9. The Healing of Lazarus.

There is no lack of remedies proposed. Temperance, Thrift, Emigration, National Insurance, Co-operation, Profit-sharing, all have their advocates, all are good in their way, none of them is all in all by itself. I have yet another remedy to add. It is not Charity, as that word is commonly understood in England. The science and art of almsgiving must be studied and practised by charitable societies for the relief of the sick and wounded in the battle of life, who cannot help themselves : but we do not want all the working classes on the sick list.

We must contrive to have fewer sick and wounded, by giving the workman a better chance of doing a stroke for himself. He has higher claims than those of charity on his employer. There is a virtue which the old schoolmen called piety : we might English it family-feeling. It imports the habitual love and care which the members of a family ought to have one for another. Family is from the Latin familia, by which the Romans understood all who were under the paterfamilias, namely, the wife, the children, (called liberi, or free subjects), and the bondsmen (servi or famuli, literally the doers, or workers, whence the name familia, from facio, I do).

We need to have the principle recognized, that workmen are part of the family of their employer, understanding family in this wide Roman sense : that he is their paterfamilias : that between him and them there exists a personal relationship, the observance of which is matter of the virtue of piety. Now piety is a virtue that binds with a closer tie than justice. It is justice to give to another his own. Justice supposes two terms, the giver and the receiver, mutually distinct. Therefore no man can be just to himself, strictly speaking. Nor does hard, fast justice run between those who are in some sense identified as one moral person, as between father and son, husband and wife, master and servant. This is the teaching of Aristotle. If the father harms the son, or the master the servant, he harms himself, a more wicked piece of mischief than is injustice done to a stranger.

This was the personal relationship, the family connection between master and man, recognized in theory at least in the ancient world, where there were slaves ; recognized in the Middle Ages as the relationship of lord and vassal ; and most cruelly discarded in modern times by the substitution of the conception that finds expression in the terms employer and hands.

The bond of family must be strengthened, and the sphere of duty of the paterfamilias enlarged. It is the depreciation of family ties that leads up to the rankest State Socialism. To that goal our large Companies, with their agents and “hands,” are unconsciously tending. But the tendency may be arrested, and even Companies become paternal, by wishing it, and by delegating to their various agents in command of their workpeople the office of a father, not without support of course from the Company’s purse. Thus a station-master might be responsible for the Company’s servants employed under him, not merely as touches the Company’s interest, but for their individual well-being, short of fussy interference, for there is excess in all things.¹

¹ “It is a good investment in a money point of view, but far more in other ways, for a railway company to provide houses for its station-masters, porters, platelayers, and signalmen. A company in good credit ought to be able to build houses more cheaply than other people, and can afford to let them to its servants at a lower rent than people who build houses merely for profit ; and it is much to the advantage of the company to keep their men together, giving them an interest in the company both while at work and when off duty.”—Railway Appliances, by Barry (Text-books of Science), pp. 190–1.

It will be said that this taking of workmen within the family circle will mean their employer spending money on them over and above the wages that he pays them. A frightful supposition truly ! Horrible to think of obstacles being thrown in the way of the amassing of wealth !

Perhaps the selfishness of the master may find comfort in the Aristotelian teaching, that he who spends on his workpeople, that is, on his family, spends on himself. Perhaps he may reflect that his men will work to greater production by being better fed, better housed, less brutal, less immoral, and more loyal to his person.

After all, there is something beyond mere breath in the “ For he’s a jolly good fellow.”

I fear, however, that the employer who starts this objection has but a poor idea of the end and purpose of money-making. Either he regards it as a means to enjoyment and ostentation, or as an end in itself. In either case he is a selfish man, a plague and embossed carbuncle in the flesh of society.

Capitalists of this mind—sober, respectable men as they are reputed to be—are to blame for the present and past misery of our labouring population. If no capitalist is possible except money-grubbers like these, it is waste of words to argue against Socialism : the Socialists are right, and Capital stands condemned.

The true end of money-making is for the good of the man’s own family, whereof his workmen count for part, for the good of his native city or district, and for the good of his country. Whoever does not appreciate the motto, Non sibi sed patriæ, is unworthy of a high position amongst mankind.

But, in these present evil days at least, it will be urged, it is all that the masters can do to keep out of the bankruptcy court : if they spend any more on their workmen, they will be clean ruined.

One thinks of Macduff’s keen inquiry, “ Dost thou say all ? ” All these cotton-spinners who rent the parks of decaying noblemen, all these provision-dealers who dress their wives in diamonds, all employers of labour who find money to fling away in the extravagances of the London season, who yacht in the Mediterranean, and fish in Norway, and buy up art-treasures in Italy—all will be ruined by an increase of attention and expenditure bestowed on the poor who are the props of their fortunes !

There certainly are capitalists whose backs another straw would break, and who are not now in a position to treat their workmen handsomely : these petty potentates in due course of nature must perish from the ranks of Capital.

It is much more certain that they will perish than that their wealthier brethren will awake to a sense of their duty. The times are unfavourable to small undertakings. Too many moneyed men have taken up the position of employer, attracted by the profits, and not thinking of the responsibilities; now the profits are gone, and they must go. The burden of employership must rest on broader shoulders.