CHAPTER XXVI.

REOCCUPATION OF THE LAND: THE ONLY IMMEDIATE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM OF THE UNEMPLOYED.

We have now just completed a century which has far surpassed all preceding centuries in the increase of man's power over natural forces, and consequent enormous increase in the production of wealth. The amount of this increase may be judged from the fact, that fifteen years ago the steam-power in Great Britain was about ten times the labour power of the whole population. It is now certainly much greater, and by the use of enormously improved labour-saving machinery, this steam-power is again increased at least tenfold in efficiency often very much more; so that our people now perform at least a hundred times as much productive work as during the preceding centuries, when steam-power and labour-saving machines were little used or almost unknown.

Yet with this hundred-fold capacity for producing the food, clothing and other commodities needed for the satisfaction of all the wants of human nature, and for obtaining all the comforts and enjoyments of life, what do we find? Huge masses of people suffering untold want, misery, and degradation in all our great cities, while in the country villages they are often surrounded by game preserves and untilled fields; an ever-increasing number dying of actual starvation, cold, or want; insanity and suicide increasing more rapidly than the population; and according to a very competent authority-a prison chaplain, who has studied the statistics of crime for thirty years an equally large increase in the prison population and in crime itself.1

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As confirming and illustrating all these terrible facts, we find, in the annual reports of the Registrar-General, proof that for the last forty years there has been continuous increase in the proportion of deaths occurring in workhouses, hospitals, asylums, and other public charitable institutions, from 16 per cent. of the total deaths (in London) in the five years 1856-60, to 26.9 per cent. in the years 1892-96; while a similar increase, though not quite so great, is shown for the whole of England.

Coincident with all these facts, and to some extent explaining them, is the continuous depopulation of the rural districts and increase of town and city populations, certainly largely due, and I believe wholly due, to the monopoly of the land in the hands of a limited class, which has always forbidden, and still forbids to the workers, the free use of their native soil except in a very small number of cases, and usually on exorbitant terms. Hence has arisen the phenomenon of an ever-increasing lack of permanent employment; the flocking of large numbers of rural labourers to the towns; the increase of want, suicide, insanity, and crime; millions of acres of land going out of cultivation; and the cry of agricultural depression, now raised the more loudly because the pockets of the landlords themselves are affected by it.

Most of the aspects of the "problem of poverty" above adverted to, I have dealt with more or less fully elsewhere, and also to some extent in the chapters of this volume on the Land Question, the Social Quagmire, &c. My present object is to suggest an immediate practical remedy for some of the worst features of the present state of things, by withdrawing from the labour market the superabundant workers and rendering them wholly selfsupporting on the land. This once effected, every other worker in the kingdom will be benefited, and the movement for a greatly improved organisation of society will be advanced by a practical illustration of the enormous waste involved in the capitalistic and competitive system that now prevails.

The Problem of the Unemployed.

The problem of general unemployment is well stated by Mr. J. Hobson in the Contemporary Review, April, 1898. He says:

"Why is it that, with a wheat-growing area so huge and so productive that in good years whole crops are left to rot in the ground, thousands of English labourers, millions of Russian peasants cannot get enough bread to eat? Why is it that, with so many cottonmills in Lancashire, that they cannot all be kept working for any length of time together, thousands of people in Manchester cannot get a decent shirt to their backs? Why is it that, with a growing glut of mines and miners, myriads of people are shivering for lack of coals? "

Now, not one of our authorized teachers of political economy, not one of our most experienced legislators can give any clear answer to these questions, except by vague reference to the immutable laws of supply and demand, and by the altogether false statement that things are not so bad as they were, and that in course of time they will improve of themselves. Mr. H. V. Mills had his attention directed to this subject by an individual instance of the same phenomenon. He found in Liverpool, next door to each other, a baker, a shoemaker, and a tailor, all out of work, all wanting the bread, clothes and shoes which they could produce, all willing and anxious to work, and yet all compelled to remain idle and half starving. His book has been before the world several years; it contains practical and efficient remedy for this state of things; yet no attempt whatever has been made to give his plan a fair trial. Let us therefore see if we can throw a little more light on the problem, and thus help to force it upon the attention of those who have the power, but who believe that nothing can be done.

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The answer to the question so well put by Mr. Hobson, and which Mr. Stead, in the Review of Reviews, considers to be the modern problem of the Sphinx which it needs a modern Edipus to solve, is nevertheless perfectly easy. To put it in its simplest form it is as follows:Unemployment exists, and must increase, because, under the conditions of modern society, production of every kind is carried on, not at all for the purpose of supplying the wants of the producers, but solely with the object of creating wealth for the capitalist employer.

Now, I believe that this statement contains the absolute root of the whole matter, and indicates the true and only lines of the complete remedy. But to many it will be a hard saying; let us therefore examine it a little in detail.

The capitalist cotton-spinner, cloth or boot-manufacturer, colliery-owner, or iron-master, care not the least who buys their goods or who uses them, so long as they can get a good price for them. The cotton, the boots, the coals, or the iron, may be exported to India or Australia, to America or to Timbuctoo, while millions are insufficiently clad or warmed in the very places where all these things are made. Even the very people who make them may thus suffer, through insufficient wages or irregular employment; yet the upholders of the present system will not admit that anything is fundamentally wrong. The lowness of wages and irregularity of employment, are, they tell us, due to general causes over which they have no control-such as foreign competition, insufficient markets, &c., which injure the capitalists as well as the workers. The unemployed exist, they say, on account of the improvements in machinery and in mechanical processes in all civilised countries, which economise labour and thus render production cheaper. The surplus labour, therefore, is not wanted; and that portion of it which cannot be absorbed in administering to the luxury of the rich must be supported by charity or starve. That is the last word of the capitalists and of the majority of the politicians. But though capitalists and politicians are satisfied to let things go on as they are, with ever-increasing wealth and luxury on the one hand, ever-increasing misery and discontent on the other, thinking men and women all over the world are not

VOL. II.

II

satisfied, and will not be satisfied, without a complete solution of the problem: which, though they are not yet able to see clearly, they firmly believe can be found.

Governments in modern times have gone on the principle that they have nothing whatever to do with the employment or want of employment of the people, with high wages or low wages, with luxury or starvation, except inasmuch as the latter calamity may be prevented by the poor-law guardians. A great change has, however, occurred in the last few years. Both the local and imperial Governments have admitted the principle of a reasonable subsistence wage, and are acting upon it, in flagrant opposition to the principles of the old political economy. Now too, I observe, the buying of Government stores abroad because they can be obtained a fraction per cent. cheaper than at home, is being given up, though only three or four years ago the practice was defended as being in accordance with true economical principles, and also because it was the duty of the Government to buy as cheaply as possible in the interest of the tax-payer. I only mention these facts to show that new ideas are permeating modern society and are compelling Governments, however reluctantly, to act upon them. We may, therefore, hope to compel our rulers to acknowledge, that it is their duty also to provide the conditions necessary to enable those who are idle and destitute-from no fault of their own, but solely through the failure of our competitive and monopolist system to support themselves by their own labour. Hitherto they have told us that it cannot be done, that it would disorganise society, that it. would injure other workers. We must, therefore, show them how it can be done, and insist that at all events the experiment shall be tried. I will now give my ideas of how this great result can be brought about, and the reasons which I believe demonstrate that the method will be successful.

Hitherto there has been no organisation of communities or of society at large for purposes of production, except so far as it has arisen incidentally in the interest of the capitalist employers and the monopolist land-owners.