THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM
 
 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 LIFE AND WORK 
 
 c 
 
 t> 
 
 J." 1 A'. HOBSON 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE EVOLUTION OF MODERN CAPITALISM, 
 "JOHN RUSKIN : SOCIAL REFORMER," ETC. 
 
 SECOND IMPRESSION 
 
 Uonfcon 
 JAMES NISBET & CO., LIMITED 
 
 21 BERNERS STREET 
 1902
 
 PRINTED BY 
 
 WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 LONDON AND BBCCLES.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THIS volume is designed to be an informal introduction to 
 the science and art of social progress. It does not profess 
 to furnish any sufficient outline of sociology or politics, 
 but seeks to ask and answer certain preliminary questions 
 which confront thinking men and women who are interested 
 in work of social reform, and wish to reach satisfactory 
 intelligible principles for their guidance in such work. 
 
 Its primary object is to enforce the recognition of the 
 organic unity of the problem of social progress by showing 
 the interactions of the many concrete "questions'" and 
 " movements " which divide the attention of social reformers. 
 
 The subject matter is approached first from the economic 
 side because the most pressing aspects of the problem are 
 more clearly seen and more definitely indicated in their 
 economic bearings. The social problem is thus first presented 
 as an economy of social forces operating upon the industrial 
 plane. The claim of Political Economy, in its older and its 
 newer forms, to handle successfully the Social Problem, as 
 a whole, or in its separate issues, is examined and found 
 wanting. By examining the nature of its defects we learn 
 the true requisites of a social science which can furnish a 
 satisfactory basis for an art of social progress. 
 
 This science and art of social utility is clearly sundered 
 
 a3 4-
 
 vi PREFACE 
 
 from the old utilitarianism which was individualistic and 
 hedonist in its standard, and purely quantitative in its 
 method or calculus. To this new utilitarianism, so ordered 
 as to give due recognition and rightful supremacy to the 
 higher needs and satisfactions of man in society, the rights 
 of individual property are referred for delimitation, and are 
 set upon a rational basis. The part played by social co- 
 operation, in the production of all forms of wealth and the 
 determination of all forms of value, is investigated; and 
 upon the results of this analysis the rights of society to 
 possess and administer property for the commonwealth are 
 established. The primary antithesis of Work and Life, 
 function and nutrition, is examined in its physical, economic, 
 and moral aspects, and is applied alike to the individual and 
 the social organism, so as to yield a scientific harmony of 
 the claims of Socialism and Individualism. Especial atten- 
 tion is given to marking clearly the operation of those 
 industrial and social forces which make for the larger and 
 more various activities of the State in politics and industry, 
 and those which, on the other hand, directly tend to enlarge 
 the bounds of individual liberty and enterprise. Here the 
 distinctions between Art and Mechanism, spontaneity and 
 routine, qualitative and quantitative production, are found 
 to lie at the roots of the Social Problem. 
 
 Though no rigid formulae of universal application are 
 pretended, certain primary laws of social growth are discerned 
 which, when applied to the formidable issues of right 
 economic distribution, population, public industry, imperial 
 expansion, etc., yield convincing and intelligible tests of 
 social utility, and present that unity of conception which 
 is recognized as essential by all who accept the view of 
 society as an organism or an organization. Whether or
 
 PREFACE vii 
 
 to what extent these laws are well established, readers must 
 judge. I would add one word addressed to those who, being 
 close students of industrial economics, may not be fully 
 satisfied with the assertion or assumption of the unfair and 
 irrational character of the distribution of wealth and other 
 opportunities under existing circumstances. Placed in the 
 dilemma of seeking to convince economic specialists by a 
 long and intricate analysis which would break the general 
 current of thought, and would repel and perhaps perplex 
 non-specialists, I have preferred the focus of the wider 
 reading public. I may, however, venture to refer any who 
 think that I have not adequately presented the economic 
 analysis of distribution, or have willingly shirked it, to my 
 technical treatment of the subject in " The Economics of 
 Distribution" (Macmillan Company). 
 
 The substance of this volume was first delivered in the 
 form of lectures to the London branch of the Christian 
 Social Union, and was afterwards printed in a series of 
 articles in The Ethical World. The matter, however, has 
 been entirely recast and largely re-written for the purpose 
 of this volume. 
 
 JOHN A. HOBSON. 
 
 March, 1901. 
 
 NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 SINCE the first publication of this book my attention has 
 been called to the fact that certain passages quoted from 
 an early edition of Professor Marshall's "Principles of
 
 viii NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 Economics," and subjected to criticism, do not appear in 
 the more recent editions of his work. I desire, therefore, 
 to withdraw the criticism of Professor Marshall's views 
 upon pp. 20, 52, and 72 as no longer applicable, and to 
 express my regret that passages originally written before 
 the later editions of his work appeared were not corrected 
 to correspond with the change of views there indicated. 
 
 Nov. 1901.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK I 
 
 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGB 
 
 I. Is THERE A SOCIAL QUESTION? 1 
 
 II. WASTE IN WORK AND LIFE 8 
 
 III. THE OLD POLITICAL ECONOMY 17 
 
 IV. THE NEW POLITICAL ECONOMY 33 
 
 V. REQUISITES OF A SCIENCE OF WEALTH DEPOSITION OF 
 
 THE MONEY STANDARD 39 
 
 VI. THE TRANSITION FROM " Is " TO " OUGHT " . .51 
 
 VII. THE QUANTITATIVE METHOD IN SOCIAL SCIENCE . . 70 
 
 VIII. NECESSARIES AND LUXURIES , 78 
 
 BOOK II 
 
 THE ART OF SOCIAL PROGRESS 
 
 I. THE RIGHTS OF MAN 87 
 
 II. NATURAL RIGHTS OF INDIVIDUAL PROPERTY ... 95 
 
 III. INFRINGEMENTS OF RIGHTS OF PROPERTY. . . .112 
 
 IV. Is A LEISURED CLASS DESIRABLE? 122 
 
 V. INDIVIDUALIST SOLUTIONS OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS . . 131 
 
 VI. SOCIETY AS MAKER OF " VALUES " 141 
 
 VII. DISTRIBUTION ACCORDING TO NEEDS 155
 
 x CONTENTS 
 
 CHAFTEK PAO 
 
 VIII. PUBLIC AND PRIVATE INDUSTRY 174 
 
 IX. LAND AND AGRICULTURE 187 
 
 X. " HUMANITARIAN SOCIALISM " 196 
 
 XL THE PROBLEM OF POPULATION 205 
 
 XII. EDUCATION AND ECONOMY OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE . .218 
 
 XIII. OVER-SPECIALIZATION IN INDUSTRIAL LIFE . . . 224 
 
 XIV. OVER-SPECIALIZATION IN INTELLECTUAL LIFE . . 231 
 XV. SOCIALISM IN THE ARTS AND PROFESSIONS . . . 238 
 
 XVI. UNEMPLOYMENT AND MISEMPLOYMENT .... 248 
 
 XVII. THE NEED OF A SOCIOLOGY 256 
 
 XVIII. ECONOMY OF INDIVIDUAL A>T> SOCIAL LIFE . . . 265 
 
 XIX. ECONOMY OF NATIONAL LIFE 272 
 
 XX. THE RANGE AND AREA OF " SOCIAL UTILITY" . . 280 
 
 INDEX , 289
 
 BOOK I 
 
 THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL PROGRESS
 
 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 IS THERE A SOCIAL QUESTION ? 
 
 THE ineffable vagueness of the Social Question has so 
 powerfully impressed the general imagination that few seem 
 able to believe that there must be an answer, or even that 
 the so-called Question can be put in any intelligible form. 
 The academic person who seeks precision by minute 
 specialization denies that there is a Social Question there 
 are only social questions; the practical reformer has 
 narrowed the phrase to connote Drink, Sex Relations, 
 Population, or even Money. Socialists, whose name might 
 indicate a large handling of the theme, commonly confine 
 it to schemes for the manipulation of material goods with 
 a variety of indefinite and wholly unexplored implications. 
 The average thoughtful, level-headed man is so certain that 
 those who talk about the Social Question are either pedants 
 or faddists, or vague fanatical enthusiasts, that he has long 
 since closed his head and heart to it. Yet this attitude is 
 both novel and indefensible. The world's great thinkers 
 have never denied the unity of the Social Question, or 
 sought to shelve it; many of them, impelled by other- 
 worldliness, have removed the centre of its gravity, content 
 to seek a true society in heaven, and willing to condone 
 the crudities of earth ; but all the great philosophers, 
 prophets, and poets have sought, in their several fashions, 
 
 B
 
 2 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 to "see life steadily, and see it whole," and, recognizing 
 some central spirit of humanity which drives towards an 
 ideal, have presented to themselves and to the world a 
 Social Question. 
 
 The present century seemed at one time to be giving 
 definite modern shape and import to it. Great representa- 
 tive thinkers, such as Bentham, Robert Owen, Comte, J. S. 
 Mill, Mazzini, Spencer, Ruskin, strove to enforce and to 
 express the intellectual and moral unity of social progress, 
 each according to his light, and to resist the paralyzing 
 tendency of feeble or timid minds to lose "the one 11 in 
 "the many," and, on the plea of being practical, to become 
 sectarian reformers, vigorous in marking time and in cancel- 
 ling each other's progress. Buoyant confidence and magnifi- 
 cent conceptions of social progress no longer sway men's 
 minds ; it is a day of small things, and men actually glory 
 in the smallness of their thoughts and hopes, as indicative 
 of safety and thoroughness, forgetting that great nations and 
 great men have ever " hitched their waggon to a star," taking 
 all knowledge for their province, and reaching with a reckless 
 amplitude of grasp after some dearly-loved, but dimly-seen, 
 ideal. But this disillusionment is only temporal and partial ; 
 the brilliant anticipations of a miraculously rapid entrance 
 into "the land of promise," which earlier prophets in this 
 century held forth, have, indeed, been overcast by the modern 
 doctrine of evolution, and falsified by the tenor of history ; 
 while the unprecedented growth of new forms of material 
 comfort has absorbed the energy and almost monopolized 
 the very name of progress. But the unity and force of the 
 Social ideal is not dead it is only sleeping ; and there are 
 many signs of its awakening into new life. 
 
 The demand for order in our thought and conduct is 
 invincible ; it may be swamped for a season by a surging sea 
 of external changes, but it comes up again, for it is implied 
 in the rational nature of man. But it comes up in new
 
 IS THERE A SOCIAL QUESTION? 3 
 
 forms with new conditions. As it is taking shape to-day 
 two new elements assert themselves. The organic conception 
 of society and the historic conception of continuity are two 
 chief products of modern thinking which have modified 
 profoundly if they have not, indeed, transformed the 
 conception of social progress. The new face they have given 
 to the Social Question takes time for its clear recognition. 
 Meanwhile it is vague and indefinite. But powerful forces 
 are at work. The passion of Wholeness, or Holiness, which 
 is in the blood of man, urges to a new attempt to formulate 
 social order. Not merely does the decay of supernaturalism 
 among the thinking minority throw the stress of interest 
 upon this life "Hath man no second life, pitch this one 
 high,"" but sociality has so far penetrated the religious world as 
 to demand that society in this life shall form a necessary pre- 
 paration for society in another life. Here, also, the doctrine 
 of continuous development has triumphed over and expelled 
 the doctrine of miraculous transformation. The City of God 
 requires us to be good citizens on earth, and enjoins that we 
 secure for all the conditions of good citizenship. Thus, every- 
 where the spiritual individualism of selfish soul-saving, with 
 the attendant neglect of this world's sanctity, shows signs of 
 perishing from the more enlightened Churches; everywhere 
 the ideas of continuity and of organic society are forcing 
 their way, imposing a new value and a new meaning upon 
 life. All this is vague enough, and may form the floating 
 material of a vague philosophy, a new mysticism. Of such 
 a mysticism, a new philosophic cult with an esoteric termi- 
 nology, by which a few erudite initiates may communicate 
 with one another, there are many indications. For any 
 intelligible formulation of the Social Question is evidently in 
 some sort a demand for a new philosophy of life. But a 
 Social Question which is left to professed philosophers can 
 never be answered. A satisfactory answer cannot consist in 
 the theoretic solution of a problem ; it must lie in the
 
 4 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 region of social conduct. Not merely the saying what 
 should be done, but the doing, is the solution. The reins 
 of Science and Practice are drawn together; a theory of 
 social conduct which shall take cognizance of all the factors 
 will be likewise the art of social conduct. 
 
 The first requisite of a really profitable setting of the 
 Social Question under its new conditions is that such 
 setting shall be intelligible to all persons possessed of 
 a moderate literary education and average capacities of 
 thought. Such a setting must probably, in the nature 
 of words and things, fail fully to conform to the metaphysical 
 niceties. But the latter cannot, and will not, be apprehended 
 by any considerable section of a society, and will not, either 
 directly or indirectly, wield any great influence on social 
 conduct. The inherent deceitfulness of philosophy leads such 
 a man as Tolstoy to maintain that in the unlettered peasant's 
 ideas and language we must seek the most satisfactory state- 
 ment of problems of life. But this is merely one implication 
 of the ultimately false logic of " no compromise." There is 
 nothing absolute in language, or even in ideas ; if we wish 
 to secure an end, we must select those which are most con- 
 venient to our purpose. In the present case, seeking to 
 formulate the Social Question in a practically serviceable 
 form, it is essential to adopt a middle course, shunning alike 
 the refinement of philosophic specialism and the equally de- 
 fective simplicity of common speech : the one sterilizes action, 
 the other understanding. 
 
 The best apprehension of the greatest number being taken 
 for our intellectual focus, it follows that our setting must be 
 in the full sense of the word, " utilitarian." The premature 
 abandonment of the utilitarian setting by many thinkers, 
 through pique arising from the narrow and degrading inter- 
 pretation given to the term, has not been justified. English 
 people are habituated to conceive and express' the " de- 
 sired " and " the desirable " in terms of utility ; and even
 
 IS THERE A SOCIAL QUESTION? 5 
 
 philosophers, like the late Professor Green, who are stoutest 
 in repudiating Utilitarianism, invariably return to that termi- 
 nology to express their final judgment on a concrete moral 
 issue. The revolt of a few superior minds against the 
 general conceptions and expressions of a nation embodied in 
 a language is always futile and commonly mischievous. The 
 particular vices of some special form of utilitarianism, the 
 insistence that desirability was entirely to be measured by 
 quantity and never by quality, the stress upon physical 
 enjoyment, and the short range of measurement, which were 
 somewhat incorrectly attributed to Bentham''s system, are 
 not inherent in utilitarianism, and need not deter us from 
 using its convenient language. Thus much in preface ; the 
 real justification of this form of stating the Social Question 
 is its success. 
 
 One further explanation is essential. It is not my 
 purpose to offer what would be rightly called a philosophy 
 of social life in other words, a full solution to the Social 
 Question. It is rather the setting of the question which 
 forms my direct object. We shall be concerned less with 
 the contents than with the form of the solution. That 
 these are practically separable may be shown by an illustra- 
 tion from industry. Industrial science may indicate the 
 business forms that are most suitable for the production of 
 the largest quantities of material wealth; but whether a 
 particular society shall adopt all these forms, or in what pro- 
 portion they shall be adopted, will depend upon the particular 
 estimates it assigns to these kinds of wealth. So, in our 
 setting of the wider Social Question, allowance must be made 
 for temperament of individual, class, and race. A common 
 form or conception of social progress may be made, but the 
 actual endeavours of a society to conform to it will largely 
 depend upon particular valuations and focus. Valuations 
 may be affected by experience and education; but, at any 
 given time, the same course of conduct will not be equally
 
 6 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 desired by, or equally desirable for, two different individuals 
 or natures. Time-focus also plays a most important part. 
 Economists know how the rate of interest and the expendi- 
 ture of incomes hinge upon the appreciation of a more or 
 less distant future. Historians know that politics are chiefly 
 a matter of time-adjustment, and that a focus of the next 
 election, a generation, or ten centuries, would impose totally 
 different policies upon a Government or a nation. 
 
 It is evidently idle to dogmatize upon this valuation and 
 focus, or to insist that desirable things shall have an absolute 
 and unchangeable value. But it is not idle to try to 
 arrange our thoughts so as to give unity and harmony 
 within these limits, so that any one of us, given his 
 temperamental valuation and his range of vision, may view 
 as a complete rational whole, "the socially desirable." 
 
 There are two modes of this setting one positive, the 
 other negative. The social problem may be set in terms of 
 wealth or terms of want, the convex and the concave 
 aspects of social economy. The early political economists 
 and social reformers assumed the positive attitude concerning 
 themselves primarily with wealth in a narrower or wider 
 sense ; but it is significant of our more critical age that a 
 Social Question has become almost synonymous with the 
 treatment of want, the cure of disease rather than the 
 enlargement of health. 
 
 The positive setting of the question, however, gave indica- 
 tion of an antithesis which is fundamental throughout our 
 study, between effort and satisfaction, human work and 
 human life. Many other oppositions will disclose themselves 
 the opposition of Producer and Consumer, Individual and 
 Society, Cost and Utility, Employer and Worker, Income 
 and Expenditure, and others; but it will be found that all 
 these antitheses which give rise to various problems of their 
 own are resoluble into or dependant on the basic antithesis 
 of effort and satisfaction. At the outset of our inquiry it
 
 IS THERE A SOCIAL QUESTION? 7 
 
 is convenient to assume the reality of this antithesis, though 
 we shall find that in the end a solution of the Social 
 Question will be satisfactory in just proportion as it fuses 
 the opposition in making manifest the art of social life. 
 
 Intellectually considered, it seems at first indifferent 
 whether we take the positive or the negative setting. Taken 
 in the former way, the Social Question assumes this shape : 
 " Given a number of human beings, with a certain develop- 
 ment of physical and mental faculties and of social institu- 
 tions, in command of given natural resources, how can they 
 best utilize these powers for the attainment of the most 
 complete satisfaction ? " This statement of the social end 
 does not really beg any question, though it may seem to do 
 so, for it purposely leaves open the interpretation of the term 
 " satisfaction," and the question of quality versus quantity in 
 measurement of "completeness." If, however, it seemed a 
 more definite statement of the end, no harm would be done 
 by adopting Ruskin^s words, " The largest number of happy 
 and healthy human beings." 
 
 The negative setting of the Social Question may be 
 allowed in the beginning to assume an even broader shape 
 after the words of a recent writer,* who says : " The history 
 of progress is the record of a gradual diminution of Waste." 
 From this standpoint the Social Question will find its essen- 
 tial unity in the problem how to deal with human waste. 
 
 * Prof. D. G. Ritchie.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 WASTE IN WORK AND LIFE 
 
 A BRIEF inventory of the chief factors of the Social Question, 
 set in terms of waste of work and life, is indispensable. All 
 measurement by defect is apt to repel by an appearance of 
 caricature, as when we mark the character of a book or a 
 friend by a series of black dots ; but it is often the best 
 method of securing a distinct impression. In treating the 
 Social Question habit confirms this manner of approach, and 
 has illicitly confined the term economy, in its popular use, 
 to the provision against waste. 
 
 Turning first to " work, 11 we are confronted by the largest 
 and most palpable waste in that accumulation of industrial 
 disorder known as "unemployment." For long periods of 
 time large stagnant pools of adult effective labour-power lie 
 rotting in the bodies of their owners, unable to become 
 productive of any form of wealth, because they cannot get 
 access to the material of production. Facing them in equal 
 idleness are unemployed or under-employed masses of land 
 and capital, mills, mines, etc., which, taken in conjunction 
 with this labour-power, are theoretically competent to 
 produce wealth for the satisfaction of human wants. At 
 certain brief periods of industrial prosperity these "pools" 
 are nearly dry in the higher fields of skilled labour ; but in 
 the lower grounds of industry they form a perpetual swamp. 
 
 Countless minor waves of industrial change some periodi- 
 cally recurrent, some essentially irregular continually enhance 
 the waste of " unemployment." 
 
 8
 
 WASTE IN WORK AND LIFE 9 
 
 While numbers of strong men stand workless, weaker 
 women the present or future mothers of the race are 
 driven in ever-growing numbers to take on them an excessive 
 burden of wage-work, wearing themselves out prematurely 
 in a struggle for an inadequate subsistence under conditions 
 which injure the vitality of the race. 
 
 Wherever the law permits, machinery and other industrial 
 conditions are adapted so as to use the immature labour- 
 power of children and young persons, in order to displace 
 the mature working strength of men. Net economy of 
 profitable business commonly tends this way. 
 
 Irregularity and mal-apportionment of labour-time con- 
 stitute a separate source of waste of labour-power. The 
 constant over-strain of long hours in some trades, the 
 alternation of overtime with short time in others, by injuring 
 the working life, causes a net waste alike to the worker and 
 to society. The enormous increase of certain orders of 
 productive power by modern machinery, and the rapid 
 expansion of the area of markets, impose a larger amount 
 of unforeseen irregularity upon industry. The hold of the 
 average employer upon a definite market, the hold of an 
 average worker upon a particular employment, are weaker 
 than they were ; and this weakness is not yet adequately 
 compensated by increased security of gaining another market 
 or another "place."" 
 
 Closely and causally related to this waste is the lack of 
 any adequate and comprehensive system for discovering, 
 educating, and utilizing for social purposes the best pro- 
 ductive powers with which nature has endowed each member 
 of society. The slow progress of discriminative education 
 and of true equality of opportunity implies the neglect of 
 modern society consciously to adapt itself to the utilization 
 of the one great " economy " which modern science has 
 most powerfully impressed upon us as a means of pro- 
 gress division of labour, or " differentiation of functions."
 
 10 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 Little trouble is yet taken to discover the special aptitudes 
 of citizens in relation to the special needs of society, the 
 best methods of training these aptitudes, and of furnishing, 
 not negative and empty " freedom " to undertake this work, 
 but the positive freedom of opportunity. A whole cluster 
 of "education" problems, manual and mental, demanding, 
 not a separate empirical solution, but a related organic 
 solution, with direct regard to full economy of social work, 
 appears as part of the Social Question. Every failure 
 to put the right man or woman in the right place, 
 with the best faculty of filling that place, involves social 
 waste. 
 
 Conditions of work form another factor. The unsanitary, 
 dangerous, degrading character imposed upon much work, 
 not by the inherent nature of the necessary processes, but 
 by considerations of individual profit, is a known source of 
 incalculable injury. The employment of white-lead workers, 
 the needlessly brutalizing work of iron-puddlers and stokers, 
 the whole system of slum workshops, mean a shortening 
 and enfeebling of the working-life. The fact that an 
 average town manual worker lives some fifteen years less 
 than an average member of the well-to-do classes is, perhaps, 
 the largest measurable leakage of social working-power with 
 which we are confronted. Its bearing on the "life" side 
 of the problem will receive further consideration. 
 
 The wasteful disposition of the labour that is done 
 requires separate notice. I have alluded to an apparent 
 excess of productive power which suffers periodic idleness. 
 But the social waste involved by the growing proportion of 
 energy put into competition, the effort to get work, orders, 
 markets, is the unique feature of present industry. It is 
 testified in every civilized community by the alarming growth 
 in the proportion of the population engaged in work of 
 distribution, the number of agents, canvassers, touts, and 
 other persons "pushing" trade, the energy put into
 
 WASTE IN WORK AND LIFE 11 
 
 advertising, shop-dressing, and other arts of selling. The 
 social worth of all this work is exceedingly small ; it is 
 mostly occupied in determining, not whether or what goods 
 shall be made or sold, but who shall make and sell these 
 goods a matter of social indifference. This is not a denial 
 of social gain from competition, but simply a recognition 
 of the waste involved by keeping twelve instead of two 
 competing grocers in one street. 
 
 One other definite waste of working-power must be named 
 that vested in the upper class of unemployed, the quarter 
 of a million men in England and Wales, between the age 
 of twenty and sixty-five, who, in 1891, were not even 
 nominal members of any trade or profession. A large 
 proportion of these men, and many more women, whose 
 domestic work is practically nil, are quite capable of 
 rendering social service ; and the dissipation of their energy 
 in sport, or in what are humorously termed " social duties," 
 constitutes a large item of waste. To these must be added 
 a large number of merely nominal members of professions 
 and persons whose only occupation is some amateur and 
 generally incompetent work of a volunteer character. 
 
 Thus, then, the most general forms assumed by social 
 problems relating to waste of work are these 
 
 1. Many are not working. 
 
 2. Many are overworking or underworking. 
 
 3. Most are not doing that work which it is the interest 
 of society they should do, or are not doing it in the best 
 way they might. 
 
 The most convenient bridge by which to pass from the 
 work side to the life side is that class of considerations 
 which relates to the quality of work. 
 
 The absorption of the whole working-power of large 
 classes by an ever minuter division of labour, unless balanced 
 by increased freedom and leisure, tends to degrade the 
 character of the worker, to injure the all-round development
 
 12 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 of his nature, and thereby to impair his faculties of enjoy- 
 ment and non-industrial use. 
 
 The dominance of specialized routine impresses the 
 character of machine-work upon the life, robs it of those 
 elements of individuality and spontaneity which make 
 existence rational and enjoyable. The machine is thus apt 
 to make a class of machine-citizens, and to place them in 
 towns made for machine purposes, and not for healthy 
 social life. The element of order which modern factories 
 and machine-processes introduce into the life of workers is 
 not without its educative value; but made, as it is, the 
 dominant factor in their lives, it is an immense source of 
 degradation and of physical, aesthetic, and spiritual 
 retardation. 
 
 No one can seriously examine the life of the "pros- 
 perous"" northern manufacturing towns, which are typical 
 of our present civilization, without recognizing the evil 
 influences of the present dominion of machinery in thus 
 degrading and retarding progress. This statement does not 
 ignore the sterling qualities of northern Englishmen, 
 struggling against these tendencies, and even utilizing the 
 elements of social contact furnished by their organized 
 workshops and their crowded cities for wholesome political, 
 social, and recreative movements. From the standpoint of 
 healthy human life the modern industrial town is, in spite 
 of all that is done for it, a failure. It has given new and 
 difficult aspects to many social questions. 
 
 It is in these towns that poverty presents its most dismal 
 and perplexing character. The vast increase of productive 
 power owned by modern societies is yet used so wastefully 
 that in London to-day one-third of the population are 
 estimated to be living in chronic poverty, unable to satisfy 
 properly the prime needs of animal life, and owning no 
 appreciable share of the vast social inheritance which the pro- 
 gress of the last century and a half has won for our nation.
 
 WASTE IN WORK AND LIFE 13 
 
 The life of these people is not worth living, so far as 
 measurements of life are possible; they are living a life 
 definitely worse in almost all respects than that of " savages " 
 in any fairly fertile land, and with hardly more hope of 
 escape or advancement. Take this statement of a recent 
 traveller in Bechuanaland, only one of many similar 
 testimonies: "I have visited nearly every native town of 
 consequence in Bechuanaland, and I say unhesitatingly that 
 these people are at this moment physically and morally far 
 better off than many thousands of the population of our 
 great cities in Great Britain, living happier and healthier 
 lives by far than seven-tenths of our poor folk at home."* 
 Whether this condition still remains after we have begun to 
 " civilize " the Bechuanas may perhaps be doubted.t 
 
 It is, of course, easy to exaggerate the amount of physical 
 poverty, for no absolute measure is possible. There is 
 reason to believe that a considerably smaller proportion of 
 our people suffer from lack of the food, clothing, etc., 
 required to support life than was the case half a century 
 ago. But there is little to indicate that the actual number 
 of the poor is diminishing. 
 
 If poverty is not more intense, it is more congested, and 
 more difficult to relieve by ordinary means. Poverty in a 
 poor country is one thing ; poverty in a rich country another. 
 Moreover, it is becoming more self-conscious, and conse- 
 quently more restless. There is much in modern towns to 
 account for this the contrast of luxury, which mocks their 
 misery; innumerable means of education, which sow the 
 seeds of new wants without supplying the opportunities to 
 satisfy them. The difference between the number of felt 
 wants and the power to satisfy them constitutes poverty in 
 its present conscious state; and, though physiological or 
 
 * A. Bryden, " Gun and Camera in South Africa," p. 129. 
 t Still more striking is the testimony from Bunnah. See H. Fielding's 
 remarkable work, " The Soul of a People."
 
 14- THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 absolute poverty may be diminishing, this felt poverty is 
 growing. 
 
 Again, we are rapidly becoming a nation of town-dwellers. 
 The new condition of town life, comprising now more than 
 three-quarters of our population, presses upon every phase 
 of the Social Problem. It is no mere sentimental grievance. 
 A life fed upon bad air, overcrowded at home and at work, 
 deprived of wholesome recreation, passed amid ugly and 
 dirty surroundings, has little chance of physical or moral 
 health. In spite of all efforts of municipal reform, successful 
 as many of them have been in improving the sanitation of 
 our cities, there remains the awkward fact that the modern 
 rush into city life means a transfer to an area where 
 mortality is nearly twenty per cent, higher than it is in 
 rural parts.* This difference of health conditions, applied 
 to the choicest strength, energy, and ability of the people 
 (for these are the people selected for town life), unless it 
 can be overcome, signifies a deterioration of the physique of 
 the race. If this is an effect of town life, the intimate 
 relations between physical health and other aspects of social 
 progress require us to see in congested town life one of the 
 most serious factors in our problem. 
 
 Moreover, modern civilization not merely draws the mass 
 of workers from a fixed habitation upon the soil, with those 
 attachments of place which have helped so much to build 
 the character of great nations; it has not planted them 
 firmly in city life. Vast numbers are fated to a life of 
 wandering over the face of a great city, driven hither and 
 thither by the shifting tide of employment, and substituting 
 for the constant Home a narrow temporary Shelter. The 
 material structure of sound family life is thus grievously 
 
 * This statement is based upon a comparison of Urban and Rural 
 Sanitary Districts. If we compare the mortality of any large industrial 
 town with that of an agricultural district of Southern England, we find 
 a far wider difference.
 
 WASTE IN WORK AND LIFE 15 
 
 impaired ; the economic power of landlordism, in narrowing 
 the shelter of the workers, plays into the hands of the 
 publican, whose premises form a natural, almost a necessary, 
 annex of the worker's home for the husband and father, as 
 the slum-street is for the children. The soil of sound 
 neighbourhood is vitiated in a floating population, and 
 healthy plants of social life are unable to spring up and 
 flourish. 
 
 The Social Question finds its most directly moral signifi- 
 cance in the growing sense of antagonism between classes 
 and masses. Mere theoretic declarations of economic and 
 social harmony between the two do not suffice. The deep- 
 felt antagonism cannot be ignored ; it constitutes a grave 
 injury to moral life. 
 
 By the whole structure and working of our industrial 
 system this waste is maintained in the directly anti-social 
 strain of conflict a, between business and business; /3, 
 between capital and labour; y, between labourer and 
 labourer. This involves no absolute condemnation of 
 competition, which, as Toynbee said, "is neither good nor 
 bad in itself; it is a force which has to be studied and 
 controlled." The point for consideration is that at present 
 it is neither adequately studied nor effectively controlled. 
 
 The loss in quality as distinct from quantity of work and 
 life thus caused is, from the nature of the case, incalculable. 
 Social and industrial disorders, which degrade the character 
 of any class of human beings, lowering their quality of 
 work and life, cannot be offset by any increase in the mass 
 of material wealth. There is no way of striking a balance 
 between quantity and quality. "All that a man hath will 
 he give for his life,"" and any damage to the quality of 
 life defies quantitative compensation. 
 
 I have chosen to lay stress upon the industrial and 
 physical aspects of these factors of the Social Question ; but 
 a separate study of the economy of intellectual and spiritual
 
 16 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 energies exhibits the same kinds of waste, though they are 
 more difficult to discriminate, and the intricacies of the 
 " questions 1 ' they provoke are greater. In confining im- 
 mediate attention more to the physical aspects I least of all 
 desire to assign priority in logical order or importance to 
 these, rather selecting the simpler concrete issues, because 
 it is easier to advance from them to the subtler analogous 
 forms in higher planes of life and work than to set the latter 
 directly in a co-ordinate position. 
 
 There is historical justification for this order, laying stress 
 first on those aspects of the Social Question which relate 
 to physical environment. Workers in the more definitely 
 intellectual or moral fields, religious missionaries, temperance 
 workers, school teachers, aesthetic and recreational reformers, 
 political propagandists, are all coming more and more to 
 recognize that bad environment of work and physical life 
 blocks the way for their particular reforms. To acknowledge 
 this is by no means to prejudge the just relations between 
 character and social environment. Rather does its merit 
 consist in this, that it best enables us, as we inevitably 
 turn from industrial to moral and intellectual forces, to 
 perceive more clearly and convincingly the identity of what 
 at first appear separate industrial and moral causes. 
 
 The deepest spirit of social discontent is distinctively a 
 moral force, and may be summed up in the words of J. S. 
 Mill: "The very idea of distributive justice, or any 
 proportionality between success and merit, or between 
 success and exertion, is, in the present state of society, so 
 manifestly chimerical as to be relegated to the region of 
 romance." * 
 
 * Fortnightly Revieic, 1879.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE OLD POLITICAL ECONOMY 
 
 WHAT is the system of thought, the science competent to 
 grapple with all the essential facts of the Social Question, 
 so as to discover the best means of minimizing social waste 
 or, conversely, of maximizing social satisfaction ? Let us 
 first examine the credentials of Political Economy for such 
 a task. It is not unnatural that we should look first to 
 this science, for most of the leading features in our setting 
 of the issue appeared to have a distinctly economic character. 
 Many of the specific evils upon which I touched are the 
 direct historical products of the Industrial Revolution, and 
 are directly associated with four great changes : 
 
 1. The development of machine-production. 
 
 2. Free Trade, or division of labour among nations, 
 causing for most advanced industrial nations a decay of 
 agriculture and of country life. 
 
 3. Expansion of market areas and the related growth of 
 a complex financial system. 
 
 4. Severance or weakening of the personal nexus 
 (a) between employers and employed ; (b) between sellers and 
 buyers. 
 
 Now these are distinctively commercial facts, and we 
 naturally turn to commercial science for some light upon 
 their results. 
 
 What satisfactory diagnosis does Political Economy give 
 of the Social Question thus presented in its distinctively 
 
 17 o
 
 18 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 economic aspect ? Frankly, none. For certain good reasons, 
 which we shall shortly understand, Political Economy offers 
 a dumb mouth to the Social Question. Men of humane 
 culture, smitten with social compunction, and hard-headed, 
 self-educated, working men, have turned for light and leading 
 to text-books of economic science, and have found darkness ; 
 have gone for bread, and have received the stones of arid, 
 barren, academic judgments. Professors of Economics resent 
 this criticism, and reply, "What you ask does not fall 
 within our province. You come saying, 'Prophesy unto us. 
 Here is depressed trade ; diagnose the case and prescribe.' 
 Or : * Plere is a mass of unemployed ; tell us some safe 
 way of utilizing their labour. Here is a dead-lock between 
 Labour and Capital ; suggest fair terms of settlement. 1 " 
 Of late the Political Economist has been in the habit of 
 rubbing his hands in deprecating fashion, and telling us, 
 " Political Economy is a science ; we are not practitioners."" 
 Now, without denying the distinctions of science, art, and 
 practice, we are at liberty to point out that the chief 
 builders of economic studies never assumed this attitude. 
 The science grew out of the art, and never separated itself. 
 Men like Adam Smith, Malthus, Ricardo, and, even later, 
 J. S. Mill and Jevons, gained authority by claiming to give 
 direction upon issues of international trade, finance, and 
 labour combinations. It is not too much to say that, had 
 it not been for the part which scientific economists played 
 in the Free Trade movement there would have been no 
 separate study claiming to be a science of Political Economy. 
 The founders of this study never contemplated a science 
 which should stay in the clouds, refusing to yield a right basis 
 of social policy. Nay, even among economic authorities of to- 
 day the attitude is not one of consistent abstinence ; commonly 
 refusing to commit themselves upon weightier issues of social 
 reform, they dabble in Bimetallism, Sliding Scales, and Poor 
 Law Reform.
 
 THE OLD POLITICAL ECONOMY 19 
 
 The claim is not that Political Economy shall devise 
 Utopias or prescribe Morrison's Pills to cure all social ills, 
 but that it shall clearly diagnose diseases which seem to be 
 of a distinctively industrial nature, and shall assess the 
 value of proposed remedies. Instead of doing this, it treads 
 delicately in the intricate mazes of historical research and 
 currency, and does much subtle theorizing about termin- 
 ology and method. All this should doubtless be done, but 
 not the other left undone without good reason shown. 
 
 Why does Political Economy throw no light upon our 
 darkness ? Briefly, because it cannot. Though our presenta- 
 tion of the Social Question seemed distinctively " economic," 
 no one of its graver issues is soluble by "economic science. 11 
 Take two instances the Eight Hours' Movement and Free 
 Trade; does the satisfactory treatment of either of these 
 questions fall within Political Economy? No. The most 
 important factors of the Eight Hours' 1 Question are not the 
 compressibility of labour, the absorption of the unemployed, 
 the effect upon the wages-bill, and so forth, but the growing 
 need of leisure from the strain of machine production for 
 recreation of physical powers, for family life and the education 
 of the higher faculties, and for the production of various 
 forms of individual and social satisfaction, not directly 
 measurable as economic quantities. Economics does not, 
 indeed, ignore the use of leisure, but only considers it so far 
 as it relates to the cost of production by affecting the efficiency 
 of labour ; the essential unity of the issue as a " social problem," 
 in which all forms of satisfaction count for their own sake, 
 lies outside its scope. 
 
 So with Free Trade, the most essentially economic sub- 
 ject, as it might seem. One chief effect of our Free Trade 
 policy has been to remove workers from good air, ample 
 space, sunshine, and other bounties of nature, and place them 
 in circumstances where they can produce a larger quantity of 
 industrial wealth. Free Trade as an " economic " movement
 
 20 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 is judged entirely by its influence on marketable wealth; 
 Free Trade as a social question requires that the total 
 effects hygienic, intellectual, and moral arising from town 
 and factory life shall receive full consideration, not 
 separately, but in organic relation to the direct gains of 
 increased industrial wealth. 
 
 But, in order to recognize the full nature of the social 
 economics we require, it will be profitable to enter upon a 
 more explicit investigation of the defects of Political 
 Economy for this purpose. 
 
 If we turn to the leading English text-book of to-day 
 to ascertain the scope of the science, we read the following 
 admirable words: "Political Economy, or Economics, is a 
 study of man's actions in the ordinary business of life."* 
 What broader or more liberal treatment is possible ? What 
 is " the ordinary business of life ? " Surely, to live well ? 
 Alas ! not at all. In the next sentence Professor Marshall 
 proceeds to say : " It inquires how he gets his income and 
 how he uses it." A strange assumption this, that the getting 
 and spending of money is " the ordinary business of life ! w 
 Yet it correctly marks out the limits of current Political 
 Economy, though we shall presently observe how feebly 
 developed the "spending" side is as compared with the 
 "getting," so that Buskin's taunt about "the science of 
 acquisitiveness" is not without point. 
 
 The history of Political Economy in England, from 
 Adam Smith onwards, forms an admirable commentary upon 
 our intellectual treatment of the Social Question. Earlier 
 "economic" studies were mostly speculations of political 
 philosophers regarding property, or essays upon concrete 
 issues in politics or business, relating to agriculture, inter- 
 national trade, currency and taxation, population, and so 
 forth. From these sources, gathering together scattered 
 facts, principles, and speculations, a philosopher a man of 
 * " Principles of Economics," vol. i. bk. i. ch. i.
 
 THE OLD POLITICAL ECONOMY 21 
 
 broad humane culture, with the Scottish capacity for acquir- 
 ing and marshalling knowledge formed a large and liberal 
 conception of a " Wealth of Nations." In its main structure 
 it was distinctly an industrial science, but endowed with a 
 freedom, humanity, and discursiveness most favourable to 
 expansion. "Wealth" was not rigidly confined to market- 
 able goods or money ; knowledge, freedom, health, and 
 character, the higher human goods, though not adequately 
 represented, were not excluded from the " Wealth of Nations." 
 A sense of social justice inspired the work. A friend of 
 labour, a stout advocate of liberty and equality of oppor- 
 tunities, an enemy of landed and capitalist monopoly, as he 
 understood them, Adam Smith was a true pioneer in the 
 development of social economy. Unfortunately, the political 
 and industrial expediencies of the age were strongly hostile 
 to the wider human treatment of economics. The vague 
 but praiseworthy attempts of men like Paine and Godwin 
 to impress larger designs of social reform were unable to 
 stem the force of the narrower utilitarians, who soon seized 
 the field of Political Economy. From Adam Smith's broad 
 platform smaller men borrowed a few planks, to improvise 
 a neat, convenient little system of their own. Mostly hard- 
 headed men, with a narrow outlook, financiers, manufacturers, 
 academic professors, political managers, they took the 
 principles of industrial freedom with which Adam Smith 
 sought to break down old forms of tyranny, and to secure 
 genuine liberty for labourers, in an age when labour was still 
 of paramount importance in production, and applied these 
 principles to secure the domination of rising capitalism. 
 Adam Smith wrote in an age before machinery, when small 
 producers controlled industry, capitalist-artisans who worked 
 hard with their own hands, whose effective labour was 
 hampered by all sorts of antiquated and absurd restrictions, 
 dictating where they should live, what trade they should 
 follow, where and how they should sell their goods, artificially
 
 22 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 enhancing the price of food and raw materials, while it 
 narrowed their markets. Laissez-faire was a policy of social 
 progress then. In the hands and mouths of a subsequent 
 generation of mill-owners, financiers, and their intellectual 
 henchmen, it became a policy of despotism and degradation. 
 It was primarily used to procure the cheapening of labour, 
 in order to feed the new machine factories with large 
 quantities of low-grade human force (regardless of sex or 
 age), to be worked into goods which should be thrust upon 
 rapidly-expanding markets, to gain the hundreds per cent, 
 which built up the fortunes of Lancashire. 
 
 For this purpose it was necessary 
 
 First, to acquire cheap food to support a large working 
 population upon the fields of the new industries. It is no 
 cynicism to state that this manufacturing interest was a 
 more potent force in the anti-corn-law movement than the 
 genuine spirit of philanthropy and of intellectual conviction 
 with which it co-operated. A similar combination of motives 
 attacked the Law of Settlement, in order to give the required 
 "fluidity" to labour a process artificially stimulated by bar- 
 gains with Poor Law authorities to furnish child labour to 
 northern mills. 
 
 Secondly, to secure a continual expansion of foreign and 
 colonial markets. What to Adam Smith was a distinct 
 utility became to the next generation of manufacturers and 
 merchants an overpowering necessity. The main motive of 
 national Free Trade was to force markets, just as the failure 
 of Free Trade adequately to secure this expansion is visibly 
 remoulding our foreign policy to-day. England was destined 
 to be the workshop of the world, and Free Trade was to be 
 the sufficient instrument of this destiny. 
 
 Thirdly, it was necessary to keep wages low. For this 
 purpose anti-combination laws were enforced, and political 
 economy was required to prove the futility of attempts of 
 workers to raise wages by combination. Hence the insistence
 
 THE OLD POLITICAL ECONOMY 23 
 
 of political economists on treating labour as a "commodity 11 
 rightly subject to the law of supply and demand determining 
 its price ; hence the theory of " natural wages," supported 
 by a Law of Population and a Wage-Fund theory commonly 
 used to prove that the general level of wages could not rise. 
 
 Two other doctrines were selected from the " Wealth of 
 Nations " for the service of a class of utilitarian economists. 
 One was the doctrine of Parsimony, which served the 
 double purpose of stimulating saving at a time when the 
 demand for capital was practically unlimited, and of 
 supporting the common class notion, prevalent up to the 
 present day, that the capitalist class, by their abstinence 
 and subsequent investment of capital, support the working- 
 classes, providing employment and advancing wages. The 
 other was a doctrine of the origin and nature of rent, largely 
 true, which served the manufacturing classes well in this battle 
 against the Land Laws and the old social aristocracy, and 
 which survives up to the present day as the one genuinely 
 revolutionary element in the older economic teaching. 
 
 Let us realize the external situation. It was a truly 
 dramatic one. After a long war, which had strained to the 
 utmost the vital powers of the nation, the full import of 
 that Industrial Revolution, which had been slowly taking 
 shape in the background of the national consciousness, 
 suddenly burst upon England. She began to realize her- 
 self in command of new and incalculable resources of 
 nature, with capacities of producing wealth beyond the 
 dreams of avarice, in the new machinery and steam motor, 
 the great strides of mechanics, chemistry, and other depart- 
 ments of science, with a monopoly of these forces so complete 
 as to place her beyond all thought of competition from 
 other nations. 
 
 A large conception of the " Wealth of Nations " might 
 have ordered and utilized these prodigious "social" forces 
 for the common good, applying the new productive powers
 
 24 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 to secure for all a stable basis of physical life and comfort, 
 and using machinery to "save" labour, and so to set free 
 the time and energy of all for the enjoyment of a fuller 
 human life. 
 
 Such ideas of social economy seized the imaginations of 
 a few lofty thinkers, and men like Fourier, Owen, Comte, 
 laboured to found upon the new industrial dispensation a 
 reformed structure of society which should elevate the race. 
 Unfortunately, both the economic and the moral basis of 
 realization were lacking. Not merely was the present 
 practicability of such dreams denied, but the intellectual 
 and moral conception which lay behind them, the very idea 
 that the powers of man and nature ought to be utilized for 
 the good of society as an organic whole, and that they 
 should be studied with this end in view, was rejected as 
 foolish and unprofitable. 
 
 The grand and fundamentally scientific conception of a 
 New Moral World was ruthlessly crushed by the dominance 
 of a narrow, dogmatic commercial economy. For the actual 
 disposition of these vast new industrial resources had come 
 into the hands of a few, the owners of land, money, or 
 certain sorts of organizing power, pluck, intelligence, or 
 cunning. The new discoveries were a national education in 
 avarice and materialism. Greed for rapidly acquiring wealth 
 became a national mania. Every powerful material interest 
 bought intellect to serve it. Men of the requisite gifts of 
 mind were paid, persuaded, and cajoled into furnishing a 
 science of Political Economy which should afford an intel- 
 lectual and even a moral justification for the ruling passion. 
 So it came to pass that brilliant practical and speculative 
 intellects set themselves to degrade the " Wealth of Nations " 
 into a Trader's science. 
 
 Do not mistake me. I am far from suggesting that such 
 men as Ricardo, Senior, James Mill, were actuated by any 
 conscious intellectual dishonesty. But it is impossible to
 
 THE OLD POLITICAL ECONOMY 25 
 
 study any department of philosophy, theology, history, or 
 sociology, without detecting everywhere the moulding force 
 of dominant class-prejudices, interests, passions, selecting and 
 rejecting among the ideas, theories, phrases, formulae which 
 come into being, and driving the intellectual workers to 
 build convenient systems. Men of powerful original force 
 sometimes hold out ; but generally the steady and persistent 
 secret pressure of class bias, working through " the spirit of 
 the age, 11 is successful in getting what it wants. 
 
 In dwelling upon bias of temperament or material interests 
 as a ruling force in Political Economy, I bring no special 
 charge against the character of a single class. Theorists of 
 the proletariat, like Marx and Henry George, are victims of 
 a similar bias, and mould, in the interests of an agricultural 
 or manufacturing class of workers, an economics scarcely less 
 defective in theory, and only less detrimental for practice 
 because the larger classes whose interests it serves are econo- 
 mically weaker than those whose interests moulded the 
 classical Political Economy in England. 
 
 Taking the latter as it left the hands of its most striking 
 exponent, Ricardo, we find it far superior, as a system, to 
 the teaching of the "Wealth of Nations. 11 It had become 
 a rigid, superficially consistent, intelligible set of doctrines, 
 a serviceable, intellectual instrument for the rising manu- 
 facturers and financiers. Though this system underwent 
 many slight modifications and accretions as it passed through 
 the hands of James Mill, McCulloch, Senior, and others, no 
 radical change took place, even in the original text-book of 
 J. S. Mill. This theory is called Manchesterism by Germans ; 
 and, though recent English writers have adduced various 
 erudite reasons for rejecting the term, it is a substantially 
 correct title for a science designed to suit that view of life 
 which the prodigious activity and prosperity of the northern 
 manufacturing towns had impressed upon the national 
 consciousness.
 
 2G THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 Certain fixed characters deeply mark the entire body of 
 this Manchester Economy, in studying which we come to 
 understand how the trained economist, by his very training, 
 usually incapacitates himself for the comprehension or solu- 
 tion of a Social Question. 
 
 1. Not merely is the survey of the study confined to 
 marketable wealth ; it is the accumulation of material forms 
 of wealth, not the using but the getting, that is made the 
 end of industrial activity. The production and accumulation 
 of goods form the corner-stone of the edifice. Occasionally, 
 in the older writers, we meet a perfunctory reference to use 
 and enjoyment, as if they were the goal ; but the actual treat- 
 ment never assigns that place to them. Jevons, later on, 
 points out that, though earlier writers often acknowledged 
 three or four departments Production, Distribution, Ex- 
 change, Consumption they had next to nothing to say 
 about the last. It might even be said that the three latter 
 processes are all regarded as subsidiary to the first. Examine 
 the structure of the " science," and you will find everywhere 
 evidence that it is built with a single eye to the accumula- 
 tion of marketable goods. 
 
 Take as crucial instances the parts assigned to Capital 
 and Consumption. 
 
 The common understanding and consistent usage of the 
 business world clearly marks ofF capital from consumption- 
 goods, confining capital in its material forms to those 
 materials and instruments which a man uses in the trade or 
 occupation by which he earns his income. The economists 
 perversely distorted the term so as to include the food and 
 other necessaries in the possessions of productive workers, 
 introducing all sorts of casuistic questions as to whether 
 particular commodities were " destined " to assist produc- 
 tion. This utterly indefensible view of capital * still blocks 
 the way to a clear comprehension of economic structure, 
 * Professor Marshall has only recently decided to abandon it.
 
 THE OLD POLITICAL ECONOMY 27 
 
 regarding, as it does, consumption merely as a means to 
 further production. 
 
 The maintenance of this same position required another 
 equally futile distinction to be made between productive 
 and unproductive consumption. The latter constitutes, in 
 the stricter text-books, the unpardonable sin of Political 
 Economy. What was this heinous offence? Did it mean 
 riotous living, unwholesome luxury, reckless extravagance? 
 Not at all. These things by no means cover the term. All 
 the conveniences and comforts of life books, music, enter- 
 tainment, education, the supply of all intellectual and moral 
 needs formed, in the strict interpretation, unproductive 
 consumption, and were considered to militate against the 
 wealth of nations. The reasoning is simplicity itself. The 
 be-all and the end-all is capital in the form of vast numbers 
 of mills and machinery, raw material, and stock. The 
 amassing of increased quantities of capital by " saving " was 
 thus the point to which all energy should be directed. 
 Capital was also essential because it maintained labour, gave 
 employment, and so furthered new production and accumula- 
 tion. This being so, consumption was to be regarded with 
 suspicion. The presumption was always against it, for it 
 diminished saving. [The earlier economists had not yet 
 developed the riper absurdity which held that saving did 
 not reduce consumption.] Consumption may exculpate 
 itself by showing that it serves a useful end i.e. helps 
 to maintain efficiency of labour-power in the bodies of 
 labourers. 
 
 "Unproductive consumption," however much it might 
 claim to contribute to enjoyment, health, intellectual and 
 moral elevation, was scouted by the stricter doctrinaires in 
 their "scientific aspect," though sometimes, when off their 
 guard, they lapse into humane obiter dicta. This theory, 
 not only narrow, but illogical, won credence and support 
 because it exploited certain just and wholesome feelings of
 
 28 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 protest against luxury, unmasking the insidious fallacy that 
 luxurious living of the rich is desirable in the interests of 
 the workers a fallacy always utilized to screen extravagance, 
 and to avert inquiries into the unjust origins of riches. The 
 old political economist, taunted as the prophet of a selfish 
 and degrading gospel, got considerable moral kudos from 
 the redeeming virtue of his encouragement of thrift in all 
 classes. 
 
 Trading upon this virtuous demeanour, the huxter science 
 bent its structure and deformed its terminology to serve 
 the art of commercial production, shedding all the more 
 liberal and humane associations it had gathered from the 
 " moral philosophy " of Adam Smith. 
 
 2. This narrow standard, confining the interest of political 
 economists to quantity of marketable matter, constrained 
 them to take a narrow view of human life and character. 
 For this they have been unduly blamed by some, who, like 
 Carlyle and Ruskin, charge them with a deliberate preference 
 and support of materialistic ends and selfish modes of reaching 
 them. But, while such charges are unfair, and can easily be 
 refuted, it cannot be denied that a constant addiction to 
 the study of any special order of phenomena is liable to 
 distort the vision, and even to induce false moral valuations. 
 Though it was no part of the duty of scientific writers to 
 impute praise and blame, no one can fail to see that the 
 appreciative, and often enthusiastic, language in which the 
 operations of self-interest in industry are described, and 
 the beneficent operation of competition between individuals 
 and nations is illustrated, did powerfully convey approval, 
 and gave a strong practical defence of current business 
 practices. 
 
 The narrow individualistic utilitarianism of James Mill 
 and those who came under his influence did, in fact, afford 
 a moral support of the enlightened self-interest of the busi- 
 ness man. When, therefore, it is claimed that this political
 
 THE OLD POLITICAL ECONOMY 29 
 
 economy is immune from censure because it only professed 
 to deal with men as they are, not as they ought to be, we 
 must receive this exculpation with reserve. Approval was 
 not the aim, but approval was conveyed; and the whole 
 tone of the teaching regarded ruthless self-assertion of 
 individuals and nations as wholesome energy, which made 
 for the greatest good of the greatest number. 
 
 It is, however, more germane to our purpose to call atten- 
 tion to the nature of man and his operations as regarded 
 by the early political economist. " Free" competition, 
 directed towards the acquisition of the greatest quantity of 
 material wealth, underlay the " economic " conception of man 
 and of industrial society. For the purposes of their study 
 thinkers made an abstraction of the self-seeking motives in the 
 industrial world. The " economic man " was a creature who 
 always moved accurately along the line of greatest personal gain 
 as labourer, planting himself in the trade and place where 
 wages are highest, endowed with a chameleon-like capacity 
 of adaptation, trammelled by no bonds of attachment which 
 would retard the perfect fluidity of his movements in the 
 labour-market; as capitalist, making with unerring instinct 
 for the highest rate of profit, unfettered by foolish scruples 
 about sweating, adulteration, or any malpractice which 
 attached to " investments " ; as merchant, shopkeeper, or as 
 consumer, knowing one law only viz. "to buy in the 
 cheapest, to sell in the dearest market. 1 ' No gain which 
 the ignorance or weakness of another placed in his way would 
 he reject ; no sentiment of compassion or generosity would 
 be allowed to blunt the edge of his cupidity. 
 
 Industrial society was conceived of as a society of these 
 self-seekers. Such society would attain the maximum of 
 wealth, for each man, in accurately following his private 
 gain, would be driven to use his labour, capital, or land, 
 in such way as to contribute most to the aggregate wealth. 
 Certain operations of economic forces would prevent the
 
 30 
 
 economic man from keeping to himself (as he would like 
 to do) the whole advantage of his selfish dealings ; by 
 necessary competition, some of the gain would filter down 
 to other members of the community. Thus would the 
 interest of each conduce to the interest of all. This law of 
 harmony between "each" and "all" underlay the theory 
 and practice of laissez-faire. 
 
 Applied logically, this doctrine of " freedom " is revolu- 
 tionary, demanding access for all to land and capital. But 
 " the tools to him who can use them " is an inconvenient 
 doctrine for owners of tools who wish to get other folk 
 to use them. So this positive "freedom" was emptied of 
 its economic contents, and came to mean freedom qualified 
 by vested interests a very different sort of "freedom" for 
 the labouring classes. 
 
 However, even this negative conception of freedom was 
 fruitful of reforms. By helping to break down guild restric- 
 tions, old rules of apprenticeship, the law of settlement, it 
 facilitated adaptation of labour to new industrial conditions. 
 Improvements of Banking and the Credit System, and of 
 Joint Stock and Co-operative enterprise, enabled capital to 
 move more freely, and work more effectively. Various land 
 reforms, but partially accomplished, abolition of primogeni- 
 ture and entail, cheapening of transfer, freedom of cultivation, 
 etc., still lie along the paths of laissez-faire. 
 
 Two fundamental defects in this ideal of Industrial 
 Harmony will claim attention later on : (a) the notion that 
 Industrial Freedom is attained by mere removal of legal 
 restrictions ; (Z>) the notion that the added self-interests of 
 each make the common interest of all, even in the field of 
 material production. 
 
 3. The third characteristic of Manchesterism is already 
 made manifest. It takes a purely statical and mechanical 
 view of society. The conviction that there is one structure 
 of industrial society right for all nations and all ages was
 
 THE OLD POLITICAL ECONOMY SI 
 
 generally accepted. Once get a truly competitive society of 
 intelligent self-seekers, and all was accomplished. 
 
 The evolutionary idea had not yet been assimilated, either 
 from the study of history or of the natural sciences. Even 
 to-day the tendency to construct rigid and absolute " ideals," 
 and to seek to impose them upon the world of phenomena 
 as practical reforms, is the commonest of errors. 
 
 The real strength of the Political Economy I have described 
 consisted in the fact that it intellectually financed the Free 
 Trade Movement, and struck one powerful blow for the 
 practical freedom of the people in securing a "cheap loaf." 
 Free Trade meant that each nation would employ itself in 
 producing the goods for which it had the greatest natural 
 advantages, and that thus the largest aggregate of world 
 wealth would be produced. It also meant for England that, 
 by cheapening the price of food, labour could be subsisted 
 cheaply and wages kept low, while raw materials of manu- 
 facture would also be cheap. 
 
 The economic man as manufacturer was chiefly influenced 
 by these business motives, though we know that Cobden and 
 other leaders were genuinely inspired by wider and humaner 
 sentiments, believing that Free Trade meant the triumph of 
 truth and justice, and dreaming golden dreams of an age 
 when the economic harmony should bind nations as it bound 
 individuals in the holy bonds of a competitive brotherhood. 
 
 Upon this loaf and this vision of peace the Manchester 
 economics has lived ever since, until a time has come when 
 the loaf (in grain, at any rate) has become so cheap that 
 many are turning on Free Trade as the murderer of English 
 agriculture, while the vision of peace grows ever dimmer 
 in face of the ruthless fact that " modern wars are all for 
 markets." 
 
 Considered as an account of the older economics, this 
 summary is unavoidably defective. It gives too hard, too 
 rigidly mechanical, a view, and does some injustice to the
 
 32 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 humanity and kindliness of men \vlio in their time were 
 genuine social reformers. The points upon which stress has 
 here been laid do not appear so prominently in the writings 
 and speeches of these men. Yet for our purpose such treat- 
 ment is right and necessary. It is with the inability of the 
 older economics to meet the modern demands of the Social 
 Question that we are concerned, and for that reason it was 
 essential to insist upon the " inhumanity " of this school of 
 thought. The economic man, and the scheme of life into 
 which he fits, are not, as is sometimes suggested, figments 
 of the modern critical imagination ; they are true logical 
 contents of the economic thought of the makers of English 
 political economy.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE NEW POLITICAL ECONOMY 
 
 THE " old political economy " is often supposed to have passed 
 away. More modern teachers J. S. Mill, Cairnes, Jevons, 
 Marshall are believed to have " humanized " the study, and 
 made it no longer a vulgar tradesman's science, but a many- 
 sided, cultured, gentlemanly science, which conjoins accuracy 
 of thought and expression with the most generous sentiments, 
 which has ever a good word for education, patronizes trade 
 unionism and co-operation, and even admits that the clergy 
 are producers. 
 
 So liberal a study might even be competent to confront 
 the Social Question ! But is it ? I think that a closer 
 scrutiny of the modern writers will show that, in its essential 
 character, the old structure is still retained, the old dogmas 
 still dominant. There is not what religious people call "a 
 change of heart." Some considerable changes are, indeed, 
 perceptible. The simplicity and rigour of the old fabric 
 have gone ; pieces have been built on to hide the bareness ; 
 it has been painted and decorated to recommend it to more 
 modern tastes. 
 
 But the scope and method of political economy still render 
 it quite inadequate to our task. It is not really " humanized." 
 It is no easy thing to reform an individual thoroughly. To 
 reform a science is still more difficult. Half conscious of 
 the insufficiencies of the older study, our "moderns" have 
 not yet ventured upon " structural repairs," but have rather 
 
 33 D
 
 34 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 tinkered at the gaps and crevices. Some portions they have 
 enlarged and elaborated e.g. laws of supply and demand, 
 theory of rent ; other portions they have so altered and built 
 over that it is hard to say whether the old part stands or 
 not. For instance, you may ask the modern economist 
 whether wages are advanced out of capital, whether rent ever 
 enters into price, or whether demand for commodities is 
 demand for labour. He will wriggle and shuffle with com- 
 plicated verbiage, but will give no straight, intelligible answer. 
 
 The "Manchester" character of the science still survives 
 in the following essential features. 
 
 1. It is still a commercial science, with material, market- 
 able wealth as its main and dominant consideration. But, 
 whereas the older economists had commonly confined them- 
 selves to material wealth, the moderns usually admit some 
 non-material forms, floundering about hopelessly to get a 
 logical footing for them. The general idea is to extend 
 "wealth" so as to include all "marketable" goods. Yet, 
 curiously enough, none of the representative writers takes 
 the complete step. J. S. Mill, after defining wealth as "all 
 useful or agreeable things which possess exchangeable value," 
 and including human skill, persisted in excluding non-material 
 services which are bought and sold e.g. a musical perform- 
 ance, or professional advice on the ground that political 
 economy concerns itself only with " permanent utilities." * 
 
 Professor Marshall includes certain kinds of non-material 
 goods in the wealth of a person "those immaterial goods 
 which belong to him, are external to him, and serve directly 
 as the means of enabling him to acquire material goods." f 
 This last proviso curiously illustrates the survival of the 
 material standpoint. Marshall, moreover, definitely excludes 
 certain classes of saleable articles. Skill he excludes on the 
 ground that it is not "external," though he admits it may 
 
 * " Political Economy " (People's edition), Introduction, p. 6. 
 t " Principles of Political Economy," bk. ii. ch. ii.
 
 THE NEW POLITICAL ECONOMY 35 
 
 be included in a "broader definition of wealth, which has 
 indeed to be taken for certain purposes," though what pur- 
 poses he does not here or anywhere explain. Marshall also 
 excludes "services and other goods which pass out of exist- 
 ence in the same moment that they come into it." Thus, 
 while the materials of a dinner are wealth, the cooking and 
 the attendance are not, though the price paid for a dinner 
 lumps them together inseparably. 
 
 The notion of " permanency " as a condition of economic 
 wealth is a peculiarly weak survival of the narrower mate- 
 rialistic basis, lending itself to the most illogical distinctions. 
 There is clearly no such thing as permanency of economic 
 values, and any attempt to force definitions by laying stress 
 upon duration fails utterly to serve even the narrowest 
 purpose of commercial science. Is a cheese wealth, and an 
 omelette, which perishes as soon as it is made, not wealth? 
 Sidgwick is open to discover the illogic of excluding all 
 personal services : " There would seem to be a certain 
 absurdity in saying that people are poorer because they 
 cure their diseases by medical advice, instead of drugs; 
 improve their minds by hearing lectures, instead of reading 
 books ; guard their property by policemen, instead of man- 
 traps and spring-guns; or amuse themselves by hearing 
 songs, instead of looking at pictures." * But Sidgwick, on 
 grounds of usage, excludes "culture" from wealth, even 
 when regarded as a saleable commodity to be bought from 
 teachers, thus cutting out the whole of intellectual wealth. 
 And so, having quitted the narrow standpoint of material, 
 marketable goods, economists fail to obtain a sound logical 
 foothold by making wealth cover all kinds of saleable goods. 
 
 Their only agreement is in the definite exclusion of non- 
 marketable goods. As Sidgwick expressly excludes " culture," 
 so Marshall excludes " moral wealth," remarking that " the 
 affection of friends, for instance, is a good, but it is not 
 * " Principles of Political Economy," bk. ii. ch. Hi. sect. iv.
 
 36 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 ever reckoned as wealth, except by a poetic licence."* As 
 comment upon this, let me recall Matthew Arnold's words : 
 " Now, poetry is nothing else than the most perfect speech 
 of man that in which he comes nearest to being able to 
 utter the truth." 
 
 It must suffice to say that, even in the new and more 
 humane political economy, leisure, health, friendship, freedom, 
 love, knowledge, intellect, and virtue are excluded from 
 wealth, and are only taken account of as far as they are 
 means to the production of certain sorts of marketable wares. 
 
 2. Other motives besides the purely self-seeking ones of 
 the old "economic man" are generally admitted into the 
 modern scheme. Man is no longer regarded merely as a 
 "covetous machine" driven by greed and idleness. 
 
 But how is he treated ? Professor Cairnes shall tell us : 
 "Moral and religious considerations are to be taken into 
 account by the economist precisely in so far as they are 
 found, in fact, to affect the conduct of men in the pursuit 
 of wealth." f In other words, " allowance " is demanded 
 for the friction of non-economic forces in working out an 
 economic problem. With the logic of this method of 
 " allowances " I shall deal presently. Here it is enough to 
 reflect that moral and religious considerations are not to be 
 treated as having any meaning or worth in themselves, but 
 only as affecting "the pursuit of wealth." Does this place 
 economics on a human basis? 
 
 3. Production or accumulation of marketable wealth still 
 remains the backbone of " economics." This statement will 
 probably be disputed, and reference made to the formal 
 emphasis laid upon and the space assigned to distribution 
 in the current text-books. But this is quite illusory. No 
 consistent, no intelligible organic theory of distribution of 
 wealth is to be found in the modern English text-books. 
 
 * " Principles," bk. ii. ch. ii.' 
 
 t "Logical Method of Political Economy," p. 44.
 
 THE NEW POLITICAL ECONOMY 37 
 
 Taking Marshall and Nicholson as types of the ablest and 
 most advanced modern work, one may yet defy any reader 
 to find a unified theory of distribution which shall relate the 
 laws which are given to explain the several forces regulating 
 wages, rent, interest, and remuneration of management. No 
 general theory of the determination of the proportion of 
 produce falling to the several claimants is there set forth. 
 Nor is there any definite attempt to ascertain the bearing 
 of consumption upon production and distribution, either in 
 a quantitative or a qualitative way. We are sometimes told 
 as, for instance, by Jevons and his followers that " con- 
 sumption is the keystone of economic thinking ; " but beyond 
 a few platitudinous obiter dicta in favour of "plain living" 
 and in condemnation of luxury, or some quite general dis- 
 cussion about the influence of a good standard of comfort 
 upon efficiency, there is no attempt to go behind the market 
 value of desires to the organic results of different sorts and 
 quantities of consumption. 
 
 The theory of production is still the only strongly and 
 closely wrought portion of economic science. The attainment 
 of a large quantity of commercial goods is still the real 
 standpoint of what remains a distinctively industrial science. 
 
 If the modern text-books give some attention, as they 
 often do, to the human claims of workers, to the character 
 of labour, and the influence of industrial facts upon human 
 happiness or worth, this treatment is purely parenthetic, 
 and is not built into the body of the science. Taking 
 economic science as it stands in current English thought, 
 the changes of the last generation have not made it capable 
 of human service in the solution of the Social Question. 
 
 Regarded even as commercial science, it is very defective. 
 Consisting of a number of separate little theories some 
 deductively, some inductively derived it furnishes a singu- 
 larly ill-fitted and disjointed whole. The intellectual man, 
 or the reflecting business man, gets little satisfaction from
 
 38 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 it, for he cannot find the organic unity he seeks, and the 
 "laws" which are given do not show him commercial society 
 as a "going concern." There is neither logical consistency 
 nor actuality. Its very efforts to humanize itself have been 
 injurious. The old system was far more convincing. It 
 had a well-jointed system and a specious intellectuality, 
 which charmed so keen a mind as De Quincey's. 
 
 The Manchester framework still survives, but in a rickety 
 condition. The standard of wealth and value is still com- 
 mercial. Man still poses, along with capital and land, simply 
 as a factor of production a means and not an end. 
 
 In face of these facts, there is something half-humorou^ 
 half-pathetic in the efforts made by modern political economy 
 to assume a refined and cultivated aspect, like the successful 
 retired trader who buys pictures, grows orchids, subscribes 
 to the hunt, and does other polite and public-spirited things 
 to make himself agreeable. It has been a dismal failure. 
 Political economy has not succeeded in convincing and 
 winning the attention either of the cultured class or of the 
 practical reformer, because it has not really changed its 
 nature. 
 
 Half-civilized, like the inhabitants of some remote island 
 just known to foreign ships, it has stuck on bits of refine- 
 ment and humanity, and wears them like "foreign orna- 
 ments" a mortal offence to true aesthetic taste. A science 
 which still takes money as its standard of value, and 
 regards man as a means of making money, is, in the nature 
 of the case, incapable of facing the deep and complex human 
 problems which compose the Social Question.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 REQUISITES OF A SCIENCE OF WEALTH DEPOSITION OF THE 
 
 MONEY STANDARD 
 
 1^ order to transform political economy into a science of 
 human wealth, two vital changes are essential. The first 
 consists in the deposition of money and the substitution of 
 social utility as the standard of wealth. This can only be 
 achieved by several steps, the separate character of which 
 demands clear recognition. First we must substitute for 
 the objective commercial standard of money the subjective 
 human standard of efforts and satisfactions according to the 
 valuation of present individual feelings ; next, we must 
 adjust this imperfect valuation by reference to the real good 
 or worth of the individual life considered as a whole ; finally, 
 we must harmonize the good of the individual with the good 
 of society, taking social utility or satisfaction as a final 
 criterion. In working out the theory of valuation, we shall 
 not have to take these last two steps separately, if we hold, 
 as we surely must, that the real and total worth of the 
 individual life is determined by, and forms part of, the 
 worth of the larger social life ; but in concrete cases of 
 economy it is sometimes convenient to treat the individual 
 good as offering a possible standard of value. 
 
 The attempt to convert political economy into a calculus 
 of pleasures and pains in production and consumption has 
 been made several times, but has completely failed to shake 
 the supremacy of money as the standard of economic value. 
 
 39
 
 40 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 The part played by money in economic theory is scarcely 
 less important than the part played in economic practice. As 
 the business man is primarily engaged in " making money," so 
 the modern economist is engaged in making money theories. 
 Almost all the subtlest reasoning of modern economists is 
 devoted to this work : their chief energy is spent in per- 
 fecting, by means of a fresh combination of the cotton 
 spinner and the academic professor, a ne\v Manchesterism 
 in which bimetallism takes the place of free trade as the cure 
 for all the ills that trade is heir to. All the diverse efforts 
 given out by man in his daily work, along with the results 
 they yield, are referred to the yellow metal to gauge their 
 worth ; motives and achievements which cannot be expressed 
 in gold are ignored. The "fortune" of an individual, the 
 " prosperity " of a nation, is always thought and estimated in 
 terms of this same metal. 
 
 At the outset it may be well to realize how exceedingly 
 faulty money is, even regarded as a standard measure of 
 commercial values. 
 
 The so-called " appreciation " and " depreciation " are, in 
 reality, the least important of the defects which impair the 
 scientific worth of money as a commercial standard. 
 
 By including under wealth only things which are measured 
 by money, we make the concrete sphere of industrial science 
 a constantly shifting one. Whole classes of commodities 
 which, under one set of circumstances, rank as wealth, are, 
 under other circumstances, excluded, though the energy which 
 goes into their production and the use made of them are the 
 same. Domestic goods constantly pass into the condition 
 of commercial goods. Weaving, baking, brewing, and a 
 great number of home industries of last century have now 
 become definite branches of industry. In every society 
 important changes of this kind are always going on : goods 
 formerly made for private use are now made for sale. The 
 continual transfer of domestic to commercial wares makes
 
 REQUISITES OF A SCIENCE OF WEALTH 41 
 
 a wholly fictitious increase of wealth when represented in 
 money. 
 
 Again, by taking the money standard, political economists 
 are practically obliged to ignore some of the most important 
 forms of public wealth. A private road may be valued by 
 the toll it can take; a public road cannot be valued. The 
 river Thames, one of the largest assets of our national wealth 
 for purely commercial uses, is incapable of value. 
 
 But a still graver fallacy is exhibited in the case of what 
 are called "free goods." "Those goods are 'free 1 which 
 are not appropriated, and are afforded by nature without 
 requiring the effort of man." * Air, sunshine, scenery so 
 far as they are accessible certain fragments of land, are 
 still "free." Should we not be disposed to say that the 
 more of these "free goods" a nation has, the wealthier it 
 is, cceteris paribus? Yet the poorer it is, according to 
 political economy. For when a free good ceases to be free, 
 and to serve the use and enjoyment of all, and becomes 
 private property, it ranks for the first time as wealth and 
 swells the national assets ! The squire who filches a piece 
 of common land, the Scotch-American millionaire who 
 encloses a mountain and charges travellers for a right of 
 way, has increased the wealth of the community. "The 
 land in its original state," says Marshall, " was a free gift 
 of nature." f Yet each withdrawal of this free gift, each 
 assertion of exclusive property in land, has made the nation 
 richer in terms of economic measurement ! 
 
 Since the owner of land is ipso facto, as well as legally, 
 the owner of air and water, sunshine and scenery, these 
 things are everywhere becoming commercial goods ; pure 
 air and sunlight are taken out of the lives of the mass of 
 industrial workers; from being "free goods" accessible to 
 all they have become luxuries utterly beyond the purse of 
 
 * Mill, " Principles of Political Economy," bk. ii. ch. ii. 
 t " Principles," p. 107.
 
 42 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 the poorer dwellers in our cities. We derive but a cold 
 "economic" comfort from knowing that the value of the 
 city lands (and rents) has grown in just proportion as the 
 access to air and sunshine is diminished. 
 
 This opens up a root-fallacy. The money value of a 
 thing is what one must pay to get it. This sum depends 
 directly upon the importance to a person of getting the 
 particular article he buys. Now, if there exists great plenty 
 of a commodity say bread it is a matter of comparative 
 indifference to him whether he gets a particular loaf (for he 
 can easily get another) ; so he will not have to pay much 
 for it ; he will get it cheap. If, on the other hand, there is 
 scarcity, it is a matter of importance to get a particular loaf 
 (for the supply may run out) ; therefore, he will pay high. 
 
 Yet a loaf may have " cost " no more to make, may yield 
 no more use in consumption, in one case than in the other. 
 Where " scarcity " enters in to determine value, a small stock 
 may be worth as much money as a large stock. Economi- 
 cally, in terms of commercial wealth, the destruction of tons 
 of fish or fruit at Billingsgate or Covent Garden, so as not 
 " to spoil the market," at a time when thousands are starving, 
 is a matter of indifference. 
 
 Can we, then, reasonably take money as a true standard 
 of objective commercial wealth? Rightly speaking, money 
 measures, not wealth, but want. Convert free goods into 
 commercial goods, competitive commercial goods into mono- 
 polies ; make it more difficult for those who need a commodity 
 to get hold of it; you are thereby increasing the money 
 value of each article of supply. 
 
 An assessment of individual or national possessions in 
 money values, therefore, gives no information whatever as to 
 the actual quantities of consumable goods which are thus 
 valued. When, therefore, we are told that the wealth of 
 England has increased so many fold during this century, or 
 when a comparison is made in money between the commercial
 
 REQUISITES OF A SCIENCE OF WEALTH 43 
 
 prosperity of England and some other country, the accuracy 
 supposed to adhere to rightly-ordered statistics is wholly 
 illusory. We are engaged in measuring widely different 
 things by a standard which can by its nature furnish no 
 indication of the extent of its inadequacy to the task. 
 
 These defects of the money standard lie upon the thres- 
 hold of our inquiry. 
 
 Let us suppose none of these difficulties to arise, and 
 that the yellow metal was a faithful register of changes of 
 all sorts of commercial goods. 
 
 We should then have a true commercial standard, but we 
 should be hardly any nearer to the standard we need for 
 social purposes. Statistics of money values would present 
 no record of any human facts. In 1770 Arthur Young 
 reckoned the income of England to be .120,000,000; in 
 1901 the income may be roughly set down at .1,600,000,000. 
 Making correct allowances for population and for prices, 
 this growth of income would signify a large increase of 
 commodities per head; but would it tell us that we are 
 working and living so much better than our ancestors ? Or, 
 confining our attention to the first step of the humanizing 
 process, would it tell us that the balance of pleasures over 
 pains for the average man was greater? 
 
 It could give us no such information. The figures might 
 imply that we were simply making greater drudges of 
 ourselves, toiling harder than before after commercial goods 
 under conditions of work which disabled us from making a 
 more pleasant or a more profitable use of our increased 
 possessions than our forefathers made of their smaller stock. 
 I do not suggest that this is so ; the presumption may be 
 to the contrary. My point is that the figures can form 
 no basis of judgment. 
 
 The same will hold of individual incomes ; the knowledge 
 that a man's income has increased from ,1000 to ,5000 
 a year tells us nothing of his gain, even according to the
 
 44 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 narrowest utilitarian calculus. The very effort of getting a 
 larger fortune may be the cause of a corresponding disability 
 to get pleasure from its use. 
 
 In order to estimate the human value, in the narrowest 
 connotation of the term, attaching to the national income 
 of <!, 600,000,000, we must identify this sum of money, not 
 with the commercial goods and services to which it refers, 
 but with the pains and pleasures involved in their production 
 and consumption. The prices of separate goods and services 
 which form the items of the national income, and out of 
 which it is paid to those who receive it as personal income, 
 are determined, according to political economy, by the 
 relations between cost of production and utility of consump- 
 tion. But neither of these terms has any direct reference 
 to human feelings of pleasure and pain, still less to any 
 standard of true human life. 
 
 Our first requisite is to reduce them to these terms. 
 
 First, let us deal with cost. "Cost" in business, and 
 often still in political economy, means merely the monetary 
 expenses of production, the quantity of money workers were 
 able to insist on getting as a condition of giving their labour, 
 and capitalists as a condition of giving use of capital. Even 
 where "cost" is distinguished from "expenses," and is ap- 
 plied to measure directly the amount of labour-force given 
 out in production, as distinguished from the price paid for 
 it, that labour-force is still estimated by references to some 
 non-human objective standard, so many horse-power, so 
 many foot-tons, so many labour-hours. This does not give 
 us what we need. If I know how many foot-tons or average 
 working-days have gone into a particular piece of work, the 
 building of a wall, the making of an engine, I am still no 
 nearer to knowing the actual painful effort, or the waste of 
 life, which this amount represents. The measure is not yet 
 a subjective one. 
 
 In order to humanize a bill of "costs," to reduce the
 
 REQUISITES OF A SCIENCE OF WEALTH 45 
 
 statement in terms of cash to terms of life, we require three 
 pieces of information, none of which is ascertainable by the 
 objective quantitative method which political economy 
 generally applies. 
 
 The steps needed to convert " costs " and " utilities " from 
 terms of cash into terms of human life are the following : 
 
 1. The character of the work or effort which goes into 
 the making of the " goods " must be known. Some work is 
 essentially degrading and brutalizing in the nature of the 
 effort it requires, like that of the iron-puddler. Other work 
 is so dangerous to health or so injurious to character that 
 only ignorance or penury induces workers to undertake it. 
 Such "cost" it ought not to be possible to buy. In the 
 human sense this work never "pays 11 i.e. the true "cost" 
 always outweighs the utility of the product. Political econo- 
 mists draw up estimates of the expenses of different qualities 
 of supply, and so form a schedule of supply-prices, the prices 
 at which various quantities of a given class of goods can be 
 put upon the market. On this plan they will draw you a 
 scale of supply-prices for white lead or phosphorus matches, 
 so much for one hundredweight, so much for two hundred- 
 weight, and so on. But does this method yield any service- 
 able information as to human cost? 
 
 It is, indeed, suggested in economic text- books that the 
 inconvenient or dangerous element in a trade is represented 
 by a higher rate of wages. The suggestion is not a whit 
 borne out by facts. But, if it were, it would not be possible 
 by any higher scale of wages to pay the cost of necrosis in 
 the match trade, or the cost of phthisis in the Belfast linen 
 trade. No true equation is possible between money and 
 life. The most careful statist cannot construct the schedule 
 of human supply-prices. No man or woman economically 
 competent to enter a "free"" contract would work under 
 existing conditions in white lead or linen. The lives of 
 these unfortunate workers are simply not paid for; they do
 
 46 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 not rank among expenses of production. There is no parity 
 of cost between such work and the labour of the skilled 
 craftsman working under wholesome conditions upon material 
 whose handling evokes his genuine interest and skill work 
 which is in its nature educating and humanizing. Take 
 the highest form of work, that of the artist or the literary 
 creator; the effort of production here, though taxing the 
 vital powers, may be in itself a pleasurable and ennobling 
 exercise. Between these two extremes lies the bulk of work. 
 But the wages which the different classes of workers respec- 
 tively receive tell next to nothing of the human cost. 
 
 2. In order to know the real cost represented by .1000 
 of textile goods, we must know not only the quantity of 
 labour power (measured objectively) and the conditions under 
 which it is given out, but how it is distributed among the 
 workers. If it is shared among a large number of able-bodied 
 men or women during a reasonably short working-day, the 
 cost may be light. If it is sweated out of a small number 
 of enfeebled workers, driven to a high intensity of effort 
 during a long working day, supplemented by overtime, the 
 cost is immeasurably greater. The most interesting work 
 becomes a painful toil if continued too long ; the most toil- 
 some work is comparatively light and wholesome if given 
 out in small quantities. 
 
 3. The industrial nature, strength, skill, etc., of the 
 workers must be known. Labour which involves but a slight 
 painful effort on adult males during a normal working-day 
 may involve a far heavier subjective "cost" if it is executed 
 under similar conditions by women or children. In practice 
 this consideration would involve considerable complexity of 
 treatment. Race, sex, age, are only three of the most 
 important factors in the problem. Some of the gravest social 
 questions depend for their solution upon a recognition of 
 these factors in subjective cost as, for example, the right 
 apportionment of work between the sexes and between adult
 
 REQUISITES OF A SCIENCE OF WEALTH 47 
 
 and child labour. Where labour which might fall lightly 
 upon adult shoulders is for some consideration of individual 
 gain imposed upon the stunted bodies and the unripened 
 strength of half-timers, the social cost is incalculably great. 
 But this cost does not appear in the price of cotton-cloth. 
 Not only sex and age, but individual differences of strength 
 and skill, will of course involve a difference in the subjective 
 "cost" which a given quantity of objective cost imposes. 
 
 If a manufacturer shows you a quantity of goods, and 
 tells you how much they cost to produce, he gives you no 
 information of human interest; even if he told you how 
 many hours of labour were represented in the cost, you would 
 still know nothing. You would want to know how heavily 
 the burden actually fell upon each of those who contributed, 
 how many men, women, and children worked, what the hours 
 of labour and other conditions were in each case. 
 
 " Cost " must be reduced to terms of life. Only when it 
 is recognized that all cost is expenditure of life, and that 
 every consumer, by each act of purchase, is exerting a direct 
 power of life or death over a class of producers, shall we 
 get a truly scientific grasp of the relations between producer 
 and consumer in industrial society. To reduce economic cost 
 to human cost you require therefore to know 
 
 1. The character and condition of the work. 
 
 2. The distribution of the work. 
 
 3. The capacities of the workers. 
 
 A corresponding analysis must be applied to economic 
 " utility." The knowledge that the " utilities " contained in 
 the mass of goods and services which constitutes the national 
 income are estimated at ,1,600,000,000 has no human 
 content. 
 
 1. We must first refer these goods and services to some 
 standard of wealth or "illth" in Buskin's sense. In this 
 ,1,600,000,000 are included large masses of adulterated 
 foods, shoddy clothing, bad books, pernicious art, snobbish
 
 48 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 personal services. These rank as economic wealth, and 
 political economy does not profess to go behind their 
 money values. So long as there are persons who are ignorant, 
 or vicious, or vulgar, and who are willing and able to back 
 their ignorance, vice, or vulgarity, by the use of money, these 
 things rank as wealth. Ruskin presses this point with keen 
 and accurate insistence, that the human value or true worth 
 of a thing consists in, and is measured by, its life-sustaining 
 and life-improving qualities. But it must be admitted that 
 Ruskin is too absolute in his declaration of the inherent and 
 invariable nature of wealth : 
 
 "The value of a thing is independent of opinion and of quantity. 
 Think what you will of it, gain how much you may of it, the value of the 
 thing itself is neither greater nor less. For ever it avails, or avails not ; 
 no estimate can raise, no disdain repress, the power which it holds from 
 the Maker of things and of men." * 
 
 By thus making value attach as a permanent immutable 
 property, Ruskin falls into an error similar to that which he 
 assails, and one inconsistent with the tenor of his teaching. 
 The value of a thing, in the sense of its power of contributing 
 to human welfare, is not "independent" either of opinion 
 or of quantity. Although the opinion of a low-class toper, 
 that fusel-oil is an admirable beverage, may not make it 
 so, or rightly entitle it to rank as a "value," it is also 
 evident that the "value" of a thing will depend upon how 
 much good the consumers are able to get out of it, and that 
 this is no fixed quantity. Many articles of consumption 
 which, in a highly-cultivated society, might rank as " illth," 
 implying tendencies which are retrograde, might help to 
 raise and educate a society of a much less developed sort. 
 Low-class books or theatres, low-class forms of religion, which 
 may injure people who have attained a certain standard of 
 life, may be a genuine means of enlightenment to a people 
 
 * " Unto this Last," p. 118.
 
 REQUISITES OF A SCIENCE OF WEALTH 49 
 
 living at a lower level. Ruskin ignored the evolutionary j 
 character of society. 
 
 2. Utility, like cost, will vary according to distribution. 
 Food will vary in true utility from infinity to a minus 
 quantity, according as it goes to feed a starving person or 
 a glutton. Estimating the whole bread supply according to 
 human " utility," it is evident that, while the first portion 
 of the supply has an infinite value, the last portion has 
 no value, since servants throw it into the dustbin. It is, 
 therefore, evident that Ruskin is inaccurate when he urges 
 that the human " value " of a thing is independent of 
 quantity. 
 
 Turning, then, to the <!, 600,000,000, we see that we 
 can make no estimate of the human welfare it contains 
 until we know how the goods it represents are apportioned 
 among the different members of the community. The value 
 of each portion depends on the nature and intensity of the 
 want it goes to satisfy. If any portion goes to satisfy the 
 most real and urgent want, then it attains its maximum 
 value in a given condition of society ; if it goes otherwise, 
 there is waste. Thus it is evident that, so long as any 
 member of the community is without a "necessary," the 
 distribution which assigns to any other member a " comfort " 
 involves primajacie a net waste from the social standpoint. 
 A given quantity of commercial wealth will thus vary in 
 utility indefinitely with the mode of its apportionment. 
 
 3. In order to ascertain the real "utility" contained in 
 a stock of commodities, we must know not merely how 
 they are to be distributed, but what kind of persons they 
 are who will consume them. None of the higher or more 
 refined kinds of modern commodities would have any " value" 
 for a barbarous race, however rightly distributed. You may 
 increase the wealth of a nation far more effectively by 
 educating the consumer than by increasing the efficiency of 
 the producer. All true education raises value by increasing 
 

 
 50 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 the vital service to be got out of something. This common- 
 place is often overlooked by political economy. The utility 
 of higher forms of wealth depends almost wholly upon the 
 number and character of the " consumers." Take a picture 
 which ranks as an asset of 1000 in the national wealth. If 
 it is bought up by a vulgar plutocrat for his private gallery, 
 it may be no " wealth, 11 but " illth,"" serving to feed certain 
 evil propensities of greed and ostentation. If it hangs in 
 the public gallery of a money-ridden people, uneducated in 
 the enjoyment of forms of beauty, their finer feelings blunted 
 by coarse lives, its utility may still be very small. But if 
 such a people can be educated, refined, and endowed with the 
 sense of beauty, a value or utility is imparted to the picture 
 which is incalculably great, as it becomes a formative influence 
 of national character. It surely belongs to political economy 
 to ascertain how far there is a tendency for these concrete 
 potentialities of wealth to pass into the possession of those 
 who are able to use them or into the hands of those who 
 are " inherently and eternally incapable of wealth " ? 
 
 In order, then, to know how much real " utility " or 
 human satisfaction is represented by the concrete " utilities " 
 of the national income, we require to know 
 
 1. What the goods and services are? 
 
 2. Who will get the use of them ? 
 
 3. How far the actual consumers are capable of getting 
 the highest use out of them ?
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE TRANSITION FROM " IS " TO " OUGHT " 
 
 OUR search for a science and an art competent to face the 
 Social Question has required us to depose the objective 
 money standard adopted by political economy, and to sub- 
 stitute a subjective standard of human feelings. It has, 
 furthermore, obliged us to refer current feelings of individuals 
 for their true valuation to a standard of true or absolute 
 utility regarded from the social standpoint. The significance 
 of the earlier of these two steps and its defence are already 
 patent; the validity, and perhaps the feasibility, of the 
 latter step, which have for convenience been assumed in the 
 foregoing analysis, will be gravely questioned by many who 
 will perceive that it imports into "economic science," as 
 commonly understood, some wider standard which is either 
 biological or ethical, or both. It is one thing, they will 
 allege, to reduce "costs 11 and "utilities" from terms of 
 
 O 3 
 
 money to terms of human feeling. That is, indeed, a step 
 which there is a growing inclination among " philosophical " 
 economists to take. It is quite another thing to introduce 
 a standard of valuation from outside to refer every " is " 
 to an " ought." 
 
 Now, though it is not difficult to perceive at a glance 
 that any science competent to touch the Social Question, 
 or indeed any question conceived as social, must introduce 
 some test for the worth of feelings which will be regarded 
 as ethical, this express subordination of the sphere of econo- 
 mics to a wider science deserves a separate justification upon 
 theoretic grounds. Such justification, however, will be 
 
 51
 
 52 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 more completely undertaken when a statement has first been 
 made of the nature of the second of the two radical changes 
 in the scope of political economy required for our purpose 
 viz. the enlargement from a science of "getting and spend- 
 ing" to a comprehensive science of human efforts and satis- 
 factions interpreted in terms of social good. 
 
 Professor Marshall does not, of course, deny that the 
 activities of getting and spending overlap and commingle 
 with other activities of human life ; but he defends his 
 detachment of them, so as to make them the subject-matter 
 of a separate science, on the ground that they form "a 
 fairly homogeneous group." * Now, we have here a clear 
 issue of fact. Are these phenomena of getting and spending 
 so "fairly homogeneous" i.e. so much like one another and 
 so unlike other phenomena that a study claiming to be a 
 separate science can be conveniently made of them? It 
 must be allowed, at the outset, to be entirely a matter of 
 " convenience," for, to the philosophic mind, there can be 
 only one science the science of everything. 
 
 " Little flower, but and if I understood 
 What thou art, root and all, and all in all, 
 I should know what God and man are." 
 
 When any group of closely-related phenomena is detached 
 for treatment in a specialized science, this detachment, 
 though essential for detailed accuracy of investigation, always 
 involves an unknown sacrifice of wider exactitude by the 
 break-up of organic unity required for the specialization. 
 In some instances the sacrifice is justified by the results; in 
 other cases it is not. Is the specialization of the phenomena 
 of "getting and spending" so justified? An answer to 
 such a question almost necessarily implies an act of individual 
 judgment, the full ground of which cannot be stated. It 
 appears to me that, for the purposes of a commercial science, 
 in which either the accumulation of money-measured goods 
 * " Principles," bk. i. ch. v. sect. iv. (edn. ii.).
 
 THE TRANSITION FROM "IS" TO "OUGHT" 53 
 
 or the accumulation of money is taken as an end, and the 
 phenomena to be studied are considered in relation to this 
 end, such a segregation is distinctly valid. Man can reason- 
 ably, for these particular purposes, be regarded as a self- 
 seeking, an " economic " man, buying in the cheapest, selling 
 in the dearest, markets. The allowances of non-economic 
 motives required will be comparatively trivial, and can be 
 measured in their effect upon economic actions, while the 
 whole set of phenomena for the purpose in hand can be 
 quantitatively expressed. 
 
 Such an " economic science" can investigate the economy 
 of manufactures and of all productive activities which take 
 definite " business " forms. It can collect and order under 
 laws the groups of facts which relate to the structure and 
 functions of different trades and markets, of businesses within 
 the trade, and can examine, from the purely economic stand- 
 point, the relations of the capital, labour, and organizing 
 power which constitute the business. Even in these inquiries 
 some difficulties of allowance and of reduction of non- 
 economic factors which interfere will recur so frequently as 
 to hamper the " accuracy " of the results. It is only when 
 we turn from industrial facts to their reflection in book- 
 keeping or money that we get the semblance of an exact 
 science. It is the craving for exactitude, and a reluctant 
 admission that it can only be satisfied in the monetary side 
 of " economics," that is driving most specialists in the science 
 to devote themselves to questions of currency, prices, and 
 taxation. 
 
 There is a monetary science which, when its foggy prin- 
 ciples are made clear and its statistical facts well ascertained 
 (a probably remote consummation), will be " exact." There 
 is also a science of industry which is far less exact, because 
 industry merges on one side into certain fine arts, on the 
 other into certain domestic or personal productive activities, 
 which cannot be separated from it, and which keep the
 
 54 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 edges of industry, as a department of life, continually blurred 
 and changing in outline. It may even be admitted that 
 these industrial and monetary facts and their laws are 
 sufficiently nearly related to one another, and sufficiently 
 separate from other facts and laws, to form the basis of a 
 science of economics. 
 
 This is all that some economists would claim. But one 
 thing must be made plain. Such a science by its necessary 
 limits can afford no satisfaction to any "human" curiosity, 
 can contribute no answer to a social question. It must 
 adhere closely to the monetary valuation. 
 
 The attempt which is made in some quarters to frame a 
 Science of Social Economics by retaining the present scope 
 of economic subject-matter, and reducing the industrial 
 and financial facts to their true "social" import, is of very 
 dubious validity. 
 
 For, though we may legitimately detach the "business 
 life" of a community for separate study, taking the objective 
 view of business and the monetary standard, as soon as we 
 interpret " business" in subjective terms of effort and satisfac- 
 tion, or vital value, we are confronted with serious difficulties 
 in effecting the detachment of the phenomena from the other 
 parts of human life. So long as we confine our attention to 
 the processes of earning and spending money-incomes, a 
 Science of Business is possible. But when we proceed to 
 explore the inner bearings and reactions of these processes, 
 to ask, How does this kind of work affect the health and 
 character of the worker and his family ? how does this kind 
 of consumption affect the moral life of the consumer? the 
 larger unity of the human organism, both in its physiological 
 and its psychological aspects, everywhere intrudes. 
 
 Even in the objective Science of Business the task is not 
 easy when we pass outside the more sordid industrial or com- 
 mercial activities. 
 
 An artist, for example, is necessarily engaged in getting
 
 THE TRANSITION FROM "IS" TO "OUGHT" 55 
 
 and in spending money. In this capacity he is amenable to 
 mercenary motives. But is there any right way of separating, 
 for purposes of economic science, his business aspect of life from 
 his intellectual and spiritual aspects? Would the closest 
 study of facts in art or literature, or in any of the highest 
 forms of work, enable us to apply the law of supply and 
 demand so as to draw a schedule indicating the effect of an 
 increase of ten, twenty, or thirty per cent, respectively in the 
 amount of money spent in books or pictures ? If it were 
 possible to do this with some rough approach to accuracy in 
 a monetary business science, it would be quite impossible to 
 do so if the results with which you were concerned were the 
 pleasure of the artist and of the public, or the real social 
 service in good work and good enjoyment, which accrued 
 from the increased expenditure of money. It is not here a 
 question of a mere quantitative change : everything depends 
 on the kind of work evoked by the increased expenditure, 
 and the kind of satisfaction it yields in its production and 
 its enjoyment. We are here concerned with reactions upon 
 the whole nature of individuals and of society resulting from 
 the subjective influences of an external business force. The 
 science of getting and spending will be very difficult to work 
 where idleness and greed are not the dominant motives, 
 where they may even come to be merely qualifying influences 
 which temper the desire to do good work or to get fame. 
 But when we penetrate more deeply beneath the monetary 
 valuations of " cost " and " utility " in works of art to the 
 subjective facts that are involved, the utter inadequacy of 
 the application of such an economic science becomes apparent. 
 When we examine costs and utilities as vital values, we 
 cannot examine them apart from the organic complexes in 
 which they inhere. This applies not only to the case of works 
 of art or other production in itself interesting, lovable, and 
 educative, but to every part of industry. The money-getting 
 and spending as objective activities may be conveniently
 
 56 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 separated from others, and may be the subject of a sepa- 
 rate science ; but the conscious life which they express, 
 the real subjective import which they bear, does not show 
 them separate or separable, but organically interwoven with 
 other feelings and other intellectual activities. Even the 
 worker compelled by circumstances to confine his energies 
 most closely to money-getting is yet constantly engaged in 
 conscious processes where the mercenary motive is combined 
 with and modified by others. The love of leisure, fealty to 
 comrades, some sense of duty, some malice against an employer, 
 co-operate with the desire to earn money. So, in consump- 
 tion, there is a constant balancing of free against commercial 
 goods ; the free library competes with the public-house, the 
 County Council band with the music-hall, home duties with 
 gambling. 
 
 It is possible for a purely commercial science with a 
 monetary standard to insist upon including all these forces 
 just in so far as they are expressible in money. Wonderful 
 things can doubtless be done in the way of money measure- 
 ment. Love of natural scenery may be very accurately 
 measured against proximity to a railway-station in the rent 
 of houses ; piety, as attested by subscription to a mission, 
 may be very closely compared with the relish of a dinner. 
 Most complicated combinations of advantages or disadvan- 
 tages can thus be reduced to a common measure. 
 
 So long as we take the money standard as final, the 
 "allowance" system which the economists support may 
 succeed. But when we come to the intrinsic wealth, or 
 " filth," this " separatist " policy utterly breaks down. Not 
 merely shall we regard "the affection of friends" as one 
 of the highest forms of wealth, but, in considering industrial 
 changes, we shall find one of the chief gains of a better 
 industrial order in the increase of this affectional wealth 
 by the removal of bitter business antagonisms and their 
 degrading influence upon the character. Looking to human
 
 THE TRANSITION FROM "IS" TO "OUGHT" 57 
 
 costs and utilities, we shall everywhere perceive free and 
 uncommercial elements commingling and fusing with the 
 commercial elements both in work and life. Can we, then, 
 in a true social economy maintain the separation of getting 
 and spending from other vital parts of conduct, and recog- 
 nize its phenomena as comprising a "fairly homogeneous 
 group " ? 
 
 My contention is, that so long as Economics confines 
 itself to the study of industry as a group of objective 
 phenomena, valued by a monetary standard, its status as a 
 science is justified; but as soon as it affects to go behind 
 these industrial phenomena to a direct consideration of 
 human motives and human welfare, its separatist status 
 breaks down. A scientific treatment of human costs and 
 utilities, whether the measure be passing desirability, as 
 attested by present pleasures and pains, or some wider 
 standard of good life, requires that an attempt be made to 
 treat simultaneously the whole of the vital factors involved. 
 In dealing with human motives, or the inner side of 
 conduct, the " allowance system " will not work. You 
 cannot say : " We will first settle this issue as an economic 
 problem a question of s. d. ; then we will take into 
 consideration other circumstances political, hygienic, 
 aesthetic, moral, in their turn ; and, bringing the results 
 together, work out a solution." 
 
 Let us clearly state the issue. It is this : Can the 
 science and art of social life be broken up into several 
 sciences and arts, or must its unity be preserved, if true 
 knowledge and sound policy are to be attained ? 
 
 The domination which the physical sciences have ob- 
 tained over scientific method has imposed the idea that 
 the separatist or specialist method is both ^ valid and 
 profitable, with the result that the process of intellectual 
 segmentation has no limits set upon it, the "science" of 
 one generation becoming the several sciences of the next,
 
 58 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 and these again splitting each into smaller separate 
 sciences. 
 
 This is often represented as right and inevitable. 
 "This is the mode in which science must necessarily 
 proceed,"" wrote J. S. Mill. Professor Marshall, whose 
 hankerings after humanity continually break the rigour of 
 his mathematical proclivities, seems at times half-conscious 
 of the weakness of the separatist method. His pamphlet 
 upon " The Present Position of Economics," gives away the 
 whole logical position with ingenuous felicity. " It is vain 
 to speak of the higher authority of a unified social science. 
 No doubt, if that existed, economics would gladly find 
 shelter under its wing. But it does not exist; it shows no 
 signs of coming into existence. There is no use in waiting 
 idly for it; we must do what we can with our present 
 resources."" * The denial of the existence of a Social Science 
 is somewhat peremptory ; surely some ordered knowledge of 
 social structure and social growth has emerged from the 
 "great deep sacred infinitude of nescience/' If, as is sug- 
 gested, the knowledge of certain groups of social facts 
 to wit, economic facts has advanced further than the 
 knowledge of certain other groups, it by no means follows 
 that this vanguard can march safely on in cheerful self- 
 reliance, leaving far behind other groups of facts with 
 which it is organically related. May it not be more 
 profitable, even so far as economic knowledge is concerned, 
 to labour at bringing up the rear-guard of obscurer know- 
 ledge into line with the more advanced section ? Not a 
 few earnest seekers after economic truth believe that " what 
 we can do with our present resources" is very little, and 
 that the reason why it is so little is the insistence which 
 Economics makes in separating itself from its more 
 backward friends, and endeavouring to make for itself a 
 selfish and a fundamentally illicit career in the intellectual 
 
 * Pa-e 35.
 
 THE TRANSITION FROM "IS" TO "OUGHT" 59 
 
 world. In the passage quoted, Professor Marshall puts the 
 separation as a mere matter of convenience, not denying 
 the superior logical validity of the wider treatment. But, 
 proceeding, he waxes bolder, and insists that the breaking- 
 up of social science into sciences is the right order of 
 procedure. "For common sense does not deal with a 
 complex problem as a whole. Its first step is to break the 
 problem up into its several parts ; it then discusses one set of 
 considerations after anotlier, and finally it sums up and gives 
 its conclusions. The fact which Comte seems to have 
 ignored is that the human mind has no other method of 
 inquiry than this: that a complex problem is broken up 
 into its component parts less methodically, indeed, but no 
 less completely, by common sense than by formal inquiry. 
 When it is broken up, each separate part offers a foothold 
 to treatment by a special scientific organon, if there be one 
 ready." * 
 
 Now, the fallacy of this reasoning may be indicated by 
 saying that it proposes a purely mechanical treatment of a 
 distinctively organic problem. The method of breaking a 
 problem up into parts, discussing one set of circumstances 
 after another, and " summing up," indicates that the problem 
 is regarded as a mechanical composition of forces. In 
 investigating the working of a machine you can take it to 
 pieces, examine each part separately, observe its single 
 function, make allowance for the friction of each process, 
 then fit it together and examine its action as a whole. 
 
 You can do this with a mechanism, but not with an 
 organism, when your business is to consider it as an 
 organism ; for the very first process of breaking it into its 
 several parts destroys the very object of your investigation. 
 The "considerations" are not arranged in separate "sets" 
 as Marshall requires ; and generically different factors, 
 constituting an organic whole, cannot be "summed up" as 
 
 * Paaje 36.
 
 60 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 if they were mathematical quantities. It is distinctly 
 untrue that "the human mind has no other method of 
 inquiry." Oliver Wendell Holmes says that "mathematics 
 breed a despotic way of thinking." In the present in- 
 stance this despotism of mathematics has developed into 
 monopoly. Of a greedy man the Americans say, " he wants 
 the earth." Professor Marshall wants the whole intellectual 
 world for his quantitative method. So far as economics 
 is a getting and spending of money, his method will apply ; 
 but social science cannot be treated in this fashion. The 
 method cannot be applied to man, as an individual, or to 
 society, because these are organisms, the organic unity of 
 which is involved in every action of each part. The first 
 act of breaking off a single part for separate investigation 
 destroys the validity of the inquiry by altering, to an extent 
 which is ex hypothesi unknown, the nature of the very object 
 of special investigation. No doubt "common sense" does 
 try to deal with a complex problem in this way, and that 
 is precisely why, whenever the problem is of an organic 
 character, common sense lamentably fails. 
 
 Comte was a philosopher, and, like all who have 
 attained a philosophic grasp of the social problem, he 
 refused to split it into component parts, knowing that by 
 so doing he would commit philosophic suicide. The 
 inorganic sciences admit the segregation of fairly homo- 
 geneous facts, giving us astronomy, geology, chemistry, 
 physics, etc., though everywhere overlapping qualifies the 
 legitimacy of the breaking into parts. In dealing with 
 organic life we may assign to separate departments certain 
 groups of facts which do not directly or chiefly involve the 
 organic life as, for example, agricultural chemistry, or even 
 anatomy. But when we enter the organic studies we must 
 adopt the biological standpoint, and study the life as a 
 whole, the only specialism which is logically justifiable being 
 the separation of genera, or species, the interdependence of
 
 THE TRANSITION FROM IS" TO "OUGHT' 61 
 
 which is not too close. The highest order of organism, 
 human life in society, must be studied as a whole for 
 distinctively scientific results to be attained. The constant 
 minute interaction of all the parts in social life renders 
 their separate investigation impossible where the inquiry is 
 related to the oneness of the organism, as is the case where 
 conduct is involved. This does not mean that we may not 
 study separate groups of human facts. Such a conclusion 
 would, indeed, be absurd. We may, and obviously must, 
 conduct special inquiries into separate parts of an organism. 
 But it is, I think, unwise to call such separate investiga- 
 tions of conveniently-selected groups of facts "sciences." 
 In human physiology we may make a separate study of 
 the more intricate phenomena of the alimentary or the 
 respiratory system, but we shall be wise not to speak of 
 a science of the alimentary or of the respiratory organs, 
 because the organic relation between the two, and the con- 
 nection with other orders of physiological phenomena, is so 
 close that the only classification of "fairly homogeneous" 
 facts is under the science of human physiology. So, in 
 studying man as a conscious organism (assuming that con- 
 scious may be fairly separated from unconscious factors), 
 separate investigation and collection of groups of phenomena 
 distinctively aesthetic, political, moral, economic, may be 
 usefully conducted, and laws of their occurrence traced ; but 
 the need of bringing together and conducting as a whole 
 the wider inquiry for the purposes of science is paramount. 
 To pretend that separate sciences exist of economics, ethics, 
 politics, aesthetics, relating to the subjective side of the 
 phenomena, is a most unfortunate pretence, which has 
 proved most prejudicial to the utility of science in directing 
 human conduct. The conspicuous failure to keep boundaries 
 is admitted by every clear-headed student of ethics, 
 aesthetics, politics, etc. each of these is incessantly 
 apologetic for stepping ultra vires. Such transgression is
 
 62 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 essential to preserve any semblance of actuality. So 
 economists are frequently found pressing considerations of 
 moral import, discussing the influence of work on character, 
 the injustice appertaining to industrial practices, the non- 
 economic effects of leisure and education, etc., quite 
 independently of their bearing upon "getting and 
 spending. 1 ' The verbal boundaries put up by specialist 
 treatises on ethics and politics are passed over on every 
 page wherever conduct is in question. Perhaps the best 
 testimony to the utter inadequacy of the separatist method 
 for " economic science " in its human character is an appeal 
 to the economic treatises which have addressed themselves 
 to influence conduct. The writings of Arnold Toynbee, 
 or, still more conspicuously, the admirable treatment of 
 "The Slave Power" by Cairnes, indicate the necessity of 
 fusing the " social sciences " where any social problem of a 
 practical nature is to be faced. 
 
 No doubt "common sense" and Professor Marshall find 
 it more convenient to break up an organic whole into a 
 number of inorganic parts for study. It is so much simpler, 
 so much easier. Let us, then, pretend that man is actuated 
 by one or two strong dominant motives (though we know 
 he is not). Let us pretend commerce is a department by 
 itself (though we know it is not). This is, no doubt, the 
 way to simplify science. But it is also the way to falsify 
 it. Because a " unified social science " is so much more 
 difficult, that is no reason for neglecting it, but is rather a 
 reason for putting more intellectual energy into its pursuit. 
 
 Considered as a sociological study, the old economics, 
 dealing with "economic" men who had no existence, and 
 could have had none, was thoroughly false science, bearing 
 somewhat the same relation to science as mediaeval romance 
 to a genuine literary presentation of life. Simplicity and 
 " exactitude " were purchased by perverting nature. Modern 
 economics has admitted the greater complexity of economic
 
 THE TRANSITION FROM "IS" TO "OUGHT" 63 
 
 man; but, while no longer regarding him as a single- 
 motived creature, persists in regarding him as a creature 
 with a single class of conduct. 
 
 Now, man is not a mechanical, but an organic, composi- 
 tion of forces. Neither breaking a human problem into 
 parts, nor an application of the "allowance system," is 
 possible in dealing with it. A man is not a business man 
 and a father and a student and a politician and a moralist. 
 He is all these together in one. As human being, every 
 part of his conduct affects him in every ond of these 
 capacities. 
 
 So long as "getting and spending" are regarded as 
 purely objective phenomena, we may study in a rough, 
 quantitative way these operations by themselves, and may 
 even make an economic science of the results. But if we 
 endow them with human significance, reducing them from 
 terms of money to terms of life, we can no longer adopt 
 this method. 
 
 The false science of getting and spending must, then, 
 be expanded into a true science of social efforts and 
 satisfactions. 
 
 Many of those who are prepared to admit the necessity of 
 breaking down the barrier between "getting and spending" 
 and other departments of human conduct in the considera- 
 tion of the Social Question, will still be loth to admit the 
 validity of substituting a standard of valuation based upon 
 true social utility for the standard of current individual 
 desires. Not a few who would abandon the notion of a 
 separate science of economics and who would subsume 
 industrial phenomena under a wider social science, would 
 at the same time insist upon a purely inductive treatment 
 of existing facts, interpreted in accordance with the imme- 
 diate valuation set on them by those directly affected, and 
 excluding all reference to any ulterior or wider standard of 
 ethics or utility.
 
 64 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 The economist and the Benthamite utilitarian are con- 
 tented with the quantitative measurement and expression of 
 individual efforts and satisfactions as they actually arise; 
 each action or event is taken on its own merits as estimated 
 by the current feeling of those directly and consciously 
 affected. Taking economic phenomena in their direct effect 
 on man, they value effort of production by the reluctance 
 of the producer to undergo the particular effort, not by the 
 net aggregate of pain or injury actually caused to this 
 individual or to society by his effort; and satisfaction of 
 consumption they similarly value by the desirability attri- 
 buted by the consumer to the particular act of consumption. 
 
 Now, it is absolutely essential to our purpose to abandon 
 the fleeting, and often mistaken, estimates which individuals 
 set upon efforts and satisfactions, regarded as passing 
 separate phenomena, and to firmly establish, as an objective 
 standard of reference, social utility. As I have already 
 indicated, this term, properly explained, seems the most 
 convenient description of the social good regarded as the 
 desirable goal of action. But if any preference exists for 
 some other term free from the narrower associations of utili- 
 tarianism, such as "social satisfaction" or "the self-realiza- 
 tion of society," or if, as Professor Mackenzie suggests, the 
 final reference be to the " essential needs or ultimate demands 
 of our nature," * the adoption of such terminology does not 
 materially affect the issue. My preference for " social utility," 
 as already indicated, is based primarily upon the fact that 
 political philosophers, to whatever school or phraseology 
 they profess allegiance, inevitably drift into language of 
 "utility," whenever they are confronted with a practical 
 issue of conduct the desirability of which is the subject of 
 consideration. 
 
 Whatever be the language used to describe this outside 
 
 * J. S. Mackenzie, " Introduction to Social Philosophy " (ed. i.), 
 p. 202.
 
 THE TRANSITION FROM IS " TO OUGHT " 65 
 
 and ultimate standard of reference, its holder will be indicted 
 by the devotee of an inductive social science, on the ground 
 that it illicitly imports a priori ethics or teleology of some 
 description into politics or economics. But this strict ruling 
 out of a priorism is quite untenable. The first and simplest 
 step in every " inductive science " is directed a priori ; no 
 collection and ordering of crude facts is possible without 
 importing from outside some principles of collection and order 
 which embody the objects or ends of the process of investi- 
 gation in a hypothetical way. You cannot investigate 
 phenomena effectively without possessing some clear motive 
 for investigation, and this motive will be related to a wider 
 motive, which will eventually relate to some large speculative 
 idea. Take a simple example from descriptive sociology. A 
 student sets himself to collect facts of the rates of mortality 
 in a given town ; if these facts are to be of scientific service 
 they must be collected and grouped in a method which is 
 imposed a priori. For example, various districts are taken, 
 and mortality rates are arranged as they vary according to 
 density of population, or again, the figures will be set in rela- 
 tion to other facts than locality e.g. to rents or to family 
 incomes or a comparison may be effected between the rate of 
 city born and country born. Whatever the direct object and 
 the result of this investigation of crude fact may be, this prime 
 object and result have no scientific finality. If the object of 
 investigation is to ascertain the proportionate mortality at 
 different ages in different social strata between town and 
 country born, this object is itself suggested and dictated by 
 some larger object relating to the respective advantages and 
 disadvantages of different pressures of population. Driven 
 far back, the whole series of investigations and reasonings at 
 different foci will be found to relate to and to be dependent 
 on some hypothesis of political or social good, which is the 
 " end," hidden, doubtless, as a conscious motive for the 
 detailed student buried in his tiny group of facts, but none 
 
 F
 
 65 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 the less permeating the whole process with "teleology/ 1 
 Not merely is purely inductive science impossible, but close 
 scrutiny of scientific method assigns the actual sovereignty 
 and directing force to an idea which is outside the range 
 of knowledge except in the shadowy form of an ideal. There 
 is no independence of the inductive method; induction 
 always rests upon the support of principles derived & priori, 
 and this a priorlsm points towards a standard which, alike 
 for knowledge and for conduct, is ideal. Hence, if we are 
 to take a scientific view of human efforts and satisfactions, 
 such as shall furnish a basis of social reform, we must have 
 a social ideal constructed to accord with human facts and 
 human possibilities, but transeending existing facts, and 
 furnishing a test for conduct. 
 
 Now, it is objected that this course of procedure confuses 
 a science of what is with a science of what ought to be, and 
 it is urged that we should confine ourselves to one thing at 
 a time. Dr. Keynes, in his " Scope and Method of Political 
 Economy," clearly voices this objection : " The attempt to 
 fuse together the inquiries into what is and what ought to 
 be is likely to stand in the way of our giving a clear and 
 unbiased answer to either question. Our investigations, for 
 instance, of the laws that determine competitive wages 
 cannot but be seriously hampered if the very same discussion 
 is to serve for a solution of the problem whether wages so 
 determined are fair wages " (p. 47). Dr. Keynes claims that, 
 by separating the economic and the ethical inquiries, he is 
 " doing one thing at a time," and is therefore working more 
 thoroughly. But if we look closely at the matter, we shall 
 see that "one thing" is precisely what he is not doing. 
 He is artificially breaking up a true unity of fact. The 
 "ought" is not something separable and distinct from the 
 "is;" on the contrary, an "ought" is everywhere the 
 highest aspect or relation of an " is." If a " fact " has a 
 moral import (as, in strictness, every fact of human significance
 
 THE TRANSITION FROM "IS" TO "OUGHT" 67 
 
 must have, though, for convenience, we may often ignore 
 it), that moral import is part of the nature of the fact, and 
 the fact cannot be fully known as fact without taking it 
 into consideration. We may, of course, institute an inquiry 
 which ignores the " ought," and which so leaves out of view 
 the net social consequences for good and evil of any fact; 
 it may often be convenient to pursue this course; but do 
 not let us deceive ourselves into believing that we are inves- 
 tigating all the fact and excluding something which is not 
 fact. This is only another instance of the protean fallacy 
 of individualism, which feigns the existence of separate 
 individuals by abstracting and neglecting the social relations 
 which belong to them and make them what they are. To 
 abstract from any fact those relations of cause and con- 
 sequence which give it moral significance is to make it less 
 of a fact than it is. No fact can be fully known as such 
 without regarding it as belonging to a system of facts 
 ordered by a principle which, by common acceptance, is 
 regarded as ethical. There is nothing whatever "mystical" 
 in this ; it simply means you do not know a fact until and 
 unless you know how it is affected by and affects other 
 facts, and have applied some standard of valuation to these 
 influences. 
 
 Dr. Keynes proceeds : " But while the ultimate aim may 
 be to guide human conduct, the immediate aim to be kept in 
 view is knowledge of positive facts " (p. 48). This is, doubt- 
 less, true. But it is a ground for distinguishing the science 
 of society from the art, not for excluding from the science 
 a study of highly relevant aspects of the facts. The know- 
 ledge of "positive facts" is not forwarded by a policy of 
 moral emasculation. 
 
 Turn to Dr. Keynes's own illustration. Can the law of 
 the determination of competitive wages be kept clear of all 
 consideration of " fairness " of wages, as he suggests it can ? 
 Only by a shallow and wholly insufficient explanation of
 
 68 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 the "economic laws'" 1 which govern the forces that determine 
 wages. A close investigation of the actual processes of 
 bargaining among buyers and sellers of labour-power will 
 disclose, as a residual fact, an economic power which dis- 
 tributes the real gain of each bargain unequally between the 
 two parties, assigning to the stronger bargainer a gain which 
 is no necessary inducement to his industrial activity, and 
 which constitutes so much "unfairness"" and social waste.* 
 This discovery of social or moral truth will, of necessity, 
 emerge in the process of a strict inquiry into facts. You 
 cannot exclude the discovery of moral truths from inquiries 
 into facts. What you can do is to shut your eyes to the 
 moral issues as they begin to emerge. Plenty of economists, 
 actuated by this motive, have so conducted inquiries into 
 the operations of "the law of supply and demand" as to 
 utterly ignore the testimony afforded by the economic con- 
 ditions of the sale of labour-power to the injustice and the 
 social waste of competition as a mode of determining the 
 reward of productive effort. This cultivated blindness of 
 false specialism in science is, as we have already seen, due 
 in part to a desire to confine attention to falsely-abstracted 
 facets of truth, which pose as "positive facts," and to ignore 
 the more dazzling and elusive facets of the same truth. 
 Thus Dr. Keynefl : " There is a further reason why a positive 
 science of political economy should receive distinct and 
 independent recognition. With the advance of knowledge, 
 it may be possible to come to a general agreement in regard 
 to what is or what may be in the economic world, sooner 
 than any similar agreement is attainable in regard to the 
 rules by which the economic activities of individuals and 
 communities should be guided" (p. 51). This, of course, is 
 simply a bold cutting of the knot, assuming, as it does, the 
 very point at issue the existence of a separate "economic 
 
 * A detailed analysis of bargaining which discloses these results is given 
 in the author's " The Economics of Distribution." Macmillan Company.
 
 THE TRANSITION FROM "IS" TO "OUGHT" 69 
 
 world 1 ' where the facts are not "moral facts," but only 
 economic. Like Professor Marshall, Dr. Keynes wants to 
 simplify by falsification. " The intrusion of ethics into 
 economics cannot but multiply and perpetuate sources of 
 disagreement. 1 " Very possibly, but you are not at liberty 
 to make a false severance for convenience. Ethics do not 
 " intrude " into economic facts ; the same facts are ethical 
 and economic. 
 
 In taking Social Utility for a standard of reference for 
 the values of effort and satisfaction, we labour under no 
 illusion as to definiteness or permanency. As a working 
 hypothesis for the regulation of conduct, Social Utility is 
 an ever-changing standard, nor is it precisely the same for 
 any two individuals. It will be the function of ethics con- 
 stantly to re-form and re-state the substance of Social 
 Utility, and to readjust the standard to accord with a 
 rising and more rational interpretation of "the essential 
 needs or ultimate demands of our nature/' But, though 
 Social Utility may not mean precisely the same for any 
 two persons, and may differ widely for two societies, or for 
 one society in two ages, this is no valid objection to its 
 adoption. Some agreement as to the meaning of Social 
 Utility at any given time exists in every society, for otherwise 
 the " general will " could not operate. In so far as the 
 members of a society own the same nature, habits, education, 
 institutions, and range of vision, they possess a common 
 grasp of what is for the good of society, and growing ex- 
 perience and wisdom render it a more practically serviceable 
 rule. A more definite and far-sighted interpretation of the 
 term Social Utility is the first aim of all ethical inquiry, 
 and such an inquiry will be found to be at the same time 
 economic and political.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE QUANTITATIVE METHOD IN SOCIAL SCIENCE 
 
 IF we are to have a science of human costs and utilities, of 
 true efforts and satisfactions, will the method be mathe- 
 matical ? This is an inquiry of the first practical import- 
 ance. The chief desire of a large order of economists, as 
 we have seen, is to make an exact science, which, in their 
 sense, implies a science based on quantitative measurements. 
 
 The mathematical impulse has always been strong in 
 Political Economy. The phrase of Edmund Burke in 
 which he denounces "an age of sophisters, calculators, 
 and economists" has a deep significance. The very word 
 "economy" has come to imply figures and precise computa- 
 tions. 
 
 Now, this endeavour to enroll "economics" in the ranks 
 of "Applied Mathematics" is valid just in proportion as 
 true human valuations are eliminated from the problems 
 which are presented. It has been admitted that a " Calculus 
 of desires " is possible, within certain limits, always provided 
 that the current monetary estimate of individuals be taken 
 as the standard of reference, without appeal to any deeper 
 and truer valuation. In this narrow fragmentary way we are 
 continually balancing the desirability of one line of action 
 against another, comparing the pleasures and pains involved, 
 and choosing the course which yields the largest balance of 
 pleasure. 
 
 Whether we can be rightly said to measure one sort or 
 
 70
 
 QUANTITATIVE METHOD IN SOCIAL SCIENCE 71 
 
 size of pleasure against another sort or size directly, or 
 whether the measure is of something which we may call the 
 "present desirability 1 " of two pleasures, is a subtle philo- 
 sophic question with which we need not here concern ourselves. 
 It is difficult to understand how it is possible to reduce to 
 common terms two pleasures, or the valuation of them, so 
 as to measure them and say which is the larger. But the 
 "economist" is surely right when he insists that somehow 
 we are actually able to achieve this feat, and that we do 
 so in all the operations of spending money upon a variety 
 of different commodities. 
 
 There is no warrant for saying that the hunger for know- 
 ledge is of the same kind as the hunger for physical food ; 
 and yet, taking present desirability as the standard, a 
 quantitative equation may easily be made. We may assert 
 that the one taste is not merely stronger but "higher" 
 than the other taste ; yet somehow this " preference," which 
 seems to involve qualitative choice, can be reduced to terms 
 of quantitative choice. The ability to make a comparison 
 expressible in money implies the capacity to represent different 
 objects of desire, as containing different quantities of some 
 one quality which is an object of choice. 
 
 But the point which it is essential for us to observe is, 
 that this mathematical measurement is not of universal 
 application even for current preferences, and that it is 
 totally inapplicable to preferences based upon true social 
 utility. When we pass from a standard of present individual 
 satisfaction or desirability to a standard of intrinsic social 
 worth, we pass from a quantitative to a qualitative estimate. 
 
 First note the limitation of mathematical or monetary 
 estimates of passing desires. 
 
 Two false assumptions underlie the claims of the mathe- 
 matical treatment. 
 
 The first is that all preference is of quantity. 
 
 The second is that apparent differences of quality can
 
 72 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 always be reduced to quantity ; better and worse, higher 
 and lower, to more and less. 
 
 Yet the mathematical economist may be easily convicted 
 of error out of his own mouth. 
 
 Take once more Professor Marshall : " It may be objected 
 that the higher motives are so different in quality from the 
 lower that the one cannot be weighed against the other. 
 There is some validity in this objection ; for the pain which 
 it would afford an earnest and good man to do deliberately 
 a wrong action is so great that no pleasure can compensate 
 for it; it cannot be weighed or measured. But, even here, 
 what hindered the pain from being measured is not its 
 quality, but its amount ; the pain is practically infinite" * 
 
 Now, my complaint here is that, in the two phrases 1 
 have placed in italics, Professor Marshall begs the whole 
 question. Adapting the utilitarian language, I should insist 
 that the good man repudiated the wrong action, not on 
 account of the size of the pain involved, but on account of 
 its quality, or intrinsic nature. The admission of the closing 
 words of the quoted passage seems to prove this. What is 
 the ground of preference ? It is that " the pain is practically 
 infinite. 1 ' 1 Now, mathematicians are no doubt legitimately 
 for their purpose in the habit of treating " infinity " as if 
 it were a positive quantity, only other than any quantity 
 which could be named. In strict logic it is not a quantity 
 at all, but just the negation of quantity. In fact, if I say 
 this pleasure is infinitely greater than that, I mean that 
 the difference is incapable of quantitative expression that, 
 in other words, it is of kind or quality. 
 
 Similarly, the more enlightened modern theologians deal 
 with the term which in "time" corresponds to " infinity " 
 in space, insisting that " eternal," as applied to life or death, 
 reward or punishment, signifies not duration but quality of 
 happiness or suffering. 
 
 * " Principles," ed. ii. 78, note.
 
 QUANTITATIVE METHOD IN SOCIAL SCIENCE 73 
 
 Economists themselves indeed are not wholly comfortable 
 in their application of the quantitative method. Its insuffi- 
 ciency is, for instance, always admitted when it is applied to 
 the measurement of " utilities " obtained by the consumption 
 of commodities. 
 
 The commonest example of the economic text-book is the 
 diagram which affects to represent by a geometrical figure 
 the total utility or satisfaction imputed by a consumer to 
 the different portions of his expenditure. 
 
 A man with 4>00 a year spends the first 100 on neces- 
 saries, the second 100 on conveniences, the third 100 
 on luxuries, the fourth he saves. It seems evident to the 
 economist that we have a descending scale of utility, as we 
 pass from the expenditure on necessaries to the less pressing 
 expenditure and the "savings. 1 " Yet, in constructing the 
 figure intended to illustrate this fact, he is obliged to leave 
 it uncompleted, thus 
 
 Why? Because he is obliged to admit that the "utility" 
 of the expenditure upon necessaries is " infinite " i.e. that 
 the quantity of money spent on them is no index or possible 
 measure of the good got out of them. Now, why is this ? 
 I take it the reason is that, in the case of necessaries, the 
 " utility " imputed by the economist is based upon the 
 supposition that the consumer " knows what he is doing," 
 and that the valuation he imputes to the first 100 expen- 
 diture is not governed merely by passing desire, but by
 
 74 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 some rough reference to a true and wider standard of utility 
 not, perhaps, social utility in the full sense, but the true 
 utility of his individual life. If the standard taken here 
 were merely that of current desire, it is quite possible that, 
 living like the beast of the field, with no forethought, he 
 might neglect to give a true valuation to some " necessary," 
 and so might perish. Indeed, it is not always true that 
 the utility actually imputed by a man to his necessaries is 
 "infinite." The case of the Chinaman who sells his life, as 
 a substitute for a criminal condemned to death, is precisely 
 to the point. He makes what we should deem an error, by 
 reducing the valuation of his life to definite quantitative 
 terms reckoned in money, and measured against some 
 quantity of comforts to be consumed in his final days, or to 
 be bequeathed to his family. There might, of course, be a 
 case where we should say man might legitimately sell his life 
 in order to preserve the life of others ; but that would be 
 a sacrifice undergone for a utility which was regarded as 
 " infinite " in value, though it might be secured by a definite 
 amount of payment. 
 
 But the admission of economists, that the "curve" 
 measuring "utility" cannot be rightly completed so as to 
 include necessaries, is really based on the supposition that 
 a sane man does accord to the utility of this part of his 
 expenditure an " infinite " value that is to say, excludes 
 it from any quantitative comparison with the "utility" he 
 imputes to mere comforts or luxuries. This admission in 
 itself invalidates the service of the whole mathematical treat- 
 ment of " utility ; " for the relation between the " necessary " 
 and the "unnecessary" parts of expenditure is quite the 
 most important thing for us to know, and if quantitative 
 measures cannot help us here they are of little use in a 
 human application of laws of wealth. 
 
 It may, however, seem that quantitative comparisons are 
 valid, at any rate, for all other " utilities " except necessaries.
 
 QUANTITATIVE METHOD IN SOCIAL SCIENCE 75 
 
 'But is this so? I think it is, just in so far as we con- 
 sent to take a separate, passing, and purely hedonistic, 
 valuation of each item of expenditure, regarding it as it 
 appeals to our fleeting sense of satisfaction, and not as 
 it forms an organic contribution to the making of a satis- 
 factory life. 
 
 The distinction is all-important. Viewed as a detached 
 piece of pleasure, or as a source of present satisfaction and 
 "utility," whether a convenience, a comfort, or a luxury, it 
 figures as a quantity which may be preferred or postponed 
 to another quantity of a different hedonistic order. This 
 separatist view cuts each "utility" clean off from all its 
 effects upon our future life save those immediately present 
 to our consciousness. So, to take an extreme instance, the 
 diseased consciousness of a drunkard gives a large quanti- 
 tative value to a glass of gin before him, considering only 
 the definite immediate fund of satisfaction it represents ; 
 whereas, if he were capable of reckoning its full effects, even 
 those of a purely hygienic nature, it would be unable to 
 give any quantitative expression to the harm it inflicted. 
 
 It may appear as if we could rightly balance conveniences 
 against luxuries, reckoning so much of the one class against 
 so much of the other. We practically do this in " spend- 
 ing" our income, and so long as the science of getting and 
 spending is strictly confined to present individual valuations 
 of current sensations (to Dr. Keynes's " what is "), the process 
 is legitimate. But the moment we endeavour to apply 
 some standard of social utility or " the ultimate demands 
 of our nature," this legitimacy of quantitative comparison 
 lapses. It only needs a little reflection to perceive that, 
 just as the "utility" of necessaries is "infinitely" i.e. quali- 
 tatively greater than that of conveniences, so the utility 
 of conveniences is infinitely greater than that of luxuries. 
 The difficulty in reali/ing this arises from a false distinction 
 between the "wants" which are satisfied by those utilities
 
 76 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 which, for certain purpose, we class as necessaries, con- 
 veniences, luxuries, etc. 
 
 Let us treat life as a whole, and briefly review it in 
 relation to the evolution of want and satisfaction, and the 
 sharp separation alike of classes of utilities and of individual 
 items, which make them measurable as exact quantities, will 
 disappear. 
 
 The briefest outline of this view must here suffice. Taking 
 the life of an individual in society, and regarding that life as 
 constituted of an organized complex of functions physical, 
 intellectual, moral, etc. we find a continuous evolution of 
 wants and satisfactions. In a general historical review of 
 this development, there will arise first the want of foods, 
 clothing, shelter, absolutely necessary to support the con- 
 tinuance of physical life. Certain improvements in quantity, 
 character, and variety of these prime physical satisfactions 
 will follow. Complementary food appealing to taste, orna- 
 mental elements in clothing, commodiousness and dignity of 
 dwelling, may come next. Gradually, higher or more delicate 
 sensations are educated, craving satisfaction ; crude arts grow, 
 providing utilities which were " unnecessary " to primeval 
 man. The beginnings of aesthetic, intellectual, and moral 
 needs are manifested ; a general widening of life, bringing 
 a conscious and continuous process of developing new wants 
 whose satisfaction gives increased value to life, ensues. 
 
 Now, since, relatively to any race or any individual, there 
 is a necessary order of this evolution of needs and satis- 
 factions, how shall we rightly regard the classes of "utilities'" 
 which satisfy these needs ? We admit that prime, physical 
 necessaries are worth infinitely more than conveniences. 
 Shall we not, by parity of reasoning, be obliged to admit 
 that each class, in its necessary order of development, has 
 infinite real utility as compared with subsequent orders 
 which are conditioned in their development by its priority ? 
 
 Certain physical necessaries are first conditions of all
 
 QUANTITATIVE METHOD IN SOCIAL SCIENCE 77 
 
 further life. Their true utility thus regarded must im- 
 measurably outweigh all other possible increments of life ; 
 but the same is true of the next order of purely physical 
 satisfactions, which must emerge before any distinctively 
 aesthetic, intellectual, or moral needs emerge. Once grasp 
 clearly the true conception of the historical relation of 
 needs in an individual life, each new want directly growing 
 out of one already satisfied, and forming, in its turn, the 
 soil from which other new wants grow, we then come to 
 recognize that each utility which satisfies an earlier want is 
 infinitely more important than the one which follows, since 
 it is an indispensable condition of all further life. 
 
 Specific and individual aberrations do not, of course, 
 affect the validity of this criticism. The man who should 
 adopt the maxim, " Give me the luxuries of life, and I will 
 do without the necessaries 11 the man who even approximately 
 follows such a scheme of life we condemn as one who, from 
 nature or from depravity of choice, takes a false view of the 
 total utility of individual and social life.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 NECESSARIES AND LUXURIES 
 
 As soon as we take the organic view of the building up of 
 wants and satisfactions into life, we perceive the futility 
 and irrationality of imputing a separate quantitative value 
 to each of them. A rational treatment of the wants and 
 satisfactions in a completely ordered life will assign an 
 infinite i.e. an unquantitative value to each of them, 
 because it will regard each as a vitally necessary part of an 
 infinitely valuable whole. 
 
 It is true that this idea is foreign to our common thought 
 and speech, which sets the so-called "necessaries 11 of life 
 apart from other satisfactions. The notion that certain 
 forms of food and other physical supports must rank separately 
 as necessary to life and work, whilst other consumption, 
 however desirable, may be distinguished as unnecessary, has 
 not only played a large part in economic literature, where 
 "productive consumption 11 is distinguished from "unpro- 
 ductive consumption, 11 but is a stock ingredient of the 
 commonplace philosophy of life. 
 
 Yet this distinction between necessaries, conveniences, 
 comfort, luxuries, convenient enough for rough, practical 
 purposes, will not stand the slightest strain of criticism, 
 and utterly breaks down in an accurate analysis. 
 
 What is "necessary 11 ? Something that is essential to 
 support life. But what life? "Physical life" is the 
 common reply. If, however, we endeavour to apply a bare 
 
 78
 
 NECESSARIES AND LUXURIES 79 
 
 physiological test, it does not avail. What are the physical 
 necessaries of life ? Are they the food, clothing, shelter, of the 
 low-skilled town labourer, that which was comprised in the 
 "necessary" or "bare subsistence' 1 wage of the economists, 
 that which was just enough to maintain the efficiency of 
 labour, and to enable them to replace themselves by their 
 children in the labour market? Not so. The full physical 
 life of these people is not thus secured. On the contrary, 
 vital statistics show that they are robbed, on an average, of 
 eighteen years of the life which they might reasonably 
 expect to have if they enjoyed the physical conditions of 
 the class above them. Their children, moreover, have much 
 less than half the chance of growing to maturity possessed 
 by the children of professional men. 
 
 Good air, large sanitary houses, plenty of wholesome, 
 well-cooked food, adequate changes of clothing for our 
 climate, ample opportunities of recreation is there any one 
 of these things that does not sensibly assist to lengthen the 
 term of physical life ? Yet most, if not all, of these things 
 would be classed among comforts or even luxuries for 
 labourers, though members of the well-to-do classes would 
 readily admit that they were necessaries for them. 
 
 Again, take art, music, travel, education, social inter- 
 course, such "goods" as would generally be classed as 
 luxuries. Does not physiology itself insist that these and 
 all other things which make for happiness react upon 
 physical health and help to maintain life ? The wage of a 
 London seamstress we rightly reckon as slow starvation; if 
 we added increment after increment, where should we stop ? 
 There are plenty of professional and commercial people who 
 spend a large portion of their own summer golfing, or in 
 Switzerland, who are, nevertheless, genuinely indignant at 
 the "luxurious waste" which is creeping into the life of 
 our better-paid mechanics, who demand a week at the sea- 
 side for themselves and their families.
 
 80 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 The true economy of leisure, change, and enjoyment, 
 even in their effects upon duration of physical life, is only 
 beginning to find recognition in our theory of consumption. 
 
 But suppose that we had ascertained what particular 
 sum of money sufficed to maintain full length of life, does 
 this exhaust " necessaries " ? Are we to reckon life by 
 mere duration, and take no account of intensiveness and 
 character, the education and use of all its powers and 
 faculties? Is not the valuation of life by length of years 
 the crudest and most patent instance of the root-fallacy of 
 quantitative analysis ? 
 
 We have spoken so far of physical life, and tested 
 "necessaries" on this basis. But physical, moral, intel- 
 lectual, are not watertight compartments of humanity. 
 Whether we regard the organic interaction of all these vital 
 powers, or take into our consideration the moral and intel- 
 lectual needs and satisfactions as claims of nature which 
 emerge later on, there is no excuse for refusing to admit the 
 latter as necessary to life, considered as the whole which it 
 rightly is. Thus we break down the distinction between 
 " goods " which are necessary and " goods " which are 
 unnecessary. All good satisfaction consists of necessaries ; 
 all things which are rightly convenient or comfortable are 
 necessary to the best life. If we desire to retain and to 
 justify the distinction of necessary and luxury, the latter 
 term should be used in one or two ways. Either it should 
 be taken to cover all forms of wasteful or injurious 
 consumption, including excess of things which are, in 
 moderation " necessary," things which, though serviceable 
 to some, are useless or injurious to their present possessors, 
 and things which are essentially, in Ruskins well-known 
 term, " illth," being in all quantities, at all times, and for 
 all persons, injurious; or else, treating "goods" objectively, 
 we , should insist on reserving it for this last class only. 
 
 Now, turn once more to the organic growth of needs
 
 NECESSARIES AND LUXURIES 81 
 
 and satisfactions in a life. The effect of each new increment 
 must be held not merely to increase the quantity of life, if 
 indeed it does this, but to alter the character or quality by 
 its action upon life as an organic whole, making it better, 
 fuller, and more complex. 
 
 The "real utility" of such a change, whether regarded 
 from an individual or a social standpoint, cannot be 
 compassed by a " curve." The mathematical schedule of 
 expenditure cannot tell us anything about this real use got 
 out of a particular expenditure of money. It can only yield 
 a passing sensational estimate, based upon a separation 
 which is physiologically and psychologically false. 
 
 Failure to recognize the order or the organic relation in 
 the growth of human wants and satisfactions has exercised 
 a most detrimental influence upon the practical work of 
 social reform, causing a confusion of two distinct methods of 
 valuation. 
 
 In tracing the historical process of development of wants 
 and satisfactions, each earlier element seems more important 
 than each succeeding one, the need of food and physical 
 protection being more pressing and essential than the needs 
 of " the higher nature." Logically, however or in the 
 order of nature, considered as a complete system, not as a 
 process each subsequent need or satisfaction is more 
 important and more valuable than the preceding one in 
 time, because it represents a higher type of life. From this 
 latter standpoint the early functions are valued chiefly as 
 the means, or material basis, of a higher spiritual life. 
 
 Now, in the practical work of social reform the confusion 
 of these two standards of valuation has greatly retarded 
 progress. Partly from a genuine conviction that "things 
 of the mind " and " things of the soul," being intrinsically 
 more important, should receive attention first ; partly from 
 a drift of philanthropic energy in these directions, through 
 a reluctance to face the inconveniences of drastic reforms of
 
 82 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 economic structure, a continual tendency has been manifested 
 to endeavour to supply higher wants before the lower wants 
 are satisfied. This has been the set policy, not only of 
 private charity, but of State action, in many instances. 
 
 Philanthropists have often argued thus : " We have only 
 so much energy or enthusiasm available in work, cash, time ; 
 we must, therefore, devote it to satisfy the wants which are 
 intrinsically of highest human importance; and it is more 
 important to save a man's soul, or even to train his 
 intelligence, than to assist him to get higher wages or a 
 better dwelling." 
 
 This is, of course, only one more instance of the monadist 
 or separatist fallacy the refusal to see life as an organic- 
 whole. The higher need, and its satisfaction the soul 
 saving, or intellectual education only seems more impor- 
 tant when viewed by itself, torn away from relations and 
 conditions which attach it to other aspects of life. 
 
 Let us see the life as a whole, with the organic inter- 
 dependency and the historical sequence of needs and desires, 
 we shall find that, for the practical reformer, the satisfaction 
 of the lower material need is always more urgent and 
 important than the satisfaction of a higher need, because 
 the latter is historically non-existent, having as yet no soil 
 out of which to grow. No artificial stimulation and supply 
 of higher needs can be other than a wasteful expenditure 
 of energy. The historical, not the logical, order of import- 
 ance rightly dominates reform movements, which are pro- 
 cesses in time, and must be bound by time conditions of 
 development. 
 
 Attempts of philanthropists to evade this natural order, 
 and to supply higher wants before lower wants, unfelt 
 wants before felt wants, attempts of the State to force 
 intellectual nourishment upon minds dependent upon bodies 
 not yet adequately nourished, represent a fundamentally 
 unsound " economy, 11 involving huge waste of social energy.
 
 NECESSARIES AND LUXURIES 83 
 
 Take, as a concrete example, Class B in Mr. Charles 
 Booth's classification of the people of London. Here is a 
 class, unable by their utmost efforts to obtain such regular 
 wage as will afford any security of decent animal existence ; 
 disabled by their bringing-up, and by the whole industrial 
 condition of their life from getting regular remunerative 
 work, or from doing such work if they could get it; 
 compelled to live and bring up families under condi- 
 tions which preclude the possibility of a sound mind in 
 a sound body. All endeavours to deal with these people, 
 in their existing economic environment, and to make them 
 religious, moral, intellectual, or even cleanly, are little 
 else than wanton misdirection of reform energy, attempts to 
 solve higher problems before lower ones, attempts to grow 
 the ripe flowers of civilization before we have grown the 
 stalk, or even furnished soil out of which the stalk may 
 grow. 
 
 This waste of energy is due to careless, or sometimes 
 wilful, neglect of the order of the evolution of human wants. 
 It may, of course, be possible sometimes to stimulate, and 
 even to satisfy, wants in individuals out of their healthy 
 natural order; moral miracles may be performed in slum 
 life; "forcing" is possible in the growth of human beings, 
 as of plants, but it is always a wasteful and a weakening 
 process. The sound economical disposition of reform energy 
 in dealing with Class B will involve, first, a concentrated 
 attention to the industrial supports of its evil material 
 environment, the questions of low wages, irregularity and 
 insufficiency of employment, the housing problem, and the 
 several aspects of "sweating." The various philanthropic 
 energies thrown into spiritual and moral work among this 
 class would gain, each its particular object, far more effec- 
 tively, if its possessors recognized the historical priority of 
 the economic problems, and concentrated first on their 
 solution, reserving their specific forms of higher missionary
 
 84 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 work for those social grades where these specific needs were 
 just beginning to emerge in the development of life. 
 
 There may be some who think that this view errs by 
 representing the slum-dweller too much as the slave of his 
 environment, and are disposed to insist that education and 
 moral stimulus, applied to individual members of Class B. 
 may induce them to make a successful effort to improve 
 their own material and economic condition. To such I 
 would reply, firstly, that such cases constitute the " moral 
 miracles " to which reference is already made, and their rare 
 existence abates but slightly the waste of reform energy; 
 and, secondly, that the ability of one, or any, individual to 
 get out of his class no more implies the ability of a whole 
 class, or of any considerable proportion of a class, to get 
 out of its condition than the fact that any boy in America 
 is able to become President of the United States implies 
 the ability of all the boys living at any given time to attain 
 this position. To impute this power to a class involves a 
 total misunderstanding of the nature of individual and class 
 competition in industrial society.
 
 BOOK II 
 
 THE ART OF SOCIAL PROGRESS
 
 CHAPTER 1 
 
 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 
 
 To some the treatment of the Social Question, contained in 
 these first eight chapters, may have seemed too purely critical 
 in the loose sense in which that term is opposed to the term 
 constructive. I may turn the edge of this objection by 
 indicating, in a single paragraph, the positive advance 
 which we have made towards a systematic study of our 
 subject. 
 
 Starting, for convenience, from a consideration of the 
 claim that current political economy is a science capable of 
 handling the Social Question, we have found it radically 
 defective for this purpose in scope, method, and standard 
 of valuation. The requisite scope of our study, we have 
 discovered, must include all conscious activities of man 
 expressed subjectively in terms of effort and satisfaction. 
 The method must be that of an organic science, recognizing 
 organic interaction and qualitative differences, not the 
 purely mathematical or quantitative method which current 
 economic science tends more and more to employ. The 
 standard of valuation must be abiding social utility, not 
 present individual satisfaction. 
 
 Now, how far does such a study enable us to confront 
 the Social Question in the concrete form of our opening 
 statement ? " Given a number of human beings, with a 
 certain development of physical and mental faculties, and 
 of social institutions, in command of given natural resources, 
 
 87
 
 88 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 how can they best utilize these powers for the attainment 
 of the greatest satisfaction ? " 
 
 It will be evident that, in building a scientific super- 
 structure upon the foundation we have laid, the burden of 
 labour lies in ascertaining and in stating the true nature 
 of the relations between efforts and satisfactions as organic 
 factors of human nature. 
 
 Two common antitheses stand directly in the path of 
 this inquiry, and, even at the risk of seeming to be need- 
 lessly discursive, we must examine them. These are the 
 familiar oppositions between rights and duties, society and 
 the individual. 
 
 Among modern social reformers of a philosophical train- 
 ing and an ethical temperament there is a tendency to carry 
 the revolt against the theory of natural and inalienable 
 rights of individuals, upon which the eighteenth-century 
 political philosophy was built, so far as to deny the utility 
 of recognizing any rights of the individual as a basis of 
 social reform. 
 
 Now, the doctrine of " natural rights " evolved in the 
 books of such thinkers as Locke, Rousseau, and Paine, and 
 embodied as a theoretic basis of reform in the Declaration 
 of Independence, and in the Declaration of the Rights of 
 Man, the " rights " to life, liberty, property, security, etc., 
 which are supposed to be born with every man, and which 
 no " society " may justly abolish or abridge, scarcely requires 
 a formal refutation. 
 
 If an individual is living a solitary, self-sufficient life out 
 of society, the attribution of these natural rights is an empty 
 form ; the word " right " has here no content or significance. 
 If he is living as a member of society, since he is an organic 
 being in an organic society, no action of his can be considered 
 purely self-regarding or wholly void of social import. Some 
 individual actions may be so indirect, so slight, or so incal- 
 culable in their social effects, that we speak of them and
 
 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 89 
 
 treat them as "self-regarding," and hold it foolish for 
 society, either through the State or otherwise, to interfere 
 with individual liberty with respect to them. But such 
 " individual rights " can have no natural or absolute validity ; 
 for society, and not the individual, must clearly claim, in 
 the social interest, to determine what actions shall fall within 
 this " self-regarding " class. Thus these rights, if rights they 
 be called, are sanctioned and bounded by society. Social 
 utility must be paramount and absolute in marking the 
 limits of such " rights.' 1 
 
 Take the strongest of these supposed " rights " the right 
 to life. Is that an absolute individual right? To a man 
 living out of society, the power to live is his concern ; the 
 right to live is wholly void of meaning. If a man is living 
 in society, his life affects the life of others ; and if it affects 
 them injuriously, society may determine that he has no 
 right to live. Upon what other principle can society act? 
 If it be urged that society has no right to take away a life, 
 but only to expel from society to desocialize a detrimental 
 member that only means that general considerations of 
 regard for human life may make it socially expedient to 
 expel rather than to kill, and by no means impairs the right 
 of society to take the more drastic measure, if expulsion 
 or segregation is too costly or too difficult. 
 
 If this is true of the right to life, it is true a fortiori of 
 all lesser rights to liberty, property, etc. But, though all 
 individual rights thus derive their validity from the supreme 
 obligation of society to protect and promote the social 
 welfare, they are none the less to be recognized as " rights, 1 " 
 and to receive their due attention. " The right to life " is 
 not a foolish or a useless phrase. It implies a recognition 
 that it is the supreme duty of society to secure the life of 
 all serviceable members, together with an implication that 
 the life of every member shall be deemed serviceable, unless 
 known to be otherwise. So there is a clear individual right
 
 90 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 to property in all " necessaries " of life implied in the right 
 to life, for "you do take my life when you do take the 
 means by which I live. 1 ' This social recognition of individual 
 rights to "property" carries important implications, not 
 wholly acceptable to the modern self-constituted guardians 
 of "individual rights."" The application of our human 
 standard to the measurement of economic "wealth 11 makes 
 it evident that the consumption of luxuries, or even of 
 " higher necessaries, 11 by any class or individual of a society 
 when another class or individuals are in need of a prime 
 requisite of life, involves social waste or disutility, unless 
 it be deemed socially desirable that some should starve. 
 Applying now our " rights philosophy, 11 we should say that, 
 where one is starving, another has no " right " in his luxury. 
 Fichte makes this declaration with no uncertain voice : 
 "From the moment that any one is in want there belongs 
 to no one that part of his property which is required to 
 save the needy one from want, but it rigidly belongs to him 
 who is in want. 11 
 
 The full bearing of this doctrine can only be grasped 
 when we keep in mind the result of our analysis of the term 
 "necessaries. 11 It will then be perceived that the doctrine 
 of rights of property conformable to " social utility " tends 
 to undermine radically existing notions of those rights, by 
 enforcing individual needs as a basis of individual property, 
 not merely in the case of the absolute necessaries of bare 
 subsistence, but of other goods, which, rightly regarded, 
 are "necessary to life. 11 
 
 It is true that the sole force of " need " as the standard 
 of reference for " rights of property " is based on a defective 
 view of the matter, presupposing property to exist, and 
 taking a purely statical view of the problem of distribution. 
 Whatever answer we may finally decide to give to the 
 question, "How far does social utility require property to 
 be distributed according to needs, how far according to
 
 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 91 
 
 efforts?" we shall find ourselves unable to exclude the 
 influence of the latter, if we are to provide for the con- 
 tinuous creation of fresh forms of " property." 
 
 Fichte's doctrine can, therefore, only be held to be 
 absolutely binding in extreme cases, and is simply a more 
 dramatic rendering of the principle that the preservation 
 of life is paramount over every other "right of property," 
 which underlies the public policy of our Poor Law. 
 
 Partly to avoid the old entanglements of doctrines of 
 individual rights, partly from a sentimental conception of 
 morality which makes "duty" more respectable than 
 "right," a certain conspiracy has arisen to lay exclusive 
 stress on duties, and to shove " rights " into the background, 
 or even to ignore their claims altogether. Mazzini is in 
 part responsible for this view among political thinkers, with 
 his well-meant but thoroughly defective formula : " Principles 
 instead of Interests, Duties instead of Rights." " Take care 
 of Duties, and Rights will take care of themselves" is the 
 suggestion. But, because people have always been more apt 
 to neglect duties than rights, it does not follow that we 
 should attempt to drive them to an opposite extreme. It 
 is essential to assert the co-existence and the identity of 
 contents between rights and duties. Where rights are 
 ignored on account of the superior nobility supposed to 
 attach to duties as motives of conduct, there is always some 
 injury or degradation lurking underneath. If we leave 
 conduct to be directed by sole reference to duty, we are, 
 for example, liable at every turn to have "mercy" and 
 "charity" foisted on us in the place of justice, claiming 
 merit for some defective act of restitution. 
 
 I may illustrate this danger from the typically academic 
 
 treatment of social questions in a recent publication of 
 
 Professor Flint.* This writer explicitly denies the co-exten- 
 
 siveness of rights and duties, assigning to the latter a far 
 
 * "Socialism."
 
 92 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 broader scope. He holds, for instance, that it is the duty 
 of the State to provide education for all its citizens ; but 
 he denies the " right " of those citizens to demand educa- 
 tion. Now this can, without difficulty, be shown to be a 
 mischievous verbal juggle. One evidently has a "right" to 
 perform one's duties. Since, then, it is the duty of the 
 State to provide education, such education is a " right " of 
 the State. Now, this is in substance the very "right" 
 which the citizen claims when he says that education is his 
 " right" He has a claim upon the State to do its duty 
 and exercise its right. 
 
 Again, Professor Flint, while admitting the social utility 
 of a Poor Law providing maintenance, denies that it involves 
 any right. " Society," he says, " as at present organized, has 
 entered into no contract, come under no obligation which 
 binds it as a matter of right to support any of its members. 
 It is their duty to support themselves, and they are left free 
 to do so in any rightful way, and to go to any part of the 
 world where they can do so." This view, pressed to its 
 logical conclusion, allows no basis whatever for the social 
 
 O * 
 
 utility which even Flint admits to attach to Poor Laws. 
 But it carries its own refutation. If it is every man's duty 
 to support himself, it is a duty which no man living in society 
 is able to fulfil. Take any man you choose, remove from 
 him all direct and indirect support of society, and see what 
 will become of him, and what freedom is left to him to "go 
 to any part of the world " ? Depend upon it, whenever any 
 one seeks to persuade us to dispense with rights and to 
 assume the higher standpoint of duties, we shall find them 
 endowed with a very defective notion of duties. Grave 
 dangers inhere in such attempts of moralists and philan- 
 thropists to wheedle people out of "rights," and to give 
 them what falsely purports to be the same or even better 
 things under the guise of duties. Though social utility 
 implies the duty of society to its members, and of its members
 
 THE RIGHTS OF MAN 93 
 
 to society, it likewise implies a reciprocity of rights. If one 
 man owes to another even so intangible a thing as "con- 
 sideration," the man to whom he owes it has a right 
 to it. 
 
 Misunderstanding upon this point frequently arises from 
 losing sight of the fact that the ultimate sanction of both 
 rights and duties is social. If A has a duty towards B, 
 may B always claim the fulfilment of this duty as a right? 
 Casuistry will set this difficulty in a specious case. The 
 gravest blot on dive's reputation was the forged treaty by 
 which he tricked Omichund. The defence that Omichund 
 was himself engaged at the very time in an attempt to cheat 
 Clive is rejected by moralists as unsound. But though 
 honourable men will insist that it was dive's duty to treat 
 Omichund fairly, will they likewise insist that Omichund, 
 who was cheating, could claim as a right that the other 
 should not cheat in return ? But the apparent failure of 
 correspondence between right and duty which the case 
 presents rests upon the implication that the claim or right 
 attributed to the individual belongs to him as an individual 
 instead of as the representative of the ultimate right of society 
 in the particular case. If A steals from B, he has still a 
 right that B shall not steal from him, because the fact that 
 A has stolen does not abrogate the social utility of pro- 
 tecting A's own property against the attack of B or any 
 other person. B's claim or right in a civilized society is 
 that society shall enforce the restitution of what is stolen 
 from him, not that he himself shall steal either from A or 
 from anybody else. Even Omichund retained a right that 
 Clive should treat him honourably, though this right was 
 based upon no merits of his own, but was delegated to him 
 as the person towards whom Clive ought to perform a 
 social duty in the particular case. The extreme cir- 
 cumstances of the case, by reducing to a minimum the 
 individual nature of the right, do not destroy the right
 
 94 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 or the convenience of attributing the right as an individual 
 possession when we are engaged merely in discussing the 
 relation between the individuals concerned. Putting the 
 matter in its most general terms, we should say, "My 
 duty (what I * ought') is ultimately what I owe, not to 
 the individual, but to society." Per contra, a Right is not 
 ultimately the right of the individual, but the right of society. 
 The knave cannot complain upon his own account of being 
 cheated, but only on behalf of society. But this ultimate 
 derivation of all rights and duties from society does not 
 impair the utility or convenience of regarding them as 
 appertaining to individuals in specific cases ; for in most 
 cases of conduct individuals, and they alone, are directly 
 involved, and the interests of society are fought out in 
 their persons. There is, therefore, no more reason for 
 denying rights to individuals than for denying duties. 
 
 It is a fatal error to abandon altogether, or even to 
 disparage, the standpoint of rights, which is so closely 
 associated with the idea of justice. The support which a 
 writer of such keen progressive sympathies as Professor 
 Ritchie has given to the abandonment of individual rights 
 is greatly to be regretted. It is true that the brunt of his 
 attack is directed against the old individualist conception 
 of these rights as "natural," in the sense that they were 
 orginal and inalienable ; but the trend of his arguments 
 makes for the annihilation of all individual rights, even 
 regarded as derivative, or media axiomata.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 NATURAL RIGHTS OF INDIVIDUAL PROPERTY 
 
 IT may reasonably be doubted whether thinkers like Rousseau 
 and Paine ever deceived themselves into the belief that the 
 "state of nature" of which they wrote was ever a real 
 historical condition of mankind. When Paine spoke of the 
 new Government of France as "the most ancient in principle 
 of all that have existed, being founded on the original 
 inherent rights of man, r> we need not understand him to 
 suppose that such a constitution had actually existed in ancient 
 societies. These men were poets in the dramatic presentation 
 of their ideas. What they meant was that their social 
 ideas were conformable to a sense of justice and of reason ; 
 and, gathering them into an ideal, they projected their 
 Golden Age upon the past as we project ours upon the 
 future. It is, rather, to be looked upon as a method of 
 education a literary means of generating reform-energy, 
 rendered possible, no doubt, by vague, unscientific views of 
 the past, but not designed as a serious contribution to 
 history. Discarding the "monadist" philosophy, which 
 indisputably underlay this theory of natural rights, we yet 
 may find a use in the older forms of thought, and in the 
 phrases which embody them. If we have any conception 
 of a rationally-ordered society of men and women, as we 
 regard them in their individual capacities, we shall assign 
 them their "rights,"" or their separate ordered spheres of 
 activity. May we not even speak of these as "natural 
 
 95
 
 96 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 rights," and of the ideal society as a "natural state " or 
 condition? For what is nature but reason working itself 
 out in the universe? The rational society will be the 
 natural society. 
 
 But why, it may be said, adhere to language which has 
 gathered round it such false implications and associations ? 
 The answer is that these old phrases of the rights of man 
 are by no means vacant of service to us. Endowed with 
 their proper contents, the "rights" set down in the 
 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the American 
 "Declaration of Independence" form a true foundation 
 of that fuller edifice of "rights" which a rational society, 
 guided by social utility, will assign to its individual 
 members. 
 
 The French Declaration named four "Natural Rights 
 of Man" " Liberty, Property, Security, and Resistance of 
 Oppression." Now, all these may be legitimately brought 
 under a single head. It is evident, at the outset, that the 
 last two cover the same fact : the right to be secure involves 
 the right to resist oppression. It is equally obvious that 
 the right to "security" is included in the right to liberty 
 and property, for a breach of security is an actual or 
 threatened assault on liberty or property. We may, more- 
 over, take the further step of asking : Are liberty and pro- 
 perty separate rights? Endowed with full significance, are 
 they not the negative and positive aspects of the same 
 rights ? Liberty conceived in vacua the mere right of not 
 being interfered with in respect of what one has or does 
 is a wholly unsubstantial right. It has been well said that 
 "it is not in the absence of restraint, but in the presence 
 of opportunity, that freedom really consists." If we press 
 the argument one step further, inquiring wherein this 
 "presence of opportunity" consists, we find it signifies the 
 existence of a special sphere of activity, a scope of work and 
 life, which is apportioned to the individual, and which may
 
 RIGHTS OF INDIVIDUAL PROPERTY 97 
 
 not be invaded by another. And what else is this private 
 sphere of activity but "property," the proprium of each 
 person that domain in which he may freely express himself? 
 
 Though this presence of opportunity for self-expression, 
 which is the essence of true " property," does not always 
 imply the exclusive possession of some objective good, it 
 does imply exclusive use. So, even in the public street, the 
 space occupied by an individual is recognized as his " right " 
 so long as he occupies it, though time and other limits be 
 assigned to this occupation. The essence of property, then, 
 is exclusive right of use. My property consists of " what is 
 mine, and not yours" to use. 
 
 Where any class of goods capable of use exists in great 
 abundance, the right of exclusive use of any portion involves 
 no difficulty. Not merely the higher intellectual and moral 
 goods, but " free " goods of every kind, become the property 
 of those who possess them, without involving any real restric- 
 tion upon the activity of others. No clash of individual 
 wills can arise over property in knowledge or in goodness. 
 The domain of intellectual and spiritual opportunities is 
 infinite ; the noblest forms of property always go a-begging. 
 The best economy of social power will always be directed 
 towards securing the largest outlay of social energy in the 
 production of those forms of wealth over which " the law of 
 diminishing returns" and the "niggardliness of nature" 
 have no control, and where the gain of one does not imply 
 the loss of another. 
 
 Common language, by confining "property" to certain 
 limited forms of material opportunity, and law, by the 
 grim humour attaching to its use of the term " real " in " real 
 property," show where the shoe pinches, where the social 
 problem presses. It is the restriction of food and of other 
 material opportunities, bounded by inexorable limits of 
 matter and space, which make " rights of property " so 
 important in their issues. Individuals find that they cannot 
 
 H
 
 98 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 all obtain full means of satisfaction for their animal wants. 
 The same material goods are wanted by several persons at 
 the same time for their "property." Under conditions of 
 actual life there is not enough of the best material oppor- 
 tunities to " go round." 
 
 This is the root from which the most pressing economic 
 and social problems spring. How much shall each have? 
 Does nature throw no light upon this question? Is there 
 any natural basis of the relations of efforts and satisfactions 
 for the guidance of society in determining the socially 
 expedient " rights of property " ? 
 
 In answering this question in the affirmative, we are by 
 no means confined to that broad philosophic interpretation 
 of "natural" which identifies it with "rational." The 
 " rights " of property may be described as " natural," because 
 certain laws of the physical and moral nature of man mark 
 out the true limits of property in any given conditions of 
 society. 
 
 In approaching the problem of property in material 
 objects it is most expedient to start from the standpoint 
 of the individual. For, as an animal, the possessor of a 
 body, the individual stands most distinctly apart from his 
 fellows, and property for the satisfaction of his animal needs 
 is most definitely allocated to his private individual use. 
 
 Physiology assigns certain laws of individual property 
 in tracing necessary relations between the output of vital 
 energy in work and the replacement of that energy through 
 nutrition. Every kind of human effort given out in the 
 production of material or non-material wealth must be 
 attended by a consumption of material forms, adjusted both 
 in quantity and in character to the expenditure of force. 
 The "appropriation" to the individual of a certain quantity 
 of food, clothing, and shelter, in order to repair the waste 
 of tissue involved by a working life, is a first assignment 
 of "property" by natural law. This "property" in the
 
 RIGHTS OF INDIVIDUAL PROPERTY 99 
 
 simplest condition of society would consist in the whole or 
 part of the actual product of the energy given out. This 
 is what Adam Smith meant by saying : " The produce of 
 labour constitutes natural recompense." Taking a somewhat 
 more advanced state of industrial society, we should express 
 this natural law by saying that nature assigns to every 
 producer, as his separate property, that portion of his 
 product, or of some equivalent in exchange, required to 
 sustain his productive energy. This first " right of property," 
 sometimes spoken of as a "subsistence wage," is generally 
 secured even to a slave, supposing his owner to be an 
 intelligent man who understands his own interest. 
 
 The natural basis of the relations between quantity and 
 character of work on the one hand, and consumption on 
 the other, has received some recognition from economists 
 and business men; but the slow progress of dietetics, and 
 the difficulties attending scientific experiments, still keep 
 this important study in a state of crude empiricism. Indeed, 
 the conditions of industrial competitive societies are such 
 that great organizers of labour, who alone are in the position 
 to experiment upon an adequate scale, are seldom obliged 
 to trouble themselves to discover whether the real wages 
 they pay are or are not sufficient fully to sustain the working 
 powers of the employees. Wherever there exists an over- 
 supply of available labour, the employer who seeks profit is 
 not compelled to consider whether the wage he pays secures 
 to the worker a "property" in consumption-goods sufficient 
 to prevent his labour-power from " running out." Provided 
 that he is able to obtain at a low price a constant replenish- 
 ment of the kind of labour he requires, it may " pay " him 
 to draw upon the capital of working energy stored in young 
 men and women, and by paying wages insufficient for the 
 maintenance of vital energy, or by drawing out the labour- 
 power too rapidly through excessive duration or intensity
 
 100 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 of labour, or by a combination of both processes, to exhaust 
 their vital capital, and throw their prematurely exhausted 
 bodies upon public or private charity to keep. This is 
 the economy of "sweating. 11 It does not always "pay." 
 Where highly-skilled, regular, or responsible labour is 
 required, the economy of high wages is valid up to a certain 
 point. It is admittedly a short-sighted policy for a master 
 in the finer textile processes, or in engineering work, which 
 demands combined skill and power, to force wages down 
 below a certain standard, because such decrements of wages 
 would be "naturally" attended by corresponding or larger 
 decrements of working efficiency. In other words, what a 
 greedy employer sought to take in extra profit would not 
 be created. The attempt to take a form of "natural 
 property 11 prevents that property from coming into being. 
 Even in low-skilled or common labour of certain sorts the 
 same natural laws are observed by capable employers. Mr. 
 Brassey, in the execution of railway contracts in different 
 countries of the world, collected valuable experience 
 indicating the direct relations between a high standard 
 of food and a large output of energy among navvies and 
 other railway and road-workers, and maintained, so far as 
 these branches of labour were concerned, the economy of 
 high wages. But it must be admitted that the economy 
 of sweating has equal validity as a "profitable 11 mode of 
 business in cases where great personal skill, or power, or 
 other high qualities, are not essential to the processes, and 
 where the labour market enables prematurely used-up 
 bodies to be readily replaced. 
 
 No general acceptance can be assigned to the contention 
 of such men as Dr. Schuke-Gaevernitz and Mr. Rae, who 
 suggest that, since high wages, short hours, and good hygienic 
 conditions evoke more productivity, the self-interest of 
 employers tends to a complete harmony of interests between 
 employers and employed. This harmony exists only in
 
 RIGHTS OF INDIVIDUAL PROPERTY 101 
 
 certain industries, and there only within certain limits. 
 Though intelligent and humane employers do often secure 
 to labour a full "natural 11 property in their product, there 
 exists no adequate security that they will do so. It is not 
 necessarily to the employer's interest to pay wages sufficient 
 to maintain properly the vital energies given out in work ; 
 still less to increase wages with the view of raising the 
 standard of efficiency. Whether or how far he will do so 
 depends upon a great variety of conditions. Even Mr. 
 Brassey never contemplated the economy of paying a Hindoo 
 navvy the same wage as a British navvy, under the expecta- 
 tion that the rise of wage would evoke a corresponding rise 
 of working energy. On the contrary, he recognized that 
 the Hindoo, if wages rose beyond a certain point, would 
 take it out in more leisure and increased torpor. Race, sex, = 
 age, personal habits, climate, in relation to each particular CD 
 kind of work, will make the problem a different one in every 
 case, and the character and intensity of industrial competition^ 
 introduce bewildering perplexities. 
 
 None the less, though difficult to trace, there exists *^ l 
 right natural basis of property in the physiological relations c*2 
 of function and nutrition. Perhaps the most serviceable 2* 
 attempts at scientific measurements have been undertaken Z3 
 in connection with modern armies. Here, so far as food and 
 exercise are concerned, German scientists have conducted 
 most elaborate investigations in order to discover the 
 quantities and proportions of foods which will produce the 
 maximum of soldierly efficiency at the lowest money cost. 
 If similar inquiries, based on even fuller knowledge of 
 nutrition, could be conducted with relation to all the 
 different classes of workers and kinds of work, we should 
 then obtain a correct measure of the first "natural right 11 
 of property. Of course, it would still be true that, though 
 social utility would demand that this property should be 
 secured to every worker, the immediate self-interest of
 
 102 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 competing employers of labour need not conform to social 
 utility, and that wages based on the superior profitableness 
 of a sweating policy might still be paid. 
 
 It must, however, be remembered that there are obvious 
 limits to " sweating.' 1 Apart from the inhumanity of a 
 direct degradation of the working life, the encroachment on 
 "rights of individual property," is strictly limited by the 
 fact that " sweating " does not so much consist in transferring 
 " property " from its rightful owner to the employer in high 
 profits, or to the consumer in low prices, as jn preventing 
 the "property" from coming into being. The supreme 
 wrong of "sweating" is in narrowing and starving the 
 productive powers of the worker. We are often told that 
 the wretched women who slave all the week at making shirts 
 or cheap trousers are not worth more than the miserable 
 pittance, the 4<s. or 5s, which they receive. And, taking the 
 technical meaning of "worth," this may well be true. No 
 one is physically capable of efficient work when competition 
 fixes wages at or below starvation point. Hasty meals of 
 bread and butter and weak tea snatched out of a sixteen- 
 hours" 1 working day, spent in a sedentary occupation and an 
 unwholesome atmosphere, render good work impossible. 
 The seamstress gets 4s. a week because she is a low-skilled, 
 inefficient worker ; but she must be low-skilled and inefficient 
 so long as she gets 4*. a week. Physique, spirit, enterprise, 
 are requisite for the performance of strong, skilled, effective 
 work of any kind. When there is no security of sustenance 
 sufficient to support and stimulate such work it cannot be 
 done. The " sweating system " is thus a terrible encroachment 
 upon rights of property, because, by denying to a worker 
 "the natural property" in the results of his labour, it 
 destroys the capacity of production. 
 
 This "natural property" extends further than the bare 
 subsistence wage. An English navvy cannot give out his 
 maximum strength unless he is well fed with meat and other
 
 RIGHTS OF INDIVIDUAL PROPERTY 103 
 
 expensive foods. Out of his product whatever is necessary 
 to purchase this food is his "natural 11 property. A man 
 engaged in close intellectual work is supposed to need a still 
 higher standard of consumption. If this is true, then, out 
 of the product of his labour, this must be secured to him. 
 This natural right of property thus indicated may be 
 summed up by saying that, out of the current production 
 of wealth, whatever portion is required to maintain the 
 productive power of workers is their natural property i.e. 
 a property which considerations of social utility will secure 
 as a right in accordance with natural laws. 
 
 When society leaves some individuals free, through the 
 action of competitive industry, to encroach upon this property 
 when it is produced, or to prevent its being produced, by 
 depressing the physical efficiency of workers, it fails to 
 maintain "social utility, 11 and condones infractions of a 
 natural right of property. 
 
 Nature marks out still further the individual rights of 
 property. The human will is a part of nature and the 
 motives which operate through it conform to "natural" 
 laws. Consideration of this factor directs Social Utility, in 
 many instances, to secure an ampler right of property to 
 the individual worker than is represented by his bare wage 
 of subsistence or of working efficiency. Where a man is 
 able, by voluntary exertion of his powers, to produce more 
 than his bare subsistence or wage of efficiency, he commonly 
 requires a portion of this surplus as his property. If the 
 conditions of industrial employment are such as enable him 
 to get it, any attempt to withhold it would operate through 
 his will as a natural check upon production, for he will not 
 consent to create this surplus-product unless he receives his 
 " proper " portion of it. 
 
 When an Irish tenant knows that the personal exertion 
 he may put into the improvement of his land is likely to 
 be confiscated by his landlord in rack-rent, he refuses to
 
 104 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 give forth this exertion, and confines himself to a smaller 
 quantity of productive labour, the results of which cannot 
 easily be taken from him. Similarly with our sweated seam- 
 stress. If she were able to put better work into her shirts 
 or trousers, she has no security of getting a higher rate of 
 pay, so that the natural incentive to this better work is 
 lacking. Under well organized industry, it is an important 
 function of the employer to order his wage system so as 
 to operate upon the will of each worker by a skilfully 
 graded inducement which shall evoke his best effort, or, more 
 accurately, that effort which, transmuted into productivity, 
 will yield the largest surplus of profit over pay. Different 
 methods of "progressive wages," profit-sharing schemes, 
 commissions and bonuses, securing to the worker a certain 
 amount of property in the product of his labour over and 
 above the physiological wage of sustenance, are devised so 
 as to stimulate the action of the will. Thus there is super- 
 imposed upon the first natural right of property of the 
 worker in his subsistence another "natural right" to such 
 portion of any extra-product he may produce as is required 
 to stimulate the necessary effort of production. Sometimes 
 a genuine antagonism is created between the two, in cases 
 where the will of the worker is over-stimulated by an 
 excessive appeal to present greed which succeeds in evoking 
 an injurious intensity of labour-power. This is the evil 
 practice known as " driving," whereby a worker is partly 
 persuaded, partly coerced, into giving out so much effort in 
 a given time, or into working so much overtime, as shortens 
 the duration or injures the character of his working life as 
 a whole. 
 
 The property claimed by the worker in this extra-product 
 bears, of course, no fixed relation to the total value of that 
 product. Much will depend upon the amount of painful 
 exertion involved in the extra-work, the inertia, and the 
 desires of the worker. A man inured to a lo\v customary
 
 RIGHTS OF INDIVIDUAL PROPERTY 105 
 
 consumption, already provided by his ordinary day's wage 
 paid for heavy and monotonous manual labour, will require 
 the maximum inducement, in the shape of a property in 
 his extra-product, in order to induce him to work over- 
 time. On the other hand, an educated man constantly 
 growing new " wants,' 1 who is engaged in interesting work 
 that does not exhaust his energy in the course of an ordinary 
 day's work, will undertake extra work for a minimum property 
 in the product. 
 
 But, while the limits of this "natural right" will vary 
 far more widely than the limits of the subsistence wage, some 
 right of property will always be claimed which is " natural " 
 in the sense that, unless it is conceded, human nature will 
 refuse the effort that is asked of it. 
 
 These two elements of natural property, one controlled 
 by purely physiological conditions, the other by operations 
 of the human will, may be taken together to represent 
 the normal standard of comfort for an individual or a class. 
 Or, if we take a closer view of the unity of the organic 
 nature of man, we may regard the former element of 
 property as natural, in that it provides for the conservative 
 demands of his nature, the maintenance of life according to 
 a fixed standard ; whereas the latter is natural in that it is 
 necessary to make provision for the progressive demands of 
 his nature which constantly puts forth new wants that press 
 for satisfaction. Rational man feels a continual impulse 
 towards a fuller life ; he will, therefore, not be content with 
 a "property " just sufficient to maintain his present efficiency 
 of work and life, but will require an ever-expanding margin 
 wherewith to live a larger and a better life. This "right" 
 of property a community guided by "social utility" will 
 also secure to the individual, for it is the essential of that 
 growth of individual and of social character which is the 
 most convincing aspect of " progress." 
 
 All that portion of a product necessary to evoke the
 
 103 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 effort of producing it is, then, the natural property of the 
 person who exerts the effort. In a state of society where 
 endeavours are made to infringe this right, the result is a 
 restriction of productive energy given out, and a consequent 
 diminution of the functional activity of the producer, an 
 impairment of vitality, and of incentive to development. 
 Man desires not merely to live, but to live more abundantly, 
 and for that end will undergo increased effort. But where 
 more abundant life is not secured, nature withholds the 
 effort ; under such conditions torpor sets in, activity becomes 
 inured to a low routine, and soon the very possibility of 
 progress disappears by atrophy of the will and the intelli- 
 gence. A systematic process of infringement of these natural 
 rights of property will gradually reduce the life of an 
 individual or of a class to its lowest terms the starved, 
 hopeless, helpless inefficiency of the unskilled casual labourers 
 in our large towns. It is not so much that these people are 
 robbed of their property by their superiors in economic 
 strength, but rather that they are prevented from producing 
 property which they can have no security of holding for 
 their own uses. In these hidden organized infringements of 
 the security of property we find the true explanation of most 
 of that inefficiency of life and work which shallow thinkers, 
 posing as moralists, impute to moral defects of the individual 
 nature as root-causes. 
 
 But how far do these rights of property, based upon 
 consideration of the physical and moral nature of man, 
 extend? Even confining ourselves to the property needed 
 to maintain physical efficiency of labour power, we find no 
 fixity of limits. The "supply" of labour in any trade is 
 constantly changing character; younger workers ousting 
 older ones, women taking the place of men, foreigners 
 replacing natives, and so forth ; while unceasing changes 
 of industrial processes affect the nature and intensity of the 
 work to be done. Each one of these changes means an
 
 RIGHTS OF INDIVIDUAL PROPERTY 107 
 
 alteration in the proportion of the product which figures 
 as "the property 11 of the worker in the sense of wage of 
 physical efficiency. 
 
 Still deeper considerations affect the rights of property 
 dependent upon the stimulus of the individual will of 
 workers. Here the question is of motive. The crude current 
 treatment of industrial economy is based upon two assump- 
 tions of the permanency of certain forces operative upon 
 human motives. The first assumption relates to human 
 nature in itself, imputing to man inherent idleness and infinite 
 greed ; the second relates to industrial processes, assuming 
 their inherent repulsiveness. Thoroughly selfish men required 
 to do disagreeable and uninteresting work will insist upon 
 a large " property " in the result of this work as a condition 
 of undertaking it. 
 
 Now, just where and in so far as these assumptions are 
 valid, individual rights of property attain their maximum. 
 The dominance of machine-production and minute division 
 of labour over large tracts of the industrial world have had 
 their worst effects in diminishing the inherent attractiveness 
 of work, and in emphasizing the force of selfish greed as the 
 sole stimulus to labour. But, for all that, it is not any 
 eternal law of nature that idleness and greed are the sole 
 directing powers of industry, and that man figures as a 
 " covetous machine/ 1 The root issue is this : Must the 
 worker necessarily, and in all cases, find his motive to labour 
 in the desire to possess as his " property " the product of his 
 labour, or may he find it in the satisfaction afforded by the 
 process ? 
 
 The answer evidently depends largely on the character of 
 the process. If the process is utterly unattractive, the worker 
 can only look to property in the product for his motive, and, 
 unless he gets a large share for his property, he will refuse 
 to produce. If, on the other hand, the process is itself 
 desirable, a far smaller property in the product is necessary
 
 108 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 perhaps no more than is required to maintain the balance 
 of physical efficiency. An artist will often work for what 
 seems to the "business man" a totally inadequate reward. 
 It is not true that man "naturally" refuses effort unless he 
 can secure a full selfish enjoyment of the product. Man 
 is the owner of a recurrent fund of superfluous vital energy, 
 over and above what is needed to procure the necessaries 
 of physical life, and he is willing to use this energy for 
 pleasurable activities of self-expression, without demanding 
 that all the matter which he may inform with this super- 
 fluous energy shall be earmarked for his private property. 
 The activity, or " virtue," of an artist is in a large degree 
 its own reward. So far as an artist (using the term here 
 in its most comprehensive sense) is rightly said to work 
 for " art's sake," he does not work for money. The product, 
 or concrete "work of art," in so far as the artist would be 
 willing to produce it even if he had to present it gratis to 
 an appreciative public, is not strictly the "property" of 
 the artist. His " nature does not require that he should 
 possess it, and wide considerations of social utility require 
 that he should not monopolize it. His property, the scope 
 of his private activity and satisfaction, here resides in the 
 exercise of the creative or artistic faculty itself; even if 
 his poems or his pictures were taken from him as he 
 produced them, and were transferred to the public service, 
 he would still continue to produce. This is, of course, only 
 true of the poet or the painter in so far as he is free in his 
 choice of work, and not a hack, harnessed to the chariot 
 of industrial society, and obliged to slave, cheat, and wrangle 
 for a living. The concrete embodiment of true free artistic 
 power the poem, the play, the picture is not the property 
 of its creator in the same sense, or to the same extent, as 
 the crop of wheat is the property of the farmer, or the 
 shoes of the shoemaker. Where the process contains within 
 itself no balance of satisfaction to yield sufficient motive
 
 RIGHTS OF INDIVIDUAL PROPERTY 109 
 
 to production, adequate "property" in the product must 
 be secured; where the process yields full measure of satis- 
 faction, no such property in the product is essential. The 
 best property of the artist is in the pleasurable use of his 
 art-power; the detached abiding product must be regarded, 
 not as the end or necessary motive of his activity, but, 
 rather, as the material condition of environment in which 
 the functional activity takes place. 
 
 It is true that many artists are very greedy, and jealous 
 of property in their product. The musician and the painter, 
 as we find them, are often preternaturally eager to secure 
 the full market value of their picture or their opera. The 
 great poet who expressed so happily the complete detachment 
 of his art from ordinary mundane motives, " I do but sing 
 because I must," was notorious for the hard bargains he 
 drove with publishers. Dr. Johnson rudely caricatured the 
 prevailing sentiment of his profession when he declared 
 that " no man but a fool wrote except for money."" 
 
 Now, it is true that the poet and the painter may rack-rent 
 the educated public, by extorting a full economic value for 
 the reading of their poems or the sight of their pictures, 
 and this conduct, being consonant with ordinary business 
 practices, may not seem reprehensible. But, rightly judged, 
 the poet has not the same natural right to the full market 
 value of his poem as the weaver or the shoemaker to the 
 value of his product. The rack-rent is not his " property " ; 
 he is simply abusing his power as monopolist. 
 
 Of course, if the " artist" is really motived by greed of 
 gain, and not in any appreciable degree by desire for self- 
 expression, love of art, or even fame, he will demand his 
 " property " in the product, like other business men. A 
 certain legitimate self-love and pride of handicraft may 
 also at any rate in the arts which take material shapes 
 stimulate a certain desire for property in the product. 
 But, making all allowances, the vital difference between
 
 110 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 the artist and the mechanic, or routine-labourer, remains. 
 Just in proportion as work is itself lovable as a means 
 of wholesome and agreeable self-expression, the "natural" 
 right of full private property in the product is weaker. 
 True work is self-expression. Where the process is in- 
 jurious, painful, or degrading, the "self" can find no 
 genuine expression in it, but is concentrated in desire for 
 the product or its money-value. This latter is the goal 
 at which the "self' aims, and, since the producer finds 
 no fruit of his activity in the process, he must have it 
 in the product. Social Utility will secure this to him, 
 in so far as it adjudges the value of the product to be 
 due to the voluntary effort of the individual producer. 
 Those who perceive that no product or its value is rightly 
 attributable as a whole to any merely individual effort 
 will recognize that even a greedy man, doing disagree- 
 able work, has no claim to property in the whole of 
 what he terms "his product"; but the limitations of 
 private property here indicated are reserved for discussion 
 later on. 
 
 The real importance of the distinction between property 
 in process and property in product is that it points out 
 one of the most profitable paths of social reform. If social 
 progress be interpreted in purely quantitative terms, and 
 taken to consist in the multiplication of human life at a 
 low level of character, using an increased control over 
 natural resources merely, or mainly, to supply larger 
 quantities of common routine goods for the fuller satis- 
 faction of the lower grades of animal wants, under these 
 conditions an increasing quantity of work will be void of 
 intrinsic worth, the rights of individual property will 
 continually grow, and the instincts of personal greed hold 
 unabated sway. But, if social progress implies higher indi- 
 viduation of tastes and a growing demand for qualitative 
 satisfaction, measuring the greatness of a man or a nation
 
 RIGHTS OF INDIVIDUAL PROPERTY 111 
 
 by refinement of wants and growing complexity of character, 
 such life will react as a demand for finer and more "artistic" 
 qualities of work, restricting the rights of individual property 
 in products, and continually educating worthier motives of 
 work.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 INFRINGEMENTS OF RIGHTS OF PROPERTY 
 
 IT has been shown that, where economic or other social 
 conditions prevent individuals from obtaining the physical 
 subsistence or the moral stimulus requisite to evoke efficient 
 productivity, such conditions must be held to constitute an 
 infringement of "natural" rights of property by placing 
 barriers against the attainment of " social utility." 
 
 But if it is an infringement of these rights of property 
 for an individual to be unable to secure these requisites, it 
 is equally an infringement for another individual to enjoy 
 "goods" in excess of these requisites. This wrong, on the 
 first blush, may seem less obvious than the other. If I am 
 underpaid for my work, I shall refuse to work ; but if I 
 am overpaid, it might seem that, though the surplus may 
 be of no use to make me work harder or better, it will not 
 prevent me from working as well as if I received my bare 
 " rights." The answer is, however : " Yes, it will ; the 
 surplus wage, consisting of a ' property ' which is not your 
 earning, but some one else's, will hang like a millstone round 
 your neck, numbing your energy and paralyzing your effort. 
 Every pound which is paid to you of another's earning is a 
 bribe not to work. Every enjoyment given without exact- 
 ing some correspondent effort, every act of consumption 
 which involves no previous act of production, is a * natural ' 
 and, in the long run, an inevitable check upon future 
 
 112
 
 INFRINGEMENTS OF RIGHTS OF PROPERTY 113 
 
 effort, and is represented in a net reduction of efficiency 
 in the recipient." 
 
 This may sound a hard saying ; but let us test it. 
 
 The economist of the Charity Organization Society justly 
 dwells upon the evil effects of distributing sixpences to a 
 promiscuous crowd of beggars. Just as money paid to 
 workers acts as a demand for labour, so the same money 
 paid to non-workers acts as a demand for idleness. It 
 enables men to live idle, induces them to remain idle, and 
 persuades others to qualify for this charity by becoming 
 idlers. Now, this result follows, not from the fact that the 
 sixpences are distributed by the caprice of a benevolent 
 stranger to persons he knows nothing about. The disposition 
 of the donor, the regularity of his charitable action, and 
 even the character of the recipients, are not the chief circum- 
 stances which determine whether the net result of such 
 action is good or evil. It is money given without corre- 
 sponding service rendered, power of enjoyment detached from 
 its natural antecedent of human effort, that constitutes 
 the wrong. But, strangely enough, well-to-do people, who 
 clearly comprehend the force of this argument when it 
 applies to the poor, fail to grasp its application to them- 
 selves. If it is the unnatural detachment of enjoyment from 
 effort which makes charity injurious, then all wealth enjoyed 
 without effort is equally injurious. The pauperization and 
 degradation which follow charitable gifts to the poor attach 
 equally to them, if they receive gifts or inheritances from 
 relatives and friends, or live upon rent and interest of capital 
 which has required of them no painful abstinence ; or if in 
 any other way they reap where they have not sown. Yet we 
 have seldom known any of this stern order of philanthropists 
 to refuse a legacy on the ground that it would degrade his 
 character if he received it. 
 
 This abrupt denial of the social utility of inheritance 
 requires some explanation or qualification. It must be kept
 
 114 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 in mind that we are engaged at present in constructing the 
 ideal relation which should subsist in a society guided by 
 true considerations of Social Utility. In a society which 
 neglects its first duty of affording to all members whose 
 existence it has endorsed, security of work and of adequate 
 payment for the same, it is not unreasonable that parents 
 and other relatives should seek by gifts or bequests to secure 
 their young against undeserved and injurious hardships. 
 Within reasonable limits of amount this private endowment 
 of security in life may not do the harm which it would do 
 in a properly constituted society. Moreover, so long as 
 these undeserved and terrible risks continue to be possible 
 the power so to bequeath property may be, and in some 
 cases will be, a genuine, or, as we should say, a "natural" 
 stimulus to productive exertion. But these qualifications 
 of the wrongfulness of bequest and inheritance under existing 
 circumstances must not lead us to assign to them any ultimate 
 social validity, or to ignore the grave abuses which attend 
 their present operation. A well-ordered society will not 
 find it socially useful to permit any bequest or inheritance 
 which will enable the recipient to withhold any of his 
 working energy from social service, nor will regard for the 
 security or prosperity of relatives or friends continue to 
 form a natural stimulus to the productive energy which 
 seeks to amass property, when this security and prosperity 
 can be attained by the reasonable exertions of each member 
 of society. 
 
 In a word, bequest and inheritance, like other forms of 
 charity, can only be defended as palliatives of social disease, 
 not as wholesome social institutions. Even considered in 
 the light of palliatives the tendency of enlightened societies 
 will be to place closer restrictions upon them. 
 
 " We find that atrophy is both more rapid and more 
 complete among parasites than elsewhere. Plants lose their 
 roots and even their leaves. Among animals, the points of
 
 INFRINGEMENTS OF RIGHTS OF PROPERTY 115 
 
 contact with the world are minimized in proportion to the 
 degree of parasitism ; the nervous system tends to Disappear 
 so completely, indeed, that in some species the individual 
 ends in being little more than a sac with reproductive 
 organs. In the world of human life, parasitic degeneration 
 is, above all, cerebral. The intellectual faculties are the first 
 to atrophy from disease; physical degeneration is a later 
 and almost a reflex process." * 
 
 This slow working of the natural law in modern industrial 
 societies is chiefly attributable to two causes. The first is 
 that, so far as rent-drawers, sinecurists, and other "pro- 
 prietary parasites'" are concerned, they are frequently 
 inheritors of an originally vigorous constitution which is 
 transmitted to them but slightly, if at all, impaired by the 
 parasitic life of their parents. This good start in life, 
 favoured by a healthy environment in childhood, enables 
 them to stand out sometimes for a long time against the 
 natural tendencies of the parasitic life. Then, again, para- 
 sitism does not, save in extreme cases, impose or admit 
 complete inertia. Most parasites must either find a " host " 
 or, if it be provided, as by inheritance to the human para- 
 site, some activity is enjoined in the very processes of feeding 
 on him. Take, for instance, the landowner. A fine humour 
 lurks in the common defence of landlordism upon the ground 
 of the laborious energy the landlord must display in order 
 to extract his full economic rents and administer his property 
 for this purpose the labour of " managing his estate."" 
 Such activity, of course, though no defence against the 
 charge of parasitism, is often efficacious in postponing or 
 abating the natural results upon the parasite. It may 
 indeed be conceded that the parasitism of the landlord is not 
 perfected until he has reached the haven of absenteeism, 
 and from a collector of rents has passed into a mere receiver, 
 
 * " Parasitism, Organic and Social," by J. Mussart and Emile Vander- 
 velde, p. 75 (Sonnenschein).
 
 116 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 opening his mouth to receive for food the fruit of others' 
 toil. The same process of change is visible in other depart- 
 ments of industrial society. The big capitalist-employer, 
 energetic in building up and ordering his business during 
 youth, tends constantly to reduce active co-operation ; for a 
 time he will busy himself in the office checking accounts, so 
 as to ascertain that he is getting his full share of profit, but 
 gradually he passes into a condition which, discarding all 
 pretence to serious work, feigns to justify itself by talk of 
 general "direction" and "responsibility; 1 ' the business is 
 converted into a company, and he assumes the post of 
 director, which becomes more and more of a sinecure as 
 time passes on, until in effect, if not in name, he becomes 
 a mere drawer of dividends. It may even be suggested that 
 the facilitation of this parasitic tendency is a chief economic 
 motive of the growth of the Joint Stock Company, which is 
 the leading type of business structure to-day. But even when 
 a landowner is " absentee " and a business man " retired," 
 the administration of their property, or, at any rate, of their 
 income, involves some exercise of brain and nerve which 
 mitigates and retards the numbing tendency of the parasitic 
 habit. 
 
 These considerations, hiding or mitigating the nature 
 and effects of economic parasitism, prevent the persons of 
 "independent means" from perceiving or admitting that 
 their "independence" is infected with the same malady as 
 the spurious charity which they condemn when it is directed 
 to the relief of the poor. 
 
 To live upon the energy of other people, through rents, 
 dividends, inheritance or gift involves, however, certain 
 natural injuries of parasitism. Indeed I do not hesitate 
 to say that, for a man who is rich or who is capable 
 by his personal exertion of enjoying a property of his 
 own making, to receive an inheritance is productive of 
 the evils of which I speak in a higher degree than in
 
 INFRINGEMENTS OF RIGHTS OF PROPERTY 117 
 
 the case where charity is bestowed upon the poor. For 
 in the case of poor persons, whose evil plight is often a 
 result of an habitual invasion by others upon their natural 
 right of property and a consequent narrowing of their 
 productive energy, one wrong may be in a certain clumsy 
 way a correction of the other wrong. But, in the case of 
 the richer person, the result of receiving a property which 
 is in no sense his, because none of his vital energy has gone 
 into its making, is an unqualified wrong. A man who 
 receives and uses a property which is not his own making 
 is paid to withhold so much of his personal energy in pro- 
 duction, is paid to give out a smaller amount of organized 
 and directed activity than he would otherwise have given. 
 If he receive a series of such gifts, or one gift, the numbing 
 influence of which is spread over a long period of time, he 
 becomes an idler or an anarchist. If the bribe acts directly, 
 it gradually saps all the roots of active energy which are 
 not centred in desire of personal display or other form of 
 self-love. The " independent gentleman. 1 ' 1 for so with uncon- 
 scious humour he styles himself, will practise for a while 
 such forms of active self-expression as are fashionable, stir 
 his emulation, and are not degraded by having attached to 
 them any useful end; he may hunt, play golf, sit on the 
 bench, enter Parliament, or even collect some sort of know- 
 ledge which shows well, and involves no arduous effort of 
 attainment. 
 
 But the property of another which he uses will gradually 
 crush his own property, his capacity of vigorous self-expres- 
 sion. Relieved of the necessity of painful effort, he will only 
 undergo such efforts as are easy ; so the habit of hard work 
 disappears, and with it the zest of enjoyment which the 
 reaction from hard work brings. The higher kinds of con- 
 centrated mental effort, with their corresponding enjoyments, 
 go first ; then the lower ; even the physical exercises involving 
 skill, constant practice, and play of mind, yield to the
 
 118 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 simpler forms of animal enjoyment. This is the normal and 
 necessary effect of living upon another's property. One by 
 one the higher activities are debilitated, and cease to work ; 
 the attempt to consume without producing, to enjoy without 
 effort, at once lessens the quantity and lowers the quality of 
 life. The logical end of a society living upon unearned 
 incomes would be death by over-feeding, or by inability to 
 digest and assimilate their food. No economic or moral 
 defence of the right to receive rent or interest, or to take 
 by inheritance or, bequest another's property, however cogent 
 it may appear, can abrogate this application of the natural 
 law. ^ 
 
 Physical decay is a " natural " consequence of attempted 
 evasions of the physical law which imposes exercise as the 
 condition of digestion. " Whosoever will not work, neither 
 can he eat " is the physical rendering of the moral law. For 
 the physical diseases bred of stolen luxuries, and those which 
 spring from chronic starvation, are literal counterparts. 
 The convex, congested paunch of the torpid plutocrat, 
 who consumes without the effort of producing, implies as 
 its equal and opposite the concave, anaemic body of the 
 inefficient starveling. The logic of events works, indeed, 
 slowly, and with seeming irregularity. Not only is it 
 possible for individuals to postpone, and even to escape 
 utterly, this natural Nemesis of "economic independence;" 
 but this struggle for existence has evolved, among other 
 "fitnesses," a particular cunning directed to this end. On 
 the physical side it takes the name of Sport. Considered 
 as an organized and regular pursuit and, as such, dis- 
 tinguished from "play," which in all animal life is the 
 wholesome expenditure of superfluous vitality in unorganized 
 displays of individual activity Sport is a device to avoid 
 the natural law by substituting voluntary, useless, physical 
 exertion for useful physical labour directed to the social good. 
 It is practised alike by the upper class of "unemployed,"
 
 INFRINGEMENTS OF RIGHTS OF PROPERTY 119 
 
 and by specialized brain- workers and others engaged in 
 sedentary and indoor occupations, in order to safeguard 
 the physique against the effects of economic idleness on the 
 one hand, and over-specialization upon the other. From 
 the social standpoint it is a waste of potentially productive 
 energy^ arising from the imperfect social order, which enables 
 some to escape all contribution of physical labour, imposing 
 their proper share upon others. We are not here concerned 
 with the justice of the pleas upon which such conduct is 
 defended the plea of inherited wealth, prior concentrated 
 services, the necessity of minute subdivision of labour. The 
 fact alone concerns us that, the greater part of this organized 
 "Sport" is a cunning product of parasitism, a substitution 
 of voluntary physical exertion directed by individual pleasure 
 for the compulsory physical work directed by social utility. 
 
 Would a sound society, then, make no allowance for physical 
 recreation ? Certainly. Not a smaller, but a larger, margin 
 of free exercise of individual powers is socially desirable for 
 all; not a larger, but a smaller, share of the individual's 
 time and energy should be directly ordered by society for 
 the explicit attainment of social ends. 
 
 But this " freedom " can only be obtained for all on con- 
 dition that all likewise do their share of the drudgery of 
 social work. If all did their share, there would be more 
 time and energy for recreation ; but recreation would probably 
 take different shapes from those in vogue at present. Boys, 
 and even men, would still play games ; some of these games 
 would probably be to some degree organized. To that 
 extent what we call Sport would survive ; but it would 
 have lost the place it occupies at present in the life of 
 certain classes. We should no longer find thousands of 
 able-bodied Englishmen virtually devoting all their time 
 and energy in summer to golf, in winter to hunting; we 
 should no longer find the greater part of the South of 
 England degenerating into a mere playground for the
 
 120 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 "classes," and we should no longer see society contami- 
 nated by the brutality of the hordes of professional sporting 
 men, from flash bookmakers down to "caddies," represent- 
 ing in their character and lives the most pernicious type of 
 modern humanity. Sport, as a profession and an organized 
 occupation, would give way to "sport 11 as a pastime and 
 a recreation. 
 
 The suggestion that Sport, as practised at present, is a 
 cunning device to escape a natural law, is curiously borne 
 out by investigation of some of the leading forms of sport, 
 which are merely reversions to the early predatory practices of 
 primitive man ; hunting and racing are useless imitations of 
 early necessary functions ; even football and other organized 
 combative games are ornamental survivals of that war habit 
 which, in its serious aspect, is now commonly delegated to 
 a special class. 
 
 The energy displayed in sport and travel, and in other 
 forms of physical activity, undertaken voluntarily by many 
 persons of " independent 11 incomes, enables them, not merely 
 to escape the natural penalty of idleness, but to develop a 
 physique superior to that of any other class. But this only 
 holds of a minority ; most members of the upper unemployed 
 class, when middle age creeps on, remit much of this volun- 
 tary activity, and gradually succumb to the illusion that a 
 man can eat and get the good out of his food without 
 working. But nature is not mocked ; such people fall 
 victims to the various maladies arising from indigestion and 
 hypertrophy ; according to Dr. Arlidge, the death-rate for 
 the "unoccupied 11 classes after the age of sixty is actually 
 higher than it is for the overworked, ill-fed, worse -housed 
 agricultural labourers. Thus, in the long run, the natural 
 law of " property " exacts its physical penalty. 
 
 As Ruskin and Tolstoy insist, it is "intended 11 by 
 nature that all men should do some manual work ; and 
 every avoidance of this law, either by excessive specialization
 
 INFRINGEMENTS OF RIGHTS OF PROPERTY 121 
 
 upon some non-manual work or by living upon "property" 
 due to the exertion of others, damages the physical vitality 
 of those who practise it. 
 
 Voluntary exercise in sport or work is not in the long 
 run an adequate safeguard. Nature imposes the obligation 
 of work as a condition of enjoyment, and it belongs to a 
 well-ordered society to enforce this obligation.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 IS A LEISURED CLASS DESIRABLE? 
 
 THE defence of a leisured class that is to say, of persons 
 whose material needs are satisfied, chiefly or entirely, by 
 the exertions of others is commonly based upon the 
 higher social services which, it is claimed, are rendered by 
 the voluntary activity of men of leisure in the spheres of 
 politics, science, literature, in travel and adventure, and in 
 all the finest and most progressive arts of civilization. 
 Indeed, it is often boldly asserted that the graces and 
 refinements of life, the disinterested love of knowledge, 
 devotion to philanthropic work, the pursuit of all the 
 slower, more hazardous, and less directly fruitful paths of 
 thought, would perish from a nation where all classes alike 
 were compelled to labour for a living.* A people thus 
 materialized, and set upon a common economic level all 
 obliged to produce what others need, or think they need 
 would lose all adequate appreciation of the finer, rarer forms 
 of human achievement. What support or encouragement, 
 it is asked, would such a society give to the mathematical 
 researches of a Cayley, the slow, patient investigations of a 
 Darwin ? Would a Shelley or a Tennyson have been allowed 
 to live years of apparent idleness necessary for the ripening 
 of their genius ? Would not a utilitarianism of the cruder 
 sort reign throughout society, repressing all the finer flights 
 of the human spirit ? 
 
 * Vide Lecky, " Studies of Democracy," vol. ii. p. 411. 
 122
 
 IS A LEISURED CLASS DESIRABLE? 123 
 
 So large a proportion of what is noblest and most 
 imperishable in science, literature, art, and in political and 
 spiritual achievements has, indeed, proceeded from members 
 of a "leisured class," or has been supported by their 
 "patronage," in all countries and all ages, that this 
 argument for an upper grade of " unemployed " seems to 
 many quite irrefutable. 
 
 But let us realize more clearly what it signifies. It 
 literally means the feeding of a chosen generally a co- 
 opted few, by the bounty of others, or of society, upon 
 the chance that some of them will do fine work which they 
 are not compelled to do. " Ah ! " it will be said, " but the 
 finest work will always be done by an internal compulsion ; 
 genius will demand expression, and the absence of all 
 obligation to produce for the market will give this genius 
 the freedom it requires to seek its natural and noblest 
 outlet." 
 
 Such men, owning '"'property" which they have not 
 earned, or supported by those who own such property, will, 
 it is urged, use their property as the means of enabling 
 them to do for society a work which is intrinsically far more 
 serviceable than what they would have done had they been 
 compelled to labour for a livelihood. Now, taking society 
 as it stands, it cannot be denied that in this pressure of 
 individual genius, there resides a force which, in not a few 
 cases, postpones or defeats the operation of the "natural 
 law" that imposes the necessity of labour. But, taken as a 
 general defence of a leisured class, it is nothing else than a 
 plea for " Anarchy." I call those men " Anarchists " (they 
 may be sportsmen, politicians, literateurs, or professional 
 men) who, in the choice and execution of all their work, 
 are entirely uncontrolled by the force of society, and do 
 whatever they do of their own individual choice. 
 
 By far the most specious defence of unearned property 
 is based upon these volunteer services. If we assume that
 
 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 every man is inclined to be as greedy and as idle as he 
 can, it may well be considered noble, and even heroic, of 
 Lord A to spend long days in the tedious work of the 
 Foreign Office, of Sir John B to compile his elaborate 
 " History of the Barbadoes," and of Mr. C to make himself an 
 authority upon agricultural chemistry, when it was open to 
 them to sit as mere parasites at the feast of life. But the 
 Social Question imposes the test of economy. May it not 
 be that these rare gains are bought too dearly ? For every 
 rich man of leisure who seems to justify his economic 
 position by the value of his voluntary work are there not a 
 score whose self-chosen activity is ill-chosen, wasteful, or 
 pernicious, and a hundred who use their economic power to 
 consume without producing anything? The enjoyment of 
 property which represents no personal effort is not really 
 justified by volunteer efforts. The effort which precedes 
 and justifies enjoyment must be as nature directs obli- 
 gatory; and, as it is necessarily social in its consequences, 
 it must be determined in amount and character by social 
 requirements. To say that a man has chosen to spend 
 all his time in shooting tigers in Bengal, exploring the 
 South Seas, drafting a Local Option Bill, or performing 
 any other arduous and meritorious act, is no answer to the 
 allegation that he enjoys property which is of another's 
 making. It may be highly creditable to the nature of an 
 individual that, whereas he might have sat idle, he uses the 
 income he derives from " economic rents " as the basis of a 
 vocation which is arduously pursued to the advantage of 
 the society in which he lives ; but, so far as he acts of his 
 own initiative, his " vocation " must be regarded as a purely 
 "charitable"" one, and the benefits he bestows upon society 
 are open to all the dangers which beset charitable action. 
 On the average man an income received for no definite service 
 rendered, or to be rendered, will operate as a bribe not to 
 work a definite endowment of idleness. Even if he
 
 IS A LEISURED CLASS DESIRABLE? 125 
 
 struggles against it in the vigour of his youth, it will over- 
 come him in later life, and he will become an idler, or a 
 still more pernicious "dabbler." This will be its normal 
 effect. The property of another, which he uses, will disable 
 him for producing property of his own will sap the power 
 of vigorous self-expression. 
 
 Even where voluntary work is done, the defence of 
 private endowment is far weaker than at first appears. So 
 far is it from being true that the necessity of contributing 
 his quota to the routine labour of the work-a-day world 
 would check the flow of voluntary energy into the higher arts, 
 or degrade its quality, that the direct contrary is the case. 
 Where a leisured class, by the very condition of its economic 
 independence, is severed from close contact with, and direct 
 experience of, the larger social life, its art, its literature, its 
 science and philosophy alike suffer. Losing at once the 
 direct support and inspiration of the popular life ; deriving 
 the material it handles in its art and literature, not from 
 the fountain-head of direct personal experience, but from 
 loose, casual observation, or from the second-hand sources 
 of books and conversation, having no strong grasp of that 
 social utility which must rightly form the standard of all 
 valuation the dilettanti workers, in their select fields, fail in 
 actuality, in broad, sympathetic comprehension of the life 
 around them, and fritter much of their energy on fruitless 
 and recondite trivialities. The "unnatural" condition of 
 their class-life narrows and emasculates their work of 
 every kind, tends to turn their art into artifice, their 
 science into esoteric pedantry, their philosophy into refined 
 verbiage. 
 
 Great literature cannot proceed from such class life ; it 
 inevitably lapses into verbal elegance, recommending itself 
 by decorative form in order to conceal the poverty of spirit. 
 A class-life remote from the people never has produced, and 
 never can produce, great literature and art. Where it has
 
 126 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 seemed to do so, as in Athens, Florence, Elizabethan 
 England, it is where and when the majestic and multi- 
 tudinous forces of some great national struggle have for 
 a season breathed into the artificial forms of class art the 
 breath of popular life, and made them its vehicles. A leisured 
 class, enjoying securely a high level of material comfort 
 derived from the labour of others, is normally disabled from 
 " great " work. This is particularly the case in literature, not 
 merely from the lack of broader sympathies which it involves, 
 but for another reason directly related to the material of 
 the literary craft. With how loose and impotent a grasp 
 most of the common words of a language relating to 
 material objects and physical actions are held by the minds 
 of people educated too exclusively on books and talk, is 
 never adequately recognized. People who are not obliged 
 to "do things for themselves" remain through life quite 
 ignorant of many of the common properties and functions 
 of material objects around them, and in particular of the 
 physical capacities of the human body. In other words, 
 they know the material world directly and essentially only 
 as it affects them as " consumers " ; something " about " the 
 working-side of common life they will learn from books or 
 unsystematic observation, but the facts are not branded by 
 adequate personal experience upon their minds, and the 
 words relating to these facts are poorly realized. People, 
 educated in the literary sense, often conceal the defective 
 realization of the words they use, even from themselves ; but 
 the defect is there. As most people bred in towns remain 
 through life with a most shadowy grasp of the meaning of 
 the commonest words relating to country life which they 
 habitually use, so people with no direct experience in 
 manual work have no vital or real understanding of a large 
 proportion of their language. The peasant or the mechanic, 
 with a far smaller vocabulary, has an incomparably more 
 powerful grasp of his words. Until we understand the
 
 IS A LEISURED CLASS DESIRABLE? 127 
 
 difference between a strong and a weak grasp of words and 
 the indispensable conditions of the former, we shall remain 
 the dupes of literary charlatans. In the nature of things 
 no great body of literature, no great body of poetry, " simple, 
 sensuous, and impassioned, 11 can arise from a leisured class 
 severed from direct contact with the working life of the 
 community. 
 
 But divorcement from the necessity of manual labour and 
 from familiar converse with hard facts of life is just as 
 injurious to many of the other arts to which the "leisured 
 classes 1 ' appeal for their justification. Politicians, historians, 
 economists, philosophers, when they do their work thoroughly, 
 are constantly compelled to handle terms of which they 
 have only a vague conventional understanding, because of 
 their defective experience. Many of the gravest and most 
 injurious errors are directly traceable to this defective 
 grounding of the class-man in facts of common life. 
 Historians who write of campaigns or of popular tumults, 
 never having marched in line or tasted the life of the streets ; 
 politicians or economists who discourse airily of unskilled 
 labour without ever having wielded a spade or carried a 
 sack of grain, however brave a show of understanding facts 
 they make, fail to convince, because they have no vital 
 grasp of the meaning of their words. Imagination will not 
 do everything, even for the historian. 
 
 I do not, of course, mean that no one can properly use 
 words without personal experience of the special facts they 
 are intended to convey ; I merely affirm that our experience 
 must bring us into direct touch with some experience of 
 the same order, if we are to know and use language aright. 
 The total severance of class-life from mass-life or, at any 
 rate, the feeble casual contact with it disables our " leisured 
 classes 11 from a true handling of the ground issues of life 
 in any of its great departments. 
 
 The ordering of property in accordance with natural
 
 128 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 laws, imposing upon all the obligation of manual labour, so 
 far from destroying national culture, is the only sound 
 foundation of such culture. A life thus ordered, while it 
 would own no "leisured class,"" would vastly increase the 
 general fund of leisure, furnishing the two essentials for 
 great production in the intellectual and artistic fields which 
 are lacking now the inspiration of great national forces, 
 and direct organic contact of intellectual workers with the 
 general life. 
 
 Would "the swinish multitude"" trample under foot all 
 the fairest flowers of civilization, as the superior man, who 
 despises those that keep him, constantly affirms ? There is 
 a fine flavour of parasitic insolence in the wide vogue which 
 this creed obtains among the leisured class. The proletariat 
 of to-day, oppressed by the burden of the entire material 
 support of an aristocracy and a large middle class, who, 
 while they do no share of manual labour, consume a wholly 
 disproportionate quantity of material products, can only 
 accomplish its task by an excessive intensity or duration of 
 hard mechanical or other routine toil, which absorbs the 
 vital energy and the leisure required for the growth and 
 satisfaction of the higher human needs. This excessive 
 output of cruder labour-power is attended, under the 
 present economic system, by an insecurity and irregularity 
 of employment which demoralizes and derationalizes 
 character, stifling the germs of aesthetic and intellectual 
 tastes, and evoking the grossest selfishness as a necessary law 
 of self-preservation. The natural and inevitable result is 
 that material dissipation and amusements of the coarsest 
 and most sensational order swallow up the narrow margin 
 of their leisure and consuming power, and make them 
 appear to our educated classes the enemies of culture, 
 prepared, if they had the power, to uproot the garden of 
 civilization, and to establish a reign of coarse material ease 
 and sensational utility. Such is the future which even so
 
 IS A LEISURED CLASS DESIRABLE? 129 
 
 thoughtful and so calm a critic as the late Mr. C. H. 
 Pearson imagined for democratic England. The humorous 
 insolence of such a view must now be apparent. The low 
 tastes and character of the mass of workers are directly 
 imposed upon them by the very class which taunts them 
 with possessing them. In the economic and attendant legal 
 processes which determine the composition of the leisured 
 and cultured classes there is extremely little to furnish a 
 "struggle" which selects and assigns success by any test of 
 those moral and intellectual qualities which make for the 
 advance of culture in art, literature, and the finer human 
 branches of achievement. We have, therefore, no warrant 
 for assuming that the mass of workers offer a worse natural 
 soil of culture than the class which at present lives upon 
 their degradation, and then defends its parasitic life by 
 arguing from this degradation as a natural and permanent 
 factor. 
 
 To come back to our main thesis, there is no warrant for 
 supposing that a people, established upon a sound basis of 
 property, and endowed with an ample margin of energy 
 and leisure, after a certain reasonable level of material 
 comfort was assured, would abuse that energy and leisure 
 as it is abused to-day by most members of our too-leisured 
 classes, and would refuse to recognize and advance the 
 claims of literature and art, or degrade science by imposing 
 short-sighted utilitarian tests. 
 
 The fallacy of those who impute to democracy this 
 debacle of culture is that they suppose the people to be able 
 to possess and wield this destructive power, without 
 perceiving that the very condition of their getting it 
 implies a change of economic order, and of intellectual con- 
 ditions which will naturally tend to avert the very dangers 
 that they fear. Not having diagnosed the maladies of 
 economic injustice which underlie the existing infraction of 
 the "natural rights of property," they fail to perceive 
 
 K
 
 130 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 how the healing of these maladies will operate in raising 
 the character of democracy. The dangers they impute 
 are genuinely inherent in mob-rule; they disappear from 
 an organic democracy standing on a sound basis of 
 property.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 INDIVIDUALIST SOLUTIONS OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 STARTING with the individual in his capacity as producer 
 and consumer, our theory represents him as giving forth 
 voluntary effort to make valuable products, and receiving 
 as his "natural property" such portion of the product (or 
 its equivalent in other products) as is physiologically and 
 morally necessary to promote the application of his most 
 effective work. 
 
 But do individuals, as such, make all or any wealth, and 
 are valuable products to be regarded as their creation ? 
 Not only avowed Socialists, but most modern economists 
 of every school, would maintain that "value is social"" in 
 the sense that organized labour and social demand are 
 essentials and determinants of the value of all valuable 
 forms of property. 
 
 It is, however, necessary to recognize that the great 
 majority of educated an4 intelligent people regard valuable 
 property as the creation of individuals, and economic society 
 as a mere aggregate of individuals. So firmly is this fallacy 
 fastened in the common mind that it requires extraordinary 
 care for its effective exposure. In addressing myself to this 
 task I need not assume in my readers an eighteenth-century 
 attitude of mind, which has no view of society other than 
 as a mere concourse of individuals or as a merely mechanical 
 combination. Some notion of society as a political, a moral, 
 
 131
 
 132 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 or a spiritual unity finds lodgment in the minds of almost 
 all thinking persons. The common use of such terms as 
 national conduct, national responsibility, the public con- 
 science, and State rights, may be taken as conclusive 
 evidence that society, in its several shapes and sizes, from 
 the municipality to the nation, and even to the wider 
 humanity, is recognized in some sense and degree as a social 
 organism operated by a social will. The education of the 
 city and the nation, and still more powerfully the education 
 of the church, has always maintained this organic conception 
 of what is termed the higher life. It is only in relation 
 to industry and property that the individualist or monadist 
 position is still obstinately held. This curious inconsistency 
 of mental and moral attitude is carried so far that moral 
 socialism is sometimes set even in theoretic antagonism to 
 economic socialism. " The economic socialist," it is suggested, 
 
 7 OO 
 
 "is a moral individualist, who wants to socialize industry 
 and property as a means of enabling every one to enjoy 
 material comfort and liberty, so as to lead a selfish life, 
 doing what he likes with his ample income and his ample 
 leisure, and caring nothing for the higher spiritual common- 
 alty."" The crude materialism, the definitely hostile attitude 
 towards religion, the family, and other bonds of moral union, 
 which have marked certain sections of Continental Socialism, 
 lend a certain superficial support to this antithesis. At 
 root it is as false as every other form of dualism. To a 
 certain class of temperament, however, the assertion, that 
 economic socialism is opposed to spiritual socialism, and 
 that the latter alone is necessary, comes as a welcome gospel. 
 It is both an " elevated " and a convenient doctrine, for, by 
 enabling him to concentrate his thoughts upon reforms of 
 moral life, it releases him from fighting in those coarser and 
 more brutal frays which engage the more ungovernable 
 passions and disturb the foundations of the existing social 
 order. Just as the " future life " has been commonly exploited
 
 INDIVIDUALIST SOLUTIONS 133 
 
 by religions in order to belittle this life, and so to divert 
 the potential energy of political and economic reform into 
 innocuous extra-terrestrial channels, so our " moral socialists " 
 play the soul against the body even in this world, and the 
 ground motives for this false philosophy are the same as 
 those which played the next world against this world. 
 
 It is, of course, true that an economic socialist may be a 
 man defective in the sense of moral solidarity, just as he 
 may be a vegetarian, a theosophist, an impressionist, or a 
 bi-metallist. But there is no reason, in the nature of things, 
 why a man, with a strong grasp of the idea of industrial 
 unity, should fail to realize the need of spiritual unity ; and 
 there is every reason why he should not. A clear conception 
 of the conditions of spiritual society will disclose the necessity 
 of a sound industrial basis. When it is shown that social 
 reform, upon the industrial plane, is the embodiment of 
 moral principles of justice and goodwill, the exposure of the 
 false distinction between economic and moral socialism will 
 be evident. Antagonism will be resolved into identity. 
 
 I have spoken of the tendency to use religion as a sedative 
 of social discontent. It is, however, right to recognize that, 
 by its steadfast maintenance of an idea of solidarity, it has 
 also been, at various epochs, a powerful, though commonly 
 a misdirected, agent of social reform. This is particularly 
 true of the Christian Church in its recent efforts to woo 
 democracy. The Churchman, more than others, possesses, 
 in his conception of a Church, an idea of spiritual unity 
 and continuity, which is not the mere sum of the lives and 
 actions of the individual members who from age to age 
 constitute the visible membership of that Church. To the 
 more enlightened members of these Churches has come in 
 recent years not merely a growing recognition of the duty 
 of the Churches to " capture " the people, and to utilize the 
 forms of democratic institutions for spiritual ends ; but some 
 desire for a genuine expansion of the functions of a Church,
 
 134 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 and a broadening of the meaning of Christianity, some 
 recognition of the dangers and falsity of the old antithesis 
 between this world and the next, a positive perception that 
 this life is part of " the life eternal," and a consequent 
 insistence that Christianity shall be a vitalizing social force 
 in this world, transforming and elevating the humblest 
 activities. This widening and deepening of religious senti- 
 ment has turned the minds of many to a recognition of 
 the fact that the attainment of spiritual unity in any large 
 human sense is impossible, so long as the great mass of the 
 people have their energies absorbed, and their spiritual 
 capacities thwarted by the incessant selfish struggle for a 
 bare physical subsistence. 
 
 But those who have approached the Social Question 
 from this spiritual plane, uninformed by economic criticism, 
 though they have often fought boldly in the cause of social 
 progress, have achieved little solid success. The Christian 
 Socialist movement in the Protestant Churches of this country, 
 and the various sporadic movements of the same order in 
 the Catholic Church of Continental countries, manifest the 
 same qualities and the same defects. Their condemnation 
 of the immorality of the present economic order is powerful 
 and convincing. They are shocked by the contrasts of 
 riches and poverty presented by modern industrial societies ; 
 they call upon the rich to abandon degrading luxury, and 
 to administer their wealth in a generous spirit, for the 
 material and spiritual well-being of their dependents ; they 
 endeavour to assuage the animosity of class strife by im- 
 pressing upon employers their obligations towards the workers, 
 while they urge the workers to peaceful co-operation ; and, 
 in general, they seek to harmonize the interests of capital 
 and labour by infusing a sense of brotherhood and mutual 
 goodwill. 
 
 While no high purpose is barren of results, it should be 
 clearly recognized that the endeavour to solve economic
 
 INDIVIDUALIST SOLUTIONS 135 
 
 problems by direct appeal to the moral conduct of individual 
 members is foredoomed to failure. 
 
 The crudest form of this spiritual attitude is that which 
 finds a social solution in the kindheartedness and generosity 
 of the rich. "Rich people must," writes Mr. Mallock, 
 "learn in time that property has its duties as well as its 
 rights, and give of their superabundance generously, wisely, 
 ungrudgingly."* We need hardly expose in detail the 
 miserable insufficiency of this revival of a time-honoured 
 remedy. Charity cannot do what is required of it. Even 
 when Charity is not blind, when it finds "worthy objects," 
 it is a mere partial palliative, and acts neither as a cure nor 
 as a preventive. Indeed, it is not difficult to show that 
 sinning, as it must, against the natural laws of property 
 such charity, however well administered, weakens and 
 enervates society. To receive as a gift what should be 
 earned as a right injures character and damages self- 
 respect. 
 
 Those whose sentiments are somewhat better guided by 
 reflection eschew this crude charitable solution, and speak of 
 "moralizing business." Here, again, we have Mr. Mallock 
 on a somewhat higher plane. "Wealth," he tells us, "does 
 not want nationalizing ; it wants moralizing Christianizing." 
 So others tell us that wealth is " a trust," and that we need 
 not nicely scrutinize its origin, but only look to the use 
 made of it by its owners. It does not seem ever to occur 
 to such social teachers as Mr. Carnegie, with his "gospel of 
 wealth," and Dr. Bosanquet, with his justification of unearned 
 property by voluntary social services, that there exists any 
 causal connection between origin and use, and that property 
 wrongly acquired will, in the order of nature, be wrongly 
 administered. 
 
 The notion that, if we can get employers, workers, and 
 consumers rightly to regulate their individual business 
 * "Luxury and Labour," p. 135.
 
 136 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 conduct, social salvation is attainable, is as unsound in theory 
 as it is inadequate in practice. 
 
 The suggestion, that reforms in the conditions of a 
 trade can be secured by the voluntary action of individual 
 employers, betrays a woeful misunderstanding of the issue. 
 Carlyle, Ruskin, and the Christian Socialists in general have 
 looked forward to influencing employers to regard themselves 
 as "captains of industry,"" fighting an industrial battle for 
 the commonwealth. The fatuity of such a process of reform 
 appears the moment we attempt to realize the details of 
 any such proposal. The only cases where an individual 
 employer can reform a trade is where he owns a trade i.e. 
 where he is a monopolist. A local gas company, a big 
 brewery, the sole manufacturer of some profitable speciality, 
 and other business firms which, by some special skill or 
 economy of production, or by the virtual control of a market, 
 are screened from competition, and are earning profits con- 
 siderably higher than the minimum required to keep the 
 requisite amount of capital in the business, are able to be 
 "generous"" to their employees, can pay them wages above 
 the competition rate, give them an eight-hours' day, and 
 incur the expense necessary to secure the best hygienic con- 
 ditions for them. But even here the " moralization of the 
 employer" as a practical reform policy is singularly futile. 
 For who is the employer for the purpose in hand ? Most 
 businesses in the condition we describe are either joint-stock 
 companies or other large businesses, using capital furnished 
 by many persons, who take no part in management, and 
 are unacquainted with the requirements, or the very names, 
 of the employees. The manager, who directly employs and 
 controls the conditions of the work, has no power to adopt 
 a policy which is virtually a charitable policy, and has no- 
 right to do so without the sanction of the shareholders. The 
 complete impracticability of inducing a majority of share- 
 holders at an annual meeting to forego some of their dividends
 
 INDIVIDUALIST SOLUTIONS 137 
 
 in order to pay more than the market wage to the employees 
 has been established by numerous experiments, in the case 
 of the Aerated Bread Company and various other highly- 
 remunerative businesses. In such businesses, where most 
 shareholders have probably purchased their shares upon 
 terms which have already discounted the very surplus which 
 they are invited to disburse in charity, there remains no reason 
 to expect that anything can be obtained by moralizing the 
 employer. But, when we turn from these exceptional busi- 
 nesses to the ordinary business, where the keen competition 
 of rivals cuts down profits to a minimum return upon the 
 invested capital, it is plainly impossible for the employer 
 to make any considerable improvement in the conditions of 
 employment which shall increase the expenses of his business. 
 So long as close competition prevails, the rate of wages and 
 other conditions of labour, as well as the prices and qualities 
 of the goods, are determined by the operations of economic 
 laws over which the individual employer has no control ; or, 
 if any individual can be considered to influence them, it is 
 the worse employer, who, by sweating labour, adulterating 
 goods, and cutting prices, either undersells his trade com- 
 petitors or forces his low level of morality upon them, in 
 the shape of " the custom of the trade." If a competing 
 manufacturer chooses to defy this low customary morality 
 and insists upon paying higher wages than his fellows, or 
 incurring any other costs which raises his expenses of pro- 
 duction, he cannot recoup himself by higher prices, but must 
 produce at a loss a condition which, in the long run, is 
 impossible. A joint action of employers to raise the condi- 
 tion of their trade is possible ; but that implies the persua- 
 sion, not of individuals, but of a full trade organization. 
 When such joint action of masters and men is practised as, 
 for example, in certain Birmingham trades it may lead to 
 some solution of the labour problem for a particular class 
 of workers ; but this is achieved by the establishment of a
 
 138 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 monopoly, which is fraught with grave dangers to the body 
 of the consuming public. 
 
 A similar line of criticism disposes of the efficacy of an 
 individual moral policy applied to the workers. Individual 
 action is impotent, or, if successful in the case of some 
 workers, it is at the expense of others. The common test 
 of the moral remedy here is the case of unemployment, due, 
 as most unemployment can be shown to be, to trade causes 
 over which the worker has no control. Where ten per cent, 
 of the workers in a trade are thrown out of work by some 
 trade disturbance, the moral or industrial character of the 
 individuals out of work will be lower than the average of 
 their fellows. But no improvement of the character of these 
 individuals will affect the quantity of unemployment ; for, if 
 the industrial efficiency of the out-of-works could be raised, 
 they could, ex-hypothesi, gain work only by displacing some 
 other ten per cent, of their comrades. This is, of course, no 
 argument against the educational reforms which seek to 
 improve the morals or industrial efficiency of labourers; it 
 merely signifies that a social malady cannot be cured by 
 individual means. 
 
 By similar analysis it can be shown that "sweating" 
 and other industrial evils of a general character cannot be 
 treated effectually by appeals to the conduct of individual 
 consumers. Even where some slight organization is applied, 
 as in the formation of Consumers'* Leagues, it is not possible 
 to achieve anything considerable. In as far as the con- 
 sumers who band themselves together to boycott certain 
 shops and to give their custom to others are actuated by a 
 charitable self-denying motive they must be regarded as 
 persons who will buy in a dearer market when they could 
 buy in a cheaper. An attempt is sometimes made to shirk 
 this crucial test by suggesting that a Consumers 1 League 
 merely induces its members to give preference to a good 
 employer over a bad employer, both charging the same price
 
 INDIVIDUALIST SOLUTIONS 139 
 
 for similar commodities, but the latter taking an illicit and 
 excessive profit. This, however, is not a normal result, for 
 where sweating goes on in a trade, competing "sweaters" 
 commonly drive down prices to a point at which a fair dealer 
 can only with difficulty make a living. The normal use of a 
 Consumers 1 League is to induce its members to abstain from 
 buying goods at " sweating " rates in order to give the trade to 
 a fair house. We must, therefore, rightly assume that its 
 members are willing to buy dearer goods when they might 
 buy cheaper, and that in some cases they will actually do so. 
 Now, I am far from disparaging the moral and educa- 
 tional value of such a movement. By teaching consumers to 
 reflect upon the vital or mortal nature of the power they are 
 by their expenditure exerting over the conditions of the lives 
 of innumerable hidden workers, and by inducing some pro- 
 ducers and traders to recognize that the industrial functions 
 which they exercise are fraught with distinct social and moral 
 significance, they are engaged on an educational crusade of 
 supreme importance. The organized action of a certain 
 number of influential persons, consumers and producers in a 
 locality, can sometimes mould a force of public opinion which 
 shall shame the " sweater " into some compliance with decent 
 conditions of employment, and may even break down bad 
 " customs of a trade." But, taking a general survey of the field 
 of industry we find no reason to suppose that these moral forces 
 can achieve large results in the matter of direct economic re- 
 form. So long as the powerful economic forces of competition 
 are coercing each manufacturer and trader, goodwill and moral 
 enlightenment among individuals cannot achieve much, nor 
 can an amateur society of consumers, however skilfully 
 managed, combat successfully the pressure of powerful trade 
 interests. The members of such leagues by zealous inquiry 
 may guarantee themselves against encouragement of "sweat- 
 ing v in some final stage of production ; but they cannot trace 
 back, through all the intricacies of industry, the diverse
 
 140 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 processes through which the shop goods have passed, and 
 it is more than probable that the higher price, which, from 
 charity, they pay, is intercepted by some middleman or 
 profit-maker in one of the stages of production, and does 
 not secure any adequate improvement in the conditions 
 of labour. Further, supposing the well-meant measure were 
 most successfully applied, it means that the consumers who 
 apply it reduce the total quantity of purchases they make 
 by paying higher prices for the goods they buy, and the 
 reduction of demand thus caused will directly and most 
 injuriously affect various groups of workers whose wages will 
 fall, or whose employment will cease. Any action, which 
 substitutes a demand for goods produced under sound con- 
 ditions of employment for sweated goods, confers some net 
 gain upon the workers. But those who enter on this line of 
 practical reform, must not deceive themselves into supposing 
 that its extension and more powerful enforcement will abolish 
 or even seriously diminish sweating. This criticism implies 
 no depreciation of the utility of educational forces in the 
 work of social reform ; it merely denies their efficacy through 
 individual conduct. When the moral education of individuals 
 has strengthened and informed the general will, and that 
 will finds adequate expression through sound public institu- 
 tions, the conditions of social progress are attained. But 
 to preach that each individual can, by his own private con- 
 duct, contribute to the solution of a social problem is a 
 barren gospel. The kernel of need is set by Mr. H. D. 
 Lloyd in these words : " Change of heart is no more redemp- 
 tion than hunger is dinner. We must have honesty, love, 
 justice, in the hearts of the business world; but we must 
 also have the forms that will fit them. 1 " * The fact that 
 these qualities are conspicuously absent from the business 
 forms of existing industry constitutes the moral pressure for 
 economic reforms. 
 
 * " Wealth against Commonwealth," p. 523.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 SOCIETY AS MAKER OF " VALUES " 
 
 THE greatest single source of error in dealing with the 
 Social Question is the failure to understand the claim of 
 society to property based upon the ground that society is 
 a worker and a consumer. Outside a narrow class of 
 economic students, an almost universal belief prevails that 
 property and the value in it are attributable to individual 
 agency alone. Though Mr. Herbert Spencer, for instance, 
 claims to have given closer attention than others to the 
 structure and functions of society, we find him, in one of 
 his latest books, broaching a theory of value which is 
 nothing else than a sheer denial of society as a working 
 unity. The rights of property of the "community 11 are 
 denied in the following instructive passage : " We must 
 admit that all which can be claimed for the community is 
 the surface of the country in its original unsubdued state. 
 To all that value given to it by clearing, breaking up, 
 prolonged culture, fencing, draining, making roads, farm 
 buildings, etc., constituting nearly all its value, the com- 
 munity has no claim. This value has been given either by 
 personal labour, or by labour paid for, or by ancestral 
 labour; or else the value given to it in such ways has been 
 purchased by legitimately-earned money. All this value, 
 artificially given, vests, in existing owners, and cannot, with- 
 out a gigantic robbery, be taken from them. 11 * 
 
 "Justice," p. 92. 
 141
 
 142 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 Since it will be generally admitted that, if society con- 
 tributes nothing to the creation of value in land, and has no 
 rightful claim to such form of property, her claim to create 
 other values and own other property most d, fortiori collapse, 
 this passage may be considered to offer a test case. 
 
 In order to clear the way, we may dismiss all consideration 
 of the legitimacy of inheritance or purchase of land raised 
 in the awkward and redundant language of the last sentence. 
 The interest to us consists in the assertion that land values 
 are the product of personal, in the sense of individual, 
 labour; who gives forth this personal labour is a matter of 
 indifference, so far as this theory of origin of value is con- 
 cerned. Moreover, the slight qualification of the opening 
 sentence, which seems to give some property to the com- 
 munity, may be cancelled. To assign to the community 
 the value of "the surface of the country in its original 
 unsubdued state" is to assign nothing. Prairie value, to 
 use the ordinary term, is nil. The " original and indestructible 
 properties " of the earth, in Ricardo's well-worn phrase, have 
 no value until the labour of man makes them available, and 
 the wants of man give them human utility. Spencer's real 
 proposition, therefore, is that all land value is the product 
 of individual activity. 
 
 In order to test this proposition, let us briefly trace the 
 growth of value of a piece of prairie land as it passes under 
 cultivation. A settler crosses the frontier of civilization, 
 and takes up virgin soil. He brings with him strength, 
 knowledge, skill, and tools all of them, to some extent, 
 admittedly the products of the slow growth of social institu- 
 tions and social knowledge in the community which bore 
 and educated him. But let us make him a gift of these 
 social qualities, and suppose him to start operations upon 
 his new land as a fully-equipped and independent individual. 
 Whatever concrete improvement of the land takes place is 
 obviously attributable to his personal labour; every increase
 
 SOCIETY AS MAKER OF "VALUES" 143 
 
 of product is due to him. Let us present him with a family, 
 which helps him to work the land. Though the co-operation 
 of the members of this family renders it no longer strictly 
 possible to attribute the improvement of the land to the 
 personal labour of any particular individual introducing, 
 in fact, in miniature, the whole question of social productivity 
 we may waive it at this stage, and treat the personal labour 
 of the family as a unit, assigning to it all increase of 
 " value " of the land. So long as the family keeps to itself, 
 using the produce of the land for its own consumption, and 
 providing by its own labour for all its wants, the claim of 
 society is nil; no social influence enters. If other families 
 settle in the same country, and pursue a similar policy, 
 entering into no directly economic relations with one another, 
 the position is unaltered. The industry of a family may 
 constantly raise the productivity of the soil. The so-called 
 "value" of the land under these circumstances is "value in 
 use," and not what the ordinary language of commerce or of 
 economics means by "value." As families grow upon the 
 newly-settled land, we may take it that they will enter into 
 business relations with one another, will devote themselves 
 more particularly to growing and raising articles for which 
 their particular land has some natural advantage, and will 
 establish, first, informal exchange, and, afterwards, regular 
 markets for disposing of their surplus produce. The value 
 of the first farm is now no longer identified with its pro- 
 ductivity, but also has reference to what can be got in 
 exchange by disposing of some surplus produce. Now the 
 "how much" of this "what can be got" in other words, 
 the exchange value will depend partly upon the needs of 
 the other farmers for this kind of produce, partly upon the 
 number of other persons from whom they can get it if our 
 original farmer is unable or refuses to supply it, and partly 
 upon the number of other things useful to the first farmer 
 which they are able to offer in exchange.
 
 144. THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 Now, just in proportion as exchange or market-value 
 enters and displaces use-value, so does social determination 
 of value displace individual determination. While value in 
 use is strictly personal, value in exchange is distinctively 
 social. A market, however crudely formed, is a social 
 institution ; the value of our farmer's produce is now partly 
 determined by the personal labour he has put into them, 
 but partly by the needs and capacities of others ; and not 
 even by the needs and capacities of any definite individual, 
 but by a great variety of needs and capacities expressed 
 socially through the instrument of a market price, which 
 is a highly elaborate result of bargaining, and does not 
 represent the needs or the capacity of any single purchaser. 
 So, when our farmer is enabled by the creation of this 
 social institution of a market to give special attention to 
 growing certain crops, and exchanging part of them for 
 other commodities which he no longer raises, the productivity 
 of his farm business has increased. But part of this increment 
 is not due to his " personal labour,"" but to the labours and 
 the needs of others expressed through the market. This 
 social influence not merely increases the annual productivity 
 of his farm, but gives it an increased capital value, in the 
 sense that, whereas he could have got nothing for it at the 
 beginning, since there was no possible buyer, and but little 
 for it when the market was first established, every year the 
 enlargement and improvement of the market increases the 
 price he could get for his land if he chose to sell it. 
 
 Now, when we speak of "land values" in a civilized 
 community, for purposes of sale or taxation, we mean not 
 that early use- value which seemed to be entirely the product 
 of "personal labour," but the exchange value which we 
 have seen cannot be produced at all by personal labour, 
 but requires the assistance of society. But the social needs 
 expressed through a market are only one of the ways in 
 which land values are made by society. Our farmer, finding
 
 SOCIETY AS MAKER OF VALUES " 145 
 
 neighbours close around him, may suffer injury as well as 
 receive service from their presence; in order to enjoy 
 security for his property, and to prevent risks and waste of 
 energy in defending the product of his labour, he will co- 
 operate with his neighbours for mutual defence, thus laying 
 the basis of the social instrument, the State. This co- 
 operation, both on its industrial and its political side, will 
 constantly grow ; as population increases, not only the 
 defensive functions will become more important, but various 
 directly productive uses of co-operation will arise ; social 
 instincts will combine with economic gain to organize large 
 enterprises which a single farmer could not undertake at 
 all; large irrigation or drainage schemes, improvements of 
 the market by roads, establishment of schools, churches, and 
 other co-operative schemes, will be adopted, improving the 
 skill, knowledge and character of the individuals, and 
 reflected in improved working of the land and raised land 
 values. Co-operative industry gives birth to towns. Our 
 farmer's land lies just outside one of these towns ; he 
 finds it pay to use some of this land for market gardens. 
 This gives a great increment of value attributable ex 
 Jiypothesi not to his personal labour, which is no greater 
 than it was before, but to the social pressure of the needs 
 of a congested industrial population ; in a word, it is a 
 product of the social institution called a "town." Other 
 land he rents or sells for suburban buildings at an 
 enormously enhanced value, which not merely represents 
 the present value set by "society" upon the land, but the 
 future value which society will hereafter set upon it. 
 
 Thus we perceive that economic value cannot attach to 
 land at all, except by the operation of social forces, and 
 that the influences which normally cause increase of land 
 values are distinctively social. It is, of course, possible 
 that increased industry or skill of an individual landowner 
 may co-operate with these social forces to raise the value of
 
 146 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 his land, but this is not normally the case ; most instances 
 that are adduced mean merely that the landowner has had 
 the skill or cunning to foresee some change of the social 
 forces of demand which will give an increased value to his 
 land for some special use, as where land is acquired and 
 adapted for speculative building purposes. 
 
 We now see that since land values are not chiefly due 
 to personal labour, but to the operation of social forces, 
 society has some right of property in these values, and 
 may assert this right without the "gigantic robbery" of 
 which Mr. Spencer speaks. 
 
 The real underlying error of Mr. Spencer and his legion 
 of followers is that they persist in regarding society as an 
 aggregate of individuals. It seems to them "a mere 
 superstition to look upon society as anything other than 
 the members who compose it." This declaration sounds 
 final, and yet its very language carries its refutation. 
 ^'Compose it." Composition implies an orderly relation of 
 parts. This relation is not found adhering to the individuals, 
 .as such. Is a " composition " in music the mere addition of 
 the notes employed? Can we break up the composition of 
 a poem into its component words or letters, and, shuffling 
 them, still maintain that we have the poem ? 
 
 If society is a composition, it must have a unity 
 consisting in the relations of its members. The maintenance 
 and activity of these relations can be shown to be a source 
 of value. 
 
 Let us leave land and turn to some other industry. 
 Brown, Smith, and Jones, working together by agreement, 
 build a boat. Does the value of this boat, when made, 
 represent the value made by Brown, and that made by 
 Smith, and that made by Jones? No such thing. Why, 
 Brown, by himself, could not have lifted the log to make 
 the keel. Or suppose he could have made a boat, could 
 he, in a given time, have made a boat worth one-third as
 
 SOCIETY AS MAKER OF VALUES " 147 
 
 much as the joint product of all three during the same 
 time? Obviously not. Supposing all three to be equally 
 efficient workmen, it is evident that their joint product, in 
 a given time, will be worth much more than three times 
 the product of Brown alone. Organized co-operation is a 
 productive power. The associated or "social" productivity 
 of Brown, Smith, and Jones is not the mere addition of 
 their productivity as individuals, even supposing they can, 
 as individuals, produce something. In a certain sense, this 
 social productivity is even capable of measure. If we set 
 Brown, Smith, and Jones to work, first separately and then 
 together, the difference in value between their added and 
 their joint product might rank as the quantity of social 
 value. This supposed case is not, of course, really accurate, 
 for it supposes Brown by himself could produce something of 
 value. We have already seen that, even supposing an 
 individual could produce something of use to himself, he 
 could not produce something of "value" in an economic 
 sense. In a thousand different subtle ways society works in 
 and with Brown. Let him be no longer boat-maker, but 
 solitary shoemaker. The value of the pair of shoes which 
 he "produces," working by himself, is just as much deter- 
 mined by society as the land-values of our farmer, as soon 
 as they begin to emerge. The skill and knowledge of his 
 craft is an elaborate social product, and is taught him by 
 society; the same society protects him while he works, 
 assists him by an elaborate organization of markets to get 
 leather, tools, thread, and a work-place, provides him with 
 a market in the form of persons who have evolved the need 
 of wearing boots, and the industrial arts whereby to pay 
 for them, and so forth. The value of the boots when made 
 will obviously depend, to an indefinite extent, upon the 
 innumerable factors which affect the supply and demand of 
 all other products, along with which boots figure in processes 
 of exchange. It is needless to labour further the proof
 
 148 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 that society co-operates with individuals in producing the 
 value which attaches to material goods. The same conditions 
 hold of non-material goods, which can be said to have 
 either a use value or an economic value. The maker of a 
 poem or play, or other non-material work of art, is in no 
 sense an absolute creator. He works upon words and other 
 intellectual forms, which are the plastic embodiments of 
 thoughts and feelings that are not his private property, 
 but are the slowly-grown, elaborate products of his nation, 
 his age, and humanity at large. Society helps him in the 
 very effort of that "inspiration" which seems so peculiarly 
 his own, through the public understanding and appreciation 
 which lighten, stimulate, and direct the creative effort. So 
 the intellectual maker has no full and absolute right of 
 property in his product, but only a right limited by the 
 relative importance assigned to his individuality of effort. 
 The exact measure of such right of private property it is 
 not easy, perhaps not possible, to ascertain. Who shall say 
 how far the (Edipus Tyrannus was the product of Sophocles, 
 how much of Athens, how much of the Hellenic genius, or 
 how much belongs to humanity ? Indeed, the boundary of 
 such property seems an ever-shifting one. Humanity 
 society in its widest significance is ever claiming, and 
 making good, its larger property in the great masterpieces 
 of human achievement ; they become less and less the 
 property of the man, more and more of the race and of 
 mankind. 
 
 Society has, then, a natural claim upon property, on the 
 ground that it is a maker of values of property. 
 
 We have seen how an individual suffers in the efficiency 
 
 */ 
 
 of his work and life, and in his capacity of progress, if he 
 is deprived of that property in the result of his labour 
 which is necessary to support and educate his powers. The 
 same is manifestly true of an organized society. We have 
 seen that such a society is rightly regarded as a maker of
 
 SOCIETY AS MAKER OF "VALUES" 149 
 
 wealth. If society does not receive an adequate share of 
 the wealth she makes, for direct expenditure on social 
 objects, she suffers in vigour and progress of life and 
 character as does the individual. 
 
 The results of the social activities which we have investi- 
 gated form a "property" which belongs to society, and 
 which coalesces with each piece of individual property. In 
 the language of political economy, this social property 
 consists of increments which, not being in their origin 
 assignable to individual activities, are called "unearned," 
 but which, in sober fact, are the earnings of society, arising 
 from public work and public wants. Bad social administra- 
 tion, unjust stewardship of society, enables certain indivi- 
 duals or classes to take and enjoy some of this social 
 property which is needed to support the full healthy pro- 
 gressive life of the community. 
 
 This view of the rights and needs of society differs very 
 widely from the commonly accepted view, which grudges 
 society the small fraction of her rightful property that she 
 takes by taxation, regarding such taxation as an encroach- 
 ment upon individual rights of property, justifiable only 
 upon specific grounds of the particular public use to which 
 the taxes will be put. This false, narrow view of the 
 claim to social property has resulted in an equally false 
 and narrow conception of the meaning and the possibilities 
 of social life. It is true that society will perform certain 
 bare necessary functions, even if most of the "property" 
 which is her due is taken from her, and administered by 
 individuals for their own purposes. The stable order of 
 society, a certain necessary change and growth of institutions, 
 the increase of population and of external structure can 
 proceed within certain limits without the direct design 
 of creating property, and without the full enjoyment 
 of the property it does create. Hence, the fact that 
 individuals take away and consume this property, as though
 
 150 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 it were their own, does not prevent the reproduction of 
 fresh forms of social property. Society, like individuals, 
 may do her work though she is "sweated" of the major 
 part of her product. But the natural penalty is not 
 escaped. This misappropriation drains the strength and 
 impairs the productivity of society. A society, where the 
 just rights of individual and social property were observed, 
 would yield a social life far stronger, far richer, far more 
 cohesive than we have any conception of. If individuals 
 got for their own private use all the product of their 
 labour that is rightly theirs i.e. such portion as is needed 
 to support the best individual life of which each is capable, 
 and only that leaving society to administer the whole of 
 her property for public uses, such an economy would be 
 attended by an incalculably great enrichment of the 
 political and industrial life of the community. A starved 
 society or a parasitic society is injured just as the indi- 
 vidual starveling or parasite is injured. This is apparent 
 directly we grasp the organic conception of society : whether 
 society be defined as an " organism " or as an " organization," 
 the character of organic progress which is conferred upon 
 her implies conformity to the same natural laws of 
 property that apply to individuals. If an individual 
 producer has no security of his property, he not merely 
 suffers in lack of enjoyment, but the loss of incentive 
 weakens his functional activities and impairs his vitality. 
 The same is true of society. 
 
 Every defence of the principle of individual property is 
 likewise a plea for social property. 
 
 Individual property, we are told, is required for self- 
 realization. Man needs to have a "permanent nucleus in 
 the material world" (as Dr. Bosanquet excellently phrases 
 it),* such security of material property that he can look 
 ahead, plan, and regulate his life as a whole, not living 
 * " Aspects of the Social Problem," p. 314.
 
 SOCIETY AS MAKER OF "VALUES" 151 
 
 from day to day, from hand to mouth. Not only do we 
 admit this claim, but we have found the "natural ""justifi- 
 cation of it. But, with the abuse of this doctrine of self- 
 realization, used as it often is to suggest that a rich 
 man, drawing rents and profits of monopoly, can justify his 
 property by the good rational use he makes of it, we must 
 join issue. We have seen that, in so far as at any given 
 time material productivity of wealth is limited, a limit is 
 imposed upon ihe right of any individual to "realize" 
 himself in material forms of property i.e. the limit of his 
 single contribution to material wealth. No one has a right 
 to realize himself in the property of others as sweater, in 
 the property of other individuals, as taker of "economic 
 rents," in the property of society. For society also needs 
 to realize herself by means of her property. It is strange 
 that a logician like Dr. Bosanquet, who so strongly builds 
 his philosophic support of private property, should ignore 
 the corresponding need of social property. "The point of 
 private property," he tells us, "is that things should not 
 come miraculously, and be unaffected by your dealings with 
 them; but that you should be in contact with something 
 which, in the external world, is the definite material 
 representation of yourself."* This is urged as a defence 
 of private property; but no word is added to explain the 
 limit it imposes upon individual property, or to extend its 
 application to the property of society. Yet, taken rightly, 
 this judgment is strikingly conclusive on both issues. It 
 presents a clear condemnation of "economic rents" and 
 monopoly profits as individual property, on the ground 
 that "they come miraculously," and are "unaffected by 
 your dealings with them ; " that they are not " the definite 
 material representation of yourself," seeing that none of 
 your vitality has gone into their making. Turning the 
 matter round, we find that these "economic rents" and 
 * "Aspects of the Social Problem," p. 313.
 
 152 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 "unearned increments'" are "definite material representa- 
 tions" of social activities, and the property they constitute 
 is required for the self-realization of society. It is the 
 denial of this full property which starves our social life to- 
 day. Look, for example, at the civic life of an average 
 municipality in England, the richest country that the 
 world has ever known. Is this civic life as strong, as rich, 
 as beautiful, as noble as it might be ? Is even its provision 
 for sanitation and the common conventional civic services 
 adequate ? Are its streets, its public buildings, worthy 
 expressions of a rich and civilized community ? Is it not a 
 commonplace that these external embodiments of our civic 
 life are, in every quality of excellence, inferior beyond all 
 comparison to the attainments of most of the great cities 
 of antiquity, the private wealth of whose citizens was not a 
 hundredth part as great as ours ? 
 
 Or, turning to that larger instrument of social life the 
 State do we not find its services everywhere crippled by 
 lack of property ? The miserably penurious provision for 
 the vast expansive needs of that public education which the 
 State professes as a public duty is one crucial instance of 
 the poverty of our State. Or take another instance. At 
 the present time the State of England is so starved that, 
 while recognizing that public utility demands the provision 
 of some monetary aid for the aged poor, she is utterly 
 unable to lay hands upon the few millions needed to defray 
 such an expense. Yet these instances refer to the prime 
 necessities of a healthy stable society. No social property is 
 accumulated to work out the progressive character of a 
 society which should seek constantly to develop and to 
 satisfy higher and more complex needs of social life, build- 
 ing up a growing commonalty which shall correspond with, 
 and react upon, the rising individuality of its constituent 
 members. 
 
 This public progress is impossible until the State, as
 
 SOCIETY AS MAKER OF VALUES " 153 
 
 representative of society, shall claim for its use and adminis- 
 tration the property which it makes and needs. 
 
 It is no policy of confiscation that is here advocated, bui 
 a just, rational demarcation between private and public 
 property. Let the individual and society, each own, out of the 
 property they jointly create, that portion which is necessary 
 to support the life and sustain the progress of each. We 
 thus refute a false individualism by setting property upon 
 a sound, natural, and rational basis. Mr. Spencer imagines 
 that " A is taxed in order that ITs children may read 
 books." No such thing ! The tax imposed on A is simply 
 the most convenient way of taking the results of social 
 work which commingle with the work done by A : the 
 joint product is not in itself directly divisible, so that 
 society takes her share in a tax. This tax it uses to 
 educate B's children, not as a favour to B, nor even as an 
 "abstract right" on the part of B's children, but because it 
 is socially important to society, of which A and B are 
 members, that all children shall be educated. 
 
 This view of social property summarily disposes of the 
 objection that society should not be allowed to administer 
 much property, because its administration will be incom- 
 petent and wasteful. We do not take away a piece of 
 property which A rightly owns, and give it to B, on the 
 ground that the latter can make a better use of it. We 
 say : " It is A's property ; he alone made it ; he has a right 
 to it ; even if he makes a bad use of it now you must not 
 take it from him ; he will learn to make a better use ; having 
 made it by his hard work, he will presumably make a better 
 use of it than one who obtained it without effort." So 
 with social property. Wherever the State or Municipality 
 can make good its claim to a piece of property, it is no 
 answer to urge that the public cannot well administer such 
 property. If a community can show that the values of 
 certain land, tramways, gasworks, or other forms of wealth
 
 154 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 are wholly, or in large measure, the products of social 
 activity, are a social property, it is a right and a duty to 
 administer such property. If it refuses, it thereby weakens 
 the social life ; if it consents, it strengthens it, and learns 
 by experience how to administer properly the property 
 which belongs to it. The objection on the score of bad 
 administration is peculiarly impertinent. You deprive a 
 man or a race of liberty; keep him or it in forcible 
 subjection ; then, when it is proposed to confer freedom, 
 you raise the cry that your victim is unable to make a good 
 use of freedom. So it is with property. A wrong injures 
 the doer and the sufferer, and on both sides the evil lives 
 even after its cause is redressed. Is that a conclusive reason 
 against redress? Society is precisely in this position. She 
 has been starved so long, her rightful property has been 
 meted out to individuals, and she has not fully learned to 
 use her own. But it is her duty and her right to learn to 
 care for the commonwealth by an economical administration 
 of common property. 
 
 This view of a progressive socialism turns the edge of 
 the stock arguments of the individualist school by basing 
 the claims for social property upon the same reasoning 
 which defends individual rights of property.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 DISTRIBUTION ACCORDING TO NEEDS 
 
 THE establishment of a theory and a policy of individual 
 and social property upon the common basis of a reference 
 to the work and the needs of individuals and societies stands 
 in some danger of rejection by Individualists and Socialists 
 alike, who may be disposed to regard it as an unphilosophic 
 compromise. The Individualist recks nought of social work 
 or social needs ; or, if he gives some half-hearted recognition 
 to the advantages of social co-operation, he is sure that the 
 gains are best utilized by handing them over to the private 
 control of the co-operating units, reserving as little as 
 possible for social use. The Socialist (using the term in its 
 broadest sense) will, on the contrary, be disposed to cavil 
 at the allowance of individual claims to property, based 
 upon the productivity of individual effort, insisting that, 
 since all "value" is social, it is impossible to sever the 
 aggregate of wealth into two classes, and, keeping one for 
 social use, to assign the other to the unfettered use of 
 private individuals as a "right." "How," it may well be 
 asked by both sides, "are you going to determine the 
 amount of individual and social property respectively con- 
 tained in an aggregate of material wealth ? " 
 
 We have, underlying this criticism, a logical and a 
 practical difficulty. But both are more apparent than real ; 
 at any rate, they become far less formidable when we face 
 them. 
 
 155
 
 156 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 The theoretic point, as raised from the ranks of Indi- 
 vidualism, has already been met by showing the reality of 
 the organic unity of society. To the "Socialist' 1 objector 
 we may reply that he gives a strained emphasis to the state- 
 ment, " All value is social," which it will not bear. It may 
 readily be conceded that in a society an individual neither 
 can, as such, produce "value," nor, indeed, exist as a com- 
 pletely separable economic unit. But the individual aspect 
 of a person, alike in its material and its moral character, 
 cannot be ignored. On the physical side there exists a sharp 
 separability of the individual, both in work and in consump- 
 tion ; and this character, or aspect, demands economic 
 recognition through property. The same, as we see, must 
 be said of the will, or moral character ; that, too, requires, 
 in varying degrees, to be stimulated by an acknowledgment 
 of a separate property. The productivity of society itself 
 must, then, depend on the operation of individual powers of 
 body and of mind; and "nature" requires that from the 
 product, "social" though it be, separate provision must 
 be made for each individual. Though, therefore, we may 
 continue to repeat, "All value is social," and even to grant 
 to society an over-lordship of all property, we must none 
 the less insist that, since the antithesis of individual and 
 society is necessary, so far as it has validity, individuals 
 must be accorded "natural" rights to property. The 
 Socialist can only meet this by denying the validity of 
 individuality as a distinction. 
 
 But how much property should belong to individuals, 
 how much to society, of the complex product? There are 
 three suggested modes of answering the question which 
 arises, after we have once accepted Social Utility as the 
 standard of reference, " What practical rule shall Social 
 Utility adopt in the assignment of individual property 
 arising from the co-operation of individual and social forces ?" 
 These answers may be indicated by the three words
 
 DISTRIBUTION ACCORDING TO NEEDS 157 
 
 "Effort," "Productivity," "Needs." Now, ethical and 
 economic considerations strongly urge the claims of effort; 
 it is felt that, if individuals can be rewarded according as 
 they try to do their best, the best will be got out of them. 
 But there are two powerful objections against the adoption 
 of effort as the all-sufficient practical rule for the determina- 
 tion of payment, both connected with the "subjective" 
 nature which the term "effort" implies. A and B may 
 both equally do their best in their different walks of life ; 
 but A is feeble-bodied or dull-minded, or, even if he is 
 physically and mentally on a par with B, the kind of work 
 at which he is doing his best does not take so much out 
 of him. B, who is stronger in body or in mind, or is 
 engaged in a sort of work which taxes the capacity of the 
 worker more heavily, though he tries no harder than A to 
 do his best, actually expends more energy. Now, this 
 greater actual expenditure of energy this greater exertion 
 of B naturally requires a larger replacement, or, in other 
 words, a higher standard of consumption. If A and B 
 receive from society the same "property" in return for 
 equality of subjective effort, either A gets more than seems 
 necessary to sustain his highest efficiency, or B gets less. In 
 either case social waste is involved. 
 
 Our analysis of "natural rights" makes it evident that 
 subjective effort cannot supply the required rule. The 
 second and completely final objection is that such effort is 
 inherently incapable of measurement until it is translated 
 from a subjective, or mental, condition into an objective 
 state, and becomes "productivity." The common sense of 
 ordinary individualism insists that " productivity " alone is 
 the most serviceable, and even the "fairest," criterion.* 
 
 * It is curious to find instructed economists, such as Menger, in his 
 work, " The Right to the Whole Product of Labour," and Foxwell, attri- 
 buting to Socialism this distinctively individualist doctrine of Distribution, 
 Socialism demands, indeed, that in a rightly-ordered society, the workers, 
 taken collectively, shall own "the whole product," but never that the
 
 158 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 " Productivity " of the individual, it is popularly believed, 
 does actually determine the distribution of wealth, by which 
 property comes into the possession of its owners. Work- 
 men on piece wages, it is said, are rewarded according to the 
 productivity of their labour the man who turns out twice 
 the output of another getting twice as much in wages ; and 
 the wage system is supposed to be generally adjusted in 
 order to give each man what he is worth, his worth being 
 measured by his product. It is likewise contended that, by 
 the force of competition among capitalists and managers of 
 industry, profits also are distributed in some approximate 
 relation to the utility of the services rendered viz. according 
 to productivity. Even those who admit that this rule works 
 very imperfectly, and that some men perhaps some whole 
 classes get more than their productivity would rightly 
 entitle them to receive, while other individuals and classes 
 get less, generally insist that productivity is the right rule 
 where, and if, it can be correctly practised. Yet our analysis 
 requires us to reject this rule, ultimately upon the same 
 ground upon which we rejected the test of effort. The 
 productivity of the individual does not, as is pretended, 
 admit of direct measurement. It is quite true that we may, 
 by measurement of piece-work or some similar method, 
 compare the productivity of one worker with that of others 
 in the same process of production, in cases where there is 
 not close personal co-operation. Such comparisons rest on 
 the assumption that the social forces which assist each indi- 
 vidual worker may be rightly ignored, because the assistance 
 they render is the same for all. This assumption is seldom 
 accurate ; but, if it be admitted, it enables us to apportion 
 wages or other rewards by comparison of products. A general 
 scheme of just or socially useful distribution, however, 
 
 individual worker shall have the individual product of his labour, which, 
 in accordance with the central doctrine of value as a social product, is 
 non-existent.
 
 DISTRIBUTION ACCORDING TO NEEDS 159 
 
 cannot possibly be thus attained, because, in a large propor- 
 tion of industrial operations, the productive unit of direct 
 labour is not an individual, but an organic complex of 
 individuals, working in such union as forbids the exact 
 calculation of individual piece-wages. The notion that 
 piece-wages, the direct measure of individual productivity, 
 are spreading over the whole industrial field, or even gaining 
 ground, has no warrant from industrial facts. But, even if 
 it were possible to universalize a piece-wage system, we 
 should not have attained the result of an apportionment of 
 wealth, by reference to productivity of individuals. Though 
 we might by this means ascertain that A, being one-third 
 more productive than B, should receive a third more wages ; 
 while B, being a third more productive than C, should receive 
 proportionally higher pay we have no means of ascertaining 
 in any of these cases what is the total separate productivity 
 of A, B, or C ; for the proportion of the aggregate product 
 imputed to each, which in reality is due to the social or non- 
 individual forces that co-operate with each, is unascertained 
 and unascertainable. A, B, and C are coal-miners, cotton- 
 spinners, or rivetters ; each ton of coal they get to the surface, 
 each pound of cotton yarn they spin, each steel plate they 
 rivet, depends for its value, to an unknown extent, upon the 
 economic forces embodied in the tools and machinery em- 
 ployed, the organization of the business and the trade, and 
 of the whole industrial and political society in, for, and with 
 which they severally work. This follows from our analysis of 
 value in the last chapter. A moment's reflection will serve 
 to dissipate the notion that a piece-wage system is really a 
 distribution according to productivity, in the sense that each 
 worker gets the whole of what he contributes to production 
 neither more nor less ; it is, in fact, only a comparison 
 of the relative superiority and inferiority of individuals in 
 production a very different matter. For, though a wage 
 system properly adjusted might balance the differences of
 
 160 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 productivity of workers by corresponding differences of pay, 
 the laws which determine the basis of wages are not at all 
 designed, nor do they serve to secure to any worker that 
 full portion of the joint product of his individual and the 
 social activities which is rightly designated as his "product." 
 
 The claim sometimes made by workers to receive the 
 whole "product 11 of their labour is, in the nature of the 
 case, impracticable; for there neither is, nor can be, in an 
 industrial society any particular product directly assignable 
 to the labour of any individual. The same answer, of 
 course, is applicable to the capitalist or the manager who 
 insists that the high profits or salary he receives measure 
 the amount of his productivity. In order to know whether 
 the banker or the owner of a brewery, who receives in profits 
 or in dividends 50,000 a year, is entitled to the property 
 on grounds of " productivity,' 1 arising from skill of manage- 
 ment, or even from the "utility" of his capital, we should 
 have to estimate and to abstract all those social forces which, 
 both on the supply side and on the demand side, help to 
 determine the value of his business a feat which is quite 
 impossible. Those who, like Mr. Mallock, seem to assume * 
 that a business man earning 5000 a year is fifty times as 
 "productive 11 as another earning 100, have simply no 
 warrant for their assumption. He may, or may not be so 
 much more productive ; it is impossible to say. Neither, in 
 theory, is the separate productivity of individuals directly 
 calculable, nor, in practice, is there any force which apportions 
 incomes or property according to such productivity. To 
 judge that one man is twice as "productive 11 because he can 
 earn an income twice as large exposes the circular argument 
 which vitiates it; for if we ask, "How do you know he is 
 twice as productive? 11 no other answer is forthcoming than 
 this : " Because he receives an income twice as large." 
 
 In thus rejecting the claims of "productivity" to form 
 * Vide " Labour and the Popular Welfare," p. 231.
 
 DISTRIBUTION ACCORDING TO NEEDS 161 
 
 a practical basis of property, I do not wish to imply that 
 one man may not be vastly more productive than another, 
 if only we were able, either in theory or in practice, to 
 measure individual productivity. The position sometimes 
 assumed by Socialists, and generally by democrats of the 
 old order, that men are approximately equal in their powers 
 and results, whether true or false, has no direct bearing on 
 the issue. For, even on the widest supposition of congenital 
 inequalities, on the theory of "Fritz is with us he is worth 
 ten thousand men," we cannot allow that individual product- 
 ivity either is, or ought to be, the direct rule for apportion- 
 ment of property. Even were the severance possible between 
 individual and social contribution to a product, it by no 
 means follows that Social Utility should base its practical 
 rule upon this severance. For, if one man produced exactly 
 twice as much as another, social waste might be involved in 
 paying him exactly twice as much ; for his " natural rights," 
 as indicated by his physical needs and his moral demands, 
 though they would in the ordinary course of nature be larger 
 than those of the less productive man, might not be twice 
 as large, and any excess of property in products over and 
 above the limit of these " rights " involves, as we have seen, 
 a definite social waste. 
 
 In choosing the third alternative, "Needs," as the most 
 serviceable basis of a practical rule for the assignment of 
 property to individuals, I wish to guard against the supposi- 
 tion that we are impelled to this selection by merely " senti- 
 mental," or even distinctively " ethical," considerations alone. 
 In adopting as our rule of distribution, " Each man according 
 to his needs," we neither affirm a merely charitable basis of 
 individual claims upon society, nor do we discard such whole- 
 some regulative influence as is afforded by consideration of 
 efforts or productivity. Our analysis of the natural relations 
 between efforts and needs has already implicitly disposed of 
 the difficulties which have prevented the common acceptance 
 
 M
 
 1G2 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 of the doctrine, "From each according to his powers, to 
 each according to his needs," which has to so many seemed 
 a counsel of perfection ethically sound, but unworkable in 
 the world as we know it. Reflection shows that the doctrine 
 is only unworkable if we suppose the two rules which appor- 
 tion work and wealth are destitute of organic causal con- 
 nection. We have already seen that this is not the case. 
 Understanding, as we rightly do, by " needs " the satisfaction 
 of those physical, intellectual, and moral wants which serve 
 to maintain and raise individual efficiency for social service, 
 Social Utility will clearly sanction full satisfaction of these 
 individual needs. Only by such satisfaction of genuine needs 
 can an individual be kept in a position to serve society by 
 efficient labour "according to his powers." In other words, 
 by taking "Needs'" as our direct practical standard for 
 determination of individual property, we have a security, 
 based upon natural causation, that distribution will likewise 
 be in general accord with effort and with productivity. Full 
 satisfaction of needs can alone evoke full efforts and full 
 productivity. 
 
 There is a slowly-growing, but perceptible, tendency 
 throughout industry to recognize this truth. In the deter- 
 mination of official salaries, payment of managerial and of 
 most highly-skilled and responsible work more and more 
 attention is given both to the real and even the conventional 
 "needs" of the "position." It is felt increasingly that 
 neither the effort nor the product in such labour can be 
 justly measured, or in any other way directly checked ; and 
 that the best guarantee of the most capable and energetic 
 performance of duties, involving, as all duties do, qualitative 
 as well as quantitative considerations, is a substantial salary, 
 sufficient for the full regular supply of all reasonable wants. 
 Gradually this more enlightened doctrine is creeping down 
 to the less skilled and less responsible grades of labour. It 
 is felt that the differences of motive between manager and
 
 DISTRIBUTION ACCORDING TO NEEDS 163 
 
 foreman, foreman and skilled workman, skilled workman and 
 "labourer,"" are, after all, differences of degree; and that, if 
 the best can be got out of a manager by fixing his salary 
 with direct regard to his " needs," the best can likewise be 
 got out of the employees throughout the complex system of 
 industry by a similar policy. This is, in fact, the rationale 
 of the labour movement in its struggle for a " living " or a 
 "minimum wage." This claim is simply the first step 
 towards the substitution of a rational wage-system, based 
 upon needs, for the anarchic struggle of disordered com- 
 petition, which only feigns to apportion pay according to 
 individual productivity. 
 
 In assigning " Needs " as the true basis of distribution and 
 of property, I need hardly say that the final reference is not 
 to what the individual thinks to be his needs, nor even to 
 the real needs of the individual for purposes of purely private 
 satisfaction or perfection, but to those needs which society, 
 taking an enlightened view of social interests, confirms and 
 endorses. 
 
 In taking "Needs" as our practical rule of guidance, 
 how far are we carried towards equality in distribution of 
 property? The natural laws of the relations which subsist 
 between production and consumption, work and life, suggest 
 that individuals may differ as widely in their needs as in 
 their efforts or their productivity. In giving consideration 
 to this view, it will be best to exclude at the outset that 
 interpretation of the doctrine, "to each according to his 
 needs," which has special reference to the "needy" classes 
 i.e. to those social weaklings for whom it is deemed socially 
 useful to make "charitable provision." The social support 
 rendered to the young, the aged, the sick, the infirm, is best 
 regarded not as based upon individual rights of property, 
 but upon considerations of the wise and humane use of 
 social property for directly social ends. Ample provision for 
 these " charitable " purposes should be the first duty towards
 
 164 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 itself of every organized society, due care being taken to 
 eradicate that sense of degradation which has been attached 
 to public charity by those who fail to understand that the 
 public is only consulting its own highest interests in taking 
 care of those who cannot take care of themselves, and in 
 preventing them from becoming a burden on the private 
 charity of individuals who, in a rightly-ordered economic 
 state, will have no funds available for such unnecessary 
 purposes. The higher forms of individual charity, the 
 offices of personal kindness and devotion in comforting 
 sorrow and alleviating suffering, will still remain, and will 
 gain in purity of motive and enjoyment, because they will 
 be relieved from the material bounty which too often degrades 
 those who give, by appealing to some secret pride of power 
 and property, and those who take, by rousing some feeling 
 of personal inferiority. The task of palliating or of healing 
 social sores should be left to society ; it is her duty, and she 
 should learn to do it. 
 
 The active members of society who claim individual 
 property according to their needs will not, therefore, claim 
 equal property. Individual needs endorsed by social utility 
 will tend to vary directly and even proportionately with 
 productivity, which is no more than saying that a larger 
 output of energy requires a larger replacement through con- 
 sumption. 
 
 But if this were all, why not take current productivity, 
 it might be urged, as the rule of distribution ? This, how- 
 ever, would plainly yield defective results. A merely 
 present quantitative material view of productivity might 
 assign to the " navvy " a larger property in satisfaction 
 of his needs than to the skilled mechanic or the managing 
 clerk. The two latter might at lower cost maintain 
 their standard of physical health and strength. But is 
 this a fair computation of their " needs " from the stand- 
 point of social utility? Evidently not. The latter are
 
 DISTRIBUTION ACCORDING TO NEEDS 165 
 
 engaged on work which, for its efficient execution, taxes 
 other faculties than muscular strength ; not only must these 
 faculties be kept in due repair, but, in proportion as the 
 work calls upon higher mental qualities, it requires provision 
 should be made for the continuous stimulation and satisfac- 
 tion of new powers and interests. In proportion as we raise 
 the character of work, we have to deal with a class of 
 worker whose social efficiency demands continual progress in 
 the development of his mental and moral powers. The 
 necessity of this development imposes more needs upon 
 the worker; social utility demands that these needs shall 
 be supplied; since society cannot check each several need 
 as it arises, much must be left to the individual. Put into 
 simple language, this means that a high-grade worker should 
 have a higher rate of pay than a low-grade worker, because 
 his " needs " are greater, and since these needs can only be 
 properly supplied by private expenditure, he ought to have 
 a larger property. It is, of course, true that in a well- 
 organized society many of the higher needs may be supplied 
 freely by society to all who feel their pressure, and such 
 expenditure may be made out of public property. But there 
 must also remain for all workers, whose work depends on 
 individuality of nature and of circumstances, a large class of 
 needs, the satisfaction of which, though of the highest social 
 importance, cannot conveniently, or possibly, be met by 
 social organization. An enlightened system of apportion- 
 ment of pay or property according to needs, must allow a 
 sufficient margin for this class of needs. 
 
 This doctrine of inequality of property is not cancelled 
 by the phrase, "equality of opportunity." In strict logic 
 it cannot be affirmed to be socially useful that every man 
 should have the same quantity of opportunities, as measured 
 by expenditure, or any other objective standard. For social 
 utility evidently ought to have regard to the capacity and 
 will of individuals to utilize their opportunities. "Why
 
 166 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 should a dull, unprogressive, uneducable man have the same 
 opportunities of education or of social influence furnished 
 him as an able, progressive man ? Such a policy would imply 
 a waste of economy of the social fund of opportunities, which 
 at any given time is limited. It would be wanton folly to 
 lavish arithmetical equality of opportunities either in the 
 shape of material property or immaterial wealth, upon indi- 
 viduals not equally capable of making a good use of them. 
 "Equality of opportunity" is a serviceable phrase, and 
 may, indeed, help within due limits to express a sound 
 policy ; but only for a society which is beginning to develop 
 a sound social economy. Since there are large needs which 
 are really common to all citizens, and since there are others 
 which it is convenient should be met by indiscriminate 
 provision, though some of the provision will be wasted, 
 equality of opportunity is sound doctrine for the organization 
 of the cruder material or educational departments of social 
 activity. But, when the finer arts of social life are developed, 
 more and more discrimination in dispensing social opportu- 
 nities will be practised, so that the more exact economy may 
 be attained whereby opportunities are distributed in propor- 
 tion to the advantage society will get from the individual 
 uses made of them. 
 
 This argument in favour of inequality of pay does not 
 imply any conviction regarding the necessity of retaining the 
 existing or any other wage system. Assuming that complete 
 communism were applied to co-operative industry, and every 
 worker was entitled to take freely from a common fund of 
 products, it would still be right and socially desirable that 
 there should be inequality in consumption, and so in "pro- 
 perty,' 1 ' 1 which, under such communism, would be confined to 
 consumables in the actual possession of consumers. Unless 
 communism operated so that individuals took and consumed 
 food and other commodities in proportion to their real needs, 
 it would be uneconomical and ineffective. What I mean is
 
 DISTRIBUTION ACCORDING TO NEEDS 1G7 
 
 this. In the well-ordered family life we have an example of 
 communism ; but a true economy of such a household implies 
 not an absolute equality of consumption, even though every 
 one might be free to help himself, but one which is directed 
 by the relative needs of the various members : the father 
 engaged in hard manual work requires and takes more and 
 better food than the others ; the older children, again, con- 
 sume more than the younger because their needs are greater. 
 In a large communistic society some such voluntary process 
 of adjustment must prevail, otherwise waste and parasitism 
 will corrupt and destroy the society. The application of 
 this principle does not therefore imply the maintenance of 
 existing methods of distribution, though in arguing the issue 
 I have found it convenient to deal with distribution on its 
 present basis. 
 
 But, though arithmetical equality of property or of 
 opportunity is not consistent with the law of distribution 
 according to needs, it by no means follows that this doctrine 
 lends any sanction either to the kinds or the degrees of 
 inequality which prevail at present. A large proportion of the 
 so-called " needs," by reference to which individual or class 
 property and expenditure are defended, are no "needs" at 
 all in the sense we use the term, for they serve no purpose 
 of " social utility." True needs and false needs will be dis- 
 tinguished by reference to our " natural rights " of property. 
 The individual needs to which society should assign "property" 
 will be those physical and mental demands of which due 
 satisfaction is required to evoke full efficiency of labour. So 
 far as relates to physical needs, this law would certainly not 
 justify any of those wide disparities of property which 
 prevail at present; the differences of standard of material 
 and intellectual comfort physically necessary to support the 
 different forms of work could never be so considerable as 
 to justify any of the current contrasts of class living. 
 
 " But," it may be urged, " your doctrine of * Needs '
 
 168 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 requires that a proper stimulus shall be applied to the 
 individual will ; whatever a man is able to insist on getting 
 as a condition of doing his best work, that it may pay society, 
 in its own interest, to accord him. Now, taking the normal 
 selfish man, will not this virtually identify 'distribution accord- 
 ing to needs' with 'distribution according to productivity,' 
 because the selfish man will insist on having a property 
 corresponding to his productivity, or full social worth ? " 
 
 Now, there is evidently some force in the objection ; the 
 question is, " How much ? " We have admitted that if a 
 greedy man, possessed of some natural gift or some trained 
 capacity, enabling him to do some great social service, 
 insists upon full payment for this service, he must, in an 
 enlightened society, obtain it. But I entirely deny that this 
 concession gives away the case with regard to "needs," or 
 justifies the greater part of existing inequalities of property. 
 
 There are several important considerations to be weighed. 
 In the first place, correct analysis of our economic processes 
 shows that large amounts of property to wit, economic rents 
 of land, large portions of profits and interest are derived 
 from monopoly or other abuse of economic power, and are 
 not necessary in order to induce those who receive them to 
 maintain land, capital, or ability of management, in its 
 current use. In other words, they do not correspond to any 
 personal productivity, and cannot, therefore, be "needed" 
 to evoke it. 
 
 Again, even in cases where great individual ability seems 
 to be the source of large gains, it is only a defective view 
 of social conditions which makes it so appear. The defenders 
 of economic inequalities speak of the enormous rewards which 
 sometimes come to inventors, to organizers of industry, and 
 to professional experts, as if they were of necessity the just 
 measure of the social services they render, or, at any rate, 
 as if they could not be in excess of such services, and were 
 socially necessary payments to evoke these services. But
 
 DISTRIBUTION ACCORDING TO NEEDS 169 
 
 none of these statements is correct; they are the result of 
 slipshod reasoning on " the theory of prices." This is best 
 seen by an example. A skilful surgeon of great reputation 
 gets, say, .1000 for a single delicate operation. Now, if the 
 operation is successful, and a very valuable life is saved, it 
 may well be represented that the "productivity' 1 of this 
 work is far higher than is represented by .1000. The 
 notion that a man can insist on getting the full worth of 
 his work in the sense of its productivity is evidently false; 
 for, suppose the surgeon in question to be as greedy as 
 possible, it might not pay him to charge more than WOQ 
 for this class of operation, though a particular patient might 
 have consented to pay more; by charging more he might 
 spoil future business. But our real question is : " Why can 
 he get ^1000 ?" Is it because he would not consent to do 
 such work for less ? Strictly speaking, " Yes."" Taking into 
 consideration all the economic circumstances as they stand, 
 ^1000 must rank as payment according to needs i.e. it is 
 necessary to pay it in order to induce him to do the work. 
 If he knows he can obtain this fee he will not take less. 
 But Mr. Mallock and his friends speak as if this enormous 
 price represented some inherent and immutable quality of 
 skill, and corresponding service ; and are even ready to insist 
 that our surgeon is, by admission, paid less than he ought 
 to have not more. Now, such is not the case. Two vitally 
 important circumstances, which help to determine the price, 
 are ignored. In order that the surgeon may be able to 
 get d^lOOO, two conditions are necessary : one is that there 
 should exist in the community a wealthy class, whose 
 income enables them to pay so high a price for medical 
 service. Living in a society where there was no such wealthy 
 class, this same surgeon, exhibiting the same skill, would 
 consent to put it forth for, say, ^50, instead of =1000. Or, 
 again, if other surgeons were available, approximately of the 
 same level of skill, they would, however indirectly, compete
 
 170 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 with him so effectively that the price of such an operation 
 would be, say, 100 instead of 1000. It therefore appears 
 that economic changes, which, by " socializing " those economic 
 rents and monopoly profits that are the sources of great 
 wealth, tended to abolish a " millionaire " class, would greatly 
 reduce the large sum which was supposed to represent a 
 necessary payment to individual skill; while a similar result 
 would ensue upon such a wider spread of medical education 
 and of general intelligence as would abate the superstitious 
 reputation which, under existing circumstances, a great surgeon 
 is wont to enjoy. Thus, there is nothing finally "necessary " 
 in the high rents enjoyed by professional ability. Those 
 who oppose the high salary proposed for some responsible 
 official are commonly met by the retort, " You cannot get 
 an equally good man for less;" and, so far as present cir- 
 cumstances go, this is often true. But, in proportion as 
 free play is given to individual ability by practical equality 
 of educational opportunities, and by breaking down the close 
 monopoly of certain professions, a larger supply of approxi- 
 mately equal ability will be available ; the best men may be 
 as superior to the worst men as before, but there will be 
 more of the best men, and they will compete more closely 
 with one another, so as to abate the extremely high indi- 
 vidual rents often received at present. What holds of pro- 
 fessions will hold even more signally of industrial inventors 
 and undertakers. There is nothing whatever in the nature 
 of things or men to require that the invention of a new 
 screw-stopper or a new pill should be rewarded by half a 
 million of money, or that an iron-king or a railway contractor 
 should make the princely pile he often makes at present. It 
 is only "necessary 1 " in the sense that there is nothing at 
 present to prevent his getting it; it is not "necessary" in 
 the sense that the inventor would not invent and the under- 
 taker would not undertake for a much smaller reward as 
 efficiently as he does now. The large rewards which accrue
 
 DISTRIBUTION ACCORDING TO NEEDS 171 
 
 at present to our magnates of industry and finance measure 
 neither personal productivity (for that is immeasurable) nor 
 needs, but simply represent what the powers of monopoly 
 they hold, or the conditions of the market, enable them to 
 take. This rational interpretation of " Needs " disposes of 
 most of the larger class and individual disparities of property 
 which exist at present. Equality of natural and educational 
 opportunities will, by affecting both the supply and the 
 demand of skilled personal services, greatly reduce the wider 
 chasms of income which are falsely attributed as necessary 
 measurements of individual skill, effort, or productivity. Just 
 in proportion as society, on the one hand, enables every one 
 to detect and educate his best abilities for social service, 
 and, on the other hand, takes away the power of private 
 ownership of "unearned increment," will the "wages" of 
 different classes of work tend towards such levels as will 
 measure the intrinsic qualities, hardness or ease, agreeability 
 or disagreeability, etc., of the work involved. 
 
 No absolute equality of "needs" will then be attained. 
 A selfish man with a real individual superiority of skill over 
 his fellow craftsmen will be able to take a larger reward, 
 and so long as he insists upon receiving this larger reward 
 as a condition of doing his full and best work, it ranks as 
 an individual economic "need." This will continue to be a 
 basis of inequality of property. Assuming that individuals 
 press their selfish claims, it will be socially useful to admit 
 them in order to evoke the best social service. 
 
 The law of property, then, though eternal in its nature, 
 is of changing application. True work is self-expression. 
 The self of the mechanical toiler, of the greedy business man, 
 expresses itself in the material products of his labour his 
 energy has passed into this form ; it is in the strictest sense 
 his property, and, so far as he alone has made it, it must be 
 secured to his individual use. Even here there are differences 
 with different races and degrees of civilization. In a primitive
 
 172 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 society peasants often will not put their best work into the 
 land, unless an absolute ownership of the land and all it 
 bears is secured to them. Here it is their rightful property ; 
 and society, in its own interest, will protect them in it. An- 
 other people, in another age, will give out their best effort 
 provided a reasonable share of the annual fruits of the soil 
 be secured for them their rightful property is smaller. Nor 
 is this unreasonable ; in the more primitive society, where 
 the peasant seems more grasping, the produce of the soil is 
 more largely the result of his own effort ; the simpler society 
 and civilization in which he lives give him less assistance. 
 In the highly civilized state his property is smaller, because 
 the co-operation of society, and, therefore, its share of 
 property, is so much larger. Similar criticism applied to 
 other industries will show how the right of property 
 in the products of labour varies inversely with the human 
 satisfaction of producing. The higher the human satisfac- 
 tion which attends productive effort, the less insistent is the 
 worker upon getting what is called the full product of his 
 labour for his true payment ; his real property consists more 
 largely in the productive activity itself. A shoemaker must 
 always have as his property a larger proportion of the money 
 value of the shoes he makes than the painter of the value of 
 his picture. This is not unfair. It may be said that society 
 co-operates in both cases equally, and should have an equal 
 property in the two products. But this is not so. The work 
 of the painter is more " socialized " in its result, for the true 
 expression of the man is less in the picture and more in the 
 effort ; the work of the shoemaker is less socialized : the self- 
 expression of the man is in material terms, and the matter 
 in large measure must be his. That portion of the product 
 which the individual insists upon regarding as the true 
 expression of his individual activity, as a detached part of 
 himself, must always be secured to him, and regarded as 
 his " property," for this is the very condition of its existence.
 
 DISTRIBUTION ACCORDING TO NEEDS 173 
 
 Our judgment upon right limits of individual property 
 will take the following shape. Whatever portion of a 
 product is necessary as an incentive to an individual to work 
 is his rightful property. It may be said to consist of two 
 parts: (1) That which is necessary to maintain, from the 
 material physical standpoint, the energy required for work ; 
 (2) That which, in addition, may be required to operate as 
 an inducement upon the will of the individual. The former, 
 for any given kind of work, and any individual physique is 
 a fixed quantity. The latter will vary with 
 
 (a) The satisfaction which accrues to the individual from 
 the functional activity involved in working. 
 
 (&) The selfishness of the individual. 
 
 Just in proportion as a society can be evolved which, on 
 the one hand, shall slacken the demand for monotonous and 
 arduous toil, infusing an increased element of art, and there- 
 fore of human interest, into all work, and, on the other 
 hand, shall so educate the social nature of the individual as 
 to lead him to identify himself more closely with the welfare 
 of others, the second element of property will tend to pass 
 over from the individual to society, because the real force 
 or motive which has produced it will be less individual and 
 more social in character. Such will be the interpretation 
 of individual needs by Social Utility.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 PUBLIC AND PRIVATE INDUSTRY 
 
 ADMITTING the utility of private property for individuals, 
 and of social property, based upon similar needs, for society, 
 we have next to ask what light this assignment of individual 
 and social property throws upon the government of industry. 
 Though the end of the ownership of property is consumption, 
 rational individuals or societies will not always seek the 
 direct and immediate attainment of that end ; much property 
 will at any given time be used, not for present enjoyment, 
 but to produce a larger continuous fund of future enjoyment 
 in other words, property will function not merely as con- 
 sumption-goods, but as capital. Thus the question takes 
 this shape : In what forms will private individuals and 
 society respectively best use that portion of their property 
 which ranks as capital? or, stated otherwise, What forms 
 of industry will best be undertaken by society, what forms 
 by private enterprise? 
 
 The notion that society ought, by virtue of a natural 
 need of self-expression or self-realization, to undertake indus- 
 trial work, is yet so novel that, in trying to answer these 
 questions, it will be best to confine ourselves to making 
 good the industrial claims of society, leaving the claims of 
 private enterprise to take care of themselves, which they 
 have always been quite capable of doing. 
 
 The preliminary question, whether society, through the 
 State, should directly engage in any industries, important 
 
 17-1
 
 PUBLIC AND PRIVATE INDUSTRY 175 
 
 though it seems to some persons, requires no answer from 
 us. For when we have decided that society has large claims 
 upon property, and must administer such property economi- 
 cally in the public good, we perceive that it can only perform 
 this duty by organizing industrial services. But what 
 services ? There are three answers which suggest themselves, 
 all expressed in general terms. The public, it is said, should 
 undertake such works as it is best capable of administering ; 
 it should undertake works which are required for supplying 
 the common necessities of the people; it should undertake 
 such works as, if left to private enterprise, are prone to 
 abuse, by reason of high or irregular prices, or by causing 
 danger to the public or to the workers engaged in them. 
 
 The first answer implies that the State can best under- 
 take industries of a routine character, which can be 
 economically ordered upon a large scale and administered 
 by officials. Such businesses must supply goods or services 
 of fixed sorts for which there is a fairly equable or calculable 
 demand, and where, therefore, comparatively little depends 
 upon those qualities of individual energy or ability that are 
 best evoked by some special stimulus of profit. The second 
 answer implies that the State, acting in the direct interest 
 of the whole community, should engage to supply goods or 
 services Avhich all require in other words, the necessaries 
 of physical, intellectual, or moral life. The third answer 
 means that it is the duty of the State to protect the public, 
 or any section of the public, as producers or consumers, 
 against specific dangers arising from the technical or the 
 economic conditions of private trades. 
 
 Now, though these three claims seem at first sight to be 
 widely divergent, based upon totally different considerations, 
 a little reflection will show an inner harmony of application. 
 
 What are the industries which best admit " routine " 
 administration ? Are they not precisely those which supply 
 the common needs of the masses of the population? The
 
 176 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 evolution of our State and municipal services has clearly been 
 conducted on these lines. The postal service in all civilized 
 nations, the railway service in most, the State organization 
 of defence against enemies without and enemies within, the 
 system of elementary education, are obvious instances of 
 the union of these two claims ; in municipal government the 
 public supply of gas, water, tramways, in some continental 
 cities the supply of water-power and of bread, fall under 
 the same double category of routine and necessary services. 
 
 The third development of public industry, on grounds 
 of protection against abuses, is not so closely and generally 
 consistent with the two other tendencies. Yet a nearer 
 examination of the structural development of modern business 
 discloses a real connection. 
 
 What are the industries most prone to the above-named 
 abuses? Whose power over the consuming public and over 
 the workers is most dangerous ? Is it not those businesses 
 which have crushed out effective competition among them- 
 selves, and are tending to establish themselves as private 
 monopolies ? Now, the commonest characteristic of this class 
 of business is magnitude of market. The economies of a 
 giant business are best attained where it is engaged in the 
 
 O o o 
 
 supply of a vast regular demand, or a demand whose irregu- 
 larities are fairly calculable. Such demands are evidently 
 not demands for luxuries or fashion goods, or for goods 
 which have a narrow special sale, but for the widespread 
 general consumption of the people. The most highly 
 evolved forms of capitalist business are either those forms 
 directly engaged in making and selling necessaries or prime 
 conveniences to the masses, or those fundamental industries 
 connected with the production or conveyance of materials 
 necessary to a great variety of directly serviceable industries. 
 Oil, sugar, corn, cotton, may be taken as examples of the 
 first order; mines, iron works, engineering shops, banks, of 
 the second ; railways of both.
 
 PUBLIC AND PRIVATE INDUSTRY 177 
 
 If we take the most advanced industrial nations to-day 
 in particular Great Britain and the United States we 
 find that in these and similar industries arise those vast com- 
 binations of federated businesses, corners, trusts, syndicates, 
 etc., which are by their nature designed, and by their size 
 and strength enabled, to escape the competition which has 
 hitherto striven to safeguard the pocket of the consumer 
 by imposing wasteful struggles upon trade competitors. 
 Wherever great capitalism prevails, and competing businesses 
 in the same market are few, we find the growth of agree- 
 ments to hold up prices and to keep down wages, which take 
 definite shape in those Shipping Federations, Railroad 
 Syndicates, and other forms of combination which seek to 
 tax the consuming public for their private benefit. So long 
 as a considerable number of businesses of moderate size 
 survive, and there is regular and effective competition, 
 although this competition has evils of its own, it enables 
 the public to secure goods at reasonable prices, and affords 
 employees in the trade some option of employment. But, 
 where this competition has altogether or largely disappeared, 
 the public welfare is evidently endangered, and a policy of 
 self-protection will more and more compel the public to 
 guard its interest by public administration of industries 
 which attain, or approach, this dangerous power. Those 
 who imagine that it may remain to the public interest to 
 permit private monopolies to plunder the consumer, and then 
 to force the plunderers to disgorge by means of taxation, 
 have not mastered either the intricacies of taxation, or the 
 cunning which monopolies, such as the Standard Oil Trust, 
 employ to dodge taxation. 
 
 The natural evolution of modern industry is bringing 
 many large routine businesses into a position of dangerous 
 power, to which State organization will be found the only 
 effective remedy. Most of the businesses which come within 
 this category may be recognized by the business form which 
 
 NT
 
 178 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 their size compels them to assume, that of the joint-stock 
 company. Generally speaking, it may be said that, in those 
 trades where the whole or the bulk of the business is in 
 the hands of companies, a stage of development has been 
 reached fraught with present, or not remotely future, danger 
 to the public. 
 
 While competition still survives between great companies, 
 the consuming public may suck most of the advantages of 
 the economies of this business structure. But, so soon as a 
 whole industry is portioned out among a few great companies, 
 the work of federation and amalgamation proceeds apace, 
 wasteful expenditure on cut-throat competition is saved, and 
 prices are fixed upon a tariff yielding high monopoly profits 
 to the federated or amalgamated companies. This apex of 
 private capitalism also enables the business that attains it 
 to exercise a well-nigh absolute control over the specialized 
 labour it employs, and solves the conflict between capital 
 .and labour by securing the unqualified submission of the 
 latter. 
 
 The businesses which take this course of growth, passing 
 from private businesses into public companies, and proceeding 
 by agreement with other companies, or by amalgamation, 
 to secure the power to earn monopoly profits by dictating 
 prices to consumers and conditions of employment to workers, 
 become distinctly anti-social forces which cannot be ultimately 
 tolerated. The history of modern States shows that they 
 are not tolerated. The large joint-stock company is but a 
 stage in the process from private to public industry. A 
 reference to the "Wealth of Nations" will make this 
 evident. Writing on the eve of the Industrial Revolution, 
 Adam Smith had little notion of the capacity of joint-stock 
 enterprise in the immediate future: "The only trades which 
 it seems possible for a joint-stock company to carry on 
 successfully, without an exclusive privilege, are those of 
 which all the operations are capable of being reduced to what
 
 PUBLIC AND PRIVATE INDUSTRY 179 
 
 is called a routine, or to such an uniformity of method as 
 admits of little or no variation. Of this kind is, first, the 
 banking trade; secondly, the trade of insurance from fire, 
 and from sea risk arid capture in time of war; thirdly, the 
 trade of making and maintaining a navigable cut or canal ; 
 and, fourthly, the similar trade of bringing water for the 
 supply of a great city." 
 
 Making the requisite allowance for more modern ideas of 
 transport and municipal services, we have in this passage an 
 admirably succinct indication of the kinds of business which 
 can be most profitably administered by companies. It is 
 worthy of observation that these very businesses, which in 
 Adam Smith's day had reached the stage of joint-stock 
 companies, are all of them in various places and at various 
 paces passing into the condition of municipal or State under- 
 takings. Banking, insurance, modern transport and municipal 
 services cannot permanently remain anywhere in the hands of 
 private companies; the same economic forces which have 
 developed the company form will, acting in conjunction with 
 the self-protective instincts of the public, everywhere compel 
 the socialization of these industries. 
 
 But how far, it may be asked, must we regard these as 
 merely the advanced guard in a general progress of industrial 
 evolution ? It is sometimes suggested that all businesses are 
 moving along this same road at different paces, and that 
 thus, in the end, all alike must pass under direct public 
 administration. This is one of the most frequent claims of 
 "scientific Socialism." But do all productive businesses alike 
 gain in economy by increase of size, and are they thus alike 
 driven into large capitalistic shapes destined to become 
 dangerous monopolies of private profit-mongers, unless they 
 are taken over by the public ? Is there no legitimate place 
 for individualism in industry ? These questions deserve 
 thoughtful inquiry, and that inquiry must have special 
 reference to certain inherent qualities of the arts of industry.
 
 180 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 What are the true characteristics of that "grande 
 Industrie" which seems to tend by inevitable laws towards 
 great capitalist forms, that are ultimately destined for 
 "socialization" as the necessary safeguard against abuse of 
 private powers of monopoly? The word "routine 11 has 
 figured prominently in describing them, and we may turn 
 the question thus : " What industries tend towards routine ? " 
 In economic terms the general answer will be this : " When- 
 ever a large, steady demand exists for certain common sorts 
 of goods or services, the twin economies of machinery and 
 minute division of labour are applicable, and these goods 
 or services can be produced most profitably upon the largest 
 scale of business. 11 It is hardly necessary to enumerate the 
 many separate advantages which a large business enjoys as 
 compared with a small business in industry where processes 
 of production can be reduced to routine. In manufactures 
 the possession of a capital so large as to secure the latest 
 and most expensive machinery, and to experiment with 
 new processes and new lines of goods, is more and more 
 essential to success ; in buying materials, in securing cheap 
 and efficient carriage, in advertising, and in " pushing " wares, 
 the advantages of big over little business are many and 
 obvious. Even in industrial departments, where mechanical 
 appliances are still secondary to the direct use of labour- 
 power, as in mining, and in many branches of distribution 
 and of agriculture, the economies of large-scale production 
 are such as to drive business rapidly along the path of 
 " manifest destiny " towards the alternative of public or 
 private monopoly. 
 
 But no one can closely inspect any large industry without 
 perceiving that all its parts do not move along this same 
 path. The radical antithesis which underlies the antagonism 
 of Socialism and Individualism in its industrial application 
 is the antithesis of Machinery and Art. If we take the fine 
 arts, which are engaged in producing the most refined sorts
 
 PUBLIC AND PRIVATE INDUSTRY 181 
 
 of material and non-material wealth, we easily recognize that 
 they show no tendency whatever to develop into great 
 companies and into syndicates. Among the lower or more 
 mechanical orders of art-workers we may, indeed, find certain 
 imitations of this industrial evolution ; but the true art-worker, 
 though he lives by his art, conducts a business upon essentially 
 individual lines he has little to gain by direct business 
 combination with his fellows, except for those processes of 
 log-rolling which are at once the denial and the degradation 
 of true art. In this finest productive work there is no 
 economy in the large-scale business : great capitalism has no 
 place here. Why not ? Clearly because the " routine " 
 elements which prevail in common business life are absent. 
 An artist must produce the whole of a product a product 
 with a unity ; it must be the direct expression of his personal 
 skill, directed to the individual work in hand. The first of 
 these conditions negates division of labour; the second, 
 machinery. Collaboration, beyond certain very narrowly- 
 defined limits, is essentially impossible for art-work ; even 
 where it is possible, it demands a personal sympathy between 
 the fellow-artists of the rarest order, and always imposes 
 some sacrifice of perfect harmony in the result, taken as a 
 whole. Such slight division of labour as prevails in art-work 
 is either directed to certain less skilled or more mechanical 
 preparatory processes, or is imposed by exigencies of executive 
 art, as in performance of orchestral music. Great creative 
 art is felt to be absolutely and eternally individual in nature : 
 the labour of producing it cannot be divided. Still less con- 
 ceivable is it that such work can be produced by machinery : 
 the constant repetition of the same process turning out a 
 number of similar goods, with the finish, not of a skilled 
 craftsman, but of a machine, is the very opposite of art. 
 Machine economy produces large quantities of average goods, 
 art a single product, the whole significance of which lies in the 
 direct expression of human spontaneous skill which it embodies.
 
 182 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 But it may be said : u After all, art is a thing apart ; 
 though machinery may not do everything, its capabilities are 
 constantly increasing ; an ever-growing proportion of wealth- 
 production is destined to pass under its sway. If, therefore, 
 we exclude a few fine arts, industry at large may be con- 
 sidered as destined to move towards monopoly and Socialism. 
 Indeed, it may appear that all general improvements in the 
 economic condition of the masses make for this goal. In 
 proportion as a genuine levelling-up of the standard of 
 comfort of a people takes place, the number of industries 
 which can be thus regulated for the satisfaction of wants 
 which, formerly confined to the 'classes, 1 have now been 
 extended to the 'masses, 1 will be continually increasing. 
 Thus, it would seem that an incessant growth of Collectivism 
 is indicated by the essential facts of general progress. 11 But 
 this is a short-sighted view of progress, based upon an 
 imperfect conception of the needs of man. It assumes that 
 doctrine of mechanical equality which we have already 
 recognized as utterly without foundation. Man is not only 
 one with his fellows, but also one by himself; not merely 
 a partaker of common humanity, but an individual with 
 nature and conditions which evolve tastes and needs that 
 are his, and his alone. Now, not only in respect of the fine 
 arts, but in all other arts, this individuality craves expres- 
 sion and satisfaction. These tastes and needs cannot be 
 adequately satisfied by routine industry. Such industry is 
 based upon the supposition that a large, and ever larger, 
 number of persons will consent to consume copies of the 
 same articles. Now, since no two persons are made precisely 
 the same in respect of any of their needs, every consent to 
 consume these routine goods implies a certain sacrifice of 
 individual taste, which should only be incurred where it 
 cannot be avoided. Mechanical routine processes can never 
 give full satisfaction. A machine can be made capable of 
 satisfying all the wants, where we are not "particular 11 ; if
 
 PUBLIC AND PRIVATE INDUSTRY 183 
 
 the wants are for material goods, steam-driven arrangements 
 of iron can be devised for making them, and there is virtually 
 no limit to the application of machinery for such purposes 
 where the necessary demand is expressed in willingness to 
 pay a sufficient price. There is hardly anything in the way 
 of material production a machine cannot be made to do, 
 provided only that a sufficient number of people will consent 
 to use exactly similar commodities. But if I stand out for 
 the " particular " wants in which I differ from all my fellow- 
 men, a machine cannot meet my requirements ; I shall demand 
 a fellow-man to satisfy me, by the exercise of skill applied 
 to the discernment and satisfaction of my special needs. 
 Now, such a worker, whatever he be called, is essentially an 
 artist; and his work is exempt from the tendency towards 
 capitalist production and Socialism. The whole gist of the 
 problem of social progress lies here. It is, indeed, possible 
 as the late Mr. Pearson, for example, seemed to hold 
 that industrial progress might quench the individuality of 
 both producer and consumer, moulding a society content to 
 satisfy its material cravings with ever-increasing quantities 
 of common orders of material goods, turned out by machines 
 operated by workers who were nothing but machine-tenders. 
 Such an evolution is, indeed, conceivable; but one would 
 hardly call it social progress. Most, if not all, avowed 
 Socialists would be prepared to stake the value of their 
 Socialism upon the single test of its active promotion of 
 individuality in freedom of life, and in the fuller satisfaction 
 of those needs which give distinction to the individual. It 
 is doubtless true that few members of a really enlightened 
 progressive community would insist upon expressing their 
 individuality in a capricious or an ultra-refined demand for 
 satisfaction in all the ordinary necessaries of life. Indeed, 
 it might fairly be assumed that machine economy, and 
 therefore State administration, would have a large and 
 an absolutely growing domain in the organized supply of
 
 184 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 ordinary food, clothing, and other prime necessaries in which 
 few healthy members of the community cared to express their 
 desire for distinction. But, though the absolute number of 
 common needs and corresponding industries might grow, 
 absorbing one after another most of those trades which are 
 now tending towards large business forms, these will be pro- 
 gressively outweighed by the growth of human activities 
 devoted to kinds of work which will rightly rank as art. 
 Under this term will come all handling of material or intel- 
 lectual "stuff" which involves individual skill and attention 
 in the worker, imposed by the need of meeting the require- 
 ments of an individual consumer. The Fine Arts only yield 
 the most signal instances of such work ; as Ruskin so admir- 
 ably insists, there is no material which does not admit a 
 genuine artistic treatment. Metals, wood, stone, leather 
 every form of matter affords infinite scope for a handicraft 
 which shall exhibit the true and noble character of Art. 
 A qualitative conception of social progress implies a constant 
 decline in the quantity of routine work as compared with 
 that work which is individual in its character and in the 
 enjoyment it furnishes. 
 
 Even in the great manufactures of to-day there is much 
 work which does not gravitate towards large businesses, the 
 execution of special orders, work of repair, various finishing 
 processes and subsidiary employments which are, from the 
 very nature of the services they render, irregular and indi- 
 vidualistic. The highest class of work still remains in small 
 businesses, because it cannot be reduced to routine and be 
 executed either by machinery, or by uninterested, low-skilled, 
 minutely subdivided labour. " There is no fit there can 
 be no fit which is made by the machine and by subdivided, 
 uninterested labour," writes Webb, in dealing with the London 
 tailoring trade. A man who will wear an average fit can 
 get it cut out by machinery ; but he who wants a good fit 
 employs an artist. So in the clock trade, which has, for the
 
 PUBLIC AND PRIVATE INDUSTRY 185 
 
 most part, passed into a factory trade, we are informed that 
 the best kind of London work is still carried on under 
 primitive conditions. " The work of making a clock is 
 conducted under one roof, both by hand and by machinery. 
 The men learn to make a clock throughout, and, whatever 
 their particular work may be, they do it with conscious 
 reference to its bearing on the action of the whole clock. 11 
 So not only a poem and a picture, but a well-fitting coat 
 and a well-made clock, are subject to the economy of art 
 rather than to the economy of machinery. While Machinery 
 makes for large businesses with large capital, with minutely 
 subdivided labour, which rapidly tend to eliminate competi- 
 tion and establish monopolies, Art makes for the personally 
 owned and personally conducted business, whose success 
 depends not upon quantity, but upon quality of work and 
 output. The former businesses, by the inevitable law of 
 evolution, must pass under social administration in every 
 well-ordered State, according as they reach the fully-ripened 
 form of monopoly. But the latter need not, and will not, 
 pass out of private management; the competition they 
 engender is not of the sweating and price-cutting order, but 
 a genuine rivalry in excellence of work ; supplying the 
 comforts and luxuries of life rather than the necessaries, 
 they can exercise no grievously oppressive power over the 
 consumer. These individualistic arts of industry will not 
 the less be servants of the commonwealth, because it will be 
 found socially expedient to leave them to private enterprise, 
 for they can only live by giving satisfaction to the finer 
 tastes which individual consumers entertain. The State will 
 organize routine industry for the supply of the common 
 services of the consuming public ; private enterprise will 
 continue to supply the more refined, erratic, individualistic 
 demands of citizens. 
 
 The real harmony between industrial Socialism and Indi- 
 vidualism will be thus achieved by delimitation of the
 
 186 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 respective provinces of machinery and art. This is not the 
 less a sound solution of the problem, because it is impossible 
 to allocate precisely all the industries. Degrees of develop- 
 ment in the industrial arts, national and local differences 
 of taste in a word, all those factors which determine the 
 current civilization of a State, will decide Avhat activities at 
 any given time shall be ordered by the State or municipality, 
 and what by individual enterprise. Turning to a familiar 
 economic distinction, we should endorse the judgment of 
 Professor Marshall in assigning to the State those industries 
 which conform to the law of Increasing Returns, reserving 
 for private administration industries which conform to the 
 law of Diminishing Returns. "This is," writes Marshall, 
 " prima Jacle reason for believing that the aggregate satis- 
 faction, so far from being already a maximum, could be 
 much increased by collective action in promoting the pro- 
 duction and consumption of things, in regard to which the 
 law of Increasing Returns acts with a special force. 1 " Now, 
 the goods which, in their production and consumption, most 
 conform to the law of Increasing Returns are precisely those 
 "routine" goods which go to satisfy the common needs of 
 the general body of consumers.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 LAND AND AGRICULTURE 
 
 THE lines by which we have approached the problem of 
 Socialism and Individualism in industry have so far led us 
 to avoid the land question, which is to not a few the " be- 
 all and end-all" of social reform. The demand for social 
 ownership and control of land and of agriculture is not at 
 first sight on all-fours with the demand for the socialization 
 of industrial monopolies. The concentration of land owner- 
 ship in a few hands, and the growth of gigantic farms worked 
 by elaborate machine processes, with subdivided routine 
 labour, only cover a small portion of the area of the land 
 question. The root-danger of uncontrolled private property 
 in land consists in the fact that, while land is an absolute 
 necessary of life for all, the available quantity of this 
 "necessary" is, for a given community, absolutely limited. 
 Competition among manufacturers and merchants can and 
 will increase, virtually without limits, the supply of other 
 commodities available for consumers to purchase; and, so 
 long as competition is fairly maintained, consumers will get 
 them upon easy terms. It is, therefore, only when compe- 
 tition lapses into monopoly that social danger arises in these 
 departments. But the supply of land does not so readily 
 admit of increase ; for many purposes it is absolutely limited, 
 e.g. central city sites, and though for many agricultural and 
 other productive purposes a rise of rent may, by calling into 
 use less fertile or more distant lands, add to the effective 
 
 187
 
 188 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 supply, the new increments of supply are of an inferior 
 quality, and the pressure of need which has introduced them 
 assigns oppressive economic powers to owners of superior 
 portions of supply, enabling them to take rents of scarcity 
 without the trouble of maintaining close combinations. 
 
 Land nationalizers, however, often fail to discriminate 
 the degrees of power exercised over industry by private 
 owners of land. Setting aside the ideal absolutism of the 
 sole owner of an island, who may keep the entire population 
 at a bare subsistence wage, compelling all to work his will 
 and taking from them every increment of wealth, we find 
 land-ownership in historic communities endowed with very 
 different degrees of economic power. Reverting to our 
 familiar antithesis of life and work, we find that, whereas 
 land is needed both for life and for work, it is the former 
 rather than the latter use which marks the greatest pressure 
 of the "land question." As a first condition of healthy 
 physical life, every man, woman, or child demands the sole 
 occupation and use at any given time of a certain quantity 
 of ground with certain physical properties. Since bare land 
 does not suffice without some adequate provision of shelter, 
 such security of continuous possession is required as shall 
 yield the material structure of a fixed home. Taking con- 
 sideration of the social needs of man, we find the exclusive 
 use of a given piece of land for a settled home the first 
 aspect of the land question. Private property in or control 
 of land must not be such as to prevent society from securing 
 for all its members this material basis of adequate home life. 
 This claim to use of land cannot, in the nature of the case, 
 ever extend to absolute ownership, a jus uteiidi et abutendi ; 
 but, resting on physical and social utility, will be limited 
 by the available quantity of land, on the one hand, and by 
 the growth of population on the other. 
 
 The same consideration will evidently affect private 
 property in and occupation of land for purposes of work.
 
 LAND AND AGRICULTURE 189 
 
 But here more discrimination is required. Whereas the 
 physical nature of all is so much alike that the amount of 
 space required for life may be regarded as approximately 
 the same for all, this is not the case when we consider land 
 for working purposes. Though every business requires land, 
 in some it is the most important factor, in others it plays 
 a trivial part. A manufacturer needs land on which to build 
 his factory, a merchant or a lawyer needs land for offices to 
 stand on, a retail trader for his shop. But though, in some 
 of these cases, the importance of occupying a particular 
 position gives great power to the owner of lands available 
 for these purposes, the land question here is evidently far 
 less important than for other businesses, which are directly 
 engaged in getting material out of the land, or in utilizing 
 spatial qualities. Agriculture, mining, transport, are the 
 fundamental and supremely important uses of land, and 
 society must of necessity protect itself against the abuse of 
 private ownership in these regards with particular solicitude. 
 It is easy to produce instances in which the stoutest champion 
 of private property would insist that society must over-rule 
 the "rights'" of individual owners in such industries. The 
 owner of forest lands, by cutting down trees, may ruin 
 the climate and fertility of whole districts ; reckless con- 
 sumption or export of coal might disastrously affect the 
 future of national industry ; unrestricted tolls upon travellers 
 or goods may cripple the freedom and fluidity of national 
 commerce for the profit of a greedy few. In these great 
 departments of industry modern States are everywhere 
 strengthening the social control. More enlightened views 
 of the needs and duties of society everywhere impose grow- 
 ing restrictions upon ownership of land in these industries. 
 Individual rights of property in land as in other wealth will 
 always be protected that is to say, such freedom of use 
 will be accorded to individual "owners'" as will suffice to 
 induce them to put " their " land to the use which is socially
 
 190 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 most profitable. On the other hand, as the needs of grow- 
 ing populations press, greater care will be taken to prevent 
 individual " owners " from wasting the land-uses they control. 
 
 There is obviously no rule good for all times and all 
 circumstances relating to "property" in land. Where 
 " pioneers " are to be induced to go out into an uninhabited 
 and virgin soil, in order to get it into cultivation, it may 
 be socially expedient to give them a well-nigh absolute 
 "property" in their land for several generations. But, in 
 proportion as a country is settled and populated, the direct 
 agency of social forces grows, and social needs begin to 
 press ; with this pressure must come a graduated modification 
 of the powers of property vested in individual owners or 
 holders ; and when we reach the congested state of modern 
 cities, where individual enterprise does least and social 
 activities most to determine the value and use of land, we 
 reach a condition of affairs in which it is unsafe to leave 
 any considerable property to individuals. Whereas, in a 
 new, unsettled country every fresh increment of land-value 
 is the direct result of the effort of the individual pioneer, 
 in a modern city collective activity either in the shape of 
 definite public improvements, or through the enterprise and 
 wants of the body of citizens alone causes such increments 
 of land-value. 
 
 It is not, hoAvever, any abstract reflections upon the sources 
 of value, or the philosophy of social rights, that are the 
 dominant forces making for nationalization and municipali- 
 zation of land, but a clearer perception of certain concrete 
 dangers of private ownership. Probably the most pressing 
 movement is towards public ownership of transport, not 
 merely for protection against excessive rates of carriage, but 
 still more urgently in order to secure such rapid, cheap, and 
 convenient transit as will relieve the congestion of town life 
 and remove the worst burdens of the Housing problem. 
 Public ownership and control of all roads is essential, for the
 
 LAND AND AGRICULTURE 191 
 
 spatial properties of land surface utilized by roads are far 
 more fixed and inelastic than any other land-supply. While 
 new and more scientific treatment of agricultural land might 
 almost indefinitely increase the effective supply, and the 
 supply of metals in the bowels of the earth may be virtually 
 unlimited, and made more easily attainable by improved 
 methods of mining, the spatial relations which subsist 
 between one place and another cannot be materially altered, 
 and a monopoly of the best and shortest road is absolute. 
 Nowhere, indeed, is the land question quite separate from 
 the question of capital; and railroads, in their historical 
 origin, were regarded as a capitalist enterprise. But more 
 and more it is perceived that the land monopoly is the real 
 basis of railroad enterprise, securing for its owners a power 
 to tax the public, which rests ultimately upon ownership of 
 land surface. So, just as the high roads, originally made 
 by private enterprise, and used for private tolls, passed into 
 the possession and control of the public, the same course 
 must be followed in the iron roads of the present. Railroads 
 are becoming more and more a common necessary of life, 
 their management a routine art ; and, since effective security 
 of competition cannot be maintained, every test of sound 
 nationalization is satisfied. All services requiring an exclu- 
 sive occupation of public roads, in town or country, enjoy 
 an economic power resting ultimately upon monopoly of 
 space. In accordance with this condition, municipal and 
 other public enterprise continually encroaches upon private 
 businesses in the conveyance and distribution of routine 
 commodities; the charters or leases granted to tram, tele- 
 phone, gas, water, and similar companies, in which the public 
 vainly seeks adequate protection for consumers, can represent 
 only an interim experimental policy which must everywhere 
 give way to wider considerations of public economy. 
 
 In Great Britain, under free trade, the question of the 
 wisdom of allowing to a few individual owners a virtually
 
 192 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 unrestricted right to use, abuse, or waste the material fabric 
 of the land, its soil, subsoil, and minerals, has never assumed 
 the importance which it takes where the population of a 
 country is dependent for physical support upon the land of 
 that country. So long as the British nation can mitigate 
 the monopoly of agricultural and mining lands, by freely 
 drawing upon foreign sources of supply, the strict limits of 
 quantity of British land do not confer upon the owners of 
 these lands an economic power at all commensurate with the 
 power of landowners where space and position are chief 
 sources of value. Moreover, so far as agricultural land 
 is concerned, the decline of agricultural values and rural 
 population, combined with a general belief that Great 
 Britain gains by the division of world-labour, which makes 
 her more and more a nation of city-dwellers, has not 
 only minimized the economic power of agricultural land- 
 owners, but has diverted attention from the demand for 
 socialization of agricultural land. Mines stand upon a 
 different footing; but even here the peculiar character of 
 mining industries prevents mining from figuring as a routine 
 industry, which could be easily administered by public 
 officers. It is true that in other countries direct ownership 
 and management of mines, as of forests and other natural 
 treasures, are widely prevalent, and a mature consideration 
 of the national importance of a wise economy of these 
 resources will doubtless determine England ultimately to 
 adopt a similar policy. But at present, though mining has 
 almost entirely reached the company stage of capitalism, the 
 demand for national control and working is less advanced 
 and less urgent than in the case of railroads ; the tendency 
 is to make a rough separation of the land factor from the 
 industrial factor, and to claim for the public the royalties 
 and rents now taken by private owners. 
 
 The social policy towards agriculture will evidently 
 depend in great measure upon the tendency which that
 
 LAND AND AGRICULTURE 193 
 
 industry may exhibit to conform to the condition of routine 
 machine production. Where, as in certain parts of the new 
 world, gigantic farms of the bonanza order arise, in which 
 vast areas of land are cultivated for some single crop by 
 machine-tenders, and where little depends upon detailed 
 individual skill and economy, there seems nothing to distin- 
 guish agriculture from the other branches of great capitalist 
 industry which ripen into public industries. But where, as 
 in most European and Asiatic countries, minute cultivation 
 with spade labour, applied with careful regard to the par- 
 ticular character of each portion of the soil and climate, for 
 the growth of varied produce adapted to local markets, 
 holds its own, and progress in agriculture implies a constant 
 increase of this individual skill and care, it seems evident 
 that such industry is least susceptible of pure routine 
 management, and depends most for its success upon the 
 maintenance of private enterprise. Under such conditions 
 a sound progressive social policy will confine itself to such 
 increased control over property in land as is required to 
 secure security of tenure upon moderate terms of payment, 
 and such freedom and encouragement of cultivation, as will 
 stimulate the most efficient activity of the actual workers 
 on the soil. Since rack-rent, or economic rent, is clearly a 
 deterrent of the effective application of capital and labour 
 to the land, the progressive policy will evidently lie in 
 breaking down the existing economic powers of landowners. 
 This will be done either by establishing judicially "fair"" 
 rents, or, if this prove impracticable as evidently it must, 
 since no true criterion of " fairness " can be found in estab- 
 lishing public ownership of agricultural land, that will be 
 let to tenants paying the economic rent to the public in 
 taxation arranged so as to establish and maintain that 
 stimulus to efficient industry which is at present lacking in 
 most countries to the workers on the land. But even here 
 it is likely that public control will not confine itself to 
 
 o
 
 194 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 ownership of the land; loans of capital upon easy and 
 equitable terms to efficient labour for purposes of buildings 
 and improvements on the land already form an important 
 function of the State in many civilized countries, and a wide 
 extension of this policy may be expected when the broader 
 social implications of the land question are realized. 
 
 The obligations of the State towards national agriculture 
 will be fulfilled only according as a more enlightened public 
 opinion recognizes the vital importance of the maintenance 
 of rural life in the national polity, not so much for any 
 narrowly economic purposes of national food supply as from 
 a knowledge that the sane physique and character of a 
 nation cannot be preserved if purely commercial estimates 
 of wealth are permitted to congest the population in large 
 centres divorced from the free goods of nature and the 
 wholesome work upon the land which have always been the 
 backbone of national greatness in the past. 
 
 The complexity of the true social policy regarding land 
 is evident enough. But what has been said will be sufficient 
 to indicate pretty plainly the order of leading land reforms. 
 Briefly summarized, they run as follows : A right social 
 regard to the value of a healthy settled home for all citizens 
 will oblige our civic policy to extend its control over the 
 town land and houses, until the town itself has become the 
 owner of the land and houses which form its material basis. 
 Taxation of ground rents and values, with increased sanitary 
 inspection and control of housing, lie along the direct route 
 of municipal reform. Past experience and the inherent 
 difficulties of such work, however, give no finality to this 
 course. A city, in order to safeguard the health of its 
 citizens, and to secure worthy and dignified external expres 
 sion for the civic life, will be compelled to extend those 
 powers which not a few are already beginning to apply in 
 the case of the worst slum streets, until it possesses a com- 
 plete ownership and control of the entire material fabric of
 
 LAND AND AGRICULTURE 195 
 
 the city. The task of achieving this policy may be slow, 
 but it is inevitable. The housing problem will only be 
 solved by a bold, conscious, continuous policy, which shall 
 secure the town for the townsmen, and, not less important, 
 the village for the villagers. So far as the same policy will 
 cover work-places as well as homes, it will be reinforced by 
 the growing needs of social control, particularly over those 
 industries which are conducted in the home or in small 
 workshops that escape the full publicity of the more 
 organized factory structure. The housing question and a 
 sound industrial policy will thus co-operate in enforcing the 
 demand for public ownership of towns and villages. The 
 progressive social policy in agriculture will probably be 
 applied, not by any wholesale national scheme, but by an 
 extension of the powers of local authorities to purchase and 
 let out land upon such conditions as will release the servile 
 rural workers of to-day from the dominion of landowners- 
 and capitalist farmers, securing for them freedom and hope 
 in their work, as the establishment of a self-governing village 
 will secure the decent conditions of home life which are 
 lacking now. 
 
 The housing problem and the nationalization of railroads 
 are the most urgent land reforms, because the monopoly of 
 space is the most dangerous of all monopolies.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 " HUMANITARIAN SOCIALISM " 
 
 THE "socialization"" of certain industries, on the ground 
 that society can well administer them, or that, left to 
 private enterprise, they endanger the common good, by no 
 means covers the whole area of practical Socialism. There 
 remains that large field of public activity in direct administra- 
 tion or control of economic functions which is undertaken 
 directly for the protection or support, not of a society as a 
 whole, but of a weaker class. This Socialism, propelled by 
 growing considerations of humanity, plays a larger and 
 larger part in modern government. Factory and Public 
 Health Acts, and a vast number of protective Acts relating 
 to particular trades, Employers 1 Liability Acts, and the 
 major part of industrial legislation in England and other 
 countries, are chiefly inspired by the intention of protecting 
 certain sections of the working classes : our Poor Law, 
 Education Acts, public dispensaries, etc., are expressly based 
 upon the conviction that certain classes are unable to 
 provide against certain evils of poverty, ignorance, and 
 disease. Modern humanitarianism, particularly in Great 
 Britain and in middle Europe, constantly makes for 
 increased protection of the young, the aged, the disabled 
 and diseased. 
 
 Education and insurance are perhaps the two most 
 prominent branches of this Socialism. Of course, it is true 
 
 19G
 
 "HUMANITARIAN SOCIALISM " 197 
 
 that in both cases a genuine philosophic defence of these 
 protective measures may be based upon Social Utility in the 
 broader sense ; but it is important to observe that in both 
 cases the direct and conscious motives which induce this 
 Socialistic legislation are humanitarian regard for the weak- 
 ness of special classes of society. Insurance of every kind is 
 evidently the soundest form of public business, because the 
 security furnished by a civilized State is far greater than that 
 furnished by any private body of individuals within that State, 
 and can be more cheaply provided by the State, while the 
 more routine part of education conforms to every test of sound 
 public enterprise. But, though society is evidently benefited 
 by such social work, a chief and special benefit is conferred 
 upon some particular persons or class ; and this latter con- 
 sideration is a more and more important determinant of 
 extensions of State activity. The fact is that Social Utility 
 is assumed in cases where effective support or protection is 
 accorded to any considerable section of the community. 
 Pity, sometimes ignorant and misguided sentimentality, plays 
 an ever-growing part in the inner life of the " educated " 
 classes; partly it may be deemed a genuine product of a 
 growing sense of brotherhood ; partly it must rank as a 
 neurotic product of distorted civilization, a moral luxury, 
 which blinds its possessors to the wholesome claims of social 
 justice. Pity, like mercy, was "invented in the courts of 
 tyrants " : philanthropy now freely utilizes legislation to 
 salve the wounds of social injustice. It is true that in the 
 notorious inconsistency of "practical politics," government 
 by doles more often takes the form of charity to the rich 
 than to the poor; but the former usually sue in forma 
 pauperis, appealing to a generally accepted sentiment that 
 the State should support an injured class where the injury is 
 undeserved and unforeseen. But, after all, these doles to 
 powerful industrial and social classes do not derive from an 
 openly-admitted policy, but are rather to be regarded as
 
 198 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 parasitic upon that growth of humane sentiment which more 
 and more insists that the State shall look after the weaklings 
 of society. 
 
 It is not always easy to distinguish this humanitarian 
 Socialism from that Socialism which arises as a normal and 
 necessary product of the evolution of industrial structure. 
 There are cases where the two are intimately related. For 
 instance, public control and administration of the drink 
 traffic may be supported either upon humanitarian or upon 
 scientific grounds. Moreover, this same example illustrates 
 the close identity which may exist between legislation for 
 the direct protection of society and legislation for the pro- 
 tection of sectional weakness. Municipalization of the drink 
 trade might be undertaken primarily for the protection 
 of drunkards and their families, or for the protection of 
 the whole society which they injure and corrupt. So with 
 public work for the unemployed ; it may be motived by a 
 recognition of an individual "right to work" which it is 
 deemed expedient for society to admit and provide for, or 
 it may be undertaken in order to protect the whole body of 
 society against the dangers and disorders of an idle and 
 desperate class. Where the protection of society as a whole 
 is the chief direct and conscious motive, no difficulty of 
 general policy arises, though the particular mode of public 
 support often deserves the closest consideration. But when 
 the direct motive of the Socialism is to protect a class by 
 contributing material support, either with or without the 
 exaction of labour, the gain to society at large being indirect, 
 or altogether hypothetical, a clear rift in the development 
 of State Socialism is discernible. 
 
 It may be premised at once that many proposals of 
 humanitarian Socialism are both dangerous and ineffective, 
 as is only natural where the dominant motive is the imme- 
 diate relief of the material or economic needs of a section of 
 the people. A perception of these dangers so frightens some
 
 "HUMANITARIAN SOCIALISM" 199 
 
 scientific Socialists that they seem to repudiate altogether 
 this sort of Socialism, and even rank themselves among 
 the harder-hearted Individualists, when old-age pensions, 
 feeding of school children, or similar proposals come up. 
 Mr. Sidney Ball, for instance, seems to agree with Dr. 
 Bosanquet and the philosophers of Charity Organization 
 in wholesale repudiation of such measures as a spurious 
 Socialism. 
 
 It is, indeed, natural enough that scientific evolutionary 
 Socialists should desire to disentangle themselves from that 
 militant Socialism which seizes indiscriminately every path 
 that seems to carry it even a little way towards an imagined 
 goal of complete State monopoly of industry. The policy of 
 relief workshops for the unemployed in some trade depression 
 is often urged by militant Socialists as the readiest means 
 of forcing on a general adoption of State industry; it is 
 claimed that, if a municipality can once be induced to offer 
 to the unemployed work in their several callings at trade- 
 union rates of wages, the constant flow from private em- 
 ployment to the more secure and easier employment of the 
 municipality will continue until the latter has been practically 
 raised to the position of sole organizer of industry. 
 
 The folly and social inutility of such a " progressive 
 Socialism " may be indicated by pointing out that, from the 
 very nature of the " unemployed " question, such public 
 industry must fail to conform to the sound tests of evolu- 
 tionary Socialism. Unemployment presses most upon the 
 lower-skilled, disorganized trades, which are irregular in 
 their movements, and where the periodic over-supply of 
 labour is greatest : these trades are, as a rule, precisely 
 those which the public can least effectively and least profit- 
 ably undertake. The labour which, at any given time, is 
 unemployed will be, upon an average, far less efficient than 
 that which remains employed. Thus the utilization of the 
 " unemployed " question in order to push public employment
 
 200 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 is " Socialism at the wrong end," so far as industrial evolu- 
 tion is concerned. 
 
 But academic Socialists, who, on this account, turn 
 a cold shoulder to schemes of public workshops for the 
 unemployed, are not justified in assuming this attitude. 
 Though this sort of Socialism may be, and often is, sup- 
 ported by false motives, and though, so far as industrial 
 structure is concerned, it is far removed from evolutionary 
 industrial Socialism, it by no means follows that it is false 
 Socialism, and that it is not the business of the State to 
 furnish work to the unemployed. 
 
 The right to have employment furnished by the State 
 may not be, and is not, rightly regarded as an absolute 
 individual claim ; but, for all that, it may be a claim which 
 a well-ordered State will recognize as an individual right, 
 endorsed by public expediency. This claim, indeed, can only 
 be refused by those who hold that all men can, at all times, 
 get work and wages if they are willing to work, or can make 
 sure and adequate provision out of their normal wages for 
 irregularity of employment. This position requires no close 
 consideration : those who hold it are simply ignorant of the 
 structure and movements of modern industry in the scope 
 they assign to individual power and responsibility. The 
 growing insecurity of regular work is pressing this public 
 guarantee of employment upon every advanced industrial 
 nation : the problem can only be solved in one way by an 
 avowed adoption of the principle of public relief works, 
 regulated so as not to interfere with the normal evolution 
 of outside industry. Those who understand the genuine 
 inability of large numbers of willing workers to get con- 
 tinuous employment, or to make safe provision for intervals 
 out of their wages, are compelled to admit the social 
 necessity of such a policy as a provision dictated alike by 
 humanity and regard for good order. But, as Dr. Stein, 
 in his important work, Die Sotiale Frage im LlcJite der
 
 "HUMANITARIAN SOCIALISM" 201 
 
 Philosophic,* reminds us, society has given an even more 
 express endorsement to this policy. The modern State, he 
 forcibly contends, " in prohibiting abortion and the starva- 
 tion of children," has placed upon "the individual resting 
 in his mother's womb a legal compulsion to be born," even 
 in the case of weaklings and deformed children, inherently 
 incapable of earning an "independent" livelihood. There- 
 fore, he urges, there is a moral duty incumbent on the State 
 to make " the right to live " a corollary of the " legal com- 
 pulsion to be born." " This right to live " implies a " State 
 guarantee of a minimum standard of life." Since work is 
 alike a physical and a moral necessity for a healthy life, this 
 admission of a public guarantee of life involves, a fortiori, 
 the provision of public work for those who require it. This 
 provision, it may perhaps be contended, is already afforded 
 in most civilized countries by some Poor Law. But this 
 purely eleemosynary provision does not meet the case ; it is 
 neither based upon an avowal of the " right to a minimum 
 standard of life," nor does it anywhere provide such a 
 standard. Moreover, by purposely imposing a stamp of 
 personal degradation upon every item of its grudged sup- 
 port,t it corrodes the dignity of personality as, indeed, it 
 is designed to do and thus destroys the all-important moral 
 basis of the individual life. Not until our Poor Law has 
 eradicated every element of degradation from its working, 
 and has succeeded in humanizing the conditions of work 
 and life which it affords, so that a self-respecting man 
 or woman who fails to get proper work and wages outside 
 
 * Page 616. 
 
 f Sir H. Longley, chief Charity Commissioner, thus admonishes 
 Boards of Guardians : " Care should be taken that the stamp of pauperism 
 is plainly marked upon all relief given, in whatever form, by the Guardians, 
 e.g. the words ' dispensary ' and ' infirmary ' should never be used in 
 forms, advertisements, or addresses without the prefix ' Pauper,' or ' Poor 
 Law,' or ' Workhouse,' which should, indeed, appear as far as possible in 
 every document issued by the Guardians to those relieved by them."
 
 202 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 will speedily and willingly have recourse to it as an expe- 
 dient expressly designed to maintain the standard of public 
 life, will a modern State have realized this obligation to 
 society. There may be, and doubtless are, dangers and diffi- 
 culties, either in expanding the sane application of our Poor 
 Law to such a purpose, or in the establishment by other 
 public authorities of relief workshops ; but these dangers and 
 difficulties must be faced and overcome by a State which 
 recognizes its duty in view of the facts of modern industrial 
 life. 
 
 The oft-repeated argument that such a policy enervates 
 the sense of individual responsibility and breaks the spirit 
 of independence, rests partly upon ignorance of industrial 
 facts, partly upon a shallow psychology related to this ignor- 
 ance. Study of industrial and social facts shows that this 
 so-styled independence has no existence, for no member of a 
 civilized society is capable of "self-support,'" so that the 
 doctrine of individual responsibility based 'on this notion is 
 utterly chimerical ; while a sane psychology insists that social 
 support wisely administered does not impair, but feeds and 
 develops, a healthy personality. 
 
 These are the true tests of the right limits of this 
 humanitarian Socialism. We cannot on a priori grounds 
 approve or condemn a policy of generous out-relief, feeding 
 school children, or old-age pensions ; nor can we determine 
 the issues by merely weighing the immediate benefits to the 
 individuals concerned against the alleged damages inflicted 
 by weakening the efforts for self-support and retarding the 
 struggle of the workers to include all these objects in their 
 ordinary standard of comfort to be defrayed out of wages. 
 It may, indeed, appear preferable on a priori considerations 
 to educate the worker to value the well-being of his children 
 and to practise thrift, and to stimulate in him the effort of 
 attaining for himself these objects. But when we recognize 
 the genuine inability of the average worker to gain a safe
 
 "HUMANITARIAN SOCIALISM" 203 
 
 and sufficient livelihood for himself and his family in sick- 
 ness and health, while not a few are unable to rear their 
 children with proper food and clothing, the futility of the 
 individualist psychology becomes evident ; the moral stimulus, 
 upon which it expressly relies, is thwarted by circumstances 
 which the average man, under existing economic and social 
 conditions, cannot overcome. If an ideal distribution of 
 economic opportunities to individual members of society were 
 feasible, it might be reasonably urged that individual self- 
 reliance would be best evoked by obliging each to make a 
 full provision for the needs of his family, though this policy, 
 consistently followed, would be the negation of society in jts 
 moral organic character. But, under the present apportion- 
 ment of economic opportunities, no guarantee exists of the 
 efficacy of these stimuli to self-help. To impose upon any one 
 the obligation to do what he cannot do at all, or cannot do 
 without neglecting other more urgent duties, is a foolish, 
 cruel, and demoralizing policy. Some dim perception of 
 these truths is entering the general mind, and increased 
 social support for the young, the old, the sick, the injured, 
 and the unemployed, will continue to be embodied in the 
 public policy of civilized countries. 
 
 No doubt this policy sometimes weakens * the stimulus of 
 individual effort, but this stimulus, if left to work, would 
 only be effective in a minority of cases ; in the majority the 
 effort would be wasted. To intensify the struggle for the 
 weaker members of society, with the knowledge that this 
 struggle must spell failure in the majority of cases, and that, 
 where success is attained, it commonly involves the ruthless 
 trampling down of weak competitors, is the most pernicious 
 
 * Social support may sometimes strengthen the individual stimulus, 
 e.g. it is very reasonable to suppose that a State old-age pension on the 
 lines of Charles Booth's proposal, whereby a bare physical subsistence was 
 provided for old age, would evoke the thrift of many poorer and irregular 
 wage-earners who at present cannot hope to save enough to keep them- 
 selves from the workhouse in old age.
 
 204 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 policy which has ever been dignified by the false title of 
 " morality." 
 
 Humanitarian Socialism, or direct social support of the 
 weak, often appears defective, and is always attended by 
 danger and waste, precisely because it is an interim policy 
 of palliatives. If social justice in a wide sense prevailed, 
 many of these particular social functions might be unneces- 
 sary or harmful ; but where all economic processes tend to 
 the advantage of the strong and the disadvantage of the 
 weak, it may be and is desirable to mitigate some of the 
 wrongs due to this reign of force, by provision of a social 
 ambulance which shall take care of those wounded in the 
 fray. 
 
 We do not, as is sometimes contended, reduce by such 
 a policy the struggle for life which is essential to the sur- 
 vival of the " fittest ; " but we raise the struggle to a higher 
 place, where a higher kind of fitness is the best. 
 
 This is not unsound Socialism, though it may well be 
 distinguished from the scientific evolutionary Socialism. 
 Palliatives are necessary, even though they may endanger 
 more radical cures ; the present cannot be wholly sacrificed 
 to the chances of an ideal future. Some of these palliatives 
 may even prepare the social body for more effective remedies 
 by redressing in particulars the evil effects of social injustice. 
 Most of the charges of demoralization brought against State 
 aid imply a defective recognition of the meaning of the 
 State as a chief social instrument. When the doctrine of 
 society as maker and administrator of social property is 
 rightly seized, no one will feel degraded because society, 
 recognizing the economic weakness of his position in some 
 regard, deems it a wise use of social property to proffer 
 State support. The particular forms of such State support 
 must, of course, vary with the forms of social weakness or 
 disease to which they are applicable, and with the public 
 resources available for such alleviative work.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POPULATION 
 
 ONE of the chief barriers to social progress in our age is 
 the refusal of the "educated" classes to handle freely and 
 simply the physiological issues which underlie every social 
 problem. It is scarcely credible that the vast majority of 
 children in modern communities are still permitted to grow 
 up to manhood and womanhood without any clear and 
 organized instruction in the truth about their bodies. 
 Serious grown persons, in discussing human issues with a 
 view to conduct, commonly and consciously ignore, or gloss 
 over with dishonest and foolish smoothness of speech, 
 questions relating to sex and generation. The joint and 
 related results of this conspiracy of silence are prudery and 
 pruriency, which are equally destructive of sane judgment 
 and conduct. Many, moreover, who are not tainted with 
 these vices, through very anxiety to avoid them, are apt to 
 make light of sex and population questions. This they are 
 the better enabled to do by reason of a certain exaggeration 
 and false emphasis which Malthus and many of his disciples 
 have laid upon the quantitative as distinguished from the 
 qualitative aspect of the problem. Social idealists from 
 Plato to Bellamy have been confronted with the objection 
 that a Society in which food and other necessaries of life 
 was freely found for all, would increase so rapidly in popu- 
 lation that it would become unable to feed itself. Such a 
 danger had, however, never seemed real in this country 
 
 205
 
 206 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 until the early decades of the last century. Until the 
 nineteenth century the population of the British Isles 
 had grown but slowly, and except in Ireland there had 
 been no signs of anything which could be called over- 
 population. The rapid increase of population between 
 1770 and 1830, and the widespread poverty and misery of 
 the working classes, gave a new and terribly dramatic 
 significance to the "law" of Malthus, according to which 
 population tended to increase faster than the means of 
 subsistence. 
 
 A crude interpretation and a false application of this 
 " law " has made it inimical to some of the most popular 
 reform movements, and in particular to socialistic experiments. 
 Taken in conjunction with the Ricardian doctrine of a 
 natural wage, it has been held to present a final barrier 
 to all effective attempts of workers to improve their condition 
 by organized action. If the result of trade combination 
 or even political combination be to raise wages, and such 
 rise of wages was accompanied by an increased birth-rate, 
 the enlarged supply of labour thus induced would of 
 necessity cause a reduction of wages towards the normal 
 "natural"" level of bare subsistence. But while combined 
 action was thus shown to be ineffective, a plausible appeal 
 was made to individual conduct. "Look around, arid 
 you will see that persons with small families to keep are 
 better off than those with large families : poverty therefore 
 results from early and improvident marriages. Let workers 
 abate this improvidence : each man has the remedy for his 
 misfortunes in his own hand. Let individual forethought 
 keep down the birth-rate among the workers, the supply 
 of labour will be relatively short, and wages will rise. Hence 
 a double economic gain to the workers. 1 ' 
 
 Now the amount of truth in this economic argument is 
 limited by the following considerations. At any given time 
 the necessary wage of any class of workers must suffice
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POPULATION 207 
 
 to support an average family in that condition of comfort 
 without which the wage earner will not consent to work. 
 Self-restraint in marriage exercised by certain families in 
 such a working class will enable them to live more com- 
 fortably than they would otherwise have done, for their 
 wage will be determined by the normal family in this class. 
 Such a policy of self-restraint, were it generally adopted by a 
 single grade or class of workers, might enable them to raise 
 the price of their labour, possibly at the expense of their 
 employers, possibly at that of other grades of fellow- workers, 
 by establishing a more or less close corner of a particular 
 labour market. So, too, it is arguable that the working 
 classes as a whole, by adopting this policy of self-restraint, 
 might enforce a general rise of wages, deriving this increase 
 by depressing rents, profits and other " surplus " elements in 
 the income of the classes. Those who admit the existence of 
 " unearned " or otherwise " squeezable " elements of income in 
 the hands of the richer classes are bound to admit that by 
 ordinary operation of the "law of supply and demand" a 
 general adoption of such prudential conduct would improve 
 the power of labourers to bargain for the sale of labour- 
 power. Here, of course, as in every other economic issue, 
 the international aspect requires recognition : the workers of 
 a single country practising this policy could only keep a 
 small proportion of their gain, unless by a rigid system of 
 protection they excluded alike foreign goods and foreign 
 immigration. 
 
 Regarded, however, as a working-class economic policy, 
 neo-Malthusianism is justified in claiming that it tends to 
 enable the workers to get a higher price for their labour. 
 Reckless increase of population tends to impoverish, regu- 
 lation tends to enrich the working classes. This may be 
 admitted at the outset. But some of those who would 
 accept the accuracy of this reasoning regard neo-Malthusi- 
 anism as needless or noxious. Their argument rests on a
 
 208 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 denial of the validity of the Law of Population, or more 
 strictly, of the Law of Diminishing Returns, in accordance 
 with which the labour cost of raising new increments of 
 food and other natural commodities increases after a certain 
 level of cultivation of the soil is reached. 
 
 The most popular statement of the position, viz. that 
 every new pair of hands brings an increased power of 
 production, illustrated by the fact that the material wealth 
 of Great Britain and of certain other countries has in- 
 creased faster than its population, is an evasion of the issue. 
 It is generally admitted that in many manufacturing and 
 commercial industries every increase of working population 
 may produce more than a corresponding increase of general 
 wealth. Nations which obtain their food supply from 
 foreign sources by exchanging manufactured goods or by 
 other services may escape or postpone the pressure of the 
 law of Diminishing Returns. Nations which thus evade the 
 population question for themselves, succeed in doing so, it 
 is urged, by ripening it more quickly in other countries. 
 The famines of India and Russia are thus to be explained. 
 
 In order to test the issue properly we must assume the 
 isolation of a country with a growing population. Suppose 
 England had been compelled to be a self-sufficing country 
 during the last half-century, could she have supported the 
 population she has had, and how ? Those who regard the 
 quantitative issue of population as an important one, are 
 not obliged to deny that England could, if necessary, have 
 supported her present population, so far as food and bare 
 physical necessaries are concerned. Important experiments 
 in intensive and scientific culture, carried on here and else- 
 where, show that mere area of land does not play that part 
 in limiting the population with which it has sometimes been 
 accredited. In his important and fascinating volume, " Field, 
 Factory, and Workshop," Peter Kropotkin shows that 
 human skill, knowledge, and care can increase almost
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POPULATION 209 
 
 indefinitely the quantity of vegetable food stuffs to be 
 obtained from a given area of land. Agriculture as 
 practised in large districts of Holland, China, and elsewhere 
 prove that an immensely larger population could be 
 subsisted on the soil of England than that which it now 
 holds. Upon the strength of such evidence it is sometimes 
 claimed that the law of Diminishing Returns has been 
 overthrown, and that " standing-room " is, after all, the only 
 true limit to the population a given piece of land properly 
 cultivated would support. Now the evidence from intensive 
 culture does not seem to me to warrant such a conclusion. 
 In order to annul the law of Diminishing Returns, it is 
 required to show, not merely that there is no virtual limit 
 to the quantity of food to be got from a given area, but 
 that every increment of food can be got without a more 
 than proportionate increase of capital and labour. Now, 
 this is not shown by the kind of evidence adduced. In 
 the case of the most highly cultivated lands of China, for 
 example, we are dealing with a people who, according to 
 European testimony, have a passion for labour, and devote 
 themselves to minute cultivation with an assiduity and an 
 endurance found in scarcely any other people. They do 
 not farm, they garden : they manure the plant and not the 
 ground, and so they get immense results, but at immense 
 cost of toil. Even thus, the population grows too fast for 
 all to find a subsistence from the soil, and in the best culti- 
 vated parts of China there is a constant drift of the 
 surplus of the young population to the towns. The 
 evidence upon which Kropotkin relies is commonly vitiated 
 for the purpose of disproving the law of Diminishing 
 Returns by another consideration. When a small class of 
 cultivators, possessing knowledge and skill superior to that 
 of their competitors, can put upon the market earlier or 
 better fruits, the price they receive may make their industry 
 remunerative. But if this skill and knowledge became the
 
 210 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 common property of a large agricultural population, such 
 special prices would no longer obtain, and it might then be 
 seen that such intense and scientific culture, though not less 
 productive than before in actual objective results, was not 
 sufficiently remunerative to evoke the necessary care and 
 efforts from a people not enamoured of "labour 1 ' for its 
 own sake. What holds of the special skill of a small class, 
 such as the Paris maraichers, may also hold of a large 
 national industry. Denmark, for example, taking the lead 
 in scientific dairy work for the last twenty years, has 
 built up a very prosperous and remunerative industry, the 
 gain of which is largely due to the backward condition of 
 dairy work in England, her largest customer. If England 
 applied herself earnestly to a scientific dairy-farming, it is 
 very likely that Danish dairies would be compelled to sell 
 their butter so much cheaper that the more expensive 
 processes would no longer prove remunerative, at any rate 
 over those districts which were less fertile or in those farms 
 where there were other demands for labour closely com- 
 peting with the dairy work. 
 
 The evidence regarding the increments of labour re- 
 quired to obtain the results of more intensive culture is 
 generally defective : it is often proved that an enormously 
 enhanced product can be got from a piece of land ; it is not 
 so often proved that it will pay to work the land in this 
 fashion. 
 
 Even where such proof is given we cannot easily admit 
 that the validity of the law of Diminishing Returns is broken. 
 Economists have always admitted that a law of increasing 
 returns is operative in agriculture up to a certain limit, i.e. 
 that an increased application of labour to a piece of land, 
 may, up to a certain point, be attended by a more than 
 corresponding increase of productiveness. It may, therefore, 
 be allowed that improvements in scientific agriculture may 
 raise the limit within which this law is applicable, and that
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POPULATION 211 
 
 modern methods may justify the remunerative application 
 of a much larger amount of labour than was possible under 
 cruder agricultural methods. Moreover, science may enable 
 man so to mitigate the vast waste of nature as to falsify 
 over certain areas and for certain periods the dictum of 
 Malthus that man tends to increase at a greater rate than 
 his food supply. Indeed, as has frequently been shown, this 
 statement of "tendency" is false, for the lower forms of 
 vegetable and animal life tend by process of natural genera- 
 tion to multiply at a far more rapid rate than man himself. 
 Not merely is this so, but it must be so, if any necessity 
 can be held to attach to natural laws. The lower forms of 
 life, each individual of which is subject to a keener compe- 
 tition and more risks, and is less able to protect himself 
 against hostile environment than individuals of higher forms, 
 must be more fertile in order to maintain the species. So 
 in proportion as we ascend to higher and more complex 
 species we find a diminishing natural fertility. This, of 
 course, by no means implies that the lower forms which can 
 furnish food for man, will, if left to the full stress of the 
 struggle for life, survive and reach maturity in larger numbers. 
 But it does furnish greater opportunities to the skill of 
 man, by conscious contrivance mitigating the pressure of the 
 struggle, so to increase the growth of certain species as to 
 make enormous additions to his food supply. Certain dis- 
 coveries of method, as in regard to rotation of crops, cures 
 for diseases of plants, or cross-breeding in animals, may be 
 fraught with productivity similar to that of the great me- 
 chanical inventions, greatly enhancing the food supply without 
 any appreciable increase of human labour. The same holds 
 of discoveries of hitherto neglected sources of food, the most 
 important of which is the practically unexplored food supply 
 of the sea. In these and other ways the mind of man may, 
 by strokes of skill involving no normal increase of labour-cost, 
 add enormously to the available food supply.
 
 212 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 But though human skill and energy has in the past made 
 great steps of progress in increasing the food supply and the 
 ability of man to maintain a larger population upon a given 
 area, these improvements have been relatively smaller in food- 
 producing industries than in others, and are likely to con- 
 tinue to be smaller in the future. 
 
 It should be plainly recognized that all these advances of 
 human science, though they postpone and mitigate the 
 pressure of the law of Diminishing Returns, do not annul it. 
 For this so-called law is in reality nothing but a direct and 
 necessary application of the admitted fact that the quantity 
 of best or most available matter for the production of 
 material commodities is restricted ; increased skill in extract- 
 ing such raw matter, or in handling it for manufacture or 
 trade after it is extracted, may more than compensate the 
 restrictions, but the larger the part which quantity of matter 
 plays the more difficult such compensation is. Hence it 
 arises that, even where increased skill is put into agriculture 
 and other extractive industries, a rapid increase of supply to 
 meet the needs of a quickly growing population is only met 
 by a more than corresponding application of labour. 
 
 It is possible that the application of great scientific dis- 
 coveries to agriculture might for some time enable human 
 skill so to triumph over the limits of matter as to enable a 
 growing population to be fed more easily. But the sugges- 
 tion that the limits of matter can be reduced to the same 
 insignificance in the food-providing industries as in those 
 manufacturing and finer arts in which the quantity of raw 
 material and the cost of getting it is a negligible part of 
 the total cost, is impossible of acceptance. Unless some 
 means of deriving physical nutriment from the atmosphere 
 or from some other virtually inexhaustible source can be 
 devised, there seems no reason to suppose that the pressure 
 of the law of Diminishing Returns can be postponed so far 
 as to make its operation a matter of indifference.
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POPULATION 213 
 
 To sum up, I am inclined to think that though a thickly 
 peopled country like England or Holland could support from 
 their own soil an increasing population, such a course would 
 necessitate the application of a continually increasing pro- 
 portion of the total productive energy of the nation to 
 agriculture. If such a country as England were called upon 
 to produce its own food it could do so by diverting a suffi- 
 cient proportion of its labour from towns to country, and 
 employing it under skilled business management. The total 
 quantity of material wealth produced in the country per 
 head would be gradually diminished, and the population 
 engaged in agriculture would be a constantly increasing pro- 
 portion of the whole. If, as Tolstoy holds, " bread labour " 
 in its most liberal sense is necessary for the good life of all 
 men, this process might be beneficial to natural life and 
 character, up to a certain point. But the tendency to 
 absorb labour entirely in agriculture and to reduce progres- 
 sively the output of other industries could hardly be accepted 
 as consistent with social progress. 
 
 Even if the development of machine processes in manu- 
 facture received such stimulation by the rise in wages, which 
 would undoubtedly be one first tendency of the obligation to 
 produce our own food, that improved mechanical appliances 
 enabled the smaller amount of labour available for manu- 
 facturers to turn out as much or more goods than before, 
 the fact that an ever-growing proportion of the population 
 must be agricultural labourers would give pause to those 
 who consider progress to be involved in a progressive appli- 
 cation of human energy to those arts and sciences in which 
 the satisfaction of animal needs plays a less and less part. 
 In a word, the unchecked growth of population on a given 
 area of land implies the progressive diminution of energy 
 available for what is commonly regarded as " the higher life/' 
 
 If this is true, we are forced to recognize that an un- 
 checked growth of population impedes and defeats the growth
 
 214. THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 of a more complex and qualitative life for the people, by 
 forcing the needs of the lower life. Quantity of human life 
 can only be obtained by sacrifice of quality, the same choice 
 with which we are confronted as individuals and nations 
 wherever we penetrate to the roots of the social question. 
 
 Though, then, there exists a quantitative Population 
 Question, its pressure may be postponed and mitigated by 
 the skill of man, but such postponement itself involves some 
 sacrifice of social progress. But a more serious and more 
 urgent aspect of the Population Question presses upon 
 civilized communities to-day. Selection of the fittest, or at 
 least, rejection of the unfittest, is essential to all progress 
 in life and character. Any social organization which checks 
 the efficiency of such processes must of necessity make for 
 deterioration of the species. This is the gravest danger of 
 our time. 
 
 We now admit that it is the duty of society to see that 
 every child is well educated, though we still grudge the 
 necessary means to fulfil this duty. But there is a prior 
 duty which society owes to itself and to the child, to see that 
 it is well born. To abandon the production of children to 
 unrestricted private enterprise is the most dangerous abne- 
 gation of its functions which any Government can practise. 
 We have seen that modern societies impose upon every 
 child in the womb a "legal compulsion to be born," and 
 that this involves an obligation on the part of society to 
 furnish the means of earning a sufficient livelihood. The 
 broader policy of social support by which modern societies 
 either through the organization of the State, or by the 
 less formal agencies of philanthropy assist their individual 
 members, not only in childhood, but in adult years, to 
 attain a full and satisfactory life, implies an ever-growing 
 social interest in the physical and mental nature of the 
 individual. Society has, at any rate, the right to insist that 
 worthless, or even noxious, lives shall not be thrust upon it
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POPULATION 215 
 
 for support by reckless or unfit parents. If parents could be 
 compelled to take upon themselves the full responsibilities 
 of parentage, and society could afford to stand aside and 
 look upon the failures with indifference, the present policy 
 of laissez faire in parentage might be defensible; though 
 even then considerations of mere pity and humanity might 
 demand that individuals should not have the right to bring 
 into existence lives destined to pain and misery. But, as 
 matters stand, the first interest of society is involved in 
 maintaining the physical, mental, and moral standard of its 
 citizens ; and, in order to secure this end, the right to veto 
 the^production of bad lives is essential. Every improvement 
 in social order impresses this need with greater urgency. 
 "Natural selection 1 ' (or "rejection,"" as it is more rightly 
 termed), operating through its crude and cruel agencies of 
 plague and famine, performed a certain social function in 
 the rejection of the physically unfit. Modern societies, so 
 far as in them lies, have put down the operation of these 
 natural checks, without substituting any others in their 
 stead. The plain result is that large quantities of low-grade 
 lives, which, in less advanced communities, would have 
 perished in infancy or childhood, are now enabled to reach 
 maturity, and to freely propagate their like. This increase 
 in the proportion of weakly or diseased men and women, 
 rearing weakly or diseased families, is the most dangerous 
 condition of modern life implying, as it must, a degenera- 
 tion of the physique of the race. Though mental and moral 
 defects are not necessarily involved in physical weakness, the 
 causal relations are sufficiently close and constant to make 
 it certain that the survival and growth of physical unfitness 
 means a fairly correspondent growth of mental and moral 
 unfitness. 
 
 By putting down the wasteful and cruel methods of 
 "natural rejection 11 society is only performing half her duty; 
 she must substitute methods of "rational rejection." In a
 
 216 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 word, it is all-important to society that propagation should 
 only take place from sound stock ; only thus can she secure 
 that the children, who are to be her future citizens and 
 workers, shall be well born. Our study of the necessary 
 limits of efficient action by the State implies, and common 
 sense readily endorses, the implication, that direct selection 
 by society, or any full application of the arts of stirpiculture 
 to the human race, would not be feasible or profitable. But 
 a social policy of veto upon anti-social propagation, however 
 difficult of enforcement it may seem, and whatever moral 
 risks it may involve, is really essential. Extreme instances 
 of this necessity are generally admitted. No defence is now 
 seriously attempted of the fatuous and wicked policy which 
 restores known and confirmed criminals to free life, allowing 
 them to propagate and educate unchecked a family of 
 criminals. Public opinion among the more educated and 
 enlightened classes reprobates, even when it condones, mar- 
 riage between persons afflicted with diseases believed to be 
 transmissible by heredity. 
 
 But any fall or clear recognition of the social import of 
 bad marriages is very slow to spread ; the most criminal 
 laxity of practice still prevails in all classes of the com- 
 munity. Thinking men and women, while admitting the 
 seriousness of the evil, and the right inherent in society to 
 protect itself, continually dwell upon the difficulties attending 
 any interference, and, impotently stretching out their hands, 
 say : " What would you do ? If you prohibit marriages, you 
 only encourage free connections, and do not achieve the 
 object of checking the growth of the unfit population." But 
 this, after all, is a mere bluff, which can satisfy nobody who 
 realizes the urgency of the facts. If the physical and moral 
 health of society is really involved in a policy of veto upon 
 unfit propagation, means of enforcing that policy must be 
 found. When it is once plainly recognized that the pro- 
 duction of defective children is the worst crime which any
 
 THE PROBLEM OF POPULATION 
 
 one can commit against society, the necessary penalties will 
 be attached, and will be as effective as any other coercive 
 measures can be in repressing the particular crimes to which 
 they are directed. Public medical certificates of marriage 
 would probably not have any considerable effect in increasing 
 the rate of illegitimacy, if heavy penalties were attached to 
 the birth of diseased or otherwise unfit "illegitimates.'" 
 When public opinion is sufficiently educated to permit the 
 operation of such laws, coercion will only be necessary in the 
 case of classes where the direct force of public opinion is 
 weak. The law itself, here as elsewhere, will be a school- 
 master to lead people to reason. Once attach a penalty or 
 prohibition to anti-social marriage, and all people amenable 
 to feelings of " propriety " and " respectability " will soon come 
 to recognize the immorality of such unions. Education in 
 physiology and sociology, even of the most elementary kind, 
 could do much to establish such sound public opinion. But 
 those who, in order to escape the inconvenience and dangers 
 attending legal action, would trust to educative influences 
 alone, mistake utterly the gravamen of the issue. It is pre- 
 cisely those classes least susceptible to education and to the 
 pressure of sound public opinion who are most liable to 
 degrade the quality of population by anti-social unions. 
 Legal coercion is thus a necessary educator and support of 
 public opinion. The latter may be more potent and far 
 safer in its action, but the former is likewise essential. The 
 population question is the question how society is to secure 
 the means of social progress by the elimination of the " unfit." 
 The rejection it is called upon to exercise cannot take place 
 after birth ; it must, therefore, be directed to prevention of 
 unfit propagation.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 EDUCATION AND ECONOMY OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE 
 
 FOR convenience we have, throughout our inquiry, maintained 
 the antithesis of individual and society, and, in relation to 
 this supposed opposition, we have examined other deeply- 
 rooted antitheses Rights and Duties, Work and Life, 
 Production and Consumption, Efforts and Needs. Study of 
 these antitheses, with particular reference to economic 
 activities bearing upon the making and use of material 
 property, has disclosed a harmony of physical and moral law 
 in their relations. We have seen that nature clearly assigns 
 certain rights embodied in exclusive use of property to in- 
 dividuals and to societies, and imposes corresponding duties 
 to assert and use these rights ; that she likewise lays down 
 certain wholesome and just rules relating to the quantities 
 and kinds of effort or work which are essential to secure a 
 full and wholesome enjoyment or satisfaction for an in- 
 dividual or a society. In particular our analysis has estab- 
 lished the soundness of the claim of the principle, "From 
 each according to his powers, to each according to his needs," 
 to be, when rightly interpreted, a law of social expediency 
 covering all economic conduct. 
 
 Just so far as the physical and moral laws of this 
 harmony are clearly recognized and embodied in the habits 
 and institutions of individual and social life do we possess 
 secure conditions of health and progress. 
 
 It now remains to make a definite attempt to resolve the 
 
 218
 
 INDIVIDUAL EDUCATION AND ECONOMY 219 
 
 opposition of individual and society, with particular reference 
 to the economic basis of life, in order to effect, not a balance 
 or a compromise, but a genuine harmony or reconcilement 
 of the opposed claims of Individualism and Socialism. 
 Although it is easy to see that an individual man, such as 
 we know and recognize to be endowed with rational humanity, 
 could not arise or exist independently of society, it is not 
 unprofitable to speculate upon the conduct of an inde- 
 pendent, self-sufficing individual. Both educationalists and 
 economists often find it convenient to start from this 
 position, looking merely to the perfection of the individual 
 life and character as their ideal. Indeed, it is a special 
 fault of educationalists that, having so many of their 
 practical problems presented to them in sharply-defined 
 individual cases, they have tended to concern themselves 
 over-much with schemes of education for securing what they 
 term " all-round development " of the individual, considered 
 as a free and separate nature, and to ignore, or at any rate 
 to slight, the claims of the social nature. If the problem 
 of education were really this, and this alone, how to develop 
 all good physical, moral, intellectual, and aesthetic faculties 
 of the individual in right harmony and healthy interaction, 
 so as to secure the perfect poise and progress of the in- 
 dividual life and character, difficult as this problem would be, 
 and differing for every child, it would be far easier than that 
 which is actually imposed upon educationalists viz. that of 
 recognizing and providing for the requisite modifications of 
 this ideal individual harmony in accordance with the claims 
 and needs of the social harmony, as represented in the con- 
 ception of social utility and of the social interests of the 
 individual. Stated crudely, the claims of society seem to 
 involve that the perfection of individual development shall 
 be sacrificed. Society claims that the individual shall not 
 live unto himself alone, but shall give some considerable 
 proportion of his time and energy to definite social services.
 
 220 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 Education must take this into account, and prepare for it. 
 This preparation means an apparent interference with the 
 free, full development of the child ; specialization of certain 
 faculties, and corresponding neglect of others, are imposed 
 by society. Nor is it true that this will always mean the 
 special cultivation of some fine natural gift which the child 
 displays. Society, in what we recognized as a well-ordered 
 community, will make two sorts of demands upon the in- 
 dividual first, that he shall contribute his proper share to 
 the routine labour organized directly by society for its 
 common supply of necessaries of life ; secondly, that he 
 shall be induced freely to exercise any fine natural taste or 
 faculty he may possess, so as to serve the higher purposes 
 of social life by a voluntary enrichment from individual 
 resources. Now, regarded from our hypothetical standpoint, 
 either of these specializations may seem to interfere with the 
 absolutely "all-round development" theory of education. 
 The socially-ordered routine labour may appear an excessive 
 burden, imposing upon the education which shall prepare 
 for it a mechanical drill in certain common activities, that 
 will take up time and energy which might be better devoted 
 to other purposes. Even as regards the cultivation of a 
 special gift, there is no security that a man can best serve 
 society by cultivating the particular talent which stands out 
 most prominently in his individual nature. It is not only 
 a question of productive powers, but of the needs of society ; 
 a musical nation might produce many individuals with high 
 natural gifts of music, but it might be a social gain for most 
 of these to devote themselves more to the cultivation of 
 secondary tastes and talents. Here, of course, no question 
 of social ordering and compulsion arises ; but, where in- 
 dividuals are powerfully inspired by social feelings, they may 
 voluntarily devote themselves to arts which are not deter- 
 mined by their strongest natural bent. An education which 
 shall pay due regard to these considerations will evidently
 
 INDIVIDUAL EDUCATION AND ECONOMY 221 
 
 be conducted upon very different lines from one which aims 
 at merely individual perfection. 
 
 The same problem may be illustrated in more definitely 
 economic terms. In " Crusoe economics," where the case is 
 taken of a wholly self-sufficing and self-supporting individual, 
 his outlay of time and productive energy will be determined 
 by a conception of perfect harmony of life in accordance 
 with the possibilities of his nature and environment. In 
 order to make the most and best of his life, he will work out 
 an economy of efforts and satisfactions upon a purely in- 
 dividual basis, giving out so much of various kinds of effort 
 as will yield him what he considers as the most satis- 
 factory life. Economists, who have worked upon this 
 hypothesis, clearly perceive that such a man will have no 
 temptation to fall into the most grievous error of modern 
 industrialism, the undue and excessive attention to pro- 
 duction as compared with consumption. Crusoe will con- 
 sider the " disutility " of labour as carefully as the " utility " 
 of its results. He will avoid specialization, not merely 
 because only by variety of work can he secure variety of 
 satisfaction, but because he will learn by constant practice 
 that thus, and thus alone, the painful endurance of labour 
 can be kept at a minimum. An intelligent individual thus 
 placed may be conceived as working out a perfect organic 
 economy of production and consumption designed to support 
 him in full physical health and satisfaction. A study of 
 the physical nature of such a man, and of the material 
 resources available for him, would, if such study were 
 possible, enable us to ascertain the exact proportion of time 
 and energy, and the order of such outlay, which he would 
 give to the several processes of work and enjoyment. If we 
 modify this notion of perfect individual economy with its 
 organic complex of work and enjoyment, by a due allowance 
 for physical and moral changes in the man, developing new 
 and more refined wants out of old wants whose satisfaction
 
 222 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 has become habitual and therefore has lost interest, we 
 conceive this organic complex of efforts and satisfactions not 
 as a stable one, but as a constant and continuous growth. 
 The calculation of such an individual economy, depending 
 as it does upon organic conditions, can never be determined 
 by quantitative methods, though it may for rude convenience 
 be illustrated by quantitative terms, so much time and 
 energy being assigned to this, so much to that kind of 
 effort or enjoyment. 
 
 But when we leave this false abstraction of the in- 
 dividual economy, and consider the work and life of a man 
 as we find him, and as alone he can be found, in society, 
 supporting and supported by society, the organic complex 
 of the individual economy, the question of the best dis- 
 position of his powers of work and enjoyment, is radically 
 altered. Looking at the individual nature and its material 
 environment alone, we can no longer determine what he 
 can best do, how best lay out his time and efforts, even 
 for purposes of individual satisfaction ; still less can we 
 determine how he should order his life in conformity to 
 social utility. The reason of our failure is, of course, 
 quite simple. We have hitherto taken a defective, a false 
 view of the individual and his environment, for we have 
 ignored the social relations which are inseparable from the 
 individual nature, and which involve him in another and 
 a different environment than the natural one which we 
 hitherto assumed. The moment we recognize that no man 
 can live unto himself alone, the problems of individual 
 education and economics are vitally altered. We can then 
 no longer determine how an individual ought to be educated, 
 and how he can best dispose his working energies, without 
 a preconceived idea of a social economy, which shall do for 
 society what we assumed falsely could be done for an in- 
 dividual viz. provide the conditions of health and progress 
 for a complex organism. Not until we know what society
 
 INDIVIDUAL EDUCATION AND ECONOMY 
 
 requires can we know what should be done with the in- 
 diyidual. Not that the individual is to be regarded as the 
 slave of society, and have his ends subordinated to the 
 social ends. The rights of the individual, so far as he is 
 really an individual, must be recognized; it is alike the 
 duty and interest of society to recognize them, even if 
 we do not go so far as to say that society exists for no 
 other purpose. But the social character or relations of 
 the being we call individual must also be recognized, and 
 that recognition must profoundly modify the whole " in- 
 dividual" economy. It must be, however, plainly under- 
 stood that there is no question of individual versus society, 
 and of a balance or a compromise of conflicting claims. 
 There are no conflicting claims; such notion of conflict 
 only arises so long as we conceive the individual as he is 
 not viz. a mere isolated unit ; when we conceive him as he 
 is, it is only a question of harmonizing the different sides 
 of his nature. It does not detract from the perfection of 
 the individual education that it should specialize certain 
 faculties and subordinate the training of others; for when 
 the individual is seen with his social bonds of feelings and 
 interests, to ignore these would be to inflict injury upon 
 the fulness of his individuality by ignoring one important 
 aspect of it. So, in the case of the economic specialization 
 imposed upon him in the social interest, he does not suffer 
 injury, but receives gain, by direct co-operation with the 
 larger life of the society to which he belongs. Only so 
 long as we confine our attention to the body is the illusion 
 of absolute individuality even plausible; directly we realize 
 the individual as a " person, 11 a rational being, a spirit or 
 soul, we perceive that he lives and moves and has his being 
 in society, and that his " ends " as individual are organically 
 related to and determined by the social ends.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 OVER-SPECIALIZATION IN INDUSTRIAL LIFE 
 
 THE right ordering of work and of life of an individual 
 member of society at any given time, what is sometimes 
 termed his "standard," will be determined by harmonious 
 adjustment of the needs and capacities of his individual 
 nature, and of those of his social nature as interpreted and 
 directed by the needs of society. Society exists, not, as is 
 sometimes maintained, in order consciously to secure the 
 separate welfare of its individual members, but to secure the 
 health and progress of society always realized as a spiritual 
 organism; but this end, interpreted at any given time in 
 terms of "social utility," has been seen to involve the care 
 and promotion of individual health and progress. It can 
 never be the interest of society to attempt to dominate or 
 enslave the individual, sucking his energies for the supposed 
 nutriment of a State ; any such endeavour would be 
 futile, for, as we have seen, an attempt to exploit those 
 energies, or to take away that " property " which nature has 
 set aside for individual support and progress, would defeat 
 its end by drying up the sources of such energy and " pro- 
 perty." Neither is it to the real advantage of the "indi- 
 viduality" of any individual to retain a churlish isolation, 
 and by an excessive pride of self-sufficiency to refuse a due 
 acknowledgment of those external and internal social bonds 
 which nature has likewise furnished to enable each "indi- 
 viduality" to be enlarged and enriched from social sources. 
 
 224
 
 OVER-SPECIALIZATION IN INDUSTRIAL LIFE 225 
 
 Society has been through all the history of man the great 
 maker of individual freedom, in that, by the material and 
 spiritual co-operation it has furnished, it has enabled indi- 
 viduals continually to enlarge the quantity and to raise the 
 quality of their interests, aims, and satisfactions. This being 
 so, the notion of a real antithesis or opposition of interests 
 between individual and society becomes as obviously unthink- 
 able as the notion of a conflict of interests between the trunk 
 of a tree and its branches. 
 
 Human capacity of error, however, makes it very possible 
 that a society, whether through the instrumentality of the 
 State or in some less externalized and formal capacity, may, 
 by foolish exercise of force, " sweat " or oppress its members, 
 inflicting real injury upon their individuality; or, conversely, 
 it may refuse to organize and utilize the true social energies 
 and " property " for the support of individual freedom in the 
 positive progressive meaning of that term. These, indeed, 
 are related vices of society, and of the State in particular; 
 for where a State does really oppress individuals, as by 
 excessive, capricious, or unequal taxation, or by repression of 
 freedom of meeting or publication, it is virtually compelled 
 to waste in the machinery of misgovernment those very 
 resources which nature had meant for public works that 
 should enrich and educate its individual members. 
 
 Society, whether through the State or otherwise, can 
 never do too much for individuals ; for whatever it does well 
 in its own interests as a society must furnish a richer soil for 
 individual growth, enlarging the range of positive freedom 
 and opportunity for its members. But, though it may not 
 do too much, it may easily do wrong things, or right things 
 in the wrong order, which indeed makes them wrong. That 
 society may oppress, and so sterilize the growth of individu- 
 ality, will be readily and generally admitted. But Mr. 
 Spencer and most Individualists, confining their attention to 
 State measures, and, by a logical necessity of their position,
 
 226 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 repudiating as attacks upon individuality the very measures 
 which are its supports, commonly ignore the greatest danger 
 of social tyranny the excessive power of society, under 
 modern industrialism, to narrow and degrade individuality 
 by over-specialization. 
 
 Whether we fasten our eyes upon the ordering of the 
 individual life or upon the life of a social group, over- 
 specialization looms before us as one of the gravest and 
 largest social dangers, the more insidious because it conceals 
 its "social" nature, and masquerades as individual liberty. 
 
 Society, we have admitted, properly requires its individual 
 members to specialize that is, devote a considerable amount 
 of their time and energy to serving society by the perform- 
 ance of certain routine work which shall contribute to the 
 social support. Modern methods of mechanical production 
 and of business organization favour a continual advance of 
 this specialization, and have brought about certain notable 
 changes in its character and its reaction upon those who 
 undergo its influence. So long as the specialization needed 
 to contribute to social service meant that each person should 
 ply some particular trade or profession, should apply himself 
 exclusively to the production of some single class of com- 
 modities as farmer, tailor, doctor, under conditions which 
 required considerable variety of skill and experience, and 
 evoked a corresponding interest in the work, so long as the 
 range of specialism at least allowed each man to see the end 
 and the utility of the work he did, no net injury to indi- 
 viduality was wrought. But where machinery of ever nicer 
 character is brought more and more into play, and where 
 the arrangement of large businesses and the increased spe- 
 cialism of small businesses, proceeding apace over the indus- 
 trial world, brings about an ever finer subdivision of labour, 
 for the express purpose of rendering such labour as far as 
 possible unskilled and purely mechanical, in order that a 
 larger quantity of routine products may be turned out by
 
 OVER-SPECIALIZATION IN INDUSTRIAL LIFE 227 
 
 each worker in a given time, such specialization has distinctly 
 degrading effects upon the life and character of workers. 
 Once we had a watchmaker; now we have a one-hundred- 
 and-fortieth part of a watchmaker confined, whether working 
 with machinery or without, to some single process in the 
 turning, boring, testing, polishing, or fitting of some single 
 portion of a particular class or size of watch. Once we 
 had a tailor, though the corruption of an ancient saying 
 making him the tenth part of a man, was even then a testi- 
 mony to the dehumanizing influences of confinement to 
 such a craft : it now takes ten men to make a tailor, the 
 worker in the tailoring trade being commonly a cutter-out, 
 a baster, button-holer, or the like. The same is true of 
 almost all trades where common classes of commodities are 
 produced for market. Ever since Adam Smith's day, in- 
 creasing division of labour and its attendant specialization 
 of the working life of the individual have been accepted as 
 the chief means and the badge of progressive industry. Each 
 man must do what he can do best only that, and always 
 that; and the smaller and simpler the thing he has got to 
 do, the better and the quicker he can be got to do it. In 
 this way alone the greatest quantity of material wealth can 
 be attained, and each of those who take part in the pro- 
 duction is supposed to get the gain in his capacity of 
 consumer. Enlightened teachers of humanity such men as 
 Carlyle, Emerson, Ruskin, Tolstoy have uttered vain pro- 
 tests against the degradation of individual life and character 
 by this narrowing and monotonizing of all labour on the one 
 hand, and the grossly materialistic conception of civilization 
 involved in measuring prosperity by quantity of mechanically- 
 wrought goods, upon the other hand. No one acquainted 
 widely with the facts of industry can seriously question the 
 statement that the conditions of much modern work tend 
 to crush out all human interest in it. A man can get no 
 pleasure from his work when it imposes a constant strain
 
 228 
 
 upon the same muscles and nerves, and can be most easily 
 done so far as the actions become automatic; when the 
 tedium of constantly repeating the same narrow movements 
 compels the cultivation of indifference ; when strict confine- 
 ment to a single process hides from him the true purpose 
 and utility of his work, and he cannot claim any single whole 
 commodity as the product of his labour. By such methods 
 the economic " cost of production " of commodities is reduced 
 to a minimum, but the real human cost is continually 
 enhanced. That cost consists in the degradation of the indi- 
 viduality of the worker, primarily as worker, but secondarily 
 as consumer, by the oppression of society. 
 
 " But why," it may be said, " do you saddle society with 
 the responsibility which should rightly fall on the employer 
 who forces on an industry these narrow mechanical processes, 
 or else upon the worker, who, in order to get better wages, 
 consents to enter such degrading occupations ? " It is not 
 enough to answer that an employer must produce in the 
 cheapest way, if he is to hold his own in competitive indus- 
 try, and that a worker is virtually compelled to take what 
 work will bring him in the highest wages. The real answer 
 is that society not, indeed, through the organization of the 
 State, but through the looser voluntary, but not the less 
 effective and powerful, organization of markets coerces the 
 individual, and narrows and distorts his individuality, by 
 this enforced growing specialization. It is the consumer who, 
 by his exercise of purchasing power, determines what kind 
 of work shall be done, and who shall do it. Now, the voice 
 of the consumer is the voice of society the composite, inhar- 
 monious, but thoroughly effective voice of Brown, Smith, 
 Jones, and Robinson. This brings to light a paradox. 
 " Free Competition,' 1 '' the force which is worshipped by those 
 who style themselves Defenders of the Individual, is seen to 
 be the very force which destroys individuality in work, and 
 compels an absolute submission to the will of society. It is
 
 OVER-SPECIALIZATION IN INDUSTRIAL LIFE 229 
 
 not, indeed, the orderly organic will and true interest of 
 society which is thus imposed upon the individual, but the 
 fluctuating, irrational will of the said Brown, Smith, Jones, 
 and Robinson, whose ill-ordered caprices and desires control 
 the worker, because they possess the mass of the consuming 
 power. While free competition socializes the worker in this 
 bad sense, the forces summoned to mitigate or to counteract 
 this tyranny are commonly described as socialistic. Socialism 
 endeavours to mitigate the sway of the consumer, to limit 
 the quantity and severity of the labour which society exacts 
 from the individual, to shorten the hours of the socially- 
 directed labour-day, to procure for the individual the leisure, 
 education, and opportunities for cultivating his other human 
 faculties which laissezfaire would deny him. 
 
 These dangers of over-specialization, due to a defective 
 order of society which subordinates the interests of the 
 producer to the supposed interests of the consumer, are 
 not confined to individuals, but beset the life of larger 
 units of society. Nations are specializing more and more, 
 some confining themselves to growing corn or cotton, sugar 
 or tobacco, others to particular departments of manufacture. 
 England is devoting herself to textile and metal manu- 
 factures, ship-building, and cei'tain branches of commerce ; 
 within England large districts are monotonized by exclusive 
 devotion to pottery or iron ; town life is becoming more 
 strongly differentiated from the country, the town itself 
 divides into residential and business quarters, while these 
 again are split by endless subdivision. These are but the 
 wider social aspects of an excessive division of labour which 
 reaches its culmination in the machine-tender of the most 
 highly organized modern factory a man whose working life 
 is incomparably narrower in scope and more vacant of human 
 interest than that of any living creature in the past. 
 
 Local specialization exaggerates the ill effects of over- 
 specialism upon the individual worker by furnishing a
 
 230 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 material environment which offers no relief. To have one's 
 life bounded by an horizon of " black country" or " potteries, 1 " 
 " cotton " or " coal," the land and labour of which are alike 
 devoted to a single industry, implies not merely a deadly 
 dulness and monotony of outward life, but an absence of all 
 wholesome stimuli to the development of the intellectual and 
 moral tastes which make for the progress of national life 
 and character. Cheap railway trips, cheap print, and external 
 machinery of education, are ineffective to counteract the 
 degrading provincialism of these specialized industrial areas 
 of which modern countries are more and more composed.
 
 CHAFER XIV 
 
 OVER-SPECIALIZATION IN INTELLECTUAL LIFE 
 
 THE dangers which beset industrial life and character from 
 over-specialism and the sway of the consumer have their 
 counterparts in our intellectual life. There, too, the same 
 ideal is proposed, to get for "the consumer 11 the largest 
 quantity of knowledge and products of thought, with the 
 least expenditure of labour, and to achieve this result by 
 increasing specialization of intellectual work. This over- 
 specialization marks out for each man or woman some 
 minute corner, some little " claim "" in the field of know- 
 ledge. Here he must grub a life long, digging a neat little 
 hole in which he may lie completely buried, laboriously 
 accumulating some minute hoard of recondite truths to 
 contribute to the intellectual market. We have in modern 
 universities hundreds of men who thus completely lose 
 themselves in work of research, absorbed by the smallness 
 of the task they essay, and often hypnotized to torpor by 
 gazing at it. This is sometimes called " thoroughness " (the 
 German grundliclikeit is commonly preferred, because we 
 have agreed to worship the Teutons for this quality). It is 
 maintained that this minute division of labour is essential to 
 good work. So our naturalist becomes a " scarabaeist," and 
 our historian confines himself to an ever-narrowing " period " 
 in the history of a single tribe, sifting with admirable per- 
 severance the countless minute mendacities of ancient 
 records, with the view of eventually eliciting some such saving 
 
 231
 
 232 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 truth as whether or not palisades were used in the Battle 
 of Hastings. 
 
 To be guilty of even seeming to disparage " thorough- 
 ness " is reckoned the unpardonable sin against knowledge. 
 Yet I would submit that thoroughness, like every other 
 virtue, is a mean ; because many more people are likely 
 to err by being slight or superficial, it by no means follows 
 that there cannot be over-thoroughness. In its true sense 
 of seeing through and round a subject in all its bearings, 
 thoroughness often suffers by the exclusive continuous 
 attention to detail which usurps the name. The most 
 minute specialist in the animal kingdom is, perhaps, the 
 earthworm, which devotes its life to passing sedulously 
 through its body tiny fragments of the little patch of earth 
 in which it lies. To this process it has sacrificed every other 
 function, and yet it knows less about the earth even than 
 the mole, and much less than the rabbit. So with the intel- 
 lectual earthworm. Even from the knowledge-getting point of 
 view he is commonly a failure. The detailed superstructure 
 of his edifice is often marvellously wrought, but its founda- 
 tions are generally weak. Your refined specialist in medicine 
 has commonly accepted, on utterly insufficient authority, and 
 without " special " inquiry, some large theories about the 
 digestive and the nervous systems ; your monetary specialist 
 in such a science as economics has erected an admirably- 
 carved financial system upon some hollow, quantitative 
 theory of money which he has swallowed wholesale and 
 a priori. 
 
 So everywhere we find a false economy of intellectual 
 power, based on over-specialism. Detailed accuracy may 
 be bought too dear. Exactitude of knowledge, indeed, 
 within any given limits, is unattainable ; it is a will-o'-the- 
 wisp, which lures the student on to collect ever minuter and 
 remoter fragments of evidence, to test and refine with ever- 
 growing scrupulosity what he has got. Since every fraction
 
 INTELLECTUAL OVER-SPECIALIZATION 233 
 
 contains infinity, it may be chopped ever finer and finer 
 still, and so the specialist's knowledge becomes always more 
 exact and smaller in compass, but never attains a satisfactory 
 end. Even where "results" are got, the process is often 
 indefensible on genuinely economical grounds. The wise 
 farmer will only put a limited quantity of labour upon a 
 given piece of land, though perfectly aware that more labour 
 would elicit a larger crop. Why ? Because there is other 
 land which will lie uncultivated if he insists on getting the 
 most out of one plot. So accuracy, superstitiously wor- 
 shipped as the intellectual ideal, often involves, in the end, 
 a squandering of power, and the too thorough man is con- 
 victed as a wastrel. Academic accuracy is often indignant 
 when the vulgar clamour for results. But the demands of 
 the vulgar are grounded in legitimate suspicions. Minute 
 specialism sterilizes action. The academic student of this 
 order seldom reaches any definite opinion upon living issues, 
 for he can seldom find a definite opinion justified. "Heaven 
 forbid that I should fetter my impartiality by entertaining an 
 opinion," said the learned barber in George Eliot's " Romola." 
 Such vain pursuit of knowledge leads to a minimum of ser- 
 viceable truth, sometimes defending its futility by the taking 
 paradox that the search after truth is better than the attain- 
 ment of truth a view which reminds us of the theory of the 
 unsuccessful fisherman, that the fewer fish there are to be 
 caught, the more sport there is in fishing. The reaction of 
 over-specialism upon the student is closely analogous to its 
 effects upon the industrial worker; by peering incessantly 
 into one little group of facts, he blunts his intelligence and 
 injures the focus of his mental eyesight. His abandonment 
 of the wider survey of knowledge, the renunciation which is 
 either forced upon him or is self-imposed, destroys his intel- 
 lectual judgment. Every bit of new knowledge needs to 
 be assayed by submission to the touchtone of the 
 Universal before its value can be ascertained, or it can be
 
 234 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 set in relation to knowledge as a whole. The over-specialist 
 has let slip the standard of knowledge, and is at the mercy 
 of all sorts of private superstitions and illusions. Thus, 
 with misspent scrupulosity, he squanders his labour on vain 
 trifles, counting every bit of knowledge worth the pains it 
 has cost, because he owns no standard of economy. Man 
 is the measure of all things, and the specialist who has made 
 himself less than a man can measure nothing. The 
 industrial specialist becomes a machine, the intellectual 
 specialist a pedant or a faddist. The great work of the 
 world has been done by hard workers, but not by close 
 specialists, even in the nineteenth century. Kant, Goethe, 
 Wordsworth, Browning, Mill, Darwin, Spencer, Ruskin the 
 greatness of the work of such men depends upon the quality 
 of universality. In theory this will be readily admitted ; in 
 practice everywhere the forces of specialism corrupt and destroy 
 the sane sense of the universal. 
 
 In some respects this intellectual over-specialism is fraught 
 with graver damage than industrial over-specialism. The 
 latter yields, at any rate, a maximum of material wealth, 
 which has some substance, and can satisfy human needs if 
 it gets properly distributed. But in the largely self-selected 
 specialism of an intellectual clique we have little guarantee 
 that the wealth it affects to produce will not be bogus 
 wealth, the mere paper value of ponderous pedantic 
 books. 
 
 It is no mere perverse scepticism which prompts Tolstoy's 
 analysis of the nature of an intellectual class, withdrawn from 
 the harder and grosser facts of life, and bound to seek to 
 justify this unnatural withdrawal. He shows how there 
 springs up a curious malformed abortive brood of theories, 
 hypotheses, and dogmas, religious, political, literary, scien- 
 tific, aesthetic, which are foisted on to the workaday world 
 as the due and timely fruits of knowledge. When the 
 sciences and arts are kept bondsmen to industry and the
 
 INTELLECTUAL OVER-SPECIALIZATION 235 
 
 material arts of life, they do substantial service ; but directly 
 they claim independent rights, demanding recognition as 
 " science for science^ sake," " art for art's sake, 11 they are apt 
 to launch into futility or worse. I allude in particular to 
 the vast output of idle theory in philosophy, religion, and 
 science, the product of monastic and academic specialism 
 through all time, the lamentable waste of much of the finest 
 intellect of every age in weaving metaphysical speculations 
 out of cobwebs, sand, and other fanciful material, for the 
 amusement and supposed edification of the non-labouring 
 classes. There is much in what Whitman says : " Now I re- 
 examine philosophies and religions. They may prove well 
 in lecture-rooms, and yet not prove at all under the spacious 
 clouds and along the landscape and flowing currents. 11 It 
 is at least likely from the conditions of such intellectual 
 production that this paper-stock may suffer a huge slump 
 in the intellectual market when a thorough business scrutiny 
 takes place into the values it claims to represent. Theories 
 of life spun by the overwrought brains of those who 
 are not living a whole life cannot themselves be whole. 
 
 Specialism, we said, was supposed to conduce to the 
 interests of the consumer. But in a rationally ordered 
 society there will be no consumers who are not also pro- 
 ducers, and a social economy which sacrificed the producer 
 to the consumer would be suicidal. For a recognition of 
 the organic relation between the arts of production and 
 consumption, work and life, will enforce the truth that 
 what injures the producer also injures him in his capacity 
 as consumer. The damaged life of the worker must inevit- 
 ably react upon his power to live and to enjoy. It is not 
 really possible for a man to be a specialist producer and a 
 multifarious consumer. The natural law establishes not 
 merely a general but a specific relation between production 
 and consumption. A man who spends all his days poring 
 over books cannot digest and enjoy the fare of the farmer
 
 236 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 or the athlete. Neither can the navvy, after an exhausting 
 day of muscular toil, reap and enjoy the fruits of others' 
 intellectual toil. No one gets the full enjoyment out of 
 any art which he does not practise himself. Even the 
 ideal gourmet should have some practical acquaintance with 
 the art of cooking if he is to enjoy fully the culinary 
 masterpiece. The arts of production and consumption are 
 really the two closely related aspects of one functional 
 activity, the action and reaction which belong to one 
 another. The inactive man cannot digest his food : 
 follow this out, and you will find that no one can whole- 
 somely consume anything unless he has put forth the effort 
 of making it, or some effort of a similar order. The true 
 balance of life demands not merely a general correspondence 
 in the intake and output of energy as an aggregate, but in 
 the special forms of energy. Your thoroughgoing specialist 
 in work will be a specialist in enjoyment; only able to do 
 one thing, he will only be able to enjoy one thing. Your 
 specialist actor, when he gets a holiday, spends it in 
 the theatre; your overworked 'busman spends it on a 
 friend's 'bus. This is a natural and necessary proceeding. 
 An increased quantity of wealth, material or intellectual, 
 produced at the expense of excessive specialization, brings 
 with it a diminishing power of using and enjoying each 
 unit of the larger sum of consumables, so that the gain in 
 objective values yields no net gain of subjective enjoyment. 
 Civilization, as we have seen, demands a certain amount 
 of specialization of functions, in order that each individual 
 may render good service to society ; but the disorderly 
 forces of modern industrial society have driven this 
 specialization too far. Social utility requires that the 
 interests of the producer should receive more direct 
 attention, and that the power of the market should not 
 dominate the life of the workers by absorbing an undue 
 proportion of their time and energy. A healthy man in a
 
 INTELLECTUAL OVER-SPECIALIZATION 237 
 
 civilized society would be able to ensure that his working 
 day should at least contain such variety of occupation as 
 would give regular exercise to all the leading functions of 
 his nature. It is neither possible nor desirable to abandon 
 the economy of subdivision of labour, but it is possible to 
 prevent narrowly subdivided labour from absorbing the 
 whole time and energy, and starving the other faculties. 
 Tolstoy has suggested that the working day of a sane man 
 should contain four elements work giving general play to 
 the muscles, work of a routine mental order, work giving 
 special exercise to wrist and eye in some skilled handicraft, 
 and intellectual work of a graver order. Some such pro- 
 vision, not enforced by society, but adopted by the reason- 
 able individual, is undoubtedly necessary for a full attain- 
 ment of humanity, and not a few of the wisest and greatest 
 workers in all ages have practised such a habit of life. 
 
 The most vital service rendered by the movement for a 
 shorter working day will consist in its contribution to this 
 end. Those who regard this movement chiefly as a demand 
 for increased leisure, for idleness, or wasteful enjoyments, 
 utterly misread the deeper issue. It is the over-specialized 
 workers' other faculties, which are at present thwarted and 
 repressed, that are lifting their voice in demand for a fuller 
 individual life. In every worker confined to a long day of 
 narrow, monotonous toil lies a score of imprisoned faculties, 
 each a potential worker, and clamouring for work and 
 enjoyment. It must take some time for the undeveloped 
 faculties " dim eyes, cramped limbs, slowly waking desires " 
 to gain their proper place in the economy of human 
 forces which make true life. But surely progress, if any- 
 where, lies this way.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 SOCIALISM IN THE ARTS AND PROFESSIONS 
 
 THERE is no reason for confining to industry the harmony 
 between Individualism and Socialism, which consists in 
 assigning to the latter the relatively routine processes, and 
 reserving the more refined and changeful processes for the 
 former. Though, for convenience, we distinguish industrial 
 work from the professions, the fine arts, and intellectual 
 pursuits in general, no clear line of demarcation can be 
 drawn. The fine arts, so far as they rest on a sensational 
 basis, working upon " matter," using material implements 
 and appealing to the senses, evidently differ only in degree 
 from other handicrafts, and are governed by ordinary 
 economic laws. The learned professions, including educa- 
 tion, science, and literature, though the "goods" they 
 produce are not material, are nevertheless, so far as they 
 are " businesses " and afford a livelihood, directly influenced, 
 and often controlled by economic conditions of the material 
 environment. Indeed, the more closely we look into the 
 structure and working of these arts and professions the 
 more nearly do they seem to approximate to ordinary 
 industry. For, although the limitations of matter, and of 
 the law of diminishing returns, may seem alien from in- 
 tellectual production (the quantity of intellectual wealth 
 appearing capable of infinite increase), the distribution of 
 this wealth, in the sense of accessibility and capacity for use 
 and enjoyment, is controlled by economic laws similar in 
 
 238
 
 SOCIALISM IN THE ARTS AND PROFESSIONS 239 
 
 action to those operative in the distribution of material 
 wealth. The truths of science, the beauties of literature, 
 of music and art, though they are inherently capable of 
 enriching an infinite number of human lives without loss or 
 diminution, are, in fact, confined to the consumption of 
 a few, and this limitation depends upon distinctively 
 "economic' 1 conditions. The conditions of ordinary work- 
 ing life, denying the possibility of sane culture, shut out 
 from the life of the majority most of the "free goods' 1 of 
 the intellectual world as effectively as private ownership of 
 land and the industrial necessities of town life have shut 
 out the " free goods " of nature. These have virtually no 
 share in the vast increase of intellectual wealth which is the 
 peculiar achievement of this century. But not merely does 
 lack of education impose these limits on the intellectual 
 wealth which can be actually enjoyed by a community. 
 Many forms of this wealth, many kinds of special skill and 
 knowledge, become the intellectual capital of some craft or 
 profession, which, possessing, or claiming an exclusive right 
 to utilize them, organize a market, regulating the effective 
 supply, and selling their intellectual wares for as much as 
 they can get. Herein lies the gravest source of waste, from 
 the standpoint of social utility. Lack of opportunities of 
 education to learn for themselves, and lack of purchasing- 
 power to buy from the profession, confine within very 
 narrow limits the consumption of "things of the mind." 
 Instead of the common stock of knowledge being increased by 
 every new discovery of scientific truth, and the common stock 
 of literary or aesthetic enjoyment growing with the creation 
 of each new master-piece of literature or art, these forms of 
 wealth, meant for mankind, actually constitute a fund of 
 exclusive enjoyment for a small class deriving their leisure, 
 education, and means of purchase from the possession of some 
 economic advantage. Every vice or defect of "com- 
 mercialism," as it is exhibited in manufacture or ordinary
 
 240 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 commerce, has its close counterpart in the " intellectual 
 world.' 1 The maladies of "sweating" (underpay, overwork, 
 sub-contract, " driving, 11 and the rest), the evils of factory 
 work, with the dull, demoralizing grind of narrow, me- 
 chanical routine ; exploitation of skilled labour by a " boss " 
 entrepreneur; trusts, syndicates, corners, and every form of 
 "combine 11 ; the worst trickeries of adulteration and ad- 
 vertisement, shop-dressing, and every detailed guile of 
 commercialism these things have their close parallels in the 
 professions of law, medicine, and the church, in teaching, 
 the stage, the fine arts, in science, literature, and journalism. 
 
 One of the gravest of the social problems surely lies here 
 how to secure such effective social control over the pro- 
 duction and distribution of these forms of non-material 
 wealth as to protect society against the abuses of monopoly 
 and adulteration, and to secure for all the "goods 11 which 
 are wastefully confined to a few. 
 
 This public economy of intellectual wealth falls under 
 two great departments. The one is primarily educative, 
 concerned with securing for all the time and opportunities, 
 material and moral, that are needed to evoke and cultivate 
 the tastes and capacities to appreciate, enjoy, and utilize 
 the vast resources of intellectual wealth. The other, vitally, 
 organically related to it, consists in the direct social control 
 and administration of such forms of intellectual wealth as 
 rightly conform to the requirements of social industry. 
 These two functions are not precise counterparts; the 
 former will in effect outrun the latter. Public or State 
 education will have two great objects first to impart such 
 knowledge and training as lays a sound basis of citizenship 
 both from a political and an industrial point of view ; 
 secondly, the detection and stimulation of higher individual 
 tastes and capacities primarily designed for private cultiva- 
 tion and enjoyment. Thus public education will not only, 
 under the heads of general and technical education, lay the
 
 SOCIALISM IN THE ARTS AND PROFESSIONS 
 
 foundation of such knowledge and training as shall enable 
 each man to perform his civic duties in an enlightened way, 
 and to contribute by some routine industry his share in the 
 production of social wealth, but it will assist each child to 
 " know himself," in the sense of discovering special tastes and 
 interests which will form the raw material of later develop- 
 ment of individuality. For the accomplishment of this 
 most urgent work, freedom and humanity must mitigate the 
 elements of discipline and routine which rightly or inevitably 
 form important factors in school life ; special tastes must be 
 caught and tested, their first food and rudimentary training 
 must be furnished in the public schools. This public educa- 
 tion is the most difficult work which a State can undertake, 
 precisely because no education can be reduced to routine. 
 But some education, that which consists in cultivating for 
 general purposes capacities which in different degrees are 
 common to all, and impressing certain common forms of 
 knowledge and behaviour needed as a basis of efficiency in 
 social life, can be brought nearer to routine than that other 
 education which is concerned with individual needs and 
 characteristics. So, even in education we can, though with 
 difficulty, apply one general distinction between routine 
 functions, which may be safely and economically adminis- 
 tered by the State, and art functions which are essentially 
 individualistic in their operation. I cannot concede, or even 
 conceive, that State schools can ever undertake the whole of 
 education, even in the narrow usage of that term ; the com- 
 mon, the relatively rough work alone can be undertaken by 
 public schools ; the finer cultivation of individual tastes and 
 activities will always belong to the home and to private 
 organization. State schools, like State business of every 
 kind, lacks the spontaneity and plasticity of private enter- 
 prise ; they will be essentially mechanical in method. Sane 
 training, judicious selection of teachers, and "a free hand" 
 may considerably mitigate these defects ; but the necessary
 
 242 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 guarantees of average efficiency imposed upon State schools 
 must always keep them from the best success in the higher 
 educational paths. The real work of cultivation of in- 
 dividual tastes for the finer sorts of skilled work and 
 enjoyment will lie outside the public schools. This truth 
 is more widely appreciated every year by those who watch 
 the efforts made by State schools in the education of art 
 faculties. The fatal tendency to mechanize art is clearly 
 discernible in the work of the South Kensington department 
 wherever it transcends the mere rudiments which are its 
 rightful sphere. The right limits of State-controlled art 
 schools are to teach such common routine skill as should 
 form a common acquisition of all educated persons, rather 
 than to form artists. The real training of individual talents 
 will never take place in schools, which, after all is said and 
 done, must approximate to factories. 
 
 What is true of art-teaching applies also to the organi- 
 zation of the arts as professions. It is somewhat curious 
 that in many ways and places Socialism, or direct State 
 organization, has proceeded further and with less opposition 
 in the arts and professions than in the material industries. 
 There is sometimes a feeling that the State or the munici- 
 pality may legitimately supply the luxuries of life, leaving 
 to individuals the supply of the necessaries. So we have 
 public art galleries and concerts, libraries and museums, 
 public lectures, and in many places public theatres. The 
 widely-accepted notion that " Socialism " of this sort is 
 *' safer " than Socialism of the necessaries of life rests upon 
 no sound logical basis. It is said that, if the public pro- 
 vided food and shelter, such a course would impair individual 
 enterprise and self-dependence, whereas public provision of 
 luxuries does not have this effect, because individuals either 
 could not or would not provide these things for themselves. 
 But this reasoning cuts its own throat ; for if free food would 
 corrupt and enervate, free libraries and free concerts must
 
 SOCIALISM IN THE ARTS AND PROFESSIONS 243 
 
 be considered to check the wholesome sacrifices which indi- 
 viduals will make for the cultivation of those new tastes that 
 come into their lives, which sacrifices are even more enno- 
 bling and helpful stimuli of character than the efforts made 
 to satisfy the animal pangs of hunger. It is better to 
 encourage a man to make a voluntary effort to provide him- 
 self with books and music than to encourage him to an effort 
 to buy food, though, and perhaps just because, it is more 
 essential to have food than reading. 
 
 This argument is not directed against public libraries and 
 concerts, nor does it advocate that free food or housing 
 should be furnished in the same way as free books or music. 
 The establishment of a secure standard of material comfort 
 for all men, in conformity Avith their reasonable human 
 needs, upon condition of their fair contribution to the fund 
 of social labour, would be achieved by a system of public 
 salaries for public work. The free luxuries of libraries, 
 music, etc., might, if we please, be regarded as a part of this 
 public salary, paid in kind to all who chose to take advan- 
 tage of it. 
 
 But the important point for us is to recognize the limi- 
 tations of this Socialism. The greatest art will never be 
 doled out by public institutions designed for the general 
 enjoyment. The ideal of a State theatre, which will recognize, 
 educate, and bring out the finest original talent, acknowledge 
 and produce the most powerful and timely masterworks, and 
 maintain a constant progress in the arts of presentation, is 
 utterly chimerical. Wherever officialism rules, there will 
 be conformity to custom ; respectability, vested interests, 
 authority, and a more or less mechanical order will prevail ; 
 no use of public money to buy the best talent, and keep it 
 up to full efficiency, will counteract these inevitable forces. 
 The same will be true of an academy of letters, an academy 
 of pictures, and of every other art. The finer the art, the 
 more destructive of the choicest flowers of achievement will
 
 244 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 be the public control. This is no argument against public 
 concerts, libraries, art schools, or a State theatre. The 
 general taste of the crowd may be well and economically 
 served by such means, and, provided public money is not 
 used to pervert really fine individual genius into conven- 
 tional mechanism, no harm and great good will be done by 
 "socializing" those portions of the fine arts which lose least 
 by routine presentation. But the finer flavours of the arts, 
 the more powerful, spontaneous, and original impressions, 
 can never be thus given. The soul of art is essentially and 
 eternally opposed to officialism and routine, however care- 
 fully and humanely ordered it may be. You can never 
 socialize your great artist, either creative or executive, in 
 painting, music, literature, drama ; the essentially individual 
 character of his work is crushed and thwarted by externally 
 imposed conditions of social service. In a true inner sense 
 he may be socialized, in so far as he recognizes the social 
 value of his work, and genuinely dedicates his gifts to the 
 welfare of society, drawing his inspiration from the public 
 sympathy and appreciation. But any attempt to compre- 
 hend him in a publicly ordered .scheme, and to impose con- 
 ditions on the exercise of his faculty, will disable him from 
 doing his best, in matters where, as Ruskin says, " the 
 difference between the best and the all but best is infinite." 
 The same truths apply to the work of the learned profes- 
 sions. Socialism has largely invaded the professional domains, 
 officializing and dedicating to the social service large numbers 
 of clergy, doctors, lawyers ; but it has almost always left 
 the most delicate, difficult, and original work to " private 
 enterprise " ; or where official teachers have wrought any 
 great reform, either in doctrine or in practice, it has been in 
 the teeth of the official power. The inherent tendency of 
 officialism to mechanize and reduce to routine is, in fact, 
 nowhere more powerfully illustrated than in these depart- 
 ments. State religions, State medicine, State law, are
 
 SOCIALISM IN THE ARTS AND PROFESSIONS 245 
 
 essentially mechanical. The moralization and rationalization 
 of public life which would take place in an intelligent and 
 educated democracy might, indeed, do much to give flexibility 
 and powers of adaptation to public institutions; but originality 
 of thought and experiment, new ideas and impulses, will 
 continue to be more freely generated and to flourish better 
 in an unofficial atmosphere. There is, therefore, room and 
 need both for Socialism and private enterprise in the pro- 
 fessions. If any routine work, either of theological or ethical 
 instruction, remained for a separate clerical profession, a 
 State Church might economically order the common and 
 generally recognized elements of such teaching, or administer 
 some common rites ; but all that was stimulative and vitaliz- 
 ing in the spiritual life of the people would, as ever, continue 
 to proceed from unauthorized outside sources. So with 
 medicine, one of the most hardened and unprogressive of 
 arts, even in its semi-socialized or State-protected condition. 
 History assigns to law the palm for dogged conservatism, 
 almost all great changes and developments in legislation or 
 codification being attributed to statesmen who have only 
 been lawyers in a secondary, non-official sense. 
 
 But, though the State can never do the best and finest 
 work, the "art" work, in any department of activity, an 
 increasing portion of routine work must always tend to fall 
 into her hands, not only in the industrial, but in the intel- 
 lectual and moral world. Nowhere will fixed limits be placed 
 on this work. As new wants become stereotyped in the 
 common standard of life of all citizens, and as public bodies, 
 by experience, improve their capacity of administration, new 
 State or municipal functions will continually arise. This 
 will apply to intellectual and moral life as to industrial ; the 
 supply of general wants by large organized processes will 
 fall to such public institutions as can most conveniently 
 undertake it ; while all that gives distinction, that marks 
 originality of taste or execution, and impresses individualitv,
 
 246 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 will remain in the hands of private citizens or private 
 organizations of citizens. 
 
 Into this general harmony, resting on the differentiation 
 between routine industries and arts, the antagonism of 
 Individualism and Socialism is resolved. Our examination 
 both of the material industries and of the. professions makes 
 it evident that this antithesis of mechanical routine and 
 art cannot be rigidly maintained, for no mechanical 
 industry is entirely destitute of individual skill and interest, 
 while no art exists but has a basis of drudgery. Yet the 
 distinction is of real convenience as a means of distingush- 
 ing the occupations which can usefully be ordered by 
 Society at any given time from those which are best left 
 to individual enterprise. 
 
 The particular functions which shall rank as routine 
 matters ripe for public service will differ with different 
 types of society and different grades of civilization. The 
 general tendency of a society advancing in complexity will 
 be to hand over an evergrowing number of functions to 
 society for its express performance or control. But this 
 must not be taken to imply any tendency of the State to 
 encroach more and more upon the individual, or to suggest 
 the approximation to an ideal in which organized Society 
 shall do everything. For the very motive of each new 
 access to the work of society is to transfer the individual 
 energy and initiative formerly exercised upon a relatively 
 low work to a higher work. A constant growth of State 
 functions thus directed will not imply the absorption of a 
 larger proportion of the total energy. A social progress 
 which involves a continual growth of new State functions 
 is quite consistent with an equal or a greater enlargement 
 of individual liberty for industrial and other enterprises. 
 Advance of municipal or State Socialism might indeed 
 proceed so fast for awhile that an increasing proportion of 
 the working population came to be servants of the public.
 
 SOCIALISM IN THE ARTS AND PROFESSIONS 247 
 
 In some countries society has in the past so ignored some of 
 its plain duties that a rapid increase of public work has 
 recently been undertaken, suggesting the fear that in 
 process of time further service will absorb the entire popu- 
 lation. In one sense this is true of the ideal society as it 
 is here foreshadowed, but not in the sense here implied. 
 In proportion as more industries and callings pass into a 
 condition of such relatively routine character as to form fit 
 subjects for public administration, it is likely that a larger 
 proportion of the entire population will give some part of 
 their time and energy to public service. This indeed is 
 clearly involved in the ideal that we have tentatively 
 adopted, which recognizes the union of social and individual 
 gain arising from a division of the working day into two 
 portions, one in which routine work is done for direct 
 public ends, the other being given to the free exercise of 
 individual interests and desires. Whether we follow the 
 progressive realization of this social ideal, or regard social 
 progress as still dependent upon the specialization of certain 
 definite official classes, there is no reason to charge the kind 
 of socialism which limits public activity to routine work 
 with encroaching upon individuality or reducing the quantity 
 or the proportions of human time and energy available for 
 private interests and occupations.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 UNEMPLOYMENT AND MISEMPLOYMENT 
 
 " How to secure for every man a man^s share of what goes 
 on in life" is the great question, as George Eliot presents 
 it through the mouth of Felix Holt. Our investigation of 
 the Social Question has consisted in large measure of a 
 diagnosis of the faults in the structure and working of 
 modern industrial societies which prevent every man 
 getting his full manhood realized. In our opening state- 
 ment we deemed it most profitable to approach social 
 progress as a progressive economy of waste. 
 
 It will now be serviceable briefly to summarize and set 
 in order the results of our inquiry into this economy from 
 the standpoint of society. 
 
 This waste, as represented in individual lives, has its 
 quantitative and its qualitative aspects, and these have 
 separate though related application to the two sides of life 
 which we distinguish as work and enjoyment, using the 
 latter term in its full rational and not in its narrow hedonist 
 sense. 
 
 The waste of quantity of labour-power gives us the 
 industrial maladies of unemployment and under-employ- 
 ment. Large stores of labour-power are either not utilized 
 by society for the production of wealth, or are kept as 
 a wastefully large reserve to be drawn upon in certain 
 emergencies. There are not a few economists who, taking 
 for granted the necessity of wide fluctuations in the volume 
 
 248
 
 UNEMPLOYMENT AND MISEMPLOYMENT 249 
 
 of industry, insist that modern industry will not work with- 
 out "a margin" of unemployed in normal times. They 
 fail, however, to perceive that the existence of this large 
 unemployed margin is, if not the "efficient" cause, at any 
 rate a necessary condition of the very fluctuations which 
 are adduced to give an economic justification of the waste. 
 This vicious circle of reasoning prevents them from con- 
 fronting the real economic issue viz. why it is that the 
 volume of production and employment is not normally 
 maintained at the full amount which short periods of trade 
 prosperity show to be possible. For unemployment is not 
 merely a labour question ; it is a question of the simultaneous 
 existence of large quantities of unemployed productive power 
 of all descriptions in labour, land, and capital. The activity 
 of industry which prevails for a short ferm in every decennial 
 period might be maintained through the entire term of 
 years ; there is no lack of productive power to secure this 
 steady maintenance of volume. As all men of wide business 
 experience are aware, the check comes from the side of con- 
 sumption. In the accepted economic theory of our text- 
 books there is nothing to explain why it should be more 
 difficult to sell at a profitable rate than to buy, why a 
 general slackening of production should be constantly 
 occurring, or why gluts of loanable capital in the money 
 market should attest the inability to find sound investments. 
 These undeniable industrial phenomena are only different 
 ways of testifying that production tends to outrun consump- 
 tion. The vast and rapid increase of the productive powers 
 of modern societies, adopting machinery and improved 
 methods of manufacture and transport, seems to be 
 attended hitherto by a slower rate of increase of con- 
 sumption of commodities. Since some one obviously 
 possesses the power to consume whatever is or can be 
 produced, and since the desire to consume seems also un- 
 limited, many thinkers, flying in the face of facts, deny
 
 250 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 the existence of under-consumption as a social phenomenon. 
 They fail to understand that, though an isolated economic 
 man would never under-produce or over-produce, but would 
 alsvays preserve an accurate adjustment between the quantity 
 of work he did and his quantity of consumption, the condition 
 of a modern industrial society, in which not the organic 
 interest of the whole society but the separate self-interest 
 of individual cells is the stimulus to and the determinant 
 of the quantity of production, affords no such guarantee of 
 accurate adjustment. 
 
 Our investigation into certain abuses of the natural law 
 of property discloses a priori reasons to suspect that these 
 maladj ustments between rate of production and rate of con- 
 sumption will occur, and suggests a natural explanation of 
 them. Since some one possesses the power to consume 
 whatever can be produced, what we have to explain is 
 the unwillingness of some who possess this power to make a 
 full and regular use of it. The phenomenon of " unearned 
 elements of income" offers such an explanation. Nature, 
 as we have seen, provides a just balance of work and enjoy- 
 ment, in exacting that an output of energy shall be attended 
 by a corresponding " intake " through consumption. In 
 other words, where incomes are earned there exists a natural 
 guarantee that they will be used for consumption. This, 
 of course, does not preclude a reasonable distribution of 
 consumption and such measure of present " saving " as will 
 provide for future progress in consumption. But where 
 incomes are " unearned," and come to a man in ways which 
 we have recognized as " unnatural " or " miraculous," 
 acquired by luck, craft, force, gift, or other ways that 
 imply no previous corresponding personal effort, no such 
 guarantee of natural use or consumption exists. On the 
 contrary, it appears natural that part, at any rate, of the 
 power of consumption thus conferred should be withheld. 
 The economic power given through " unearned incomes " is,
 
 UNEMPLOYMENT AND MISEMPLOYMENT 251 
 
 we have seen, a power to live parasitically, and this power 
 is injurious not merely to society, upon whom such persons 
 prey, but to the parasites themselves. If they make 
 full economic use of such power, they tend to degenerate 
 not only morally, but physically, approaching the diseased 
 condition of the slave-owning ants, who cannot even feed 
 themselves, and die of starvation if unattended. The 
 degree of rationality possessed by them as men prevents 
 most persons, who are economically able to live this 
 absolutely non-producing all-consuming life, from availing 
 themselves of their full power. We have seen that sport 
 and other amateur activities are devised as work-substitutes, 
 which shall enable them to evade the injury they would 
 sustain by eating without exercise. But these safeguards 
 are often insufficient ; they cannot, even with these sub- 
 stitutes for work, use all the consuming power arising from 
 their unearned incomes without conscious injury. Much 
 injury they do, in fact, incur by expenditure upon excessive 
 luxury. But common sense, or a certain nausea and sense 
 of satiety which nature provides as a check upon excess, 
 sets some restrictions even upon luxurious expenditure, and 
 impels the wealthy classes to an amount of "saving," or 
 withholding of the power of consumption, which grows 
 with every increase in the elements of "unearned incomes" 
 and in the number of their recipients. It is this with- 
 holding of power of consumption by certain classes of in- 
 dividuals that constitutes the maladjustment, from the 
 social standpoint, between power of production and current 
 rate of consumption, and which brings about a larger aggre- 
 gate of saving than is economically needed to maintain 
 capital which assists in supplying goods for current con- 
 sumption. An adequate psychology of the millionaire 
 would furnish overwhelming evidence of the correctness of 
 this judgment. What Mr. J. J. Astor said of himself is 
 true of his class : " I can do nothing with my income but
 
 252 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 buy more land, build more houses, and lend money on 
 mortgage. In short, I am found with the necessaries of 
 life, and more than that I cannot get out of my money."" 
 This holds good, not only of a handful of financial or com- 
 mercial princes, but of a considerable class of wealthy men 
 in every industrial community. After the necessaries, and 
 even the luxuries, of life are provided, a vast surplus remains, 
 the expenditure of which is not prompted by any sufficient 
 desire of enjoyment ; such surplus is self-accumulative, and 
 seeks investment. Now, since the actual field of sound 
 investment at any given time is limited by the rate of 
 present or immediately prospective consumption (invest- 
 ments for remote uses being extremely restricted), there is 
 an excessive pressure upon this area of investment. Any 
 individual, of course, may " make good " all his savings ; 
 but he will do so by "making bad" the savings of some one 
 else. A certain quantity of bad or futile " savings " is thus 
 inevitable, and it takes two forms : (i) Passing into the 
 form of " watered capital," or into the stock of some bogus 
 or unsound company, the " savings " become " the consuming 
 power" of some other individuals, who may use them to 
 increase their consumption, or, in their turn, receiving them 
 as " unearned income," may try to find a sound investment 
 for them. (2) They may lie idle in the hands of bankers 
 as loanable capital, only to be called into social service 
 at periods of booming trade. Lying thus, they represent 
 a power of production which might be used, but is not. 
 
 In fine, the unemployment, or under-production, which is 
 of frequent and general occurrence, is the natural and neces- 
 sary result of an under-consumption which is derived from 
 a severance between the power to consume and the desire 
 to consume. Excessive or unearned incomes remove the 
 power to consume from those who have the desire to con- 
 sume, and place it in the hands of those who do not, and 
 in the order of nature cannot, fully use this power. We
 
 UNEMPLOYMENT AND MISEMPLOYMENT 253 
 
 have seen why they cannot use it simply because it is not 
 " their property," but belongs either to some other individuals 
 from whom it is "sweated" by some power of monopoly, 
 or to society, which has earned it by social work, but failed 
 to claim it for social uses. The cure for the quantitative 
 decrease of un- or under-employment thus consists in a 
 progressive policy which shall restore these " unearned " 
 elements to those who have earned them, and can, therefore, 
 use them. 
 
 This policy is embodied in two movements. The move- 
 ment which seeks, through law, working-class organization, 
 and public opinion, to increase the proportion of the con- 
 suming power which passes, in higher wages or in increased 
 leisure, to the working classes, is one means of readjust- 
 ment. For the larger income of the workers, being earned 
 by labour on the one hand, and needed for the satisfaction 
 of a growing number of strong legitimate desires on the 
 other hand, will be chiefly used in raising the volume of 
 current consumption. Such saving as takes place here will 
 chiefly be saving for definite purposes of increased provision 
 for personal consumption in the near future, and, as such, 
 will be not only individually, but socially, justified by 
 economic results. This transfer of increased power of con- 
 sumption from the non-workers to the workers will raise 
 the social volume of consumption of commodities and will 
 (pace the dead dogma that " demand for commodities is not 
 a demand for labour") raise to a corresponding extent the 
 normal value of production and employment. Since it will 
 be employed, not chiefly upon the satisfaction of capricious 
 wants, but in a general rise of the common standard of 
 comfort, it will not only increase the volume, but will steady 
 the character, of production and employment. 
 
 The other line of progressive policy, consisting in the 
 " socialization " of such industries as, left in private hands, 
 yield " monopoly " rents or profits, or in the increased
 
 254 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 taxation of large or " unearned v incomes, will, in the hands 
 of an enlightened community, likewise tend to a healthy 
 readjustment of production and consumption, such as will 
 secure full and regular employment for all workers. For an 
 enlightened community, recognizing the growing social 
 needs, will continually use its enlarging income from State 
 monopolies and from taxation to raise the standard of 
 public consumption, by providing a fuller, richer, and more 
 complex social life, as well as by furnishing such support and 
 aid to the weaker members of society as is held to be con- 
 sistent with a true interpretation of social utility. 
 
 Upon the qualitative defect of misemployment it is need- 
 less to dwell in this summary. Though the waste it implies 
 has never received adequate recognition, its existence and its 
 main direct causes are not disputed. Not merely is there a 
 waste of energy arising from occasional failure to get the 
 right man or woman into the right place ; the truth rather 
 is that there are few, if any, men and women doing exactly 
 the work for society which they ought to be doing, and 
 doing it in the best way which modern resources render 
 possible. Society suffers waste, sometimes more, sometimes 
 less, in the case of every one of us. Public education, at 
 once more liberal, more discriminative, and more technical, 
 can do much. But the most perfect education conceivable 
 would not, of itself, stop the social waste of misemployment. 
 Even if to equality of education we added such equality of 
 other distinctively economic opportunities as enabled each 
 man or woman freely to choose his or her work, we should 
 even then be faced by the fact that free individual selection, 
 guided by self-interest, would not secure the full public 
 economy. The added self-interest of each man does not 
 constitute the collective organic interest of society ; to 
 suppose it does involves one more return to the false 
 " monadism " which we abandoned in setting up a standard 
 of "social utility." Society must exercise a supreme and
 
 UNEMPLOYMENT AND MISEMPLOYMENT 255 
 
 direct control over the choice of work of individuals, so 
 far as that work is to be directly devoted to those 
 routine services which we have recognized as the right 
 contribution of individual members of a well-ordered society. 
 How society may proceed towards the realization of such 
 adequate control is no part of our inquiry here. Just in pro- 
 portion as socialization of routine work advances by the 
 natural and necessary steps I have indicated, we shall, of 
 course, obtain that public selection and discrimination of 
 workers which is needed to secure right employment in the 
 public interest. Misemployment of time or energy in that 
 large department of life left to individual control, and 
 designed for direct cultivation and expression of individuality, 
 will always remain part of the inevitable risk and cost of 
 individual progress, and will only be diminished by a higher 
 attainment of rationality and of social feeling among 
 individuals.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE NEED OF A SOCIOLOGY 
 
 PRESERVING our convenient antithesis, we must set against 
 the social waste of unemployment and misemployment the 
 related waste of unenjoyment and misenjoyment. Social 
 teachers modern economists in particular, ignoring or 
 slighting the direct human uses of good work, have pro- 
 fessed peculiarly to study the interests of the consumer; 
 yet they have seldom recognized or understood the 
 enormous waste of the social fund of enjoyment. Not by 
 calm philosophical diagnosis, but more frequently by the 
 pungent revelation of some detailed casual experience of 
 life, is the appalling size and significance of this "waste" 
 brought home to us. Some miserable group of half-starved, 
 animal-faced children, playing in a city slum ; a row of 
 stolid-featured labourers, sitting on the wall outside the 
 public-house on Sunday waiting for the opening hour; the 
 garish vulgarity of a crowded music-hall; the dull, joyless, 
 and unsuccessful " home " of an " unskilled " labourer's 
 wife SU ch glimpses force us to feel how little the mass of 
 the people appear to get out of life. Thus stimulated to 
 wider reflection, we recognize how little the vast command 
 over the resources of nature and of the intellectual world, 
 gained by recent generations, has enabled us to raise the 
 general standard of life. A large majority of the people of 
 England do not, in fact, possess the opportunity of a life 
 in which a reasonable supply of physical necessaries and 
 
 256
 
 THE NEED OF A SOCIOLOGY 257 
 
 comforts, education, leisure, and the external means of 
 wholesome recreation and intellectual enjoyment are secured. 
 Individuals, and even special classes of the people by the 
 possession of unusual skill or energy, by good fortune, or 
 by some particular conjunction of economic forces have 
 been able to raise considerably their standard of life, though 
 the lack of well-directed education has generally impaired 
 the quality of such standard by base forms of misenjoyment. 
 For the rest, civilization has hitherto done little even to 
 increase their opportunities of animal enjoyment. Upon 
 the bad physical foundation of large city life is erected a 
 meagre, ugly, and unsafe standard of enjoyment. 
 
 It cannot be otherwise, granting the economic con- 
 ditions which at present underlie the distribution of wealth. 
 The excessive power of enjoyment which passes by economic 
 force into the control of certain members of the community, 
 and which we have seen to be in large measure wasted, 
 necessitates a corresponding lack of enjoyment in others ; 
 while the direct and indirect results of abuses of this power 
 are manifested in converting the enjoyment of wealth into 
 the misenjoyment of "illth." 
 
 The special forms of this waste need not here detain us ; 
 all we are concerned with is the recognition of the existence 
 of this quantitative and qualitative waste of life corresponding 
 with, and causally related to, the waste of work. 
 
 A radical method of social reform, based upon direct 
 regard to social utility, will find itself confronted by the 
 necessity of probing every one of these problems of waste 
 to a double root. The practical problems of the art of 
 social reform have one root in physiology, one is psychology. 
 A sane standard of work on the one hand, or of enjoyment 
 on the other, can only be achieved by social reforms based 
 ultimately on these related studies. It may finally come to 
 pass that physiology and psychology will be resolved into 
 one science. At present it is best to respect their frontiers, 
 
 s
 
 258 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 " unscientific " as they may appear to be. One or two 
 brief illustrations of this need of scientific inquiry are here 
 in place. The question of an eight-hours' day is reckoned 
 a distinctively "economic 11 question; but its real issues, 
 both direct and indirect, involve the most delicate inter- 
 actions of physical and mental forces. The direct issue 
 underlying the question of economic feasibility is the 
 question whether a shortening of hours will be attended 
 by an intensification of labour ; whether such intensification 
 is either possible or desirable depends partly upon physical 
 conditions of the compressibility of labour-power, partly 
 upon the operation of the desire of increased leisure, with 
 intenser effort, upon the will. These forces, obviously 
 related in their action, will be of different powers in 
 different trades and for different grades of workers. Equally 
 important is the indirect issue, the effect of increased leisure 
 upon the habits of a class, upon " the standard of life," 
 and so, by reaction, upon efficiency of labour. The 
 rashness of the confident opinions commonly expressed as 
 to the way in which "the working classes," lumped to- 
 gether as a homogeneous mass, will use their increased 
 leisure is a pitiable exhibition of the incapacity of the 
 average man to handle a social question by the light of 
 nature and crude personal experience. A similar double 
 root, with wide ramifications, underlies the question of 
 "the economy of high wages." Here the distinctively 
 psychological problem of valuations of various forms of 
 expenditure merges with the inquiry as to the effect of 
 different foods or forms of recreation upon muscular strength, 
 intelligence, and honesty. Even where one of the two re- 
 lated aspects, physical or psychical, seems at first sight domi- 
 nant, the other can easily be seen to exercise powerful unseen 
 influences. Gambling appears at first sight a distinctively 
 psychical disease, until we come to understand the animal 
 craving for reckless relief from the grinding monotony of
 
 THE NEED OF A SOCIOLOGY 259 
 
 mechanized industry, seeking an easy and a not too 
 intellectual outlet; or, carrying the matter further back, 
 the very commercial structure which, in its cardinal work- 
 ings, directly feeds the spirit of speculation will be traced 
 to the physical conditions of industrialism. So, on the 
 other side, the population and the family, the physiological 
 aspects of which are so prominent, are easily made to 
 disclose the psychical forces which affect the rate of 
 marriage, the size and efficiency of the family. It is 
 needless to labour a point which no thoughtful person is 
 likely to deny. 
 
 While, then, all the sciences and arts are tributaries to 
 the science and art of society, physiology and psychology 
 are the direct and conjoined currents of the main in- 
 tellectual stream. For social conduct has as its one direct 
 object the welfare of humanity in work and in life, and 
 physiology and psychology are the studies which bear most 
 immediately upon this theme. 
 
 The hopes of a scientific politics must, then, really depend 
 in large measure upon the progress of these sciences, and 
 the consciously-ordered application to social movements of 
 the truths they attain. This inevitably throws the strain 
 of social progress upon education. There are those who 
 insist that progress always has been unconscious, the in- 
 stinctive groping of blind masses of humanity towards an 
 unknown goal; that rational manipulation or direction of 
 these forces is either futile or undesirable. The main 
 tendency of this view is to emphasize the purely physical 
 side of the world-process ; to insist that pressure of 
 material needs from behind is the only explanation of 
 human conduct; that where the psychical forces appear 
 to exert initiative they are really engineered by physical 
 impulses. Now, this is neither an intelligible self-consistent 
 view, nor does it conform to facts as we know them. If the 
 unity of life is broken up at all into body and mind, there
 
 260 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 is just as much evidence that mind acts upon body as that 
 body acts upon mind ; nor can any assumed priority of the 
 material conditions in time be taken to deny the genuineness 
 of the causal interaction. What we see in the individual 
 organism we also see in the social organism. We may say 
 that in societies the part played by conscious design has 
 been smaller than that played in the case of individual 
 conduct; but nothing depends upon this size measurement. 
 Between the view of Victor Hugo that even the greatest 
 actors on the stage of history, those men who are supposed 
 to mould and dominate the policy of nations, are but waves 
 of the ocean raised into momentary prominence by the wind 
 and the view of Carlyle that "history is the biography 
 of great men" the truth, perhaps, lies midway. The 
 conscious designs of strong individuals have certainly ex- 
 ercised potent direct influences upon the short-range policy 
 of nations ; how far they can direct or deflect the deeper 
 current of the economic forces of a nation is open to 
 question. But no theory which we may adopt as to the 
 relative importance of the individual and the national forces, 
 or of the conscious and the unconscious springs of conduct, 
 impairs the supreme utility of a study of the related 
 sciences of biology and psychology in the work of social 
 reform. For there can be no question but that, in the 
 more developed forms of social life, the conscious adaptation 
 of social forces, whatever form these forces take, is of grow- 
 ing significance. Even though we regard all history as an 
 unfolding of the processes of nature, and rid our philosophy 
 of any idea of purpose other than that which is contained 
 in natural laws, we are bound to admit the ability of natural 
 forces, acting through the human consciousness, to order 
 and economize the play of unconscious forces. The part 
 played by consciousness itself belongs to the natural process, 
 which in all the higher forms of nervous organism becomes 
 more fully conscious. The conception of the modes of social
 
 THE NEED OF A SOCIOLOGY 261 
 
 evolution requires us to assign a growing power to con- 
 sciously-ordered human purposes in individuals and in 
 peoples. There is, therefore, every reason to believe that 
 the growing self-consciousness of nations and other social 
 organisms will play a greater and a greater part in history, 
 and that what we call progress will be more and more 
 determined in pace and character by the capacity which a 
 nation displays for the conscious rational ordering of its 
 resources. 
 
 Thus the supreme condition of social progress is for a 
 society to " know itself." The beginnings of the science of 
 sociology already indicate the insufficiency of the biological 
 study of the individual, and suggests that even on the 
 physical side the social organisms of family, tribe, race, 
 cannot be regarded as mere aggregates of units. On the 
 psychical side, the infant study of folk-psychology already 
 discloses remarkable phenomena of mass-life. The laws of 
 the interactions of minds in the operations of public opinion, 
 in the conduct of such a loose and temporary association as 
 a " crowd " or a public meeting, and in the closer, more 
 durable, and more consciously-ordered associations of a city 
 or a State, are beginning to be seriously studied. These 
 enlargements of the science of human life, pursued simul- 
 taneously and relatedly from the physical and psychical 
 sides, bearing upon every size, form, and quality of social 
 grouping, from the organism of the primitive family to that 
 of the most delicately and consciously-adjusted organism 
 of a great modern State, and the still more intricate and 
 more elusive organism of international or human relations 
 over the world-area, are rapidly transforming the aspect of 
 the Social Question and our understanding of it. If our 
 hopes of social progress rest more and more upon the 
 capacity of societies for the conscious interpretation of 
 social utility, the education of this consciousness through 
 sociology is of supreme importance. This education must
 
 262 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 involve a close and accurate intellectual replica of the 
 entire intricacy of the social processes. The science of 
 sociology thus conceived implies the correlation of a great 
 number of groups of specialist students devoted to the 
 investigation of biological or psychical facts, or their re- 
 lations at some particular point, or from some special focus. 
 This work of specialism is the legitimate individualism of 
 science, always to be checked, adjusted, and rendered scienti- 
 fically fruitful by reference to wider extra-specialist con- 
 ceptions. The weakness of economic, political, and other 
 sociological studies hitherto has consisted in an excess of 
 independence, a lack of organized methods of gathering and 
 arranging the narrower results for wider investigation with 
 the object of attaining the crowning generalizations of 
 sociology. This lack is attributable chiefly to the adoption 
 of a crude notion that inductive science can work alone, 
 unaided by those deductive processes of reasoning termed 
 d priori. The arts of social progress, depending upon the 
 answers to the question, What are the probable net 
 social results over different periods of time of particular 
 changes in social institutions achieved by such and such 
 methods, and at such and such a pace ? can safely rest on 
 no other basis than this scientific sociology. 
 
 Not, indeed, that social reform requires that the majority 
 of citizens shall become expert social scientists ; but such a 
 social science must be in their midst in such a way that the 
 practical statesmen, the journalists, preachers, teachers, and 
 other leaders of public opinion, may be deeply and syste- 
 matically informed by it, so that sound information and 
 sound modes of thinking may in various degrees, by many 
 channels, percolate into the general mind. Thus alone can 
 the social progress of a people become conscious and rational, 
 and, therefore, take at once a faster and a surer pace. 
 
 But, it may be said, this intellectually-enlightened con- 
 sciousness does not of itself suffice for social progress. To
 
 THE NEED OF A SOCIOLOGY 263 
 
 know is one thing, to do another, even where the direct self- 
 interest of a society is concerned. In all social conduct it 
 is necessary to move individuals ; and both the fact and the 
 force of the movement depend upon the presence and the 
 strength of the motive. Sociology may furnish a true art 
 of social progress ; but whether, or how far, a given society 
 will practise that art will depend upon the force which 
 the moral bond of association exercises upon individuals. 
 Social efficiency, for progress, really means the desire of indi- 
 viduals to merge or subordinate their separate ends of indivi- 
 duality, and to act on the supposition that a common social 
 end realized by the individual consciousness, is in itself 
 desirable. Or, adopting another formula which has its uses, 
 it implies a conformity to the " general will " seeking by 
 rational conscious progress the welfare of society regarded 
 as an organized whole. The individual will subserves this, 
 purpose in so far as it consents to subordinate passing 
 caprices and desires to a fuller sense of the part it is 
 capable of bearing in the fulfilment of the larger social 
 purpose. Such conduct of the individual in conformity with 
 the general will is in part a matter of knowledge, in part 
 of rational self-control. But whatever stress may be laid 
 upon moral choice, it is clear that such a science of sociology, 
 as is here advocated, will have importance in as much as it 
 can educate the social desires of individuals, by enforcing, 
 through plain causal revelations, the true results of social 
 and unsocial conduct. It can thus release what might 
 be termed the potential forces of sociality in individuals, 
 and economize them for social work. It makes no real differ- 
 ence how much stress we lay upon the understanding, how 
 much in the will, for we cannot in any case assume a fixity 
 in the amount of energy available in the members of a 
 society for social progress. The doctrine of the conserva- 
 tion alike of physical and psychical forces imposes no such 
 limitation as is sometimes suggested. The proportion of
 
 264 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 conscious motive-power in the members of a society that 
 can be directed to distinctively social ends is not limited. 
 It is, to the individual, a matter of desires and preferences. 
 Where the ideas of social causation are weak, where the 
 organic life of society is feebly realized, but little energy 
 will be diverted from private into public channels. But 
 sociology, by the distinctively intellectual operation of 
 enabling individuals to realize society as an elaborate 
 organic interaction of social forms and forces, and so to 
 understand the worth of social conduct, will alter the scale 
 of human values and desires.* Social progress as a conscious 
 process thus depends ultimately upon the store of some 
 common fund of vitality possessed by members of a society, 
 and their willingness to divert a larger or a smaller pro- 
 portion of this power to the conscious attainment of social 
 ends. 
 
 * For a most masterly and subtle analysis of the psychology of the 
 General Will, see Bosanquet's " The Philosophical Theory of the State " 
 (Macmillan).
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 ECONOMY OF INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL LIFE 
 
 IN order to emphasize the supreme need of a rational 
 economy of individual and social life, based on the joint 
 and related studies of physiology and psychology, it may be 
 well to set forth briefly, in more formal order, the chief 
 problems which specifically demand solution. 
 
 The life of an individual man, as a physical process of 
 waste and repair, may be considered to depend primarily 
 upon the intake of serviceable chemical elements in food and 
 the atmosphere ; the services of clothing, shelter, and other 
 material necessaries may be regarded as subsidiary processes, 
 protecting or facilitating the processes of repair of tissue. 
 This intake of food by digestion and assimilation is largely 
 converted into muscular and nervous energy, which may 
 be given out in forms of physical or mental work. This 
 slight reference to what is now becoming a science of hygiene 
 may serve to indicate, not only where the tributary sciences 
 come in, but where the chief defects of economy lie. Foods 
 have been classified according to the proportion of various 
 organic chemical constituents; the chemical needs of the 
 human body are fairly ascertained ; but the kinds and pro- 
 portions of foods which will most easily and securely supply 
 these constituents, even to the normal healthy man, much 
 more to weak or diseased persons, and the relation of different 
 kinds of foods to different kinds of work or functions, are 
 little known. Not merely are the details of wholesome 
 
 265
 
 266 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 standards of diet not scientifically known, but there is no 
 agreement with reference to the proportions in bulk of the 
 general classes of foods nitrogenous, carboniferous, etc. 
 which should be taken by a normal healthy child or adult. 
 How far various forms of animal or of vegetable organisms 
 should be used to impart constituents needed for human 
 repair; how much food should be taken, and at what 
 intervals; what is the net economic use of alcohol or sugar 
 these and similar large general questions have yet found 
 no satisfactory answer. The selection of a standard of diet 
 for a class or a nation has had very little reference to close 
 scientific, or even reasonably empirical, consideration of 
 results ; and, once established as a habit, it is so difficult to 
 change or modify, that abuse of food probably constitutes 
 by far the largest source of waste to which human life is 
 subjected. To some extent original errors in adopting foods 
 are doubtless modified by natural selection, which will adapt 
 the digestive and assimilative organs to the work imposed 
 upon them; but this process of adaption is itself a waste, 
 and is probably quite unequal to the rapidity and complexity 
 of change required to meet modern changes in quantity and 
 quality of food consumption, taken in conjunction with other 
 great alterations of physical environment. It is, for example, 
 at least likely that, as a result of the increase of command 
 over commodities which has come to most English people 
 during this century, excessive consumption of food in general, 
 and in particular of carboniferous foods, and a shortening of 
 intervals between meals, are throwing upon the digestive 
 organs a grave excess of work. Athletes and military 
 officers are working towards the general outlines of an 
 economy of food for certain cruder animal functions; but 
 when we consider the vastly complex specialization of modern 
 life particularly for purposes of manual and intellectual 
 work we shall see how far we stand from a knowledge of 
 the true economy of food.
 
 ECONOMY OF INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL LIFE 267 
 
 The most general classification of a society for industrial 
 and professional purposes, with some recognition of differences 
 of size, age, sex, race, season, climate, will give sufficient 
 complexity to a science of food ; and, when we consider the 
 continual adoption of new elements of food, we shall perceive 
 that a constant struggle against waste is here involved. 
 Beyond certain empirical advice, generally negative in form, 
 the science of food, in its application to individual needs and 
 abnormal states of body, is still in its infancy. 
 
 Apart from waste in the digestive and assimilative pro- 
 cesses, other great wastes in the use of energy derived from 
 food demand recognition. The growth of neurotic diseases in 
 modern civilized communities is the most striking testimony 
 to what is probably the next greatest waste after waste of 
 food. The waste of nervous energy in almost every action of 
 almost every person is considerable, and a special practice 
 of nerve-training is now seeking to recover a lost economy 
 of infant and animal life. To use only the nerves that are 
 wanted for the end in view, and to use only the energy 
 required for these nerves to effect the end, is one of those 
 great economies of life which, lost as an instinctive art, may 
 be recovered as a conscious art. The waste of muscular 
 energy is also considerable, due largely to irregular use and 
 partial atrophy, imposed by certain conditions of civilized 
 life ; though, so far as muscular energy is applied to industry, 
 instinctive processes of selection probably economize it to the 
 utmost. Still, where there is clumsiness or inefficiency of 
 manipulation, waste ensues, and the wide margin of this 
 waste may easily be realized by comparing the method of 
 an amateur and an expert in using a pickaxe or carrying 
 a trunk. 
 
 Economy of nerve and muscle for special industrial pro- 
 cesses belongs, of course, to technical education : it is in the 
 unspecialized processes the free, or leisure side of life that 
 the waste is gravest. The rational man must seriously take
 
 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 his life in hand, and find out how he may best economize or 
 utilize the strictly limited amount of physical energy he gets 
 from the food which he is able to assimilate. Idle and 
 foolish talk is sometimes indulged upon this theme. It is, 
 for instance, suggested that, by varying one^s occupation, 
 one can practically give out an infinity of energy ; or, even 
 if some restrictions are set upon the quantity of muscular or 
 ordinary nervous energy that can be given out in a day, it 
 is suggested that an intellectual man, by mere change of his 
 subject-matter, may escape all quantitative control. This is 
 a dangerous fallacy. Judicious distribution may do much to 
 dispose economically the use of the muscular and nervous 
 energy obtained from food ; it cannot increase the stock, nor 
 can it hypothecate a future stock, without danger. Those 
 who are slowest to recognize that thinking uses up a store 
 of physical energy, and that, though this store may be econo- 
 mized by distribution, it cannot be enlarged, are often 
 taught by harsh experience. Variety of interest and occu- 
 pation can do much, but it cannot create muscular and 
 nervous energy. 
 
 So, while each rational man, with what small aid "science 11 
 can afford, must build up a complex organic diet for himself 
 adapted to his individual needs, and changing as those 
 change, he must similarly work out a complex standard of 
 uses of energy. If he is wise, he will shun exactitude and 
 leave " a broad margin to life, 11 a large proportion of his 
 fund of energy and time unallotted to specific purposes ; 
 the rest he will distribute so as to get the widest variety of 
 exercise consistent with such specialization as is demanded 
 by society, or for some private satisfaction. The same will 
 obviously apply to the use of physical energy for moral or 
 distinctively social purposes. The loose notion that, because 
 " the soul " has the direction or determination of these, 
 they somehow escape the limitation of the body, has no 
 warrant. All conscious employments use up physical
 
 ECONOMY OF INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL LIFE 269 
 
 energy; whether by transmuting it into mental energy, or 
 merely by an accompanying expenditure of energy still 
 physical, makes no difference. 
 
 The smoothness of these platitudes may be broken by 
 one or two illustrations of the great sources of waste in 
 modern life. The torrent of books has come upon the 
 intellectual public with such unforeseen impetuosity as to 
 break down all previously established standards of in- 
 tellectual economy even for " the learned," and the un- 
 trained readers of the million vaguely flounder amid a sea 
 of printed matter. The claims of science and of literature 
 respectively, of the best books against lighter literature, of 
 present interest and utility against past greatness, of the 
 literature of power against the literature of knowledge 
 such great issues ramify and reticulate into a thousand 
 minor ones, not to speak of the crowning difficulty of 
 knowing what is the value of a book for you before you 
 have read it. The intellectual waste of reading the wrong 
 books, or reading the right books in the wrong way, is a 
 topic of common regret among educationalists. But even 
 these fail generally to recognize " the previous question " 
 which underlies the entire economy viz. how much time 
 and energy should be given to books at all. The excessive 
 intake of food and the consequent defective assimilation is 
 in the intellectual economy a twin waste to that which we 
 marked in the physical economy, and proceeds from similar 
 causes. 
 
 A clearer recognition both of the moral and the intel- 
 lectual uses of personal intercourse will probably depose 
 books from the too prominent place they now occupy among 
 the educated classes. Just in proportion as our civilization 
 becomes more qualitative in its arts of production and 
 consumption, the direct stimuli to over-reading will disap- 
 pear with those to over-eating. We shall be more par- 
 ticular in our physical and mental food, and shall give more
 
 270 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 attention to using well what we have got than to getting 
 more. 
 
 In alluding to personal intercourse I touch the deepest 
 and most deplorable waste of life, particularly, perhaps, in 
 the English nation. If our arts of physical and intellectual 
 consumption are yet crude, what shall we say of the social 
 arts? Our boast of the English home and family life will 
 bear no scrutiny even in their grosser material organization ; 
 when we look to the moral or spiritual side, the waste of 
 love and joy in most homes is appalling; some family affec- 
 tion generally exists, but in most instances it is repressed, 
 distracted, or even poisoned by a seeming lack of all finer 
 capacity for sympathy. Since the family is primarily a 
 structure for physical needs, and since the physical simi- 
 larity of its members will often be a positive disqualifica- 
 tion for the more serviceable forms of higher intercourse 
 which will depend upon spiritual communion of unlikes, 
 friendship remains as the truer test of sociality. Emerson 
 and others have well insisted that the greatest wealth of 
 individual life is derived from well-chosen friendship. Yet 
 care in the selection and cultivation of friendship is regarded 
 not merely by the uncultured but by the cultured classes as 
 a matter of indifference, or, even worse, it is deliberately 
 sacrificed to the formation of "useful connections. 11 As a 
 source of wealth and pleasure it is either squandered or 
 ignored, and "advice on choosing friends 11 is consigned to 
 the pedantry of copy-book morality. It is hardly too much 
 to say that for the vast majority of English people friend- 
 ship, in the sense of deep personal attachment and sym- 
 pathy, and as distinct from family affection and familiar 
 acquaintanceship, is an unexplored country. In other 
 words, the notion of cultivating social feelings is not 
 English ; the possibilities of friendship are thrown to chance 
 and propinquity ; the Englishman closes his heart, as 
 he closes his front door, with the conviction that an
 
 ECONOMY OF INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIAL LIFE 271 
 
 Englishman's home is his castle, to be fortified against 
 intruders. 
 
 It would be possible to trace the same source of moral 
 waste further, to show that by weakening the spiritual 
 bonds of neighbourhood it was responsible for the feebleness 
 of civic life, and of the broader humanity which grows out 
 of this. The true order of moral or social forces which 
 shall enable a man to get the most out of his life in the 
 higher planes of living, though it belongs peculiarly to the 
 psychical side of life, is subject to similar laws of economy 
 and waste to those discernible on the physical plane. There 
 is no such real distinction and antithesis of soul and body 
 as it is sometimes convenient to pretend, and for this reason 
 it is that " the laws above are sisters of the laws below." 
 
 When, from these illustrations, we consider the prodigious 
 wastes of human forces for work and life, from the stand- 
 point of individuality alone, we shall perceive that the 
 Social Question is even larger and more complex than at 
 first appeared.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 ECONOMY OF NATIONAL LIFE 
 
 IN the wider form of society nations are the units, and 
 social economy must take cognizance of national life and 
 conduct, using the powers of work and satisfaction in the 
 several nations for the attainment of the greatest human 
 utility. What light does such a general formula throw upon 
 international relations and the practical arts of national 
 politics ? How far do the " natural " laws, regulating the 
 apportionment of work and property among the individual 
 members of a social group, apply to the national members 
 of the great human society ? 
 
 Amid the vague language used even by educated 
 persons regarding the " manifest destiny " of a nation, the 
 "conflict of races," the "subjugation of the less efficient by 
 the more efficient races," and the " opening-up " of back- 
 ward countries to modern industrial civilization, we find 
 scarcely any trace of a clear principle of morality or of 
 utility based upon a general conception of an end of 
 humanity. Yet, unless each nation is to be its own arbiter 
 in its conflicts with another nation, and to be allowed 
 forcibly to impose its private utility as a law of conduct, it 
 is necessary to frame some idea of a common human purpose, 
 to which different nations shall conform, and which shall 
 limit the rights and duties of nations, regulating their 
 relations with one another. 
 
 It is scarcely possible for any one pretending to form a 
 
 272
 
 ECONOMY OF NATIONAL LIFE 273 
 
 rational conception of life to maintain that the rule of 
 brute force embodied in the phrase, "Homo homini lupus" 
 though no longer applicable to individuals, still holds of 
 nations. But, if it does not hold, some standard of human 
 utility must take its place. How slow has been the dawn- 
 ing of any rational conception of humanity, or of any 
 feeling of a need of it, is testified by the current reluctance of 
 statesmen and publicists to confront this issue. Yet many 
 dim signs of its recognition are discernible. Not only 
 England and America, but nations with a somewhat less 
 developed standard of political morality, like Germany and 
 Russia, are no longer content to justify their territorial 
 aggression and their interferences with foreign nationalities 
 on grounds of mere selfish expediency, but profess a certain 
 mission of civilization, insisting, at any rate, that the 
 attainment of their private ends is accompanied by a gain 
 to the world, and, in particular, to the land or the nation 
 which is the object of the encroachment. The British 
 conquest of India, the Russian advance in Central Asia, the 
 opening up of China by the leading European nations, the 
 partition of Africa into "spheres of influence," though 
 motived undeniably in the first instance by the particular 
 commercial or political interests of great "powers," are 
 defended also on the ground that, by spreading "civiliza- 
 tion," they make for the general welfare of the world. 
 
 Now, beyond pointing out a suspicious resemblance 
 which this line of reasoning bears to the exploded argument 
 of the old economists, that an " unseen hand " guides the 
 enlightened selfishness of individual economic men to make 
 for the greatest good of the community, we are not here 
 concerned with the merits of these particular movements. 
 What does concern us is the testimony which the history 
 of modern national movements bears to the need of a 
 scientific sociology. So long as we claimed to rule India 
 because we were stronger, and wanted territory and
 
 274f THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 industrial wealth, no new fundamental issue fraught with a 
 sociological interest arose. But when we claim to rule 
 India for her own good, and to teach her the arts of 
 civilization which shall render her most serviceable to the 
 world, our appeal in form, at any rate is to some rational 
 criterion of humanity in its widest sense. 
 
 It no longer suffices for each nation to claim to be its 
 own arbiter as to the part it shall play in civilizing the 
 world, and as to the spheres of political, industrial, and 
 moral influence over which it seeks to operate. The mere 
 ipse dixit of a nation which professes a mission to annex 
 some portion of the globe, and to break it in for the civili- 
 zation of Christendom, will have little weight in any rational 
 consideration of a world economy. On the other hand, a 
 rigid conservation of existing territorial boundaries is neither 
 historically feasible nor desirable. The utilization of the 
 natural resources of each portion of the globe should be 
 assigned to the people which can most effectively undertake 
 it. This test, it is true, is eagerly accepted by every aggres- 
 sive power, which adduces its very power of conquest as 
 best evidence of the superior efficiency required. So we 
 hear of the " more efficient " and the " less efficient " races ; 
 and it is suggested that it is " the destiny," or even " the 
 mission," of the former to " wipe out " the latter, or to sub- 
 jugate them. But two fallacies plainly underlie this argu- 
 ment. In the first place, efficiency for the purpose in hand 
 is not attested by capacity of conquest, or even by superiority 
 in the present arts of industry. Take the nations of 
 Western Europe by their own valuation, and the whole earth 
 is theirs by indefeasible right, for purposes of industrial 
 exploitation, and for such political control as is essential to 
 secure this object. Such a course is good for the conqueror, 
 good for the conquered, good for everybody ! 
 
 But sociology, even in its dim beginnings, condemns the 
 fallacious simplicity of such a solution. It finds "efficiency 11
 
 ECONOMY OF NATIONAL LIFE 275 
 
 a relative term. The " fittest 1 ' individual in some primitive 
 society might be the man who by force or cunning was most 
 successful in knocking his fellows on the head and taking 
 their property. That form of " fitness " has, however, in 
 most societies yielded place to quite different forms. So in 
 the society of nations we cannot conclude that a nation is 
 absolutely more fit and efficient because it is stronger in war 
 or more advanced in certain arts of industry. Such " fit- 
 nesses" may not be the best tests of a nation's ability to 
 " civilize " another or to develop its material resources ; and 
 to turn the world into a cock-pit for the application of these 
 tests may not be a wise economy of the material and moral 
 powers of humanity. 
 
 Perhaps the most dangerous and common illusion which 
 sociology discovers is the belief that there is one type of 
 civilization equally suitable to all men, all places, and all 
 times. If this were so, it would doubtless be true that every 
 nation more advanced in the development of this civilization 
 ought to give a helping hand to the more backward nations, 
 and by education, or perhaps, even by coercion, endeavour 
 to drive them along the one true path of human destiny 
 towards the goal of a single homogeneous society. But this 
 notion is utterly at variance both with the " theory of evolu- 
 tion" and with the facts of history. Not only have we no 
 warrant for supposing that all " progressive " nations are 
 moving towards a single type of society, but we have every 
 reason for believing this to be impossible. The wide variants 
 of natural environment and of race, reacting constantly one 
 upon the other, oblige us to conceive civilization as " multi- 
 form." No stress need be laid upon any theory of " natural " 
 races ; it suffices that we find deeply marked characters of 
 historic race, physical and psychical, which, whether they 
 be regarded as " original " or entirely as products of their 
 material environment, do tend to express themselves firmly 
 and constantly in widely divergent types of civilization.
 
 276 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 Modern researches have brought out many salient features 
 of national character stamped upon the religion and philo- 
 sophy, the literature and fine arts, of a people, and still 
 more ineffaceably upon their ordinary domestic and social 
 habits. 
 
 How far these roots of national character are to be 
 regarded as physical, how far as psychical, is not important 
 for our present inquiry ; it is enough to adduce the growing 
 weight of sociological testimony to their distinctness and 
 their persistence as common factors underlying all individual 
 differences and surviving all external changes in the life of 
 a people. Le Bon, in his " Psychology of Peoples," finds this 
 common race character to consist in certain few fixed senti- 
 ments or ideas which are virtually permanent, rejecting most 
 attempts at grafting alien sentiments and ideas, and only 
 absorbing kindred ones by the slow process of centuries of 
 education. These qualities, lying deeper down than intel- 
 lectual culture, deeper even than the fine arts, mould the 
 destiny of nations, and are the real ultimate determinants of 
 the work which they can do in the world. 
 
 Now, even if this theory gives too absolute persistency to 
 national character, it is, at any rate, nearer the truth than 
 the shallow current notion that one nation can, in the course 
 of a generation or two, so impose the essential features of 
 its civilization upon the life of a widely alien nation that 
 they will grow and prosper. 
 
 If civilization is multiform, we cannot say that one civi- 
 lization is better than another, only that it is different. 
 Some of these differences, we may expect, will blend and 
 cross without loss of fertility, others will not. This is surely 
 a consistent and a necessary outcome of the teaching of 
 "evolution." There are "specific" differences in civiliza- 
 tions that is to say, differences of such a kind that " cross- 
 ing " is either infertile or leads to degeneracy in the product 
 of the "crossing." It is, perhaps, an unwarranted and a
 
 ECONOMY OF NATIONAL LIFE 277 
 
 speculative suggestion, but is consonant with many known 
 facts, that, where the members of two races do not freely 
 intermarry, the civilizations which they represent cannot 
 merge ; not that intermarriage is essential to the organic 
 union of two civilizations, but that its absence serves to 
 indicate a natural antipathy which is applicable not only to 
 the physical, but to the psychical planes of life. 
 
 Now, it is evident that these considerations have an im- 
 portant bearing on the social utility of those movements of 
 colonization and empire by which nations, advanced in the 
 arts of war and industry, seek to extend these arts and to 
 utilize the resources of other parts of the world. If we take 
 the concrete example of England, and put the question 
 thus, In what way can England best utilize for the welfare 
 of the world her national energy? will she do best to 
 confine herself to the " intensive " and " qualitative " culti- 
 vation of her present territorial resources, or shall she 
 spread her growing population and her political and com- 
 mercial energy over other portions of the globe, and, if so, 
 over what portions ? no reasonable answer can be given 
 that is not based upon consideration of the physiology and 
 psychology of races. 
 
 It might be most " economical " to have confined the 
 energy of the English nation to these islands, cultivating on 
 a small scale the finest arts of political and industrial self- 
 government, and, if necessary, regulating the growth of 
 population, so as to produce a small and highly-qualitative 
 species of humanity. Granting the desirability of an expan- 
 sion of England, that expansion might have been confined 
 to the colonization of territories upon which we could live 
 and work under conditions which did not bring our civiliza- 
 tion into direct contact with other civilizations ; that is to 
 say, we might have confined ourselves to countries with 
 natural conditions not widely different from our own, which 
 were virtually unpeopled. The economy of such expansion
 
 278 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 is evidently sounder and more profitable than one which 
 implies direct contact with large peoples of a different or 
 a "lower" civilization, and in natural conditions widely 
 different from our own. We cannot, of course, predict 
 d priori that it is unprofitable for English civilization to 
 graft itself upon the civilization or the barbarism of an alien 
 race. Such crossing of races and of civilizations might be 
 profitable in the highest degree. It is at least likely that 
 the numerous crossings out of which the existing English 
 race is formed, and the still more numerous and diverse 
 crossings which are making an American race, are chief 
 sources of strength and of capacity for progress. But where 
 races and civilizations are widely divergent, such forced 
 alliances are wasteful and even vain expenditures of energy ; 
 they involve the maintenance of two discordant civilizations 
 upon the same area with attempts at fusion that react 
 detrimentally upon both. If the British occupation of India 
 enabled us to settle permanently in considerable numbers in 
 India, this conflict and its double process of degeneration 
 would become apparent ; as matters actually stand, the utter 
 futility of our attempts to do more than establish certain 
 external and purely superficial signs of British civilization is 
 apparent to all close students of Indian life. The " effective 
 occupation " of China by large numbers of Europeans settling 
 down to live and work would exhibit in even more striking 
 form the impossibility of genuine fusion between widely- 
 divergent civilizations and the wasteful economy of attempt- 
 ing it. The successful exploitation of certain sources of 
 material wealth might, for a time, be taken as tokens of 
 success, and as constituting a service to the world; but a 
 wider range of vision would show that these material gains 
 were purchased by great racial disturbances, which made the 
 price too costly. It is not easy to ascertain how far the 
 opcning-up of Asia and Africa, for purposes of industrialism, 
 can be safely attained ; but if this opcning-up involves a
 
 ECONOMY OF NATIONAL LIFE 279 
 
 serious attempt to impose the deeper essentials of European 
 civilization upon these countries, it can scarcely be denied 
 that the gravest dangers are involved. Such evidence as is 
 available at present affords no prospect of success in grafting 
 the civilization of Western Europe either upon " savage " 
 peoples or upon the ancient civilizations of the Eastern 
 world. " Education " is not merely discovered to be a 
 slower process than we once confidently supposed, but there 
 is reason to believe that such results as are attained belong to 
 comparatively superficial strata of industrial and intellectual 
 life, and do not seriously affect those fundamental sentiments 
 and ideas which are the roots of national character. 
 
 When it is admitted that civilization is not uniform, but 
 multiform, and that its various forms are largely determined 
 by the extremely slow and gradual interaction between 
 natural environment and racial character, so that both that 
 character and the civilization through which it finds expres- 
 sion may be regarded as in large measure a product of the 
 environment, profound modifications must take place in the 
 policies by which the civilized nations of Europe seek 
 " expansion."" 
 
 How far should our energies be directed to intensive, 
 how far to extensive, cultivation ? In what directions may 
 we most profitably expand, so as to avoid the waste of energy 
 which comes from public attempts to unite with, or to replace, 
 other civilizations, and the fatal reaction of such waste upon 
 our national life ? These questions a " world-economy " 
 requires should be confronted and answered by such light 
 as science and history can bring. A social unit, whether it 
 be a city or a nation, must be deemed to possess at any 
 given time a certain amount of energy. How to employ that 
 energy over an area which is neither too small nor too large, 
 so as to yield the largest and most satisfactory result in work 
 and life, is an aspect of the Social Question which it is the 
 business of every society to put and to answer as best it can.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 THE RANGE AND AREA OF "SOCIAL UTILITY " 
 
 IT may have occurred to some who have followed this treat- 
 ment of the Social Question that too little consideration has 
 been given to history. This has been due to no desire to 
 depreciate the importance of "the historical method," but 
 arises from the strict limits I have felt it necessary to set 
 upon my task. Although, in the course of the treatment, 
 some definite attempts have been made to mark out more 
 clearly the lines along which social progress must be sought, 
 particularly in relation to the fundamental economic pro- 
 blems, my main object has been, not to fill in the exact 
 contents of the art of social progress, but rather to find the 
 laws of that art. In other words, I have sought to give a 
 clearer setting to the social problem by marking its chief 
 economic and psychical conditions, rather than to offer a 
 solution which should be of immediate service to the prac- 
 tical politician or social reformer. In establishing the 
 supreme claim of social utility as the ideal and the practical 
 criterion, and in discussing some of the laws of social utility 
 in relation to the " rights " of individuals and societies, both 
 in their material and moral aspects, I have rather assumed 
 than stated the contribution which history must make to 
 the contents of that social utility as it is understood at any 
 time and in any place. By thus doing, I have given to the 
 standard social utility a vagueness and an apparent unreality, 
 
 280
 
 RANGE AND AREA OF "SOCIAL UTILITY" 281 
 
 \vhich qualities do not, of course, attach to it in actual life. 
 All the larger abstract terms which it is necessary to employ 
 in getting any wide conception of social conduct, " greatest 
 happiness of the greatest number," " realization of the cosmic 
 purpose," etc., are necessarily lacking in substance, unless and 
 until history fills in the concrete facts. So with "social 
 utility." For a statesman or any common citizen in England 
 to-day its worth and meaning as a vital principle will evi- 
 dently depend in large measure upon the grasp of present 
 and past fact which history discloses. The contents of social 
 utility to him will become "real" and valid for conduct, just 
 in proportion as knowledge of facts and of the laws of facts 
 enables him to construct a feasible future in accordance with 
 true principles of continuity. He will know what is possible, 
 what is probable, in the future, from his knowledge of the 
 past. If he has made history into an organic science, the 
 full form and contents of social utility, at any given range 
 and area, may even be deemed a direct product of historical 
 study. But two considerations of great importance enter 
 here. The history by means of which a social ideal of utility 
 shall receive substance transcends the common acceptance of 
 the term " history." It is no longer the accurate presentation 
 of fact, but something which is really different namely, facts 
 ordered and interpreted. This process of ordering and inter- 
 pretation is, in the last resort, the work not of the specialist 
 historian or the statistician (who is a quantitative historian), 
 but of the " philosopher." The notion that a social science 
 capable of yielding an art of social progress can be formed 
 upon inductive lines by setting a number of persons to study 
 facts, and then by ordering these facts and extracting their 
 common measures in laws and tendencies, is the futile 
 product of an incapacity to think clearly upon the condi- 
 tions of science. The laws or principles needed for the 
 selection, the ordering, and the interpretation of concrete 
 facts of history cannot be got out of these facts themselves,
 
 282 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 but must be imposed by a process which, at any rate rela- 
 tively to these facts, is a priori. 
 
 The failure to recognize this adequately, and the conse- 
 quent disparagement of " philosophy " by many students of 
 " history " and many practical reformers, is a grievous source 
 of intellectual waste which is visible in defective correlation 
 of intellectual forces. Whether the principles of order and 
 interpretation required to utilize historic study are them- 
 selves reached inductively by prior study of historic facts is 
 a question which would lead us back into one of the great in- 
 tellectual " impasses " viz. the statement of the true relations 
 between the " forms " and the " contents " of thought, which 
 need not concern us here. It is sufficient that, for the 
 purpose of the statesman or the common citizen, conceptions 
 which in relation to his facts are a priori are essential. To 
 him there must be a "telos" which cannot be extracted 
 directly and wholly from the concrete experience at his 
 command, but which yet must be moulded into general con- 
 sistency with that experience. Social principles can never 
 be "ground out" of history in the almost mechanical way 
 which the pure inductionist requires. If history really did 
 " repeat itself,"" this might in some sense be done. But it is 
 only to the superficial view that " history," in the objective 
 meaning of the term, repeats itself; a closer view always dis- 
 closes differences beneath apparent " repetition, 11 and the more 
 minute the investigation the greater the variety and number 
 of these differences. This study of facts always discloses " the 
 many, 11 never " the one " ; yet, if there is to be a " science of 
 history, 11 it will consist in this very discovery of the " one, 11 
 the " unity, 11 the " laws " of action, which induction alone is 
 impotent to disclose. Indeed, one must go further, and insist 
 that the mere historical researcher and the mere statistician 
 are everywhere incapable of the processes of induction on 
 which they rely. Induction implies and uses conceptions of 
 uniformity in nature which are imposed a priori. It is not
 
 RANGE AND AREA OF "SOCIAL UTILITY 1 ' 283 
 
 too much to say that, without some large principles which 
 are a priori, and may for convenience be called philosophic 
 (since they must ultimately depend upon a conception of 
 "order in the universe," with which philosophy is primarily 
 concerned), history becomes a mere chaotic accumulation of 
 unordered and, therefore, unintelligible facts, while statistics 
 is really what some of its enemies have described it le 
 mensonge en cliiffres. 
 
 Even if we take an ordered view of history, and accord 
 to it the important place it must occupy in forming and 
 correcting the conceptions of human life which are needed by 
 the social utilitarian, another caution is required. Even when 
 history is rightly used so as to yield laws and "principles," 
 it can never satisfy the needs of the statesman or the social 
 reformer. The knowledge of the past, even ordered and 
 philosophically treated, cannot suffice as a guide to social 
 utility. Although deeper study gives a new meaning to 
 "history repeats itself" by the discovery of these laws, the 
 laws cannot suffice for conduct. This is why the " armchair" 
 economist or philosopher is commonly found to bd the enemy 
 of progress. He finds quite correctly that knowledge of the 
 past does not justify the steps of progress he is called upon 
 to take in the present. The authority of past experience 
 always weighs heavily against important reforms. For " con- 
 duct" is always concerned with the unknown, and always 
 involves "risks." The social reformer must take risks, and 
 cannot even often know what t>r how great risks he is taking. 
 To refuse to take these risks is not even conservatism or 
 stagnation ; it is necessary retrogression or decline, processes 
 which, ex hypothcsi, involve even graver risks. For things 
 do not stand still, and, if we refuse to budge, the current of 
 events flows by us. Man set for conduct must act, and a 
 moral rational man must act by a standard of social utility, 
 which is the creation of his own constructive imagination 
 acting upon the material of experience furnished him by
 
 284 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 history. Just in proportion as his mind is enriched by this 
 true philosophy of history will he form strong ideals of social 
 utility, and follow them with that confidence which is the 
 shortest and, therefore, the most economical path to success. 
 Every one of the separate questions into which the Social 
 Problem breaks must be informed by special flows of ordered 
 fact from channels of historic inquiry ; but the gathering of 
 these questions back into their unity, which is necessary in 
 order to understand their organic interaction, and, therefore, 
 to deal safely and profitably with any one of them, will 
 transcend the study of "history," and will belong to "a 
 sociology " which cannot be deferred on the ground that " it 
 is so difficult," because no social conduct can be rationally 
 ordered without it. 
 
 The question of area and focus introduces different con- 
 siderations. It is impossible so to cast our conception of 
 social utility as to include all humanity for all time ; the 
 wisest and most cosmopolitan of statesmen must take a 
 shorter view and a narrower area than this. Every one 
 knows more about himself and his own immediate interests 
 than about the interests of his city ; more about the interests 
 of his city than about those of his nation ; and more about 
 the interests of his nation than about those of humanity. So 
 far as this is so, where no clash between the stronger narrow 
 areas of interest and the weaker, broader areas is discernible, 
 he is rationally justified in devoting a larger portion of his 
 energy to securing the more definite and confined interests. 
 Such are the special claims of civism and patriotism. But 
 the wiser he becomes, the more enlightened will be his view 
 of his own interests and those of the narrower social areas 
 and, with each increase of enlightenment, the identification 
 of his narrower self with the larger social self to which he 
 belongs by nature and by reason will be clearer and closer ; 
 so the proportion of the energy he rightly devotes directly 
 to the welfare of the wider areas will advance. This is.
 
 RANGE AND AREA OF "SOCIAL UTILITY " 285 
 
 however, but in part a matter of comparative knowledge; 
 more largely a matter of sympathy. The narrowly selfish 
 man must chiefly seek his individual well-being, because he 
 knows no other and feels no other. The man who is more 
 truly cognizant of the interests of his wider self in his city, 
 his nation, and humanity, will naturally give more energy to 
 the realization of the wider ends, because they are relatively 
 more important to him, alike by knowledge and by sym- 
 pathy, than they are to the ignorant and self-engrossed man. 
 The same is true of the time-focus. A man who cannot see 
 beyond the present or whose vision of the future rapidly 
 vanishes into complete darkness, will labour chiefly for the 
 present good of his small area of social sympathy, caring 
 little for immediate posterity, nothing for remote posterity. 
 A thoughtful man, well stocked with knowledge of the past, 
 and able better to forecast the future, and so to enter into 
 vital sympathy with future generations, will estimate their 
 welfare higher in comparison with the welfare of the present. 
 Economists have realized this in their theory of the "dis- 
 count " of future goods, and the rudest sociology regards as 
 one of the most crucial tests of high civilization the larger 
 foresight and forethought it brings. Each focus in social 
 area or in time has its own standard of utility. It is difficult 
 to say how far these differences of focus belong to the intel- 
 lectual, how far to the emotional, faculties of man. The 
 operations of the two are here, as elsewhere, organically 
 related. 
 
 The value of these trite remarks consists in the light 
 they throw upon different theoretical and practical views 
 of every social question. Every radical difference of judg- 
 ment rests upon the basis of a difference in valuation. 
 Primarily these appear as temperamental. A only sees and 
 cares for the immediate interests of himself and his family, 
 conceiving these interests in terms of narrow material gain ; 
 B sees and cares for the material interests of the present
 
 286 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 generation of his countrymen is a typical patriot; C is a 
 human-hearted man, of wider vision, taking mankind for 
 his social area, and thinks and feels in centuries a philan- 
 thropist in the sane sense. You cannot make A and B 
 and C see any proposed course of conduct alike, because of 
 their wide discrepancy of valuation resting upon a double 
 difference of focus. It is primd facie a difference of indi- 
 vidual character and feeling. But even could you increase 
 the range of vision of A and B to that of C, you still could 
 not secure uniformity of judgment and of effort, for there 
 would still remain that difference of soul, or character, 
 ingrained in the individual nature, and to all appearance 
 ineradicable, which would still keep their valuations different. 
 How much is this elemental factor of temperament an ob- 
 stacle to common sympathy and common action, or how far 
 can these apparently radical differences be overcome by 
 education? Here is the root-problem of psychology, which 
 is of supreme interest for students of social reform. Much 
 how much we cannot tell can be done by social education 
 to enlarge the range of vision in both directions, as well as 
 to quicken the sympathy. But, because social utility has for 
 every man a different intellectual and emotional content, and 
 must even widely fluctuate with his feelings and experience, 
 it is none the less a real standard of conduct. So with the 
 social group, the city, or nation, the organized reason and 
 goodwill of the community have, at any given time, a fairly 
 definite range in area and duration. Its definitencss and 
 efficiency for conduct at any moment will largely depend 
 upon the coherence and consistency of the individual units 
 which contribute to it; but, just in proportion as a city or 
 a state consciously pursues a policy, it does so by virtue of 
 possessing some working standard of social utility. 
 
 It is precisely at this point that we perceive the ultimate 
 dependence of all social reform upon factors in individual 
 character which are, as operative forces, psychical. The
 
 RANGE AND AREA OF "SOCIAL UTILITY" 287 
 
 Social Question finds, perhaps, its clearest unity in that 
 common education of the intelligence and goodwill of the 
 citizen which, by enlarging the area and extending the 
 time-range of social utility for all citizens alike, tends to 
 assimilate their private valuations, and so gives increased 
 definiteness, coherence, and strength to the public standard 
 and the public policy. An organic social policy will be 
 strong precisely in proportion as it expresses the enlightened 
 and enlarged common sense and common feeling of the 
 many. 
 
 Every social reform or palliative which, by raising, even 
 for a time, the general level, economic or intellectual, of 
 " the majority,' 1 tends to establish more solidly this common 
 standard, makes for progress. Since all effective reforms will 
 be the expressions of the organic life of the social whole, the 
 smallest elevation of the common standard of character and 
 life will be more effectual for true economy than a much 
 larger elevation of the standard of a class or of favoured 
 individuals. 
 
 This is the truth which underlies the distrust felt by 
 many of the machinery of politics. Society as an organism 
 must be animated by a common moral and intellectual life, 
 vested in individuals who are working in conscious co-opera- 
 tion for a common end, if any substantial progressive economy 
 of social life is to be attained. Turning to concrete politics 
 as one large instrument of social reform, we are faced at 
 every turn by this question : " You say that the collective 
 action of municipalities and States must be enlarged, that 
 their control of industries and their administration of pro- 
 perty must be extended. How is the municipality or the 
 State to be made an effective instrument for such work?" 
 Everywhere the problem drives back into the region of 
 individual character and motive. A well-planned mechanism 
 of democracy, with just forms of political and industrial 
 government, may be rendered quite ineffective by the inability
 
 288 THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 
 
 of the community to control a selfish bureaucracy. This is, 
 in fact, everywhere the crux of democracy. It cannot be 
 securely overcome by the most carefully-balanced series of 
 constitutional checks. The ultimate good working of such 
 a democracy will depend upon the intelligence and goodwill 
 which the private citizens bring to bear upon the public life, 
 and upon the existence of corresponding qualities and senti- 
 ments in the public servants. Only in proportion as civic 
 life is so strengthened and so informed by common concep- 
 tions of social utility that the classes which are specialized 
 for official work remain in deep and genuine sympathy with 
 the body of citizens so that the welfare of the community, 
 and not the running of an official machine, is the leading 
 motive in their work ; while the ordinary citizen directs his 
 intelligence and his goodwill towards public affairs so as to 
 feel that he can truly exercise some influence upon their 
 administration do the moral conditions of sound social 
 economy exist. The forms and institutions of a State and 
 a society should be so shaped and so sized as to render this 
 free and effective play of moral and intellectual forces 
 possible.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Absentees, 116 
 
 Abstract rights, 153 
 
 Academic Socialists, 200 
 
 Adam Smith, 18, 21, 28, 178, 227 
 
 Aerated Bread Company, 137 
 
 Africa, partition of, 273 
 
 Agriculture, decay of, 17 
 
 Allowance, system of, 36, 56, 63 
 
 Anarchists, 123 
 
 Anarchy, 123 
 
 Arlidge, Dr., 120 
 
 " Armchair " thinkers, 283 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, 36 
 
 Art of social progress, 2G3 
 
 , work of, 108 
 
 products, 109, 111 
 
 Artist, work of, 181 
 
 , motive of, 108, 109 
 
 Arts and Professions, Socialism in 
 
 the, Bk. ii. ch. xv. 
 
 Aspects of the Social Problem, 150, 151 
 Astor, Mr. J. J., 251 
 Athens, 126, 148 
 Axiomata media, 94 
 
 B 
 
 Ball, Mr. S., 199 
 
 Barbadoes, History of the, 124 
 
 Barbarism, 278 
 
 Bechuanaland, 13 
 
 Bellamy, 205 
 
 Bengal, 124 
 
 Bentham, 2, 5 
 
 Benthamite utilitarianism, 64 
 Billingsgate, 42 
 Bimetallism, 18 
 Birmingham trades, 137 
 Birth-rate, 206 
 Bonanza farming, 193 
 Bookmakers, 120 
 Booth, Charles, 83, 203 
 Bosanquet, Dr. B., 135, 150, 199 
 Brain-workers, 119 
 Brassey, 101 
 " Bread Labour," 213 
 Browning, 234 
 Burke, Edmund, 70 
 Business, science of, 54 
 
 C 
 
 Cairnee, 33, 36, 62 
 
 li Calculus of desires," 70 
 
 Capital, loanable, 249 
 
 , theory of, 26 
 
 Capitalist, work of, 116 
 Captains of Industry, 136 
 Carlyle, 28, 136, 227, 260 
 Carnegie, 135 
 Cayley, 123 
 Central Asia, 273 
 Charity, 91, 135, 163, 164 
 
 , injurious, 113 
 
 Charity organization, 197 
 
 Society, 113 
 
 China, 209 
 
 , break up of, 278 
 
 Christendom, civilization of. 274 
 Christianity, broadening, 134 
 
 289 
 
 U
 
 290 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Christian Socialists, 136 
 Church, a State, 245 
 
 , Christian, 133 
 
 Churches, individualism in, 3 
 City-dwellers, a nation of, 192 
 City sites, 187 
 Classes and masses, 127 
 Clive, conduct of, 93 
 Clock-making, 185 
 Coal, export of, 189 
 Collaboration in Art, 181 
 " Combines," 240 
 Commercialism, 239 
 Commissions, 166 
 Commodities, demand for. 253 
 Companies, Joint Stock, 178 
 
 , Municipal, 191 
 
 Competition, " free," 29 
 
 , waste in, 10 
 
 Composition, 146 
 
 Comte, 2, 24, 59 
 
 " Conflict of Races," 272 
 
 Consumers' leagues, 138 
 
 Consumption, unproductive, 27 
 
 Conveniences, 73 
 
 Co-operative industry, 145; results 
 
 of, 147 
 
 " Cosmic purpose," 281 
 " Cost," meaning of, 44, et s:q. 
 Covent Garden, 42 
 Covetous machine, 117 
 Crusoe economics, 221 
 Culture, conditions of, 128, et seq. 
 Customs of the trade, 137 
 
 D 
 
 Dabblers, 125 
 
 Danish dairies, 210 
 
 Darwin, 123 
 
 Democracy, crux of, 288 
 
 De Quincey, 38 
 
 Die Sociale Frage im lichte der Philo- 
 sophic, 201 
 
 Dilettanti, 125 
 
 Diminishing returns, law of, ISC, 
 208, 210 
 
 Distribution, theory of, 36 
 
 Distributive justice, 16 
 
 Disutilitv of labour, 221 
 
 Division of labour, 9, 107, 226 
 Drink trade, municipalization of, 198 
 " Driving," 104 
 Duties and rights, 91 
 
 E 
 
 Earthworm, 232 
 Economic man, 29, 53, 62 
 
 rents, 151 
 
 Economics of Distribution, vii., 68 
 
 Economy, 9 
 
 Education, individual, 220, et seq. 
 
 , problems of, 10 
 
 , equality of opportunity in, 254 
 
 , public and private, 240, 2il 
 
 , pace of, 279 
 
 , theory of State, 153 
 
 Educational forces in reform, 140 
 " Effective occupation," 278 
 Effort as standard, 157 
 Efforts and satisfactions, 88 
 Eight hours' movement, 19 
 
 question, 258 
 
 Elementary education, 176 
 Elizabethan England, 126 
 Emerson, 227, 270 
 Employers' liability, 196 
 England, future of, 129 
 Equality of opportunity, 165, 167 
 Ethical World, the, vii. 
 Expansion of England, 277 
 Expenses, 44 
 
 Factory Acts, 196 
 " Fair " rents, 193 
 Family life, in England, 270 
 
 , communism in, 167 
 
 Farmer, as maker of land values, 
 
 144 
 
 Felix Holt, 248 
 Fichte, 90 
 
 Field, Factory, and Workshop, 203 
 Fielding, II., 13 
 Fine arts, 184 
 Fitness, relativity of, 275 
 Flint, Prof., 91, 92 
 Florence, 126
 
 INDEX 
 
 291 
 
 Folk psychology, 261 
 
 Food, economy of, 101, 266 
 
 Forests, 192 
 
 Fortnightly Review, 16 
 
 Fourier, 24 
 
 Foxwell, Prof. H. S., 157 
 
 France, Government of, 95 
 
 ' Free Competition," 228 
 
 Free goods, 41, 239 
 
 Free Trade, 17, 18, 19, 22, 31 
 
 Freedom, 30 
 
 , positive meaning of, 10 
 
 Friendship, 276 
 
 Future life, doctrine of, 132 
 
 G 
 
 Gambling, economic root of, 258 
 
 General will, doctrine of, 263 
 
 George, Henry, 25 
 
 George Eliot, 233, 249 
 
 Godwin, 21 
 
 Goethe, 234 
 
 Golden Age, the 95 
 
 Gi-undlichkcit, 231 
 
 Guardians, Boards of, 201 
 
 Gun and Camera in outh Africa, 13 
 
 Half-timers, 47 
 
 Hastings, Battle of, 232 
 Hindoo navvies, 101 
 History, 281-283 
 
 , conceptions of, 260 
 
 Holland, 209 
 
 Holmes, O. W., 60 
 
 Home, waste of life in, 256 
 
 Homo homini lupus, 273 
 
 Housing problem, 190, 195 
 
 Humanitarian socialism, 196, ct scq. 
 
 Humanity, property of, 148 
 
 Hugo, Victor, 260 
 
 Hypertrophy, 120 
 
 Illegitimacy, 217 
 
 " Illth," 47, 48, 56, 257 
 
 Incentives to individual, 173 
 
 Income of England, 43 
 Increments of land value, 145, 190 
 Independence, 118 
 
 , meaning of, 116, 117, 118 
 
 India, 208 
 
 , conquest of, 273, 274 
 
 Individual as producer, 147 
 
 rights, 223 
 
 Individualism, 154 
 Individualist solutions, 131 
 Industrial revolution, 17, 23 
 Industrie Grande, 180 
 Industry, Bk. ii. ch. viii. 
 
 , evolution of modern, 177 
 
 Infinite, 72, 73-77 
 Inheritance, 118 
 Insurance, 179 
 
 , as public business, 197 
 
 Intensive, national life, 277 
 
 , cultivation, 211 
 
 Introduction to Social Philosophy, 64 
 
 Jevons, 18, 26, 27 
 Joint Stock Company, 116 
 Johnson, Dr., 109 
 Justice, 140 
 
 K 
 
 Kant, 234 
 
 Keynes, Dr., 66, 68, 75 
 
 Kropotkin, P., 208 
 
 Labour, skilled, etc., 100 
 
 , supply of, 106 
 
 Laissez faire, 22, 30, 239 
 Land, nationalization of, 188 
 
 , property in, 140 
 
 values, 143, 144 
 
 question, the, Bk. ii. ch. ix. 
 
 , uses in manufacture, 189 
 
 Landlordism, 115 
 Le Bon, 276 
 Lecky, 122 
 
 Leisured class, 123, 123 
 Liberty, 96
 
 292 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Libraries, public, 243 
 
 Linen, 45 
 
 Literature, as a class product, 125, 
 
 127 
 
 Lloyd, H. D., 140 
 Local Option Bill, 124 
 Locke, 88 
 
 Logical Method of Political Economy, 36 
 London, poverty of, 12 
 Longley, Sir H., 201 
 Luxuries, 73, Bk. i. ch. viii. 
 Luxury and Labour, 135 
 
 M 
 
 Machine, limits of, 182, 183 
 Machine-production, 17, 107 
 Machinery and Art, 180, 182, 185 
 Mackenzie, Professor, 64 
 Mallock, 135, 1GO 
 Malthua, 18, 205, 206, 211 
 Manchesterism, 25, 31, 34, 38 
 
 , a new, 40 
 
 " Manifest destiny," 272 
 
 Maraichers, 210 
 
 Margin of life, requisite, 268 
 
 Market, a social institution, 141 
 
 Markets, 17 
 
 Marx, 25 
 
 Marriage, prohibition of, 217 
 
 , self-restraint in, 207 
 
 Marshall, Prof. A., 20, 26, 33, 34, 41, 
 
 52,58,72, 186 
 Massart, J., 115 
 Mathematics, applied, 70 
 Mazzini, 2, 91 
 McCulloch, 25 
 Menger, 157 
 Mill, James, 24, 28 
 
 , J. S., 2, 16, 18, 25, 33, 34, 41, 58 
 
 Millionaire class, 170 
 Minimum wage, a, 163 
 
 standard, 201 
 
 Mining, land for, 189, 11)2 
 Misemploymont, Bk. ii. ch. xvi. 
 Mob-rule, 180 
 Money, 1 
 
 standard. 39, et s<-q. 
 
 Monopoly, profits of, 151 
 
 Moral socialists, 133 
 Moralization of employers, 136 
 Municipality, property of, 153 
 Muscular waste, 267 
 
 National life, economy of, Bk. ii. 
 
 ch. xix. 
 Natural rights, 96, et scq., 104, 161 
 
 selection, 215 
 
 rejection, 215 
 
 Navvy, English, 102 
 Necessaries, 73, Bk. i. ch. viii. 
 Needs, as basis of distribution, 161, 
 
 et seq. 
 , distribution according to, Bk. ii. 
 
 ch. vii. 
 
 Neo-Multhusianism, 207 
 Neurotic waste, 267 
 Nicholson, Prof. J. S., 37 
 
 
 
 (Edipus Tyrannus, 148 
 
 Officialism, 243 
 
 Old-age pensions, 202 
 
 Omichund, 93 
 
 Organic nature of man, 105 
 
 Organism or organization, 150 
 
 , biological, 61 
 
 , conscious, 61 
 
 , society as an, vi. 
 
 " Ought," 51, 66 
 Out-relief, 202 
 
 Over-specialization in Industrial 
 Life, Bk. ii. ch. xiii. 
 
 in Intellectual Life, ch. xiv. 
 
 Owen, Robert. 2. 27 
 
 Paine, 21, 88, 95 
 
 Painter, property in picture, 172 
 Palliatives, necessity of, 204 
 Parasites, biological and social, 115 
 Parasitism, organic and social, 115 
 Parsimony, doctrine of, 23 
 Patronage, 123
 
 INDEX 
 
 293 
 
 Pearson, C. H., 129, 183 
 
 Peasant, property of, 172 
 
 Personal intercourse, uses of, 270 
 
 Philanthropists, 113 
 
 , views of, 82 
 
 Philanthropy, 197 
 
 Physical life, 77 
 
 basis of economics, 265 
 
 Physiological wage, 104 
 
 basis, 205 
 
 Physiology, as basis of rights. 98 
 
 Piece-wages, 159 
 
 Pioneers, 190 
 
 Plato, 205 
 
 Play, distinguished from sport, 118 
 
 Plutocrat, 118 
 
 Policy, social, 287 
 
 Political economy, and social ques- 
 tions, 17, 20 
 
 Politics, scientific, 259 
 
 Poor law, 201 
 
 Poor law reform, 18, 91 
 
 Population, law of, 1, 25 
 
 , problem of, Bk. ii. ch. xi. 
 
 Postal service, 176 
 
 Prairie value, 142 
 
 Present position of Economics, 58 
 
 Price, theory of, 169 
 
 Principles of Economics, 20, 72 
 
 Product, property in, 105 
 
 Production, theory of, 37 
 
 Productivity as standard, 157, et 
 seq. 
 
 Professors, attitude of, IS 
 
 Profit-sharing. 104 
 
 " Progressive wages," 101 
 
 nations, 275 
 
 Propagation, unfit, 21 7 
 
 Property, 96, 97 
 
 , uses of, 151 
 
 , infringement of, 106 
 
 Protestant Churches, 18 i 
 
 Psychology and physiology, 259 
 
 Psychology of Peoples, 270 
 
 Public Health Acts, 196 
 
 Quantitative method, 70. et 
 
 II 
 
 Race-efficiency, 272, 274 
 
 Race, theory of, 275 
 
 Rack-rent, 193 
 
 Rae, 100 
 
 Railroad syndicates, 177 
 
 Railroads, 191 
 
 , nationalization of, 195 
 
 Relief, public works, 200 
 Rent, right of, 118 
 
 , rise of, 187 
 
 Resistance, right of, 96 
 
 Ricardo, 18, 24, 142 
 
 " Right to life," 89 
 
 " Right to work," 198 
 
 Might to the whole product of labour, 
 
 157 
 " Rights of man," 87, 96 
 
 , declaration of, 88 
 
 Rights of property, 90 
 Ritchie, Prof. D. G., 7, 94 
 Roads, land for, 190 
 Romola, 233 
 Rousseau, 88, 94 
 Routine factor, 181 
 
 goods, 101 
 
 industries, 175, et seq. 
 
 Ruskin, John, 2, 7, 47, 48, 120, 136, 
 
 184, 227, 244 
 Russia, 208 
 
 Saving, economy of, 251 
 Schools, State, 241 
 Schulze-Gsevernitz, 100 
 Science and practice, 4 
 
 , industrial, 5 
 
 Scope and Method of Political Economy, 
 
 66, 67, 68 
 
 Seamstress, sweated, 102 
 Security, 96 
 Self-accumulative saving, 252 
 
 , expression of, 110 
 
 help, 203 
 
 realization, ]50, 151 
 
 regarding, 89 
 
 Senior, N., 21
 
 294 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Sentimental and ethical, 1G1 
 Sex problems, 205 
 
 relations, 1 
 
 Shelley, 123 
 
 Shipping federations, 177 
 
 Shoemaker, property of, 172 
 
 Sidgwick, Prof., 35 
 
 Slave Power, the, 62 
 
 Sliding scales, 18 
 
 Smith, Adam, 21, 28, 99, 178, 227 
 
 Social causation, 264 
 
 economics, 54 
 
 question, unity of, 1, 3, 7 
 
 reform, roots of, 257 
 
 science, quantitative method 
 
 in, Bk. i. ch. vii. 
 
 support of weaklings, 163 
 
 utility as standard, 69, 156, 
 
 173 
 
 utility, 103, 105 
 
 , range and area, Bk. ii. 
 
 ch. xx. 
 
 Socialism, 91 
 
 Socialism and Individualism, har- 
 mony of, 186 
 
 , continental, 132 
 
 , humanitarian, 196, 202, et seq. 
 
 , academic, 200 
 
 , progressive, 154, 199 
 
 , scientific, 179 
 
 , State, 198 
 
 Socialist, broad use of, 155 
 
 Socialists. 1, 131 
 
 Sociology, v. 
 
 , need of a, Bk. ii. ch. xvii. 
 
 Sophocles, 148 
 
 Soul of a People, the, 13 
 
 South Kensington, 242 
 
 Space, monopoly of, 1 95 
 
 Spatial use of laud, 191 
 
 Specialists, 232 
 
 Spencer, II., J40, 142, 146, 153, 225 
 
 " Spheres of influence," 273 
 
 Sport, origin of, 118, 119 
 
 Standard Oil Trust, 177 
 
 State, life of, 152 
 
 industries, 174, et seq. 
 
 , oppression by, 225 
 
 , rights of, 92 
 
 Statistics, use of, 281 
 
 Stein, Dr., 200 
 Stirpiculture, 216 
 Studies of Democracy, 122 
 Subsistence wage, 99 
 Surgeon, fee, 169 
 Surplus wage, 112 
 Sweating in professions, 210 
 
 system, 102 
 
 , economy of, 100, 102 
 
 T 
 
 Tailor, 227 
 Tailoring trade, 1 84 
 Taxation, social theory of, 149, 153 
 Temperament, influence of, 286 
 Thames, as an asset, 41 
 Theatre, a State, 243 
 Tennyson, 52, 122 
 Time-focus, 285 
 Tolstoy, 120, 213, 237, 234 
 Toynbee, 15, 62 
 Transport, industry of, 189 
 
 U 
 
 Under-production, 252 
 
 consumption, 250 
 
 Unearned incomes, 118 
 
 , meaning of, 149 
 
 increment, 171 
 
 Unemployed, 199 
 
 , margin of, 249 
 
 , upper, 11, 118 
 
 Unemployment, 8, 9 
 
 , Bk. ii. ch. xvi. 
 
 United States, President of, 84 
 Universality, 234 
 Unoccupied classes, 1 20 
 " Unseen hand," 273 
 Unto this Last, 48 
 Urban: mortality of, 14 
 Utilitarian, meaning of, 4 
 Utility, meaning of, 47, 50 
 Utopias, 19 
 
 Value, 49 
 
 , society as maker of, 147, 148 
 
 is Social, 131, 156, Bk. ii. ch. vu
 
 INDEX 
 
 295 
 
 Vandcrvelde, E., 115 
 Vital values, 55 
 
 Wages, economy of high, 100, 258 
 
 Wants, economy of, 105 
 
 Waste, in relation to progress, 7 ; in 
 
 Work and Life, Ch. ii. ; Summary 
 
 of, 11 
 
 Watchmaker, 227 
 Wealth against Commonwealth, 140 
 
 Wealth, definition of, 34-36 
 Wealth of Nations, 21, 23, 24, 52, 178 
 Webb, 184 
 White lead, 45 
 Whitman, 235 
 Wordsworth, 234 
 Work and life, vi. 
 Workhouse, 201 
 
 Young, Arthur, 43 
 
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