ALDERMAN TELLETT'S DREAM.
MR. BEN TILLETT has given us in the Times of Tuesday his solution of the problem of the unemployed. Unfortunately, though the oracle has spoken, it has spoken after the manner of oracles. What the working classes are to labour for is, first, municipal Collectivism, and next, State Collectivism. If their electoral organisations do their duty, the next County Council election should give us the one, the next General Election should give us the other. Mr. Tillett seems to think that this is all that it is necessary to say in order to commend his scheme to general acceptance. His letter is meant to convince capitalists and other hard- headed persons—hard heads, Mr. Tillett remarks paren- thetically, being "a misnomer for hard hearts "—that, unless Collectivism is at once substituted for the present order of things, the country will "go industrially to the dogs ; " but he sees no need for explaining in what way Collectivism is to work the happy change he anticipates. The only argument he condescends to use, is the argument from fear. Agree with your adversary quickly, he says. The practical reforms which go by the name of municipal Collectivism "are mild compared with what the proletariat will exact when they get in a hurry." Inasmuch, however, as State Collectivism is to come if the working class organisations do their duty at the nextl General Election, the time for trying municipal Collectivism, by way of a stepping-stone to the larger reform, seems to be past. We are all but face to face with Mr. Tillett's remedy, "the taxation of property and all material wealth up to the full extent necessary to provide adequate pro- vision for the wealthless and workless."
Mr. Tillett is so pleased with the moral effect he looks for from this system—it will soon, he says, "touch the coin conscience of those who fleece and then flout the fleeced "—that he carries his demonstration no further. Yet, if we may venture to call his attention to the omission, there is a link in his argument which he has not supplied. We will concede, in order to narrow the controversy, that the taxation he speaks of—taxation which he is evidently quite prepared to carry to the length of confiscation—will touch "the coin conscience" of the capitalist. But how will it, in the long-run, provide work for the unemployed ? If it could be trusted to do this, if the confiscation of the wealth belonging to the few could really secure the per-. moment comfort of the poor, we might be willing to believe that at last honesty has proved not to be the best policy. What hinders us from following Mr. Tillett's lead is the con- viction which nothing in his letter is calculated to shake, that the effect of the confiscation, of which in a greater or less degree he is the advocate, would have the very opposite result. It would not long provide work for the unemployed, and when it ceased to provide it, their numbers would have become greater, and their condition consequently more desperate than is the case now. We can well believe that to Mr. Tillett this condition of mind appears strangely contemptible. . But all great conversions are wrought by men who can suppress the contempt which ignorance naturally inspires ; and if Mr. Tillett wishes to be a suc- cessful missionary, he must condescend to those who, intellectually speaking, are men of low estate. We will do our best to put before him what seem to us the inevit- able results of the remedy he proposes for want of em- ployment. Perhaps, when he next writes to the Times, he will point out in what respect these expectations of ours are mistaken.
No one questions, of course, that if the Government chose to do so, it could at once find work at full Union wages for all the men now out of employment. There is no need for the moment to inquire out of what source the wages would come ; the State could raise enough money for this purpose by merely increasing the present taxation all round, and so keeping clear of the difficulties which might otherwise arise from the resistance of the classes whose goods Mr. Tillett proposes in fact, though not in name, to appropriate for the use of the community. But when all the unemployed are set to work, and the produc- tion of the country is increased in proportion, what is to become of the things produced ? No doubt the demand for ordinary food and clothing will be stimulated by the improved condition of those of the workers who were for- merly idle and penniless. They will now be in receipt of good wages, and they will consequently eat and drink more and wear better clothes. But the production of a country like England embraces very much more than the mere food and clothing of the producers. There is a vast trade in supplying the multifarious wants of a class which possesses in the aggregate large accumulated wealth ; and there is a vast trade with foreign countries. Neither of these demands would be in the least stimulated by the State employment of those who are now unemployed. Yet the Government would have to go on making believe that they were being stimulated, because, if it did not, whole classes of labourers would remain unemployed. In deter- mining what work to give out, it would simply have to consider what the workmen were able to do. Dock labour, for example, is abundant ; therefore men must be set to work to load ships. But what is to be done with the ships when they are loaded ? No more goods will be wanted abroad than are wanted now ; consequently it will be useless for the ships to leave the dock. The only con- solation the Government would have would be that dock labour means unloading as well as loading, so that what is done on Monday can be undone on Tuesday. Every day, therefore, the stock of unsaleable goods would be growing larger until, in a very short time, the glut caused by this reckless over-production would alarm even the officials of the Dockers' Union. This is only one instance of what would follow from a policy which puts out of sight what was to become of things when produced, and thinks only of the duty of finding work for the men who are willing and able to produce them.
But beside the imaginary foreign trade, which would have to be supplied because there were men demanding to be employed in supplying it, there are the many trades which are well occupied in supplying the wants of the well-to- do. It is obvious that some, if not all, of those would have to be kept in full work, because those who had learned them would be unfitted for any other employment. If the State is to find work for all who ask for it, it must obviously find work that they are able to do. It would be cruel to tell a man who had been accustomed all his life to work for a goldsmith, to go and plant cabbages. The dignity of labour would be outraged if a skilled workman were put to mere relief-work. But the increased production of this kind of goods would not lead to any more being sold. They are bought by the rich when they feel rich ; they are the first things that the rich cease to buy when they cease to feel rich. Under the legislation advocated by Mr. Tillett they would not merely buy no more of them, they would quite certainly buy much less. We have hitherto assumed that the wages of the unemployed would be paid out of the general taxation of the country, and the consequent increase of the burden laid on the taxpayer would of itself greatly lessen the demand for everything not of the first necessity. But Mr. Tillett c3ntemplates the money wanted to pay the unemployed being entirely drawn from the special taxation of the rich. The rich therefore would have less money to spend on superfluities than other classes, and instead of buying more things in proportion as more were produced, they would buy far fewer. The Government warehouses would soon be filled with useless articles produced at great cost for the exclusive use of a class which the very process of producing them had reduced to poverty. Nor is this the only weak point in Mr. Tillett's scheme. He proposes to make provision for "the wealthless and workless" by taxing "property and all material wealth." In order, therefore, that this plan should succeed, it would be necessary that the owners of property should remain in the country, and go on getting together the material for the State to tax. Mr. Tillett must surely regard capitalists as either idiots or saints. If they are idiots, we can understand their sitting still to await confiscation. If they are saints, we can understand their submission to what they regard as the will of Providence. But if they are only practical men of business they will, we imagine, transport all that they can lay hold of to some less advanced country than England. We will suppose, however, that Mr. Tillett has in view some method of preventing their departure. Does he believe that they will then go on working as hard when all that they make is seized by the State, as they do now when they keep it for themselves? Yet, if he does not believe this, how does he propose to secure a continuous supply of wealth to tax ? The energy and skill which he ve hitherto produced that wealth will be as active as ever, only not in England ; or if the transference of them to other countries is some- how hindered, the motive which has hitherto called them forth will be no longer operative. Perhaps, however, in Mr. Tillett's Collectivist Millennium, the passion for accumulating will survive, though money is accumulated only to be taken away.
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