Practical Politics; or, the Liberalism of To-day

by Alfred Farthing Robbins

Against these points may be set others: that England has already been severely affected by competition with countries where the hours are longer and the pay less; that any further restriction of hours without a corresponding reduction of pay would be ruinous to our trade; and that it is highly probable that the majority of workmen would prefer to labour for nine hours at their present wages than for eight hours at less. The last contention, of course, might be answered by an enactment fixing not only the hours to be worked but the wages to be paid. If this is wished for, it should be clearly put; but before any step is taken towards either such measure, several points concerning each, which now appear more than doubtful, should be made clear.

A fallacy underlying much of the contention in favour of any such enactment is the idea that the community is divided into two distinct classes—the producing and the consuming. As a fact, there are no producers who do not consume, though there are some consumers who do not produce. But is even that an unmixed evil? There is a further fallacy which arbitrarily divides us into capitalists and labourers; but every man who can purchase the result of another’s labour is a capitalist, and that much-denounced person will never be got rid of as long as it is easier to buy than to make.

A third class which secures the condemnation of many is “the middle-man.” It is easy to denounce him, but he is a necessity at once of commerce and of comfort. If one wants some coffee at breakfast, he cannot go to Java for the berry, the West Indies for the sugar, the dairy-farm for the milk, and the Potteries for the cup from which to drink. So far from the middle-man unduly increasing the price of those articles, he lessens it by dealing in bulk with what it would pay neither the producer nor the purchaser to deal with in small quantities; and not only lessens the price but, in regard to the commodities of a distant land, renders it practically possible for us to have them at all.

It is equally useless to rail at competition as if it were inherently evil, for there will be competition as long as men exist to struggle for supremacy. And competition keeps the world alive, as the tide prevents the sea from stagnating. Occasionally the waves break their bounds, and loss and tribulation result; but the power for good must not be ignored, because the power for evil is sometimes prominent.

To talk of the working classes as if they thought and acted in a body is another delusion. Not only this. The frequent assumption that somebody or other can speak on behalf of “the people” is a mistake. When it is done, one is entitled to ask what the phrase means? “The people” are the whole body of the population, and no one section, even if a majority has a right to exclusively claim the title. In legislating, regard must be had to the interests of all and not to those of a part, however numerous; and this brings us straight to the question of interfering by enactment with the price or the amount of labour.

It is curious to note that the demand which is now being raised by some Trade Unionists on behalf of labour is similar in principle to that which was used for centuries by the propertied classes against labour. The Statute of Labourers, passed in the reign of Edward III., fixed wages in most precise fashion, settling that of a master mason, for instance, at fourpence and of journeymen masons at threepence a day. And as lately as only eight years after George III. came to the throne, all master tailors in London and for five miles round were forbidden under heavy penalties from giving, and their workmen from accepting, more than 2s. 7½d. a day—except in the case of a general mourning. Subsequently, statesmen grew more wise, and, in the closing years of last century, the younger Pitt refused to support a bill to regulate the wages of labourers in husbandry. But it is singular that, whereas Adam Smith could say that “whenever the Legislature attempts to regulate the difference between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters,” to-day it is the workmen who promise to become so.

If it be replied that it is State interference with the hours alone and not with the wages that is demanded, it may be submitted that if the one is done it will be a hardship to the worker rather than a boon if the other be not attempted. For, if a man, by working nine hours a day, could earn, say, 27s. a week, it is obvious that for eight hours a day he would not earn more in the same period than 24s., unless Parliament insisted that he should receive the higher sum for the less work. But is Parliament likely to do anything of the kind; if it did do it, would it be found to be practicable; and, if it were found to be practicable, would it be just?

Parliament is not likely to do anything of the kind, because the experience of centuries has taught us that it is impossible to fix wages by statute. It was tried over and over again, first by enactments applying to the whole country, and then by regulations for each county, settled by the local justices of the peace; but, though the experiment was backed by all the forces of law, it broke down so utterly that in time it had to be got rid of.