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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 52

Requisites for Perfect National Prosperity

Requisites for Perfect National Prosperity

In all ages, from the days when prophets foresaw in the distant periods of the earth's history the millennial reign of peace, and Plato taught in the garden of the Academy, to our own times, men have indulged in dreams and anticipations of a state of perfect justice and perfect righteousness upon earth.

Sir Thomas More, Lord Bacon, Campanella, Harrington, Fénélon, and other great and enthusiastic minds have given to the world their ideas and their hopes of such a perfect community. Utopian as were their dreams, Utopian as were their hopes, rudely disturbed as they all were by the din of war and the selfishness of civilised life, they show that in every age there has existed a belief that a better state of society could be found than now exists, and a hope that such a happy result might be accomplished.

In our own times not only have we the theories of the Socialists and the Communists, but thousands now living can remember the practical efforts made by Robert Owen, St. Simon, and Fourier; while recently Mr Hepworth Dixon has written for us his clever, if not very deep, observations upon the peculiar communities which page 22 have arisen and flourished with more or less succcess in the United States. Thinking men seem now to appraise the great insurrections of thought and action which disturbed Europe for so many years as the frantic efforts of men to throw off the burden of tyranny and to obtain justice.

Thus Mr Heath (in the Contemporary Review, April, 1883,) says:—"The outbursts which have most alarmed Europe—Lollardism, the Jacquerie, peasant revolts, Anabaptism, the Camissarde Insurrection, the French Revolution, the Commune—have been nothing so much as terrible screams from a humanity crushed and hunted into a corner. If the movements which ended in these outbreaks be studied, they will be found, one and all, to have been efforts on the part of the people to realise exactly the same thoughts as those expressed in the Sermon on the Mount."

The history of England supplies many such. The rising which won the Great Charter; that mighty revolution led by Hampden, and Pym, and Cromwell, which sent Charles I. to the block, won the imperishable liberties of Englishmen, and left the greatest imprint ever placed upon the political history of man; the war of independence in America; the passing of the Reform Bill;—all these were but movements of the same spirit, and efforts for a better state of things.

It may no doubt be said of most of these events that in theory they were dreams, impracticable and delusive; that in practico they were failures, or were followed by great re-actions. But they all give help and light to us, warning and encouraging all those who search for the promised land, wherein liberty and justice shall be found. The time is at length ripe for a great social movement. Never until now could such a movement have been attempted with a reasonable hope of complete success. In no place save in a new country, such as this, could such a movement be successfully carried on. Never before has the necessity for such a movement been so deeply felt, nor have circumstances ever yet existed so favourable to its triumph.

The errors in the plans of Utopian or Socialistic reformers have arisen from incomplete knowledge of that sociology, which, during this generation, has been the subject of wide discussion. Nor could there have been a complete and workable system of social economy without that knowledge and those groat advantages which enquiry, experience, and scientific discovery have bestowed upon us during the last five-and-twenty years.

To achieve a perfect prosperity in this community, so far as regards the production and distribution of wealth—a prosperity which shall not fill the houses of the wealthy with gorgeous furniure, and give to them the means of astonishing foreign states by tstentatious luxury, while leaving the industrial classes in want and poverty—but a prosperity which shall fill every home in the and with comforts, in which every citizen shall participate in fair page 23 proportion; a prosperity which shall not rob the wealthy to enrich the poor, but which shall arise from a great production of national wealth and a just distribution of that wealth, among all who, whether by capital or labour, help to produce it,—is a task worthy of the great race which has found a home in these islands of New Zealand.

There are three classes whoso aid and assistance must necessarily be given for the production and realisation of wealth—the producer, the capitalist, and the consumer. For without labour no wealth can be produced; without capital no land, nor instruments, nor means of production can be procured, nor labour supported; without a market, no produce save that which could be used by the producer himself would be of any value.

The producer, the consumer, and the capitalist, therefore, to ensure complete success, must be joined by unity of interest and advantage.

To achieve this we must place these three classes in partnership, and this can be done by the application of the joint-stock principle and by that only.

Another condition requisite to success is that the three factors of production—Land, Labour, and Capital—shall be united as the joint property of one proprietor, and that that proprietor should be at once producer, capitalist, and consumer. This also can be accomplished by the joint-stock principle, and by that principle only. Then there should exist the wisest organisation for the employment of labour and capital so as to produce the greatest amount of wealth, whether in annual production or in permanent improvements, at the least cost of time and money. Nor should we forget that production should be directed so as first to satisfy the requirements of all who are interested or assisting in the production itself, and then to provide ford the general purposes of an advantageous commerce.

It is necessary also that all produce and merchandise should be brought to and distributed amongst consumers without unnecessary delay, at the lowest cost and price consistent with a moderate profit for production. And it is absolutely necessary that no monopoly should ever be permitted of the benefits to be enjoyed from such conditions of social life. While on the one hand there should be no compulsion, on the other there should be no restriction to the participation of these advantages. All who desire to contribute labour or capital, or to purchase, and thus, by consumption, co-operate in production and distribution, should be able to do so.

Finally, wealth having been thus produced, and its advantages realised by the partnership as a whole, it should be justly and fairly distributed among producers, capitalists, and consumers, in proportion to what each class and each individual has contributed to the general result. And this, as well as all the preceding con- page 24 ditions, can only be accomplished and fulfilled by the application of the joint-stock principle.

It will at once be seen that the plan here sketched is a combination of the co-operative and joint stock principles, to be applied to the powers, the wants, and the social existence, not merely of individuals, of special classes, or of special callings, but of a whole community. The necessity of organisation is daily becoming more apparent. The age in which we live, as we are so often told, is an age of progress. All pursuits other than those which are peculiarly personal have developed new circumstances and new conditions of success. All manufactures, nearly all farming, all undertakings by which money is earned, and therefore the necessaries and comforts of life possessed, are carried on upon a scale of magnitude un-thought of by our fathers, although no doubt it will be surpassed by our children in an increasing ratio. So vast, indeed, are most of the great undertakings of this age that single men seldom attempt them, and they are men of colossal wealth and daring courage—for all men know that in such cases one slight mistake may turn a millionaire into a bankrupt. A very large and growing part of the business of life is now carried on by societies organised in various ways, generally in the manner of joint-stock companies. Look around you. The ships of companies bring immigrants to our shores. Along our coasts the Union and other company's steamers carry them from place to place. They land, and a company's cars carry them to see the outskirts of your towns. They return and go to any bank—for all are companies—to cash their letters of credit. They buy land of a land company, order materials for a house of a timber company, buy coal of a coal company, clothes of a clothing company, meat of a meat company, horses of a stud company, insure both house, and life, and safety in insurance companies; get their ironmongery, their soap, and oil, and candles, their fruit, their lime, from companies; borrow money from a company; sell their goods through a company; do their washing, both personal and relative, by a company; leave a company as trustees of their wills; then die, and a newspaper company publishes the obituary notice. It is now a common and perhaps a prudent course to take when any business becomes too large for individual responsibility—it is formed into a company on the joint stock principle. When any exceptionally costly or vast undertaking is to be accomplished, it is done by means of a joint stock company. Thus commerce grows, and wealth increases. Productions are multiplied at half the olden cost, and in a tenth part of the olden time. The work once done laboriously by multitudes of men, is now performed by costly machinery with marvellous accuracy and perfect ease. By a company the Suez Canal was cut; the continents are traversed by railways built by companies; upon the surface of every ocean the fleets of companies carry the commerce of the world; while far below along the still and silent wires the ends of the earth page 25 are, by permission of a company, whispering to each other the stories of joy and sorrow, of loss and gain, of victory and defeat, of famine and plenty, now tolling of an earthquake destroying cities; then that nations are thrilled at a hero's death. It is impossible for individual working men to compete in the game of life. The end would be certain ruin. There are also other signs of the times which compel the mind to the conclusion that organisation and co-operation are necessary in every department of life. Benefit societies, clubs of all sorts and for all purposes, associations of all descriptions, religious associations, churches, Bible and tract societies, missionary, political, athletic, literary, artistic, scientific, philanthropic. In short, all civilised life is organised. Government and society themselves are but the widest and most comprehensive forms of organisation and co-operation amongst men.

It will now be easy to see what organisation I advise. Having the franchise, the source of all legislative power, the people are able, by political organisation, to control the making and direction of legislation. So having Labor and employing Capital and Land in commercial and business organisation, they can control the production and distribution of wealth.

If any illustration is required of the benefits of organisation the daily history of the industrial classes affords an abundant field from whence those illustrations may be drawn. Not only in the numerous classes which have been already adverted to, but in those special organisations, such as trades-unions, in which the labourers of all branches of industrial life join themselves together for the purpose of mutual defence against the oppression of capitalist employers. These, however, are merely for purposes of defence, while the organisation of labour, which must and soon will prevail, will be the organisation which I here counsel—an organisation joining and uniting labour and capital for purposes, not of defence, but of aggression and conquest.

The common enemies of the industrial classes are anxiety, and want, and unfairly requited toil. These have to be conquered and destroyed. It is monstrous, it is a scandal upon our civilisation and Christianity, while millions of acres of fertile land and available soil, enriched with a genial climate and opened by noble harbours, lie untouched and waiting to give forth their treasures of food and raiment to the hand of industry, that there should be want of employment and idleness in the land.

And it is a bitter satire upon our boasted intelligent and capacity for business that half the labour in the country should be wasted; that farming, as a rule, should rather impoverish than enrich the farmer; that in some branches of industry there should be so much production as to leave no available market, while in others there should be so little as to compel us to send large sums, amounting to hundreds of thousands of pounds, annually to other page 26 countries for articles which we ourselves, blessed with a peerless soil and climate, could produce in greater abundance and at less cost than they can do from whom we buy.