CHAPTER VII

HOW UNDERPAYMENT COMES

A shirtmaker’s story—The “higgling of the market” as seen at the factory gate—Mr Booth’s percentage of poverty—Mr Rowntree’s—The living wage in America—How wages are determined—By relative needs—Not by efficiency—Mr Bosanquet’s fundamental fallacy—Ambiguity of word “earn”—Effect upon the poor of the pressure of the poorer—Efficiency only of pecuniary value while rare—Not inefficiency but poverty the real disease.

More than seventeen years ago I sat in the neat but poverty stricken room of a most respectable family and listened to the pathetic, uncomplaining words of an admirable woman who, together with her sister, had, for years, helped to support an early widowed sister-in-law and her three children. All three women worked at home at shirtmaking, and this one of the aunts had certainly gone short of food. It was not she who told me of her good deeds. She was showing me, at my request, the shirts that they were at that time making for a payment of 1s. 2d. a dozen. I continue in the words of my own report, written immediately afterwards.

“These shirts are of fair average quality and are striped in gay colours. They have to be fetched ready cut out but not folded; all the sewing has to be done to them, including a square of lining at the back of the neck but not the button holes.... ‘Has the price gone down much?’ I asked. ‘Oh, yes’ said Miss Y.; ‘my sister and I used to get sixpence apiece. But that was for rather better shirts than these. We worked for B.’s then. One day my sister was there, waiting for the work, and a gentleman came in and said to Mr B., “I’ll take the whole lot at 4s. 6d. a dozen”; and Mr B. said to my sister: “Miss Y., will you take the work at that, or must I give it all to this gentleman?” And my sister thought, if we stood out for the price, they would come round to us, and she said, “No,” she would not take it, and so he gave it to the gentleman and we were thrown out; and instead of coming round to sixpence again, that work has gone down to 2s. 6d. a dozen, and even lower than that. I know of people who do the very cheapest cotton shirts at 9d. or even 7d. a dozen.’”

Miss Y.’s little story is the story of work in hundreds—nay in thousands—of work places. Sometimes it is at the factory gate that the cheapening process goes on. Towards the end of those bitter weeks, “the slack time,” there will be scores of factory girls, pale and pinched under their shabby feathered hats, going from firm to firm and asking whether hands are wanted. At last word will go round that X.’s are “taking on” on Monday morning. Before the opening hour on Monday morning, the entrance to Mr X.’s factory will look like the pit door of a popular theatre. Often have I heard girls describe the dialogue that follows.

“The foreman says to a young girl in front of me: ‘What wages do you want?’ And she says: ‘Eight shillings.’ And he told her: ‘No, she could go.’ So when he come to me, I knew it was no good to say, ‘Eight’; so I said: ‘Seven and six.’”

At seven and sixpence, perhaps, she gets taken on; and when, presently, the slack time comes again, the girls weeded out, to be first discharged, are those who have been receiving eight shillings weekly ever since their engagement in the previous season. Seven shillings and sixpence a week (translated or not, according to the custom of the factory, into terms of piece work) now becomes the usual wage; and next season this descends by another sixpence or another shilling.

Below six shillings or five shillings, an employer or foreman seldom tries to drive the time wage, even of girls, unless, indeed, he can salve his conscience by regarding them as learners. Yet I have known a wealthy employer admit without any signs of compunction, both that certain girls in his employ were paid four shillings a week, and that they could not live on that sum.

The home worker, when he thus suffers diminution of an already insufficient wage, tries to increase output by setting his children to work.

“The same pressure that leads to the employment of the children presently leads, in a slack time, to the acceptance of yet lower pay for the sake of securing work. The poorer the worker the less possible is any resistance to any reduction in pay. Thus, by and by, mother and children, working together, come to receive no more than did the mother working alone. The employer—and eventually in all probability the public—has in fact obtained the labour of the children without extra payment. To such an extent has this process been carried that in the worst paid branches of home work, subsistence becomes almost impossible unless the work of children is called in.”[58]

It is thus true that, economically, a man’s enemies are those of his own household; and that, wherever workers are not protected by organisation or by special laws, the wage, first of the individual and then of the family, tends to be brought down to the lowest possible level of subsistence, and even, possibly if a poor-law subsidy can be obtained, below it. It is not by chance, nor because their work is of little value, nor because they are contented to take little pay, that all these many households of workers are living lives so cruelly straitened by poverty. Nor is it a mere effect of chance that in other countries as well as in our own, national wealth is beheld increasing side by side with extreme poverty on the part of those citizens who toil most incessantly.

In our own country, the investigations of Mr Charles Booth and of Mr Seebohm Rowntree, carried out independently and on slightly differing methods, the one in London, the other in York, have resulted in figures strikingly similar. Mr Booth puts the proportion living in poverty, of the whole population of London, at 30·7%; Mr Rowntree, that of the whole population of York, at 27·84%.[59]

In America the same problem has received the attention of various careful enquirers, the most recent of whom, perhaps, is Father Ryan, Professor of ethics and economics in the St Paul Seminary, Minnesota.[60]

In this volume may be found a careful estimate of the figure that may be taken as affording a “living wage” in different parts of the United States. Professor Albion Small, head of the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago, is quoted as having said “a few years ago” that “No man can live, bring up a family, and enjoy the ordinary human happiness on a wage of less than one thousand dollars a year” (£200).[61]

Mr John Mitchell, President of the United Mine Workers, says, in a passage quoted by Professor Ryan: “In cities of from five thousand to one hundred thousand inhabitants, the American standard of living should mean, to the ordinary unskilled workman with an average family, a comfortable house of at least six rooms. It should mean a bathroom, good sanitary plumbing, a parlour, dining-room, kitchen and sufficient sleeping room that decency may be preserved and a reasonable degree of comfort maintained. The American standard of living should mean, to the unskilled workman, carpets, pictures, books and furniture with which to make his home bright, comfortable and attractive for himself and his family, an ample supply of clothing suitable for winter and summer and above all a sufficient quantity of good, wholesome, nourishing food at all times of the year. The American standard, moreover, should mean to the unskilled workman that his children should be kept at school until they have attained the age of sixteen at least, and that he is enabled to lay by sufficient to maintain himself and his family in times of illness or at the close of his industrial life, when age and weakness render further work impossible, and to make provision for his family against premature death from accident or otherwise.”[62]

The minimum wage upon which a family could be supported, in towns of the size named, was estimated by Mr Mitchell in 1903 at $600 a year (£120). In larger cities the cost would, he considered, be higher. Professor Ryan is, no doubt, right in saying that “the irreducible minimum of necessaries and comforts” could not “now” (he was writing in October 1905) be obtained in any city of the United States for less than $600, and that though that sum might be “_possibly_ a Living Wage in the moderately sized cities of the West, North and East ... in some of the largest cities of the last-named regions, it is certainly _not_ a Living Wage.”[63]

Having established this figure for annual income Professor Ryan goes out to enquire into its actual prevalence and from various official reports and statistics draws the conclusion that, “the number of male adults receiving less than $12.50 (£2, 10s.) per week, in 34 manufacturing industries was, in 1890, 66%, and, in 1900, 64%.[64]

And it must be remembered that in America as in England there are few manufacturing industries in which wage earners are in full work throughout the year.

Thus it appears that, in the two great English speaking empires, a considerable proportion, even of the upper working classes, do not receive remuneration that allows to them and to their families that minimum of space, food, clothing and recreation which at the present day are esteemed essential to civilised life.

The reason of this state of things is a fairly simple one. Wages, in a state of free competition, are determined not by the intrinsic cost of the work performed but by the relative needs of the worker to sell and of the paymaster to buy. Where there are many workers able to offer the same service and comparatively few buyers, the work will be paid for at a low rate, however excellent; where would-be buyers’ workers are few and would-be buyers many, the work will be highly paid, however ill done. Among ourselves the numbers competing for manual work are very large, and the need of each particular workman for employment far greater and more pressing than the need of any employer for any particular man. Consequently, the wages of the manual worker are low in proportion to the cost of livelihood; and the individual worker is absolutely powerless by himself to increase them.

These facts are so familiar, and, when definitely stated, so universally admitted, that it almost seems necessary to apologise for reiterating them. Yet they are continually ignored by ordinary middle class people in conversing upon labour questions, and not infrequently even by writers of some standing. Categorically, they are not—and doubtless would not be—denied; but whole volumes are founded upon the basis of their falsity. The entire constructive argument, for instance, of Mrs Bosanquet’s “The Strength of the People,” a book which, having gone into a second edition, may be supposed to have influenced a good many readers, rests upon a tacit assumption that payment is determined by quality of work: an assumption masked by the ambiguous character of the word “earn,” which at one moment is used in the sense of “deserve” and at another in the sense of “receive.” Mrs Bosanquet—except indeed when dealing with the old Poor Law—cheerfully ignores the painful law that wages are determined by the conflict of needs, and writes, throughout, as though the manual worker who does good work were sure of being well paid. From this assumption she goes on, very logically, to suppose that the cure for a man’s poverty is to make him do good work. Many persons who are not themselves exposed to the pinch of competition may be found expressing the same view, which obtains apparent support from the fact that the very ill paid are observed not to be producing good work. For, although it is unfortunately not true that good work always “earns” good wages, it is true that bad pay, sooner or later, but quite inevitably leads to bad work. Without a certain modicum of food, comfort, good clothing, leisure and ease of mind, no human being long remains capable of producing good work. The father of a family who receives 18s. a week and pays 7s. for lodging cannot, if he also feeds his wife and children, either remain or become a very good workman. Before he can do better work he must be better paid.

Mrs Bosanquet thinks otherwise. Efficiency and consequently prosperity might, she appears to believe, be enforced upon the poor by the withdrawal of such help as is now accorded them. The prospect of that beloved refuge, the workhouse, prevents them from providing for their old age; but the prospect of literal starvation would probably be more effective. The hunger and hardship of their daily lives do not furnish an adequate spur; but perhaps despair might do so. We seem to hear Mrs Chick exhorting the dying Mrs Dombey to “make an effort.”

Again, that terrible pressure of the poorer upon the poor which Mr Booth regards as so serious an evil appears to Mrs Bosanquet an element of hope and strength. Morally, the charity of the poor to one another is undoubtedly a beautiful thing; economically, it is assuredly one of the causes that increase and aggravate poverty; and such diminution of pauperism as is produced by the maintenance out of the workhouse of an aged or sick relative may, in the long run, lead to the destitution of a whole family. The last result of such maintenance may, if wide-spread, be far more nationally expensive than if all the sick and aged were supported out of the public purse.

Let us see, in an example of the commonest kind, how this mutual help works out. Smith and Brown, manual labourers, are working side by side at a wage of £1 a week or thereabouts. Both are married men with children. Both are contributing to a provident society which, if they survive the age of sixty, will furnish a small pittance to their declining years. Slack times come; Smith is discharged; Brown is retained. Within a fortnight, Smith, with his wife and children, begins to suffer hardship; the household property goes, piecemeal, to the pawnshop; the “club money” is no longer forthcoming, and Smith’s provision for his old age lapses. Brown, whose pound a week affords, as may be supposed, no great superfluity for him and his, finds himself unable to see his “mate” and his mate’s children in want of bread; Brown’s club money and a good deal more which can ill be spared goes to their assistance, and Brown’s provision for old age lapses.

The Smith family, it is true, has been kept from the workhouse—at the cost, not improbably, of some weakly little Smith’s life—but has not this result been bought too dear? Do not justice and good sense alike suggest the unfitness of leaving the burden of maintaining the Smith family to rest upon precisely that class of the community which is least able to support it? The maintenance of those who cannot maintain themselves by those who can barely maintain themselves keeps both groups upon a dead level of destitution. If our aim is really the strengthening of the people we must not begin by increasing the burdens of the weakest—burdens borne often at so cruel a sacrifice of health and life, and with so amazing an absence of complaint. The Smith family and the Brown family alike are suffering because their income is barely adequate to their elementary current needs; and their troubles will only be cured by the possession of a larger real income. This, indeed, Mrs Bosanquet sees plainly enough. “How can we bring it about,” she asks, “that they” (_i.e._ “those whom we may call the very poor”) “shall have a permanently greater command over the necessaries and luxuries of life?” Gifts she perceives to be no true remedy, though she fails to assign the economic reason, which is that the possession of outside resources enables the recipient to “go one lower” than his unendowed competitor in the battle for employment. The same objection does not apply to the workhouse, which withdraws the pauper from the battle altogether, but it does apply to outdoor relief, and is the one valid economic argument against it. The best charity—as Dr Johnson long ago pointed out—indeed, the only effectual charity, is to set a man to work at good wages. This is not, however, Mrs Bosanquet’s plan. “The less obvious, but more effective remedy is to approach the problem by striking at its roots in the minds of the people themselves; to stimulate their energies, to insist upon their responsibilities, to train their faculties. In short, to make them efficient.”[65]

Unfortunately the ill-nourished, ill clothed and ill taught cannot be made efficient. Moreover if we could make every one of them efficient, they would be no better off, financially in their efficient state than they are now, in their incompetence.[66] While rare, efficiency, like a tenor voice, commands a monopoly price; if universal, its money worth would be no higher than that of the ability to read, which in the Middle Ages was a commercial asset of value. Furthermore, since extreme poverty destroys efficiency, these ill paid efficient persons would presently become, like our poorer manual labourers of to-day, weak of brain and of body, dull, languid, inert and therefore bad workers.

Thus efficiency, however desirable upon other grounds, is no economic remedy for underpayment. Not inefficiency but poverty is the real disease, and since poverty is an inevitable result of unlimited competition in labour, the disease can only be cured by some interference with the free course of competition. How to apply such interference effectually is the real problem which organised society has to solve. Towards its solution Mrs Bosanquet, able though she is, offers no assistance, because she never acknowledges the character of the problem. For her there are only inefficient people to be taught better, not underpaid people to be paid better. In this respect she represents a considerable school of thought and therefore it has seemed worth while to examine her thesis at some length; especially since any writer is pretty sure of welcome who preaches a doctrine so soothing to the general conscience. Much sympathetic distress would be spared to all of us, and much racking of anxious brains to a few, if it were but possible to believe with Mrs Bosanquet that the poor are themselves the architects of their own poverty and that they must themselves be its physicians. Unfortunately this is not the case. The process of cheapening described above is, in a state of unlimited competition, absolutely inevitable; and neither talent nor industry can exempt from it any isolated worker whose qualifications do not create for him some sort of monopoly.