Labour and the Popular Welfare

by W. H. Mallock

And now we are in a position to repeat with more precision and confidence the conclusion which we reached at the end of the last chapter. ◆¹ It was there pointed out that of our present national income, consisting as it does of about thirteen hundred million pounds, Labour demonstrably produced not more than five hundred million pounds, whilst eight hundred million pounds at least was demonstrably the product of Ability. In the present chapter, I have substantiated that proposition: I have exposed the confusions and fallacies which have been used to obscure its truth; I have shown that Ability and Labour are two distinct forces, in the sense that whilst the latter represents a faculty common to all men, the possession of the former is the natural monopoly of the few; that the labourer and the man of Ability play such different parts in production that a given amount of wealth is no more their joint product than a picture is the joint product of a great painter and a canvas-stretcher; and I have now pointed to some rough indication of the respective numbers of the men of Ability and of the labourers. Instead, therefore, of contenting ourselves with the general statement that Ability makes so much of the national income, and Labour so much, we may say that ninety-six per cent of the producing classes produce little more than a third of our present national income, and that a minority, consisting of one-sixteenth of these classes, produces little less than two-thirds of it.

BOOK IV

THE REASONABLE HOPES OF LABOUR—THEIR MAGNITUDE, AND THEIR BASIS

CHAPTER I

How the Future and Hopes of the Labouring Classes are bound up with the Prosperity of the Classes who exercise Ability.

◆1 The foregoing conclusions not yet complete; but first let us see the lesson which it teaches us as it stands.

◆¹ The conclusion just arrived at is not yet completely stated; for there are certain further facts to be considered in connection with it which have indeed already come under our view, but which, in order to simplify the course of our argument, have been put out of sight in the two preceding chapters. I shall return to these facts presently; but it will be well, before doing so, to take the conclusion as it stands in this simple and broad form, and see, by reference to those principles which were explained at starting, and in which all classes and parties agree, what is the broad lesson which it forces on us, underlying all party differences.

◆1 If we sum up all that has been said thus far, it may seem at first sight that it teaches nothing but the negative lesson, that we should let Ability have its own way unchecked.

◆¹ I started with pointing out that, so far as politics are concerned, the aim of all classes is to maintain their existing incomes; and that the aim of the most numerous class is not only to maintain, but to increase them. I pointed out further that the income of the individual is necessarily limited by the amount of the income of the nation; and that therefore the increase, or at all events the maintenance, of the existing income of the nation is implied in all hopes of social and economic progress, and forms the foundation on which all such hopes are based. I then examined the causes to which the existing income of the nation is due; and I showed that very nearly two-thirds of it is due to the exertions of a small body of men who contribute thus to the productive powers of the community, not primarily because they possess Capital, but because they possess Ability, of which Capital is merely the instrument; that it is owing to the exercise of Ability only that this larger part of the income has gradually made its appearance during the past hundred years; and that were the exercise of Ability interfered with, the increment would at once dwindle, and before long disappear.

Thus the two chief factors in the production of the national income—in the production of that wealth which must be produced before it can be distributed—are not Labour and Capital, which terms, as commonly used, mean living labourers on the one hand, and dead material on the other; but they are two distinct bodies of living men—labourers on the one hand, and on the other men of Ability. The great practical truth, then, which is to be drawn from the foregoing arguments is this—and it is to be drawn from them in the interest of all classes alike—that the action of Ability should never be checked or hampered in such a way as to diminish its productive efficacy, either by so interfering with its control of Capital, or by so diminishing its rewards, as to diminish the vigour with which it exerts itself; but that, on the contrary, all these social conditions should be jealously maintained and guarded which tend to stimulate it most, by the nature of the rewards they offer it, and which secure for it also the most favourable conditions for its exercise. By such means, and by such means only, is there any possibility of the national wealth being increased, or even preserved from disastrous and rapid diminution.