Women's Wages

by William Smart

First, organisation is necessary to protect women against employers and against themselves—the one no less than the other. The true enemies of the workers' organisations are, on the one hand, the grasping employer, and, on the other, the "blackleg" worker. By the grasping employer I mean the employer who really wishes to make a gain at the expense of the people whom he employs; it is easy to see why he dislikes the trade union. But the good employer—if he could only lift his horizon a little—would see that he requires the help of the trade union, inasmuch as he cannot keep up the wages if the workers do not assist him. The best, the most amiable and just manufacturer, must sell his goods at the same prices as his rivals. If these rivals, by securing low-priced labour, can reduce the prices of their goods, he is almost forced to reduce his wages. Consequently, if the trade unions could prevent low-priced labour being offered they would most materially assist the great majority of employers—for I am sanguine enough to believe that most employers are anxious to pay their workers as high a wage as they can. But the best employers are helpless to remedy the evils of a class of workers who are hopelessly at war among themselves, and ready to take each a lower wage than the other. Where a girl, coming out of a comfortable home, is willing to take ten shillings a week because to her it is "pocket money;" where the mother of five will take eight shillings because her husband is out of work and she is the sole bread-winner; where the mother of ten will accept six shillings because she has so many mouths to feed; where the girl just in her teens will take four shillings because she is a little girl—where all these different women, with different motives, are competing against each other for equal work, there is no remedy but the severe one of preventing these poor souls from dragging down the wage of each other. If women are ever to get a fair day's wage on the ground of a fair day's work, as distinguished from the wage determined by a woman's necessity, it will only be by the old remedy of combination and the protection of the average working woman against the more helpless members of her own sex.

But, second, enlightenment of the public conscience must supplement organisation. It should not be difficult to convince educated people that women's work should be paid on the same principle as that of men—that is to say, according to their product, and not according to their wants; and to make them pay, or insist on the worker being paid, equal wages for equal work. But the point on which enlightenment does seem very much needed is that of the supposed necessity for low wages.

I do not know how there could be any such necessity unless it was the case that labour and capital, like land in some countries, had entered on the stage of decreasing returns, and had, moreover, gone so far on that down grade that the additional returns grew more slowly than population—and no one has even suggested such an idea. I have already tried to point out the fallacy that low prices explain low wages. It is, however, perhaps advisable to note that they do not even, to any great extent, condone, much less justify them.

Probably we are all familiar with an argument like this: Consider, it is said, the great fact that calico is twopence a yard. Every woman in England may now be clad in cotton fabrics which, a century ago, were beyond the purchasing power of a queen. Beware how women are encouraged to ask and to stand for higher wages, or calico will again be put beyond the reach of any but queens. I confess I never heard this caution without remembering Carlyle's indignant reply:—"We cannot have prosperous cotton trades at the expense of keeping the Devil a partner in them." The weakness of it will become obvious if we carry the matter a little further and argue that if we can succeed in reducing women's wages still more, say, to 5s. per week, we shall have a considerable reduction in calico, and bring it within the reach of still poorer people.

It is Dickens, I think, who speaks of a horse that was fed on a system which would have reduced his cost of upkeep to a straw a day, and would, no doubt, have made him a very rampageous animal at that if, unfortunately, the horse had not died! The idea that cheapness of goods makes up for everything in the workers' circumstances is, perhaps, the most deplorable of current fallacies. It is no less than that of mistaking the whole end and aim of industry. The goal of economic effort is not accumulation of wealth, but the support of wealthy human beings—not "goods," as Aristotle told us long ago, but the "good life." True economical cheapening of production is cheapening of natural powers outside of man—not cheap labour, but cheap machinery, cheap organisation, cheap transit. This is a kind of cheapening of product which can go on indefinitely. From the dawn of civilisation man has been turning a hostile or indifferent environment into a rich and friendly one. For ages, indeed, constant war hindered this conquest of nature. It is only in this century that comparative peace among nations has allowed the majority of men to give all their time and thought to the economical life, and even yet the locusts of standing armies eat up great part of our harvest field. But the changes which have been made on the earth, as we know it, the natural resources of matter and force now under our control, the complex and sensitive organisation which knits the world together, all point to possibilities of wealth beyond the wildest dreams of last century. There is some fatal leak in our industrial system if every child in Great Britain this year is not the heir of a richer heritage, at least of richer possibilities, than the child of last year. If our fathers a generation ago earned 20s. by day labouring, we should be earning 40s. by day labouring; or, if we are still earning only 20s., the 20s. now should buy what 40s. did then.

Now, as this suggests, there are two lines which the economical progress of the workers may take—that of advancing wages or that of cheapening products. Which of these is preferable? Without entering on any more discussion, two considerations may show that there is no comparison between the two, so far as the workers are concerned.

First, the ideal condition of average human life is a condition of well-paid wage earning; of steady assured labour, which does not strain or stress, and is crowned visibly by the fruit of its own exertion. There is nothing more depressing to the thoughtful economist than the waste, positive and negative, which comes of disorganised labour; where the working man and his wage are the sport of speculation, and the period of high wages and overtime is succeeded by periods when the worker is thrown on the streets to learn the bad lesson of spare time without culture, and of leisure without rest. It is of small comfort to the working man that the manufacturer and merchant share the bad time with him, and that stocks are thrown on the market at "ruinous sacrifices." In vain is the cheap sale advertised in sight of the penniless buyer.

Second, while from one point of view it is all the same whether a worker's wage is raised from 20s. to 40s. a week, or whether everything he buys is reduced by 50 per cent., the balance of advantage is not so simple as this. If the wages are raised the worker alone gets the benefit. If commodities are reduced in price those who consume them—namely, the whole community—get the benefit. If, by reducing Tom's wages, you reduce the price of commodities which Tom, Dick, and Harry buy, Tom divides the economic advantage, such as it is, with Dick and Harry. Thus reduction of wages is never fully compensated by reduction of prices. The seigniorage of current commodities is borne, not by the community but by the workers.

Thus, I repeat that, while the fact that wider circles of population get the advantage of cheap goods is some mitigation of the evil, it is no justification of it. There is no reason why products should reach wider and wider circles, except that the cheap products are a gain to the wider circles. And if this gain tends to be outweighed by the evils of reduced wages, calico at twopence a yard may be too cheap.

But if there is still some question whether, economically, it is justifiable and advisable to organise workers to ask higher wages, and to educate the public conscience to pay them, it may be settled, as regards women at least, by this simple consideration. Wealth in Great Britain, according to Mr. Giffen, increases annually by 3 per cent., while population increases by only 1·3 per cent. That is to say, wealth increases more than twice as fast as population. In the light of this statistic it cannot be economically necessary that women's remuneration for labour should remain at the subsistence level. If this was a fair wage fifty years ago, it cannot be so now.