§10.This problem, of course, is merely one illustration of the complicated issues which arise in any orderly study of the human economics of class and individual standards of consumption.Even such a merely cursory glance at this delicate organic problem will serve to expose the fatuity of so much of the crude dogmatic criticism lavished upon working-class economy by well-to-do reformers who have not sufficient imagination or discretion to abstain from applying the standards of valuation appropriate to an income of £1,000 a year to a family living upon £60 a year.The exact income-point where a West Ham worker can afford to observe the legal requirements against overcrowding by hiring another room, where he can join a Club with a reasonable chance of keeping up the subscriptions, where he can afford to keep the boys or girls at school beyond the legal age-limit, such questions cannot be settled by general maxims as to the duty of thrift or the advantages of education, or even the dangers of bad sanitation.It must be remembered that even in this highly-civilised and Christian land there are still some millions of people who cannot afford to set aside anything for a rainy day, or to let their children enjoy the education which the State freely provides, or even to obey some of the fundamental laws of health.As the family wage rises beyond a bare minimum of current subsistence, a point will emerge where each of these and many other sound practices becomes economically feasible: the particular income-point, of course, will differ with each family according to its composition, its needs, and the opportunities of meeting them.
What applies so evidently to the narrow incomes of the wage-earners is, of course, equally applicable to the higher incomes of other classes.
The well-to-do professional man recognises that an annual expenditure of five or even ten per cent of his income on holidays may be a sound economy, just as he calculates that he is doing better for his son by spending £1,000on his professional training than by putting him to business at sixteen with the same sum for capital.Not only is it impossible to generalise for a whole people, or for all families in a given trade or of a given income, but there will be no two cases where a rising income ought to be laid out precisely in the same way.This is of course nothing else than saying that, as no two persons, or families, are precisely alike in physical and moral make-up, in tastes, needs, opportunities, their expenditure cannot rightly be the same.
Though this belongs to the most obvious of common-places, none is more habitually ignored.And that neglect is largely due to the fact that the platitudinarian moralist has always been allowed to have a free run in the region of commentary on expenditure.
Eulogia of thrift and industry have been as indiscriminate and as unprofitable as diatribes against luxury and idleness.What is needed is a flow of orderly investigation into the real needs and capacities of the individuals and groups who constitute industrial society, not confined to the hard facts which can be tabulated and plotted in curves but taking count of those softer and more plastic facts which a closer study of human life will always show as the main determinants of any art of conduct.
The place of leisure in the organic standard of a group or class or nation will be one of the most delicate problems in such a study.Its delicacy for the individual economy may, indeed, be deduced from the expression which we used at the outset of this treatment, in describing it as 'the opportunity of opportunities.' In other words, its human utility to any man, and, therefore, its importance, relative to his wages or any other good he gets from them, will depend upon the nature of all the opportunities it opens up, and that in its turn depends upon the entire sum of those conditions which we name his Nature and his Environment.
The progressive achievement of this economy of leisure is closely linked with a gradual reorganisation of industry so as to eliminate the large waste of time and energy which present productive methods involve.With science and humanity cooperating in the art of social organisation it ought to be possible to effect such economies as would place all Englishmen in private possession of the greater part of their waking day for their own purposes in life.It requires, however, a genuine faith in the organic progress of Human Nature to urge with confidence the fuller measure of such a reform.We need at least to assume that the normal tendency will be towards the use, not the abuse, of more leisure, as of higher wages.
That some waste will be incurred in learning to use leisure, as also in building up each stage in a rising standard of expenditure, is of course inevitable.Much might be said about the conditions which facilitate the assimilation both of leisure and of wages to nourish a higher human life.
Race, climate, social traditions and surroundings, the nature of the work, age, sex and, indeed, many other conditions, must help to determine how a given shortening of hours, or enhancement of wages, will affect the standard of life.Some crude distinctions of great significance have been observed.
