PLAIN WORDS ON 'nth INDUSTRIAL CRISIS. T HE public mind, bewildered
by torrents of words and waterspouts of statistics, real and imaginary, in regard to the coal strike, has become utterly confused. Men ask, and no wonder, why it is and how it is that we have been brought, as they see only too well we have been brought, to the very edge of a terrible abyss. They feel that somewhere or other, though they can't exactly say where, we must have taken the wrong turning, for it cannot have been necessary to tread a path so full of peril, and possibly one with no end but irremediable disaster. Why, they keep on asking in their own minds, have all these dreadful things happened How is it that other countries, even vanquished Germany, are not in anything like the state of peril that we are in ? For the first two and a-half years of the Peace it looked as if things were better here than in most countries, and then suddenly this catastrophe has fallen upon us. What is the reason of it all ?
The reason, reduced to its lowest terms, is this. We have been pretending that it is possible to pay wages higher than the economic conditions will allow. That is the long and short of the whole matter. " But why should that bring about such appalling results It may be ill- advised or extravagant, but there is no reason why it should mean ruin." Because it is, speaking in an economic sense, impossible to pay men more than the economic conditions allow. No doubt, when one says " impossible," that must be taken in a relative sense. You may, of course, temporarily and for a set purpose, overcome the laws of economics, but that does not alter those laws any more than the law of gravity is altered by the fact that men are able to jump, or to swing for a considerable time by holding on to a trapeze with their hands. Though, speaking in the abstract, men cannot be paid more wages than the economic conditions allow—cannot get more money out of an industry than there is in that industry, i.e., than can be produced by the sale of the product—the State, which means the whole body of taxpayers, can sub- sidize the workers in a particular industry and so make them appear to be earning more than the economic conditions allow. It is, however, only in appearance. If real wages are, say, £3 a week, and the workers receive £4 a week, what has happened is that an additional £1 is paid by the rest of the taxpayers to prevent the economic laws taking effect. It will be said, perhaps : " Well, what does it matter ? There is nothing blasphemous or wicked in counteracting an economic law when its results are cruel and unsocial. Mining is a very dangerous trade, though, curiously enough, the mmers don't seem to object to it, and therefore it is the duty of the State to compensate the miners for being willing to undertake such hard work under such unpleasant conditions. That is how the cruel laws of economics should be treated in a civilized state." At first sight that seems a proper and humane way of meeting the difficulty. But wait a minute I In the first place we must remember that when we talk about the State doing a thing, we are indulging in a poetic impersonification. The State has got no purse of its own. All it can do is to put its hand into our purses and extract money from them. "No doubt. But why should we be so selfish as to refuse to make a contribution to men doing such useful, nay necessary, work as that of the miners ? Surely here, if anywhere, the labourer is worthy of his hire." That this is logically correct we do not deny. If the taxpayers like, they can pay an extra wage to the miners. But how about the other trades If the matter is looked into carefully, can it possibly be said that the miners' trade is one so different from all other trades that the miners ought to be subsidized, while a similar subsidy ought to be refused to their fellow-workers ?
The answer, " No, let them all come. Let them all have it," is clearly impossible, except in those happy regions where people live entirely by taking in each other's washing and backing each other's bills. " Then let the Capitalist pay." Alas I the Capitalist, as has been shown again and again, is not rich enough. His capital, which is almost all credit—i.e., the potentiality of making money rather than money actually made — withers like the grass under the fierce rays of the Socialistic sun. Since even the State cannot pay out money in wages which it has not got, the only logical and possible plan is to establish a privileged industry. But if you do that for the miners, you will certainly have to do the same for two or three other important industries, such as the iron and steel industry, the shipping industry, the railways, and all other forms of transport. The result of this must be a crushing burden on the un- subsidized industries. It is possible that you might find the point where the crushing would not exactly exterminate. Mark, however, the result I You would have a set of privileged subsidized workers resting upon something very like the serfdom of the unsub- sidized. You would have an economic caste system. The people in the unsubsidized trades would want to enter the subsidized. But this would not be congenial to those enjoying the subsidy. They would much prefer that their own sons and daughters should enter the privileged trades rather than strangers. Thus trades would become heredi- tary like the hereditary castes in India. In truth, you can no more have Communism in small than in big doses. The small doses kill more slowly but none the less surely than the big—the doses from which we see the people of Russia dying in an agony more intense and more terrible than that of which history affords any record. " What, then, is the remedy ? " The remedy is to heave the coal trade alone. " But that might mean terrible suffer- ings for the coal-miners." No doubt it would mean a very considerable reduction of wages, but the mine- owners are willing, and, as we think, rightly willing, to speculate upon their being able to carry on without a reduction to anything like such low wages as are paid to the agricultural labourer for a longer day's work. Even suppose, though no one has suggested it, that the wages were to come down to the agricultural labourer's level, why is it necessary to assume that a minor cannot and ought not to be expected to live upon a wage which millions of people in this country do live upon, and live upon without any physical or social degradation Remember, we are not talking as if low wages were some- thing with which manual workers ought to be contented. We draw no such monstrous distinction. A man has got just as good a right to earn " big money " with his hands as with his brains. The great painters or sculptors are only sublimated handicraftsmen. But the low-paid brain- worker or " professional man," as we call him, is in many cases suffering greater losses of income, not merely rela- tively, but actually, than that proposed for those engaged in the mining industry. We all know of clergymen either in the Established Church or amongst the Nonconformists whose spending incomes are well below £160 a year. Will anyone dare to say that they have not faced their difficulties, difficulties for which they are not in any sense personally, responsible, with the utmost courage and good sense ? Have they ever attempted to hold up the nation and say, " Till we are satisfied and have got what we think is enough, the work of the nation shall not go on" I Have they ever said what one of the leaders of the miners said— that even if they failed they would have the satisfaction of knowing that they had dragged the whole country down to ioerish with them ? The men and women in the less well-paid professions, persons living on annuities, pen- sioners, and in fact all persons with small fixed incomes, are unquestionably now enduring great sufferings. They sank as the manual workers rose. Everything costs them more, and there is no possibility for them of increasing their income. We regret it, but we do not for a moment suggest that it is harder for a professional family to be poor than it is for that of a labourer. Of course it is not. All we say is that it is not worse for a miner to be poor than for a clergyman or schoolmaster. " Is there, then, no hope for the miner and for the manual worker generally. ? Is the door always to be slammed in his face 3 Is he for ever to be told that he cannot improve his position because the economic conditions will not allow it ? Is this iron rule to exclude him for ever from the realms of comfort and material progress ? " No. A thousand times no I Though the economic law cannot be frustrated by merely ignoring it, there is a remedy, and one perfectly satisfactory for Labour in spite of its apparent harshness. That remedy is increased production. If by any means the total product of an industry can be increased without increasing the cost of production, then at once the economic conditions begin to reform themselves and in such a way that wages can be not merely maintained but increased.
An increased demand is created by falling prices. But this is not all. Remember that increased production is never a single blessing, or even a double blessing, but always a multiplex blessing. Trade is so interlocked that if there is a positive and not merely a relative increase in production, and so a lowering of price, in any trade upon which other trades are dependent—and this means most trades—then an increased production will be set going in these trades and will reinforce the extra pro- duction which has been achieved in the trade which first began to increase its product. Not only do,the rivulets flow into an increased main stream, but they are them- selves increased.
Imagine for a moment what would happen if the men in every trade were seized with a sudden impulse which made them say : " Now, we will each of us work half an how longer every day, and during the whole time we are at work each of us guarantees to put a bit more punch behind every stroke." Further, let it be supposed that each man would guarantee to get the maximum out of any machine he attends, without thinking of any false economics about machinery ousting human labour, &c. Finally, let us suppose every manual labourer, according to his power, determining to think out some device or method for increasing production. Even if the resultant increase in production were only email in each trade, the aggregate result throughout the country might well be of almost incalculable importance to the wage-earners as a whole. The dry bones would stir throughout the land and, coming together, make a new world. Let there be no fear that the capitalist would be able to absorb the increase in production. No doubt he would get a share of the increased production in consideration of marketing the product, but no more.
The main advantage would go to the manual workers, first by the increased demand for the product which low prices would have inaugurated, but still more by the great increase in purchasing power conferred on wages. Though people always dwell upon the interests of the pro- ducer and focus attention on him, what we ought to think about quite as much is the consumer and his economic position. In a complicated world like the present, one can never get away from the fact that a man is only a producer in one trade and a consumer literally in a thousand. And yet, strange as it may seem, the worker always thinks about the nominal remuneration for his work as a pro- ducer, and hardly ever worries about what he will be able to buy with the metal or paper tickets called money which he receives. The greater number of us never give a thought to the comparative values of those exchanges which we are always carrying out. Yet they are of vital import to us. To put it another way, it is not the money we get, but what we can buy with it that really matters.
We must apologize to our readers for this dose of very elementary economics, but it is sometimes good to go back to the very simplest propositions and to re-read the first dozen or so of Euclid's. propositions. Lest, however, we should be called unpractical, we may make a suggestion which will appeal to those whose boast it is that they have unscientific minds. We say deliberately that if the miners want to do what is really best for them- selves, and not for the moment to take anything else into consideration, they should at this moment say to the Government : " Don't fritter away in wages that ten millions that you are always dangling before us as a bribe, but do this—let that ten millions be kept apart as a special fund administered by two men chosen by the unions and two men chosen by the owners, with a chairman nominated by the Government. Let it be the duty of these five trustees to inquire into all forms of labour-saving machinery which will increase the production without increasing the cost of production. If they are convinced that they have got hold of a good thing, let them say that they will lend money to any ` approved mine ' at a low rate of interest, and so increase the produc- tion per wages paid." That would be a pointer to the road which alone leads to the workers' millennium—Good wages and steady wages and cheap prices all round.
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