Unfortunately the politicians and the economists have never discussed the question of poverty from this point of view. They have found men buying and selling, and as buyers and sellers hunting for profits they have discussed them. Volumes have been written on such subjects as "rent," "interest," or "value," but nothing has been done to inquire how much work is needed to feed, clothe and house a community, and how best that work may be accomplished. In designing an engine, the man of science considers the work to be done and the known means to do it. Is it too much to ask that in ordering the affairs of a nation, statesmen should consider the quantity of commodities needed to give material happiness and the known means to produce and distribute them? To make the best use of our energies, to profit fully by the discoveries and inventions of the living and the dead, we must come to a common agreement as to the work which needs to be done and determine that that work shall be accomplished. For want of that agreement and determination, for want, that is, of a wise collectivism, the greater number of our people are poor.
It is probable that the earliest readers of this book will be of those who, like myself, are amongst the favoured few whose work brings them pleasure and the means of happiness. To these the first appeal. Is it a good thing, is it an honourable thing, to be one of the few whose bark is borne upon the waters of wretchedness, whose fortunes float upon a sea of unfathomable depths of despair? Look downwards and you shall see monsters that once were human, frailties that once were women, devils that once were children. These are the product of the individual strife in which it is not always the noblest thing to succeed, but in which it is ever a terrible thing to fail. Is success worth having which is purchased at such a price?
The last appeal shall be to the poor. It is no escape from labour which the thinking man offers the people. There are no honourable avenues to ease and luxury in the organization which would abolish poverty. It is a world of service which a civilization would substitute for a world of serfdom and pain. But if, realizing that the world has no room for the idle, the people would rise to a freedom only bounded by the knowledge of, and necessity for, collective decision, then there is the broadest avenue for hope and the clearest call to action. The achievements of those who are gone, these are the inheritance of the people. The only true riches of the nation, men and women, these are the people themselves. The people have but to will it, and we set our faces towards a civilization.
[62] "Deaths from Starvation or Accelerated by Privation (London)." Issued Sept. 14th, 1904.
[63] Quoted from Dudley Baxter's "The National Income," by kind permission of the publishers, Messrs Macmillan & Co.
[64] In saying this Dudley Baxter committed one of the few errors which can properly be laid to his charge. See Chapter 19.
[65] "Usury," a preface re-published in "On the Old Road."
[66] "Encyclopædia Britannica," Volume 33, page 200.