A Hundred Years Hence: The Expectations of an Optimist

by T. Baron Russell

CHAPTER X

THE AGE OF ECONOMIES

The next century will certainly be a frugal age in the sense of planetary frugality. With a greatly-increased call on the resources of the world entailed by the vast increase of population it will be absolutely necessary for us to “make the most of what we here do spend.” And with the more humane and gentler notions which will prevail it is also certain that the new age will be an age of cheapness. Of course, cheapness is a purely relative matter. The suit of clothes which would be very cheap at seven guineas in the United States would be very dear at that price here, not merely because by reason of the tariff clothes and other things are expensive in America, but also because wages are higher there than in England. In spite of the enormous growth of population since, say, the accession of Queen Victoria, the standard of comfort is much higher now than then, and prices are lower, because production has increased more quickly than population. Comforts are cheaper, wages are higher. But the standard of comfort will be higher still a hundred years hence. Workmen will earn a greater share of the commodities of life, and whether their pay be higher, computed as money, or lower, makes no difference to the question of cheapness. If wages are low commodities will be low-priced: that is all.

And probably this is the turn that events will take, though, even then, the monetary earnings of the worker will probably be much higher than they are nowadays. It is doubtful whether so clumsy a contrivance as metallic currencies, of intrinsic values corresponding with their titles, can survive at all; but of course everything will be computed in terms of some currency or other—perhaps of an obsolete currency. We are apt to think that the steady value of gold can be counted upon to remain a constant factor of economics. But only a very small part of the real business of the world is even now transacted with actual gold. Much the greatest part is transacted in paper—that is by the simple balancing of debits against credits in various clearing-houses.

Of course, if there were any reason to suppose that State Socialism would be the political basis of future institutions, currency of intrinsic value (which practically means, even now, only gold currency) would be easily dispensed with, because almost every transaction would be effected by means of orders on the national treasury, the State owning practically everything. Some visionaries have long included the abolition of money in their schemes for the immediate economic improvement of the race. But the disuse of a currency is not really a means to any end. It is only an effect which may or may not arise out of certain alterations in commercial method. There are signs that the people are already growing tired of the extravagance attached to the system of State, and even of municipal, trading: and this fact makes socialism improbable. Constant complaints are heard about such things as municipal tramways and municipal gasworks, and the proposal to transfer the entire working of telephones to the Government has been fiercely opposed. Where the post-office works telephones side by side with a telephone company, as in London, there is no indication that the public prefers the Government service before the private service; and it is admitted that tramways privately owned work more cheaply and yield better returns on their capital than municipal tramways. Any interference of the State in matters that could practically be left to private enterprise provokes incessant complaint. When continued and developed, however, this interference has a vicious habit of extending itself into fresh fields. Having first undertaken the education of the people the State was not long in carrying that system to its natural limit by relieving parents of school fees. Now, free meals for poor children, or meals sold below cost, are gradually becoming the fashion; what is the use of reading out lessons to children who are too hungry to listen? So the State must feed as well as educate. From this to the free clothing of school children is a very short step. But once the unavoidable sequence of such things is recognised, public opinion begins to revolt, asking where, if we go on at this rate, we are likely to stop, so long as there is any parental duty that the State has omitted to assume. We perceive that, unless the process is arrested, the begetter of children will have no obligations left, and the awful effects of relieving every member of the public of all responsibility being at length recognised, there is sure to be a reaction. It is certainly not beyond the wit of man to contrive that it shall be impossible for parents to leave their children untaught, without Government taking upon itself the function of schoolmaster. A hundred years hence I hope that it will long have been unnecessary to use force at all to compel parents to educate their children: and by that time the folly of our (perhaps temporarily unavoidable) expedients will be laughed at, and the fatuity of a minimum standard of proficiency, which inevitably becomes the maximum standard also, will be wondered at. In the matter here selected as the most convenient for illustration, and in other matters where State powers, or powers devolved by the State, are now employed in enterprises which do not properly fall into the province of Governments, the abuses and wastefulness of governmental interference are already acting as the best possible object-lessons against further interferences of the kind which makes for socialism.

But of all the restraining influences inimical to socialism, none will be anything like so powerful in the present century as the new anxiety with which the people will safeguard their own self-respect. It must be borne in mind, and cannot be too often repeated, that before many decades, systems of education will be valued chiefly in proportion as they tend to develop and establish character in the individual. And with the recognition of the great truth that character is much the most important thing in the world, there will grow up a great jealousy of anything which tends to damage the public sense of individual responsibility. This jealousy cannot but be adverse to socialism, whose ideal is to relieve the individual of all responsibilities and to throw them upon committees.

Not that the value of organisation and combination for various objects will at all be lost sight of. But we shall perceive that voluntary combination is a form of self-government vastly more friendly to the preservation of self-respect than legislative action, and also a form much less likely to be oppressive. It will be seen, for instance, that it is more desirable for working men to fix, through their trade-unions, the hours of labour in various industries, arranging to meet exceptional circumstances where the latter arise, than for Parliament to decree that nobody shall work more than eight hours a day. Neither is the panacea of compulsory arbitration in trade disputes likely to be a feature of future politics, because we shall certainly not be long before we perceive that, while it is no doubt quite easy to compel employers and employed to submit their respective cases to a tribunal appointed by law, there is no known way in which the award of such a tribunal can be enforced, and if there were, the effect of its employment would be almost intolerably injurious to the commerce of the country. What will happen a hundred years hence is that trade disputes will have disappeared, because all the workers will be practically their own employers.

Consequently free contract and not socialism will be the basis of the political system of a hundred years hence, and the standard of comfort will be adjusted in the same way as everything else. But in order that this standard may be as high as the advanced humanity of the new age will certainly demand for a population vastly increased, it will be necessary that all the resources of the planet be made the most of. That motive power, one of the most important, if not the most important of all these resources, should be economically produced is, as has already been said, an absolute essential. When we make the most of the sources of power, and are able to apply power in convenient and portable ways to all sorts of work at present done by hand, one of the greatest economies conceivable will have been effected. Probably muscle, as an element of workmanship, will become quite obsolete, though muscular strength will be developed by athletics as a recreation and a safeguard to the health of the race. Here again self-respect will be sedulously nurtured, for nothing fosters it so much as a man’s sense of his inherent bodily power. All sorts of wastefully laborious methods of labour will be superseded, in the same way as the steam hammer has superseded the sledge hammer. With the perfect development of power-production achieved, a great deal of the dirtiness of manufacture will vanish: and moreover, a use will have been discovered for every by-product of every manufacture. We are hideously wasteful as yet: and wastefulness makes for dirt. One perceives this at once on comparing a factory where the by-products are of a nature to be utilised directly, with one where these products are of small value. A goldsmith’s shop is a clean place compared with the gasworks of even a modern town: but these again are clean compared with what they used to be before the various chemical uses of coal-tar and gas-liquor were discovered.

In the planning of machinery, notwithstanding the fact that power will be obtained at a minimum of expense, all contrivances which economise force will be highly valued. We have been increasingly valuing them ever since steam first became important as a source of motive power. Early machines in the Patents’ Museum at South Kensington exhibit the most extraordinary recklessness in the waste of power. Considering the feebleness of the motive force available, one would have expected that every means would be sought to minimise friction. But instead, the force was transmitted by contrivances which, to a modern eye, seemed deliberately contrived to introduce as much friction as possible. Every year brings out fresh inventions for the avoidance of friction: and still we are but upon the very threshold of the subject. It was only in 1904 that a party of railway engineers was entertained by a patentee who wished to show them the saving in coal per train-mile which can be saved by a new bearing for passenger coaches, and the superior smoothness (which is of course a factor in the economy) of their running. Hardly any vehicle except a bicycle or a trotting buggy is yet constructed with any serious attempt to save friction at the axles. The number of industrial machines to which ball-bearings might be applied with great economy of power is enormous. But ball-bearings are very little used. It is probably considered as yet that the saving in coal would not pay for the working expenses connected with them and with other improvements. But as machinery is further improved economies at present merely theoretical will become practical and remunerative. In a hundred years’ time we shall certainly be able to make generally profitable the use of many devices as yet applicable only to delicate and exceptional machines, and shall be able to use much power which at present runs to waste. Every time a locomotive is stopped there is a great waste of power in the operation of the brakes, because it is not worth while to adopt any contrivance for utilising it. It disappears, as heat, and is lost. Many similar wastages could be cited, and engineers would scoff at the citation, on the ground that the loss is not worth saving. But it will be worth saving a hundred years hence. We shall not be able to afford any waste. The world will have to be worked, as we say, “for all it is worth.”