Part 1 (1/2)

Problems of Poverty.

by John A. Hobson.

Preface

The object of this volume is to collect, arrange, and examine some of the leading facts and forces in modern industrial life which have a direct bearing upon Poverty, and to set in the light they afford some of the suggested palliatives and remedies. Although much remains to be done in order to establish on a scientific basis the study of ”the condition of the people,” it is possible that the brief setting forth of carefully ascertained facts and figures in this little book may be of some service in furnis.h.i.+ng a stimulus to the fuller systematic study of the important social questions with which it deals.

The treatment is designed to be adapted to the focus of the citizen- student who brings to his task not merely the intellectual interest of the collector of knowledge, but the moral interest which belongs to one who is a part of all he sees, and a sharer in the social responsibility for the present and the future of industrial society.

For the statements of fact contained in these chapters I am largely indebted to the valuable studies presented in the first volume of Mr.

Charles Booth's _Labour and Life of the People_, a work which, when completed, will place the study of problems of poverty upon a solid scientific basis which has. .h.i.therto been wanting. A large portion of this book is engaged in relating the facts drawn from this and other sources to the leading industrial forces of the age.

In dealing with suggested remedies for poverty, I have selected certain representative schemes which claim to possess a present practical importance, and endeavoured to set forth briefly some of the economic considerations which bear upon their competency to achieve their aim. In doing this my object has been not to p.r.o.nounce judgment, but rather to direct enquiry. Certain larger proposals of Land Nationalization and State Socialism, etc., I have left untouched, partly because it was impossible to deal, however briefly, even with the main issues involved in these questions, and partly because it seemed better to confine our enquiry to measures claiming a direct and present applicability.

In setting forth such facts as may give some measurement of the evils of Poverty, no attempt is made to suppress the statement of extreme cases which rest on sufficient evidence, for the nature of industrial poverty and the forces at work are often most clearly discerned and most rightly measured by instances which mark the severest pressure. So likewise there is no endeavour to exclude such human emotions as are ”just, measured, and continuous,” from the treatment of a subject where true feeling is constantly required for a proper realization of the facts.

In conclusion, I wish to offer my sincere thanks to Mr. Llewellyn Smith, Mr. William Clarke, and other friends who have been kind enough to render me valuable a.s.sistance in collecting the material and revising the proof-sheets of portions of this book.

Chapter I.

The Measure of Poverty.

-- 1. The National Income, and the Share of the Wage-earners.--To give a clear meaning and a measure of poverty is the first requisite. Who are the poor? The ”poor law,” on the one hand, a.s.signs a meaning too narrow for our purpose, confining the application of the name to ”the dest.i.tute,” who alone are recognized as fit subjects of legal relief.

The common speech of the comfortable cla.s.ses, on the other hand, not infrequently includes the whole of the wage-earning cla.s.s under the t.i.tle of ”the poor.” As it is our purpose to deal with the pressure of poverty as a painful social disease, it is evident that the latter meaning is unduly wide. The ”poor,” whose condition is forcing ”the social problem” upon the reluctant minds of the ”educated” cla.s.ses, include only the lower strata of the vast wage-earning cla.s.s.

But since dependence upon wages for the support of life will be found closely related to the question of poverty, it is convenient to throw some preliminary light on the measure of poverty, by figures bearing on the general industrial condition of the wage-earning cla.s.s. To measure poverty we must first measure wealth. What is the national income, and how is it divided? will naturally arise as the first questions. Now although the data for accurate measurement of the national income are somewhat slender, there is no very wide discrepancy in the results reached by the most skilful statisticians. For practical purposes we may regard the sum of 1,800,000,000 as fairly representing the national income. But when we put the further question, ”How is this income divided among the various cla.s.ses of the community?” we have to face wider discrepancies of judgment. The difficulties which beset a fair calculation of interest and profits, have introduced unconsciously a partisan element into the discussion. Certain authorities, evidently swayed by a desire to make the best of the present condition of the working-cla.s.ses, have reached a low estimate of interest and profits, and a high estimate of wages; while others, actuated by a desire to emphasize the power of the capitalist cla.s.ses, have minimized the share which goes as wages. At the outset of our inquiry, it might seem well to avoid such debatable ground. But the importance of the subject will not permit it to be thus s.h.i.+rked. The following calculation presents what is, in fact, a compromise of various views, and can only claim to be a rough approximation to the truth.

Taking the four ordinary divisions: Rent, as payment for the use of land, for agriculture, housing, mines, etc.; Interest for the use of business capital; Profit as wages of management and superintendence; and Wages, the weekly earnings of the working-cla.s.ses, we find that the national income can be thus fairly apportioned--

Rent 200,000,000.

Interest 450,000,000.

Profits 450,000,000.

Wages 650,000,000.[1]

Total 1750,000,000.

Professor Leone Levi reckoned the number of working-cla.s.s families as 5,600,000, and their total income 470,000,000 in the year 1884.[2] If we now divide the larger money, minus 650,000,000, among a number of families proportionate to the increase of the population, viz.

6,900,000, we shall find that the average yearly income of a working- cla.s.s family comes to about 94, or a weekly earnings of about 36s. This figure is of necessity a speculative one, and is probably in excess of the actual average income of a working family.

This, then, we may regard as the first halting-place in our inquiry. But in looking at the average money income of a wage-earning family, there are several further considerations which vitally affect the measurement of the pressure of poverty.

First, there is the fact, that out of an estimated population of some 42,000,000, only 12,000,000, or about three out of every ten persons in the richest country of Europe, belong to a cla.s.s which is able to live in decent comfort, free from the pressing cares of a close economy. The other seven are of necessity confined to a standard of life little, if at all, above the line of bare necessaries.

Secondly, the careful figures collected by these statisticians show that the national income equally divided throughout the community would yield an average income, per family, of about 182 per annum. A comparison of this sum with the average working-cla.s.s income of 94, brings home the extent of inequality in the distribution of the national income. While it indicates that any approximation towards equality of incomes would not bring affluence, at anyrate on the present scale of national productivity, it serves also to refute the frequent a.s.sertions that poverty is unavoidable because Great Britain is not rich enough to furnish a comfortable livelihood for everyone.

-- 2. Gradations of Working-cla.s.s Incomes.--But though it is true that an income of 36s. a week for an ordinary family leaves but a small margin for ”superfluities,” it will be evident that if every family possessed this sum, we should have little of the worst evils of poverty. If we would understand the extent of the disease, we must seek it in the inequality of incomes among the labouring cla.s.ses themselves. No family need be reduced to suffering on 36s. a week. But unfortunately the differences of income among the working-cla.s.ses are proportionately nearly as great as among the well-to-do cla.s.ses. It is not merely the difference between the wages of skilled and unskilled labour; the 50s.

per week of the high-cla.s.s engineer, or typographer, and the 1s. 2d. per diem of the sandwich-man, or the difference between the wages of men and women workers. There is a more important cause of difference than these.

When the average income of a working family is named, it must not be supposed that this represents the wage of the father of the family alone. Each family contains about 2 workers on an average. This is a fact, the significance of which is obvious. In some families, the father and mother, and one or two of the children, will be contributors to the weekly income; in other cases, the burden of maintaining a large family may be thrown entirely on the shoulders of a single worker, perhaps the widowed mother. If we reckon that the average wage of a working man is about 24s., that of a working woman 15s., we realize the strain which the loss of the male bread-winner throws on the survivor.