A Sheaf

by John Galsworthy

What large business nowadays is not conducted as a limited company by a board of directors appointed and paid by the shareholders as trustees to produce for them a maximum of profit? What large estate is not managed by a paid agent on the same principle? And, however generous our aspirations, which of us does not know the deflecting power of trusteeship, rigidified, as it is, by law and by the sense that we are paid for the performance of a job inimical to generosity? True—the rates of wages and of rent come not under rules but under the broad heading of policy; and, in deep reality, I suspect it to be equally true that the maximum of generosity ministers in the long run to the maximum of stability and profit; nevertheless there can be no doubt whatever that the trustee system not only befogs and deadens the human relationship between employer and employed, but affords an overwhelming support to our natural instinct to take the immediate view and line of least resistance.

Broadly speaking, where there is trusteeship, as trusteeship is now understood, there is no wide view of the relation of Capital to Labour in the light of the good of Society as a whole; there is only a faithful, cold-blooded, purblind service for the benefit of a cestui que trust, who is himself freed from a sense of personal responsibility and from all apparent need for a wide and human outlook. The trustee system, if not already, will soon be universal, and I see no means of counteracting its secret, dangerous, and irritating effect on the mind of Labour, save by such process of education as shall soak the spirit of the prosperous classes with an altogether larger and saner feeling of the fundamental unity and interdependence of Society, with a good-will so vastly increased that the shareholder and cestui que trust shall no longer require the director or trustee to consider them and them alone, but bid him instead consider equally the interests of the employed. Such a mood of altruism is now, roughly speaking, absent from the minds of the prosperous classes; and to attain to it is a consummation that I fear will never come about under our present system of education.

The second influence on which I would lay great emphasis is the state of mind produced by our system of education in the young of the prosperous classes at our private and public schools, and, to a less extent, at our universities. Before dwelling on this let me suggest two truths. In life, where a fortunate person is brought into contact with one less fortunate, the first step towards cordial relationship must obviously come from the fortunate. For human nature is happily so constituted that the less fortunate feels ashamed to make advances which, liable to misconstruction, are not compatible with self-respect. Every man of any worth can test, indeed is testing, this truth continually in his own life; it cannot indeed be doubted. Again, where advances are made by the fortunate from sheer friendliness and without ulterior motive, they most certainly evoke response in the same friendly spirit from all save exceptional churls.

Now, since these primary truths concerning human nature underlie the whole question of Labour Unrest, it becomes of the first importance to consider how far the young of the prosperous classes are made actively familiar with them. How far are the legions at our private and public schools (those legions from whom the ranks of Capital are, in the main, recruited) made to understand, and—more than understand—to feel that they are fortunate, that Labour is less fortunate, that they will have to live their lives in interdependence with Labour, and that if they do not make—out of a free and fine heart make—the first advances to good-fellowship with less fortunate Labour, those advances can—by a law, and a good law, of human nature—never be made? How far are they at present brought up to see this? I would go so far as to say—hardly at all. In my day at a public school—and I have no reason at all to hope that, whatever be the exceptions, the general rule has greatly changed—the Universe was divided into ourselves and “outsiders,” “bounders,” “chaws,” “cads,” or whatever more or less offensive name best seemed to us to characterise those less fortunate than ourselves. It is true that we applied the name mainly to the lower ranks of Capital rather than to actual Labour, but this was only because we lived so far away from industrial workers that we never even thought of them. Such working folk as we actually came into personal contact with we never dreamed of associating with any such offensive thought in our minds or speech on our tongues; but, generally, the working man did not exist for us except as a person outside, remote, and almost inimical. From our homes, touched already by this class feeling, caught up from political talk by chance overheard, we went to private schools, where the teaching of manners, mainly under clerical supervision, effectually barred us from any contaminating influence; so that if by chance we encountered the “lower class” boy we burned to go for him and correct his “cheek.” Thence we were passed into the great “caste” factory, a public school, where the feeling became, by mere process of being left to itself, as set and hard as iron. It is true that a levelling process went on among the boys themselves, so that a duke’s son was no more accounted of than a stockbroker’s, but nevertheless all learned to consider themselves “the elect.” Of ten public schoolboys, seven have come from “caste-”infected homes and private schools, and have active prejudice already. The remaining three may still be open-minded or indifferent; of these, two will infallibly follow the sway of the herd instinct; one may perhaps develop a line of his own, or adhere to the influence of a home inimical to “caste,” and become a “smug” or Radical. In result, failing definite sustained effort to break up a narrow “caste” feeling, the public school presents a practically solid phalanx of the fortunate, insulated against real knowledge of, or sympathy with, the less fortunate. This phalanx marches out into the professions, into business, into the universities, where, it is true, some awaken to a sense of wider values—but not too many. From the point of view of any one who tries to see things as they are, and see them as a whole, there is something terrific about this automatic “caste” moulding of the young. And in the present condition of our country it is folly, and dangerous folly, to blink it.[^[6]]

For all my love of my old school, for all my realization of the fact that her training equips her children with certain qualities invaluable to public life and public service, I do feel that she and all her sisters are disserving the national welfare by refraining from really active and resolute attempt to destroy the bad side of “caste” feeling. They let it grow of its own momentum through the herd instinct till it blinds the eyes and blunts the feelings of those who, being fortunate, must by the laws of human nature make the first advances toward friendship with the less fortunate, if those advances are to be made at all; and must make them not because to neglect them is dangerous, but out of brotherly feeling and a real hearty wish to give all the help they can to such as are not so lucky as themselves. I do not mean that our public schools and universities are consciously refraining. They are not, and their very unconsciousness in the matter is half the danger. And I do not say that there are no masters, or dons, conscious of the danger and trying their best to remove it, but I do say there are not nearly enough. A few swallows do not make a summer.

Since, in relation to the foregoing, four objections, at all events, are bound to be made, let me make them myself, and answer them too. First: It is not the public school and ’varsity man who is lacking in sympathy and good-will towards Labour; it is the self-made capitalist, or the grammar school man. The truth is that, with exceptions, they all are lacking. But the defect is more dangerous and insidious within “the caste” than without; for not only is “the caste” homogeneous, and far more influential in every way, but it veils its lack of sympathy in this very pretension of having sympathy. Next it will be said: “You accuse us of lack of sympathy! But we would gladly be sympathetic, if they would only let us!” Now this in the main is a perfectly genuine belief in members of “the caste” when they have once gone out into life and rubbed off the rawness of youthful hostility and prejudice. But it is the genuine belief of people only passively inclined to friendship; in other words, the belief of the fortunate not imbued with a spirit sufficiently high and generous to take, from the best motives, active steps towards friendship with the less fortunate.

Further it will be said: “But Labour is not really less fortunate than ourselves—it has freedom from cares, responsibilities, and expenses, such as we can never know; in fact, we are not sure that it is not really the more fortunate class.” Well! Apart from the fact that not one in ten thousand of “the caste” would change places with an industrial worker, there is this answer: “On your hypothesis, evolution, which is ‘caste’s’ main justification, is absurd and our system is standing on its head. If, indeed, you require Labour to consider itself at least as fortunate as yourselves, you must set to work at once and revalue everything, alter every present ideal in your social life, and annul the importance of property. Are you prepared to do this?” Finally it will be objected: “It may be as you say, but the evil is implicit and inevitable, for everything possible is already done by our educational authorities to counteract a narrow ‘caste’ spirit and imbue the children of the fortunate with a brotherly feeling towards the less fortunate.” The answer to this is simply: “Has everything been done? Has anything like everything been done? For example, is the danger of this narrow ‘caste’ spirit ever taken into account in the appointment of these same educational authorities?”

Besides being “snobs” in the best sense of that word, boys are high-spirited, generous, and malleable creatures. Let any fair-minded man of “the caste” ask himself: “What sustained and really ‘felt’ effort did he encounter from his own teachers in school and college days to turn that high spirit, and generosity, and malleability of his into a state of mind that regarded his good fortune as a thing to be held in trust to share to the full with the less fortunate?” A few will answer truly: “Yes, I have met with such effort.” But how few!

Again, then, I am brought to the point of saying: There is a general absence of active and sustained effort to produce in the young of the prosperous classes this “good-will” state of mind; to change such general absence of effort into a general presence of effort is a consummation that will never, I think, be reached under our present system of education.

Both these influences, then, contributing to Social Unrest—the one produced by the increasing presence of the fiduciary element, and the other by the unchecked growth of a narrow “caste” spirit—lead us to the same prime underlying deficiency in our national life, the lack of right purpose in our education. They happen to be both incident to Capital, but it is probable that influences incident to Labour, of which I hesitate to speak, since I cannot from personal experience and feeling, may also in measure be traced to the same underlying deficiency in our education.