Another important public event was the introduction into the British Parliament of an Employer’s Liability Bill. “This Bill proceeds,” said its introducer, “on the principle that when a person for his own profit sets in motion agencies which create risks for others, he ought to be civilly responsible.” (The Scotsman Report, May 4, 1897.) Now it goes without saying that the iron trust, and all trusts and commercial rings and monopolies, create the risk of a disastrous rise of prices to the general public, and a consequent greater inequality of wealth possession than even that from which we are suffering acutely to-day. A logical executive, holding the above principle, will inevitably annex to the State these huge outgrowths of the competitive system, will keep down prices to the level required by the general interests, and apply profits to the good of all.
That the time is not far distant when nationalization of the land will take place, appears from the fact that many others besides socialists advocate the measure. But we must not suppose that rent will be abrogated. The State will impose a charge on the fertile and well situated lands to create conditions that are fair not only to consumers but to cultivators, whose labour in view of a given result must vary according to the superiority or inferiority of soils and situations. District Councils will in all probability organize agricultural labour, the State only drawing a rent; while to present owners of the land compensation will be made, and, if accustomed to work on the land, salaried positions in the new order offered.
The rent exacted by the State may become the single form of taxation necessary for purposes of administration and for organized labour engaged on such service of the people as does not bring in any profit. But when routine industries bearing on universal needs belong to the State, profits will flow into the national exchequer. It will be possible to gradually increase the State’s payment for labour as the workers become more capable of elevating their standard of life and consuming wisely; while the surplus profits will be available for the organizing of new services to be rendered free.
The carriage and distribution of letters is a comparatively long established State industry. The carriage of human beings should equally become so. The State’s taking over of railways and the municipalities’ taking over of tramways cannot be much longer delayed.
Bread baking and distributing by Government employés is pre-eminently desirable, to put an end to adulteration in a primary necessary of life and to prevent the waste of energy which takes place in the present disorganized system. Already there is such a general complaint of the quality of bakers’ bread, that an approved method of baking from pure flour under State control would be welcomed by all who perceive how the racial blood is more or less poisoned and its vitality lowered by what is called “the staff of life.” (A prolonged process of baking breaks up the starch granules, and renders bread more digestible. The extra expense and trouble precludes the adoption of this method by private bakers.)
Again, the health of the nation suffers cruelly from poison germs carried in the medium of milk. But when district councils have organized agricultural labour, dairy produce will be distributed under strict Government control. Emulation will spring up among local authorities all over the country to excel one another in the arts of rapidly acquiring and skilfully managing all industries that affect general health, and thus raising the tide of life within the bounds of their jurisdiction. With this aim broadly accomplished, the minor industries might safely be left for some time in private hands and under a competition modified in a greater degree than now by State inspection for the benefit of workers and consumers.
Among services to be made free to the public, those of transit bulk largely and should probably come first—free railway and steamship service, free tramway and cable-car service, to be followed in time by a more or less complete service of free entertainments calculated to develop art and promote a happy, joyous life.
If we cast our thoughts forward and try to realize the action and interaction of these altered social conditions upon society, we can hardly mistake the nature of the changes humanity itself will undergo. With the destruction of the frightful incubus of poverty, human hearts will no longer be wrung by anguish, bitterness, despair. With opportunity freely afforded for regular employment and its ample reward, for decent and wholesome living, and a civic life brightened by many pure pleasures, the degrading and false excitements will cease to allure. Drunkenness, vice, crime will greatly diminish. Instead of the desperate struggle for bread and all that appertains to an animal life pure and simple, a new struggle will arise—a benign, inspiring emulation to attain to and acquire the noble qualities of humanity, the distinctive characteristics of, not the lower animal, but the higher spiritual man.
Respecting the form of government in a Socialistic State, I cannot do better than quote Mr. J. A. Hobson: “A developed organic democracy will have evolved a specialized ‘head,’ an expert official class, which shall draft laws upon information that comes to them from innumerable sources through class and local representation, and shall administer the government, subject to protests similarly conveyed.” “The conditions of a really effective expert officialism are two: such real equality of educational opportunities as shall draw competent officials from the whole people; and such a growth of public intelligence and conscience as shall establish the real final control of government for society in its full organic structure.” (Contemporary Review, February, 1902.)