THE NEW RAID

Utopia of Userers, et al

by Gilbert K. Chesterton

THE NEW RAID, UTOPIA OF USERERS, ET AL by Gilbert K. Chesterton
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The two kinds of social reform, one of which might conceivably free us at
last while the other would certainly enslave us forever, are exhibited in
an easy working model in the two efforts that have been made for the
soldiers' wives--I mean the effort to increase their allowance and the
effort to curtail their alleged drinking. In the preliminary
consideration, at any rate, we must see the second question as quite
detached from our own sympathies on the special subject of fermented
liquor. It could be applied to any other pleasure or ornament of life; it
will be applied to every other pleasure and ornament of life if the
Capitalist campaign can succeed. The argument we know; but it cannot be
too often made clear. An employer, let us say, pays a seamstress twopence
a day, and she does not seem to thrive on it. So little, perhaps, does
she thrive on it that the employer has even some difficulty in thriving
upon her. There are only two things that he can do, and the distinction
between them cuts the whole social and political world in two. It is a
touchstone by which we can--not sometimes, but always--distinguish
economic equality from servile social reform. He can give the girl some
magnificent sum, such as sixpence a day, to do as she likes with, and
trust that her improved health and temper will work for the benefit of his
business. Or he may keep her to the original sum of a shilling a week,
but earmark each of the pennies to be used or not to be used for a
particular purpose. If she must not spend this penny on a bunch of
violets, or that penny on a novelette, or the other penny on a toy for
some baby, it is possible that she will concentrate her expenditure more
upon physical necessities, and so become, from the employer's point of
view, a more efficient person. Without the trouble of adding twopence to
her wages, he has added twopenny-worth to her food. In short, she has the
holy satisfaction of being worth more without being paid more.

This Capitalist is an ingenious person, and has many polished
characteristics; but I think the most singular thing about him is his
staggering lack of shame. Neither the hour of death nor the day of
reckoning, neither the tent of exile nor the house of mourning, neither
chivalry nor patriotism, neither womanhood nor widowhood, is safe at this
supreme moment from his dirty little expedient of dieting the slave. As
similar bullies, when they collect the slum rents, put a foot in the open
door, these are always ready to push in a muddy wedge wherever there is a
slit in a sundered household or a crack in a broken heart. To a man of
any manhood nothing can be conceived more loathsome and sacrilegious than
even so much as asking whether a woman who has given up all she loved to
death and the fatherland has or has not shown some weakness in her seeking
for self-comfort. I know not in which of the two cases I should count
myself the baser for inquiring--a case where the charge was false or a
case where it was true. But the philanthropic employer of the sort I
describe is not a man of any manhood; in a sense he is not a man at all.
He shows some consciousness of the fact when he calls his workers "men" as
distinct from masters. He cannot comprehend the gallantry of
costermongers or the delicacy that is quite common among cabmen. He finds
this social reform by half-rations on the whole to his mercantile profit,
and it will be hard to get him to think of anything else.

But there are people assisting him, people like the Duchess of Marlborough,
who know not their right hand from their left, and to these we may
legitimately address our remonstrance and a resume of some of the facts
they do not know. The Duchess of Marlborough is, I believe, an American,
and this separates her from the problem in a special way, because the
drink question in America is entirely different from the drink question in
England. But I wish the Duchess of Marlborough would pin up in her
private study, side by side with the Declaration of Independence, a
document recording the following simple truths: (1) Beer, which is largely
drunk in public-houses, is not a spirit or a grog or a cocktail or a drug.
It is the common English liquid for quenching the thirst; it is so still
among innumerable gentlemen, and, until very lately, was so among
innumerable ladies. Most of us remember dames of the last generation
whose manners were fit for Versailles, and who drank ale or Stout as a
matter of course. Schoolboys drank ale as a matter of course, and their
schoolmasters gave it to them as a matter of course. To tell a poor woman
that she must not have any until half the day is over is simply cracked,
like telling a dog or a child that he must not have water. (2) The
public-house is not a secret rendezvous of bad characters. It is the open
and obvious place for a certain purpose, which all men used for that
purpose until the rich began to be snobs and the poor to become slaves.
One might as well warn people against Willesden Junction. (3) Many poor
people live in houses where they cannot, without great preparation, offer
hospitality. (4) The climate of these picturesque islands does not favour
conducting long conversations with one's oldest friends on an iron seat in
the park. (5) Halfpast eleven a.m. is not early in the day for a woman
who gets up before six. (6) The bodies and minds of these women belong to
God and to themselves.