Part 27

“Antonio Stradivari has an eye That winces at false work and loves the true, With hand and arm that play upon the tool, As willingly as any singing bird Sets him to sing his morning roundelay Because he likes to sing and likes the song.”

Our best known instances of normal or nearly normal production are found in art and science. Here you have a product which the world recognises as its own—not that of the individual maker. “He has given to the world” such and such a picture, or statue; discovery in science or composition in music; to this world-service we give some, though an imperfect, honour; and we pity and even blame the man who “prostitutes his art” to the level of “the pot-boiler.” Art is world-service, truly, but so is manufacture or commerce. A man should no more prostitute his “trade” than his “art.” It is as base to make a “pot-boiler” of your day’s work as of a book or a picture. No soldier is more actually “serving his country” in his occasional fighting, than is the workman in his continual working. One’s country sometimes has to be “saved” in sudden emergency, at considerable cost of immediate exertion and sacrifice; but one’s country has to be kept alive all the time, at considerable cost of unceasing labour and some sacrifice too. Our patriotism, which rushes madly forward to “save the country” when it is in visible danger, and, having saved it, proceeds to exploit it for personal advantage all the rest of the time, is on a par with love for one’s family, which would risk life to “save” it, from flood, or fire, or injurious attack, and then mercilessly cheat it, starve it, keep it cold and dirty and ignorant and sick and vicious—when not “in danger.” The danger to our country from our general neglect and misuse, and our frequent positive injury, is far greater than that of occasional war. We need a patriotism that will operate all the time.

The human worker, whether a captain of industry or in the ranks, who puts his personal safety and advantage before that of his country is exactly the same traitor and coward that the officer or private in the army would be who did the same thing. He does not know it, we do not know it, therefore no odium attaches to these public offenders. But the mischief they do is apparent in every branch of our economic processes.

We have seen that human production is checked in amount by our lack of knowledge. It is injured in kind from the same cause. Normal production has an evolution of its own. Follow the development of any one trade, and you will see as natural a growth as in a physical organ, marred of course by our errors, but there under all. Take the building trades as an example. At the beginning we find primitive man enlarging a cave somewhat, or, lacking that retreat, putting up some shelter of boughs to screen him from the wind and rain, or spreading a hide for the same purpose. The act, repeated, develops skill, and the mind, dwelling over and over on the same problem, develops too, and sees better ways of accomplishment. The shelter of hide becomes the teepee or wigwam, and, cloth superseding leather, the tent in all its forms; but its growth is limited by mechanical conditions. The shelter of boughs is more open to improvement; and evolves slowly into hut, cabin, house. The materials used depending on the environment, the Eskimo builds of ice, the Chaldean of clay, and, slowly, by proof of superiority, stone was used wherever found. The principle of specialisation acting steadily upon this widening current of functional ability, we have now that group of allied trades required to construct for modern man the material form in which he lives and works—without which he cannot live and work.

A genealogical tree could be made, showing just where each branch diverged, the workers in wood, clay, and stone dividing early; the gradual appearance of the system of pipes and conduits which vitalise a house; the development of windows in all forms, of doors and their particular line of improvement, of interior finish, from daubed mud to artistic decoration; and so on and so on, until we have now the house which stands knit to the city by waste pipe, water pipe, gas pipe, and electric wire; a house which represents the slow fruition of a thousand centuries, the contributed intelligence and skill of a million men. The evolution of this “social form” is as natural and orderly as the evolution of any physical form. To the men through whom it grew the whole course should have been a pleasure and a pride, and in large measure it has been, in spite of all our misbeliefs.

To feel within one’s self the tendency toward a certain line of production, to “learn the trade,” i. e., submit the brain to the accumulated stimulus of that line of production—to feel the racial skill begin to flow through one’s fingers—to do the thing well—better—best!—and then, still unsatisfied, to relieve the pressure by new invention of ways even better than the best—that is the natural sensation of the producer. Against this have operated at every step the weight and darkness of our leaden lies. The child is not so watched and trained as to develop the fine sense of special “calling” which shows the best path in life. Only the extreme case, the boy who would be a sailor, or a mechanic, or whatever he was meant to be, has the advantage of being where he belongs in the world’s work. But the average boy, with no special aptitude or pleasure in his trade, is put to work under the dominant idea, drilled in from infancy, that he is to work only because he has to—he has to in order to get the pay. The whole outlook of his position is lost. He has his head in a bag. All he sees is the week’s wage, and the work is merely to be gotten through in order to get the wage.

We have known all along that this was a wrong attitude, and have tried to inculcate upon the worker a sense of “the nobility of labour,” of “duty to his employer,” of the “common interest of capital and labour.”

It does not ennoble the labourer to enlarge his selfishness to the size of his employer’s. The employer is in exactly the same boat. He has no more sense of what his work is for than the “hand” has. He too is looking only at his wages,—salary, income, profits, rent,—looking only at what he is to get from society, instead of what he is to do for it. The common interest of employer and employee, which is merely an interest in their common income, does not lift the cloud from labour. No interest is large enough to satisfy the human mind, except the social interest; the thrilling glory of working with and for the whole world at the trade you love best, and can do best.

The workman should have such education as shall give him for a background the full knowledge of social evolution; and the special place of his own trade in that evolution. He should know just where it first appeared, how it grew, and why, the importance of its place to-day—and here there would, no doubt, be warm differences of opinion, debates and competition. The payment for his service should no more be the point of ambition with the workman, than with the pen-man, paint-man, or rifleman. The producer is entitled to feel the full power and pride of production; and, in spite of our errors, this power and pride is felt by the well-placed workman, whose life is better than his belief—as human life always is.

One of the most important features of this great social function is the reactive effect on the functionary. The maker is inexorably modified by the thing made. If the thing made develops along normal lines, the maker develops with it. If it does not—if it is checked or perverted in its growth, so is the worker. Working is humanity’s growing. In the act of working the individual is modified, and by the work accomplished humanity is modified. Also the accomplished work remains, like coral, the record of the height of those who did it.

In the case of those who do not work, who consume copiously, and produce nothing, they have no chance of normal development, add no step to human progress. See in conspicuous instance the Grecian marbles and literature. Those who gave the work were themselves developed by doing it; the society which received the work was developed by using it; and by the work as it remains to us, we know and judge Greece. But the possession of these works does not make us Greeks. To be able to do them was to be Greek. Many causes combined to make the Greek; and the Greek blossomed into that kind of work—he was, so to speak, merely Greeking in the doing of it. We have the result as we have fossil bones. From it we may learn what the Greek was, but not how to make him.

A person, or a race, is something, owing to antecedent conditions. Then they do something by virtue of being what they are, as an apple tree bears apples. (“By their fruits ye shall know them.”)

The thing done does have some reactive effect, however—else we should have no power to modify each other, and this is one of humanity’s chief advantages. The modifying effect of the work accomplished is indeed large, it is no wonder we so long to create the things whereby we can thus progressively serve each other. See, for instance, the endless effect upon society of such work as Plato’s, Angelo’s, Stevenson’s, Edison’s; all work counts in both ways; in the doing it affects the doer; when done it affects the user.

But it is more blessed to give than to receive. In animals the modification of species is effected only in the direct line of heredity. A change of condition modifies his action—the change in action modifies him—and the modification is transmitted in his single line. But there is no means of widening the effect—it has to be filtered down through direct heredity. With man, in his organic connection, there is a race modification through our transmission of energy in work, which multiplies his progress million-fold. Some local change of condition modifies the action of one person, the change in action modifies him, and the modification is transmitted in his single line. Thus far we are even with the animals. Then we pass them; man’s action is work; it is not mere putting something in his mouth; it is making something. And the thing made holds and transmits his energy, passing it on forever to all who use it, making the growth of one the growth of all.

One man, or some few men, make a steam engine. They personally are by so much developed as makers, and their children after them. That is so much gain. But if we had waited for our inventors to modify the race through physical heredity, we should be still in the Bronze Age. The engine, being made, becomes part of the social structure, and proceeds to modify the society it serves.

The bicycle is perhaps a better instance. The effect of the making is not materially different from the effect of making watches. But the thing made has modified society by the reactive effects of its use. It has modified the dress, the activity, and so the physique and character of women, to their great improvement. It has modified roads—to the great material benefit of the regions affected. It has modified inn-keeping, livery-stabling, tailoring, the relative distance of residence—the effects of the bicycle on society are great, even upon the most superficial survey. But this is no reason why the maker of bicycles should be a better man than the maker of chronometers, or that either of them should be paid more than the maker of pianos, or less than the maker of poems.

The first effect of work, its result, return, or payment, is to the maker in the quality and quantity of his effort. No one can measure his pay or deny it. The second is to the user in the fulness of his use. This, alas! can be measured and denied, and has been, to our racial injury. No tyranny was ever able to prevent the steady development of man through the work he did. If he laboured faithfully and generously, he grew in the outputting of his strength, and his growth ultimately overthrew the tyranny. But tyranny of various sorts has withheld from the workers the reactive benefits of using the product of their work; and so hindered race development.

The builders of beautiful houses, working well, are necessarily benefited by their own working; but if they are forced to live in poor, ugly, unhealthy houses, they are not benefited by the results of the work. This is a grave limitation of a man’s income; and if his income is checked, his output is checked also. As an unwise farmer exhausts his soil in greedy harvesting without due fertilisation, so we have drawn upon the creative energies of humanity and denied the rich replenishment which would have made the product so much more prolific.

Here the mischievous effect of our Want theory comes in plainly. The man who is working merely for pay must cater to the purchaser. He must please existing tastes. Looking at his product, not as an end, to benefit society, but as a means to benefit himself, he must so produce as to secure a buyer. This is the “pot-boiler” again. The artist who paints to suit his patrons and get their money is not the true artist, and through him art does not grow. The maker of coats or hats or houses or dishes submits to this degrading pressure, and the result is seen in our debased and vulgar forms of manufacture everywhere.

The evil effects to the consumer are more manifest in some trades than in others, as, for instance, in the liquor trade. Here we have human beings producing what they know people will buy; and then, not content with the existing demand, using all possible means to excite and maintain a further demand—simply that they may make money.

Again, in our degraded press, we have a most conspicuous instance of this prostitution of a great social function to private ends. Under the mistaken idea that the distribution of news is a process for feeding owners of papers, and thus being led to arrange their news so as to please the most buyers, they rapidly descend along lines of least resistance to a wholesale catering to the worst tastes of the most people; and supplement that by elaborate efforts to foment and spread the low appetites they so obsequiously serve.

Naturally there is no growth and grandeur in a trade like this. To spread knowledge, sympathy, instant information of the world’s movements good and bad, is to take part in one of society’s chief functions; in the general nervous system of the world. But to ascertain that society enjoys certain sensations, and to force the general presentation of news into a special arrangement to give those desired sensations, is to turn healthy action into a loathsome disease. In any form of human production, the object is to serve the consumer by the best development of the product, not to use the consumer as a means of profit for the producer. The producer must, of course, be provided for; as must the soldier, artist, physician; but self-interest is not the object of the work.

In the production of shoes, again, the object should be a constant improvement in material, shape, wearing quality, and general utility and beauty. Deliberately to change the shape and size, the proportion and make of human footwear, merely to cater to low tastes, is the degrading “pot-boiler”; the prostituting of a social function to a private end.

All forms of cheap and dishonest production, of adulteration, of an artificially forced market, are directly traceable to our Want theory; to our persistent superstition which still crudely imagines this vast and intricate world of interservice to be a primeval forest, where beast and savage hunt for prey. The mistake in object degrades the product, and the degraded product degrades the man. Thus our immense field of production is not only checked in output and arrested in distribution, but weakened through and through by adulteration and bad workmanship; with evils in result, unending. The natural trend toward a wider, fuller, easier, and ever better production, accompanied at every step by growing pride and power and pleasure in the producer, is hindered and perverted to large degree by our prevalent economic fallacies.

Another conspicuous point where our errors touch production is seen in the arts especially; the particular mistake here being in the persistence of the ego concept; our confusion of self-expression with social service. The social consciousness, unrecognised, presents itself to our minds as a huger self-consciousness.

We have often wondered at the inordinate selfishness of man, compared to which the innocent egoism of the beasts is angelic. This tremendous range and depth of selfishness is because of that essential enlargement of self which comes with socialisation—the individual of a given society is that society—feels it as a “self.” The Roman, to the limits of his capacity, is Rome. The socialised individual carries in him the enlargement of his society. He has a wider soul, perforce, that is our human quality. This larger self, a thing frankly essential to social existence, enabling the individual to so think, feel, and act with and for his society, comes into action long before it is recognised by the “local office”—the mind of the individual. The mind has to learn its own contents as well as its outside environment. Our traditional labelling of those contents is no more correct than our primitive misconceptions of geography or physics.

What we personally call a quality does not affect its nature, but does affect our own conscious behaviour. The ability we display to mistake and miscall our own qualities and those of other people, is apparently immeasurable. So we feel this social soul, this larger aliveness; a power of caring for millions, of wanting for millions, and of doing for millions; and, since we ourselves feel it in ourselves, we call it self-consciousness.

A man, joining a regiment of old and splendid fame, comes to feel and act strongly from the regimental consciousness. He feels it with his own mental machinery; but it is not an enlargement of his personal self-consciousness—that is forever limited to his personality. This larger self—society, and its accompanying social consciousness—we calmly appropriate as a personal quality, and proceed to act on it. Having the capacity to think, feel, act for a thousand, we proceed to think, feel, and act a thousand times more for ourselves. Therefore we are naturally appalled at the limitlessness of “human selfishness.”