If we view the physical aspects of existence in relation to happiness, it is obvious that the satisfaction of desires for food, clothing and shelter stands first in order of urgency in the life of nations.
That modern nationalities are very far from the attainment of this satisfaction of primary wants is lamentably evident to the eye of observers who examine the conditions in which the great majority of their members live. Food to the mass of the people is excessively dear. In order to buy it for his family, a workman has often to spend two-thirds of his weekly wage, leaving one-third only to meet the cost of shelter and clothing, and nothing at all for recreation and instruction.
If we add to this difficulty of satisfying the primary needs of a family on average wages, the frequent lack of employment with the consequent lack of any weekly income at all, and the prevalence of low wages, rightly termed starvation-wages, we have before us a picture of the utter inadequacy of our present industrial system to subserve general well-being.
It is necessary to understand something of our present industrial system, its foundations and evolution in the past, if we are to forecast the changes that will occur in the immediate future, when the fast-growing recognition of its manifold failings must inevitably bring about a different order of industry. Private property in land and in other essentials for the production of food, shelter, clothing, etc., lies at the basis of the present system; and since the direct object of private proprietors is not to satisfy the primary needs of the people, but to create individual profits, we cannot wonder that a system thus motived by selfishness works out in a miserable and wholly imperfect manner.
The industrial class may be broadly divided into two sections, employers and employed, while a few highly skilled workers, members of the professions of law, medicine, arts, letters, and science stand in a measure outside this category. Landlords and shareholders as such are an idle section of the community. They absorb the labour of a multitude of workers, while giving no personal service in return. Quite truly has it been said: “The modern form of private property is simply a legal claim to take year by year a share of the produce of the national industry without working for it.” (Fabian Essays, page 26).
In comparing past forms with the present forms of industry, a distinguishing feature of the latter is the number of great factories where workers toil long hours, usually in the tending of machines, to turn out for the private profit of their employers, vast quantities of goods destined for retail distribution all over the world. The large organizations of industry, so familiar to us, are of quite recent growth, and already show signs of a coming change as sweeping in its scope as any changes that have occurred in the past. Yet to listen to the expression of opinions that prevail in literary and upper class circles, one would suppose we had reached finality in our social system, and that the conventional tributes paid to proprietors of land and capital in the shape of rent and interest would, as a matter of course, remain legal to the end of time.
Now let us glance at the history of the past. For two centuries after the Norman conquest, intestine war and feudal oppressions embittered the life of the British labourer. He might be called from the plough at any moment to take up arms in his master’s quarrel, and if he sowed seed and saw his fields ripen, the harvest of his hopes might still be cut down by the sword of the forager, or trodden by the hoof of the war-horse. He was bondsman and slave, defenceless in the hands of the lords of the soil, who at best, protected him only in the barest necessities of a scanty livelihood—a hut without a chimney, its furniture a great brass pot and a bed valued at a few shillings. (Wade’s History of the Working Classes.) A change for the better came after the plague of 1348, and, when by perpetual warfare with France, men had become more valuable through diminution of their number.
King Edward the Third freed the bondsmen to recruit his armies, and enforced villeinry service was exchanged for service paid by wages—these, however, were ordinarily fixed by statute. In the middle of the eighteenth century wages stood at the ratio of about a bushel and a half of wheat for one week’s labour; by the middle of the nineteenth century they had fallen to what could only purchase one bushel of wheat. (Threading my Way, R. D. Owen, p. 220.) The cause of this change was that meanwhile, two clever men—Arkwright and Watt—had made discoveries which gave an impetus to industry beyond all previous experience. Mechanical aids to production were invented, and the consequent cheapening of products created more and more demand. Machinery and human labour side by side were under stress and strain to meet the call of new desires. Cotton and wool and flax were woven into fabrics and poured out of Great Britain to every quarter of the globe; capital was amassed, and wealthy capitalists bid against each other for more labour still. Agriculturists flocked into towns, factories sprang up in all directions, population rapidly increased, and children were sucked into the industrial maelstrom, for health and happiness were in no way considered when remunerative work was offered.
Outwardly the British world had altered. Internal warfare had passed away, and the war-horse was no longer visible in harvest-fields. The scene now presents a resemblance to a huge hive of bees industriously secreting and amassing honey for future use. Great Britain has assumed beyond her own shores a foremost place among civilized nations. The resources of her newly-created wealth seem boundless, and everywhere her power is felt. She can thin the ranks of her population, and swell her army to conquer and suppress the tyrant Napoleon, while keeping at work the enormous leviathan of her own trade and commerce by the deft fingers of her little children. Summer and winter find her tiny bees—infants of seven or eight—at labour in the factories from six a.m. to noon. One hour for dinner is allowed, and they toil on once more till eight o’clock at night.
Were these, then, the “good old times” of which we are proud? At all events they were the times in which England’s greatness was established and vast fortunes were built up, founded upon the industry of young children sweating in factories for thirteen hours a day.