ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS.
The economic aspect of this many-sided question is undoubtedly one of
the gravest and most worthy of consideration. The unlimited influx of
cheap, destitute, foreign labour, cannot but exercise a prejudicial
effect upon the wages of the native working-classes. It forces the
decent British workman to compete on unequal terms with those who are
willing to work for any wage--however meagre--for any number of hours,
and amid surroundings filthy and disgusting in the extreme. I do not
of course say that it has this effect upon wages in all industries,
but only in those trades which the evil has yet reached. These are not
great trades, perhaps, in the sense of the textile or metal industries,
but they are considerable industries all the same, and they give
employment to hundreds of thousands of men and women.
In the trades and districts chiefly affected, this is the agency
which reduces the price of labour to a level below that upon which
Englishmen and Englishwomen can with decency and self-respect exist,
and which renders effectual combination impossible. Every one with
any practical knowledge of business, will admit that it is the lowest
price which rules the market. If then we have a body of men combining
together for the purpose of getting what they consider to be a fair
wage, how can they maintain that combination, if, when a strike occurs,
or any little dispute arises between employer and employed, by which
the employed hope to get a little better terms for themselves, the
destitute foreigner steps in ready to undersell them, and to work
for little or next to nothing at all? Nor, as things stand, can the
employers be greatly blamed either. In these trades few of them are
great capitalists, the battle of life is pretty hard on them too, and
in struggling to better themselves, they naturally seize every legal
means that offers.
One of the worst features of this system is the "multiplication of
small masters." The subject is a tempting one, but space forbids me to
dwell on it. I would only say that the competition among these small
employers is almost as fierce as the competition among the employed.
Much indignation has been directed against the "sweater," the bloated
human spider, who, according to _Alton Locke_, sucks the life-blood
of his victims, or who more recently has been presented to us in the
pages of _Punch_ as a gorgeously-apparelled, champagne-drinking,
cigar-smoking Hebrew, who, as he rakes in his gold, laughs and grows
fat upon the sufferings of the wretched creatures sacrificed to his
greed.
Such monsters do exist. Of that there can be no doubt. They are by no
means exclusively Hebrews, neither are they confined to the tailoring
trade alone; nor is it necessary to go as far as Whitechapel in
search of them. But a dispassionate study of the facts will show that
the great bulk of the "sweaters" are very poor; and that with their
profits driven down by competition, they can hardly make a living. In
fact, both employers and employed are alike the victims of this fierce
competitive struggle, and of the craze for cheapness at any cost. The
result is that the market is flooded with a quantity of cheap and
inferior articles which injure the trade, and destroy the demand for
good English work.
At present, the two trades most affected are the cheap tailoring and
boot-making. In the former, as a direct consequence, all the horrors
of "sweating" reign supreme. In the latter, the cheaper kind of work
is now taken by foreigners entirely; hundreds of Englishmen who were
formerly employed in it at a fair wage are driven out of employment,
and now seek in vain for work. "Oh," but I hear some say, "they can
turn their hands to something else." But it is not so easy for a man
who has been apprenticed and brought up to a certain trade, to turn
his hand to "something else." His craft is his bread, his trade is
his capital; it is dear to him, for upon it he has lavished all his
skill, all his energies. It is hard that he should be robbed of it by
the foreigner. These two trades are not the only ones affected. In the
cabinet-making, chair-turning, cigar-making, cheap fur trade, and other
industries, the same evil is beginning to work, and always with similar
baleful results. Labour is displaced; Englishmen are robbed of their
work; and if they do not become paupers or something worse, they are
driven from their homes to seek their fortunes anew in some distant
land.
The evil effect of this unchecked immigration upon the price of labour
is very marked. I have collected together a few articles made by
"sweated" workpeople in the East End, and have traced out the cost of
labour in each instance. These samples include a wooden "Windsor"
chair, solidly put together, and neatly turned; it was sold for 1_s._
9_d._, and the price paid for making it was 2-1/2_d._ A fur collarette
of hareskin, dyed gray and lined--really a very decent-looking
article--was sold for 1_s._ 6_d._; labour received, 1-3/4_d._ A pair
of button boots, leather-lined throughout, were bought for 3_s._
11-1/2_d._; labour received 2-1/2_d._ for the "lasting" (_i.e._ sewing,
heeling, and putting together); this 2-1/2_d._ did not include nails,
wax, thread, all necessary to the work, which had to be found by
the workman. Three pairs of boots can be "lasted" in an hour. There
is also the "finishing," which costs 2_d._, and five pairs can be
"finished" in an hour. But the most striking instance of all is that
of a knickerbocker suit, well-made, and properly adorned with braid,
made by a "sweated" workwoman in the East End. It was bought at a shop
for 2_s._ 11_d._, and the woman received for making it 5-1/2_d._; which
wretched pittance did not include needles, thread, and material used
in the binding, all of which had to be found by the person "sweated."
Now, I put it fairly and dispassionately to any unprejudiced person,
if honest labour has no better reward to offer than this, what wonder
if thousands of our people, in despair of earning a decent livelihood,
are driven into vice and degradation--the men to drink, the women to
prostitution?
Much has been said and written about the exact number of these alien
immigrants, which, as has already been pointed out, in the present
dearth of trustworthy statistics, cannot be accurately ascertained.
It is not merely a question of numbers. I submit that it matters
comparatively little to the main argument whether the arrivals in one
particular year were a few thousands more or a few thousands less, or
the precise numbers of "those who return again to the Continent,"
when there are already so many of these indigent foreigners in our
midst. Even supposing for the sake of argument--I do not for one
moment admit it--that the numbers arriving are comparatively small,
they would still have a very bad effect upon the price of wages, in
the trades and industries upon which they entered. The inflow of a
comparatively small number into a neighbourhood where much of the work
is low-skilled and irregular, will often produce an effect which seems
quite out of proportion to the actual number of the invaders. From the
native labourer's point of view, the mere fact of the presence of these
low-living foreigners, ready as they are at any moment to step in and
undersell his labour, constitutes a standing menace to his interests.
In all the trades in which they are employed, the rate of wages is
being perpetually beaten down.
Thus it follows that any argument drawn from the number of these
destitute aliens, as compared with the total population of the United
Kingdom, is obviously wide of the mark. We must consider their
distribution in particular localities and particular trades; more than
that, in order to arrive at any valuable result, we must examine also
into the local and trade distribution of foreign labour _conjointly_.
In this connection the evidence comes almost entirely from the East End
of London. As we have seen, the two trades principally affected are the
cheap tailoring and boot-making. Let us consider the latter first.
Mr. Freak, Secretary of the Shoemakers' Society, stated before the
Immigration Committee, that over 10,000 foreigners were engaged in
the boot-making trade in the East End of London. He said:--"Until
within ten or fifteen years ago, the Jew foreigners did not affect
our trade much; but by degrees they have taken the work that men
generally learned their trade on, such as the commoner class of work.
They simply have taken it to themselves entirely, and the effect has
been that hundreds of our men have to walk about, particularly in
winter-time, who used to be employed on that class of work. These Jew
foreigners work in our trade at this common work sixteen or eighteen
hours a day, and the consequence is, they make a lot of cheap nasty
stuff that destroys the market, and injures us. And if we have a strike
on, or any little dispute occurs in our trade, when we might otherwise
get a little better terms for ourselves, they go and take the work at
any price, and so defeat our ends in getting or attempting to get our
proper wages." Mr. Freak reckons that about 25 per cent. of the persons
engaged in the _whole_ of the boot and shoe trade in the city of London
are foreigners; but that the commoner kind of work is monopolized by
foreigners entirely. He further said that the introduction of this
pauper labour has seriously affected the rate of wages received by
the English operatives, not of course so much in the best shops, but
very greatly in the commoner class of work. It had also the effect
of reducing the employment of a large number of Englishmen, and of
driving hundreds out of work altogether. He went on to say:--"I know
that at the time when I first came to London, any one could get work
at the middle or common class of goods; and now they are sent out to
the homes or given to the sweaters, who take them on the system that
they are working themselves in the way I have mentioned; and the price
is reduced so low that to work single-handed a man could not get his
living. He has to sweat his children or his wife; and if a man and
his wife and children do not want anything more than just bread and
cheese and sleep, then they might get a living out of it; because some
of these Jews who come over will not come out of the house for a whole
week. They will sleep in the same place where they work day after day.
They simply get food and the barest raiment to cover them, and that
is all they can get for their work. I do not think that these foreign
Jews have created any new industry; but they have made the industry in
common work more beastly, and I do think that they are doing an injury
in our foreign markets by the stuff that they make, because a great
quantity of it is made of cardboard and composition. The leather that
is put into the sole is simply a bit of veneer. It is simply a thin
sole covered over a composition--clump as we call it. It is composed of
shreds of leather, ground up, and stuck together."
Now let us consider the cheap tailoring trade in the East End. It
appears, upon the evidence of Dr. Ogle, whose work it is to prepare
the statistical part of the Census, and whose opinion upon all such
matters stands deservedly high, that of the persons engaged in the
tailoring trade, in the parish of St. George's-in-the-East, over 80 per
cent. are foreigners. Mr. Zeitlin, Secretary of the Jews' branch of the
Tailors' Association, himself a Russian Jew, stated before the same
Committee that there were altogether employed in the East End of London
about 25,000 tailors, of whom 10,000 are men and 15,000 women. Out of
the 10,000 men, "mostly foreigners and not born here," three-parts
are Jewish, and one part not Jewish; and of the women three-parts are
English, and one part Jewesses.
Mr. John Burnett, Labour Correspondent of the Board of Trade, who was
specially deputed in August 1887 to make inquiries into the Sweating
system in the East End of London, reported that matters were much
worse there of late years, because of the "enormous influx of pauper
foreigners." He made a rough calculation that of some 20,000 tailors
in the East End of London, 15,000 were foreigners--that is, persons
not born in England; and of the remaining 5000, nearly all were Jews
born in England, who might almost be described as foreigners also,
since in their habits and their customs they have nothing in common
with the native community. He stated that there were not more than 250
Englishmen employed in the cheap tailoring trade in the whole East End
of London. They have all been driven out by Jews. There is, however,
still a considerable employment of Englishwomen. Mr. Burnett also
drafted a memorandum on the immigration of foreigners, and in it he
stated that in respect of the trades and districts chiefly affected by
it, the evil had assumed serious aspects. He considered that London,
Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Glasgow--to some
extent Edinburgh, and also some other Scotch towns--were affected by
the evil. There is of course the general lack of actual statistics as
to the precise amount of the foreign population in these towns; but
the Glasgow Trades' Council, for instance, though it has no specific
information to hand on the subject, states generally that the tailoring
in that city is overrun by Polish Jews. Mr. Burnett contemplates the
time when the ready-made clothing trade will be entirely in foreign
hands.
The presence of foreign immigration is felt also, though to a lesser
extent, in cabinet-making and other trades. In the cabinet-making
trade, Mr. Burnett estimates that of 23,000 persons engaged in it
in London, 4000 are foreigners, chiefly Germans, and many of them
German, Russian, and Polish Jews. He draws a distinction between the
Germans pure and simple, and the German, Russian, and Polish Jews,
for this reason. The Germans are found in the superior workshops of
the West End, and they are found receiving the same rate of wages as
their English shop-mates; but in the cases of the Russian and Polish
Jews at the East End, they are receiving a much lower rate when they
are employed, and they are employed on inferior work under entirely
different conditions.
The foregoing considerations make it clear that the effect of foreign
immigration upon the condition of our own workmen is not to be measured
by the small percentage foreigners bear to the general population of
the United Kingdom; but by their distribution in the particular trades
of particular localities.
It is impossible to deny the displacing power of so large an addition
to labour, in trades already overcrowded. The fact that under such
circumstances the new-comers find employment, infers of necessity
the displacement of labour previously employed. It implies also the
denial of employment to natives anxious to obtain it. Nor is this
large intrusion of a foreign element confined in its effects to the
displacement of native labour alone. It brings down to its own level
labour that is not displaced. In all trades that do not require long
apprenticeship and technical skill, the supply of labour is greatly
in excess of the demand. Competition to obtain employment is in
consequence cruelly severe. The inevitable results are, the evasion
of the law respecting factories and workshops, the reduction of wages
to the lowest minimum, and the extension of the hours of work to the
utmost limits of human endurance.
The effect of foreign immigration upon our labouring population is
far greater than might at first be supposed. Its inevitable effect is
the degradation of all the native labour employed, to the level of the
foreign labour which is brought into competition with it. When the
struggle is between those accustomed to a higher, and those accustomed
to a lower standard of life, the latter can obviously oust the former
and take their work. Just as a base currency drives out of circulation
a pure currency, so does a lower standard of comfort drive out a higher
one.
What do competent authorities say on the subject of native labour?
Mr. Goodman, who was a member of the Executive Committee of the
Liverpool Tailors' Society, stated in his evidence before the House
of Lords' Committee, that fifteen years ago the Sweating system only
existed to a very limited extent in Liverpool; but that now it was
carried on in a most extensive manner. He said that he accounted for
its existence to a very large extent by the influx of foreigners,
principally Jews. "At the present moment, fully two-thirds of the
sweaters in Liverpool are foreigners; the majority of whom, as I have
already stated, are not tailors at all, and have never served one hour
in the tailor trade properly as an apprentice. I was told by a Jew some
time ago, and he made a serious complaint to me on that head, that
he was already finding the competition of his own people so severe,
that being a practical man, he should have to do as they had done in
many cases, lower his prices, or else he could not make a living. The
competition, even amongst the Jews, is getting so severe that the
prices are constantly tending to decrease; and I believe that to-day
they are very much lower than they were a few years ago in Liverpool,
through this competition of foreigners amongst themselves, together
with their competition with the natives."
Mr. Allen, Secretary of the Master Tailors' Association in Liverpool,
stated that, "As an Association, we have discussed the matter, and we
are opposed to it in the main (_i.e._ foreign immigration), and we
passed a resolution that the importation of pauper aliens be prohibited
with this condition, the prohibition not to extend to skilled workmen
imported under contract."
Mr. Keir, General Secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Tailors,
thus moderately and dispassionately stated the case:--"I hardly know
that it would be wise to stop immigration altogether. That would be an
unnatural and hardly fair way of doing the thing; but I think it ought
to be regulated in some way, and that the poorest, and most miserable,
and the unskilled, perhaps, of foreign labour ought not to be thrown
upon the markets of England to oppose and to act detrimentally to the
interests of the English people. I do not think it would be wise, and
I don't know that we could advocate, and I am sure any intelligent man
would not advocate altogether, the complete prohibition of foreign
labour; but at the same time I think there must be, or ought to be,
some means devised whereby skilled labour should contend against
skilled labour in a fair and straight market. It is not skilled labour
against skilled labour; it is poverty thrown in our midst, and it is
poverty competing with itself, as it were; and struggling in that
way, and the manner in which they live, the food they eat, and the
circumstances under which they exist, deprive them altogether of the
comforts of home, you may almost say, as far as Englishmen, Scotchmen,
or Welshmen are concerned."
One point remains to be noted. It has been urged that these immigrant
aliens do not enter upon native trades, but introduce new industries
of their own. If that were really the case, such a contention would
undoubtedly have much weight. The Huguenots established new industries
of silk, glass, and paper; the Flemings introduced the finer class
of weaving into England; in both of these cases the alien influx was
beneficial. But it cannot be seriously maintained that these low-class
Jewish immigrants have stimulated or created new wants. They have
created no new trade; they have debased old ones. I admit that they
almost monopolize the cheap clothing trade, but even here they have
created no new _kind_ of industry.
The power of the German, Russian, or Polish Jew, accustomed to a lower
standard of life, to undersell the English worker in the English labour
market must be admitted by all, though the exact importance of it is,
I know, a disputed point. The industrial degradation of the "sweated"
workers arises from the fact that they are working surrounded by a
"pool of unemployed," or superfluous supply of labour. So long as
this standing pool remains, and so long as it is ever being augmented
by the endless influx of cheap, destitute foreign labour, so long it
is difficult to see how the wages of the low unskilled workers can
be materially raised. Let the pool be gradually drawn off, and wages
will rise, since the combined action of the workers will no longer be
able to be defeated by the eagerness of the foreigner to take their
work and wages. But the pool can never be drawn off until the stream
which so largely recruits it is cut off at its source. If once this
foreign influx is stopped, it will decrease by the natural process of
evaporation.
Let us take a national view. The true standard of a nation's prosperity
is to be found in the prosperity of its working-classes. The higher
the rate of wages the better is the condition of the working-classes;
the cheaper the labour of a country, the lower the condition of the
people therein. One of the surest signs of the real rise of a nation is
the elevation of the masses in their wages, their habits, their homes,
their scale of living, and their condition generally. Anything which
tends to reduce the price of labour tends also to reduce the labourer's
standard of comfort and prosperity, and there can be no manner of
doubt that this continuous influx of destitute foreigners does tend
both directly and indirectly to reduce the profits of the wage-earning
classes. Wages follow certain inexorable laws of supply and demand. If
the supply of human labour exceeds the market demand, then the men will
be beaten down; and how can the supply do otherwise than exceed the
demand, when the market is being continually flooded by the influx of
the cheapest kind of foreign labour?
"Unrestricted immigration," said a witness before the United States
Committee, "is the degradation of American labour." If that be true in
a country of such enormous resources as the United States, how much
more true must it be in our own densely-populated little island? It is
the high rate of wages which has given to the American workmen their
unexampled prosperity as citizens. It is the recognition of this truth
which has induced the United States Government to guard its doors so
jealously against the entrance of the destitute and unfit of other
lands. And they are right, not only on economic grounds, but for other
reasons as well, since all history teaches us that in the long run
degraded labour is sure to avenge itself upon all the classes above it.
"Rely upon yourselves; by societies, combinations, and well-directed
strikes, you can secure higher wages and better conditions for
yourselves." Such are the words of the "old" Trades Unionism, and in
the main they are true enough. But in this instance they fall beside
the mark; for, as I have already pointed out, combination is rendered
impossible by this fierce competition of destitute labour from abroad.
In the industries affected, any man or woman, or any body of men or
women, who refused to work upon the sweating prices quoted, would be
simply turned away, and their places filled by the foreigner. They
are literally living from hand to mouth. They know that if they lose
their wage one week, they will be destitute the next, and starving
the week after. Under these circumstances it is not surprising to
find that there exists among the native working-classes the strongest
feeling against the great and increasing invasion of their rights. This
feeling is not only confined to the trades chiefly affected, it is
rapidly spreading throughout the country. So far as I have been able to
judge, the feeling among the working-classes in favour of restrictive
measures is practically unanimous. A vast majority of the great Trades
Unions and Labour Organizations--not only those immediately affected,
but others as well--have passed strongly-worded resolutions on the
subject, recognizing that though the evil may not yet have sensibly
affected their particular industry, yet it tends indirectly to do so.
That the labour organizations are fully alive to the importance of
this question is shown by the following letter, taken almost at random
from hundreds of similar communications which have reached me during
the last few months. It is from the Secretary of the "National Society
of Amalgamated Brassworkers," Birmingham.[18] The arguments are so
clearly and cogently put, that they are well worthy of being quoted
here.
"The Executive desire me to say that they are unanimously of opinion
that the time has come when the State should regulate, in the interests
of British labour, the immigration of destitute aliens; and that they
have observed with alarm the injury done to their brethren in the East
End of London and other parts of the country by this element of unfair
competition. My Executive desire me also to say that these conclusions
are arrived at reluctantly, as they would like this country to be a
really happy England, giving welcome to the oppressed of every land.
While, however, they hold this view strongly, they are also of opinion
that this broad principle must not be allowed, to any appreciable
extent, to be the means of pauperizing English men and English women.
The unchecked admission of this force has spread enough misery; and it
is hoped that your efforts will bring about such restrictions as will
put an end to an evil which has been the means of providing a surplus
labour market to become a ready prey to the sweater."
These are weighty words. They come from an important Society, which,
though its members have not yet felt the shoe pinch themselves, they
recognize the truth of the old saying, "If one member suffers, all the
other members suffer with it." This utterance does not stand alone; it
is but an echo of the opinion of similar organizations throughout the
country.[19] The English workman is naturally patient and law-abiding.
It is his nature to suffer and be strong. All that he asks for--and
surely it is not an unreasonable request--is that he should be allowed
a fair field for his energies in the land that gave him birth. If this
be denied him, then, sooner or later, will follow consequences, which,
to quote Herbert Spencer, "no man may tell in language."
It is because this movement is so essentially a workingman's movement
that I am confident of its ultimate success. Let us look the situation
in the face. The balance of power has passed into the hands of the
wage-earning classes--three-fourths of the electorate are wage-earners;
I use the word in its widest sense. Therefore, it follows as a matter
of course, that just as the land-owning classes when they had the power
made laws in their interests; and the trading-classes when they had the
power passed laws for their interests; so the working, wage-earning
classes of this country, now that they have the power, will use it
to protect and advance their interests likewise. And what can touch
their interests more nearly than this unrestricted immigration of
destitute foreign labour? "The flowing tide is with us." Whatever may
be the immediate interests of the hour, labour questions constitute
the politics of the future. There are signs all round the world that
social problems and labour questions are gradually taking the place
of older issues over which men have contended. There is no likelihood
now of a war about creeds, no dynastic contest is now on the cards;
the rivalries of nations and of races are not as potent as they were;
but the lot of the "dim millions," the labouring-classes, who were
ignored by all the warriors and statesmen of the past, is now forcing
its way to the front. The contest which is gathering will not be around
"exhausted factories and obsolete policies," as Mr. Disraeli said
in 1852, but living problems, coming home to the hearts and to the
firesides of all labouring men. Labour legislation is the legislation
of the future; and it needs no prophetic eye to foresee that one of
the leading measures in the labour programme of the future will be to
protect the English working-men against this perpetual pouring in of
destitute foreigners. Hitherto in only one constituency, Lewisham, has
this question found a prominent place in an electioneering programme.
We all know the result of that election. As it was at Lewisham, so
will it be before long in every urban constituency throughout England.
"Why," the working-classes are asking, "should we be robbed of our
birthright by the refuse population of other countries?" Why, indeed!
People are beginning to see that a great and crying evil flourishes in
our midst; and when that fact has been thoroughly digested, means will
soon be found to remedy it.