1 10 3 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/6ea73c16174c3e137d46e7a0c3d5cdd9.pdf?Expires=1780531200&Signature=Lcno6kxNtbZ3Rd4v5o04SoJMhubTc8PRayp74B09a5ZQz7AtHHJAOyslpwOkI4bLuqLtAu%7EXnSvZwNhFDREzyLEjsOIuj8UQOmcXT4H00lLdCQWKJwBoAmGZvYr8V-8CHJ%7Ec6zB-U5IV2VKyVd-S70NSsy3%7E2ALLjiFdhuavfeCPRnMFIcf1BFzkoLSxEy2p-mwdsq-ju5JRNyFY2vwBfpUL3Dt2hB2quJD63fEHA4sFBgz6CwHCTYHrNxlKcKstnGdqAEoF4imHAEl92-DiD%7EKK5LPe-AvCSU1bhhtsFn-DenStlGI-LPHfXsw-D3J985T8F46zdElf5DxKB7BX5w__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM c029b94fa1cf05ebac9475f426a0d7a9 PDF Text Text 11 PROBLEM INDUSTRIAL SOLVED. BY W. B. ROBERTSON. “ England is full of wealth, of multifarious produce, supply for human want in every kind—yet England is dying of inanition. With unabated bounty the land of England blooms and grows; waving with yellow harvests; thick-studded with workshops, industrial implements, with fifteen millions of workers, understood to be the strongest, the cunningest, and the willingest our earth ever had ; these men are here, the work they have done, the fruit they have realised is here, abundant, exuberant on every hand of us; and behold some baleful fiat as of Enchantment has gone forth, saying, ‘ Touch it not, ye master-workers, ye master-idlers ; none of you can touch it, no man of you shall be the better for it; this is enchanted fruit.’ ”— Thomas Carlyle {Past and Present}. ----- LENDING sb LONDON: THE MODERN PRESS, 13, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. �CON TEN 7 S. Overproduction ------ Overpopulation ....... Remedy ......... �OVERPRODUCTION. —I. Y over-production is meant that there are more commodities produced than can be sold. The problem, therefore, in connexion with over-production is, why can this surplus of commodities not be sold? .Many writers, among them John Stuart Mill, deny the possibility of a general over-supply. They maintain that, while there may be over­ production as regards one or more kinds of commodities, there cannot be over-production in all kinds, so long as there is a human want un­ satisfied. It is impossible, for instance, to have an over-supply of food so long as millions of our fellow-men are in need of the barest necessities of life. If there be any strength in an argument like this at all, it would follow, or rather it is implied in such argument, that the mere need, the mere human desire, for any given commodity is sufficient to set the machinery in motion to produce it. Here is a man with an empty stomach and in need of a meal, this of itself, is, on such grounds, sufficient to procure such meal; or here is another man with a bare back, and in need of a coat, this is enough to procure him the coat. Now it must be plain to every one, that those that have nothing but empty stomachs and bare backs cannot influence in the slightest degree the quantity of food that may be produced, or the quantity of coats that may be made. Is any farmer going to plough and sow a field for men that come to him with nothing except empty stomachs; or is any tailor going to make coats for men that have nothing to show but bare backs ? Here, however, from one of the Cobden Club publications, are facts that show clearly enough that the quantity of food produced has nothing to do with the number of people that are m need of food, that in fact the more food there is, the greater will be the number of people in want. In this pamphlet * we have the paradoxical statement that the present depression, which set m in 1884, “ was the natural and necessary result of the improved and fairly good harvest with which this country was favoured in that year.” This statement the author (Augustus Mongredien) proves by figures taken from the Boardof Trade returns. Thus, in 1884, our imports and exports together were twenty-five million odd pounds sterling less than the average of the four previous years. This * Trade Depression : Recent and Present. �4 diminution is accounted for by the fact that in the same year “ our foreign supplies of cereals fell short of the previous years to the extent of 15^ millions of pounds sterling ; and to that extent, therefore, we may infer that the home harvests of 1884 had exceeded in yield the harvests of the previous few years.” The effect of this extra harvest was, according to our authority, to lessen directly our importations of cereals ; we had the cereals at home, and consequently did not require to buy them from foreign countries. Indirectly our exports were also lessened. Our whole foreign trade, exports and imports together, by this good harvest, Mr. Mongredien computes, was reduced by 43 millions of pounds sterling ; for he considers the effects of this good harvest as extending into 1885. After, making allowances he concludes, that this 43 millions worth of goods, represents from 2,500 to 3,000 cargoes; by so many cargoes, therefore, would our shipowners’ trade be lessened ; they would have that number of cargoes the less to carry, This sudden diminution in their business threw idle ships upon their hands; it then affected the shipbuilders, for the shipowners having more ships than they could find employment for, were of course not likely to order more. “ As a natural consequence,” Mr. Mongredien proceeds, “ the diminished construction of ships (in which the consumption of iron enters so largely) occasioned a propor­ tionate falling off in the demand for that metal, so that (other causes assisting) the wave of depression extended to the iron trade, and then spread to the closely connected coal-producing industries and others, which they influence more or less directly. Moreover, it would necessarily follow from there being between 2,500 and 3,000 fewer cargoes to load and unload at our chief ports, London, Liverpool, Glas­ gow, &c., that there would be less demand for persons living by that kind of labour, so that a number of dock labourers of all sorts would be thrown out of work. . . . On examination we find that the industries which really did most suffer from the recent and present depression are precisely those which we have enumerated above.” Such then is the account of trade depression given by the Cobden Club. There can be no questioning its accuracy so far as it goes; it leaves us helpless, however—in fact, it paralyses us. The farmer always endeavours to make his labour as productive as possible—the better his crops the more he rejoices, and the more does the nation rejoice with him. How tempered must this joy be though, if its cause is also to be the means of throwing thousands of hard working men out of work, and depriving them of the necessaries of life ! The bounties of Nature would thus seem to benefit no one, for the more bountiful she is, the less wrork is there for people to do, and in consequence the less able are they to get at these bounties. Besides the foregoing facts, we have others showing that .people may and do suffer want in the midst of plenty. The stocks of wheat held in Liverpool at the end of 1885 were 3,578,938 centals, while at the end of 1884 there were only 1,869,146 centals. Now, the winter 1885-6 was marked by great distress throughout the country; and yet we were more abundantly supplied in food-stuffs than we had ever been, for the figures taken at other ports besides Liverpool showed the same increase. The argument, therefore, that a general overproduction is impossible while there is human want can no longer be maintained. It now remains for us to explain why overproduction comes about, and �5 why it is, as already remarked, that the more abundant commodities are, the greater will be the number of people in want. For this purpose it will be necessary for us to say a word upon the system of renumerating labour. The remuneration of every kind of labour is fixed in the same way, viz., by competition. This competition may be amongst the employers, or amongst the employed. When there is a great deal of work to be done, when everybody is in employment, and there is still a demand for more men, these additional men must be drawn from other masters ; and to be so drawn inducements in the shape of higher wages must be held out to them. Under circumstances like these wages tend to rise. In a state of society, for example, such as that presented by a newly settled country where human labour is little aided by machinery, the labouring classes are,, it is well known, highly paid. The reason of this is because labourers are few compared with the amount of work that is offered. For these few labourers employers compete amongst themselves —each one holding out better inducements than the other. Take America some years ago ; wages were high then because there were more labourers wanted than could be got. Not only were wages high, but masters were very civil to their servants, as is evidenced by the fact that servants were euphemistically called “ helps,” allowed to sit at the same table with their employers, and treated in every way as equals. This courtesy, on the part of employers, is rapidly disappearing with the cause that gave rise to it; for labourers are no longer scarce in America, and if a servant dislikes to be called a servant, he can go about his busi­ ness—there are plenty others willing to take his place. It was the scarcity of labour that gave rise to the appearance of a system of equality in America, which many attributed to the Republican form of Govern­ ment. The form of Government had nothing whatever to do with it. So much then for the fixing of wages when labour is scarce. When labour is plentiful, when there are a great many seeking work, the labourers compete with one another for such employment as there is to be had. This of course brings wages down. It is useless for a man to offer his services for five shillings a day, when there are plenty others willing to do the same thing for two shillings and sixpence. Thus one man underbids another, and the one whose necessities are the greatest is the one that will accept the lowest terms. It is this competi­ tion amongst the working-classes that has brought wages down to star­ vation point in the simpler kinds of work. Starving men and women compete with starving men and women, and are glad to get the oppor­ tunity of working long hours every day for a few coppers ; because this is better than nothing at all. The foregoing then is the method upon which wages are fixed, and it operates in every department of human activity. The reason that a navvy is worse paid than a mechanic is simply because there are more men able to do navvy’s work than mechanic’s work, and the competition is consequently keener amongst the navvies than amongst the mechanics. We might go through all the different kinds of labour, and we wnuld find that wages in each kind are high or low according to the relation between the number of men seeking employment, and the quantity of employment to be got. The law of wages, then, may be stated in these words: Wages vary according to the relation between the quantity of labour offered and the quantity of labour required. �6 If people had borne this in mind, we would not have had so many ex­ pressions.of surprise at the fact that our working population has made so little, if, indeed, any progress. We often hear our great wealth spoken of, the wonderful strides we have made, and yet only a few seem, and we are told this with astonishment, to have participated in our increased power. All this is quite in accordance with what Political Economy has predicted, as is shown by the following passage from Ricardo;—“ If the shoes and clothing of the labourer could, by improvements in machinery, be produced by one fourth of the labour now necessary to their production, they would probably fall 75 per cent.; but so far is it from being true, that the labourer would thereby be enabled permanently to consume four coats, or lour pairs of shoes, instead of one, that his wages would in no long time be adjusted by the effects of competition, and the stimulus to popuation, to the new value of the necessaries on which they were expended. If these improvements extended to all the objects of the labourers’ consump­ tion, we should find him, probably at the end of a very few years, in possession of only a small, if any, adddition to his enjoyments.” This was written at the beginning of the present century. It afnounts to saying, “ It makes no difference how much you improve your methods of production, the position of the labourer will not be one whit the better; he will not enjoy any more of the necessaries and conveniences of life, his command over these necessaries and conveniences will always be just enough to enable him to subsist and to raise up more labourers.” This is perfectly true. It was at the beginning of the century, as we have just remarked, that Ricardo wrote the passage. Since then, we have introduced improve­ ments into every kind of work, -and the result is as predicted. The labourers are poor and ignorant; they still toil unceasingly; and they think themselves lucky if they can get the opportunity of undergoing this toil. We shall now endeavour to give more pointedly, the reason of this anomalous position, the reason why in the midst of plenty people starve, why, in fact, the more plentiful things are the less able are we to get at them. As Carlyle says:—“ We have more riches than any nation ever had before ; we have less good of them than any nation ever had before. Our successful industry is hitherto unsuccessful; a strange success if we stop here ! In the midst of plethoric plenty, the people perish ; with gold walls and full barns, no man feels himself safe or satisfied. Workers, master-workers, un workers, all men come to a pause ; stand fixed, and cannot farther. Have’we actually got enchanted then ; accursed by some God1” Now let us offer a simple illustration of some of the economic effects of such a system of remunerating labour. Suppose that the only thing we did in this country was to make cotton—a single industry is supposed because it simplifies matters ; suppose, moreover, that we could make enough cotton to supply our own requirements for that article, and had enough to send to other countries for our food and whatever else we needed. At the beginning of the centruy we will further suppose that everybody is employed, that there is nobody out of work, and the wages are good enough to keep them comfortably and respectably. By and by improved methods of production and transit are introduced, and to such an extent that one man can do as much as five formerly did. As these improvements are applied four men out of every five would be thrown �out of work ; wages, moreover, would be reduced, for rather than be thrown out of work the men would offer their services at a lower rate, and competition amongst the workers would become keener. Here, then, with an increasing power of production, we would have a reduced number of consumers—these too getting a smaller share of the produce of their labour. What under such circumstances can be more natural than a glut, than over-production ? With such a fair start then at the beginning of the century, we should be as bad to-day as we now actually are. The men that had been thrown out of work with every successive improvement, and their families, would have to live somehow ; many of them would become thieves and vagrants, many of them paupers. All this too would come about independently of the extraordinary tendency of population to increase. When we take this into account we can only wonder, not that evils are so rampant in society, but that society has continued so long upon such a basis. The hard lot of man then would appear not to be due to the niggard­ liness of nature as we have been taught; to have no connection with the curse that doomed him to eat his bread “ by the sweat of his brow.” It is due to a mere convention, the shadowy nature of which will appear clearly enough later on. The real significance of over-production is to reduce our present indus­ trial system to an absurdity. It is ridiculous for people to have to starve because they have grown too much food, to go unclad because they have made too many clothes, and unhoused because they have built too many houses. There would be work for all the unemployed to-morrow if the half of London were destroyed; there is nothing like calamities for trade. By bringing about over-production, then, the working population has proved our present industrial system to be false; and how very unequal that system is we see every day. Here in a few words is one of its most ■ glaring inequalities. The governing class has said to the working class, you go to work under this system—your share of the result of your labour will be fixed in this wise, our share of the result of your labour will be fixed in this other wise. So the working population said all right, took up their hammers and went to work. They weret old to work hard and ever harder, and overseers were put to see that they did work hard. But what is this that has come upon us now ? The governing class exclaim, “ Stop ! you have produced too much ; you must lay down your hammers until we require you again ; we have quite enough here of everything to suit us—indeed more than enough. So you can go and shake your heels outside there while we enjoy ourselves and consume the things that you have made.” OVER-POPULATION.—II. The view that attributes our social disorders to the fact that we are overpopulated, is perhaps more widely accepted than any other. The reason for this is because it is an easily understood view. What can be more clear than that, if there be a greater number of people in a commu­ nity than can get employment, and if the livelihood of these people depend upon their getting employment, the privation of those that cannot get employment �8 is due to the fact that there is no room for them in such community ? At one time it was universally believed that the sun moved round the earth ; for what could be more clear than that, if Rome continued to remain in the same spot and the sun every day passed over it, the sun must so move ? Rome, however, did not continue to remain in the same spot; hence what was so very clear was all wrong. Similarly the livelihood of man does not depend upon his getting employment, it depends upon his get­ ting the means of livelihood ; hence what is so very clear as to our being over-populated, may also be all wrong. This is a point, however, that remains for us to consider. The reader has of course heard of Malthus and his celebrated essay on “ Population.” In that essay it was shown that in every community the number of members is limited by the means of subsistence at their command; increase the subsistence and an increased population will result; diminish the subsistence, and there follows a diminished popula­ tion. “ This is incontrovertibly true,” he says. “ Through the animal and vegetable kingdoms, Nature has scattered the seeds of life abroad with the most profuse and liberal hand; but has been comparatively sparing in the room and the nourishment necessary to rear them. The germs of existence contained in this earth, if they could freely develop themselves, would fill millions of worlds in a few thousand years. Necessity, that imperious, all pervading law of nature, restrains them within the prescribed bounds. The race of plants, and the race of animals shrink under this great restrictive law; and man cannot by any efforts of reason escape from it.” Such was the truth that Malthus laboured to enforce—a truth that one would have thought so self-evident as not to need enforcing. His essay, however, is really nothing more than a demonstration of the extraordinary strength of the principle of self- con servation. Malthusians consider themselves followers of Malthus on the ground that they accept and seek to promulgate his views on population. Let us consider for a moment their position. This country, they say, is over-populated. Why I Because there are more people in it wanting work than can get work ; many are con­ sequently compelled to idleness, these not having any other way of procuring the necessaries of life except by labour, are consequently either thrown upon the generosity of their friends or become recipients of public relief, or criminals. In this simple way does the Malthusian explain all our social calamities, and, as the only remedy, he suggests that people must be more prudent, must regulate the number of children they bring into the world—in a word, the population of a country must correspond to the work to be done in that country, the more work the greater the population may be, the less work the less the population. The reader will now see that there is a difference between the view of Malthus and the view of the Malthusian.; the former set up subsistence as the limit to population, the latter sets up employment or work to be done—the more work there is to be done as already remarked, the more room is there for an increased population. Let us now follow the Malthusian position to its logical issue. Why do we call one method of'production or transit an improvement upon another ? Simply because it involves less labour, simply because it abridges labour, and that is the reason that we adopt the improved method. Now, with every abridgment in the labour of making and �9 transferring things there becomes relatively, less and less labour to do, and consequently, the ideal population of the Malthusian becomes less and less. In this way, if the Malthusian position had free play, the most ingenious race, the race that is most apt to discover quicker and quicker methods of doing things, would thereby be always narrowing the limits of its populatiou. It would consequently be the first to disappear from the face of the earth, the fittest to survive would be the most stupid, the unkindest countries would be the most densely populated; in a word, nature and man would be at daggers drawn. We do not say that such is not the case to-day—in fact it is the case. Nature and man are at war, and all through one little fallacy in our economic system. Meanwhile as to our statement that it is the case that nature and man are at daggers drawn, that the stupidest, or least adaptive, are fittest to survive, we have practical proof of this in recent legislative action in America and Australia. Chinese labour was forbid­ den the markets of these countries, because the Chinaman can underbid the Anglo-Saxon. Laws are made to protect the weak against the strong; the strong man m the case just noticed, is the Chinaman, the weak, the Anglo-Saxon, who requires special protection. The fittest will always survive—that statement points to a law that we cannot alter. What we can alter, however, and what we must alter if we would continue our race—if, indeed, we wish to make any further progress at all—are the conditions that make the Chinaman and those that approach him in character the superior. Suppose again, that the Malthusian doctrines were practically adopted and most rigidly carried out. Suppose that to-day our population was so regulated, that there was not an idle man in the kingdom, not a pauper, not even a criminal. Every one is fed, and clad, and legitimately employed. There remains, however, in this happy state of affairs just one thing that we have got to-day, and that is our present industrial system. Let us now take a step forward from this ideal point to a time when improved methods of production and transit have been introduced. Com­ modities can be manufactured with less labour, goods can be conveyed to their destinations with less labour—in a word, we shall suppose, as is really what happens, that in nearly every department of human effort, improvements have been introduced. They are called improvements, because they lessen labour. What then would be the economic effect of a year’s progress upon the ideal state of affairs that we have just been imagining ? The first effect would be that to make the same quantity of manufactures, less workmen would be required ; masters would consequently have to discharge some of their men. Now, what becomes of these men? Well, they do not want to be discharged, so they offer their services at a lower wage, competition amongst the work­ men for such employment as there is to be had becomes keener, wages consequently become lower, for masters are obliged to follow the market rate of wages. No matter, however, whether wages be high or low, the masters cannot employ as many men as they did before the introduction of the supposed improvements. What, then, becomes of the surplus ? Why, enforced idleness, and with it loss of independence : then as wc go on improving, we recruit the ranks of the enforced idlers—they are enforced idlers at first—and out of them springs the necessity for those vigorous institutions police courts, prisons, and workhouses. �IO The Malthusian would thus have to resort periodically to some drastic measures to restore the balance between employment and population. One word more in connexion with improvements. We have seen their effect to be the lessening the nurhber of those employed and the lowering of wages. Now here comes the economic effect par excellence. Fewer men in employment at reduced wages means a diminution in the power of the community to consume. Improved methods of production, &c., are ever increasing our power over nature, our power to produce ; they are at the same time, by rendering competition amongst labourers keener and keener, diminishing our power to consume. This is going on all over the world, is operating upon the industrial classes in every civilised community, is the noose with which we are stranglingourselves, is in the words of Carlyle, “ the accursed invisible night-mare that is crushing out the life of us and ours.” Can anyone wonder that the markets of the world are glutted ? The supply pipes are ever widening, the waste pipes ever contracting: of course, there is a running over ; of course, as Carlyle says, our wealth “i s an enchanted wealth.” THE REMEDY.—III. The 'main evils that result from our present economic svrstem have appeared from our observations on over-production and over-population. Over-production and over-population are themselves under existing arrangements sources of great suffering. Both, curiously enough, too, exist together. This in itself shews that there must be some contradic­ tory forces in operation in the industrial world ; for is it not ridiculous that we should have too large a population while we are complaining of having too great an abundance of useful things? How are we to tell when a population is great or small ? By a reference to the limit of population. Now the limit to population is professed to be the means of subsistence. But our population is so far from pressing upon this limit that we are complaining of a too abundant supply of the means of subsistence. Here then is an absurdity; and we are landed in this absurdity because the limit to population is not as supposed, the means of subsistence, but the employment offered in a community. By referring to this limit, the employment offered in a community, we find that our population is too great; for there are many more than can get employ­ ment, and by so many is our population excessive. Now, it remains for us to ask ourselves whether we are to maintain this limiting principle, or whether it would not be better for us to adopt another. We have already shewn that it is impossible to have population regu­ lated by the employment to be had in a community because such em­ ployment is always varying, is by the introduction of improved methods of production always becoming less and less. Now, here is a fertile source of evil; for with every contraction of the field of employment some are thrust out of that field, these keep on recruiting the everlasting army of paupers and criminals, and form the dregs of society. They are forced into these positions, and no subsequent action on the part of society is of any avail in recalling them. There is the field of labour, it is full; �11 place another man in it, it is more than full; the consequence is that either that man or some one else must go out. Besides paupers and criminals, and what are called the dregs of society, such a limiting principle to population leads in its working out to deterioration in workmanship, and indeed in human character. As already shown, improvements by lessening the demand for labour lead to a keener competition amongst labourers, and thereby lead to a con­ traction of the labourers’ pockets ; to meet this diminished consuming power commodities have to be made as cheaply as possible ; there is no effective demand for good materials, consequently jerrymaundering is in the ascendant. As to the deterioration in human character that is con­ tinually going on, we have already shown what class is best fitted to survive. It is the class that can live on least, whose manner of living approaches more and more closely to the beasts. Thus is our civilisa­ tion being undermined, and thus are all our attempts at social progress frustrated. It is apparent, then, that some other limit to population must be substituted for the one that prevails to-day, and it is. such other limit that we now proceed to unfold. This other limit is the means of subsistence—the very limit that is supposed to be in operation, but which we have shown to be not the case. Now, in the first place, with such a limit as the means of subsist­ ence over-population would be impossible; for no community could ever consist of more members than it could support. This, of course, is evi­ dent, and requires no further elucidation. In speaking of the limiting principle that is in operation now, viz., employment, we objected to it that it was always varying. Might not the means of subsistence vary too ? If, moreover, at any time, writh the means of subsistence as the limit to population there should become less subsistence than will suffice to maintain the whole population, who is to have such subsistence and who is to go without ? Of course the means of subsistence might vary; the difficulties that might arise from such a possibility will, however, disappear after we have shown how this limit is to be practically adopted, and this brings us to enquire into the nature of property. What is property ? Why does society have such a thing as property at all ? Why should it put itself about to ensure any man in the pos­ session of whatever goods he may have got hold of? The only reason that can be given for this, and a very gocd one it is, is to encourage industry. For instance, I make chairs ; suppose that as soon as I have done so a stronger man than myself comes along and takes them from me; I should most certainly come to the conclusion to make no more chairs, because I would derive no benefit from pursuing such a course, and would at once betake myself to procuring whatever I wanted by stealing also. Of course, there would very soon be nothing to steal, and society would at once collapse. To prevent this collapse, however, and to preserve its own life, society steps forward and says that these chairs are mine, that they are mine because I made them ; the reason that such a course of conduct on the part of society preserves its life is because I am .thereby encouraged to go on making more chairs, and every other maker of everything else is encouraged in the same way. Thus are the members of the community kept supplied with such commodities as are required. The institution of private property, then, is maintained by society �T2 for the sake of encouraging industry, and for the sake of nothing else, except what is implied in the encouragement of industry — viz., the continuance of society. Such, then, is the reason why we have such a thing as property. How far does society practically adhere to this, the. recognised theory of property ? It has departed from it as far as it can. To see that this is so, the merest glance round is sufficient; for those that have made everything have got nothing. As soon as an article has been made it is by some magical operation—an operation so subtle that it is scarce perceptible —snatched from the maker, and becomes the property of some one else. Speaking in this connection John Stuart Mill says that he would prefer Communism itself to such an unholy state of affairs. “ If,” he says, “ the institution of private property necessarily carried with it as a con­ sequence that the produce of labour should be apportioned as we now see it, almost in an inverse ratio to the labour—the largest portions to those who have never worked at all, the next largest to those whose work is almost nominal, and so, in a descending scale, the remuneration dwind­ ling as the work grows harder aud more disagreeable, until the most fatiguing and exhausting bodily labour cannot count with certainty on being able to earn even the necessaries of life: if this, or communism were the alternative, ail the difficulties, great or small, of communism would be but as dust in the balance.” Surely it cannot be impossible for society to carry out so simple a theory—a theory that it recognises and accepts as true—as to see that people have the produce of their own labour, that industry is rewarded and encouraged. The grossest inconsistency on the part of society as regards property is the maintenance of property in. land. How can that encourage in­ dustry ? It is only the produce of the land, the result of labour, that can be called property. By insuring to this individual or to that individual this or that tract of land, what industry does society encourage ? It en­ courages the industry of the idle—a terrible industry, a scourge: it reduces thousands of its members to the position of flunkeys, ministers to idleness. As we have already said, the view that property is maintained in a community for the purpose of encouraging industry and for no other pur­ pose, is not new neither is it denied. All that it implies is that men are to be rewarded according to their industry—this, no one can for a mo­ ment deny, is far from being practically carried out; in fact, we practically carry out the very opposite doctrine. Here then are two principles, viz.: that population is limited by subsistence and that property is instituted to encourage industry ; that are universally accepted and argued upon, as if they were carried into practice ; we have shown that the one not carried into practice, how­ ever, seeks to deny them. Why should they not be adopted by society ? It is the adoption of these two principles, and of these two principles alone that is recommended here. Indeed by seeing that the theory of property alone is applied, the limiting principle to population will be implicitly applied too. Such, and such alone, is the work that lies before reformers now. 'AXVV • wy""........... •''WXxxxax" �OBJECT. The Establishment of a Free Condition of Society based on the prin­ ciple of Political Equality, with Equal Social Rights for all and the complete Emancipation of Labour. PROGRAMME. 1. All Officers or Administrators to be elected by Equal Direct Adult Suffrage, and to be paid by the Community. 2. Legislation by the People, in such wise that no project of Law shall become legally binding till accepted by the Majority of the People. 3. The Abolition of a Standing Army, and the Establishment of a National Citizen Force ; the People to decide on Peace or War. 4. All Education, higher no less than elementary, to be Free, Com­ pulsory, Secular, and Industrial for all alike. 5. The Administration of Justice to be Free and Gratuitous for all Members of Society. 6. The Land with all the Mines, Railways and other Means of Tran­ sit, to be declared and treated as Collective or Common Property. 7. Ireland and all other parts of the Empire to have Legislative Independence. 8. The Production of Wealth to be regulated by Society in the com­ mon interest of all its Members. 9. The Means of Production, Distribution and Exchange to be declared and treated as Collective or Common Property. As measures called for to palliate the evils of our existing society the Social-Democratic Federation urges for immediate adoption :— The Compulsory Construction of healthy artizan’s and agricultural labourers’ dwellings in proportion to the population, such dwellings to be let at rents to cover the cost of construction and maintenance alone. Free Compulsory Education for all classes, together with the provision of at least one wholesome meal a day in each school. Eight Hours or less to be the normal working day in all trades. Cumulative Taxation upon all incomes above a fixed minimum not exceeding /300 a year. State Appropriation of Railways, with or without compensation. The establishment of National Banks, which shall absorb all private institutions that derive a profit from operations in money or credit. Rapid Extinction of the National Debt. Nationalisation of the Land, and organisation of agricultural and industrial armies under State control on Co-operative principles. As means for the peaceable attainment of these objects the SocialDemocratic Federation advocates : Adult Suffrage. Annual Parliaments. Proportional Represen­ tation. Payment of Members ; and Official Expenses of Election out of the Rates. Abolition of the House of Lords and all Hereditary Authorities. Disestablishment and Disendowment of all State Churches. Secretary, Social-Democratic Federation, Bridge House, Blackfriars, E.G. �4t J ■ All who are interested in Socialism should read THE FOLLOWING PUBLICATIONS OF THE MODERN PRESS, 13, Paternoster Row, London, E.C. Which will be sent post free at the published prices on receipt of an order amounting to one shilling or more. (The Publications of the Modern Press can be obtained from W. L. Rosenberg, 261, East Tenth Street, New York City.) The Historical Basis of Socialism in England. By H. M. Hyndman. Paul, Trench, & Co. Crown 8-vo., price 8s. 6d London: Kegan This is the only Book in the English Language which gives the Historical and Economical Theories of Organised Socialism. It should be carefully studied by all who desire to understand why Socialists are enthusiastic for their cause, and confident of ucces s in the near future. Woman in the Past, Present and Future. By August Bebel, Deputy in the Reichstag. Translated from the German by H. B. Adams Walther. Demy 8-vo., cloth, price 5s. ft. F This work by the best known of the German Socialists aims at showing that the social condition of women can be permanently improved only by the solution of the whole social problem, The Co-operative Commonwealth: an Exposition of Modern Socialism. By Laurence Gronlund, of Philadelphia. Demy 8-vo., paper cover, is. This book supplies the want, frequently complained of, of definite proposals for the administration of a Socialistic State. Mr. Gronlund has reconciled the teaching of Marx with the influence of Carlyle in the constructive part of his work, which is specially recommended to English Socialists. Socialism versus Smithism: I An open letter from H. M. Hyndman to Samuel Smith, M.P. for Liverpool. 8-vo. Cheaper edition, price id. Crown John E. Williams, and the Early History of THE SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC FEDERATION. trait. Price one penny. 1 With Por­ Opening Address to the Trade Union Congress at Southport, September, 1885. Delivered by T. R. Threlfall. Royal 8-vo., 16-pp. Price one penny. An able address from a representative working man on political and social topics. i| L- ■ Ek. I I Social ism made Plain. The social and political manifesto of the Social-Democratic Federation issued in June 1883 ; with “The Unemployed,” a Manifesto issued after the “ Riots in the West End” on 8th February, 1886. Sixty-first thousand. Crown 8-vo., paper cover, price id. “ JUSTICE,” the Organ of the Social Democracy. Every Saturday, one penny. I! �Socialism and Soldiering*; with some comments on the Army Enlistment Fraud. By George Bateman (Late 23rd Regi­ ment), with Portrait. With an introduction by H. H. Champion (Late Royal Artillery). Price One Penny. The Working Man’s Programme (Arbeiter Pro- gramm). By Ferdinand Lassalle. Translated from the German by Edward Peters. Crown 8-vo., paper cover, price 6d. The Robbery of the Poor. By W. H. P. Campbell. Demy 8-vo., paper cover, price 6d. The Appeal to the Young. By Prince Peter Kropotkin. Translated from the French by H. M. Hindman and reprinted from Justice. Royal 8-vo., 16-pp. Price one penny. The most eloquent and noble appeal to the generous emotions ever penned by a scientific man. Its author has just suffered five years’ imprisonment at t.he hands of the French Republic for advocating the cause of the workers Wage-Labour and Capital. From the German of Karl Marx translated by J. L. Joynes and reprinted from Justice. New and cheaper edition, Royal 8-vo., price id. By Edward Carpenter.—Social Progress and Indi­ The Man with the Red Flag : Being John Burns’ vidual Effort; Desirable Mansions; and Co-operative Production. One penny each. Speech at the Old Bailey, when tried for Seditious Conspiracy, on April gth, 1886. (From the Verbatim Notes of the official short­ hand reporter.) With Portrait. Price threepence. The Socialist Catechism. with additions from Justice. By J. L. Joynes. Reprinted Demy 8-vo., price id. 20th thousand. Socialism and Slavery. By H. M. Hyndman. (In reply to Mr. Herbert Spencer’s article on “ The Coming Slavery.”) New Edition, with portrait. 16 pp. Royal 8-vo., price one penny. The Emigration Fraud Exposed. By H. M. What an Eight Hours Bill Means. By T. Mann Hyndman. With a Portrait of the Author. Reprinted by per­ mission from the Nineteenth Century for February, 1885. Crown 8-vo., price one penny. (Amalgamated Engineers). New edition with portrait. Thousand. Price one penny. Socialism and the Worker. Price id. By F. A. Sixth Sorge. An explanation in the simplest language of tne main idea of Socialism. The Chicago Riots and the Class War in the United States. By H. M. Hyndman. Reprinted from Time, June, 1886. Price one penny. International Trade Union Congress, held at August, 1886. Report by Adolphe Smith. Price Three-Halfpence. Paris, 24-pp., Royal 8-vo. �Social Progress and Individual Effort. Desirable Mansions. Co-operative Production. England Arise. Song with Music. By Edward Carpenter. Price id. each. Cashel Byron’s Profession: G. Bernard Shaw. A Novel. The Genesis Of Capital. Translated from the French of Gabriel Deville by B. J. Royal 8vo. Price id. The Nationalisation of Societv. dore D’Auton. By Price is. Royal 8vo, paper covers. By J. Theo­ Royal 8vo., price id. The Australian Labour Market: Startling The Industrial Problem Solved. By W. B. Disclosures. By John Norton, New South Wales Labour Delegate. Royal 8vo., Price id. Robertson. 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Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The industrial problem solved Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Robertson, W.B. Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 12, [4] p. ; 23 cm. Notes: Stamp on title page: South Place Chapel Finsbury, Lending Library. Publisher's list and Information on the Social-Democratic Federation on unnumbered pages at the end. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Modern Press Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1887 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G4973 Subject The topic of the resource Industry Socialism Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The industrial problem solved), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Economics Industrial Democracy Industrialization Population Increase Production Socialism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/782bf9b98e3c67d9679c73ec5e5ce38b.pdf?Expires=1780531200&Signature=b4mUOV%7EMGFhF0FfR-YuV3dOUgBc8tQ1fT1TSFtyDra3gFwyJPJrBe0S08qjOeHqH34gla3czanyAjdnuwNUkopVxB6yX-FmxeHA5j3HkqrwU7A5wCq6bAuSy691OI4OkEWMtN0y6d54a3okzcsRoLWbk6C1VEzW7lFzizi4CbySo21abBI7TLy46tpatjdNHL3ykptDpkXRGeZ0dzScrcsgrUT5f1IIsudl4r0PnOJtPEwrDeJD3-guMpcpMkek5xFpEtvrInxWokmgETbPgdO6WfNdSI3LcpGPtv3%7EoKJI4iH2usJPxHVgZcdR9WkRN45YlyT6nNmXSiWzVZjhbEw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM b4c78c31cbac3eea9198fdb2a3288acd PDF Text Text CLOTH 6d. NETT * SB �.A C. FIFIELD'S NEW LIST. THE WOMAN’S CALENDAR By DORA B. MONTEFIORE. ■ “Women are beginning to take themselves seriously, whether as wives, sweethearts, bridge-players, mothers, or politicians.® It has occurred to me that a special Woman’s Calendar,^ containing selections of wise, witty, critical or hopeful quota-? tions, from the writings of those who, through words, have; been obliging enough to conceal or reveal their thoughts! about women, might be of value to us in our efforts towards! self-realization.”—From the Foreword. I “ Should go far and wide at this time of the awakening oft women.”—Age. “A delightful little book.”—Aursw« Times. “ Of extreme interest.”—The Lady. Tastefully produced, oblong, is. nett. Cloth back, gilt 28« nett. Undated, and suitable for any period. Postage id. and i^d. | THE INFLUENCE OF WOMEN! ON THE PROGRESS OF 1 KNOWLEDGE. By Henry T. Buckle. Demy 16mo, 64 pages, Cd. nett, i cloth,, gill top, is. ne/t. 3 A very valuable forgotten essay by the famous historian of | “Civilization in Europe.” RABBI BEN EZRA. By Robert Browning. THE EVERLASTING YEA. By Thomas Carlyle. Two classics, charmingly produced as separate booklets, ■ each. Post free 4^d. each. LONDON: A. C. FIFIELD, 44, FLEET ST., E.CJl �dj ß 41 NS67 NATIONAL SECULAR SOCIETY UNTO THIS LAST.” �“ Ruskin lived to see ‘ Unto this Last,’ the book which he pre­ ferred to all the rest both for its substance and its style, attain a great vogue, and to find many of his ideas and suggestions pass into the accepted political currency. In the main his strength as an economic writer lies where also lies his strength as an (esthetic writer—namely in his penetrative power of vision. To break down the walls which in a competitive social system hide from mens eyes the actual and ultimate facts was Ruskin’s mission. Carlyle called Ruskin's economical essays 1 fierce lightning bolts' and in very truth his impeachments (of the existing order) flash on the perceptive sense as lightning on the eye.”—E. T. Cook in Die. Nat. Biog. John Ruskin was born 1819, died January 20, 1900. ‘ Unto this Last' originally appeared serially in the ‘ Cornhill Maga­ zine ’ in i860, and in book form in 1862, �UNTO THIS LAST (“I will give unto this last, even as unto thee.”—Matt. xx. 14. FOUR ON THE ESSAYS FIRST PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY BY JOHN RUSKIN. Popular Edition. Unabridged. LONDON : A. C. FIFIELD, 44, FLEET STREET, E.C. 1907. �CONTENTS. PAGE Preface ........ 5 ESSAY I. II. The Roots The Veins of of Honour .... 9 Wealth .... 27 .... 41 III. Qui Judicatis Terram IV. Ad Valorem 60 �PREFACE. The four following essays were published eighteen months ago in the ‘ Cornhill Magazine,’ and were repro­ bated in a violent manner, as far as I could hear, by most of the readers they met with. Not a whit the less., I believe them to be the best, that is to say, the truest, nghtest-worded, and most serviceable things I have ever written; and the last of them, having had especial pains spent on it, is probably the best I shall ever write. “ This,” the reader may reply, “ it might be, yet not therefore well written.” Which, in no mock humility, admitting, I yet rest satisfied with the work, though with nothing else that I have done; and purposing shortly to follow out the subjects opened in these papers, as I may find leisure, I wish the introductory statements to be within the reach of any one who may care to refer to them. So I republish the essays as they appeared. One word only is changed, correcting the estimate of a weight ; and no word is added. Although, however, I find nothing to modify in these papers, it is matter of regret to me that the most startling of all the statements in them—that respecting the necessity of the organisation of labour, with fixed wages-—should have found its way into the first essay; it being quite one of the least important, though by no means the least certain, of the positions to be defended. The real gist of these papers, their central meaning and aim, is to give as I believe for the first time in plain English—it has often been incidentally given in good Greek by Plato and Xenophon, and good Latin by Cicero and Horace—a logical definition of WEALTH: such definition being absolutely needed for a basis of economi­ cal science. The most reputed essay on that subject �6 UNTO THIS LAST. which has appeared in modern times, after opening with the statement that “ writers on political economy profess to teach, or to investigate, the nature of wealth,” thus * follows up the declaration of its thesis—“ Every one has a notion, sufficiently correct for common purposes, of what is meant by wealth.” . . . “It is no part of the design of this treatise to aim at metaphysical nicety of defini­ tion. ”t Metaphysical nicety, we assuredly do not need ; but physical nicety, ana logical accuracy, with respect to a physical subject, we as assuredly do. Suppose the subject of inquiry, instead of being House­ law (Oikonomia), had been Star-law (Astronomia') y and that, ignoring distinction between stars fixed and wan­ dering, as here between wealth radiant and wealth re­ flective, the writer had begun thus : “ Every one has a notion, sufficiently correct for common purposes, of what is meant by stars. Metaphysical nicety in the definition of a star is not the object of this treatise ; ”—the essay so opened might yet have been far more true in its final statements, and a thousand-fold more serviceable to the navigator, than any treatise on wealth, which founds its conclusions on the popular conception of wealth, can ever become to the economist. It was, therefore, the first object of these follow­ ing papers to give an accurate and stable definition of wealth. Their second object was to show that the ac­ quisition of wealth was finally possible only under certain moral conditions of society, of which quite the first was a belief in the existence, and even, for practical purposes, in the attainability of honesty. Without venturing to pronounce—since on such a matter human judgment is by no means conclusive—what is, or is not, the noblest of God’s works, we may yet admit so much of Pope’s assertion as that an honest man is among His best works presently visible, and, as things stand, a somewhat rare one ; but not an incredible or miraculous work ; still less an abnormal one. Honesty is not a disturbing force, which deranges the orbits of economy ; but a consistent and commanding force, by obedience to which—and by no other obedience—thoSfe orbits can continue clear of chaos. It is true, I have sometimes heard Pope condemned for the lowness, instead of the height, of his standard :— “ Honesty is indeed a respectable virtue ; but how much higher may men attain ! Shall nothing more be asked of us than that we be honest ? ” * Which ? for where investigation is necessary, teaching is impossible. t ‘ Principles of political Economy,’ By J, S. Mill, Preliminary remarks, p. g, �PREFACE. 7 For the present, good friends, nothing. It seems that in our aspirations to be more than that, we have to some extent lost sight of the propriety of being so much as that. What else we may have lost faith in, there shall be here no question; but assuredly we have lost .faith in common honesty, and in the working power of it. And this faith, with the facts on which it may rest, it is quite our first business to recover and keep : not only believing, but even by experience assuring ourselves, that there are yet in the world men who can be restrained from fraud otherwise than by the fear of losing employment; nay, * that it is even accurately in proportion to the number of such men in any State, that the said State does or can prolong its existence. To these two points, then, the following essays are mainly directed. The subject of the organisation ol labour is only casually touched upon ; because, if we once can get a sufficient quantity of honesty in our captains, the organisation of labour is easy, and will develop itself without quarrel or difficulty ; but if we cannot get honesty in our captains, the organisation of labour is for ever­ more impossible. The several conditions of its possibility I purpose to examine at length in the sequel. Yet, lest the reader should be alarmed by the hints thrown out during the following investigation of first principles, as if they were leading him into unexpectedly dangerous ground, I will, for his better assurance, state at once the worst of the political creed at which I wish him to arrive. (i.) First—that there should be training schools for youth established, at Government cost,+ and under Gov­ ernment discipline, over the whole country; that every child born in the country should, at the parent’s wish, be permitted (and, in certain cases, be under penalty re­ quired) to pass through them; and that, in these schools, the child should (with other minor pieces of knowledge hereafter to be considered) imperatively be taught, with the best skill of teaching that the country could produce, the following three things:— * “The effectual discipline which is exercised over a workman is not that of his corporation, but of his customers. It is the fear of losing their employment which restrains his frauds, and corrects his negligence,” (‘ Wealth of Nations,’ Book I. chap, io.) t It will probably be inquired by near-sighted persons, out of what funds such schools could be supported. The expedient modes of direct provision forthem I will examine hereafter : indirectly, they would be far more than self-support­ ing, The economy in crime alone (quite one of the most costly articles of luxury in the modern European market), which such schools would induce, would suffice to support them ten times over. Their economy of labour would be pure gain, and that too large to be presently calculable, �UNTO THIS LAST. 8 (a) The laws of health, and the exercises enjoined by them; Habits of gentleness and justice ; and The calling by which he is to live. (2.) Secondly—that, in connection with these training schools, there should be established, also entirely under Government regulation, manufactories and workshops for the production and sale of every necessary of life, and for the exercise of every useful art. And that, in­ terfering no whit with private enterprise, nor setting any restraints or tax on private trade, but leaving both to do their best, and beat the Government if they could—there should, at these Government manufactories and shops, be authoritatively good and exemplary work done, and pure and true substance sold; so that a man could be sure, if he chose to pay the Government price, that he got for his money bread that was bread, ale that was ale, and work that was work. (3.) Thirdly—that any man, or woman, or boy, or girl, out of employment, should be at once received at the nearest Government school, and set to such work as it appeared, on trial, they were fit for, at a fixed rate of wages determinable every year;—that, being found in­ capable of work through ’ ignorance, they should be taught, or being found incapable of work through sick­ ness, should be tended; but that being found objecting to work, they should be set, under compulsion of the strictest nature, to the more painful and degrading forms of neces­ sary toil, especially to that in mines and other places of danger (such danger being, however, diminished to the utmost by careful regulation and discipline), and the due wages of such work be retained, cost of compulsion first abstracted—to be at the workman’s command, so soon as he has come to sounder mind respecting the laws of em­ ployment. (4.) Lastlv—that for the old and destitute, comfort and home should be provided ; which provision, when mis­ fortune had been by the working of such a system sifted from guilt, would be honourable instead of disgraceful to the receiver. For (I repeat this passage out of my 1 Political Economy of Art,’ to which the reader is referred for farther detail “ a labourer serves his country with ) * his spade, just as a man in the middle ranks of life serves it with sword, pen, or lancet. If the service be less, and, therefore, the wages during health less, then the reward when health is broken may be less, but not less honour­ able ; and it ought to be quite as natural and straight­ forward a matter for a labourer to take his pension from (b) (c) * ‘ A Joy for Ever.’ �THE ROOTS OF HONOUR. 9 his parish, because he has deserved well of his parish, as for a man in higher rank to take his pension from his country, because he has deserved well of his country.” To which statement, I will only add, for conclusion, respecting the discipline and pay of life and death, that, for both high and low, Livy’s last words touching Valerius Publicóla, “ de -publico est elatus” ought not to be a dishonourable close of epitaph. These things, then, I believe, and am about, as I find power, to explain and illustrate in their various bear­ ings ; following out also what belongs to them of col­ lateral inquiry. Here I state them only in brief, to pre­ vent the reader casting about in alarm for my ultimate meaning; yet requesting him, for the present, to remem­ ber, that in a science dealing with so subtle elements as those of human nature, it is only possible to answer for the final truth of principles, not for the direct success of plans: and that in the best of these last, what can be im­ mediately accomplished is always questionable, and what can be finally accomplished, inconceivable. Denmark Hill, loth May, 1862. “UNTO THIS LAST.” “ I will give unto this last, even as unto thee.”— Matt. xx. 14. I.—THE ROOTS OF HONOUR. MONG the delusions which at different periods have possessed themselves of the minds of large masses of the human race, perhaps the most curious—certainly the least creditable—is the modern soi-disant science of political economy, based on the idea that an advantageous code of social action may be determined irrespectively of the in­ fluence of social affection. Of course, as in the instances of alchemy, B2 A �IO UNTO THIS LAST. astrology, witchcraft, and other such popular creeds, political economy has a plausible idea at the root of it. “ The social affections,” says the economist, “ are accidental and disturbing elements in human nature; but avarice and the desire of progress are constant elements. Let us eliminate the inconstants, and, considering the human being merely as a covetous machine, examine by what laws of labour, purchase, and sale, the greatest accumulative result in wealth is obtainable. Those laws once determined, it will be for each individual afterwards to introduce as much of the disturbing affectionate element as he chooses, and to determine for himself the result on the new conditions supposed.” This would be a perfectly logical and successful method of analysis, if the accidentals afterwards to be introduced were of the same nature as the powers first examined. Supposing a body in motion to be influenced by constant and inconstant forces, it is usually the simplest way of examining its course to trace it first under the persistent conditions, and afterwards introduce the causes of variation. But the disturbing elements in the social problem are not of the same nature as the constant ones; they alter the essence of the creature under examination the moment they are added; they operate, not mathe­ matically, but chemically, introducing conditions which render all our previous knowledge unavailable. We made learned experiments upon pure nitrogen, and have convinced ourselves that it is a very manageable gas; but, behold ! the thing which we have practically to deal with is its chloride, and this, the moment we touch it on our established principles, sends us and our apparatus through the ceiling. . Observe, I neither impugn nor doubt the conclu­ sion of the science, if its terms are accepted. I am simply uninterested in them, as I should be in those of a science of gymnastics which assumed that men had no skeletons. It might be shown, on that sup­ position, that it would be advantageous to roll the �THE ROOTS OF HONOUR. II students up into pellets, flatten them into cakes, or stretch them into cables; and that when tírese results were effected, the re-insertion of the skeleton would be attended with various inconveniences to their con­ stitution. The reasoning might be admirable, the conclusions true, and the science deficient only in applicability. Modern political economy stands on a precisely similar basis. Assuming, not that the human being has no skeleton, but that it is all skele­ ton, it founds an ossifiant theory of progress on this negation of a soul; and having shown the utmost that may be made of bones, and constructed a number of interesting geometrical figures with death’s-head and humeri, successfully proves the in­ convenience of the reappearance of a soul among these corpuscular structures. I do not deny the truth of this theory : I simply deny its applicability to the present phase of the world. This inapplicability has been curiously manifested during the embarrassment caused by the late strikes of our workmen. Here occurs one of the simplest cases, in a pertinent and positive form, of the first vital problem which political economy has to deal with (the relation between employer and employed); and, at a severe crisis, when lives in multitudes, and wealth in masses, are at stake, the political econo­ mists are helpless—practically mute; no demon­ strable solution of the difficulty can be given by them, such as may convince or calm the opposing parties. Obstinately the masters take one view of the matter; obstinately the operatives another; and no political science can set them at one. It would be strange if it could, it being not by “ science ” of any kind that men were ever intended to be set at one. Disputant after disputant vainly strives to show that the interests of the masters are, or are not, antagonistic to those of the men: none of the pleaders ever seeming to remember that it does not absolutely or always follow that the persons must be antagon­ istic because their interests are. If there is only a �12 UNTO THIS LAST. crust of bread in the house, and mother and children are starving, their interests are not the same. If the mother eats it, the children want it; if the children eat it, the mother must go hungry to her work. Yet it does not necessarily follow that there will be “ an­ tagonism ” between them, that they will fight for the crust, and that the mother, being strongest, will get it, and eat it. Neither, in any other case, whatever the relations of the persons may be, can it be as­ sumed for certain that, because their interests are diverse, they must necessarily regard each other with hostility, and use violence or cunning to obtain the advantage. Even if this were so, and it were as just as it is convenient to consider men as actuated by no other moral influences than those which affect rats or swine, the logical conditions of the question are still indeterminable. It can never be shown generally either that the interests of master and labourer are alike, or that they are opposed; for, according to circumstances, they may be either. It is, indeed, always the interest of both that the work should be rightly done, and a just price obtained for it; but, in the division of profits, the gain of the one may or may not be the loss of the other. It is not the master’s interest to pay wages so low as to leave the men sickly and depressed, nor the workman’s in­ terest to be paid high wages if the smallness of the master’s profit hinders him from enlarging his busi­ ness, or conducting it in a safe and liberal way. A stoker ought not to desire high pay if the company is too poor to keep the engine-wheels in repair. And the varieties of circumstance which influence these reciprocal interests are so endless, that all en­ deavour to deduce rules of action from balance of expediency is in vain. And it is meant to be in vain. For no human actions ever were intended by the Maker of men to be guided by balances of expedi­ ency, but by balances of justice. He has therefore rendered all endeavours to determine expediency �THE ROOTS OF HONOUR. 13 futile for evermore. No man ever knew, or can know, what will be the ultimate result to himself, or to others, of any given line of conduct. But every man may know, and most of us do know, what is a just and unjust act. And all of us may know also, that the consequences of justice will be ultimately the best possible, both to others and ourselxes, though we can neither say what is the best, or hov it is likely to come to pass.. . I have said balances of justice, meaning, in the term justice, to include affection—-such affection as one man owes to another. All right relations be­ tween master and operative, and all their best inter­ ests, ultimately depend on these. _ We shall find the best and simplest, illustration. 01 the relations of master and operative in the position of domestic servants. We will suppose that the master of a household desires only to get as much work out of his servants as he can, at the rate of wages he gives. He never allows them to be idle; feeds them as poorly and lodges them as ill as they will endure, and in all things pushes his requirements to the exact point beyond which he cannot go without forcing the ser­ vant to leave him. In doing this, there is no vio­ lation on his part of what is commonly called “ justice.” He agrees with the domestic for his whole time and service, and takes them;—the limits of hardship in treatment being fixed by the practice of other masters in his neighbourhood; that is to say, by the current rate of wages for domestic labour. If the servant can get a better place, he is free to take one, and the master can only tell what is the real market value of his labour, by requiring as much as he will give. This is the politico-economical view of the case, according to the doctors of that science; who assert that by this procedure the greatest average of work will be obtained from the servant, and therefore, the greatest benefit to the community, and through the community, by reversion, to the servant himself. �14 UNTO THIS LAST. That, however, is not so. It would be so if the servant were an engine of which the motive power was steam, magnetism, gravitation, or any other agent of calculable force. But he being, on the con­ trary, an engine whose motive power is a Soul, the force of this very peculiar agent, as an unknown quantity, enters into all the political economist’s equations, without his knowledge, and falsifies every one of their results. The largest quantity of w'ork will not be done by this curious engine for pay, or under pressure, or by help of any kind of fuel which may be supplied by the chaldron. It will be done only when the motive force, that is to say, the will or spirit of the creature, is brought to its greatest strength by its own proper fuel; namely, by the affections. It may indeed happen, and does happen often, that if the master is a man of sense and energy, a large quantity of material work may be done under mechanical pressure, enforced by strong will and guided by wise method; also it may happen, and does happen often, that if the master is indolent and weak (however good natured), a very small quantity of wrork, and that bad, may be produced by the servant’s undirected strength, and contemptuous gratitude. But the universal law' of the matter is that, assuming any given quantity of energy and sense in master and servant, the greatest material result obtainable by them will be, not through anta­ gonism to each other, but through affection for each other; and that, if the master, instead of endeavour­ ing to get as much work as possible from the ser­ vant, seeks rather to render his appointed and neces­ sary work beneficial to him, and to forward his in­ terests in all just and wholesome ways, the real amount of w’ork ultimately done, or of good ren­ dered, by the person so cared for, w-’ill indeed be the greatest possible. Observe, I say, “ of good rendered,” for a ser­ vant’s. work is not necessarily or always the best �THE ROOTS OF HONOUR. 15 thing he can give his master. But good of all kinds, whether in material service, in protective watchful­ ness of his master’s interest and credit, or in joyful readiness to seize unexpected and irregular occasions of help. Nor is this one whit less generally true because indulgence will be frequently abused, and kindness met with ingratitude. For the servant who, gently treated, is ungrateful, treated ungently, will be revengeful; and the man who is dishonest to a liberal master will be injurious to an unjust one. In any case, and with any person, this unselfish treatment will produce the most effective return. Observe, I am here considering the affections wholly as a motive power; not at all as things in themselves desirable or noble, or in any other way abstractedly good. I look at them simply as an anomalous force, rendering every one of the ordinary political econo­ mist’s calculations nugatory; while, even if he desired to introduce this new element into his estimates, he has no power of dealing with it; for the affections only become a true motive power when they ignore every other motive and condition of political economy. Treat the servant kindly, with the idea of turning his gratitude to account, and you will get, as you deserve, no gratitude, nor any value for your kindness; but treat him kindly without any economical purpose, and all economical purposes will be answered; in this, as in all other matters, whoso­ ever will save his life shall lose it, whoso loses it shall find it. * * The difference between the two modes of treatment, and between their effective material results, may be seen very accurately by a comparison of the relations of Esther and Charlie in ‘ Bleak House,’ with those of Miss Brass and the Marchioness in ‘ Master Humphrey’s Clock.’ The essential value and truth of Dickens’s writings have been unwisely lost sight of by many thoughtful persons, merely because he presents his truth with some colour of caricature. Unwisely, because Dickens’s caricature, though often gross, is never mistaken. Allowing for his �i6 UNTO THIS LAST. The next clearest and simplest example of relation between master and operative is that which exists between the commander of a regiment and his men. Supposing the officer only desires to apply the rules of discipline so as, with least trouble to him­ self, to make the regiment most effective, he will not be able, by any rules or administration of rules, on this selfish principle, to develop the full strength of his subordinates. If a man of sense and firmness, he may, as in the former instance, produce a better result than would be obtained by the irregular kind­ ness of a weak officer; but let the sense and firmness be the same in both cases, and assuredly the officer who has the most direct personal relations with his men, the most care for their interests, and the most value for their lives, will develop their effective strength, through their affection for his own person, and trust in his character, to a degree wholly un­ attainable by other means. This law applies still more stringently as the numbers concerned are manner of telling them, the things he tells us are always true. I wish that he could think it right to limit his brilliant exaggeration to works written only for public amusement; and when he takes up a subject of high national importance, such as that which he handled in ‘ Hard Times,’ that he would use severer and more ac­ curate analysis. The usefulness of that work (to my mind, in several respects the greatest he has written) is with many persons seriously diminished because Mr. Bounderby is a dramatic monster, instead of a characteristic example of a worldly master; and Stephen Blackpool a dramatic perfection, instead of a character­ istic example of an honest workman. But let us not lose the use of Dickens’s wit and insight, because he chooses to speak in a circle of stage fire. He is entirely right in his main drift and purpose in every book he has written; and all of them, but especially 1 Hard Times,’ should be studied with close and earnest care by persons interested in social questions. They will find much that is partial, and, because partial, apparently unjust; but if they ex­ amine all the evidence on the other side, which Dickens seems to overlook, it will appear, after all their trouble, that his view was the finally right one, grossly and sharply told. �THE ROOTS OF HONOUR. 17 larger : a charge may often be successful, though the men dislike their officers; a battle has rarely been won, unless they loved their general. Passing from these simple examples to the more complicated relations existing between a manufac­ turer and his workmen, we are met first by certain curious difficulties, resulting, apparently, from a harder and colder state of moral elements.. It is easy to imagine an enthusiastic affection existing among soldiers for the colonel. Not so easy to imagine an enthusiastic affection among cotton­ spinners for the proprietor of the mill. A body of men associated for purposes of robbery (as a High­ land clan in ancient times) shall be animated by per­ fect affection, and every member of it be ready to lay down his life for the life of his chief. But a band of men associated for purposes of legal production and accumulation is usually animated, it appears, by no such emotions, and none of them are in any wise willing to give his life for the life of his chief. Not only are we met by this apparent anomaly, in moral matters, but by others connected with it, in adminis­ tration of system. For a servant or a soldier is engaged at a definite rate of wages, for a definite period; but a workman at a rate of wages variable according to the demand for labour, and with the risk of being at any time thrown out of his situation by chances of trade. Now, as, under these contin­ gencies, no action of the affections can take place, but only an explosive action of disaffections, two points offer themselves for consideration in the matter. The first.—How far the rate of wages may be so regulated as not to vary with the demand for labour. The second.—How far it is possible that bodies of workmen may be engaged and maintained at such fixed rate of wages (whatever the state of trade may be), without enlarging or diminishing their number, so as to give them permanent interest in the estab­ lishment with which they are connected, like that of �i8 UNTO THIS LAST. the domestic servants in an old family, or an esprit de corps, like that of the soldiers in a crack regiment. The first question is, I say, how far it may be possible to fix the rate of wages irrespectively of the demand for labour. Perhaps one of the most curious facts in the history of human error is the denial by the common political economist of the possibility of thus regu­ lating wages; while, for all the important, and much of the unimportant labour on the earth, wages are already so regulated. We do not sell our prime-ministership by Dutch auction; nor, on the decease of a bishop, whatever may be the general advantages of simony, do we (yet) offer his diocese to the clergyman who will take the episcopacy at the lowest contract. We (with exquisite sagacity of political economy !) do indeed sell commissions; but not, openly, generalships : sick, we do not inquire for a physician who takes less than a guinea; litigious, we never think of reducing six-and-eightpence to four-and-sixpence; caught in a shower, we do not canvass the cabmen, to find one who values his driving at less than sixpence a mile. It is true that in all these cases there is, and in every conceivable case there must be, ultimate refer­ ence to the presumed difficulty of the work, or number of candidates for the office. If it were thought that the labour necessary to make a good physician would be gone through by a sufficient number of students with the prospect of only half­ guinea fees, public consent would soon withdraw the unnecessary half-guinea. In this ultimate sense, the price of labour is indeed always regulated by the de­ mand for it; but, so far as the practical and imme­ diate administration of the matter is regarded, the best labour always has been, and is, as all labour ought to be, paid by an invariable standard. (i What! ” the reader perhaps answers amazedly : “ pay good and bad workmen alike? ” Certainly. The difference between one prelate’s �THE ROOTS OF HONOUR. 19 sermons and his successor’s—or between one phy­ sician’s opinion and another’s,—is far greater, as respects the qualities of mind involved, and far more important in result to you personally, than the difference between good and bad laying of bricks (though that is greater than most people suppose). Yet you pay with equal fee, contentedly, the good and bad workmen upon your soul, and the good and bad workmen upon your body; much more may you pay, contentedly, with equal fees, the good and bad workmen upon your house. “Nay, but I choose my physician, and (?) my clergyman, thus indicating my sense of the quality of their work.” By all means, also, choose your bricklayer; that is the proper reward of the good workman, to be “ chosen.” The natural and right system respecting all labour is, that it should be paid at a fixed rate, but the good workman employed, and the bad workman unemployed. The false, unnatural, and destructive system is when the bad workman is allowed to offer his work at half-price, and either take the place of the good, or force him by his com­ petition to work for an inadequate sum. This equality of wages, then, being the first object towards which we have to discover the directest available road—the second is, as above stated, that of maintaining constant numbers of workmen in em­ ployment, whatever may be the accidental demand for'the article they produce. I believe the sudden and extensive inequalities of demand which necessarily arise in the mercantile operations of an active nation, constitute the only essential difficulty which has to be overcome in a just organisation of labour. The subject opens into too many branches to admit of being investigated in a paper of this kind; but the following general facts bearing on it may be noted. The wages which enable any workman to live are necessarily higher if his work is liable to intermission �20 UNTO THIS LAST. than if it is assured and continuous; and however severe the struggle for work may become, the general law will always hold, that men must get more daily pay if, on the average, they can only cal­ culate on work three days a week, than they would require if they were sure of work six days a week. Supposing that a man. cannot live on less than a shilling a day, his seven shillings he must get, either for three days’ violent work, or six days’ deliberate work. The tendency of all modern mercantile opera­ tions is to throw both wages and trade into the form of a lottery, and to make the workman’s pay depend on intermittent exertion, and the principal’s profit on dexterously used chance. In what partial degree, I repeat, this may be necessary in consequence of the activities of modern trade, I do not here investigate; contenting myself with the fact that in its fatallest aspects it is assur­ edly unnecessary, and results merely from love of gambling on the part of the masters, and from ignor­ ance and sensuality in the men. The masters cannot bear to let any opportunity of gain escape them, and frantically rush at every gap and breach in the walls of Fortune, raging to be rich, and affronting, with impatient covetousness, every risk of ruin; while the men prefer three days of violent labour and three days of drunkenness, to six days of moderate work and wise rest. There is no way in which a principal, who really desires to help his workmen, may do it more effectually than by check­ ing these disorderly habits both in himself and them; keeping his own business operations on a scale which will enable him to pursue them securely, not yielding to temptations of precarious gain; and at the same time, leading his workmen into regular habits of labour and life, either by inducing them rather to take low wages, in the form of a fixed salary, than high wages, subject to the chance of their being throwm out of work; or, if this be impossible, by dis­ couraging the system of violent exertion for nomi­ �THE ROOTS OF HONOUR. 21 nally high day wages, and leading the men to take lower pay for. more regular labour. In effecting any radical changes of this kind, doubtless there would be great inconvenience and loss incurred by all the originators of the movement. That which can be done with perfect convenience and without loss, is not always the thing that most needs to be done, or which we are most imperatively re­ quired to do. I have already alluded to the difference hitherto existing between regiments of men associated for purposes of violence, and for purposes of manufac­ ture; in that the former appear capable of. self-sacri­ fice—the latter, not; which singular fact is the real reason of the general lowness of estimate in which the profession of commerce is held, as compared with that of arms. Philosophically, it does not, at first sight, appear reasonable (many writers have endea­ voured to prove it unreasonable) that a peaceable and rational person, whose trade is buying and selling, should be held in less honour than an unpeaceable and often irrational person, whose trade is slaying. Nevertheless, the consent of mankind has always, in spite of the philosophers, given precedence to the soldier. And this is right. For the soldier’s trade, verily and essentially, is not slaying, but being slain. This, without, well­ knowing its own meaning, the world honours it for. A bravo’s trade is slaying; but the world has never respected bravos more than merchants : the reason it honours the soldier is, because he holds his life at the service of the State. Reckless he may be—fond of pleasure or of adventure—all kinds of bye-motives and mean impulses may have determined the choice of his profession, and may affect (to all appearance exclusively) his daily conduct in it; but our estimate of him is based on this ultimate fact—of which we are well assured—that, put him in a fortress breach, with all the pleasures of the world behind him, and �22 UNTO THIS LAST. only death and his duty in front of him, he will keep his face to the front; and he knows that his choice may be put to him at any moment, and has before­ hand taken his part,—virtually takes such part con­ tinually—does, in reality, die daily. Not Jess is the respect we pay to the lawyer and physician, founded ultimately on their self-sacrifice. Whatever the learning or acuteness of a great lawyer, our chief respect for him depends on our J belief that, set in a judge s seat, he will strive to judge justly, come of it what may. Could we sup­ pose that he would take bribes, and use his acuteness and legal knowledge to give plausibility to iniquitous decisions, no degree of intellect would win for him our respect. Nothing will win it, short of our tacit conviction, that in all important acts of his life jus­ tice is first with him; his own interest, second. In the case of a physician, the ground of the honour we render him is clearer still. Whatever his science, we would shrink from him in horror if we found him regard his patients merely as subjects to experiment upon; much more, if we found that, receiving bribes from persons interested in their deaths, he was using his best skill to give poison in the mask of medicine. Finally, the principle holds with utmost clearness as it respects clergymen.. No goodness of disposition will excuse .want of science in a physician, or of shrewdness in an advocate; but a clergyman, even though his power of intellect be small, is respected on the presumed ground of his unselfishness and ser­ viceableness. Now, there can be no question but that the tact, foresight, decision, and other mental powers, re­ quired for the successful management of a large mercantile concern, if not such as could be compared with those of a great lawver, general, or divine, would at.least match the general conditions of mind required in the subordinate officers of a ship, or of a regiment, or in the curate of a country parish. If, �THE ROOTS OF HONOUR. 23 therefore, all the efficient members of the so-called liberal professions are still, somehow, in public esti­ mate of honour, preferred before the head of a com­ mercial firm, the reason must lie deeper than in the measurement of their several powers of mind. And the essential reason for such preference will be found to lie in the fact that the merchant is pre­ sumed to act always selfishly. His work may be very necessary to the community; but the motive of it is understood to be wholly personal. The mer­ chant’s first object in all his dealings must be (the public believe) to get as much for himself, and leave as little to his neighbour (or customer) as possible. Enforcing this upon him, by political statute, as the necessary principle of his action; recommending it to him on all occasions, and themselves reciprocally adopting it, proclaiming vociferously, for law7 of the universe, that a buyer’s function is to cheapen, and a seller’s to cheat,—the public, nevertheless, involun­ tarily condemn the man of commerce for his com­ pliance with their own statement, and stamp him for ever as belonging to an inferior grade of human personality. This they will find, eventually, they must give up doing. They must not cease to condemn selfishness; but they will have to discover a kind of commerce which is not exclusively selfish. Or, rather, they will have to discover that there never was, or can be, any other kind of commerce; that this which they have called commerce was not commerce at all, but cozen­ ing; and that a true merchant differs as much from a merchant according to laws of modern political economy, as the hero of the Excursion from Autolycus. They will find that commerce is an occupation which gentlemen will every day see more need to engage in, rather than in the businesses of talking to men, or slaying them; that, in true commerce, as in true preaching, or true fighting, it is necessary to admit the idea of occasional voluntary loss;—that sixpences have to be lost, as well as lives, under a �24 UNTO THIS LAST. sense of duty; that the market may have its martyr­ doms as well as the pulpit; and trade its heroisms as well as war. May have—in the final issue, must have—and only has not had yet, because men of heroic temper have always been misguided in their youth into other fields, not recognising what is in our days, perhaps, the most important of all fields; so that, while many a zealous person loses his life in trying to teach the form of a gospel, very few will lose a hundred pounds in showing the practice of one. The fact is, that people never have had clearly explained to them the true functions of a merchant with respect to other people. I should like the reader to be very clear about this. Five great intellectual professions, relating to daily necessities of life, have hitherto existed—three exist necessarily, in every civilised nation : The Soldier’s profession is to defend it. The Pastor’s, to teach it. The Physician’s, to keep it in health. The Lawyer’s, to enforce justice in it. The Merchant’s, to provide for it. And the duty of all these men is, on due occasion, to die for it. “ On due occasion,” namely :— The Soldier, rather than leave his post in battle. The Physician, rather than leave his post in plague. The Pastor, rather than teach Falsehood. The Lawyer, rather than countenance Injustice. The Merchant—What is his “ due occasion ” of death ? It is the main question for the merchant, as for all of us. For, truly, the man who does not know when to die, does not know how to live. Observe, the merchant’s function (or manufac­ turer’s, for the broad sense in which it is here used the word must be understood to include both) is to provide for the nation. It is no more his function to �THE ROOTS OF HONOUR. 25 get profit for himself out of that provision than it is a clergyman’s function to get his stipend. is stipend is a due and necessary adjunct, but not the object of his life, if he be a true clergyman, any more than his fee (or honorarium) is the object ot life to a true physician. Neither is his fee the object of life to a true merchant. All three, if true men, have a work to be done irrespective of fee—to be done even at any cost, or for quite the contrary of fee; the pastor’s function being to teach, the phy­ sician's to heal, and the merchant’s, as I have said, to provide. That is to say, he has to understand to their very root the qualities of the thing he deals in, and the means of obtaining or producing it; and he has to apply all his sagacity and energy to the pro­ ducing or obtaining it in perfect state, and distri­ buting it at the cheapest possible price where it is most needed. . . And because the production or obtaining ot any commodity involves necessarily the agency of man) lives and hands, the merchant becomes in the course of his business the master and governor of large masses of men in a more direct, though less con­ fessed way, than a military officer or pastor; so that on him falls, in great part, the responsibility for the kind of life they lead; and it becomes his duty, not only to be always considering how to produce what he sells, in the purest and cheapest forms, but how to make the various employments involved in the pro­ duction, or transference of it, most beneficial to the men employed. And as into these two functions, requiring for their right exercise the highest intelligence, as well as patience, kindness, and tact, the merchant is bound to put all his energy, so for their just discharge he is bound, as soldier or physician is bound, to give up, if need be, his life in such way as it may be de­ manded of him. Two main points he has in his Providing function to maintain : first, his engage­ ments (faithfulness to engagements being the real �26 UNTO THIS LAST. root of all possibilities in commerce); and, secondly, the perfectness and purity of the thing provided; so that, rather than fail in any engagement, or consent to any deterioration, adulteration, or unjust and exorbitant price of that which he provides, he is bound to meet fearlessly any form of distress, poverty, or labour, which may, through maintenance of these points, come upon him. Again : in his office as governor of the men em­ ployed by him, the merchant or manufacturer is invested with a distinctly paternal authority and re­ sponsibility. In most cases, a youth entering a com­ mercial establishment is withdrawn altogether from home influence; his master must become his father, else he has, for practical and constant help, no father at hand : in all cases the master’s authority, together with the general tone and atmosphere of his business, and the character of the men with whom the youth is compelled in the course of it to associate, have more immediate and pressing weight than the home influence, and will usually neutralise it either for good or evil; so that the only means which the master has of doing justice to the men employed by him is to ask himself sternly whether he is deal­ ing with such subordinate as he would with his own son, if compelled by circumstances to take such a position. Supposing the captain of a frigate saw it right, or were by any chance obliged to place his own son in the position of a common sailor; as he would then treat his son, he is bound always to treat every one of the men under him. So, also, supposing the master of a manufactory saw it right, or were by any chance obliged, to place his own son in the position of an ordinary workman; as he would then treat his son, he is bound always to treat every one of his men. . This is the only effective, true, or practical Rule which can be given on this point of political economy. And as the captain of a ship is bound to be the �THE VEINS OF WEALTH. 27 last man to leave his ship in case of wreck, and to share his last crust with the sailors in case of famine, so the manufacturer, in any commercial crisis or dis­ tress, is bound to take the suffering of it with his men, and even to take more of it for himself than he allows his men to feel; as a father would in a famine, shipwreck, or battle, sacrifice himself for his son. All which sounds very strange: the only real strangeness in the matter being, nevertheless, that it should so sound. For all this is true, and that not partially nor theoretically, but everlastingly and practically : all other doctrine than this respecting matters political being false in premises, absurd in deduction, and impossible in practice, consistently with any progressive state of national life; all the life which we now possess as a nation showing itself in the resolute denial and scorn, by a few strong minds and faithful hearts, of the economic principles taught to our multitudes, which principles, so far as ac­ cepted, lead straight to national destruction. Re­ specting the modes and forms of destruction to which they lead, and, on the other hand, respecting the farther practical tvorking of true polity, I hope to reason further in a following paper. II___ THE VEINS OF WEALTH. HE answer which would be made by any ordinary political economist to the statements contained in the preceding paper, is in few words as follows :— “It is indeed true that certain advantages of a general nature may be obtained by the development of social affections. But political economists never professed, nor profess, to take advantages of a gen­ eral nature into consideration. Our science is simply the science orf getting rich. So far from being a fal­ T �28 UNTO THIS LAST. lacious or visionary one, it is found by experience to be practically effective. Persons who follow its pre­ cepts do actually become rich, and persons who dis­ obey them become poor. Every capitalist of Europe has acquired his fortune by following the known laws of our science, and increases his capital daily by an adherence to them. It is vain to bring forward tricks of logic, against the force of accomplished facts. Every man of business knows by experience how money is made, and how it is lost.” Pardon me. Men of business do indeed know how they themselves made their money, or how, on oc­ casion, they lost it. Playing a long-practised game, they are familiar with the chances of its cards, and can rightly explain their losses and gains. But they neither know who keeps the bank of the gambling­ house, nor what other games may be played with the same cards, nor what other losses and gains, far away among the dark streets, are essentially, though invisibly, dependent on theirs in the lighted rooms. They have learned a few, and only a few, of the laws of mercantile economy; but not one of those of politi­ cal economy. Primarily, which is very notable and curious, I ob­ serve that men of business rarely know the meaning of the word “rich.” At least, if they know, they do not in their reasonings allow for the fact, that it is a relative word, implying its opposite “ poor ” as positively as the word “ north ” implies its opposite “ south.” Men nearly always speak and write as if riches were absolute, and it were possible, by following certain scientific precepts, for everybody to be rich. Whereas riches are a power like that of elec­ tricity, acting only through inequalities or negations of itself. The force of the guinea you have in your pocket depends wholly on the default of a guinea in your neighbour's pocket. If he did not want it, it would be of no use to you; the degree of power it possesses depends accurately upon the need or desire he has for it—and the art of making yourself rich in �THE VEINS OF WEALTH. 29 the ordinary mercantile economist's sense, is there­ fore equally and necessarily the art of keeping your neighbour poor. . . I would not contend in this matter (and rarely, in any matter) for the acceptance of terms. But I wish the reader clearly and deeply to understand the diference between' the two economies, to which the terms “Political” and “Mercantile” might not unadvisedly be attached; Political economy (the economy of a State, or ot citizens) consists simply in the production, preserva­ tion, and distribution, at fittest time and place, ot useful or pleasurable things. The farmer who cuts his hay at the right time; the shipwright who drives his bolts well home in sound wood; the builder who lays good bricks in well-tempered mortar; the house­ wife who takes care of her furniture in the parlour, and guards against all w’aste in her kitchen; and the singer who rightly disciplines, and never, over­ strains her voice : are all political economists in the true and final sense; adding continually to the riches and well-being of the nation to which they belong. But mercantile economy, the economy . of “ merces ” or of “ pay,” signifies the accumulation, in the hands of individuals, of legal or moral claim upon, or power over, the labour of others, every such claim implying precisely as much poverty or debt on one side, as it implies riches or right on the other. It does not, therefore, necessarily involve an addition to the actual property, or well-being, of the State in which it exists. But since this commercial wealth, or power over labour, is nearly always con­ vertible at once into real property, while real pro­ perty is not always convertible at once into power over labour, the idea of riches among active men in civilised nations, generally refers to commercial wealth; and in estimating their possessions, they rather calculate the value of their horses and fields by the number of guineas they could get for them, �30 UNTO THIS LAST. than the value of their guineas by the number of horses and fields they could buy with them. There is, however, another reason for this habit of mind; namely, that an accumulation of real pro­ perty is of little use to its owner, unless, together with it, he has commercial power over labour. Thus, suppose any person to be put in possession of a large estate of fruitful land, with rich beds of gold in its gravel; countless herds of cattle in its pas­ tures; houses, and gardens, and storehouses full of useful stores; but suppose, after all, that he could get no servants? In order that he may be able to have servants, some one in his neighbourhood must be poor, and in want of his gold—or his corn. Assume that no one is in want of either, and that no servants are to be had. He must, therefore, bake his own bread, make his own clothes, plough his own ground, and shepherd his own flocks. His gold will be as useful to him as any other yellow pebbles on his estate. His stores must rot, for he cannot con­ sume them. He can eat no more than another man could eat, and wear no more than another man could wear. He must lead a life of severe and common labour to procure even ordinary comforts; he will be ultimately unable to keep either houses in repair, or fields in cultivation; and forced to content himself with a poor man’s portion of cottage and garden, in the midst of a desert of waste land, trampled by wild cattle, and encumbered by ruins of palaces, which he will hardly mock at himself by calling “ his own.” The most covetous of mankind would, with small exultation, I presume, accept riches of this kind on these terms. What is really desired under the name of riches, is, essentially, power over men; in its simplest sense, the power of obtaining for our own advantage the labour of servant, tradesman, and artist; in wider sense, authority of directing large masses of the nation to various ends (good, trivial, or hurtful, according to the mind of the rich person). �THE VEINS OF WEALTH. 3i And this power of wealth of course is greater or less in direct proportion to the poverty of the men over whom it is exercised, and in inverse proportion to the number of persons who are as rich as ourselves, and who are ready to give the same price for an article of which the supply is limited. If the musician is poor, he will sing for small pay, as long as there is only one person who can pay him; but if there be two or three, he will sing for the one who offers him most. And thus the power of the riches of the patron (always imperfect and doubtful, as we shall see pre­ sently, even when most authoritative) depends first on the poverty of the artist, and then on the limita­ tion of the number of equally wealthy persons, who also want seats at the concert. So that, as above stated, the art of becoming “ rich,” in the common sense, is not absolutely nor finally the art of accumu­ lating much money for ourselves, but also of con­ triving that our neighbours shall have less. In accurate terms, it is “ the art of establishing the maximum inequality in our own favour.” Now, the establishment of such inequality cannot be shown in the abstract to be either advantageous or disadvantageous to the body of the nation. The rash and absurd assumption that such inequalities are necessarily advantageous, lies at the root of most of the popular fallacies on the subject of political economy. For the eternal and inevitable law in this matter is, that the beneficialness of the inequality depends, first, on the methods by which it was ac­ complished; and, secondly, on the purposes to which it is applied. Inequalities of wealth, unjustly estab­ lished, have assuredly injured the nation in which they exist during their establishment; and, unjustly directed, injure it yet more during their existence. But inequalities of wealth, justly established, benefit the nation in the course of their establishment; and, nobly used, aid it yet more by their existence. That is to say, among every active and well-governed people, the various strength of individuals, tested �32 UNTO THIS LAST. by full exertion and specially applied to various need, issues in unequal, but harmonious results, receiving reward or authority according to its class and ser­ * vice; while, in the inactive or ill-governed nation, the gradations of decay and the victories of treason work out also their own rugged system of subjection and success; and substitute, for the melodious ine­ qualities of concurrent power, the iniquitous domin­ ances and depressions of guilt and misfortune. * I have been naturally asked several times with re­ spect to the sentence in the first of these papers, “ the bad workmen unemployed,” “ But what are you to do with your bad unemployed workmen?” Well, it seems to me the question might have occurred to you before. Your housemaid’s place is vacant—you give twenty pounds a year—two girls come for it, one neatly dressed, the other dirtily; one with good recommendations, the other with none.' You do not, under these circumstances, usually ask the dirty one if she will come for fifteen pounds, or twelve; and, on her consenting, take her in­ stead of the well-recommended one. Still less do you try to beat both down by making them bid against each other, till you can hire both, one at twelve pounds a year, and the other at eight. You simply take the one fittest for the place, and send away the other, not perhaps con­ cerning yourself quite as much as you should with the question which you now impatiently put to me, “ What is to become of her ? ” For all that I advise you to do, is to deal with workmen as with servants; and verily the ques­ tion is of weight: “ Your bad workman, idler, and rogue —what are you to do with him ? ” We will consider of this presently: remember that the administration of a complete system of national com­ merce and industry cannot be explained in full detail within the space of twelve pages. Meantime, consider whether, there being confessedly some difficulty in deal­ ing with rogues and idlers, it may not be advisable to produce as few of them as -possible. If you examine into the history of rogues, you will find they are as truly manu­ factured articles as anything else, and it is just because our present system of political economy gives so large a stimulus to that manufacture that you may know it to be a false one. We had better seek for a system which will develop honest men, than for one which will deal cun­ ningly with vagabonds. Let us reform our schools, and we shall find little reform needed in our prisons. �THE VEINS OF WEALTH. 33 Thus the circulation of wealth in a nation re­ sembles that of the blood in the natural body. There is one quickness of the current which comes of cheerful emotion or wholesome exercise; and another which comes of shame or of fever. There is a flush of the body which is full of warmth and life; and another which will pass into putrefaction. The analogy will hold, down even to minute par­ ticulars. For as diseased local determination of the blood involves depression of the general health of the system, all morbid local action of riches will be found ultimately to involve a weakening of the re­ sources of the body politic. The mode in which this is produced may be at once understood by examining one or two instances of the development of wealth in the simplest possible circumstances. Suppose two sailors cast away on an uninhabited coast, and obliged to maintain themselves there by their own labour for a series of years. If they both kept their health, and worked steadily and in amity with each other, they might build themselves a convenient house, and in time come to possess a certain quantity of cultivated land, to­ gether with various stores laid up for future use. All these things would be real riches or property; and, supposing the men both to have worked equally hard, they would each have right to equal share or use of it. Their political economy would consist merely in careful preservation and just division of these possessions. Perhaps, however, after some time one or other might be dissatisfied with the re­ sults of their common farming; and they might in consequence agree to divide the land they had brought under the spade into equal shares, so that each might thenceforward work in his own field, and live by it. Suppose that after this arrangement had been made, one of them were to fall ill, and be un­ able to work on his land at a critical time—say of sowing or harvest. C �34 UNTO THIS LAST. He would naturally ask the other to sow or reap for him. Then his companion might say, with perfect justice, “ I will do this additional work for you; but if I do it, you must promise to do as much for me at another time. I will count how many hours I spend on your ground, and you shall give me a written promise to work for the same number of hours on mine, whenever I need your help, and you are able to give it.” Suppose the disabled man’s sickness to continue, and that under various circumstances, for several years, requiring the help of the other, he on each occasion gave a written pledge to work, as soon as he was able, at his companion’s orders, for the same number of hours which the other had given up to him. What will the positions of the two men be when the invalid is able to resume work? Considered as a “ Polis,” or state, they will be poorer than they would have been otherwise : poorer by the withdrawal of what the sick man’s labour would have produced in the interval. His friend may perhaps have toiled with an energy quickened by the enlarged need, but in the end his own land and property must have suffered by the withdrawal of so much of his time and thought from them; and the united property of the two men will be certainly less than it would have been if both had remained in health and activity. But the relations in which they stand to each other are also widely altered. The sick man has not only pledged his labour for some years, but will prob­ ably have exhausted his own share of the accumu­ lated stores, and will be in consequence for some time dependent on the other for food, which he can only “ pay ” or reward him for by yet more deeply pledging his own labour. Supposing the written promises to be held entirely valid (among civilised nations their validity is �THE VEINS OF WEALTH. 35 secured by legal measures ) *, the person who had hitherto worked for both might now, if he chose, rest altogether, and pass his time in idleness, not only forcing his companion to redeem all the engagements he had already entered into, but exacting from him pledges for further labour, to an arbitrary amount, for what food he had to advance to him. There might not, from first to last, be the least illegality (in the ordinary sense of the word) in the arrangement; but if a stranger arrived on the coast at this advanced epoch of their political economy, he would find one man commercially Rich; the other commercially Poor. He would see, perhaps, with no small surprise, one passing his days in idleness; the other labouring for both, and living sparely, in the hope of recovering his independence at some distant period. This is, of course, an example of one only out of many ways in which inequality of possession may be established between different persons, giving rise to the Mercantile forms of Riches and Poverty. In the instance before us, one of the men might from the first have deliberately chosen to be idle, and to put his life in pawn for present ease; or he might have mismanaged his land, and been compelled to have * The disputes which exist respecting the real nature of money arise more from the disputants examining its functions on different sides, than from any real dissent in their opinions. All money, properly so called, is an acknowledgment of debt; but as such, it may either be considered to represent the labour and property of the creditor, or the idleness and penury of the debtor. The intricacy of the question has been much increased by the (hitherto necessary) use of marketable commodities, such as gold, silver, salt, shells, etc., to give intrinsic value or security to currency; but the final and best definition of money is that it is a documentary promise ratified and guaranteed by the nation to give or find a certain quantitv of labour on demand. A man’s labour for a day is a better standard of value than a measure of any produce, because, no produce ever maintains a consistent rate of productibility. �36 UNTO THIS LAST. recourse to his neighbour for food and help, pledging his future labour for it. But what I want the reader to note especially is the fact, common to a large number of typical cases of this kind, that the estab­ lishment of the mercantile wealth which consists in a claim upon labour, signifies a political diminution of the real wealth which consists in substantial posses­ sions. Take another example, more consistent with the ordinary course of affairs of trade. Suppose that three men, instead of two, formed the little isolated republic, and found themselves obliged to separate, in order to farm different pieces of land at some dis­ tance from each other along the coast; each estate furnishing a distinct kind of produce, and each more or less in need of the material raised on the other. Suppose that the third man, in order to save the time of all three, undertakes simply to superintend the transference of commodities from one farm to the Other; on condition of receiving some sufficiently re­ munerative share of every parcel of goods received in exchange for it. If this carrier or messenger always brings to each estate, from the other, what is chiefly wanted, at the right time, the operations of the two farmers will go on prosperously, and the largest possible result in produce, or wealth, will be attained by the little community. But suppose no intercourse between the landowners is possible, except through the travel­ ling agent; and that, after a time, this agent, watch­ ing the course of each man’s agriculture, keeps back the articles with which he has been entrusted until there comes a period of extreme necessity for them, on one side or the other, and then exacts in exchange for them all that the distressed farmer can spare of other kinds of produce : it is easy to see that by in­ geniously watching his opportunities, he might pos­ sess himself regularly of the greater part of the super­ fluous produce of the two estates, and at last, in some year of severest trial or scarcity, purchase both �THE VEINS OF WEALTH. 37 for himself and maintain the former proprietors thenceforward as his labourers or servants. This would be a case of commercial wealth ac­ quired on the exactest principles of modern political economy. But, more distinctly even than in the former instance, it is manifest in this that the wealth of the State, or of the three men considered as a society, is collectively less than it would have been had the merchant been content with juster profit. The operations of the two agriculturists have been cramped to the utmost; and the continual limitations of the supply of things they wanted at critical times, together with the failure of courage consequent on . the prolongation of a struggle for mere existence, without any sense of permanent gain, must have seriously diminished the effective results of their labour; and the stores finally accumulated in the mer­ chant’s hands will not in any wise be of equivalent value to those which, had his dealings been honest, would have filled at once the granaries of the farmers and his own. The whole question, therefore, respecting not only the advantage, but even the quantity, of national wealth, resolves itself finally into one of abstract justice. It is impossible to conclude, of any given mass of acquired wealth, merely by the fact of its existence, whether it signifies good or evil to the nation in the midst of which it exists. Its real value depends on the moral sign attached to it, just as • sternly as that of a mathematical quantity depends on the algebraical sign attached to it. Any given accumulation of commercial wealth may be indicative, on the one hand, of faithful industries, progressive energies, and productive ingenuities : or, on the other, it may be indicative of mortal luxury, merci­ less tyranny, ruinous chicane. Some treasures are heavy with human tears, as an ill-stored harvest with untimely rain; and some gold is brighter in sunshine than it is in substance. And these are not, observe, merely moral or pathetic attributes of riches, which �38 UNTO THIS LAST. the seeker of riches may, if he chooses, despise; they are, literally and sternly, material attributes of riches, depreciating or exalting, incalculably, the monetary signification of the sum in question. One mass of money is the outcome of action which has created—another, of action which has annihilated— ten times as much in the gathering of it; such and such strong hands have been paralysed, as if thev had been numbed by nightshade : so many strong men’s courage broken, so many productive opera­ tions hindered; this and the other false direction given to labour, and lying image of prosperity set up, on Dura plains dug into seven-times-heated fur­ naces. That which seems to be wealth may in verity be only the gilded index of far-reaching ruin; a wrecker’s handful of coin gleaned from the beach to which he has beguiled an argosy; a camp-follower’s bundle of rags unwrapped from the breasts of goodly soldiers dead; the purchase-pieces of potter’s fields, wherein shall be buried together the citizen and the stranger. And, therefore, the idea that directions can be given for the gaining of wealth, irrespectively of the consideration of its moral sources, or that any gen­ eral and technical law of purchase and gain can be set down for national practice, is perhaps the most in­ solently futile of all that ever beguiled men through their vices. So far as I know, there is not in history record of anything so disgraceful to the human in­ tellect as the modern idea that the commercial text, “ Buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dear­ est,” represents, or under any circumstances could represent, an available principle of national economy. Buy in the cheapest market?—yes; but what made your market cheap ? Charcoal may be cheap among your roof timbers after a fire, and bricks may be cheap in your streets after an earthquake; but fire and earthquake may not therefore be national bene­ fits. Sell in the dearest?—ves, truly; but what made your market dear? You sofd your bread well to-day; �THE VEINS OF WEALTH. 39 was it to a dying man who gave his last coin for it, and will never need bread more, or to a rich man who to-morrow will buy your farm over your head; or. to a soldier on his way to pillage the bank in which you have put your fortune? None of these things you can know. One. thing only you can know, namely, whether this dealing of yours is a just and faithful one, which is all you need concern yourself about respecting it; sure thus to have done your own part in bringing about ulti­ mately in the world a state of things which will not issue in pillage or in death. And thus every ques­ tion concerning these things merges itself ultimately in the great question of justice, which, the ground being thus far cleared for it, I will enter upon in the next paper, leaving only, in this, three final points for the reader’s consideration. It has been shown that the chief value and virtue of money consists in its having power over human beings; that, without this power, large material possessions are useless, and to any person possess­ ing such power, comparatively unnecessary. But power over human beings is attainable by other means than by money. As I said a few pages back, the money power is always imperfect and doubtful; there are many things which cannot be reached with it, others which cannot be retained by it. Many joys may be given to men which cannot be bought for gold, and many fidelities found in them which can­ not be rewarded with it. Trite enough—the reader thinks. Yes : but it is not so trite—I wish it were—that in this moral power, quite inscrutable and immeasurable though it be, there is a monetary value just as real as that re­ presented by more ponderous currencies. A man’s hand may be full of invisible gold, and the wave of it, or the grasp, shall do more than another’s with a shower of bullion. This invisible gold, also, does not necessarily diminish in spending. Political econo­ �40 UNTO THIS LAST. mists will do well some day to take heed of it, though they cannot take measure. But farther. Since the essence of wealth consists in its authority over men, if the apparent or nominal wealth fail in this power, it fails in essence; in fact, ceases to be wealth at all. It does not appear lately in England, that our authority over men is absolute. The servants show some disposition to rush riot­ ously upstairs, under an impression that their wages are not regularly paid. We should augur ill of anv gentleman’s property to whom this happened every other day in his drawing-room. So, also, the power of our wealth seems limited as respects the comfort of the servants, no less than their quietude. The persons in the kitchen appear to be ill-dressed, squalid, half-starved. One cannot help imagining that the riches of the establishment must be of a very theoretical and documentary character. Finally. Since the essence of wealth consists in power over men, will it not follow that the nobler and the more in number the persons are over whom it has power, the greater the wealth? Perhaps it may even appear, after some consideration, that the per­ sons themselves are the wealth—that these pieces of gold with which we are in the habit of guiding them, are, in fact, nothing more than a kind of Byzantine harness or trappings, very glittering and beautiful in barbaric sight, wherewith we bridle the creatures; but that if these same living creatures could be guided without the fretting and jingling of the Byzants in their mouths and ears, they might themselves be more valuable than their bridles. In fact, it may be discovered that the true veins of wealth are purple —and not in Rock, but in Flesh—perhaps even that the final outcome and consummation of all wealth is in the producing as many as possible full-breathed, bright-eyed, and happy-hearted human creatures. Our modern wealth, I think, has rather a tendency the other way;—most political economists appearing �QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM. 41 to consider multitudes of human creatures not con­ ducive to wealth, or at best conducive to it only by remaining in a dim-eyed and narrow-chested state o being. Nevertheless, it is open, I repeat, to serious ques­ tion, which I leave to the reader s pondering, whether, among national manufacturers, that of Souls of a good quality may not at last turn out a quite leadingly lucrative one? Nay, in some far­ away and yet undreamt-of hour, I can even imagine that England may cast all thoughts of possessive wealth back to the barbaric nations among whom they first arose; and that, while the sands of the ' Indus and adamant of Golconda may yet stiffen the housings of the charger, and flash from the turban of the slave, she, as a Christian mother, may at last at­ tain to the virtues and the treasures of a Heathen one, and be able to lead forth her Sons, saying “ These are my Jewels.” Ill___ QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM. (“ They who rule the Earth.") OME centuries before the Christian, era, a Jew merchant, largely engaged in business on the Gold Coast, and reported to have made one of the largest fortunes of his time (held also in repute for much practical sagacity), left among his ledgers some general maxims concerning wealth, which have been preserved, strangely enough, even to our own days. They were held in considerable respect by the most active traders of the middle ages, especially by the Venetians, who even went so far in their admira­ tion as to place a statue of the old Jew on the angle of one of their principal public buildings. Of late years these writings have fallen into disrepute, being c2 S �42 UNTO THIS LAST. opposed in every particular to the spirit of modern commerce. Nevertheless I shall reproduce a passage or two from them here, partly because they may in­ terest the reader by their novelty; and chiefly be­ cause they will show him that it is possible for a very practical and acquisitive tradesman to hold, through a not unsuccessful career, that principle of dis­ tinction between well-gotten and ill-gotten wealth, which, partially insisted on in my last paper, it must be our work more completely to examine in this. He says, for instance, in one place : “ The get­ ting of treasures by a lying tongue is a vanity tossed to and fro of them that seek death; ” adding in another, with the same meaning (he has a curious way of doubling his sayings) : “Treasures of wicked­ ness profit nothing : but justice delivers from death.” Both these passages are notable for their assertions of death as the only real issue and sum of attain­ ment by any unjust scheme of wealth. If we read, instead of “ lying tongue,” “ lying label, title, pre­ tence, or advertisement,” we shall more clearly per­ ceive the bearing of the words on modern business. The seeking of death is a grand expression of the true course of men’s toil in such business. We usually speak as if death pursued us, and we fled from him; but that is only so in rare instances. Ordinarily, he masks himself—makes himself beauti­ ful—all-glorious; not like the King’s daughter, allglorious within, but outwardly : his clothing of wrought gold. We pursue him frantically all our days, he flying or hiding from us. Our crowning suc­ cess at three-score and ten is utterly and perfectly to seize, and hold him in his eternal integrity—robes, ashes, and sting. Again : the merchant says, “ He that oppresseth the poor to increase his riches, shall surely come to want.” And again, more strongly: “ Rob not the poor because he is poor; neither oppress the afflicted in the place of business. For God shall spoil the soul of those that spoiled them.” �QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM 43 This “ robbing the poor because he is poor,” is especially the mercantile form of theft, consisting in taking advantage of a man’s necessities in order to obtain his labour or property at a reduced price. The ordinary highwayman’s opposite form of robbery— of the rich, because he is rich—does not appear to occur so often to the old merchant’s mind; probably because, being less profitable and more dangerous than the robbery of the poor, it is rarely practised by persons of discretion. But the two most remarkable passages in their deep general significance are the following :— “ The rich and the poor have met. God is their ' maker. ’ ’ “ The rich and the poor have met. God is their light. ” They ” have met ” : more literally, have stood in each other’s way (obviaverunf). That is to say, as long as the world lasts, the action and counteraction of wealth and poverty, the meeting, face to face, of rich and poor, is just as appointed and necessary a law of that world as the flow of stream to sea, or the interchange of power among the electric clouds :— “ God is their maker.” But, also, this action may be either gentle and just, or convulsive and destruc­ tive : it may be by rage of devouring flood, or by lapse of serviceable wave;—in blackness of thunder­ stroke, or continual force of vital fire, soft, and shapeable into love-syllables from far away. And which of these it shall be, depends on both rich and poor knowing that God is their light; that in the mystery of human life, there is no other light than this by which they can see each other’s faces, and live;—light, which is called in another of the books among which the merchant’s maxims have been pre­ served, the “ sun of justice,”* of which it is pro* More accurately, Sun of Justness; but, instead of the harsh word “Justness,” the old English “Righteous­ ness” being commonly employed, has, by getting con­ fused with “ godliness,” or attracting about it various �UNTO THIS LAST. 44 mised that it shall rise at last with “ healing ” (health-giving or helping, making whole or setting at one) in its wings. For truly this healing is only possible by means of justice; no love, no faith, no hope will do it; men will be unwisely fond—vainly faithful—unless primarily they are just; and the mis­ take of the best men through generation after gen­ eration, has been that great one of thinking to help the poor by almsgiving, and by preaching of patience or of hope, and by every other means, emollient or consolatory, except the one thing which God orders for them, justice. But this justice, with its accompanying holiness or helpfulness, being even by the best man denied in its trial time, is by the mass of men hated wherever it appears : so that, when the choice was one day fairly put to them, they denied the Helpful One and the Just; and desired a murderer, sedition-raiser, * and robber, to be granted to them;—the murderer in­ stead of the Lord of Life, the sedition-raiser instead of the Prince of Peace, and the robber instead of the Just Judge of all the world. I have just spoken of the flowing of streams to the sea as a partial image of the action of wealth. In one respect it is not a partial, but a perfect, image. vague and broken meanings, prevented most persons from receiving the force of the passage in which it occurs. The word “ righteousness ” properly refers to the justice of rule, or right, as distinguished from “ equity,” which refers to the justice of balance. More broadly. Righteous­ ness is King’s justice; and Equity Judge’s justice; the King guiding or ruling all, the Judge dividing or dis­ cerning between opposites (therefore, the double question, “ Man, who made me a ruler— ft/caorifc —or a divider—pEptarric—over you ? ”) Thus, with respect to the Justice of Choice (selection, the feebler and passive justice), we have from lego—lex, legal, loi, and loyal; and with respect to the Justice of Rule (direction, the stronger and active justice), we have from rego—rex, regal, roi, and royal. * In another place written with the same meaning, “Just, and having salvation.” �QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM. 45 The popular economist thinks himself wise in having' discovered that wealth, or the forms of property in general, must go where they are required, that where demand is, supply must follow. He farther declares that this course of demand and supply can­ not be forbidden by human laws. Precisely in the same sense, and with the same certainty, the waters of the world go where they are required. Where the land falls, the water flows. The course neither of clouds nor rivers can be forbidden by human will. But the disposition and administration of them can be altered by human forethought. AVhether the stream shall be a curse or a blessing, depends upon man’s labour, and administrating intelligence. For centuries after centuries, great districts of the world, rich in soil, and favoured in climate, have lain desert under the rage of their own rivers; nor only desert, but plague-struck. The stream which, rightly directed, would have flowed in soft irrigation from field to field—would have purified the air, given food to man and beast, and carried their burdens for them on its bosom—now overwhelms the plain and poisons the wind; its breath pestilence, and its work famine. In like manner this wealth “ goes where it is re­ quired.” No human laws can withstand its flow. They can only guide it: but this, the leading trench and limiting mound can do so thoroughly, that it shall become water of life—the riches of the hand of * wisdom; or, on the contrary, by leaving it to its own lawless flow, they may make it, what it has been too often, the last and deadliest of national plagues : water of Marah—the water which feeds the roots of all evil. The necessity of these laws of distribution or re­ straint is curiously overlooked in the ordinary politi­ cal economist’s definition of his own “ science.” He calls it, shortly, the “ science of getting rich.” But there are many sciences, as well as many arts, of get* “ Length of days in her right hand; in her left, riches and honour.” �46 UNTO THIS LAST. ting rich. Poisoning people of large estates, was one employed largely in the middle ages; adultera­ tion of food of people of small estates, is one em­ ployed largely now. The ancient and honourable highland method of blackmail; the more modern and less honourable system of obtaining goods on credit, and the other variously improved methods of appro­ priation—which, in major and minor scales of in­ dustry, down to the most artistic pocket-picking, wc owe to recent genius—all come under the general head of sciences, or arts, of getting rich. So that it is clear the popular economist, in calling his science the science par excellence of getting rich, must attach some peculiar ideas of limitation to its character. I hope I do not misrepresent him, by assuming that he means his science to be the science of “ getting rich by legal or just means.” In this definition, is the word “ just,” or “ legal,” finally to stand? For it is possible among certain nations, or under certain rulers, or by help of certain advocates, that proceedings may be legal which are by no means just. If, therefore, we leave at last only the word “ just ” in that place of our definition, the insertion of this solitary and small word will make a notable difference in the grammar of our science. For then it will follow that in order to grow rich scientifically, we must grow rich justly; and, therefore, know what is just; so that our economy will no longer depend merely on prudence, but on jurisprudence— and that of divine, not human law. Which prudence is indeed of no mean order, hold­ ing itself, as it were, high in the air of heaven, and gazing for ever on the light of the sun of justice; hence the souls which have excelled in it are represented by Dante as stars forming in heaven for ever the figure of the eye of an eagle; they having been in life the discerners of light from darkness; or to the whole human race, as the light of the body, which is the eye; while those souls which form the wings of the bird (giving power and dominion to �QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM. 47 justice, “ healing in its wings ) trace also in light the inscription in heaven: “ diligite justitiam qui judicatis terram.” “Ye who judge the earth, give ” (not, observe, merely love, but) “ diligent love to justice ” : the love which seeks diligently, that is to say, choosingly, and by preference to all things else. Which judging or doing judgment in the earth is, according to their capacity and position, required not of judges only, nor of rulers only, but of all men : a truth sorrowfully lost sight of even by * those who are ready enough to apply to them­ selves passages in which Christian men are spoken of as called to be “ saints ’ (f.e., to helpful or healing functions); and “ chosen to be kings” (i.e., to knowing or directing functions); the true meaning of these titles having been long lost through the pretences of unhelpful and unable persons to saintly and kingly character; also through the once popular idea that both the sanctity and royalty are to consist in wearing long robes and high crowns, instead of in mercy and judg­ ment; whereas all true sanctity is saving power, as all true royalty is ruling power; and injustice is part and parcel of the denial of such power, which “ makes men as the creeping things, as the fishes of the sea, that have no ruler over them.”! * I hear that several of our lawyers have been greatly amused by the statement in the first of these papers that a lawyer’s function was to do justice. I did not intend it for a jest; nevertheless it will be seen that in the above passage neither the determination nor doing of justice are contemplated as functions wholly peculiar to the lawyer. Possibly, the more our standing armies, whether of soldiers, pastors, or legislators (the generic term “ pastor ” including all teachers, and the generic term “lawyer” including makers as well as interpreters of law), can be superseded by the force of national heroism, wisdom, and honesty, the better it may be for the nation. + It being the privilege of the fishes, as it is of rats and wolves, to live by the laws of demand and supplv; the distinction of humanity, to live by those of right. �48 UNTO THIS LAST. Absolute justice is indeed no more attainable than absolute truth; but the righteous man is distin­ guished from the unrighteous by his desire and hope of justice, as the true man from the false by his de­ sire and hope of truth. And though absolute justice be unattainable, as much justice as we need for all practical use is attainable by all those who make it their aim. We have to examine, then, in the subject before us, what are the laws of justice respecting payment of labour—no small part, these, of the foundations of all jurisprudence. I reduced, in my last paper, the idea of money payment to its simplest or radical terms. In those terms its nature, and the conditions of justice re­ specting it, can be best ascertained. Money payment, as th^re stated, consists radically in a promise to some person working for us, that for the time and labour he spends in our service to­ day we will give or procure equivalent time and labour in his service at any future time when he may demand it. * If we promise to give him less labour than he has given us, we under-pay him. If we promise to give him more labour than he has given us, we over-pay him. In practice, according to the laws of demand and supply, when two men are ready to do the work, and only one man wants to have it done, the two men underbid each other for it; and the one who * It might appear at first that the market price of labour expressed such an exchange: but this is a fallacy, for the market price is the momentary price of the kind of labour required, but the just price is its equivalent of the productive labour of mankind. This difference will be analysed in its place. It must be noted also that I speak here only of the exchangeable value of labour, not of that of commodities. The exchangeable value of a commodity is that of the labour required to produce it, multiplied into the force of the demand for it. If the value of the labour— x and the force of demand = y, the exchangeable value of the commodity is xy, in which if either x±o, or y=o, xy=o. �QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM. 49 gets it to do, is under-paid. But when two men want the work done, and there is only one man ready to do it, the two men who want it done over­ bid each other, and the workman is over-paid. . I will examine these two points of injustice in succession; but first I wish the reader to clearly understand the central principle, lying between the two, of right or just payment. When we ask a service of any man, he may either give it us freely, or demand payment for it. Re­ specting free gift of service, there is no question at present, that being a matter of affection not of traffic. But if he demand payment for it, and we wish to treat him with absolute equity, it is evident that this equity can only consist in giving time for time, strength for strength, and skill for skill. . If a man works an hour for us, and we only promise to work half an hour for him in return, we obtain an unjust advantage. If, on the contrary, we promise to work an hour and a half for him in return, he has an unjust advantage. The justice consists in abso­ lute exchange; or, if there be any respect to the stations of the parties, it will not be in favour of the employer : there is certainly no equitable reason in a man’s being poor, that if he give me a pound of bread to-day, I should return him less than a pound of bread to-morrow; or any equitable reason in a man’s being uneducated, that if he uses a certain quantity of skill and knowledge in my service, I should use a less quantity of skill and knowledge in his. Perhaps, ultimately, it may appear desirable, or, to say the least, gracious, that I should give in return somewhat more than I received. But at pre­ sent, we are concerned on the law of justice only, which is that of perfect and accurate exchange;— one circumstance only interfering with the simplicity of this radical idea of just payment—that inasmuch as labour (rightly directed) is fruitful just as seed is, the fruit (or “ interest,” as it is called) of the labour first given, or ‘‘ advanced,” ought to be taken into �50 UNTO THIS LAST. account, and balanced by an additional quantity of labour in the subsequent repayment. Supposing the repayment to take place at the end of the year, or of any other given time, this calculation could be ap­ proximately made; but as money (that is to say, cash) payment involves no reference to time (it being optional with the person paid to spend what he re­ ceives at once or after any number of years), we can only assume, generally, that some slight advantage must in equity be allowed to the person who ad­ vances the labour, so that the typical form of bargain will be : If you give me an hour to-day, I will give you an hour and five minutes on demand. If you give me a pound of bread to-day, I will give you seventeen ounces on demand, and so on. All that is necessary for the reader to note is, that the amount returned is at least in equity not to be less than the amount given. The abstract idea, then, of just or due wages, as respects the labourer, is that they will at any time procure for him at least as much labour as he has given, rather more than less. And this equity or justice of payment is, observe, wholly independent of any reference to the number of men who are willing to do the work. I want a horseshoe for my horse. Twenty smiths, or twenty thousand smiths may be ready to forge it; their number does not in one atom’s weight affect the question of the equitable payment of the one who does forge it. It costs him a quarter of an hour of his life, and so much skill and strength of arm, to make that horseshoe for me. Then at some future time I am bound in equity to give a quarter of an hour, and some minutes more, of my life (or of some other person’s at my disposal), and also as much strength of arm and skill, and a little more, in making or doing what the smith may have need of. Such being the abstract theory of just remunera­ tive payment, its application is practically modified by the fact that the order for labour, given in �QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM. 51 payment, is general, while the labour received is special. The current coin or document is practically an ordcron the nation for so much work of any kind; and this universal applicability to immediate need renders it so much more valuable than special labour can be, that an order for a less quantity of this gen­ eral toil will always be accepted as a just equivalent for a greater quantity of special toil. Any given craftsman will always be willing to give an hour of his own work in order to receive command over half an hour, or even much less, of national work. This source of uncertainty, together with the difficulty of determining the monetary value of skill, render the * * Under the term “ skill ” I mean to include the united force of experience, intellect, and passion, in their opera­ tion on manual labour: and under the term passion, to include the entire range and agency of the moral reel­ ings ; from the simple patience and gentleness of mind which will give continuity and fineness to the touch, or enable one person to work without fatigue, and with good effect, twice as long as another, up to the qualities of character which render science possible—(the retarda­ tion of science by envy is one of the most tremendous losses in the economy of the _ present century)— and to the incommunicable emotion and imagination which are the first and mightiest sources of all value m art. It is highly singular that political economists should not yet have perceived, if not the moral, at least the passionate element, to be an inextricable quantity m every calculation. I cannot conceive, for instance, how it was possible that Mr. Mill should have followed the true clue so far as to write—“ No limit can be set to the importance—even in a purely productive and material point of view—of mere thought,” without seeing that it was logically necessary to add also, “ and of mere feel­ ing.” And this the more, because in his first definition of labour he includes in the idea of it “ all feelings of a dis­ agreeable kind connected with the employment of one’s thoughts in a particular occupation.” True; but why not also, “ feelings of an agreeable kind ” ? It can hardly be supposed that the feelings which retard labour are more essentially a part of the labour than those which acceler­ ate it. The first are paid for as pain, the second as power. The workman is merely indemnified for the first; �52 UNTO THIS LAST. ascertainment (even approximate) of the proper wages of any given labour in terms of a currency, matter of considerable complexity. But they do not affect the principle of exchange. The worth of the work may not be easily known; but it has a worth, just as fixed and real as the specific gravity of a substance, though such specific gravity may not be easily ascertainable when the substance is united with many others. Nor is there so much difficulty or chance in determining it, as in determining the ordinary maxima and minima of vulgar political economy. There are few bargains in which the buyer can ascertain with anything like precision that the seller would have taken no less;—or the seller ac­ quire more than a comfortable faith that the pur­ chaser would have given no more. This impossi­ bility of precise knowledge prevents neither from striving to attain the desired point of greatest vexa­ tion and injury to the other, nor from accepting it for a scientific principle that he is to buy for the least and sell for the most possible, though what the real least or most may be he cannot tell. In like manner, a just person lays it down for a scientific principle that he is to pay a just price, and, without being able precisely to ascertain the limits of such a price, will nevertheless strive to attain the closest possible approximation to them. A practically serviceable approximation he can obtain. It is easier to deter­ mine scientifically what a man ought to have for his but the second both produce a part of the exchangeable value of the work, and materially increase its actual quantity. “ Fritz is with us. He is worth fifty thousand men.” Truly, a large addition to the material force ;—consisting, however, be it observed, not more in operations carried on in Fritz’s head, than in operations carried on in his armies’ heart. “ No limit can be set to the importance of mere thought.” Perhaps not! Nay, suppose some day it should turn out that “ mere ” thought was in itself a recommendable object of production, and that all Mate­ rial production was only a step towards this more precious Immaterial one? �QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM. 53 work, than what his necessities will compel him to take for it. His necessities can only be ascertained by empirical, but his due by analytical, investigation. In the one case, you try your answer to the sum like a puzzled schoolboy—till you find one that fits, in the other, you bring out your result within certain limits, by process of calculation. Supposing, then, the just wages of any quantity of given labour to have been ascertained, let us ex­ amine the first results of just and unjust payment, when in favour of the purchaser or employer: t.e., when two men are ready to do the work, and only one wants to have it done. The unjust purchaser forces the two to bid against each other till he has reduced their demand to its lowest terms. Let us assume that the lowest bidder offers to do the work at half its just price. The purchaser employs him, and does not employ the other. The first or apparent result is, therefore, that one of the two men is left out of employ, or to starvation, just as definitely as by the just pro­ cedure of giving fair price to the best workman. The various writers who endeavoured to invalidate the ■positions of my first paper never saw this, and as­ sumed that the unjust hirer employed both. He em­ ploys both no more than the just hirer. The only difference (in the outset) is that the just man pays sufficiently, the unjust man insufficiently, for the labour of the single person employed. I say, “ in the outset for this first or apparent difference is not the actual difference. By the unjust procedure, half the proper price of the work is left in the hands of the employer. This enables him to hire another man at the same unjust rate, on some other kind of work; and the final result is that he has two men working for him at half-price, and two are out of employ. By the just procedure, the whole price of the first piece of work goes into the hands of the man who does it. No surplus being left in the employer’s �54 UNTO THIS LAST. hands, he cannot hire another man for another piece of labour. But by precisely so much as his power is diminished, the hired workman’s power is in­ creased : that is to say, by the additional half of the price he has received; which additional half he has the power of using to employ another man in his service. I will suppose, for the moment, the least favourable, though quite probable, case—that, though justly treated himself, he yet will act unjustly to his subordinate; and hire at half-price if he can. The final result will then be, that one man works for the employer, at just price; one for the workman, at half-price; and two, as in the first case, are still out of employ. These two, as I said before, are out of employ in both cases. The difference between the just and unjust procedure does not lie in the number of men hired, but in the price paid to them, and the persons by whom it is paid. The essential difference, that which I want the reader to see clearly, is, that in the unjust case, two men work for one, the first hirer. In the just case, one man works for the first hirer, one for the person hired, and so on, down or up through the various grades of service; the influence being carried forward by justice, and arrested by injustice. The universal and constant action of justice in this matter is therefore to dimin­ ish t-he power of wealth, in the hands of one in­ dividual, over masses of men, and to distribute it through a chain of men. The actual power exerted by the wealth is the same in both cases; but by in­ justice it is put all into one man’s hands, so that he directs at once and with equal force the labour of a circle of men about him; by the just procedure, he is permitted to touch the nearest only, through whom, with diminished force, modified by new minds, the energy of the wealth passes on to others, and so till it exhausts itself. The immediate operation of justice in this respect is therefore to diminish the power of wealth, first, in acquisition of luxury, and secondly, in exercise of �QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM. 55 moral influence. The employer cannot concentrate so multitudinous labour on his own interests, nor can he subdue so multitudinous mind to.his own will. But the secondary operation of justice is not less impor­ tant. The insufficient payment of the group of men working for one, places each under a maximum of difficulty in rising above his position. The tendency of the system is to check advancement. But the suffi­ cient or just payment, distributed through a.descend­ ing series of offices or grades of labour,gives each subordinated person fair and sufficient means of rising in the social scale, if he chooses to use them, and thus not only diminishes the immediate power of wealth, but removes the worst disabilities of poverty. It is on this vital problem that the entire destiny * I am sorry to lose time by answering, however curtly, the equivocations of the writers who sought to obscure the instances given of regulated labour in the first of these papers, bv confusing kinds, ranks, and quantities of labour with its qualities. I never said that a colonel should have the same pay as a private, nor a bishop the same pay as a curate. Neither did I say that more woik ought to be paid as less work (so that the curate of a parish of two thousand souls should have no more than the curate of a parish of five hundred). But I said that, so far as you emplov it at all, bad work should be paid no less than good work; as a bad clergyman yet takes his tithes, a bad phvsician takes his fee, and a bad lawyer his costs. And this, as will be farther shown in the con­ clusion, I said, and say, partly because the best work never was, nor ever will be, done for money at all; but chiefly because, the moment people know they have to pay the bad and good alike, they will try to discern the one from the other, and not use the bad. A sagacious writer in the Scotsman asks me if I should like any com­ mon scribbler to be paid by Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. ''as their good authors are. I should, if they employed him—¿ut would seriously recommend them, for the scribbler’s sake as well as their own, not to employ him. The quantity of its money, which the country at present invests in scribbling is not, in the outcome of it, eco­ nomically spent; and even the highly ingenious person to whom this question occurred, might perhaps have been more beneficially employed than in printing it. �56 UNTO THIS LAST. of the labourer is ultimately dependent. Many minor interests may sometimes appear to interfere with it, but all branch from it. For instance, considerable agitation is often caused in the minds of the lower classes when they discover the share which they nominally, and to all appearance, actually, pay out of their wages in taxation (I believe thirty-five or forty per cent.). This sounds very grievous; but in reality the labourer does not pay it, but his em­ ployer. If the workman had not to pay it, his wages would be less by just that sum; competition would still reduce them to the lowest rate at which life was possible. Similarly the lower orders agitated for the repeal of the corn laws, thinking they would be * * I have to acknowledge an interesting communica­ tion on the subject of free-trade from Paisley (for a short letter from “A Well-wisher” at ----- , my thanks are yet more due). But the Scottish writer will, I fear, be disagreeably surprised to hear, that I am, and always have been, an utterly fearless and unscrupulous free­ trader. Seven years ago, speaking of the various signs of infancy in the European mind (‘ Stones of Venice,’ vol. iii., p. 168), I wrote: “The first principles of commerce were acknowledged by the English parliament only a few months ago, in its free-trade measures, and are still so little understood by the million, that no nation ¿Lares to abolish its custom-houses.” It will be observed that I do not admit even the idea of reciprocity. Let other nations, if they like, keep their ports shut; every wise nation will throw its own open. It is not the opening them, but a sudden, inconsiderate, and blunderingly experimental manner of opening them, which does harm. If you have been protecting a manu­ facture for a long series of years, you must not take the protection off in a moment, so as to throw every one of its operatives at once out of employ, any more than you must take all its wrappings off a ieeble child at once in cold weather, though the cumber of them may have been radically injuring its health. Little by little, you must restore it to freedom and to air. Most people’s minds are in curious confusion on the subject of free-trade, because they suppose it to imply enlarged competition. _ On the contrary, free-trade puts an end to all competition. “ Protection ” (among various other mischievous functions) endeavours to enable one �QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM. 57 better off if bread were cheaper; never perceiving that as soon as bread was permanently cheaper, wages would permanently fall in precisely that pro­ portion. The corn laws were rightly repealed; not, however, because they directly oppressed the poor, but because they indirectly oppressed them in caus­ ing a large quantity of their labour to be consumed unproductively. So also unnecessary taxation op­ presses them, through destruction of capital, but the destiny of the poor depends primarily always on this one question of dueness of wages. Their distress (irrespectively of that caused by sloth, minor error, or crime) arises on the grand scale from the two re­ acting forces of competition and oppression. There is not yet, nor will yet for ages be, any real over­ population in the world; but a local over-population, or, more accurately, a degree of population locally unmanageable under existing circumstances for want of forethought and sufficient machinery, necessarily shows itself by pressure of competition; and the taking advantage of this competition by the pur­ chaser to obtain their labour unjustly cheap, consum­ mates at once their suffering and his own; for in this (as I believe in every other kind of slavery) the op­ pressor suffers at last more than the oppressed, and those magnificent lines of Pope, even in all their force, fall short of the truth :— “ Yet, to be just to these poor men of pelf, Each does but HATE HIS NEIGHBOUR AS HIMSELF : Damned to the mines, an equal fate betides The slave that digs it, and the slave that hides.” The collateral and reversionary operations of jus­ tice in this matter I shall examine hereafter (it being country to compete with another in the production of an article at a disadvantage. When trade is entirely free, no country can be competed with in the articles for the production of which it is naturally calculated; nor can it compete with any other, in the production of articles for which it is not naturally calculated. Tuscany, for in­ stance, cannot compete with England in steel, nor Eng- �58 UNTO THIS LAST. needful first to define the nature of value); proceeding then to consider within what practical terms a juster system may be established; and ultimately the vexed question of the destinies of the unemployed work­ * men. Lest, however, the reader should be alarmed at some of the issues to which our investigations seem to be tending, as if in their bearing against the power of wealth they had something in common with those of socialism, I wish him to know, in accurate land with Tuscany in oil. They must exchange their steel and oil. Which exchange should be as frank and free as honesty and the sea-winds can make it. Com­ petition, indeed, arises at first, and sharply, in order to prove which is strongest in any given manufacture pos­ sible to both; this point once ascertained, competition is at an end. * I should be glad if the reader would first clear the ground for himself so far as to determine whether the difficulty lies in getting the work or getting the pay for it. Does he consider occupation itself to be an expen­ sive luxury, difficult of attainment, of which too little is to be found in the world ? or is it rather that, while in the enjoyment even of the most athletic delight, men must nevertheless be maintained, and this maintenance is not always forthcoming? We must be clear on this head be­ fore going farther, as most people are loosely in the habit of talking of the difficulty of “ finding employment.” Is it employment that we want to find, or support during employment ? Is it idleness we wish to put an end to, or hunger? We have to take up both questions in succes­ sion, only not both at the same time. No doubt that work is a luxury, and a very great one. It is, indeed, at once a luxury and a necessity; no man can retain either health of mind or body without it. So profoundly do I feel this, that, as will be seen in the sequel, one of the principal objects I would recommend to benevolent and practical persons, is to induce rich people to seek for a larger quantity of this luxury than they at present possess. Nevertheless, it appears by experience that even this healthiest of pleasures may be indulged in to excess, and that human beings are just as liable to surfeit of labour as to surfeit of meat; so that, as on the one hand, it may be charitable to provide, for some people, lighter dinner, and more work—for others, it may be equally ex­ pedient to provide lighter work, and more dinner. �QUI JUDICATIS TERRAM. 59 terms, one or two of the main points which I have in view. Whether socialism has made more progress among the army and navy (where payment is made on my principles), or among the manufacturing operatives (who are paid on my opponents’ principles), I leave it to those opponents to ascertain and declare. What­ ever their conclusion may be, I think it necessary to answer for myself only this : that if there be any one point insisted on throughout my_ works more fre­ quently than another, that one point is the impossi­ bility of Equality. My continual aim has been to show the eternal superiority of some men to others, sometimes even of one man to all others, and to show also the advisability of appointing such persons or person to guide, to lead, or on occasion even to compel and subdue, their inferiors according to their own better knowledge and wiser will. My principles of Political Economy were all involved in a single phrase spoken three years ago at Manchester . “ Soldiers of the Ploughshare as well as Soldiers of the Sword and they were all summed in a single sentence in the last volume of * Modern Painters “ Government and co-operation are in all things the Laws of Life; Anarchy and competition the Laws of Death.” . v And with respect to the mode in which these general principles affect the secure possession of pro­ perty, so far am I from invalidating such security, that the whole gist of these papers will be found ulti­ mately to aim at an extension in its range; and whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor.. But that the working of the system which I have undertaken to develop would in many ways shorten the apparent and direct, though not the unseen and collateral, power, both of wealth, as the Lady of Pleasure, and of capital as the Lord of Toil, I do �6o UNTO THIS LAST. not deny;—on the contrary, I affirm it in all joyful­ ness; knowing that the attraction of riches is already too strong, as their authority is already too weighty, for the reason of mankind. I said in my last paper that nothing in history had ever been so disgraceful to human intellect as the acceptance among us of the common doctrines of political economy as a science. I have many grounds for saying this, but one of the chief may be given in few words. I know no pre­ vious instance in history of a nation’s establishing a systematic disobedience to the first principles of its professed religion. The writings which we (verb­ ally) esteem as divine, not only denounce the love of money as the source of all evil, and as an idolatry abhorred of the Deity, but declare mammon service to be the accurate and irreconcileable opposite of God’s service; and, whenever they speak of riches absolute, and poverty absolute, declare woe to the rich, and blessing to the poor. Whereupon we forth­ with investigate a science of becoming rich, as the shortest road to national prosperity. “Tai Cristian dannerà l’Etiòpe, Quando si partiranno i due collegi, L’uno in eterno ricco, e l’altro inope.” IV.--- AD VALOREM. (“ According to the Value.”) N the last paper we saw that just payment of labour consisted in a sum of money which would approximately obtain equivalent labour at a future time : we have now to examine the means of obtaining such equivalence. Which question involves the definition of Value, Wealth, Price, and Produce. None of these terms are yet defined so as to be understood by the public. But the last, Produce, which one might have thought the clearest of all, is, I �AD VALOREM. 61 in use, the most ambiguous; and the examination of the kind of ambiguity attendant on its present employment will best open the way to our work. . In his chapter on Capital, Mr. J. S. Mill in­ * stances, as a capitalist, a hardware manufacturer, who, having intended to spend, a certain portion o the proceeds of his business in buying plate and jewels, changes his mind, and “ pays it as wages to additional workpeople.” The effect is stated y r. Mill to be, that “ more food is appropriated to the consumption of productive labourers.” Now I do not ask, though, had I written this paragraph, it would surely have been asked of me, What is to become of the silversmiths? If they are truly unproductive persons, we will acquiesce in their extinction. And though in another, part of the same passage, the hardware merchant is supposed also to dispense with a number of servants, whose “ food is thus set free for productive purposes,” I do not inquire what will be the effect, painful. or otherwise, upon the servants, of this emancipation of their food. But I very seriously inquire why iron­ ware is produce, and silverware is not? That the merchant consumes the one, and sells the other, cer­ tainly does not constitute the difference, unless it can be shown (which, indeed, I perceive it to be becom­ ing daily more and more the aim of tradesmen to show) that commodities are made to be sold, and not to be consumed. The merchant is an agent of con­ veyance to the consumer in one case, and is himself the consumer in the other :f but the labourers are in * Book I. chap. iv. s. i. To save space, my future references to Mr. Mill’s work will be by numerals only, as in this instance, I. iv. i. Ed. in 2 vols. 8vo, Parker, 1848. + If Mr. Mill had wished to show the difference in re­ sult between consumption and sale, he should have repre­ sented the hardware merchant as consuming his own goods instead of selling them; similarly, the silver mer­ chant as consuming his own goods instead of selling them. Had he done this, he would have made his position clearer, though less tenable; and perhaps this was the �62 UNTO THIS LAST. either case equally productive, since they have pro­ duced goods to the same value, if the hardware and the plate are both goods. And what distinction separates them? It is indeed possible that in the “ comparative estimate of the moralist,” with which Mr. Mill says political econ­ omy has nothing to do (III. i. 2), a steel fork might appear a more substantial production than a silver one : we may grant also that knives, no less than forks, are good produce; and scythes and plough­ shares serviceable articles. But, how of bayonets? Supposing the hardware merchant to effect large sales of these, by help of the “ setting free ” of the food of his servants and his silversmith,—is he still employing productive labourers, or, in Mr. Mill’s words, labourers who increase “the stock of per­ manent means of enjoyment ” (I. iii. 4)? Or if, in­ stead of bayonets, he. supply bombs, will not’ the absolute and final “ enjoyment ” of even these ener­ getically productive articles (each of which costs ten ) * pounds be dependent on a proper choice of time and place for their enfantement; choice, that is to say, depending on those philosophical considera­ tions with which political economy has nothing to do?t position he really intended to take, tacitly involving his theory, elsewhere stated, and shown in the sequel of this paper to be false, that demand for commodities is not de­ mand for labour. But by the most diligent scrutiny of the paragraph now under examination, I cannot deter­ mine whether it is a fallacy pure and simple, or the half of one fallacy supported by the whole of a greater one; so that I treat it here on the kinder assumption that it is one fallacy only. * I take Mr. Helps’ estimate in his essav on War. + Also, when the wrought silver vases'of Spain were dashed to fragments bv our custom-house officers because bullion might be imported free of duty, but not brains, was the axe that broke them productive ?—the artist who wrought them unproductive? Or again. If the wood­ man’s axe is productive, is the executioner’s? as also, if the hemp of a cable be productive, does not the produc­ tiveness of hemp in a halter depend on its moral more than on its material application ? �AD VALOREM. 63 I should have regretted the need of pointing out inconsistency in any portion of Mr. Mill’s work, had not the value of his work proceeded from its incon­ sistencies. He deserves honour among economists by inadvertently disclaiming the principles which he states, and tacitly introducing the moral considera­ tions with which he declares his science has no con­ nection. Many of his chapters are, therefore, true and valuable; and the only conclusions of his which I have to dispute are those which follow fr®m his pre­ mises. Thus, the idea which lies at the root of the passage we have just been examining, namely, that labour applied to produce luxuries will not support so many persons as labour applied to produce useful articles, is entirely true; but the instance given fails—and in four directions of failure at once—because Mr. Mill has not defined the real meaning of usefulness. The definition which he has given—“ capacity to satisfy a desire, or serve a purpose ” (III. i. 2)—applies equally to the iron and silver; while the true defini­ tion—which he has not given, but which nevertheless underlies the false verbal definition in his mind, and comes out once or twice by accident (as in the words “ any support to life or strength ” in I. i. 5)—applies to some articles of iron, but not to others, and to some articles of silver, but not to others. It applies to ploughs, but not to bayonets; and to forks, but not to filigree. * The eliciting of the true definitions will give us the reply to our first question, “ What is value? ” re­ specting which, however, we must first hear the popular statements. “ The word ‘ value,’ when used without adjunct, always means, in political economy, value in ex­ change ” (Mill, III. i. 3). So that, if two ships can­ not exchange their rudders, their rudders are, in politico-economic language, of no value to either. * Filigree; that is to say, generally ornament depen­ dent on complexity, not on art. �64 UNTO THIS LAST. But “ the.subject of political economy is wealth.” —(Preliminary remarks, page I.) And wealth “ consists of all useful and agreeable objects which possess exchangeable value.”—(Pre­ liminary remarks, page io.) It appears, then, according to Mr. Mill, that use­ fulness and agreeablcness underlie the exchange value, and must be ascertained to exist in the thing, before we can esteem it an object of wealth. Now, the economical usefulness of a thing depends not merely on its own nature, but on the number of people who can and will use it. A horse is useless, and therefore unsaleable, if no one can ride,—a sword, if no one can strike, and meat, if no one can eat. Thus every material utility depends on its rela­ tive human capacity. Similarly : The agreeableness of a thing depends not merely on its own likeableness, but on the number of people who can be got to like it. The relative agreeableness, and therefore saleableness, of “ a pot of the smallest ale,” and of ” Adonis painted by a running brook,” depends virtually on the opinion of Demos, in the shape of Christopher Sly. That is to say, the agreeableness of a thing depends on its relatively human disposition. Therefore, poli­ * tical economy, being a science of wealth, must be * These statements sound crude in their brevity; but will be found of the utmost importance when they are developed. Thus, in the above instance, economists have never perceived that disposition to buy is a wholly moral element in demand: that is to say, when you give a man half a crown, it depends on his disposition whether he is rich or poor with it—-whether he will buy disease, ruin, and hatred, or buy health, advancement, and domestic love. And thus the agreeableness or exchange value of every offered commodity depends on production, not merely of the commodity, but of buyers of it; therefore on the education of buyers, and on all the moral elements by which their disposition to buy this, or that, is formed. I will illustrate and expand into final consequences every one of these definitions in its place: at present they can �AD VALOREM. 65 a science respecting human capacities and disposi­ tions. But moral considerations have nothing to do with political economy (III. i. 2). Therefore, moral considerations have nothing to do with human capa­ cities and dispositions. I do not wholly like the look of this conclusion from Mr. Mill’s statements :—let us try Mr. Ricardo’s. “ Utility is not the measure of exchangeable value, though it is absolutely essential to it.”—(Chap. I. sect, i.) Essential in what degree, Mr. Ricardo? There may be greater and less degrees of utility. Meat, for instance, may be so good as to be fit for any one to eat, or so bad as to be fit for no one to eat. What is the exact degree of goodness which is “ essential ” to its exchangeable value, but not “ the measure” of it? How good must the meat be, in order to possess any exchangeable value? and how bad must it be—(I wish this were a settled question in London markets)—in order to possess none? There appears to be some hitch, I think, in the working even of Mr. Ricardo’s principles; but let him take his own example. “ Suppose that in the early stages of society the bows and arrows of the hunter were of equal value with the implements of the fisherman. Under such circumstances the value of the deer, the produce of the hunter’s day’s labour, would be exactly ” (italics mine) “ equal to the value of the fish, the product of the fisherman’s day’s labour. The comparative value of the fish and game would be entirely regulated by the quantity of labour realised in each.” (Ricardo, chap. iii. On Value.) Indeed ! Therefore, if the fisherman catches one sprat, and the huntsman one deer, one sprat will be only be given with extremest brevity; for in order to put the subject at once in a connected form before the reader, I have thrown into one, the opening definitions of four chapters: namely, of that on Value (“Ad Val­ orem”); on Price (“Thirty Pieces”); on Production (“Demeter”); and on Economy (“The Law of the House”). D �66 UNTO THIS LAST. equal in value to one deer; but if the fisherman catches no sprat and the huntsman two deer, no sprat will be equal in value to two deer? Nay; but—Mr. Ricardo’s supporters may say—he means, on an average;—if the average product of a day’s work of fisher and hunter be one fish and one deer, the one fish will always be equal in value to the one deer. Might I inquire the species of fish. Whale? or * whitebait? It would be waste of time to pursue these fallacies farther; we will seek for a true definition. Much store has been set for centuries upon the use of our English classical education. It were to be wished that our well-educated merchants recalled to mind always this much of their Latin schooling,— that the norpinative of valorem (a word already suffi­ ciently familiar to them) is valor; a word which, therefore, ought to be familiar to them. Valor, from * Perhaps it may be said, in farther support of Mr. Ricardo, that he meant, “ when the utility is constant or given, the price varies as the quantity of labour.” If he meant this, he should have said it; but, had he meant it, he could have hardly missed the necessary result, that utility would be one measure of price (which he expressly denies it to be); and that, to prove saleableness, he had to prove a given quantity of utility, as well as a given quantity of labour; to wit, in his own instance, that the deer and fish would each feed the same number of men, for the same number of days, with equal pleasure to their Salates. The fact is, he did not know what he meant imself. The general idea which he had derived from commercial experience, without being able to analyse it, was that when the demand is constant, the price varies as the quantity of labour required for production; or, using the formula I gave in last paper—when y is constant, x y varies as x. But demand never is nor can be ultimately constant, if x varies distinctly; for as price rises, con­ sumers fall away; and as soon as there is a monopoly (and all scarcity is a form of monopoly, so that every _ commodity is affected occasionally by some colour of monoplv), y becomes the most influential condition of the price. Thus the price of a painting depends less on its merit than on the interest taken in it by the public; �AD VALOREM. 67 vAlere, to be well or strong (uytairw) ;—strong, in life (if a man), or valiant; strong, for life (if a thing), or valuable. To be “ valuable,” therefore, is to “avail towards life.” A truly valuable or availing thing is that which leads to life with its whole strength. In proportion as it does not lead to life, or as its strength is broken, it is less valuable; in pro­ portion as it leads away from life, it is unvaluable or malignant. The value of a thing, therefore, is independent of opinion, and of quantity. Think what you will of it, gain how much you may of it, the value of the thing itself is neither greater nor less. For ever it avails, or avails not; no estimate can raise, no disdain re­ press, the power which it holds from the Maker of things and of men. The real science of political economy, which has yet to be distinguished from the bastard science, as medicine -from witchcraft, and astronomy from astro­ logy, is that which teaches nations to desire and labour for the things that lead to life : and which the price of singing less on the labour of the singer than the number of persons who desire to hear him: and the price of gold less on the scarcity which affects it in com­ mon with cerium or iridium, than on the sunlight colour and unalterable purity by which it attracts the admira­ tion and answers the trust of mankind. It must be kept in mind, however, that I use the word “ demand ” in a somewhat different sense from economists usually. They mean by it “ the quantity of a thing sold.” I mean by it “ the force of the buyer’s capable intention to buy.” In good English, a person’s “ demand ” signi­ fies, not what he gets, but what he asks for. Economists also do not notice that objects are not valued by absolute bulk or weight, but by such bulk and weight as is necessary to bring them into use. They say, for instance, that water bears no price in the market. It is true that a cupful does not, but a lake does; just as a handful of dust does not, but an acre does. And were it possible to make even the possession of a cupful or handful permanent (i.e., to find a place for them), the earth and sea would be brought up by handfuls and cup­ fuls. �68 UNTO THIS LAST. teaches them to scorn and destroy the things that lead to destruction. And if, in a state of infancy, they supposed indifferent things, such as excres­ cences of shell-fish, and pieces of blue and red stone, to be valuable, and spent large measures of the labour which ought to be employed for the extension and ennobling of life, in diving or digging for them, and cutting them into various shapes,—or if, in the same state of infancy, they imagine pre­ cious and beneficent things, such as air, light, and cleanliness, to be valueless,—or if, finally, they imag­ ine the conditions of their own existence, by which alone they can truly possess or use anything, such, for instance, as peace, trust, and love, to be pru­ dently exchangeable, when the markets offer, for gold, iron, or excrescences of shells—the great and only science of Political Economy teaches them, in all these cases, what is vanity, and what substance; and how the service of Death, the Lord of Waste, and of eternal emptiness, differs from the service of Wisdom, the Lady of Saving, and of eternal fulness; she who has said, “ I will cause those that love me to inherit Substance; and I will Fill their trea­ sures.” The “ Lady of Saving,” in a profounder sense than that of the savings bank, though that is a good one: Madonna della Salute,—Lady of Health,— which, though commonly spoken of as if separate from wealth, is indeed a part of wealth. This word, “ wealth,” it will be remembered, is the next w’e have to define. ‘‘To be wealthy,” says Mr. Mill, “is to have a large stock of useful articles.” I accept this definition. Only let us perfectly understand it. My opponents often lament my not giving them enough logic : I fear I must at present use a little more than they will like; but this business of Political Economy is no light one, and we must allow no loose terms in it. We have, therefore, to ascertain in the above �AD VALOREM. 69 definition, first, what is the meaning of “ having,” or the nature of Possession. Then what is the mean­ ing of “ useful,” or the nature of Utility. And first of possession. At the crossing of the transepts of Milan Cathedral has lain, for three hun­ dred years, the embalmed body of St. Carlo Borromeo. It holds a golden crosier, and has a cross of emeralds on its breast. Admitting the crosier and emeralds to be useful articles, is the body to be con­ sidered as “ having ” them? Do they, in the politicoeconomical sense of property, belong to it? If not, and if we may, therefore, conclude generally that a dead body cannot possess property, what degree and period of animation in the body will render posses­ sion possible? As thus : lately in a wreck of a Californian ship, one of the passengers fastened a belt about him with two hundred pounds of gold in it, with which he was found afterwards at the bottom. Now, as he was sinking—had he the gold ? or had the gold him ? * And if, instead of sinking him in the sea by its weight, the gold had struck him on the forehead, and thereby caused incurable disease—suppose palsy or insanity,—would the gold in that case have been more a “possession” than in the first? Without pressing the inquiry up through instances of gradu­ ally increasing vital power over the gold (which I will, however, give, if they are asked for), I presume the reader will see that possession, or “ having,” is not an absolute, but a gradated power; and consists not only in the quantity or nature of the thing pos­ sessed, but also (and in a greater degree) in its suit­ ableness to the person possessing it and in his vital power to use it. And our definition of Wealth, expanded, becomes : “ The possession of useful articles, which we can use.” This is a very serious change. For wealth, instead of depending merely on a “have,” is thus * Compare George HERBERT, ‘The Church Porch,’ Stanza 28. �70 UNTO THIS LAST. seen to depend on a “ can.” Gladiator’s death, on a “ habet ”; but soldier’s victory, and State’s salva­ tion, on a “ quo plurimum posset.” (Liv. VII. 6.) And what we reasoned ol only as accumulation of material, is seen to demand also accumulation of capacity. So much for our verb. Next for our adjective. What is the meaning of “ useful ”? The inquiry is closely connected with the last. For what is capable of use in the hands of some persons, is capable, in the hands of others, of the opposite of use, palled commonly “ from-use,” or “ ab-use. ” And it depends on the person, much more than on the article, whether its usefulness or ab-usefulness will be the quality developed in it. Thus, wirte, which the Greeks, in their Bacchus, made rightly the type of all passion, and which, when used, “ cheereth god and man ” (that is to say, strengthens both the divine life, or reasoning power, and the earthy, or carnal power, of man); yet, when abused, becomes “ Dionusos,” hurtful especially to the divine part of man, or reason. And again, the body itself, being equally liable to use and to abuse, and, when rightly disciplined, serviceable to the State, both for war and labour;—but when not disciplined, or abused, value­ less to the State, and capable only of continuing the private or single existence of the individual (and that but feebly)—the Greeks called such a body an “idiotic” or “private” body, from their word signifying a person employed in no way directly useful to the State; whence finally, our “ idiot,” meaning a person entirely occupied with his own concerns. Hence, it follows that if a thing is to be useful, it must be not only of an availing nature, but in avail­ ing hands. Or, in accurate terms, usefulness is value in the hands of the valiant; so that this science of wealth being, as we have just seen, when regarded as the science of Accumulation, accumulative of capacity as well as of material,—when regarded as �AD VALOREM. 71 the Science of Distribution, is distribution not abso­ lute, but discriminate; not of every thing to every man, but of the right thing to the right man. A difficult science, dependent on more than arithmetic. Wealth, therefore, is “the possession , of the valuable by the valiant ”; and in considering it as a power existing in a nation, the two elements, the value of the thing, and the valour of its possessor, must be estimated together. Whence it appears that many of the persons commonly considered wealthy, are in reality no more wealthy than the locks of their own strong boxes are, they being inherently and eternally incapable of wealth; and operating for the nation, in an economical point of view, either as pools of dead water, and eddies in a stream (which, so long as the stream flows, are useless, or serve only to drown people, but may become of importance in a state of stagnation should the stream dry); .or else, as dams in a river, of which the ultimate service depends not on the dam, but the miller; or else, as mere accidental stays and impediments, acting not as wealth, but (for we ought to have a correspondent term) as “ illth,” causing various devastation and trouble around them in all directions; or lastly, act not at all, but are merely animated conditions of delay, (no use being possible of anything they have until they are dead,) in which last condition they are nevertheless often useful as delays, and “ impedi­ menta,” if a nation is apt to move too fast. This being so, the difficulty of the true science of Political Economy lies not merely in the need of developing manly character to deal with material value, but in the fact, that while the manly character and material value only form wealth by their con­ junction, they have nevertheless a mutually destruc­ tive operation on each other. For the manly char­ acter is apt to ignore, or even cast away, the material value :—whence that of Pope :— “ Sure, of qualities demanding praise More go to ruin fortunes, than to raise.” �72 UNTO THIS LAST. And on the other hand, the material value is apt to undermine the manly character; so that it must be our work, in the issue, to examine what evidence there is of the effect of wealth on the minds of its possessors; also, what kind of person it is who usually sets himself to obtain wealth, and succeeds in doing so, and whether the world owes more grati­ tude to rich or to poor men, either for their moral influence upon it, or for chief goods, discoveries, and practical advancements. I may, however, anticipate future conclusions, so far as to state that in a com­ munity regulated only by laws of demand and supply, but protected from open violence, the persons who become rich are, generally speaking, indus­ trious, resolute, proud, covetous, prompt, metho­ dical, sensible, unimaginative, insensitive, and ignorant. The persons who remain poor are the entirely foolish, the entirely wise, the idle, the reck­ less, the humble, the thoughtful, the dull, the ima­ ginative, the sensitive, the well-informed, the im­ provident, the irregularly and impulsively wicked, the clumsy knave, the open thief, and the entirely merciful, just, and godly person. Thus far, then, of wealth. Next, we have to ascertain the nature of Price; that is to say, of exchange value, and its expression by currencies. . Note first, of exchange, there can be no profit in it. It is only in labour there can be profit—that is to Sj^’> making in advance,” or “ making in favour of (from proficio).. In exchange, there is only ad\ antage, i.e., a bringing of vantage or power to the exchanging persons. Thus, one man, by sowing and reaping, turns one measure of corn into two measures. That is Profit. Another, by digginc and forging, turns one spade into two spades. That is Profit. But the man who has two measures of corn wants sometimes to dig; and the man who has two spades wants sometimes to eat:—Thev exchange the gained grain for the gained tool; and both are the better for the exchange; but though there is much �AD VALOREM. 73 advantage in the transaction, there is no profit. Nothing is constructed or produced. Only that which had been before constructed is given to t.ie person by whom it can be used. If laboui is neces­ sary to effect the exchange, that labour is in reality involved in the production, and, like all other labour, bears profit. Whatever number of men are concerned in the manufacture, or in the conveyance, have share in the profit; but neither the manufacture nor the conveyance are the exchange, and in the exchange itself there is no profit. . , There may, however, be acquisition, which is a very different thing. If, in the exchange, one man is able to give what cost him little labour for what has cost the other much, he “ acquires ” a certain quantity of the produce of the other’s labour. And precisely what he acquires, the other loses. In mer­ cantile language, the person who thus ,acquires is commonly said to have “ made a profit and I be­ lieve that many of our merchants are seriously under the impression that it is possible for everybody, somehow, to make a profit in this manner. WEereas, by the unfortunate constitution of the world we live in, the laws both of matter and motion have quite rigorously forbidden universal acquisition of this kind. Profit, or material gain, is attainable only by construction or by discovery; not by exchange. Whenever material gain follows exchange, for every plus there is a precisely equal minus. Unhappily for the progress of the science of Poli­ tical Economy, the plus quantities, or—if I may be allowed to coin an awkward plural—the pluses, make a very positive and venerable appearance in. the world, so that every one is eager to learn the science which produces results so magnificent; whereas the minuses have, on the other hand, a tendency to retire into back streets, and other places of shade,— or even to get themselves wholly and finally put out of sight in graves : which renders the algebra of this science peculiar, and difficultly legible; a large D2 �74 UNTO THIS LAST. number of its negative signs being written by the account-keeper in a kind of red ink, which starvation thins, and makes strangely pale, or even quite in­ visible ink, for the present. The Science of Exchange, or, as I hear it has been proposed to call it, of “ Catallactics,” considered as one of gain, is, therefore, simply nugatory; but con­ sidered as one of acquisition, it is a very curious science, differing in its data and basis from every other science known. Thus :—If I can exchange a needle with a savage for a diamond, my power of doing so depends either on the savage’s ignorance of social arrangements in Europe, or on his want of power to take advantage of them, by selling the diamond to any one else for more needles. If, farther, I make the bargain as completely advan­ tageous to myself as possible, by giving to the savage a needle with no eye in it (reaching, thus a sufficiently satisfactory type of the perfect operation of catallactic science), the advantage to me in the entire transaction depends wholly upon the ignorance, powerlessness, or heedlessness of the per­ son dealt with. Do away with these, and catallactic advantage becomes impossible. So far, therefore, as the science of exchange relates to the advantage of one of the exchanging persons only, it is founded on the ignorance or incapacity of the opposite person. Where these vanish, it also vanishes. It is therefore a science founded on nescience, and an art founded on artlessness. But all other sciences and arts, except this, have for their object the doing away with their opposite nescience and artlessness. This science, alone of sciences, must, by all available means, promulgate and prolong its opposite nescience; otherwise the science itself is impossible. It is, therefore, peculiarly and alone the science of darkness; probably a bastard science—not by any means a divina scientia, but one begotten of another father, that father who, advising his children to turn stones into bread, is himself employed in turning �AD VALOREM. 75 bread into stones, and who, if. you ask a fish of him (fish not being producible on his estate), can but gi\e you a serpent. The general law, then, respecting just or econo­ mical exchange, is simply this: —lhere must be advantage on both sides (or if only advantage on one, at least no disadvantage on the other), to. the persons exchanging; and just payment for his time, intelligence, and labour, to any intermediate person effecting the transaction (commonly called a mer­ chant); and whatever advantage there is on either side, and whatever pay is given to the intermediate person, should be thoroughly known to all con­ cerned. All attempt at concealment. implies some practice of the opposite, or undivine science, founded on nescience. Whence another saying of the Jew merchant’s—“ As a nail between the stone joints, so doth sin stick fast between buying and selling.” Which peculiar riveting of stone and timber, in men’s dealings with each other, is again set forth in the house which was to be destroyed—timber and stones together—when Zechariah’s roll (more probably “curved sword”) flew over it: “the curse that goeth forth over all the earth upon every one that stealeth and holdeth himself guiltless,” instantly followed by the vision of the Great Measure;—the measure “ of the injustice of them in all the earth ” (avr;; )/ acacia avruv er 7rd<rp rij yij) with the weight of lead for its lid, and the woman, the spirit of wickedness, within it;—that is to say, Wickedness hidden by dulness, and formalised, outwardly, into ponderously established cruelty. “ It shall be set upon its own base in the land of Babel.”* I have hitherto carefully restricted myself, in speaking of exchange, to the use of the term “ ad­ vantage ”; but that term includes two idea'? : the advantage, namely of getting what we need, and that of getting what we wish for, Three- * Zech. v. ii. See note on the passage, at p. 82. �76 UNTO THIS LAST. fourths of the demands existing in the world are romantic; founded on visions, idealisms, hopes, and affections; and the regulation of the purse is, in its essence, regulation of the imagination and the heart. Hence, the right discussion of the nature of price is a very high metaphysical and psychical problem; sometimes to be solved only in a passionate manner, as by David in his counting the price of the water of the well by the gate of Bethlehem; but its first conditions are the following :—The price of any­ thing is the quantity of labour given by the person desiring it, in order to obtain possession of it. This price depends on four variable quantities. A. The quantity of wish the purchaser has for the thing; opposed to a, the quantity of wish the seller has to keep it. B. The quantity of labour the purchaser can afford, to obtain the thing; opposed to /3, the quantity of labour the seller can afford, to keep it. These quantities are opera­ tive only in excess: i.e., the quantity of wish (A) means the quantity of wish for this thing, above wish for other things; and the quantity of work (B) means the quantity which can be spared to get this thing from the quantity needed to get other things. Phenomena of price, therefore, are intensely com­ plex, curious, and interesting—too complex, how­ ever, to be examined yet; every one of them, when traced far enough, showing itself at last as a part of the bargain of the Poor of the Flock (or “ flock of slaughter ”), “ If ye think good, give me my price, and if not, forbear ”—Zech. xi. 12; but as the price of everything is to be calculated finally in labour, it is necessary to define the nature of that standard. Labour is the contest of the life of man with an opposite;—the term “ life ” including his intellect, soul, and physical power, contending with question, difficulty, trial, or material force. Labour is of a higher or lower order, as it includes more or fewer of the elements of life : and labour of good quality, in any kind, includes always as much �AD VALOREM. 77 intellect and feeling as will fully and harmoniously regulate the physical force. In speaking of the value and price of labour, it is necessary always to understand labour of a given rank and quality, as we should speak of gold 01 silver of a given standard. Bad (that is, heartless, inexperienced, or senseless) labour cannot be vajued; it is like gold of uncertain alloy, or flavved iron." . The quality and kind of labour being given, its value, like that of all other valuable things, is invari­ able. But the quantity of it which, must be given for other things is variable : and in estimating this varia­ tion, the price of other things must always be counted by the quantity of labour; not the price oi labour by'the quantity of other things. Thus, if we want to plant an apple sapling in rocky ground, it may take two hours’ work; in soft ground, perhaps only half an hour. Grant the soil equally good for the tree in each case. Then the value of the sapling planted by two hours’ work is nowise greater than that of the sapling planted in half an hour. One will bear no more fruit than the other. Also, one half-hour of work is as valuable as another half-hour; nevertheless, the one sapling has cost four such pieces of work, the other only one. Now, the proper statement of this fact is, not that the labour on the hard ground is cheaper than on the * Labour which is entirely good of its kind, that is to say effective, or efficient, the Greeks called ‘ weighable, or ’ a^tog, translated usually “ worthy,” and because thus substantial and true, they called . its price n/iij, the “ honourable estimate ” of it (honorarium): this word be­ ing founded on their conception of true labour as a divine thing, to be honoured with the kind of honour given to the gods; whereas the price of false labour, or of that which led away from life, was to be, not honour, but vengeance; for which they reserved another word, attributing the exaction of such price to a peculiar god­ dess, called Tisiphone, the “ requiter (or quittance­ taker) of death ” ; a person versed in the highest branches of arithmetic, and punctual in her habits; with whom accounts current have been opened also in modern days. �78 UNTO THIS LAST. soft; but that the tree is dearer. The exchange value .may, or may not, afterwards depend on this fact. If other people have plenty of soft ground to plant in they will take no cognizance of our two hours’ labour in the price they will offer for the plant on the rock. And if, through want of sufficient botanical science, we have planted an upas-tree instead of an apple, the exchange value will be a negative quan­ tity; still less proportionate to the labour expended. What is commonly called cheapness of labour, signifies, therefore, in reality, that many obstacles have to be overcome by it; so that much labour is required to produce a small result. But this should never be spoken of as cheapness of labour, but as dearness of the object wrought for. It would be just as rational to say that walking was cheap, be­ cause we had ten miles to walk home to our dinner, as that labour was cheap, because we had to work ten hours to earn it. The last word which we have to define is “ Pro­ duction.” 1 have hitherto spoken of all labour as profitable; because it is impossible to consider under one head the quality or value of labour, and its aim. But labour of the best quality may be various in aim. It may be either constructive (“ gathering,” from con and struo), as agriculture; nugatory, as jewel-cutting; or destructive (” scattering,” from de and struo), as war. It is not, however, always easy to prove labour, apparently nugatory, to be actually so; * * The most accurately nugatory labour is, perhaps, that of which not enough is given to answer a purpose effectually, and which, therefore, has all to be done over again. Also, labour which fails of effect through nonco-operation. The cure of a little village near Bellin­ zona, to whom I had expressed wonder that the peasants allowed the Ticino to flood their fields, told me that they would not join to build an effectual embankment high up the valley, because everybody said “that would help his neighbours as much as himself.” So every proprietor built a bit of low embankment about his own field; and �AD VALOREM. 79 generally, the formula holds good : “ he that gathereth not; scattereth ”; thus, the jeweller’s art is prob­ ably very harmful in its ministering to a clumsy and inelegant pride. So that, finally, I believe nearly all labour may be shortly divided into positive and negative labour : positive, that which produces lite, negative, that which produces death; the most directly negative labour being murder, and the most directly positive, the bearing and rearing of chil­ dren : so that in the precise degree in which murder is hateful, on the negative side of idleness, in that exact degree child-rearing is admirable, on the posi­ tive side of idleness. For which reason, and because of the honour that there is in rearing children, while * the wife is said to be as the vine (for cheering), the children are as the olive branch, for praise :.nor for praise only, but for peace (because large families can only be reared in times of peace) : though since, in their spreading and voyaging in various directions, they distribute strength, they are, to _ the home strength, as arrows in the hand of the giant strik­ ing here and there far away. Labour being thus various in its result,. the pros­ perity of any nation is in exact proportion to the quantity of labour which it spends in obtaining and employing means of life. Observe, I say, obtaining and employing; that is to say, not merely wisely pro­ ducing, but wisely distributing and consuming. Economists usually speak as if there were no good in the Ticino, as soon as it had a mind, swept away and swallowed all up together. * Observe, I say, “rearing,” not “begetting.’ The praise is in the seventh season not m oirop^roe, nor m tbvraXia, but in óirwpa. It is strange that men alwavs praise enthusiastically any person who, by a mo­ mentary exertion, saves a life; but praise very hesitatingly a person who, by exertion and. self-denial prolonged through years, creates one. We give the crown “ ob civem servatum ” why not “ ob civem natum ? Born I mean, to the full, in soul as well as body. Eng­ land has oak enough, I think, for both chaplets. �8o UNTO THIS LAST. consumption absolute. * So far from this being so, consumption absolute is the end, crown, and perfec­ tion of production; and wise consumption is a far more difficult art than . wise production. Twenty people can gain money for one who can use it; and the vital question, for individual and for nation, is, never “ how much do they make? ” but “ to what purpose do they spend? ” The reader may, perhaps, have been surprised at the slight reference I have hitherto made to “ capital,” and its functions. It is here the place to define them. Capital signifies “ head, or source, or root material ”—it is material by which some derivative or secondary good is produced. It is only capital proper (caput vivum, not caput mortuum) when it is thus producing something different from itself. It is a root, which does not enter into vital function till it produces something else than a root: namely, fruit. That fruit will in time again produce roots; and so all living capital issues in reproduction of capital; but capital which produces nothing but capital is only root producing root; bulb issuing in bulb, never in tulip; seed issuing in seed, never in bread. The Political Economy of Europe has hitherto devoted itself wholly to the multiplication, or (less even) the aggregation, of bulbs. It never saw, nor conceived, such a thing as a tulip. Nay, boiled bulbs they might have been—glass bulbs—Prince Rupert’s drops, consummated in powder (well, if it were glass-powder and not gunpowder), for any end or meaning the economists had in defining the laws of aggregation. We will try and get a clearer notion of them. The best and simplest general type of capital is a well-made ploughshare. Now, if" that ploughshare did nothing but beget other ploughshares, in a poly* When Mr. Mill speaks of productive consumption, he only means consumption which results in increase of capital or material wealth. See I. iii. 4, and I. iii. 5. �AD VALOREM. 81 pous manner,—however the great cluster of polypous plough might glitter in the sun, it would have lost its function of capital. It becomes true capital only by another kind of splendour, when it is seen “ splendescere sulco,” to grow bright in the furrow, rather with diminution of its substance, than addi­ tion, by the noble friction. And the true home ques­ tion, to every capitalist and to every nation, is not, “ how many ploughs have you? ” but, “ where are your furrows? ’’ not—11 how quickly will this capital reproduce itself? ”—but, <l what will it do during reproduction? ’’ What substance will it furnish, good for life? what work construct, protective of life? if none, its own reproduction is useless—-if worse than none,—(for capital may destroy life as well as support it), its own reproduction js worse than useless; it is merely an advance from Tisiphone, on mortgage—not a profit by any means. Not a profit, as the ancients truly saw, and showed in the type of Ixion;—for capital is the head, or foun­ tain head, of wealth—the “ well-head ” of wealth, as the clouds are the well-heads of rain : but when clouds are without water, and only beget clouds, they issue in wrath at last, instead of rain, and in light­ ning instead of harvest; whence Ixion is said first to have invited his guests to a banquet, and then made them fall into a pit filled with fire; which is the type of the temptation of riches issuing in imprisoned torment,—torment in a pit, (as also Demas’ silver mine,) after which, to show the rage of riches pass­ ing from lust of pleasure to lust of power, yet power not truly understood, Ixion is said to have desired Juno, and instead, embracing a cloud (or phantasm), to have begotten the Centaurs; the power of mere wealth being, in itself, as the embrace of a shadow, —comfortless, (so also “ Ephraim feedeth on wind and followeth after the east wind ”; or “ that which is not ”—Prov. xxiii. 5; and again Dante’s Geryon, the type of avaricious fraud, as he flies, gathers the �82 UNTO THIS LAST. air up with retractile claws,—“l’aer a se raccolse,”* ) but in its offspring, a mingling of the brutal with the human nature : human in sagacity—using both intel­ lect and arrow; but brutal in its body and hoof, for consuming, and trampling down. For which sin Ixion is at last bound upon a wheel—fiery and toothed, and rolling perpetually in the air;—the type of human labour when selfish and fruitless (kept far into the Middle Ages in their wheel of fortune); the wheel which has in it no breath or spirit, but is whirled by chance only; whereas of all true work the Ezekiel vision is true, that the Spirit of the living creature is in the wheels, and where the angels go, the wheels go by them; but move no otherwise. This being the real nature of capital, it follows that there are two kinds of true production, always going on in an active State : one of seed, and one of food; or production for the Ground, and for the Mouth; both of which are by covetous persons thought to be production only for the granary; whereas the function of the granary is but interme­ diate and conservative, fulfilled in distribution; else it ends in nothing but mildew, and nourishment of rats and worms. And since production for the * So also in the vision of the women bearing the ephah before quoted, “ the wind was in their wings,” not wings ‘• of a stork,” as in our version ; but “ milvi,” of a kite, in the Vulgate, or perhaps more accurately still in the Septuagmt, “hoopoe,” a bird connected typically with the power of riches by many traditions, of which that of its petition for a crest of gold is perhaps the most in­ teresting. The “ Birds ” of Aristophanes, in which its part is principal, are full of them; note especially the “ fortification of the air with baked bricks, like Babylon,” i. 550; and again, compare the Plutus of Dante, who (to show the influence of riches in destroying the reason) is the only one of the powers of the Inferno who cannot speak intelligibly; and also the cowardliest; he is not merely quelled or restrained, but literally “ collapses ” at a word; the sudden and helpless operation of mercan­ tile panic being all told in the brief metaphor, “ as the sails, swollen with the wind, fall, when the mast breaks.” �AD VALOREM. 83 Ground is only useful with future hope of harvest, all essential production is for the Mouth; and is finally measured by the mouth; hence, as I said above, con­ sumption is the crown of production; and the wealth of a nation is only to be estimated by what it con­ The want of any clear sight of this fact is the capital error, issuing in rich interest and revenue of error among the political economists. Their minds are continually set on money-gain, not on mouth­ gain; and they fall into every sort of net and snaie, dazzled bv the coin-glitter as birds by the fowler s glass; or'rather (for there is not much else like birds in them) they are like children trying to jump on the heads of their own shadows; the. money-gam being only the shadow of the true gain, which is humanity. The final object of political economy, therefore, is to get good method of consumption, and great quan­ tity of consumption : in other words, to use every­ thing, and to use it nobly; whether it be substance, service, or service perfecting substance. The most curious error in Mr. Mill’s entire work, (provided for him originally by Ricardo,) is his endeavour to dis­ tinguish between direct and indirect service, and consequent assertion that a demand for commodities is not demand for labour (I. v. 9, et seq.). He dis­ tinguishes between labourers employed to lay out pleasure grounds, and to manufacture velvet; declar­ ing that it makes material difference to the labouring classes in which of these two ways a capitalist spends his money; because the employment of the gardeners is a demand for labour, but the purchase of velvet is * not. Error colossal, as well as strange. It will, * The value of raw material, which has, indeed, to be deducted from the price of the labour, is not contem­ plated in the passages referred to, Mr. Mill having fallen into the mistake solely by pursuing the collateral results of the payment of wages to middlemen. He says—“ The consumer does not, with his own funds, pay the weaver �84 UNTO THIS LAST. indeed, make a difference to the labourer whether we bid him swing his scythe in the spring winds, or drive the loom in pestilential air; but, so far as his pocket is concerned, it makes to him absolutely no difference w’hether we order him to make green velvet, with seed and a scythe, or red velvet, with silk and scissors. Neither does it anywise concern him whether, when the velvet is made, we consume it by walking on it, or wearing it, so long as our consumption of it is wholly selfish. But if our con­ sumption is to be in anywise unselfish, not only our mode of consuming the articles we require interests him, but also the kind of article we require with a view to consumption. As thus (returning for a mo­ ment to Mr. Mill’s great hardware theory : it ) * matters, so far as the labourer’s immediate profit is concerned, not an iron filing whether I employ him in growing a peach, or forging a bombshell; but my probable mode of consumption of those articles matters seriously. Admit that it is to be in both cases “ unselfish,” and the difference, to him, is final, whether when his child is ill, I walk into his cottage and give it the peach, or drop the shell down his chimney, and blow his roof off. for his day’s work.” Pardon me: the consumer of the velvet pays the weaver with his own funds as much as he pays the gardener. He pays, probably, an intermedi­ ate ship-owner, velvet merchant, and shopman; pays carriage money, shop rent, damage money, time money, and care money; all these are above and beside the velvet price (just as the wages of a head gardener would be above the grass price); but the velvet is as much produced by the consumer’s capital, though he does not pay for it till six months after production, as the grass is produced by his capital, though he does not "pay the man who rolled and mowed it on Monday, till Saturday afternoon. I do not know if Mr. Mill’s conclusion—“'the capital can­ not be dispensed with, the purchasers can ” (p. q8) has vet been reduced to practice in the City on any large scale. * Which, observe, is the precise opposite of the one under examination. The hardware theory required us to �AD VALOREM. 85 The worst of it, for the present, is, that the capi­ talist’s consumption of the peach is apt to be selfish, and of the shell, distributive; but, in all cases, this * is the broad and general fact, that on due catallactic commercial principles, somebody's roof must go oh in fulfilment of the bomb’s destiny. You may grow for your neighbour, at your liking, grapes or grapeshot; he will also, catallactically, grow grapes or grape-shot for you, and you will each reap what you have sown. . It is, therefore, the manner and issue of consump­ tion which are the real tests of production. Pro­ duction does not consist in things laboriously made, but in things serviceably consumable; and the. ques­ tion for the nation is not how much labour it em­ ploys, but how much life it produces. For as condischarge our gardeners and engage manufacturers; the velvet theory requires us to discharge our manufacturers and engage gardeners. * It is one verv awful form of the operation of wealth in Europe that it' is entirely capitalists’ wealth which sup­ ports unjust wars. Just wars do not need so much money to support them; for most of the men who wage such, wage them gratis; but for an unjust war, men s bodies and souls have both to be bought; and the best tools of war for them besides ; which makes such war costly to the maximum ; not to speak of the cost of base fear, and angry suspicion, between nations which have not grace nor honestv enough in all their multitudes to buv an hour s peace of mind with : as, at present, France and England, purchasing of each other ten millions sterling worth of consternation annually (a remarkably light crop, half thorns and half aspen leaves sown, reaped, and granaried by the “ science ” of the modern political economist teaching covetousness instead of truth). And all unjust War being supportable, if not by pillage of the enemy, only by loans from capitalists, these loans are repaid by subsequent taxation of the people, who appear to have no will in the matter, the capitalists’ will being the primary root of the war; but its real root is the covetous­ ness of'the whole nation, rendering it incapable of faith, frankness, or justice, and bringing about, therefore, in due time, his own separate loss and punishment to each person. �86 UNTO THIS LAST. sumption is the end and aim of production, so life is the end and aim of consumption. I left this question to the reader’s thought two months ago (pp. 40-41), choosing rather that he should work it out for himself than have it sharply stated to him. But now, the ground being suffi­ ciently broken (and the details into which the several questions, here opened, must lead us, being too com­ plex for discussion in the pages of a periodical, so that I must pursue them elsewhere), I desire, in clos­ ing the series of introductory papers, to leave this one great fact clearly stated. There is no Wealth but Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happv human beings; that man is richest who, having per­ fected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others. A strange political economy; the only one, never­ theless, that ever was or can be: ' all political economy founded on self-interest being but the ful­ * filment of that which once brought schism into the Policy of angels, and ruin into the Economy of Heaven. “ The greatest number of human beings noble and happy.” But is the nobleness consistent with the number? Yes, not only consistent with it, but essen­ tial to it. The maximum of life can only be reached by the maximum of virtue. In this respect the law of human population differs wholly from that of animal life. The multiplication of animals is checked only by want of food, and by the hostility of races; the population of the gnat is restrained by the hunger of the swallow, and that of the swallow by the scarcity of gnats. Man, considered as an animaf, * “ In all reasoning about prices, the proviso must be understood, ‘supposing all parties to take care of their own interest.”’—Mill, III. i. 5. �AD VALOREM. 87 is indeed limited by the same laws : hunger,, or plague, or war, are the necessary and only restraints upon his increase,—effectual restraints hitherto,—his principal study having been, how most swiftly to destroy himself, or ravage his dwelling-places, and his highest skill directed to give range to the famine, seed to the plague, and sway to the sword. But, considered as other than an animal, his increase is not limited by these laws. It is limited only by the limits of his courage and his love. Both of these have their bounds; and ought to have; his race has its bounds also; but these have not yet been reached, nor will be reached for ages. In all the ranges of human thought I. know none so melancholy as the speculations of political econo­ mists on the population question. It is proposed to better the condition of the labourer by giving him higher wages. “Nay,” says the economist,—“if you raise his wages, he will either people down to the same point of misery at which you found, him, or drink your wages away.” He will. I know it. Who gave him this will ? Suppose it were your own ®on of whom you spoke, declaring to me that you. dared not take him into your firm, nor even give him his just labourer’s wages, because if you did he would die of drunkenness, and leave half a score of children to the parish, “ Who gave your son these disposi­ tions? ”—I should enquire. Has he them by inherit­ ance or by education? By one or other they must come; and as in him, so also in the poor, Either these poor are of a race essentially different from ours, and unredeemable (which, however often im­ plied, I have heard none yet openly say), or else by such care as we have ourselves received, we may make them continent and sober as ourselves—wise and dispassionate as we are—models arduous of imi­ tation. “ But,” it is answered, “ they cannot receive education.” Why not? That is precisely the point at issue. Charitable persons suppose the worst fault of the rich is to refuse the people meat; and the �88 UNTO THIS LAST. people cry for their meat, kept back by fraud, to the Lord of Multitudes. * Alas ! it is not meat of which the refusal is crudest, or to which the claim is validest. The life is more than the meat. The rich not only refuse food to the poor; they refuse wisdom; they refuse virtue; they refuse salvation. Ye sheep without shepherd, it is not the pasture that has been shut from you, but the Presence. Meat 1 perhaps your right to that may be pleadable; but other rights have to be pleaded first. Claim your crumbs from the table if you will; but claim them as children, not as dogs; claim your right to be fed, but claim more loudly your right to be holy, perfect, and pure. * James v. 4. Observe, in these statements I am not taking up, nor countenancing one whit, the common socialist idea of division of propertv: division of property is its destruction; and with it the destruction of all hope, all industry, and all justice: it is simply chaos—a chaos towards which the believers in modern political economy are fast tending, and from which I am striving to save them. The rich man does not keep back meat from the poor by retaining his riches ; but by basely using them. Riches are a form of strength ; and a strong man does not injure others by keeping his strength, but by using it injuriouslv. The socialist, seeing a strong man oppress a weak one, cries out—“ Break the strong man’s arms; ” but I say, “Teach him to use them to better purpose.” The forti­ tude and intelligence which acquire riches are intended, by the Giver of both, not to scatter, nor to give away, but to employ those riches in the service of mankind ; in other words, in the redemption of the erring and aid of the weak —that is to say, there is first to be the work to gain money; then the Sabbath of use for it—the Sabbath, whose law is, not to lose life, but to save. It is continu­ ally the fault or the folly of the poor that they are poor, as it is usually a child’s fault if it falls into a pond, and a cripple’s weakness that slips at a crossing; nevertheless, most passers-by would pull the child out, or help up the cripple. Put it at the worst, that all the poor of the world are but disobedient children, or careless cripples, and that all rich people are wise and strong, and you will see at once that neither is the socialist right in desiring to make everybody poor, powerless, and foolish as he is himself, nor the rich man right in leaving the children in the mire. �AD VALOREM. 89 Strange words to be used of working people “ What 1 holy; without any long robes or anointing oils; these rough-jacketed, rough-worded persons, set to nameless, dishonoured service? Perfect!-— these, with dim eyes and cramped limbs, and slowlywakening minds? Pure !—these, with sensual desiie and grovelling thought; foul of body and coarse of soul? ” It may be so; nevertheless, such as they are, they are the holiest, perfectest, purest persons the earth can at present show. They may be what you have said; but if so, they yet are holier than we who have left them thus. But what can be done for them ? Who can clothe —who teach—who restrain their multitudes? What end can there be for them at last, but to consume one another ? I hope for another end, though not, indeed, from any of the three remedies for over-population com­ monly suggested by economists. These three are, in brief—Colonisation; Bringing in of waste lands; or Discouragement of Marriage. The first and second of these expedients merely evade or delay the question. It will, indeed, be long before the w’orld has been all colonised, and its deserts all brought under cultivation. But the radical question is, not how much habitable land is in the world, but how many human beings ought to be maintained on a given space of habitable land. Observe, I say, ought to be, not how many can be. Ricardo, with his usual inaccuracy, defines what he calls the “ natural rate of wages ” as “ that which will maintain the labourer.” Maintain him ! yes; but how?—the question was instantly thus asked of me bv a working girl, to whom I read the passage. I will amplify her question for her. ” Maintain him, how? ” As, first, to what length of life? Out of a given number of fed persons, how many are to be old—how many young? that is to say, will you arrange their maintenance so as to kill them early— say at thirty or thirty-five on the average, including �90 UNTO THIS LAST. deaths of weakly or ill-fed children?—or so as to enable them to live out a natural life? You will feed a greater number, in the first case, by rapidity of * succession; probably a happier number in the second : which does Mr. Ricardo mean to be their natural state, and to which state belongs the natural rate of wages ? Again : A piece of land which will only support ten idle, ignorant, and improvident persons, will support ivl-\°r intelligent and industrious ones, vvhich of these is their natural state, and to which of them belongs the natural rate of wages ? . Again . If a piece of land support forty persons in industrious ignorance; and if, tired of this ignorance, they set apart ten of their number to study the pro­ perties of cones, and the sizes of stars; the labour of these ten being withdrawn from the ground, must either tend to the increase of food in some transi­ tional manner, or the persons set apart for sidereal and conic purposes must starve, or some one else starve instead of them. What is, therefore, the natural rate of wages of the scientific persons, and how does this rate relate to, or measure, their re­ verted or transitional productiveness? Again : If the ground maintains, at first, forty labourers in a peaceable and pious state of mind, but they become in a few years so quarrelsome and im­ pious that they have to set apart five, to meditate upon and settle their disputes;—ten, armed to the teeth with costly instruments, to enforce the deci­ sions, and five to remind everybody in an eloquent manner of the existence of a God ?—what will be the result upon the general power of production, and what is the “ natural rate of wages ” of the medita­ tive, muscular, and oracular labourers ? Leaving these questions to be discussed, or waived, at their pleasure, by Mr. Ricardo’s fol. * ,.The quantity of life is the same in both cases: but it is differently allotted. �AD VALOREM. 91 lowers, I proceed to state the main facts bearing on that probable future of the labouring classes which has been partially glanced at by Mr. Mill. That chapter and the preceding one differ from the common writing of political economists in admitting some value in the aspect of nature, and expressing regret at the probability of the destruction of natural scenery. But we may spare our anxieties on this head. Men can neither drink steam, nor eat stone. The maximum of population on a given space of land implies also the relative maximum of edible vegetable, whether for men or cattle; it implies a maximum of pure air, and of pure water. There­ fore : a maximum of wood, to transmute the air, and of sloping ground, protected by herbage from the extreme heat of the sun, to feed the streams. All England may, if it so chooses, become one manufac­ turing town; and Englishmen, sacrificing themselves to the good of general humanity, may live diminished lives in the midst of noise, of darkness, and of deadly exhalation. But the world cannot become a factory, nor a mine. No amount of ingenuity will ever make iron digestible by the million, nor sub­ stitute hydrogen for wine. Neither the avarice nor the rage of men will ever feed them; and however the apple of Sodom and tnP grape of Gomorrah may spread their table for a time with dainties of ashes, and nectar of asps,—so long as men live by bread, the far away valleys must laugh as they are covered with ths gold of God, and the shouts of His happy multitudes ring round the winepress and the well. Nor need our sentimental economists fear the too wide spread of the formalities of a mechanical agri­ culture. The presence of a wise population implies the search for felicity as well as for food; nor can any population reach its maximum but through that wisdom which “ rejoices ” in the habitable parts of the earth. The desert has its appointed place and work; the eternal engine, whose beam is the earth’s axle, whose beat is its year, and whose breath is its �92 UNTO THIS LAST. ocean, will still divide imperiously to their desert kingdoms bound with unfurrowable rock, and swept by unarrested sand, their powers of frost and fire : but the zones and lands between, habitable, will be loveliest in habitation. The desire of the heart is also the light of the eyes. No scene is continually and untiringly loved, but one rich by joyful human labour; smooth in field; fair in garden; full in orchard; trim, sw’eet, and frequent in homestead; ringing with voices of vivid existence. No air is sweet that is silent; it is only sweet when full of low currents of under sound—triplets of birds, and murmur and chirp of insects, and deep-toned words of men, and wayward trebles of childhood. As the art of life is learned, it will be found at last that all lovely things are also necessary;—the wild flower by the wayside, as well as the tended corn; and the wild birds and creatures of the forest, as well as the tended cattle; because man doth not live by bread only, but also by the desert manna; by every won­ drous word and unknowable work of God. Happy, in that he knew them not, nor did his fathers know; and that round about him reaches yet into the in­ finite, the amazement of his existence. Note, finally, that all effectual advancement to­ wards this true felicity of the human race must be by individual, not public effort. Certain general measures may aid, certain revised laws guide, such advancement; but the measure and law which have first to be determined are those of each man’s home. We continually hear it recommended by sagacious people to complaining neighbours (usually less well placed in the world than themselves), that they should “ remain content in the station in which Pro­ vidence has placed them.” There are perhaps some circumstances of life in which Providence has no in­ tention that people should be content. Nevertheless, the maxim is on the whole a good one; but it is peculiarly for home use. That your neighbour should, or should not, remain content with his posi­ �AD VALOREM. 93 tion, is not your business; but it is very much your business to remain content with your own, What is chiefly needed in England at the present day is to show the quantity of pleasure that may be obtained by a consistent, well-administered competence, modest, confessed, and laborious. We need examples of people who, leaving Heaven to decide whether they are to rise in the world, decide for themselves that they will be happy in it, and have resolved to seek—not greater wealth, but simpler pleasure; not higher fortune, but deeper felicity; making the first of possessions, self-possession; and honouring them­ selves in the harmless pride and calm pursuits of peace. Of which lowly peace it is written that “ justice and peace have kissed each other ”; and that the fruit of justice is “ sown in peace of them that make peace ”; not “ peace-makers ” in the common under­ standing—reconcilers of quarrels; (though that func­ tion also follows on the greater one;) but peaceCreators; Givers of Calm. Which you cannot give, unless you first gain; nor is this gain one which will follow assuredly on any course of business, com­ monly so called. No form of gain is less probable, business being (as is shown in the language of all nations—-7rwXE<r from tteXw, 7rpaatc from Trepaw, venire, vendre, and venal, from venio, etc.) essenti­ ally restless—and probably contentious;—having a raven-like mind to the motion to and fro, as to the carrion food; whereas the olive-feeding and bearing birds look for rest for their feet; thus it is said of Wisdom that she “ hath builded her house, and hewn out her seven pillars ”; and even when, though apt to wait long at the doorposts, she has to leave her house and go abroad, her paths are peace also. For us, at all events, her work must begin at the entry of the doors : all true economy is “ Law of the house.” Strive to make that law strict, simple, generous : waste nothing, and grudge nothing. Care in nowise to make more of money, but care to make �94 UNTO THIS LAST. much of it; remembering always the great, palpable, inevitable fact the rule and root of all economy— that what one person has, another cannot have; and that every atom of substance, of whatever kind, used or .consumed, is so much human life spent; which, if it issue in the saving present life, or gaining more, is well spent, but if not is either so much life pre­ vented, or so much slain. In all buying, consider, first, what condition of existence you cause in the producers of what you buy; secondly, wrhether the sum you have paid is just to the producer, and in due proportion, lodged in his hands; thirdly, to how * much clear use, for food, knowledge, or joy, this that you have bought can be put; and fourthly, to whom and in. what way it can be most speedily and service­ ably distributed; in all dealings whatsoever insisting on. entire openness, and stern fulfilment; and in all doings, on peifection and loveliness of accomplish­ ment; especially on fineness and purity of all market­ able commodity : watching at the same time for all ways of gaining, or teaching, powers of simple plea­ sure; and of showing “o'o-or ¿r y£y’ 6'„«ap” —the sum of enjoyment depending not on the quan­ tity of things tasted, but on the vivacity and patience of taste. And if, on due and honest thought over these things, it seems that the kind of existence to which men are now summoned by every plea of pity and claim of right, may, for some time at least, not be a luxurious one, consider whether, even supposing , PV’Per offices of middlemen, nanielv, overseers (or authoritative workmen), conveyancers (merchants sailors, retail dealers, etc.), and order-takers (persons employed to receive directions from the consumer), must of course, be examined before I can enter farther into th<i question of just payment of the first producer. But I have not spoken of them in these introductory papers because the evils attendant on the abuse of such inter­ mediate functions result not from any alleged principle of modern political economy, but from private carelessness �AD VALOREM. 95 it guiltless, luxury would be desired by any of us, if we saw clearly at our sides the suffering which ac­ companies it in the world. Luxury is indeed possible in the future—innocent and exquisite; luxury for all, and by the help of all; but luxury at present can only be enjoyed by the ignorant: the crudest man living could not sit at his feast, unless he sat blindfold. Raise the veil boldly; face the light; and if, as yet, the light of the eye can only be through tears, and the light of the body through sackcloth, go thou forth weeping, bearing precious seed, until the time come, and the kingdom, when Christ’s gift of bread, and bequest of peace, shall be “ Unto this last as unto thee ”; and when, for earth’s severed multitudes of the wicked and the weary, there shall be holier reconciliation than that of the narrow home, and calm economy, where the Wicked cease—not from trouble, but from troubling—and the Weary are at rest. THE END. �JUST PUBLISHED. A new and important Booklet by Mr. H. G. WELLS. SOCIALISM AND THE FAMILY By H. G. WELLS. - Author of “ Anticipations ” ; “ Mankind in the Making,” &c. 6d. nett. 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Fifield Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1907 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context N567 Subject The topic of the resource Economics Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Unto this last : four essays on the first principles of political economy), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Economics NSS Political Economy https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/875249d1dc691fb934359c9db111fa42.pdf?Expires=1780531200&Signature=drAizmy1--lxk9APPNdmF04mp9bUN3n8wjjdkoLAjz93Q9myNS02xVgHlemjBeDmHVZo%7E8nBbbsDU2mlzbLI%7E-5PpcQr6MyrakiV4gi0Xwl8nrCyCJjIHhE7F2kyKAbVr9O0%7EVPjukXshpP-xGsLHEnZklSmJSTuJhBg2U0snrLKj0jTWV9KvEpOXIKSk6F8aHAe6yetk4IdxEHOEFW7Xm7L%7EkU4qz9mdxc%7EgU-UWGJyx19S73cDI1Af1vbvKGdH%7EqGjI1lhsT039vDwaCPrfbVA1ogC1fz5QycT2mRO9TpphsZ7baBWBZGvPXUjo3e6WYa3qV60XEwW7AS5AwjMFw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM ccefbc5561ec629647e7c440704b1ecb PDF Text Text WORK AND WEALTH ESSAY AN ON THE OF ECONOMICS SOCIALISM, BY J. K. INGALLS. ONE PENNY. LONDON: INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING COMPANY, * r 35, NEWINGTON GREEN ROAD, N. 1887. ��WORK AND WEALTH.4 <Ti HAVE chosen the above terms in preference to Labour and W Capital, because they convey more exact ideas. Thè word labour carries with it the impression of compulsory, or servile toil. Capital is a word which economists themselves cannot satis­ factorily define, and to which they apply only an arbitrary meaning. The things signified by work and wealth are subject to no equivocal interpretation, are understood by all, and stand to each other in the relation of a natural sequence. Speaking from the standpoint of the trader, from which political economists mainly speak, Adam Smith lays down this fundamental proposition : “ It was not by gold or silver, but by labour, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased.” For him the term labour was appropriate, because, in his time, a large proportion of the world’s work was performed by bondmen or by hirelings, even more the mere dependents of the legal possessors of the world’s wealth than are the workers of to-day. Starting from this comprehensive, but exact, proposition that work is the only source from which wealth can be produced or purchased as an axiom, the opposite of which is simply unthinkable, let us direct our attention to an inquiry into the manner in which wealth to appearance is transferred so often in exchange for no equivalent in labour. Even the trader may be interested in the attempt to account for the fact that wealth, at first purchasable only by work, comes to be possessed mainly by those who do no work. The thing which a man has produced by his work, and which is an object of desire to himself and others, can be transferred in several different ways. The natural or simplistic methods are: (r) Force, involving robbery, theft, and, in an advanced stage, cheating, over­ reaching, and advantage-taking of every description ; (2) Gift, involving partial and invidious bestowments, as well as noble gene­ rosities ; (3) Hazard, involving all kinds of gaming, and, in the progress of society, all speculative ventures. * This paper originally appeared in the Ameiican “ Radical Review.” * �4 v i The rational method, and one which is arrived at only by culture and the recognition of social obligations, is mutual exchange. With the earlier method^ as they have existed in the past, we need have no quarrel. They were the only ones possible under the con­ dition of social and moral development then obtaining. Robbery is the main element of organic and animated life. The carnivorous animals all support life by drawing it from orders less powerful or aggressive than themselves, and even the herbivorous sustain life by devouring vegetable life. Man destroys the lives of the creatures beneath him that he may eat their flesh and robe himself with their furs and skins.. He robs the sheep of its fleece, the silk-worm of its web that he may clothe himself. That he pursues a similar course with his fellow is not to be wondered at. Only a conception of the brotherhood of man and the real dignity of work can win him from his tendency to devour the substance of the weak and simple who fall into his hands, instead of producing wealth for himself. The rude man, who has spent hours in the forest gathering fagots, but lies down at night without a fire, while another enjoys the genial warmth those same fagots yield while burning, may have transferred their possession in several different ways. He may, with a certain degree of equity, have exchanged them, for different products which the other had worked to obtain ; he may have engaged in some game of chance, and lost them wholly ; or he may have been met by a stronger man, while returning laden, and deprived of his fagots by force. Or, he already may have been reduced to a bond-slave, his life having bten spared in war on condition of his submission to a life of slavery; and thus have given his captor the perpetual ability to purchase wealth with his and his childrens’ toil. From the mental state which results from such motives as sway the successful warrior and slave-holder, to that of the enlightened moralist and economist who discovers that, if another has created wealth which he himself desires, the true thing to do is to create something which the other will equally desire, that so the transfers may be mutually agreeable and beneficial, is a distance which requires ages of toil and struggle to overcome. It may be urged that in the capture and management of slaves, who would not willingly work if left to themselves, a certain necessary work was performed, and a larger production of wealth obtained. If we were to admit this as regards the past, it would serve as no justi­ fication for the continuance of slavery ; but it should also be con­ sidered that the robber class, until taught by the toil of the indus­ trious that labour will produce or purchase wealth, never seeks to subject the toilers to slavery. Besides, all experience shows that ••• �5 slavery, so far from promoting industry, begets a general repugnance to work on the part of both slave and slave owner : thus the thing urged in its justification is seen to have been caused mainly by itself. It was not till after centuries of advancement that civilized nations began to discourage chattel slavery. Its entire abolition in our country is a recent event. But by its abolition we have by no means reached any thing like an equitable system of exchange. We still have class legislation, protecting the vast accumalations of wealth and ownership of land in unlimited quantities, just as incom­ patible with justice as the older tyranny. To be able to purchase wealth with others’ labour, it is not at all necessary to own their bodies. The strong assumed “ property in ■ man ” and “ property in the soil ” at the same time. Now, since the soil is absolutely essential to the application of labour to productive uses, he who has an exclusive claim to it can labour under any tribute he pleases, or deny it opportunity to employ itself or be employed at all. Since ownership in man has been abolished, private ownership of land is the chief basis, the great fulcrum, of alt devices for purchasing wealth by the work of others. By the workers themselves this power is little understood, because it affects them indirectly. They come in immediate contact with their employers, and questions of raising or lowering wages, lengthen­ ing or shortening hours, attract their attention and divert it from more fundamental questions. They hardly reflect that their em­ ployers are also subject to the competitive struggle, and are often broken down by the operation of the same law which shortens the rations, and renders more and more precarious the employment, on which the labourer depends. The indifference of the working-men to this question of the land, and their failure to obtain even enough of it to enable them to rear homes for themselves and families, has a curious, as well as sad, result. Quite twenty-five per cent, of the earnings of labourers, clerks, and mechanics who do not own a home of their own, goes to the landlords for rent. In many instances, this is for structures which have been paid for a hundred times over, and are not worth in their material the labour of pulling down and carrying away. It is true that a portion of this rent comes back in payment of repairs, taxes, etc., but still leaving a large percentage for which labour receives no return whatever, and may almost be said to yield voluntarily, thus permitting others, to that extent, to purchase wealth with their unrequited toil. Had our Government established a system of easy access to the * �6 soil through nationalization of the land or a judicious limitation to private ownership, the questions arising between employer and em­ ployed would have a ready solution. On the recurrence of a de­ pression in business, general or special, the parties feeling themselves crowded would betake themselves to the cultivation of the soil, or some self-employment; or at least enough would do so to relieve the overstocked labour market, thus increasing the demand for the things which had been over-produced. Out of our semi-feudal land system grow also many of the giant evils which afflict our commerce and finance. The man who has no land must hire it or pay for its use, before he can apply his labours in cultivation, however willing and capable he may be. This basic necessity of borrowing is the foundation of all other borrowing ; paying for the use of land is the basis of all rent and usury and speculative profit of every description. Distressed by unnatural dis-'“*^* possession and deprivation, people are in no condition to resist the temptation to borrow anything which promises relief, and to pledge themselves to pay therefor impossible rates of interest. The poor man, to free himself from present deprivation, borrows the means to do a little business • the man of considerable means borrows that he may do more business; and for the result, we have most of the real estate and much of the personal property of both in the hands of the money-lender through foreclosures. A large proportion of all transfers of real estate, especially for the last three years, has been through foreclosures, and to avoid foreclosures. An annual half-billion does not cover the amount which goes into or through the hands of corporations in the form of interest in this country, not to mention the enormous rentals, private speculative profits, etc. The industrious man, who purchases by his work any desired wealth, gets only one-half, or less, himself,—the other half going to the usurer, landlord, or profit-monger. These are enabled to pur­ chase, or get recognized possession of, this other half through unlimited control of land, and the system of usance and annuities growing up from that basis. It may be said with too much truth that working-men get now more than they wisely use; but it is still truer that, in proportion as their share in what they have produced is diminished, they become more and more indifferent to saving, and more and more shiftless and unreliable. It is not the purpose of this paper to attempt to point out what is right and equitable between employer and employed under our system of wages. W-hen any considerable portion of mankind �7 desires equity and mutualism in industry and division, there will be no difficulty in arriving at exact conclusions. My object will be more than realized, if I draw attention to these things as they actually exist, and to the positive relation which work and wealth sustain to each other, the truth in regard to which can only be ascertained by careful analysis. Into all production of wealth only two factors enter: (i) the raw material—the soil or its spontaneous productions; (2) human effort. However complex or extended, in the last analysis only these two elements are found. It is not the carbon and nitrogen, the salts and gases, of which our food and clothing are composed, which we pro­ duce as wealth, but that specific form and aptitude for use which our work has wrought or effected. According to that ingenious political economist, Bastiat, even when we purchase things with money or by barter, we do not exchange things, but forms of service. The inference, however, which he draws from this truthful proposition—that, therefore, any one in possession of wealth to whatever amount must necessarily have rendered an equivalent service for that wealth (either by him­ self, or through an ancestor or donor)—is so monstrous as to be accepted only by specialists in 11 exact science.” On the contrary, we find mutuality of service nowhere recognized as at all requisite in the business transactions of the world. We might as well look for it under the chattel system, where men and women are bought and sold, and where labour does not have to be purchased with equiva­ lent service, but can be enforced by the lash. Adam Smith says : “ It is impossible for one to become excessively rich without making many others correspondingly poor.” This is a result which could not possibly arise from any mutual exchange of services, or from any honest transfers of equivalents, any more than we can have an equation with one side plus and the other minus. Hence it follows that, where inordinate wealth exists, it has been purchased by the labour of others than the possessors, and through transfers by force, fraud or hazard. To produce or have wealth at all, human effort must be put forth. Even the spontaneous productions of Nature cannot constitute wealth, until taken out of their natural state. The savage who has fagots and game in store for a week has wealth, as compared with him who has to gather a daily supply. Application and frugality seem the only requisites for its acquirement. By a wise division of labour and special adaptation of functions, the wealth of the world has been vastly increased; but we must not let the complexity of work and diversity of employments confuse our ideas in regard to �8 * the main question,—namely, the source of wealth, and the equity or iniquity of the present method of distribution. As society advanced from the simply savage state, the search, capture, and transportation of natural wealth was followed by various handicrafts which added value thereto. It was work, nothing less and nothing more, of hand and brain which formed social wealth from the resources of Nature. In all these elaborate transforma­ tions, we can discover no other earthly agency, nor indeed make any material distinction in the essential character of these varied services. One and all are necessary to each other. By no logic can we decide that one service is more important than another, except in the utility of its product. If one has discovered, another secured, and a third transported the prize to the place where it is needed for consumption, we can decide no otherwise than that the pay of each should be propor­ tioned to the time employed in labour and the useful result accom­ plished. Even the labour necessary to divide and distribute it comes in justly for a share. So far all must be plain in regard to the facts involved in our question. It seems to me the principles must also be clear. But it will be answered that still the distinctions in life and the inequali­ ties of distribution of which we complain have been transmitted to us from previously existing conditions, and result from the operations of forces that can be traced back through every form of civilization. This is, however, very far from proving that they exist in accordance with elementary principles or any rational interpretation of law. Really it comes to this,—whether we will continue the essential injustice, while dropping the barbaric methods of the savage, or attempt a truly scientific solution of the problem of work and wealth. In the discovery, procurance, and manipulation of natural produc­ tions, I have indicated all the steps in the production of wealth. Services in the preservation or conservation of wealth are equally entitled to consideration, but cannot be yielded a superior claim. With our inequitable division, and the disorganized methods of dis­ tribution which it begets, the number of traders becomes sadly disproportioned to the number of actual producers ; and since those despoiled are chiefly those who perform the most useful labour, the smart and shrewd seek the more indirect methods of obtaining wealth. And just here the principle of competition, which political economists seem to think ought to reconcile the wealth producers to starvation, does not work with facility, for no one can do a business at a loss, and hence society has to support numbers to do the work which one might do. �9 I may, in this connection, refer to the instrumentality of money or currency, serviceable in moving crops and the work of distribu­ tion generally. Its importance, however, is ’ mainly due to the want of mutualism in our distributive system and of equity in our methods of exchange. A charge for the time-use of this instrument, in defiance of the sentiments of all moralists from Moses and Cato to Ruskin and Palmer, has been enforced by our laws, because labour was at the mercy of the few who hold the soil, and because operations could be made to pay dividends out of the wealth purchased by the labour of the poor arid simple. Chattel slavery enabled the planter to pay interest. ‘Land monopoly enables the capitalist to assume that there is a usufruct ’to wealth. In return, usury has been the great lever by which millions of homes have been alienated, and gone to swell the domain of avarice and love of lordly domination. As war was the parent of slavery, by which whole families, tribes, and nations were reduced to bondage,—made “ hewers of wood and drawers of water” to the victors,—so it has been employed to enslave labour by the creation of immense national debts, the mere interest of which is an onerous tax upon the worker. Hazard has also played as large, if not so conspicuous, a part as war in reducing labour to the condition of dependence and distress. The liberty of self, wife, and children, in barbaric times, was often staked. And when this was not done, borrowing to prolong play was practised, as to-day in Turkey and in some Christian and even republican countries, upon conditions and at rates which can have no termina­ tion but in life-long bondage or peonage. To relieve present dis­ tress, or deluded by the hope of acquiring the ability to live by others’ labour, many people to-day, who would despise the mere gambler, fall into a similar fatuity, and wake from it only to find themselves slaves to the power they expected to use to lay others* labour under contribution. I am not urging sympathy for these dupes. I am only pointing out some of the causes, still in operation, which have resulted in making the few the actual masters of labour, and given them the ability to purchase wealth without work of their own. In our country and time we do not enforce gambling debts as they do in Turkey ; but we do enforce contracts to pay interest, often just as oppressive, and only outwardly less barbarous and inhuman. In.thus tracing the. working of these crude methods, we find that the productive labour of our time has its .inheritance, through the wage system, serfdom, and slavery, from primitive subjection to force; or through speculative trade, from the hazard which ruined �ro the victim without permanently benefiting the winner. It is not important to our purpose to inquire whether the plunderers or plundered are more to blame, or the greater sufferers. This is plain; with the land in the hands of the hereditary or speculative lord, the labourer has no resources for self-employment, however fit or unfit he may be. The working-man can obtain independence now only by the possession of exceptional powers, or by special good fortune, and then only through schemes and operations which raise one at the expense of many. The inheritance of the property class consists of a transmission of power attained by forceful conquest, or by the varied forms of hazard, fraud, and corruption. With their wealth they inherit generally the tendency to take advantage of the necessities of others, and to apply new methods of overreaching when the spirit of progress will no longer tolerate the old ones. 1 do not make this application to individuals, but only to those given to the shrewd use of wealth; well I know that many parvenus far outdo, in management, those who inherit wealth. In this country we have changed some things to suit republican prejudices. For instance, our land is no longer entailed in a family. Yet it is all falling into the hands of a class; and although the great fortunes sometimes change to other hands, they are controlled by those with still greater, and their attitude and relation to industry remain the same. Of the large fortunes now enjoyed in New York and New England, many had their foundations laid by successful privateers and slave traders ; and by other methods no less dis­ cordant with principles of natural justice. The immense fortunes made by two well-known citizens in the generation now past are quite exceptional, and yet they well illustrate the present divorced relation between work and wealth. In a certain sense, both were industrious workers. Each has said of himself that, when he worked in the ordinary way, his income was trifling. It was only after lon^ struggle, in which many worthy men went to the wall, that their fortunes began to accumulate with great rapidity. Both were greatly indebted to our civil war, which reduced whole populations to poverty, left the nation three billions in debt, and sacrificed a million lives. It is also worthy of note that a great banker at our nat onal capital was made rich by privileges granted him to trade during the Mexican war. When it is said in justifica­ tion of these men that they did not go outside the acknowledged rules of I usiness. it is admitting that our systems of trade, finance, etc., are essentially the same as in barbarous ages whose forms we have discarded. �11 Another great estate, also recently left in the city of New York was mainly inherited, being now in the possession of the third gene­ ration. In mentioning these instances I disclaim any purpose of judging the men. They were what inheritance and environment made them. My only purpose is to show the irrational and fatal policy which places in the hands of any men, however good or great, the power to purchase, ad libitum, wealth with other people’s work. I am quite well aware that for many years to come this remonstrance will remain measurably unheeded. The workers are so depressed with hardship, or so readily elated with the prospect of success in some exceptional field, that they are quite unwilling to look away from prospects of temporary relief to the consideration of broad questions of reform, even if they were less idiotically joined to party, labelled republican or democratic, by leaders who form a mutual ring, whichever party attains power, and conspire to make the plunder of public funds and public trusts a fine art. But from the operation upon the public mind of works like those of Spencer, Mill, Lewes, and Ruskin, much is to be hoped. Our own country, also, has the names of men, not unknown to fame, who are deeply impressed with the importance of this vital social and ethical problem. Its development promises to take form like this : First, As a civil right,—freedom of access to the soil and oppor­ tunity of self-employment; Second, As a principle of law,—the partnership of all concerned in the production of wealth requiring division of labour; Third, As a matter of commercial ethics,—equivalents of service in all exchanges. In connection with these developments in the intellectual and ethical field, it occurs to me that there is a probability, at least, of a movement which shall greatly hasten the downfall of our barbarous system of division, and the approach of the era when work shall be the only recognized title to wealth. Within the present century, men like Robert Owen, Peter Cooper, Gerrit Smith, and many others who could be mentioned, have shown, with more or less success, that it is “nobl-e to live for others,” and that personal interests may be subordinated to social aims. It seems to me no dream of romance to indulge the faith that, at a time near at hand, a class of true men and women will arise and form an order, which will abstain from preying on the results of others’ toil. These social knights-errant will scorn to rely on the efforts of others for their support, or to apply to their own use, in any way, that for which another has wrought. They will no more consider the necessity or �12 weakness of their toiling fellow a reason why they should overreach and plunder him, than would the model knight of the days of chivalry have considered that the weakness and defenceless state of a persecuted woman was a reason why he should outrage rather than protect her. These will organize industries on an equitable basis, promote emigration to districts where the exactions of landlords are less intolerable, and turn the current of many now questionable, though well-intended, charities into channels of self-employment and self-help. It is not too much to hope that they will be able ulti­ mately to change the application of the vast amount of labour and wealth now expended in “ plans of salvation ” to save the souls of men in a future world, into a broadly beneficent measures of indus­ trial organization and social renovation, and thus render possible the coming of the “ kingdom of heaven upon the earth,” under the equitable rule of which it<£ shall be given to every one according to his work.” PUBLICATION LIST. P. J. PROUDHON : A Biographical Sketch, with Portrait. Seymour. By Henry Post free, I ^d. SAMFUNDET DAGEN EFTER REVOLUTIONEN (Society on the Morrow of the Revolution). Translated from the French into Danish. 32 pp. and Coloured Cover Post free 2|d. THE CRIMINAL LAW AMENDMENT ACT. By “An English Anarchist.” Reprinted from “The Anarchist,” to which is added an Appendix. Post free, 1 jd. THE MALTHUSIANS. A Socialistic attack on the doctrine of Malthus. By P. J. Proudhon. Post free, i|d. EVOLUTION AND REVOLUTION. A Scientific Essay on the doctrine of Evolution. By M. Elisee Reclus. Post free, i^d. LAW AND AUTHORITY. An essay on the error and usurpation of politi­ cal legislation, and its concomitant evils. By Pierre Kropotkine. Post free, 2|d. GESETZ UND AUTORITAET (Law and Authority). German Edition. Post free, 2.jd. THE PLACE OF ANARCHISM IN SOCIALISTIC EVOLUTION. By the same author. Post free, i|d. EXPROPRIATION. By the same author. Post free, i|d. WAR. By the same author. Post free, i^d. THE MANIFESTO OF THE COMMUNISTS. By Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Crimson Cover. Post free, 2|d. INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING COMPANY. THE ANARCHIST, A Journal of Anti-political Socialism and advocate of the abolition of the State. EDITOR AND PUBLISHER: HENRY SEYMOUR. Price, One Penny. LONDON : 35, NEWINGTON GREEN ROAD, N. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Work and wealth: an essay on the economics of socialism Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ingalls, J.K. Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 12 p. ; 23 cm. Notes: Stamp on front flyleaf: South Place Chapel Finsbury, Lending Library. "This paper originally appeared in the American 'Radical Review'". Publisher's list on numbered page at the end. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available International Publishing Company Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1887 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G4968 Subject The topic of the resource Economics Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Work and wealth: an essay on the economics of socialism), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Economics Socialism