But we have not to deal with the ultimate future,but with the immediate present,and for the evils with which we are dealing the existing cooperative organisations do not and cannot give us much help.
Another--I do not like to call it specific;it is only a name,a mere mockery of a specific--so let me call it another suggestion made when discussing this evil,is Thrift.Thrift is a great virtue no doubt.
But how is Thrift to benefit those who have nothing?What is the use of the gospel of Thrift to a man who had nothing to eat yesterday,and has not threepence to-day to pay for his lodging to-night?To live on nothing a day is difficult enough,but to save on it would beat the cleverest political economist that ever lived.I admit without hesitation that any Scheme which weakened the incentive to Thrift would do harm.But it is a mistake to imagine that social damnation is an incentive to Thrift.It operates least where its force ought to be most felt.There is no fear that any Scheme that we can devise will appreciably diminish the deterrent influences which dispose a man to save.But it is idle wasting time upon a plea that is only brought forward as an excuse for inaction.Thrift is a great virtue,the inculcation of which must be constantly kept in view by all those who are attempting to "educate and save the people.It is not in any sense a specific for the salvation of the lapsed and the lost.Even among the most wretched of the very poor,a man must have an object and a hope before he will save a halfpenny."Let us eat and drink,for to-morrow we perish,"sums up the philosophy of those who have no hope.
In the thriftiness of the French peasant we see that the temptation of eating and drinking is capable of being resolutely subordinated to the superior claims of the accumulation of a dowry for the daughter,or for the acquisition of a little more land for the son.
Of the schemes of those who propose to bring in a new heaven and a new earth by a more scientific distribution of the pieces of gold and silver in the trouser pockets of mankind,I need not say anything here.
They may be good or they may not.I say nothing against any short cut to the Millennium that is compatible with the Ten Commandments.
I intensely sympathise with the aspirations that lie behind all these Socialist dreams.But whether it is Henry George's Single Tax on Land Values,or Edward Bellamy's Nationalism,or the more elaborate schemes of the Collectivists,my attitude towards them all is the same.
What these good people want to do,I also want to do.But I am a practical man,dealing with the actualities of to-day.I have no preconceived theories,and I flatter myself I am singularly free from prejudices.I am ready to sit at the feet of any who will show me any good.I keep my mind open on all these subjects;and am quite prepared to hail with open arms any Utopia that is offered me.But it must be within range of my finger-tips.It is of no use to me if it is in the clouds.Cheques on the Bank of Futurity I accept gladly enough as a free gift,but I can hardly be expected to take them as if they were current coin,or to try to cash them at the Bank of England.
It may be that nothing will be put permanently right until everything has been turned upside down.There are certainly so many things that need transforming,beginning with the heart of each individual man and woman,that I do not quarrel with any Visionary when in his intense longing for the amelioration of the condition of mankind he lays down his theories as to the necessity for radical change,however impracticable they may appear to me.But this is the question.
