PAUPER QUESTION IN ENGLAND AND GERMANY 69 



TiiH Platitudes of the Public 



These are the sort of platitudes one hears constantly in the 

 mouths of men who really believe what they say because they 

 have been born and bred in a country which encourages poverty 

 and institutes a huge system of pauperism, and which, two 

 generations ago, threw overboard its agriculture and became 

 entirely dependent upon its trades and manufactures. Briefly, 

 the people of England are so accustomed to rub shoulders with 

 paupers that they see nothing anomalous in their existence. 

 They are also so accustomed to look to foreign countries for 

 four-fifths of their wheat and flour, and a vast quantity of their 

 other food-stuffs besides, that they hardly regard their own 

 land as a factor in the situation at all ; and, therefore, when a 

 man comes along and tells them this land of theirs is a factor, 

 by far the mo.^t important one in the entire social and economic 

 conditions of their country, and that it is more intimately 

 woven into the very fibres of their own lives than any other 

 factor in this world, they can hardly be brought to realise the 

 truth. When, however, the people of this country can grasp 

 these living truths, the destruction of that insensate party 

 warfare and political trickery, which has brought incalculable 

 harm to tbe country, will commence. 



It is pointed out nowadays by many writers who prefer to 

 determine such matters, as we are considering, by the aid of the 

 practical manifestations afforded by the actual conditions under 

 which the people live rather than by the light of " economic 

 science," that some professors of economics seem to be more 

 jealous of the dogmas of their particular beliefs than mindful of 

 the people's real interests. 



Economic Platitudes 



One writer, in defending the present fiscal system of the 

 country, pointed to " the enormous advantage of fifty years of 

 Eree-trade imports, as manifested in the prosperity of the 

 country and in our high standard of living," in order to prove 

 that it is the best for the people. The people, on the other 

 hand, who rightly prefer to reduce this question to concrete 

 examples and apply them to their individual lives, take quite 

 a different view. They very naturally point, in the first place, 

 to ever-present unemployment, to increasing destitution and 

 growing pauperism ; to the pressing necessity of enormous 

 State and private charity ; to social unrest and political agita- 

 tion ; to the growth of Socialism and of revolutionary doctrines 



