Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 24.djvu/744

724 Several motives have prompted this brief narrative. One is the wish to prove that sympathy with the people and self-sacrificing efforts on their behalf do not necessarily imply approval of gratuitous aids. Another is the desire to show that benefit may result, not from multiplication of artificial appliances to mitigate distress, but, contrariwise, from diminution of them. And a further purpose I have in view is that of preparing the way for an analogy.

Under another form and in a different sphere, we are now yearly extending a system which is identical in nature with the system of "make-wages" under the old poor-law. Little as politicians recognize the fact, it is nevertheless demonstrable that these various public appliances for working-class comfort, which they are supplying at the cost of rate-payers, are intrinsically of the same nature as those which, in past times, treated the farmer's man as half-laborer and half-pauper. In either case the worker receives, in return for what he does, money wherewith to buy certain of the things he wants; while, to procure the rest of them for him, money is furnished out of a common fund raised by taxes. What matters it whether the things supplied by rate-payers for nothing, instead of by the employer in payment, are of this kind or that kind? the principle is the same. For sums received let us substitute the commodities and benefits purchased; and then see how the matter stands. In old poor-law times, the farmer gave for work done the equivalent, say of house-rent, bread, clothes, and fire; while the rate-payers practically supplied the man and his family with their shoes, tea, sugar, candles, a little bacon, etc. The division is, of course, arbitrary; but unquestionably the farmer and the rate-payers furnished these things between them. At the present time the artisan receives from his employer in wages the equivalent of the consumable commodities he wants; while from the public comes satisfaction for others of his needs and desires. At the cost of rate-payers he has in some cases, and will presently have in more, a house at less than its commercial value; for of course when, as in Liverpool, a municipality spends nearly £200,000 in pulling down and reconstructing low-class dwellings, and is about to spend as much again, the implication is that in some way the rate-payers supply the poor with more accommodation than the rents they pay would otherwise have brought. The artisan further receives from them, in schooling for his children, much more than he pays for; and there is every probability that he will presently receive it from them gratis. The rate -payers also satisfy what desire he may have for books and newspapers, and comfortable places to read them in. In some cases too, as in Manchester, gymnasia for his children of both sexes, as well as recreation-grounds, are provided. That is to say, he obtains, from a fund raised by local taxes, certain benefits beyond those which the sum received for his labor enables him to purchase. The sole difference, then, between this system and the old system of