In the first place, let us understand clearly what is meant by philanthropic labour, and how it is distinguished from pauper labour on the one hand, and self-supporting labour on the other. Self-supporting labour I take to be that form of work which returns not less, and generally something more, than is expended upon it. Pauper labour, on the other hand, is work to which the applicants for parish relief are “set,” not with a view to the profit to be derived from it, but partly as a test of their willingness to work, and partly as a means of employing the unemployed; while philanthropic labour is employment provided for the unemployed with the same disregard of profit as distinguishes pauper labour, but with a greater regard for the poor, and as a means of affording them relief in a less degrading manner than is done under the present Poor Law. Pauper and philanthropic labour, then, differ essentially from self-supporting labour in being non-profitable modes of employment; that is to say, they yield so bare an equivalent for the sum expended upon the labourers, that none, in the ordinary way of trade, can be found to provide the means necessary for putting them into operation: while pauper labour differs from philanthropic labour, in the fact that the funds requisite for “setting the poor on work” are provided by law as a matter of social policy, whereas, in the case of philanthropic labour, the funds, or a part of them, are supplied by voluntary contributions, out of a desire to improve the labourers’ condition. There are, then, two distinguishing features in all philanthropic labour—the one is, that it yields no profit (if it did it would become a matter of trade), and the other, that it is instituted and maintained from a wish to benefit the labourer.
STREET ORDERLIES.
The Street-Orderly system forms part of the operations on behalf of the poor adopted by a society, of which Mr. Charles Cochrane is the president, entitled the “National Philanthropic Association,” which is said to have for its object “the promotion of social and salutiferous improvements, street cleanliness, and the employment of the poor, so that able-bodied men may be prevented from burthening the parish-rate, and preserved independent of workhouse, alms, and degradation.” Here a twofold object is expressed: the Philanthropic Association seeks not only to benefit the poor by giving them employment, and “preserving them independent of workhouse, alms, and degradation,” but to benefit the public likewise, by “promoting social and salutiferous improvements and street cleanliness.” I shall deal with each of these objects separately; but first let me declare, so as to remove all suspicion of private feelings tending in any way to bias my judgment in this most important matter, that I am an utter stranger to the President and Council of the Philanthropic Association; and that, whatever I may have to say on the subject of the street-orderlies, I do simply in conformity with my duty to the public—to state truthfully all that concerns the labourers and the poor of the metropolis.
Viewed economically, philanthropic and pauper work may be said to be the regulators of the minimum rate of wages—establishing the lowest point to which competition can possibly drive down the remuneration for labour; for it is evident, that if the self-supporting labourer cannot obtain greater comforts by the independent exercise of his industry than the parish rates or private charity will afford him, he will at once give over working for the trading employer, and declare on the funds raised by assessment or voluntary subscription for his support. Hence, those who wish well to the labourer, and who believe that cheapness of commodities is desirable “only,” as Mr. Stewart Mill says (p. 502, vol. ii.), “when the cause of it is, that their production costs little labour, and not when occasioned by that labour’s being ill-remunerated;” and who believe, moreover, that the labourer is to be benefited solely by the cultivation of a high standard of comfort among the people—to such, I say, it is evident, that a poor law which reduces the relief to able-bodied labourers to the smallest modicum of food consistent with the continuation of life must be about the greatest curse that can possibly come upon an over-populated country, admitting, as it does, of the reduction of wages to so low a point of mere brutal existence as to induce that recklessness and improvidence among the poor which is known to give so strong an impetus to the increase of the people. A minimized rate of parish relief is necessarily a minimized rate of wages, and admits of the labourers’ pay being reduced, by pauper competition, to little short of starvation; and such, doubtlessly, would have been the case long ago in the scavaging trade by the employment of parish labour, had not the Philanthropic Association instituted the system of street-orderlies, and by the payment of a higher rate of wages than the more grinding parishes afforded—by giving the men 12s. instead of 9s. or even 7s. a week—prevented the remuneration of the regular hands being dragged down to an approximation to the parish level. Hence, rightly viewed, philanthropic labour—and, indeed, pauper labour too—comes under the head of a remedy for low wages, as preventing, if properly regulated, the undue depreciation of industry from excessive competition, and it is in this light that I shall now proceed to consider it.
The several plans that have been propounded from time to time, as remedies for an insufficient rate of remuneration for work, are as multifarious as the circumstances influencing the three requisites for production—labour, capital, and land. I will here run over as briefly as possible—abstaining from the expression of all opinion on the subject—the various schemes which have been proposed with this object, so that the reader may come as prepared as possible to the consideration of the matter.
The remedies for low wages may be arranged into two distinct groups, viz., those which seek to increase the labourer’s rate of pay directly, and those which seek to do so indirectly.
The direct remedies for low wages that have been propounded are:—
A. The establishment of a standard rate of remuneration for labour. This has been proposed to be brought about by three different means, viz.:—