Part 24 (2/2)
For example, some land will be in the hands of men who have contributed absolutely nothing to its value. They have inherited it, and upon the rent which conditions have enabled them to exact they have lived lives of uselessness if not of profligacy. One has abjured his American nationality to avoid the payment of the personal tax, and applies the sums which he receives, thanks to the industry of the community in New York, to the publis.h.i.+ng of a conservative newspaper in London opposed to every effort permanently to improve the conditions of humanity there. Some land will be in the hands of men and women who have invested it in the economies of a laborious life and for whom it represents an old-age pension. Between these two, there is every degree of merit.
The problem of compensation in taking over of city land will prove as complicated as in the socialization of industries, and very much the same principles will apply. Every city presents problems of its own, and it is difficult, therefore, to lay down general principles applicable to all cities. But one point seems clear: We shall have to live in our cities while we are transforming them, and this means that the transformation will have to be slow. If the state undertakes to transform the slums into habitable tenements, the present families of the slums must be accommodated somewhere while the transformation takes place.
Rebuilding our cities to accommodate them to the changed conditions of a cooperative commonwealth, will be little more than doing on a large scale what Birmingham did on a small scale when it converted its slums into Corporation Street. If it is to be done well, it must be preceded with the deliberate preparation indispensable to the success of every large undertaking.
The Single Taxers are right when they claim that the enhancement of the value of land due to the industry of the many ought not to be appropriated by the idle few. The ”unearned increment” should accrue to the whole community and not to a few landowners. As, therefore, the enhancement of the value of land due to crowding is a peculiar feature of the city, and distinguishes it from the country, it seems indispensable that city land should eventually be owned by the city; by the ma.s.s of citizens who labor and dwell therein.
Another thing seems clear, namely, that a city cannot be transformed to suit the needs of a cooperative commonwealth so long as the city is owned by a few individuals who, by virtue of their owners.h.i.+p, have a right to resist the transformation.
The owners.h.i.+p in city land is, therefore, totally different from owners.h.i.+p in farmland. In the latter case, there is no necessity for suppressing private owners.h.i.+p; whereas in the city, such suppression seems indispensable. It may be added that the beautiful parts of every city are due to state owners.h.i.+p. The Place des Vosges was built by Henry IV; the Place Vendome was built by Louis XIV; the Place de la Concorde was built by Louis XV; the Champs Elysees and the Arc de l'Etoile were built by the two Napoleons. Practically all the great monuments of Paris were built by the state. Her streets were planned by the state, and the height of her private buildings regulated by the state. The same thing is true of London and Vienna. It is in our American cities alone that private initiative being allowed full sway, our buildings look like ill-a.s.sorted books in a neglected library; that we are committed to interminable streets and avenues which pa.s.s what monuments we have but lead up to none. In a word, our cities are committed to conditions so inartistic that the task of making them beautiful seems impossible short of destroying and rebuilding them altogether.
-- 6. SUMMARY OF PRODUCTIVE SIDE OF ECONOMIC CONSTRUCTION
It will be seen that modern Socialism does not propose to interfere with the private owners.h.i.+p of the farmer in his farm, and that the production of agricultural and dairy products will remain much in the same hands as at present, except that the state will have farm colonies to standardize production; to weed out those farmers who, because of their incapacity, are unable to produce what the land is capable of producing; and to furnish work not only for unsuccessful farmers, but for all who cannot earn a living in socialized industries or under compet.i.tive conditions. Such a condition of things will involve no redistribution of tasks. It will leave every man working in the industry in which he is; it will leave those who are engaged in compet.i.tion still engaged in compet.i.tion where it is not productive of injurious result. It will raise wages in all socialized industries, and raise the purchasing power of these industries by reducing prices; it will, therefore, raise the standard of life for the workingman, secure for him clean and wholesome habitations, and a possibility of maintaining a home in the best sense of the word, where our present civilization makes such a home impossible. By farm colonies it will make the exploitation of men, women, and children impossible. Children will not work at all until they have reached the fullest education of which they are capable; women will not be allowed in industrial work as long as they are bearing and rearing children; and men need never receive a sweated wage when they have state inst.i.tutions where they can in exchange for their work, have board, lodging, and as much wage as they can in addition earn. There will be no criminal cla.s.s, for no man need be driven to crime by want; and by the abolition of the criminal cla.s.s and the criminal environment, it is probable that crime resulting from economic causes will tend to disappear. Nor will a woman be driven by need to prost.i.tution. Every industry will provide compensation for its own superannuated and defectives, and the state will have but few for whom to furnish old-age pensions. The community will be relieved, therefore, of the enormous burden of vagrancy, pauperism, prost.i.tution, and crime; and all this without interfering with any compet.i.tive industry capable of supporting its workers up to the standard of life created by socialized industry, and without any such convulsion as will throw upon the state the dangerous problem of a.s.signing tasks.
We have heretofore considered only the problem of production; we have still to consider that of distribution.
-- 7. DISTRIBUTION.
At the present time anarchy reigns over production and distribution.
This anarchy has been in great part already replaced in the field of manufacture by the trust. By combination, or as Mr. Rockefeller says, ”by cooperation” (Book II, Chapter III), all those engaged in the manufacture of the same thing have eliminated compet.i.tion so as to obtain the advantages of production on a large scale. The cooperative commonwealth will avail itself of the work already done by the trust, and as has been already shown, will leave all these trusted industries in the hands of those actually engaged in the work thereof.
In the field of agricultural production, however, little has been done to diminish the anarchy of distribution.[182]
The anarchy which now characterizes distribution must be considered under two heads: compet.i.tion in the field of transportation, and compet.i.tion in the field of retail trade. America is unique among the nations of the world for insisting upon railroads being run on the compet.i.tive system. In Europe franchises are given to railroads with a view to public welfare and the distinct policy of avoiding compet.i.tion. Capitals are adopted as railroad centers and franchises so granted as to furnish a system of main lines radiating from these centers in such a manner as to compete with one another the least possible. In America we have proceeded upon the plan that railroads are to compete just as traders do, and that it is by compet.i.tion that rates are to be kept down. Railroads competing with one another between the same places are run at a social loss, the community is better served by one railroad run in the interests of the country than by two between the same points run in the interests of private individuals.
As regards transportation then there seems to be no room for compet.i.tion whatever. The state should own all systems of transportation with a view to bringing the produce of the country and of the factory to the consumer at the lowest possible cost to the community.
Let us consider how a cooperative community will deal with compet.i.tion in the retail trade.
There is no reason why the private retailer conducting a business for his own account should not continue to exist side by side with a system of state distribution. There are reasons of propinquity and convenience that enable the small retailer to live to-day next door to the big department store. In the same way, the private retailer can perfectly well continue to live by the side of the state distributing system. Nevertheless, some parts of retail trade will be taken over absolutely, for example, milk, for hygienic reasons. And other departments will be so completely in the hands of the state that so long as the state furnishes a good quality it will be improbable that private enterprise will find it useful to interfere; as for example, the baking of bread.
As regards all those things which are likely to remain in the hands of individual enterprise, as, for example, things in which taste plays an important role--garments, hats, wallpaper, furniture, musical instruments, other instruments of pleasure such as athletic goods, bicycles, automobiles, steam launches, photographic apparatus--the retailing of these is likely to remain as much a matter of private enterprise as the production of them.
As regards the necessaries of life the consumer should be able to get them at the lowest possible price. All things of a hygienic character, which it is of the utmost importance that the consumer should have of the purest quality, the state will undertake not only to transport, but to distribute in state stores. It is of course conceivable that in some towns the state store will not be conducted to the satisfaction of its citizens, and private enterprise will therefore run a store in that place better than the state. In such case, private enterprise ought to be encouraged in its compet.i.tion. But inasmuch as good state management will be in a cooperative commonwealth a matter of the greatest importance, it is not likely that the citizen will long endure bad administration. This belongs more to the political aspect of Socialism than to the economic, and will be studied there. We shall therefore now pa.s.s to a brief consideration of just how this system of distribution will work.
The state, having control of transportation, will adopt the method now prevailing in South Australia, and will pay the manufacturer and the farmer in cash at least 50 per cent--if not more--of the value of his goods at the railroad station. These will then be transported by the state in conformity with the needs of the various villages, towns and cities to stores of its own. These will be run upon the cooperative plan; the goods sold at only a small margin above cost, this margin being kept to meet the expense of distribution; and the profits--if any--will be distributed at the end of the year amongst customers on the cooperative plan.
It is obvious, however, that if the state is to distribute in the most economical manner, it must have some control over production. It must not be called upon to transport and distribute more of any one thing than the public wants; nor must it be caught without enough to satisfy the needs of the consumer. This makes it indispensable to study the problem of control at the same time with the problem of distribution.
No function of the state will probably be more important in a cooperative commonwealth than that of controlling the production of those things which, because they are necessaries or have hygienic importance, a cooperative commonwealth should itself control, transport, and distribute.
The problem of control is not as difficult as it might at first seem.
We know perfectly well to-day how much wheat, corn, beef, mutton, etc., are actually consumed by our population. All we have to do to determine this amount for ourselves is to take, for example, the amount of wheat produced in the country, and the amount exported, subtract the exports from the product and determine the amount consumed in this country. The same thing can be done practically with every staple product. The state, therefore, can determine every year in advance how much of every staple product _must_ be produced for the needs of the country. It will, of course, add to the amount actually needed a margin to provide for poor crops and other accidents.
Let us consider how this control will be exercised as regards farm and dairy products. It has been already suggested that land should be cla.s.sified according to geographical conditions, exposure, and soil.
The productivity of the farm colonies will of course be known by the state. Every private farm will have its productivity roughly determined and every farmer will be expected to produce a minimum amount. Of the amount he produces, a part will be taken as taxes to furnish the government with the means to pay for administration. The rest will be paid for partly in gold and partly in orders on the state stores. The object of this system of payment is the following:
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