Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/394

 372 THE ECONOMIC JOI. YRNAL two Italian Operas, whilst a million of its citizens are without the means of decent life, is now determined, not with. any reference to the genuine social needs of the capital of the world, or even by any comparison between the competing desires of i$s inhabit- ants, but by the chance vagaries of a few hundred .wealthy fmailies, tempered by Argentina and the Influenza. It will be hard for the democracy to believe that the conscious public appropriation of municipalized rent would not result in a better adiustment of resources to needs, or, at any rate, in a more general satisfaction of individual desires, than this Individualist appropriation of personal tribute on the labours of .others. ' A more serious result of the inequality of income caused by the private ownership of land and capital is its evil effect on human character and the multiplication of the race. It is not easy to compute the loss to the world's progress, the degradation of the world's art and literature, caused by the demoralization of excessive wealth. Equally difficult would it be to reckon up how many potential 'geniuses are crushed out of existence by lack of opportunity of training and scope. But a graver evil is the positive 'wrong-population' which is the result of extreme poverty and its accompanying insensibility to all but the lowest side 'of human life. In a condition of society in which the average family income is but a little over 23 per week, the de- duction of rent and interest for the benefit of a small class necessarily implies a vast majority.of the population below the level of decent existence. The slums at the East End of London are the corollary of the mansions at the West End. The depres- sion of the worker to the product of the margin of cultivation often leaves him nothing but the barest livelihood. No prudential considerations appeal to such a class. One consequence is the breeding in the slums of our great cities, and the overcrowded hovels of the rural poor, of a horde of semi-barbarians, whose unskilled labour is neither required in our present complex in- dustrial organism, nor capable of earning a maintenance them. It was largely the recognition that it was hopeless to expect to spread a Malthusian prudence among this residuum that turned John Stuart Iill hto a Socialist; and if his solution be rejected, the slums remain to the Individualist as the problem of the Sphinx, which his civilization must solve or perish. It is less easy to secure adequate recognition of the next, and in 'many respects the most serious'difficulty'of Individualism namely, its inconsistency with democratic self-government. The Industrial Revolution, with its splendid conquests over .Nature,