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Page 16
My view is, that the sweating system impoverishes and weakens the
whole community, because it saps the stamina and diminishes the
productive power of thousands of workers, and these in their turn drag
others down with them. "Unduly low rates of wages, excessive hours of
labour, insanitary condition of workplaces"--what does all that mean?
It means an industry essentially rotten and unsound. To say that the
labourer is worthy of his hire is not only the expression of a natural
instinct of justice, but it embodies an economic truth. One does not
need to be a Socialist, not, at least, a Socialist in the sense in
which the word is ordinarily used, as designating a man who desires
that all instruments of production should become common property--one
does not need to be a Socialist in that sense in order to realise that
an industry, which does not provide those engaged in it with
sufficient to keep them in health is essentially unsound. Used-up
capital must be replaced, and of all forms of capital the most
fundamental and indispensable is the human energy necessarily consumed
in the work of production. A sweated industry does not provide for the
replacing of that kind of capital. It squanders its human material. It
consumes more energy in the work it exacts than the remuneration it
gives is capable of replacing. The workers in sweated industries are
not able to live on their wages. As it is, they live miserably, grow
old too soon, and bring up sickly children. But they would not live at
all, were it not for the fact that their inadequate wages are
supplemented, directly, in many cases, by out-relief, and indirectly
by numerous forms of charity. In one way or another the community has
to make good the inefficiency that sweating produces. In one way or
another the community ultimately pays, and it is my firm belief that
it pays far more in the long run under the present system than if all
workers were self-supporting. If a true account could be kept, it
would be found that anything which the community gains by the
cheapness of articles produced under the sweating system is more than
outweighed by the indirect loss involved in the inevitable subsidising
of a sweated industry. That would be found to be the result, even if
no account were taken of the greatest loss of all, the loss arising
from the inefficiency of the sweated workers and of their children,
for sweating is calculated to perpetuate inefficiency and
degeneration.
The question is: Can anything be done? Of the three related
evils--unduly low rates of wages, excessive hours of labour, and
insanitary condition of work-places--it is evident that the first
applies equally to sweated workers in factories and at home, but the
two others are to some extent guarded against, in factories, by
existing legislation. This is the reason why some people would like to
see all work done for wages transferred to factories. Broadly
speaking, I sympathise with that view. But if it were universally
carried out at the present moment, it would inflict an enormous amount
of suffering and injustice on those who add to their incomes by home
work. Hence the problem is twofold. First, can we extend to workers in
their own homes that degree or protection in respect of hours and
sanitary conditions which the law already gives to workers in
factories? And secondly, can we do anything to obtain for sweated
workers, whether in homes or factories, rates of remuneration less
palpably inadequate? Now it certainly seems impossible to limit the
hours of workers, especially adult workers, in their own homes. More
can be done to ensure sanitary conditions of work. Much has been done
already, so far as the structural condition of dwellings is concerned.
But I am afraid that the measures necessary to introduce what may be
called the factory standard of sanitariness into every room, where
work is being done for wages, would involve an amount of inspection
and interference with the domestic lives of hundreds of thousands of
people which might create such unpopularity as to defeat its own
object. I do not say that nothing more should be attempted in that
direction, quite the reverse; but I say that nothing which can be
attempted in that direction really goes to the root of the evil, which
is the insufficiency of the wage. How can you possibly make it healthy
for a woman, living in a single room, perhaps with children, but even
without, to work twelve or fourteen hours a day for seven or eight
shillings a week, and at the same time to do her own cooking, washing,
and so on. How much food is she likely to have? How much time will be
hers to keep the place clean and tidy? An increase of wages would not
make sanitary regulations unnecessary, but it would make their
observance more possible.
An increase of wages then is the primary condition of any real
improvement in the lives of the sweated workers. So the point is this.
Can we do anything by law to screw up the remuneration of the
worst-paid workers to the minimum necessary for tolerable human
existence? I know that many people think it impossible, but my answer
is that the fixing of a limit below which wages shall not fall is
already not the exception but the rule in this country. That may seem
a rather startling statement, but I believe I can prove it. Take the
case of the State, the greatest of all employers. The State does not
allow the rates of pay even of its humblest employ�s to be decided by
the scramble for employment. The State cannot afford, nor can any
great municipality afford, to pay wages on which it is obviously
impossible to live. There would be an immediate outcry. Here then you
have a case of vast extent in which a downward limit of wages is fixed
by public opinion. Take, again, any of the great staple industries of
the country, the cotton industry, the iron and steel industry, and
many others. In the case of these industries rates of remuneration are
fixed in innumerable instances by agreement between the whole body of
employers in a particular trade and district on the one hand and the
whole body of employ�s on the other. The result is to exclude
unregulated competition and to secure the same wages for the same
work. No doubt there is an element--and this is a point of great
importance--which enters into the determination of wages in these
organised trades, but which does not enter in the same degree into the
determination of the salaries paid by the State. That element is the
consideration of what the employers can afford to pay. This question
is constantly being threshed out between them and the workpeople,
with resulting agreements. The number of such agreements is very
large, and the provisions contained in them often regulate the rate of
remuneration for various classes of workers with the greatest
minuteness. But the great object, and the principal effect of all
these agreements, is this: it is to ensure uniformity of remuneration,
the same wage for the same work, and to protect the most necessitous
and most helpless workers from being forced to take less than the
employers can afford to pay. Broadly speaking, the rate of pay, in
these highly organised industries, is determined by the value of the
work and not by the need of the worker. That makes an enormous
difference. But in sweated industries this is not the case. Sweated
industries are the unorganised industries, those in which there is no
possibility of organisation among the workers. Here the individual
worker, without resources and without backing, is left, in the
struggle of unregulated competition, to take whatever he can get,
regardless of what others may be getting for the same work and-of the
value of the work itself. Hence the extraordinary inequality of
payment for the same kind of work and the generally low average of
payment which are the distinguishing features of all sweated
industries.
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