The English Strike
London, August 28.
There was a great strike of railway men in England last week, the news of which was sent over the world. As a subject of conversation and discussion it has taken the place of ordinary sights and tourist stunts. A very large per cent of the railway employés went out, there was rioting in several places, the soldiers were called upon, there was almost war in spots, and several people, innocent by-standers usually, were killed. The government secured a cessation of the strike by getting men and managers to agree to submit the differences to a national commission and be bound by it—an agreement both sides will break if it does not suit them. A railroad strike is a most serious thing in England, for in London and the manufacturing centers the people depend on the railroads to bring in their provisions, and as ice is almost unknown very few shops have more than a day’s supply of meats, fish and fresh eatables on hand. So the strike was pinching millions of people who had no personal interest in its result.
If I were a railroad employé in England I would strike, or at least I’d strike out for America or some other land where a man has a show. Railroad men are not well paid in England, rather worse than other working-men. Engineers, or drivers as they are called, rarely get to exceed 30 to 35 shillings a week (seven to nine dollars). Firemen, switch-men, baggagemen, station-men, operators, conductors and brakemen get from 20 shillings to 35 shillings a week (five to nine dollars). And yet both passenger fares and freight charges are higher in England than in Kansas. In discussing the subject with an educated Englishman I complained that a man with a family could not live on these wages. “Yes, but they do,” he said; “but the family doesn’t get meat every day—and the family doesn’t need meat every day.” I argued on, that a man can’t buy a home, or save anything for trouble or old age. “That’s true,” he said, “and it is unfortunate. But his children won’t let him starve, and there is some light job he can do to help out. The government is now preparing a plan for the pensioning of old people. When that law is working, a man won’t have to worry about the future.”
Which is a rotten theory. It merely means that with the prospect of a pension of less than two dollars a week an English laborer can be kept working at the present low standard. I am for the old-age pension, but I am for the proper payment of a workingman while he is at the age to enjoy life. This beautiful England with its castles and palaces and picture galleries and great history is far behind every other nation in its treatment of the workingman, and consequently England is now sitting on a keg of dynamite which is likely to explode. Once get it out of the heads of the English workmen that they have to submit to these things and these wages because their fathers did, and that it is a great blessing to have a king and lords, and the English working-men will raise Hades with the present political and social conditions in merry England. It seems to me that the time is not far distant when the explosion will take place. Only very skillful management on the part of the English statesmen and the very conservative habits of thought of the English people prevented most serious trouble last week.
An English workman usually has a large family, and the only way they can keep from going hungry or to the poorhouse is for the whole family to work and mother and children earn money to put into the common treasury. Meat, vegetables, fruit, everything to eat, costs more in England than it does in Kansas. Rent is less, but our workmen wouldn’t live as these have to. Clothing is cheaper in some respects and dearer in others. But the item is small with an English workman. You can see that after he pays rent and buys food he has very little left for wearing apparel, so father wears his suit until it is worn out, mother gets along on second-hand clothing, which is generally used, and the children have a cheaper grade and little of it.
I am not knocking on the English. This condition which seems so distressing to me is a product of their conditions and is not the deliberate purpose of the people. I think it comes from the conservatism of the English character, and also from the fact that the English workman competes against the world. English manufactures and commerce have been built up because in England labor is intelligent, high-class, and cheap. I can have a tailor-made suit of clothes for twelve dollars in London. That’s fine for me, but how is it for the tailor? And it doesn’t help the other English workingman, for he does not have the twelve. On the other hand, the ability of the American workman to buy has brought it to pass that he can get just as good a suit, better fitted and better looking, at a Hutchinson clothing store for twelve to fifteen dollars,—and he has the money and buys! There is going to be some discussion of clothing and the woolen schedule in the United States, and I want to put in this testimony. Before I left home I bought a suit in Hutchinson for fifteen dollars. No English tailor-made suit for that price looks near so well, and the way it fits and hangs is complimented by the English. The only kind of stuff that is cheaper in England than with us is that in which hand labor is employed. Women buy laces because they are made by intelligent working-women who are paid 25 to 50 cents a day. Silk hats are cheaper, but the same quality hat I buy at home cost me just as much in London, and shirts, underwear, sox, etc., are as expensive here as in Hutchinson. I am told the same rule applies to women’s clothes. Americans who come to England and continue to live on the same standard they do in America say that living is more expensive here. Of course they can have three or four servants for the same price they paid the one hired girl at home, and can pose as being “upper class.”
I went to a barber shop, a first-class one. I was shaved for a “tuppence” (four American cents) and had my hair cut for a “trippence” (six American cents). I gave the barber a tip of a penny, for which he was very thankful, and then I went out of the shop growling at a country where I could get shaved so cheaply and where a tailor-made suit cost only $12. In this world of ours we are so dependent on one another that you can’t cheapen one man without cheapening all the rest. I asked the street-car conductor and he told me he was paid five dollars a week—and he has a family of six. The chamber-maid at the hotel works for a dollar a week and board. A good coachman or a house-man gets one to two dollars a week and board. A clerk in a store does well to beat five dollars a week. How do they live? I don’t know, but they do; but they have all heard of America and Canada and Australia, and would go there if they could raise the fare, or if it were not for leaving family and home.