THE UNIONISTS' SOCIAL POLICY.
THE Unionist Social Reform Committee, a body chiefly composed of Unionist Members of Parliament, but including also such well-known men as Professor Ashley and Mr. Christopher Turner, have just issued a Report on Industrial Unrest, in the shape of a small book published by Mr. John Murray (6d. net). With the central aims and objects of the Committee we are in strong sympathy, and we applaud their refusal to adopt an attitude of easy optimism towards social and moral problems, and to act as if all were for the best in the best possible of worlds. That, of course it is not, and all honour to Unionists who are not content to let things slide, but insist that we must be up and doing in the interests of the poor! We are, then, in full sympathy with Mr. F. E. Smith when he says in his introduction to the Report that "the view of modern as of ancient Toryism is that the interests of the State and the community must at all costs be safeguarded, but that the interests of the worker must not be sacrificed in the process, for the worker is an integral portion of the State.' The interests, the true interests, the interests of the workers as a whole— these undoubtedly should be our goal. At present no thinking man can feel satisfied with the condition of the poorer section of the community, or with the general tendency of the efforts made to set it right. The system of social reform proposed by the Liberals, which is based almost entirely upon new and higher taxation, is a quack medicine of the most virulent kind—a medicine which, even if it gives temporary relief, must ultimately make the disease far worse than before, for taxation in the end always falls most heavily on the poor.
How do this Committee of earnest Unionists face the problem ? In one or two instances, no doubt, they make veryuseful and practical suggestions. Taken as a whole, how- ever, we are reluctantly compelled to come to the conclusion that they have learned the wrong lessons from their study of the problem. They appear to believe that the best cure for a poisoned person is for him to take yet another dose of poison. It is the mediaeval theory of antidotes. In spite, then, of our sympathy with the desire of the Committee to achieve something for the workers, we are bound to condemn their plans for increased interference. And for this reason. We do not object to interferences with the conditions of labour in the least because they are irksome to the rich, but solely because we believe them to be disastrous to the poor. We hold interference to be the main source of the unrest and of the sense of injustice which are now so widespread amongst the workers. Holding that view, we cannot assent to further and greater interference, or support such proposals as the establishment of Wages Boards and schedules of minimum wages enforced, we will not say by compulsory arbitration, for that, we are glad to note, is definitely repudiated by the Report, but at any rate by schemes which partake of the nature of com- pulsory arbitration. "But if you object to the schemes of the Unionist Committee, how do you propose to meet the social and industrial evils of the time ?" That is the question which is sure to be put to us, and from which we do not shrink. We are not content with mere laisseg- faire, any more than we are prepared to say that all is well. All is not well, but a great part of the evil, perhaps all the evil, is, in our opinion, due to the rash attempts which men have made generation after generation to alter economic conditions by legislation.
People talk as if freedom of contract and freedom of exchange had had their day and been found wanting. As a matter of fact, they have never had even a trial. There has never been a nation in any age which has tried true freedom in these two essential matters. Instead, the further we go back and the more primitive the State, the more certain are we to find restriction heaped on restriction, interference on interference. When, then, we ask for more freedom, it is not in order to return to a state of things which has once existed, but to try a remedy which, though it has been known and talked about for many years, has never been put in operation. When freedom was supposed to reign in this country—namely, in the "thirties" and " forties " of last century—as a matter of fact there were quite as many restrictions as there are now, though they were of a different kind. In that period trade, for example, was hampered in every direction by a system of Protection and of high Colonial Preference, while at the same time the worker was prevented from combining and co-operating for his own benefit. Till our statute book bears a very different complexion from what it does at present or from what it has ever borne, we cannot admit that freedom has been tried and failed. No doubt we shall never attain to full industrial and social freedom of contract or of exchange. We can, however, move gradually in this direction, and can, at any rate, prevent further shackles being imposed upon the worker. It is to this policy that we invite the attention of the Unionist Party, both on the merits and on grounds of political strategy. Of the merits we are certain. Of the strategy we are equally sure. Even if interference under the alias of Social Reform were in truth what the workers wanted and what was good for them, they would not now take it from the Unionists. When the nation wants Socialism it will go to the " old firm." to the Liberal and Radical Party, and not to the Unionists. But when the nation is tired of the fruits of interference and restric- tion it will turn to the Unionist Party and ask them to try the effects of a little freedom. That will be the Unionists' opportunity, and for that they should prepare
themselves. •
In studying disease in the social as well as the human frame, it is always wise to consider what the patient him- self instinctively desires. It may not be always right to let him have his way, but no wise doctor ever leaves the patient's feelings out of consideration. Now, curiously enough, in spite of his outcries for more social reform and more interference, with its consequent heavier taxa- tion, the ordinary worker instinctively desires, and auto- matically and subconsciously calls for, two things : better wages and liberty of action—more pay and more freedom. Take any Trade Unionist off his guard, or any working man or woman who has not been sophisticated by the prattle of the Fabians, the Syndicalists, or the Marxists, and he will express his desires as we have just expressed them. We would not suggest for a moment that the Unionist Party should attempt to obtain him these things if they were not also the things which are best calculated to improve his position. Since, however, we most firmly believe that they are not only what he wants, but what he ought to have, we hold that the fulfilling of these desires should be the aim of the Unionist Party. Let the Liberals stick to their ideal of high taxes, nominally raised from the rich but actually from the poor, and of interference at every turn with the worker—an interference which will not allow him to settle his own hours of work or to work for what master and what wages he will, and still more will not allow him to spend his money as he likes or save it as he likes but insists upon his being regimented or dragooned into railing provision for himself as Mr. Lloyd George and the Insurance Commissioners and other well-meaning bureaucrats shall in future direct. The Liberal ideal is that of a healthy, well-fed, well-looked-after social serf who is never to be allowed his fling, never to be allowed to spend his own money in his own way. Good money, or rather good conditions, for he will touch very little money, are to be secured for him by the State. His nominal wages are not to be allowed to drop below a certain minimum, but he is to be barred from spending that minimum as he likes. The insurance agent will pounce on a portion of it, the rate collector and the tax collector on still more ; and very soon the worker will not be permitted to live in a cheap cottage or a small cottage or an untidy cottage, however much he may prefer to do so. No, he will be forced to "stand and deliver " more of his minimum wage to pay an economic rent for some cottage built on very uneconomic principles, and designed by a middle-class local authority which has laid it down that the first requirement of a house or cottage is that it shall look nice, or what Mr. Bumble and his wife think looks nice--mot always the same thing, we venture to suggest, in spite of the " admonishment " lately administered to us on this point by a writer in Country Life.
Can we wonder that the unfortunate worker feels suffocated beneath this avalanche of restrictions and limitations, and that be pines to be able to spend his own money in his own way, even- if it can be proved that he.
does not get the same amount of comfort and security as if he were to spend it according to the rules and schedules of some local or central authority ? Better a dinner of herbs and a ragged coat where freedom is than a municipal dinner in a municipal cottage eaten under municipal restrictions in a municipally designed jacket. Talk about the dismal science—what could be more dismal than the prospect offered by Radical social reform ? The advocates of the old economic ideas, at any rate, left men free to spend their money in their own way, left them free to exercise what every man and every woman instinctively yearns for—freedom of choice in regard to their cash expenditure. In all of us surges up the cry of the spirited little girl who, running over all the delights she could get for sixpennyworth of coppers, stamped her foot and declared that, come what might, she would not have a shilling to put into the bank !* But how are we to secure the workman the freedom and the higher wages for which he longs ? We would begin by giving him the freedom, certain that if you remove the shackles from a man, whether imposed by oppressors or philanthropists, and also relieve him from that terrible weight of taxation which always follows on economic restrictions, higher wages will in the end come of themselves. Let us give men freedom to belong to 'Unions or not as they choose. We would even do the same in the matter of insur- ance if we could, though we admit that the clearing away of the restrictions here may now be beyond our power. Most of all, let us as far as possible keep the hands of the rate collector and of the tax collector out of the workman's pocket. Though very often he does not see the hands at work, they are there, filching from him his earnings, or, rather, his power of choice as to how he shall spend his money. Why, for example, should a man be taxed in proportion to the tobacco, the tea, the coffee, and the sugar he consumes ? Our ideal, in fact, would be that, whatever a man's wage, he should have the greatest possible choice in how to spend it. As it is, no man in this country can follow the ideal set before the mediaeval King of "living on his own." He is always being forced to get money so that he may be able to face the tax collector and the rate collector. It ought to be possible for a man who has a cottage of his own and a piece of ground of his own and an industrious family to make a living as a colonist makes a living in the wilds. But this be cannot do in England, for he must make something which can be sold in order to pay the tax collector, who will not take produce but only money. In this attempt to raise money a man is often ruined in a bad year. We are all being screwed up to a kind of economic concert pithh by the tax collectors, and a great many strings break in the process on which otherwise many a homely tune could have been played. If we cannot construct an economic or a material paradise for everyone, at least we can strike some of the shackles from the people's limbs. As Grattan said of the Irish peasant, they may have to be in rags, but at least they shall not also be in chains.
As to fulfilling the ideal of higher wages, there is, we are convinced, but one way—an increase in the demand for what the labourer has to sell; in other words, the service of his arms and brain. Increased demand, and increased demand alone, will permanently raise wages. But you will never get an increased demand for labour through the valley of the shadow of restriction. You can only promote increased demand by increasing the total wealth of the world— by increasing exchanges. Yet unhappily at this moment the whole of mankind seems bent upon diminishing, not increasing, exchanges, and therewith the demand for labour. The Protectionists and the Tariff Reformers on our side clamour for reducing exchanges, and even more clamorous, more potent, and more far-reaching in their consequences are the demands of the Radical Trade Unionists and social reformers for the limiting and cutting down of exchanges. To them, in truth, though of course they will not say so in words, Free Exchange has become the enemy, the upas-tree which has to be cut down. The three things which the worker should ask for are "Demand for my
• "For ninepenee or tenpenee my Daddy I'll thank, But I won't have a shilling to put in the bank."
Very possibly she might voluntarily have put a certain percentage of a gift into her money-box, but she resented the idea that the shilling should be swept off before her eyes into an inhuman and petrified institution. It ceased to be her money from the moment it was earmarked for the bank. Money wan only money while it was free. Hence the hatred of the poor for " truck." It leaves no freedom of choice.
labour—demand for my labour—demand for my labour." That is his path, and his only path, to higher wages. There are only two possible bases for society on the economic side ; one is the exchange basis, the other the basis of compulsion. But compulsion means slavery of a kind, which the worker, though he may think he would like it, will never really tolerate. Therefore, abuse it and misunderstand it as he may, the exchange basis is the one upon which he and all of us will ultimately be compelled to live.
Before we leave the subject of the present article we should like to draw attention to the fact that Mr. Stephen Reynolds, the ablest exponent of the feelings of the less- well-paid workers at the present day, in a recent article in the New Age noted with great force and ability the passionate desire of the worker for more freedom, and his hatred of the bureaucratic shackles which are accumulating so fast around his limbs. We and Mr. Stephen Reynolds are miles apart on most moral, social, political, and economic questions, but here at any rate we join hands. He sees, as we do, that the real cause of the unrest among the workers which is producing so much anxiety among their friends—the capitalists can very well look after themselves, and will never really suffer by a revolutionary movement, or, if they do, will suffer only very temporarily—is not their poverty, though that we fully admit is often very great, but the interference which now harries the working man at every turn—" lies in his bed, walks up and down with him." Admittedly he is often unconscious of the cause, or rather thinks that the cause of his malaise is his poverty ; but in truth it is the restrictions and the limitations, the interference with his daily life, which the law imposes upon him. The gates of the prison house are slowly closing upon him. No doubt the prison house I. a good deal more comfortable from many points of view than his old free hovel, but for all that he is terrified, and rightly, at the thought of being a prisoner to the State. Instinctively lie is as perturbed at the sight of the closing gates as are wild creatures when they are being caught.. They want to burst the bars and get out. To be told that the cage means better meals and a more comfortable place to sleep in gives no relief whatever to their fears or their anger. Up till now the worker has believed that he can have it both ways—be free and also have constant aid from the State. When, however, he realizes that he must choose between freedom and schemes for more social reform, he will not hesitate for a moment. He will choose freedom and throw minimum wages, Wages Boards, and trade restrictions into the bottomless abyss.
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