Oct. 13.
From some Russian acquaintances, certain criticisms of ave England have reached us, not without truth and certainly amusing. The critics in question, though not openly Bolsheviks, must certainly be tinged with Bolshevik thought for the burden of their attack is that that on which Britain most prides herself for strength is the peculiar source of her weakness, namely, her great middle class. The ingrained, unvaried ambition of these people, say our Russian friends, is to make enough money to retire upon; once they have acquired a competence they "'shut up shop'' for good, and the land is dotted over with the tiny establishments of perfectly able-bodied men and women, some in country cottages, some in suburban villa residences or modest flats, who are henceforward mere parasites on the nation, subsisting upon® the work of others but doing not a hand's turn to justify their existence.
The answer to this charge is. that the overwhelming majority of such: homes are the reward: of many years' work. Their owners' ideal was not, perhaps, a high one; but they laboured for it honestly and denied themselves many things so as to be able to enjoy just such a respite in the evening of their lives. The number of those who live idly upon what their parents worked for-: and accumulated is we believe negligible.
Nowadays a man must have inherited a fairly large sum to be able to "'do nothing,"' as the saying is, and in that case he probably spends his money in ways that bring work to others, though we admit that it might be made to bring them more work. But the children of a man who leaves, say, £1,000 a year, will not have enough on division to sap their inclination for work. There are, of course, the pro-verbal maiden ladies. But girls are more and more being given a profession nowadays-and thus, where they do not marry, will have done several years' work before they retire to the desired country cottage.
What the Bolshevists propose to do with their elderly "people we have no idea.
But a conspicuous part of many dreams of the future—Bellamy's ''Looking '3ack-wards' for instance—is that a certain number of years' work shall entitle a man to leisure for the rest of his life. The same idea is accepted in modern-day states and is the foundation of old-age pensions and national insurance, which are intended to; provide the same period of rest for those who, getting past the -prime of life, have never, by. the nature of their work, been able to accumulate for it on their own account. The real criticism of the British scheme is that this.system does not go far enough. When old age pensions were inaugurated, they allowed for a payment of five shillings a week. This has since been increased, we believe, but the amount is. still derisory as compared with the cost of life even on the humblest scale. Another objection to the British old age pensions is that they are non-contributory; the recipient has never been required, as is, or used to be done in Germany, to pay something himself, to their ultimate cost. And thus they tend to become a mere dole, received unthankfully as all doles are.
But here again the trouble arises that comparatively few of those who eventually draw old age pensions have been able to afford to contribute week by week. Their families have absorbed every penny of what they earned, even without reckoning the precariousness of their employment, a very. serious factor, with which even the best artisans must - reckon. For these conditions the capitalistis usually held to blame. But even this criticism is unthinking. The workers themselves. cannot be altogether exonerated of the: misfortunes which dog them. For instance, the housing question is possibly. more responsible for. social unrest than any other in Britain to-day. But for the shortage of decent working class houses the disastrous ''ca' canny' policy of builders and bricklayers is at least.very largely to blame. Again, the individual capitalist, sole controller of vast businesses, usually has sense to see that it pays-him to treat his employees well, of which fact the soap, cocoa and mustard industries are notable examples. The majority of capitalists, so-called are joint-stock companies, whose managers' business is to' get the biggest dividend that he can for the shareholders. This seems to bring us back to the retired middle-class man,—the so-called parasite. And here the solution suggests itself that he and his fellows might~ be persuaded to accept smaller dividends, pay their workpeople better and keep them on through bad times, if in return the Government would let them off the taxes which are necessary to provide the.many, many millions that old age. pensions and the like cost. But taxes ate more easily put "on than taken off, especially in respect of things involving that terror of Labour wrath with which all modern Governments are haunted.
The only answer to all these social problems is that we could all do something desirable someone else.would exercise sufficient consideration and self restraint. In other words, that "'Cain's heresy' is, as much as money, the root of all evil. But in that respect the British bourgeoisie, poor things, certainly have no monopoly of
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.