Ten years after

by Philip Gibbs

The Price of Labour

The price of labour is at the root of the problem. Even before the war the rate of wages in England, as calculated in purchasing power, were far higher than in Germany, Belgium, Italy, France, and most other continental nations, though very much less than in the United States. During the war Labour, seeing its chance, demanded fantastic rates of pay and received them. During the last two years there has been a readjustment to the cost of living so that wages have been reduced, but they still stand in nearly all trades, except that of agriculture, at a higher level than in 1913.

But the men are not satisfied. During the war they learnt their power and their value. Since the war they have become intensely class-conscious and demand better wages, shorter hours, decent conditions of housing, security in sickness and unemployment, old-age pensions from sixty years on, more money to be spent on their education, and a bigger margin beyond the bare needs of life for leisure and amusement. I am not one of those who blame them. I am all—or nearly all—on their side. The conditions of the slums in England and Scotland are still a disgrace to civilisation. The housing accommodation of working men in villages as well as in cities is often abominable. I do not believe in a great Empire or a luxurious civilisation built on the wreckage of men’s lives, on slave labour, on the killing of souls, as the British Empire was built during the industrial period after the Napoleonic Wars, when the manufacturers of Great Britain grew rich out of sweated labour in factories and homes before the Trades Unions, the Factory Acts, and democratic reform blotted out the black shame of 1830 to 1850. I think it good and right that men who help to save their country should be given the reward of good wages for good work and some chance of joy in life. The point of trouble is not the justice of that but its possibility. Is it possible for these labouring classes in England, Scotland, and Wales to get high wages and work for shorter hours when their export trade is diminishing, when the competition of cheap labour will become more and more severe during the next few years, and when the taxation of the wealthy classes is already extinguishing their wealth?

Labour in the mass, especially the political extremists who accuse Ramsay MacDonald of being a “bourgeois” and Philip Snowden a “reactionary,” believe that it is possible. They believe that there is still a vast source of untapped wealth in England which should be redistributed in their favour. They believe that they would get far higher wages and work much less if they owned and controlled the machinery and material of labour by some system of nationalisation or communism. They believe that it is only the selfishness of the “upper classes” and the greed of the great employers and Trusts which prevent them from receiving far greater rewards in return for their toil. They have not yet realised, or refuse to believe, that England is not in possession of inexhaustible wealth, that the rich people in the country—with only few exceptions—are already taxed beyond their power to pay without crippling industry itself and slowing down the adventure of trade, and that if a nation loses its markets for the only goods it can produce no amount of social legislation or social revolution will benefit the individual.

The awful failure of the Russian Communism, its abandonment by its own leaders, is either unknown or ignored by many British working men. Some of them would like to try the experiment in Great Britain. They do not understand the extreme delicacy of that machinery of international trade and credit by which the industrial life of Great Britain has been maintained. Russia lost its international trade, but its life was secure from the soil, apart from drought. All factories might close down in Petrograd, as they did, but the workers returned to the land and scraped along. In Great Britain if the factories close for lack of markets or credit or capital, the population will surely die unless America comes to the rescue with the A.R.A.

I don’t think it will be as bad as that. Before such things could happen madness would have to overtake the British people and they are, as a nation, remarkably sane. Communism is not a spreading disease in the heart of England, though it lurks in cities where trade is worst. But even with full sanity, the moderation of such a Labour Government as that led by Ramsay MacDonald, and a gradual redistribution of wealth already taking place, there is bound to be trouble ahead. In my judgment England must steel herself to endure lean years, heavier burdens, fiercer competition, less luxury all round, harder work for less pay.