Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell (read novel full TXT) 📖

State

employees and officials will not be able to use it all. With their

paper money they will be able to buy enough and more than enough to

satisfy all their needs abundantly, but there will still be a great

and continuously increasing surplus stock in the possession of the

State.

 

`The Socialist Administration will now acquire or build fleets of

steam trading vessels, which will of course be manned and officered by

State employees - the same as the Royal Navy is now. These fleets of

National trading vessels will carry the surplus stocks I have

mentioned, to foreign countries, and will there sell or exchange them

for some of the products of those countries, things that we do not

produce ourselves. These things will be brought to England and sold

at the National Service Stores, at the lowest possible price, for

paper money, to those in the service of the State. This of course

will only have the effect of introducing greater variety into the

stocks - it will not diminish the surplus: and as there would be no

sense in continuing to produce more of these things than necessary, it

would then be the duty of the Administration to curtail or restrict

production of the necessaries of life. This could be done by reducing

the hours of the workers without reducing their wages so as to enable

them to continue to purchase as much as before.

 

`Another way of preventing over production of mere necessaries and

comforts will be to employ a large number of workers producing the

refinements and pleasures of life, more artistic houses, furniture,

pictures, musical instruments and so forth.

 

`In the centre of every district a large Institute or pleasure house

could be erected, containing a magnificently appointed and decorated

theatre; Concert Hall, Lecture Hall, Gymnasium, Billiard Rooms,

Reading Rooms, Refreshment Rooms, and so on. A detachment of the

Industrial Army would be employed as actors, artistes, musicians,

singers and entertainers. In fact everyone that could be spared from

the most important work of all - that of producing the necessaries of

life - would be employed in creating pleasure, culture, and education.

All these people - like the other branches of the public service -

would be paid with paper money, and with it all of them would be able

to purchase abundance of all those things which constitute

civilization.

 

`Meanwhile, as a result of all this, the kind-hearted private

employers and capitalists would find that no one would come and work

for them to be driven and bullied and sweated for a miserable trifle

of metal money that is scarcely enough to purchase sufficient of the

necessaries of life to keep body and soul together.

 

`These kind-hearted capitalists will protest against what they will

call the unfair competition of State industry, and some of them may

threaten to leave the country and take their capital with them… As

most of these persons are too lazy to work, and as we will not need

their money, we shall be very glad to see them go. But with regard to

their real capital - their factories, farms, mines or machinery - that

will be a different matter… To allow these things to remain idle

and unproductive would constitute an injury to the community. So a

law will be passed, declaring that all land not cultivated by the

owner, or any factory shut down for more than a specified time, will

be taken possession of by the State and worked for the benefit of the

community… Fair compensation will be paid in paper money to the

former owners, who will be granted an income or pension of so much a

year either for life or for a stated period according to circumstances

and the ages of the persons concerned.

 

`As for the private traders, the wholesale and retail dealers in the

things produced by labour, they will be forced by the State

competition to close down their shops and warehouses - first, because

they will not be able to replenish their stocks; and, secondly,

because even if they were able to do so, they would not be able to

sell them. This will throw out of work a great host of people who are

at present engaged in useless occupations; the managers and assistants

in the shops of which we now see half a dozen of the same sort in a

single street; the thousands of men and women who are slaving away

their lives producing advertisements, for, in most cases, a miserable

pittance of metal money, with which many of them are unable to procure

sufficient of the necessaries of life to secure them from starvation.

 

`The masons, carpenters, painters. glaziers, and all the others

engaged in maintaining these unnecessary stores and shops will all be

thrown out of employment, but all of them who are willing to work will

be welcomed by the State and will be at once employed helping either

to produce or distribute the necessaries and comforts of life. They

will have to work fewer hours than before… They will not have to

work so hard - for there will be no need to drive or bully, because

there will be plenty of people to do the work, and most of it will be

done by machinery - and with their paper money they will be able to

buy abundance of the things they help to produce. The shops and

stores where these people were formerly employed will be acquired by

the State, which will pay the former owners fair compensation in the

same manner as to the factory owners. Some of the buildings will be

utilized by the State as National Service Stores, others transformed

into factories and others will be pulled down to make room for

dwellings, or public buildings… It will be the duty of the

Government to build a sufficient number of houses to accommodate the

families of all those in its employment, and as a consequence of this

and because of the general disorganization and decay of what is now

called “business”, all other house property of all kinds will rapidly

depreciate in value. The slums and the wretched dwellings now

occupied by the working classes - the miserable, uncomfortable,

jerry-built “villas” occupied by the lower middle classes and by

“business” people, will be left empty and valueless upon the hands of

their rack renting landlords, who will very soon voluntarily offer to

hand them and the ground they stand upon to the state on the same

terms as those accorded to the other property owners, namely - in

return for a pension. Some of these people will be content to live in

idleness on the income allowed them for life as compensation by the

State: others will devote themselves to art or science and some others

will offer their services to the community as managers and

superintendents, and the State will always be glad to employ all those

who are willing to help in the Great Work of production and

distribution.

 

`By this time the nation will be the sole employer of labour, and as

no one will be able to procure the necessaries of life without paper

money, and as the only way to obtain this will be working, it will

mean that every mentally and physically capable person in the

community will be helping in the great work of PRODUCTION and

DISTRIBUTION. We shall not need as at present, to maintain a police

force to protect the property of the idle rich from the starving

wretches whom they have robbed. There will be no unemployed and no

overlapping of labour, which will be organized and concentrated for

the accomplishment of the only rational object - the creation of the

things we require… For every one labour-saving machine in use

today, we will, if necessary, employ a thousand machines! and

consequently there will be produced such a stupendous, enormous,

prodigious, overwhelming abundance of everything that soon the

Community will be faced once more with the serious problem of

OVER-PRODUCTION.

 

`To deal with this, it will be necessary to reduce the hours of our

workers to four or five hours a day… All young people will be

allowed to continue at public schools and universities and will not be

required to take any part in the work or the nation until they are

twenty-one years of age. At the age of forty-five, everyone will be

allowed to retire from the State service on full pay… All these

will be able to spend the rest of their days according to their own

inclinations; some will settle down quietly at home, and amuse

themselves in the same ways as people of wealth and leisure do at the

present day - with some hobby, or by taking part in the organization

of social functions, such as balls, parties, entertainments, the

organization of Public Games and Athletic Tournaments, Races and all

kinds of sports.

 

`Some will prefer to continue in the service of the State. Actors,

artists, sculptors, musicians and others will go on working for their

own pleasure and honour… Some will devote their leisure to science,

art, or literature. Others will prefer to travel on the State

steamships to different parts of the world to see for themselves all

those things of which most of us have now but a dim and vague

conception. The wonders of India and Egypt, the glories of Rome, the

artistic treasures of the continent and the sublime scenery of other

lands.

 

`Thus - for the first time in the history of humanity - the benefits

and pleasures conferred upon mankind by science and civilization will

be enjoyed equally by all, upon the one condition, that they shall do

their share of the work, that is necessary in order to, make all these

things possible.

 

`These are the principles upon which the CO-OPERATIVE COMMONWEALTH of

the future will be organized. The State in which no one will be

distinguished or honoured above his fellows except for Virtue or

Talent. Where no man will find his profit in another’s loss, and we

shall no longer be masters and servants, but brothers, free men, and

friends. Where there will be no weary, broken men and women passing

their joyless lives in toil and want, and no little children crying

because they are hungry or cold.

 

`A State wherein it will be possible to put into practice the

teachings of Him whom so many now pretend to follow. A society which

shall have justice and co-operation for its foundation, and

International Brotherhood and love for its law.

 

`Such are the days that shall be! but

What are the deeds of today,

In the days of the years we dwell in,

That wear our lives away?

Why, then, and for what we are waiting?

There are but three words to speak

“We will it,” and what is the foreman

but the dream strong wakened and weak?

`Oh, why and for what are we waiting, while

our brothers droop and die?

And on every wind of the heavens, a

wasted life goes by.

`How long shall they reproach us, where

crowd on crowd they dwell

Poor ghosts of the wicked city,

gold crushed, hungry hell?

`Through squalid life they laboured in

sordid grief they died

Those sons of a mighty mother, those

props of England’s pride.

They are gone, there is none can undo

it, nor save our souls from the curse,

But many a million cometh, and shall

they be better or worse?

 

`It is We must answer and hasten and open wide the door,

For the rich man’s hurrying terror, and the slow foot hope of

the poor,

Yea, the voiceless wrath of the wretched and their unlearned

discontent,

We must give it voice and wisdom, till the waiting tide be

spent

Come then since all things call