IV
It is, however, not enough to standardise the cost of living and to impose a limit upon profits; for we have still no adequate guarantee against a lowering of the standard of life. It does not necessarily follow that the surplus profits will go to the raising of wages, or that standardised prices will make for a sufficient living. It is necessary to define a minimum standard of life. The demand for a minimum wage is a beginning in this direction, but under the profit system, the minimum wage defined as a money-wage is something of a snare. For so long as prices tend to fly upward, no minimum wage can effectually prevent a depression of the standard of life. It is only as we succeed in fixing a minimum “real wage” which takes account of the cost of living that we approach a satisfactory estimate. But, again, under the present system—the relation of supply to demand in the labour market will render even a minimum “real wage” exceedingly precarious.
The only satisfactory solution of this difficulty is to dissolve the connection between work and wages. The assumption that men will not work unless they must is not true; but it is the truth that while men are compelled to work by the coercion of fear—whether of hunger or of punishment—they will not do the most or the best work of which they are capable. That workmen nowadays are apt to do as little as they can for as much as they can get is not to be disputed; and organised labour combines with its demand for larger wages another demand for fewer working hours, and under certain conditions imposes restrictions on output. But this is simply the answer in kind which labour returns to capital. It is the vicious sequel of a vicious system. Capital buys in the cheapest and sells in the dearest market; and labour having been brought up in the same school does the same thing. If capital tries to extort as much as it can out of labour, it is not to be wondered at that labour should take a hand in the game.
We have to recognise that the best workmanship requires two conditions; first—that the worker shall have a direct interest in the thing he produces, second, that he shall enjoy the freedom which comes from a sense of guaranteed security. To the former we shall have to return at a later stage in the argument. Concerning the latter, we have seen how the present system exposes the worker to a grave and vexatious insecurity. It is stupid to suppose that men will habitually put their best into their work under such conditions as these. The whole system is intrinsically demoralising to all whom it touches. It is demoralising to the employer because he comes to regard the worker as a mere “hand,” a tool; and that is a frame of mind which saps his own manhood. It is demoralising to the worker because it treats his physical energy as a thing to be bought and sold at a price, the highest price he can extort; and since a man’s labour is actually inseparable from his person, it reduces him to a condition of servility, which, within a certain limit, is as real as that of a chattel slave. He has neither independence nor security. Over against this state of things, we must affirm that a man’s subsistence shall be guaranteed to him as a customary practice, in good weather and in bad, in sickness and in health, in work or unemployment. The British Labour Party’s proposal of a national minimum standard of life universally enforced is certainly one of the cornerstones of a wholesome social order. The cynic will probably say that this will be the paradise of the slacker; and no doubt there would be some persons base enough to evade their share of productive labour. But we can count upon the public opinion of a society in which freedom has created a new sense of social obligation and a new quality of fellowship, to make a slacker’s life not worth living. It may very fairly be doubted whether at the worst the slacker who remained incorrigible would constitute so great a tragedy—either in number or in kind—or constitute so clear evidence of the bankruptcy of a system as do the innumerable and increasing derelicts of the present industrial order.
These three measures, the standardisation of the cost of living, the limitation of profits, the institution of a minimum standard of life are necessary to the redemption of commerce. For to redeem commerce, we must in the first instance, take away from it the power and the opportunity of exploiting life for the ends of private gain. But this process secures another result. It ensures for the mass of the people a reasonable security and sufficiency of physical subsistence, so that the pre-occupation with self-preservation need no longer arrest their spiritual development. We establish the foundations of freedom—freedom from fear, from anxiety, from the autocracy of the employer or his agent—and confer upon the ordinary man a new status, in which we may with good hope expect to find him susceptible to a social vision powerful to evoke his devotion and to bring his will into captivity to its obedience. Commerce and industry will then no longer be a vast scramble of competition and exploitation, but a generous social co-operation.
Chapter IV.
THE REDEMPTION OF WORK.
“And the men of labour spent their strength in daily struggling for breath to maintain the vital strength they laboured with. So living in a daily circulation of sorrow, living but to work, and working but to live, as if daily bread were the only end of a wearisome life, and a wearisome life the only occasion of daily bread.”—Daniel Defoe.
“And perfect the day shall be, when it is of all men understood that the beauty of holiness must be in labour as well as in rest. Nay! more, if it may be, in labour; in our strength rather than in our weakness; and in the choice of what we shall work for through the six days and may know to be good at their evening time, than in the choice of what we pray for on the seventh, of reward and repose. With the multitude that keep holiday we may perhaps sometimes vainly have gone up to the House of the Lord and vainly there have asked for what we fancied would be mercy; but for the few who labour as their Lord would have them, the mercy needs no seeking, and their wide home no hallowing. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow them all the days of their life, and they shall dwell in the House of the Lord for ever.”—John Ruskin.
THE clue to the approaching change in the social order is to be found in the mind of organised labour. What organised labour is resolved to achieve, that it will achieve soon or late. Hitherto we have been concerned in these pages with an enquiry, more or less speculative, into the conditions and measures required for a wholesome social evolution. How far does the present tendency of organised labour correspond with the general lines of progress which our enquiry has so far constrained us to define? It will not be necessary, in order to answer this question, to survey the whole field of labour policy. For our present purpose we may neglect on the one hand the conservative element in the labour movement, and the extreme revolutionary element on the other. This does not imply a judgment on either; it simply means that we shall reach a safer judgment upon the direction in which labour is minded to go by considering the central mass of the movement; and of this central mass it may be affirmed with some assurance that its best mind has received a more coherent and detailed interpretation in Great Britain than elsewhere. We shall, therefore, consider the general tendency of the progressive elements in the British Labour Movement. It will not be necessary to raise the question of ways and means at this point. It is a question upon which strong views are held on both sides—whether labour is to attain its goal by political or industrial action, by gradual approach or by some catastrophic method such as the general strike. But the question of method does not arise at this point; our present object is to examine so far as we may the goal which organised labour is pursuing.