Discontent and its Causes
One who moves among the workers cannot fail to be struck with the discontent which permeates them. Some people call it “industrial unrest,” and condemn it as a menace to society; they forget that discontent with existing conditions is an essential element of progress. Society advances, not by uniform and rhythmic strides in a fixed direction, but by convulsive movements which, if plotted on a plan, would present the appearance of gyrations to right and left of the axis of progression, but generally register a forward march. In our democratic organization of society, where the mutual relations of constituent elements of the community are so generally governed by common-sense compromise, no section that was passive could ever hope to better its social conditions.
There are several causes for the prevalent dissatisfaction, of which probably the most potent is the increasing standard of education. Those who take the trouble to compare the education of our industrial classes of to-day with the lack of education of the workers at the beginning of the nineteenth century, as described in some of the first Factory Inspectors’ reports, cannot fail to realize what enormous progress has been achieved; and this progress has—and happily so—given birth to a new vision. One of the first effects of education is to stimulate aspirations for improvement of material conditions, and the social observer generally finds that the first aspirations created in this direction by education are frequently not kept within the bounds which a fuller education and a wider experience ultimately impose.
Effect of Bad Environment
As, during the decades immediately before the war, the outlook of the workers widened under the influence of education, and especially as a result of the facilities for travel from the towns into the country for holidays and recreation, there has arisen an increasing dissatisfaction with industrial surroundings and home conditions. Nor is that surprising. Owing to the aggregation of factories during the industrial revolution, as near as possible to the centre of towns, and the huddling of houses in crowded, fetid and ill-built courts, as near as possible to the factories, a condition of things grew up, and indeed in many large towns still continues, more than sufficient to cause industrial discontent. Men are told by Socialist proselytizers the plausible story that such a state of things is one of the inevitable concomitants of the capitalistic organization of industry—a statement quite untrue. What caused it was the impotence of municipal organization in those days to control town planning or regulate the construction of streets and erection of houses, and the insufficient development of the social conscience as to the things which ought to be done for the good of the community. Some of our successful leaders of industry have conclusively demonstrated, by the most convincing of tests—viz., the commercial success of their venture—that there is no necessary connection whatsoever between bad industrial environment and the prosperity of their “capitalistic” works. Take for example Lord Leverhulme’s beautiful garden village at Port Sunlight, and many similar model villages connected with other industrial undertakings. Nothing more conduces to industrial contentment than a comfortable home; no one can expect contentment in the occupants of many of the old houses which still disgrace some of our industrial centres, with their leaky roofs, rotten floors, muddy backyards and general structural decay, in which it is impossible to keep things nice, or children tidy, or household effects clean. Our municipalities are doing great work in sweeping away dwellings of this kind. Their final disappearance is a matter of expense and rates, for removal is costly. Local authorities are performing wonders in keeping, so far as they can, old buildings fit for human habitation, but there is a limit to the process of patching up ancient and dilapidated houses.
Fear of Unemployment
Another active cause of industrial discontent is insecurity of employment. If this week a man is in work and has no certainty of work next week—a condition even in normal times of large numbers of the industrial population—he is persistently oppressed by a desolating fear. Want of work is the menacing spectre which haunts the background of every working-class home. Intermittent employment produces serious decay of human fibres and moral degeneration—an inevitable result of the discouragement caused by fruitless seeking after work, and of the shifts to find food for wife and family. The inability to organize any uniform routine of living leads straight away to improvidence: when a man is in work one week, he spends all he has, relying on continuance of the work; next week, if unemployed, he has nothing except perhaps some unemployment pay or benefits. It is systematically rubbed into him by exponents of Socialism that unemployment is solely caused by the capitalistic organization of industry, that there can be none under the Socialists’ regime, as if any socialistic scheme for the reorganization of industry is going to compel the consumer to buy more commodities and services than he would be prepared, or able, to buy under capitalistic production.
Dissatisfaction with Status in Industry
A contributing cause to industrial discontent of growing moment is what the worker describes as the denial to him of a human status in industry. He complains, especially in the matter of being taken on or discharged or put on overtime or night-work, indeed, with respect to the whole conditions of his employment, that little or no regard is paid to him as a human being. He is content to accept the theory of the Labour intellectuals—it is certainly not his own conception—that he is a wage-slave taken on and discharged just as it suits his employer’s interests, and that his labour is bought and sold on the same principles as any other raw material in industry. The old paternal relation of employer and employed, unfortunately much weakened by the introduction of the factory system, has undoubtedly disappeared with the conversion of family businesses into vast joint-stock company concerns; personal touch between the master and his men no longer exists. There is, however, no ground for suggesting—as Socialists are fond of instilling into the minds of the workers—that this is still another inevitable result of the capitalistic organization of industry. In some of the largest and greatest of capitalistic works, workers can be, and to my knowledge are, treated with consideration and sympathy. Their human values can always be respected and full human status accorded to them if only the right spirit prevails between employers and employed, and proper machinery exists for its infusion into workshop life.