The social problem; life and work

Front matter

THE LIBRARY

OF THE

NEW YORK STATE SCHOOL

Preface

This volume is designed to be an informal introduction to the science and art of social progress. It does not profess to furnish any sufficient outline of sociology or politics, but seeks to ask and answer certain preliminary questions which confront thinking men and women who are interested in work of social reform, and wish to reach satisfactory intelligible principles for their guidance in such work.

Its primary object is to enforce the recognition of the organic unity of the problem of social progress by showing the interactions of the many concrete "questions'" and " movements " which divide the attention of social reformers.

The subject matter is approached first from the economic side because the most pressing aspects of the problem are more clearly seen and more definitely indicated in their economic bearings. The social problem is thus first presented as an economy of social forces operating upon the industrial plane. The claim of Political Economy, in its older and its newer forms, to handle successfully the Social Problem, as a whole, or in its separate issues, is examined and found wanting. By examining the nature of its defects we learn the true requisites of a social science which can furnish a satisfactory basis for an art of social progress.

This science and art of social utility is clearly sundered

a3

21897 vi PREFACE

from the old utilitarianism which was individualistic and hedonist in its standard, and purely quantitative in its method or calculus. To this new utilitarianism, so ordered as to give due recognition and rightful supremacy to the higher needs and satisfactions of man in society, the rights of individual property are referred for delimitation, and are set upon a rational basis. The part played by social cooperation, in the production of all forms of wealth and the determination of all forms of value, is investigated; and upon the results of this analysis the rights of society to possess and administer property for the commonwealth are established. The primary antithesis of Work and Life, function and nutrition, is examined in its physical, economic, and moral aspects, and is applied alike to the individual and the social organism, so as to yield a scientific harmony of the claims of Socialism and Individualism. Especial attention is given to marking clearly the operation of those industrial and social forces which make for the larger and more various activities of the State in politics and industry, and those which, on the other hand, directly tend to enlarge the bounds of individual liberty and enterprise. Here the distinctions between Art and Mechanism, spontaneity and routine, qualitative and quantitative production, are found to lie at the roots of the Social Problem.

Though no rigid formulae of universal application are pretended, certain primary laws of social growth are discerned which, when applied to the formidable issues of right economic distribution, population, public industry, imperial expansion, etc., yield convincing and intelligible tests of social utility, and present that unity of conception which is recognized as essential by all who accept the view of society as an organism or an organization. Whether or

PREFACE vii

to what extent these laws are well established, readers must judge. I would add one word addressed to those who, being close students of industrial economics, may not be fully satisfied with the assertion or assumption of the unfair and irrational character of the distribution of wealth and other opportunities under existing circumstances. Placed in the dilemma of seeking to convince economic specialists by a long and intricate analysis which would break the general current of thought, and would repel and perhaps perplex non-specialists, I have preferred the focus of the wider reading public. I may, however, venture to refer any who think that I have not adequately presented the economic analysis of distribution, or have willingly shirked it, to my technical treatment of the subject in " The Economics of Distribution" (Macmillan Company).

The substance of this volume was first delivered in the form of lectures to the London branch of the Christian Social Union, and was afterwards printed in a series of articles in The Ethical World. The matter, however, has been entirely recast and largely re-written for the purpose of this volume.

JOHN A. HOBSON,

March, I90I.

Book I The Science Op Social Progress

CHAPTER FAOB

I. Is THERE A Social Question? . . . . 1

II. Waste in Wokk and Life . . 8

III. The Old Political Economy . 17

IV. The New Political Economy 33

V. Requisites of a Science of Wealth — Deposition op

THE Money Standard 39

VI. The Transition from "Is" to "Ought" ... 51

VII. The QuANTrrATiVE Method in Socul Science . . 70

VIII. Necessaries and Luxuries 78

Book II The Art Of Social Progress

I. The Bights of Man

II. Natural Rights of Individual Property .

III. Infringements of Rights op Property.

IV. Is A Leisured Class desirable? .

V. Individualist Solutions of Social Problems

VI. Society as Maker of " Values " .

VII. Distribution according to Needs

87 95 112 122 131 141 155

X CONTENTS

OHAPTBR PAGE

VIII. Public and Pkivatb Industkt ... 174

IX. Lakd and Ageicultuke . . . . 187

X. "Humanitarian Socialism" 196

XI. The Pboblem of Population .... 205

XII. Education and Economy of Individual Life .218

XIII. Over-Specialization in Industrial Life . . 224

XIV. Over-Specialization in Intellectual Lite 231 XV. SocLUJSM IN the Arts and Professions . . 238

XVI. Unemployment and Misemployment .... 248

XVII. The need of a Sociology 256

XVin. Economy op Individual and Social Life . . . 265

XIX. Economy op National Life 272

XX. The Eanoe and Area of "Social Utility" . . . 280

INDEX 289

BOOK I

THE SCIENCE OF SOCIAL PROGRESS

CHAPTER I IS THERE A SOCIAL ftUESTION ?

The inefTable vagueness of the Social Question has so powerfully impressed the general imagination that few seem able to believe that there must be an answer, or even that the so-called Question can be put in any intelligible form. The academic person who seeks precision by minute specialization denies that there is a Social Question — there are only social questions; the practical reformer has narrowed the phrase to connote Drink, Sex Relations, Population, or even Money. Socialists, whose name might indicate a large handling of the theme, commonly confine it to schemes for the manipulation of material goods with a variety of indefinite and wholly unexplored implications. The average thoughtful, level-headed man is so certain that those who talk about the Social Question are either pedants or faddists, or vague fanatical enthusiasts, that he has long since closed his head and heart to it. Yet this attitude is both novel and indefensible. The world's great thinkers have never denied the unity of the Social Question, or sought to shelve it; many of them, impelled by otherworldliness, have removed the centre of its gravity, content to seek a true society in heaven, and willing to condone the crudities of earth; but all the great philosophers, prophets, and poets have sought, in their several fashions, to "see life steadily, and see it whole," and, recognizing some central spirit of humanity which drives towards an ideal, have presented to themselves and to the world a Social Question.

The present century seemed at one time to be giving definite modern shape and import to it. Great representative thinkers, such as Bentham, Robert Owen, Comte, J. S. Mill, Mazzini, Spencer, Ruskin, strove to enforce and to express the intellectual and moral unity of social progress, each according to his light, and to resist the paralyzing tendency of feeble or timid minds to lose "the one" in " the njany," and, on the plea of being practical, to become sectarian reformers, vigorous in marking time and in cancelling each other's progress. Buoyant confidence and magnificent conceptions of social progress no longer sway men's minds ; it is a day of small things, and men actually glory in the smallness of their thoughts and hopes, as indicative of safety and thoroughness, forgetting that great nations and great men have ever " hitched their waggon to a star," taking all knowledge for their province, and reaching with a reckless amplitude of grasp after some dearly-loved, but dimly-seen, ideal. But this disillusionment is only temporal and partial ; the brilliant anticipations of a miraculously rapid entrance into "the land of promise," which earlier prophets in this century held forth, have, indeed, been overcast by the modern doctrine of evolution, and falsified by the tenor of history ; while the unprecedented growth of new forms of material comfort has absorbed the energy and almost monopolized the very name of progress. But the unity and force of the Social ideal is not dead — it is only sleeping ; and there are many signs of its awakening into new life.

The demand for order in our thought and conduct is invincible ; it may be swamped for a season by a surging sea of external changes, but it comes up again, for it is implied in the rational nature of man. But it comes up in new

IS THERE A SOCIAL QUESTION? 3

forms with new conditions. As it is taking shape to-day two new elements assert themselves. The organic conception of society and the historic conception of continuity are two chief products of modern thinking which have modified profoundly — if they have not, indeed, transformed — the conception of social progress. The new face they have given to the Social Question takes time for its clear recognition. Meanwhile it is vague and indefinite. But powerful forces are at work. The passion of Wholeness, or Holiness, which is in the blood of man, urges to a new attempt to formulate social order. Not merely does the decay of supematuralism among the thinking minority throw the stress of interest upon this life — "Hath man no second life, pitch this one high," but sociality has so far penetrated the religious world as to demand that society in this life shall form a necessary preparation for society in another life. Here, also, the doctrine of continuous development has triumphed over and expelled the doctrine of miraculous transformation. The City of God requires us to be good citizens on earth, and enjoins that we secure for all the conditions of good citizenship. Thus, everywhere the spiritual individualism of selfish soul-saving, with the attendant neglect of this world's sanctity, shows signs of perishing from the more enlightened Churches; everywhere the ideas of continuity and of organic society are forcing their way, imposing a new value and a new meaning upon life. All this is vague enough, and may form the floating material of a vague philosophy, a new mysticism. Of such a mysticism, a new philosophic cult with an esoteric terminology, by which a few erudite initiates may communicate with one another, there are many indications. For any intelligible formulation of the Social Question is evidently in some sort a demand for a new philosophy of life. But a Social Question which is left to professed philosophers can never be answered. A satisfactory answer cannot consist in the theoretic solution of a problem ; it must lie in the region of social conduct. Not merely the saying what should be done, but the doing, is the solution. The reins of Science and Practice are drawn together; a theory of social conduct which shall take cognizance of all the factors will be likewise the art of social conduct.

The first requisite of a really profitable setting of the Social Question under its new conditions is that such setting shall be intelligible to all persons possessed of a moderate literary education and average capacities of thought. Such a setting must probably, in the nature of words and things, fail fully to conform to the metaphysical niceties. But the latter cannot, and will not, be apprehended by any considerable section of a society, and will not, either directly or indirectly, wield any great influence on social conduct. The inherent deceitfulness of philosophy leads such a man as Tolstoy to maintain that in the unlettered peasant's ideas and language we must seek the most satisfactory statement of problems of life. But this is merely one implication of the ultimately false logic of " no compromise." There is nothing absolute in language, or even in ideas; if we wish to secure an end, we must select those which are most convenient to our purpose. In the present case, seeking to formulate the Social Question in a practically serviceable form, it is essential to adopt a middle course, shunning alike the refinement of philosophic specialism and the equally defective simplicity of common speech : the one sterilizes action, the other understanding.

The best apprehension of the greatest number being taken for our intellectual focus, it follows that our setting must be in the full sense of the word, "utilitarian." The premature abandonment of the utilitarian setting by many thinkers, through pique arising from the narrow and degrading interpretation given to the term, has not been justified. English people are habituated to conceive and express the "desired " and " the desirable " in terms of utility ; and even

IS THERE A SOCIAL QUESTION? 5

philosophers, like the late Professor Green, who are stoutest in repudiating Utilitarianism, invariably return to that terminology to express their final judgment on a concrete morq,l issue. The revolt of a few superior minds against the general conceptions and expressions of a nation embodied in a language is always futile and commonly mischievous. The particular vices of some special form of utilitarianism, the insistence that desirability was entirely to be measured by quantity and never by quality, the stress upon physical enjoyment, and the short range of measurement, which were somewhat incorrectly attributed to Bentham's system, are not inherent in utilitarianism, and need not deter us from using its convenient language. Thus much in preface; the real justification of this form of stating the Social Question is its success.

One further explanation is essential. It is not my purpose to offer what would be rightly called a philosophy of social life — in other words, a full solution to the Social Question. It is rather the setting of the question which forms my direct object. We shall be concerned less with the contents than with the form of the solution. That these are practically separable may be shown by an illustration from industry. Industrial science may indicate the business forms that are most suitable for the production of the largest quantities of material wealth; but whether a particular society shall adopt all these forms, or in what proportion they shall be adopted, will depend upon the particular estimates it assigns to these kinds of wealth. So, in our setting of the wider Social Question, allowance must be made for temperament of individual, class, and race. A common form or conception of social progress may be made, but the actpal endeavours of a society to conform to it will largely depend upon particular valuations and focus. Valuations may be affected by experience and education ; but, at any given time, the same course of conduct will not be equally desired by, or equally desirable for, two different individuals or natures. Time-focus also plays a most important part. Economists know how the rate of interest and the expenditure of incomes hinge upon the appreciation of a more or less distant future. Historians know that politics are chiefly a matter of time-adjustment, and that a focus of the next election, a generation, or ten centuries, would impose totally difierent policies upon a Government or a nation.

It is evidently idle to dogmatize upon this valuation and focus, or to insist that desirable things shall have an absolute and unchangeable value. But it is not idle to try to arrange our thoughts so as to give unity and harmony within these limits, so that any one of us, given his temperamental valuation and his range of vision, may view as a complete rational whole, "the socially desirable."

There are two modes of this setting — one positive, the other negative. The social problem may be set in terms of wealth or terms of want, the convex and the concave aspects of social economy. The early political economists and social reformers assumed the positive attitude concerning themselves primarily with wealth in a narrower or vdder sense; but it is significant of our more critical age that a Social Question has become almost synonymous with the treatment of want, the cure of disease rather than the enlargement of health.

The positive setting of the question, however, gave indication of an antithesis which is fundamental throughout our study, between effort and satisfaction, human work and human life. Many other oppositions will disclose themselves — the opposition of Producer and Consumer, Individual and Society, Cost and Utility, Employer and Worker, Income and Expenditure, and others ; but it will be found that all these antitheses which give rise to vainous problems of their own are resoluble into or dependant on the basic antithesis of effort and satisfaction. At the outset of our inquiry it

IS THERE A SOCIAL QUESTION? 7

is convenient to assume the reality of this antithesis, though we shall find that in the end a solution of the Social Question will be satisfactory in just proportion as it fuses the opposition in making manifest the art of social life.

Intellectually considered, it seems at first indifferent whether we take the positive or the negative setting. Taken in the former way, the Social Question assumes this shape : " Given a number of human beings, with a certain development of physical and mental faculties and of social institutions, in command of given natural resources, how can they best utilize these powers for the attainment of the most complete satisfaction ? " This statement of the social end does not really beg any question, though it may seem to do so, for it purposely leaves open the interpretation of the term " satisfaction," and the question of quality versus quantity in measurement of "completeness." If, however, it seemed a more definite statement of the end, no harm would be done by adopting Ruskin's words, " The largest number of happy and healthy human beings."

The negative setting of the Social Question may be allowed in the beginning to assume an even broader shape after the words of a recent writer,* who says : " The history of progress is the record of a gradual diminution of Waste." From this standpoint the Social Question will find its essential unity in the problem how to deal with human waste.

* Prof. D. G. Ritchie.

Chapter II

A BRIEF inventory of the chief factors of the Social Question, set in terms of waste of work and life, is indispensable. All measurement by defect is apt to repel by an appearance of caricature, as when we mark the character of a book or a friend by a series of black dots; but it is often the best method of securing a distinct impression. In treating the Social Question habit confirms this manner of approach, and has illicitly confined the term economy, in its popular use, to the provision against waste.

Turning first to " work," we are confronted by the largest and most palpable waste in that accumulation of industrial disorder known as "unemployment." For long periods of time large stagnant pools of adult effective labour-power lie rotting in the bodies of their owners, unable to become productive of any form of wealth, because they cannot get access to the material of production. Facing them in equal idleness are unemployed or under-employed masses of land and capital, mills, mines, etc., which, taken in conjunction with this labour-power, are theoretically competent to produce wealth for the satisfaction of human wants. At certain brief periods of industrial prosperity these "pools" are nearly dry in the higher fields of skilled labour ; but in the lower grounds of industry they foi'oi a perpetual swamp.

Countless minor waves of industrial change — some periodically recurrent, some essentially irregular — continually enhance the waste of " unemployment."

While numbers of strong men stand workless, weaker women — the present or future mothers of the race — are driven in ever-growing numbers to take on them an excessive burden of wage-work, wearing themselves out prematurely in a struggle for an inadequate subsistence under conditions which injure the vitality of the race.

Wherever the law permits, machinery and other industrial conditions are adapted so as to use the immature labour-power of children and young persons, in order to displace the mature working strength of men. Net economy of profitable business commonly tends this way.

Irregularity and mal-apportionment of labour-time constitute a separate source of waste of labour-power. The constant over-strain of long hours in some trades, the alternation of overtime with short time in others, by injuring the working life, causes a net waste alike to the worker and to society. The enormous increase of certain orders of productive power by modern machinery, and the rapid expansion of the area of markets, impose a larger amount of unforeseen irregularity upon industry. The hold of the average employer upon a definite market, the hold of an average worker upon a particular employment, are weaker than they were; and this weakness is not yet adequately compensated by increased security of gaining another market or another "place."

Closely and causally related to this waste is the lack of any adequate and comprehensive system for discovering, educating, and utilizing for social purposes the best productive powers with which nature has endowed each member of society. The slow progress of discriminative education and of true equality of opportunity implies the neglect of modem society consciously to adapt itself to the utilization of the one great " economy ■" which modern science has most powerfully impressed upon us as a means of progress — division of labour, or "differentiation of functions."

Little trouble is yet taken to discover the special aptitudes of citizens in relation to the special needs of society, the best methods of training these aptitudes, and of furnishing, not negative and empty "freedom" to undertake this work, but the positive freedom of opportunity. A whole cluster of "education" problems, manual and mental, demanding, not a separate empirical solution, but a related organic solution, with direct regard to full economy of social work, appears as part of the Social Question. Every failure to put the right man or woman in the right place, with the best faculty of filling that place, involves social waste.

Conditions of work form another factor. The unsanitary, dangerous, degrading character imposed upon much work, not by the inherent nature of the necessary processes, but by considerations of individual profit, is a known source of incalculable injury. The employment of white-lead workers, the needlessly brutalizing work of irou-puddlers and stokers the whole system of slum workshops, mean a shortening and enfeebling of the working-life. The fact that an average town manual worker lives some fifteen years less than an average member of the well-to-do classes is, perhaps, the largest measurable leakage of social working-power with which we are confronted. Its bearing on the "life" side of the problem will receive further consideration.

The wasteful disposition of the labour that is done requires separate notice. I have alluded to an apparent excess of productive power which sufiFers periodic idleness. But the social waste involved by the growing proportion of energy put into competition, the effort to get work, orders, markets, is the unique feature of present industry. It is testified in every civilized community by the alarming growth in the proportion of the population engaged in work of distribution, the number of agents, canveissers, touts, and other persons "pushing" trade, the energy put into advertising, shop-dressing, and other arts of selling. The social worth of all this work is exceedingly small; it is mostly occupied in determining, not whether or what goods shall be made or sold, but who shall make and sell these goods — a matter of social indifference. This is not a denial of social gain from competition, but simply a recognition of the waste involved by keeping twelve instead of two competing grocers in one street.

One other definite waste of working-power must be named — ^that vested in the upper class of unemployed, the quarter of a million men in England and Wales, between the age of twenty and sixty-five, who, in 1891, were not even nominal members of any trade or profession. A large proportion of these men, and many more women, whose domestic work is practically nil, are quite capable of rendering social service ; and the dissipation of their energy in sport, or in what are humorously termed "social duties," constitutes a large item of waste. To these must be added a large number of merely nominal members of professions and persons whose only occupation is some amateur and generally incompetent work of a volunteer character.

Thus, then, the most general forms assumed by social problems relating to waste of work are these —

1. Many are not working.

2. Many are overworking or underworking.

3. Most are not doing that work which it is the interest of society they should do, or are not doing it in the best way they might.

The most convenient bridge by which to pass from the work side to the life side is that class of considerations which relates to the quality of work.

The absorption of the whole working-power of large classes by an ever minuter division of labour, unless balanced by increased freedom and leisure, tends to degrade the character of the workei", to injure the all-round development of his nature, and thereby to impair his faculties of enjoyment and non-industrial use.

The dominance of specialized routine impresses the character of machine-work upon the life, robs it of those elements of individuality and spontaneity which make existence rational and enjoyable. The machine is thus apt to make a class of machine-citizens, and to place them in towns made for machine purposes, and not for healthy social life. The element of order which modern factories and machine-processes introduce into the life of workers is not without its educative value; but made, as it is, the dominant factor in their lives, it is an immense source of degradation and of physical, aesthetic, and spiritual retardation.

No one can seriously examine the life of the "prosperous" northern manufacturing towns, which are typical of our present civilization, without recognizing the evil influences of the present dominion of machinery in thus degrading and retarding progi-ess. This statement does not ignore the sterling qualities of northern Englishmen, struggling against these tendencies, and even utilizing the elements of social contact furnished by their organized workshops and their crowded cities for wholesome political, social, and recreative movements. From the standpoint of healthy human life the modern industrial town is, in spite of all that is done for it, a failure. It has given new and difficult aspects to many social questions.

It is in these towns that poverty presents its most dismal and perplexing character. The vast increase of productive power owned by modern societies is yet used so weistefuUy that in London to-day one-third of the population are estimated to be living in chronic poverty, unable to satisfy properly the prime needs of animal life, and owning no appreciable share of the vast social inheritance which the progress of the last century and a half has won for our nation.

The life of these people is not worth living, so far as measurements of life are possible; they are living a life definitely worse in almost all respects than that of " savages " in any fairly fertile land, and with hardly more hope of escape or advancement. Take this statement of a recent traveller in Bechuanaland, only one of many similar testimonies: "I have visited nearly every native town of consequence in Bechuanaland, and I say unhesitatingly that these people are at this moment physically and morally far better off than many thousands of the population of our great cities in Great Britain, living happier and healthier lives by far than seven-tenths of our poor folk at home." * Whether this condition still remains after we have begun to "civilize" the Bechuanas may perhaps be doubted.f

It is, of course, easy to exaggerate the amount of physical poverty, for no absolute measure is possible. There is reason to believe that a considerably smaller proportion of our people suffer from lack of the food, clothing, etc., required to support life than was the case half a century ago. But there is little to indicate that the actual number of the poor is diminishing.

If poverty is not more intense, it is more congested, and more difficult to relieve by ordinary means. Poverty in a poor country is one thing ; poverty in a rich country another. Moreover, it is becoming more self-conscious, and consequently more restless. There is much in modern towns to account for this — the contrast of luxury, which mocks their misery; innumerable means of education, which sow the seeds of new wants without supplying the opportunities to satisfy them. The difference between the number of felt wants and the power to satisfy them constitutes poverty in its present conscious state; and, though physiological or

* A. Bryden, " Gun and Camera in Soutli Africa," p. 129. + Still more striking is the testimony from Burmah. See H. Fielding's remarkable work, " The Soul of a People."

absolute poverty may be diminishing, this felt poverty is growing.

Again, we are rapidly becoming a nation of town-dwellers. The new condition of town life, comprising now more than three-quarters of our population, presses upon every phase of the Social Problem. It is no mere sentimental grievance. A life fed upon bad air, overcrowded at home and at work, deprived of wholesome recreation, passed amid ugly and dirty surroundings, has little chance of physical or moral health. In spite of all efforts of municipal reform, successful as many of them have been in improving the sanitation of our cities, there remains the awkward fact that the modern rush into city life means a transfer to an area where mortality is nearly twenty per cent, higher than it is in rural parts.* This difference of health conditions, applied to the choicest strength, energy, and ability of the people (for these are the people selected for town life), unless it can be overcome, signifies a deterioration of the physique of the race. If this is an effect of town life, the intimate relations between physical health and other aspects of social progress require us to see in congested town life one of the most serious factors in our problem.