THE STANDARD OF COMFORT
In his book, “The Living Wage,” published in 1912, Mr. Philip Snowden
devotes the third chapter to an estimation of the number of adult men,
employed in the principal trades of the United Kingdom, who are getting
less than 25s. a week. He quotes Professor Bowley, who in 1911 announced
that 2,500,000 adult men were getting less than 25s. a week when working
full time. This number, he explains, would be considerably increased
were the figures based on actual earnings, as in almost every trade men
occasionally, or even habitually, work short weeks, and get short pay
during some part of the year.
Mr. Snowden, moreover, considers that Professor Bowley had
under-estimated the number of adult men who, at full rates of pay, were
earning less than 25s. a week. He takes Board of Trade returns, which
show that in the cotton industry, which is one of the best paid of our
great trades, 40 per cent. of adult men earned less than 25s. a week;
that in the wool-combing industry the average wage for adult men on full
time was 17s. 6d. a week; that in the linen industry 44 per cent. of the
adult men earned less than 20s. a week, and 36 per cent. earned between
20s. and 30s.; that in the jute industry 49 per cent. of the adult men
earned less than 20s. a week, and 36 per cent. earned between 20s. and
30s.; that in the silk industry 19 per cent. of the adult men earned less
than 20s. a week, and 54 per cent. earned between 20s. and 30s.; and he
took also a summary of the _actual_ earnings of the adult men in the
textile trades of the United Kingdom, which shows that for one week of
September, 1906, 48 per cent. earned less than 25s. a week.
For other occupations, Mr. Snowden, still quoting Board of Trade figures,
says that in the clothing trade 7 per cent. of adult men earned less than
20s. a week, and 27 per cent. between 20s. and 30s.
Of bricklayers’ labourers 55.9 per cent. earned under 25s. a
week.
Of masons’ labourers 67 per cent. earned under 25s. a week.
Of plumbers’ labourers 54 per cent. earned under 25s. a week.
Of painters’ labourers 33 per cent. earned under 25s. a week.
Of builders’ labourers 51 per cent. earned under 25s. a week.
A still later return of the Board of Trade gives information as to the
wages of railway men in 1911. The figures show that 63 per cent. of
the adult men got less than 25s. a week. The earnings of agricultural
labourers, as given by the Board of Trade, for 1907 were 15s. 2d. a week
in cash, or 18s. 4d. a week, counting all allowances. Mr. Snowden sums up
the clearly set out facts given in his chapter thus:
“The facts cited in this chapter show that on the average something like
one-half of the adult men, most of whom have a family dependent upon
their earnings, do not earn 25s. 9d. a week, and that of this half,
a very considerable proportion receive very much less than a pound a
week. When we have considered the cost of living, it will be seen how
wholly inadequate these wages are, and how inevitable it is that the
consequences of this insufficiency should show themselves in the physical
and social conditions of the wage-earning classes.”
In his estimate, Professor Bowley calculated that about 8,000,000 adult
men were employed in regular occupations in the United Kingdom, and that
of these 32 per cent., or nearly one-third, were earning, at full-time
work, less than 25s. a week. As we see, Mr. Snowden comes to a different
conclusion, and reckons that 50 per cent. of the adult men in regular
employment are getting less than 25s. a week. If we take the smaller
of these two estimates and reckon that one-fifth of the adult men are
unmarried, we get something like 2,000,000 families living on a wage
which is under 25s. a week. Again, to quote from Mr. Snowden, “Sir Robert
Giffen estimated twenty years ago that there were 2,000,000 families
where the total income did not exceed a pound a week.” Allowing that the
average family consists of a man and his wife and two children, we get
8,000,000 persons who are living more or less as are the people whose
daily life has been described in the previous chapters of this book,
while, if we take Mr. Snowden’s own estimate, the number is far greater.
That means that the great bulk of this enormous mass of people are
under-fed, under-housed, and insufficiently clothed. The children among
them suffer more than the adults. Their growth is stunted, their mental
powers are cramped, their health is undermined.
A hundred years ago their fathers would have regarded these children
as economic assets, and the family income would have been produced by
every member who was over a very tender age. During the last century
the State prohibited the employment of children under a certain age—an
age which, as wisdom grows, tends to become higher and higher. By this
necessary action the State formally invested itself with the ultimate
responsibility for the lives and welfare of its children, and the
guardianship thus exercised has continually been enlarged in scope until
it has assumed supreme control of the nurture and training of the youth
of the nation. A birth now means that a new human being must be fed,
clothed, and housed in a manner which the State as guardian considers
sufficient, for a period which we now hope to raise to sixteen years.
If a man in these days sets his young children to earn money, or, if
they be not fed, clothed, cared for, and sent regularly to school, he
can be put in prison. If the children’s mother be a wage-earner, she can
also be sent to prison if her children are not sufficiently cared for.
Even the non-earning mother who has only what her husband chooses to
give her can be imprisoned if a magistrate decide that any child-neglect
is chargeable to her. It would seem reasonable to expect that when the
ultimate responsibility for their welfare is undertaken by a rich and
powerful State, children should at least be in receipt of sufficient
food, shelter, warmth, and clothing.
Instead, however, of co-operating with parents and seeing to it that
its wards are supplied with such primary necessaries, this masculine
State, representing only male voters, and, until lately, chiefly those
of the richer classes, has been crude and unwise in its relations with
all parents guilty of the crime of poverty. With the best intentions it
has piled upon them responsibilities which it has left them to cope with
unaided. We still have the children of sober, industrious men and women
living lives which maim and stunt them and make of them a handicap for
the very State of which they are part. And we have parents whose wages
are insufficient for their own needs spending themselves to perform
the impossible, and, while they fail, the State—their partner in
responsibility—looks the other way.
The first remedy for this state of things which springs to the mind of
the social reformer is a legal minimum wage. The discussion of a minimum
wage, which is at the same time to be a family wage, is exceedingly
difficult. We realise that wages are not now paid on a family basis. If
they were we should not have 2,500,000 adult men receiving for full-time
work a sum which the writer has no hesitation in saying is less than
sufficient for the proper maintenance, and that on the lowest scale, of
one adult person. To pay wages in future, on an adequate family basis, to
every adult worker who could possibly have helpless children dependent
upon him or her would be a startlingly new departure. There are none,
in fact, who advocate it. And yet if we are really attempting to solve
the problem of hungry children by minimum wage legislation, we ought to
aim at no less. Of course, what usually is advocated is the paying of a
family wage to all adult men, while paying women an individual wage—the
assumption being that women never maintain families. But we know this
assumption to be untrue. Many thousands of women do maintain families,
and if, through the medium of the minimum wage, their children also are
to be kept in decency and comfort, the wages of women must also be on the
family basis. Another difficulty in dealing with a family wage is the
question of what sized family? There is no standard either in numbers or
in age. If the wage be calculated upon a wife and two children, it will
not support a wife and six children. Nor if it be calculated upon three
children under four will it support in equal efficiency three children
of ten, eleven and thirteen. Further, if a law which would keep children
at school until the age of sixteen should happily come into force, the
difficulty of reckoning a minimum wage which would suit everybody would
be still greater.
A third difficulty is the fact that money paid as wage for work done
must, in the nature of things, belong wholly and entirely to the person
who performs the work. He or she is free to devote such money to any
purpose they think best, and cases are not unknown of children who do
not receive even such nurture as their parents’ means could allow. Many
people solve these knotty points by dropping women bread-winners out of
the problem, by arranging that the family consists of five persons—a man,
his wife, and three children—and by assuming that every parent thinks
more of his or her children’s welfare than of self. By doing this, they
deal with theories instead of facts.
The two sums that have been seriously discussed by such various
authorities as Mr. Rowntree, Mr. Charles Booth, and the Labour party
are 25s. a week and 30s. a week. Neither sum is really enough in some
localities should there be more than three children, who are to be
properly housed as well as properly dressed and fed. And neither sum
as a hard and fast minimum, even for men only, is considered practical
politics by anybody. Scientific minimum wage schemes must consider and
give weight to the conditions of each trade and locality. Many decisions
in the worst paid trades will follow the example of the decisions under
the Trades Boards Act, and when a minimum has been arrived at it will
be—though an advance on present wages—insufficient perhaps to keep in
real efficiency and comfort a single adult.
Moreover, to keep the children of the nation in health and strength
is too important and vital a responsibility to be placed entirely on
the shoulders of one section of the community—namely, the employers of
labour. It is a responsibility which should be undertaken by the only
authority which is always equal to its complete fulfilment—the State.
Therefore, although any minimum wage scheme which proposes to raise
the bottom wages in any trade or trades, or for any group or groups
of workers, is a necessary part of legislation, and must be urgently
insisted upon in any plan for social reform, no minimum wage legislation
now proposed, or likely to be proposed, will deal adequately with the
question of all the children of the working poor. Yet unless we do deal
with all of them, and deal adequately, the problem of the nation’s
children goes unsolved.
Two theories are sometimes seriously brought forward as means by which
the problem of hungry children could be dealt with. One is that if
only the poor could be induced to cut down their families to fit their
incomes there would be no problem. The other is, that if only the woman
with 20s. a week knew how to spend it she could feed, lodge, and clothe
her family with perfect ease. The first of these two ideas—if it ever
possibly could be put into practice—would find a cure for poverty by the
dying out of all the poor people. The man with 20s. and less could not
even marry; the man with 25s. might perhaps marry, but could have no
children; the man with 30s. might have one or two children—one is tempted
to say “and so on.” But the people with incomes over the income-tax level
do not nowadays as a rule err on the side of too large families. Many
people with the comparatively enormous sum of £10 a week hesitate to
have more than one or two children. It is obvious that were the children
of the poor limited according to wage there would be no corresponding
advance in the size of the families of the rich. It is not only that the
nation would shrink, but the wage-earner would automatically cease to
reproduce himself. It seems an heroic way of curing his difficulties.
Obviously as a palliative in individual cases the plan of limiting the
family according to wage appeals with great force to the well-fed and
more fortunate observer, but as a national measure to deal with poverty
it fails to convince. That a man with 24s. a week is unwise to have six
children is perfectly true. But, then, what sized family would he be wise
to have? If he were really prudent and careful of his future he would,
on such a wage, neither marry nor have children at all. He could in that
case live economically on 20s. a week and save the 4s. towards his old
age. But we cannot expect Professor Bowley’s 2,500,000 adult men to act
on those lines. The fact is they want to marry and they want to have
children. As either of these courses is unwise on 24s. a week, they are
in for a life of imprudence anyhow. The very facts of their poverty—close
quarters and lack of mental interest and amusement, and, above all,
lack of money—help to make the limitation of their family almost an
impossibility to them.
The other suggestion has been already dealt with in previous chapters.
It is always worth while, of course, to teach an improvident and stupid
woman to be careful and clever—if you can. But to put down all the
miseries and crying wants of the children of the poor to the ignorance
and improvidence of their mothers is merely to salve an uneasy conscience
by blaming someone else. It is almost better to face the position and
say, “The poor should not be allowed to have children,” than to pretend
that they could house, clothe, and feed them very well on the money at
their disposal if they chose.
In Schedule A in the First Report of the Departmental Committee, with
respect to the Poor Law Orders, a diet for a child of over two and under
eight years is given, of which one day in any workhouse might be as
follows:
_Breakfast._—Bread, 5 ounces; fresh milk, ½ pint.
_Dinner._—Roast beef, 1½ ounces; potatoes or other vegetables, 4 ounces;
fresh fruit-pudding, 6 ounces.
_Supper._—Seed-cake, 4 ounces; cocoa (half milk), ½ pint.
No mother on 20s. a week could secure such food for her children. It is
not supposed that the Departmental Committee appointed by the President
of the Local Government Board would prescribe an extravagant diet, and
it seems terrible that the children of the hard-working honest poor
should be fed on a diet which is about half that prescribed as the most
economical and very least that a healthy workhouse child should have. In
this report it has been decreed that the workhouse child needs milk. Half
of its evening and morning meals are to be of bread and milk. Further,
“milk” is specially notified as meaning “new milk, whole and undiluted.”
If the workhouse child needs about a pint of whole and undiluted new
milk a day, as well as other food such as vegetables, fruit, bread, and
cocoa, so does the child outside the workhouse. No scheme of porridge and
lentils will do for a child without milk, and milk is expensive. When the
mother has fed the bread-winner in accordance with his tastes and with
some semblance of efficiency, she has no chance of being able to afford
even a half-ration of milk for her children. When she has balanced the
problem of housing against that of feeding, and has decided on the wisest
course open to her, she has still to put her children three and four in
a bed. She cannot separate the infectious from the healthy, nor the boys
from the girls. She can never choose a sanitary and healthful life. She
can only choose the less of two great evils.
No teacher of domestic science, however capable, can instruct girls
scientifically and in detail how adequately to house, clothe, clean,
warm, light, insure, and feed a family of four or five persons on 20s. a
week in London. The excellent instruction given by the L.C.C. teachers
is based on budgets of £3, 35s., or of 28s. for a family of six persons.
It was realised that to teach girls how to manage inadequately would be
false teaching. If the scientific and trained teacher cannot solve the
problem, the untrained, overburdened mother should not be criticised
because she also fails. The work which she is expected to do is of
supreme importance. It would be enlightened wisdom to enable her to do
it.