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
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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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