Equalisation of Advantages

The extension given by collectivists to the idea of protection makes easy the transition from that idea to the different notion of equalisation of advantages. Of the members of every community the greater number cannot obtain the comforts or the enjoyments which fall to the lot of their richer and more fortunate neighbours. Against this evil of poverty the State ought, it is felt by collectivists, to protect the wageearning class, and in order to give this protection must go a good way towards securing for every citizen something like the same advantages, in the form of education, or of physical well-being, as the rich can obtain by their own efforts. This extension of the idea and practice of protection by the State has not, it is true, in England led as yet to anything like that enforced equality popularly known as communism, but, during the latter part of the nineteenth century, it has produced much legislation tending towards that equalisation of advantages among all classes which, in practice, means the conferring of benefits upon the wage-earners at the expense of the whole body of the tax-payers.

This tendency is traceable in the development of the law with reference to elementary education, to an employer’s liability for injuries received by workmen in the course of their employment, and to municipal trading.

As to Elementary Education.—Up to 1832 the State recognised no national responsibility and incurred no expense for the elementary education of the people of England; nor did it impose upon parents any legal obligation to provide for the education of their children.

From 1833 onwards, the State made grants, the earliest of which amounted to not quite £20,000, for the indirect promotion of the education of the English people, and thereby to a certain extent admitted its duty as a national educator, but the assumption of this duty was delayed by the distrust of State intervention which characterised the Benthamite era.

In 1870 the education of the English poor became for the first time the direct concern of the nation, and the State attempted to enforce upon parents, though to a very limited extent, the obligation of providing their children with elementary knowledge, and in so far at the parents’ own expense, that they were compellable to pay school fees. In 1876 this duty of the parents received distinct legal recognition, and in 1880 the compulsory attendance of children at school was for the first time made universal.

In 1891 parents of children compelled to attend school were freed from the duty of paying school fees, and elementary education became what is called free.

This last change completely harmonises with the ideas of collectivism. It means, in the first place, that A, who educates his children at his own expense, or has no children to educate, is compelled to pay for the education of the children of B, who, though, it may be, having means to pay for it, prefers that the payment should come from the pockets of his neighbours. It tends, in the second place, as far as merely elementary education goes, to place the children of the rich and of the poor, of the provident and the improvident, on something like an equal footing. It aims, in short, at the equalisation of advantages. The establishment of free education is conclusive proof that, in one sphere of social life, the old arguments of individualism have lost their practical cogency. Here and there you may still hear it argued that a father is as much bound in duty to provide his own children at his own expense with necessary knowledge as with necessary food and clothing, whilst the duty of the tax-payers to pay for the education is no greater than the obligation to pay for the feeding of children whose parents are not paupers. But this line of reasoning meets with no response except, indeed, either from some rigid economist who adheres to doctrines which, whether true or false, are derided as obsolete shibboleths; or from philanthropists who, entertaining, whether consciously or not, ideas belonging to socialism, accept the premises pressed upon them by individualists, but draw the inference that the State is bound to give the children, for whose education it is responsible, the breakfasts or dinners which will enable them to profit by instruction. The State, moreover, which provides for the elementary education of the people, has now, in more directions than one, advanced far on the path towards the provision of teaching which can in no sense be called elementary. If a student once realises that the education of the English people was, during the earlier part of the nineteenth century, in no sense a national concern, he will see that our present system is a monument to the increasing predominance of collectivism. For elementary education is now controlled and guided by a central body directly representing the State; it is administered by representative local authorities, it is based on the compulsory attendance of children at school, it is supported partly by parliamentary grants and partly by local rates.

As to Employer’s Liability.—Before 1800 the Courts had established the principle, that an employer was liable to a third party for damage inflicted upon him through the negligence of the employer’s servants or workmen in the course of their work. The moral justification for this obligation has been sometimes questioned by moralists no less than by judges.

“The law of this country,” writes Paley, “goes great lengths in intending a kind of concurrence in the master [with the acts of his servant], so as to charge him with the consequences of his servant’s conduct. If an innkeeper’s servant rob his guests, the innkeeper must make restitution; if a farrier’s servant lame a horse, the farrier must answer for the damage; and still farther, if your coachman or carter drive over a passenger in the road, the passenger may recover from you a satisfaction for the hurt he suffers. But these determinations stand, I think, rather upon the authority of the law than any principle of natural justice.”

This doubt whether legal liability could justly co-exist with the absence of moral responsibility contributed to a singular result. The Courts, between 1830 and 1840, curtailed the extent of an employer’s liability by grafting upon it an anomalous limitation. An employer, they held, was not liable to pay compensation to one of his servants or workmen for damage suffered through the negligence of a fellow-servant or fellow-workman in the course of their common employment. This rule is known as the “doctrine of common employment.” It belonged to the era of individualism, and was supported by the economic theory, of dubious soundness, that when a person enters into any employment, e.g. as a railway porter, the risks naturally incident to his work are taken into account in the calculation of his wages. However this may be, the doctrine of common employment caused much apparent hardship. If a railway accident occurred through the negligence of the engine driver, every passenger damaged thereby could obtain compensation from the railway company, but a guard or a porter, since they were injured through the negligence of their fellow-servant, could obtain no compensation whatever. A rule accepted in Massachusetts, no less than in England, could not be attributed to antidemocratic sentiment, but it excited frequent protests from workmen. The introduction, however, of household suffrage did not lead to the immediate abolition of the doctrine of common employment. In 1880 the Employers’ Liability Act, 43 & 44 Vict. c. 42, greatly limited the operation of a rule which all wage-earners felt to be unjust, but did not do away with its existence. In 1894 a Bill passed through the House of Commons which did away altogether with the doctrine of common employment, but the House of Lords struck out a clause which prohibited a workman from contracting himself out of the Act, and the Bill was dropped by its supporters. Thus far every actual or proposed amendment of the law aimed mainly at placing a workman, when injured through the negligence of his fellows, in the same position as a stranger.

In 1897, however, legislation took a completely new turn. The Workmen’s Compensation Act of that year (60 & 61 Vict. c. 67) introduced into the law the new principle that an employer must, subject to certain limitations, insure his workmen against the risks of their employment. At the same time the right of a workman to bargain away his claim to compensation was in reality, though not in form, nullified, since any contract whereby he foregoes the right to compensation secured him by the Workmen’s Compensation Acts is effective only where a general scheme for compensation, agreed upon between the employer and the employed, secures to the workmen benefits at least as great as those which they would derive from the Compensation Acts; and this arrangement must be sanctioned by a State official.

This legislation bears all the marked characteristics of collectivism. Workmen are protected against the risks of their employment, not by their own care or foresight, or by contracts made with their employers, but by a system of insurance imposed by law upon employers of labour. The contractual capacity both of workmen and of masters is cut down. Encouragement is given to collective bargaining. The law, lastly, secures for one class of the community an advantage, as regards insurance against accidents, which other classes can obtain only at their own expense, and, though it is true that the contract of employment is still entered into directly between masters and workmen, yet in the background stands the State, determining in one most important respect the terms of the labour contract. The rights of workmen in regard to compensation for accidents have become a matter not of contract, but of status.

As to Municipal Trading.—At the beginning of the nineteenth century English municipal corporations took little part in trade; they did not, in general, engage in business which otherwise would have been carried on for profit by private persons or companies. In truth, the old corporations which were reformed by the Municipal Corporations Act, 1835, were not adapted for entering into trade. As we have seen, they were corrupt and inefficient, and shirked even the duties which generally belonged to civic authorities; they were the object of deep distrust; no one dreamed of increasing their sphere of action. It was not till municipal reform had worked its salutary effects that any popular feeling grew up in favour of the management of trades, which might concern the public interest, by municipal corporations. Nor was municipal trading during the Benthamite era in harmony with the liberalism of the day. A gradual change of public opinion may be dated from about the middle of the century. Since 1850 the extension of municipal trading has progressed with a rapidity which increased greatly as the nineteenth century drew towards its close; the market rights of private owners have been bought up by municipalities; markets so purchased have often turned out lucrative properties, and “we find that the more recent developments [of municipal trading] in connection with municipal markets include slaughter-houses, cold-air stores, ice manufactories, and the sale of surplus ice, and that the right to sell the ice to the public without restriction has been demanded” from Parliament. Municipal bathing establishments have become common, as well as the foundation of municipal water-works, and since the middle of the century the supply of gas, which up to that date had been wholly in the hands of companies, has in many cases passed under the management of local authorities. Tramways (1868-69) were first constructed and owned, and since a later date (1882-1892) have been worked by municipalities, whilst since 1889 electrical works have been carried on by municipalities, and the fact is now clearly recognised that all or the greater number of tramways will ultimately become municipal property. Before 1890 local authorities had little concern with house building, and the Labouring Classes’ Lodging Houses Act, 1851, remained a dead letter. Under the Housing of the Working Classes Act, 1890, local authorities now possess large powers of buying up insanitary areas, of demolishing insanitary buildings, of letting out land to contractors under conditions as to the rebuilding of dwellings for the poor, and of selling to private persons the buildings thus erected. Municipalities have at the same time received powers to build additional houses on land not previously built upon, and to erect, furnish, and manage dwellings and lodging-houses. They have also entered into various trades. They have employed themselves, e.g., in turning dust into mortar, in working stone quarries, in building tram-cars, in the provision of buildings for entertainments and for music, in laying out race-courses, in the manufacture of electrical fittings, in the undertaking of telephone services, in the sale and distribution of milk, and the like. The desires, moreover, of municipalities have outstripped the powers hitherto conceded to them by Parliament. They desire to run omnibuses in connection with tramways; they wish to construct bazaars, aquaria, shops, and winter gardens; they wish to attract visitors to a district by advertising its merits. No one, in short, can seriously question that, for good or bad, the existence of municipal trading is one of the salient facts of the day, and that it has since the middle of the nineteenth century acquired a new character. The trades, if so they are to be called, which were first undertaken by local authorities were closely connected with the functions of municipal government. At the present day municipal trading is becoming an active competition for business between municipalities supported by the rates, and private traders who can rely only on their own resources. The aim, moreover, of municipal trading is, on the face of it, to use the wealth of the ratepayers in a way which may give to all the inhabitants of a particular locality benefits, e.g. in the way of cheap locomotion, which they could not obtain for themselves. Here we have, in fact, in the most distinct form the effort to equalise advantages. The present state of things, indeed, can in no way be more vividly described than by using the words of an author, who is certainly no opponent of socialism, and who, if he expresses himself with satirical exaggeration, means honestly to depict matters passing before our eyes:—

“The practical man, oblivious or contemptuous of any theory of the social organism or general principles of social organisation, has been forced, by the necessities of the time, into an ever-deepening collectivist channel. Socialism, of course, he still rejects and despises. The individualist town councillor will walk along the municipal pavement, lit by municipal gas, and cleansed by municipal brooms with municipal water, and seeing, by the municipal clock in the municipal market, that he is too early to meet his children coming from the municipal school, hard by the county lunatic asylum and municipal hospital, will use the national telegraph system to tell them not to walk through the municipal park, but to come by the municipal tramway, to meet him in the municipal reading-room, by the municipal art gallery, museum, and library, where he intends to consult some of the national publications in order to prepare his next speech in the municipal town hall, in favour of the nationalisation of canals and the increase of Government control over the railway system. ‘Socialism, Sir,’ he will say, ‘don’t waste the time of a practical man by your fantastic absurdities. Self-help, Sir, individual self-help, that’s what’s made our city what it is.’ ”

But here we pass to the second subject of this lecture.