THE BOTTOMLESS PURSE.
(IF all the features of the electoral contest the most con- J spicuous is the eagerness of almost every candidate to promise unlimited largess to the electors and to their friends out of the bottomless purse of the State. There is scarcely a candidate, to whatever Party he professes to belong, who is not promising something, and in every case it is the State that is to be called upon to redeem the promises which the candidate makes with the hope of securing votes for himself. From the moral point of view the picture is ugly ; from the economic point of view it presents the danger of financial disaster. The moral aspect of the question is immediately the more important, be- cause sooner or later it covers the other, for no country can secure really good economics except upon a basis of good morals. Partially realizing the importance of moral issues, a good many candidates combine their promises of unlimited largess with a professedly moral appeal to the electors not to forget the men who have fought for the nation. If that appeal were the prelude to a request that those to whom it is made should themselves respond by a personal sacrifice on behalf of the men who have fought for the nation, then it would certainly be a true moral note. Unfortunately this is not the case. Many of the candidates who are most eloquent in declaring that at all costs the wounded and disabled men must be generously treated repudiate the idea that any of the necessary funds should be provided by private subscription. The whole must be a charge upon the State. That again would be legitimate if the eloquent candidate at the same time insisted that in order to provide the money for the State to spend every person whom he was addressing must be willing to pay an increased tax out of his own pocket. But the candidate who takes this attitude is a rare bird indeed. Instead of telling the elector that it is his or her duty to make a personal sacrifice for the men who have suffered so much for their country, the average candidate allows his audience to run away with the idea that all the necessary funds can be provided out of the bottomless purse of the State without any expense to the persons whose votes he is soliciting. Indeed some candidates, in order that there may be no mistake on this point, go out of their way to insist that after the war there must be no taxes on small incomes, no taxes on articles of popular consumption, but that the whole burden of the revenue must be borne by the capitalist class.
Thus all idea of the moral obligation upon every citizen to make a personal sacrifice in return for the splendid pat- riotism of the men who have fought for the nation disappears. Instead we have a crude appeal to selfishness disguised under the plausible cloak of patriotic generosity. One cannot help sr..-pecting that if there had not been in the country thousands of wounded and disabled men with an honourable claim on the nation's financial help, some other claim, less honourable, would have been put forward by candidates eager to buy.votes by scattering to the multitude the money of the State. Indeed, simultaneously with the demand for generous treatment of the wounded and disabled, many candidates are urging in the same breath an increase of civil old-age pensions and a lowering of the age at which such pensions should begin ; they are also advocating unlimited out-of-work pay to munitioners—who during the past years have been earning higher wages than ever before in their lives—and large increases of wages to the employees in every kind of State undertaking.
Frankly, from the point of view of the nation this policy is both more immoral and more dangerous than the old policy of straightforward bribery at the candidate's private expense. In the old days there was a more or less open bargain between elector and candidate. The candidate said : " For reasons of my own I wish to obtain a seat in Parliament, and I will give half-a-crown to every true-born elector who votes for me." To-day the candidate, instead of spending his own money, promises to provide out of the funds of the State financial benefits for those who vote for him or for their friends. The old policy could not be carried beyond a certain point because if it were the candidate would be ruined. It is reported that on one occasion the cost of an election in Yorkshire went up to 1100,000 ; but that was an outside figure. Few men cared to pay more than the tenth part of that sum for a seat in Parliament. Thus the amount available for bribery was limited, and with the growth in the size of constituencies the evil tended to cure itself. Under the present system there is no similar limit to the amount available, and very few electors, perhaps indeed very few candidates, see that there must be an ultimate limit.
The theory of the bottomless purse is in fact deeply in- grained in human nature wherever. large organizations are involved. The average man can see clearly enough the bottom of his own purse, or the bottom of the purse of any small private firm, or of a rural parish. But directly the organization grows too large for the average man's financial grasp he cannot rid his mind of the idea that the resources of the organization are unlimited, and that therefore there is no crime in making demands upon them. This consideration is constantly operating in the common attitude of the ordinary citizen to a railway company. People who would not dream of swindling one another in their private relationships think it no crime to swindle a railway company by travelling without a ticket, if they believe they can escape detection. The underlying concep- tion in their minds is that the railway company must neces- sarily be so rich that the little bit which is lost on one ticket does not count. This attitude is intensified in dealing with the State. We find it even in the minds of responsible municipal officials, who will be quite eager to save the rates of the town with which they are concerned, but quite reckless in imposing additional burdens upon the National Exchequer.
Where is the evil to end ? If it is not checked, it will sooner or later provide its own ending by the financial ruin of the community. The wealth of the nation finally depends upon work, mental or manual, aided by accumulated capital. The whole present policy of Parliamentary candidates, without distinction of Party, is to encourage financial demands which will simultaneously check the accumulation of capital and remove incentives to work. It may be a good thing that old people should obtain a pecuniary allowance when they have reached the age of sixty-five instead of seventy, but certainly they will be less inclined to go on working if such an allowance is paid to them. Again, it may be a good thing to give liberal out-of-work allowances to people who are temporarily thrown out of employment by the shifting of industries, but it is certain that if such allowances are paid the majority of the people concerned will be less eager to get back to work than they are at present. It is also certain that, in proportion as State control of industry is extended so that the profits of the business instead of being closely scrutinized by an individual employer are merged into the general revenues of the State, every person concerned in that business will be less eager to turn out efficient work and to prevent waste than under the present system. If in addition we establish a system of taxa- tion which bears exclusively upon those who take the trouble to accumulate wealth, to the relief of those who spend every penny as they earn it, it is certain that less capital will be accumulated. Industry will thus lose the advantage it now obtains by being able to renew and develop its mechanical resources, with the final result that the total income of the nation will rapidly decline and the bottom of the bottomless purse will become visible. Then we shall have to build up all over again, after having learned a few obvious truths at the cost of much suffering. If our politicians looked a little further ahead and showed a little more eagerness to recon- struct their own minds before undertaking to reconstruct the world, they might help to save the nation from such a financial disaster by teaching the electors that it is the duty of the citizen to consider, not what the State is to do for him, but what he can do and ought to do for the State. This is the only ethical basis upon which State Socialism is possible ; but the State Socialists universally teach the reverse doctrine.
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