SOCIAL PROBLEMS.*
Ix the first part of this book there is much with which it is possible to agree. Mr. George is the master of a clear and vigor- ous style, and although he looks almost exclusively at the darker side of things, although his denunciations of modern society are unduly severe, his facts often unfairly stated, and his deduc- tions generally absurd, many of his observations are not without warrant ; and it is perhaps well that we should be reminded, even in overstrained language, that our social system is not perfect, and that some momentous social problems are pressing for solution. The style of the following passages is perhaps too rhetorical for precise statement, but they are both suggestive and well put :— " There is in all the past nothing to compare with the rapid changes now going on in the civilised world. It seems as though, in the European race and in the nineteenth century, man was just beginning to live, just grasping his tools and becoming con- scious of his powers. The snail's pace of crawling ages has sud- denly become the headlong rush of the locomotive, speeding faster and faster. This rapid progress is primarily in industrial methods and material powers. But industrial changes imply social changes, and necessitate political changes. Progressive societies out- grow institutions as children outgrow clothes. Social progress always requires greater intelligence in the management of public affairs ; but this the more as progress is rapid and change quicker. And that the rapid changes now going on are bringing up problems that demand most earnest attention, may be seen on every hand. Symptoms of danger, premonitions of violence, are appearing all over the civilised world. Creeds are dying, beliefs are changing ; the old forces of Conservatism are melting away. Political institutions are failing as clearly in democratic America as in monarchical Europe. There is growing unrest and bitterness among the masses, whatever may be the form of government, a blind groping for escape from conditions becoming intolerable."
The growing unrest is indisputable, but it is not true, as Mr. George asserts, that the condition of the masses is worsening,— that the rich are becoming richer, and the poor poorer. The truth, as touching the poor at least, is the other way. It can be proved beyond dispute that the condition of the people of this country, as of Europe generally, much as it leaves to be desired, has vastly bettered daring the last half-a-century, and that it improves from decade to decade. The discontent which he describes is due in great measure to the improvement which he denies, and is, so far, a good sign. There was a time, and that not long ago, when employers in the cotton and other trades, without a thought that they were inhuman, or eliciting a word of complaint from their victims, worked little children as well as grown people fourteen hours a day, and housed them in cottages worse than pigsties. More leisure, greater liberty, and better education are giving birth to new ideas and higher aspirations, to yearnings for social reform, and to that unrest in which some see the dawn of a new era, others the bode of a disastrous future. On the Continent, it is precisely among the superior workmen of the towns that Communism most prevails. In the country districts of France, there are (with few ex- ceptions) only two classes,—peasants and labourers. The peasants, being cultivating owners, are Conservative by instinct ; while the labourers are as yet too stolid and unimaginative, too little apprehensive of the future, to be readily receptive of Communistic ideas. For fear of the future makes even more for Socialism than glaring inequalities of fortune. The most able and eloquent advocate of the social revolution we ever heard speak on a platform was a journey- man horologist, elegantly dressed, with hands as white as those of a woman, and earning, if a regulator, three or four pounds a week. Three pounds a week, though not a princely income, is a good wage ; and if it could have been assured to him, this man would doubtless have been quite content. But the conscious- ness that his earnings depended on his health, the state of trade or the caprice of an employer, uncertainty as to the future, and fear of poverty, preyed on his mind, and made him a firebrand. There is no more wearing anxiety than the anxiety arising from the fear of falling into want, a fear which is far more keenly felt among the artisans of the Continent than among the workmen of England. But the difficulty of finding a remedy which shall not be worse than the disease is immense. A scheme was lately brought before the Great Council of Geneva for compulsorily assuring to every member of the community an easy old age by granting him an annuity of some fifty pounds, from the beginning of his sixtieth year. The funds were to be provided by a tax on wages, collected by employers of labour ; but when the figures were submitted to an actuary, he found that, although the scheme was theoretically • Social ProUcms. By Henry George. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, and Co.
sound, the payment of the annuities could not begin for forty years. As people did not feel disposed to tax themselves for the benefit of an unborn generation, and it was considered im- p )ssible to increase the proposed tax on wages, the scheme fell to the ground.
But these difficulties Mr. George ignores ; neither does he take heed of the fact that one-half, and probably more than one-half, of the poverty and misery which he ascribes to pernicious institutions is due to improvidence, to thriftlessness, and to drunkenness. He propounds his great remedy for social ills with as much confidence as if he were an infallible Pope deliver- ing himself of a new dogma. That remedy is, of course, the abolition of private property in land, and its appropriation by the State without compensation to the owners. In this Mr. George goes further than any school of Continental Socialists, Anarchists alone excepted ; and they, shrewder or more thorough than he, do not propose to suppress private property by a decree of the State, but by suppressing the State itself. They know that Governments cannot contra- vene the condition of their existence by breaking one of the most
fundamental of the laws which they have been created to uphold, —the protection of property. If property be robbery, then have Governments no raison d'etre ; and if Mr. George wants to be
consistent, he should adopt the doctrines of M. Ells& Reclus• Nor are these the only points of difference between Mr. George and his Continental sympathisers. He writes like a devout man, believes in Christianity, and avers that his theories are in accordance with the will of God ; his French and German friends repudiate religion utterly, stigmatise Christianity as an effete superstition, and denounce the Bible as a book of lies. There can be no doubt, we think, that Mr. George's reverence for things divine and his declared acceptance of the morality of the New Testament have greatly increased his influence as well in this country as in his own. People who would no more open a book of Bakounine's than one of Bradlaugh's read George with as little hesitation as they read the sermons of a favourite preacher. And he preaches forcibly, as witness the following passage :—
" The poor ye have always with you.' If ever a scripture has been wrested to the Devil's service, this is that scripture. How often have
these words been distorted from their obvious meaning to soothe con- science into acquiescence in human misery and degradation ; to bolster that blasphemy, the very negation and denial of Christ's teachings, that the All Wise and Most Merciful, the Infinite Father, has decreed that so many of His creatures must be poor in order that others of His creatures, to whom He wills the good things of life, should enjoy the pleasure and virtue of doling out alms ! The poor ye have always with you,' said Christ ; but all his teachings supply the
until the coming of the kingdom.' In that kingdom of God on earth, that kingdom of justice and love for which He taught His fol- lowers to strive and pray, there will be no poor. But though the faith and the hope, and the striving, for this kingdom are of the very essence of Christ's teaching, the staunchest disbelievers and revilers of its possibility are found among those who call themselves Christians. Queer ideas of the Divinity have some of these Christians, who hold themselves orthodox and contribute to the conversion of the heathen. A very rich, orthodox Christian said to a newspaper reporter a while ago, on the completion of a large work, out of which he is said to have made millions : We have been.peculiarly favoured by Divine Providence; iron never was so cheap before, and labour has been a drug in the market.' " It would be equally useless and unjust to brand Mr. George as an imposter and his followers as dupes. The man is evidently sincere ; the enormous sale of his books, both in this country and America, proves that his theories are finding wide accept- ance with the masses. The most optimist of his critics cannot deny that many of the evils he denounces are only too real, that there exist laws that favour the rich at the expense of the poor— that, for instance, men who call themselves God-fearing, and enjoy all the respect which wealth and position in this country confer, connive.at a system of gambling in human lives ; and when a
Minister of the Crown introduces a measure for the protection of the victims, he is stigmatised by the noble leader of a great party as attacking "a great interest," and fomenting " monstrous and fantastic charges." The revelations made by Mr. Chamber- lain in his speech on the Merchant Shipping Bill, and the opposition it has encountered in the House of Commons, will be quoted and discussed in every Socialist paper on the Con- tinent, and give rise to many a fierce denunciation of the brutality and selfishness of the British bourgeoisie. Preachers of subversive doctrines have always found their most potent allies among the unreasoning opponents of reform.
Mr. George, being a philanthropist with a cause, is as impervious to reason as a man with a grievance ; but he can hardly be more one-sided than some of the upholders of the present order. A few days ago the Times printed an article on the land question, in which the system of entail was defended on the ground that it enabled many worthy people who have saved money to found families and become members of the squirearchy. No doubt of it; but the end of private property in land is the happiness of the many, not the pleasure of the few, and unless the law of entail makes for this end, it neither can nor ought to be maintained. While we can neither agree with the wild theories which Mr. George propounds, nor believe in the millennium which he foretells, we fully share in his desire to raise the condition of the masses, and to remove every obstacle and reform every law that impedes their pro- gress towards a better state of things. We deprecate violent changes as much as we distrust heroic remedies ; and we have far more confidence in the voluntary efforts of the disinherited to make their lot more tolerable, and the increasing sense of their responsibilities among the fortunate, than in the action of Governments or the schemes of enthusiasts. Social Problems, though frequently unfair, is often highly suggestive ; and to those of our readers who take an interest in the subject of which it treats, we can recommend the book as one of the most eloquent, if least just, indictments of modern society which has appeared in the English tongue.
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