W. M. Flinders Petrie

“ If the trade is not in the hands of a single firm for a whole district, like a railway company, there arises the problem, how is the burden of cheap work for the poor to be distributed over the constituent firms? This was solved in Rome by the union, which was the sole body recognised in law. Each member of the union was assessed by his union, on the basis of both his capital and his trade returns, and he had to do so much of the cheap work in proportion. Hence the wealth of each firm determined the amount of their proletariat taxation. ”

“ Free trade implies free competition, and that is trade-warfare.
Another form of trade war is holding a country for the sake of a monopoly of trade, thus enabling a group of manufacturers—say of France—to tax all the inhabitants under their government, especially in colonies—as Algiers, Madagascar, Tahiti, &c. This is simply a form of tribute, like the taxation levied by Rome on various conquered countries; it holds back the taxed countries. If other countries wish to get a share of that trade they will have to fight, by trade or by violence, to conquer the right to join in it. ”

“ To begin at the sentimental end, as is now the fashion, is to degrade the whole race by swamping it with the worst stocks.
The line of progress in invention is the remorseless "scrapping" of poorer machines. The more serious the progress becomes, the more scrapping needs to be done. We must not be surprised then if a sign of human progress of mind and body should be the large number of inefficients who are thrown out of work on the scrap heap of society. ”

“ A man with a gigantic income cannot spend more than a few per cent. of it on himself. He must use it for large public enterprises which benefit mankind. To put it in another form, a great dealer has organised a method for taxing the community in such a way that they do not notice it. And if he spends the tax on public improvements or endowments—railways, new inventions, or universities—he is an active benefactor to the whole community. He sponges up the surplus which would otherwise be frittered away in ostentation or luxury, and drops it out where it is a permanent benefit. ”

“ We thus see that diversity, however great, must vary about a single centre, if it is to be favourable to society as a whole.
Looking at the general domination of modern law it is truly astonishing how much uniformity is possible. But the fact of a uniform law being in force must not blind us to the existence of a great amount of diversity being now tolerated side by side with it. For instance, we are so accustomed to think of only one type of marriage that the various stages recognised in Roman law seem astonishing. ”

“ What has been the result of the wealth in the hands of each class, to that class, and to the whole community? The rise of workmen's pay has mainly been used up; there has been a great benefit by improving the conditions of life, but perhaps half of the increase has been lost in mere waste; very little has gone toward lifting families to a higher class, and but a very small proportion has been saved. The whole property of the poor is estimated now at nearly a year's income, the result of savings in a century, or less than 1 per cent. ”

“ The great subject of the waste by renewal of the population in each generation has an immense variety of aspects; but the essential importance of it is seen when we reflect that about half the labour of the world is swallowed up in this renewal. The burden of production, of rearing, of education, and the waste and loss in the process, exceeds that of any other activity, such as supply of food or shelter, for the adult. Hence any possible saving in this great mass of labour, or reduction of waste, is of the first importance to the individual and the race. ”

“ Every step of the past has been a present, living, urgent, imperative, to the whole world; and every such present has been entirely conditioned by its past, just as the future to us is conditioned by our present. If any race now cares to learn somewhat from its own past, and that of others, it may benefit its own future; if it prefers a blind selfishness, a better race will be welcomed to its place. ”

“ There is a common feeling that business cannot be interesting in itself; but there are few, if any, businesses which if intelligently followed will not yield scope for some real interest of observation and study. The greater application of mind to the work of life will leave far less scope for fruitless amusement and—as a great painter remarked—"there is nothing of interest in life to be compared with work." ”

“ The one subject on which most print is spent is that which is absolutely futile, sport and games. Whether one group of men, selected by mere accident, is a minute trifle more active than another accidental group, is a matter of such utter insignificance that it would seem impossible to suppose that anyone would turn the head to see the result decided. Yet such questions absorb most of the interests and spare thoughts and reading of a great part—perhaps the greater part—of the population, just as the races of the circus swamped all other interests of the decadent Roman. ”

“ One man is forbidden to lay more than three hundred bricks a day, another forbidden to make more than so many glass dishes, another forbidden to attend to more than one machine. In every trade where a selfish short-sighted policy has gained its way, there is this system, which is doing inconceivable harm to character. The compulsory glorification of sloth is the most deleterious misfortune that can happen to a nation. The wreck of wars, pestilence and famine, will leave a more hopeful prospect than that of a people sunk in organised sloth. ”

“ The saving of life is another great step which will give man far higher power; not only in the mere hindrance of death, but far more in the increased power of work per day. The power of continuity of work is a growth of civilisation; and it is obvious that a man who can do twelve hours' work per day, instead of six hours, not only lives virtually twice as long, but costs the community only half as much for what he does. This continuity of work, or industry, is seen in both high and low classes of work. Some races can do more than twice as much agricultural work in the day as others. ”

“ As a principle we may hate the trust-man63 and multi-millionaire, but he may be a lesser curse than the extravagant middle or lower-class man. War is hateful, but it may be a lesser curse than rotting in peace. So long as the average man shows by his selfish luxury that he is incapable of managing wealth, so long the private taxer—who prevents some of the waste—will be a positive blessing to the community. The evolution of the great money-manager type now going on is a distinct step forward in the prevention of waste, and the growth of a better system of expenditure. ”

“ The simple action of a tax, without any compulsion, has produced a profound change in a family system which centuries or thousands of years had left unaltered. The notorious clinging to power and money among the aged, has given way before the screw of the State. The custom which left the control of large estates to men generally between fifty and eighty years of age, and hampered their development by the dying hand, has largely yielded to the Indian custom, of the division of property among sons on their marriage or entry on public life. ”

“ The modern ideal of a small family carefully tended is an immense advance, both for the individual life and for the saving of waste. But its benefits should be sought and not commanded. If the neglectful, dirty, and wasteful stocks of low type in our midst let their children die off, it is the only balance to their overgrowth, which would soon outnumber the better class of population. The right end to begin at is by insisting on hard work and tidy living, under penal enactments; the saving of the children may then be left to take care of itself. ”

“ The need of spending any considerable time on amusement is the sign of an incapacity, which has to be removed by strengthening the mind in the individual or in the race. The passion for amusement is the sure evidence of a defective education, which has left the mind incapable of continuity, or bare of interests. An important advance therefore lies in better use of the time which is at present wasted in fruitless action of mind or body; better adaptation and education for the work of life will gradually raise the standard so that this form of waste will be avoided. ”

“ It is perhaps not too much to say that all general popular advance of the community at large is based on the prevention of waste. Wherever waste exists improvement is possible; and we need not trouble ourselves much about the construction of the social organism, so long as we can lay our finger on the waste and check it. As with a machine we know the amount of force that is put into it, and can see what percentage is yielded up usefully in its output, so it is with a community. The design of the nature and quality of work done by the community or the machine is another matter ”

“ The more intense is the artificiality of life, the greater are the extremes of ability and incompetence, of riches and poverty, accompanying it. It is often a problem to kind hearts that there should be such misery and degradation side by side with the ease and welfare of civilisation. The answer is that it is inevitable, because the very same artificiality which gives scope to the capable to rise, equally gives scope for the incapable to fall. Every chance, every opening, every benefit attainable by exertion, is a means of advance to him who uses it ”

“ It is notorious that government lands are administered more wastefully and less remuneratively than any private property; and it would be ruinous to tie up the whole country to such administration. It is useless to say that these are mere abuses which must be rectified. Let them be rectified in the minor scale first, before the system can be applied in the major scale. There is no kind of government in the world that would not ruin this country if it introduced State ownership. Human nature does not allow of it, and only ignorance of human nature could propose it. ”

“ The enormous variety of character, and ability for special work, is all needed in a complete community. There are many "wrong paradises" in a whole society. We see the necessity for mental diversity, from the pure mathematician who is proud of the inapplicability of his results, through all the successive stages of research work, commercial work, administrative management, and mechanical work, even down to merely automatic work which needs no more mind than a cow's. And it is perfectly clear that such mental diversity must have corresponding variety of external life to accommodate it. ”

“ To compensate them for their incapacity by relief works, by farm colonies, by outdoor relief doles, by maintenance of their children, will inevitably lead to further atrophy of mind. The doctrine of equality of wages in a trade is a double injury, it encourages the most incapable man that can possibly squeeze into the trade, and it discourages the capable man who is worth far more than the average. It must tend to drive capable men out of the trades which they might have raised by their example and stimulus, into other lines where capacity can still earn its value. ”

“ Supposing that some public enterprise makes 20 per cent. profit to its shareholders, the people who use it are certainly better off, or they would leave it alone, and the profit is no loss to the community, as it merely means so much transferred from one pocket to another, and none wasted. But if such enterprises are choked at the roots by fear of seizure, the whole community suffers. Who will care to develop suburbs by starting electric trams when the whole can be seized in twenty-one years, so soon as it begins to repay the risks incurred? ”

“ When we become familiar with details of early ages nothing is more astonishing than to see how unaltered the mind of man is in its essentials. In tales and maxims six thousand years old we see not only the common stock of primary instincts, but also the finesse of conduct in public life, the modes of ensuring respect in dealing with superiors and inferiors, the attention to very varied elements of character, and a fine suavity and kindliness pervading the whole. ”

“ We all know how such great benefits as prison reform, the abolition of slavery, the restriction of child labour, and similar movements of which the public are now proud, were each originated by one mind, and worked by a small group in the teeth of the bitterest opposition to start with. ”

“ Hence the Roman trades unions were small employers of the status of our plumbers or upholsterers, more than, as with us, a large mass of crude labour organised against all capital. They were trade unions, rather than unions of the mechanics as against the managers. The compulsory entry of all the master employers into a union would no doubt be a step very welcome to modern unionism; and the compulsory extension of it, so as to leave no free labour, would be an ideal condition, in which picketing would be quite superseded by legal compulsion to join the union. ”

“ Probably the habit of mind and the type of government act and react by one intensifying the other.
Where we can study an actual working system of communism in such a climate as our own, we see that it only succeeded by some elaborate and very forcible regulations. To outsiders, ignorant of the machine, the less advanced states of society are generally supposed to be very simple, and to leave a large amount of liberty. On the contrary, whenever a barbaric or savage society is really understood, the complexity which is essential to its success is seen to be even greater than among ourselves. ”

“ A huge waste of life is going on, and it has been proved that it is preventable. But however much we must sympathise with it, we cannot shut our eyes to its meaning. England produces over 300,000 excess of births over deaths yearly, and perhaps a tenth more might be added to that by care of infant life. But would that tenth be of the best stock or the worst? We must agree that it would be of the lower, or lowest type of careless, thriftless, dirty, and incapable families that the increase would be obtained. Is it worth while to dilute our increase of population by 10 per cent. ”

“ The often debated problem dealing with the human refuse of bad stocks is one which presses most on an advanced civilisation. We will not do like the Christian Norseman, when he put the ne'er-do-weel family into a wide grave in the churchyard, and wiped his hands of them. We will not even leave them to exterminate themselves by their own follies, vices, and ignorance. But if the state takes up the burden of such wastrels it must have an entire control of them. Responsibility without rule is worse than rule without responsibility. The only safe course is a rigorous enforcement of parental duties ”

“ THE NEED OF DIVERSITY.
A large part of the aims of government in all ages has been the securing of uniformity, and much of the misery of mankind has been caused by the enforcing of it. But when we look at nature we see that a highly uniform species is the least likely to advance; and a seedsman or a breeder will try to break up too uniform a strain by exciting conditions which may lead to beneficial new varieties. It is only in a fluctuating species in which new "sports" easily arise, or are quickly developed by conditions, that we can expect to acquire new qualities or beneficial advance. ”