L. G. Chiozza Money

“ We have still to learn that while the dwellings and surroundings of the people are unlovely we cannot hope for a gifted race. We have yet to understand that education begins when the child opens its eyes and ears to the sights and sounds of the home and its surroundings. It is not alone that the people lack monetary income. To the ill-distribution of wealth is added the ill-distribution of the means of a beautiful life. The majority of our people are denied the vision of beauty, and even those who receive fair wages perish morally for lack of that vision. ”

“ We have no fear of capital, regarding it as the natural handmaiden of labour; we look on interest itself as natural and just; we would set no limit to accumulation, nor impose on the rich any burden that is not equally placed on the poor; we see no evil in competition, but deem unrestricted competition to be as necessary to the health of the industrial and social organisms as the free circulation of the blood is to the health of the bodily organism—to be the agency whereby the fullest co-operation is to be secured. ”

“ Sham, shoddy and make-believe—these are erected in the form of houses, sewn up in the form of suits, packed in tins to mock children as food, made the sole occupation of millions of quite honest people. If honesty of production is to be regained, the great services must pass, one by one, under public control, and as each passes another opportunity for the amassing of private fortunes will pass away and another factor in the Error of Distribution will be cancelled. ”

“ It cannot be too strongly insisted that in connexion with the problem of housing the people there is not merely the question of "overcrowding" or of "crowding," whether in rooms or on area, to be considered. Not only death and disease but ugliness and inconvenience have to be fought. The speculative builder is covering suburban areas with mile after mile of amorphous dwellings. Acre after acre of smiling meadow is disfigured. Street after street of buildings of unredeemed ugliness reach out into the beautiful country which lies so near to the 75,000 acres of London. ”

“ That truth realized by any man, it is never again possible for him, if he has more than the average share of the nation's income, to grudge a part of the amount by which his income exceeds the average to raise to a higher level the children of those whose lives have been a crying injustice from their cradles—of those who have, with all their faults, done more than their share of the hard labour of the world. ”

“ Deprivation for the many and luxury for the few have degraded our national life at both ends of the scale. At the one end, "thirteen millions on the verge of hunger," physically and morally deteriorated through poverty and unloveliness. At the other, the inheritors of the earth, "senseless conduits through which the strength and riches of their native land are poured into the cup of the fornication of its capital." ”

“ There, fully one-half the population are attached to the soil by virtue of ownership and secure in the mother-earth which nourishes them. They may be poor, many of these peasant proprietors, but at least they are not constantly on the verge of hunger; at least they have the glorious privilege of independence.
Our empty country-side is universally admitted to be a great national danger. It is not alone that we are so much dependent upon imported food; it is that the imported food is for the consumption of a race degenerating in the unwholesome environment of town life. ”

“ The educational sham over, the real education of life begins. So far as the State calls for privates of industry it is chiefly to make them soldiers, sailors, makers of guns, builders of battleships. The development of all things useful, of railways, of canals, of roads, of cities, of houses, is resigned to the blind call for commodities and the intelligence of individuals who, in search of private gain, seek, without regard to the national well-being, to profit by that blind call. ”

“ We may delude ourselves how we will with palliatives; we shall find no remedy for unemployment short of the control by the community of the essential work of the community. While we leave the direction of labour in the hands of a few rich men there will ever be a surplus of labour left for our hapless "government" to deal with wastefully. While the community resigns its right to decide its own destinies by submitting to the rule of the rich, there will remain the problem of poverty of which unemployment is not the worst part. ”

“ Policies of insurance, those typical documents of a community of prey, will be read in the public archives with much the same feelings as we now read a warrant for the burning of a Bruno. The young men who now waste their time in ruling up books in banks and insurance offices or in serving writs will find manly and useful work. The production of commodities will be commensurate with the labour put forth, unemployment will be one of the few crimes known to the statute-book, and last, but not least, the economic dependence of woman will cease. ”

“ So long as the masses of the people are denied the fruit of their own labour, so long will our civilization be a false veneer, and our every noble thoroughfare be flanked by purlieus of shame.
There is already a beginning made. A few hundred millions have been applied as public capital in the ownership by many municipalities of such services as tramways, gasworks, and waterworks. As we saw in our examination of the national wealth, such capital is yet but a tiny fraction of the whole, and it still bears a great mortgage and pays interest to private hands. ”

“ It is no escape from labour which the thinking man offers the people. There are no honourable avenues to ease and luxury in the organization which would abolish poverty. It is a world of service which a civilization would substitute for a world of serfdom and pain. ”

“ The Free Trader has demonstrated that, as a whole, we are a wealthy and a prosperous people. The Protectionist has been able to throw doubt upon that wealth and prosperity chiefly because it is an indisputable fact that, whatever may be true of our accumulated wealth and total income, every British city has its slums, its paupers and its out-of-works. The Protectionist has been unable to resist the Free Trade evidence as to the magnificence of our commerce and shipping and the increasing national income recorded by the Inland Revenue Commissioners. ”

“ Thus the error in the distribution of income connotes an error in the distribution of our population amongst useful and useless, noble and ignoble, industries. Too few of our population are engaged in the manufacture of houses, boots, textiles, and furnishings. Too many of our population are engaged either in the direct production of luxuries or in the production of useful articles to be exchanged for foreign luxuries. The great masses of our people are under-served; a small proportion of our people are over-served. ”

“ We have purchased a great commerce at the price of crowding our population into the cities and of robbing millions of strength and beauty. We have given our people what we grimly call elementary education and robbed them of the elements of a natural life. ”

“ Given equality of opportunity, the marshal's baton in each private's knapsack, and the nation need not waste one of its great men.
If we are in earnest in this matter of the problem of poverty, we must hasten to equalize opportunity, and having begun with the unborn child, continue our work in the school. We must seek to make the school a preparation for life and endeavour to build up, out of the new generation, citizens who understand, and who, understanding, will see to it that they remain not poor. ”

“ So other millions derived from labour pass into channels of waste.
The waste and misdirection of capital is a far-reaching matter. Lacking capital, which simply means lacking tools, labour cannot be economically exerted, whether in agriculture, in manufacturing, or in distribution. For the use of tools we leave the great mass of our population dependent upon a comparative handful of rich persons. That dependence amounts to an economic serfdom which places the direction of the lives and labours of the people in the hands of the few. ”

“ It is beyond question that there is a clear call to succour the aged, to care for the weak, to aid poor women in their time of trouble. The sufferer, the affected individual, the disease, must be dealt with. But ever we must keep before us the causes which bring into being the raw material of our social problems; ever we must have clear vision of the crime of poverty in a wealthy country ”

“ From the small beginnings made we must seek to advance, nor need we be deterred by those who implore us to hasten slowly. If Rome was not built in a day, Washington was built in not many days, and the factory system itself is little more than a century old. The lapse of a single generation might see well advanced the building of our new city.
It would be a great pity if anyone were to imagine that the changes necessary to secure the just reward of all forms of labour are either difficult to effect or likely to cause dislocation in the making. ”