Practicable Socialism, New Series

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

There are, it must be evident, few signs of rational enjoyment in the vastly increased pleasure-seeking of to-day. The people crowd into the country, but only a few people find anything in nature which is theirs. They pass by the memorials of great men and great events, and seldom feel a thrill of national pride. They wander aimlessly, helplessly through museums and picture-galleries, the things they see calling out little response in their minds. They have a limited and often perverted taste for music, and have so little conversation that on holidays they are silent or shout senseless songs. They get a short-lived excitement out of sport, so that for a whole countryside the event of a year is a football match and the chief interest of a Press recording the affairs of the Empire is the betting news. The recreations of the people and their Bank Holiday pleasures, at a time when the universal mind is stirring with a consciousness of new capacity, and the world is calling more loudly than ever that its good things should be enjoyed, give cause for some anxiety. Where there is no rational enjoyment there is likely to be discontent and mischief.

The people cannot enjoy themselves so as to satisfy their nature because of poverty. They began to work before they had time to enjoy learning and before they had become conscious of their capacities and tastes. They have been crushed from their youth upwards by the necessity of earning a livelihood, and have never had the leisure to look at the beautiful world in which they have been placed. They have from their childhood been caught in the industrial machine, and have been swept away from the things which as men and women they were meant to enjoy. They have been too poor to find their pleasure in hope or in memory, enough for them if they have been able to snatch at the present and passing excitement.

Poverty is the enemy of rational enjoyment, and it also prevents the freedom which has pride in self-government. The people cannot be said to be keen to take a part in the government of their country, they are almost ready to accept a despot if they could secure for themselves more health and comfort. There is evident failure to grasp great principles in politics, and a readiness to accept in their stead a popular cry. Parties are judged by their promises, and national interests are often put below private interests; motives which are untrue to human nature are charged against opponents, and the “mob spirit” has an easy victory over individual judgment. The votes of the people may be at any moment fatal to the commonwealth.

Poverty is to a large extent the cause of this weakness in self-government and of the consequent danger to the nation. People whose minds have been crushed under the daily anxiety about the daily bread have little thought for any object but “how to live,” and thus they are apt to lose the power of vision. They see money as the only good, and they are disposed to measure beauty, tradition, and work in its terms. The pictures of “the happy homes of England” and the tales of her greatness have for them little meaning. “What are our homes that we should fight for them?” “What has England done for us?” The welfare of the nation is nothing alongside that of their own class; their chief want is security from starvation.

Some conception of the nation as a whole is necessary to kindle interest in self-government, and modern poverty is gradually blotting out the old conception which grew up when people loved the countryside, where the fields laughed and sang with corn and the cottages nestled in gardens, and when they had leisure to enjoy the tales of their fathers’ great deeds. Some knowledge is also necessary if those who give votes have to decide on policies which affect international relations, and hold firmly to principles in dark as well as in bright times. But how can the men and women have such knowledge who have been driven by the poverty of their homes to go to work as children, and have had no leisure in which to read history or to dream dreams? Of course they vacillate and of course they fall victims to shallow philosophy.

The people, in a word, because of poverty, are not free. They are “cogs in a great machine which uses human lives as the raw stuff out of which to fashion material wealth”. They are by fear of starvation compelled to be instruments of production almost as much as if they were under a law of slavery. They do not live for an end in themselves, but for an end for which others desire to use them.

The poverty of the multitude of workpeople, which limits their capacities for enjoyment and for self-government, and is divided only by a very thin partition from the destitution of squalor and starvation, is, I believe, the chief source of our present discontent, and of the bitterness which makes that discontent dangerous. The “cares of this life” equally with “the deceitfulness of riches” are apt to choke that communion with an ideal which is the source of healthy progress.

Schemes of relief and charity do not aim to reach this poverty. What, then, is to be done? “Give more education, and better education,” is the reply of the best reformers. “Let there be smaller classes in the elementary school, so that each child’s personality may be developed by the teacher’s personality.” “Let more attention be given to physical training.” “Let compulsory continuous education prevent the appalling wastage which leaves young people to find their interests in the excitement of the street.” Yes, a system of more and of better education would send out men and women stronger to labour and more fit both for the enjoyment and business of life. But poverty still stands in the way of such a system of education. The family budget of the mass of the people cannot keep the boy or girl away from work up to the age of fifteen or sixteen, nor can it allow the space and leisure necessary for study, for reading, and for intellectual recreation.

What, then, is to be done? The answer demands the best thought of our best statesmen. There are, doubtless, many things possible, and no one thing will be sufficient. But by some means or other the great national income must be so shared that the 39,000,000 of poor may have a larger proportion.

We have lately been warned against careless talk about rights. It may, therefore, be inaccurate to say that 39,000,000 out of 45,000,000 citizens have a right to more than half of the eighteen hundred million pounds of income. But it is as inaccurate to say that 6,000,000 citizens have a right to the half of the eighteen hundred million pounds which they now receive. What are called “rights” have been settled by law on principles which seemed to the lawmakers of the time the best for the commonwealth. It is law made by our ancestors by which it is possible to transfer the property of the dead to the living, providing thereby a foundation on which stands the mighty accumulation of £13,762,000,000. It is, indeed, by such laws that the capitalist who has saved a small sum is able to go on increasing that sum to millions. There is no natural right by which the poor may be said to have a claim on wealth or the rich to possess wealth.