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 .W398 ^ 
 1908 
 
 Basis 
 Policy of 
 ocialism
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CAUFORNjJj.|^^^^^ 
 
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 mjS '25'1 V u5 CALIFORNIA, SAJ t DlPro 1^^ ^ ^ 
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 THE FABIAN SOCIALIST SERIES, No. 4 
 
 Reprinted from Fabian Tracts, Revised 
 
 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF 
 SOCIALISM
 
 THE FABIAN SOCIETY 
 
 FOUNDED 1883 
 
 THE FABIAN SOCIETY consists of men and women 
 who are Socialists, that is to say, in the words of its 
 " Basis," of those who aim at the reorganization of society 
 by the emancipation of Land and Industrial Capital from 
 individual and class ownership, and the vesting of them in the 
 community for the general benefit. . . . For the attainment 
 of these ends the Fabian Society looks to the spread of Socialist 
 opinions, and the social and political changes consequent there- 
 on. It seeks to promote these by the general dissemination of 
 knowledge as to the relation between the individual and society 
 in its economic, ethical, and political aspects. 
 
 The Society welcomes as members any persons, men or 
 women, who desire to promote the growth of Socialist opinion 
 and to hasten the enactment of Socialist measures, and it 
 exacts from its members no pledge except a declaration that 
 they are Socialists. 
 
 The Society is largely occupied in the endeavour to discover 
 in what way the principles of Socialism can be applied both to 
 the political problems which from time to time come up for 
 settlement, and to those problems of the future which are as 
 yet rather political theory than actual politics. It holds fort- 
 nightly meetings for the discussion of papers on such subjects 
 by members and others, some of which are published as 
 Fabian Tracts. 
 
 The Society includes : — 
 
 I. Members, who must sign the Basis and be elected by 
 
 the Committee. Their subscription is noi fixed ; 
 each is expected to pay according to his means. 
 They control the Society through their Executive 
 Committee and at business meetings. 
 
 II. Associates, who sign a form expressing general 
 
 sympathy with the objects of the Society, and pay 
 not less than los. a year. They can attend all except 
 specially private meetings, but have no control 
 over the Society and its policy. 
 III. Subscribers, who must pay at least 5s. a year, and 
 
 can attend the lectures. 
 The monthly paper, " Fabian News," and the Fabian 
 Tracts are sent as published to all three classes. 
 
 Lists of Publications, Annual Report, Form of Application 
 as Member or Associate, and any other information can be 
 obtained on application, personally, or by letter, of 
 
 The Secretary of the Fabian Society, 
 
 3 Clement's Inn, Strand, London, W.C.
 
 THE BASIS & POLICY 
 OF SOCIALISM 
 
 By 
 
 SIDNEY WEBB, L.C.C., AND THE 
 
 / 
 
 FABIAN SOCIETY 
 
 The Fabian Socialist Series, No. 4 
 
 LONDON 
 
 A. C. FIFIELD, 44 FLEET STREET, E.G. 
 
 1908
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGI 
 
 FACTS FOR SOCIALISTS, from the Political 
 Economists and Statisticians. By THE 
 FABIAN SOCIETY 5 
 
 CAPITAL AND LAND. By THE FABIAN 
 
 SOCIETY 28 
 
 SOCIALISM : True and False. By SIDNEY WEBB 50 
 
 TWENTIETH CENTURY POLITICS: A Policy 
 OF National Efficiency. By SIDNEY 
 WEBB 75 
 
 Note. — ^The calculations of National Income and 
 National Wealth and other figures in the following pages 
 have been revised for this edition, and relate to the year 
 1905-6, the latest for which the data are available.
 
 THE BASIS AND POLICY 
 OF SOCIALISM 
 
 I. FACTS FOR SOCIALISTS 
 
 " No one can contemplate the present condition of the masses 
 of the people without desiring something like a revolution for 
 the better." (Sir R. Giffen, Essays in Finance, vol. ii. 
 P- 393-) 
 
 I. The Nation's Income. 
 
 THE annual income of the United Kingdom has been 
 estimated by the following authorities : — 
 
 Sir Louis Mallet.K.C.S.I. (India Office), 18S3-4, £ 
 
 National Income and Taxation (Cobden 
 Club), p. 23 .. .. .. .. 1,289,000,000 
 
 Professor Leone Levi (King's College, London), 
 
 7"nne5, January 13th. 1885 .. .. 1,274,000,000 
 
 Professor A. Marshall (Cambridge University), 
 Report of Industrial Remuneration Con- 
 ference, p. 194 (January, 1885), upwards of 1,125,000,000 
 
 Mr. Mulhall (1892), Dictionary of Statistics, 
 
 p. 320, Income for 1889 . . . . . . 1,285,000,000 
 
 Sir R. Giffen, The Wealth of the Empire, Journal 
 of Royal Statistical Society, vol. Ixvi., 
 part iii. 1903 .. .. .. .. 1,750,000,000 
 
 Mr. A. L. Bowley, M.A. (Appointed Teacher 
 of Statistics, University of London), 
 Economic Journal, September, 1904 ; In- 
 come for 1903 .. .. .. .. 1,800,000,000 
 
 Mr. L. G. Chiozza Money, I\I.P., 1908 Daily 
 
 Mail Year Book; Income for 1907 .. 1,750,000,000 
 
 The gross assessments to income tax have risen from 
 ;f6oi,45o,977 in 1881-2 to £925,184,556 in 1905-6 (Inland 
 Revenue Reports, C. — 4,474 and Cd. — 3,686). Allowing 
 for a corresponding rise in the incomes not assessed and 
 in the wages of manual labour, we may estimate the 
 income for 1905-6 at not less than ;f 1,920,000,000. The
 
 6 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 population in 1901 being nearly 41,500,000 (Cd. — 1,727), 
 the average annual income is about £46^- per head, or 
 ;ri85 per adult man. ^ In 1840 it was alsout ;^20-|, and in 
 i860 £26^ per head (Mr. Mulhall, Dictionary of Statistics 
 p. 245). 
 
 These figures (which are mainly computed from income- 
 tax returns and estimated average rates of wages) mean 
 that the price in money of the commodities and services 
 produced in the country during the whole course of a year 
 was about £185 per adult man.' Most of these commodi- 
 ties and services were used up within that period in main- 
 taining the 41,500,000 inhabitants, and Sir R. Giffen 
 
 estimates that about 
 jr200,ooo,ooo is 
 " saved " annually 
 {Essays in Finance, 
 vol. ii., p. 407). 
 The bulk of this 
 " saving " consists 
 of new houses and 
 of new railways, 
 steamers, machin- 
 ery, and other aids 
 to future labour. 
 
 For subsequent 
 
 comparison the 
 
 total is represented 
 
 biy the annexed 
 
 figure. 
 
 II. Who produces it. — The desirable commodities and 
 
 useful services measured by this vast sum are produced 
 
 solely by the " efforts and sacrifices " (Cairnes), whether 
 
 ^ It has been assumed throughout that one person in every four 
 
 is an adult male, and that there are, on an average, five persons 
 
 to each family group. 
 
 - It mayj^be observed that the estimated amount of " money " 
 or currency in the country is about £130,000,000, or under £^ per 
 head, including bank notes. Gold coin and bullion, between 
 ;^8o, 000,000 and ;^i 00,000,000 ; silver and bronze, ;^i 5,000,000 ; 
 bank notes, beyond gold reserves, £24,000,000 (W. S. Jevons, 
 Investigations in Currency and Finance, p. 272 ; Report of Deputy- 
 Master of the Mint, 1889 ; Mr. Goschen's speech on Second Reading 
 of the Coinage ^Act, 1891).
 
 FACTS FOR SOCIALISTS 7 
 
 of muscle or of brain, of the working portion of the com- 
 munity, employed upon the gifts of Nature. 
 
 Adam Smith " showed that labour is the only source of 
 wealth. . . . It is to labour, therefore, and to labour only, 
 that man owes everything possessed of exchangeable 
 value " (McCulloch's Principles of Political Economy, part 
 ii., sec. I). 
 
 " No wealth whatever can be produced without labour " 
 (Professor Henry Fawcett (Cambridge), Manual of Political 
 Economy, p. 13). 
 
 " That useful function, therefore, which some profound writers 
 fancy they discover in the abundant expenditure of the idle rich 
 turns out to be a sheer illusion. Political economy furnishes no 
 such palliation of unmitigated selfishness. Not that I would breathe 
 a word against the sacredness of contracts. But I think it is im- 
 portant, on moral no less than on economic grounds, to insist upon 
 this, that no public benefit of any kind arises from the existence of 
 an idle rich class. The wealth accumulated by their ancestors and 
 others on their behalf, where it is emj)loyed as capital, no doubt 
 helps to sustain industry ; but what they consume in luxury and 
 idleness is not capital, and helps to sustain nothing but their un- 
 profitable lives. By all means they must have their rents and 
 interest, as it is written in the bond ; but let them take their proper 
 place as drones in the hive, gorging at a feast to which they have 
 contributed nothing " [Some Leadini^ Principles of Political Economy, 
 p. 32, by the late John Elliott Cairnes, m.a.. Emeritus Professor of 
 Political Economy at University College, London ; 1874). 
 
 III. Who the workers are. — Those who profess to be 
 taking part in the work of the community were divided 
 at the census of 1901, into the following classes : — 
 
 MALES. FEMALES. TOTAL. 
 
 Industrial 
 
 
 . 8,884,116 
 
 2,594,684 
 
 11,478,800 
 
 Agricultural 
 
 
 2,058,096 
 
 183,881 
 
 2,241,977 
 
 Commercial 
 
 
 845,127 
 
 89,106 
 
 934.233 
 
 Domestic 
 
 
 357.037 
 
 2,058,528 
 
 2.415.565 
 
 Professional 
 
 
 817.731 
 
 387,050 
 
 1,204,781 
 
 
 12,962,107 
 
 5.313.249 
 
 i«. 275. 356 
 
 Unoccupied, 
 
 under 20 
 
 . 6,476,645 
 
 7,202,149 
 
 13.678,794 
 
 Unoccupied, 
 
 over 20 . 
 
 663,656 
 
 8,840,915 1 
 
 9.504,571 
 
 20,102,408 21,356,313 41,458,721 
 (Compiled from Reports of the 1901 Census for England and 
 
 Wales, Scotland and Ireland.) 
 ^ Most of these are married women engaged in domestic work, 
 although not so described.
 
 8 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 Among the professed workers there are, of course, many 
 whose occupation is merely nominal. The number is 
 swelled by the " sleeping " partners, the briefless barristers, 
 the invalids, and the paupers, prisoners, and sinecurists 
 of every description. Many thousands more have occu- 
 pations useless or hurtful to the community ; and others, 
 as, for example, many domestic servants, labour honestly, 
 but for the personal comfort of the idlers, and they might, 
 therefore, as far as production is concerned, as well be 
 themselves idle. 
 
 Nevertheless, there were, in 190 1, 663,656 adult men 
 (one in twenty) who did not even profess to have the 
 shadow of an occupation. Most of these form the main 
 body of the idle rich, " the great social evil of ... a non- 
 labouring class" (J. S. Mill, Political Economy, Popular 
 Edition, p. 455). 
 
 It is clear that the labour of the workers is much in- 
 creased by the presence among them of so large a propor- 
 tion of persons who take no useful part in the business of 
 life. The possible reduction of the daily hours of work 
 has, however, been much exaggerated. Thus Mr. William 
 Hoyle, writing in 1871, committed himself to the assertion 
 that, " assuming every person did his share, a total of 
 i^ hours' daily labour would suflice to supply us in abun- 
 dance with all the comforts of life " {Our National Resources, 
 p. 56). It appears from the context that his calculation 
 refers to a community composed exclusively of actual 
 workers in the production of material necessaries, whereas 
 in ordinary human societies about half the population is 
 under the age of twenty, and more than half the adults 
 are women mostly occupied in domestic duties. The i^ 
 hours daily have, therefore, at once to be multiplied four- 
 fold, and account is even then taken only of food, clothing, 
 houses and furniture. The whole calculation is indeed of 
 little value, and has never been accepted by other authori- 
 ties. 
 
 IV. How the idle rich live. — " Whence is their 
 purchasing-power derived ? It does not descend to them 
 from the skies ; nor is it obtained by submarine telegraph 
 direct from California or Australia ; nor is its presence
 
 FACTS FOR SOCIALISTS 9 
 
 exhaustively accounted for by the presence of certain 
 figures on the credit side of their accounts in their bankers' 
 books" (Prof. J. E. Cairnes, Some Leading Principles of 
 Political Economy, p. 31). 
 
 They hve, in the main, upon the portions of the national 
 product which are called rent and interest, by the 
 legal " guarantee to them of the fruits of the labour 
 and abstinence of others, transmitted to them without 
 any merit or exertion of their own" (J. S. Mill, Political 
 Economy, Popular Edition, p. 129). 
 
 " It is at once evident that rent is the effect of a mono- 
 poly " (J. S. Mill, Political Economy, p. 255). 
 
 " Monopoly, in all its forms, is the taxation of the in- 
 dustrious for the support of indolence, if not of plunder ", 
 {Ibid., p. 477). 
 
 V. Rent of land and houses. — The total profits from 
 the ownership of lands, houses, tithes, etc., as assessed 
 for income tax in 1905-6 was ;^258,948,67i ; the rents of 
 mines, quarries, ironworks, gasworks, waterworks, canals, 
 fishings, shootings, markets, tolls, etc., amounted to 
 £42,863,644 (Inland Revenue Report, 1906-7, Cd — 3,686). 
 Many of these are no- 
 toriously far from being 
 fully assessed. The 
 total " rent" ^ of im- 
 movables of the United 
 Kingdom must there- 
 fore amount to at least 
 /3io,ooo,ooo, or nearly 
 one-sixth of the total 
 produce. Of this 
 amount probably 
 £100,000,000 may be 
 estimated as the an- 
 nual rental value of 
 the bare site, without 
 buildings. 
 
 Total produce, £1,920,000,000. R. — Rent, £310,000,000. 
 
 ^ In 1843 the total was (for Great Britain only) i9S,2i^,A97 i 
 in 1855 (for the United Kingdom) £i2/^,iji,'6is.
 
 lo THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 VI. Interest on capital. — Interest is distinguished by 
 economists from the rent on the one hand, and the " wages 
 of superintendence," or other payment for services on the 
 other ; but a large part of the " Rent " already dealt with 
 consists of interest on capital embodied in land in the form 
 of houses, etc. 
 
 The profits of public companies, foreign investments, 
 railways, etc., assessed to income tax in the United King- 
 dom in 1905-6 amounted to ;;^3ii, 366,085. The interest 
 payable from British public funds (rates and taxes) was, 
 in addition, ^^22, 680,741, and from Indian, Colonial and 
 Foreign Governments ;(30,932,o67 (Inland Revenue Report, 
 1906-7, Cd. — 3,686). 
 
 That these amounts are understated may be inferred 
 from Mr. Mulhall's estimate of the stocks, shares, bonds, etc. 
 held in Great Britain alone, as being worth £2,655,000,000, 
 producing an annual income of upwards of £122,000,000 
 {Dictionary of Statistics, p. 106). Sir Louis Mallet estimated 
 the English income from foreign investments alone 
 in 1883-4 9-t £100,000,000 annually {National Income 
 and Taxation (Cobden Club), p. 13), and later returns 
 show that this estimate must be considerably increased. 
 Nearly the whole of this vast income may be regarded as 
 being received without any contemporary services ren- 
 dered in return by the owners as such. 
 
 We have, however, to add the interest on capital em- 
 ployed in private undertakings of manufacture or trade. 
 This is included with " wages of superintendence," in 
 business profit, both for the purpose of the income tax 
 returns and in ordinary speech. Sir R. Giffen estimated 
 it, in 1884, apart from any earnings of personal service, 
 at £89,000,000 {Essays in Finance, vol. ii, p. 403). Allow- 
 ing for the increase since then, the total amount of interest 
 cannot therefore be less than ;^390, 000,000. 
 
 Adding hereto the rent mentioned in the preceding 
 section, we have a total of £700,000,000 for rent and 
 interest together. 
 
 The following diagram represents the proportion of the 
 nation's income thus claimed from the workers, not in 
 return for any service rendered to the community, but
 
 FACTS FOR SOCIALISTS 
 
 ti 
 
 inerely as the payment for permission to use the land and the 
 
 already accumulated 
 capital of the country. 
 VII. Profits and 
 Salaries. — But those 
 who enjoy the vast 
 unearned income just 
 mentioned cannot all 
 be accurately described 
 as the " idle rich," 
 though they would 
 forgo none of it by 
 refusing to work. If 
 they are disposed to 
 increase it by leading 
 active lives they can 
 do so ; and most of 
 them adopt this course 
 to some extent, especi- 
 ally those whose share is insufficient for their desires. 
 
 As the unearned income is not equally distributed, 
 some of the participants are in comparatively humble 
 circumstances ; but it may be observed that the " manual- 
 labour class," or the poor, possess but a small fraction of 
 the land and capital. 
 
 In 1906 the Deposits in P.O. Savings Bank were ;^i55,996,446 
 
 Total product, ;{i, 920,000,000. 
 
 R. — Rent, ^^3 10,000,000. 
 
 I. — Interest, ;{390,ooo,ooo. 
 
 Trustee 
 Consols purchased for small holders, 
 
 P.O.S.B., were 
 
 Consols purchased for small holders, 
 
 Trustee S.B., were 
 In 1905 the Capital of Building Societies was . . 
 The Funds of Trade Unions, Co-operative, 
 
 Friendly and Provident Societies was 
 The Funds of Industrial Life Assurance 
 
 Societies was . . 
 
 53,009,299 
 
 18,986,199 
 
 2,369,869 
 70,348,997 
 
 123,517,888 
 
 34,913,210 
 
 ;^459,i4i,9o8 
 
 (see Eleventh Annual Report of the Labour Department 
 of the Board of Trade, Cd. — 3,690, 1907 ; Statistical 
 Abstract, C. — 3,691, 1907 ; and " Capital and Land " 
 in this volume), or less than one thirty- second part
 
 12 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 of the total accumulated wealth, and about £29 per head 
 of the adult workers in the " manual labour class," even 
 supposing the whole was owned by members of that class. 
 Against this, too, must be set the debts of the labourers to 
 pawnbrokers, shopkeepers and others, which amount, in 
 the aggregate, to a considerable sum. 
 
 When the members of this endowed class elect to work, 
 they are able to do so under unusually favourable con- 
 ditions. Associated with them in this respect are the 
 fortunate possessors of exceptional skill in hand or brain, 
 and the owners of literary, artistic, or commercial mono- 
 polies of every kind. These workers often render in- 
 estimable service to the community, and they are able to 
 exact in return remuneration proportionate neither to 
 their utility nor to the cost of their education or training, 
 but to the relative scarcity of the faculty they possess. 
 
 The numbers and total income of this large class cannot 
 be exactly ascertained. It includes workers of all grades, 
 from the exceptionally skilled artisan to the Prime Minister, 
 and from the city clerk to the President of the Royal 
 Academy. 
 
 It is convenient for statistical purposes to include in it 
 all those who do not belong to the " manual-labour class." 
 If we take the " rent of ability " to have increased in the 
 same proportion as the assessments to income tax, this 
 prosperous body may be estimated to receive for its work 
 as profits and salaries about ^^490,000, 000 annually. 
 
 Sir R. Giffen : total income, less rent, interest, 
 and wages of manual-labour class (Essays in 
 Finance, 1886, vol. ii. p. 404) .. .. ;^3i3,ooo,ooo 
 
 Professor A. Marshall : earnings of all above the 
 manual-labour class (Report of Industrial 
 Remuneration Conference, p. 194), 1885 .. 300,000,000 
 
 Mr. Mulhall : income of tradesmen class only 
 
 [Dictionary of Statistics, p. 320), 1886 .. 244,000,000 
 
 Sir R. Giffen : salaries of superintendence 
 assessed to income tax alone {Essays in 
 Finance, 1886, vol. ii. p. 404) .. .. 180,000,000 
 
 VIII. The classes. — The total amount of rent, interest, 
 profits and salaries was estimated some years ago as fol- 
 lows : — 
 
 Professor Leone Levi, Times, 13th January, 1885 ;^753, 000,000
 
 FACTS FOR SOCIALISTS 13 
 
 Professor Alfred Marshall, Report of Industrial 
 
 Remuneration Conference, p. 194 {1885) .. ;{675,ooo,ooo 
 Sir. R. Gifien, Essays in Finance, vol. ii. p. 467 
 
 (1886) .. .. .. .. .. .. 720,000,000 
 
 Mr. Mulhall, Dictionary of Statistics, p. 246 . . 818,000,000 
 Mr. A. L. Bowley, Statistical Society's Journal, 
 
 vol. Iviii., part 2, p. 284 (1891) .. .. 912,000,000 
 
 Since these estimates were made the wealth of the 
 country has grown greatly, and on the basis of the increase 
 in gross assessments to income tax, we estimate that the 
 total drawn by the upper, middle, and trading classes 
 amounts at present to about ;;^i, 190, 000,000 yearly, or 
 just under two-thirds of the total produce. 
 
 And the masses. — The total amount of wages was at 
 the same time estimated by the statisticians : — 
 
 Professor Leone Levi (as above) . . . . . . ;^5 2 1,000, 000 
 
 Professor A. Marshall (as above) . . .. .. 500,000,000' 
 
 Mr. Mulhall, Dictionary of Statistics, p. 320 . . 467,000,000 
 Sir R. Giffen, Essays in Finance, vol. ii. p. 467 . . 550,000,000 
 Mr. J. S. Jeans, Statistical Society's Journal, 
 
 vol. xlvii. p. 631 . . . . . . . . 600,000,000 
 
 Mr. A. L. Bowley (as above) . . . . . . 699,000,000 
 
 Allowing for the increase since these estimates were made 
 we may safely say that the manual-labour class receives for 
 all its millions of workers only some ;^ 730,000,000. 
 
 'These estimates, which are based on average rates of wages, 
 multiplied by the number of workers, assume, however, reasonable 
 regularity of employment, and take no account of the fact that 
 much of the total amount of nominal wages is reclaimed from the 
 workers in the shape of rent. Much must, therefore, be deducted 
 to obtain their real net remuneration.
 
 14 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 Rent .. .. .. .. .. .. ;^3 10,000,000 
 
 Interest . . . . . . . . . . . . 390,000,000 
 
 Profits and Salaries . . . . . . . . 490,000,000 
 
 Total (that is, the entire income of the upper, 
 
 middle, and trading classes) .. .. 1,190,000,000 
 
 Income of manual-labour class . . . . . . 730,000,000 
 
 Total produce .. .. .. .. .. ;|f 1,920, 000,000 
 
 IX. The Two Nations. — This unequal division of the 
 fruits of the combined labour of the working community 
 divides us, as Lord Beaconsfield said, into " two nations," 
 widely different from each other in education, in comfort, 
 and in security. There is some limited central territory 
 between, and some luckier few escape from the large camp 
 in which their fellows are toiling to the more comfortable 
 fortress of the monopolists, from which, on the other hand, 
 others sink into destitution from extravagance or mis- 
 fortune. But for the great majority the hues between 
 these two nations are practically impassable. 
 
 It is not that this division is based on any essential 
 differences in the industry or morality between individuals. 
 
 " Since the human race has no means of enjoyable existence, or 
 of existence at all, but what it derives from its own labour and 
 abstinence, there would be no ground for complaint against society 
 if every one who was willing to undergo a fair share of this labour 
 and abstinence could attain a fair share of the fruits. But is this 
 the fact ? Is it not the reverse of the fact ? The reward, instead 
 of being proportioned to the labour and abstinence of the individual, 
 is almost in an inverse ratio to it ; those who receive the least, labour 
 and abstain the most " (John Stuart Mill, Fortnightly Review, 1879, 
 p. 226, written in 1869). 
 
 We have seen what the " two nations " each receive : 
 
 it remains to estimate their respective numbers, and the 
 following facts supply materials for this computation: — 
 
 (a) The Comparatively Rich. (b) The Comparatively Poor. 
 
 It has been shown that the Mr. Mulhall, Dictionary of 
 
 adult males without professed Statistics, p. 320 ; families 
 
 occupation numbered 663,656 in 4,774,000, 
 
 1 90 1. This represents a popula- Mr. Chiozza Money, Daily 
 
 tion of about 2,650,000, all of Mail Year Book, 1908, esti- 
 
 whom were living on incomes mates that the lower, middle, 
 
 not derived from any specified and working classes number 
 
 occupation. 39,000,000. 
 
 About one-seventieth part of The number of persons " em- 
 
 the population owns far more ployed " at wages in the indus-
 
 FACTS FOR SOCIALISTS 
 
 IS 
 
 (a) TJie Comparatively Rich {del.) : 
 than one-half of the entire 
 accumulated wealth, public and 
 private, of the United Kingdom 
 (Chiozza Money, Riches and 
 Poverty, p. 72). 
 
 The landlords (of more than 
 ten acres) number only 176,520, 
 owning ten-elevenths of the total 
 area (Mulhall, Dictionary of 
 Statistics, p. 341). 
 
 More than one-half the area 
 of the whole country is owned 
 by 2,500 people (Chiozza Money, 
 Riches and Poverty, p. 75). 
 
 The mortgage upon the in- 
 dustry of the community, known 
 as the National Debt, was owned 
 in 1880 by only 236,514 persons, 
 103,122 of whom shared in it 
 only to the extent of less than 
 /15 per annum each (Mulhall, 
 Dictionary of Statistics, p. 262). 
 Only sixty-nine out of every 
 1 ,000 persons dying leave behind 
 them /300 worth of property 
 (including furniture, etc.), and 
 only ninety-seven per 1,000 
 leave any property worth men- 
 tioning at all. 
 
 The number of estates up- 
 wards of ;^ 1 0,000 in value in 
 1906-7 upon which Estate Duty 
 was paid was 4,172 ; their 
 capital value was ;^2i8,253,558. 
 They include five-sevenths of 
 the total net capital of the 
 estates liable for duty (Inland 
 Revenue Report, C. — 3,686). 
 
 In 1 906-7 the estates of 86 per- 
 sons were proved for;^68,294,278, 
 or nearly one-quarter of the 
 value of all estates. Of these, 
 ten were more than ;^i, 000,000, 
 eighteen over ;^500,ooo, fifty- 
 eight over ;^25o,ooo (Cd. — 3,686). 
 Mulhall estimates that there 
 were, in 1889, 222,000 families of 
 the gentry, 604,000 families of 
 the middle class, 1,220,000 fami- 
 
 (b) The Comparatively Poor {cid.): 
 tries of the Kingdom is placed 
 at thirteen to fourteen millions, 
 and this includes over four 
 million women. 
 Mr. J. S. Jeans, 
 Statistical So- 
 ciety's Journal, 
 vol. xlvii. p. 631, 
 places the num- 
 ber at about . . 14,000,000 
 Sir R. Giffen, 
 Essays in Fi- 
 nance, vol. ii. p. 
 461 (separate in- 
 comes of manual 
 labour class) .. 13,200,000 
 Prof. Leone Levi, 
 T2Wf5,i3thJan., 
 1885 (number of 
 workers in man- 
 ual-labour class 
 in 1 881) . . 12,200,000 
 
 Sir R. Giffen, 
 Labour Commis- 
 sion Statistics, 
 six and a quar- 
 ter million fami- 
 lies of wage 
 earners, or per- 
 sons . . . . 13,000,000 
 Mr. A. L. Bow- 
 ley, Statistical 
 Society's Jour- 
 nal, June, 1895, 
 manual labour- 
 ers . . . . 13,000,000 
 Thirty - nine millions take 
 ;^900,ooo,ooo (Chiozza Money, 
 Daily Mail Year Book, 1908). 
 
 Nine hundred and three out 
 of every 1,000 persons (about 
 half of whom are adults) die 
 without property worth speak- 
 ing of, and 931 out of every 
 1,000 without furniture, invest- 
 ments, or effects worth ;^300 
 (Cd.— 3,686). 
 
 From returns obtained from 
 8,121 Private and Government
 
 i6 
 
 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 (b) TIic Comparatively Poor (ctd.): 
 works, employing 862,365 per- 
 sons, it appears that the average 
 annual wage per head amounted 
 to not more than ;^50. These 
 returns include the police and 
 other public servants, but do 
 not take any account of agri- 
 cultural and general labourers 
 (Annual Report of Labour De- 
 partment, Board of Trade, 1893- 
 1894, C— 7,56s). 
 
 (a) The Comparatively Eich (ctd.) : 
 lies of the trading class ; in all 
 only about two million families 
 above the manual-labour class 
 of less than five million families 
 {Dictionary of Statistics, p. 320). 
 
 More than one-third of the 
 entire income of the United 
 Kingdom is enjoyed by less than 
 one-thirtieth of its people (Chi- 
 ozza Money, Riches and Poverty, 
 p. 42). 
 
 The income-tax payers num- 
 ber only 1,000,000 to 1,100,000, 
 One-ninth of the entire popula- 
 tion enjoy roughly one-half of 
 the entire national income (Chi- 
 ozza Money, Daily Mail Year 
 Book, 1908). 
 
 Mr. L. G. Chiozza Money 
 estimates that 1,250,000 people 
 take ;^6oo, 000,000 a year, 
 and 3,750,000 people take 
 ;^250,ooo,ooo (Daily Mail Year 
 Book, 1908). 
 
 X. The competitive struggle. — Disguise it as we may 
 by feudal benevolence, or the kindly attempts of philan- 
 thropists, the material interests of the small nation privi- 
 leged to exact rent for its monopolies, and of the great 
 nation, thereby driven to receive only the remnant of the 
 product, are permanently opposed. " The more there is 
 allotted to labour the less there will remain to be appro- 
 priated as rent " (Fawcett, Manual of Political Economy, 
 P- 123). 
 
 It is therefore " the enormous share which the possessors 
 of the instruments of industry are able to take from the 
 produce" (J. S. Mill, quoting Feugueray, Principles of 
 Political Economy, p. 477, Popular Edition of 1865), which 
 is the primary cause of the small incomes of the compara- 
 tively poor. That neither class makes the best possible 
 social use of its revenues, and that both waste much in 
 extravagance and vice, is an apparently inevitable secon- 
 dary result of the unequal division, which it intensifies 
 and renders permanent ; but it is a secondary result only,
 
 FACTS FOR SOCIALISTS 17 
 
 not the primary cause. Even if the whole " manual- 
 labour class " received £50 per adult, which is the average 
 income of those who are best off, and made the best possible 
 use of it, it would still be impossible for them to live the 
 cultured human life which the other classes demand for 
 themselves as the minimum of the life worth living. It is 
 practically inevitable that many of the poor, being debarred 
 from this standard of life, should endeavour to enjoy them- 
 selves in ways not permanently advantageous to them- 
 selves or to society. 
 
 The force by which this conflict of interest is maintained, 
 without the conscious contrivance of either party, is com- 
 petition, diverted, like other forces, from its legitimate 
 social use. The legal disposers of the great natural mono- 
 polies are able, by means of legally licensed competition, 
 to exact the full amount of their economic rents ; and the 
 political economists tell us that so long as these natural 
 monopolies are left practically unrestrained in private 
 hands, a thorough remedy is impossible. 
 
 In 1874 Professor Cairnes thought that some help might 
 be found (at any rate by the better-paid labourers) by 
 means of co-operation in production. He then wrote : — 
 
 " If workmen do not rise from dependence upon capital by the 
 path of co-operation, then they must remain in dependence upon 
 capital ; the margin for the possible improvement of their lot is con- 
 fined within narrow barriers, which cannot be passed, and the problem 
 of their elevation is hopeless. As a body they will not rise at all. 
 A few, more energetic or more fortunate than the rest, will from 
 time to time escape, as they do now, from the ranks of their fellows 
 to the higher walks of industrial life, but the great majority will 
 remain substantially where they are. The remuneration of labour, 
 as such, skilled or unskilled, can never rise much above its present 
 level " (Prof. J. E, Cairnes, Some Lcadin'^ Principles of Political 
 Economy, p. 348 ; 1874). 
 
 Thirty years have passed away since these words were 
 written, and it must now be apparent, even to the most 
 sanguine of individualists, that the chance of the great 
 bulk of the labourers ever coming to work upon their own 
 land and capital in associations for co-operative production 
 has become even less hopeful than it ever was ; and Dr. 
 J. K. Ingram tells us that modern economists, such as 
 Professors T. E. Cliff e Leslie and F, A. Walker, regard the 
 6
 
 i8 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 idea as " chimerical " (Article on " Political Economy " 
 in EncyclopcBdia Britannica, vol. xix. p. 382). Even so 
 friendly an economist as Mr. Leonard Courtney agrees in 
 this view. Yet this, according to authorities so eminent, 
 is the only hope for the labourer under the present arrange- 
 ments of society, or any other that the Professor could 
 suggest. 
 
 XI. — Some victims of the struggle. — The statistics 
 hitherto quoted have l^een mainly based on the assump- 
 tion of reasonable regularity of employment. But of the 
 great permanent army of the " unemployed," no reliable 
 statistics can be obtained. From returns rendered to 
 the Labour Department of the Board of Trade by Trade 
 Unions, it appears that in the seven years, 1896-1902, the 
 mean percentage of members unemployed was 3-3 (Annual 
 Report of Labour Department, Board of Trade, 1901-2, 
 Cd. — 1,755). The average number of persons in London 
 whose home is the " common lodging-house " is over 
 30,000 ; over 1,100 are every night found in the " casual 
 wards." 
 
 As regards the four millions of persons in the metropolis, 
 Mr. Charles Booth tells us that 37,610, or 0-9 per cent, 
 are in the lowest class (occasional labourers, loafers, and 
 semi-criminals) ; 316,834, or 7-5 per cent in the next 
 (casual labour, hand-to-mouth existence, chronic want) ; 
 938,293, or 22-3 per cent, form the " poor " (including 
 alike those whose earnings are small, because of irregularity 
 of employment, and those whose work, though regular, 
 is ill-paid). These classes, on or below the " poverty line " 
 of earnings not exceeding a guinea a week per family, number 
 together 1,292,737, or 30-7 per cent of the whole popula- 
 tion. To these must be added 99,830 inmates of work- 
 houses, hospitals, prisons, industrial schools, etc., making 
 altogether nearly 1,400,000 persons in this one city alone 
 whose condition even the most optimistic social student 
 can hardly deem satisfactory {Labour and Life of the People, 
 edited by Charles Booth, 1891 ; vol. ii. pp. 20-1). 
 
 The ultimate fate of these victims it is not easy ade- 
 quately to reahze. In 1905 no less than 21 persons, of 
 whom 8 were fifty-five years old and upwards, were re-
 
 FACTS FOR SOCIALISTS 19 
 
 corded by the Registrar-General as having died of starva- 
 tion (Cd. — 3,279). Actual starvation is, however, returned 
 as the cause of death in but a few cases annually ; and it 
 is well known that many thousands of deaths are directly 
 due to long-continued under-feeding and exposure. Young 
 children especially suffer. 
 
 In England and Wales in 1905, 91,597 deaths were 
 registered as having taken place in Poor Law Institutions, 
 workhouses, infirmaries, schools, hospitals, and asylums, 
 or iy6i per cent of the total deaths ; the proportion during 
 the eleven years immediately preceding having averaged 
 1538 per cent. Of these, 48,794 occurred in workhouses, 
 32,899 in hospitals, and 9,904 in lunatic asylums. 
 
 In London in 1905 one person in every three died in the 
 workhouse, hospital, or lunatic asylum. Out of 70,962 
 deaths, 28,276 being under twenty years of age, 13,985 
 were in workhouses, 10,854 ^^ hospitals, and 498 in lunatic 
 asylums, or, altogether, 25,337 ^^ public institutions 
 (Registrar- General's Report, 1905, Cd. — 3,279). 
 
 It is worth notice that a large number of those compelled 
 in their old age to resort to the workhouse have made 
 ineffectual efforts at thrifty provision for their declining 
 years. In 1890-91, out of 175,852 inmates of workhouses 
 (one-third being children, and another third women), no 
 fewer than 14,808 have been members of benefit societies. 
 In 4,593 cases the society had broken up, usually from 
 insolvency (House of Commons Return, 1891, Nos. 366 
 and 130 — B). It is probable that one in every three 
 London adults wiU be driven into these refuges to die, and 
 the proportion in the case of the " manual-labour class " 
 must of course be still larger. And the number of persons 
 who die while in receipt of out-door relief is not included 
 in this calculation. As in 1907 the mean number of out- 
 door paupers in the metropolis was 44,890 (Cd. — 3,665), 
 and the average death-rate in London was 17-4 per 1000, 
 it may be assumed that upwards of 1000 persons died 
 while in receipt of out-door relief — often from its being 
 insufficient. 
 
 I5'570 persons died by fatal accidents in 1904 (Registrar- 
 General's Report, C. — 3,279), 1,113 losing their lives in
 
 20 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 mines, quarries, etc., 853 on railways, 219 in working 
 machinery, 510 by poisoning and poisonous vapours, and 
 233 in building operations. These are figures for England 
 and Wales alone, and would be much increased by including 
 the accidents in Scotland and Ireland. 
 
 The Board of Trade Report on " Railway Accidents " 
 during the year 1906 shows that 438 railway servants were 
 killed, and 4,365 injured, by accidents on the lines. Of 
 these 9 were killed and 572 injured whilst coupling or un- 
 couphng vehicles (Cd. — 3,690). 
 
 " At present the average age at death among the nobiUty, gentry, 
 and professional classes in England and Wales was 55 years ; but 
 among the artizan classes of Lambeth it only amounted to 29 
 years ; and whilst the infantile death-rate among the well-to-do 
 classes was such that only 8 children died in the first year of life 
 out of 100 born, as many as 30 per cent succumbed at that age 
 among the children of the poor in some districts of our large cities. 
 The only real causes of this enormous difference in the position of 
 the rich and poor with respect to their chances of existence lay in 
 the fact that at the bottom of society wages were so low that food 
 and other requisites of health were obtained with too great difficulty " 
 (Dr. C. R. Drysdale, Report of Industrial Remuneration Conference, 
 p. 130). 
 
 " Any one who is acquainted with the state of the population 
 of all great industrial centres, whether in this or other countries, is 
 aware that amidst a large and increasing body of that population 
 there reigns supreme . . . that condition which the French call 
 la mishc, a word for which I do not think there is any exact English 
 equivalent. It is a condition in which the food, warmth, and cloth- 
 ing, which are necessary for the mere maintenance of the functions 
 of the body in their normal state, cannot be obtained ; in which 
 men, women, and children are forced to crowd into dens wherein 
 decency is abolished, and the most ordinary conditions of healthful 
 existence are impossible of attainment ; in which the pleasures 
 within reach are reduced to brutality and drunkenness ; in which 
 the pains accumulate at compound interest in the shape of starva- 
 tion, disease, stunted development, and moral degradation ; in 
 which the prospect of even steady and honest industry is a life of 
 unsuccessful battling with hunger, rounded by a pauper's grave. 
 . . . When the organization of society, instead of mitigating this 
 tendency, tends to continue and intensify it ; when a given social 
 order plainly makes for evil and not for good, men naturally enough 
 begin to think it high time to try a fresh experiment. I take it to 
 be a mere plain truth that throughout industrial Europe there is 
 not a single large manufacturing city which is free from a vast 
 mass of people whose condition is exactly that described, and from 
 a still greater mass, who, living just on the edge of the social swamp, 
 are liable to be precipitated into it " (Professor Huxley, Nineteenth 
 Century, February, 1888).
 
 FACTS FOR SOCIALISTS 21 
 
 B. S. Rowntree estimated that the average income from 
 all sources of the 11,560 working-class families in York in 
 1899 was 32s. 8|d. per week, or £85 a year. But 1,465 
 families, comprising 7,230 persons, that is, I5"46 per cent 
 of the wage-earning class and 9* 91 per cent of the population 
 of York, were living in " primary poverty," that is, on less 
 than enough to provide the minimum of food, clothing, 
 and shelter. And, in addition, 13,072 persons, or I7"93 
 per cent of the population were living in " secondary 
 poverty," that is, on earnings which would be sufficient 
 if spent with rigid economy and perfect wisdom, but were 
 insufficient because in part misspent on drink and betting, 
 or through ignorant housekeeping. " The wages paid for 
 unskilled labour in York are insufficient to provide food, 
 shelter, and clothing adequate to maintain a family of 
 moderate size in a state of bare physical efficiency." No 
 less than 52 per cent of " primary " poverty was due to 
 low wages alone {Poverty, 2nd ed., pp. 83, 120, 133). 
 
 One great cause of the short and miserable lives of the 
 poor is the insanitary condition of the slums in which 
 many of them are compelled to dwell. The strongest 
 testimony to the evil effects of such surroundings comes 
 from the insurance companies. The industrial friendly 
 societies have in each large town their " proscribed streets." 
 The Liverpool Victoria Legal Friendly Society proscribed, 
 for Liverpool alone, on account of their insanitary charac- 
 ter, 167 " streets wherein no members of the Society may 
 be entered " (Circular of the 13th October, 1886). Yet 
 these unhealthy streets were not too bad to be the only 
 homes of thousands of the poorer citizens of that com- 
 mercial centre. 
 
 Lnfant Mortality 
 
 " The best indication probably as to whether the con- 
 ditions of life in any locality are healthy or the reverse is 
 the infant mortality " {The Dwelling House, by G. V. 
 Poore). 
 
 In the Analysis of the causes of death in England and 
 Wales furnished by Dr. Tatham, m.a., m.d., f.r.c.p., to 
 the Registrar-General, and pubhshad in the Report for 
 1904 (Cd! — 2,617), attenticu is called to " the enomiolis
 
 22 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 sacrifice of life that besets early infancy in England and 
 Wales. Nearly half the children dying under one year 
 perish within three months of their birth ; whilst of sur- 
 vivors in the second year of life there die more than twice 
 as many as in any one of the three succeeding years." 
 The mortality among children under five years of age — 
 rate per i,ooo living — from all causes in England and 
 Wales in 1905 was 44.66 per thousand ; 50.26 in urban 
 counties, and 33.64 in rural counties. The highest death- 
 rate amongst children under one year was in Glamorgan- 
 shire, 147 to 1,000 births ; the next highest was Durham, 
 153 ; whilst London came sixteenth with 131. The 
 lowest death-rate was in Radnorshire and Bucks, 82 each. 
 
 The infantile death-rate at Bethnal Green is twice that 
 of Belgravia. Holborn (151,835) and St. George's, Han- 
 over Square (149,748), have almost equal populations ; 
 yet in the former 1,614, ^^ the latter only 1,007 children 
 under five died in 1884 ^ (Registrar-General's Report, 1886, 
 pp. 32, 126, C. — 4,722). 
 
 Dr. Playfair says that 18 per cent of the children of the 
 upper class, 36 per cent of those of the tradesmen class, 
 and 55 per cent of those of the workmen, die before they 
 reach five years of age (quoted at p. 133 of Dictionary of 
 Statistics, by Mr. Mulhall, who, however, thinks it " too 
 high an estimate "). 
 
 Overcrowding Statistics. From Censuses 1891 aiid 1901, 
 General Report. ^ 
 
 ENGLAND AND WALES. OVERCROWDING 
 
 
 No. of I to 
 
 4 roomed 
 
 
 
 Percents 
 
 ige of 
 
 Tenement 
 
 tenements wil 
 
 th moie than 
 
 No. of occupiers 
 
 populati 
 
 on in 
 
 with 
 
 two occupau 
 
 ts per room. 
 
 of such tenements. 
 
 such teue 
 
 ments. 
 
 
 1891 
 
 1901 
 
 1891 
 
 1901 
 
 1891 
 
 1901 
 
 I room 
 
 92,259 
 
 66,669 
 
 357,707 
 
 245,576 
 
 1-23 
 
 076 
 
 2 rooms 
 
 184,231 
 
 147,527 
 
 1,124,056 
 
 884,672 
 
 3-88 
 
 272 
 
 3 rooms 
 
 120,031 
 
 102,556 
 
 951,877 
 
 807,566 
 
 3-28 
 
 2-48 
 
 4 rooms 
 
 85,132 
 
 74,662 
 
 824,404 
 
 729,653 
 
 2-84 
 
 2*24 
 
 481,653 391,914 3,258,044 2,667,466 ii"23 8*20 
 The total number of tenements in England and Wales 
 ^ No figures for a comparison of this kind are given in the 
 Registrar-General's Reports for years subsequent to 1884. 
 
 - The figures for 1901 have been calculated from the material 
 given in the Preliminary Report, and, though appro.ximately cor- 
 rect, must not be taken as exactly accurate.
 
 FACTS FOR SOCIALISTS 23 
 
 was, in 1901, according to the returns, 7,036,868, which 
 gives, with a population of 32,527,843, an average of 4.6 
 persons to each tenement. 
 
 The six great towns in which the percentage of over- 
 crowded persons was the highest were as follows : — 
 Gateshead . . . . 34"53 Plymouth . . . . 20-25 
 
 Newcastle-on-Tyne 30' 5 7 HaUfax . . . . I4"67 
 
 Sunderland .. .. 30'io Bradford .. .. I4'5J5 
 
 The five registration counties with most overcrowding 
 (London omitted) were : — 
 
 Northumberland .. 31 '31 Yorkshire .. .. 9*6 
 
 Durham . . . . 29-48 Cumberland . . 8*47 
 
 Pembroke . . . . 9-94 
 
 Speaking generally, it would appear that the coal- 
 bearing counties are those where the crowding of dwellings 
 is most severe. 
 
 OVERCROWDING IN LONDON REGISTRATION COUNTY 
 
 830,182 persons living more than two in a room equal 19-71 per 
 cent to total population (General Report, 1891 Census, p. 118). 
 
 " This figure of nearly 20 per cent, however, is based on 
 the population of the whole town, which in i8gi was 
 4,211,743. To ascertain the real nature of the overcrowd- 
 ing problem it is essential to look more closely into the 
 details of the different districts of London. It will then 
 be found that in such central parts as Holborn, Clerken- 
 well, St. Luke's, Whitechapel, and St. George-in-the- 
 East, the overcrowding exceeds 35 per cent. Look more 
 closely into selected areas in these districts and the problem 
 appears even more serious. The average number of per- 
 sons per acre for all London is 56. In the Old Artillery 
 Ground it is 427, in Spitalfields it is 322, in Mile End Old 
 Town it is 269. These three districts are in Whitechapel " 
 {London Government, by Frederick Whelen, p. 67). In 1901 
 the figures were about 719,293 persons, or I5-88 per cent. 
 
 MORTALITY AND OVERCROWDING (LONDON) 
 
 Proportion 
 
 of Total Population living Death-rate, 
 
 more; than 
 
 two 
 
 in a room (m Tene- All Causes, 
 
 mcnts 
 
 f less 
 
 than five rooms). 1885-92. 
 
 Districts with 
 
 under 
 
 15 per cent . . . . i7'5i 
 
 ,, 
 
 
 ,, 
 
 IS to 20 per cent .. 19-51 
 
 ,, 
 
 
 ,, 
 
 20 to 25 ,, . . . . 20-27 
 
 ,, 
 
 
 ,, 
 
 25 to 30 ,, . . . . 21-76 
 
 ,, 
 
 
 
 30 to 35 23-92 
 
 " 
 
 
 over 
 
 35 .. •• •• -5-07 
 
 (Loudon Government, p. 60).
 
 24 THE BASIS AND POLICY OP SOCIALISM 
 Later returns show some improvement : — 
 
 MliTROPOLITAN BOROUGHS 
 
 Proportion of Total Populatiou living more than Corrected 
 
 two in a room (in tcutmeuts of less than five Death-rate, 
 rooms). Census igoi. 1901-3. 
 
 1. Boroughs with under 15 per cent .. .. 16.6 
 
 2. ,, ,, from 15 to 20 per cent .. i8'8 
 
 3. ,, ,, ,, 20 to 25 ,, .. 19-3 
 
 4. „ ,, ,, 25 to 30 ,, . . 2I-I 
 
 5. 30 to 35 ,. .. 207 
 
 6. „ ,, over 35 22-3 
 
 Class I comprises City, Battersea, Camberwell, Chelsea, Deptford, 
 
 Fulham, Greenwich, Hackney, Hammersmith, Hampstead, 
 Kensington, Lambeth, Lewisham, Paddington, Stoke New- 
 ington, Wandsworth, Westminster, Woolwich. 
 Class 2 comprises Bermondsey, Islington, Poplar. 
 
 ,, 3 ,, Marylebone, St. Pancras, Southwark. 
 
 4 ,, Bethnal Green, Holborn, Shoreditch. 
 
 ,, 5 ,, Stepney. 
 
 ,, 6 ,, Finsbury. 
 
 (Abstracted from the Annual Reports of the INIedical Officer 
 of Health to the London County Council for 1901 and 1904.) 
 
 We clog our public poor relief with irksome and degrad- 
 ing conditions, so that the honest poor often die lingering 
 deaths rather than accept it. Mr. Charles Booth states 
 that " as regards entering the workhouse, it is the one 
 point on which no difference of opinion exists among the 
 poor. The aversion to the ' house ' is absolutely universal, 
 and almost any suffering and privation will be endured by 
 people rather than go into il " {The Aged Poor in England 
 and Wales). Yet the paupers in actual receipt of public 
 relief on one day number more than a million : — 
 England and Wales, 1st January, 1906 926,741 cost ;^i4,035,888 
 Scotland, 15th January, 1906 .. .. 111,405 ,, 1,406,489 
 
 Ireland, 7th January, 1906 .. .. 104,362 ,, 1,209,286 
 
 1,142,508 ;^i6,65i,663 
 
 (Statistical abstract for the United Kingdom. Cd. — 3,691.) 
 
 But the relief is not usually given permanently ; to 
 obtain the number of different individuals who receive 
 relief during a year we must multiply the daily number by 
 2-3. (This is the computation given in Mr. Charles Booth's 
 paper before the Statistical Society, December, 1891. See 
 also his Pauperism, a Picture ; and the Endowment of Old 
 Age, an Argument.) This gives a pauper class during any 
 one year of about i,b2j,ooo persons, or i in b of the manual-
 
 FACTS FOR SOCIALISTS 2$ 
 
 labour class. In some rural districts every aged labourer 
 is a pauper. 
 
 The maintenance of these paupers cost ^16,651,663 for 
 a year. But in addition to this public expenditure the 
 various charitable societies spend £10,040,000 annually 
 (Mr. Mulhall, Dictionary of Statistics, p. 112), and the charity 
 of individuals is known to be enormous. The numbers of 
 the destitute class must therefore be largely increased. 
 Sir R. Giffen talks of the class of live millions " whose 
 existence is a stain on our civilization " {Essays in Finance, 
 vol. ii, p. 350). It is the lot of at least one in five of the 
 manual-labour class — of 16 in every 100 of the whole 
 population — to belong to this class. 
 
 " To me, at least, it would be enough to condemn modern society 
 as hardly an advance on slavery or serfdom, if the permanent 
 condition of industry were to be that which we behold, that 90 
 per cent of the actual producers of wealth have no home that they 
 can call their own beyond the end of the week ; have no bit of soil, 
 or of so much as a room that belongs to them ; have nothing of 
 value of any kind, except as much old furniture as will go in a 
 cart ; have the precarious chance of weekly wages which barely 
 suffice to keep them in health ; are housed for the most part in 
 places that no man thinks fit for his horse ; are separated by so 
 narrow a margin from destitution, that a month of bad trade, sick- 
 ness, or unexpected loss, brings them face to face with hunger and 
 pauperism. . . . This is the normal state of the average workman 
 in town or country " (Mr. Frederic Harrison, p. 429, Reports of 
 Industrial Remuneration Conference, 1886). 
 
 The normal state of the " average workman " is the average 
 normal state of four out of five of the whole population 
 (Prof. Leone Levi, Times, 13th January, 1885). 
 
 Xn. The evil and the remedy.—" The deepest root 
 of the evils and iniquities wdiich fill the industrial world 
 is not competition, but the subjection of labour to capital, 
 and the enormous share which the possessors of the instru- 
 ments of industry are able to take from the produce " 
 (J. S. Mill quoting Feugueray, Principles of Political 
 Economy, p. 447, edition of 1865). 
 
 " We have been suffering for a century from an acute 
 outbreak of individualism, unchecked by the old restraints, 
 and invested with almost a religious sanction by a certain 
 bouUeb& school of writers " (Prof. H. S. Fo:iwell, Uuivtrbiby
 
 26 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 College, London, p. 249 of essay in The Claims of Labour, 
 1886). 
 
 " It is, indeed, certain that industrial society will not 
 permanently remain without a systematic organization. The 
 mere conflict of private interests will never produce a well- 
 ordered commonwealth of labour " (article on " Political 
 Economy " in Encydopcedia Britannica, vol. xix, 1886, 
 p. 382, since published as the History of Political Economy, 
 by J. K. Ingram, ll.d., Trinity College, Dublin). 
 
 Socialists affirm that the evil can never be remedied 
 until the " two nations " are united by the restitution to 
 public purposes of rent and interest of every kind, and by 
 the growth of social sympathy promoted by the accom- 
 panying cessation of class distinctions. It will be seen 
 by the above quotations that this position is based on the 
 facts of the case as ascertained and declared by the recog- 
 nized authorities in statistics, and is in entire harmony 
 with the doctrines of Political Economy. 
 
 XIII. Some steps already taken towards Socialism. 
 
 The restitution to public purposes of rent and interest of 
 every kind cannot be effected by revolution, or by one or 
 a dozen Acts of Parliament. Legislative reforms are 
 needed, but they must be supplemented by a thoroughly 
 organized exercise by all local authorities, from Parish to 
 County Councils, of the powers they already possess, as 
 well as by the acquisition of new and more far-reaching 
 powers. The supply of water, milk, gas, and electric light, 
 the establishment of markets, slaughter-houses, tramways, 
 steamboats, baths, wash-houses, cemeteries, harbours, 
 libraries, bands, art galleries, museums, open spaces, 
 gymnasia, allotments, the building of workmen's dwell- 
 ings and municipal lodging-houses, are being carried on 
 by municipal authorities for the common good. They 
 might be extended to every urban community in the 
 kingdom if public opinion and public enterprise were 
 sufficiently alert to their opportunities. The following 
 figures show the influence of socialistic principles in our 
 municipal administration. A House of Commons Return, 
 issued in December, 1902, gives a summary of the repro- . 
 ductive undertakings carried on by 299 out o( the 317
 
 FACTS FOR SOCIALISTS 27 
 
 municipal boroughs in England and Wales ; total capital, 
 £121,172,372 ; balance outstanding, 31st March, 1902, 
 ^^104,925, 853 ; average annual income for four years to 
 31st March, 1902, £13,368,702 ; average annual working 
 expenses for the same period, £8,228,706 ; average annual 
 net profit for the same period, £4,812,005 (H.C. — 398, i6th 
 December, 1902). No later returns have been made. 
 
 The establishment of Works Departments and the direct 
 employment of labour are municipal developments which 
 are yearly transforming hundreds of workers into State 
 servants. 
 
 The transfer of rent and interest from private pockets 
 to public purposes will be mainly brought about by means 
 of progressive taxation in the shape of graduated death 
 duties, a graduated differentiated income tax, and the 
 rating of land values. The Budgets of 1894 and 1907 
 not only cleared the way for the application of Socialist 
 principles to taxation, but have brought a largely increased 
 revenue into the national exchequer. An estate duty, 
 varying from i per cent on estates of £500 to 10 per cent 
 on those of £1,000,000 and over, with an additional per- 
 centage, from II to 15 per cent on the amount of the estate 
 in excess of £1,000,000, is now exacted. The income 
 tax is not only graduated, but also differentiated as be- 
 tween earned and unearned incomes. During the year 
 1906-7 the revenue from the death duties was £18,958,763. 
 In the period 1894-5 to 1906-7 no less than £212,488,604 
 was collected from the death duties, an average of 
 £17,707,383 a year, as against £9,979,691 in 1893-4 (Cd. — 
 3.686). 
 
 The extension of these means by the Socialist Chancellors 
 of the Exchequer of the future will extinguish unearned in- 
 comes, and so far as taxation can do it, bring about the 
 emancipation of the people from private monopoly.
 
 II. CAPITAL AND LAND 
 
 THE practical aim of Socialists with regard to the 
 materials of wealth is " the emancipation of land and 
 industrial capital from individual and class ownership, and 
 the vesting of them in the community for the general 
 benefit." Land and capital are instruments with which 
 man works for the production of wealth, material for the 
 maintenance of his existence and comfort. Now it is im- 
 portant to notice that, though in common talk we separate 
 the two, and though political economists have given a 
 scientific dignity to this rough classification of the instru- 
 ments of production, distinguishing as " land " that 
 which has been provided by " Nature," and as " capital " 
 that which has been made by human industry, the dis- 
 tinction is not one which can be clearly traced in dealing 
 with the actual things which are the instruments of pro- 
 duction, because most of these are compounded of the 
 gifts of Nature and the results of human activity. 
 
 " Land." — The only instruments given to us by Nature 
 are climate, physical forces, and virgin soil. The use of 
 these passes with legal " property " in the land to which 
 they belong, and they are consequently classed with 
 " land." Those virgin soils are called good or fertile 
 which contain in abundance elements which the chemistry 
 of animal or vegetable life can convert into the materials 
 of human food, clothing, etc. Other mineral elements 
 of particular patches of soil are convertible by the arts of 
 the mining, metallurgic, building, and engineering indus- 
 tries, into a thousand forms of wealth. 
 
 How *' Land " gets value. — But even these qualities of 
 virgin soil are of no use or value unless they are found in 
 accessible positions ; and their advantage to the proprietor 
 of the land increases rapidly as human society develops 
 in their neighbourhood ; whilst in all advanced societies 
 wc find largs areas of town lands whose usefulness and 
 \aluc have nothing to do uath their soils, but are due 
 
 28
 
 CAPITAL AND LAND 29 
 
 entirely to the social existence and activity of man. Land 
 in Cornhill, worth a million pounds an acre, owes its value 
 to the world-wide industry and commerce whose threads 
 are brought together there, not to its natural fertility or 
 to the attractions of its climate. " Prairie value " is a 
 fiction. Unpopulated land has only a value through the 
 expectation that it will be peopled. 
 
 The " natural " capabilities of land are thus increased, 
 and, indeed, even called into existence, by the mere develop- 
 ment of society. But, further, every foot of agricultural 
 and mining land in England has been improved as an 
 instrument of production by the exercise of human labour. 
 
 First, of human labour not on that land itself ; by the 
 improvement of the general climate, through clearing of 
 forest and draining of marsh ; by the making of canals, 
 roads, railways, rendering every part of the country acces* 
 sible ; by the growth of villages and towns ; by the im- 
 provement of agricultural science ; and still more by the 
 development of manufactures and foreign commerce. Of 
 all this human labour, no man can say which part has 
 made the value of his land, and none can prove his title to 
 monopolize the value it has made. 
 
 Secondly, all our land has been improved by labour 
 bestowed especially upon it. Indeed, the land itself, as 
 an instrument of productioji, may be quite as truly said to 
 be the work of man as the gift of Nature. Every farm or 
 garden, every mine or quarry, is saturated with the effects 
 of human labour. Capital is everywhere infused into and 
 intermixed with land. Who distinguishes from the mine 
 the plant by which it exists ? Who distinguishes from the 
 farm the lanes, the hedges, the gates, the drains, the build- 
 ings, the farm-house ? Certainly not the English man of 
 business, be he landlord, farmer, auctioneer, or income 
 tax commissioner. Only the bold bad economist attempts 
 it, and, we must add, some few amongst our allies, the 
 Land Nationalizers. It may be worth while to digress 
 for a while in the company of these latter. 
 
 A word to " Land Nationalizers." — The arguments 
 revived in our generation by John Stuart Mill and Henry 
 George, and the activity of the various societies that have
 
 30 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 taken in hand the work of diffusing them, have now con- 
 verted an immense body of pubhc opinion to the Sociahst 
 view of the justice of, and urgent necessity for, Nationahza- 
 tion of the Land ; or, at least, the absorption by the State 
 or Municipahty of ground rents, mining royalties, and 
 similar unearned profits from the soil. Land Nationalizers 
 go, generally, so far with Socialists that (in the words of 
 the Fabian " Basis ") they " work for the extinction of 
 private property in land, and of the consequent individual 
 appropriation, in the form of rent, of the price paid for 
 permission to use the earth, as well as for the advantages 
 of superior soils and sites." 
 
 But some, who are thus far Land Nationalizers, still 
 shrink from any interference with the legal powers enjoyed 
 by the holders of capital. Hence a most unfortunate 
 separation exists between them and the Socialists, whose 
 design of nationalizing the industrial capital with the land 
 appears to them unjustifiable and unessential. 
 
 Capitalist and Landlord in one Boat. — They use the 
 argument that capital, unlike land, is created by labour, 
 and is therefore a proper subject of private ownership, 
 while land is not. Socialists do not overlook the facts on 
 which this argument rests, but they deny, on the grounds 
 already partly stated, that any distinction can be founded 
 on them sufficiently clear and important to justify the 
 conclusion drawn. But supposing we assume it true that 
 land is not the product of labour, and that capital is ; it 
 is not by any means true that the rent of land is not the 
 product of labour, and that the interest on capital is. 
 Nor is it true, as Land Nationalizers frequently seem to 
 assume, that capital necessarily becomes the property of 
 those whose labour produces it ; whereas land is undeniably 
 in many cases owned by persons who have got it in exchange 
 for capital, which may, according to our premises, have 
 been produced by their own labour. Now since private 
 ownership, whether of land or capital, simply means the 
 right to draw and dispose of a revenue from the property, 
 why should the landowner be forbidden to do that which 
 is allowed to the capitalist, in a society in which land and 
 capital are commercially equivalent ? Virgin soil, with-
 
 CAPITAL AND LAND 31 
 
 out labour upon or about it, can yield no revenue, and 
 all capital has been produced by labour working on land. 
 The landlord receives the revenue which labour produces 
 on his land in the form of food, clothing, books, pictures, 
 yachts, racehorses, and command of industrial capital, in 
 whatever proportions he thinks best. The ownership of 
 land enables the landlord to take capital for nothing from 
 the labourers as fast as their labour creates it, exactly as 
 it enables him to squander idly other portions of its product 
 in the manner that so scandalizes the Land Nation alizers. 
 When his tenants improve their holdings by their own 
 labour, the landlord, on the expiration of the lease, re- 
 morselessly appropriates the capital so created, by raising 
 the rent. In the case of poor tenants holding farms from 
 year to year in Ireland, the incessant stealing of capital 
 by this method so outraged the moral sense of the com- 
 munity, that the legislature interfered to prevent it, long 
 before Land Nationalization was commonly talked of in 
 this country. Yet Land Nationalizers seem to be pre- 
 pared to treat as sacred the landlords' claim to private 
 property in capital acquired by thefts of this kind, although 
 they will not hear of their claim to property in land. 
 Capital serves as an instrument for robbing in a precisely 
 identical manner. In England industrial capital is mainly 
 created by wage workers, who get nothing for it but per- 
 mission to create in addition enough subsistence to keep 
 each other alive in a poor way. Its immediate appropria- 
 tion by idle proprietors and shareholders, whose economic 
 relation to the workers is exactly the same in principle 
 as that of the landlords, goes on every day under our eyes. 
 The landlord compels the worker to convert his land into 
 a railway, his fen into a drained level, his barren seaside 
 waste into a fashionable watering-place, his mountain into 
 a tunnel, his manor park into a suburb full of houses let on 
 repairing leases ; and lo ! he has escaped the Land Nation- 
 alizers : his land is now become capital, and is sacred. 
 
 The position is so glaringly absurd, and the proposed 
 attempt to discriminate between the capital value and 
 the land value of estates is so futile, that it seems almost 
 certain that the Land Nationalizers will go as far as the
 
 32 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 Socialists, as soon as they understand that the Socialists 
 admit that labour has contributed to capital, and that 
 labour gives some claim to ownership. The Socialists, 
 however, must contend that only an insignificant part of 
 our capital is now in the hands of those by whom the labour 
 has been performed, or even of their descendants. How 
 it was taken from them, none should know better than the 
 land Nationalizers. 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to enlarge on or illustrate the 
 obvious truth that, whatever the origin of land and capital, 
 the source of the revenues drawn from them is contem- 
 porary labour. The remainder of this tract may still 
 further impress the impossibility of maintaining any hard 
 and fast lines between them, either as regards their charac- 
 teristics and importance in developed societies, or the 
 defensibility of their private ownership or the arguments 
 for their nationalization. 
 
 " Capital." — To return from our digression : When we 
 consider what is usually called capital, we are as much at 
 a loss to disentangle it from land as we are to find land 
 which does not partake of the attributes of capital. 
 
 For though capital is commonly defined as wealth pro- 
 duced by human labour, and destined not for the immediate 
 satisfaction of human wants, but for transformation into, 
 or production of, the means of such satisfaction in the 
 future ; yet railways, docks, canals, mines, etc., which 
 are classed among the instruments of production as capital, 
 are really only somewhat elaborate modifications of land. 
 The buildings and the plant with which they are worked 
 are further removed from the form of land, but we lump 
 the lot as capital. All farming improvements, all indus- 
 trial buildings, all shops, all machinery, raw material, 
 live and dead stock of every kind, are called capital. And 
 just as there is a purely social element in the value of land, 
 so are there purely social elements in the value of capital ; 
 and its value, in all its forms, depends upon its accessibility 
 and fitness here and now, and not on the labour it has 
 cost. The New River Company's Water Shares had 
 their recent enormous value, not because Sir Hugh 
 Middleton's venture was costly, but because London had
 
 CAPITAL AND LAND 33 
 
 become great. The usefulness of fixed and unchangeable 
 forms of capital increases and decreases through external 
 causes, just as does that of land. If instruments of pro- 
 duction must be classified, the best division of them is 
 into immovables and movables ; the annual value of build- 
 ings, railways, mines, quarries, waterworks, gasworks, 
 durable fixed machinery, and many other forms of so-called 
 capital, manifestly agreeing with that of land in fluctuating 
 according to causes of which the effects are generalized 
 in the " Law of Rent " of abstract economics. 
 
 Besides industrial capital, there is a considerable amount 
 of what has been conveniently called " consumer's capital." 
 Dwelling-houses, and all their domestic machinery and 
 conveniences are as necessary for production as land and 
 factories ; for though the worker uses them in his character 
 of consumer, they are necessary to maintain him in effi- 
 ciency for his work. All private stores of food and cloth- 
 ing, all forms of personal property, may likewise be classed 
 as consumer's capital. It will, however, be evident that 
 in classing these as capital the signification of that name 
 is becoming very vague and indefmite. 
 
 Finally we have such purely non-material and social 
 kinds of capital as banking and credit organizations, 
 inventions, and other devices for extending and intensify- 
 ing our power over Nature ; social forces of immense im- 
 portance for the carrying on of wealth production, largely 
 capable of social ownership, not entirely capable of 
 private monopoly, but at present appropriated by some 
 individuals more than by others. 
 
 What is the estimated value of our national stock of 
 the above-named form of wealth ? — In December, 1889, 
 Sir Robert Giffen attempted to compute the capital value 
 of realized property in the United Kingdom as it was in 
 the year 1885.^ The following table is reproduced from 
 that furnished by him, the figures being corrected accord- 
 ing to the ofhcial Returns of Income Tax Assessments for 
 1905-6. -^ The estimate of the value of the capital is 
 
 ^ See The Growth of Capital (1889), Essays in Finance. 
 
 - Fiftieth Report of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue 
 (Cd. — 3,686), price 2s. The amount stated as annual farmers' 
 c
 
 34 
 
 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 arrived at by taking what Sir R. Giffen considered 
 suitable number of years' purchase of the income : — 
 
 Gross Income. 
 
 Under : 
 Schedule A — 
 
 Profits from the owner- 
 ship of — 
 
 Land 
 
 Houses . . 
 
 Other property . . 
 Schedule B — 
 
 Profits from the occupa- 
 tion of lands (farmers' 
 profits mainly) 
 Schedule C 
 
 Profits from British, In- 
 dian, Colonial and 
 Foreign Government 
 Securities 
 Schedule D — 
 
 Quarries, mines and iron- 
 works . . 
 
 Gasworks 
 
 Waterworks 
 
 Canals, etc. 
 
 Fishings in the United 
 Kingdom and Sporting 
 Rights in Ireland 
 
 Markets, tolls, etc. 
 
 Salt springs or works 
 and Alum works 
 
 Cemeteries 
 
 Railways in the United 
 Kingdom 
 
 No. of 
 Years' Purchase. 
 
 Capital 
 Value. 
 i 
 
 52,151.543 
 
 205,486,455 
 
 1,310,673 
 
 52,421,649 
 
 26 
 15 
 30 
 
 1,355,940,118 
 
 3,082,296,825 
 
 39,320,190 
 
 419-373.192 
 
 46,925,674 25 1,173,141.850 
 
 24,379,408 
 7,413.611 
 5,816,300 
 3,847,201 
 
 203,304 
 869,635 
 
 150,573 
 183,612 
 
 4 
 25 
 20 
 20 
 
 20 
 20 
 
 20 
 20 
 
 97,517,6322 
 185,340,2752 
 1 16,326,0002 
 
 76,944,0202 
 
 4,066,080 2 
 17,392,7002 
 
 3,011,4602 
 3,672,2402 
 
 41,241,692 28 1,154,767,3762 
 
 Carried forward ;^7, 729, 109, 958 
 
 profits appears to be excessive, as Sir R. Giffen overlooked the fact 
 that the Income Tax Acts assume the net profits of agriculture (in 
 England) to be equal to one-third the rent, not the whole as here 
 given. The number of years' purchase of rural land may also be 
 regarded as too high. On the other hand, that of urban properties 
 is much understated. But these considerations do not materially 
 affect the aggregate total, and Sir R. Giffen's basis has therefore 
 been throughout maintained. 
 
 ^ This includes ;^i3,82i income assessed under Schedule D. 
 
 " Of these totals which make up the " industrial capital " of the 
 country, amounting to il3, 752, 541, 930, at least 3,290,257,001 is 
 under joint stock management, ;^2, 003, 392,001 being the paid-up
 
 CAPITAL AND LAND 
 
 35 
 
 Gross Income. 
 
 No of Capital 
 Years' Purchase Value. 
 
 i i 
 
 Brought forward 7,729,109,958 
 
 16,111,221 
 
 20 
 
 322,224,420 
 
 6,687,134 
 
 25 
 
 167,178,350 
 
 14,794,821 
 
 20 
 
 295,896,420 
 
 19.137.857 
 
 20 
 
 382,757,140 
 
 73,562,831 15 1,103,442,4652 
 
 Under : 
 
 Railways out of the 
 United Kingdom 
 
 Loans secured on the 
 public rates . . 
 
 Indian, Colonial, and 
 Foreign Securities 
 
 (other than Govern- 
 ment) . . 
 
 Other interest and pro- 
 fits, etc. 
 
 Other businesses, profes- 
 sions, etc., taking one- 
 fifth of the gross in- 
 comes as interest on 
 capital 
 
 Businesses, professions, 
 etc., omitted from as- 
 sessment, say 20 per 
 cent on amount as- 
 sessed (;^367, 8 14,155), 
 taking one-fifth of this 
 income as interest on 
 capital 
 
 Income from capital of 
 non-taxpayers, say . . 
 
 Foreign investments not 
 included in Schedules 
 C and D, say . . 
 
 Movables not yielding 
 income, say . . 
 
 Government and local 
 public property, say . . 
 
 Total £12,671,297,243^ 
 
 capital of the 40,995 registered companies carrying on business in 
 April, 1906, and £|i, 286, 883, 000 being the paid-up capital of the 
 railways in the United Kingdom at the end of 1906. See the Annual 
 Statistical Abstract, fifty-fourth number, C. — 3,691 (1907) ; price 
 IS. 7d. To this must be added the capital administered by char- 
 tered banks and trading companies, not registered under the Com- 
 panies Acts. 
 
 ^ These amounts, being conjectural only, are reproduced from 
 Sir R. Giffen's estimate in 1885, with small additions, amounting 
 in all to ;^ 1 5 5, 000, 000 on the capital value. 
 
 ■* Owing to a rearrangement of the Income Tax Returns the 
 
 14,712,566 
 
 15 
 
 220,688,4902 
 
 70,000,000 
 
 5 
 
 350,000,0002 
 
 50,000,000 
 
 10 
 
 500,000,000 
 
 1,000,000,000^ 
 
 600,000,000^
 
 36 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 " Land " and *' Capital " indistinguishable. — It may 
 
 be noticed that there is no attempt in this table to dis- 
 tinguish between what Land Nationalizers might think 
 should be classed as land, and what they would admit to 
 be capital. The common sense of the ordinary business 
 man and statistician recognizes that such distinction is 
 impracticable and arbitrary. To the business man they 
 are both equally forms of property, merely different kinds 
 of investments — that is, arrangements for obtaining a 
 revenue from the labour of others. The practical states- 
 man sees in them simply sources of income, and assesses 
 them equally to income tax. Indeed, that famous tax 
 of 20 per cent on rent, of which the Enghsh Land Restora- 
 tion League and many Radicals need to demand the revival, 
 was not imposed as a land tax at all, but formed part of 
 the incidence of a general tax of four shillings in the pound 
 on the annual value of all realized property and sale- 
 able INTERESTS, excepting only farm stock and household 
 furniture. It was an " Aid " (or tax upon realized pro- 
 perty) imposed primarily upon all persons " having any 
 Estate in ready Monies, or in any Debts whatsoever owing 
 to them within this Realm or without, or having any 
 Estate in Goods, Wares, Merchandizes, or other Chattels 
 or personal Estate whatsoever "... except " the Stock 
 upon Lands and such Goods as are and for Household 
 Stuff "... at the rate of " four Shillings in the Pound 
 according to the true Yearly Value thereof," computed at 
 
 total works out at less than on the method previously in use. It 
 is now probably a considerable under-statement. If we compare 
 this total for 1905-6 with those of previous years we find the total 
 estimated by Sir R. Giffen in 1865 was ;^6, 114,063,000 ; in 1875, 
 ;£8, 548, 1 20,000 ; and in 1885, ;^ 10,079, 5 79,000. In a paper read 
 to the British Association in September, 1903, and published in the 
 Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Vol. LXVI., Part III., 
 Sir R. Giffen estimated the total capital of the United Kingdom to 
 be ;^ 1 5,000,000,000. (The number of years' purchase taken above 
 is low, and a small increase would easily account for this larger 
 figure.) The increase in realized wealth in forty-one years may 
 therefore safely be estimated at six thousand millions sterling, or 
 an average of more than 140 millions a year. The average annual 
 increase has been at the rate of 2^ per cent, or nearly two and a half 
 times the rate of increase of the population.
 
 CAPITAL AND LAND 37 
 
 6 per cent of their capital value (see the Act of Parliament 
 of 1692, 4 William and Mary, cap. I, sec. 2), including also 
 the emoluments of pubHc officers at that time regarded as 
 saleable ])roperty (sec. 3), and finally " to the end a further 
 Aid and Sup])ly for their Majesties' Occasions may be 
 raised," a similar tax is imposed on Lands " according to 
 the true Yearly Value thereof at a Rack Rent " (sec. 4). Will 
 not the Land Nationalizers take this hint, and include 
 all unearned incomes in their " Single Tax " programme ? 
 
 Who owns all this Land and Capital ? — Who, then, 
 are the Landlords and the Capitahsts amongst us ? They 
 are those persons who own the instruments of wealth- 
 production and enjoy the profits of them. In England, 
 as in all developed industrial societies, almost the whole 
 of the land and industrial capital, and most of the con- 
 sumers' capital (chiefly consisting of dwelling-houses) is 
 at present owned and controlled by one set of people, 
 while it is another set of people who produce wealth by 
 using them. 
 
 " Capitalists." — A glance at Sir R. Giffen's table will 
 show how little of the material wealth of England is 
 available for immediate enjo3mient or consumption, and 
 how large a proportion is in the form of machinery to aid 
 labour in the supply of our wants from day to day. The 
 value of movable personal property, not employed as 
 instruments of production, must be less than one-tenth of 
 the total. DweUing-houses, and the land attached to 
 them, may amount to about two-tenths more. But 
 occupying ownership of these properties is the exception, 
 and most of them are used by their owners as an invest- 
 ment yielding rent, paid out of the earnings of working 
 occupiers. The whole of the remainder consists of land 
 and capital employed for wealth-production in agriculture, 
 mining, transport, and other industries, trades, and pro- 
 fessions. 
 
 Four-fifths of our national wealth, we may safely say, 
 consists of such instruments. The wants of the community 
 are supplied from year to year, and week to week, by the 
 reciprocal services of the active workers who usej^and
 
 38 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 administer them. The worker, of whatever kind, is paid 
 by a wage, a salary, a professional income, or profits due 
 to his skill in organizing or directing industry, the amount 
 of which is determined by competition between himself 
 and other workers. The owners of the instruments of 
 production receive as rent and interest such an amount 
 of the value of the produce as equalizes the normal income 
 of the workers in each calling ; that is to say, they obtain 
 from the workers who are using their land and capital a 
 toll equal to the difference between the product of industry 
 engaged in with any particular instrument of land or 
 capital, and the product of the like industry engaged in 
 with the least efficient instrument actually employed any- 
 where at the time. 
 
 Some of the workers are, it is true, themselves capitalists, 
 that is to say, own larger or smaller amounts of land and 
 capital ; and many capitalists work. How many, and 
 how much ? Here are some facts gathered from the 
 Report of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue for 1906-7, 
 and other reliable sources. ^ 
 
 " Landlords." — Probate or administration was granted 
 in 66,082 estates of the net capital value of £298,460,180 
 in 1906-7. They were classified as follows : — 
 
 34,296 estates not exceeding ;^5oo, aggregating /io,ooi,740. 
 
 10,516 estates over ;^5oo, and not exceeding ;^i,ocx), aggregating 
 ;^8,6i6,449. 
 
 17,098 estates, over ;^i,ooo and not exceeding ;^io,ooo, aggregating 
 ;^6i, 588,433. 
 
 4,086 estates, over ;^io,ooo and not exceeding ;^250,ooo, aggre- 
 gating ;^i49,959,28o. 
 
 58 estates, over ;^2 50,000 and not exceeding ;^500,ooo, aggrega- 
 ting ;^2i, 292,964. 
 
 18 estates, over ;^5oo,ooo and not exceeding ;(|i, 000,000, aggre- 
 gating ;^i2,863,i32. 
 
 10 estates, over ;^i,ooo,ooo, aggregating ;^34,i38,i82. 
 
 About one-seventieth part of the population owns far 
 more than one-half of the entire accumulated wealth, public 
 and private, of the United Kingdom. More than one-half 
 the area of the whole country is owned by 2,500 people. ^ 
 
 1 Inland Revenue Report, 1907, Cd. — 3686. 
 
 * See Riches and Poverty, by L. G. Chiozza Money, M.P., pp. 
 72 and 75. Also " Facts for Socialists," in this volume.
 
 CAPITAL AND LAND 39 
 
 "Workers." — How much land and capital do the 
 manual-labour class own ? Supposing that they were the 
 owners of the whole of — 
 
 the deposits (1906) in the P.O. Savings Bank ^ . . ;^i55,996,446 
 
 • f ,, Trustee ,, > . . 53,009,299 
 
 the Consols purchased for small holders by the P.O. ^ 18,986,199 
 
 the Consols held for depositors in Trustee Savings 
 
 Banks ^ .. .. .. .. .. .. 2,369,869 
 
 the nominal capital (1905) of the Building Societies^ 70,348,997 
 
 the nominal capital of the — 
 
 100 principal Trade Unions (1905)- . . • • £ 4,808,106 
 
 Co-operative Societies (1905)- .. .. .. 68,251,495^ 
 
 Friendly Societies (1904)" .. .. .. .. 50,458,287 
 
 Industrial Life Assurance Societies^ .. .. 34,913,210 
 
 they would own land and capital valued at . . . . 459,141,908 ■* 
 
 that is to say, a little less than one thirty-second part of 
 the land and capital with which they work. The number 
 of persons " employed at wages " in the industries of the 
 kingdom was estimated at about fourteen millions, includ- 
 ing over four million women in 1891, and must be at least 
 fifteen and a half millions now. The share of the able- 
 bodied manual-workers, in property, then, must average 
 about £29 per head of those in employment. 
 
 What sort of a system is this ? — Labour pohticians, 
 Land Nationalizers, Conservatives, Radicals, all who 
 interest themselves in social science as the study of the 
 well-being of man, will agree with us that the use of land 
 and capital should be to serve as instruments for the 
 
 ^ " Statistical Abstract," C. — 3,691, 1907. 
 
 " " Eleventh Annual Report of the Labour Department of the 
 Board of Trade," Cd. — 3,690, 1907. 
 
 ^This figure includes some societies such as the Civil Service 
 Stores, which are not Workmen's Co-operative Societies, though 
 registered as Industrial and Provident Societies under the Friendly 
 Societies Acts. 
 
 *This total is undoubtedly a great deal too large, and much of 
 it is duplicate. Thus, for instance, many of the Building Societies, 
 Trade Unions, Co-operative Societies, Friendly Societies, and 
 Industrial Assurance Societies, bank their surplus funds in the Post 
 Office and the Trustee Savings Banks, and those amounts therefore 
 are in this total counted twice over. Much of it, moreover, is 
 owned by children and others belonging to the middle class.
 
 40 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 active, the energetic, the industrious, the inteUigent of 
 mankind to produce wealth for themselves and those who 
 are necessarily dependent on them, and to maintain the 
 conditions of healthy existence for the society which they 
 compose. And will they not also agree with us that it is 
 the abuse of land and capital that they should be made 
 by the laws of any people a " property " often owned by 
 entirely idle and unprofitable persons, who may exact 
 hire for them from those who are working for the main- 
 tenance of social existence, or may even refuse the would- 
 be workers access to these indispensable instruments of 
 industry ? For what are the effects ? 
 
 If the access be refused — land kept out of cultivation ; 
 tillage turned into sheepwalks, and sheepwalks into shoot- 
 ings ; natural sources of wealth locked up from use ; the 
 pleasant places of the earth, the mountains, the moors, 
 the woodlands, the seashores, parked and preserved and 
 placarded, that the few may have space for their pride, ' 
 while the many must crowd into squahd cities and dismal 
 agricultural towns, and take their holidays in herds on 
 the few beaten tracks left free for them. In commerce — 
 rings, corners, syndicates, pools, and monopolies, and all 
 the fearful social loss and waste of under-production ; 
 lock-outs, short time, and other expedients of the reckless 
 selfishness of capitalists who are nursing the market for 
 private ends. 
 
 If access be granted — if the land and capital be devoted 
 to their proper use, then it is on condition that rent and 
 interest be paid to the proprietor, simply in virtue of his 
 existence as such. He may or may not be doing some work 
 of social utility, but the rent and interest are paid to him 
 as an absolutely idle person, and it is this, the tribute of 
 industry to idleness, that Land Nationalizers denounce 
 in its form of rent, and that Socialists, and all who have 
 the Socialist spirit, denounce in aU its forms. 
 
 With the Land Nationalizers we are at one entirely on 
 this point : That so much of the annual value of land 
 as they class as rent (which is caused by the physical 
 qualities, advantages, or position of land), is a toll taken 
 by an idle class frora the industry of the rest of the nation,
 
 CAPITAL AND LAND 41 
 
 and should be resumed by the nation in the quickest and 
 most effectual manner possible. 
 
 With the non-Socialists we agree entirely on this point : 
 That so much of the income of any landlord as is caused, 
 not by rent as defined by the political economists, but by 
 the exercise of his own abilities as a superintendent and 
 director of agriculture or industry, is of the nature of a 
 salary, the competitive price of useful work done for society. 
 And we further agree with the non-Socialists that so much 
 of the income of any capitalist as is caused, not by interest 
 as defined by the economists, but by the exercise of a 
 similar ability in the administration of capital and the 
 organization of industry, is equally of the nature of a 
 salary obtained by useful work. 
 
 Wc must, however, point out that the monopoly of land 
 and capital has led, and still leads, to a virtual class mono- 
 poly of the opportunities of doing this kind of work, and 
 of the education and training required for it ; and that not 
 till these private monopolies are abolished will the re- 
 muneration of such activity reach its normal level of com- 
 petition value. The same monopoly has given to the 
 sons of the privileged classes an advantage which still keeps 
 the wages of certain professions (the Bar, for instance, to 
 which access is guarded by the useless convention of a 
 long and extravagant sham-education), above the level at 
 which they would stand were their opportunities equally 
 open to all. 
 
 The amount of tribute and its effects. — Of the tolls 
 enumerated in Sir R. Giffen's table we cannot say what 
 part should be classed as rent and what part as interest ; 
 we can only state that the total income derived from real 
 property — lands and buildings — must amount to about 
 £310,000,000 a year ; and that, according to the table, at 
 least £390,000,000 may be classed as pure interest on other 
 instruments of production (apart from all reward for 
 personal services). 
 
 The profits and salaries of the class who share in the 
 advantages of the monopoly of the instruments of pro- 
 duction, or are endowed by nature with q.n exceptional
 
 42 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 ability of high marketable value, amount, according to the 
 best estimate that can be formed, to about £490,000,000 
 annually. While, out of a national income of some 
 ;^i, 920, 000, 000 a year, the workers in the manual-labour 
 class, four-fifths of the population, obtain in wages not 
 more than £730,000,000. 
 
 Rent and interest alone, the obvious tribute of the 
 workers as such to the drones as such, amount demon- 
 strably to almost as much as this sum annually, and it 
 may be safely said that the workers, from top to bottom 
 of society, pay a fine of one-half the wealth they produce 
 to a parasitic class, before providing for the maintenance 
 of themselves and their proper dependents. 
 
 Is a healthy existence secured for society by this arrange- 
 ment ? 
 
 The income of the manual-labour class may be put at 
 less than £50 per family,^ and out of this they must pay 
 heavy rents for the houses they live in. How much is left 
 for healthy life ? Even that little is not always vouchsafed 
 to them. There are in London now at least 35,000 adult 
 men who, with their families (say 100,000), are slowly 
 starving for want of regular employment. Over thirty 
 per cent of the whole four million inhabitants of the richest 
 city in the world were found by Mr. Charles Booth 
 to fall below his " Poverty Line " of bare subsistence 
 earnings. 
 
 " At present the average age at death among the nobiUty, 
 gentry, and professional classes in England and Wales is 55 years ; 
 but among the artizan classes of Lambeth it only amounts to 
 29 years ; and whilst the infantile death-rate among the well-to-do 
 classes is such that only eight children die in the first year of life 
 out of 100 born, as many as 30 per cent succumb at that age among 
 the children of the poor in some districts of our large cities. The 
 only real cause of this enormous difference in the position of the 
 rich and poor with respect to their chances of existence lies in the 
 fact that at the bottom of society wages are so low that food and 
 other requisites of health are obtained with too great difficulty " 
 (Dr. C. R. Drysdale, Report of Industrial Remuneration Con- 
 ference, p. 130). 
 
 One in three of Londoners dies in the workhouse, lios- 
 Annual Report of_^the Labour Department, 1893-4, C. — 7,565.
 
 CAPITAL AND LAND 43 
 
 pital, or lunatic asylum ; one in six of the manual-labour 
 class is a pauper, or has been one. 
 
 Hear Professor Huxley {Nineteenth Century for February, 
 1888) :— 
 
 " Any one who is acquainted with the state of the popula- 
 tion of all great industrial centres, whether in this or other 
 countries, is aware that amidst a large and increasing body 
 of that population there reigns supreme . . . that condition 
 which the French call la misere, a word for which I do not 
 think there is any exact English equivalent. It is a condition 
 in which the food, warmth, and clothing, which are necessary for 
 the mere maintenance of the functions of the body in their normal 
 state, cannot be obtained ; in which men, women, and children 
 are forced to crowd into dens wherein decency is abolished, and the 
 most ordinary conditions of healthful existence are impossible of 
 attainment ; in which the pleasures within reach are reduced to 
 brutality and drunkenness ; in which the pains accumulate at 
 compound interest in the shape of starvation, disease, stunted 
 development, and moral degradation ; in which the prospect of 
 even steady and honest industry is a life of unsuccessful battling 
 with hunger, rounded by a pauper's grave. . . . When the organiza- 
 tion of society, instead of mitigating this tendency, tends to con- 
 tinue and intensify it, when a given social order plainly makes for 
 evil and not for good, men naturally enough begin to think it high 
 time to try a fresh experiment. I take it to be a mere plain truth 
 that throughout industrial Europe there is not a single large manu- 
 facturing city which is free from a vast mass of people whose con- 
 dition is exactly that described, and from a still greater mass, who, 
 living just on the edge of the social swamp, are liable to be precipi- 
 tated into it." 
 
 Land reform a partial remedy only, — How far would 
 land restoration alone remedy this ? If it were possible 
 to nationalize soil apart from capital, the ground rents 
 recovered for the nation might possibly amount to the 
 present sum of our imperial and local taxation, £240,000,000 
 or thereabouts. ^ The pecuniary relief certainly could 
 not amount to more. Land nationalization might further 
 immensely benefit society, where it now suffers from the 
 curmudgeonism of private owners. But so long as capital 
 continued to be used for the exploitation of the workers, 
 so long would their economic slavery continue. Those 
 who retain the capital, without which the earth and all 
 
 ^"Statistical Abstract of the United Kingdom," Cd. — 3,691, 
 1907.
 
 44 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 its products cannot be worked, will step into the place 
 of the landlord, and the tribute of " interest " will be 
 augmented. Society will be relieved, but not freed. 
 
 Objections to Socialism. — But the "practical" objector 
 may say : Does not the capitalist now administer his 
 capital and direct industry ? Was not this admitted 
 above ? And is not capital, the product of labour, 
 maintained and augmented by saving ? How will 
 Socialists provide for the administration and increase of 
 capital ? 
 
 "Management." — The question is being answered by 
 the contemporary development of industrial organization. 
 How much of the " management of land " is done now 
 by the landlords, and how much by the farmer and the 
 agent, or the bailiff ? The landlord's supposed function 
 in this respect is almost entirely performed by salaried 
 professional men. As to capital, who manages it ? The 
 shareholders in the joint stock companies, who own nearly 
 five-sixths of the whole industrial capital ? No ! The 
 shareholding capitalist is a sleeping partner. More and 
 more every day is the capitalist pure and simple the mere 
 owner of the lien for interest, becoming separated from the 
 administrator of capital, as he has long been separated 
 from the wage worker employed therewith. The working 
 partner, with sleeping partner drawing interest, is every 
 day passing into the form of the director of a joint stock 
 company. More and more is the management of industries 
 falling into the hands of paid managers, and even the 
 " directors " emphasize the fiction that they are not 
 mere money-bags and decorative M.P.'s, by the humorous 
 practice of taking fees for their labours at board 
 meetings. 
 
 The administrator of capital can be obtained at present 
 for a salary equivalent to his competition value, whether 
 the concern to be managed be a bank, a railway, a brewery, 
 a mine, a farm, a factory, a theatre, or a hotel. The 
 transfer to the community (national or local) of the 
 ownership of the main masses of industrial capital
 
 CAPITAL AND LAND 45 
 
 need make no more difference in this respect than does 
 the sale of shares on the Stock Exchange at the present 
 moment. 
 
 " Saving." — As for the saving of capital, what does that 
 mean ? The artificial instruments of production which 
 form the bulk of property exist certainly only because 
 human labour has been devoted to the production of forms 
 of wealth other than those which are for immediate con- 
 sumption. Every man in receipt of an income has the 
 option of taking out his claim on the labour of society in 
 the form of immediate enjoyments, passing and perishing 
 in the use, and leaving the world no richer — as luxuries 
 of all kinds, leisure for amusement or travel, service of 
 menials, royal wedding illuminations, beer and skittles, 
 or else in the form of more permanent products or of 
 instruments which can be used for further wealth-pro- 
 duction. All that he spends on the latter class of 
 product is said to be saved — and at least two hundred 
 million pounds annually, according to Sir R. Giffen, are 
 " saved" in this way by the creation of new houses, docks, 
 railways, roads, machinery, and other aids to future 
 labour. If a man's income represents the competition 
 value of work done by him, it is said that he has " pro- 
 duced " the amount of saving so made, and has some title 
 to its ownership. 
 
 But just as the productive qualities of land are only 
 maintained by the continuous application of human in- 
 dustry, so the most permanent forms of capital are per- 
 petually wasting and being repaired, whilst, of the less 
 durable forms, such as machinery, raw material, and 
 farming stock, the whole is incessantly transformed, con- 
 sumed, replaced and renewed. The capital saved by the 
 original investor has long since disappeared. 
 
 There are, however, very few forms of consumable 
 wealth which can be "saved" at all. Food, clothing, 
 ordinary comforts and luxuries, amusements, and all that 
 makes up our daily life, admit of little storage. 
 
 When we say that a man has saved so much wealth, 
 we simply mean that he has abstained from taking out a
 
 46 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 claim which he had on society, and that its payment is, 
 by agreement, deferred to the future. But the wealth 
 which is to meet that claim does not at present exist. It 
 is to be produced by the workers, when, where, and in the 
 form asked for. 
 
 If we admit the fairness and advantage of guaranteeing 
 to every man the equivalent of the result of his own 
 industry, we should deny that there is adequate social 
 advantage in a system which permits him to convert this 
 claim into a lien for a perpetual annuity, an enduring 
 tribute from the workers for the use of that which only 
 their using can keep from perishing, while he retains un- 
 diminished all the time his claim to the repayment of the 
 original " saving." 
 
 The " saving " of capital, the increase of the instruments 
 of production and of permanent commodities by the ab- 
 stention from consumption of all wealth produced, is 
 undoubtedly an advantage to society. If any individual, 
 for the sake of rendering such advantages to society, 
 abstains in any year from himself consuming all that he 
 has earned, by all means let him be repaid in his old age, 
 or whenever he wants the equivalent of his past activity. 
 Why should we not, as a transitional expedient, treat such 
 economizers as we treat inventors, and if they will not 
 work without such a precise guarantee, if they are still 
 purely individualist in their motive for activity, give them 
 such a reward as we give individualist inventors ^ in their 
 patent rights, so long as such encouragement is necessary for 
 the creation and interest of our capital. But let that which 
 society has maintained and fructified invariably pass to 
 society within a limited period. So much maybe necessary for 
 the present to promote saving out of earned incomes ; for 
 saving out of the unearned incomes of rent and interest 
 society can even now take its own measures by taxation 
 for the increase of public capital. As soon as industrial 
 capital is owned by those who use it, provision out of 
 
 1 Non-individualist inventors are those who, like the late Thomas 
 Stevenson (lighthouse engineering), Michael Faraday (industrial 
 chemistry and electricity), Sir Wilham Simpson (anaesthetics), and 
 a host of others, return gratuitously to society the fruits of their 
 inventive genius, and take out no patents.
 
 CAPITAL AND LAND 47 
 
 income for all necessary maintenance and increase of the 
 instruments of production will be an ordinary and obvious 
 element in its administration, as it is now in a joint 
 stock company, and our present precarious dependence 
 on the caprice or acquisitiveness of individuals will be 
 superseded. 
 
 We appeal, therefore, to Land Nationalizers to con- 
 sider their reason for hesitating to work with us for the 
 nationalization of capital, on the ground that the evolution 
 of industry has rendered land and capital indistinguishable 
 and equally indispensable as instruments of production, 
 and that, holding with J. S. Mill that the " deepest root 
 of the evils and iniquities which fill the industrial world 
 is . . . the subjection of labour to capital, and the enor- 
 mous share which the possessors of the instruments of 
 industry are able to take from the produce," ^ we see 
 clearly that if they would make any improvement in the 
 condition of the agricultural labourer and his fellow wage- 
 slave in the towns, they will be forced to abandon the 
 illogical distinctions that are sometimes drawn between 
 the instruments with which they work. 
 
 As instruments of production, the use and value of land 
 and capital alike are due to human labour ; alike they are 
 used for the hindrance or exploitation of industry by their 
 proprietor ; aUke they are limited in quantity, and con- 
 sequently subject to monopoly ; alike they enable a 
 private monopolist to exact tribute from the workers for 
 the use of that which the workers have produced. 
 
 The Political Situation. — We appeal to political re- 
 formers of all parties to work with us in the spirit which 
 is more and more merging politics in Socialism. However 
 much they may hold aloof from the Land Nationalization 
 movement, and resent the imputation of Socialistic tenden- 
 cies, they have yet been, and still are, and will be, forced to 
 modify our social system in the Socialist direction. What 
 were the Tory Factory Acts, the Truck Acts, the Mines Regu- 
 lation Acts, the Workmen's Compensation Acts, but limita- 
 
 ^ Quotation from Feuguerayi in Principles of Political Economy, 
 p. 477, edn. of 1865.
 
 48 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 tions of the power of capital ? What are the Adulteration 
 Acts, the Merchant Shipping Acts, the Employers' Liability 
 Acts ? What was the Abolition of the Corn Laws ? 
 The Mark Lane Express has told us — a confiscation of the 
 " property " of the landlords. What are the Irish Land 
 Acts and the action of the Land Commissioners ? What 
 are the proposals of official Liberals for a " just taxation of 
 land values and ground rents," and " taxation " (appar- 
 ently not necessarily " just ") "of mining royalties,"^ 
 and of politicians of both parties for a sliding scale of 
 income tax, but projects for the partial recovery for 
 the nation of the toll which property takes from in- 
 dustry ? What are the Small Holdings and Allotments 
 Acts, but the beginning of provision for the municipaliza- 
 tion of land ? 
 
 In what respect, then, do the supporters of these measures 
 differ from us on grounds of principle ? 
 
 Why are these reformers not Socialists ? Why do they 
 hesitate to join the only party of social reform which has 
 definite principles of action, and a clear vision of the course 
 of economic evolution ? Have they not paved the way 
 by their progressive restrictions of the despotism of the 
 private employer ? And are they not constantly extend- 
 ing the sphere of social industry in the post office, the 
 telegraphs, telephones, tramways, docks, harbours, mar- 
 kets, schools, the supply of gas, water, and electricity, 
 and many other public undertakings ? Are they not 
 steadily increasing the local taxation of realized property, 
 and recovering rent for public use, by the rates on rent for 
 education, parks, free libraries, public baths, meals for 
 school children, and other social conveniences ? 
 
 All these are Socialistic measures, that is, they tend 
 either to the recovery of some portion of the tribute which 
 landlord and capitalist now levy, or to the assumption by 
 the community of the control of land and industrial capital. 
 These measures we would extend by increased taxation, 
 and by the additions to, such communal administration, 
 in the hope of leavening the Individualist society in which 
 we have to work. Such advances serve as palliatives of 
 1 National Liberal Federation Resolution, 1891.
 
 CAPltAL AhilS LAU'Q a9 
 
 existing evils, as educational examples to the slow of 
 understanding, as encouragements to the cautious and 
 conservative. But whether the advance be slow or rapid, 
 this we hold indisputable, that until the workers of this 
 and every other country collectively own and control the 
 instruments they must work with, till then are liberty and 
 manhood impossible for the majority ; and that until we' 
 cease to pay to non-effecti-ves the half of our arinuat 
 sustenance, it will be impossible for the many to obtai'i* 
 that existence and education in youth, that security and 
 leisure in old age, and those opportunities for human and 
 appreciative life, which the resources of our country and 
 our civihzation are amply sufficient to yield them.
 
 III. SOCIALISM : TRUE AND FALSE 
 
 By SIDNEY WEBB 
 
 A Lecture delivered to the Fabian Society, 21st January, 
 1894, by Sidney Webb. 
 
 I DO not know whether many of those here present are 
 aware that we celebrate to-night what may be regarded 
 as the tenth anniversary of the foundation of this Society. 
 It was on the 4th of January, 1884, that the httle group 
 which had been for some months discussing the Regenera- 
 tion of the World and a Fellowship of the New Life, 
 formally adopted the title of the Fabian Society — thereby 
 indicating, as I take it, an underlying suspicion that the 
 Devil of Individualism was not to be driven out by any 
 short and sharp encounter, but that it behoved all true 
 believers to watch and wait and diligently equip themselves 
 for a warfare which must necessarily be harassing and 
 protracted. But though we took the title of the Fabian 
 Society in January, 1884, it was two or three years before 
 we had quite found out what our instinctive choice of a 
 title really portended. In 1884 the Fabian Society, like 
 the other Socialist organizations, had its enthusiastic young 
 members — aye, and old ones, too — who placed all their 
 hopes on a sudden tumultuous uprising of a united prole- 
 tariat, before whose mighty onrush, kings, landlords and 
 capitalists would go down like ninepins, leaving society 
 quietly to re-sort itself into Utopia. The date for this 
 Social Revolution was sometimes actually fixed for 1889, 
 the centenary of the opening of the French Revolution. 
 I remember myself that one of our friends, in his zeal that 
 the rural districts might not be forgotten, printed and
 
 SOCIALISM: TRUE AND FALSE 51 
 
 circulated a proposal that a few Socialist missionaries 
 should buy a gipsy caravan and live in it " until the 
 Revolution," an event evidently to be expected before the 
 ensuing winter ! 
 
 It was against all thinking and teaching of this cata- 
 strophic kind that the Society gradually came to set its 
 face — not, as I believe, because we were any less in earnest 
 in our warfare against existing evils, or less extreme in our 
 remedies, but because we were sadly and sorrowfully 
 driven to the conclusion that no sudden or simultaneous 
 transformation of society from an Individualist to a 
 Collectivist basis was possible, or even thinkable. 
 
 On the other hand we had but little sympathy with 
 schemes for the regeneration of mankind by the establish- 
 ment of local Utopias, whether in Cumberland or in Chili. 
 To turn our back on the Unearned Increment and the 
 Machine Industry seemed a poor way of conquering them. 
 We had no faith in the recuperative qualities of spade 
 husbandry or in any devices for dodging the Law of Rent. 
 In short, we repudiated the common assumption that 
 Socialism was necessarily bound up with Insurrectionism on 
 the one hand or Utopianism on the other, and we set to 
 work to discover for ourselves and to teach to others how 
 practically to transform England into a Social Democratic 
 Commonwealth . 
 
 Well, we have, I hope, all learned a great deal since 1884, 
 but everything that has happened during these years has 
 strengthened our faith in the fundamental principles of 
 our association. If I might speak in the name of our 
 members, I should say that we are more than ever con- 
 vinced of the utter impossibility of what may be called 
 Catastrophic Socialism and all its attendant heresies. Nor 
 have we seen reason to alter our distrust of separate Socialist 
 communities, in whatever specious new form the old idea 
 may clothe itself. For all these years we have held on 
 our course, turning neither to Insurrectionism on the one 
 hand nor to Utopianism on the other. 
 
 If now I briefly recall to your mind some instances of the 
 progress of Collectivist ideas during these years, I trust 
 that no one will imagine that I am attempting to claim
 
 52 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 that progress as the work of the Fabian Society, or indeed 
 of any society whatever. Nothing is more futile than to 
 endeavour to ascribe the exact cause and origin of a 
 general intellectual movement, of which we are, indeed, 
 ourselves a product. The seeds of the Socialist harvest 
 of the last few years were sown by the great thinkers and 
 teachers of the last two generations ; and it would be idle 
 to attempt to measure the exact influence of any one of 
 them in the transformation of ideas amid which we are 
 now living. 
 
 I take as a starting-point, not 1884, but the year 1880, 
 which, as I conceive, approximately marks the turning of 
 thought. At that date we may almost say that an un- 
 systematic and empirical Individualism reigned supreme. 
 Not in one political party alone, or in one class of society, 
 but in all alike, we find the assumption that the functions 
 of government ought to be reduced to the barest minimum ; 
 that free competition, leading as it was supposed to the 
 survival of the fittest, was the only sure foundation of a 
 prosperous State ; and that the incessant private " war 
 which leads each man to strive to place himself on another's 
 shoulders and to remain there " (Sir Henry Maine, Popular 
 Government ), was, on the whole, a benevolent dispensa- 
 tion of Providence, and part of the " Laws of Nature," 
 not impiously to be interfered with. 
 
 The Liberal Party, at that time almost exclusively 
 dominated by the manufacturers and the Whig families, 
 was living on the remnants of the political reputation of 
 the Manchester School. A vague belief in the saving grace 
 of non-intervention abroad and laisser faire at home, was 
 vitalized only by a practical programme of the extension 
 of household franchise to the counties. To the rising 
 desire for social reform it presented no more hopeful solu- 
 tion than the economic negations of Nassau Senior and 
 Fawcett. The object of all social reforms, authorized or 
 unauthorized, was to enable the artisan to become a small 
 capitalist, and the labourer a small landowner. " Three 
 acres and a cow " in the country had its analogue in 
 schemes of leasehold enfranchisement in the towns. As 
 an alternative to the existing order of squires and captains
 
 SOCIALISM: TRUE AND FALSE 53 
 
 of industry, we had offered to us a millennium of peasant 
 proprietors and small masters. It is needless to enlarge 
 upon the self-complacency with which both Liberal and 
 Conservative capitalists delighted in reminding the work- 
 ing-men of all the future possibilities of self-advancement, 
 when land should be " free," food cheap, and industrial 
 competition unrestricted. The epics of this faith have 
 been written by that unconscious corrupter of youth, 
 Mr. Samuel Smiles, and are still fresh in the memories of 
 most of us. 
 
 In 1880 Mr. Gladstone came into power on a wave of 
 popular indignation against atrocities in Bulgaria, which 
 dispensed with the necessity for any programme of social 
 reforms in England. The political Radicals, swept along 
 by the same wave, were too busy denouncing international 
 aggression to be effective even on fiscal reform and political 
 democracy, beyond which they had practically no vision. 
 The Conservatives, less traditionally bound to Adminis- 
 trative Nihilism, had just consolidated the Factory Acts, 
 but their leaders had been so far perverted as deliberately 
 to leave the whole range of sweated trades outside the 
 effective scope of the law, and to give up all attempts to 
 shorten the hours of labour. Even the working-men had 
 been permeated by the same policy. The Trade Union 
 leaders could think of only four trivial amendments to 
 propose to the Factory Bill of 1878. The Trade Union 
 Congress of those years asked for practically nothing but 
 an Employers' Liability Bill. In 1879 there were a great 
 many more unemployed than there have ever been since, 
 but no responsible authority thought of anything but 
 charity or poor relief for them. Free Education, Exten- 
 sion of the Factory Acts, Limitation of the Hours of 
 Labour, Expansion of Municipal Activity, though all 
 proposed long before, seem, in 1880, scarcely to have 
 entered the heads of any of those who were leading either 
 the Conservative, the Liberal, the Radical, or the Trade 
 Union forces. But more striking even than this barren- 
 ness of programme was the total absence of any system- 
 atic view of politics as a whole. In this respect the 
 most advanced statesman of that day stood out in
 
 54 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 marked contrast with the Philosophic Radicals of the first 
 half of the century. I will quote the significant comment 
 of a shrewd critic of Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet : — 
 
 " James Mill and his school had two characteristics 
 which have not always marked energetic types of Liberal- 
 ism, and perhaps do not mark them in our own day. The 
 advanced Liberals of his time were systematic, and they 
 were constructive. They surveyed society and institutions 
 as a whole ; they connected their advocacy of political 
 and legal changes with theories of human nature ; they 
 considered the great art of government in connection with 
 the character of man, his proper education, his potential 
 capacities. They could explain in the large dialect of a 
 definite scheme what were their aims and whither they 
 were going. ... Is there any such approach to a body of 
 systematic political thought in our own day ? We cannot 
 say that there is " (Mr. John Morley, in a review of Bain's 
 " Life of James Mill," Fortnightly Review, vol. xxxi. p. 503. 
 April, 1882). 
 
 Now in estimating the progress of Collectivism since 
 1880 I do not propose to make any parade of the member- 
 ship and influence of the various Socialist societies, which 
 seem to me to be, at the present time, far greater than at 
 any previous period. Nor will I recite a long list of bills 
 which have been passed, and claim these as more or less 
 triumphs of Collectivism. It would be easy to argue that 
 the multiplication of municipal gasworks is an unconscious 
 adoption of the principle of Socialism, just as the freeing 
 of schools and the building of gratuitous libraries is of that 
 of Communism. But what we Socialists are aiming at 
 is not to secure this or that reform, still less to put this or 
 that party into power, but to convert the great mass of the 
 English people to our own views. We are trying to satisfy 
 the ordinary man, not merely that most of the existing 
 arrangements of society are fundamentally defective — for 
 on that point the great majority have always been most 
 painfully convinced — but also that the main principle of 
 reform must be the substitution of Collective Ownership 
 and Control for Individual Private Property in the means 
 of production. In short, the SociaHst task is to contribute
 
 SOCIALISM: TRUE AND FALSE 55 
 
 to this generation the " body of systematic pohtical 
 thought," of which Mr. John Morley was in 1882 deploring 
 the lack. Though we cannot count among our ranks any 
 men of the calibre of Bentham and James Mill, though we 
 have neither the wealth nor the position of the Philosophic 
 Radicals of the first part of the century, yet I take it that 
 the work set before us is analogous to theirs. The Socialists 
 are the Benthamites of this generation. And if I had to 
 sum up the effect upon the public mind of the 
 Socialist propaganda of the past few years, I could find 
 no better description than that given of the work of the 
 Benthamites. 
 
 " They produced," says a very competent observer, 
 " a much more serious effect on public opinion than super- 
 ficial inquirers perceived, or interested ones would acknow- 
 ledge. The important practical effect was not made 
 evident by converting and bringing over large numbers of 
 political partisans from one banner or class to another, 
 or by making them renounce one appellation and adopt 
 another ; but it was shown by affecting the conclusions of 
 all classes, and inducing them, while they retained their 
 old distinctive names, to reason after a new fashion, 
 and according to principles wholly different from those 
 to which they had been previously accustomed " 
 (J. A. Roebuck). 
 
 It is, of course, especially in the economic and industrial 
 field that we find this reasoning " after a new fashion, and 
 according to principles wholly different from those to which 
 they had been previously accustomed." It has become 
 more and more plain that the facts of industrial life are 
 " dead against " the reahzation of the individualist ideal 
 of each man becoming his own master. The Industrial 
 Revolution, with its aggregation of production into ever 
 larger enterprises, has rendered it practically impossible 
 for five-sixths of the population to be anything but hired 
 servants, dependent on the owners of land and cajiital 
 for leave to earn a living. At the same time the spread of 
 economic knowledge has made it clear that even the most 
 virtuous artisan cannot dodge the law of rent ; and he is 
 therefore left face to face with the grim fact of a colossal
 
 56 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 tribute levied by ownership upon industry, without any 
 obligation on the part of the receivers to render social 
 service in return. It is especially the growing under- 
 standing of this Ricardian law of rent which has revolu- 
 tionized London politics, and has caused the hostile in- 
 difference with which the artisan in other centres is coming 
 to regard both the great political parties. The outcome 
 of this new ferment is the formation of an incipient Collec- 
 tivist body of opinion among the great bulk of the younger 
 men, the rising London party, and the new-born Labour 
 Movement. 
 
 The political effect of this change of opinion is seen in the 
 gradual transformation of party programmes, especially 
 on the Land question. In the Liberal party the new 
 Collectivist section is in direct antagonism to the " old 
 gang." Its aim is not the subdivision of property, whether 
 capital or land, but the control and administration of it 
 by the representatives of the community. It has no 
 desire to see the Duke of Bedford replaced by five hundred 
 little Dukes of Bedford under the guise of enfranchised 
 leaseholders, but prefers to assert the claim of the whole 
 community to the land, and especially to that " unearned 
 increment " of value which the whole comniunity creates. 
 It has no vain dream of converting the agricultural labourer 
 into a freeholder, farming his own land, but looks to the 
 creation of parish councils empowered to acquire land for 
 communal ownership, and to build cottages for the labourers 
 to rent. The path to its town, Utopia, is that of Mr. 
 Chamberlain's early career, though not of his political 
 programme — unlimited municipalization of local public 
 services and a wide extension of corporate activity. London 
 in particular has caught up the old Birmingham cry of 
 " High rates and a healthy city," but with a significant 
 difference. Our modern economists tell us that the first 
 source of public revenue for a rising city is the growing 
 rental value of its site, which at present falls into private 
 hands. Hence the new demand for the gradual municipali- 
 zation by taxation of urban land values — a demand still 
 so little understood by most of our statesmen that they 
 fondly imagine it to have something to do with a division
 
 SOCIALISM: TRUE AND FALSE 57 
 
 of rates between house-owner and occupier. It is coming 
 to be remembered, in short, that Bentham himself, the 
 great father of Pohtical Radicahsm, urged that taxation 
 need not be hmited to the supply of funds for the 
 bare administrative expenses of the State, but that 
 wisely handled it also supplied a means of gradually 
 securing the great end of equality of opportunity to every 
 citizen. 
 
 The typical young politician, who twenty years ago 
 was a convinced Individualist quoting Mr. Herbert Spencer, 
 is nowadays an empirical CoUectivist of a practical kind. 
 His face is turned away from the Individualist ideal of 
 his fathers towards a period of ever-increasing collective 
 action. Happily, however, he is no Utopian, and realizes 
 that it is impossible all at once to take over the administra- 
 tion of the land and capital of the community. Where 
 direct public administration is still impracticable, the 
 public interest can only be secured by collective regulation 
 of the conditions of labour, in order to prevent the Standard 
 of Life of the workers from being degraded by private 
 greed. And hence it is that the extremely valuable 
 mantle shared by Robert Owen and Lord Shaftesbury, and 
 despised by the older Liberals, is now the joint heritage 
 of the Labour Party and the CoUectivist Radicals ; Eight 
 Hours Bills, practicable and impracticable, are the order 
 of the day, and drastic proposals for the annihilation of 
 " Sweating " excite the vmdisguised horror of the older 
 members of both Liberal and Conservative parties. And 
 since all this regulation and supervision of private enter- 
 prises is burdensome and expensive, the presumption of 
 the younger politicians is distinctly against individual 
 profit-making where it is possible to dispense with it. 
 The best Government is no longer " that which governs 
 least," but " that which can safely and advantageously 
 administer most." 
 
 All this is encouraging progress for so short a period as 
 a few years. But it amounts, of course, to no more 
 than the preliminary steps in the conversion of England. 
 Public opinion, in fact, is in " a fine state to begin on." 
 Adhesion to Socialism is no longer a disqualification for
 
 58 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 a candidate. Politicians lend a willing ear to Socialist 
 proposals. Now is the time to bring to bear a body of 
 systematic and constructive political thought, such as that 
 with which the Philosophic Radicals won their great 
 triumphs. The greatest need of the English Socialist 
 Party at this moment is men and women of brains who 
 will deliberately set themselves, by serious study, to work 
 out the detailed application of CoUectivist principles to 
 the actual problems of modern life. We need to do a great 
 deal more hard thinking in almost every department of 
 our Socialist programme. I am appalled when I realize 
 how little attention we have yet been able to pay to what 
 I may call the Unsettled Questions of Democratic Adminis- 
 tration. 
 
 To take, for instance, the pressing problem of the 
 Unemployed. In my humble judgment no plan has yet 
 been devised by which the fluctuations of work could be 
 entirely prevented, or safe and profitable employment 
 found for those rendered idle by no fault of their own. It 
 is easy enough to demand that something should be done ; 
 and I entirely agree with agitating the subject ; but some- 
 thing more than agitation is required. It is of no use 
 urging remedies which can be demonstrably proved to be 
 worse for the patient than the disease itself. I fear that 
 if we were given full power to-morrow to deal with the 
 unemployed all over England we should find ourselves 
 hard put to it how to solve the problem. Or to turn to 
 another field, in which practically nothing has yet been 
 done. Have we any clear and decided view as to the 
 relation between central and local authorities ? How far 
 do we wish to increase the power of the national adminis- 
 tration at the expense of local governing bodies — to what 
 extent, that is, will our Social Democracy be consistent 
 with local Home Rule ? The Glasgow Town Council, for 
 instance, was lately quarrelling with the Postmaster- 
 General as to whether the telephone should fall within the 
 sphere of municipal or of national Socialism. It is evident 
 that some departments of public administration can be 
 best managed from one central office. It is, I suppose, 
 equally evident that others must be administered locally,
 
 SOCIALISM: TRUE AND FALSE 59 
 
 under some kind of central control. But which subjects 
 should be local and which should be central — upon what 
 principle the division should be made, and in what form 
 and to what extent there should be a central control — ■ 
 these are problems to which, as far as I know, no solution 
 has been found, and very little serious thought been given. 
 
 I do not suggest that we Socialists are more ignorant 
 than other people : on the contrary, the two puzzles that 
 I have chosen are at present puzzles to the whole world. 
 But the whole world is not equally interested with ourselves 
 in getting a solution of them. Those who believe that 
 nothing ought to be done for the unemployed are not likely 
 to succeed in finding anything ; and we can hardly expect 
 those who object to any extension of Democracy to help 
 us to solve the problems which it presents. It is we who 
 must discover the answers to our own conundrums ; and 
 I do most seriously suggest that there is no more valuable 
 field of work for any group of Socialists, no more fruitful 
 service to the Socialist cause, than for them earnestly and 
 persistently to study, in the light of the ascertained facts, 
 some one of the many social problems to which we have 
 to apply our Socialist faith. Depend upon it, the first 
 step to getting what we want is a very clear and precise 
 knowledge of what it is that we want. 
 
 But this want of precision in our thinking may easily do 
 worse than merely delay our progress ; there is, as it 
 seems to me, a good deal of danger of its leading us posi- 
 tively astray from the Socialist goal. The circumstances 
 of modern life are so complicated, the problems to be dealt 
 with are so difficult, the need for prompt action is often 
 so great, that we may easily be led to take up schemes of 
 reform which promise some immediate improvement on 
 the present state of things, but which are not really in the 
 line of advance towards a genuine Collectivism. 
 
 Here I venture on dangerous ground. But if we are 
 to clear up our ideas, and apply our Socialist principles to 
 the practical problems of life, we must definitely make up 
 our mind between contrary ideals. If our aim is the 
 transformation of England into a Social Democracy, w6 
 must frankly accept the changes brought about by the
 
 6o THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 Industrial Revolution, the factory system, the massing 
 of population in great cities, the elaborate differentiation 
 and complication of modern civilization, the subordination 
 of the worker to the citizen, and of the individual to the 
 community. We must rid ourselves resolutely of those 
 schemes and projects of bygone Socialisms which have 
 now passed out of date, as well as from the specious devices 
 of Individualism in a new dress. All these I class together 
 as Spurious Collectivism, making, in my view, not for 
 social progress, but for reaction. 
 
 Utopia Founding. — And first let us deal with the ideas 
 of those amiable enthusiasts who are still bent on the 
 establishment of ideal communities. Scarcely a year 
 passes without some new project for the formation of 
 a perfect Socialist colony in Paraguay or Peru, Mexico or 
 Matabeleland, where all the evils of landlordism and the 
 machine industry are to be avoided. The authors of such 
 schemes are often chided for their unbounded belief in 
 human nature. To me, on the contrary, they seem to be 
 throwing up the sponge in despair. Their disgust with 
 the world of Competition and Individualism, their impa- 
 tience with the slow and gradual methods of Democratic 
 progress, come really not from too much, but from too 
 little faith in humanity. " I see very little hope for the 
 workers as a class," writes one of them., " even if they get 
 all they want. Our best plan for the present is to form for 
 ourselves a little backwater outside the force of the main 
 current, so that we ourselves may not be entirely swept 
 away — a little space free from the mists and miasma of 
 competition, so that we, at least, may breathe the fresh air 
 of freedom and brotherhood " (Letter in Brotherhood, 
 January, 1894). 
 
 Now I do not for a moment wish to discourage any 
 young Socialist who feels a burning desire to shake the 
 dust of civilization off his feet. Nevertheless, the aim of 
 the modern Socialist movement, I take it, is not to enable 
 this or that comparatively free person to lead an ideal 
 life, but to loosen the fetters of the milhons who toil in 
 our factories and mines, and who cannot possibly be moved
 
 SOCIALISM: TRUE AND FALSE 6i 
 
 to Freeland or Topolobampo. For the last two genera- 
 tions we have had social prophets, who, seeing the im- 
 possibility of at once conv^erting the whole country, 
 founded here and there small companies of the faithful, 
 who immediately attempted to })ut into practice whatever 
 complete ideal they professed. The gradual adoption of 
 this ideal by the whole people was expected from the steady 
 expansion of these isolated communities. But in no single 
 case has this expectation been fulfilled. Most of these 
 isolated colonies outside the world have failed. Some few, 
 under more favourable circumstances, have grown pros- 
 perous. But whether they become rich or remain poor, 
 they appear to me equally disastrous to the real progress 
 of Socialism inside the world as we know it. 
 
 Wise jorophets nowadays do not found a partial com- 
 munity which adopts the whole faith ; they cause rather 
 the partial adoption of their faith by the whole community. 
 Incomplete reform is effected in the world of ordinary 
 citizens, instead of complete reform outside of it. Genuine 
 Socialism grows by vertical instead of horizontal expansion ; 
 we must make ever more Socialistic the institutions amid 
 which we live, instead of expecting them to be suddenly 
 superseded by any new set imported from elsewhere. By 
 this method progress may be slow, but failure is impossible. 
 No nation having once nationalized or municipalized any 
 industry has ever retraced its steps or reversed its action. 
 
 Sometimes, however, the Utopia founder comes in more 
 dangerous guise. He propounds his scheme, not entirely 
 as a Socialist colony, but as a means of providing for the 
 unemployed. Here is one of the latest of these proposals, 
 put forward by a comrade whom we all respect for sincerity 
 and boundless energy : — 
 
 "The Easiest Way to Socialism. — In the present 
 crisis, with the unemployed clamouring for immediate relief, 
 and every humane heart in the country backing their 
 plea, the most suitable and hopeful governmental way of 
 ushering in a Socialistic State is to found for them a partial 
 and optional Co-operative Commonwealth. This is now, 
 probably, in the present state of public opinion, the most
 
 62 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 convenient and easy end to begin at ; better even than 
 any general scheme of land nationalization, or the nationali- 
 zation of anything else. Let the nation acquire imme- 
 diately, with public money or public credit, just enough of 
 the 6,000,000 unfilled or half-tilled acres of the country 
 to set those to work productively who ask for emplo5nnent ; 
 let these, under proper guidance, make some sort of rough 
 dwellings for themselves and their families and one another, 
 grow food, and supply mutually each other's pressing 
 needs ; as far as possible, let each man and woman be 
 put to the kind of productive work they have been re- 
 spectively accustomed to ; and let those who have no skiU 
 be trained into usefulness ; let the workers' wages be a 
 draft on the store they help to fill by their labour ; let 
 there not be any loss of vote or any slightest stigma of 
 pauperism connected with this public organization of 
 industry ; and let its internal management be as democratic 
 as may be found consistent with the preservation of order 
 and efficiency. Such an organization — a little optional 
 co-operative commonwealth, free to every citizen — would 
 become, in all probability, the nucleus of the coming 
 Socialistic State. The standard of comfort in it at first 
 would not be very high, but, freer from the burden of 
 landlordism and capitalism than the rest of the country, 
 it would be bound to rise rapidly and steadily, and would 
 attract permanently a larger and ever larger proportion 
 of the nation, and more and more skilled workers, until 
 wellnigh all the industry and commerce of the country 
 were absorbed into it " (Editorial in Brotherhood, December, 
 
 1893). 
 
 Could there be a more enticing mirage ? Solve the 
 problem of the Unemployed and establish a Social-Demo- 
 cratic Republic at one stroke ! What a contrast to such 
 pettifogging work as slowly and with infinite difficulty 
 building up a Municipal Works Department under the 
 London County Council ; fighting to recover, inch by 
 inch, the control of the Thames, the docks and the water 
 supply ; puzzling out the means of so perfecting the 
 Mines and Railways Regulation Acts, the Factory and 
 Public Health and Licensing Codes, that the degradation
 
 SOCIALISM: TRUE AND FALSE 63 
 
 of the Standard of Life and the manufacture of fresh 
 unemployed may be arrested ; discovering how to recover 
 for the use of the whole community an ever larger share 
 of the rent and interest going into idle pockets ; organizing, 
 educating, and disciplining the workers into Trade Unions ; 
 painfully elaborating a network of schools and classes 
 which shall day by day open out to the poorest child in 
 the remotest corner of the realm more of the real treasures 
 of civilization. Why not drop all this and concentrate 
 our efforts on the simple expedient of persuading a Parlia- 
 ment of landlords and capitalists to vote the necessary 
 sixty or a hundred and sixty millions sterling, to buy and 
 stock 6,000,000 acres of land on which our out-of-works 
 may be " freer from the burden of landlordism and capi- 
 talism than the rest of the country " ? I do not wish 
 to-night to discuss the problem of the Unemployed. It 
 is, I think, probable that, as regards one class of the 
 Unemployed, a term of servitude in an educational Labour 
 colony on a small scale, managed in a proper way, would 
 be the best (though an expensive) means of restoring them 
 to the ranks of productive citizens. But to imagine that 
 any such colony could be self-supporting, that the land 
 which no capitalist will now till with expert farm labourers 
 at ten shillings a week would yield Trade Union rates of 
 wages to a mixed crowd of unemployed townsmen ; that 
 such a heterogeneous collection of waifs and strays, without 
 a common acquaintanceship, a common faith, or a common 
 tradition, could be safely trusted for a single day to manage 
 the nation's land and capital ; finally, to suppose that 
 such a fortuitous agglomeration of undisciplined human 
 atoms offers " the most suitable and hopeful way of usher- 
 ing in a Sociahstic State " — all this argues such a complete 
 misconception of the actual facts of industrial and social 
 life, such an entire misunderstanding of the process by 
 which a Democratic society passes from one stage of its 
 development to another, that I feel warranted in quoting 
 it as an extreme instance of Utopia- founding. 
 
 What we Socialists are after is not any clearing out from 
 our midst of those unfortunates who form the reserve army 
 of Labour, even if this were possible, but the organiza-
 
 64 THE SAs7Sf AlWD POLICY' OF' ^OCiALiSM 
 
 tion of public services in such a way that no such reserve 
 army shall exist. We do'Piot, for instance, want to set unem- 
 ployed dockers or gasworkers I'O' dig, but so to administer 
 the docks and gasworks that there shall be no such 
 constant fringe of casual labour. To the solution' of 
 this problem Utopia- founding, or any other scheme 
 of " organizing the unemployed," helps just nothing 
 at all. 
 
 Trade Sectionalism. — A more insidious form of Spurious 
 Collectivism is that which makes, consciously or uncon- 
 sciously, the trade and not the community the unit of 
 administration, and which is expressed in the cry of the 
 land for the labourer, the mine for the miner — I do not 
 know whether we may add the school for the school- 
 teacher and the sewer for the sewerman. 
 
 This Trade Sectionalism is of very old date. It was 
 one of the earliest forms taken by the Socialist movement 
 in this country. Under the system proposed by Robert 
 Owen in 1833 the instruments of production were to be- 
 come the property, not of the whole community, but of the 
 particular set of workers who used them. The Trade 
 Unions were to be transformed into " National Com- 
 panies " to carry on all the manufactures. The Agricul- 
 tural Union was to take possession of the land, the Miners' 
 Union of the mines, the textile unions of the factories ; 
 each trade being carried on by its particular Trade Union, 
 centrahzed in one " Grand Lodge." 
 
 Of all Owen's attempts to reduce his Socialism to prac- 
 tice, this was certainly the very worst. His schemes of 
 factory legislation have raised the standard of life of 
 millions of workers all over the world. For his short-lived 
 communities there was at best the excuse that within 
 their own area the competitive conflict between indepen- 
 dent owners was eliminated. But in " the Trades Union," 
 as he conceived it, the mere combination of all the work- 
 men in a trade as co-operative producers, would no more 
 have eliminated commercial competition than a combina- 
 tion of all the employers in it into a joint stock company. 
 His Grand Lodges would have been simply the head offices
 
 SOCIALISM: TRUE AND FALSE 65 
 
 of huge companies owning the entire means of production 
 in their industry, and subject to no control by the com- 
 munity as a whole. They would therefore have been in 
 a position at any moment to close their ranks and admit 
 fresh generations of workers only as employees at com- 
 petitive wages, instead of as shareholders, thus creating 
 at one stroke a new capitalist class and a new proletariat. 
 Further, improvident shareholders would soon have begun 
 to sell or pawn their shares in order to spend their capital, 
 finally dropping with their children into the new prole- 
 tariat ; whilst the enterprising and capable shareholders 
 were trafficking in their shares to buy into other and 
 momentarily more profitable trades. Thus there would 
 have been not only a capitalist class and a proletariat, 
 but a speculative stock market. Finally there would 
 have come a competitive struggle between the companies 
 to supplant one another in the various departments of 
 industry. Thus the shipwrights, making wooden ships, 
 would have found the boiler-makers competing for their 
 business by making iron ships, and would have had either 
 to succumb or to transform their wooden ship capital into 
 iron ship capital, and enter into competition with the 
 boilermakers as commercial rivals in the same trade. 
 Moreover, the whole effect of economic rent was entirely 
 overlooked. The fact that the expenditure of labour 
 required to bring articles of the same desirability to market 
 varies enormously according to natural variations in 
 fertility of soil, distance to be traversed, proximity to 
 good highways, waterways, or ports, accessibility of 
 water power or steam fuel, and a hundred other circum- 
 stances, including the organizing ability and executive 
 dexterity of the producer, was left out of account. Owen 
 assumed that the labour of the miner and that of the 
 agricultural labourer would spontaneously exchange equit- 
 ably at par of hours and minutes when the miners had 
 received a monopoly of the bowels of the country, and the 
 agricultural labourers of its skin. He did not even foresee 
 that the Miners' Union might be inchned to close its ranks 
 against recruits from the fanri labourers, or that the 
 Agricultural Union might refuse to cede sites for the
 
 66 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 Builders' Union to work upon. In short, the difficult 
 economic problem of the equitable sharing of the advan- 
 tages of superior sites and opportunities never so much as 
 occurred to the enthusiastic adherents of William Thomp- 
 son's theory, afterwards to be elaborated by Karl Marx, 
 that all exchange values could be measured in terms of 
 " Labour Time " alone. 
 
 Now I do not suggest that we are in danger of any com- 
 plete revival of Owen's Trade Sectionalism, but I often 
 hear Socialists drop into proposals which tend in that 
 direction. The impatience manifested when it is pointed 
 out that Trade Unions will continue to be necessary in a 
 Social Democratic State ; the reluctance which many 
 Socialists exhibit to regarding Board Schools or Woolwich 
 Arsenal as essentially Socialistic institutions ; the pro- 
 posals occasionally made that the operatives in each trade 
 should elect the managers of it or fix their own hours of 
 labour — all these seem to me to be survivals of Owen's 
 principles, diametrically opposed to modern Socialism. 
 But let me take an actual example from France, a land 
 where all parties are supposed to be more strictly logical 
 in their thinking than those of our compromising island. 
 A few years ago Monsieur Goblet, with, as I understand, 
 the concurrence and support of the whole of the Socialist 
 members of the Assembly, proposed, as a Socialist measure, 
 that the present coal-owners should, under certain circum- 
 stances, be expropriated, and the mines transferred, not to 
 the community as a whole, or to any town or district, but 
 to the men actually working in each mine, who were to 
 divide among themselves the profits hitherto enjoyed by 
 the individual lessees of the mines. I have read a good 
 many notices of this proposal, but I have nowhere seen 
 it pointed out that, so far from being Socialist in character, 
 it is really in direct opposition to Socialist principles. We 
 do not desire to see the mines, and the profits from the 
 mines, transferred to the miners, but to the community as 
 a whole. How far the management should be national 
 and how far local is an unsettled problem of Democratic 
 administration. But to hand over the nation's coal to 
 one particular set of the workers is, in my view, no more a
 
 SOCIALISM: TRUE AND FALSE 67 
 
 Socialist proposal than the late Sir George Elliot's scheme 
 for transferring it to a capitalist syndicate. What we as 
 Socialists look for is, not the assumption by any trade 
 of the management of that trade, but the extension of the 
 public organization of industry, whether under the Central 
 Government, the County, the Town, or the Parish Council, 
 in the interest of the community as a whole. 
 
 Joint Stock Individualism.— If we reject Owen's Trade 
 Sectionalism as a spurious form of Collectivism certain to 
 develop into Joint Stock Individualism on a large scale, 
 what are we to say to schemes which frankly begin and 
 end with Joint Stock Individuahsm on a small scale ? 
 The zealous and devoted men who made the Christian 
 Socialist Movement of 1848-54, and who got their ideals 
 from Louis Blanc and the Paris Sociahsts of 1848, sought 
 to replace the capitalist entrepreneur, not by the official 
 of the community, but by httle groups of independent 
 workmen jointly owning the instruments of their trade, 
 and co-operating in a " self-governing workshop." This 
 dream of co-operative production by Associations of 
 Producers still lingers vaguely about the Trade Union 
 world, and periodically captures the imagination of enthu- 
 siastic reformers. It is still nominally recognized by the 
 main body of co-operators as one of the ideals of their 
 movement, and it enjoys the very vigorous advocacy of 
 an association of its own. But alike in the Trade Union 
 and the Co-operative worlds, the Association of Producers, 
 necessarily sectional in principle and working for its own 
 gain, is being rapidly superseded by the contrary ideal of 
 an Association of Consumers, carrying on industry, not 
 for the profit of the worker, but with the direct object of 
 supplying the wants of the community in the best way. 
 
 I should have thought there would have been no doubt 
 as to the side that we Socialists should take in this con- 
 troversy. It may be all very well for a little group of 
 thrifty artisans to club together and set up in business 
 for themselves in a small way. If their venture is pros- 
 perous they may find it more agreeable to work under 
 each other's eye than under a foreman. Co-operative
 
 68 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 production of this sort is at best only a partnership of 
 jobbing craftsmen, with all the limitations and disad- 
 vantages of the small industry. From beginning to end 
 it is diametrically opposed to the Socialist ideal. The 
 associated craftsmen produce entirely with a view to their 
 own profit. The community obtains no more control 
 over their industry than over that of an individual em- 
 ployer. They openly compete for business with private 
 firms and other associations of producers. The self- 
 governing workshop belongs, in fact, not to Socialism, but 
 to Joint Stock Individualism. Moreover, in the great 
 majority of existing cases the so-called associations of 
 producers have a darker side. There are capitalist partners 
 who are not workers, and wage-workers who are not 
 partners. In order to increase the gains of the members, 
 their numbers are strictly limited, new hands are taken on 
 at wages often below Trade Union rates, or, worse still, 
 work is given out to be done at home on the sweating 
 system. The self-governing workshop becomes, in short, 
 a httle partnership of small masters, with all the attendant 
 evils of that decaying form of industrial organization. 
 The co-operative production of the self-governing work- 
 shop appears to me, therefore. Spurious Collectivism of a 
 bad type. On the other hand the co-operative production 
 of the store and the two great Co-operative Wholesale 
 Societies is a genuine step in advance along our own lines. 
 Unfortunately the distinction between the co-operation 
 of associations of consumers, and that of associations of 
 producers is often misunderstood. We have Socialists 
 and Trade Unionists denouncing the great co-operative 
 organizations of the North of England, with their milhon 
 of members, and the forty millions sterling of annual trade 
 which they have rescued from the profit-maker — denounc- 
 ing, too, not their incidental shortcomings, but the very 
 principle of their association ; and upholding, on the 
 contrary, what is, I presume, supposed to be the more 
 Socialist principle of profit-sharing or even of the self- 
 governing workshop. The great boot factory, which the 
 million of co-operators have built at Leicester for the 
 supply of their own boots, is attacked on the ground that
 
 SOCIALISM : TRUE AND FALSE 69 
 
 the profits of the bootmaking are not given to the boot- 
 makers there employed, but are carried to the credit of 
 the whole co-operative community, of which the boot- 
 makers can and do form part. The working-men of Roch- 
 dale or Leeds, who have joined together to organize on a 
 co-operative basis the supply of their own wants, are re- 
 proached for not handing over some or all of the annual 
 surplus of receipts over expenditure (for I will not call it 
 profit) to the shop-assistants employed in their service. For 
 the life of me I cannot see that this is a Socialist criticism. 
 The whole of our creed is, that industry should be carried 
 on, not for the profit of those engaged in it, whether 
 masters or men, but for the benefit of the community. 
 We recognize no special right in the miners, as such, to 
 enjoy the mineral wealth on which they work. The 
 Leicester boot operatives can put in no special claim to 
 the profits of the Leicester boot factory, nor the shopmen 
 in a co-operative store to the surplus of its year's trading. 
 It is not for the miners, bootmakers, or shop-assistants, as 
 such, that we Socialists claim the control and the profits 
 of industry, but for the citizens. And it is just because 
 the million co-operators do not, as a rule, share profits 
 with their employees as employees, but only among con- 
 sumers as consumers ; because the control of their industry 
 is vested not in the managers or operatives but exclusively 
 in the members, with one man one vote ; and because 
 they desire nothing more ardently than to be allowed in 
 this way to make the whole community co-partners with 
 themselves and participants in their dividend, that their 
 organization appears to me to be thoroughly Collectivist 
 in principle. 
 
 Industrial Anarchism. — I suspect, however, that there 
 is something more than confusion of thought in the pre- 
 ference frequently shown by Socialists for the self-govern- 
 ing workshop, run by the workers in it, over the Co-opera- 
 tive factory or Municipal Works Department managed by 
 the representatives of the community. In our capitalist 
 system of to-day there is so much " nigger-driving," so 
 many opportunities for petty tyranny, so frequently a
 
 70 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 bullying foreman, that 1 do not wonder when working 
 men look with longing upon an ideal which promises 
 to make them their own masters, if only in a small way. 
 With this feeling every one must sympathize. It is just 
 because the conditions of the industrial servitude of the 
 great mass of the people are so unsatisfactory that we 
 strive to make them citizens and workers of a Socialist 
 State. But the desire of each man to become his own 
 master is part of the old Adam of Individualism. The 
 time has gone by for carrying on industry by independent 
 producers, such as survive in the cobbler and the knife- 
 grinder, or even by httle associations of such producers, 
 like the self-governing workshop in its best form. 
 
 Socialists who hanker after these delights have forgotten 
 their Karl Marx. The steam-engine, the factory, and the 
 mine have come to stay ; and our only choice is between 
 their management by individual owners or their manage- 
 ment by the community. As miner, mechanic, or mill 
 operative, the worker is and must be the servant of the 
 community. From that service Socialism offers no 
 escape. All it can promise is to make the worker, in his 
 capacity of citizen, jointly the proprietor of the nation's 
 industry and the elector of the head officers who administer 
 it. As citizens and electors, the workers, we may presume, 
 will see that the hours of labour are as short, the conditions 
 of work as favourable, and the allowance for maintenance 
 as liberal, as the total productivity of the nation's industry 
 will afford. Organized in their Trade Unions, moreover, 
 the workers in each department of the nation's service 
 will know how to make their voice heard by their fellow- 
 citizens against any accidental oppression of a particular 
 trade. 
 
 And here I must mention a common misunderstanding 
 of a Socialist phrase — the Abolition of the Wage System. 
 Some of our Anarchist friends persist in quoting this as if 
 it implied the entire abolition of the service of one man 
 under the direction of another. To listen to their inter- 
 pretation one would imagine that they suppose us to con- 
 template a reversion to the mythical time when every 
 man worked as an independent producer, and enjoyed the
 
 SOCIALISM: TRUE AND FALSE 71 
 
 whole product of his individual labour. I need hardly say 
 that Socialism involves nothing of the sort. We propose 
 neither to abandon the London and North Western Rail- 
 way, nor to allow the engine-drivers and guards to run 
 the trains at their own sweet will, and collect what they 
 can from the venturesome passengers. 
 
 By the abolition of the wage-system we mean the aboli- 
 tion of the system now generally prevailing in the capitalist 
 industry, by which the worker receives a wage not deter- 
 mined with any reference to his quota of the national 
 product, nor with any regard for the amount necessary 
 to maintain him and his family in efficient citizenship, but 
 fixed solely by the competitive struggle. This competitive 
 wage we Socialists seek to replace by an allowance for 
 maintenance deliberately settled according to the needs 
 of the occupation and the means at the nation's command. 
 We aheady see official salaries regulated, not according 
 to the state of the labour market, but by consideration of 
 the cost of living. This principle we seek to extend to the 
 whole industrial world. Instead of converting every man 
 into an independent producer, working when he likes and 
 as he likes, we aim at enrolling every able-bodied person 
 directly in the service of the community, for such duties 
 and under such kind of organization, local or national, 
 as may be suitable to his capacity and social function. 
 In fact, so far are we from seeking to abolish the wage 
 system so understood, that we wish to bring under it all 
 those who now escape from it — the employers, and those 
 who live on rent or interest, and so make it universal. 
 If a man wants freedom to work or not to work just as he 
 likes, he had better emigrate to Robinson Crusoe's island, 
 or else become a millionaire. To suppose that the indus- 
 trial affairs of a complicated industrial state can be run 
 without strict subordination and discipline, without 
 obedience to orders, and without definite allowances for 
 maintenance, is to dream, not 6f Socialism but of 
 Anarchism. 
 
 Peasant Proprietorship. — Is it to the influence of this 
 same yearning lor industrial anarchism that we are to
 
 72 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 attribute the persistence among us of such a spurious form 
 of Collectivism as Peasant Proprietorship ? I do not mean 
 Peasant Proprietorship in its crudest form. I suppose that 
 no Socialist desires to see the land of the country divided 
 among small peasant freeholders, though this is still the 
 ideal professed by many statesmen of " advanced " views. 
 We are, I hope, all thoroughly convinced that economic 
 rent in all its forms should enrich, not any individual, but 
 the community at large. But it is not difficult to trace, 
 in some of those who are keen advocates of Land Nationali- 
 zation, survivals of economic Individualism. We saw 
 our esteemed friend, Michael Davitt, lending his influence, 
 not to secure the land of Ireland for the people of Ireland, 
 but to tighten the grip which half a million individual 
 Irishmen had on their particular holdings. Many Scotch 
 comrades, too, seem eager to "destroy landlordism" by 
 converting the crofter into a freeholder. Even the Land 
 Nationalization Society cherishes some project of allowing 
 each Englishman, once in his life, to choose for himself 
 a piece of what it professedly desires to obtain for all in 
 common. This seems to me about as reasonable as to pro- 
 pose that each Englishman should be allowed. once in his life, 
 to choose for himself one ship out of the Royal Navy, or that 
 each Londoner should have the right, on his twenty-first 
 birthday, to appropriate for his own use one particular 
 corner of the London parks. The same spurious Collectivism 
 runs through all forms of Leasehold Enfranchisement — a 
 thoroughly reactionary movement, which, I am glad to 
 think, is now quite dead. The agitation for Small Ownings 
 has perhaps more vitality in it ; but it is rapidly changing 
 into an agitation for Small Holdings, owned and let by the 
 County Council or some other Collectivist organization. 
 But there are more insidious forms of this Peasant Pro- 
 prietorship fallacy. What are we to say to comrades who 
 demand that the County Council shall supply artisans* 
 dwellings "to be let at the cost of construction and main- 
 tenance only " ? At present we allow the landlords of 
 London to put into their own pockets sixteen millions a 
 year of annual ground rental of the bare site. If we were 
 to cover London with artisans' dweUings " let at the cost
 
 SOCIALISM: TRUE AND FALSE 73 
 
 of construction and maintenance only," we should simply 
 be handing over these sixteen millions of rental value, 
 towards which the labour of all England contributes, to 
 the particular tenants of our new dw^eUings. How, more- 
 over, if all buildings are to be let at equal rents, are we to 
 equalize the advantages of a fiat overlooking Hyde Park 
 and a similar flat out at Holloway ? Since we cannot all 
 live on the best sites, those who do must contribute, for 
 the common benefit, the equivalent of the extra advantage 
 they are enjoying. That is to say, a Sociahst State or 
 municipahty will charge the full economic rent for the 
 use of its land and dwellings, and apply that rent to the 
 common purposes of the community. To follow any 
 other course would be to fall into the Peasant Proprietor- 
 ship fallacy. 
 
 Now I fully agree with those who urge greater unity of 
 action and charity of conduct in the Socialist Movement. 
 But w^e cannot rise above mere denunciation of existing 
 evils, and get that " body of systematic political thought " 
 which is at present our greatest need, unless we clear up 
 our own ideas. To do this we must, in all friendliness, 
 criticise any proposal that appears to belong to the Spurious 
 Collectivism which at present confuses the issue. I hope 
 we may learn scrupulously to abstain from personal abuse 
 or denunciation. I trust we shall avoid imputing motives. 
 But if we are to make any intellectual progress at all, we 
 must have a great deal more frank discussion of the details 
 of the Socialist programme. The movement gains nothing 
 by a complacent toleration of Spurious Collectivism. I 
 do not urge the universal adoption by all Socialists of a 
 rigid practical programme, complete in all its details. 
 But our one hope of successful propaganda lies in the 
 possession of exact knowledge and very clear ideas of what 
 it is we want to teach. To mix up, under the common 
 designation of Socialism, proposals which tend to Anar- 
 chism with those which tend to Collectivism, to accept 
 Democracy and yet to dally with the idea of catastrophic 
 Social Revolution, to confound Utopianism with modern 
 State Socialism, to waver between a trade or workshop 
 sectionalism and ownership by the community — all this
 
 74 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 argues a confusion of thought which is the worst possible 
 equipment for a successful teacher. If we are to have 
 anything like the success of the early Philosophic Radicals, 
 we must be able, like them, to " explain in the large dialect 
 of a definite scheme " " what are our aims and whither 
 we are going."
 
 IV. TWENTIETH CENTURY POLITICS 
 
 By SIDNEY WEBB 
 
 A lecture to the Fabian Society, November 8th, 1901. Much 
 of this lecture appeared, tmder another title, in the 
 " Nineteenth Century," September, 1901, and is here 
 reproduced by permission of the Editor. 
 
 IT is not altogether an idle fancy that associates the 
 change of century with a change of thought. The 
 governing ideas to which we look forward, at the beginning 
 of the twentieth century, will, we may be sure, not be 
 those on which we looked back at the close of the nine- 
 teenth. 
 
 What is going to be the dominant note of Twentieth 
 Century Politics ? Certainly, I venture to assert, not 
 the note of Nineteenth Century Liberalism or Conserva- 
 tism. 
 
 What, then, is the matter with Liberalism ? For fifty 
 years, in the middle of the last century, we may recognize 
 it as " a great instrument of progress," wrenching away 
 the shackles — political, fiscal, legal, theological, and social 
 — that hindered individual advancement. The shackles 
 are by no means wholly got rid of, but the political force 
 of this old Liberalism is spent. During the last twenty 
 years its aspirations and its watchwords, its ideas of daily 
 life and its conceptions of the universe, have become in- 
 creasingly distasteful to the ordinary citizen as he renews 
 his youth from generation to generation. Its worship of 
 individual liberty evokes no enthusiasm. Its reliance on 
 " freedom of contract " and " supply and demand" with 
 its corresponding " voluntaryism " in religion and philan- 
 thropy, now seems to work out disastrously for the masses, 
 who are too poor to have what the economists call an 
 " effective demand " for even the minimum conditions of
 
 76 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 physical and mental health necessary to national well- 
 being. Of all this the rising generations of voters became 
 deadly tired, and Liberalism collapsed in consequence. 
 
 The decline of Liberalism. — I am aware that it is an 
 amiable delusion of many good Liberals that the collapse 
 of their party at the end of the nineteenth century was 
 due merely to temporary causes — to the South African 
 war, to personal quarrels among the leaders, or to the 
 Home Rule Bill. But the smashing defeat of 1895 was only 
 the culmination of a steady alienation from Liberalism 
 of the great centres of population, which began to be visible 
 even in 1874. London and Lancashire persisted in this 
 adverse verdict. The most startling feature of the election 
 of 1885 — still prior to the Home Rule Bill — was the extent 
 to which Liberalism was rejected by the boroughs. This, 
 and not the ephemeral dispute about the war, is the bottom 
 fact of the political situation. Thirty years ago the great 
 boroughs were enthusiastic for Liberalism. By an unin- 
 terrupted process of conversion they became flatly opposed 
 to it. The fact that to-day the Conservative Party finds 
 its chief strongholds, not in the lethargic and stationary 
 rural counties, drained of their young men, but in the 
 intellectually active and rapidly growing life of the towns 
 (containing two-thirds of the nation), proves that Liberal- 
 ism does not express the Progressive instinct of the twen- 
 tieth century. It held that position for so large a part of 
 the last century that it came to beheve that it held it by 
 natural right. How was it that it lost it ? 
 
 A new England. — The answer is that during the last 
 thirty years we have become a new people. " Early 
 Victorian " England now lies, in effect, centuries behind us. 
 Such things do happen. The processes which make one 
 generation differ from another operate sometimes slowly 
 and imperceptibly, sometimes quickly and even suddenly. 
 At one period centuries may pass without any discoverable 
 difference in the mind or character of a nation. At another 
 new ideas are precipitated and new parties crystallized 
 almost before the old parliamentary hands have time to
 
 TWENTIETH CENTURY POLITICS 77 
 
 prove their visionariness. Such an epoch of transforma- 
 tion we now recognize, to cite only one instance, in the 
 reign of Ehzabeth. We note, within a single generation, 
 a distinct change in the content of men's minds. Their 
 standpoints are shifted. Their horizons are suddenly en- 
 larged. Their whole way of considering things is altered, 
 and lo ! a new England. In the same sense the historian 
 of the future will recognize, in the last quarter of the nine- 
 teenth century, the birth of another new England. Eliza- 
 bethan England changed because Englishmen became 
 aware of new relationships. They saw themselves linked 
 on, almost suddenly, with the past in classic antiquity, 
 and with the future in America. The England of this 
 generation is changing because Englishmen have had 
 revealed to them another new world of relationships, of 
 which they were before unconscious. This time it is not 
 a new continent that the ordinary man has discovered, 
 but a new category. We have become aware, almost in 
 a flash, that we are not merely individuals, but members 
 of a community, nay, citizens of the world. This new 
 self-consciousness is no mere intellectual fancy, but a hard 
 fact that comes home to us in our daily life. The labourer 
 in the slum tenement, competing for employment at the 
 factory gate, has become conscious that his comfort and 
 progress depend, not wholly or mainly on himself, or on 
 any other individual, but upon the proper organization 
 of his Trade Union and the activity of the factory inspector. 
 The shopkeeper or the manufacturer sees his prosperity 
 wax or wane, his own industry and sagacity remaining 
 the same, according to the good government of his city, 
 the efficiency with which his nation is organized, and the 
 influence which his Empire is able to exercise in the coun- 
 cils, and consequently in the commerce of the world. 
 
 "Thinking in communities." — Hence the ordinary 
 elector, be he workman or manufacturer, shopkeeper or 
 merchant, has lost his interest in individual " rights," or 
 abstract " equality," political or religious. The freedom 
 that he now wants is not individual but corporate freedom 
 — freedom for his Trade Union to bargain collectively,
 
 78 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 freedom for his co-operative society to buy and sell and 
 manufacture, freedom for his municipality to supply all 
 the common needs of the town, freedom, above all, from 
 the narrow insularity which keeps his nation backing, 
 " on principle," out of its proper place in the comity of 
 the world. In short, the opening of the twentieth century 
 finds us all, to the dismay of the old-fashioned Individuahst, 
 " thinking in communities." 
 
 Now the trouble with what I venture to call nineteenth 
 century Liberalism is that, by instinct, by tradition, and 
 by the positive precepts of its past exponents, it " thinks 
 in individuals." It visualizes the world as a world of inde- 
 pendent Roundheads, with separate ends, and abstract 
 rights to pursue those ends. We see old-fashioned Liberals, 
 for instance, still hankering after the disestablishment and 
 disendowment of all State Churches, on the plea of re- 
 ligious equality ; meaning that it is unfair to give any 
 public money or pubHc advantage to any denomination 
 from which any individual taxpayer dissents. But if it 
 be so, all corporate action is unfair. We are all dissenters 
 from some part or another of the action of the communities 
 of which we are members. How far the maintenance of a 
 State church really makes for national well-being — how 
 otherwise than by national establishment and public 
 endowment we can secure, in every parish, whether it 
 cares and can afford to pay for it or not, the presence of 
 a teacher of morality and an exponent of higher intellectual 
 and social life — is a matter for careful investigation. But 
 the notion that there is anything inherently wrong in 
 compelling aU citizens to help to maintain religious observ- 
 ances or religious instruction of which some of them in- 
 dividually disapprove, is part of the characteristically 
 Whig conception of the citizen's contribution to the ex- 
 penses of the social organization, as a bill paid by a private 
 man for certain specific commodities which he has ordered 
 and purchased for his own use. On this conception the 
 Quaker is robbed when his taxes are spent on the Army 
 and Navy ; the Protestant is outraged by seeing his con- 
 tributions help to support a Roman Catholic school or 
 university ; the teetotaler is wronged at having to provide
 
 TWENTIETH CENTURY POLITICS 79 
 
 the naval ration of rum. Nineteenth century Liberahsm 
 was, in fact, axiomatically hostile to the State. It is not 
 " httle Englandism " that is the matter with those who 
 still cling to such views ; it is, as Huxley and Matthew 
 Arnold correctly diagnosed, administrative Nihilism. So 
 far as political action is concerned they tend to be in- 
 veterately negative, instinctively iconoclastic. They have 
 hung up temperance reform and educational reform for a 
 quarter of a century, because, instead of seeking to enable 
 the citizen to refresh himself without being poisoned or 
 inebriated, and to get the children thoroughly taught, 
 they have wanted primarily to revenge their outraged 
 temperance principles on the publican and their outraged 
 Nonconformist principles on the Church. Of such Liberals 
 it may be said that the destructive revolutionary tradition 
 is in their bones ; they will reform nothing unless it can 
 be done at the expense of their enemies. Moral superiority, 
 virtuous indignation, are necessaries of political life to them; 
 a Liberal reform is never simply a social means to a social 
 end, but a campaign of Good against Evil. Their con- 
 ception of freedom means only breaking somebody's bonds 
 asunder. When the " higher freedom " or corporate life 
 is in question, they become angrily reactionary, and de- 
 nounce and obstruct the most obvious developments of 
 common action as " infringements of individual liberty," 
 " municipal trading," or — dreadest of all words — " bureau- 
 cracy." They feel no desire to promote the greatest possi- 
 ble development of municipal activity, the most compre- 
 hensive extension of the Factory Acts, or the fullest utiliza- 
 tion of the Government departments in the service of the 
 public. They quite honestly consider such aims to be mis- 
 chievous. They are aiming at something else, namely, at 
 the abstract right of the individual to lead exactly the 
 kind of life that he likes (and can pay for), unpenalized by 
 any taxation for purposes of which he individually dis- 
 approves. They are, in fact, still " thinking in individuals." 
 
 Liberalism and the Empire. — The same atomic concep- 
 tion of society, transferred from the State at home to the 
 British Empire as a whole, lay at the root of much of the
 
 So THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 feeling of nineteenth century Liberalism with regard to 
 foreign and colonial policy, and may even be detected 
 colom"ing the fervid propaganda of Irish " Home Rule." 
 Twentieth Century Politics will be based, it appears to me, 
 not on abstract rights of " nationalities," but on the con- 
 crete administrative necessities of definitely organized 
 commonwealths ; not on racial autonomy, whatever the 
 geography — an obsolete tribal notion which would give us 
 an empire of the Jews — but on territorial democracy, 
 whatever the mixture of race. Exactly what geographical 
 areas will best serve as administrative units, and exactly 
 what degree of local self-government each grade in the 
 hierarchy of units will enjoy, is a difficult problem in politi- 
 cal science, towards the solution of which the nineteenth 
 century has contributed little. Meanwhile Twentieth 
 Century Politics for this country will certainly assume the 
 maintenance, as against all external aggression, of that 
 great commonwealth of peoples styled the British Empire, 
 including within itself members of all races, of all human 
 colours, and nearly all languages and religions. We, at 
 any rate, are precluded from assuming or admitting that 
 any distinct " nationality," just because it imagines itself 
 to have ends which differ from, and, perhaps, conflict with, 
 the common interests of the Empire as a whole, has, there- 
 fore, an abstract right to organize an independent govern- 
 ment and pursue those ends at whatever cost to its col- 
 leagues or neighbours. The abstract right to unfettered 
 freedom in self-government, which we all see that we must 
 deny to the individual, cannot be accorded to the family, 
 the tribe, the race, the parish, the city, the county, the 
 province, or the state. Our obvious duty with the British 
 Empire is, not to " run " it for our own profit, or with any 
 idea of imposing Anglo-Saxondom on a reluctant world, 
 but to put our best brains into the task of so organizing it 
 as (consistently with the paramount aim of its maintenance 
 as a whole) to promote the maximum individual develop- 
 ment of each geographical unit within its bounds. And 
 as with the factory or the slum at home, it is clear that 
 this maximum of individual development will not be secured 
 by allowing each imit to pursue its own ends without refer-
 
 TWENTIETH CENTURY POLITICS 8i 
 
 cnce to the welfare of the whole. The central idea of the 
 old Liberalism, hostile as it was to the development of the 
 State within these isles, was therefore naturally unsympa- 
 thetic to the deliberate organization of the Empire oversea. 
 
 Conservatives as caretakers. — Has then the nation 
 become Conservative ? Not in the least. The pleasant- 
 mannered young gentlemen of no occupation, the portly 
 manufacturers and the estimable country squires who sit 
 on the Conservative benches, as every one who knows 
 them personally will admit, no more share the feelings 
 of the new England of the town electorate than does 
 Mr. Morley. Far from having learnt to think " in communi- 
 ties," there is no satisfactory evidence of their having, in 
 politics, learnt to think at all. When they win, their very 
 triumph is not their own. They are elected, not in order 
 to put Conservatism into power, but in order to keep 
 Gladstonianism out. Two advantages, indeed, they have, 
 which make their election possible. The modern Conserva- 
 tive candidate is politically a man without prejudices. 
 No abstract principle forbids him to listen sympathetically 
 to any proposal for reform. Hence he seems on the plat- 
 form less belated than the nineteenth century Liberal, with 
 his stock of shop-soiled principles at full price. And, most 
 useful of all at the present juncture, the modern Conserva- 
 tive, unlike the Gladstonian Liberal, is quite happy and 
 ungrudging in paying out the Imperialist commonplaces 
 which convey to a constituency a stimulating blusterous 
 impression that he is conscious of the British Empire as 
 a whole. Into this blusterous impression the enthusiastic 
 voter is allowed to read as much consciousness as he him- 
 self has attained to of Imperial rights, duties, and interests 
 in the sphere of world politics. This, however, is mere 
 hustings manner. Conservative cabinets at work, like 
 Conservative members in the House of Commons, show 
 themselves no more in accord with the new England of the 
 twentieth century than do the Liberals. When the ques- 
 tion is one of making any more effective use of the State 
 departments, Mr. Austen Chamberlain is as old-fashioned 
 as Mr. Morley. As to our Presidents of the Local Govern
 
 82 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 ment Board, they are about as much at home in 
 twentieth century municipal affairs as King James the 
 First would be in a modern trade arbitration. Whether 
 they are called Fowler, Chaplin, or Long, makes no differ- 
 ence that is discoverable by the provincial town clerks or 
 the chairmen of the committees of the London County 
 Council ; all alike are impenitent decriers of the magnificent 
 social structure that is rising all over the country, ignorant 
 of their duties, missing their great opportunities, and 
 naturally hostile to any extension of the local government 
 activity which has already far outgrown their knowledge 
 and capacity. In the efficiency of the public offices the 
 elector has, to put it as moderately as possible, no more 
 confidence to-day than he had in the nineteenth century. 
 It may be an injustice to meritorious ministers in humbler 
 station, but there is every reason to believe that the British 
 public takes Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and Mr. 
 Arthur Balfour as types of their respective Governments. 
 Now these gentlemen simply do not believe in the possi- 
 bility of improvement in human affairs — a view which is 
 rather the philosophy of an independent income and a 
 great position than of the mass of electors existing in 
 obviously improvable circumstances. 
 
 The Party of National Efficiency. — It appears, then, 
 that without some new grouping of the electorate, without 
 the inspiration of some new thought, no virile and fecund 
 Opposition, let alone an alternative Government, is con- 
 ceivable. No front Opposition Bench can be really effec- 
 tive — still less can it cross the floor of the House of Com- 
 mons — unless it expresses, not alone the views of its own 
 political partisans, but also the inarticulate criticism of the 
 mass of the community. Outside the narrow ranks of the 
 " political workers " of either party, the millions of citizens 
 are quietly pursuing their ordinary business — weavers at 
 the loom, mechanics at the lathe, teachers in the schools, 
 ministers of religion toiling in the slums of our cities, 
 doctors going their rounds, manufacturers at their mills, 
 merchants and bankers journeying daily to their offices, 
 patient investigators working out scientific problems,
 
 TWENTIETH CENTURY POLITICS 83 
 
 public-spirited men and women struggling " gegen die 
 Dummheit " on Town Councils and Education Committees. 
 It is these men's judgments on public affairs, these men's 
 impressions and aspirations, which, in the England of to- 
 day, give force and backing to the words of statesmen. 
 And if now we inquire what it is that comes into these 
 men's minds when they read their newspapers, when they, 
 in their particular callings, impinge on some corner of 
 public administration, or when, in their own lives, some 
 public disaster comes home to them, there is but one 
 answer. They are not thinking of Liberalism or Conserva- 
 tism or Socialism. What is in their minds is a burning 
 feeling of shame at the " failure " of England — shame for 
 the lack of capacity of its governors, shame for the inability 
 of Parliament to get through even its routine business, 
 shame for the absence of grip and resourcefulness of our 
 statesmen, shame for the pompous inefficiency of every 
 branch of our public administration, shame for the slack- 
 ness of our merchants and traders that transfers our com- 
 mercial supremacy to the United States, shame for the 
 supineness which looks on unmoved at the continued 
 degradation of our race by drunkenness and gambling, 
 slum life, and all the horrors of the sweated trades, as 
 rampant to-day in all our great centres of population as 
 they were when officially revealed fifteen years ago. This 
 sense of shame has yet to be transmuted into political 
 action. The country is ripe for a domestic programme, 
 which shall breathe new life into the administrative dry 
 bones of our public offices. The party and the statesmen 
 whom these men will support, the leaders for whom they 
 are hungering, are those who shall convince them that 
 above all other considerations they stand for a policy of 
 National Efficiency. 
 
 The abolition of sweating. — For such a policy of 
 National Efficiency, there can be no other starting-point 
 than the condition of the people. To-day, in the United 
 Kingdom there are, Sir Robert Giffen tells us, not fewer 
 than eight millions of persons, one fifth of the whole 
 population, existing under conditions represented by a
 
 84 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 family income of less than a pound a week, and constituting 
 not merely a disgrace, but a positive danger to our civiliza- 
 tion. These are the victims of " sweating " in one or other 
 of its forms, condemned, as the House of Lords' Committee 
 emphatically declared, to " earnings barely sufficient to 
 sustain existence ; hours of labour such as to make the 
 lives of the workers periods of almost ceaseless toil ; 
 sanitary conditions injurious to the health of the persons 
 employed, and dangerous to the public." 
 
 The first and most indispensable step towards National 
 Efficiency is the healing of the open sore by which this 
 industrial parasitism is draining away the vitality of the 
 race. There is no doubt about the remedy, no uncertainty 
 among those who have really worked at the problem. We 
 have passed through the experimental stage of factory 
 legislation, and we now know that it is no mere coincidence 
 that these eight millions of persons correspond almost 
 precisely with the sections from whom we have hitherto 
 withheld the effective protection of the Factory Acts. 
 The statesman who is really inspired by the idea of National 
 Efficiency will stump the country in favour of a " National 
 Minimum " standard of life, below which no employer in 
 any trade in any part of the kingdom shall be allowed to 
 descend. 
 
 The National Minimum. — He will elaborate this mini- 
 mum of humane order — already admitted in principle in 
 a hundred Acts of Parliament — with all the force that 
 eloquence can give to economic science, into a new indus- 
 trial charter, imperatively required, not merely or even 
 mainly for the comfort of the workers, but absolutely for 
 the success of our industry in competition with the world. 
 With the widespread support which this policy would 
 secure — not only from the whole Trade Union world and 
 the two millions of organized co-operators, but also from 
 ministers of religion of all denominations, doctors and 
 nurses, sanitary officers and teachers, Poor Law adminis- 
 tratorseand modern economists, and even the enlightened 
 employ rs themselves — he would be able to expand our 
 uneven and incomplete Factory Acts into a systematic
 
 TWENTIETH CENTURY POLITICS 85 
 
 and all-embracing code, prescribing for every manual 
 worker employed a minimum of education, sanitation, 
 leisure and wages, as the inviolable starting-point of in- 
 dustrial competition. 
 
 Housing; the people. — But factory legislation alone, 
 however effective and complete, can secure a " moral and 
 material minimum " only so far as the conditions of employ- 
 ment are concerned. Even more than in the factory, the 
 Empire is rooted in the home. How can we build up an 
 effective commonwealth — how, even, can we get an efficient 
 army — out of the stunted, anaemic, demoralized denizens 
 of the slum tenements of our great cities ? Can we, even 
 as a mere matter of business, any longer afford to allow 
 the eight millions of whom I have already spoken — the 
 " submerged fifth " of our nation — to be housed, washed, 
 watered worse than our horses ? Is it not clear that one 
 of the first and most indispensable steps towards National 
 Efficiency is to make really effective that " National 
 Minimum " of sanitation which is already nominally com- 
 pulsory by law ? This means a great extension of munici- 
 pal activity in town and country. It means a new point 
 of view for the Local Government Board, which must 
 cease to do evil and learn to do well, by dropping its lazy 
 routine of obstruction and discouragement, and rousing 
 itself to be prompt with its stimulus, eagerly oncoming 
 with its help, and, when necessary, swift and ruthless with 
 its compulsion. For the Local Government Board has, 
 though no President seems to be aware of it, an even higher 
 duty in sanitation than stimulus and help. It is the 
 guardian of the National Minimum. To it is committed the 
 great trust of seeing that no single family in the land is 
 denied the indispensable conditions of healthy life. So 
 far as house accommodation, ventilation, good drainage, 
 and pure water are concerned. Parliament has long ago 
 embodied this National Minimum of sanitation in univers- 
 ally apphcable PubUc Health Acts, which it is the duty 
 of the Local Govermnent Board to enforce upon local 
 authorities just as drastically as these ought to do upon 
 individuals. Cau anything be more preposterouij m a
 
 86 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 business nation than to allow (as a succession of Presidents 
 of the Local Government Board have long allowed) one 
 locality after another, merely out of stupidity, or inca- 
 pacity, or parsimony, demonstrably to foster malignant 
 disease and bring up its quota of citizens in a condition 
 of impaired vitality ? Why does not the Local Govern- 
 ment Board undertake a systematic harrying up of the 
 backward districts, regularly insisting, for instance, that 
 all those having death-rates above the average of the 
 kingdom shall put themselves in order, improve their 
 drainage, lay on new water supply, and insure, by one 
 means or another, a supply of healthy houses sufficient to 
 enable every family to comply with the formula of " three 
 rooms and a scullery " as the minimum necessary for 
 breeding an even moderately Imperial race ? Every 
 medical officer knows that it is quite possible, within a 
 generation after the adoption of such a genuine enforce- 
 ment of the National Minimum of sanitation, to bring 
 down the average death-rate by at least 5 per 1,000, and 
 the sickness experience by at least a third. The equivalent 
 money gain to the community would be many millions 
 sterling. A single friendly society, the Manchester Unity 
 of Oddfellows, would, it has been calculated, save a quarter 
 of million annually in benefits alone. I measure my words 
 when I say that the neglect of the Local Government 
 Board to enforce even the existing legal National Minimum 
 of sanitation, causes each year more deaths than the most 
 calamitous of our wars. 
 
 Raising the standard of life. — A Ministry really in- 
 spired with a passion for National Efficiency would.howcver, 
 know how to use other instruments besides compulsion. 
 The Government must set itself to raise the standard of life. 
 This is specially the sphere of local initiative and corporate 
 enterprise, of beneficent competition rigorously stopped 
 by law from the downward way, but freed, stimulated, 
 and encouraged in every experiment on the upward way. 
 We have seen how the Local Government Board has 
 necessarily to be always coercing its local authorities to 
 secure the National Minimum ; for anything beyond that
 
 TWENTIETH CENTURY POLITICS 87 
 
 minimum the wise Minister would mingle premiums with 
 his pressure. He would, by his public speeches, by per- 
 sonal interviews with mayors and town clerks, and by the 
 departmental publications, set on foot the utmost possible 
 emulation among the various local governing bodies, as 
 to which could make the greatest strides in municipal 
 activity. We already have the different towns compared, 
 quarter by quarter, in respect of their death-rates, but at 
 present only crudely, unscientifically, and perfunctorily. 
 Why should not the Local Government Board avowedly 
 put all the local governing bodies of each class into honorary 
 competition with one another by an annual investigation 
 of municipal efficiency, working out their statistical marks 
 for excellence in drainage, water supply, paving, cleansing, 
 watching and lighting, housing, hospital accommodation, 
 medical service, sickness experience and mortality, and 
 publicly classifying them all according to the result of the 
 examination ? Nay, a Minister keenly inspired with the 
 passion for National Efficiency would call into play every 
 })ossible incentive to local improvement. The King might 
 give a " Shield of Honour " to the local authority which had 
 made the greatest progress in the year, together with a 
 knighthood to the mayor, and a Companionship of the 
 Bath to the clerk, the engineer, and the medical officer of 
 health. ( )n the other hand, the six or eight districts which 
 stood at the bottom of the list would be held up to public 
 opprobrium, whilst the official report on their shortcomings 
 might be sent by post to every local elector, in the hope 
 that public discussion would induce the inhabitants to 
 choose more competent administrators. 
 
 Grants in aid. — If honour and shame fail to appeal to 
 the ratepayers of our most backward communities, there 
 remains the potent lever of pecuniary self-interest. For 
 England has, almost without being aware of it, invented 
 exactly that relationship between central and local govern- 
 ment which enables the greatest possible progress to be 
 made. To let each locality really manage its own affairs 
 in its own way — the anarchic freedom of American local 
 administration — is not only to place an intolerable burden
 
 88 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 upon the poorer districts, but also to give up the all- 
 important principle of the enforcement of a National 
 Minimum. On the other hand, to subject the local authori- 
 ties to the orders of a central government — the autocratic 
 Minister of the Interior of continental systems — would 
 be to barter away our birthright of local self-government 
 for the pottage of bureaucratic administration. The 
 middle way has, for half a century, been found through 
 that most advantageous of expedients, the grant in aid. 
 We see this in its best form in the police grant. When 
 each locality did its own " watching " in its own way, 
 thieves and highwaymen enjoyed as much liberty as the 
 local governing bodies themselves. When this state of 
 things became unendurable, eager reformers urged a 
 national police force. But England had an anti-Napoleonic 
 horror of a centralized gendarmerie, acting under orders 
 from London. The solution was found in an empirical 
 compromise. Parliament has, since 1856, required by 
 statute that every county and every borough in Great 
 Britain shall maintain an efficient police force. 
 
 A compulsory minimum. — This is the poHcy of the 
 National Minimum. But as the local authorities very 
 much disliked providing anything like enough police, and 
 as the enormous growth of an uneducated and almost 
 desperate " proletariat " which was produced by the indus- 
 trial revolution forced successive Governments to be very 
 much in earnest about police efficiency, they applied a 
 potent stimulus to it. A grant in aid of the cost of the 
 local police force was offered to the justices and town 
 councillors — at first one quarter, and now one half, of their 
 actual expenditure on this service, however large this may 
 be. As the grant is conditional on the force being main- 
 tained in efficiency, the Home Office is able, without im- 
 pairing the independence, or offending the dignity of the 
 local authorities, to inspect all the provincial poHce forces. 
 The Home Secretary has no power to order any improve- 
 ment, but his annual inspection enables him to call pointed 
 attention to any shortcomings, and to observe with circum- 
 locutory official politeness, that if the de!ect slicruld aot
 
 TWENTIETH CENTURY POLITICS S9 
 
 have got itself remedied, somehow or another, before the 
 next inspection, he might find himself under the regrettable 
 necessity of withholding the certificate, without which 
 the Exchequer contribution (in which the Police Grant is 
 now merged) cannot be paid. The result of this constant 
 expert criticism and central pressure, coupled with the 
 unlimited grant in aid, is that the strength and efficiency 
 of the provincial police forces has increased during the 
 past generation by leaps and bounds, without any loss of 
 local autonomy, and without the creation of any centralized 
 bureaucracy. We need not consider whether this very 
 great development of the county and borough police was 
 or was not required for national efficiency. The point is 
 that, as successive INIinisters really wanted it, they were 
 able, by their fortunate discovery of the instrument of the 
 grant in aid, varying automatically with the growth of the 
 service, and conditional on its efficiency, to bring about the 
 improvement they desired. The story of the establish- 
 ment and progressive efficiency of the English provincial 
 police force is destined to become a classic example of the 
 perfect relationship between central and local self-govern- 
 ment. 
 
 Unfortunately ministers have had so little desire for 
 efficiency in any other branch of local government, and 
 have made so little study of the subject, that grants in 
 aid have been, in other directions, perverted into mere 
 doles in relief of the rates. Nineteenth century Liberalism 
 — really unsympathetic to efficient government adminis- 
 tration — simply hated them all, even the police grant, 
 with an undiscriminating hatred. But the grants in aid 
 are there, to the extent, all told, of some fifteen millions 
 sterling annually ; and no ministry dependent on the 
 rate-payer's vote will ever dream, by withdrawing this 
 subsidy, of suddenly raising rates by two shillings in the 
 pound. What we have to do is to give up all pretence of 
 aboHshing grants in aid, or even of objecting to their in- 
 evitable increase, in order to enlist their aid in the promo- 
 tion of National Ef&ciency. A mere rearrangement of 
 the existmg infertile subventions would enable a separate 
 gTiiit to be made, oa conditions similar to tiiose oi the
 
 90 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 ])resent police grant, in aid of each branch of local adminis- 
 tration which it is considered desirable to promote, not 
 only for police and schools, but for such humdrum but 
 fundamentally important services as roads and bridges, 
 paving and lighting, water-supply and housing, baths and 
 wash-houses, parks and libraries. 
 
 Regeneration of poor relief. — Passing from the muni- 
 cipal services of daily life to the collective provisions for 
 those sections of the community who are avowedly unable 
 to provide for themselves, what a vista of urgently needed 
 reform is opened up by the Poor Law ! Three-quarters 
 of a century ago the nation was saved from hideous disaster 
 by the little knot of social investigators who, by inventing 
 the workhouse test, found the means of stopping the 
 pauperism of the able-bodied. The central department 
 charged with Poor Law administration adopted this in- 
 vention, and has lived on it ever since. Liberal and Con- 
 servative Ministers alike have done their best, even at the 
 cost of some public uneasiness, to maintain the ' ' principles 
 of 1834." But a government department cannot, any 
 more than a business undertaking, go on living for ever 
 on a single invention. The semi-penal workhouse was 
 excellent for its purpose of a test of able-bodied destitution. 
 We now know that it is the worst possible place for the 
 children, the sick and the aged, who comprise the vast 
 majority of present-day " paupers." But the Local 
 Government Board has never incorporated this new truth. 
 Twentieth Century politics, applied to the relief of the 
 poor, will replace the present critical and repressive attitude 
 of the Local Government Board by a positive programme 
 of Poor Law reform. What an energetic President would 
 take in hand would be, not only the vigorous discourage- 
 ment of outdoor relief to the able-bodied (women no less 
 than men), but an equally vigorous insistence on the 
 humane treatment of the aged, the most scientific provision 
 for the sick, and, above all, the best possible rearing of the 
 " children of the State." In no branch of the work of the 
 Local Government Board is there more opening for im- 
 provement than in the case of the children. Here and
 
 TWENTIETH CENTURY POLITICS 91 
 
 there, indeed, enlightened Boards of Guardians have, after 
 many difficulties, extracted the approval of the central 
 department for carefully considered plans of " scattered 
 homes " and " cottage homes," " boarding-out " and 
 emigration. But in scores of unions up and down the 
 country the Local Government Board tolerates, year after 
 year, a treatment of pauper children quite " Early Vic- 
 torian " in its parsimonious thriftlessness. There are still 
 thousands of children in actual workhouses, still tens of 
 thousands in ophthalmic barrack schools ; the level of 
 their education is still such that, to give only one example, 
 not a single pauper child in all London has ever won one 
 of the London County Council's junior scholarships. In 
 spite of the decay of apprenticeship, practically nothing 
 has yet been done to give them any genuine technical in- 
 struction ; and hundreds of them are still annually bundled 
 off the hands of the Guardians into such occupations as 
 hair-cutting and shaving, from which they are destined, 
 in too many cases, to recruit the ranks of unskilled labour. 
 Or take again the treatment of the sick poor. When a 
 man is ill, the only profitable thing for the community is 
 to cure him as thoroughly as possible with the least possible 
 delay. Yet it cost years of patient struggle before William 
 Rathbone and other far-sighted philanthropists could force 
 the Local Government Board to require trained nurses or 
 even to allow Boards of Guardians to train nurses for the 
 sick poor. Even to this day, whilst some workhouse in- 
 firmaries are nearly as well equipped as a good hospital, 
 they are all understaffed. What is far graver, the Local 
 Government Board allows dozens of unions to go on year 
 after year with workhouse sick wards, so foul, so badly 
 equipped, and so destitute of adequate medical and 
 nursing staff — in short, so far behind the standard of an 
 up-to-date general hospital — as plainly to delay recovery. 
 Year after year its own officials report the same short- 
 comings — in one case going so far as to declare that the 
 Guardians ought to be indicted for manslaughter. Yet 
 no President has grit enough to put his foot down, and 
 enforce, upon these backward unions, even the standard 
 of the rest.
 
 92 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 The National Minimum of education. — So far I have 
 been deaUng with the prevention of disease and premature 
 death, and the building up of the nervous and muscular 
 vitality of the race. This, it is clear. Twentieth Century 
 Politics will regard as the primary duty of Government. 
 But it is not enough that we rear a physically healthy race. 
 The policy of National Efficiency involved a great develop- 
 ment of public education. Here again the law is in ad- 
 vance of the administration. So far as the schooling of 
 children is concerned, Parliament has long since endorsed 
 the policy of a National Minimum, to be compulsorily 
 enforced on every locality and every individual. The 
 guardian and interpreter of this National Minimum is the 
 Board of Education. No Education Minister has ever 
 found the House of Commons cut down his estimates, 
 or express anything but satisfaction at the growth of the 
 education vote. The Board of Education, moreover, has 
 full powers to fine, dissolve, and even to supersede any 
 local authority that fails in its duty. So far as instruction .; 
 up to fourteen is concerned, it is clearly not the fault of 
 Parliament if any child, in any part of the kingdom, is 
 denied the most efficient education that pedagogic science 
 can devise. 
 
 Unfortunately we have never yet had a Prime Minister 
 or a Chancellor of the Exchequer who had any conception 
 of the duty of the Government to insist on National 
 Efficiency in education, or, with the one exception of Mr. 
 Arthur Acland, an Education Minister who had any power 
 of standing up either against his own permanent staff, 
 or against the unwarranted but frequent interferences of 
 the Treasury with educational policy. Unfortunately, too, 
 both Conservatives and Liberals have, in dealing with 
 primary education, been hampered by the particularism 
 in schools which stands in the way of any national policy 
 of education. One party has backed denominational 
 schools, and has only grudgingly admitted the need for 
 School Boards. The other party, with at least equal 
 intolerance, has backed Board Schools, and only grudgingly 
 allowed denominational schools to e.xist. The result of 
 this sectarian and unsectarian narrownecs, and of the
 
 TWENTIETH CENTURY POLITICS 93 
 
 incapacity of the Education Dej)artment itself, is that, 
 after a whole generation of nominal compulsion, we are 
 still only at the beginning of the task. Over at least a 
 fifth of England, the schools, the training of the teachers, 
 the scope and content of the curriculum, and even the 
 attendance of the children, are so inferior as to amount 
 to a national scandal, whilst only in the picked samples 
 of a few towns do we rise to the common level of Switzer- 
 land. It is in the class-rooms of these schools that the 
 future battles of the Empire for commercial prosperity 
 are being already lost. What the country now needs, 
 and what it will presently clamour for — perhaps too late— 
 is a national policy in education. It is tired of the old 
 particularism in schools. So long as freedom of conscience 
 is maintained, and reasonable public control secured, the 
 younger generation cares not a jot what particular modicum 
 of religious instruction is combined with the secular educa- 
 tion. It has not the slightest wish to starve out the 
 Church or the Roman Catholic schools, and really prefers 
 them to go on supplying a useful alternative to municipal 
 administration. And seeing that we cannot possibly 
 shut up the non-provided schools, which educate half the 
 children in the land, the ordinary non-political citizen 
 cannot see why the old feud should any longer be allowed 
 to paralyse national education ; why both sets of schools 
 cannot once for all be frankly accepted as equally parts of 
 the national system ; why the Board of Education cannot 
 do its statutory duty and firmly bring up all schools, 
 whatever their management, to the same high (and annually 
 rising) national standard of secular efficiency ; and why 
 the whole necessary cost of these improvements should 
 not be freely granted, under reasonable conditions of 
 audit and control, from national funds. And the tanta- 
 lizing thing is that all this needs no further legislation. 
 The President of the Board of Education could decree it all 
 to-morrow, after one Cabinet Council, by a stroke of the 
 pen. All that stands between us and a really effective 
 National Minimum of education is a strong Education 
 Minister who really knows his business, who is backed by 
 his Cabinet against the natural resistance of the Chancellor
 
 94 THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM 
 
 of the Exchequer to the necessary increase of the grant, 
 and who will stand no insubordination from either his 
 own or the Treasury clerks. 
 
 But all this concerns only primary education, which the 
 nation thought that it had settled as long ago as 1870. It 
 is now quite prepared to see the building up of an equally 
 national system of secondary education, and even of 
 university education of a certain sort. In nothing, indeed, 
 does our Government incur more discredit than its failure 
 to carry through a secondary education programme of a 
 sweeping kind. The man in the street cannot be interested 
 by carefully minimized reforms, effecting nothing but such 
 half-hearted changes as only experts can understand. His 
 imagination and patriotism must be roused by a large- 
 hearted plan for bringing the whole of our educational 
 machinery up to the level of that of any other country. 
 Assure him politely that energetic local authorities here 
 and there will presently provide technical schools and a 
 scholarship ladder, and he will not even pretend to under- 
 stand what it means ; but he will wake up if he is told 
 that the whole system is to be so reorganized that every 
 clever child in every part of the country shall get the best 
 possible training that can be devised. To get this done 
 he quite realizes that there must be a much more substan- 
 tial grant in aid of secondary education. 
 
 Twentieth century universities. — Moreover, the man 
 in the street, though he knows nothing accurately, has got 
 into his mind the uncomfortable conviction that Germany 
 and the United States are outstripping us, not merely in 
 general education and commercial " 'cuteness," but also 
 in chemistry and electricity, engineering and business 
 organization in the largest sense. Nothing would be more 
 widely popular at the present time, certainly nothing is 
 more calculated to promote National Efficiency, than a 
 large policy of Government aid to the highest technical 
 colleges and the universities. The statesman who first 
 summons up courage enough to cut himself loose from 
 official pedantries on this point, and demand a grant of 
 half a million a year with which to establish in the United
 
 TWENTIETH CENTURY POLITICS 95 
 
 Kingdom a dozen perfectly equipped faculties of science, 
 engineering, economics, and modern languages would score 
 a permanent success. 
 
 I can indulge in no further detail. The policy of National 
 Efficiency here sketched out for the Home Office, the Local 
 Government Board, and the Board of Education, needs, 
 of course, to be worked out in equal detail for the other 
 departments. The energetic rehandling of the Budget 
 (which now yields no more per head than it did a hundred 
 years ago), so as to assert the claims of the State as the 
 sleeping partner in the unearned increment both of urban 
 land values and the huge gains of monopolized industry ; 
 the reform of local taxation on the lines of an assessment 
 according to site-value instead of the present penalizing 
 of the building and improving of houses ; the rescue of 
 our present " tied " refreshment houses from the tyranny 
 of the brewer, and the adjustment of their number and 
 hours of business to the actual needs of each locality ; 
 the reform of the House of Commons by confining all 
 ordinary speeches to a quarter of an hour, and the in- 
 creased devolution of business to committees — all these 
 are but points in the same pohcy of National Efficiency 
 by which every part of the central and local machinery of 
 the State — not to say also the wider commonwealth of the 
 Empire — needs to be knit together into an organically 
 working whole. 
 
 THE END
 
 THE FABIAN SOCIALIST SERIES 
 
 consists of a revised, collected, and classified 
 edition of some of the most valuable of the 
 famous "Fabian Tracts" in a style more suitable 
 for the general reading public, and supplying in 
 a handy and attractive form the best and most 
 authoritative thought on "What Socialism 
 Means." Each booklet contains not less than 96 
 well-printed pages, good paper and good type, 
 and is supplied in two forms, i.e., in attractive 
 wrappers at 6d. each, nett, and in quarter cloth 
 boards, gilt top, at i/- each, nett. Postage id, and 
 zd. each respectively. 
 
 VOLUMES NOW READY: 
 
 I. SOCIALISM AND RELIGION. 
 
 CONTENTS : (i) Christian Socialism, by the Rev. Stewart D. 
 Headlam. (2) Socialism and Christianity, by the Rev. Percy 
 Dearmer. (3) Socialism and the Teaching of Christ, by the Rev. 
 John Clifford. (4) A Word of Remembrance and Caution to the 
 Rich, by John Woolman, of the Society of Friends. 
 
 IL SOCIALISM AND AGRICULTURE. 
 
 CONTENTS : (i) The Village and the Landlord, by Edward 
 Carpenter. (2) State Aid to Agriculture, by T. S. Dymond. 
 (3) The Secret of Rural Depopulation, by Lieut.-Col. D. C. 
 Redder. (4) The Revival of Agriculture, by The Fabian Society. 
 
 III. SOCIALISM AND INDIVIDUALISM. 
 
 CONTENTS: (i) The Difficulties of Individualism, by Sidney 
 Webb. (2) The Moral Aspects of Socialism, by Sidney Ball. 
 
 (3) The Impossibilities of Anarchism, by G. Bernard Shaw. 
 
 (4) Public Service versus Private Expenditure, by Sir Oliver Lodge. 
 
 IV. THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM. 
 
 CONTENTS: (i) Facts for Socialists, by the Fabian Society. 
 (2) Capital and Land, by the Fabian Society. (3) Socialism : 
 True and False, by Sidney Webb. (4) Twentieth Century Politics, 
 by Sidney Webb. 
 
 LONDON: A C. FIFIELD, 44 FLEET STREET, E.G.
 
 AA 000 997 076 5