The man who knows, and is ready to help, is early surrounded by clients. Tributes from the organizers and leaders of the great trades are as frequent as the testimony to his help which came from workers in unorganized and sweated trades. The representative of a mining constituency in later years, his work for the miners was great, and repaid by their trust and support. [Footnote: "During the whole of his Parliamentary life he was always ready and willing to help the miners, assist in preparing and drafting Mines Bills, regulations for increased safety in mines, and the eight hours. He was in charge of the Mines Regulation Amendment Bill, bringing it before the House every Session until the Government appointed a Royal Commission, and ultimately brought in a Bill which became an Act of Parliament. By his tact and influence he managed some years ago to get a short Bill passed raising the working age underground from twelve to thirteen," writes Mr. T. Ashton, secretary of the Miners' Federation.] From a standpoint which gives an estimate of all his Labour work come these words from Mr. Sidney Webb:
"He was an unfailing resource in every emergency. No one will ever know how much the Progressive Movement, in all its manifestations, owed to his counsel, his great knowledge, and his unsparing helpfulness. Trade-unionism among women as well as men; the movement for amending and extending factory legislation; the organization of the Labour forces in the House of Commons, are only some of the causes in which I have myself witnessed the extraordinary effectiveness which his participation added. There has probably been no other instance in which the workmen alike in the difficulties of trade-union organization and amid the complications of Parliamentary tactics have had constantly at their service the services of a man of so much knowledge and such extensive experience of men and affairs. But the quality that more than any other impressed me in Sir Charles Dilke as I knew him was his self-effacement. He seemed to have freed himself, not only from personal ambitions, but also from personal resentments and personal vanity. What was remarkable was that this 'selflessness' had in it no element of 'quietism.' He retained all the keenness of desire for reform, all the zest of intellectual striving, and all the optimism, of the enthusiast."
II.
That "true Imperialism" which Sir Charles advocated was never more clearly shown than in matters of Social Reform. His demand that we should learn from the example of our Colonies was dictated by his desire to promote the homogeneity of the Empire. He believed in developing our institutions according to the national genius, and he viewed, for example, with distrust the tendency to import into this country such schemes as that of contributory National Sickness Insurance on a German pattern. His attitude during the early debates on Old-Age Pensions helped to secure a non-contributory scheme. He laid, then as always, special stress on the position of those workers who never receive a living wage and already suffer from heavy indirect taxation, holding that to take from such as these is to reduce still further their vitality and efficiency. During the debates on the Workmen's Compensation Act he urged the extension of the principle to out-workers and to all trades. The protection should be universal and compulsory.
In a speech of April 27th, 1907, he promised to "fight to the death any scheme of Old-Age Pensions based on thrift or on the workers' contributions." Later, when the proposals as to workmen's insurance were nebulous, but nevertheless pointed to a contributory scheme, he, criticizing some words of Mr. Haldane's, spoke his anxiety lest "to have a system for all labour, including the underpaid labour of unskilled women, based on contributions by the individual, might involve the difficulty expressly avoided by the Government in the case of pensions— namely, the use of public money to benefit the better-paid class of labour, inapplicable to the worst-paid class, but largely based on taxation which the latter paid." One of his last pencillings on the margin of an article reviewing the Government's forecast of the scheme for sickness insurance includes a note of regret and indignation at the apparent omission to make any special provision for the lowest-paid classes of workers.
One neglected class of Labour whose grievances he sought to remedy by a measure which has not yet reached fulfilment was that of the shop assistants. Year after year, from 1896, he spoke at their meetings, introduced their Bill in the House of Commons, urged its points, inspired its introduction in the Lords, till at last the Liberal Government, in 1909, introduced proposals embodying its main features. The question of the representation of the shop assistants on the Grand Committee when the Bill should reach that stage was discussed by him just five days before his death, and many attributed very largely to his absence the fact that the Government were obliged to permit mutilation of their proposals before they became law in 1911. The National Union of Shop Assistants have commemorated his work for them by giving his name to their new headquarter offices in London.
An amusing tribute to his legislative activities and the effect they produced on reactionaries is to be found in a speech by that famous "die-hard" of the individualist school, the late Lord Wemyss, who warned the House of Lords that their lordships should always scrutinize the measures that came from "another place," and "beware of Bills which bear on their backs the name of that great municipal Socialist, Sir Charles Dilke."
A minor but important characteristic of Sir Charles's views as an administrator was his conviction that wherever the interests of women and children are concerned the inspectorate should include an effective women's staff. The appointment of women inspectors for the Local Government Board made by him in 1883 was a pioneer experiment, which he vainly urged Sir William Harcourt to follow in the Home Department—a reform delayed till twelve years later, when Mr. Asquith as Home Secretary carried it out.
But his most important service to Labour in the direction of administration is connected with the Home Office Vote. Though Bills were closely followed by him in Committee, he refused to take part in any obstruction upon them, holding that "all obstruction is opposed to the interests of Radicalism, in the long-run." Acting on this view, he with others helped the Government to get votes in Supply. The true policy was, in his view, to obtain "ample opportunity for the discussion of important votes at those times of the Session when we desire to discuss them." So he dealt with Home Office administration on its industrial side. Some more marked and centralized criticism of the workings of this great department was necessary than that supplied by questions in Parliament, correspondence, and private interviews. The administration of the War Office, the conduct of Foreign Affairs, or of the Admiralty, claimed the attention of the House of Commons as the annual vote on the Estimates came round. It was not so with the "Ministry of the Interior," and it was practically left to Sir Charles to create that annual debate on the Home Office Vote, which dealt with the industrial side of that department's administration. Year after year he reviewed its work, forcing into prominence the Chief Inspector's Report on Factories and Workshops; examining the orders, exemptions, exceptions, and regulations, by which the Home Office legislates under the head of administration, always with a view to the levelling up of industrial conditions and the promotion of a universal incidence of protection for the workers. "We can trust no one but Sir Charles Dilke in Parliament to understand the principles of factory legislation," wrote Mr. Sidney Webb in comment on some destructive Government proposals as to industrial law. This appreciation of the fundamental ideal underlying our legislative patchwork of eccentricities went hand in hand with a half- humorous and half-lenient understanding of his countrymen's attitude to such questions. "We passed Acts in advance of other nations," he said, "before we began to look for the doctrines that underlay our action, and long before we possessed the knowledge on which it was said to have been based." But for one afternoon in the year the attention of the House of Commons was intelligently focussed on the details of the suffering of those, the weakest workers of all, on whose shoulders the fabric of our industrial system rests. Matters left previously to the agitation of some voluntary society or to the pages of the "novel with a purpose" were marshalled according to their bearing on different administrative points, and discussed in orderly detail. The overwork of women and girls in factory or workshop; the injury to health and the risks that spring from employment in dangerous trades; poor wages further reduced by fines and deductions; the employment of children often sent to work at too early an age, to stagger under loads too heavy for them to bear; the liability to accident consequent on long hours of labour—these were the themes brought forward on the Home Office Vote, not for rhetorical display, but as arguments tending to a practical conclusion, such as the inadequacy of inspection or the insufficient numbers of the available staff.
In the atmosphere thus created much progress was possible. Take, for example, one dangerous trade, that of the manufacture of china and earthenware, in which during the early nineties suffering which caused paralysis, blindness, and death, was frequent and acute. Speaking as late as 1898 on the Home Office Vote, and quoting from the official reports, Sir Charles showed that the cases for the whole country amounted to between four and five hundred out of the five to six thousand persons exposed to danger. Under his persistent pressure Committee after Committee inquired into this question and promulgated special rules; attention was focussed on the suffering, and this evil, though still unfortunately existing, abated both in numbers and acuteness, till at his death the cases had fallen to about a fifth of those notified in 1898.