Social Forces in England and AmericaWells, H. G. (Herbert George)
History
Social Forces in England and America
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
England -- Social conditions -- 20th century; Social problems; United States -- Social conditions -- 1865-1918
In the latter case a great enterprise, forced to consider its “hands” as
being also in their degree “heads,” would include a department of
technical and business instruction for its own people. From such ideas
one passes very readily to the conception of guild-managed businesses,
in which the factor of capital would no longer stand out as an element
distinct from and contrasted with the proprietorship of the workers. One
sees the worker as an active and intelligent helper during the great
portion of his participation, and as an annuitant and perhaps, if he has
devised economies and improvements, a receiver of royalties during his
declining years.
And concurrently with the systematic reconstruction of a large portion
of our industries upon these lines there will have to be a vigorous
development of the attempts that are already being made, in garden
cities, garden suburbs, and the like, to re-house the mass of our
population in a more civilised and more agreeable manner. Probably that
is not going to pay from the point of view of the money-making business
man, but we prosperous people have to understand that there are things
more important and more profitable than money-making, and we have to tax
ourselves not merely in money, but in time, care, and effort in the
matter. Half the money that goes out of England to Switzerland and the
Riviera ought to go to the extremely amusing business of clearing up
ugly corners and building jolly and convenient workmen’s cottages—even
if we do it at a loss. It is part of our discharge for the leisure and
advantages the system has given us, part of that just give and take,
over and above the solicitor’s and bargain-hunter’s and money-lender’s
conception of justice, upon which social order ultimately rests. We have
to do it not in a mood of patronage, but in a mood of attentive
solicitude. If not on high grounds, then on low grounds our class has to
set to work and make those other classes more interested and comfortable
and contented. It is what we are for. It is quite impossible for workmen
and poor people generally to plan estates and arrange their own homes;
they are entirely at the mercy of the wealthy in this matter. There is
not a slum, not a hovel, not an eyesore upon the English landscape for
which some well-off owner is not ultimately to be blamed or excused, and
the less we leave of such things about the better for us in that day of
reckoning between class and class which now draws so near.
It is as plain now as the way from Calais to Paris that if the owning
class does not attend to these amenities the mass of the people, doing
its best to manage the thing through the politicians, presently will.
They may make a frightful mess of it, but that will never bring back
things again into the hands that hold them and neglect them. Their time
will have passed for ever.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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