improvement in the lives of the sweated workers. So the point is this.
Can we do anything by law to screw up the remuneration of the
worst-paid workers to the minimum necessary for tolerable human
existence? I know that many people think it impossible, but my answer
is that the fixing of a limit below which wages shall not fall is
already not the exception but the rule in this country. That may seem
a rather startling statement, but I believe I can prove it. Take the
case of the State, the greatest of all employers. The State does not
allow the rates of pay even of its humblest employés to be decided by
the scramble for employment. The State cannot afford, nor can any
great municipality afford, to pay wages on which it is obviously
impossible to live. There would be an immediate outcry. Here then you
have a case of vast extent in which a downward limit of wages is fixed
by public opinion. Take, again, any of the great staple industries of
the country, the cotton industry, the iron and steel industry, and
many others. In the case of these industries rates of remuneration are
fixed in innumerable instances by agreement between the whole body of
employers in a particular trade and district on the one hand and the
whole body of employés on the other. The result is to exclude
unregulated competition and to secure the same wages for the same
work. No doubt there is an element--and this is a point of great
importance--which enters into the determination of wages in these
organised trades, but which does not enter in the same degree into the
determination of the salaries paid by the State. That element is the
consideration of what the employers can afford to pay. This question
is constantly being threshed out between them and the workpeople,
with resulting agreements. The number of such agreements is very
large, and the provisions contained in them often regulate the rate of
remuneration for various classes of workers with the greatest
minuteness. But the great object, and the principal effect of all
these agreements, is this: it is to ensure uniformity of remuneration,
the same wage for the same work, and to protect the most necessitous
and most helpless workers from being forced to take less than the
employers can afford to pay. Broadly speaking, the rate of pay, in
these highly organised industries, is determined by the value of the
work and not by the need of the worker. That makes an enormous
difference. But in sweated industries this is not the case. Sweated
industries are the unorganised industries, those in which there is no
possibility of organisation among the workers. Here the individual
worker, without resources and without backing, is left, in the
struggle of unregulated competition, to take whatever he can get,
regardless of what others may be getting for the same work and-of the
value of the work itself. Hence the extraordinary inequality of
payment for the same kind of work and the generally low average of
payment which are the distinguishing features of all sweated
industries.
Now, if you have followed this rather dry argument, I shall probably
have your concurrence when I say, that the proposal that the State
should intervene to secure, not an all-round minimum wage, but the
same wages for the same work, and nothing less than the standard rate
of his particular work for every worker, is not a proposition that the
State should do something new, or exceptional, or impracticable. It is
a proposal that the State should do for the weakest and most helpless
trades what the strongly-organised trades already do for themselves. I
cannot see that there is anything unreasonable, much less
revolutionary or subversive, in that suggestion.
This proposal has taken practical form in a Bill presented to the
House of Commons last session. Whether the measure reached its second
reading or not I do not know. It was a Bill for the establishment of
Wages Boards in certain industries employing great numbers of
workpeople, such as tailoring, shirtmaking, and so on. The industries
selected were those in which the employés, though numerous, are
hopelessly disorganised and unable to make a bargain for themselves.
And the Bill provided that where any six persons, whether masters or
employés, applied to the Home Secretary for the establishment of a
Wages Board, such a Board should be created in the particular industry
and district concerned; that it should consist of representatives of
employers and employed in equal proportions, with an impartial
chairman; and that it should have the widest possible discretion to
fix rates of remuneration. If Wages Boards were established, as the
Bill proposed, they would simply do for sweated trades what is already
constantly being done in organised trades, with no doubt one important
difference, that the decisions of these Boards would be enforceable by
law. Now that no doubt may seem to many of you a drastic proposition.
But I would strongly recommend any one interested in the subject to
study a recently-published Blue-book, one of the most interesting I
have ever read, which contains the evidence given before the House of
Commons Committee on Home Work. That Blue-book throws floods of light
on the conditions which have led to the proposal of Wages Boards, on
the way in which these Boards would be likely to work, and on the
results of the operation of such Boards in the Colony of Victoria,
where they have existed for more than ten years, and now apply to more
than forty industries. The perusal of that evidence would, I feel
sure, remove some at least of the most obvious objections to this
proposed remedy for sweating.
Many people look askance, and justly look askance, at the interference
of the State in anything so complicated and technical as a schedule of
wages for any particular industry. But the point to bear in mind is
this, that the wages, which under this proposal would be enforceable
by law, would be wages that had been fixed for a particular industry
in a particular district by persons intimately cognisant with all the
circumstances, and, more than that, by persons having the deepest
common interest to avoid anything which could injure the industry. The
rates of remuneration so arrived at would be based on the
consideration of what the employers could afford to pay and yet retain
such a reasonable rate of profit as would lead to their remaining in
the industry. Such a regulation of wages would be as great a
protection to the best employers against the cut-throat competition of
unscrupulous rivals as it would be to the workers against being
compelled to sell their labour for less than its value. There is
plenty of evidence that the regulation of wages would be welcomed by
many employers. And as for the fear sometimes expressed, that it would
injure the weakest and least efficient workers, because, with
increased wages, it would no longer be profitable to employ them, it
must be borne in mind that people of that class are mainly home
workers, and as remuneration for home work must be based on the piece,
there would be no reason why they should not continue to be employed.
No doubt they would not benefit as much as more efficient workers from
increased rates, but _pro tanto_ they would still benefit, and that is
a consideration of great importance. But even if this were not the
case, I would still contend, that it was unjustifiable to allow
thousands of people to remain in a preventable state of misery and
degradation all their lives, merely in order to keep a tenth of their
number out of the workhouse a few years longer.
I have only one more word to say. I come back to the supreme interest
of the community in the efficiency and welfare of all its members, to
say nothing of the removal of the stain upon its honour and conscience
which continued tolerance of this evil involves. That to my mind is
the greatest consideration of all. That is the true reason, as it
would be the sufficient justification, for the intervention of the
State. And, or my own part, I feel no doubt that, whether by the
adoption of such a measure as we have been considering, or by some
other enactment, steps will before long be taken for the removal of
this national disgrace.
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