SOCIALIST FIGURES AM) SOLID FACTS.* Mn. W. H. MALLocx has
rendered a real service to the public by elaborately working out a number of monographs dealing with the assertions currently made by Socialists and land- taxers, and providing a precise statistical answer to most of these reckless misstatements, The monographs cover such questions as the distribution of land, the rise and fall in value of land, the distribution of income, housing accommodation, the profits in the coal trade, the proportion of taxes paid by different classes, and so on. Like all statisticians, Mr. Matlock occasionally attaches, perhaps, too much value to mere figures. For example, in one of his monographs be says : "We know with approximate accuracy the income of Great Britain in the year 1800 to have been about 2170,000,000." We venture to think that this state- ment cannot possibly be supported. The income of Great Britain in the year 1800 may have been 2170,000,000, or may have been twice, or may have been half that sum, but there is no possible means of knowing with accuracy, even approximately, what the precise figure was. When, however, allowance has been made for this excessive devotion to figures which takes possession of all people who work at them per- sistently, Mr. Mallock's monographs still remain of great and undoubted value. For some of the Socialist statements with which he deals are so palpably at variance with known facts that it is only necessary to set down the admitted figures in order to show the baselessness of a large part of the stock in trade of the Socialist orator.
Let us take, first of all, the question of the land, for this Ems become more or less an actual question owing to the success of Mr. Outhwaite at Hanley. In the course of his campaign Mr. Outbwaite and his land-tax lieutenants were fond of making the assertion, which we fancy Mr. Lloyd George has more than once made, that two-thirds of the land of the king- dom is owned by 2,500 people. It is perhaps true to say that half the soil of the kingdom is owned by 2,500 people, or, rather, was so owned forty years ago, when the new Domesday Survey was made ; but this half, as every intelligent observer knows, is, in the main, the less valuable half of English soil. It includes mountains and moorlands and wide stretches of poor agricultural land. Where land is agriculturally rich, and still more where land has an urban value, estates are generally small. Mr. Mallock, after analysing at some length the new Domesday Book of 1875, arrives at the conclusion that at that period the number of landowners in England and Wales, exclusive of London, was very nearly 1,000,000, and he • Statistical Monographs for Use in Counteracting the Influence of Socialist and Kindred Agitators. By W. H. Mallock. London Liberty and Property Defence League, 25 Victoria Street, S. W. [2ia. a set.]
further infers that in 1875 one out of every four householders was an owner of the ground on which his house was built. Since 1875 it is notorious that the number of landowners has enormously increased. In the year 1909, when Mr. Lloyd George was asked whether he would, in con- nexion with his famous Budget, call upon every land- owner to make a return of his property, he replied that this would involve 2,000,000 returns. This figure was probably an exaggeration, but it is safe to say that at the present time there are 1,500,000 landowners in the United Kingdom. Dealing with London by itself the figures are, if possible, even more striking. Not long ago some Land Tax agency issued a picture postcard giving a representation of what was called "The London Octopus," by which was meant the alleged throttling of London by a few landlords. In order that there might be no mistake as to the meaning of the picture the accompanying letterpress stated that "twelve landlords own London." Since then the County Council has very nearly completed an accurate survey of the whole area of London, and finds that the actual number of landowners in London is just under 35,000. The survey further shows that the largest landowners in London are not private individuals but great public corpora- tions, namely, the Crown, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, the London County Council, and the City Corporation. The results of this survey have been public property for two or three years, yet the Ministerial Press still continues at intervals to repeat the fiction that London is owned by a handful of "dukes."
Another very important point with which Mr. Mallock deals is the theory that rent of land increases more rapidly than other forms of wealth, and virtually sucks up the whole wealth of the community. This, of course, is the famous theory on which Mr. Henry George founded his whole scheme of land taxation. Whether the theory was true even as regards the city of San Francisco, where it had its birth, is doubtful. That it is absolutely untrue as regards England or any other old country is, or ought to be, notorious. Mr. Mallock deals with it in many ways. Perhaps the most striking of the figures which he pro- duces from official documents to show the absurdity of this theory is a comparison between the income-tax returns of 1861 and 1906. In the former year the rent of land and houses was returned at £114,000,000, in the latter year £223,000,000, or an increase of 95 per cent. In the same interval the income from professions and businesses rose from £81,000,000 to 2451,000,000, or an increase of 455 per cent. That comparison alone is sufficiently striking, but in the item "rent of land and houses" allowance must be made for the capital value of the houses constructed in forty- five years. This is difficult, of course, to ascertain pre- cisely, but it obviously amounts to many hundred millions sterling. Mr. Matlock gets at his result indirectly by taking the generally admitted assumption that in the case of a house the average value of the site is one-fifth of the value of the site and fabric together. To this he adds the rent of agricultural land treated as a separate item. He then applies this test to more modern figures where there can be less doubt as to the accuracy of the original data, and he shows that between 1885 and 1906 the total land rent of the kingdom increased by only £5,000,000, while the incomes from professions and businesses and salaries of employees increased by £285,000,000. The truth, of course, is that land rent instead of being an increasing proportion of our national wealth is a constantly diminishing proportion, while as regards large areas of the kingdom there has been an absolute as well as a relative decline in land values.
Another very valuable monograph deals with some of the extraordinary blunders made by the Fabians in their popular leaflets. For example, Mr. Mallock quotes from Facts for Socialists, issued apparently with the approval of Mr. Sidney Webb, the statement that "in 1901 there were 666,656 adult men (i.e., over 20 years of age) who did not even profess to have a shadow of an occupation." This statement Mr. Mallock analyses as follows : The census returns for England and Wales give the number of unoccupied males over 20 years of age for England and Wales at only 543,000, and it is probable that Mr. Webb and his friends brought this total up to 666,000 by adding what they deemed to be proportional figures for Suotland and Ireland. But who are the 543,000
whom the Fabian Society class as "without a shadow of an occupation " ? According to Mr. Mallock this figure includes no fewer than 251,000 persons over 65 years of age. It also includes inmates of workhouses, asylums, and institutions for the permanently insane and imbecile, while only 93,000 persons were classified as "living on their own means."
Another blunder on which a great deal of Socialist argu- ment is built up is the confusion between "gross assessments to income-tax" and the "aggregate of individual incomes exceeding 2160." As the statisticians of the Fabian Society ought to have known, these two things are entirely different, for gross assessments take into account items which neither for fiscal nor for rhetorical purposes can properly be treated as income at all. Take one very obvious instance. The gross assessment for a landowner's income-tax includes the whole of what he receives in rent, although a large proportion of the total has to be paid out again for the upkeep of the estate.
Perhaps, however, the principal value of these monographs resides, not in the conoise deductions which Mr. Mallock makes from the figures whieh he has examined, but in the references which he gives to the authentic sources of information which the inquirer can examine for himself. This every inquirer ought to do, for though Mr. Mallock has usefully indicated the conclusive answers which can be made to popular misstatements, he is from time to time somewhat careless in his own statements. For example, in the monograph dealing with housing he shows quite truly that the main fact about housing in the fifteen years between 1893 and 1908 is the enormous growth in houses of a moderate rent accompanied by an actual decline in the poorest hoases and a very slow growth in the richest. The figures on this point are solidly satisfactory, but, unfortunately, through carelessness in compiling, or in printing, there are one or two obvious mistakes which tend to discredit the value of the work, although they only affect small details. No doubt, however, these will be set right next time the monograph is reprinted. But, though we must note these faults, the value of the series is unquestionable, and their pro- vision lays all defenders of the principles of free exchange under a deep debt of gratitude to Mr. Mallock. The mono- graphs were originally published by the London Municipal Society, but have now been taken over by the Liberty and Property Defence League.
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