Part 3

Our present difficulties all boil down to one recognizable sediment. Great Britain is over-populated. Before the war we were over-populated, and to-day we are still more so, and to-morrow matters are likely to be worse.[1] There are three solutions to this problem. Either we must stop breeding, or we must create new home industries and so absorb our surplus population, or we must transport it to less thickly populated areas overseas.

Footnote 1:

In 1913, 700,000 emigrated from this country; in 1923, only 463,000 left.

Six hundred and odd politicians in Westminster, some in black ties and others in red, chatter like a wilderness of monkeys, whilst those who were proclaimed heroes may consider themselves lucky if they are allowed to stand in the gutter and sell bootlaces; and in this chatter the problem is drowned, only to bob up again, between each breath.

We are told that the Government’s determination is “not to tolerate propaganda for birth control in clinics and maternity centres supported by public funds.” This settles the first solution, at least the Government does not believe in it. Recently, because the coal mining industry was unable to pay its way, it is now subsidized, and many new industries are left unprotected, so the second solution joins the first. As regards the third solution, very little has been done outside private effort, because the problem has been tackled from the wrong end. Attempts are persistently being made to shift the unemployed; who wants them? In place attempts should be made to shift the employed, but this question I will examine a little later on.

The point I want the reader, however, to realize is that, as the riddle of the Gordian knot was _not_ solved by cutting it, so the problem of over-population will not be solved by the dole. Cutting and doling can be done by any fool with his coat on, they are too easy; for the problem which faces us demands that we take our coats off and get to work, in place of turning our less fortunate fellow citizens into unemployable vagrants.

THE PROBLEM OF UNEMPLOYMENT

Birth control I rule out of discussion, and though I am of opinion that it might well be made compulsory amongst politicians, my solution demands not a restriction, but a vast increase in the birth rate.

The invention of the locomotive and steamship upset all birth rate calculations.[2] During the last century it has been reckoned that twenty-eight million people left Europe by sea, four millions during the first half and twenty-four millions during the second, the period of railway and steamship development. Out of these twenty-eight million emigrants, twenty-two millions went to the United States, the population of which was five and a quarter millions in the year 1800, seventy-six millions in 1900, and is about one hundred and ten millions to-day, and quite possibly, before the present century is out, this figure will be doubled.

Footnote 2:

In 1750, before the industrial revolution set in, the population of the United Kingdom was 6,517,000.

In the United Kingdom we see, if not so great, as startling an increase, considering the smallness of the country. In 1801, the population numbered about sixteen millions, and to-day, excluding Ireland, it numbers about forty-four millions, which is probably four or five millions more than the industry of the country can economically support, as unemployment and the low standard of living, not only now but before the war, testify to.

Let us remember always what has created the great civilizations of the past, empires and kingdoms, prosperous lands and great cities. It is movement and the means of movement. First man placed a bundle on his wife’s head and gave her a kick, then he tamed the ox and beat it with a stick, thus civilization became possible. At length, he invented the wheel and the sail, and, by means of these inventions, mankind crept out of primeval darkness into the dawn of history. In 1809 Fulton invented the steamship, and in 1814 George Stephenson built his first locomotive. It is, as I have already said, these inventions which have created not only such immense cities as modern London and New York, but which have shifted millions of men, women and children from one part of the globe to the other. Why did they shift them, this is the question? Because the steamship and the railway enabled them to tap sources of wealth which did not exist in their own countries; for without prospects of wealth there would be little or no movement.

To-day, we possess an Empire of over fourteen million square miles in area, of which three-quarters is sparsely inhabited. In Canada we find nine million two hundred thousand people; in Australia five million eight hundred thousand; in South Africa eight millions, and in New Zealand only one million two hundred thousand; yet New Zealand is as big as the British Isles.

Without considering our immense Colonial possessions, the potential wealth of the Dominions alone should eventually be sufficient to support certainly one if not two hundred millions of Englishmen. On the one hand we have room for at least a hundred millions, and on the other we have a surplus of some five millions. The redistribution of this surplus should not prove an insuperable problem, and even if it cost us twenty pounds a head to arrive at a solution, it would be cheap when compared to spending forty-six millions a year on doles and poor rates, which, far from solving the problem of unemployment, only accentuate it.[3]

Footnote 3:

“Schemes to the value of approximately £466,000,000 undertaken in connection with the relief of unemployment have, or are being assisted by the Exchequer.”—_Whitaker’s Almanack._

In former times, the danger inherent in immigrations was the hostility of the tribes in occupation of the new lands—the problem was a military one. To-day, the difficulty is not military, but financial. To-day, it is no longer bows and arrows which restrict immigration, but money. To-day, it is not profitable to tackle a land owner with a rifle, and nearly all land worth owning is owned; instead the settler must buy the land, or be sufficiently skilled to dispose of his labour at a profit.

Our present-day unemployed have no money and little skill. To send such people to the Dominions is no true solution of the unemployment problem, for it only shifts the unemployed from one place to another, and this does not solve the problem. In 1914, Germany attempted to gain the French Colonies, not because she wanted to shift to them the vagrants of Berlin and Hamburg; but, because the possession of these Colonies would have enabled thousands of well-to-do Germans, the small capitalists and skilled workers of the middle classes, to enrich themselves without loss of nationality. Incidentally, as these people emigrated, room would be made in Germany for the under-dog. Competition would have decreased with a decrease in not the unemployed, but in the employed population. Wages would have increased in proportion and, by degrees, the greater percentage of the under-dogs, through increased wealth, would have raised themselves into the middle class as small capitalists.

To-day, there is no necessity for us to covet the territories of other nations. We possess ten million square miles of sparsely-populated land in which Englishmen will not be lost to the Empire. To-day, we see this problem mentioned in every paper, but writers will persist in thinking in terms of the _unemployed_. It is the _employed_ we must shift, not only because at home room will thus be made for the unemployed,[4] but because it is the skilled man or the small capitalist who can thrive in the Dominions and Colonies and the unemployed normally cannot.

Footnote 4:

It may be considered by some that this will mean that we in England shall be left with the unworkable dregs of society. Such a view is a gross libel on the bulk of the unemployed. Before the War, seventy per cent. of the recruits for the army enlisted because they were unemployed. During the War these men were universally proclaimed heroes, and such they were. I can personally testify, after twenty-seven years of service in the army, that less than five per cent. of the men in any unit of regular soldiers would make undesirable citizens if vocational training were fully established. If, however, men are kept unemployed for years they will eventually become unemployable.

THE PROBLEM OF POWER

To move we must not only possess the means of movement, but the will to move; for, without this will, all the means in the world are but scrap iron and dead timber. The men who first tamed the camel and the horse must have had ideas in their heads—visions which impelled them to do what they did. It may have been sympathy for his wife as she carried his load which induced men to jump on a horse’s back, but much more likely was it her low carrying power and possibly also to get away from her restless tongue.

In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the will to move is stimulated by material gain. To possess something easily, cheaply, and, if possible, for nothing, is the urge of both commerce and robbery, twins of Fear and Greed, forces of vice as well as of virtue, the forces of the growth of the human world, and forces not to be set aside lightly.

The nomadic hordes surged out of Asia in the search after food. It was the desire to fill their stomachs which moved them. They trickled over Europe until they met the sea, and then, as years passed by, they conquered the ocean and swept into the New World. What will happen when the Americans begin to swarm, it is difficult to say. Will they once again set out to pursue the setting sun? Who knows?

So also with the wars of the world, as with these slow but steady human inundations, it has nearly always been a material goal, however shadowy in form, which has provided the urge. Security, what is this? The shield of Prosperity and Liberty—a desert, a river, a range of mountains, or a feeble neighbour; in one word, a secure frontier to shield a people, so that they may enjoy the fruits of peace; this has been the urge of war.

Then, from war, which so often is but robbery on a national scale, to turn to barter, amicable warfare; and from barter to turn to commerce, amicable war on a national scale, what has been the urge? A gold field, oil wells, land where corn will grow or cattle will breed; in one word, the possibilities of wealth, which is the loadstone of movement.

The potential wealth of the Empire is stupendous, and potential wealth is power asleep, power awaiting to be roused from its slumbers, the power of coal, of oil, and water, of the air and the sun’s rays, of the tides and of the atoms themselves. The whole world is a gigantic battery of power, and our Empire covers a quarter of this world, and all that is needed is to detonate it, and it can only be detonated by the will of man.

The Romans conquered by building roads, the modern world, by building railways. Yet both are but a one-dimensional means of movement, and, in type, so near related, that even to-day the gauge of our railway lines is the gauge of the Roman chariots. Suppose now that these roads and railways could suddenly expand laterally, so that from a few feet broad they could expand to a few yards in breadth, then to hundreds of yards, miles, and hundreds of miles, until it is as easy to move over the surface of the earth as over the surface of the sea. A second dimension would be given to movement; a new world would be born, since a stupendous sleeping power would be awakened. Stephenson improved the chariot. In place of taking three weeks to go from London to Edinburgh we can now travel there in eight hours. He conquered Time rather than Space. The storming of the Bastions of Space, this is the problem of the future, and one of our engines of conquest is the cross-country machine.

PROBLEMS OF MOVEMENT

Economic movement may be divided into five great categories, namely, movement by air, by water, by rail, by road and by pack. Each may be divided into two sub-categories. Thus, air movement by transport lighter and heavier than air; water movement into sea transport and inland water transport; railway movement into broad and narrow-gauge lines; road movement into transport by wagon and lorry, and pack movement into human and animal porterage or carriage.

I do not here intend to examine movement by air and water, and, as regards the other three categories, I will limit my examination to their use in undeveloped countries, more particularly within the Empire, and I will start with the railway.

_The Railway._ The country through which a railway is built may be divided into three economic areas:—

(i) A belt about eighty miles in width, through the centre of which the railway runs.

(ii) Two belts, each about twenty miles wide, extending on the flanks of the central belt.

(iii) The whole of the country concerned, excluding the above three belts.

Whether the prosperity of the country is based on minerals, cattle, or cereals, the first belt is normally prosperous, the second two less prosperous, and the remainder of the country unremunerative. To bring the whole country up to the prosperity of the first belt demands a railway every eighty miles.

Obviously, in an undeveloped country, to build railways every eighty miles is prohibitively costly, but as nearly every nation in the world is prepared to spend millions of pounds on the construction and maintenance of railways and rolling stock, and often with little reference to the law of supply and demand, it is advisable, I think, briefly to examine the question of cost.

The cost of a railway decreases as the load increases; the load must, consequently, be sufficient to pay for the capital expenditure entailed in constructing the line and also its maintenance. The cost of the Nigerian railways was £11,000 per open mile; the estimated cost of new construction in the Gold Coast lies between £13,000 and £17,000 per mile. For railways costing as much as these, and the figures are not abnormally high, to pay, the country they traverse must not only be fertile or rich in minerals, but thickly inhabited.

I have already examined the question of population in the Dominions, all of which are to-day sparsely inhabited, so I will now turn to another area, namely, British Tropical Africa, a potentially immensely rich country covering some two and a half million square miles and occupied by forty million inhabitants. To run railways through this country would be similar to running railways through Great Britain less its present elaborate system of roads[5] and with a population numbering about two and a quarter millions. In such conditions railways would most certainly not pay, and would only begin to do so when road feeders had been built and the country had become thickly populated.

Footnote 5:

There are 178,000 miles of road in Great Britain.

_The Road_. As economically the railway is length with little breadth, in undeveloped countries it can only be looked upon as an artery, depending for its freight on the roads and tracks which converge on it. If these roads and tracks be few in number, generally speaking, freights will be insignificant, and the railway, in place of fostering wealth, will swallow it up or stifle it. The railway must, therefore, be skirted by a network of roads.

The cheapest form of road is a rough cart track, and where the country consists of grass land and the rainfall is low, as in South Africa, extensive use can be made of bullock wagons for purposes of transportation. The bullock wagon has reached, however, the zenith of its evolution, and is by no means suited for countries where grazing is difficult. If fodder has to be carried in bulk, it at once becomes an uneconomical means of movement.

If the country to be traversed is unsuited to this means of transport, we are left with the lorry, and though light box-cars, such as Ford vans, can use rough tracks and frequently move across country, the load carried is so small, that, unless it is of a particularly valuable nature, or distance is short, the cost of carriage becomes prohibitive. We are left, therefore, with the heavy lorry, varying from three to six tons burden.

These vehicles obviously demand macadamized roads, which not only are extremely expensive to build, but in a sparsely inhabited country prohibitively expensive to maintain. Here in England, we spend yearly £50,000,000 and more on road repair.[6] In Jamaica, £1,000,000 is spent on the maintenance of lorry roads. In both countries this means that each inhabitant has to pay slightly more than £1 a year to meet the road repair bill. In tropical countries, where torrential rains fall and vegetation luxuriates, the macadamized road is out of the question, so also is it in desert land where the sand is apt to silt over the roadways.

Footnote 6:

In 1914–1915 the maintenance of roads cost £19,000,000, in 1921–1922 this sum had risen to £45,500,000.

If the road will not suit the vehicle, the vehicle must be made to suit the road. Here again the difficulty is economically almost insuperable. Balloon tyres, the use of light trailers and of multi-wheel vehicles will partially overcome the difficulty; but rubber rapidly deteriorates in tropical countries, and though a vehicle, such as the Renault six twin-wheel car, has carried out some wonderful performances in the Sahara and elsewhere, the maintenance of twelve balloon tyres practically rules it out of court in most undeveloped countries.

If the bullock wagon is restricted to certain areas, and if the lorry demands a road which is prohibitively expensive, the only remaining sources of transport which can feed the railway are the pack animal and the human porter.

_The Pack Animal._ In examining this last system of transport, I will begin with the human pack-animal, the native porter. Not only is this means of carriage the most primitive of all, which renders it somewhat of an anachronism in the twentieth century, but it is extravagant in the extreme. Economically it is unsound, since the human pack-animal stands in the way of the development of his country. In the first place his productive work is lost, and in the second, the load carried is so small as to offer little encouragement to the producer. Last, and by no means least, unlike the railway, as the amount increases, so does the cost per ton mile increase with it.

On a large scale the system is impossible, and the substitution of pack animals for porters is but little less uneconomical, except in mountainous countries and desert lands, and in the latter, it would seem that the reign of the camel is approaching its end, since in most places where a camel can go a car can follow.

TWO-DIMENSIONAL MOVEMENT

The above, I admit, is a very brief summary of an immense and complex subject, namely, the bridging of the gap which exists between the producer and the arterial railway, or the producer and his market, if it be a distant one. Ruling out pack and porter as being too uneconomical to be used on a large scale, we are left with the wagon, the lorry and the light railway. All these three means can cover great distances, but they do not solve the problem, because the solution does not only lie in power to traverse distance, but in ability to cover the largest area in the shortest time.

The difficulty so far has been that the wheel demands a road and destroys a road, and that, whilst it is easy, though frequently very costly, to make a road which will suit a wheel, it is most difficult to make a wheel which will not damage a road; for failing a cheap and simple form of Pedrail wheel, a system of multi-wheels has to be resorted to, and this system leads directly to the tracked machine, which not only can dispense with roads, but, what is equally important, can make its own track, just as the feet of a man form a path by frequently crossing the same piece of ground.

This is not the place to examine in detail the technicalities of roadless vehicles; but to-day there are two main types of these vehicles; an all-tracked machine of the tank type, and a half-tracked machine which has wheels in front and tracks in rear. The first is more suitable for heavy loads, and the second for light.

In the manufacture of these vehicles three main problems must be solved:

(1) The vehicle must be able to use roads without damaging them; nor must it damage the surface of the ground it travels over.

(2) It must be able to move across country without damaging itself.

(3) The cost per ton-mile must be equal or lower than that of existing vehicles.

It may seem a paradox to lay down that the first requirement of a roadless vehicle is that it can negotiate roads, but, in fact, it is not so; for it stands to reason that, when prepared tracks do exist, it is only wasting time and energy to travel across country. Further, if the tracks of the vehicle are so constructed that they do not damage roads, they will not damage the surface of the ground, and, consequently, by continually travelling over the same ground, they will compact and consolidate its surface and rapidly form a road of their own which will require no metalling. This advantage is one of the great secrets of its success.

As movement across country entails traversing rough ground, the tracks of a roadless vehicle must permit of the absorption of obstacles. This absorption is attained by springing the tracks. In an unsprung machine, obstacles are either crushed into the ground or the vehicle has to lift itself over them. In both cases the result is injury to the machine, and loss of power and discomfort.

It stands to reason that the vehicle must be durable, simple and easy to maintain; also that the ton-mile cost must be low. As regards this latter requirement, experimental machines have so far proved that this is a possibility. A one-ton roadless Guy Lorry recently travelled from London to Aldershot, and its ton mileage was fifty-two to the gallon. It has also been worked out that the cost per ton-mile of the Sentinel tractor, “including overhead charges, depreciation, interest on capital and all running charges, and allowing for a 20-tons net load for a reasonable number of working days in the year,” will be slightly under twopence per ton-mile.

[Illustration:

SENTINEL TRACTOR

[_Face p. 80_ ]

In the future, the types of roadless vehicles are likely to be great as the surface of the ground differs in various countries; also fuels of all kinds are likely to be burnt, such as petrol, oil and coal, and in tropical countries, where these fuels are scarce or expensive, producer gas is almost certain to become the main motive power.