Labour policy—false and true

by Lynden Livingston Macassey

“It becomes clear that we cannot increase the sum-total of paid employment unless we also increase the volume of commodities and conveniences which all men want. None of the schemes ever proposed for State employment for the unemployed do this. They are all designed not to produce things that somebody wants, but to provide an excuse for paying wages to people who cannot find work. In every case the work is made for the sake of the workman, and that very fact implies that the work is not wanted for its own sake.”

That brings us directly to the question of “relief works.” The only economic justification for them is, that when, on humanitarian grounds, payments have to be made out of public or municipal funds for the maintenance of unemployed persons and their dependants, it is better, instead of giving a dole without requiring any work, to ask for work which may confer some benefit on the community paying wages for it. The irony of the position is that the Trade Unions always ask that the wages paid shall be full Trade Union rates, forgetting entirely that the work is not remunerative work and that it is not at the time wanted by the community, but only provided by the community at an economic loss.

The Farm Colony Fiascos

We have had some experience of attempts to provide “remunerative work.”

The Hollesley Bay Farm Colony was established in 1905 by the Central Unemployed Body; the total expenditure on it between 1905 and March 31, 1912, was £178,253, the total realized by sales of produce of the colony during the same period was £41,755, showing a net loss during that time of £136,498. (See Sixth Report Central (Unemployment) Body, 1913, pp. 7 and 16.) Mr. John Burns, President of the Local Government Board, speaking in the House of Commons, March 13, 1908 (Parliamentary Debates, Vol. 186, 70), said in regard to the Hollesley Bay colony: “The labour and the work of these men is brought into competition with the local market gardeners and farmers, and when I go down to Hollesley Bay I am confronted with small deputations of professional decent agricultural labourers and servants of market gardeners, complaining of the fact that our attempt, well-intentioned, charitably inclined, and fed with State money, on behalf of the unemployed, is dispossessing the decent agricultural labourer.” The South Ockenden Farm Colony was established by the West Ham Guardians. Mr. John Burns said, in regard to it: “In the whole time that that colony has been in operation—and no one will but admit that I have given it the most generous and the most fatherly assistance—out of the 790 who have gone through that colony, its object being to train men for the land and to take them back to the land, there is not a recorded instance of the men going back to agricultural work” (Parliamentary Debates, Vol. 186, 70). On the same occasion Mr. Burns referred to the Laindon colony established by the Poplar Guardians: “I saw an old agricultural labourer between sixty and sixty-five years old, digging in a field within 200 yards of the colony, getting 15s. or 16s. per week”—Mr. Burns had previously mentioned that the average cost per week per man on the colony was 24s.—“I said to him, ‘How long does it take you to dig an acre of land?’ He said, ‘It takes me a fortnight to dig an acre of that land.’ I went across the rail and found on the public works sixty-seven able-bodied men ... taking ten days to dig an acre and a half.” Thus, in the colony each man was digging at the rate of one acre in 446 days, while the old agricultural labourer on the adjoining land was digging one acre in 14 days. It will be remembered that the express object of the Central Unemployed Body in setting up these colonies was to provide productive work for the unemployed. No wonder that Mr. Burns, with his great experience, expressed himself in the following terms, July 19, 1906 (Parliamentary Debates, Vol. 161, 425):—

“I believe that relief works ought to be the last resort of any community. They sterilize volition, sap self-reliance, and introduce into industry those very conditions of irregularity and low pay which we are seeking to remove.... If the works are State-aided, charity-fed, tax-founded, or rate-subsidized, they will only be a form of public benevolence that will divert the right money in the wrong way to wasteful ends with demoralizing results. New works unproductive and unremunerative, fed by rates and taxes, are about the worst form of relief that can be imagined.”

Mr. Burns’s conclusion will be confirmed by every person who has any experience of relief works. The work done is per unit immensely more costly than if it were done under normal industrial conditions; the men know it is not serious work, and therefore do not work.

If relief works have to be provided—and the unemployed cannot be left to starve—what the works shall be, the conditions under which they shall be executed, the extent to which the State ought to go, raise extraordinarily difficult questions calling for the nicest judgment.

It is wholly unnecessary to emphasize the evil of doles, whatever form they take, whether Poor Law outdoor relief or anything else. I have had many cases under my personal notice of men who, being offered work at reasonable rates of pay, refused to take it, stating that they were doing better out of their various payments for unemployment—and they were.