VIII. Lecture worked its salutary effects that any popular feeling grew up in favour of the management of trades, which might concern the public interest, by municipal corporations. Nor was municipal trading during the Benthamite era in harmony with the liberalism of the day. A gradual change of public opinion may be dated from about the middle of the century. Since 1850 the extension of municipal trading has progressed with a rapidity which increased greatly as the century drew towards its close; the market rights of private owners have been bought up by municipalities; markets so purchased have often turned out lucrative properties, and "we find that the more "recent developments [of municipal trading] in con"nection with municipal markets include slaughterhouses, cold-air stores, ice manufactories, and the "sale of surplus ice, and that the right to sell the "ice to the public without restriction has been "demanded" from Parliament. Municipal bathing establishments have become common, as well as the foundation of municipal water-works, and since the middle of the century the supply of gas, which up to that date had been wholly in the hands of companies, has in many cases passed under the management of local authorities. Tramways (1868-69) were first 1 Darwin, pp. 3, 4. 8 2 Ibid. The extension of municipal business has been constantly accompanied and accomplished by the compulsory purchase on the part of local authorities, of land, or other property, belonging to private individuals. It is worth notice that compulsory purchase might more accurately be termed compulsory sale, and always involves the possibility, or probability, that a man may be compelled to sell property either which he does not wish to sell at all, or which he does not wish to sell on the terms that he is compelled to accept. Such compulsory sale is often justified by considerations of public interest, but it always means a curtailment of the seller's individual liberty. VIII. constructed and owned, and since a later date (1882- Lecture 1892) have been worked by municipalities, whilst since 1889 electrical works have been carried on by municipalities, and the fact is now clearly recognised that all or the greater number of tramways will ultimately become municipal property. Before 1890 local authorities had little concern with house building, and the Labouring Classes' Lodging Houses Act, 1851,1 remained a dead letter. Under the Housing of the Working Classes Act, 1890, local authorities now possess large powers of buying up insanitary areas, of demolishing insanitary buildings, of letting out land to contractors under conditions as to the rebuilding of dwellings for the poor, and of selling to private persons the buildings thus erected. Municipalities have at the same time received powers to build additional houses on land not previously built upon, and to erect, furnish, and manage dwellings and lodging-houses. They have also entered into various trades. They have employed themselves, e.g., in turning dust into mortar, in working stone quarries, in building tram-cars, in the provision of buildings for entertainments and for music, in laying out race-courses, in the manufacture of electrical fittings, in the undertaking of telephone services, in the sale and distribution of milk, and the like. The desires, moreover, of municipalities have outstripped the powers hitherto conceded to them by Parliament. They desire to run omnibuses in connection with tramways; they wish to construct bazaars, aquaria, shops, and winter gardens; they wish to attract visitors to a district by advertising its merits. No 1 14 & 15 Vict. c. 34. VIII. Lecture one, in short, can seriously question that, for good or bad, the existence of municipal trading is one of the salient facts of the day, and that it has since the middle of the nineteenth century acquired a new character. The trades, if so they are to be called, which were first undertaken by local authorities were closely connected with the functions of municipal government. At the present day municipal trading is becoming an active competition for business between municipalities supported by the rates, and private traders who can rely only on their own resources. The aim, moreover, of municipal trading is, on the face of it, to use the wealth of the ratepayers in a way which may give to all the inhabitants of a particular locality benefits, e.g. in the way of cheap locomotion, which they could not obtain for themselves. Here we have, in fact, in the most distinct form the effort to equalise advantages. The present state of things, indeed, can in no way be more vividly described than by using the words of an author, who is certainly no opponent of socialism, and who, if he expresses himself with satirical exaggeration, means honestly to depict matters passing before our eyes : 66 "The practical man, oblivious or contemptuous of any theory of the social organism or general principles of social organisation, has been forced, by the neces"sities of the time, into an ever-deepening collectivist "channel. Socialism, of course, he still rejects and 66 despises. The individualist town councillor will "walk along the municipal pavement, lit by municipal gas, and cleansed by municipal brooms with municipal water, and seeing, by the municipal clock in "the municipal market, that he is too early to meet VIII. "his children coming from the municipal school, Lecture "hard by the county lunatic asylum and municipal 66 66 'hospital, will use the national telegraph system to "tell them not to walk through the municipal park, "but to come by the municipal tramway, to meet him "in the municipal reading-room, by the municipal art gallery, museum, and library, where he intends to "consult some of the national publications in order "to prepare his next speech in the municipal town. 'hall, in favour of the nationalisation of canals and "the increase of Government control over the railway system. 'Socialism,' Sir, he will say, 'don't waste "the time of a practical man by your fantastic "absurdities. Self-help, Sir, individual self-help, 66 66 "that's what's made our city what it is.' (B) Trend of Collectivist Legislation "It cannot be seriously denied," wrote Mr. Morley in 1881, " that Cobden was fully justified in describ"ing the tendencies of this legislation [i.e. the factory laws] as socialistic. It was an exertion "of the power of the State, in its strongest form, definitely limiting in the interest of the labourer "the administration of capital. The Act of 1844 was only a rudimentary step in this direction. In "1847 the Ten Hours Bill became law. Cobden was 66 "abroad at the time, and took no part in its final stages. In the thirty years that followed, the 1 Cited as language of Sidney Webb, by George Eastgate, Times, Saturday, August 23, 1902, p. 6. VIII. 66 66 66 66 66 66 66 66 verance. Lecture principle has been extended with astonishing perseWe have to-day a complete, minute, and voluminous code for the protection of labour; buildings must be kept pure of effluvia; dangerous machinery must be fenced; children and young persons must not clean it while in motion; their hours are not only limited, but fixed; continuous employment must not exceed a given number of hours, varying with the trade, but prescribed by the law in given cases; a statutable number of holidays is imposed; the children must go to school, and the employer must every week have a certificate "to that effect; if an accident happens notice must "be sent to the proper authorities; special provisions are made for bakehouses, for lace - making, for collieries, and for a whole schedule of other special callings; for the due enforcement and vigilant "supervision of this immense host of minute prescriptions there is an immense host of inspectors, certifying surgeons, and other authorities, whose business it "is to speed and post o'er land and ocean' in restless guardianship of every kind of labour, from that of "the woman who plaits straw at her cottage door, to the miner who descends into the bowels of the earth, and the seaman who conveys the fruits and "materials of universal industry to and fro between "the remotest parts of the globe. But all this is one "of the largest branches of what the most importunate socialists have been accustomed to demand; and if "we add to this vast fabric of labour legislation our system of Poor Law, we find the rather amazing result that in the country where socialism has "been less talked about than any other country in 66 66 66 |