RICHES AND POVERTY
BOOK I
THE ERROR OF DISTRIBUTION
CHAPTER I
THOUGHTS ARISING OUT OF A GREAT CONTROVERSY
DURING recent years a considerable share of the thoughts of men has been devoted to the consideration of one part of our fiscal policy,—that part which is concerned with Customs duties. In public and in private, on hundreds of platforms and in thousands of homes, the ancient issue has been debated between those who hold that Customs duties should be imposed for revenue purposes only and those who contend that Customs duties may be used as instruments with which to direct wisely the agricultural, industrial and commercial development of a nation. In the arguments which have been adduced by both sides in this controversy a large part has been taken by evidence of the prosperity or want of prosperity of the United Kingdom, as though Customs policy were the sole factor in determining the wealth and progress of a people. Blind to the fact that a wise Customs policy can at best enable a nation to make the most of its natural advantages, extreme disputants have been engaged on the one side in piling up incontestable evidences of British wealth and on the other side in producing equally incontestable evidences of British poverty. The Free Trader has revelled in import and export, shipping, banking and revenue statistics, while the Protectionist has reminded us of the existence of millions on the verge of hunger, of hundreds of thousands of paupers, and of tens if not hundreds of thousands of unemployed. The Free Trader has demonstrated that, as a whole, we are a wealthy and a prosperous people. The Protectionist has been able to throw doubt upon that wealth and prosperity chiefly because it is an indisputable fact that, whatever may be true of our accumulated wealth and total income, every British city has its slums, its paupers and its out-of-works. The Protectionist has been unable to resist the Free Trade evidence as to the magnificence of our commerce and shipping and the increasing national income recorded by the Inland Revenue Commissioners. The Free Trader has had reluctantly to admit the existence, in our wealthy country, of social disorders and masses of extreme poverty which are terrible blots upon our prosperity. If one side has dwelt almost exclusively upon signs of wealth and the other side almost exclusively upon evidences of poverty, what else could be expected when a highly complicated problem became the shuttlecock of faction? Even honest politicians become afraid to make statements which may be treated as "admissions" when party feeling runs high. The more should we welcome the notable utterance of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman at Perth on June 5th, 1903:
"But I take it (the Chamberlain policy of 'Preference') as confined to food, and it amounts to this, that the cost of the necessaries of daily life is to be raised to the people of this country in order that the Colonial producer may do more business, make larger profit, and the landowner get better rents. Now the pinch of this does not fall upon the well-to-do. It may be an inconvenience to a great number of people, but the real pinch of it falls upon a needier class altogether, who are sadly large among us. What is the population of the Colonies which I have named? About thirteen millions. This is the population who will share more or less the benefit of this new arrangement. In this country we know, thanks to the patience and accurate scientific investigations of Mr Rowntree and Mr Charles Booth, that there is about 30 per cent. of our population underfed, on the verge of hunger. Thirty per cent. of 41 millions comes to something over 12 millions—almost identical as you see with the whole population of the Colonies. So that it comes to this, that for every man in the Colonies who is benefited, one head is shoved under water in this country. I think I might set down that fact as almost enough of itself to condemn any scheme, however plausible. Surely the fact that about 30 per cent. of the population is living in the grip of perpetual poverty is, or ought to be, a sufficient answer to the Prime Minister's complacent suggestion that we can now afford to try experiments which fifty years ago were not to be thought of."
These words have been widely used as a reply to the assertion that we are a prosperous people. Their true meaning is, that while we have acquired great wealth, and enjoy a considerable national income, that wealth and that income are not so distributed as to give a sufficiency of material things to all our population. As for their use as an "argument" for Protection, we have but to turn to that land favoured of nature, the United States of America, to find records of poverty fully as distressing as our own.
Mr Robert Hunter, the American sociologist, thus summarises the poverty of the United States of America: "There are probably in fairly prosperous years no less than 10,000,000 persons in poverty; that is to say, underfed, underclothed, and poorly housed. Of these about 4,000,000 persons are public paupers. Over 2,000,000 working men are unemployed from four to six months in the year. About 500,000 male immigrants arrive yearly and seek work in the very districts where unemployment is greatest. Nearly half of the families in the country are propertyless. Over 1,700,000 little children are forced to become wage-earners when they should still be in school. About 5,000,000 women find it necessary to work, and about 2,000,000 are employed in factories, mills, etc. Probably no less than 1,000,000 workers are injured or killed each year while doing their work, and about 10,000,000 of the persons now living will, if the present ratio is kept up, die of the preventable disease, tuberculosis."
We have, then, to thank the fiscal controversy for this: In the belief that evidence of prosperity, or the reverse of prosperity, is a proof or disproof, as the case may be, of the wisdom of a particular Customs policy, we have been reminded at once of our riches and of our poverty. Through the controversy over that absurd phrase the "balance of trade," worthy landsmen have been reminded that the United Kingdom possesses half the world's seagoing ships, and poor clerks have learned with astonishment that our oversea investments produce over £100,000,000 of profits per annum. The unemployed workman, drawing from his beneficent trade union the small allowance with which his own thrift has provided him, and which barely keeps the wolf from his door, has learned that our imports of food—"chiefly from foreign countries"—are worth £200,000,000 per annum. Millions—other people's millions—have become common objects of the newspaper column, and it is probable that a great part of our population is now acquainted with the fact that the gross income brought under the review of the Income Tax Commissioners is about £1,000,000,000 per annum. It has also, alas, become familiar that our Poor Law expenditure reaches £17,000,000 a year, and that, even in our best years of trade, many of our skilled workmen are denied the means of earning their livelihood. While demonstrating our prosperity the good Free Trader has paused to write a cheque for a West Ham Distress Fund, or subscribed some shillings for a children's slum party.
The object of these pages is to help the reader to form an accurate idea of the distribution of the wealth which results from our industries and commerce. 44,000,000 people in the United Kingdom work to produce certain commodities, and a part of this output is exchanged for commodities produced in other lands. We produce, we export, and we import, and our home production increased by our imports and decreased by our exports constitutes a great income which is divided up amongst us in such manner that some of us are rich and some of us are poor. Let us endeavour to make concrete our ideas on the subject of riches and poverty, that we make quite sure what we mean when we speak of the wealth and prosperity of the United Kingdom.