One is the education and cooperation of consumers.But while education may do much to check the consumption of certain classes of 'illth', it can hardly enable the consumer to cope with the superior skill of the specialist producer by defeating the arts of adulteration and deterioration which are so profitable.Consumers' Leagues can perhaps do something to check adulteration and sweating, by the employment of skilled agents.But it will remain very difficult for any such private action to defeat the ever-changing devices of the less scrupulous firms in profitable trades.The recognition of these defects of private action causes an increased demand for public protection, by means of legislative and administrative acts of prohibition and inspection.The struggle of the State to stamp out or to regulate the trades which supply injurious or adulterated foods, drinks, and drugs, to stop gambling, prostitution, insanitary housing, and other definitely vicious businesses, is one of the greatest of modern social experiments.
Though the protection of the consumer is in many cases joined with other considerations of public order, it is the inherent weakness of the consumer, when confronted by the resources of an organised group of producers, that is the primary motive of this State policy.How far the State protection is, or can be made effective, is a question too large for discussion here.
It must suffice to observe that the conviction that the private interests of producers will continue to defeat all attempts at State regulation in socially 'dangerous trades' furnishes to socialism an argument on which there is a tendency to lay an ever greater stress.
§5.These reflections are necessary as preliminary to the consideration of the statics and dynamics of consumption in any nation or class.For they represent the most important class of disturbing influences in the evolution of standards of consumption.
Now in considering the proper mode of estimating the human utility contained in our £1,700,000,000 worth of 'consumables', we must consider, first, the validity of the standards of consumption in which they are incorporated.
If we have grounds for believing that actual standards of consumption are moulded by the free pressure of healthy organic needs, evolving in a natural and rational order towards a higher human life, there will be a presumption favourable to the attribution of a high measure of human utility to the aggregate income.In this enquiry we may, therefore, best start by considering the evolution of wants and modes of satisfying them, as reactions of the half-instinctive, half-rational demands of man upon his environment.Human animals, placed in a given environment (with some power of moving into another slightly different one or of altering slightly that in which they are) develop standards of work and of consumption along the lines of 'survival value'.The earliest stages in the evolution of both standards, consumption and industry, must be directed by the conditions of the physical struggle for life.The modern historical treatment of origins applies this principle in the analysis of physical environments, in which Le Play and Buckle have done such valuable pioneer work, and which such thinkers as Professor Geddes have carried further in their schemes of regional survey.
Though the fundamental assumption which seems to underlie this method, at any rate in its fulness, viz., that there is only one sort of mankind and that all the differences which emerge in history, whether of 'racial'
character or of institutions, are products of environment, is open to question,2the dominant part played by physical environment in determining the evolution of economic wants and satisfactions, is not disputed.
Like other animals, men must apply themselves to obtain out of the immediate physical environment the means of maintenance -- the food, shelter and weapons, the primitive tools, which enable them to work and live at all.If we consider separately the consumptive side of this economy, we seem to grasp the idea of an evolution of a standard of consumption, moulded by the instinctive selection of means to satisfy organic needs of the individual and the species.The sorts of food will be those obtained by experiments upon the flora and fauna of the country, guided mainly by 'instinct', though some early conscious cunning of selection and of cultivation will serve to improve and increase the supplies.The clothing will consist of furs or plaited fibres got from the same natural supplies.The shelter will consist of an easy adaptation of trees, caves or other protective provisions of nature.Even the early tools, weapons and domestic utensils, though admitting some more rational processes of selection and adaptation, will remain half-instinctive efforts to meet strong definite needs.So long as we are within this narrow range of primary animal wants, there is perhaps little scope for grave errors and wastes in standards of consumption.Doubtless mistakes of omission are possible, e.g., a tribe may fail to utilise some abundant natural supply of food which it is capable of assimilating.But such omissions will probably be rare, at any rate in cases where population comes to press upon the food supply, so evoking experiments in all natural resources.Grave errors of commission, e.g., the adoption of poisonous ingredients into the supply of food or other necessaries, will be impossible, so long as we are dealing with factors of consumption which have a definite survival value.This seems to apply, whether we attribute some instinctive wisdom or some more rational process of selection as the evolutionary motive.
