Practicable Socialism, New Series

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

Progress indeed cannot be judged by comparative figures. In 1850 it would have marked a great change if pauperism had dropped from 62 to 26 per 1000, but in 1910 it may be that 26 per 1000 constitutes as heavy a burden. Truth depends on relation. The social conscience has become much more sensitive. This generation cannot brook wrongs which previous generations brooked. Our self-respect is wounded by the thought of poverty which our care might remove. Poverty itself is recognized to be something worse than want of food. Every citizen is necessary, not only that he may work for the commonwealth, but that he may contribute by his thoughtful interest to make government efficient and human. The standard by which individual value is judged has been raised. Figures are not by themselves measures of progress, because every unit in the course of years changes its value, and to-day, as compared with sixty years ago, each man, woman and child may be said to have a worth which has increased tenfold. Official figures do not recognize worth and are therefore irritating; they increase and do not allay bitterness.

Something then must be done, and the debate in the House of Commons suggests something which might be done immediately. The Prime Minister and the Government might at once adopt certain recommendations on which there is general agreement, and which would not involve the immediate substitution of a new body of administration in the place of the Guardians. It might, for instance, 1. establish compulsory continuation schools; 2. make adequate provision for the feeble-minded; and 3. develop some method of training for the able-bodied and able-minded who have lost their way in the industrial world.

There is general agreement as to the treatment of the feeble-minded, as to the training of the young, and as to the way of discipline for the unemployed.

The public has hardly recognized what is involved in the neglect of the measures recommended for the care of the feeble-minded. They do not know how much crime, how much poverty, and how much drunkenness may be traced to this cause, or they would not expect the laws which assume strong-mindedness to be effective. What effect can prison have on characters too feeble to resolve on reformation? What appeal to independence can have weight with those who cannot reason? Evidence abounds in the pages of Reports, and the best thought of the times has agreed on the recommendations. If these recommendations were put into a Bill and adopted a reform would be achieved which would cut deeply into the burden of unemployment and vice under which the nation now labours.

Then again as to the training of the young. Compulsory continuation schools might be established.

It is grievous to reflect that while the country is expending £23,000,000 on education, there should be a large body of men and women without any resource other than that of the mechanical use of their hands and without any interest to satisfy their minds. It may be that something is wrong in our elementary schooling, but it is hard to realize how the boy who leaves school to-day, a good reader and writer, and of clean habits, can become the dull, ignorant, and almost helpless man of thirty or thirty-five who stands among the unemployed at the table of the Relief Committee. Nevertheless it is so, and the tale of his descent has been often told. The boy, free of school, throws off school pursuits as childish things. He will have no more to do with books or with learning. He takes a situation where he can get the largest wages, and where least call is made on mental effort. He has money to spend and he spends it on the pleasures which give the most excitement. At the age of eighteen or twenty he is no longer wanted as a boy, and he has no skill or intelligence which would fit him for well-paid work as a man. He becomes a casual labourer, or perhaps gets regular employment in some mechanical occupation. Before he is forty, he is very frequently among the “unemployed,” his hands capable only of doing one sort of work, and his head incapable of thinking out ways or means. His schooling has been practically wasted and he is again a burden on the community.

All inquiry goes to show that neglected boyhood is the chief source of “the unemployed”. Care in securing good places for boys when they leave school, and offers of technical teaching may do something, but these means do not serve to create the intelligent labourer, on whom, more than on the skilled artisan, the wealth of the country depends. “No skilled labourer,” Mr. Edison is reported to have said, “is better than the English, and no unskilled labourer is worse.” The intelligent labourer is one who does common work so as to save money; one who can understand and repeat instructions; one who can rise to an emergency; one who serves others’ interests and finds others’ interests.

Our labourers have not this intelligence because the boy’s mind, just opened at school, has been allowed to close; he has been taken away from learning just when it was becoming interesting. The obvious remedy is compulsory continuation schools, and these have been recommended again and again by investigators and committees.

Let it be enacted that young persons under eighteen cannot be employed unless their employers allow time for attendance at such schools on three days a week, and receive a certificate of attendance—let it be made obligatory on all young persons engaged in industrial work that they attend such schools. Great employers like Messrs. Cadbury have found it in their interest to make such attendance compulsory on the young persons they employ. A Departmental Committee would soon discover the best way of enforcing compulsion, and the Government by this simple means would do much to stop unemployment and poverty at its source.

Some method of training the able-bodied and able-minded unemployed might be developed.