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ENGLAND'S IDEAL 
 
 giitd otlicit §apqi;s 
 
 SOCIAL SUBJECTS 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD CARPENTER. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 SWAN SONNENSCHEIN, LOWREY c^ CO., 
 
 PATERNOSTER SQUARE. 
 
 iS87. 
 
 COPYRIGHT. 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR: 
 
 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY, 
 
 2nd Edition, 1885, with numerous added Poems 
 crown 8vo, cloth, pp. 260, price 2s. 6d. 
 
 " A book whose power will certainly make it known." — Dublin 
 Umversity Review. 
 
 "Truly ' mystic, wonderful '—like nothing so much as a nightmare 
 after too earnest a study of the Koran ! '' — Graphic. 
 
 " Its plan includes a poetical appeal to the different nationalities 
 of the world, a sketch of the characteristic features of England and 
 English towns, and all kinds of industrial work, finally a series of 
 dramatic pictures whose vividness and beauty seem magical." — 
 Cambridge Review. 
 
 MODERN SCIENCE: 
 
 A Criticism. Cro^vn 8vo, stiff paper, pp. 75, 
 price IS. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 JOHN HEYWOOD, RIDGEFIELD, MANCHESTER, 
 
 AND 
 
 ir, PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, LONDON. 
 

 CONTENTS. 
 
 I' AGE 
 
 ENGLAND'S IDEAL : Reprinted from " To-Day," May, 
 
 1884 I 
 
 MODERN MONEY-LENDING, AND THE MEANING OF 
 
 DIVIDENDS : A Tract for the Wealthy . . . . 20 
 
 SOCIAL PROGRESS AND INDIVIDUAL EFFORT : A LcCtUre t 
 
 given at Sheffield, Feb., 1885 . . . . • • 45 i 
 
 DESIRABLE MANSIONS : Reprinted from " Progress," 
 
 June, 1883 . . . . . . . . . . 62 
 
 SIMPLIFICATION OK LIFE: A Paper read before the 
 
 Fellowship of the New Life, Jan., 1886 . . 79 
 
 DOES IT PAY? Reprinted from "To- Day," Oct., 
 
 1886 100 
 
 TRADE: Reprinted from " To- Day," Jan., 1887 .. log )(^ C 
 
 PRIVATE PROPERTY : A Lecture given in London and 
 
 in Edinburgh, 1 886 . . . . . . ■ • 1 1 5 
 
 THE ENCHANTED THICKET : An Appeal to the " Well- 
 to-do" .. .. .. .. .. -139 
 
 808119 
 
ENGLAND'S IDEAL. 
 
 " Behold the hire of the laborers, . . . which is of you kept back by Iraud, 
 crieth : and the cries of them . . , are entered into the ears of the Lord of 
 Sabaoth." 
 
 While it seems to be admitted now on all hands that 
 the social condition of this country is abou t as bad as it 
 can be, and while many schemes, more or less philanthropic 
 or revolutionary, are proposed for its regeneration, it just oc- 
 curs to me to bring forward, by way of balance, the importance 
 of personal actions and ideals. For as the nation is composed 
 of individuals, so the forces which move the individual — the 
 motives, the ideals, which he has in his mind — are, it 
 seems to me, the main factors in any nation's progress, and 
 the things which ultimately decide the direction of its 
 movement. 
 
 At the bottom, and behind all the elaborations of econo- 
 mic science, theories of social progress, the changing forms 
 of production, and class warfare, lies to-day the fact that the 
 old ideals of society have become corrupt, and that this cor- 
 ruption has resulted in dishonesty of life. It is this dis- 
 honesty of personal life which is becoming the occasion of 
 a new class-war, from whose bloody parturition struggle will 
 arise a new ideal — destined to sway human society for 
 many a thousand years, and to give shape to the forms of 
 its industrial, scientific, and artistic life.* 
 
 • What this new Ideal of Humanity will be I will not attempt here lo fore- 
 •hadow. Sufficient that honesty — the honest human relation — must obviously be 
 essential to it. As the ideal of the Feudal Age was upheld and presented to the 
 world in its great poetry, so the new ideal of the Democratic Age will be upheld 
 ■nd presented to the world in the great poetry of Democracy. 
 B 
 
2 . ENGLAND S IDEAL. 
 
 The feeling, indeed, seems to be spreading that England 
 stands already on the verge of a dangerous precipice ; at 
 any moment the door may open for her on a crisis more 
 serious than any in her whole history. Rotten to the core, 
 penetrated with falsehood from head to foot, her aristocracy 
 emasculated of all manly life, her capitalist classes wrapped 
 in selfishness, luxury, and self-satisfied philanthropy, her 
 Government offices — army, navy, and the rest — utterly 
 effete, plethoric, gorged (in snake-like coma) with red 
 tape,* her Church sleeping profoundly — snoring aloud — her 
 trading classes steeped in deception and money greed, her 
 laborers stupefied with overwork and beer, her poorest 
 stupefied with despair, there is not a point which will bear 
 examination, not a wheel in the whole machine which will 
 not give way under pressure. The slightest disturbance 
 now, and the wheels will actually cease to go round : the 
 first serious strain — European or Eastern war — and who 
 knows but that the governing classes of England will suc- 
 cumb disgracefully. And then — with an exhausting war 
 upon us, our foreign supplies largely cut off, our own 
 country (which might grow ample food for its present popu- 
 lation) systematically laid waste and depopulated by land- 
 lords, with hopeless commercial depression, stagnation of 
 trade, poverty, and growing furious anarchy — our position 
 will be easier imagined than described. 
 
 India — with its "forty millions always on the verge of 
 starvation " — the playground of the sons of English capital- 
 ists — must go. Ireland, that has nobly struck the note of 
 better things to all Europe, but who in her long and glorious 
 battle for freedom has received no encouragement from the 
 English people, will desert us. We shall call to her for 
 
 * An intelligect officer of our own navy having lately had occasion to inspect one 
 of the naval departments at Washington, tells me that in organisation, alertness, 
 modern information, and despatch of business it altogether surpasses our own 
 corresponding Admiralty department, and leaves it far behind ! As to the state of 
 our army deputmetits, we know what that is only too well, 
 
ENGLAND'S IDEAL. 3 
 
 help, but there shall be no answer — but derision. Egypt 
 will curse the nation of Bondholders. 
 
 In the face then of these considerations let us go straight 
 to the heart of the matter. Let us, let all who care or hold 
 ourselves in any way responsible for the fate of a great 
 nation, redeem our lives, redeem the life of England, from 
 this curse of dishonesty. The difficulty is that to many 
 people — and to whole classes — mere honesty seems such a 
 small matter. If it were only some great Benevolent Insti- 
 tution to recommend ! But this is like Naaman's case in 
 the Bible : to merely bathe in the Jordan and make yourself 
 clean — is really too undignified ! 
 
 But the disease from which the nation is suffering is dis- 
 honesty ; the more you look into it the clearer you will per- 
 ceive that this is so. Let us confess it. What we have 
 all been trying to do is to live at the expense of other 
 people's labor, without giving an equivalent of our own 
 labor in return. Some succeed, others only try ; but it 
 comes to much the same thing. 
 
 Let a man pause just for once in this horrid scramble of 
 modern life, and ask himself what he really consumes day 
 by day of other people's labor — what in the way of food, 
 of clothing, of washing, scrubbing, and the attentions of 
 domestics, or even of his own wife and children — what 
 money he spends in drink, dress, books, pictures, at the 
 theatre, in travel. Let him sternly, and as well as he may, 
 reckon up the sum total by which he has thus made himself 
 indebted to his fellows, and then let him consider what he 
 creates for their benefit in return. Let him strike the balance. 
 Is he a benefactor of society? — is it quits between him and 
 his countrymen and women ? — or is he a dependent upon 
 them, a vacuum and a minus quantity ? — a beggar, alms- 
 receiver, or thief? 
 
 And not only What is he ? but What is he trying to be ? 
 
 B 2 
 
4 England's ideal. 
 
 For on the Ideal hangs the whole question. Here at last 
 we come back to the root of national life. What the ideal 
 cherished by the people at large is, that the nation will soon 
 become. Each individual man is not always sure to realise 
 the state of Hfe that he has in his mind, but in the nation it 
 is soon realised ; and if the current idea of individuals is to 
 get as much and give as little as they can, to be debtors of 
 society and alms-receivers of the labor of others, then you 
 have the spectacle of a nation, as England to-day, rushing 
 on to bankruptcy and ruin, saddled with a huge national 
 debt, and converted into one gigantic workhouse and idle 
 shareholders' asylum. (Imagine a lot of people on an 
 island — all endeavoring to eat other people's dinners^ but 
 taking precious care not to provide any of their own — 
 and you will have a picture of what the " well-to-do " on 
 this island succeed in doing, and a lot of people not well- 
 to-do are trying to arrive at.) 
 
 For there is no question that this is the Ideal of England 
 to-day — to live dependent on others, consuming much and 
 creating next to nothing* — to occupy a spacious house, 
 have servants ministering to you, dividends converging from 
 various parts of the world towards you, workmen handing you 
 the best part of their labor as profits, tenants obsequiously 
 bowing as they disgorge their rent, and a good balance at 
 the bank ; to be a kind of human sink into which much 
 flows but out of which nothing ever comes — except an oc- 
 casional putrid whiff of Charity and Patronage — this, is it 
 not the thing which we have before us ? which if we have 
 not been fortunate enough to attain to, we are doing our 
 best to reach. 
 
 Sad that the words " lady " and " gentleman " — once 
 nought but honorable — should now have become so 
 
 * Py fine iroay called " having an iadepeadence." 
 
ENGLAND S IDEAL. 5 
 
 soiled by all ignoble use. But I fear that nothing can 
 save them. The modern Ideal of Gentility is hopelessly 
 corrupt, and it must be our avowed object to destroy it. 
 
 Of course, among its falsities, the point which I have 
 already alluded to is the most important. It is absolutely 
 useless for the well-to-do of this country to talk of Charity 
 while they are abstracting the vast sums they do from the 
 laboring classes, or to pretend to alleviate by philanthropic 
 nostrums the frightful poverty which they are creating whole- 
 sale by their mode of life. All the money given by the 
 Church, by charity organisations, by societies or individuals* 
 or out of the rates, and all the value of the gratuitous work 
 done by country gentlemen, philanthropists, and others, is a 
 mere drop in the ocean compared with the sums which 
 these same people and their relatives abstract from the poor, 
 under the various legal pretences of interest, dividends, 
 rent, profits, and state-payments of many kinds. "They 
 clean the outside of the cup and platter, but within they are 
 full of extortion and excess." 
 
 If for every man who consumes more than he creates there 
 must of necessity be another man who has to consume less 
 than he creates, what must be the state of affairs in that nation 
 where a vast class— and ever vaster becoming — is living in 
 the height of unproductive wastefulness ? Obviousl) another 
 vast class — and ever vaster becoming — must be sinking 
 down into the abyss of toil, penury, and degradation. 
 Look at Brighton and Scarborough and Hastings and the 
 huge West End of London, and the polite villa residences 
 which like unwholesome toadstools dot and disfigure the 
 whole of this great land. On 7C'hat are these " noble " 
 mansions of organised idleness built except upon the bent 
 back of poverty and lifelong hopeless unremitting toil 1 
 Think ! you who live in them, 7('/iat your life is, and upon 
 what it is founded. 
 
6 England's ideal. 
 
 As far as the palaces of the rich stretch through Mayfair 
 and Belgravia and South Kensington, so far (and farther) 
 must the hovels of the poor inevitably stretch in the opposite 
 direction. There is no escape. It is useless to talk about 
 better housing of these unfortunates unless you strike at the 
 root of their poverty ; and if you want to see the origin and 
 explanation of an East London rookery, you must open the 
 door and walk in upon some fashionable dinner party at 
 the West End, where elegance, wealth, ease, good gram- 
 mar, politeness, and literary and sentimental conversation 
 only serve to cover up and conceal a heartless mockery — 
 the lie that it is a fine thing to live upon the labor of 
 others. You may abolish the rookery, but if you do not 
 aboHsh the other thing, the poor will only find some other 
 place to die in ; and one room in a sanitary and respectable 
 neighborhood will serve a family for that purpose as well 
 as a whole house in a dirtier locality. If this state of affairs 
 were to go on long (which it won't do) England would be 
 converted, as I have said, into one vast workhouse and 
 pauper asylum, in which rows of polite paupers, sur- 
 rounded by luxuries and daintily fed, would be entirely 
 served and supported by another class — of paupers unable 
 to get bread enough to eat ! 
 
 But the whole Gentility business is corrupt throughout 
 and will not bear looking into for a moment. It is incom- 
 patible with Christianity (at least as Christ appears to have 
 taught it) ; it gives a constant lie to the doctrine of human 
 brotherhood. 
 
 The wretched man who has got into its toils must surren- 
 der that most precious of all things — the human relation to 
 the mass of mankind. He feels a sentimental sympathy 
 certainly for his " poorer brethren ; " but he finds that he 
 lives in a house into which it would be simply an insult to 
 ask one of them ; he wears clothes in which it is impossible 
 
England's ideal. 7 
 
 for him to do any work of ordinary usefulness. If he sees 
 an old woman borne aown by her burden in the street, he 
 can run to the charity organisation perhaps and get an 
 officer to enquire into her case — l)ut he cannot go straight 
 up to her like a man, and take it from her on to his own 
 shoulders ; for he is a gentleman, and might soil his clothes ! 
 It is doubtful even whether — clothes or no clothes, old wo- 
 man or no old woman — he could face the streets where he 
 is known with a bundle on his shoulders ; his dress is a 
 barrier to all human relation with simple people, and his 
 words of sympathy with the poor and suffering are wasted 
 on the wide air while the flash of his jewellery is in their 
 eyes. 
 
 He finds himself among people whose constipated man. 
 ners and frozen speech are a continual denial of all natural 
 affection — and a continual warning against offence ; where 
 to say 'onesty is passable, but to say 'ouse causes a positive 
 congestion ; where human dignity is at such a low ebb that 
 to have an obvious patch upon your coat would be con- 
 sidered fatal to it ; where manners have reached (I think) 
 the very lowest pitch of littleness and niaiserie; where 
 human wants and the sacred facts, sexual and other, on 
 which human life is founded, are systematically ignored ; 
 where to converse with a domestic at the dinner table would 
 be an unpardonable breach of etiquette ; where it is assumed 
 as a matter of course that you do nothing for yourself — to 
 lighten the burden which your presence in the world neces- 
 sarily casts upon others ; where to be discovered washing 
 your own linen, or cooking your own dinner, or up to the 
 elbows in dough on baking day, or helping to get the coals 
 in, or scrubbing your own floor, or cleaning out your own 
 privy, would pass a sentence of lifelong banishment on you ; 
 where all dirty work, or at least such work as is considered 
 dirty by the "educated" people in a household, is thrust 
 
8 ENGLAND'S IDEAL. 
 
 upon young and ignorant girls ; where children are brought 
 up to feel far more shame at any little breach of social de- 
 corum — at an " h " dropped,* or a knife used in the 
 wrong place at dinner, or a wrong appellative given to a 
 visitor — than at glaring acts of selfishness and uncharit- 
 ableness. 
 
 In short, the unfortunate man finds himself in a net of 
 falsehoods ; the whole system of life around him is founded 
 on falsehood. The pure beautiful relation of humanity, the 
 most sacred thing in all this world, is betrayed at every 
 step ; and Christianity with its message of human love. 
 Democracy with its magnificent conception of inward and 
 sacramental human equality, can only be cherished by him 
 in the hidden interior of his being ; they can have no real 
 abiding place in his outward life. 
 
 And when he turns to the sources from which his living 
 is gained, he only flounders from the quagmire into the 
 bog. The curse of dishonesty is upon him ; he can find no 
 bottom anywhere. 
 
 The interest of his money comes to him he knows not 
 whence ; it is wrung from the labour of someone — he knows 
 not whom. His capital is in the hands of railway companies, 
 and his dividends are gained in due season — but how ? 
 He dares not enquire. What have companies, what have 
 directors and secretaries and managers to do with the ques- 
 tion whether justice is done to the workmen ? and when 
 
 * The explanation, as far as I can discover, of this mysterious iniquity is as 
 follows : It is a notorious tendency in language, as it progresses, to drop the 
 aspiration. Thus the "h," though common in Latin, is extinct in the derivative 
 Italian and only feebly surviving in French. In English the singular phenomenon 
 presents itself of there being two usages — the "h" being practically extinct 
 among the mass of the people, while it is clung to with tenacity by the more or 
 less literary classes (and with exaggerated tenacity by those who ape these classes). 
 The explanation seems to be that the natural progress rf language has gone on 
 among the people at large, but has been checked among the lettered classes by 
 the conservative influence of the arts of printing and writing. And that it should 
 be possible for one section of the community thus to slide past the other, and for 
 two usages so to be established, only illustrates the completeness of class alienation 
 tnat exists in this coimtry. 
 
ENGLANDS IDEAL. 9 
 
 did a shareholder ever rise up and contend that dividends 
 ought to be less and wages more? (I met with a case once 
 in a report : but he was hissed down.) 
 
 His rents come to him from land and houses. Shall he 
 go round and collect them himself ? No, that is impossible. 
 This farmer would show him such a desperate balance-sheet, 
 that widow would plead such a piteous tale, this house 
 might be in too disgraceful a state, and entail untold re- 
 pairs. No, it is impossible. He must employ an agent or 
 steward, and go and live at Paris or Brighton, out of sight 
 and hearing of those whose misfortunes might disturb 
 his peace of mind ; — or put his money affairs entirely in 
 the hands of a solicitor. That is a good way to stifle con- 
 science. 
 
 Money entails duties. How shall we get the money and 
 forget the duties ? Voila the great problem ! . . . But 
 we cannot forget the duties. They cark unseen. 
 
 He has lent out his money on mortgage. Horrid word 
 that " mortgage ! " — " foreclosure," too ! — sounds like 
 clutching somebody by the throat ! Best not go and see 
 the party who is mortgaged ; — might be some sad tale 
 come out. Do it through a solicitor, too, and it will be all 
 right. 
 
 Thus the unfortunate man of whom I have spoken finds 
 that, turn where he may, the whole of his life — his external 
 life — rests on falsehood. And I would ask you, reader, 
 especially well-to-do and dividend-drawing reader, is this — • 
 this picture of the ordinary life of English gentility — your 
 Ideal of life ? or is it not ? For if it is do not be ashamed 
 of it, but please look it straight in the face and understand 
 exactly what it means : but if it is not, then come out of it ! 
 It may take you years to get out ; certainly you will not 
 shake yourself free in a week, or a month, or many months, 
 but still — Come out ! 
 
lO ENGLANDS IDEAL. 
 
 And surely the whole state of society which is founded on 
 this Ideal, however wholesome or fruitful it may have once 
 been, has in these latter days (whether we see it or not) 
 become quite decayed and barren and corrupt. It is no 
 good disguising the fact ; surely much better is it that it 
 should be exposed and acknowledged. Of those who are 
 involved in this state of society we need think no evil. 
 They are our brothers and sisters, as well as the rest ; and 
 oftentimes, consciously or unconsciously, are suffering, 
 caught in its toils. 
 
 Why to-day are there thousands and thousands through- 
 out these classes who are weary, depressed, miserable, who 
 discern no object to live for ; who keep wondering whether 
 life is worth living, and writing weary dreary articles in 
 magazines on that subject ? Who keep wandering from the 
 smoking-room of the club into Piccadilly and the park, and 
 from the park into picture galleries and theatres ; who go 
 and " stay " with friends in order to get away from their own 
 surroundings, and seek "change of air," if by any means 
 that may bring with it a change of interest of life ? Why, 
 indeed? Except because the human heart (to its eternal 
 glory) cannot subsist on lies ; because — whether they know 
 it or not — the deepest truest instincts of their nature are 
 behed, falsified at every turn of their actual lives : and 
 therefore they are miserable, therefore they seek something 
 else, they know not clearly what. 
 
 If, looking on England, I have thought that it is time 
 this Thing should come to an end, because of the poverty- 
 stricken despairing multitudes who are yearly sacrificed for 
 the maintenance of it^ and (as many a workman has said to 
 me) are put to a slmu death that it may be kept going, I 
 have at other times thought that, even more for the sake of 
 those who ride in the Juggernaut car itself, to terminate 
 the hydra-headed and manifold misery which lurks deep 
 
ENGLANUS IDEAL. II 
 
 down behind their decorous exteriors and well-appointed 
 surroundings, should it be finally abolished. 
 
 Anyhow, it must go. The hour of its condemnation has 
 struck. And not only the false thing. I speak to you, 
 working men and women of England, that you should no 
 longer look to the ideal which creates this Thing — that you 
 should no longer look forward to a day when you shall turn 
 your back on your brothers and sisters, and smooth back 
 white and faultless wrist-bands — living on their labor ! but 
 that you shall look to the new Ideal, the ideal of social 
 brotherhood, and of honesty, which, as surely as the sun 
 rises in the morning, shall shortly rise on our suffering and 
 sorrowing country. 
 
 But I think I hear some civilisee say, " Your theories are 
 all very well, and all about honesty and that sort of thing, 
 but it is all quite impracticable. Why, if I were only to 
 consume an equal value to that which I create, I should 
 never get on at all. Let alone cigars and horses and the 
 hke, but how about my wife and family? I don't see how 
 I could possibly keep up appearances^ and if I were to let 
 my position go, all my usefulness (details not given) would 
 go with it. Besides, I really don't see how a man can 
 create enough for all his daily wants. Of course, as you 
 say, there must be thousands and millions who are obliged 
 to do so, and more (in order to support us\ but how the 
 deuce they live I cannot imagine — and they must have to 
 work awfully hard. But I suppose it is their business to 
 support us, and I don't see how civilisation would get on 
 without them, and in return of course we keep them in 
 order, you know, and give them lots of good advice I " 
 
 To all which I reply, " Doubtless there is something 
 very appalling in the prospect of actually maintaining one- 
 
12 England's ideal. 
 
 self — but I sincerely believe that it is possible. Besides, 
 would not you yourself think it very interesting just to try ; 
 if only to see what you would dispense with if you had to 
 do the labor connected with it — or its equivalent ? If you 
 had to cook your own dinner, for instance ? " 
 
 " By Jove ! I believe one would do without a lot of 
 sauces and side dishes ! " 
 
 "Or if you had to do a week's hard work merely to get a 
 
 new coat " 
 
 " Of course I should make the old one do — only it would 
 become so beastly unfashionable." 
 
 That is about it. There are such a lot of things which 
 we could do without — which we really don't want — only, and 
 but . . . ! 
 
 And rather than sacrifice these beloved onlies and buts, 
 ratlier than snip off a few wants, or cut a sorry figure before 
 friends, we rush on with the great crowd which jams and 
 jostles through the gateway of Greed over the bodies of 
 those who have fallen in the struggle. And we enjoy no 
 rest, and our hours of Idleness, when they come, are not 
 delightful as they should be. For they are not free and 
 tuneful like the Idleness of a ploughboy or a lark, but they 
 are clouded with the spectral undefined remembrance of 
 those at the price of whose blood they have been bought. 
 As to the difficulty of maintaining oneself, hsten to this, 
 please ; and read it slowly : " For more than five years I 
 maintained myself thus solely by the labor of my hands ; 
 and I found that by working about six weeks in a year I 
 could meet all the expenses of living." 
 
 Who was it wrote these extraordinary words ? 
 It has for some time been one of the serious problems of 
 Political Economy to know how much labor is really re- 
 quired to furnish a man with ordinary necessaries. The 
 proportion between labor and its reward has been lost 
 
England's ideal. 
 
 13 
 
 sight of amid the complexities of modern life ; and we only 
 know for certain that the ordinary wages of manual labor 
 represent very much less than the value actually created. 
 
 Fortunately for us, however, about forty years ago a man 
 thoroughly tired of wading through the bogs of modern 
 social life had the pluck to land himself on the dry ground 
 of actual necessity. He squatted on a small piece of land 
 in New England, built himself a little hut, produced the 
 main articles of his own food, hired himself out now and 
 then for a little ready money, and has recorded for us, as 
 above, the results of his experience. Moreover, to leave no 
 doubt as to his meaning, he adds, " The whole of my 
 winters, as well as most of my summers, I had free and clear 
 for study." (He was an author and naturalist.) 
 
 The name of this man was Henry Thoreau. His book 
 " Walden " (and anyone can obtain it now*) gives the 
 details of the experiment by which he proved that a man 
 can actually maintain himself and have abundant leisure 
 besides ! And this, too, under circumstances of consider- 
 able disadvantage ; for Thoreau isolated himself to a great 
 extent from the co-operation of his fellows, and had to con- 
 tend single-handed with Nature in the midst of the woods, 
 where his crops were sadly at the mercy of wild creatures. 
 It is true, as I have said, that he had built himself a hut, 
 and had two or three acres of land to start with ; but what 
 a margin does his six weeks in a year leave for critical sub- 
 tractions ! 
 
 If anyone, however, doubts the truth of the general state- 
 ment contained in the last paragraph, his doubt must surely 
 be removed by a study of the conditions of life in England 
 in the fifteenth century. At that time, between the fall of 
 the feudal barons and the rise of the capitalists and land- 
 lords, there was an interval during which the workers 
 
 * Camelot Classics : W. Scott, London. 1886. Price is. 
 
14 ENGLANDS IDEAL. 
 
 actually got something like their due, and were not robbed 
 to any great extent by the classes above them. Thorold 
 Rogers, in his " Work and Wages," gives the wages of an 
 unskilled town laborer at 6d. a day in the 15th century, 
 while the price of a sheep at that time was 2s. Noio the 
 proportions are 3s. to 50s. Four centuries ago the laborer 
 could have bought the sheep with four days' work ; now he 
 requires the toil of sixteen or seventeen days. Similarly 
 with the price of an ox, which was then 20s. Even bread 
 he could earn with less work then than now. Why is this ? 
 Surely our country is not at present so overgrazed and cul- 
 tivated as to increase the difficulty of raising beasts and 
 crops (on the contrary, it is half-deserted and under- 
 cultivated) ; nor, certainly, did the laborer in the fifteenth 
 century receive more than he might be said to have created 
 by his labor. Why then does the laborer to-day not get 
 anything like that reward ? The reason is obvious. His 
 labor is as fruitful as ever, but the greater part of its pro- 
 duce — its reward — is taken from him. 
 
 As fruitful as ever ? — far more fruitful than ever ; for we 
 have taken no account of the vast evolutions of machinery. 
 What that reward would be, under our greatly-increased 
 powers of production — if it were only righteously distributed 
 — we may leave to be imagined. 
 
 As to Thoreau, the real truth about him is that he was a 
 thorough economist. He reduced life to its simplest terms, 
 and having, so to speak, labor in his right hand and its 
 reward in his left, he had no difficulty in seeing what was 
 worth laboring for and what was not, and no hesitation in 
 discarding things that he did not think worth the time or 
 trouble of production. 
 
 And I believe myself that the reason why he could so 
 easily bring himself to do without these things, and thus 
 became free — " presented with the freedom " of nature and 
 
ENGLAND'S IDEAL. 
 
 15 
 
 of life — was that he was a thoroughly educated man in the 
 true sense of the word. 
 
 It seems to be an accepted idea nowadays that tlie better | 
 educated anyone is the more he must require. " A plough- 
 man can do on so much a year, but an educated man — O 
 quite impossible ! " 
 
 Allow me to say that I regard this idea as entirely false. 
 First of all, if it were true, what a dismal prospect it would 
 open out to us ! The more educated we became the more 
 we should require for our support, the worse bondage we 
 should be in to material things. We should have to work 
 continually harder and harder to keep pace with our wants, 
 or else to trench more and more on the labor of others ; 
 at each step the more complicated would the problem of 
 existence become. 
 
 But it is entirely untrue. Education does not turn a man 
 into a creature of blind wants, a prey to ever fresh thirsts 
 and desires — it hnng^hxnx into relation with the world around 
 him. It enables a man to derive pleasure and to draw 
 sustenance from a thousand common things, which bring 
 neither joy nor nourishment to his more enclosed and 
 imprisoned brother. The one can beguile an hour any- 
 where. In the field, in the street, in the workshop, he sees 
 a thousand things of interest. The other is bored, he must 
 have a toy — a glass of beer or a box at the opera — but these 
 things cost money. 
 
 Besides, the educated man, if truly educated, has surely 
 more resources of skilful labor to fall back upon — he need 
 not fear about the future. The other may do well to 
 accumulate a little fund against a rainy day. 
 
 It is only to education commonly so-called — the false 
 education — that these libels apply. I admit that to the 
 current education of the well-to-do they do apply, but that 
 it is only or mainly a cheap-jack education, an education in 
 
1 6 England's ideal. 
 
 glib phrases, grammar, and the art of keeping up appear- 
 ances, and has httle to do with bringing anyone into relation 
 with the real world around him — the real world of humanity, 
 of honest daily Life, of the majesty of Nature, and the 
 wonderful questions and answers of the soul, which out of 
 these are whispered on everyone who fairly faces them. 
 
 Let us then have courage. There is an ideal before us, 
 an ideal of Honest Life — which is attainable, not very 
 
 * difificult of attainment, and which true education will help 
 
 S» us to attain to, not lead us astray from. 
 
 A man may if he likes try the experiment of Thoreau, 
 and restrict himself to the merest necessaries of life — so as 
 to see how much labor it really requires to live.* Starting 
 from that zero point, he may add to his luxuries and to his 
 labors as he thinks fit. How far he travels along that 
 double line will of course depend upon temperament. 
 Thoreau, as I have said, made a specialty of economy. 
 One day he picked up a curiosity and kept it on his shelf for 
 a time ; but soon finding that it required dusting he threw 
 it out of the window ! It did not pay for its keep. Thoreau 
 preferred leisure to ornaments ; other people may prefer 
 ornaments to leisure. There is of course no prejudice — 
 all characters, temperaments, and idiosyncrasies are welcome 
 and thrice welcome. The only condition is that you must 
 not expect to have the ornaments and the idleness both. 
 If you choose to live in a room full of ornaments no one 
 can make the slightest possible objection ; but you must not 
 expect Society (in the form of your maidservant) to dust 
 them for you, unless you do something useful for Society in 
 return. (I need not at this time of day say that giving 
 Money is not equivalent to " doing something useful " — 
 unless you have fairly earned the money ; then it is.) 
 
 * It must be remembered, however, that if anyone under present conditions of 
 society tried this experiment as a wage-laborer, he would be badly handicapped , 
 as he would not receive anything like the reward of his labor. 
 
ENGLAND S IDEAL. IJ 
 
 Let us have courage. There is ample room within this 
 ideal of Honest Life for all human talent, ingenuity, diver- 
 gency of thought and temperament. It is not a narrow 
 cramped ideal. How can it be? — for it a/o/ie contains in it 
 the possibility of human brotherhood. But I warn you : 
 it is noi compatible with that other ideal of Worldly Gen- 
 tility. I do not say this lightly. I know what it is for any- 
 one to have to abandon the forms in which he has been 
 brought up ; nor do I wish to throw discredit on any one 
 class, for I know that this ideal permeates more or less the 
 greater part of the nation to-day. But the hour demands 
 absolute fidelity. There is no time now for temporising. 
 England stands on the brink of a crisis in which no wealth, 
 no armaments, no diplomacy will save her — only an awaken- 
 ing of the National Conscience. If this comes she will 
 live — if it comes not # * # ? 
 
 The canker of effete gentility has eaten into the heart 
 of this nation. Its noble men and women are turned into 
 toy ladies and gentlemen ; the eternal dignity of (voluntary) 
 Poverty and Simplicity has been forgotten in an unworthy 
 scramble for easy chairs. Justice and Honesty have got 
 themselves melted away into a miowling and watery philan- 
 thropy; the rule of honor between master and servant, 
 and servant and master, between debtor and creditor, and 
 buyer and seller, has been turned into a rule of dishonor, 
 concealment, insincere patronage, and sharp bargains ; and 
 England lies done to death by her children who should 
 have loved her. 
 
 As for you, working men and working women of England 
 — in whom now, if anywhere, the hope of England lies — 
 I appeal to you at any rate to cease from this ideal, I 
 appeal to you to cease your part in this gentility business — 
 to cease respecting people because they wear fine clothes 
 and ornaments, and because they live in grand houses. 
 c 
 
iS England's ideal. 
 
 You know you do these things, or pretend to do them, and 
 to do either is foolish. \Ve have had ducking and forelock- 
 pulling enough. It is time for you to assert the dignity of 
 human labor. I do not object to a man saying " sir " to 
 his equal, or to an elder, but I do object to his saying " sir " 
 to broadcloth or to a balance at the bank. Why don't 
 you say " yes " and have done with it ? Remember that you, 
 too, have to learn the lesson of honesty. You know that 
 in your heart of hearts you despise this nonsense ; you know 
 that when the " gentleman's " back is turned you take off 
 his fancy airs, and mimic his incapable importances, or 
 launch out into bitter abuse of one who you think has 
 wronged you. Would it not be worthier, if you have these 
 differences, not to conceal them, but for the sake of your 
 own self-respect to face them out firmly and candidly ? 
 
 The re-birth of England cannot come without sacrifices 
 from you, too. On the contrary, whatever is done, you will 
 have to do the greater part of it. You will often have to 
 incur the charge of disrespect ; you will have to risk, and to 
 lose, situations ; you will have to bear ridicule, and — 
 perhaps — arms ; Anarchists, Socialists, Communists, you will 
 hear yourselves called. But what would you have ? It is 
 no good preaching Democracy with your mouths, if you are 
 going to stand all the while and prop with your shoulders 
 the rotten timbers of Feudalism — of which, riddled as 
 they have been during three centuries by the maggots of 
 Usury, we need say no worse than that it is time they 
 should fall. 
 
 I say from this day you must set to work yourselves in 
 word thought and deed to root out this genteel dummy — 
 this hairdresser's Ideal of Humanity — and to establish your- 
 selves (where you stand) upon the broad and sacred ground 
 of human labor. As long as you continue to send men to 
 Parliament because they ride in carriages, or cannot have a 
 
ENGLAND'S IDEAL. 1 9 
 
 meeting without asking a " squire," whom you secretly 
 make fun of, to take the chair, or must have clergymen and 
 baronets patrons of your benefit clubs — so long are you 
 false to your natural instincts, and to your own great 
 destinies. 
 
 Be arrogant rather than humble, rash rather than stupidly 
 contented ; but, best of all, be firm, helpful towards each 
 other, forgetful of differences, scrupulously honest in your- 
 selves, and charitable even to your enemies, but determined 
 that nothing shall move you from the purpose you have set 
 before you — the righteous distribution in society of the 
 fruits of your own and other men's labor, the return to 
 Honesty as the sole possible basis of national life and 
 national safety, and the redemption of England from the 
 curse which rests upon her. 
 
 I 
 
MODERN MONEY-LENDING, 
 
 AND THE 
 
 MEANING OF DIVIDENDS 
 
 " If I lend £'ioo, and for it covenant to receive £jos, or any other sum greater 
 than was the sum I did lend, this is that that we call usury ; such a kind uf bar- 
 gaining as no good man, or godly man, ever used." — Bp. Jewell, 
 
 " Chi fila ha una camiccia, e chi non fila ne ha due.'* 
 
 The practice of Money-lending is now carried out on 
 such an enormous scale, and by such a large class of society, 
 and is attended by certain evils so widespread and disas 
 trous, that it has become fairly necessary to look the pro- 
 blem in the face ; and whatever may be the conclusion 
 arrived at, I shall consider the purpose of this paper ful- 
 filled if it causes the reader (and myself) to confront the 
 question and to see that it requires solution. 
 
 There has always been a disagreeable odor about this 
 trade. The very word Usury has unpleasant associations 
 with it. How is it then that we who reprobate the money- 
 lending Jew of mediaeval Europe and the marwari whose 
 loans press so heavily to-day upon the peasant of India, are 
 light-hearted enough to lend our money out at interest 
 without a qualm, and (some of us) to make our entire sub- 
 sistence on the gains so got from other people ? 
 
 Is it that the Shylock and the marwari are so distant 
 from us that we do not perceive our relationship to them ? 
 
 " No," says someone, " the reason is that they practised 
 and practise Usury ; we only reap Interest. To live on the 
 20 
 
MODERN MONEY-LENDING. 21 
 
 gains of other people becomes criminal when you depass a 
 certain point." 
 
 What then is that point ? Where is that hne to be drawn 
 which divides legitimate Interest from Usury? Let us 
 remember that the word Usury simply indicates that the 
 person who lends the money expects a reward for the use of 
 it ; and the word Interest indicates that the person who 
 lends the money is interested in, or a party to, the concern 
 from which the gain is expected to be made. There is 
 nothing in the original signification of the two words to 
 show one proceeding as more legitimate than the other. 
 
 Certainly it is quite conceivable that a high rate of In- 
 terest might be grossly unfair, and a low rate only just and 
 equitable ; but this distinction of degree can hardly be the 
 ground of our action, since there is nothing that we usually 
 covet more or congratulate ourselves more upon than the 
 obtaining of a high rate of interest for our money. 
 
 No — the reason, it seems to me, why we carry on our 
 modern money-lending business without qualms lies simply 
 in the fact that the practice is universal round us. Every 
 body (which in the '•' society " signification of the word 
 means everyone who does not work with his hands) does it. 
 Custom sanctions it ; " the law allows it." And to most 
 people involved in the practice it naturally never occurs to 
 consider its rightfulness or wrongfulness at all. 
 
 But this does not make it the less incumbent on us — 
 once we have looked into the matter — to get to the roots of 
 it. Rather more. Let us grub at it then. 
 
 The fundamental principle of social life and just living 
 can never, it seems to me, be too often brought forward, 
 For some reason or other it is only too often liable to be 
 obscured. It is this — that the existence and well-being of 
 a people are secured by their collective labor, and that 
 only by taking his part in that labor can each man have a 
 
22 MODERN MONEY-LENDING, 
 
 right to the advantages which flow from it. PoHtical Eco- 
 nomy always begins with an island ! At first all are workers, 
 and by a few hours' work daily from each man sufficient of 
 the necessaries and adornments even of life are produced 
 (from the natural resources of the island) to maintain every 
 ■ one in comfort. After a time it is found that the state of 
 affairs has changed. Half the population is now living in 
 idleness — or at most engaged in occupations whose benefit 
 to the community is very remote and dubious. The other 
 half is working very hard — twice as many hours a day in 
 fact as before — as it must do to keep things up to the 
 former level. 
 
 This is a sad change for the worse. One half of the 
 community is living in degrading slavery, has more work to 
 do than can be done without injury and the blunting of 
 noble powers. The other half is living in (far more) 
 degrading dependence, and is suffering that injury to its 
 soul which comes and must come from all meanness and 
 selfishness. 
 
 This second state of affairs on the island is what we 
 notice on our own Island to-day and in modern social life 
 at large. The causes which have led up to it and the means 
 by which it is kept going are manifold. The use of money 
 and of capital, hereditary acquirements, monopoly of land, 
 customs and laws now grown false and harmful, are some 
 of the engines by which one part of the community retains 
 its power over the other part. The problem of the little 
 island is complicated, too, when we come to consider the 
 big Island, by such matters as foreign trade, taxes, misun- 
 derstandings as to the nature of money, and all the cog- 
 wheels big and little of social life — but essentially it is the 
 same. These things only serve to disguise the fact that one 
 class is living on the labor of another ; they do not in any 
 way alter the fact. 
 
AND THE MEANING OF DIVIDENDS. 23 
 
 Let US look at the matter again. I have said that the 
 money-lending classes are in our modern society enor- 
 mously large. They are also enormously on the increase. 
 It can hardly be otherwise. Let us suppose that in 
 some society conducted on our present system one man 
 (and only one at first) accumulates enough money to 
 bring him in a substantial income — say ;^5oo a year. Then 
 that man is safe. He has escaped from the labor of feed- 
 ing himself and children, and may fold his arms and amuse 
 himself as he likes — he has got on the dry land beyond the 
 flood — and this in perpetuity practically ; for he may live as 
 long as he can and then transmit the right to those who 
 come after him. He is safe, and except by his own impru- 
 dence need never again join the throng of those who toil 
 and spin. Presently another man accumulates the desired 
 amount. He also " retires," and is safe. Then a third and 
 fourth. Then hundreds and thousands, then a considerable 
 portion of the whole nation — where shall we stop ? All the 
 footsteps (with but few exceptions) point the same way. 
 Few, who by their own exertions or those of their fathers and 
 grandfathers have reached the desired haven, are likely to 
 quit it again. The number must go on increasing — yet it 
 is impossible for a whole nation to retire and suck its 
 thumb! What is happening ? This is happening — avast 
 and ever vaster proportion of the nation is getting (by force 
 of existing social rights and machinery) to live on the 
 labor of the rest. Every day, of those who are harnessed 
 to the car of national life and prosperity, one or another by 
 dint of extra forethought, prudence, miserliness, cunning, or 
 whatever it may be, gets an advantage over the rest, leaves 
 them, jumps inside the car, and thenceforth, instead of 
 drawing is drawn. The end is only too obvious. It is a 
 rcductio ad absurdum of national life. It is breakdown, 
 smash up — and the car left in the ditch. 
 
24 MODERN MONEY-LENDING, 
 
 These are serious charges to bring against the practice of 
 money-lending as carried on in modern society. Let us 
 look at the other side of the question. 
 
 I have ^S°° which I have saved out of the products of 
 my own labor — and which I have no immediate use for. 
 My neighbor offers me 5 per cent, per annum for the use of 
 the sum, for a given period. Have I not a perfect right to ac- 
 cept his offer ? Should I not be a perfect fool if I refused it ? 
 
 Yes (in answer to the firs: question — the answer to the 
 second will perhaps appear later on) I have a perfect (legal) 
 right to accept his offer. On this view Interest is a grati- 
 tude. It is presumably a payment made by the borrower 
 in return for some advantage he derives from the money 
 lent. It does not matter to me in a sense how he employs 
 the money. He may merely squander it for his own amuse- 
 ment, or he may employ it as capital to bring him a profit. 
 In either case he gives me what I consider sufficient security 
 for its repayment, and if he offers me 5 per cent, interest 
 besides it is because the advantage is worth that to him ; 
 and I have a perfect right to accept it. 
 
 Besides, am I not by lending this money actually in the 
 second case benefiting society ? Do I not put capital into 
 the hands of a man who is willing and able to employ it, 
 and thus actually encourage and further production ? Nay 
 more, I may go further, and waiving my request for a secu- 
 rity may subscribe my funds directly to his concern, taking 
 the risk and sharing some of the profits — may become a 
 shareholder in fact. In doing this do I not benefit my 
 country, and may I not pocket my returns with a glow of 
 substantial and generous satisfaction? * 
 
 * Under the term Money-lenders, I thus include both Bond and Shareholders— 
 receivers of Interest and sharers of Profits. I am aware that current Politica 
 Economy draws a considerable distinction between these two classes. But though 
 for scientific purposes such a distincticn may be useful, yet practically, and as far 
 as regards national advantage or social morality, I confess I do not see that it ii 
 of much importance. 
 
AND THE MEANING OF DIVIDENDS. 2$ 
 
 Yes, I believe that it is possible that in the ways men- 
 tioned I may be useful to society; and it seems to me 
 very probable that, for instance, the Jew money-lender of 
 the 13th and 14th centuries in England 7c/as a very useful 
 member of society. At that time, when capital was scarce, 
 and for the budding demands of commerce private indi- 
 viduals could often not supply sufficient funds, his services 
 may have been indispensable ; and if he sometimes took 
 undue advantage of his position, plentiful laws restrained 
 him. 
 
 How then can it be that the gains of the modern money- 
 lender, whether bond or share-holder, if just, should lead to 
 such disastrous conclusions as I have pointed out ? How 
 can we reconcile the rightfulness of interest with the im- 
 morality of a life of idleness, and the meanness of a vast 
 class supported by the excessive and exhausting labor of 
 the mass of the people ? 
 
 Is it possible that a practice which is wholesome and 
 useful to society in a moderate or small degree may become 
 highly dangerous when carried out on a large scale ; that 
 the Jew money-lender in consideration of his services could 
 in his time really be tolerated, but that the shareholder has 
 become an insupportable Old Man of the Sea who must be 
 torn off and got rid of at all costs ? Quite possible, I 
 think ; though I will not by any means say that this is the 
 conclusion of the whole matter. Let us grub at it again. 
 
 Is it still not obvious that the poverty of the mass of the 
 people stands in direct relationship to the wealth of the 
 money-lending classes, that they are the two opposite sides 
 or faces, in fact, of the same thing? Has that original 
 illustration about the people on the Island grown dim by 
 reason of some considerations by the way which have been 
 introduced ? Let it stand out clear again. It cannot be 
 got over. 
 
26 MODERN MONEY-LENDING, 
 
 Where does Interest come from ? Have you ever thought 
 of that ? 
 
 If I lend £"500 to a man, he may, as I have said, either 
 squander it away or invest it as capital to bring him in a 
 profit. The first case need not detain us long ; it is in the 
 main an exceptional case. If the borrower squanders my 
 money, I shall probably have to sell him up to repay myself 
 capital and interest; I shall not lend to him again, and 
 that game soon comes to an end. The money-lending 
 which constitutes the great problem of modern society is 
 that which is connected in some way or other with capital. 
 I lend my ;^5oo to a man who employs it as capital in 
 some concern, and the interest which I receive comes out 
 of the profits of that concern. 
 
 But where does it come from ? Who pays it ? How does 
 the capitalist make his profit ? 
 
 The capitalist buys raw material ; he employs labor to 
 work it up into a finished article ; and he sells the finished 
 article. These are the three processes of his business, and 
 in one (or more) of these processes he must get more than 
 he gives — otherwise he can make no profit. That is quite 
 clear, I think. He is a clothier. He buys cloth, employs 
 men and women to cut and stitch it, and sells coats. The 
 coat contains so much cloth and so much added labor 
 (including the labor necessary to replace the wear and 
 tear of the sewing machines). And the value of the coat 
 is equal to the value of the cloth plus the value of the 
 labor put into it. 
 
 Where does his profit come from ? Not in the buying 
 and selling of the mere cloth obviously. For he buys at 
 the market price and must in the long run sell at the same. 
 The profit comes to him in the buying and selling of the 
 labor which he employs on the coat. How is that ? It is 
 not difficult to see. He gives his young women two 
 
AND THE MEANING OF DIVIDENDS. 2J 
 
 shillings (generally less) for their day's work at the sewing 
 machines. But the labor they put into the cloth is Jt'ortA 
 far more than two shillings ; and the extra value the Capita- 
 list gets in the market for his coat (above the value of the 
 cloth out of which it is made) is the actual value of the 
 labor put into it, not the value of the wretched wage which 
 he gives. Thus it is that he gets more than he gives. 
 
 The process is simple enough. An article with say nine 
 hours' — a whole day's — labor in it should fetch on the 
 market an equivalent of nine hours' labor, e.g., such an 
 amount of coin as would on the average cost nine hours 
 labor in its production. This goes to the Capitalist. 
 But does anyone for a moment suppose that the two 
 shillings that he gives to his workwoman is the equivalent, 
 or anything like the equivalent, of those same nine 
 hours ? What, if you please, in the way of the ordinary 
 necessaries of life does nine hours' labor represent ? 
 (iodwin, the author of " Political Justice," calculated that 
 a man with ordinary labor, unhampered by the rapacity 
 of others, should be able in two hours daily to supply 
 himself with the necessaries and conveniences of life. 
 Bastiat, if I am not mistaken, mentions two and a half 
 hours. Karl Marx, whose calculations on Capital I am 
 following, supposes six hours' labor per diem necessary 
 in order that a man may provide for himself, a wife, and 
 two children. Of course an exact estimate on this subject 
 is difficult to make. So far has society got from any simple 
 and equitable relation between labor and its reward that 
 we actually do not kno'io how much (or how little) labor is 
 required for a man to support himself in health and com- 
 fort (see p. 1 2). But all authors agree that it is very small 
 compared with the nine hours' daily slavery which constitute 
 the beginning and the end of a modern working man's life. 
 
 * Twelve houts, with one and a half off for meals, is the more usual day's work, 
 I believe, in this department. 
 
28 MODERN MONEY-LENDING, 
 
 The nine hours' labor then which our sempstress or 
 machinist puts into the article ought to represent for her a 
 comfortable subsistence for several days. It represents a 
 bare living for one day. She ought to get say a value of 
 6s. for it. She receives 2s. The capitalist pockets the 
 difference. The wretched girl makes him a present, or has 
 to make him a present, of four days' work in the week. 
 She gets the value of her labor for two. And this is 
 where profits, where interest, under our present social sys- 
 tem, come from. 
 
 The position of women in these matters is notoriously 
 bad, but that of the male laborers, skilled or unskilled, is 
 little better. Marx calculates that the ordinary cotton 
 spinner makes a present to his master of three days' work 
 in the week. He puts six days' labor into the yarn, and 
 his master in selling the cotton gets the equivalent of that 
 six days' labor, but he only gives the spinner the money 
 value of three days' labour. " Under the old system of 
 corvee a man was obliged to give, say one day's work in the 
 week, or at most two, to his feudal lord without any pay- 
 ment. Such a man, though he had the remaining five or 
 six days wholly to himself, was thought little better than a 
 slave. Nor was he. English capitalists would, of all men, 
 subscribe largely to reheve human beings from continuing 
 in such a shameful and degraded position. But here at 
 home, we have men, women, and children, who are obliged 
 to give four, five, six hours a day to the capitalist for 
 nothing, and yet are thought free." * 
 
 Now let us take the case of a railway company (I am 
 interested in this as I am a shareholder myself, and should 
 like to see how my dividends arise). 
 
 We (the shareholders) have subscribed our funds, and — 
 
 » " England for All," by H. M. Hyndman, price 6d.— An excellent little book. 
 
AND THE MEANING OF DIVIDENDS. 29 
 
 to simplify the matter — we will suppose that we have bought 
 over with a large portion of them the entire plant of an old 
 company. This then forms our capital stock ; and we can 
 begin running trains at once. We shall have to maintain 
 the permanent way and the rolling stock, and for this pur- 
 pose shall have to employ a large number of men, besides 
 purchasing materials from time to time ; and we shall have 
 a large staff of general servants and ofificials. Our chief ex- 
 penditure, therefore, will be in wages. And our receipts 
 will arise principally from the transport of goods and 
 passengers. How do we expect to make our profits ? 
 Obviously by reducing the expenditure below the receipts. 
 
 We have to transport 20 truck-loads of coal. There is a 
 lot of labor required. There is the labor of shunters and 
 signalmen, of station-masters and platelayers, of driver, 
 stoker, and guard ; there is the labor of those who replace 
 the wear and tear of the line and of the rolling stock. All 
 this labor and much more has to be considered. When 
 totted up it constitutes the labor-value of the service ren- 
 dered. What we expect to get in exchange for the service 
 is an equivalent labor-value as expressed in money — that is 
 to say, if we get j£s for the service it may be supposed that 
 the labor necessary for the production of a piece of gold, 
 value p^5, is equivalent to the labor involved in the transport 
 of the said 20 truck-loads of coal. This is the basis of all 
 just exchange. It is possible, however, that we may get 
 more than our labor-value. If we are secure from com- 
 petition or have a monopoly of any kind, vre may succeed 
 in getting more than we give — simply because our customers 
 cannot get their transport done at a less price through other 
 channels. It is possible also that we may sometimes have 
 to take actually less than the labor-value of our services 
 rendered. How we can do this and yet make a profit we 
 shall see presently. 
 
3© MODERN MONEY-LENDING, 
 
 The obvious method, through all this, of securing divi- 
 dends is to keep dmvn 7C'a^es. 
 
 Let us take the three cases supposed. Let us first assume 
 that the price we can get for our service represents exactly 
 the just exchange — that we receive a labor-value from our 
 customer exactly equal to that which we give him. How 
 do we make our profits ? How must we make our profits ? 
 Obviously by giving our own servants and workmen /ess 
 than the labor-value of what they do for us — by giving 
 them wages which do «<?/ represent their labor — which are 
 not an equivalent for it. 
 
 Let us suppose, secondly, that the state of the market 
 forces us for the time being to accept from the customer 
 actually less than the labor-value of the service rendered ; 
 then obviously we are driven to lower still further the wages 
 of our servants, to do them a more glaring injustice — that 
 is, if we can ; for on this depend our chances of a dividend. 
 
 These two cases are, I take it, by far the most common- 
 Lately, for instance, large bodies of signalmen working on 
 the Midland Railway have had their wages reduced from 
 2 IS. to 19s. a week ! These men are working 12 hours a 
 day ; one week, nights ; another week, days ; and some 
 hours on Sundays — some 80 hours in all. Hardly three- 
 pence an hour. It is impossible to pretend that these men 
 are paid for their work, but it is the balance of their unpaid 
 labor which creates what is called the dividend ; and that 
 is what makes the directors so anxious to reduce the wage.* 
 I can buy in the street six boxes of matches for a penny. 
 
 * Their consideration for the workers may be judged by the following: 
 
 Lately the Midland Railway's receipts (owing to bad trade) fell off by ;f50,(X)0 in 
 one half-year- If this had been economised out of dividend, the dividend for the 
 half-year would have been decreased by one tiventieth part. But rather than 
 that the shareholders should bear so trifling a loss, it was resolved to recoup the 
 sum out of wages ; and this involved the discharge of some hundreds of servants, 
 and the reduction of the wages of others in t he shameful manner shown above. 
 And yet the Midland Railway is worked as liberally as any Railway in the United 
 Kingdom. See note, p. 32. 
 
AXD THE MEANING OF DIVIDENDS. 3 1 
 
 The capitalist must sell them at considerably less than that 
 — say nine boxes for a penny. It is difficult for me to 
 believe that the labor-value involved in the making of nine 
 boxes of matches is not more than a penny. If so, this is 
 a case in which the capitalist gets actually less value from 
 the customer than he gives. What then must he give to his 
 own workmen ? This is a question which weighs upon me 
 when I buy those six boxes. It is not a pleasant one ; and 
 I feel no desire any longer to glory in their cheapness. 
 
 To return to my railway. The third case remains uncon- 
 sidered, in which I succeed in getting from my customer 
 (for one reason or another) more than the value of the service 
 rendered. When this happens I certainly cati pay my 
 servants and workmen the full value of their labor, and yet 
 have a margin for my own profit. And it would be useless 
 to deny that this sometimes takes place. Workmen under 
 the present system and with existing fluctuations in trade 
 sometimes get in wages as much as represents the full 
 value of their labor. But this is always an exceptional 
 condition of affairs and does not last long. In such a case 
 where do the profits of capital come from ? If I charge my 
 passenger for transporting him from Dover to London the 
 full value of one man's labor for a day, and the human 
 labor actually involved in the transport (reckoning up 
 everything) has been only equal to one man's labor for 
 three-quarters of a day — and I pay my servants justly for 
 that — then I gain my profits clearly out of the passenger. 
 I gain a quarter-day's labor from him — that is, I cause him 
 (or if he does not work himself, whoever works for him) to 
 work a whole day for a service which only costs me (or my 
 representatives) the labor of three-quarters of a day. 
 
 Thus, once more, it appears that my profits come, and 
 must come, from the labor of others. They arise, and can 
 only arise, from the fact that some portion of the labor 
 
32 MODERN MONEY-LENDING, 
 
 connected with my business goes unremunerated. The 
 proper remuneration of that portion I pocket for myself, 
 and that is how my dividends arise.* 
 
 That labor is the proper basis of exchangeable value is 
 now assumed, I believe, by all Political Economists ; that 
 it is the source of all that is generally termed " Wealth " is 
 obvious. It therefore needs no detailed argument to prove 
 that if a class lives without labor, if it obtains wealth with- 
 out working for it — it must be appropriating the labor of 
 others, and the wealth that rightfully belongs to them. 
 And this is the case, I fear, of the shareholder and of that 
 vast class in this nation who live on interest and dividends. 
 
 But, it may well be asked, if this appropriation is unjust, 
 why does the worker submit to it ? Why does he allow a 
 portion, and often a large portion, of his daily labor to go 
 unremunerated ? 
 
 The answer is : Because he cannot help himself. He sees 
 and feels that it is unjust, but he is caught in the jaws of. a 
 vice and cannot move. 
 
 The matter lies in a nutshell. If the worker could employ 
 himself, be his own Capitalist, then (and then only) could 
 he get the full remuneration of his labor, for he would have 
 no idle person to support in addition to himself and family. 
 But in the existing state of affairs he cannot become his 
 own Capitalist. Why? Because, of the two outlets of 
 Capital — agriculture and industrial production — one is 
 barred by our land system, the other by machinery. 
 
 * Auy railway company's report will illustrate these remarks. I quote the follow- 
 ing figures from the accounts of the North-Eastern for the latter part of 1884. The 
 total revenue for that half-year was £3,299,000. This enormous sum was expended 
 as follows: — Wages (inclnding salaiics of officials), £l,o78,000; purchase of 
 materials, law costs, t.Txes, &c., £689,000; and the balance, £1,531,000, went 
 almost entirely to the bond aiTd share liolders ! That is, roughly speaking, one 
 million sterling went to the workers who carried on the line, and one million and 
 a half to the idlers who claimed interest on their capital ; or, in other words, out 
 of every ten hours that the signalman, engine-driver, or other servant or official 
 worked, he gave six hours for the benefit of the share and bond holder, and only 
 had four for himself. And this is about an average case. Taking the railways of 
 the United Kingdom as a whole, we find that £33,000,000 a year is paid as interest 
 on Capital out of this industry alone ! 
 
AND THE MEANING OF DIVIDENDS. ^;^ 
 
 In fact, if our workman, having saved up a little capital^ 
 proposes to buy a small piece of land and support himself 
 upon it by his own labor, and that of his family — he finds 
 himself at the very outset met by the fact that he can hardly 
 find such a piece of land to buy. The main portion of 
 Great Britain is in the hands of a few thousand large owners. 
 The quantity of land in the market is small, it is mostly in 
 large and cumbrous holdings, the price is prohibitive, and 
 the legal expenses and complications attending the transfer 
 are very vexatious and costly, the result being that in his 
 own country the workman finds himself an exile, without a 
 foot of soil which he can call his own, and unable to exert 
 the labor which he longs to put into the ground, without 
 hiring himself out, becoming a slave, a dependent, and 
 giving half the profits of his toil to someone else. 
 
 If, on the other hand, he desires to embark his small 
 savings in some form of industrial production, and to 
 employ himself in that way, he finds that machinery forbids. 
 For without machinery he cannot hope to compete in the 
 market. And to acquire machinery and all that goes with 
 it, he must lay out large sums of money, and be a large 
 Capitalist at once. 
 
 Thus, absolutely unable on the present system to employ 
 himself, the workman is thrown on the market — there to 
 sell his labor to the Capitalist for what he can get. 
 
 Now we begin to perceive the operation of those two 
 deities, worshiped by Commercial Philosophers — Supply 
 and Demand. Think for a moment of the vast floating 
 fluctuating tramping toiling population that does the 
 manual work of England to-day. " In the i sth century a 
 landless houseless family was almost unknown." What 
 material for reflection lies in these words ! Think of the 
 vast patient toiling population of to-day, homeless, tramping 
 from place to place, thrice blessed when it can get into 
 
 D 
 
34 MODERN MONEY-LENDING, 
 
 some squalid corner of workshop or factory and be allowed 
 to grind one eternal and monotonous operation for nine 
 hours a day ; remember that this population is so situated 
 that it cannot employ itself; and then think of the capitalist 
 class rolling through the streets in its carriages, monopolis- 
 ing the land and the instruments of production — at whose 
 feet this working population has to kneel and beg for 
 employment. Is it not a mockery to talk of Supply and 
 Demand — or if not a mockery, are these two words so to 
 rule us that all charity and human pity, nay, that all honesty 
 and the demands of divine justice itself are to be set aside 
 in their favor ? The Demand is a demand for bread, the 
 Supply — well, what is the supply ? What is it as a matter 
 of fact, what is it likely to be, from a class in power to a 
 class that is forced to come and crouch at its feet ? What 
 has it been all the world over from the tyrant to the 
 slave ? A supply, alas ! of insults and mockery, of chas- 
 tisement and tears, and a crown of thorns placed upon 
 the brow of despised and rejected Humanity. 
 
 The supply (in wages) is and obviously must be under 
 the present system just sufficient to keep the laborer going — 
 and, in the long run, no more. I think practically all 
 political economists admit this. That whatever fluctuations 
 there may be owing to the state of trade, whatever great 
 accessions in the production of wealth owing to new and 
 ever new mechanical inventions, in the end the wages of 
 the workmen do tend and must under the capitalist system 
 tend ever do\vnwards to that minimum which just admits 
 of the support of the workman and the perpetuation of his 
 race. Capital, in fact, is limited in the hands of the few, and 
 Labor is at the mercy of these few as to whether it shall 
 be employed or not. The country may be full of Labor 
 desiring to be employed, but if the capitalists do not see a 
 way of turning it to their profit it remains unemployed. 
 
AND THE MEANING OF DIVIDENDS. 35 
 
 The object of all production, in fact, is not the providing 
 for the people or the supply of the wants of the nation — 
 but the profit of a small class. And if the small class is not 
 profited the nation may starve ! That is the long and short 
 of it. 
 
 Nothing can illustrate this better than England at the 
 present time. The land holds thousands of men, honest 
 excellent workmen, who hate idleness and desire work. 
 Can anyone doubt that England would be a richer happier 
 country if they were employed ? If those men were only 
 turned out on the farm lands now in every county running 
 to thistles and docks — there to support thetnselves by their 
 own labor — the country would by that alone be millions 
 of pounds richer. Yet these men roam the roads and with 
 hungry eyes look over the hedges at fields all going to 
 waste, at badly drained, uncared for, half-cultivated lands 
 — in vain —because, forsooth ! the capitalist and landlord 
 classes do not find it suit their pockets to employ them. 
 The same remark applies to industrial production. It is 
 useless to say that there is not ample work for the industrial 
 classes of England to do — work which would and must be 
 profitable to themselves and the nation. The real question 
 is whether it suits the capitalist classes to let them do it. 
 But Lord Broadacre and Mr. Moneybag find they can get 
 lo per cent, for their money in Mexican and Brazilian 
 bonds, and it suits them very well to let their capital go out 
 of the country — suits them better perhaps than employing 
 the starving laborers in it. It matters not to them — it 
 matters not to the great shareholding, dividend-drawing, 
 and rent-receiving classes of this country what the condition 
 is of the laboring masses from whom they draw their wealth. 
 As a matter of fact they know little or nothing about it. I 
 believe that thousands and thousands out of these classes 
 ivould, if they only knew the facts of the case — if they could 
 
 D— 2 
 
36 MODERN MONEY-LENDING, 
 
 only realise the monotony and depression of the life of the 
 mechanical wage-worker, the hopelessness of it, the bitter 
 sense of wrong as he is driven to beg for employment from 
 door to door — if they could only for one moment with the 
 keen eye of justice see the honest relation between 
 themselves, and this man who stands without in the 
 cold — see him as the true man, and themselves as 
 dependents — would, I say, if not out of piiy out of 
 very pride abandon their mode of life and rest no more 
 till they had made some reparation. But for the most part, 
 lapped in luxury and ease from their childhood onwards, 
 ignorant of the real facts of life, nursed among absurd and 
 impossible ideals, and flattered by class views and interests, 
 living in houses and quarters far away from the haunts of 
 labor, and knowing nothing of the great heart of the 
 People with all its aspirations and sufferings, they have no 
 chance to see the thing in its broad true light, nor to under- 
 stand the real nature of the position in which they are 
 placed.* 
 
 Let me here pause to resume. In considering the 
 morality of Interest I agreed that if one should offer me 5 
 per cent, interest for the use of my ;^5oo I should have a 
 perfect right to accept it. How far do I feel my conclusion 
 now modified by the foregoing investigations ? A perfect 
 /^^^/ right. Yes, that under the present conditions of society 
 I certainly have. But what sort of right beyond that ? what 
 sort of human or moral right ? 
 
 I confess that if the Laborer from whose overplus of 
 
 * That the industrial classes themselves, however, understand it, and feel that 
 it must cnme to an end, let the following portions of a letter from an artizan, a 
 wire-woiker, prove. Writing of a book, he says : " I glory in its onslaught on 
 Modern Gentility and all its ignobilities and fettered uselessness. I know its 
 author would have them break theii fetters and give them liberty. His strong 
 language is most needful to get them to think at all on this subject, they live in 
 such a flattered fool's-paradise with such an absence of self-reliance. How unlike 
 the early Greeks! or even the common English people. . . . This state of 
 society has most certainly outUyed its usefulness, and must die and England live.'' 
 
AND THE MEANING OF DIVIDENDS. 37 
 
 work my Interest o mes were himself in a substantial and 
 flourishing condition, if for instance as in the 15th century 
 he were himself a small landholder, and employer of his 
 own right arm, then, though I might have compunctions, I 
 should still feel that he had a choice in the matter — that he 
 was really at liberty to bargain with me on equal terms, and 
 to pay me the overplus of his labor or withhold it as he 
 might think fit. But as the circumstances are — seeing that 
 the Laborer has no choice, that I practically have him by 
 the throat, and that he must either pay me or die, I fear it 
 is a little out of place to talk of any kind of right at all — 
 except that which comes of force. 
 
 Think once more of our island. There are two parties 
 on it. One party possesses all the land (best not inquire 
 how it got it !) and all the tools and implements of industry' ; 
 the other party possesses nothing. The second party has 
 to do all the labor. Of the fruits of its labor just enough 
 is awarded to it to keep it alive and fit for work, the rest is 
 claimed by the first party (under the names of rent, interest, 
 profit, &:c.) as a reward for its kindness in allowing the 
 laborers to use its land and tools ! 
 
 Why does the second party submit to anything so absurd ? 
 Simply because it is the most patient, broad-backed, good- 
 humoured, simple, honest creature imaginable, and has 
 never fairly opened its eyes to see through the juggle 
 imposed upon it. But that flam cannot last long now. 
 The day of the rule of class greed and wealth is almost 
 at an end. The workers are waking up in England and all 
 over Europe to their true position. In a few, very few, years 
 the antagonism will be declared on both sides. Perhaps in 
 England the very next great crisis will bring an open de- 
 claration of war — if not (as may be hoped) actual conflict. 
 
 But before coming to anything so practical as a con- 
 sideration of what has to be done in view of this huge and 
 
38 MODERN MONEY-LENDING, 
 
 impending struggle, let me meet one objection to my 
 general argument which just now occurs to me. 
 
 It is said that a state of society which only provides for 
 manual labor and the physical wants of men is disastrous 
 to all higher life and in every way far from desirable ; and 
 that to deprive men of the chance of living in " inde- 
 pendence " (as it is called) would be to deprive the world 
 of the services of many great thinkers, artists, philan- 
 thropists, and benefactors of the human race. Let me say 
 first, and in passing as it were, that if mere justice were 
 done to the human masses at large they would not stand in 
 need of so many philanthropists and benefactors ! and 
 that injustice can never in the nature of things grow a 
 greater crop of human welfare and felicity than justice. 
 Secondly, let me say that there is nothing to prevent 
 society from recognising and paying the labor of the artist, 
 the judge, and the thinker even, — as much as it recognises 
 and rewards the labor of the mason and the quarryman ; 
 but that this would form no reason for maintaining a vast 
 number of people in abject uselessness and idleness besides. 
 Thirdly, let me say that the production of the necessaries 
 of hfe is still the most important and the foundation element 
 of national life, and that in our present England it is both 
 in honor and in actual pursuit dangerously neglected in 
 favor of the innumerable fancy-work with which it is over- 
 laid. Fourthly, do not let us forget the manifold evils 
 which arise from this so-called " independence " — the waste 
 of life, and its good things, the ennui, unbelief, and ill- 
 health — do not let us forget that this *' independent " class 
 is responsible for the creation of other classes — such as 
 lawyers, domestic servants, doctors — who if not idle are 
 themselves next to useless to the community, and therefore 
 a burden upon it ; and Fifthly, and most important of all, 
 let me remind the reader that if the capitalist class were 
 
AXD THE MEANING OF DIVIDENDS. 39 
 
 abolished and a fair share of work at the necessaries of Hfe 
 done by all parties in the nation — the average work so 
 required would be only about three or four hours a day, 
 thus leaving ample time in the remaining hours for other 
 pursuits, and probably causing developments on the intel- 
 lectual and artistic sides of civilisation hitherto unpre- 
 cedented and undreamt of. 
 
 To proceed now with a consideration of what has to be 
 done in the immediate future to meet tlie coming changes. 
 The People are demanding, and will with rapidly increasing 
 loudness demand, that the land of this country and the 
 instruments of production (meaning thereby Capital) shall 
 be put once more into the hands of the producers. Under 
 various names, as Nationalisation of the land, Nationalisa- 
 tion of Capital, Co-operation, Socialism, &c., they will 
 practically demand one thing — namely, that the workers 
 shall directly inherit the fruits of their work, and shall not be 
 mulcted by secondary classes intervening between. The 
 capitalist classes (as a body) will resist this demand ; and 
 there will be more or less open war for a considerable 
 period, ending at last no doubt in the defeat of the 
 capitalists. The end cannot really I think be doubtful, 
 but the length of the struggle and the violence of it may 
 depend on a variety of causes. It seems to me in the last 
 degree improbable that any great proportion of the capitalist 
 classes will admit the justice of or yield to the demands of 
 the people ; on the contrary, they will organise resistance ; 
 and the People will organise attack. And it is only too 
 probable that antagonism will embitter- and exaggerate 
 the sense of wrong on both sides. Some few, how- 
 ever, among the capitalist classes will discern the sub- 
 stantial justice of the popular claims, and will have 
 boldness to act up to their convictions ; and on the action 
 of these it may greatly depend whether the struggle be 
 
40 MODERN MONEY-LENDING, 
 
 ultimately referred to the arbitrament of reason or of 
 force. 
 
 In face of the rapidly spreading views (partly explained 
 above) on the nature of rent, interest, and profits, the present 
 attitude of the more well-meaning among the Capitalist 
 classes towards the People seems very inadequate and indeed 
 out of place. It is not patronage and kindly condescension 
 that are required, but mere justice. From the person who 
 has taken from you a large proportion of the fruits of 
 your labor it is not agreeable to receive small doles to keep 
 you from starvation. Charity organisations and unpaid 
 magistracies and the current philanthropic schemes indicate 
 a benevolent intention on the part of those who. promote 
 them, but they also indicate an entire misconception as to 
 where the root of the evil lies, and an incapability of 
 realising the way in which the people themselves regard 
 these attempts to remedy it. 
 
 On the other hand, perhaps the workers hardly realise 
 how difficult it is for one of the dividend-receiving classes 
 to extricate himself, when he finds his mistake, from the 
 false position into which he has unconsciously got. Trained 
 to no kind of manual work, perhaps to no useful work at all 
 (for of how little real use to the community is the greater 
 part of the work at present done in the select professions !), 
 trained perhaps to no work of any kind, useful or unuseful, 
 he (or she) finds it difficult to satisfy the desire now arising 
 for an honest and faithful life. And indeed, the Avhole 
 state of society around being dishonest and unfaithful, it is 
 difficult for anyone to satisfy that desire. 
 
 Yet there are certain lines along which such a person 
 may work with satisfaction — and which I may perhaps try 
 to indicate. In the first place (and perhaps this is as a rule 
 the best plan), remaining in that place or profession in 
 which they are, they may try to make their work in it en- 
 
AND THE MEANING OF DIVIDENDS. 41 
 
 tirely honest and open, and as useful to others as possible, 
 especially the poor. This will of course involve losses, 
 monetary and otherwise, and ridicule. But nothing else 
 can be expected or need be wished for. In the second 
 place, to make this course of life feasible and to gradually 
 gain independence from dividends, it will be necessary to 
 reduce expenses greatly, and to adopt a very simple mode 
 of life. The current mode of life among the capitalist 
 people is so needlessly expensive and complex, that few of 
 them, even the more economical, realise how easily it can 
 be simplified, and with how much advantage to health and 
 happiness, liut really nowadays the adornments of life, as 
 for instance, literature, music, art, travel even, are so cheap 
 that very little, after the necessaries have been provided for 
 is required for the satisfaction of mental wants. A great 
 deal of ignorance no doubt exists among so-called well-to- 
 do people about proper food (a matter in which humble 
 country folk are far better instructed) and a great deal of 
 unnecessary expense incurred in this item ; but I have not 
 the least doubt — and I am not speaking at random in this 
 matter — that with j^i20 a year a man and a wife willing to 
 do a fair share of work (and both of them free from any 
 desire to make a pretence of grandeur — for this lies very 
 much at the root of the matter) could bring up a little 
 family in health and happiness — all taking their part in 
 household life — and with education, culture, and refinement 
 equal to any in the land. But such a change as this, or in 
 this direction, at all generally adopted, would enormously 
 alter the aspect of the nation, and bring us nearer to that 
 ideal of social love, justice, and health from which we have 
 so far strayed. 
 
 I dwell on these personal reforms first, because surely to 
 each individual they must come first — before any more 
 wide-reaching sphere of usefulness can be reached. Any 
 
42 MODERN MONEY-LENDING, 
 
 capitalist or shareholding sort of person who carried out 
 this plan of living would probably after a time find that he 
 (or she) had a considerable balance at the bank to dispose 
 of. He would then have to consider what to do with it. 
 And he would find himself much nearer than before to a 
 practical realisation of the advice which Jesus gave to the 
 young man with great possessions. 
 
 Without attempting to limit the directions in which such 
 a person might with his money try to benefit the mass of 
 the People, as in some sort of reparation for having taken it 
 from them, I would suggest that at present the great need 
 of the People (as mentioned above) is to get capital into 
 their own hands for the purpose of employing their own 
 labor. This can only be done by Co-operation, either on a 
 small scale, or by the community at large. Anything there- 
 fore which will further Co-operation, either by the founding 
 of productive societies, or by a dissemination of ideas on 
 the subject, will I think be especially useful. Furthermore, 
 and beyond this kind of Co-operation, something of the 
 nature of National Co-operation is to be aimed at. This 
 practically, and dropping details, means Socialism, which I 
 take it is simply the substitution of the rule of general 
 advantage for the rule of individual greed, as represented 
 by Capitalism. The word Socialism has to many an un- 
 pleasant flavor. Like every new word or idea which comes 
 into the world, it carries with it something repugnant and 
 offensive ; and those who view it from the outside take it 
 to mean confusion, destruction, and disorder. But those 
 who view it from within see that it really means order and 
 harmony far more than the system it is destined to replace. 
 Indeed, if anything, the danger of Socialism — and one that 
 will have to be guarded against — will be its representing too 
 much orderliness, and so being inimical to individual ec- 
 centricity and development. 
 
AND THE MEANING OF DIVIDENDS. 43 
 
 Behind this word, and giving it authority, stands the huge 
 personality of Democracy, the rule of the mass of the 
 people — their interests rather than the interests of the 
 aristocratic or commercial classes. To many serious and 
 thoughtful folk this rule seems full of danger. To them it 
 appears that the working classes, whatever virtues they may 
 have, are essentially disorderly, turbulent, clamorous, and 
 disregardful of rights — and that therefore (as undoubtedly 
 would be the case if this were true) they are and always 
 must be unfit — either directly or through representatives — 
 to be the practical rulers of society. I believe myself, how- 
 ever, that this is a complete mistake — a mistake due to 
 ignorance, and to hasty generalisation of those isolated 
 occasions when the people have hitherto forced themselves 
 into notice like volcanic lava through the upper crust of 
 society's indifference and repression. It happens to me to 
 have had perhaps exceptional opportunities of knowing the 
 various main strata of English social life — the fashionable, 
 the intellectual, the commercial classes, and the proletariat. 
 I may say I have spent several years in each stratum and 
 mixed freely and wellnigh exclusively in each case with 
 those belonging to it — and without dogmatising on the 
 matter, my decided opinion is that the more stable section of 
 the working masses is the real backbone of the nation. 
 My opinion is that this class (if it can be called a class) is 
 in sound sense, orderliness, affectionateness, and whole- 
 some instinct, moral and physical, far superior to the rest of 
 the nation ; that in intellect, if not equal to the detailed work 
 of the scientific people, it has a plain strong mastery derived 
 from its contact with the actual facts of life, which is most if 
 not more important ; and that in dealing with moral and poli- 
 tical problems it uses a broad sense and tact which often lead 
 it to just conclusions when professional politicians and mora- 
 lists are floundering among expediencies and casuistries. 
 
44 MODERN MONEY-LENDING. 
 
 Of course the same old blood runs everywhere ; and in 
 all sections of social Hfe, as far as I can see, you find the 
 same characters, and differences of character, temperament, 
 passion, and intellect. But undoubtedly the habits of hfe 
 of each class give a special cast and expression to the 
 average underlymg humanity. The fashionable, the intel- 
 lectual, and the commercial classes are each narrowed down 
 in their diiferent ways and along their own lines ; that great 
 class which lives in direct contact with Nature and the actual 
 facts of life seems to me (notwithstanding the specially tr}'- 
 ing circumstances of its life in the present day) to be by far 
 the least narrowed, to be by far the most human ; and I 
 shall always be thankful that I have come to know it, as I 
 have done, and to learn some of the best lessons of my life 
 from it. 
 
 I do not think therefore that in contemplating the 
 changes that are coming upon society, the change from the 
 rule of Capital to the rule of Labor, from Plutocracy to Demo- 
 cracy, from Constitutionalism to Socialism — or whatever 
 you like to call it — we need be alarmed about the upshot 
 or imagine that chaos is before us. For my part I hail the 
 oncoming of this change, and believe that, through what- 
 ever struggle and suffering for the time, it will end in the 
 establishment of a far nobler freer life in the land and in 
 a broader overshadowing of the wings of justice and of 
 peace. 
 
SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 AND INDIVIDUAL EFFORT. 
 
 " The universe could not have been created if God were not a man." 
 
 — Swedenborg . 
 
 The Progress of Society is a subject which occupies much 
 attention nowadays. We hear the shouts and cries of 
 reformers, and are incHned sometimes to be vexed at their 
 noisy insistance and brandishing of panaceas ; but when we 
 come to look into the evils to which they draw our attention 
 — under our very noses as it were — and see how serious they 
 are : when we see the misery, the suffering all around us, 
 and see, too, how directly in some cases this appears to be 
 traceable to certain institutions, we can hardly be human if 
 we do not make some effort to alter these institutions and 
 the state of society which goes with them ; indeed, at times 
 we feel that it is our highest duty to agitate with the noisiest, 
 and insist at all costs that justice should be done, the iniquity 
 swept away. 
 
 And yet on the other hand, when, retiring from the heat 
 and noise of conflict, we mount a little in thought and look 
 out over the world, when we realise — what indeed every day 
 is becoming more abundantly clear — that Society is the 
 gigantic growth of centuries, moving on in an irresistible 
 and ordered march of its own, with the precision and fatality 
 of an astronomic orb, how absurd seem all our demonstra- 
 tions ! what an idle beating of the air ! The huge beast 
 comes on with elephantine tread. The Liberal sits on his 
 45 
 
46 SOCIAL PROGRESS AND INDIVIDUAL EFFORT. 
 
 head, and the Conservative sits on his tail ; but both are 
 borne along whether they will or no, and both are shaken 
 off before long, inevitably, into the dust. One reformer shouts 
 "This way," and another shouts "That," but the great 
 foot comes down and crushes them both, indifferent, crushes 
 the one who thought he was right and the one who found 
 he was wrong, crushes him who would facilitate its progress 
 and him who would stop it, alike. 
 
 I confess that I am continually borne about between 
 these two opposing views. On the one hand is Justice, 
 here and now, which must and shall be done. On the other 
 hand is destiny indifferent, coming down from eternity, 
 which cannot be altered. 
 
 Where does the truth lie ? Is there any attainable truth 
 in the matter ? Perhaps not. The more I think of it, the 
 more am I persuaded that the true explanations, theories, 
 of the social changes which we see around us, that the forces 
 which produce them, that the purposes which they fulfil, 
 lie deep, deep down unsuspected j that the profoundest 
 hitherto Science (Buckle, Comte, Marx, Spencer, Morgan, 
 and the rest) has hardly done more than touch the skirt of 
 this great subject. The surface indications, currents, are 
 elusive ; the apparent purposes very different from the real 
 ones ; individuals, institutions, nations, more or less like 
 puppets or pieces in a game ; — the hand that moves them 
 altogether unseen, screening itself effectually from observa- 
 ^tion. 
 
 Let me take an illustration. You see a young plant 
 springing out ot the ground. You are struck by the eager 
 vital growth of it. What elasticity, energy ! how it snatches 
 contributions from the winds and sunlight and the earth 
 beneath, and rays itself out with hourly fresh adornment ! 
 You become interested to know what is the meaning of all 
 this activity. You watch the plant. It unfolds. The leaf 
 
SOCIAL PROGRESS AND INDIVIDUAL EFFORT. 47 
 
 bud breaks and discloses leaves. These, then, are what it 
 has been aiming at. 
 
 But in the axils of the leaves are other leaf-buds, and from 
 these more leaves ! The young shoot branches and becomes 
 a little tree or bush. The branching and budding go on, a 
 repetition apparently of one formula. Presently, however, 
 a flower-bud appears. Now we see the real object ! 
 
 Have you then ever carefully examined a flower-bud? 
 Take a rosebud, for instance, or better still perhaps, a dahlia. 
 When quite young the buds of these latter are mere green 
 knobs. Cut one across with your penknife : you will see 
 a green or whitish mass, apparently without organisation. 
 Cut another open which is more advanced, and you will see 
 traces of structural arrangement, even markings and lines 
 faintly pencilled on its surface, like the markings that shoot 
 thro' freezing water — sketches and outlines of what is to 
 follow ; later, and your bud will disclose a distinct formation ; 
 beneath an outer husk or film — transparent in the case of 
 the dahlia — the petals can already be distinguished, marked, 
 though not actually separated from each other. Here they 
 lie in block as it were, conceived yet not shapen, like the 
 statue in the stone, or the thought in the brain of the 
 sculptor. But they are growing momently and expanding. 
 The outermost, or sepals, cohering form a husk, which for 
 a time protects the young bud. But it also confines it. A 
 struggle ensues, a strangulation, and then the husk gives way, 
 falls off or passes into a secondary place, and the bud opens. 
 
 And now the petals uncurl and free themselves like living 
 things to the light. But the process is not finished. Each 
 petal expanding shows another beneath, and these younger 
 ones, as they open, push the older ones outwards, and while 
 these latter are fading there are still new ones appearing in 
 the centre. Envelope after envelope exfoliated — such is 
 the law of life. 
 
48 SOCIAL PROGRESS AND INDIVIDUAL EFFORT. 
 
 At last however within the most intimate petals appears 
 the central galaxy — the group of the sexual organs. And now 
 the flower (the petal-flower), which just before in all its 
 glory of form color and fragrance seemed to be the cul- 
 minating expression and purpose of the plant's life, appears 
 only as a means, an introduction, a secondary thing — a 
 mere advertisement and lure to wandering insects. Within 
 it lies the golden circle of the stamens, the magic staff of 
 the pistil, and the precious ark or seed-vessel. 
 
 Now then we know what it has all been for, or think we 
 do — for a moment ; then we perceive that we are mistaken. 
 For the appearance of the seed-vessel is not the end ; it is 
 only a beginning. The flower, the petals, now drop off 
 withered and useless ; their work is done. But the seed- 
 vessel begins to swell, to take on structure and form — just 
 as the formless bud did before — there is something at work 
 within. And now it bursts, opens, and falls away. It too 
 is a husk, and no longer of any importance — for within it 
 appear the seeds, the objects of this long toil ! 
 
 Is the investigation finished ? is the process at an end } 
 —No. 
 
 Here within this tiny seed lies the promise, the purpose, 
 the vital principle, the law, the inspiration — \vhatever you 
 like to call it — of this plant's life. Can you find it ? 
 
 The seed falls to the ground. It swells and takes on 
 form and structure — just as the seed-vessel which enclosed 
 it took on form and structure before — and as the flower-bud 
 (which enclosed the seed-vessel) did before that — and as 
 the leaf-bud (which enclosed the flower-bud) did before 
 that. The seed falls to the ground ; it throws off" a husk 
 (always husks thrown off !) — and discloses an embryo plant 
 radicle, plumule, and cotyledons — root-shoot, stem-shoot, 
 and seed-leaves — complete. And the circle begins again. 
 
 We are baffled after all I We have followed this extra- 
 
 J 
 
SOCIAL PROGRESS AND INDIVIDUAL EFFORT. 49 
 
 ordinary process, we have seen each stage of the plant- 
 growth appearing first as final, and then only as the envelope 
 of a later stage. We have stripped off, so to speak, husk 
 after husk, in our search for the inner secret of the plant- 
 life — we have got down to the tiny seed. But the seed we 
 have found turns out (like every other stage) to be itself 
 only an envelope — to be thrown away in its turn — what we 
 want lies still deeper down. The plant-life begins again— 
 or rather it never ends ; but on closer examination we 
 see that that does not repeat itself — it does not move in a 
 circle, but rather in a spiral. The young plant is not the 
 same as the parent, and the next generation varies again 
 from this. When the envelopes have been thrown off a 
 thousand and a hundred thousand times more, a new form 
 will appear ; will this be a nearer and more perfect expres- 
 sion than before of that within-lying secret — or otherwise ? 
 
 To return to Society : I began by noting the contrast, 
 often drawn, between the stern inexorable march of this as 
 a whole, and the equally imperious determination of tlie in- 
 dividual to interfere with its march — a determination excited 
 by the contemplation of what is called evil, and shapen by 
 an ideal of something better arising within him. Think 
 what a commotion there must be within the bud when the 
 petals of a rose are forming ! Think what arguments, what 
 divisions, what recriminations, even among the atoms. An 
 organisation has to be constructed and completed. It is 
 finished at last, and a petal is formed. It rays itself out in 
 the Mjn, is beautiful and unimpeachable for a day ; then it 
 fades, is pushed off", its work is done — another from within 
 takes its place. 
 
 One social movement succeeds another ; the completion 
 of one is the signal for the commencement of the next. 
 Hence there c.\n be no stereotyping : not to change is to 
 die — this is the rule of Life ; because (and the reason is 
 
 E 
 
50 SOCIAL PROGRESS AND INDIVIDUAL EFFORT. 
 
 simple enough) one form is not enough to express the secret 
 of life. To express that requires an infinite series of forms. 
 
 Even a crab cannot get on without changing its shell. It 
 outgrows it. It feels very uncomfortable — pent, sullen, and 
 irritable (much as the bud did before the bursting of the 
 husk, or as society does when dead forms and institutions — 
 generally represented by a class in power — confine its growth) 
 — anxious, too, and oppressed with fears. It — the crab — 
 retires under a rock, out of harm's way, and presently, 
 crack ! the shell scales off, and with quietude and patience 
 from within another more suited to it forms. Yet this latter 
 is not final. It is merely the prelude to another. 
 
 The feudal arrangement of society succeeded the clannish 
 and patriarchal, the commercial or competitive system 
 succeeds the feudal, the socialistic succeeds the commercial, 
 and the socialistic is succeeded in its turn by other stages ; 
 and each of these includes numerous minor developments. 
 The politician or reformer who regards any of these stages 
 or steps as containing the whole secret and redemption of 
 society commits just the same mistake as the theologian 
 who looks upon any one doctrine as necessary to salvation. 
 He is betrayed into the most frightful harshness, narrow- 
 mindedness, and intolerance — and if he has power will 
 become a tyrant. Just the same danger has to be guarded 
 against by every one of us in daily life. Who is there who 
 (though his reason may contend against it) does not drop 
 into the habit of regarding some one change in his life and 
 surroundings as containing finally the secret of his happi- 
 ness, and excited by this immense prospect, does not do 
 things which he afterwards regrets, and which end in dis- 
 appointment. There is a millennium, but it does not belong 
 to any system of society that can be named, nor to any 
 doctrine, belief, circumstance, or surrounding of individual 
 life. The secret of the plant-life does not tarry in any one 
 
SOCIAL PROGRESS AND INDIVIDUAL EFFORT. 5 1 
 
 phase of its growth ; it eludes from one phase to another, 
 still lying within and within the latest. It is within the grain 
 of mustard seed : it is so small. Yet it rules and is the 
 purpose of every stage, and is like the little leaven which, 
 invisible in three measures of meal, yet leavened the whole 
 lump. 
 
 Of the tendency, of which I have spoken, of social forms 
 to stereotype themselves. Law is the most important and in 
 some sense the most pernicious instance. Social progress 
 is a continual fight against it. Popular customs get har- 
 dened into laws. Even thus they soon constitute evils. 
 But in the more complex stages of society, when classes 
 arise, the law making is generally in the hands of a class, 
 and the laws are hardened (often very hardened) class 
 practices. These shells have to be thrown off and got rid 
 of at all costs — or rather they will inevitably be thrown 
 off when the growing life of the people underneath forces 
 this liberation. It is a bad sign when a patient " law- 
 abiding " people submit like sheep to old forms which are 
 really long out-worn. " Where the men and women think 
 lightly of the laws . . . there the great city stands," 
 says Walt Whitman. 
 
 I remember once meeting with a pamphlet written by an 
 Italian, whose name I have forgotten, member of a Secu- 
 larist society, to prove that the Devil was the author of all 
 human progress. Of course that, in his sense, is true. The 
 spirit of opposition to established order, the war against the 
 continuance (as a finality) of any institution or order, how- 
 ever good it may be for the time, is a necessary element of 
 social progress, is a condition of the very life of Society. 
 Without this it would die. 
 
 Law is a strangulation. Yet while it figures constantly as 
 an evil in social life, it must not therefore be imagined to 
 be bad or without use. On the contrary, its very appear- 
 E— 2 
 
/ 
 
 52 SOCIAL PROGRESS AND INDIVIDUAL EFFORT. 
 
 ance as an evil is part of its use. It is the husk which 
 protects and strengthens the bud while it confines it. Possibly 
 the very confinement and forcible repression which it exer- 
 cises is one element in the more rapid organisation of the 
 bud within. It is the crab's shell which gives form and 
 stability to the body of the creature, but which has to give 
 way when a more extended form is wanted. 
 
 In the present day in modern society the strangulation of 
 the growth of the people is effected by the capitalist class. 
 This class together with its laws and institutions constitutes 
 the husk which has to be thrown off just as itself threw off 
 the husk of the feudal aristocracy in its time. The com- 
 mercial and capitalist envelope has undoubtedly served to 
 protect and give form to (and even nourish) the growing life 
 of the people. But now its function in that respect is 
 virtually at an end. It appears merely as an obstacle and 
 an evil — and will inevitably be removed, either by a violent 
 disruption or possibly by a gradual absorption into the 
 socialised proletariat beneath. 
 
 At all times, and from whatever points of view, it should 
 be borne in mind that laws are made by the people, 
 not the people by the laws. Modern European Society is 
 cumbered by such a huge and complicated overgrowth 
 of law, that the notion actually gets abroad that such ma- 
 chinery is necessary to keep the people in order — that with- 
 out it the mass of the people would not live an orderly life ; 
 whereas all observation of the habits of primitive and 
 savage tribes, destitute of laws, and almost destitute of any 
 authoritative institutions — and all observation of the habits 
 of civilised people when freed from law (as in gold-mining 
 and other backwood communities) — show just the reverse. 
 The instinct of man is to an orderly life, the law is but the 
 result and expression of this. As well attribute the or- 
 ganisation of a crab to the influence of its shell, as attribute 
 
SOCIAL PROGRESS AND INDIVIDUAL EFFORT. 53 
 
 the orderly life of a nation to the action of its laws. Law has 
 a purpose and an influence — but the idea that it is to pre- 
 serve brder is elusive. All its machinery of police and 
 piisons do not, cannot do this. At best in this sense it 
 only preserves an order advantageous to a certain class ; it 
 is the weapon of a slow and deliberate warfare. It springs 
 from hatred and rouses opposition, and so has a healthy 
 influence. 
 
 Fichte said : " The object of all government is to render 
 government superfluous." And certainly if external au- 
 thority of any kind has a final purpose it must be to 
 establish and consolidate an internal Authority. Whitman 
 adds to his description of " the great city," that it 
 stands ** Where outside authority enters always after the 
 precedence of inside authority." When this process is 
 complete, government in the ordinary sense is already 
 ** rendered superfluous." Anyhow this external govern- 
 mental power is obviously self-destructive. It has no per- 
 manence or finality about it, but in every period of history 
 appears as a husk or shell preparing the force within which 
 is to reject it. 
 
 Thus I have in a very fragmentary and imperfect way 
 called attention to some general conditions of social pro- 
 gress, conditions by which the growth of Society is probably 
 comparable with the growth of a plant, or an animal, or an 
 astronomic organism, subject to laws and an order of its 
 own, in face of which the individual would at first sight 
 appear to count as nothing. But there is, as usual, a 
 counter-truth which must not be overlooked. If Society 
 moves by an ordered and irresistible march of its own, so 
 also — as a part of Society, and beyond that as a part of 
 Nature — does the individual. In his right place the in- 
 dividual is also irresistible. 
 
 Now then, when you have seized your life-inspiration, 
 
54 SOCIAL PROGRESS AND INDIVIDUAL EFFORT. 
 
 your absolute determination, you also are irresistible, the 
 whole weight of this vast force is behind you. Huge as 
 the institutions of Society are, vast as is the sweep of its 
 traditions and customs, yet in face of it all, the word " I 
 will " is not out of place. 
 
 Let us take the law of the competitive struggle for exis- 
 tence—which has been looked upon by political economists 
 (perhaps with some justice) as the base of social life. It is 
 often pointed out that this law of competition rules through- 
 out the animal and vegetable kingdoms as well as through 
 the region of human society, and therefore, it is said, being 
 evidently a universal law of Nature, it is useless and hope- 
 less to expect that society can ever be founded on any 
 other basis. Yet I say that granting this assumption — and 
 in reahty the same illusion underlies the apphcation of the 
 word " law " here, as we saw before in its social application 
 — granting, I say that competition has hitherto been the 
 universal law, the last word, of Nature, still if only one 
 man should stand up and say, " It shall be so no more," if 
 he should say, " It is not the last word of iny nature, and 
 my acts and life declare that it is not," — then that so-called 
 law would be at an end. He being a part of Nature has as 
 much right to speak as any other part, and as in the ele- 
 mentary law of hydrostatics a slender column of water can 
 balance (being at the same height) against an ocean — so 
 his Will (if he understand it aright) can balance all that can 
 be arrayed against him. If only one man — with regard to 
 social matters — speaking from the very depth of his heart 
 says " This shall not be : behold something better ; " his 
 word is likely stronger than all institutions, all traditions. 
 And why? — because in the deeps of his individual heart he 
 touches also that of Society, of Man. Within himself, in 
 quiet, he has beheld the secret, he has seen a fresh crown 
 Tjf petals, a golden circle of stamens, folded and slumbering 
 
SOCIAL PROGRESS AND INDIVIDUAL EFFORT. 55 
 
 in the bud. Man forms society, its laws and institutions, 
 and Man can reform them. Somewhere within yourself, be 
 assured, the secret of that authority lies. 
 
 The fatal words spoken by individuals — the words of 
 progress — are provoked by what is called evil. Every 
 human institution is good in its time, and then becomes 
 evil — yet it may be doubted whether it is really evil in itself, 
 but rather because if it remained it would hinder the next 
 step. Each petal is puslied out by the next one. A new 
 growth of the moral sense takes place first within the 
 individual — and this gives birth to a new ideal, something to 
 love better than anything seen before. Then in the light of 
 this new love, this more perfect desire, what has gone be- 
 fore, and the actually existing things appear wizened and 
 false {i.e., ready to fall like the petals). They become some- 
 thing to hate, they are evil ; and the perception of evil is 
 already the promise of something better. 
 
 Do not be misled so as to suppose that science and the 
 intellect are or can be the sources of social progress or 
 change. It is the moral births and outgrowths that originate, 
 science and the intellect only give form to these. It is a 
 common notion and one apparently gaining ground, that 
 science may as it were take Society by the hand and be- 
 come its high priest and guide to a glorious kingdom. And 
 this to a certain extent is true. Science may become high- 
 priest, but the result of its priestly offices will entirely 
 depend on what kind of deity it represents — what kind of 
 god Society worships. Science will doubtless become its 
 guide, but whither it leads Society will entirely depend on 
 whither Society desires to be led. If Society worships a 
 god of selfish curiosity, the holy rites and priesthood of 
 science will consist in vivisection and the torture of the 
 loving animals; if Society believes above all things in 
 material results, 'science will before long provide these things, 
 
 1 
 
55 SOCIAL PROGRESS AND INDIVIDUAL EFFORT. 
 
 — it will surround men with machinery and machine-made 
 products, it will whirl them about (behind steam-kettles as 
 Mr. Ruskin says) from one end of the world to the other, it 
 will lap them in every luxury and debility, and give them 
 fifty thousand toys to play with, where before they had only 
 one — but through all the whistling of the kettles and the 
 rattling of the toys it will not make the still small voice of 
 God sound nearer. If Society, in short, worships the 
 devil, science will lead it to the devil ; and if Society wor- 
 ships God, science will open up and clear away much that 
 encumbered the path to God. (And here I use these terms 
 as lawyers say " without prejudice.") No mere scientific 
 adjustments will bring about the millennium. Granted that 
 the problem is Happiness, there must be certain moral 
 elements in the mass of mankind before they will even 
 desire that kind of happiness which is attainable, let alone 
 their capacity of reaching it — when these moral elements 
 are present, the intellectual or scientific solution of the 
 problem will be soon found, without them there will not 
 really be any serious attempt made to find it. That is — as 
 I said at the head of this paragraph — science and the in- 
 tellect are not, and never can be, the sources of social 
 progress and change. It is the moral births and out- 
 growths that originate ; the intellect stands in a secondary 
 »> place as the tool and instrument of the moral faculty. 
 
 The commercial and competitive state of society may be 
 taken to indicate an upheaval from the feudal of a new (and 
 perhaps grander) sentiment of human right and dignity. 
 Arising simultaneously with Protestantism it meant — they 
 both meant — individualism, the assertion of man's worth 
 and dignity as man, and as against any feudal lordship or 
 priestly hierarchy. It was an outburst of feeling first. It 
 was the sense of equality spreading. It took the form of 
 individuahsm — the equality of rights — Protestantism in 
 
SOCIAL PROGRESS AND INDIVIDUAL EFFORT. 57 
 
 religion, competition in commerce. It resulted in the 
 social emancipation of a large class, the bourgeoisie. Feu- 
 dalism, now dwindled to a husk, was thrown off; and for a 
 time the glory, the life of society was in the new order. 
 
 But to-day a wider morality, or at least a fresh impulse, 
 asserts iiself. Competition in setting itself up as the symbol 
 of human equality, was (like all earthly representations of 
 what is divine) only an imperfect symbol. It had the 
 elements of mortality and dissolution in it. For while it 
 destroyed the privilege of rank and emancipated a huge 
 class, it ended after all by enslaving another class and 
 creating the privilege of wealth. Competition in fact re- 
 presented a portion of human equality but not the whole : 
 insisting on individual rights all round, it overlooked the 
 law of charity, turned sour with the acid of selfishness, and 
 became as to-day the gospel of " the devil take the hind- 
 most." Arising glorious as the representative of human 
 equality, and the opponent of iniquity in high places, it has 
 ended by denying the very source from whence it sprung. 
 Like many a popular hero it has turned tyrant, and must 
 share the tyrant's doom. 
 
 Competition is doomed. Once a good, it has now become 
 an evil. But simultaneously (and probably as part of the 
 same process) springs up, as I say, a new morality. 
 Everywhere to-day signs of this may be seen, felt. It is 
 fdt that the relation which systematically allows the weaker 
 to go to the wall is not human. Individualism, the mere 
 separate pursuit, each of his own good, on the basis of 
 equality, does not satisfy the heart. The right (undoubted 
 though it may be) to take advantage of another's weakness 
 or inferiority, does not please us any longer. Science and 
 the intellect have nothing to say to this, for or against, — 
 they can merely stand and look on — arguments may be 
 brought on both sides. What I say is thatas a fact a change 
 
58 SOCIAL PROGRESS AND INDIVIDUAL EFFORT. 
 
 is taking place in the general sentiment in this matter ; some 
 deeper feeling of hum in solidarity, brotherliness, charity, 
 some more genuine and substantial apprehension of the 
 meaning of the word equality, is arising — some broader and 
 more determined sense of justice. Though making itself 
 felt as yet only here and there, still there are indications 
 that this new sentiment is spreading; and if it becomes 
 anything like general, then inevitably (I say) it will bring a 
 new state of society with it — will be in fact such new state 
 of society. 
 
 Some years ago at Brighton I met with William Smith, 
 the author of " Thorndale " and other works — a man who 
 had thought much about society and human life. He was 
 then quite an invahd, and indeed died only a week or two 
 later. Talking one day about the current Political Economy 
 he said : " They assume self-interest as the one guiding 
 principle of human nature and so make it the basis of their 
 science — but," he added, " even if it is so now, it may not 
 always be so, and that would entirely re-model their 
 science." I do not know whether he was aware that even 
 then a new school of political economy was in existence, 
 the school of Marx, Engels, Lassalle, and others — founded 
 really on just this new basis, taking as its point of departure 
 a stricter sense of justice and a new conception of human 
 right and equality. At any rate, whether aware or not, 1 con- 
 tend that this dying man — even if he had been alone in the 
 world in his aspiration— y^^Z/TZ^ luitJiin himself a deeper, 
 more intimate, principle of action than that expressed in the 
 existing state of society, might have been confident that at 
 some time or other — if not immediately — it would come to 
 the surface and find its due interpretation and translation in 
 a new order of things. And I contend that whoever to-day 
 feels in himself that there is a better standard of life than 
 the higgUng of the market, and a juster scale of wages than 
 
SOCIAL PROGRESS AND INDIVIDUAL EFFORT. 59 
 
 " what A. or B. will take" and a more important question 
 in an undertaking than " how much per cent, it will pay " — 
 contains or conceals in himself the germs of a new social 
 order. 
 
 Socialism, if that is to be the name of the next wave of 
 social life, springs from and demands as its basis a new sen- 
 timent of humanity, a higher morality. That is the essential 
 part of it. A science it is, but only secondarily ; for we 
 must remember that as the bourgeois political economy 
 sprang from certain moral data, so the socialist political 
 economy implies other moral data. Both are irrefragable on 
 their own axioms. And when these axioms in course of 
 time change again (as they infallibly will) another science of 
 political economy, again irrefragable, will spring up, and 
 socialist political economy will be false. 
 
 The morality being the essential part of the movement, "7 
 it is important to keep that in view. If Socialism, as Mr. 
 Matthew Arnold has pointed^out, means merely a change ot 
 society without a change of its heart — it merely means that 
 those who grabbed all the good things before shall be dis- 
 placed, and that those who were grabbed from should now 
 grab in their turn — it amounts to nothing, and is not in 
 effect a change at all, except quite upon the surface. If it is 
 t J be a substantial movement, it must mean a changed ideal, 
 a changed conception of daily life ; it must mean some 
 better conception of human dignity — such as shall scorn to 
 claim anything for its own which has not been duly earned, 
 and such as shall, not find itself degraded by the doing of 
 any work, however menial, which is useful to society; it 
 must mean simplicity of life, defence of the weak, courage 
 of one's own convictions, charity of the faults and failings 
 of others. These things first and a larger slice of pudding 
 all round afterwards ! 
 
 How can such morality be spread ? — How does a plant 
 
6o SOCIAL PROGRESS AND INDIVIDUAL EFFORT. 
 
 grow ? — It grows. There is some contagion of influence in 
 these matters. Knowledge can be taught directly ; but a 
 new ideal, a new sentiment of life, can only pass by some 
 indirect influence from one to another. Yet it does pass. 
 There is no need to talk — perhaps the less said in any case 
 about these matters the better — but if you have such new 
 ideal within you, it is I believe, your clearest duty, as well 
 as your best interest, to act it out in your own life at all ap- 
 parent costs. Then we must not forget that a wise order 
 of society once established (by the strenuous action of a 
 few) reacts on its members. To a certain extent it is true, 
 perhaps, that men and women can be grmvn — like cab- 
 bages. And this is a case of the indirect influence of the 
 strenuous few upon the many. 
 
 Thus — in this matter of society's change and progress — 
 (though I feel that the subject as a whole is far too deep for 
 me) — I do think that the birth of new moral conceptions in 
 the individual is at least a very important factor. It may be 
 in one individual or in a hundred thousand. As a rule pro- 
 bably when one man feels any such impulse strongly, the 
 hundred thousand are nearer to him than he suspects. 
 (When one leaf, or petal, or stamen begins to form on a 
 tree, or one plant begins to push its way above the ground 
 in spring, there are hundreds of thousands all round just 
 ready to form.) Anyhow, whether he is alone or not, the 
 new moral birth is sacred — as sacred as the child within the 
 mother's womb — it is a kind of blasphemy against the Holy 
 Ghost to conceal it. And when I use the word "moral" 
 here — or anywhere above — I do not, I hope, mean that 
 dull pinch-lipped conventionality of negations which often 
 goes under that name. The deep-lying ineradicable desires, 
 fountains of human action, the life-long aspirations, the 
 lightning-like revelations of right and justice, the treasured 
 hidden ideals, born in flame and in darkness, in joy and 
 
SOCIAL PROGRESS AND INDIVIDUAL EFFORT. 6 1 
 
 sorrow, in tears and in triumph, within the heart — are as a 
 rule anything but conventional. They may be, and often 
 are, thought ////moral. I don't care, they are sacred just 
 the same. If they underlie a man's life, and are nearest 
 to himself — they will underlie humanity. To your own self 
 be true . . . ." 
 
 Anyhow courage is better than conventionality : take 
 your stand and let the world come round to you. Do 
 not think you are right and everybody else wrong. If you 
 think you are wrong then you may be right ; but if you 
 think you are right then you are certainly wrong. Your 
 deepest highest moral conceptions are only for a time. They 
 have to give place. They are the envelopes of freedom — that 
 eternal Freedom which cannot be represented — that peace 
 which passes understanding. Somewhere here is the in- 
 visible vital principle, the seed within the seed. It may be 
 held but n It thought, felt but not represented — except by 
 life and history. Every individual so far as he touches this 
 stands at the source of social progress — behind the screen 
 on which the phantasmagoria play. 
 
 y 
 
DESIRABLE MANSIONS. 
 
 " The widow Douglas, she took me for her son, and allowed she would civilise 
 me ; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal 
 regular and decent the widow was in all her ways ; and so when I couldn't stand 
 it no longer I lit out." — Mark Twain. 
 
 After all, why should we rail against the rich ? I think 
 if anything they should be pitied. In nine cases out of 
 ten it is not a man's fault. He is born in the lap of 
 luxury, he grows up surrounded by absurd and impossible 
 ideas about life, the innumerable chains of habit and cir- 
 cumstance tighten upon him, and when the time comes 
 that he would escape, he finds he cannot. He is con- 
 demned to flop up and down in his cage for the remainder 
 of his days — a spectacle of boredom, and a warning to gods 
 and men. 
 
 I go into the houses of the rich. In the drawing-room I 
 see chill weary faces, peaked features of ill-health ; down- 
 stairs and in the kitchen I meet with rosy smiles, kissable 
 cheeks, and hear sounds of song and laughter. What is 
 this ? Is it possible that the real human beings live with 
 Jeames below-stairs ! 
 
 Often as I pass and see in suburb or country some 
 " desirable mansion " rising from the ground, I think : 
 That man is building a prison for himself. So it is — a 
 prison. I would rather spend a calendar month in Clerk- 
 enwell or Holloway than I would in that desirable man- 
 sion. A young lady that I knew, and who lived in such a 
 mansion, used with her sisters to teach a class of factory 
 girls. Every now and again one of the girls would say, 
 62 
 
DESIRABLE MANSIONS. 63 
 
 " Eh, Miss, how I would Hke to be a grand lady like you ? " 
 Then she would answer, " Yes, but you wouldn't be able to 
 do everything you liked; for instance, you wouldn't be allowed 
 to go out walking when you liked." " Eh, dear ! " they 
 would say to one another, " she is not allowed to go out 
 walking when she likes — she is not allowed to go out 
 walking when she likes ! " 
 
 Certainly you are not allowed to go out walking when 
 you like. Reader, did you ever spend a day within those 
 desirable walls ? I have, many. I wake up in the morn- 
 ing. It is fine and bright. I think to myself: I will have 
 a pleasant stroll before breakfast. Yes — man proposes. It 
 is all very well to meditate a morning walk, but where O 
 where are my clothes ? I cannot very well go out without 
 them. What can have become of them ? Suddenly it oc- 
 curs to me : James, honest soul, has taken them away to 
 brush. Good. I wait. Nothing happens. I ring the bell. 
 James appears. " My clothes, James." "Yes, sir." Again 
 I wait — an intolerable time. At last the familiar jacket and 
 trousers appear.* Good. Now I can go out. Not so fast 
 — where are your boots ? Boots, good gracious, I had for- 
 gotten them. Heaven knows where they are — I don't. Pro- 
 bably fifty yards away. I creep downstairs. All is quiet. 
 The servants are evidently at breakfast. It would be mad- 
 ness to hope to get boots brushed at such a moment, i 
 would like to clean them myself. In fact I am fond of 
 cleaning my own boots; the exercise is pleasant, and 
 besides it is just such a Httle bit of menial work as I would 
 rather do for myself than have others do for me ; but, as I 
 said before, one cannot do what one likes. In the first 
 
 * A friend tells me that once to revenge himself for this sort of trifling lie con- 
 cealed his nether garment under the mattrass, and then, in the morning, slyly 
 watched the footman as he vainly sought round the room for it. The consequence 
 however was that he fell very much in the estimation of the latter, who doubtless 
 thought that, like Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, his luaster's visitor " had gone 
 to bed with his breeches on." 
 
64 DESIRABLE MANSIONS. 
 
 place, in this house where one is fifty yards away from every- 
 thing one wants, I have not the faintest idea where my boots 
 are, or the means and instruments of blacking them ; in the 
 second place an even more fatal objection is that if I did 
 succeed in committing this deed of darkness the conse- 
 quent uproar in the house would be quite indescribable. 
 The outrage on propriety would not only shock the feelings 
 of the world below stairs, but it would put to confusion the 
 master of the house, upset the whole domestic machinery, 
 create unpleasant qualms in the minds of the other guests, 
 and possibly make me feel that I had better not have lived. 
 Accordingly I abandon the idea of my pleasant stroll. It 
 is not worth such a sacrifice. The birds are singing out- 
 side, the flowers are gay in the morning sun — but it must 
 not be. Within, in the sitting-rooms, chaos reigns. Chairs 
 and tables are piled in cheerful confusion upon one another, 
 carpets are partially strewn with tea-leaves. To read a book 
 or write an aimless letter to some one (the usual resource 
 of people in desirable mansions) is clearly impossible ; to 
 do anything in the way of house-work is forbidden — it being 
 well understood in such places that one may do anything 
 except what is useful. There remains nothing but to beat 
 a retreat to my chamber again — put my hands in my pockets 
 and whistle at the open window. 
 
 "Who was that I heard whistling so early this morning?" 
 says my kindly old host at breakfast. " O, it was you, was 
 it ? I expect now you're an early riser ; get up at seven, 
 take a walk before breakfast ; that sort of thing — eh ? " 
 '* Yes, when I can," I reply with ambiguous intent. " Well, 
 I call that wonderful," says an elderly matron — not likely, 
 as far as appearances go, to be accused of a similar practice — 
 "such energy, you know." " What a strong constitution 
 you must have to be able to stand it ! " remarks a charming 
 young lady on whom it has not yet dawned that the vast 
 
DESIRABLE MANSIONS. 65 
 
 majority of human kind have their breakfast before half- 
 past nine. 
 
 This is not a good beginning to the day ; but the rest is 
 like unto it. I find that there are certain things to be 
 done — a certain code of things that you may do, a certain 
 way of doing them, a certain way of putting your knife and 
 fork on your plate. When you come down to dinner in 
 the evening you must put on what the Yankees call a claw- 
 hammer coat. It is not certain (and that is just the grisly 
 part of it) what would happen if you did not do this. In 
 some societies evidently such a casualty has never been 
 contemplated. I have heard people seriously discussing — ■ 
 in cases where the required article was missing — what could 
 be done, where one might be borrowed, &c. — but clearly 
 it did not occur to them that anyone could dine in his 
 natural clothes. Sometimes, when in a fashionable church, 
 I have wondered whether it would be possible to worship 
 God in a flannel shirt — but I suppose that to go out to a 
 dinner party in such a costume would be even more un- 
 thinkable. As I said before, you are in prison. Submit to 
 the prison rules, and it is all right — attempt to go beyond 
 them, and you are visited with condign punishment. The 
 rules have no sense, but that does not matter (possibly some 
 of them had sense once, but it must have been a very long 
 time ago) ; the people are good people, no better nor 
 worse in themselves than the real workers, the real hands 
 and hearts of the world ; but they are condemned to banish- 
 ment from the world, condemned into the prison houses of 
 futility. TKte stream of human life goes jmst them as they 
 gaze wearily upon it through their plate-glass windows ; 
 the great Mother's breasts of our common Humanity, with 
 all its toils and sufferings and mighty joys, are withheld 
 from them. Dimly at last I think I understand why it is 
 their faces are so chill and sad, their unnourished hyes so 
 
 F 
 
C6 ^ ■ DESIRABLE MANSIONS. 
 
 unhealthy and over-sensitive. Truly, if I could pity anyone, 
 I would them. 
 
 By the side of the road there stands a little girl, crying ; 
 she has lost her way. It is very cold, and she looks pinched 
 ^nd starved. " Come in, my little girl, and sit by my 
 •cottage fire, and you'll soon get warm ; and I'll see if I can't 
 find you a bit of something to eat before you go on . . . 
 Eh ! dear ! how stupid I am — I quite forgot. I am sorry 
 I can't ask you in, but I am living in a desirable mansion 
 now — and though we are very sorry for you, yet you see we 
 could hardly have you into our house, for your dirty little 
 boots would make a dreadful mess of our carpets, and we 
 should have to dust the chairs after you had sat upon them, 
 and you see Mrs. Vavasour might happen to come in, and 
 she would think it so very odd ; and I know cook can't 
 bear beggars, and, O dear ! I'm so sorry for you — and 
 here's a penny, and I hope you'll get home safely." 
 
 The stream of human life goes past. When a rich man 
 builds himself a prison, he puts up all these fences to shut 
 the world out — to shut himself in. U he can he builds far 
 back from the high road. In the front of his house he has 
 a boundless polite lawn, with polite flower beds, afar from 
 vulgar people and animals. Rows of polite servants attend 
 upon him ; and there within of inanity and politeness he 
 •dies. Of what human life really consists in he has little 
 idea. He has not the faintest notion of what is necessary 
 for human life or happiness. Sometimes with an indistinct 
 vision of accumulated evil, he says : " Poor So-and-so, he 
 has only ;^2oo a year to keep his wife and family on ! " 
 ]No wonder his own daughters dedicate themselves to 
 '" good works." They go out with the curate and visit 
 .at neighboring cottages. Their visits have little appre- 
 •ciable effect on the people, but are a great benefit to them- 
 .selves and the curate. They observe, for the first time, 
 
DESIRABLE MANSIONS. 67 
 
 how life is carried on ; they see the operations of scrubbing 
 and cooking (removed in their own houses afar from mortal 
 pohte eye) ; perhaps they behold a mother actually suckling 
 her' own babe, and learn that such things are possible ; 
 finally, they " wonder " how " those people " live, and to 
 them their wonder (like the fear of God) is the beginning 
 of wisdom. The lord of the mansion sits on the magisterial 
 bench, or strides about his fields, and lumps together all 
 who are not in a similar position to himself as the "lower 
 classes." After dinner in the evening, if the conversation 
 turns on politics, he and his compeers discuss the impor- 
 tance of keeping the said lower classes in order, or the best 
 method of " raising " them out of the ignorance and dis- 
 order in which they are supposed to wallow. And during 
 the conversation it will be noticed that it is by everyone 
 tacitly allowed and understood, and is, in fact, the very 
 foundation of the whole argument, that the speakers them- 
 selves belong to an educated class, while the mass of the 
 people are uneducated. Yet this is exactly the reverse of 
 the truth — for they themselves belong to an ill-educated 
 class, and the mass of the people are, by the very nature of 
 the case, the better educated of the two. 
 
 In fact the education of the one set of people (and it is 
 a great pity that it should be so) consists almost entirely 
 in the study of books. That is very useful in its way, and 
 if properly balanced with other things ; but it is hardly 
 necessary to point out that books only deal with phantoms 
 and shadows of reality. The education of the world at 
 large, and the real education, lies, and must always lie, in 
 dealing with the things themselves. To put it shortly (as it 
 has been put before), one man learns to spell a " spade," to 
 write it, to rhyme it, to translate it into French and Latin — 
 possibly, like Wordsworth, to address a sonnet to it — the 
 other man learns to use it. Is there any comparison between 
 
 ¥—2 
 
68 DESIRABLE MANSIONS. 
 
 the two ? Now is it not curious that those good people sit- 
 ting round their dinner table in the desirable mansion, or 
 listening to a little music in the drawing-room, should 
 actually be so ignorant of the world, and what goes on in 
 it, as to think, and honestly believe, that they are, par 
 excellence, the educated people in it ? * Does it ever occur 
 to them, I often think, to inquire who made all the elegant 
 and costly objects with which they are surrounded ? Does 
 it ever occur to them, as they tacitly assume the inferiority 
 of the working classes, to think of the table itself across 
 which they speak — how beautifully fitted, veneered, 
 polished ; the cloth which lies upon it, and the weaving 
 of it ; the chairs and other furniture, so light and yet so 
 strong, each requiring the skill of years to make ; the silver, 
 the glass, the steel, the tempering, hardening, grinding, fit- 
 ting, riveting ; the lace and damask curtains, the wonderful 
 machinery, the care, the delicate touch, adroit manipulation ? 
 the piano ! the very house itself wherein they spend their 
 days ! Is there one, I say, who we will not say could make 
 even the smallest part, but who even has the faintest idea 
 how one of these things is made, where it is made, who 
 makes it ? Not one. All the care, the loving thought, the 
 artistic design, the conscientious workmanship that have 
 been expended, and are daily expended, on these things 
 and the like of them — go past them unrecognised, un- 
 acknowledged. The great hymn of human labor over the 
 earth is to them an idle song. There, in the midst of all 
 these beautiful products of toil and ingenuity, possessing but 
 not enjoying, futile they sit, and fancy themselves educated — 
 
 » " . . . . People who roll about in their fine equipages scarcely knowing 
 what to do with themselves or what ails them, and some of whom occasionally run 
 to such places as ours to have their carriage linings or cushions altered, or to 
 know if they ' can be altered as they don't /eel quite comfortable.' I often think 
 ' God help them,' for no one else can ' 
 
 I insert this extract just to show how these things are regarded from the side 
 which does not usually find expression. It is from a letter written by an 
 elderly and gentle-hearted man employed in a carriage factory. 
 
DESIRABLE MANSIONS. 69 
 
 fit to rule. I have heard of a fly that sat stinging upon the 
 Iiind-quarters of a horse, and fancied that without it the cart 
 would not go. Fancied so, 1 say, until the great beast 
 whisked its tail, and after that it fancied nothing more. 
 
 Do I put these things in a strong light? May be I do j 
 but I put them faithfully as I have seen them, and as I see 
 them daily. I do not suppose that riches are an evil in 
 themselves. I do not suppose that anything is an evil in 
 itself. I know that even in the midst of all these 
 shackles and impediments, that wonderfulest of things, the 
 human soul, may work out its own salvation ; and well I 
 know that there are no conditions or circumstances of 
 human life, nor any profession from a king to a prostitute, 
 that may not become to it the gateway of freedom and im- 
 mortality. But I daily see people setting this standard of 
 well-to-do respectability before them, daily more and more 
 hastening forth in quest of desirable mansions to dwell in ; 
 and I cannot but wonder whether they realise what it is they 
 seek ; I cannot lend my voice to swell the chorus of en- 
 couragement. Here are the clean facts. Choose for your- 
 selves. That is all. 
 
 Respectability ! Heavy-browed and hunch-backed word ; 
 Once innocent and light-hearted as any other word, why 
 now in thy middle age art thou become so gloomy and 
 saturnine ? Is it that thou art responsible for the murder of 
 the innocents ? Respectability ! Vision of clean hands and 
 blameless dress — why dost thou now appear in the form of 
 a ghoul before me ? 
 
 I confess that the sight of a dirty hand is dear to me. 
 It warms my heart with all manner of good hopes and 
 promises. Often and long have I thought about this 
 matter, and in all good faith I must say that I fail to see 
 how hands always clean are compatible with honesty. 
 This is no play upon words. I fail to see how in the long 
 
70 DESIRABLE MANSIONS. 
 
 run, any man that takes his share in the work of the world 
 can keep his hands in this desirable state. 
 
 How ? The answer is obvious enough — leave others to 
 do the dirty work. Good ! Let it be so ; let it be granted 
 that others shall do the scrubbing and baking, the digging, 
 the fishing, the breaking of horses, the carpentering, build- 
 ing, smithing, and the myriad other jobs that have to ba 
 done, and you at the pinnacle of all this pyramid of work, 
 above all, keep your hands clean. We shouting to you 
 from below, exhort you — At all costs, keep your hands 
 clean ! Think how important it is, while the great ships 
 have to be got into harbor, that your nails should be 
 blameless ! Think if by any accident you were to do a 
 real good piece of work, and get your hands thoroughly 
 grimed over it, unwashable for a week, what confusion 
 would ensue to yourself and friends ! Think, O think of 
 your clients, or of the next dinner party, and earnestly and 
 prayerfully resolve that such a fall may never be yours. 
 Seek, we pray you, some secure work — some legal, clerical, 
 official, capitalist, or land-owning business, safe from the 
 dread stain of dirty hands, whatever other dirt it may bring 
 with it — some thoroughly gentlemanly profession, marking 
 you clearly off from the vulgar and general masses, and the 
 blessing of heaven go with you ! 
 
 Shut yourself off from the great stream of human life, 
 from the great sources of physical and moral health ; ignore 
 the common labor by which you live, show clearly your 
 contempt for it, your dislike of it, and then ask others to do 
 it for you ; turn aside from nature, divorce yourself from 
 the living breathing heart of the nation ; and then you will 
 have done what the governing classes of England to-day 
 have done, have given full directions to your own heart 
 and brain how to shrivel and starve and die. 
 
 Man is made to work with his hands. This is a fact 
 
DESIRABLE MANSIONS. 7 1 
 
 which cannot be got over. From tliis central flict he 
 cannot travel far. I don't care whether it is an individual 
 or a class, the life which is far removed from this becomes 
 corrupt, shrivelled, and diseased. You may explain it how 
 you like, but it is so. Administrative work has to be done 
 in a nation as well as productive work; but it must be done 
 by men accustomed to manual labor, who have the healthy 
 decision and primitive authentic judgment which comes of 
 that, else it cannot be done well. In the new form of 
 society which is slowly advancing upon us, this will be felt 
 more than now. The hiijher the position of trust a maii 
 occupies the more will it be thought important that, at. 
 some period of his life, he should have been thoroughly- 
 inured to manual work ; this not only on account of the: 
 physical and moral robustness implied by it, but equally 
 because it will be seen to be impossible for anyone, without 
 this experience of what is the very flesh and blood of 
 national life, to promote the good health of the nation, or 
 to understand the conditions under which the people live 
 whom he has to serve. 
 
 But to return to the sorrows of the well-to-do— and care 
 that sits on the crupper of wealth. This is a world-old and 
 well-worn subject. Yet, possibly, some of its truisms may 
 bear repeating. A clergyman, preaching once on the trials 
 of life, turned first to his rich friends and bade them call to 
 mind, one by one, the sorrows and sufferings of the poor ; 
 then, turning to his " poorer brethren," he exhorted them 
 also not to forget that the rich man had his afflictions — with 
 which they should sympathise — amongst wliich afflictions, 
 growing chiefly out of their much money, he reckoned 
 '• last, but not least, the difflculty of finding for it an invest- 
 ment which should be profitable and also secure I " It has 
 been generally supposed that the poorer brethern failed to 
 sympathise with this form of suffering. 
 
72 DESIRABLE MANSIONS. 
 
 But it is a very real one. What cares, what anxieties, 
 what yellow and blue fits, what sleepless nights, dance at- 
 tendance on the worshiper in the great Temple of Stocks ! 
 The capricious deity that dwells there has to be appeased 
 by ceaseless offerings. Usury ! crookfaced idol, loathed, yet 
 grovelled to by half the world, whose name is an abomina- 
 tion to speak openly, yet whose secret rites are practised by 
 thousands who revile thy name, what spell of gloom and 
 bilious misery dost thou cast over thy worshipers ! Is it 
 possible that the ancient curse has not yet lost its effect : 
 that to acquire interest on money and to acquire interest in 
 life are not the same thing ; that they are positively not 
 compatible with each other; that to fly from one's just 
 share of labor in the world, in order to live upon the 
 hard-earned profits of others, is not, and cannot come to 
 good ? Is it possible, I say, reader, that there is a moral 
 law in the world facing us quite calmly in every transaction 
 of our lives by which it must be so — by which cowardice 
 and sham cannot breed anything else for us but gloom and 
 bilious misery? In this age which rushes to stocks — to 
 debenture, preference, consolidated, and ordinary stocks, 
 to shares, bonds, coupons, dividends — not even refusing 
 scrip when it can get it — does it ever occur to us to con- 
 sider what it all means ? — to consider that all the money so 
 gained is taken from some one else ; that what we have 
 not earned cannot possibly be ours, except by gift, or 
 (putting it plainly) theft 1 How can it then come with a 
 blessing ? How can we not but think of the railway opera- 
 tives, the porters, managers, clerks, superintendents, drivers, 
 stokers, platelayers, carriage-washers, navvies, out of whose 
 just earnings (and from no other source) our dividends are 
 taken ? Let alone honesty — what, surely, does our pride 
 say to this ? Is it possible that this frantic dividend-dance 
 of the present day is like a dance of dancers dancing with- 
 
DESIRABLE MANSIONS. 73 
 
 out any music — an aimless incoherent impossible dance, 
 weltering down at last to idiocy and oblivion? 
 
 Curious, is it not, that this subject (of dividends) is never 
 mentioned before said wage-receiving classes ? I have often 
 noticed that. When James enters the room, or Jeffery 
 comes to look at the gas-fittings, the babble of stocks dies 
 faintly away, as if ashamed of itself? and while a man will, 
 without reserve, allude to his professional salary, he is 
 generally as secret concerning his share-gotten gains as 
 ladies are said to be about their age. 
 
 But, as I said at first, these things are not generally a 
 man's fault. They are the product of the circumstances in 
 which he is born. From his childhood he is trained osten- 
 sibly in the fear of God, but really in the fear of money. 
 The whole tenor of the conversation which he hears round 
 him, and his early teaching, tend to impress upon him the 
 awful dangers of not having enough. Strange that it never 
 occurs to parents of this class to teach their children how 
 Utile they can live upon, and be happy (but perhaps they 
 do not know). Hence the child of the poor man — even 
 in these adverse times — grows up with some independence 
 of mind, for he knows that if at any time he can obtain 
 jQS*^ or^^ioo a year by the work of his hands, he will be 
 able to bring up a little family ; while the son of a rich man 
 in the midst of a family income of fifty times ;^5o, learns 
 to tremble slavishly at the prospect of the future ; dark 
 hints of the workhouse are whispered in his ears ; father 
 and mother, school teachers and friends, join in pressing 
 him into a profession which he hates— stultifying his whole 
 life — because it will lead to ;^5oo, or even _^i,ooo a year 
 in course of time. This is the great test, the sure criterion 
 between two paths : which will lead to more money ? The 
 youthful tender conscience soon comes to look upon it as a 
 duty, and the acquisition of large dividends as part of the 
 
 1 
 
74 DESIRABLE MANSIONS. 
 
 serious work of life. Then come true the words of the 
 preacher: he realises with painful clearness the difficulty of 
 findincf investments which shall be profitable and also secure ; 
 circulars, reports, newspaper-cuttings, and warning letters 
 flow in upon him, sleepless nights are followed by anxious 
 days, telegrams and railway journeys succeed each other. 
 But the game goes on : the income gets bigger, and the fear 
 of the workhouse looms closer ! Friends and relations also 
 have shares. Some get married and others die. Hence 
 truitee-ships and executor-ships, increasing in number year 
 by year, coil upon coil ; solicitors hover around on all sides, 
 jungles of legal red tape have to be waded through, chancery 
 looms up with its "obscene birds"' upon the horizon, and 
 the hapless boy, now an old man before his time, with 
 snatched meals and care-lined brow, goes to and fro like an 
 automaton— a walking testimony to his own words that 
 " the days of his happiness are long gone past." Before 
 God, I would rather with pick and shovel dig a yearlong 
 drain beneath the open sky, breathing freely, than I would 
 live in this jungle of idiotic duties and thin-lipped respecta- 
 bilities that money breeds. Why the devil should the days 
 of your happiness be gone past, except that you have lived a 
 life to stultify the whole natural man in you ? Do you think 
 that happiness is a little flash -in-the-pan when you are eight- 
 teen, and that is all ? Do you not know that expanding 
 age, like a flower, lifts itself ever into a more and more 
 exquisite sunlight of happiness — to which Death, serene 
 and beautiful, comes only at the last with the touch of per- 
 fected assurance ? Do you not know that the whole effort 
 of Nature in you is towards this happiness, if you could 
 only abandon yourself, and for one child-like moment have 
 faith in your own mother? But she knows it, and watches 
 you, half amused, run after your little " securities," knowing 
 surely that you must at length return to her. 
 
DESIRABLE MANSIONS. 75 
 
 But Avherein the affluent classes suffer most in the present 
 day perhaps is the matter of health. Into that heaven it is 
 indeed hard for a rich man to enter. Here again the whole 
 tradition of his life is against him. If there is one thing 
 that appears to me more certain than another it is, as I have 
 partly said before, that no individual or class can travel far 
 from the native life of the race without becoming shrivelled, 
 corrupt, diseased — without suffering, in fact. By the native 
 life I mean the life of those (always the vast majority of 
 human kind) who live and support themselves in direct 
 contact with Nature.* To rise early, to be mostly in the 
 open air, to do some amount of physical labor, to eat clean 
 and simple food, are necessary and aboriginal conditions of 
 the life of our race, and they are necessary and aboriginal 
 conditions of health. The doctor who does not start from 
 these as the basis of his prescriptions does not know his 
 work. The modern money-lender, man of stocks, or what- 
 ever you call him, and his family, live in the continual 
 violation of these conditions. They get up late, are mostly 
 indoors, do little or no physical work, and take quantities of 
 rich and greasy food and stimulants, such as would exhaust 
 the stomach of a strong man, but which to them, in their 
 already enervated state, are simply fatal. Hence a long 
 catalogue of evils, ever branching into rhore. Hence dys- 
 pepsia, nerves, liver, sexual degeneracies, and general de- 
 pression of vitality ; a gloomy train, but whose drawn 
 features you will recognise if you peep into almost any one of 
 those desirable mansions of which I have spoken. A terrible 
 symptom of our well-to-do (?) modern life is this want 
 
 * It TT-ust be noticed that the working masses of our great towns do not by 
 any means fulfil this condition. Thrust down into squalor by the very effort of 
 others climbing to luxury, the unnaturalness and misery of their lives is the direct 
 counterpart and inseparable accompaniment of the unnaturalness of the lives of the 
 rich. That the great masses ot our population to-day are in this unhealthy state 
 does not however disprove the statement in the text — /.<•., that the vast majority 
 of mankind must live in direct contact with Nature— rather it would indicate that 
 the present conditions can only be of brief duration. 
 
76 DESIRABLE MANSIONS. 
 
 of health, and one which presses for serious attention. 
 There is only one remedy for it; but that remedy is a 
 sure one — the return (or advance) to a simpler mode of 
 existence. 
 
 What is the upshot of all this ? There was a time when 
 the rich man had duties attending his wealth. The lord or 
 baron was a petty king, and had kingly responsibilities as 
 well as power. The Sir Roger, of Addison's time, was the 
 succeeding type of landlord. And even to the present day 
 there lingers here and there a country squire who fulfils that 
 now antiquated ideal of kindly condescension and patronage. 
 But the modern rush of steam-engines, and the creation of 
 an enormous class of wealthy folk living on stocks, have 
 completely subverted the old order. It has let loose on 
 society a horde of wolves ! — a horde of people who have no 
 duties attaching to their mode of life, no responsibility. 
 They roam hither and thither, seeking whom and what they 
 may devour. Personally I have no objection to criminals, 
 and think them quite as good as myself. But, Talk of 
 criminal classes — can there be a doubt that the criminal 
 classes par excellence m our modern society are this horde of 
 stock and share-mongers ? If to be a criminal is to be an 
 enemy of society, then they are such. For their mode of 
 life is founded on the principle of taking without giving, of 
 claiming without earning — as much as that of any common 
 thief. It is in vain to try and make amends for this by 
 charity organisations and unpaid magistracies. The cure 
 must go deeper. It is no good trying to set straight the roof 
 and chimneys, when the whole foundation is aslant. These 
 good people are not boarded and lodged at Her Majesty's 
 pleasure, but the Eternal Justice, unslumbering, causes them 
 to build prisons (as I have said) for themselves — plagues 
 them with ill-health and divers unseen evils — and will and 
 must plague them, till such time as they shall abandon the im- 
 
DESIRABLE MANSIONS. 77 
 
 possible task they have set themselves, and return to the 
 paths of reason. 
 
 The whole foundation is aslant — and aslip, as anyone may 
 see who looks. In short, it is an age of transition. No 
 mortal power could make durable a Society founded on 
 Usury — universal and boundless usury. The very words 
 scream at each other. The baron has passed away ; and the 
 landlord is passing. They each had their duties, and while 
 they fulfilled them served their time well and faithfully. 
 The shareholder has no duties, and is miserable, and will 
 remain so till the final landslip, when, the foundations having 
 completely given way, he will crawl forth out of the ruins of 
 his desirable mansion into the life and light of a new day. 
 
 Less oracular than this I dare not be ! As I have 
 said before there is no conceivable condition of life in 
 which the human soul may not find the materials of its 
 surpassing deliverance from evil and mortality. And I for 
 one would not, if I had the power, cramp human life into 
 the exhibition of one universal routine. If anyone desires to 
 be rich, if anyone desires to gradually shut himself off from 
 the world, to build walls and fences, to live in a house where 
 it is impossible to get a breath of fresh air without going 
 through half a dozen doors, and to be the prisoner of his 
 own servants; if he desires it so that when he walks down 
 the street he cannot whistle or sing, or shout across the road 
 to a friend, or sit upon a doorstep when tired, or take off his 
 coat if it be hot, but must wear certain particular clothes in 
 a certain particular way, and be on such pins and needles as 
 to what he may or may not do, that he is right glad when he 
 gets back again to his own prison walls ; if he loves trustee- 
 ships and Egyptian bonds, and visits from the lawyer, and 
 feels glad when he finds a letter from the High Court of 
 Chancery on his breakfast table, and experiences in attend- 
 ing to all these things that satisfaction which comes of all 
 
78 DESIRABLE MANSIONS. 
 
 honest work ; if he feels renovated and braced by lying in 
 bed of a morning, and by eating feast dinners every day, and 
 by carefully abstaining from any bodily labor ; if dyspepsia 
 and gout and biliousness and distress of nerves are not 
 otherwise than grateful to him ; and if he can obtain all 
 these things without doing grievous wrong to others, by all 
 means let him have them. 
 
 Only for those who do not know what they desire I would 
 lift up the red flag of warning. Only of that vast and ever 
 vaster horde which to-day (chiefly, I cannot but think, in 
 ignorance) rushes to Stocks, would I ask a moinent's pause, 
 and to look at the bare facts. If these words should come 
 to the eye of such an one I would pray him to think for a 
 moment — to glance at this great enthroned Wrong in its 
 dungeon palace (not the less a wrong because the laws coun- 
 tenance and encourage it) — to listen for the cry of the home- 
 less many, trodden under foot, a yearly sacrifice to it — to 
 watch the self-inflicted sufferings of its worshipers, the 
 ennui, the depression, the unlovely faces of ill-health, to 
 observe the falsehood on which it is founded, and therefore 
 the falsehood, the futility, the unbelief in God or Man which 
 spring out of it — and to turn away, determined, as far as in 
 him lies, to worship in that Dagon-house no longer. 
 
SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE. 
 
 •* As I preferred sons things to others, and especially valued my freedom, as I 
 could fare hard and yet succeed well, I did not wish to spend my time in earning 
 rich carpets or other fine furniture, or delicate cookery, or a house in the Grecian 
 or the Gothic style just yet. If there are any to whom it is no interruption to 
 acquire these things, and who know how to use them when acquired, I relinquish 
 to them the pursuit." — Thoreau. 
 
 Certainly, if you do not want to be a vampire and a para- 
 site upon others, the great question of practical life, and 
 which everyone has to face, is how to carry it on with as 
 little labor and effort as may be. No one wants to labor 
 needlessly, and if you have to earn everything you spend, 
 economy becomes a very personal question — not neces- 
 sarily in the pinching sense, but merely as adaptation of 
 means to the end. When I came some years ago to live 
 with cottagers (earning say -^50 to ^60 a year) and share 
 their life, I was surprised to find how little both in labor 
 and expense tlieir food cost them, who were doing far more 
 work than I was, or indeed the generality of people among 
 whom I had been living. This led me to see that the rich 
 dinners and expensive mode of living I had been accus- 
 tomed to were a mere waste, as far as adaptation to any 
 useful end was concerned ; and afterwards I decided that 
 they had been a positive hindrance, for when I became 
 habituated to a more simple diet I found that a marked 
 improvement took place in my powers both of mind and 
 body. At a later time when keeping house myself (still on 
 the same scale, though with a little more latitude owing to 
 79 
 
8o SIMPLIFICATIOX OF LIFE. 
 
 visitors) and having, daring a short time, to buy every 
 article of food, I found that the expenses for a family of 
 four persons were well under 8d. a head per diem, not in- 
 cluding firing or labor of cooking. And now I am in- 
 clined to consider this needlessly large. 
 
 The difference, however, arising from having a small 
 piece of garden is very great, and makes one feel 
 how important it is that every cottage should have 
 a plot of ground attached. A rood of land (quarter 
 acre) is sufficient to grow all potatos and other vege- 
 tables and some fruit for the year's use, say for a family of 
 five. Half an acre would be an ample allowance. Such a 
 piece of land may easily be cultivated by anyone in the 
 odd hours of regular work, and the saving is naturally large 
 from not having to go to the shop for everything of this 
 nature that is needed. Atlhe present time — October, 1885 
 — when growing all fruit and vegetables, eggs also, for our 
 own use, I find that our entire expenses for provisions (in- 
 cluding flour, meat, milk, butter, groceries, sugar for pre- 
 serving, etc.) amount to 5d. a head per day. The flour-bill 
 (baking done at home) is about id. per day each, and some 
 portion of this — though I am not in a position at present to 
 say exactly how much — is saved when we grow our own 
 wheat. As a matter of practical interest I find that an acre 
 of wheat in a fairly good year (say 10 " bags," or 180 stone) 
 will provide a year's bread for a family of five. Anyone 
 having a horse will of course find it economical to use it with 
 the plough ; but I am inclined to think that a cottager 
 with a little more land than he would want for his garden 
 and with a little spare time, would find it worth while to 
 spade up half an acre or so (he would get a rare crop in 
 this way) and grow wheat on it. However, not having 
 tried this plan myself, 1 will not do more than just to suggest 
 it. A small hand-mill in the house serves with little labor 
 
SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE. 8 1 
 
 to produce the whole-meal flour, but for white flour the 
 corn must be sent to the miller. 
 
 While on this question of wheat I may remark that an 
 impression seems to have got abroad that England is not a 
 good wheat-producing country; but surely there is no 
 ground for this. English grain is actually finer than the 
 American grain, and the yield per acre on our farms is 
 larger. As soon as ever we tried our own flour we found 
 (really to our surprise) that the quality of bread was quite 
 superior to what we had been accustomed to from the 
 bouglit meal, and this in a district — the Derbyshire dales 
 — by no means so well suited for corn growing as most 
 parts of England. This purer taste of the bread may, how- 
 ever, have been partly due to the fact that millers and 
 flour-dealers are in the habit of mixing different sorts and 
 qualities of flour together (e^en if they do not adulterate 
 with other substances), much as tea-blenders mix tea, 
 and thus our bread of commerce, like everything else com- 
 mercial, is sophisticated. The only serious drawback 
 to English wheat is that in some rainy seasons the grain 
 is not so dry as it should be — but millers, it must be 
 remembered, have drying-floors. Undoubtedly the pro- 
 duction of wheat in England is just now at a discount be- 
 cause of the extraordinary low-pricedness of the American 
 wheat ; but then it should be noted that the English farmer 
 is frightfully burdened by our landlord system as well as 
 by heavy rates and taxes. Whatever may be said about 
 rent not entering into cost of production, and though the 
 theory abstractly considered is a pretty one, yet in practice 
 in England I believe it will be found to apply only very 
 partially. The landlord is on the top of the farmer and 
 has the advantage of him in every way. The latter is loth 
 to leave the place on v/hich he, and perhaps his ancestors 
 before him, have lived so long, and to incur the disastrous 
 
 G 
 
S2 SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE. 
 
 ^expenses of a change ; " hope springs eternal " and " though 
 the seasons have been bad they may be better in the 
 future ; " then the available amount of land in the country 
 is limited, there is always a large portion of the town popu- 
 lation ready to try its hand at agriculture, if only as a 
 hobby and in the face of probable loss ; building specula- 
 tions, favorableness of sites for ornamental estates, etc., 
 re-act on agricultural rents ; and though it is contended 
 that all these things adjust themselves in //;;/<?, yet it is just 
 there that the difficulty arises. For during the time so 
 required i/ie actual conditions of the problem change ; the 
 prices, the cost of production, the situation of the " margin 
 of cultivation " fluctuate, and their adjustment to rent in 
 each particular case has to be re-discovered each year. 
 The problem practically never is solved, but is deferred in- 
 definitely ; the landlord continues to reap the advantage of 
 his strong and entrenched position, and the successive 
 generations of burdened farmers, losing all their capital, 
 and what is even more, all heart and courage, neglect their 
 land, and widespread impoverishment, as now, ensues. 
 
 } This, being so, seems obviously a matter requiring imme- 
 diate attention, for it must always be an object of first-class 
 importance to a country to produce the staple articles of its 
 ■own food ; and if we find that our wheat production is 
 .hampered even in a small degree by the obstruction of a 
 privileged class, such obstruction ought to be removed a? 
 »quickly as possible. Personally I am inclined to, think, look- 
 ing at all the details of the case and the indirect as well as 
 direct influences, that this obstruction is not a small matter, 
 .and that if it does not account for the entire difficulty which 
 our farmers have in contending with American prices it 
 accounts for a large part of it, and is therefore a subject more 
 serious and worthy of attention from our statesmen than for 
 
 I instance the opening up of new markets by petty foreign wars. 
 
SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE. 83 
 
 To return to the question of domestic economy. Of 
 course the current mode of Hfe is so greatly wasteful, and 
 we have come to consider so many things as necessaries — 
 whether in food, furniture, clothing, or what not — which 
 really bring us back next to no profit or pleasure compared 
 with the labor spent upon them, that it is really difficult to 
 know where the balance of true economy would stand if, 
 so to speak, left to itself. All we can do is to take the ex- 
 isting mode of life in its simpler forms, somewhat as above, 
 and work from that as a basis. For though the cottager's 
 way of living, say in our rural districts or in the neighbor- 
 hood of our large towns, is vastly superior to that of the 
 well-to-do, that does not argue that it is not capable of 
 improvement. 
 
 About the largest account in most modern households is 
 the butcher's. I find that our bill runs up to ;^io a year, 
 and this is less than in the Royal Household, where it 
 reaches ;^9,47 2. If our princes and their attendants were 
 to adopt a more frugal diet (say like that of the Caliph 
 Omar, who rode from Medina to Jerusalem with a bag of 
 dates and a bag of corn at his saddle-bow), they would pro- 
 bably be quite as cheerful and healthy as now, and there 
 would be a great saving to the nation ! 
 
 The causes of the craving for a meat diet seem to be 
 similar to those of the craving for other stimulants. For 
 though flesh is not generally considered a stimulant, a little 
 attention will show that its action is of like nature. It very 
 quickly produces a sense of well-being, liable to be followed 
 by reaction and depression ; and this action, though 
 innocuous in its smaller degrees, becomes seriously harm- 
 ful when flesh is made a staple article of diet. With regard 
 to the healthfulness of stimulants generally I am inclined 
 to think that as long as they are merely used for pleasures 
 sake (sociality and good-fellowship) they are right enough, 
 G— 2 
 
84 SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE. 
 
 and in place ; but as soon as ever they go so far as to 
 become necessities^ and the man learns to lean on them for 
 support, or thinks that he cannot do without them, from 
 that moment they are harmful and lowering to the system. 
 The question of meat involves, of course, the additional 
 question of our moral or sentimental relation to the animals. 
 Probably the great craving for all these things goes with 
 our present conditions of civilisation. The hurr}', the 
 overwork — or rather feverish work — of modern life ; the 
 bad air — as of women all along in the house, or men in a 
 close workshop ; the unnatural stimulations, in sexual 
 affairs as in everything else ; and above all the hyper- 
 sensitiveness of our women, who, having abandoned out- 
 door life and labor, transmit a feebly nervous organism 
 to the race : — all these things produce a craving for artifi- 
 cial supports. The man cannot walk and must have 
 crutches ; and the crutches in their turn atrophise the 
 limbs. 
 
 On the whole, and for habitual use, I do not know what 
 can be pleasanter or more nourishing than the cereals (rice, 
 wheat, &c.), milk, eggs, cheese, bread, butter, and any 
 fruit or vegetables that come handy ; and they seem to me 
 to stand by one for hard work and endurance better than 
 flesh. Less than a pennyworth of oatmeal will make one 
 person a large dish of porridge, and this with an &gg, or 
 some cheese and a little fruit, will form a first-class dinner. 
 As to the fearful and wonderful receipts contained in the 
 cookery books, the formula — Serve up hot and throw out of 
 the window — might, with advantage, be appended to most 
 of them. I am convinced there is a most abominable and 
 idiotic waste of time in connection with this subject in all 
 our well-to-do establishments. If the pleasure given bore 
 any proportion to the expenditure of time and labor there 
 might be some sense in the matter, but it doesn't. Fancy 
 
SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE, 85 
 
 a small household of five or six persons requiring a cook — 
 i.e., a person engaged all day long in preparing food for 
 them. Is it not out of all reason? But the mistress of 
 the house descends as it were from the skies, " orders 
 dinner," and returns again to her celestial abode. Whether 
 it was worth while that the scullery-maid should be sent 
 scouring round the town, that she should return hot and 
 tired, and quarrel with the cook — that saucepans should be 
 soiled, much time consumed in peeling, and some money 
 wasted — all in order that unseasonable shrimps should be 
 made into indigestible sauce and served up with the fish, 
 is a question which does not enter into her (the mistress's) 
 head as she takes an infinitesimal portion of the said sauce 
 upon her plate. 
 
 Once I had the honor of staying in a country house for 
 a few days as a guest of one of the servants, and the view 
 which I thus got of our social arrangements — from that 
 side I suppose from which Moses saw the Almighty — was 
 very curious and interesting. 
 
 The orthodox dinner, reduced even to its lowest terms, 
 involves say meat, two vegetables, and a pudding — four 
 dishes, all requiring cooking ! The labor this represents 
 per annum, and just for one meal a day, is something fear- 
 ful. And it is not a comfortable meal ; let alone the 
 disagreeable smells involved in its preparation — smells 
 which necessitate sitting-rooms being a long way from 
 kitchens, and houses altogether more extensive and cum- 
 brous than they need be — it is a meal having no centre of 
 gravity ; you cannot for the life of you tell the proper pro- 
 portion these dishes bear to each other. 
 
 Would it not be better to have just one dish — (like the 
 family bowl seen in Highland cabins and elsewhere) — one 
 dish combining in itself all needful qualities of nutrition 
 and tastiness, with perhaps a few satellite platters around 
 
86 SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE, 
 
 for any adjuncts or off-sets that might seem appropriate ? 
 This central dish (the only one requiring immediate 
 cookery) say some golden-orbed substantial omelet, or 
 vast vegetable pie, or savoury and* nutritious soup, or solid 
 expanse of macaroni and cheese, or steaming mountain of 
 rice surrounded by stewed fruit, or even plain bowl of 
 fermenty, would represent the sun or central fire of our 
 system, while round it in planetary order would circle such 
 other useful and inexpensive viands as would give the 
 housewife a minimum of trouble to provide — chunks of 
 bread and cheese, figs, raisins, oatmeal cakes, fresh fruit, 
 or what not. Here would no second relay of plates be 
 necessary, and victuals which could not face each other on 
 the table would not be forced into spiteful conflict within 
 the man. Even the knife and fork would almost dis- 
 appear, washing up would become an affair of a few 
 minutes, and the woman's work before and after dinner be 
 reduced to a trifle compared with what it is now. For it 
 must be remembered that with this whole matter hangs 
 the question of women's work. Woman is a slave, and 
 must remain so as long as ever our present domestic system 
 is maintained. I say that our average mode of life, as con- 
 ceived under the bourgeois ideal of society, cannot be kept 
 up without perpetuating the slavery of woman. It is quite 
 probable that in the mass she will resist the change ; but it 
 may have to come nevertheless. 
 r~ As to the general question of eating, I am inclined to 
 think that, as in other matters, though moderation is the 
 best general rule, this has to be varied by an occasional 
 orgy. For pleasure in the long run, health, economy of 
 force, &c., a certain sparingness is to be recommended; 
 but the orgy should not be omitted. Among other things 
 it restores the moral tone, and prevents — a most important 
 point — all danger of lapse into pharisaism. Probably if 
 
SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE. 87 
 
 people nowadays had to slaugliter for iheir own use the- 
 difficulty would be to get them to " kill the fatted calf." 
 On my little farm we have fowls m plenty, but we cannot 
 get one for dinner, simply because no member of the 
 household is sufficiently goaded by hunger to be willing to 
 perform the sacrifice : and so Peggy and Fluffy, though 
 old, are respited from month to month, or taken to market 
 — such is human inconsistency ! — to be killed ultimately by 
 some one else. 
 
 No doubt immense simplifications of our daily life are 
 possible ; but this does not seem to be a matter which has 
 been much studied. Rather hitherto the tendency has 
 been all the other way, and every additional ornament on 
 the mantel -piece has been regarded as an acquisition, and 
 not as a nuisance ; though one doesn't see any reason, in 
 the nature of things, why it should be regarded as one more 
 than the other. It cannot be too often remembered that 
 every additional object in a house requires additional dust- 
 ing, cleaning, repairing, and lucky are you if its require- 
 ments stop there. When you abandon a wholesome tile 
 or stone floor for a Turkey carpet, you are setting out on a 
 voyage of which you cannot see the end. The Turkey 
 carpet makes the old furniture look uncomfortable, and 
 calls for stuffed couches and armchairs, the couches and 
 armchairs demand a walnutwood table ; the walnutwood 
 table requires polishing, and the polish bottles require- 
 shelves; the couches and armchairs have castors and 
 springs — which give way and want mending ; they have 
 damask seats which fade and must be covered ; the chintz 
 covers require washing, and when washed they call for 
 antimacassars to keep them clean. The antimacassars, 
 require wool, and the wool requires knitting-needles, and 
 the knitting-needless require a box, the box demands a 
 side-table to stand on, and the side-table involves more 
 
88 ■ SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE. 
 
 covers and castors — and so Ave go on. Meanwhile the 
 carpet wears out and has to be supplemented by bits of 
 drugget, or eked out with oilcloth, and, beside the daily 
 toil required to keep this mass of rubbish in order, we have 
 every week or month, instead of the pleasant cleaning-day 
 of old times, a terrible domestic convulsion and bouleverse- 
 ment of the household. 
 
 It is said by those who have travelled in Arabia that the 
 reason why there are so many religious enthusiasts in that 
 country, is that in the extreme simplicity of the life and uni- 
 formity of the landscape there heaven — in the form of the 
 intense blue sky — seems close upon one. One may almost 
 see God. But we moderns guard ourselves effectually against 
 this danger. For beside the smoke pall which covers our 
 towns, we raise in each household such a dust of trivialities 
 that our attention is fairly absorbed, and if this screen sub- 
 sides for a moment we are sure to have the daily paper held 
 up before our eyes— so that if a chariot of fire were sent to 
 fetch us, ten to one we should not see it. 
 
 However, if this multiplying of the complexity of life is 
 really grateful to some people, one cannot quarrel with them 
 for pursuing it ; and to many it appears to be so. When a 
 sewing machine is introduced into a household the simple- 
 minded husband thinks that, as it works ten times as quick 
 as the hand, there will now be only a tenth part of the 
 time spent by his wife and daughter in sewing that there 
 was before. But he is ignorant of human nature. To his 
 surprise he finds that there is no difference in the time. 
 The difference is in the flounces — they put ten times as 
 many on their dresses. 
 
 Thus we see how little external reforms avail. If the 
 desire for simplicity is not really present no labor-saving 
 appliances will make life simpler. 
 
 Talking about floors, it seems a good plan in upper 
 
SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE. 89 
 
 chambers, and rooms where floors are boarded, to stain and 
 varnish them. This is not expensive, but it takes a Httle 
 time — two or three days altogether for the different washes 
 to dry ; first the stain, then a wash of size, i.e., diluted glue, 
 and then the oak varnish. There is a varnish now com- 
 monly sold called brush varnish, which dries very quickly, in 
 a few hours, and does not require any size ; but it is hardly 
 so good and durable as the other. The advantage of 
 varnished floors is that they do not require scrubbing, 
 which is a very laborious process, but only to be rubbed 
 over with a damp cloth. One or two rugs, or bits of 
 carpet, are all that is needed for a covering, and these can 
 be easily taken up and shaken and the room swept at the 
 weekly cleaning. A carpet over the whole floor not only 
 smells badly, and makes the air of the room permanently 
 stuffy, but, being difficult to remove, it remains down for 
 months at a time, and harbors all sorts of dirt. Varnished 
 floors however will not stand heavy work, as in a living- 
 room or kitchen where thick boots are in and out all day ; 
 and here stone or tile floors, with cocoa-nut matting if 
 a covering is wanted, always seems to me the most 
 appropriate. 
 
 The rest of the furniture takes its cue very much from 
 the treatment of the floor. As a rule all curtains, hangings, 
 cloths, and covers, which are not absolutely necessary, 
 should be dispensed with. They all create dust and stuffi- 
 ness, and all entail trouble and recurring expense, and they 
 all tempt the housekeeper to keep out the air and sunlight 
 — two things of the last and most vital importance. I like 
 a room which looks its best when the sun streams into it 
 through wide open windows and doors. If the furnishing 
 of it cannot stand this test — if it looks uncomfortable under 
 the operation — you may be sure there is something un- 
 wholesome about it. As to the question of elegance or 
 
90 SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE. 
 
 adornment, that may safely be left to itself. The studied 
 effort to make interiors elegant has only ended — in what we 
 see. After all, if things are in their place they will always 
 look well. What, by common consent, is more graceful 
 than a ship — the sails, the spars, the rigging, the lines of 
 the hull ? Yet go on board and you will scarcely find one 
 thing placed there for the purpose of adornment. An 
 imperious necessity rules everything ; this rope could have 
 no other place than it has, nor could be less thick or 
 thicker than it is ; and it is, in fact, this necessity which 
 makes the ship beautiful. Everything in it has relation — 
 has relation to the winds and waves, or to something else 
 on board, and is there for purposes beyond its own exis- 
 tence. Or again, after you have been the round of sstheti- 
 cally-furnished mansions, and seen all that taste and wealth 
 can do in this direction, does it not happen to you at last 
 to turn by chance into some old-fashioned cottage by the 
 wayside and find that, for pure grace and beauty, this 
 interior, without the least effort or intention whatever, has 
 beaten all the rest hollow? Yet, with the exception 
 perhaps of a few plants in the window, everything here is 
 for use. The eye rests on nothing but what suggests a train 
 of thought. Here is the axe hanging, there the gun ; here 
 over the dresser a row of plates, there the kettle boiling on 
 the fire ; and there, behind the door, the straw hat which 
 the rosy-cheeked girl puts on when she runs out to look to 
 the fowls. Everything is alive, and transparent too with 
 cleanly human life. But your modern drawing-room is 
 dead — a stupor comes -over the mind as it gazes at the aim- 
 less armchairs, and the room seems full of lumber. You 
 cannot jnake your room beautiful by buying an expensive 
 vase and putting it on the mantel-shelf; but if you live an 
 honest life in it, it will gro%v beautiful in proportion as it 
 comes to answer to the wants of such a life. 
 
SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE. 9I 
 
 The treatment of walls is a somewhat vexed question. 
 Some people prefer paper, while others prefer a color-wash 
 or paint. On the whole there always seems to me some- 
 thing incongruous and even trivial in the idea of papering 
 stone and plaster. Color-washes are clean and sweet ; 
 they are made of whitening with a little size (flour and 
 water) mixed to prevent rubbing off, and coloring matter 
 according to choice. They are of course quite inexpensive 
 and can be renewed every two or three years. Paint has 
 the advantage of being very durable and of being washable, 
 but it has the drawback of being more laborious and costly 
 in operation, and of course renders a room uninhabitable for 
 a week or two till it is thoroughly dry. In fact care should be 
 taken with regard to this last point. On the whole I think 
 papering is the least trouble, color-washing the least ex- 
 pensive in materials, and paint perhaps the most satisfactory 
 in the long run. If, however, a room is really well plastered 
 to begin with (which does not often happen nowadays) one 
 may very well dispense with all three methods, and that is 
 perhaps after all the most obvious thing to do. 
 
 With regard to clothing, as with furniture and the other 
 things, it can be much simplified if one only desires it so. 
 Probably, however, most people do not desire it, and of course 
 they are right in keeping to the complications. Who knows 
 but what there is some influence at work for some ulterior 
 purpose which we do not guess, causing us to artificialise 
 our lives to the extraordinary extent we do in modern 
 times? Our ancestors wore woad, and it does not at first 
 sight seem obvious why we should not do the same. With- 
 out however entering into the woad question, we may 
 consider some ways in which clothing may be simpli- 
 fied without departing far from the existing standard. It 
 seems to be generally admitted now that wool is the most 
 suitable material as a rule. I find that a good woollen coat, 
 
92 SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE. 
 
 such as ordinarily worn, feels warmer when tinlined than it 
 does when a layer of silk or cotton is interposed between the 
 woollen surface and the body. It is also lighter, thus in 
 both ways the simplification is a gain. Another advantage 
 is that it washes easier and better, and is at all times cleaner, 
 No one who has had the curiosity once to unpick the lining 
 of a tailor-made coat that has been in wear a little time, 
 will, I think, ever wish to have coats made on the same 
 principle again. The rubbish he will find inside, the fret- 
 tings and frayings of the cloth collected in little dirt-heaps 
 up and down, the paddings of cotton wool, the odd lots of 
 miscellaneous stuff used as backings, the quantity of canvas 
 stiffening, the tags and paraphernalia connected with the 
 pockets, bits of buckram inserted here and there to make 
 the coat " sit " well — all these things will be a warning to 
 him. What would be shamed by exposure to the light is 
 all covered up by a sham decorous lining, and if the mess 
 looks unwholesome and suggestive of disease in a compara- 
 tively new coat made by a well-to-do tailor, what must it 
 be in the case of a coat made up by a cheap and nasty 
 dealer, or one that has been unwashed (and how can one 
 wash such a thing ?) for years ? 
 
 Now if all these tags are done away with, and a coat is 
 made up of ^^<?^ cloth* without any lining whatever or any 
 stiffening (except a patch here and there where the buttons 
 are sewn on), and with pockets simply made by the addi- 
 tion of another patch of cloth — patch-pockets as they are 
 called — the relief and the sense of added comfort, warmth, 
 lightness, cleanliness are really delightful. The truth is 
 that one might almost as well be in one's coffin as in the 
 stiff layers upon layers of buckram-like clothing commonly 
 worn nowadays. No genial influence from air or sky can 
 
 * Mrs. Jarvis Barber, of Abbeydale, near Sheffield, is new organising the pro- 
 ductioa 01 hand-spun and hand-woven cloths, of undyed wool, both beautiful and 
 durable ; and will be happy to take orders for the same. 
 
SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE. 93 
 
 pierce this dead hide, no effluence from within escape. A 
 man's clothing we will say generally consists round his 
 trunk of undervest, shirt, waistcoat and coat, to which must 
 sometimes be added an overcoat — each of the three last- 
 mentioned garments consists, at any rate over the front of 
 the body, of three thicknesses — cloth, canvas-stiffening, and 
 lining — in all eleven layers. Eleven layers between him 
 and God ! No wonder the Arabian has the advantage over 
 us. Who could be inspired under all this weight of tailor- 
 dom? 
 
 And certainly, nowadays, many folk visibly are in their 
 cofiSns. Only the head and the hands out, all the rest of 
 the body clearly sickly with want of light and air, atro- 
 phied, stiff in the joints, strait-waistcoated, and partially 
 mummied. Sometimes it seems to me that is the reason 
 why in our modern times the curious intellect is so abnor- 
 mally developed, the brain and the tongue waggle so, and 
 fingers are so nervous and meddlesome, because these 
 organs alone have a chance, the rest are shut out from 
 God's light and air : the poor human heart grown feeble 
 and weary in its isolation and imprisonment, the sexual 
 parts degenerated and ashamed of themselves, the liver 
 diseased, and the lungs straitened down to mere sighs and 
 conventional disconsolate sounds beneath their cerements. 
 
 But a good woollen shirt and coat, and pants of similar 
 material, are really all a man needs for ordinary wear in 
 our climate — three garments, all simply made, easily wash- 
 able, and often washed. In quite cold weather a waistcoat 
 can be added, which should also be unlined and with the 
 back made out of cloth the same as the front. Thus even 
 when a greatcoat is worn the maximum will be only four 
 thicknesses over the body instead of eleven, while the 
 normal covering will be two layers instead of eight. The 
 warmth will be just as great as before, but the suffocation 
 
94 SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE. 
 
 and raummydom will be less ; we shall be nearer the 
 sources of life, and may possibly even hear spoken to 7ts 
 the words : " Lazarus, come forth ! " 
 
 As to the feet which have been condemned to their 
 leathern coffins so long that we are almost ashamed to look 
 at them, there is still surely a resurrection possible for 
 them. There seems to be no reason except mere habit 
 why, for a large part of the year at least, we should not go 
 barefoot, as the Irish do, or at least with sandals.* [Demo- 
 cracy which redeems the lowest and most despised of the 
 people, must redeem also the most menial and despised 
 members and organs of the body.] Even now, effeminated 
 as our feet are, it takes but little practice to accustom them 
 to country roads ; in our towns with their excellent pave- 
 ments the custom might in summer time be adopted at 
 once. And who does not know the pleasure of grasping 
 the ground — the bare earth — with his bare feet ? If it be 
 objected that it is really impossible to imagine our modern 
 life carried on on such principles — the brokers on the 
 London Stock Exchange hurrying around, or the visitor 
 appearing at a fashionable afternoon tea, in bare feet (!) 
 — this is not a serious argument ; because if the two things 
 are really incompatible, it is quite possible that in the long 
 run the Stock Exchange business may turn out to be the 
 less important of the two — less grounded in the ultimate 
 necessity of things than the freedom and emancipation of a 
 single member of the human body ; and so the little toe, 
 like the proverbial worm, though nearly crushed, may at 
 last turn and revenge itself on a civilisation whose oppres- 
 sion it has too long endured. 
 
 But, as we are talking about economy, what a saving of 
 labor and expense would be effected by dispensing, if 
 
 * Mr. W. A. Lill, of 37, Margaret Street, Sheffi eld, is willing to supply an elegant 
 and useful form of sandal. The " size " of boot worn is all that is required, and the 
 word " broad," "narrow," or " medium '' to indicate the character of the foot. 
 
SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE. 95 
 
 only for six months out of the year, with shoes and stock- 
 ings? The labor involved in merely darning the latter 
 is really a serious item in household life. Ihough scoffed 
 at by the male part of the community, as beneath their 
 notice — this labor is only another of the links in the chain 
 which binds the women folk down. Again, who does not 
 know the time which is spent, in any self-supporting house- 
 hold, in patching and mending the numerous garments 
 worn, putting in fresh linings and renewing pockets ? — time 
 which might be largely saved if the number of garments 
 was much reduced, and their construction altogether 
 simplified from the beginning. Thus, all through for men 
 and similarly for women, a simplification of dress might be 
 adopted — even without departing for from present modes 
 — which would involve far less initial expense, and far less 
 labor of maintenance than the present plan. And if these 
 things seem trivial to some well-bred person, who is in the 
 habit of saying, like the Centurion in the Bible, to his 
 servant : — " Do this, and he doeth it " — we must remember 
 as was said at the outset, that in any honest household, 
 faithfully providing for its own wants, such matters have to 
 be faced. The husband has out of his labor to provide 
 the initial expense, the wife has to do the most part of the 
 work of repair and renewal, and to such people the affair is 
 is not trivial at all. Rather one might say that if educated 
 and wealthy people would set the example of simplifying 
 these things to the utmost in their own persons, they would 
 do more to lighten the burden of life for the mass of the 
 people than they can expect to do by casually plunging their 
 liands into their pockets in aid of some Charity. 
 
 There are many other ways in which the details and 
 labor of daily life may be advantageously reduced, which 
 will occur to anyone who turns practical attention to the 
 matter. For myself, I confess to a great pleasure in wit- 
 
96 SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE. 
 
 nessing the Economies of Life — and how seemingly nothing 
 need be wasted — how the very stones that offend the spade 
 in the garden become invaluable when footpaths have to be 
 laid out or drains to be made. Hats that are past wear get 
 cut up into strips for nailing creepers to the wall, the upper 
 leathers of old shoes are useful for the same purpose. The 
 under garment that is too far gone for mending is used for 
 patching another less decrepit of its kind. Then it is torn- 
 up into strips for bandages, or what not ; and when it has 
 served its time thus it descends to floor washing, and is 
 scrubbed out of Hfe — useful to the end. When my coat 
 has worn itself into an affectionate intimacy with my body, 
 when it has served for Sunday best, and for weekdays, and 
 got weather-stained out in the fields with sun and rain — 
 then, faithful, it does not part from me, but getting itself 
 cut up into shreds and patches descends to form a hearthrug 
 for my feet. After that, when worn through, it goes into 
 the kennel and keeps my dog warm, and so after lapse of 
 years, retiring to the manure-heaps and passing out on to 
 the land, returns to me in the form of potatos for my 
 dinner; or being pastured by my sheep reappears upon 
 their backs as the material of new clothing. Thus it re- 
 mains a friend to all time, grateful to me for not having 
 despised and thrown it away when it first got behind the 
 fashions. And seeing we have been faithful to each other, 
 my coat and I, lor one round or life-period, I do not see 
 why we should not renew our intimacy — in other meta- 
 morphoses — or why we should ever quite lose touch of each 
 other through the aeons. 
 
 With regard to the sum total of labor required for the 
 maintenance of a household according to modern notions, 
 I find on my little farm of seven acres (which is by no 
 means conducted on model principles, but in a very 
 ordinary way) that the figures for last financial year (Sep- 
 
simplificat:on of life, 97 
 
 tember, '84-'85) run as follows : — Number of persons^ 
 rather over four on the average ; household expenses (in- 
 cluding provisions and utensils, but not clothing or personal 
 exj)enses), ;f38 ; farm expenses, i.e.^ seeds, tools, manure 
 *^^-> ilL^^ J taxes, jQd ; close upon j[fiQ in all. I consider 
 that the farm and market garden could easily be worked by 
 a man and his family, say having a son of fifteen to help him, 
 with just occasional outside help. And the question then 
 would be for them to sell stuff sufificient to cover the above 
 outlay and leave a margin for pocket money and rent (pay- 
 able we should hope to the nation and not to any indivi- 
 dual landlord). This they ought to do, and probably would 
 do without difficulty in times of average prices. What 
 exact margin might be expected, or what exact extent of 
 land would yield the best results, are questions which I 
 should find it difficult to answer; all such points depend so 
 very much on considerations of soil, locality, kinds of crop 
 grown, whether ordinary or highly specialised, the state of 
 the markets, &c., that it seems rash and indeed impossible 
 to generalise on them. Personally I feel so very strongly 
 that the present conditions of commercial production are 
 rapidly passing away, that I don't think it very much matters 
 whether the peasant occupier (or any other worker or indus- 
 trial adventurer) is proved to be a commercial success or a 
 commercial failure just now. When the new conditions of 
 society enable the worker to receive something like an 
 equivalent of the value he produces* it is evident that the 
 question of success or failure will be a very different one 
 from what it is to-day. 
 
 ^Vhat I feel more interested to show is the actual expense 
 — as in the figures given above — of carrying on a simple, 
 but unstinted, household life. For though some would 
 
 * Mr. Mulhall (Dictionary of Statistics) gives, for 1883, our national produce of 
 wealth .It value '£'1,265,000,000; number of families of producers, 4,629,000. Divid- 
 ing, we find that;{;373 a year is the average value produced by each family 
 
 H 
 
98 SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE. 
 
 consider these figures absurdly small, and others needlessly 
 large, yet on the whole they are probably not far from 
 \he average experience on the subject; and at any rale 
 I give them because I can vouch for their accuracy. Not 
 long ago a gentleman told me that he was anxious to 
 adopt a very simple mode of life, and to take a cottage with 
 plot of land to it, for himself and family, but was waiting 
 till he had saved money enough — _;^i 5,000 was t}ie sum he 
 tnentioned — for the venture. I thought it was a pity he 
 should wait so long, if he was really so anxious about it 
 as evidently if he could scrape together only ^i^ioo a year, 
 from any professional sources or out of dividends, or what 
 not, he would have amply sufficient for all casualties. 
 
 In the more or less socialistic state of society towards which 
 we seem to be trending, the normal condition would pro- 
 bably be for a man to have a cottage and sufficient land — 
 say not less than a rood — to grow a good deal of food for 
 his own use, while daily labor at a really adequate rate of 
 wages would be secured to him outside in workshop, 
 design-room, school, warehouse, or wherever it might be. 
 And this always seems to me, if properly managed, the 
 most satisfactory mode of life for the average man. It 
 avoids the uncertainties and anxieties of running a concern 
 of one's own. There is no reason why the wage-work 
 should not be done under pleasant and wholesome condi- 
 tions, the hours would not be long, and there would be a 
 home and land of one's own on which to expend super- 
 fluous energy. Thus, if we take the household expenses 
 at ;^4o, including purchase of a few tools, &:c., for the 
 garden, and rent (payable to the State and therefore no 
 taxes) at ;j£"io, we see that a family earning ;^ioo a year 
 would have ample margin for clothing, pocket money, and 
 even travelling within reasonable limits — would be, in fact, 
 quite well off. But even under the present wasteful conditions 
 
SIMPLIFICATION OF LIFE. 99 
 
 of society, statistics show, as in the note on last page, that 
 the value created by each family of producers is over ^^270 
 a year. Allowing something then for the expenses of distri- 
 bution, organisation, &c., and allowing nothing for the im- 
 proved productiveness of labor under a better system — 
 we still see that the normal wage per annum may be placed 
 at something like ^^250 per family. This would be, of 
 course, under the supposition that the hours of labor re- 
 mained the same as they are now. In this respect, how- 
 ever, under any reasonable condition of society, a man 
 would be at liberty to exercise some choice. If he wished 
 to live very luxuriously, or had extraordinary expenses to 
 meet, he could continue working his nine or ten hours as 
 now ; if however his domestic wants were only about the 
 ordinary range they would easily be covered by the sum 
 (_;^ioo) we have mentioned, and then obviously four 
 hours a day would be sufficient ; while if single, and of 
 simple habits, he (or she) could do with less. 
 
 In the above sketch my object has been not so much to 
 put forward any theory of the conduct of daily life, or 
 to maintain that one method of living is of itself superior 
 to another, as to try and come at the facts connected with 
 the subject. In the long run every household has to sup- 
 port itself, the benefits and accommodations it receives 
 from Society have to be covered by the labor it expends 
 for Society. This cannot be got over. The present effort 
 of a large number of people to live on interest and divi- 
 dends, and so in a variety of ways on the labor of others, 
 is simply an effort to make water run up hill : it cannot last 
 very long. The balance then between the labor that you 
 consume and the labor that you expend may be struck in 
 many different ways, but it has to be struck ; and I have 
 been interested to bring together some materials for an 
 easy suhuion of the problem. 
 
 H— 2 
 
DOES IT PAY? 
 
 " Who has been wise receives interest." 
 
 — IPa/i IV/titmaa. 
 
 Having lately embarked in an agricultural enterprise on 
 a small scale, I confess I was somewhat disconcerted, if 
 not actually annoyed, by the persistency with which — from 
 the very outset and when I had been only two or three 
 months at work — I was met by the question at the head 
 of this paper. Not only sisters cousins and aunts but 
 relatives much more remote, and mere acquaintances, at 
 the very first suggestion that I was engaged in trade, always 
 plumped out with the query. Does it pay? And this struck 
 me the more because though I knew the point was import- 
 ant, I had in the innocence of my heart fancied that there 
 might be other considerations of at least comparable weight. 
 But I soon found out my mistake ; for none of my well-to- 
 do friends asked whether the work I was doing was wanted, 
 or whether it would be useful to the community, or a means 
 of healthy life to those engaged in it, or whether it was 
 honest and of a kind that could be carried on without in- 
 terior defilement ; or even (except one or two) whether I 
 liked it, but always : does it pay ? I say my well-to-do 
 friends, because I couldn't help remarking that while the 
 workers generally asked me such questions as whether the 
 soil was good, or adapted to the purpose, the crops fine, 
 the water abundant, &c., it was always the rich who asked 
 the distinctively commercial question — a professional ques- 
 tion as it appeared to me, and which marked them as a 
 
 lOO 
 
DOES IT PAY? lOI 
 
 class, and their modes of thought. Not that I have any 
 (juarrel with them for asking it, because the question is un- 
 doubtedly in some sense a very important one, and one 
 which has to be asked ; rather I ought to feel grateful and 
 indebted, because it forced me to think about a matter that 
 I had not properly considered before. 
 
 What then did it mean ? What was the exact sense of 
 the expression, does it pay ? as here used ? On enquiring 
 I found it came to this : " When you have subtracted from 
 your gross receipts all expenses for wages of labor, 
 materials, ^c, is there a balance equivalent to four or five 
 percent, on your outlay of capital? If yes, it pays ; if no, it 
 doesn't." Clearly if the thing came up to this standard or 
 surpassed it, it was worthy of attention ; if it didn't it would 
 be dismissed as unimportant and soon be dropped and 
 abandoned. This was clear and definite, and at first I felt 
 greatly relieved to have arrived at so solid a conclusion. 
 But after a time, and carrying on the enterprise farther, I 
 am sorry to say that my ideas (for they have a great 
 tendency that way) again began to get misty, and I could 
 not feel sure that I had arrived at any certain principle of 
 action. 
 
 My difficulty was that I began to feel that even supposing 
 the concern only brought me in one per cent., it was quite 
 as likely as not that I should still stick to it. For I thought 
 that if I was happy in the life, and those working with me 
 were well-content too, and if there were children growing up 
 on the place under tolerably decent and healthy conditions, 
 and if we were cultivating genuine and useful products, 
 cabbages and apples or what not — that it might really pay 
 me better to get one per cent, for that result, even if it in- 
 volved living quite simply and inexpensively, than ten per 
 cent, with jangling and wrangling, over-worked and sad 
 faces round me, and dirty and deceptive stuff produced ; 
 
I02 DOES IT PAY? 
 
 and that if I could afford it I might even think it worth 
 while to pay to keep the first stage going, rather than he paid 
 for the second. 
 
 I knew it was very foolish of me to think so, and bad 
 Political Economy, and I was heartily ashamed of myself, 
 but still I couldn't help it. I knew the P.E.'s would say 
 that if I disregarded the interest on my capital I should only 
 be disturbing natural adjustments, that my five per cent, 
 was an index of what was wanted, a kind of providential 
 arrangement harmonising my interest (literally) with that of 
 the mass of mankind, and that if I was getting only one per 
 cent, while others were sending in the same stuff from 
 P>ance and getting ten per cent., it was clear that I was 
 wasting labor by trying to do here what could be done so 
 much more profitably somewhere else, and that I ought to 
 give way. This was what I knew they would say ; but then 
 from my own little experience I readily saw that the ten 
 per cent, profit might mean no superior advantage of labor 
 in that part, but merely superior grinding and oppression 
 of the laborer by the employer, superior disadvantage of 
 the laborer in fact ; and that if I gave way in its favor, I 
 should only be encouraging the extortion system. I should 
 be playing into the hands of some nefarious taskmaster in 
 another part of the industrial world, and by increasing his 
 profits should perhaps encourage others, still more un- 
 scrupulous, to undersell him, which of course they would 
 do by further exactions from the worker ; and so on and 
 on. I saw too that if I abandoned my enterprise, I should 
 have to discharge my workpeople, with great chance of 
 their getting no fresh employment, and to them I had 
 foolishly become quite attached ; which was another serious 
 trouble, but I could not help it. 
 
 And so in all this confusion of mind, and feeling quite 
 certain that I could not understand all the complexities of 
 
DOES IT PAY? 103 
 
 the science of Political Economy myself, and having a 
 lurking suspicion that even the most able professors were 
 in the dark about some points, I began to wonder if the 
 most sensible and obvious thing to do were not just to try 
 and keep at least one little spot of earth clean : actually to 
 try and produce clean and unadulterated food, to en- 
 courage honest work, to cultivate decent and healthful con- 
 ditions for the workers, and useful products for the public, 
 and to maintain this state of affairs as long as I was able, 
 taking my chance of the pecuniary result to myself. It 
 would not be much, but it would be something, just a 
 little glimmer as it were in the darkness ; but if others did 
 the same, the illumination would increase, and after a time 
 perhaps we should all be able to see our way better. 
 
 I knew that this method of procedure would not be 
 " scientific " — that it would be beginning at the wrong end 
 for that — but then as I have said I felt in despair about my 
 ever being clever enough really to understand the science — 
 and as to half-knowledge, that might be more misleading 
 than none. It was like the advice in the Bible, '•' Seek ye 
 'first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all 
 these things shall be added unto you," obviously irrational 
 and absurd, and any argument would expose the fallacy of 
 it, and yet I felt inclined to adopt it. 
 
 For when on the other hand I tried to make a start along 
 the ordinary lines, I found myself from the outset in a hope- 
 less bog ! I could not, for the life of me, tell }iow nmch I 
 ought to take as interest, and how much I ought to give 
 in wages — the increase of the former evidently depending 
 on the smallness of the latter. If I adopted just the current 
 rate of wages, there was nothing in that, for I knew that 
 they represented a mere balance of extortion on the one 
 hand and despair on the other, and how could I take that 
 a.s my principle of action ? If I gave more than the current 
 
104 DOES IT PAY? 
 
 rate I should very likely get no interest iit all, and so be 
 consigned to perdition by all my well-to-do friends, includ- 
 ing the Professors of Political Economy ; while if I gave 
 less, I should certainly go to hell in my own eyes. And 
 though I pondered over this dilemma, or rather trilemma, 
 till I was sick of it, I never could see my way out 
 of it. 
 
 And then I reflected that even if I was lucky enough to 
 l^itch on some'principle of wage-payment which would leave 
 a nice little balance of Interest — it was quite doubtful 
 whether I should feel any right to appropriate such balance 
 to my own use. That also was a great trouble. For I could 
 not help seeing that after taking my proportional payment for 
 my labors in the concern, and some small remuneration 
 for my care of superintendence, if I then appropriated a 
 considerable interest on the capital laid out, I should with- 
 out any extra work be much better off than my coadjutors. 
 And though the P. E.'s assured me this was all right, and 
 kind of providential, I had serious qualms, which, do what 
 I would, I could not shake off. I felt keenly that what 
 I should then be taking would only be so much subtracted 
 from the wages of these others, and that the knowledge of 
 this would disturb the straightforward relation between us, 
 and I should no longer be able to look them in the face. 
 
 I could not help seeing too that it was by means of this 
 general system of the appropriation of balances that a very 
 curious phenomenon was kept up — an enormous class, to 
 wit, living in idleness and luxury, they and their children 
 and their children's children, till they became quite incap- 
 able of doing anything for themselves or even of thinking 
 rightly about most things — tormented with incurable ennui, 
 and general imbecility and futility ; all art and literature, 
 which were the appendage of this class, being affected by a 
 kind of St. Vitus' dance ; and the whole thing breaking out 
 
DOES IT PAY? Io5 
 
 finally for want of any other occupation into a cuff and 
 collar cult, called respectability. 
 
 And then I began to see more clearly the meaning of the 
 question (asked by this class) — does it pay f — i.e., Can we 
 continue drawing from the people nourishment enough to 
 keep our St. Vitus' dance going ? I thought I saw a vision 
 of poor convulsed creatures, decked out in strange finery, 
 in continual antic dance peering in each other's faces, with 
 eager questioning as to whether the state of profits would 
 allow the same doleful occupation to go on for ever. And 
 all the more eager I saw them on account of the dim 
 wandering consciousness they had that the whole thing was 
 not natural and right, ?nd the presentiment that it could 
 not last very long. And then 1 saw a vision of the new 
 society in which the appropriation of balances was not the 
 whole object of life ; but things were produced primarily 
 for the use and benefit of those who should consume them. 
 It was actually thought that it paid better to work on that 
 principle ; and strangely enough, the kingdom of hetiven was 
 at the centre of that society — and the " other things " were 
 added unto it. But there was no respectability there, for 
 the balances that could be privately appropriated were not 
 large enough even to buy starch with, and a great many 
 people actually went without collars. 
 
 And so I saw that the eager question (in the paiticular 
 sense on which it had been asked me) was in fact a symptom 
 of the decay of the old Society — a kind of dying grin and 
 death-rattle of respectability — and that a new order, a new 
 life, was already preparing beneath the old, in which there 
 would be no need for it to be asked ; or if asked, then in 
 Avhich it should be asked in a new sense. 
 
] 
 
 J 
 
 TRADE. 
 
 "He likewise engaged in a pursuit disgraceful even in a private individual — 
 buying great quantities of goods and selling them again to advantage." 
 
 — 'Suetonius concerning Vespasian. 
 
 I SUPPOSE the peculiar character of our commercial age — 
 its excellencies and its defects — can be as well studied in 
 the market as anywhere. The first time I stood behind my 
 own goods, and spread out peas and potatos, roses and 
 raspberries of my own growing to the eye of the customer, 
 I felt that I was passing behind a veil, many things were 
 becoming clear ! I had often been in the market as a buyer, 
 and had, I am sorry to say, been accustomed to look upon 
 the tradesman as a personification of artful wickedness — 
 one who combined with his fellows to defraud the public 
 and to take advantage of its innocence. But now I had 
 passed myself into that inner circle, and with what a different 
 eye did I regard the situation ! It seemed to me now that 
 it was the public which was at fault. I seemed to see at a 
 glance the original sinfulness of its disposition. How out 
 of its naughty old heart it suspected you always and always 
 of putting the bad stuff at the bottom of the basket ; how it 
 would beat you down shamelessly, if it could, to prices below 
 the zero of any possible remuneration to the grower ; how 
 it would handle fruit and flowers till all the delicate bloom 
 was gone, and then pass by with a scoff — (things, all of 
 which I had once done myself) ; and how, instead of desir- 
 ing to do as it would be done by, its one guiding fear, over- 
 ruling all lesser sentiments of honesty and humanity, was 
 lest it should be done as it would desire to do. Hitherto I 
 1 06 
 
TRADE. 107 
 
 had looked ujjon cheap goods as a blessing, but now I saw, 
 or seemed to see, that they meant general ruin. For cheap 
 goods meant low wages, scarcity of money ; meant hungry 
 faces going by, and hands fingering half-pence long and 
 anxiously before parting with them ; meant slow sales and 
 poor returns to the trader. While scarcity and high prices 
 seemed no longer the unmixed evil I had supposed, for 
 likely as not they were the indication of a brisk demand, 
 full pockets, and general prosperity. 
 
 Thus my change of position, from the front to the back 
 of a stall, wrought at once a considerable alteration in my 
 views ot some social matters. I took a new view of the 
 world. My axiom was changed, and consequently a lot of 
 theorems which I thought were well established fell to pieces, 
 and became sadly invalid. I found the inner circle of the 
 market a vantage ground, too, for the study of human 
 nature. Here the buyers are the performers. They occupy 
 the arena, and are exposed to a considerable criticism 
 from behind the stalls. The seller, on the other hand, is 
 comparatively unobserved. The buyer eyes the straw- 
 berries, old bird though he be he cannot entirely hide the 
 gleam of his satisfaction at their appearance. 
 
 " How much ? " he asks carelessly. " Five shillings a 
 peck" is your equally careless reply. You know the fruit is 
 first rate. You know also that he knows it ; and he pro- 
 bably knows that you know that he knows it. " Eh, what 
 are you talking about ? " is his answer, and in assumed dis- 
 gust he goes off down the market. Presently you see him 
 coming back again ; he has been all round ; but as he goes 
 by, crafty he scarce glances at the coveted stuff. Not till 
 he has got to a safe distance, and to a spot where he thinks 
 he may stand unobserved does he turn again and measure 
 it over with his eye. Now then you are satisfied ; you 
 know that you are safe about those strawberries, and you 
 
loS TRADE. 
 
 miy give your attention to the sale of other things. You 
 know also (what is very important) that there is no better 
 fruit of the same kind and at the same price in the market. 
 Great is your triumph when, after some delay, your customer 
 returns (as he infallibly will do) and you are able to tell him 
 that the produce in question is all sold, or that the price has 
 risen ! 
 
 On the whole though the maxims of business are not too 
 lofty, the thorough business people are the most satisfactory 
 to deal with. They waste no time in whatever higgling is 
 necessary, they know a little of both sides of the question, 
 and are inclined to treat you as a reasonable creature, and 
 are prompt and methodical. This carefully-dressed some- 
 what stout matron with curls looks a little old-fashioned, but 
 she has a shrewd eye and a kindly heart ; she keeps a shop, 
 and knows pretty well how prices stand both for buyer and 
 seller ; is pleasant to deal with, and not disinclined to put 
 her custom on a friendly and permanent footing. Here 
 comes a man who considers himself quite the boss of the 
 market — brisk and business-like, with extensive watch-chain, 
 and elegant flower in his button-hole ; he is a large dealer 
 and acts as if he were doing you the honor to be your 
 customer. Nevertheless one can get on with him ; but this 
 abominable Irishwoman who always turns up talking nine- 
 teen to the dozen, and wanting to beg everything at shame- 
 less prices, and then when the bargain is concluded asking 
 for this to be thrown in and that to be thrown in, is really 
 more, than I can bear. Then there is an unpleasant-look- 
 ing ferret-eyed man who always suspects me of having put 
 the best potatos at the top ; I do not like him, and feel no 
 satisfaction in selling anything to him. But this little man 
 in carefully-brushed great-coat and tall hat is really a 
 pleasure to deal with. He is a retail customer and is quite 
 a Pickwickian study, has an immense red nose, which must 
 
TRADE. 109 
 
 occupy nearly all his field of view, yet of drinking I am 
 sure he is blameless, so affable and scrupulous is he ; and 
 when he buys a peck of peas I feel certain he will take them 
 home and shell them sitting by his wife's side. There is 
 the working wife too, who wants a nice cauliflower for the 
 Sunday dinner, but ultimately declines on a cabbage on 
 account of the price ; and the young rnan who wants a 
 button-hole for his girl. He chooses the most lovely of the 
 rose-buds, but pauses when he hears what he has to pay 
 (for the season is advanced) — he retires for a moment, and 
 then comes forward like a man and secures his prize. 
 
 Those who know something about the labor of produc- 
 tion — either in the trade in question or in some other trade 
 — are often most reasonable to deal with. They can sym- 
 pathise to some extent with you. I find that the " lady " 
 or " gentleman " is often inclined to beat one down or refuse 
 a rational price out of mere ignorance — not knowing what 
 they ought to give, they assume that whatever you ask must 
 be an imposition. And of course, on the other hand, they 
 often are imposed upon by the unscrupulous. I confess 
 that I have been inclined to take this latter part myself. 
 There is a widespread impression among the " people " that 
 the wealthy class are lawful prey. Perhaps they are — it 
 might be difficult to decide one way or the other — but any- 
 how the gap or the want of sympathetic relation between 
 the two parties makes their dealings with one another un 
 satisfactory. 
 
 With regard to the higghng of the prices, and the law of 
 supply and demand, it is interesting to see how rapidly you 
 feel from your own particular stand the general state of the 
 market, how organically you seem to form a part of it. 'i'ou 
 drive over the hills by sunrise, plunging down through the 
 clear light and by the dewy hedgerows into the still quiet 
 streets of the great city ; you find yourself in a bustling 
 
r 
 
 no TRADE. 
 
 noisy market, you open out your goods, take a cursory 
 glance at the quantity of stuff in of various kinds, and 
 mentally fix on the probable prices. The stream of cus- 
 tomers flows by. " How much ? " " how much ? " " how 
 much?" Different as are the characters of the indivi- 
 duals comprising the crowd, various as are their little 
 dodges and artifices, the total effect is soon averaged. As 
 you reply to each, expressions of disgust or satisfaction 
 involuntarily pass over their faces, and in a few minutes 
 you know quite certainly how you stand — your little gland 
 which is washed by the general circulation soon gets con- 
 gested with traffic or left high and dry — and your relation to 
 the rest of the market is established. 
 
 I should be inclined to think that, unless it be the petro- 
 leum market, there is no market which fluctuates so 
 rapidly as the vegetable and fruit market. Frosts spoil 
 tons of cauliflowers, rain ruins acres of strawberries ; a few 
 fine days in spring will cause parsley to fall from three 
 shillings a pound to as many pence. From week to week 
 in some articles it is impossible to tell what the price will 
 be. You bring in a load of fine celery roots and the market 
 is glutted with celery, there are tons and tons in, and it is 
 as good as given away to the street-hawkers ; another day 
 it is just as scarce — everyone has held back — and poor stuff 
 fetches a good price. Even from hour to hour the varia- 
 tions are remarkable, some things will run out and run up, 
 other things will remain abundant to the very close of the 
 market, and have to be sold at last for a mere song. Quite 
 a class of small traders and hawkers lie in wait for this last 
 casualty, and make their living by buying what else would 
 be shot up on the manure heap. Still, though competition 
 thus holds sway and can, so to speak, be felt in operation, 
 it is difiicult to reduce the law of supply and demand to 
 anything like an absolute generalisation, or to make it 
 
TRADE. Ill 
 
 practically applicable except in the roughest way. Custom, 
 which is a force antagonistic to competition, and which has 
 at one time undoubtedly been the main determinant of 
 prices — which is certainly one of the strongest forces of 
 human nature, and which will have to be reckoned with in 
 any forecast of the future adjustments of commerce — custom 
 acts strongly to-day in the markets, even in the very teeth 
 of the fierce competition that exists. Customary prices 
 modify competition prices ; for very shame large numbers 
 of people will not buy and will not sell at rates which they 
 consider abnormal ; a latent sense of honor withholds 
 them ; the tendency of buyers and sellers to establish per- 
 manent and friendly dealings with each other, a tendency 
 which I am inclined to think lies at the base of all exchange 
 and which has created, I suppose, the word " customer," is 
 still quite strongly traceable, the effort of the human to 
 assert itself as against the merely mechanical being yet not 
 quite extinct. Then there are nameless preferences — as of 
 individuals for particular varieties of goods — or of classes of 
 buyers for particular classes of sellers ; nameless habits, 
 traditions, predilections or prejudices, and this in everj' 
 trade, anomalies which competition ought to level down, 
 but somehow it does not. Undoubtedly the tendency to a 
 mechanical level may be said to exist, but that the level or 
 anything like a level is [ever reached is quite a different 
 thing. It is like a basin of water being carried about in 
 the hand, the water should go horizontal, but the disturb- 
 ances arising from the human side effectually prevent this 
 being realised. Thus competition when one becomes 
 practically acquainted with it, when one comes to feel its 
 operation, appears somewhat as a force acting on the human 
 — acting I would almost say to degrade or warp the human 
 within one. It does not appear as an isolated and self- 
 sufficient law of exchange, but just as one factor in the 
 
TRADE. 
 
 problem, a factor which, if it had everything its own way, 
 would speedily reduce commerce to a mere mechanical 
 function devoid of all humanity. This, however, is a result 
 which is impossible, because no function of human nature 
 can be separated from humanity and made purely mechani- 
 cal without ipso facto withering away and dying. And thus 
 we have the alternative that commerce must either go on 
 in its present direction and perish, or live by returning to 
 human relationship as its basis. 
 
 "I* have tried trade," says Thoreau, "but I found it 
 would take ten years to get under-way in that, and that 
 then I should probably be on my way to the devil." And 
 again he says, "Trade curses everything it handles." I my- 
 self have never met anyone who seriously maintained that 
 success in trade was in the long run compatible with honesty. 
 These charges however may not be so damnatory as they 
 appear, for after all perhaps it does not matter so much 
 whether trade can be carried on honestly or not, as whether 
 you try to carry it on honestly. The use of trade, as perhaps 
 of every other pursuit, is mainly to test your probity ; and I 
 should say that for that purpose it is excellently adapted. 
 The strains it puts upon you are severe. Quite decisively 
 you cannot worship both God and Mammon in it. If how- 
 ever folks generally tried to carry on trade honestly, very 
 probably a new form of exchange would soon develop itself 
 which would allow of honesty being realised. 
 ^T' I do not think that the difficulty about trade lies chiefly 
 in the market, but rather in its influence, indirectly, on pro- 
 duction. The market on the whole with all its chicanery, 
 its worship of cuteness, its besting and blufting, is an intensely 
 human institution, the very fact that you are forced into 
 contact with such a number of your fellow-creatures has a 
 redeeming influence. And some useful qualities, such as 
 alertness, forethought, patience and judgment, have un* 
 
TRADE. 113 
 
 doubtedly been developed by it. But its influence on pro- 
 duction is to my mind deadly and numbing. To feel that you 
 are working for the market kills all interest in your work. 
 
 I feel this quite decisively myself. When I am working 
 for use^ when I am hoeing potatos and thinking of them 
 only as food — thinking how somebody will eat them at any 
 rate — and studying how to grow them best for that purpose, 
 then I have an assured good before me which no one can 
 takeaway. Whatever their /r/i^^, these potatos will feed the 
 same number of human beings. I feel calm anJ contentful, 
 and can take pleasure in my work. But when I am working for 
 the market, when the profit and the gain which I am to de- 
 rive from the sale of my potatos is the main object before 
 me — when I am considering all along whether each thrust 
 of the hoe \\'\\\pay, whether I had not better scamp this or 
 hurry over that in view of the falling prices, when I see that 
 the whole end and purpose of my labor is involved in 
 doubt owing to trade fluctuations which I cannot possibly fore- 
 see — then — (how can it be otherwise ?) — I am miserable and 
 feverish, grudging every stroke of the tool in my hand, each 
 effort of the muscles, tossed about by uncertainty, wavering 
 in my plans, and devoid of that good heart which alone is 
 the basis of all good work. Certainly I may be, shall be, 
 longer over my work in the first case than in the second ; 
 but I shall produce better stuff" — and if I enjoy my work I 
 shall not mind an hour additional at it, but if I hate it, all the 
 time spent on it is lost. Business conducted on the latter 
 principle may be tolerable, while the prospect of winning 
 draws one on, and before the gambling pleasure has palled, 
 but after that, no ! The whole of production to-day is vitiated 
 by the fact that it is production for gain, for profit. There is 
 no assured good in it, no certain advantage or enjoyment 
 in the work — success depends on conditions which are 
 beyond the control of the worker or employer. But it is / 
 
1 14 TRADE. 
 
 not wise for anyone to let success depend on things which 
 are beyond his control. The evil principle searches down 
 and affects the lowermost grades of industry, and there is 
 hardly a man nowadays to be found who can ba said to be 
 happy in his work. Yet if production were for use, success 
 would be within the reach of everybody. No man, if he 
 only worked for five minutes, need fear that his work will 
 be lost by a fluctuation of the market. No fluctuation of 
 the market will spoil the knife-edge that I have been grind- 
 ing, nor any change in the price of turnips make these that 
 I am singling less useful for food. My work is secure when 
 I have done it well, and its result is secure — I can whistle 
 and sing at my ease. 
 
 Trade is against nature, it is in the long run against 
 human nature, as long as " What can I get ? " is its motto. 
 The true nature of man is to give like the sun ; his getting 
 must be subordinate to that. When giving, his thoughts 
 are on others and he is " free ; " when getting, his thoughts 
 are on himself, he is anxious therefore and miserable. As 
 long as Trade takes " What can I get ? " for its axiom, 
 anxiety and misery will characterise all its work — as they 
 do to-day. 
 
PRIVATE PROPERTY. 
 
 '' For froperty alone Law was made." 
 
 — Macaulay. 
 
 "For I will have none who will not open his door to all : treating others as 
 liave treated him. 
 
 " The trees that spread their boughs against the evening sky, the marble that I 
 have prepared beforehand these millions of years in the earth, the cattle that roam 
 over the myriad hills— they are Mine, for all my children — 
 
 " If thou lay hands on them for thyself alone, thou art accursed." 
 
 A FRIEND of mine lately went out for a drive with a gentle- 
 man who owned a large property. The drive extended some 
 miles through his estate. " That village is on my land," 
 said he ; "at least I believe so. Is it not, coachman ? " 
 " Yes, sir," said John, touching his hat. " And I go as far 
 as the top of that hill, I think." " No, sir (with the same 
 obeisance), you are mistaken ; this road we are on divides 
 your property from Lord 's." 
 
 In what sense did that gentleman own that land ? To own 
 means to confess, to recognise, to acknowledge. A shep- 
 herd owns his sheep : he knows each one from the others ; 
 a man owns his neighbor in the street. But this man did 
 not even recognise his land when he saw it. His servants, 
 the common people in his neighborhood, knew more about 
 his property than he did. 
 
 This sounds strange, but it is very common. In fact I 
 believe there is very little land in this country but what is 
 owned in this sort of way. The legal owner— even if he 
 knows the exact boundaries — knows little really about his 
 property. For all information as to the nature of the soil, 
 the variety of trees and plants which may be found on 
 115 1—2 
 
Il6 PRIVATE PROPERTY. 
 
 it, the crops for which it is adapted, the course of water or 
 of stone beneath the surface, and so forth, he has to refer 
 to the common people who are working for him. It is 
 ahiiost certain that he would not recognise a bit of his own 
 soil if it was brought to him, and if by any chance a small 
 portion of the same were to adhere to his hands he would 
 not 01V71 that, but hastily retreating would wash it off, lest 
 he should appear too familiar with it ! While the people 
 about him and working on the land are continually think- 
 ing (as I have often had occasion to notice) what can be 
 done for the land, how they can best do justice to it — spend- 
 ing affection and thought upon it — and indeed grieving 
 when they see it neglected, when they see it undrained or 
 insufificiently manured, or allowed to run to waste and 
 dishevelment — even though these matters are as the saying 
 is " not their concern," and make no difference to their 
 pockets. While, I say, the common people spend this love 
 and affection on the land, the legal owner, as a rule, is 
 thinking concerning it of only one thing — and that is how 
 much money he can get out of it. (This was not always so 
 — at one time, I believe, the landlord was a much more 
 genuine personage — but I think at the present day in 
 England it may fairly be stated to be the case.) 
 
 The question then is which is the true owner ? Is it the 
 man who, spending thought and affection and labor on the 
 land, blesses it with increase, and causes its face to smile 
 with glad produce ; or is it the man who, hardly knowing 
 even the boundaries of that which he possesses, and feeling 
 no warming of the heart towards it to make it beautiful and 
 blessed, thinks only of what advantage he can gain from it, 
 and of how much rent the law will allow him to scrape from 
 its surface ? 
 
 And what exactly is this legal ownership ? In the case 
 of land, it is the power to evict, to prosecute for poaching. 
 
PRIVATE PROPERTV, II7 
 
 to levy rent, &c. It is essentially a negative power. It is 
 the power to //"(ft w// others from jising. The gentleman I 
 mentioned would very likely have the power to turn all the 
 inhabitants of that village off his land and convert it into a 
 deer forest. He might prevent anyone from tilling any 
 part of his soil. The landlords of England might starve 
 the English people out. The people must pay rent in order 
 to be allowed to produce their own food. And so with all 
 property, the legal ownership is essentially negative ; it is the 
 power to prevent other people from using. Note well that 
 it is not the power to use the thing yourself A man may 
 have a fine telescope but be quite incapable of using it ; yet 
 he has the legal power to prevent anyone else looking 
 through it. So a man may possess a fine tract of land, and 
 yet be ignorant of agriculture and incapable even of hand- 
 ling a spade ; he may not even have the money to set others 
 to work on it ; the law supplies him with no force or means 
 wherewith to cultivate that land, it merely supplies him if 
 he wishes, with a (police) force to prevent others from 
 using it. And if there are any useful natural products 
 upon or beneath the surface, it enables him to keep them 
 ail to himself. 
 
 It is as well to remember this. Some people think a 
 great deal of law and legal right, and no doubt it is quite 
 proper that they should do so. And indeed it may well be 
 that this kind of thing is quite necessary at a certain stage 
 of civilisation; but it is as well to remember that it is in 
 itself essentially negative and anti-social. More than that 
 — and flowing from that — I think it may well be seen that 
 m;re legal ownership is essentially harmful. For it is a 
 great power, and like all great power, if not humanised by 
 loving application it must tend to destruction. The man 
 who has money is like the man who controls the floodgates 
 of an estuary. He can turn the current (which is always 
 
Il8 PRIVATE PROPERTY. 
 
 flowing) into this channel or that ; he can launch the flood 
 in devastation over the lands, or he can bind it in its 
 course to carry the barks of peace and plenty along its 
 shores ; he can create order and life, or he can precipitate 
 ruin and death. But there is just this difference — that it is 
 easier to destroy than to create, and any random applica- 
 tion of wealth — though strictly legal — being merely careless 
 or selfish is pretty sure to bring ruin and distress with it, 
 whereas it is certain that one must give careful thought to 
 the spending of the same to make it fruitful of order and 
 of joy. 
 
 This only illustrates what Ruskin has said, for those who 
 would learn from him, that " wealth is the possession of the 
 valuable by the valiant." Property does not become true 
 luealih till it comes into the hands of one who is able and 
 willing to use it well. In the hands of another man it may 
 just as likely be tilth. Vast tracts of land in the hands of an 
 owner who gives no care or thought to its use, who perhaps 
 does not use it at all in any effective sense, but lives in 
 Paris or London — lands undrained perhaps and breeding 
 malaria, or left in the hands of agents whose sole business 
 is to rack-rent the tenants, and so to induce wide-spread 
 agricultural paralysis — such lands, or rather (since the lands 
 themselves are right enough) the false ownership in them, 
 is illth. Buy costly and elaborate dinners, so that you may 
 never know the clean and natural desire for food ; buy a 
 carriage, so that you may never have to walk ; buy heavy- 
 piled furniture and hangings for your room, so that you may 
 not breathe the fragrant air of heaven, and you will breed 
 disease and death — your wealth will have become illth. And 
 not only for yourself, but — if you follow it out — probably 
 also for those who have to prepare you these things. Use 
 the same money to set twenty honest people to some whole- 
 some and useful work ; use it for them freely and friendly 
 
PRIVATE PROPERTY. Il9 
 
 and it will buy bread and life.— it will feed their hearts 
 and their bellies both. And not them only but others 
 whom you cannot see. In the one case your possession 
 will be a nuisance, in the other it will be a blessing. The 
 first course is the easy one — of mere legality ; the second 
 is the difficult one — of humanity. 
 
 Thus, as a first step towards the subject before us, I 
 think we may fairly make the following general statement, 
 viz., that legal ownership is essentially a negative and 
 anti -social thing ; and that, unless qualified or antidoted by 
 human relationship, it is pretty certain to be absolutely 
 harmful. In fact, when a man's chief plea is " the law 
 allows it," you may be pretty sure he is up to some mis- 
 chief ! 
 
 We may now pass on to a consideration of what property 
 really means. If legal ownership is a negative thing, is 
 there some reality of which it is, as it were, the shadow — 
 which it has at some time or other vainly tried to repre- 
 sent ? 
 
 In what sense, for instance, can one really own a material 
 object, an animal, or even a man ? Let us take the last 
 first. A slave-owner could by virtue of the law force a 
 slave to do his will, but there have been many masters who 
 without application of the law have been able to get the 
 same result ; by personal ascendancy, by the establishment 
 of honest and just relation between themselves and the 
 owned, by affectionate care. In these cases the ownership 
 has been more complete, the will more faithfully obeyed, 
 the tie of attachment stronger than chains. This kind of 
 ownership is, at least, nearer the reality than the other. 
 
 So with an animal, affection, courage, personal mastery 
 produce the true attachment. The dog runs away from his 
 legal owner to his true owner. In both these cases, pro- 
 perty in its reality appears as a trust. You are in trust for 
 
120 PRIVATE PROPERTY. 
 
 the creature that you own. To keep a man (slave or 
 servant) for your own advantage merely, to keep an animal 
 that you may eat it, is a lie. You cannot look that man 
 or animal in the face. They may be your property accord- 
 ing to law, but you have no pleasurable sense of owner- 
 ship in them, only discomfort. 
 
 Now these cases relate to living beings, and what sense 
 of true ownership you have, arises through right relation to 
 those beings. But can you have ownership of inorganic 
 matter — of the mere materials of life ? Say, can you posi- 
 tively really and truly own a single chemical atom ? Can 
 you control, can you command it — and how will you begin ? 
 (I do not say that you cannot— on the contrary, I have 
 dreamed that there is an authority over these things, quite 
 similar to, and on the same conditions as the former cases — 
 but that is a kind of authority very little studied at present.) 
 Can you say to the little bit of camphor w^hich you wrap 
 so neatly in paper and put in your drawer, " Little bit of 
 camphor you are mine " — and in a day or two you open the 
 paper, and lo ! there is nothing there .-' or to the treasures in 
 chest and closet which the moth and the rust are duly and 
 diligently all the while corrupting, " Treasures, treasures, 
 you are all mine, mine. Mine ! " Yes, you can say so ; but 
 in what sense exactly do you say so ? Is it merely in the 
 legal sense, that you rub your hands as you gaze bending 
 over them, and say, " I can prevent anyone else from using 
 you " — or is it in a grander sense than this ? And if so, in 
 li'liat sense ? 
 
 Can we get anything out of the word Property itself? 
 (The collect says : " O God, \A\o's,^ property is ever to have 
 mercy and to forgive.") That which is proper to a thing. 
 What are the properties of brimstone — its essential charac- 
 teristics, qualities, relations to other things ? What is the 
 property of chalk as distinguished from cheese ? What 
 
PRIVATE PkOPERTV. 121 
 
 are the properties of vegetable life, of animal life ? What 
 is the essential Property of Man ? 
 
 This last is the question of questions. Amid all the 
 shows and illusions, is it possible that the reality which we 
 seek is hidden here ? What if material property is only a 
 symbol and indication of it ? All the scrambling after 
 calculable wealth, all the delusions and illusions, all the 
 bog-floundering and fatuous wisp-catching are not in 
 vain, if they lead us to find an answer to that^ if they 
 show us at last the wealth which is truly incalculable. 
 
 At any rate I think we can begin to see, in part, that 
 there is a sense in which a man can own material property 
 — more true, more real^ than the legal sense. I fancy the 
 bread, fragrant and sweet from the baking, which a man 
 eats in peace and thankfulness of heart, becomes his 
 property. It passes into his sinews and brain, and serves 
 his will. It becomes his life, and enters, for the time, into 
 faithful obedient relation to //////. I do not think that the 
 costly food eaten in greediness of spirit becomes his pro- 
 perty. I am sure that it torments him a deal, all down 
 those canals and colons, and is not faithful and obedient 
 to his will. Sometimes indeed the slave arises and slays 
 him who should have been his master. I fancy that the 
 coat which a man wears in singleness of spirit, and ready 
 if need be to give it to some one who is more in want than 
 himself, becomes, for the time, \\\?, property. It enters into 
 some beautiful and expressive but indescribable relation to 
 himself, and has more grace than the richest drapery. I 
 fancy that the ground which a man tills and tends with 
 loving care becomes, for the time being, his property. It 
 answers to ////;/, it becomes one of his qualities. The 
 young trees put forth their leaves gratefully to him, and the 
 furrows shoot rich and greeri, for he blesses them. 
 
 Thus, though we may not have got to the bottom of the 
 
122 PRIVATE PROPERTY. 
 
 matter yet, it does appear that true ownership in man, 
 animal, or material wealth, cannot exist without some 
 living and human relationship to the object owned. With- 
 out this relation ownership is a mere form ; it may be 
 legal, but it must be dead, and therefore harmful. 
 
 Perhaps the most effective example of this sort of thing 
 is a man's property in the creation of his own hands. 
 This would seem to be the original type of private pro- 
 perty. If I cut a stick in the wild woods, whittle it, peel 
 it, polish it, and transform it into a walking stick, the 
 universal consent of mankind allows me a right in that 
 stick. And why ? Because as far as it is a product of 
 anything besides Nature, it is a product of my work. I 
 have entered into the closest relationship to it ; I have put 
 myself into it ; it has become part of me — one of my 
 properties. 
 
 As the quality of the work rises, as the quantity of good 
 humanity put into it increases — whether in the shape of 
 manual effort, or ingenious thought, or loving artfulness — 
 so does the true value of the object increase ; and so does 
 the good sense of mankind confirm the right of property 
 in it to the man who thus produced it. A bow and arrows 
 may have more work put into it than a walking stick ; it 
 has more value. A fiddle may have still more. The 
 violins of Stradivari were his property, commercially speak- 
 ing, before he sold them ; but indeed he put so much of 
 his self into them that they still, in a sense, belong to him 
 — and to no one else — they are vocal with his presence. 
 And of his great poem, " Leaves of Grass," Whitman says, 
 " Who touches this touches a man." He has fairly passed 
 himself into it, and to such a degree that he and it can 
 never be parted. Types and impressions of the book may 
 be sold, but it remains his splendid property and glorious 
 manifestation to all time. 
 
PRIVATE PROPERTY. 123 
 
 To keep then to just the ordinary walks of life, we see 
 that creation by his own labor is the most original and 
 indeed valid claim which a man can have to private 
 property in material wealth, and taking all in all — rufifianism 
 duly allowed for — the most widely accepted. When however 
 labor becomes more social, and many combine for the 
 production of one thing, a difficulty arises. The product 
 is no longer the creation of one man, but of many ; and, as 
 the process becomes more complex, ultimately of society. 
 The product therefore is — or should be — the property of 
 society. The man is paid in counters or checks, which are 
 called wages, and which represent — or ought to represent — 
 the average human value which he has put into the product. 
 The wages are now his private property. They are not 
 property in so near and personal a sense as the walking- 
 stick or the bow and arrows ; but from that personal rela- 
 tionship to one object, which he had before, he has now 
 exchanged into a social relationship ; and having given so 
 much human value to society he can now have its equiva- 
 lent back again in any form that he pleases. He has lost 
 in intensity of personal ownership, but he has gained in 
 breadth and variety of command. 
 
 Thus we have a second stage of private property when it 
 becomes social. The human value put into an object does 
 not come back to the man /// that object, but it comes back 
 to him in counters or checks, that is in money, transmutable 
 into human values in all sorts of objects. But here we 
 come upon a difficulty which is a very serious one — in fact, 
 quite insurmountable — the crux and the sphinx-riddle of all 
 political and social economy, namely how can we reduce 
 the work of one man and the work of another to one stan- 
 dard ? What is the measure of human value, and therefore 
 of all value ? There is, of course, no answer to this. That 
 is, there is an answer, but it does not admit of being formu- 
 
124 PRIVATE PROPERTY. 
 
 lated in words ; the progress of society itself through the 
 ages is the process by which the answer is being slowly 
 ground out. From time to time temporary answers are 
 given, as for instance, " The value of an object is what it 
 will fetch in the market," or "The value of an object is 
 proportional to the number of hours of human labor em- 
 bodied in it," and though one such answer may be an im- 
 provement on another it is clear that none may stand the 
 criticism of time^and that the successive social systems 
 founded on them are from the outset doomed to destruction 
 — till the millennium is reached . — when society, we sup- 
 pose, will accept no formulated measures or laws, but will 
 be ruled from within. 
 
 Despite however this huge difficulty in the theory of 
 value, which thus affects collaterally any definition of private 
 property in its social aspect, let us cheerfully push on a little 
 farther. 
 
 We have said that if there is to be any distinction be- 
 tween property in its merely legal sense and in its true 
 sense, the distinction must reside in the living and human 
 relation involved in the latter as opposed to the former. 
 But we see also that in the second or social stage of pro- 
 perty the relationship to the product of your own labor is 
 weakened. A man instead of having a good yew bow as 
 the product of his day's work has 5s. This is a decided 
 falling off — a few counters instead of the sturdy product of 
 his own thought and toil. What sentiment can he have for 
 his own five shillings more than for his neighbor's ? What 
 piivaie property in them, except in the barest legal sense ? 
 But this sad relapse is partly made good when he comes to 
 use his counters. With his five shillings say he buys a 
 spade. Then this spade — though not the product of his 
 toil — represents indirectly such a product ; and as he comes 
 to use the spade day after day, gradually he restores the 
 
PRIVATE PROPERTY. 1 25 
 
 lost sense of personal relationship — the spade grows to his 
 hand, and at length it becomes his very own, a prolonga- 
 tion of himself, his property in the most effective and in- 
 timate sense. 
 
 Thus we have property arising first from individual crea- 
 tion, then passing through the generalised form of Money, 
 or exchange, and finally regaining its personal and private 
 sanction in use. 
 
 Use then is an important element in the definition of 
 true property. This is clear enough. If I accumulate 
 counters as the product of my toil, the objects for which I 
 finally exchange those counters will be — or should be — my 
 property. But if with those counters I buy a horse, which 
 kicks me off its back, and continues kicking me off, then 
 clearly I have lost my property ! True, I may still have 
 legal property in it — I may still be able to prevent others 
 from using it — but I shall have no true enjoyment or pos- 
 session, since I cannot use it myself. Or to .take the ex- 
 ample given by Ruskin : the man on board ship who tied 
 his gold in a belt round his waist to make it secure, thought 
 that that gold was his property ; but when the ship capsized 
 and he was in the water he saw that he was mistaken ; he 
 found that he was the property of the gold, for it took him 
 to the bottom. In order for true ownership, there must be 
 use, which means mastery, which means exercise of will, of 
 human power. Every object is a challenge to our man- 
 hood — till we have mastered it — taken possession of it ; 
 and it is only " ours " when we have put forth our living 
 power upon it. 
 
 As an example of use, of mastery : I knew a coachman 
 at a large country house, who was devoted to his master's 
 horses. When he came into the stable the horses would 
 purr and whinny with delight, kissing him as he went up to 
 them in tlieir stalls. That man could do anything with those 
 
126 PRIVATE PROPERTY. 
 
 horses. The Stock Exchange magnate who was driven 
 behind them to the station each day knew Httle and cared 
 less about them. He was the legal owner, but the other 
 surely was the true owner. Even the powers of the legal 
 owners are limited in these cases. It is in vain that the 
 young lord says that he will take such-and-such a horse out 
 hunting, if the groom has determined that he shall not — the 
 latter can invent a score of good reasons to gain his point, 
 which the former cannot gainsay. The garden practically 
 belongs to the gardener ; it is he who determines what 
 flowers shall be cut, what seeds shall be sown ; and it is a 
 common remark that the servants are the rulers of our large 
 domestic establishments — and just, because authority is the 
 natural result of labor, whether in production or in 
 use. 
 
 The money form of property is, as I have said, that in 
 which there is least of the personal and human element, 
 and so it comes about that the stage of civilisation in which 
 money is most sought after is just that in which though there 
 is, as we shall see later on, most worship of private property 
 there is least realisation of the same in any true sense. To 
 this stage belongs the mania for accumulation. Money be- 
 comes an end in itself, apart from all noble and joyful sense 
 of mastery ; and material objects represent money, instead 
 of money representing them. Instead of wealth consisting 
 in mastery, it comes to consist in the number of objects to 
 be mastered — a pretty quandary ! The unfortunate man who 
 is beset by this mania can rest no more. He lays field to 
 field, and house to house ; he buys books, dress, variety of 
 food, drink, entertainment — each time thinking now he will 
 be satisfied. And each time finding out his mistake, he 
 presses forward another step in the same direction {i.e. 
 farther from the ultimate goal). As James Hinton says, 
 " we are like children who eat, and eat, and eat, ignorant 
 
PRIVATE PROPERTY. 1 27 
 
 that food is for nutrition.'' The children have mistaken 
 the object of food, so we of property. 
 
 Food is for nutrition, not for gratification of the sense 
 of taste, nor for accumulation in the bowels. It nourishes 
 the body in passing through it. So of property : it is not 
 for gratification of the sense of ownership, nor for accumu- 
 lation in strong boxes, store-rooms, and old stockings, that 
 it exists. The moment it begins to accumulate disease 
 sets in. " Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, 
 where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break 
 through and steal." 
 
 Man is like a flame — which shines by virtue of the current 
 of materials passing through it. Check that current, and 
 his brightness will be materially diminished ; let the por- 
 ducts of combustion accumulate if but a few moments, 
 and his light will be extinguished. Use and pass on, use 
 and pass on — that is the word, and admit no more than 
 you can use. 
 
 Go into grand houses. What are these books rotting by 
 hundreds on the library shelves, these boudoirs and best 
 rooms seldom opened, with fusty smelling furniture, these 
 forgotten dresses lying in the deeps of unexplored ward- 
 robes ? What are these accumulations of money, of 
 certificates and securities, of jewels and of plate, hoarded 
 away in safes and strong boxes and at the bank. They are 
 the signs of disease. They are similar to the accumula. 
 tions of fat in an over-corpulent person, of smoke and soot 
 in an ill-regulated flame. They mar the beauty, the grace, 
 the dignity, and the power of man. Of dis-ease, remember, 
 for when did you ever meet an owner of this sort who was 
 at ease — as your dog lying on the hearth-rug is ac ease — 
 who owns nothing? England is full of such undigested 
 wealth ; she is congested, sick, sick almost to death with 
 it. And while her upper classes are suffering a chronic 
 
128 PRIVATE PROPERTY. 
 
 indigestion from this accumulation of dead matter upon 
 them, while they are rendered imbecile, diseased, and 
 absolutely pestilent by it, her poor are dying for mere 
 want of nourishment. 
 
 Thus once more we come to the necessity of use as a 
 justification of possession ; but this opens up a further and 
 final question, namely, that of right use. It is obvious that 
 we cannot allow a man property in a horse, however 
 often or however well he may ride it, if he uses it to run 
 down old women and children in the street. We take the 
 knife away from the child because it cannot use it rightly ; 
 and so the good sense of mankind takes away even the pro- 
 duct of his own labor from the man who is going to damage 
 others with it. Society puts forward a claim to over-rule 
 the individual in this matter. But it does not tell us what 
 right use is, nor am I going to attempt a definition. We 
 have to work out these things by degrees. All considera- 
 tions — the slow progress of society, the successive attempts 
 of law to come to a satisfactory definition of the rights of 
 property, and its continual failure, all point to the fact 
 that, until the individual and society are properly 
 harmonised, property cannot be rightly held. It is only 
 when a man enters into the region of equality that a 
 solution offers itself In finding the true Property of Man 
 he finds the secret of all ownership ; and in surrendering 
 all rights of private property, and accepting poverty, he 
 really becomes possessor of all social wealth, and, for the 
 first time, infinitely rich. 
 
 And now a few words in a historical sense. Private pro- 
 perty, as a legal right, has not always existed in the past, 
 and will not always in the future. There will come a time 
 in the future, as there has been in the past, when Imv will 
 have nothing at all to say on this subject. It has now in 
 fact become abundantly clear from late researches that in 
 
PRIVATE PROPERTY. I 29 
 
 a certain early stage of history Man passes through a 
 phase of communism. Columbus in one of his letters 
 mentions with regard lo some West Indian tribes, at the 
 time of his discovery, that they appeared to hold things in 
 common. A traveller, lately writing home, says that he 
 tried to explain to one of the Samoan Islanders of the 
 Pacific the system that prevails in Great Britain and other 
 civilised countries — how some people were rich while 
 others were poor — and that oftentimes one man would be 
 actually starving, while another would have more bread 
 than he could eat ; but he, the wretched islander — being 
 used to a communistic state of society — could not under 
 stand the possibility of such a situation ; his poor heathen 
 brain was positively unequal to the task of comprehending 
 the glorious blessings of our Christian civilisation. 
 
 In an early phase of history, then, when men go in 
 tribes or clans cemented by blood-relationship, the desire 
 for private property is weak. The clan has property, but 
 the individual hardly any. In this stage of society, as 
 would appear from various circumstances, the individual 
 self is to a large extent lost or fused in the tribal self. The 
 man owns, but owns in common with his mates (the same 
 may be seen in ants or bees). He fights fiercely with those 
 of another clan, and will seize their goods for the benefit 
 of his own side, or kill them ; but to quarrel with, or steal 
 from, or injure one of his own people is exceedingly rare — 
 rarer (as I think all observers agree) than in our more 
 civilised countries. His self is almost one with the tribal 
 
 self. 
 
 Later on comes this individualising of self, and this ac- 
 centuation of private property ; and a huge, elaborate, and 
 in the present day cumbrous and collapsing, system of laws 
 arises for the purpose of defining these individual rights, 
 and the limits of property. What is the meaning of this 
 
 K 
 
130 PRIVATE PROPERTY. 
 
 vast fungus-growth which has overshadowed civilisation so 
 long ? It is obvious that it must have had some purpose, 
 some function, in the history of our race. 
 
 I take it that it is a part of the development of man. I 
 take it that it is necessary that the individual should be 
 excluded from the tribe (as the child is excluded from its 
 mother's womb) that he may learn the lessons of indi- 
 viduality ; that he may learn his powers, and the mastery 
 over things ; that he may learn his right relations to others, 
 and the misery of mere self-seeking and individual greed ; 
 and that having learned these lessons, and so to speak 
 found the Hmits of Self, he may once more fuse that Self — 
 not now again with the tribe, but with something greater 
 and grander, namely Humanity. 
 
 Of this process, then, of the development of the individual, 
 the institution of private property has, I take it, been the 
 great engine. Growing up from small beginnings it has gradu- 
 ally had the effect of separating each individual man from the 
 community of his fellows ; it has raised a kind of artificial 
 wall or barrier between. Acting on his specially selfish 
 instincts it has drawn these out to a degree probably un- 
 precedented before in the history of his race ; but the 
 compensation has been that in this isolation it has de- 
 veloped in man a certain growth in the sense of individu- 
 ality — which was necessary and which would have been im- 
 possible without it. Within this network, this honeycomb, 
 this penitentiary of laws and institutions connected with 
 private property, each individual as in a separate cell, with 
 much tribulation, has learned or is learning these lessons. 
 When they are learnt the need of the barriers and the cells 
 will disappear ; and, slowly and gradually, as it came, the 
 institution of private property will pass away. 
 
 If I have said anything, therefore, or been understood to 
 say anything, against property — legal property — I recant 
 
PRIVATE PROPERTY. 13! 
 
 it. It is a step, a necessary step, in human development, 
 like many other things it is an illusion, but it is also an 
 indication. Man rising from the savage state, reaching as it 
 were his majority, comes into property (especially is this 
 true of the present day with its vast accessions of material 
 power and wealth), and doesn't know what on earth to do 
 with it ! He hasn't an idea of its uses. He hoards it, he 
 hides it, he pursues it, he dances round it, hugs it, kisses it, 
 puts it on his head, his back, circles his arms, his finger.s, 
 with it — falls down and worships it. He locks it in a box 
 and lies awake at night thinking of it ; he conceals it in his 
 mattrass ; lie buries it in a bank — as a dog does a bone — 
 and presently the bank grows so big that it has to have 
 columns and a portico ; he prowls about the shop-windows, 
 staring at it through panes of glass ; he buys revolvers and 
 policemen to defend it, and dresses people like himself up 
 in wigs and gowns to talk wise about it — and then believes 
 what they say. He behaves in fact like a madman, and 
 hasn't an idea what he is doing. But there is a method in 
 his madness nevertheless. He thinks that by all these 
 antics he is really getting at something substantial — and so 
 in a sense he is. He is finding out his own properties, he 
 is learning to possess himself. 
 
 The material property which he is pursuing is an illusion. 
 It serves its purpose for a time. He is very tenacious of it 
 at first ; it exercises him dreadfully, and he flies into violent 
 tempers over it. But by the time he has learned to control 
 these little passions it seems to have lost some of its 
 attraction 1 In the beginning he is a great stickler for his 
 rights over it, and goes to law considerably, but in the end 
 he is glad to get done with it and the whole blessed trancla- 
 ment of cares and anxieties connected with it. 
 
 Money may be gain, and it may be power ; but it is not 
 always either to him who has it. More properly, it is the 
 
 t-2 
 
132 PRIVATE PROPERTY. 
 
 symbol of an unknown Gain, which he may attain to — it 
 is the symbol of an unknown Power, which lies within 
 him. When the realities are seized, the symbol will drop 
 off as useless — or be only used as a symbol. When a man 
 has learned whose superscription there is on the coin he 
 uses, he has learned everlasting life. 
 
 To return to the historical clue : the practical advantages 
 which money gives in the present day — such as travel, art, 
 books, leisure — must not be ignored or undervalued. 
 They are all part of education and development, and are 
 valuable at a certain stage. But as society progresses, and 
 emerges from the child state, even these values of private 
 riches tend to become daily less. Art galleries, free libraries, 
 and the solution of the industrial problem will provide 
 everybody with the three last ; travel is already marvel- 
 lously cheap, and will become cheaper. Before so very 
 long the need and the use of private property will disappear 
 from social life. It will figure only as an encumbrance ; 
 law, as I have said, will cease to take any cognizance of its 
 existence ; and the curve of progress will bring us back 
 to the communism of early society on another and higher 
 plane of human development. 
 
 The problem of life is ultimately extraordinarily simple ; 
 and when society has recovered from the daze and night- 
 mare which oppresses it, and has re-established the simple 
 honest relation between man and man, it will be seen to be 
 so. All the problems of Society depend ultimately on the 
 problem of the individual's own life. All questions of 
 material property come back ultimately, as already hinted, 
 to the question, what is the property of Man ? When the 
 key to that has been found all these other difficulties 
 vanish entirely — like a flake of snow touched by a drop of 
 water. They disappear and exist no more. The questions 
 pf food, clothing, housing, literature, etc., will not then need 
 
PRIVA'JE PROPERTV. 1 33 
 
 to give anyone a moment's anxiety. As to travelling, " it 
 is not worth while," as Thoreau says, " to go round the 
 world in order to count the cats in Zanzibar." If you do 
 not happen to have the means to go to Brazil, set out travel- 
 ling to Heaven. It is a longer journey, and you will see 
 more by the way. Nay, I would say to the wealthy, travel 
 in your own township. Put off your fine clothes and go 
 among the poor and oppressed ; work at the bench with 
 the carpenter's son, and in the pit with the collier ; go on the 
 road with the tramp and lighten the way a little for his feet 
 — and you will hear things you never thought to have heard, 
 you will see things that in all your grand tours you never 
 imagined it possible to see. 
 
 Like other problems, the problem of property is best 
 solved indirectly. That is, not by seeking material 
 wealth directly, but by seeking that of which material 
 wealth is only the symbol. "Seek ye first the king-~^ 
 
 dom of God and all these things shall be added \ 
 
 unto you." 
 
 Vaguely metaphorical as these words sound, yet I believe 
 they express a literal fact. To this generation, weary with 
 seeking after material things, worshiping its gold and silver, 
 its steam-engines and its commerce, they express the fact 
 that not in this way can it gain what it seeks. Its idols are 
 dead ; for all the worship that is rendered to them they 
 grant nothing in returrt. The quest is illusive. Seeking ease 
 we have found nothing but dis-ease ; scrambhng for wealth 
 our civilisation has become poverty-stricken beyond all 
 expression ; worshiping mere technical knowledge we have 
 forgotten the existence of wisdom ; and setting up material 
 property as our God we have dethroned the divine in our 
 own natures. Not till this last is restored can we possibly 
 attain to possession of the other things. Materials are not 
 to be worshiped — they must be commanded. Nature is _J 
 
1^4 PRIVATE PROPERTY. 
 
 one ; she is loyal to herself from the centre to the very 
 circumference. Till you have established a right relation 
 with that centre, till you have loyally sought and found 
 within yourself the password, do not think she will be such a 
 fool as to surrender to you her outposts. On the contrary, 
 till such time, she will taunt you and deride you ; she will 
 tantalize you with shadows and mock you with illusions of 
 gain — but in reality you will have nothing, enjoy nothing, 
 nor be capable of owning anything. 
 
 Finally, and lest we should wander away into mere 
 abstractions and generalisations, let us try and apply some 
 of our principles to practice. It seems to me that the 
 principles which I have sought to establish are eminently 
 practical, I have tried to show that wealth in order really 
 to be wealth must be humanised. Mere legal possession is 
 nothing, or worse than nothing ; it is an injury to the com- 
 munity. This is, alas ! only too well illustrated in our 
 modern society. The wealth of the wealthy is for the most 
 part a dead inhuman wealth — -a corruption — a mortification. 
 The land is not owned in any true sense, it is left in the 
 hands of agents and stewards, who must, from the nature of 
 the case, act on a rule of inhumanity. The great industries 
 are not owned in any true sense, but the shareholders and 
 bondholders to whom they legally belong live ignorant even 
 of the nature of their possessions, and leave directors and 
 managers to screw down their workmen — satisfied so long 
 as they provide the usual dividend at the end of the half 
 year. What we have to do — what society has to do— is to 
 divide this false ownership from the true ownership, and 
 cast it out ; and that quickly, for already the process of 
 mortification is far gone, and only a serious operation can 
 avert death. We must say to the landholders of this and 
 other countries, " Unless you put your lands to some 
 human use, unless you hold them in trust for the good of 
 
PRIVATE PROPERTY. 135 
 
 the people, we shall take them from you — and that quickly 
 — for by every acre that you are now devoting to your own 
 aggrandisement merely you are murdering a brother." To 
 the man who now owns ten farms, we may fairly say, " If 
 you like to go and live on one of your farms to till and 
 tend it, well and good ; do so by all means ; that is true 
 ownership. But the ownership you have in the other nine 
 farms is a mere legal ownership ; you cannot till and tend 
 them too ; all you are doing with them is to ' prevent 
 others from using them ' by charging rent upon them. Here 
 your ownership is absolutely harmful, so without more ado, 
 clear out ! " 
 
 And to the shareholders and bondholders of this and 
 other countries we may fairly say, "What are you doing with 
 your properties ? Have you any human relation to them 
 at all ? Do you come together at your meetings to con- 
 sider how best to administer them for the public good, how 
 to turn out the usefuUest and most genuine articles, how to 
 compass the welfare of the men engaged in them ? If not, 
 then you are doing nothing, and worse than nothing with 
 them — you are using your legal power to aggrandise your- 
 selves, to enrich yourselves at the cost of these others, you 
 are by just so much preventing others from the use of these 
 properties, you are by just so much strangling the natural 
 life of the people — begone ! the whole pack of you, and let 
 us never see your faces again ! " 
 
 Clearly the sooner we get rid of all mere law in the 
 matter of property the better. The good sense of mankind, 
 as I have already said, will always allow a man his claim in 
 the product of his own hands, or his own labor ; and the 
 same good sense will never dispute a man's right in that 
 which he puts to good human use. These may safely be 
 left to the unwritten law of all ages- Whatever is not of 
 these is of the devil. The claims which people put in for 
 
13^ PRIVATE PROPERTY. 
 
 wealth for which they never labored, the rights which they 
 assume in property which they use to degrade others with, 
 are of the devil. And these are the claims and the rights 
 which written and printed laws are specially constructed to 
 secure. It must be one of our most practical objects to 
 break down by degrees this whole apparatus of chicanery, 
 and so at length to free true property from the vast accumu 
 lations of false ownership which in later times have so dis- 
 guised the reality that we hardly any longer know what 
 it is. 
 
 Many immediate applications might be made of the 
 principles which we have indicated. Thus not only, as we 
 have said, might ownership in land be at once limited to 
 occupying ownership, but the same principle might be (more 
 roughly) applied to personal property. We might, I mean, 
 at once and as a first approximation, say that no one could 
 fairly and humanly use an income of over £5,000 a year (I 
 should not like myself to have to use a tenth part of it) and 
 so by a cumulative or prohibitive taxation transfer at once a 
 large quantity of idle and dead wealth into the occupancy of 
 the people for living and public uses. And I maintain that 
 such measures as these are in the highest degree practical, 
 simply because they involve a question of life and death to 
 the nation. England and indeed all " civilised " countries 
 to-day are simply in advanced stages of mortification. The 
 accumulation of dead matter upon them is such that if it 
 continues to take place much longer the organism as a 
 whole must inevitably perish. The belt of gold is taking 
 us swiftly and surely to the bottom. Nothing but a vitalis- 
 ing of the national possessions by use — use by the people, 
 Siud/or the people— can save us, and already even for that 
 the time is short. 
 
 So true is it that the moral and ultra-moral laws pene- 
 trate right down into the concerns of ordinary life. Far and 
 
PRIVATE PROPERTY. 137 
 
 away up beyond all our theories and definitions stands the 
 true Manhood — the real Property of Man — of which the 
 other is only the sign and emblem. Are we true to that 
 invisible point, that inward polestar of our human nature — ■ 
 are we masters of wealth in that invisible region — then we 
 descend with authority upon outward possessions to master 
 them, and our national life is sane and prosperous ; but 
 without such radiation from within all our gold is simply 
 ashes. 
 
 To build up this Supreme Life in a people — the life of 
 Ecjuality — in which each individual passes out of himself 
 along the lives of his fellows, and in return receives their 
 life into himself with such force that he becomes far greater 
 as an individual than ever before — partaker of the supreme 
 power, and well nigh irresistible — to build up this life in a 
 people may well be a task worthy of the combined efforts 
 of poets, philosophers, and statesmen. The whole of history 
 and all the age-long struggles of the nations point to this 
 realisation. Even now society like a chrysalis writhes in 
 the birth-throes of the winged creature within. Equality — 
 the vanishing of the centuries-long conflict between the 
 individual and his fellows — the attainment by each man of 
 a point where all this war of interests ceases to exist, and 
 the barriers which divide man from man are thrown down 
 — this is, indeed, that Freedom for which all of history has 
 been one long struggle and preparation. No mere out- 
 ward equality, no monotony of external condition — far from 
 it — but the equality of the " members of the body" fulfilling 
 their various functions in perfect inward harmony. This 
 state of society, the ideal and the dream of so many ages, 
 is after all not so impossible of realisation, not so very ex- 
 travagant. If a single healthy human or animal body 
 exists, surely a healthy human society may exist. In the 
 backward past, in the early communal life to which we 
 
138 PRIVATE PROPERTY. 
 
 have alluded, this state of society has existed in its embryo- 
 nic or seed-like form, and when the immense nightmare 
 of what we call civilisation, when the long period of growing 
 pains and bitter negative experience which we are now 
 going through has passed away, it will exist again in its 
 glorified and universal form. The morning stars will 
 once more sing together, and exiled man will re-enter the 
 gates which the flaming sword so long has guarded. 
 
THE ENCHANTED THICKET. 
 
 "And the thorns sprang up and choked them." 
 
 In gathering together the foregoing papers into one volume 
 I would fain say a last word by way of appeal to you the 
 specially wealthy and respectable classes. The situation is 
 so grave, the crisis hastens so, all over the civilised world — 
 what are you going to do ; what part are you going to play 
 in the great drama on which the curtain is just rising ? 
 
 As one walks through the vast polite wildernesses of the 
 West End of London, and the endless suburban villa- 
 regions of all our great towns — in extent and wealth and 
 standard of luxury visibly and rapidly increasing from year 
 to year — as one sips one's tea in the drawing-room, or listens 
 to the after-dinner conversation over the wine and walnuts, 
 there steals upon one I know not what sense of ante- 
 diluvian slumber, of strange and may be fatal lethargy. 
 All is so elegant, so easy, so finished* — one dreams on as 
 in an enchanted palace, and the noise of the actual world 
 dies out at last from one's ears. And yet, when a man 
 comes to look into it, he sees that it is just here, in these 
 enchanted palaces, that the danger and the disease of 
 modern society lies. He cannot help feeling that these who 
 live here are really, as William Morris calls them, the 
 
 * *' Yes, that Is just the worst of it," said a Canadian friend of mine one day in 
 the Paric, as I remarked \i\)oa the elaborate nicety and finish of the equipages, 
 dresses, &c., of the passers by, " that is just the worst of it, it h fioished—there is 
 notliing more to come out of it all." 
 
14© THE ENCHANTED THICKET. 
 
 dangerous classes. Not the poor half-starved wretches, 
 puny and stunted in person, and empty in purse, 
 who mad with rage are belched forth in their 
 thousands and hundreds of thousands from the slums 
 of our great cities — not these, terrible as they are, 
 are the real danger. They are only the reaction, the pro- 
 test, the necessary outcome, and perhaps after all the 
 hopeful ending of a great wrong. It is in these great clotted 
 and congested centres which call themselves " society," but 
 through which the true life-blood of society does not circu 
 late — in the slow poison and paralysis of the life there — in 
 the fatal mortification of these centres, which with their 
 vast wealth and influence spread claws of contagion all 
 through the vital organism in which they occur, that the 
 serious peril lies, which perhaps only a serious convulsion 
 may avert. 
 
 In truth the very extent of these congested regions is 
 already a difficulty. For they are so vast that you who live 
 within them have hardly a chance to know what is going ou 
 in the real world. The cry of the starving children, the 
 price of whose maintenance for a week is consumed by you 
 in a single ordinary meal, reaches not your ears. It has too 
 far to travel. Sometimes indeed a tale of suffering may 
 penetrate, but it sounds far off like a dream. How can you 
 do anything? A thousand shackles, worse than any 
 tangled thicket, have grown up round the sleeping soul. 
 
 You sit in rooms crowded with knick-knacks, elegant 
 trifles from all parts of the world. They are beautiful ; I 
 have not a word to say against them. And in the next 
 house the rooms are crowded with similar trifles, and in the 
 next, and the next ; and for miles round the same. The 
 servants have to dust them every day, the owners never look 
 at them — hardly know what they are. For whom do they 
 exist? If in a plainly furnished cottage one such thing 
 
 i 
 
THE ENCHANTED THICKET. 141 
 
 were seen, it would actually be examined — it would be a 
 delight, a real curiosity, a bright suggestion of form and 
 color, an adornment of work-a-day life ; but here it is so 
 gratuitously useless that it enfeebles the mind that gazes on 
 it ; it is no adornment, for there is no real life to adorn. 
 
 It is all congestion. Congestion at the dance — so many 
 people, such dresses, that dancing is impossible. Conges- 
 tion at the dinner party — congestion in twelve courses ; so 
 much to eat that eating is impossible. Congestion of books 
 — so much to read, that reading is impossible. Congestion 
 in church — stitched and starched up to the eyes (while the 
 servants at home are preparing the roast beef and plum 
 pudding). Congestion at the theatre, at]the concert, yawning 
 in dress-clothes on the front seats ; while the real enjoyers 
 and observers are out of sight behind. Such a congestion 
 of unused wealth and properly, such a glut, as surely the 
 world before has never seen, and to purge which away will 
 surely require such medicine as the world before has never 
 seen — no gilded pill or silent perambulator this time, but a 
 drastic bolus plowing its way through the very frame of 
 " society," not without groans and horrible noises. 
 
 And through this maze of congested life — of interests 
 which have ceased to be interesting, of enjoyments which 
 have become bores— to' pick the way, what an art it has 
 become ! Visitors call in the afternoon, and visits iiave to 
 be made. The long day has to be eked out — now a cup of 
 tea, now a five-course meal, now a little coffee, and now a 
 turn at the piano. (And all the time what poor girls are 
 pining, what mothers are dying for want of a little help, a 
 little sympathy !) And ever the smallest crumbs of incident 
 to be worked up into "conversation." Some get quite 
 clever at this. They always say the right thing at the 
 right time, are sympathetic, bright, entertaining. Yes- 
 while Nero is fiddling, Rome is burning. Have you no 
 
142 THE ENCHANTED THICKET. 
 
 Other use for that sensitive heart, that ready tongue, which 
 nature has given you, than to perpetuate this Fool's Para- 
 dise of polite trifling. 
 
 A Paradise truly. The hot water arrives so punctually 
 at the bedroom door, the carpets are so soft and warm, the 
 spoons so bright and clean — surely there can't be much 
 amiss in the world. If only these demagogues would keep 
 quiet, these few crack-brained Ruskins — and the faint wolf- 
 howling there far down in the conscience. 
 
 Do you not attend church on Sunday, and are you not 
 very philanthropic ? Do you not tell each other sad stories 
 about the poor over your ice-pudding, till your lips are 
 pursed with pity ? (or is it the pudding ?) Do you not 
 undertake excursions to the East End, and get deeply in- 
 terested in the general question of slums ? Is it not all 
 very nice, and just as it ought to be, and wouldn't the poor 
 soon get their wrongs redressed if instead of naughtily riot- 
 ing they were to wait for you to come in your fur cloaks 
 like good fairies^ and turn their wretched dens into plea- 
 sant palaces ? 
 
 And yesterday a woman that I know died — died wash- 
 ing — washing rich folks' clothes — at sixpence a dozen. 
 Sixpence a dozen all round — mark that ! — a halfpenny 
 each. Not many handkerchiefs and collars when its " all 
 round-" — mostly shirts and big thing.s. " It seems a many 
 times passing through your hands even for a penny each,'' 
 as one in the same line of life said to me — " two rubbings, 
 dollying, two rinsings, wringing, putting out to dry, taking 
 down, folding, mangling, starching and ironing each thing." 
 
 It was a good thing, wasn't it, that she died quietly, poor 
 thing, so gentle and loving — without any fuss or rioting in 
 the streets or making comfortable people uncomfortable ? 
 Of course our clothes are not washed at that price — no 
 blood on them. We all know that. At any rate, we pay 
 
THE ENCHANTED THICKET. 1 43 
 
 fair enough ; if the people whom we employ put the wash- 
 ing out on scandalous terms that is their fault, not ours. 
 We have so many things to attend to, so many big philan- 
 thropic schemes, we can hardly be expected to know all 
 about our laundress. 
 
 And to-day a hundred porters and signalmen have been 
 discharged from one of the large railways, so as to effect a 
 saving of ^5000 a year in expenses. (See note p. 30.) It 
 would have been a pity, wouldn't it, to reduce the dividend in 
 order to save those hundred good industrious folk and their 
 families from being turned into the streets ? The diminution 
 of dividend would have very nearly amounted to twopence 
 halfpenny (this is a fact) on every ^100 share. Think of that ! 
 Twopence halfpenny ! It was a good thing those hundred 
 families were turned off, or you might have actually had to 
 go short of a box of chocolate next Christmas. 
 
 Is there no sense of sympathy, of responsibility, of mere 
 duty even, in these matters ? Has the cry of Cain, " Am 
 I my brother's keeper ? " become stereotyped upon the 
 lips of the wealthy? When the shareholder comes for his 
 dividend, when the bondholder comes for his bond, is it 
 nothing to him that human flesh has to submit to the knife 
 in the process, as long as he gets what the law allows him 
 to claim ? Is all humanity dead out of the world, and are 
 you rich going to continue for ever this practice of living out 
 of the degradation and death of the poor, which has already 
 become so familiar to you that it seems the most natural 
 thing possible ? 
 
 And yet after all has been said, do I not know well 
 enough the tender heart that beats within you — for all that 
 the enchanted thicket has grown so strong and tall ? You 
 men of the upper classes — numbers of you — so devoted, 
 chivalrous, honorable, attending to the welfare of servants 
 and dependents, conscientious on committees, indefatigable 
 
144 THE ENCHANTED THICKET. 
 
 in generosity towards the needy, fairly perplexed night and 
 day in the study how best to distribute your wealth ; yet 
 has it never occurred to you that it would be better once 
 for all to abandon this everlasting game of robbing Peter 
 to pay Paul — this Sisyphus labor, this rolling of stones 
 uphill only that they may roll down again ? What a relief 
 surely it would be ! Here on the one hand, with infinite 
 labor in your profession, with infinite care and anxiety in 
 your trade, with infinite trouble even in keeping account of 
 all your rents and dividends, are you gathering a heap to- 
 gether — only to cause yourself fresh labor fresh anxiety and 
 care in distributing it again, perhaps to the very people you 
 got it from. Why not save this double labor from the 
 beginning ? Let the two minuses obliterate each other and 
 make once more a plus in your life. Here is a circular 
 lying on my table addressed to Railway shareholders, and 
 asking subscriptions for a benefit society for the men. 
 What is the good of my first taking a part of their 
 earnings from the men, and then giving the same 
 back to them in a benefit society ? What is the good 
 of first depriving the people at large of the means 
 of clothing and feeding themselves, and then coming 
 back to them with clothing clubs and soup kitchens ? 
 What is the good of forcing them to work for me under 
 filthy and harmful conditions, and then building hospitals 
 to cure them of the diseases and injuries that I have 
 caused? I might have saved myself the trouble and 
 them the insult. Or do we of the upper classes constitute 
 such a special providence in relation to the working masses 
 that unless their means of livelihood all passed through our 
 hands it would not get properly distributed ? You men — 
 educated men as you purport to be — surely you must see 
 the contradiction which is involved in your mode of Hfe, the 
 absurdity ; if, above all things you are practical, do not let 
 
THE ENCHANTED THICKET. t4S 
 
 this waste and misapplication of your social labor con- 
 tinue. 
 
 And you, women of the same class, who have such 
 capacities of love and sympathy — this life that you lead, 
 with its perpetual denial of humanity, cannot satisfy you 
 for long. You mothers, we plead for the thousands ot 
 mothers who loving their children like you have to 
 see the little things almost starving before their eyes. 
 You young women ! think of the girls in back courts 
 and alleys or even | in rude 'country villages or mining 
 districts — gentle creatures full of capacities for gaiety, 
 romance, beauty, like yourselves, but too soon to be 
 hardened into spiritless drudges — think ! to know you, to 
 have you for a friend, would be a dream of splendor. 
 How much you might give if you would only come nearer 
 these ! Think if you only hved in a place where these 
 could run in and out freely without fear — some simple little 
 cot, where the tide of humanity would wash right up to the 
 door. How they would love you ! How that bright gift of 
 tact and sympathy would cheer them ! how your ornaments 
 and acquisitions would then become real adornments and 
 curiosities — how you could find a hundred uses for them, 
 and for your books which now lie congested on your 
 shelves. What a busy life — how much of interest, possibly 
 even of love ! But now you are shut away — you are in 
 prison. An impenetrable chevaux defrise of aimless heart- 
 less conventionalities and luxuries forbids the entrance of 
 any natural human being. The child of drunken parents 
 may be driven out into the street — but it will not come to 
 you for a refuge. No little naked feet will stain your 
 carpet with sacred dirt. The young girl, pure minded as 
 yourself, but unable to bear the sight of her poverty-stricken 
 parents may be driven too into the street — but remember 
 that in the hour of her despair she will not come to you ; 
 
146 THE ENCHANTED THICKET. 
 
 she will not open her heart to you whose fingers are loaded 
 with rings and who have as many dresses as a fancy-woman 
 — for how should she suppose that you will understand ? 
 These high walls, these damask curtains round the windows, 
 these retinues of servants, how shall she penetrate through 
 them to you ? 
 
 The hedge is growing thicker, my child, thicker and 
 taller round you, and your soul sleeps within. 
 
 Ah ! I know how your heart bleeds in silence over these 
 things — how you curse the fate which brought you into this 
 world. But how can you move? A thousand chains de- 
 tain you ; round you in every direction stretches the web of 
 polite society — attractive certainly in some respects, but 
 O how poisonous and paralysing. In this you were born ; 
 every fibre of it has entered into your body — how can you 
 escape from it ? 
 
 The large mirror stands on the toilet-table, and another 
 still larger on the floor. Wherever you look it is only 
 yourself that you see. The servants study your conveni- 
 ence — these wardrobes and chests, they are all for your 
 dresses. You who have so desired to give yourself to 
 others, whose loving heart has so yearned to pour itself out, 
 to lose itself, forget itself altogether in others — you are 
 chained to the dead body of yourself. This weary weight 
 you drag from room to room, you cannot escape from it — 
 at the dance, at the concert, it is there. Men smirk round 
 it ; servants offer it every attention ; but you, the living soul, 
 who would gladly go on your knees and scrub the floor for 
 the feet that you love — hold ! Do nothing of the kind, for 
 that would be highly vulgar ! 
 
 O it is hateful, it is intolerable. Take a torch and go 
 right down to the basement .... 
 
 No, well do not do that -, for after all even a desirable 
 mansion may come in useful for some purpose. But you. 
 
THE ENCHANTED THICKET. 1 47 
 
 if anyway possible, clear out of it, yourplace is not here, 
 and between these walls built on the despair and degrada- 
 tion of others you will find it as hard to lead a true life as 
 it is " for a camel to go through the eye of a needle." 
 
 The evil base of our society eats right through. That 
 our wealthy homes are founded on the spoliation of the 
 poor vitiates all the life that goes on within them. Some- 
 how or other it searches through and degrades the art, 
 manners, dress, good taste of the inmates. While there is 
 time and before the day of reckoning comes — before the 
 fountains of the great deep are broken up in our vast cities, 
 and chaos horrible ensues — let us hope that some at least 
 of these classes will awake from the fatal slumber whic!\ 
 enthrals them — a true awakening, no mere uneasy stretch 
 ing and turning to sleep again. Through the tangle 1 
 thicket there is but one deliverer that can make his way, 
 and as of old his name is the Prince of Love. 
 
 In conclusion, and to look at the matter quite practically, 
 there seems but one immediate step that the wealthy 
 despoiler can take — which at the same time is a most 
 obvious step — and that is, at once or as soon as ever he 
 can, to place his life on the very simplest footing. And 
 this for several reasons. First, because if he must live by 
 other people's labor — and in some cases doubtless his 
 " education " will leave him no other alternative — it is 
 clearly his duty to consume as little of that commodity as 
 he possibly can — (and anyhow experience shows that it is 
 impossible to live very lu.xuriously on one's own labor 
 alone). Secondly, because only by living simply — that is, on 
 a level of simplicity at least equal to that of the mass of the 
 people — is it possible to know the people, to become friends 
 with them, to gauge their wants, &c. ; and here I may say 
 that I do not see that it is the least necessary for a well-to- 
 do person to trouble himself or herself about big philan- 
 
148 THE ENCHANTED THICKET. 
 
 thropic schemes, or even to join committees of any kind 
 (unless having a special tm-n that way) — if such an one will 
 only go and live quite quietly in town or country in such 
 an unpretending manner that all, even the poorest, will 
 have ready access without shame, he (or she) will soon 
 find plenty of use for their surplus, and with a certainty of 
 not being imposed upon which they cannot possibly have 
 under other circumstances. Thirdly, because by such a 
 simple li''e the cares and anxieties of a luxurious household 
 — the innumerable fidgets and worries and obstacles to all 
 true life, together with the dread about being able to 
 maintain it all in the future — are once and for all got rid 
 of. A great load drops off, and the Rubicon once crossed 
 the difficulties attending the change are seen to be nothing 
 compared with the increased happiness which it brings. 
 Fourthly, because it is only on the knowledge and habits 
 gained in a simple self-supporting life that the higher know- 
 .edge and the fine arts are really founded, and it is as im- 
 possible for a statesman to look after a nation properly 
 unless he is acquainted with the first elements of social 
 life as it is for an artist to paint prop erly who does not 
 realise the value of homely details, or for a capitalist to do 
 justice to his works and workmen who is ignorant (as is 
 commonly the case nowadays) of the rudiments of the 
 industry which he professes to organi se. 
 
 And so on. In every departme nt, of morality, good 
 taste, common-sense, private and public expediency, a 
 change in the hves of the rich is called for. It is not 
 necessary to know or to argue about all the changes that 
 will follow. This first step is obvious, and if you take 
 that, the next will become clearer. 
 
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