Laissez-faire

“ But when, in any way, direct or indirect, the unworthy deprive the worthy of their dues, or impede them in the quiet pursuit of their ends, then may properly come the demand, "Interfere promptly and effectually, and be in fact the protectors which you are in name." Our politicians and philanthropists, impatient with a salutary laissez-faire, tolerate and even defend a laissez-faire that is in the highest degree mischievous. ”

“ The universal demand of Laissez-faire by a people from its governors or upper classes, is a soft-sounding demand; but it is only one step removed from the fatallest. 'Laissez-faire,' exclaims a sardonic German writer, 'What is this universal cry for Laissez-faire? Does it mean that human affairs require no guidance; that wisdom and forethought cannot guide them better than folly and accident? ”

“ Never, on this Earth, was the relation of man to man long carried on by Cash-payment alone. If, at any time, a philosophy of Laissez-faire, Competition and Supply-and- demand, start up as the exponent of human relations, expect that it will soon end. ”

“ The laissez-faire view of government was to all appearances becoming entirely dominant.
63. Individualism.—But the prevailing tendencies of thought and the economic teaching of the period were not merely negative and opposed to government regulation; they contained a positive element also. If there was to be no external control, what incentive would actuate men in their industrial existence? What force would hold economic society together? The answer was a plain one. Enlightened self-interest was the incentive, universal free competition was the force. ”

“ The capitalists were, in short, committed to the principle of laissez-faire in every phase of industrial life, from " Free Trade in Corn " to the unlimited use of labour of either sex at any age and under any conditions ; and what the workmen demanded was only the application of this principle to the wage con- tract. ”

“ Suffice it to say that the principle is understood in every nation and clime, being embodied in innumerable maxims and witticisms: caveat emptor: business is business; dog eat dog; the devil take the hindmost; look out for Number One; do others or they will do you; self-preservation is the first law of Nature. In a civilization based upon commercial competition, laissez faire and freedom of contract, the lie of the horse-trader becomes the basis of all the really significant actions of men and women. ”

“ Modern democracy and the industrial system were both born in a time of reaction against kings, crown government, and a regime of detailed economic regulation. In the industrial sphere this reaction took the form of extreme devolution, known as laissez-faire individualism. Each economic decision was to be made by the man who had title to the property involved. Since almost everything was owned by somebody, there would be somebody to manage everything. ”

“ It is true that the laissez faire of to-day differs from that of the last century. For there is at present a very wide belief in the possibility of controlling corporations, and whereas the laissez faire of the last century went so far as to deny the necessity of government control, that of to-day very largely admits it. ”

“ Thus, the weight of my criticism is directed against the inadequacy of the theoretical foundations of the laissez-faire doctrine upon which I was brought up and which for many years I taught;3⁄4against the notion that the rate of interest and the volume of investment are self-adjusting at the optimum level, so that preoccupation with the balance of trade is a waste of time. ”

“ Parliament will absolutely, with whatever effort, have to lift itself out of those deep ruts of donothing routine; and learn to say, on all sides, something more edifying than Laissez-faire. If Parliament cannot learn it, what is to become of Parliament? The toiling millions of England ask of their English Parliament foremost of all, Canst thou govern us or not? ”

“ The map habit of thought is no less pregnant in the sphere of economics than it is in that of strategy. True that Laissez-faire had little use for it, but the 'most favoured nation' clause which Germany imposed on defeated France in the Treaty of Frankfurt had quite a different meaning for the strategical German mind to that which was attached to it by honest Cobdenites. ”

“ With trained men, educated to pen and practise, to administer and act; briefless Barristers, chargeless Clergy, taskless Scholars, languishing in all courthouses, hiding in obscure garrets, besieging all antechambers, in passionate want of simply one thing, Work;—with as many Half-pay Officers of both Services, wearing themselves down in wretched tedium, as might lead an Emigrant host larger than Xerxes' was! Laissez-faire and Malthus positively must part company. ”

“ These, 'the armed soldiers of democracy,' had to chain democracy under their feet, and become despots over it, before they could work out the earnest obscure purpose of democracy itself! Democracy, take it where you will in our Europe, is found but as a regulated method of rebellion and abrogation; it abrogates the old arrangement of things; and leaves, as we say, zero and vacuity for the institution of a new arrangement. It is the consummation of No-government and Laissez-faire. It may be natural for our Europe at present ”

“ One way or other, the world will absolutely need to be governed; if not by this class of men, then by that. One can predict, without gift of prophecy, that the era of routine is nearly ended. Wisdom and faculty alone, faithful, valiant, ever-zealous, not pleasant but painful, continual effort, will suffice. Cost what it may, by one means or another, the toiling multitudes of this perplexed, over-crowded Europe, must and will find governors. 'Laissez-faire, Leave them to do?' The thing they will do, if so left, is too frightful to think of! ”

“ The manufacturers who had private property—that is, property and money apart from the capital employed in their business—were in a different position, and could either retire from business, and make the best of what they had left, or keep on manufacturing in the hope that they should retrieve their losses, and that times would mend. ”

“ In the earlier periods of the large corporation the industrial baron and his ofttimes lawless audacity were essentials of corporate existence. As these great types die off, their system dies with them. Supply keeps close on the heels of demand. These feudal barons of industry and commerce are breeding no successors because none are needed. ”

“ Enterprise was allowed full play. Protective duties were reduced and finally abolished. Competition stimulated and encouraged the production of wealth. But while the masters profited, the workpeople suffered. ”

“ Whereas the organization of feudal economic life rested upon an elaborate system of binding customs, the organization under the system of private enterprise has rested upon the self-interest of the property owner-a self-interest held in check only by competition and the conditions of supply and demand. ”

“ While the several industries become, in point of fact, more and more dependent upon one another, in point of law, they remain wholly independent. The means of production in every single industry are private property ”

“ Here we see a proprietor, not only encouraging industry by every ordinary means, but absolutely risking, and losing, large sums of money, in the most laudable and noble exertions to maintain and support a trade most valuable for the country and the people engaged in it. ”

“ That hoards had rights while human souls had none.
Then all things changed their object and relation;
Commerce instead of Nature—Progress instead of Men;
The world became a monstrous corporation. ”

“ Let him who owns and those who work, receive Their fair division of the profits reaped. The owner gives the land and the machines To work the raw material, yielding gain. Let this be calculated as his toil, And grain, proportionate to such, bestowed, While those, whose labour has produced the grain, Receive their fair share of the profits too. Thus all would have an interest in the work, 37 And feel they laboured not, nor toiled in vain. Strikes and disputes would fade like restless dreams, And Brotherhood would knit the hearts of men. ”

“ There was no limit to the extent to which an individual might acquire the exclusive ownership of all the factories, shops, mines, and means of industry, and commerce of every sort, so that no person could find an opportunity to earn a living except as the servant of the owner and on his terms. ”

“ You cannot say in modern commerce, 'we are big enough, let us stop here.' Nowadays, with the present commercial system, a business must grow or die. But if it is to grow, we who are responsible for it must be able to seize every opportunity, occupy every vacant position, leave nothing to chance or to our rivals. The fact is, my dear, I have been meaning to tell you, if ever you did speak to me on the subject, that in my judgment the moment has come when the Imperial should be turned into a public company. ”

“ But let the service that Capital and Management are capable of rendering industry once be lost to sight, and industry itself will be ruined, and with it the well-being of Labor and the Community as well. What is needed is, not the ruination of Capital and Management, but that each be given its rightful place in a system of the government of industry which will make for the good of all the parties to production. ”

“ Capital has been accumulated by great corporations, known as “trusts,” which occupy gigantic buildings and use larger and more costly machinery than was ever before known. Even private life is affected in manifold ways by recent inventions. ”

“ Laws for maintaining a balance of property among orders, necessary to sustain an aristocracy, however disguised, defeat every such principle of our policy.
By suffering industry to distribute property, industry will be created. It teaches no vice. It bestows health and content. It is a pledge of virtue. It double our happiness by enabling us to blend with it the happiness of others. ”

“ The present system of mastery is based on the ownership by one group of people, of the productive wealth upon which depends the livelihood of all. The masters of present day economic society have in their possession the natural resources, the tools, the franchises, patents, and the other phases of the modern industrial system with which the people must work in order to live. The few who own and control the productive wealth have it in their power [Pg 94] to say to the many who neither own nor control,—"You may work or you may not work." ”

“ Private ownership in the instruments of production, once the means of securing to the producer the ownership of his product, has to-day become the means of expropriating the farmer, the artisan, and the small trader, and of placing the non-producers—capitalists and landlords—in possession of the products of labor. ”

“ The individual lawyer or carpenter perishes, but the profession or the trade survives, like a Platonic idea. In a stationary economic condition of a people, we might suppose that every trade and profession is an immortal, unchanging corporation. ”

“ I thought, on the contrary, that under the present conditions of private ownership production itself had taken a wrong turn, so as to neglect, and often to prevent, the production of the very necessaries for life on a sufficient scale. ”

“ At his command, through foremen and managers, workmen are employed or dismissed. He decides how long they are to work and what pay they are to get. And all this happens because the factory is his factory, the works, his works; they belong to him, are his private property. It is this right of private property over the means of production that is the cause of the terrible power which is in the hands of capital. ”

“ But the flames of a new economic evolution run around us, and we turn to find that competition has killed competition, that corporations are grown greater than the State and have bred individuals greater than themselves, and that the naked issue of our time is with property becoming master instead of servant, property in many necessaries of life becoming monopoly of the necessaries of life. ”

“ In the midst, too, of all these instantaneous conflicts and unions, we are all interchangeably related in the double interest of capitalists and consumers,—that is, we have each and all an interest that property shall be respected, and that production shall be carried forward to its utmost point of perfection, so as to make its products accessible to all. ”

“ Some tell us that we want capital, and that we should send abroad and get men to come here with money to build factories. This is not what we need. If the cotton lord and the millionaire come here and hire you to build factories and pay you their money for their work, when the factory is erected they own it, and they set their price upon your labor and your wool or cotton—they have dominion over you. But if, by your own efforts and exertions, you cooperate together and build a factory it is your own. ”

“ Had property been well distributed, protected by co-operative guilds fenced round and supported by custom and by the autonomy of great artisan corporations, those accumulations of wealth, necessary for the launching of each new method of production and for each new perfection of it, would have been discovered in the mass of small owners. ”

“ Private ownership of land by a few was doubtless in its origin an act of spoliation; whereas private ownership of factories and natural monopolies was the result of the application of intelligence and labor to the organization of industry. ”