A

"PROGRESS AND POVERTY,"

A CRITICISM OF MR. HENRY GEORGE.

BEING

TWO LECTURES
Delivered in St. Andrew's Hall, Newman Street, London,

llJ^$i
BY THE LA'

ARNOLD TOYNBEE, M.A.,

Senm- Bursar atid Tutor of Balliol College^ Oxford.

PRICE ONE SHILLING.

LONDON
l^EGAN TAUL; trench & CO., I, TATERNOSTER SQUARE.
1883.
HP N T.iBr ^
A/f UNIVERSITY OF CALIFOENIA
•SANTA BARBARA

PREFATORY NOTE.
When Mr. Toynbee delivered the two speeches which make up tliis pamphlet,
it was his intention to use the shorthand writer's report of what he said as the

basis of a treatise, containing a fuller statement of his arguments, and, ia

particular, a large number of statistical details, of which in speaking he only

indicated the general results. A protracted and, as it has proved, fatal illness

frustrated his purpose. Mr. Toynbee was never able so much as to look over the

proofs of his addresses, to assure himself that he was correctly reported, much less

to review and recast what he said. Delivered as they were in the extremity of

physical weakness, and now appearing without revision, these speeches may well

seem to those who knew him best to be but an imperfect expression of his thought

and aims. Nevertheless, the friend to whom the task of editing them has fallen

has not felt himself justified in making any but the most trifling and obvious
corrections. There were, indeed, no materials for a more complete revision, as

the speeches were entirely extempore, and Mr. Toynbee was not in the haljit of

making notes of his addresses. The excellence of the shorthand writer's notes

may be no serious errors in the report of what Mr.

permits the hope that there
however far this may fall short of what, had strength not
Toynbee actually said,
failed him, he was competent and anxious to say. But any regrets on this score

are now merged in the wider and lasting regret for all that has been lost to his

friends and the community by his untimely death. —A. M.

 FIRST LECTURE.
UK. GEORGE IN CALIFORNIA.
(Delivered the nth January, 1883.)

The book I have undertaken to criticise does not stand alone

in economic and social literature. It is one of many similar
works which have been inspired by a vision of human misery.
It is true that it is not filled, like the work of the great

socialist, Karl Marx, with detailed descriptions of human degra-

dation ; nevertheless, it has human injustice for its theme. Some
of us, know, are inclined to put the
I book down in disgust and

impatience ; but I think any of us who have, even for a momeht,

looked into the abyss will be glad that this book has once
more reminded us of the widespread suffering that is concealed
beneath the smooth surface of our ordinary life. I know that many

who have read this book have felt not merely disgust and impatience,
but have thought that the warm and fierce sympathy shown in it with
human pain was not real ; but they have made a great mistake.
I do not think we now require such books as these to make

us realise and understand those more obvious forms of suffering

which press upon us from every side. We are all of us, I suppose*
appalled when we picture the dark and desolate cabins of Maamtrasna,
on that bleak mountain side, inhabited by half-civilised savages, or
when we visit those more dark and desolate corners of this great
still

city, inhabited by beings whom we still call men and women, or when
we catch a glimpse of the moral interior of a labourer's cottage.
These forms of suffering, I say, are obvious they are obtrusive ; but —
it is a more refined form of suffering which, it seems to me, this book

brings to our notice. It is the suffering of men who earn what we call

good wages, whose labour

— labour, let me remind you, which does
not invigorate the brain, but which wears it out prematurely, and
depresses the mind and dulls the intellect
—
whose labour, I say,
cannot obtain for them even a whole house as a home, nor the decent
enjoyments of life, nor the certainty of an honourable old age. Forty
years ago it was the famished multitude clamouring for bread that
threatened society. To-day, though we still have our 800,000
paupers, and hundreds of thousands more who are kept from
pauperism only by heroic sacrifice, to-day, I say, society is
threatened not by this m\iltitude, for cheap bread has kept
them quiet since 1846, but it is threatened by that large class
of men whose wants have grown while their income has been

stationary, or whose wants have grown faster than their incomes. I

know that there are some, again, who will say that this description is

exaggerated, and I admit that there are classes of artizans stone —

carvers, for example
—
whose wages are high, and who find rational

delight in their employment but I maintain that any people who

;

have descended into mines, any person who has

visited factories, or
taken the trouble to compare the necessary expenditure of an artizan
with his income, will understand that what I say is true. The
misery, however, which produced the socialism with which
we are familiar in England was misery, in the first
instance,
of a physical kind. All modern socialism originated with the

great industrial revolution which began at the commence,

ment of the last century the industrial revolution which silenced the
;

spinning-wheel and hand-loom, and dragged men and women into

great cities and huge factories. With that began the modern
problems of the distribution of wealth; and also at that time great
socialist writers made their appearance but the same epoch
;

which gave birth to the socialists, gave birth also to their grest
enemies, the economists. —
These writers Malthus, James Mill,
David Ricardo — men of intellect and of upright character, framed
an explanation of the misery which they saw before them, which
denied hope to the human race. One man, the most eminent of
them, Ricardo, caught up the scattered points which various writers
had elucidated, and welded them into a compact and lucid science
No writer that I know has a greater power of abstract thought
than David Ricardo, and I have found it difficult, if once you grant
his premises, to find any mistakes in his conclusions. From 1817 to
1848 the economists reigned supreme. There were, indeed, objections
raised, objections raised even by men in their own ranks. Sismondi,
the great Swiss economist, for example, once talking to Ricardo, said,
 '
What, then ! is wealth everything ? is man nothing ? Ricardo
''

answered at — least you will find the answer in his books that —
the suffering which Sismondi pitied was the result of an inevitable
law. To explain the views which the economists took, we must
remember that they looked upon life as a mad race between
population and wealth. They would not allow for a moment
that the machinery in the factories was to be
stopped in order
that women and children might breathe, lest a little wealth should
be lost, There were others who pro-
and the world go back.
tested outside the ranks of the economists. There were the
Christian socialists, there was Thomas Carlyle, who in his '*Past
and Present " flung upon the economists passionate reproaches,
which all of them left unheeded but one, and that man was John
Stuart Mill. In 1S48 was published Mill's book, which,
though it
incorporates much of the old economic doctrines, yet
represents an immense and unparalleled advance in England of union
and of sympathy with the mass of the people. In that book, for the
first time, is seen the influence of the socialists upon the economists ;

the influence of the earliest social reformers, who, bewildered and

perplexed as they were, said that a science that told them these
things must be a false science. And since Mill's time, the argu-
ment has gone on, and at last it is now apparent to all the world,
that the long and bitter controversy between economists and human

beings has ended in the conversion of the economists. The

economist now dares to say that the end of his practical science is
not wealth, but man; and further, he owns that his intellectual theories
have also undergone a vast change. He has learnt to recognise that
the laws which he supposed were universal are often only partial and

provisional ; he has learnt to recognise that the method which he

uses with such confidence —
the method of abstract deduction is a —
most dangerous one ;
that it can be used only by men who know
that at every step they have to question their premises, and that at
every step they have to test their conclusions by experience.
Last of all, he recognises that the vast problems which we all now
see are looming upon us cannot be solved by rash and hasty state-

ments, but only by patient and vigilant science. He recognises that

to solve the problem of to-day we must go back far into the past.

He recognises that the problem of distribution is not a simple one ;

that a very difficult and a very complicated one.
it is That is the

position of the economists at the present time ; but it is a singular

 8

thins, that at the very time when David Ricardo has been discredited

amongst the economists themselves, he has become the founder of

two new systems of sociaUsm, He, the great middle-class economist,
the man who was looked up to as the bulwark of society, this man by
wages has produced Lassalle, and by his theory of rent
his theory of
has produced Henry George. To-night I have nothing to do with
Lassalle, I have to speak of Mr. Henry George.
The book which Mr. George wrote between 1877 and 1879 is, as
we know, a remarkable one. It is full of acute dialectic and splendid
all

declamation ; full, as I said in my opening remarks, of a real and

keen sympathy with the people. Indeed, as he tells us in his book,
he might well sympathise with the people, for he had been a work-
man himself. Nevertheless, remarkable as the book is, original as
the book is — not so original as many of us suppose, not so

original if we come to look back upon American economic literature

— it has yet, in spite of partial truths, promulgated errors which I

believe to be fundamentally dangerous. And I, for one, seeing how

much wrong the economists have done in the past by false theories,

remembering that the economists for years denounced Trades

Unions, and told the unionists thatthey could not raise the rate of wages
by combination ; remembering that the economists have sometimes
influenced legislation in the past in a mischievous direction, that they
were guilty, for instance, of the Irish Land Act of i860, which substi-
tuted contract for tenure; I am determined that, as far as in me lies, I
will be no party to any more illusions. I will do what I can to further

the public good, but I will not sacrifice my intellectual conscience by

supporting a fair, but delusive panacea.

The book which
I have spoken of was written in 1877, but it was
preceded by a pamphlet, which was written in 1871. I said just

now that George was a child of David Ricardo, but that is an

inadequate statement ;
we must also recognise that he is the child, or
rather, that his theories are the children, of the peculiar circumstances
of anew State. The first pamphlet which Mr. George wrote was a
pamphlet about the Land Question in California. And it is no
wonder that he should have written the pamphlet, for he saw in a
country with natural resources greater than those of France, and with
a population at that time numbering not more than 600,000
people,
tramps and paupers make their appearance. That was enough to
make a man gasp and stare. He also saw the concentration of
land in a few hands — one peculiar evil, that is to
say, of
an old country making its appearance in a new one. Properties
there were at the time which exceeded almost anything we know in

England, properties of more than a quarter of a million acres held by

men who did not even go through the pretence of rendering any
public service as the condition of their tenure. Mr. George pondered
on these things, and whilst he was pondering, he stumbled across
Mill's pamphlets, published in 1870, on the reform of land tenure. In
those pamphlets Mill for the first time put forward the famous proposal
for the appropriation of the unearned increment. But the
proposal was not a new one. It is to be found in the first edition of
Mill's book, published in 1848, and it is to be found still further
back than that in his father's book on political economy, published
in 1821. The history of the idea a singular one, for there is no
is

doubt that it was the historian of British India with whom the idea
originated. his observations on the systems ot land tenure
It was
and revenue India that led him to make, in a clear and incisive
in

form, the proposal which has now been popularised and become the
basis of an agitation. That proposal put forward in Mill's pamphlet-
awakened new thoughts in Mr. George. It awakened also new

thoughts in land reformers in Victoria and our own colonies. All

over the world men were busy with the idea, fighting then for its
practical application.
Mr. George's pamphlet, though a very remarkable one, appears to
have produced little effect. His practical proposals were two. First,
he said, " We will tax all land up to its full value." By that he meant
that he would take all that part of rent which is due to the growth of
civilisation and to wealth, and not to individual labour and enterprise.
Let us remember that that is the proposal to—take, mark

you, not what a man puts into the soil, but what comes to a man

owing to no exertion on his own part.

" Mr. George, " you
If," said
tax these great estatesup to their full value, then it will be impossible

any longer for the great landowners to keep their properties together ;
they will be forced to sell." In the next place, he proposed, and it
was a remarkable proposal to niake, to limit the size of properties —
that to say, that land in future should be granted only in 40 and So
is

acre sections; and he believed that in that way a steady and regular

development of population and wealth would take place. I want you

to remember that proposition, because Mr. George abandoned it
afterwards. His pamphlet attracted some attention, but produced, as
J said, little effect. Mr. George, however, did not abandon his con-
 lO

sidcration of the question. He turned to other American economists ;

he studied the writings of Henry Carey, the Pennsylvanian economist ;

of Francis Walker, the eminent head of the United States Department

of Statistics of Francis Bowen, another American economist and of
; ;

M. Emile de Laveleye. All these books he had studied, when in the year
1
877 there came the great labour war in Pennsylvania. That labour war
in Pennsylvania, and the distress that followed, led Mr. George to begin

work, which he completed two years afterwards.

this great Remember
that thework was begun at a time of immense distress, and of wide-
spread and deep depression of trade. In 1878, for example, it was
said that 600,000 men left the East for the West. Everywhere wages
fell, and artizans who had emigrated from England to America
returned from America to England. It was in the midst, therefore, of

an unexampled depression of trade, in a continent with the greatest

natural resources in the world, that this book was written. Again,
remember that these circumstances must have left their mark upon
the treatise. And note, too, that Mr. George's practical proposals are
now a little changed from those of 187 1. His first practical
proposal
is still to confiscate rent — /.e., to take the unearned increment
without compensation ; but, on the other hand, he abandons
his old proposal of limitmg the size of farms, and asserts that large
farms are due to an inevitable law of economic development, with
which he will not meddle.

This is the book which I have to criticise. It abounds with points,

it abounds with side issues ;

but there isone main contention, and one
principal theory. The contention is, that rent must be taken, and
the theory a theory of the development of society in relation to the
is

distribution of wealth. That not only for Mr. George, but for all of
us, is the main issue ;
that is the real question —
Is the law of

economic development one which will tend to produce greater and

greater equality in the distribution of wealth, or is it one which will
concentrate wealth more and more in a few hands ? Now we know
that inEngland wealth has become gradually concentrated in fewer
hands. The fact has been disputed, and it is not such a simple
question as some people suppose but still, if we take the evidence of
;

themostcompetentpersons, we shall find that upon this point they agree.

There was a famous Budget speech made by Mr. Gladstone in 1864,
a speech in which, after dilating upon the unexampled prosperity of the
country. Gladstone paused, and turned round and said to his
Air.
"
astonished audience, But what is human life in the great majority
 1 1

"
of cases but a bare struggle for existence ? And the remark
was repeated in less emphatic, but equally significant,
language only
the other day by the latest member of the Cabinet, Sir Charles Dilke.
We have, therefore, the evidence both of Mr. Gladstone, the Prime
Minister, and Sir Charles Dilke, that wealth is concentrated in fewer

hands, or, at any rate, that the mass of the people do not share in the

growing prosperity of our industry and our commerce. And the

same phenomenon was visible in America in those two years of
which I speak. There, also, was the spectacle of men like Vanderbilt.
who inherited twenty millions, and of others almost equally
rich, who,

whilst the labourers were driven by thousands from the East to the
West, still lived in luxury, and seemed to have kept the wealth
which they had made.
What the explanation ?
is What is the explanation of this ever-
recurring question ;
the question which has bewildered the minds
and saddened the hearts of every man who cares for his fellow-
men? The explanation must be one of four things. Either
there an impassable, inexorable physical limit, which presses down
is

the labourers, and against which the labourers struggle in vain. Or,
there must be some fatal flaw in our institutions. Or, there must be
some sinister shadow cast by the law of production
— by the system of
production on a large scale. That system which for production is most
efficient may perhaps cause a more unequal distribution of wealth.

Or, last of all, the fault may be in human nature ;

it may be that it

is human rapacity
— the
apparently inexorable demand of men to

benefit themselves at the expense of their fellow-creatures. One of

these four or a combination of these four must be the cause. Mr.

George says that the explanation is not to be found in any limit set

by external nature ;
that it is not to be found in all institutions or

some, but only in one

— private property in land. And he expressly
denies that the economic structure of society can have any influence ;

and further, he thinks that if you once stamped out that one baneful
institution, nature would be powerless to oppress and degrade.
human
Of the four possible kinds of cause Mr. George accordingly only

acknowledges the second, namely, our institutions, and only one part
of these — i.e. , private property in land.
Is Mr. George right about the first statement ? That is our first

point. Remember that at present, purposes of to-night, I

for the

am speaking of new countries, not of old countries I shall deal with ;

old countries in my next lecture. Is Mr. George right with regard to

 12

America when he says there is no present physical limit to the prosperity

of the people ? Yes, Mr. George is right with regard to America. In

the first place, it has long been recognised by economists, that in
manufactures there is what is called a law of increasing return that —
is, as men come together in masses, the cost of carriage
is diminished,

the .power of combination is increased, inventions take place, and

enterprise advances ; and all these things increase the net produce of
labour per head, z>., the wealth left over after the exertions which have
produced it have been satisfied and the tools and materials replaced.
That is the view oi Mr. Nassau Senior, and it is the view, also, of most
—
English economists not, I think, that they have seen its significance.
Let us turn next to agriculture. Is this law true of agriculture ? An
—
Englishman any Englishman who has read, for example, Ricardo's
book, and remembers the ploughing up of the sheep-walks in the years
of the great war with Napoleon, when we got five or six bushels of
—
wretched corn to the acre would think that it is not true, and that
in agriculture, at any rate, there is a law of diminishing return.
After a time, even in a new State, even in a new continent like

America, the return to the labour expended on the fields must be

less and
less in proportion to the effort. But of America as a whole
this not yet true.
is There are apparent exceptions, due to the
peculiarities of American agriculture, due to the wasteful and exhaust-
ing method of
cultivation pursued in America, which has led to a

premature diminution of the fertility of the soil, not only in the

Eastern States, but in what is called the new North-West. Still, on

the whole, we may say that up to the present time not only has the
total wealth of America increased, in agriculture as well as in manu-
factures, but — and this is the crucial point — the total wealth pei
head. Not only is there more wealth, but if it were equally
divided each man would have more. So far, then, we agree with
Mr. George. If, therefore, external nature does not impose a
barrier, why is it, asks Mr. George, that, with all this vast increase

of wealth, wages either do not increase or actually decrease ?

Who gets this vast accession of wealth ? Mr. George answers :

not the speculators, not the Rothschilds, not the great

great
contractors, not the lords of the loom and the spindle, not the

great ironmasters, not the keepers of great stores, not the great
grain dealers and merchants, but one class alone, the owners of land.
They alone seize upon the increase, and are rich, whilst the people
become poorer, cr, at least, remain as poor as ever. To somci
 ^3

perhaps, accustomed to the accumulation of wealth in England, this

may seem an absolutely absurd statement ; but let us be patient, and
study Mr. George's book in his own country. If we turn to an
eminent American economist, to whom I have already alluded, Mr.
Francis Bowen, we find that he makes this remark —
that the com-
monest and the simplest way of making a fortune in America is to
buy up land where a city is likely to be built, and to wait for an
increase in value. And, again, let us also remember this, in justice to
Mr. George's view, that the great railway kings in America have not
made their fortunes merely by speculation in stocks and shares, but in
lind speculation ; for land speculation has been bound up from the
beginning with the extension of railways in America. Still, how far,

admitting all this, can Mr. George's statement be considered true ?

Now I come my lecture, and I ask you to be
to the difficult part of

patient. If you are about these questions, and recognise

really eager
as you all
must, they are, how they have bewildered men
how huge
from the beginning of time, you will be patient ; if I tried to make
the problem really simpler than it is, you might justly complain of me.
I could do so, but I should have to use for that purpose illegitimate
artifice.

Let theory is, that j-ent sw anows^up the increase

me remind you, the
of wealth. How
does Mr. George prove this ? Let us try and v,'ork
out his theory; let us watch how the theory is explained in the

development of a little miniature State. I will try to make the picture

as vivid in your minds as possible. Suppose, for example, one of
those settlements of our Puritan forefathers on the Atlantic coast,
and with no commerce with the outside world. Mr. George

says, in the first place, when these settlers land there is no rent —
time, wealth After a
anyone can go upon the
land, anywhere.
increases and population increases ; slowly
the people move outwards
from the settlement, and new pieces of land are taken into use. Now
we must suppose that already the division between employers and
workmen in the industrial system has taken place, and we have got to
ask— (and this the whole point ; I am not going to deal with interest
is

am going to deal with wages)— what will determine wages

in
to-night, I
this little settlement?Mr. George says that wages will be determined by
what the labourer can get working for himself on the land last taken
into use. Put it in this way supposing the man who works on a piece
:

of land a mile away from the little group of houses on the sea-coast
can get three pecks of wheat a day as his wage. If an employer in the
 14

" work
town says to him, I will give you two pecks, if you will

for me such-and-such a business," the labourer will say, "No;

at

I will take at least three, because I can make at least three by

working for myself on the land outside." Therefore, says Mr. George,
new settleme nt wages will be determined by what a man can
in a
make working for himself on the last piece of land taken into use.
Now, how, according to this theory, are we to explain the fall in wages
" " that is
which takes place Oh," says Mr. George,
? very simple.
As years go on, the whole of that little plain is occupied, and men
begin to carry their cultivation up the sides of the mountains.
Then
it is found that the labourer can only earn one peck,, we will say, a

day working on the piece of land last taken into use, and then all

through the settlement wages will fall to one peck a day instead of
three ; and" the landowner —
we are not now talking of the capitalist
or the employer, we are talking of the landowner will sweep off the —
whole of the increased wealth." That is the explanation, according
to this statement, of the fall of wages with the advance of civilisation.'

Now, in the first place, I wish to point out that this theory assumes
the law of diminishing return that is, — it assumes that after a time
the return to men's labour will diminish. But that contradicts Mr.
George's statement (with which I entirely agree), that the true law of

agriculture and of industry is a law of increasing return. Mr.

George, however, has an answer, which is obvious on the surface

of the book. He says, "Oh, I don't talk merely of wages as a
quantity; I talk of wages as a proportion." This is Mr. George's
" If
answer, in the first place ; but my reply to Mr. George is this :

you speak of wages only as a proportion, how does your theory

explain fall of wages,

the the appearance of tramps, and the
"
appearance of poverty a new State ? m
because, though wages
might increase or might remain stationary, yet still, as long as
they did not decline, we should be at a loss to explain by Mr.
George's theory the fact which Mr. George sets out to explain
—
the appearance of tramps and the fall of wages in a new
Slate. And, in the next place, if we look carefully at Mr.
George's book itself, we find that all the evidence he gives is of
the fall of wages as a quantity. He tells us that wages in
California fell from i6 dollars a day,
say, in 1849, to 2)^ dollars
a day in so that the facts which he himself adduces, which he
1879 ;

seis out to explain, are not explained by his theory. Mr. George,
he V, ever, has yet another answer to make : "What I mean," he says,
 15

" that speculation in land is the true cause of a fall in in a

is, wages
new State." To illustrate his contention I will ask you to come back
with me to our little settlement at the sea-side. Mr. George supposes
thatmen hold on to great tracts of land in that little settlement,
and will not sell it or let it, so that the labourers who want to settle
on the land have to pass this tract, and passing it, are forced
by
this artificial cause of land speculation to take poorer land into use.

That being the case, their increased skill, their increased agricul-
tural knowledge, not now, owing to pushing back, as it were, on
will

what Mr. George calls the land line, owing to the pushing back of
cultivation up to the hills, counterbalance the diminishing fertility
of soil in agriculture. But my answer is again (I am coming to the
end of this very soon) first, Mr. George, you are
: not consistent
with yourself. In various passages you say that private property
in land is the primary, speculation only a derivative, cause ;
so that, even if there were not speculation, wages would fall as a
'

quantity with the advance of civilisation. But next I ask. Is there

any evidence that cultivation has been pushed in America so far back
as to diminish the return to labourand agriculture ? Certainly not.
Ifwe may take the price of wheat as an index, we find that the price
between 1810 and 1820 averaged about eight dollars, measured in
gold, for a barrel of wheat in Philadelphia. In 1820 it was nine
dollars; but then in 1869 it was six dollars, measured in gold,
and it has been falling, as we know, since, so that Mr. George
brings no evidence as to the diminishing fertility, as to the

diminishing power of labour in agriculture, owing to the pushing back

of the margin of cultivation. Notice, too, that Mr. George has,
curiously enough, neglected altogether
—
I suppose it is to obtain that

simplicity which we economists stand so much in need of in studying

things
— the mechanism of exchange. For according to Ricardo's

theory, which Mr. George accepts implicitly, the margin of cultiva-

tion, of which we have spoken, instead of determining the wages and
the remuneration of the employed, is itself determined by the growth
of population and wealth and commerce. Let us go back for the
lasttime to our settlement, and I will show you what is the process
according to Ricardo. As population advances, poorer lands
may be taken into use ;
but Ricardo points out that a farmer
of his own day, who
(he was thinking, of course, of the English farmer
was ploughing up the edges of the moors and the sheep-walks), though
he might get only six bushels per acre on that new bit of land
 i6

which ploughed up on the side of the hill, would yet expect the
is

same and the same wages for superintendence, and expect

interest
to pay his labourers the same wages as before. In other words,
what would happen is, not that he would obtain a lower remuneration,
a smaller share of the general produce of industry, because he was

working on inferior land, but that he would sell his smaller produce
at ahigher price. My point is, that wages and profits or we will —
throw away the word profits, which is a troublesome one, and say
wages and the earnings of the great employers (for Mr. George, in the
most extraordinary way, includes under the title wages the wages
of superintendence, the earnings of these great employers and iron-
masters, and the great grain speculators), the wages of these men are
determined, as a general rule, independently of the productiveness of
the soil, and therefore rent cannot be the cause of wages and profits

falling lower than before. Ricardo's theory of rent, which

That is

Mr. George only half understands, and which, as far as California or any
new country is concerned, is true, though there are exceptions with
regard to old countries. Rent, I may as well admit at once (and I
shall deal with this with care in my next lecture), rent in Ireland and

rent in this great City of London ;

and rent, again, in some parts of

agricultural England, has in certain cases lowered wages

— that I

admit; but then that is owing to a different cause, which I shall

try to explain in my second lecture.

I have now shown, first,that Mr. George's theory is self-contra-

dictory ; secondly, that he cannot explain by his theory the facts

which he himself adduces ;
and in the third place, that the theory
is not the theory that there is a law of increasing return, but
false ;

the theory that it is rent which alone swallows up the increase. Last
of all, in criticising Mr. George, let us ask whether Mr. George's facts
are right ;
whether there is or is not a fall of wages
in the first place,

in California ;
in the second place, whether there is or is not a fall of

wages in America and our colonies generally, a matter, mind, of

primary importance to workmen who have to emigrate.

What is the truth about California ? Mr. George is quite
right
in saying that wages rose from 8s 4d a-day (wages of a common

labourer), to about 6s. 8d. a-day in 1849, when

^3 the gold
discoveries were made. fell, however, rapidly ; they were only
They
I2S. 6d. a-day in 1856. In i860, they fell to Ss. 2d (I am talking of
the average wages), but in 1879, the year in which Mr. George pub-
lished his book, wages were higher than they were in i860. They
were 9s. y^^d, that is the average wage calculated from statistics

supplied by Mr. Tooke in his History of Prices

; by
Dr. Young in his
Labour in Europe and America (these are my authorities for

wages in California) ; and, finally, by Mr. George himself. But

if money wages have somewhat increased, the increase in real wages,
i.e., in the amount of the conveniences and necessaries of life that a
v/orkman can obtain with his money, is greater still, inasmuch as the
prices of nearly all the principal articles of life have fallen about one-
third —
were falling about one-third in California generally between
1856 and 1879. I am, indeed, not quite satisfied about these facts,
although I have taken immense pains with them. Statistics, I

have found, are very unreliable. One man will tell you about prices
of things in San Francisco, and another man will tell you about
the prices of things in California, and these facts must be taken
subject to that consideration. But what about wages generally in

America? That is the main point. Have they risen, or have they fallen ?

My own impression was that they had risen — real wages mean
I —
and I consulted three American economists :
First, Mr. Amasa
Walker, a Free-trade economist ; next, Mr. Francis Bowen, a
Protectionist economist : and lastly, Mr. Francis Walker, a Free-trade
economist again ;
and I find that all these three economists agree that
— —
wages real wages have, on the whole, risen since 1800. Mr. Francis
—
Walker was the latest writer he brings his figures down to 1877 Mr. ;

Amasa Walker down to 1869, and Mr. Francis Bowen down to 1S70.
So far, then, the figures of the American economists are in favour of

my view ;
but I was not satisfied with that. I determined to study
the course of wages in our own colonies ; and what do I find to be

the case ? This that in the gold colonies,

:
Victoria and New South

Wales, exactly the same line of movement has taken place. Wages
were low before the gold discoveries ; they rose rapidly when
the gold diggings were discovered. They have fallen, and have
fluctuated, especially the wages of skilled artizans, a good deal

since; but at the present time, in New South Wales, accord-

to statistics the Government, they are higher

ing supplied by
than they were in 1856 and the New South Wales corre-
;

spondent of the Times, writing from Sydney

on August 2 last, said
also that wages had never been so high as they were at the present
" If
time. You can now justly turn to me, and say that is so what :

in America,
is your theory of wages ? If rent has not reduced wages
if wages have risen, and also along with wages, not interest, wliich
 i8

is a different thing, but the remuneration of management — the

great gains of speculation
— what isthe explanation ?
"
The explana-
tion is a very simple one. The net produce of American agriculture
and American industry has, as Mr. George has said, increased during
this a consequence, the;, net produce to be divided
time, and, as
between the labourer and the employer and the owner of capital, of
It has thus been possible for the
course, greater than before.
is

employers and owners of capital to amass enormous wealth without

the labourer of all share in the increased returns.
depriving
Mind, I admit that his share k not what it ought to be.

I am only hinting to you that we shall have to look for our

explanation in America, and perhaps in England, to the division of

the net produce between the employer and the workman ; but I
have not dealt adequately and fairly with Mr, George until I have
shown how his theory originated. His theory is not a mere
fiction of his brain ;
it is one that has a natural origin in
American experience. His theory, for example, that wages .

are determined by what a man

can get on the last land taken
into cultivation is by no means an abstract one. If you study

the history of California and of Victoria and of New South Wales,

you will find that all writers

—
not only newspaper writers, but•

economists — say wages in every trade were

that at one time
determined by what men could get by working at the gold diggings.
For instance, Mr. Tooke, the historian of prices, tells us that men
working at the gold-diggings in Victoria could get about /^8 to ;!^io
a week in 185 1, and the wages, therefore, in Melbourne were
about ;£6 or ;£'j a week for all kinds of labour the difiference —
being, of course, accounted for by the risk of the gold trade.
The explanation is, that where there is an unlimited demand
for labour in any one trade, to which labour has ready access, then

the wages obtained in that trade will determine the wages paid in every
other trade. No man will take less — that is, as a blacksmith or as a
carpenter
— in Melbourne than he can obtain, roughly speaking, at
the gold diggings further oft". It is the same in California. But I
have not done ;
it is not merely in California that you will find
these facts brought forward and these phrases used. Take the
great American ironmaster, Mr Hewitt, who was examined before
the Trades Union Commission, and ask him what determines wages
"
in the Eastern States, and he will say at once, Oh, what a labourer
can get off the land ;
that determines wages." He puts it in this
 19

way — "We great ironmasters

in the Eastern States, in
Pennsylvania, are
obliged to pay our puddlers at least what they can obtain on the
farms in the West." There was at the time the words were used a
demand, perfectly unlimited, for labour in agriculture in the West,
and therefore any labourer in an iron foundry in Pennsylvania would
"
say to his master, Give nie this wage, or I shall go West and take up
land, where I can get that much for myself" On the other hand, of
course, wages are always somewhat lower in an Eastern State, because
men prefer to live in cities ; they like the excitement of city life, and
they dislike the solitude and hard life of the West. Then there is one
more point before we have done with this part of our subject. Mr.
George says was not merely the exhaustion of the rich gold deposits
it

in California that produced a fall of wages. He maintains, of course,

that workmen got high wages, because anyone could go with his
rocker and his spade to a stream, and simply dig out the gold, wash
it in his pan, and sell the gold dust just as it was there
to the dealer. That is, it
only required a pick and a shovel, and a
man had nothing more to do than to dig out the gold. Sometimes
these deposits would not yield much gold, and then, as the result, the
labourers got lower wages ; that is clear. But then says Mr. George,
"
Notice, if you please, that these gold diggings were common pro-
perty ;
no man might hold a claim over one of them for a longer time
than it was in use. He could peg out his claim, and if he did not use it
any one day, then he had to go." Mr. George is perfecdy right. That
was the law not only in California, but in Victoria. Then he says,
the Comstock lode was rich in certain places, and yet the opening of
that great vein did not raise wages. agree with Mr. George, that
I

had land been monopolised in California in the first instance,

instead of wages rising everywhere with the gold discoveries,
all that the workmen would have asked would have been
a slightly higher wage than they could obtain in the carpenters

shops and the blacksmiths' shops in San Francisco, and the

rest would have gone to the capitalist, in the first instance, who
took the lease, and ultimately to the landlord it would have gone to;

rent. But let me point out, if you please, that Mr. George's own
remedy would not allow v/ages to rise, because Mr. George proposes
to tax land up to its full value, and, therefore, these gold miners
at the placer deposits would not have had higher wages, but

would have had to yield a large part of the gold which they had
obtained to the State, so that their individual wages would not
 20

have risen, though the gold would have gone to the community,
instead of to the individual. For the rest, I perfectly

agree with Mr. George that private property in land is not

essential to good agriculture ;
that security of tenure is sufficient ;
and that been an iniquitous mistake on the part of
it has
our own Colonial Governments, and on the part of the Government
of America, to sell land to individuals instead of keeping it for

the use of the people. But this view is not, of course, a new
one, it is an old question in all the colonies. As long ago as 1856,
Mr. Tooke, whom I have quoted so often, an eminent merchant,
who wrote a most valuable " History of Prices," proposed that land
should be let on lease instead of being sold. And then, again, it was
proposed in Victoria in 1870 and 1873, in the land agitation of which
I have spoken ; and as I have said, the principle is a just one ; but
there are practical difficulties. I find, for example, that Mr. Charles

Pearson, who has studied the land question from the extreme radical
point of view in Victoria for some time, and has tried all sorts of
methods to prevent land accumulating in the hands of a few great
owners, remarked of this proposal, which he admitted was in the
abstract a just one, that where there was a great number of lease-
holders it would be an extremely dangerous one, because all those
leaseholders would have votes, and could vote about the renewal of
their leases. do not attribute myself very much importance
Well, I
lO the objection, because not one form alone, but all forms of taxation,
and all forms of exacting wealth from individuals in a new State may
be openings for corruption. But I want to point out that the question
is not such a simple one ; and we have seen that earnest and thoughtful

.radical land reformers, like Mr. Pearson, do not think it is a very easy
one. The gain to the State, I admit, would be enormous ; but remember
that mypoint is still, that though this revenue would go into the
pockets of the State —
into the Treasury, instead of into the pockets of
individuals yet
—it would not benefit wages,
'\^^ages have not, as a

general rule, been reduced by the rise of rent, and they could not be
>increased by its confiscation.
I have, last of all, in this explanation, to show you what is
the true theory of the facts — the true facts which Mr. George
adduces. I have said already that the rapid fall of wages in

California and Victoria was due to the

exhaustion of the placer
deposits. I admit that the previous rapid rise was due to the fact

that these deposits were not monopolised by individuals. But now —

 21

this is a very vital question —What about the tramps of whom Mr.
George speaks ? The facts are astounding. In one pamphlet Mr.
George says that the common estimate in 1878 was that there were

20,000 labourers unemployed in San Francisco. Another estimate

made in 1875 P^t the number at 10,000. Now, what is the expla-
nation of the appearance of these tramps, these vagrants, in a new
State —a most appalling fact ? I am not speaking of China-
men they are distinct altogether from European labourers.
;
The
Chinamen numbered about 8,000 in 1870 ; the figure I have given is
the number of unemployed labourers of European race. At the
time of which I speak there were not only tramps in California,
but tramps in Lake City, and tramps in the new North-West. Why
is that ? The explanation is given by Mr. George himself in a pamphlet

he wrote on the labour struggle, and it is to be found in all the

recent valuable reports presented to the Duke of Richmond's Com-
mission en American agriculture. It is this— that with the large farm
system of cultivation workmen cannot obtain regular employment.
For instance, take one great farm in Dakota, which had an area equal
to about three times the size of the City of New York. On this farm in
the spring 150 men were employed, and in the summer 250, and in the
winter only 10. What became of these men ? They went to the towns.
For, you nine months in the year the labourers in the great
may say,
wheat farms wheat farms in the world, have
in California, the largest

no employment, and are driven into San Francisco and these are the ;

men who, justly perhaps, protest against Chinese labour, and who
meet on the sand-locks in San Francisco, and propose to remedy their
grievances. That is the explanation of tramps in California and
Minnesota and Dakota. I must remind you that Mr. George does not

propose to touch the large farm system. He says the large farm
is due to a law of economic development, with which he will
system
not meddle. But as long as vast accumolators of capital continue
to deal thus ruthlessly with their human instruments, what good will
the confiscation of rent do ? The evil in this case plainly is not the
ownership of land in large quantities, which is all that Mr. George
would prevent, but its tenure in large quantities, which he would
allow.

What, then, is to be said about this large farm system ? Is it

to go on ? If we look at it closely, we shall find that this is

but one typical form of a universal and urgent problem. It

is not only in farms and in agriculture that great businesses are

 22

being formed, or have been formed, but in industry and manu-

factures, as we well know here. As Karl Marx and other writers have
pointed out, gradually large industries are stamping out, or rather,
large businesses are stamping out, small ones. Gradually capital is
being accumulated in- fewer and fewer hands, until at last some
think we shall have nothing but a handful of stupendous monopo-
lists, with a struggling mass of labourers at their feet. This,
I say, is one great cause affecting the division of produce ;

it is one great reason why wages have not risen in propor-

tion to the increase in productive power ;
it is because the economic
structure of society such that the huge employer and the huge
is

capitalist can practically dictate terms to the labourers. What is

the remedy for this ? Mr. George offers none. There is one which
he hints at, but I do not think it a serious one. If anyone likes to
ask me afterw'ards my opinion I will discuss it.
Why does Mr.
George propose no remedy ? Why does he refuse to meddle with it?
Because he is a believer in what the economists no longer believe in
— in what are called the "economic harmonies" ;
that is, he believes,
as Adam Smith believed, and as Bastiat believed, that if you once
abolish private property, or, rather, confiscate the unearned increment,
then individual interests will harmonise with common interests, and
competition, which we know is often now a baneful and destructive force,
will then become a beneficent one. Now, in justice to Mr. George,
again, I must point out that he proposes that when industries become
monopolies they should be undertaken by the State. Well, I admit
that that is the true principle. They should be either undertaken by
the State, or regulated by the State. We are going to deal, for

example, wuth the Water Companies in London; and all great

industries like the supply of water and the supply of gas, and so

on, which involve necessarily a monopoly, ought either to be

undertaken by the State, or regulated by the State. But apart
from absolute monopoly, there may be the immense force of great
capitalists not in ooen combination, who are able
to press down wages.

What is to be done ? now that we economists abandoned

I said just
the belief in economic harmonies. What do we, then, think of the
economic self-interest which most socialists denounce as a thing to be

destroyed ? We say that more resembles a great

economic self-interest

physical force than anything else, the laws of which must be studied
in order that it may be controlled. For example, take self-interest
working in the great grain market. To buy in the cheapest and sell
 23

in the dearest market is to take a thing from Avhere it is least wanted

to where it is most wanted. Here a service, therefore, rendered by
is

self-interest to the community ;

not that the great grain speculators
are not over-paid ; still self-interest does work, where they have not a

monopoly, for the good of the community as a whole. But look at

self-interest working in the destruction of life in mines and factories.

We know very well what this was we know very well there were no
;

economic harmonies there. The absence of economic harmonies is to

be read in that terrible history of the degradation of men, and women,
and children which is to be found in our own Government reports.
But while we regard competition as resembling a physical force,
in that it admits of and demands study and control, we do
not allow that it is, like physical forces, unalterable in itself.

Whilst you cannot change the elements of nature, but only learn
their secret and control them, human nature can change. Man we
recognise now is not like a rock or a stont, but is pliable, and
pliable to great ideas of justice. need no longer crouch and We
shiver under the shadow of inexorable law. Man is master of
his fate. Still I know there are some who will say this is an idle
dream. Men always have followed their self-interest without
remorse ;
men always will follow their self-interest without remorse.
I deny that. But I admit that we cannot wait for the
time when higher ideals will control men's self-interest, and
that the economists, it
they admit that the economic harmonies
are to a large extent a fiction, are bound to admit the necessity for
more administration and control. That is true. The era of free
trade and free contract is gone, and the era of administration has come-
Not only has the era come, but silently it has been upon us before
we knew it. Throughout the whole of this century, when we were
busy unshackling our trade and flinging open our ports to the whole
world, we were at the same time
— against, I admit, the protests of
the economists —hemming in the disastrous and virulent greed of

employers, passing Factory Acts, prohibiting the labour of women in

mines, protecting women and children everywhere. But in 1881 we
began a new era, for in that year an Act was passed which extended
the protection of the State, which is the organised power of the

community for good, not merely to women and children, but

to men — I mean the Irish Land Act. The author of that remark-
able phrase in 1864, the man who said that for the great majority of
beings life was a bare struggle for existence, unconsciously redeemed
 24

his utterance. He unconsciously redeemed his pledge, and by

passing the Irish Land Act — though he may deny it, and it may be
necessary for him to deny it, there is no reason why we should —
he has committed the Radical party to a socialist
programme.
AVhat I mean by socialism is this. I do not mean the destruc-
tion of private property I do not mean communism
; but I ;

do mean the extension of the protection of the State not only to

women and children, but, if need be, to men, because men also —
agricultural labourers and workers in mines and factories are but —
too often not free agents.
Here, however, arises a great problem. We shallhave to carry
out these measures without that old independence,
undermining
that habit of voluntary association, of
which we are justly proud, for
if —
we undermine that that pride which has made the English
workman sacrifice everything to keep himself out of the workhouse,
which has made workmen bind themselves
together in Friendly
Societies and Trades Unions and in
Co-operative Societies if we —
undermine that, then it would be better to leave our work undone.
But I believe it can be done. I believe that the problems of adminis-
tration, difficult as they are, can be solved if men will only have
patience, and in my next lecture I hope to sketch in outline a pro-
gramme of administration, dealing with
wages, the dwellings of the
poor, the question of insurance, and the question of the recrea-
tions of the people. All these things I hope to deal with, and will try
to show that without revolution and without socialism, in the
continental sense, we do something towards that
shall be able to
better distribution of wealth all desire to see.which
But we
if we undertake a more complicated work of administration,
remember, in the first place, that we are dealing, again, not
with physical but with the of
facts, compound sensibilities
and interests shaped by ages of history and change which we call
man, and that the thing is not
simple— it is difficult that it will ;

require not only the thought of one man, but the thought of many,
and not only the thought of many, but the
patience of more;
and if, again, administration is to be successful, it means one
thing more it means devotion to the community.
:
For all
these new proposals will only open up new opportunities
for corruption, same time we raise ourselves to the
unless at the
occasion, and determine that we will, in proposing them and in
working them out, be actuated with no other feeling than a passionate
 25

" "
devotion to the community. But, alas !
many of you will say,
" such a and our
thing needs faith, faith is in ruins," I
"
answer, True, your faith is in ruins ; but I think also that in
spite of darkness and bewilderment and tears, there will come
a purer faith, a faith which, cleared of superstitious control,
shall make devotion to the community no longer a troubled and
uncertain refuge from doubt, but a source of a pure and tranquil
inner life." But we need not wait for that, and if men individually
will but make up their minds to do all that in them lies to bring about

the great event for which the people have longed for so many
centuries, the thing will be done
—
the reign of social justice will
have come.
 SECOND LECTURE.
MR. GEORGE IN ENGLAND.
(Delivered the iSth January, 1S83.)

I WISH to remove one misrepresentation that I may have created by

my lecture last Thursday — the impression that I said that no substantial
improvement had taken place in the condition of the workpeople.
Now, it is not true that no improvement has taken place in their
condidon. A great change for the better has taken place, but it is not
universal. It is confined to certain portions of the population, and it
ISgreater, for example, in Lancashire than in London ; in fact, it is
because the improvement in the condition of the workmen of London
has not been so great as the improvement in the condition of the
workmen of Lancashire, that this book
upon which I lecture has
taken such hold of you. The evidence of what I
say is to be sought
not in tables of imports and exports, but in the statements of the
workmen themselves. Workmen who remember England as it was
40 years ago, know well that their condition now, as
compared with
their condition then,one which may be said to be almost a
is

civilised one. If you turn to the memoirs of the Chartists, if

you
turn to the memoirs of men like Samuel Lovett and Thomas
Cooper,
you can there see what the suffering was. You can there read descrip-
men who clamoured to be sent to prison that they might not
tions of
starve.You read there descriptions of labourers who burnt ricks, and
asked when the fighting was to begin and you may there read a
;

description of the wretched weavers and stockingers of Leicestershire,

cowering in their miserable
workshops. The time when such
suffering as that
—
which, mind, was not the suffering of the habitually
degraded class of our population, but the suffering of the class of skilled
workmen upon whom our national strength depends— the time when
such suffering as that could be endured has passed. If we wanted

any further evidence of that bygone misery we might find it not

merely in the of the but in the
sufferings people themselves,
 27

sufferings of great thinkers. The anguish of that dreadful

age tortured the sad and brooding spirit of Carlyle
into fierce

impatience, and clouded the fire of his exhortations.

Let us
remember when we upbraid him with his savage moods, that he,
at least, upheld the lamp of duty amidst the storm, and lightened
the darkness of the time. Arnold, too, the great and wise man, with an
the false
insight almost deeper than that of Carlyle, protested against
policy of the Liberals of his time. These men could do nothing
for the people ;
and they were maddened by the feeling of their im-
potence. It was not from them that the salvation of this nation came :

it was from Cobden and Bright, and the Anti-Corn Law League.
If in my last lecture* I gave anyone the impression that I

under-estimated the work of Cobden, I would remove it, because,

unless he had laid deep the foundations of the economical prosperity,
of this country, the social reforms which we strive for would have
been beyond the reach of hope. Cobden, living in the midst of a busy
manufacturing population, and with the sagacity of a man of business,
saw, at least, one thing. He saw what even Mill, wise and tender as
he was to the people, could not see. He
saw that the one thing to
do wasto repeal the Corn Laws. The repeal of the Corn Laws, which
Cobden fought for, curiously enough, was not insisted upon by the
economists as a remedy for the distress of the people. It is another of
those extraordinary instances of the blindness of wise men, when they
arenotin contact with thosewho suffer. In Mill's "Political Economy"
you an extraordinary passage, in which he says that from the
will find

repeal of the Corn Laws he could not hope for much for the bettering
of the condition of the people. He said that, because he was misled by
a false economic theory. But Cobden, having the brilliant sagacity
which shines Smith, did see in his own county how the men
in Adam
and the mills suffered by the Corn Laws; and he pointed out (and I
think we have not sufficiently remarked it since) of what immense

importance not merely cheap bread is to the people, but a steady

price of bread, which means steady trade. What Cobden said was :

If you have a steady price for bread, then will trade, as a whole, be

steadier, and the workman be able to calculate his income and his

expenditure. And if we we
turn to the facts since Cobden's time,
see how completely his prediction has been verified. Between i860 and

*
The reference here is to something which was said in the discussion that followed the
one of the speakers protesting that Mr. Toynbee had unduly depreciated the
first lecture,
economists, and especially their services in the cause of Free Trade.
 28

1870, the difference between the highest and the lowest price of grain
was 24s. ; between 1S70 and 1880 it was 15s. a quarter. That simplefact
means that vast masses of labourers are saved from degradation, because,

though the depression of trade through which we have lately passed has
been great, it is not to be compared for a moment, as the elder work-
men know well, and those who have studied the history of the time
know, with the agony of 1841.

Now, it is this very improvement in the material condition of the

problem we have to solve, for until people

people that constitutes the
have raised themselves a little, they cannot be really discontented.
The people at one time were too brutalised to feel the longings for a
more refined life which they now feel and it is this that we have to
settle —how to give them a share in ideals
;

which we have taught them to

for. And the
long simple difficulty is, that owing to the fact that they
have got the suffrage, owing to the fact that we have a free Press, and
that they have a greater intelligence —
their wants have increased faster
than their income. a singular thing, that although the material
It is

condition of the people has improved, yet the economists have not

changed their theory of economic development. It is a singular

thing that Mr. George can find the foundation of his views in the
works of Mill, and Ricardo, and Cairnes. It would not be surprising
if we found a theory that rent must increase, and that wages and

profits must remain stationary or fall with an advance of civili-

either

sation, in the works of Ricardo ; but it is extraordinary that in 1873

Mr. Mill, in one of his papers on land tenure reform, should have
asserted that rent must continually increase, and that profits and
wages must either remain stationary or decline. The statement was
repeated by Cairnes in 1874, and it seems to be the generally accepted
view ; but it is a view which is false. In fact, Mr. George's theory
would not have received the support it has in England had it not
been buttressed by the theories to be found in the treatises of Mill,
Ricardo, and Cairnes.
Let me try and explain to you how this theory is proved. In
Ricardo's time, as I said in my last lecture, England was in a state
of great distress. In order to get corn to feed the people, we had to
plough up moors and sheepwalks, and every year the price of bread
grew higher. Now, what Ricardo said was this If the price of bread :

risesand the labourer wishes to obtain, and insists upon obtaining,

the same number of loaves —
suppose, for example, a family takes ten
loaves a week —
every manufacturer, every great employer, will have
 29

to give to his workmen a larger share of the wealth that is made in each
trade. That the great coalowner will have to give a larger share of
is,

the coal to the coal hewer, that he may purchase the same quantity of
bread as before the great cotton manufacturer will have to give a larger
;

weight of yarn to the spinner, that he may purchase the samequantity of

bread as before ;
and therefore the share that will remain in the hands
of the employers will be less than before but in the meantime rent ;

will increase, because the price of bread having gone up every land-

owner can obtain a higher price for his land. That is the simple
statement of the theory of economic development accepted by the
English economists. But the theory is not true. For, to take only
one point, it is clear that just at the time when the price of bread
is highest the labourer is at his weakest, and, therefore, is most help-
less in struggling with the employer. As a matter of fact, the great

employers did make large fortunes during the great war, when
rent was very high, as they have made large fortunes since.
The reason why Mill did not see this was that he, in common
with whole English school of economists, confounded the
the
return for the use of capital, which we call interest, with what we may call
the gains of monopoly and speculation and enterprise. Because
interest, as a rule, but not always, falls with the advance of civilisation,
these economists argued that the wages of superintendence also would
fall, or, rather, they included
the wages of superintendence under the
term interest ;
and there was their mistake. As a matter of fact,

therefore, and I have found this to be the case by investigations

I have made, in different manufacturing districts in different trades
profits have risen in the
sense that the gains of the employers have
increased since 1840; and that is one explanation of the reason

why the workmen are not better off. The increase has not gone, as

the English economists said, simply to rent, or mainly to rent ; it has

gone mostly to the great employers.
But I cannot satisfactorily explain the origin of this theory, that
rent continually increasing, to the detriment of profits and wages,
is

unless you will lollow me back once more to that disastrous time when
the great modern problems arose. It was in that time that this

peculiar theory sprang up,

and unless I can put this theory aside, I
cannot effectually destroy Mr. George's view. That time was an awful
crisis of the English people.
in the history Population, which had
been growing slowly during the early years of the eighteenth century,
suddenly went forward with an immense impetus under the encourage-
ment of the power-loom, and the spinning machinery, and the steam
engine. And then all of a sudden the sun failed, and the heavens broke
up. The stars in their courses fought against the English people-
Year after year the rain beat down upon the soddened fields, tilled by
paupers; and men, women, and children, working with moans and tears
in factories and mines from daybreak to night, could get no bread to eat,

though our commerce grew, andspreadtoevery clime. All theContinent

was aflame with war, and though our commerce spread, the English
labourer took not of the increase, for that which he needed most we
could not get then in return for all our goods. We could not get
enough bread for him to eat. It was not the fault of the rich in this
case. We had come to one of those great crises in the history of the

human race, when in the long struggle between fate and human will

(by fate I mean those great uncontrolled natural forces which en-

compass our life, and those inner workings of our own minds which
have not yet been brought under the control of our will) I say it —
was one of those times when fate was triumphant, and man went to
the ground. It was an awful time, and we may be thankful that we

did not live in it ;

it is no good trying to see that there is a meaning
in it. We cannot see the meaning of these things. Every now and
then the human race must suff<2r in silence. Thank God, we have not
to suffer thus at the present time !

I will show you now how it is that the rich could not help the poor.
We are all amazed at the vast increase of machinery, and at the

enormous mechanical power now placed at our service it is one of —

the facts which Mr, George dwells upon and yet we say, how little —
have the workpeople gained But the power-loom and the spindle
!

and the steam-engine could do little to elevate the suffering of the

people for if you ask the workman about his expenditure, he will
;

tell you (and I think there is a general agreement about it) that he

spends between 40 and 60 per cent. generally 60 per cent., at least,

—
in the case of the labourer —
on food and so, though you might ;

cheapen clothing, it was of

you could not cheapen
little avail while
bread. And then machinery
brought a vast evil in its train. People
—
—
working weavers and spinners were thrust aside and trampled down
by the newmachinery; and that at the very time when they needed help
most. And again, the rich could not help by money, for, wonderful as
it may seem, in spite of the vast heaps of wealth that there
were in England, it was impossible for the rich really to succour
the poor. And here we have the explanation of the book written by
Alalthus. During those bad harvests year after year, with a great war
allthrough Europe, we could not get, as a nation, the bread to eat.
There was a Hmited supply of food ; and Malthus urged and argued,
that it was of no use the rich giving money to the poor, for it would

only raise the price of bread. The only way in which they could
help
—
and they did it as much as they could was by lessening their —
own consumption of bread. That is how the idea of natural and ^^--
exorable law crept into our economic science. Human will was
powerless at that particular time, and Malthus was right in saying
as he did, that Trades' Unions could not raise wages, simply
because, though they might get higher moneywages, they could not
get higher bread wages. Now we understand, perhaps, Malthus's
doctrine of population. It, like the whole of the English school of

thought, was the product of a peculiar and disastrous time. Popu-

lationwas advancing at an immense pace, and though immense
improvements were also being made in agriculture, food could not be
grown fast enough. But after a time the crisis passed away, although
the theories which had grown up in the brief moment of agony
dominated our thought for half-a-century. You may ask,
iS; then, the theory of Malthus false ? Well, it is neither false
nor true. I told you in my last lecture, that one thing that w^e
economists had learnt w^as many this, that of the laws or statements
that we made, which we at one time supposed to be universally true,
we now understand to be true only under the conditions of a par-
ticular time and place. The law of population is not true in America,

because increase of population means an increase of wealth but it ;

probably is true in Norway and in France. How far the doctrine of

population is of practical importance to us at the present time I can-
not now tell you ; but one thing I may say, and it is this the —
doctrine of population in its practical application is subordinate to
the hope of social reform. I mean, that we need not trust, as the old
economists did, to checks on population, either alone or in the main,
or improvements in the condition of the workpesple; but we may
trust to the organised work of the community, which will slowly

lift them to a higher place.

I have now put aside that doctrine of the English economists which

seems to countenance the theory of Mr. George. Eet me next take

Mr. George's theory in itself, and ask how far, and under what con-
ditions, it is true when applied to an old country like England ? Mr.
George says that in England x^^t will swallow up
everything, except
 32

what is just necessary to induce people to add to the stores of wealth,

and to induce the race to reproduce itself —
that is, he says, that in
an old country like England wages will depend upon the minimum
standard of comfort, and that the which
rate of interest (with
he generally confounds the earnings of monopoly, though he
distinguishes them in one place) will depend upon the induce-
ments to save. Everything else besides will be swept off by
rent. Now, under what conditions is this true ? It would be true in
^n island where one man possessed the whole of the land, and
where the people were subject to him — that is, where he had the
physical power to leave them just enough to eat and himself to take all
the rest ; and even then, of course, from this island there must be no

migration of labour or capital ; the people of that island must be con-

fined to it. Is there any country in the world in which circumstances
of this sort obtain ? Yes ;
there is more than one. If you turn to

India you will find that there, practically, wages the remuneration of —
those who till the soil —
do depend upon the will of the Government.
But notice that in India economic interest, or, rather, the enlightened
economic interest of a Government which is slowly struggling to do
justice, does protect the people. Othman, the great Mohammedan
in his first land settlements altered the rent every year ; but
Emperor,
he soon found that he had made a mistake, because if he swept off
the fruits of the earth year after year, there was no inducement left at
all to the labourers to work ; so, gradually, he extended his settle-
ments to ten years, and we have now extended them to thirty years —
that is, for thirty years the labourers are left in possession of the land
and of the fruits of the land for thirty years any increased wealth
;

which they make cannot be carried off by the State. But there is
another country closer home than India in which economic interest
has broken down — I mean Ireland. Ireland is almost too sad a
subject for anyone to talk about, but I will say a few words
about In Ireland you have a population of peasants, with no
it.

manufactures to which to resort, as we have in England ; and you

have a population of peasants, without the alertness and the power of
movement which capital gives, and therefore they are at the mercy, or
were at the mercy, of the landlords. It is true that in Ireland rent has
lowered wages. It is true that what the landlord took lowered the

remuneration not only of the peasant farmer, but of the labourer

whom he employed ; and Mr. Davitt is right in saying that the labourers
ought now to share in the reduction of rent which has taken place —
 33

for was partly out of their wages that the excessive rent had been
it

taken. The Irish Land Act of 1881, as I told you last Thursday, does
mark a great epoch in our history ; but it is not an Act in which
we can take any pride, for it was not the fruit of
patient foresight,
watching year after year to remedy the sufferings of a people it ;

was an Act snatched from us by crime and violence and

though ;

the great statesman who passed it, and who go will down to posterity
memorable for passing that Act — and he deserves to be memorable
— although this great statesman will go down to posterity
memorable for the work he has done, yet we cannot but regret that
not only he, but the ruling classes in this
country, had not foreseen
the evil which came. One or two remember, saw
Englishmen,
it, and understood it. one of the greatest of the many merits
It is
of John Mill, that he saw long ago that rents in Ireland ought not to be
fixed by competition ;
but his words were unheeded, and we are
responsible
— not merely the governing classes, but we, as a nation, are
responsible
— for
neglecting his words.
Is there similar oppression in England? The theory has
been that the oppression which was exercised in Ireland was
peculiar to Ireland,and that the English farmers, being capitalists,
with the power of movement, were able to hold out against unfair
exactions of rent, and that the English labourer was also able to
protect himself According to this theory, rent is what is left after

wages and profits are paid, and wages and profits are fixed inde-

pendently of rent. This theory is the accepted one, and it has

been especially urged as a justification of the Irish Land Act that —
the principle upon which it could be vindicated does not apply
here. Now, I wish to make a distinction which I shall recur to
later on
a distinction between the power of a landlord to evict or
:

to pull down cottages and throw together farms what you may call —
the physical power which he exercises in virtue of his possession of
the land — and his power to raise rent. Now it is true — as I have to deal
with the management of land, I know it —that under certain condi-
tions you cannot raise your rents against the will of the farmer,
because the farmer can " I will throw
say, up my farm, and I will
either emigrate to America, or remove to some other part of this
country." In the present depression of agriculture farmers have
thrown up their farms ; that is, being capitalists, they have been able
to hold their own, and you will find that is especially the case in
the districts which border on the great manufacturing centres.
 34

There the farmers are alert, intelligent, and are able to hold their

own ;
but when you come to the South of England, to Dorsetshire,
say, or Wiltshire, you will find there that in many districts the
farmers are farmers; that they have only a little,
not capitalist

capital that they are unable to resist the exactions of the landlord,
;

and that the labourers share also in their economic subjection.

Now I find from studying Government reports, that it is admitted, or,
rather, asserted,by farmers and labourers, that the high rents have in
England caused low wages. This has always been denied by land-
lords ; but I have had the opportunity of consulting land-agents who
have not been afraid to speak the truth, and these men have admitted
tome that on more than one farm they have known a rise in rents to
be followed by a reduction in —
wages that is, that on a small scale
the same conditions obtain in an English county in the South of
England that obtain in Ireland and in India. But mind, those con-
England exceptional. Wherever you have labourers, such
ditions are in
as you have in Northumberland and Durham, who are close to the coal-

pits and the industries, and whenever you have farmers with energy,
and character, and capital, there rent cannot lower wages, because the
labourer has the power of movement, and the capitalist farmer has
the power of movement, and t-here is competition amongst the land-
lords for the letting of farms.

Now, let us come, having dealt with agriculture, to ground rents in

England. Ground rents are of far more importance, perhaps to

you than agricultural rents, for, as I hinted at the beginning of my

lecture, the working men in London have suffered from high rents.
You I dare say understand that the value of land in London
is infinitely greater than the value of land in any other town ; it is
infinitely greater than the value of land,say, in Bolton, in Lancashire.
If you went to Bolton, in Lancashire, you would find that nearly
every artizan lived in a whole house ; but you know well that an
artizan in London either has to live in two rooms, or has to take a
house and let lodgings.one explanation of the reason
Now, here is

why I think you attribute so much importance

to this book of Mr.

George's. You have suffered yourselves whether —

consciously or uncon-
sciously, I do not know, probably consciously from the high rents
—
which are exacted in London. Now, let us look carefully into this matter,
and see whether we can explain it. Why are rents, in the first place,
so much higher in London than they are elsewhere ? and in the next
place, why do workmen apparently suffer themselves more from high
 oo

rents in London ? It might be argued that economic interest would

lead them to expect higher wages in London to compensate them for
their higher rents ; and in a certainmeasure wages are higher in
London than they are, say, in Oxford or in Bolton, in similar trades,
but I think from my own inquiries, and from the opinions of workmen
whom I have consulted, that this higher rate of wages does
not compensate for the cost of Now the
greater living.
reason why land is of such immense value in London is this. Land
in London will bear or has a great many uses and if a labourer ;

wishes to live in the middle of

London, he will have to pay a rent
which will not be
merely determined by the value of the land for his
own house, but by the value of the land for a warehouse. If
you
let it for a warehouse, you let it for an enormous rent, and,
therefore, you are going to build an artizan's house upon
if

it, that house will have to pay a much higher rent

artizan's
than it would have to
pay supposing the land were only adapted for
this one class of house.
Now, to show you that this is the case, if you
go to great manufacturing towns in Yorkshire and in Lancashire,
you will find often that there is a gradual movement of factories from
inside the town to the outskirts. That is, the millowners find
great
that the land so valuable for warehouses, and that
is
they have to pay
such a high rent if they keep their factories on the land in the centre
of the town, that it pays them better to take their businesses
outside,
and build in the valleys, or on the
edge of the moors. There is an
instance of what I mean— the great value of the land causing, you will
observe, a great difficulty to the manufacturer for a time, because
the rent he pays is not determined the value of the land for the use
by
of his factory, land for
but, say, by the value of his its use for a
warehouse.
Now then, what bearing has this upon wages and interest and
profits ? In the is no doubt that some capitalists
first place, there
may have suffered by the exactions of landowners in great towns ;
but if you go to Lancashire or to Yorkshire, you will find that that is
not the case. In most of the great Lancashire towns the mills are
built either on a lease, or upon
—what practically a free-
— a 999 years99 years
is

hold lease. That is, the owner of the land is powerless

to demand a high rent for his land and from inquiries I have made
;

of men who ought to know, because they are manufacturers them-

selves, Ihave learned that not only is this the case, but that even at the
termination of the 99 years lease the rent is often not raised. Ycu may
 36

ask me in astonishment, why does the landowner let the manufacturer

stay there For a very simple reason; the business of the factory is
?

essential to the prosperity of the place. If the landowner tries to

exact a high rent, there are a great many places elsewhere on
which the cotton spinner can build his factory, and if he goes, then
will the population follow him ;
then will the cottages which belong
to the landowner become tenantless ;
so that it is the landowner's
interest in Lancashire not to exact a high rent, but rather to let

the land for the

factory go very cheap. in And it is clear that
Lancashire rent has nothing whatever to do either with a depression
of profi's, supposing there to be a depression which has not —
been the case — or with a depression of wages. Wages in Lancashire
are independent of the powerof the landownersof Lancashireasawhole.
But directly you come to London you find an entirely different state of
things. I have noticed in some of the papers indignant letters,
evidently inspired by Mr. George's book, which I should say have
been written by London leaseholders. Leases in London are far
shorter than they are anywhere else. Whereas in Bolton you get a
99 years lease, and may not get your rent raised at the end of it, in

London you often can only get a 60 or 75 years lease, sometimes

shorter, because the old corporations colleges, and so on could — —

not let 40 years and at the termination
their land for longer than ;

of the lease the rent But observe, during the 40 years of the
is raised.

lease the owner of the ground is powerless even here. The holder of
the lease stands, as it were, in his place, and is able to appropriate the
fruits of the growth of speculation and of his enterprise, and the

labourer is able to share it with him if he combines in Trades Unions.

But at the end of the term the landowner raises his rent and now we —
come to an important question. he can sweep off the
It is quite clear

increased value of the land, but can he sweep off more? Can he
raise his rent to a point which will not only transfer to him that
" "
which has hitherto gone
unearned increment to the tenant, but
will diminish the profits of the tenant's business ? No, he cannot,
except, as I will show you, under certain exceptional conditions, because,
as a rule, as I know from experience, those who own or rent these
" I will
shops and warehouses will say, not stay here. I will go else-
where ;" and as there is competition amongst the owners of
land in London to let land, it is quite clear that the owner of
the shop or business has the power to move elsewhere, and
other men will be glad to let their lands to him. I
 37

have known instances where shops have stood empty year after
year, I know of one in Oxford at the present time, simply
because owner of the house persists in asking a higher
the
rent than that which the shopkeeper says he can afford to
pay and yet make the ordinary profit on his trade. So you will
observe that, though the landowners are able to sweep off the increased
rent, they and, therefore, not to
are not able to diminish profits,

depress wages so far as they depend upon profits, except where a man's
business depending greatly upon local connection, he is uinwilling to

forego his connection, and unwilling to leave his house and shop,
and, therefore, is forced to take lower profits in his trade, in order to
retain the advantages of staying there.

I have now shown thatrent in agriculture and in great cities does not

lower profits or wages, except under certain exceptional conditions, which

I shall deal with later on. If I had time I could give you a great

number of facts to show that Mr. George's assertion, that wages and
interest always fall as rent rises, is I
constantly disproved by history.
will only take one instance from our own recent experience. Between
1850 and 1878 there was a great rise of rent in this country.
Even
in the case of agricultural land therewas an increase of 40 per cent.,
while the rent of town land, of course, rose even more considerably.
Did interest and wages fall ? On the contrary. Interest remained
in a few cases, but
stationary while wages rose, rose to nearly double
rose more or less in almost all. Now we come to the question : Since
rent does not directly lower profits or lower wages, ought we to con fiscate
rent? First of all, let us ask what we should gain
— what the money gain
would be ? You will remember that Mr. George, in his book, states
that he would not take the whole of what is commonly called rent but,
to individual exertions and
only that part of rent which was due, not
enterprise, but to the natural growth
of civilisation— that is, he wishes
that every man should keep that which he has earned himself; and he
there follows the English economists. But he asserts that the com-
munity ought to obtain that which practically the community has

produced. Now, can we divide the rent which is really the result of
labour and capital from rent which is what Mr. George would call
payment for the bare use of land ? Take, first of all, the rent
in agricul-

ture. What is the rent of agricultural land in the United Kingdom ?

The according to the latest available income-tax returns, is

rent,
of that is Irish rent, and that
;^69,ooo,ooo.* Now, about ;^io,ooo,ooo
* The gross annual value of
" Lands " as distinct from "
Houses " under Schedule A was
 38

is being reduced. about ^10,000,000 of the rent of

— Again,
it is

corporate property property which either is, or ought to be, as I

understand it, directed to a public use. Of that figure I am not
quite
certain. Now, if we deduct, say, ^10,000,000 of corporate rent, and
deduct the sum which the Land Commissioners have taken from the
landlords of Ireland and handed over to the peasants, we
may fairly say
thattherental still
left to deal with does not
exceed^6o,ooo,ooo. Now,
what part of that are we to regard as due to the growth of the com-
"
munity, as "unearned increment ? It is a very difficult to I thing say.
have done the best have talked with land-agents about it,
I could. I

especially with one land-agent whom I have the honour to know, who
is not only a land-agent, but a good Liberal, and a man who, though
he has dealt with land all his
understands and sympathises with
life,

the labourers. I asked him what he thought this so-called " unearned
"
increment would and he told me that it was impossible to form
be,
an exact estimate but he pointed out one thing which he considered
;

of great importance. He said " Of course, Mr. George proposes to

:

leave to the landlords the interest on the

capital which they have put
into the soil ; but a certain portion at least of that
capital is wasted it ;

does not add to the value of the land. For a man instance, may
spend a great deal of money in adopting a bad system of drainage,
which does not add to the value of the land in fact, it _
;
may
depreciate the value of the land so that the question arises, are
;
you
to leave to the landlord the interest on all the capital he has

put into the land, or are you to take what is the letting value of the
land at the present time, and then see how much, as far as
you can,
the improvements introduced by the landlords have added to the
letting
value?" My own opinion is, that it would be fair, supposing we
adopted this system, to take the letting value of the land, and deduct
only that which the landlords had added to that value. Now, how much
would that be ? Well, it has been variously estimated. Some people
have said it would be two-thirds of the whole others have
saidonlyone-
;

third. If I take an estimate halfway, whichthink myself (of course, I

vve are all liable to correction on this

point) is too high, it would be
thirty millions ; so that thirty millions would be paid to the
English
people.
Now we come to the ground rents. These present even greater

returned at something between 69 and 70 millions for each of the four

but the total was reduced by about a million in each of the two latter years 1877.8 to 18S0 r
vears ovvin-^
' ° to reoav'
ments and altowances on account of agricultural depression
 39

difficulty. The value ot houses, according to the returns I

have just referred to, in iS8o or 1881* was 115 millions
in United Kingdom.
the There, you see, you get land and
houses together —
we have no separate record of ground rents —
the ground rents are hidden away under the rent of houses. The
question, therefore, is, have we any data for forming a fair and
just estimate ? I do not know that we have ; but one thing I will

point out, and that is this — that the ground rents of London are
infinitely greater in proportion to the area of land than those
of any other place, owing to the reason I have spoken of.

Take a
given piece of land
Blackburn, in Bolton or and
take an equal piece of land in London, and you will find the difference
between the ground rents would be enormous. I believe that
many people have been dazzled and misled by the immense sums which
theyknow land would let for in the centre of this city ; they have
formed their estimate of the ground rents of the whole kingdom, that
is, upon the ground rents of an exceptional place. Still, the ground

rents of the whole kingdom would amount to a large sum. I put

them myself on some rough calculations" which I have made, but to

which I do not attach much value, at about 20 or 25 millions,
as a whole, out of the 115 millions. I know there is a great
difference of opinion about this, and I do not want to rest my
case upon it. I found that a friend of mine, an economist of
reputation, had also estimated the ground rents at 25 millions.
To be safe, then, let us put the ground rents at 30 millions.
We now have 60 millions which would be paid over to the

treasury of the State if Mr. George's plan were to be adopted.

This sum of 60 millions is to be paid for the redemption of
the English people ! It seems to me simply incredible, that an old
and powerful nation like the English, with a long history of free
institutions, with men who have suffered for liberty, and who have
built up her greatness by devotion and patience
— I say, it seems to
me incredible, that the members of that nation should think that they
can redeem themselves by seizing upon 60 millions of gold and
silver. Sixty millions is a large sum, I admit. It is not such a very

large sum when you compare it with the national income, which is

something about twelve hundred millions still it is a large sum ; but

—
is it a sum for which you are going to risk your whole civilisation ?

*
115 millions in 1879-80, 117^ millions in 1880.S1.
 40

I do not deny that there may be cases in which it may be

justifiable to confiscate property. Such cases have arisen in the history

of a great nation. No compensation, as Mr. George tells us, was given

to Southern slaveowners for their slaves after the great war but I ;

am told by the Americans that tliey would have had compensation

if it had not been for the war. Again, I find instances of confisca-
tion in England and our own Colonics, and, I think, justifiable
confiscation. For example, the Colony of Victoria in Australia was,

until the gold discoveries of 1

850-1, not a rich colony at all, and
was inhabited by a sparse population, largely composed of great
graziers. These men held vast tracts of land from the Government
by lease, with the right of pre-emption, that is, of buying at a nominal

price. Then came

the gold discoveries. The gold discoveries, which

brought thousands of men from every country in the world, added

enormously to the wealth and population of the country, and gave an
immense increase to the value of the land. The squatters proposed
to exercise their right of pre-emption at a nominal price. If they

had done so at that time they would immediately, being very

few, have had the whole of the colony in their hands, and so the
"
Colonial Government said No," and it simply wiped out those
rights without compensation, andthe English Government at home rati-
fied that action. AVell, I think that that was justifiable; but do remember
of what nation you are speaking in the case of England. It is not a

nation that has been ground down for ages. It has had its wrongs and
has suffered, I admit ; you know that as well as I do ;
but you knov/
also, that the way we have dealt with those wrongs and sufferings
has not been by violent and spasmodic attempts at confiscation,

producing a war between classes, but it has been by slow and patient
endeavours to do right, by endeavouring to win one class to support
another class, and to weld the nation into a compact whole. I
admit that rent ought to be taxed but you have no right well, it
;
— is

superfluous to talk about right

—
I say that it is highly inexpedient it^

the interests of this community that the proposal simply to con-

fiscate rent should be entertained for a moment.
I have said that I would tell you how you should deal with the
taxing of rent. I shall speak on the subject a little later on, when I

come to discuss social reforms, and to show you where to get money
to carry them out. Before dealing with that point, I wish to ask,
having shown you that rent has not lowered profits and wages as a
whole (always remember the exceptions), what has lowered wages in
 41

England ? or rather, what has prevented wages from rising as much

aswe should have expected them to do, considering the enormous
and admitted increase in our wealth ? I have made, again, investiga-
tions about the rise in money wages, and the increase in the cost ol
living in this country,and I find that in certain trades (I speak here
largely upon the evidence of workmen themselves I have not gone :

by statistics much), in certain trades wages have risen. For instance,

I believe they have risen very largely (I am now, of course, speaking
of money wages) in the boot and hosiery trades in Leicester. They
have risen, again, in the copper works of South Wales ; they have risen,
as you all know, in the building trades, but they have remained station-
ary insome of the leading trades in which we should have expected
them to rise most. They have risen not at all, or only a little, in the
great engineering trades, for example, and many workmen in
Lancashire not only have not gained a rise in wages, but have

positively suffered
— that is, workmen who were earning high wages in
factories have been displaced by machinery, and have had to work for
lower wages in those factories or in the mines. The whole question
of the rise of money wages is an extremely difficult one ; but I may
here point out, that about the year 1874, and he repeated the state-
ments in his book. Professor Fawcett, after reading Mr. Brassey's
book upon Work and Wages, expressed his astonishment that wages in
England had risen so little since Free-trade. He said
"
It had been —
my impression that the workman had largely gained and I find that ;

the workman has gained but He

based that statement upon
little."

statistics supplied by Mr. Brassey. Now, the point which we have got to

find out is this —

Why wages did not rise more. You remember that the
old political economists told us that there was a physical limit to the
rise in wages, and I have shown you how that view arose. But we
now know, first of all, that the only physical limit at the present ti.ne
in a country like the whole of the net produce of industry;
England is

that is, the whole of the net produce which is the joint result of labour
and enterprise. There is the physical limit; and as that net produce
is very large, we need not consider that physical limit of much
importance. Again, we admit that there is no limit in the amount of
previously stored-up wealth. That was an idea that the economists
had at one time, but it has been abandoned. No one supposes that
labourers in the boot trade in London, or in the cotton trade in
Lancashire, are prevented from getting higher wages, simply because,
atany given moment, there is only a limited quantity of wealth stored
 42

up for ready use. We know very well, of course, that the great
mass of things are not stored up ready for use. They are produced
when there is a demand for them. If, for instance, the bootmakers of
Leicester get higher wages, what happens is, that they begin to spend
their money in all the shops in Leicester, and then the trades in
Lancashire and Yorkshire become busy, and more coats and hats and
other articles of use are made ; so .there is no limit, we find

agam, to a rise of wages, m the previous accumulations of

capital. Where is the limit, then ? The limit is in the
will of the employer. The limit is not a physical one
but one which you may call a moral one.
remember, if Now
you please, that at present the employers expect what they call a
certain rate of profit —a certain rate of remuneration — for their enter-

prise. The question can you —is, I do not ask for the present, whether
it is much, but whether you can, by
just that they should have so
contrivance, by Trades' Unions, by skilful watching of the turns of
trade, get part of that wealth from them ? We are not now going to
discuss whether employers ought to give more wages we are going ;

to discuss whether the workman can, under the present conditions,

obtain more wages from him by any means to which he may legiti-

mately resort in the present state of society. Now, it is true that the
employer is immensely more powerful than the workman. Even when
the workman is combined in powerful Trades' Unions, he yet finds it

very difficult to grapple with the employer on equal terms. If the

workmen, by a combination, succeed in obtaining a rise in wages, the

employer can, if he likes, dismiss a certain number of workmen ; he
can, if he introduce machinery.
likes, also I have known instances

where a of wages has taken place, and the only

strike for a rise
result has been that the machine has taken the place of the labourer.
This is the employer's power. Mind, we are not condemning the
employers; remember workmen would probably do just the same if
that

they were in their position; in fact, I don't find in my own experience

that workmen are better employers than others. I
say am to
that I find that co-operators — I]do not wish to throw any sorryupon the slur

co-operative cause
—
but co-operators who are workmen, and who are
often in the position of employers, have sometimes forgotten the high
ideal with which they have started, and have not treated their workmen

any better than the capitalist employer whom they intend to

displace. I say, therefore, that we are not now discussing
whether an employer ought to do a certain thing, or whether he is
 43

wrong or right because he does a certain thing. We are simply

asking whether you, by using legal means, can obtain a wages rise in
from him; and my answer is this— that it is
extremely difficult,
simply because the employer, as I believe, can either, if he likes,
introduce machinery, or, if he likes, reduce his
expenditure on wages.
Now, one of the old doctrines of the economists was, that the
employers had a fixed sum to spend on wages, and people have
laughed at it. Of course, it is untrue as a general principle, but
recent investigations into the condition of the agricultural labourer
have certainly led me to suppose that there are classes of
employers,
probably the most ignorant and stupid, who, having spent habitually
a certainsum on labour, when wages rise, rather than employ the
same number as before at the higher wage, will dismiss a certain
number of the labourers, and spend only the same sum as before.
You see, therefore, the difficulties. Now, what have been the
remedies which the workmen have relied upon? The workmen, in the
first place, have relied upon Trades' Unions; and I believe myself—
(and
I think this, again, is a thing which London workmen do not realise as
fully as workmen in the North, in the iron and coal
trades)— that the
great Trades' Unions,when properly organised, and supported as they
willbe more and more by public opinion, the public opinion of the
whole of the people, will be able, not by coercion mainly, but
by
forcing the employer to respect them, and slowly to conceive of the
idea of introducing equity into his dealings with workmen I do —
think that the Trades' Unions may enforce a rise in
wages in the
future. As a matter of fact, the Trades' Unions have so far succeeded
that in the North of England, and in othei parts of the
country, boards,
which are not known in London, called Boards of Conciliation, have
been formed, upon which employers and workmen sit, at the same
table, to discuss the question of wages. These boards I think myself
are of very great significance, because
they could not have been
formed unless the employer had recognised the political equality and
independence of the woikmen ; and mark what that means. The
workman, as Mr. Mundella told the Trades' Unions Commission in
1867, had in the past been treated by the employer as a serf and a
dependent ; when he obtained the franchise and got political rights,
the employer was forced to respect him, and admit him to an
equal
footing.
— —
And this is the point directly you get the idea of
citizenship extended from one class to the whole people, it is
inevitable that in time the relations between classes must chan
 44

mean at once, but

I do not to say that they will change
I do know that these considerations slowly begin to act upon the
are only true to our-
employers, and that if we, the English nation,
and to our ideals, we shall be able to coerce the employers,
selves,
not by physical force, but by a far more powerful and subtle force
—
public opinion
—
into yielding to the workmen the wages which they

employers, as I say, may be worked upon

deserve. The in that

way ; but there is also one other method of dealing

with them, that
is, by international co-operations
of workmen. There was a society

formed some years ago, of which Professor Beesly knows the

history
—
for he was concerned in it which was called the —
Inter-

national, and was much misunderstood in England ;

but it had for

its main object a thoroughly legitimate thing, viz. — the combination,

the peaceful combination, peaceful and intelligent combination of
workmen in different countries in Europe, to prevent employers
reducing wages by importing foreign labour. Now that
society broke down, and it is important to remember why. It

broke down because workmen were not yet fit to co-operate ; that
is, they were not yet fit for international co-operation. I say that the
workmen were not fit at that time to carry out this work, because it

involved co-operation between men of different races, different

languages, different ideas and prejudices.

But the history of that
which that the thing can
society teaches us one great lesson,
is this ;

be done, and probably will be done in time. But remember that

the material change you want can only be got by the development of

higher moral qualities. That is a thing which I am afraid a great

many of you do not understand. You do not realise what a subtle
and delicate and complicated thing civilisation is. Civilisation has

not been built up by brute force, as I told you before ;

it has been

builtup by patience, by self-sacrifice, by care, by suffering and you ;

for the
cannot, and you will not, obtain any great material change
better unless you are also prepared to make an effort to advance in
your moral ideas.

So far, then, I have dealt with the question of a rise in wages as

between employers and workmen. Is there any remedy which can
be offered besides ? I think you will find, if you study the question,
that there is one remedy which has been much spoken of and dealt
with in Lancashire and Yorkshire, but, again, is little understood in
London. That is the difficulty of dealing with you London work-
men lead a peculiar life ; you have a sort of civilisation of your
:
you
 45

own you have a history of your own and I, talking about the
; ;

workman's Hfe in Lancashire and Yorkshire, have sometimes been

surprised workmen in London are as ignorant of
to find that
it as if —
they belonged to the middle class.
well, as if Now,
what can co-operation, which is a great name in Lancashire and
Yorkshire, and of which Mr. Lloyd Jones has been the champion
for so long a time —
what can co-operation do for the workmen
to obtain a rise in wages? There has been a great difficulty
in the way of co-operation, for that, again, has implied higher moral

qualities and not only that, but

;
it has implied great energy and
power of mind for industry, as it ;
is carried on in modern times, is,

as we know, carried on upon a large scale, and a man requires to be, in

a rough way, a kind of genius in order to grapple with trade, to watch
markets, to know what shall be made, where to buy his materials, and
when to close his factories. Now, workmen have never been able
to succeed up to the present time on a large scale (I think I
am right) in
production but
co-operative do believe that ;
I

co-operative production can succeed, and I wish co-operators would

turn their attention to one thing. I have said that most of the trades

inEngland are carried on on a large scale, but there are some trades
which are carried on on a small scale. There is the nail trade, for
instance, in South Staffordshire. We have been horrified by the
revelations of the state of things in the nail trade. Now, the nail
trade is a trade, so far as I understand it, not requiring much capital,
and which couldbegrappled withby co-operators. Mightlsuggest to the

co-operators that they should turn their immediate attention to those

trades in which small capital is required, and see whether they cannot
—
redeem the workers in them for the condition of the workers in the
nail trade is infamous.
There are many other points with regard to co-operation
which I might deal with, but I have no more time. I

must turn now to agriculture. I have said that I would deal

with the taxing of rent and deal with agricultural wages. What
can be done to raise the wages and improve the condition of
the agricultural labourer ? We know that the historical policy of the
Liberal party with regard to land has been what has been called
free trade in land, but that we know in the last year or so has
fallen slightly into contempt amongst them.
thought great Men
things of it at one time, but they now see this ; that if you had
free trade in land you would only get larger estates than before, and
 46

what we want to do is to prevent 2,238 men owning half of the

United Kingdom. That is an appalling fact, and it has im-
pressed not only people who propose the nationalisation of the
land, but people who do not propose such a revolutionary measure,
as they would call it, but who
propose other measures which, they
think, would prevent a catastrophe. These people have
proposed peasant proprietorship. They have said, and men on
all hands begin to admit (even those who would alter things
as little as that there is a to
possible), great danger
society in the existence of such a small number of land-
owners midst of a vast population like this.
in the Now, let us
consider the old Liberal remedy.
first Is it of no use ? I have
taken immense pains to study this question. It is one of those

questions in w^hich historical investigations are of primary importance ;

untilyou know, that is, the reasons which have led to the accumula-
tions of land in the past, what the
you cannot faithfully say effect of
free trade in land will be. cannot even summarise conclusions
I my
to-night, but I will tell you opinion, and you may take it for what
my
it is worth. My own opinion is, that the land has in England been

got together into a few hands mainly for political and social causes,
for I find that the dispersion of small freeholders in
England follows
very closely the growing supremacy in politics of the great landowners.
From 1 688 to 1800 the small freeholders went, and during that time the
great landowners were on the throne. Now, the question is. If we had
free trade in land, would those political motives disappear ? No.
I think if you had free trade in land alone, and left free trade in

land to do the work alone, you would not get a dispersion of land.
But I think if you accompanied such measures by sweeping and vital
and necessary political changes
— if
you reform the House of Lords,
which you will have to do ;
if you establish County Boards —
that is, you place the government of the English counties in the
if

handsofthe labourers and inhabitants of the counties; if you abolish the

Game Laws if you remove all those other privileges which at present
;

induce men to buy land, I think it is extremely probable, though we

have men of enormous wealth in England whose passion now is to
buy land, that in future those men might be content as, on the whole,
men are content in America, to buy just enough land for residence,
and not to accumulate estates in county after county for the sake of

political influence. I know that there are large estates in America ;

but I find that those, as a rule, are held for speculation — that is, the
 47

men who hold them are not rich men, wielding vast political power —
they are men who are called land-poor — they are poor men who are

impoverishing themselves in order to enrich themselves by the sale of

the land in the future. I cannot argue this out now I may at some —
future time — but there is one point I want to insist upon.
The question is this : If free trade in land gives you a

greater distribution of land, will it improve the condition

(and that is the real point) of the agricultural labourers ?

Now, would point out that, of course, free trade

in the first place, I
in land would be accompanied by improved agriculture. Men
absolute of land that is included under the
having ownership (and
term free trade) would put capital into the land, would spend more
money in wages ; and in this manner the labourer's position would
improve. It is indeed pointed out in answer to that, that where agri-

culture is at its best, the condition of the labourer is often at its worst.

That I admit is sometimes the case ; and it is not merely necessary to

get efficient production, you must look into the matter, and see
whether
there is not something wrong with the methods of distribution in

agriculture. Now, the peasant-proprietorship scheme is

meant really to
meet this difficulty. You mean,who propose it, to give
those of you
he may have his own small
to the labourer the land in order that

plot of ground, may become prosperous, perhaps, and certainly a

Conservative. Now, the agricultural labourer, I imagine, is
not yet fit become a peasant proprietor, and what is more, if he
to

were, I should say, that it was a highly dangerous and foolish experi-
ment to make at the present time. When you are proposing to intro-
duce great economic changes, you do not sit down in your study and
manufacture a scheme. You carefully watch the course of things,
you carefully observe the movements of population and of wealth and
the habits and ideas of the people, and you try and forecast the
results of your measure. Now, I maintain, first of all, that economic
conditions in England are far too uncertain to admit of this proposal

being adopted at present in any but the most tentative way.

The most experienced observers say that, apart altogether
from the seasons, the future of agriculture is an extremely uncertain
one ; and if it is so, it is quite clear that by putting the labourer on
the land you may simply involve him in ruin. You have to wait, and
this is what I especially want to impress upon you, you have to wait
to deal with this thing until the economic conditions are more
settled. There is a great disturbing fact in the West of America —
 48

the great farms of the West of America ;

but these farms, I think
from what observe, are beginning to disappear.
I The soil in
cases so exhausted, that it does not pay to cultivate
many is
getting
in the present wasteful manner, and therefore the extraordinary
low price of corn which has prevailed in the English markets
and
may not prevail in future. Still, I say, that it is uncertain,
while uncertain, the transference of the land to
it is
the peasantry

at the present time might prove a destructive gift to the peasants.

for you to
Next, I think I can point out that it is quite possible
effect a decided improvement in the condition of the agricultural
labourer without trying any such measure. What I think the Liberal
all the
Party might try is this. say, first of all, that
They might
commons and allthe waste lands in the kingdom, instead of, as at

present, being under an Enclosure, or rather, it has now become a

Land Commission, should be really placed in the hands of either
the Village Commune, as in France, or of the County Boards,
which are now to be established. These waste lands are, of course,
very much smaller than they used to be, but they are still of vast

importance, and if you can place them in the hands of the County
Boards, you would then prevent, at any rate, the labourers suffering
in the future from the enclosure of the remnants of their commons,

and, in the next place, you would enable land to be let to labourers
where experiments could be made as to the possibility of peasant

That, I think, is a suggestion thaf might be con-

proprietorship.
one thing necessary. It
sidered. But further, I think there is this

is necessary that labourers in the country, as

well as in the towns,

should be able to buy their houses, and, if they wish, to get a plot of
land as well. I do think it is reasonable to demand that the

labourer should have a right to buy a house if he wishes, and that he

should have also the right either to rent or to buy, say, a half acre
of land, the half acre which Mr. Joseph Arch demands. That seems
to me a reasonable proposal, and if you do that, you will then, to a
certain extent— to a large extent, secure the independence of the

agricultural labourer, for it is no good conferring

a vote upon him
unless you do secure his independence.

Next, we come to the taxation of rent. What can be said for

the taxation of rent ? Mill's original proposal, which was made by

him in 1870 in consultation with some of the London workmen

land then as you
(who were as eager about the nationalisation of the
are now), was that what he called the unearned increment
 40

should be taken, but that it should not be taken as Mr. George

proposes, without compensation, but should be taken after a
time, after the land had been valued. Now, I do not think that
that a very practicable thing.
is But what could be done is this.
I think you could tax land more than
you do by the present income
tax if you increased the tax on the income of
capitalists at the same
time. You may say that is a very extraordinary proposal, but in
thinking it over I think that it is just. All property in this kingdom
is held subject to taxation. What really is unjust is, that
you should suddenly put a burden one class
great upon
alone. In 1842, Sir Robert Peel, in order to out
carry
some great financial changes
— in order, in fact, to inaugurate
the era of Free-trade — imposedincome tax, which was,
the
practically, of course, a deduction from the income of the propertied
classes ; and as such it affected the selUng value of shares.
Now, no one disputed it to be his right to do that in fact, it was ;

admitted to be his right, and I think if you imposed a tax, not at first
a heavy one, perhaps a graduated tax, according to the size of estates
and the size of incomes, you would go some steps towards
meeting the
difficulty. These questions, as I said, are difficult— they are not
—
simple and you cannot decide upon them once by a " cheer," or a at

"no," or a "yes." They have to be decided upon by careful

working, and by devotion to the people. I say if this were done, I

think you might succeed in getting a large revenue in time from

the lands and from the capitalists, through the taking of
which they would not suffer, and which would enable us to carry out
those great reforms which we desire. There is one thing to be
remembered. I do not think the rich would object to taxation

very much if they thought that the money which was taken
would really be of vast use to the people. The rich in the past have
not shown themselves unequal to great emergencies. An aristocracy
like ours cannot be wholly base, because it has ruled so It is a
long.
far better aristocracy, for example, than the aristocracy of France,
because it has been a ruling aristocracy and although a man ;be may
debased by ruling a people, he may also be elevated by it ;
the sense
of responsibilitymay elevate him and strengthen his character, and he
may be open to appeals to his sense of justice Now, I do think that
the rich in this country, both landowners and others, are open to
such appeals, and I think if we could make that appeal, and make it

effectively, we might get such a measure of taxation carried out as

would enable us to carry out also, and realise, the reforms that we
want.
What are those reforms ?* We come now to the last part of all, and
I shall indicate at once the practical reforms which I suggest, I am
not going to dogmatise upon them. I am only going to indicate the

principles upon which they can be carried out. Let me again tell

you one thing. If you want to propose a scheme of practical reform,

do not sit down and frame an artificial one, but patiently look into
the history of the country. Look, for instance, into the administra-
tivechanges that have been going on during the last 50 or 60 years,
andsee whether you can get any hints for future guidance. I believe you
can. might havelearntgreatlessons which wehave neglected.
I believe we

First of take the question of your dwellings ; that is a primary one,

all,

and of vast importance. It has two aspects first, as a question of —

rent, and secondly, as a question of health and decent comfort. It is

notorious that the sanitary conditions of dwellings in great towns is a

disgrace ; and we find that we have boards who are nominally

responsible for the inspection of these places, and yet nothing is
done. If you turn to the history of factory legislation, you
will find that, first of all, we passed Acts which we thought
would be effective, but they were not eifective, and why?-
It was
Simply because we did not appoint anyone to enforce them.
not till 1833 that we learnt, that in addition to passing an Act
requiring certain things to be done, we had also to appoint inspectors,
who should insist that those things should be done. Now, between
1833 and 1859, an immense change was wrought for the better in the
condition of the factory people. Diseases which had been peculiar
to them slowly disappeared, simply because the law was enforced,
although I admit was not enforced with sufficient vigilance. You
it

may answer me But we have sanitary inspectors, we have medical

*'
:

officers." Well, you have ; but then there are two points you must
look to. First, these tnen are often dependent upon the local

bodies for their practice and position, and therefore they will not
enforce the laws against members of those bodies whose enmity

might injure them ; and in the next place, unless some pressure is
put upon them, you will get nothing done, because they are often
apathetic or too busy with their own practice. Now, have we
anything that can guide us in this matter ? Yes we have.
* When
Mr. Toynbee had reached this point the lateness of the hour and his own extreme
exhaustion compelled him greatly to curtail the remaining portions of his address.
 51

Again turn to existing facts. The English people spend some-

thing like ^16,000 a in laws to
3'ear simply enforcing
protect animals fromWhat we do for animals cannot
cruelty.
we do for human beings? Cannot we direct some of this
eager, energetic, and restless philanthropy— much of it is good, I
admit— but cannot some of it be directed to more profitable use ?
I do not mean that the
protection of animals is not a profitable use,
but I do that philanthrophy wasted
s-ay is
largely. Why cannot you form
Vigilance Committees, which shall be composed of working men and
the members of the middle class alike, who would watch the enforce-
ment of these laws, and insist upon their being enforced who would ;

keep the sanitary inspectors and medical officers to their work, so

that such abuses as we read of
constantly in the London papers
could not exist any longer ? That is one of those practical reforms
to which I would desire that you should turn your attention.
Land nationalisation is a great thing, but after all, these
littlethings are greater in reality, because they imply the high
qualities of patience and combmation, to which, more than to
sweeping laws, we must look for improvement.
There are many other points I should wish to dwell upon and
submit for the consideration of those who think about these things.
I have not yet dealt with the
question of rent of houses. I myself
think it would be possible for the municipality of London, which
has practically done it
buy up land, and let
indirectly already, to
it to building
companies under certain conditions, companies which
should be limited, as the gas companies are and the water companies
ought to be, to a certain rate of profit, so that rents could not be
raisedbeyond a certain point, and the workmen could be decently
housed in the centre of London at a moderate price but there ;

are immense difficulties in connection with the scheme. I do not

want you to rush away with the impression that the scheme is feasible
without the most careful study and thought. You must ask
people
like Miss Hill, who have worked all their lives amongst
the poor, and considered the question of rents you must
—
ask such people what they think about it, and you m.ust remem-
ber that if you Londoners want to settle these questions, you
can settle them, but only by co-operating with those who have

time to think. This question of dwellings, as I know, is of primary

importance, and can probably be settled in some such way as I
indicate. But, mind, you may settle it in the wrong way. We have
 52

done a great many wrong and mischievous things in the past by care-
and it is of vast importance that you should act circumspectly
lessness,
And, finally,with regard to the class of measures I have been speaking

of, I think you ought to take care that the great suburbs growing up
round London at the present time are not mere blocks of brick and
mortar, as they are at present, without a single open space in which you
can breathe. You ought to take care that powers are given to local
bodies— and you should combine and see that they use them to —
prevent this being done, and to secure open spaces. Let the Govern-
ment give compulsory powers to municipalities to buy up open tracts
of land wherever they like. You ought not to have to go back to
Parliament every time for power to buy up vacant land. When you
want it, you ought to be able to command it yourselves.
Then there is the question of insurance, and the question of
insurance a very great one.
is There is one important consideration
about it, namely, that the middle classes, who have talked to us
mostly about this subject, have overlooked the tact that thrift may often
brutalise a man as much as drink. I mean this, that a man may
make huge efforts to save and to raise himself, and so become narrow
and selfish and careless of his fellow-men. Now we want men to
raise themselves, without brutalising themselves, and if (I throw this
out as a suggestion) you can take into account the great PMendly
Societies, which we are justly proud of, which have something like
;^ 12,000,000 capital, and to which large masses of the workpeople
belong
— Government could co-operate with them, and adopt
if the
some such principle as is adopted with regard to education, by making
grants-in-aid under carefully-considered conditions of State audit, and
thelike, I think it might be possible for the great Friendly Societies in
time slowly to reduce their rates of payment, slowly to enable more
men to insure, and so in time to diminish pauperism without, mind, —
invoking State aid on a large and monstrous scale, without inter-
fering with those great self-helping voluntary institutions which have
built up this nation. But I only throw that out as a suggestion. I

only want to show the principle upon which we should work.

And last of all, there is the question of recreation. I suppose

what impresses us most in London is the dreariness of life. I do

think that the question of recreation is a question for the great land-
lords in London to consider Will not one of these great men ransom
his soul by building a great building, where people may come out of
the dreary streets and rest, and listen, it they like, to music such as
 53

Milton listened to? Why should not they get, as we do, a sense of
the infinite — for a great building isreally the infinite made visible
—
why should not they get a sense of the infinite from great buildings
?

Why should not they, also, share in our pleasures ? If these great
men would do this thing, it would be worth their while in many ways.
I do think that that is a thing which the rich, at any rate, might
think of.

have said a great deal about reforms, but the question is How
I —
can you get them carried ? I shall give you one final word about
that. The way we have got reforms carried in England is not by, as
a rule, class war, but by class alliance. It has been that the working

classes have found friends amongst the best of the middle classes and
the rich, and they together have brought such a pressure to bear upon
the rest of the rich that the thing has been done. I know the rich

are afraid, many of them. I am speaking to an audience of two

classes, and I will speak to both. I know the rich are afraid, many of

them, democracy; but they need not fear democracy, for

of

democracy has been able to do much for the rich without their
knowing it. It has cleared them of much of the selfishness which
necessarily attaches to irresponsible wealth. It has opened their

minds to the wants and wishes of the people. It is violent, I

know; it is
stormy at times, but it is only violent and stormy like
a sea — it cleanses the shores of human life.
Now 1 turn to the workmen. Some of you have been impatient
here this evening ; you have shouted for revolution ;
but I
do not think that that is the feeling of the great mass of
the people. What I do feel is, that they are justified, in a way,
in looking with dislike and suspicion on those who are better to do.
We— the middle mean, not merely the very rich we
classes, I
—
have neglected you; instead of justice we have offered you charity,
and instead of sympathy, we have offered you hard and unreal advice ;

but I think we
are changing. you would only believe it and trust
If

us, I think that many of us would spend our lives in your service.
—
You have I say it clearly and advisedly--you have to forgive us, for
we have wronged you we have ;
sinned against you grievously— not

knowingly always, but still we have sinned, and let us confess it ; but
if you will forgive us — nay, whether you will forgive us or not— we will

serve you, we will devote our lives to your service, and we cannot do
more. It is not that we care about public life, for what is public life

but the miserable, arid waste of barren controversies and personal

 54

jealousies, and grievous loss of time ? Who would live in public life
if he could help
it ? But we students, we would help you if we could.
We are willing to give up something much dearer than fame and social
position. We are willing to give up the life we care for, the life with
books and with those we love. We will do this, and only ask
you to remember one thing in return. We will ask you
to remember this — that we work for you in the hope and
trust that you get material civilisation, if you get a better life,
if

if you have opened up to you the possibility of a better life, you

will really lead a better life. If, that is, you get material civilisation,

remember that it is not an end in itself. Remember that man, like trees
and plants, has his roots in the earth but like the trees and the plants,
;

he must grow upwards towards the heavens. If you will only keep
to the love of your fellow-men and to great ideals, then we shall find

our happiness in helping you, but if you do not, then our reparation
will be in vain.

And, last of all, you must remember that if you will join hands with
us, we do intend that we shall as a nation accomplish great things, and
seek to redeem what is evil in our past. We shall try to rule
India justly. We shall try to obtain forgiveness from Ireland.
We shall try to prevent subject races being oppressed by our com-
merce, and we shall try to spread to every clime the love of man.

IJBRARY
UNIVEKriTTY OF CALIFORNIA
SANTA BARBARA
/'^^ THE LIBRARY
// ^ UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
Santa Barbara

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