LETTERS TO A WORKING MAN. [To THR EDITOR OF THE
"SPROTLTOR.1 Sin,—The "Letters to a Working Man" are of ever-increasing interest, and the whole attitude of the Spectator towards political economy is of the utmost value at the present day, when the political economy of the schools has become too abstract for application to everyday life. It is not, however. to the "Letters," but to one of your shorter articles that I wish particularly to refer. You say: "We desire the abolition of poverty but such abolition can only take place if more of the things needed by men are pro- duced" (Spectator, January 25th, p. 135). At a time when we may be hurried headlong into the first-come solution of the "unemployed question," it is well to insist on the truth that it is productive work only which can benefit society and increase the country's wealth; and that it is the productive workers who support the whole country. They create the capital (be it cheap or dear), and they are also the pillar which supports not only the idlers, but also the doers of useless work. It is productive work alone that we should try to increase. Building a wall to pull it down next day; sweeping streets by hand instead of machinery ; the extra gardener or chauffeur; all this means, indeed, employ- ment, but it is producing no wealth and it is increasing the burden borne by the productive workers,—hamper- ing the production of wealth. We want to strengthen the pillar which bears the load by increasing productive
work.
What is productive work ? It is merely the application of labour to land (used in the economic sense). It is the working up of raw materials into shapes calculated to satisfy human wants. Such raw materials are : land to cultivate, land to dwell or work on, clay, slate, iron ore, coal, water-supplies, virgin forests, &a. If we are to increase the opportunities for productive work, we must make it easier for labour to obtain access to these raw materials. We must cease to help owners of these raw materials to withhold them and hamper access to them. A system which relieves the owner of house property from the obligation to pay rates so long as his houses remain unused, which relieves the owner of coal or a stone quarry of the burden of rates so long as these raw materials are unworked, which relieves the owner of " ripening " land round a town of nearly all the burden of rates so long as he chooses to let the " ripening " process continue,—this system is actively creating unemployment. And it is this system undet: which we are suffering to-day. We must also free productive work from the present heavy charges on it by taking off the rates from buildings and improvements. That change, in fact, is wanted which shall remove the burden from industry, and impose it instead in such manner as to stimulate production,—that is, on the market capital value of the raw materials, whether used or unused. And yet in the same issue of the Spectator as that in which your excellent remarks on the cheapening of capital occur, the Lords are urged to reject the only measure which can lead to the freeing of industry and encourage the pro- duction of wealth,—I mean the Scottish Land Valuation Bill, the first step towards this economically sound change in the basis of rating.—I am, Sir, &o., House of Commons. JOSIAH C. WEDGWOOD.
[We print our correspondent's criticism, but cannot argue here the Exchequer questions raised by him. We would ask him, however, to bear in mind that in questions of taxation we must always remember that it is men, and not things or houses, who pay taxes. A man is no doubt taxed in respect of certain possessions—that is, he pays more or leas according as he possesses more or less of special forms of property selected as measuring-rods by the State—but it is the human being who pays. Taxes are not, as some people seem to think, a kind of secretion from inanimate objects.—En. Spectator.]
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