t on
character, initiative, enterprise? It is a question now not of freedom,
but of responsibility, and it is one that has caused many searchings of
heart, and in respect of which opinion has undergone a remarkable
change. Thus, in relation to poverty the older view was that the first
thing needful was self-help. It was the business of every man to provide
for himself and his family. If, indeed, he utterly failed, neither he
nor they could be left to starve, and there was the Poor Law machinery
to deal with his case. But the aim of every sincere friend of the poor
must be to keep them away from the Poor Law machine. Experience of the
forty years before 1834 had taught us what came of free resort to public
funds by way of subvention to inadequate wages. It meant simply that the
standard of remuneration was lowered in proportion as men could rely on
public aid to make good the deficiency, while at the same time the
incentives to independent labour were weakened when the pauper stood on
an equal footing with the hard-working man. In general, if the attempt
was made to substitute for personal effort the help of others, the
result would only sap individual initiative and in the end bring down
the rate of industrial remuneration. It was thought, for example--and
this very point was urged against proposals for Old Age Pensions--that
if any of the objects for which a man will, if possible, provide were
removed from the scope of his own activity, he would in consequence be
content with proportionally lower wages; if the employer was to
compensate him for accident, he would fail to make provision for
accidents on his own account; if his children were fed by the
ratepayers, he would not earn the money wherewith to feed them. Hence,
on the one hand, it was urged that the rate of wages would tend to adapt
itself to the necessities of the wage earner, that in proportion as his
necessities were met from other sources his wages would fall, that
accordingly the apparent relief would be in large measure illusory,
while finally, in view of the diminished stimulus to individual
exertion, the productivity of labour would fall off, the incentives to
industry would be diminished, and the community as a whole would be
poorer. Upon the other hand, it was conceived that, however deplorable
the condition of the working classes might be, the right way of raising
them was to trust to individual enterprise and possibly, according to
some thinkers, to