Constructive Imperialism

by Viscount Alfred Milner Milner

SWEATED INDUSTRIES[ToC]

Oxford, December 5, 1907

This exhibition is one of a series which are being held in different parts of the country with the object of directing attention, or rather of keeping it directed, to the conditions under which a number of articles, many of them articles of primary necessity, are at present being produced, and with the object also of improving the lot of the people engaged in the production of those articles. Now this matter is one of great national importance, because the sweated workers are numbered by hundreds of thousands, and because their poverty and the resulting evils affect many beside themselves, and exercise a depressing influence on large classes of the community. What do we mean by sweating? I will give you a definition laid down by a Parliamentary Committee, which made a most exhaustive inquiry into the subject: "Unduly low rates of wages, excessive hours of work, and insanitary condition of the workplaces." You may say that this is a state of things against which our instincts of humanity and charity revolt. And that is perfectly true, but I do not propose to approach the question from that point of view to-day. I want to approach it from the economic and political standpoint. But when I say political I do not mean it in any party sense. This is not a party question; may it never become one. The organisers of this exhibition have done what lay in their power to prevent the blighting and corrosive influence of party from being extended to it. The fact that the position which I occupy at this moment will be occupied to-morrow by the wife of a distinguished member of the present Government (Mrs. Herbert Gladstone), and on Saturday by a leading member of the Labour Party (Mr. G.N. Barnes, M.P.), shows that this is a cause in which people of all parties can co-operate. The more we deal with sweating on these lines, the more we deal with it on its merits or demerits without ulterior motive, the more likely we shall be to make a beginning in the removal of those evils against which our crusade is directed.

My view is, that the sweating system impoverishes and weakens the whole community, because it saps the stamina and diminishes the productive power of thousands of workers, and these in their turn drag others down with them. "Unduly low rates of wages, excessive hours of labour, insanitary condition of workplaces"—what does all that mean? It means an industry essentially rotten and unsound. To say that the labourer is worthy of his hire is not only the expression of a natural instinct of justice, but it embodies an economic truth. One does not need to be a Socialist, not, at least, a Socialist in the sense in which the word is ordinarily used, as designating a man who desires that all instruments of production should become common property—one does not need to be a Socialist in that sense in order to realise that an industry, which does not provide those engaged in it with sufficient to keep them in health is essentially unsound. Used-up capital must be replaced, and of all forms of capital the most fundamental and indispensable is the human energy necessarily consumed in the work of production. A sweated industry does not provide for the replacing of that kind of capital. It squanders its human material. It consumes more energy in the work it exacts than the remuneration it gives is capable of replacing. The workers in sweated industries are not able to live on their wages. As it is, they live miserably, grow old too soon, and bring up sickly children. But they would not live at all, were it not for the fact that their inadequate wages are supplemented, directly, in many cases, by out-relief, and indirectly by numerous forms of charity. In one way or another the community has to make good the inefficiency that sweating produces. In one way or another the community ultimately pays, and it is my firm belief that it pays far more in the long run under the present system than if all workers were self-supporting. If a true account could be kept, it would be found that anything which the community gains by the cheapness of articles produced under the sweating system is more than outweighed by the indirect loss involved in the inevitable subsidising of a sweated industry. That would be found to be the result, even if no account were taken of the greatest loss of all, the loss arising from the inefficiency of the sweated workers and of their children, for sweating is calculated to perpetuate inefficiency and degeneration.

The question is: Can anything be done? Of the three related evils—unduly low rates of wages, excessive hours of labour, and insanitary condition of work-places—it is evident that the first applies equally to sweated workers in factories and at home, but the two others are to some extent guarded against, in factories, by existing legislation. This is the reason why some people would like to see all work done for wages transferred to factories. Broadly speaking, I sympathise with that view. But if it were universally carried out at the present moment, it would inflict an enormous amount of suffering and injustice on those who add to their incomes by home work. Hence the problem is twofold. First, can we extend to workers in their own homes that degree or protection in respect of hours and sanitary conditions which the law already gives to workers in factories? And secondly, can we do anything to obtain for sweated workers, whether in homes or factories, rates of remuneration less palpably inadequate? Now it certainly seems impossible to limit the hours of workers, especially adult workers, in their own homes. More can be done to ensure sanitary conditions of work. Much has been done already, so far as the structural condition of dwellings is concerned. But I am afraid that the measures necessary to introduce what may be called the factory standard of sanitariness into every room, where work is being done for wages, would involve an amount of inspection and interference with the domestic lives of hundreds of thousands of people which might create such unpopularity as to defeat its own object. I do not say that nothing more should be attempted in that direction, quite the reverse; but I say that nothing which can be attempted in that direction really goes to the root of the evil, which is the insufficiency of the wage. How can you possibly make it healthy for a woman, living in a single room, perhaps with children, but even without, to work twelve or fourteen hours a day for seven or eight shillings a week, and at the same time to do her own cooking, washing, and so on. How much food is she likely to have? How much time will be hers to keep the place clean and tidy? An increase of wages would not make sanitary regulations unnecessary, but it would make their observance more possible.

An increase of wages then is the primary condition of any real improvement in the lives of the sweated workers. So the point is this. Can we do anything by law to screw up the remuneration of the worst-paid workers to the minimum necessary for tolerable human existence? I know that many people think it impossible, but my answer is that the fixing of a limit below which wages shall not fall is already not the exception but the rule in this country. That may seem a rather startling statement, but I believe I can prove it. Take the case of the State, the greatest of all employers. The State does not allow the rates of pay even of its humblest employés to be decided by the scramble for employment. The State cannot afford, nor can any great municipality afford, to pay wages on which it is obviously impossible to live. There would be an immediate outcry. Here then you have a case of vast extent in which a downward limit of wages is fixed by public opinion. Take, again, any of the great staple industries of the country, the cotton industry, the iron and steel industry, and many others. In the case of these industries rates of remuneration are fixed in innumerable instances by agreement between the whole body of employers in a particular trade and district on the one hand and the whole body of employés on the other. The result is to exclude unregulated competition and to secure the same wages for the same work. No doubt there is an element—and this is a point of great importance—which enters into the determination of wages in these organised trades, but which does not enter in the same degree into the determination of the salaries paid by the State. That element is the consideration of what the employers can afford to pay. This question is constantly being threshed out between them and the workpeople, with resulting agreements. The number of such agreements is very large, and the provisions contained in them often regulate the rate of remuneration for various classes of workers with the greatest minuteness. But the great object, and the principal effect of all these agreements, is this: it is to ensure uniformity of remuneration, the same wage for the same work, and to protect the most necessitous and most helpless workers from being forced to take less than the employers can afford to pay. Broadly speaking, the rate of pay, in these highly organised industries, is determined by the value of the work and not by the need of the worker. That makes an enormous difference. But in sweated industries this is not the case. Sweated industries are the unorganised industries, those in which there is no possibility of organisation among the workers. Here the individual worker, without resources and without backing, is left, in the struggle of unregulated competition, to take whatever he can get, regardless of what others may be getting for the same work and-of the value of the work itself. Hence the extraordinary inequality of payment for the same kind of work and the generally low average of payment which are the distinguishing features of all sweated industries.

Now, if you have followed this rather dry argument, I shall probably have your concurrence when I say, that the proposal that the State should intervene to secure, not an all-round minimum wage, but the same wages for the same work, and nothing less than the standard rate of his particular work for every worker, is not a proposition that the State should do something new, or exceptional, or impracticable. It is a proposal that the State should do for the weakest and most helpless trades what the strongly-organised trades already do for themselves. I cannot see that there is anything unreasonable, much less revolutionary or subversive, in that suggestion.

This proposal has taken practical form in a Bill presented to the House of Commons last session. Whether the measure reached its second reading or not I do not know. It was a Bill for the establishment of Wages Boards in certain industries employing great numbers of workpeople, such as tailoring, shirtmaking, and so on. The industries selected were those in which the employés, though numerous, are hopelessly disorganised and unable to make a bargain for themselves. And the Bill provided that where any six persons, whether masters or employés, applied to the Home Secretary for the establishment of a Wages Board, such a Board should be created in the particular industry and district concerned; that it should consist of representatives of employers and employed in equal proportions, with an impartial chairman; and that it should have the widest possible discretion to fix rates of remuneration. If Wages Boards were established, as the Bill proposed, they would simply do for sweated trades what is already constantly being done in organised trades, with no doubt one important difference, that the decisions of these Boards would be enforceable by law. Now that no doubt may seem to many of you a drastic proposition. But I would strongly recommend any one interested in the subject to study a recently-published Blue-book, one of the most interesting I have ever read, which contains the evidence given before the House of Commons Committee on Home Work. That Blue-book throws floods of light on the conditions which have led to the proposal of Wages Boards, on the way in which these Boards would be likely to work, and on the results of the operation of such Boards in the Colony of Victoria, where they have existed for more than ten years, and now apply to more than forty industries. The perusal of that evidence would, I feel sure, remove some at least of the most obvious objections to this proposed remedy for sweating.

Many people look askance, and justly look askance, at the interference of the State in anything so complicated and technical as a schedule of wages for any particular industry. But the point to bear in mind is this, that the wages, which under this proposal would be enforceable by law, would be wages that had been fixed for a particular industry in a particular district by persons intimately cognisant with all the circumstances, and, more than that, by persons having the deepest common interest to avoid anything which could injure the industry. The rates of remuneration so arrived at would be based on the consideration of what the employers could afford to pay and yet retain such a reasonable rate of profit as would lead to their remaining in the industry. Such a regulation of wages would be as great a protection to the best employers against the cut-throat competition of unscrupulous rivals as it would be to the workers against being compelled to sell their labour for less than its value. There is plenty of evidence that the regulation of wages would be welcomed by many employers. And as for the fear sometimes expressed, that it would injure the weakest and least efficient workers, because, with increased wages, it would no longer be profitable to employ them, it must be borne in mind that people of that class are mainly home workers, and as remuneration for home work must be based on the piece, there would be no reason why they should not continue to be employed. No doubt they would not benefit as much as more efficient workers from increased rates, but pro tanto they would still benefit, and that is a consideration of great importance. But even if this were not the case, I would still contend, that it was unjustifiable to allow thousands of people to remain in a preventable state of misery and degradation all their lives, merely in order to keep a tenth of their number out of the workhouse a few years longer.

I have only one more word to say. I come back to the supreme interest of the community in the efficiency and welfare of all its members, to say nothing of the removal of the stain upon its honour and conscience which continued tolerance of this evil involves. That to my mind is the greatest consideration of all. That is the true reason, as it would be the sufficient justification, for the intervention of the State. And, or my own part, I feel no doubt that, whether by the adoption of such a measure as we have been considering, or by some other enactment, steps will before long be taken for the removal of this national disgrace.