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THE UNIVERSITY
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LOS ANGELES
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CONTENTS
Chap. I. The Curse of Poverty— Cause and Effect
and Palliative Measures pcigs i
II. Shortag-e of Work in Our Trades and
Manufactures — How to Employ the
Surplus Population 6
III. The Sacrifice of Ag-riculture — Some of
the Cost 14
IV. Destru6tion of the National Industry —
Alarming Effecft on the Labour Market 22
v» V. Poverty not a Necessity — Contrasts in
Jj^ Home and Foreign Statistics 33
^ VI. National Pauperism and Taxation —
2 Poverty and Private Charities 41
13 VII. How War would intensify Poverty —
Grave Peril to the Nation 52
^ VIII. Some Results of Fiscal Maladministra-
^ tion — The Gainsborough Commission 58
g IX. The German Pauper Question — Poor-
Houses and their Inmates 71
X. Tariffs and the Price of Bread — German
Methods and EfFe(5ls 82
XI. Pauperism as a Result of Free Trade —
;^35,ooo,ooo required annually in Poor-
Rates 94
XII. The Incubus of Taxation — Fiscal and
Poor Law Reforms 108
XIII. Prevention of National Waste — The
Means to the End 124
C3
x:
5:t->OrwOO
iv CONTENTS
Chap. XIV. Agricultural Holdings— Produaion and
Industry p(^g^
XV. British and Foreign Wheat Produ6lion
— The "Cheap Loaf" Cry
XVI. Problem for the British Tax-payer—
Pauperism or Home Industries
XVII. Possibilities of the Land — How to Em-
ploy the People
XVIII. Taxation and Wasteful Expenditure —
Scope for Co-operative Relief
XIX. The Free Trade Sham Exposed— Em-
ployment for Foreigners
XX. State Aid for Agriculture— Equilibrium
in the Labour Markets
XXI. Land Reform and Tariff Reform —
Necessity for Popular A6lion
XXII. True and False Socialism — Tyranny of
Individualism
XXIII. County Councils and Small Holdings —
Miscarriage of Public Duty
XXIV. Compulsory Sale of Land— Will the
Landlords Suffer?
XXV. Effea of Creating Small Holdings—
A New and Powerful Body of Electors
XXVI. Physical Degeneration of the People —
Means of Uplifting them
XXVII. The only Possible Conclusions — An
Appeal to the Public
135
143
154
163
169
180
191
198
229
238
242
2^1
INTRODUCTION
A PROLONGED and determined crusade is as
urgently needed in these modern days as when
the burning eloquence of Peter the Hermit drew
the armed hosts of Europe to the attempted rescue of
the Holy Sepulchre. The battles now to be waged are
not against the Saracens, but against the forces of
ignorance apathy and criminal neglect, which have
wrought, and are still causing, havoc in our own country.
It must be manifest to all keen observers that unless
the people and the legislature are soon aroused from
their Rip Van Winkle sleep to a full realisation of the
insidious manner in which these enemies of our race have
entrenched themselves round about us, hemming us in
on every side, the d rest perils and disasters must await
us. " A strong man armed keepeth his house in peace,"
but for many years past we have been living in a Fool's
Paradise, and have allowed ourselves to be beguiled,
surprised and handed over to our foes, bound hand and
foot in fetters stronger than those which the mighty
Samson awoke to struggle against in days of old. It is with
reference to such foes that the warning voice is now raised.
The first object aimed at in this book is to focus the
attention of the people on the phenomenal, widespread,
and yet unnecessary poverty which exists in the United
Kingdom as an inevitable result of neglecting the land
industry, as well as on the uselessness of all effort,
viii INTRODUCTION
With this conviction should come a realisation of the
serious injury inflicted on the British people by the
party spirit which is dominant in Parliament, and of the
utter hopelessness of getting any real measure of national
usefulness passed through the two Houses until this
insane and destructive party spirit be kept in check by
the common sense of the people and the mandate of the
body-electorate. Then should follow a recognition of the
absolute necessity of curbing the spread of Socialism by
creating an atmosphere of peace and prosperity among
the people, instead of the foul miasma arising from the
poverty and discontent in which millions of our fellow
countrymen live to-day.
The monstrous injustice of forcing upon the people a
mass of pauperism, widespread unemployment, and a
lower standard of comfort than is necessary, because of
the weakness of Governments and the trickery of politi-
cal parties, has been fully illustrated in these pages.
These, and kindred vital questions, including that of
calling for such an amendment of the fiscal laws of the
country as would afford the same protection to our own
industries, land or otherwise, as is accorded to them in
every civilised state in the world, plead earnestly for
early solution.
Those, therefore, who will come over the border I'.ne of
apathy, indifference, prejudice and ignorance, to help in
the crusade against the hydra-headed evils and injus-
tices described in detail in the following chapters, will do
more to assist in the progress of their own country and
in the well-being of their own people, than those who
gave to the world the railroad and the telegraph.
THE MURDER
OF AGRICULTURE
CHAPTER I
The Curse of Poverty — Cause and Effect and
Palliative Measures
THE poverty of the people of the United Kingdom ^ Dre^d
is as widespread as it is phenomenal; it presents Haunting
Shape
one of the most difficult social problems to the Govern-
ment of the day ; its solution puzzles and confounds all
sections of the great political parties, and it affords so
extensive a scope for charitable effort that philanthro-
pists have begun to despair of ever being able to grapple
with it effectually.
It has become so rampant as to be almost aggressive,
and being for ever with us it has assumed a dread haunt-
ing shape that overshadows the legislature and frightens
and appals the people.
Many an Act has been passed by Parliament, and
many a relief measure undertaken by the multitude of
small municipal authorities throughout the country,
with the object of improving a position of affairs which
to-day is admittedly as bad as, or even worse than, it was
five, ten or twenty years ago, but it is clear that all
Parliamentary and Municipal effort has been in vain,
and that vast sums of public money have been thrown
away on measures which have not proved even pallia-
tive.
I
2 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
Poverty has indeed, cast a deep gloom over the whole
nation, and not even our legislators and municipal
councillors may hope to escape from its paralysing in-
fluence.W are all, therefore, naturally enough, interested
in the question and desirous at least of studying it from
a point of view that will enable us to help in its solution.
Complete The entire question relating to the poor of this
Remfirfd country is in a most unsatisfactory condition, and it
is certain that unless the British tax-payers look at the
matter from a totally different point of view from that
from which they have hitherto been accustomed to re-
gard it, and demand a complete change in the admini-
stration of the laws relating to the subject, their millions
will continue to be spent annually to no purpose, save
to maintain the upkeep of an enormously costly ad-
ministrative staff which does no real good.
Ample justification for the most drastic change in the
Poor Laws in the first place, and then in their admini-
stration, will be found in the simple fact that, in spite of
the enormous amount of public money spent annually
by the State in its endeavour to meet the requirements
of the case, poverty still exists in a widespread and most
acute form; poverty and its offspring — dull apathy,
drunkenness, and that nerveless inertia which is so hard
to stir.
Poverty is no respecter of persons — it is the common
lot of millions of our fellow-countrymen. It is to be
found in the homes of the poorly paid clerk, the typist
and dressmaker, the shop-assistant and small trades-
man, as readily as in the slums of our big centres of
population; while among the poor gentlefolk who
THE CURSE OF POVERTY 3
quietly starve and perhaps die, some of the saddest
cases of the kind are to be met with.
It is an evil which is ever growing ; a curse which has
fallen on the people as a deadly blight, and the evil is not
to be uprooted and cast out, or the curse removed, by
the adoption of ordinary methods.
We must battle with poverty as with a mortal foe, New Plan
but we must reaHse and frankly admit that the old Campaign
methods of warfare have failed, that our weapons are
obsolete, our tactics faulty to a degree, and that unless
we draw up a new and altogether different plan of cam-
paign, and arm ourselves with modem and more effective
weapons, we shall never'carry the war to a successful issue.
But before we take the field against the foe let us ask
why he is there, why Poverty exists at all, and if Poverty
is really a necessary result of human life.
There is always a good reason to be found for the ex-
istence of a thing if we look deep enough ; if we seek for
Cause rather than for Effect. Poverty exists as an Effect,
and it is because we have hitherto attempted to deal
with effects, instead of seeking out and uprooting the
cause, that we have signally and persistently failed.
Who, for example, knowing that sixteen milhons of
the public funds are spent by the State annually in the
relief of only the most acute form of pauperism, and that
still vaster sums are given every year by philanthropists
and the charitably disposed (which embraces all classes
of the community), can say that we are right in dealing
with Effects instead of Causes, when it is seen that the
people still suffer from Poverty, and the results of poverty,
more acutely than ever they did?
4 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
If we then regard poverty as a result of something
^^Tak)uf else, and then regard that something else as a thing^to
be sought out and fought with, we shall, at all events,
have got on the right track at last.
We may take it for granted that, as a rule,Vman'does
not become poor because he likes it ; on the contrary,[he
struggles against poverty with all the strenuousness^he
is capable of, and generally makes a good fight of it till
he is fairly beaten. His most persistent foe, in nearly all
cases, is want of work, and this lack of employment, he
finds to his cost, is pretty general, for the supply of
labour is always greater than the demand.
But why is the supply of labour always greater'than
the demand? Why is it that in all professions, trades and
industries, when we advertise for one man we get appli-
cations from hundreds? Why is it that the,building con-
tractor, who puts up a notice outside his works at eight
o'clock in the morning that " hands " are wanted, re-
places it by another at noon the same day intimating
" no more hands wanted "? The reply will be found in
the indisputable fact that our present means of em-
ployment, our professions, trades, manufactures and
other industries, are totally incapable of affording full
employment to the entire working population of the country,
and that the labour market is always congested.
The clerk, typist, dressmaker, milliner, shop-assistant,
" hands " in textile factories, navvies, dock labourers,
are all subject to the pressure which congestion of labour
involves; they have been sufferers from it for many
years as they are suffering from it to-day; and it is
absolutely certain that unless other, readier and more
THE CURSE OF POVERTY 5
stable forms of employment are found for that large
section'of the working community, which existing pro-
fessions, trades and manufactures cannot employ, and
will not be able to employ, the congestion must continue
and the people must suffer.
CHAPTER II
Shortage of Work in our Trades and Manufac-
tures— How TO Employ the Surplus Popula-
tion
SOME of the publicists of the day, elated with the
expansion of our national trade and fondly be-
lieving that the present tide of commercial prosperity
will bear us along to a haven of rest and security against
all our social and economic troubles, point to this trade
expansion as a sure means of relieving the situation.
Even so high an authority as Mr Balfour, in his speech
on the introduction of the Scottish Land Bill on March
20, 1907, is reported to have said:
Our Manu- " But everybody who either opposed the abolition of
Resources the Corn Laws, or favoured them, must have been,
unless he was an idiot, perfectly conscious of the fact
that that exposed agriculture to all the difficulties of
foreign competition, if foreign competition should arise,
and that it was deliberately intended by its authors to
stimulate that great growth of the manufacturing popu-
lation which I view without dismay or regret, because I
recognise it is the only possible mode in which the popu-
lation of this country can largely increase or its wealth
augment, to meet the great Imperial needs with which
we have to deal."
If Mr Balfour has been correctly quoted — and this
SHORTAGE OF WORK 7
seems beyond question, as all the newspapers substan-
tially agree in their reports — then it is clear that that
gentleman still believes in our manufactures as the
national pabulum, the only source from which we may
hope to draw those ever-necessary supplies of men and
money, upon which depends the existence of the Empire.
Let us see if these statements will bear the test of
truth and experience.
A writer in The Contemporary Review for April, 1905,
says :
" The total loss of capital invested in agriculture,
which has taken place since 1874, owing to the decay of
our rural industries, has been estimated to amount to
the colossal sum of £1,000,000,000; but it seems likely
that the estimate is too low, and that the total loss is
about twice as large as the whole amount of our National
Debt."
If the axiom holds good that the people cannot be- Loss of
come impoverished without the State Exchequer suffer- ral Wealth
ing, owing to the shrinkage in the taxable area of the
country which must inevitably result from such a condi-
tion, then it seems clear enough that, in building up our
manufactures at the expense of our agriculture, the
State must have lost vast sums since we commenced to
neglect our great land industry ; it will, perhaps, never be
clearly demonstrated what we have really lost, but any-
way the sum is colossal.
It may be contended that the increased manufac-
turing wealth will compensate for loss of agricultural
wealth, but this could not be maintained, because, quite
8 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
apart from other considerations, the demand for manu-
factured goods naturally expands as the world's popu-
lation increases, and prosperity spreads. It therefore
follows that had British agriculture remained in a
prosperous condition, manufacturing wealth must have
been greater than it is now, because of the greater pur-
chasing power which such prosperity gives.
Then in regard to manulactures being :
" The only possible mode in which the population of
this country can largely increase,"
the actual facts of the case appear to be in direct opposi-
tion to the contention.
The Government Emigration Records show the fol-
lowing figures :
From 1853 to 1904, when trade was not so flourishing
as at the present time, 9,773,704 persons emigrated from
Great Britain and Ireland, of which Great Britain
accounts for 6,294,954 and Ireland for 3,478,750, or an
annual average for that period of 187,956 persons.
Later figures show that during the five years ending
1905, upwards of 1,700,000 people, or an annual average
of 340,000, emigrated from the shores of Great Britain,
excluding Ireland; while in 1906 the enormous total of
557,815 persons emigrated from the United Kingdom.
If these figures prove anything it is this, that despite
the vaunted trade expansion and the growth of our
manufacturing industries, the people of this country
find the necessity of emigrating in alarming numbers
every year, while the millions that are left behind ex-
perience ever-growing difficulty in obtaining employ-
SHORTAGE OF WORK 9
ment. It therefore becomes evident that the Leader of
the Opposition was himself so imperfectly acquainted
with the subject as to give effect to utterances which
can serve no purpose but to mislead his Party, and all
that large section of the electorate who will not think
this matter out for themselves.
Mr Balfour is an able debater, a capable and astute
leader of a great party, and he is, moreover, no mean,
pettifogging politician, but a wise and far-seeing states-
man, who compels the respect and admiration of even
his political opponents; but he is, nevertheless, human,
and liable to human fallibility. In this instance he has
obviously committed an error of judgment.
In discussing so momentous a question as that in-
volving the welfare of a people, we cannot permit our
judgment to be influenced against our own convictions,
even by so great an authority as the ex-Prime Minister
of the United Kingdom.
Let us now look at the matter from one or two other
points of view, just to see if Mr Balfour's contention that
in manufactures will be found the
" Only possible mode in which the population of this
country can largely increase, or its wealth augment, to
meet the Imperial needs with which we have to deal "
can possibly be justified by the experience of the past.
Success is a standard by which we may fairly measure
most things in this world; and if a work yields good
substantial results and stands satisfactorily the practical
tests of ordinary life, it may safely be called a success.
Mr Balfour's " only possible mode " of dealing with
10 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
the question has, as is well known, been tried for the last
thirty years or more, and it has failed so unmistakably
as to result, firstly, in an actual increase in the number
of paupers, which the State has to keep in its work-
houses; secondly, in a huge surplus of unemployed,
which is the bugbear of each successive Government;
and thirdly, in a still greater mass of necessitous people
of all classes, who, but for the continual effort and
material aid of that multitude of philanthropic people
who give unknown millions annually, would surely starve
and die.
It may be contended that although these are facts
plainly stated and legitimately quoted, they neverthe-
less need not necessarily apply to the future, because
the expansion of national trade is so phenomenal and so
abiding as to preclude the possibility of its failing us as a
sure means of affording employment for every worker in
the country; but it is obvious, from the experience of
the past, that such a contention would be as unreliable
and dangerous as it is specious and misleading.
Our national trade has passed through periods of
phenomenal expansion and great prosperity time and
again during the last fifty years or so, but what has it
ever left behind save periods of reaction and depression,
of lack of work and widespread distress, wherein
Government aid on a liberal scale has been found neces-
sary to save people from starving, and private charities
have been sorely taxed to help the helpless?
Other Nobody despises our trades and manufactures, and
Wealth '^^'^ have not the slightest intention of under-estimating
their enormous value as highly important and essential
SHORTAGE OF WORK ii
factors in the commonweal ; indeed, it must be admitted
that they are as essential to our welfare as the sun's in-
fluence is essential to the planet on which we live. But
here we must draw a firm line of demarcation. Trade and
industries are certainly among the highest essentials to
our existence as a great nation, but they are not the only
ones. If we trust entirely to them we fail, as we have
seen, and we must not fail any longer. We must supple-
ment these means of wealth, greatness and prosperity,
by other and surer means, that are not subject to out-
side influences, but that will afford unfailing employ-
ment to all who adopt them, quite irrespective of market
fluctuations and trade depressions.
These means are to be found in the land, and only in
the land. The land in every country but our o^^^l forms
the staple industry, and constitutes the chief means
of employment, with the result that in every case there
is no such thing as widespread poverty and a huge mass
of pauperism, as we know it.
Do not let us pass by this startling fact without con-
sidering what it means, for upon it hangs the welfare of
the British nation.
We are, generally speaking, an untravelled people
and a busy people. If we go abroad for our short summer
holidays, we go for pleasure, and do not bother ourselves
about the institutions of the country we travel in, or its
trade, industries or constitution. If we go to Belgium,
for example, we are more interested in the splendid
Palais de Justice at Brussels, and the weird collection
of paintings at the Musee Wiertz, than in the wonder-
ful agricultural system of the country.
12 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
But when observation becomes necessary and com-
parison essential in national interests, we must no longer
ignore, as of no moment, what other nations have felt
constrained to do in the common interests of the people ;
if we do, we shall become criminally negligent.
Universal There is not a country in Europe but has recognised
Agricu ture j^^^ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ highest form of universal agriculture
is as essential to the welicvre of the people as the sun is
to the solar system. They have seen that although com-
merce and industries are valuable and even necessary
factors in building up the prosperity and greatness of a
country, the land is even a far greater factor. The land
is the source from which life itself springs, and it must
therefore form the basis of all human effort. Neglect the
land, and the real wealth of a country at once declines.
Cultivate it highly, and real abiding wealth increases,
full lucrative work is found for the people, prosperity
develops and poverty disappears. This is not a theory of
economics but a law, and those who care to study the
matter for themselves will find that it is a law which
knows no change.
We alone of all nations of the Western world have
thought fit to deride that law and to set it at naught.
Years ago, in the pride and full plenitude of our com-
mercial and industrial success, we cast aside almost
scornfully the nation's great agricultural industry, and
opened our free trade flood-gates to the world's earth
productions. "We will manufacture for the peoples of the
earth, and wax fat thereby," said we in our arrogance,
" and they shall grow our com: they shall be our hewers
SHORTAGE OF WORK 13
of wood and drawers of water." We were to be lords of
manufacture and they — slaves of the soil.
A singularly bold idea was this of Richard Cobden,
and had it been realised our position would have been
unique in the world's history ; but, "the best-laid schemes
o' mice an' men Gang aft a-gley " — other nations also
saw the necessity of developing their manufactures, and
they would not have international free trade, and so
the great " Free Trade " scheme was foredoomed to J^® . ..
° Best-laid
failure. Among other things, we have let in free the land Schemes
products of other nations, but in so doing we have killed
the people's greatest industry, and we shall presently see
how terribly we have suffered in consequence.
Mr Balfour's " only possible mode " will not then be
found in manufactures, but in the land and only in
the land.
14
I
CHAPTER III
The Sacrifice of Agriculture — Some of the
Cost
N a work like this it is impossible to do more than
glance at one or two aspects of a question that has so
many features, any one of which might well form the
basis of a ponderous academical work. All that we can
do, therefore, is to show, as briefly as possible, the
enormous loss the country has sustained, and how
materially the neglect of our land industry has helped in
building up the poverty of the country — poverty so
widespread and phenomenal as to stand apart from that
of all other countries in the Western world with the
single exception, perhaps, of Russia — and then point
out how heavily the burden of poverty falls on all
classes.
The total area of the United Kingdom is given as
77,684,000 acres, of which 43,673,000 are returned as
" cultivated."
There are 12,789,000 acres of mountain, heath and
grazing land, nearly all of which could be brought under
the plough and profitably tilled.
Then there are 3,070,000 acres of woods and planta-
tion, largely consisting of what are called " sporting "
estates.
We are here dealing with a cultivable area of about
SACRIFICE OF AGRICULTURE 15
63,500,000 acres. The following table will show the posi-
tion:
Cultivable area 63,500,000 Uses of the
Area given as under cultivation . . 43,673,000 Area
Area actually in crops 12,992,531
Area under grass and pasturage . . 34,078,526
Here is disclosed the unpalatable fact that of what
Government calls the "cultivated" area, only 12,999,000
acres are actually under tillage, while all the rest —
34,000,000 acres — is under grass and permanent pasture.
If we add to this enormous unfilled area the 12,789,000
acres of mountain, heath and grazing lands, and the
3,070,000 acres under Woods and Plantations, we have
the formidable area of 49,859,000 acres of land lying
untitled.
Now it follows in logical sequence that if a country
allows its land to remain unfilled, and a vast extent of
splendid arable land to run to grass, grazing lands and
heath, it fails to turn potential energy into an active
li\4ng force.
In other words, no country in this world can afford to
allow 50 millions of acres, out of a possible cultivable
area of 63 millions, to run to waste without suffering
terribly for its folly. Let us see how it has affected us.
If we look at the question first from the point of view
of the people, i.e., how it affects our workers in the
matter of employment, we find the land industry of the
United Kingdom employs and supports to-day only
3,900,000 persons, or about one-ftfteenth of the popula-
tion.
i6 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
Rational France employs and supports about three-fifths of its
population, Germany about one-third, and Hungary
about two-thirds by the land industry ; and if we choose
to follow their example by introducing a common-sense,
rational system of agriculture, a universal system of
small holdings by occupying owners and reasonable
land tenures all round, we should be able to employ
and support at least one-third oi our population, or, say,
10 to 14 millions of our people on the land.
But there is really no necessity to push the matter to
extremes, and this is only intended to show what our
land is really capable of.
There is, however, every necessity for the people of
this country to be awakened from that deadly lethargic
sleep into which they were plunged by the preaching of
a false prophet. Cobden and his disciples were fervid
refonners, strenuous in their efforts, sincere in their
convictions, and completely successful in their cam-
paign. They fought long and well for what they con-
sidered to be a good cause, and they carried a large
section of their countrymen with them.
They won the battle, but in winning it they destroyed
agriculture, and in killing the land industry they mur-
dered the people's best friend and greatest ally.
The deadly effects of the campaign were not felt at
once; the great land industry was hard to kill, and it
survived for a time.
Here is what Ernest E. Williams, author of The
Imperial Heritage, Made in Germany, The Foreigner in
the Farm-Yard, etc., has to say on the subject in
Our National Peril.
SACRIFICE OF AGRICULTURE 17
" It was not all at once that agriculture began to die.
Just as a man may, by some foolish course of living, sow
in his system the seeds of death, and yet continue for
some years afterwards in fair and apparent health, so it
was with English agriculture. The ' natural protection '
of distance, which Cobden promised to the English far-
mer, did shield agriculture for a time. The prairies of
North and South America were as yet sparsely em-
ployed in arable cultivation, and apart from the com-
parative smallness of the foreign wheat supply avail-
able, a lack of facilities for transportation, and the high
charges for freight, did give the farmer protection against
foreign competitors, even after the duties were removed.
But all through the intervening years the foreign wheat
lands have been developing, railways have made a mesh
over them, and the seas are now so crowded with ships
that they are carrying grain across the Atlantic for a
penny a bushel, and in some cases actually as ballast."
It was then that the country commenced to feel the Emigration
loss of its great staple industry. Labour difficulties be- Starvation
came acute and employment hard to obtain, and it soon
became apparent that despite the lavish optimism of
the Cobdenites, our much vaunted manufactures and
world commerce were not capable of giving employment
to the whole of the workers of the kingdom, and that
vast numbers would either have to starve or emigrate.
They chose the latter course, and a tide of emigration
set in which has deprived the Kingdom of millions of its
best and strongest, for we must always bear in mind it
is the hardy, strong and vigorous who emigrate, and not
the timorous, weak and shrinking.
2
i8 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
The following table, compiled from The Statesman's
Year-Book, will show how terribly the nation has been
drained of its robust manhood.
From 1815 to i860 the emigrants from the United
Kingdom totalled 5,046,067, but let us also deal with
several later periods.
Total
Yearly
Average
For 46 years ending i860
(1815-1860) . .
5,046,067
109,697
For 10 years ending 1870
I-967.570
196,757
For 10 years ending 1880
2,228,396
222,839
For 10 years ending 1890
3.555.655
355.566
For 10 years ending 1900
2,661,832
266,183
1901-1904
1,592,237
398,059
1905 and 1906 . .
1,017,732
508,866
These figures, terrible as they are in their significance,
only tell one story, and it is this : The people's greatest
industry, having been killed by a cruel but mistaken
policy, millions of England's sons and daughters have
found the necessity of leaving the country which gave
them birth, to — avoid starvation!
And we are further alarmed by the startHng fact that
in spite of the enormous expansion of national trade
which has been experienced during the last few years,
this appalling drain on the manhood of the country is
still found to be a pressing necessity, the aggregate for
the years 1905 and 1906 being 1,017,732, or an average
for the two years of 508,866 ; in other words :
"The heaviest emigration drain synchronises
with phenomenal trade expansion."
SACRIFICE OF AGRICULTURE 19
Now if great expansion of national trade means any-
thing at all, it certainly should include, among other
things, full work and prosperous times for the people;
and without being over sanguine we should certainly
safely calculate on that. But as a matter of fact it means
nothing of the kind; it only means, in this connexion,
that fuller work may be found for a time for those who
are already engaged, but for that vast throng of those
unfortunates who are not engaged — and these are in
their hundreds of thousands and their millions — as the
emigration returns prove, there is no work and no
HOPE.
In plain, terse English, your Cobdenites, free traders. The
political economists, or whatever cult they may belong industry
to, have, between them, killed the national indus-
try, the chief source of the people's support and
employment, and have given them nothing in return
save a lot of vapid promises and an international trade
policy of so Utopian a nature as to result in nothing but
poverty to millions of our countrymen.
And it is just here that we should do well to bear in
mind that most of these millions who have been driven
from their country by inept fiscal laws were of the
body electorate, and had an inalienable right to partici-
pate in and benefit by the wise and well-considered
legislation of those whom they sent to Parliament to
govern in the interests of the body politic. Every one of
these unfortunates, and every one of those who are being
exiled to-day, have a well-defined grievance, nay, a just
cause for deep-rooted, bitter animosity against any
government and its followers who, solely for political
za
20 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
motives, bolster up a system which long experience has
proved to be as faulty as it is fatal.
And what of those who stay at home to share with
their wives and families in the evils which a misguided
fiscal policy must necessarily produce?
Are we Have they no grievance against their rulers? Can they
Content? i . •
look around and say — We are content? Is work so plenti-
ful with them, so stable, so remunerative as to cause
them to say, We have nothing to complain of? Can they
say that our professions, trades and industries are so
exigent in their demand for labour that a man is snapped
up by one or the other of them the moment he is out of
employment? Do we, as a people, in short, find that the
labour supply is so scanty, the demand so great, and
employment of all kinds so certain and so well paid as to
have justified the destruction of our great land industry
years ago?
These and similar questions we should ask ourselves
to-day in all seriousness, and with a firm determination
to get an answer of so unmistakable a nature as will
clear up, once and for all, much that is doubtful and
obscure.
We don't want to be humbugged any longer by the
specious promises of political economists, or by a host of
publicists who write glibly enough on every subject
under the sun, and who, by the subtlety of their argu-
ments and flowery rhetoric, can almost prove that black
is white. Nor are we to be cajoled any more by this
pohtical party or that, who, to serve its own interests,
will set up any cry or party catchword just to attract
the Jvotes of the large, easily-deluded section of the
SACRIFICE OF AGRICULTURE 21
British public which will not think matters out for
itself.
The prevailing poverty of the people and the emi-
nently unsatisfactory condition of the entire question
affecting labour, have brought us face to face with a
grim fact, and we are at last going to probe the matter
to the bottom, and settle it in our own way.
22
CHAPTER IV
Destruction of the National Industry — ^Alarming
Effect on the Labour Market
THERE is a kind of ceaseless barter going on in this
workaday existence of ours, and each one of us
should be careful in ascertaining beforehand that we
shall get fair value in exchange for that which we give
up. But in spite of this we do often neglect these little
points on which so much depends, and then we suffer in
mind, body or estate. The same precaution should be
taken by nations as by individuals.
When we were offered a change in our laws agricul-
tural over half a century ago — a change which was to
do such great and wonderful things for us as a people,
and among others, convert Great Britain into a land
flowing with plenty for all and lots to spare — did we
count the cost? Did we sit in judgment on the case and
calmly sift the evidence for and against, and then pro-
ceed to pass a well-considered decree; or did we too
readily believe what we were told by one party to the
suit, and then pass a hasty, ill-considered, ex-parte
judgment?
That we took the last-mentioned course is unfortu-
nately too well shown by the many evils which have
grown out of our actions : evils which are so widespread
among the people as to demand our best and immediate
consideration and decisive action.
DESTRUCTION OF NATIONAL INDUSTRY 23
In the latter part of the first half of the nineteenth
century there was, perhaps, as much need for reform in
the fiscal administration of the country as there is to-
day; few of us, therefore, would care to carp and cavil at
honest attempts to relieve a strained position; but as
the best and surest way to arrive at the true value of a
thing is to measure it by the amount of success it yields,
let us test what our forefathers did for the country by
this standard.
To prove the utter and complete failure of the Cob-
denite, free trade, or whatever system we choose to
call it, we should calmly view the position from all
points, without prejudice and without political bias,
because if we attempt to adjudicate on this momentous
question with a mind tainted by the faintest tinge of parti-
sanship, we shall surely fail.
There is no need for elaborate statistical tables or Change in
Agricultural
reference to official documents to prove our case here. Laws
for the facts are patent to all; and these facts, unpala-
table though they must be to all those who uphold in
its entirety our present fiscal system, declare the utter
worthlessness of a policy which was going to give the
people of this country full work and general pros-
perity, good times all round, and employment for
everybody.
Humbug! sheer humbug, and folly; and fools, indeed,
were we to have believed so long in a scheme which car-
ried with it, from the period of its inception, the germs
of its own destruction. How could any scheme of the
kind succeed that aimed at the destruction of a
GREAT NATIONAL INDUSTRY, an industry which is as
24 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
essential to the people's existence as water is to the
living plant? But experientia docet.
We too readily believed what we were told by a false
school of teachers, and we have suffered, aye, suffered
so long and so terribly that we are at last forced to
realise that our position is so full of peril that unless we
take this matter into our own hands and settle it in our
own way, it will end in individual ruin and national
disintegration.
We find ample evidence on every side that there is not
work enough for the people; that distress and poverty
abound, and that the standard of living among a large
section of the working classes is far too low; far below
what it need be ; a standard of living, with not a ray of
hope or comfort in it, and of so mean a nature as to be a
positive injustice.
We find in every trade, profession and industry
that the supply of labour always largely exceeds the
demand, and this means general precariousness of em-
ployment, a low wage standard, and certainly a case
of NO WORK for many.
Women in We find that, owing to increased cost of living, the
Market Uncertainty of employment and the domestic necessity
of " making both ends meet," women have entered the
labour market as competitors in many branches of em-
ployment which till quite recently were exclusively re-
served for men. And we recognise that as the employ-
ment of women is a necessary part of the economic
system of the country, and that it is sure to increase
rather than decrease, it is essential that the field of
labour should be generally enlarged so as to prevent
DESTRUCTION OF NATIONAL INDUSTRY 25
that overcrowding which rendered labour conditions so
hard in the past, which does so at present, and which
wiU make them absolutely hopeless in the future.
We have at length realised that there is no chance of
relief coming to us under the existing system of political
economy, which relies solely upon trade and manufac-
tures and the professions to support the people, and
takes no account of the great land industry of the
country. We are forced to realise that in the land lies the
people's best and surest chance of permanent employ-
ment, and, moreover, that this form of employment is
not subject to the same fluctuating disturbances which
beset all other forms of occupation.
Judged, then, by the infallible standard of results,
our forefathers' policy has brought about a state of
affairs never dreamt of by them, whereby great loss has
fallen upon the people; upon those whom it was their
intention to help and foster.
It then becomes quite clear to us that with suitable
land tenures, whereby every good, industrious tiller of
the soil may have the opportunity, under equitable
provisions, of acquiring proprietary rights, and with
reasonable assistance from the State in certain direc-
tions, the land would not only be capable of giving profi-
table employment to the whole of our English workers,
but would, at the same time, relieve the congested labour
conditions of all other industries and professions, and
result generally in those obvious advantages which
equilibrium of supply and demand in the labour market
involves.
It is absolutely clear to us that to establish a balance
26 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
of power between employer and employed means,
among other things, greater independence of labour, full
permanent work, better wages, and, generally speaking,
a higher standard of comfort for workers.
Having these considerations firmly established in our
minds, we can then voice our demands with the cer-
tainty that we are asking for that which is not only
reasonable, fair and jusl, but absolutely essential in the
interests of the people as in those of the tax -payer and
the State; the commonwealth is involved in the ques-
tion, and it is, therefore, of momentous importance.
The Need of We want co-operution between agriculture and manu-
Co-operation
factures.
Mr Ernest Williams, in one of his works on the sub-
ject. Our National Peril, says:
" Agriculture is not only the greatest wealth-pro-
ducer amongst all the departments of industry, but the
manufacturing industries themselves depend upon it.
. . . Agriculture and manufactures, living side by side,
support each other even physically as well as economi-
cally, as the most elementary chemistry will explain to
you; and when they are wedded in the same com-
munity, wealth and economic well-being are produced
and conserved to an extent which is not possible when
they are divorced."
A misguided pohcy divorced the great land in-
dustry from manufactures years ago, and bitter experi-
ence has taught us that a cruel wrong was wrought, and
that these two great industries should now come to-
gether again.
DESTRUCTION OF NATIONAL INDUSTRY 27
We may now proceed to count the cost of our too
ready credulity, and there is, I fear, nothing but a re-
cord of loss and disaster all along the line.
The unfortunate policy that we are committed to by
a band of fervid but misguided zealots, has as surely
encompassed the destruction of the people's great source
of wealth — agriculture — as their prototypes, nearly
nineteen hundred years ago, brought about the destruc-
tion of Jerusalem.
Landlords have, as we have seen, lost, at the lowest
estimate, £1,000,000,000 of their capital. Farmers' capi-
tal has shrunk by another £150,000,000, and there has
been far-reaching loss to all who depended upon agricul-
ture for their support — agricultural implement makers,
harness makers, carpenters, blacksmiths, masons,
mechanics, labourers, all of whom have had to leave the
rural districts for the urban, and helped to swell the
already overcrowded ranks of labour in our centres of
population.
The State then comes in as a great loser, whose tale of Colossal
losses is counted by many millions annually, and the
ultimate result of it all is that the entire burden of our
folly or madness falls, as such burdens always must
fall, on the people, — the working classes and the tax-
payers.
It is obvious that if a man loses a portion of his capi-
tal, his income shrinks generally in exact proportion to
the shrinkage of capital, or, to put it in a more concrete
form, it is clear that a man trading with £10,000 is sure
to derive a larger income from that amount of capital,
other things being equal, than he would from £5,000.
28 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
The loss of ;£i, 150,000, 000 {eleven hundred and fifty
millions sterling) in landowners' and farming capital
means, at only four per cent profit, an annual loss of
income amounting to the colossal sum of £46,000,000
{forty-six millions sterling) to landlords and farmers
alone.
But before we proceed further with this matter, let us
make it quite clear to that section of the public which
generally dismisses such questions with the euphemistic
" bally rot," that there is no " bally rot " here, but hard
grisly facts.
A more concrete example, which, although arrived at
by different methods, illustrates the same principle, is
the following:
Of the land " under cultivation," we find that over
34,000,000 acres are in grasses and pasturage.
Good pasturage to-day commands as much rent as
good arable, because, owing to the general neglect of
agriculture, there is little or no demand for land for arable
purposes.
Restore agriculture, however, to the place it ought
to occupy as the central industry of the country, and
must occupy before we can employ the people and
bring about a general state of prosperity , and good arable
land at once assumes a value far higher than any pas-
turage could command. Three to five pounds per acre
would be a common rental for arable land under a sen-
sible agricultural system; 15s. to 25s. per acre is a com-
mon enough price to-day.
Assuming for the moment that arable land, under
more favourable conditions, would command only £1
DESTRUCTION OF NATIONAL INDUSTRY 29
per acre more than pasturage, we have by our neglect Vast _
encompassed a loss on this item alone of £34,000,000 Area
per annum in landlords' revenue. Add to this the
20,000,000 acres — the difference between what Govern-
ment calls the " cultivated area " of 43,673,000 acres
and what students of the subject call the " cultivable
area " of 63,500,000 acres — most of which could be
profitably tilled, and you have a vast area which, if
brought under the plough, would in time be worth £1 to
£2 or £3 per acre. Practically the whole of this land to-
day produces nothing.
Assume again that this land would produce a small
all-round rental of £1 per acre, and allowing for a liberal
margin of from six to eight million acres of rocky land,
or other land unsuited for tillage, the landlords are
suffering a further loss here of about £12,000,000 to
£14,000,000 per annum in revenue.
These two items alone represent a loss to landlords'
income of from £46,000,000 to £48,000,000 per annum.
The next loss is to the State Exchequer. We all know
that if a man be taxed on his net income the State
revenue decreases in the exact proportion to the de-
creased income. If landlords' and farmers' income has
decreased to the extent of £46,000,000 annually, it is
clear that a great shrinkage in the taxable area of the
country must have taken place, while the Government
revenue from income-tax must also have decreased with
it. This means, at one shilling in the pound, an annual
loss to the State of £2,300,000 — two millions three hun-
dred thousand pounds sterling.
Now it should be borne in mind that every penny of
30 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
this falls upon the British tax-payer, that docile, patient,
biirden-bearing creature, the British tax-payer, that
anomalous production of civilisation, the " tax- and
rate-payer."
This man is a phenomenon ; his hand is constantly in
his pocket to pay the piper when he is not permitted to
call the tune; to pay for what he has not ordered and
does not want. He is always being called upon to " shell
out," in consequence of the ineptness of Government
administration and the bad trading and reckless extra-
vagance of municipal bodies. This product of civilisation
is a grumbler yet uncomplaining, he barks but does not
bite; he has at times a ferocious aspect, but within he is
as harmless as a cooing dove, and, take him all round,
he is as good-natured and gullible, and as squeezable as
a good "tax- and rate-payer" need be.
He is, indeed, such an anomaly that in many in-
stances he does not really know that what the State
spends comes out of his pocket. How often it is said, "Oh,
it does not matter, the State will have to shell out," as
though the State derived its income from sources alto-
gether apart from the direct and indirect taxation of the
people.
Now we all object to taxes in any shape or form, and
would gladly rid ourselves of the burden if we could, but
however much we may object to them, we all admit that
taxation is as necessary in the administration of the
affairs of the nation as sunshine is to the growth of
flowers.
The Patient The patient way in which the British tax-payer has
borne the heavy burden of the South African War tax
DESTRUCTION OF NATIONAL INDUSTRY 31
for years longer than it was necessary, proves how ready
he is to play his part as a loyal citizen and bear the heavy
burdens imposed upon him by those whom he elects and
sends to Westminster to legislate in the interests of the
Empire.
He is, however, forced to realise at last that his
docility and patience have induced the building up of a
system of expenditure in respect to Poor Law adminis-
tration, and similar subjects, so lavish and wasteful, and
withal so useless and ineffectual, as to amount to a
public scandal and a positive injustice to every tax-
payer in the kingdom.
He is also forced to recognise that his apathy in regard
to fiscal affairs has resulted in maladministration to such
an extent as to cause widespread loss to State land-
owners and farmers, as well as poverty and misery to the
working classes, and it has cast upon the tax-paying
community far heavier burdens than there is the least
necessity for, burdens of which they are heartily sick
and tired, because they know, from bitter everyday
experience, that all effort is futile, and that these bur-
dens are borne without affording the least real relief to
those for whose benefit they were imposed.
He sees that the whole question is becoming more
difficult and menacing each year, that the poverty of
the people has become so prevalent as to demand more
and more attention and support from the State and the
charitable public, and that it has, in fact, become tlie
most important question of the day. It looms largely in
the Government programme of work in every ses-
sion; it forms the basis of all Socialist agitation and
32 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
enterprise; it is a favourite war cry of all the people's
champions, and we are so accustomed to its presence
among us that we have come to regard it as an integral
part of the social fabric, a necessary result of human life.
A Heritage We beheve it to be a " heritage of the ages," that it
of the Ages ^ ^
always has been and always must be, and that there is
no use in trying to get away from the fact. Poverty we
say is just one of the effects of human existence, as
wealth is another ; it always has existed and always will
exist, and there is really no use talking about it.
No use talking about it! Is there not? Nevertheless,
let us talk about it in order to see if what we say in this
respect is not one of those human fallacies which are as
plentiful as blackberries in autumn, and only require a
little pricking to prove what airy bubbles they are in
reality. We think there is no use talking about the
question of poverty, because it is a common belief that
it catmot be done away with ; we think like this, in other
words, " because everybody thinks so."
For thousands of years everybody believed that the
earth was the centre of the universe, and that the sun
revolved round this planet until Copernicus and Galileo
proved to us that the very opposite was the case.
Who believes to-day in this fallacy?
33
CHAPTER V
Poverty not a Necessity — Contrasts in Home and
Foreign Statistics
NOW let us put this belief in the necessity of
poverty to the test. Poverty as we know it;
poverty that is more widespread and which costs this
country, with a population of about 43,000,000, im-
measurably more than it costs any other civilised
country in the world; some ;£i6,ooo,ooo annually, apart
from all charities of a private and personal nature.
Let us, first of all, turn to our near neighbours across
the Channel for comparisons.
France has a population of 39,000,000 and spends
45,000,000 francs, or £1,800,000 on her poor, but this
sum is the aggregate of both State contributions and
private charities.
Germany has a population of upwards of 60,000,000.
No statistics have been compiled since the year 1895,
but there is very little actual pauperism outside of the
capital, Berlin.
Holland, with a population of 5,591,695, spends about
£1,629,201 on her paupers.
Switzerland, with a population of 3,250,000, spends
about £635,000.
Austria-Hungary, with a population of 26,969,812,
spends about £1,156,000 on the poor of the country.
3
Comparison
34 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
Denmark, with a population of 2,588,919, spends
about £464,000.
Italy, with a population of 32,966,307, spends about
£1,240,000, although, strictly speaking, there is no
pauper rate and no pauperism.
Leaving the Western States of Europe and going
across the Atlantic, we find that, although the United
States of America have Poor Laws, they are not bothered
with poverty; in fact, the whole question over there is
of such insignificance as to be hardly worth recording.
The expenses of the Almshouses is given at something
over 2,409,000 dollars, or about £481,000 annually. The
population is about 80,000,000.
Effect of If we then turn to the other side of the Western world
and seek for comparison in the United States of America
for example, we still fail to find anything like a parallel
to our own case, or the least justification for the belief
that poverty, as it exists in our country, is an inevitable
result of human life and therefore a necessity. On
the contrary, both in Europe and America, the general
belief is that, although there is bound to be a certain
proportion of necessitous people, chiefly consisting of
the old and infirm, the sick and young children —
orphans principally — anything like widespread poverty
is an anomalous condition and therefore unnecessary —
an accident, in short.
It is interesting to note in this connexion that in
Holland mendicity and vagabondage are treated as a
crime, and persons convicted of it can be placed in a
State work establishment. The Dutch, at all events, are
no believers in poverty being a necessary result of hu-
man life.
POVERTY NOT A NECESSITY 35
And we notice that there is very Uttle pauperism in
those countries where mendicity and vagabondage are
criminal, and treated as such !
The first great lesson to be derived from these statis- Result of
tics, is that ours is the only country in the world which Pauperism
has set up an elaborate and costly system of pauper
administration, whereby, by legalising unlimited pau-
perism we actually increase poverty, by encouraging
improvidence, thriftlessness and a careless disregard of
individual responsibility. The feeling that has been
engendered in a very large section of the British working
classes by this legislation of wholesale pauperism is this :
" I'll do what I can to get a living, but if I don't
succeed — well there's always the ' House ' to fall back
upon, which is a blessing. At any rate there's always
State aid for the asking."
Now if there is anything in life calculated to rob a
man of grit and backbone, of stamina, energy and
stalwart independence, to entirely deprive him of that
mascuHne vigour which is his pride, it is the feeling that
the State is always ready to dry-nurse him, to supply
him with food, raiment and light work the moment he
feels inclined to accept such aid.
Such knowledge reduces a man, bit by bit, to a poor,
feeble, inert creature, fit only to be cast up as a fleck of
frothy scum from the sea of human workers. Men of this
type, and there are plenty of them in the great army of
toilers, soon fall out of the ranks and drift onward to the
workhouses and casual wards, or seek outdoor relief
from the many Poor Law offices scattered broadcast all
3«
36 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
over the kingdom. Thenceforth these flabby specimens
of humanity fasten themselves on to these institutions
and become a hfelong burden to the rate-payers and tax-
payers of the country.
Human Then there is a great lesson to be learned from the
Wastrels
wastrel type : your slouching, dirty, public-house corner
loafer, the frowzy tramp, professional beggar, et hoc
genus omne. These creatures muster in their thousands;
they are a curse to the tax-payer, a shame to all honest
workers and a scandal to the country.
The working man is forced to rub shoulders with the
loafer daily, and he cannot escape from his touch. He
swells the ranks of the honest unemployed in their labour
demonstrations merely for what he can get out of it, but
he has no intention of doing any harder work than this.
He makes a brave show in all such processions, because
of his rags and tatters, and because his name is legion,
but the real working man knows him to be a fraud and a
sham, and would willingly rid himself of his presence if
he knew how. The British working man holds in supreme
contempt this despicable wastrel, and would loyally
support any measures that would get rid of him.
These human specimens are lost to all sense of shame ;
they whine and cringe, or bully and bluster; they cajole
and flatter, twist, turn and dodge ; they will do anything
for a living, from house to house begging and petty theft
up to highway robbery, but they will not work: that is
the only thing they will not do ; and yet our comprehen-
sive and lavish system of giving away public money
applies equally to this human scum as to the deserving
poor. The law is: " No man shall starve," and although
POVERTY NOT A NECESSITY 37
this law, under proper conditions, may be a merciful,
just and even a necessary law, let us, in the name of com-
mon sense, safeguard the position by seeing that these
conditions are of a nature that are at least fair and
equitable to those who supply the funds — the British
tax-payer — while not being hard and impossible to the
poor. The present system is one-sided and unjust to the
country; it enables an army of loafing vagabonds to
fatten on mis-spent public funds; it encourages vaga-
bondage among a certain section of the working classes,
which, in this unfortunate country, finds employment
hard to get and still harder to retain, and it is a disgrace-
ful scandal to the nation.
Our present Poor Laws would be open to widespread
abuse, and therefore unsuitable, even under conditions
where every honest worker in the Kingdom could find
employment at fair wages, which would enable him to
live comfortably and without fear of the future on the
proceeds of honourable toil ; but even under such condi-
tions it would be found that that section of the commu-
nity which will not work under any circumstances
would still be able to live in idle vagabondage just as
easily as it does to-day.
Will the people of this country never arouse them- Gross
selves to a sense of the monstrous abnormality of these ^"'.^I^'^'^^
Poor Laws, and the cruel wrong they do to the whole Poor Laws
nation? Cannot they see that, although they were
framed in a spirit of generous philanthropy and adminis-
tered in foolish indulgence, they have, nevertheless,
brought nothing but shame to the working classes by
sapping their manhood; and gross injustice to the tax-
433^38
38 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
payers, by imposing on them heavy burdens, which
serve no purpose but to pamper the thriftless and en-
courage the worthless?
When our forefathers framed these Acts, they were
full of the same Utopian ideas that filled Richard Cob-
den's ardent breast. They held the idea that we were to
be the manufacturing lords of the earth, and that our
great and ever-growing ii^dustries would find lucrative,
lasting employment for all our workers. They were full
of beliefs in our greatness ; in the phenomenal prosperity
that would attend their country ; and being full of these
pleasant thoughts they were as broad in their views and
as generous in their impulses as a man is when he is filled
with the good things of this life. But, alas, their ideals
were foredoomed to failure. Had these generous legisla-
tors known that pauperism, which they had provided for
with such lavish liberality, would grow into one of the
biggest items of public expenditure, the present Poor
Laws would never have come into existence.
Poor Laws we want, because every great country
should support its poor. But Poor Laws, like all other
laws, should be drawn up with the nicest consideration
for every section of the people. Let our Poor Laws be
comprehensive and even generous, but let them provide
only for the support of the aged, infirm and deserving, those
who have been rendered poor by no fault of their own. Let us
provide liberally for this class of paupers, but here let
our provision cease.
Not It may be said: " This scheme of yours is as Utopian
pV^^'s'al" ^^ ^^^ ^^^ y^^ condemn, because it presupposes a condi-
tion of employment for all which does not exist." Pre-
POVERTY NOT A NECESSITY 39
cisely! but why not create such conditions! It would be
easy enough to do so, if the people would only give
Government the mandate ; but if they will not do so, if
they are content to do nothing but grumble, then they
must abide by the consequences of their own supineness.
As matters now stand, these Poor Laws constitute one
of the gravest scandals of modem times.
Herein lies an injustice so palpable and widespread as
to need no demonstrating here. Every rate-payer and
tax-payer in the country has been fully cognisant of it
for years, and has chafed under the soreness which this
shameful and yet altogether unnecessary burden causes.
But nothing of any practical value has been done. The
recent victory of Reform over Progressive Socialism in
the London County Council, and amongst Poor Law
Guardians, may check reckless expenditure in certain
directions, and thus give some relief, but the great
scandal of poor law expenditure has not been
touched, and millions of the taxpayers' money are, in
the meantime, being squandered annually.
Why is it, in spite of the fact that the Government
and all classes of the community are fully aware of this
gross scandal, that it is allowed to go on year after year,
and decade after decade, unchanged? Why is it that
each successive Government finds the necessity of pro-
viding, in their budget, the prodigious sums that are
spent annually on pauperism?
There is only one reply: Because in sacrificing The
its greatest industry — agriculture — the greatest trad- A^gricuhure
ing and manufacturing country in the world, with its
mighty Empire stretching to the confines of the earth,
40 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
and thus possessing all the inherent properties of pheno-
menal wealth and general prosperity, is being compelled
to recognise the necessity for poverty and the legislation of
pauperism as a national institution.
Why should this be so? Because we have listened to
the false doctrines of a band of fervid, but wrong-
headed, zealots, who were only capable of looking at a
great fiscal question fronri one narrow point of view, in-
stead of studying it from the many sides which so broad
a question always presents.
Every question in this world has more than one side
to it ; and because we, in our bhnd credulity, obstmately
refused to acknowledge this cardinal fact, we have
wrought incalculable injury to the whole nation. The
masses and the classes, employer and employed, capital
and labour, Radical and Conservative, are all equally
involved in the general loss, and none have escaped the
blighting influence of our folly.
Let us recognise the fact that we have erred; that in
our desire to improve the position of the people we have
cast away the substance for the shadow; that certain
alterations are essential in our fiscal arrangements, and
we shall soon retrieve our position and build upon sure
foundations a great structure of national prosperity. If
we neglect to do this, poverty and distress will increase,
and our ruin as a great nation will surely follow.
41
CHAPTER VI
National Pauperism and Taxation — Poverty and
Private Charities
THE question of National Pauperism should be
considered from a point of view that is practically
ignored by the vast majority of people, particularly that
section of the community which is especially benefited
by the constant outpouring of spontaneous philanthropy.
We, as a nation, have become so familiar with this
widespread poverty and its dire results, that the heavy
imposts of Government and the stupendous efforts of
the philanthropic public in aid of the poor are regarded
as a necessary item in the economy of life; while the
poor themselves look upon the prodigious charities, to
which we shall presently refer, as a matter of course,
indeed, as a right.
We have seen to what extent tax-payers are called Enormous ^
upon by the State to assist in relieving our pauper popu- to t^e Poor
lation by direct taxation ; let us now form some estimate
of the extent to which the well-to-do people of our
country help the poor in a more general, though in-
direct, manner.
It is impossible to arrive at anything like accuracy in
respect to the value of this indirect aid, because of the
lack of statistical information on the subject; and also
because those who give do not care to talk of their
charities; we must, therefore, fall back upon a process
42 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
of deduction which will enable us to form some general
idea of the immense importance of the well-to-do
classes as the most valuable asset in the national life.
Let us take Hospitals first, for in this branch of
philanthropy we have Burdett's Hospitals and Chanties
to guide us.
In 1903 the income of our Hospitals amounted to
£2,500,000 annually.
This vast income, with the exception of " Contribu-
tions from Workpeople " and " Patients' Payments,"
which represent six per cent, of the income, comes
annually from the philanthropic well-to-do, either from
annual subscriptions, donations, legacies or investments
of moneys originally left to hospitals by charitable per-
sons.
Capitalise this annual income, and we shall find that
at four per cent, it comes to about £62,500,000. The
well-to-do classes of this country have, therefore, set aside
the stupendous sum of over sixty-two millions sterling
out of their wealth, so that the poor and needy, the sick
and suffering among their fellow-countrymen may have
the same benefits of medical and surgical skill, and be as
tenderly cared for under their bodily afflictions, as they
are themselves.
Then there is a large number of charities, apart from
Hospitals, such as:
Charity Organisation Societies.
Ambulance Associations.
The Salvation Army.
Church Extension Association.
Aged Pilgrims' Friend Society.
NATIONAL PAUPERISM AND TAXATION 43
Hundreds of Societies of various kinds for benefiting
the poor.
Orphanages by the score.
Industrial Homes of various kinds.
Asylums for all sorts and conditions of poverty, and
Benevolent Associations of every imaginable descrip-
tion.
After dealing with one hundred and eighty-six of
these institutions out of the multitudes that are in
existence, and leaving out of calculation all that :
(1) devote their funds to spiritual aid to the poor;
(2) that are partially self-supporting by payment
from inmates ;
(3) that are in any way connected with trades or pro-
fessions ;
it will be found that the aggregate annual income
amounts to the colossal sum of £1,533,821.
Capitalise this in the same way as the income from
Hospitals, and there is the enormous sum of £38,455,525
as a further contribution from our well-to-do country-
men, in aid of the poor and needy and the destitute, the
outcast women, the poor little waifs and strays, the
afflicted and the suffering, and all that human flotsam
and jetsam cast up on the shores of our land by the
turbulent waves of human Ufe.
Now we come to the greatest of all these prodigious Far-reaching
• Privfltc
charities, the like of which cannot be found elsewhere m charities
any civihsed country in the world, not so much because
our foreign friends are lacking in the quality of mercy
and benevolence, but because there is no necessity for it
in other countries.
44 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
These far-reaching private charities ramify through
all classes of society, and yet show no sign of their pre-
sence. This is the charity that " vaunteth not itself, is
not puffed up "; it does its work silently yet surely, and
it seeketh no reward.
Which Ex- This form of charity is practically universal in our
"really Poor land, and its power is potent and far-reaching. It com-
Wed/h^ mences where the great organised charities stop; it
takes up the work they are unable to do, and enormously
supplements, in a quiet, unobtrusive, unseen manner,
that work in the broad field of philanthropy which the
visible charity organisations are not destined to touch.
This form of charity is as widespread as the ocean and
as all-embracing as the sun's light and warmth; it ex-
tends to all sections of the community, and none are
neglected or forgotten. Its donors are to be found in
their millions, for all classes are engaged in the good
work. From the small shop-keeper or the needy clerk, the
poorly-paid shop-assistant, from the artisan and working
classes themselves up to the King in his palace, and even
from the little children who are encouraged to give their
pence, does this constant stream of charity flow, and it
may be truly said that one half of the people of this
country is engaged in helping the other half.
That this is literally true may be proved by the test of
individual experience. What man or woman is there
among us who does not give even a trifle in charity? We
know that practically every one of our friends does
something for charity's sake.
" I can't do much but, thank God, I can do something
to help," is a saying common even among really poor
NATIONAL PAUPERISM AND TAXATION 45
people, while among the wealthier folk philanthropic
work, in its many ramifications, is a recognised form
of daily duty.
Our own personal experience tells us that there is no
family, or one or more members of a family, who are not
engaged, directly or indirectly, in some form of chari-
table work.
Hospitals, homes, asylums, and the m.ultitude of
charitable institutions, together with the numerous
bazaars, concerts, dramatic performances, street col-
lections and entertainments of various kinds, which are
in constant evidence, are but the outward and visible
sign of that deep current of public sympathy with
poverty, which flows on silently yet irresistibly, carry-
ing on its broad bosom a message of love and material
aid to those who, but for it, would be poor indeed.
Charity so unostentatious, so unobtrusive and modest, The Mighty
so silent and yet so universal, is obviously difficult to Charky
discover, and more difficult to tabulate and chronicle,
yet it is a mighty power in the land, exercising a wide-
spread, powerful influence over those poor stricken ones
of this country who are in sore need of that material aid
from their fellow-creatures, without which their lives
would be but a living death.
Wine, beef tea, jellies, soups, fruit, tea, coffee, and
other articles of diet innumerable, together with to-
bacco, coal, clothing and other material comforts, are
among the many gifts bestowed on the poor and needy,
daily and hourly; and as this form of assistance is
liberally supplemented by monetary aid from about
one half of the adult population of the country, the donors
46 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
probably amount to upwards of twenty millions of
people.
Some of these are too poor to give more than a few
pence now and again, or a little food ; others give more
liberally, according to their means, while others give
their hundreds and thousands of pounds, many of the
wealthy setting aside a certain part of their vast income
for this unostentatious work, quite apart from their
great public gifts to hospitals and other charitable in-
stitutions, which are blazoned abroad in the news-
papers.
From the following examples we may be able to
deduce something that will enable us to form a crude
idea of the colossal proportions of that beneficent shape
called CHARITY, whose radiant form is ever brighten-
ing the homes of those who are in sore need of her
ministering grace.
The table is compiled from information supplied by
personal friends, of what they pay in poor-rates and
what they give annually in private charities.
The persons enumerated may be regarded as repre-
sentative, as it will be seen that they are drawn from
many grades of society; while the amounts paid in Poor
Rates and Charities are the average of several years :
Occupation
Amount paid
in Poor-Rates
Amount given
in Charities
I s. d.
i s. d.
Domestic Servant
None
I 10 0
Artisan
None
15 0
Small Shopkeeper
3 14 0
2 10 0
Bank Clerk
None
400
Amount paid
in Poor-Rates
Amount gfiven
in Charites
None
2
10 0
5 I
I
25
0 0
6 4
5
21
0 0
4 i8
3
8i
10 6
9 10
0
45
0 0
13 8
4
53
15 6
i6 0
0
1,270
19 II
NATIONAL PAUPERISM AND TAXATION 47
Occupation
Private Secretary on
small salary
Lady of small means
Country Gentleman,
moderate means
Novelist
Retired Military Officer
Bank Manager
Manufacturer
These figures prove that a vast amount of money
must come from the pockets of the British public every
year, although the actual amount may never be ascer-
tained.
We may, however, partly by a reference to statistics,
and partly by a process of deduction, arrive at a fairly
approximate total.
In regard to the distribution of national wealth, Eloquent
statisticians are agreed as to how a part of it, at all charity
events, is divided among the people, and the following Statistics
tables, compiled from well-known works on the subject,
wiU show how much of this wealth is accounted for.
Census returns also indicate how the people faU under
the various age groups. The last statistical information
on the subject shows that while 360 persons in every
thousand fall under the age of 15 years, 640 in every
thousand of the population were of 15 years of age and
upwards.
The estimated population of the United Kingdom
to-day exceeds 43,000,000, and on this basis we have an
adult population of 27,520,000.
48 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
Deducting from this total the paupers, say 1,200,000,
and another two milUons of necessitous people who have
nothing to give, and we have a residue of 24,320,000,
Then cut off your misers, curmudgeons and persons
of that ilk, who will not part with a penny under any
circumstances, and number them at the odd 320,000,
and you still have 24 millions of good citizens who help
their fellow beings according to their means.
The following statement shows that 435.614 o^ the
large philanthropists are accounted for.
INCOME OF PRIVATE PERSONS
INCOME OF FIRMS
Income
Exceeding
and not
Exceeding
No. of
Persons
Assessed
Estimated
Amuunt set
aside for
Charity
Total
Amount for
Charity
Vo. of Firms
Assessed
Average
Amount of
Incimie
Assessed
nstimated
Amoun isct
aside for
Charity
Total
Amount fo
Chanty
£
£
£
£ 1
£
£
£
50,000
25
4.000
100,000
11
102,015
500
5,50<
10,000
50,000
213
2,000
426,000
96
18,614
300
28,So<
5,000
10,000
446
500
223,000
1,737
7,140
200
347,40<
4,000
5,000
302
200
60,400
886
4.580
100
88,6o«
3,000
4,000
523
100
52,300
1,463
3,500
100
i46,30«
2,000
3,000
1,385
50
69,250
2,771
2,559
50
'38,551
1,000
2,000
5-941
20
118,820
7,046
1,540
20
140,92
1,000
358,505
10
3 685.050
44,264
382
10
442,64
377.340
4,734,820
58,274
I 338,71
No. of Firms Assessed
No. of Private Persons
Assessed
Total
■•• 58,274 Total Amount of Charity
from Firms ;{^Ii338,7Ji
... 377,340 Total Amount of Charity
from Private Persons ^'4, 734,821
•• 435,614
Total ... ;66,073,53<
We have now to deal with about 24 millions who are
always ready to do something for charity's sake. But it is
just here that we must resort to some process of deduc-
NATIONAL PAUPERISM AND TAXATION 4(>
tion, because this good work remains unrecorded and
untabulated.
Divide the 24,000,000, say, into four groups of
6,000,000 each, i.e., those who give £7 los., £5, £2, and
los. each, and the result is:
6,000,000
at
i7
10 0 =
£45,000,000
6,000,000
at
£5
00 =
£30,000,000
6,000,000
at
£2
0 0
£12,000,000
6,000,000
at
10 0 =
£ 3,000,000
Total 24,000,000 £90,000,000
It may be contended by some that the estimate of
£7 los., £5, £2, and los. for the four groups respectively,
has been put at too high a figure, but careful
inquiries will prove that the estimate is, if anything,
too low.
We will now weld all these figures into an intelligible
whole.
Here is the statement :
1. Income of Hospitals .... £2,500,000
2. Income of Charitable Institutions . 1,533,821
3. Income from Bazaars, Concerts and other
entertainments (estimated) , . . 200,000
4. Amount contributed by private persons
and firms assessed by Government . 6,073,530
5. Private charities (unrecorded) . . 90,000,000
Total £100,307.351
Contributions in kind, such as food, clothing, coal,
etc., have been purposely left out of consideration, be-
4
50 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
cause of the difficulty of arriving at a fairly approximate
amount, but the total annual value would be enormous.
Enormity of Now in regard to these stupendous figures it will
Poverty surely be said by a certain section of the public, which
sneers at charity and scoffs at anything that is noble and
elevating in human life, that this plain statement is all
" bunkum " and " rot," and that it is put before the
public with some deep, hidden purpose.
The reply to the latter part of such a contention will
be found in the pages of this work, as its purpose — that
of arousing the people of this country to a sense of the
enormity of our national poverty — is plainly set forth
herein. The answer to the first part of their contention is
that those who care to consult any of the statistical
works on the subject can speedily satisfy themselves
that there is no " rot ' ' in the matter at all.
Whitaker's Almanack, for example, for the year
1907, shows that sixty testators alone left as much as
£4,486,440 in charities in 1906; while in regard to the
many millions of our compatriots whose ear is never
deaf to the voiced or mute appeal of the poor and needy,
where is the man who can say: " I don't believe they
give so much as you try to make people imagine." This
giving, however, is, thank God, as widespread as the
Heavens, and as life-giving and comforting as the
warmth we get from the blessed sunbeams.
But the question has to be asked: what is this
stupendous charity worth? what real lasting good does
it do to those whom it is our desire to help on in the
world, when vast masses of our people remain sunk in
the slough of poverty?
NATIONAL PAUPERISM AND TAXATION 51
We have contended elsewhere in these pages that the
£16,000,000 of State funds spent on pauperism is, in
itself, a monstrous injustice to the British tax-payer,
particularly so because there is no real necessity for
poverty at all in our country ; but what is this compara-
tively insignificant sum when set side by side with the
colossal amount subscribed annually by a philanthropic
public? Oh! the shame of it aU! that our Governments
and our political parties have permitted this foul thing
to fall upon our people as a deadly blight, because, for-
sooth, the righting of the wrong would have clashed
with party interests, and perhaps unseated the Govern-
ment that attempted it.
The British people and the British tax-payers have a
deep-seated grievance, and they should wage a bitter,
deadly feud against that principle in our political Ufe
that has only served the narrow selfish policy, on the one
hand, of building up a few individual reputations, and in
amassing large individual wealth ; while on the other it
has resulted in nothing but poverty and degradation to
the great masses of our countrymen and countrywomen.
4^
52
CHAPTER VII
How War would Intensify Poverty — Grave Peril
TO THE Nation
LET us now try and realise what would happen to
us if war broke out between this country and one
or more of the great European States; and let us not
shirk this question as we shirk so many others, because
war is imminent unless we change much that is objec-
tionable, both in our international polic}' and in the in-
ternal economic conditions of the country.
The recent experiences of the South African War
teach us that when war breaks out, even in remote parts
of the Empire, markets at once become disturbed,
" comers " are formed, supphes are " held up," and
prices advance all along the line.
General We remember going into a shop to buy some silk
Prices socks; prices had considerably advanced, and we asked
the reason why. " The war has affected the price," was
the answer. " But," we remarked, " we don't get our
silk from South Africa." " Oh," said the shopman, " I
don't know about that, socks are dearer, anyway."
Do not pass this little incident over with a smile, for
it is no laughing matter, but one of serious import and
full of tragedy.
War with a great European power means far more to
the people of Great Britain than the South African
HOW WAR WOULD INTENSIFY POVERTY 53
affair did, and it is our business to understand what it
does mean to us.
Here is an extract on the subject from the work before
quoted : Our National Peril.
" Now think what that [a barely fourteen weeks'
supply of wheat in the country just after harvest] would
mean in time of war. I mean a war waged against us by
one or more great naval Powers. ' Oh, but the Navy,'
perhaps you say. But does it not strike you that perhaps
our Fleet would have something better to do than con-
voy grain ships across the Atlantic during war time?
that its operations might be seriously hampered by
having to perform this big service? Easily, then, the
country might run short of food; for it is not only wheat,
but all sorts of foodstuffs, for which we are largely de-
pendent upon imports. That is to say, famine prices
would at once result. Corn merchants estimate that the
commencement of a naval war against this country
would mean the immediate rise of wheat to anything
between one hundred shillings and two hundred shillings
a quarter. What would be the effect of that to-day upon
the working classes? With trade disorganised, and wages
therefore lower or non-existent, it would mean grievous
suffering, bread riots, revolution — unless the country
sought peace at once upon an}^ terms the enemy would
give it. But would there be any grain to convoy ? By
a few smart and secret operations agents of the enemy
could corner the world's wheat supply ; and as this would
be the most effectual method of bringing England quickly
to her knees, it is more than probable that such a course
would be followed."
54 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
When one attempts to portray what would be hkely
to happen under given conditions, people as a rule dis-
miss the matter by saying: " Nonsense, you are a
croaker " (provided the picture you have drawn be an
unpleasant one) , and with an inconsequent remark they
proceed to the consideration of more congenial subjects.
If the same plan is adopted here, we shall be criminally
negligent of our own most vital interests, and we shall,
moreover, court and richly deserve any disaster that
may hereafter befall us as a people. We are not in the
habit of croaking more than our neighbours, but if we
commit folly, we like to see what sort of a position our
folly is likely to land us in.
Our There is no croaking or pessimism about the living
Peril truth so clearly set forth in Our National Peril, for as a
people, we are in grave danger, and it is well that a man
here and there should point out the truth.
^*By a few smart seci'ct financial operatiojis^ agents of tlie
enemy could corner the world' s 7vheat supply ."
" Oh," says your man whom nothing will convince,
" Government would never allow that, nor would the
Colonies ever sell to our enemy in war time."
Government would doubtless take every precaution
to prevent food-stuffs finding their way into the enemies'
country, and the Colonies might not sell openly to our
foes, but that could not prevent the " comer." The
Continental Powers are not fools, and with a number of
secret agents and unlimited funds, the stuff would be
" cornered," and prices would advance to hundreds of
shillings a quarter; to a price, in short, that would mean
starvation to millions of our unfortunate people.
HOW WAR WOULD INTENSIFY POVERTY 55
We must not forget in this connexion that we are a
nation of free traders, and hold that nothing must ever
be allowed to interfere with the sacred and inviolable
rights of free and unrestricted intercourse between
buyer and seller, or with the natural operation of the
law of supply and demand.
We stand for the principles of absolute freedom in
all commercial transactions, and it may well be asked,
who is to stop the operations of an army of secret agents
who would be let loose on the world's corn markets so7ne
time before war is actually declared?
Are we so foolish, so blind as to believe that the Power False Belief
or Powers we wage war with do not know our weak insular
places as well as we do? And do we suppose that they Security
will not strike hard at the weakest points in our armour
of defence before they attack us in our strongest? Do we
fondly believe they are so ignorant of the game of!war as
not to know that the surest way to victory is by starving
us into submission, and if we so believe, are we to hug
these fond but fatal fancies to our hearts, even to our
own destruction? Will nothing stir the mass of inertia,
that terrible lethargy bom of false beliefs in the invio-
lability of our insular security, that robs us of virility
and renders us flabby and nerveless? And are we
for ever to do nothing but sneer at the idea of
foreign invasion and scoff at all attempts to make our-
selves so strong, independent and self-supporting, as to
render successful invasion wellnigh hopeless? Are we
never to put ourselves in that position which will so
neutralise the evil effects of war as to result in neither
permanent injury nor disaster to us as a nation?
56 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
We fervently hope not. We have done much to
weaken our position by Utopian legislation and an
inane fiscal policy; we have sacrificed our best interests
in regard to agricultural matters, and we have, in conse-
quence, impoverished the people to an extent that finds
no parallel in any civilised country in the world; but we
surely cannot carry this destructive policy through to
our utter ruin.
Royal Commissions have reported on this momentous
question time and again ; able writers and public speak-
ers, moved by loyalty and patriotism, have for years
past sent their warnings to Governments and their
message to the people, but so far, alas, without the
slightest result. Governments still continue to show
more interest in the petty, political conflict which wages
round the contest for a seat, than in the safety of an
Empire, while the people remain sunk in the slough of
apathy and indifference.
Admirals, generals, statesmen, have spared no time
and trouble in bringing this vital question home to the
British Parliament and the British people.
Here is what Admiral Harding Close said on the sub-
ject in 1903:
" We spend thirty-one millions a year on the Navy. You
might as well chuck that money into the sea for all the
good it will do, for what is the use of our going to sea
and winning battles of Trafalgar if we leave a starving
population behind? ... It is no use your boasting that
we have a powerful Navy, and that, therefore, having
command of the sea, our food supply is safe. You cannot
get a naval officer to say so. We never had command of
HOW WAR WOULD INTENSIFY POVERTY 57
the sea, so far as the protection of our merchant ships is
concerned. If there was a period in the history of this
country when we might say we had command of the
sea, surely it was after the battle of Trafalgar, when
there was not an enemy left on the sea. Yet after that
battle, hundreds of our merchant ships were captured;
and it will be so again. We cannot protect our merchant
ships ; the thing is impossible. The true blockade will be
the impossibility of our ten thousand slow merchant
ships obtaining any insurance, and being laid up as the
United States merchant ships were laid up when the
Alabama was about. This will prevent the weekly arrival
of the four hundred merchant ships which bring us our
food, and cause panic on the corn-market, the enemy
having made food contraband of war."
Such views as these are held by quite a host of far-
seeing patriotic citizens, whose sole desire is to safe-
guard the country from those deadly perils which beset
us, owing to our utter dependency on outside aid for
our daily supply of bread and other food-stuffs.
Now it stands to reason that if our outside supplies in
war time cannot be safely convoyed and absolutely
guaranteed, even by a powerful two-power standard
Navy, we must secure ourselves by the development of
our internal resources, and that we can do this with the
greatest possible ease will be seen in later pages of this
work.
58
CHAPTER VIII
Some Results of Fiscal Maladministration — The
Gainsborough Commission
IF we put the question of national poverty to
the fiscal test, we shall see how much our ineptness in
that direction is answerable for.
In deteiTQining this question let us beware of playing
into the hands of any political party. It is one of those
cases that a man must decide upon the evidence before
him, and not be influenced by pleaders for or against.
Because we have listened to those who had some pur-
pose to serve, some political party to help, we have
suffered as no nation of modem times has suffered, and
we must listen to the time-serving politician no more.
Evidence of widespread havoc is, alas, too manifest
on every side ; a ruined land industry and all that it in-
volves; a terribly congested labour market; lost manu-
facturing industries; dearth of employment and vast
masses of unemployed; exhaustion of national energy
by the constant drain of compulsory emigration, and a
mass of pauperism, the like of which is not known in any
civilised country in the world.
The incident of the 3,000 English dockers at Ham-
burg in the spring of last year, shows the ease with which
foreign markets can be supplied with the overplus of
British labour, while the discharge of artisans from the
Woolwich Arsenal about the same period and the imme-
RESULTS OF FISCAL MALADxMINISTRATION 59
diate recourse to emigration which followed, proves how
precarious employment is in this country, and how diffi-
cult it is to get fresh work.
Here is what The Daily Mail said on the subject of the
Hamburg strike, on April 13, 1907 :
" Whatever may be the ultimate result, the struggle
incidentally will have the effect of enabling some 3,000
English professors of the theoretical cheap loaf to earn
their daily bread for a few days longer. I am becoming
accustomed to the spectacle of the English Arheit-
willige (glad of a job) gladly picking up the scattered
crumbs of Germany's industrial prosperity, but still it
seems to me a strange plight for Englishmen to be re-
duced to. . . . The men were working willingly. They had,
for once in a way, a job which English industrial condi-
tions failed to provide, and one could only feel glad to
see them still cheerfully employed. But quite half the
crates and packing-cases of German manufactured
goods they were cheerfully loading for transport over
sea bore in stencilled black letters the familiar legend,
* Made in Germany,' which indicated that they were
destined either for England or for English Colonies.
Displaced English labour reduced to getting a living by
helping to displace English manufactures.''
What a depth of bitter humiliation and cruel irony
there is for the English people in that last sentence.
Displaced English labour reduced to getting a living by
helping to displace English manufactures, and, alas, it is
true. Not only is it true, but if Germany, or other coun-
tries which have built up a soHd wall of hostile tariffs
Manufac-
tures
60 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
against our manufactures, wanted English labour by
tens of thousands, they would get them with the same
ease with which Hamburg got her 3,000.
Let us now find out what this means, for we are face
Displaced ■ ■ /-^ ,-,
Labour and to face With a Strangely anomalous position. On the
one hand, we have the Government and Free Traders
pointing to the expansion of national trade as indicating
national prosperity; and on the other, the Tariff Re-
formers pointing to congested labour markets, the
masses of unemployed, the precariousness of employ-
ment, lost industries, and the phenomenal pauperism of
the country (compared with every other civilised
country in the world), as indicating commercial atrophy
and national decline.
This sums up, approximately enough, the exact posi-
tion of the two great contending political parties of
the State, and we will now settle the matter by the sure
test of practical common sense.
In order that we may have and retain a perfectly free
mind on this subject and other matters affecting the
commonwealth, we have for some years past cut our-
selves adrift from every political party in the Kingdom.
We care not which party may be in power, nor are we
concerned with what they call themselves. Liberals,
Liberal-Unionists and Radicals are meaningless terms
to us. We want good government, and we judge only by
results, which is the one safe and practical way of de-
ciding a question.
Here is presented a strange spectacle — the people of
the greatest trading and manufacturing country in the
world gladly accepting employment even for a few
RESULTS OF FISCAL MALADMINISTRATION 6i
weeks, from our greatest commercial and industrial
European rival, because they cannot find work in their
own country. Couple this fact with others of a like
nature — widespread distress, the congested state of
labour in all professions, trades and industries; the
existence of phenomenal pauperism and the necessity of
legalising it as a State institution ; the stupendous sums
spent on pauper relief each year; the cruel drain on the
virile energy of the nation by the constant and ever-
increasing stream of emigration — and the very natural
and common-sense conclusion is arrived at that the social
and economic condition of the people is as bad as it can
be: that our fiscal administration is fataUy wrong, and
that unless we alter and amend it, irrespective of the
feelings of this political party or that, we shall simply
bring about the disintegration of the Empire.
Political parties and political economy enthusiasts Does Trade
will, no doubt, say that this method of reasoning is Mean
faulty and the conclusions wrong. The individual reply pro^s^^g^/t p
to this is obviously: "My social and economic position
has been rudely assailed ; my interests are at stake here ;
my pocket has suffered ; and in spite of what these gentle-
men tell me I am going to settle this matter at last in my
own way. I will take my own course in spite of the fact
that our import and export trade is apparently in a
flourishing condition, because I find that this one thing
alone does not, and cannot, constitute in itself all the
many factors that are essential to ultimate success and
prosperity. I find that the wonderful cry of the party in
power, that great trade expansion means national
PROSPERITY is as false and misleading and as fatal
62 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
to the real interests of the people as such political
cries and catchwords usually are.
" I find that trade expansion, despite the wonderful
things claimed for it, means prosperity to a compara-
tively small number of manufacturers and commercial
men, but the same dead level of non-prosperity for the
masses: the same sordid, narrow, mean, half-fed strug-
gling existence for millions of workers ; and my faith in
the universal benefits that are said to come out of great
trade expansion is dead; killed by the falseness of its
own doctrine.
" I find that the great party warcry of the cheap
LOAF is as false as it is destructive, because, despite its
attractiveness, it has done no more for the people than
has any other political catchword. I look around me on
all sides and instead of finding thriving, prosperous condi-
tions and a fair average standard of material comfort
The Cheap among the masses, I find, on the contrary, there is ex-
Q^ cessive poverty and a general average of wretchedness,
denoting a precariousness of life which has no parallel
in any other country. This cheap loaf cry, which
was set up as the watchword of a scheme which was
going to bring about national prosperity, has
robbed the people of the means of earning the where-
withal to buy the so-called cheap loaf, and the cry is
nothing but a mockery and a delusion. What is the use of
promising a man cheap bread if you deprive him of the
means of earning money to buy it with? If the promise
were worth anything would hundreds of thousands of
our workers be on the brink of starvation to-day?
Would work be so difficult to get and hard to retain?
RESULTS OF FISCAL MALADMINISTRATION 63
Would the great unemployed question be [so promi-
nent, pauperism so rampant, poor-rates so high, exces-
sive emigration so necessary, and widespread despon-
dency among our working classes so pronounced if there
were anything of value in this often used and much-
vaunted cry? "
The reply given above is one that will be found in the
mouth of any tax-payer who has thought this matter out
in a rational manner.
When we look about and carefully note the sad state
our people have been reduced to since they commenced
to follow after this wretched phantasm, we wonder if
there be a man among us who, in his heart, really be-
lieves that the cheap loaf is anything more than a party
cry raised for the purpose of catching the voter?
Does our great array of workers who, although in
employment to-day, may — owing to the uncertainties
which enshroud the labour market question — be out of
work to-morrow, really believe in the efficacy of this
political war cry?
British workmen of late years have taken a keen in-
terest in national politics, and quite right too, for they
have a considerable stake in the commonwealth, and it
is fitting that they should look after their ov/n interests.
They are stalwart fighters and loyal partisans, and
constitute in themselves a powerful division of the great
political army ; but quite apart from the faintest trace of
political bias can they honestly say, that even if the
cheap loaf cry were capable of conferring on the people
the one benefit of a cheap loaf, it has not, at the same time,
deprived them of quite a number of economic advantages
64 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
which enormously outweigh the single benefit of cheap
bread?
This purpose cannot be served better than by re-
ferring here to the Report of what is called the " Gains-
borough Commission."
It will be borne in mind that a "Commission " of
working men was formed a year or more ago at Gains-
borough, to study the conditions of labour prevailing in
German workshops, and the social status of German
workpeople.
Six men were elected by ballot from among their
co-workers. Their names are: T. W . Mottershall, J.
Mann, G. W. Brown, G. Proctor, H. Beilby and H.
Calvert, and they were employed by Messrs Marshall,
Sons and Co., Rose Bros., and Edlington and Co. (all of
Gainsborough).
Some of them were recognised Free Traders. The
object of the journey was entirely unpolitical, it being
intended, mainly, that certain fallacies prevailing in
England, concerning the rate of wages and mode of life
of German workmen, should be rectified.
Rival The working men were conducted through Germany
Conditions by Mr J. L. Bashford, the Editor of the book. Life and
Germany Lahour in Germany, which contained an account of their
investigations.
The necessary facilities for carrying out such a task
were most readily given by the Secretary of State of the
German Imperial Home Office; by the Prussian Minister
of Trade and Commerce ; by a number of manufacturers
and others connected with industry, and by the organi-
sing authorities of the Social Democratic Party.
RESULTS OF FISCAL MALADMINISTRATION 65
The members of the Commission represented more
than one phase of pohtical thought, hence the reports
deal with the various questions from several points
of view.
Throughout the tour the men applied themselves
assiduously to their arduous task, and were determined
to carry out their inquiry in as thorough a manner as
was possible in the short time at their disposal, viz., six
weeks.
On their return to England each delegate handed to
Mr Bashford a written statement of the impression
made upon him in Germany — a faithful reproduction
of his own views on all he saw and heard — extracts from
which are appended.
Mr Proctor said :
" We found that Germany raised tariffs against every
other country, and that France, America, Russia, South
America, Spain, Italy, Austria, and other countries in
Europe, raised tariffs against her; but this did not stop
the expansion of her trade with other countries."
Mr Beilby wrote :
" During the whole six weeks I was in Germany I only
came across one case of drunkenness. This state of tem-
perance must, I am convinced, be an important factor
in the prosperity of the country."
Mr Brown stated :
" The German workman seems to be more sober and
steady than our own workpeople, and he dresses well.
When he gets employment, he seems to like to stop
where he is, instead of always changing."
5
66 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
Mr Mann wrote :
" I went to Germany with an open mind with regard
to tariff reform, but had not gone far before I found
that something would have to be done to protect our
industry at home. It is reasonable to suppose that when
the people of England get thoroughly awakened to the
losses naturally incurred by them in consequence of the
high tariffs imposed by foreign countries, they will ulti-
mately come to the conclusion that what is sauce for the
goose is sauce for the gander, and will ask that foreigners
shall pay for the use of the British market just as
foreigners make British manufacturers, through their
high tariffs, pay for the use of their markets."
Mr Calvert said :
" It cannot be asserted with any degree of truth that
the social conditions of the German workman, taken
generally, suffer by comparison with our own, nor can
we say that at present there is a lack of employment.
" In the elementary schools there is no raggedness,
nor sign of starvation, as we were led to suppose we
should see. This is not to be wondered at, when we re-
member that the Empire is at present subject to a wave
of general prosperity."
Mr Mottershall said :
" A citizen of the German Empire is accepted by the
State as a responsibility, and is taken in hand from
childhood, with a view of obtaining from such citizen
the best results possible for the benefit of the Empire as
a whole.
" It is reasonable to suppose that when the English
RESULTS OF FISCAL MALADMINISTRATION 67
people awake to the losses actually incurred by them in
consequence of the high tariffs imposed by Germany and
other foreign countries, that it is necessary for the pro-
tection of the English workmen, that the foreigners
should pay for the use of the English market."
Some extracts from the general body of the Report
bear with singular significance on the case we are con-
sidering.
Crefeld, the seat of the German velvet and silk in- Comparative
Poverty of
dustry, was the first great town visited by the Commis- England and
sion, and what the delegates found there may be taken ^'■™a°y
as the keynote of the entire question respecting the
COMPARATIVE POVERTY of Great Britain and Germany.
" There is no penury to be seen in the streets of
Crefeld," said the delegates on visiting that place, and
they saw no reason to change this note during their
extended tour through industrial Germany.
" The general condition of the working classes in the
industrial town of Crefeld impressed us. Wherever we
came into contact with them we were struck by their
genial character, general physical health, cheerfulness
of demeanour and freshness about their work. No sign
of extreme poverty meets the eye; the problem of the
unemployed obviously does not weigh upon the munici-
pal authorities at the present juncture."
In Rheinhausen and Essen, Bechum, Dortmund; in
Selingen, Dusseldorf, Cologne, Frankfort-on-Maine ; in
Bavaria and Saxony; in Leipzig, Hamburg, Berlin, the
same experiences are met with.
" Widespread, pinching poverty, in the worst sense of
5«
68 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
the word does not exist under the present conditions of
the labour market. There is a demand for labour, not a
scarcity; the working classes here are receiving wages
which, even if not quite up to our British standard, are
not illiberal, and are certainly above the standard we
were led to expect they were before we left England."
" The question of the unemployed does not exist
here."
" The men in this neighbourhood earn good wages, so
that it is not necessary for the women to go out to
work."
" We could, however, see no trace of want. There is
no lack of emplo3^ment, and all the works here are fully
occupied."
" It cannot be said that the municipality is troubled
here with an ' Unemployed ' question on a large
scale."
These few extracts sufficiently emphasise the start-
ling fact that poverty, as we know it in this country, is
practically unknown in the GeiTnan Empire.
Another phase of the question which this very practi-
cal and intensely interesting Report invests with re-
markable significance — the prosperity of the German
working classes, as evidenced by the State Savings
Banks — is dealt with in an extract from the Report,
showing what the German workpeople have been able
to do towards making provision for the future :
" The statistics of the Prussian Savings Banks, just
published, bear out all that we have been able to notice
concerning the improvement in the condition of the
RESULTS OF FISCAL MALADMINISTRATION 69
working classes. The amount of deposits almost doubled
between 1894 and 1904. In 1894 they amounted to
4,000.67 millions of marks (£196,111,275), in 1905,
to 7,761.93 millions (£380,485,300). The total amount
in the whole of the German Empire of the deposits lying
in the savings banks, is said to be about £598,000,000.
Similar statistics for the United Kingdom provide
the following figures :
1894 1904
Post Office Savings Banks £89,266,006 £148,339,354
Trustee Savings Bank £43,474,904 £ 52,280,861
£132,740,910 £200,620,215
These figures show that for every head of population
in Germany there is a sum of £10 12s. 2d. in the savings
banks, while for the United Kingdom there is but
£4 15s. 7d., or less than one-half.
While in Germany also the deposits of the working
classes had about doubled in the ten years ending 1904,
they had only increased in this country by fifty-one per cent,
in the same period.
In this commercial world we generally measure a
man's prosperity by his bank balance; and if we apply
this practical standard to the working classes of Great
Britain and Germany, we shall find that our own people
suffer considerably by the contrast. It supplies a scath-
ing condemnation of the economic and fiscal system, for
it proves its utter unsuitability to the present needs of the
country, while it serves no purpose but to spread wealth
and prosperity among foreign nations at the expense of
70 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
our own countrymen. We do not grudge foreign peoples
that measure of success and prosperity which the wiser
fiscal laws of their country enable them to enjoy, but we
bitterly resent the continuance of inept fiscal laws in our
own country, which serve only to limit the success of the
British people and deprive them of that prosperity in
which it is their right to participate.
The consideration of this part of the question might
be suitably closed by the following extract from the
Report :
" Whilst proceeding from town to town in this busy
and prosperous district of the German Empire, we have
been forced to face the fact that it has been during the
period following upon the introduction of protection
duties by Prince Bismarck, in 1879, that Germany has
ceased to be poor and has become well-to-do; that her
workpeople have received a large increase in wages ; that
the general social condition of the latter has improved;
that Germany's industry has developed; that she has
succeeded in extending her foreign trade and in acquir-
ing ready markets for her continuously developing
industry.
" We showed in our report about Essen, that in that
district wages had increased by 61 per cent, since 1871,
and by 267 per cent, as compared with what they were
seventy years ago."
71
CHAPTER IX
The German Pauper Question — Poorhouses and
THEIR Inmates
IT will now be of interest to see what the " Gains-
borough Commission" says about the German poor-
houses and their inmates.
Here are a few references to the subject :
" As regards the workhouse, we have in vain looked
for one ; and in very deed the ' House ' plays no great
role in these parts."
" In this connexion it may be briefly noted that the
workhouse in Germany is an institution of a penal
nature under the supervision of the police, to be dis-
tinguished from the poorhouse or the shelter for the
homeless."
" The poorhouse, too, is intended for old and in-
firm persons, rather than for those that are able-
bodied."
" Further, there are no over-filled workhouses here,
for there are not even any workhouses to fill with able-
bodied men and women. The poorhouses and homes
for the sick and aged poor in Germany, are for those
that are disabled and unfit for work ; the workhouse, or
German Arbeitshaus, is for the vagrant and the outcast,
who will not work, and is, therefore, condemned to a life
of correction."
72 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
Speaking of the Berlin night refuges, which are dis-
tinct from our workhouses, the Commission says :
" The inmates of these refuges are divided into two
classes. One class consists of those who constantly make
use of them; the other of those who are forced to do so
by temporary circumstances. The former consists of
individuals who never seem to care to look out for re-
gular occupation.
" If it is discovered that they have no inclination to
work, they are handed over to the police and sent to a
house of correction."
These extracts, although brief, are really a summary
of the impressions of the six members of the Commission
in respect to the German " Pauper " question. There is
admittedly a certain number of destitute people in
Germany who have to be provided for by the various
municipal bodies, and there are poor in every country in
the world, but pauperism as we have it, legalised into a
State institution, exacting from the pockets of the tax-
payers the enormous sum of £34,000,000 annually in
POOR RATES, is nothing but a monstrous growth on the
civilisation of a great country and a standing reproach
to our legislature.
Old Age The important question of "old age pensions"
Pensions
which IS very much m evidence at the present time, was
also dealt with by the Gainsborough Commission.
The delegates were much impressed by the fact that
there was a scheme in operation throughout Germany
whereby the working classes were provided for in old
age or infirmity.
THE GERMAN PAUPER QUESTION 73
Mr H. Beilby wrote :
" With respect to provision for old age a German
working-man is better provided for. I should greatly-
like to see the old age and infirmity pension scheme
introduced into England,"
Mr H. Calvert says :
" The old age and infirmity pension scheme im-
pressed me as being perfect in organisation and admini-
stration; and it must be very gratifying to know that
when the time comes to cease work, declining years will
not be spent within the workhouse gate. Provision
against accidents and sickness, which is also compul-
sory, is very beneficial, as it enables all workers to be-
come independent of charity, which is always an uncer-
tain quantity."
The Report itself has many references to the subject.
Here are a few of them :
" The working classes are well clothed and well
educated, and their interests are attended to by the
State in a measure unknown in other countries. In sick-
ness they can claim relief at the hands of the State ; in
old age, and when incapacitated for work, they have not
got the workhouse or the poorhouse to look forward to,
but a certain fixed allowance, in return for which they
are certain to have a refuge for their declining years with
their relatives and friends.
" There is a pension fund inaugurated by the firm
for the men over and above the State pension fund, and
also a fund for giving support to the employees during
sickness, or when in special want of aid. These are free
74 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
gifts from the firm. A committee of the men go into
every application for aid and decide whether the case
merits support. This is done in order to eliminate those
who simulate sickness or distress, and do away with any
risks of reckless benevolence.
" Throughout the whole Empire the provisions of the
Imperial social legislation are effective, and throughout
that part of the Empire through which we have been
passing the action of the employers is also effective. The
German workmen are insured against accidents, against
sickness and against infirmity and old age. They have
no premium whatever to pay for the insurance against
accidents, this being settled by the employers alone;
the employers pay one-third and the employed two-
thirds of the premium against sickness; and the pre-
mium against old age and premature infirmity is distri-
buted equally between employers and employed.
" The State further pays a contribution by under-
taking all the expense of administration, free of charge,
and by adding a money consideration to the old age and
premature infirmity pensions.
" By being thus insured the workpeople acquire a
right, as citizens, to allowance in case of disability to
work through accidents, sickness and premature infir-
mity or old age. These allowances are not of the nature
of donations to paupers; but of allowances to which
they have acquired a right as citizens. In order to
acquire these rights as citizens the workpeople also con-
tribute to the premiums, as well as the employer; and
the State, as a body, pays the expenses of administra-
tion. These contributions of the employers, on the one
THE GERMAN PAUPER QUESTION 75
hand, are necessarily a large financial burden on pro-
duction, which must not be overlooked; and on the
other hand, the contributions of the State are made up
by the whole mass of the tax-payers, not only by the
working people themselves.
" Owing to the social legislation that has been enacted
within recent years, a workman receives compensation,
paid by his employer, for accidents sustained in the
course of work ; he and his employer insure him against
sickness, premature infirmity and old age; so that his
future is provided for with the assistance of his em-
ployer and the State. Further, many employers, as we
have already shown, confer benefits of various kinds,
material and intellectual, on their employees."
Here we have a far-reaching system of old age and
infirmity pensions: Firstly, that inaugurated by the
State and made compulsory; and secondly, a supple-
mentary system inaugurated by private firms, which,
in some cases, are " free gifts from the firm."
At any rate it is certain that twenty-five years ago
Germany saw the necessity of provision for her toilers,
and she gave the working classes the necessary measures
of relief in the " Infirmity and Old Age Insurance Act "
of 1889.
Mr J. L. Bashford, the leader of the Gainsborough
Commission, in his Appendix to the Report, entitled,
" Infirmity and Old Age Pensions in Germany," in re-
ferring to the nature of the Act said :
" The Government resorted to compulsory in-
surance, because it was impossible to devise any other
76 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
method for securing the broad masses of the working
classes — those belonging to the lower grades — to contri-
bute."
Here is the crux of the position. The German Govern-
ment knew, when they framed their Bill years ago,
that the only way to secure the contribution of a certain
section of the working classes was to make the Act
compulsory. That they were justified in taking this step
the following extract from Mr Bashford's Appendix will
show:
" Since the introduction of the system of compulsory
insurance for the German workmen the German Empire
has advanced on the road to progress and wealth by
leaps and bounds. The material and hygienic conditions
of the whole nation have improved ; and everything goes
to show that the working classes must, in a great
measure, attribute their increased health and vigour to
the beneficent effects of the legislation initiated twenty-
six years ago."
" The question that may well be asked here is: What
will our Government do? Will they go into this matter
as thoroughly as it deserves when they bring up their
" Old Age Pensions " scheme, or will they introduce
some milk-and-water measure which will do harm rather
than good?
Will they insult the working classes by clothing their
Bill in the garb of charity, or will it be of the same
invigorating, virile and co-operative nature as that of
its GeiTnan prototype?
" This insurance scheme affects workpeople
I
THE GERMAN PAUPER QUESTION ^^
not VAGRANTS, tramps or those who will not work.
Nor are the workmen's insurance laws a chari-
table scheme. They are unlike mere Poor Law relief
measures, in that they confer on every insured person
a LEGAL right to a fixed modicum of assistance in
case of sickness, accident, infirmity or old age, in return
for which they have themselves contributed an obolus to
the fund from which they receive such assistance."
The German " Infirmity Insurance Act " is of a type
that, while compelling thrift, builds up, at the same
time, out of self-help, a feeling of independence, reliance
and freedom, which is so dear to every honest, right-
minded man and woman.
Our workpeople, as citizens of the Empire, want a
reasonable, practical recognition of their claims to con-
sideration, and not charity. The Government have an ex-
cellent opportunity of showing them such consideration
by the introduction of some scheme of old age and in-
firmity pensions, which, while insuring the obligatory
insurance of all persons working for wages or salary
whose income does not exceed, say, £ioo per annum,
will improve the position of the people by encouraging
co-operation, thrift and economy; some sensible scheme
in short, that will help the people, and not humiliate
them; that will uplift and not cast down, and that will
provide for, and not pauperise, them.
It will be borne in mind in connexion with the Ger-
man scheme that although it is a co-operative arrange-
ment between State, employer and employed, the
employers and employed contribute two-thirds in equal
78 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
parts, while the State subvention amounts to about one-
third of the whole.
It is just here that an emphatic protest against the
contemplated action of the present Government in this
country is necessary, otherwise a gross injustice will be
done to the entire body of British tax-payers.
Sound and If it be true that the Government " Old Age Pension "
Just Scheme
Required Scheme is to fall entirely on the tax-payers of this country,
a more wanton, cruel and mischievous piece of legisla-
tion could not possibly be devised.
Nobody wants measures of injustice, except a few
advanced Socialists, who would welcome even the worst
forms of Anarchism in their mad desire to pull down the
existing order of things ; and if this Government, or any
succeeding Government, betrays the tax-payers of Great
Britain merely to catch the ephemeral vote of a few
social iconoclasts, they deserve extinction as a political
party.
The British working-man would, of course, not be
fool enough to reject a scheme of " Old Age Pensions "
which came entirely out of the pockets of the British
tax-payers, not he! If you are fools enough to shell out
so liberally I am not fool enough to refuse what you
offer — he would say — and quite right, too; but he
doesn't expect this ridiculously quixotic method of
dealing with the matter. Put before him a sound, sen-
sible, practical scheme, whereunder he would be ex-
pected to co-operate with his employer and the State, in
building up for himself a certainty in the future in
respect to a suitable provision for old age or premature
infirmity, for sickness and suchlike misadventures of
THE GERMAN PAUPER QUESTION 79
life, and you will give him just what he expects, what he
is hoping for, and what he is perfectly willing to sub-
scribe to. But the scheme must be sound and efficient
all along the Hue, or he will have nothing to do with it.
Now apart from the gross injustice to tax-payers, a Legalised
scheme of the kind contemplated by the present Govern- charity
ment would be nothing more or less than another
Legalised State Charity.
It has been shown in these pages how disastrously the
great State Pauper charity has affected the people,
and is there a statesman, politician, tradesman, or work-
ing man in the country who honestly believes that the
colossal Charity now being hatched by a weak-kneed
Government would result in universal good?
Is there an honest Britisher in this realm who be-
lieves in his heart that a pusillanimous measure of this
nature can do aught but harm to those it professes to
serve?
Does he really believe that our pauper laws, which,
after all, are of a kindred nature to this "Old Age Pen-
sion " scheme of the Government now in ofhce, will do
anything more than emasculate the manhood of the
nation and deprive a man of those characteristics which
are the pride and glory of his sex — the right and privi-
lege of providing for and protecting his wife and httle
ones with his own strong right arm and — in his own way?
The British working-man is individually and collec-
tively a power in the State, and a power to be reckoned
with. He is an honest man and a stalwart champion for
his own rights and privileges, and that he can well look
after his own interests is proved by his trade unions,
8o THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
and other evidences of combination. If he wants any-
thing, he is quite capable of asking for it in an organised
manner, which often carries conviction with it. If, for
example, he wanted an " Old Age Pension " scheme of
the kind now under consideration, he would ask for it in
a plain, practical manner; it doesn't follow he would get
it, nevertheless he would trj^
In this particular instance the British working men
have not asked for any scheme of "Old Age Pensions"
which would fall entirely upon the British tax-payers.
Will Crookes has asked for such a scheme, but then
Will Crookes no more voices the real wants or wishes of
the great array of British workers than we voice the
needs of the wild men of the Andaman Islands.
To say that he, and a few other advanced Socialists in
Parliament who clamour for extreme measures, really
voice the wishes and desires of the vast army of British
workers is to say that which is obviously untrue.
Old Age The British workman wants an " Old Age Pension "
Pensions but i • t
not Charity scheme truc enough, but he does not want charity, and
those who say he does simply pervert the truth. Give
him a scheme whereby he will himself be expected to
co-operate in making provision for old age, and where-
under generous, co-operative aid will be given both by
employer and State, and you will find he will respond
readily enough.
An " Old Age Pension " scheme of this nature is the
working man's right, and the tax-payers would support
such a scheme, but the other scheme would be a rank
injustice and a cruel wrong, and they would bitterly
resent it.
I
THE GERMAN PAUPER QUESTION 81
The British tax-payers should be alert over this ques-
tion and carefully watch the contemplated Bill, other-
wise a heavy incidence of further taxation will surely fall
upon shoulders that are already too heavily burdened.
Even if a sensible, equitable scheme be brought into
operation, a certain amount of fresh taxation would
inevitably result, but we need have no fear of this, as
money spent in this direction means nothing more than
an insurance against pauperism and a reduction of poor-
rates.
82
CHAPTER X
Tariffs and the Price of Bread — German Methods
AND Effects
ANOTHER important question dealt with in the
interesting Report of the Gainsborough Commis-
sion, might be referred to with advantage, and that is
German tariffs and the price of bread.
We are considering the vital question of the poverty
of our people, and whatever impinges on that condition
is of more than passing interest to us. Moreover, we are
looking at this matter from our own point of view this
time, and as our own personal interests are involved, we
are going to come to our decision quite irrespective of
what politicians, publicists or political economists may
say. For the moment we cut ourselves adrift from party
policy and preachers of all kinds: Self-interest is at
stake, and we are not going to allow our judgment to
be biased by political considerations, or our reason be-
fogged by fervid faddists.
The Gainsborough Commission have a message to
deHver to the British people, and we should listen to
what they say without bias. H there is anything in what
they tell us about German tariffs that we can turn to our
own good, we should certainly not throw our chances
away.
Here are some references to the subject, which we
recapitulate :
TARIFFS AND THE PRICE OF BREAD 83
" We found that Germany raised tariffs against every Effect of
other country, and that France, America, Russia, South imposts
America, Spain, Italy, Austria, and other countries in
Europe raised tariffs against her; but this did not stop
the expansion of her trade with other countries.
" I went to Germany with an open mind with regard
to tariff reform, but had not gone far before I found that
something would have to be done to protect our in-
dustry at home.
" It is reasonable to suppose that when the English
people awake to the losses actually incurred by them in
consequence of the high tariffs imposed by Germany and
other foreign countries, they will come to the only pos-
sible conclusions, that it is necessary, for the protection
of the English workman, that the foreigners should pay
for the use of the English market."
Referring more especially to the price of bread, the
Commission says:
" A loaf of rye bread at Crefeld, weighing four English
pounds, should cost 3fd., or roughly, 3|d.
" The 41b. wheaten loaf, eaten at Gainsborough, costs
" All these details spell prosperity; and even though
we do not go so far as to say they must be the direct re-
sult of the Imperial policy of protection, we are justified
in drawing attention to the fact that this auspicious
condition of things has been developing parallel to pro-
tective tariffs.
" It was pointed out by us in our last report that the
prosperity of the last twenty years of German industry
84 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
has been running parallel with protective duties. Wages
have also risen; and the tendency of the day is that they
will rise still higher.
" At Hochst, near Frankfort, as we pointed out in a
previous report, people eat wheaten bread as well as
bread made of wheat and rye flour mixed. A loaf of white
bread made at Hochst, v/eighing four English pounds,
should cost ^|d. The Gainsborough quartern loaf costs
4|d., so that the difference in price is hardly perceptible.
Where then does the extreme pressure on the German
consumer come in, in regard to the price of bread, as
compared with the English consumer? We must note
that Germany feeds nine-tenths of her population from
her own grain.
" As regards wages and the conditions of labour in
Germany, people in England cannot dispel from their
minds pictures that have been shown them of times
gone by. It is difficult to make them understand that
Germany has not been standing still, but had been
developing in methods and in wealth by leaps and
bounds since 1870. The British voters will have to learn,
sooner or later, that German labour competes with
British labour, and that the condition of German work-
men has developed for the good since 1879, when Bis-
marck made the fiscal policy of the Empire a protec-
tionist one again.
" They came to the conclusion that their export in-
dustry flourished more under the tariff that existed
from 1850-1860, than under Liberalism and free tariffs
from i860 to 1870. Germans admit that they have made
enormous progress during the last thirty years, and this
TARIFFS AND THE PRICE OF BREAD 85
progress has been contemporaneous with protectionism.
Wages had very materially increased in Germany within
the last twenty years, and are bomid to increase still
more."
Summing up the position the Commission said:
" We were selected by the Gainsborough working
men themselves, in order to find out whether the social
condition of German working men was as miserable as
it was portrayed in Gainsborough by certain politi-
cians.
" Meanwhile we submit that our reports give a fair
and reasonable picture of the conditions under which
German workmen labour. These conditions differ in
many respects from ours; and this would be the case
also were we to compare our lot with that of the work-
men in any other country. Whatever the diversity of
conditions, however, it is quite clear that the German
industrial workman is immeasurably better paid now
than he was twenty-five years ago, and that he is simi-
larly better clothed, better fed and better lodged than
he was then. He has, moreover, ample facilities for
healthy recreation for himself and family. In regard to
the provision made for him by the State in the event of
sickness, in the event of his meeting with accidents dur-
ing the exercise of his vocation, as well as in the event
of his becoming unable to earn his living through physi-
cal debility or old age, he is in a decidedly better position
than the workmen in our country. He pays no more in a
protectionist country for his bread, his coffee, his sugar,
his clothing or his boots, than we do in England. It
86 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
would be of no use to offer him wheaten bread and jam,
which we consider in England to be necessaries. He
prefers his brown rye bread and other delicacies, at
which our people would turn up their noses. His meat is
just now dearer than it is with us, but in normal times
we do not consider that he is worse off relatively in this
respect than we are, when we make due allowance for
national differences of taste.
" We are bound to state, as we have repeatedly stated
in our reports, that under the policy of protection
followed by Imperial Germany since 1878, she has made
progress by leaps and bounds in industrial prosperity,
has developed into becoming Britain's greatest com-
mercial rival in Europe, and that her working classes are
in the enjoyment of a vastly larger share in the comforts
of life than their parents would have dreamt of hoping
for in their own generation."
Here then we have before us a Report on a matter
touching the most momentous question of the day : the
poverty and unemployment of the British people.
Why Is there It is a Report, the like of which we have never seen ; a
Poverty and r t-> •
Unemploy- Report of British workmen, appointed by British work-
men, to inquire into the social and economic conditions
of their confreres in Germany — our greatest European
industrial competitor.
This Report is of especial value, because of its ex-
treme moderation and lack of bias of any kind, pohtical
or otherwise. It is a Report of a body of honest, straight-
forward British working men who, the moment they got
free of the shackles of bigotry and foolish prejudices,
which their insular position and the false teaching^of
meat?
TARIFFS AND THE PRICE OF BREAD 87
politicians cast about them, at once saw that England
is not the only commercial and industrial country in the
world; that trade opens the eyes and develops the un-
derstanding, and that, despite our commercial pride and
industrial arrogance, we can learn many a useful lesson
from our trade rivals across the water.
We regard the Report of such importance, that if we
were rich enough we would have millions of copies
printed, so that every worker in the Kingdom might have
a copy gratis. It is a pity its sale price is 2s., and not 2d.
The question we now have to answer is this :
What are we to do with the Report of the Gains-
borough Commission?
Are we to put it aside as of no moment, or are we to
give it a prominent place in our consideration and use it
to our profit and advantage?
Here we have a number of British workmen who, be-
fore they went to Germany, were as full of insular preju-
dice in respect to the socio-economic conditions under
which they live in this country, as are the general body
of their confreres from whom they were elected, telling
us of marvellous facts and supplying us with a number
of eye-openers :
"... We have been forced to face the fact that it has
been during the period following upon the introduction of
protection duties by Prince Bismarck in 1879, that Ger-
many has ceased to be poor and has become well-to-do; thai
her workpeople have received a large increase in wages,
that the general social condition of the latter has improved,
that Germany's industry has developed, that she has sue-
88 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
ceeded in extending her foreign trade and in acquiring
ready markets for her continuously developing industry."
When we consider that this pregnant utterance was
forced from a number of our own working men after a
few weeks' tour in industrial Germany, most of them
being out-and-out free traders, or what we wrongly
call free traders, and as full of blind infatuation for
what they considered to be the cause, as numbers of
their colleagues have been for years, it clearly follows
that if the whole of our working classes could have the
same opportunities of studying the fiscal conditions of
other countries as were given to the Gainsborough Com-
mission, they could only come to the conclusion that
there is something fundamentally wrong with the way
in which we conduct our own fiscal affairs.
Keep your politicians, the many publicists who write
so glibly about the theories of economics, your working
classes and the general body of the people within the
shores of their own country, and their ideas on many
subjects remain narrow, warped and stunted, like a
plant that is pot-bound, but once you relieve them of
their cramped condition and send them abroad, where
their ideas have room to expand, they assume a rapid
growth that is most astonishing.
Disadvan- The famous " Silver Streak " has bestowed many a
Silver benefit on our land ; a hundred years ago it saved the
country from foreign invasion and emancipated Europe
from mihtary despotism; it isolates us from the rest of
Europe, and in isolation there is safety from sudden
attack. These are immense advantages, and no Britisher
Streak
TARIFFS AND THE PRICE OF BREAD 89
would care to sacrifice or alter them; but on the other
hand, there are certain disadvantages, and we are feeling
their effect to-day.
Had we possessed the same facilities for free inter-
communication with neighbouring States, as our friends
across the water possess, of keeping touch with, and
studying each others' methods of government, our fiscal
arrangements would not, or could not, have been in the
inept state they are to-day, for we should have benefited
by the experience of others and adapted our laws to the
requirements of the times.
The ' ' Silver Streak ' ' cuts off free facilities for travel,
and perhaps four-fifths or more of the British people
never leave their native land.
Now this is just one of those matters that we are
liable to pass by as of no particular consequence one way
or the other, but let us think for a moment, and we shall
find that it has more in it than would appear at first
sight.
If the vast majority of our people never leave their
own country, they have no opportunity of studying the
conditions of life in other countries, and are, therefore,
at the mercy of any penny-a-hner who may chance to
come along. Many of these gentlemen who talk glibly
and write with so facile a pen on any and all subjects,
are hke the people, inasmuch as they have never been in
foreign countries, save to Boulogne, or such places, on
their short annual holiday. If asked to write or speak on
any matter, there is always a well-filled library, with
books of reference on every subject under the sun, to
fall back upon, and to men of such facile parts it is the
90 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
easiest thing in the world to " get up " any subject at a
few hours' notice.
It is from such men that the vast majority of people
in this country get their information, either through the
medium of the public prints or from platform orations,
and they have now to ask themselves: " Have we bene-
fited by this system of second-hand teaching? and if we
have not benefited, our teachers must be at fault and
their teaching of a spurious order."
This question can best be answered by comparing
certain social and economic conditions of this country
with any one, or all, of the neighbouring European
States.
Labour conditions, scarcity of employment, dis-
tress, LEGALISED PAUPERISM, NECESSITY for UNIVERSAL
PRIVATE CHARITY, ENORMOUS POOR-RATES, are all cap-
able of being compared with similar conditions in other
countries ; and if they be studied with care, and without
prejudice, it will at once be seen that the workmen
forming the " Gainsborough Commission "had enough
justification for their conclusions in the following signifi-
cant utterance.
" We have been just three weeks in Germany, and
have seen the German workmen at work and at play. In
the busy districts of Rhineland and Westphalia we came
into contact with thousands of our German comrades
engaged in the heavy industr}^ and looked in vain for
the signs of poverty which certain persons in Gains-
borough and elsewhere told us would confront us on all
sides. Despite the prevailing dearness of meat, which is
TARIFFS AND THE PRICE OF BREAD gi
seriously affecting aU classes in the German Fatherland,
and consequently all those whose incomes are limited,
including the incomes of the working people, whose
budget for household expenses is necessarily quite
specially affected at this time of year, nothing indica-
tive in the remotest degree of widespread distress has
come within the limit of our vision; on the contrary,
there is every sign of increasing prosperity. Occupation
is to be had everywhere for the asking of it, in all fac-
tories and at all works in the towns we have passed
through ; the building trade is everywhere in a fair condi-
tion, and even in the ranks of the unskilled, who must
always be subject to fluctuations as regards employ-
ment, there is no general cause for complaint. Instead
of there being a superabundance of workers and conse-
quently a crowd of ' unemployed,' employers are
clamouring on all sides for skilled labour."
Let us pause here so that we may firmly establish in
our minds the exact meaning of these passages, and
carefully estimate their value to us as a people. Do not
let us make the fatal mistake of putting this message
aside as of no moment, because it is fraught with either
weal or woe, just as we regard it. Ignore it, and the
present deplorable conditions which environ the whole
question of labour must become worse. Accept it, and
general conditions will improve, a better standard of
comfort will soon be set up, and lasting prosperity will
surely result.
Here we have a pregnant message from our own
workers, a message full of serious import and deep
92 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
significance, and we shall do well if we give it our imme-
diate attention and full support.
But although this is an honest attempt of the work-
ing classes themselves to stir up their co-workers to a
sense of the many disadvantages of the economic condi-
tions of this country, compared with those prevaihng in
Germany, it may meet with as much hostility from cer-
tain publicists favouring the maintenance of the present
fiscal conditions as though it were a political move of
their adversaries.
We may be told that this Gainsborough Commission
is a faked-up job of the protectionists; that the five
free traders on it were but tools of fiscal reformers,
and that the whole thing is but a political dodge of the
enemy.
We are so party ridden in this country that every-
thing has to yield to party influence and become subor-
dinate to party interests, while any or every incident of
public life may be made use of to serve party purposes.
Party interests are built up of individual interests, and
in thus reducing it to its true denomination we find
much self-interest barring the way to reform, and many
difficulties standing in the way of progress.
In coming to a determination on this momentous
question let us be sure that we have cast out of our
minds every vestige of political influence, and let us
beware of the false doctrine of those who, because they
have their own interests to serve, continue to uphold a
system which has, among other things, reduced the
people of this country to a state of poverty, misery and
degradation, the like of which is not to be found in any
TARIFFS AND THE PRICE OF BREAD 93
civilised country in the world. They may, and perhaps
will, still claim for our present fiscal system those same
potentialities for good which Cobden and his followers
claimed for it half a century ago, but as facts are surer
than fancies, we prefer to believe the evidence of our
own eyes rather than trust further to the phantasma-
goria raised by the magic of false teachers.
In other words, we find that as we have been led astray
by the political teaching of those who passed as our
friends, we had better take this question of politics into
our own hands and carefully examine it in our own way
before we allow it to lead us again a hair's breadth away
from our own best interests.
94
CHAPTER XI
Pauperism as a Result of Free Trade — £35,000,000
Required Annually in Poor-Rates
Gross "\T T'E have then, in the foregoing pages, presented to
njus i^e y V us a number of trenchant facts in respect to the
Tax-payers j^iost momentoiis question of the day, touching the wel-
fare of the British people. We know that abnormal
poverty dogs the footsteps of our unfortunate country-
men with the tenacity of a bloodhound, and, turn which-
ever way they will, this fell presence is always on their
track.
We have realised for many years that every trade,
profession and industry in this country has been so over-
crowded, that employment has been hard to get and
difficult to retain, even by skilled men, in what are
regarded as safe positions — witness the recent dis-
charges from Woolwich Arsenal and the necessity for
immediate exodus to Germany and other countries
which followed, because other firms in the same line of
business could offer the men no employment.
A We know that every Government for the last fifty
Incubus yea^rs or more have been at their wits' end to decide what
to do with the ever-increasing burden of pauperism,
which has settled upon the shoulders of British tax-
payers with crushing effect, and yet the burden grows,
and its weight becomes heavier.
We have seen that, owing to its constant presence in
PAUPERISM AS A RESULT OF FREE TRADE 95
their midst, the people have actually come to regard
this foul thing as something that must be, even, indeed,
to accept it as a necessity, and beyond grumbling at the
financial strain which their acquiescence in the matter
involves, they do nothing to relieve themselves of this
monstrous incubus.
The Government of the day, seeing this unfortunate
attitude on the part of the people, naturally shape their
course accordingly, by imposing upon the tax-payers
those heavy burdens called poor-rates, which now
amount to the stupendous sum of £34,926,280, nearly
thirty-five millions sterling annually.
The people have assumed this strangely anomalous
attitude in regard to pauperism, because ; every
Government that has been in power since the passing
of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, has led the
people to believe that pauperism is there by constitu-
tional right, and cannot be done away with.
The Government of that day thought they had im-
proved the Pauper Laws by their new Act, and perhaps
they had, but they had never dreamed that future
Governments would take out of the pockets of the
people the colossal sum of thirty-five millions sterling
annually for pauper relief, nor did the people for a
moment realise that in legalising poverty, pauper-
ism would, in the next generation, grow into one of the
biggest national institutions, demanding for its main-
tenance several millions more than are spent on the
Army, and even more than is spent on our Navy — the
most powerful in the World.
Here is a monstrous anomaly, and yet the thing goes
96 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
on because of the apathy of Governments and the
ignorance of the people.
It has been truly said that:
"It is the people who really make the laws of the
land; so it is the people who have first to be influenced,
and then the necessary laws will come into being."
Convince the people that pauperism, as we know it,
is nothing but a foul growth on the body politic; that
poverty even is preventable, and the country will soon
witness a wonderful change, not only in our Poor Laws,
but in the attitude of the people themselves towards the
entire question.
Poverty, in an acute form, is no more a necessity than
drunkenness is a necessity, and it is time we recognised
this fact.
We can prevent poverty and kill pauperism with the
greatest possible ease, but we must first of all discover
the source from which poverty and its attendant horrors
spring, before we may hope to cut off the evil. We have
looked for, and are still looking for, the source of these
curses to our country in the wrong directions, and we
have failed to find it.
Statesmen, writers on politica economy, publicists.
Members of Parliament and Ministers of Government are
all seeking for the solution of the problem in unlikely
spots, trying to unlock the door with a key that will not
fit, and they might just as well abandon the task.
Mr Balfour, in speaking against the second reading of
the Small Landholders (Scotland) Bill, April 30, 1907,
is reported to have said :
PAUPERISM AS A RESULT OF FREE TRADE 97
" They [the Government] increased the difficulty by
bringing people, in the ordinary phrase, ' back to the
land,' because when agriculture went through a period
of depression it was inevitable that the people would
have to seek other occupations in other places. It was a
result of simple and well-known economic causes, which,
although of the greatest possible importance in the con-
sideration of this subject, was constantly left out of
account."
On the introduction of the BiU into Pariiament on
March 20, 1907, Mr Balfour said:
" I am one of those who always said the abolition of
the Com Laws would inevitably cause a great beneficial
change in our system. But every one must be conscious
that it exposes us to all the difficulties of foreign com-
petition. It was intended by its authors to stimulate the
growth of a manufacturing population, which I view
without regret, because it is the only way in which the
population of this country can develop."
It is very clear from these two quotations from Mr
Balfour's recent speeches that that eminent statesman
does not regard the deplorable state of labour and the
whole question affecting employment and poverty as
anomalous, or due to anything else than :
" A result of simple and well-known causes."
while the remedy, he contends, will be found in,
" The great growth of the manufacturing population
— because I recognize it is the only possible mode in
which the population of this country can largely in-
crease, or its wealth augment."
7
98 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
Mr John Burns, who took part in one of the meetings
of the Imperial Conference at the Colonial Office on
April 25, proposed:
" That it is desirable to encourage British emigrants
to proceed to British Colonies rather than Foreign
countries; and that the Imperial Government be re-
quested to co-operate with any Colonies desiring immi-
grants in assisting suitable persons to emigrate."
And the Conference passed the resolution unani-
mously.
Here, then, we have two notable examples of how
statesmen regard this matter.
Firstly, we have the Leader of the Opposition en-
couraging belief in the selfsame remedial measures that
have persistently failed the country for more than half
a century ; and then we find a Cabinet Minister suggest-
ing the only remedy he can think of — the suicidal course
of emigration — as a solution of the problem.
Let us consider Mr Balfour's extraordinary statement
that:
" They [the Government] increased the difficulty by
bringing people, in the ordinary phrase, back to the
land," etc.
"Back to Now, of all charges that may be brought against the
Government of the day by the party out of power, this
surely is the most remarkable for its utter feebleness.
How on earth are we to have agriculture unless we begin
by putting people on the land?
How are we to increase and develop it unless we
supply it with workers?
PAUPERISM AS A RESULT OF FREE TRADE 99
How are we to have our manufacturing industries
unless we build our factories and put " hands " into
them? And how are we to increase our existing indus-
tries and trades unless we send to them the necessary
complement of labour?
To predict difficulties in agriculture because we supply
that industry with one of the essentials to success —
labour — is, ceteris paribus, to prophesy evil to our manu-
facturing industries, because we supply them with the
necessary workers. Mr Balfour cannot blow hot and cold
with the same breath, and what is sauce for the goose
is sauce for the gander. Agriculture, like every other
industry in this world, must take its chance, and bear its
ups and downs like everything else in life. What we have
to do is to start it on its way, give it every chance of
success, and then let it run alone. Mr Balfour and his
Party need have no misgivings on this point, because it
is clearly shown elsewhere in these pages that agricul-
ture is not only capable of drawing off all those who are
unemployed to-day, but millions of the population of
this country besides.
There is, however, a note in Mr Balfour's utterance
that is far more alarming than his ill-grounded predic-
tions about difficulties arising through sending the
people " back to the land," and that is the baneful effect
of his own policy when he and his Party are again in
power.
If Mr Balfour, in opposition, sees danger in developing
agriculture, what course is Mr Balfour, as Prime Minis-
ter, likely to take? If Mr Balfour, as Leader of the Oppo-
sition, denounces " back to the land " as a harmful
7^
100 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
measure, Mr Balfour's Government is hardly likely to
take those steps to put the great land industry of the
country in that position which it must attain before the
people can find relief from the sore troubles that beset
them.
If Mr Balfour is really sincere in believing what he
stated, or was reported to have stated, and has, more-
over, the courage of his convictions, then it is as clear as
daylight that if that gentleman is returned to power, and
provided his Party share his beliefs, a black day will
dawn for England. The only hope for the people is
through the land, and, if the way be barred — God help
them.
When we come to the newspapers for help, we are no
better off, for in seeking a solution of the difficulties
which beset labour they, more or less, seem to ignore
agriculture as a factor in the situation.
Here is an example from one of the London dailies —
Daily Express.
In connexion with the Woolwich Arsenal troubles it
published the following article, which is given in extenso,
to show how severely the land is left alone as having no
part in the labour question :
FREE TRADE
WHAT IT HAS DONE FOR THE MEN OF WOOLWICH
A CONTRAST
NO WORK TO BE HAD IN ENGLAND
PROTECTED AMERICA WANTS MEN
STRIKING LESSON
' ' Remarkable developments have arisen in connexion
with the unemployment at Woolwich.
PAUPERISM AS A RESULT OF FREE TRADE loi
" The Express dispatched yesterday a number of tele-
grams to private engineers on the Government Hst, in
the hope of finding work for the discharged mechanics
and labourers.
"The firms communicated with were among those in
the engineering branches mentioned by the Prime
Minister on Monday as enjoying especially good trade.
" The replies were of a very significant character, and
form a strikingly unfavourable commentary on the Prime
Minister's statement. There is no work for additional
men; in fact, in most cases, men are being dismissed.
"We print by way of contrast with the telegrams, a
striking dispatch from our New York correspondent, on
conditions in the American engineering trade. It is
stated that the unemployed British skilled workmen
could find plenty of work in the United States."
NO WORK
The message telegraphed to the firms in question was
in the following terms :
" Could you find employment for one hundred skilled
workmen from Woolwich?"
Sir W. G. Armstrong, Whitworth and Co., the cele-
brated engineering firm, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, wired
back the following reply :
" We regret the suggestion is at present impossible, as
we are obliged to pay off hands every week."
Messrs Kynoch, of Birmingham, replied :
" In reply to your telegram, we have to say that, in
consequence of Government action, there is more
scarcity of employment, and consequently more suffer-
102 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
ing among our own people than is the case at Wool-
wich."
" Can you provide employment for 500 of our skilled
workpeople?"
Messrs Vickers, Sons and Maxim reply from their
works at Erith :
" No. We are discharging men, owing to slackness of
work."
The same firm's headquarters at Barrow state :
" We cannot find work for men from Woolwich, be-
cause, if Government demands continue as at present,
we fear we cannot help the men we already have em-
ployed."
The Woolwich labour troubles offered a splendid
thesis for an academical work on the subject, but the
Press failed to grasp the opportunity.
Whichever way we turn, we are met by the same trend
of thought in respect to labour — the manufactures and
trades are regarded as the only means of employment in
spite of the fact that they persistently fail us, and so —
we go on missing the way.
Let us now turn to other countries in order to see what
they do there.
This is what one of the London dailies had to say on
the subject in May of last year:
UNPARALLELED PROSPERITY
THE RISING TIDE OF GERMAN TRADE
AMAZING REPORT
EXPORTS DOUBLED IN TWELVE YEARS
" Some extraordinary particulars of the present
prosperity of German industry were issued last night
PAUPERISM AS A RESULT OF FREE TRADE 103
by the Foreign Office in a report by Mr Consul H.
Harriss-Gastrell on the trade of Wurtemberg.
" Practically every industry is reported to be in a
highly flourishing condition. Orders are pouring in, capi-
tal is doubling with unparalleled rapidity, wages are
rising, and there is an extraordinary demand for labour.
The British Consul says :
" *The general economic improvement in Germany
. . . has continued steadily, and in the latter of the two
years under review (1905-1906) attained a hitherto un-
precedented height.
" ' There are no signs as yet of high water mark having
been reached, most manufacturers having orders for
months in advance.
" ' The home labour supply has resulted in a very
general increase of wages, which in many industries
amounts to more than a 10 per cent, rise, and also in
many cases to a shortening of the working day.' "
From such references as these, which appear con-
stantly in the public prints, it is manifest that the
country is now aroused to a sense of its own danger, and
that the entire question of labour is attracting intense
and widespread interest. This, therefore, is the time for
us to study the matter and to trace the evil which besets
it to its source.
Much is made by publicists of the marvellous in-
dustrial prosperity of Germany, the United States and
other civilised countries, and with very good reason.
Phenomenal progress has been made in these countries,
but we can also point to enormous commercial and in-
104 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
dustrial expansion. Considerable expansion has, in fact,
been experienced during the last few years in practically
all the great trading states of the world, and, per se, this
is neither remarkable nor significant.
There are, however, certain factors in the position
which are of remarkable significance, and we must not
ignore them, if we are determined to sift this matter to
the bottom.
Foreign Industrial expansion in Germany and the United
Industrial
Expansion States IS not attended by congested labour markets and
consequent scarcity of employment, because such a
condition would be impossible in those countries.
In both Germany and the United States industries
are united to agriculture, and each assists the other. In
Germany, for example, we find from The Statesman's
Year Book, 1906, that her farms supported 18,066,663
persons, of whom 8,156,045 were actually working upon
them.
The land industry provides for eighteen millions of the
population, and the rest is simple enough. Agriculture,
in short, draws away so many workers that all other indus-
tries find it difficult to obtain the necessary supply of labour.
In these countries, as in all other countries of the
world, agriculture is the chief industry, and all others
are subsidiary to it.
In our country agriculture and manufactures are not
allied, but divorced. They are not sister industries, help-
ing each other by natural affinities, but living apart and
working independently of each other. There is no bond
of sympathy and strength between them, and because
there is no unity the nation suffers.
PAUPERISM AS A RESULT OF FREE TRADE 105
We are the only people in the world who have at-
tempted to make manufactures rank first in the national
industries and place agriculture as of secondary import-
ance in the economy of life. Ours is the only country in
the world that has attempted to alter the course of a
natural law by making the great land industry sub-
servient to minor industries.
That we have signally failed, as we deserved to fail,
needs no further proof than is afforded by the many
signs of the times, which are manifest enough even to
the most casual observer.
Ours is a nation that stands apart from all others, in
that we have been infatuated enough to believe that we
should find universal riches and prosperity in Cobden's
singularly bold idea that we should become the lords of
manufacture ; and that we could live and become great
on these alone.
Richard Cobden's was truly a lofty ideal, but only an
ideal. He left out of calculation the simple fact that
before we could become lords of manufacture we must
first of all become lords of the earth — and that we are a
long way off that consummation needs no emphasising
— and because we are not lords of the earth we must
obviously fail in compelling the nations to come our
way, to do as we do, to do in fact as we should like them
to do.
That we have failed all along the line; that our
splendid schemes and soaring aspirations after a unique
position in the history of the world have burst like airy
bubbles is, alas, too visible to even the meanest in-
telligence.
io6 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
Instead of universal riches and prosperity we have
reaped widespread poverty and distress. Instead of
becoming lords of manufacture, our country is the
common " dumping ground " for the manufactured
wares of our foreign rivals. Instead of good wages and
general employment there is " sweating " and un-
employment. Instead of home industries supporting our
own people, they are obliged to seek work in Germany
and elsewhere; and, worst of all, instead of the Mother
Country holding out a helping hand to the best and
readiest, the strongest and fittest of her sons and daugh-
ters, they are obliged to leave the land they love and
seek their bread in lands that are free from these old
worn-out ideas, which have wrought such incalculable
harm to the British people.
Xhe This is the central fact that runs right through the
^^F "^^t position like the warp of a piece of cloth, and crosses and
re-crosses it like the weft, and unless we pick up these
threads and weave them together in a practical manner,
we shall never succeed in making a good job of our work.
Governments, statesmen and publicists have all
missed the way, because they have never gathered up
the right threads into their hands; and this much re-
mains certain, that until they do so and then dexte-
rously manipulate the shuttle, they will continue to
fail.
As for your ordinary politician he is of no account as
a factor in the question, because he is a man of no inde-
pendence, and, therefore, of no use save to vote with his
party.
PAUPERISM AS A RESULT OF FREE TRADE 107
What is wanted here is a broad, lofty conception of
patriotism; that noble feeling that will make a man
get up in his place in Parliament and declare boldly
what is in his heart, and not a narrow slavish adherence
to party.
io8
CHAPTER XII
The Incubus of Taxation — Fiscal and Poor
Law Reforms
THERE are speakers and writers in abundance on
all social and economic questions in Parliament
and out of it; there are those who declare that free
trade is the panacea for the troubles which have over-
taken us, and those who affirm that in fiscal reform
will be found the solution of the problem. Political
parties have made free trade and fiscal reform their
war cries, and one of them has raised the cheap loaf
as their battle standard.
Part of the Press supports one of these factions and
part of it the other ; bitter controversy often rages round
the question, and public feeling is influenced sometimes
this way and sometimes that by these warriors of a
wordy warfare.
More fierce controversialists throw themselves boldly
into the arena of this bloodless conflict year by year and
so the game goes merrily on, to the huge amusement of
all foreign nations and to the undoing of our own people.
Now we may lay down this one broad cardinal fact as
a sure basis to work upon : — Not by such means will the
problem be solved ; the battle won.
It is obvious, from the bitter experience of the past,
that what has been misnamed free trade has ignomini-
THE INCUBUS OF TAXATION 109
ously failed to do anything but positive harm to the
cause, and we can trust to it no more. If we had real
free trade, that is, a free and unrestricted interchange
of commodities between the nations of the earth, on
broad, generous, well-defined lines; that splendid
Utopian free trade that was dreamed of by the ideal-
ists of more than half a century ago, it might serve
our turn, but the poor, weak, narrow, one-sided thing it
pleases us to call "Free Trade," is nothing but a
laughable farce, a humbug and a sham, which will as
surely fail us in the present and future as it has in the
past.
Fiscal reform may help us, but not if we trust to it
alone.
The prevailing idea is that if we hold out a helping
hand to our industries, assisting one of them in this
direction and another in that, and generally put them
in a position to fight on more equal terms with their
foreign rivals by setting them free of those shackles with
which they are so sorely hampered to-day, we shall over-
come all difficulties, but in this we are mistaken.
By altering our laws so as to give the country a wise,
well-considered fiscal system, we shall, without doubt, do
some good, but beyond that — nothing. Our industries
may absorb a few thousand more " hands," wages may
even slightly rise; in certain industrial sections there
may be less uncertainty of employment and less dis-
tress, but the main question — the poverty of the general
body of the people — will remain untouched.
It is not so much the thousands that we want to assist
as the millions.
no THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
The surplus thousands may be absorbed by manu-
factures, but the surplus millions only by the land.
Keystone This is the great central fact around which the entire
Situation question rotates; it is the keystone of the arch; the
pivot on which the fulcrum works; and yet, strangely
enough, it is persistently left out as a factor of no im-
portance at all, by all the Governments of the past, by
publicists, speakers, and by most of the Press. Study
The National Statute Book for years past, and see how
barren it is of effort to relieve the situation by means of
the land, save in one or two attempts to afford partial
relief. Listen to the rhetoric of platform orators, and
mark how carefully they avoid all reference to the land
as a factor in the most burning social question of the
day.
Read your newspapers and notice that, while waging
a fierce, wordy war against political adversaries, and
clamouring for preference for the party they serve, they
studiously refrain from all mention of the land as of
the least importance on their political horizon.
Party and policy rule the situation. Every man, be-
fore he enters Parliament, must first learn some political
creed, and that creed binds him, body and soul, to his
Party. Independence is lost; initiative is dead; he may
have ideas, but he never voices them, albeit in this he is
of use to his Party; he falls into what somebody has
called — " the general mush of concession," and his
usefulness to his country is lost.
This is the common fate of most of our legislators
whom we elect and send to Westminster to represent us
— the people. That our interests are not served as they
THE INCUBUS OF TAXATION iii
should be is amply manifested in the many evidences
around us of the unsatisfactory condition of the country.
Moreover, it is certain that this senseless political
antagonism, which is ceaselessly going on in the National p . • .•
Parliament, renders useful work impossible, and we, as a not_
Policy
people, are sick and tired of it all. We want patriotism,
not policy, and we don't care one straw what Govern-
ment is in power. Radical or Conservative, so long as we
get it.
Fundamentally, the party principle is right enough,
but in practice it has proved itself lacking in those
essentials to national prosperity which are indispensa-
ble in that general body conducting the business affairs
of the Nation.
It is a bar to public business, a slayer of individual in-
dependence, a standing menace to the Empire and a
veritable curse to the people. Let the people see to it.
A recent exemplification of this fact will be found in
the debate which took place on the second reading of
the Small Landholders (Scotland) Bill.
This Bill, which is but one of those attempts, already
referred to, for the purpose of partially relieving the
deplorable condition of the people, was as fiercely
attacked as though it were a measure introduced into
Parliament for the avowed purpose of bringing about
the destruction of the commonwealth.
Here is a specimen of the invective indulged in; and
if twaddle of this kind is all the Opposition have to urge
against the Government, they had, in their own in-
terests, best remain silent.
Said one of the Party out of power (Mr Cochrane) :
112 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
" Was this Bill to be the means of giving doles to
deserving Radical agents and other politicians, who had
waded through Chinese slavery and other terminological
inexactitudes, and who had failed to obtain from the
Lord Chancellor the dignity of Justice of the Peace?
Were these persons to be presented at the cost of a
country with a small holding, with the buildings upon
it?"
Now, personally, we don't care a brass farthing for
Radical agents or the Radical party; nor do we, for
that matter, care a fig for any party. We only ask for
good government, and if we get it, we don't care which
party is in and which is out.
In this case the Government of the day made an
honest attempt to emancipate the people from some of
the evils which beset them, and they were howled at for
their pains.
The Bill is good in its way, but it does not go far
enough ; it lacks those easy facilities for creating peasant
proprietorships which the Small Holdings Bill of 1892,
for example, provides for. But then that Bill was by no
means perfect, partly for the reason that its sphere of
application was too limited, and partly because, in
placing its operation in the hands of County Councils,
the Government rang its death knell. Go and ask the
County Councils what they have done with the country's
mandate to create a number of peasant proprietors up
to the limit of the Act, and they will tell you that their
combined efforts have resulted in the creation of small
proprietory farms, aggregating a few hundred acres.
Here is really a useful measure, intended by Govern-
THE INCUBUS OF TAXATION 113
ment for the relief of a strained, intolerable position,
rendered completely abortive by the stupidity of buco-
lic councils, but we have something more to say on this
matter later on.
The present Government should go back ; pick up the
threads of the 1892 Bill, take them into their own
hands, work the Act for all it is worth, and then extend
it in a thoroughly workmanlike manner to the whole of
the many millions of acres now lying practically unpro-
ductive in Great Britain.
It is very necessary at this juncture that we should Small
thoroughly understand what these SMALL HOLDINGS mean
to the people.
It is patent enough to the poorest intelligence that
there is something fundamentally wrong with the
system upon which our social and economic arrange-
ments work.
We have seen that, in spite of all effort on the part of
Government, of all social and industrial effort, of the
enormous contributions from the public purse, and of
the still greater aid from private sources, poverty of
an alarming type still falls upon the people as a curse ;
that work is difficult to get and hard to retain, and that
the entire social and economic condition of the people is
deplorable.
We have seen that in Germany and other European
States there is very little poverty, that work is abun-
dant, wages good and the general condition of the people
in these respects at least far better than with us.
We have seen that this difference is due to the fact,
and to one fact only, that in all these countries the
114 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
LAND is the staple industry and all others subordinate
to it.
We have seen that because we alone, of all countries
in the whole world, have attempted to make agriculture
subservient to trade and manufactures, we have failed
as we deserved to fail. The land is the source of being,
the source of wealth ; from it we are taken, to it we must
return; without it we cannot live. Man, in making the
most of the land, in working it for all it will produce, is
but following a natural law, and he who contends
against the operation of natural laws, pits his puny
strength against a force that is simply irresistible.
We must cultivate highly every acre that is capable
of being cultivated in the kingdom, or we shall fail as
signally in the future as in the past.
There is no escape from this fact! No possibility of
evading this law with impunity.
Will nothing ever arouse the people of this country
to a true sense of their position?
Is there anything under heaven that will awaken them
from that fatal sleep which the destruction of their
land-industry plunged them into fifty odd years ago?
Is there any power on earth that will make them
understand the simple fact that if they have an industry
capable of giving employment and support to twelve or
fourteen millions of people, and they muddle it so that it
can only employ and support 3,900,000, they have made
a shocking mess of their own affairs?
Will they 7tever understand that unless they work
their great national industry on sound, economic
and commercial principles, work it for all it is worth.
THE INCUBUS OF TAXATION 115
work it in a manner to produce the maximum of
NATIONAL wealth and afford employment to the maxi-
mum head of population, immense loss of national
strength, power, vigour, energy, vitality, and wealth
musi result. Will they never realise that want of work,
poverty, and a complete derangement of social and
economic conditions are but the natural sequel of
NATIONAL waste?
Cannot they see for themselves that because of their False
blindness, infatuation, madness; because they have Worn-out
allowed false teachers to lead them astray, to lead them ^^''®^*
away from the real source of their strength and vitality,
from these springs of national productiveness, which
are as essential to the well-being of the people as
the sun's warmth is to the ripening com; poverty
has fallen upon them as a scourge, and that poverty and
its attendant horrors will continue to haunt them so
long as they cling to false creeds and worn-out beliefs?
Are the British tax-payers so blind as not to perceive
that all official effort to relieve the situation is in vain;
that the poor-rates and parochial cesses of whatsoever
nature are unavailing, and that their enormous contri-
bution of THIRTY-FIVE MILLIONS annually is as easily
swallowed up by the great ocean of pauperism as
children's sand castles on the beach are swept away by
each incoming wave?
Will they never realise that this Frankenstein
monster, which has been created out of the ignorance of
a people and the indifference of Governments, has a
maw wide and voracious enough to swallow up their
;f 35, 000, 000, and as much more as they may provide, if^
8a
ii6 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
in their egregious folly, they are weak enough to continue
their supplies? Year by year does the demand for more
and more millions increase, and can a living man point to
the slightest modicum of good done to the body politic?
Can it be said by even one political economist, politician,
statesman or statist, that these many millions that are
so uncomplainedly surrendered every year by the com-
plaisant tax-payers of this country, have done even the
faintest trace of good in reducing the widespread
poverty of the people, in providing work for the army
of unemployed that is marching up and down the
country seeking work and finding none, or in relieving
the unparalleled conditions which surround the entire
position affecting this great social question?
Can the Government of to-day, or any administration
that has been in office during the last fifty years, point
to any real good that has been done in the past with the
tax-payers' millions, or predict a time when this sense-
less drain on the public will cease?
Can any Government, past or present, affirm, with-
out fear of contradiction, that their predecessors of 1834,
in passing their Poor Law Amendment Act, have done
aught else than encourage poverty by making a legal
charge on the public revenues?
Can they show, indeed, that the Act has resulted in
the shghtest amelioration in the poverty-stricken condi-
tion of the people?
No! emphatically and unequivocally no!
In order that the position may be clearly understood
by the people of this country, some statistics bearing on
the question are appended for easy reference :
TK
[E INCUBUS (
)F TAXATIO
N 117
Amount
Incidence
Year.
Population.
raised in
Poor-rates.
per head of
Population.
1834
24,028,584
£7,000,000
5s. 9d.
1895-96
39,221,109
26,331,700
13s. 5d.
1900-01
41,154,646
30,126,236
14s. 8id.
1904-05
42,793,272
34,926,280
i6s. 2|d.
These figures will show that even in the dark days of The
1834, that dreary time when poverty was considered so jnc^'bu*"'
excessive as to demand a change in our Com Laws, only
about seven millions were raised in poor-rates, while
the incidence per head of population was only 5s. 9d.
In 1895-96 the amount raised was over twenty-six
millions, and the incidence per head rose to 13s. 5d. ;
in 1901 it was found necessary to raise as much as
thirty millions with an incidence of 14s. 8d. ; while in
1904-5 nearly thirty-five milhons were required, with a
still higher charge per head of population of i6s. 2d.
The Government's own figures, therefore, show how
poverty and pauperism have flourished under State
protection, and how, in spite of enormous trade expan-
sion and industrial progress and of the vast accumula-
tion of individual wealth, it has grown into an insatiable
monster which administrative effort cannot appease
nor national sacrifice satisfy. Governments have done
their best under an unhealthy system which engenders
its own agents of destruction, while tax-payers have
flung their millions into these fathomless quicksands of
pauperism without avail and without hope.
Seven hundred and twenty millions sterling in poor-
rates have been raised since the Poor Law Amendment
Act of 1834 came into operation, and who shall say that
ii8 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
the country is better for these squandered milUons, or
that the position of the people has improved?
Will Government give tax-payers a substantial
guarantee that the three to four hundred millions that
they will exact from them during the next ten years will
do more good than the two hundred and ninety-six
millions which they have paid into the State coffers
during the last ten years?
Can Government give the country any assurance,
worth the paper it is written on, that even their Scottish
Small Holdings Bill, or their Small Holdings Bill for
England, will really and permanently relieve the poverty
of the people, generally improve the position, and re-
duce, even by a trifle, the heavy burden of poor-rates?
Is there a single statesman in Parliament or out of it,
who, calmly and dispassionately viewing the position
and nicely balancing in his far-seeing mind the many
impossibilities of the case, can conscientiously assure us
that under the existing conditions of our economic
administration and the peculiarly enervating effect on
the people of our Poor Laws, there is the very faintest
chance of permanently improving the position so as to
find work for all and do away with the necessity for
poverty?
After the bitter experience of the last seventy years
and the many sad manifestations of condign failure
which are, alas, too abundantly spread around us to-
day, is there a man in the Kingdom who, apart from
party bias and political influence, can honestly say that,
if the poor-rates be increased from £35,000,000 annually
to £45,000,000, these added ten millions will do aught
THE INCUBUS OF TAXATION 119
else than temporarily relieve an ever-present and an
ever-growing demand on the tax-payers' pockets?
If we maintain our present attitude towards this Terrible
terrible social question; this sickly, mawkish attitude problems
of taking the backbone out of our manhood by en-
couraging poverty and offering a premium to pauperism ;
if we continue to give every able-bodied man and woman
in the country the legal right to thrust their hands deep
down into the pockets of the British tax-payer and live
at his expense the year round ; is there a man among us
bold enough to assert that we are doing that which is
best for the people, or that which is just to the tax-
payer?
Can we, as a justice-loving people, a people who are
really desirous of doing that which is best for our own
countrymen, honestly and truthfully affirm that our
Poor Laws, which were conceived in mercy and ad-
ministered in compassion, are the best and most helpful,
uplifting and practical that we are capable of framing?
Is it not incontestably true that our Poor Laws, which
were altered in 1834, and amended now and again to
meet what were considered certain requirements of the
times, have had the effect of demoralising the people,
inducing appalling and unprecedented poverty, im-
perilKng the commonwealth, and doing a gross injustice
to the general body of tax-payers?
In reply to this group of startling questions there will
be found many apologists who, with the ready skill of
practised controversiahsts having specious arguments
ready to hand, will endeavour to prove that the reverse
of all this is in reality the case ; but as an ounce of fact is '
120 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
worth more than a ton of theory, so are the material
manifestations of our Poor Laws, per se, of far more
value than the academical declamations of learned
jurists or the speculative theories of newspaper corre-
spondents.
Here we have in our midst unparalleled poverty, a
mass of foul, festering pauperism that is not even re-
lieved by the thirty-five millions raised annually by the
State, or by the incomparably larger sums subscribed
out of the universal philanthropy of millions of our
country men and women ; and now that we are looking
at this question for the first time in what we conceive to
be an eminently practical manner, we naturally want to
know the why and the wherefore of the matter.
The Why We know full well that our people have not been
Wherefore driven into poverty by the harshness of our laws and the
blighting restrictions of our social life ; but, on the con-
trary, that the mild benevolence of our Poor Laws and
the easy facilities presented by our own social condi-
tions, offer a distinct premium to that large section to be
found in every population which, given an opportunity,
is only too ready to shirk those responsibilities which
attach to the individual obligations of life.
With so mild a code of national laws and so benevo-
lent an attitude on the part of the public, it is no wonder
that we have succeeded in degrading that section of our
countrymen which is for ever standing on the verge of
poverty.
It is no wonder, indeed, that if these people are
offered on easy terms State aid and private charity in
the place of a precarious livelihood and semi-starvation,
THE INCUBUS OF TAXATION 121
they accept it. Small blame to them; in fact we should
probably do precisely the same thing if we were in their
position. " Any port in a storm " is good enough for
them.
But this is not doing the best for the people; this is
not uplifting them, but casting them down; this is not
encouraging self-help and individual independence, but
creating a weak, limp, nerveless condition, which has to
be bolstered up by outside support. We are really doing
our best to bring about the complete demoralisation of
the poorer classes, and it is no wonder that our pauper
ranks continue to be well recruited.
That this state of affairs constitutes a grave danger New
Practical
to the commonweal by sapping the manhood of the Legislation
nation there is no shadow of a doubt, and it behoves us ^i"""®
to go back on our tracks, pick up the loose threads of
feeble legislative measures, knit them together in a firm,
tight skein, and then weave them into one solid, sensible,
practical law that will make the people self-respecting
and self-supporting ; a law that will help and not hinder
the people from becoming free and independent citizens,
and that will relieve the unfortunate tax-payer of an
iniquitous burden which is as unjust as it is unnecessary.
We may be sure that a great amount of nonsense and
twaddle will be talked the moment a proposal is made to
alter these hopelessly impossible Poor Laws.
So-called philanthropists will rise up in indignant
wrath at the very name of reform, and every attempt
wiU be made to show that any alteration in existing laws
would be cruel and barbarous, and an outrage to the
deserving poor. Then again bumbledom wiU rise up as
122 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
one man and declaim against any innovations that
are likely to interfere with their cherished and exclusive
prerogatives as " Guardians of the Poor."
In regard to these Poor Law guardians, we need have
no scruples, as the recent scandals in connexion with
the shameful squandering of the tax-payers' money
conclusively prove how some of these gentlemen dis-
charge their public trust, while in respect to the philan-
thropists it may be said that true philanthropy consists
in helping a man to help himself rather than in forcing
him to become dependent on others.
" Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have I
give unto thee," were the words of the Apostle to the
cripple, and then — he healed him!
Was not this better, wiser, more really philanthropic
than giving him a little temporary aid and then leaving
him in the same dependent position for the next day?
Peter did the man a real service by making him whole, or,
in other words, by putting the man in a position wherein
— he could help himself.
Peter was far wiser, more practical, and a truer
philanthropist than your fussy faddist who, by uphold-
ing unsuitable laws, would keep a man dependent on the
charity of others rather than help him to become free
and independent.
Said a well-known writer on the subject of self-
help:
" The greatest serv'ce we can do for another is to help
him to help himself. To help him directly might be
weakening. . . . But to help him to help himself is never
THE INCUBUS OF TAXx\TION 123
weakening, but always encouraging and strengthening,
because it leads him to a larger and stronger life."
The man then who helps to put his brother in a posi-
tion to help himself is a truer philanthropist than he who
bolsters him up with adventitious aid, and it is this
aspect of the question that deserves our closest atten-
tion, because in it we shall find the key to the whole
position.
124
CHAPTER XIII
Prevention of National Waste — The Means
TO THE End
lEFORE we can amend the Poor Laws, we must
^ amend other things. The Poor Laws exist because
of excessive poverty. Poverty exists because of lack of
employment, and lack of employment is but a result of
fatuitous administration.
We have done nothing in the past but to pull down,
at least in respect to the question we are considering;
now let us alter our methods and adopt a cow-structive
policy instead of a d'e-structive one.
Let us tell those whom we send to Parliament to
administer our affairs that we can no longer bear with
official pedantry in regard to national economics, and
that we are not disposed to submit longer to the delu-
sion of an antiquated and worn-out system of fiscal
administration.
Must But in telling them this we should make it clear,
a Party ^t the samc time, that this vital question, upon which
Question j^^^gs the welfare of a people, must not be made a
party question. It is a question similar to that of
the Irish Land Bill of 1903, which, because of its
national importance, or for other reasons, passed through
Parliament practically without debate. We claim that
this measure, being of even more importance, must not
be made the subject of unseemly party wrangling, and
PREVENTION OF NATIONAL WASTE 125
that political capital must not be made out of it. This
question directly touches the individual and collective
interests of every working man and every tax-payer in
the kingdom, and it must go through Parliament
as a national measure bearing the sign-manual of a
people.
We must help our people by finding work for them;
we must be in a position to say to every able-bodied
man and woman in the country — there is no need for
you to go to the workhouse because we can provide you
with honest work whereby you will be able to support
yourself.
We must be in a position to provide work for all our
great mass of unemployed, for every honest man and
woman in the land, and then we shaU be able to say —
the poor-rates are not for you, but only for those who
are unable to work: the aged and infirm, the blind and
halt, the cripples, the insane, and those whose bodily or
mental condition renders ordinary manual labour im-
possible.
We can employ literally millions of our people in
making our o^^^l butter and cheese, in growing our own
fruit and vegetables, in producing our own milk, poultry
and bacon, in growing our own corn and making our
own flour.
We can, in short, grow practically all our own food,
and usefully and honourably employ aU our own people.
We can so well employ our own people in our own
country that the wasteful drain of emigration will cease
for a considerable time, and we shall keep the sturdy and
the strong; those pushing, vigorous, brave sons of the
126 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
nation with us, instead of forcing them to seek their
bread in a strange land.
How to We can repopulate our country districts and give back
Plenty to England that backbone of rural strength and vigour
for Poverty ^^ -which the enervating, exhausting policy of the last
half-century has robbed her. We can sprinkle over our
fair island from Cornwall to the Pentlands, from the
Wash to St David's Head, such a multitude of happy,
thriving homesteads that our land will fairly hum with
the joyous, invigorating sound of busy industries. We
can send the people to honest work instead of to the
workhouses, and we can give them plenty in the place of
poverty.
But — and there is a But here as there is in many
another of life's by-ways — we must go back on our
tracks and pick up the right path, and, above all things,
we must be prepared to make some sacrifices.
If we are determined to provide work for that vast
array of unemployed, for that greater multitude, the
" submerged tenth"; if we are really determined to
banish poverty and slay pauperism outright; to make
our people prosperous, contented and happy, we must
give up that which, by a monstrous falsehood, is called
Free Trade, and substitute for it a new code of
sensible, practical fiscal laws, whereunder our people
may have the same fair chance of carrying on their
trades, professions and industries, to their own profit
and advantage, as is enjoyed by the peoples of every
civilised country in the world, save our own.
This we must be prepared to do thoroughly. No
halting, flabby, half-hearted measures will help us here,.
PREVENTION OF NATIONAL WASTE 127
but a vigorous, whole-hearted poHcy, that, while helping Reciprocity
not
our own people and safeguarding our own interests, will Hostility
not prove necessarily hostile to our neighbours. Recipro-
city is what we want, not hostility. There is not a vestige
of reciprocity in our international trade to-day, not
even the shadow of fair Free Trade, not a trace of
just dealing. We are met at every turn, in every foreign
port, in every civilised country in the whole world with
a veritable host of hostile tariffs, and free trade is dead
— slain by our own egregious folly in clinging so fatu-
ously to the threadbare delusion of worn-out beliefs.
Here are some of the food imports into the United
Kingdom for the year 1906, as given in The Statesman's
Year Book for 1907:
Imports. Value.
Wheat, Grain and Flour £67,879,948
Butter and Margarine 26,200,007
Cheese 7,607,641
Eggs 7,098,137
Meat, Bacon, Poultry, etc. .... 41,169,522
Animals for food 9,889,127
Fruits and Hops 11,225,968
Here we have a group of figures, compiled from
returns furnished by Government, of so formidable a
nature as to be absolutely startling ; and yet, save a few
students of the subject, there is not one Englishman in
ten thousand who is aware of the state of affairs herein
disclosed, nor is he aware that in them is involved the
existence of England as a great world power.
Practically the whole of this enormous mass of food-
stuffs, which costs the colossal sum of £171,000,000
128 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
annually, and which we ask foreign nations to grow for us,
can he produced in our own country.
Broadly speaking, it suffices to say that when a nation
takes the insane, suicidal policy of killing her own in-
dustries, throwing her own people out of employment,
and forcing the best of them to emigrate to save them
from starvation, she does that which, in the process of
time, will ensure her own destruction as surely as the
seasons come round.
Construe- Strength lies in constructiveness and in conservation,
tlV6n6SS
and Con- and the country which adopts a destructive and waste-
«ervatism j^^j^ policy of economics is bound to lose its national
vigour.
England is in this position to-day; her great land in-
dustries have decayed to an extent that she has actually
become dependent upon any and every country which
will come to her assistance with the bare necessaries of
life; she is obliged to send her own sons and daughters
away from her shores every year in ever-increasing
numbers because she can no longer support them, and
she has literally and truly become dependent upon the
good will of foreign countries for her daily bread.
Now this particular phase of the case alone opens up
so vast a field of discussion that we have only room to
refer to one or two of its aspects.
It is said that as long as we hold the seas all fear of
our food supplies being cut off may be dismissed. This
may be true; and the absence of a really formidable
European naval power during the last half-century has
been the justification for such a belief. But the past is
past; the present exhibits new and alarming aspects of
PREVENTION OF NATIONAL WASTE 129
this phase of the question ; and the future no man may
read.
Germany has declared that she is determined to have
a sea-power that wih at least rival our own: and what
Germany says, that will she do. She is wealthy, powerful
and ambitious, and certainly capable of performing
what she promises.
The remarkable and rapid growth of her vast mercan-
tile marine has startled the world, and what she has done
with her trading vessels she can and will do with her war-
ships. Germany is the power to be reckoned with here,
and to pooh-pooh the idea of that country being the
cliief factor in the situation would be weak and foolish.
The incident of the Bundcsrath and the General (Ger- ^uS
man steamers) during the South African War, furnished and Policy
Germany with the exact opportunity for which she was
seeking to increase her sea-power. She has long seen the
necessity for increased naval armaments to protect her
rapidly growing over-seas trade, and this boarding inci-
dent was the spark to the powder; the inspired Press
made the most of the matter, and this comparatively
insignificant affair has been so cleverly " engineered "
as to have become a great national movement, having
for its real object the supremacy of the Fatherland.
Germany has already got together a powerful fleet of
warships which stands as a menace to our own shores ;
and as she has done this in the remarkably short space of
six years, we may well be anxious about the immediate
future.
If, under the vastly altered conditions in the status of
European sea- powers brought about by Gennany's atti-
9
130 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
tude, we still persist in pooh-poohing the matter, we
shall deserve the disaster that will surely overtake us as
a people.
There is, however, another aspect of the case which
may, perhaps, cause us as much pecuniary loss, trouble
and distress, as having our supplies cut off by a hostile
power, and that is the general helplessness of our posi-
tion.
As an island in the western seas our position is suffi-
ciently isolated, but by the voluntary sacrifice of our
agriculture we render ourselves doubly dependent on
outside support and at the mercy of every group of
"Cornerers" who, by the power of their millions, may
chance to make our country the subject of their financial
operations.
Even last year there is evidence of our utter helpless-
ness. The recent rise in the price of corn was the result of a
probable shortage in the American wheat crop, and it was
sufficient to send prices up eight shillings a quarter. AH
that is wanted now is a " corner " in wheat, and we
shall have famine, or war prices, and consequent distress
and misery among millions of our people.
Home- If we grow our own corn, and we can do it easily
Corn enough, the balance of demand and supply would be more
equably poised, and the host of rascally speculators who
deliberately and cruelly make money out of a people's
despair would think twice before commencing their
nefarious and villainous transactions.
Here again we are more or less led astray by statists
and political economists.
We are told that the price of a commodity does not
PREVENTION OF NATIONAL WASTE 131
depend upon the demand and supply of that particular
commodity in a single country, but upon the world's
demand and supply of that commodity, and this is true
in the main, or, it might be said, it is truer in theory
than in practice.
Broadly speaking, we may say that the country which
produces all that it requires of a certain commodity,
pays less for that commodity, and is in a safer position
in respect thereto, than another country which produces
none of it.
Can it be proved by any living man that, apart from
such abnormalities in prices as may be caused by specu-
lative dealers or market-riggers, Lancashire, for ex-
ample, pays precisely the same price for cotton as the
New Orleans mills, which buy the commodity at their
doors? Can it be proved that the London millers pay
the same price for their wheat as it can be purchased at
in the markets of the Canadian plains? Other things
being equal, the thing is an impossibility, because of the
incidental expenses attending the transport and sale of
commodities from one place to another, middlemen's
profits, and so on.
Let England produce aU the corn she requires for her
own consumption, and several results are sure to follow
that are bound to be to her profit and advantage.
1. She will be less at the mercy of " Cornerers " an Beneficial
.,,. . , , Results of
millionaire speculators. a Change
2. The price of corn will be less liable to sudden and °^ Policy
violent fluctuations which are generally " engineered "
by unscrupulous speculators.
3. She will become practically independent of outside
gu
132 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
supplies and, despite the theory of economics, it will be
found in practice that she will be able to control the
market prices of her own bread-stuffs instead of them
being governed — as they are to-day — entirely by those
foreign markets upon which we are so hopelessly depen-
dent.
4. Permanent and profitable employment will be
found literally for millions of our people who are now so
miserably poor as to be on the verge of starvation.
5. The necessity for taking thirty-five millions annu-
ally out of the pockets of the tax-payers for poor-rates
will become less and less as agricultural industries de-
velop, until this tax shrinks to the same irreducible mini-
mum at which this monstrously unjust and altogether
unnecessary imposition stands in other civilised countries.
6. Large increase in manufacturing industries and
trades consequent on improved condition of millions of
people whose purchasing power naturally becomes
greater in proportion to increased prosperity.
These instances will suffice, although we might fill
many pages with the subject.
A Sham Now if we cannot carry this precious free trade
Fraud arrangement right through to that practical, logical
conclusion hoped for by its inventors; if we cannot say
that it has resulted in general prosperity to the country,
and bestowed those especial benefits on us as a people
which we were led to believe it would bestow, it may
fairly be asked, in the name of that common sense
upon which we pride ourselves so much, why on earth
do we go on clinging to a palpable sham and a mon-
strous fraud?
PREVENTION OF NATIONAL WASTE 133
The thing is either a success or a failure.
If we judge of it by the only infallible standard by
which all mortal affairs are measured — results — the
thing is, as we have seen, an unmitigated failure.
Nevertheless, there are not wanting apologists who
will loudly asseverate that this so-called free trade
fraud must be a success, because of the enormous trade
expansion of the last few years and of the tremendous
wealth of the nation.
But this profoundly important and far-reaching
question cannot be measured by such shallow plummets
as these, nor must we allow our better judgment to be
obfuscated by such specious arguments.
The accumulated wealth of the nation is individual,
and great accumulation of individual wealth only serves
to show that the few have benefited — not the whole.
This is a fitting reply to those who still uphold the
theories of free trade.
In respect to trade expansion if it could be shown that
over any group of years during the last decade or two
our import and export trade had expanded in a much
greater proportion than that of other countries or states
which protect themselves by tariffs hostile to us, then
something might be said in favour of what is called Free
Trade, but it cannot be proved.
This much, however, is certain, that those who still The System
that Failed
profess belief in Free Trade uphold it because it forms
part of their political pledge to their constituencies;
and they know full well that if Free Trade falls, they
must fall with it. Not for a real, heartfelt, honest belief
in its efficiency as the best fiscal system for the country
134 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
do men support Free Trade. Not because it brings
general prosperity to the Nation and employment for
our poverty-stricken millions do these free traders
support a system which has proved a veritable scourge
to the body politic. Not because it broadly and truly
serves the interests of the people in a wide, liberal
generous sense do they uphold it, but because it serves
their interests.
The individual interests of the time-serving politician
are ser\^ed through his party and by his being returned
to Parliament.
It suits certain merchants because Free Trade serves
their particular line of business; and it suits the coal-
owners because it enables them, with huge profits to
themselves, to supply our already keen commercial
rivals — who may, in the near future, possibly become
our mortal foes — with those sources of energy and
strength which we find it more difficult to resist year
by year.
Whichever way we look at this matter, we are con-
fronted with the same forbidding array of unpalatable
facts that selfishness is the keystone and corner
stone of Free Trade, and that it can only be defended on
the narrow, sordid, unpatriotic principles of self-interest.
A few individual interests then are served, a few vast
individual fortunes are built up, and the great interests
of the people and the widespread national wealth which
is theirs by right — the real wealth of the country — is
dissipated and utterly sacrificed to a cruel creed which
puts individual gain before national needs.
135
CHAPTER XIV
Agricultural Holdings — Production and
Industry
IN the preceding chapter we have presented to us a
position so anomalous as to amount to a veritable
paradox. On the one hand we have a fiscal policy which
robs the people of employment, the country of its natural
wealth, and the Empire of its virile strength ; and on the
other a vast army of tax-payers and voters who actually
support those who uphold and administer this destruc-
tive policy while utterly condemning its results and de-
nouncing its general ineptness.
We have among us hundreds of thousands, nay, mil-
lions of citizens, who are honestly desirous of doing that
which is best for their country, and yet assume a do-
nothing, apathetic attitude towards this vital question,
the right solution of which means simply the salvation
of the people of this land.
We know that our trade, although increasing in Startling
volume, is only doing so in response to that general
world-trade expansion which is being experienced in
every civilised country; and we, moreover, know that
instead of getting our fair share of this increased trade, or
rather the lion's share of it, which our position as the first
trading and manufacturing nation in the world entitles
us to, our percentage of increase has actually fallen below
that of any of our great foreign rivals.
136 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
These facts are so startling, so full of import to us as a
people, so pregnant with significance, that it is a marvel
anyone should find it necessary to refer to them: a
marvel that we, a practical, level-headed nation, as we
really are at bottom, should not have become fami-
liar with them years ago and taken those steps which
were necessary to put right that which was wrong. A
writer here and there, or a platform orator now and
again has taken the trouble to point out how and where
we were going wrong, and a few listened and were con-
vinced; but as a nation our attention has been drawn
away from this question of supreme importance by the
meretriciousness of party politics, and vital national
interests have been sacrificed to the hollow verbosity of
Parliamentary wranglers.
The time has come to assert ourselves as a sensible
hard-working people, who, knowing that in our magnifi-
cent soil and temperate climate we possess all the
potentialities to agricultural success, are determined to
convert that potential energy into an actual living power.
Monstrous We know that in our total area of land and water of
Anomaly 77 58^^000 acres, there are upwards of 63,500,000 of
land, most of which is eminently suitable for agricul-
ture. Among this enormous acreage we know that we
possess vast areas of the very finest corn-producing land
to be found in the world, and — alas, that it should be so —
we also know that most of this splendid land, this poten-
tial source of national wealth and collective prosperity,
is shamefully wasted in growing green crops for sheep
feeds and grass for sheep pasturage. It is a monstrous
anomaly, yet nevertheless true, that in 1906, while we
AGRICULTURAL HOLDINGS 137
had as much as 38,194,210 acres in green crops (turnips,
etc., for sheep food), clover and pasturage, we had only
1,799,484 in wheat. In other words, of the total area
under cultivation to-day in the United Kingdom 80 per
cent, is under sheep feed and less than 4 per cent, under
man feed.
We also know that even a worse thing has befallen us
in that, owing to an inept fiscal system, vast areas have
been withdrawn altogether from cultivation and laid
down in large deer forests and sporting estates; vast
tracts of splendid land that, under other conditions,
would be available as a source of wealth and employ-
ment ; a national asset of considerable value.
We have seen in the preceding chapters that we
import annually from foreign countries £171,000,000
worth of food-stuffs, and we will now show how practi-
cally the whole of this could be produced in our own
country.
Let us first take the most important item — wheat.
It is computed that we require about 285,000,000
bushels of wheat for our own consumption. Can we pro-
duce this quantity? The Government returns show that,
on an average, our wheat lands produce thirty-two
bushels per acre. We then require roughly 8,590,000
acres to produce the 285,000,000 bushels.
We have over 63,000,000 acres of land in the United
Kingdom, most of which is capable of tillage. 48,000,000
acres of this large area are already under cultivation
(chiefly grass and sheep feed crops), but bring every acre
of this vast tract that is capable of being tilled under
the plough ; cre3.te millions of agricultural holdings where
138 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
there are now but thousands ; give the country a sensible,
practical fiscal system ; a system that will lend itself to
agricultural needs, among other things, and who shall
say that, apart from all party bias and political bunkum,
8,500,000 acres cannot be devoted each year to the grow-
ing of wheat?
Occupying Many well-known authorities on matters agricultural
Ownerships ■,■,■, • -,
consider that nothmg like this area would be required
if the land were properly tilled under a system of
" Occupying Ownerships," that is to say, under a system
best calculated to produce the maximum instead of the
minimum results from the soil. Good husbandry, such as
would inevitably result if the man owned the land he
tilled, would produce a minimum yield of five quarters per
acre; and instead of 8,500,000 of acres being necessary
to produce all the wheat we require for our consumption,
7,000,000 would suffice.
Then we import over 6,000,000 cwts. of bacon. Can
any man in his senses affirm that if we grow from
7,000,000 to 8,500,000 acres of wheat, with thousands of
farmsteads scattered throughout the country, we should
lack any one of the required facilities for producing
every pound of bacon that we now import in such vast
quantities?
Next we come to cheese, butter, poultry and eggs.
Who or what is to stop us producing all these when once
the great land industry is permanently established in
our midst?
Once we give back to the people their best heritage —
agriculture — put the plough back into the furrow, con-
vert our sheep walks into cornfields, our deer forests
AGRICULTURAL HOLDINGS 139
and sporting estates into market gardens; pasture our
sheep on the rough hill sides (their natural demesnes)
instead of on our best arable land, and our cows in our
low-lying water meadows, and then supplement this
by stall feeding as they do in other countries where
they raise a larger head of cattle per acre than we do;
rigorously stop the wasteful system of allowing these
animals to fatten on the cream of the land which should
rightly be regarded as the property and substance of the
people, who shall say that these things shall not be?
They are impossible to-day because the blundering of
Governments, the insincerity of politicians, and the
ignorance of the people have made them impossible, but
go and ask any other civilised country in the world if
they have found it impossible to accomplish these things,
and they will laugh in your face.
Take one concrete example: Belgium, for instance, Gompan-
son with
sends us of the surplus of her farm produce. We get Belgium
£1,229,000 worth of eggs and poultry annually from that
country. Do we suppose that she sends us her own farm
produce and then buys foreign eggs for her own con-
sumption? Belgium is far more densely populated than
our own country, with 630 head of population to the
square mile against our 360, or, in other words, about
twice as densely populated as the United Kingdom ; and
yet, in spite of this, she contrives to produce as much
butter as she requires for herself and something over for
export.
Then Belgium has another surprise for us. She has but
a tiny cultivable area, only 4,350,000 acres, and yet she
manages to raise 1,154,721 pigs, while we, with our
140 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
enormous area under cultivation of 48,000,000 acres,
raise but 3,680,740 of these animals. This works out at
26 pigs for every 100 acres under cultivation in Belgium,
and only 7 per every 100 acres in the United Kingdom.
We find also that Belgium has 1,782,000 head of
homed beasts, while we have 7,000,000. This works
out at 43 head for ever}' 100 acres under cultivation in
Belgium, and only 14 per 100 acres in the United
Kingdom.
Home and Again, if we similarly compare the production and
Production industry of every civilised country in the world with that
Industry ^^ °^^ °^^ country we shall find much to deplore all
along the line. Everywhere else the land is regarded as
the chief source of wealth, the chief means of employing
and supporting the people, the backbone of the Nation,
and its refuge in the time of trouble. Roughly speaking,
they rely upon their land as a means of employing and
supporting about one-third or more of the entire popula-
tion; of producing practically the whole of their food-
stuffs ; of preventing an exhaustive outflow of emigra-
tion, and last, but not least, of stimulating the demand
for locally manufactured goods by maintaining in a
general state of prosperity a large agricultural popula-
tion, the spending power of which must be enormous.
With us the reverse of all this is the case; our land
industry is neglected, and it supports the minimum head
of population in the whole of Europe and produces the
minimum head of live stock; it is a source of weakness
to the Nation, inasmuch as we are forced to rely on out-
side aid for the very bread we eat, and a large proportion
of most other foods; it compels exhaustive emigration
AGRICULTURAL HOLDINGS 141
because there is no employment to be found on the land ;
it induces poverty and creates, therefore, a mass of pesti-
lential pauperism, and it kills that demand for manu-
factured goods which, under other conditions, would
undoubtedly come from a prosperous agricultural popu-
lation which might be numbered in millions.
God help the people who in their blind folly offer up
in sacrifice their national heritage to the dead fetish of
this so-called free trade, and God forgive those who,
for political purposes, for individual gain, or other
reasons, have led the people to believe in the " cheap
loaf " cry as the Ultima Thule of national good and
the last word in the poor man's domestic economy.
In the history of the British Constitution a cleverer
war cry was never raised by any political party, and
never was a crueller wrong wrought on a people. Never
was a more monstrous delusion born in the semblance of
truth than this free trade phantasm; and never was
The Cheap
a political password uttered with less veracity and with Loaf" Cry
less real sincerity than that of the cheap loaf. Never-
theless, there is just that semblance of truth in it which
invests it with its form of reality ; that spurious, tinselly
glitter which makes it appear so genuinely attractive to
the hard-working artisan and all those among us whose
everyday toil leaves little time for the study of questions
of this kind which are necessarily extremely complicated.
Full well did those who raised this clever party cry know
that the poor harried voters of this country would never
imearth the foundations of the political structure upon
which it was raised to ascertain if it was built on the
solid basis of economic truth.
142 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
Never before has any single Parliamentary measure
caused such widespread havoc to national interests,
and never before has party interest been so well served
by a political move that is as subtle as the serpent and
as poisonous and deadly as the puff-adder.
Were it not for this false cheap loaf cry, the sham
called free trade would have been dead and buried by
this time : slain by the inward force of its own destruc-
tiveness.
" A lie that is all a lie may be met with and fought out-
right.
But a lie that is half a truth is a harder matter to fight."
Now let us put the cheap loaf theory to the trying
test of truth's searchlight.
143
CHAPTER XV
British and Foreign Wheat Production — The
Cheap Loaf Cry
WE are told by those who bolster up the Free Trade
idea that if we want cheap bread we must give up
growing our own wheat, let others grow it for us, and
then let it come into our ports duty free. By such means
we are told we shall have a cheap loaf, much cheaper
than in those countries which grow their own food-stuffs
and put a duty on imports.
If this be true, it follows that our bread should cost us
a good deal less than is paid for it in other countries.
If it be not true, then it is clear that we have been
deceived.
So far as Germany is concerned, a country bristling
with tariffs of all sorts, we find, from the " Gains-
borough Report " that the 41b. loaf cost, when the
Commission visited that country a year or more ago,
about the same as it did in England.
" At Hochst, near Frankfort, as we pointed out in a
previous report, people eat white wheaten bread as well
as bread made of wheat and rye flour mixed. A loaf of
white bread made at Hochst weighing four English
pounds should cost 4^d. The Gainsborough quartern
loaf costs 4|d., so that the difference is hardly per-
ceptible."
144 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
In order that this matter may be thoroughly under-
stood by the British people, we give here a table showing
the price of bread ruling in eight European countries,
including our own, on July 3, 1907, together with the
prices of wheat and flour. This information is supplied
by an eminent member of the London Com Exchange.
Prices are many shillings per quarter higher now than
they were when the " Gainsborough Commission "
visited Germany. There is a further rise of 5s. per quar-
ter since these pages were written.
July 3. 1907.
Price of
Wheat.
480 lb.
Price of
Flour.
zSolb.
Price of
Bread.
4 lb. loaf.
Duty on
Wheat.
480 lb.
Duty on
Flour.
aSolb.
United
Kingdom
33/6 10 36/-
26/- to 26/6
5d. to 5id.
—
—
Belgium
33/- to35/-
25/- to 27/- Sid.
Free
2/-
Holland
33/- to 35/-
25/- to 28/- 5id.
Free
Free
Austria
38/6 to 39/6
21/6 to33/-
4d.*to5id.
I'/S
iS/io
France
46/- to 47/-
35/- to 3s/6
6d. to 6id.t
12/2
ii/2toi6/3d.i|
Germany
45/61048/-
32/- to4o/-
5d.t to 6id.
12/-
12/11
Hungary
39/- to 40/-
21/6 1033/-
4d.§ to Sid.
"/S
15/10
Italy
43/- to47/-
32/- to 32/6 1 sfd.
1 1/5
iS/io
Strange
Anomalies
and Facts
Here is a strange anomply. We find that, other things
being equal — i.e., the difference of grading as regards
flour, and the difference of quality as regards bread —
the prices for the 41b. wheaten loaf are practically the same
in all countries in spite of the startling fact that in five
out of the seven foreign countries quoted there is a duty
* The low price is for brown bread (wheaten).
t These prices are for the high class French bread. Prices of
bread eaten by the people not available on this date.
JThe low price for brown bread; the high price is for bread
not eaten by the people.
§The low price for brown bread.
llAccordirig to extraction.
BRITISH & FOREIGN WHEAT PRODUCTION 145
of IIS. 5d. to I2S. 2d. per quarter on wheat, and 2s. to
i6s. 3d. on flour.
Another starthng fact is that in no country do we find
the 41b. loaf — allowing always for difference of quality —
dearer than it is with us. Another " eye-opener " will be
found in the fact that in spite of a heavy duty of lis. to
I2s. per quarter on wheat the people manage to buy
their 41b. wheaten loaf as cheaply in the countries where
these tariffs prevail as they do in free trade England.
Truly marvellous! yet it is so.
This point, too, is worthy of consideration. England
imports nearly 30,000,000 quarters of wheat for her
home consumption. A duty of lis. per quarter on which
would mean £16,500,000 annually.
Now the question naturally arises, if foreign countries
can put a duty of lis. a quarter on imported wheat and
still sell their bread at the same price as we do, who let
wheat in free, why on earth should not we do the same?
Why shouldn't we save this ;^i6,50o,ooo by encouraging
wheat-growing in our own country instead of paying it
to other countries to grow it for us? But we shall deal
with this phase of the question later.
The question then is asked — who is going to crack this
hard nut ; who will solve the problem?
Ask your tricky politician, and he will surely trump
up some specious explanation which, while satisfying
his gullible constituency, will only serv'^e to incense those
among us who are determined to push this matter to a
conclusion. This " free trade " fraud has been put to
the sure test of everyday experience. Europe has been
asked at what price she sells the 41b. wheaten loaf on a
10
146 THE xMURDER OF AGRICULTURE
given day in dght of her great capitals, and the answer
is: ^^ practically the same price in all countries. And no
dearer than in your own.
Having then placed our 41b. loaf side by side with
similar loaves from other countries, we find, in spite of
all we have been told to the contrary, by those who
raised the cheap loaf cry, that it is neither heavier,
bigger, nor cheaper than those made and sold in
countries which protect their trade by a multitude of
restrictive tariffs, and in which there is not a vestige of
what is fatuously called in our country " free trade."
So far as Germany is concerned this significant fact
was discovered by a number of British workmen, who
constituted themselves into a Commission for the ex-
press purpose of inquiring into the state of trade and
labour conditions prevailing in that country'. Among
other things they unearthed the price of the German
4ib. loaf, and we find that it is no dearer than our ovm.
Now when we speak of " discovery " it argues that
something has been revealed which was not known be-
fore, and this is precisely what has happened here.
Bread in Not a man in a hundred thousand was aware that the
Protected
Countries Protected States of the world produced and sold their
bread as cheaply as we do; not a man in ten thousand
ever thought of it at all. The general belief was that our
loaf was really cheap, a good deal cheaper than in other
countries, and we accepted this as a fact because we were
told so by those who professed to know.
Despite the fervid " cheap loaf " cry, and notwith-
standing Germany's ring of tariffs which encircles her
trade as with bands of steel, the German 41b. loaf is no
BRITISH & FOREIGN WHEAT PRODUCTION 147
dearer than our own. The ^vTiter has " discovered " that,
despite the total absence of " free trade " in those
countries, each one of them can make and supply their
people with a 41b. loaf as cheaply as we can..
This is a disillusionment, and we want to know why
we have been deluded.
The writer was a free trader for many years be-
cause he had faith in those who taught the tenets of
the belief. It is true that he never put his belief to any
severe tests, nor looked for other results than those we
are all so familiar with — those dire results to the body
politic which we are still told are but the statural outcome
of economic laws.
We believed in free trade because others believed in it,
and this is precisely the position that hundreds of
thousands, nay millions of our countrymen are in to-
day. We believe in this, that, or the other, not because
we have any real, solid foundations for our belief; not
because we have been able to test its value by any well-
defined measure of success, but simply and solely be-
cause other people believe in it. " What's good enough
for most people is good enough for me," is a saying as
common as blackberries in autumn, and with this com-
forting platitude we dismiss many a knotty problem
which would otherwise cause us a lot of trouble to un-
ravel.
But we have at length realised that this attitude,
although conducive at the outset to a certain amount of
personal ease and comfort and freedom from care, is
about the most wasteful one that we could possibly
assume ; wasteful individually and collectively.
loa
148 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
We find that we are being overtaken with a heavy and
ever-increasing burden of taxation ; that the people can-
not find work and are obHged to emigrate in ever-grow-
ing numbers; that poverty increases and pauperism
grows; that despite our unique position as manufac-
turers we are not holding our own in the markets of the
world; and we therefore conclude that we had better look
at this matter through our own spectacles rather than
through those which have been fitted to our noses
by others, and which have done nothing but obscure our
vision.
We naturally want to knuw why the British people
have been humbugged and deceived?
That we have been deceived there is no question, and
we want to know why our politicians and statesmen, our
legislators, our Governments of the past, whether Whig
or Tory, Conservative or Liberal, have done nothing to
undeceive us?
Living In these pages we are face to face with living
Truths 1 1 • 1 • -11
truths which are mcontrovertible.
It has been left to a handful of laymen, men who work
for their daily bread and whose business does not take
them to the national legislative assemblies at West-
minster— men who appoint others to administer their
fiscal affairs and conduct the national business on the
most economic principles — literally to discover that their
affairs have been so badly managed as to involve the
State in heavy financial losses and the people in wide-
spread and yet unnecessary poverty and degradation
And these men who represent the entire section of
British workers, the whole of the British tax-payers and
BRITISH & FOREIGN WHEAT PRODUCTION 149
the body-electorate of the country, want to know
why?
They want to know why none of the Governments,
formed out of one or the other of those great political
sections called " parties," which are elected by the
people to serve national interests, have ever found it
necessary to point out these truths in a simple, frank^
straightforward manner? They either knew, or did not
know, that the agricultural and fiscal policy pursued for
the last half-century or more was bringing ruin on the
country, and if they knew, it was their business, not
ours, to point this out clearly and unmistakably, and to
point it out unceasingly. If they knew and remained
silent, then they have simply betrayed a great national
trust, or if they have referred to the matter in a half-
hearted, weak, unconvincing manner, then they can no
longer command the confidence of the British people. If
they did not know, then they are a sham and a fraud and
deserve no place in the national councils.
These are questions which we find it absolutely essen-
tial to ask in our own interests, albeit we ask them
with the conviction that no reply will be forthcoming
unless we ourselves supply the answer.
The fact is that Governments have thought on these The Curse
subjects, but have never dared to take the necessary AdmLis-
steps to relieve the position, because of the bitter opposi- tration
tion of the party out of power. The curse of our ad-
ministration is that every measure, however good it may
be, is made the subject of fierce strife, and it is impossible
to carry through Parliament any useful national
measure without encountering the unrelenting hostility
150 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
of the Opposition. One writer, in speaking of the British
Parliament, has truly said :
" Let your measure be framed by Divine Authority
and brought in by angels, and it will be thrown out by
the Opposition."
At all events, that the land question has been in the
mind of Governments more than once is evidenced by,
among others, the Acts of :
1883 and 1900. Agricultural Holdings Acts.
1892. Small Holdings Act.
1899. Improvement of Land Act.
1903. Irish Land Act.
1907. Scottish Small Holdings Bill and the EngUsh
Small Holdings Bill, etc.
But the poor, paltry, half-hearted measures that have
been given to the country show clearly enough that
although the Governments of the past realised that a
change, at least in our agrtcw/^Mm/ system, was necessary,
they had not the courage of their convictions. They
knew that it was useless to bring in a BiU that would do
all that was necessary ; a real purging measure of relief,
that would sweep away all those obstructions which
cling to the great land industry and convert a really
strong, powerful national organism into a weak, languish-
ing, paltry thing which is a source of pity and commisera-
tion to the country.
They knew it was useless to attempt to reform our
Land Laws and to give to the country a sensible, practi-
cal code, whereby the land would be worked under con-
ditions that would ensure the maximum measure of sue-
BRITISH & FOREIGN WHEAT PRODUCTION 151
cess all round — to land-owner, tenant-farmer and tax-
payer— no use in attempting to create that host of
peasant-proprietors which, once established, would form
the backbone of our national life and vigour as it does in
every other civiUsed state in the world except our own.
They knew there was no use doing any of these things What the
. . ... Govern-
because of the Opposition. The foe was lying in wait ment
to attack them at every point, and they knew that °®^
however good and necessary the Bill might be in the in-
terests of the people, it would meet with the same fierce
hostility as though it were a measure intended to defeat
the ends of justice and bring ruin upon the country.
They knew that some reform in the Land Laws, such
as has been sketched in these pages, was absolutely
necessary to save the countr}' and give back to the
people that meed of prosperity which they have lost ; and
that the longer this was deferred the more would the
people suffer. Yet, in spite of this, they dared not bring
in their Bill because of the Opposition. The party out
of power was prepared for the fight ; the Government
knew them to be a vengeful, relentless foe, armed at
all points witli the ready weapons of Parliamentary war
fare, and that their own defeat would mean ruin, loss
of place, power and emoluments; loss pecuniar^'; loss
individually and collectively; loss to self, loss to party,
and so, they dared not face it.
This, in a nutshell, is exactly the state of affairs in the
British Parliament. No one party is better than another.
If Liberals are in. Conservatives are in opposition. If
Liberal Unionists are in, Liberals and Radicals are their
sworn foes. The Irish Nationalists are deadly enemies to
152 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
all other political sections, the Labour Party professes a
kind of Social and Parhamentary Ishmaelitism, and there
is not the toss of a coin between the lot of them. The
party out of power is truculent and swaggering. The
party in power is timid, weak and shrinking, and, be-
tween them all, national affairs suffer and the people are
the victims.
Patriotism Fundamentally, the " Party " system in Parliament is
not Party j-jgj^^ euough. Theoretically, it is sound. Practically, it is
unsound, because it engenders strife where there should
be harmony, and sets up contention where there should
be co-operation. It seriously hampers the efforts of the
paid representatives of the people — the office-bearers f
the Government — it blocks national work, impedes pro-
gress, and is an enemy of real reform. It strangles indivi-
dual effort and kills patriotism, and, take it all round, the
party system of our Parliament, which was intended to
be a blessing, has proved a veritable curse.
No man wants to see it abolished, but the vast majo-
rity of Englishmen, recognising its abuses, wish for
drastic changes in its methods, so that public business
may be helped on and not retarded; so that the com-
monwealth may be benefited by co-operation and not
injured by shallow contention and petty jealousies. They
want to see whole-hearted support given to measures of
public good, and the spirit of patriotism rank before the
spirit of party.
So long as the present state of affairs exists in our
national assembly, so long will national interests suffer.
Let the two great political sections, the Liberals and
Liberal Unionists and the Conservatives unite over this
BRITISH & FOREIGN WHEAT PRODUCTION 153
national question; let them recognise that our agri-
cultural and fiscal laws require considerable alterations
to meet modem requirements; that these reforms are
really essential in the people's interests, and the country
will then find relief, but not until then.
154
CHAPTER XVI
Problem for the British Tax-payer — Pauperism
OR Home Industries
ONE of the most practical, up-to-date ways of deal-
ing with this big question of the poverty of the
British people is to ask the British lax-payer whether he
would prefer his money being wasted on bolstering up
national pauperism or usefully spent in developing
national industries?
This, at first sight, seems a ridiculous question to ask,
but there is more in it than meets the eye.
The British tax-payer has really a choice between
pauperism and prosperity, but he must look at the
whole question from quite a different standpoint from
that from which he has hitherto been in the habit of
viewing it.
State and So long as he regards the poverty of the people, as he
Privfltc
Charity knows it to-day, and the host of paupers bred therefrom,
as a necessary outcome of economic law, so long will the
civil administration of the day call upon him to hand
over the £35,000,000 annually, which it costs to support
and maintain this belief; but the moment he realises that
he has been throwing his mone}- away on false ideas, and
that he has really done more harm than good by his mis-
placed lavishness, the necessity for raising this colossal
sum for that purpose, at least, will cease.
PROBLEM FOR THE BRITISH TAX-PAYER 155
Reduced to its proper denomination, all this poor
relief, whether by State aid or from public or private
sources, is nothing but a stupendous charity, and
the moment we begin dispensing chanties we must
" go slow," or we shall do more harm than good; we
shall be " done in the eye," as the saying is.
In private life the common experience is, the moment
you establish a reputation for philanthropy, you are
" got at "by men and women of all sorts and conditions,
and despite every possible precaution, you are deceived
in hundreds of cases. There is a veritable host of people,
of both sexes, always on the look-out for a " soft job,"
and this is certain, that so long as widespread, misplaced
philanthrophy exists, so long will this array of loafers,
tramps and ne'er-do-weels; this human scum, that
battens on the poor-rates Hke leeches, and waxes fat on
the silly credulity of the charitably disposed, grow and
multiply.
There is no getting away from this fact, and it applies
equally to all charities, whether private, public, or State.
Before we finally decide what we, as tax-payers, are to
do in this matter, let us see if our millions have really
done any good to the cause to which we have so liberally
contributed for the last fifty years or more ; and as this
thing, like everything else in life, should be measured by
results, let us apply that infallible standard to it.
The incidence per head of population of the pauper Enormous
tax was shown in a previous chapter to have risen from Taxation
from 5s. gd. in 1834 to i6s. 2d. in 1905. We append here
some figures showing the total sum expended on paupers
-n Great Britain and the cost per head for several periods
156 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
from i860 to 1905, compiled from the Reports of the
Royal Commission on Depression of Trade, and those'of
the Local Government Boards for England and Wales
and Scotland.
ENGLAND AND WALES
Year
Amount Expended.
Annual
Average of
i
Amount per head
of Paupers.
Annual Aver, of
I s. d.
1860-64
6,052,370
678
1880-84
8,221,092
10 8 II
1900
11,567,649
14 12 0
1904-05
13,610,737
SCOTLAND
15 13 9
Year
Amount Expended.
Annual
Average of
i
Amount per head
of Paupers.
Annual Aver, of
i s. d.
1860-64
714,511
5 14 0
1880-84
895,961
8 18 8
1900
1,109,619
II 4 6
1904-05
1,351,548
12 13 0
If there is anything in this world calculated to arouse
British tax-payers to a sense of their own peril and to a
realisation of the cruel wrong they have suffered for long
weary years from this pauper yoke, it is the fact which is
here disclosed.
Not only has the cost of each pauper in England and
Wales risen from £6 ys. 8d. in 1860-64 to £15 13s. 9d. in
1904-05, or considerably more than doubled, and will in-
crease as much in the future as it has in the past, but the
PROBLEM FOR THE BRITISH TAX-PAYER 157
most galling and humiliating feature of this wretched
business is the consciousness that every penny of the
hundreds of millions that have been wrung from rate-
payers has been spent in vain. The greedy pauper maw is
always wide open to swallow up the hard earnings of
many a poor rate-payer, who can hardly support himself ;
and that he should be compelled to contribute yearly to
support this foul growth on our civilisation is nothing
but a monstrous injustice.
Another alarming feature that must be added to this- ^"'^[^^s^
° of Able-
tale of wrong-headed administration is the significant bodied
and ever-growing increase in the number of able-bodied ^"p^""^
paupers who prey upon the easily rendered millions of
the complaisant British tax-payer.
Here is an extract from The Daily Express of May 28,
last.
"And here let me point to an alarming feature in this
expansion of organised pauperism. It is the increase of
the able-bodied pauper. He and she are thronging into
the workhouses in ever-increasing numbers, for while the
paupers who are described as temporarily disabled have
increased 28.6 per cent. ; thosejwho are described as being
actually in good health have increased 49.6 per cent, in
number. Their own temporary illness or accident has
brought less than half of the whole to the workhouse, and
the illness of members of their family, and drink, idleness
and want of work have reduced the rest to pauperism.
What an illustration of the need for thrift."
So far as we have gone, the results are significantly
disappointing, but let us carry our investigation further.
158 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
It is easy enough to give and give lavishly when Gov-
ernments find the British public so yielding, but to give
judiciously; to give with wisdom, and in a manner that
will help a man to become prosperous and not pauperise
him, is quite another matter,
Mr Andrew Carnegie, in returning thanks for the Free-
dom of Abergavenn}^ which was conferred on him on
May 31, 1907, said : " The true sense of money is to help
those who help themselves." And we may depend upon
it that that shrewd millionaire knew what he was talking
about when he gave utterance to that pithy sentence.
Help the jf [^ jg necessary to call upon the British tax-payers for
Injure £35, 000, 000 annually to assist their needy compatriots,
let us use that colossal sum in a way that mil help the
people and not injure them.
The writer of a letter which appeared in The Daily
Express, on May 28 of last year, over the signature of
" B," said:
" If, however, the object of all sane citizens is not to
pauperise, then it follows that poor relief must not be a
system of largesse, for largesse inevitably converts the
merely poor into the pauper pure and simple. On the
other hand, it is a national question and not a question
for the individual. The State provides against destitu-
tion— and the Poor Laws are really laws for the destitute
— mainly in self-defence and for its own purposes. It fol-
lows that it is not to the advantage of the State that this
relief should be easy to get or pleasant to retain, and that
in any case the relief should itself be as far as possible a
remedial process,
PROBLEM FOR THE BRITISH TAX-PAYER 159
"As a matter of fact, however, the present system is
going all in the opposite direction, and just in the pro-
portion in which it goes in this opposite direction so does
the pauperising of the people proceed.
" The vast sums of money now being expended help
the respectable poor but little, they are squandered by
various bodies of bumbledom in fostering and encoura-
ging thriftlessness, idleness, dissoluteness. Public money,
hard-earned and often ill-spared, is thrown broad-cast
over those whom drink or laziness or the neglect of those
legally liable to maintain them — and capable of maintain-
ing them — have rendered destitute. This money is not
spent; it is wasted. And it is being wasted yearly by
extravagant and irresponsible persons — for the boards of
guardians spend practically all the money devoted to
indoor and outdoor relief — in ever-increasing quantities,
and with the deplorable result of an ever-increasing
body of pauperised people. It is high time to call a halt
to this waste of public money and to the futile folly of
gilding and stereotyping the pauper."
These extracts put the case very clearly and in a man-
ner that wiU appeal not only to the tax-payer, but to
every section of the British people, save that compara-
tively small body of wastrels who will not work.
There is no getting away from the fact that our Poor Worst
Laws, taken all round, are the worst and most unsuitable Laws in
that could possibly be devised. They are the worst in Eu- ^^^^^
rope, in the world, and so long as the people of this
country submit to them, so long will the poor continue
to be pauperised, degraded and brutaUsed.
The philanthropists of three quarters of a century ago
i6o THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
meant well by urging upon Government the necessity of
amending the Poor Laws, but their efforts have resulted
in disaster to the cause they championed, and pauperism
of a monstrous and degrading type has grown out of that
mild indulgence which the Governments of the past
threw over their legislative measures when dealing with
this question.
In legalising pauperism we have given every
able-bodied man and woman in the country the con-
stitutional right to put his or her hand into the
pockets of the British tax-payer, and worse than this, we
have given eveiy Poor Law authority in the country, all
bumbledom, in fact, the same Constitutional right to
spend as much of the tax-payers' money as they choose.
Budgeting for paupers is as common in all official esti-
mates as budgeting for the Army, Navy and Civil Ser-
vices; the poor-rates item is one of the biggest in the
national accounts, and all officials, whether of the Im-
perial Government or the Poor Law officers of small
rural councils, have come to regard pauperism as a
National Institution upon which millions upon mil-
lions may be spent without fear or reproach — merito-
riously, in fact.
Pauperism has been with us for so long that we have
become quite accustomed to its presence, and there are
few among us who would care to question the validity of
its claim upon the public purse, or consider the possibi-
lity of ridding ourselves of its burden altogether. Yet this
overgrown monster, like many other monsters that have
been subdued in past times, can be defeated and over-
thrown with comparative ease.
PROBLEM FOR THE BRITISH TAX-PAYER i6i
The only kind of paupers who have any claim upon
the public purse are those who really and truly are un-
able to work, the aged and infirm, those of feeble in-
tellect, and young children.
These poor items of the great human race have just
claims on State charity, and no others. Even for cripples
and the blind can suitable light work be found, and
there is no need that this unfortunate section of the com-
munity should become altogether dependent upon State
aid. Let these unfortunates have the same opportunities
for self-help as are offered to others, and even they will be
the better for it.
For the rest, let work be found, and found in such
abundance as will afford no possible excuse for idleness
and vagabondage.
Provide them with suitable work, and then make it a
penal offence punishable by imprisonment if they will
not work.
Let it, however, be thoroughly understood that we Pander-
will no longer support a huge host of able-bodied men pauperism
and women in slothful idleness, and that we will not be
deterred by that squeamish, sickly sentimentality which
has hitherto guided and governed the administration of
this question. Let us say, firmly and unhesitatingly, that
we are tired to death of this loathsome disease which has
fastened on to the British people, that our treatment of
it has been wrong from the first, and that it has done
nothing but develop its growth and increase its viru-
lence. Let us frankly admit that, with the best intentions
possible, this pandering of Poor Law guardians all over
i62 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
the kingdom to pauperism has only had the effect of in-
creasing the vast hordes of dissolute poor, who fatten
like vampires on the very life-blood of the tax-payers.
This advance of the pauper hosts has become a national
peril, and it is time to cry " halt."
i63
CHAPTER XVII
Possibilities of the Land — How to Employ the
People
LET us now examine the capabilities of the country
for employing our own people, and in order to
thoroughly understand what enormous potentialities we
have in this direction, we should compare our own coun-
try with neighbouring States.
It has been shown elsewhere in these pages that we
have about 48,000,000 acres under cultivation, while
about twelve to fifteen million acres more could be added
to this cultivated area out of the 20,000,000 which are
now returned as rough grazing land and heath. We then
have a cultivable area of about 63,500,000 acres.
The following table will show the cultivated area of
three other countries, the number of persons engaged in
agriculture, etc.
Country.
Acres
under cultivation.
Holdings.
Persons
employed.
Persons employed
and supported.
Germany
108,211,772
5-558 317
8,156.317
18,068,663
France
92,442,745
5,550,000
7,800,000
24,000,000
Hungary
54.303.938
2,795.885
4,500,000
12,977,419
*United Kingdom "|
(Agricultural \
and Fisheries) j
48,000,000
1,104,637
2,262,452
3,900,000
* The returns for the United Kingdom are for " Agriculture and
Fisheries,"and it is, therefore, difficult to determine the number of peo-
ple employed in agriculture alone. The above figures are, however,
fairly approximate.
iia
i64 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
Judged by comparison with other countries the
United Kingdom can employ and support some thirteen
milHons of persons on her lands. She now employs but
2,262,452, and employs and supports under 4,000,000.
Briefly, agriculture can employ and support profitably
and honourably nine to ten million more people than it
does to-day.
The pauper population proper, i.e., the aged and infirm
and those whose bodily or mental condition renders
work practically impossible, numbers 782,602 persons.
This leaves 341,82c, at least, for whom work must be
found, and it is evident, that with reasonable land ten-
ures and a properly organised and liberally equipped
system of agriculture, there would be no difficulty in
finding suitable work for this comparatively small num-
ber of our unemployed and for millions more.
Unemployed Let US carry the matter a step further to see what
would be the effect on the condition of the people of find-
ing work for the unemployed and converting the pauper-
population into an army of wage-earners.
Fortunately, we need not resort to speculation as to
results, because we have the experience of other
countries to serve as a reliable guide.
In most of the European States pauperism does not
cause them much trouble, because, owing to general em-
ployment on the land, there is really no need for it. The
great land industry works side by side with trades and
manufactures, and tends to preserve a fairly exact
equilibrium between supply and demand in the labour
market.
A report on the trade of Germany by Dr Paul
POSSIBILITIES OF THE LAND 165
Schwabach (British Consul-General at Berlin) which
was issued by the Foreign Office on May 27 of last year,
is full of remarkable instances of Germany's prosperity,
but only two groups of figures need be given in proof of
what we are urging and in illustration of the astounding
progress of that country.
The first group deals with the savings of the people as
a result of the apphcation of wise and judicious fiscal
laws affording reasonable protection to the great
national industry, agriculture, and the other trades of
the country.
It is shown that in the Prussian Savings Banks alone
the deposits had increased in 1905 by ;£^27, 000,000;
the total deposits at the end of that year having
reached the enormous sum of £415,000,000.
The other group, which is even more significant, deals
with the number of people liable for income-tax.
Here are some figures from Dr Schwabach's Report :
Y Persons liable to Amount liable to
'' income-tax income-tax
£
1892 .... 2,437,886 298,069,882
1900 .... 3,370.534 412,439,347
1906 .... 4,675,199 536,296,834
These figures reveal the astounding fact that in conse-
quence of Germany's prosperous condition there has
been an increase in the number of persons liable to in-
come-tax since 1892 of 90 per cent., while the income oi
the tax-payers has increased by 80 per cent, in the same
period.
These figures in both cases refer only to Prussia, but
i66 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
Dr Schwabach is careful to explain that they are fairly
representative of the conditions through the Gernrian
Empire. The position of this country is far less encoura-
ging-
In regard to the income of the people, we find, from
a statistical abstract issued by the Board of Trade on
November 13, 1907, for the fifteen years 1891-2 — 1906,
the following figures :
1891-2 1906-7
Income Taxed ^678,193,442 ^925,184,556
or an increase of only 36 per cent, in the tax-payers'
income against an increase in Germany for the same
period of 80 Per cent.
As regards our savings banks we are in an even worse
plight.
Our Post The annual statement of the Post Office Savings Bank
Office ., y-i-i 1 Tinri
Savings foi" the year 1906, which was issued on July 18 of last
year, shows that during the year the deposits amounted
to £43,980,578 and the withdrawals to £43,675,181, or an
increase in deposits of only £305,397, against an increase
in the Prussian Savings Bank for the year 1905 of up-
wards of £27,000,000.
Here is a starthng revelation. One section of the Ger-
man Empire alone, out of its prosperity, can afford to
put by, in one year, out of the people's savings, the
enormous sum of twenty-seven millions sterling; while
we, out of our poverty, can only increase our savings in
one year by the insignificant sum of £300,000, less than
one-third of a million sterling.
Commenting on this position, one of the London
journals said:
POSSIBILITIES OF THE LAND 167
"A noteworthy point in the return is the fact that the
savings of the people, as shown in the banks account,
have remained practically stationary, the withdrawals
almost balancing the deposits. This has now been the
case for several years, and is in direct contrast to the
position in the United States, where the deposits in the
savings bank have nearly quadrupled in the past twenty
years, and now reach the enormous sum of over
£600,000,000. In the past six years alone they have
grown by nearly ^^200,000,000."
Now these two instances are but examples of what is
going on in most of the civilised countries of the world.
We wonder whether these startling facts will arouse
the British people to a sense of their own weakness ; their
wretched condition in comparison with other countries.
Will they awake to a realisation of what the sacrifice
of agriculture, the worship of a free trade fetish, and
blind adherence to a misguided, if sincere, political party
has brought them to?
Will the fact that in the United States the people, out United
of their savings, have added in six years, £200,000,000 to Savings
the credit side of their banking account, appeal to them
as a thunderclap, or will they treat the matter with the
same dull apathy with which they have treated practi-
cally all those vitally important social and economic
questions upon which depends their life's well-being.
Will it ever occur to the British people that if the
Prussian people can bank in one year twenty-seven mil-
lions sterhng out of their savings, and the people of the
United States thirty-three milHons, that we, under
the same sensible, wise and favourable fiscal conditions
i68 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
which obtain in those countries can do precisely what
they do?
Will also the fact that the single State of Prussia can
put by this large sum in one year out of the people's
savings, while we find the necessity of drawing out of our
Savings Banks as much as we put in, have any signifi-
cance for the people of this land?
Will this amazing prosperity which has overtaken
Germany and which is solely the result of well-devised
paternal laws, which are after all as essential in the wide
government of a State as they are in the narrow domestic
government of a single family, appeal to the present
Government, or to any succeeding Government with the
force of a mighty shock?
Will they ever realise that one of the immediate
results of this startling prosperity of the German people
is the enormous power it gives the State of raising
money?
And lastly, will they ever awake to the important fact
that when the assessable amount liable to income-tax
has risen in one section of the German Empire by
;f 238,000,000 in fourteen years, this vast sum, together
with similar. increases in other sections of the Empire, has
to be added to the taxable area of the country?
169
CHAPTER XVIII
Taxation and Wasteful Expenditure — Scope for
Co-operative Relief
ONE of the most embarrassing problems that con-
fronts British Chancellors of the Exchequer is the
extreme difficulty of extending the taxable area of the
Kingdom.
It is, moreover, perfectly obvious, that the tendency of
every Government, whether Conservative or Liberal, is
to throw the entire burden of any extra taxation that
may be imposed on to the well-to-do classes, and,
broadly, there is nothing to cavil at in this.
If, however, this be the declared policy of Governments,
it becomes the positive duty of each successive admini-
stration to see that every facility be given to widen the
taxable area of the country and not narrow and restrict
it by unwise fiscal laws, or a policy of this kind must
necessarily become a gross injustice to the entire body of
British tax-payers.
The present Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Asquith,
declared, in his Budget speech of April 18, 1907, that :
" The income-tax, as it is one of the most productive, The In-
so it is one of the most delicate parts of our fiscal Tax
machinery. There is nothing like it to be found anywhere
else in the world. It produced this year something like
£32,000,000 to the Exchequer.
170 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
" The income-tax is really a twofold tax; it is a tax
on property and a tax on earnings. I start with the propo-
sition, and a most important proposition it is, that it
must now be regarded as an integral and permanent part
of our financial system."
Good! The tax-payers are, we have no doubt, quite as
ready to accept this view as Mr Asquith is to propound
it, but they have a perfect right to demand, at the same
time, that the present Chancellor of the Exchequer and
his successors should conduct this exceedingly difficult
and delicate business of taxing a people with great
circumspection and with every regard to their inte-
rests, otherwise a cruel wrong will be done to them.
Let us glance for a moment into the Chancellor of the
Exchequer's other sources of direct taxation to see what
he takes from the pockets of the British tax- and rate-
payers.
Income-tax accounts for £32,000,000
Poor-rates account for ^^35, 000, 000
Death Duties account for £14,000,000
House Duty and Land Tax £2,600,000
Total £83,600,000
It stands to reason that if this huge sum is demanded
each year from the British tax-paying public, a sum
representing three-fifths of the entire revenue of the
Kingdom, those who " pay the piper should be allowed
to call the tune," but nothing of the kind is permitted.
Much of this money is squandered, not spent, and yet
more and more is demanded each vear.
TAXATION AND WASTEFUL EXPENDITURE lyi
If the ordre de jour is to tax the wealthy, and here
let us thoroughly understand that the wealthy class in-
cludes all those whose incomes are over ;^i6o or £200 per
annum, every finance minister has a very ticklish
undertaking.
It is the easiest thing in the world for the Government
to tell every poor struggling clerk and shop-keeper and
the poorly paid professional classes, whose chief diffi-
culty in this life is to make both ends meet, that because
their incomes may exceed £160 per annum, they are
accounted as well-to-do, but it is quite another thing to
make these people see the force of the argument. If you
try to make them believe that it is necessary, in the inte-
rests of the commonweal, that they should be taxed,
they would say :
' You only find it necessary to tax us because your
own foolish laws have so restricted the wealth of the
country, and consequently the taxable area, as to compel
you to fall back upon people of our class, who find it
sufficiently hard to live without being forced to shell out
for income-tax and poor-rates."
This would be quite a proper reply.
Let this question of taxation be, therefore, co-opera-
tive. If the British public are called upon to contribute
£80,000,000 and more for State needs, all they ask Co-operative
is that Government should adopt a sensible, up-to-date
fiscal arrangement and a practical agricultural system,
and the general wealth of the country would at once
begin to expand. Increased wealth means a large increase
in the number of persons Kable to taxation, and a larger
Taxation
172 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
area of taxation means, inter alia, a lighter incidence of
taxation, and perhaps, exemption altogether, at least,
exemption for persons with small incomes who, under
such conditions, would not be liable to a tax of the
kind. Increased general prosperity means less poverty,
and less pauperism means less necessity for poor-rates,
and smaller poor-rates would be an immense boon to
literally millions of people with incomes so small as to
make this poor-rate impost a positive injustice.
This is a view of the case that may not strike the
Chancellor of the Exchequer with the same force as it
does the general body of British tax-payers, but it is a
sensible and just view, nevertheless, and moreover, one
that will commend itself more and more to that long-
suffering community as time goes on.
Another aspect of this many-sided question, which is
occupying the attention of the tax-paying community, is
the shameful waste of their surrendered millions.
Waste of The public prints of recent times have been full of
Money scandals touching the doings of poor law guardians,
and here are some of the many instances of reckless
squandering of public funds, which have been reported.
The Daily Express for May 31 of last year says:
Pleasures for Paupers
" The inmates of Romford Workhouse are to be enter-
tained on various Sunday evenings during the summer
to music by the Beacontree Heath band, and they will be
permitted to promenade the grounds during the perfor-
mance of the programme."
The same paper for June 4, of last year says:
TAXATION AND WASTEFUL EXPENDITURE 173
Luxury for Paupers
" The Risbridge (Suffolk) Guardians, having received
offers of old potatoes at £3 15s. per ton and new Jersey
potatoes, at los. gd. per hundredweight, accepted the
latter for the consumption of the paupers."
The same edition of the above paper also contains the
following :
WORKHOUSE BATHS AT ;^i4 EACH
Architect's Remarkable Admissions
Many Profits
" Mr Albert E. Gough, architect of the Hammersmith
Workhouse, made some astounding admissions at the
resumed^Local Government Board inquiry, yesterday,
concerning the allegations of extravagance, which have
been levelled against the Guardians.
" He confessed that he had not placed the plans of the
alterations and additions before the Guardians before
proceeding with the work. He took a free hand in the
matter.
" With reference to the £836 spent on the opening
ceremony, he said the amount was dealt with in his
certificate, as had been done ' hundreds and hundreds
of times.'
" 'As a result of dealing with it in that way,' said the
Inspector, 'the builder gets 10 per cent, commission, the
quantity surveyor 2^, and you 4 per cent, making i6|
percent, in all?'
" ' Yes, sir,' Mr Gough replied. ' I see the point but
I never took that view before.'
" ' How came you, as an architect and a man of posi-
174 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
tion to pass an account of £836 for the opening ceremony
and issue your certificate?' Mr Robb asked. ' It is the
usual thing.'
" The Usual Thing.
" ' Is it the usual thing to hoodwink the auditor?'
" ' There was no hoodwinking.'
" ' What possible means has the Local Government
Board auditor of going behind your certificate and
ascertaining the real nature of the transaction?' 'I see
it now.'
" ' If there were any hoodwinking of the Local Gov-
ernment Board auditor, the Guardians were privy to it?'
' I suppose so.'
"Another item referred to was fifty-nine porcelain
baths at £14 each, exclusive of profit, carriage and fixing.
They were chosen by a committee of the Guardians.
" ' Could you not get a suitable bath of enamel at
£7?' Mr Robb asked. ' Yes, but enamel wears off.'
" ' But doesn't porcelain spht?' ' Not the best porce-
lain,'
" 'And nothing but the best porcelain is suitable for
the lucky inhabitants of Hammersmith Workhouse?'
Mr Robb retorted. ' You paid three times as much for
baths for the paupers as the small householder, the man
who pays for the paupers, can afford to spend on a bath
for himself.'
Result of The result of this cruel waste of public money is that,
^*^^ in spite of a reduction in the expenses of the Hammer-
smith Borough Council of one penny in the pound, they
have been compelled to add fourpence in the found to the
TAXATION AND WASTEFUL EXPENDITURE 175
rates, which means a net loss of fivepence in the pound to
the rate-payers.
Here is what a London paper said on the subject in
May of last year :
Cost of Paupers' Palace
" The Hammersmith Borough Council has been com-
pelled to add fourpence in the pound to the rates,
although the borough council's expenses would justify a
reduction of one penny in the pound.
" The Council gives the following explanation in the
notice to rate-payers:
" Special attention is drawn to the fact that the large
increase in the rate of fourpence in the pound is due solely
to the increased requirements of the late board of guar-
dians over which the borough council has no control. The
amount to be raised for that body is £16,500 more than
in the last half-year, representing a rate of over five-
pence in the pound, while the borough council's expenses
have been reduced by a sum equal to a rate of one penny
in the pound,
" An emergency precept of £12,000 was served unex-
pectedly on the council by the late board of guardians."
There are numerous instances of similar needless ex-
travagance in other parts of the country, but these will
suffice for the moment.
These disclosures are most disheartening to rate- The Augean
payers, and many of them will, no doubt, think that the
pubhcity which has been given to them and the severe
terms of imprisonment inflicted on the West Ham cul-
176 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
prits will clear out the Augean stable and serve to afford
the necessary protection of public moneys.
But do not let us indulge in such fond delusions : there
is more here than meets the eye.
The fact is the whole pauper administration stands on
an unsound basis, and is rotten to the core.
The attitude of Government, and that of the munici-
pal administrations, the tax-payers and the people is as
wrong-headed as it possibly can be, and unless we, as a
nation, assume a sensible, practical and healthy attitude
towards this unsatisfactory and eminently unsavoury
question, no help will be forthcoming.
Government will do nothing so long as the country
does not give them what they call a mandate. They
may well contend that pauperism has to be provided for
according to the laws of the land, and in raising millions
in rates and taxes, they are simply obeying the mandate
of the country. If y(.u want something different, you
must give us another mandate, say they.
The municipal administrations, poor law guardians
and the rest of the spending official bodies, simply follow
the lead of the Imperial Government, their duty is to
spend the millions subscribed by the tax-payers, and
recent disclosures show how they do it.
The tax-payers, not as yet fully realising that pauper-
ism in our country is no more a natural result of econo-
mic laws than drunkenness is, have hitherto yielded up
their millions with certain misgivings that something
was wrong, but what that something was they couldn't
quite make out. They have recently learnt that vast
sums of their money have been shamelessly squandered
TAXATION AND WASTEFUL EXPENDITURE 177
rather than spent, but that fact seems to reveal corrupt-
ness or incapacity in the spending administration rather
than the rottenness of the entire system of which these
bodies are but an outgrowth.
The people rarely think about the matter at all. Public
^ ^ • • 1 X Attitude
Pauperism was a recognised State institution before towards
they were born, and they accept it at that ; if it is wrong, ^^"Pe"*™
show us how to put it right, is what they say.
This, in a nutshell, is the attitude adopted towards
pauperism by the people and the tax-payers, and a more
sickly, unhealthy, harmful attitude cannot be conceived.
The whole nation has somehow contrived to set up a
sort of belief in the necessity for this plague spot on
our civilisation, and this weak, flabby spirit of acqui-
escence in a positive evil has wrought incalculable harm
in every direction.
The enormous pauper homes all over the country,
many of them of costly architectural design and palatial
aspect, with elaborate and luxurious fittings, which will
hardly be found even in the homes of the wealthy classes,
only serve to show that bumbledom, at all events, has
set pauperism up as a fetish, while the scandalous
waste of public money which has been and is going on,
proves that poor law guardians freely offer up the tax-
payer's gold on the altar of their god.
At the moment it is nobody's business to take any
action that would reheve the country of this loathsome
incubus. There is a general grumbling all along the hue
of that vast array of people who are compelled to hand
over their rates and taxes to the State coffers, and this
means every householder in the country, rich or poor,
12
178 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
but they only grumble and growl. Let us, however, cease
growling and do something. Let us make up our minds,
since it is necessary for State purposes that we should be
taxed, that these taxes be wisely spent, not wasted. Let
us insist that our millions be laid out in a manner that
will encourage the people to cultivate habits of self-help,
thrift and industry, and not in a way that brings upon
them the degradation of pauperism.
Practical Let US make it abundantly clear to Government, and
and Co-
operative all concerned, that every penny we yield up in rates and
^ *® taxes must be spent along utilitarian lines, and that the
system of relief to the people must be practical and co-
operative, i.e., if the State finds it necessary to call upon
us to help the people, we, in turn, ask that the State set
up some practical system of relief, whereby those requi-
ring aid maybe helped to become self-supporting citizens,
and so, in time, find themselves in a position to pay back
to the State in direct or indirect taxes, the sum spent on
them in their need.
Let us make it as clear as daylight that we are tired to
death of seeing our money spent to no other result than
to encourage the worst and most dissolute type of pau-
perism that the world can show to-day; to engender a
spirit of wasteful extravagance on the part of municipal
officers; and to establish a feeling of apathetic indiffe-
rence on the part of the Government for the time being.
We want to see good results from those milhons which
the State wrings yearly from the British tax-payers, for
many of them can ill afford what they are forced to part
with.
We want to see a just and proper appreciation of this
TAXATION AND WASTEFUL EXPENDITURE 179
pauper question on the part of all concerned, Govern-
ment, tax-payers and the people; a wise, practical inter-
pretation of its meaning, and not the sickly, mawkish
and exceedingly unwise interpretation it bears to-day.
We, the British tax-payers, ask this in aU seriousness.
We demand it as a right. We, who supply the funds, ask
that our money be spent wisely and well and for the good
of the people. Now, our millions are spent to the un-
doing of our countrymen, and we require the system to
be altered and amended.
12a
i8o
CHAPTER XIX
The Free Trade Sham Exposed — Employment
FOR Foreigners
THE so-called " Free Trade " question should now
be tested in one or two simple ways. This false
system has still many misguided followers, and we do
not want to be caught napping again by doctrinaires of a
mendacious creed.
It has pleased us to speak of Great Britain as a free
trading country and we have hitherto deluded ourselves
into the belief that we are reaUy and truly a nation of
bona fide free traders.
A greater delusion never possessed a sensible, practical
people, nor was a greater deception ever practised by
political wire-pullers, who, solely for party purposes, go
through the hollow farce of keeping up this ridiculous
show. In the history of the British Parliament a more
monstrous sham than this free trade humbug has never
been set up before the British people with such remark-
able success.
It is nothing but a party pretence, a political fraud of
the hollowest, most meretricious nature, and the wonder
is that we have been hoodwinked for so long a time.
This free trade business may be likened unto a fiddle
upon which many and varying tunes may be played, a
most useful instrument ahke in the hands of Conserva-
THE FREE TRADE SHAM EXPOSED i8i
tive and Liberal Governments, inasmuch as both have
fully played upon it to suit their own purposes. If the
Conservatives want a few millions, they add a penny or
so to the tea tax, for example. If the Liberals are short of
money, they abstain from taking off that which their pre-
decessors, the Conservatives, put on ; or they put on that
which their political opponents took off.
The Conservatives wanted money during the South
African War of 1902, and, among other things, they
Taxe« on
raised the duty on tea to sixpence per pound. In the fol- Food
lowing year, 1903, there was a fresh imposition, raising
the duty to eightpence. On July i, 1905, a reduction of
twopence took place.
The Liberals soon afterwards were drifted into power
on the top of the anti-Chinese and Nonconformist Edu-
cation wave, and they took off one penny only of this
tax, because they required money to carry out certain
schemes to which they were pledged.
Sugar is another string to this free trade fiddle. You
can no more do without sugar than you can do without
bread, and yet your free trade Government have no
scruples about taxing sugar — every pound of which has to
come from outside sources — to the tune of £6,177,953
annually.
Then we come to coal, from which the present Govern-
ment derives £2,183,973 annually in export duties. This
little impost was put on by a Conservative Government
to defray some of their own expenses for the war, but
why is it kept on by a Government which professes to
detest war and abhors anything which interferes with
free trade? Why?
i82 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
We now come to a long list of food-stuffs, all of which
pay import duty before reaching the people, such as
cocoa, coffee, tea, milk, and milk preparations ; sugar ;
confectionery of all kinds; fruits dried; jams and
marmalade.
A free trade Government may call these luxuries, and
therefore, they are taxed, but the people know full well
that most of these foods are no more a luxury than bread
is a luxury ; nevertheless free trade Governments have
no more scruple about taxing these commodities than a
protectionist Government would have. The new Tariff
Convention between this country and the United States
of America, signed on November 20, 1907, is but another
example of the utter hollo wness of this " Free Trade "
fraud.
The present Government which calls itself Liberal —
but which its political opponents dub Radical — has just
entered into an arrangement which is as diametrically
opposed to the principles of Free Trade as light is to
darkness. The United States, wishing to secure still
greater advantages for her goods, and freer facilities for
her commercial travellers, says to us: " You give us free
entry for our samples of dutiable imports, and we will
give you something in return. You profess to be a free-
trading nation, nevertheless, you are just as much open
to a bargain, or in other words, to those principles of
reciprocity under which the protected countries of the
world formulate their systems of tariffs, as other nations
are. You already draw £35,000,000 annually from your
import duties on goods of various kinds, many of them,
such as sugar for example, being necessaries of life and
THE FREE TRADE SHAM EXPOSED 183
in daily use by the people ; while we know from past ex-
perience you would just as readily tax other articles of
common consumption if you wanted money for war
purposes, or for other argent State needs."
Our Pecksniffian Government, while professing to
scout the very idea of Reciprocity, and assuming an atti-
tude of pious horror at the mere mention of Protection,
have, de facto, entered into a reciprocal commercial
convention with our cousins across the Atlantic, whereby
certain of their goods come into our country free of im-
port duty, in return for a reduction in their import duty
of 25 per cent, on British works of art.
In addition to this there is the still more recent in-
stance, in December of last year, of the arrangement
made between the Australian Government and our
Board of Trade, in respect to some of our manufactures
which Austraha imports. Our slate trade has benefited
to the extent of a preferential reduction of 5 per cent.,
while the bicycle trade has benefited even still more.
Free Trade apologists will, no doubt, by many a
specious argument, attempt to explain away this extra-
ordinary movement of the Government in favour of
Reciprocity, this leaning towards the very principles
which their political opponents, the Unionist Tariff
Reformers, so strenuously advocate, but, however much
they may protest, this precious Free Trade principle has
been clearly, unmistakably and formally surrendered
by their own Government in this Tariff Convention with
the United States, and the matter is now un fait
accompli.
The present Free Trade Government, having ad-
i84 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
mitted the principles of reciprocity, and emphasised this
admission b}^ giving the country a proof of their behef in
the necessity of Tariff Reform in the shape of a practical
working arrangement with a foreign State, are now
" between the devil and the deep sea." They cannot
recede from the anomalous attitude they have assumed
without still further weakening their position, while if
they continue where they are they will assuredly give
their political adversaries certain advantages by which
they will not fail to profit.
At any rate, it is certain that although the principles
of " Free Trade " may be good enough in theory, it is
manifest they will not stand the rough and tumble of
this practical everyday existence of ours. Silk breeches
and kid gloves may be very pretty and becoming, but
good honest homespun and a stout pair of leather
gauntlets are better able to resist the hard wear and tear
of life, and enable us to grapple with those thorns which
crop up so often in our journey through this
world.
To put it briefly. Governments, no more than indivi-
duals, can afford to ignore the pressing exigencies of Hfe ;
nor are they proof against those temptations which touch
self-interests. The United States wanted a compara-
tively small commercial concession. Certainly, says our
" Free Trade " Government, but give us something in
return; reduce your duty on some of our goods which
you buy from us, and we will take certain duties off some
of the goods you send to our country — a small bargain
to serve some personal interest! and lo, Reciprocity be-
comes the guiding principle even of a Government wliich
THE FREE TRADE SHAM EXPOSED 185
professes to be the avowed champion of what is, by
misnomer, called Free Trade — Verb. Sap.\
With these instances before us, is it not true that in Liberal
Principles
spite of their free trade professions, Liberal Govern-
ments are quite as ready to sacrifice their principles to
their pockets, the moment they want money, as their
political opponents are?
Is it not true that despite their much vaunted cry of
free trade, and their declared behef in its principle,
they can no more help taxing the food of the people than
they can hinder the return of the equinoxes?
Is it not true that the whole business is an unmiti-
gated farce ; that free trade is nothing but a sham and a
gigantic fraud, and that those who profess it cannot up-
hold their professions of faith because their acts belie
their principles?
Is it not true that, for these reasons, those who profess
belief in free trade must be the veriest humbugs among
men, and that free trade itself is doomed to destruc-
tion?
Let us now proceed to the welcome task of building up
out of the shattered fragments of destroyed industries
and exploded fiscal systems, some intelligible scheme
which shall give back to the people that measure of pros-
perity which it is their absolute right to enjoy. Let us
confess in a frank, manly manner, that we have been
regularly humbugged, and that, in sacrificing our great
land industry and beheving in " free trade " nonsense,
we have, while adding to the individual wealth of a
certain small section of the community, seriously im-
peded the growth of national prosperity, caused wide-
i86 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
spread unemployment, and induced an enormous
amount of unnecessary poverty among the people.
Let us say — we don't mind paying, and paying liberally
to help the people to become self-supporting and self-
respecting citizens, but we insist that our money be
spent in a manner that will directly help them onward to
general prosperity.
Employment -yy-g must find employment for every man, woman and
for Every- jt ^ j
body child in the Kingdom by restoring every one of our lost
industries, and where it is necessary to alter our fiscal
laws to afford these industries the necessary encourage-
ment and protection, we must alter them in a manner
that will afford our people as much protection as is
offered in Germany, the United States, and other States,
whose manufactures have killed many of our own
industries.
'v.We must have no further paltering with this subject,
neither must we listen further to political wire-pullers
about " free trade " and the " cheap loaf " cry, be-
cause it is as clear as daylight that ' ' free trade ' ' is the
cause of all our troubles, while we have discovered that
those countries which protect themselves against us supply
a loaf just as cheap as we do.
We are absolutely certain that our lost industries can
only be restored to us by these means, and we will not
cease in our efforts till the present laws are repealed and
a code more generous and helpful to our own people set
up in their place.
Full employment for the unemployed, full work for
our workers, and the establishment of a sound basis,
upon which will be built up the general prosperity of a
THE FREE TRADE SHAM EXPOSED 187
people, can only be effected by these means, and we are
at last determined to see the thing carried through.
Germany and the United States (our two most for-
midable competitors) are not" free traders," and never
have been, and yet their relative progress is greater than
our own, while their prosperity, instead of being indi-
vidual, as with us, is national. What we want is the
prosperity of the people and not that of a few already
rich individuals, who continue to make a good thing out
of free trade.
We are called a " nation of shopkeepers." Good! Let Nation of
us deserve the name : let us do that which foreign nations ^^ eepers
are now doing for us. We import yearly ;^i5o, 000,000
worth of manufactured goods from foreign countries.
Let us make practically all these goods ourselves and
employ our own people instead of those who put up im-
possible barriers against a single pound's worth of our
manufactures ever finding their way into their country.
We import £36,000,000 worth of iron and other metal
goods for example, but is there a country on earth that,
given the same opportunities other States possess, can
turn out metal wares to surpass our own?
Then we buy £16,000,000 worth of chemicals, dyes,
etc. Why? Chemicals and dyes are largely made from
by-products of mines and gasworks ; yet what country
can beat us in this direction?
Cutlery and hardware account for nearly £4,000,000
annually^ and yet no country in the world can produce
these goods equal to our own.
Nearly £4,500,000 are sent abroad every year for
i88 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
earthenware and glass, and yet our own productions
cannot be beaten by any foreign country.
We import nearly £6,000,000 worth of paper, every
pound of which could be made in our own country with
the greatest ease: Greater Britain supplying us with
practically all the raw material we require.
These are but examples of what is going on, but it is
the same sickening tale in every department of indus-
try ; enormous sums sent to foreign countries every year
to make goods for us which our own people can make
better for themselves.
Employ- Will nothing ever teach us that we can make all these
Foreigners goods ourselves and that every million spent abroad
simply means providing employment for foreigners in-
stead of our own people?
Shall we never learn the bitter lesson that to spend our
wealth on foreign industries is to crush out our own, and
to kill our own industries is to throw tens of thousands
out of employment and bring about the impoverishment
of a whole people?
Let us have done with this worse than folly ; this suici-
dal mania which possesses us, and boldly and deter-
minedly declare that our own people shall be employed
in making practically all the goods that we require for
our own consumption and for export, and that, if our
present fiscal system does not admit of this, then it must
be altered and amended to an extent that will enable us
to do all that we require.
We must not be turned from our purpose either by any
political party, that for their own reasons favour free
trade, of by that timid section who are afraid of adopt-
THE FREE TRADE SHAM EXPOSED 189
ing a rational and reasonable fiscal policy because —
foreign nations may resent it. Of all the insane objections
to necessary amendment of our fiscal laws to suit
national purposes, this is, perhaps, the feeblest. Did Ger-
many and America ask our permission when they built
around their trade and industries a wall of tariffs so high
and broad as to render our chance of ever scaling it
absolutely impossible?
Do they ever ask our permission whenever they find it
necessary to impose new tariffs or alter others to suit
their own ends?
Does any country in the world ever ask our permission
in regard to the alteration or continuance of existing
fiscal laws or the making of new ones?
And if these questions cannot be answered in the
affirmative, why should we care one straw what other
nations think; why consult their interests when they
never consider ours?
Do not let any consideration, any argument, however
plausible, turn us from our determination to right the
cruel wrong that has been done to us by supporting in-
dustries in foreign countries instead of planting them in
our own midst for the support of our own people.
" Support Home Industries " is a perfectly in- Home
Industries
telligible cry, and quite good enough for us; and al-
though political economists tell us that, according to all
the rules of economic law, it is better for us to buy
£150,000,000 worth of goods annually in foreign coun-
tries, we know that such teaching is specious and false.
The application of this law has, in fact, resulted in no-
thing but disaster, inasmuch as it has deprived tens of
igo THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
thousands of our own workers of employment and
brought widespread poverty and misery to vast numbers
of people, who, under other conditions, would be enjoy-
ing just that measure of prosperity which is now being
enjoyed by the workers in those countries whose indus-
tries we support by our insane policy.
191
CHAPTER XX
State Aid for Agriculture — Equilibrium in the
Labour Markets
THE greatest of all our industries is the land
and we may turn the enormous potential power
that we find latent there into a mighty living force, that
will carry us along to marvellous prosperity undreamed
of to-day.
The lives of hundreds of thousands of our weary toilers
are saddened and overshadowed by the ever-present
consciousness that, because of the precariousness of la-
bour, they may lose their employment at any moment.
Let us remove this dread and give them cheerfulness and
hope.
Millions of our tax-payers are conscious of the fact
that, owing to our insane fiscal system, their money is
spent to no purpose but to encourage and support indus-
trial workers in other countries at the expense of paupe-
rising our own people. If we emancipate our tax-payers
from this intolerable position by building up our own
industries, finding work for our own people, and creating
and developing general prosperity, we shall reduce the
necessity for taxation — at all events, ' ' Poor Relief ' ' taxa-
tion— and at least lessen their burden to that extent.
We must declare in no uncertain manner that our
lands shall be worked and our people employed, and
that, as we are perfectly aware this cannot be done
192 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
without State aid and encouragement, the State must
come to the people's rescue.
The State must help on this industry in various ways ;
by sensible and helpful land tenures, by the creation of
millions of small occupying proprietorships ; by the estab-
lishment and regulation of a low scale of railway rates
whereby the free movement of agricultural produce may
be facilitated throughout the country ; by the establish-
ment of a multitude of municipal markets ; and generally
by practical, wise and helpful administration.
Having done so much, wherefrom a general improve-
ment in the economic condition of the people will spring
as surely as the sun gives us of his light and warmth ; the
State will be in a position to consider how it can best
apply the largely increased revenue, which must be a
direct result of increased prosperity.
Agncul- n jja^g already been shown in these pages that the agri-
Wealth cultural wealth of the United Kingdom has decreased
during the last thirty years by the stupendous sum of
£1,000,000,000 (some writers put it at a much higher
figure) and it follows, as night the day, that if this enor-
mous wealth be restored to the country, aye, even
greatly augmented as it can be by a splendid system of
universal agriculture, the like of which this country has
never yet experienced, large increases of revenue must
result from it.
One of the cries of the tariff reformers is :
" Tariff reform means less income-tax and work for
all." But as it stands it is not true.
Paraphrased as under, it means truth, absolute and
positive.
STATE AID FOR AGRICULTURE 193
" Land industry and tariff reform mean prosperity , less
taxes, and work for all."
But do not let us accept this statement without con-
sideration. If it be true, it will bear investigation ; if it be
not true, then it will break down under the test.
It is obvious that, in certain directions, less need for
taxation must result, while in others the incidence will be
lighter owing to the large increase in the area of taxation.
Take " poor-rates," for example, which are largely
spent on pauper institutions of various kinds, as well as
in maintaining an enormous police force of upwards of
61,000 men; a costly criminal magistracy and an elabo-
rate system of industrial schools, reformatories and
prisons, the result of a large criminal population.
Every schoolboy knows that pauper establishments
are not to help the rich, and that the great army of police
and the prisons are not to maintain order among the
respectable British working classes, the shopkeepers and
merchants, and the wealthy ones of the land.
The criminal classes are not, as a rule, recruited from
the rich, the well-to-do and the respectable, self-respect-
ing citizens, but from the ranks of the poor; from that
large unfortunate section of our population which, for
various reasons, is first reduced to privation and want,
and then to despair and desperation.
It follows, then, in logical sequence, that if you reduce Reduction
poverty and bring about a state of general prosperity,
there will be less want, less crime, and less necessity for
that elaborate expensive machinery which has been set
up to deal with crime, and, therefore, less cost in main-
taining it,
13
194 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
In regard to the claims of tariff reformers for less
taxation, what will surely happen is this. General in-
crease in the prosperity of the people will have precisely
the same effect as it had in Germany ; it will give Govern-
ments an enormously extended taxable area, over which
they will be able to spread their imposts with a lighter
incidence, and this will surely mean less taxation per
head, although larger revenues for Government.
As this is no dream of a hare-brained visionary, but
the hard dry facts of a scientific law, we may now indulge
in some speculations as to what had best be done with
the extra millions which the State is sure to gamer from
the prosperity of a people.
NutstKiU There can be no question that, so far as it is necessary,
it should be applied to the encouragement and relief of
agriculture, for the many reasons which have already
been given in these pages. But for the sake of conveni-
ence let us get these facts together in a nutshell. They
are us under :
1. Without the great land industry it is seen that
trades, manufactures and professions alone cannot sup-
port and employ the entire working population of the
country.
2. Without any other State aid than the amendment
of our fiscal system, the State encouragement of general
agriculture, and co-operation with other industries,
trades and manufactures can maintain themselves in a
state of active and progressive prosperity.
3. A system of general agriculture wiU absorb so large
a portion of our working population that an equilibrium
will be set up between the supply and demand of labour.
STATE AID FOR AGRICULTURE 195
4. Equilibrium in the labour markets, with the bal-
ance turned towards demand, means greater indepen-
dence of workers, better demand and better wages.
c. The land industry without other State aid than
suitable land tenures, a practical scheme of " small
proprietary holdings," an amended fiscal system, and
consistent encouragement to general agriculture, will be
as self-supporting as other industries.
These are the chief contentions put forth in these
pages, and we should now focus them on to the main
consideration of our subject.
The entire question, as we have seen, hangs upon
the development of the land industry, and its mainte-
nance as the chief means of support to the people, and
as the greatest source of wealth production in the
country.
Nothing, therefore, must be allowed to interfere with
the establishment of agriculture on a firm, solid basis,
and if it be found that State aid, even of a direct nature,
be necessary to establish it on that sure basis, then let
us devote some of this extra revenue to that end. Our
business is to see that our great staple industry, upon
which so much depends, aye, even the life of a people
and the existence of a great world empire, be first of all
set up and then so carefully and jealously protected by
national safeguards that nothing may be allowed to
jeopardise it in any way.
Safeguard this precious possession so thoroughly that, Subsidise
if it be found necessary in national interests even to Necesscry
subsidise it in some way, then do so by all means; and
13a
196 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
once we alter the present inane fiscal and agricultural
systems, this would become easy enough.
Mr Harcourt, First Commissioner of Works, in his
speech on the second reading of the " Small Holdings
Bill," for England, on June 12, 1907, said:
" If, as Mr Chaplin would have us believe, small hold-
ings could not exist without protection, I would not
raise my hand to bring them into being."
All Englishmen who have the welfare of their country
at heart sincerely hope that agriculture will flourish
without protection. But — and here we must commit no
more blunders — if we find that it cannot do so, that it
requires a little State assistance to enable it to prosper,
a little leading by the hand to enable it to walk surely and
firmly, then, and in that case, State aid must be given.
Mr Harcourt has raised his Party cry of " No protec-
tion " and " cheap loaf," and he asks us to follow, but
we are no longer disposed to sacrifice the people's inte-
rests to the selfish spirit of any political party. We have
seen that every country in the world which shows the
most prosperous balance sheets, assists its trade and
industries in some form or other, and we are firmly con-
vinced that the time has come for us to do the same.
" People before party " is our cry ; our answer to
all political parties, whether Liberal or Conservative;
and as we conceive this to be the true spirit of patriotism
before ^c caunot follow Mr Harcourt, whose policy is so harsh
Party ^-^^ uncompromising, as to imperil and even sacrifice a
great national industry for want of a little assis-
tance, because such a course would clash with the interests
of the Party he serves.
STATE AID FOR AGRICULTURE 197
If, then, we find a little aid in this direction or that
necessary to help on this industry, let us afford it that
aid, and do not let us be deterred by so shallow, narrow
and selfish a consideration as that put forward by Mr
Harcourt on behalf of the present Government.
British tax-payers would much prefer to see their
millions spent in helping on our great land industry,
which, properly developed and judiciously administered,
would regenerate the country, rather than see them
squandered in creating poverty, encouraging pauperism,
and maintaining 61,000 police and a huge costly criminal
department, to deal with the results of pauperisation. Go,
ask them which they prefer, nay, make it a " question "
at the next General Election, and it will be found that
they will vote solid for the former course. No man in his
senses prefers poverty to prosperity, and every tax-
payer in the country would gladly support a scheme of
the kind. And this is certain, that any Government
which goes to the country on this ticket — among others
of a kindred nature — will surely play a trump card. The
country is so sick of poverty, the unemployed question,
pauperism and the rest of it, that it would gladly hail a
change.
Tax-payers, moreover, bear the heavy burden of taxa-
tion which all this involves with complete conscious-
ness that it is borne in vain ; and the Government which
shows them how this burden may be carried with ease
and comfort, or at all events, with some satisfaction to
themselves, or how it may, in time, be considerably
lightened, will command this important body of electors
to a man.
igS
CHAPTER XXI
Land Reform and Tariff Reform — Necessity for
Popular Action
THE subject we are dealing with is so vast that it is
impossible in this work to do more than merely
glance at a few of its more salient features, and much
that is useful and important must necessarily be left un-
said. But before concluding we would refer to one or two
other points, which should not be lost sight of in our
consideration of this question.
There is a large section of the community which al-
ways finds difficulty in making up its mind on any ques-
tion of the day, because it is so easily led this way or
that ; it shapes its course by what the last speaker hap-
pens to have said ; and startling newspaper head-lines of
the sensational order prove irresistibly attractive. People
of this description might well be treated as a qiiaufite
negltgenble, were it not for the fact that they form too
large and important a body to neglect, and it is therefore
necessary to warn them of what will surely happen.
Two questions that vitally affect all Englishmen are
now before the public; the land question and
tariff reform; and many a man, who has hitherto
thought but little on either subject, must now make up
his mind one way or the other. We are, indeed, at " the
Parting of the Ways "; let us beware lest we take the
wrong path.
LAND REFORM AND TARIFF REFORM 199
In order to have a perfectly unbiased mind, we must
cut ourselves adrift from all political entanglements, and
stand free men, owing allegiance to no party, whether
Liberal or Conservative. Our votes should be given to
that party which governs best in the people's interests,
and to no other.
We are convinced for the reasons herein given, and
many others, which lack of space forbids us to give, that
the salvation of the British people depends upon land
REFORM and TARIFF REFORM, and our support will be
given to that party which pledges itself to amend the
laws in these respects.
The moment anything of the nature of reform be Traps
undertaken by the Party in power, the other Party will jjn^ary
swear by all their gods that the people's interests are
being sacrificed and the country ruined; and it is just
here that we require a little stiffening in the backs of our
mental fibres, or we shall surely be led astray.
Here is a specimen of what we may expect taken from
one of the London dailies :
FARM HANDS' DANGER
PROTEST BY MEN WHO HAVE LOST THEIR WORK
SMALL HOLDINGS
MISERABLE COMPENSATION
SEARCH FOR WORK
"A remarkable manifesto calling attention to the
hardships which farm hands will suffer by being dis-
placed under the Government's Small Holdings Bill, has
been issued by twenty-six of the labourers who lost their
200 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
work at Burwell, Cambs, when the Crown lands were
turned into allotments."
These headlines first of all attract our attention and
then we are induced to believe that an injustice has been
done to the people, almost an outrage indeed.
The facts of the case are that Government, in their
attempt to afford some relief to the strained situation, by
turning a few hundred acres of Crown lands into Small
Holdings, necessarily had to displace some of the hands
who had been working on the land; and this trifling
matter is sufficient to call forth these sensational head-
lines and supply " copy " for a hostile Press or a hostile
party. These are traps to catch the unwary; political
traps, which both of the great political parties are not
above setting, and we should beware of them. We cannot
make our omelet without breaking eggs, and we cannot
have our " Small Holdings " without displacing, to
begin with, those who are already working on the land,
but this single fact no more sums up the position than
that " one drop makes an ocean."
Question ^ , . . ,
of Re-ad- In bnngmg about any great national reform it
justment ^^ highly probable, nay, almost certain, that, at the
outset, some individual interests wiU suffer, but in the
end it is equally certain that in the resultant general
good, full compensation will follow. Small Holdings are
especially designed to help those working on the soil, and
if a farm hand be displaced to-day, he may come in to-
morrow as a peasant proprietor or a tenant farmer ; it is a
mere question of readjustment, a reshuffling of the cards
and we must not, therefore, allow ourselves to be frigh-
LAND REFORM AND TARIFF REFORM 201
tened by those who would make political capital out of
our fears.
But as the matter is of vital importance to us as a
people, let us make it doubly sure by arriving at a just
and true appreciation of its bearings. Let us measure it
by the infallible standard of experience.
We have already seen that our 48,000,000 acres of
what we call our " cultivated area " (38,000,000 acres of
which are either in grass or sheep feeds) give occupation
and support to only 3,900,000 people out of the entire
population, or apparently about one-eleventh of the
entire population of the United Kingdom is supported
by the land.
In Germany the land occupies and supports nearly
19,000,000, or considerably over one-third of the entire
population.
France actually employs over 8,000,000 of her active
population, and M. Gourot, President de la Societe
Nationale d'Encouragement h I'Agriculture, speaking on
the subject in July 1905, spoke of 24,000,000 Agricultu-
rists of France. As we must assume that the President of
this Society knew what he was talking about, we con-
clude that France's great land industry employs and
supports the enormous total of 24,000,000 of her popula-
tion.
Hungary, with a population of a little over 19,000,000
employs and supports over 13,000,000 in agriculture,
or, in other words, her land industry occupies and sup-
ports nearly two-thirds of the entire population of the
country.
To put this highly important question in another way,
202 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
Compara- it will be Seen from the following table that while we, in
Statistics the United Kingdom, can only manage to employ and
support eight persons to every one hundred acres of
our cultivated area :
Germany employs and supports i8
France employs and supports about .... 26
Hungary employs and supports 24
Here is a table for easy reference :
P , . . , Persons employed Persons emp'd
Country. and supported by &supportedby
Ag-riculture. every looacres
United Kingdom 48,000,000 3,900,000 8
Germany. . . 108,000,000 19,000,000 18
France . . . 92,000,000 24,000,000 26
Hungary, . . 54,000,000 13,000,000 24
If, however, we take Great Britain without Ireland, it
will be seen that our case is even worse, for our 32,000,000
of " cultivated " area only employs 1,389,000 per-
sons, or employs and supports about 2,250,000. This
means that only one-fourteenth part of the entire popu-
lation is supported by our land, while each 100 acres
cannot emplo}'^ and support more than about six persons.
Now that we have narrowed this matter down to the
irreducible minimum of incontrovertible statistics, we
are face to face with two highly important facts :
I . That our country employs fewer people in its agri-
culture and supports a smaller head of population on its
land than any other country in Europe. (For purposes of
comparison only three European States have been taken,
although aU of them could show similar results.)
LAND REFORM AND TARIFF REFORM 203
2. That this being so, there is scope for the enormous
expansion of our agricultural industry and for the em-
ployment of vast numbers of people.
Having, by this brief statement of facts and figures,
shown that, if in carrying out measures of land reform,
it is necessary to displace a few farm hands here and
there, employment for all of them, and indeed for
millions more of our country men and women will be
found on the land as the scheme develops, the question
might well be asked — Why all this fuss about nothing ?
It must be obvious to any unprejudiced person that in The
the land lies the people's hope, the people's opportunity. Hope^ *
In the land Hes freedom from poverty, employment,
prosperity and wealth ; the people's redemption ; and yet
at the first attempt on the part of Government, for the
time being, to help along our unfortunate countrymen to
this goal we find a hostile Press, solely and wholly for
political purposes, ready to stir up the people against the
development of the land industry.
Now, in discussing this matter among ourselves, just
in a friendly manner, we might naturally ask the follow-
ing questions.
Why is there a hostile Press and a hostile Party? Why
is hostility shown, practically to every measure, good,
bad, or indifferent, which the Government of the day,
whether Conservative or Liberal, may bring forward?
W^hy is administrative work retarded, and State busi-
ness frequently stopped by the hostility of a pohtical
Party backed up by a hostile Press? Why?
The answer is clear. Because they have a purpose to
serve, or because they don't know and don't care that
204 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
their hostility to the Government of the day means, in
many cases, inimicahty to the commonweal, and, there-
fore, hostility to the people.
If they have a purpose of their own to serve, and that
purpose happens to clash with the interests of the people,
then it is clear they are of no use to us from that point of
view, because of their inimicahty.
If, in serving their own purpose, they don't care
whether national interests are sacrificed, or not, then it
is equally clear they are of no use to us from that point
of view, because of their hostility.
It is also clear that if they be influenced by either or
both of these purposes, then they are not fit to be the
people's guides, to represent their interests, or champion
their cause.
We cannot get rid of either the political parties or a poli-
tical Press, but if we find they mislead us, we need not j al-
low .• and if we do not follow them , the logical conclusion of
the business is that in time they will learn to follow us.
To-day, both Parties and Press profess to represent the
people ; arrant humbug ; they no more represent the real
views and wishes of the millions than they represent the
inhabitants of Mars. They represent their own views and
serve their own ends, but not ours. Rarely do the people's
hopes and desires find expression in the acts of either
Press or politicians, and seldom are the real mandates of
the people carried out by them. Less and less do they ex-
press our real views, and less and less grows the disposi-
tion to listen to their teaching, or follow their lead; and
so, we form our own opinions and take our own way
along that path which we are sure will lead to the uplift-
ing of a people and the prosperity of a Nation.
205
CHAPTER XXII
True and False Socialism — Tyranny of
Individualism
ANOTHER matter for earnest consideration is the
attitude of that body of " ardent patriots " which
loves to pose before the people as Sociahsts; and here,
as in other directions, we must learn to make up our
own minds or we may be led away by what may prove
to be a very ignis fatmis of politics.
Socialism may be good or it may be bad, but we are
not going to pass j udgment here on a movement which,
while having many adherents, has but little cohesion,
and no clearly defined principles to guide it. There are
many Sociahsts who, taken as a whole, may rightly be
regarded as a new band of political wire-pullers, but
theirs is not the Socialism — that is to say true Socialism
— taught by such great Socialist philosophers as Ruskin,
Owen and others.
The " Socialism " of to-day is, indeed, so ill-defined
as to call forth the question: "What is Socialism?"
and it seems as though there can be no reply forth-
coming, because every man who professes to be an
exponent of Socialism expounds it in a manner to har-
monise with his own particular views, and thus the
Socialism of one man differs materially from that of
another.
This being so, we, who have our own ideas of what
2o6 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
true Socialism means, will put our own interpretation
on what is, in reality, a great science.
Socialism means, among other things, exactly what
we have been urging in these pages, viz., the combina-
tion, advancement and prosperity of the people, and a
vigorous crusade against all that is untrue, unjust and
tyrannous, including the tyranny of party politics;
and last, but not least, against the tyranny of that
band of rabid politicians who seek to dominate the
British people through the sanguinary expedient of Red
Revolution.
It may be taken for granted that the people of this
country are just as keen for social and economic reform
as those " Socialists " profess to be, and are just as
determined to get it, but we prefer to get what we
want by peaceful means and not by treading the bloody
path of revolution.
Socialist 'Pq show how some modem Socialists expound the
principles of Socialism, and how they carry out their
self-imposed mission as teachers of the people, we
give here a few extracts from their Sunday School
Catechism, which were published by one of the London
daily papers, and which wiU admirably illustrate their
methods :
" How many classes are there in society? A great num-
ber.
" Name us two? Aristocrats and workers.
" Who are the aristocrats? Those who enjoy wealth
without working for it when able.
" Who are the workers? Men who work for wages and
Principles
TRUE AND FALSE SOCIALISM 207
receive only a portion of what they earn, the other part
going to keep the idle classes.
" Who owns the factories and warehouses? The
rich capitahst class, who will not employ men unless
they can make a profit.
"What is the consequence? That men, able and willing
to work, cannot get food for their wives and children.
" Do men and women die of hunger in England? Yes,
in the midst of plenty.
" Do savages starve in the midst of plenty? No. When
there is plenty of food they will rejoice, feast and make
merry."
Here also are two verses from a hymn which is inclu-
ded in the Socialist Sunday School hymn-book :
" These kings defile us with their powder,
We want no war within the land ;
Let soldiers strike : for peace call louder,
Lay dowTi arms, and join hand in hand.
Should these vile monsters still determine
Heroes to make us in despite,
They'll know full soon the kind of vermin
Our bullets hit in this last fight.
" We peasants, artisans and others
Enrolled among the sons of toil.
Let's claim the earth and henceforth for brothers,
Drive the indolent from the soil.
On our flesh long has fed the raven,
We've too long been the vulture's prey;
But now, farewell this spirit craven,
The dawn brings in a brighter day."
208 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
The following is from a catechism called " Hungry
Children":
" What is a pauper? One who lives upon others while
being able to work.
" Are the rich class able to work? Y es; because hey
are well cared for when young, and grow up strong.
" But do they work? No, they consider it menial and
beneath them.
" Then they are paupers? Yes, because they live on
others, and do no work, though capable.
" Then there must be another reason, besides saving
children from pauperism why they do not want children
of the common people to be fed and clothed by the
Nation? Yes.
"What is the reason? They think that if the children of
the working men are fed and properly educated they
would become more independent, and demand a better
living wage.
" Is there any body of men and women who wish to
see all children properly fed and clothed, whether their
parents are poor or rich? Yes, the Socialists."
And here is a verse from a hymn in the Socialist hymn-
book, entitled, " Ye Poor of Wealthy England."
" Ye poor of wealthy England,
Who starve and sweat and freeze,
By labour sore to fill the store
Of those who live at ease ;
'Tis time to know your real friends.
To face your real foe,
TRUE AND FALSE SOCIALISM 209
And to fight for your right
Till ye lay your masters low;
Small hope for you of better days
Till ye lay your masters low."
Now this system of teaching is bound to do harm De-struo-
rather than good because it misleads where it should ^Jt^con-
rightly direct, and pulls down where it should build up. structive
Its policy is i?^e-structive rather than cow-structive, and
this is a huge fundamental blunder. It, moreover, brings
ridicule on a great cause, and nothing kills more quickly
than ridicule.
To prate of rich, idle classes and aristocrats and then
to assert that part of the workman's wages goes " to
keep the idle classes " is simply to pervert the truth and
with deliberate intent to injure. As a matter of fact
the rich, idle classes, who, by the way, derive their
wealth in many instances from sources altogether apart
from the British working man, give employment, and
good emplo3Tnent, too, to vast numbers of British
workers in various ways which need not be gone
into here.
Then to talk of the " rich capitalist class, who will not
employ men unless they can make a profit " is simpty
childish nonsense.
Who on this earth, unless he be born with a golden
spoon in his mouth, ever dreams of working save for a
profit?
Does the seamstress, the clerk, the farmer, the pro-
fessional class, the soldier, sailor, parson, the British
workman, or even the Socialist himself, ever dream of
working for anything but a profit, and, if so, why in the
14
210 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
name of common sense should the so-called capitalist not
be allowed to work for a profit?
Has there been in the world's history any socio-econo-
mic condition in any country whereby the capitalist set
up his workshops and designedly conducted his business
operations so that his work people might wax rich while
he became poor? Or do those who profess the Socialism
of to-day really contemplate a state of affairs where-
under modern capitalists will purposely run their
factories and workshops to enrich their workpeople and
beggar themselves?
It would certainly appear from their catechism that
our modem Socialists do expect something of the kind,
but it is certain that nothing of the sort will ever take
place. You cannot force any man to run his business at a
loss, and you cannot force your capitalist to run his
factory so that everybody but himself may become a
gainer.
•' They think that if the children of the working men
are fed and properly educated they would become more
independent and demand a better wage."
Poisonus Now of all the insidious, poisonous teaching this is
about the worst that could possibly be devised. To teach
children who naturally know nothing of such matters
that rich folk do not want poor children educated and
fed is to utter one of the most monstrous falsehoods of
the age.
Here is what the Chancellor of the Exchequer said
on this subject in introducing his Budget on April i8,
1907:
TRUE AND FALSE SOCIALISM 211
" First of all there is the child, for whom heredity and
parental care have, perhaps, done nothing or worse than
nothing."
Later on, in advocating the claims of the British child,
on the British public for educational purposes, he con-
tinued :
"Your Parliamentary grants, if you add the exchequer
contributions, as you ought to, were £13,359,000; sums
raised by local rates were £11,785,000, a total of
£25,144,000. That is what it cost the State to recognise
its duty to the children of the community."
In face of the fact that £25,000,000 of the British tax-
payers' money is spent on educating the British children,
and £16,000,000 is spent on feeding and clothing the poor
and needy a7id the children, to utter that wicked lie is
worse than wicked, it is criminal.
As a matter of fact education is compulsory, and it
was made so because it was found that the poor would
not send their children to school; and, as the Chancellor
of the Exchequer pointed out parental care has, perhaps,
done nothing or worse than nothing to help the poor
children of this country; and yet, in spite of this well-
known fact, the so-called Socialists publish and put into
circulation among the children of the poor so monstrous
and mischievous a falsehood.
This is just the doctrine that SociaUstic leaders should Anarchy not
1 ,0 • 1- Socialism
not teach, because it is anarchy and not Socialism
they are advocating, and the British people don't want
anarchy and bloodshed. Moreover, this doctrine is emi-
i4«
212 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
nently foolish and must be condemned by all right-
minded people.
When we come to probe the depths of this spurious
Socialistic doctrine we shall find that it is highly destruc-
tive to the body politic, as the following extracts before
quoted will prove.
Tis time to know your real friends,
To face your real foe,
And to fight for your right
Till ye lay your masters low;
Small hope for you of better days
Till ye lay your masters low."
" They'll know full soon the kind of vermin
Our bullets hit in this last fight."
We are at bottom an eminently sensible and practical
people ; were it not so, we should not be what we are to-
day— a great world power — let us, therefore, in the name
of that practicality which has stood us in such good stead
in the past, have done with this silly vapouring after
things which will never be, and settle down to the practi-
cal realities of everyday life.
The People's Socialists, real Socialists, who have the welfare of the
Real Tyrants 1,1,111 n i •■ i
people at heart and who have really a great and noble
work to perform, should emancipate themselves from
this narrow, selfish spirit of envy and jealousy, and
preach the broad gospel of peace and prosperity and in-
dustry ; the advancement and betterment of the people,
and not national disorder, destruction and chaos. We
have all the means of general prosperity at hand without
resorting to violence; let us make use of them. Let
TRUE AND FALSE SOCIALISM 213
Socialists direct their vigour to the land ; let their forces
be directed against the destruction of those terrible foes
to the people, which have been their real tyrants — igno-
rance, APATHY, INERTIA — let them war against these
and the individualism of political parties and the
baneful influence they exercise over the people's inte-
rests, and they will accomplish more in a year than they
will, by their present methods, even at the wane of the
twentieth century.
But in this, as in all things else in life, don't let us
accept what we are told too readily ; let us put it to the
test of experience ; let us cite a case in proof of what we
are contending.
Germany, again, will furnish us with a recent and
most striking example of how much good can be done by
the peaceful industry of the people, and how little by
rabid, spurious Socialism.
In January of last year a great battle was fought at
the hustings in Germany between Socialism and Impe-
rialism, and, as everybody knows who reads the news-
papers, the Socialists were so badly defeated that it is
doubtful if ever they will recover from the crushing
blows dealt out to them. Socialism had been making
headway in Germany for some years, and it was confi-
dently expected, at least by the great Socialist leader,
Herr Bebel, and by the Socialists themselves, that the
General Elections in that country would reveal an
enormous development of the Socialistic spirit, but a
huge surprise was awaiting them, and they found that
Socialism was not popular with the masses, and that it
had received a very serious check.
214 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
The Blow What was the cause of this, what influence was at
to German i i r • i r
Socialism woiK, what 106 was sccietly warring against the forces of
SociaHsm? Not the mighty army of the German Empire,
for never a soldier was called out to crush Socialism ; not
the civil power of the State, because there was no vio-
lence. No repressive measures were taken, and yet
Socialism received so deadly a blow that it may never
recover. What was the cause of its downfall? The com-
• mon sense of the people themselves. By their own in-
dustry, their honest toil and thrift, their own construc-
tiveness, they have created conditions of solid prosperity
that are absolutely inimical to such doctrines as those
propounded in the foregoing lines.
Germany first of all built up a great barrier against the
onward march of Socialism, or to call it by its proper
name. Anarchism, when she commenced to conserve her
great land industry, for it is certain that no section of the
body-electorate is so solidly conservative as your small
landed proprietor, who is, and must naturally be, on the
side of law and order, prosperity and peace.
Alliance of The people of Germany, recognising this important
"^Labour ^^ct, and seeing that their real interests lay in the
development of all other industries as the surest means
of bringing about a state of general prosperity, adopted a
cow-structive policy instead of a ^e-structive one. They
saw that capital was necessary in this development, and
they worked with it and not against it. They saw that to
ensure prosperity, Labour must be allied to capital and
not divorced from it, and they helped to bring about the
alliance. They helped to build up and not pull down ; and
it is a fact that in the last few years the co-operation of
TRUE AND FALSE SOCIALISM 215
these allied forces has simply resulted in the most pheno-
menal commercial, industrial, and agricultural prosperity
that has been witnessed in Europe in modern times.
These, then, are the forces that have arrayed them-
selves against Socialism in Germany with such crushing
effect. Peacefully, silenth^ unconsciously, have these
potent influences been at work and lo! Socialism has
been shaken to its foundations.
Now this means nothing more or less than that
this Socialistic Anarchism, which paid agitators would
teach, is bom of the poverty and misery of a people;
that it breeds and flourishes on their weakness and degra-
dation, and waxes bold and defiant in their despair.
This unhealthy Socialism would pull down law and
order, kill capitalists as ruthless, bloodthirsty monsters;
uproot social conditions and give the country nothing in
return but civil war and — chaos.
Socialism of this type can only be likened unto a
poisonous growth that feeds on the foul miasma arising
from the seething mass of a people in the throes of a
deadly struggle; but our better feeling and good com-
mon sense revolt against a state of affairs which means
economic and financial ruin to us — the people — indivi-
dually and collectively, and we will not have that.
No! No! Germany has chosen the better part in making Object
use of her capitalists in helping the people along the path Aimed at
to general prosperity. That is what we want — general
PROSPERITY.
A country that has in one of its sections alone,
£477,606,350 or as another statistician states £41 5,000,000
2i6 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
in the people's savings banks, and can put by £27,000,000
of the people's savings in a single year, is good enough
for us to imitate.
Socialism of the " blood and bullet " type never
thrives among a people's prosperity, because in in-
dustry, peace and contentment it finds nothing to
feed upon, and it languishes and fades away into
nothingness.
Another reason why this spurious Socialism of the
" blood and bullet " type should yield to true Socialism —
and this reason might well be regarded as insuperable by
all that large section of the British people, which relies
largely upon the tax-payers and the well-to-do among the
public for its maintenance and support — should be well
considered.
We have seen in a former chapter to what extent the
poor and needy of our land — and they are in their
millions — rely partly upon the poor-rates, but chiefly on
the stupendous private aid accorded so liberally each
year by practically one-half of the British people.
Now, although most of this great army of helpers pay
poor-rates directly or indirectly, yet it is plainly mani-
fest that they are not disposed to allow the part they
play in the poverty of the Nation to be circumscribed by
the narrow limits set by the State cesses.
The amount levied by official authority bears but a
small proportion to the huge sums privately contributed
in various forms of charities, and it is this fact which
claims our attention, and unless we give it that conside-
ration which it unquestionably deserves, we may do in-
calculable harm.
First of all we should bear in mind that this stupen-
I
TRUE AND FALSE SOCIALISM 217
dous contribution of over /ioo,ooo,ooo (one hundred Voluntary
millions sterling) annually to the needs of the people, is
purely voluntary.
It is a form of charity which grows out of pity and
compassion, and once you crush out pity and stifle com-
passion, you cut off the source of charity.
Those who give so liberally, and so continuously, out
of their ample means to help the helpless and cast a few
bright rays of sunshine over the lives of those who, but
for this help, would live on in darkness and despair, are
not obliged to give, and this significant fact should never
be lost sight of for a single moment. We are apt to think
that these good people are obliged to hand over their
millions annually, and this attitude on the part of that
section of Progressivists, Socialists, or whatever they
call themselves, has already had a bad effect. Many a
generous giver whose hand was constantly in his pocket
in aid of the poor and needy, the sick and suffering
among his fellow countrymen, has ceased to give because
of the blustering, bullying attitude of those who lead the
people astray by false doctrines.
"An Englishman's house is his castle," and his money
is his own ; and in spite of the ravings of the paid agitator
and the vapourings of the social iconoclast, it will remain
so. England is a free country, and her sons and daugh-
ters are free; free to give or free to withhold. The
wealthy and well-to-do classes have exercised that free-
dom by generously giving, but, given sufficient cause, they
may stay their hand and withhold those many millions,
which are as life-blood to a vast number of our poor, and
without which the one bright beam that sheds a small
2i8 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
ray of light over their hves would die out, and their lot
be dark indeed.
It may indeed be truly said that the attitude of these
so-called Socialists is as anomalous to the philanthropic
public as the Governments attitude is to the tax-payer.
Let us, for instance, take the income-tax as an ex-
ample to illustrate our meaning.
National Said the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the House of
Commons, on April i8 of last year, in speaking of one
item only of the national income derivable from the
rich:
" The income-tax is one of the most productive and
one of the most delicate parts of our fiscal machinery.
There is nothing like it to be found anywhere else in the
world. It produced this year something like £32,000,000
to the Exchequer. . . . For a tax whose effective con-
tinuance involves the annual perpetration of a gross in-
justice is a tax which ought to be reserved, at any rate,
for great and pressing emergencies."
Then, after considering the anomalies which are ad-
mittedly characteristic of the income-tax, and manipu-
lating them in a manner to justify, more or less, its
retention as a permanent impost, he said:
" We now recognise the tax to be a permanent part
of our system."
Good! The income-tax, among others, is now re-
garded as a permanent part of our system of raising
money, but do we regard this enormously productive
source of income as a thing to be fostered and cared for,
as a source of national life-blood, which, if cut off, would
TRUE AND FALSE SOCIALISM 219
cause atrophy and death to the body politic; or do we
regard it as a thing to be buffeted and abused by some,
envied and hated by others, and held up to slander and
contumely by, perhaps, half the people of the land?
That many of us take the last-mentioned course is an
indubitable fact, but in doing this we show a lamentable
lack of that fair play, upon which we, as a people, pride
ourselves so much, and we display, at the same time, a
deplorable absence of tact, prudence and common sense.
All classes possess the inalienable right of claiming
equality of consideration, and yet it delights a certain
section of the people to hold the rich and well-to-do
classes up to contumely, merely because they are rich
and well-to-do ; while the present Government, indeed
all Governments, seem to take a positive delight in " rub-
bing it in," by assuming a foolish and unnecessarily hos-
tile attitude towards British tax-payers as a body.
Now in most things of life, if we have a valuable asset, Judicious
a reliable source of income, or any good thing which
yields us an abundant supply of what we need, we do our
best to safeguard our precious possession by wise precau-
tion and judicious protection, so that it may come to no
possible harm, and in this we are right.
But in regard to the valuable national asset we possess
in our rich and well-to-do folk and in our large philan-
thropic public, we do nothing of the kind. Governments
and these modern Socialists take that course which
severs rather than connects, which divorces ra.ther than
weds ; and if we alienate the sympathies and good will of
those who help us, of those who serve us loyally and well,
we shall assuredly suffer for our folly sooner or later.
220 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
Governments' safeguard and the people's good lie in
keeping on excellent terms with those who supply the
wherewithal; and this is sure, that if the complaisant
good will of the tax-payers of this country, and of that
vast army of private helpers, upon which so much
depends, be too rudely shaken and disturbed, trouble
will surely arise.
221
CHAPTER XXIII
County Councils and Small Holdings — Miscar-
riage OF Public Duty
THE power of the British tax-payer has, hitherto,
been potential rather than actual, but the power is
there, nevertheless. Given the opportunity, it will
develop into an active living force, before which even
Governments might be swept away. Combination, cohe-
sion and organisation are all that are required to convert
an easy-going passivity into strong energetic action, and
those who are responsible for the present uncompromising
attitude towards the entire body of British tax-payers,
and towards that which is good and noble in the British
people, should beware lest this thing happen.
The triumph of right over wrong in the recent Lon-
don County Council Elections and the defeat of Socialism
in the last Municipal Elections are but exemplifications of
what can be done by even a little combination, but if the
great body of the tax-payers of the Empire be once con-
vinced that organised combination in defence of their
rights be necessary, then it is not a Government nor a
succession of Governments, nor a fervid band of social
Ishmaelites, that will bar the way to reform.
Government and those concerned might hsten to this
doctrine with advantage !
Let us beware of that pernicious type of so-called
Socialism that teaches violence and unrest, for it is cer-
222 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
tain that by such means national prosperity can never
come.
And this is true, that, in one way and another, we find
our best interests have suffered through the efforts of
those who have been pulHng and hauhng them in this
direction and that, and we are sick and tired of it all.
Whigs, Tories, Liberals, Conservatives, Liberal-Union-
ists, Radicals and Labourites, Cobdenites, and now
Socialists, have all had a turn at us, and played with us
like a shuttlecock, with their own particular little Party
game as a battledore, and so — our interests have been
tossed about one to the other.
Doubt, Another thing, of which we should beware, is the fatal
and Self- habit of hesitancy, doubt and disbelief, which is a
Interest jyi^rked characteristic of the day. Bring along your
scheme, it matters not what it may be, and you will have
a veritable host of scoffers and disputants ready to pull it
to pieces.
In Parliament or out of it, it is the same, always doubt,
ridicule, derision, opposition, always a" Party " against
it, always somebody ready to pull down remorselessly
what it has taken better men such infinite pains to build
up. Your scheme may be as hollow as a drum, or as solid
as Mother Earth, it is aU the same to your iconoclast ; his
business is to destroy, and he does it in many cases. " Oh,
I can't stomach that." " You won't catch me beheving
this." and the short, but trenchant " bally rot " are
common sayings in the mouths of thousands of people,
whose only warrant for their utterance is that spirit of
foolish unbelief which possesses so many of our country^-
men.
COUNTY COUNCILS & SMALL HOLDINGS 223
Coupled with this spirit of unbelief there is the power-
ful spirit of self-interest, which bars the way to many a
scheme of reform. Financial interests, political interests,
or other personal interests always have something to say
against any measures necessitating alteration in existing
conditions, and these vested interests will surely rise up in
wrathful judgment against the scheme propounded in
these pages.
There are those living to-day who remember the fierce
opposition and the derisive contempt with which steam
was received years ago.
Steam is a mighty power to-day.
Then it was only yesterday, as it were, that Marconi
met with so deadly an opposition from those who had
something to lose, or fancied they had, from the adop-
tion of his scheme — opposition that would have broken
down a weaker man; yet wireless telegraphy is an ac-
complished fact to-day.
And so it is all along the line. Those who build up will
always find many who are ready to pull down; always
doubters and deriders; always those, who, for some
reason or other, will surely bar the way to progress and
reform.
But in spite of this let us be loyal to ourselves.
" This above all — to thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day.
Thou canst not then be false to any man."
Let us banish from our minds all these doubts and
fears, which those who have some purpose to serve would
make us entertain, and believe firmly and steadfastly that
Attitude
Assumed
224 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
Result of poverty is nothing but the result of unwise laws, which
Unwise ^ -' o
Laws may easily be altered; that pauperism is an economic
condition absolutely unnecessary ; that general prosperity
is quite within our reach; and that the regeneration of
the British people depends solely upon the amendment
of fiscal laws and wise helpful State administration.
And let us, above all, realise once and for all that :
" Our doubts are traitors
And make us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt."
A further interesting point in the consideration of this
vital question is the general attitude we assume in deal-
ing with it, which may be described as an attitude of
condonation, excuse, exoneration and puerile weakness,
amounting almost to criminal negligence.
It is not surprising that there should be this general
inaneness because it has been the fashion to believe for
the last half-century, or thereabouts, that the agricul-
tural industry of Great Britain was in a hopelessly im-
possible condition, and that it was mere waste of time
and sheer nonsense to try to do anything for it.
In a few words this exactly describes the feelings of
the British people towards Britain's great land industry;
and when practically a whole nation holds such perni-
cious views, it is no wonder that failure is excused,
blundering forgiven, and maladministration condoned.
The Small Holdings Act of 1892 is a case in point. This
Act was especially designed to afford relief to the people
by encouraging the development of Small Holdings in
Great Britain. The operation of the Act was made over
COUNTY COUNCILS & SMALL HOLDINGS 225
to County Councils, and in ten years those municipal
bodies had succeeded in acquiring but the insignificant
amount of 569 acres.
Now when ParHament legislates in the interests of Rigi»teous
the people, in order that they may find some relief from tion
the hardships of life, and entrusts the working of its
measures to certain official corporate bodies, it is at least
expected that those officials will take the trouble to
rightly interpret the laws and administer them with
intelligence and promptitude. Failing this, there should
be righteous condemnation and punishment.
Here is an actual result.
One of the ablest contributions of modern times to the
necessity of creating a great agricultural industry in the
country, Land Reform, by the Right Hon. Jesse Col-
lings, M.P., page 207, has the following:
" The County Councils — with some exceptions, which
will be noticed — have practically ignored the duty placed
upon them. For the most part they have not even
appointed advisory committees to consider the question,
which under the fifth clause of the Act, it made it com-
pulsory for them to do."
In other instances the author of Land Reform, points
out that many of the County Councils regard the Act as :
"A land speculation, on which — out of regard for the
rates — they are not warranted to enter."
While on page 208 of the same work we find the writer,
in accounting for the failure of the Act, saying :
" Members of County Councils, in the rural counties,
15
226 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
do not in this respect represent the agricultural labourers.
They are mostly of the territorial class — of the old
quarter sessions type. They are kindly disposed towards
the labourers, and would do what they think is good for
them, but always as labourers. They have not as yet
accepted the idea that the creation of a class of land-
owning peasants would be good for agriculture itself, as
well as for the community."
In a word the County Councils, for reasons which were
wholly insufficient, and certainly reprehensible, have
thought fit to deride and set at naught a great Parlia-
mentary measure which was enacted in the National
interests, and for the help and benefit of a large section
of our workers, which finds the conditions of life so hard
as to be wellnigh hopeless.
Miscarriage So great a miscarriage of public duty calls for sharp
Duty official reprimand and fitting punishment as well as pub-
lic condemnation.
This is what Land Reform, page 212, says on the sub-
ject:
" Taking into consideration all these adverse circum-
stances, the Small Holdings Act cannot fairly be de-
scribed as a failure. Up to the end of 1892 eight County
Coimcils in England and Wales had put the Act into
operation. They had, at that date, acquired a total area
of 569 acres of land for the purpose of small holdings."
It seems clear enough, even to the poorest intelligence,
that if County Councils " have practically ignored the
duty placed upon them " while only " eight " of them
have acquired but 569 acres in ten years, the Small Hold-
COUNTY COUNCILS & SMALL HOLDINGS 227
ings Act of 1892 is a most unmitigated failure, and is, to
all intents and purposes, as dead as a kippered herring.
It is equally clear that if County Councils have, for the
insufficient reasons referred to in Land Reform, practi-
cally killed a useful Act, which was intended to give some
relief to the people, they have committed a grave offence
against the commonweal, and it follows, in logical
sequence, that where an offence is committed, condemna-
tion should follow, not condonation and excuse.
No great military commander in the world's history
ever won his battles by excusing and condoning the
faults and failures of his lieutenants; and no nation can
remain great and prosperous that persistently exone-
rates its office-bearers from all blame attaching to mal-
administration of public affairs, and glosses over every
offence against the commonweal. Such an attitude is
worse than mawkish and imbecile; it is positively de-
structive and wellnigh criminal, and the sooner we accept
this plain wholesome fact, the better it will be for us.
The men who serve the State on these corporate
bodies were not pitchforked into their position, whether
they liked it or no. All rate-payers are acquainted with
their methods of candidature, and know full well how
eagerly every seat in the council is competed for.
These municipal councillors spare no pains in getting
elected to the position they occupy, and when they have
secured what they covet, it is only fair to expect that
they will do their duty.
This Small Holdings Act of 1892 affords a striking ex-
ample of municipal administrative failure of a grave
nature, and of insubordination to the Imperial Govern-
15^
228 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
ment ; and we ask : — why have they so cruelly wronged
the people?
Another aspect of this question which requires looking
into and adjusting, is the menace to the body politic
involved in municipal insubordination.
Passive Here we have an example showing how easy it is for
municipal bodies to thwart the Imperial Government
and do a wrong to the people by the mere process of
passive resistance, and unless the Imperial Government
assumes a firm attitude in the matter, and exercises a
sharper control over local governments, matters will go
from bad to worse, and the unfortunate people will be as
completely humbugged, and their best interests fooled
away by these municipal councils, as they have been in
so many other directions.
Government should never have entrusted the working
of an important Act like that of 1892 to the incompe-
tency of municipal councils ; it was an Imperial measure,
and its operation should have been the especial care of
the central authority. Nevertheless, County Councils
were entrusted with the working of the Act, and we have
seen how signally they have betrayed their trust.
For fifteen years the people have been waiting and
hoping for some relief from their burdens, and they have
waited in vain because County Councils, forsooth, stood
in their way.
The people of Great Britain have a bitter grievance
against local governments, and they ask, in the name of
JUSTICE, that the whole matter be looked into by
Government, and their grievance redressed.
229
CHAPTER XXIV
Compulsory Sale of Land — Will the Landlords
Suffer?
NOW we come to the further considerations of, per-
haps, the most important hnk in the long chain of
lost opportunities. Though there is unanimity of ideas,
those ideas are not carried out with that strong impulsive
force which makes for, and commands complete success.
There is a general concensus of opinion among the best
authorities on the agricultural condition of Great
Britain, that relief from the present intolerable pressure,
arising from congested labour markets, is only coming
from the land, and they affirm that this can best be
brought about by the creation of a number of small
holdings.
They further point out that the surest way of guaran-
teeing success and securing high-class culture and the
maximum yield from the land is to follow the French
and German systems of creating " Occupying Owner-
ships." Of this there is no room for doubt, for not only
have those countries adopted this system, but it is
practically universal in all European countries.
It is a perfectly sound argument, therefore, as far as it Thorough-
" ness and
goes, but unfortunately, like so many of our measures of Complete-
public utility, it does not go far enough ; it falls short of required
the mark and lacks that one essential to complete success
— thoroughness and completeness!
230 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
A complete system of small occupying ownerships,
spread far and wide over the length and breadth of
Great Britain, would raise the people of England to a
height of general prosperity never before attained, and
there is no doubt about this because we have the ex-
ample of half a dozen neighbouring States as a safe guide.
An incomplete, half-hearted measure, however, would
only afford partial relief to the few, and this is not
exactly what we want to accomplish.
We want to offer to the whole of our workers immu-
nity from want and guarantee them against that general
precariousness of life which is their portion to-day, and
we know full well that this can only be accomplished by
dealing with the land question in a whole-hearted, com-
prehensive manner.
It is not the thousands of small holdings that will help
the position but the millions, and, as we have already
seen, there is ample room in the Kingdom for lite-
rally and truly millions of such occupying ownerships.
Let us, then, not make the unpardonable blunder at the
very outset, of giving to the nation a paltry, timid
measure of help, but one full to the brim, of generous
support and assistance.
We hear it said : " Oh! but it would be a gross injustice
to the landlord to take his land from him by force and
give it to Jack, Tom and Harry."
Let us look into this matter for a moment.
The land on this globe of ours is intended by the
Creator to produce good for, and give occupation to,
the people. This, unquestionably, is its primary use.
If, by the chance of war, or the accident of circurn-
COMPULSORY SALE OF LAND 231
stances, the land of a certain country happens, in the ^o National
course of time, to get into the hands of a few ovMiers, who, Suffer?
owing to economic conditions, or for other reasons, can-
not, or will not, cultivate it in a manner to ensure the
best results to the Nation, it follows, as an incontrovert-
ible fact, that national interests must suffer.
If national interests suffer from such a cause, it is the
manifest duty of the State to take such steps as may be
necessary to ensure a return to those conditions under
which national prosperity may be re-established and
maintained.
This, in a nutshell, is the precise condition of our land
industry to-day.
The land of our country has, for certain reasons, which
need not be referred to here, got into the hands of a few
men who cannot, or will not, cultivate it in a manner to
ensure the best results to the Nation, and unless this con-
dition be changed, the country will continue to suffer
immense loss from neglect of this, its greatest industry.
It has been shown in these pages how colossal this loss
is, and how it ramifies among all sections of the people ;
how the taxable area of the country has been reduced by
the blighting effect of the decay of a great industry ; and
how Government is forced to rely more and more on
direct taxation of a galling and, in some cases, of an un-
just nature, because of this restricted area. It is seen how
the heavy pauper burden has become intolerable
because the land can neither employ nor feed the people,
and, therefore, a clear case is established in favour of
reform, and reform of a drastic nature.
Let us look at the matter from the landlords' stand-
232 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
point first of all. What has he done with his heritage
during the last fifty years, say; has it paid him, has it
brought him in that return which good property should,
or has it not? The landlord himself knows best! The
public have been led to believe that land is a bad invest-
ment, that in many instances it is not worth the holding,
and that many a big landowner, after paying the neces-
sary upkeep expenses on his farms, hardly gets anything
out of his estates.
If this be the case then one obstacle, at least, in the
way of a different condition of land tenures disappears
automatically, as no man can reasonably expect to hold
on to a condition of things which is distinctly inimical to
his own interests.
Small Then what is his position in regard to sale? Can it be
Occupying
Ownerships proved that he would be a loser under a system of com-
pulsory sale to Government for the purpose of small
occupying ownerships?
Let us also look into this question for a moment.
During the last eighteen months the writer has been
looking for a little property and has had scores of first-
class agricultural estates, with excellent mansions,
dwelling houses, farms, cottages and farm buildings;
complete estates in fact, offered to him at prices varying
from £i^ to £28 per acre. Several of these estates have
been inspected and reported upon by a land expert, and
in every case the land was said to be good agricultural
land.
It stands to reason, therefore, that when the State
comes in as purchaser every regard will be paid to market
prices. Under the Small Holdings Act of 1892, County
COMPULSORY SALE OF LAND 233
Councils in all cases paid a good deal more for the land
they purchased than the prices for which landowners are
perfectly willing to sell it to private buyers ; and as the
Imperial Government would, in every case, be guided
by market prices, we fail to see where the injustice
comes in.
If the injustice consists in the compulsory nature of the
business, then, while we can readily understand and
appreciate such a feeling, we could not altogether con-
demn it for such a reason, because we could point to an
equal measure of injustice in a good many other matters
pertaining to the administration of the affairs of the
commonwealth, which are actually acquiesced in and
agreed to by that very class which would condemn this
occupying ownership scheme. The income-tax, poor-
rates, death-duties, and other items of a kindred nature
in the domestic life of the nation are all compulsory, but
that fact alone is insufficient to condemn them on the
score of injustice. None of us like these compulsory
attentions on the part of Government, but as loyal sub-
jects we recognise the necessity for their existence, and
we submit to them.
Let us adopt precisely the same course in respect to
new land tenures, always bearing in mind this important
difference, that, whereas in one case our millions are, as
we have seen, spent in vain in many directions, in this
case, those who are asked to give up something would
receive in return full market value for that which they part
with.
Then, again, there is the pressing necessity for remov-
ing this question of cultivating our soil to the best pos-
234 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
The Region sible results all round — to the individual, the people and
of Polemics , „ . , . ^ .
the State — from the region of polemics.
If we take the trouble to study the works of most of
the writers on the subject, and the speeches of those who
are patriotic enough to touch on the matter on public
platforms, we shall find that, in nearly every case, a
more or less controversial attitude is assumed.
Indeed, this simple question, the solution of which is
so apparent, is treated by many writers and speakers
with almost the same amount of academic discussion as
astronomers contrive to cast about the origin of star
clusters and those mysterious nebulae, which are sunk in
space to such an appalling distance that the light takes
centuries to reach our earth.
There is nothing far away or abstruse about this simple
question as to whether we shall or shall not cultivate
our fields, and the wonder is that we have been beguiled
so long by those who would make a mystery of it. There
is no room for discussion, and none for doubt; nor is
there the faintest chance of losing our way, because the
path, and the only path to our destination, lies plainly
before us, and is as straight as an arrow.
This is the question : — There is a town with, for instance,
a hundred thousand inhabitants ; it has its usual com-
plement of professions, trades and manufacturing in-
dustries, but, nevertheless, it cannot employ and sup-
port its entire population.
Many of the people are badly off because of lack of
employment, and numbers, indeed, are on the verge of
starvation; while many who possess energy and enter-
prise, make a bold dash for freedom and prosperity by
COMPULSORY SALE OF LAND 235
leaving the town and seeking their fortunes in foreign
parts.
In the vicinity of the town, and surrounding it on all
sides, there are, we will imagine, large tracts of splendid
agricultural land lying unfilled because of the foolish yet
suicidal policy of the urban council, or governing body,
in attracting the people to important urban industries
and pursuits, and leaving out of consideration the still
more important land industry, which, in their blind
fatuity, they have left neglected and uncared for.
Matters having reached a crisis, it is found that, if
these valuable lands be properly cultivated, employ-
ment will not only be found for all those who are unem-
ployed in the town, but for a good many more besides;
while it is also certain that the creation of a large,
prosperous agricultural industry just outside the town,
and encompassing it in all directions, must necessarily
largely increase the demand on the town's production of
manufactured wares and other goods.
A simpler question was never put before the human A Simple
11 • • ,1 1 • Question
race, and the answer to it is so easy that the wonder is and
that we hesitate, for it is just at this spot that we shall Answer*
find the key to the position.
We, the people, do not hesitate nor have we ever hesi-
tated. We know how this question should be settled, and
ought to have been settled long ago, but we have never
been allowed to have a voice in the matter. The people
know perfectly well that where we have valuable land it
ought to be cultivated, and cultivated for all it is worth,
just as we know that, wherever we possess a valuable
asset of any kind, of whatsoever nature in this world, it is
236 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
our plain duty to work it in every way to our advantage
and profit.
The people know clearly enough that their real inte-
rests have been shamefully sacrificed by those whom
they have set up to regulate and govern national affairs,
just as we have seen that the interests of those who lived
in the town — which we use as an illustration — were sac-
rificed by the weak yet destructive policy adopted by its
governing body.
Let us then lift this simple question of whether or not
we should cultivate our fields, out of the region of recon-
dite polemics and place it in the simple category of
ascertained facts.
Every schoolboy knows that a highly tilled field is
more valuable than a piece of waste common of similar
size, and that the one gives employment to, and pro-
duces something for, a certain number of people, while
the other produces nothing.
Why, therefore, do we invest so elementary a matter
with all the fuss and bother that centres round the solu-
tion of an abstruse scientific problem, which requires
great skill and deep learning to unravel, instead of treat-
ing it with elementary simplicity?
Why? — The answer is, because, in the first place, we
have been " sold " by Governments which have been too
weak to act up to the courage of their convictions, and
secondly, because we have been humbugged and tricked
by every political party in the country, whose interests
do not lie in the direction of land reform.
Out of this atmosphere of weakness and political
prestidigitation has been evolved a feeling of doubt and
COMPULSORY SALE OF LAND 237
uncertainty in the minds of the British people as to the
possibilities, or capabilities, of agriculture, and our
reason has become muddled and befogged to such an
extent that we are really incapable of forming sound,
practical, common-sense views on a subject that is, in
reality, simplicity itself. Once we divest our minds of all
this obfuscation. the cardinal fact will stand out clear and
sharp that, in agriculture, we have the most important
factor in the solution of those social and economic diffi-
culties which envelop, as with a dark cloud, the people of
this country.
238
CHAPTER XXV
Effect of Creating Small Holdings — A New
AND Powerful Body of Electors
A New and ^ \ T^ might usefully refer again to the small holdings
^'Bod*^^of question in order to see how, if properly manipu-
Electors lated, it might be made one of the most potent factors
ever placed in the hands of a political party. Assuming
that the two great political parties in the country — the
Liberals and Liberal-Unionists — are desirous of legisla-
ting in the true interests of the commonwealth, both
would naturally be equally interested in the formation of
a new and powerful body of electors consisting of several
millions of small occupying owners who would vote solid
for law and order or, in other words, for the conservation
of all that which, in the British Constitution, is just,
equitable, right, loyal and patriotic. Create your host of
small-landed proprietors, occupying owners, or whatever
it may please you to call them, and you will have formed
the most conservative body of electors in the country;
for it is an axiom that no man guards so jealously his
rights and privileges, and conserves that which conduces
to law and order, as does your agricultural proprietor.
But there must be no shilly-shallying, half-hearted
measures. What is required is a down-right, comprehen-
sive system of occupying ownerships, which, in its broad
sweep, would embrace every acre of the land from John
o' Groat's to the Land's End, and from the Wash to
Milford Haven.
EFFECT OF CREATING SMALL HOLDINGS 239
We have seen that France, with her 92,442,745 acres Foreign
of cultivated area, has 5,550,000 smallholdings; Gcr- '^'^amples
many, with her 108,211,772 acres of cultivated area, has
5.558,317 small holdings; Hungary, with her 54,303,938
acres of cultivated area, has 2,795,885 small holdings,
while we, with our 48,000,000 acres under cultivation,
have only 1,104,637 small holdings.
Even little Belgium, with her tiny 4,350,000 acres of
cultivated area, has as many as 829,625 smaU holdings.
Give to our country a small holding's system pretty
much on the same principle as we find obtaining in every
prosperous State in Europe, and our 48,000,000 of " cul-
tivated" areawillgiveus, on the German basis, 2,500,000
agricultural holdings; on the French basis, 2,850,000; on
the Hungarian basis, 2,500,000; and on the Belgian
basis, 9,000,000.
But if we bring the twelve to fourteen millions of acres
of waste land before referred to, into the field of opera-
tions and add them to our 48,000,000 of cultivated area,
our agricultural holdings would then amount, on the
basis of the small holdings of the four countries above
given, to:
3,330,000; 3,800,000; 3,333,000 and 12,000,000
respectively, instead of the miserable 1,104,637 " Hold-
ings " of sorts now on the agricultural register.
If a vast body of new electors is imported into the
politics of the State, a body, moreover, created out of
the prescience of a wise Government, it follows that,
apart from the well-known conservative bias of all agri-
culturists, the Government would, at least, ensure the
240 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
Gain to the good will and support of those whom they had brought
Government . ^, .. . . i i i , ii
into existence. The offspring is, as a rule, loyal to the
parent, and your host of new agricultural electors would
naturally be loyal to those who gave them birth, particu-
larly so if, in their wisdom. Government would but lead
them by the hand and give them, while in their infancy,
just that judicious amount of encouragement and sup-
port which is essential to all young life.
We want to get the " best possible " result out of the
land — for the people,the tax-payers and the Government ;
and, above all, we want to absolutely guarantee the main-
tenance of law and order and the building up of that
abiding, general prosperity which we know full well can
only come out of the creation of widespread industries,
wherefrom the people may find full and profitable em-
ployment and — PEACE.
Create your army of agricultural voters ; train them to
habits of thrift and industry; encourage them by wise
measures of help ; give them every facility for the transit
of agricultural produce throughout the country; bring
them into direct touch with the consumer by the estab-
lishment of a multitude of municipal markets all over
the kingdom, and you will have done that which will
assuredly bring about conditions of prosperity.
If you create a prosperous agriculturist, you give him
a solid stake in the country, and once you do this you
invest him with those attributes which make for law and
order, and which are openly hostile to revolution and
chaos.
Armed and equipped with the necessary weapons of
offence and defence, your new army of agricultural
EFFECT OF CREATING SMALL HOLDINGS 241
voters would become the most potent factor in the field
of modern politics, and the Government of the day could
use this new force with powerful effect. Among other
things, it could be used with deadly results against the
advancing ranks of Red Socialism, which, taken in flank
by this new and unlooked-for foe, would have to bring
about a speedy change of front or suffer crushing defeat.
We have seen, in the foregoing pages, how Sociahsm in
Germany met with a fatal defeat in the general elections
in January of last year because industrial Germany,
particularly the agricultural industry, being in a highly
prosperous condition, wanted peace, not riot and tumult,
and she got it. Go to Germany to-day, and you will
find a state of prosperity unequalled by any civilised
State in the world — general prosperity and social and
economic peace.
This powerful reinforcement of the political power of
the State used against the forces of this modern de-
structive Socialism, would destroy them as surely as the
fervid sunbeams melt the snowflakes, while they might
be used with equal force in many directions to "right
the wrong " and to sweep away much that is bad and
hurtful in the administration of national affairs.
Create this multitude of new voters, treat them justly
and with consideration, and you will have a new political
power before which Irish Nationalists, Socialists, Little
Englanders, Empire wreckers and paid political agitators
of all sorts will be swept away as easily as the strong
autumnal gales sweep away the fallen leaves of the
orest.
16
242
CHAPTER XXVI
Physical Degeneration of the People — Means of
Uplifting Them
IT would be unjust to the British people if, in writing
on a subject so momentous to their well-being, w^e
failed to dwell on that aspect of it which is so intimately
connected wdth, and interwoven in, the very fibres of
their physical lives.
For a good many years past the "Physical Degenera-
tion of the British People " has been a subject of wide-
spread public interest. Royal Commissions have been
appointed to inquire into the matter; public speakers
and writers galore have dwelt forcibly on the lamentable
decadence of the people's physical strength ; while all the
evidence afforded by the reports of official investigations
conclusively proves that this decadence is practically
universal among the masses ; that the damage has been
done; the evil wrought; and that the curse clings to a
large section of the British people with the same fearful
tenacity as the deadly folds of the great constrictor ser-
pent cling to his prey.
Space forbids a lengthy disquisition on the subject,
but room must be found for a couple of the latest refer-
ences to it.
The Daily Express of August lo, 1907, has the follow-
ing, which is here given in extenso.
PHYSICAL DEGENERATION OF THE PEOPLE 243
DEGENERATION AND POVERTY Alarming
Remarkable Figures from Board Schools
Stunted Growth
" Remarkable proof of the physical degeneration
caused by poverty has been obtained by an investigation
as to the heights and weights of the board-school children
of Glasgow.
" Nearly 73,000 children were examined in the course
of this investigation, which was the most extensive ever
undertaken in Britain. A report by Dr W. Leslie Macken-
zie, medical member of the Local Government Board for
Scotland, and Captain A. Foster, Inspector of Physical
Training, on the statistics collected, was issued last even-
ing as a Blue book.
" According to this the children were divided up into
four classes, those living in one room, two rooms, three
rooms, and four rooms and over. The average weight and
height of the boys, who ranged in age from five to eigh-
teen years, was as follows:
Weight in Height in
Pounds. Inches.
One-roomed 52.6 46.6
Two-roomed 56.1 48.1
Three-roomed 60.6 50.0
Four-roomed 64.3 51.3
For girls the figures were :
Weight in Height in
Pounds. Inches.
One-roomed 51.5 4^-3
Two-roomed 54.8 47.8
Three-roomed 59.4 49-^
Four-roomed 65.5 5^.6
16a
244 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
Only One Conclusion
" ' These figures show that the one-roomed child,
whether boy or girl, is always on the average distinctly
smaller and lighter than the two-roomed,' states the
report; ' and the two-roomed than the three-roomed;
and the three-roomed than the four-roomed. The num-
bers examined are so large, and the results are so uni-
form, that only one conclusion is possible : that the poor-
est child suffers most in nutrition and in growth.
" ' It cannot be an accident that boys from one-
roomed houses should be 1 1.7 lb. lighter, on an average,
than boys from four-roomed houses, and 4.7 inches
smaller. Neither is it an accident that girls from one-
roomed houses, are, on the average, 14 lb. lighter, and
5.3 inches shorter than the girls from four-roomed
houses.' "
And in the same issue there is this evidence from a
separate source and from a different part of the kingdom.
One Child in every Two Dies
" Dr Francis J. Allan, medical officer of health for
Westminster, states in his annual report, that of 1,278
children born in 363 famihes during the past three years,
639, exactly one in every two, died before reaching the
age of one year."
Hundreds of similar proofs of this terrible physical
degeneration of our unfortunate fellow countrjmien are
supphed, alas! from different directions, and there is any
amount of official proof that, height, weight and chest
measurement for age, the young of the British masses
PHYSICAL DEGENERATION OF THE PEOPLE 245
are far below any European nation in these test stan-
dards of national physique, and, indeed, actually below
the standard of alien races in our midst: — the Jewish
children, for example. There is also equally indisputable
evidence that, among the children of the poor, over 80
per cent, of them suffer from imperfect and rotten teeth :
an infallible sign of physical deterioration.
Here, again, we have to ask : — why?
Why should the British people, of all people in the J[ere t'^e^^uch
civilised world, be singled out for this fearful yet un- Misery and
J ,. ^ Degradation?
deserved degradation?
What have they done that their rulers should take
upon themselves the awful responsibility of pauperising
a people, and reducing them to a state of misery, the
like of which can find no parallel in any State of Europe,
or in any civilised country in the world?
Why should our people be driven from healthy, life-
giving occupations in the wholesome open country and
herded together, like sheep in a pen, in the crowded and
unhealthy purlieus of great cities, where it is known they
live in hard, grinding poverty, and in a foul atmosphere
of moral and physical degradation?
Why is it that millions of our fellow countrymen and
women and children should be reduced to a condition
that excites the pity of the more fortunate of the
British people, as well as the wonder of all foreigners,
and which demands the outpouring of copious and ever-
flowing streams of charity from State and Public? — why?
Let the Governments, past and present, answer.
Let those political parties, which have been using the
people's interests to serve their own needs, answer.
246 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
Let the Cobdenite school, who, over half a century
ago, destroyed agriculture and cut off the people's best
and surest source of employment, answer.
For half a century, and more, have Governments,
political parties, and Cobdenites inflicted a cruel in-
justice on millions of unoffending people; and because
their political or personal interests stood in the way, they
would not right the wrong they had done. Let them see
to it. Let them be called upon to render an account of
their stewardship, so that they may receive the due
reward of their work. Let them be called upon to make
restitution to a cruelly wronged and undeservedly de-
graded people, and let that restitution be full and com-
plete and speedily made.
Strength of But in spite of the miserable condition to which so
the iVlsisscs
Sapped many of our people have been reduced, there are not
wanting those who will endeavour to controvert the
position of affairs by the usual methods of cheap scepti-
cism, by assuming the " bally-rot " attitude, or by
pointing to the fact that as we excel in various feats of
athleticism and are continually " breaking records " in
running, cycling and the rest of it, we cannot be deterio-
rating in physical fitness.
This line of argument is the quintessence of meretri-
ciousness, but it is, nevertheless, convincing enough to
some people.
In the first place our athletes are the pick of the race,
and they are not drawn from that unfortunate section of
the people whose deplorable condition we are here con-
sidering.
Rome had her array of splendid gladiators, who main-
PHYSICAL DEGENERATION OF THE PEOPLE 247
tained her prowess in the pubHc arenas, when her
citizens were sunk in excesses of debauchery and vice,
and her manhood effeminated by unbridled indulgence ;
yet physical decay had sapped the strength of the people,
and Rome sank to rise no more as a great world empire.
The strength of the great masses of our people has been
sapped by other causes than those which contributed to
Rome's downfall, yet the results are not dissimilar.
Go, watch the crowds in any of our great manufactu-
ring towns, and you will soon become aware of the effect
of a couple of generations of town life on the people.
Watch them at our holida}' resorts on any Bank Holi-
day, and you will seek in vain for that splendid type of
manhood and womanhood which was our boast two or
three generations back. Pallid, under-sized, narrow-
chested and narrow-shouldered men and women you will
find moving about in a listless, half-hearted way, that is,
indeed, sad to behold, but you will look in vain for that
breezy briskness and frolicsome gaiety which is as
natural to young men and maidens as water is to the
duck. Go a little further afield, to the outskirts of your
holiday resorts, to your woods and quiet places, and you
will find your young men and maidens, instead of indul-
ging in that gaiete de civur which is but the external
evidence of a sunshiny mind, in positions which can only
indicate the working of a a mind depressed and degene-
rated by unhealthy physical and mental surroundings.
In every park or place of public resort in the Kingdom, Moral as well
particularly in provincial places, is the spectacle to be Deferforation
met with, and it is a matter for general comment. In
some places it is carried to such an extent that it
248 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
amounts to a scandal, and respectable, clean-minded
citizens have taken to avoiding certain localities.
Let us carefully note this fact: nowhere else in the
civilised world will such sights be met with as may be
seen on any Sunday evening or holiday evening in any of
our pubhc resorts. In France, Italy, or Germany, the
people enjoy themselves in a gay, bright fashion, and on
the occasion of their Fetes or Festas hundreds and
thousands of young couples may be met promenading
in the woods or other quiet places, but never do you see
the slightest approach to indecency.
The British people, or at all events a certain section of
them, stand alone in this respect, and the question
naturally has to be asked : — why?
The answer is simple enough, yet deadly in its sim-
plicity, because, in breaking down the physical body you
have, at the same time, seriously impaired the moral
being. Lower a man's physique, breed him in the stifling
atmosphere of an overcrowded city; environ him with
poverty and its companions — misery and despair ; poison
him with the foul miasma arising from life's degrada-
tions, and you will produce just the type we see about us
to-day in every part of this fair country of ours.
Shame on us as a people that we have permitted this
to go on for so long!
Shame, fourfold shame, on all those who are respon-
sible for this cruel, unredressed wrong.
Who among us can blame these poor wrongdoers,
when, through our own wrong done to them, they know
not they are offending?
What man among us wiU dare to cast the stone, when.
PHYSICAL DEGENERATION OF THE PEOPLE 249
through his own wrongdoing, he has brought about his
brother's degradation?
Ask these mute milhons if they have brought this foul
thing on themselves by their own deliberate choice, and
how will they answer you? Shall we be able to show that
we have done our best to put them in that position
which would enable them to help themselves?
Can we prove that we have taken that course in our
administration of their affairs that would encourage,
support and uplift them into such a position as would
enable them to live clean, wholesome lives, and afford
them a reasonable chance of attaining a fair share of the
good things of this life, and becoming respected citizens,
with a stake in their own country? No! a thousand
times, No! We have done none of these things, and we
know it.
In God's name let us wipe out this foul stain on the
civilisation of a great Empire, and purge our souls of a
monstrous injustice. We have the means at hand, let us
use them.
Let us recognise that in spite of all the humbug and
cant of this age, these millions are not represented to-
day in the councils of the Nation, and that they never
have been represented. They are voiceless as mutes and
as impotent as the withered limbs of a cripple. Let us
give them speech and motion, and start them on their
way to a better life and happier surroundings. Let us
infuse into their saddened lives a few bright beams of
hope, and develop those conditions which will enable
them to attain a higher standard of comfort, and a fair
modicum of content, prosperity and peace.
250 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
The Jhis is due to them ; it is the people's right, and if we
Right deny this to them we, as a Nation, deserve to suffer.
Governments, pohtical wire-pullers, and those who
uphold false doctrines, are all equally responsible for the
degradation of a vast section of the British people, and
if, after the many warnings that have been given time
and again by many speakers and many writers, they
still continue the perpetuation of a great injustice, they,
and not the people, must be held to blame if a still
greater evil arise out of an unredeemed wrong.
251
CHAPTER XXVII
The only Possible Conclusions — An Appeal to
THE Public
THE searchlight of Truth has been freely utilised in
the foregoing chapters for the purpose of illustra-
ting to the people of this country the perils with which
they are confronted. The Dragon which was slain by
St George has again to be encountered, overthrown, and
destroyed in the shape of the terrible modern scourge of
poverty, pauperism, waste, criminal neglect, and physi-
cal degeneration. Slowly, but surely, has this monster
been gripping the body politic with all-embracing tenta-
cles, and draining away the vitality and even the life-
blood of the Nation.
An earnest endeavour has been made in this book to
expose to the public view this rapacious modern Dragon ;
to describe the many ways in which it has wrought
havoc throughout the country; and to show how those
who should have followed the example of St George, and
have gone out to slay it, have been either too slothful,
too indifferent, too self-seeking, or too cowardly to pro-
tect the people from its ravages.
The object of the writer has been to arouse the people
to a sense of the necessity of taking drastic measures for
their own protection and benefit before it is too late. A
glorious heritage has been handed down to them by
their forefathers and they are bound in honour to
252 THE MURDER OE AGRICULTURE
pass it on unimpaired, to those who come after them.
In view of the perils with which that heritage is now
threatened, they find themselves at the parting of
the ways.
Let them beware that they do not take the wrong
path. If they continue to walk in the old, broad way of
apathy, indifference, attid neglect of their own interests,
they wiU assuredly find their ever- watchful enemy ready
to complete their destruction. If, on the other hand, they
will seek the straight and narrow path which leads to re-
form and practical legislation, they may yet come into
that promised land of national safety and Imperial
greatness, which should be the ultimate destiny of all
real lovers of their country.
Surely they are not so foolish, when shown the perils
of their present position, as to refuse to make the attempt
to work out their own salvation as a Nation. Hitherto,
they have apparently preferred to let others " think "
for them, they have even, ostrich-like, hidden their heads
in the sands that they might not see their ever-active
enemy.
The startling facts and anomalies revealed in the pre-
ceding chapters should be no longer ignored. It is abso-
lutely necessary to " read, mark, learn and inwardly
digest " them in order to properly realise aU that they
mean. The land industry has been so greatly neglected
that it has become a source of weakness instead of
strength to the country; it compels excessive emigra-
tion, because there is no employment on the land ; it in-
duces poverty, and creates a pestilential mass of paupe-
rism ; and it kills that demand for manufactured goods.
THE ONLY POSSIBLE CONCLUSIONS 253
which, under other and better conditions, would un-
doubtedly come from prosperous agriculture.
It has been clearly shown that the agricultural and
fiscal policy of the country for the last half-century has
been bringing ruin and unemployment to the people,
and that the affairs of the Nation have been so badly
managed that it has been involved in heavy financial
losses and widespread poverty and degradation in con-
sequence. Indeed, the need for drastic change has been
so fully illustrated that it is only necessary now to make
some practical suggestions, which, if adopted, may per-
haps help to remedy the existing evils and to bring about
some of those long-wanted reforms, which should lead the
people back into the ways of peace, plenty, and prospe-
rity, from which they have been so sadly straying.
Without the great land industry, trades, manufac-
tures and professions alone cannot support and emplo}'
the entire working population of the country. Without
any other State aid than the amendment of our fiscal
system, the State encouragement of general agriculture,
and co-operation with other industries, trades and manu-
factures, they could maintain themselves in a state of
active and progressive prosperity. A system of general
agriculture would absorb so large a portion of our work-
ing population that an equilibrium would be set up
between the supply and demand for labour, which would
mean greater independence and better wages for the
workers. The land industry, without other State aid than
suitable land tenures, a practical scheme of small
proprietary holdings, an amended fiscal system, and con-
sistent encouragement to general agriculture, would be
254 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
as self-supporting as other industries. The entire question
depends, therefore, upon the proper development of the
land industry.
Regulations should also be made for the reduction of
railway rates to enable producers to send their food-
stuffs more quickly and cheaply to market. A multitude
of municipal markets should be established throughout
the country, and where that is scarcely possible, the pro-
ducers should co-operate for the purpose of erecting
centres for the receipt of their goods, the results of the
sales to be placed to their credit. A much greater use
could also be made of the facilities offered for the con-
struction of light railways to link the country districts
together and enable the home producers to compete with
foreign importers.
With the creation of milhons of small holdings em-
ployment would thus be provided for every man, woman
and child in the Kingdom, and with wise and helpful
administration the wealth of the country would be
vastly increased.
One of the greatest obstacles to the progress and re-
form is the party spirit in Parliament and municipali-
ties, for it engenders strife and contention and seriously
hampers the efforts of the representatives of the people.
No one wishes to see it altogether abolished, but very
serious efforts must be made to remedy its evil effects
and to alter existing methods. Whole-hearted support
should be given to measures for the public good, quite
apart from party considerations, in fact the spirit of
patriotism should rank before the spirit of party, and
not be sacrificed to it.
THE ONLY POSSIBLE CONCLUSIONS 255
What is really required in the interests of the country
is that the great political parties should unite for the
amicable settlement of the agricultural and fiscal pro-
blems. The Poor Law system in the same way should be
thrown into the melting-pot, and so reorganised to
meet modem requirements, that it would not be neces-
sary to go on wasting untold milHons, as in the past, on
State, public, and private charity.
By proceeding on these and other hnes, sketched in
preceding chapters, it should be comparatively easy to
establish Old Age Pensions, to which the State, em-
ployers, and the employed could contribute their quotas.
An atmosphere of peace, prosperity and happiness would
thus be evolved from the foul miasma arising from
the poverty, pauperism and despair, which are now the
curse of the country, and of which those Socialists,
who are really Anarchists, are endeavouring to make
so much political capital for the furtherance of their
own ends.
With this brief presentment of the important ques-
tions dealt with extensively in earlier pages, it only
remains for us to ask ourselves: — "Shall we be found
wanting as a Nation, when our time comes to be weighed
in the balance? Have we used well the talents entrusted
to us, or have we hidden them away in a napkin, like the
man in the old parable?"
We form a part only of a great Empire. Have we set an
example that our Colonies and the world at large may
foUow with advantage and benefit? Or have we been so
neglecting our great destiny as a Nation, and our splendid
opportunities as a people, that we incur the danger of
256 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE
seeing inscribed on the wall, as in letters of fire, the
words which foretold the fall of ancient Babylon :
Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin!
It is not too late to ask ourselves these questions, and
upon our answer to them and upon the attitude we shall
adopt with regard to the vital problems dealt with in
this work will greatly depend the future of this country
and Empire! Surely we ought to strive, as a Nation, to
deserve such an inscription as that which commemorates
in St Paul's Cathedral the life-work of Sir Christopher
Wren: " Si monumentum requiris circumspice " (If you
seek his,monument look around) .
FINIS
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