i tide POPP Dt “= a ————S -™ _— lied rinse apa Pier-g tine ee A ge pS E isa 9 1 4 4 H { y i pg an ccin Setups PPI BR gd5 Vee ar pene es re etn Se ga cee alleen ee Plate greeter tte SNR Ore ee a. Sa Sa agsoa sp reshape sirens aioe a eee Ce ee Re aN Ee as eearieorearansebiaacaeoe Ceaaeseraneerem ere a mS nena ee Seana LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA PRESENTED BY ‘cIntire Public Liororyen ~, v = tar I iy en ietctet ere ae ee eee ee eee Raeee cere ress ey AA a et eee ears THE OUREINE, OF SANITY~~ eke ~* a i é ee 2 \ i i i Fi I ; i s, oe w & ok 3 Se ee a = eres a a al ener ra c= Sea tt AD OT ——- a oe SSS AT RECT meassaes te Rr se wed —a {ren mene eee LPT ee ee CT ST EUG Ey CODE BOOKS BY G. K. CHESTERTON Tue BALLAD OF THE WHITE HoRsE CHARLES DICKENS Tue Everzvastinc Man Fancies VERSUS FADS DHE FiyiInc INN GeorceE BERNARD SHAW HERETICS Cue INCREDULITY oF FATHER Brown lHE INNOCENCE OF FATHER Brown MANALIVI THE Man Wuo Was THURSDAY ORTHODOXY PoEMS A SHort History oF ENGLAND TALES OF THE Lonc Bow THe SUPERSTITION OF DIVORCE TREMENDOUS [RIFLES Tue Uses or Diversity VariED I YPES Wuat | SAw IN AMERICA Wuat’s WroNG WITH THE WoRLD WILLIAM CoBBETT Tue Wispom or FATHER Brown THE OUTLINE OF SANITYPOAC TOR ELE See ERE Te ee] Gere UP CE SOE Re ead TAR LY: ena ss SNe Don Se eae I aie SR ee es ~~ KK @ EGE Saieb) RaOwN aetna bet ~~ —ieeadiord Na THE OUTLINE OF SANITY Se Ny emgyaea ar: om ae teers arene ee. mas Pe amos Sepia oa PN —e etn Eee F ct hactbatttnadti ays ee Se a i Re Soe ete = tie hee Sea a Fe EE a aN ee nto aa I Cea al en AOS NEW YoRK, DODD, MEAD & COMPANY ee Gall i ily i yi 4 11h ik eae ——— nll ta i ¥ fi i 3 FI a i t H EP at a i eyPe a1a step ee ; { i eee ERTS ESR VEY By DODD, PRINTED MANUFACTURED IN THE Vig BPrrO > VAIL-BALLOU PRESS, COPYRIGHT, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc. IN U. Ss UNITED 192 INC., A, STATES OF AMERICA BINGHAMTON, N. Y.IT] CONTENTS SOME GENERAL IDEAS— 1. THE BEGINNING OF THE QUARREL . 2. THE PERIL OF THE Hour 3. THE CHANCE OF RECOVERY . 4. ON A SENSE OF PROPORTION . SOME ASPECTS OF BIG BUSINESS— THE BLUFF OF THE BiG SHOPs MISUNDERSTANDING ABOUT METHOD Ie De 3. A CASE IN POINT 4. THE TYRANNY OF IRUSTS SOME ASPECTS OF THE LAND— 1. THE SIMPLE TRUTH . 2. VowWS AND VOLUNTEERS . 3. THE REAL LIFE ON THE LAND SOME ASPECTS OF MACHINERY— . THE WHEEL OF FATE : THE ROMANCE OF MACHINERY . _ THE HOLIDAY OF THE SLAVE . THE Free MAN AND THE Forp CAR Who A NOTE ON EMIGRATION— 1. THe NEED oF A NEw SPIRIT : 2. THe RELIGION OF SMALL PROPERTY A SUMMARY Dal Sas a — BS Sem nent Ue ergs oe a ri Hi rj Piette ae Ser ce ee tae I= at end WOR vena ese oe eee ~e z Rheeaiem ne ee ee I a Deo ae Seaa aie eee een tant ae ROR A Seon Patt ar Teale we Ye ee Oe eee hea es ees an one Ste S hott hana ae mw nent pares Perm Seen jt a a ene eee a Aaa aahSR ERNIE eet TR, (rar gustareersenietierlerineen tone eT oe aay i es I al oa my ees 2k a — ee ee oneal aE aSAS, ee ESS 8 an veto a Cte eae SE Se eae Nineties ks eerie ee Mare Pann eo nn nent SESE Se ear et eet tenn obec en aaa be aimee eye Ne yee SOME GENERAL IDEAS 1. The Beginning of the Quarrel 2. The Peril of the Hour 3. The Chance of Recovery 4 . On a Sense of Proportion a SP DEE IE Tilo th thd Wiel a paanrrwrsetinaetaneace mtnwe Mal al A! ttl Saperecom ee ete oh, eee ne ee er ateTHE BEGINNING OF THE QUARREL | HAVE been asked to republish these notes—which appeared in a weekly paper—as a rough sketch of cer- tain aspects of the institution of Private Property, now so completely forgotten amid the journalistic jubilations over Private Enterprise. The very fact that the publicists say so much of the latter and so little of the former is a measure of the moral tone of the times. A pickpocket is obviously a champion of private enterprise. But it would perhaps be an ex- aggeration to say that a pickpocket is a champion of private property. The point about Capitalism and Commercialism, as conducted of late, is that they have really preached the extension of business rather than the preserv ation of belongings; and have at best tried to disguise the pickpocket with some of the vir- tues of the pirate. The point about Communism is that it only reforms the pickpocket “by. forbidding pockets. Pockets and possessions generally seem to me to have not ‘only a more normal but a more dignified de- fence than the rather dirty individualism that talks about private enterprise. In the hope that it may pos- 3 al - ake aS ens ee AEE Ee, bet beet betel adits ea gy SID OeSE pee en SS oe aaa OE IY Lae iene Sn Oe Aare ete et STS wt oie: ois Li oa ] ; a — _ _ seen — - ot 27 per y A SS iaemerens hp 2 a ~ Se Rene ee phere Mn CE 4 ELS bah ea ee aaa. a te naar Cnn A - re ne 4 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY sibly help others to understand it, | have decided to reproduce these studies as they stand, hasty and sometimes merely topical as they were. It is indeed very hard to reproduce them in this form, because they were editorial notes to a controversy largely con- ducted by others; but the general idea is at least present. In any case, “private enterprise” 1s no very noble way of stating the truth of one of the Ten Com- mandments. But there was at least a time when it was more or less true. The Manchester Radicals preached a rather crude and cruel sort of competition; but at least they practised what they preached. The news- papers now praising private enterprise are preaching the very opposite of anything that anybody dreams of practising. ‘The practical tendency of all trade and business to-day is towards big commercial combina- tions, often more imperial, more impersonal, more in- ternational than many a communist commonwealth —things that are at least collective if not collectivist. It is all very well to repeat distractedly, “What are we coming to, with all this Bolshevism?” It is equally relevant to add, “What are we coming to, even with- out Bolshevism?” The obvious answer is—Monopoly. It is certainly not private enterprise. The American Trust is not private enterprise. [t would be truer to call the Spanish Inquisition private judgment. Monopoly is.neither private nor enterprising. It exists to prevent private enterprise. And that system of trust or monopoly, that complete destruction of property, t at) eee eee FT,BEGINNING OF THE QUARREL y would still be the present goal of all our progress, if there were not a Bolshevist in the world. Now I am one of those who believe that the cure for centralization is decentralization. It has been de- scribed as a paradox. There is apparently something elvish and fantastic about saying that when capital has come to be too much in the hand of the few, the right thing is to restore it into the hands of the many. The Socialist would put it in the hands of even fewer people; but those people would be politicians, who (as we know) always administer it in the interests of the many. But before I put before the reader things written in the very thick of the current controversy, I foresee it will be necessary to preface them with these few paragraphs, explaining a few of the terms and amplifying a few of the assumptions. I was in the weekly paper arguing with people who knew the shorthand of this particular argument; but to be clearly understood, we must begin with a few defini- tions or, at least, descriptions. I assure the reader that I use words in quite a definite sense, but it is possible that he may use them in a different sense; and a muddle and misunderstanding of that sort does not even rise to the dignity of a difference of opin- ion. For instance, Capitalism is really a very unpleasant word. It is also a very unpleasant thing. Yet the thing I have in mind, when I say so, is quite definite and definable; only the name is a very unworkable f a aed oP arate tae Nm CU eee aT areata aaa ae A eC I kaMbetdeaddeemaeten ek on a e items Cube etineae Ee Piette ae Ra ES a A ee = a a ene eee Pa TA ee Pa e IOAN Conran en oa Pete an bata, . o eee ee eelLn emi eee espa dar avserserepr pial ele PERE rear ea a a a os Fe . rs ><. sta suerte ie linc os IEPs eareeenrear eile ela ee arene adie et oe Sesame ree elena nA sothe baton n'a peed $e \o= mr eT a te Sa nr ene eaapseener emer eee eam ae SS te arr ee sider eranametareieitiataale in a oN min ; Sn re nite Sacer eee ae ner es rs Set tt) Vs OL A Sey net eamenemeerien Seep mt be basterberche eee oe ~ es ieee ea NC) es - atin 12 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY in a sort of abstract fury, that “small properties will not stay small.” Now it is interesting to note here that the opponents of anything like a several pro- prietary bring two highly inconsistent charges against it. They are perpetually telling us that the peasant life in Latin or other countries is monotonous, is un- progressive, is covered with weedy superstitions, and is a sort of survival of the Stone Age. Yet even while they taunt us with its survival, they argue that it can never survive. They point to the peasant as a peren- nial stick-in-the-mud; and then refuse to plant him anywhere, on the specific ground that he would not stick. Now, the first of the two types of denunciation is arguable enough; but in order to denounce peas- antries, the critics must admit that there are peas- antries to denounce. And if it were true that they al- ways tended rapidly to disappear, it would not be true that they exhibited those primitive customs and conservative opinions which they not only do, in fact, exhibit, but which the critics reproach them with ex- hibiting. They cannot in common sense accuse a thing at once of being antiquated and of being ephem- eral. It is, of course, the dry fact, to be seen in broad daylight, that small peasant properties are not ephem- eral. But anyhow, Mr. Shaw and his school must not say that arches cannot be built, and then that they disfigure the landscape. The Distributive State is not a hypothesis for him to demolish; it is a phenomenon for him to explain. fj RUPP EELIEPEECELU LA RE RES IS SREPRE TGBEGINNING OF THE QUARREL 13 The truth is that the conception that small prop- erty evolves into capitalism is a precise picture of What practically never takes place. The truth is at- tested even by facts of geography, facts which, as it seems to me, have been strangely overlooked. Nine times out of ten, an industrial civilization of the modern capitalist type does not arise, wherever else it may arise, in places where there has hitherto been a distributive civilization like that of a peasantry. Capitalism is a monster that dustrial servitude has almost —_—— those empty spaces where the grows in deserts. In- ; — everywhere arisen in of England rather than the South; precisely because the North had been comparatively empty and bar- barous through all the ages when the South had a civilization of guilds and peasantries. Thus it grew up easily in the American continent rather than the European; precisely because it had nothing to sup- plant in America but a few savages, while in Europe it had to supplant the culture of multitudinous farms. Everywhere it has been but one stride from the mud- hut to the manufacturing town. Everywhere the mud- hut which really turned into the free farm has never since moved an inch towards the manufacturing town. Wherever there was the mere lord and the mere serf, they could almost instantly be turned into the mere employer and the mere employee. Wherever there has-been the free man, even when he was rela- older civilization was}, thin or absent. Thus it grew up éasily in the North ~~ -& A ws; ML A Dy x ~ ~ = meen ey as Sheil SS te. Se Sian en Seta ae ats eb Sh ee ~ pm Se tL al ce ee eres eNO, Ei te << ae Ds eh COL RIO ae ae ar eee NG ee SRW OR eee TEE paenen Paes os ery we? re Ni a aid a3 3 a5 ayaN = er a pero et ~aaproecar eT oe aa Sn eee Rie nt ge ne eperananeepecenenbiace wae a ana Cee omen Por mr deere eee at a rer sigitemee lo ci ent SME arr lalalZ Fi cs t F rf) ‘3 by ie 14 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY tively less nich_and powerful, his mere memory has made complete industrial capitalism impossible. It is ‘an enemy that has sown these tares, but even as an enemy he is a coward. For he can only sow them in waste places, where no wheat can spring up and choke them. To take up our parable again, we say first that arches exist; and not only exist but remain. A hun- dred Roman aqueducts and amphitheatres are there to show that they can remain as long or longer than any- thing else. And if a progressive person informs us that an arch always turns into a factory chimney, or even that an arch always falls down because it is weaker than a factory chimney, or even that wherever it does fall down people perceive that they must replace it by a factory chimney—why, we shall be so audacious as to cast doubts on all these three assertions. All we could possibly admit is that the principle supporting the chimney is simpler than the principle of the arch; and for that very reason the factory chimney, like the feudal tower, can rise the more easily in a howling wilderness. a But the image has yet a further application. \If at this moment the Latin countries are largely made our model in the matter of the small property, it is only in the sense in which they would have been, through certain periods of history, the only exemplars of the arch. There was a time when all arches were Roman arches; and when a man living by the Liffey or theBEGINNING OF THE QUARREL 15 Thames would know as little about them as Mr. Shaw knows about peasant proprietors. But that does not mean that we fight for something merely foreign, or advance the arch as a sort of Italian ensign; any more than we want to make the Thames as yellow as the Tiber, or have any particular taste in macaroni or malaria. The principle of the arch is human, and applicable to and by all humanity. So is the principle of well-distributed private property. That a few Ro- man arches stood in ruins in Britain is not a proof that arches cannot be built, but on the contrary, a proof that they can. And now, to complete the coincidence or analogy, what is the principle of the arch? You can call it, if you like, an affront to gravitation; you will be more correct if you call 1t an appeal to gravitation. The principle asserts that by combining separate stones of a particular shape in a particular way, we can ensure that their very tendency to fall shall prevent them from falling. And though my image is merely an 1l- lustration, it does to a great extent hold even as to the success of more equalized properties. What up- holds an arch is an equality of pressure of the sep- arate stones upon each other. The equality is at once mutual aid and mutual obstruction. It is not difficult to show that in a healthy society the moral pressure of different private properties acts in exactly the same way. But if the other school finds the key or compari- son insufficient, it must find some other, It is clear pat ae See a rt nes teers ante an ee ae ae a th} FEL aa es eo a ee aR fe a nn Pa Peace teehee + Ph : Cres prema | *} | i 78 a te rs 4 ] MNSe, am ae te ese er Se Sar eee ae OE Tt matey tet SS sae aor Ey amare) Ss ~ ee oe a a nea ea ot eres 16 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY that no natural forces can frustrate the fact. To say that any law, such as that of rent, makes against it 1s true only in the sense that many natural laws make against all morality and the very essentials of man- hood. In that sense, scientific arguments are as II- relevant to our case for property as Mr. Shaw used to say they were to his case against vivisection. Lastly, it is not only true that the arch of property remains, it is true that the building of such arches increases, both in quantity and quality. For instance, the French peasant before the French Revolution was already indefinitely a proprietor; it has made his property more private and more absolute, not less. The French are now less than ever likely to abandon the system, when it has proved for the second, if not the hundredth time, the most stable type of pros- perity in the stress of war. A revolution as heroic, and even more unconquerable, has already in Ireland dis- regarded alike the Socialist dream and the Capitalist reality, with a driving energy of which no one has yet dared to foresee the limits. So, when the round arch of the Romans and the Normans had remained for ages as a sort of relic, the rebirth of Christendom found for it a further application and issue. It sprang in an instant to the titanic stature of the Gothic; where man seemed to be a god who had hanged his worlds upon nothing. Then was unsealed again some- thing of that ancient secret which had so strangely described the priest as the builder of bridges. AndBEGINNING OF THE QUARREL 17 when I look to-day at some of the bridges which he built above the air, | can understand a man still call- ing them impossible, as their only possible praise. What do we mean by that “equality of pressure” as of the stones in an arch? More will be said of this in detail; but in general we mean that the modern passion for incessant and restless buying and selling goes along with the extreme inequality of men too rich or too poor. The explanation of the continuity of peasantries (which their opponents are simply forced to leave unexplained) is that, where that independ- ence exists, it 1s valued exactly as any other dig- nity 1s valued when it is regarded as normal to a man; as no man goes naked or is beaten with a stick for hire. (The theory that those who start reasonably equal cannot remain reasonably equal is a fallacy founded entirely on a society in which they start extremely unequal.)It is quite true that when capitalism has passed a’certain point, the broken fragments of prop- erty are very easily devoured. In other words, it 1s true when there is a small amount of small property; but it is quite untrue when there is a large amount of small property. To argue from what happened in the rush of big business and the rout of scattered small businesses to what must always happen when the par- ties are more on a level, is quite illogical. It 1s prov- ing from Niagara that there is no such thing as a lake. Once tip up the lake and the whole of the water will ee a as eet sh a Penton a omen ala im st ar alt cb es ey i Tot eT oe ee a en HON Hee er ~ me - Wl .e +3 A ia H a oeNS Ae ae eae meee Se ~ - Ste poder benenemreertaaiekacuas NCR ae Nas m tra serreetesteermmee initia tal SaaS Sa at contac sealant itera at os ne elintieleniica as » itr ee a a = rc ar orsign gS SMD ware 18 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY rush one way; as the whole economic tendency of cap- italist inequality rushes one way. Leave the lake as a lake, or the level as a level, and there is nothing to prevent the lake remaining until the crack of doom— as many levels of peasantry seem likely to remain until the crack of doom. This fact is proved by ex- perience, even if it is not explained by experience; but, as a matter of fact, it is possible to suggest not only the experience but the explanation. The truth is that there is no economic tendency whatever towards the disappearance of small property, until that property becomes so very small as to cease to act as property at all. If one man has a hundred acres and another man has half an acre, it is likely enough that he will be unable to live on half an acre. Then there will be an economic tendency for him to sell his land and make the other man the proud possessor of a hundred and a half. But if one man has thirty acres and the other man has forty acres, there is no economic tend- ency of any kind whatever to make the first man sell to the second. It is simply false to say that the first man cannot be secure of thirty or the second man content with forty. It is sheer nonsense; like saying that any man who owns a bull terrier will be bound to sell it to somebody who owns a mastiff. It is like say- ing that I cannot own a horse because | have an ec- centric neighbour who owns an elephant. Needless to say, those who insist that roughly equalized ownership cannot exist, base their whole FUSTFITTER LeeLee eye Tere Tee ead one reat es i isBEGINNING OF THE QUARREL 19 argument on the notion that it has existed. They have to suppose, in order to prove their point, that people in England, for instance, did begin as equals and rapidly reached inequality. And it only rounds off the humour of their whole position that they as- sume the existence of what they call an impossibility in the one case where it has really not occurred. They talk as if ten miners had run a race, and one of them became the Duke of Northumberland. They talk as if the first Rothschild was a peasant who patiently planted better cabbages than the other peasants. The truth is that England became a capitalist country because it had Jong been an oligarchical country. It would be much harder to point out in what way a country like Denmark need become oligarchical. But the case is even stronger when we add the ethical to the economic common sense When there is once es- tablished a widely scattered ownership, there is a public opinion that is stronger than any law; and very often (what in modern times is even more fe- markable) a law that is really an expression of public opinion. )It may be very difficult for modern peo- ple to imagine a world in which men are not gener- ally admired for covetousness and crushing their neighbours but I assure them that such strange patches of an earthly paradise do really remain on earth. The truth is that this first objection of impossi- bility in the abstract flies flat in the face of all the B= oe ee ~ ~ Bs te eS += Se in aint Ce Or eed wren. me a a te areas RAT A Se ey eek i RAD Pee st a a. ne hg a ORR el tite a Le a ne thet abated ee ee eee eee an ne aaa 3 ey ae ae a oh iy aPa eee aos - SOREN ees a TOTO SSS re RI Ds ot eed haar peewe teeter i me nts a . aliarienipsacedods eR erephrerteernez = OT ee Siac baeet creamer oe 20 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY facts of experience and human nature. It is not true that a moral custom cannot hold most men content with a reasonable status, and careful to preserve it. It is as if we were to say that because some men are more attractive to women than others, therefore the inhabi- tants of Balham under Queen Victoria could not pos- sibly have been arranged on a monogamous model, with one man one wife. Sooner or later, it might be said, all females would be found clustering round the fascinating few, and nothing but bachelorhood be left for the unattractive many. Sooner or later the sub- urb must consist of a hundred hermitages and three harems. But this is not the case. It is not the case at present, whatever may happen if the moral tradition of marriage is really lost in Balham. So long as that moral tradition is alive, so long as stealing other people’s wives is reprobated or being faithful to a spouse is admired, there are limits to the extent to which the wildest profligate in Balham can disturb the balance of the sexes. So any land-grabber would very rapidly find that there were limits to the extent to which he could buy up Jand in an Irish or Spanish or Serbian village. When it is really thought hateful to take Naboth’s vineyard, as it 1s to take Uriah’s wife, there is little difficulty in finding a local prophet to pronounce the judgment of the Lord. In an atmos- phere of capitalism the man who lays field to field is flattered; but in an atmosphere of property he is promptly jeered at or possibly stoned. The result isBEGINNING OF THE QUARREL 2] that the village has not sunk into plutocracy or the SuaunD into polygamy. i Property is a point of honour. The true contrary of the word “property” is the word “prostitution.” And it is not true that a human being will always sell what is sacred to that sense of self-ownership, whether it be the body or the boundary. A few do it in both cases; and by doing it they always become outcasts, But it is not true that a majority must do ith and any- body who says it is, is ignorant, not of our plans and proposals, not of anybody’s visions and ideals, not of distributism or division of capital by this or that process, but of the facts of history and the substance of humanity. He is a barbarian who has never seen an arch. In the notes I have here jotted down it will be ob- vious, of course, that the restoration of this pattern, simple as it is, is much more complicated in a com- plicated society. Here I have only traced it in the simplest form as it stood, and still stands, at the be- ginning of our discussion. I disregard the view that such “reaction” cannot be. I hola the old mystical dogma that what Man has done, Man can do. My crit- ics seem to hold a still more mystical dogma: that Man cannot possibly do a thing because he has done That is what seems to be meant by saying that small property is “antiquated.” It really means that all property is dead. There is nothing to be reached upon the present lines except the increasing loss of i - ti i f } . ee ~ eat ae Ves Sermon eas Na oes Seemann ae alm - nl tae a ead ae beset ee a a nate a See Eat tat are Se 5 a Ne NR BE BE OR - “a3 PRO iet ciate ud el on et SS ye al ee22 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY — property by everybody, as something swallowed up into _a system equally impersonal and inhuman, Sa te ie oo tae = ee 4 ene ee) 4 J ¥ whether ¥ we call it Communism or Capitalism. If we cannot go ‘back, it hardly seems worth while to go forward. There is nothing in front but a flat wilderness of standardization either by Bolshevism or Big Busi- ness. But it is strange that some of us should have seen sanity, if only in a vision, while the rest go for- ward chained eternally to enlargement without liberty and progress without hope. om A eat io {CM VII te al nl che wail itl mS — SIS ee SO Sees Setters a 4 me snet oe Sew =" aay aa pentane beaI] THE PERIE OF SEE HOUR WHEN we are for a moment satisfied, or sated, with reading the latest news of the loftiest social circles, or the most exact records of the most responsible courts of justice, we naturally turn to the serial story in the newspaper, called “Poisoned by Her Mother” or ““The Mystery of the Crimson Wedding Ring,’ in search of something calmer and more quietly convincing, more restful, more domestic, and more like real life. But as we turn over the pages, in passing from the incredible fact to the comparatively credible fiction, we are very likely to encounter a particular phrase on the general subject of social degeneracy. It 1s one of a number of phrases that seem to be kept in solid blocks in the printing-offices of newspapers. Like most of these solid statements, it is of a soothing character. It is like the headline of “Hopes of a Settlement,’ by which we learn that things are unsettled; or that topic of the “Revival of Trade,” which it is part of the journalistic trade periodically to revive. The sentence to which I refer is to this effect: that the fears about social degeneracy need not disturb us, because such fears have been expressed in every age; and there are always romantic and retrospective per- 23 ne pee re ST eee a ade ee a tan toe ee ee PLES te ne A Sep er ee oe aN eee writes are aaa see, Po! Pn ital fe Rat ta Be achat at at ey ee a Oe me paeinah he ea ee an cect So ne rea eid a ar a a ay a ee a ae PS ee ee ee cree NI is { | wag Bi si wy aa 4 A ie a2 EeeI. A mt we ST ta - soar epee tanta aiek ee mt So: oA eaten eee a a! ow. Sor ink et ~ ———s Pate aa oS ATR ST repels ee NEN ~ 24 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY sons, poets, and such riff-raff, who look back to imaginary “good old times.” It is the mark of such statements that they seem to satisfy the mind; in other words, it is the mark of such thoughts that they stop us from thinking. The man who has thus praised progress does not think it necessary to progress any further. The man who has dismissed a complaint, as being old, does not himself think it necessary to say anything new. He is content to repeat this apology for existing things; and seems unable to offer any more thoughts on the subject. Now, as a matter of fact, there are a number of further thoughts that might be suggested by the subject. Of course, it is quite true that this notion of the decline of a state has been suggested in many periods, by many persons, some of them, unfor- tunately, poets. Thus, for instance, Byron, noto- riously so moody and melodramatic, had somehow or other got it into his head that the Isles of Greece were less glorious in arts and arms in the last days of Turk- ish rule than in the days of the battle of Salamis or the Republic of Plato. So again Wordsworth, in an equally sentimental fashion, seems to insinuate that the Republic of Venice was not quite so powerful when Napoleon trod it out like a dying ember as when its commerce and art filled the seas of the world with a conflagration of colour. So many writers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have even gone so far as to suggest that modern Spain played aHE PERIEOR ihe nOUR 25 less predominant part than Spain in the days of the discovery of America or the victory of Lepanto. Some, even more lacking in that Optimism which is the soul of commerce, have made an equally perverse comparison between the earlier and the later con- ditions of the commercial aristocracy of Holland. Some have even maintained that Tyre and Sidon are not quite so fashionable as they used to be; and somebody once said something about “the ruins of Carthage.” [In somewhat simpler language, we may say that all this argument has a very big and obvious hole in it. When a man says, “People were as pessimistic as. you are in societies which were not declining, but were even advancing,” it is permissible to reply, “Yes, and people were probably as optimistic as you are in societies which really declined.” For, after all, there were societies which really declined. It is true that Horace said that every generation seemed to be worse than the last, and implied that Rome was going to the dogs, at the very moment when all the external world was being brought under the eagles. But it is quite likely that the last forgotten court poet, prais- ing the last forgotten Augustulus at the stiff court of Byzantium, contradicted all the seditious rumours of social decline, exactly as our newspapers do, by say- ing that, after all, Horace had said the same thing. And it is also possible that Horace was right; that it was in his time that the turn was taken which led ms Fm Ton Sainte ee Sate a Nee at ee NL Bok ee eee ee ae | he ‘h ad hy 4 Te I a e eeveeqj 4 oY rook’ Se, relent ae ee Ot oe) £ Py iio nite re Sareea or [GTS RSP ES Me re ne nr ae meets —— An’ I oO Oar eee a ree ao. arsenate ae Fea ea ta eee eit wd a ri ty re Y ; ‘ ei é 26 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY from Horatius on the bridge to Heracleius in the palace; that if Rome was not immediately going to the dogs, the dogs were coming to Rome, and their dis- tant howling could first be heard in that hour of the uplifted eagles; that there had begun a long advance that was also a long decline, but ended in the Dark Ages. Rome had gone back to the Wolf. I say this view is at least tenable, though it does not really represent my own; but it is quite sufficiently reasonable to refuse to be dismissed with the cheap cheerfulness of the current maxim. There has been, there can be, such a thing as social decline; and the only question is, at any given moment, whether By- zantium had declined or whether Britain is declining. In other words, we must judge any such case of al- leged degeneracy on its own merits. It 1s no answer to say, what is, of course, perfectly true, that some people are naturally prone to such pessimism. We are not judging them, but the situation which they judged or misjudged. We may say that schoolboys have always disliked having to go to school. But there is such a thing as a bad school. We may say the farmers always grumble at the weather. But there is such a thing as a bad harvest. And we have to consider as a question of the facts of the case, and not of the feelings of the farmer, whether the moral world of modern England is likely to have a bad har- vest. Now the reasons for regarding the present prob-THE, PERI OR HEsnOUR 27 lem of Europe, and especially of England, as most menacing and tragic, are entirely objective reasons; and have nothing to do with this alleged mood of melancholy reaction. The present system, whether we call it capitalism or anything else, especially as it exists in industrial countries, has already become a danger; and is rapidly becoming a death-trap. The evil is evident in the plainest private experience and in the coldest economic science. To take the practical test first, it is not merely alleged by the enemies of the system, but avowed by the defenders of it. In the Labour disputes of our time, it is not the em- ployees but the employers who declare that business is bad. The successful business man is not pleading success; he is pleading bankruptcy. The case for Capitalists is the case against Capitalism. What 1s even more extraordinary is that its exponent has to fall back on the rhetoric of Socialism. He merely says that miners or railwaymen must go on working “in the interests of the public.” It will be noted that the capitalists now never use the argument of private property. They confine themselves entirely to this sort of sentimental version of general social respon- sibility. It is amusing to read the capitalist press on Socialists who sentimentally plead for people who are “failures.” It is now the chief argument of al- most every capitalist in every strike that he is him- self on the brink of failure. I have one simple objection to this simple argu- oe eernenne ld teh e ™ pee aa ees - ee ie Ce Tio le ae rey a Son en ra ataiar orn SeFy ; . Aes is 28 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY ment in the papers about Strikes and the Socialist peril. My objection is that their argument leads straight to Socialism. In itself it cannot possibly lead to anything else. If workmen are to go on working because they are the servants of the public, there cannot be any deduction except that they ought to be the servants of the public authority. If the Govern- ment ought to act in the interests of the public, and there is no more to be said, then obviously the Govern- ment ought to take over the whole business, and there is nothing else to be done. I do not think the matter is so simple as this; but they do. I do not think this argument for Socialism is conclusive. But according to the Anti-Socialists the argument for Socialism is quite conclusive. The public alone 1s to be considered, and the Government can do any- thing it likes so long as it considers the public. Pre- sumably it can disregard the liberty of the employees and force them to work, possibly in chains. Presum- ably also it can disregard the property of the em- ployers, and pay the proletariat for them, if necessary out of their trouser-pockets. All these consequences follow from the highly Bolshevist doctrine bawled at us every morning in the capitalist press. That 1s all they have to say; and if it is the only thing to be said, then the other is the only thing to be done. In the last paragraph it is noted that if we were left to the logic of the leader-writers on the Socialist peril, they could only lead us straight to Socialism.Coe Peek EGS a ALTO Raw THE PERIE OF THEsHOUR 29 And as some of us most heartily and vigorously re- fuse to be led to Socialism, we have long adopted the harder alternative called trying to think things out. And we shall certainly land in Socialism or in some- thing worse called Socialism, or else in mere chaos and ruin, if we make no effort to see the situation as a whole apart from our immediate irritations. Now the capitalist system, good or bad, right or wrong, rests upon two ideas: that the rich will always be rich enough to hire the poor; and the poor will always be poor enough to want to be hired. But it also pre- sumes that each side is bargaining with the other, and that neither is thinking primarily of the public. The owner of an omnibus does not run it for the good of all mankind, despite the universal fraternity blaz- oned in the Latin name of the vehicle. He runs it to make a profit for himself, and the poorer man con- sents to drive it in order to get wages for himself. Similarly, the omnibus-conductor is not filled with an abstract altruistic desire for the nice conduct of a crowded omnibus instead of a clouded cane. He does not want to conduct omnibuses because conduct is three-fourths of life. He is bargaining for the biggest wage he can get. Now the case for capitalism was that through this private bargain the public did really get original case for capitalism collapses entirely, if we have to ask either party to go on for the good of the public. If capitalism cannot pay what will tempt men me ae eS Re er ee ee oe N a ata Cohorts Bnet Gc Patna SS te ete ae Poole an ote pea erp eee Aw arsonont ve ee ee “~ tte ae ee Cn a ee ee — oe = = —E andes Sn ee Pr ee mt Sere ee oer Sa ee ee a al WI on ne caer at Sa pee ott ee i ais harass io Set a Narang. | 30 ie OUDEINE OF SANDY to work, capitalism is on capitalist principles simply bankrupt. If a tea-merchant cannot pay clerks, and cannot import tea without clerks, then his business is bust and there is an end of it. Nobody in the old capitalist conditions said the clerks were bound to work for less, so that a poor old lady might get a cup of tea. So it is really the capitalist press that proves on capitalist principles that capitalism has come to an end. If it had not, 1t would not be necessary for them to make the social and sentimental appeals they do make. It would not be necessary for them to appeal for the intervention of the Government like Socialists. It would not have been necessary for them to plead the discomfort of passengers like sentimentalists or altruists. ‘The truth is that everybody has now abandoned the argument on which the whole of the old capitalism was based: the argu- ment that if men were left to bargain individually the public would benefit automatically. We have to find a new basis of some kind; and the ordinary Con- servatives are falling back on the Communist basis without knowing it.\Now I respectfully decline to fall back on the Communist basis. But I am sure it is perfectly impossible to continue to fall back on the old Capitalist basis. Those who try to do so tie themselves in quite impossible knots. The most prac- tical and pressing affairs of the hour exhibit the con- tradiction day after day. For instance, when someTHE PERIE OF THE HOUR 31 great strike or lock-out takes place in a big business like that of the mines, we are always assured that no great saving could be achieved by cutting out private profits, because those private profits are now neg- ligible and the trade in question is not now greatly enriching the few. Whatever be the value of this par- ticular argument, it obviously entirely destroys the general argument. The general argument for capital- ism or individualism is that men will not adventure unless there are considerable prizes in the lottery. It is what is familiar in all Socialistic debates as the argument of “the incentive of gain.” But if there is no gain, there is certainly no incentive. If royalty- owners and shareholders only get a little insecure or doubtful profit out of profiteering, it seems as if they might as well fall to the lowly estate of soldiers and servants of society. I have never understood, by the way, why Tory debaters are so very anxious to prove against Socialism that “State servants” must be in- competent and inert. Surely it might be left to others to point out the lethargy of Nelson or the dull routine of Gordon. But this collapse of industrial individualism, which is not only a collapse but a contradiction (since it has to contradict all its own commonest maxims), is not only an accident of our condition, though it is most marked in our country. Anybody who can think in theories, those highly practical things, will see that sooner or later this paralysis in the system is in- Sn FEN a pee he lk ra ne “= a ae a ta ae a tl - nines Se ee ener er aa eee deed De eet ata he ie eae EO ee a Ne aps eeil nak rng 7 ee ee he nal rr rer Set Pris anne. ete ea se WY wrere . OEE pera a a a5 ane rae 7. lt) RTE aes Ce — Tt Se ater coeceneeee Pers eke ee Fi 4 cs J 4° 2 a 32 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY evitable. Capitalism is a contradiction; it is even a contradiction in terms. It takes a long time to box the compass, and a still longer time to see that it has done so; but the wheel has come full circle now. Capitalism is contradictory as soon as it is complete; because it is dealing with the mass of men in two opposite ways at once.’ When most men are wage- earners, it is more and more difficult for most men to be customers. For the capitalist is always trying to cut down what his servant demands, and in doing so is cutting down what his customer can spend./As soon as his business is in any difficulties, as at present in the coal business, he tries to reduce what he has to spend on wages, and in doing so reduces what others have to spend on coal. He is wanting the same man to be rich and poor at the same time. This contradic- tion in capitalism does not appear in the earlier stages, because there are still populations not reduced to the common proletarian condition. But as soon as the wealthy as a whole are employing the wage-earners as a whole, this contradiction stares them in the face like an ironic doom and judgment. Employer and employee are simplified and solidified to the relation of Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday. Robinson Cru- soe may say he has two problems: the supply of cheap labour and the prospect of trade with the na- tives. But as he is dealing in these two different ways with the same man, he will get into a muddle. Robin- son Crusoe may possibly force Friday to work forTHE RERIE OR HEsIOUR 313) nothing but his bare keep, the white man possessing all the weapons. As in the Geddes parallel, he may economize with an Axe. But he cannot cut down Fri- day’s salary to nothing and then expect Friday to give him gold and silver and orient pearls in return for rum and rifles. Now in proportion as capitalism covers the whole earth, links up large populations, and is ruled by centralized systems, the nearer and nearer approaches this resemblance to the lonely fig- ures On the remote island. If the trade with the na- tives is really going down, so as to necessitate the wages of the natives also going down, we can only say that the case is rather more tragic if the excuse is true than if it is false. We can only say that Cru- soe is now indeed alone, and that Friday is unques- tionably unlucky. I] think it very important that people should under- stand that there is a principle at work behind the industrial troubles of England in our time; and that, whoever be right or wrong in any particular quarrel, it is no particular person or party who is responsible for our commercial experiment being faced with failure. It is a vicious circle into which wage-earning society will finally sink when it begins to lose profits and lower wages; and though some industrial coun- tries are still rich enough to remain ignorant of the strain, it is only because their progress is incomplete; when they reach the goal they will find the riddle. In our own country, which concerns most of us most, a ln bai teeth Sree MN Se ee ee eat oe OPERA Peptide tet oN ee SE= es " eee rrr a : Serpette tea aL TE Ie wr aes ~- a ROprSNEE EN ene ae eerie eon gir es mee a saneerasantespimnlenreassiaieins Sis Sieearee a etaereareteenceesnee aauoee 34 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY we are already falling into that vicious circle of sink- ing wages and decreasing demand. And as I am going to suggest here, in however sketchy a manner, the line of escape from this slowly closing snare, and because I know some of the things that are commonly said about any such suggestion, I have a reason for re- minding the reader of all these things at this stage. “Safe! Of course it’s not safe! It’s a beggarly chance to cheat the gallows.” Such was the intemperate ex- clamation of Captain Wicks in the romance of Stevenson; and the same romancer has put a some- what similar piece of candour into the mouth of Alan Breck Stewart. “But mind you, it’s no small thing! ye maun lie bare and hard . . . and ye shall sleep with your hand upon your weapons. Aye, man, ye shall taigle many a weary foot or we get clear. | tell ye this at the start, for it’s a life that I ken well. But if ye ask what other chance you have, I answer; Nane.” And | myself am sometimes tempted to talk in this abrupt manner, after listening to long and thoughtful disquisitions throwing doubt on the detailed per- fection of a Distributist State, as compared with the rich happiness and final repose that crowns the pres- ent Capitalist and Industrial State. People ask us how we should deal with the unskilled labour at the docks, and what we have to offer to replace the radiant popularity of Lord Devonport and the permanent industrial peace of the Port of London. Those who ask us what we shall do with the docks seldom seemTHE PERIL OF THE HOUR 35 to ask themselves what the docks will do with them- selves, if our commerce steadily declines like that of sO many commercial cities in the past. Other people ask us how we should deal with workmen holding shares in a business that might possibly go bankrupt. It never occurs to them to answer their own question, in a capitalist state in which business after business is going bankrupt. We have got to deal with the smallest and most remote possibilities of our more simple and static society, while they do not deal with the biggest and most blatant facts about their own complex and collapsing one. They are inquisitive about the de- tatls of our scheme, and wish to arrange beforehand a science of casuistry for all the exceptions. But they dare not look their own systems in the face, where ruin has become the rule. Other people wish to know whether a machine would be permitted to exist in this or that position in our Utopia; as an exhibit in a museum, or a toy in the nursery, or a ‘‘torture im- plement of the twentieth century” shown in the Chamber of Horrors. But those who ask us so anx- iously how men are to work without machines do not tell us how machines are to work 1f men do not work them, or how either machines or men are to work if there is no work to do. They are so eager to dis- cover the weak points in our proposal that they have not yet discovered any strong points in their own practice. Strange that our vain and sentimental vision should be so vivid to these realists that they can Dusen oe pene int ea eer: CO EO ee an nel et A paan ne RSet tReet [eR ae ona i a on PIT at gtin arwisncige en ee nae OE TST OD en LR Da SOT AD ne= scieerpitpdarianteeettae alee ie Pa promt eet emetener ae tat i SIC er etal IO eae Snot oeeennsusianenteeenne a a ie Seana) Oe see tala STN: Se eee = “eae enter! 2 0 aero 36 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY see its every detail; and that their own reality should be so vague to them that they cannot see it at all; that they cannot see the most obvious and overwhelming fact about it: that it is no longer there. For it is one of the grim and even grisly jokes of the situation that the very complaint they always make of us is specially and peculiarly true of them. They are always telling us that we think we can bring back the past, or the barbarous simplicity and superstition of the past; apparently under the im- pression that we want to bring back the ninth cen- tury. But they do really think they can bring back the nineteenth century. They are always telling us that this or that tradition has gone for ever, that this or that craft or creed has gone for ever; but they dare not face the fact that their own vulgar and huckstering commerce has gone for ever.(They call us reactionaries if we talk of a Revival of Faith or a Revival of Catholicism. But they go on calmly plas- tering their papers with the headline of a Revival of Trade. What a cry out of the distant past! What a voice from the tomb! They have no reason whatever for believing that there will be a revival of trade, except that their great-grandfathers would have found it impossible to believe in a decline of trade. They have no conceivable ground for supposing that we shall grow richer, except that our ancestors never prepared us for the prospect of growing poorer. Yet it is they who are always blaming us for dependingTHE PERE OF Sine TOUR Bi on a sentimental tradition of the wisdom of our ancestors. It is they who are always rejecting social ideals merely because they were the social ideals of some former age. They are always telling us that the mill will never grind again the water that is past; without noticing that their own mills are already idle and grinding nothing at all—like ruined mills in some watery Early Victorian landscape suitable to their watery Early Victorian quotation. They are always telling us that we are fighting against the tide of time, as Mrs. Partington with a mop fought against the tide of the sea. And they cannot even see that time itself has made Mrs. Partington as an- tiquated a figure as Mother Shipton. They are always telling us that in resisting capitalism and commercial- ism we are like Canute rebuking the waves; and they do not even know that the England of Cobden is already as dead as the England of Canute. They are always seeking to overwhelm us in the water-floods, to sweep us away upon these weary and washy meta- phors of tide and time; for all the world as if they could call back the rivers that have left our cities so far behind, or summon back the seven seas to their allegiance to the trident; or bridle again, with gold for the few and iron for the many, the roaring river of the Clyde. We may well be tempted to the exclamation of Captain Wicks. We are not choosing between a pos- sible peasantry and a successful commerce. We are ees a a Rte ea SSS ere ee eS, a By teammate ee ROSES TS ea Se ee =e Pee dete te tae ea tre ~~. ae orate ene at deems me ee tines a am mea Ee aad Ea ee ete eenoe pene eS os See preont een me ne eae lene i ar ee me er al eR Sehr ae aaa atacand Ama rd 1 a tS Wea enna ee ee anes <= _memwy ve 1: Ot ere ele el ae Ff i i K! ye aa b by a vs i I RO ELE ol oat oat otal ee a ee - ee re err nt a : 38 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY choosing between a peasantry that might succeed and a commerce that has already failed. We are not seek- ing to lure men away from a thriving business to a sort of holiday in Arcadia or the peasant type of Utopia. We are trying to make suggestions about starting anew after a bankrupt business has really gone bankrupt. We can see no possible reason for supposing that English trade will regain its nine- teenth-century predominance, except mere Vic- torian sentimentalism and that particular sort of lying which the newspapers call “optimism.” They taunt us for trying to bring back the conditions of the Middle Ages; as if we were trying to bring back the bows or the body-armour of the Middle Ages. Well, helmets have come back; and body-armour may come back; and bows and arrows will have to come back, a long time before there is any return of that fortunate moment on whose luck they live. It 1s quite as likely that the long bow will be found through some accident superior to the rifle as that the battle- ship will be able any longer to rule the waves with- out reference to the aeroplane. The commercial sys- tem implied the security of our commercial routes; and that implied the superiority of our national navy. Everybody who faces facts knows that aviation has altered the whole theory of that naval security. The whole huge horrible problem of a big population on a small island dependent on insecure imports is a problem quite as much for Capitalists and Collect-yi i Sess ser THE RERIE OR SBE HOUR 39 Ivists as for Distributists. We are not choosing be- tween model villages as part of a serene system of town-planning. We are making a sortie from a be- sieged city, sword in hand; a sortie from the ruin of Carthage. “Safe! Of course it’s not safe!” said Captain Wicks. I think it is not unlikely that in any case a simpler social life will return; even if it return by the road of ruin. I think the soul will find simplicity again, if it be in the Dark Ages. But we are Christians and con- cerned with the body as well as the soul; we are Eng- lishmen and we do not desire, if we can help it, that the English people should be merely the People of the Ruins. And we do most earnestly desire a serious consideration of whether the transition cannot be made in the light of reason and tradition; whether we cannot yet do deliberately and well what nemesis will do wastefully and without pity; whether we can- not build a bridge from these slippery downward slopes to freer and firmer land beyond, without con- senting yet that our most noble nation must descend into that valley of humiliation in which nations dis- appear from history. For this purpose, with great conviction of our principles and with no shame of being open to argument about their application, we have called our companions to council. Seen Se itl Renae ne 2 i aa at nt pene . cn ~s bass a > he Nee oe eB abl at Wd bee Porat owe ne nek a md ane es Tad te RN te ee a Be ee Pehle ae CO ee eee ae ann Oe Pee ym,Pr al ice a a ee ee er arma aie PET TT fie 4 koa ae Sas om ee ean eo A ett ater la La oO eagle te IT] THE CHANCE OF RECOVERY ONcE upon a time, or conceivably even more than once, there was a man who went into a public-house and asked for a glass of beer. I will not mention his name, for various and obvious reasons; it may be libel nowadays to say this about a man; or it may lay him open to police prosecution under the more hu- mane laws of our day. So far as this first recorded action is concerned, his name may have been any- thing: William Shakespeare or Geoffrey Chaucer or Charles Dickens or Henry Fielding, or any of those common names that crop up everywhere in the popu- lace. The important thing about him is that he asked for a glass of beer. The still more important thing about him is that he drank it; and the most important thing of all is that he spat it out again (I regret to say) and threw the pewter mug at the publican. For the beer was abominably bad. True, he had not yet submitted it to any chemical analysis; but, after he had drank a little of it, he felt an inward, a very inward, persuasion that there was something wrong about it. When he had been ill for a week, steadily getting worse all the time, he took some of the beer to the Public Analyst; and that 40THE CHANCE OF RECOVERY 4] learned man, after boiling it, freezing it, turning it green, blue, and yellow, and so on, told him that it did indeed contain a vast quantity of deadly poison. “To continue drinking it,’ said the man of science thoughtfully, “will undoubtedly be a course attended with risks, but life is inseparable from risk. And be- fore you decide to abandon it, you must make up your mind what Substitute you propose to put into your inside, in place of the beverage which at present (more or less) reposes there. If you will bring me a list of your selections in this difficult matter, I will willingly point out the various scientific objections that can be raised to all of them.” The man went away, and became more and more ill; and indeed he noticed that nobody else seemed to be really well. As he passed the tavern, his eye chanced to fall upon various friends of his writhing in agony on the ground, and indeed not a few of them. lying dead and stiff in heaps about the road. To his simple mind this seemed a matter of some con- cern to the community; so he hurried to a police court and laid before a magistrate a complaint against the inn. “It would indeed appear,’ said the Justice of the Peace, “that the house you mention Is one in which people are systematically murdered by means of poison. But before you demand so drastic a course as that of pulling it down or even shutting it up, you have to consider a problem of no little difficulty. Have you considered precisely what building you Pas, “ee SEE LO ae at Stine tality Se SEE SR aR Nn Ne aw le aris aR ideal ea ae ae eee AE SS Ses mer SADR PC EEAA Soo ae enn est42 THE OUREINE ORRSANITY would Put In Its Place, whether a .” At this point I regret to say that the man gave a loud scream and was forcibly removed from the court announcing that he was going mad. Indeed, this conviction of his mental malady increased with his bodily malady; to such an extent that he consulted a distinguished Doc- tor of Psychology and Psycho-Analysis, who said to him confidentially, “As a matter of diagnosis, there can be no doubt that you are suffering from Bink’s Aberration; but when we come to treatment I may say frankly that it is very difficult to find anything to take the place of that affliction. Have you con- sidered what is the alternative to madness ts Whereupon the man sprang up waving his arms and cried, ‘“There is none. There is no alternative to mad- ness. It is inevitable. It is universal. We must make the best of it.” So making the best of it, he killed the doctor and then went back and killed the magistrate and the public analyst, and is now in an asylum, as happy as the day is long. In the fable appearing above the case is propounded which is primarily necessary to see at the start of a sketch of social renewal. It concerned a gentleman who was asked what he would substitute for the poison that had been put into his inside, or what constructive scheme he had to put in place of the den of assassins that had poisoned him. A similar demand is made of those of us who regard plutoc- Stee aaa erereertaraieiaanacatans Snes ee eo eater Se moe Sa cere ——— ow ae a NE Nc paper rapeeeensennien et areata a ne a eeeTHE CHANCE OF RECOVERY 43 racy as a poison or the present plutocratic state as something like a den of thieves. In the parable of the poison it is possible that the reader may share some of the impatience of the hero. He will say that nobody would be such a fool as not to get rid of prussic acid or professional criminals, merely because there were differences of opinion about the course of action that would follow getting rid of them. But | would ask the reader to be a little more patient, not only with me but with himself; and ask himself why it is that we act with this promptitude in the case of poison and crime. It is not, even here, really because we are indifferent to the substitute. We should not regard one poison as an antidote to the other poison, if it made the malady worse. We should not set a thief to catch a thief, if it really increased the amount of thieving. The principle upon which we are acting, even if we are acting too quickly to think, or think- ing too quickly to define, is nevertheless a principle that we could define. If we merely give a man an emetic after he has taken a poison, it is not because we think he can live on emetics any more than he can live on poisons. It is because we think that after he has first recovered from the poison, and then re- covered from the emetic, there will come a time when he himself will think he would like a little ordinary food. That is the starting-point of the whole specula- tion, so far as we are concerned. If certain impedi- ments are removed, it is not so much a question of costae a <> sh RAT Rg eT RAE a STI Sie ihre etacad Be ag ne P Tcteh ic ka SS SA rt at ak SS A en Saree oer alll fe aw Sete an Fe a oD Oe a No acs Bo a ne Pera eet eatPts ated Spteopreninret enter ea heen eee ee ee mt Es See a LA a sem one peli < Somer reeemeeteen! eee a eee wae em rer a Oe se ae on 7: ree ae ee tn Sete eer? Soiree epee 44 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY what we would do as of what he would do. So if we save the lives of a number of people from the den of poisoners, we do not at that moment ask what they will do with their lives. We assume that they will do something a little more sensible than taking poison. In other words, the very simple first principle upon which all such reforms rest, is that there is some tendency to recovery in every living thing if we re- move the pressure of an immediate peril or pain. Now at the beginning of all this rough outline of a social reform, which I propose to trace here, I wish to make clear this general principle of recovery, with- out which it will be unintelligible. We believe that if things were released they would recover; but we also believe (and this is very important in the practical question) that if things even begin to be released, they will begin to recover. If the man merely leaves off drinking the bad beer, his body will make some effort to recover its ordinary condition. If the man merely escapes from those who are slowly poisoning him, to some extent the very air he breathes will be an antidote to his poison. As I hope to explain in the essays that follow, I think the question of the real social reform divides itself into two distinct stages and even ideas. One is arresting a race towards mad monopoly that is already going on, reversing that revolution and re- turning to something that is more or less normal, but by no means ideal; the other is trying to inspireTHE CHANCE OF RECOVERY 45 that more normal society with something that is in a real sense ideal, though not necessarily merely Utopian. But the first thing to be understood is that any relief from the present pressure will probably have more moral effect than most of our critics imagine. Hitherto all the triumphs have been tri- umphs of plutocratic monopoly; all the defeats have been defeats of private property. I venture to guess that one real defeat of a monopoly wouid have an instant and incalculable effect, far beyond itself, like the first defeats in the field of a military empire like Prussia parading itself as invincible. As each group or family finds again the real experience of private property, it will become a centre of influence, a mis- sion. What we are dealing with is not a question of a General Election to be counted by a calculating machine. It is a question of a popular movement, that never depends on mere numbers. That is why we have so often taken, merely as a working model, the matter of a peasantry. The point about a peasantry is that it is not a machine, as prac- tically every ideal social state is a machine; that 1s, a thing that will work only as it is set down to work in the pattern. You make laws for a Utopia; it is only by keeping those laws that it can be kept a Utopia. You do not make laws for a peasantry. You make a peasantry; and the peasants make the laws. I do not mean, as will be clear enough when I come to more detailed matters, that laws must not be used for the Oe ry reeanaey ee ee as Pata eae . - er ee aay pee Da eI Fas oe rene Sate” To kia intact ad od ed De ero Se BE el ee AE SOG Sy tee a) Lele are ales fee (i 2 1} il a4 isar pt xteeiemeteets , Sa ad al ia he NIE. a) ees ~~ _ atc pee pa ar eter al al Cena oma eterna eat SS RT RIE a re aa) ar eines TE aan arr al Neagle 46 THe OURLINE OF SANITY establishment of a peasantry or even for the protec- tion of it. But I mean that the character of a peasantry does not depend on laws. The character of a peasan- try depends on peasants. Men have remained side by side for centuries in their separate and fairly equal farms, without many of them losing their land, with- out any of them buying up the bulk of the land. Yet very often there was no law against their buying up the bulk of the land. Peasants could not buy be- cause peasants would not sell. That is, this form of moderate equality, when once it exists, is not merely a legal formula; it is also a moral and psychological fact. People behave when they find themselves in that position as they do when they find themselves at home. That is, they stay there; or at least they be- have normally there. There is nothing in abstract logic to prove that people cannot thus feel at home in a Socialist Utopia. But the Socialists who describe Utopias generally feel themselves in some dim way that people will not; and that is why they have to make their mere laws of economic control so elaborate and so clear. They use their army of officials to move men about like crowds of captives, from old quar- ters to new quarters, and doubtless to better quar- ters. But we believe that the slaves that we free will fight for us like soldiers. In other words, all that I ask in this preliminary note is that the reader should understand that we are trying to make something that will run of it-THE CHANCE OF (RECOVERY 47 self. A machine will not run of itself. A man will run of himself; even if he runs into a good many things that he would have been wiser to avoid. When freed from certain disadvantages, he can to some extent take over the responsibility. All schemes of collective concentration have in them the character of controlling the man even when he is free; if you will, of controlling him to keep him free. They have the idea that the man will not be poisoned if he has a doctor standing behind his chair at dinner-time, to check the mouthfuls and measure the wine. We have the idea that the man may need a doctor when he is poisoned, but no longer needs him when he is unpoisoned. We do not say, as they possibly do say, that he will always be perfectly happy or per- fectly good; because there are other elements in life besides the economic; and even the economic is affected by original sin. We do not say that because he does not need a doctor he does not need a priest or a wife or a friend or a God; or that his relations to these things can be ensured by any social scheme. But we do say that there is something which is much more real and much more reliable than any social scheme: and that is a society. There is such a thing as people finding a social life that suits them and enables tiem to get on reasonably well with each other. You co not have to wait ti!l you have estab- lished that sort of society everywhere. It makes all the difference so soon as you have established it Ss ; poate nt PA ita ite peels momen EE AO ee eS rnin Ptctn AD nT ee inn ace Se wena peetan rae ereses ed a Nm neers a eterno le Os tnt aoenintnatecrrsearerentie cs Stee Seeman eee Sareea ee Ses RIE steer meri teen ail Ge nS ear li er Sea na ete rs ‘| \ 48 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY anywhere. So if I am told at the start: “You do not think Socialism or reformed Capitalism will save England; do you really think Distributism will save England?” I answer, “No; I think Englishmen will save England, if they begin to have half a chance.” I am therefore in this sense hopeful; I believe that the breakdown has been a breakdown of machinery and not of men. And | fully agree, as I have just ex- plained, that leaving work for a man is very differ- ent from leaving a plan for a machine. I ask the reader to realize this distinction, at this stage of the de- scription, before I go on to describe more definitely some of the possible directions of reform. | am not at all ashamed of being ready to listen to reason; | am not at all afraid of leaving matters open to adjust- ment; I am not at all annoyed at the prospect of those who carry out these principles varying in many ways in their programmes. I am much too much in earnest to treat My OWn programme as a party pro- gramme; or to pretend that my private bill must be- come an Act of Parliament without any amend- ments. But I have a particular cause, in this par- ticular case, for insisting in this chapter that there is a reasonable chance of escape; and for asking that the reasonable chance should be considered with rea- sonable cheerfulness. I do not care very much for that sort of American virtue which is now sometimes called optimism. It has too much of the flavour of Christian Science to be a comfortable thing forTHE CHANCE OF RECOVERY 49 Christians. But I do feel, in the facts of this par- ticular case, that there is a reason for warning people against a too hasty exhibition of pessimism and the pride of impotence. I do ask everybody to consider, in a free and open fashion, whether something of the sort here indicated cannot be carried out, even if it be carried out differently in detail; for it is a matter of the understanding of men. The position 1s much too serious for men to be anything but cheerful. And in this connection I would venture to utter a warn- Ing. A man has been led by a foolish guide or a self- confident fellow-traveller to the brink of a precipice, which he might well have fallen over in the dark. It may well be said that there is nothing to be done but to sit down and wait for the light. Still, it might be well to pass the hours of darkness in some discussion about how it will be best for them to make their way backwards to more secure ground; and the recollection of any facts and the formulation of any coherent plan of travel will not be waste of time, especially if there is nothing else to do. But there is one piece of advice which we should be in- clined to give to the guide who has misguided the simple stranger—especially if he is a really simple stranger, a man perhaps of rude education and ele- mentary emotions. We should strongly advise him not to beguile the time by proving conclusively that it is impossible to go back, that there is no really er oe ea A a gens at Roadaertte ee ae re ens reer ars eee sae ap eS NII ak mappa en eee etek LE ae u bf 5 a i Fy ® | é 7 some:ee peaeiian ee NTS ele ee preteen te = rs “i ri sanaietesiantPmd eset ii 5 Cs UP ate ee lt Nearer eee a ATA Na ay ee Oe SLIT nee, a ao te tyigeet 50 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY secure ground behind, that there is no chance of find- ing the homeward path again, that the steps recently taken are irrevocable, and that progress must go forward and can never return. If he is a tactful man, in spite of his previous error, he will avoid this tone in conversation. If he is not a tactful man, it is not altogether impossible that before the end of the con- versation, somebody will go over the precipice after all; and it will not be the simple stranger. An army has marched across a wilderness, its column, in the military phrase, in the air; under a confident commander who is certain he will pick up new communications which will be far better than the old ones. When the soldiers are almost worn out with marching, and the rank and file of them have suffered horrible privations from hunger and exposure, they find they have only advanced un- supported into a hostile country; and that the signs of military occupation to be seen on every side are only those of an enemy closing round. The march is suddenly halted and the commander ad- dresses his men. There are a great many things that he may say. Some may hold that he had much bet- ter say nothing at all. Many may hold that the less he says the better. Others may urge, very truly, that courage is even more needed for a retreat than for an advance. He may be advised to rouse his dis- appointed men by threatening the enemy with a more dramatic disappointment; by declaring thatTHE GHANGE OF RECOVERY 5 | they will best him yet; that they will dash out of the net even as it is thrown, and that their escape will be far more victorious than his victory. But anyhow there is one kind of speech which the com- mander will not make to his men, unless he 1s much more of a fool than his original blunder proves him. He will not say: “We have now taken up a position which may appear to you very depressing; but I assure you it 1s nothing to the depression which you will certainly suffer as you make a series of in- evitably futile attempts to improve it, or to fall back on what you may foolishly regard as a stronger position. I am very much amused at your absurd suggestions for getting back to our old communica- tions; for | never thought much of your mangy old communications anyhow.” There have been mutinies in the desert before now; and it is possible that the general will not be killed in battle with the enemy. A great nation and civilization has followed for a hundred years or more a form of progress which held itself independent of certain old communica- tions, in the form of ancient traditions about the land, the hearth, or the altar. It has advanced un- der leaders who were confident, not to say cocksure. They were quite sure that their economic rules were rigid, that their political theory was right, that their commerce was beneficent, that their parliaments were popular, that their press was enlightened, that their science was humane. In this confidence they — mht dtp Pio mr Ee Sai tins siedobttadiny chead eke ta at el DON i BOM dn na mead AES PAE ek tk sta 1 owl ad io Pye Pct ST ss lar nh nds RR re a ee PT" Sa Aono acon s~ ginan pan sae ATEN ET Bh pepyre— sahwenne geek LOE PORE a Uaet rd SN ad nat ot es Soca mo as epee Sait pcoprentnnent etree es Nt am et IT) ator ery a a a en A eine en ieee mere SS as So Pe ee ot ~ ONT a tne screen oor ie eae rgeeasche la 7 D2 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY a committed their people to certain new and enormous experiments; to making their own independent na- tion an eternal debtor to a few rich men; to piling up private property in heaps on the faith of finan- ciers: to covering their land with iron and stone and stripping it of grass and grain; to driving food out of their own country in the hope of buying it back again from the ends of the earth; to loading up their little island with iron and gold till it was weighted like a sinking ship; to letting the rich grow richer and fewer and the poor poorer and more num- erous; to letting the whole world be cloven in two with a war of mere masters and mere servants; to los- ing every type of moderate prosperity and candid patriotism, till there was no independence without luxury and no labour without ugliness; to leaving the millions of mankind dependent on indirect and dis- tant discipline and indirect and distant sustenance, working themselves to death for they knew not whom and taking the means of life from they knew not where; and all hanging on a thread of alien trade which grew thinner and thinner. To the people who have been brought into this position many things may still be said. It will be right to remind them that mere wild revolt will make things worse and not bet- ter. It may be true to say that certain complexities must be tolerated for a time because they correspond to other complexities, and the two must be carefully simplified together. But if I may say one word toTHE CHANCE OF RECOVERY 53 the princes and rulers of such a people, who have led them into such a pass, I would say to them as seri- ously as anything was ever said by man to men: “For God’s sake, for our sake, but, above all, for your own sake, do not be in this blind haste to tell them there is no way out of the trap into which your folly has led them; that there is no road except the road by which you have brought them to ruin; that there 1S 0 progress except the progress that has ended here. Do not be so eager to prove to your hapless victims that what is hapless is also hopeless. Do not be so anxious to convince them, now that you are at the end of your experiment, that you are also at the end of your resources. Do not be so very eloquent, so very elaborate, so very rational and radiantly con- vincing in proving that your own error is even more irrevocable and irremediable than it is. Do not try to minimize the industrial disease by showing it is an incurable disease. Do not brighten the dark prob- lem of the coal-pit by proving it is a bottomless pit. Do not tell the people there is no way but this; for many even now will not endure this. Do not say to men that this alone is possible; for many already think it impossible to bear. And at some later time, at some eleventh hour, when the fates have grown darker and the ends have grown clearer, the mass of men may suddenly understand into what a blind alley your progress has led them. Then they may turn on you in the trap. And if they bore all else, they Nl SR I aT ee es peepee Te an ~ Pn tel Oa ott eae Lt ae Ae Poe ne A { i af oH Hi My A] BS asat So onbpcanteabeeremnrer eer Caan eecerentieent eter OIE a i a IIE a Ney nO ee eniteatan arte = Spine olemei wbeurting NN Ee ie Seinen ae ie eaten arena.) a enema er eee et orn roll ene Se ~ See ee Seana 34 ine OURCINE OE SANIT Y might not bear the final taunt that you can do noth- ing; that you will not even try to do anything. “What art thou, man, and why art thou despairing?’ wrote the poet. ‘God shall forgive thee all but thy despair.’ Man also may forgive you for blundering and may not forgive you for despairing. ’IV ON A SENSE OF PROPORTION THOSE of us who study the papers and the par- liamentary speeches with proper attention must have by this time a fairly precise idea of the nature of the evil of Socialism. It is a remote Utopian dream im- possible of fulfilment and also an overwhelming practical danger that threatens us at every moment. It is only a thing that 1s as distant as the end of the world and as near as the end of the street. All that is clear enough; but the aspect of it that arrests me at this moment is more especially the Utopian as- pect. A person who used to write in the Daily Mail paid some attention to this aspect; and represented this social ideal, or indeed almost any other social ideal, as a sort of paradise of poltroons. He suggested that “weaklings’ wished to be protected from the strain and stress of our vigorous individualism, and so cried out for this paternal government or grand- motherly legislation. And it was while I was reading his remarks, with a deep and never-failing enjoyment, that the image of the Individualist rose before me; of the sort of man who probably writes such remarks and certainly reads them. The reader refolds the Daily Mail and rises from 95 Oi hea nna MI i ah cS] i SOT pte A ST 32a eee ata ation mre ai ates se perttiotietsadad-s Per 5 sw Peres wih ee = a nT rer OAS Ty Pare ae a 4 %56 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY his intensely individualistic breakfast-table, where he has just dispatched his bold and adventurous breakfast; the bacon cut in rashers from the wild boar which but lately turned to bay in his back garden; the eggs perilously snatched from swaying nest and flapping bird at the top of those toppling trees which gave the house its appropriate name of Pine Crest. He puts on his curious and creative hat, built on some bold plan entirely made up out of his own curious and creative head. He walks outside his unique and unparalleled house, also built with his own well-won wealth according to his own well- conceived architectural design, and seeming by its very outline against the sky to express his own pas- sionate personality. He strides down the street, mak- ing his own way over hill and dale towards the place of his own chosen and favourite labour, the workshop of his imaginative craft. He lingers on the way, now to pluck a flower, now to compose a poem, for his time is his own; he is an individual and a free man and not as these Communists. He can work at his own craft when he will, and labour far into the night to make up for an idle morning. Such is the life of the clerk in a world of private enterprise and prac- tical individualism; such the manner of his free pas- sage from his home. He continues to stride lightly along, until he sees afar off the picturesque and strik- ing tower of that workshop in which he will, as with the creative strokes of a god .. .ON A SENSE OF PROPORTION ah He sees it, I say, afar off. The expression is not wholly accidental. For that is exactly the defect in all that sort of journalistic philosophy of individual- ism _and enterprise; that those things are at present even more remote and improbable than communal visions. It is not the dreadful Bolshevist republic that is afar off. It is not the Socialistic State that is Utopian. In that sense, it is not even Utopia that is Utopian. The Socialist State may in one sense be very truly described as terribly and menacingly near. The Socialist State is exceedingly like the Capital- ist State, in which the clerk reads and the journalist writes. Utopia is exactly like the present state of af- fairs, only worse. “It would make no difference to the clerk if his job became a part of a Government department to- morrow. He would be equally civilized and equally uncivic if the distant and shadowy person at the head of the department were a Government official. Indeed, it does make very little difference to him now, Whether he or his sons and daughters are em- ployed at the Post Office on bold and revolutionary Socialistic principles or employed at the Stores on wild and adventurous Individualist principles. I never heard of anything resembling civil war between the daughter at the Stores and the daughter in the Post Office. |] doubt whether the young lady at the Post Office is so imbued with Bolshevist principles that she would think it a part of the Higher Morality to a -— we ? : .* fs Ys a ed 4 ee Le | a4 oI ey . A a. fi ; a #7 T; bf if a ; e; 7% wa eu ¥ h Le, ‘« he Pi a ck by : a #4 i Hl i | ey) i & 5 ¥ sf Hs Boa er ne erie ee a Bape iar eee lense : es 4 St aa a Hy i Bs SI 3 mI———E — vrei ne tae reintegrate See, Mie = Sas ra Nn mn we Soc SEK WIS So SOND ees BLL 7 5 heater tien oe ar sr ieee SoC pes ener Be: ir Paro ee Oe. 62 THE OUREINE OF SANDY that he would have in the most monstrous model village. I do not sneer at him; he has many intelligent tastes and domestic virtues in spite of the civilization he enjoys. They are exactly the tastes and virtues he could have as a tenant and servant of the State. But from the moment he wakes up to the moment he goes to sleep again, his life is run in grooves made for him by other people, and often other people he will never even know. He lives in a house that he does not own, that he did not make, that he does not want. He moves everywhere in ruts; he always goes up to his work on rails. He has forgotten what his fathers, the hunt- ers and the pilgrims and the wandering minstrels, meant by finding their way to a place] He thinks in terms of wages; that is, he has forgotten the real meaning of wealth. His highest ambition is con- cerned with getting this or that subordinate post in a business that is already a bureaucracy. |There is a certain amount of competition for that post inside that business; but so there would be inside any bureaucracy. This is a point that the apologists of monopoly often miss. They sometimes plead that even in such a system there may still be a competition among servants; presumably a competition in servil- ity. But so there might be after Nationalization, when they were all Government servants. The whole ob- jection to State Socialism vanishes, if that is an an- swer to the objection. If every shop were as thoroughly nationalized as a police station, it would not preventON A SENSE OF PROPORTION 63 the pleasing virtues of jealousy, intrigue, and selfish ambition from blooming and blossoming among them, as they sometimes do even among policemen. Anyhow, that world exists; and to challenge that world may be called Utopian; to change that world may be called insanely Utopian. In that sense the name may be applied to me and those who agree with me, and we shall not quarrel with it. But in an- other sense the name is highly misleading and par- ticularly inappropriate. The word “Utopia” implies not only difficulty of attainment but also other qualities attached to it in such examples as the Utopia of Mr. Wells. And it is essential to explain at once why they do not attach to our Utopia—if it is a Utopia. There is such a thing as what we should call ideal Distributism; though we should not, in this vale of tears, expect Distributism to be ideal. In the same sense there certainly is such a thing as ideal Com- munism. But there is no such thing as ideal Capital- ism; and there is no such thing as a Capitalist ideal. As we have already noticed (though it has not been noticed often enough), whenever the capitalist does become an idealist, and specially when he does be- come a sentimentalist, he always talks like a Social- ist. He always talks about “‘social service” and our common interests in the whole community. From this it follows that in so far as such a man 1s likely to have such a thing as a Utopia, it will be more or less feet EE ee yom ee Satan pees ee a a ror urs ae Se tee at ne eee owen een manent A Na ce sda cdl deal ee he Stale te nat ee AST a a OE ee ee porns Cand or a eet os ws ews CATR ala cae Aeve Dn a oe ae Ts Calera er SM a Be ns tie ht aieoetenteaeriemrer ee eae TT GD Se eter cutee endian este Lot ea we St a I IR net Sohn LMS See ee awe ED <5 Naren ers Se ee pent aril ea CN resale lain pian any = ee a arate 64 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY in the style of a Socialist Utopia. The successful financier can put up with an imperfect world, whether or no he has the Christian humility to recognize him- self as one of its imperfections. But if he is called upon to conceive a perfect world, it will be something in the way of the pattern state of the Fabians or the I.L.P. He will look for something systematized, some- thing simplified, something all on the same plan. And he will not get it; at least he will not get it from me. It is exactly from that simplification and sameness that I pray to be saved, and should be proud if I could save anybody. It is exactly from that order and unity that | call on the name of Liberty to de- liver us. We do not offer perfection; what we offer is pro- portion. We wish to correct the proportions of the modern state; but proportion is between varied things; and a proportion is hardly ever a pattern. It is as if we were drawing the picture of a living man and they thought we were drawing a diagram of wheels and rods for the construction of a Robot. We do not propose that in a healthy society all land should be held in the same way; or that all property should be owned on the same conditions; or that all citizens should have the same relation to the city. It is our whole point that the central power needs lesser powers to balance and check it, and that these must be of many kinds: some individual, some com- munal, some official, and so on. Some of them willSVL EB Eee eee RO LV ERLTe CPEE EET Clue aE wey eS ON A SENSE OF PROPORTION 65 probably abuse their privilege; but we prefer the risk to that of the State or of the Trust, which abuses its omnipotence. | For instance, | am sometimes blamed for not be- lieving in my own age, or blamed still more for be- lieving in my own religion. I am called medieval; and some have even traced in me a bias in favour of the Catholic Church to which I| belong. But sup- pose we were to take a parallel from these things. If anyone said that medieval kings or modern peas- ant countries were to blame for tolerating patches of avowed Bolshevism, we should be rather surprised if we found that the remark really referred to their tolerating monasteries. Yet it is quite true in one sense that monasteries are devoted to Communism and that monks are all Communists. Their economic and ethical life 7s an exception to a general civiliza- tion of feudalism or family life. Yet their privileged position was regarded as rather a prop of social order. They give to certain communal ideas their proper and proportionate place in the State; and something of the same thing was true of the Common Land. We should welcome the chance of allowing any guilds or groups of a communal colour their proper and proportionate place in the State; we should be perfectly willing to mark off some part of the land as Common Land. What we say is that merely national- izing all the land is like merely making monks of all the people; it is giving those ideals more than their pet di Dnt tne een ae ea a oe ees fit ne Dade Gin Meat eR nee eee rr — et an a a ON et ws ed eA vane ; ‘ Mt an % 28 aN % reip arr arenererrar eae peta EEE En no rrr men CME pr eee means al CE ean ane Sa 5s Anca read Se ~ seat os oss} Seria k ens rarer 66 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY proper and proportionate place in the State. The ordinary meaning of Communism is not that some people are Communists, but that all people are Com- munists. But we should not say, in the same hard and literal sense, that the meaning of Distributism is that all people are Distributists. We certainly should not say that the meaning of a peasant state 1s that all people are peasants. We should mean that it had the general character of a peasant state; that the land was largely held in that fashion and the law generally di- rected in that spirit; that any other institutions stood up as recognizable exceptions, as landmarks on that high tableland of equality. If this is inconsistent, nothing is consistent; if this is unpractical, all human life in unpractical. If a man wants what he calls a flower-garden he plants flowers where he can, and especially where they will deter- mine the general character of the landscape garden- ing. But they do not completely cover the garden; they only positively colour it. He does not expect roses to grow in the chimney-pots, or daisies to climb up the railings; still less does he expect tulips to grow on the pine, or the monkey tree to blossom like a rhododendron. But he knows perfectly well what he means by a flower-garden; and so does everybody else. If he does not want a flower-garden but a kitchen-garden, he proceeds differently. But he does not expect a kitchen-garden to be exactly like a kitchen. He does not dig out all the potatoes, because SED TeS. VEPURTETETREVLT IEEE TET Ty EPEREERS) ATP ESRSL OC ORG LIE CI PER celta ec reee Ceo Toe PRT A PEL O RTON A SENSE OF PROPORTION 67 it is not a flower-garden and the potato has a flower. He knows the main thing he is trying to achieve; but, not being a born fool, he does not think he can achieve it everywhere in exactly the same degree, or in a man- ner equally unmixed with things of another sort. The flower-gardener will not banish nasturtiums to the kitchen-garden because some strange people have been known to eat them. Nor will the other class a vegetable as a flower because it is called a cauli- flower. So, from our social garden, we should not necessarily exclude every modern machine any more than we should exclude every medieval monastery. And indeed the apologue is appropriate enough; for this is the sort of elementary human reason that men never lost until they lost their gardens: just as that higher reason that is more than human was lost with a garden long ago. RED apo gee tee band EN a Ee Sr > | : iF } | | | ma eee ent7 “Cnt ot one tater eee a) : La, an a STEERS: Pere ere = eae esSOME ASPECTS OF BIG BUSINESS . The Bluff of the Big Shops . A Misunderstanding about Method 3. A Case in Point The Tyranny of Trusts ae Aetna deri pet ode-ped th omceme ae a3 ea epee. NE A a ee ota pares? “1 oo ne eee Sa is IE ent Bieet Seca eee = ew re D & 5THE BLUFF OF THE BIG SHOPS Twice in my life has an editor told me in so many words that he dared not print what I had written, because it would offend the advertisers in his paper. The presence of such pressure exists everywhere in a more silent and subtle form. But I have a great re- spect for the honesty of this particular editor; for it was evidently as near to complete honesty as the editor of an important weekly magazine can possibly go. He told the truth about the falsehood he had to tell. On both those occasions he denied me liberty of expression because I said that the widely advertised stores and large shops were really worse than little shops. That, it may be interesting to note, is one of the things that a man is now forbidden to say; per- haps the only thing he is really forbidden to say. If it had been an attack on Government, it would have been tolerated. If it had been an attack on God, it would have been respectfully and tactfully ap- plauded. If I had been abusing marriage or patriot- ism or public decency, I should have been heralded in headlines and allowed to sprawl across Sunday newspapers. But the big newspaper is not likely to 71 rere a Woverdoy PPacl Ne ST oad at a a eed =<, ee ett ae Se a5 ey ein ae es Fee nee ee OR SER aT CO ne tlie ntitcane a ed a a te ee es rn ER pr crares Stn ae PE Ae nthe toed Roll Se ab) tee Oe ee aS ARS CS en) tn ee CE cnSEI >= peas pater rence vereapac- alba Linea a en anEIPT reerorenaeern a i Seas RS er Scinetoeoasensenstusienien;eeeemeral, amet eieeeie ie SEA ate ret, aL. “= maar ete a ad a He ie 72 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY attack the big shop; being itself a big shop in its way and more and more a monument of monopoly. But it will be well if I repeat here in a book what I found it impossible to repeat in an article. I think the big shop is a bad shop. I think it bad not only in a moral but a mercantile sense; that is, I think shopping there is not only a bad action but a bad bargain. | think the monster emporium is not only vulgar and inso- lent, but incompetent and uncomfortable; and I deny that its large organization is efficient. Large organiza- tion is loose organization. Nay, it would be almost as true to say that organization is always disorgan- ization. The only thing perfectly organic is an organ- ism; like that grotesque and obscure organism called a man. He alone can be quite certain of doing what he wants; beyond him, every extra man may be an extra mistake. As applied to things like shops, the whole thing is an utter fallacy. Some things like armies have to be organized; and therefore do their very best to be well organized. You must have a long rigid line stretched out to guard a frontier; and therefore you stretch it tight. But it is not true that you must have a long rigid line of people trimming hats or tying bouquets, in order that they may be trimmed or tied neatly. The work is much more likely to be neat if it is done by a particular craftsman for a particular customer with particular ribbons and flowers. The person told to trim the hat will never do it quite suitably to the person who wants it trimmed;THE BEUEF OF GHE BIGESHORS! = 738 and the hundredth person told to do it will do it badly; as he does. If we collected all the stories from all the housewives and householders about the big shops sending the wrong goods, smashing the right goods, forgetting to send any sort of goods, we should behold a welter of inefficiency. There are far more blunders in a big shop than ever happen in a small shop, where the individual customer can curse the individual shopkeeper. Confronted with modern ef- ficiency the customer is silent; well aware of that organization's talent for sacking the wrong man. In short, organization is a necessary evil—which in this case 1S not necessary. I have begun these notes with a note on the big shops because they are things near to us and familiar to us all. I need not dwell on other and still more entertaining claims made for the colossal combina- tion of departments. One of the funniest is the state- ment that it is convenient to get everything in the same shop. That is to stay, it is convenient to walk the length of the street, so long as you walk indoors, or more frequently underground, instead of walking the same distance in the open air from one little shop to another. The truth is that the monopolists’ shops are really very convenient—to the monopolist. They have all the advantage of concentrating business as they concentrate wealth, in fewer and fewer of the citizens. Their wealth sometimes permits them to pay tolerable wages; their wealth also permits them to - eikaeee ee baad oN EAS ee Tinton Sh tS tte DS Te es + eee {testbed ns pa ee Oa let Ca a eae a at EET ELE RE St a Ba ee et i i OTR ehat sider persecute reenact 9s Le manatee ree Sas SS ee rn a rele cee roe see eS ban SEN ee ha mere Saree Se Ey» Se i +; v| { cf 3 i é re =e 74 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY buy up better businesses and advertise worse goods. But that their own goods are better nobody has ever even begun to show; and most of us know any num- ber of concrete cases where they are definitely worse. Now I expressed this opinion of my own (so shocking to the magazine editor and his advertisers) not only because it is an example of my general thesis that small properties should be revived, but because it is essential to the realization of another and much more curious truth. It concerns the psychology of all these things: of mere size, of mere wealth, of mere adver- tisement and arrogance. And it gives us the first work- ing model of the way in which things are done to-day and the way in which (please God) they may be un- done to-morrow. There is one obvious and enormous and entirely neglected general fact to be noted before we con- sider the laws chiefly needed to renew the State. And that is the fact that one considerable revolution could be made without any laws at all. It does not concern any existing law, but rather an existing superstition. And the curious thing is that its upholders boast that it is a superstition. The other day I saw and very thoroughly enjoyed a popular play called Jt Pays to Advertise; which is all about a young business man who tries to break up the soap monopoly of his fa- ther, a more old-fashioned business man, by the wild- est application of American theories of the psychol- ogy of advertising. One thing that struck me as rather Tea ea aTTHE BEURE OF RHE BIGISHORS) 7/5 interesting about it was this. It was quite good com- edy to give the old man and the young man our sym- pathy in turn. It was quite good farce to make the old man and the young man each alternately look a fool. But nobody seemed to feel what I felt to be the most outstanding and obvious points of folly. They scoffed at the old man because he was old; because he was old-fashioned; because he himself was healthy enough to scoff at the monkey tricks of their mad ad- vertisements. But nobody really criticized him for having made a corner, for which he might once have stood in a pillory. Nobody seemed to have enough instinct for independence and human dignity to be Irritated at the idea that one purse-proud old man could prevent us all from having an ordinary human commodity if he chose. And as with the old man, so it was with the young man. He had been taught by his American friend that advertisement can hypno- tize the human brain; that people are dragged by a deadly fascination into the doors of a shop as into the mouth of a snake; that the subconscious is cap- tured and the will paralysed by repetition; that we are all made to move like mechanical dolls when a Yankee advertiser says, “Do It Now.’ But it never seemed to occur to anybody to resent this. Nobody seemed sufficiently alive to be annoyed. The young man was made game of because he was poor; because he was bankrupt; because he was driven to the shifts of bankruptcy; and so on. But he did not seem to Se) aoa hc Seal aie ae et PE aa ey eee IN Ry a ee te EDR ph mE A Ay OE Dal DP EO Pea mennarpinae ganbe Sind (ae oF ar atta ae ae Ee SL ind LE ~ a AB wena aerate EE ee ie aCe eter ete SSE purser ata ae nemarsacial 5 eo ets a lala eS Saas " selena SOD nereeeaten ete ae pal Saree mene oe ty Hi 1 t A { Fs ' é ti es 76 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY know he was something much worse than a swindler, a sorcerer. He did not know he was by his own boast a mesmerist and a mystagogue; a destroyer of reason and will; an enemy of truth and liberty. I think such people exaggerate the extent to which it pays to advertise; even if there is only the devil to pay. But in one sense this psychological case for ad- vertising is of great practical importance to any pro- gramme of reform. The American advertisers have got hold of the wrong end of the stick; but it is a stick that can be used to beat something else besides their own absurd big drum. It is a stick that can be used also to beat their own absurd business philosophy. They are always telling us that the success of modern commerce depends on creating an atmosphere, on manufacturing a mentality, on assuming a point of view. In short, they insist that their commerce is not merely commercial, or even economic or political, but purely psychological. I hope they will go on say- ing it; for then some day everybody may suddenly see that it is true. For the success of big shops and such things really is psychology; not to say psycho-analysis; or, in other words, nightmare. It is not real and, therefore, not reliable. This point concerns merely our immediate attitude, at the moment and on the spot, towards the whole plutocratic occupation of which such publicity is the gaudy banner. The very first thing to do, before we come to any of our proposals that are political andar] res THE BEUFF OF THE BIGESHORS) 977 legal, is something that really is (to use their beloved word) entirely psychological. The very first thing to do is to tell these American poker-players that they do not know how to play poker. For they not only bluff, but they boast that they are bluffing. In so far as it really is a question of an instant psychological method, there must be, and there is, an immediate psychological answer. In other words, because they are admittedly bluffing, we can call their bluff. I said recently that any practical programme for restoring normal property consists of two parts, which current cant would call destructive and constructive; but which might more truly be called defensive and offensive. The first is stopping the mere mad stam- pede towards monopoly, before the last traditions of property and liberty are lost. It is with that prelim- inary problem of resisting the world’s trend towards being more monopolist, that I am first of all dealing here. Now, when we ask what we can do, here and now, against the actual growth of monopoly, we are always given a very simple answer. We are told that we can do nothing. By a natural and inevitable op- eration the large things are swallowing the small, as large fish might swallow little fish. The trust can ab- sorb what it likes, like a dragon devouring what it likes, because it is already the largest creature left alive in the land. Some people are so finally resolved to accept this result that they actually condescend to regret it. They are so convinced that it 1s fate that = = aks eerie er ee Se Mn nm, a pate intl ae “ Se Sere Aen ni aol sete Rr -Le hn Minds Bea hs rare IE rn ca RRS a SR ee a =e cetat - a per an rp hia oA aa Lae EE aay ae A II Sy et ee BNE Ne a Cad Pn cA EASE aD eae eee easkins er Bh aenterecenergre een oe ice epee er arene tao I“ eae ac ores eee et) PINOT Waka mcaece ee ee Nm oie ect Sar Seninlennia tenant Ne a Rt Sree pietlale Sint SNORT erent erect oe net ae 78 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY they will even admit that it is fatality. The fatalists almost become. sentimentalists when looking at the little shop that is being bought up by the big com- pany. They are ready to weep, so long as it is ad- mitted that they weep because they weep in vain. They are willing to admit that the loss of a little toy- shop of their childhood, or a little tea-shop of their youth, is even in the true sense a tragedy. For a trag- edy means always a man’s struggle with that which is stronger than man. And it is the feet of the gods themselves that are here trampling on our traditions; it is death and doom themselves that have broken our little toys like sticks; for against the stars of destiny none shall prevail. It is amazing what a little bluff will do in this world. For they go on saying that the big fish eats the little fish, without asking whether little fish swim up to big fish and ask to be eaten. They accept the de- vouring dragon without wondering whether a fash- ionable crowd of princesses ran after the dragon to be devoured. They have never heard of a fashion; and do not know the difference between fashion and fate. The necessitarians have here carefully chosen the one example of something that is certainly not necessary, whatever else is necessary. They have chosen the one thing that does happen still to be free, as a proof of the unbreakable chains in which all things are bound. Very little is left free in the modern world; but private buying and selling areTHE BEUPF OF THE BIGESnORS 79 still supposed to be free; and indeed still are free; if anyone has a will free enough to use his freedom. Children may be driven by force to a particular school. Men may be driven by force away from a public-house. All sorts of people, for all sorts of new and nonsensical reasons, may be driven by force to a prison. But nobody is yet driven by force to a partic- ular shop. I shall deal later with some practical remedies and reactions against the rush towards rings and corners. But even before we consider these, it is well to have paused a moment on the moral fact which is so ele- mentary and so entirely ignored. Of all things in the world, the rush to the big shops is the thing that could be most easily stopped—by the people who rush there. We do not know what may come later; but they cannot be driven there by bayonets just yet. American business enterprise, which has already used British soldiers for purposes of advertisement, may doubtless in time use British soldiers for purposes of coercion. But we cannot yet be dragooned by guns and sabres into Yankee shops or international stores. The alleged economic attraction, with which | will deal in due course, is quite a different thing: | am merely pointing out that if we came to the: conclu- sion that big shops ought to be boycotted, we could boycott them as easily as we should (1 hope) boy- cott shops selling instruments of torture or poisons for private use in the home. In other words, this first and teenies Se Rada Dk i a Pree TWiT ALL se Bom oe, Oe Oy en eestare nae pe areata grater rong il Teo ee naa anaes! oo ure es» ars Se EP arwitnani aman ee ene TT fede ser pipeiac erate ale DR ier retatoeteretee a ar) Sean SR a nN ee ET I scone opener nie en Santer ee eee erate Nenletine eee Te lgiese! 80 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY fundamental question is not a question of necessity but of will. If we chose to make a vow, if we chose to make a league, fer dealing only with little local shops and never with large centralized shops, the campaign could be every bit as practical as the Land Campaign in Ireland. It would probably be nearly as successful. It will be said, of course, that people will go to the best shop. I deny it; for Irish boycotters did not take the best offer. I deny that the big shop is the best shop; and I especially deny that people go there because it is the best shop. And if I be asked why, I answer at the end with the unanswerable fact with which I began at the beginning. I know it is not merely a matter of business, for the simple reason that the business men themselves tell me it is merely a matter of bluff. It is they who say that noth- ing succeeds like a mere appearance of success. It is they who say that publicity influences us without our will or knowledge. It is they who say that “It Pays to Advertise’; that is, to tell people in a bullying way that they must “Do It Now,” when they need not do it at all.I] A MISUNDERSTANDING ABOUT METHOD Berore I go any further with this sketch, I find I must pause upon a parenthesis touching the nature of my task, without which the rest of it may be mis- understood. As a matter of fact, without pretending to any official or commercial experience, I am here doing a great deal more than has ever been asked of most of the mere men of letters (if | may call my- self for the moment a man of letters) when they con- fidently conducted social movements or set up social ideals. I will promise that, by the end of these notes, the reader shall know a great deal more about how men might set about making a Distributive State than the readers of Carlyle ever knew about how they should set about finding a Hero King or a Real Su- perior. I think we can explain how to make a small shop or a small farm a common feature of our so- ciety better than Matthew Arnold explained how to make the State the organ of Our Best Self. I think the farm will be marked on some sort of rude map more clearly than the Earthly Paradise on the navigation chart of William Morris; and | think that in compari- son with his News from Nowhere this might fairly be called News from Somewhere. Rousseau and Rus- 81 SOR EE ed ae rey ae A at hd eee ee a is | it | 5 4 bi : ree a : A i i i a Lf r+ a A.) a) et a A Loe ora iae TT want SR ero epee teellie peerage lela et PEP eat eater en god To a art ia seeder ial TN eel sereaie nt <——_ een i SEN ele cee inn erga cl es ea Ca 82 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY kin were often much more vague and visionary than I am: though Rousseau was even more rigid in ab- stractions, and Ruskin was sometimes very much ex- cited about particular details. I need not say that I am not comparing myself to these great men; | am only pointing out that even from these, whose minds dominated so much wider a field, and whose position as publicists was much more respected and responsi- ble, nothing was as a matter of fact asked beyond the general principles we are accused of giving. I am merely pointing out that the task has fallen to a very minor poet when these very major prophets were not required to carry out and complete the fulfilment of their own prophecies. It would seem that our fathers did not think it quite so futile to have a clear vision of the goal with or without a detailed map of the road; or to be able to describe a scandal without go- ing on to describe a substitute. Anyhow, for whatever reason, it is quite certain that if I really were great enough to deserve the reproaches of the utilitarians, if I really were as merely idealistic or imaginative as they make me out, if I really did confine myself to describing a direction without exactly measuring a road, to pointing towards home or heaven and telling men to use their own good sense in getting there— if this were really all that I could do, it would be all that men immeasurably greater than I am were ever expected to do; from Plato and Isaiah to Emerson and Tolstoy.A MISUNDERSTANDING 83 But it is not all that I can do; even though those who did not do it did so much more. I can do some- thing else as well; but I can only do it if it be under- stood what I am doing. At the same time I am well aware that, in explaining the improvement of so elab- orate a society, a man may often find it very difficult to explain exactly what he is doing, until it is done. [ have considered and rejected half a dozen ways of approaching the problem, by different roads that all lead to the same truth. I had thought of beginning with the simple example of the peasant; and then I knew that a hundred correspondents would leap upon me, accusing me of trying to turn all of them into peasants. I thought of beginning with describing a decent Distributive State in being, with all its bal- ance of different things; just as the Socialists describe their Utopia in being, with its concentration in one thing. Then I knew a hundred correspondents would call me Utopian; and say it was obvious my scheme could not work, because | could only describe it when it was working. But what they would really mean by my being Utopian, would be this: that until that scheme was working, there was no work to be done. I have finally decided to approach the social solution in this fashion: to point out first that the monopolist momentum is not irresistible; that even here and now much could be done to modify it, much by anybody, almost everything by everybody. Then | would main- tain that on the removal of that particular pluto- an Boe oe i Pr Paseae jer yeenre ah DR 2 en ——— Scermrmeeacrar ee ee at ad et eee Rita ea nie SION a Sree ea ces Pa x wt i ae ede oie ees a ~ PP e-aetee . Rnd a ee ec teil need eae ne ee Peli NE aT a ee Lo Ee EO a ee OP EO Dn oe Pia I mr ny H 5 . M4 H 5 =? nN eee= ne . ee —s oe ee ernst res Ct oi See ed te BIC a st Saesee vo eee a Sees seers TIE ere eee re SE nares Sear 84 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY cratic pressure, the appetite and appreciation of nat- ural property would revive, like any other natural thing. Then, I say, it will be worth while to propound to people thus returning to sanity, however sporadi- cally, a sane society that could balance property and control machinery. With the description of that ulti- mate society, with its laws and limitations, I would conclude. Now that may or may not be a good arrangement or order of ideas; but it is an intelligible one; and | submit with all humility that I have a mght to ar- range my explanations in that order, and no critic has a right to complain that I do not disarrange them in order to answer questions out of their order. | am willing to write him a whole Encyclopedia of Dis- tributism if he has the patience to read it; but he must have the patience to read it. It is unreasonable for him to complain that I have not dealt adequately with Zoology, State Provision For, under the letter B; or described the honourable social status of the Guild of the Xylographers while I am still dealing alphabetically with the Guild of Architects. | am willing to be as much of a bore as Euclid; but the critic must not complain that the forty-eighth propo- sition of the second book is not a part of the Pons Astnorum. The ancient Guild of Bridge-Builders will have to build many such bridges. Now from comments that have come my way, | gather that the suggestions I have already made mayA MISUNDERSTANDING 85 not altogether explain their own place and purpose in this scheme. I am merely pointing out that monopoly is not omnipotent even now and here; and that any- body could think, on the spur of the moment, of many ways in which its final triumph can be delayed and perhaps defeated. Suppose a monopolist who is my mortal enemy endeavours to ruin me by preventing me from selling eggs to my neighbours, I can tell him I shall live on my own turnips in my own kitchen- garden. I do not mean to tie myself to turnips; or swear never to touch my own potatoes or beans. | mean the turnips as an example; something to throw at him. Suppose the wicked millionaire in question comes and grins over my garden wall and says, “I perceive by your starved and emaciated appearance that you are in immediate need of a few shillings; but you can’t possibly get them,” I may possibly be stung into retorting, “Yes, I can. I could sell my first edi- tion of Martin Chuzzlewit.” | do not necessarily mean that I see myself already in a pauper’s grave unless I can sell Martin Chuzzlewit; 1 do not mean that | have nothing else to suggest except selling Martin Chuzzlewit; | do not mean to brag like any com- mon politician that I have nailed my colours to the Martin Chuzzlewit policy. I mean to tell the offensive pessimist that I am not at the end of my resources; that I can sell a book or even, if the case grows desperate, write a book. I could do a great many things before I came to definitely anti-social action = “we Se ee a ee a a ee ee etinltinias aera es eS eS Feld ari ate be a i ee te te Ee Nr nae~ 5 sa pape pserrversdasi al nsh ae ORE tat erstrperaenig aa eta Sian adie terre alent el eI PO er aerate aalerien ial att ene ee ae per diet aT vr wala oa ee aati ee ray | inn tint oeeteaerrece eae es tedyiisect 86 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY like robbing a bank or (worse still) working in a bank. I could do a great many things of a great many kinds, and | give an example at the start to suggest that there are many more of them, not that there are no more of them. There are a great many things of a great many kinds in my house, besides the copy of a Martin Chuzzlewit. Not many of them are of great value except to me; but some of them are of some value to anybody. For the whole point of a home is that it is a hotch-potch. And mine, at any rate, rises to that austere domestic ideal. The whole point of one’s own house is that it is not only a number of totally different things, which are nevertheless one thing, but it is one in which we still value even the things that we forget. If a man has burnt my house to a heap of ashes, I am none the less justly indignant with him for having burnt everything, because I cannot at first even remember everything he has burnt. And as it is with the household gods, so it is with the whole of that household religion, or what remains of it, to offer resistance to the destruc- tive discipline of industrial capitalism. In a simpler society, | should rush out of the ruins, calling for help on the Commune or the King, and crying out, “Haro! a robber has burnt my house.” I might, of course, rush down the street crying in one passionate breath, “Haro! a robber has burnt my front door of seasoned oak with the usual fittings, fourteen window frames, nine curtains, five and a half carpets, 753(Oe a te Ee ee Mins be Mead ara POCEES ALLER S ESET A MISUNDERSTANDING 87 books, of which four were éditions de luxe, one por- trait of my great-grandmother,” and so on through all the items; but something would be lost of the fierce and simple feudal cry. And in the same way I could have begun this outline with an inventory of all the alterations I should like to see in the laws, with the object of establishing some economic justice in Eng- land. But I doubt whether the reader would have had any better idea of what I was ultimately driving at; and it would not have been the approach by which | propose at present to drive. I shall have occasion later to go into some slight detail about these things; but the cases I give are merely illustrations of my first general thesis: that we are not even at the mo- ment doing everything that could be done to resist the rush of monopoly; and that when people talk as if nothing could now be done, that statement is false at the start; and that all sorts of answers to it will immediately occur to the mind. Capitalism is breaking up; and in one sense we do not pretend to be sorry it is breaking up. Indeed, we might put our own point pretty correctly by say- ing that we would help it to break up; but we do not want it merely to break down. But the first fact to realize is precisely that; that it is a choice between its breaking up and its breaking down. It is a choice between its being voluntarily resolved into its real component parts, each taking back its own, and its merely collapsing on our heads in a crash or confusion ey ~ ck set . Se. ae ate tre, ay _ SERe ese ss pa To a ti bad eek a pes ns en err ——~ ee ‘ em Mi ee eed til Ha OLE PE ee ee al a ie ae a Se mad ekk nee es pate thsi, Sn dee ate ae =o on . a rs NS te berated. Pat Le tad ae EB ce EF a Se PS A Ah TD path did aeaen ae ea rae ae paste SESE stellt lille DMSO Seer ae 3: eee Rae a DS A I i OA BEE ele aT a Spnaniniee pers ca $ | ae ah 7 yi 3 & 4 5 ] TEL. creet ahead reer eruertieg ad b1 of PE ae at tt pare oe eae “- Sachin nape lela ial Cet haere arr entieapepane ene al otis tare Cimon Rien Sencar eS bse: anaes sie ats OC RT enema sey _- =~ SR pein > sea eee ee et ne Se eer sarod sine oe ree Se 88 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY of all its component parts, which some call com- munism and some call chaos. The former is the one thing all sensible people should try to procure. The latter is the one thing that all sensible people should try to prevent. That is why they are often classed together. I have mainly confined myself to answering what I have always found to be the first question, ‘““What are we to do now?” To that | answer, “What we must do now is to stop the other people from doing what they are doing now.” The initiative is with the enemy. It is he who is already doing things, and will have done them long before we can begin to do anything, since he has the money, the machinery, the rather mechanical majority, and other things which we have first to gain and then to use. He has nearly completed a monopolist conquest, but not quite; and he can still be hampered and halted. The world has woken up very late; but that is not our fault. That is the fault of all the fools who told us for twenty years that there could never be any Trusts; and are now telling us, equally wisely, that there can never be anything else. There are other things I ask the reader to bear in mind. The first is that this outline is only an outline, though one that can hardly avoid some curves and loops. I do not profess to dispose of all the obstacles that might arise in this question, because so many of them would seem to many to be quite a differentPERRI ceo te GUNTER UE TOTaRt oe yey ¢ PULTE CoR AE OCR ES LE LS Lee OE eERe Se A MISUNDERSTANDING 89 question. I will give one example of what I mean. What would the critical reader have thought, if at the very beginning of this sketch I had gone off into a long disputation about the Law of Libel? Yet, if I were strictly practical, I should find that one of the most practical obstacles. It is the present ridiculous position that monopoly is not resisted as a social force but can still be resented as a legal imputation. If you try to stop a man cornering milk, the first thing that happens will be a smashing libel action for calling it a corner. It is manifestly mere common sense that if the thing is not a sin it is not a slander. As things stand, there is no punishment for the man who does it; but there is a punishment for the man who discovers it. | do not deal here (though I am quite prepared to deal elsewhere) with all these de- tailed difficulties which a society as now constituted would raise against such a society as we want to con- stitute. If it were constituted on the principles [ suggest, those details would be dealt with on those principles as they arose. For instance, it would put an end to the nonsense whereby men, who are more powerful than emperors, pretend to be private trades- men suffering from private malice; it will assert that those who are in practice public men must be criti- cized as potential public evils. It would destroy the absurdity by which an “important case” is tried by a “special jury”; or, in other words, that any serious issue between rich and poor is tried by the Ly. I oe ae Py oe ‘A fits aad nen peGea Wie St oT) er te ~~, Ere Enh aatne Rt A Seine ee as int = PID 3 mn an HES aera ue sae Se ee: a == Or re ne niepern ere Sa a eraser nk peepee eat eS RANE RR on eee epee: Pita te vant as BN Nee Ay pats aa hat es a —_ orate.So Sepa sacar en lll REP ree ert a fae Dera — Pe iaibninelienn re ne a sat ae at yale cere Be nae > ns at et pn tell - 7 = ale RIN seeped ean ete Ma ea ~ Secreta Saas 90 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY rich. But the reader will see that I cannot here rule out all the ten thousand things that might trip us up; I must assume that a people ready to take the larger risks would also take the smaller ones. Now this outline is an outline; in other words, it is a design, and anybody who thinks we can have practical things without theoretical designs can go and quarrel with the nearest engineer or architect for drawing thin lines on thin paper. But there is another and more special sense in which my sug- gestion is an outline; in the sense that it is deliber- ately drawn as a large limitation within which there are many varieties. I have long been acquainted, and not a little amused, with the sort of practical man who will certainly say that I generalize because there is no practical plan. The truth is that I gen- eralize because there are so many practical plans. I myself know four or five schemes that have been drawn up, more or less drastically, for the diffusion of capital. The most cautious, from a capitalist stand- point, is the gradual extension of profit-sharing. A more stringently democratic form of the same thing is the management of every business (if it cannot be a small business) by a guild or group clubbing their contributions and dividing their results. Some Distributists dislike the idea of the workman having shares only where he has work; they think he would be more independent if his little capital were in- vested elsewhere; but they all agree that he oughtA MISUNDERSTANDING 9] to have the capital to invest. Others continue to call themselves Distributists because they would give every citizen a dividend out of much larger national systems of production. I deliberately draw out my general principles so as to cover as many as possible of these alternative business schemes. But I object to being told that I am covering so many because | know there are none. If | tell a man he is too luxurious and extravagant, and that he ought to economize in something, I am not bound to give him a list of his luxuries. The point is that he will be all the better for cutting down any of his luxuries. And my point is that modern society would be all the better for cutting up property by any of these processes. This does not mean that | have not my own favourite form; personally I prefer the second type of division given in the above list of exampies. But my main business is to point out that amy reversal of the rush to concentrate property will be an improvement on the present state of things. If I tell a man his house is burning down in Putney, he may thank me even if I do not give him a list of all the vehicles which go to Putney, with the numbers of all the taxicabs and the time-table of all the trams. It is enough that | know there are a great many vehicles for him to choose from, before he is reduced to the proverbial adventure of going to Putney on a pig. It is enough that any one of those vehicles is on the whole less uncomfortable than a house on fire or even a heap ea z Cepeda ce ca cee Patel ee PES een Saeeen Mi Sn ta na ee oe Pee mney ena en > Ea a A a a a ae rn are pnw an we nn ar Fs eT OO tae I Ae Ba Pitas es. H 4 MI a “ & i x So 5 be)SPAT TEI Tae TNE ne err mamta: a, SN lla le enon eee iL, sO mre eaten et ote nee rene nme er a eee eee eer ere a8 e) 92 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY of ashes. I admit I might be called unpractical if impenetrable forests and destructive floods lay be- tween here and Putney; it might then be as merely idealistic to praise Putney as to praise Paradise. But I do not admit that | am unpractical because | know there are half a dozen practical ways which are more practical than the present state of things. But it does not follow, in fact, that I do not know how to get to Putney. Here, for instance, are half a dozen things which would help the process of Distributism, apart from those on which I shall have occasion to touch as points of principle. Not all Distributists would agree with all of them; but all would agree that they are in the direction of Distributism. (1) The taxation of contracts so as to discourage the sale of small property to big proprietors and encourage the break-up of big property among small proprietors. (2) Something like the Napoleonic testamentary law and the destruction of primogeniture. (3) The estab- lishment of free law for the poor, so that small prop- erty could always be defended against great. (4) The deliberate protection of certain experiments in small property, if necessary by tariffs and even local tariffs. (5) Subsidies to foster the starting of such expen- ments. (6) A league of voluntary dedication, and any number of other things of the same kind. But I have inserted this chapter here in order to explain that this is a sketch of the first principles of Dis- tributism and not of the last details, about which evenee ECP ROO SESE Te. at: ee CRORE Er ee AG EY be A MISUNDERSTANDING 93 Distributists might dispute. In such a statement, ex- amples are given as examples, and not as exact and exhaustive lists of all the cases covered by the rule. If this elementary principle of exposition be not understood I must be content to be called an un- practical person by that sort of practical man. And indeed in his sense there is something in his accusa- tion. Whether or no I am a practical man, I am not what is called a practical politician, which means a professional politician. I can claim no part in the glory of having brought our country to its present promising and hopeful condition. Harder heads than mine have established the present prosperity of coal. Men of action, of a more rugged energy, have brought us to the comfortable condition of living on our cap- ital. | have had no part in the great industrial revolu- tion which has increased the beauties of nature and reconciled the classes of society; nor must the too en- thusiastic reader think of thanking me for this more enlightened England, in which the employee is living on a dole from the State and the employer on an overdraft at the Bank. ioe Te A ee oe . Meta rn eT Sie ein asa RN Sa a ete ees line iad eNO aS ae ne tae et et arr e Se ie Ce Ne ee eee eee 2 eT ae on de ee ee ei mae Peer Aerials OS DE NS OE SDSS Tale Ce ee[at Soeeetoraes Spt Deh e at Sociale eee es ote. se Det ee preteen) sate en ra a ree nee aa ae rea arr rans oo SNe ere a SE Ny sorrseirer-alineieeiesie at) Ca ntl oe ee IT] A CASE IN POINT It is as natural to our commercial critics to argue in a circle as to travel on the Inner Circle. It is not mere stupidity, but it is mere habit; and it is not easy either to. break into or to escape from that iron ring. When we say things can be done, we commonly mean either that they could be done by the mass of men, or else by the ruler of the State. I gave an ex- ample of something that could be done quite easily by the mass; and here I will give an example of some- thing that could be done quite easily by the ruler. But we must be prepared for our critics beginning to argue in a circle and saying that the present populace will never agree or the present ruler act in that way. But this complaint is a confusion. We are answering people who call our ideal impossible in itself. If you do not want it, of course, you will not try to get it; but do not say that because you do not want it, it follows that you could not get it 1f you did want it. A thing does not become intrinsically impossible merely by a mob not trying to obtain it; nor does a thing cease to be practical politics because no politi- cian is practical enough to do it. I will start with a small and familiar example. In 94A CASE IN POINT 95 order to ensure that our huge proletariat should have a holiday, we have a law obliging all employers to shut their shops for half a day once a week. Given the proletarian principle, it is a healthy and neces- sary thing for a proletarian state; just as the satur- nalia is a healthy and necessary thing for a slave state. Given this provision for the proletariat, a practical person will naturally say: “It has other advantages, too; it will be a chance for anybody who chooses to do his own dirty work; for the man who can man- age without servants.” That degraded being who ac- tually knows how to do things himself, will have a look in at last. That isolated crank, who can really work for his own living, may possibly have a chance to live. A man does not need to be a Distributist to say this; it is the ordinary and obvious thing that anybody would say. The man who has servants must cease to work his servants. Of course, the man who has no servants to work cannot cease to work them. But the law is actually so constructed that it forces this man also to give a holiday to the servants he has not got. He proclaims a saturnalia that never happens to a crowd of phantom slaves that have never been there. Now there is not a rudiment of reason about this arrangement. In every possible sense, from the immediate material to the abstract and mathematical sense, it is quite mad. We live in days of dangerous division of interests between the employer and the employed. Therefore, even when ratte Se A LT ee ee SNE aS DS A Pn ee SE eT “4See Stn ee nine eeeeeeeee ee — Ci ate epeepcer tees RT eT Nae ee alerted aera eed en etre EONS EE IMI ee et leat eee ee net eee . as “ - =<" ¢ Oe oR ea ee sr 4 96 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY the two are not divided, but actually united in one person, we must divide them again into two parties. We coerce a man into giving himself something he does not want, because somebody else who does not exist might want it. We warn him that he had better receive a deputation from himself, or he might go on strike against himself. Perhaps he might even be- come a Bolshevist, and throw a bomb at himself; in which case he would have no other course left to his stern sense of law and order but to read the Riot Act and shoot himself. They call us unpractical; but we have not yet produced such an academic fantasy as this. They sometimes suggest that our regret for the disappearance of the yeoman or the apprentice is a mere matter of sentiment. Sentimental! We have not quite sunk to such sentimentalism as to be sorry for apprentices who never existed at all. We have not quite reached that richness of romantic emotion that we are capable of weeping more copiously for an imaginary grocer’s assistant than for a real gro- cer. We are not quite so maudlin yet as to see double when we look into our favourite little shop; or to set the little shopkeeper fighting with his own shadow. Let us leave these hard-headed and practical men of business shedding tears over the sorrows of a non- existent office boy, and proceed upon our own wild and erratic path, that at least happens to pass across the land of the living. Now if so small a change as that were made to-A CASE IN POINT 97 morrow, it would make a difference: a considerable and increasing difference. And if any rash apologist of Big Business tells me that a little thing like that could make very little difference, let him beware. For he is doing the one thing which such apologists commonly avoid above all things: he is contradict- ing his masters. Among the thousand things of in- terest, which are lost in the million things of no in- terest, in the newspaper reports of Parliament and public affairs, there really was one delightful little comedy dealing with this point. Some man of nor- mal sense and popular instincts, who had strayed into Parliament by some mistake or other, actually pointed out this plain fact: that there was no need to protect the proletariat where there was no pro- letariat to protect; and that the lonely shopkeeper might, therefore, remain in his lonely shop. And the Minister in charge of the matter actually replied, with a ghastly innocence, that it was impossible; for it would be unfair to the big shops. Tears evidently flow freely in such circles, as they did from the rising politician, Lord Lundy; and in this case it was the mere thought of the possible sufferings of the million- aires that moved him. There rose before his imagina- tion Mr. Selfridge in his agony, and the groans of Mr. Woolworth, of the Woolworth Tower, thrilled through the kind hearts to which the cry of the sor- rowing rich will never come in vain. But whatever we may think of the sensibility needed to regard the big rr - ened iG eae a me ae Xe : on A eee gah ba Ridin Goat OE eae ee Tone ee ta Fl ar Ce ee Ce Pee SO a ee en eae Poe ra Stic ey DL LEIA mee ne I AT en ee i BEE Be at Wr a reas Pas nee atSL meen a Sr ers patibent ee eT Tos E ae) TS, Po er sent dar Sener tare al eC eT ae ven ener aay di oa earner reenter wien eg iO IO See piatialeis a acne el tae oe a meee Televeval 98 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY store-owners as objects of sympathy, at any rate it disposes at a stroke of all the fashionable fatalism that sees something inevitable in their success. It is absurd to tell us that our attack is bound to fail; and then that there would be something quite unscrupu- lous in its so immediately succeeding. Apparently Big Business must be accepted because it is invulnerable, and spared because it is vulnerable. This big absurd bubble can never conceivably be burst; and it is simply cruel that a little pin-prick of competition can burst it. I do not know whether the big shops are quite so weak and wobbly as their champion said. But what- ever the immediate effect on the big shops, | am sure there would be an immediate effect on the little shops. | am sure that if they could trade on the general holiday, it would not only mean that there would be more trade for them, but that there would be more of them trading. It might mean at last a large class of little shopkeepers; and that is exactly the sort of thing that makes all the political difference, as it does in the case of a large class of little farmers. It is not in the merely mechanical sense a matter of numbers. It is a matter of the presence and pressure of a par- ticular social type. It is not a question merely of how many noses are counted; but in the more real sense whether the noses count. If there were anything that could be called a class of peasants, or a class of small shopkeepers, they would make their presence felt inA CASE IN POINT 99 legislation, even if it were what is called class legis- lation. And the very existence of that third class would be the end of what is called the class war; in so far as its theory divides all men into employers and employed. I do not mean, of course, that this little legal alteration is the only one | have to pro- pose; I mention it first because it is the most obvious. But I mention it also because it illustrates very clearly what I mean by the two stages: the nature of the negative and positive reform. If little shops began to gain custom and big shops began to lose it, it would mean two things, both indeed preliminary but both practical. It would mean that the mere centrip- etal rush was slowed down, if not stopped, and might at last change to a centrifugal movement. And it would mean that there were a number of new citizens in the State to whom all the ordinary Social- ist or servile arguments were inapplicable. Now when you have got your considerable sprinkling of small proprietors, of men with the psychology and philos- ophy of small property, then you can begin to talk to them about something more like a just general settlement upon their own lines; something more like a land fit for Christians to live in. You can make them understand, as you cannot make plutocrats or proletarians understand, why the machine must not exist save as the servant of the man, why the things we produce ourselves are precious like our own chil- dren, and why we can pay too dearly for the posses- {Sam Nee s ea So nhl a ne a lel Sere re ae ay ae Sees See SS Petes A ee ponent a Pe i ob thdinl Aad Md) Pela oe ARES Te Sr oe ees fi oa} Rey ” a ni t He ad an tNPs > eis esecmrieabiaaiii sale etn P See ae etabarteaieeneng=areieee eebienei eo tanaeeeee eS Sw ee eee ee Fa Oe Wee . ins SSE wlan heen kcsece aoa eenerenanteon Soar nee - ' SC aan ena pee aera ermine ead Lit 8 To ae Oe re TT = ore - ee Pe ater ninepdioomain ta ete TT He : 3 Pee at OPS, 100 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY sion of luxury by the loss of liberty. If bodies of men only begin to be detached from the servile settle- ments, they will begin to form the body of our public opinion. Now there are a large number of other ad- vantages that could be given to the small man, which can be considered in their place. In all of them I presuppose a deliberate policy of favouring the small man. But in the primary example here given we can hardly even say that there is any question of favour. You make a law that slave-owners shall free their slaves for a day: the man who has no slaves is out- side the thing entirely; he does not come under it in law, because he does not come into it in logic. He has been deliberately dragged into it; not in order that all slaves shall be free for a day, but in order that all free men shall be slaves for a lifetime. But while some of the expedients are only common Jjus- tice to small property, and others are deliberate pro- tection of small property, the point at the moment is that it will be worth while at the beginning to create small property though it were only on a small scale. English citizens and yeomen would once more exist; and wherever they exist they count. There are many other ways, which can be briefly described, by which the break-up of property can be encouraged on the legal and legislative side. I shall deal with some of them later, and especially with the real re- sponsibility which Government might reasonably as- sume in a financial and economic condition which isA CASE IN POINT 10] becoming quite ludicrous. From the standpoint of any sane person, in any other society, the present problem of capitalist concentration is not only a ques- tion of law but of criminal law, not to mention crim- inal lunacy. Of that monstrous megalomania of the big shops, with their blatant advertisements and stupid stand- ardization, something is said elsewhere. But it may be well to add, in the matter of the small shops, that when once they exist they generally have an organ- ization of their own which is much more self- respecting and much less vulgar. This voluntary or- ganization, as every one knows, is called a Guild; and it is perfectly capable of doing everything that really needs to be done in the way of holidays and popular festivals. Twenty barbers would be quite ca- pable of arranging with each other not to compete with each other on a particular festival or in a particu- lar fashion. It is amusing to note that the same people who say that a Guild is a dead medieval thing that would never work are generally grumbling against the power of a Guild as a living modern thing where it is actually working. In the case of the Guild of the Doctors, for instance, it is made a matter of reproach in the newspapers, that the confederation in question refuses to “make medical discoveries accessible to the general public.” When we consider the wild and un- balanced nonsense that is made accessible to the gen- eral public by the public press, perhaps we have some eens Sa Sean cs en ae Ae eye ee ec ae oe pees ac parm enw a a ee OP Ea an tified ae dg ee te ee oe ~ PST Oe a Be LE es ie eee erties102 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY reason to doubt whether our souls and bodies are not at least as safe in the hands of a Guild as they are likely to be in the hands of a Trust. For the mo- ment the main point is that small shops can be governed even if they are not bossed by the Govern- ment. Horrible as this may seem to the democratic idealists of the day, they can be governed by them- selves. Ln Rt nent as ene mea Pereahien eal ted LA aE Tat taal arts — ei Racl ala maeel ‘ SS ee int A wt a chet sae ene AN mire at oo meme : ee EE EI IT TOLD ; i | Sa ae ER — - ny —_ ABTS tN re eit eet Grice ee eo seer aiCOG AD ERO EH: IV THE TYRANNY OF TRUSTS We have most of us met in literature, and even in life, a certain sort of old gentleman; he is very often represented by an old clergyman. He is the sort of man who has a horror of Socialists without any very definite idea of what they are. He is the man of whom men say that he means well; by which they mean that he means nothing. But this view is a little unjust to this social type. He is really some- thing more than well-meaning; we might even go so far as to say that he would probably be nght-thinking, if he ever thought. His principles would probably be sound enough if they were really applied; it is his practical ignorance that prevents him from knowing the world to which they are applicable. He might really be right, only he has no notion of what is wrong. Those who have sat under this old gentle- man know that he is in the habit of softening his stern repudiation of the mysterious Socialists by say- ing that, of course, it is a Christian duty to use our wealth well, to remember that property is a trust com- mitted to us by Providence for the good of others as well as ourselves, and even (unless the old gentle- man is old enough to be a Modernist) that it is just 103 Ri x a or see feo a” ‘a | ey a Hy Seca ee ee IN a eS, nS ata BN tad ae ee eatin SSL RO SO F-Pt fietenai ee ee ea ieee Sew hea hal Ja wT cH st t é .aN Be anante ay ie ey Ae a ern hn ; =e - B. - et cer aprile PO at re teat geet aia Seminal as aaa eee arene — ne aed re fae SEM Neral ere le iri Ser reser ar ee ata meenas nina hiecaetprione eNO eae ese ac Ciaetaearaee 108 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY happened is that the monopolists have attempted an encircling movement. But the encircling movement is not yet complete. Unless we do something it will be complete; but it is not true to say that we can do nothing to prevent it being completed. We are in favour of striking out, of making sorties or sallies, of trying to pierce certain points in the line (far enough apart and chosen for their weakness), of breaking through the gap in the uncompleted circle. Most people around us are for surrender to the sur- prise; precisely because it was to them so complete a surprise. Yesterday they denied that the enemy could encircle. The day before yesterday they denied that the enemy could exist. They are paralysed as by a prodigy. But just as we never agreed that the thing was impossible, so we do not now agree that it is irresistible. Action ought to have been taken long ago; but action can still be taken now. That is why it is worth while to dwell on the diverse expedients already given as examples. A chain is as strong as its weakest link; a battleline is as strong as its weak- est man; an encircling movement is as strong as its weakest point, the point at which the circle may still be broken. Thus, to begin with, if anybody asks me in this matter, “What am I to do now?” I answer, “Do anything, however small, that will prevent the completion of the work of capitalist combination. Do anything that will even delay that completion. Save One shop out of a hundred shops. Save one croft outTHE TYRANNY OF TRUSTS 109 of a hundred crofts. Keep open one door out of a hundred doors; for so long as one door is open, we are not in prison. Throw up one barricade in their way, and you will soon see whether it is the way the world is going. Put one spoke in their wheel, and you will soon see whether it is the wheel of fate.” For it is of the essence of their enormous and un- natural effort that a small failure is as big as a big failure The modern commercial combine has a great many points in common with a big balloon. It 1s swollen and yet it is swollen with levity; it climbs and yet it drifts; above all, it is full of gas, and gen- erally of poison gas. But the resemblance most rele- vant here is that the smallest prick will shrivel the biggest balloon. If this tendency of our time received anything like a reasonably definite check, I believe the whole tendency would soon begin to weaken in its preposterous prestige. Until monopoly is monop- olist. it is nothing. Until the combine can combine everything, it is nothing. Ahab has not his kingdom sc long as Naboth has his vineyard. Haman will not be happy in the palace while Mordecai is sitting in the gate. A hundred tales of human history are there to show that tendencies can be turned back, and that one stumbling-block can be the turning-point. The sands of time are simply dotted with single stakes that have thus marked the turn of the tide. The first step towards ultimately winning is to make sure that the enemy does not win, if it be only that he does Tree ey) a een te ROE Ce et 9 a A RE Bat cial atin ae where OEE etnies 5 A M 4110 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY not win everywhere. Then, when we have halted his rush, and perhaps fought it to a standstill, we may begin a general counter-attack. The nature of that counter-attack I shall next proceed to consider. In other words, I will try to explain to the old clergy- man caught in the net (whose sufferings are ever be- fore my eyes) what it will no doubt comfort him to know: that he was wrong from the first in thinking there could be no net; that he is wrong now in think- ing there is no escape from the net; and that he will never know how wrong he was till he finds he has a net of his own, and is once more a fisher of men. I began by enunciating the paradox that one way of supporting small shops would be to support them. Everybody could do it, but nobody can imagine it being done. In one sense nothing is so simple, and in another nothing is so hard. I went on to point out that without any sweeping change at all, the mere modification of existing laws would probably call thousands of little shops into life and activity. I may have occasion to return to the little shops at greater length; but for the moment I am only running rapidly through certain separate examples, to show that the citadel of plutocracy could even now be at- tacked from many different sides. It could be met by a concerted effort in the open field of competition. It could be checked by the creation or even correction of a large number of little laws. Thirdly, it could be attacked by the more sweeping operation of largerTHE TYRANNY OF TRUSTS 111 laws. But when we come to these, even at this stage, we also come into collision with larger questions The common sense of Christendom, for ages on end, has assumed that it was as possible to punish cornering as to punish coining. Yet to most readers to-day there seems a sort of vital contradiction, echoed in the verbal contradiction of saying, ““Put not your trust in Trusts.’ Yet to our fathers this would not seem even so much of a paradox as saying, “Put not your trust in princes,” but rather like saying, “Put not your trust in pirates.” But in applying this to modern conditions, we are checked first by a very modern sophistry. When we say that a corner should be treated as a conspiracy, we are always told that the conspiracy is too elaborate to be unravelled. In other words, we are told that the conspirators are too conspira- torial to be caught. Now it is exactly at this point that my simple and childlike confidence in the busi- ness expert entirely breaks down. My attitude, a mo- ment ago trustful and confiding, becomes disrespect- ful and frivolous. I am willing to agree that I do not know much about the details of business, but not that nobody could possibly ever come to know anything about them. I am willing to believe that there are people in the world who like to feel that they depend for the bread of life on one particular bounder, who probably began by making large profits on short weight. I am willing to believe that there are people mes as Can ne NSO om a NO Se OR ae ey nt het Rk ed al Ee tae ee nies ices OE iti sarin anil PP rt atrial onan ea eee Eo , Pr ine H 4 i sh 4 i i 5 : 4 Boognet Sai acspe ou heeatvaaebermeneree ea” aca os tale Pe oar queeiariennaliet nese Se ee Pn Se NO CR NR eA IER ne rrr ran al DP -2F alm re Ppa paengiiegh hl Tae Fa adietmaept omen Ti} ; ' meh - <=" eri < Pre tre, 4 Pe P RE SPS 172 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY have my toys taken away any more than your” And of the various positions that I have to meet, | will begin with his. Now on a previous page I said | agreed with Mr. Penty that it would be a human right to abandon machinery altogether. I will add here that | do not agree with Mr. Penty in thinking machinery like magic—a mere malignant power or origin of evils. It seems to me quite as materialistic to be damned by a machine as saved by a machine. It seems to me quite as idolatrous to blaspheme it as to wor- ship it. But even supposing that somebody, without worshipping it, is yet enjoying it imaginatively and in some sense mystically, the case as we state it still stands. Nobody would be more really unsuitable to the ma- chine age than a man who really admired machines. The modern system presupposes people who will take mechanism mechanically; not people who will take it mystically. An amusing story might be written about a poet who was really appreciative of the fairy-tales of science, and who found himself more of an obsta- cle in the scientific civilization than if he had delayed it by telling the fairy-tales of infancy. Suppose when- ever he went to the telephone (bowing three times as he approached the shrine of the disembodied oracle and murmuring some appropriate form of words such as vox et preterea nihil), he were to act as if he really valued the significance of the’ instrument. Suppose he were to fall into a trembling ecstasy on hearing from aTHE ROMANCE OF MACHINERY _ 173 distant exchange the voice of an unknown young woman in a remote town, were to linger upon the very real wonder of that momentary meeting in mid-air with a human spirit whom he would never see on earth, were to speculate on her life and personality, so real and yet so remote from his own, were to pause to ask a few personal questions about her, just suffi- cient to accentuate her human strangeness, were to ask whether she also had not some sense of this weird psychical téte-d-téte, created and dissolved in an in- stant, whether she also thought of those unthinkable leagues of valley and forest that lay between the mov- ing mouth and the listening ear—suppose, in short, he were to say all this to the lady at the Exchange who was just about to put him on to 666 Upper Tooting. He would be really and truly expressing the senti- ment, “Wonderful thing, the telephone!” ; and, unlike the thousands who say it, he would actually mean it. He would be really and truly justifying the great SCi- entific discoveries and doing honour to the great SCl- entific inventors. He would indeed be the worthy son of a scientific age. And yet I fear that in a scientific age he would possibly be misunderstood, and even suffer from lack of sympathy. I fear that he would, in fact, be in practice an opponent of all that he desired to uphold. He would be a worse enemy of machinery than any Luddite smashing machines. He would ob- struct the activities of the telephone exchange, by praising the beauties of the telephone, more than if wy SLEISEPS PUES TR ea Pere ret ee: ee ems on ae i epee Sy, a a ND Noe an nS a re perk ee te a oe ae i ~~ Sere helipad be ie ed i Ee ee at Rate aes pane Ca ee LSE Se ee eT Otte hehe ee ars career ‘i i asa Aa Se Pina 4 ; “ i : 4 a FI h Bi } 5 i aH H % t ae TeeFe aaaeteer eer ee Tet eee Pee wr rst - eceeeeinenreamt ee nes ee To ale seinen tS a a isan tee pertain aE rte ln oS earner ena eee as Se aati anerenna ae ee ere napa ientinin 7 Saale eran eT Er rp i nm i re ti ; He 174 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY he had sat down, like a more normal and traditional poet, to tell all those bustling business people about the beauties of a wayside flower. It would of course be the same with any adventure of the same luckless admiration. If a philosopher, when taken for the first time for a mde in a motor- car, were to fall into such an enthusiasm for the mar- vel that he insisted on understanding the whole of the mechanism on the spot, it is probable that he would have got to his destination rather quicker if he had walked. If he were, in his simple zeal, to insist on the machine being taken to pieces in the road, that he might rejoice in the inmost secrets of its structure, he might even lose his popularity with the garage taxi- driver or chauffeur. Now we have all known children, for instance, who did really in this fashion want to see wheels go round. But though their attitude may bring them nearest to the kingdom of heaven, it does not necessarily bring them nearer to the end of the jour- ney. They are admiring motors; but they are not motoring—that is, they are not necessarily moving. They are not serving that purpose which motoring was meant to serve. Now as a matter of fact this con- tradiction has ended in a congestion; and a sort of stagnant state of the spirit in which there is rather less real appreciation of the marvels of man’s in- vention than if the poet confined himself to making a penny whistle (on which to pipe in the woods of Ar- cady) or the child confined himself to making a toyTHE ROMANCE OF MACHINERY 175 bow or a catapult. The child really is happy with a beautiful happiness every time he lets fly an arrow. It is by no means certain that the business man 1s happy with a beautiful happiness every time he sends off a telegram. The very name of a telegram is a poem, even more magical than the arrow; for it means a dart, and a dart that writes. Think what the child would feel if he could shoot a pencil-arrow that drew a picture at the other end of the valley or the long street. Yet the business man but seldom dances and claps his hands for joy, at the thought of this, whenever he sends a telegram. Now this has a considerable relevancy to the real criticism of the modern mechanical civilization. Its supporters are always telling us of its marveilous in- ventions and proving that they are marvellous im- provements. But it is highly doubtful whether they really feel them as improvements. For instance, I have heard it said a hundred times that glass is an excellent illustration of the way in which something becomes a convenience for everybody. “Look at glass in windows,” they say; “that has been turned into a mere necessity; yet that also was once a luxury.” And I always feel disposed to answer, “Yes, and it would be better for people like you if it were still a luxury; if that would induce you to look at it, and not only to look through it. Do you ever consider how magical a thing is that invisible film standing between you and the birds and the wind? Do you ever Pineeuri PTET ERR aT aot Picea AU Pritt EE tae eed Pe geri at Ye ON NT epatemgegs Sach node as lente a vant ee ae PN cn OE on ENN OR ay 1 a4 a 4 MOY oe 4 Nati mee, Sree een ae ae ata eee re ncdicindh ied War eee tem ieee are . Cake ae eeeted inate ceed hal ee “DS et ete arenes ee Pe asap tla ec Le NN actin ee SP, a re, Sable aca SSR arse el re Dn ee eC ene ere 176 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY think of it as water hung in the air or a flattened diamond too clear to be even valued? Do you ever feel a window as a sudden opening in a wall? And if you do not, what is the good of glass to your” This may be a little exaggerated, in the heat of the moment, but it is really true that in these things in- vention outstrips imagination. Humanity has not got the good out of its own inventions; and by making more and more inventions, it is only leaving its own power of happiness further and further behind. I remarked in an earlier part of this particular meditation that machinery was not necessarily evil, and that there were some who valued it in the right spirit, but that most of those who had to do with it never had a chance of valuing it at all. A poet might enjoy a clock as a child enjoys a musical-box. But the actual clerk who looks at the actual clock, to see that he is just in time to catch the train for the city, is no more enjoying machinery than he is enjoying music. There may be something to be said for mechanical toys; but modern society is a mecha- nism and not a toy. The child indeed is a good test in these matters; and illustrates both the fact that there is an interest in machinery and the fact that machinery itself generally prevents us from being in- terested. It is almost a proverb that every little boy wants to be an engine-driver. But machinery has not multiplied the number of engine-drivers, so as to allow all little boys to drive engines. It has not givenTHE ROMANCE OF MACHINERY © 177 each little boy a real engine, as his family might give him a toy engine. The effect of railways on a popula- tion cannot be to produce a population of engine- drivers. It can only produce a population of pas- sengers; and of passengers a little too like packages. In other words, its only effect on the visionary or po- tential engine-driver is to put him inside the train, where he cannot see the engine, instead of outside the train where he can. And though he grows up to the greatest and most glorious success in life, and swindles the widow and orphan till he can travel in a first- class carriage specially reserved, with a permanent pass to the International Congress of Cosmopolitan World Peace for Wire-Pullers, he will never perhaps enjoy a railway train again, he will never even see a railway train again, as he saw it when he stood as a ragged urchin and waved wildly from a grassy bank at the passage of the Scotch Express. We may transfer the parable from engine-drivers to engineers. It may be that the driver of the Scotch Express hurls himself forward ina fury of speed be- cause his heart is in the Highlands, his heart is not here: that he spurns the Border behind him with a gesture and hails the Grampians before him with a cheer. And whether or no it is true that the engine- driver’s heart is in the Highlands, it is sometimes true that the little boy’s heart is in the engine. But it is by no means true that passengers as a whole, travel- ling behind engines as a whole, enjoy the speed in a Te + Ta ia = at atin Se ee rec ae LT a Ne oe ae ie nada nT Re 1 pelea ving age ete i ; a fy u i ' i (f 4 Si qMMII TE Seer aripuntietianercerarmiedaele aera) — ay ———— eae i Ten a Sen ea ot rans rs A RY Ces Pi et SOS rare seybsoulsdsiecyeee 178 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY positive sense, though they may approve of it in a negative sense. I mean that they wish to travel swiftly, not because swift travelling is enjoyable, but because it is not enjoyable. They want it rushed through; not because being behind the railway-engine is a rapture, but because being in the railway-carriage is a bore. In the same way, if we consider the joy of engineers, we must remember that there is only one joyful engineer to a thousand bored victims of en- gineering. The discussion that raged between Mr. Penty and others at one time threatened to resolve it- self into a feud between engineers and architects. But when the engineer asks us to forget all the monot- ony and materialism of a mechanical age because his own science has some of the inspiration of an art, the architect may well be ready with a reply. For this is very much as if architects were never engaged in anything but the building of prisons and lunatic asylums. It is as if they told us proudly with what passionate and poetical enthusiasm they had them- selves reared towers high enough for the hanging of Haman or dug dungeons impenetrable enough for the starving of Ugolino. Now I have already explained that I do not pro- pose anything in what some call the practical way, but should rather be called the immediate way, be- yond the better distribution of the ownership of such machines as are really found to be necessary. But when we come to the larger question of machinery (Paes ears}ec eae bebe eve gk etytetads THE ROMANCE OF MACHINERY _ 179 in a fundamentally different sort of society, governed by our philosophy and religion, there is a great deal more to be said. The best and shortest way of say- which the man is a pygmy, we must at least reverse the proportions until man. is a_giant to whom. the machine is a toy. Granted that idea, and we have no reason to deny that it might be a legitimate and enlivening toy. In that sense it would not matter if every child were an engine-driver or (better still) every engine-driver a child. But those who were al- ways taunting us with unpracticality will at least admit that this is not practical. I have thus tried to put myself fairly in the position of the enthusiast, as we should always do in judging of enthusiasms. And I think it will be agreed that even after the experiment a real difference between the engineering enthusiasm and older enthusiasms re- mains as a fact of common sense. Admitting that the man who designs a steam-engine is as original as the man who designs a statue, there is an immediate and immense difference in the effects of what they design. The original statue is a joy to the sculptor; but it is also in some degree (when it is not too original) a joy to the people who see the statue. Or at any rate it is meant to be a joy to other people seeing it, or there would be no point in letting it be seen. But though the engine may be a great joy to the engineer and of great use to the other people, it is not, and it ~ ie SNS ss ~ Sere — ~ , PR Lr Melon md SN eet eb keh incites at eee et nea as Nn Bintmy eC Ct iF i nos faarinePemsiapeleies os CIRC IP tn ate errata ol RIO Oe eee ie seienaiae Sonic aa MDa wren ae halal. Nema gee ees pena Ws oan Oe ares ee NS lina Ce geet eer Lat tenet Seine 180 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY is not meant to be, in the same sense a great joy to the other people. Nor is this because of a deficiency in education, as some of the artists might allege in the case of art. It is involved in the very nature of machinery; which, when once it is established, con- sists of repetitions and not of variations and sur- prises. A man can see something in the limbs of a statue which he never saw before; they may seem to toss or sweep as they never did before; but he would not only be astonished but alarmed if the wheels of the steam-engine began to behave as they never did before. We may take it, therefore, as an essential and not an accidental character of machinery that it is an inspiration for the inventor but merely a monot- ony for the consumer. This being so, it seems to me that in an ideal state engineering would be the exception, just as the de- light in engines is the exception. As it is, engineering and engines are the rule; and are even a grinding and oppressive rule. The lifelessness which the machine imposes on the masses is an infinitely bigger and more obvious fact than the individual interest of the man who makes machines. Having reached this point in the argument, we may well compare it with what may be called the practical aspect of the problem of machinery. Now it seems to me obvious that machin- ery, as it exists to-day, has gone almost as much be- yond its practical sphere as it has beyond its imagina- tive sphere. The whole of industrial society is foundedTHE ROMANCE OF MACHINERY | 181 on the notion that the quickest and cheapest thing 1s to carry coals to Newcastle; even if it be only with the object of afterwards carrying them from New- castle. It is founded on the idea that rapid and regu- lar transit and transport, perpetual interchange of goods, and incessant communication between remote places, is of all things the most economical and direct. But it is not true that the quickest and cheapest thing, for a man who has just pulled an apple from an apple tree, is to send it in a consignment of apples on a train that goes like a thunderbolt to a market at the other end of England. The quickest and cheap- est thing for a man who has pulled a fruit from a tree is to put it in his mouth. He is the supreme economist who wastes no money on railway journeys. He is the absolute type of efficiency who is far too efficient to go in for organization. And though he is, of course, an extreme and ideal case of simplification, the case for simplification does stand as solid as an apple tree. In so far as men can produce their own goods on the spot, they are saving the community a vast expenditure which is often quite out of propor- tion to the return. In so far as we can establish a considerable proportion of simple and self-supporting people, we are relieving the pressure of what is often 4 wasteful as well as a harassing process. And taking this as a general outline of the reform, it does appear true that a simpler life in large areas of the com- munity might leave machinery more or less as an eX- Sy a Ia te ren, A aatiRET ELS a eer ee = eee Pale A ar app ~ Rube tal ns ~ apres ee eA TS wd eat ay Ss mn ER RTI Tn Siensmmenetaiains ye Siete Ie PER Netra near “| A eee emer dies de 182 KhHEOUREINE OF SANIM Y ceptional thing; as it may well be to the exceptional man who really puts his soul into it. There are difficulties in this view; but for the mo- ment I may well take as an illustration the parallel of the particular sort of modern engineering which moderns are very fond of denouncing. They often forget that most of their praise of scientific instru- ments applies most vividly to scientific weapons. If we are to have so much pity for the unhappy genius who has just invented a new galvanometer, what about the poor genius who has just invented a new gun? If there is a real imaginative inspiration in the making of a steam-engine, is there not imaginative interest in the making of a submarineP Yet many modern admirers of science would be very anxious to abolish these machines altogether; even in the very act of telling us that we cannot abolish machines at all. As I believe in the right of national self-defence, I would not abolish them altogether. But I think they may give us a hint of how exceptional things may be treated exceptionally. For the moment I will leave the progressive to laugh at my absurd notion of a limita- tion of machines, and go off to a meeting to demand the limitation of armaments.MTTTe Ti Ter ity Apa vate ce vet, pata dh eSETESSIT AL: IT] THE HOLIDAY OF THE SLAVE I HAVE sometimes suggested that industrialism of the American type, with its machinery and mechanical hustle, will some day be preserved on a truly Ameri- can model; I mean in the manner of the Red Indian Reservation. As we leave a patch of forest for sav- ages to hunt and fish in, so a higher civilization might leave a patch of factories for those who are still at such a stage of intellectual infancy as really to want to see the wheels go round. And as the Red Indians could still, I suppose, tell their quaint old legends of a red god who smoked a pipe or a red hero who stole the sun and moon, so the simple folk in the industnal enclosure could go on talking of their own Outline of History and discussing the evolution of ethics, while all around them a more mature civilization was deal- ing with real history and serious philosophy. I hesi- tate to repeat this fancy here; for, after all, machinery is their religion, or at any rate superstition, and they do not like it to be treated with levity. But I do think there is something to be said for the notion of which this fancy might stand as a sort of symbol; for the idea that a wiser society would eventually treat ma- chines as it treats weapons, as something special 183 Cacia as a ae Ba oan la Ae ¥ Cena atin aes Wi ae td Uy | : eT Par;eigenen vane sare rented ae eo nee = ; a ae Sires EP et on elit alee ria np SO no nat eee ee Ta se) Fn eee OS a re ~ —— e if af Fi lH by Hi: ' ! if re a eS Hi Vs 184 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY and dangerous and perhaps more directly under a central control. But however this may be, | do think the wildest fancy of a manufacturer kept at bay like a painted barbarian is much more sane than a serious scientific alternative now often put before us. I mean what its friends call the Leisure State, in which every- thing is to be done by machinery. It is only right to say a word about this suggestion in comparison with our own. In practice we already know what is meant by a holiday in a world of machinery and mass production. It means that a man, when he has done turning a handle, has a choice of certain pleasures offered to him. He can, if he likes, read a newspaper and dis- cover with interest how the Crown Prince of Fon- tarabia landed from the magnificent yacht Atlantis amid a cheering crowd; how certain great American millionaires are making great financial consolidations; how the Modern Girl is a delightful creature, in spite of (or because of) having shingled hair or short skirts; and how the true religion, for which we all look to the Churches, consists of sympathy and social prog- ress and marrying, divorcing, or burying everybody without reference to the precise meaning of the cere- mony. On the other hand, if he prefers some other amusement, he may go to the Cinema, where he will see a very vivid and animated scene of the crowds cheering the Crown Prince of Fontarabia after the arrival of the yacht Atlantis; where he will see anPEEL ETUTESATERE TOE CUESRA ALTO LTUELER ET ETULETLUCL ETL CLELULERLCTOVELATTR TTL L TTT, rate | f Eeaen | ‘ ey TT SURTRLCTLY TAU TED EEE ET EN OT EE ELE LE LTER EAL 2 ASUS OP ey. THE HOLIDAY OF THE SEAVE 185 American film featuring the features of American mil- lionaires, with all those resolute contortions of visage which accompany their making of great financial consolidations; where there will not be lacking a charming and vivacious heroine, recognizable as a Modern Girl by her short hair and short skirts; and possibly a kind and good clergyman (if any) who explains in dumb show, with the aid of a few printed sentences, that true religion is social sympathy and progress and marrying and burying people at ran- dom. But supposing the man’s tastes to be detached from the drama and from the kindred arts, he may prefer the reading of fiction; and he will have no dif- ficulty in finding a popular novel about the doubts and difficulties of a good and kind clergyman slowly discovering that true religion consists of progress and social sympathy, with the assistance of a Modern Girl whose shingled hair and short skirts proclaim her indifference to all fine distinctions about who should be buried and who divorced; nor, probably, will the story fail to contain an American millionaire making vast financial consolidations, and certainly a yacht and possibly a Crown Prince. But there are yet other tastes that are catered for under the conditions of modern publicity and pleasure-seeking. There is the great institution of wireless or broadcasting; and the holiday-maker, turning away from fiction, jour- nalism, and film drama, may prefer to “listen- -in” to a programme that will contain the very latest news ie ibaa OR enamanee ES ea Lo Ne I YD Rad EY Feat at alin te os Ee Pee hte te ern me nw eae spr eaten aint iL a TERE I Sant at ani 5 ratoaeett 17 P oe nae pis latter nel reat ea eae Peeters aaa = Foon Aware == a eet aoa eI tee | Oe a SC SS ae eee enn eee Sorter i ne rr raha dene Sree RE a Re recap apie ee ee IV THE FREE MAN AND THE FORD CAR I AM not a fanatic; and | think that machines may be of considerable use in destroying machinery. | should generously accord them a considerable value in the work of exterminating all that they represent. But to put the truth in those terms is to talk in terms of the remote conclusion of our slow and reasonable revolution. In the immediate situation the same truth may be stated in a more moderate way. Towards all typical things of our time we should have a rational charity. Machinery is not wrong; it is only. absurd. Perhaps we should say it is merely childish, and can even be taken in the right spirit by a child. If, there- fore, we find that some machine enables us to escape from an inferno of machinery, we cannot be com- mitting a sin though we may be cutting a silly fig- ure, like a dragoon rejoining his regiment on an old bicycle. What is essential is to realize that there is something ridiculous about the present position, some- thing wilder than any Utopia. For instance, | shall have occasion here to note the proposal of central- ized electricity, and we could justify the use of it so long as we see the joke of it. But, in fact, we do not even see the joke of the waterworks and the water 192FREE MAN AND THE FORD CAR _ 193 company. It is almost too broadly comic that an es- sential of life like water should be pumped to us from nobody knows where, by nobody knows whom, some- times nearly a hundred miles away. It is every bit as funny as if air were pumped to us from miles away, and we all walked about like divers at the bottom of the sea. The only reasonable person is the peas- ant who owns his own well. But we have a long way to go before we begin to think about being rea- sonable. There are at present some examples of centraliza- tion of which the effects may work for decentraliza- tion. An obvious case is that recently discussed in connection with a common plant of electricity. | think it is broadly true that if electricity could be cheapened, the chances of a very large number of small independent shops, especially workshops, would be greatly improved. At the same time, there is no doubt at all that such dependence for essential power on a central plant is a real dependence, and is there- fore a defect in any complete scheme of independ- ence. On this point I imagine that many Distributists might differ considerably; but, speaking for myself, 1 am inclined to follow the more moderate and pro- visional policy that I have suggested more than once in this place. I think the first necessity is to make sure of any small properties obtaining any success in any decisive or determining degree. Above all, I think it is vital to create the experience of small property, exe Tee Ti TET EPO VOT PL OPEPAEL eras LS ere, Se 8 a DTT te ~ Aare, A Sa ee ee a 4 a | rer pene nm =a tae a ae eres ? 2 4 D y ede FS) i i ran : 4 : | |Seen re aaa nee Pome tetera ae ae Pane eet ee eee ee LA ihre eae cen i arte ot SO ealne net peo nee TS Se weve area SRR IER a 194 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY the psychology of small property, the sort of man ‘who is a small proprietor. When once men of that sort exist, they will decide, in a manner very different from any modern mob, how far the central power-house is to dominate their own private house, or whether it need dominate at all. They will perhaps discover the way of breaking up and individualizing that power. They will sacrifice, if there is any need to sacrifice, even the help of science to the hunger for possession. So that I am disposed at the moment to accept any help that science and machinery can give in creating small property, without in the least bowing down to such superstitions where they only destroy it. But we must keep in mind the peasant ideal as the motive and the goal; and most of those who offer us me- chanical help seem to be blankly ignorant of what we regard it as helping. A well-known name will illus- trate both the thing being done and the man being ignorant of what he is doing. The other day I found myself in a Ford car, like that in which I remember riding over Palestine, and in which (I suppose) Mr. Ford would enjoy riding over Palestinians. Anyhow, it reminded me of Mr. Ford, and that reminded me of Mr. Penty and his views upon equality and mechanical civilization. The Ford car (if I may venture on one of those new ideas urged upon us in newspapers) is a typical product of the age. The best thing about it is the thing for which it is despised; that it is small. The worst thing aboutCOCV ER BTEC PTO ER ES ES SUES Ew ee ee eR EURO CUE ORS EVE eee US ORDER ere Pe ab uh, porpuaeoren estes Jel eou en FREE MAN AND THE FORD CAR __ 195 it is the thing for which it is praised; that it is stand- ardized. Its smallness is, of course, the subject of endless American jokes, about a man catching a Ford like a fly or possibly a flea. But nobody seems to notice how this popularization of motoring (however wrong in motive or in method) really is a complete contradiction to the fatalistic talk about inevitable combination and concentration. The railway is fading before our eyes—birds nesting, as it were, in the rail- way signals, and wolves howling, so to speak, in the eS dna tantn le eee a Ce na “sows en munal and concentrated mode of travel like that in a Utopia of the Socialists. The free and solitary traveller is returning before our very eyes; not al- ways (it is true) equipped with scrip or scallop, but having recovered to some extent the freedom of the King’s highway in the manner of Merry England. Nor is this the only ancient thing such travel has revived. While Mugby Junction neglected its re- freshment-rooms, Hugby-in-the-Hole has revived its inns. To that limited extent /the Ford motor is al- ready a reversion to the free man. If he has not three acres and a cow, he has the very inadequate sub- stitute of three hundred miles and a car/I do not mean that this development satisfies my theories. But I do say that fit destroys other people’s theories; all the theories about the collective thing as a thing of the future and the individual thing as a thing of the past. Even in their own special and stinking way of Da PAE Mil LL a Ia pa a tan OE a bet fc aBe-tor ith Dania Gece ee Pita to Palit pears SE a Te ee ee Pe REPRE RAEI Eee PaSI ren ne! yearn, Rains rT dln SP ead tea a iio ae at reper te tat ‘siete Ae a ea rE rl ar?“ pene =e earn So Neen rerio carpe ea ann hen ew ne eins. at oon et ETE Ss were oka — oy 196 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY science and machinery, the facts are very largely going against their theories. Yet I have never seen Mr. Ford and his little car really and intelligently praised for this. I have often, of course, seen him praised for all the conveniences of what is called standardization. The argument seems to be more or less to this effect. When your car breaks down with a loud crash in the middle of Salisbury Plain, though it is not very likely that any fragments of other ruined motor cars will be lying about amid the ruins of Stonehenge, yet if they are, it 1s a great advantage to think that they will probably be of the Same pattern, and you can take them to mend your own car. The same principle applies to persons motor- ing in Tibet, and exulting in the reflection that if another motorist from the United States did happen to come along, it would be possible to exchange wheels or footbrakes in token of amity. I may not have got the details of the argument quite correct; but the general point of it is that if anything goes wrong with parts of a machine, they can be replaced with identical machinery. And anyhow the argument could be carried much further; and used to explain a great many other things. I am not sure that it is not the clue to many mysteries of the age. I begin to under- stand, for instance, why magazine stories are all ex- actly alike; it is ordered so that when you have left one magazine in a railway carriage in the middle of a story called “Pansy Eyes,” you may go on withPeppprtagr ares eNeRCLS Ese ees: FREE MAN AND THE FORD CAR __ 197 exactly the same story in another magazine under the title of “Dandelion Locks.” It explains why all leading articles on The Future of the Churches are exactly the same; so that we may begin reading the article in the Daily Chronicle and finish it in the Daily Express. It explains why all the public utter- ances urging us to prefer new things to old never by any chance say anything new; they mean that we should go to a new paper-stall and read it in a new newspaper. This is why all American caricatures re- peat themselves like a mathematical pattern; it means that when we have torn off a part of the picture to wrap up sandwiches, we can tear off a bit of an- other picture and it will always fit in. And this is also why American millionaires all look exactly alike; so that when the bright, resolute expression of one of them has led us to do serious damage to his face with a heavy blow of the fist, it is always possible to mend it with noses and jaw-bones taken from other million- aires, who are exactly similarly constituted. Such are the advantages of standardization; but, as may be suspected, I think the advantages are exaggerated; and I agree with Mr. Penty in doubt- ing whether all this repetition really corresponds to human nature. But a very interesting question was raised by Mr. Ford’s remarks on the difference be- tween men and men; and his suggestion that most men preferred mechanical action or were only fitted for it. About all those arguments affecting human Pa ee ee Pa mewevunwoy ernonree a od at nee am tt oN mand ee meat ne ae ee riage: Srna Pa ead ee een a ee en a ee ee AE nS erenes ne sonee ere SS Ae muege ralemeeesoae eealia aromatase al NI Ree Sega Sao “alee ga Ps eeeneaneereniaeia Seeee estes a ene eing rer aierieteieie one) Wren min a ete eT mint a hea ST Ts ee es ere Ps eter aca ee alerted ne nn er te miei eee EE 3 198 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY equality, I myself always have one feeling, which finds expression in a little test of my own. I shall be- gin to take seriously those classifications of superior- ity and inferiority, when I find a man classifying himself as inferior. It will be noted that Mr. Ford does not say that he is only fitted to mind machines; he confesses frankly that he is too fine and free and fastidious a being for such tasks. I shall believe the doctrine when | hear somebody say: “I have only got the wits to turn a wheel.”’ That would be real, that would be realistic, that would be scientific. That would be independent testimony that could not easily be disputed. It is exactly the same, of course, with all the other superiorities and denials of human equal- ity that are so specially characteristic of a scien- tific age. It is so with the men who talk about superior and inferior races; I never heard a man say: “An- thropology shows that I belong to an inferior race.” If he did, he might be talking like an anthropologist; as it 1s, he is talking like a man, and not unfrequently like a fool. I have long hoped that I might some day hear a man explaining on scientific principles his own unfitness for any important post or privilege, say: “The world should belong to the free and fighting races, and not to persons of that servile disposition that you will notice in myself; the intelligent will know how to form opinions, but the weakness of in- tellect from which I so obviously suffer renders my opinions manifestly absurd on the face of them:FREE MAN AND THE FORD CAR __ 199 there are indeed stately and godlike races—but look at me! Observe my shapeless and fourth-rate fea- tures! Gaze, if you can bear it, on my commonplace and repulsive face!” If I heard a man making a scientific demonstration in that style, | might admit that he was really scientific. But as it invariably hap- pens, by a curious coincidence, that the superior race is his own race, the superior type is his own type, and the superior preference for work the sort of work he happens to prefer—I have come to the conclusion that there is a simpler explanation. Now Mr. Ford is a good man, so far as it is con- sistent with being a good millionaire. But he himself will very well illustrate where the fallacy of his ar- gument lies. It is probably quite true that, in the making of motors, there are a hundred men who can work a motor and only one man who can design a motor. But of the hundred men who could work a motor, it is very probable that one could design a garden, another design a charade, another design a practical joke or a derisive picture of Mr. Ford. I do not mean, of course, in anything I say here, to deny differences of intelligence, or to suggest that equality (a thing wholly religious) depends on any such impossible denial. But | do mean that men are nearer to a level than anybody will discover by set- ting them all to make one particular kind of run- about clock. Now Mr. Ford himself is a man of de- fiant limitations. He is so indifferent to history, for re nape wwwowns IN ST TS nl ne Pe icthbn ttn bubmtteeetil eee Se a es ar, Shee St rN S er ee HG we ee are os aE a irretmrcsiteere ene ‘ natant . a Saat at de ten ee STS I a ee eR Ste cee eae ee ea EP atin BO ae eri TRL Ta Aa al Ny ne Ne BA BE a a i a RaeRob abedotn o Let eho nt Pat cae — atale — Se-andetue” Poe eet amar tribe eee Precedence ei ia Li eel ett ace ae enter nee ak a apt ae Pchlide SE et eet ta IY —— 7 oe ee EN EET SST RRR ere rp rere care 200 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY example, that he calmly admitted in the witness-box that he had never heard of Benedict Arnold. An American who has never heard of Benedict Arnold is like a Christian who has never heard of Judas Iscariot. He is rare. I believe that Mr. Ford indicated in a general way that he thought Benedict Arnold was the same as Arnold Bennett. Not only is this not the case, but it is an error to suppose that there is no importance in such an error. If he were to find him- self, in the heat of some controversy, accusing Mr. Arnold Bennett of having betrayed the American President and ravaged the South with an Anti- American army, Mr. Bennett might bring an action. If Mr. Ford were to suppose that the lady who re- cently wrote revelations in the Daily Express was old enough to be the widow of Benedict Arnold, the lady might bring an action. Now it is not impossible that among the workmen whom Mr. Ford perceives (probably quite truly) to be only suited to the mechanical part of the construction of mechanical things, there might be a man who was fond of reading all the history he could lay his hands on; and who had advanced step by step, by painful efforts of self- education, until the difference between Benedict Ar- nold and Arnold Bennett was quite clear in his mind. If his employer did not care about the difference, of course, he would not consult him about the difference, and the man would remain to all appearance a mere cog in the machine; there would be no reason foreee cpuetraate: Hi HELO eee wi a! FREE MAN AND THE FORD CAR 201 finding out that he was a rather cogitating cog. Any- body who knows anything of modern business knows that there are any number of such men who remain in subordinate and obscure positions because their pri- vate tastes and talents have no relation to the very stupid business in which they are engaged. If Mr. Ford extends his business over the Solar System, and gives cars to the Martians and the Man in the Moon, he will not be an inch nearer to the mind of the man who is working his machine for him, and thinking about something more sensible. Now all human things are imperfect; but the condition in which such hob- bies and secondary talents do to some extent come out is the condition of small independence. The peas- ant almost always runs two or three sideshows and lives on a variety of crafts and expedients. The vil- lage shopkeeper will shave travellers and stuff weasels and grow cabbages and do half a dozen such things, keeping a sort of balance in his life like the balance of sanity in the soul. The method is not perfect; but it is more intelligent than turning him into a machine in order to find out whether he has a soul above machinery. Upon this point of immediate compromise with machinery, therefore, I am inclined to conclude that it is quite right to use the existing machines in so far as they do create a psychology that can despise machines: but not if they create a psychology that respects them. The Ford car is an excellent illustra- See ee SS nan eae ee pare ES one ~ sverN an enw a oat ee TS eee — Oa Saerential ah era ene aaa Sodpeapresone-sehai ri 4 ot aan eee perm tarpaaulacs ale sein a Pn eee persia areas ane a area een Se Stigiis steiner feos on. CSCS oman ee ae me aan tence be mente (RP etree rem Hos ae et eee elie . Wore imine ether aca ee ee ear 7 ai Se \: bi Vi ie 202 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY tion of the question; even better than the other illus- tration I have given of an electrical supply for small workshops. If possessing a Ford car means rejoicing in a Ford car, it is melancholy enough; it does not bring us much farther than Tooting or rejoicing in a Tooting tramcar. But if possessing a Ford car means rejoicing in a field of corn or clover, in a fresh land- scape and a free atmosphere, it may be the beginning of many things—and even the end of many things. It may be, for instance, the end of the car and the beginning of the cottage. Thus we might almost say that the final triumph of Mr. Ford is not when the man gets into the car, but when he enthusiastically falls out of the car. It is when he finds somewhere, in remote and rural corners that he could not normally have reached, that perfect poise and combination of hedge and tree and meadow in the presence of which any modern machine seems suddenly to look an ab- surdity; yes, even an antiquated absurdity. Probably that happy man, having found the place of his true home, will proceed joyfully to break up the car with a large hammer, putting its iron fragments for the first time to some real use, as kitchen utensils or garden tools. That is using a scientific instrument in the proper way; for it is using it as an instrument. The man has used modern machinery to escape from modern society; and the reason and rectitude of such a course commends itself instantly to the mind. It isFREE MAN AND THE FORD CAR_ 203 not so with the weaker brethren who are not content to trust Mr. Ford’s car, but also trust Mr. Ford’s creed. If accepting the car means accepting the phi- losophy I have just criticized, the notion that some men are born to make cars, or rather small bits of cars, then it will be far more worthy of a philosopher to say frankly that men never needed to have cars at all. It is only because the man had been sent into exile in a railway-train that he has to be brought back home in a motor-car. It is only because all machinery has been used to put things wrong that some machinery may now rightly be used to put things right. But I conclude upon the whole that it may so be used; and my reason is that which [ con- sidered on a previous page under the heading of “The Chance of Recovery.” I pointed out that our ideal is so sane and simple, so much in accord with the ancient and general instincts of men, that when once it is given a chance anywhere it will improve that chance by its own inner vitality because there is some reaction towards health whenever disease is removed. The man who has used his car to find his farm will be more interested in the farm than in the car; cer- tainly more interested than in the shop where he once bought the car. Nor -will Mr. Ford always woo him back to that shop, even by telling him tenderly that he is not fitted to be a lord of land, a rider of horses, or a tuler of cattle; since his deficient intellect and Seg ae PPPS OP Eckel Se eal Sa ANS ea enn a re a il Samarra re Pn en Nee Ce a ae are . at a Pn N mis a = Oe ee ee BE Se aS nl Pn ¥ ara — Q Peat a 4 io 5 : | ‘ 4 ve ry 4 Fy & x " mI[rs al ote . ane ee % rae ee eRe 5 ee et a pee Saari renal ele ER ROP near aerate Wares ye a yen a ee EI ater deine a enn a eee ip j ( i i Fi ) as} Soars H i | fi i LoS eer ne Cen 204 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY degraded anthropological type fit him only for mean and mechanical operations. If anyone will try saying this (tenderly, of course) to any considerable number of large farmers, who have lived for some time on their own farms with their own families, he will dis- cover the defects of the approach.~ eh min STE ore = eae tt nina oe reser aeerae a a NS ee ne V NT SE eyen re A NOTE ON EMIGRATION 1. The Need of a New Spirit 2. The Religion of Small Property Se norte aE ae enn tacahgy BR L-O pre-med timid es dee = Niet Rt eins LOR EI LE Se Oe TT a al BBE nt es Soe owe Pan Pa aa Oe LE et ee ID =~ Fe i ee ee eT$n) ae ae et i ; i CATS PSEDI ET SILES RPE TLS BY I THE NEED OF A NEW SPIRIT, BEFore closing these notes, with some words on the colonial aspect of democratic distribution, it will be well to make some acknowledgment of the recent sug- gestion of so distinguished a man as Mr. John Gals- worthy. Mr. Galsworthy is a man for whom I have the very warmest regard; for a human being who really tries to be fair is something very like a mon- ster and miracle in the long history of this merry race of ours. Sometimes, indeed, I get a little exas- perated at being so persistently excused. I can imagine few things more annoying, to a free-born and properly constituted Christian, than the thought that if he did choose to wait for Mr. Galsworthy behind a wall, knock him down with a brick, jump on him with heavy boots, and so on, Mr. Galsworthy would still faintly gasp that it was only the fault of the System; that the System made bricks and the System heaved bricks and the System went about wearing heavy boots, and so on. As a human being, | should feel a longing for a little human justice, after all that in- human mercy. But these feelings do not interfere with the other feelings I have, of something like enthusiasm for 207 ‘eae sere yd erie ay el en) ) PECTS er CeePeveleceee le lege Pubes bat ed! PUEREECA TEES ELEL ERE V SR Ch EE Ea a ee? ea RIE EE Lorn pian te el er +S Sy, 5 ae Re te a eee al an Se Na itr a en Se ey ~~ Canes " Pete a ene Soe eyes a ets —_ Cn Re BO eT ee ar . a aa ae en ane Sa A ee TA en ens ae aertivet ela : 4 et 1 aod } : 5 eet ae “aya pea et Nera tareg lake nna OP me ett cnepenree ea gaara Paine eres ee a oe ee mre Ca ba hn eid Sete te Dt Si 3 eine 210 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY in our own country. Nobody supposes that the whole English population could live on the English land. But everybody ought to realize that immeasurably more people could live on it than do live on it; and that if such a policy did establish such a peasantry, there would be a recognizable narrowing of the mar- gin of men left over for the town and the colonies. But we would suggest that these ought really to be left over, and dealt with as seems most desirable, after the main experiment has been made where it matters most. And what most of us would complain of in the emigrationists of the ordinary sort is that they seem to think first of the colony and then of what must be left behind in the country; instead of thinking first of the country and then of what must overflow into the colony. People talk about an optimist being in a hurry; but it seems to me that a pessimist like Mr. Gals- worthy is very much in a hurry. He has not tried the obvious reform on England, and, finding it fail, gone into exile to try it elsewhere. He is trying the obvious reform everywhere except where it is most obvious. And in this I think he has a subconscious affinity to people much less reasonable and respectable than himself. The pessimists have a curious way of urging us to counsels of despair as the only solution of a problem they have not troubled to solve. They de- clare solemnly that some unnatural thing would be- come necessary if certain conditions existed; and thenTHE NEED OF A NEW SPIRIT 211 somehow assume from that that they exist. They never think of attempting to prove that they exist, before they prove what follows from their existence. This is exactly the sort of plunging and premature pessimism, for instance, that people exhibit about Birth Control. Their desire is towards destruction; their hope is for despair; they eagerly anticipate the darkest and most doubtful predictions. They run with eager feet before and beyond the lingering and inconveniently slow statistics; like as the hart pants for the water-brooks they thirst to drink of Styx and Lethe before their hour; even the facts they show fall far short of the faith that they see shining be- yond them; for faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. If I do not compare the critic in question with the doctors of this dismal perversion, still less do | compare him with those whose motives are merely self-protective and plutocratic. But it must also be said that many rush to the expedient of emigra- tion, just as many rush to the expedient of Birth Control, for the perfectly simple reason that it is the easiest way in which the capitalists can escape from their own blunder of capitalism. They lured men into the town with the promise of greater pleas- ures; they ruined them there and left them with only one pleasure; they found the increase it produced at first convenient for labour and then inconvenient for - supply; and now they are ready to round off their es ~~ wt cate Se OD adnan ao ~ ee ir hip ited ee LD a ee EI nee D2 PPB rithertin CRE eae _— Lad ae enn Laas emt kane pied mca em emery PPO li a tare osu en ee a U re rr | f ‘ H if itFi ar a ee Faeyr am per ee ES Scan unttabnerennrer eee ELGt Te nr ST tere cer eerpatner pede Cot LA minats See RRs St serene ree fens ORC AR i pe epee et 0c are tba a ew prereset dina Trae reenter: ee Centred = Daa hee i pet a eerie Cea ——— \ tY 212 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY experiment in a highly appropriate manner, by telling them that they must have no families, or that their families must go to the modern equivalent of Botany Bay. It is not in that spirit that we envisage an ele- ment of colonization; and so long as it is treated in that spirit we refuse to consider it. | put first the statement that real colonial settlement must be not only stable but sacred. I say the new home must be not only a home but a shrine. And that is why I say it must be first established in England, in the home of our fathers and the shrine of our saints, to be a light and an ensign to our children. I have explained that I cannot content myself with leaving my own nationality out of my own nor- mal ideal; or leaving England as the mere tool- house or coal-cellar of other countries like Canada or Australia—or, for that matter, Argentina. I should like England also to have a much more rural type of redistribution; nor do | think it impossible. But when this is allowed for, nobody in his five wits would dream of denying that there is a real scope and even necessity for emigration and colonial settlement. Only, when we come to that, I have to draw a line rather sharply and explain something else, which is by no means inconsistent with my love of England, but I fear is not so likely to make me loved by Englishmen. I do not believe, as the newspapers and national histories always tell me to believe, that we have “the secret” of this sort of successful coloniza-THE NEED OF A NEW SPIRIT 213 tion and need nothing else to achieve this sort of democratic social construction. I ask for nothing bet- ter than that a man should be English in England. But I think he will have to be something more than English (or at any rate something more than “Brit- ish”) if he is to create a solid social equality out- side England. For something is needed for that solid social creation which our colonial tradition has not given. My reasons for holding this highly unpopular opinion | will attempt to suggest; but the fact that they are rather difficult to suggest is itself an evidence of their unfamiliarity and of that narrowness which is neither national nor international, but only im- perial. | should very much like to be present at a con- versation between Mr. Saklatvala and Dean Inge. | have a great deal of respect for the real sincerity of the Dean of St. Paul’s, but his subconscious prejudices are of a strange sort. | cannot help having a feeling that he might have a certain sympathy with a Social- ist so long as he was not a Christian Socialist. | do not indeed pretend to any respect for the ordinary sort of broad-mindedness which is ready to embrace a Buddhist but draws the line at a Bolshevist. | think its significance is very simple. It means welcoming alien religions when they make us feel comfortable, and persecuting them when they make us feel un- comfortable. But the particular reason | have at the moment for entertaining this association of ideas 1s irae ae By H H FN ee ea ww ae ee Retin Rae ee eta ee a a Seen a Sot nina ad oN liad “ee han Saint aa 7m OT i AE Hd aay a ET Ee - —~ . pa TT ee Le AE IIS be Or ee tee rE ln EE Lith OE deme tod Bicmehs ee i a ee 25 itieiiinentianlin a tern = I SO Ee A Ne SR nlite te Rent nc ltd ot hee E> ~——, Pe ee ee aDn ol dno a amen een piper eae i noepanteeeremeer ee Ea ae” pac nomena ornieia arias? Beat natal sii Geanae plein ienaocoPio= per ete oer tor ila aba Lena fi i i ej t Hh Ki ; it Pee Wi Pe es | 214 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY one that concerns a larger matter. It concerns, in- deed, what is commonly called the British Empire, which we were once taught to reverence largely be- cause it was large. And one of my complaints against that common and rather vulgar sort of imperialism is that it did not really secure even the advantages of largeness. As I have said, |_am_ a nationalist; Eng- land is good enough for me. I would defend England greater joy would I defend England against the whole British Empire. With a romantic rapture would I defend England against Mr. Ramsay MacDonald when he had become King of Scotland; lighting again the watch fires of Newark and Carlisle and sounding the old tocsins of the Border. With equal energy would I defend England against Mr. Tim Healy as King of Ireland, if ever the gross and grow- ing prosperity of that helpless and decaying Celtic stock became positively offensive. With the greatest ecstasy of all would I defend England against Mr. Lloyd George as King of Wales. It will be seen, therefore, that there is nothing broad-minded about my patriotism; most modern nationality is not nar- row enough for me. But putting aside my own local affections, and looking at the matter in what is called a larger way, [ note once more that our Imperialism does not get any of the good that could be got out of being large. And I was reminded of Dean Inge, because he sug-THE NEED OF A NEW SPIRIT 215 gested some time ago that the Irish and the French Canadians were increasing in numbers, not because they held the Catholic view of the family, but because they were a backward and apparently almost barbaric stock which naturally (I suppose he meant) in- creased with the blind luxuriance of a jungle. I have already remarked on the amusing trick of having it both ways which is illustrated in this remark. So long as savages are dying out, we say they are dying out because they are savages. When they are incon- veniently increasing, we say they are increasing be- cause they are savages. And from this it 1s but a simple logical step to say that the countrymen of Sir Wilfred Laurier or Senator Yeats are savages because they are increasing. But what strikes me most about the situation is this: that this spirit will always miss what is really to be learnt by covering any large and varied area. If French Canada is really a part of the British Empire, it would seem that the Empire might at least have served as a sort of interpreter between the British and the French. The Imperial statesman, if he had really been a statesman, ought to have been able to say, “It is always difficult to understand another nation or another religion; but I am more fortunately placed than most people. I know a little more than can be known by self-contained and isolated states like Sweden or Spain. | have more sympathy with the Catholic faith or the French blood because | have French Catholics in my own Empire.’ Si OE God ean] ae TE on Rakeuen eee ——~ Soe aie BaP Palle et, oe co ep ns ny el ta Vie — eee eee Reinen oan ota en es edie ta Sees as ee ae ve eran poet ain he deen ee Sten te cae eat Ceemeatee ee was att ae CE en a Se aE Sea PP Ne ae alba Ens cet ree Chih DMS eT I Sy en < nt > iy a < & vi: erated te eae —— we oaceaent tthe " a we re parr tema to rer ks 4 ~ ~ Steer SPOT I —— papa Sy eae tencntt mE ne raat ee Pe sg EP ets ia ol aS rarer lite helen ln tS SO reesei ee ee are Sm EP F SWOPE SCRE Soar 216 THE OUREINE OF SANIT Y Now it seems to me that the Imperial statesman never has said this; never has even been able to say it; never has even tried or pretended to be able to say it. He has been far narrower than a nationalist like myself, engaged in desperately defending Offa’s Dyke against a horde of Welsh politicians. I doubt ‘if there was ever a politician who knew a word more of the French language, let alone a word more of the Latin Mass, because he had to govern a whole popu- lation that drew its traditions from Rome and Gaul. I will suggest in a moment how this enormous inter- national narrowness affects the question of a peas- antry and the extension of the natural ownership of land. But for the moment it is important to make the point clear about the nature of that narrowness. And that is why some light might be thrown on it in that tender, that intimate, that heart-to-heart talk between Mr. Saklatvala and the Dean of St. Paul’s. Mr. Sak- latvala is a sort of parody or extreme and extrava- gant exhibition of the point; that we really know nothing at all about the moral and philosophical ele- ments that make up the Empire. It is quite obvious, of course, that he does not represent Battersea. But have we any way of knowing to what extent he repre- sents India? It seems to me not impossible that the more impersonal and indefinite doctrines of Asia do form a soil for Bolshevism. Most of the eastern phi- losophy differs from the western theology in refusing to draw the line anywhere; and it would be a highlyTHE NEED OF A NEW SEIRIQ, ~~ 21 probable perversion of that instinct to refuse to draw the line between meum and tuum. | do not think the Indian gentleman is any judge of whether we in the West want to have a hedge round our fields or a wall round our gardens. And as I happen to hold that the very highest human thought and art consists al- most entirely in drawing the line somewhere, though not in drawing it anywhere, I am completely con- fident that in this the western tendency is right and the eastern tendency is wrong. But, in any case, it seems to me that a rather sharp lesson to us is in- dicated in these two parallel cases of the Indian who grows into a Bolshevist in our dominions without our being able to influence his growth, and the French Canadian who remains a peasant in our dominions _without our getting any sort of advantage out of his stability. I do not profess to know very much about the French Canadians; but I know enough to know that most of the people who talk at large about the Em- pire know even less than | do. And the point about them is that they generally do not even try to know any more. The very vague picture that they always call up, of colonists doing wonders in all the corners of the world, never does, in fact, include the sort of thing that French Canadians can do, or might pos- sibly show other people how to do. There is about all this fashionable fancy of colonization a very danger- ous sort of hypocrisy. People tried to use the Over- nth nae Sr ww oneness re erties ea a SO ence a ee SS SE TES Swe Weel SS ewe a were teoaTnnerta Se suave ed bes ee o~ 220 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY believe that any scheme of the sort will have to be based on a totally different and indeed diametrically opposite spirit and principle to that which is com- monly applied to emigration in England to-day. I think we need a new sort of inspiration, a new sort of appeal, a new sort of ordinary language even, be- fore that solution will even help to solve anything. What we need is the ideal of Property, not merely of Progress—especially progress over other people’s property. Utopia needs more frontiers, not less. And it is because we were weak in the ethics of property on the edges of Empire that our own society will not defend property. as men defend a right. The Bol- shevist is the sequel and punishment of the Buccaneer.Rebre eee ST hee, PERCE eter eras CVEV ES LTE: I] THE RELIGION OF SMALL PROPERTY We hear a great deal nowadays about the disad- vantages of decorum, especially from those who are always telling us that women in the last generation were helpless and impotent, and then proceed to prove it by describing the tremendous and towering tyranny of Mrs. Grundy. Rather in the same way, they insist that Victorian women were especially soft and submissive. And it is rather unfortunate for them that, even in order to say so, they have to in- troduce the name of Queen Victoria. But it is more especially in connection with the indecorous in art and literature that the question arises, and it is now the fashion to argue as if there were no psychological basis for reticence at all. That is where the argument should end: but fortunately these thinkers do not know how to get to the end of an argument. I have heard it argued that there is no more harm in de- scribing the violation of one Commandment than of another: but this is obviously a fallacy. There is at least a case in psychology for saying that certain images move the imagination to the weakening of the character. There is no case for saying that the mere contemplation of a kit of burglar’s tools would in- 221 cca sD papeat ‘ewe ee a Gal SN ee athe Bee ee ee Stn Taian ne ~~ wows oie hie ee San parte Sint toatens teeta ne te Aan Cat A PE lich te ned cal eared at ee oe a ar Oe et tal ACN iy A nt nn ae SOON Se a te a Ha iy i 4 $4 hE an i A Ay By x D 4 hi NI5 ee eeclee eee nae cpr eee ee nt rane tear pee ea re eet ti —-"e BE Serer ae OIE Meyers n Beton ae ee ee Pe haar eibeb emer TIT ahs — La tance ee rh alee nee nn TERS al CS Ooe eee acetal inde ee en Ns See er errmas Se eres Pecos 222 DHE OUTLINE OF SANITY flame us all with a desire to break into houses. There is no possibility of pretending that the mere sight of means to murder our maiden aunt with a poker does really make the ill deed done. But what strikes me as most curious about the controversy is this: that while our fiction and journalism is largely break- ing down the prohibitions for which there really was a logical case, in the consideration of human nature, they still very largely feel the pressure of prohibitions for which there was never any case at all. And the most curious thing about the criticism we hear di- rected against the Victorian Age is that it is never directed against the most arbitrary conventions of that age. One of these, which I remember very vividly in my youth, was the convention that there is some- thing embarrassing or unfair about a man mention- ing his religion. There was something of the same feeling about his mentioning his money. Now these things cannot possibly be defended by the same psy- chological argument as the other. Nobody is moved to madness by the mere sight of a church spire, or finds uncontrollable emotions possess him at the thought of an archdeacon’s hat. Yet there is still enough of that really irrational Victorian conven- tion lingering in our life and literature to make it necessary to offer a defence, if not an apology, when- ever an argument depends upon this fundamental fact in life. Now when I remark that we want a type of colo-Sees PPOs ee) RELIGION OF SMALL PROPERTY 223 nization rather represented by the French Canadians, there are probably still a number of sly critics who would point the finger of detection at me and cry, as if they had caught me in something very naughty, “You believe in the French Canadians because they are Catholics’; which is in one sense not only true, but very nearly the whole truth. But in another sense it is not true at all; if it means that I exercise no independent judgment in perceiving that this 1s really what we do want. Now when this difficulty and misunderstanding arises, there is only one prac- tical way of meeting it in the present state of public information, or lack of information. It is to call what is generally described as an impartial witness; though it is quite probable that he is far less impartial than | am. What is really important about him is that, if he were partial, he would be partial on the other side. The dear old Daily News, of the days of my youth, on which I wrote happily for many years and had so many good and admirable friends, cannot be ac- cused as yet as being an organ of the Jesuits. It was, and is, as every one knows, the organ of the Noncon- formists. Dr. Clifford brandished his teapot there when he was selling it in order to demonstrate, by one symbolical act, that he had long been a teetotaller and was now a Passive Resister. We may be pardoned for smiling at this aspect of the matter; but there are many other aspects which are real and worthy of all possible respect. The tradition of the old Puritan ideal eat} SRG Seer] ie dF Bc Mand = sae Bee || a} fi “un iM Vs le roves se SaaS ee anette ——~ ph eee at ae tie om te ee ~ aa tiated 9 > Sittin deathly ee be et ant SNe te ale ea te ee a Ral I ee a Te po ewes natal aT ep Fy iD t | Fi | f 2 i Hii fF Ii Perera ernie sents lh el PT nag got 9 ie pjesama nk ina AIR IE TO ae vate onpt ee gos ~ oe ew ain OAR eaten ae LO Pee eee ed rat ~ <1 Sa eee el ot oe eee eather eT Sa ecunedinmaninien ee herrea Steels A wa 224 HE OUTLINE OF SANITY does really descend to this paper; and multitudes of honest and hard-thinking Radicals read it in my youth and read it still. I therefore think that the following remarks which appeared recently in the Daily News, in an article by Mr. Hugh Martin, writing from Toronto, are rather remarkable. He begins by saying that the Anglo-Saxon has got too proud to bend his back; but the curious thing is that he goes on to suggest, almost in so many words, that the backs of the French Canadians are actually strengthened, not only by being bent over rustic spades, but even by being bent before superstitious altars. I am very anxious not to do my impartial witness an unfair damage in the matter; so I may be excused if I quote his own words at some little length. After saying that the Anglo-Saxons are drawn away to the United States, or at any rate to the industrial cities, he remarks that the French are of course very numerous in Quebec and elsewhere, but that it is not here that the notable development is taking place, and that Montreal, be- ing a large city, is showing signs of the slackening to be seen in other large cities. “Now look at the other picture. The race that is going ahead is the French race... . In Quebec, where there are nearly 2,000,000 Canadians of French origin in a population of 2,350,000, that might have been expected. But as a matter of fact it is not in Quebec that the French are making good most con-RELIGION OF SMALL PROPERTY 225 spicuously . . . nor in Nova Scotia and New Bruns- wick is the comparative success of the French stock most marked. They are doing splendidly on the land and raising prodigious families. A family of twelve is quite common, and I could name several cases where there have been twenty, who all lived. The day may come when they will equal or outnumber the Scotch, but that is some way ahead. If you want to see what French stock can still achieve, you should go to the northern part of this province of Ontario. It is doing pioneer work. It is bending its back as men did in the old days. It is multiplying and staying on the soil. It is content to be happy without being rich. “Though I am not a religious man myself, | must confess I think religion has a good deal to do with it. These French Canadians are more Catholic than the Pope. You might call a good many of them des- perately ignorant and desperately superstitious. They seem to me to be a century behind the times and a century nearer happiness.” These seem to me, I repeat, to be rather remark- able words; remarkable if they appeared anywhere, arresting and astonishing when they appear in the traditional paper of the Manchester Radicals and the nineteenth-century Nonconformists. The words are splendidly straightforward and unaffected in their literary form; they have a clear ring of sincerity and experience, and they are all the more convincing be- ere | ai} ai A beeen ASS SO tle eet ae nd a ee a Oe ne aan el ach, Se lm eles heen eee aN ae oe al “A. peed an ta aC eT OM ne AW eee a ~e ae enti el Ge ae SL a oe ae ath ange wi Saws aermeetigmmns ee icin gad oN ego a e le PIP aa Ten ee an eee— a bs a thee! : oe ae operat pr nnn 2 ct TTS ecient a eLetter analyte aa a CN neon SSaetareeae eT 5 a lie de a NOR erential seen 2 COC ema encenmeteee ee oe hited eee Cena Pree ee ri C eaecitaireae Sa eas Cnc DPwineinsem ee a ee 226 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY cause they are written by somebody who does not share my own desperate ignorance and desperate superstition. But he proceeds to suggest a reason, and incidentally to make his own independence in the matter quite clear. “Apart from the fact that their women bear an incredible number of children, you have this other consequence of their submission to the priest, that a social organism is created, which is of incalculable value in the backwoods. The church, the school, the cure, hold each little group together as a unit. Do not think for a moment that I believe a general spread of Catholicism would turn us back into a pioneer people. One might just as reasonably recommend a return to early Scottish Protestantism. I merely record the fact that the simplicity of these people is proving their salvation and is one of the most hope- ful things in Canada to-day.” Of course, there are a good many things of an incidental kind that a person with my views might comment on in that passage. I might go off at a gal- lop on the highly interesting comparison with early Scottish Protestantism. Very early Scottish Protes- tantism, like very early English Protestantism, con- sisted chiefly of loot. But if we take it as referring to the perfectly pure and sincere enthusiasm of many Covenanters or early Calvinists, we come upon the contrast that is the point of the whole matter. Early Puritanism was pure Puritanism: but the purer it isRELIGION OF SMALL PROPERTY 227 the more early it seems. We cannot imagine it as a good thing and also a modern thing. It might have been one of the most honest things in Scotland then. But nobody would be found calling it one of the most hopeful things in Canada to-day. If John Knox ap- peared to-morrow in the pulpit of St. Giles, he would be a stickit minister. He would be regarded as a rav- ing savage because of his ignorance of German meta- physics. That comparison does not meet the extraor- dinary case of the thing that is older than Knox and yet also newer than Knox. Or again, I might point out that the common connotation of “submission to the priest” is misleading, even if it is true. It is like talking of the Charge of the Light Brigade as the submission to Lord Raglan. It is still more like talk- ing about the storming of Jerusalem as the submis- sion to the Count of Bouillon. In one sense it is quite true: in another it is very untrue. But I have not the smallest desire here to disturb the impartiality of my witness. I have not the smallest intention of using any of the tortures of the Inquisition to make him admit anything that he did not wish to admit. The admission as it stands seems to me very remarkable; not so much because it is a tribute to Frenchmen as colonists as because it is a tribute to colonists as pious and devout people. But what concerns me most of all in the general discussion of my own theme is the in- sistence on stability. They are staying on the soil; they are a social organism; they are held together as Crepe YETSyT : er ale By a ¥: a aA} FY ty Soa £9 anaes TED : ey oe wy ein rd i i4 4 Ui i A atte tind dc ee SNe Name ce vm o ae - ee a ee iS Be es reed talents ae owen thet deel wth ns lems best a SN SS a ond Pe aa Na Eee ~ eae PP SR eres epee ema he a meeregeeer ean nS ene nea Herta ; : 5 } 5 i i ' i +} | | j i seyCis tao tanita ome et Tet ee , cee Saree ae Se ar Serre aaa Ci sal tac ea ed eee rea a at) aera sertanerierarriaaaa Saks scarp aesbianate tinea SS cece Sergei SS eer al rhe SO ere ees a erate — einen ace a irl ace ee ICSD arian eas Rev see ee PEEP RPE PL 228 tHE OUTLINE OF SANIDY a unit. That is the new note which I think is needed in all talk of colonization, before it can again be any part of the hope of the world. A recent description of the Happy Factory, as it exists in America or will exist in Utopia, rose from height to height of ideality until it ended with a sort of hush, as of the ultimate opening of the heavens, and these words about the workman, “He turns out for his homeward journey like a member of the Stock Exchange.” Any attempt to imagine humanity in its final perfection always has about it something faintly unreal, as being too good for this world; but the visionary light that breaks from the cloud, in that last phrase, accentuates clearly the contrast which is to be drawn between such a condition and that of the labour of common men. Adam left Eden as a gar- dener; but he will set out for his homeward journey like a member of the Stock Exchange. St. Joseph was a carpenter; but he will be raised again as a stock- broker. Giotto was a shepherd; for he was not yet worthy to be a stockbroker. Shakespeare was an ac- tor; but he dreamed day and night of being a stock- broker. Burns was a ploughman; but if he sang at the plough, how much more appropriately he would have sung in the Stock Exchange. It is assumed in this kind of argument that all humanity has con- sciously or unconsciously hoped for this consumma- tion; and that if men were not brokers, it was because they were not able to broke. But this remarkable pas-RELIGION OF SMALL PROPERTY 229 sage in Sir Ernest Benn’s exposition has another ap- plication besides the obvious one. A stockbroker in one sense really is a very poetical figure. In one sense he is as poetical as Shakespeare, and his ideal poet, since he does give to airy nothing a local habitation and a name. He does deal to a great extent in what economists (in their poetical way) describe as imag- inaries. When he exchanges two thousand Patagonian Pumpkins for one thousand shares in Alaskan Whale Blubber, he does not demand the sensual satisfaction of eating the pumpkin or need to behold the whale with the gross eye of flesh. It is quite possible that there are no pumpkins; and if there is somewhere such a thing as a whale, it is very unlikely to obtrude itself upon the conversation in the Stock Exchange. Now what is the matter with the financial world is that it is a great deal too full of imagination, in the sense of fiction. And when we react against it, we naturally in the first place react into realism. When the stockbroker homeward plods his weary way and leaves the world to darkness and Sir Ernest Benn, we are disposed to insist that it is indeed he who has the darkness and we who have the daylight. He has not only the darkness but the dreams, and all the un- real leviathans and unearthly pumpkins pass before him like a mere scroll of symbols in the dreams of the Old Testament. But when the small proprietor grows pumpkins, they really are pumpkins, and sometimes quite a large pumpkin for quite a small BPG E SSO ERY iota hago ta OE eral En Rit ie eS ce Se ne a te ~ Retina nts a LOA ETI. See aaa a eMart aN praca RP Brome ee “ CO nr eI ni Bete SO a mn ee Ic NT a AN a dC ners tn reer ee armen nes aw a re cn re any : ; 5 i Pa ay by f ,3 ari fait Do at a ear De NaS eae Det as Sr A Te eee erate Naar Sie i A SER serene ar LB Be re ~ = all nl Rear nae ee i es ON needa i 230 iE OUREINE*OF SANITY proprietor. If he should ever have occasion to grow whales (which seems improbable) they would either be real whales or they would be of no use to him. We naturally grow a little impatient, under these condi- tions, when people who call themselves practical scoff at the small proprietor as if he were a minor poet. Nevertheless, there is another side to the case, and there is a sense in which the small proprietor had better be a minor poet, or at least a mystic. Nay, there is even a sort of queer paradoxical sense in which the stockbroker is a man of business. It is to that other side of small property, as ex- emplified in the French Canadians, and an article on them in the Daily News, that I devoted my last re- marks. The really practical point in that highly in- teresting statement is, that in this case, being pro- gressive is actually identified with being what is called static. In this case, by a strange paradox, a pioneer is really a settler. In this case, by a still stranger para- dox, a settler is a person who really settles. It will be noted that the success of the experiment is actually founded on a certain power of striking root; which we might almost call rapid tradition, as others talk of rapid transit. And indeed the ground under the pioneer’s feet can only be made solid by. being made sacred. It is only religion that can thus rapidly give a sort of accumulated power of culture and legend to something that is crude or incomplete. It sounds like a joke to say that baptizing a baby makes the babyRELIGION OF SMALL PROPERTY 231 venerable; it suggests the old joke of the baby with spectacles who died an enfeebled old dotard at five. Yet it is profoundly true that something is added that is not only something to be venerated, but something partly to be venerated for its antiquity—that is, for the unfathomable depth of its humanity. In a sense a new world can be baptized as a new baby is bap- tized, and become a part of an ancient order not merely on the map but in the mind. Instead of crude people merely extending their crudity, and calling that colonization, it would be possible for people to culti- vate the soil as they cultivate the soul. But for this it is necessary to have a respect for the soil as well as for the soul: and even a reverence for it, as having some associations with holy things. But for that purpose we need some sense of carrying holy things with us and taking them home with us; not merely the feeling that holiness may exist as a hope. In the most exalted phrase, we need a real presence. In the most popular phrase, we need something that is always on the spot. That is, we want something that is always on the spot, and not only beyond the horizon. The pioneer instinct is beginning to fail, as a well-known traveller recently complained, but I doubt whether he couid tell us the reason. It is even possible that he will not understand it, in one radiant burst of joyful com- prehension, if I tell him that I am all in favour of a wild-goose chase, so long as he really believes that the wild goose is the bird of paradise; but that it is neces- Te ran am, —weye en Sa tna aan ips RRA RE eae aie Ded ee en SNe ey ™ ta inna eae ee Rei Sn i eae e nena te - nulla me as SN Se ee eran ee tet kn sam aonetie Dace cnet aa nate ae Septet Rill alee hem mel Ea ete Caan ae OA Pee eae Pra iptimarsiaienies I ae athe mite ene Et edd ee eS a TO RY ty : % a Ps A D ]MRE Narre an ae ete eC areca De le erg la a, SE tee te aS a WOR neem eee tae ee Sits A Aner == <= oO en re — Ohler tan Shea Rlelintatinim cata ee as nee Rn TRI OM Oe et lat one eee oe a. aca See oct ce Eee ae ae ee ater np ae shame TL ID ts 5 7} Resear; 232 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY sary to hunt it with the hounds of heaven. If it be barely possible that this does not seem quite clear to him, I will explain that the traveller must possess something as well as pursue something, or he will not even know what to pursue. It is not enough always to follow the gleam: it is necessary sometimes to rest in the glow; to feel something sacred in the glow of the camp fire as well as the gleam of the polar star. And that same mysterious and to some divided voice, which alone tells that we have here no abiding city, is the only voice which within the limits of this world can build up cities that abide. As I said at the beginning of this section, it is futile to pretend that such a faith is not a fundamental of the true change. But its practical relation to the re- construction of property is that, unless we understand this spirit, we cannot now relieve congestion with colonization. People will prefer the mere nomadism of the town to the mere nomadism of the wilderness. They will not tolerate emigration if it merely means being moved on by the politicians as they have been moved on by the policemen. They will prefer bread and circuses to locusts and wild honey, so long as the forerunner does not know for what God he prepares the way. But even if we,put aside for the moment the strictly spiritual ideals involved in the change, we must admit that there are secular ideals involved which must be positive and not merely comparative, like the ideal ofRELIGION OF SMALL PROPERTY 233 progress. We are sometimes taunted with setting against all other Utopias what is in truth the most im- possible Utopia; with describing a Merry Peasant who cannot exist except on the stage, with depending on a China Shepherdess who never was seen except on the mantelpiece. If we are indeed presenting impos- sible portraits of an ideal humanity, we are not alone in that. Not only the Socialists but also.the Capital- ists parade before us their imaginary and _ ideal figures, and the Capitalists if possible more than the Socialists. For once that we read of the last Earthly Paradise of Mr. Wells, where men and women move gracefully in simple garments and keep their tempers in a way in which we in this world sometimes find difficult (even when we are the authors of Utopian novels), for once that we see the ideal figure of that vision, we see ten times a day the ideal figure of the commercial advertisers. We are told to “Be Like This Man.” or to imitate an aggressive person pointing his finger at us in a very rude manner for one who regards himself as a pattern to the young. Yet it is entirely an ideal portrait; it is very unlikely (we are glad to say) that any of us will develop a chin or a finger of that obtrusive type. But we do not blame either the Capitalists or the Socialists for setting up a type or talismanic figure to fix the imagination. We do not wonder at their presenting the perfect person for our admiration; we only wonder at the person they ad- mire. And it is quite true that, in our movement as _ = ~ a ye aoa cre tpn ee Te Piedad eed eee pati tines a Noe eee ne thee area a a ee te ~ Eee ee aS —— a natal sae aia ties a tle eer ew 5 een en perth aaa nee PR lt EN Mi tele Dain th teed mee hee En A eR Te NE Ee aT eee nl es Pitti te eid, ga Ra dP Ne ek be YY ¢ i i | eH 33 a3See ra eget mn re ieee ere tr 4 u 7 Te On eee pee Soetacouriaa alata PON eo retro ena Seana panne epee enteneteassedibidie gs amar Parenter ane pee pera ee SS ere 234 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY much as any other, there must be a certain amount of this romantic picture-making. Men have never done anything in the world without it; but ours is much more of a reality as well as a romance than the dreams of the other romantics. There cannot be a nation of millionaires, and there has never yet been a nation of Utopian comrades; but there have been any number of nations of tolerably contented peasants. In this connection, however, the point is that if we do not di- rectly demand the religion of small property, we must at least demand the poetry of small property. It is a thing about which it is definitely and even urgently practical to be poetical. And it is those who blame us for being poetical who do not really see the practical problem. For the practical problem is the goal. The pioneer notion has weakened like the progressive notion, and for the same reason. People could go on talking about progress so long as they were not merely thinking about progress. Progressives really had in their minds some notion of a purpose in progress; and even the most practical pioneer had some vague and shadowy idea of what he wanted. The progressives trusted the tendency of their time, because they did believe, or at least had believed, in a body of democratic doc- trines which they supposed to be in process of estab- lishment. And the pioneers and empire-builders were filled with hope and courage because, to do them jus- tice, most of them did at least in some dim way be-RELIGION OF SMALL PROPERTY 235 lieve that the flag they carried stood for law and liberty, and a higher civilization. They were therefore in search of something and not merely in search of searching. They subconsciously conceived an end of travel and not endless travelling; they were not only breaking through a jungle but building a city. They knew more or less the style of architecture in which it would be built, and they honestly believed it was the best style of architecture in the world. The spirit of adventure has failed because it has been left to adventurers. Adventure for adventure’s sake be- came like art for art’s sake. Those who had lost all sense of aim lost all sense of art and even of accident. The time has come in every department, but espe- cially in our department, to make once again vivid and solid the aim of political progress or colonial ad- venture. Even if we picture the goal of the pilgrimage as a sort of peasant paradise, it will be far more prac- tical than setting out on a pilgrimage which has no goal. But it is yet more practical to insist that we do not want to insist only on what are called the qualities of a pioneer; that we do not want to describe merely the virtues that achieve adventures. We want men to think, not merely of a place which they would be in- terested to find, but of a place where they would be contented to stay. Those who wish merely to arouse again the social hopes of the nineteenth century must offer not an endless hope, but the hope of an end. Those who wish to continue the building of the old rf Ea wae ae ee EN een RE ene ee swe eaiae Se aaa need ts Fe a ee et. mata et a —nor aoa a oe Pena mane ne em Poors TT _— a Sen SS ee eras: ee al Setanta rs epee kk PKI POS ew ne i ELI TE et ak ST ponte er PDA RETEAT rl cea a“ bad EP es De eee Cee ee236 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY colonial idea must leave off telling us that the Church of Empire is founded entirely on the rolling stone. For it is a sin against the reason to tell men that to travel hopefully is better than to arrive; and when once they believe it, they travel hopefully no longer. Pe Pwat eer Need hit Ral onal atte paper or "heart. ee ak ater sone ool wee oe ne neat sea EL WL ener ee ae Sere ere a aE n fi 0 ’ — if] ie va Ri rf ee oa rane ee dielVI A SUMMARY Rare na i : 6 | nin= See “ae anueinaen ee | | lereiedien a ae oa a = 8 et roteA SUMMARY I once debated with a learned man who had a curious fancy for arranging the correspondence in mathematical patterns; first a thousand words each and then a hundred words each—and then altering them all to another pattern. I accepted as I would al- ways accept a challenge, especially an apparent ap- peal for fairness, but I was tempted to tell him how utterly unworkable this mechanical method is for a living thing like argument. Obviously a man might need a thousand words to reply to ten words. Sup- pose I began the philosophic dialogue by saying, © You strangle babies.” He would naturally reply, “Non- sense—I never strangled any babies.” And even in that obvious ejaculation he has already used twice as many words as I have. It is impossible to have real debate without digression. Every definition will look like a digression. Suppose somebody puts to me some journalistic statement, say, “Spanish Jesuits de- nounced in Parliament.” I cannot deal with it without explaining to the journalist where | differ from him about the atmosphere and implication of each term in turn. I cannot answer quickly if I am just discovering slowly that the man suffers from a series of extraor- dinary delusions: as (1) that Parliament is a popular representative assembly; (2) that Spain is an effete 239ee ore, ae tea Paaryncynn spanner on. : eS Se nn tenner aan ceria ad Lit? Sa So ig a“ a petite Se ee prea aah ea ee epeareeseneatate termes amet oa 7 Man arate Bt at es ATRYN nt ee tem Dera lntin caine SE Peete teres) mrerseicindece en aoe ree, Case are nN Sew awn ston 240 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY and decadent country; or (3) that a Spanish Jesuit is a sort of soft-footed court chaplain; whereas it was a Spanish Jesuit who anticipated the whole democratic theory of our day, and actually hurled it as a defiance against the divine right of kings. Each of these ex- planations would have to be a digression, and each would be necessary. Now in this book I am well aware that there are many digressions that may not at first sight seem to be necessary. For I have had to con- struct it out of what was originally a sort of contro- versial causerie; and it has proved impossible to cut down the causerie and only leave the controversy. Moreover, no man can controvert with many foes without going into many subjects, as every one knows who has been heckled. And on this occasion I was, I am happy to say, being heckled by many foes who were also friends. I was discharging the double func- tion of writing essays and of talking over the tea- table, or preferably over the tavern table. To turn this sort of mixture of a gossip and a gospel into anything like a grammar of Distributism has been quite im- possible. But I fancy that, even considered as a string of essays, it appears more inconsequent than it really is; and many may read the essays without quite see- ing the string. I have decided, therefore, to add this last essay merely in order to sum up the intention of the whole; even if the summary be only a recapitula- tion. | have had a reason for many of my digressions, which may not appear until the whole is seen in someaes leeaee A SUMMARY 24] sort of perspective; and where the digression has no such justification, but was due to a desire to answer a friend or (what is even worse) a disposition towards idle and unseemly mirth, I can only apologize sin- cerely to the scientific reader and promise to do my best to make this final summary as dull as possible. If_we proceed as at present in a proper orderly fashion,the_very idea of property will vanish. It is not revolutionary violence that will destroy it. It is rather the desperate and reckless habit of not having a revolution. The world will be occupied, or rather is already occupied, by two powers which are now one power. I speak, of ccurse, of that part of the world that is covered by our system, and that part of the history of the world which will last very much longer than our time. \Sooner or later, no doubt, men would rediscover so natural a pleasure as property. But it might be discovered after ages, like those ages filled with pagan slavery. It might be discovered after a long decline of our whole civilization. Barbarians might rediscover it and imagine it was a new me) Anyhow, the prospect is a progress towards the complete combination of two combinations. They are both powers that believe only in combination; and have never understood or even heard that there is any dignity in division. They have never had the imagi- nation to understand the idea of Genesis and the great myths: that Creation itself was division. The begin- ning of the world was the division of heaven and eens ha Se nn Ate licia a re ais se wes pee ed eas intel ~- . Se en ae Sa ncabpenes eee a sti rere SS ee wea ee a ened ane io tnen tp thief Dobcrdiek ele Sess uation ae a ae Vayelemmibnaamnene eee LEN mpm, ome eee eal ae Ie FY u a a4 a + & 3 A 4 x!SWS way i Saree eee eee eee eet pes an apie eter tases al Sal ant pean a eas pea SO Ne Se be on RS I a nr a a Whig rte an ROL - ee 242 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY earth; the beginning of humanity was the division of man and woman. But these flat and platitudinous minds can never see the difference between the crea- tive cleavage of Adam and Eve and the destructive cleavage of Cain and Abel. Anyhow, these powers or minds are now both in the same mood; and it is a mood of disliking all division, and therefore all dis- tribution. They believe in unity, in unanimity, in harmony. One of these powers is State Socialism and the other is Big Business. They are already one spirit; they will soon be one body. For, disbelieving in di- vision, they cannot remain divided; believing only in combination, they will themselves combine. At pres- ent one of them calls it Solidarity and the other calls it Consolidation. It would seem that we have only to wait while both monsters are taught to say Consoli- darity. But, whatever it is called, there will be no doubt about the character of the world which they will have made between them. It is becoming more and more fixed and familiar. It will be a world of or- ganization, or-syndication,of standardization. People will be able to get hats, houses, holidays, and patent medicines of a recognized and universal pattern; they will be fed, clothed, educated, and examined by a wide and elaborate system; but if you were to ask them at any given moment whether the agency which housed or hatted them was still merely mercantile or had be- come municipal, they probably would not know, and they possibly would not care.wear evar es A SUMMARY 243 Many believe that humanity will be happy in this new peace; that classes can be reconciled and souls set at rest. I do not think things will be quite so bad as that. But I admit that there are many things which may make possible such a catastrophe of content- ment. Men in large numbers have submitted to slav- ery; men submit naturally to government, and per- haps even especially to despotic government. But I take it as obvious to any intelligent person that this government will be something more than despotic. It is the very essence of the Trust that it has the power, not only to extinguish military rivalry or mob rebel- lion as has the State, but also the power to crush any new custom or costume or craft or private enterprise that it does not choose to like. Militarism can only prevent people from fighting; but{monopoly can pre- vent them from buying or selling anything except the article (generally the inferior article) having the trade mark of the monopoly. If anything can be in- ferred from history and human nature, it is absolutely certain that the despotism will grow more and more despotic, and that the article will grow more and more inferior. There is no conceivable argument from psy- chology, by which it can be pretended that people preserving such a power, generation after generation, would not abuse it more and more, or neglect every- thing else more and more. We know what far less rigid rule has become, even when founded by spirited and intelligent rulers. We can darkly guess the effect SS eon teenth. a aN vette ae bac ele ees bake ey ba aL bh a Ot te hrc ca ee ee oe a ae — ca BAe aha a SS it Fd ; > it i 4] i t e 4 A 4 | i a Ei : t Eeees at at ee ne a eimsad ES 0 OS siiean! peering 7 SC eee ee oe Sabla nt Naan lie oS Sa a Warr rma a ee Tle, Scere pee starrer a OPT IRE ara ae = a Ma daar ease ser erties oh tof Too ae oe iereemereee ee Pemewhany ) —e Milroy ae Oe recta ca SHG Daphnia gee Sr teers pron alia ome ring ~~” 244 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY of larger powers in the hands of lesser men. And if the name of Cesar came at last to stand for all that we call Byzantine, exactly what degree of dullness are we to anticipate when the name of Harrod shall sound even duller than it does? If China passed into a prov- erb at last for stiffness and monotony after being nourished for centuries by Confucius, what will be the condition of the brains that have been nourished for centuries by Callisthenes? I leave out there the particular case of my own country, where we are threatened not with a long de- cline, but rather with an unpleasantly rapid collapse. But taking monopolist capitalism in a country where it is still in the vulgar sense successful, as in the United States, we only see more clearly, and on a more colossal scale, the long and descending perspec- tives that point down to Byzantium or Pekin. It is perfectly obvious that the whole business is a machine for manufacturing tenth-rate things, and keeping peo- ple ignorant of first-rate things. Most civilized sys- tems have declined from a height; but this starts on a low level and in a flat place; and what it would be like when it had really crushed all its critics and ri- vals and made its monopoly watertight for two hun- dred years, the most morbid imagination will find it hard to imagine. But whatever the last stage of the story, no sane man any longer doubts that we are seeing the first stages of it. There is no longer any difference in tone and type between collectivist andTeper eerie?! A SUMMARY 245 ordinary commercial order; commerce has its offi- cialism and communism has its organization. Private things-are already public in the worst sense of the word; that is, they are impersonal and dehumanized. Public things are already private in-the worst sense of the word; that is, they are mysterious and secre- tive and largély corrupt. The new sort of Business Government-will combine everything that is bad in all the plans for a better world. There will be no ec- centricity; no humour; no noble disdain of the world. There will be nothing but a loathsome thing called Social Service; which means slavery without loyalty. This Service will be one of the ideals. I forgot to mention that there will be ideals. All the wealthiest men in the movement have made it quite clear that they are in possession of a number of these little comforts. People always have ideals when they can no longer have ideas. The philanthropists in question will probably be surprised to learn that some of us regard this prospect very much as we should regard the theory that we are to be evolved back into apes. We therefore con- sider whether it is even yet conceivable to restore that long-forgotten thing called Self-Government: that is, the power of the citizen in some degree to direct his own life and construct his own environment; to eat what he likes, to wear what he chooses, and to have (what the Trust must of necessity deny him) a range of choice. In these notes upon the notion, I have been Caw shel FEB) RWSL YY Ne uJ Ee LL ee ts i a FI i z 5 4 . i i i PE eee tae mm “ Ce he Sy 9 ee a ee es ~~~ Se ~ = ey ee nna — sane teat tnPeo IERT —~ Soto wn ee ee ere Oli a a rl Te ae Oe ee Oye ie een aan ogee . Nad eh ea adn a - EE eR ee a SY aes sere aaa ee ant rn ere. Berga arf : bs et ig rR x rat ree at oF OT hat ow Sere apr So renee resets ae Pema pee nen 246 THE OUDEINE, OF SANIMY concerned to ask whether it is possible to escape from this enormous evil of simplification or centralization, and what I have said is best summed up under two heads or in two parallel] statements. They may seem to some to contradict each other, but they really con- firm each other. First, I say that this is a thing that could be done by people. It is not a thing that can be done to people. That is _Where it differs from nearly all Socialist schemes | as it does from plutocratic philanthropy. I do not say that I, regarding this prospect with hatred and contempt, can save them from it. I say that they can save me from it, and themselves from it, if they also regard it with hatred and contempt. But it must be done in the spirit of a religion, of a revolution, and (1 will add) of a renunciation. They must want to do It as they want to drive invaders out of a country or to stop the spread of a plague. And in this respect our critics have a curious way of arguing in a circle. They ask why we trouble to denounce what we cannot de- stroy; and offer an ideal we cannot attain. They say we are merely throwing away dirty water before we can get clean; or rather that we are merely analysing the animalcule in the dirty water, while we do not even venture to throw it away. Why do we make men discontented with conditions with which they must be content? Why revile an intolerable slavery that must be tolerated? But when we in turn ask why our ideal is impossible or why the evil is indestructible, theyA SUMMARY 247 answer in effect, “‘Because you cannot persuade people to want it destroyed.” Possibly; but, on their own showing, they cannot blame us because we try. They cannot say that people do not hate plutocracy enough to kill it; and then blame us for asking them to look at it enough to hate it. If they will not attack it until they hate it, then we are doing the most practical thing we can do, in showing it to be hateful. A moral movement must begin somewhere; but I do most posi- tively postulate that there must be a moral move- ment. This is not a financial flutter or a police regula- tion or a private bill or a detail of book-keeping. It is a mighty effort of the will of man, like the throwing off of any other great evil, or it is nothing. I say that if men will fight for this they may win; I have no- where suggested that there is any way of winning without fighting. Under this heading 1 have considered in their place, for instance, the possibility of an organized boy- cott of big shops. Undoubtedly it would be some sac- rifice to boycott big shops; it would be some trouble to seek out small shops. But it would be about a hundredth part of the sacrifice and trouble that has often been shown by masses of men making some patriotic or religious protest—when they really wanted to protest. Under the same general rule, I have remarked that a real life on the land, men not only dwelling on the land but living off it, would be an adventure involving both stubbornness and abnega- Peale el teanaro NMOGUEC Vie lteee teed eatar: rh Paton a che ye Pas te ee aR Dh Now a — al ~ meee de nan a nen Lt Ae Weer ee Ss a oe — aR ae we Sa et em a ee tt as tant ne LO ee RE Rha ere ae Natal ee POD Oe a Eel iY: y k P “ICee iL ft DR as aes Ere eter nites mi atlas i ep ST PO ar erate iter eae ciel el a eC Sel DR ea eter Be pane ee een pean re fleet ie tl a d - Ca esa ee 5 arabe rien jn a NO arene. 258 THE OUTLINE OF SANITY pecially at this time, that there is much to be said on the other side. We alone, perhaps, are likely to insist in the full sense that the average respectable citizen ought to have something to rule. We alone, to the same extent and for the same reason, have the right to call ourselves democratic. A republic used to be called a nation of kings, and in our republic the kings really have kingdoms. All modern governments, Prussian or Russian, all modern movements, Capitalist or So- cialist, are taking away that kingdom from the king. Because they dislike the independence of that king- dom, they are against property. Because they dislike the loyalty of that kingdom, they are against mar- riage. It is therefore with a somewhat sad amusement that [ note the soaring visions that accompany the sinking wages. I observe that the social prophets are still offering the homeless something much higher and purer than a home, and promising a supernormal su- periority to people who are not allowed to be normal. I am quite content to dream of the old drudgery of democracy, by which as much as possible of a human life should be given to every human being; while the brilliant author of The First Men in the Moon will doubtless be soon deriding us in a romance called The Last Men on the Earth. And indeed | do believe that when they lose the pride of personal ownership they will lose something that belongs to their erectTeRT CUT TER OT CPE? CTO rr} PEAEG LAG 4a O25 0000 LA Aes A SUMMARY 259 posture and to their footing and poise upon the planet. Meanwhile I sit amid droves of overdriven clerks and underpaid workmen in a tube or a tram; | read of the great conception of Men Like Gods and I wonder when men will be like men. THE END ae! een oe Seed by mn Fw Se es ~ as nS R -aetmnan ne ai ee Sete eer ee eran eee Sn et a ee Saati ee eins teed ee reer ete “se 4 ‘| i‘ : ‘i let at os elim anal ~ erm ma ae ot ene Bien a een and eee a EC ST I ee ate nae Teoi nleapantesbereenreeeee ey TE Sacprectiger peat = sleneeememr ee ell Te me) eae a ae renter | | f =~ RE Se neTATSTALEDOL TIS EET Oe MeL PEO eee eae Lee This book is a preservation photocopy. It is made in compliance with copyright law and produced on acid-free archival 60# book weight paper which meets the requirements of ANSINISO Z39.48-1992 (permanence of paper) Preservation photocopying and binding by Acme Bookbinding Charlestown, Massachusetts as) 2000 ta sm