[38] "Principles of Economics," Vol. i., p. 786.
[39] The same is true of France. Our neighbours across the Channel have fully £1,500,000,000 invested in places outside the country.
[40] At Johannesburg on April 15th, 1905, Mr Lionel Phillips is reported to have said: "The Chinese were housed, fed and looked after better than the working population of England." It may well be.
BOOK II
TOWARDS ORGANIZATION
CHAPTER XIII
THE GOLDEN KEY
THE misdirection of labour and the waste of income can be checked if we would have it so. It is in our power, as a nation, to employ the wealth of the community for national ends and to increase abundantly the fertility of labour. It is true that we want "more trade," and it is also true that we need better use of the results of the trade that we have. The problem of poverty is neither obscure nor insoluble; its cause is clear from the extraordinary series of facts we have examined; its solution becomes equally clear when we realize what ample means of remedy we have at our command. We perceive that the chief ramifications of the social problem are but varying effects springing from one cause, the waste of labour. We realize that Poverty, in a nation of 44,000,000 persons possessing an aggregate exchange income of about £1,840,000,000, need be with us only as long as we care to tolerate it. Each social or political problem takes on a new aspect when we consider it, as we should consider it, in relation to the income of the nation and its distribution.
Unfortunately, the facts of the case have been studied by few people, and, in so far as they have been published at all, it has been in pages inaccessible to the public. Of our 44,000,000 people, it is doubtful if as many as a hundred have studied the subject matter at first hand. Even in relation to taxation, the question of distribution is rarely discussed. It is but necessary to listen to a debate on the income tax in the House of Commons to perceive that on the subject of "ability" the vaguest conceptions exist. Our most ardent reformers discuss their plans without reference to the economic framework of the society which they propose to reform. As a result, we get a vast amount of misdirected effort, a dreary outpouring of vague and empty rhetoric, a pitiful misconception on the part of the public as to the true condition of their finances, industries and commerce, and a succession of timorous proposals for reform ludicrous in relation to the nature and magnitude of the problems with which they seek to deal.
In the following pages an attempt is made to correlate the facts as to the Error of Distribution with many of the problems of government. From the standpoint that we are a people with a great income, with a clear idea as to the ill-distribution of that income and the manner in which, through the joint operations of luxury and poverty, a nation may be devitalized even while its income is growing, let us consider the means of amelioration.