Practicable Socialism: Essays on Social Reform

by S. A. Barnett; Mrs. S. A. Barnett

In this Whitechapel Union there is no out-relief, and ‘charity’ is given only to those who, by their forethought or their self-sacrifice, awaken those feelings of respect and gratitude which find a natural expression in giving and receiving presents. The result has not disappointed our hope. The poor have learnt to help themselves, and have found self-help a stronger bond by which to keep the home together than the dole of the relieving officer or of the district visitor. The rates have been saved 6,000l. a year, and that sum remains in the pockets of ratepayers to be spent as wages for work, and by the new system of relief the poor are not only more independent but distinctly richer. The old system of relief has been conquered, and the result we desired has been won. What is that result? With what a state of things does the new system leave us face to face?

We find ourselves face to face with the labourer earning 20s. a week. He has but one room for himself, his wife, and their family of three or four children. By self-denial, by abstinence from drink, by daily toil, he and his wife are able to feed and clothe the children. Pleasure for him and for them is impossible; he cannot afford to spend a sixpence on a visit to the park, nor a penny on a newspaper or a book. Holidays are out of the question, and he must see those he loves languish without fresh air, and sometimes without the doctor’s care, though air and care are necessities of life. The future does not attract his gaze and give him restful hours; as he thinks of ‘the years that are before’ he cannot think of a time when work will be done, and he will be free to go and come and rest as he will. In the labourer’s future there are only the workhouse and the grave. He hardly dares to think at all, for thought suggests that to-morrow a change in trade or a master’s whim may throw him out of work and leave him unable to pay for rent or for food. The labourers—and it is to be remembered that they form the largest class in the nation—have few thoughts of joy and little hope of rest; they are well off if in a day they can obtain ten hours of the dreariest labour, if they can return to a weather-proof room, if they can eat a meal in silence while the children sleep around, and then turn into bed to save coal and light; they are well off indeed, only because they are stolid and indifferent. Their lives all through the days and years slope into a darkness which is not ‘quieted by hope.’

If the wages be 40s. a week the condition is still one to depress those who on Sunday bless God for their creation. The skilled artisan, having paid rent and club money and provided household necessaries, has no margin out of which to provide for pleasure, for old age, or even for the best medical skill. There can be for him no quiet hours with books or pictures, while his children or friends make music for his solace. He can invite no friends for a Christmas dance; he can wander in the thought of no future of pleasure or of rest. England is the land of sad monuments. The saddest monument is, perhaps, ‘the respectable working man,’ who has been erected in honour of Thrift. His brains, which might have shown the world how to save men, have been spent in saving pennies; his life, which might have been happy and full, has been dulled and saddened by taking ‘thought for the morrow.’

This ought not so to be, and this will not always be. The question therefore naturally occurs, ‘Why should not the State provide what is needed?’ This is the question to which the Socialist is ready with many a response. Some of his suggestions, even if good, are impracticable. It may be urged, for instance, that relief works should be started, that State workshops should be opened, and starvation made impossible. Or it may be urged that the land should be nationalised and large incomes divided. To such suggestions, and to many like them, it is a sufficient answer that they are impracticable. Their attainment, even were it desirable, is not within measurable distance, and to press them is likely to distract attention from what is possible. If a boy who goes out ‘in the interest of the fox’ can spoil a hunt by dragging a herring across the scent, a well-meaning socialist may hinder reform by drawing a fair fancy across the line of men’s imagination. All real progress must be by growth; the new must be a development of the old, and not a branch added on from another root. A change which does not fit into and grow out of things that already exist is not a practicable change, and such are some of the changes now advocated by socialists upon platforms. The condition of the people is one not to be long endured, but the answer to the question, ‘What can the State do?’ must be a practicable one, or we shall waste time, make mistakes, rouse up anarchy, and destroy much that is good.

Facing, then, the whole position, we see that among the majority of Englishmen life is poor; that among the few life is made rich. The thoughts stored in books, the beauty rescued from nature and preserved in pictures, the intercourse made possible by means of steam locomotion, stir powers in the few which lie asleep in the many. If it be true, as the poet says, that men ‘live by admiration,’ it is the few who live, for it is they who know that which is worth admiration.

It seems a hard thing—but I believe that it is on the line of truth—to say that the dock labourer cannot live the life of Christ; he may, by loving and trusting, live a higher life than that lived by many rich men, but he cannot live the highest life possible to men of this time. To live the life of Christ is to make manifest the truth and to enjoy the beauty of God. The labourer who knows nothing of the law of life which has been revealed by the discoveries of science, who knows nothing which, by admiration, can lift him out of himself, cannot live the highest life of his day, as Christ lived the highest life of His day. The social reformer must go alongside the Christian missionary, if he be not himself the Christian missionary.

Facing, then, the whole position, we see first the poverty of life which besets the majority of the people, and further we recognise that the remedy must be one which shall be practicable, and shall not affect the sense of independence. It is difficult to state any principle which such remedy should follow. If it be said that men’s needs, not their wants, may be supplied by others’ help, then it is necessary to set up an arbitrary definition and to define wants as those good things which a man recognises to be necessary for his life, and needs as those good things the good of which is unseen by the individual to whose well-being, in the interests of the whole, they are necessary. Food and clothing would thus be an example of a man’s wants, education of his needs; and it might, according to this definition, be a statement of a principle to say that the remedy for the sadness of English labour is to be sought in letting the State provide for a man’s needs while he is left to provide for his own wants. It is, however, a statement which, depending on an arbitrary and shifting definition, would not be understood. If, as another statement of a principle, it be said that means of life may be provided, while for means of livelihood a man must work, then it becomes difficult to draw a distinction, for some means of life are also means of livelihood. There is no principle as yet stated according to which limits of State interference may be defined.

The better plan is to consider the laws which are accepted as laws of England, and to study how, by their development, a remedy may be found. On the statute book there are many socialistic laws. The Poor Law, the Education Act, the Established Church, the Land Act, the Artisans’ Dwellings Act, and the Libraries Act are socialistic.

The Poor Law provides relief for the destitute and medical care for the poor. By a system of outdoor relief it has won the condemnation of many who care for the poor, and see that outdoor relief robs them of their energy, their self-respect, and their homes. There is no reason, however, why the Poor Law should not be developed in more healthy ways. Pensions of 8s. or 10s. a week might be given to every citizen who had kept himself until the age of 60 without workhouse aid. If such pensions were the right of all, none would be tempted to lie to get them, nor would any be tempted to spy and bully in order to show the undesert of applicants. So long as relief is a matter of desert, and so long as the most conscientious relieving officers are liable to err, there must be mistakes both on the side of indulgence and of neglect. The one objection to out-relief, which is at present recognised by the poor, is that the system puts it in the power of the relieving officer to act as judge in matters of which he must be ignorant, so that he gives relief to the careless or crafty and passes over those who in self-respect hide their trouble. Pensions, too, it may be added, would be no more corrupting to the labourer who works for his country in the workshop than for the civil servant who works for his country at the desk, and the cost of pensions would be no greater than is the cost of infirmaries and almshouses. In one way or another the old and the poor are now kept by those who are richer, and the present method is not a cheap one.

Many men and women fail because they do not know how to work. The workhouses might be made schools of industry. If the ignorant could be detained in workhouses until they had learnt the use of a tool and the pleasure of work, these establishments would become technical schools of the kind most needed, and yearly add a large sum to the wealth of the nation.