III.
The testimony of Mr. Hills has touched on several objects for which Sir Charles worked till his death, but of these one upon which he struggled to establish an international understanding—that of the minimum wage— claims a fuller consideration. The interdependence of Labour was always apparent to him, and under the sympathy for suffering which inspired his action on such questions as the native races or the treatment of the alien Jew, there lay the sense that the degradation of any class of labour in one country affected its status in all, and that to be insular on industrial questions was to undermine everything that the pioneers of English Labour had fought for and achieved.
The wages of many workers were left untouched by the imperfect development of trade-unionism. Sweating was the result. To check this evil, machinery must be created by legislation to deal with low wages, while international understanding was essential here, as in other questions of Social Reform, to enable the democracies of the various countries to keep abreast.
The question of the minimum wage had occupied Sir Charles Dilke's attention from the days of his discipleship to John Stuart Mill. He had been much impressed by the debates which took place during his presidency in 1885 at the Conference on Industrial Remuneration. A few years later he had been present at a meeting convened by the Women's Trade-Union League during the Trade-Union Congress at Glasgow, and the impression made on him by that meeting he thus described:
"I had long been used to Labour meetings, but was then brought face to face with hopeless difficulties, heartbreaking to the organizer, because of a rooted disbelief among the workers in the possibility of improvement. There is a stage in which there is hope—hope for the improvement of wages and of conditions, possibly to be won by combined effort. There is a stage, familiar in the East End of London, when there is no hope for anything, except, perhaps, a hired feather and the off-chance of an outing. Yet even the roughest trades employing women and children in factories or large workshops, to be found in the East End or in the outskirts of Glasgow, have in them the remote possibility of organization. Home industries in many cases have not even that bare chance. There is in them a misery which depresses both the workers and those who would help them. The home life of the poorest class of factory workers is not much, but it means, nevertheless, a great deal to them. The home life of the home worker is often nothing. The home becomes the grinding shop. Factory slavery finds a refuge even in a hard home. 'Home' slavery has none…. It is in this class, utterly incapable of fixing a minimum wage for itself, that the evil of its absence stands revealed in its worst form."
Turning, as was his custom, to our colonies for successful experiment and example, he discussed with Mr. Deakin (the Victorian Minister of whom he prophesied in 1887 that he would be the First Prime Minister of that federated Australia which was then called "Deakin's Dream") the example of a Wages Board which was being introduced in Victoria. An Anti-Sweating League had been formed in 1893 in Victoria, and had adopted this scheme, carrying it into law in 1895. The vital part of the scheme was the creation of Conciliation Boards on which representatives of employers and employed were represented—Boards which should discuss wages and fix a minimum rate in the trade concerned.
As opposed to any larger scheme of conciliation for all trades, this plan had to Sir Charles's mind certain marked advantages: it would not interfere with the activities of the great trade-unions which already stood possessed of similar voluntary machinery, while its application only to those whose depressed and miserable condition invoked public sympathy would create an atmosphere likely to induce successful and harmonious development.
In 1898 he introduced his Wages Boards Bill, from that time annually laid before Parliament; but it made no progress, and there were moments when even his optimism almost failed. It was not till 1906, when a Sweated Industries Exhibition was organized by the Daily News, that a step forward was made. The sight of the workers, engaged in their ill-remunerated toil, brought home to the public an evil till then too little realized. The movement was international. A similar exhibition in Berlin had already been held, and others now followed in America, in Continental countries, in Scotland, and in various parts of England. In this country a National Anti-Sweating League came into existence. A great meeting of trade-unionists and Labour representatives was held at the Guildhall, Sir Charles Dilke presiding on the first day, and the question of the minimum wage was debated by Labour; Sir George Askwith, Mr. Sidney Webb, and Mr. W. P. Reeves, with other Colonial representatives, speaking from the platform. Many conferences followed, and M. Vandervelde came from Belgium, M. Arthur Fontaine from France, to combat insular and Tariff Reform arguments, and to point out that the movement was not confined to our own shores. A great deputation representative of every shade of political opinion, introduced by Sir Charles Dilke and the Archbishop of Canterbury, waited on the Prime Minister on December 4th, 1908, and laid their views before him. Sir Charles put the Bill into the hands of the Labour party in Parliament. A Committee of the House was appointed to consider the question of home work and the proposed measure, and, after the stages which Mr. Hills has described, it became law as the Trade Boards Act in 1909. The Act at first applied to only four trades, but there have been several additions. Of the first extension made after Sir Charles's death, and of the probability of the adoption of the scheme by other countries, Sir George Askwith wrote: "It will be the first stone on Sir Charles's cairn. I can see them all coming up the hill, nation by nation."
[Footnote: France, the first nation to reach the hill-top, passed her
Minimum Wage Act for home workers in 1915.
Minimum rates of wages under the Trade Boards Act were in operation in
Great Britain (February, 1915) as follows:
Female Persons over 18
per Week of 52 Hours.
Per Hour. Per Week.
Ready-made and wholesale bespoke tailoring,
and shirt-making 3-1/2d. 15s. 2d.
Chain-making 2-3/4d. 11s. 11d.
Paper-box-making 3-1/4d. 14s. 1d.
Lace-finishing 2-3/4d. 11s. 11d.
Sugar confectionery and food-preserving 3d. 13s. 0d.
Tin-box-making 3-1/4d. 14s. 1d.
Metal hollow-ware 3d. 13s. 0d.
It is to be noted that these rates of wages, which are in every case much higher than those they supplanted, were fixed before or in the early part of the War, and owe nothing to the general inflation of earnings which took place at a later stage. From the figures of the Board of Trade Enquiry into Earnings and Hours of Labour, published in 1909, it appears that about one-third of the women employed in factories and workshops were at the time of the Enquiry in receipt of wages of less than 10s. per week, and the minimum rates above mentioned must be considered in relation to these, and not to later figures.
In the various trades, shirt-making and lace-finishing excepted, minimum rates of wages have also been fixed for adult male persons. These rates before the War were, save in one case, 6d. per hour or upwards, and probably one-quarter of the adult male workers in the trades benefited by them.
The relief given by the Boards to groups of particularly ill-paid women, such as the chain-makers, the matchbox-makers in East London, and the lace-finishers, has been the subject of many articles in the Press.
In the chain-making trade, where the Board affected both wives and husbands, the family income increased, in many cases, by 15s. and upwards per week. The bearing of these higher rates of wages on the food and clothing of those who received them, the physical condition of the school-children, and personal and social habits, forms part of the story which Mr. R. H. Tawney tells in Minimum Rates in the Chain-making Trade.]
On April 14th, 1910, there followed the dinner to celebrate the passing into law of his favourite project, and at that dinner, under the presidency of Dr. Gore, then Bishop of Birmingham, representatives of Liberalism, Labour, and Conservatism met to do Sir Charles honour. There were many tributes paid to one whom Mr. Will Crooks dubbed "the greatest of anti-sweaters," and of them the happiest was, probably, that of Dr. Gore:
"Sir Charles has played a great part publicly. In finding out, however, what has been going on behind the scenes, I am led to know that, great as has been the public part, there is a greater part Sir Charles has played in that region which the newspapers do not penetrate—the region where important decisions are hatched and matured, and differences made up, before appearances are made in public. His zeal has been unquenchable and consistent."
After Sir Charles's death, the same friend described his knowledge as "supreme and incomparable in all matters relating to industries and industrial law, transcending that of any of his contemporaries."
Sir Charles Dilke's nature led him to discount personal tributes, and his verdict on the triumph of the minimum-wage principle is best summed up in the words of Renan which he sent to one who worked with him: "C'est ainsi qu'il se fait que le vrai, quoique n'étant compris que d'un très petit nombre, surnage toujours, et finit par l'emporter."
There is no part of his work which brings out more the quality of "self-effacement" to which Mr. Sidney Webb alludes. The cause of Labour is not even yet a popular one, and there are many who held and hold that his interest in it was not calculated to strengthen the political position of one to whom men looked as a military expert, or an authority on foreign affairs. But to him a grasp of social questions and a full recognition of the place which Labour should hold in the modern State were essential parts of a statesman's equipment, and appeals on the ground of a weakening of his position by his unremitting care for Labour interests could not have a feather's weight in the balance for one in whom the chord of self had long since been struck and passed in music out of sight.