Riches and Poverty (1910)

by L. G. Chiozza Money

Even those who have striven to hold fast the curious faith that civilization comes, not through collective service, but through individual strife, are constrained to admit that much waste is going on. It is noteworthy that Sir Robert Giffen, in one of his last essays on Taxation, said:[66]

"When the proportion (of income appropriated by the state) becomes one-tenth or less it is doubtful whether the state can do best for its subjects by making the proportion still lower, that is, by abandoning one tax after another, or whether equal or greater advantage would not be gained by using the revenue for wise purposes under the direction of the state, such as great works of sanitation, or water supply or public defence. In other words, when taxes are very moderate and the revenue appropriated by the state is a small part only of the aggregate of individual incomes, it seems possible that individuals in a rich country may waste individually resources which the state could apply to very profitable purposes. The state, for instance, could perhaps more usefully engage in some great works, such as establishing reservoirs of water for the use of town populations on a systematic plan, or making a tunnel under one of the channels between Ireland and Great Britain, or a sea-canal across Scotland between the Clyde and the Forth, or purchasing land from Irish landlords and transferring it to tenants, than allow money to fructify or not fructify, as the case may be, in the pockets of individuals. Probably there are no works more beneficial to a community in the long run than those like a tunnel between Ireland and Great Britain, which open an entirely new means of communication of strategical as well as commercial value, but are not likely to pay the individual entrepreneur within a short period of time."

Here we have a reflection of the uneasy feeling that all is not well in the disposition of the income of the community. Very true it is that "individuals in a rich country may waste individually resources which the State could apply to very profitable purposes." Even were the means by which "Captain Roland fills his purse" moral, we should need to look to Captain Roland's expenditure. The effects of the robbery do not end with the impoverishment of the despoiled. The despoiler proceeds to spend the contents of his fat purse, and in spending he buys bodies and souls, and builds up vested interests in degrading occupations.

In the foregoing pages I have pointed both to mere palliatives of existing evils and to real remedies which go to the root of things. Our attempts to reform, our strivings towards organization, must in practice have regard both to palliatives and to remedies. We have to keep in mind both the impoverished and sometimes degraded creatures which are effects of past and existing causes, while dealing drastically and radically with the causes themselves. At present the greater part of the labours of social reformers are directed to dealing with a succession of distressful effects. Here are slums; how shall we rehouse their inmates? Here are paupers; what shall we do with them? Here are unemployed; how shall we keep them going until they find employers? Here are aged poor; can we, should we, give them pensions? We owe a present duty in all these and many other matters. The effects must be dealt with and ameliorated. It is beyond question that there is a clear call to succour the aged, to care for the weak, to aid poor women in their time of trouble. The sufferer, the affected individual, the disease, must be dealt with. But ever we must keep before us the causes which bring into being the raw material of our social problems; ever we must have clear vision of the crime of poverty in a wealthy country; ever we must seek to come to grips with the original sin.

To deal with causes we must strike at the Error of Distribution by gradually substituting public ownership for private ownership of the means of production. In no other way can we secure for each worker in the hive the full reward of his labour. So long as between the worker and his just wage stands the private landlord and the private capitalist, so long will poverty remain, and not poverty alone, but the moral degradations which inevitably arise from the devotion of labour to the service of waste. So long as the masses of the people are denied the fruit of their own labour, so long will our civilization be a false veneer, and our every noble thoroughfare be flanked by purlieus of shame.

There is already a beginning made. A few hundred millions have been applied as public capital in the ownership by many municipalities of such services as tramways, gasworks, and waterworks. As we saw in our examination of the national wealth, such capital is yet but a tiny fraction of the whole, and it still bears a great mortgage and pays interest to private hands. That interest, in process of time, will disappear through the operation of sinking funds, and then, as to certain services, the community will enter into its own with no tribute to pay to private usurers. From the small beginnings made we must seek to advance, nor need we be deterred by those who implore us to hasten slowly. If Rome was not built in a day, Washington was built in not many days, and the factory system itself is little more than a century old. The lapse of a single generation might see well advanced the building of our new city.

It would be a great pity if anyone were to imagine that the changes necessary to secure the just reward of all forms of labour are either difficult to effect or likely to cause dislocation in the making. As has been pointed out, the greater number of our industrial concerns are already shaped in the form of limited liability companies, the shareholders in which are dumb, while the management is in the hands of paid officials. In 1902-3, while private firms were assessed to Income Tax on £193,000,000, public companies were assessed on £239,000,000. In 1907-8 the respective figures were £183,000,000 and £259,000,000. The re-shaping proceeds apace. The reform which needs to be effected is to substitute the community at large for the dumb shareholders. Management, ability, invention, would be properly rewarded, as they are now rewarded in some cases, and as they are not now rewarded in many cases. The only change would be the gradual substitution of the community for the shareholders, and the consequent disappearance of unearned incomes. Such portions of the product as were necessary for application as new capital would be so applied by the community. For the rest, the whole of the product would go to labour. Saving, the necessary saving, without which labour would go without tools, would be simply and automatically effected, and capital would take its true and rightful place as the handmaiden of labour.

Let us not go further without a vision and a hope. That vision, that hope, is not of a regimented society, but of a community relieved from nine-tenths of its present irksome routine and carking care. If the individual is to be set free it can only be in a society so organized as to reduce the labour employed in the production of common necessaries to a minimum. That minimum cannot be secured without the organization of each of the great branches of production and distribution. Common needs can be satisfied with little labour if labour be properly applied. The work of a few will feed a hundred or supply exquisite cloth for the clothing of fifty. The work for a few hours per day of every adult member of the community will be ample to supply every comfort in each season to all. Thus set free, the lives of men will turn to the uplifting, individual work which is the pride of the craftsman. The dwellings of men will contain not only the socialized products within common reach, but the proud individual achievements of their inmates. The simple and beautiful clothing of the community will chiefly be made of fabrics woven in the socialized factories, but it will often be worked by the loving hands of women. A happy union of labour economized in routine work and labour lavished upon individual work will uplift the crafts of the future and the character of those who follow them. The abominations of machine-made ornament will disappear, and art be wedded to everyday life. Each new invention to save labour in mining, or tilling, or building, or spinning, will be hailed with joy as a release from toil and a gift of more time in which to do individual work. The inventor, the originator, now unhappily compelled to hunt for a capitalist and bow low his genius before some individual distinguished only for that gift of acquisitiveness, that business ability, which is the lowest attribute of mankind, will see his idea put to the test and reap not unholy gains, but the honour of his fellows if it is not found wanting. The painter, no longer compelled to paint the portraits of the rich and not necessarily beautiful, will ally his gifts with the common life of men and be carried in triumph before the enduring monuments of his genius. The organizer, the man of arrangement, will be invited to exercise his talent, not in over-reaching and despoiling his fellows, but in planning their welfare in a thousand new schemes of development. No host of wasteful workers will be found in the industrial camp. Accounts will be simple and clerks few. No travellers, agents or touts will be needed to push doubtful commodities. The sham and the substitute will be found only in museums. It will be obviously ridiculous to employ any but good materials, for labour can only be economized by producing the things which are the best of their kind. Policies of insurance, those typical documents of a community of prey, will be read in the public archives with much the same feelings as we now read a warrant for the burning of a Bruno. The young men who now waste their time in ruling up books in banks and insurance offices or in serving writs will find manly and useful work. The production of commodities will be commensurate with the labour put forth, unemployment will be one of the few crimes known to the statute-book, and last, but not least, the economic dependence of woman will cease.

The attainment of such ends will only be difficult as long as we refuse to apply scientific methods to the ordering of common affairs. It is in the domain of politics alone that men refuse to apply first principles to the solution of problems. The mental daring which has accomplished so much in engineering, in astronomy, in surgery, in every department of science, is replaced in the sphere of politics by a timorous tinkering with admitted evils. With things the scientist has worked marvels in a single century. With those marvels the politician has done little. The scientist has applied his skill to locomotion; the politician has refused to avail himself of that skill in order to distribute the population healthily. The scientist has stated the conditions of health; the politician has refused to create those conditions. The scientist has supplied the tools; the politician has neglected to take them up.

The problem of riches and poverty is of the simplest. It presents none of the difficulties which attach to the measurement of the mass of the sun, or the treatment of such a disease as cancer. Science has presented us with such instruments that we can easily create a tremendous superfluity of commodities if we choose to do so. We know how to produce; we know how to transport the results of our production. The appliances at our command, wielded by the labour of 44,000,000 people, could furnish many more foot-tons of work than are needed to give proper housing, suitable clothing and good food to every unit of the community. There is here no impenetrable secret; we have read enough in the book of Nature to control her forces to effect; our power of production is not too small, but already greater than our need. As I have pointed out in an earlier page, if invention went no further if science now came to a standstill, we should have tools more than adequate to abolish poverty.