Chapter VI: Religion and Business

THE message brought to the Mother Country by Mr. W. M. Hughes, Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia, stirred the country deeply. Deservedly so; for although Mr. Hughes did not prophesy smooth things, his message had about it the unmistakable ring of truth. He said bluntly that the principles on which English commerce has rested for at least a hundred and fifty years are wrong. " England has been, and is, the chief of sinners." It required great courage to say that at a distinguished gathering of English commercial men, in the chief centre of the greatest commercial empire that the world has ever seen. But the words were not spoken at random. They were the outcome of deep study, thought, and experience, and the speaker knew how to demonstrate their truth. The principles on which English commerce had rested so long were those of the classical school of political economy represented by Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill. Briefly stated, they may be summed up thus—unfettered competition, buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest, and the law that the price of labour and of commodities is settled by the demand and supply of them. Mr. Hughes was not concerned to deny that a case can be made out in favour of those principles if the only question about trade is how to get rich as quickly as possible. But that is not the only question. The trade of a country is intimately connected with national safety and with the social welfare of its people. "For a time," said Mr. Hughes, "the trade of a nation that treats trade as if it had no connection with national safety may make great strides, as did ours, but there comes a day of reckoning to such nations, and it has come to us." " This war," said Mr. Hughes on another occasion, "has rung the death-knell of a policy of cheapness that took no thought for the social and industrial welfare of the workmen, that mistook mere wealth for greatness, no matter whether the wealth was in our hands or those of German Jews." And he had his instances in proof of his thesis. Our foolish habit of looking only at cheapness, and disregarding wider and higher interests, has given a monopoly to our enemies of tungsten powder for the hardening of steel, of dyes, and of sugar production. We thus found ourselves at the outbreak of war largely dependent on the enemy for certain commodities of prime importance to us. We had allowed the enemy to gain a monopoly in these commodities, and by having to buy them from him we had furnished him with money to pay for ships, guns and munitions to be used against us in the war. Nor is this all. We have already paid five thousand millions of pounds, without reckoning the priceless lives lost, in order to defend ourselves against the enemy's attack. So that " Penny wise and pound foolish " is the epitaph which may be written on the tombstone of the old liberal political economy which has governed British trade for generations. But Mr. Hughes was not so much concerned about demolishing false principles which have led England astray in the past. He is a statesman and he is thoughtful for the future. He saw that British unpreparedness and want of organisation make the British Empire a tempting bait for her highly organised enemies. He was conscious that it would be a difficult task to organise the British Empire. Tantæ molis erat Romanam condere gentem. The task required all the skill and all the energy of her greatest statesmen. But it was to be done; the welfare of the world and her own safety demanded it. The enemy is buoyed up with the hope of conquering for himself the trade of the world after the war is over. There is sure to be a great and rapid development of commerce, and the profits will go largely to those who are best prepared to reap them. We must be ready with a definite and well-thought-out policy for the defence and preservation of the Empire. Enemy competition will not be the only danger to be confronted after the war. The war has necessitated great changes in the national life and industry. Prices have risen enormously. The cost of the war will press upon the shoulders of the people for generations to come. Unless the situation is carefully managed, all this will inevitably lead to a period of domestic strife, to a war between class and class hardly less disastrous than the war of nations. Mr. Hughes saw clearly what is wanted. His mind is filled with a glorious vision of a future British Empire: “The British Empire organised for trade, for industry, for economic justice, for national defence, for the preservation of the world's peace, for the protection of the weak against the strong. That is a noble ideal. It ought to be, it must be, ours." The old system favoured individualism. It professed to give everybody a fair field and no favour. If everyone was sure to reap the fruits of his labour, everyone would put forth all his energies, and in working his utmost for himself, each would work for the common good in the aggregate. It looked like a sound and sane philosophy. It only forgot the facts of human nature and of life. It forgot that in capacity and in opportunity men are, and must be, very unequal. And so the system of unfettered competition meant in practice that a few grew enormously rich, while the great majority were reduced to the condition of "hands," they became mere instruments of production. Unfettered competition meant in practice selfishness, class hatred, envy and malice. It meant sweating, starvation wages, and oppression of the poor. It meant the lowering of the quality of commodities by tricks of trade which left nothing unadulterated, and called nothing by its proper name. To make sure of a profit, traders frequently charged as much as they thought the customer could pay. The very notion of a fair and reasonable price for commodities, the just price as it used to be called, was almost lost. You got as much as you could for your goods, and gave as little as you could for them. That was business; it was buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest. The stress and the strain of the war have given the death-blow to all these ideas. A nation relying on them was found to be no match for a nation organised in every department for national action and for conquest. If it was not desirable to jump from one extreme to the other, if it was not wise to emulate the excessive organisation of the enemy, national safety imperatively demanded that something should be done. After all there is a middle course, and there as a rule, in politics as in morals, salvation is to be found. For individual and class selfishness it should not be impossible to substitute a care for the common weal. The common good should be the supreme aim of governments, and individuals and classes should learn to subordinate private interest to the common welfare of the whole. Instead of laissez faire and unfettered competition, rulers should strive to make economic justice prevail. Commerce and trade are not governed only by physical and necessary laws; they are departments of human life and are subject to moral law. The classical school of political economists was fond of arguing about the law of demand and supply as if it were a law of astronomy. They used to say that it was as futile for governments to try to interfere with its working as it would be to try to interfere with the law of gravitation. In one of his little books on political economy Dr. Cunningham, the Anglican Archdeacon of Ely, has told us that we have outlived the old notion that there is a just price, a fair and reasonable price for everything. The experience of the war has taught us what to think of views like those. " Other food products generally were unduly inflated in price early in August by the anxiety of consumers to lay in stocks. This was checked by reassuring statements from the Government as to supplies of the principal products both present and prospective, and the inflation of prices was prevented on the appointment by the government of a standing committee of retail traders who fixed from day to day maximum retail prices."* This shows that the "economic justice" which forms one feature of Mr. Hughes's policy for the future is not an impossible ideal. If we add to it the other feature, "the protection of the weak against the strong,” we shall have the chief elements of the time-honoured Christian teaching that the firm foundations of States are Justice and Charity. The reader will not be left under the impression that I am preparing the way for advocating Socialism. That would be no remedy for existing evils; it errs by excess in the opposite direction. It is, however, too large a subject to be treated here.

* The “Times” History of the War, i., 193.