951. KEPORT— 1898. 



of another. They made concessions to it in the matter of slavery and forced 

 labour of all kinds. Their armoury had weapons against the pressgang and the 

 corvee. When there was no physical compulsion their misgivings slept. But, at 

 present, most of us feel that such a test is too rough and ready. One man may be 

 the tool of another under an oppression and compulsion that are not less severe 

 because not exercised by brute force ; for example, there is the reluctant service 

 under a hard taskmaster, only rendered because penury and starvation are the 

 alternatives. To the older economists all kinds of subjection except that arising 

 from the legal property of one man in another were worthy to be tolerated, and 

 were in most cases regarded as inevitable. They had sympathy with the poor 

 according to their knowledge, but our sympathy is probably greater because we have 

 better knowledge of the condition of the poor. Reluctant subjection of one man to 

 another, though a fact of everyday life now as then, does not now leave us indifferent. 

 Willing subjection is also a familiar fact. It does not seem hard to us to acknow- 

 ledge our leaders and bid them take us and use us as their instruments. But, 

 between the extremes of (a) free subjection to a leader and (b) the submission of a 

 slave who has no choice in the matter, there are in our society various grades of 

 subjection to others, subjection for their ends chiefly, for our ends partly ; and 

 they cannot be split into two simple groups by a physical test. Industry especially 

 gives plenty of instances of the temporary subjection of one man to another for 

 definite ends and over fixed periods of time. We can hardly cope with Nature suc- 

 cessfully at all without combining against her under leaders. It is certainly an 

 essential feature of our present industrial system. As a man commits his goods to 

 be used by another for him, so he commits his person to be so used, for another's 

 beneQt, but also for his own. 



Now that slavery is gone, it has become as hard to prove a complete ' expro- 

 priation and exploitation ' of the labourer in industry as it is hard to prove plagi- 

 arism in literature. The degree of the ' ex-ploitation' must always be considered. 

 Were the relations of employer and employed those of Prospero and Caliban, or 

 of Prospero and Ariel, or- only of Oberon and Puck ? There are many degrees, 

 and it is a long way from the top to the bottom of the ladder. In an army the 

 leader is not using the led for his own purposes ; though he has soldiers under him, 

 he himself is a man under authority ; and he is using them for a common cause, 

 which both have at heart. Such service is not servitude if the cause is really at 

 heart on both sides. So it might be, and is sometimes, in industry ; but we have at 

 present, perhaps, more of the worse degrees than of the better. There is little 

 liberty and much servitude when the workmen have no interest but their wages ; 

 they are used directly for another's ends and only indirectly and accidentally for 

 their own. The leaders and the led can justly say of each other : they are nothing 

 to us but means to our ends, our profits, or our wages. 



The old economists took little note of such distinctions. It seemed enough to 

 them that there was a legal contract. Even Burke, who spoke in his first 

 pamphlet (on ' Natural Society in 1756 ') of the ' slavery and burdens of the poor,' 

 and of nine out of ten of the human race as passing their life in miserable 

 di-udgery, speaks in this last pamphlet (in 1795) as if there was no cause for 

 misgivings in this connection ; a contract once made could not be a hardship to 

 either party, for a contract is a compromise, both giving and both taking what 

 seems the best possible equivalent at the time. 



Yet in almost all contracts there 'is what Professor Pantaleoni ^ called lately 

 ' economic strength ' on the one side ; and there is ' economic weakness ' on the 

 other. It is where the weakness is great that the contract galls even if it has been 

 the less of two evils; and there appears to be as much servitude as liberty. The 

 weaker is made the tool of the stronger, the tenant of the landlord, the workman 

 of the employer, the clerk of the merchant. Professor Pantaleoni, with his inge- 

 nious casuistry, would persuade us that we can seldom pronounce on which side the 

 economic weakness lies, especially if we look to the future as well as the present. 

 He gives us many instances where the tables can be easily turned. Like the 

 Platonic Socrates arguing in the ' Republic ' against any sure definition of the 



' Economic Journal, June, 1898. 



