The Alien Invasion

by W. H. Wilkins

In the trades and districts chiefly affected, this is the agency which reduces the price of labour to a level below that upon which Englishmen and Englishwomen can with decency and self-respect exist, and which renders effectual combination impossible. Every one with any practical knowledge of business, will admit that it is the lowest price which rules the market. If then we have a body of men combining together for the purpose of getting what they consider to be a fair wage, how can they maintain that combination, if, when a strike occurs, or any little dispute arises between employer and employed, by which the employed hope to get a little better terms for themselves, the destitute foreigner steps in ready to undersell them, and to work for little or next to nothing at all? Nor, as things stand, can the employers be greatly blamed either. In these trades few of them are great capitalists, the battle of life is pretty hard on them too, and in struggling to better themselves, they naturally seize every legal means that offers.

One of the worst features of this system is the "multiplication of small masters." The subject is a tempting one, but space forbids me to dwell on it. I would only say that the competition among these small employers is almost as fierce as the competition among the employed. Much indignation has been directed against the "sweater," the bloated human spider, who, according to Alton Locke, sucks the life-blood of his victims, or who more recently has been presented to us in the pages of Punch as a gorgeously-apparelled, champagne-drinking, cigar-smoking Hebrew, who, as he rakes in his gold, laughs and grows fat upon the sufferings of the wretched creatures sacrificed to his greed.

Such monsters do exist. Of that there can be no doubt. They are by no means exclusively Hebrews, neither are they confined to the tailoring trade alone; nor is it necessary to go as far as Whitechapel in search of them. But a dispassionate study of the facts will show that the great bulk of the "sweaters" are very poor; and that with their profits driven down by competition, they can hardly make a living. In fact, both employers and employed are alike the victims of this fierce competitive struggle, and of the craze for cheapness at any cost. The result is that the market is flooded with a quantity of cheap and inferior articles which injure the trade, and destroy the demand for good English work.

At present, the two trades most affected are the cheap tailoring and boot-making. In the former, as a direct consequence, all the horrors of "sweating" reign supreme. In the latter, the cheaper kind of work is now taken by foreigners entirely; hundreds of Englishmen who were formerly employed in it at a fair wage are driven out of employment, and now seek in vain for work. "Oh," but I hear some say, "they can turn their hands to something else." But it is not so easy for a man who has been apprenticed and brought up to a certain trade, to turn his hand to "something else." His craft is his bread, his trade is his capital; it is dear to him, for upon it he has lavished all his skill, all his energies. It is hard that he should be robbed of it by the foreigner. These two trades are not the only ones affected. In the cabinet-making, chair-turning, cigar-making, cheap fur trade, and other industries, the same evil is beginning to work, and always with similar baleful results. Labour is displaced; Englishmen are robbed of their work; and if they do not become paupers or something worse, they are driven from their homes to seek their fortunes anew in some distant land.

The evil effect of this unchecked immigration upon the price of labour is very marked. I have collected together a few articles made by "sweated" workpeople in the East End, and have traced out the cost of labour in each instance. These samples include a wooden "Windsor" chair, solidly put together, and neatly turned; it was sold for 1s. 9d., and the price paid for making it was 2-1/2d. A fur collarette of hareskin, dyed gray and lined—really a very decent-looking article—was sold for 1s. 6d.; labour received, 1-3/4d. A pair of button boots, leather-lined throughout, were bought for 3s. 11-1/2d.; labour received 2-1/2d. for the "lasting" (i.e. sewing, heeling, and putting together); this 2-1/2d. did not include nails, wax, thread, all necessary to the work, which had to be found by the workman. Three pairs of boots can be "lasted" in an hour. There is also the "finishing," which costs 2d., and five pairs can be "finished" in an hour. But the most striking instance of all is that of a knickerbocker suit, well-made, and properly adorned with braid, made by a "sweated" workwoman in the East End. It was bought at a shop for 2s. 11d., and the woman received for making it 5-1/2d.; which wretched pittance did not include needles, thread, and material used in the binding, all of which had to be found by the person "sweated." Now, I put it fairly and dispassionately to any unprejudiced person, if honest labour has no better reward to offer than this, what wonder if thousands of our people, in despair of earning a decent livelihood, are driven into vice and degradation—the men to drink, the women to prostitution?

Much has been said and written about the exact number of these alien immigrants, which, as has already been pointed out, in the present dearth of trustworthy statistics, cannot be accurately ascertained. It is not merely a question of numbers. I submit that it matters comparatively little to the main argument whether the arrivals in one particular year were a few thousands more or a few thousands less, or the precise numbers of "those who return again to the Continent," when there are already so many of these indigent foreigners in our midst. Even supposing for the sake of argument—I do not for one moment admit it—that the numbers arriving are comparatively small, they would still have a very bad effect upon the price of wages, in the trades and industries upon which they entered. The inflow of a comparatively small number into a neighbourhood where much of the work is low-skilled and irregular, will often produce an effect which seems quite out of proportion to the actual number of the invaders. From the native labourer's point of view, the mere fact of the presence of these low-living foreigners, ready as they are at any moment to step in and undersell his labour, constitutes a standing menace to his interests. In all the trades in which they are employed, the rate of wages is being perpetually beaten down.

Thus it follows that any argument drawn from the number of these destitute aliens, as compared with the total population of the United Kingdom, is obviously wide of the mark. We must consider their distribution in particular localities and particular trades; more than that, in order to arrive at any valuable result, we must examine also into the local and trade distribution of foreign labour conjointly.

In this connection the evidence comes almost entirely from the East End of London. As we have seen, the two trades principally affected are the cheap tailoring and boot-making. Let us consider the latter first.

Mr. Freak, Secretary of the Shoemakers' Society, stated before the Immigration Committee, that over 10,000 foreigners were engaged in the boot-making trade in the East End of London. He said:—"Until within ten or fifteen years ago, the Jew foreigners did not affect our trade much; but by degrees they have taken the work that men generally learned their trade on, such as the commoner class of work. They simply have taken it to themselves entirely, and the effect has been that hundreds of our men have to walk about, particularly in winter-time, who used to be employed on that class of work. These Jew foreigners work in our trade at this common work sixteen or eighteen hours a day, and the consequence is, they make a lot of cheap nasty stuff that destroys the market, and injures us. And if we have a strike on, or any little dispute occurs in our trade, when we might otherwise get a little better terms for ourselves, they go and take the work at any price, and so defeat our ends in getting or attempting to get our proper wages." Mr. Freak reckons that about 25 per cent. of the persons engaged in the whole of the boot and shoe trade in the city of London are foreigners; but that the commoner kind of work is monopolized by foreigners entirely. He further said that the introduction of this pauper labour has seriously affected the rate of wages received by the English operatives, not of course so much in the best shops, but very greatly in the commoner class of work. It had also the effect of reducing the employment of a large number of Englishmen, and of driving hundreds out of work altogether. He went on to say:—"I know that at the time when I first came to London, any one could get work at the middle or common class of goods; and now they are sent out to the homes or given to the sweaters, who take them on the system that they are working themselves in the way I have mentioned; and the price is reduced so low that to work single-handed a man could not get his living. He has to sweat his children or his wife; and if a man and his wife and children do not want anything more than just bread and cheese and sleep, then they might get a living out of it; because some of these Jews who come over will not come out of the house for a whole week. They will sleep in the same place where they work day after day. They simply get food and the barest raiment to cover them, and that is all they can get for their work. I do not think that these foreign Jews have created any new industry; but they have made the industry in common work more beastly, and I do think that they are doing an injury in our foreign markets by the stuff that they make, because a great quantity of it is made of cardboard and composition. The leather that is put into the sole is simply a bit of veneer. It is simply a thin sole covered over a composition—clump as we call it. It is composed of shreds of leather, ground up, and stuck together."

Now let us consider the cheap tailoring trade in the East End. It appears, upon the evidence of Dr. Ogle, whose work it is to prepare the statistical part of the Census, and whose opinion upon all such matters stands deservedly high, that of the persons engaged in the tailoring trade, in the parish of St. George's-in-the-East, over 80 per cent. are foreigners. Mr. Zeitlin, Secretary of the Jews' branch of the Tailors' Association, himself a Russian Jew, stated before the same Committee that there were altogether employed in the East End of London about 25,000 tailors, of whom 10,000 are men and 15,000 women. Out of the 10,000 men, "mostly foreigners and not born here," three-parts are Jewish, and one part not Jewish; and of the women three-parts are English, and one part Jewesses.