◆1 But this is very far from being the whole lesson taught, or indeed the chief part of it.
◆¹ This, however, is but one half of the case; and, taken by itself, it may seem to have no connection with the problem which forms the main subject of this volume, namely, the social hopes and interests, not of Ability, but of Labour. For, taken by itself, the conclusion which has just been stated may strike the reader at first sight as amounting merely to this: that the sum total of the national income will be largest when the most numerous minority of able men produce the largest possible incomes,—incomes which they themselves consume; and that, unless they are allowed to consume them, they will soon cease to produce them. From the labourer’s point of view, such a conclusion would indeed be a barren one. It might show him that he could not better himself by attacking the fortunes of the minority; but it would, on the other hand, fail to show him that he was much interested in their maintenance, since, if Ability consumes the whole of the annual wealth which it adds to the wealth annually produced by Labour, the total might be diminished by the whole of the added portion, and Labour itself be no worse off than formerly. But when I said just now that it was to the interest of all classes alike not to diminish the rewards which Ability may hope for by exerting itself, this was said with a special qualification. I did not say that it was to the interest of the labourers to allow Ability to retain the whole of what it produced, or to abstain themselves from appropriating a certain portion of it; but what I did say was that any portion appropriated thus should not be so large, nor appropriated in such a way, as to make what remains an object of less desire, or the hope of possessing it less powerful as a stimulus to producing it. This qualification, as the reader will see presently, gives to the conclusion in question a very different meaning from that which at first he may very naturally have attributed to it.
◆1 The chief lesson to be learnt is that, whilst Ability is the chief producer of wealth, Labour may appropriate a large share of its products.
◆¹ For the precise point to which I have been leading up, from the opening page of the present volume to this, is that a considerable portion of the wealth produced by Ability may be taken from it and handed over to Labour, without the vigour of Ability being in the least diminished by the loss; that such being the case, the one great aim of Labour is to constantly take from Ability a certain part of its product; and that this is the sole process by which, so far as money is concerned, Labour has improved its position during the past hundred years, or by which it can ever hope to improve it further in the future.
◆1 The question is, How much may it appropriate without paralysing the Ability which produces it?
◆¹ The practical question, therefore, for the great mass of the population resolves itself into this: What is the extent to which Ability can be mulcted of its products, without diminishing its efficacy as a productive agent? An able man’s hopes of securing nine hundred thousand pounds for himself would probably stimulate his Ability as much as his hopes of securing a million. Indeed the fact that, before he could secure a million pounds for himself, he had to produce a hundred thousand for other people, might tend to increase his efforts rather than to relax them. But, on the other hand, if, before he could secure a hundred thousand pounds for himself, he had to produce a million for other people, it is doubtful whether either sum would ever be produced at all. There must therefore be, under any given set of circumstances, some point somewhere between these two extremes up to which Labour can appropriate the products of Ability with permanent advantage to itself, but beyond which it cannot carry the process, without checking the production of what it desires to appropriate. But how are we to ascertain where that precise point is?
◆1 This is a question which can be answered only by experience; and we have the experience of a century to guide us.
◆¹ To this question it is altogether impossible to give any answer based upon à priori reasoning. The very idea of such a thing is ridiculous; and to attempt it could, at the best, result in nothing better than some piece of academic ingenuity, having no practical meaning for man, woman, or child. But what reasoning will not do, industrial history will. Industrial history will provide us with an answer of the most striking kind—general, indeed, in its character; but not, for that reason, any the less decided, or less full of instruction. For industrial history, in a way which few people realise, will show us how, during the past hundred years, Labour has actually succeeded in accomplishing the feat we are considering; how, without checking the development and the power of Ability, it has been able to appropriate year by year a certain share of what Ability produces. When the reader comes to consider this,—which is the great industrial object lesson of modern times,—when he sees what the share is which Labour has appropriated so triumphantly, he will see how the conclusions we have here arrived at, with regard to the causes of production, afford a foundation for the hopes and claims of Labour, as broad and solid as that by which they support the rights of Ability.
Let us turn, then, once more to the fact which I have already so often dwelt upon, that during the closing years of the last century the population of Great Britain was about ten millions, and the national income about a hundred and forty million pounds. It has been shown that to reach and maintain that rate of production required the exertion of an immense amount of Ability, and the use of an immense Capital which Ability had recently created. But let me repeat what I have said already: that we will, for the purpose of the present argument, attribute the production of the whole to average human Labour. It is obvious that Labour did not produce more, for no more was produced; and it is also obvious that if, since that time, it had never been assisted and never controlled by Ability, the same amount of Labour would produce no more now. We are therefore, let me repeat, plainly understating the case if we say that British Labour by itself—in other words, Labour shut out from, and unassisted by the industrial Ability of the past ninety years—can, at the utmost, produce annually a hundred and forty million pounds for every ten millions of the population.
◆1 In 1860 Labour took at least twenty-five per cent more than it produced itself, out of the products of Ability; and it now takes about forty-five per cent.