FISCAL POLICY.
• [To THE EDITOR OP TEE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—It is perhaps natural that nearly all the present dia. cussion on fiscal policy should be carried on on economic and material lines, and by professors, economists, politicians, essayists, and journalists. But after all, abstract articles in
a struggle like this do not convert many people,—that, at least, is my experience. Sixty years ago even the eloquence of Cobden and Bright needed something else to back it up. Interminable statistics, tables of imports and exports, balance of trade, &c., have never yet appealed to the "man in the street," and these men will have a good many votes when the issue is decided.
Now personally I stand impartially outside that issue. I give no opinion either for or against Mr. Chamberlain, either for or against Protection or Free-trade in the present discussion. As a convinced Socialist, I am persuaded that in neither lies the social salvation of the community, in this or in any other country. If Protection can be shown to be good for physical and moral ad- vancement, I am an economic Protectionist; if Free-trade can be thus shown, I am an economic Free-trader. But so far as regards social solutions I can quite convincedly and impartially say, "A plague on you both ! " Perhaps, then, I can without bias state what I believe to be an actual material fact about the artisan "man in the street" from a very long and close acquaint- ance with him. If any political party had a statesman strong and audacious enough (Lord Randolph Churchill in the heyday of his popularity is the sort of man I have in my mind) to put a tax on imported manufactured articles in a considerable number of trades, and leave food and raw material alone, he would sweep the vast majority of our British industrial workers in our towns into his political net, not from the standpoint of pure economics or statistic, but from what they believe to be a practical stand- point. "Labour" is Protectionist in many respects. Trade- 'Unionism, fair-wages clauses, eight-hour agitations, anti-sub- contracting, anti-sweating factory laws, the general international
Labour movement, are all essentially Protectionist, in that they are endeavours to surround the workers with artificial restrictions in order to ward off what they believe to be unfair competition from outsiders. They are all absolutely opposed to that unlimited, unrestricted competition which is the essential bottom idea of Free- trade.
I have before me a remarkable speech made by Mr. W. C. Steadman, L.C.C., in June last at a meeting of the London County Council on the question as to whether the ironwork of the new Vauxhall Bridge should be obtained from Belgium or restricted to British manufacturers. The Bridgea Committee proposed the latter, and Mr. Steadman supported them in spite of the fact that the Belgian tender was the lower, owing, as he said, to the fact that with low royalties and low wages the Continental manu- facturer is able to offer the lowest of tenders. He pointed out that it was exceedingly difficult to supervise in the wages direc- tion, work done in a foreign country, and went on to say:—" The Council itself is a Protectionist. It has laid down a Standing Order on the books to see that the workmen employed on our work, whether in this country or abroad, are getting the recognised Trade- Union rate of wages. It has failed to do that in the case of the Belgian rails,—absolutely failed to do it. That being so, we have got nothing else to do but to support the recommendation of the Bridges Committee on this occasion." The Free-traders on the Council, however, plumped for Belgium, and thus upheld the contention of the Socialist, and of, as I believe, the majority of artisans, that unlimited Free-trade in manufacturing in- dustries really and logically means unlimited sweating. I remember some years ago, at the time of the anti-sugar- bounties agitation, talking to some of the most prominent Free- traders on the London Trades Council, and every one of them, as a ivn,lrer, was most strongly in favour of countervailing duties. To t..em cheap sugar did not compensate for loss of employment in the East End, neither did the fact that some of their class might be getting a little better wage by jam-making in Dundee.
I expect, Sir, that your Protectionist readers will have been chort- ling because they think that, as an impartial man, I have been arguing in favour of Protection! Nothing of the sort. Still a plague on both your houses. What was Mr. Steadman's objection to the London County Council Belgian Protectionist tender? Low wages, and the workers there badly off. It is a moot point, and one very difficult to decide, whether all round the workers of a Protectionist country are worse off than those of a Free-trade country. I have never seen such dire poverty in Berlin, Vienna, Amsterdam, Brussels, or New York as I see every day in London. But of this we may be certain, all round they are no better off. And of this we may also be certain, that while in a Free-trade competitive country the profits of industry do not necessarily, because of Free-trade, flow into the pockets of the workers, without long and painful struggles in the shape of Protec- tionist Trade-Unionism, &c., those profits in a Protectionist country do flow into the pockets of landlords and manufacturers, as against the workers. No; neither in Protection nor in Free-trade is the real remedy to be found. Charles Bradlaugh once told me that he heard W. J. Fox deliver that famous speech in Covent Garden Theatre in which he pictured, under the reign of Free-trade, all our prisons empty and all our workhouses in ruins. With our criminal population and our million paupers we shall have to wait a while for Fox's ideal. But there are prisons and paupers also in every Protectionist country in the world. For their abolition we must look in other direc- tions,—most of all, as I believe, to a wise and ordered Socialism. Protection and Free-trade are at the bottom Labour questions, and the discussion on them and the struggle between them will cease only when the people of all civilised countries shall collec- tively own themselves, because they collectively own the means which are necessary for their individual and collective existence. Then it will be to the interest of all to supply the needs of all by mutual labour, because so, and so only, will they individually obtain the satisfaction of their own legitimate desires, and this will lift the whole question above the plane of mere physical materialism, for it will involve the constant practice of the higher mental and moral qualities of the race. Communism ! Yes, I know that, and I rejoice in it, for a sane Communism is the highest ideal, economic, political, social, scientific, philosophical, and religions, which has ever been offered to the world.
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