BOOKS.

LABOUR AND THE POPULAR WELFARE,* Mn. NAMLOCK is a many-sided writer. His lucidity of style and thought and his keen and rather malicious humour have long ago made his name familiar with the reading world as that of a satirist, caricaturist, novelist, and social inquirer. His latest work is more than worthy of his brilliant reputa- tion, and establishes once and for all his right to be considered seriously; it is much more human in its tone than his earlier writings, and leaves no unwholesome flavour on the palate, such as was generally experienced after tasting of the highly seasoned pages of The New _Republic. Thia book is a clearly expressed and carefully considered exposition of a difficult economic question, which has never been sufficiently illumi- nated by specialists, but which has a highly important bear- ing on some of the most pressing political problems of the day.

Mr. Mallock's subject is the share of Labour in the National Income,—a question which verbiage has rendered trite, but reason has not settled. He gives an entirely new turn to the discussion by showing the inadequacy of the ordinary clas si- fication of the means of production, as land, labour, and capital. Labour and capital he puts together under a new category,—human exertion; and he subdivides this term into two,—ability, of which capital is only a" congealed" form, and labour. This new distinction is so important that Mr. Mallock must be allowed to explain it himself 1— "Human exertion as applied to the production of wealth is of two distinct kinds : Ability and Labour—the former being essen- tially moral or mental exertion, and only incidentally muscular ; the latter being mainly muscular, and only moral or mental in a comparatively unimportant sense. This difference between them, however, though accidentally it is always present, and is what at first strikes the observation, is not the fundamental difference. The fundamental difference is of quite another kind. It lies in the following 'fact : That Labour is a kind of exertion on the part of the individual, which begins and ends with each separate task it is employed upon, whilst Ability is a kind of exertion on the part of the individual which is capable of affecting simultaneously the labour of an indefinite number of individuals, and thus hastening or perfecting the accomplishment of an indefinite number of tasks."

The part played in production by ability is almost an undis- covered study; the question has, indeed, been hinted at by Walker, who, in his Political Economy lays special stress on the importance and productive efficacy of the entrepreneur in commerce, while Mill has glanced at the matter in a. casual reference to the "wages of superintendence;" bat it has been left to Mr. Mallock to distinguish logically and assign to their proper positions the two subdivisions of the activity of man- kind in the pursuit of wealth. When the question is looked at from this new standpoint, it at once becomes plain that the struggle of labour to better its position is directed, not towards taking a larger share of the intereet on capital, but at wresting some part of their income from the possessors of ability. This proposition will appear startling to many who have been misled by the obscure and loose expressions in which economists love to involve the mysteries of their science. But a moment's reflection makes it evident that the popular belief that labour has only got to get all the capital of the nation into its hands in order to be all-powerful, is based on forgetfulness of the fact that misdirected capital * Labour and the .Papular Wayare. By W. H. Mallock. London; A. and C. Black. is quite as helpless as misdirected labour. Mr. Mallock brings forward the instructive example of the Bessemer steamer, a vessel fitted with "a sort of rocking saloon," which was expected to mitigate the horrors of travelling by sea, by remaining level in spite of the rolling of the ship. Un- fortunately, this ingenious design was found to be quite impracticable, and the boat, on which hundreds of thousands of pounds had been spent, proved totally unseaworthy, and was sold as old iron. There was no lack of capital in this case, and the labour employed was no less skilful than that directed to the construction of the City of Paris.' The failure was due solely to an error of judgment on the part of ability.

Ability is tbe faculty which directs and organises labour, studies closely the fluctuations of demand for various com- modities in various markets, and is capable of weighing the expediency of adopting new departures in machinery, and undertaking fresh enterprises in production. It includes the inventive genius of the theoretical engineer, together with the commercial instinct of the practical manager of a large industrial concern. Mr. Mallock ascribes to the influence of this faculty the whole of the enormous addition which has been made to the national income daring the present century, arguing that labour in itself is unprogressive, and has shown no improvement since the dawn of civilisation :— " In the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, which belong the age of stone, objects have been found which bear witness to a manual skill equal to that of the most dexterous workmen of to-day.

It was even found, when the unburied ship of a Viking was being reproduced for the International Exhibition at Chicago, that in point of mere workmanship, with all our modern appli- ances, it was impossible to make the copy any better than the original; whilst if we institute a comparison with times nearer our own—especially if we come to the close of the last century— it is hardly necessary to Bay that in every operation which depended on training of eye and hand, the great-grandfathers of the present generation were the equals of their great-grandsons. We will therefore content ourselves with comparing the labourers of to-day with the labourers of the days of Pitt ; and with regard to those two sets of men, we may safely say this, that in whatever respect the latter seem able to do more than the former, their seemingly increased power can be definitely traced to some source outside themselves, from which it has been taken and lent to them,—in other words, to the ability of some one able man, or else to the joint action of a body of able men."

Put into figures, the result of the exertions of ability stands thus :— "A given number of people, a hundred years ago, produced yearly in this country a hundred and forty million pounds. The same number of people to-day produce two and a half times as much. Labour, a hundred years ago, could not have produced more than the total product of the community—that is to say, a hundred and forty million pounds ; and if it produced that then, it produces no more now. The whole added product is produced by the action of Ability."

In dealing with such a work as Mr. Mallook's, a quotation gives a quite unsatisfactory impression. The book is so clearly considered and logically expressed throughout, and the different parts of the argument hang together so closely, that an excerpt is but as a stone taken from a mosaic. Nevertheless, it being clearly understood that any one who wishes to do Mr. Mallock justice must read his treatise from beginning to end, we may perhaps be allowed to quote a striking passage in which the present wages of labour are compared with those which it received at the beginning of the present reign :— "In 1843, when Queen Victoria had been six or seven years on the throne, the gross income of the nation was in round numbers five hundred and fifteen million pounds. Of this, two hundred and thirty-five million pounds went to the labouring classes ; and the remainder, two hundred and eighty million pounds, to the classes that paid Income-tax. Only fifty years have elapsed since that time, and, according to the best authorities, the income of the labouring classes now is certainly not less than sir hundred and sixty million pounds. That is to say, it exceeds, by a hundred and forty-five minion pounds, the entire income of the nation fifty years ago. '

After making due allowance for the increase in the numbers of the labourers, Mr. Mallock finds that "the labouring classes of this country, in proportion to the number, receive to-day forty-seven, millton pounds a year more than the entire in- come of the country at the beginning of the reign of Queen Victoria." And he puts the case again in a fresh light "Dreams of some possible social revolution, dreams of some divi- sion of property by which most of the riches of the rich should be abstracted from them and divided amongst the poor—there were not wanting fifty years ago. But even the most sanguine

of the dreamers hardly ventured to hope that the riches of the rich could be taken away from them completely ; that a sum equal to the rent of the whole landed aristocracy, all the interest on capital, all the profits of our commerce and manufactures, could be added to what was then the income of the labouring classes. No forces of revolution were thought equal to such a change as that. But what have the facts been ? What has happened really ? Within fifty years the miracle has taken place, or,

indeed one greater than that They have gained every penny that they possibly could have gained if every rich man of that period—if duke, and cotton lord, and railway king, followed by all the host of minor plutocrats, had been forced to cast all they had into the treasury of Labour, and give their very last farthing to swell the labourers' wages. The labourers have gained this ; but that is not all. They have gained an annual Bum of forty-seven Iniftion pounds more. And they have done all this, not only without revolution, but without any attack on the fundamental principles of property. On the contrary, the circum- stances which enabled Labour to gain most from the proceeds of Ability, have been the circumstances which have enabled Ability to produce most itself."

It is hardly necessary to point out the conclusion at which Mr. Mallook arrives from the consideration of the facts and figures which he puts before us. To sum his position up, it is evident that labour, like capital, is helpless unless it is well directed ; that the position of the labourers can only be improved by the continuance of the improvement in the methods of production, which has led to the enormous rise in the national income ; that this improvement is due solely to

the exertions of ability, and that therefore, however legitimate be the desire of the labourers to add to their own wages by lowering the income of ability, they will be acting against their own interests if they push their demands to a point

which renders further activity on the part of ability unprofit- able.

Sanguine dreamers, such as Mr. Mello& mentions as existing fifty years ago, are still to be found among us, and many of them, believe that the whole problem can be

solved by State-ownership or co-operation. The latter system, under which the labourer provides his own capital and his own ability, has been tried and found wanting ; the interests of labour have no sincerer upholder than Professor Marshall, but he, in his Economics of Industry, admits that "in fact the managers of a Co-operative Society seldom have the alertness, the inventiveness, and the ready versatility of the ablest of those men who have been selected by the struggle for survival, and have been trained by the perfectly free and unfettered responsibility of private busi- ness." State -ownership is hardly within the bounds of practical politics at present; but the gentlemen who have called themselves in to doctor our commercial system, and have written "Down with competition" on the prescription. would be disagreeably surprised by the result of their treat- ment, if even the patient were misguided enough to swallow

the dose. There is nothing to prevent the national income from falling with the same prodigious rapidity with which it has risen. Our commerce is engaged in a life-and-death struggle, and the effect on the teeming populations of our great towns would be so disastrous as to be absolutely appalling, if owing to any measures of so-called reform our industrial exertions were to be relaxed and enfeebled. Only by the fullest and freest liberty of enterprise and competition can our traders maintain their hold on the markets of the world. Every new measure which limits the incentive to activity and the desire to save on the part of each individual, puts the welfare of the nation,

and especially of the labouring classes, into a position of great jeopardy. How much has been accomplished under the

present system, and how fully the workers have shared in the fruits of the general exertion, is ably shown by Mr. Mallock.

He fully recognises the right of labour to desire further benefits, and, indeed, writes with the express object of clearly stating the conditions under which the gigantic progress of the present century has been achieved, and of proving that only by maintaining those conditions in their highest possible degree of efficacy can the forward movement be pressed on still further.

Mr. Mallock's hope, that he has avoided controversial matter, is probably doomed to disappointment ; but it may safely be asserted that none can fail to be charmed with the lucidity and logical directness of his work, while its utility

as a, practical commentary on a recondite economic, social, and political question cannot be overrated.