◆1 What the social reformer should study is not the dreams of Socialists, but the forces actually at work, through which Labour has already gained, and is gaining so much.
◆¹ What, then, the social reformer, what the labourer, and the friend of Labour, ought to study with a view to improving the condition of the labouring classes, is not the theories and dreams of those who imagine that the improvement is to be made only by some reorganisation of society, but the progress, and the causes of the progress, that these classes have actually been making, not only under existing institutions, but through them, because of them, by means of them.
CHAPTER III
Of the Causes owing to which, and the Means by which Labour participates in the growing Products of Ability.
Let me repeat in other words what I have just said. The labouring classes, under the existing condition of things, have acquired more wealth in a given time than the most sanguine Socialist of fifty years ago could have promised them; and this increased wealth has found its way into their pockets owing to causes that are in actual operation round us. These causes, therefore, should be studied for two reasons: firstly, in order that we may avoid hindering their operation; secondly, in order that we may, if possible, accelerate it; and I shall presently point out, as briefly, but as clearly as I can, what the general character of these causes is.
◆1 It is true that there are notorious facts that may make the superficial or excitable observer doubt the reality of this great progress of the labouring classes.
◆¹ But before doing this,—before considering the cause of this progress,—I must for a moment longer dwell and insist upon the reality of it; because unhappily there are certain notorious facts which constantly obtrude themselves on the observation of everybody, and which tend to make many people deny, or at least doubt it. These facts are as follows.
◆1 But when these facts—viz. facts relating to the very poor—are reduced to their true proportions,
Speaking in round numbers, there exists in this country to-day a population consisting of about seven hundred thousand families, or three million persons, whose means of subsistence are either insufficient, or barely sufficient, or precarious, and the conditions of whose life generally are either hard or degrading, or both. A considerable portion of them may, without any sentimental exaggeration, be called miserable; and all of them may be called more or less unfortunate. There is, further, this observation to be made. People who are in want of the bare necessaries of life can hardly be worse off absolutely at one period than another; but if, whilst their own poverty remains the same, the riches of other classes increase, they do, in a certain sense, become worse off relatively. The common statement, therefore, that the poor are getting constantly poorer is, in this relative sense, true of a certain part of the population; and that part is now nearly equal in numbers to the entire population of the country at the time of the Norman Conquest. Such being the case, it is of course obvious that persons who, for purposes of either benevolence or agitation, are concerned to discover want, misfortune, and misery, find it easier to do so now than at any former period. London alone possesses an unfortunate class which is probably as large as the whole population of Glasgow; and an endless procession of rags and tatters might be marched into Hyde Park to demonstrate every Sunday. But if the unfortunate class in London is as large as the whole population of Glasgow, we must not forget that the population of London is greater by nearly a million than the population of all Scotland; ◆¹ and the truth is that, although the unfortunate class has, with the increase of population, increased in numbers absolutely, yet relatively, for at least two centuries, it has continued steadily to decrease. In illustration of this fact, it may be mentioned that, whereas in 1850 there were nine paupers to every two hundred inhabitants, in 1882 there were only five; whilst, to turn for a moment to a remoter period, so as to compare the new industrial system with the old, in the year 1615, a survey of Sheffield, already a manufacturing centre, showed that the “begging poor,” who “could not live without the charity of their neighbours,” actually amounted to one-third of the population, or seven hundred and twenty-five households out of two thousand two hundred and seven. Further, although, as I observed just now, it is in a certain sense true to say that, relatively to other classes, the unfortunate class has been getting poorer, the real tendency of events is expressed in a much truer way by saying that all other classes have been getting more and more removed from poverty.
◆1 We shall find that they have no such significance, nor disprove in any way the extraordinary progress of the vast majority.