Pocket.
Many a vigorous arm has applied the axe to that dense and matted jungle, the indigence of the lower orders; but little more has been accomplished than the blunting of the hatchet and the exhaustion of the pioneer who wielded it.
This being the case, it would be the height of folly for me, with my far feebler frame and my puny weapon, to attempt to do more than to peer cautiously around the deep shades, and try to find out, as a dweller within those murky woods, if here a little path and there a little opening, into which a gleam of sunlight penetrates at times, be not discoverable, half hidden, perchance, by clumps of brushwood, which it will cost but little trouble to clear away. I shall therefore restrict myself to indicating such of these openings as I see, or fancy I see, from whence operations might, according to my notion, be directed towards the demolition of portions at all events of this swart and gloomy forest.
One of the largest of these clearings is undoubtedly, I think, Co-operation, of which there are two kinds—viz., combinations between masters and men in the shape of limited partnerships, a per-centage on profits, &c.; and combinations amongst the wage-earners themselves for certain specified purposes.
With regard to the first named, I am rather inclined to doubt the probability of its ever becoming an important factor in the sum of human progress, on account of the unlikelihood of its being generally adopted either in the near or distant future, and I am still more sceptical as to its efficacy as a panacea, even if it were universally reduced to practice, especially in these days of commercial disasters.
Coming, then, to the other mode of co-operation—associations of manual workers—this also divides itself into two branches, having two distinct objects—namely, the receipt of higher wages for labour performed, and the obtaining greater value in commodities in the disbursement of such wages. Both these are, no doubt, laudable aspirations; and, although at the first glance they may appear incompatible with, if not altogether antagonistic to, each other,—inasmuch as increased remuneration to the producer means an increase in the price of the thing produced,—yet it will be seen, on mature reflection, that as a very large proportion of operatives are employed in the manufacture of articles of luxury, of which they are not consumers or purchasers, so much of the increase in the price of such articles as finds its way into the pockets of the artificer in the shape of added wages is a net gain to that portion of the labouring classes, and will inevitably exude from such portion to the benefit of the whole, in the same manner as what may be called in contradistinction their normal earnings.
I should like to say one word about combinations of workmen in this place, which may be distasteful to unqualified panegyrists of the system: such combinations should invariably be in accordance with our recognized code of morals, and they must be in obedience to the ordinary laws of Nature; and it is to be feared that these desiderata to perfection in co-operation have at times been lost sight of in the past. I am compelled to blush for my order when I find them seizing the opportunity of their employers being under a heavy time-contract for the execution of important public or other works to organize a strike: this is clearly an infraction of all the ethics of morality. Neither can I appreciate their sense of the fitness of things when I hear them laying it down as a sound axiom that wages should be equalized, so that the stupid, idle, or inferior workman should be on a par with the skilled and industrious one. This is a blunder against one of the most immutable of Nature’s laws—that of variety and infinite gradation; the suggestion implies a yearning after the utterly unattainable, which it is astonishing men of otherwise sound judgment should seriously entertain for one moment. As a comrade of mine pithily observed, not long since, when we were discussing the possibility of devising a scheme by which all men should receive the same amount of remuneration for their labour, and, when received, be enabled to make it go equally far—“You might as well try to make men all o’ one height.”
Remove these excrescences from our combinations, and when it is found we can be practical as well as earnest, co-operation will have acquired a new vigour, and will be able to accomplish greater results. The main citadel will be none the less impregnable because our forces are not scattered abroad in various directions, in the vain endeavour to strengthen totally indefensible frontiers.
But, after all, it is from the other branch of co-operation—the co-operative store system—that the greatest advantages may be expected to accrue. This is growing into favour yearly, still growing (despite recent diatribes in the newspapers), and is extending its ramifications into quite primitive districts. The knowledge that this is an undoubted fact should afford gratification to the well-wishers of the poor.
Yet this gratification is subject to some modification when it is seen that this, not the least important birth of the nineteenth century, though growing and bearing within itself the germs of almost infinite possibilities, is at present of too tiny dimensions to grapple with that colossal ogre—the wasteful expenditure of the impecunious. It is Hercules indeed, but Hercules still in swaddling clothes before the strangling of the serpent. The amount of dealings at these stores by the class to whom they are calculated to prove the greatest boon, when compared with dealings by this same class with very retail shopkeepers and at other places where the practice of paying “through the nose” (pardon the vulgarity) so extensively prevails, will be found to be almost infinitesimal. The question therefore arises, may it not be possible to replace these pine torches by Edisonian lights, so as to eliminate from wider tracts the thick darkness enwrapping the minds of the sons and daughters of toil as to what constitutes their true interests? It appears to me that there is one way of rendering this feasible, which I deferentially submit for consideration. It may be quite impracticable; and, if practicable, may contain such flaws as to be futile. If so, on defects being pointed out which I am not able, unassisted, to discover, I can only say I am open to conviction. I have no desire to be charged with an ineradicable attachment to that peculiar feat of horsemanship known as “riding a hobby to death.” My plan is simply this: first, let every town of say over 10,000 inhabitants possess an internal government complete in itself, with plenary administrative powers; let groups of villages, in such numbers as may be determined on (the present Poor-Law Union Divisions might be taken as a basis), form cordons round themselves in like manner, and with the like objects; let every care be taken to select the very best men of every social grade to form the local senate, and let the members of which it is composed be paid for their services out of the public (local) funds, be subject to re-election at short intervals, and be required to give good accounts of their stewardship. Further, let it be clearly understood that the only condition on which a man could hope to be enrolled in this representative band, or, being enrolled, expect to be allowed to continue his official existence, would be his distinct and unquestioning recognition of personal responsibility, as far as is humanly possible, for, and his unwavering resolution to secure, the well-being of all his constituents, physically, pecuniarily, mentally, and morally.
These preliminaries being supposed to be satisfactorily settled, such incorporation or assembly of chosen ones might (always supposing my views happened to find favour in their sight) open as many co-operative stores—so many for each trade—as would be sufficient to supply the needs of the entire community, selecting competent men from each trade to manage the different departments, and paying them by an agreed salary in the same manner as rate collectors and relieving officers are paid. A certain specified per-centage to be added to the prime cost of the various articles to defray the estimated expenses of management, advertising, rent (if necessary, though it would be better if the local legislators were also the landlords), wear and tear, depreciation in stock, and miscellaneous expenses for the year; and sales to be made to the consumer for cash only. The urban or rural chancellor of the exchequer would, in his annual budget, soon learn to adjust the amount of his tax (for so the per-centage may be considered), over and above the original cost price, according to the probable exigencies of the ensuing year, by the light afforded by the transactions of the preceding one.
Seeing how many millions of pounds are annually disbursed for the barest sustenance and most absolute necessaries of life by the poor of the three kingdoms, from most of whom exorbitant rates of profit are wrung,—for the fact need not be expatiated on here that the more indigent the purchaser, and the more his penury drives him to live from hand-to-mouth, the less value he receives for his money, to say nothing of the further irruptions made into his income by the only partially-slain “truck system,” or by the payment of interest to the accommodating successors of the Lombards, whose golden balls proclaim them to serve the honourable office of jackal-purveyors to the lions of the gin-palaces,—seeing this, I say, shall I be stigmatized as a dreamer, a half-crazy Utopian, if I anticipate magnificent results to follow from fair trial of a scheme designed to stem the frightful torrent of improvidence at present obtaining amongst the working classes, and to enable them to occupy the new position of being participators in the benefits of a sound commercial undertaking?
Here, however, as elsewhere, there are tares amongst the wheat—if, indeed, it be wheat. An awkward inquiry obtrudes itself unbidden. What is to become of the thousands of deserving folks, too old for the most part to begin life de novo, who have earned a tolerably honest livelihood as small shopkeepers, and who would probably find themselves, under the system just recommended, “improved off the face of the earth?” Partially the difficulty might be met by the employment of the most active or most experienced of them in the borough stores. A little more might be accomplished in this direction also by giving some of them appointments to the numerous new offices it will be found necessary to create if our municipal authorities ever do wake up and bestir themselves, and aspire to becoming something more suitable to the spirit of the age than mere assemblies for palaver. But when all this is done, there will still be the residuum, and that residuum composed almost exclusively of the feeble, the aged, the halt, the lame, and the blind, who will be more or less thrown upon their own resources. For these, the only gleam of light I can discern is the fact that a remnant of their old customers will not find out all at once the error of their ways, and will go on in their accustomed grooves for some time after the centralized co-operative store shall have become un fait accompli, and so their decline into pauperism will be slow and gradual. Heaven only knows how some of these small shopkeepers contrive to exist even now by vending pennyworths and halfpennyworths of this, that, and the other; it can only be by imposing extravagant profits on the article vended. One cannot help thinking that their case can hardly very well be worse than it is, in any event. But be this as it may, care for their particular interests must not be permitted to dominate over due consideration for those of the vast aggregate mass forming the rest of our clientèle, innumerable as “leaves in Vallambrosa,”—and, like other and greater folks, superfluous retailers must submit to be sacrificed for the benefit of the common weal.
It is impossible to deal even in the most cursory manner with this “pocket” question without just glancing at the important bearing which the question of temperance must exercise upon it. To place a further spending power in the hands of an incurably intemperate populace would obviously mean only to increase and intensify the vice of intemperance. While deprecating any intention of making this paper the vehicle for a furious tirade against drunkenness, I feel bound to say in passing that, little as I love total abstinence, I regard it as a much lesser evil than the unrestrained indulgence of dipsomania; and if any man feels that he is so much a slave to his degraded appetite that he cannot keep up a nodding acquaintance with John Barleycorn without wallowing under his influence in the mud of inebriety, I respect that man for signing the pledge. My optimist instincts, however, buoy me up again on this subject also, for I sincerely believe that, high authority for the assertion though there be, mankind are not mostly fools; and that when they have begun to realize the fact that they have a choice as to the kind of investment they may obtain for their money, the great majority of them will be looking out for some more substantial advantage than the questionable luxury of seeking temporary oblivion from carking cares and the grisly spectre of hopeless indigence. It may, I think, be relied on with certainty that an improvement in the pecuniary circumstances of the poor would beget increased self-respect, and self-respect would proclaim drunkenness unfashionable, and that now vigorous and lusty giant would ere long find himself as decrepit and infirm as Bunyan’s Giant Pope. Those of us who have read of the bacchanalian orgies of the great no further back than the days of the Regency of George IV., and contrast it with the sobriety which is said to prevail amongst them in our days, cannot be accused of being groundlessly sanguine if we augur the percolation downwards of this stream of moderation under happier auspices, and that, too, in no remote future.
A third means of lightening the strain upon our ouvriers is to multiply the facilities for emigration. I would even go so far as to say that I think an International Emigration and Immigration League between all the civilized nations of the world, for the purpose of drafting overplus populations into thinly inhabited districts, would be rather a good thing than otherwise, the inconveniences attending differences of language, manners, and so forth, being quite surmountable; whereas the difficulties attendant upon the possession of more hands to labour than there is work to perform, and consequently more hungry stomachs than there is food to fill, is altogether insurmountable. With regard to the affliction of mal du pays, from which undoubtedly many of the expatriated would suffer at intervals, that would be found to be a much more tolerable burden to bear, combined with a sufficiency of victuals and clothing, than the pangs of starvation or semi-starvation even on one’s “native heather.”
But as it is no part of my programme to move too fast, or too far at once, I do not insist upon any international arrangement of the kind I have hinted at during, say, the present decade. I do, however, earnestly entreat all whom it may concern to try their best to place the matter of Emigration on a proper footing. I unhesitatingly maintain that whilst Great Britain possesses untold thousands of acres of virgin soil, and practically unlimited untried possibilities, in her numerous colonies, this our “sea-girt isle” ought not to suffer from a plethora of willing workers. The existing facilities held out to our overcrowded populations to induce them to venture upon “fresh fields and pastures new” might be multiplied a hundred-fold.
Surely it ought to be part of the fundamental policy of a State—especially of a State whose real governing body is elected by household suffrage—to take the most active measures for insuring the weal of all its citizens: the humblest as well as the highest. Does not this, indeed, form the very quintessential attribute of good government? Has it not been rightly said that a State represents the totality of all the individuals composing it? I assume these are sound political axioms; and if I am right in this assumption, may I not suggest, as the most certain way of attaining the desired end, that our Representative Government should formally acknowledge our claims upon them by appointing a Minister for “the Condition of the People,” with a seat in the Cabinet? The next step would be easy, for when once the whole surroundings were fairly brought within the range of vision, the vital importance of Emigration as a principal means of amelioration would be recognized; and it would be discovered that an able Secretary for Emigration would prove an invaluable auxiliary in the effective working of the department.
It would be necessary, I apprehend, to select for this latter office a man eminent as well for good temper as for a capacious intellect, as the multiplicity of the functions he would have to perform would render such office by no means a sinecure; and the involved and complex matters he would have to deal with might, at times, go far in the direction of ruffling the serenest imperturbability.
The eye of fancy depicts him in the active performance of his multifarious duties, surrounded by numerous painstaking subordinates, some of whom bear to him huge tomes, containing a full alphabetical list (compiled from the census returns and other sources) of the populations, industries, and assessments of the United Kingdom, divided into areas of certain dimensions, showing the age, sex, occupation, and earnings or incomings of every person; the number of houses (with their rentals or estimated yearly value), workshops, or other business establishments of every kind, specifying how many hands are employed in each and the amount of wages paid; and also showing the number of persons in receipt of out-door relief, and approximate number of vagrants in each district. Other attentive satellites open before him the various domesday books, containing reports by competent surveyors as to the quantity, and the latent riches or irredeemable poverty, of uncultivated lands throughout those vast dominions of ours on which the sun never sets; with copious notes by skilled mercantile men and geographers, pointing out the places where commodious ports might be formed, railways constructed, or manufactories erected. Our much-worried Secretary, whose heart is in his work, compares notes, and directs some of his chief clerks to prepare digests of, for instance, the information contained in pp. 420 to 446 of the 17th volume of the first set of books, and pp. 97 to 104 of the 32nd volume of the second set, ready for his consideration on the day but one following. He then takes up similar digests, which have previously been prepared in like manner, and sees clearly that one hundred artisan families of various specified trades, full particulars of which are before him, may, with advantage to all parties, be transplanted, passage free, from the blind alleys of Flintchester to the new settlement of Hornihand in Australasia, with the authorities of which place the usual arrangement will be made to assist them on their début, and lend them a helping hand until they get fairly settled down. Day after day this kind of thing goes on throughout the year, except for some two months during the late summer and autumn vacation, when the hard-worked Secretary and his staff are enjoying a well-earned holiday.
The more I ruminate on this matter of Emigration the more I am convinced that it is indispensable; it should run on wider lines, and cover a far more extended area than is possible under anything short of Governmental intervention. Seeing the utter inutility and inefficacy of isolated exertions to deal with the mighty problems which our complex civilization presents for solution, I should, on behalf of myself and my class, hail with joy the prospect of State interference in our interests. Sneers may continue to be directed against, and witty sarcasms levelled at, a “Paternal Government,” “infringement of that liberty of the subject which is the inherent privilege and birthright of every Briton,” and other like cuckoo-cries. But meantime we starve; we increase and multiply in obedience to the law of Nature, and our opportunities of earning subsistence do not increase and multiply in a corresponding ratio. And without by any means desiring to steep my pen in midnight blackness in order to portray possible portentous consequences, yet it is a proposition not to be controverted that the ever-increasing preponderance of born toilers over any quantity of remunerative toil which can by any possibility be created within the limits of Great Britain proper must inevitably cause such consequences to be calamitous. For some time past the dark shadow of over-population has been looming on the horizon of “Merrie England,” at first no bigger than a man’s hand, but later advancing nearer and still more near and assuming colossal proportions; and the time cannot be far distant when it will obstinately refuse to be ignored any longer, even by the most unreflective, but will assert itself in a manner little to be desired. How, then, to avert this evil? How to postpone the advent of the fateful day? Are not these queries of vital interest to all ranks of society? I for one feel them to be so: hence the above gropings after gleams of daylight in the midst of the gathering shades. I do not pretend to aver that I have found the sunshine, that I have discovered an absolute cure for all the ills that “flesh is heir to.” Too well I know what mistakes and blunders are interwoven in the best-devised schemes of human origin. Nevertheless, I hold that the free expression and ventilation of opinions, even though they may be erroneous, is often eventually productive of good, by serving to dispel vagueness of thought and loose generalization, and solidifying the abstract into the concrete; until which process has been accomplished no thing soever can be dealt with satisfactorily. Therefore, as a firm disbeliever in the Malthusian philosophy, as also in the recommendations for checking the increase of population more recently scattered broadcast amongst us, and being deeply impressed with the imperative necessity of confronting the difficulty at once—now, in these days when the heavens above us appear to be hardening into brass, and the earth beneath us to be corrugating into iron—I have requested the Editor of this Review to afford me the opportunity of giving publicity to my views.
Closely allied to this division of my paper, if not actually of it, is the subject of Charity. Here, again, what a lamentable waste of vital force, what an invertebrate entity crying aloud to be overhauled, remodelled, jointed, and braced! Contrast the grand sum total yearly given in charity with the paucity of definite results attained—the well-worn comparison of the Nasmyth hammer and the nut instantaneously recurs to one’s mind. Except when subscriptions are raised for some specific object outside the usual round altogether, how little there is to show for the expenditure! Why is this so? And what is the remedy? Obviously, I opine, the cause is individualism, isolation, caprice,—and as obviously, I ween, the only cure is combination, organization, system. Where we have now hundreds of little benevolent societies, with their honorary secretaries and treasurers and fussy committees, each neutralizing the others, let us have two or three established on a broad basis, with a central committee who, when the “sinews of war” are collected in one focus, will be strong enough to enter on paths at present untrodden, and wise enough to understand that almost innumerable differentiations in the nature of gifts will be necessary to cope successfully with the almost illimitable diversities in the nature of requirements, and who will insist on being invested with discretionary powers in matters of occasional aids and supplemental benevolences. Then it will be no longer possible for the shameless pauper, flaunting his rags and sores in the marketplace, or the whining sycophantic hypocrite, to monopolize the coals of one society, the blankets of a second, the soup of a third, and so on ad infinitum, not seldom exchanged for means of procuring beer to give additional zest to the utterance of the sentiment—“What fools these gentlefolks be.” The most searching inquiries would be instituted, and perchance succour afforded to those to whom it would prove an inestimable boon, but who, from constitutional timidity or mauvaise honte, now starve and drop and die in silence, overlooked by almoners who take the first miserable-looking object who comes to hand, the most self-asserting or the most “’umble,” and straightway pour out the contents of their cornucopias upon shams, making a miserable travesty of the sacred name of Charity.