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The Pecuniary Results to the Individual of an Equal Division, first of the National Income, and secondly of certain parts of it.

◆1 The gross income of the United Kingdom.

◆2 The whole amount attributed to the rich would not be available for distribution.

◆3 A certain deduction must therefore be made from the estimated total.

◆¹ The gross income of the United Kingdom—the aggregate yearly amount received by the entire population—is computed to be in round numbers some thirteen hundred million pounds. But though this estimate may be accepted as true under existing circumstances, we should find it misleading as an estimate of the amount available for distribution. So far as it relates to the income of the poorer classes, it would be indeed still trustworthy; but the income of the richer—which is the total charged with income-tax—we should find to be seriously exaggerated, as considerable sums are included in it which are counted twice over. ◆² For instance, the fee of a great London doctor for attending a patient in the South of France would be about twelve hundred pounds. Let us suppose this to be paid by a patient whose income is twelve thousand pounds. The doctor pays income-tax on his fee; the patient pays income-tax on his entire income; and thus the whole sum charged with income-tax is thirteen thousand two hundred pounds. But if we came to distribute it, we should find that there was twelve thousand pounds only. And there are many other cases of a precisely similar nature. According to the calculations of Professor Leone Levi, the total amount which was counted twice over thus, amounted ten years ago to more than a hundred million pounds.[2] ◆³ In order, therefore, to arrive at the sum which we may assume to be susceptible of distribution, it will be necessary, therefore, to deduct at least as much as this from the sum which was just now mentioned of thirteen hundred million pounds.[3] Accordingly the income of the country, if we estimate it with a view to dividing it, is in round numbers, twelve hundred million pounds.

◆1 This, divided amongst all, would yield thirty-two pounds per head:

◆2 But different sexes and ages would require different amounts,

◆3 The proportions of which are readily ascertainable.

◆¹ And now let us glance at our problem in its crudest and most rudimentary form, and see what would be the share coming to each individual, if these millions were divided equally amongst the entire population. The entire population of the United Kingdom numbers a little over thirty-eight millions; so our division sum is simple. The share of each individual would be about thirty-two pounds. But this sort of equality in distribution would satisfy nobody. It is not worth talking about. For a quarter of the population are children under ten years of age,[4] and nearly two-fifths are under fifteen: and it would be absurd to assign to a baby seeking a pap-bottle, or even to a boy—voracious as boys’ appetites are—the same sum that would be assigned to a full-grown man or woman. ◆² In order to give our distribution even the semblance of rationality, the shares must be graduated according to the requirements of age and sex. The sort of proportion to each other which these graduated shares should bear might possibly be open to some unimportant dispute: but we cannot go far wrong if we take for our guide the amount of food which scientific authorities tell us is required respectively by men, women, and children; together with the average proportion which actually obtains at present, both between their respective wages and the respective costs of their maintenance. ◆³ The result which we arrive at from these sources of information is substantially as follows, and every fresh inquiry confirms it. For every pound which is required or received by a man, fifteen shillings does or should go to a woman, ten shillings to a boy, nine shillings to a girl, and four and sixpence to an infant.[5]

◆1 The problem best approached by taking the family as the unit:

◆2 And then we can arrive at the share of each member.

◆3 The maximum income that an equal distribution would give a bachelor.

◆¹ So much, then, being admitted, we shall make our calculations best by starting with the family as our unit, and coming to the individual afterwards. The average family consists of four and a half persons; and the families in the United Kingdom number eight and a half millions. Twelve hundred millions—the sum we have to divide—would give each family an income of a hundred and forty pounds. From this, however, we should have to deduct taxes; and, since if all classes were equal, all would have to be taxed equally,—the amount due from each family would be considerable. Public expenditure, if the State directed everything, would of necessity be larger than it is at present; but even if we assume that it would remain at its present figure, each family would have to contribute at least sixteen pounds.[6] Therefore sixteen pounds must be deducted from the hundred and forty pounds. Accordingly we have for four and a half persons a net income of a hundred and twenty-six pounds. Now these persons would be found to consist on an average of a man and his wife, a youth, a girl, and a half of a baby,—for when we deal with averages we must execute many judgments like Solomon’s,—and if we distribute the income among them in the proportion I just now indicated, the result we shall arrive at will, in round numbers, be this. ◆² The man will have fifty pounds, the woman thirty-six pounds, the youth twenty-five pounds, the girl twenty-four pounds, and the half of the infant five pounds. And now let us scrutinise the result a little further, and see how it looks in various familiar lights. An equal distribution of the whole wealth of the country would give every adult male about nineteen shillings and sixpence a week, and every adult female about fourteen shillings. These sums would, however, be free of taxes; so in order to compare them with the wages paid at present, we must add to them two shillings and sixpence and two shillings respectively, which will raise them respectively to twenty-two shillings, and to sixteen shillings: ◆³ but a bachelor who is earning the former sum now, or an unmarried woman who is now earning the latter, would neither of them, under any scheme of equal distribution conceivable, come in for a penny of the plunder taken from the rich. They already are receiving all that, on principles of equality, they could claim.

The smallness of this result is likely to startle anybody; but none the less is it true: and it is well to consider it carefully, because the reason why it startles us requires to be particularly noticed. Of the female population of the country that is above fifteen years old, the portion that works for wages is not so much as a half;[7] and of the married women that do so, the portion is much smaller. The remainder work, no doubt, quite as hard as the rest; but they work as wives and mothers; and whatever money they have comes to them through their husbands. Thus when the ordinary man considers the question of income, he regards income as something which belongs exclusively to the man, his wife and his children being things which the man maintains as he pleases. But the moment the principle of equality of distribution is accepted, all such ideas as these have to be rudely changed: for if all of us have a claim to an equal share of wealth, just as the common man’s claim is as good as that of the uncommon man, so the woman’s claim is as good as the claim of either; and whatever her income might be under such conditions, it would be hers in her own right, not in that of anybody else. Accordingly it happens that an equal distribution of wealth, though it would increase the present income of the ordinary working man’s family, might actually, so far as the head of the family was concerned, have the paradoxical result of making him feel that personally he was poorer than before—not richer.[8]

◆1 The highest possible standard of living would be represented by a man and wife without children.

◆¹ The man’s personal share, then, would be twenty-two shillings a week, and the woman’s sixteen shillings; and they could increase their income in no way except by marrying. As many of their expenses would be greatly diminished by being shared, they would by this arrangement both be substantial gainers: but if the principle of equality were properly carried out, they would gain very little further by the appearance of children; for though we must assume that a certain suitable sum would be paid them by the State for the maintenance of each child, that would have to be spent for the child’s benefit. We may, therefore, say that the utmost results which could possibly be secured to the individual by a general confiscation and a general redistribution of wealth, would be represented by the condition of a childless man and wife, with thirty-eight shillings a week, which they could spend entirely on themselves: for all the wealth of the nation that was not absorbed in supplying such incomes to men and women who were childless, would be absorbed in supporting the children of those who had them; thus merely equalising the conditions of large and of small families, and enabling the couple with ten or a dozen children to be personally as well off as the couple with none. Could such a condition of wellbeing be made universal, many of the darkest evils of civilisation would no doubt disappear: but it is well for a man who imagines that the masses of this country are kept by unjust laws out of the possession of some enormous heritage, to see how limited would be the result, if the laws were to give them everything; and to reflect that the largest income that would thus be assigned to any woman, would be less than the income enjoyed at the present moment by multitudes of unmarried girls who work in our Midland mills—girls whose wages amount to seventeen shillings a week, who pay their parents a shilling a day for board, and who spend the remainder, with a most charming taste, on dress.

He will have to reflect also that such a result as has been just described could be produced only by an equality that would be absolutely grotesque in its completeness—by every male being treated as equal to every other male of the same age, and by every female being treated similarly. The prime minister, the commander-in-chief, the most important State official, would thus, if they were unmarried, be poorer than many a factory-girl is at present; whilst if they were married, they and their wives together would have but four shillings a week more than is at present earned by a mason, and six shillings a week less than is earned by an overlooker in a cotton-mill.

◆1 Absolute pecuniary equality, however, is not thought possible by anybody;

◆2 As the salaries asked for Members of Parliament by the Labour Party show.

◆¹ But an equality of this kind, from a practical point of view, is worth considering only as a means of reducing it to an absurdity. Even were it established to-morrow, it could not be maintained for a month, owing to the difficulty that would arise in connection with the question of children: as unless a State official checked the weekly bills of every parent, parents inevitably would save out of their children’s allowances; and those with many children would be very soon founding fortunes. And again it is obvious that different kinds of occupation require from those engaged in them unequal expenditures; so that the inevitable inequality of needs would make pecuniary equality impossible. Indeed every practical man in our own country owns this, however extreme his views; ◆² as is evidenced by the amounts which have been suggested by the leaders of the Labour Party as a fit salary for a paid Member of Parliament. These amounts vary from three hundred pounds a year to four hundred pounds; so that the unmarried Member of Parliament, in the opinion of our most thoroughgoing democrats, deserves an income from six to eight times as great as the utmost income possible for the ordinary unmarried man. And there are many occupations which will, if this be admitted, deserve to be paid on the same or on even a higher scale. We may therefore take it for granted that the most levelling politicians in the country, with whom it is worth while to reason as practical and influential men, would spare those incomes not exceeding four hundred pounds a year, and would probably increase the number of those between that amount and a hundred and fifty pounds. Now the total amount of the incomes between these limits is not far from two hundred million pounds: so if this be deducted from the twelve hundred million pounds which we just now took as the sum to be divided equally, the incomes of the people at large will be less by sixteen per cent than the sums at which they were just now estimated; and the standard of average comfort will be represented by a childless man and wife having thirty-one shillings and eightpence instead of thirty-eight shillings a week.

◆1 General redistribution, then, is not thought possible by any English party;

◆2 But it is still instructive to consider the theoretical results of it.

◆¹ We need not, however, dwell upon such details longer: for there are few people who conceive even a redistribution like this to be possible; and there would probably be fewer still who would run the risk of attempting it, if they realised how limited would be the utmost results of it to themselves. My only reason for dealing with these schemes at all is that, ◆² whilst they are felt to be impossible as soon as they are considered closely, they are yet the schemes which invariably suggest themselves to the mind when first the idea of any great social change is presented to it; and a knowledge of their theoretical results, though it offers no indication of what may actually be attainable, will sober our thoughts, and at the same time stimulate them, by putting a distinct and business-like limit to what is conceivable.

◆1 But there are certain parts of the national income the redistribution of which has been actually advocated, i.e.: (1) the rent of the land; (2) the interest of the National Debt; (3) the sums spent on the Monarchy.

◆2 We will consider what the nation would gain by confiscating the above.

◆3 Absurd ideas as to the amount of the landed rental of the country.

◆¹ And for this reason, before I proceed further, I shall ask the reader to consider a few more theoretical estimates. The popular agitator, and those whose opinions are influenced by him, do not propose to seize upon all property; they content themselves with proposing to appropriate certain parts of it. The parts generally fixed upon are as follows:—First and foremost comes the landed rental[9] of the country—the incomes of the iniquitous landlords. Second comes the interest on the National Debt; third, the profits of the railway companies; and last, the sum that goes to support the Monarchy. All these annual sums have been proposed as subjects of confiscation, though the process may generally be disguised under other names. ◆² Let us take each of these separately, and see what the community at large would gain by the appropriation of each. And we will begin with the income of the landlords; for not only is this the property which is most frequently attacked, but it is the one from the division of which the largest results are expected. ◆³ It is indeed part of the creed of a certain type of politician that, if the income of the landlords could be only divided amongst the people, all poverty would be abolished, and the great problem solved.

◆1 The popular conception of the wealth of the larger landlords.

◆¹ In the minds of most of our extreme reformers, excepting a few Socialists, the income of the landlords figures as something limitless; and the landlords themselves as the representatives of all luxury. It is not difficult to account for this. To any one who studies the aspect of any of our rural landscapes, with a mind at all occupied with the problem of the redistribution of wealth, the things that will strike his eye most and remain uppermost in his mind, are the houses and parks and woods belonging to the large landlords. Small houses and cottages, though he might see a hundred of them in a three-miles’ drive, he would hardly notice; but if in going from York to London he caught glimpses of twelve large castles, he would think that the whole of the Great Northern Railway was lined with them. And from impressions derived thus two beliefs have arisen—first that the word “landlord” is synonymous with “large landlord”; and secondly that large landlords own most of the wealth of the kingdom. But ideas like these, when we come to test them by facts, are found to be ludicrous in their falsehood. If we take the entire rental derived from land, and compare it with the profits derived from trade and capital, we shall find that, so far as mere money is concerned, the land offers the most insignificant, instead of the most important question[10] that could engage us. Of the income of the nation, the entire rental of the land does not amount to more than one-thirteenth; and during the last ten years it has fallen about thirteen per cent. The community could not possibly get more than all of it; and if all of it were divided in the proportions we have already contemplated, it would give each man about twopence a day and each woman about three half-pence.[11]

◆1 The landed aristocracy are not the chief rent-receivers.

◆2 A multitude of small proprietors receive twice as much in rent as the entire landed aristocracy.

◆3 The entire rental of the landed aristocracy is so small that its confiscation would benefit no one.

◆¹ But the more important part of the matter still remains to be noticed. The popular idea is, as I just now said, that we should, in confiscating the rental of the kingdom, be merely robbing a handful of rich men, who would be probably a deserving, and certainly an easy prey. The facts of the case are, however, singularly different. It is true, indeed, if we reckon the land by area, that the large landlords own a preponderating part of it: but if we reckon the land by value, the whole case is reversed; ◆² and we find that classes of men who are supposed by the ordinary agitator to have no fixed interest in the national soil at all, really draw from it a rental twice as great as that of the class which is supposed to absorb the whole. I will give the actual figures,[12] based upon official returns; and in order that the reader may know my exact meaning, let me define the term that I have just used—namely “large landlords”—as meaning owners of more than a thousand acres. No one, according to popular usage, would be called a large landlord, who was not the owner of at least as much as this; indeed the large landlord, as denounced by the ordinary agitator, is generally supposed to be the owner of much more. Out of the aggregate rental, then—that total sum which would, if divided, give each man twopence a day—what goes to the large landlords is now considerably less than twenty-nine million pounds. By far the larger part—namely something like seventy million pounds—is divided amongst nine hundred and fifty thousand owners, of whose stake in the country the agitator seems totally unaware; and in order to give to each man the above daily dividend, it would be necessary to rob all this immense multitude whose rentals are, on an average, seventy-six pounds a year.[13] Supposing, then, this nation of smaller landlords to be spared, ◆³ and our robbery confined to peers and to country gentlemen, the sum to be dealt with would be less than twenty-nine million pounds; and out of the ruin of every park, manor, and castle in the country, each adult male would receive less than three-farthings daily.

◆1 Were the National Debt and the Railways confiscated, the results would likewise be hardly perceptible to the nation as a whole.

◆¹ And now let us turn to the National Debt and to the railways. The entire interest of the one and the entire profits of the other, would, if divided equally amongst the population, give results a little, but only a little, larger than the rental of the large landlords. But here again, if the poorer classes were spared, and the richer investors alone were singled out for attack, the small dividend of perhaps one penny for each man daily, would be diminished to a sum yet more insignificant. How true this is may be seen from the following figures relating to the National Debt. Out of the two hundred and thirty-six thousand persons who held consols in 1880, two hundred and sixteen thousand, or more than nine-tenths of the whole, derived from their investments less than ninety pounds a year; whilst nearly half of the whole derived less than fifteen pounds.

◆1 The Monarchy costs so small a sum, that no one would be the richer for its abolition.

◆¹ And lastly, let us consider the Monarchy, with all its pomp and circumstance, the maintenance of which is constantly represented as a burden seriously pressing on the shoulders of the working-class. I am not arguing that in itself a Monarchy is better than a Republic. I am considering nothing but its cost in money to the nation. Let us see then what its maintenance actually costs each of us, and how much each of us might conceivably gain by its abolition. The total cost of the Monarchy is about six hundred thousand pounds a year; but ingenious Radicals have not infrequently argued that virtually, though indirectly, it costs as much as a million pounds. Let us take then this latter sum, and divide it amongst thirty-eight million people. What does it come to a head? It comes to something less than sixpence halfpenny a year. It costs each individual less to maintain the Queen than it would cost him to drink her health in a couple of pots of porter. The price of these pots is the utmost he could gain by the abolition of the Monarchy. But does any one think that the individual would gain so much—or indeed, gain anything? If he does, he is singularly sanguine. Let him turn to countries that are under a Republican government; and he will find that elected Presidents are apt to cost more than Queens.

◆1 All such schemes of redistribution are illusory, not only on account of the insignificance of their results,

◆2 But also on account of a far deeper reason, on which the whole problem depends.

◆¹ All these schemes, then, for attacking property as it exists, for confiscating and redistributing by some forcible process of legislation the whole or any part of the existing national income, are either obviously impracticable, or their result would be insignificant. Their utmost result indeed would not place any of the workers in so good a position as is at present occupied by many of them. This is evident from what has been seen already. ◆² But there is another reason which renders such schemes illusory—a far more important one than any I have yet touched upon, and of a far more fundamental kind. We will consider this in the next chapter; and we shall find, when we have done so, that it has brought us to the real heart of the question.