There is no moral principle that condemns State interference, although we may admit that occasionally it has wrought evil instead of good. Failures have been caused by ignorance alike in the rulers and the ruled. But as knowledge of the real problem advances, errors in governing will become less frequent, and the action of the State be marked by a wise adaptation to human needs in view of the greatest happiness possible.
State regulation is simply a matter of power and expediency. At the present low stage of civilization, for just so long as the ruling power is exercised by a propertied minority, it will prove injurious to the majority; but when the power passes over to the people the evils from which the majority suffer—in so far as they are remediable by society—will be slowly and surely redressed. Our County, District and Parish Councils are important instalments of democracy. These elected bodies, with their increasing powers, are potent to make of the community an ever larger and larger employer of labour, until, at the will of the people, all industries become absorbed, and the collectivist system of labour organization is gradually established. It is evident that the instruments of a thoroughly democratic administration are rapidly perfecting in Great Britain; and when the ideal of socialism dominates the national mind, these will present a ready means of realizing the ideal in practice. Ignorance of the ideal leads many minds into the false assumption that the raising of wages, and to do this the impoverishing of capitalists, is the socialistic sine quâ non in State action. But as Mrs. Bosanquet explains: “In our nineteenth century cry for higher wages we are apt to lose sight of the fact that many things are more important to the working-man than a few shillings added to his weekly income. A good supply of water, well-paved and lighted streets, a market in which he can always obtain wholesome food, and properly guarded sanitary conditions, will do more to raise his standard of living above that of his ancestors than any increase of mere money income. With those he can lead a healthy, orderly life on comparatively small wages; without them no rise in wages, however desirable in itself, will enable him to escape danger and disease.” (Rich and Poor, by Mrs. Bernard Bosanquet.)
This puts the case for municipal socialism in a nutshell. No amount of philanthropy, no amount of individual action is likely to provide a parish with a good water supply, properly paved and lighted streets, sanitary dwellings and a well-managed market. (Fabian News.) Yet these are fundamental requisites of general well-being, and another requisite for well-being and progress, dependent upon State action, is education of the people. If the power of the masses and their independence of arbitrary authority grow out of accord with their real knowledge of things, disastrous and bloody revolutions become possible. That in some sort the State must educate the masses is a principle already acknowledged and acted upon. We know, too, with how little success! But as Government loses its evil characteristics and grows enlightened, our State education will be directed to new ends. Its aim will be to impress such knowledge on the rising generations as will prepare them for social life, and instruct them in the means of averting misery and increasing happiness. It will educate them in the science of society and true meliorism, in the best methods for repressing anti-social feelings, in the formation of noble ideals of conduct, and in that religion which unites mankind in the region of the heart and makes of their union a living and growing social organism.
But while this is the aim of State education, the exact means adopted may vary. Where parents are superior much may be left in their hands, but inferior parents can never be permitted to train up children in inferior ways at the risk of lowering social purity and health.
I believe the time will arrive when Government, acting on its right of force and expediency, will take up and sequestrate the small class of social units who, defective by nature and evil conditions, are unable to control the injurious tendency to propagate their kind. This degraded minority will be kindly dealt with and allowed all liberty not inconsistent with the careful guarding of public safety. The object to attain would be simply the putting an end to their evil stock.
In the matter of State education, as well as in that of State interference with trade, objections are made on the ground of injustice. “Why,” it is asked, “should a man without children be taxed to educate the children of others? Is it not unjust that the earnings of the prudent should be taken to save the imprudent from the consequences of their own folly?” My answer is that besides being expedient, it is not socially unjust and the argument rests on the fact that the rewards of life depend upon the economic conditions of society much more than upon individual effort or merit. The amount of a man’s income is determined by forces not created by justice, and over which he has no personal control. A clever physician may command the fee of a guinea a visit. Let another competent man appear in the neighbourhood and charge half a guinea, the first has to lower his fee or lose his patients, and if he lowers his fee, the sum of the incomes of the two physicians sharing the patients between them will be less than the amount of the single income originally derived from that source. A man’s gains are what the competitive system ordained by society permits him to seize, whether he be working hard or not at all. Within these non-moral conditions an appeal to justice is irrelevant. Outside the non-moral conditions, what justice requires is that all men should be socially equal in respect of two things, viz. liberty and the ordinary comforts of life.
If employers do not deem it unjust to lower wages, neither should they deem it unjust were the State to lower their incomes to the precise amount their employés receive. Society has in the past arbitrarily arranged conditions that favour the few; why should it not now arbitrarily rearrange these conditions favourably to the many? If we take the average amount of all incomes to represent the sum each worker might justly receive, we find that a number of people have far more than this sum. The surplus represents then an “unearned increment” obtained by force of circumstance. A still larger number of people, on the other hand, are wholly unable to win, by any effort they may make, the above average amount, even if they work hard and well all their lives. Is it not just and reasonable that the more fortunate are required to give up a portion of their “unearned increment” in order that in the interests of society the children of the less fortunate should be educated? And, again, the improvident and immoral are nature’s defective children. Does not the highest religion demand that they should be tenderly dealt with and spared—if that be possible—all the tortures that nature unaided would bring upon them.
I believe that, under conscious evolution, the State will become in its action more and more philanthropic, simply for this reason—its members will become more and more humane and public-spirited.
Voluntary and State agency, however, will continue to co-exist. Each has its peculiar merits and demerits, and each individual case to be dealt with has its peculiar conditions. Science and experience must in each case therefore decide which agency applies best. There is no foregone conclusion that under State Socialism all private industries will collapse. The principle of the system is that no method of industry, hurtful to society as a whole, may exist, and the power of the State shall be rigorously used to protect the interests of the whole, as against conflicting individual interests. Even now it is felt, through the growing democratic spirit, that for our public bodies to take advantage of the struggle for employment of starving, hard-pressed men and women, is a national disgrace. It will soon be a point of honour with the nation to fix a minimum wage for public employés much above the competitive rate. Some County Councils have already been moved to direct that workers employed by them, or under their contracts, should be paid trade-union wages. Parliament has in some cases acted similarly, and when we remember that Government at this moment is the largest employer of labour in the kingdom, we realize that its example in giving wages determined more by equity than by competition will have a raising effect upon wages in private employment.
There is not any danger, however, that the movement of taking over the industries of the country by the State will stop short of the most favourable point. As I write this chapter, the following paragraph has appeared in a socialist journal of to-day: “It is proposed to establish a gigantic trust to control the entire iron-producing interests of the United States. This, of course, is eminently proper from an economic view, as it is a clearly demonstrated fact that production on a large scale is cheaper than production on a small scale. Carnegie, Rockefeller and Morgan, proposers of the iron trust, are, from a certain standpoint, benefactors of the race, inasmuch as they will demonstrate the practicability of the co-operative idea on a national scale in production. In due time the people will recognize the folly of allowing these men to reap the whole profits, and the system will be readjusted.”