A late uncle of mine, the Rev. Thomas Spencer, for some "^twenty years incumbent of Hinton Charterhouse, near Bath, no fiooner entered on his parish duties than he proved himself anxious for the welfare of the poor, by establishing a school, a library, a clothing club, and land-allotments, besides building some model cottages. Moreover, up to 1833 he w^as a pauper's friend — always for the pauper against the overseer. There presently came, however, the debates on the Poor Law, which impressed him with the evils •of the system then in force. Though an ardent philanthropist he was not a timid sentimentalist. The result was that, immediately the new Poor Law was passed, he proceeded to carry out its provisions in his parish. Almost universal opposition was encountered by him: not the poor only being his opponents, but even the farmers on whom came the burden of heavy poor-rates. For, strange to say, their interests had become apparently identified Avith the maintenance of this system which taxed them so largely. The explanation is that there had grown up the practice of paying out of the rates a part of the wages of each farm-servant — " make- wages," as the sum was called. And though the farmers contri- buted most of the fund from which *' make-wages " were paid, yet, since all other ratepayers contributed, the farmers seemed to gain by the arrangement. My uncle, however, not easily deterred, faced all this opposition and enforced the law. Tho result was that in two years the rates were reduced from £700 a year to £200 a year; while the condition of the parish was greatly tmprovod. " Those who had hitherto loitered at the corners of THE COMI^'G SLAVERY. 21 tlie streets, or at the doors of the beer-shops, had something else to do, and one after another they obtained employment; " so that out of a population of 800, only 15 had to bo sent as incapable paupers to the Bath Union (when that was formed), in place of the 100 who received out-door relief a short time before. If it be said that the £20 telescope which, a few years after, his parishioners presented to my uncle, marked only the gratitude of the rate- payers; then my reply is the fact that when, some years later still, having killed himself by overwork in pursuit of popular welfare, he was taken to Hinton to be buried, the procession which followed him to the grave included not the well-to-do only but the poor.
Several motives have prompted this brief narrative. One is the wish to prove that sympathy with the people and self-sacrificing cliorts on their behalf, do not necessarily imply approval of gratuitous aids. Another is the desire to show that benelit may result, not from multiplication of artificial appliances to mitigate distress, but, contrariwise, from diminution of them. And a further purpose I have in view is that of preparing the way for an analogy.
Under another form and in a different sphere, wo are now yearly extending a system which is identical in nature with the system of " make-wages " under the old Poor Law. Little as politicians recognize the fact, it is nevertheless demonstrable that ihese various public appliances for working-class comfort, which they are supplying at the cost of ratepayers, are intrinsically of the Eiime nature as those which, in past times, treated the fariuer's man as half-labourer and half-pauper. In either case the worker receives in return for what he does, money wherewith to buy certain of the things he wants; while, to procure the rest of tliem fcip him, money is furnished out of a common fund raised b}' taxes, ^^hat matters it whether the things supplied by ratepayers for nL'thing, instead of by the employer in payment, are of this kind or that kind? the principle is the same. For sums received let us substitute the commodities and benefits purchased; and then see huw the matter stands. In old Poor- Law times, the farmer gav^ for work done the equivalent, say of house-rent, bread, clothes, and fire; while the ratepayers practically supplied the man and his family with their shoes, tea, sugar, candles, a little bacon, &c. The division is, of course, arbitrary; but unquestionably the farmer anrl the ratepayers t'uruishcd these things between tliem At tho »9 THE MAN vr:RSUS THE STATE.
present time the artisan receives from his employer in wages, the equivalent of the consumable commodities he wants; while from the public comes satisfaction for others of his needs and desires. At the cost of ratepayers he has in some cases, and will presently \.i\ve in more, a house at less than its commercial value; for of CDurse when, as in Liverpool, a municipality spends nearly £:iOO,000 in pulling down and reconstructing low-class dwellings, nnd is about to spend as much again, the implication is that in Bome way the ratepayers supply the poor with more accommo- dation than the rents they pay would otherwise have brought. The artisan further receives from them, in schooling for hi.s children, much more than he pays for; and there is every pro- br«bility that he will presently receive it from them gratis. The ratepayers also satisfy what desire he may have for books and newspapers, and comfortable places to read them in. In some cases too, as in Manchester, gymnasia for his children of both sexes, as well as recreation grounds, are provided.. That is to say, he obtains from a fund raised by local taxes, certain benefits beyond those which the sum received for his labour enables him to purchase. The sole difference, then, between this system and the old system of '' make- wages," is between the kinds of satisfactions obtained; and this difference does not in the least affect the nature of the arrangement.
Moreover, the two are pervaded by substantially the same illusion. In the one case, as in the other, what looks like a gratis benefit is not a gratis benefit. The amount which, under the old Poor Law, the half- pauperized labourer received from the parish to eke out his weekly income, was not really, as it appeared, a bonus; for it was accompanied by a substantially-equivalent decrease of his wages, as was quickly proved when the system was abolished and the wages rose. Just so is it with these seeming boons received by working people in towns. I do not refer only to the fact that they unawares pay in part through the raised rents of their dwell- ings (when they are not actual ratepayers); but I refer to the fact that the wages received by them are, like the wages of the farm- labourer, diminished by these public burdens falling on employers. Read the accounts coming of late from Lancashire concerning the cotton-strike, containing proofs, given by artisans themselves, that the margin of profit is so narrow that the less skilful manufacturers, as well as those with deficient capital, fail, and that the companies THE COMING SLAVERY. 23 of co-operators who compete with them can rarely hold their own; and then consider what is the implication respecting wages. Among the costs of production have to be reckoned taxes, general and local. If, as in our large towns, the local rates now amount to one-third of the rental or more — if the employer has to pay this, not on his private dwelling only, but on his business-premises, factories, Avarehouses, or the like; it results that the interest on his capital must be diminished by that amount, or the amount must be taken from the wages-fund, or partly one and partly the other. And if competition among capitalists in the same business and in other businesses, has the effect of so keeping down interest that while some gain others lose, and not a few are ruined — if capital, not getting adequate interest, flows elsewhere and leaves labour unemployed; then it is manifest that the choice for the artisan under such conditions, lies between diminished amount of work or diminished rate of payment for it. Moreover, for kindred reasons these local burdens raise the costs of the things he consumes. Tha charges made by distributors are, on the average, determined by the current rates of interest on capital used in distributing businesses; and the extra costs of carrying on such businesses have to be paid for by extra prices. So that as in the past the rarat worker lost in one way what he gained in another, so.in the present does the urban worker: there being, too, in both cases, the loss entailed on him by the cost of administration and the waste ac- companying it.
*' But what has all this to do with ' the coming slavery '? " will perhaps be asked. Nothing directly, but a good deal indirectly, as we shall see after yet another preliminary section.
It is said that when railways weretirst opened in Spain, peasants standing on the tracks were not unfrequently run over; and that the blame fell on tlie engine-drivers for not stopping: roral ex- periences having yielded no conception of the momentum of a large mass moving at a high velocity.
The incident is recalled to me on contemplating the ideas of the so-called " practical " politician, into whose mind there enters nc thought of such a thing as political momentum, still less of a political momentum which, instead of diminishing or remaining constant, increases. The theory on which he daily proceeds is that the change caased by his measure will stop where he intends it to 24 THE MAN VERSUS THE STATE.
stop. IIo contemplates intently the things his act will achieve, bui thinks little of the remoter issues of the movement his act sets np^ and still less its collateral issues. When, in war-time, " food for powder " was to bo provided by encouraging population — when Mr. Pitt said, " Let us make relief in cases where there are a number of children a matter of right and honour, instead of a ground for opprobrium and contempt; "* it was not expected that the poor-rates would be quadrupled in fifty years, that women with many bastard* would be preferred as wives to modest women, because of their incomes from the parish, and that hosts of ratepayers would b(? pulled down into the ranks of pauperism. Legislators who in 183;3- voted £20,000 a year to aid in building school-houses, never sup- posed that the step they then took would lead to forced contribu- tions, local and general, now amounting to £6,000,000; they did not intend to establish the principle that A should be made re- sponsible for educating B's offspring; they did not dream of a compulsion which would deprive poor widows of the help of their elder children; and still less did they dream that their successors^ by requiring impoverished parents to apply to Boards of Gaardians to pay the fees which School Boards would not remit, would initiate a habit of applying to Boards of Guardians and so cause paupcriza- tion.f Neither did those who in 1834 passed an Act regulating the- labour of Avomen and children in certain factories, imagine that the By stem they were beginning would end in the restriction and in- .»pection of labour in all kinds of producing establishments where- more than fifty people are employed; nor did they conceive that the inspection provided would grow to the extent of requiring that before a "young person" is employed in a factory, authority must bo given by a certifying sni'geon, who, by personal examination (to- v.hich no limit is placed) has satisfied himself that there is no in- c.ipacitating disease or bodily infirmity: his verdict determining whether the " young person " shall earn wages or not. J Even less, as I say, does the jDolitician who jDlumes himself on the practical- ness of his aims, conceive the indirect results which Avill follow the direct results of his measures. Thus, to take a case connected with one named above, it was not intended tlirough the system of " payment by results," to do anything more than give teachers an THE COMING SLAVERY. 25 cfB.cient siimulas: it- was not supposed that m numerous cases t'leir health would give way under the stimulus; it was nob expected that they would bo led to adopt a cramming system and to put undue pressure on dull and weak children, often to their great injury; it was not foreseen that in many cases a bodily en- feeblement would be caused which no amount of grammar and geography can compensate for. The licensing of i^ublic-houses was simply for maintaining public order: those who devised it never imagined that there would result an organized interest powerfully influencing elections in an unwholesome way. Nor did it occur to the "practical" politicians who provided a com- pulsory load-line for merchant vessels, that the pressure of ship- owners' interests would habitually cause the putting of tlio load-line at the very highest limit, and thai from precedent to precedent, tending ever in the same direction, the load-lino V70uld graduallv rise in the better class of shipn; as from good authority I learn that it has already done. Legislators who, some forty years ago, by Act of Parliament compelled railw^ay-companies to supply cheap locomotion, would have ridiculed the belief, had it been expressed, that eventually their Act Avould punish the com- panies which improved the supply; and yet this wns the result to companies which began to carry third-class passofigers by fast trains; since a penalty to the amount of the passenger-duty v/as inflicted on them for every third-class passenger so carried. To Avhich instance concerning railways, add a far more striding one disclosed by comparing the railway policies of England and J'rance. The law-makers Avho provided for the ultimate lapsing of French railways to the State, never conceived the possibility that inferior travelling facilities would result — did not foresee that reluctance to depreciate the value of property eventually coming to the State, would negative the authorization of competing lines, and that in th3 absence of competing lines locomotion would be relatively costly, slovv^, and infrequent; for, as Sir Thomas Farrer has lately shown, the traveller in England has great advantages over the French traveller in the economy, swiftness, and frequency with which his journeys can be made.
But the "practical " politician who, in spite of such experiences repeated generation after generation, goes on thinking only of proximate results, naturally never thinks of results still moro remote, still more general, and still mere important than those just 26 THE MAN VEHSUS THE STATE.
exemplified. To repeat the metaplior used above — he never asks Avhether the political momentum set up by his measure, in some cases decreasing but in other cases greatly increasing, will or will not have the same general direction with other like momenta; and whether it may not join them in presently producing an aggregate energy working changes never thought of. Dwelling only on the effects of his particular stream of legislation, and not observing how other such streams already existing, and still other streams which will follow his initiative, pursue the same average course, it never occurs to him that they may presently unite into a volu- minous flood utterly changing the face of things. Or to leave figures for a more literal statement, he is unconscious of the trutli that he is helping to form a certain type of social organization, and that kindred measures, effecting kindred changes of organiza- tion, tend with ever-increasing force to make that type general; until, passing a certain point, the proclivity towards it becomes irresistible. Just as each society aims when possible to produce in other societies a structure akin to its own — just as among the G reeks, the Spartans and the Athenians struggled to spread their respective political institutions, or as, at the time of the French Revolution, the European absolute monarchies aimed to re-establish absolute monarchy in France while the Republic encouraged the formation of other republics; so within every society, each species oJ: structure tends to propagate itself. Just as the system of voluntary co-operation by companies, associations, unions, to achieve business ends and other ends, spreads throughout a com- munity; so does the antagonistic system of compulsory co-opera- tion under State-agencies spread; and the larger becomes its extension the more power of spreading it gets. The question of questions for the politician should ever be — " What type of social structure am I tending to produce? " Bat this is a question he never entertains.
Here we will entertain it for him. Let us now observe the general course of recent changes, with the accompanying current of ideas, and see whither they are carrying us.
The blank form of a question daily asked is — " We have already done this; why should we not do that? " And the regard for pre- cedent suggested by it, is ever pushing on regulative legislation. Having had brought within thuir sphere of operation more and THE COMING SLAVEUY. 27 more nnmerons businesses, the Acts restricting hours of employ- ment and dictating the treatment of workers are now to be made applicable to shops. From inspecting lodging-houses to limit the numbers of occupants and enforce sanitary conditions, we have passed to inspecting all houses below a certain rent in which there are members of more than one family, and are now passing to a kindred inspection of all small houses.* The buying and working of telegraphs by the State is made a reason for urging that the State should buy and work the railwaj'S. Supplying children with food for their minds by public agency is being followed in some cases by supplying food for their bodies; and after the practice has been made gradually more general, we may anticipate that the supply, now proposed to be made gratis in the one case, will eventually be proposed to be made gratis in the other: the argu- ment that good bodies as well as good minds are needful to make good citizens, being logically urged as a reason for the extension.f And then, avowedly proceeding on the precedents furnished by the church, the school, and the reading-room, all publicly provided, it is contended that "pleasure, in the sense it is now generally admitted, needs legislating for and organizing at least as much as work." J Not precedent only prompts this spread, but also the necessity •which arises for supplementing ineffective measures, and for dealing with the artificial evils continually caused. Failure does not destroy faith in the agencies employed, but merely suggests more stringent use of such agencies or wider ramifications of them. Laws to check intemperance, beginning in early times and coming down to our own times, when further restraints on the sale of intoxicating liquors occupy nights every session, not having done what was expected, there come demands for more thorough-going laws, locally preventing the sale altogether; and here, as in America, these will doubtless be followed by demands that pre- vention shall be made universal. All the many appliances for * See letter of Local G-overnment Board, Times, January 2, 1884.
t Verification comes more promptly than I expected. This article has been etandii'g in type since January 30, and in the interval, namely on March 13 [the article was pviblished on April 1], the London School Board resolved to apply for authority to use local charitable funds for supplying gritis meals and clothing to indigent children. Presently the definition of " indigent " will be widened; more children will be included, and more funds asked for.
28 THE ^lAX VERSUS THE STATE.
*'stamplnnf out" cpidomic diseases not having succeeded in preventing outbreaks of small-pox, fevers, and the like, a further remedy is applied for in the shape of police-power to search house?? tor diseased person^j, and authority for medical officers to examine any one thoy think fit, to sec -whether he or she is suffering from an infectious or contagious malady. Habits of improvidence having for generations been cultivated by the Poor-Law, and the improvident enabled to multiply, the evils produced by compulsory charity are now proposed to be met by compulsory insurance.
The extension of this policy, causing extension of corresponding ideas, fosters everywhere the tacit assumption that Government should step in whenever anything is not going right. " Surely you. would not have this misery continue! " exclaims some one, if you hint a demurrer to much that is now being said and done. Observe what is implied by this exclamation. It takes for granted, first, that all suffering ought to be prevented, which is not true: much suffering is curative, and prevention of it is prevention of a remedy. In the second place, it takes for granted that every evil can be removed: the truth bein;^ that with the existing defects of human nature, many evils can only be thrust out of one place or form into another plnce or form — often being increased by tho change. The exclamation also implies the unhesitating belief, here especially concerning us, that evils of all kinds should be dealt with by the State, There does not occur the inquiry whether there are at work other agencies capable of dealing with evils, and whether tho evils in question may not be among those which are best dealt with by these other agencies. And obviously, the more numerous governmental interventions become, the more confirmed does this habit of thought grow, and the more loud and perpetual the demands for intervention.
Every extension of the regulative policy involves an addition io the regulative agents — a further growth of officialism and an increasing power of the organization formed of ollicials, Take a pair of scales with many shot in the one and a few in the other. Life shot after shot out of the loaded scale and put it into the unloaded scale. Presently you will produce a balance; and if you go on, the position of the scales will be reversed. Suppose the beam to be unequally divided, and let the lightly loaded scale be at the end of a ve;y long arm; then the transferor each shot, pro- ducing a much greater c!icct, will far sooner bring aboat a change THE COMIXG SLAVERY. 29 of position. I use tlio figure to illustrate what results from trat^s- ferring one individual after another from the regulated mass of the community to the regulating structures. The transfer weakens the one and strengthens the other in a far greater degree than is implied by the relative change of numbers. A comparatively small body of officials, coherent, having common interests, and acting under central authority, has an immense advantage over an incoherent public which has no settled policy, and can be brought to act unitedly only under strong provocation. Hence an organiza- tion of officials, once passing a certain stage of growth, becomes Jess and less resistible; as we see in the bureaucracies of the Continent.