MUNICIPAL UTOPIAS.
CRITICS say that all the literature of the hour shows a pessimistic tinge, and the observers of society declare that the cultivated boys of to-day are most of them pessimists ; but certainly there is plenty of optimism in politics. The " shilling dreadfuls" have been superseded by pamphlets about Socialist Utopias, to be realised usually in a few hundred years ; we rarely open a magazine without finding a paper in it about some splendid change immediately at hand ; and Liberal orators are indulging everywhere in magnificent pictures of the happiness of mankind on the day after to-morrow. Something of this tendency is due, of course, to a desire to make promises without being too definite as to their nature, and something to a sense of the policy of appearing hopeful ; but the majority of the sanguine are honest enough, and if the song were not agreeable, they would not be so loud in their chant, " There's a good time coming." Optimism in social politics is, in truth, in the air ; and we note that in England it attaches itself especially to the growth of municipal institutions. We have no objection to raise to the new spirit in itself, for, after all, cheeriness is a source of strength ; but the orators, at all events, should remember that all electors are not young, and that to the experienced, promises, to be grateful, must be a little particular. Mr. H. H. Fowler, for example, speaking on Tuesday at the Eighty Club, after a long disquisition on the historic re-unions of the Liberal Party after tem- porary splits, declared that the destructive era was over, and the epoch of construction had arrived. The Liberal Party, when it resumed power, would deal with all sorts of questions, and seek the " true glory of the nation," which is the physical and moral well-being of the people, and has for its barometer the " condition of our cottage homes." We do not deny the general proposition in the least, though we dislike its rhetorical form ; but we cannot find in all the two columns of Mr. Fowler's speech in the Daily News that he had any plan for increasing well-being, unless it were, perhaps, the development of the London 'County Council. Sir Charles Dilke, in his remarkable address of Tuesday at Glasgow, came a little closer to reality, for he had a definite and singular prediction to make. Besides prophesying an Eight-Hours Bill, a general decay of war owing to the universal armament of the nations, and some other less important changes, he pro- phesied a gradual reduction in the inequalities of wealth throughout the world. He entered into this at much length, and gave an impression of sincerely believing his own idea, which is this. He thinks that the rich are about to grow poorer, and the poor richer. The rent of land will decline, or rather, is declining; the interest on capital will be gradually lessened, so lessened as greatly to diminish the practice of saving ; the pay for brain-work will decrease, the supply of educated men being so large ; and all taxation will press heavier on the rich, even the municipal rates being arranged on the progressive principle, so that the occupier of a £100 house shall pay not five times as much as the occupier of a £20 house, but ten times as much. At the same time, there will be more demand for work- men, owing in part to the immense undertakings the Municipalities will be able to begin with their cheaply raised loans ; and, with shorter hours, full employment, and higher wages, the wage-earners will approximate towards the middle-class position. No one will suffer—except, indeed, that unlucky brain-worker, who is to be eaten up by com- petition, as clerks are now—and there is to be a reign of universal brotherhood, one great instrument in producing which will be strong Municipalities, on whose Councils Sir Charles would apparently confer high legislative power. Indeed, he would let them do almost what they liked, pro- vided they paid off their debts at short intervals, and did not " rob " future generations for the benefit of this one. This is, we suppose, to be considered a practical speech, and deserves to be studied with a certain attention, its speaker having accumulated knowledge in many lands. And first as to municipal powers, on which Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. Fowler are agreed, and on which they evidently rely as the instruments of future social reform. Why do they think strong Municipalities will effect so much good ? We agree with them that municipal powers will probably be extended, and are entirely in favour of vigorous and free municipal life ; but why should cities go right on the very point on which so many States are assumed to have gone wrong,—why, that is, should they get rid, when States have not got rid, of the social residuum ? They cannot have more brain-power than States ; they cannot create unpro- ductive work for long periods, any more than States ; they cannot make men good or sober or industrious, any more than States. Why, then, are they expected to succeed in a task in which the nationalities have failed ? No answer is given by the speakers, and the teaching of experience is as yet all the other way. The sovereign cities have universally failed, and Europe, which was formerly full of them, does not retain a solitary one. From Avignon to Dantsic they have disappeared, swallowed in the larger communities which, had they been models of social administration and ideals for the workers of the world, would never have ventured to absorb them. The nearest approach to such an organisation left in Europe is Geneva, and the merest traveller has only to ask in Geneva whether the social question is settled. Among the more limited cities of the Continent, the stronger municipal institu- tions are, the less is there any approach to social equality, which, also, no one not utterly ignorant of facts would affirm to have been even approached in Birmingham, the best example of self-government among our own towns. In America, where men are so free and philanthropy is so diffused, and the Municipalities are so nearly Legislatures, the situation of the city-dwelling residuum is often appalling, and the condition of the classes, as regards not only wealth and luxury, but even health and food, displays, we venture to say, wider disparities than exist in any rural county in England, and ten times the disparity observable in Prussian provinces, where often the classes, though separated by a wall of etiquettes, shade off as regards their mode of living till differences are imperceptible. It may be, of course, that all this is to be changed, and that some conviction operative as a creed will descend upon all classes, and extinguish poverty ; but there is no sign of it yet, not the glimmer of a symptom that universal brotherhood will reign in Bristol before it reigns on the beautiful uplands and smiling valleys of the surrounding counties. Why should it ? What on earth is there in spaces covered with houses to extinguish the tendencies of the human heart, or to make men value less the comfort and sense of security and freedom which are the only real blessings conferred by money ? Sir Charles Dilke talks, indeed, of an economic law at work which will produce equality, and, as often happens, we agree with him as to his data. We too think that wages will rise, being driven up by resolute pressure from below, operating in aid of a new sense of pecuniary justice above. We too believe that there may for a time be a large, indeed a reckless, expenditure of municipal money. We too hold very strongly the idea that, owing to the enormous accumulations of capital and the new facilities for moving it, the rate of interest is sinking, so that unless a period of war intervenes, the middle class may within twenty years be unable, as Mr. -Goschen once prophesied, to invest money at 2 per cent. And, finally, we also think it quite possible that universal education may diminish the pay of the majority of ordinary brain-workers, until, as in America, the professional classes will be comparatively poor, or occupy a pecuniary position not unlike that of the English clergy at the present moment. But how can Municipalities pro- duce these results, or in what way will they tend towards equality of condition ? The poverty of the educated middle class will not make the poor more comfortable, but less comfortable ; and as to the rich, the accumu- lations of capital which can alone decrease interest, must of necessity increase the scale of fortunes ; and what does it matter to the regime of equality whether a man has £100,000 at 4 per cent., or £200,000 at 2 per cent. ? He is still a man far richer than the artisan on 50s. a week. We do not understand Sir Charles Dilke to say that the artisan will take the rich man's money away ; he knows economics too well to believe that anything of the kind can be done without the resulting poverty being felt first of all by the artisan. You can empty a reservoir if you like, but you cannot empty it and fill irrigating pipes from it at one and the same time. Sir Charles Dilke looks forward with obvious exultation to immense municipal borrowings ; but loans imply interest, even if it is low, and interest implies rates ; and if the well-to-do are scientifically bled, whence are the rates to come ? From the wage-earners perhaps, who were, as a condition of the municipal Utopia, to have been so prosperous. It is of no use asking the British elector, but we may ask Sir Charles Dilke if he remembers the lot of the curiales, the respectable citizens who, in the Roman Empire, were made responsible for imperial and municipal taxes, and what followed their extinction ? It was not exactly social happiness. The worst of all these dreams of Utopia, of an equality of social condition as impossible as equality of stature, is that those who put them forward do in their minds always, and often in their speeches, allow for long periods of time, and that their audiences do not. The poor voters do not want to know that their grandchildren will be happier and more equal, and that the carpenter of A.D. 2000 will be better paid than the lawyer and the physician. They want that blessed condition of affairs to arrive now, and termi- nate their sufferings if they suffer, or their discontent if they do not. They are impatient, and being everywhere possessed of power, they may in their impatience try social experiments which can result only in social ruin. The Municipality of Paris, which is old, experienced, and full of clever men, would, it is well known, try them if it were not restrained by the State ; would, that is, expropriate all houses, and draw into its own hands all employment of labour. The end of that would be the extinction of individualism, and with it one of two results. Either each industrious man would have to provide for two lazy men, or the lazy men would be forced to work, as they were in Peru, by a system of State slavery. There is a similar tendency towards collectivism in all the great cities of Europe, and if it is fostered by an outburst of vague optimism about the magical result of devolving power on Municipalities, we shall undoubtedly see crude experiments worked out roughly by incompetent men. That may not ruin society, for the moment theory becomes action, huge forces of resistance will develop themselves ; but it will unquestionably intensify the misery it is intended to cure. It seems to us that the duty of honest men at this moment is to endeavour to repress vague hope, to make the great resisting laws more clear—as, for example, that old law that you cannot get more hay out of a field than there is grass in it— and to propose, instead of new tools, work which, if good tools existed, could actually be done with them. We are not for a moment denying that such work is to be found, but only that it is not to be done by raising ex- pectations of a municipal millennium. The cities will blunder as the States have done, and Mayors, Provosts, or Chairmen will be as ambitious, as misguided, and as corrupt as ever the Kings have been. A municipal life is an excellent thing and a hopeful thing as compared with municipal deadness, but to believe that it will be pure and wise and benevolent just because it is small, is to feed oneself with illusions. Even if it is, the gain will not be complete, for when all has been said, the necessary man is not the citizen but the grower of corn.
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