The Shining Pyramid (collection)/The Capital Levy
THE CAPITAL LEVY
An Essay in Economics
A little politics, I think, for a change. We have all enjoyed the Christmas Feast tremendously. I trust we have done our duty as Britons to the Turkey, the Plum Pudding, the Mince Pies, the Port and the Punch, both as a pleasure and as a sacred duty—see the old Parson's Christmas Sermon in Washington Irving's dear book. Very good: but the fare is rich and full-bodied; it may not be amiss to take something tart and dry and astringent by way of an alterative, as I think the doctors call such a medicine. I call it a Pickmeup.
Well, it has gradually filtered into my intelligence, which knows little and cares less about politics, that there has been a General Election, and that the Labour Party is the second largest party in the house, polling, by the way, a huge number of votes, which under other electoral systems would have secured them many more seats than they actually hold. And what these formidable fellows want is a Capital Levy, and—put it plain and put it short—that means taking away money from the haves and giving it to the havenots.
Now it is not my business to determine whether this would be a good plan or not. Frankly, speaking most emphatically as one of the havenots, rather, as one of the vagabonds who hope each night that the farmer's fowls are not too noisy, and that the thicket in the wild field is not too wet to sleep in, frankly, from this my point of view I should think that the Capital Levy is nonsense. I don't believe that I should get a penny of it: I think it would go in building more palaces like Australia House in the Strand and in paying large numbers of official patriots very handsomely. I believe that all the wise folks, not being fanatics, have always declared that "dividing up" was rubbish. It is said that the condition of the common, average man in Russia is not noticeably better now than it was in the days of the Little Father, though that was by no means a golden age. Then, the Swiss, a solid people who have run the Commonwealth of the Common Man with very considerable success for some hundreds of years; they will have nothing to say to this "Morrison's Pill Remedy"—to quote Carlyle—of a Capital Levy. The early Christians tried the plan for a few years, but they soon abandoned it. And considering their zeal and their admirable fervour: it would almost seem that the plan is radically incompatible with human nature. It is of no good for man to pretend he has three legs; unless he is a sideshow in a Circus. The impersonation is sure to break down, and to break down in a somewhat lamentable manner.
Still, this is all beside the mark. The point is that the very large number of votes cast for the Labour Party and the Capital Levy signifies that there is a vast body of discontent in the country, a vast number of people who feel that "things" are all wrong, and that these vague "things" should be and can be made right. I entirely agree with them. But I don't think that what they really want is more money; though that would be very nice too; if it could be managed. I believe that they are discontented, and rightly discontented, because the work that most of them do is entirely unfit for humanity, because, in consequence, they are bored to tears, angry, sullen, in an ill humour. It sounds somewhat shocking; but if anything like modern industrialism could have existed in ancient times, the only workers would have been slaves and criminals. In the old service-books there were prayers for "those in the mines." I don't wonder at it. How would you and I like to pass a great part of our lives in a deep, black, hot hole in the ground, lying on our backs in a low, narrow passage, hacking away the coal over our heads?
And then the other people, the people who are above ground. I remember once, when I was strolling about England, being roused early in the morning at a place called Farnworth, not very far from Manchester. I may mention by the way that the only thing that would do Farnworth any good would be T. N. T. and plenty of it. Well, I was roused at this horrid Farnworth between 5 and 6 in the morning, by a clattering on the pavement outside. It was a grey morning and a grey cold drizzle of rain was falling, and below in the mean, ugly street the mill-girls with grey shawls on their heads were clattering along in their clogs to the mills; there to be a part of mechanism all day long, to have a little more sense than the looms they tended, but not much. Is it to be wondered that such a life breeds sour discontent? It would be awful, indeed, if it did not breed discontent; for then humanity would have fled from the human heart.
There is another instance that occurs to me. I remember, a dozen years ago, there was an Exhibition of the Boot Industry up at Islington. The Exhibition had a pretty poster, called "Then and Now," or by some such title. One side of it shewed a pleasant old man, sitting at the door of his pleasant old cottage, affectionately tapping away at a boot, which, be it understood, he had made all by himself. Every slice of leather was his doing, every stitch his sewing, every nail his hammering. When the boots were finished, they would be his humble masterpiece; he might have signed their soles, if he would, "Adonijah Marbuck fecit." Then, on the other side of the poster, was a brisk young fellow of to-day, in a modern boot factory, handling some sort of a lever in some sort of a mechanism, and presumably performing the tenth or twentieth or thirtieth process involved in boot-making, as it now is, and destined to do nothing else for the rest of his life. In the poster, this young man looks happy and contented. But he isn't. He votes for the Labour Party and for Loot. I am not in the least surprised. Would you like to depress that lever, move it slightly to the right, raise it, depress it to the left, all day and every day for the natural term of your life? I hope not.
And the worst of it is: there is no remedy, no possibility of a remedy. Let us have a benevolent despot who would abolish all machinery invented after the seventeenth century. The result would be that in a few months, a very few months, we should all be starving in tattered clothes and bare feet, and rather worse off than the Russians are to-day. It is not to be done. It will be noted that I have said nothing about the "dangerous trades." I don't think they matter much. Men are not much affected by danger and risk and hazard nor even by horrible physical discomfort; in fact, many men incur all these things voluntarily and joyfully and call it sport and adventure and exploration and the Army and so forth. If the manufacture of china were a dread adventure, with the risk of poison always and certainly present, but always a tremendous uncertainty as to what might happen any day, any hour: then we should have Expeditions to Hanley and Stoke, and heroes insisting on lead-glazing vegetable dishes and sauce-boats; with Memorial Services at St. Paul's for the Mighty Dead. But it is not so, and it cannot be so. We are bound on the industrial wheel, and that wheel must revolve remorselessly till—the end of our era. So far as we can see, boots are going to be made by mechanical processes and not by individual craft and thought and labour up to the very end of anything that we can conceive.
I repeat: the money question, the question of what recompense the labouring man is to receive for leading a dreary, mechanical and inhuman life is important enough; but it is not the question. If money were the root of this sad evil: then the working-man would not find his chief delight in "finding winners"; which are mostly losers and cost him dear. For, I believe there is very little doubt amongst those who know that backing horses is distinctly unprofitable for the backers. Peers have come to horrid grief over it, and so have plasterers. There are streaks and flashes of luck, of course; but from the practical point of view it is the baddest of all bad business. The bookies grow to be shiny men with red, prosperous necks; the backers go groaning as far as money is concerned. But they go on backing. I see them in bar corners, the evening paper opened at the sporting page, standing with knotted brows, poring over the elaborate tables of tips, comparing the prophecy of "the Marshal" with the prophecy of "Stycorax," weighing the judgment of "Peppermint" with the judgment of "the Lad," calculating, pondering, speculating—and enjoying themselves enormously. Sometimes there enters suddenly one with high importance in his air; he beckons to his friend, he whispers in his ear secrets, sure secrets that come by devious ways from the very stable itself; there is deep conference; again intense enjoyment; and, in the long run, a balance on the wrong side so far as the backer is concerned. He doesn't care: something went wrong with the Berkshire, but he has a dead cert. for the Leicester.
Clearly, then, the root of the problem is not to be sought for in the matter of money, for if it were working-men would not pass so much time in doing their best to lose what they have. So far as money is concerned, I have always held that co-partnership is the only solution, not only nor chiefly because labour would have a larger share of the profits and very justly, too; but because an element of uncertainty would be introduced into labour's existence, and uncertainty is one of the great salts of life, if it be not the essential salt of all human life. The weekly wage would go on as before; but what about that three monthly or six monthly bonus? Why, I believe that every factory would get up a sweepstake as to the amount and so add sweetness to sweetness.
Meanwhile gambling in all its forms should be encouraged, if life is not to become intolerable for the wage-slaves. I am delighted to see that ingenious persons have succeeded of late in driving a tunnel right under the Lottery Acts. For a mere half-crown you have a chance of winning two thousand pounds; there is something to think about as you raise the lever and move it to the right, depress it and move it to the left, in deadly repetition all day long. The unpalatable dry meat of daily existence is salted, seasoned, made endurable by the element of wonder, surmise, uncertainty that has been mingled with it. Assuredly the inventors of "Ballots" are public benefactors.
Of course, there are other ways of palliating the boredom of modern existence. There is the interesting case of the sporting nobleman, confronted every winter with the cessation of racing on the flat. What was he to do with himself? He consulted a wise man, who told him to go and be an Egyptologist. He followed this advice, and a month or two ago, the quest of years was rewarded. His picks and spades burst into the treasure house of the dead Kings with the strange names who reigned in Egypt nearly four thousand years ago; and he saw the wonderful things of gold and lapis lazuli that had been laid there in secret hundreds of years before Troy fell, nearly a thousand years before Romulus raised the walls of Rome. That was a great moment indeed; but Egyptian exploration is a sport beyond the means of most of us, and out of the question where factory hands and miners are concerned.
No; Egyptology is no solution for Labour Unrest, and writing books—another way—is more a vice than a sport. Let the Labour Party bring in a Co-partnership Bill instead of that Capital Levy nonsense, while their followers "spot winners" and buy tickets in all the Ballots going. Thus we shall get along tolerably, if not very well.