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Pass on Pamphlets.      No. 8.
1d.

THE REMEDY FOR UNEMPLOYMENT

ALFRED R. WALLACE







The Clarion Press,
44, Worship Street, London, E.C.


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  No. 48.--THE CASE FOR SOCIALISM.
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THE REMEDY FOR UNEMPLOYMENT.

BY DR. ALFRED R. WALLACE.


The reason why I wrote the present pamphlet (which first appeared in
the “Socialist Review,” and is now reprinted in a slightly modified
form) was that, although there is a small body of avowed Socialists
in Parliament, not one of them has, so far as I am aware, upheld any
of the fundamental principles of Socialism as a means of dealing with
the greatest of present-day problems--that of chronic unemployment and
starvation all over our land. Let me illustrate what I mean by a few
examples. Perhaps the most fundamental and universally admitted axiom
of Socialism is that all production should be, primarily, _for use and
not for profit_; and the next in importance is that the true or proper
_wages of labour_ is _the whole product of that labour_.

But neither in Parliament nor out of it has a single voice been raised
to show that these principles _must_ be adopted in any permanent
solution of the problem, or to explain how they _can_ be applied far
more easily and economically than any of the suggested alleviations.
All the talk has hitherto been of securing trade union rates of wages
for out-of-works of every kind; and the underlying idea has always been
that of the non-Socialist worker--that the Government provision of
work must _not_ be looked upon as permanent, but only as enabling the
worker to live till the capitalist employer again requires him.

An equally non-Socialist view was put forth by one of the most
respected Socialists in Parliament when he advocated the immediate
construction of light railways all over the country in order that when
labour was brought back to the land the products could be carried
economically to market, implying that the “products” were to be sold,
thus competing in the market with those of other producers, lowering
prices, and altogether ignoring the great Socialist principle of
“production for use.” In the discussion of this question it has been
totally overlooked that by a proper organisation of the labour of
the permanently or temporarily unemployed, as well as of all those
whose employment does not supply them with the means of a thoroughly
sufficient and healthy existence, all the necessaries and comforts of
life can be produced in our own country, just as they were produced
down to a few centuries ago. I will now proceed to the exposition of
the whole subject.

In order that those who have not read the Labour Party’s Unemployed
Workmen Bill may understand why it could not have succeeded, a short
statement of its essential provisions may here be given.

The first clause provides that the “Local Unemployment Authority”
under this Bill shall be the council of every borough or district of
over 20,000 inhabitants, and for the rest of the county the “County
Council.” Clause 3 declares that “it shall be the duty of the Local
Unemployment Authority to provide work for him” (any workman registered
as unemployed) in connection with one or other of the “schemes”
hereinafter provided, “or otherwise,” or failing the provision of work,
“to provide maintenance, should necessity exist, for that person and
for those depending on that person.”

This is the essential part of the clause, with a condition that the
wages are to be “not lower than those that are standard to the work in
the locality.” Then there is to be a Central Unemployment Committee
to “frame schemes,” and generally look after the Local Unemployment
Committees, which are to be established by every local authority,
and are also to “frame schemes”; and the “schemes” of the four or
five hundred local authorities are all to be submitted to the Local
Government Board for revisal or approval. Nowhere is any guide given
to the essential principles which should underlie these hundreds of
schemes, and we can easily imagine the delay, the confusion, the cost,
and the almost certain failure of “schemes” initiated in so haphazard a
manner.

The whole conception of the Bill is, in my opinion, wrong. Unemployment
is not a local phenomenal, but national, and even world-wide. It is a
symptom of disease in our existing civilisation, and must be treated,
if with any chance of success, on broad national lines, and with
national resources. Even the one definite suggestion in the Bill--that
“schemes of national utility” might be undertaken to employ the
out-of-works--however good in itself, was here altogether out of place.
For such schemes--afforestation, reclamation of foreshores, drainage
works, roads, etc.--are all either not reproductive at all, or not
for many years, in the meantime increasing taxation, and thus perhaps
producing further unemployment; while they could only employ a mere
fraction of those in distress (none of the women) and, when completed,
would leave the problem exactly where it was when they were started.

The discussion in Parliament showed a clear recognition of the fact
that it is quite impossible to remedy such chronic and widespread
unemployment as exists now by finding work for the half-starved
population in the hundreds of different occupations at which they have
been engaged; but, strange to say, no one seemed to be aware that it
is by no means impossible--that it is, in fact, comparatively easy--to
enable these same people to _produce for themselves the primary
necessaries of life_ which are their _immediate_ and _permanent_
need. What is required is to organise and combine the whole of the
unemployed into local groups, each group or community being primarily
made up of a due proportion of workers who have been engaged in the
production of some of these _necessaries_, and who will form a nucleus
for the training of others for similar work. These various occupations
are comparatively primitive, and there is every reason to believe that
they will be found among the unemployed in about the same proportions
as in the whole population. The thorough organisation and careful
supervision needed cannot, however, be left to the random, and often
antagonistic, opinions of hundreds of local authorities, but must be
undertaken by the Central Government itself, and that only when the
guiding _principles_ and the practical _procedure_ have been carefully
thought out, clearly defined, and fully discussed in Parliament, before
being embodied in law. It is pre-eminently a work to be devised and
carried out by the Executive Government itself.

I will now endeavour to show in some detail how this can be done, what
will be its results, and what are the various facts and arguments which
render its success a certainty if it is fully and honestly carried out.

The recent discussion of the problem of unemployment, both in
Parliament and in the Press, affords a remarkable proof of how
difficult it is to enforce attention to new methods of dealing with
great social problems, if such proposals are made a little before their
time. Thus only can it be explained that not one Liberal, Labour, or
Socialist Member of Parliament seems to be aware that a thorough and
carefully-worked out scheme for dealing with the unemployed problem was
published about twenty years ago, was re-issued a year or two later in
a cheap edition by a well-known London publisher, was widely read and
greatly admired, and--as was to be expected at _that time_--was very
soon forgotten. I feel sure that this book must be in many public and
private libraries, especially those of Liberal or Radical Clubs, but
neither by Members of Parliament nor by any writers in the reviews have
I once seen it referred to. Yet its title alone should have caused
it to be read at this time, since it so fully and clearly states the
problem which has received so much attention, but no solution, during
the last few years. It is as follows: _Poverty and the State, or Work
for the Unemployed; An Inquiry into the Causes and Extent of Enforced
Idleness, together with a Statement of a Remedy Practicable Here and
Now_. By Herbert V. Mills. London. Kegan, Paul, Trench, and Co. Price
one shilling. 1889.

Now, this book is pre-eminently a practical one, and the bold claim in
its title is fully justified by its contents. Mr. Mills was a Poor Law
Guardian in Liverpool for many years, where there were nearly three
thousand inmates of the workhouse. He thus had unusual opportunities
of becoming acquainted with the poor, and of studying the various
problems of pauperism, such as unemployment, food-supply, the various
occupations of paupers, and other matters. He further obtained
information and advice from experts in agriculture, and in the various
trades and occupations of the men who came under his notice, and has
thus been able to give us detailed estimates and calculations of the
greatest value in formulating practical methods of utilising the labour
of the unemployed to the greatest advantage, for their own benefit.
He also visited and carefully inquired into the detailed working of
the various Dutch Beggar and Labour Colonies, and obtained from them
valuable information as to the methods that tend to success, as well as
of those that either diminish the success or lead to failure.

Having myself encountered many disappointments in books, claiming to
expound new and important ideas both in physical and economic science,
I was fully prepared for another failure here. But I quickly found that
this was really what it claimed to be, and I at once did all I could
to call public attention to it, first in one of my annual addresses
to the Land Nationalisation Society (in 1892), and much more fully
in a chapter I wrote for Edward Carpenter’s _Forecasts of the Coming
Century_, published in 1897. This chapter I republished, with some
important additional facts and arguments, in 1900, in my _Studies,
Scientific and Social_; yet all appears to have been in vain. If the
authors of the “Unemployed Workmen Bill” had drawn it so as to follow
closely Mr. Mills’ scheme, and had fully explained this scheme in their
speeches by means of the facts, illustrations, and methods so well and
concisely given in his book, I feel sure that the result of the debate
would have been very different, and that not only Socialists, but the
whole body of Labour Members, a large majority of Liberals, and even
many Conservatives, would have voted in its favour; in which case the
Government would have been obliged either to adopt it, or to bring in a
Bill of their own on similar lines.

The chief reason why Mr. Mills’ scheme, if embodied in a Bill, should,
and I think would, receive the support of a large majority in the
present House of Commons is, that it utilises and combines in an
admirable manner the most important, and at the same time the least
disputable, methods of both Socialism and Individualism. To illustrate
this I will give a few condensed extracts from his summary of the main
features of his proposals, with some remarks of my own.

(1) In each county or union, tracts of land from 2,000 acres upwards
shall be purchased or taken over by the State or Local Authority, and
be prepared with suitable