All these measures, and many others of similar nature, excited the indignation of the greatest prophet of Individualism because, forsooth, they modified somebody’s right to do as he pleased about something. Luckily for England, Mr. Spencer and a handful of his individualist disciples stood alone, while the electorate carried these laws through their highest tribunals.
One can imagine the “joy of living” in an individualist arcadia fashioned after Mr. Spencer’s own heart. A working man would be able to take up the occupation of a sailor. He could embark on the rotten old tub of some greedy shipowner, insured for many times its value, loaded to the gunwales and sure to sink when it got out of sight of land to where the water was a little rougher than plate glass. Of course he would be living under a system of “voluntary co-operation” and “freedom of contract” and if he didn’t wish to go to sea he could stay at home and--starve. There would be very little work in port unloading ships, as so many of them would never return to be unloaded. When the insurance money was paid the shipowner could give a banquet and hold forth on the individual right of the sailor to get drowned in the interests of commerce without the government meddling about life boats and other expensive and nonsensical appliances.
If he preferred to work on “terra firma” he might get a job in a mine with only one shaft which in case of firedamp would be converted into a furnace. Then as there would be no way to get out, no socialistically inclined person would be able to dispute his individual right to stay in. If he preferred the white lead industry he might “get in” there, and there being no respirators, baths, or acidulated drinks he could be a physical wreck in a year and a corpse in two. Or he might try the gasworks and, there being no inspectors, there would be nothing to interfere with his individual right to be asphyxiated in an oven or roasted in a retort.
As wages would be small, unions not being individualist institutions, he might get a cheap room in the top of an hotel without fire escapes, in a town with no fire engines. He could live cheaply on bread from bakehouses that never knew lime washings and had not seen hot water or soap for over six months, and eat fruit and vegetables handled by people who were not troubled with decent, let alone sanitary, lodgings.