Delphi complete works of.., p.793
Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 793
“Well, Joe,” answered Charlie, “I’ve got to get the bees and the thistles and there’s the plant to put up — in fact a thousand will be just a start.”
The manager rubbed his hands.
“All the better,” he said. “All the more business for the bank. You’ll have to sign this, Charlie. You see this is private enterprise and the government won’t allow it except under proper conditions — no monopoly is it? — Anyone can buy bees — no unfair, et cetera, et cetera. I needn’t read it all. There you are. Sign there.”
Charlie signed the documents. Then the manager called to Miss Killboy, “Have you got a thousand dollars there?”
“In my bag, I have,” she said.
“Your own?”
“No it’s the bank’s — if you want it, take it — it’s all right.”
And with that Charlie shook hands and left with his loan.
Scarcely had he gone when Mr. Easy, the Government Bank inspector, came into the office. It always seemed a pleasant morning when inspector Easy turned up, with a laugh and a good word for everybody — a genial, comfortable man with a convenient memory so that he knew every girl’s name in the bank, even her christian name.
“Well, Nellie,” he said to Miss Killboy. “How’s golf? The accountant’s full, I suppose, is he? Ah! here’s the boss himself. Hullo Joe! How’s the trout fishing?”
And with that they sat down together over a cigar.
“How’s trout fishing?” repeated the inspector. “I hear they’re biting in great shape.”
“Great,” said Charlie. “In fact I was going to suggest going right out to Coldwater Creek as soon as you’ve got through here.”
“Oh, this won’t take a minute. Your cash is all right, eh? It was last week? Well, then it’s all right now. Can we get flies at the hardware store? Your notes overdue is what I specially want. If you think it’s too early still for flies I don’t mind using bait. You see up at Ottawa the department wants all these overdue notes collected up and sent to them. There’s an agitation against paying them, in fact quite a row started in parliament. They say its sheer tyranny to ask a man to pay a note that he can’t pay.”
“What will they do about it,” asked Charlie . . .
“Write them all off into unredeemed assets. After all it just adds so much wealth to the country.”
“Fine,” said the manager. “I’ll add this up in a second, and meantime — Miss Killboy,” he called, “give me two dollars please out of the cash, and mark it ‘flies receivable.’ ”
And within a few minutes away they were speeding in the manager’s car all set for trout fishing, the noise of the rippling river already in their ears.
Now let us turn to another standing difficulty under socialism, the problem that goes by the name of Art under socialism. The question here at issue is how to arrange for the output of “art,” so that people who write books have a chance to publish them, and people who paint pictures and compose music have a chance to bring what they have done before the world; this means, in the second place that such people should be set free from other work, or from enough of it, to have time to give themselves over to artistic creation.
Generous youth settles the problem in one breath. What more simple than to have a board of experts, men of achievement and experience, to sit in judgment on works of art — manuscripts, and plays and pictures and melodies — and decide what is best, what is worth while to be put forth at the general expense of the state. It sounds, to inexperience, like justice and opportunity itself, but to those who know, — Ah, me, how different!
What are you to do against set judgments, accepted standards, experts of yesterday dull to-day? Will all the good will in the world give me — or anyone who knows what he is talking about — the open chance of an open market?
This is a matter of which I know all that goes with fifty years of experience — exactly fifty since my first marketed humour (under the free enterprise of a return envelope and a stamp) was sold in 1894. Since then, among more serious occupations and more solid writing, I have been a writer of books avowedly humorous. Under the present regime when I have written a book of humour I have to look round for a publisher who thinks the book funny. He doesn’t need to laugh himself; publishers never do; he is selling a laugh, not buying it for himself. But if one publisher sees no laugh in the book perhaps another will, or another yet. If about a dozen publishers see no laugh in the book, perhaps there isn’t any. But there’s always the chance, always the open market and the prospect of a reward — modest perhaps in reality, but staggering in anticipation.
LITTLE SCENES FROM SOCIALISM
THE NATIONAL HUMOUR BOARD
WON’T LAUGH
I have a vision of myself going before a Board (the national Humour Commission) to receive their decision on a manuscript which I have submitted to them.
They are seated in a handsome and impressive Board Room, strung along the sides of the great table, the chairman at the head. They are mostly men pretty well up in years, some of them, I regret to notice, rather sallow and dyspeptic looking.
I am standing humble and expectant.
“We have here,” says the chairman, “your manuscript entitled — what is it called? Let me see, Nonsense Novels? You wrote this, did you?”
“Yes,” I said. “I wrote it.”
There is something like a groan from the Board table.
“Well,” says the chairman, not unkindly. “I am sorry to say that the Board do not find these — what do you call them, Nonsense Novels, funny. I had the stories read aloud to them. They didn’t laugh; in fact they were even perplexed.”
There is a quiet, but not unkind shaking of heads about the Board Table.
“We wished however,” continued the chairman, “to give your manuscript every chance and so I had it read also to the judges of the Supreme Court, not of course as a court — I mean in their private capacity. I regret to say that they not only didn’t laugh but they took distinct exception to it. They say that a great many of the statements in the stories are open to question as illogical. This, for example—”
The chairman turned over the leaves of the manuscript —
“You say in speaking of Roman history that a ‘centaur was a fabulous being half man, half horse, half unicorn.’ They object that that makes one and a half . . . and here again, you say, ‘The young man leaped upon his horse and rode off furiously in all directions.’ They hold he couldn’t.”
There was a pause. The chairman laid aside the manuscript and said.
“Now we don’t want in any way to discourage you. The government values literature and our National Board claim that they can laugh more over less, than would be possible if they acted by private enterprise.”
There was a distinct ha! ha! round the Board.
“So you must remember that you may if you wish appeal past the Board to the Supreme Court. That is, of course, the same set of judges but they would be sitting officially as a court, and their time paid for. They might easily think things funnier under those circumstances. And remember also that you always retain the right to read this manuscript to yourself and to laugh as much as you like, or to read it aloud to your friends, subject naturally to their right of not listening to it. Well, we mustn’t keep you longer” — he reached out to shake hands. “Bring us something any time you feel disposed. Good-bye.”
The case against the practicality of socialism is even stronger than is indicated by these administrative difficulties. Underlying all of them is the still deeper weakness at the very foundation occasioned by the lack, under socialism, of a full incentive towards work, unless the work is allotted and carried out under the incentive of compulsion, a condition which converts socialism, as we have already said, into a prison. Under private industry the necessity of looking after oneself and the hope of bettering oneself supplies exactly this motive, the danger being that it may be applied too hard and convert private industry into the tyranny of those who have, exercised over those who have not. But socialism falls down here on what seems one of the basic principles of human life. We need — all of us — a certain amount of compulsion to make us work: the alarm clock in the morning, the school bell — we will not say the schoolmaster’s raw-hide; let us call it the written examination — the office that opens at nine, the boss. We need to save up money to get married — so run the well worn steps on life’s upward pathway. Reaching the top we often find it empty, and wish we had lingered a little by the way, played truant now and again, so to speak — but that is neither here nor there.
So the trouble is, will socialists work? Those who have read the history of socialism and of the hundred and one socialist communities that have been founded, especially in North America, have flourished for a while and then fallen to pieces, will tell us of many instances of communities and fellowships not based on private gain where work was continuous and conscientious. They will speak of the many monastic orders of the past with whom to work was to pray; they will point to the silent, tongue-bound industry of the Trappists or to the notable success of the Rappites of Indiana. This was, a hundred years ago the community whose spacious farms and orchards were bought out by the noble idealist Robert Owen (1771-1858) to be, alas, the seat of the crazy babbling New Harmony (1825). But I think most historians agree that the instances where socialist communities were found to work hard represent cases where the members were inspired not by the economic motive of socialism, but by the animating spirit of religious faith. They counted the world well lost and if by accident they found it, gave it gladly away again.
Nor can we in discussing the practical possibilities of socialism make any comparison, draw any parallel as between our country and Russia. There is no parallel to draw. Forty years ago Russia was a country of ignorance and illiteracy condemned by tyranny to a stagnation and poverty that were a mockery of its vast potential wealth. In that short time it has passed through revolution, slaughter, and famine to try to cover the ground we took long centuries to pass. Its internal, industrial advance is now matched and crowned by a national defence unsurpassed in history. Stalingrad ranks with Thermopylae. Yet even in Russia after a first attempt at uniformity of lot and equality of pay, it was found that the needed advance could not be made without the incentive of those extra rewards for extra talent, unusual endeavor and exceptional endowment which are as old as human history, and as deep set as human nature.
The Russian system, therefore, would yet seem far from its final phase. Indeed it may happen that the movement of the democracies towards what is called the “left” (extension of state action) may be met by a movement of the Russian system toward the “right” (private rights) and both may come together in the middle. But Heaven forbid that this country, to reach the happiness that the future holds for us, must pass through such a Valley of the Shadow as that the Russian people had to pass.
In the preceding chapter this difficulty of work under socialism has already been discussed as abstract theory. Here we may show it as socialism in the concrete by picturing a community of socialists at work, or as near to it as they can get. In order to isolate them in the way all things in experimental science are isolated from external influences, we may imagine them as landing on a desert island.
LITTLE SCENES UNDER SOCIALISM
SOCIALISTS ON A DESERT ISLAND
So one day there came sailing to the island a ship of Socialists. And these had come across the ocean looking for a place to set up Brotherly Love. But they had been a long time in coming, for it is much slower to sail a ship on brotherly love than in the old Nova Scotia fashion.
So when the leader saw the Island it looked so fresh and green and cool that he knew it was just the place for a habitation of brotherly love. He called down the main hatchway, “Gentlemen, I don’t want to trouble you or to disturb the ladies, but if some of you will come on deck I think you will agree that we have found just the very place we are looking for.”
They came at once, after awhile, for they were the best-natured fellows in the world.
So presently they got the ship to the shore. They bumped a hole in it on the rocks but that didn’t matter as they wouldn’t be using it any more. They had speeches and sang community songs and went to sleep on the sands with the wind in their ears.
The next day the leader said, “Now, gentlemen, I suggest that we set ourselves to work for the production of food. Labour, ladies and gentlemen, is the sole source of value. I will, therefore, ask you to initiate with me the production of yams, mangoes, banyans, breadfruit and so forth, and the domestication of the wild dingo and the llama for their wool and of the goat for its milk and meat. We also search the rocks for guano eggs.”
One shook his head. “It sounds like work,” he said.
But the leader answered, “How can it be work if you get no wages?”
And another said, “Can’t we have a little community singing first?” So they sat and sang.
After that — not that very day, of course — the work began, or at least it was supposed to begin. But the Island was so beautiful and so drowsy that it hardly seemed right to work. Even the leader said, “Don’t over exert yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, and, above all, keep out of the sun. Mrs. McSpodden, don’t try to catch that goat — you’ll never get it.”
So the yam field was a little scratched and then neglected, and they sat round on the grass in the shade of the trees and listened to the burbling of the little brooks, and the women made daisy chains of flowers and sang to the children, and it always seemed too early to begin work, and then too late, and then it was afternoon and then sunset.
So they ate what they had brought in boxes and crates and barrels, and each day there was less and less of it. “We must work,” said the leader and yawned as he said it, and when they looked at him again he was fast asleep.
Then came all of a sudden the monsoon storms and rain, and great flashes of lightning that tore the sky, and wind and waves that smashed what was left of the ship. And there was no shelter and no food and only hissing rain.
And when the monsoon storm was over the Socialist settlement of Brotherly Love was gone. There was nothing of it but here and there little fragments of human wreckage among the rocks and trees, and bits of coloured cloth — and even that the sun and wind tore and wore away every day. Perhaps some of the people made a raft of the broken ship and got away. But if they did it was never known.
Yet if laziness were socialism’s only fault it might be pardoned. Even laziness is better than fierce over-work that is apt to be set up under free enterprise when it is given its own way, the over-work that is induced by piece-work and by those subtle and misleading forms of “speeding-up” the worker which seems merely to offer special reward to the industrious but in reality lower the general average rate. There is in truth a reasonable and decent pace of work, mental or bodily, for going beyond which there is neither need nor social advantage but which free competition is inclined to push too hard. Lazy men have their place in the world in keeping it sane.
Now as long as Government enterprise and private enterprise exist side by side a certain amount of laziness leavens the lump. So it is today for example in the colleges, which are in a sense “socialism,” that is, either state institutions or else trusts, and not in either case run to make a profit. Heaven help the professors if they had to show a dividend. In the colleges much of the work is lazy, some of it even drowsy. But that is the price paid for the residue — the real stuff, the work for work’s sake that counts neither time nor labor, on which is built our science and our mechanism of life.
One may recall here the good old days of the Intercolonial Railway of forty or fifty years ago not as it really was, which doesn’t matter to the present discussion, but as the good natured jokes of the day pictured it to be. Built as a political and military railway which could not be expected to run at a commercial profit, it amply lived up to this expectation. It was understood that all the passengers rode on passes; that the train hands came and sat in amongst them, talking local politics; that the train was stopped in summer time to pick raspberries along the track; and that if a passenger missed the train at a side station the train would go back for him, unless he’d gone on ahead. One might say that that is no way to run a railway but yet in a sense it’s as wonderful as what we now call “service.”
But the real trouble with socialism, the terrible danger which it conceals lies not with laziness but in another direction. Socialism as it grows complete leaves no way out, leaves no escape, and to maintain its hold must sooner or later fall back on force and turn to despotism, the iron, brutal rule of those in power organized against expulsion from it. There is no need to argue whether this is so. The world has seen it.
But this problem of escape we leave over for a moment while we turn to see the way in which the impossibilities of socialism as now shown reveal why it is that private enterprise has become the basis of industrial society and must remain, as far as we can see, the only basis which does not carry the danger of a social catastrophe. The truth is that of late years, often from the very generosity of our hearts and our increasing eagerness for a better world we have looked too much at the defects and short-comings of private enterprise, too little at its merits.
After all the private enterprise supplies a continuous and universal motive power to keep things going. The system of “every man for himself” corresponds to the fundamental prompting of human nature. The words taken by themselves, “every man for himself,” have a selfish, an almost brutal sound which permits a false interpretation. In reality when we talk of “every man for himself” in the social and industrial world we mean every man working not only for himself alone but for those near and dear to him — for a wife, for children, for aged parents who begin to lean on his support. A man working literally alone and solely for himself is as rare a sight as it is repugnant. Society could never be based on that. But the strong man whose capacity is as a tower of strength to those dependent on him is a great figure, one that in an earlier world before the days of machinery and associated industry was the basis of society itself.
