Round about a Pound a Week

by Mrs. Pember Reeves

“The facts cited in this chapter show that on the average something like one-half of the adult men, most of whom have a family dependent upon their earnings, do not earn 25s. 9d. a week, and that of this half, a very considerable proportion receive very much less than a pound a week. When we have considered the cost of living, it will be seen how wholly inadequate these wages are, and how inevitable it is that the consequences of this insufficiency should show themselves in the physical and social conditions of the wage-earning classes.”

In his estimate, Professor Bowley calculated that about 8,000,000 adult men were employed in regular occupations in the United Kingdom, and that of these 32 per cent., or nearly one-third, were earning, at full-time work, less than 25s. a week. As we see, Mr. Snowden comes to a different conclusion, and reckons that 50 per cent. of the adult men in regular employment are getting less than 25s. a week. If we take the smaller of these two estimates and reckon that one-fifth of the adult men are unmarried, we get something like 2,000,000 families living on a wage which is under 25s. a week. Again, to quote from Mr. Snowden, “Sir Robert Giffen estimated twenty years ago that there were 2,000,000 families where the total income did not exceed a pound a week.” Allowing that the average family consists of a man and his wife and two children, we get 8,000,000 persons who are living more or less as are the people whose daily life has been described in the previous chapters of this book, while, if we take Mr. Snowden’s own estimate, the number is far greater. That means that the great bulk of this enormous mass of people are under-fed, under-housed, and insufficiently clothed. The children among them suffer more than the adults. Their growth is stunted, their mental powers are cramped, their health is undermined.

A hundred years ago their fathers would have regarded these children as economic assets, and the family income would have been produced by every member who was over a very tender age. During the last century the State prohibited the employment of children under a certain age—an age which, as wisdom grows, tends to become higher and higher. By this necessary action the State formally invested itself with the ultimate responsibility for the lives and welfare of its children, and the guardianship thus exercised has continually been enlarged in scope until it has assumed supreme control of the nurture and training of the youth of the nation. A birth now means that a new human being must be fed, clothed, and housed in a manner which the State as guardian considers sufficient, for a period which we now hope to raise to sixteen years. If a man in these days sets his young children to earn money, or, if they be not fed, clothed, cared for, and sent regularly to school, he can be put in prison. If the children’s mother be a wage-earner, she can also be sent to prison if her children are not sufficiently cared for. Even the non-earning mother who has only what her husband chooses to give her can be imprisoned if a magistrate decide that any child-neglect is chargeable to her. It would seem reasonable to expect that when the ultimate responsibility for their welfare is undertaken by a rich and powerful State, children should at least be in receipt of sufficient food, shelter, warmth, and clothing.

Instead, however, of co-operating with parents and seeing to it that its wards are supplied with such primary necessaries, this masculine State, representing only male voters, and, until lately, chiefly those of the richer classes, has been crude and unwise in its relations with all parents guilty of the crime of poverty. With the best intentions it has piled upon them responsibilities which it has left them to cope with unaided. We still have the children of sober, industrious men and women living lives which maim and stunt them and make of them a handicap for the very State of which they are part. And we have parents whose wages are insufficient for their own needs spending themselves to perform the impossible, and, while they fail, the State—their partner in responsibility—looks the other way.

The first remedy for this state of things which springs to the mind of the social reformer is a legal minimum wage. The discussion of a minimum wage, which is at the same time to be a family wage, is exceedingly difficult. We realise that wages are not now paid on a family basis. If they were we should not have 2,500,000 adult men receiving for full-time work a sum which the writer has no hesitation in saying is less than sufficient for the proper maintenance, and that on the lowest scale, of one adult person. To pay wages in future, on an adequate family basis, to every adult worker who could possibly have helpless children dependent upon him or her would be a startlingly new departure. There are none, in fact, who advocate it. And yet if we are really attempting to solve the problem of hungry children by minimum wage legislation, we ought to aim at no less. Of course, what usually is advocated is the paying of a family wage to all adult men, while paying women an individual wage—the assumption being that women never maintain families. But we know this assumption to be untrue. Many thousands of women do maintain families, and if, through the medium of the minimum wage, their children also are to be kept in decency and comfort, the wages of women must also be on the family basis. Another difficulty in dealing with a family wage is the question of what sized family? There is no standard either in numbers or in age. If the wage be calculated upon a wife and two children, it will not support a wife and six children. Nor if it be calculated upon three children under four will it support in equal efficiency three children of ten, eleven and thirteen. Further, if a law which would keep children at school until the age of sixteen should happily come into force, the difficulty of reckoning a minimum wage which would suit everybody would be still greater.

A third difficulty is the fact that money paid as wage for work done must, in the nature of things, belong wholly and entirely to the person who performs the work. He or she is free to devote such money to any purpose they think best, and cases are not unknown of children who do not receive even such nurture as their parents’ means could allow. Many people solve these knotty points by dropping women bread-winners out of the problem, by arranging that the family consists of five persons—a man, his wife, and three children—and by assuming that every parent thinks more of his or her children’s welfare than of self. By doing this, they deal with theories instead of facts.

The two sums that have been seriously discussed by such various authorities as Mr. Rowntree, Mr. Charles Booth, and the Labour party are 25s. a week and 30s. a week. Neither sum is really enough in some localities should there be more than three children, who are to be properly housed as well as properly dressed and fed. And neither sum as a hard and fast minimum, even for men only, is considered practical politics by anybody. Scientific minimum wage schemes must consider and give weight to the conditions of each trade and locality. Many decisions in the worst paid trades will follow the example of the decisions under the Trades Boards Act, and when a minimum has been arrived at it will be—though an advance on present wages—insufficient perhaps to keep in real efficiency and comfort a single adult.

Moreover, to keep the children of the nation in health and strength is too important and vital a responsibility to be placed entirely on the shoulders of one section of the community—namely, the employers of labour. It is a responsibility which should be undertaken by the only authority which is always equal to its complete fulfilment—the State.

Therefore, although any minimum wage scheme which proposes to raise the bottom wages in any trade or trades, or for any group or groups of workers, is a necessary part of legislation, and must be urgently insisted upon in any plan for social reform, no minimum wage legislation now proposed, or likely to be proposed, will deal adequately with the question of all the children of the working poor. Yet unless we do deal with all of them, and deal adequately, the problem of the nation’s children goes unsolved.