of the Chief Inspector of Factories show that in 1901 the industry gave
occupation to 513,000 persons. The increase in the number of spindles
and of looms, however, has been far greater than the increase in the
number of hands. Machinery has made vast strides and becomes daily
swifter and more economical of labour; so that the total growth of the
trade, since the days of employers who vowed that a ten-hour day would
ruin them, almost passes calculation. Moreover, the development of the
industry tends more and more towards those branches which demand most
skill. Our exports increase more largely in fabrics than in yarn, and
most of all in coloured fabrics, the prices of which are rising. We are
in short “specialising in the more expensive and difficult work.” We are
producing those really exquisite coloured cotton stuffs which under
various fancy names have, during the last few years, made summer dresses
so attractive, and which are well worth the comparatively high price at
which they are bought.
On p. 61 of the pamphlet written by Professor S. J. Chapman for the Free
Trade League[78] may be found a most interesting table of the
comparative increase, all over the world, in the number of spindles,
between the years 1870 and 1903. We find that “about a fifth of the
total increase in the world’s spindles in a third of a century has
fallen to the United Kingdom. The whole of Europe, taken together in a
period of industrial awakening, cannot boast a growth of cotton spindles
more than twice as great as that which has taken place in this country
alone, though in 1870 Europe was almost at the beginning of her cotton
spinning, and has since then been fostering it.... In 1870 the American
nation had a fifth as many spindles as the United Kingdom, and to-day
she does not possess half as many as the United Kingdom.” And this in
spite of the fact that the population of the United States is so much
larger than ours.
Another table (on p. 66) deals with exports of manufactured cotton
goods, and compares the average annual exports, from 1891 to 1902, of
Germany, Holland, Belgium, France, Switzerland, the United States, and
the United Kingdom. The absolute increase of British exports in the year
1901–2 was £8,170,000; that of Germany, £4,100,000; and that of the
United States, £325,000. All the remaining countries together totalled
an increase of only £13,450,000, as against Britain’s £8,170,000. The
increase in German exports, which comes nearest to our own, is but
slightly more than half of it. “Of the total trade (exporting) done by
the chief Western trading nations, Great Britain accounts for 62·5%;
Germany stands next with 12%.” Moreover, these figures, reaching only to
1902, take no account of the vast prosperity of the cotton trade in
Great Britain since: a prosperity of which some indication is given in
the Report of the Chief Inspector of Factories for 1905. From Oldham, Mr
Crabtree reports that “About 20 new mills have been erected or are in
course of erection for the cotton spinning trade alone. These will
contain about 2,000,000 spindles.” (p. 147.) Mr Verney reports that “in
the Rochdale district alone three new mills containing 220,000 spindles
started in 1905, and at the end of the year there were nine more in
course of construction to be equipped with 770,000 spindles. The total
number of new mills which have commenced to run in 1905 and which are in
course of erection throughout Lancashire is no less than 57, with
5,000,000 spindles. The signification of these figures may be better
appreciated when it is remembered that in the whole of France there are
but 6,000,000 spindles, and in Germany less than 9,000,000.” (p. 147.)
On the same page the following declaration, by Mr W. Tattersall, is
quoted from “The Cotton Trade Circular”: “The year’s trading has been
the most prosperous in the history of Lancashire.”
On the whole, the story of the British cotton trade—a trade, be it
remembered, the very existence of which is surprising—is the story of
one of the most amazing developments in industrial history. Raw material
that can only be grown in distant countries is brought, naturally
enough, at first, to a land of coal and iron, the cradle of the factory
system. By and by, other countries, including some in which the raw
material can be produced, begin, in their turn, to adopt the factory
system and to manufacture cotton. What would naturally follow? Surely,
the absorption of the English trade by the foreign competitor whom
nature favours. Moreover, Britain, already handicapped by nature, had
further handicapped herself by restricting hours of work and by imposing
high and expensive standards of sanitation and safety. Yet what is seen
to occur? England’s trade goes on steadily expanding, year by year;
wages rise, both nominally and, to a greater degree, really; and in the
course of last year (1905) not only was all the available adult labour
employed, but it was not possible to get enough of it, so that there was
actually some increase in half time labour, which previously had
steadily declined.
Nor is the contrast less if we consider the mills themselves or the men
and women connected with them. In the first third of the last century,
the mills were, in general, dirty, ill ventilated, ill provided with
sanitary accommodation, frequently overcrowded, the machinery unguarded
and the temperature unregulated, so that the operatives suffered from
extremes both of heat and of cold. At the present day, there must be a
certain cubic space for every worker, there must be proper sanitary
accommodation, moderate temperature and—most important of all, perhaps,
in this industry—there must be proper ventilation for carrying off the
dust and fluff by which the lungs of so many cotton operatives have been
injured. The old mills were full of overworked, underpaid children,
stunted, wizened, and, if their contemporaries are to be credited,
precociously vicious; children who dropped asleep at their looms, and
had to be dragged, crying with sleepiness, from their beds to begin work
again in the morning, while another relay of little serfs were actually
waiting to enter the beds left vacant. The mills ran till late at night,
sometimes all night long. Diseases of many kinds, especially phthisis
and spinal deformities were rife; while drunkenness and immorality seem
to have been rampant. The masters, many of whom were self made men, of
little education, vowed that their profits were not large, and that any
restriction of the hours of labour would inevitably land them in the
Bankruptcy Court. The operatives, however, persisted in clamouring for
relief; parliament granted it; and strange to say, instead of being
ruined, the trade grew better and better. The workers, seizing their
chance, developed strong trade unions that included both men and women,
and thus secured themselves against the disastrous results of free
competition. Their union helped them to gain better wages; the law
helped them to health and to leisure. In less than three generations,
the cotton workers of North Western England have become intelligent,
independent citizens. They are no longer oppressed, no longer illiterate
and no longer vicious. Free libraries and co-operative stores grow and
flourish, and the old English passion for music, still dormant in the
South, is well awake in the large cotton towns of the North. In
industrial efficiency the English spinners and weavers of cotton have no
rivals. As the Tariff Commission reported, “Nearly every mill started
abroad with English machinery requires a certain amount of British
workpeople and overlookers to start it and to train up native labour.”
(Sec. 205.) This increase of skill, dependent very largely upon an
improved standard of life, has rendered possible a vast improvement in
methods of production, with the usual consequence of a greatly enlarged
output. The masters, from whom the increasing stringency of the law has
demanded an ever rising standard of capacity, are men of a better class
than their predecessors, and among the most enlightened of British
employers.
Meanwhile, in other countries, many of the evils which Lancashire has
left behind, still prevail. Children toil to-day in certain American
mills, as they toiled once in ours; in many European countries, hours
are still injuriously long and wages inadequate to the demands of a
civilised life. Yet employers of this cheap labour cannot produce so
profitably as Lancashire can. “On the general efficiency of British
labour as compared with that of any foreign country witnesses are
practically unanimous,” says the Report of the Tariff Commission. (Sec.
89.) In short, the English cotton manufacturer produces more cheaply and
more profitably, upon the whole, than any competitor, and in the highest
branches of the trade, can hardly be approached. The reasons of this
pre-eminence are that the good conditions enforced by law and the
comparatively high wage enforced by the trade unions combine to create
for him the most efficient body of cotton workers in the world. Once
more, the facts of industrial history proclaim the truth that efficiency
is not the cause but the product of fair wages, healthy surroundings and
reasonable leisure.
Do not let us be deceived into supposing that, apart from these factors,
there is any peculiarity in the cotton trade to account for these
developments. If there were, we should behold the ill paid and
overworked cotton workers of the Southern States, many of whom are of
the same race as ourselves, producing fabrics as good as ours, at the
same speed, and equal profit. Indeed, we need not go so far as America
for our object lesson. The South West of our own country may provide it.
Bristol, no less than the more northerly parts of the island, had its
cotton mills. The same advantages were presented: the port open to the
Atlantic, the moist westerly climate, the plentiful supply of labour.
The same factory law applies, the same hours and conditions are
enforced; the employers, of late years at any rate, have been men of
capital and of intelligence. One factor only has been absent: the
powerful organisation of workers. Because of its absence, wages have
fallen to the level of unskilled trades in the district. Men do not work
in the cotton trade in Bristol, nor adult women. The employees are
girls, earning the low wage of a Bristol factory girl. Of profits there
have, for years, been practically none. No employer can afford to make
improvements in methods of production; and at the present moment it is,
I believe, an open secret that the one remaining mill is only kept open
because its owner is unwilling to turn away the hands.[79] But for the
strong trade unions of the northern operatives, the whole of England’s
cotton trade at the present day might be in the position of Bristol’s
cotton trade, and the Lancashire worker might be toiling for as many
hours and as small a wage as his German competitor. To the organisation
of the workers, English labour owes that comparatively fortunate
position which is, as Mr Schoenhof, years ago, perceived, “the only
vantage ground which England possesses and which secures to her the safe
and indisputable rulership of the commerce of the world.”[80]
In this particular industry of cotton, other nations, as he points out,
whose labour is ill paid and whose hours of work are long, are trying to
defend themselves by a high protective tariff “against the results of
England’s high pay and short hours.”... “Yet it is all machine work
driven by steam power and conducted in factories under the best
intellectual management which the countries afford. But how world wide
the difference in the results!”[81]
World wide indeed—not as to national trade only, but as to national
happiness.
CHAPTER IV
THE MINIMUM WAGE IN PRACTICE
Sweating not unknown in the colonies—Instances published by _Otago
Daily Times_—Underpaid workers in 1895—Epidemic of strikes—State
arbitration proposed in New Zealand—Conciliation Boards and Court
of Arbitration—Details of New Zealand law—Objections raised by
critics in England—Difference in position of British and of New
Zealand trade unions—New Zealand freed from strikes—The question
of the poorest workers—Wellington match makers—Tailoresses under
an agreement and tailoresses under an award—The under rate
worker—Victoria and Wage Boards—Campaign of the _Age_—Factory Act
of 1896—Details of Wage Board scheme—The first six Boards—Boards
in 1905—Several instances of the “determinations” of Wage
Boards—Effect on home work—The case of New South Wales—Summing up.
The evils of underpayment, being the invariable result of unlimited
competition, inevitably show themselves in any country where trade has
come into existence. The oversea colonies of Britain are not
overcrowded, are naturally rich, and ought to be free from evils
accumulated during an old civilisation. Yet, thirty years ago, instances
of underpayment, exactly on all fours with those exhibited in the
Queen’s Hall in the summer of 1906, were to be found in New Zealand, in
South Australia and in Victoria.
There, as here, newspapers called attention to the facts, and aroused
the public conscience. In January 1889, the _Otago Daily Times_, “a
journal distinguished amongst its fellows for caution and restraint of
language,” published a series of articles about underpaid labour in
Dunedin. “One woman deposed that she might make 3s. 6d. on a good day
but it would be by stitching from half past eight in the morning until
eleven at night.”[82]
“Yet she counted her lot at that time almost happy, for she had lately
escaped from a factory where, do what she would, she could not earn more
than eighteenpence daily by working until all hours of the night.”
Another woman reported that she “finished cotton shirts at 1s. 6d. a
dozen”[83] and that she could “get through a dozen and a half in the
factory between nine o’clock and six in the evening; then she carried a
dozen more home and sat up sewing by lamplight until they were
finished.... On one of these evenings she had a stroke of good luck; she
was allowed to take away a dozen flannels as well as her dozen shirts.
Both bundles were done when she went to bed—at three o’clock in the
morning—and by that night’s work she earned a whole shilling.” (p. 30.)
Individual and combined action followed these revelations. A union of
tailoresses was formed and an effective factory law passed. Wages,
however, continued upon a downward course, and in 1895 “there were in
the colony 591 factory girls who were getting no pay for their work, and
175 who were paid half a crown a week or less.” (p. 34.) Such facts as
these were enough to show to thoughtful observers that, unless special
measures were introduced, the evils of European countries would grow
with the growth of the colonies. Another series of events helped to
focus attention upon labour problems. This was the epidemic of unusually
wide-spread and bitter strikes which ran through the various colonies in
the early nineties. Into the details of these it is unnecessary to
enter. It is enough to say that, in at least one instance, associated
workers demanded what they had no right to demand and that, in at least
three instances, associated employers refused even to confer upon the
demands of the workers. The mining companies, for example, declared in a
public manifesto that “The mining companies claim the right to work the
mines as they deem best and cannot refer this right to arbitration.” (p.
95.) Acts of violence were committed; the public was greatly
inconvenienced; much money was lost; and people began to look about for
some legislation that would obviate similar troubles in the future.
This was the opportunity of Mr Reeves, at that time Minister of Labour
in New Zealand. He saw that the path of progress lay along the line of
organisation; and that the field of State Arbitration is not between man
and man, but between association and association. He recognised that
organised society has a right to demand of its different sections that
degree of class organisation which renders possible the application of a
common law. Hitherto, sectional combination had been used principally as
a basis for organised war; in Mr Reeves’s plan, it was to furnish the
basis of an organised peace. Following out the stages by which
industrial disputes develop into strikes, he substituted for each a more
peaceful step. His Bill, respecting the divisions of the colony into
districts, allowed the creation in any district of a local Conciliation
Board, and established a supreme Court of Arbitration. The Conciliation
Boards were to come into existence “if petitioned for,” and were to be
“composed of equal numbers of masters and men, with an impartial
chairman.” (p. 101.) The right of electing representatives to serve on
these Boards was given not to individuals but solely to such bodies of
employers or of workers (men or women) as registered themselves under
the Act. An association of as few as seven workers may, at the present
time, claim registration. When registered, such associations are called
Industrial Unions, and become corporations “with power to hold land, to
sue and be sued, and to recover dues from their members.” (p. 103.)
The functions of a Conciliation Board are as follows: On receiving a
request from any party to an industrial dispute, it calls before it the
other parties concerned, hears, examines and awards. No strike or
lock-out is permitted while the case is under hearing. The Board has
full power to take evidence and to compel attendance. At first, the
awards of the Conciliation Boards had no legal force but, in 1900, the
amended Act made these awards “final and legally binding unless appealed
against within a month.” (p. 127.)
The higher tribunal, the Court of Arbitration, consists of “a president
with two assessors, one selected by associations of employers the other
by federations of trade unions.” (p. 102.) The three members of the
Court are appointed for three years and, unless bankruptcy, crime or
insanity intervenes, cannot be removed except by a vote of both Houses
of Parliament. The Court is not fettered by precedent, settles its own
procedure and may take any evidence that it chooses, “whether strictly
legal evidence or not.” It may hear cases publicly or privately at its
discretion. Its award is given by the majority of the three members, and
they may decide whether the award is to have the force of law or “merely
to be in the nature of good advice.” If it is to have legal force it
must be filed in the Supreme Court and after that any party to it may be
prosecuted for a breach of it. The penalty payable by a single employer
or trade union is limited to £500; and in case of a union’s possessing
insufficient funds to meet the penalty every member is liable up to £10.
The award cannot be appealed against nor quashed by any other tribunal,
nor can the proceedings be carried into any other court. On the other
hand, awards remain in currency only for a fixed period, which need not
be longer than three years at the outside, and at the end of which the
matter may be reopened.
Though only registered unions of masters and of workers can elect the
officials of the Boards and of the Court, yet the jurisdiction of these
tribunals extends to all employers and to all workers whether registered
under the Act or not. In any district where there is a duly registered
body of workers but none of employers the Governor in Council may
nominate the conciliators required to make up a Board.
Such were the general features of the Act that after three years of
endeavour was passed at the end of 1894 and came into force in 1895. It
passed amid steady opposition from employers and with extremely little
support from public opinion. In 1900, after five years’ experience of
its workings, when a consolidated and amended Act was introduced, only
one voice was lifted to attack its general principle. Not from its
neighbours, who are intimate with the workings of it, but from this side
of the ocean have come the attacks to which it has been exposed. It has
been contended, again and again, by English newspapers that the measure
is unduly favourable to trade unions, a contention much strengthened in
appearance by the fact that in various trades awards have been made
requiring employers to give preference to unionists, so long as the
union can supply men qualified and ready to fill vacancies. Such awards,
however, are by no means invariable; each case is tried on its merits,
and the Court is largely guided by the general custom of each trade. It
must be borne in mind also that the position of a New Zealand union is
very different from that of a British union, and that this difference
has been largely brought about by the colonial law, in the interest not
of the union but of public peace and convenience. As Mr Reeves justly
remarks: “In New Zealand the community, mainly for the purpose of self
protection, has deprived trade unionists of the right of striking—of the
sacred right of insurrection to which all workmen rightly or wrongly
believe that they owe most of what lifts them above serfdom. The
Arbitration Act, moreover, deliberately encourages workmen to organise.
When, in obedience to the law, they renounce striking and register as
industrial unions, it does not seem amiss that they should receive some
special consideration. Their exertions and outlay in successfully
conducting arbitration cases benefit non-unionists as well as
themselves, though the non-unionists have done nothing to help them. Nor
need the preference entail any hardship to their employers. Non-unionist
labour is usually valued either because it is cheaper or because it is
more peaceable. But under the Arbitration law non-unionists must get the
same pay as unionists, and unionist strikes are abolished. It is only
the non-unionists (in a trade where there is no award in force) who can
strike, and who—though rarely and then only in petty groups—do. They
are, therefore, to that extent, the more dangerous servants of the two.
Nor, be it noted, does an employer who has only non-union men in his
factory stand clear of the Act. Nor again can he take himself out of it
by discharging his union hands and pleading that he has none in his
employ. If an award has been made dealing with the trade in his
district, he is bound by it as much as his competitors who employ union
labour.”[84]
In short, New Zealand has taken out of the hands of organised labour its
principal weapon and has placed that weapon in the hand of the state.
The right of waging industrial war is, now, in New Zealand denied to
unions either of workers or of employers. To have enforced this denial
without loss to either side and at the same time to have encouraged
organisation is a feat that any British minister may reasonably desire
to emulate.
It is quite certain that, without the Arbitration Act, New Zealand would
not have enjoyed that immunity from labour battles which in fact it has
enjoyed. The use of the Act happened to coincide, as its author points
out, with a revival of trade; and a revival of trade is, as every
experienced trade unionist knows, the period in which strikes may hope
to be successful. “Instead, however, of striking on a rising market, as
the traditional custom of trade unionism has been, the New Zealand
unions were able to arbitrate upon it”—to the saving of much money, much
suffering and much ill feeling.
Other objectors complain that the Arbitration Act does nothing to help
the unorganised—always the most helpless—workers. Those who make this
complaint have failed to appreciate the value of that important
provision according to which a group of as few as seven (originally as
few as five) workers in any industry are allowed to register themselves
as an industrial union. Even in the poorest and most scattered of
English trades it would be an easy matter to collect seven persons who,
_if they knew themselves protected from dismissal_, would be willing to
appeal for improved conditions to a Conciliation Board. So far from
shutting out the unorganised, the Industrial Arbitration law opens to
them a door by which they may share in all the advantages of
organisation without waiting for a preliminary improvement in their
conditions; and, at the same time that it holds out to them a powerful
helping hand, makes them not merely passive recipients of a benefit, but
active agents in their own emancipation.
Would that the same door were open to our poorest workers on this side
of the ocean; that the worser paid of English factory workers could, by
registering some seven of their number, present their case to a court
or, with the support of the court behind them, form such an agreement as
was made with their employers by the Wellington match-factory employees
in November 1902, and brought into court for registration. The schedule
of this agreement contains but five clauses and is a model of brevity
and directness. Clause I. settles the working hours, on the basis of a
45 hours week. Clause II. fixes (in 52 words) the piece work rates of
pay for five different branches of work. Clause III. deals with the
question of union and non-union labour, and requires “the company”
(there was but the one employing company, apparently, in the district)
“when engaging a worker or workers” to “employ a member or members of
the union in preference to non-members, provided there are members of
the union equally qualified with non-members to perform the particular
work required to be done, and ready and willing to undertake it;
provided, further, that any person now employed in this industrial
district in this trade, and any other person desirous of entering the
trade now residing or who may hereafter reside in this industrial
district, may become a member of the union upon payment of an entrance
fee not exceeding 5s., and of subsequent contributions, whether payable
weekly or not, not exceeding 6d. per week, upon the written application
of the persons so desiring to join the union, without ballot or other
election.” Clause IV. requires the executive of the union to keep an
“employment book” containing the names, addresses and employers during
the previous six months of members wanting to be employed; the book to
be “open to the company and its servants without fee or charge during
all working hours on every working day.” Clause V. runs as follows:
“When members of the union and non-members are employed together, there
shall be no distinction between members and non-members, and both shall
work together in harmony and shall receive equal pay for equal
work.”[85]
I have thought it worth while to quote these clauses in some detail
because they are typical and illustrate the safeguards both to the
employer and to the non-union worker by which a preference clause is
generally accompanied. The whole schedule occupies only 46 lines of
print—exactly one page of the volume in which it appears.
We see, by this example, that the Arbitration Act does not exclude
collective bargaining between workers and employers but allows the
registration and enforcement of terms to which the representatives of
both parties have agreed. Thus the field of legitimate activity is still
left open to organisations both of employers and of workers: the Act
merely provides for peaceable and equitable settlement in cases where
the parties fail to settle matters for themselves. An instance occurs in
the history of the tailoresses in which one district was governed by an
agreement, and another by an award. The employers in the latter district
complained that the employers in the former were allowed to compete with
them on unfair terms; and the court having compared the terms of the
agreement with those of the award, found that the agreement was actually
in some instances the higher of the two and that, in the instances where
it was lower, the wages actually paid were double those set down. This
was in 1903. In 1905 the trade was once more in court asking for the
establishment of a weekly wage. The court, acceding to what it declares
to have been a general wish, did fix a weekly wage, but made the award
for a year only, from Jan. 1906 to Jan. 1907. The schedule—rather a long
one—fixes the terms of apprenticeship to each class of work, the wages
of apprentices (5s. a week, rising at fixed intervals by 2s. 6d. at a
time); defines, according to the length of her experience in her special
department, a first-class and a second-class “improver,” a “journey
woman, and an under rate worker,” and fixes minimum rates for all but
the last named. Improvers in coat and vest work are to receive, for
second class hands (girls just out of apprenticeship) a minimum of 17s.;
first class hands (with another year’s experience) one of £1, 0s. 6d.;
journey women are to be paid not less than £1, 5s. 0d.[86] An under rate
wage, for old, infirm or incompetent persons, may be fixed by the worker
concerned and the trade union, by the Chairman of the Conciliation Board
or by any person appointed by the Board. Such settlements of under rate
wages continue for only six months, and opportunity is given to the
union and to the applicant of “calling evidence and adducing arguments”
before the adjudicator. In the four districts to which this award
applies a tailoress, who is a “full hand” and a competent worker, can
now be sure that her week’s work will not be paid at a lower rate than
25s. a week. There is no prohibition of home work; but the home worker
must be paid at the established piece work rates, and an employer paying
less exposes himself to fines up to the sum of £100. Thus, in district
after district, and in trade after trade, a system has been established
which combines the apparently contradictory virtues of uniformity and
elasticity.
The scene of a sitting of the Court of Arbitration can easily be called
up from newspaper descriptions. The room is plain and not large. At the
upper end, between the two arbitrators, sits the judge in wig and gown.
Men and masters, easily distinguishable by differences of dress, manner
and speech, face each other across a table; in the body of the room
reporters and a sprinkling of spectators are gathered to listen. The
matter in hand is stated; then the representative of the men’s union or
of the associated masters sets forth the plea of his clients, no counsel
being employed except by agreement of both parties. The cost and the
duration of proceedings are, no doubt, both lessened by this provision;
and it is said that the unprofessional advocates on the two parts often
show remarkable ability in the conduct of the case.
In Victoria a different method of fixing a minimum wage has been
adopted; the method not of the Conciliation Board and Court of
Arbitration but of the Wage Board. The mechanism of the Wage Boards is
much more easily described and understood than that of the New Zealand
Boards and Court; and it is, no doubt, partly, though not wholly, upon
this account that advocates of the minimum wage are apt to propose the
Victorian rather than the New Zealand model for imitation. Personally,
however, considerable study of both plans has convinced me that the New
Zealand method is, in practice, the less cumbrous, and that it includes
features of great value that are lacking in the Victorian system.
Especially valuable seems to be the singular ease with which its
machinery can be brought to bear upon the poorest workers. Were the law
of New Zealand also the law of England I would myself engage to collect,
within six months, from each of half a dozen underpaid women’s trades
the seven workers necessary to form the required unions, and so to bring
these half dozen trades within the purview of a Conciliation Board. Such
Boards are established upon being asked for by a registered association
of workers (or of employers), whereas the Victorian Wage Boards can only
be established in any trade by a resolution of both Houses of
Parliament; and, on this side of the ocean at least, Parliaments are apt
to require much moving before they can be made to act.
In Melbourne, as in New Zealand, the first impulse towards the legal
fixing of a minimum wage came from a newspaper. That powerful organ, the
_Age_, for many years continued to print articles on the subject of
underpayment and bad conditions of work. A Royal Commission was
appointed and made a Report as early as 1884, but no practical reforms
were attempted. The _Age_ continued its crusade. In 1893 a Board of
Inquiry was appointed and the evidence taken by that body showed the
state of the workers in several trades to be deplorable. In 1895 an
Anti-Sweating League was formed and, finally, in 1896, a new Factory and
Shops Act was passed, of which the most remarkable clauses were those
dealing with the establishment of Wage Boards. Provision was made for
the appointment of special boards “to fix wages and piece work rates for
persons employed either inside or outside factories in making clothing
or wearing apparel or furniture, or in bread making or baking, or in the
business of a butcher or seller of meat.”[87]
Permission was also given by the Act for the appointment of similar
boards in other trades “provided a resolution has been passed by either
House[88] declaring it is expedient to appoint such a Board.”
These Boards consist of not less than four nor more than ten members,
half of whom are elected by employers and half by employees, or, failing
election, are appointed by the Governor in Council.
The methods by which the members of Wage Boards are elected is
extraordinarily cumbrous and could scarcely be imitated in any large
industrial community. The latest regulations for such elections (dated
Feb. 19, 1906) are embodied in no less than 28 clauses. In each
specified trade two electoral rolls must be prepared by the factory
inspectors, the one including names and addresses of all workers, the
other those of all employers. In order to facilitate the compilation of
this trade census, all employers are required to send to the inspectors
lists of the workpeople employed by them. Candidates must be nominated
by 10 employers or by 25 employees; and voting papers are printed
containing the names of all the candidates.
“The Chief Inspector shall cause every voting paper to be posted at
least four days prior to the date of such election to every elector
whose name and address is on the roll of electors for the special
board.” The elector must strike out the names of all but those
candidates for whom he desires to vote and must return the paper by 4
o’clock on the day of election. Imagine such a process as this in one of
our own ill paid trades! The workers in such trades are migratory in the
highest degree; by the time that the addresses of all qualified electors
had been collected, one third of them, at least, would have ceased to be
accurate. This fact alone would lead both to omissions and to
duplications. The clerical labour and postage would be so heavy as to be
a serious national expense; and the magnitude of the enumeration would
render its completion a work of time. I doubt whether a Board to deal
with any larger British trade could possibly be elected in less than a
twelvemonth; and even such expedition as this would demand the
employment of an extensive special staff.
The members of the Board, when it has at last been formed may elect an
outside chairman, and if they fail to do so, the Governor in Council may
appoint one. The Boards may fix “either wage rates or piece work rates,
or both; must also fix the hours for which the rate of wage is fixed and
rate of pay for overtime.” They may also fix the proportions of
apprentices and improvers to be employed; and may “determine that
manufacturers may be allowed to fix piece work rates based on the
minimum wage.... The Chief Inspector may, however, challenge any rate so
paid, and the employer may have to justify it before the Board.” The
power to grant a licence to any aged or infirm worker to work at less
than the established minimum wage rests with the Chief Inspector.
The first Boards were only six in number. Several of these had much
difficulty in arriving at a “Determination.” The Men’s and Boys’
Clothing Board, for instance, occupied nine months in drawing up theirs,
and finally established both time and piece rates. With the idea of
compensating the home worker for incidental expenses and loss of time,
the piece work rates were fixed a shade higher than the time rate—with
the result that employers ceased to send work out. In other instances
where there has been no such difference, the compulsion to pay home
workers at something near a living wage has tended in the same
direction.
Though the number of Boards was steadily enlarged, the legislation
allowing their formation was for some years persistently held as
experimental, and not until 1904, after eight years of experience were
they made a permanent part of the law of Victoria.
There were at the end of 1905—the latest date for which the Report of
the Factory Inspectors is available—38 Boards the determinations of
which were in force. The wages and conditions fixed by these Boards vary
to a remarkable decree, and it is to be regretted that the smallest
advances seem in general to have been granted in the worst paid trades.
In some cases the established minimum for a competent adult worker is
sadly low. For instance the female chocolate coverer of over 21 has a
minimum of only 17s. weekly, while her fellow worker who is under 21 but
over 18 may be paid as little as 14s. a week. The minimum for a youth of
the same age is also 14s. but the adult male chocolate coverer (a person
whom I have never found in England) must be paid not less than 30s.[89]
Worse still is the case of the jam trade in which the minimum for
“females of 18 years and upwards” is but 14s.[90] Such determinations as
these point to a desire on the part of the Board rather to prevent a
further drop of wages than to effect a rise to what may be esteemed a
“living wage.” Still, even to arrest the downward course is a step in
the right direction, and the example of the millinery trade, in which
there is no Board, shows that the jam maker at 14s. is probably better
off than she would be were there no determination at all in her trade.
Miss Cuthbertson reports that in 1901 the average wage for milliners was
11s. 4d. per week per individual. “In 1902 the average fell to 11s. 1d.;
in 1903 to 10s. 4d.; in 1904 to 9s. 10d.;—and possibly this year will
witness a further fall.”[91] Yet the trade steadily grows, the number of
persons employed rising from 758 in 1901 to 1410 in 1904.
Dressmakers, however, who work under a determination, average 12s.
3d.[92] The determination in this trade did not come into force until
September 1904; and in 1903 the average wage of dressmakers in Victoria
was 11s. 11d. These averages, of course, include apprentices and
learners. The established minimum for a competent dressmaker is now 16s.
per week.[93]
This contrast serves to suggest how valuable has been the influence of
the Boards in checking the fall of wages. An average weekly difference
of half a crown between the wages of dressmakers and of milliners would
scarcely have arisen of itself, especially in a comparatively small
industrial community. Some Boards have evidently been timid; and some
have shown—to put the matter mildly—no strong desire to approximate the
wages of women to those of men engaged in very similar work. The
difference between 17s. and 30s. in the case of chocolate coverers may
serve as an instance. On the other hand, the Bootmaking Board and the
Brushmaking Board have courageously enacted that women employed in
certain branches shall have “the same rate as males.” Thus a woman in
the bootmaking trade who is engaged in “making, finishing or clicking
(but not skiving or trimming) insides or outsides or stuff cutting by
hand” must receive a minimum of 40s. a week; while for women in some
other branches of the same industry the minimum is fixed at 20s.[94]
The Brushmaking determination, even bolder, runs thus: “Any females
employed in any of the above classes of work to be paid at the same
rates as males.” These rates vary from a minimum of 21s. a week to one
of 64s.[95]
Even the lowest of these minima would be an advance of at least 25% on
the wages of most home working brushmakers in London. In Victoria the
average throughout the whole trade was, in 1905, £1, 9s. 2d.[96]
Some Boards have been less successful than others. The mingled
ignorance, astuteness and bland mendacity of the Chinese furniture
makers appear to have baffled the Furniture Board, as far as the Chinese
department of the trade is concerned; and as the figures quoted show,
the minimum fixed in some women’s trades is far too low. But, looking at
the Report of the Chief Inspector—a most interesting document—it seems
impossible to doubt that the Boards have, in trade after trade, both
arrested the fall of wages and (not always but often) effected a rise.
No doubt the determinations are sometimes evaded; so, in our own
country, are the Factory Acts sometimes evaded, yet the general
influence for good of the Factory Acts is no longer a matter of doubt.
That neither the Industrial Arbitration Act nor the Wage Boards have by
their action checked the trade of the colonies in which they exist seems
to be established beyond question. The Wage Boards, without any other
prohibitory effort, seem by the mere process of forbidding underpayment
to have imposed a check upon the most unsatisfactory sorts of home work.
As M. Aftalion has pointed out, home work, in large part, subsists
solely on account of its evils. Work given out only because it might be
sweated naturally ceases to be given out when sweating is stopped. On
the other hand, home work of a better kind, the home work that is
harmful neither to the worker nor to the community, is not checked
merely by a provision that it shall be properly paid. While it is very
desirable that no person shall work at home for very poor pay or under
very bad conditions, it is emphatically not desirable that no person
whatever shall be allowed to work at home for money. Miss Thear, one of
the Victorian inspectors, reports a considerable decrease in home work
in the shirt trade, the tasks formerly performed by outdoor hands “and
in some cases by elderly women who are now recipients of the old age
pension” are now being performed in the factories by herring-boning,
button-hole and button sewing machines. “In addition to getting the old
age pension and going to work inside of factories, other means of
employment seem to have opened up for others who were formerly out
workers. Some have boarded-out children to care for, and some are
registered under the Infant Life Protection Act.”[97]
Miss Cuthbertson, on the same page, says: “The tendency in all trades is
to get the work done in factories, where the supervision is closer, and
where, with improved machinery, work can be turned out much more
cheaply.” The minimum wage law has, in fact, hastened the course of that
development upon which most trades, and the clothing trades, perhaps,
especially, had already entered.
Legislation of a similar character to that of the sister colonies has
been established in New South Wales, and the kindness of friends in
Sydney has supplied me with much matter published and unpublished; but,
after careful consideration, I have decided not to attempt any account
of the minimum wage law of New South Wales. The reasons for this
abstention are twofold. In the first place the Act is but five years
old, and its history, therefore, is far less instructive than that of
the legislation in New Zealand and in Victoria. In the second place the
accounts received point some one way and some another, so that it is
difficult to draw from them any plain conclusion. I am well aware that
by passing over the case of New South Wales I expose myself to the
accusation of adducing only the favourable examples and of disregarding
those that have not succeeded. To this it may fairly be replied that
although the New South Wales law has not apparently fully succeeded,
neither has it entirely failed. It is still in a stage of probation, and
therefore of far less value to the student than such laws as have
progressed beyond that stage. Moreover, even if it were true—as most
emphatically it is not—that the Colonial experiments had all completely
failed, it would by no means follow that to devise a successful minimum
wage law was a task beyond the wit of man.
In fact, however, both forms of minimum wage law—the Arbitration Court
and the Wage Boards—have demonstrably helped to raise wages and to
diminish underpayment within their jurisdiction. The Industrial
Arbitration Act, in particular, is a very remarkable piece of
constructive legislation, the full scope of which will probably be more
and more perceptible with the development of the land to which it
belongs. Its balance, its wide applicability, the simplicity and
promptitude of its working deserve to be better comprehended. The Wage
Board, by comparison, lacks originality, flexibility and ease.
Both examples have great value for British students; yet it does not
follow that either, in precisely its Colonial form, is altogether suited
to the industrial needs of Britain. A prejudice against compulsory
arbitration—a prejudice which I venture to think rests in some degree
upon imperfect comprehension of the New Zealand law—is strong among
British trade unionists, and the work of dispelling this would be long
and arduous. On the other hand, the comparative slowness and
cumbrousness of the Wage Board system and the absence of any means by
which the workers can claim the help of the Board are features only too
much in accord with English inertness and officialdom. It seems much to
be desired that, if Wage Boards should come to be created in this
country, the appointment of them should be effected in the same manner
as the appointment of the New Zealand Conciliation Boards: i.e., on the
request of seven or more associated workers; and it is quite imperative
that some simpler and less costly method of choosing the representatives
of labour and of capital, respectively, should be devised. To establish
in this country a system which proved to be almost unworkable or of
which the machinery moved so slowly as to be always in arrear of actual
conditions would tend to promote rather than to abate the evil of
sweating.
CHAPTER V
FOREIGN COMPETITION
High wages and high prices not necessarily connected—Effect of
increased wages in different groups of trades—Trades in which
there is a margin for increase—Varying wages in the same
trade—Scottish Wholesale Co-operative Society’s shirt
factory—Trades in which higher wages would lead to improved
methods—Displacement of workers—Cheapened production—Increased
demand and increased employment—Trades in which higher wages would
lead to higher prices—Foreign legislation against sweating—Effect
of higher wages upon home market—Valuelessness to the country of
very ill paid trades—The two lines along which trade may
develop—The line of cheap labour—Consequences to the British
worker—The line of good work—Summing up.
The foregoing chapters will have been written in vain if they have not
succeeded in showing that there is no necessary connection between high
wages and high selling prices; but that, on the contrary, high wages, in
the great majority of cases, actually conduce to cheap production. Were
this invariably the case, it is obvious that a general rise of wages,
far from encouraging foreign competition, would rather form a barrier
against it. And this, in fact, would be—as it is in some instances
already—the case in many trades.
It may be well briefly to consider the various groups of cases that
would arise in consequence of a general rise in the remuneration of
labour. There exists, in the first place, a considerable group of trades
in which, for similar work in respect of goods sold at the same price,
different employers pay very different rates of wage. A very remarkable
instance is furnished, in one of the worst paid trades, by the shirt
factory of the Scottish Wholesale Co-operative Society. In that
establishment, turning out goods for working class customers, women have
for years received about double the wages of the average home working
shirt maker, they not providing, as does she, the sewing cotton used. In
October 1906 the average wage paid to workers in this factory was 18s.
3d. per week, and their week was one of 44 hours.[98] Yet the factory
pays and has done so for many years.[99]
It is therefore clear that even in the ready made shirt trade it is
possible to pay reasonably good wages, to compete with the “sweater,”
and yet to make a profit. Thus the enforcement of a minimum weekly wage
very near the level of Mr Maxwell’s 18s. 3d. would neither kill the
trade nor stimulate the importation of foreign shirts. It would merely
impose upon other employers that standard of management and methods
which Mr Maxwell has chosen voluntarily to adopt. Those employers who
lacked intelligence or flexibility to carry on a factory on these terms
would, it is true, be driven out of business; but their customers would
not cease to buy nor to be supplied at the old price. The only change
would be that none of us would, any longer, be buying shirts at which
some woman had sewn, as Hood said,
“with a double thread
At once a shirt and a shroud.”
There are other groups of trades in which the history of the cotton
trade would be repeated, that is to say, the employer who found himself
compelled to pay higher wages would at once introduce better
machinery—either in the narrow sense of actual appliances or in the
wider sense of improved organisation and management. Such an employer
would also, as the cotton masters have done, demand better work from his
employees, and would get it. At first there might be a diminution in the
number of hands employed; but if, as almost always happens, the improved
methods led to a considerable reduction in the cost of production and
consequently to a lowered selling price, demand would immediately
increase, and more workers would again be wanted. There is no reason in
the nature of things why a rise of wages and a powerful labour
organisation should not do for the silk trade and the woollen trade of
Britain what they have already done for the cotton trade.
In the first group of these trades, then, no workers would be displaced,
and the conditions of the market would remain unaltered; in the second,
there would, at first, probably be a displacement and afterwards,
probably, a renewed, or even an increased demand for workers.
We come next to a group of trades which may exist, but of the existence
of which I personally am somewhat sceptical. These are the trades in
which there is neither margin of profit nor room for improvements that
might make up for the additional outlay upon heightened wages. In these
trades—if such there be—it is undeniable that if British wages rose
while foreign wages remained stationary the foreigner would be extremely
likely to capture the market.
But there are various matters that must be set down upon the other side
of the account. To begin with, our foreign competitors are themselves
uneasy about the existence of sweating within their borders. It is
almost certain that German legislation directed against this evil will
precede legislation in this country; while in America, as may indeed be
judged by the quotations from recent American books that appear in these
pages, there are many persons much concerned with the problem of
underpaid labour. If our foreign competitors should keep step with
ourselves in the prohibition of extreme underpayment, the balance of
international trade would be in no way disturbed. Nay, if only Germany
should do so, the disturbance to the English market would not be
serious.
Moreover, the payment of high wages to working people has, in itself, a
beneficial effect upon the home market. Some people write and speak as
though money when it once passed into the hands of a wage earner passed
out of existence. But in fact it almost always returns very quickly into
active circulation and thus quickens the national turnover. As a general
rule a workman, when his wages rise, spends his extra money upon
additional comfort for himself and his family; buys more and better
food, more and better clothes, more and better furniture; often he moves
to a better dwelling and almost always he extends his recreations. The
chances are that he will spend something in belonging to a club or a
friendly society. He will not, however, as his enemies are fond of
asserting, generally drink more; it is to the man who lives with his
family in one room, not to the man who has a comfortable parlour, that
the public-house looks so attractive. We may say without much doubt that
these will be his modes of expenditure because we have among us plenty
of well paid artisans, and observation teaches that these are in fact
the ways in which they spend their money. Now, many of these channels of
expenditure are practically not open to foreign competition. Bread for
English eating must be baked in English bakehouses: milk is not yet
imported: the retail shopkeeper, the bricklayer, the omnibus driver and
the railway servant must follow their avocations on the hither side of
the sea. The better paid worker thus, without any premeditation or
patriotic design, tends, by the mere process of buying what he wants, to
set his fellow countrymen working. It is quite possible that the
increase of demand thus created would more than counterbalance the loss
of any trade the retention of which depends upon the continuance of
underpayment. Nor is this all. It is a question whether any trade in
such a condition is either worth keeping or capable of being kept. An
experienced employer who is at the head of a large and successful
enterprise writes to me: “Broadly speaking, I am convinced that an
occupation which does not admit of a decent living wage is an occupation
we are better without and one which in due time will die. I mean that
the requirements of the Factories and Workshops Act must kill it. A
trade which can only live by means of inadequate wages and cheap squalid
unhealthy buildings is doomed.” Such a trade while it still endures is
not really a source of national profit. The workers whose lives it
drains, not being supported by the price paid for their labour, must
come eventually to be partly or wholly supported by other people. They
are, in fact, a national burden, whether the charge is nominally borne
by the State or by private citizens. Poverty, dirt and disease are very
costly to the country in which they prevail; and they are inevitable
results of underpayment.
We may seek the development of our trade along either of two lines—we
may aim either at underselling our competitors or at surpassing them. If
we elect to take the line of cheapness, and also determine to seek that
cheapness by paying very low wages, we must confine ourselves to goods
that demand neither very high skill nor very elaborate machinery. But
these are precisely the sort of goods that can best be produced by
nations upon a lower level than ourselves, by peasants and by dwellers
in genial climates where comparatively little food and clothing and
practically no heating are required. With workers such as these we can
never compete on equal terms, and we should be wiser not to try. We can
never bring down an Englishman to the standards of the Chinaman or of
the Hindoo. But we can, in making the attempt, create among ourselves a
class of helots, degraded labour slaves, living on a level that shocks
our national conscience. To do this is to keep open a sore in our midst
and to run a constant risk of those revolts and disturbances which are
the greatest possible danger and interruption to the regular course of
trade—a greater danger perhaps than that of being undersold by
foreigners. For the long-suffering of the English poor, though amazing,
is not probably quite unlimited. No national life can be stable while
large numbers of the people live in great misery. The best safeguard of
national peace is a general distribution of comfort and independence.
And the safest paths towards this state of security are good education
and good payment for the workers. Low wages lead by a path of
intolerable suffering to an inevitable downfall. On the ascending path
too there may be dangers—but they are the less dangers, and they will be
faced by citizens fitter to meet them.
After all, even Great Britain cannot expect to hold all the trade of the
world. What she may expect, what she can have if she will, is the
commercial leadership of the world. She may show in other departments,
as she has shown in cotton and in iron, that her race can produce the
best workers living, and the best organisers of work; and she can
continue the great lesson which others have learned from her history,
but which she herself does not always remember, the lesson that, other
things being equal, that nation becomes wealthiest which pays its
workers best. Health, skill, intelligence: these are the true bulwarks
of national prosperity; and the price of these is liberal payment for
labour. Nor does the prosperity which rests upon these things injure
those neighbouring nations amid which it develops. Rivalry upon the
up-grade educates and improves all alike; rivalry upon the down-grade
injures and degrades all, but not all alike. In that competition the
nation suffers most whose standards are highest.
To sum up in a few words: in many trades, wages could be raised out of
profits without change of selling price; in some a rise of wages would
lead to improvements of method, to cheapening of production and probably
to a fall of selling price; in some, though probably not in many, a rise
of wages would necessitate a rise of prices; and of these there may be
some (it is not proved that there are) the retention of which absolutely
depends upon the payment of excessively low wages.[100]
In regard to the first two groups, which together cover the greater part
of the industrial field, improved payment at home would certainly give
no advantage to the foreign competitor and might in some cases rather be
disadvantageous to him.
In the other group, a rise of wages would probably, wherever the nature
of the industry admitted of importation, lead to an increase of
importation as against home production.
But in cases where the continuance of a trade actually depends upon
aggravated underpayment the trade is shown, by that very fact, to be
already in a declining state, and unable to support its own cost; and no
trade that is in a declining state and that offers no possibility of
bettered conditions can be regarded as a valuable national asset. On the
other hand, of every additional shilling paid in wages, at least
sixpence is spent in employing British labour, so that if, owing to a
general rise of wages, we were to lose entirely the third and lesser
group of industries, we should still enjoy a greater volume of trade
than before wages were raised.
Thus, when we look it squarely in the face, we perceive that the bogie
of foreign competition is a bogie indeed; and that British workers well
paid would have less ground than British workers ill paid to fear that
their trade would be taken from them.
CHAPTER VI
GAIN TO THE NATION
Desirability of better pay to the underpaid—Report of
Interdepartmental Committee on Physical Deterioration—Its hopeful
side—No degenerate class—Physical and mental effects of poverty on
the individual—The better paid artisan—Conclusion.
If, then, without seriously diminishing the trade of the country or the
volume of employment, it is possible gradually to raise the wage of all
ill paid workers to a level that will allow them something like a
civilised existence, how desirable and how urgent is legislation that
will bring about this result. No person, indeed, disputes the
desirability of the change; the only point in question is its
feasibility. To prove that the change is feasible and is impossible to
be effected except by law has been the whole purpose of this volume.
Now, in these last pages, it may be permissible to glance at the immense
gain to the nation that would arise from a general increase in the pay
of such British workers as are now grossly underpaid.
Physically, no person familiar with the poorer quarters of any
industrial district can doubt that such workers are suffering seriously.
The whole report of the Interdepartmental Committee on Physical
Deterioration is little more than a report of the results of extreme
poverty. Amid the accumulation of melancholy facts, however, is to be
found evidence of a most hopeful kind. In our own country, at least, its
seems to be true that the physical deterioration which comes of poverty
(as distinguished from that which comes of vice) is rather personal than
hereditary, and that the starved child will regain health and normality
amid better conditions; so that even in a single generation any group of
British people suffering from the effects of poverty may be restored to
the average standard of the race if properly fed, properly clothed,
properly housed, not overworked, and allowed plenty of air. The higher
death rate, the inferior physique, the poorer vitality of the ill paid
mark tendencies not inborn but acquired, all of which might and would
disappear with the diminution of poverty and of that ignorance which is
one outcome of poverty, and also, by reaction, one of the contributory
causes of poverty. Degeneracy exists; but not a degenerate class; the
class which we sometimes call degenerate is, as a class, merely starved.
In short all that waste of human life, of human energy and of human
happiness which is going on daily around us and is causing to the
country a daily loss heavier than that of any campaign, is neither
inevitable nor incurable. This misery might be sensibly diminished
within three years, and might be ended within the lifetime of children
already born.
Nor is it the body alone that suffers the deterioration of poverty. The
underfed brain too, remains stunted; and to be constantly hungry is to
be constantly apathetic. Lassitude, inertia, the mental dulness that
knows no pleasure except of the senses, no personal initiative and no
activity save in response to external stimulus, these are the
characteristics of the adult whose childhood has been passed in
overcrowded rooms, whose food has been insufficient, his clothing
inadequate, and to whom no wider horizons have ever been opened. Such an
individual knows nothing of the real joys of life; he is a valueless
citizen, consuming more than he produces, a poor worker, and even when
not personally vicious, an influence rather towards degradation than
towards progress.
But taken early enough and fed, clothed and housed like the children of
the better paid artisan, the same man might have become healthy of body
and alert of mind; a reader of books, a player of outdoor games, a
skilled craftsman taking delight in his good work, a citizen rendering
intelligent public service, a parent of healthy hopeful children,
enjoying and creating prosperity. There are hundreds of such men among
the superior artisans of this country. It has been my lot to know many
of them, and it is my belief that on the whole they and their families
form the happiest, the most valuable and the best conducted portion of
our nation. To bring up into that class those compatriots of theirs and
ours who now, by no fault of their own, suffer not only the privations
but also the degradations of extreme poverty is no impossible feat, and
would be the greatest possible of national services. Happily there are
signs of a growing public desire to remedy the appalling evils vaguely
summarised under the word “sweating,” and of a growing inclination to
seek the remedy along the lines of endeavour marked out by our colonial
brethren.
In the earnest hope that such an endeavour may be made, quickly, yet not
hastily, by the law of Great Britain, and that these chapters may as
soon as possible become out of date, I offer to my fellow countrymen the
conclusions gradually shaped in my own mind by nearly twenty years of
work among industrial problems.
INDEX
Adler: Miss Nettie, 108, 123, 124
Aftalion: A., 2, 255
Alien immigration, 197
America: Children’s work in, 115, 119–122, 128;
“sweating” in, 143;
a living wage in, 149–151;
low cost of production, 184;
cotton trade, 221;
child labour in cotton mills, 226;
southern states, 227
Anti-Sweating league: in Melbourne, 247
Apprentices, parish: Act of, 218
Arbitration Courts in New Zealand, 235, 236
Army and Navy Stores, 176, 177
Australia: wage board in Victoria, 246;
in Melbourne, 247;
minimum wage in Melbourne, 251;
legislation in New South Wales, 257
Babies’ shoe making, 105
Bake houses: boys working in, 109
Ball covering, 15
Bird cage making, 14
Boot finishing, 15
Boot making, 105
Booth: Chas., 6, 65, 148, 155, 201
Bosanquet: Mrs, 153, 154, 155, 157, 158, 159
Box making: children’s work, 106
Brickfields: children working in, 110
Cabmen, 76
Cabs and Omnibuses Bill: report of select committee, 82, 83, 97
Cadbury: Edward, 3
“Case for the Factory Acts: The,” 114
Chapman: Prof. S. J., 220
“Child Labour” (_No. 93, Annals_ _of American Academy_), 119 120–122,
125, 128–130
Children: as home workers, 104;
unpunctual at school through home work, 105;
babies’ shoe making, 105, 108;
dodging educational authorities, 106;
working all night, 106;
match box making, 106, 108;
string bag making, 107;
tooth brush making, 107;
kid belt making, 107;
wood chopping, 107;
wood polishing, 107;
steel covering, 108;
fish basket sewing, 108;
in small laundries, 108;
half timers, 112;
errand boys, 108;
Saturday and evening boys, 108;
barbers’ lather boys, 108;
matching girls, 109;
street trading, 109;
their labour of little use to them later in life, 109;
boys working in bake houses, 109;
in brick-fields, 110;
heavy loads, 110–111;
in textile trades, 110–111, 112;
in the potteries, 114;
general remarks on child labour, 140
Civil Service Stores, 177
Clerks and Bookkeepers, 71, 138
Committee on wage-earning children, 108
Competition, free: its effect upon labour, 166;
checks upon, 195
Confectionery, 29, 32, 110
Consumers: Associations of, 176
Consumers’ League, A: impractibility of, 205–211;
in America, 210;
influence on public opinion, 210
Co-operation: Industrial, 176, 177, 180
Co-operative Stores, 201, 202
Co-operative Union, 180
Cost of labour: recognition of its true cost, 173
Cotton mills: children’s work, 110–111, 112–113
Cotton trade: not natural to Britain, 214–217;
condition of workers in 1830, 217;
prosperity increased under higher wages, 219;
in Bristol, 227
“Cotton Trade Circular,” 222
Cotton workers: educational improvement of, 225
Crabtree: Mr, Inspector of Factories, 221
Cuthbertson: Miss, Inspector of Factories, Victoria, 256
_Daily News_, 59, 60
_Daily News_: Sweated Industries Exhibition, 10, 18, 142, 148
Danger of Fire, 35
Dockers’ Union, 135
Dressmaking, 29, 32
Drink and Poverty: some facts about, 198;
lessened by shorter hours, 200
Early marriages: reason for, among working class, 197
Economy of high wages, 165, 184, 228
Edgworth: Maria, 115
Education: effect of child labour on, 125
Efficiency: remarks on, 158
Emigration, 196, 211
Employers: responsibility for strikes, 184;
duty to pay a fair wage, 187;
in cotton trade, 225;
in Bristol, 227
Errand boys, 108;
Saturday and evening workers, 108;
barbers’ lather boys, 108
Factories: reports of chief inspector, 25, 29, 32, 37, 38, 39, 109–111,
221;
in Australia, 252–254, 256
Factory Acts: beneficial effects, 181, 188, 194, 224, 267;
in Australia, 247;
evasion of, 255
Factory girls: an appreciation of, 134;
manners of, 136;
code of honour, 137
Factory work: general remarks on, 133
Factory workers: their condition compared with home workers, 23, 46
Fair wage, a: what is a fair wage, 161;
pessimist view, 212–214
Fines and deductions, 39, 41, 54
Fish basket sewing, 108
Foreign Competition: effect on a minimum wage, 271
Free Libraries, 225
_Free Trade League_, 220
Gaskell: P, 217
Germany, 143;
cotton trade in, 221;
possibility of legislation to curtail sweating, 264, 265
Gissing: Geo., 72
Glass works in America, 120–121
_Guardian: The_, 210
Half timers, 112
Health: of home workers, 17;
of factory workers, 25;
of shop assistants, 55;
of child workers, 115, 121–125
Heavy loads, 110–111
High wages and cheap production, 260
“Historical Development of the Factory Acts,” 114
Hogg: Mrs, 18, 118
Home Industries for women: report on, 2
Home Office enquiry, 125
Home work: report on, 2;
in Birmingham, 3;
match box making, 3;
shirt making, 10;
paper-bag making, 11;
toy making, 13;
pipe making, 13;
bird cage making, 14;
weaving, 14;
boot finishing, 15, 105;
ball covering, 15;
tooth brush making, 18, 20;
miscellaneous trades, 21
Home workers: Condition of, 17;
general remarks on, 132;
impossibility of organisation, 186
Hours of work: piece work, 16;
long hours in factories, 29, 30, 31;
shop assistants, 53, 58;
in Scotland, 66;
waitresses, 69;
railway men, 77;
omnibus men, 83;
motor omnibus men, 92;
children’s hours of work at home, 108;
in tin works, 110;
work at home after closing hours, 188;
women in textile trades, 218
House of Lords Committee on Early Closing of Shops, 68
Hutchins: Miss B. L., 114
Industrial efficiency: effect of Child Labour on, 130–131;
caused by fair wages, 227
Industrial Unions of New Zealand, 234
Ireland: copartnership in, 179
Ironing, 108
Irwin: Miss, 3, 17, 66, 67, 68, 69
Jackman: Marshall, 124, 125
Jam-making. _See_ Confectionery
Jarvis family: History of, 7
Johnson: Dr, 157
“Juvenile wage earners and their work,” 108, 123
Kelley: Mrs Florence, 120, 125, 129
Kid belt making, 107
Labour and other commodities: difference in essence between, 171
Labour co-partnerships, 176;
in Ireland, 179
Laundries: long hours in, 31
Laundry work, 108
Lead poisoning: risk of, 37
Legislation for a minimum wage: need of, 272
Living wage: estimate of, 149
London County Council: as employer, 100;
contrasted with private companies, 101;
bye-laws relating to child labour, 119, 124;
Medical Officer’s report, 123
_Longman’s Magazine_, 206
MacDonald: J. Ramsay, 65
Manchester physicians’ report on child labour in 1784, 112
“Manufacturing population of England,” 217
Martindale: Miss, Inspector of Factories, 111
Match box making, 3, 7;
child workers, 106
Matching girls, 109
Matheson: M. Cécile, 3
Maxwell: Mr, Scottish Wholesale Co-operative Society, 261, 262
Maxwell: W. B., 72
_Melbourne Age: The_; crusade against sweating, 247
Minimum wage: legislation in New Zealand, 231–246;
in Australia, 246–258;
practicability of legislation in England, 258–259;
effect of a minimum wage, 271
Miscellaneous trades, 21
Mitchell: John, 149–151
Moral aspect of shop assistant’s life, 72
Moral effect of child labour, 127–131
Nail and chain making, 12
National Anti-Sweating League, 261
National aspect of better conditions, 192
National income, 195
National Union of Shop Assistants, etc., 55
New Zealand: state arbitration, 231–239;
industrial unions of, 234;
arbitration court, 235, 236;
wages in, 244
Non-competitive systems, 176
Non-producers, 195
Novels: showing shop assistant’s life, 72
Old age pension: in Australia, 256
Omnibus men: drivers and conductors; licences, 81;
wages, 83;
expenses, 83;
liability for accidents, 85;
drivers and conductors of motor omnibuses;
hours of work, 92;
wages, 92;
breakdowns, 94;
uniform, 98;
spies, 99;
general remarks, 140, 143, 164
“Organised labour,” 151
Ormsby: Sir Lambert, 124
Over population, 195
Packing and filling: cocoa, 25;
tea, 26;
jam, 26;
cartridges, 26
Paper-bag making, 11, 24
Payment, _See_ Wages
Peel: Sir Robert, 114
Physical deterioration, 273
Pipe making, 13
Potteries: children working in, 114
Poverty: investigations into, 148–149;
physical and mental effects on the individual, 273–274
Railway workers: hours, 77;
porters’ wages, 77;
“blacklisting,” 78;
general remarks on, 140, 164
Reeves, W. Pember, 231, 233, 237, 239, 248
Rochdale pioneers, 178
Romilly: Sir Samuel, 113
Rowntree: Seebohm, 148, 149
Ryan: Father, 149, 151
Sanitary Acts: competition checked by, 181, 191, 194
Sanitary conditions: of factories, 33;
shop assistants’ quarters, 58;
high standard in cotton factories, 223
Schoenhof: J., 131, 165, 184, 228
Scottish Council for Women’s Trades, 3, 126
Scottish Wholesale Co-operative Society, 261
Shann: Geo., M.A., 3
Shirt making, 10, 144
Shop assistants: living in, 48;
code of rules, 54;
wages, 60;
“premiums,” 60;
commissions, 62;
condition in Scotland, 66;
general remarks, 138
Small: Prof. Albion, 149
Spiers & Pond, Ltd., 70
Squire, Miss: Inspector of Factories, 35, 36
State arbitration in New Zealand, 231;
success of, 239
Steel covering, 108
Street trading by children, 109
Strikes, 183, 184;
in the colonies, 232
String bag making, 107
“Sweating”: definition of the term, 1;
not confined to cheap goods, 22, 142;
general remarks, 132, 143;
not unknown in the colonies, 230;
a source of weakness to nations, 266–269
Tailoring, 29;
wages in New Zealand, 244
Tariff Commission, 220, 225, 226
Tattersall: Mr W., 222
Temperance, 198, 211
Temperature: extremes of, 40;
in cotton factories, 223–224
Textile trades: Children’s work, 110–111, 112–113
Thear: Miss, Inspector of Factories, Victoria, 256
Thomas: Dr, 123
Thrift among working classes, 201;
not advisable, 202–205
Tooth brush making, 18, 20, 107
Toy making, 12
Trade unions, 182, 184;
mistakes of, 185;
as provident societies, 201, 202;
in cotton trade, 225, 226;
lack of trade organisation in Bristol cotton mills, 227, 228;
in New Zealand, 237
Underpaid worker: cost to the nation, 170–171
Underpayment: how it comes about, 144–160;
not caused by inefficiency, 159
United States: _see_ America
Ventilation, 224
Verney, Mr: Inspector of Factories, 222
Vines, Miss: Inspector of Factories, 31, 37
Wages: match box making, 5, 7;
shirt making, 10, 144–145;
paper-bag making, 12;
toy making, 13;
clay pipe making, 14;
ball covering, 16;
brush making, 20;
miscellaneous trades, 21;
packing and filling, 23, 26, 27, 28;
machinists, 41;
shop assistants, 60;
waitresses, 70;
female clerks and bookkeepers, 71;
railway porters, 77;
omnibus men, 83;
motor omnibus men, 92;
children’s wages for home work, 105–106;
wages, how determined, 152;
what is a fair wage, 161;
articles of dress, 188;
textile workers, 218–219;
tailoresses in New Zealand, 244;
factory wages in Australia, 252–254;
high wages and cheap production, 260–261
Waitresses: in restaurants, 67;
in railway stations, 68;
hours of work, 67, 68;
expenses of, 69;
general remarks on, 138
Washing appliances, 37
Watts: Alderman; of Manchester, 123
Weaving, 14
Webb: Catherine, 176
Webb: Mrs Sydney, 114
Wells: H. G., 72
Whiteley’s, Ltd.: William, 54
Women in the printing trades, 65
_Women’s Co-operative Guild_, 180
“Women’s employment in shops,” 67, 69
_Women’s Industrial Council_, 2, 3, 6, 7, 17, 56, 72, 188, 189
“Women’s work and wages,” 3, 39, 65
Women workers: difficulty of organisation, 185, 186
Wood chopping, 107
Wood polishing, 107
Woodward: S. W., 130
Work done below cost price, 164
Worth: meanings of, 162
Zola: E., 72
PRINTED BY
TURNBULL AND SPEARS,
EDINBURGH
-----
Footnote 1:
A. Aftalion, “Le developpement de la fabrique et le travail à domicile
dans les industries de l’habillement.” Paris. Librairie du recueil J.
B. Sirey et du Journal du Palais.
Footnote 2:
“Home Industries of Women in London.” Report of an Inquiry in
thirty-five trades.
Footnote 3:
“Women’s Work and Wages.” A phase of life in an industrial city. By
Edward Cadbury, M. Cécile Matheson and George Shann, M.A.
Footnote 4:
Handbook to the Exhibition, p. 139.
Footnote 5:
Mrs F. G. Hogg was one of the most valued members of the Women’s
Industrial Council. Her ability, judgment, perseverance, and devotion
were all admirable, and her early death has left in the memories of
those who worked with her a blank that can never be filled up.
Footnote 6:
Report of the Chief Inspector, 1905, pp. 297–98.
Footnote 7:
A friend has just sent me a note of a similar case, that of a
cartridge filler, who received 1d. for filling 1000 cartridges. She
said that she could fill 25,000 a day, when busy. “But,” adds my
friend, “she is a physical wreck, having worked at this for ten
years.”
Footnote 8:
Report of the Chief Inspector, 1905, p. 50.
Footnote 9:
Report of Chief Inspector, 1905, p. 99.
Footnote 10:
Report of Chief Inspector, 1905, p. 300.
Footnote 11:
Report of Chief Inspector, 1905, p. 302.
Footnote 12:
Report of Chief Inspector, 1905, p. 290.
Footnote 13:
Report of Chief Inspector, 1905, p. 34.
Footnote 14:
Report of Chief Inspector, 1905, p. 292.
Footnote 15:
Report of Chief Inspector, 1905, p. 293.
Footnote 16:
Report of Chief Inspector, 1905, p. 280.
Footnote 17:
The article from which this is an extract was published (in the _New
Review_) in September 1891; but the practices described, are, I fear,
not yet extinct, though the law is succeeding by degrees in making
them risky.
Footnote 18:
“Life in the Shop.” A series of articles reprinted from the _Daily
Chronicle_, pp. 5 and 6.
Footnote 19:
The National Union of Shop Assistants, Clerks, and Warehousemen, now
growing very powerful, and guided by able, experienced and energetic
officials, has of late done much towards inducing employers to abolish
or diminish some of their fines.
Footnote 20:
A peculiarly shocking example of the abuses that may arise from a
system of fining was lately brought to my knowledge. It is not recent,
and must, I think and hope, be unique. I have found no witness who has
ever heard of a similar instance. Of its truth, however, the source
from which it comes forbids doubt. These are the facts. In a certain
retail shop selling drapery and fancy goods the foreman, whose
business it apparently was to collect fines, was required to make up a
fixed sum of money from this source every week; and being a man with
wife and children, afraid above all things of being left without
employment, was accustomed to inflict sufficient fines to make up this
total. Two girls, whose weekly wage of 11s. he had thus reduced, on
one occasion, to 4s., took to evil courses; and the foreman when dying
(in a hospital) told a lady visitor the circumstances, and said that
he felt himself responsible for the downfall of the girls. The lady
(an experienced worker in a girls’ club) made enquiries, which
confirmed the startling tale. She followed up the girls, reclaimed one
and put her into respectable employment, but failed with the other and
was unable to keep sight of her.
Footnote 21:
These cases are taken from the reports of an investigator employed
some years ago by the Women’s Industrial Council. This lady, who was
an experienced assistant, spent over two years in passing from shop to
shop, remaining long enough in each to obtain complete information as
to wages, conditions, food, rules, etc.
Footnote 22:
_Daily News_, 25th August, 1906. Letter signed “Onesimus.”
Footnote 23:
Women’s Work and Wages, p. 47, note.
Footnote 24:
Edited by J. Ramsay MacDonald. P. S. King & Son.
Footnote 25:
Women’s Employment in Shops. Report of an enquiry conducted for the
National Federal Council of Scotland for Women’s Trades; by Margaret
Irwin, p. 7.
Footnote 26:
Women Shop Assistants. The evidence given by Miss Irwin before the
Select Committee of the House of Lords on Early Closing of Shops, p.
5.
Footnote 27:
Women’s Employment in Shops, p. 6.
Footnote 28:
Report of Select Committee on the Cabs and Omnibuses (Metropolis)
Bill, 1906, p. 5, par. 31.
Footnote 29:
As these terms may possibly be unfamiliar to some readers, it may be
as well to explain that, on a time and a half rate, every penny of the
ordinary wage becomes a penny-halfpenny; and that, on a time and a
quarter rate, every such penny becomes a penny-farthing.
Footnote 30:
Report of Select Committee on the Cabs and Omnibuses (Metropolis)
Bill, 1906, p. 4, par. 19.
Footnote 31:
Report of Select Committee on the Cabs and Omnibuses (Metropolis)
Bill, 1906, p. 4, par. 19.
Footnote 32:
Juvenile wage earners and their work. By Nettie Adler, hon. Sec.
Committee on Wage-Earning children. Progress, July 1906.
Footnote 33:
Report for 1905, p. 52.
Footnote 34:
Report for 1905, p. 52.
Footnote 35:
A “young person” means, according to the Factory Acts, one under 18.
Footnote 36:
Report for 1905, p. 296.
Footnote 37:
The Case for the Factory Acts. Edited by Mrs Sidney Webb. Chapter II.
The Historical Development of the Factory Acts. By Miss B. L.
Hutchins, pp. 80–81.
Footnote 38:
Case for the Factory Acts, pp. 82–3.
Footnote 39:
Bye-laws under the Employment of Children Act have now been passed in
many towns, and the London County Council has at last been permitted
by the Home Office to establish a fairly satisfactory code. Really
satisfactory no code can be which sanctions any employment of children
during school years, but in this department, as in others, the
interposition of the law has done something to check glaring
industrial evils.
Footnote 40:
_Child Labor._ A menace to industry, education and good citizenship
(No. 93 of the Annals of the American Academy of political and social
science. March 1906.) p. 318.
Footnote 41:
_Child Labor_, p. 293.
Footnote 42:
Some ethical gains through legislation. By Florence Kelley, p. 44.
Footnote 43:
_Ibid._, p. 45.
Footnote 44:
_Ibid._, p. 49.
Footnote 45:
Juvenile wage earners. By Nettie Adler, Hon. Sec. Committee on Wage
earning children. _Progress._ July 1906.
Footnote 46:
Minutes of Evidence. Questions 12644, 12758.
Footnote 47:
These facts and more to the same purpose may be found in an article by
Miss Adler in the _Guardian_ of May 9, 1906.
Footnote 48:
Some ethical gains through legislation, p. 86.
Footnote 49:
Pp. 12, 13, 14.
Footnote 50:
Inter-Departmental Committee on the employment of school children.
Minutes of Evidence, pp. 275, 455, 471.
Footnote 51:
Child Labor, p. 302.
Footnote 52:
Child Labor, p. 275.
Footnote 53:
Some ethical gains through legislation, p. 17.
Footnote 54:
Some ethical gains through legislation, p. 42.
Footnote 55:
Mr S. W. Woodward, of the firm of Woodward and Lathrop, Washington, in
a short paper called: “A Business Man’s View of Child Labour,” writes:
“It may be stated as a safe proposition that for every dollar earned
by a child under 14 years of age tenfold will be taken from their
earning capacity in later life.” Child Labor, p. 362.
Footnote 56:
J. Schoenhof. Economy of High Wages, p. 38.
Footnote 57:
It must not be assumed from the above anecdote that all factory girls
are foul-mouthed. This was by no means true even in the year after the
Dock strike, and is much less true now. But I have no doubt there are
still factories in which the habit of foul speech is a sort of
fashion.
Footnote 58:
Handbook to Sweated Industries Exhibition, p. 23.
Footnote 59:
Poverty. By J. Seebohm Rowntree, p. 229.
Footnote 60:
A Living Wage: Its ethical and economic aspect. Macmillans. New York,
April 1906.
Footnote 61:
_Ibid._, p. 136. I must not be understood as committing myself to
these figures, which apply to America. They are employed here to show
that a large proportion of American wage earners do not receive the
sum considered by experts as affording a “Living Wage.”
Footnote 62:
I have not personally referred to Mr Mitchell’s book, the title of
which is “Organised Labour.” Professor Ryan gives the pages from which
this extract comes: pp. 116, 117.
Footnote 63:
A Living Wage, p. 150.
Footnote 64:
_Ibid._, p. 164.
Footnote 65:
The Strength of the People. By Helen Bosanquet, p. 114.
Footnote 66:
Of course efficiency is valuable for other than financial reasons; but
we are dealing now only with the question of payment.
Footnote 67:
Economy of high wages, p. 392.
Footnote 68:
If, at this point, any reader should pause to ask: “What, then, ought
the Brothers Cheeryble to do? Ought they to leave the selling of
safety pins to some less scrupulous persons? Or ought they to go on
underpaying the cappers?” I reply that the worthy twins should follow
neither of these courses, but should bend their minds to inventing or
getting invented a machine that would cap the pins even more cheaply,
because much more expeditiously, than the hand workers. The reduction
in the cost of production would then allow the payment of decent wages
to the operators. Mechanical operations should be done by machines,
and hand work should be reserved for those which demand individual
variation or peculiar and special perfection. The capping of safety
pins, which falls under neither of these heads, is emphatically an
operation to which the human brain and hand should not be put.
Footnote 69:
Industrial Co-operation. Edited by Catherine Webb, p. 242.
These figures do not include middle class joint stock associations,
such as the Army and Navy Stores.
Footnote 70:
Industrial Co-operation, p. 80.
Footnote 71:
In order to do so readers must address themselves to the Co-operative
Union, 2 Nicholas Croft, High St., Manchester. It is much to be
regretted that so valuable and informing a work should be published in
a manner that almost restricts its influence to persons who are
already convinced co-operators. The outer world of readers who badly
need to understand the facts and meanings of the great co-operative
movement have no opportunity of meeting with the one volume that
compendiously explains the existing conditions.
Footnote 72:
Economy of high wages, p. 63.
Footnote 73:
Of course a minimum rate of wages and sometimes indeed a complete
scale of wages has often been fixed by various local bodies or
departments; but only when such bodies have been, directly or
indirectly, employers of labour. Thus the duty of employers to pay a
fair wage has been recognised, but not, as yet, the duty or the right
of the State to enforce the payment.
Footnote 74:
It may be worth noting here—though the point lies outside the scope of
this chapter—that an expansion of trade when wages do not rise leads
to the extraordinary state known as overproduction, in which producers
complain that they cannot find a market for their wares, at the same
time that hundreds of fellow citizens are seen to be in crying need of
these same wares.
Footnote 75:
Mr Charles Booth’s tables show that in 1889, out of a population of
891,539, in East London, there were no less than 47,225 members of
various Friendly Societies.
Footnote 76:
This explanation of the impracticability of a Consumers’ League is
reprinted, with the alteration of a few words, from the Supplement to
the _Guardian_, the Editor of which has given me leave to reproduce it
in this chapter.
Footnote 77:
A prominent employer writes to me in December 1906 that wages have
since risen 2½ per cent.
Footnote 78:
A Reply to the Report of the Tariff Commission on the Cotton Trade.
Written for the Free Trade League by S. J. Chapman, M.A., Professor of
Political Economy at the University of Manchester.
Footnote 79:
Since writing these lines I have been informed that improved machinery
and management have been introduced, and that the outlook has
consequently improved also. But it is safe to prophesy that unless her
wages should rise very substantially, the Bristol worker will not
reach the standard of the Lancashire worker.
Footnote 80:
Economy of High Wages, p. 66.
Footnote 81:
Economy of High Wages, p. 398.
Footnote 82:
W. Pember Reeves. State Experiments in Australia and New Zealand. Vol.
ii. p. 29. To this volume I am indebted for the account of all the
facts preceding and accompanying the enactment of the earliest laws
under which a minimum wage could be legally fixed in the colonies. Any
reader desiring fuller details of these most interesting developments
should refer to Mr Reeves’s second volume.
Footnote 83:
It seems from the context that 1s. 6d. was the price paid for making
the dozen shirts throughout, and that the finisher’s share was but a
part of this, since a night’s work, in which she did a dozen shirts
and something more, only brought her one shilling.
Footnote 84:
W. Pember Reeves. State Experiments in Australia and New Zealand. Vol.
ii. pp. 111–112.
Footnote 85:
Journal of the Department of Labour. New Zealand. Vol. XI. pp.
267–268.
Footnote 86:
Journal of the Department of Labour. New Zealand. Vol. XIV. pp. 70–76.
Footnote 87:
This account of the establishment of the first Wage Boards is derived
from Mr Reeves’s State Experiments in Australia and New Zealand, vol.
ii. chap. 1.
Footnote 88:
A resolution of both Houses is now required.
Footnote 89:
Report of the Chief Inspector of Factories, work-rooms and shops.
Victoria, 1905, p. 62.
Footnote 90:
Report of Chief Inspector of Factories. Victoria, p. 68.
Footnote 91:
Report of Chief Inspector of Factories. Victoria, 1905, p. 43.
Footnote 92:
Report of Chief Inspector of Factories. Victoria, 1905, p. 19.
Footnote 93:
_Ibid._, p. 63.
Footnote 94:
Report of Chief Inspector of Factories. Victoria, p. 58.
Footnote 95:
Report of the Chief Inspector of Factories. Victoria, 1905, p. 60.
Footnote 96:
_Ibid._, p. 14.
Footnote 97:
Report of Chief Inspector of Factories. Victoria, 1905, p. 39.
Footnote 98:
See the speech of Mr Maxwell (to whom personally, it may be added,
this excellent state of things is due) on p. 38 of the National
Anti-Sweating League’s Report of a Conference on the Minimum Wage.
Footnote 99:
A very strange instance of divergence of wages in one factory came
under my notice some 15 or 16 years ago. This also was in the shirt
trade. A strike arose in a large factory, and when a register came to
be taken of the wages received by the various women it was
discovered—greatly to the surprise of the workers concerned—that there
was a difference of almost 50 per cent. between the rates paid in one
workroom and those paid in another, both being under the same roof,
and the work being so absolutely identical that the two groups were
frequently engaged upon garments cut by the same stroke from the same
roll of material. The one room was superintended by a forewoman who
resisted any attempt to lower wages, and who, being a valuable
official, was able to impose her wishes; in the other the forewoman
meekly accepted any reductions proposed by the firm. I need hardly add
that the young women who worked in the former room were markedly
superior in appearance, in manners and in intelligence to those
belonging to the latter. Those who worked under the good forewoman
were, indeed, some of the best looking and most agreeable girls with
whom I have ever been brought into contact.
Footnote 100:
There are no doubt plenty of industries of which employers engaged in
them would declare beforehand that wages could not possibly be raised
without the ruining of the trade. But employers in the cotton trade
were of the same opinion and experience has shown that they were
mistaken.
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