towards Industrial Freedom 
 
 war 
 
 >en tet
 
 
 I I -±^^.~ -^-~ — . .- : — — I — 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES

 
 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 4/6 net. 
 
 Pocket Edition 3/6 net. 
 
 ENGLAND'S IDEAL 2/6 net and 1/- net. 
 
 THE HEALING OF NATIONS 
 
 Cloth, 2/6 net. Paper, 2/- net. 
 
 MY DAYS AND DREAMS 
 
 An Autobiography 7/ 6 net.
 
 I Towards 
 
 I Industrial Freedom 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD CARPENTER 
 
 LONDON : GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN, LTD. 
 RUSKIN HOUSE 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C. 1 
 NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
 
 First published in 1917 
 
 (All rights reserved)
 
 H 
 
 3 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. INTRODUCTORY . 
 
 II. THE TRANSFORMATION OF OUR INDUSTRIAL 
 SYSTEM .... 
 
 n 
 
 *\^> III. INDUSTRY AS AN ART 
 
 IV. BEAUTY IN EVERYDAY LIFE 
 
 V, NON-GOVERNMENTAL SOCIETY . 
 
 *J VI. SMALL HOLDINGS AND AGRICULTURAL CO 
 ^ OPERATION .... 
 
 **■ VII. THE VILLAGE AND THE LANDLORD 
 
 ^ VIII. BRITISH ARISTOCRACY AND THE HOUSE OF 
 LORDS .... 
 
 IX. SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE IN CHINA 
 
 PAGE 
 
 7 
 
 18 
 
 48 
 60 
 76 
 
 99 
 115 
 
 136 
 164 
 
 APPENDIX— 
 
 THE UNEMPLOYED RICH AND THE UNEMPLOYED 
 
 POOR. ..... 215 
 
 THE MINIMUM WAGE . . . . 2l6 
 
 20790 J
 
 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 Although the following papers were mostly 
 written before the Great .War broke out, yet it 
 will be noticed that the consciousness runs through 
 them of a great impending crisis and transforma- 
 tion of our social arrangements, both in this 
 country and in Western Europe. It may not 
 have been clear at that time exactly how that 
 crisis would come about ; but now that the War 
 is on us we can see how inevitable in a sense it 
 has been, and how this deadly strife of nations 
 has flowed (in the main) from the hopeless falsity 
 of the social and industrial conditions prevailing 
 in the countries concerned — the falsity of undemo- 
 cratic societies divided into classes whose chief 
 object in life was to prey upon each other ; the 
 falsity of a so-called social order which ignored 
 the rights of women ; and the falsity of an in- 
 dustrial system whose real object was not public 
 welfare but private gain, not the production of 
 goods for use but the exploitation of labor for
 
 8 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 profit. Robbery and strife, more or less covered 
 over and concealed by canting phrases, have eaten 
 deep into the heart of these nations, and that over 
 a long period ; and now at last we see that it was 
 inevitable that some time this spirit of enmity 
 and inhumanity, this internal disease, which has 
 for so long afflicted us, should break forth and 
 come to the surface, if even in the thunder of 
 guns and the drenching of Europe with blood. 
 
 In a way the fact that some of these causes of 
 disaster were traced and exposed (as they were 
 by many Socialist thinkers) long before the 
 disaster itself arrived, gives their exposure 
 additional validity and force. Whatever side- 
 issues there may be in the present catastrophe, 
 we cannot doubt that financial greed and profit - 
 mongering, made all the more possible by the 
 domination of the profit -mongering classes, have 
 been at the bottom of the trouble. The war began 
 with the speculative plotting of Germany for the 
 development of Mesopotamia and the Baghdad 
 Railway, and now England is apparently showing 
 her high moral disapproval of this by taking 
 over the development herself ! Whatever may 
 be thought about individual and isolated instances, 
 it is evident that commercial ambitions, and the 
 consequent demand for the annexation of terri- 
 tory, have for long enough in all the nations con- 
 cerned been leading up to a crisis of deadly 
 conflict ; and the connexion of this with class - 
 domination is well illustrated by the fact that
 
 INTRODUCTORY 9 
 
 Russia with the change of her Constitution has 
 immediately repudiated the desire for annexation, 
 while the Socialists of Germany and the other 
 countries repudiate it also. 1 
 
 But the long foreground of this tragedy, and 
 its deep and intimate genesis out of the very 
 heart and habits of the various nations, must 
 persuade us of something else — namely that it is 
 not destined to pass over very quickly ; and that 
 its results will be profounder, longer -enduring and 
 more far-reaching than we have even yet dared 
 to imagine. Guglielmo Ferrero, the Historian 
 of Republican Rome, points out in a late article 
 in // Secolo, the extraordinary shortsightedness 
 of the views held about the present European 
 situation by the politicians generally. " Great 
 things," he says, " are maturing in the world. 
 From one end to the other there is preparing 
 the most gigantic trial or test (ordalia) that 
 ever has been seen, of States, dynasties, nations, 
 parties, religions and philosophical doctrines. It 
 is like a universal Judgment day. Worldly crowns 
 
 1 It is interesting to find that so long ago as 1805 a certain 
 Dr. Hall writing on the evils of modern civilisation said : 
 " In consequence of the rich of most of the different civi- 
 ised nations of Europe all coveting the same things, the 
 countries producing those things are the continual objects 
 of contests and wars between these different powers. These 
 wars are easily excited by the rich, who are either them- 
 selves the persons with whom lies the power of making 
 war and peace, or are the persons who have great influence 
 with those who have that power" {The Effects of Civilisation 
 on the People in European States, by Charles Hall, M.D., 1805).
 
 io TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 and powers, with their ancient glories, their idols, 
 their altars and their faiths are apparently ready- 
 to roll in the dust " ; and yet while the one living 
 idea which can save society is that of a new social 
 order resting on reason and on justice " there have 
 so far only appeared on the scene, old men, pro- 
 fessing old ideas, making use of old principles, 
 repeating ancient discourses, and seeming to be 
 willing to do anything rather than change their 
 old habits of the courtier, the official, and the 
 Parliamentarian." 
 
 I have no intention here of entering into political 
 questions \ but certainly in the social and in- 
 dustrial field the limitation of outlook among our 
 British leaders is little short of astonishing. In 
 all the talk lately about the renovation of the 
 country after the war, about the finding of em- 
 ployment for returning soldiers, the planting of 
 the people on the land or in industrial life, and 
 so forth, it seems to be taken for granted that 
 when things settle down again, our general in- 
 dustrial system will return as before : that 
 " employers " will once more " find work " for 
 their men, that the " employed " will be only 
 too thankful to escape from prowling the streets ; 
 and that (of course) nothing will be produced 
 unless it yields a " profit " to some one — a divi- 
 dend to a shareholder or a rent to a landlord. 
 There seems to be no suspicion of the possibility 
 of any other arrangement — or if there are 
 suspicions they are indeed kept dark !
 
 INTRODUCTORY n 
 
 Similarly with regard to our foreign trade, 
 great caucuses and conferences are being held with 
 the object of diverting trade from its natural 
 channels in such a way as to benefit ourselves and 
 do despite to our " enemies." It is of course a 
 case of trying to make water run uphill. Yet 
 there seems to be no foresight of the fact that 
 with the growing internationalisation of world- 
 traffic (not to mention the growing internationali- 
 sation of the peoples themselves) such schemes 
 are doomed to failure, or at most to a very short- 
 lived success. 
 
 Nothing seems to me more certain than that 
 our whole commercial system, both as regards 
 internal economy and as regards foreign trade, is 
 on its last legs, and that it is doomed to dissolution 
 — or at least to such a transformation in spirit as 
 will be equivalent to a dissolution of its present 
 form- And surely such a dissolution is not only 
 to be expected, but truly to be prayed for. After 
 a career of a century and a half during which 
 it ha3 defiled the world with every kind of moral 
 stain and physical ugliness, it is surely time that 
 the Shop -keeping Age should pass away. Doubt- 
 less it has had, for its time, a function to fulfil 
 — it has had uses in the winning for mankind of 
 all sorts of external facilities and values, and 
 in the scattering of " comforts and conveniences " 
 —telephone- and water-closets and the like— all 
 over the habitable globe ; but now surely it will 
 be seen that its main use can only have been as
 
 12 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 a preparation for something infinitely more valu- 
 able, to come after. 
 
 As a matter of fact Bankruptcy, in more senses 
 than one, impends over the nations of Europe, 
 and it is curious, as Ferrero. says, that, despite 
 that obvious fact, the statesmen and politicians 
 of the various countries go on playing the old 
 trivial games, like gamblers in the midst of an 
 earthquake, oblivious or unheeding that at any 
 moment the house they are in may come tumbling 
 about their heads. 
 
 In this country the absence of any real grasp 
 of the situation among our leaders — even among 
 our Labour -leaders — is most curious. Mr. Bonar 
 Law tells us, in a quite jaunty way, that we are 
 spending £7,000,000 a day — but confesses that he 
 has no effective knowledge of, or control over, 
 the accounts. Everything goes smoothly so far ; 
 and there is a general impression that we " shall 
 come out all right." Certainly, just above Niagara 
 the water does flow very smoothly, though with 
 a swift and ever swifter course. " Sit still and 
 shut your eyes," says the War Office, " and we 
 will censor the Press so that the public shall not 
 be able to look ahead, even if it wants to." 
 
 And supposing for a moment that Bankruptcy 
 (in the strictly financial sense) does not ensue. 
 What then? Why, for the United Kingdom so 
 enormous a permanent debt that some 300 or 
 400 millions sterling will have to be paid yearly 
 to the bondholders for the rest of mortal time !
 
 INTRODUCTORY 13 
 
 Does any one for a moment suppose that the people 
 of this country — already weighed down to the 
 ground by mortgages, dividends, and taxation of 
 all kinds— are going to bear this added burden, 
 that they possibly can support it? Great as the 
 sufferings would be which Bankruptcy would en- 
 tail, they would not be a tenth of those caused 
 by this alternative. And yet we talk glibly about 
 " winning the War " I 
 
 Germany — whether in Socialist or Imperialist 
 hands — will probably repudiate her debts. We 
 might, if we like, say that being accustomed to 
 tearing up scraps of paper she will make no 
 great demur about doing so — and of course the 
 fact of her debts being all internal, among her 
 own people, will make this course easier. Eng- 
 land will be more unwilling to repudiate, but may 
 of course in the end be forced to do so. France 
 will follow suit, and possibly also Italy and Russia. 
 The Americans will be left to boss the world. 
 
 The outlook is not cheerful. But these and 
 many other things all point to the same conclusion 
 — the necessity of considering very seriously, as 
 far as this country is concerned, what are to 
 be its industrial forms in the future. I feel myself 
 that to lay down any hard and fast doctrine on 
 this subject would be rash. It would certainly 
 be foreign to my intention. On the other hand 
 we can see some very distinct directions in which 
 men's minds are moving, and certain clear con-
 
 14 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 ditions for the coming organisations, without which 
 we should not be satisfied ; and I have thought 
 it best, in the following papers, to make sugges- 
 tions with regard to these without attempting to 
 be too Utopian or doctrinaire. The course of 
 evolution is always difficult to forecast, and to 
 turn beforehand even the very next page of the 
 history of one's own country is impossible. Never- 
 theless, like a giood sportsman, one can prepare one- 
 self for every emergency, one can guess from the lie 
 of the ground what game is likely to appear and 
 with what kind of situation one may have to deal. 
 In the first of the following chapters I have 
 sketched rather roughly the evils which arose from 
 the industrial arrangements of the early part of 
 the last century, and the reforms into which these 
 evils forced us. In the later chapters I endeavour 
 to infer what further transformations we may 
 expect in the future. These transformations will, 
 I take it, be largely of a psychological character — 
 that is, they will depend on a changed mental 
 attitude towards life, on a changed estimate of 
 values, even more than on a change of institutions. 
 When people come to value beauty in our daily 
 life more than they do now, when they long 
 intensely for that kind of industrial freedom which 
 causes men's handiwork to become an art and 
 a joy, when they perceive that the glory and the 
 sweetness of the blue sky and a clean air are 
 assets which we cannot neglect without peril to 
 our souls and bodies, when they understand that
 
 INTRODUCTORY 15 
 
 co-operation is not only valuable because it in- 
 creases the productive efficiency of men, but much 
 more valuable when it liberates their dormant 
 instinct of mutual helpfulness and love — when they 
 see that all these inner things and many others 
 are of more importance for human happines9 than 
 the mere increase of external riches — then indeed 
 the Shop -keeping Age will have passed away. 
 It is with a view to this psychological transforma- 
 tion that I have gathered together in this volume 
 papers on " Industry as an Art," on " Beauty in 
 Everyday Life," On ,{ Non -Governmental Society," 
 "Agricultural Co-operation," and so forth. 
 
 It becomes increasingly evident, I think, that 
 over and beyond any formulas of reform what is 
 needed is" a figw spirit of social and industrial life. 
 Without that even the best institutions will be of 
 little avail. As Mr. Clutton Brock says : " The 
 desire for spiritual freedom is the basis, the only 
 basis, for Socialism. . . 1 And Socialism should 
 endeavour to prove that it is the natural and 
 inevitable product of the desire for spiritual free- 
 dom." This spiritual freedom means the oppor- 
 tunity to evolve from oneself what one thinks right 
 and true and beautiful. It means a co-operation 
 of all the members of society, and this in a 
 way not merely technical and external, but in 
 a real spirit of mutual help and equality. Only 
 on such conditions, we may be sure — only on the 
 condition of spiritual and creative freedom — can 
 a society be really human and healthy.
 
 16 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 At the conclusion I have introduced a long 
 paper on " Social and Political Life in China " 
 — partly because I think the study of the conditions 
 that exist in a land so remote in every way from 
 our own may (especially at this time when our 
 own institutions are in the melting-pot) be of 
 great assistance. When one reflects that China 
 has come down unbroken through a period of 
 over forty centuries, and with her general polity 
 during that period very little altered ; that she 
 has survived internal convulsions and the shocks 
 of Time and the external attacks of many nations ; 
 one cannot refuse to see that there must be some- 
 thing very substantial and very well worth study- 
 ing in that spirit which has inspired her and those 
 institutions which she has adopted. It has been 
 the fashion of a cheap Western criticism to ridicule 
 China and to represent her as enduring agelong 
 in a state of slumber and fatuity. Apart from 
 the improbability of such a theory, it is absolutely 
 rejected by all those travelers who have made 
 the land of Sinim a subject of intimate and pro- 
 longed study, nor do all the foolish political efforts 
 of the Western nations during the last seventy or 
 eighty years, and their complete failure to break 
 up that great Organism, lend any countenance 
 to the theory. China is as strong to-day as she 
 ever was — as the world will presently find out. 
 And as an instance of the value and power of the 
 general public spirit ruling a nation in comparison 
 with formal laws and institutions I may here
 
 INTRODUCTORY 17 
 
 mention one thing. In China it is thought rather 
 disgraceful to live on the rent of land. There 
 is no law, as I understand, against it, but there 
 is a strong public opinion — and though, as a 
 matter of convenience, it is not uncommon for 
 one small holder who has more than he wants 
 to rent out an acre or two to another who has less, 
 it is really rare for any one to attempt or to dare 
 to live entirely from the tribute of his tenants. 
 In England, I need hardly remark, it is just 
 the opposite ; there is a common public opinion 
 in the other direction, and a man is respected, 
 and even thinks himself respectable, just in pro- 
 portion to the length of his rent-roll. Apart then 
 from all legislation one can see in these two 
 instances the vastly differing results of a differing 
 spirit of life — in China an immense and far-flung 
 peasant -class rooted comfortably in small tenures 
 on the land, the most productive and the most 
 stable on the whole Earth, and in England huge 
 private estates half cultivated by a paralysed and 
 inefficient population, and a country in perpetual 
 danger on account of the inadequacy of its food- 
 supply. 
 
 As there has been a recrudescence lately of 
 the effort to break up Trade Unions I have 
 included in the Appendix a paper on ' l The 
 Minimum Wage," showing the valuable and indeed 
 indispensable work the Unions have done, if only 
 in the establishment of this principle.
 
 II 
 
 THE TRANSFORMATION OF OUR INDUS- 
 TRIAL SYSTEM 
 
 About the middle of last century there arose a 
 great belief that the world was somehow going to 
 be saved by Trade and Commerce. M&th the rise 
 of the huge Machine -industries in the end of the 
 eighteenth century, and the immense development 
 of Locomotion in the early part of the nineteenth, 
 the commerce of the world increased by leaps 
 and bounds . The Crystal Palace in 1 8 5 1 was 
 the first of a series of Exhibitions which were 
 held as monuments and milestones of human 
 industrial progress. The lines of the Railways 
 and Steamships, spreading rapidly like a wonder- 
 ful web over the world, linked land to land ; and 
 it was said, and said again, '* Leave these forces 
 to their natural issue, let each man pursue his 
 own profit, his own interest — each country the 
 same — and by, the inevitable operation of tradje 
 and industrial exchange the whole world will ere 
 long be united in one great Brotherhood. The 
 Sheffield forger and grinder will manufacture 
 
 sickles for Russia ; and the Russian peasant, 
 
 18
 
 INDUSTRIAL TRANSFORMATION 19 
 
 cutting his wheat crop with the same, will send 
 back a portion of it for the sustenance of the 
 Sheffielder. The Lancashire girl working in the 
 mills, and helping to turn out cotton goods by 
 the mile for the natives of India, will run home 
 in the evening, with shawl thrown over her head, 
 to her little cottage, and sit down to a cup of 
 tea whose leaves have been plucked by her dark- 
 skinned sister in the tea-gardens of Assam." 
 Tennyson, who more than any other poet gave 
 voice to this period and these aspirations, said 
 in a passage often since quoted t— 
 
 For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, 
 Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that 
 
 would be, 
 Saw the heavens fill with Commerce, argosies of magic 
 
 sails, 
 Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with golden 
 
 bales, 
 
 ■ • • • 
 
 Till the war drum throbbed no longer, and the battle flag 
 
 was furled, 
 In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world. 
 
 It was a glorious dream, this apotheosis of 
 Commerce I this vision of an international 
 Brotherhood founded on trade and barter ! 
 And who shall say that, in a sense, it may 
 not some day be fulfilled — that some day earth's 
 children may not in freedom create and in free- 
 dom and friendliness interchange, the products 
 of their labors? But so far, alas I the dream
 
 20 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 has not been fulfilled, The Trade and the Com- 
 merce truly exist. But the freedom and the 
 friendliness — where are they? Only wage -slavery, 
 and the nations and the peoples armed to the 
 teeth in enmity against each other I 
 
 And the reason why the dream has not been 
 fulfilled is clear enough. You cannot make a 
 silk purse out of a sow's ear. And out of a 
 Trade and a Commerce founded on greed and self- 
 seeking, and chicanery, and the law of devil- 
 take -the -hindmost, you cannot get, and you can- 
 not expect to get, a society of brotherhood and 
 trust and mutual help. The spirit has been 
 deficient from the beginning ; and the tree will 
 bear no other fruit than its own seed. 
 
 From the beginning, and before Tennyson, 
 there were warning voices. Thoreau, from his 
 New England hermitage, said, " Trade curses 
 everything it handles," and again, " I have tried 
 Trade ; but found it would take ten years to 
 get on in that, and that then I should probably 
 be on my way to the devil." And before him 
 again, Shelley in his youthful inspiration of Queen 
 Mat spcdce of 
 
 Commerce ! beneath whose poison-breathing shade 
 No solitary virtue dares to spring ; 
 But Poverty and Wealth with equal hand 
 Scatter their withering curses. 
 
 Strong words ! — perhaps even a trifle over- 
 charged—but alas* ! how true, how true in the 
 main, even down to Jo-rJay !
 
 INDUSTRIAL TRANSFORMATION 21 
 
 It may be worth while to consider some of 
 the ways or respects in which this modern 
 Commerce has proved itself a failure — as thus 
 supplying us with some hints towards the 
 future. And first I will take its foundation 
 principle of Internecine Competition. 
 
 Ncrw every one will allow that Competition, 
 in the sense of a reasonable emulation in good 
 work and efficiency, is a very sensible and proper 
 thing. But it mu9t be remembered that the 
 Political Economists and the Industrial leaders 
 of the early nineteenth century went far beyond 
 this. They laid it down, in their great prin- 
 ciple of laissez-faire, that no restraint should 
 be placed upon individual effort in the midst 
 of the great struggle for existence — and even that 
 if every man (short of actually breaking the law) 
 went straight for his own advantage, regardless 
 of others, the total result for society at large 
 would be favorable and harmonious. In con- 
 sequence of this doctrine — or rather, perhaps, in 
 concurrence with it — came a period of the wildest 
 competition— in which, in the struggle for Trade 
 and for Profit, almost every law, human and 
 moral (which did not happen to be written in 
 the Statute Book), was broken ; and in which 
 the sufferings of those trampled underfoot in the 
 struggle — the suffering of women and tiny chil- 
 dren in the coal-mines, of strong men in glass- 
 works and steel-works, of girls in chemical works 
 and cotton mills, of chimney-sweeps, of farm-
 
 23 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 laborers, of sweated workers in city slurris, and 
 so forth — were so frightful, that in spite of the 
 theories of the Professors, and the fierce protests 
 of the great Lords of trade, 1 the nation insisted 
 from time to time on new Statute -laws restrain- 
 ing and restricting the freedom of the strong 
 man as against the weak, and defining and de- 
 fending equitable, relations between employer and 
 employed. Thus the later part of the nineteenth 
 century and the whole Victorian era witnessed a 
 slow but inevitable reaction against laissez-faire ; 
 and so ensued the very decided, though mostly 
 unacknowledged, beginnings of our modern 
 socialism. 
 
 This period of wild competition, and the 
 readjustment under it of all industrial relations, 
 is perhaps unique in human history. In all the 
 old societies — look where you will — you will find 
 individualistic competition having a very restricted 
 sway. The old societies were mainly customary. 
 Trade in old days was a matter of custom. The 
 word "customer" indicates this. If you dealt 
 with one man for your boots, and with another 
 for your bread, and with another for your meat, 
 you were the customer of these various people ; 
 the prices too were customary ; and these forms 
 of custom were not changed except for strong 
 and necessary reasons. In any one district there 
 established itself in consequence a kind of equili- 
 
 * Even John Bright in 1847 protested against the limiting 
 of women's and children's labor to ten hours per diem.
 
 INDUSTRIAL TRANSFORMATION 23 
 
 brium ; and each tradesman could know pretty 
 clearly what his prospect and outlook for the 
 coming year might be. But with the coming- 
 in of the world-wide Trade of which we are 
 speaking all this was changed. The Sheffield 
 cutler who, with his forbears, had manufactured 
 table knives for centuries suddenly found a deluge 
 of such knives coming in from Germany ; the 
 Coventry watchmaker discovered that watches 
 were pouring in from Switzerland or Massachu- 
 setts ; the farmer stared in dismay at sacks of 
 flour arriving from Canada or the Danubian 
 plains, and at thousands of heads of cattle con- 
 signed from the Argentine. Prices were hope- 
 lessly cut down and mangled, and men who had 
 before been making a fairly prosperous and 
 reliable living found themselves plunged in failure 
 and debt. At the same time the world-wide 
 Trade brought new sources of employment ; great 
 new industries sprang up ; the wage-working 
 populations migrated from place to place in 
 search of new work. The old steady-going hum- 
 drum order of things was shattered, and in its 
 place there set in a confused but fierce struggle 
 —men dislocated from their old occupations 
 fighting with each other at the doors of factories 
 and workshops for admittance ; masters under- 
 selling each other in the home and foreign 
 markets ; employers, in order to keep their foot- 
 ing against rivals, beating down the wages of 
 their own men to the lowest possible point ; and
 
 24 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 the workers, in order to keep body and soul 
 together, banding with each other to fight the 
 employers . 
 
 It is in the midst of this cut-throat commercial 
 warfare that we have been living. No one can 
 look out upon the Industrial .Wbrld of to-day 
 without seeing that it is so. And no one can 
 look upon it without seeing that to continue living 
 in ft is intolerable— that things cannot remain 
 as they are. It is a time of Transition. The 
 old customary order of society is behind us ; 
 the rational and rrumane order lies in front ; 
 and ft is towards this latter that we have to 
 press on. 
 
 The second instance of the failure of Modern 
 Commerce which I will take is that of Fraud and 
 Adulteration, with their inevitable accompaniment, 
 Waste. 
 
 In the old social order, in which production 
 was local, and the origin of nearly all articles 
 consumed was well-known to those who consumed 
 them, there was not much room for this trouble. 
 The Coat one wore was certified in all respects. 
 Its wool came from a neighboring farmer's 
 sheep, and was spun into yarn by some village 
 grandmother ; it was woven into cloth on a 
 cottage loom, and made up into a garment by 
 the parish tailor or the local housewife. If there 
 were scamping or deceit anywhere it was pretty 
 sure to be found out. If the local pork butcher
 
 INDUSTRIAL TRANSFORMATION 25 
 
 displayed an unwonted abundance of sausages, 
 and at the same time there occurred 3 mysterious 
 disappearance of the neighbors' cats, it was easy 
 to put two and two together, and to affix the 
 blame and the discredit 1 But when the world- 
 wide Trade came in, all this was changed. Fraud 
 and Adulteration became positively practicable, 
 comparatively safe, and superlatively profitable, 
 and the rush in that direction became so enor- 
 mous that to catalogue all the forms these evils 
 took would be simply impossible. Books like 
 The Jungle and Tono-hungay have familiarised 
 the world with certain aspects. Years ago 
 Herbert Spencer pointed out that silk goods were 
 commonly loaded with such heavy dyes as to 
 convert 1 lb. of pure silk into 2.\ lb. of the 
 marketable commodity ! To-day (I hSTve reason 
 to know) there are " pure linen " goods turned 
 out in Manchester which are made entirely of 
 cotton, with an admixture of size 1 And so far 
 has this habit penetrated that (according to Phil 
 May) the little slum-girl nowadays, who buys half 
 a pound of margarine from the grocer says : 
 " And please, Sir, mother says, would you stamp 
 the cow on it, as we have company coming 
 to tea? " 
 
 The progress of science has reached such a 
 point, and the chemicalising of products has 
 become so subtle, that inspection and regula- 
 tion are non-plussed, and the pursuing of the 
 evil by Law is plainly seen to be only a
 
 26 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 temporary remedy— which must ultimately give 
 way before the only radical cure, namely the 
 merging of this unholy scramble of the markets 
 in a serene and orderly form of communal 
 production* 
 
 And under this head it is perhaps not unfair 
 to dwell for a moment on the whole present 
 system of Advertisements and Travelers. A few 
 years ago (1901) it was calculated that in Great 
 Britain alone 80,000 folk were employed in the 
 advertisement trade, besides 64,000 commercial 
 travelers. How near these various activities run 
 to the line of Fraud we must leave the parties con- 
 cerned to judge, but of their signification as illus* 
 trating the intolerable Waste of our present system 
 every one can form an opinion. For all this vast 
 expense of labor and treasure represents only 
 the internecine warfare of firms with one another 
 — each bent on destroying its rival or rivals — 
 and whatever Trade one firm gains in the process 
 is lost by some other, so that the total advantage 
 or profit to the community is absolutely zero. 
 Many years ago Mr. Pears boasted that he spent 
 £100,000 a year in advertisements; and now 
 probably the sum is far larger. But of all the 
 hundreds of thousands of pounds thus spent in the 
 British soap trade what advantage does the com- 
 munity reap — except that its soap is so much 
 dearer in consequence? The public in fact, 
 through this extra price, pays and supports the 
 great army of travelers and advertisers. But
 
 INDUSTRIAL TRANSFORMATION 27 
 
 far wiser and better oft would the public be 
 if, instead, it simply planked down the same sum 
 in some such other way, as would provide the 
 said army with really useful work — useful to 
 themselves and to the community. And if any 
 one is so futile as to maintain that by this enor- 
 mous expense of advertisement and travelers the 
 public is enabled to judge the merits of various 
 soaps for various uses, the obvious answer is that 
 a jury of washerwomen for a few pounds a year 
 could fulfil this function for all practical purposes 
 with the greatest ease and efficiency— and prob- 
 ably with far more satisfaction to the general 
 customer. 
 
 The third trouble which I wish to consider in 
 connection with Modern Industry is the Fluctua- 
 tion of Trade. This is a very serious matter, 
 and one which I think will demand more atten- 
 tion in the future than it has hitherto received. 
 We saw that in the old society, when custom 
 ruled and production was local, industrial condi- 
 tions were comparatively steady. Changes of 
 course took place ; but they were slow and 
 partial and there was fair time for readjustment. 
 Now on the contrary changes are rapid, sweep- 
 ing, and unexpected. A small margin of profit 
 flings a whole body of trade across the Atlantic ; 
 a new invention, as we have already seen, 
 paralyses a whole industry in one place, and sets 
 it humming and buzzing in another. The country
 
 28 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 boot -maker in old days supplied his own locality 
 year in and year out with a certain class of 
 hand-made article. Now suddenly arrives from 
 Northampton or perhaps from New England a 
 consignment of machine-made boots at break- 
 neck prices ; and he sees ruin staring him in 
 the face. A sense of painful Insecurity affects 
 all the trades, small or large, in the country 
 or in the town. It becomes impossible to fore- 
 cast the future. At any. moment these causes of 
 fluctuation may arise. The employer suffers ; he 
 is timid and anxious \ he fears to lay down 
 capital. The worker suffers ; he is haunted by 
 the prospect of the "■ sack," and the long weary, 
 walking of the streets. 
 
 This fluctuation is a great evil. .We may say 
 that however bad conditions may be, yet if they 
 are fixed human ingenuity and necessity will 
 presently, devise a way to make the situation 
 tolerable. If for instance the demand for British 
 coal suddenly fell to only one half of the present 
 demand, and remained there, and it was known 
 that it would renidin at that low figure, then— 
 although for the moment there would be disloca- 
 tion and great suffering— yet in a short time the 
 excess of coal workers would migrate elsewhere 
 and those that remained would soon continue 
 working under normal conditions. But when the 
 fluctuations are continual and unforeseen, the pain 
 so caused in the body politic is extreme. At one 
 moment men are drawn in thousands to a district,
 
 INDUSTRIAL TRANSFORMATION 29 
 
 only a few months later to be starved out for 
 want of employment, and cruelly dispersed to 
 other centres. A kind of alternate inflammation 
 and atrophy of industrial tissue takes place, and 
 the consequent pain and anxiety to all concerned, 
 both employers and employed, are terrible. One 
 result, as far as the employers are involved, is 
 the abandonment of " stocking." With the swift 
 fluctuations of demand for any class of goods, 
 due to world-wide Trade (and collaterally also 
 to new Fashions and new Inventions), the manu- 
 facturer does not to-day venture to lay in a 
 large stock or store of any one article, lest with 
 the cessation of demand it be thrown useless on 
 his hands. He knows there is always a great 
 army of unemployed waiting outside his gates 
 (and modern Industry and Manufacture positively 
 now depend and rely on this fact) ; and he sees 
 that for his purpose the best plan is to live from 
 hand to mouth, as it were — to just supply the 
 demand of the moment, if necessary by calling 
 in extra workers from outside ; and then when 
 that is over, and the ebbtide comes, to discharge 
 a lot of hands, taking them (or others) on again 
 later when a boom occurs. In the old days of 
 course fluctuations were much less in extent and 
 slower in operation ; and those that did occur 
 were greatly alleviated by the custom of stock- 
 ing, by which in slack times the work was con- 
 tinued much as usual, arid the surplus of stock 
 thus created was stored up to be ready, for the
 
 30 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 next busy season. In those days old hands were 
 seldom discharged, and new ones were but slowly 
 taken on ; and the Industrial machine ran 
 smoothly and evenly, like an engine with a big 
 fly wheel. But now with the abandonment of 
 stocking the jolting and self-destruction of the 
 whole organism are terrible and ruinous. 
 
 With the constant " on and off " of employ- 
 ment which our general industrial system entails, 
 the condition of large masses of the workers is 
 fatally bad. If their wages when actually in 
 work are fair, yet their total and average in the 
 long run are wretchedly small ; saving becomes 
 hopeless ; long periods of unemployment occur ; 
 and the effect on the character of the man is 
 most baneful. The sufferings entailed in the 
 process are so great, that he loses his courage, 
 he loses hope and object in life, he loses the 
 habit of steadfast industry, and in cases where 
 ill-fortune continues he loses actual skill and 
 efficiency. Finally, if a long period of want of 
 employment brings about the break-up of the 
 home and the adoption of the life of the tramp, 
 the tragedy of this transition is so great that (as 
 statistics show) a return afterwards to normal 
 life is rarely possible. The man becomes adapted 
 to an aimless existence. " When shall I get 
 work again? " inquired the needy workman of the 
 old fortune-teller. " You will have bad luck 
 for two or three years," said she, " but after 
 that ..." ' ! Yes, aftef that? " hurriedly asked
 
 INDUSTRIAL TRANSFORMATION 31 
 
 the anxious querist. " You will get used to it! " 
 was the fatal reply. 
 
 Such are some of the awful problems which 
 loom up in connexion with modern industrial life, 
 and make us feel that we are nearing the end 
 of one dispensation, and must be preparing for 
 the arrival of another. The present system 
 hastens to its crisis and its close. As competi- 
 tion becomes keener and keener, as the world- 
 wide Trade draws its currents from farther and 
 farther shores, so does the whirlpool at the centre 
 become more and more fatally swift. Every day 
 the machines spin faster and faster, every day 
 the " drive " in the workshops is intensified. Pro- 
 duction of wealth increases with enormous strides, 
 and every day with less actual cost of labor. 
 Thus it comes about that while the needs of the 
 world are being supplied by the toilers, and an 
 enormous portion of the wealth so produced is 
 being appropriated by the shareholder and the 
 landlord, the actual number of wage-receivers in 
 the process is if anything being reduced. As the 
 machines spin faster, in fact, so much faster do 
 they throw off on the one hand the unemployed 
 poor, and on the other hand the unemployed rich. 
 
 This double problem of unemployment is the 
 master problem of our time, and its solution the 
 key to the future. It is both a threat and a 
 hope. For the failure to solve it will mean the 
 ruin and destruction of modern society ; it will
 
 32 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 mean the continued and increased production of 
 futile and imbecile crowds on the surface and in 
 the upper ranges of social life, and the continued 
 and increased production of hopeless and despair- 
 ing crowds of incompetents in the lower ranges 
 —a double burden which, unremoved, must 
 inevitably crush Society beneath it. But the 
 solution of the problem will lead the way to the 
 promised land of a new era. 1 
 
 The sufferings of the unemployed— to any one 
 who at all knows them— have indeed been very 
 terrible— terrible even to think of. But there is 
 this hope in them, that these very woes have 
 forced the attention of the world, they have com- 
 pelled us at last to face the problems which lie 
 behind them, and are the origin of them. The 
 man who stands at the dock -gates asking not 
 for alms but for a pittance of work, and stands 
 there, ill -clothed and ill -fed, for hours and hours 
 in the rain and cold, if so he may win bread 
 for his little ones, is (though we do not always 
 see it so) the Christ knocking at the door of 
 modern society, knocking at the door of our 
 hearts. He is ourself in another guise. Long 
 have we turned a deaf ear, long have we hardened 
 our hearts. But now we can do so no longer. 
 For humanity's sake, for the sake of our common 
 life, we must open the gates and let him in. 
 
 And this opening of the gates— what is it? It 
 is the acknowledgment of his Right to Work. 
 
 1 See Appendix.
 
 INDUSTRIAL TRANSFORMATION 33 
 
 Let us pause on this a moment. Some folk 
 would deny that there can be any such right, 
 as a right to work. But surely if they deny 
 that, in a society constituted as ours is, they deny 
 the existence of any right. For a man can ask 
 no more modest, no more reasonable, no more 
 unassailable right than the right to support him- 
 self. Observe, it is not the right to beg that is 
 claimed, though that to a starving man can hardly 
 be denied ; it is not the right to steal, or in some 
 way to live on the labor of others, though that 
 is certainly claimed and taken by large sections 
 of society ; it is not the right even to be sup- 
 ported out of the rates, though that is granted 
 by the Poor Law. No, it is a claim much more 
 modest and humble than any of these— simply the 
 right to have an opportunity of earning one's 
 own living ! 
 
 And can such a claim be resisted?— The more 
 we think about it, and the more Society at large 
 thinks about it, the more we see that in all reason 
 and humanity it cannot be resisted. 
 
 But some say : We admit that the claim in 
 itself seems a reasonable one, but the real diffi- 
 culty is this, that there is no practicable way in 
 which the claim can be granted— in which work 
 can actually be provided, however willing we may 
 be to provide it. To such objectors we may 
 reply : — Very well, then, if we can show that there 
 are many ways in which self-supporting work can 
 be provided, you will surely feel bound to adopt 
 
 3
 
 34 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 them, or at least to make sincere and thorough 
 trial of them. 
 
 That methods can be found by which, after 
 the lapse of a few preparatory years, remunerative 
 work could be provided for everybody — and with 
 great general advantage to the whole community 
 — there can be no reasonable doubt. Any one 
 who has looked into the subject must I think 
 agree to this. The real doubt lies in the willing- 
 ness of those at present in power to adopt the 
 methods — and the reason for this unwillingness I 
 will refer to later. For the moment let us 
 consider what these methods are. 
 
 In the face of the detailed and masterly 
 handling of this subject in the Minority Report 
 of the Poor Law Commission it would be super- 
 fluous for me to enter into them very minutely, 
 as well as impossible within the limits of this 
 paper. Suffice it to say that the main points 
 are ( i ) The gradual shortening of the working 
 day — especially to begin with, in public indus- 
 tries like the Railway, tram and omnibus 
 services ; > (2) the diminution of Boy and 
 Girl labor, and the raising of the School age ; 2 
 (3) the institution of great and ultimately greatly 
 remunerative public works, like Afforestation and 
 
 1 See The Remedy for Unemployment, being Part II. of the 
 Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission (Fabian 
 Society, 1909), p. 275. 
 
 a Ditto, p. 269.
 
 INDUSTRIAL TRANSFORMATION 35 
 
 Land Reclamation 5 ' P (4) tnc founding of Labor 
 and Farm Colonies. 3 
 
 Most of these points explain themselves. The 
 shortening of the hours of labor would cause an 
 absorption of extra workers into those industries 
 in which such shortening was carried out. The 
 curtailing of Boy and Girl labor and the raising 
 of the School age would, of course, not only, 
 cause an extra demand for adult labor, but would 
 give an opportunity for the methodical technical 
 training of young folk, and the turning them out 
 into the world as efficient citizens — a most im- 
 portant matter. With the institution of great 
 and permanent Government works of Reclama- 
 tion, Afforestation, Canal restoration, extension, 
 etc., not only would there be a great increase of 
 employment, but it could be arranged— as the 
 Minority Report recommends— that such works 
 should proceed more rapidly in seasons of general 
 Trade depression, and less rapidly in seasons of 
 prosperity, so as in this way to counteract in some 
 degree the fluctuations of general industry, which 
 we have seen to be so harmful. And by the 
 foundation of Labor and Farm colonies indus- 
 trial training could be provided— compulsory in 
 some cases, but voluntary in most— for those who 
 are now incompetent and unskilled ; while by 
 degrees and with extended experience and im- 
 provement in the general level of skill and 
 
 1 Ditto, p. 280. 
 
 • Ditto, pp. 301, 328, and 329.
 
 36 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 efficiency, such places could be rendered quite 
 self-supporting and even remunerative. 
 
 A word upon this last point. The Minority 
 Report, wisely perhaps, does not dwell upon the 
 question of self-supporting colonies. The English 
 labor colonies, like Hollesley Bay — largely owing 
 to their half-hearted management — have not been 
 a great success ; but the work done on the 
 Continent in this line has been quite remarkable ; 
 and already it has become clear that in certain 
 places of this kind — like Merxplas in Belgium — 
 very inefficient human material, which in England 
 becomes a heavy charge upon the rates, may 
 be taken and rendered " practically self-support- 
 ing " ; x while in other cases, as at Witzwill in 
 Switzerland, similar material, well fed and lodged 
 and gradually trained, yields an actual balance 
 to the good, after all the expenses of the estab- 
 lishment have been paid. 2 
 
 Both these colonies, just mentioned, are of a 
 more or less compulsory character, and deal with 
 material of most unlikely kind— inefficient, un- 
 willing, and constantly fluctuating. And the 
 question arises whether, with these results obtained 
 in such places, we may not fairly look forward 
 to the founding of other Colonies of really skilled 
 
 1 See The Unemployed • a National Question, by Percy 
 Alden, price is. (P. S. King, 1905), p. 23. 
 
 2 For an account of Witzwill Colony, see article by Edith 
 Sellers, in the Nineteenth Century for January 1910.
 
 INDUSTRIAL TRANSFORMATION 37 
 
 and alert workers in all departments — Industrial 
 Villages and Garden Cities we might call them 
 —which should be greatly successful and pros- 
 perous, and yield a high rate of wages or return 
 for their labor to those co-operating in them. 1 
 That skilled and efficient men and women must 
 be able — with all modern appliances and indus- 
 trial science — to produce from the ground, and 
 supply each other with all the necessaries of life 
 and an abundance over and above, is, one may 
 say, a truism of Social economy. And for the 
 success of some such experiment all that would 
 seem really necessary would be the provision of 
 an ample area of land, and of a wise and experi- 
 enced management. (After all, England itself, 
 taken as a whole, is such a colony — only very 
 badly organised, or scarcely at all, and with a 
 vast number of quite helpless and useless members 
 — and yet it supports itself year by year with a 
 perfectly astonishing superfluity and profit.) 
 
 In all this matter we have to remember that 
 reaping — as we are now doing — the harvest of 
 our unholy commercial system of the last century 
 or more, we cannot expect all at once to undo 
 its ill-effects and dissipate its deadly accumula- 
 tion of drc£rs below and of scum above. There 
 
 'cr 
 
 1 A very interesting account of the large and highly 
 successful voluntary colony at Frederiksoord in Holland, is 
 given by Herbert V. Mills in his book, Poverty and the State 
 (price is.), pp. 148-54. 
 
 20790 J
 
 38 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 must necessarily be a considerable period of 
 preparation, and of training of these helpless 
 Crowds to become useful and efficient. But once 
 that is allowed, and it is understood that in the 
 near future practically every boy and girl that 
 comes of age will be qualified to do useful work 
 for the community—why the nightmare about the 
 difficulty or impossibility of finding employment 
 will surely vanish quite naturally. 
 
 Why then— it may be asked— why are not 
 efforts made at once to work out such proposals 
 as above outlined, for the provision and extension 
 of employment? Why are not large schemes 
 adopted in the direction of shortening the work- 
 ing day, the curtailing of juvenile labor, the 
 institution of great national and remunerative 
 public works? Why is not serious consideration 
 given to the subject of industrial villages— to be 
 composed of efficient workers of all trades (of whom 
 there may soon again be thousands walking about 
 the streets)— while in the meantime other prepara- 
 tory colonies, not entirely self-supporting, and the 
 technical schools, might be tackling the problem 
 of qualifying the young and the inefficient for the 
 future time when they will be able to take their 
 place as worthy and useful citizens? Every one 
 admits the urgency of the Unemployment problem, 
 they " deeply sympathise " — and yet, and yet, 
 when these simple and obvious remedies are put 
 forward, they are Somehow ignored 1 Why is it? 
 
 The answer is simple— and instructive. It is
 
 INDUSTRIAL TRANSFORMATION 39 
 
 because all these remedies involve the idea of 
 industry being carried on not for Profit but for 
 Use — not for the profit and gain of an individual 
 man, a shareholder, a bondholder, a landlord — 
 but for the use and advantage of the workers 
 and the whole community ; and this idea is so 
 appalling that it dislocates people's minds — and 
 they cease to think : just as people cease to 
 walk when their legs are dislocated ! Folk are 
 60 accustomed in fact to think that industry can 
 only go on when it pays a big man to get a 
 big profit out of it— they are so ingrained to our 
 commercial system — that some of them genuinely 
 believe that no other state of affairs is possible ; 
 while others (not so innocent) see in any such 
 change the beginning pf the end of legalised 
 robbery 1 To such folk the reclamation of vast 
 lands from the sea and the dotting them over 
 with farm-steads and a prosperous population 
 seems a useless and meaningless enterprise, for 
 it would give no scope for speculation, nor yield 
 any profit to individual shareholders ; the same 
 of a home-colony ; while the shortening of the 
 working-day in the various trades would certainly 
 bring a danger of some slight diminution of divi- 
 dends, and therefore, however important it might 
 be for the health or safety of the workers, ought 
 decidedly to be opposed. . 
 
 Such then is the state of affairs in the United 
 Kingdom to-day. The Commercial system and
 
 40 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 the commercial ideals of the last century have 
 had their full fling ; and while creating a Trade 
 and a Wealth perfectly astounding and unparal- 
 leled (as, for instance, Total exports and imports 
 in 1830, £88,000,000; the same in 1907, 
 £957,000,000), they have at the same time 
 developed evils and inhumanities so monstrous 
 (e.g. Fraud and Adulteration unprecedented, 
 Robbery of the poor by the rich, vast accumula- 
 tions of diseased wealth, deadly masses of 
 Poverty) that it is felt that the process cannot 
 and must not any longer continue. And yet at 
 the same time, so ingrained is the habit of the 
 past — so persuaded are the workers that the only 
 source of employment is the self-interest and 
 speculative advantage of "masters," so deter- 
 mined are the employing classes not to 
 countenance any industry which does not yield 
 them dividends— that the next steps, which are 
 of course in the direction of production for Use, 
 though perfectly obvious, seem strange and almost 
 impossible . 
 
 It is evident that nothing but a new concep- 
 tion and spirit will avail — nothing but a new 
 germinating principle of industrial life. For, as 
 said before, the tree will bear no other fruit than 
 its own seed. We cannot get grapes from 
 thorns. Out of the seed of the plant called 
 devil-take-the-hindmost, sown in the beginning of 
 last century, has sprung for this age no ordered 
 and gracious social life, of friendliness and
 
 INDUSTRIAL TRANSFORMATION 41 
 
 humanity, of beauty and of joy, but only a wilder- 
 ness of briars— as any one may plainly see who 
 merely glances around. Briars, vigorous perhaps, 
 strong-growing, and covering all the land— but 
 after all, only briars. Nothing but the grafting 
 of a new life upon these, a new spirit, a new 
 germinating principle, will so transform them that 
 they will blossom at last into the rose of our 
 devotion and our love. 
 
 And this change, this new inspiration (which 
 is already coming to us) is coming, as ever, 
 from the outcast and the rejected. It is from 
 the pitiful figures scarce able to hold their rags 
 together, who flit past us like ghosts in the mid- 
 night of the richest city of the world, or huddle 
 crouching on the riverside seats — or from those 
 dreary cues of hopeless thousands who wait at 
 dockyard and factory gates— that the congregated 
 cry of suffering has gone up, which is at last 
 awakening the slumbering soul of our modern 
 civilisation to its human destiny, its real life. 
 " Abandon this mad, this inhuman struggle," it 
 says, " in which we and such as we are hourly 
 and eternally crucified— in which your own hearts 
 and lives are blasted. Look on us, and know 
 that we are but yourselves in another form. 
 Grant our claim, so unassailable, so elementary— 
 the simple Right to Work— that we may be 
 allowed to support ourselves— that the industrial 
 machine may be so modified that all may bear 
 their part, and none be excluded. Do this, and
 
 42 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 lo ! in the hour that you do it you will have sown 
 the Seed of a new Society — as far superior to 
 the present one as the perfect rose is superior 
 to the bramble — the society in which industry shall 
 actually be carried on for human Use instead of 
 for fraud and robbery. 
 
 " But do it not, and the hour of your ruin 
 is at hand. The writing is already on the wall. 
 No nation can continue for long, without serious 
 disaster, to harbor huge masses of its population 
 in a decaying and diseased state — forbidden from 
 the land and all the conditions of healthy industry 
 and life — its very own limbs and members mortify* 
 ing. The Crisis draws rapidly near. Whether it 
 Comes from within, by the disorganisation of your 
 Own internal affairs, or whether from without) by 
 direct foreign attack — unless you set your house 
 in order, and that right soon, a great catastrophe 
 awaits you." 
 
 This element, then, in the breakdown of our 
 present Commercial system— this strange and 
 ominous evolution of huge masses of unemployed 
 poor and unemployed rich — is bringing us such 
 a lesson as the above, and pointing us such a 
 cure, largely on what may be called the moral 
 plane. Another element in the same — namely, 
 the evolution of great industrial Trusts and Com- 
 bines — is pointing a strictly practical direction for 
 us to take, and a practical means by which we 
 may, possibly pass to the new Society. 
 
 The Trust of course is the halfway house to
 
 INDUSTRIAL TRANSFORMATION 43 
 
 the Public Administration of Industry, It pre- 
 pares the way— in those larger wholesale indus- 
 tries to which it applies— for their being taken 
 over and administered by. the Public. Yet to 
 say " prepares the way " is hardly correct, seeing 
 that for years now, as already pointed out, legis-* 
 lation has gone in the direction of Socialism, 
 that is to say of restraining the wild race of 
 commercialism and introducing human order 
 where before was a self-seeking chaos j for 
 years, too, it has gone in the direction of 
 municipalising industries and taking them over 
 into public control 5 and of necessity it has done 
 so, for there is no other direction to-day in which 
 progress in such matters can well take place. 
 The Labor and Socialist parties in the State 
 have recognised and acknowledged this necessary 
 movement, and are deliberately and consciously 
 helping it on ; the Liberal and Conservative 
 parties, with their eyes more or less shut, do 
 not perhaps always know what they are doing, 
 or see where they are going I yet the Statute 
 Book of the last 60 years shows plainly enough 
 —from the Ten Hours Act for women and children 
 of 1848 to the Minimum Wage and Wage-boards 
 Act of 1908 J — and it is too late now for these 
 parties to make a bogey of a movement which 
 they themselves have been nursing so long. 
 
 The advance, the growth, the conquest of the 
 general socialist conception are assured. The 
 1 See Appendix for Note on the Minimum Wage.
 
 44 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 gradual transformation of our industries and 
 activities is inevitable — so that they will be carried 
 on in the main for public advantage and use. 
 How far the process begun in the Post Office, 
 the Telegraphs, Telephones, Railways, Trams, 
 Electricity, Gas, and Water Supply (not to 
 mention Munitions and the general Regimenta- 
 tion connected with the Great War)— how far 
 exactly Nationalisation and Municipalisation will 
 go — we cannot of course yet see. Certain 
 it is that before long the greater portion of the 
 land and the greater number of the large 
 industries will be collectively handled. And 
 certain it is that these changes will bring a 
 considerable alleviation of the evils of the 
 commercial era. 
 
 Public administration allays the evil of exces- 
 sive Competition, and the cut-throat warfare and 
 waste which go on still in the outside trades. 
 (Imagine for a moment what the Post Office 
 would be to-day if in the hands of a hundred 
 little competing letter-carrying firms !) Public 
 Administration practically puts an end to the evil 
 of Adulteration ; it curbs an enormous amount 
 of Fraud and Waste. Under it, Fluctuations 
 of employment, which we have seen to be so 
 great a curse, are much more easily controlled ; 
 Hours can be shortened at need, and sections 
 of unemployed so absorbed ; Wages and con- 
 ditions made much more equable and favor- 
 able or just to the worker ; and in general the
 
 INDUSTRIAL TRANSFORMATION 45 
 
 Robbery of the poor by the rich minimised and 
 gradually extinguished. 
 
 But— and this is a most important " but "— 
 it brings with it the very great danger of the 
 growth of officialism, bureaucracy, and red-tape, 
 than which, if allowed free sway, few things can 
 be more fatal to the real life of a nation. The 
 multiplication of officials — as has been seen in 
 the past history of Russia — strangles the spon- 
 taneous vitality of the people ; it creates a vast 
 body of parasites, as bad as the dividend-drawing 
 parasites of Commercialism ; and betrays the 
 public into the power of a class hostile to change 
 and to progress. 
 
 We see this alas ! only too clearly in con- 
 nexion with the present War. In this country 
 officialism is tightening its grip in a fateful way ; 
 and administered as it is from above by a class 
 which is out of touch and sympathy with the 
 needs of the people it is becoming a great danger. 
 The ignorance displayed by the War Office and 
 the high Civil authorities concerning the common 
 and necessary conditions of life among the masses 
 is something astonishing ; it has led to perpetual 
 altering of regulations and to every kind of 
 vacillation and uncertainty ; it has bred a deep 
 distrust in the minds of the people, and in this 
 hour of national crisis, if carried much farther, 
 might easily lead to something like revolution. 
 At a time when national unity is above all things 
 needed, the tendency to treat the unions and other
 
 46 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 botiies of workers in a ' superior ' and hostile 
 spirit — bodies that in general know fully as much 
 about the subjects in discussion and are quite 
 as ' patriotic ' as those who criticise them — and 
 the unwillingness to take these bodies into con- 
 fidence and work with instead of against them, 
 are signs of a most foolish and mistaken state 
 of mind. 
 
 As an instance of the kind of thing that is 
 constantly happening, I may perhaps quote from 
 a late book of mine a passage concerning the 
 shipping strike on the Clyde in 1910 : "A good 
 deal of indignation had been expressed up and 
 down the country at the conduct of the men in 
 the shipyards, who had refused to take up their 
 tools and go to work again, even after their 
 leaders had counselled and even urged them to 
 do so. I was as much in the dark as most 
 others about the cause of this strange refusal — 
 until I reached Greenock ; and then I soon heard 
 from various quarters, both of men and masters, 
 the real reason. It was not a" question of wages 
 or of hours. Those matters had so far been 
 settled satisfactorily. The real grievance was a 
 personal one. The men had been affronted by 
 the overbearing conduct of the Chairman of the 
 Employers' Association, the insulting manner in 
 which he had behaved to their representatives, 
 and so forth ; and they were not going to put 
 Up with this without a protest. They wanted 
 to be treated in a gentlemanly way. It was
 
 INDUSTRIAL TRANSFORMATION 47 
 
 encouraging and refreshing to find that this was 
 so j and the fact that it was so lets a good 
 deal of light into a frequent cause of labor 
 troubles and dissensions. But of course in this 
 case at Greenock, as in so many others, the Press 
 all over the country had got on the wrong tack, 
 and the public never knew the real rights of the 
 matter," 1 
 
 Thus we see that while we plead in many 
 departments for more public administration of 
 Industry, it will be very necessary at the same 
 time to guard against the great dangers of 
 officialism and Bureaucracy. We may of course 
 hope that a new alertness in the masses and a 
 far more thorough general education in Citizen- 
 ship will in the future come to our aid ; but 
 we see that to guard against these dangers will 
 require all our alertness. 
 
 In the following chapters, however, I have 
 endeavoured to indicate some directions of future 
 movement along which there will be a good hope 
 of passing by in safety, and gaining the haven 
 of a fair and rational social harmony. 
 
 1 See My Days and Dreams, p. 262.
 
 Ill 
 
 INDUSTRY AS AN ART 
 
 Mr. Bertrand Russell in his excellent book 
 on The Principles of Social Reconstruction 
 accentuates strongly the fact that men's impulses 
 may be divided into two great classes — the 
 Possessive and the Creative— and suggests indeed 
 that the Western nations are even now preparing 
 for a period of transition, in which the possessive 
 instinct will cease to be so influential as it has 
 been in the past, and will begin to yield place to 
 the creative. Let us hope that this change is 
 really taking place. The possessive desires, as 
 Mr. Russell points out, are those which commonly 
 bring people into conflict with one another, and 
 make for warfare on a big or a small scale ; the 
 constructive impulses, on the other hand, are 
 those which on the whole tend towards co- 
 operation and harmony. 
 
 That a period of profound and wide-reaching 
 Change is already upon us is a thing to which a 
 thousand indications point ; and it is well that 
 at such a juncture we should pause and peer 
 forward, as best we may, into the future. In the 
 
 foregoing paper (Ch. II) I have sketched the 
 
 4 8
 
 INDUSTRY AS AN ART 49 
 
 Industrial transformation which' has been going 
 on during the last fifty or sixty years and the 
 slow modifications of our Capitalist system which 
 have been forced upon us from point to point by 
 the glaring and obvious defects of the latter ; 
 but I confess that for myself I can see nothing 
 really adequate and satisfactory in this direction 
 except a complete change of Heart— a change 
 of the very guiding principles of our modern 
 life. A mere tinkering at our existing industrial 
 arrangements will never do what we want ; and 
 now that the War has brought us face to face 
 with some of the facts of life and given people 
 furiously to think in a way that they have never 
 done before, the need of a radical Change stands 
 out more clearly before us, and the realisation 
 of such a thing seems less distant and a good 
 deal more feasible. 
 
 Are we approaching (I hardly dare ask the 
 question) an age of good sense in the affairs of 
 mankind? Is the long-deferred Coming-of-Age 
 of Humanity at last to be celebrated? Let us not 
 pray the gods for any stupendous gifts for the 
 coming generations-r-for towering genius or in- 
 tellect or universal heroic characterr-=rbut only for 
 a modest boon, such as they surely cannot grudge 
 or refuse to grant— to be able, namely, to conduct 
 our own affairs with a little good sense, just a 
 very little, as much for instance as a sheep might 
 have ' I 
 
 . Here we are, the human race/ planked down 
 
 4
 
 50 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 upon this planet with '{at tne present day)" most 
 marvelous powers of industrial production at our 
 command, amply sufficient, if decently used, to 
 supply every one with all the necessaries of life — 
 and only requiring a very moderate degree of 
 intelligence so to make use of them ; l and lo ! 
 instead of settling down to make the best of 
 so excellent a situation we deliberately leave 
 nine-tenths of our brothers and sisters to live in 
 squalid and abject poverty, while the rest of us 
 employ our precious time and energies in mad 
 and destructive warfare ! 
 
 We have got to get down to the root, and to 
 begin again, so to speak, from the beginning. 
 We have got, it seems to me, to realise two 
 things : first, that Life itself can be made and 
 has to be made something good and beautiful 
 —worth living for, in fact ; secondly, that work 
 itself must be so transformed as to become a 
 pleasure. I will discuss these two points more 
 at length presently. Sufficient just now to 
 observe that the second point necessarily follows 
 from the first. For since work occupies, and 
 
 1 As to the necessity of confining (by birth control) our own 
 growing populations — and those of other civilised nations — 
 within reasonable limits, there can hardly be two opinions on 
 its importance. It is so obvious that a well-grown, healthy, and 
 highly developed people is happier in itself and, even though 
 limited in numbers, better able to resist attack than a puny 
 ill-grown horde spawning in ignorance and confusion. See 
 on this subject Havelock Ellis' excellent Wartime Essays 
 (Constable, 1916).
 
 INDUSTRY AS AN ART 51 
 
 must always occupy, the major part of our waking 
 hours, it is clear that our lives generally cannot 
 well be a joy to us if our work is a burden and 
 detestable. And if to some people these two 
 objects of our future endeavor seem too remote 
 and impossible, let us remember that since the 
 experience of the Great War nothing need seem 
 to us impossible, and that here in these two 
 directions we have a thing indeed worth working 
 for— something even worth giving our lives for— 
 such as we have never had before in all the days 
 of our boasted modem Civilisation. 
 
 One serious obstacle to the amelioration indi- 
 cated, is what Mr. Russell terms the ' Possessive ' 
 impulse— chiefly exhibited among the Well-to-do ; 
 and it may be worth while to say 3. few words 
 on this. Through long centuries this impulse 
 has been cultivated and evolved, and to such a 
 degree that it has become in many cases a mere 
 mania— the " mania of owning things "—without 
 rhyme or reason. In pursuance of this mania" 
 vast numbers of people not only make miserable 
 their own lives (which would not so much matter), 
 but also the lives of thousands around them, from 
 whom they derive their ill-gotten gains. (Even 
 sheep are not so senseless as this.) It is the 
 possessive or grabbing mania which stands in 
 the way of our human approach to the new 
 world that awaits us. Let us hope that the 
 power and vitality of this delusion are fading 
 away, and that soon it will be but a ghost and
 
 52 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 a bogey through which we shall walk, and find 
 that it has no substance. 
 
 The other serious obstacle is the Timidity and 
 want of self-reliance of the mass -peoples in 
 almost all countries ; Who— though their hearts, 
 so to speak, are in the right place— have not 
 thought out the logical issue of their feelings 
 and have not in consequence the courage of their 
 opinions. Though there is ample evidence that 
 among all peoples, in some early or pre-civilisa- 
 tion period, life has appeared as worth living, and 
 work as something attractive and enjoyable, yet 
 there is no doubt that in the later centuries the 
 conditions of industry have ingrained into men's 
 minds an opposite view. If any enthusiast to-day 
 were to descend into one of our big towns and, 
 standing at a street corner, to preach to the 
 passers by about the " pleasure of Work," or 
 to urge them to the easy task of making 
 Life " really enjoyable and beautiful," the crowd 
 I fear, putting their thumbs to their noses, would 
 break out in scornful laughter, or perchance turn* 
 ing on the speaker would stone him with stones- 
 even as they stoned Stephen at Jerusalem when 
 for him the heavens opened and he saw in a 
 vision the Son of man standing at the right hand 
 of God. i 
 
 The truth is that Life and Work to-day under 
 the commercial-industrial regime have become so 
 hideous and monotonous and altogether detest- 
 able that to the plain man the very notion of
 
 INDUSTRY AS AN ART 53 
 
 their possible charm and beauty has become ludi- 
 crous, and not to be entertained. Nevertheless 
 there are plentiful indications that this hideous - 
 ness and hatefulness has already reached its 
 climax, and that a new order of world-history 
 is setting in. It is naturally difficult for the 
 mass-people to believe in such a divine possibility 
 of change ; yet I most certainly think that if 
 they once beheld the vision and realised what 
 it meant, they would set their faces towards it 
 in real earnest, and would say in the words of 
 William Blake : "I will not cease from Mental 
 Fight, nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand, 
 till we have built Jerusalem in England's green 
 and pleasant Land." 
 
 What then are the necessary conditions for 
 making Work a pleasure?— They are so extra- 
 ordinarily simple that it is a marvel that they 
 have so far escaped attention and been neglected. 
 Work is a pleasure when it is free and creative 
 in character— and that is the whole mystery of 
 the matter. There is little else to be said. 
 Every human being, like every animal or plant 
 or tree, has a law of growth of its own, whose 
 expression and utterance is a joy to it. One 
 tree bears oranges, another bears roses. The joy 
 that any such healthy tree has in its work is 
 evident. But only on condition that it is free, 
 to produce according to its nature. To try to 
 compel a rose-tree to bear oranges would be 
 madness— a madness similar to that which pre-
 
 54 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 vails at present in the* whole of our industrial 
 world. So great is the pleasure of free creative 
 work that thousands and hundreds of thousands 
 of folk — as is well known — after their day of 
 leaden and slave -like labor in the factories, do 
 actually on their return home plunge into some 
 sort of hobby of their own — whether gardening, 
 or cabinet-work, leatherwork, copper-embossing, 
 painting, or what not. Tired as they are they 
 still are drawn onwards by the desire to express 
 themselves, to create something of their own ; 
 nor do fresh fatigues deter them from this joyful 
 quest. I know a boy who slaves in a dirty 
 workshop for ten hours or so a day. When he 
 gets home — and a very poor home at that — he 
 actually, after he has had his tea, descends into 
 the cellar and by the dim light of a tallow candle 
 and with poor tools begins work again, making 
 little cabinets or corner-cupboards, or a model 
 of an aeroplane. Such people are true artists ; 
 and all work of course ought to be of a similar 
 nature — that is, of the nature of an Art. 
 
 Artists, in the wide sense of the word, are 
 the only natural and healthy people, and in line 
 with the rest of creation — with the trees and 
 the animals. They are indeed happy. But to 
 confine the name to those who dabble in paints 
 or letters or music is foolish. For the greatest 
 of arts are the arts of Life ; and the washer- 
 woman who takes a real pride and interest in 
 her work, to make it as perfect as she can,
 
 INDUSTRY AS AN ART 55 
 
 independently of any so - called profit or gain 
 which she may derive from it, is an artist in 
 her way, and indeed more truly so in the essence 
 of things than many a man who merely paints 
 pot-boilers for the Spring exhibitions. 
 
 Every one ought to be an artist and to take 
 pleasure in his or her work, feeling that the work 
 was a true self-expression and self -liberation. 
 Then there would be joy over the land. '(I s the 
 song of a lark work, or is it play?) If Pro- 
 duction became free then nearly every one would 
 work In that spirit. And in order that produc- 
 tion should become free the conditions are also 
 extraordinarily simple — the only condition being 
 that people generally should desire it to be free. 
 
 Such an Ideal has by statesmen for some 
 centuries never been put into practical shape, 
 or even apparently contemplated with that end 
 in view. Yet one would say that its realisation 
 in a sensible community would not be a very 
 difficult matter. All that would be required 
 would be that every person or group of persons 
 who desired it should have access (at a State or 
 community rent) to a small plot of land on 
 which to establish his or their industry, and access 
 also, under similar conditions, to such power, 
 in the form of electricity or steam or water, as 
 the community could provide. I say "or group 
 of persons " because it is clear that for many 
 industries the work of a group is more appro- 
 priate and effective than the work of isolated
 
 56 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 individuals, and such spontaneously co-operative 
 work ^(provided the group were self-governing 
 and not enslaved to any master) would be free 
 in character and would carry with it for each 
 worker the charm of authenticity and of being 
 '(through the group) the expression of each 
 worker's will. Thus it would be truly artistic, 
 and truly a source of pleasure — being both creative 
 and free. Something of such conditions was 
 certainly realised in the best days of the mediaeval 
 guilds. Where on the other hand it happened 
 that the industry was carried on by a single 
 individual, its self - expressional and artistic 
 character Would probably be enhanced — though 
 something no doubt might be lost on the social 
 side, and in the pleasure of co-operation. 
 
 As I say, there does not seem to be any 
 serious reason why a scheme of this kind '(in 
 more adequate detail) should not be worked out, 
 provided the nation desired it. The real obstacle 
 —both to the spread of any such Ideal, and to 
 the practical working of it out— lies in the matter 
 we have mentioned above, the excess of ' posses- 
 sive ' instinct which pervades large classes. The 
 very extensive and wealthy classes who to-day 
 control production and derive their riches from 
 the enslavement of labor, dread above all things 
 the freeing of the worker and the prospect of 
 the latter becoming self -determining and master 
 of his fate. Though it is notorious that the 
 present dispensation produces a rather futile,
 
 INDUSTRY AS AN ART 57 
 
 mean, and miserable master-class, together with 
 a dismal, weary, and sad -eyed worker class, yet 
 the whole political and social engine is concen- 
 trated on the effort to maintain it as it is, and 
 to disguise or conceal its evil character. The 
 lifting of this coffin-lid would be the signal of 
 a Resurrection such as the world has hardly yet 
 dreamed of. 
 
 A second result would follow from the freeing 
 of the worker. Not only would Work, being 
 authentic and creative, become a joy and a bless- 
 ing ; but the things created would (at any rate 
 after a brief period of adaptation to the new order) 
 take on the quality of Beauty. The world would 
 be irradiated with a new light. The things 
 produced and sold or exchanged in the markets 
 and the shops, having been made in joy and 
 gladness, and having absorbed into themselves 
 the spirit of those who produced them, would 
 actually radiate back the same spirit on the pur- 
 chasers and users — not otherwise than as the 
 luminous paint with which we paint our clock- 
 dials, after having been exposed to the sunlight 
 during the day, radiates back a fairy gleam of 
 the same in the watches of the night. The 
 wares in the windows, the objects round us in 
 our rooms, would reflect the conditions of their 
 production. They do so now; and that is 
 part of the terror, in the present day, of walking 
 through the streets^ I The abject aimless articles 
 that we see exposed there for sale are the sorry
 
 58 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 reflection of the kind of life the mass of our 
 people lead. 
 
 The degree to which Beauty, with the in- 
 spiration which it affords, is absent from the 
 surroundings of our modern life is a thing) which — 
 though it has been dwelt on by a few Artists 
 and Socialists, like Ruskin and William Morris — 
 has generally passed unnoticed by. the multitude. 
 Beauty has in truth been so far exiled from our 
 current Works and Days that we have lost the 
 sense of it*^ and of that which we have never 
 experienced we have naturally ceased to feel the 
 need. I propose in the following chapter to 
 explain more in detail what this loss is and what 
 it means, , 
 
 NOTE 
 
 It is sometimes said, and even strenuously main- 
 tained, that with due regimentation and officialism 
 such as to-day we see existing and extending all 
 around us — with a thoroughgoing system of servile 
 labor, in fact — more and better articles could be 
 and would be produced, than by any such free 
 creative method as above proposed. Personally I 
 very much doubt this assertion. The " more " is just 
 possibly, though not certainly, true ; but the "better" 
 I think is assuredly false — unless, indeed, explosive 
 shells and big guns are to be adopted as the measure 
 of goodness. However, allowing for the moment that 
 the argument is feasible, what does it really at most 
 amount to ? It amounts to this — that cheap and 
 serviceable wares are the main object of life, and that
 
 INDUSTRY AS AN ART 59 
 
 if these are produced it really does not matter about 
 the welfare of the Producers, or whether their souls 
 are liberated to a nobler and more human utterance. 
 It is indeed the final conclusion and condemnation of 
 the " Nation of Shopkeepers " theory — and there I 
 think we may leave it !
 
 IV 
 
 BEAUTY IN EVERYDAY LIFE' 
 
 It is difficult sometimes to make clear what 
 exactly one means by Beauty in daily life. Per- 
 haps one can best attack the subject by pointing 
 out first what one does not mean. Not long 
 ago, in walking over the hills on my way to 
 Sheffield, I saw a sight which, alas ! is far from 
 uncommon. I saw one of those charming way- 
 side wells or fountains, which I remembered was 
 gracious, years ago, with sparkling pure water 
 and overhanging ferns and mosses — I saw it 
 neglected and shattered, dried up, and its place 
 filled with broken pots and pans and old salmon 
 tins. The sight afflicted me and, remembering 
 how this was only one instance out of many, 
 I could not help thinking : — Is the love of beauty 
 and the sense of the sacredness of Life and 
 Nature lost to this people? It is impossible 
 (I thought) to imagine the Greeks of old per- 
 mitting such a crime. They would have slain 
 the man who perpetrated it. For, for them, 
 deities and spirits dwelt in the streams and foun- 
 
 ' Being the substance of a Lecture delivered in Sheffield 
 and elsewhere. 
 
 60
 
 BEAUTY IN EVERYDAY LIFE 61 
 
 tains, and in the woods and 1 all the sylvan world, 
 and to defile these things was an act of sacri- 
 lege. And even our own forefathers, a few 
 centuries ago, had their well - dressings and 
 festivals of gratitude to the gods for all creatures 
 of beauty and use. But we — we have lost the 
 sense of divinity in Nature and Life, and instead, 
 when we ask what is holy and what is sacred, 
 we are pointed to some stuffy chapel or church', 
 with greasy pews and ill-smelling hymn-books, 
 and ever-closed windows — and told that there we 
 must doff our hats and speak with bated breath ! 
 Not that I have anything to say against churches 
 and chapels — for those who like them ; but I 
 do think it sad that all our reverence should be 
 piled upon these things to the neglect of those 
 others ; and that while we sing our hymns to 
 God on the Sundays we should employ the rest 
 of the week in emptying our slops in the 
 streams and pouring foul volumes of smoke up 
 into the glorious and crystal vault of heaven. 
 I can hardly believe that God likes that sort of 
 worship 1 
 
 And it is not only Nature that is thus dese- 
 crated, but that Man himself, who ought to be 
 the crown and pride of Nature, has become a 
 blot upon her face. The other day I was passing 
 in the train along the coast not far from the 
 shore. It was a Spring day ; the sun shone 
 brightly ; before me was a field in which men 
 were plowing and beyond it stretched the sea.
 
 62 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 It was a beautiful scene — the sky above, flecked 
 with fleecy clouds, the darker blue, foam-broken 
 waves, the rich brown of the land ; the white 
 birds (sea-gulls) following in the furrow ; the 
 splendid well-equipped horses. All "(I was going 
 to say) was full of life and promise. — And then 
 I looked at the men I and saw with sorrow two 
 ill -dressed, poverty-stricken, poorly-built, and 
 obviously weary " farmhands " trudging there 
 behind their teams — the one note of sadness and 
 disharmony in the scene. Why should this be? 
 They say that in China at the Spring Equinox, 
 it has been the custom of centuries for the 
 Emperor to go forth with a silver plow and 
 plow a few furrows in ceremonial state — this 
 in token of the honor attaching to so important 
 a work — an honor so great that even an Emperor 
 may covet to stand thus " as Mediator between 
 Earth and Heaven." Can we in the end of time 
 devise nothing better or more worthy than out 
 method? The work of the plowman, in all 
 pagan times and since the dawn Of History 
 has been honored. Why should if not be 
 so now? 
 
 And if there is a Festival which in the Old 
 World has been celebrated with dance and with 
 song, more even than the Spring-sowings, it has 
 been the garnering and the threshing of the 
 corn. To-day, what do I see when this period 
 comes round? I declare that I fairly dread its 
 arrival 1 I hear a horrible rumbling ill-omened
 
 BEAUTY IN EVERYDAY LIFE 63 
 
 sound, I look' forth ; and behold a foul and 
 dirty and splay-jointcd engine creaking along 
 the road, belching forth clouds of filthy smoke, 
 and followed by a threshing machine and a dozen 
 or so of the most god-forsaken, wretched men 
 who have been picked up for next to nothing 
 among the ' unemployed.' This Machine and 
 this crew pass into a farmyard, there to perform 
 their horrid rites, and through the belly of the 
 former and the hands of the latter passes the 
 beautiful corn, in a fashion so inhuman that 
 I cannot help wondering whether, after the pro- 
 cess, the grain is fit to be eaten. 
 
 And when we leave the fields and pass into 
 the factories — away from the redeeming influences 
 of the open air — the case, as we all know, is 
 worse. Where in the long drab rooms, filled with 
 drab-coloured men and Women and children, in 
 the stifling air, and amid the clatter of machinery 
 and the wicked scream of wheels, — where are 
 the most beggarly elements of beauty and of 
 joy in life? Alas ! they are not to be found. 
 Commercialism says they do not pay ; and 
 Puritanism, her handmaid, has declared them 
 to be wicked. On one occasion, at Kilbowie, 
 near Glasgow, I stood on the bridge '( not at 
 midnight but at midday) at the hour when 
 Singer's great sewing-machine factory is loosed 
 for its dinner time. A human torrent — some ten 
 thousand men and girls as it was then reckoned 
 — passed rapidly over. And I, ensconced in a
 
 64 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 sheltered corner, stood and looked at their faces. 
 It was not necessary for me to go inside. Stand- 
 ing there I could see only too clearly the con- 
 ditions which prevailed within the factory [(no 
 worse probably than elsewhere in the Kingdom) ; 
 they were written on the listless tired faces, the 
 lightless eyes, the monotone expressions/ the 
 pallid skins, the peaked features, the perkily 
 sexual physiognomies. I came away feeling, 
 depressed indeed. 
 
 When living at Brighton as a boy, more than 
 fifty years ago, I used to hear of the miners in 
 the North whose coal — often brought in sea-borne 
 ships to the neighboring little harbor of 
 Shoreham — we were in the habit of burning. 
 And I used to think what grand fellows those 
 miners must be, who faced danger and death 
 in the pits, and heavy toil, in order to obtain 
 this so necessary fuel — what strong and well- 
 grown men, and honored by the nation, as of 
 course they ought to be. Fate or destiny have 
 led me, in these later years, to live within three 
 or four miles of the coal pits of North-East 
 Derbyshire ; and now I know the miners of that 
 locality well. Sometimes it happens to me to be 
 in the station at Chesterfield when the " Paddy 
 Mail " comes in — the train which brings the men 
 back from the outlying pits. I shall never forget 
 the moment when first I watched the arrival of 
 this train. Instead of the fine hearty fellows 
 my boyish imagination had pictured, there
 
 BEAUTY IN EVERYDAY LIFE 65 
 
 descended from the overcrowded carriages and 
 hurried away across the platform as if ashamed 
 of themselves a shambling ragged crew, whose 
 thin legs and worn features spoke only too clearly 
 of want and overwork. Of course there were 
 some sturdy and comfortable specimens among 
 the crowd, but they were the exception. Rickety 
 limbs, contracted chests, hacking coughs and 
 hollow cheeks, abounded ; and now, with more 
 intimate knowledge of the subject, I am con- 
 scious that that first impression was very near 
 the mark. Somehow, despite occasional bursts 
 of good times and good luck, these men who 
 do some of society's most needed work are left, 
 through ignorance, neglect, and oppression, to 
 become its bitter enemies. And one can only 
 ask, VVhere are the splendors and the joys of 
 life which should be their portion? 
 
 Finally when we follow the workers — of either 
 sex — from the factories and furnaces and shops 
 to their own homes, what do we find? Every 
 one unfortunately knows something of the miles 
 of mean streets in our great towns, which, as 
 John Burns once said, " make mean men, weary 
 women and unclean children." What elements 
 are there in these surroundings, to feed the soul 
 and give it nourishment? What stimulus to save 
 it from the deadly pall of monotony? Those who 
 are sufficiently well off to command frequent 
 change do not know how paralysing is the effect 
 of monotony ; but those who have had the good 
 
 5
 
 66 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 fortune to be confined in prison for a long period, 
 or have been compelled to work in a factory, 
 do. On one occasion, some manual worker 
 friends of mine, man and wife, who resided 
 normally in a small country cottage, took their 
 two children for a little holiday to the seaside. 
 They let down at a lodging there— a house in a 
 row, of the usual type ; and while they were 
 unpacking their few belongings they told the 
 children to run out and play in the street. The 
 children did so, and for some minutes all went 
 well. Then suddenly heartrending screams were 
 heard. The parents rushed to the window, think- 
 ing the kiddies had, by chance, been run over. 
 But no, nothing of the kind. There were the 
 boy and girl safe and sound, but crying their 
 little hearts out in a paroxysm of despair. What 
 was the matter? They had run a little way along 
 the street, and lo I there they were staring up 
 at the senseless row of tall houses in front of 
 them, all exactly alike, of which it was impos- 
 sible to tell which was the one whence they had 
 lately emerged, and where their parents would 
 be foundt It was a veritable nightmare — this 
 row of grinning idiotic house-fronts all exactly 
 the same, down to the very lace -curtains — and a 
 nightmare which they would never forget to the 
 end of their days. 
 
 I tell this story in order to illustrate the sad, 
 the paralysing effect of uniformity and monotony 
 in the present day live9 of our mass -peoples,
 
 BEAUTY IN EVERYDAY LIFE 67 
 
 both children and adults. I think anyhow I 
 have said sufficient to indicate — by illustrations 
 drawn from their absence — what I mean by the 
 need and the importance in our industrial world, 
 of the positive things — of Health and Joy and 
 Love and Beauty — the things without which our 
 mortal days on Earth are of little or no account. 
 And I think I now begin to understand why 
 to thousands, and one may sSy millions, this 
 War [(even with all its horrors) has been a relief 
 and an escape, why it has brought alertness of 
 mind and brightness of eyes with it. And 
 the answer is : — Because — dreadful and wicked 
 though it be — it has meant to so many a 
 life in the open-air ; it has meant health, good 
 food, a common cause, comradeship with others, 
 and a dozen positive things, instead of the 
 inhuman monotonies and negations of a life of 
 slave labour under the heel of commercialism. 
 I understand that wicked as the War is, it is in 
 its essence the outcome and result of something 
 more wicked \ and I pray that when afterwards 
 the millions return to their homes they will see 
 to it that never again shall the soulless regime 
 of the past be reinstated, but that industrial life 
 shall go forward into a new land — the land of 
 freedom and of joy. 
 
 There is one thing which the W.ar has done* 
 in which we are all agreed. It has convinced 
 us that it will be no use in the future pleading 
 Poverty as our excuse for the continuance of
 
 68 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 the past conditions. This People of ours, which 
 has been able to rise up and pour out money- 
 like water for the purposes of the present conflict, 
 can never again say that resources are wanting 
 for the far more important purpose of creating 
 for itself a really worthy and great national life. 
 We have indeed discovered the amazing extent 
 of our industrial wealth, and its amazing growth. 
 In 1830, as already said (Ch. I.), the combined 
 value of our Imports and Exports amounted to 
 £88,000,000 ; shortly before the War this had 
 risen to £1,000,0.00,000. The National Income 
 at the same time reached £2,000,000,000. Yet 
 during that period — when individual merchants and 
 manufacturers were making enormous fortunes — 
 it was commonly said that such things as old- 
 age pensions, shorter working days, free meals 
 for children and so forth, were too expensive 
 to be contemplated. We know now what these 
 excuses amounted to. 
 
 Wie are beginning to understand too the false- 
 ness of the plea, sometimes put forward, that the 
 mass -peoples are indifferent to such things as 
 Health, Freedom, and the real joy of creative 
 industry, and are quite content as long as they 
 have their bread and butter, and their few 
 trumpery amusements. It is certain (as I have 
 noted in the previous chapter) that the creative 
 instinct and the feeling for beauty are widespread 
 and deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, 
 and that in all times and lands the peasants and
 
 BEAUTY IN EVERYDAY LIFE 69 
 
 the craft workers in their potteries, or wrought 
 iron -work, or textile fabrics, have — when left with 
 a little independence to their own devices — felt 
 and found their way to results quite admirable and 
 beautiful. Why is it that great artists like Ruskin 
 and Morris and Walter Crane have for long 
 enough pointed this out to unheeding generations, 
 and that travelers going to out of the way places 
 and the ends of the earth have brought us back 
 countless specimens of such native talent? Lately, 
 at the Exhibition of the Design and Industries 
 Association, held in London (November 191 6), 
 there were shown some colored cotton cloths 
 copied from designs made by the native tribes 
 of West Africa in connexion with their hand- 
 loom industry ; and certainly the beauty of these 
 things, the richness of the colors and the excel- 
 lence of the fabrics, were an eye-opener to those 
 who thought that on such matters Manchester and 
 South Kensington had said the last word. The 
 truth is that the love of beauty is natural among 
 all free peoples — though of course its standard 
 may vary in quality and character ; and we may 
 well believe that some aboriginal folk living in 
 the open air and the light of the African sun have 
 an acuter sense of color and form than many of 
 our populations who are surrounded by the 
 monotonous and drab conditions of which I have 
 spoken. 
 
 Mr. Chester Holcombe, for some time Acting 
 Minister of the United States at Peking, says
 
 70 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 of the Chinese people » : — " They have a keenly 
 sensitive aesthetic taste. Evidences of this fact 
 are to be found in every direction and among 
 all classes throughout the empire. . . . Their love 
 of the odd and grotesque, in imitation or varia- 
 tion of nature, is more apparent than real, and 
 is mainly shown in dwarf copies of natural objects 
 of grandeur or beauty. This is the result of 
 necessity rather than of choice, and should be 
 credited to a hunger for the beautiful, so keen 
 that in the absence of the originals they can find 
 pleasure in the merest toy-copies. Hence all over 
 China, in the homes of the poorest as well as of 
 the wealthy, in door-yards and dwellings, are 
 to be found tiny landscapes, dwarf trees, mimic 
 caves and grottos, artificial rockwork, and moun- 
 tains of a few feet in height, threads of running 1 
 water, or lakes that a child might spring 1 across. 
 All this is the struggle of poverty to surround 
 and satisfy itself with the beautiful. And as 
 such it has a' right to recognition and respect. . . . 
 Throughout the empire," he goes on to -say, " hill- 
 slopes, mountain -crags, and similar points com- 
 manding a wide range of vision, were chosen 
 centuries ago as sites for their temples, pagodas, 
 and other sacred and important edifices. The 
 writer stood one autumn day by a ruined building 
 placed upon the highest point in the Imperial 
 Summer Palace, west of Peking. On every hand, 
 
 1 See The Real Chinaman, by Chester Holcombe (Hodder & 
 Stoughton, 1895).
 
 BEAUTY IN EVERYDAY LIFE 71 
 
 marring what must once have been a scene of 
 exquisite beauty, were blackened, broken and roof- 
 less walls, and other marks of the desolation 
 wrought by British and French troops when they 
 plundered and burned this palace in i860. Where 
 the writer stood were to be seen a few Chinese 
 characters recently written upon one of the posts 
 of a finely wrought but broken gateway, Trans- 
 lated, they read as follows : — ' A gentleman would 
 not so far demean himself as to consent to the 
 mutilation and destruction of this wonderfully 
 beautiful landscape.' " 
 
 I think we must admit that the Chinese citizen 
 who scrawled this on the broken gate-post had 
 not only a fine sense of beauty but also a keen 
 faculty for polite yet searching rebuke. 
 
 The truth is that the germ of the Beauty- 
 sense is slumbering in the hearts of all peoples, 
 not only in the Chinese or Japanese peasants 
 whose productions we admire, but even in our 
 more solid and stolid British stocks. But tt ts 
 very commonly starved out on the one hand by 
 sheer poverty or paralysed on the other by mere 
 superfluity of wealth. 
 
 I have spoken in the preceding chapter of the 
 charm of the technique of the mediseval guilds, 
 as seen in their architecture and other craft - 
 work, and suggested how much of the charm 
 derives from the freedom and spontaneity and 
 authenticity of these productions. I do not think 
 we yet perceive what a large element in the con-
 
 72 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 sciousness of Beauty is our recognition of a 
 personal factor behind it. I mean that the sense 
 that here is an intelligence seeking for expression 
 adds greatly to our appreciation of the beautiful. 
 It is not every thing of course, but it is an im- 
 portant element — and one that has not been 
 sufficiently considered by the professors and the 
 schools. A rose is presented to you, whose color 
 and form appear perfect ; a living creature, it 
 seems, unfolding its life to the world — in some 
 way striving to express itself. But when suddenly 
 you discover that the flower is an artificial one, 
 what a sense of loss supervenes I Certain elements 
 of beauty remain, it is true, but one most impor- 
 tant element — the consciousness of touch upon a 
 kindred life — is gone. 
 
 This is so far true that I think it largely 
 explains the ugliness of machine - made things . 
 Here is a row of iron railings. From the South 
 Kensington point of view it may be a very desir- 
 able row. The design of each shaft and of the 
 scroll which connects it with the adjacent shaft 
 may be excellent ; but when a thousand such 
 shafts and scrolls appear in regimental monotony 
 the mind is paralysed ; there is no sense of 
 expressiveness or of personality, only a sense of 
 weary repetition ; and one great factor of beauty 
 is lost. So it comes about that, though one may 
 look at a single artificial rose or wrought -iron 
 scroll with pleasure and in admiration of the 
 ingenuity and skill of the artificer, one turns
 
 BEAUTY IN EVERYDAY LIFE 73 
 
 away from the thousand mechanical copies in 
 disgust. 
 
 To be quite practical. Though one can see 
 that there may be not a few intermediate stages 
 to be passed through before this ideal of Industry 
 as an Art can be realised, yet one can see that 
 to keep one's eye fixed on that ideal is the best 
 way of arriving there. The mechanical organi- 
 sation of Industry may have to be retained for 
 a period, but it must be retained only with a 
 view to the liberation beneath it of the human 
 spirit and of human creativeness. A purely 
 mechanical industry may be retained long in some 
 trades — like the weaving of cotton sheeting or 
 the turning out of steel rails (where uniformity 
 is the main thing required) — longer than in other 
 trades where the human impress is more impor- 
 tant. But in such cases the actual length of 
 hours worked under machine -conditions might be 
 so reduced that each employee still had the major 
 part of the day for his own personal and 
 authentic activity. A four hours' shift in many 
 trades would be quite feasible ; and practically 
 no worker would object to giving this amount 
 of time provided he had the rest of the day 
 free for the industry in which he was really 
 interested. 
 
 As said before, a Wealth which exists only 
 for the purpose of producing more Wealth is 
 the most foolish and futile thing imaginable. It 
 is worse — it is poisonous and disease-producing.
 
 74 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 For a hundred years now, In this and other 
 Western countries, this Dispensation has lasted ; 
 and it has resulted (as many of us foretold years 
 ago) in fhe deposit of a mass of mere dregs 
 in the bottom of the social chalice, and the spread 
 of a quite foul scum on the top. Possibly nothing 
 but the strain and suffering of a great War could 
 avail to purge the body politic of these evils. 
 Wis have given endless thought and labor to 
 the perfecting of breeds of Cattle and Cabbages 
 and to the awarding of prizes for the same in 
 countless shows and exhibitions-; but we have 
 only thought of the men and women themselves 
 as machines for the grinding out of profit. And 
 now the Nemesis is on us. 
 
 Let me recount, in illustration of my meaning, 
 what happened in Manchester three or four years 
 ago. The old Infirmary had been pulled down, 
 leaving a large open space at the end of Market 
 Street, and nearly in the centre of the city. The 
 question naturally arose, What should be done with 
 this open space ? and the idea was widely favoured 
 to convert it into an ornamental garden, with 
 plentiful seats and resting-places for the busy 
 public. At a meeting of the City Council a 
 resolution to that effect was proposed, and seemed 
 likely to be carried— when a Councillor got up 
 and said " No— no, you cannot do this ; for if 
 you plant an ornamental garden there with seats, 
 what will be the consequence? Why, all the 
 dirty, unclean, poverty-stricken loafers that you
 
 BEAUTY IN EVERYDAY LIFE 75 
 
 see about the streets now will flock there, and 
 after them It will be Impossible for any clean and 
 self-respecting citizen to use the place — so that 
 plan had better be abandoned." After the 
 Councillor had spoken there was a dead silence 
 in the Council. It was seen that no reply was 
 possible, and that the scheme would have to be 
 abandoned. As a matter of fact I have known 
 almost identical things happen in other Northern 
 towns, and schemes for their improvement similarly 
 paralysed. .; / tJ 
 
 L We need a new gospel of Wealth — namely the 
 liberation of the real wealth of this and other 
 nations — the up -building of a glad and free 
 creative Life among the millions, and the growth 
 of a healthy, alert, handsome, and capable popu- 
 lation, having in their midst the priceless flower 
 of beauty, and faithfully tending it in thejr daily 
 life.
 
 V 
 NON-GOVERNMENTAL SOCIETY 
 
 Most people agree nowadays in the view (to 
 which I have alluded already) that the growth 
 of bureaucracy and officialism in the modern State 
 is a serious evil, and that the extension of Govern- 
 ment interference and the multiplication of Laws 
 are a great danger. We all know that the institu- 
 tion of the Law and the Courts actually creates 
 and gives rise to huge masses of evil — bribery, 
 blackmail, perjury, spying and lying, wrongful 
 accusation, useless and deliberate suffering and 
 cruelty ; that it publicly sanctions and organises 
 violence, even in extreme forms ; that it quite 
 directly and deliberately supports vast and obvious 
 wrongs in Society— as for instance land-monopoly ; 
 that it is absurd and self-contradictory in much 
 of its theory and practice ; that (as Herbert 
 Spencer so frequently insists) it paralyses the 
 folk that submit or trust to it ; and finally that 
 it is to-day for the most part so antiquated and 
 out of date that (even if this were thought 
 desirable) it might well seem impracticable to 
 patch it up for real human use. 
 
 Yet in these cases — though we admit that the 
 
 76
 
 NON-GOVERNMENTAL SOCIETY 77 
 
 things are evil — our defence usually is that they 
 carry some compensations with them, and that 
 anyhow they arc necessary evils, which we cannot 
 dispense with, and without which disorder, violence 
 and social disruption would ensue. 
 
 It may be worth while to consider this defence 
 more closely ; for curiously enough the history 
 of nations and peoples is, on the whole, to con- 
 trary effect. Not only have all the early tribes 
 of the world got on and cohered together in 
 order and social amity without any rigid and 
 ponderous system of laws ; but even among the 
 peasant peoples of to-day — like the Irish or the 
 Swedes or the Swiss or the Chinese — where they 
 are still living in moderately primitive conditions, 
 we find the same thing. Governmental law and 
 its operations and institutions occupy but a very 
 small part in their lives. It is true that Custom 
 is strong among all primitive folk, no doubt as 
 a very necessary backbone or framework to their 
 society ; but Custom is a very different thing 
 from Law. It is law in its inception — when it 
 is yet in a tentative, rudimentary condition ; and 
 however harsh, rigid, or senseless the customs of 
 many savage tribes may be, they are yet easier 
 to alter than when they have become ossified 
 into written forms, with their huge weight of 
 age and ceremony, and the authority of armed 
 men to enforce them. 1 
 
 1 See below, p. 90. Spencer and Gillen, in their late book 
 The Northern Tribes of Australia, say that there are no chiefs
 
 78 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 That human societies can subsist without a 
 considerable amount of Custom we may well 
 doubt ; but that they can subsist and maintain 
 themselves in good order and vitality without 
 written law and its institutions there is no reason 
 at all to doubt. And when Custom, among a 
 reasonable and moderately advanced people, 
 leaving behind the barbarities of the savage 
 age, takes on a gentler form, and while exer- 
 cising considerable pressure on individuals is 
 itself fairly plastic and adaptable to the general 
 movements of society — we seem to see in such 
 pressure a force as far superior to Law as life 
 itself is superior to mere mechanism. A vast 
 amount of our social life to-day in all depart- 
 ments of its activity is ruled by Custom, and 
 some of these customs, like those of " society ' 
 and fashion, have a very powerful sway. There 
 is no law, for instance, for the recovery, of betting 
 debts, yet their non-payment is extremely rare. 
 
 Of course, accustomed as we are to " call the 
 policeman " on every emergency, we find it hard 
 to imagine life without this institution ; and our 
 life being largely founded on it, it is so far 
 necessary, and its removal would cause disloca- 
 tion. That is, since without the police the present 
 spoliation of the poor would not be possible, 
 
 even or headmen among these people ; but the old men 
 constitute an informal council, which punishes " crime " and 
 the breaking of marriage rules, organises the ceremonies, 
 and from time to time inaugurates reforms.
 
 NON-GOVERNMENTAL SOCIETY 79 
 
 and the enormous existing inequalities of wealth 
 and poverty could never have been heaped up 
 —without them the society founded on these arti- 
 ficial inequalities could not well be maintained. 1 
 But to say that because a certain institution is 
 necessary to build up and retain society in a 
 certain abnormal and unnatural form, therefore 
 society cannot exist without that institution, is 
 the same as to say that because to a Chinese 
 woman of rank foot -bandages are necessary, 
 therefore women generally cannot exist without 
 foot -bandages. ,We have to realise that our 
 present social forms are as ugly and inhuman 
 as a club foot ; and then we shall begin to 
 realise how little necessary are these institutions, 
 like law and police, whose chief concern and 
 office is to retain and defend these forms. 
 
 The chief difficulty, then, which arises in 
 people's minds at the thought of a free non- 
 governmental society, does not concern its de- 
 sirability—they are agreed as a rule that it 
 would be desirable— but concerns its practi- 
 cability. And much of this difficulty is derived 
 from the society of the present. People see, in 
 fact, that an internecine competition for sub- 
 sistence is the ruling force of life to-day, and 
 the chief incentive to production, and they, infer 
 that without government society would dissolve 
 
 ' Though, as all more primitive society shows us, small 
 inequalities and such as arise from natural differences of 
 human industry and capacity will always be welcome.
 
 8o TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 into a mere chaos of plunder on the one hand, 
 and of laziness on the other. 1 It is this difficulty 
 which has first to be removed. 
 
 Though it seems a hard thing to say, the outer 
 life of society to-day is animated first and fore- 
 most by Fear. From the wretched wage -slave, 
 who rises before the break of day, hurries through 
 squalid streets to the dismal sound of the 
 " hummer," engages for nine, ten, or twelve hours, 
 and for a pittance wage, in monotonous work 
 which affords him no interest, no pleasure ; who 
 returns home to find his children gone to bed, 
 has his supper, and, worn out and weary, soon 
 retires himself, only to rise again in the morning 
 and pursue the same deadly round ; and who 
 leads a life thus monotonous, inhuman, and 
 devoid of all dignity and reality, simply because 
 he is hounded to it by the dread of starvation ; — 
 to the big commercial man, who, knowing that 
 his wealth has come to him through speculation 
 and the turns and twists of the market, fears 
 that it may at any moment take to itself wings 
 by the same means ; who feels that the more 
 wealth he has, the more ways there are in which 
 he may lose it, the more cares and anxieties 
 belonging to it ; and who to continually make 
 his position secure is, or thinks himself, forced 
 to stoop to all sorts of mean and dirty tricks ; — 
 
 1 Though it must, to be strictly impartial, be pointed out 
 that this difficulty is chiefly felt by those classes who them- 
 selves live on interest and in ornamental idleness.
 
 NON-GOVERNMENTAL SOCIETY 81 
 
 over the great mass of people the same demon 
 spreads its dusky wings. Feverish anxiety is the 
 keynote of their lives. There is no room for 
 natural gladness or buoyancy of spirits. You 
 may walk the streets of our great cities, but you 
 will hear no one singing— except for coppers ; 
 hardly a plowboy to-day whistles in the furrow, 
 and in almost every factory (this is a fact) if 
 a workman sang at his work he would be 
 " sacked." We are like shipwrecked folk 
 clambering up a cliff. The waves are raging 
 below. Each one clings by handhold or foot- 
 hold where he may, and in the panic if he push 
 his neighbor from a point of vantage, it is to 
 be regretted certainly, but it cannot be helped. 
 
 But such a state of affairs is not normal. 
 Allowing that the struggle for existence in some 
 degree or form is unavoidable, history still, except 
 at rare crises, presents us with no such spectacle 
 of widespread anxiety ; the study of native races 
 —whom we might consider in a state of destitu- 
 tion — reveals no such dominion of dread. I want 
 the reader to imagine for a moment this burden 
 of fear lifted off the hearts of a whole people ; 
 and the result. 
 
 Let us imagine for a moment that some good 
 
 fairy—some transcendental Chancellor of the 
 
 Exchequer— with a stroke of his wand, has assured 
 
 to us all not only an old age pension, but a 
 
 decent provision for all our days of the actual 
 
 necessaries of life (to go no further than that) ; 
 
 6
 
 82 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 so that for the future no man could feel any 
 serious or grinding anxiety for his own material 
 safety, or that of his family. What would be 
 the result on our actions? 
 
 Perhaps, as many would maintain, nine -tenths 
 of the population would say, "I'm blessed if 
 I'll ever do another stroke of work." Like the 
 organ-grinder who came into a little fortune, and 
 who forthwith picked up an axe and fell upon 
 his organ, shouting as he hacked it to pieces, 
 " You shall neffer play dat tarn Alabama Coon 
 any more," we should feel so sick of our present 
 jobs that we should want to turn our backs on 
 them for ever. Very likely, I should say — and 
 rightly enough too ; for " work " in the present 
 day is done under such degrading and miserable 
 conditions by the vast majority of the population 
 that the very best and most manly thing would 
 be to refuse to continue doing it. 
 
 But let us suppose, since a bare living has 
 been assured to us, and we are in no danger of 
 actual starvation, that we all take a good long 
 holiday, and abstain religiously from doing any- 
 thing. Suppose that we simply twirl our thumbs 
 in idleness for two, three, four, or six months. 
 Still, is it not obvious that at the end of that 
 time nine-tenths of the population would find 
 sheer idleness appallingly dreary, and that they 
 would set themselves to work at some thing or 
 other — to produce comforts or conveniences rising 
 above the level of sheer necessity — objects of
 
 NON-GOVERNMENTAL SOCIETY 83 
 
 use or beauty, either for themselves, or for 
 their families and neighbors, or even con- 
 ceivably for society at large ; that, in fact, a 
 spontaneous and free production of goods would 
 spring up, followed of course by a spontaneous 
 and free exchange — a self-supporting society, 
 based not on individual dread and anxiety, but on 
 the common fulness of life and energy? 
 
 That people relieved from care do spon- 
 taneously set themselves to work is sufficiently 
 shown by the case of the well-to-do classes to- 
 day. For these people, though having every- 
 thing provided for them, and not merely the bare 
 necessaries which we have supposed, exhibit the 
 most extraordinary and feverish energy in seeking 
 employment. A few decades of years have been 
 quite sufficient to make them feel the utter failure 
 of picnics as an object in life ; and now we 
 are flooded with philanthropic and benevolent 
 societies, leagues, chanty organisations, art 
 missions to the poor, vigilance crusades, and 
 other activities, which are simply the expression 
 of the natural energies of the human being seek- 
 ing an outlet in social usefulness. It is, of course, 
 to be regretted that owing to the very imperfect 
 education of this class their ideas and their 
 capacities of social usefulness should be so 
 limited. However, this is a defect which will 
 no doubt be remedied in the future. All that 
 concerns us here is to see that since the rich, 
 though in many %vay3 ill-adapted by training and
 
 84 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 tradition, do spontaneously take up a life of 
 this kind, there is nothing extravagant in sup- 
 posing that the average man, surrounded by so 
 many unfulfilled needs, might do the same. 
 
 And if any one still doubts let him consider 
 the thousands in our large towns to-day who 
 would give their ears to be able to get out and 
 work on the land — not so much from any prospect 
 of making a fortune that way, as from mere 
 love of the life ; or who in their spare time 
 cultivate gardens or plots or allotments as a 
 hobby ; or the thousands who when the regular 
 day's work is over start some fresh little occupa- 
 tion of their own — some cabinet-making, wood- 
 turning, ornamental iron-work or whatnot ; the 
 scores of thousands, in fact, that there are of 
 natural gardeners, cabinet-makers, iron -workers, 
 and so forth ; and then think how if they 
 were free these folk would sort themselves spon- 
 taneously to the work they delighted in. 
 
 Thus it appears to be at least conceivable that 
 a people not hounded on by compulsion nor kept 
 in subjection by sheer authority, would set itself 
 spontaneously to produce the things which it 
 prized. It does not, of course, at once follow 
 that the result would be perfect order and 
 harmony. But there are a few considerations 
 in the positive direction which I may introduce 
 here. 
 
 In the first place, each person would be 
 guided in the selection of his occupation by his
 
 NON-GOVERNMENTAL SOCIETY 85 
 
 own taste and skill, or at any rate would be 
 guided by these to a greater extent than he is 
 to-day ; and on the whole would be more likely 
 to find the work for which he was fitted than 
 he is now. The increase in effective output and 
 vitality from this cause alone would be great. 
 While the immense variety of taste and skill in 
 human beings would lead to a corresponding 
 variety of spontaneous products. 
 
 In the second place, the work done would be 
 useful. It is certain that no man would freely 
 set himself to dig a hole, only to fill it up again 
 —though it is equally certain that a vast amount 
 of the work done to-day is no more useful than 
 that. If a man were a cabinet-maker and made 
 a chest of drawers, either for himself or a neigh- 
 bor, he would make it so that the drawers would 
 open and shut ; but nine-tenths of the chests 
 made on commercial principles are such that the 
 drawers will neither open nor shut. They are 
 not meant to be useful ; they are meant to have 
 the semblance of being useful j but they are 
 really made to sell. To sell, and by selling 
 yield a profit. And for that purpose they are 
 better adapted if, appearing useful, they turn out 
 really useless, for then the buyer must come again, 
 and so yield another profit to the manufacturer 
 and the merchant. The waste to the community 
 to-day arising from causes of this kind is 
 enormous ; but it is of no moment as long as 
 there is profit to a certain class.
 
 86 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 Work in a free society would be done because 
 it was useful. It is curious, when you come to 
 think of it, that there is no other conceivable 
 reason why work should be done. And of course 
 I here include what is beautiful under the term 
 useful, — as there is no reason why one should 
 separate what satisfies one human need, like the 
 need of beauty, from another human need, like 
 the need of food. I say the idea of work implies 
 that it i9 undertaken because the product itself 
 satisfies some human need. But strangely enough 
 in Commerce that is not so. The work is under- 
 taken in order that the product may sell, and 
 so yield a profit ; that is all. It is of no moment 
 what the product is, or whether bad or good, 
 as long as it fulfils this one condition. And 
 so the whole spirit of life and industry in the 
 other society would be so utterly different from 
 that of the present, that it is really difficult for 
 ua to compare the results. But it is not diffi- 
 cult to see that if on the principles of freedom 
 there was not so much produced in mere quan- 
 tity, and folk did not (as may indeed be hoped) 
 work so many hours a day as now, still, the goods 
 turned out being sincere and genuine, there would 
 really be far more value shown in a year than 
 on the strictly commercial system. 
 
 In the third place, it follows— as William 
 Morris so constantly maintained— that ' work ' 
 in the new sense would be a pleasure — one of 
 the greatest pleasures undoubtedly of life ; and
 
 NON-GOVERNMENTAL SOCIETY 87 
 
 this one fact would transform Its whole character. 
 We cannot say that now. How many are there 
 who take real pleasure and satisfaction in their 
 daily labor? Are they, in each township, to be 
 counted on the fingers? But what is the good 
 of life if its chief element, and that which must 
 always be its chief element, is odious? No, the 
 only true economy is to arrange so that your 
 daily labor shall be itself a joy. Then, and 
 then only, are you on the safe side of life. And, 
 your work being such, its product is sure 
 to become beautiful 5 that painful distinction 
 between the beautiful and the useful dies out, 
 and everything made is an artistic product. 
 Art becomes conterminous with life. 
 
 Thus it will be observed that whereas" the 
 present society is founded on a law-enforced 
 system of Private Property, in which, almost 
 necessarily, the covetous hard type of man 
 becomes the large proprietor, and (supported by 
 law and government) is enabled to prey upon the 
 small one j and whereas the result of this 
 arrangement is a bitter and continuous struggle 
 for possession, in which the motive to activity 
 is mainly Fear ; we, on the contrary, a*re dis- 
 entangling a conception of a society in which 
 Private Property is supported by no apparatus 
 of armed authority, but as far as it exists is a 
 perfectly spontaneous arrangement, in which the 
 main motives to activity are neither Fear nor 
 greed of Gain, but rather Community of life
 
 88 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 and Interest m life— in which, in fact, you 
 undertake work because you like the work, 
 because you feel that you can do it, and 
 because you know that the product will be 
 useful, either to yourself or some one else I 
 
 How Utopian it all sounds 1 How absurdly 
 simple and simple-minded — to work because you 
 like the work and desire the product. How 
 delightful if it could be realised, but, of course, 
 how "unpractical' and impossible. 
 
 Yet is it really impossible? From Solomon 
 to Dr. Watts we have been advised to go to 
 the Ant and the Bee for instruction, and lo ! 
 they are unpractical and Utopian too. Can any- 
 thing be more foolish than the conduct of these 
 little creatures, any one of whom will at any 
 moment face death in defence of his tribe? while 
 the Bee is absolutely so ignorant and senseless, 
 that instead of storing up the honey that it has 
 gathered in a little cell of its own, with a nice 
 lock and key, it positively puts it in the common 
 cells, and cannot distinguish it from the stores 
 of the others. Foolish little Bee, the day will 
 surely come when you will bitterly rue your "un- 
 thrifty " conduct, and you will find yourself 
 starving while your fellow-tribesmen are con- 
 suming the fruits of your labor. 
 
 And the human body itself, that marvelous 
 epitome and mirror of the universe, how about 
 that? Is it not Utopian too? It is composed 
 of a myriad cells, members, organs, compacted
 
 NON-GOVERNMENTAL SOCIETY 89 
 
 into a living unity. A healthy body is the most 
 perfect society conceivable. What does the hand 
 say when a piece of work is demanded of it? 
 Does it bargain first for what reward it is to 
 receive, and refuse to move until it has secured 
 satisfactory terms, or the foot decline to take 
 us on a journey till it knows what special gain 
 is to accrue to it thereby? Not so ; but each 
 limb and cell does the work which is before it 
 to do, and (such is the Utopian law) the fact of 
 its doing the work causes the circulation to flow 
 to it, and it is nourished and fed in proportion 
 to its service. And we have to ask whether the 
 same may not be the law of a healthy human 
 society? .Whether the fact of a member doing 
 service (however humble) to the community would 
 not be quite sufficient to ensure his provision 
 by the rest with all that he might need? Whether 
 the community would think of allowing such an 
 one to starve any more than a man would think 
 of allowing his least finger to pine away and 
 die? Whether it is not possible that men would 
 cease to feel any anxiety about the " reward of 
 their labor " ; that they would think first of 
 their work and the pleasure they had in doing 
 it, and would not doubt that the reward would 
 follow? 
 
 For indeed the instinct to do anything which 
 is obviously before you to do, which is wanted, 
 and which you can do, is very strong in human 
 nature. Even children, those rudimentary savages,
 
 go TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 are often extremely proud to be " useful," and 
 it is conceivable that we might be sensible enough, 
 instead of urging them as we do now to " get 
 on," to make money, to beat their fellows in 
 the race of life, and by climbing on other folk's 
 heads to ultimately reach a position where they 
 would have to work no longer, — that we might 
 teach them how when they grew up they would 
 find themselves members of a self-respecting 
 society which, while it provided them gratis with 
 all they might need, would naturally expect them 
 in honor to render some service in return. Even 
 small children could understand that. Is it quite 
 inconceivable that a society of grown men and 
 women might act up to it? 
 
 But it is really absurd to argue about the 
 possibility of these things in human society, when 
 we have so many actual examples of them before 
 our eyes. Herman Melville, in that charming 
 book Typee, describes the Marquesas Islanders 
 of the Pacific, among whom he lived for some 
 time during the year 1846. He says 1 ** During 
 the time I lived among the Typees no one was 
 ever put upon his trial for any offence against 
 the public. To all appearances there were no 
 courts of law or equity. There was no municipal 
 police for the purposes of apprehending vagrants 
 or disorderly characters. In short, there were 
 no legal provisions whatever for the well-being 
 and conservation of society, the enlightened end 
 of civilised legislation. " Nevertheless, the whole
 
 NON-GOVERNMENTAL SOCIETY oi 
 
 book is a eulogy of the social arrangements he 
 met with, and with almost a fervor of romance 
 in its tone ; and yet, like all his description of 
 the natives of the Pacific Islands, undoubtedly 
 accurate, and well corroborated by the travelers 
 of the period. An easy communism prevailed. 
 When a good haul of fish was made, those who 
 took part in it did not keep the booty to them- 
 selves, but parceled it out, and sent it throughout 
 the tribe, retaining only their proportionate share. 
 .When one family required a new cabin, the others 
 would come and help to build it. He describes 
 such an occasion, when, " at least a hundred 
 of the natives were bringing materials to the 
 ground, some carrying in their hands one or two 
 of the canes which were to form the sides, others 
 slender rods of hibiscus, strung with palmetto 
 leaves, for the roof. Every one contributed some- 
 thing to the work ; and by the united but easy 
 labors of all the entire work was completed 
 before sunset." 
 
 Similar communistic habits prevail, of course, 
 through a vast number of savage tribes, and 
 indeed almost anywhere that the distinctively com- 
 mercial civilisation has not set its mark. They 
 may be found close at home, as in the little 
 primitive island of St. Kilda, in the Hebrides, 
 where exactly the same customs of sharing the 
 hauls of fish or the labors of housebuilding exist 
 to-day, 1 which Melville describes in Typee ; and 
 
 1 Sec Chapter XI of Poverty and the State, by H. V. Mills.
 
 92 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 they may be found all along the edges of our 
 civilisation in the harvesting and house-warming 
 " bees " of the backwoods and outlying farm- 
 populations. And we may fairly ask, not whether 
 such social habits are possible, but whether they 
 are not in the end the only possible form ; for 
 surely it is useless and absurd to call these modern 
 hordes of people, struggling with each other for 
 the means of subsistence, and jammed down by 
 violent and barbaric penal codes into conditions 
 which enforce the struggle, societies ; as it would 
 be absurd to call the wretched folk in the Black 
 Hole of Calcutta a society. If any one will 
 only think for a minute of his own inner nature 
 he will see that the only society which would ever 
 really satisfy him would be one in which he 
 was perfectly free, and yet bound by ties of 
 deepest trust to the other members ; and if he 
 will think for another minute he will see that 
 the only conditions on which he could be perfectly 
 free (to do as he liked) would be that he should 
 trust and care for his neighbor as well as him- 
 self. The conditions are perfectly simple ; and 
 since they have been more or less realised by 
 countless primitive tribes of animals and men, 
 it is surely not impossible for civilised man to 
 realise them. If it be argued (which is perfectly 
 true) that modern societies are so much more 
 complex than the primitive ones, we may reply 
 that if modern man, with his science and his 
 school-boards, and his brain cultivated through
 
 NON-GOVERNMENTAL SOCIETY 93 
 
 all these centuries, is not competent to solve a 
 more complex problem than the savage, he had 
 better return to savagery. 
 
 But it is getting time to be practical. 
 
 Of the possibility of a free communal society- 
 there can really, I take it, be no doubt. The 
 question that more definitely presses on us now 
 is one of transition — by what steps shall we, or 
 can we pass to that land of freedom? 
 
 We have supposed a whole people started on 
 its journey by the lifting off of a burden of Fear 
 and anxiety ; but in the long, slow ascent of 
 evolution sudden miraculous changes are not to 
 be expected ; and for this reason alone it is 
 obvious that we can look for no very swift trans- 
 formation to the communal form. Peoples that 
 have learnt the lesson of " trade " and competi- 
 tion so thoroughly as the modern nations have 
 — each man fighting for his own hand — must take 
 some time to unlearn it. The sentiment of the 
 common life, so long nipped and blighted, must 
 have leisure to grow and expand again ; and 
 we acknowledge that — in order to foster new ideas 
 and new habits — an intermediate stage of definite 
 industrial organisation may be quite necessary. 
 
 t When one looks sometimes at the awful residue 
 and dregs which were being left as a legacy to 
 the future by our present commercial system — 
 the hopeless, helpless, drunken, incapable men 
 and women who drift through London and the 
 country districts from workhouse to workhouse,
 
 94 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 or the equally incapable and more futile idlers 
 in high places, one feels that possibly only a 
 rather stringent industrial organisation (such as the 
 War has brought upon us) could have enabled 
 society to cope with these burdens. The hand of 
 the nation has already been forced to the de- 
 velopment of Farm-colonies, Land-reclamations, 
 Afforestation, Canal -restoration, and other big 
 industrial schemes, and these are leading to a 
 considerable socialisation of land and machinery. 
 At the same time the rolling up of companies into 
 huge and huger trusts is, as we plainly see, making 
 the transference of industries to public control 
 and to public uses, daily more easy to effect. 
 
 On the other hand, the Trade Unions and Co- 
 operative Societies by the development of pro- 
 ductive as well as distributive industries, and by 
 the interchange of goods with each other on an 
 ever-growing scale, are bringing about a similar 
 result. They are creating a society in which 
 enormous wealth is produced and handled not 
 for the profit of the few, but for the use of the 
 many ; a voluntary collectivism working within 
 and parallel with the official collectivism of the 
 
 State. 
 
 As this double collectivism grows and spreads, 
 profit -grinding will more and more cease to be 
 a lucrative profession. Though no doubt great 
 efforts will be made in the commercial world 
 to discountenance the public organisation of the 
 unemployed (because this will cut away the ground
 
 NON-GOVERNMENTAL SOCIETY 95 
 
 of cheap labor on which commercialism is butlt), 
 yet as we have seen, the necessity of this organi- 
 sation has reached such a point that it can no 
 longer be denied. And as it comes in more 
 and more, it will more and more react on the 
 conditions of the employed, causing them also to 
 be improved. Besides, we are fain to hope that 
 something else of which we see growing signs 
 on every hand, will also come in — namely a new 
 sense of social responsibility, a new reading of 
 religion, a healthier public opinion — which will 
 help on and give genuine life to the changes 
 of which we speak. If so, it might not be so 
 very long before the spread of employment, and 
 the growing security of decent wages, combined 
 with the continual improvement of productive pro- 
 cesses and conditions, would bring about a kind 
 of general affluence — or at least absence of 
 poverty. The unworthy fear which haunts the 
 hearts of nine-tenths of the population, the anxiety 
 for the beggarly elements of subsistence, would 
 pass away or fade in the background, and with 
 it the mad nightmarish competition and bitter 
 struggle of men with each other. Even the sense 
 of Property itself would be alleviated. To-day 
 the institution of Property is like a cast-iron railing 
 Against which a human being may be crushed, 
 but which still is retained because it saves us 
 from falling into the gulf. But to-morrow, when 
 the gulf of poverty is practically gone, the indi- 
 cating line between one person and another
 
 96 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 need run no harsher than an elastic band. 1 
 People will wake up with surprise, and rub their 
 eyes to find that they are under no necessity of 
 being other than human. 
 
 Simultaneously (i.e. with the lessening of the 
 power of money as an engine of interest and 
 profit -grinding) the huge nightmare which weighs 
 on us to-day, the monstrous incubus of " business " 
 — with its endless Sisyphus labors, its searchings 
 for markets, its displacement and destruction of 
 rivals, its travelers, its advertisements, its armies 
 of clerks, its banking and broking, its accounts 
 and checking of accounts — will fade and lessen 
 in importance ; till some day perchance it will 
 collapse, and roll off like a great burden to the 
 ground 1 Freed from the great strain and waste 
 which all this system creates, the body politic 
 will recover like a man from a disease, and spring 
 to unexpected powers of health. 
 
 Meanwhile in the great industrial associations, 
 voluntary and other, folk will have been learning 
 the sentiment of the Common Life — the habit of 
 acting together for common ends, the habit of 
 feeling together for common interests — and once 
 
 1 This alleviation indeed is already in some curious ways 
 visible. Forty years ago the few dressed in broadcloth, 
 the masses in fustian ; but now that silk is made out of wood- 
 pulp, and everybody can dress and does dress in the latest 
 fashion, it is no distinction to have fine clothes. Similarly 
 with books, travel, and a hundred other things. What is 
 the good of being a millionaire when the man with three 
 pounds a week can make almost as good a show as you ?
 
 NON-GOVERNMENTAL SOCIETY 97 
 
 this has been learnt, the rest will follow of its 
 own accord. 
 
 In the course of these changes, moving always 
 towards a non - governmental and perfectly 
 voluntary society in the end, it is probable that 
 some Property -founded institutions, like the pay- 
 ment of labor by wages, though not exactly 
 ideal in their character, will continue for a long 
 period. It may perhaps be said that in some 
 ways a generous wage -payment convention (as 
 for instance sketched in the last chapter of 
 Carruthers' Commercial and Communal Economy) 
 on a thoroughly democratic basis, gives more 
 freedom than a formless Anarchism in which each 
 one takes " according to his needs," simply be- 
 cause under the first system A could work two 
 hours a day and live on the wage of two, and 
 B could work eight and live on the wage of 
 eight, each with perfect moral freedom — whereas 
 if there was no wage system, A (however much' 
 he might wish to loaf) would feel that he was 
 cheating the community — and the community 
 would think so too — unless he gave his eight 
 hours like everybody else. 1 
 
 The great point however to bear in mind in 
 
 all this matter is that though the Cash nexus may 
 
 and no doubt will linger on for a long time 
 
 ' It is difficult also to see how things like railways and 
 the immense modern industries (if these survive) could be 
 carried on without some such system of wage-payment and 
 the definite engagement to fulfil certain work which it carries 
 with it. 
 
 7
 
 98 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 in various forms of Wages, Purchase, Sale, and 
 so forth, it must inevitably with the changing 
 sentiment and conditions of life lose its cast- 
 iron stringent character, and gradually be con- 
 verted into the elastic cord, which while it may 
 indicate a line of social custom will yield to 
 pressure when the need arises. Private Property 
 will thus lose its present virulent character, and 
 subside into a matter of mere use or convenience ; 
 monetary reckonings and transfers, as time goes 
 on, will seem little more than formalities— as to- 
 day between friends. 
 
 Finally, Custom alone will remain. The sub- 
 sidence of the Property feeling will mean the 
 subsidence of brute -force Law, for whose existence 
 Property is mainly responsible. The peoples 
 accustomed to the varied activities of a complex 
 industrial organism, will still— though not suffer- 
 ing from the compulsion either of hunger or of 
 brute authority— continue through custom to carry 
 on those activities-, their Reason in the main 
 approving. 
 
 Custom will remain— slowly changing. And 
 the form of the Societies of the future will be 
 more vital and organic, and far more truly 
 human, than they have been or could be 
 under the rigid domination of Law*
 
 VI 
 
 SMALL HOLDINGS AND AGRICULTURAL 
 CO-OPERATION 
 
 In my experience Small Holders are among the 
 best and most capable of our rural populations. 
 I include as small holders those who work farms 
 up to forty acres or so. 1 They generally exhibit 
 a good deal of all-round capacity, and are 
 versatile and handy at a variety of jobs. And 
 this for the simple reason that having to look 
 after a small place mainly by themselves they 
 are obliged to be a little ingenious and versatile. 
 Such a man, besides the farmwork connected with 
 the animals and the crops, generally knows some- 
 thing of joinering and iron work ; he has a bench 
 and a few tools, and an old anvil picked up at 
 a sale ; he personally repairs his sheds and out- 
 houses, or [(if he is a freeholder) builds newi 
 ones ; he does a little thatching ; and in many 
 cases — especially if his holding is really small — 
 he is compelled to earn something by outside 
 work for neighbors, by doing a bit of gardening, 
 or masoning or walling from time to time. Thus 
 
 1 The Small Holdings Act of 1907 includes anything from 
 one acre up to fifty acres. 
 
 99
 
 ioo TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 such a man is often very resourceful, and in a 
 sense well-educated, even though he may only 
 read or write with difficulty. 
 
 On a large farm there is almost too much 
 division of labor. There are several farm- 
 hands, and one is cowman and another plowman 
 and a third horseman, and so on ; and I find 
 they tend consequently to drop, into grooves and 
 become rather limited in their outlook and acti- 
 vities. The farmer, instead of compelling a 
 change of occupation now and then, takes the 
 easiest line and allows the young men — even 
 though they be his own sons — to remain in their 
 grooves, and consequently to grow up somewhat 
 stunted in ability and ignorant of a large portion 
 of their proper business. 
 
 For this reason alone — namely, the production 
 of handy capable men (and women) — Small 
 Holdings are much to be encouraged. If the 
 men and women of a country are (as they cer- 
 tainly are) its most important crop, this is a 
 matter which demands attention. The decay of 
 the townbred peoples — the puny sickly character 
 of the crowds that are the product of the factories 
 and offices of our big towns — is a menace to 
 our civilisation ; and if at the same time the 
 present depopulation of the country-sides is going 
 to continue the situation will become very serious. 
 We want to get a far larger population on the 
 land, and so to produce a far larger amount of 
 home-grown food than we do at present. Pro-
 
 SMALL HOLDINGS AND CO-OPERATION 101 
 
 ductive self-support has in fact become impera- 
 tive. It has been calculated that if the United 
 Kingdom were only cultivated to the same degree 
 that Belgium was before the Great War it would 
 supply home-grown food for 37 million people 
 instead of for 1 7 million as now ; and there 
 is no doubt that an equal or even greater degree 
 of cultivation is quite possible here — with due 
 organisation and intelligence. We have heard 
 a good deal lately about our dependence on the 
 imports of food from abroad. In 1905 the 
 imports of butter, cheese, milk : (condensed), 
 bacon, lard, fowls, eggs, onions and potatoes, 
 amounted to £58,000,000 in value — the value in 
 eggs alone being nearly £7,000,000. All these 
 articles, and many others, including apples, pears, 
 small fruits, honey, and many vegetables, are 
 particularly suited for being grown on small 
 holdings, but (partly owing to the dearth of 
 such holdings) have been much neglected, and 
 their place taken by foreign produce. The im- 
 portance of getting the additional population on 
 the land which an extension of small cultivation 
 would mean, and at the same time of securing so 
 great an augmentation of our food supply, can 
 hardly be overestimated. It ought to be one 
 of the very 'first things to be considered in the 
 reorganisation of our industrial system. 1 
 
 1 " In France, before the loss of Alsace-Lorraine there 
 were about five million proprietors owning seven and a half 
 acres each on the average ; and in Wiirtemburg 260,000
 
 102 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 It must not be forgotten too that an increased 
 (productive) country population would supply an 
 extra market for our townmade manufactured 
 goods, and so again be helpful in making the 
 whole community self-contained and independent 
 of foreign influences. Not that foreign trade 
 is in itself a thing undesirable ; but it always 
 has to be remembered that to be dependent on 
 influences which we cannot control is a mistake ; 
 also that, other things being equal* to exchange 
 goods at home is better than to exchange the 
 same abroad, simply because the cost of shipping 
 or carriage is so much less in the former instance. 
 
 There are other things to be said in favor 
 of small holdings. One is that they constitute 
 a ' ladder ' by which the agricultural laborer 
 or even the townsman may climb up to a sub- 
 stantial position on the land. The younger son 
 of a farmer, for instance, does not generally 
 see any prospect of coming into the farm himself. 
 He cannot command enough capital to take 
 another large farm and stock it, and if he cannot 
 find a small holding suited to his means there 
 is nothing left for him but to become a farm 
 servant or to migrate into town life. Naturally 
 he adopts the latter alternative. It is often said 
 that the depopulation of the country-sides is 
 due to the inordinate desire of country lads for 
 
 peasant owners with less than five acres each, and 160,000 
 with over five acres each " (pamphlet by J. B. Paton on the 
 Peasantry of England, Manchester, 1901).
 
 SMALL HOLDINGS AND CO-OPERATION 103 
 
 the excitements of city Ufa. I do not find k 
 so. More often they are simply driven into 
 the towns by the necessity of earning a living 
 somewhere, and by the closure of all avenues 
 of decent life in the country. It goes without 
 saying that long hours, wretched wages, and 
 the dulness of life under the regime of the squiro 
 and the parson, contribute to this result. If we 
 are to have an intelligent and alert population 
 on the land (a sine qua non of any nation's 
 greatness) the land must be made attractive and 
 accessible, and one means towards this is the 
 encouragement of small holdings. 
 
 Hitherto we may almost say any development 
 in this direction had been tf/scouraged in this 
 country by those who have most sway in the 
 matter — the landlord class. There are several 
 reasons for this. One undoubtedly is that small 
 holders as a rule — whether freeholders or tenants 
 — are not ' respectable ' enough to suit the gentry. 
 They are too democratic. People who have a 
 little independence of habit and manner, who 
 do not salute their superiors becomingly, or who 
 build with their own hands ramshackle sheds 
 and outhouses in their fields, are obviously not to 
 be encouraged. And what is more serious, such 
 people are a great bar to ' sport.' Foxes are 
 liable to be trapped or poisoned by them. To 
 hunt or shoot over their little holdings is to 
 run the risk of having a wasp's nest stirred about 
 one's ears and to court all sorts of unpleasant-
 
 104 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 nesses. For indeed a landowner who has five 
 or six large farmers for his tenants can fairly 
 easily come to terms with these in the matter 
 of hunting and shooting, but what could he do 
 with fifty or a hundred small holders? The thing 
 would be impossible. 1 
 
 It is somewhat the same with regard to Rents. 
 The landlord or his agent finds it much easier and 
 simpler to collect rents from! a few large holders 
 than from a 'great many small ones. Hence 
 there is a tendency for convenience' sake towards 
 large holdings. In the middle and later part 
 of last century the rolling up of small farms into 
 large ones went on apace. To-day there is 
 beginning to be a tendency the other way ; but 
 the breaking up process and the providing of 
 barns and cottages for the subdivided portions 
 is a laborious and expensive matter, and at 
 present is only moving slowly. Of course this 
 matter of the size of farms is also largely a 
 question of the kind of crops arranged for or 
 desired. Where cereals or root crops are wanted 
 large holdings and agricultural machines of 
 various kinds are much to the point, but the 
 equally valuable and often more valuable supplies 
 of vegetables, small fruit, orchard fruit, eggs, 
 etc., are best grown on small places where indi- 
 vidual attention is the main thing and machinery 
 is less important. 
 
 One common objection brought against the 
 
 ■ See Ch. VII, infra.
 
 SMALL HOLDINGS AND CO-OPERATION 105 
 
 small holding idea is that little industries work 
 at a disadvantage in point of capital, division 
 of labor, sheer productiveness, etc., as compared 
 with large-scale industries. Of course there is 
 a certain amount of truth in this— though it would 
 not do to say that all small-scale industries suffer 
 in the comparison— and if it were the case that 
 the absolute and only object of industry was 
 the money-value of its product there would be 
 still more truth in it ; but we have seen through 
 that delusion already, and need not again be 
 led astray by it. 
 
 The limitation, however, of his Capital, in the 
 case of a small man, his disadvantage in the 
 markets, both in buying and selling, his being 
 compelled sometimes to invest in a horse and 
 cart or in some kind of machinery which the 
 exiguity of his estate will not permit him fully 
 to use, the difficulty that he has in borrowing 
 money in a time of need, and the danger of fall- 
 ing into the hands of the money-lender— all these 
 things undoubtedly do militate against the small 
 holder ; and the cure for them equally un- 
 doubtedly is to be found in Co-operation. 
 
 The classical instance of the value of Co- 
 operation in connexion with small holdings is 
 to be found in Denmark. After 1864, when 
 Germany had wrested Schleswig-Holstein from 
 the Danes, there was nothing left for the latter 
 but to make the best of what remained to them.
 
 106 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 Jutland was ttttle better than a sandy heath.; but 
 with extraordinary energy the people threw them- 
 selves into its development ; the soil was worked 
 and enriched in every possible way ; the land 
 was broken up into holdings of seven to ten 
 acres each ; sheds and cots and cottages were 
 erected ; co-operative societies were formed 
 among the settlers ; the government helped with 
 agricultural organisation, the creation of High 
 Schools for the peasants, and the loan of funds ; 
 and before long there were beside large farms 
 some i 50,000 little holdings of seven to ten acres 
 successfully running there, whose activities were 
 largely carried on by combined labor. The 
 first co-operative dairy was started in 1882 ; by 
 the year 1904 there were over 1,000 such dairies. 
 Bacon-curing, the collecting and sale of eggs, 
 poultry, honey, the manufacture of butter and 
 cheese, the purchase of seeds, food-stuffs, 
 manures, machinery, were all negotiated by the 
 same method ; insurance and banking the same ; 
 and in this short period of time sandy Jutland 
 became a large exporter of food, and poured 
 even into England (with its really richer soil) 
 great quantities of farm-produce which England 
 might have been growing for herself. In the 
 form of butter, eggs and bacon alone Denmark 
 before the War was supplying the United King- 
 dom to the value of 15 or 20 million sterling. 1 
 
 • See also article on " Co-operation in Denmark," by Erik 
 Givskov in the Wholesale Co-operative Annual for 1905,
 
 SMALL HOLDINGS AND CO-OPERATION 107 
 
 France, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Sweden, 
 Finland, Italy, Roumania, Bulgaria, have followed 
 on the same lines of agricultural co-operation. 
 Nor must we forget Ireland. The noble efforts 
 of Horace Plunkett and afterwards of George 
 
 Russell X A - E -) were sc °ff eci at at first - Cut 
 gradually they won their way. In 1889, I 
 believe, the first Irish Creamery was started ; in 
 1895 there were already 67 ; and in 1902, over 
 320, effecting sales to the value of £1,000,000 
 per annum-,; to-day there are agricultural 
 societies without end, for the production and sale 
 of poultry, eggSj flax, fruit, honey, and a variety 
 of other things. 
 
 Mr. George Russell, in his excellent book The 
 National Being, 1 shows from his own experience 
 what the co-operative association can do. He 
 says (p. 46) : " The Society is a better buyer 
 than the individual. It can buy things the indi- 
 vidual cannot buy. It is a better producer also. 
 The plant for a creamery is beyond the individual 
 farmer ; but our organised farmers in Ireland, 
 small though they are, find it no trouble to 
 erect and equip a creamery with plant costing 
 £2,000. The organised rural community of the 
 future will generate its own electricity at its 
 central buildings, and run not only its factories 
 and other enterprises by this power, but will 
 supply light to the houses of its members and 
 also mechanical power to run machinery on the 
 Maunsel & Co., Dublin and London, 1916, price 4s. 6d.
 
 108 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 farm. One of our Irish societies already supplies 
 electric light for the town it works in. In the 
 organised rural community the eggs, milk, 
 poultry, pigs, cattle, grain and wheat produced 
 on the farm and not consumed or required for 
 further agricultural production, will automatically 
 be delivered to the co-operative business centre 
 of the district, where the manager of the dairy 
 will turn the milk into butter or cheese, and 
 the skim milk will be returned to feed the com- 
 munity's pigs. The poultry and egg department 
 will pack and dispatch the fowls and eggs to 
 market. The mill will grind the corn, and return 
 it ground to the member, or there may be a 
 co-operative bakery to which some of it may 
 go." And so on. A picture follows of how 
 the rural labourers under this regime will 
 gradually become skilled co-workers with one 
 another, and the co-operative community have its 
 own carpenters, smiths and mechanics ; how 
 there will be common laundries and kitchens, 
 and village halls with libraries and gymnasiums 
 and rooms for recreation and dancing. All very 
 feasible, and one may say already realised in 
 part in various different localities. 
 
 The matter of co-operative banks is impor- 
 tant. At present a small man who wants £20 
 to pay his rent with is very much put to it if he 
 does not happen to have that amount in hand — 
 even though he knows that in a couple of months 
 he will be quite well off. If he goes to the
 
 SMALL HOLDINGS AND CO-OPERATION 109 
 
 ordinary Bank to borrow he is treated with scant 
 respect and made to understand that owing to 
 deficient security he Avill have to pay a high 
 rate of interest. The alternative for the wretched 
 man is to sell a cow, which he often has to do, 
 owing to the forced sale, at a decided loss. 
 [And there are, I need hardly say, some specu- 
 lative dealers who count on this sort of thing and 
 make a practice of purchasing from small men in 
 distress.] The co-operative Bank is a quite dif- 
 ferent affair. The farmers of a certain district 
 club together for financial purposes. Having be- 
 tween them all a great amount of valuable farm 
 stock, machinery, etc., it becomes possible for the 
 Club to go to an ordinary commercial Bank 
 and borrow on this joint security. The security 
 in the m|ass being thoroughly good the Bank 
 will probably, as things are, lend at 4 per cent, 
 interest. The Club will borrow just as much 
 as it needs, and lend the money out, if required, 
 to its members — of course at a rather higher rate 
 of interest, say 5 per cent. The extra 1 per 
 cent, so coming in will pay the secretarial and 
 other expenses of the Club. Now the Club, or its 
 committee, knowing well the financial circum- 
 stances of its members, will have no difficulty 
 in deciding in each case on what conditions, of 
 interest or repayment, the loan shall be afforded. 
 It will only perhaps be very rarely that interest 
 exceeding 5 per cent, will be demanded. 
 Suppose a small man wishes to borrow, as above,
 
 no TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 a sum of £20 to pay his rent. He only wants 
 the loan for a couple of months, as he will be 
 able to repay it before then, and he gets the 
 money from his Club at 5 per cent. Five per 
 cent, on £20 for a year would be £1 ; but for 
 those two months it will only amount to 3s. 46.. ; 
 and he obtains this great accommodation for that 
 trifling sum. This is a good deal better than 
 having to sell his cow at a breakneck price. 
 In many cases the combination of a large farm 
 with a number of small holdings' and village 
 industries in a kind of co-operative Colony may 
 prove very desirable, and it is much to be hoped 
 that this form of settlement on the land may 
 be carried out in the future. Let us suppose 
 that 2,000 acres of good farm land are pur- 
 chased and properly equipped with buildings and 
 machinery and live stock, and that out of this 
 or in connexion with it sufficient land is set apart 
 for twenty or thirty small holdings, with suitable 
 cottages and barns. Then 3. good farm -manager 
 working the Central farm would have beside his 
 regular staff a supply of men from the small 
 holdings to do wage -work when necessary on the 
 farm. On the other hand as a* skilled agri- 
 culturist he would be able to advise the small 
 holders about their crops and their animals ; he 
 would organise for them co-operative purchase 
 of food-stuffs, etc., or co-operative sale of their 
 produce. Moreover a number of the small men 
 would probably, have command of useful trades,
 
 SMALL HOLDINGS AND CO-OPERATION in 
 
 such as blacksmithlng, building, joinering, tailor- 
 ing and so forth ; and so a competent head 
 man might in this way build up a largely self- 
 contained and at any rate self-supporting Colony 
 — in which all the members would take some 
 share in the work, and of course derive a corre- 
 sponding share of the profits. 
 
 Colony or no Colony, the combination of a 
 small holding with some technical or industrial 
 occupation is a great help. There are always 
 times when work on the land is not needed, or 
 if needed not feasible, and in such times a small 
 trade is a great financial resource. In this way 
 smithing, as I have said, or joinering or cabinet - 
 making, or masoning, or boot or sandal making, 
 or bookbinding, engraving, literary and art work, 
 teaching, commercial traveling, and many other 
 activities may be worked in with the agricultural 
 life, and with really gteat advantage to both sides. 
 
 In the matter of the purchase or acquirement 
 by individuals of such holdings— either freehold 
 or on a long lease — Co-operation naturally comes 
 in again. In the neighborhood where I am 
 living— while fields adjacent to the roads and 
 eligible for building command something like 
 £100 per acre — large farms of 50 or 100 acres 
 can often be bought in bulk for £25 per acre. 
 Needless to say that it is good business for a 
 group co-operatively to purchase such a farm 
 and subdivide it themselves according to their 
 needs — the low price enabling them jointly to
 
 112 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 make accommodation roads, erect fences, etc. ;• 
 and such a group may naturally combine for 
 further purposes, like buying and selling, when 
 once the holdings are fairly established and in 
 operation. When the Land Valuation Acts are 
 once supplemented by a " Tax and Buy " 
 ordinance, allowing public bodies to purchase 
 lands on a fair basis of their estimated rental 
 for rating purposes, some millions of acres now 
 held up in private ownership for sporting or other 
 non-productive uses will come into the market, 
 and be available for the objects indicated in this 
 chapter. I have on more than one occasion had 
 reason to mention the case of some moors near 
 here which till lately carried for rating purposes 
 an estimated rental of only 2s. 6d. per acre, 
 and which yet were charged to a public body 
 for reservoir needs at the rate of over £100 per 
 acre I 1 
 
 In England the Small Holdings and Agricul- 
 tural Co-operation movement progresses only 
 slowly — though a few large owners like Lord 
 Carrington and Mr. Winfrey in Norfolk and 
 Lincolnshire, and Sir Robert Edgcumbe in Dorset, 
 and a few societies like the A.O.S., have done 
 their best for it. But the Government and the 
 official people have been very slack and have 
 not seemed to realise the importance of the 
 matter ; while the farmers have commonly been 
 rather hostile than otherwise. Thus it has come 
 
 ■ See Ch. VII, infra.
 
 SMALL HOLDINGS AND CO-OPERATION 113 
 
 about that while Ireland in such things is on 
 the forefront of the Avave of progress England 
 is still waterlogged (water on the brain !) and in 
 the trough of the sea. 
 
 The English mind, being relatively incapable 
 of reasoning, only moves as a rule under the 
 stimulus of felt necessity or of a visible object- 
 lesson. Start a Creamery or Co-operative Dairy 
 in a certain locality, and the people of the neigh- 
 borhood will come to see, and will possibly in 
 the end follow the example in their own villages, 
 but you may talk and lecture to them without 
 end and still without result. An amusing illustra- 
 tion of this concrete habit of the English mind 
 occurred at Brandsby in Yorkshire at the 
 beginning of the County Council's agricultural 
 lectures in that region. An expert came there 
 weekly to give lectures on Dairy Work and butter 
 making. The attendance at the first lecture was 
 poor and disappointing. At its conclusion a 
 farm-man got up and said that he didn't see 
 the good of a " gentleman " coming down to 
 lecture to them on dairy work " what had prob- 
 ably never milked a cow in his life." Luckily 
 the lecturer knew his business and immediately 
 replied, "Well, I'll milk a cow against you any 
 day." Great excitement ! The challenge was 
 accepted, and it was agreed that at the next 
 week's meeting there should be two cows on the 
 platform, and the competitors should toss up for 
 their choice. The news spread through the 
 
 8
 
 ii4 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 village, and whereas the lecture -room at the first 
 meeting had been almost empty, at the second 
 it was full to overflowing. The lecturer fortu- 
 nately won easily, getting more milk from his 
 cow, and in less time, than the other ; and after 
 that, needless to say, the course was a great 
 success . 
 
 This concrete habit and tendency to rely only 
 on actual experience has, of course, its good side ; 
 and our County Councils and other authorities, 
 taking up the cue, should do their best to dot 
 the country-sides with effective examples of small 
 holdings co-operatively organised.
 
 VII 
 THE VILLAGE AND THE LANDLORD 1 
 
 My object in this paper is simply to describe 
 the economic conditions of a single country parish, 
 here in England, and from the consideration of 
 these conditions to draw some inferences towards 
 our future policy with regard to the land. In 
 modern life — in every department of it, one may 
 say — bedrock facts are so veiled over by complex 
 and adventitious growths that it is difficult to 
 see the proper and original outline of any problem 
 with which we are dealing ; and so it certainly 
 is in this matter of the land question. Any one 
 glancing at a country village, say in the neigh- 
 borhood of London, probably sees a mass of 
 villas, people hurrying to a railway station, motor- 
 cars, and so forth ; but as to where the agricul- 
 tural workers are, what they are doing, how they 
 live, what their relations may be to the land and 
 the land owners — these things are obscure, not 
 easily seen, and difficult to get information about. 
 And yet these are the things, one may say, which 
 are most vital, most important. 
 
 ■ Published also (in 1909) as a Fabian Tract, No. 136. 
 
 115
 
 u6 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 The parish which I have in mind to describe 
 is a rather large and straggling parish in a rural 
 district, with a small population, some 500 souls, 
 almost entirely agricultural in character, consist- 
 ing of farmers, farm laborers, woodmen, and so 
 forth, with a few miners and small artisans— on 
 the whole a pretty hard-working, industrious lot. 
 Fortunately, one may say, there is hardly any- 
 thing resembling a villa in the whole parish ; 
 there is no resident squire, and the business man 
 is conspicuous by his absence. The place there- 
 fore forms a good example for the study of the 
 agricultural land question. The farms are not 
 over large, being mostly between fifty and one 
 hundred acres in extent. There is just the land, 
 and the population living mainly by the cultiva- 
 tion of it. This population, as I have hinted, 
 is not lacking in industry ; it is fairly healthy 
 and well grown ; there is no severe poverty • 
 and (probably owing to the absence of the 
 parasite classes) it is better off than most of 
 our agricultural populations. Yet it is poor, 
 one may almost say very poor. Probably, of 
 the hundred families in the parish, the average 
 income is not much over £60 a year ; and 
 many, of course, can by no means reach even 
 that standard. 
 
 Let us consider some of the financial and other 
 conditions which lead to this state of affairs. In 
 the first place, I find that the inhabitants have 
 to pay in actual rent to their landlords about
 
 THE VILLAGE AND THE LANDLORD 117 
 
 £2,500 a year. In fact, the gross estimated 
 rental of the parish is about £3,250, but as there 
 are quite a few small freeholders the amount 
 actually paid in rent is reduced to £2,500. 
 Nearly the whole of this goes off out of the parish 
 and never comes back again. The duke and 
 most of the other landlords are absentees. This 
 forms at once, as is obvious, a severe tax on 
 the inhabitants. One way or another the hundred 
 families out of what they produce from the land 
 have to pay £2,500 a year into alien hands— 
 or, averaging it, £25 per family ! and this, if 
 their average income is now only £60, is certainly 
 a heavy burden ; since, if they had not to pay 
 this sum, their income might be £85. No doubt 
 it will be said, " Here we see the advantage of 
 having resident squires. The money would then 
 return to the parish." But would it? Would it 
 return to those who produced it? No ; it would 
 not. The spoliation of the toilers would only 
 be disguised, not remedied. In fact, let us 
 suppose (a quite ordinary case) that the parish 
 in question were owned by a single resident 
 squire, and that the £2,500 were paid to him 
 in rent. That rent would only go to support 
 a small extra population of servants and de- 
 pendents in the place. One or two small shops 
 might be opened ; but to the farmer and farm 
 worker no advantage would accrue 1 There might 
 be a slightly increased sale of milk and eggs ; 
 but this again would be countervailed by many
 
 n8 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 disadvantages, " Sport " over all the farm lands 
 would become a chronic nuisance ; the standard 
 and cost of living, dress, etc., would be raised ; 
 and the feeble and idiotic life of the " gentry," 
 combined with their efforts to patronise and 
 intimidate, would go far to corrupt the popula- 
 tion generally. In this parish then, of which 
 I am speaking, the people may be truly thank- 
 ful that they have not any resident squires. All 
 the same, the tax of £25 per family is levied 
 upon them to support such squires in some place 
 or other, and is a permanent burden upon their 
 lives. 
 
 Less than a hundred years ago there were in 
 this parish extensive common lands. In fact, 
 of the 4,600 acres of which the parish consists, 
 2,650, or- considerably more than half, were 
 commons. They were chiefly moors and woods ; 
 but were, needless to say, very valuable to 
 cottagers and small fanners. Here was pasture 
 for horses, cows, sheep, pigs, geese ; here in the 
 woods was firewood to be got, and bracken for 
 bedding ; on the moors, rabbits, bilberries, turf 
 for fuel, etc. In 1820 these commons were 
 enclosed ; and this is another thing that has 
 helped to cripple the lives of the inhabitants. 
 As is well known, during all that period syste- 
 matic enclosure of the common lands of Great 
 Britain was going on. In a landlord House of 
 Parliament it was easy enough to get bills passed. 
 Any stick will do to beat a dog with ; and it
 
 THE VILLAGE AND THE LANDLORD 119 
 
 was easy to say that these lands, being common 
 lands, were not so well cultivated as they might 
 be, and that therefore! the existing landlords 
 ought to share them up. The logic might not 
 be very convincing, but it served its purpose. 
 The landlords appropriated the common lands ; 
 and during the 120 years from 1760 to 1880, 
 ten millions of acres in Great Britain were thus 
 enclosed. 1 
 
 In 1820 the turn of this particular parish 
 came, and its 2,650 acres of commons ' ' went 
 in." I used to know an old man of the locality 
 who remembered when they " went in." He 
 used to speak of the occurrence as one might 
 speak of a sinister and fatal event of nature — a 
 landslide or an earthquake. There was no idea 
 that it could have been prevented. The commons 
 simply went in I The country folk witnessed the 
 proceeding with dismay j but, terrorised by their 
 landlords, and with no voice in Parliament, they 
 were helpless. 
 
 It may be interesting to see some of the details 
 of the operation. In the Enclosure Award Book, 
 still kept in the parish, there remains a full 
 account. The then Duke of Rutland, as lord of 
 the manor, as impropriator for tithes, as pro- 
 prietor, and so forth, got the lion's share, nearly 
 2,000 acres. The remaining 650 acres went to 
 the other landlords. Certain manorial and tithe 
 rights were remitted as a kind of compensation, 
 1 See Mulhall's Dictionary oj Statistics, " Enclosures."
 
 120 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 and the thing was done. In the Award Book 
 the duke's share is given as follows : — 
 
 Acres. Roods. 
 
 i. "As Impropriator for tithes of corn, 
 grain, and hay ; and in lieu 
 of and full compensation for all 
 manner of tithes, both great 
 and small" 1,381 3 
 
 2. "As Lord of the Manor/' and in 
 
 compensation for certain man- 
 orial rights, " and for his con- 
 sent to the said enclosure " ... 108 2 
 
 3. " For chief rents," amounting in the 
 
 whole to ^14 28 2 
 
 4. "For enfranchisement of copyholds" 11 3 
 
 5. " As proprietor " 18 2 
 
 6. " By sale to defray the expenses of 
 
 the Act" 449 1 
 
 1,998 1 
 
 Thus we find, in exchange for the ducal tithes, 
 nearly a third of the whole area of the parish 
 handed over — most of it certainly not the best 
 lands, but lands having considerable value as 
 woods and moors. We find some acres adjudged 
 to the duke in consideration of his kind " con- 
 sent " to the transaction. And, most wonderful 
 of all, nearly 450 acres surrendered by the parish 
 to defray the expenses of getting the Act through 
 Parliament I And now to-day in the said parish 
 there is not a little field or corner left — absolutely 
 not a solitary acre out of all the vast domain 
 which was once for the people's use— on which 
 the village boys can play their game of cricket I
 
 THE VILLAGE AND THE LANDLORD 121 
 
 Indeed, most valuable tracts were enclosed quite 
 in the centre of the village itself— as, for instance, 
 a piece which is still called " The Common," 
 though it is no longer common, and many bits 
 on which little cottages had been erected by 
 quite small folk. It would be a very desirable 
 thing that the enclosure award books in other 
 parishes should be investigated, and the corre- 
 sponding facts with regard to the ancient commons 
 brought to light generally over the country. 1 
 
 A third thing which cripples the agricultural 
 interest very considerably is the incidence of the 
 rates. The farmer's dread of a rise in rates has 
 become almost proverbial. And it is by no means 
 unnatural or unreasonable. For there is prob- 
 ably no class whose estimated rental is so large, 
 compared with their actual net income, as the 
 farmer class. A farmer whose farm, after de- 
 ducting all expenses of rent, rates, manure, 
 wages, etc., yields him a clear profit of no more 
 than £100 a yeaf for his household use is quite 
 probably paying £70 a year in rent. But a 
 superior artisan or small professional man who 
 is making £150 a year will very likely be only 
 paying £20 in rent. It is obvious that any slight 
 increase in the rates will fall much more heavily 
 on the first man than on the second. The rates, 
 therefore, are a serious matter to the farmer ; 
 
 1 Some Forgotten Facts in the History of Sheffield and District 
 (Independent Press, Sheffield, 1907, price 2s. 6d.) contains 
 valuable information of this kind.
 
 122 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 and something in the way of shifting their inci- 
 dence, and distributing the burden more fairly, 
 ought certainly to be done. 1 
 
 As an instance of this latter point, let me 
 again refer to the parish in question. .We have 
 seen that some 2,600 acres of common lands 
 passed over to the landlords in 1820, ostensibly 
 for the public advantage and benefit. Of these, 
 more than 1,500 acres of moor land, held by the 
 duke, are rated on an estimated rental of less 
 than 2S. 6d. per acre. The general farm lands 
 of the parish are rated on an estimated rental of 
 14s. or 15s. per acre on the average. Thus the 
 moor lands are assessed at about one-sixth of 
 the value of the farm lands. This is perhaps 
 excessively low ; but the matter might pass, if 
 it were not for a somewhat strange fact — namely 
 that a few years ago when some twenty acres 
 of these very moor lands were wanted for a matter 
 of great public advantage and benefit, that is, 
 for the formation of a reservoir, the ducal estate 
 could not part with them under £50 an acre ; 
 and a little later, when an extension of acreage 
 was required, the district council had to pay a 
 much higher price, so that the total purchase, 
 first and last, comes out at more than £150 per 
 
 1 I am not here discussing the question of how far a rise 
 of rates falls upon the landlord ; for, though this may ulti- 
 mately and in the far distance be so, it is clear that the 
 farmer primarily feels the pinch, and not till he is nearly 
 ruined is there any chance of his getting a corresponding 
 abatement of rent.
 
 THE VILLAGE AMD THE LANDLORD 123 
 
 acre I Now here is something very seriously 
 out of joint. Either the moor lands are worth 
 a capital value of £150 an acre, in which case 
 they ought to be assessed at, say £5, instead of 
 at 2s. 6d. ; or else, if the rating at 2S. 6d. is 
 really just and fair, surely it is monstrous that 
 the public, having to carry through a most im- 
 portant and necessary improvement, should be 
 " held up " and made to pay a ruinous price, 
 simply because the land cannot be obtained else- 
 where. The conclusion is: Let such lands be 
 rated in accordance with the capital value set 
 upon them by their owners, and we shall have a 
 much fairer and more equitable distribution of 
 the public burden. 
 
 And this matter of the moors leads to the con- 
 sideration of a fourth cause which cripples the 
 land cultivator terribly in this country. I mean 
 Sport. The nuisance and detriment that this is to 
 the farmer has become so great that, unless strict 
 measures are soon taken, widespread ruin will 
 ensue. In many subtle ways this acts. With 
 the enormous growth of wealthy and luxurious 
 classes during the last fifty years, the tendency 
 has been to turn the country districts into a mere 
 playground. The very meaning of the word 
 sport has changed. The careful working of 
 covers by the occasional sportsman has been re- 
 placed by clumsy battues, with wild shouts and 
 shrieks of " drivers," and huge slaughter of birds, 
 half tame, and specially bred for the purpose.
 
 I2 4 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 Mobs of people, anxious to appear fashionable, 
 and rigged out by their tailors in befitting 
 costume, are formed into shooting parties. Rich 
 men, Wanting to get into society, hire moors and 
 woods, regardless of expense, regardless of animal 
 slaughter, regardless of agricultural interests, as 
 long as they get an opportunity to invite their 
 friends. 1 In Devonshire to-day the farms in many 
 parts are simply eaten up by rabbits, because the 
 landlords, in order to provide plenty of shooting, 
 insist on spinneys and copses and hedgerows and 
 waste bits being retained in their wild state for 
 purposes of cover 1 On the northern moors the 
 rabbits simply devastate the farms along the moor 
 edges — not because the rabbits are preserved, for 
 the shooting is mainly of grouse and pheasants, 
 but because the moors, being uncared for except 
 in this way, the rabbits are allowed to multiply 
 without check. They are the gamekeeper's per- 
 quisite. Yet if the farmer who has a farm adjoin- 
 ing the moor carries a gun to protect himself 
 against their invasions, it is conveyed to him (if a 
 
 1 The financing of these affairs is funny. A large moor 
 will let for the grouse season for ^3,000, say on the condition 
 of grouse being bagged up to, but not beyond, 2,400 brace. 
 Mid-week parties hurry in by rail and motor, stay for two or, 
 perhaps, three nights, and hurry off again, to be succeeded 
 by other parties the following weeks. The whole thing is 
 conducted in the most mechanical way, with "drives," 
 " batteries," and so forth. And when the expenses are added 
 up, including men employed, guests entertained, and rent 
 paid, they certainly do not fall far short of the proverbial 
 guinea a bird !
 
 THE VILLAGE AND THE LANDLORD 125 
 
 tenant of the same landlord) that he had better 
 not do so, lest he should be suspected of shooting 
 the grouse ! Thus he is paralysed from his own 
 defence. In the parish of which I am speaking 
 there are lands along the moor edges which used 
 to grow oats and other crops, but which now, 
 on account of the rabbit nuisance, are quite un- 
 cultivable in that way, and only yield the barest 
 pasture . 
 
 In and about 1850, when wheat more than once 
 reached £5 a quarter, the farmers and landlords 
 were doing a roaring trade. Rents were high, 
 but the land could afford it. Farmers were 
 anxious to increase the size of their holdings, and 
 landlords were not averse to this, as it saved 
 them trouble. And so set in that tendency to 
 roll small holdings into big ones which continued, 
 with baneful effect, during all the second half 
 of the century. Sport at the same time came 
 in to increase the action. It was easier to pacify 
 the few than the many over the matter. It was 
 simpler to hunt a pack of hounds over two or 
 three large farms than across a network of 
 small holdings. Besides, the New Rich, as well 
 as the elder gentry, wanted widespread parks, 
 and not a democratic rabble of cottagers at their 
 very doors. And so the game went on. Soon 
 prices of farmstuff fell heavily. But it is easier 
 to get rents up than to get them down again. 
 The alleviations of rent which have taken place 
 since 1854 have been only painfully gained and
 
 126 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 grudgingly yielded. Wheat which was at ioo 
 shillings a quarter then fetched only about 
 30 shillings at the beginning of this century ! 
 And though other farmstuffs have not fallen in 
 like degree, yet during all that period of de- 
 clining prices, the British farmer has been pinched 
 and pined all over the country. The landlord 
 has been on top of him ; and with holdings often 
 much too large for his need, and a yearly balance 
 too small, he has employed far less labor and 
 tillage than he ought to have done ; his land 
 has lost heart ; and he has lost heart— till he 
 has become to-day probably the least enterprising 
 and least up to date of all the agriculturists of 
 Western Europe. 1 
 
 Such are some at least of the causes which 
 have contributed to the decay of agriculture in 
 this country ; and their consideration may indi- 
 cate the directions in which to seek for a cure. 
 
 What is needed, first and foremost, is very 
 obviously security of tenure, under such condi- 
 tions as shall give both farmer and cottager a 
 powerful interest in the land and its improvement. 
 It is often said, and supposed, that the country- 
 man nowadays does not care about the land and 
 the rural life, and is longing to exchange it for 
 town life. I do not find this so. I find that he 
 is compelled into town life by the hard conditions 
 
 1 There are many farms of 500 or 600 acres in Gloucester- 
 shire only employing five or six hands — or one man to a 
 hundred acres !
 
 THE VILLAGE AND THE LANDLORD 127 
 
 which prevail in the country— but not that he 
 wants to leave the latter. Indeed, I am amazed 
 at the tenacity with which he clings to the land, 
 despite the long hours and the heavy toil ; nor 
 can one witness without wonder and admiration 
 the really genuine interest which he feels in its 
 proper treatment, quite apart from any advantage 
 or disadvantage to himself. It is common to 
 find a farm laborer expressing satisfaction or 
 disgust at the good or bad tillage of a field with 
 which he is in no way connected ; or to see a 
 small farmer's son working early and late, perhaps 
 up to the age of thirty, with no wages but a mere 
 pittance in the way of pocket-money, and only 
 a remote prospect of inheriting at some future 
 date his share of the farm-stock and savings, 
 and yet taking a wholehearted interest in the 
 work not really different from that which an artist 
 may feel. There is some splendid material here 
 —in these classes neglected by the nation, and 
 overlaid by a tawdry and cheap -jack civilisation. 
 I say it is clear that they must be given a 
 secure and liberal tenure of the land and be free 
 once for all from the caprice of the private land- 
 lord with his insolences of political intimidation 
 and sport, and his overbearance in parochial 
 affairs. The absolute speechlessness of our rural 
 workers to-day on all matters of public interest 
 is clearly, to any one who knows them, due to 
 their mortal dread lest their words should reach 
 the powers above. It has become an ingrained
 
 128 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 habit, And it has led of course to a real paralysis 
 of their thinking capacity and their enterprise. 
 But place these men in a position where the fruits 
 of their toil will be secure, where improvements 
 can be made, in cottage or farm, with a sense of 
 ownership, and where their vote and voice in 
 the councils of the parish will not be dependent 
 on squire or parson ; and the world will be 
 astonished at the result. 
 
 There are two main directions in which to go 
 in the matter of secure tenure. One is the 
 creation of more small freeholds j the other is 
 the throwing of lands into the hands of public 
 authorities, and the creation of permanent tenures 
 under them. Though the latter embodies the 
 best general principle, I do not think that forms 
 a reason for ruling out freeholds altogether. In 
 all these matters variety is better than uniformity ; 
 and a certain number of freeholds would probably 
 be desirable. In the same way with regard to 
 public ownership, if anything like nationalisation 
 of the land is effected, I think it should decidedly 
 be on the same principle of variety — creating not 
 only State and municipal ownership 1 , but owner- 
 ship by county councils, district councils, parish 
 councils, etc. — with a leaning perhaps towards the 
 more local authorities, because the needs of par- 
 ticular lands and the folk occupying them are 
 likely on the whole to be better understood and 
 allowed for in the locality than from a distance, 
 
 Let us suppose, in the parish which I have
 
 THE VILLAGE AND THE LANDLORD 129 
 
 taken for my text, that by some kind of political 
 miracle, all the lands on which rents are now 
 being paid to absent landlords were transferred 
 to the ownership of the Parish Council. Then 
 at once the latter body would come into an income 
 of £2,500 a year. At one blow the whole burden 
 of the rates would fall off, and still a large 
 balance be left for public works and improve- 
 ments of all kinds. It might be allowable, for 
 a moment, to draw a picture of the Utopian con- 
 ditions which would ensue — the rates all j>aid, the 
 rents milder and more equal than before, the 
 wages of parish workers raised, free meals for 
 school-children provided, capital available for 
 public buildings, free libraries, agricultural 
 engines and machinery, also for improving or 
 administering common lands and woods, and so 
 forth. There is no danger of course of so 
 delirious an embarrassment occurring ! for any 
 scheme of nationalisation would take a long time, 
 and would only gradually culminate ; and no 
 scheme would place the whole lands of a parish 
 at the disposal of a single body like the parish 
 council. But the example helps us to realise the 
 situation. Every farmer and cottager whose hold- 
 ing was under a public body would know and 
 feel that whatever rent he might have to pay, 
 it would come back to him in public advantages, 
 in the ordaining of which he would have a voico, ; 
 he would know that he would be in no danger of 
 disturbance as long as he paid his rent ; and 
 
 9
 
 130 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 in the matter of capital improvements tn land 
 or building he might either make them himself 
 (with the council's consent), in which case if he 
 should decide later on to quit the holding, the 
 council would compensate him, knowing that the 
 rental paid by the new tenant would be corre- 
 spondingly increased ; or he could get the council 
 (if willing) to make the improvement, and him- 
 self pay a correspondingly increased rent for it. 
 In either case he would have as good a bargain, 
 and almost as free a hand, as if he were on his 
 own freehold. 
 
 Security of tenure, largely through public 
 ownership, must certainly be one of the first items 
 of a land-reform program. Another item, the 
 importance of which is now being widely felt, 
 is the making provision for the effective supply 
 of small holdings. The Small Holdings and Allot- 
 ments Act (of 1907) has not so far borne much 
 fruit. Indeed, one rather gathers that forces 
 purposely hostile to it have been at work. But 
 this state of affairs must not continue ; and some 
 advance in that direction will certainly have to 
 be effected. By small holdings I mean holdings, 
 freehold or leasehold, from twenty-five Seres down 
 to one or two acres in extent, each with cottage 
 and buildings attached. Of holdings of this class 
 (largely owing to the " rolling up " policy of last 
 century) there is an absolute famine in the land. 
 The demand, the outcry, for them is great, but 
 the supply is most scanty. Yet this class covers
 
 THE VILLAGE AND THE LANDLORD 131 
 
 some of the most important work of modern o.grl- 
 culture, and a great variety of such work. It 
 includes, in its smaller sizes, market gardens, with 
 intensive culture of all kinds, and glass, besides 
 the kind of holding occupied by the professional 
 man or other worker who supplements his income 
 by some small cultivation ; and in its larger sizes 
 it includes nurseries, as well as small arable and 
 pasture farms. The starvation that exists to-day 
 in Britain of all these classes of industry is 3 
 serious matter. 1 
 
 In the parish with which we are dealing, owing 
 partly to its distance from a market, the demand 
 for such holdings takes chiefly the form of a 
 demand for small arable and pasture farms. But 
 the need of these is great, as indeed it is nearly all 
 over the country. A holding of this kind, of any 
 size from five to twenty acres, forms an excellent 
 stepping-stone, as I have said (p. 102), for a farm 
 laborer or farmer's son towards a position of inde- 
 pendence. A second or third son of a farmer, not 
 likely to follow his father in the occupation of the 
 
 1 It will be said that if there is such a demand for small 
 holdings, the supply will soon by natural laws be forth- 
 coming. But as a matter of fact under our present system 
 this is not so — and for three reasons : (1) the slowness of 
 the landed classes to perceive the needs of the day — even 
 though to their own interest ; (2) the want of capital among 
 a great number of them, which makes them unwilling to 
 face the breaking up of large farms and the building of extra 
 cottages ; (3) the fact that those who have money are 
 careless about public needs, and do not want to see a sturdy 
 population of small holders about their doors.
 
 132 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 farm, has to-day only a poor prospect. Unable to 
 command enough capital to stock a large farm 
 himself, and unable to find a small one, he has 
 but two alternatives — to drift down into the fruit- 
 less life of the farm laborer, or else to go off 
 and try his luck in town. If, as is most often 
 the case, he is twenty-five or so before the need 
 of making a decision comes upon him, his chances 
 of learning a town trade are closed, and the first 
 alternative is all that is left. Yet the small holder 
 of this kind is often one of the most effective 
 and useful types of agricultural worker. On a 
 holding, say of fifteen acres, while he cannot 
 get an adequate living for himself and family 
 by ordinary farm methods, yet he can gain a 
 considerable amount, which he supplements by 
 working as a useful hand for neighbors at harvest 
 and other times. Being thrown on his resources, 
 and not having too much land, he gains more 
 than the average out of it, and his own ingenuities 
 and capacities are developed ; so that, as a rule, 
 he is the most resourceful and capable type of 
 man in the district. It is of the most vital 
 importance to the country that this type of man, 
 and his class of holding, should be encouraged. 
 
 There is one method which I have so far 
 neglected to mention by which both security of 
 tenure and small holdings can be obtained — I 
 mean Co-operation. The formation of co-opera- 
 tive societies for the purchase of large farms, 
 for the division of them, the building of cottages,
 
 THE VILLAGE AND THE LANDLORD 133 
 
 and the leasing of small holdings so obtained, is 
 one of the most hopeful directions for the future. 
 It ought to be easy for the public authorities to 
 lend money on perfectly safe terms for this 
 purpose. What co-operation has done and is 
 doing for agriculture in other countries— in the 
 way of establishing banks, land -holding societies, 
 societies for butter -making, egg -collecting, buying 
 of feeding stuffs and manures, sale of produce, 
 etc., is now perfectly well known. Ireland even 
 has left England behind in this matter ; but 
 England and Scotland will have to level up. It 
 is a sign, at least of good intentions, that the 
 late Act gives power to the County Councils to 
 promote and assist the formation and working 
 of co - operative agricultural societies of all 
 kinds. 
 
 One of the very first things, I think, which 
 ought to be taken up is this question of the 
 commons. If ten million acres between 1760 
 and 1880 passed so easily from the public use 
 into the exclusive hands of the landowners, surely 
 there ought not to be much difficulty in passing 
 them back again. As I have said, they were 
 appropriated mainly on the plea that, being 
 commons, they were inadequately cultivated. The 
 main cultivation they have received from the land- 
 lords has been of rabbits, grouse, and other game ! 
 The public has been simply played with in the 
 matter j and agricultural interests, instead of 
 being extended and improved, have been Severely
 
 134 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 damaged. When we realise, in addition to this, 
 that, owing to the increase of the general popula- 
 tion and its needs, these tracts which passed into 
 private hands with such slender compensation to 
 the public, are now held up at ruinous prices, we 
 realise that it is high time that the game should 
 cease ; and that the lands which Parliament voted 
 away from the public in those days should now 
 be voted back again— and with " compensation " 
 on a similar scale. These lands are still largely 
 in the hands of the families to whom they were 
 awarded ; and the transfer could perhaps be most 
 fairly and reasonably effected by their simple 
 reversion to the public on the expiration of exist- 
 ing life interests in them. But of course there 
 would have to be land courts to deal with and 
 compensate special cases, as where the land had 
 changed hands, and so forth. 
 
 The value of such ancient common lands to 
 the public would now be very great. Large 
 portions of them would be suitable for cultiva- 
 tion and for allocation in small holdings ; the 
 villages would again have a chance of public 
 playgrounds and cricket grounds ; the Parish 
 councils Would have lands (so much needed and 
 so difficult to obtain) for allotment gardens ; the 
 District councils might turn many an old wood- 
 land into a public park ; while the wilder moors 
 and mountains could be held under County 
 councils or the State, either for afforestation, or 
 as reserves for the enjoyment of the public, and
 
 THE VILLAGE AND THE LANDLORD 135 
 
 the preservation of certain classes of wild animals 
 and birds, now in danger of extinction. 
 
 Let a large measure of this kind be passed 
 retransf erring the main portion of the common 
 lands into public hands ; and at the same time 
 a measure compelling owners in the future to 
 declare their land values, and giving power to 
 the public bodies to purchase on the basis of 
 the values so declared ; and already we should 
 have made two important steps towards bringing 
 the land of the nation into the possession of its 
 rightful owners.
 
 VIII 
 
 BRITISH ARISTOCRACY AND THE HOUSE 
 
 OF LORDS 
 
 It has often been said that our victory at Waterloo 
 was a great misfortune to England ; and in 
 general terms the truth of this remark can hardly 
 be gainsaid. Our successes as against the armies 
 of the French Revolution certainly kept the current 
 of new human forces and ideas associated with 
 that movement at a distance, and warded it off 
 from our shores. The feudal system, broken down 
 and disorganised all over the Continent by 
 Napoleon, preserved its old tradition in these 
 islands. And one consequence has been that, in 
 the matters of qur Land -system and our Aris- 
 tocracy, we are now a hundred years behind the 
 rest of .Western Europe. 1 
 
 Our land-system, with its large estates breed- 
 ing a servile and poor - spirited population of 
 tenantry and farm laborers, has had the effect 
 of clogging and depressing British agriculture — 
 to such a degree, indeed, that the latter has 
 become a thing despised and neglected by our- 
 
 1 Not to mention our Penal and Civil Codes, so antiquated 
 and cumbrous compared with the Code Napoleon. 
 
 136
 
 ARISTOCRACY AND THE LORDS 137 
 
 selves and derided by our neighbors. And our 
 Aristocracy has developed to so monstrous and 
 importunate a form that, like some huge parasite, 
 it threatens disease and ruin to the organism upon 
 which it has fastened. It is with the latter trouble 
 that I am at this moment concerned. 
 
 It is indeed curious that Britain, which has 
 for so long a time boasted herself in the fore- 
 front of human progress, should now be saddled 
 with this institution— a reactionary institution of 
 such magnitude and dead weight as no other 
 nation in the world can show. And more curious 
 still is it that, all the time, with great diligence 
 and apparent zeal, she is enlarging and building 
 up the absurd incubus which weighs her to the 
 ground . 
 
 Poor Britain I with all her other burdens— 
 her burdens of crying poverty, of huge popula- 
 tion, of limited land, of distressing fogs both 
 in the mental and physical atmosphere— to be 
 actually fastening and riveting this extra one upon 
 her own back I .What must one think of such 
 a nation? Has she lost her wits, and does she 
 at all divine what she is doing? Is she still 
 lost in a sleep of centuries, and living in dreams 
 of three or four hundred years ago? 
 
 There has in the past been a certain glamour 
 and romance about the Feudal Aristocracy. 
 Perhaps distance lends enchantment. ,We like 
 to lose ourselves in a kind of Tennysonian 
 dream of knights and ladies ; we know that once
 
 138 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 there were bold bad barons, who certainly were 
 a terrible pest to their contemporaries, but whom 
 we rather admire in the far perspective ; we do 
 not forget the great historical families, whose 
 largesses and whose crimes were on a splendid 
 scale, whose petty jealousies and quarrels with 
 each other were the ruin of peasants and the 
 devastation of country-sides, but whose noblesse 
 oblige had elements of heroism and sacrifice in 
 it, even on account of the very fact of its mean- 
 ing the maintenance of their own Order as against 
 the world. iWe may readily concede that these 
 people did some work that had to be done, we 
 may allow that there was a certain poetry and 
 creative power in it ; but what has all that to 
 do with the modern Aristocracy? 
 
 Of the 550 hereditary peers who to-day con- 
 stitute the bulk of the House of Lords, it is 
 very doubtful if a single one had a relative present 
 at Runnymede and the signing of the Charter. 
 It is said that only five can even trace their 
 families back to that century. In the reign of 
 Elizabeth the lay Lords numbered no more than 
 sixty. Even the Stuarts, who lavished honours 
 on the most dubious favourites, only increased 
 the list of peers by about 100. It was — and 
 the moral is easily drawn — in the reign of 
 George III that the great growth of the modern 
 peerage took place. George himself, anxious to 
 strengthen his weak hand in the Government, 
 insisted on nominating a large contingent — his
 
 ARISTOCRACY AND THE LORDS 139 
 
 congeners and equals in point of brains and edu- 
 cation— a crass and fat, snuff-taking and port- 
 wine-bibbing crew. William Pitt— and this was 
 part of his settled policy — drowned out the old 
 Whig families in the House of Lords " by pouring 
 into it members of the middle and commercial 
 class, who formed the basis of his political power 
 —small landowners, bankers, merchants, nabobs, 
 army-contractors, lawyers, soldiers, and seamen. 
 It became the stronghold not of blood, but of 
 property, the representative of the great estates 
 and great fortunes which the vast increase of 
 English wealth was building up." 1 The whole 
 process was a sort of strange counterblast to 
 the French Revolution. But with Pitt's succes- 
 sors it continued to such an extent that actually 
 the total number of peerages created during 
 George the Third's reign was 3 8 8- 1? 
 
 And from that time forward the same. 
 Britain, to accentuate her victory over Napoleon, 
 and to assure the world of her anti -revolutionary 
 principles, steadily added and added to her tale 
 of titled heads : till now — instead of the feudal 
 chiefs and royal boon -companions and buccaneers 
 and sea-dogs of old days — we have a wonderful 
 
 1 J. R. Green, Short History of the English People, ch. x. 
 
 2 May's Constitutional History, vol. i. The number of 
 baronets created during the same reign was 404 ! and of 
 knights such a crowd that the order has never recovered 
 from the somewhat aldermanic and provincial flavour it then 
 acquired.
 
 140 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 breccia of brewers and bankers, colliery owners 
 and Stock Exchange magnates, newspaper pro- 
 prietors, wine dealers, general manufacturers and 
 industrial directors, among whom the old land- 
 lords lie embedded like fossils. 1 It must be 
 confessed that whatever romance a title may have 
 once carried with it has now quite gone. It 
 is hardly possible, one would think, for the most 
 Philistine Briton or world -foraging Yankee to per- 
 ceive any glamor in the present aristocracy. 
 Indeed, one may say that— although, of course, it 
 includes some very worthy persons— a certain 
 vulgarity attaches to the class as a whole, and 
 that it is doubtful whether any really self-respect- 
 ing commoner would consent to be included in it. 
 But the curious fact is, as I have said, that 
 it continues to grow and be added to. At present 
 the United Kingdom is blessed with 750 peers 
 in all (not all of them in the House of Lords), 
 besides an innumerable host of lesser dignities. 
 The late Conservative Government, during its ten 
 years of office, scored fifty -seven additions to the 
 House— not a bad count ; but Campbell -Banner- 
 man beat all records by creating twenty in the 
 course of his first eighteen months 1 If the 
 accretions to the ranks of Rank are to continue 
 at similar rates, imagination g'asps at the probable 
 situation, say in fifty years. 
 
 .With regard to this extraordinary freak of 
 " C.-B.'s," it is difficult to find a rational explana- 
 
 1 Since 1800 the new peers created amount to over 400.
 
 ARISTOCRACY AND THE LORDS 141 
 
 tion, which — in view of the debate at that time 
 about the sale of honours to wealthy party 
 supporters — is not also a rather unpleasant one. 
 In the story of " Bel and the Dragon," when 
 Daniel determined to destroy the great Idol which 
 the people worshipped, he fed into its capacious 
 maw fresh lumps of " pitch and fat and hair " 
 (of which ingredients, no doubt, the monster was 
 already composed). He seemed to be nourish- 
 ing and fattening it, but in reality he destroyed 
 it, by causing it to " burst in sunder." But 
 whether the Liberal party really wishes or thinks 
 to break up the House of Lords in the same way 
 is extremely doubtful. It is certainly an odd 
 way of doing battle. 
 
 That it can be for a moment supposed that 
 that House can be converted into a progressive 
 institution by ample creation of Liberal peers 
 is out of the question. In the first place, there 
 is the huge existing Conservative majority there, 
 to be overcome before anything like a balance 
 can be established. In the second place, there 
 is the undeniable and portentous fact that for 
 turning a man into a Tory, a day in that House 
 is better than a thousand (outside). For reasons 
 and in ways not very difficult to see there is a 
 steady social and conventional pressure going on 
 in those surroundings, which gradually transforms 
 well-meaning and progressive folk into rigid ob- 
 structives. Of the ninety-two peers (and their 
 successors) created by Liberal Prime Ministers
 
 142 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 in the last fifty years, only forty -six, that is one 
 half, are now Liberals. 1 Thirdly, it must be 
 remembered that of those who do thus call them- 
 selves Liberals, and under that head are created 
 peers, their real liberality and culture "and public 
 spirit (for the most part, and with a few very 
 genuine exceptions) are only skin-deep. They 
 have worked mainly for their own private ends 
 and advancement ; they have been successful men 
 in business or in law ; they have engineered 
 society influences ; they have made themselves 
 grateful to highly placed personages ; they have 
 dumped down enormous funds on occasions for 
 election and other purposes ; they have even ob- 
 tained what they wanted by forbearing to press 
 for the payment of debts I In a variety of ways 
 they have been useful to their own side ; and 
 sometimes they have been so little useful that for 
 that reason it has been thought better to remove 
 them to " another place." But whatever the cause 
 of their advancement, the end to which it leads 
 will in most cases be the same. It is hard to 
 believe — as Mr. Joseph Clayton says in his excel- 
 lent little book, The Truth about the Lords — 
 that the cause of " temperance legislation will 
 be assisted in the Upper House by Lords Burton 
 and Blyth " ; or that " the progress of labor 
 legislation, in favor of a shorter working day 
 and the abolition of child -labor, will be hastened 
 by Lords Nunburnholme, Pirrie, Glantawe, and 
 
 1 Written in 1908.
 
 ARISTOCRACY AND THE LORDS 143 
 
 Winterstokc." Having climbed the Liberal 
 ladder, the great probability remains that they 
 will scorn the base degrees by which they did 
 ascend, and retire finally to swell the obstructive 
 influences in the Second Chamber. 
 
 Lastly — and most important of all— the prob- 
 ability that the House of Lords can be converted 
 into a progressive institution by the creation of 
 Liberal peers is practically nil, for the simple 
 reason that the Liberal party itself is not essentially 
 progressive ; and as time goes on gets less and 
 less differentiated in all important respects from 
 the Conservative party — into which in the end 
 it will probably merge. 
 
 The whole magnification and bolstering-up of 
 both the House of Lords and the " Aristocracy " 
 generally in this country is certainly an extraordi- 
 nary phenomenon, and one which would hardly 
 be possible in any other country of the world in 
 this year A.D. Pausing for a moment to take a 
 bird's-eye view of it, and guarding ourselves 
 against undue self -depreciations or too-sweeping 
 comparisons of the Briton with other nations, let 
 us just make a plain matter-of-fact estimate of 
 the situation. 
 
 One might suppose that here in the general 
 Aristocracy, among the pick and pink of the 
 nation, endowed with wealth, education, and far- 
 reaching influence, would be found the leaders 
 and pioneers of every great movement ; that art 
 and science, sociology and politics would tie
 
 144 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 illuminated and inspired, organised and marshalled 
 by this class ; that abroad it would stand as 
 representative of what was best and most vigorous 
 in our people ; and that at home and in the 
 country-sides it would set the tone and animate the 
 centres of the most healthy and useful life. iWhat 
 do we actually find? A waste of dullness, 
 commonplaceness and reaction. This Aristocracy 
 does nothing — next to nothing that can be said 
 to be of public utility, 1 for even the -really useful 
 work of the ordinary country gentleman on 
 County Councils and as a member of the Great 
 Unpaid can hardly be placed to its account. It 
 produces (in the present day) no artists, no men 
 of letters of any distinction, no inventors, no great 
 men of science, no serious reformers, hardly even 
 a great military general or political leader. And 
 this is certainly astounding when one considers 
 the exceptional opportunities its members have 
 for success and advancement in any of these 
 directions, and the ease with which they can 
 command a hearing and a following. 
 
 It is true, of course, that occasionally a man 
 of decided note and ability — a Kelvin or a 
 Tennyson, a Beaconsfield or a Kitchener — on 
 account of real or generally admitted service to 
 the nation, and not on account of his swollen 
 
 1 It is nowadays enormously connected among the Direc- 
 tors of Joint Stock Companies and Banks and other money- 
 lending concerns, but whether its labours in these connexions 
 are of public utility is a question
 
 THE ARISTOCRACY AND THE LORDS 145 
 
 money-bags or his scheming self-advertisement, 
 is collated into the Aristocracy. But such 
 individuals are not numerous, and they are not 
 the product of the Aristocracy. They are impor- 
 tations into it which, alas I do not modify its 
 general character, but too often, like good build- 
 ing materials thrown into a swamp, simply sink 
 into it and disappear. The amount of useful 
 genius or talent which the institution, from its 
 hereditary deeps, supplies to the world is an almost 
 negligible quantity. 
 
 Again— not to make too great a demand in 
 the way of world-wide genius or service, but to 
 keep to humbler spheres — we may point out that 
 the class in question does not rise to the occasion 
 of its most obvious duties. Despite the efforts 
 of Lord Carrington " to arouse its activity, it 
 does not remodel villages on its estates, or create 
 experimental colonies on its broad acres ; it does 
 not meet the very genuine demand now existing 
 for small holdings ; it does not even lend farm 
 lands to Boards of Guardians for the use of 
 the unemployed. If these things have to be 
 tackled, they are left to the generosity and 
 philanthropic zeal of wealthy Americans, who 
 come across the water to polish up the old country. 
 It does not exhibit any pride in making its 
 factories or its quarries or its collieries (where its 
 revenues spring from such sources) models of 
 excellent and cleanly management, with the best 
 
 1 Now (191 7) Marquis of Lincolnshire. 
 10
 
 146 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 conditions possible for the workers concerned in 
 them. It organises none of the social reforms in 
 town or country which are so cryingly needed, 
 and which it ought to be so well qualified to 
 initiate. It sometimes appears (though; of course, 
 this is not really the fact) as though it could 
 think of nothing more beneficial for its rural 
 demesnes and their populations than to shoot over 
 them, or more appropriate for its town duties 
 than to employ plenty of dressmakers for 
 Society functions. 
 
 One must not certainly deny that these good 
 people move up in squadrons, and are greatly 
 in evidence as Patrons and Patronesses of 
 Bazaars, Or of Hospitals, or of philanthropic 
 institutions of various kinds. Anything that is 
 colourless and non-committal, which is popularly 
 helpful, without being a severe tax on pecuniary 
 funds or physical energies, and in which a name 
 or a title carries weight, is peculiarly favoured. 
 As Mr. Clayton says (p. 102), " For the laying 
 of foundation-stones, opening of important build- 
 ings, presiding over religious and philanthropic 
 meetings, the directing of limited liability com- 
 panies, the ' governing ' of self-governing colonies, 
 and the entertaining of political followers, they 
 are in great demand." And with all these duties, 
 and the demands of " Society " generally, it really 
 would not be fair to call them idle. t We may 
 even say that they are enormously busy. 
 
 It would be foolish' also to deny — what is
 
 ARISTOCRACY AND THE LORDS 147 
 
 sufficiently obvious — that among the titled people, 
 especially the older families, there are found some 
 folk of a humane and cultured class of mind, 
 with charming and genuine good manners, simple 
 habits, and a real sense of responsibility and even 
 affection towards those dependent on them ; and 
 for the existence of such people, in whatever 
 sphere, we may be grateful, especially in these 
 days when they are in danger of being drowned 
 out by tawdry newcomers. 
 
 But all this — in the way of benefits or ad- 
 vantages accruing from the Aristocratic system 
 — is very negative. On the other hand, the posi- 
 tive evils of the system do not admit of being 
 overlooked. To the mass of meaningless fashion 
 and expensive idleness created by our social 
 arrangements generally, it accords an impjimatur 
 of distinction and desirability. The flagrant sale 
 of high honours — worse, apparently, in the be- 
 ginning of this twentieth century than ever before 
 — corrupts the nation with the resultant lesson 
 that to make a fortune anyhow and to spend 
 it for personal aggrandisement is the best way 
 to gain distinction and public respect. Traffic- 
 king in titles has become quite a profession, and 
 a rich man has now little difficulty, through the 
 mediation of diplomatic but impecunious ladies 
 of rank, in getting himself made a knight or 
 a baronet. A quite uncalled-for and dispropor- 
 tionate power is put into the hands of persons 
 who are really not worthy of it, whose aims are
 
 148 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 vulgar, whose education is poor, on whose tables 
 hardly a book of real merit is to be found (often, 
 certainly, not as good literature as is seen in a 
 better -class workman's home) ; and among whom 
 the questions most important to be discussed are 
 whether golf or motoring, baccarat or bridge, 
 shall be the order of the day. Gangs of similar 
 folk use their " influence " to get important posi- 
 tions in Army or Navy or official circles filled 
 up by relatives or favorites ; and the resultant 
 scandals of incompetence or maladministration, 
 which later years inevitably unfold, are hushed 
 up by the same influences. The nation is heavily 
 injured, but the damage does not recoil on the 
 heads of those most responsible. ' Society " 
 twaddle fills the newspapers and impresses the 
 uninitiated and unlearned ; the aimless life and 
 ideals silting downwards infect the masses of the 
 people with a most futile and feeble conception 
 of life ; and in little matters of dress and etiquette 
 ultimately make the middle classes even worse 
 than those whom they imitate, and from whom 
 they suppose the fashions to originate. 
 
 To return to the House of Lords. I have no 
 intention here of dwelling on its record of in- 
 efficiency and obstruction. Of its political history 
 during the last century ; of its meagre and scanty 
 attendances, even over the most important ques- 
 tions ; of its marvelous inefficiency and Want 
 of comprehension in dealing with the same ; of 
 its indifference when any human or humane inte-
 
 ARISTOCRACY AND THE LORDS 149 
 
 rest has been concerned ; of its dead obstructive - 
 ness when such things seemed to endanger in any 
 degree its " rights of property " ; of its clinging 
 to the death-penalty (in 18 10) for the stealing 
 of values over 5s., and to the same (in 1820) 
 for values over £10, and to the same again (in 
 1839) for sheep -stealing ; of its maintenance by 
 large majorities of vivisection (1879), and of 
 trap pigeon -shooting (1883) ; of its turning deaf 
 ears to the pleading cry of children in the coal 
 mines (1842), or of little chimney-sweep urchins 
 in the chimneys (1849), or of evicted and famine - 
 stricken peasants in Ireland (1880-2) ; of its 
 steady refusal, until fairly forced, to grant the 
 rightful and natural demands of citizens for 
 suffrage and self-government and religious equality 
 and the education of their boys and girls ; or 
 to grant the demands of women for rights over 
 their own property and persons, and of men for 
 the protection of their own labor-power ;— are 
 not all these things written in the great books 
 of the Chronicles of the last hundred years, as 
 well as in the pages of the Almanacks and the 
 manifestos of the late Mr. Stead? There is only 
 one opinion about them ; and what has been 
 said a thousand times it is needless to repeat. 
 Nor can we fairly expect anything else. If 
 we indulge in the absurdity and scandal of making 
 men high legislators because they have heaped 
 together huge fortunes by selling " purge " and 
 " kill-devil " to a drink -sodden public, or have
 
 150 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 made themselves wealthy and notorious by circu- 
 lating lying and sensation -mongering canards 
 among ignorant populations, we must expect the 
 absurdities and scandals and misfortunes which 
 are the logical result. And if it only stopped 
 there ! But to go further, and to make the bodily 
 heirs of these people our future High Legislators, 
 even to the crack of doom — well, that is surely 
 midsummer madness, and a gilding of the refined 
 gold of folly I As a precise and practical writer 
 has remarked : " Our toleration of this costly 
 absurdity is the wonder of the world. Its like 
 is not to be found in any other civilised nation," 
 
 The real question which remains is, What is 
 to be the cure? Dismissing the supposition that 
 a syndicate of American millionaires will buy up 
 the House of Lords complete for the purposes of 
 a world -exhibition, and, on the other hand, the 
 supposition that a violent wave of socialist revo- 
 lution will drown it suddenly out of existence — 
 as being, both of them, though feasible, beyond 
 the range of immediate politics, we may at least, 
 and as a practical issue, discuss what considerable 
 and radical changes would really bring this in- 
 stitution, and that of the Aristocracy generally, 
 into the line of human usefulness. There is fair 
 reason to suppose that in a few years the Labor 
 party or parties in the Lower House will have a 
 decisive influence there ; and in view of that 
 probability some suggestions for a future policy
 
 ARISTOCRACY AND THE LORDS 151 
 
 with" regard to the Peers may be useful — though 
 the following proposals (it must be understood) 
 are merely individual, and would not perhaps 
 be accepted in block by any of the Socialist 
 organisations. 
 
 I think we may assume that, short of a 
 violent catastrophe, the Second Chamber will be 
 retained. Its total abolition would not be in 
 accordance with the temper and tradition of the 
 British ; and, personally, I think that — as long as 
 our present general Constitution remains — a 
 Second Chamber is desirable ; because our 
 House of Commons — though with an intelligent 
 voting public it might become intelligent, and even 
 get to know a little political economy — must 
 always, from the method of its election, be largely 
 composed of professional politicians, and must 
 represent mainly popular ideals, views, and 
 currents of opinion. There is no harm in this, 
 but it requires to be corrected by a more search- 
 ing, accurate, and experienced spirit (if only, for 
 example, in order that Bills passed by the popular 
 Assembly may be intelligible, and may not become 
 law while still containing hopelessly contradictory 
 clauses). Also a Chamber with some intelligent 
 and public-spirited initiative about it would be 
 very helpful. 
 
 A Second Chamber, then, seems to me on the 
 whole advisable, and will, I have no doubt, for 
 a long time to come be demanded by the
 
 152 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 British people. It will not necessarily be the 
 House of Lords ; but here again the British love 
 of tradition and continuity will come in, and will 
 probably insist on its being called the House of 
 Lords — even long after it has come to consist 
 mainly of manual workers and advanced women ! 
 
 The practical question therefore is — how to 
 begin immediately to remodel the Upper House 
 with a view to rendering it (in time) a useft 
 Second Chamber. 
 
 The first and immediate need obviously is to 
 drop the hereditary qualification. No son of an 
 existing peer should sit in a future House simply 
 on account of being an eldest son. He may 
 succeed to his father's title (of that more anon), 
 but not therefore to his father's seat. The present 
 House will not be wiped out, but in the twinkling 
 of an eye it will be changed, as far as its legis- 
 lative functions are concerned, to a body of life- 
 peers. The descendants of the existing peers 
 will (possibly) carry on their ornamental func- 
 tions in Society, but they will cease to be our 
 hereditary Legislators. This is so very indis- 
 pensable a reform, and the scandal and absurdity 
 of the present arrangement is so monstrous, that 
 without making this first step practically nothing 
 can be done ; and the public must simply choose 
 between this and eternal disgrace. Moreover, it 
 is a reform which could be carried out almost 
 imperceptibly, and with a minimum of friction. 
 
 The present House would remain, for the
 
 ARISTOCRACY AND THE LORDS 153 
 
 moment, undissolved ; but its numbers would 
 slowly dwindle with the decease of its members. 
 All future peers created in order to supply the 
 consequent vacancies would be life-peers. What- 
 ever other titles they might carry, or if they 
 carried no titles at all, in either case their right 
 to sit in the House would not descend to their 
 offspring. Thus in the course of not so very 
 many years we should have a Second Chamber 
 wholly consisting of life - members appointed 
 on their own merits, and neither claiming nor 
 exercising hereditary power. 1 
 
 What would be the general principles of 
 appointment to such a Chamber? It might be 
 urged that (after it was once fairly established) 
 it should be made self-elective — say like the 
 Chinese Academy, which for more than a thousand 
 years has exercised so tremendous a sway over 
 
 1 Lord Hobhousc, in 1894, proposed such a Second 
 Chamber, limited to 200 or 250 life-members, and having 
 also a limited right of veto {Contemporary Review, December 
 1894). Sir Herbert Maxwell proposed that the Crown should 
 cease to grant hereditary titles, and should be content with 
 creating life-peerages ; also that the number of members 
 of the Upper House should be reduced to 268 (Nineteenth 
 Century, July 1906). Mr. Frederic Harrison has sketched 
 a similar Senate, drawn widely from the various professions, 
 learned societies, and so forth (Posit ivist Review, October 1906). 
 Constitutionally, the peers are summoned by the Will of 
 the Crown, and apart from that have no hereditary right to 
 sit, and on the other hand it is amply admitted now that 
 the Crown has power to grant peerages and summon peers 
 for life only ; so we see that the change proposed would 
 involve no great technical or constitutional difficulty.
 
 154 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 the destiny of China. As every one knows, the 
 Chinese Academy consists of some 240 members, 
 the best scholars and savants in the empire, to 
 each of whom by immemorial provision is allowed 
 a house and a small salary. The duty of the 
 body is to debate and turn its critical acumen 
 and enlightenment on any or every public question 
 that may arise. It has no direct legislative or 
 executive power ; but the results of its debates 
 and its recommendations are widely circulated 
 through the empire, and have an immense Influence 
 on the popular mind, while at the same time the 
 body exercises or has exercised a very outspoken 
 censorship over the acts of officials and even of 
 the Emperor himself. This body is self -elective. 
 When a vacancy occurs the remaining members 
 elect the new one. It is thus independent of 
 patronage, and no doubt (as the remarkable history 
 of the Chinese Academy shows), when once a 
 good tradition Is started, this method of election 
 may be very effective. 
 
 Wdth regard to the House of Lords, however, 
 there might (at present) be objections to this 
 method — and we may take it as probable that 
 new (life) peers will continue to be created, and 
 writs of summons issued, on the recommendation 
 of the Premier at the time in office. Assuming 
 this, I think it must follow, as the second abso- 
 lutely necessary reform, that in all cases a reason 
 (of distinguished service) must be given for each 
 creation. Sir Wilfrid Lawson on one occasion,
 
 ARISTOCRACY AND THE LORDS 155 
 
 in 1887 I believe, proposed this. And It is clear 
 that to leave the distribution of high honours 
 and the position of Hereditary National Legis- 
 lator to the irresponsible appointment of any 
 Government, is simply to court bribery, corrup- 
 tion, and malversation. A distinct and sufficient 
 reason must be given for each creation, just as 
 is done in the case of the award of a medal or 
 decoration, a V.C. or a D.S.O. ; and though this 
 in itself might not always secure the best men, 
 it would certainly go a long way to keep out 
 the commonplace and really harmful types, 
 whose real recommendation to-day consists in 
 services which would not bear public scrutiny. 
 Of course this reform will be strenuously re- 
 sisted by certain classes, just for the very reason 
 that irresponsible patronage is so dear and so 
 very convenient to those who can exercise it ; but 
 the change is absolutely necessary and indispens- 
 able. 
 
 It would probably have to be accompanied by 
 some indication as to the kind of distinguished 
 service which should be regarded as a qualifi- 
 cation. Personally, I think that in this Second 
 Chamber, or House of Life -peers, as far as 
 possible, every class or section of the nation should 
 be represented, and represented of course by well- 
 known and well-tried members of such class, or 
 by those who have done good service to their 
 class or to the nation. Lord Rosebery, in 1S84, 
 in moving for a Select Committee on the reform
 
 156 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 of the House of Lords, " specified nine classes 
 which were entirely without representation in that 
 House. The first were the Nonconformists, the 
 last the Workmen. The other seven were as 
 follows — medicine, science, literature, commerce, 
 tenant-farmers, arts, and colonists. He suggested 
 that life -peers should be created, and that the 
 ancient system of assistants, by which judges were 
 called into council, might be revived." * Here, 
 at any rate, as far as it went, was a practical 
 suggestion towards making the House an efficient 
 and useful body. But the details of such member- 
 ship, ex officio and other, would of course need 
 careful consideration, and into that question we 
 need not go now. What is clear, at present, 
 is that the future House of Peers (and here the 
 word " peers " comes in very appropriately) will 
 consist of able men of all classes and so-called 
 ranks in society. And this is in the line of a 
 very obvious and natural evolution. In early 
 times the Lords Spiritual, who often outnumbered 
 the Lords Temporal in the House, were not a 
 little jealous of the latter. Towards the close 
 of the eighteenth century the old landed families, 
 who alone beside the Church were there repre- 
 sented, were furiously disgusted at the accession 
 to their ranks of large bodies of commercial and 
 professional gentry. Again, in 1856, there was 
 a storm in the House over the granting of a 
 
 1 W. T. Stead, Peers or People : An Appeal to History, p. 194, 
 1907.
 
 ARISTOCRACY AND THE LORDS 157 
 
 life-peerage to Lord Wensleydale ; the highest 
 legal and historical authorities, however, main- 
 tained that it was the ancient right and privilege 
 of the Crown to create life-peers ; and in 1887 
 the Appellate Jurisdiction Act was passed, in 
 accordance with which certain Law-lords now take 
 their seats for life ex officio. Finally, in the 
 last twenty years, classes of men have been ad- 
 mitted to the House whom even George III would 
 not have dared to propose. Sir Erskine May, 
 in his Constitutional History of England, speak- 
 ing of the great growth in numbers of the Upper 
 House in modern times, says : " With this large 
 increase of numbers the peerage has undergone 
 further changes no less remarkable, in its character 
 and composition. It is no longer a council of 
 the magnates of the Land — the territorial Aris- 
 tocracy, the descendants or representatives of the 
 barons of the olden time ; but in each successive 
 age it has assumed a more popular and repre- 
 sentative character." Thus, although the present 
 House would, no doubt, be much shocked at the 
 idea, it does not seem at all improbable that a 
 time may come when a Joseph Arch, for instance, 
 as an eminent farm-laborer and representative 
 of farm-laborers, might be called to sit on its 
 councils. 
 
 Another reform which will probably be advis- 
 able will be the limitation of the new House 
 of Life -peers to a definite number of members
 
 158 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 — although, of course, such limiting number might 
 be alterable from time to time. One great ad- 
 vantage of such a limitation is, that on any occa- 
 sion the number of vacancies existing is known, 
 and the question of their replenishment comes 
 naturally before the public, so that ; whoever the 
 appointing authority may be, he or they cannot 
 easily act in a secret or underhand way in the 
 matter, as is indeed too possible with the present 
 method. 
 
 The reforms thus proposed are practically 
 threes — 
 
 i. Life -peerages (the actual title a matter of 
 little importance). 
 
 2. Adequate reasons of useful service to be 
 given for each creation — on democratic grounds 
 more or less scheduled and recognised. 
 
 3. Limitation of number of members. 
 
 Under such conditions as these reforms would 
 induce, the Second Chamber would probably turn 
 out satisfactorily, and there does not seem any 
 reasons why its powers should be seriously 
 curtailed. To propose to keep the House of 
 Lords as it is, is practically to ask for the cur- 
 tailment of its powers and the suspension of the 
 right of veto — for it is evident that things can- 
 not go on very long as they are ; but to remove 
 the right of veto would in effect be to reduce 
 the House to a mere revising body — whose work
 
 ARISTOCRACY AND THE LORDS 159 
 
 could, of course, be better done by a committee 
 of experts. If a Second Chamber is to be re- 
 tained at all,, far more sensible would it be to 
 make it a really useful and intelligent institution, 
 with power of initiative and power of veto — the 
 latter at any rate to some degree, though of 
 course guarded. Short of our securing such use- 
 ful and intelligent body, Abolition would be the 
 only alternative. 
 
 There remain a few words to say about the 
 Aristocracy generally, and the possibilities of 
 bringing it into line as a serviceable or even 
 tolerable institution. It is fairly clear that the 
 same arguments which have been brought forward 
 in favor of a life-seat only in the House of 
 Peers, and in favor of a declaration of the 
 reasons for conferring that distinction, apply 
 equally — though not perhaps equally pressingly 
 —to the conferring of titles generally. Of course, 
 it would be possible to raise a man to a baronage 
 or an earldom, and in doing so to give him a 
 life-seat only in the Second Chamber, while at 
 the same time continuing his title to his heirs ; 
 but the question arises, Why — because a man has 
 done useful service to the nation (assuming, of 
 course, that he has), and the nation to show its 
 gratitude confers some title upon him — why should 
 the irresponsible heirs of this man, and of other 
 such men, be allowed in p_erp/?tuo to sport similar 
 titles, and so to form (as we see) a class of
 
 160 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 Society idlers (or busybodies) who, to say the 
 least, exercise an enfeebling and unworthy influ- 
 ence on the rest of the people? ' It may be, 
 replied to that, that as long as you take from 
 such folk direct legislative power, the thing does 
 not matter. If any such classes like to whirl 
 round in their little coteries, and have their smart 
 dinner-parties and their scandals, their punctilios 
 of precedence and their privileges of heading lists 
 of subscriptions, why should the nation interfere 
 to deprive them of these simple pleasures? And 
 there is so far truth in this, that we must admit 
 that as long as the present commercial system 
 continues, and there remains, as to-day, a sum 
 of some 600 millions sterling of unearned in- 
 come, or more, to be divided every year among 
 the capitalist and landlord classes, this feeble and 
 unworthy life will probably continue among; such 
 classes, whether titled or not. That is so far 
 true ; but it forms no reason why the nation, 
 by a system of rank without service, should give 
 its imprimatur of distinction to such a life. 
 
 Again, there may be some people who believe 
 in Blood so far as to think that the descendants 
 of a really great man inherit his virtues to a 
 remote posterity . And it certainly, seems possible 
 
 1 It should also be pointed out that if it is desired to 
 confer distinction by titles, the latter must be for life only 
 — since the hereditary system gives no distinction, no dis- 
 tinction between authentic genius and the commonplace 
 wearer of a family coronet.
 
 ARISTOCRACY AND THE LORDS 161 
 
 that some day — when there is a State depart- 
 ment of Eugenics — whole families may be granted 
 a pedigree and diploma on account of their excel- 
 lent breed ; but then I need hardly say that such 
 patent of nobility would be immediately cancelled 
 for any person who should breed children outside 
 the regulation of the State— as I fear many of 
 our aristocracy at present do I And as to the 
 Blood descending with the Name, a very brief 
 calculation will dispel that illusion, for it is easily 
 found (doubling at each generation) that ten 
 generations back one had over a thousand 
 ancestors living (say in 1600 A.D.), while ten 
 generations again before that (say in 1300) one 
 had over a million. Any one, therefore, who 
 can trace his descent from some ancestor living 
 in 1300 — and there are few indeed who can do 
 that — will have the satisfaction of knowing that 
 one -millionth » part of the blood in his veins 
 will be due to that ancestor I 
 
 I have referred— in speaking of the House of 
 Lords — to the Chinese Academy, which seems an 
 extraordinarily practical and sensible institution. 
 We might do worse than take a hint from China 
 as to the handling of titles generally. Greatly 
 and devoutly as John Chinaman believes in 
 heredity, descent, and ancestor-worship, he is not 
 
 1 It is true that, according to the Mendelian theory of 
 heredity, there may occasionally emerge a very near replica 
 of some fairly remote ancestor ; but, as I say, it will in all 
 probability be of an ancestor not in the line of the Name. 
 
 11
 
 162 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 such a fool as to close his eyes to the fact 
 that blood very soon runs out and becomes inter- 
 mixed. Chester Holcombe, for some years Acting 
 Minister of the United States at Peking, says of 
 the Chinese in his excellent book, The Real China- 
 man : " There is no titled nobility, with its long 
 list of elder and younger sons, sons-in-law, and 
 cousins near and remote, to be supported from 
 the public funds, and to fill all the more impor- 
 tant positions of honor and profit. The few 
 titles that are from time to time bestowed carry 
 nothing with them but the nominal honor ; 
 they are bestowed as rewards for distinguished 
 services, and have never been recognised as 
 forming the basis of any claim whatever upon 
 either offices or treasury. In a way they are 
 hereditary, but soon run out, since the rank de- 
 creases one grade with each generation. Even 
 the imperial clan forms no exception to this rule. 
 The author has many a time had in his employ 
 a man who, as a relative of the Emperor, was 
 entitled to wear the imperial yellow girdle ; but 
 he was a hod -carrier, and earned six cents a 
 day." 
 
 (With this suggestion — for the benefit of some 
 future Government — I will close. Let our 
 Aristocracy, as far as it is hereditary, be " let 
 down gently " by the rank descending one grade 
 with each generation. This already happens with 
 the younger children of our higher ranks, who
 
 ARISTOCRACY AND THE LORDS 163 
 
 receive courtesy titles for life. Let a system 
 of such courtesy titles be extended for two or 
 three .generations, and let all children in that 
 jespect count as younger children ; and in a 
 few years we should have got rid of a foolish' 
 and somewhat vulgar anachronism.
 
 IX 
 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE IN CHINA 1 
 
 I 
 
 In speaking of China, it is necessary to guard 
 against a misconception still greatly current, 
 namely that the Chinese are a backward 1 , ignorant 
 nation, slumbering in a kind of agelong lethargy. 
 In many respects this notion is the reverse of the 
 truth. In many respects the Chinese are the 
 most wide-awake of races. They are certainly 
 one of the most remarkable. Intelligent, obser- 
 vant, accurate, industrious, kindly, polite, tenai- 
 cious of custom, having an immense history 
 stretching back thousands of years, they are at 
 once among the oldest and the most childlike 
 of peoples — old and wise in the accumulated 
 experience of their own past, yet little more 
 than children in face of some of the problems 
 which to-day the West presents to them'-. It is 
 only in the latter sense that any. awakening of 
 China can be spoken of or expected. 
 
 TTieir historical records come down in a con- 
 
 1 Originally published as an article in The Co-operative 
 
 Annual (1907). 
 
 164
 
 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE IN CHINA 165 
 
 tinuous stream from some 4,000 years ago ; » 
 and, though there lias been constant develop- 
 ment during that time, there has been no great 
 break in their institutions. There is no record 
 of a time when they 'did not occupy the country 
 they now occupy ; no record of a time when they 
 had not a monarchical system, in general outline 
 the same as they now possess 2 — never a time 
 when the great masses of the people were not 
 agricultural as now, never a time when they were 
 not practically self-sufficing and independent of 
 other countries and peoples. Time and time again 
 they have been invaded. Tartars, Manchurians, 
 Mahommedans, Christians, Japanese., Dutch, Por- 
 tuguese, English, and Russians have poured in 
 upon them ; yet they have never been very 
 greatly disturbed. With a smile that is childlike 
 and bland John Chinaman has pursued the even 
 tenor of his way. And his teeming millions, 
 instead of being conquered, have simply 
 swallowed up th^ invader and continued much 
 as before. 
 
 Printing, as is well known, was invented in 
 China 500 years before it was used in Europe ; 
 gunpowder even before that — though it shows 
 sadly for the intelligence of the Chinese that 
 
 1 There is a document preserved in the Shoo-king or Book 
 of History which seems to be an actual survey of the king- 
 dom as it existed in the twenty-third century B.C. 
 
 8 No essential modification can at any period in all the 
 centuries be discovered in their system of government. — 
 Holcombe, The Real Chinaman, p. 31.
 
 166 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 they did not use it for killing people with till 
 they were taught by the Europeans* I ' Their 
 astronomical observations are among the oldest 
 in the world, dating some '2,000 years B.C. As 
 much as seventeen or eighteen hundred years 
 ago they adopted changes of a socialist character, 
 anjd began to establish their land system on a 
 reasonable basis. Seven or eight hundred years 
 ago they tried the use of an irredeemable paper 
 currency, and found it wanting. 3 And for cen- 
 turies past '(till quite recently) the military 
 profession has been lapsing into contempt and 
 disuse as unworthy of a 'great people. 
 
 After these considerations it is not very 
 surprising to find that this great nation coming 
 down from the remote past found itself in the 
 early centuries of our era — or at any rate had 
 good reason to think itself — the most advanced 
 and civilised on the whole earth'. We read that 
 Marcus Antoninus in A.D. i'66 sent an embassy 
 by sea to China to procure the rich silks which 
 that country produced. The culture of silk was 
 brought thence into Europe during the Emperor 
 Justinian's reign. Tea plants were carried from 
 India to China in A.D. 315, and Chinese physi- 
 cians and Chinese engineers were employed in 
 
 1 By the Portuguese, early in the seventeenth century. 
 
 3 It drove the metallic currency out of the country. See 
 The Real Chinese Question, by Chester Holcombe (Methuen, 
 1 901), p. 231 ; also a careful history of the paper currency in 
 China, in Primitive Civilisations, vol. ii, ch. xyi,
 
 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE IN CHINA 167 
 
 Persia in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 1 
 From that period onwards its experiences of 
 other peoples were not very favorable. French, 
 Portuguese, Spaniards, Dutch, Russians, and 
 Britons appeared in turn, but their conduct was 
 more that of pirates than of civilised men. More 
 and more did the Celestial Empire learn to look 
 on all outsiders as ' barbarians ' and ' foreign 
 devils.' More and more it shut itself away from 
 the world. It established a ring-fence about 
 itself, and lived in isolated superiority. It 
 remained sublimely ignorant of the rise of the 
 great Western nations, and of what we call 
 modern Progress ; and so came about the extra- 
 ordinary result that in 1835 or so, a little before 
 our Opium war with China, that ancient nation, 
 from Emperor to peasant, was living in pro- 
 foundest ignorance of what we Call Modern Civi- 
 lisation ; in sublime, celestial, and indeed quite 
 ludicrous sense of its own superiority over " the 
 red-haired, green-eyed, hairy-faced monsters of 
 the Wjest, with feet one cubit and two -tenths 
 long," who were supposed to inhabit Europe ; and 
 in the sharpest possible contrast to them, both 
 of life and ideals. 2 
 
 1 See China (Bohn Series), p. 19. 
 
 s It is even now commonly supposed in China that the 
 European missionaries dig out the eyes of children in their 
 schools, and, pounding them with other ingredients in a 
 mortar, make of them a magic paste of infernal potency. 
 It was this superstition that led to the awful Tientsin massacre 
 in 1870.
 
 168 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 It may be that our ignorance of China! is in 
 reality little less remarkable than theirs concern- 
 ing us. We most of us think we know some- 
 thing about the subject. We have relations or 
 friends who have been along the Coast, and who 
 have brought back outlandish tales ; we have 
 read similar accounts in the columns of the daily 
 Press ; but such things hardly touch the fringe 
 of the matter. In all such cases where along 
 a seaboard one race or civilisation comes into 
 direct contact with another race and civilisation 
 the result is — just what one might expect — a dis- 
 organisation and corruption of both. Probably 
 there are few more corrupt European populations 
 than those you find at Hongkong, Shanghai, and 
 the other ports along that coast. And, on the 
 other hand, the Chinese populations in those places 
 give you no more just idea of the great interior 
 of China than a stroll down Ratcliffe Highway 
 and the London Docks would give you of British 
 home life and industry. The mass of books 
 and print dealing with China describe this motley, 
 mongrel, and degenerate civilisation of the sea- 
 board. Nevertheless there is a literature dealing 
 with the true Interior, and sufficient, at any rate 
 with a little study — and with plentiful allowance 
 for dark patches (as for superstitions, cruelties, 
 ignorance, poverty, famines, etc.) — to give us a 
 glimpse of a vast ocean of population, not to be 
 counted at much less than 400,000,000, and 
 probably th'e most stable, the most swell -rooted,
 
 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE IN CHINA 169 
 
 the most content, equal, agricultural and peace- 
 loving on the whole earth. 1 
 
 This may sound too strongly worded ; but, in 
 order to show that there is some foundation for 
 the view, I will first quote a few general remarks 
 by well-known and reliable authorities on the 
 subject, and then proceed to a more detailed 
 account . 
 
 Professor Giles, in his Historic China and 
 Sketches, says ;(P- 124): ''Food and lodging 
 are cheap in China, and it may be roundly stated 
 that every man, woman, and child has something 
 in the way of clothes, two full meals a day, and 
 a shelter at night " ; also, " The normal state of 
 the people of China is one of considerable pros- 
 perity and great natural happiness." Fortune, 
 in his Residence among the 'Chinese, says 5 "I 
 doubt if there is a happier race anywhere than 
 the Chinese farmers and peasantry " ; and A. J. 
 
 1 Some of the best books on this subject are : — The Middle 
 Kingdom, by S. Wells Williams, 2 vols. (New York, 1883) ; 
 Primitive Civilisations, by E. J. Simcox (Sonnenschein, 1894), 
 vol. ii ; La Cite Chinoise, by Eugene Simon (Paris, 1894) ; 
 Historic China and Sketches, by Professor H. A. Giles; The 
 Real Chinaman, by Chester Holcombe (Hodder & Stoughton, 
 1895) ; The Real Chinese Question, by Chester Holcombe 
 (Methuen, 1900) ; " These from the Land of Sinim," by Sir 
 Robert Hart (Chapman & Hall, 1901) ; China's Only Hope, by 
 the Viceroy Chang Chih Tung (Oliphant, Anderson, & Ferrier, 
 1901) ; China in Transformation, by A. R. Colquhoun (Harper 
 Bros., 1898) ; Intimate China, by Mrs. A. J. Little ; and Village 
 and Town Life in China, by Y. K. Lcong and L. K. Tao 
 (Allen & Unwin, 1915).
 
 170 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 Little in Through the Yangtse Gorges : " Riches 
 are fairly distributed, and the contrast of grind- 
 ing poverty with arrogant wealth, which is the 
 rule in Europe, is the exception here." 
 
 I will now sketch out very roughly some of 
 the leading ideas and institutions of the Chinese 
 polity, premising of course that over a country 
 so vast as China, with its various climates, races, 
 dialects, etc., there is necessarily a considerable 
 variation in details ; ' also that my object is 
 not to excite an ignorant attention by the recital 
 of wonders and absurdities, nor to flatter our own 
 complacency by dwelling on the follies or failures 
 of a distant civilisation, but to point out the 
 great constructive lines and inspirations of that 
 civilisation "( surei y one °f the most remarkable 
 in the world) ; and then to pass on to a con- 
 sideration of what great changes are likely to 
 ensue both in itself and abroad owing to its 
 contact with the civilisations of the West. 
 
 One of the most salient, and to us most 
 interesting, characteristics of China is the essen- 
 tial Democracy of its institutions, and the sense 
 
 * It is interesting, however, to find that writers agree on 
 the essential homogeneity of the Chinese people. Chester 
 Holcombe says : " History furnishes no parallel of any race 
 or nation of noticeable size so homogeneous, so uniform, 
 and so intense in its characteristics. Their nationality is 
 burned into them. They cannot slough it off or exchange 
 it for any other. They absorb other races. But they remain 
 always Chinese." — The Real Chinese Question, p. 96. See also 
 Primitive Civilisations, vol. ii, p. 290.
 
 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE IN CHINA 171 
 
 and practice of Equality among its populations. 
 Unlike India, we may almost say that there is 
 no hereditary class or caste in China. The only 
 caste is the Literary Caste, from which all 
 officials are taken, and admission to this '(by 
 examination) is so free and open that the ascent 
 of a boy of the poorest family to the highest 
 positions and honours is quite usual and excites 
 no special notice. Eugene Simon, whose know- 
 ledge of China is most intimate, asserts '(La 
 Cit 6 Chinoise, p. '62) that it is rare to find a 
 family, however lowly, which has not some 
 member, close or distant, of highest rank ; and 
 that owing to this perpetual rise and fall in 
 station the whole population is leavened through 
 with the sentiment of equality ; and of course, 
 correspondingly, with the sense of its own dig- 
 nity. While Chester Holcombe, in The Real 
 Chinese Question [(p. 62), goes so far as to say 
 that " during many centuries the heads of the 
 Government, always excepting the Emperor, have 
 commonly been the sons of poor unknown 
 parents." 
 
 In all countries class divisions create arro- 
 gance, insolence, servility, and boorishness. In 
 China a necessary result of the general sense 
 of equality is good manners. Nothing is more 
 cultivated than politeness. Even the beggar must 
 be treated with the respect due to a perfect 
 gentleman. And it is said that the early Chris- 
 tian missionaries, accustomed to the behavior of
 
 172 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 carters In their own Western lands— where, if two 
 met in a narrow lane, they would often fall to 
 violent language and sometimes to blows — were 
 astonished to see Chinamen in a similar situation 
 bowing to each other with the utmost deference, 
 and apologising profusely for getting in each 
 other's way 1 
 
 Again, this sense of equality and good manners 
 is closely connected with the whole manner of 
 life of these vast populations. There is no 
 country in the world where a large population 
 is spread out over the land in secure cultivation 
 of innumerable small holdings, and in modest 
 family independence and prosperity, to a like 
 degree as in China. Everything in Chinese 
 history is ancient, and at an early period the 
 phases, first of the village commune and then 
 of the agglomeration of lands into private hands, 
 were passed through. The evils of the latter 
 state of affairs were realised, and many laws 
 and regulations were adopted for the purpose 
 of checking the growth of large estates and of 
 a landless class. Among these was a special 
 tax on arable land not cultivated, 1 doubtless with 
 the object of discouraging indolent ownership. 
 And the result of all these measures and move- 
 ments, extending over many centuries, has been 
 that, at the present time, not only is it most rare 
 for any one to own or occupy more than, say, 
 250 acres, but there is an unwritten law of 
 1 See Primitive Civilisations, vol. ii, p. 50.
 
 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE IN CHINA 173 
 
 public opinion which makes it "discreditable to 
 do so, or to live upon the rents of land without 
 being actually engaged in their cultivation. 1 The 
 State from the very earliest times has exercised 
 a kind of overlordship over the lands and assessed 
 a tax upon them, which in the present day runs 
 to about 2od. to 2 2d. per acre. 2 Subject to this 
 tax a family is perfectly secure in its tenure, or 
 may rent out portions of its land to others — a 
 thing not infrequently done as a matter of con- 
 venience between bona-fide cultivators, though 
 not approved of on such a scale 3s would lead 
 to mere landlordism. 
 
 The consequence of all this is that all the more 
 productive parts of China — the plains of the great 
 rivers and the slopes of the lower hills — present 
 to-day a scene of extraordinary fertility and of 
 widespread democratic industry. For hundreds of 
 miles together the land is covered by an immense 
 patchwork or network of small holdings — of an 
 average size, perhaps, of five or six acres, and 
 rarely exceeding fifty acres — running together 
 into small hamlets or clusters of cottages, each 
 with their school or meeting house, their wells 
 and lift -pumps worked by buffaloes, their tanks 
 
 1 Simon, La Cite Chinoise, p. 37. 
 
 ' Rev. A. Williamson, Journeys in Northern China, 1870, 
 p. 167. Professor S. Wells Williams says it varies from 
 20 to 66 cents (say iod. to 2s. 90!.) per acre, according to 
 quality of land, etc. {The Middle Kingdom, vol. i, p. 294). 
 The revenue of China, except for a small amount in likin 
 dues and Customs, is entirely derived from the Land Tax.
 
 174 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 and irrigation channels. Here aire grown crops 
 of the most varied and valuable kind— tea-bushes 
 planted in orderly lines and patches, groves of 
 oranges, clumps of bamboo or sugar cane, ver- 
 dant squares of young rice, pollard mulberries 
 for the silkworms, plots of cotton and maize and 
 wheat and yam and clover, not to mention less 
 known things like wax trees and varnish trees. 
 John Chinaman, as is well known, is about the 
 best agriculturist in the world. For centuries 
 and centuries the Country has been face to face 
 with the problem of supporting its immense popu- 
 lation off its own lands, and though necessarily 
 at times and places, in seasons of drought or 
 social disturbance, the pressure of population on 
 the means of subsistence produces frightful 
 famines and widespread distress, yet, on the 
 whole, the manner in which this problem is solved 
 is the admiration of all observers. Simon gives 
 very detailed and interesting accounts of the 
 Chinese agricultural methods, and says it is not 
 uncommon for a Chinaman to obtain five or 
 six crops in a year off one plot of ground. 1 
 
 Over all this land may be seen the silver 
 threads of irrigation-canals and ditches, skirt- 
 ing the hills for scores and hundreds of miles — 
 often three or four tiers of them one above 
 another — and serpentining down to the lower slopes 
 and plains^ Irrigation for thousands of years 
 lias been one of the main public objects, and 
 * La Cite Chinoisc, pp. 304, 305.
 
 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE IN CHINA 175 
 
 innumerable public or private efforts and bene- 
 factions have enriched the country with its 
 present complete system, without which of course 
 its agriculture could not be carried on. The 
 larger canals too form waterways for boats and! 
 traffic, and the hamlets, villages, and occasional 
 large towns are knit together by innumerable 
 footpaths and a few but not many highroads 
 for wheel traffic. Of this industrial and com- 
 mercial life we read : — 
 
 China is one great hive of commerce. Every part is 
 reached from every other part. The whole business certainly 
 is done under the most antiquated, cumbersome, and expen- 
 sive methods, and with an enormous waste of time. But it 
 is done. The inns everywhere are full of business travelers. 
 The rivers and canals are crowded with cargo-carrying craft 
 of every description, and bound in every direction. The 
 roads and mountain passes are clamorous with the shouts 
 and calls of drivers of camels, drivers of horses, mules, and 
 donkeys, and with porters of every age and both sexes, all 
 loaded to the extreme limit of endurance with every name- 
 able class or description of goods, bound for a market. 
 There are native banks of exchange in every city of size, 
 by means of which money may be safely remitted to any 
 part of China, however remote. And, in addition to the 
 Government service of couriers, there are postal and express 
 companies which transmit letters and parcels everywhere.' 
 
 But the cultivation and occupation of the Land 
 is the main thing. Every family in China desires 
 to be rooted in the land— to have a few acres 
 of its own, a family burial place, and a spot 
 sacred to ancestor-worship. Though folk cmi- 
 1 The Real Chinese Question, p. 328.
 
 176 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 grate to the towns ^(and towns of a million popu- 
 lation are not so rare), still, it is but for a 
 time. The great object is to make a little money, 
 purchase a plot, and establish oneself and descen- 
 dants on the land. 
 
 Thus one great root of Chinese life is the 
 Land. The other is the Family. And I must 
 give a few lines to the family. 
 
 The family in China does not mean quite the 
 same as with us. It is a term of wider import. 
 It not only means man and wife and their 
 children, but it often also includes married sons 
 and their wives and children, and may also) include 
 brothers of the man and their families and 
 descendants. It largely goes with the land. 
 .When a younger son marries he may stay on with 
 his wife and young family in the household of 
 his father ; but as soon as he can afford it he 
 will generally obtain a plot of land for himself 
 and plant himself out (since his elder brother or 
 brothers will remain on the ancestral plot). He 
 will thus found a new family or ancestral branch, 
 and secure a place where his own memory 
 and presence may be kept green and sacred. 
 Ancestor-worship lies at the back of the whole 
 life of China and of Japan ; but it is a very 
 difficult thing for us Westerners to understand. 
 It is not at all what we at first think— namely 
 a pious respect paid to the virtue and character 
 of a predecessor — or at least it is something 
 much tipore, and more intimate, than that. It
 
 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE IN CHINA 177 
 
 is a very real sense of the presence of that 
 ancestor, and of his or her continued life within 
 and around the living person. He (or she) is 
 here still, though unseen, is looking out of our 
 eyes, hearing with our ears, is moving and 
 working and influencing events in our neighbor- 
 hood. 1 Hundreds, thousands of the dead sur- 
 round us. ,We shall in time join their company. 2 
 All life is given a kind of sacredness through this 
 cause. 
 
 The Chinaman sets apart a room for the 
 worship of his forbears. If he is too poor to 
 afford a whole room, he still sets apart one end 
 of a room. There, on shelves, are placed the 
 memorial tablets of his ancestors, or of deceased 
 members of his family. On a table in front 
 flowers are placed, and on occasions incense is 
 burnt. Here he comes to meditate ; and here, 
 once a fortnight or once a month, is held the 
 family conclave or meeting. 
 
 This is a weighty affair, and holds an impor- 
 tant place not only in the life of the Family, but 
 of the Nation. As we have said, the family 
 group, may form a numerous body. The 
 
 1 See Lafcadio Hearn in Kokoro, p. 270 : " To Japanese 
 thought the dead are not less real than the living. They take 
 part in the daily life of the people — sharing the humblest 
 sorrows and the humblest joys." 
 
 2 It will be remembered that General Nogi in the Russo- 
 Japanese War addressed the spirits of the dead soldiers, 
 informing them of the late victories, and thanking them for 
 their co-operation. 
 
 12
 
 178 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 members gather together, dressed in holiday 
 attire. The head of the family — who is generally 
 of course a man, but occasionally a widowed 
 mother or grandmother — conducts a sort of 
 service. There is an invocation to Heaven and 
 to the spirits of the departed ancestors ; and 
 then, turning to the table in the centre of the 
 room, the head of the family opens the record 
 book — in which all family events and histories 
 have been inscribed — and reads from it the life 
 of some one or other of the ancestors or pre- 
 decessors ; changing of course each time, so that 
 in the course of two or three years the younger 
 members of the family become quite familiar 
 with the histories of those who have gone before 
 them, and can surely profit by them for 
 encouragement or warning. The history having 
 been read, the head of the house goes on to fill 
 up the book to date from the last meeting with 
 the events which have happened in the interval 
 — the births, deaths, marriages, and lesser hap- 
 penings — and then the meeting resolves itself into 
 a sort of tribunal to pass 'judgment, if necessary, 
 on the actions of the various members. 
 
 This is a very important and very interesting 
 function of the family assembly, and it has a 
 bearing far beyond the immediate life of the 
 family, for it in reality takes the place and does 
 most of the work of our magistrates and police 
 courts. In China the honor of the family is 
 of the most sacred character, and is upheld before
 
 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE IN CHINA 179 
 
 all things. To strike a father or mother is 
 punishable by death — whatever the provocation 
 may be. And anything which tarnishes or slurs 
 the family name is resented to the highest degree. 
 The family therefore keeps the strictest watch 
 upon its own members ; and if at any monthly 
 meeting there is an accusation lying against a 
 member — perhaps preferred by some neighbor- 
 ing family — as of quarrel, or theft, or any mis- 
 demeanor, this is gone into with punctilious 
 care ; and the relative is either cleared or, if 
 found guilty, punished by his own people ! "(the 
 punishment may be a fine, or even blows, and, 
 in quite extreme cases, expulsion from the 
 family.) So careful are families in these pro- 
 ceedings, and so great is their sense of public 
 honor, that it appears that in the proceedings 
 of the public and higher courts of the land an 
 entry in a family record book as to any matter 
 of fact is taken as sufficient proof and evidence 
 of that fact— the falsification of a record book 
 being a thing almost unknown and unthought of. 
 According to Simon, one of the first questions 
 asked when the meeting resolves itself into a 
 tribunal is whether every member has duly paid 
 his taxes I and this to us forms a very impres- 
 sive testimony to their sense of civic honor. 
 Certainly, the institution of the family meeting 
 must produce a great impression on the children, 
 who are thus brought up in an atmosphere alive 
 with the consciousness of public duty and respon-
 
 i3o TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 sibility, And the schools work in the same 
 direction. Their teaching as regards anything 
 resembling science or matters of fact is lamentably 
 bad and absurd, and as regards literature and 
 manners it is overloaded with petty rules and 
 regulations ; but as regards the general Con- 
 fucian principles of justice and sincerity, straight- 
 forward dealing, and duty to neighbor and State, 
 it is quite excellent, and indeed superior to our 
 school teaching, which for the most part ignores 
 these things. It may be in consequence of this 
 that the standard of public honesty in China is 
 really very high— though this fact is not always 
 admitted by us, and a good deal of official corrup- 
 tion (which certainly exists) is quoted to prove 
 the contrary. Our merchants, however, all agree 
 that the Chinese trader is most reliable to deal 
 with, and that his word is as good as his bond. 
 The family tribunal— by thus at one stroke, as 
 it were, sweeping off the cases that come before 
 our petty courts — disposes of a vast number 
 of evils which fester round our police-courts and 
 police system. Police are reduced to a mini- 
 mum, and are almost non-existent in the country 
 districts. 1 The public courts are few in number, 2 
 
 1 " That crime is not very rife in China is sufficiently shown 
 by their having no police force." — Mrs. Archibald Little in 
 Intimate China, p. 140. 
 
 "A sort of village police is maintained in some districts by 
 the inhabitants under the authority of the village elder." — 
 S. Wells Williams, Middle Kingdom, vol. i, p. 483. 
 
 ■ The Abbe Hue, in his Chinese Empire (vol. ii, ch. vii),
 
 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE IN CHINA 181 
 
 and have only the more serious cases to deal 
 with, often those in which the criminals concerned 
 have been expelled from their families ; and 
 though the methods of the courts are summary 
 and often barbaric, yet it is a query whether on 
 the whole they are so much worse than ours. 1 
 The results of all this on the national life— of 
 the widespread sense and practice of Equality, of 
 the rooting of so vast a population in the Land, 
 of its rooting in the Family, with its own indi- 
 genous tribunals, rites, and customs— is to produce 
 a social organisation extraordinarily simple and 
 stable, though loosely compacted, and a people 
 more thoroughly democratic, more independent 
 of government and self-determining, and less 
 infested by parasitic classes, than perhaps any 
 in the world. There is no Priestly caste in China. 
 The only priests are Buddhist priests, who attend 
 to the little temples scattered here and there 
 on the wilder bits of land, among groves or rocks. 
 And they, in accordance with their religion, are 
 perfectly quiescent and unwilling to interfere with 
 the life of the people. There is, for the reasons 
 mentioned above, no Lawyer caste or profession.* 
 There is no Military caste. The profession of 
 arms, as already hinted, fell into contempt and 
 
 says : " There are four times as many judges in France 
 as in the whole Chinese Empire." And Simon (La Citi 
 Chinoisc, p. 7) speaks strongly of the absence of crime. 
 
 1 See Holcombe, The Real Chinaman, ch. ix. 
 
 a "The Chinese have an invincible repugnance to lawyers." 
 — The Real Chinaman, p. 30.
 
 life TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 neglect a thousand years past, and until the date 
 of the late Boxer movement there was no attempt 
 to revive it. The Manchu dynasty, since its 
 settlement in Peking, 250 years ago, has had a 
 bodyguard of some 100,000 men permanently 
 stationed in the neighborhood, but these soldiers, 
 if soldiers they can be called, were till 1898 
 or so armed with bows and arrows, and were a 
 mere rabble incapable of discipline or concerted 
 action. The rest of the army in China con- 
 sisted a few years ago of some 400,000 militia 
 organised by the viceroys and governors of the 
 different provinces, and constituting really fifteen 
 different and independent armies, of which Chester 
 Holcombe says that some were passably effec- 
 tive, while others he has seen were armed with 
 old matchlocks and spears, and fans and 
 umbrellas ! J It is evident from this that there 
 has been till lately no military profession. China 
 cannot even be said, as a whole, to have an 
 army, for though the viceroys have each their 
 bodies of militia, these act independently of one 
 another. 2 And though doubtless, as I shall 
 presently point out, there will be a united national 
 
 1 Chinese Question, p. 129. See also account of a Chinese 
 Military Review, by Mrs. A. Little, Intimate China, ch. xiv ; 
 and Abbe Hue's Chinese Empire, vol. i, ch. x, on the absurdities 
 of the Chinese Army. Now, however, all this is rapidly 
 being altered. 
 
 2 In the case of the Japano-Chinese War, for instance, the 
 viceroys of the middle and south of China did not move at all, 
 and sent no military help to Peking.
 
 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE IN CHINA 183 
 
 army, it will probably be a very long time, if 
 ever, before the evils of militarism and the 
 military caste grow up in this favored land. 
 
 That a country should exist in the world abso- 
 lutely free from the dominance of the Priestly, 
 the Legal, and the Military castes ' seems to be 
 too good to be true, and difficult indeed for 
 the Western mind to believe ! But when we 
 realise also that the Landlord living on rents 
 and the Share or Bond holder living on the 
 interest of capital lent out to others 2 are so 
 rare as to be practically negligible — that there 
 are, in fact, no landlord or capitalist classes — 
 our wonder must surely deepen into admiration, 
 possibly even to envy ; and we can hardly avoid 
 asking ourselves the question whether what we 
 have been pleased to call China's awakening may 
 not, after all, mean the awakening of Europe I 
 
 However, do not let us go too fast. If in 
 the socialist or semi -socialist nature of her institu- 
 tions China is undoubtedly admirable, she equally 
 certainly suffers from a defect which Socialism 
 in Europe will have to be on its guard against, 
 i.e. the bribery and corruption of officials. This 
 
 1 And we may add the Medical profession ; see article on 
 "Chinese Daily Life " by J. K. Goodrich, Forum, October 
 1899. 
 
 3 "While in China comparatively few persons live in idle- 
 ness on the income of their investments, an extraordinary 
 number live on the profits of small capital which they 
 administer themselves." — Primitive Civilisations, vol. ii, p. 330.
 
 184 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 is the weak point of Chinese public life. The 
 ' squeeze ' is universal. 
 
 The native residents of Peking have a saying, as describing 
 the universal peculation, that when the Imperial milk-wagon 
 reaches the outer gate of the city the official on duty there 
 takes out a cup of milk and puts in a cup of water. At each 
 gate and police-station within the city passed by the wagon 
 this process of extraction and substitution is repeated, with 
 the result that when the fluid eventually reaches the Imperial 
 table no trace of milk, even in color, can be detected. They 
 are also somewhat fond of saying that the Emperor is the 
 poorest man in all China. 1 
 
 This illustration of the Imperial milk -wagon 
 apparently applies to the collection of taxes and 
 revenue all over the country. A tax is collected 
 by a minor official (often at considerably higher 
 than the legal rate), and is handed over to 
 superior officials, who in their turn deliver it 
 to the viceroy of the province. He finally has 
 to transfer it, or the balance of it, to the Imperial 
 Treasury. But the ' squeezes ' taken out at 
 each and every step of the process are so con- 
 siderable and so numerous that the balance is 
 only small, and the Imperial Government remains 
 poor. 
 
 Chinese apologists for this state of affairs say 
 —and certainly with a good deal of truth— that 
 the salaries allowed to officials by Government 
 are merely nominal, and are recognised to be 
 so . The regular salary, for instance, of a viceroy 
 is only about £100 a year; special allowances 
 1 The Real Chinese Question, p. 357.
 
 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE IN CHINA 1^5 
 
 for this and that increase it to about £1,000; 
 but of course the quite unavoidable expenses of 
 the office far exceed the latter amount, and the 
 public who pay the taxes are quite content that 
 a portion of them should go to provide irregular 
 additions to the regular allowance. So with other 
 and lower officials. There is a good deal of 
 give and take all through ; every family has 
 relatives among the official classes, and these 
 relatives in turn assist the family, so that the 
 latter has an interest on both sides of the account, 
 and if it is plundered it also shares in the 
 plunder !— or, to put the matter less rudely, it 
 permits and condones the ' squeeze ' as part of 
 a system of necessary balances and adjustments. 
 
 So far the apologist ; and, as we have said, 
 with some reason. Nevertheless we must feel 
 that the system is a bad one, with all its 
 irregularities and temptations to peculation, and 
 not conducive to public morality. Especially in 
 the towns and larger centres is this the case. 
 In the country, probably, where everything has 
 to be done more openly and publicly, the evils 
 may be less. 
 
 What we have said about the smallness of the 
 revenue flowing in to the Central Government 
 and its small payments to officials— the " poverty 
 of the Emperor " in fact— is important ; and there 
 is no understanding of China without it. The 
 Central Government is essentially feeble. It ha9 
 little money ; it has no army ; it has next to
 
 i86 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 no police. What can it do? The people go 
 their own way. The taxes run to about 2S. 6d. 
 per head of the population. 1 Even if that were 
 all spent (say £50,000,000) on public purposes, 
 it would be a small amount for a nation of 
 400,000,000 population. 2 (What does our United 
 Kingdom, with a tenth of the population, spend?) 
 The Central Government is weak, and has no 
 power to coerce the people or compel them into 
 forms which they do not like. They go their 
 own way, rooted in the land and in the family, 
 and in their own customs .3 Even the local 
 mandarins and officials — though sometimes doubt- 
 less they abuse their powers — are not by any 
 means independent of the people. Simon 
 describes a case in which a new mandarin 
 
 1 La Cite Chinoisc, p. 6. Compare also Sir Robert Hart in 
 " These from the Land of Sinim," p. 64 : " Government taxation 
 has always and everywhere been of the lightest possible 
 kind." 
 
 2 Professor S. Wells Williams, reckoning the total revenue 
 (in 1883) at £40,000,000, estimates that of this only £11,000,000 
 would reach Peking, the rest being retained in the provinces. 
 — The Middle Kingdom, vol. i, p. 290. 
 
 3 " The great fact to be noted, as between the Chinese and 
 their Government, is the almost unexampled liberty which 
 the people enjoy, and the infinitesimally small part which 
 Government plays in the scheme of national life." — China in 
 Transformation, by A. R. Colquhoun, p. 296. 
 
 "In point of fact the Chinese are governed less than any 
 nation in the world. ... A thousand and one official in- 
 spections, interferences, and exactions, common everywhere 
 in America and Europe, are quite unknown in China." — The 
 Real Chinese Question, p. 4.
 
 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE IN CHINA 187 
 
 having been appointed, who was disliked by the 
 people, the people simply refused to have him, 
 and, politely but firmly turning his sedan-chair 
 round, sent him back to the place whence he 
 came. 1 And other instances of the same kind 
 are quoted. There is complete liberty of meet- 
 ing and of the Press 2 — rights which are by no 
 means always accorded in Western countries — 
 and, as a matter of fact, discussion and the forma- 
 tion of public opinion are constantly going on 
 even in the smallest hamlets. 
 
 It is Western ignorance as to the real relation- 
 ship between the Central Government and the 
 people of China which is constantly leading even 
 our diplomatists (who ought to know better) into 
 all sorts of blunders. We make a treaty with 
 the Government at Peking (generally under threats 
 of force), and the Chinese Minister of course 
 smilingly defers and procrastinates, and finally 
 yields and signs the treaty. Yet he knows all 
 the time that it is waste paper. What power 
 
 1 Simon puts the total number of officials for the whole of 
 China at under 30,000. — La Cite Chinoisc, p. 15. 
 
 3 Or there was till a few years ago. " To this day," says 
 Mrs. A. Little, " the Chinese peasant enjoys a degree of liberty 
 and immunity from Government interference unknown on 
 the Continent of Europe. There is no passport system ; he 
 can travel where he pleases ; he can form and join any kind 
 of association ; his Press was free till the Empress Tze Hsi, 
 probably inspired by Russian influence, issued her edict 
 against it in 1898 ; his right of public meeting and free 
 speech are still unquestioned." — Intimate China, p. 378. See 
 also La Cite Chinoisc, p. 17.
 
 i88 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 has he, or the Government, or the Emperor, to 
 enforce the observation of the treaty by his own 
 people? None at all. It may be a treaty to 
 open up certain districts to our commercial agents, 
 or for the remission of certain likin dues on 
 foreign goods sent into the interior. Who can 
 compel the people of that district to receive the 
 hated foreigner, or who knows whether the local 
 mandarins will remit those likin dues or not? l 
 The Government can only send an order to the 
 viceroy of each province ; the viceroy will use 
 his own discretion ; he may pass the order on 
 to the mandarins beneath him, or he may not. 
 If he does they also will use their discretion ; 
 finally the mandarins may bully the people, but 
 the people, when all is said, will take their own 
 ways, and on them will largely depend the final 
 issue. China, in fact, is like an organism of the 
 jelly-fish type, not very highly sensitive, not 
 having any very marked and ruling centre to 
 which everything is referred ; but for that very 
 reason perhaps the more stable and persistent 
 because its vitality is distributed throughout the 
 whole mass. 2 
 
 But the most interesting— and indeed astonish- 
 
 * See on this subject, China in Transformation, by A. R. 
 Colquhoun, note, p. 163. 
 
 I 2 A. R. Colquhoun very aptly compares China to a mass 
 of protoplasm, and likens the family and village groups " to 
 an infinite multitude of water-tight cells, which keep the 
 whole mass afloat even in the most turbulent sea." — China 
 in Transformation, p. 284.
 
 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE IN CHINA 189 
 
 ing — feature in the constitution of China is the 
 Han-Lin Academy and the influence it exercises. 
 In that country, where the military profession is 
 held in contempt and the merchant class accounted 
 lowest in public rank, 1 literature has for centuries 
 been held in the highest honor. Thousands of 
 candidates press to Peking and other cities every 
 year for the examinations. To take the degrees, 
 to become a member of the privileged and 
 literary class, respected everywhere, and so to 
 have a chance of gaining official position, is the 
 aim of millions. The poorest families will make 
 heroic sacrifices to enable one of their members 
 to become a scholar. It is said that there must 
 be some 700,000 Chinese graduates now living. 
 So widespread indeed is the interest in literature 
 that it is quite common to find holiday -folk (as 
 is seen also in Japan) spending their afternoon 
 in the country capping verses or writing odes in 
 amicable rivalry. 
 
 The Han-lin College or Academy was founded 
 in A.D. 740, 2 or nearly 1,200 years ago, by an 
 Emperor of the Han dynasty, as a sort of advisory 
 body. It now consists of some 240 members, 
 each of whom is granted by the State a house 
 
 1 The four grades of the Chinese polity, in order of respect, 
 are said to be skill, nun*, kung, and sluing, or scholar, farmer, 
 artisan, and merchant. The first are the brains, the second 
 the producers, the third the producers at second-hand, and 
 the fourth the mere exchangers. 
 
 ■ The literary class and examination system, however, had 
 existed long before this.
 
 190 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 and garden and a modest pecuniary allowance. 
 But it has these 'privileges as an immemorial 
 right, and is in no way dependent on the Govern- 
 ment ; on the contrary, it has the right, and it 
 is part of its duty, to criticise the latter, and even 
 the Emperor himself. The College elects itself 
 — that is, when a vacancy occurs it elects the new 
 member, and of course always from those who 
 are already most distinguished as scholars. Thus, 
 like our Fellows' bodies and learned societies in 
 the West, it keeps up its own traditions. Its 
 duties are (i) discussion, (2) dissemination of 
 its conclusions throughout the nation, and (3) 
 censorship of individuals (officials). 
 
 It discusses anything : any question which 
 affects the welfare of the people. This may be 
 a foreign treaty, or it may be a new method in 
 education, or it may be some small detail in 
 agriculture. But the College has no legislative 
 or executive power. It can neither pass a law 
 nor issue a command of any kind. All it can 
 do is, when it has arrived at a conclusion, to 
 issue a leaflet or pamphlet on the subject. This 
 may be a leaflet recommending some method of 
 dealing with an insect pest in the gardens, it 
 may be a pamphlet protesting against a foreign 
 treaty, or it may (as happened lately) be one 
 urging the adoption of Western science in the 
 schools. Whatever it is, the circular has an enor- 
 mous publicity ; it goes by millions of copies 
 through the land, and is read and debated in
 
 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE IN CHINA 191 
 
 every little hamlet. And if the recommenda- 
 tions suggested meet with a wide and warm 
 public approval it not infrequently happens that 
 the Government takes them up, and they pass 
 into the laws or institutions of the country. Very 
 little, I believe, ever passes into the public law 
 in China without this previous circulation and 
 approving discussion — for the simple reason that 
 without this there would be no security that the 
 people would conform to it. 
 
 II 
 
 I have dwelt thus long upon the conditions of 
 life in China without coming to the gist of my 
 paper, namely the results which may be expected 
 from the contact of that life with Western civi- 
 lisation — because, in fact, without a fair under- 
 standing of the former it is impossible to estimate 
 the latter. 
 
 The first awakening of China to the growth 
 of what we call the modern Western world un- 
 doubtedly occurred in 1839-40, when the guns 
 of British frigates at Canton boomed out our 
 demand for the admission of opium into that 
 port. Into the details of that oft-told tale, so 
 dishonoring to Britain, it is not necessary for us 
 to go. China for centuries had taken her own 
 way in complete ignorance and indeed oblivion 
 of the outer world. Now suddenly the whole 
 proceedings opened her eyes to two great facts :
 
 i 9 2 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 (i) The existence of nations there in the " .West " 
 possessed of demonic powers and hellish engines 
 of destruction ; (2) their apparently entire un- 
 scrupulousness in the use of these powers in the 
 service of gain and trading profit. Considering 
 that the trader, as we have already pointed out, 
 ranks as the lowest class in the Chinese polity, 
 and that trade (as apart from industrial produc- 
 tion) has always been looked upon as beneath 
 the notice of the ruling classes and officials — that 
 it is, in fact, almost impossible to get them to 
 take any interest in it— one can begin to under- 
 stand the strange and sinister impression pro- 
 duced. Naturally it was many years before the 
 new tidings about the " barbarians " and " foreign 
 devils " penetrated the whole mass of the nation. 
 But unfortunately succeeding events did nothing 
 to remove the first impression, only confirmed 
 it. Envoys from Britain, France, and the United 
 States pressed for right of residence in China, 
 always in the name of Trade, and backed their 
 demands always by Force. China persistently 
 refused their admittance, but in i860 a com- 
 bined force of English and French destroyed the 
 Taku forts, 1 captured Tientsin, and the Peking 
 Legations were established. Other events of the 
 same character followed, and with the same result. 
 The Chinese, overwhelmed by force, had to give 
 
 1 On the plea that the Chinese had not observed the treaty 
 of 1858 ; but we have already seen what the nature of a. 
 Chinese treaty must be.
 
 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE IN CHINA 193 
 
 way. Always the Western war vessels grew larger 
 and more threatening, always their cannon more 
 terrible and destructive. Till in 1894-5 came the 
 Japan and China war, and, with the defeat of 
 China, loud and open talk among the Western 
 Powers of her dismemberment. 
 
 It was only then, just at the close of the last 
 century, and after some fifty or sixty years of 
 rude awakening cuffs and blows, that China en 
 masse began to rouse herself to meet the situa- 
 tion. Her haughty and ignorant contempt of the 
 iWfestern peoples as mere hordes of savages > was 
 giving way to astonishment at their mechanical 
 and scientific powers, if also with added hatred 
 of them because of their powers. Japan had 
 already tackled the problem, had educated and 
 armed herself, but China lay helpless and in- 
 capable. What was to be done? A huge popular 
 movement— the ' Boxer ' movement— ignorant and 
 superstitious, but full of enthusiasm and deter- 
 mination to oust the foreigner, began to grow 
 up. And the Han -Lin Academy came in to make 
 appeal to the more thoughtful part of the nation. 
 
 The action of the Academy in this matter is 
 full of interest and suggestion, and I must dwell 
 on it for a moment. As a rule it would appear 
 that the Academy is a somewhat conservative 
 
 ' Even as late as 1864 the Chinese Government "declined 
 to negotiate a treaty with the Kingdom of Prussia, because 
 it had never heard of any such country ! " — The Real Chinese 
 Question, p. 185. 
 
 13
 
 194 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 body, bound up, no doubt, to a great extent with 
 the old national ideals and the Confucian tradi- 
 tion ; but, having debated this matter of the 
 foreigner, it seems that a majority was in favor 
 of issuing an appeal to the country— a; call to 
 arms, in fact, and a call to Western science and 
 education. The writing of this appeal was com- 
 mitted to Chang Chih Tung, China's " greatest 
 viceroy," and the pamphlet, presented by the 
 Academy and endorsed by the Emperor, was duly 
 printed and circulated. It has probably by now 
 circulated by millions of copies. 1 China's only 
 hope, the author explains, consists in the 
 strengthening of her army and military power 
 by the adoption of modern methods and imple- 
 ments of war ; in the improvement of her schools 
 by the introduction of science and Western teach- 
 ing ; and in getting into touch with Western 
 ideas by means of travel, translation of books, 
 etc. At the same time the solid and world-old 
 bases of Chinese life and citizenship, the laws 
 of Confucius, and the worship of the ancestors, 
 must by no means be deserted, for it is only 
 on these that a secure edifice can be erected. 
 
 The following are some quotations from the 
 book. Speaking of education in the schools, the 
 author says (page ioo) : — 
 
 1 A translation of this pamphlet, called China's Only Hope 
 (Oliphant, Anderson, & Ferrier, 1901), pp. 150, can now be 
 obtained, and is well worth reading. Its circulation in China, 
 prior to translation in 1900, was put at a million copies.
 
 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE IN CHINA 195 
 
 The old and new must both be taught ; by the old is meant 
 the Four Books, the Five Classics, history, government, and 
 geography of China ; by the new, Western government, 
 science, and history. Both are imperative, but we repeat 
 that the old is to form the basis, and the new is for practical 
 purposes. Under the head of Western Government come 
 the comparative study of governments and science, colleges, 
 geography, political economy, customs, taxes, military regula- 
 tions, laws, and expositions. Under Western science are 
 classed mathematics, mining, therapeutics, sound, light, 
 chemistry, and electricity. 
 
 Among other suggestions for providing money 
 for these improved schools, he says : — 
 
 Convert the temples and monasteries of the Buddhists and 
 Taoists into schools. 1 To-day these exist in myriads. Every 
 important city has more than a hundred. Temple lands and 
 incomes are in most cases attached to them. If all these 
 are appropriated to educational purposes we guarantee plenty 
 of money and means to carry out the plan (p. 99). 
 
 We must put the useful books of the West into Chinese, 
 and scatter them far and wide among those who are ignorant 
 of Western languages, among the wide-awake officials, the 
 impecunious literati, the scholars replete with Confucian 
 lore, the merchants, workmen, the old and the young, to be 
 used and appropriated by them in their different spheres 
 
 (P- "3)- 
 
 Travel must not be neglected. 
 
 The diminutive country of Japan has suddenly sprung into 
 prominence. Ito, Yamagata, Yanomoto, Mitsui, and other? 
 
 1 This advice was actually followed to some extent ; but 
 after the seizure of the throne by the Dowager Empress the 
 temples and monasteries were restored to their former uses. 
 (Sec The Story of China, by R. K. Douglas, p. 454.) In the 
 last few years, however, some fifteen new universities have 
 been established.
 
 196 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 visited foreign countries twenty years ago, and learned a 
 method by which to escape the coercion of Europe. Under 
 their leadership more than one hundred Japanese students 
 were sent to Germany, France, and England to learn foreign 
 systems of conducting government, commerce, war, etc. 
 After these had completed their course they were recalled 
 and employed by the Japanese Government as generals and 
 Ministers. When the Government was once changed they 
 developed into the Heroes of the Orient (p. 92). 
 
 And he goes on to urge the sending of Chinese 
 students to Japan and the West, for a" similar 
 purpose. Railways must also be constructed. 
 
 Let us build railways, and then the scholars can have easy 
 communication with distant friends, the farmer can utilise 
 much that is now waste, the merchant can readily meet the 
 demand for supply, forwarding the heaviest material, the 
 workmen will soon find machinery everywhere, the abundant 
 products of the mines will be beneficially distributed, and 
 our China coast will be securely protected and guarded by 
 myriads of efficient troops. . . . The whole country will 
 become really ours, and China will be one great united 
 family, with no fear of famine or war (p. 126). 
 
 As to the nations of Europe, there is no trust 
 to be placed in their promises ; they are 
 
 like tigers with dripping jaws (p. 81). They talk of peace and 
 mean war. Austria first instituted the Disarmament Society. 
 Immediately afterwards the war between Russia and Turkey 
 broke out. Then Germany attacked Africa, England attacked 
 Egypt and Thibet, France conquered Madagascar, and Spain 
 Cuba. . . . Germany has seized upon our Kiaochou, and 
 Russia has appropriated our Port Arthur. ... If we talk of 
 disarmament to the other countries without the force to back 
 up our words we will become the laughing-stock of the world. 
 . . . Drilling troops is better than disbanding them. With 
 fifty warships on the sea and thirty myriads of troops on land,
 
 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE IN CHINA 197 
 
 with daily additions to both ships and troops, with the daily 
 strengthening of our forts and equipping them with the best 
 engines of modern warfare, and with the railways intersecting 
 the land, what country would dare to begin hostilities with 
 China or in any way infringe upon her treaty rights ? Under 
 these conditions Japan will side with China, Europe will retire, 
 and the Far East will be at rest (p. 140). 
 
 Finally, comparing China with the West, he 
 says : — 
 
 Although China is not so wealthy and powerful as the West, 
 her people of whatever condition — rich or poor, high or low — 
 all enjoy a perfect freedom and a happy life. Not so all the 
 inhabitants of Western lands. Their Governments may be 
 strong ; but the lower classes of the people are miserable, 
 unhappy, and maliciously wronged. Their liberties are re- 
 strained, and there is no redress. They rise in rebellion on 
 every opportunity, and not a year passes without an account 
 of the murder of some King or the stabbing of some Minister. 
 These Governments certainly cannot be compared with our 
 China (p. 41). 
 
 I have given these copious extracts from the 
 book because I think they are surely very interest- 
 ing — not only as giving the words of a great 
 Chinese statesman, but as representing the views 
 of, at any rate, a large section of the Han-Lin 
 Academy, and a resume of the program which 
 is now, one may say without exaggeration, being 
 discussed by peasant and prince alike all over 
 the vast demesne of Chinese territory. 
 
 This program is in fact — though of course 
 there are dissentients to it— being rapidly carried 
 out. We know what Japan has done ; but China 
 is far older and more experienced than Japan.
 
 198 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 If on the one hand she is more wary and slow 
 to move, she is, on the other, equally capable, 
 and, when she moves, inclined to move more 
 permanently and more irresistibly than the 
 younger nation. The Boxer uprising was, and 
 is, largely ' the instinctive solution of the problem 
 by the popular masses. It put power into the 
 hands of the Empress Dowager for her coup 
 d'etat, and she and her party in turn supported 
 and reinforced it. It led to the attacks on the 
 Peking Legations in 1900. It meant, and means, 
 " Out with the foreigner " and " China for the 
 Chinese." And the movement has come to stay. 
 Sir Robert Hart, who probably knew China as 
 well as any living Englishman, said : "In fifty 
 years' time there will be millions of Boxers in 
 serried ranks and war's panoply at the call of 
 the Chinese Government : there is not the 
 slightest doubt of that." 2 Nor can we for a 
 moment doubt that the Chinese, though averse 
 to change, have just as great technical ability 
 as the Japanese, and if they once come to realise 
 the need of its application in modern arts of war 
 or peace will excel, just as the Japanese have 
 done. The telegraph and telephone, at their first 
 appearance, were resisted to the utmost ; but 
 now already their wires reach like a web all 
 over the Flowery Land. The people are like 
 
 1 Though it seems also that it was greatly stimulated by the 
 publication of China's Only Hope (see p. 6 of that book). 
 • " These from the Land of Sinim," p. 55.
 
 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE IN CHINA 199 
 
 that — tenacious of old custom, yet once in motion 
 exceedingly quick to take up a new position. 
 And Sir Robert Hart warmly endorses the words 
 of Wen Hsiang, the Prime Minister of China in 
 the early sixties, who said ; — 
 
 You are all too anxious to awake us and start us on a new 
 road, and you will do it ; but you will all regret it, for, once 
 awake and started, we shall go fast and far — farther than you 
 think — much farther than you want ! ' 
 
 To this movement of China against the 
 foreigner and towards her own independence the 
 victory of Japan over Russia gave something like a 
 seal of security. The autonomy of the Far East 
 is now established, and China has only to follow the 
 lead of Japan in cultivation of the arts of war, and 
 the two in combination may set the world at 
 defiance. Already for some years Chinese emis- 
 saries and inspectors have been keeping their 
 eyes open in our big steel workshops. Indeed 
 as far back as 1872 the Viceroy Li Hung Chang 
 sent 120 Chinese boys of good family to be 
 educated in the United States, with a view to 
 studying military and naval methods there. Now 
 there are some thousands of young Chinese study- 
 ing military science either in China or Japan. 
 There are nineteen modern military academies 
 in China, three arsenals turning out rifles and 
 quick-firing guns, and more in process of forma- 
 
 1 " These from Uie Land of Sinim," p. 52,
 
 200 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 tion. 1 Very soon, says Putnam Weale, they will 
 have a thoroughly effective army of some 400,000 
 men, all trained on the Japanese system. Need- 
 less to say the European Powers and the United 
 States have learned a lesson, and all talk of 
 dismemberment has ceased. 
 
 We may take it, I think, as good as certain 
 that China will rehabilitate her military power, 
 and that (even though there may be attempts 
 against her) there will be no dismemberment. 
 There remain other questions. What about the 
 " Yellow Peril " of invasion?— 400,000,000 of 
 Chinese let loose upon the world I .What about 
 the awakening of China to trade and com- 
 mercial life, and the result upon our trades? 
 What about the infiltration of Chinese ideas 
 and social standards among the Western 
 peoples ? 
 
 1 . I think that whoever has followed the general 
 outline of Chinese life and character will find it 
 very difficult to imagine this people deliberately 
 making an armed invasion of other countries. 
 The whole tenor of their temperament and in- 
 stitutions is '" Let alone ! " " Don't meddle ! " 
 They have no dogmatic religion (a frequent cause 
 of wars) to carry at the point of the sword into 
 other countries. They have no strong central 
 government (another frequent cause) ready to 
 serve private ends by the wholesale sacrifice of 
 
 1 The Re-shaping of the Far East, by Putnam Weale (1905), 
 vol. ii, ch. xxxiii,
 
 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE IN CHINA 201 
 
 its own subjects. Their ancestral worship pre- 
 cludes them from forming permanent homes in 
 other lands. In all the long history of the 
 Chinese Empire there is, I believe, hardly a 
 single instance of their invading, in a military 
 sense, another country. 1 The habits of the 
 people are agricultural and social— not military ; 
 the Government, as I have said, is weak and 
 diffused, and though the latter may, in the face 
 of foreign menaces, pull itself together (and is 
 doing so) sufficiently to present a good front 
 against invasion, it seems very improbable that 
 it will ever concentrate to the much greater 
 degree necessary for the invasion of other lands. 
 On the other hand, the eternal problem of Chinese 
 life— namely the sustenance of so enormous a 
 population on an area of land which, though 
 large, is limited— may one day reach a point of 
 acuteness compelling some kind of irruption 
 beyond their borders. In that case— though it 
 be rash to prophesy— I should think a huge (but 
 peaceful) migration is the most likely thing to 
 happen. And if the infiltration of Western ideas 
 were to go so far (which does not at present 
 seem probable) as to break up the Chinaman's 
 conception of the sanctity of home, and to deaden 
 his urgent desire for burial in ancestral ground 
 —then indeed such migrations might assume pro- 
 portions quite alarming, and even threatening to 
 
 1 The invasions of Japan and Burmah under Kublai Khan 
 cannot fairly be credited to the Chinese.
 
 202 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 the stability of our own civilisations. 1 However, 
 I think we may put migrations of this magnitude 
 off to a rather remote period, and say for the 
 present that while there is going to be no dis- 
 memberment of China by the Western or other 
 Powers, there is, on the other hand, going to 
 be no H Yellow Peril " in the shape of armed 
 invasions of these lands by China. 2 
 
 2. The question of the commercial relations 
 of the New China with Europe and the .West is 
 a very interesting one. I think myself that, 
 
 1 Professor Douglas points out {Story of China, p. 2) that 
 throughout their history the Chinese have mainly conquered 
 other lands by the process of settling on them ! 
 
 2 Unfortunately the same cannot be said with regard to 
 the Japanese. The lust of invasion or conquest seems to 
 be attracting them ; there is much in the character and 
 religion of the people antagonistic to it. Anyhow the 
 possibility of the overthrow of our Western civilisation by 
 peaceful migrations from the East must not be ignored. 
 To quote Lafcadio Hearn {Out of the East, pp. 237-41) : — 
 "Already thinkers, summarising the experience of the two 
 colonising nations — thinkers not to be ignored, both French 
 and English — have predicted that the earth will never be fully 
 dominated by the races of the West, and that the future 
 belongs to the Orient. ... In the simple power of living our 
 so-called higher races are immensely inferior to the races of the 
 Far East. . . . For the Oriental has proved his ability to study 
 and to master the results of our science upon a diet of rice, 
 and on so simple a diet can learn to manufacture and to utilise 
 our most complicated inventions. But the Occidental cannot 
 live except at a cost sufficient for the maintenance of twenty 
 Oriental lives. In our very superiority lies the secret of our 
 fatal weakness. Our physical machinery requires a fuel too 
 costly to pay for the running of it in a perfectly conceivable 
 future period of race-competition and pressure of population,"
 
 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE IN CHINA 203 
 
 though there is a large party in China in favor 
 of the " ring-fence " policy, the " open-door " 
 party, supported by Chang Chin Tung, and rein- 
 forced by the general tendency of trade develop- 
 ment, etc., will almost inevitably gain ground. 
 The more obvious advantages of this policy, the 
 influx of cheap goods, etc., will appeal after a 
 time to the masses of the people ; and once 
 the nation, by the establishment of its military 
 strength, has come to feel itself secure, it may 
 possibly be considerably more disposed to admit 
 the trader and the commercial traveler than it 
 has hitherto been. Having mounted its guns, 
 it will not be so afraid of opening the door. 
 
 If we suppose the door opened, and (what is 
 already part accomplished) a network of rail- 
 ways giving access to the interior of China, then 
 —for good or evil, and let us hope, for good — 
 a big trade with the Western nations must inevit- 
 ably spring up. There will, for many years and 
 until the people can manufacture these things 
 for themselves, be a great demand for our steel 
 rails, girders, edge tools, machines, etc., as well 
 as for some classes of our textile fabrics ; » and 
 we in return shall be buying Chinese silks, tea, 
 porcelain, spices, etc., more freely. Both parties 
 will no doubt so far be benefited. Then a time 
 will come when, for good or evil, our manufac- 
 tures and methods of manufacture, our factory 
 
 1 The increase in the export of Manchester cotton goods to 
 China has been enormous during the last few years.
 
 204 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 system in short, will make headway in ChinS— 
 when they will produce steel rails, big guns, and 
 calico sheeting for themselves ; and their workers, 
 as wage -workers, will begin to be crowded by 
 thousands in huge workshops to the sound of 
 machinery. 1 
 
 What will happen then? It is hard to say. 
 Already in Japan, in a few short years, the intro- 
 duction of Western commercialism has brought 
 with it problems unknown before — dire increase 
 of poverty, multiplication of unemployed. 2 What 
 will it do in China? There already the supply 
 of labor is so great that the land is like a cup 
 full to the very brim. Introduce labor-saving 
 machinery, and instantly it will overflow. Millions 
 will be thrown out of work. Terrible commotion 
 and uproar will ensue. Will China plod through 
 all this, through a long period of bloodshed and 
 confusion, to land herself at last only where the 
 Western nations have landed themselves, in the 
 production of a futile society composed of two 
 great classes antagonistic to each other, and both 
 
 1 It must be remembered that China is well supplied with 
 coal. " Coal exists in every province," says Wells Williams 
 in The Middle Kingdom. The whole of Southern Shansi is 
 full of coal — beds five, eight, and even ten feet thick. The 
 world could, according to Richtofen, be supplied with coal 
 from Shansi alone for thousands of years I Coal and iron are 
 also abundant in Yunnan. Cotton mills and ironworks already 
 exist in Hanyang, Shanghai, and other places. — See China in 
 Transformation, by A. R. Colquhoun, ch. iii and ch. v. 
 
 3 See Lafcadio Hearn, Japan, an Interpretation.
 
 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE IN CHINA 205 
 
 unsatisfactory — one living idly on dividends and 
 the other in a state of monotonous and squalid 
 slavery? It is hardly thinkable. Or will her 
 genius, already so deeply Socialistic, seize on and 
 transform this factory system into a free organi- 
 sation of guilds, 1 self-dependent and autonomous, 
 sweated by no masters, and ready to use th'e 
 surplus productiveness of machinery for the 
 shortening of the hours of labor and the absorp- 
 tion of unemployed into the working ranks? We 
 cannot tell. The world can only at present wait, 
 in profound suspense and interest, to see what 
 solution will be given. 
 
 That a considerable and important movement 
 in China is imminent seems at least very prob- 
 able ; and this may lead, at any rate for a time, 
 to a great influx of Chinese into Western 
 countries, and to some amount of dislocation of 
 Western trade. With regard to the latter, the 
 production on a large scale of factory -made goods 
 in China and at a very low cost has been held 
 up by not a few writers 2 as heralding a period 
 of great disaster to the Western nations 5 but 
 we think this view is based on a misconception. 
 
 1 The Chinese guilds and mutual help societies are most 
 numerous — clubs of young men for starting each other in 
 business ; clubs for insurance, burial, recreation, etc. ; masonic 
 clubs ; secret societies for political purposes, and so forth. 
 " The Chinese have a genius for association," says A. R. Col- 
 quhoun, China in Transformation, p. 297. 
 
 3 See Professor C. H. Pearson in National Life and Character, 
 p. 133 ; also E. Simon in La Cite Chinoise, p. 85.
 
 206 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 The entry of China into the world -market, with 
 cheap goods in her hands, would undoubtedly 
 alter the currents of Western trade, causing some 
 items to increase and others to diminish in 
 magnitude. An offer from her, for instance, of 
 good and inexpensive cotton cloths to the world 
 would strike a heavy blow at Lancashire. But 
 — since exports always demand imports in return — 
 if China came into the world-market as a seller, 
 she would also come to the same extent as a 
 buyer. The total volume of Western trade would 
 not be diminished, rather increased. Even if 
 Britain lost in one branch of her trade she would 
 probably be the gainer in another. The new 
 arrival would mean a temporary dislocation of 
 Western trade, but it would by no means spell 
 disaster. 
 
 There are some also who think that with the 
 development of self -supply through machine and 
 factory production, combined with her own enor- 
 mous natural internal resources, China will be 
 tempted to abate and ultimately to drop her trade 
 with the West, and to retire once more within 
 her ring-fence. But again— though prophecy is 
 rash— I do not think such a retirement is likely. 
 There is much current misunderstanding of the 
 laws of foreign trade, and the subject is a* diffi- 
 cult one, without doubt ; but this much is certain, 
 that — granted Free Trade and no artificial walls 
 of Protection around a country— that country, even 
 though capable of producing everything it needs
 
 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE IN CHINA 207 
 
 within its own borders, will still prefer to ex- 
 change some of its products with other countries ; 
 and that the more flourishing it is within its own 
 borders the more active probably will its outer 
 exchange be, 
 
 It is often thought that if the cost of produc- 
 tion of a certain article is higher, say, in Britain 
 than in some other country, there is no chance 
 of that article being demanded from Britain by 
 the said country. But J. S. Mill has conclusively 
 proved that this is not so {Principles of Political 
 ^Economy, Book III, ch. xvii). To use his classic 
 example, if the cost of production of both cloth 
 and corn is greater in Britain than in Poland, 
 it may still happen that British cloth will flow 
 steadily to Poland, and Polish corn flow steadily 
 to Britain, simply because cloth is cheaper rela- 
 tively to corn in Britain, and corn cheaper 
 relatively to cloth in Poland. 1 
 
 If China, conscious of her own strength, should 
 cast off her prejudice against mercantile rela- 
 tions with the outer world, there is little doubt 
 that she will always find advantage to herself 
 in such relations — both buying and selling. And 
 if the Western nations desire to make her their 
 customer, it seems to me that there is probably 
 
 ■ And so a certain amount of corn sent from Poland would 
 buy more cloth in Britain at British prices than the same 
 amount of corn remaining in Poland would buy of Polish 
 cloth at Polish prices. But the whole chapter should be 
 referred to. See pp. 222, 223 infra.
 
 2oS TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 no better way to do so than to acknowledge her 
 autonomy, give her every pledge of security, and 
 favor in all ways her internal prosperity — and 
 so leave the natural laws of trade and exchange 
 to work themselves out. Lord Salisbury, in a 
 moment of inspiration, once said : — 
 
 If I 'am asked what our policy in China is, my answer is 
 very simple. It is to maintain the Chinese Empire, to pre- 
 vent it from falling into ruins, to invite it into paths of 
 reform, and to give it every assistance which we are able to 
 give it to perfect its defence or to increase its commercial 
 prosperity. 1 
 
 And surely a wise and generous national policy 
 in the future will recognise this great principle 
 in all foreign trade, that the prosperity of the 
 peoples we deal with also spells our own 
 prosperity. 
 
 3. We now come to the third and final 
 question, namely the effect of China's awakening 
 in the way of the interchange of ideas between 
 her and the West. This contact between West 
 and East is one of the most remarkable charac- 
 teristics of the present age, and one surely fraught 
 with great and important issues for the future. 
 On all sides we see both Eastern and Western 
 peoples being modified by it. The commercial 
 system is breaking down caste in India. The 
 interest in modern science there is growing. 
 Huxley and Darwin seem for the moment to 
 
 1 See Mrs. Archibald Little's Intimate China, p. 424.
 
 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE IN CHINA 209 
 
 be taking the place of the Vedic sages. On 
 the other hand, in Europe our philosophy is being 
 profoundly altered by Eastern thought, and among 
 the peoples at home doctrines of Karma and 
 Reincarnation are being widely (and even wildly) 
 circulated. Japan has adopted battleships, tall 
 chimneys, and chimney-pot hats ; and we are 
 making a pious cult of Japanese art and Japanese 
 simplicity of life. How far is this going to go? 
 Are Asia and Europe going to blend in a uniform 
 color of civilisation, all alike for the whole globe? 
 and is humanity entering on a last stage of 
 universal Esperanto and Equality? To suppose 
 this would, I think, be a little too previous. While 
 it is perfectly true that India and Japan are 
 being greatly modified by contact with the West, 
 and that the Western nations are being largely 
 colored by Eastern thought and custom — and 
 greatly to the benefit of both— it is also true that, 
 looking deeper, there is no sign of a radical 
 change of base. India, in view of com- 
 mercialism, may sweep away many absurdities 
 of her present caste system, but there is no sign 
 that she will abandon its great main outlines, 
 which she has preserved inviolate for thirty 
 centuries. Something the same with her religious 
 philosophy. She will correct that to the data of 
 modern science, but she will not desert it. And 
 so with Japan. While it was thought a little 
 time ago that Japan was becoming completely, 
 transmogrified in her blind devotion tQ Western 
 
 14
 
 210 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 ways and manners, it has now become clear that 
 her full and conscious intention is in a very 
 different direction — namely, merely to adapt and 
 make use of these Western things for the better 
 protection and ultimate expression of her own 
 ideals. She is returning to her own base again 
 instead of going farther from it. As Lafcadio 
 Hearn says (Out of the East, ch. vii, 
 " Jiujutsu "I :- 
 
 Despite her railroad and steamship lines, her telegraphs 
 and telephones, her postal service and her express companies, 
 her steel artillery and magazine rifles, her universities and 
 technical schools, she remains just as Oriental to-day as she 
 was a thousand years ago. She has been able to remain 
 herself, and to profit to the utmost possible limit by the 
 strength of the enemy. She has been, and still is, defending 
 herself by the most admirable system of intellectual defence 
 ever heard of — by a marvelous national jiujutsu. 
 
 We may apply these remarks to China. The 
 vast probabilities are that China, adopting like 
 Japan a great deal of Western civilisation and 
 thought, will still not move perceptibly from her 
 ancient base of 4,000 years. And when we 
 consider how excellent that base is — fixed deep 
 in the Land, in the Family, in the great moral 
 principles of good Citizenship, and in a Religion 
 spiritual yet void of all dogma — there seems 
 indeed no reason why she should leave it. That 
 the challenge and intrusion of the Western world 
 will benefit China one can hardly doubt-. 
 Wrapped and isolated in her own life for
 
 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE IN CHINA 211 
 
 centuries, she has certainly lapsed Into much 
 feebleness, ignorance, and mere stupid routine ; 
 but the sleeper is very far from dead or dis- 
 abled. Awaking from her dreams she may any 
 day now astonish the world by activities as re- 
 markable as those of Japan, though probably 
 along a different line ,< and she may, with her 
 long past of experience, leap to the solution of 
 social problems which are almost the despair of 
 the West, 
 
 In the West itself the growing knowledge of 
 China, and familiarity with her institutions) 
 hitherto so little understood, will surely have 
 a profound influence — a greater influence than that 
 exercised by Japan. About the Japanese civi- 
 lisation there is a certain lightness of touch, 
 almost a thinness j but China is massive and 
 solid to a degree. When it comes to be recog- 
 nised what are the causes of China's immense 
 duration down the centuries — the democratic 
 simplicity of her institutions, her affection for 
 the land and determination that every one shall 
 have a share in it, her freedom from parasite 
 classes, and her recognition of the farmer and 
 the artisan as superior to the merchant in im- 
 portance ; the respect, too, paid to letters, to the 
 clan and to the family, the 'easy handling of 
 domestic, social, and legal matters through these 
 powers, the little power of central government, 
 the genius of the people for the formation of 
 free guild3 and societies, and so on— it is not
 
 212 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 difficult to see that the European peoples will 
 be inclined to rub their eyes and take many a 
 hint from those they have hitherto despised. 
 Again it is rash to prophesy — but it may be 
 that the fact of the Awakening of the East 
 coming now, at a time when Europe (as we 
 hope) is growing out of her commercial rigime 
 into nobler ideals, may make a rapproch&ment 
 between East and West all the easier. It has 
 been the fatal and vulgar commercialism of the 
 Westerners which has for long been the greatest 
 barrier between us and the East. "- The entire 
 Western atmosphere," says Chester Holbrook, " is 
 intensely repugnant to the Chinese. They have 
 never understood nor admitted that the main 
 purpose for which governments were created was 
 to foster commerce and money -making, From 
 their view-point that is the petty business of petty 
 men." When this obstacle on our side is partly 
 removed there will be the less temptation to China 
 to retire behind her own walls. The peaceful 
 infiltration, too, of Chinese folk into Western lands 
 — which, apart from any more serious movement, 
 will surely go on— and of Chinese of better class 
 '(not as hitherto the mere riff-rafT and family 
 outcasts), will lead in the same direction and to 
 a better understanding ; and may contribute to 
 that v great change which one day perhaps will 
 be called the Awakening of the West.
 
 APPENDIX
 
 THE UNEMPLOYED RICH AND THE UN- 
 EMPLOYED POOR 
 
 (See ch. ii, p. 9.) 
 
 A moment's thought shows that as machinery perfects 
 and perfects itself there is] a tendency for fewer 
 workers to produce more goods or wealth. The 
 balance of increased wealth goes to the profit-receiv- 
 ing classes ; and so there is a double result, namely, the 
 increase of the wealthy unemployed, and the increase 
 of the unemployed workers. The increase of these 
 two classes may not go on simultaneously, and there 
 may and must be fluctuations on both sides ; but the 
 general tendency is clear. It might, of course, be 
 counteracted by shorter hours of labor and increased 
 wage, which by bringing a greater number of workers 
 in under better conditions would immensely improve 
 their lot, and at the same time by reducing profits 
 would clean up and improve the lives of the wealthy ; 
 but as the entire tendency of the present system is 
 the other way (in order to keep up profits), this double 
 shrinkage of employment must go on — as long, in 
 fact, as the system goes on, and until the whole 
 attitude of the nation towards these questions changes. 
 
 215
 
 THE MINIMUM WAGE 
 
 A Paper read at the Conference on Sweated Industries, 
 at Glasgow, October 12, 1907. 
 
 (See ch. ii, p. 14.) 
 
 The subject of the Minimum Wage has been very 
 widely considered in various aspects and from various 
 points of view ; and I do not propose now to go into 
 the general question. There is evidently a growing 
 public opinion in favor of the constitution of Wages 
 Boards and the establishment of some kind of legal 
 minimum ; and doubtless something will be done in 
 that direction. There will be difficulties, of course, in 
 drafting regulations, and there will be drawbacks to 
 their operation, but these are things we must expect 
 in any such case. I am now only desirous to estab- 
 lish a point which has, I think, not been sufficiently 
 insisted on ; and which will, I hope, remove one class 
 of prejudice against, or objection to, the proposal. 
 
 It is generally tacitly assumed that a legal Minimum, 
 by raising wages in low classes of labor, will handi- 
 cap the employer, make the realising of a profit more 
 difficult, and generally place a strain upon him, which 
 latter, of course, he may overcome, but which will 
 nevertheless remain a strain. I want to point out that 
 in many respects this is the reverse of what will 
 happen. And I believe that quite a few employers 
 are beginning to realise that this is so, and therefore 
 
 216
 
 APPENDIX 217 
 
 are favorable to a legal enactment — though no doubt 
 the majority still are opposed to it. 
 
 The case in reality is very simple. Every one knows 
 that the employer to-day has a most anxious time. 
 The dread of competition, the continual fluctuations 
 of prices, the fear of being undersold in the market, 
 haunt him. He has no certain foundation for his 
 business. He is like a man standing or working on 
 boggy ground, with no firm footing anywhere. At 
 any moment a competitor may undersell him ; and 
 one of the commonest causes of such underselling is 
 the employment of cheap labor. Here are three 
 manufacturers, say, in some particular branch of 
 industry, all fairly equal with one another, and all 
 going along fairly well. Then, all at once, a fourth 
 comes in, with sweated labor, undersells the others, 
 and breaks up the trade. Painful fluctuations and 
 disturbances set in, prices come down, ruinous alike 
 to employers and employed ; and ultimately perhaps 
 the former, even against their own wish, are forced 
 to adopt the wage-cutting devices of their new 
 competitor . 
 
 Now we must contend that to rule out or prevent 
 this operation by fixing a minimum below which ithe 
 wage shall not go, is a benefit, not only to the em- 
 ployed, but to the employers themselves. It gives 
 them at last some firm ground beneath their feet. It 
 takes away one large cause of doubt and risk and un- 
 certainty ; and simplifies greatly for them the problem 
 which they are handling. 
 
 Imagine ten or twelve men— a sight you may often 
 see in large ironworks — standing round in a circle and 
 holding a heavy iron plate, which they have to handle 
 and perhaps pass on to some machine ; and imagine 
 the ground on which those men stand to be partly 
 big boulders and partly mud. You will appreciate
 
 218 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 at once the dangers and difficulty of their work. At 
 one moment the plate will be tilted in this direction, 
 throwing an unbearable weight on one man ; at an- 
 other moment it will be tilted in that. No man will 
 have certain footing or be able to use his strength 
 properly. Now suppose them all to step up 6 inches 
 onto a solid and level stone pavement. It may be 
 a slight exertion to get there, but once there, the 
 whole conditions will be different. The work will 
 be carried on with a certainty, an ease, and an 
 economy of labor, out of all comparison with what 
 existed before. Somewhat corresponding will be the 
 advantages to employers when by the fixation of a 
 minimum wage the financial ground beneath their feet 
 shall have been made comparatively solid, and the 
 conditions so far equal for all. 
 
 Trade Unions, of course, have already done some- 
 thing of the kind in the higher grades of industry ; and 
 I believe that many employers are quite ready to 
 admit that their action has been helpful. The Unions 
 have, in fact, secured their trades to some degree 
 against ruinous fluctuations. It is only necessary to 
 imagine for a moment the effect of the total dis- 
 appearance of the Unions — say in the Lancashire 
 Cotton trade — to realise that such a disappearance 
 would mean widespread confusion — the pushing in of 
 new competitors with cheap or sweated labor, the 
 bankruptcy of old employers, and endless disturbance 
 and chaos in a great industry. 
 
 The truth is that, within limits, it does not matter 
 to an Employer if wages are, high, provided all other 
 employers have to pay equally high. It may matter 
 to the Public, of course (who may have to pay a higher 
 price for the article), but not to the Employer. We 
 come, therefore, now to [the question of the interest 
 of the Public.
 
 APPENDIX 219 
 
 That the absence of a Minimum Wage (whether that 
 minimum be obtained by Trade Unions or by Wages 
 Boards) may mean a cheapening of price to the public, 
 must of course be admitted. But, at this time of day, 
 I think no one will say that that in /^//constitutes a 
 sufficient reason. We all feel that any such gain to 
 the Public might be very ill secured by the degrada- 
 tion and misery of a large body of workers. And in 
 the case of the so-called Sweated Industries— with 
 which we are specially dealing — there are reasons for 
 supposing that the enhancement in price (due to 
 the minimum regulation) would be almost imper- 
 ceptible. In these industries wages often bear such 
 a very small ratio to cost of materials, profits, 
 salaries of superintendence, etc., that a rise of wages 
 need make but little difference in the price of the 
 article. 
 
 Take the case of shirts that are " made " x at from 
 8d. to is. a dozen — say, one shirt made for id. That 
 shirt is sold for 2s. Doubtless in some cases for 
 more. Suppose the woman's wage doubled, so that 
 she will get 2d. instead of id. Her week's wage will 
 in consequence rise from, say, 7s. to 14s. — which latter, 
 though a poor enough wage, will be positive affluence 
 to her. The price of the shirt, other things remaining 
 the same, will rise id. The shirt, therefore, would 
 cost 2s. id. instead of 2s. Can we suppose that it 
 would be hard on the public to ask them to pay 2s. id. 
 for the shirt, in order that a whole class of miserable 
 workers should be redeemed to belter conditions ? — 
 or can we suppose that the demand for shirts would 
 be diminished by this extra charge ? The more prob- 
 able result of it all, of course, would be that the 2s. 
 
 1 The term "making" does not include cutting out, sew- 
 ing on buttons, and making buttonholes, but it includes 
 practically everything else.
 
 220 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 price would remain as before, and that the employer 
 would accept a slightly reduced profit. 
 
 Nor must we forget a thing which is constantly 
 being overlooked when these questions of better wages 
 are being discussed, namely, that markets, instead of 
 being ruined by better wages, are greatly stimulated 
 thereby — for to-day Political Economy is beginning 
 to see, much more clearly than of old, that markets 
 and trade rest on the well-being of the mass of the 
 peoples — that is, on the mass-wages. Whatever, there- 
 fore, cripples wages and the welfare of the masses neces- 
 sarily cripples trade and the markets. Into such a 
 general question of Political Economy, however — 
 interesting as it might be to discuss — we must not go 
 now. 
 
 I would say a word on the difficult subject of 
 Foreign Trade — because it almost necessarily links 
 up with the question we have in hand. 
 
 My argument has run upon the assumption that a 
 Minimum Wage, though it might raise the cost of 
 production of an article to some degree, need in no- 
 wise handicap an employer, because it would apply 
 to all employers alike. And this argument I consider 
 perfectly just, as long as it is applied, say, within the 
 limits of the United Kingdom. But we have to con- 
 sider besides (what is undoubtedly a fact) that trade 
 runs nowadays on such small margins that a slight 
 enhancement of the cost of production may— I do 
 not say necessarily will, but may— drive an industry 
 abroad. 
 
 There are two points I should like to bring forward 
 in this connexion : (i) That the difficulty will have 
 to be met, and is being met, by the extension of the 
 principle of the Minimum Wage to other countries; 
 (2) that in general, the bogey of Foreign Competition 
 —though not without a certain basis of reality— has
 
 APPENDIX 221 
 
 been made far too much of, and has become a cause 
 of alarm far greater than there is any reason for. 
 
 With regard to (i), \vc know that Australia and 
 New Zealand have for some time had Wages Boards 
 and Arbitration Courts in operation (Sir C. Dilke's Bill 
 was founded on the Victorian Wages Boards), while 
 America has had a system of licensing home-work- 
 rooms. Germany, our chief rival in the sweated 
 trades, is strong against Sweating, and an Imperial 
 Commission is considering now the question of steps 
 to be taken. So that these facts should rather en- 
 courage us in the direction we are going, and towards 
 the establishment of an International Agreement on 
 the subject. 
 
 With regard to (2), namely, Foreign Trade, there is 
 no doubt a great deal of nonsense talked on the sub- 
 ject. I fear folk nowadays do not read their John 
 Stuart Mill as they ought to ! Of course, it would be 
 absurd to deny that sometimes a rise in the cost of 
 production at home may cause a foreign demand to 
 cease ; but this is by no means always the case, (and 
 (paradoxical as it may sound) it may often happen 
 that a foreign country may demand from us an article 
 which it is actually producing all the time at less cost 
 than we are at home. 
 
 Trade, in fact, does not follow absolute cheapness, 
 but relative cheapness. It may happen that a thing (a 
 razor, say) is produced cheaper in Germany than here, 
 and yet the Germans may continue buying it from us 
 because relatively to some article the Germans export 
 to us that razor is cheaper here than in Germany, 
 Germany sends butter to Britain because, relatively 
 to certain other things, it is of more value here than 
 in Germany. A keg of butter, say, will buy twenty 
 razors here, but only fifteen of the same class in 
 Germany. It will pay a German merchant, therefore,
 
 222 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 to send butter to England, and take our razors in 
 exchange — and a steady interchange of butter and 
 razors will go on — even though the cost of razors in 
 both countries is the same, say is. each. That is, 
 we shall export razors to Germany, even though they 
 are produced equally cheaply there as here. Now, 
 suppose the cost of razors in Britain to rise a little, 
 so as to be actually greater than in Germany — say, 
 only nineteen can be obtained for a keg of butter 
 instead of twenty. Still the exchange will go on, 
 because there will still be a gain of four razors on 
 each keg. (I am, of course, not mentioning costs 
 of transit, etc., because those things, though they will 
 alter the figures, will not alter the general principle.) 
 In this case, then, we shall actually be exporting a 
 certain class of razors to Germany, although their cost 
 of production here is greater that in Germany ! 
 
 I dwell on this case merely in order to show how 
 paradoxical is the subject of Foreign Trade, and what 
 a mistake it is to be led away by cheap arguments 
 which are really of a very superficial and delusive 
 character. 
 
 You will find a careful exposition of the above sub- 
 ject in J. S. Mill's Principles of Political Economy, Book 
 III, ch. xvii, § 2, from which I may as well give some 
 extracts. Quoting his father, Mr. James Mill, he says : 
 " If the cloth produced with ioo days' labor in 
 Poland was produced with 150 days' labor in Eng- 
 land, while the corn produced in Poland with 100 
 days' labor could not be produced in England with 
 less than 200 days' labor ; — then an adequate motive 
 to exchange would immediately arise. With a 
 quantity of cloth which England produced with 150 
 days' labor, she would be able to purchase as much 
 corn in Poland as was there produced with* 100 days' 
 labor ; but the quantity which was there produced with
 
 APPENDIX 223 
 
 100 days' labor would be as great as the quantity 
 produced in England with 200 days' labor." 
 
 Then he continues: "By importing corn, therefore, 
 from Poland, and paying for it with cloth, England 
 would obtain for 150 days' labor what would other- 
 wise cost 200, being a saving of 50 days' labor on 
 each repetition of the transaction, and not merely a 
 saving to England, but a saving absolutely ; for it is 
 not obtained at the expense of Poland, who, with corn 
 that costs her 100 days' labor, has purchased cloth 
 which, if produced at home, would have cost her the 
 same. Poland, therefore, on this supposition, loses 
 nothing ; but also she derives no advantage from the 
 trade, the imported cloth costing her as much as if 
 it were made at home. To enable Poland to gain any- 
 thing by the interchange, something must be abated 
 from the gain of England — the corn produced in 
 Poland by 100 days' labor must be able to purchase 
 from England more cloth than Poland could produce 
 by that amount of labor ; more, therefore, than Eng- 
 land could produce by 150 days' labor, England thus 
 obtaining the corn which would have cost her 200 
 days' at a cost exceeding 150, though short of 200. 
 England, therefore, no longer gains the whole of the 
 labor which is saved to the two jointly by trading 
 with one another." 
 
 I would say in conclusion that though I am in favour 
 of the institution of Wages Boards, etc., I think all this 
 legislation which is being proposed with regard to 
 Sweating, etc., is a very detestable thing. The evils of 
 legislation generally are very obvious : Interference, 
 Inspection, Expense, Officialism ; and it is only because 
 they are a cure for worse evils that we must endure 
 them for a time. We have got our social system and 
 social habits into such an inhuman state that I sup- 
 pose we shall have to go through a painful period
 
 224 TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM 
 
 of social drill and discipline and interference with 
 individual liberty before better and more human ways 
 of treating each other will become natural to us. 
 
 When Lafcadio Hearn — that greatest of writers on 
 the subject of Japan — first visited that country he was 
 struck, as most travelers are, by the extraordinary 
 atmosphere of consideration, kindness, and civility to 
 each other which existed there, by the general devo- 
 tion to the common good, by the absence of poverty, 
 and so forth. In his latest book {Japan : An Interpre- 
 tation) he traces this state of affairs, which now appears 
 spontaneous and natural, to the fact that in past cen- 
 turies the people went through a period of considerable 
 discipline in these directions, which, in fact, ingrained 
 these habits into their lives. 
 
 Let us hope that the period through which we are 
 now passing is one in which the Western nations are 
 waking up to the enforcement of a more human 
 morality in matters of Wealth and Industry than has 
 existed heretofore ; and that it will result in a period 
 in which such laws will not be necessary — because it 
 will have become natural and instinctive for the em- 
 ployer to do his best for the employed, and because 
 folk will have ceased to care for Wealth which has 
 been obtained through the misery and degradation 
 of others ; also perhaps because in Co-operation the 
 distinction between employers and employed will have 
 ceased to exist. 
 
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