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Chapter XV.

Character.

The analysis of economic conditions has led to the conclusion that the principles on which the wealth of a modern civilised community is distributed among the factors of production require readjustment on a more equitable basis. But a bigger problem confronts us than the economic one which has so far occupied our attention—the problem of character. A nation's most valuable asset is a people of strong bodies, supporting strong minds, governed by strong conscience.

Long ago Ruskin bethought him to examine philosophically the busy life of the manufacturing towns of Britain. He went from London to Birmingham, from Birmingham to Manchester, from Manchester to Glasgow. His admiration was evoked at the elaborate industrial organisation. He noticed the large sweep of the employers' intellect, and the delicate skill of the operative. He found that no place in the world could equal the Clyde for shipbuilding, that Manchester stood pre-eminent in cottons, that Sheffield feared no rivals in cutlery, that Leeds occupied pride of place in woollens. He marvelled and exulted at the degree of excellency his countrymen had attained in the manufacture of commodities. Then he visited the quarters where the workmen were lodged. He inquired into their manner of life, the pursuits of their leisure hours, their qualities of character, and his heart sank. He left those manufacturing towns freighted with the heavy conviction that on Britain lay the imperious duty of establishing factories for the production of character. Without sparing, money had been poured and labour spent on the manufacture of linens, cottons hardware; but the time had arrived when some of this energy and some of this wealth should be directed to the manufacture of men. Good, strong men were more than good, strong cloth. The obligation was clear: England must apply herself for the next generation to man-making.

Truly the problem of character towers above all others. How are we to strengthen the bodies, furnish and train the minds, and knit closer the moral fibres of men? When we can faithfully answer that question there will be no disease wrought by passion to lessen productive power, there will be no prejudice born of ignorance to bolster up economic fallacies, there will be no depravity nursed by intemperance to fill our gaols.

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Let this question stand out in all the prominence which its importance justifies. What is the strength of this element of character in national life? It is predominant, and has ever been so. The decline of a nation's prosperity is the inevitable accompaniment of the decay of the character of its people. All sane men ascribe what measure of superiority Britain possesses to the stamina of her people. Brassey, in his monumental work on "Wages," gives us the experience of his father as a builder in all parts of the world as to the comparative efficiency of British workmen. He found in building the Paris and Rouen line that, although English navvies received 5s a, day and French navvies only 2a 6d, the former were cheaper workmen. On comparing the cost of adjacent cuttings, in precisely similar circumstances, one excavated by a gang of Englishmen, one by a gang of Frenchmen, the work of the former was done at a lower cost per cubic yard than that of the latter.

A strong people is more in the making of a great nation than ample resources. Abstract the British people from the British Isles; replace them with forty million Asiatics; give these Asiatics the benefit of British laws, the guidance of British statesmen, the control of the British navy, the possession of British ships, and the management of British factories; give them everything except British grit and character, and the ascendency of the star of Britain will be arrested, its decline and fall will be speedily accomplished. All these things are accessories; character is the essentia.

As we stretch our gaze down the course of the world's history and watch the rise and fall of nations, we are struck with the preponderant influence of human character in moulding the destines of nations. It was the spirit of freedom which the Greeks breathed in from the expansive sea that exalted them as a nation and made their intelligence and physique the wonder of all time. But a distaste for steady industry, a relegation of labour to slaves, weakened the spring and grip of their mind. A more pronounced degeneraey of character dashed the sceptre from Rome's imperial hand. Five hundred years before Christ Rome drove her Tarquín kings beyound her walls because of a moral lapse, and established a republic. From this time she advanced steadily in power, bringing province. "after province and people after people under her dominion. "Roman citizen" then stood for honour, liberty, and prowess in war. His religion was an intense worship and consistent practice of the cardinal virtues. In temples, raised by hands that found joy in labour, he offered sacrifices to the highest human excellencies-to '"Valour," to "Truth," to "Good Faith," to "Modesty," to "Charity," to "Concord." Each virtue had its shrine. The reverent imagination elevated each into a god, able and resolute to inflict dire penalties in case of deviation from integrity. The Roman was a Stoic, disdaining the weakness which would murmur under pain or misfortune. He steeled himself against the "blows page 113 of circumstance," learned to stem the angry flood of life with "heart of controversy." Morality was grooved into habits of action. Its inward "must" held empire, and produced a man with fibre like that of the oak, which withstands the tempest as the zephyr. Truly the Roman, in the heydey of his power, challenges our admiration.

But as the imperial city extended her boundaries beyond Italy and carried her victorious arms east and west, wealth accumulated and men decayed. Into the lap of mighty Rome the subject provinces emptied their horns of plenty. Conquering warriors returned home with captives innumerable chained to their chariot wheels. These poor slaves, the victims of war, were made the drawers of water and hewers of wood for their masters. The Roman forsook agriculture, relegated his toil to slaves, and devoted himself to sumptuous living. The Roman patrician, finding slave labour cheaper and more docile than that of free men, substituted it upon his farms and plantations. The unemployed gravitated into the city to demand bread. With the increase of riches came increased poverty. Formerly duty had been of more weight than pleasure, and justice stronger than expediency. But now that the world paid Rome tribute, and nations sent their best men to till her fields; now that the free cultivators had disappeared from the soil, and Italy was being absorbed into vast estates, the Roman citizen lost his stoicism; his patriotism waned; his religion, from being a condition which regulated life, degenerated into an opinion. The outward form—the shell of these virtues—remained, but the kernel was withered up. Patriotism and religion received a lipservice only; cant gripped the utterances of men. The higher classes deemed it their supreme function to dress elegantly, dine sumptuously, and live sensuously; the poor asserted their right to be fed without labour. The young patrician spent his days in perfumed baths, his nights in wild orgies. He became more solicitous about the curl of his hair than the set of his muscles. The tie of wedlock, so strong in the best days of the republic, he laughed at as prudish. For a time, indeed, the law of marriage was practically suspended. Cicero put away Terentia when she was old and married a young woman. Cato made over Marcia, the mother of his children, to his friend Hortensius, and took her back as a wealthy widow when Hortensius died. So vice and luxury relaxed the fibre of the people. Empire cannot build or maintain itself on flaccid character. Hordes of rude, strong, nature-fed savages from the North eventually overwhelmed imperial Rome.

With pardonable pride we look back to the fourth and fifth centuries, when successive migratory waves brought to the shores of Britain the strongest members of the strongest races of Northern Europe, From that time to this it has been superiority of character, daring and resourceful, which has enabled the British nation to withstand many a staggering shock, and, at length, lift herself to the exalted position of a nation on which the sun never sets.

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But is there no ground for misgiving? Are the elements which wrought the dissolution of Rome utterly absent? May we not be vain-glorious? May not our imperialism be of the kind which grasping after territory, neglects the conditions which make an imperial race? Are we not in danger of reckoning our greatness by statistics of shipping and trade, by strength of navy and [unclear: re] serves of banks? National charcter may not be wanting, but there is much to cause alarm.

If history establishes that luxury enervates, how shall we view the statement in Marshall's "Principles of Economics":—"Perhaps £100,000,000 are spent by the working classes and £400,000,000 by the rest of the population of England in ways that do little towards making life nobler or truly happier." Of the whole purchasing power of the English people one-third is spent wastefully.

An analysis of the statistics of poverty affords abundant evidence of the causes undermining national strength and weakening character. Professor Warner, in his "American Charities," tells us that misfortune causes 74.4 per cent, of the world's poverty and misconduct causes 21.3 per cent. He furnishes a detailed table of those causes, but the three main ones are sickness or death is family, lack of employment, and intemperance. The first account for 23.6 per cent, of the poverty, the second for 17.4 per cent., the third for 11 per cent. He bases his conclusions on investigations made in Great Britain, the United States, and Germany. Charles Booth, in his momumental work on "Poverty." commenting on the third cause, says:—"Of drink in all its combinations, adding to every trouble, undermining every effort after good, destroying the home and cursing the young lives of the children, the stones tell enough. It does not stand in apparent chief cause in as many cases as sickness and old age, but if it were not for drink, sickness and old age could be better met."

Another writer says:—"The four great causes of pauperism and of degraded city life have long seemed to me to be these: 1 Foul homes; 2 intoxicating drink; 3 neglect of child life; 4 in discriminate almsgiving."

Such are the conclusions of men whose research and ability qualify them to express an opinion.

Now, philanthropy has never wearied in its efforts to relieve the appalling distress. The activity of charity organisations bears eloquent testimony to the benevolence of mankind. But the question is beginning to obtrude itself, and ever With greater at and greater insistence, whether the prolific causes Permanently be work creating want, vice, crime, disease, and death, may not be wholly or in large degree eradicated. It seems vain to waste energy on singles cases of relief, if wisely directed effort might dry page 115 up the sources of the woe. Seventy-four per cent. of it is attributed to misfortune. But old age and sickness would only reduce to destitution where the earnings of the family in health were on the margin of subsistence. So much distress attributable to misfortune argues unjust economic conditions. Were wealth fairly distributed, labour justly rewarded, the labouring class would have no difficulty in preparing for sickness and old age. Put into operation the reforms suggested in the previous part of this work, and the greatest of all causes of poverty would be incalculably weakened. Unearned incomes must be assailed with vigour, that the toilers of nations may enjoy the fruits of their industry, and lay by stores for the seasons of arffiction. Human beings whose whole healthy energies are necessarily absorbed by the effort to secure the means of a bare physical support are ruined when sickness overtakes them. Even in New Zealand, with its relatively high wages, it requires a species of heroism to rear a family on £2 a week, as many thousands do, and maintain the family independence through every alternation of 'its fortune.

Economic reform is urgent, yet each step in the industrial advancement should and must, if the gain is to be permanent, be followed closely, and secured by a corresponding advance in the moral and intellectual character and habits of the people. Whilst removing the economic causes of inefficiency, we must be earnest in attacking the social and moral causes.

It will have been observed that the figures quoted relate solely to the causes of pauperism. Now, pauperism is by no means an infallible index to character. Generally speaking, no doubt the pauper is such because of a weakness of some kind, which unfits him for the stress of our competitive industrialism. There is usually a lack of mental or moral robustness. Nevertheless, men of stout heart and firm principle may be overthrown by a calamity. But even if pauperism may be taken to indicate inefficiency, there are incalculable elements of weakness in society above the poverty line, elements which generate crime and contract beyond measure a nation's productive capacity. Intemperance, lust, gambling—who can estimate their baneful influence? Marshall says a fourth of the world's expenditure makes no contribution to human happiness or strength. Insanity is on the increase. The most disquieting reports reach us of physical degeneracy in the candidates for the Army, and of defective constitutions of school children. Everywhere we see energy misdirected, leisure misspent. Our policemen lawyers, and magistrates are wrestling daily with crime. No doubt the dangerous classes are almost always poor, but vice and inefficiency are not peculiar to any grade of society. The virus permeates through all. Righteousness, we are told, exalteth a nation. Yes, righteousness makes a people strong; righteousness augments a people's wealth. Righteousness has a commercial value, and can be expressed in terms of money. Let the British Empire make page 116 her drunkards sober, her gamblers thrifty, her idlers industrious her profligates virtuous, her ignorant wise, and her present prosperity would be a circumstance compared with the condition she would then realise. The age calls for moral vigour. The time clamours for reforms which will touch the springs of character. It takes a long time to build a man. The mother, the home, the school, the church, must combine their influences, must co-operate for many years before the man of educated intellect and high principle is evolved. Yet the toilsome efforts of decades may be undone in a few short months by the agencies, destructive of character, with which every modern community abounds. Destruction is always easier than construction. We must be eager to pull down the institutions which pull down men. No institution or practice should receive the support of the State, or the sanction of its laws, unless it makes some contribution to the material or moral wellbeing of the nation. Let the grand truth again be emphasised: the foundations of a country's greatness are not battlements and armies, but the virtue and intelligence of its people.

The problem then presents itself, how is national character to be improved? The sovereign remedy is education in the widest acceptation of the term. There are always two methods of attaining an end, the positive and the negative. A conjunction of the two is invariably attended with the largest measure of success. If sound, virile character be our end, we may move towards it, positively, by the training of the faculties and furnishing of the mind, and, negatively, by removing every hindrance to such developmen. It is unwise to cultivate the garden and then leave it a prey to the depredator. We must be destroyers as well as cultivators, iconoclasts as well as builders. From this double activity we may confidently expect the emergence of strengthened character.