WILLIAM SMITH, POTTER AND FARMER, 1790–1858. By George Bourne. Chatto. 1920. 6s. net.
Mr. Bourne has written a beautiful and sensitive little book about his grandfather, and his own memories of his grandfather's village. It has in it that deep and still appreciation of English country and of the ways of English peasants, which is so common to all who know and love them, and so very rarely expressed. It has the quality of Jefferies at his best, and of Mr. Hudson too. The scenes which he evokes—the broad green spaces, the silence, the interminable round of tasks, the handling of the earth and its store—will never come again in the places of which he tells us. Farnborough, Frimley, Camberley, Yateley are suburbs of London, over-run by the spawn of Aldershot and the railway. Nowadays one must go further afield to realise the presence of Saint Use; and a term seems to be set even there. It is not that, in the Roman poet's phrase, Nos patriæ fines et dulcia linquimus arva: rather that those fair fields are flying further from us—as well they may, seeing what we make of them. Such a book as Mr. Bourne's will be treasured hereafter for the sake of the quiet beauty and homely virtues which it records, but very much also for the tenderness and fidelity with which it does its work.
POLITICS AND ECONOMICS
COAL MINING AND THE COAL MINER. By H. F. Bulman, M.I.Min.E., Assoc. M. Inst. C.E., F.G.S. Methuen. 15s.
NATIONALISATION OF THE MINES. By Frank Hodges, Secretary of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain. With Foreword by the Right Hon. J. R. Clynes, M.P. Leonard Parsons. 4s. 6d.
Mr. Bulman is a mining engineer who has been a colliery manager and a director of colliery companies, and he has a wide knowledge of the subject. He has much of interest and value to say about the getting of coal, the technical processes and the machinery, the work of the miners and their dangers. But he does not confine himself to these matters; he deals with many of the controversial questions that are exercising the public mind at the moment. His book was written unfortunately—or fortunately—before the Coal Commission, as he puts it, "commenced its novel proceedings," and his allusions to the evidence it took and the reports it issued are confined to a note or two here and there. There is no doubt, however, which side he is on. Though sympathetic enough to the miners, he has plenty of hard words to say of their Trade Unions. He deplores the prevalence of ca'canny, of absenteeism, of the aggressive spirit shown towards the employers. Over Government interference he waxes very bitter; many of the rules and regulations imposed on the management for the safety of the miners rouse his ire, whilst the Minimum Wage Act he regards as utterly mischievous, since it "encourages the indolence which is so prominent a characteristic of human nature." The longest chapter in the book discusses in considerable detail—and with many attractive plans and pictures—the housing of the miners. Mr. Bulman thinks that it is very unfair to throw the blame for bad housing conditions on the colliery owners, who, he says, have done more than most employers to provide houses for those they employ. But many, we think, who have read the evidence given to the Royal Commission, whatever may be their views on the proper method of running the coal industry, will find themselves at issue with Mr. Bulman on that point.
Mr. Hodges makes a direct and ably-reasoned appeal for the nationalisation of the mines. He is, we think, at rather needless pains to disclaim "politics" in his book. His main emphasis is certainly on the economic aspect of the problem; but he cannot avoid being "political" in the largest sense. He exposes, with a good deal more stress than Mr. Bulman, the wasteful methods of coal production by the 3300 British collieries operated by 1452 companies, and subject to the "dead-hand" of 4000 royalty owners, as well as its wasteful methods of consumption at the collieries and further afield. He discusses the decrease of output, the main reason for which he will by no means admit to be the naughtiness of the miners. And he directs the notice of the unhappy general public to the fact that we are faced at the same time with a decline in production and a large increase in profits. What, then, does Mr. Hodges want? He sees "no other remedy except that of National ownership of the entire industry, with joint control by the full personnel of the industry and representatives of the whole community." The miners, he avers, are as much opposed to bureaucracy as the most extreme of "anti-nationalisers." Both the Sankey scheme and the original scheme of the miners ("The Nationalisation of Mines and Minerals Bill," which is printed as an Appendix to the book) guard against this. The State is to own the industry, but the machinery of Pit and District Committees and a National Mining Council would mean management by those engaged in the industry, together with representatives of the consumers. This last part is important, for the Syndicalist idea of the "Mines for the Miners" is, in Mr. Hodges' view, antisocial and "repugnant to our communal instincts." Nor will he allow that there is any substance in the fear that the initiative secured by private ownership will be lost. If this initiative really exists to-day, it will be increased a hundredfold, he argues, when scope is given to the brain-workers who are responsible for the running of the industry. Altogether the book is one which is worthy of the most careful study by nationalisers and anti-nationalisers alike.
SOCIAL THEORY. By G. D. H. Cole. Methuen. 5s.
It is a commonplace of our sceptical and disillusioned age that all our cherished institutions are in the melting-pot. The old economic order is tottering; the finger of scorn is pointed at the hollowed principle of Parliamentary Government. Eager reformers preach Democracy and yet more Democracy. But the discontented citizen finds himself getting ever a larger portion of the shadow of Democracy and ever less of the substance. To him in his perplexity comes Mr. Cole, offering a new social theory, to explain the causes of the evil and its true remedy. What is wrong, he asserts, is the false doctrine that endows the State with sovereign attributes and makes it supreme in every sphere. His treatment of Leviathan is drastic. He is not merely for curbing it, nor, on the other hand, for its complete destruction. What he wants is to deflate the monster, so to speak, and reduce it to the status of a decent domestic animal with a carefully limited sphere of usefulness.
The democratic society which Mr. Cole foresees will be a co-ordinated system of functional associations, guilds of producers, co-operative societies of consumers, and many others. The State will no longer be sovereign, it will merely be one of those associations, confined to its own specific functions. For each function in society there must be found an association and method of representation, and for each association and body of representatives a function. "Representative democracy," as we see it to-day in a "single omnicompetent Parliament," is a mockery; for "no man can represent another man, and no man's will can be treated as a substitute for, or representative of, the wills of others." This does not mean that Mr. Cole denies the validity of all representative government, only that he wants it put in a truer form. And that form is functional representation. The elected representatives of the future, of whom clearly there will be many—and "Why not?" says Mr. Cole—are not to be mere delegates, but each will have a more limited rôle, subject to more constant and closer criticism and advice from their constituents and, in the last resort, to "recall" by them. It is in this functional organisation that Mr. Cole centres his hopes of social and economic peace and progress, of political justice, of liberty and happiness for the individual. It is a theory that is open to criticism at several points, and no final judgment of it can, of course, be passed on the basis of this book. But Mr. Cole at least argues his case very clearly and trenchantly, and he has made a notable contribution to political science.