Middle-Class Argument
Concluding the exchange of letters in which two well- known members discuss the present plight of the middle classes.
DEAR JANE,—I'm afraid I can't answer the last question in your last letter ; perhaps in any case it was rhetorical. The Labour Party may be interested in " solidarity " at other times than a General Election, though I find it hard to believe that people who have shown such considerable ill-will have any real interest in my goodwill. They could have had it, of course. They had my vote in 1935, and if the Army hadn't made a muddle of the papers (thereby shying me the trouble of making up my mind) they might have had another vote from me by post in .1945. Since that date there has still been plenty of goodwill in the tank, if anyone had bothered to turn on the tap. At various moments of crisis it has looked as though the tap might, in fact, be turned—but no ; we have had a sermon, perhaps even a prayer, but no com- munity singing.
About two years ago I had a small bee in my bonnet about an " industrial home guard." The analogy is easy. When the country is in military danger you get all available volunteers into uniform and give them rifles ; when the country is in economic danger I should have thought it was possible to make use of the same volunteer spirit—it's there all right. But whenever I talked the idea over with anyone, I was always told that it was impossible because, apart from any other objections, the unions wouldn't like it. If this is true, it is frightening. I don't know whether the generals still prepare for the next war with the weapons of the last, but the trade unions certainly seem to prepare for the next crisis with the text-books of their youth. But we don't shoot union leaders or generals ; all we do is to kick them upstairs and ask the middle classes to pay, in blood or money, more than their fair share of the damage.
By the way, is the distinguishing badge of the middle class that its members do not belong to a union ? It would take too long to analyse what is meant by the middle classes (the, plural is signi- ficant), though a member of them is as easy to recognise in alien surroundings as an English traveller is abroad—and he is today almost certainly just as short of ready money as the traveller. But though we both of us know what we mean when we talk about the middle classes, I am afraid that the expression conjures up some extraordinary fantasies in other minds. Broadly speaking, we, inevitably, mean ourselves ; an older generation probably thought of a section of society stretching from the Forsytes to Mr. Polly, and some Labour politicians obviously have created for themselves a fictional character composed in equal parts of Sir Basil Zaharoff and Mr. Squeers. Shall we, to be brief, say that the middle classes are those which think in terms of overwork rather than of overtime ?
I do not need to read the leaves in my tea-cup to foresee a lot more overwork coming their way. That is one of the assumptions that I think must be made, and the only thing to hope for is that it may become possible for the overwork to be distributed into rather more useful channels and for less time to be wasted on irritating inessentials. Whatever class we have been writing about, it is not the leisured class. I am not sure that such a class exists, though I should like to believe that it did. I should like to think that there were still a few private drones (I say nothing about those on the public pay-roll)—that there were individuals who had enough money to take a risk in behaviour or taste comparable with the gambles that good business-men must be prepared to take. But, as I say, that margin af enterprise has been taken away from the middle classes.
Another assumption to be made, presumably, is that it will take some time for the Welfare State, to which we as a country seem committed (and so does America for the matter of that), to shake down to the needs of the middle classes. At present they put in far more than they get out, and though their justification in the long run must be that they put their best into society, " their best " cannot by any stretch of imagination be considered as consisting of nothing but half their gross income. I should like to think it was possible also to assume that the mugwumps among our rulers would realise how wasteful their present technique is.
That's enough assumptions. I will only make one more, and that is that you will have had enough of this correspondence. If I go on much longer, the rasping sound of the hustings will begin to creep into my nib. I shall therefore beat my pen into a plough- share and go and dig in the garden.—Yours, GEORGE.
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DEAR GEORGE,—or, after your last sentence, dear Candide,—I think you've answered my question. Labour, the present bunch anyway, just don't know how to tap goodwill—active and creative goodwill, as against grudging acquiescence—not even in their own supporters. See absenteeism figures. Something lacking in the Fabian mentality ? How to appeal to middle-class solidarity—in peacetime—is a question which might puzzle even less uninspired leaders. How do you amalgamate the Forsytes and Mr. Polly, the lone-wolf intellectual, the retired Lt.-Col., the civil servant, the bright young works manager, an so on, whether for purposes of intelligent generalisation or of civic appeal ?
It's this same variety, incidentally, which makes it so hard to imagine the adaptations which will be needed whatever party is in power. I don't think the high and palmy days are coming back under any regime whatever. I don't mean that taxation need stay where it is (though economists are rather discouraging), still less that we'll always be hooted at, discriminated against, and treated as near-delinquents. But I doubt if we'll evei accumulate " inde- pendent means " again—Mr. Polly's legacy, amounting to some three years' income, is likelier to be typical of the middle-class nest-egg. And we shajl never be able to buy personal service on the old scale, however we thrive in other respects. It's only wl.ere there's pretty drastic inequality that you'll find many earners economically able to pay another earner full time (let alone two or more) out of their own net income. I think we might as well face these facts—though, being human, we shall go on grumbling. (Like you, I regret the " leisured class," but it did come awfully expensive, and anyway I don't believe leisure need be 100 per cent. leisure to bear \fruit.) . As for practical adaptation. . . . Your troubles and mine are, I think, merely those of the transition, aggravated by the Shinwell spirit. No doubt some day the State school and the scholarship system will have improved and widened enough to lift the greatest single economic worry off the shoulders of people like us ; and, to come to smaller matters, those who can afford cars will be able to run them and those who can't will have settled themselves where they are less essential. And I can see germing even now numbers of promising institutions, from home helps, " sitters-in" and peri- patetic deputy-mothers to nursery schools and baby-hotels, which will make it possible for the single-handed housewife both to get through the years of heaviest domestic pressure without exhaustion and to enjoy the occasional vitamins of real release from domesticity. (I don't see any satisfactory solution for the really ambitious she- professional. Blame Eve.) Also our daughters (and sons) and their houses will be better equipped for independence. No ; if our rulers will stop actually kicking us in the face, I think we shall do all right. Mind you, I'm looking ahead, assuming away the mosf flagrant anomalies of reward within the middle class ; otherwise what one can say about ourselves, for instance, certainly wouldn't apply to teachers and to the clergy.
But the retired Lt.-Col. and the lone wolves worry me. Assuming a state of affairs where comparative equality is not incompatible with honest money, and where what property can be acquired is secure from confiscation (optimism indeed !) the former's sons and grandsons, when they retire, should be all right. But the present sufferers ? Advice on psychological adaptation—about the only kind possible—would hardly come gracefully from me ; though still less gracefully from the present Cabinet. And the exception, the artistic or intellectual path-breaker ? He's always had a raw deal unless he has had private means or a patron. It will be still rawer in future. If he adapts himself, regretfully, into a sound bread- winning line, we may not notice the loss at first. We shall later.
Well, you asked me once to send you, in a plain envelope, my views on which party most shared your " first concern "—the rebuilding of unity between Government and governed. I know which not. As to the others, the plain envelope (open on Thursday) is enclosed. Till the spirit moves you again.—Yours, JANE.
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