Problems of Poverty: An Inquiry into the Industrial Condition of the Poor

by J. A. Hobson

§ 2. Checks on growth of population.--We need not discuss in its wider aspect the question whether our population tends to increase faster than the means of subsistence. Disciples of Malthus, who urge the growing pressure of population on the food supply, are sometimes told that so far as this argument applies to England, the growth of wealth is faster than the growth of population, and that as modern facilities for exchange enable any quantity of this wealth to be transferred into food and other necessaries, their alarm is groundless. Now these rival contentions have no concern for us. We are interested not in the pressure of the whole population upon an actual or possible food supply, but with the pressure of a certain portion of that population upon a relatively fixed supply of work. It is approximately true to say that at any given time there exists a certain quality of unskilled or low-skilled work to be done. If there are at hand just enough workers to do it, the wages will be sufficiently high to allow a decent standard of living. If, on the other hand, there are present more than enough workers willing to do the work, a number of them must remain without work and wages, while those who are employed get the lowest wages they will consent to take. Thus it will seem of prime importance to keep down the population of low-skilled workers to the point which leaves a merely nominal margin of superfluous labour. The Malthusian question has in its modern practical aspect narrowed down to this. The working classes by abstinence from early or improvident marriages, or by the exercise of moral restraints after marriage can, it is urged, check that tendency of the working population to outgrow the increase of the work for which they compete. There can be no doubt that the more intelligent classes of skilled labourers have already profited by this consideration, and as education and intelligence are more widely diffused, we may expect these prudential checks on "over-population" will operate with increased effect among the whole body of workers. But precisely because these checks are moral and reasonable, they must be of very slow acceptance among that class whose industrial condition forms a stubborn barrier to moral and intellectual progress. Those who would gain most by the practice of prudential checks, are least capable of practising them. The ordinary "labourer" earns full wages as soon as he attains manhood's strength; he is as able to support a wife and family at twenty as he will ever be; indeed he is more so, for while he is young his work is more regular, and less liable to interruption by ill-health. The reflection that an early marriage means the probability of a larger family, and that a large family helps to keep wages low, cannot at present be expected to make a deep impression upon the young unskilled labourer. The value of restraint after marriage could probably be inculcated with more effect, because it would appeal more intelligibly to the immediate interest of the labourer. But it is to the growing education and intelligence of women, rather than to that of men, that we must look for a recognition of the importance of restraint on early marriages and large families.

§ 3. The "Emigration" Remedy.--The most direct and obvious drainage scheme is by emigration. If there are more workers than there is work for them to do, why not remove those who are not wanted, and put them where there is work to do? The thing sounds very simple, but the simplicity is somewhat delusive. The old laissez faire political economist would ask, "Why, since labour is always moving towards the place where it can be most profitably employed, is it necessary to do anything but let it flow? Why should the State or philanthropic people busy themselves about the matter? If labour is not wanted in one place, and is wanted in another, it will and must leave the one place and go to the other. If you assist the process by compulsion, or by any artificial aid, you may be removing the wrong people, or you may be removing them to the wrong place." Now the reply to the main laissez faire position is conclusive. Just as water, though always tending to find its own level, does not actually find it when it is dammed up in some pool by natural or artificial earthworks, so labour stored in the persons of poor and ignorant men and women is not in fact free to seek the place of most profitable employment. The highlands of labour are drained by this natural flow; even the strain of competition in skilled hand-labour finds sensible relief by the voluntary emigration of the more adventurous artisans, but the poor low-skilled workers suffer here again by reason of their poverty: no natural movement can relieve the plethora of labour-power in low-class employments. The fluidity of low-skilled labour seldom exceeds the power of moving from one town to a neighbouring town, or from a country district to the nearest market towns, or to London in search of work. If the lowlands are to be drained at all, it must be done by an artificial system. Now all such systems are in fact open to the mistakes mentioned above. If we look too exclusively to the requirements of new colonies, and the opportunities of work they present, we may be induced to remove from England a class of men and women whose services we can ill afford to lose, and who are not in any true sense superfluous labour. To assist sturdy and shrewd Scotch farmers, or a body of skilled artisans thrown out of work by a temporary trade depression, to transfer themselves and their families to America or Australia, is a policy the net advantage of which is open to grave doubt. Of course by removing any body of workers you make room for others, but this fact does not make it a matter of indifference which class is removed. On the other hand, if we look exclusively to the interests of the whole mass of labour in England, we should probably be led to assist the emigration of large bodies of the lowest and least competent workers. This course, though doubtless for the advantage of the low class labour, directly relieved, is detrimental to the interest of the new country, which is flooded with inefficient workers, and confers little benefit upon these workers themselves, since they are totally incapable of making their way in a new country. The reckless drafting off of our social failures into new lands is a criminal policy, which has been only too rife in the State-aided emigration of the past, and which is now rendered more and more difficult each year by the refusal of foreign lands to receive our "wreckage." Here, then, is the crux of emigration. The class we can best afford to lose, is the class our colonies and foreign nations can least afford to take, and if they consent to receive them they only assume the burden we escape. The age of loose promiscuous pauper emigration has gone by. If we are to use foreign emigration as a mode of relief for our congested population in the future, it will be on condition that we select or educate our colonists before we send them out. Whether the State or private organizations undertake the work, our colonizing process must begin at home. The necessity of dealing directly with our weak surplus population of low-skilled workers is gaining more clear recognition every year, as the reluctance to interfere with the supposed freedom of the subject even where the subject is "unfree" is giving way before the urgency of the situation.

§ 4. Mr. Charles Booth's "Drainage Scheme."--The terrible examples our history presents to us of the effects of unwise poor law administration, rightly enjoin the strictest caution in contemplating new experiments. But the growing recognition of the duty of the State to protect its members who are unable to protect themselves, and to secure fair opportunities of self-support and self-improvement, as well as the danger of handing over their protection to the conflicting claims of private and often misguided philanthropy, is rapidly gaining ground against the advocates of laissez faire. It is beginning to be felt that the State cannot afford to allow the right of private social experiment on the part of charitable organizations. The relief of destitution has for centuries been recognized as the proper business of the State. Our present poor law practically fails to relieve the bulk of the really destitute. Even were it successful it would be doing nothing to prevent destitution. Since neither existing legislation nor the forces of private charity are competent to cope with the evils of "sweating," engendered by an excess of low-class labour, it is probable that the pressure of democratic government will make more and more in favour of some large new experiment of social drainage. In view of this it may not be out of place to describe briefly two schemes proposed by private students of the problem of poverty.

Mr. Charles Booth, recognizing that the superfluity of cheap inefficient labour lies at the root of the matter, suggests the removal of the most helpless and degraded class from the strain of a struggle which is fatal not merely to themselves, but to the class immediately above them. The reason for this removal is given as follows--

"To effectually deal with the whole of class B--for the State to nurse the helpless and incompetent as we in our own families nurse the old, the young, and the sick, and provide for those who are not competent to provide for themselves--may seem an impossible undertaking; but nothing less than this will enable self-respecting labour to obtain its full remuneration, and the nation its raised standard of life. The difficulties, which are certainly great, do not consist in the cost. As it is, these unfortunate people cost the community one way or another considerably more than they contribute. I do not refer solely to the fact that they cost the State more than they pay directly or indirectly in taxes. I mean that altogether, ill-paid and half-starved as they are, they consume, or waste, or have expended on them, more wealth than they produce."

Mr. Booth would remove the "very poor," and plant them in industrial communities under proper government supervision.

"Put practically, my idea is that these people should be allowed to live as families in industrial groups, planted wherever land and building materials were cheap; being well-housed and well-warmed, and taught, trained, and employed from morning to night on work, indoors or out, for themselves, or on Government account."

The Government should provide material and tools, and having the people entirely on its hands, get out of them what it can. Wages should be paid at a "fair proportionate rate," so as to admit comparison of earnings of the different communities, and of individuals. The commercial deficit involved in the scheme should be borne by the State. This expansion of our poor law policy, for it is nothing more, aims less at the reformation and improvement of the class taken under its charge, than at the relief which would be afforded to the classes who suffered from their competition in the industrial struggle. What it amounts to is the removal of the mass of unemployed. The difficulties involved in such a scheme are, as Mr. Booth admits, very grave.

The following points especially deserve attention--

1. Since it is not conceivable that compulsion should be brought to bear in the selection and removal out of the ordinary industrial community of those weaker members whose continued struggle is considered undesirable, it is evident that the industrial colonies must be recruited out of volunteers. It will thus become a large expansion of the present workhouse system. The eternal dilemma of the poor law will be present there. On the one hand, if, as seems likely, the degradation and disgrace attaching to the workhouse is extended to the industrial colony, it will fail to attract the more honest and deserving among the "very poor," and to this extent will fail to relieve the struggling workers of their competition. On the other hand, if the condition of the "industrial colonist" is recognized as preferable to that of the struggling free competitor, it must in some measure act as a premium upon industrial failure, checking the output of energy and the growth of self-reliance in the lower ranks of the working classes. No scheme for the relief of poverty is wholly free from this difficulty; but there is danger that the State colony of Mr. Booth would, if it were successful as a mode of "drainage," be open to it in no ordinary degree.