Cheapness means low wages. Cheapness may benefit that strange and mythical figure the abstract "consumer" of the text-books, but need not benefit the working man. Very likely it will harm him, because "Cheap goods mean cheap labour, and cheap labour means low wages. You have nothing but your labour to sell, and you are told that it will pay you to sell that cheaply."[783] "All commodities are produced by labour, therefore to drive commodities down to their cheapest rate must result in cheap labour."[784] Cheapness may fill those with joy who have money in their pocket and who do not care how cheap goods are produced. But incidentally the policy of Free Trade and of laisser faire, the policy of cheapness which benefits the consumer and takes no notice of the producer, encourages and causes sweating and untold misery to the workers. "Do you ever consider the lives of the people who make these marvellously cheap things? And do you ever think what kind of homes they have; in what kind of districts the homes are situated; and what becomes of those people when they are too ill, or too old, or too infirm to earn even four shillings as the price of a hundred and twelve hours' work?"[785]
Free Trade may have been beneficial in Cobden's time, when Great Britain was the chief manufacturing country in the world. But what is its effect under the changed conditions of the present time, and how will these changes affect her industries and her workers? "In the early days of our great trade the commercial school wished Britain to be the 'workshop of the world,' and for a good while she was the workshop of the world. But now a change is coming. Other nations have opened world-workshops, and we have to face competition. France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, and America are all eager to take our coveted place as general factory, and China and Japan are changing swiftly from customers into rival dealers. Is it likely, then, that we can keep all our foreign trade, or that what we keep will be as profitable as it is at present?"[786] "Suppose we lost a lump of our export trade. Suppose the Japanese, Chinese, or Americans capture some of our markets. Where should we get our food? If we could not sell our exports, we could not buy imports of food. We are walking on thin ice, my countrymen. And if competition became keener, what would the champions of Free Trade do to meet it? They would say: 'We must sell our manufactures, or you will get no food. To sell our manufactures we must reduce the price. To reduce the price we must reduce the cost of production. To reduce the cost of production we must cut down wages.'"[787] "Free Trade means laisser faire all round, not only in regard to inanimate commodities, but in respect to that most important commodity of all—human labour power. Chinese, Japanese, Indians, negroes are all permitted under complete Free Trade to compete freely on their lower standard of life against the white man."[788] "A demand for a general reduction of wages is the end of the fine talk about big profits, national prosperity, and the 'workshop of the world.' The British workers are to emulate the thrift of the Japanese, the Hindoos, and the Chinese, and learn to live on boiled rice and water. Why? So that they can accept low wages and retain our precious foreign trade. Yes, that is the latest idea. With brutal frankness the workers of Britain have been told again and again that, 'If we are to keep our foreign trade, the British workers must accept the conditions of their foreign rivals,' and that is the result of our commercial glory! For that we have sacrificed our agriculture and endangered the safety of our Empire."[789]
The assertion of the Free Traders that Free Trade has made Great Britain prosperous is treated with scorn. "The Free Traders say we, the nation, are richer under this system than we should be under Protection. By employing ourselves in those occupations in which we can produce the cheapest article, we earn the most wealth in money value.—In money value.—They do not consider the twelve million underfed, the hundreds of thousands of unemployed. The nation, we, are richer. That is the test. Well, my countrymen, I think it is a damnable doctrine, and its results are damnable. The Free Traders boast of our wealth. Are twelve million underfed, a million starving children, a million paupers, an infantile death-rate of 150 per 1,000—are these signs of wealth? The question is not 'Is the nation wealthy?' but 'Are the people wealthy?' Judged by this standard, how poor a nation is this, my countrymen! The Free Traders tell us that we earn more wealth under Free Trade than we should under Protection. Again I ask: Who are we?"[790] A Socialist weekly lately said: "Great Britain, I understand, has recovered its prosperity; our exports are going strong, and our imports have nothing much to complain about. Prosperity? Why, Great Britain is simply rolling in—statistics."[791]
Socialists rightly demand that the effect of British fiscal policy should be judged not by its effect upon the wealth of the few, but upon the employment of the many, and they clearly recognise the destructive effect which Free Trade has upon the national industries. "Under Free Trade it is possible for a foreign trader to take trade away from a British trader. If for any reason we lost an important trade, or several small trades, our unemployed would naturally grow. The Free Trade theory that the capital and the labour in the lost trades will find other employment is simply theory. Suppose they didn't. The Free Trader has no answer except: Look at our enormous wealth. My countrymen, looking at another man's wealth does not feed me, clothe me, and house me."[792] "When men are thrown out of work, by competition, or depression, or any cause, they do not so easily 'transfer their services to some other new employment.' It is easy to make them do so—on paper. And when they do get a fresh job, is it always as good as the one lost? Do they not often lose all their belongings, and get into debt, while looking for that new employment which the Free Traders talk about so glibly? and do not capitalists often lose a good deal of capital before they give up the fight for the trade? Nevertheless, say the Free Traders, we, the nation, are richer under this system than we should be under Protection. By employing ourselves in those occupations in which we can produce the cheapest article, we earn the most wealth in money value."[793] To this argument the Socialists reply: "Does your moral law say it is right that men should be thrown on the streets to starve because other men in other countries produce goods 2-1/2 per cent. cheaper?"[794]
The statistics of an enormous foreign trade, which Free Traders triumphantly display for the edification of the masses, give, according to the Socialists, little consolation to the unemployed and ill-employed workers. "Figures, be they never so dazzling, and numbers, be they never so round, will not feed the hungry, house the homeless, or bring light and warmth into the drear, precarious lives of the mass of our people. The increase of trade means only an increase of production, and not necessarily of persons employed or wages gained. With the rapid concentration of industries and the perfection of labour-saving devices, production has been enormously increased without any corresponding increase of employment; in some cases, with an actual decrease of employment. What the workers are interested in is not the mere growth of profitable trade, but the extent to which the industries of their country afford them and their families a security of livelihood, and the reasonable comforts and recreations which their labour has more than earned."[795]
Most Socialists frankly own that Free Trade has been a failure. "In the House of Commons on March 12th, 1906, Mr. P. Snowden, M.P., said: 'Sixty years of Free Trade had failed to mitigate or palliate to any considerable extent the grave industrial and social evils which Free Traders and Protectionists alike were compelled to admit. Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman had admitted them when he said that 30 per cent. of our population were on the verge of hunger. He contended that whatever improvement had been effected in the condition of the people during the last sixty years was due to other causes than Free Trade."[796]
During 1907 the complaints among the Socialists about the effect of Free Trade upon employment have become louder. The fact that British unemployed workmen furnished an apparently inexhaustible supply of strike-breakers to Continental employers, that men fought like wild beasts at the registry offices in order to be allowed to act as strike-breakers in Hamburg and Antwerp, has shown the great prevalence of unemployment. Commenting hereon a Socialist monthly said in bitter irony, under the heading "British Blacklegs": "The intervention in the Antwerp dock-workers' strike of British workmen as blacklegs is a striking commentary on the prosperity of the people of this country. Under Free Trade we have been told—ad nauseam—by Liberal politicians that the British working-man is the most prosperous and well-fed human being on the face of the earth. He, with wages nearly double those of the best-paid Continental workman, with all kinds of provisions infinitely cheaper—thanks to Free Trade—than they can be procured elsewhere, is indeed 'God's Englishman.' It would be as unkind as rude to suggest that these honourable politicians had been lying. The only alternative conclusion to be arrived at is that the British workman is a most disinterested being, willing to sacrifice his prosperity and comfort in order to compel the miserably paid dockers of Antwerp and Hamburg to submit to the conditions against which they have revolted."[797] The action of Mr. Haldane, the present Secretary of State for War, in dismissing a large number of workmen from Woolwich Arsenal and giving a contract for 100,000 horseshoes for the British Army to an American firm on account of greater cheapness, prompted the following verses:
Mr. Haldane was smiling and suave
As his views upon horseshoes he gave;
He will buy from the Yanks
(Who take orders with thanks).
And believes that much money he'll save.
How thankful we all ought to be
That this most kind and careful M.P.
Thus shows Woolwich men
They will be employed when
They're off to the States—Q.E.D.[798]
Some Socialists take a very pessimistic view of the economic position of Great Britain. Mr. Hyndman said that "Great Britain had lost her commercial and industrial supremacy. The United States now stood first, Germany second, and Great Britain was forced into third place."[799] Many years ago some far-seeing Socialists had prophesied the coming industrial decline of Great Britain. "The notion that Britain can hold a monopoly of engineering, or of any other trade, must be given up. Britain cannot; countries that have been almost wholly agricultural are rapidly becoming manufacturers too."[800] Of late these pessimistic forecasts have become louder and more frequent. The progress of industrial countries can be measured, to some extent, by their output of coal, and "at no distant date Germany will probably also surpass our output and we will be relegated to third place."[801] This event will very likely take place about 1910. The statistics published by the British Board of Trade are deceptive. They leave out Germany's very large and constantly growing output of lignite, which amounts to about 60,000,000 tons per annum, and which increases Germany's coal output, as stated by the Board of Trade, by about 50 per cent.