Delphi complete works of.., p.318
Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 318
“Listen to this,” said the vice-president. “ ’Coats are to be loose or belted and to achieve a straight simplicity by intricate smooth goring.’ What this ‘goring’ is, I don’t know, but it seems to me that a man won’t be allowed to wear buttons on his coat.”
“That’s what it means,” said Edward, “because it tells you elsewhere that smooth surfaces will be stressed, eliminating buttons almost entirely.”
“What about pants?” asked the vice-president, “any buttons to them?”
“It doesn’t seem to mention them,” answered Edward.
The vice-president looked at the newspaper and ran his eye further down the column. “Listen to this— ‘Wide shoulders will be broadened by tricky cuts rather than by big sleeves, and narrow hips will be simulated by tailored fabric belts giving the impression of a high waistline.’ ”
“What’s that?” interposed the general manager, a stout man, who hadn’t yet spoken. “Let me see that about the wide shoulders — there seems some sense in that, eh? I don’t know that I would object to that. When do we wear that, is that for the office or what?”
“Yes,” said the vice-president, “that’s for the daytime. It says that for the evening you wear a waistlength velvet evening jacket with a huge fur collar, often in skunk, and perhaps with cartridge-pleated velvet collar and cuffs.”
“That sounds pretty nifty, doesn’t it?” said the general manager.
“It does,” said the vice-president. “I admit there’s something in that. I’ve often thought, you know, that you’d get quite an effect with a really fine bit of fur like that — I mean for the evening when you want to wear something worth while. Does it say anything as to what kind of stuff or what coloured stuff you wear with it?”
They were all quite animated now, bending over the newspaper, their indignation apparently evaporated. “Here it is,” said Edward Evenshade. “The best things seem to be a smooth printed Shantung or a pink organdie, with pastels as a distinct feature.”
“I wonder how those would look?” said the vice-president.
“What is organdie, anyway?” asked the general manager.
“I don’t know,” said the third director, “but let’s send out and get some.” He rang the bell. “Young man,” he said, “kindly go down the street and get some Shantung and organdie.”
“Yes, sir,” said the young man, “already mixed or in two bottles?”
“No, no, it’s a fabric. Get — oh, get about ten pounds of each.”
“And while you’re there, ask them if they have any skunk fur and a case of cartridges.”
“Directly, sir,” said the young man.
“You know,” said the vice-president, stepping over to the large mirror at one side of the room and trimming his coat tight in to his waist, “I’ve often thought that in a way our clothes are all wrong. You take that line now — there — see what I mean, John—”
“I know,” said the general manager, “or even drawn in a little more smartly — allow me — so, like that, eh?”
“You’re right,” said the vice-president. “I see how it means. The paper says, doesn’t it, that the general effect aimed at is that of an Egyptian silhouette? Something like this, eh?”
Edward realized that it was no use for him to try to do business with his fellow directors in their present preoccupation. He left, promising to come back later in the day. They were so absorbed that they hardly saw him go.
From the bank, as his business of the day demanded, Evenshade went to the office of the president of one of the great railways.
“Can I see the president?” he asked of the secretary in the outer office. The president and Edward Evenshade were old personal friends, and Edward was never denied an access to the private office of the magnate.
“I’m afraid not,” said the young man.
“Is he busy with a conference?”
“No,” said the secretary somewhat reluctantly, “not exactly that. His milliner is with him.”
“His milliner?” said Edward.
“Yes. To tell the truth, it arose out of something in the morning’s paper about the new change in the waistline — wait a minute — I have it here— ‘It is generally understood in Paris that the contemplated revolution in the waistline will react at once upon the hat. It is claimed that hats will be drawn lower in the brim than ever and set a little sideways with a suggestion of espièglerie, or even diablerie calculated to intrigue.’ Yes, that was it; he was talking about it with the traffic manager and they sent out for some. I think they’re trying them on.”
“Perhaps I might wait,” said Edward.
“I hardly think so,” said the secretary, “they’ve been half an hour already.”
At this moment a smart-looking messenger boy burst his way in. He had in each hand a huge round cardboard hat-box. “Hats for the president,” he said. “I don’t think—” began the secretary. “It’s all right,” said the boy. “He telephoned for them.”
Edward realized that the ominous news from Paris had utterly upset the commercial world for the day. It was impossible to transact business in an atmosphere so tense with apprehension.
In fact, for the rest of the day he made no attempt to carry on the usual work of the office, merely sitting with Undertone discussing the outlook for a modified waistline and exchanging with his friends, over the telephone, comments on the extent to which a man might hold out against the decree.
It was a great relief to Edward when the wearisome business day was at last over, and he was able to set his face homewards. The pleasure was all the greater in that Edward had before him the anticipation of a dinner party which would at any rate give him a chance to wear some of his pretty things so soon to be discarded at the inexorable bidding of fashion.
That evening at about seven o’clock Edward Evenshade was seated on a low stool in front of a long mirror, engaged in dressing for dinner. Several new people were expected and naturally Edward wished to look his best.
But a choice is difficult. The litter of frills and laces on the floor beside him showed the vacillation of his mind. He had already almost decided on an evening dress shirt of soft white foulard with ruchings up to the throat, when he rejected it in favour of a dainty clinging slip-over of passementerie worn over a low brasserie. Then again he wondered whether burnt umber was really his colour. He picked up the dainty little dinner jacket and turned it in his hands. It was sweet, there was no doubt of it. On the other hand, not everybody can wear burnt umber. Would he look better in terra cotta or potash? But then again, the evening candle light at dinner is not like sunlight. But if he didn’t wear the burnt umber then a jacket with a higher collar would mean doing his hair all over again, or at least clipping it close round his ears. Or would that show the shape of his head too much? He knew that the shape of his head, though he hated to admit it, was not his best point. It was shaped too much like a nut.
So sat Edward Evenshade in perplexity till the slamming of the front door and the sound of hurried steps on the stairs told him that Clara had come home.
“I’m late as hell, Eddie!” she called from the landing, “but it will be all right. I’ve still time to chuck on my clothes for dinner.”
“No, come in here,” called Edward from his dressing-room. “I want you to help me pick something to wear.”
Clara strode into Edward’s dressing-room.
“Why, Eddie,” she exclaimed, “you’re only half ready.”
“I know, Clara. I just couldn’t decide about the colours. Look! how do you like that?”
As he spoke, Edward held the little burnt umber dinner jacket up against his cheeks.
“Why, you look perfectly sweet,” Clara said.
“No, but is the colour too strong for me?”
“I don’t think so, dear, not in evening light. But if you think it is, why not put on something else? But I must skip. I’ve simply got to get ready. They’ll be here in ten minutes.”
“No, it’s all right. They’re invited for eight; there’s lots of time. Before you go, what about money for Bridge tonight? Have you got any, or do you want any? And where do we stand today? You know, Clara, if we don’t do up accounts each night it gets so complicated, doesn’t it?”
“I know, Eddie,” answered Clara, “but I write it down always. I’ve got it here in my little book. Yes, here it is. You paid me up to the day before yesterday, Tuesday — No, I’m wrong, we were square till last night. There’s only today.”
“All right, what are the items?”
Edward and Clara, like all other reasonable husbands and wives in Utopia, knew nothing of that economic dependence of the wife upon the husband which is the blot of our present situation. Although, in their case, Edward was the outside breadwinner and Clara lived at home, it was recognized that her functions in life and her work were just as much an economic contribution to their welfare as the money which Edward earned in his office. Their accounts were kept in accordance with this principle.
“What are the items?” asked Edward.
“Well,” said Clara, “first, I took baby out of his cradle and washed him — two dollars is right, isn’t it?”
“Quite right,” said Edward. “If you sent him to the laundry they’d charge that.”
“Then I rocked his cradle for an hour—”
“Two dollars,” said Edward.
“But I sang to him,” said Clara.
Edward looked doubtful. “I don’t think that’s extra,” he said.
“All right, Eddie,” said Clara good-naturedly, “let it go at that. Here are the other things, at the rates we’ve generally set for them—”
“Ordering the food over the telephone, fifty cents.”
“Right!”
“Directions to maid about how not to cook the food for the dinner party, fifty cents.”
“Right!”
“Having lunch with your mother at her house, five dollars.”
“I suppose so,” said Edward.
“Visit from the Reverend Canon Jaw and refusing a subscription to build a new chancel. What’s that worth, Eddie, be fair? That saved a lot of money. And think of it! he was here an hour.”
“I admit,” said Edward, “that’s tough; go on though, and we’ll lump it together. What else?”
“Well, really nothing much,” said Clara, looking at her notes. “Taking baby up, putting baby down, singing to baby, talking to Mrs. Woundup over the ‘phone — but let that go. And then I went to golf at four and I’m just back.”
“Well, call it for the whole of it, fifteen dollars, will that be all right?”
“Oh, quite right, Eddie, perfectly fair.”
“As a matter of fact,” said Edward, as he felt in his pocket for the money, “it’s more than I made myself today downtown. Hardly any of us did much.”
“Why?” asked Clara.
“Oh, this blasted news from Paris.”
“I didn’t see it. What news? Is it another market smash?”
“No, no, not that. This infernal fall of the waistline to the hips. But I suppose if we’ve got to do it, we must make up our minds to it like men. But skip, Clara, and get ready.”
“Give me a kiss first,” said Clara.
“Who pays?” asked Eddie.
“Fifty-fifty,” she said.
FINIS
Hellements of Hickonomics in Hiccoughs of Verse Done in Our Social Planning Mill
CONTENTS
THE SOCIAL PLAN
DEAD CERTAINTY
THE RANCHMAN’S REVERIE
HAPPY JIM, THE CONSUMER
OH! MR. MALTHUS!
MEET MR. WEGG, BANKER
FINALE
AN EDUCATIONAL APPENDIX
PREFACE
LECTURING THE OTHER day before a brilliant galaxy of young men and women, known, in the college where they belong, as Economics Three, there occurred to me, and I used, the metaphor of a social reformer sitting as a raven on the window-sill and croaking “Social Plan.” Economics Three woke up and laughed. This gave me the idea that it might be of great service if economic problems could be discussed in the form of the literature of the imagination. This would help to remove the argument from the angers and the bitterness that so often surround it. If we cannot discuss it like gentlemen, let us at least discuss it like idiots. Having got the idea, all I had to do was to write this book.
Of the economic basis of this book I would like to say this. Forty years of hard work on economics has pretty well removed all the ideas I ever had about it. I think the whole science is a wreck and has got to be built up again. For our social problems there is about as much light to be found in the older economics as from a glowworm. Only one or two things seem to me clear. Cast-iron communism is nothing but a penitentiary. Sooner or later either it is doomed or man is doomed. I believe that the only possible basis for organized society is that of every man for himself, — for himself and those near and dear to him. But on this basis there must be put in operation a much more efficient and much more just social mechanism. We need not a new game but a new set of rules. There must be bread and work for all; and that ought to mean mighty little work and lots of bread.
I would like to say a word or two about some of the theories with which these verses deal. The theory of Malthus was triumphant for a hundred years. It was regarded as a melancholy truth, but as none the less true. The great American economist, Francis Walker, spoke of argument directed at it as being only the “headless arrows of beginners.” But from the first I shot my headless arrows at it, unheeded. All that is true about the Malthus stuff is that if people multiply fast enough and long enough presently there won’t be standing room. But it is no explanation of the industrial poverty, the starvation and the slum of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The great collapse of the last five years has proved this to everybody.
Poverty, unemployment and disaster have overwhelmed alike the city and the solitude: the world is starving in the midst of plenty: numbers have nothing to do with it. There is no population problem for humanity at large: only for the single family, that cannot place its offspring: and that problem belongs not under “numbers-and-subsistence,” but under social organization.
In regard to Malthus himself, I have permitted myself, in the interests of art, to clothe him with an imaginary character and appearance to suit his doctrine. It is true that Malthus, who was an ordained clergyman but lectured for the East India Company at their college at Haileybury, had a hare lip and was more or less unintelligible to his hearers. This, however, is hardly a disadvantage for a professor of political economy. But there is no reason to imagine that the reverend gentleman was cadaverous or doleful, or averse to the joys of matrimony. He married at twenty-nine and had a nurseryful of children. But Art is higher than literal truth.
With regard to banking, I am aware that certain wicked persons have lately widely said that a bank is bunk; that a banker usurps what ought to be a social privilege in that he sits down and “makes money” with a pen and ink. This is not so. A great many of the forms that a banker uses have to be printed. And anyway, even if it is true that he can make money for other people by sitting down and writing “loan” with his left hand and “deposit” with his right, he can’t do that for himself. All he can get out of it is the interest that other people pay him for the “loan-and-deposit” stuff. In return he performs the social service of helping to shift the world’s production from one channel to another. Looked at that way I don’t think he’s any crookeder than the rest of us. I’ve known several bankers. They seemed all right.
I am not saying that there is nothing wrong with the present conditions under which banks work, and with the present privileges which they enjoy. They need further social regulation and control, just as all other branches of industrial and financial activity need it. That is part of the new world in which we live. Forms of legislative control and grants of legislative privilege that worked well enough in the simpler environment of three generations ago do not work so well now. But the banker only shares this environment with the rest of us. There is no more reason to “abolish” the banker than there is to abolish the butcher and the baker: as much, as little. If we abolish them, then their place is taken by the officials of a communistic state, — appointed, in the pure wind of theory, by the honest and enlightened vote of their free fellow-citizens but appointed in reality on a basis of favoritism, intrigue, fear and tyranny of which one shudders to think.
If one wishes to appreciate a banker better, one has only to think of a state bank, run by and for the people, handing out free loans like free lunches. This is the picture that I have tried to portray in the person of Comrade Ilyitch the Commissar. I try to mean by him all that is good and bad in Bolshevism, its fierce elemental energy, its rootage in bye-gone tyranny, and its inevitable end.
I linger with interest on what is to me the pathetic but attractive figure of Happy Jim the Consumer. I see him, dancing in his rags, a poor scarecrow in the wind, but carrying down with him in history all the lost glory of Manchester School. Who pays any attention to Jimmy now? We call a commission on a tariff, and listen to what is called “evidence” from manufacturers: we hear from bankers on banking, and from burglars on burglary. Who listens to poor Happy Jim? If he came to the door in his rags, with his tambourine and his John Stuart Mill would they let him in? Suppose they did and Jimmy the Consumer read out a piece of John Stuart Mill, how they would laugh?
I do not mean by this to deny the need and the expediency of tariff protection. We are not yet ready for the Kingdom of Heaven of Universal Free Trade. In our present world it would tend to force down the wages of all nations to the wages of the lowest. Not until the sunken areas are leveled up can we have a uniform world. But it seems to me that in the post-war period we have gone tariff-mad. The “nationalism” of the unhappy Versailles Treaty has acted as a virus in the veins of humanity. It has put us back, centuries back, into the poisonous attitude of regarding other nations’ ruin as our own welfare, and other nations’ welfare as our ruin. We are back again to the insular insanity of Rule Britannia, exulting in the fact that other nations “shall one by one to tyrants fall.” We have forgotten David Hume’s noble sentiment in which even as a citizen of Great Britain he “prayed for the flourishing commerce of France.” It may, therefore, do no harm to recall the “welfare economics” of the consumer and to tolerate for a moment the salvation songs of my Happy Jim. No manufacturer need fear that the tariff is going to vanish overnight.
“That’s what it means,” said Edward, “because it tells you elsewhere that smooth surfaces will be stressed, eliminating buttons almost entirely.”
“What about pants?” asked the vice-president, “any buttons to them?”
“It doesn’t seem to mention them,” answered Edward.
The vice-president looked at the newspaper and ran his eye further down the column. “Listen to this— ‘Wide shoulders will be broadened by tricky cuts rather than by big sleeves, and narrow hips will be simulated by tailored fabric belts giving the impression of a high waistline.’ ”
“What’s that?” interposed the general manager, a stout man, who hadn’t yet spoken. “Let me see that about the wide shoulders — there seems some sense in that, eh? I don’t know that I would object to that. When do we wear that, is that for the office or what?”
“Yes,” said the vice-president, “that’s for the daytime. It says that for the evening you wear a waistlength velvet evening jacket with a huge fur collar, often in skunk, and perhaps with cartridge-pleated velvet collar and cuffs.”
“That sounds pretty nifty, doesn’t it?” said the general manager.
“It does,” said the vice-president. “I admit there’s something in that. I’ve often thought, you know, that you’d get quite an effect with a really fine bit of fur like that — I mean for the evening when you want to wear something worth while. Does it say anything as to what kind of stuff or what coloured stuff you wear with it?”
They were all quite animated now, bending over the newspaper, their indignation apparently evaporated. “Here it is,” said Edward Evenshade. “The best things seem to be a smooth printed Shantung or a pink organdie, with pastels as a distinct feature.”
“I wonder how those would look?” said the vice-president.
“What is organdie, anyway?” asked the general manager.
“I don’t know,” said the third director, “but let’s send out and get some.” He rang the bell. “Young man,” he said, “kindly go down the street and get some Shantung and organdie.”
“Yes, sir,” said the young man, “already mixed or in two bottles?”
“No, no, it’s a fabric. Get — oh, get about ten pounds of each.”
“And while you’re there, ask them if they have any skunk fur and a case of cartridges.”
“Directly, sir,” said the young man.
“You know,” said the vice-president, stepping over to the large mirror at one side of the room and trimming his coat tight in to his waist, “I’ve often thought that in a way our clothes are all wrong. You take that line now — there — see what I mean, John—”
“I know,” said the general manager, “or even drawn in a little more smartly — allow me — so, like that, eh?”
“You’re right,” said the vice-president. “I see how it means. The paper says, doesn’t it, that the general effect aimed at is that of an Egyptian silhouette? Something like this, eh?”
Edward realized that it was no use for him to try to do business with his fellow directors in their present preoccupation. He left, promising to come back later in the day. They were so absorbed that they hardly saw him go.
From the bank, as his business of the day demanded, Evenshade went to the office of the president of one of the great railways.
“Can I see the president?” he asked of the secretary in the outer office. The president and Edward Evenshade were old personal friends, and Edward was never denied an access to the private office of the magnate.
“I’m afraid not,” said the young man.
“Is he busy with a conference?”
“No,” said the secretary somewhat reluctantly, “not exactly that. His milliner is with him.”
“His milliner?” said Edward.
“Yes. To tell the truth, it arose out of something in the morning’s paper about the new change in the waistline — wait a minute — I have it here— ‘It is generally understood in Paris that the contemplated revolution in the waistline will react at once upon the hat. It is claimed that hats will be drawn lower in the brim than ever and set a little sideways with a suggestion of espièglerie, or even diablerie calculated to intrigue.’ Yes, that was it; he was talking about it with the traffic manager and they sent out for some. I think they’re trying them on.”
“Perhaps I might wait,” said Edward.
“I hardly think so,” said the secretary, “they’ve been half an hour already.”
At this moment a smart-looking messenger boy burst his way in. He had in each hand a huge round cardboard hat-box. “Hats for the president,” he said. “I don’t think—” began the secretary. “It’s all right,” said the boy. “He telephoned for them.”
Edward realized that the ominous news from Paris had utterly upset the commercial world for the day. It was impossible to transact business in an atmosphere so tense with apprehension.
In fact, for the rest of the day he made no attempt to carry on the usual work of the office, merely sitting with Undertone discussing the outlook for a modified waistline and exchanging with his friends, over the telephone, comments on the extent to which a man might hold out against the decree.
It was a great relief to Edward when the wearisome business day was at last over, and he was able to set his face homewards. The pleasure was all the greater in that Edward had before him the anticipation of a dinner party which would at any rate give him a chance to wear some of his pretty things so soon to be discarded at the inexorable bidding of fashion.
That evening at about seven o’clock Edward Evenshade was seated on a low stool in front of a long mirror, engaged in dressing for dinner. Several new people were expected and naturally Edward wished to look his best.
But a choice is difficult. The litter of frills and laces on the floor beside him showed the vacillation of his mind. He had already almost decided on an evening dress shirt of soft white foulard with ruchings up to the throat, when he rejected it in favour of a dainty clinging slip-over of passementerie worn over a low brasserie. Then again he wondered whether burnt umber was really his colour. He picked up the dainty little dinner jacket and turned it in his hands. It was sweet, there was no doubt of it. On the other hand, not everybody can wear burnt umber. Would he look better in terra cotta or potash? But then again, the evening candle light at dinner is not like sunlight. But if he didn’t wear the burnt umber then a jacket with a higher collar would mean doing his hair all over again, or at least clipping it close round his ears. Or would that show the shape of his head too much? He knew that the shape of his head, though he hated to admit it, was not his best point. It was shaped too much like a nut.
So sat Edward Evenshade in perplexity till the slamming of the front door and the sound of hurried steps on the stairs told him that Clara had come home.
“I’m late as hell, Eddie!” she called from the landing, “but it will be all right. I’ve still time to chuck on my clothes for dinner.”
“No, come in here,” called Edward from his dressing-room. “I want you to help me pick something to wear.”
Clara strode into Edward’s dressing-room.
“Why, Eddie,” she exclaimed, “you’re only half ready.”
“I know, Clara. I just couldn’t decide about the colours. Look! how do you like that?”
As he spoke, Edward held the little burnt umber dinner jacket up against his cheeks.
“Why, you look perfectly sweet,” Clara said.
“No, but is the colour too strong for me?”
“I don’t think so, dear, not in evening light. But if you think it is, why not put on something else? But I must skip. I’ve simply got to get ready. They’ll be here in ten minutes.”
“No, it’s all right. They’re invited for eight; there’s lots of time. Before you go, what about money for Bridge tonight? Have you got any, or do you want any? And where do we stand today? You know, Clara, if we don’t do up accounts each night it gets so complicated, doesn’t it?”
“I know, Eddie,” answered Clara, “but I write it down always. I’ve got it here in my little book. Yes, here it is. You paid me up to the day before yesterday, Tuesday — No, I’m wrong, we were square till last night. There’s only today.”
“All right, what are the items?”
Edward and Clara, like all other reasonable husbands and wives in Utopia, knew nothing of that economic dependence of the wife upon the husband which is the blot of our present situation. Although, in their case, Edward was the outside breadwinner and Clara lived at home, it was recognized that her functions in life and her work were just as much an economic contribution to their welfare as the money which Edward earned in his office. Their accounts were kept in accordance with this principle.
“What are the items?” asked Edward.
“Well,” said Clara, “first, I took baby out of his cradle and washed him — two dollars is right, isn’t it?”
“Quite right,” said Edward. “If you sent him to the laundry they’d charge that.”
“Then I rocked his cradle for an hour—”
“Two dollars,” said Edward.
“But I sang to him,” said Clara.
Edward looked doubtful. “I don’t think that’s extra,” he said.
“All right, Eddie,” said Clara good-naturedly, “let it go at that. Here are the other things, at the rates we’ve generally set for them—”
“Ordering the food over the telephone, fifty cents.”
“Right!”
“Directions to maid about how not to cook the food for the dinner party, fifty cents.”
“Right!”
“Having lunch with your mother at her house, five dollars.”
“I suppose so,” said Edward.
“Visit from the Reverend Canon Jaw and refusing a subscription to build a new chancel. What’s that worth, Eddie, be fair? That saved a lot of money. And think of it! he was here an hour.”
“I admit,” said Edward, “that’s tough; go on though, and we’ll lump it together. What else?”
“Well, really nothing much,” said Clara, looking at her notes. “Taking baby up, putting baby down, singing to baby, talking to Mrs. Woundup over the ‘phone — but let that go. And then I went to golf at four and I’m just back.”
“Well, call it for the whole of it, fifteen dollars, will that be all right?”
“Oh, quite right, Eddie, perfectly fair.”
“As a matter of fact,” said Edward, as he felt in his pocket for the money, “it’s more than I made myself today downtown. Hardly any of us did much.”
“Why?” asked Clara.
“Oh, this blasted news from Paris.”
“I didn’t see it. What news? Is it another market smash?”
“No, no, not that. This infernal fall of the waistline to the hips. But I suppose if we’ve got to do it, we must make up our minds to it like men. But skip, Clara, and get ready.”
“Give me a kiss first,” said Clara.
“Who pays?” asked Eddie.
“Fifty-fifty,” she said.
FINIS
Hellements of Hickonomics in Hiccoughs of Verse Done in Our Social Planning Mill
CONTENTS
THE SOCIAL PLAN
DEAD CERTAINTY
THE RANCHMAN’S REVERIE
HAPPY JIM, THE CONSUMER
OH! MR. MALTHUS!
MEET MR. WEGG, BANKER
FINALE
AN EDUCATIONAL APPENDIX
PREFACE
LECTURING THE OTHER day before a brilliant galaxy of young men and women, known, in the college where they belong, as Economics Three, there occurred to me, and I used, the metaphor of a social reformer sitting as a raven on the window-sill and croaking “Social Plan.” Economics Three woke up and laughed. This gave me the idea that it might be of great service if economic problems could be discussed in the form of the literature of the imagination. This would help to remove the argument from the angers and the bitterness that so often surround it. If we cannot discuss it like gentlemen, let us at least discuss it like idiots. Having got the idea, all I had to do was to write this book.
Of the economic basis of this book I would like to say this. Forty years of hard work on economics has pretty well removed all the ideas I ever had about it. I think the whole science is a wreck and has got to be built up again. For our social problems there is about as much light to be found in the older economics as from a glowworm. Only one or two things seem to me clear. Cast-iron communism is nothing but a penitentiary. Sooner or later either it is doomed or man is doomed. I believe that the only possible basis for organized society is that of every man for himself, — for himself and those near and dear to him. But on this basis there must be put in operation a much more efficient and much more just social mechanism. We need not a new game but a new set of rules. There must be bread and work for all; and that ought to mean mighty little work and lots of bread.
I would like to say a word or two about some of the theories with which these verses deal. The theory of Malthus was triumphant for a hundred years. It was regarded as a melancholy truth, but as none the less true. The great American economist, Francis Walker, spoke of argument directed at it as being only the “headless arrows of beginners.” But from the first I shot my headless arrows at it, unheeded. All that is true about the Malthus stuff is that if people multiply fast enough and long enough presently there won’t be standing room. But it is no explanation of the industrial poverty, the starvation and the slum of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The great collapse of the last five years has proved this to everybody.
Poverty, unemployment and disaster have overwhelmed alike the city and the solitude: the world is starving in the midst of plenty: numbers have nothing to do with it. There is no population problem for humanity at large: only for the single family, that cannot place its offspring: and that problem belongs not under “numbers-and-subsistence,” but under social organization.
In regard to Malthus himself, I have permitted myself, in the interests of art, to clothe him with an imaginary character and appearance to suit his doctrine. It is true that Malthus, who was an ordained clergyman but lectured for the East India Company at their college at Haileybury, had a hare lip and was more or less unintelligible to his hearers. This, however, is hardly a disadvantage for a professor of political economy. But there is no reason to imagine that the reverend gentleman was cadaverous or doleful, or averse to the joys of matrimony. He married at twenty-nine and had a nurseryful of children. But Art is higher than literal truth.
With regard to banking, I am aware that certain wicked persons have lately widely said that a bank is bunk; that a banker usurps what ought to be a social privilege in that he sits down and “makes money” with a pen and ink. This is not so. A great many of the forms that a banker uses have to be printed. And anyway, even if it is true that he can make money for other people by sitting down and writing “loan” with his left hand and “deposit” with his right, he can’t do that for himself. All he can get out of it is the interest that other people pay him for the “loan-and-deposit” stuff. In return he performs the social service of helping to shift the world’s production from one channel to another. Looked at that way I don’t think he’s any crookeder than the rest of us. I’ve known several bankers. They seemed all right.
I am not saying that there is nothing wrong with the present conditions under which banks work, and with the present privileges which they enjoy. They need further social regulation and control, just as all other branches of industrial and financial activity need it. That is part of the new world in which we live. Forms of legislative control and grants of legislative privilege that worked well enough in the simpler environment of three generations ago do not work so well now. But the banker only shares this environment with the rest of us. There is no more reason to “abolish” the banker than there is to abolish the butcher and the baker: as much, as little. If we abolish them, then their place is taken by the officials of a communistic state, — appointed, in the pure wind of theory, by the honest and enlightened vote of their free fellow-citizens but appointed in reality on a basis of favoritism, intrigue, fear and tyranny of which one shudders to think.
If one wishes to appreciate a banker better, one has only to think of a state bank, run by and for the people, handing out free loans like free lunches. This is the picture that I have tried to portray in the person of Comrade Ilyitch the Commissar. I try to mean by him all that is good and bad in Bolshevism, its fierce elemental energy, its rootage in bye-gone tyranny, and its inevitable end.
I linger with interest on what is to me the pathetic but attractive figure of Happy Jim the Consumer. I see him, dancing in his rags, a poor scarecrow in the wind, but carrying down with him in history all the lost glory of Manchester School. Who pays any attention to Jimmy now? We call a commission on a tariff, and listen to what is called “evidence” from manufacturers: we hear from bankers on banking, and from burglars on burglary. Who listens to poor Happy Jim? If he came to the door in his rags, with his tambourine and his John Stuart Mill would they let him in? Suppose they did and Jimmy the Consumer read out a piece of John Stuart Mill, how they would laugh?
I do not mean by this to deny the need and the expediency of tariff protection. We are not yet ready for the Kingdom of Heaven of Universal Free Trade. In our present world it would tend to force down the wages of all nations to the wages of the lowest. Not until the sunken areas are leveled up can we have a uniform world. But it seems to me that in the post-war period we have gone tariff-mad. The “nationalism” of the unhappy Versailles Treaty has acted as a virus in the veins of humanity. It has put us back, centuries back, into the poisonous attitude of regarding other nations’ ruin as our own welfare, and other nations’ welfare as our ruin. We are back again to the insular insanity of Rule Britannia, exulting in the fact that other nations “shall one by one to tyrants fall.” We have forgotten David Hume’s noble sentiment in which even as a citizen of Great Britain he “prayed for the flourishing commerce of France.” It may, therefore, do no harm to recall the “welfare economics” of the consumer and to tolerate for a moment the salvation songs of my Happy Jim. No manufacturer need fear that the tariff is going to vanish overnight.
