Socialism As It Is Part 7

President Hadley is even more definite than Dr. Eliot. The new educational policy so thoroughly in accord with the interests of the business and capitalist cla.s.ses demands "for the people" every opportunity in education that will make the individual a better _worker_, while it allows his development as a _man_ and a _citizen_ to take care of itself. President Hadley urges that we follow along German lines in public education. What he feels we still lack, and ought to take from Germany, are the "industrial training and the military training of the people": the children are forced to go to the elementary schools for a time, and during that part of their education they are kept out of the shops and the factories. They, however, receive instructions in the rudiments of shop and factory work."[54] In other words, the children are kept out of the factory, but the shop and the factory are permitted to enter the school. Doubtless an improvement, but not yet the sort of education any business or professional man would desire for his own children at twelve, fourteen, or sixteen years of age.[55]

"State Socialism" looks at the individual, and especially the workingman, almost wholly from the standpoint of what the community, as _at present organized_, the capitalists being the chief shareholders, is able to make out of him. Each newborn child represents so much cost to the community for his education. If he dies, the community loses so and so much. If he lives, he brings during his life such and such a sum to the community, and it is worth while to spend a considerable amount both to prevent his early death or disablement and to increase his industrial efficiency while he lives. According to this view, Professor Irving Fisher of Yale has calculated that the annual child crop in the United States is worth about seven billion dollars per annum, a sum almost equal to the annual value of our agricultural crops. In both cases great economies are possible. Professor Fisher has estimated that 47 per cent of the children who die in America less than five years old could be saved at an average cost of $20 per child, which means an annual loss to the nation of $576,000,000, according to Professor Fisher's calculation of what would have been the future value of all the children now lost (above their cost of maintenance).

"We have counted it our good fortune," says Professor Fisher, "to dwell in a land where nature has been so prodigal that we have not needed to fear want. We are only beginning to realize that this very prodigality of nature has produced a spirit of prodigality in men.

"It is the purpose of the conservation movement to rebuke and correct this national trait, and the resources of science are now concentrated in this mighty effort in that direction.

"The conservation of human life will, I believe, const.i.tute the grandest movement of the twentieth century.

"Not only do human beings const.i.tute by far the greatest part of our natural resources, but the waste of human life and strength is by far the greatest of all wastes. In the report of President Roosevelt's conservation commission, although his commission was primarily appointed to conserve our natural rather than our vital resources, it was pointed out that _human beings, considered as capitalized working power, are worth three to five times all our other capital_, and that, even on a very moderate estimate, the total waste and unnecessary loss of our national vitality amounts to _one and one half billions of dollars per year_."[56]

When the "State Socialist" policy has taken possession of the world, which may be in the very near future, or, more correctly speaking, when the world's business and politics are so organized as to give this policy a chance for a full and free application, is it not evident that every advanced nation will consider it as being to its business interest to put an end to this vast, unnecessary loss of life? And if half a billion a year is lost through unnecessary deaths of very young children, is it not probable that an equal sum is lost through death later in childhood or early youth, another similar sum through underfeeding in later life, or through lack of sufficient exercise, rest, recreation, and outdoor life, and a far larger amount through lack of industrial training? Is it not certain that unnecessary industrial accidents, sickness due to overwork and early old age due to overstrain, are responsible for another enormous loss? And, finally, is not unemployment costing a billion a year to the "nation, considered as a business firm"? This last-named loss has been calculated, for the United States alone, as 1,300,000 years of labor time annually. If a round million of these years are saved--if we estimate their value in profits at the low figure of $1000 each,--we have another billion (even allowing for 300,000 unemployable).[57]

Is it not clear that nearly every element in the community will soon combine to do all that is humanly possible to put an end to such costly abuses and neglect; and that conscientious and wholesale efforts to preserve the public health and to secure industrial efficiency cannot be a matter of the distant future, when movements in that direction have already been initiated in Great Britain, Australia, Germany, and some other countries? Sir Joseph Ward, Premier of New Zealand, says that the people of that country have already calculated the value of each child--and, on this basis, made it the subject of certain governmental investments. He says:--

"To return to the annuity fund, apart from the a.s.sistance it gives to the wife and children if the father is sick, it also contributes the services of a medical man for a woman at childbirth, and the State pays $30 for that purpose. If all of this is not needed to pay the physician, the rest may be used for carrying on the home.

This has all been done with the view to helping the birth rate and bringing into the world children under the most healthy conditions possible, so that they may have a free chance of attaining man's or woman's estate.

"We a.s.sess the value of an adult in our country as $1500. So, _from a business standpoint and on national grounds_, we regard the expenditure of a sum up to $30 as judicious, when the value of the infant to the country may be fifty times that sum. Thus the small wage earner's wife and children are provided for, and his fear about being able to provide for a large family is decreased."

(Italics mine.)[58]

"I am of the opinion," declares Mr. Churchill, "that the State should increasingly a.s.sume the position of the reserve employer of labor," and that "the State must increasingly and earnestly concern itself with the care of the sick and aged, and, above all, of the children." He looks forward "to the universal establishment of the _minimum standards_ of life and labor, and their progressive elevation as the increasing energies of production may permit."[59]

Mr. Churchill rejects the supposition that the government intends to stop with the extension of the eight-hour law to miners. "I welcome and support this measure, not only for its own sake," he said, "but more because it is, I believe, simply the precursor of the general movement which is in progress, all over the world, and in other industries besides this, towards reconciling the conditions of labor with the well-ascertained laws of science and health."[60]

It might be supposed that this measure would prove costly to employers, but this is only a short-sighted view. In the first place, working for less hours, the miners will produce somewhat more per hour, but an even more important ultimate benefit comes from the fact that the most experienced miners, those who are most profitable, being subject to less overstrain, will have a longer working life.

Another measure already enacted towards establis.h.i.+ng "a national minimum" applies to the wages in ready-made tailoring and some less important industries, to which s.h.i.+rt-waist making is soon to be added.

These are known as the "sweated" trades, "where the feebleness and ignorance of the workers and their isolation from each other render them an easy prey to the tyranny of bad masters and middlemen one step above them upon the lowest rungs of the ladder, and themselves held in the grip of the same relentless forces,"--where "you have a condition not of progress but of progressive degeneration." Mr. Churchill asked Parliament to regard these industries as "sick and diseased," and "to deal with them in exactly the same mood and temper as we should deal with sick people," and accordingly boards were established for the purpose of setting up a minimum wage.[61]

But if employers are forced to pay higher wages, it may be thought that they will lose from the law. This Mr. Churchill effectively denies.

"In most instances," he says, "the best employers in the trade are already paying wages equal or superior to the probable minimum which the Trade Board will establish. The inquiries I have set on foot in the various trades scheduled have brought to me most satisfactory a.s.surances from nearly all the employers to whom my investigations have addressed themselves.... But most of all I have put my faith in the practical effect of a powerful band of employers, perhaps a majority, who, whether from high motives or self-interest, or from a combination of the two--they are not necessarily incompatible ideas--will form a vigilant and instructed police, knowing every turn and twist of the trade, and who will labor constantly to protect themselves from being undercut by the illegal compet.i.tion of unscrupulous rivals."

Mr. Churchill claims that employers who are trying to pursue such trades with modern machinery and modern methods are more seriously hampered by the compet.i.tion of the "sweaters" than they are by that of foreign employers. "I cannot believe," he concludes, "that the process of raising the degenerate and parasitical portion of these trades up to the level of the most efficient branches of the trade, if it is conducted by those conversant with the conditions of the trade and interested in it, will necessarily result in an increase in the price of the ultimate product. It may even sensibly diminish it through better methods."[62] Mr. Churchill is able to point out, as with most of the other reforms, that in one country or another they are already being put into effect, the legislation against "sweating" being already in force in Bavaria and Baden, as well as in Australia, under a somewhat different form.

But the most striking of the British labor reforms has yet to be mentioned. Not only were the present old age pensions established by the common consent of all the political parties, but a law has now been enacted--also with the approval of all parties (and only twenty-one negative votes in Parliament)--to apply the same methods of state insurance of workingmen to sickness, accidents, and even to unemployment. The old age pensions were already more radical than those of Prussia in that the workingmen do not have to contribute under the British law, while the National Insurance Bill as now enacted surpa.s.ses both the former British measure and the German precedent in everything, except that it demands a lesser total sum from the government. In the insurance against accidents, sickness, and unemployment the government, instead of contributing the whole amount, gives from two ninths to one third, one third to one half being a.s.sessed against employers and one sixth to four ninths against employees. At first this reform, it is expected, will cost only about $12,500,000, and it will be several years before the maximum expenditure of $25,000,000 is reached. But the measure is radical in several particulars: it applies to clerks, domestic servants, and many other cla.s.ses usually not reached by measures of the kind,--a total of some 14,000,000 persons; it provides $5,000,000 a year for the maintenance of sanatoria for tuberculosis and creates new health boards to improve sanitation and educate the people in hygiene; and it furnishes physicians and medicines for the insured, thus organizing practically the whole medical force and drug supply as far as the ma.s.ses are concerned.

In fact, the whole scheme may be looked on not so much as a measure to aid the sick and wounded of industry financially, as to set at work an automatic pressure working towards the preservation of the health, strength, and productive capacity of the people, and incidentally to the increase of profits. As Mr. Lloyd George said in an interview printed in the _Daily Mail_: "I want to make the nation more healthy than it is.

The great ma.s.s of illness which afflicts us weighs us down and is easily preventable. It is a better thing to make a man healthy than to pay him so much a week when he is ill."

Mr. Lloyd George points out that the German employers have found that the governmental insurance against accidents has proved a good investment:--

"When Bismarck was strengthening the foundation of the new German Empire, one of the very first tasks he undertook was the organization of a scheme which insured the German workmen and their families against the worst evils arising from these common accidents of life. And a superb scheme it was. It has saved an incalculable amount of human misery to hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of people.

"Wherever I went in Germany, north or south, and whomever I met, whether it was an _employer_ or a workman, a _Conservative_ or a Liberal, a Socialist or a Trade-union Leader--men of all ranks, sections and creeds, with one accord joined in lauding the benefits which have been conferred upon Germany by this beneficent policy.

Several wanted extensions, but there was not one who wanted to go back. The employers admitted that at first they did not quite like the new burdens it cast upon them, _but they now fully realized the advantages which even they derived from the expenditure_, for it had raised the standard of the workman throughout Germany." (My italics.)[63]

It is not only worry and anxiety that were removed, but definite and irregular sums that workers or their employers had formerly set aside for insurance against accident, sickness, and old age, were now calculated and regulated on a business basis more profitable to both parties to the labor contract. It is true that in Germany the employers only pay part of the cost, the rest being borne almost entirely by employees, while in Great Britain--as far as the old age pensions go--the government pays all, and is likely to pay a considerable part, perhaps a third, in the other insurance schemes. But the plan by which the government pays all may prove even less costly to the employing cla.s.s, since landlords and inactive capitalists on the one hand and the working people on the other, pay the larger part of the taxes--so that state insurance in this thoroughgoing form is perhaps destined to be even more popular than the German kind.

The most radical provision of the new bill is that which deals with unemployment. Though applying only to the engineering and building trades, it reaches 2,400,000 people. It proposes to give a weekly allowance to every insured person who loses employment through no fault of his own, though nothing is given in strikes and lockouts. And it is intended to extend this measure to other employments. This is only the first installment.

It is probable that Mr. Churchill's project that the State should undertake to abolish unemployment altogether is the most radical of all the proposed policies, excepting only that to gradually expropriate all the future unearned increment of land.

"An industrial disturbance in the manufacturing districts and the great cities of this country," says Mr. Churchill, "presents itself to the ordinary artisan in exactly the same way as the failure of crops in a large province in India presents itself to the Hindoo cultivator. The means by which he lives are suddenly removed, and ruin in a form more or less swift and terrible stares him instantly in the face. That is a contingency which seems to fall within the most primary and fundamental obligations of any organization of government. I do not know whether in all countries or in all ages that responsibility could be maintained, but I do say that here and now, in this wealthy country and in this _scientific_ age, it does in my opinion exist, is not discharged, and will have to be discharged."[64]

Mr. Churchill proposes not only to guard against periods of unemployment which extend to all industries in the case of industrial crises, but also to provide more steady employment for those who are unoccupied during the slack seasons of the year or while pa.s.sing from one employer to another. Above all he plans that the youth of the nation shall not waste their strength entirely in unremunerative employment or in idleness, but that every boy or girl under eighteen years of age should be learning a trade as well as making a living. Few will deny that the program of Mr. Churchill and his a.s.sociates in this direction marks a great step towards that "more complete or elaborate social organization"

which he advocates.

One of the most significant of all the measures by which Mr. Churchill plans to lend the aid of the State to the raising of the level of the working cla.s.ses is his "Development" Act. The object of this bill, in the language of Mr. Churchill, is "to provide a fund for the economic development of our country, for the encouragement of agriculture, for afforestation, for the colonization of England (the settlement of agricultural land), and for the making of roads, harbors, and other public works." Stated in these terms, the Development Act is a measure of "State Socialism" for the general industrial advance of the country, but the main argument in its behalf lies in that clause of the bill which provides, to quote from Mr. Churchill again: "that the prosecution of these works shall be regulated, as far as possible, by the conditions of the labor market, so that in a very bad year of unemployment they can be expanded, so as to increase the demand for labor at times of exceptional slackness, and thus correct and counterbalance the cruel fluctuations of the labor market."[65]

We have seen that Mr. Churchill has justified these measures, not as increasing the relative share of the working cla.s.ses, but as adding to the total product. They are to add to the industrial efficiency of the nation as a whole, and so incidentally to bring a greater income to all,--but in much the same proportions as wealth now distributes itself.

In this country Mr. Roosevelt has advocated a typical "State Socialist"

program of labor reforms including:--

"A workday of not more than eight hours."

"The abolition of the sweat-shop system."

"Sanitary inspection of factory, workshop, mine, and home."

"Liability of employers for injury to body and loss of life" and "an automatically fixed compensation."

"The pa.s.sage and enforcement of rigid anti-child-labor laws which will cover every portion of this country."

"Laws limiting woman's labor."

All these measures except the first were adopted long ago, in considerable part at least, by the reactionary government of Prussia and are being introduced generally in monarchical and aristocratic Europe, and I have shown that the eight-hour day has been inst.i.tuted for miners in Great Britain and that Mr. Winston Churchill proposed to extend it.

Mr. Roosevelt himself concedes that "we are far behind the older and poorer countries" in such matters. But an examination of the action of State legislatures during the year just past will show that we are making rapid progress in the same direction.

"Social" or "industrial" efficiency, promoted by the government, is already the central idea in American labor reform. Government insurance against old age, accident, sickness, and unemployment is regarded, not as the "workingmen's compensation" for injuries done them by society, but as an automatic means of forcing backward employers to economize the community's limited supply of labor power--not to wear it out too soon, not to overstrain it, not to damage it irreparably or lay it up unnecessarily for repairs, and not to leave it idle. Mr. Louis Brandeis points out that mutual fire insurance has appealed to certain manufacturers because in twenty years it has resulted in measures that have prevented more than two thirds of the expected losses by fire.

Similarly, he says, "if society and industry and the individual were made to pay from day to day the actual cost of sickness, accident, invalidity, premature death, or premature old age consequent upon excessive hours of labor, of unhygienic conditions of work, of unnecessary risk, and of irregularity in employment, those evils would be rapidly reduced."[66]

This, as Mr. Brandeis says, is undoubtedly on the "road to social efficiency" and its practical application will convince employers better than "mere statements of cost, however clear and forceful." It will remove a vast sea of human misery, and the process will immensely enrich society. But like the other State Capitalist reforms (until they are supplemented by some more radical policy) it will at the same time automatically bring about an increase of existing inequalities of income and an intensification of social injustice.

Mr. William Hard in a study of workingmen's compensation for _Everybody's Magazine_ has reached a similar conclusion to that of Mr.