TRW DREAD OF A PROFIT.—II. T AKE a specific story to
illustrate to what the dread of a profit may lead. When the Australian Governments took over the railways, there was a question of improving the service of trains in the immediate vicinity of one of the great cities. There was a local demand to have more trains stopped at the station and better running and so forth in a suburban, or what might easily have become a suburban, area. The Socialists of the day opposed the improvement of the train service on the ground that it would enormously enhance the value of the land through which the trains ran. Why, they said, should the train service_ be improved, and so give an enormous unearned profit to the landowners I Why should they be made rich by the action of the State ? The view prevailed for a time and the train service was not improved, though the actual extra cost to the Railway Department would have been little or nothing. Now look at the result. This dread of a profit in the abstract, this refusal to believe that A's gain would be B's gain also, actually deprived an enormous number of people of health and happiness and of all the subsidiary benefits which always follow the development of a new suburb. It hit the small builder, the small workman, and the small shopkeeper, and generally checked trade and industry. For fear that one or two people should make a so-called unearned profit, a great number of people were deprived of a free field for their abilities At the bottom of this dread of a profit, if we analyse it closely, is- a belief like that which reigns among nations in regard to trade exchanges. Just as people persist in imagining that an exchange is a " deal " in which one man is bound to be bested and another benefited, so people cling to the idea that A's profit must be B's loss. They cannot conceive, though it is an almost absolute truth, that when A makes an industrial profit he is in the end making it for others as well as himself, and that, be his nature as grasping and as wicked as you will, he cannot prevent the process by which wealth is always spreading downwards and finding its own level. Wealth, in truth, is like water. It is a very difficult job to hold it up, for that " wild and wandering thing," as the old lawyers called water, is always in movement and seeking the ocean from which it came.
Just as exchanges when we understand their nature are-seen to be a mutual benefit and not a mitigated swindle, or, as Bastiat put it with exquisite clearness, not a conflict with profit for one and loss for the other but " a union of forces," so profit-making in a fair field and where there Is no privilege or monopoly is a form of co-operation. Indeed, the privilege Profiteer " of the comic paper might with truth be called " The Co-operator malgre lui."
This we admit will be a hard saying for those who take their economic and philosophic ideas from the popular Press. Yet it can very easily be shown to be true by recalling the history of the cheap journals. In old days the cheapest daily newspapers cost a penny. At that time of cheap living and low wages it seemed, however, and indeed was, more than a working man could pay for his daily instruc- tion. Then there came Mr. Alfred Harmsworth and did what we must all acknowledge was a great public service. He saw that by very careful organization, and by basing his action on the principle of very small profits over an enormous number of units and very quick returns obtained through skilful and efficient planning, he could sell.a readable and efficient paper, and sell it at a Drat, for a halfpenny. He accordingly produced the Deaf Mail, and gave men the opportunity to read the latest news every day for half what they had usually been paying before. Now granted that newspapers are, as we believe they are, of enormous benefit to mankind, and in fact a necessity for civilization, surely this was a great benefit. But Mr. Harmsworth while conferring an enormous benefit on a million men made a great fortune for himself. He had the boldness to see that by taking the very tiniest of profits for himself on each copy of his paper, and then multiplying that tiny profit first by a million and then by three hundred and thirteen, he could make a commercial success of a halfpenny paper without even counting the advertisements. That was satisfactory to him ; but would not the million working men have been fools to say "We care nothing about that. It takes away all our satis- faction, all our interest, and robs us of all our enjoyment in the halfpenny paper to know that a man who is no better than we are, and who does not even work with his hands, is making £50,000 a year, or whatever is the exact amount, by the exploitation of his idea. Why should he have that huge profit I Down with him and it I If you tell us that we shall be deprived of our paper, we say, Nonsense 1' We can of course by co-operation produce just as good a paper as he can, and therefore he is the fifth wheel to the coach, a, parasite, an industrial blood- sucker, and there is and ought to be no place for him. He may be a good employer, and always ready to give in to Trade Union demands, but what does that matter I He is a 'Profiteer,' and there's an end of it I " The answer to that is of course that till the so-called " Profiteer " came along and organized the industry there was no competent halfpenny London morning daily paper. The true way and the sensible way of looking at the matter is very different. What the workers ought to have said, and in effect did say silently and in their hearts, was something of this kind : " It is quite worth our while in order to get a readable halfpenny paper to make a tiny payment each day to this energetic and daring man. It is quite true that by doing so we may see him roll up a great fortune for himself, but what does that matter to us if he is giving us something which we could not have got without him I We should be fools to go without our halfpenny paper simply because we couldn't bear the idea of his making a profit out of it. After all, it was because there was a chance of making this great profit that at last we got somebody to do the trick. Without the temp- tation of a great profit we might have waited till Doomsday for an enterprising halfpenny daily. There was a splendid great apple hanging at the top of the bough, but no one of us could get it down. He sat up at nights thinking out a plan, and then risked his neck in getting it down—but of course it was on the under- standing that if it did come down he was to have a big slice out of it and the rest was to be divided np into small lots. However, better a piece of apple got at this price than none at all l " Take another example. The Railway magnate such as we have had in America by scores, who by his organization and combination of lines makes a rail system which does a vast service not only to the travelling public but also to the traders by popularizing transport, adds to the amenities of life in a million homes. He makes a huge profit, no doubt. But imagine all the men who used the lines for themselves and for their goods, and all the people who consumed the goods and travelled by those lines, got together in some vast assembly. Next, suppose it had been put to them : "In order to secure the benefits of this line are you willing each of you to contribute one-tenth of a cent per annum to the personal profit of Mr. James B. Valley, or would you prefer to go without these improved railway facilities rather than run the risk of his making a fortune in which you would take no direct share 3 Can we doubt what their answer would have been I
(To be concluded.)
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