Your pay envelope

by John Richard Meader

The soap-box orator informs you that under Socialism all industry will be owned collectively and will be conducted in the interests of the workers exclusively. What does the worker imagine that this means? He pictures himself as a part owner of the factory in which he works. He sees himself dividing the profits of that manufacturing concern with the 50 or 100 or 500 persons now constituting the working force of the establishment. Believing that this is what Socialism promises to do for him, he becomes interested immediately. Naturally the soap-box orator doesn’t try to correct this impression.

Sydney Webb, however, tells a different story. He knows that Socialism does not intend to do anything of this kind. Turn to “Fabian Tract No. 51” (p. 16), and you will read the following:

“The whole of our creed is that industry should be carried on, not for the profit of those engaged in it, whether masters or men, but for the benefit of the community. We recognize no special right in the miners as such to enjoy the mineral wealth on which they work. The Leicester boot operatives can put in no special claim to the profits of the Leicester boot factory, nor the shop-man in the co-operative store for the surplus of its year’s trading. It is not for the miners, bootmakers, or shop-assistants, as such, that we Socialists claim the control and the profits of industry, but for the citizens.”

This is quite a different proposition, isn’t it? Socialism doesn’t mean that you are to be permitted to turn the factory in which you work into a profit-producing concern for your own benefit. It does mean, however, that the profit produced by all the concerns in the entire country shall be lumped together, and, after all the losses and necessary charges have been deducted, the sum left shall be divided among all the people—a system under which you would receive one-fifty, one-seventy or one-ninety millionth part, according to the population of the nation.

This puts the matter in a less attractive light, but we have by no means fully disclosed the iniquity of those who are trying to fool the voters with false promises. Let us now try to find out what charges must be deducted from the total profits before this division can be made.

Not all businesses are to-day successful. Some of them fail because the people do not buy the articles which it was expected they would buy, and it is quite possible that such mistakes might be made under Socialism. It is entirely probable that some kind of mistakes would be made, and that there would be approximately as great a proportion of losses with collective management as we now have under individual management. These items would, of course, have to be deducted before the division of profits could be effected.

The Socialists claim that a large part of the profits of which the worker is robbed, goes to meet the expenses of rent and interest, two factors that would not have to be considered in the Co-operative Commonwealth. They do not seem to take into account the fact that the money applied to rent, interest and profit is not stored away, or otherwise taken out of circulation, even to-day. The greater part of this sum finds its way back to industry by providing for extensions in business, renewals of machinery, enlargements of factories, and the establishment of new industries.

There are items of expense that we cannot dodge even under Socialism. Factories and machinery do not last forever. New methods must constantly be adopted. An ever-increasing popular demand necessitates an extension of manufacturing facilities. Do the Socialists expect us to believe that, on the establishment of the Co-operative Commonwealth, everything will be income and there will be no outlay—all profit and no expenses?

Then we must provide for the payment of the huge army of Socialist officials, for there will be practically no end to the number of overseers, superintendents, clerks, bookkeepers, auditors, cashiers, and statisticians—to say nothing of the host of minor officials—all of whom will have to be paid at the same rate, to say the least, as the laborers.

In talking about this kind of workers to-day, the Socialist agitator is very apt to dub them a “non-producing class.” If you will examine Socialist statistics carefully, you will find that the statisticians almost invariably omit to consider the amount paid such workers as an item of expense; that they are even likely to include the sum represented by these salaries in the profits of the employing class. Should the time ever come when the Socialists themselves are called upon to provide the pay-roll for the nation, they will discover that the directive and executive workers, and all the persons employed to carry out their part of the program, will call for the expenditure of a tremendous sum of money. Tremendous as this amount would be to-day, however, the present outlay for this purpose would be but a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of the system that Socialism would have to establish.