If a community consists of 10,000 people, and if 9000 people are making bread and 1000 are making jewellery, it is evident that there will be more bread than jewellery.
If in the same community 9000 make jewellery and only 1000 make bread, there will be more jewellery than bread.
In the first case there will be food enough for all, though jewels be scarce. In the second case the people must starve, although they wear diamond rings on all their fingers.
In a well-ordered State no luxuries would be produced until there were enough necessaries for all.
Robinson Crusoe's first care was to secure food and shelter. Had he neglected his goats and his raisins, and spent his time in making shell-boxes, he would have starved. Under those circumstances he would have been a fool. But what are we to call the delicate and refined ladies who wear satin and pearls, while the people who earn them lack bread?
Take a community of two men. They work upon a plot of land and grow grain for food. By each working six hours a day they produce enough food for both.
Now take one of those men away from the cultivation of the land, and set him to work for six hours a day at the making of bead necklaces. What happens?
This happens--that the man who is left upon the land must now work twelve hours a day. Why? Because although his companion has ceased to grow grain he has not ceased to _eat bread_. Therefore the man who grows the grain must now grow grain enough for two. That is to say, that the more men are set to the making of luxuries, the heavier will be the burden of the men who produce necessaries.
But in this case, you see, the farmer does get some return for his extra labour. That is to say, he gets half the necklaces in exchange for half his grain; for there is no rich man.
Suppose next a community of three--one of whom is a landlord, while the other two are farmers.
The landlord takes half the produce of the land in rent, but does no work. What happens?
We saw just now that the two workers could produce enough grain in six hours to feed two men for one day. Of this the landlord takes half.
Therefore, the two men must now produce four men's food in one day, of which the landlord will take two, leaving the workers each one. Well, if it takes a man six hours to produce a day's keep for one, it will take him twelve hours to produce a day's keep for two. So that our two farmers must now work twice as long as before.
But now the landlord has got twice as much grain as he can eat. He therefore proceeds to _spend_ it, and in spending it he "finds useful employment" for one of the farmers. That is to say, he takes one of the farmers off the land and sets him to building a house for the landlord.
What is the effect of this?
The effect of it is that the one man left upon the land has now to find food for all three, and in return gets nothing.
Consider this carefully. All men must eat, and here are two men who do not produce food. To produce food for one man takes one man six hours.
To produce food for three men takes one man eighteen hours. The one man left on the land has, therefore, to work three times as long, or three times as hard, as he did at first. In the case of the two men, we saw that the farmer did get his share of the bead necklaces, but in the case of the three men the farmer gets nothing. The luxuries produced by the man taken from the land are enjoyed by the rich man.
The landlord takes from the farmer two-thirds of his produce, and employs another man to help him to spend it.
We have here three classes--
1. The landlord, who does no work.
2. The landlord's servant, who does work for the benefit of the landlord.
3. The farmer, who produces food for himself and the other two.
Now, all the peoples of Europe, if not of the world, are divided into those three classes.
And it is _most important_ that you should thoroughly understand those three classes, never forget them, and never allow the rich man, nor the champions of the rich man, to forget them.
The jockeys, huntsmen, and flunkeys alluded to just now, belong to the class who work, but whose work is all done for the benefit of the idle.
Do not be deceived into supposing that there are but _two_ classes: there are _three_. Do not believe that the people may be divided into workers and idlers: they must be divided into (1) idlers, (2) workers who work for the idlers, and (3) workers who support the idlers and those who work for the idlers.
These three classes are a relic of the feudal times: they represent the barons, the vassals, and the retainers.
The rich man is the baron, who draws his wealth from the workers; the jockeys, milliners, flunkeys, upholsterers, designers, musicians, and others who serve the rich man, and live upon his custom and employment, are the retainers; the workers, who earn the money upon which the rich man and his following exist, are the vassals.
Remember the _three_ classes: the rich, who produce nothing; the employees of the rich, who produce luxuries for the rich; and the workers, who find everything for themselves and all the wealth for the other two classes.
It is like two men on one donkey. The duke rides the donkey, and boasts that he carries the flunkey on his back. So he does. But the donkey carries both flunkey and duke.
Clearly, then, the duke confers no favour on the agricultural labourer by employing jockeys and servants, for the labourer has to pay for them, and the duke gets the benefit of their services.
But the duke confers a benefit on the men he employs as huntsmen and servants, and without the duke they would starve? No; without him they would not starve, for the wealth which supports them would still exist, and they could be found other work, and could even add to the general store of wealth by producing some by their own labour.
The same remark applies to all those of the second class, from the fashionable portrait-painter and the diamond-cutter down to the scullery-maid and the stable-boy.
Compare the position of an author of to-day with the position of an author in the time of Dr. Johnson. In Johnson's day the man of genius was poor and despised, dependent on rich patrons: in our day the man of genius writes for the public, and the rich patron is unknown.
The best patron is the People; the best employer is the People; the proper person to enjoy luxuries is the man who works for and creates them.
My Lady Dedlock finds useful employment for Mrs. Jones. She employs Mrs.
Jones to make her ladyship a ball-dress.
Where does my lady get her money? She gets it from her husband, Sir Leicester Dedlock, who gets it from his tenant farmer, who gets it from the agricultural labourer, Hodge.
Then her ladyship orders the ball-dress of Mrs. Jones, and pays her with Hodge's money.
But if Mrs. Jones were not employed making the ball-dress for my Lady Dedlock, she could be making gowns for Mrs. Hodge, or frocks for Hodge's girls.
Whereas now Hodge cannot buy frocks for his children, and his wife is a dowdy, because Sir Leicester Dedlock has taken Hodge's earnings and given them to his lady to buy ball costumes.
Take a larger instance. There are many yachts which, in building and decoration, have cost a quarter of a million.
Average the wages of all the men engaged in the erection and fitting of such a vessel at 30s. a week. We shall find that the yacht has "found employment" for 160 men for twenty years. Now, while those men were engaged on that work they produced no necessaries for themselves. But they _consumed_ necessaries, and those necessaries were produced by the same people who found the money for the owner of the yacht to spend.
That is to say, that the builders were kept by the producers of necessaries, and the producers of necessaries were paid for the builders' keep, with money which they, the producers of necessaries, had earned for the owner of the yacht.
The conclusion of this sum being that the producers of necessaries had been compelled to support 160 men, and their wives and children, for twenty years; and for what?
That they might build _one yacht_ for the pleasure of _one idle man_.
Would those yacht builders have starved without the rich man? Not at all. But for the rich man, the other workers would have had more money, could afford more holidays, and that quarter of a million spent on the one yacht would have built a whole fleet of pleasure boats.
And note also that the pleasure boats would find more employment than the yacht, for there would be more to spend on labour and less on costly materials.
So with other dependants of the rich. The duke's gardeners could find work in public parks for the people; the artists, who now sell their pictures to private collections, could sell them to public galleries; and some of the decorators and upholsterers who now work on the rich men's palaces might turn their talents to our town halls and hospitals and public pavilions. And that reminds me of a quotation from Mr.
Mallock, cited in _Merrie England_. Mr. Mallock said--
Let us take, for instance, a large and beautiful cabinet, for which a rich man of taste pays 2000. The cabinet is of value to him for reasons which we will consider presently; as possessed by him it constitutes a portion of his wealth. But how could such a piece of wealth be distributed? Not only is it incapable of physical partition and distribution, but, if taken from the rich man and given to the poor man, the latter is not the least enriched by it.
Put a priceless buhl cabinet into an Irish labourer's cottage, and it will probably only add to his discomforts; or, if he finds it useful, it will only be because he keeps his pigs in it. A picture by Titian, again, may be worth thousands, but it is worth thousands only to the man who can enjoy it.