Over-Production
But what will reflective readers say of a Governing Class, such
as ours, addressing its Workers with an indictment of
'Overproduction!' Over-production: runs it not so? "Ye
miscellaneous, ignoble manufacturing individuals, ye have
produced too much! We accuse you of making above two-hundred
thousand shirts for the bare backs of mankind. Your trousers
too, which you have made, of fustian, of cassimere, of Scotch-
plaid, of jane, nankeen and woollen broadcloth, are they not
manifold? Of hats for the human head, of shoes for the human
foot, of stools to sit on, spoons to eat with--Nay, what say we
hats or shoes? You produce gold-watches, jewelleries, silver-
forks and epergnes, commodes, chiffoniers, stuffed sofas--
Heavens, the Commercial Bazaar and multitudinous Howel-and-
Jameses cannot contain you. You have produced, produced;--he
that seeks your indictment, let him look around. Millions of
shirts, and empty pairs of breeches, hang there in judgment
against you. We accuse you of over-producing: you are
criminally guilty of producing shirts, breeches, hats, shoes and
commodities, in a frightful overabundance. And now there is a
glut, and your operatives cannot be fed!"
Never surely, against an earnest Working Mammonism was there
brought, by Game-preserving aristocratic Dilettantism, a stranger
accusation, since this world began. My lords and gentlemen,--
why, it was _you_ that were appointed, by the fact and by the
theory of your position on the Earth, to 'make and administer
Laws,'--that is to say, in a world such as ours, to guard against
'gluts;' against honest operatives, who had done their work,
remaining unfed! I say, _you_ were appointed to preside over the
Distribution and Apportionment of the Wages of Work done; and to
see well that there went no labourer without his hire, were it of
money-coins, were it of hemp gallows-ropes: that function was
yours, and from immemorial time has been; yours, and as yet no
other's. These poor shirt-spinners have forgotten much, which by
the virtual unwritten law of their position they should have
remembered: but by any written recognised law of their position,
what have they forgotten? They were set to make shirts. The
Community with all its voices commanded them, saying, "Make
shirts;"--and there the shirts are! Too many shirts? Well, that
is a novelty, in this intemperate Earth, with its nine-hundred
millions of bare backs! But the Community commanded you, saying,
"See that the shirts are well apportioned, that our Human Laws be
emblem of God's Laws;"--and where is the apportionment? Two
million shirtless or ill-shirted workers sit enchanted in
Workhouse Bastilles, five million more (according to some) in
Ugolino Hunger-cellars; and for remedy, you say, what say you?--
"Raise _our_ rents!" I have not in my time heard any stranger
speech, not even on the Shores of the Dead Sea. You continue
addressing those poor shirt-spinners and over-producers, in
really a _too_ triumphant manner:
"Will you bandy accusations, will you accuse us of
overproduction? We take the Heavens and the Earth to witness
that we have produced nothing at all. Not from us proceeds this
frightful _over_plus of shirts. In the wide domains of created
Nature, circulates no shirt or thing of our producing. Certain
fox-brushes nailed upon our stable-door, the fruit of fair
audacity at Melton Mowbray; these we have produced, and they are
openly nailed up there. He that accuses us of producing, let him
shew himself, let him name what and when. We are innocent of
producing;--ye ungrateful, what mountains of things have we not,
on the contrary, had to 'consume,' and make away with! Mountains
of those your heaped manufactures, wheresoever edible or
wearable, have they not disappeared before us, as if we had the
talent of ostriches, of cormorants, and a kind of divine faculty
to eat? Ye ungrateful!--and did you not grow under the shadow of
our wings? Are not your filthy mills built on these fields of
ours; on this soil of England, which belongs to--whom think you?
And we shall not offer you our own wheat at the price that
pleases us, but that partly pleases you? A precious notion!
What would become of you, if we chose, at any time, to decide on
growing no wheat more?"
Yes, truly, here is the ultimate rock-basis of all Corn-Laws;
whereon, at the bottom of much arguing, they rest, as securely as
they can: What would become of you, if we decided, some day, on
growing no more wheat at all? If we chose to grow only partridges
henceforth, and a modicum of wheat for our own uses? Cannot we
do what we like with our own?--Yes, indeed! For my share, if I
could melt Gneiss Rock, and create Law of Gravitation; if I
could stride out to the Doggerbank, some morning, and striking
down my trident there into the mudwaves, say, "Be land, be
fields, meadows, mountains and fresh-rolling streams!" by Heaven,
I should incline to have the letting of _that_ land in
perpetuity, and sell the wheat of it, or burn the wheat of it,
according to my own good judgment! My Corn-Lawing friends, you
affright me.
To the 'Millo-cracy' so-called, to the Working Aristocracy,
steeped too deep in mere ignoble Mammonism, and as yet all
unconscious of its noble destinies, as yet but an irrational or
semirational giant, struggling to awake some soul in itself,--the
world will have much to say, reproachfully, reprovingly,
admonishingly. But to the Idle Aristocracy, what will the world
have to say? Things painful and not pleasant!
To the man who _works,_ who attempts, in never so ungracious
barbarous a way, to get forward with some work, you will hasten
out with furtherances, with encouragements, corrections; you
will say to him: "Welcome, thou art ours; our care shall be of
thee." To the idler, again, never so gracefully going idle,
coming forward with never so many parchments, you will not hasten
out; you will sit still, and be disinclined to rise. You will
say to him: "Not welcome, O complex Anomaly; would thou hadst
staid out of doors: for who of mortals knows what to do with
thee? Thy parchments: yes, they are old, of venerable
yellowness; and we too honour parchment, old-established
settlements, and venerable use and wont. Old parchments in very
truth:--yet on the whole, if thou wilt remark, they are young to
the Granite Rocks, to the Groundplan of God's Universe! We
advise thee to put up thy parchments; to go home to thy place,
and make no needless noise whatever. Our heart's wish is to save
thee: yet there as thou art, hapless Anomaly, with nothing but
thy yellow parchments, noisy futilities, and shotbelts and fox-
brushes, who of gods or men can avert dark Fate? Be counselled,
ascertain if no work exist for thee on God's Earth; if thou find
no commanded-duty there but that of going gracefully idle? Ask,
inquire earnestly, with a half-frantic earnestness; for the
answer means Existence or Annihilation to thee. We apprise thee
of the world-old fact, becoming sternly disclosed again in these
days, That he who cannot work in this Universe cannot get existed
in it: had he parchments to thatch the face of the world, these,
combustible fallible sheepskin, cannot avail him. Home, thou
unfortunate; and let us have at least no noise from thee!"
Suppose the unfortunate Idle Aristocracy, as the unfortunate
Working one has done, were to 'retire three days to _its_ bed,'
and consider itself there, what o'clock it had become?--
How have we to regret not only that men have 'no religion,' but
that they have next to no reflection; and go about with heads
full of mere extraneous noises, with eyes wide-open but
visionless,--for most part, in the somnambulist state!