The co-operation of farmers or small holders working for the quality of what they produce and not for filling their pockets and extending their estates, secure in their independence, acting separately so far as separate action is conducive to good cultivation and co-operating when united action can produce better results, this method, as actually practised in Denmark, for instance, must obviously be superior both for the land and for the people. But the deplorable lack of scientific knowledge, the unprogressive methods of our farmers, the engrained readiness to be controlled by some social superiors, makes the rapid extension of such a system impossible.
In the meanwhile we cannot accept our rich man’s plea that as a landlord, even as a good landlord, his expenditure is profitable. It is not that he makes nothing but mistakes; it is that he cannot give sufficient time and attention to it; it is that he is by nature incapable—an incapacity which he shares with every other mortal—of deriving from his estate of some thousands of acres all that it could produce. It follows that his action in keeping to himself large tracts of this unique form of property is depriving many of a means of employment and countless hundreds of the enjoyment of the fruits of the land; it is driving the population from the country districts to overcrowd the towns, add to the number of the unemployed, and swell the volume of crime.
The land question with all its ramifications is perhaps the most complex and vast of the many subjects that are touched by the responsibility of riches, but it is one that more completely than any other illustrates the argument, and is the best evidence of the limitation of the rich man’s powers. In no field of human activity ought it to be tolerated that an entirely unfitted and untrained man should be put at the head of so difficult and highly technical a business as the management of land. When this occurs in commerce the business collapses, but in land management the owner remains doing untold damage and often playing the ridiculous part of a territorial magnate or a petty monarch, to his own hurt and to the hindrance of his subjects. An American writer making a survey of life in England to-day says, “When one hears, and one does hear it on every hand, how poor are Englishmen, one has in this land question some explanation of the secret.”[12]
Chapter V
The rich man’s children—His sons’ education at school and university—His daughters—Love and marriage—Refinement of the aristocracy—Their alliance with the plutocracy—Smart society—Its general characteristics.
The natural desire of every man is to do the best he can for his children, and in this respect the rich man feels that his money is of special advantage to him. But are healthy upbringing and good education superior in quality if they are expensive? The whole trouble with regard to these children is comprised in the fact that they know they are going to have money, so that from the earliest age they accept their elevation from the common herd as a matter of course, and assume the easy assurance and authoritative manner which always characterises them. Their childhood they spend guarded by servants, nurses, governesses, and tutors, often without coming much into personal contact with their parents or deriving any benefits from parental care and affection, the strongest of all the variety of influences in a man’s life; they also have a more or less general consciousness that anything they want can be had for the asking. The boys are sent to public schools, where there are many others in a like position, and where the expense of education is greater than in other schools, and its quality rather inferior. Here they are given a vague notion of ancient Jews, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, and of England in the Middle Ages. But nothing is taught them of contemporary history, of English literature, or of how their own country is governed to-day, nor is a moment found during those early years for a preliminary study of political economy or some elementary exposition of industrial and social problems, though such exposition would be invaluable, if only to impress on young and acquisitive minds the fact that such problems exist. In short, the world they are living in is never explained to them. And, whatever they may learn, from start to finish they are assiduously kept in a groove where their own class is represented to them as the predominating and important section of the community, which may expect service but need not render it.
To do schoolboys justice, however, they cannot be accused of being snobs. They care nothing for rank or riches. They have their own particular standard of judging who is “a good chap” and who is not, and on the whole their verdict is shrewd and not unfair. They are apt to be over-severe against breaches of their particular code, and they are very suspicious of any signs of originality. It is in this direction that they make many serious mistakes. But that a boy has a title is a matter of complete indifference to them, or whether or not he be the son of very rich parents is a matter about which they would not think it worth while to inquire. No distinctions are made; the sons of the rich mix with their school-fellows without being conscious of occupying any special position, and their school-fellows accept them without even knowing they are the sons of the rich. The harm they do quite unconsciously is not of an obvious kind, and its very subtilty prevents it from being recognised. They themselves know what the future has in store for them, and it necessarily affects their attitude towards school work and general intellectual training for after life. They are callous and indifferent as to education, regarding it not as an essential preparation for their life’s work, but as a tedious exercise which has to be gone through, and in which they are assisted by the natural curiosity of youth and an instinctive dislike of ignorance. If they are popular this view, accompanied by a certain amount of swagger and a preference for and often a proficiency in games and sport, gives them a position which is distinctly attractive to the boy mind, and their influence spreads very rapidly among those who in after life have got to work for their livelihood. In those schools where there is no disturbing element emanating from the presence of rich leisured boys the standard of efficient work—not estimated by the measure of worldly success which titles and position afford—will be found to be higher than in the few schools which lay themselves out to receive this class of boy. It is not to be inferred that the rich man’s son never has sufficient ability and, indeed, industry to distinguish himself in the intellectual field. But it is the influence and example of those who have been brought up from their earliest childhood knowing that they have not to work in order to live, that creates an atmosphere which must be unfavourable to the training of boys for whom life is not to be one prolonged holiday.
At the university the superiority of the position of richer boys is first acknowledged. They are free to spend their money and make the display, in one direction or another, which is to distinguish them from their fellows for the rest of their lives, and recruits for their band of toadies and tuft-hunters begin to enlist. Should they not be completely independent the question of the choice of a profession has to be discussed, and is almost invariably regarded purely from the monetary point of view of pay and salary. Many either enter professions which they allow to occupy very little of their time or have no profession at all, and their incomes preclude them from deriving any of the unquestionable advantages of professional training and discipline, without which no man can be expected to cultivate the talents he may possess, or acquire knowledge and experience which might make him a useful associate in the general activity of the community he lives in. We will not enlarge on the sort of life they lead—the unrelieved pursuit of enjoyment, the London season, the country house parties, the race meetings, the shooting and hunting, the visit to the Continental watering-place to recover from the fatigues before starting again, and so on and so on. It is sufficient to know that they contribute as little as possible to and extract as much as they can from the general fund of national wealth.
The girls meanwhile receive hardly any real education at all, except in the knowledge of the little world which they are taught to believe is the whole world, and within the walls of which they are probably destined to spend the remainder of their days. The moment of “coming out” is held before them as the one thing to look forward to. And when the longed-for day arrives, it is only the signal for the commencement of an exhausting round of pleasures sanctioned by their society and represented to them as being the one absorbing business of life. It is only charitable to accuse them of being uneducated, otherwise it would be hard to explain psychologically the attitude of mind, of cheerful acceptance of the fate in store for them instead of rebellion against it. If, in rare cases, they attempt to follow a line of their own and join the professional class, every conceivable obstacle is put in their way, and the prejudice against work which is not the business of “a lady” is generally strong enough to drive them back into the smooth groove of leisure. Not infrequently this fatal obligatory idleness crushes the spirit out of them.