The idea of settling questions of this kind by international action, which was started at first from the side of the employers as a convenient obstructive, but has since been taken up with great zeal by the young German Emperor and the socialists, is obviously delusive. It ignores the possibilities of the case, for who, in the first place, is to adjust the complicated details of this international handicap, and if they were adjusted, who is to enforce them? No country is likely to be very strict in enforcing those parts of the settlement by which it lost some point of advantage, and those are the only parts for which any such settlement was wanted at all. Besides, international labour treaties are quite unnecessary. Experience all over the world shows that a short-hour State suffers nothing in the competition with a long-hour State. When Massachusetts became a ten-hour State, her manufacturers never found themselves at any disadvantage in competing with those of the neighbouring eleven-hour States of New England, and they would have still less to fear from rivals who employed, not the same Anglo-Saxon labour as they did themselves, but the less efficient labour of Germany or France. The ten-hour day was its own reward. It improved the efficiency of the workpeople to the degree where, in concert with improvements in the management, also due to the shortening of the day, the product of ten hours in Massachusetts was equal to the product of eleven elsewhere. If the same result were to follow the adoption of an eight hours day, which, however, has still to be tested by experiment, there is of course no more reason why one country should wait for another in adopting the eight hours day than in adopting the policy of free trade.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] It is only fair to this eminent man to remember that his mature opinions must not be looked for in his essay, "Ideen zu einem Versuch die Gränzen der Wirksamkeit des Staats zu bestimmen," which was written in his early youth, and never published until after its author's death. Although in this work he condemns all State education, he lived to be a famous Minister of Education himself, and to take a great part in establishing the Prussian system of public instruction.
[8] Frothingham's "W. H. Channing: a Memoir," p. 18.
[9] Roscher's "Finanz-Wissenschaft," p. 63.
[10] For proof of the position that the rate of wages is determined by the amount of production, see pp. 307-11.
CHAPTER XII. THE AGRARIAN SOCIALISM OF HENRY GEORGE.
Mr. George sent his "Progress and Poverty" into the world with the remarkable prediction that it would find not only readers but apostles. "Whatever be its fate," he says, "it will be read by some who in their heart of hearts have taken the cross of a new crusade.... The truth I have tried to make clear will not find easy acceptance. If that could be, it would have been accepted long ago. If that could be, it would never have been obscured. But it will find friends—those who will toil for it, suffer for it: if need be, die for it. This is the power of the truth" (p. 393). Mr. George's prediction is not more remarkable than its fulfilment. His work has had an unusually extensive sale; a hundred editions in America, and an edition of 60,000 copies in this country are sufficient evidences of that; but the most striking feature in its reception is precisely that which its author foretold; it created an army of apostles, and was enthusiastically circulated, like the testament of a new dispensation. Societies were formed, journals were devised to propagate its saving doctrines, and little companies of the faithful held stated meetings for its reading and exposition. It was carried as a message of consolation to the homes of labour. The author was hailed as a new and better Adam Smith, as at once a reformer of science and a renovator of society. Smith unfolded "The Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations," but to Mr. George, we were told, was reserved the greater part of unravelling "the nature and causes of the poverty of nations," and if the obsolete science of wealth had served to make England rich, the young science of poverty was at length to make her people happy with the money. Justice and Liberty were to begin their reign, and our eyes were to see—to quote Mr. George's own words—"the City of God on earth, with its walls of jasper and its gates of pearl" (p. 392).