THE CLASS WITH CHARACTER.
AA SLIGHTLY cynical but not incapable observer re- marked that the British nation might be divided into two classes, the nice people who had been impoverished by the war and the nasty people who had been enriched. This generalization, like all generalizations, could not be applied closely without wild injustice. Nevertheless we understand and appreciate the truth lying at its heart. The class which has been harder hit financially than any other is that which has enjoyed, as a class, no rise of salary, no war bonus, no State mitigations of the struggle to live— in a word, the professional class. In• an able review of the incidence of taxation a few months ago Mr. Herbert Samuel pointed out that the men with an income of between £2,000 and £3,000 a year were taxed relatively higher than any other persons. This statement roughly covers those who work in the professions or have a professional education, and who in many instances by almost super- human efforts have made enough to send their sons to the Public Schools and Universities. Of course men with the income mentioned by Mr. Samuel are high up in their professions, but the whole professional class, ranging down to quite small incomes, is animated by very much the same ideals and customs. This is the class which is incom- parable for character. It spends itself in what must always be counted valuable public service, whether all the service be paid for or not. This class brings up its children to be good citizens, and it sends to the outposts of the British Empire young men of honesty and judgment, practising a code of decent conduct, as administrators and settlers. Not a tithe of the suffering which has been endured by this class during the war has been told. Lawyers, doctors, clergymen, Civil Servants, schoolmasters, and such like make it a point of pride not to proclaim their troubles to the passer-by.
There is now a tendency among the extreme leaders of Labour—most of them self-appointed leaders—to speak of the professional and middle classes as a blood-sucking bourgeoisie who are grossly overpaid, and who must be brought down to their proper rung on the ladder. The proper rung, according to this point of view, is apparently somewhere below that occupied by those who earn their living by manual labour.' It is surely time that the truth was told about the enormous value to the nation and the Empire of the character, the accomplishments, and the generally ungrudging labour of this bourgeoisie." We are among those who heartily wish well to Labour (meaning by that term the manual workers of the country) ; we wish to see them secure in conditions of prosperity and con- tentment, with fair surroundings both in town and country. But this happy state of affairs will never be achieved
with the goodwill of all if working men regard themselves as a class apart, a privileged group whose work is much more important than th; work of those who labour—very often at much greater physical distress to themselves— with their brains. Not only during the war but before the war the self-denying record of the professional classes was a remarkable one. Professional men characteristically adopted political principles, whether right or wrong, which continually conflicted with their own interests. If they believed that the development of cereal farming was necessary for the well-being of the country, they were prepared by their votes to snake their food cost more. They 'mew that they were getting extremely cheap corn from the virgin corn-lands of the distant world, but if they believed that only by taxing that corn to the dis- advantage of their own pockets could they restore and expand agriculture in England they were ready to do it. They were ready, again, to tax any and every form of imports if they thought these were a danger to our national indus- tries. We do not ourselves in the least believe in the
desirability of any form of Protection except in so far as it may be necessary to maintain the Empire as an approxi- mately self-supporting community possessing control of all the resources necessary for a common defence ; but we are not looking into the matter now from the economic point of view, but merely in order to examine the motives of what we have roughly called the professional class. Yet again, whenever it was asserted that more money was required for the Navy or the Army, or that Compulsory Service must be introduced, professional men were the first to shout acquiescence, well knowing that the tax both in money and service would fall with greatest weight upon themselves. Professional- men have no "Trade Union customs " about cutting down their hours of labour and doing their work about half as quickly or half as well as they can. Bather they create for themselves an interest in even-the.dullest work by making it smatter of pride to do it as well as they know how. It would be nothing less than a disaster to the country it such men as these were squeezed out, and impoverished to such a degree that they could no longer give their children the old education, or became too weary and jaded for their brain-power to exercise itself fully. Scientific discoveries, medical research, scholarship, political philosophy, artistic culture, on all of which our British civilization is in varyieg degrees built up, would Cease or wither. Let it not be thought, however, that the professional class is without the fighting instinct. It has great wisdom, great experience of affairs, and behind its unwillingness to talk it well knows its own value to the nation. If the extremists of Labour try to grasp for themselves aristocratic privileges, there is certain to be a counter-movement, and it would be fully justified. Already there are signs of it. The clerk or secretary with a small salary will not continue to pay his Income Tax, as he has hitherto done, without public gtruinblings if he reads daily in the newspapers the, absurd claims of the miners and other workers. The demand of the Labour Party as a whole is that no one should pay Income Tax who draws less than £250 a year. Though we think that freedom from all direct taxation is a demoralizing thing, since it liberates millions of citizens from all sense of responsibility for public expenditure, no objection can be raised on mere grounds of equity to a raising of the taxable limit which would apply all round. But many of the miners are asserting that no matter how much they may earn, they will never pay Income Tax. It is well known that many of them have been earning as much as £500 a year. In the papers of Tuesday we read that a number of workers at Woolwich Arsenal were proceeded against because they had refused to pay Income Tax. An official told the Magistrate that these amounts were " considered irrecover- able." The Magistrate thereupon remarked " But other people are not allowed. to evade Income Tax. I do not see why these persons should not be forced to pay." The Income Tax official pointed out that there was a scheme of deduction of Income Tax from earnings, but " very few were willing to come under that scheme." " It should have been made compulsory," very properly retorted ithe Magistrate, and added: "If the number of people in this place alone from whom money cannot be recovered were generally known, there would be great public indignation. Almost every day we have about seventy-five of these cases in this Court. It is scandalous." The middle classes in certain German towns showed what they could do. recently in the way of organizing themselves against a threatened general strike. In England we see farmers threatening to strike against the prices for milk imposed upon them by the Government. The motives here may be rather different, but the beginning of organiza- tion, and the contemplation of a strike, on the part of men who have never struck as a body before, are significant.
The difficulty in organising the professional and middle classes is that organization under the guidance of men who have much more enthusiasm than wisdom may rapidly become highly political or partisan in tone. Such men are apt to leap to the front in a hitherto unorganized interest. The real purpose of the organization may be deflected into something like an alien hunt—which, if the truth be told, is a struggle against dangers not to be compared with the domestic danger of eclipsing, the professional °leas. If the brain workers organize themselves on proper Tines, they can undoubtedly de a great.deal to circulate the truth that the prosperity of the country lies in consulting the intereats of all, that reforms must be in accordance with the will of the majority, and that to recognize any class ascendancy is to rum everybody. If any class ascendancy is to be recog-
nized, it obviously ought to be the ascendancy of those who have knowledge, judgment, learning, and experience, and not of those who are inspired by such smatterings of economic reading as were paraded by Mr. &lithe before the Coal Comnusaion. But let us have no ascendancy but that where ascendancy rightfully belongs—to the will of the greatest number. If Mr. SniiMe can convert the majority to his point of view, well and good. We who are real not nominal democrats will bow to that will, but to no other. We have already spoken of the threats of the farmers, but every section of brain workers is capable of retorting. Doctors could withhold their advice and chemists their medicines ; engineers viuld refuse to apply their technical knowledge to the supervision of machinery ; capitalists could withdraw their money from the industries which were being ruined under their eyes and send it abroad ; editors could refuse to give any kind of publicity to pro- ceedings of which they disapproved, and in these days not much advance would be made by a movement of which nothing was heard. These are only examples. If we are not mistakep, some time ago the Medical Association came into conflict with miners somewhere in Wales, and the miners' Unions broke oil the negotiations with the Associa- tion and appointed their own medical officers. But the results were so unsatisfactory that the Unions surrendered, and were only too glad to accept the conditions of the Medical Association—which, after all, is a kind of Trade Union itself.
The brain workers should think well over these matters, and. if they do not find that existing organizations meet their needs, they should create others. Moreover, they ought to represent their opinions very strongly before the Royal Commission on the Income Tax. They should state confidently and boldly what we believe to be the truth,which ie that the educatiOn of boys in schools where high character is cultivated is an inestimable asset to the country. They should claim in the public interest, as well as in their own, that relief for those who are paying for a liberal education should be on a much more generous scale. They might claim an abatement of Income Tax of something like £50 for every child under twenty-one years of age. They should also insist that those who are not bringing up families should be more heavily taxed in order that those who are undoubtedly spending their money for the national good should pay less. For our part, we do not suppose for a moment that the hand workers as a whole, for we have faith in them and a great respect for them, are at all blind to the vast work which has been done by those who use their brains for science and learning and in the professions. But the working men are being temporarily misled, and many of them naturally believe the absurd statements which are placed before them most frequently and most forcibly. If brain workers employed some of their energy during the next few months in thinking out an orgam- ration for themselves, the effort would certainly not be wasted.
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