Poverty springs from a number of sources, the more important of which
are controllable. So does special privilege. I think it is entirely
feasible to abolish both poverty and special privilege--and there can be
no question but that their abolition is desirable. Both are unnatural, but it is work, not law, to which we must look for results.
By poverty I mean the lack of reasonably sufficient food, housing, and
clothing for an individual or a family. There will have to be
differences in the grades of sustenance. Men are not equal in mentality
or in physique. Any plan which starts with the assumption that men are
or ought to be equal is unnatural and therefore unworkable. There can be
no feasible or desirable process of leveling down. Such a course only
promotes poverty by making it universal instead of exceptional. Forcing
the efficient producer to become inefficient does not make the
inefficient producer more efficient. Poverty can be done away with only
by plenty, and we have now gone far enough along in the science of
production to be able to see, as a natural development, the day when
production and distribution will be so scientific that all may have
according to ability and industry.
The extreme Socialists went wide of the mark in their reasoning that
industry would inevitably crush the worker. Modern industry is gradually
lifting the worker and the world. We only need to know more about
planning and methods. The best results can and will be brought about by
individual initiative and ingenuity--by intelligent individual
leadership. The government, because it is essentially negative, cannot
give positive aid to any really constructive programme. It can give
negative aid--by removing obstructions to progress and by ceasing to be
a burden upon the community.
The underlying causes of poverty, as I can see them, are essentially due
to the bad adjustment between production and distribution, in both
industry and agriculture--between the source of power and its
application. The wastes due to lack of adjustment are stupendous. All of
these wastes must fall before intelligent leadership consecrated to
service. So long as leadership thinks more of money than it does of
service, the wastes will continue. Waste is prevented by far-sighted not
by short-sighted men. Short-sighted men think first of money. They
cannot see waste. They think of service as altruistic instead of as the
most practical thing in the world. They cannot get far enough away from
the little things to see the big things--to see the biggest thing of
all, which is that opportunist production from a purely money standpoint
is the least profitable.
Service can be based upon altruism, but that sort of service is not
usually the best. The sentimental trips up the practical.
It is not that the industrial enterprises are unable fairly to
distribute a share of the wealth which they create. It is simply that
the waste is so great that there is not a sufficient share for everyone
engaged, notwithstanding the fact that the product is usually sold at so
high a price as to restrict its fullest consumption.
Take some of the wastes. Take the wastes of power. The Mississippi
Valley is without coal. Through its centre pour many millions of
potential horsepower--the Mississippi River. But if the people by its
banks want power or heat they buy coal that has been hauled hundreds of
miles and consequently has to be sold at far above its worth as heat or
power. Or if they cannot afford to buy this expensive coal, they go out
and cut down trees, thereby depriving themselves of one of the great
conservers of water power. Until recently they never thought of the
power at hand which, at next to nothing beyond the initial cost, could
heat, light, cook, and work for the huge population which that valley is
destined to support.
The cure of poverty is not in personal economy but in better production. The "thrift" and "economy" ideas have been overworked. The word "economy" represents a fear. The great and tragic fact of waste is impressed on a mind by some circumstance, usually of a most materialistic kind. There comes a violent reaction against extravagance--the mind catches hold of the idea of "economy." But it only flies from a greater to a lesser evil; it does not make the full journey from error to truth.