Is this conception too large for a race which talks of Empire? In the United States there is a private trust which was organized by a single individual with a capital of 1,000,000,000 dollars—a trust which owns territory, mines, railways, steamships and mills, and supports 1,000,000 people. Business transactions are growing greater, and must greater grow, for the world cannot afford to peddle with its resources. The future is with the men who realize that it is not more difficult to think in millions than in thousands. Within the last few years we have spent on a war with a small people £250,000,000 in the name of Empire. £250,000,000 is the price of one-fourth of the entire area of the Mother Country. It is high time for a little Imperial thinking in the home market.
[52] These facts are summarized from the Census Reports.
[53] See his excellent "Forestry in the United Kingdom."
CHAPTER XVIII
ORGANIZATION
IT has already been remarked in these pages that quite inadequate numbers of persons are engaged in the production of many useful articles. This would be true even if all the individuals enumerated as producers in the census returns were fully employed upon existing plant and under their existing managers. As a matter of fact, they are not fully employed. Unemployment or short time always exists in greater or less degree. Between inadequate numbers and inadequate employment of those numbers the quantity of ponderable commodities produced in the United Kingdom is so small, as we have seen, that only a small fraction of our people are well housed or well clothed. A great multitude craves for satisfaction of elementary needs, while a host of shopkeepers wait hungrily for customers who cannot buy.
In the nineteenth century enormous strides were made in the invention of machinery and labour-saving appliances and methods, and now, at the opening of the twentieth century, we possess means more than ample for the satisfaction of all. If invention now came to a standstill, we could, with such science as we now command, produce, or obtain by exchange for our production, far more food, houses, clothes, furniture and other commodities than we actually need, and this while our population enjoyed ample leisure in which to develop their higher faculties.
What, then, is at fault? Not only do the majority of our men work arduously, but an immense army of women and young children are also engaged in production and distribution. Of the population of England and Wales between the ages of 20 and 55 only 179,946 males and 823,135 unmarried females figured in the Census of 1901 as "without specific occupations." What is the explanation, then, of an insufficient and ill-distributed production? The answer can be given in a few words. It is want of organization which leads to such poor results from so much hard labour. A poor stream of ponderable commodities filters through thousands of unnecessary channels, and becomes the subject of many strange services, each of which claims and gets some sort of reward. By the enumeration of each of these services the total income which we examined at the beginning of this book is made up. The Error of Distribution of the national income connotes a wasteful and inadequate production.
Waste in actual production is still exceedingly great. In only a minority of cases are factories equipped with the best plant and appliances. Model factories, in which the most economical production is attained, are still exceptional. There are tens of thousands of small employers who lack the capital properly to equip their establishments, and who perforce waste labour.
That is to speak of production as a whole, without reference to the nature of the goods produced, but when we come to analyse the product, waste is everywhere apparent. Labour, to be economically employed, should produce only genuine articles, capable of application for a considerable period to the purpose which they are designed to serve. As we know only too well, a very great part of our manufacturing output is of articles which make-believe, and it is only a small fraction of production in any branch of industry which is the best of its kind. Our competitive system is largely an endeavour to make profits out of the sale of trashy articles, the production of which wastes alike the labour engaged in making them and the labour for which they are exchanged. It is difficult to say which is more pitiable, the waste of labour upon rubbish designed for the consumption of the poor, or the waste of labour upon luxuries designed for the consumption of the rich.