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Page 28
After all, I fear the odious individual whose existence and attributes
we have discussed must be accepted as a scourge sent to punish us for
past sins of the race. Certainly women had a very bad time in days
gone by--they were slaves; and at odd moments I am tempted to conclude
that the slave instinct survives in some of them, and they take their
revenge in true servile fashion. This line of thought would carry me
back over more ages than I care to traverse; I am content with knowing
that the shrews are in a minority, and that the majority of my
countrywomen are sweet and benign.
X.
ARE WE WEALTHY?
Among the working-classes shrewd men are now going about putting some
very awkward questions which seem paradoxical at first sight, but
which are quite understood by many intelligent men to whom they are
addressed. The query "Are we wealthy?" seems easy enough to answer;
and of course a rapid and superficial observer gives an affirmative in
reply. It seems so obvious! Our income is a thousand millions per
year; our railways and merchant fleets can hardly be valued without
putting a strain on the imagination; and it seems as if the atmosphere
were reeking with the very essence of riches. A millionaire gives
nearly one thousand pounds for a puppy; he buys seventeen baby horses
for about three thousand pounds apiece; he gives four thousand guineas
for a foal, and bids twenty thousand pounds for one two-year-old
filly; his house costs a million or thereabouts. Minor plutocrats
swarm among us, and they all exhibit their wealth with every available
kind of ostentation; yet that obstinate question remains to be
answered--"Are we wealthy?" We may give the proletarians good advice
and recommend them to employ no extreme talk and no extreme measures;
but there is the new disposition, and we cannot get away from it. I
take no side; the poor have my sympathy, but I endeavour to understand
the rich, and also to face facts in a quiet way. Supposing that a ball
is being given that costs one thousand pounds, and that within sound
of the carriages there are twenty seamstresses working who never in
all their lives know what it is to have sufficient food--is not that a
rather curious position? The seamstresses are the children of mighty
Britain, and it seems that their mother cannot give them sustenance.
The excessive luxury of the ball shows that some one has wealth, but
does it not also seem to show that some one has too much? The clever
lecturers who talk to the populace now will not be content with the
old-fashioned answer, and an awkward deadlock is growing more nearly
imminent daily. Suppose we take the case of the sporting-man again,
and find that he pays three guineas per week for the training of each
of his fifty racers, we certainly have a picture of lavish display;
but, when we see, on the other hand, that nearly half the children in
some London districts never know what it is to have breakfast before
they go to school, we cannot help thinking of the palaces in which the
horses are stabled and the exquisite quality of the animal's food.
There is not a good horse that mother England does not care for, and
there are half a million children who rarely can satisfy their hunger,
and who are quartered in dens which would kill the horses in a week.
These crude considerations are not-presented by us as being
satisfactory statements in economics; but, when the smart mob orator
says, "What kind of parent would keep horses in luxury and leave
children to hunger?" "Is this wealthy England?" his audience reply in
a fashion of their own. Reasoning does not avail against hunger and
privation. I am forced to own that, for my part, the awful problem of
poverty seems insoluble by any logical agent; but the man of the mob
does not now care for logic than ever he did before, and he has
advisers who state to him the problems of life and society with
passionate rhetoric which eludes reason.
The whole world hangs together, and Chicago may be called a mere
suburb of London. English people did not understand the true history
of the genesis of poverty until the developments of society in America
showed us with terrific rapidity the historical development of our own
poverty. The fearful state of things in American cities was brought
about in a very few years, whereas the gradual extension of our
poverty-stricken classes has been going on for centuries. To us
poverty, besides being a horror, was more or less of a mystery; but
America exhibited the development of the gruesome monster with lurid
distinctness. In the old countries the men who first were able to
seize the land gradually sublet portions either for money or warlike
service; the growth of manufactures occupied a thousand years before
it reached its present extent; and with the rising of manufacturing
centres came enormous new populations which were finally obliged to
barter their labour for next to nothing--and thus we have the
appalling and desolating spectacle of our slums. All that took place
in America with the swiftness of a series of stage-scenes; so that men
now living have watched the inception and growth of all the most
harrowing forms of poverty and the vices arising from poverty. And now
the cry is, "Go back to the Land--the Land for the Nation!" Matters
have reached a strange pass when such a political watchword should be
chosen by thousands in grave and stolid England, and we shall be
obliged to compromise in the end with those by whom the cry is raised.
I believe that a compromise may be arranged in time, but the leaders
of the poor will have to teach their followers wisdom, self-restraint,
and even a little unselfishness, impossible as the teaching of that
last may seem to be. We have begun a great labour war, in which
battles are being lost and won by opposing sides around us every day.
The fighting was very terrible at the beginning; but we shall be
forced at last to adopt a system of truces, and then the question "Are
we wealthy?" may find its answer. At this moment, however much an
optimist may point to our wealth, the logical opponent of established
things can always point to the ghastly sights that seem to make the
very name of wealth a cynical mockery.
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