Problems of Poverty: An Inquiry into the Industrial Condition of the Poor

by J. A. Hobson

§ 7. The Extent of Foreign Immigration.--So much for the inflow from the country districts. But there is another inflow which is drawing close attention, the inflow of cheap foreign labour into our towns. Here again we have first to guard against some exaggeration. It is not true that German, Polish, and Russian Jews are coming over in large battalions to steal all the employment of the English working-man, by under-selling him in the labour-market. In the first place, it should be noted that the foreigners of England, as a whole, bear a smaller proportion to the total population than in any other first-class European state. In 1901 the foreigners were 76 in 10,000 of the population; that is a good deal less than one per cent. Our numbers as a nation are not increased by immigration. On the contrary, between 1871 and 1901 we lost considerably by emigration.[[19]] Even London, the centre of attraction to foreigners, does not contain nearly so large a per-centage of foreigners as any other great capital. The census gave 3 per cent. as the proportion of foreigners, excluding those born in England of foreign parents. Though this figure is perhaps too low, the true proportion cannot be very large. It is not the number, but the distribution and occupation of the foreign immigrants, that make them an object of so much solicitude. The borough of Stepney contains no less than 40 per cent. of the foreign-born population of London, the foreigners increasing from 15,998 in 1881 to 54,310 in 1901. At present 182 out of every 1000 in this district are foreigners. The proportion is also very high in Holborn, Westminster, Marylebone, Bethnal Green, and St Pancras. The Report of the Royal Commission on Alien Immigration, 1902, states "that the greatest evils produced by the Alien Immigrants here are the overcrowding caused by them in certain districts of London, and the consequent displacement of the native population." The concentration of the immigrant question is attested by the fact that in 1901 no less than 48 per cent. of the total foreign population were resident in six metropolitan boroughs, and in the three cities of Manchester, Liverpool, and Leeds. While a considerable number of them are Germans, French, and Italians, attracted here by better industrial conditions in trades for which they have some special aptitude, a greatly increasing proportion are Russian and Polish Jews, driven to immigrate partly by political and religious persecution, partly for industrial ends, and feeding the unskilled labour-market in certain manufactures of our great cities.

§ 8. The Jew as an Industrial Competitor.--Looking at these foreigners as individuals, there is much to be said in their favour. They do not introduce a lower morality into the quarters where they settle, as the Chinese are said to do; nor are they quarrelsome and law-breaking, like the low-class Italians who swarm into America. Their habits, so far as cleanliness is concerned, are perhaps not desirable, but the standard of the native population of Whitechapel is not sensitively high. For the most part, and this is true especially of the Jews, they are steady, industrious, quiet, sober, thrifty, quick to learn, and tolerably honest. From the point of view of the old Political Economy, they are the very people to be encouraged, for they turn out the largest quantity of wealth at the lowest cost of production. If it is the chief end for a nation to accumulate the largest possible stock of material wealth, it is evident that these are the very people we require to enable us to achieve our object.

But if we consider it is sound national policy to pay regard to the welfare of all classes engaged in producing this wealth, we may regard this foreign immigration in quite another light. The very virtues just enumerated are the chief faults we have to find with the foreign Jew. Just because he is willing and able to work so hard for so little pay, willing to undertake any kind of work out of which he can make a living, because he can surpass in skill, industry, and adaptability the native Londoner, the foreign Jew is such a terrible competitor. He is the nearest approach to the ideal "economic" man, the "fittest" person to survive in trade competition. Admirable in domestic morality, and an orderly citizen, he is almost void of social morality. No compunction or consideration for his fellow-worker will keep him from underselling and overreaching them; he acquires a thorough mastery of all the dishonourable tricks of trade which are difficult to restrain by law; the superior calculating intellect, which is a national heritage, is used unsparingly to enable him to take advantage of every weakness, folly, and vice of the society in which he lives.

§ 9. Effect of Foreign Competition.--One other quality he has in common with the mass of poor foreigners who compete in the London labour market--he can live on less than the Englishman. What Mrs Webb says of the Polish Jew, is in large measure true of all cheap foreign labour--"As industrial competitor, the Polish Jew is fettered by no definite standard of life; it rises and falls with his opportunities; he is not depressed by penury, and he is not demoralized by gain." The fatal significance of this is evident. We have seen that notwithstanding a general rise in the standard of comfort of the mass of labourers, there still remains in all our cities a body of labouring men and women engaged in doing ill-paid and irregular work for wages which keep them always on the verge of starvation. Now consider what it means for these people to have brought into their midst a number of competitors who can live even more cheaply than they can live, and who will consent to toil from morning to night for whatever they can get. These new-comers are obviously able, in their eagerness for work, to drive down the rate of wages even below what represents starvation-point for the native worker. The insistence of the poorer working-classes, under the stimulus of new-felt wants, the growing enlightenment of public opinion, have slowly and gradually won, even for the poorer workers in English cities, some small advance in material comfort, some slight expansion in the meaning of the term "necessaries of life." Turn a few shiploads of Polish Jews upon any of these districts, and they will and must in the struggle for life destroy the whole of this. Remember it is not merely the struggle of too many workers competing on equal terms for an insufficient quantity of work. That is terrible enough. But when the struggle is between those accustomed to a higher, and those accustomed to a lower, standard of life, the latter can obviously oust the former, and take their work. Just as a base currency drives out of circulation a pure currency, so does a lower standard of comfort drive out a higher one. This is the vital question regarding foreign immigration which has to be faced.

Nor is it merely a question of the number of these foreigners. The inflow of a comparatively small number into a neighbourhood where much of the work is low-skilled and irregular, will often produce an effect which seems quite out of proportion to the actual number of the invaders. Where work is slack and difficult to get, a very small addition of low-living foreigners will cause a perceptible fall in the entire wages of the neighbourhood in the employments which their competition affects. It is true that the Jew does not remain a low-skilled labourer for starvation wages. Beginning at the bottom of the ladder, he rises by his industry and skill, until he gets into the rank of skilled workers, or more frequently becomes a sub-contractor, or a small shopkeeper. It might appear that as he thus rose, the effect of his competition in the low skilled labour market would disappear. And this would be so were it not for the persistent arrival of new-comers to take the place of those who rise. It is the continuity in the flow of foreign emigration which constitutes the real danger.

Economic considerations do not justify us in expecting any speedy check upon this flow. The growing means of communication among nations, the cheapening of transport, the breaking down of international prejudices, must, if they are left free to operate, induce the labourer to seek the best market for his labour, and thus tend to equalize the condition of labour in the various communities, raising the level of the lower paid and lower lived at the expense of the higher paid and higher lived.

§ 10. The Water-tight Compartment Theory.--One point remains to be mentioned. It is sometimes urged that the foreign Jews who come to our shores do not injure our low skilled workers to any considerable extent, because they do not often enter native trades, but introduce new trades which would not have existed at all were it not for their presence. They work, it is said, in water-tight compartments, competing among themselves, but not directly competing with English workers. Now if it were the case that these foreigners really introduced new branches of production designed to stimulate and supply new wants this contention would have much weight. The Flemings who in Edward III.'s reign introduced the finer kinds of weaving into England, and the Huguenot refugees who established new branches of the silk, glass, and paper manufactures, conferred a direct service upon English commerce, and their presence in the labour market was probably an indirect service to the English workers. But this is not the case with the modern Jew immigrants. They have not stimulated or supplied new wants. It is not even correct to say that most of them do not directly compete with native labour. It is true that certain branches of the cheap clothing trade have been their creation. The cheap coat trade, which they almost monopolize, seems due to their presence. But even here they have established no new kind of trade. To their cheap labour perhaps is due in some cases the large export trade in cheap clothing, but even then it is doubtful whether the work would not otherwise have been done by machinery under healthier conditions, and have furnished work and wages for English workers. During the last decade they have been entering more and more into direct competition with British labour in the cabinet-making, shoemaking, baking, hair-dressing, and domestic service occupations. Lastly, they enter into direct competition of the worst form with English female labour, which is driven in these very clothing trades to accept work and wages which are even too low to tempt the Jews of Whitechapel. The constant infiltration of cheap immigrant labour is in large measure responsible for the existence of the "sweating workshops," and the survival of low forms of industrial development which form a factor in the problem of poverty.

Chapter IV.

"The Sweating System."

§ 1.Origin of the Term "Sweating."--Having gained insight into some of the leading industrial forces of the age, we can approach more hopefully the study of that aspect of City poverty, commonly known as the "Sweating System."