THE UNKNOWN WITNESS
By PROFESSOR HERMANN LEVY
" THE multitude," so wrote C. F. G. Masterman in his unforgotten study of the Condition of England, " is the People of England ; that 8o per cent. (say) of the present inhabitants of these Islands who never express their own grievances, who rarely become articulate, who can only be observed from outside and very far away. It is the people which, all unnoticed and without clamour or protest, has passed through the largest secular change of a thousand years." More than 25 years have elapsed since this was written, but the sentence has remained true. It is certainly a great evil that we know so little about the class we ought to know most of; but there is a still greater evil : that we have so many false notions of their so-called opinions. There is hardly one debate on social questions, either inside or outside the Mother of Parliaments where speakers do not claim to know " how the people think about it." But in fact, to judge only from what different politicians claim to know about " the people," the views of the people must appear to be very different and indeed very contradictory. Parliamentary Committees and the evidence they take still play an important part in political activities and indeed it is from them that a wide knowledge of many social problems might be derived. But everyone whose studies lead to a close scrutiny of such committees and their work, must be struck by the fact that the " people " immediately concerned are never heard.
The author of these lines had an opportunity of scrutinising the many voluminous Minutes of Evidence published by several committees on so important a topic as Industrial Assurance, which concerns not fewer than about 82 million policies held by working-class people. Not one of these policyholders was heard. The only person who really could tell something about them and their heavy grievances was —apart from members of the very useful National Council for Social Service—a Mr. Mashford of Hull, whose laudable business for years it has been to recover insurance claims for the poor. But the absence of these policyholders was even claimed by those interested in the business as a proof that everything should be considered in order—otherwise policyholders would have made use of their right to appear before the Committee. As if a workman in Leeds or Sheffield would find it possible to travel to and stay in London just to give evidence about an injustice concerning his penny policy for burial money ! The case is characteristic. As soon as doubts are raised concerning certain methods of business which induce people to spend their money in what might be a very uneconomic way,_we hear : " the people want it." The people " want " whatever drug is offered to them with almost cynical exaggeration of its merits, they " want " the houses which they are induced to buy by seductive advertisement and which may run them into debt and ruin, they " want " a most expensive funeral—how can funeral directors be blamed for selling them what they want ? If a hire-purchase establishment sells to some lower middle- class people a sitting-room suite which they would consider a sheer luxury if they were not allowed to pay 2S. 6d. a week or so, the persuasive salesman, when asked whether such a system will not lead to extravagant expenditure by such class of people, may retort : " Well, I would not buy it fbr myself ; but the people want it."
We know little of the people. There have been many rural enquiries in England. Big landowners, large farmers, representatives of associations connected with the land, agents and surveyors have been called as witnesses, but the small farmer and the labourer and cottager were not to be found among them. True, inasmuch as the members of the lower class are more numerous than those of the higher ones, one may argue that single witnesses become of less value. But then other methods should be found to get hold of the truth. Yet our modern statistics appear to remove such possibilities still further. We have become accustomed to consider that only what can be proved by big numbers is of economic or social value. I do not wish to underrate the importance of Indices. But I do not believe that any advantage can be derived from them in studying the questions with which we are concerned. Does the so-called Index of the Cost of Living really give a picture of social " life "?
Nobody will deny that such studies as Sir John Boyd Orr's Report on Food, Health and Income make an excellent ground-work for studying some basic facts con- cerning the food of the nation. But they do not give and cannot disclose the dynamic forces behind such statistics, even if these were more perfect than they are at present; they do not disclose the sociology of food expenditure and they cannot lead to constructive proposals arising out of the actual habits, wants and grievances of the people. And the same criticism applies to population statistics and to figures relating to the falling birth-rate. Useful and appreciable as certainly all such calculations are, they must ignore the psychological aspect of the problems which can only be ascertained when the motives, the attitude, the wishes, tastes and habits of the people concerned are made known. That is why we need to know more about the unknown witness, about the people who have never been interrogated by Coinmittees and who yet have formed the basis of every social enquiry.
Can it be done ? Curiously enough the task has been hitherto left to individuals who have felt a desire to acquaint themselves, and later on their readers, with some personal experiences. They have to some extent disclosed very remark- able facts, although many statistical professionals may doubt their general validity. Thus, for instance, when Lady Bell made statements about 200 homes and the reading of their inmates; she found that 17 women could not read, eight men could not read, 28 houses where no one cared to read, eight men actually disliked reading, three women actually disliked reading, seven women who said they had no time to read, 5o houses where they only read novels, 58 houses where they read newspapers only, 37 houses where they were " fond of reading ".or " great readers," 25 houses where they read books that were absolutely worth reading. How useful would it be, apart from general figures about the distribution of food and its consumption within different classes of income, to know such plain things as : are you satisfied with your diet, and if not, why not ? Would you like better or other food or cooking ? Would you like to see the sweet- shops reduced for the benefit of your children ? If your income were higher, would you spend more on food and on what kind of food ? And so on. Much of this kind of knowledge has been derived in Germany by the way of Enquites, investigations with forms to be filled out by the enquirers in the homes or workshops of the population, and much help has been given to this work by the Verein fur Socialpolitik, an association mainly consisting of professors of economics and other economists. If a problem of social importance was put on the list of coming enquiries, University professors set their students to work on such investigations— especially those of their students whose personal domicile might offer particular opportunities for studying things at first hand—while the students welcomed such tasks given to them as a preliminary opportunity for a more elaborate study of their own. In England such facilities do not exist. Moreover they would not even be greatly appreciated by the economists who see their ideal in mere marginal utility revelations. And, as once Professor Clapham put it to me, very briskly, there are many of them who could not describe what they analyse. The unknown witness has yet to be mobilised.
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