Riches and Poverty (1910)

by L. G. Chiozza Money

As I have already said, it is commonly recognized that such a function as a tramway or water supply must of necessity be a monopoly, public or private, if its working is to be economical. It is not difficult to show that the control of the production and distribution of all articles of common use must be unified if labour is not to be wasted. Just as one water main and one alone is needed for the service of a row of houses, so, to use a familiar illustration, one vehicle and one alone is needed to supply the same row of houses with milk. If a number of milk-sellers are competing for the custom of one small neighbourhood, as is usually the case, a quite considerable number of able-bodied men, boys and animals are engaged in unnecessarily traversing the same streets, one after the other, to do the work which could be performed with much more ease, certainty and expedition by a fraction of their number. Each of the small tradesmen has to keep a set of accounts demanding his own attention or that of his wife or clerk. Each milk dealer, again, has his separate supply of milk from the railway station, sent by some farmer at a distance. Each of these doses of milk is the subject of a separate transaction, wasting labour at both ends of the journey and in transit. From first to last, the process is clumsy and tedious, wasting labour at every stage. The waste is precisely of the same nature as would occur if several water companies supplied a certain street with water and had their mains running side by side. There would be just as much absurdity, and no more, in serving my road by four water-mains as in serving it by the four milk chariots which now pay it such frequent visits.

And to pursue this useful illustration a little further there is another analogy between a water supply and a milk supply which should not be forgotten. The importance of pure milk is not less than the importance of pure water. The milk supply of towns is derived from a thousand tainted sources, the precise nature of which is unknown both to the consumers and to the milk dealers. I fear we should drink less milk if we could see the handling of it—the literal handling of it—from the start. I have a lively recollection of the last milking operation I witnessed. Suffice it to say that I agreed, afterwards, that the butter made on the farm looked to be very fine butter, and that I was entirely satisfied with an ocular demonstration of its many virtues. As is pointed out by Dr G. F. McCleary, the Battersea Medical Officer of Health,[57] "if large towns want clean milk they must not look to outside authorities to get it for them." The ordinary milk farmer is a conservative creature who does not appreciate the "faddist" with his demands for a clean milker and a clean cow. A dirty person draws milk from a dirty animal into a dirty receptacle, and tons of manure come to London with the morning milk. Dr Leslie Mackenzie, Medical Officer of the Local Government Board for Scotland,[58] thus describes the process:

"To watch the milking of cows is to watch a process of unscientific inoculation of a pure (or almost pure) medium with unknown quantities of unspecified germs.... Whoever knows the meaning of aseptic surgery must feel his blood run cold when he watches, even in imagination, the thousand chances of germ inoculation. From cow to cow the milker goes, taking with her (or him) the stale epithelium of the last cow, the particles of dirt caught from the floor, the hairs, the dust, and the germs that adhere to them.... Everywhere, throughout the whole process of milking, the perishable, superbly nutrient liquid receives its repeated sowings of germinal and non-germinal dirt. In an hour or two its population of triumphant lives is a thing imagination boggles at. And this in good dairies! What must it be where cows are never groomed, where hands are only accidentally washed, where heads are only occasionally cleaned, where spittings (tobacco or other) are not infrequent, where the milker may be a chance-comer from some filthy slum—where, in a word, the various dirts of the civilized human, are at every hand reinforced by the inevitable dirts of the domesticated cow? Are these exaggerations? They are not. I could name many admirable byres where these conditions are, in a greater or less degree, normal."

There is but one way to obtain clean and pure milk and at the same time to secure economy of labour in its production and distribution coupled with adequate remuneration of the labour so economized, and that is the way of public ownership. The municipality should conduct the entire operation of milk supply. By so doing it would prolong the lives of its citizens, save the lives of many infants, and add to its revenue.

A public milk supply, even in relation to the food of adults, is an urgent need. When considered in relation to infantile mortality the question is seen to be a vital one. All medical officers of health are at one on the point. We must have municipal milk depots if the children are to be saved, and if we supply milk for children and nursing mothers we may as well enlarge our basis of operations and make the milk service, like the water service, a complete municipal monopoly.

Thus organized, another great service would be lifted out of the sphere of bargaining and chicanery and adulteration. In another industry the waste of labour would cease. In another trade men would work with intent to serve, and cease to hunt profits at the cost of their bodies and souls.

The case for the municipalization of the milk supply is a very forcible one, but it is not more so than that for the public ownership of other common services. The point as to waste of labour in production or distribution largely affects them all. The dangers of adulteration and dirt touch not milk alone, but the manufacture and distribution of every commodity. Commercialism has undermined honesty. Sham, shoddy and make-believe—these are erected in the form of houses, sewn up in the form of suits, packed in tins to mock children as food, made the sole occupation of millions of quite honest people. If honesty of production is to be regained, the great services must pass, one by one, under public control, and as each passes another opportunity for the amassing of private fortunes will pass away and another factor in the Error of Distribution will be cancelled. The best services at low charges for the public will be accompanied by ample but not excessive remuneration of management, a proper reward and short hours for the privates of industry, and the accumulation of just so much profit in the public treasury as may be deemed necessary to provide for new capital, contingencies, or for public non-revenue services. Thus, and thus alone, can we raise the status of the mass of the people and prevent the congestion of wealth in a few hands. There can be no proper diffusion of wealth until we have ended the system by which good and bad employers use the lives of the multitude for their profit and pleasure, now working them arduously in exchange for a payment which is an unfair remuneration of the service, and anon refusing them even the opportunity to do hard labour.

The remarkable success of municipal trading, so far, may be measured by the bitterness of the attacks which have been made upon it by private capitalists. The recent complaints of the railway companies as to the competition of municipal tramways entirely dispose of the theory that private enterprise alone can ensure economical management and an efficient production. It is argued that public bodies cannot obtain faithful service from their employees, and that businesses managed by them are bound to fail because the men in command do not understand the interests they seek to control or the methods of industry. Capital, it is represented, is bound to be wasted, and the tax-payer certain to suffer in pocket as part proprietor of an unsuccessful business, even as he suffers also as a consumer of his own poor product. In reply it is only necessary to point out that there is nothing which can be urged against a trading municipality which cannot also be urged against a limited liability company. In the latter case, as in the former, the shareholders know nothing of the details of the business they own. In each there is a governing body which in its turn usually knows little of the technicalities of the business undertaken. Thus the chairman of a well-known steel company is a solicitor. The boards of directors of the majority of our leading limited companies are composed of men who are strangers to the businesses they "direct." In practice management devolves upon the Managing Director, who is usually a man well versed in his trade or profession. We see, therefore, that a limited liability company, after all, is in precisely the same position as a municipality. The private monopolists are compelled to find a practical man to manage their business and make profits for them. That is precisely what the municipality does. As a matter of fact, some of the cleverest men in the United Kingdom are serving municipalities as advising and managing engineers, instead of hiring themselves out to some board of directors.

What do railway directors, for example, know of railway management? Do they travel on their own line, note its deficiencies, and repair them? Do they take a practical hand in its affairs? No. The practical management is in the hands of certain paid servants, goods managers, general managers, locomotive superintendents, and so forth. Is it seriously argued that an individual engineer, as locomotive superintendent of a private railway company, is more efficient than he would be in the service of say the London County Council? If so, how does it come about that the railway companies are losing trade while the L.C.C. trams are crowded? If so, how is it that to travel on the South Eastern Railway is a martyrdom, while to travel on a L.C.C. tram is a pleasure?

It will be seen on reflection that the only difference between the company and the municipality is this. In the case of the company the qualification of the directors is merely the owning of stock or shares in the undertaking, and the perfunctory votes of a few shareholders. In the case of the municipality the "director" has to secure the suffrages of a great body of his fellow-citizens. As for nepotism, it is far more common in private trade than in public life in this country. In nearly every private business some inefficient son or cousin or nephew is "provided for," to the loss of the undertaking. Competitive industry is full of square men carefully planted in round holes by their friends and relatives.[59] In the municipal service there are fewer wasters than are to be found connected with great limited liability companies. As for waste of capital, it is common in private business, and its loss is as real to the community, from an economic point of view, as the loss of capital by a municipality. As for negligence and theft, these are common in all kinds of business undertakings, but as a general rule audit and control are stricter in municipal trading than in the case of private companies. As for cheerful service, the reader has but to compare the servants of municipal tramways with those of any private omnibus company. My own experience is that it is the municipal servant who is the more civil and obliging. Perhaps it is because the municipality gives him better wages, shorter hours, and a decent coat. As for the product of the machine, the London County Council gives the public longer rides for the same fares while paying its men better. Thus the share of the product which once went to swell private fortunes is distributed, and by so much the Error of Distribution is reduced.