Part 4 (2/2)

Prophecy might be falsified too soon and too palpably, and the position, which changes from week to week, is too critical for anyone to discuss unless he has full and exact knowledge of the facts and clear understanding of the way in which undercurrents are setting.

CHAPTER XI

LONG HOURS

_Our life is turned_ _Out of her course wherever man is made_ _An offering, or a sacrifice, a tool_ _Or implement, a pa.s.sive thing employed_ _As a brute mean, without acknowledgment_ _Of common right or interest in the end._ --WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

There is no doubt that among the causes of unrest one of the most serious, probably much more so than either employers or workmen are generally conscious of, is the long hours of work. Those who have had to hear questions arising out of labour disputes have noticed the state of tension produced by the weariness and strain of too prolonged and continuous work. Even in the domestic circle an overworked man is often found less amiable and more ready to find fault. A hara.s.sed manager and a deputation of jaded workmen may be really very good fellows and yet find that some comparatively small question raises strong feeling and mutual recrimination, and then leads to rash action resulting in open strife, strikes, and lock-outs, and the judicial proceedings which may be necessary in consequence of them. ”A Skilled Labourer,” writing in the _Quarterly Review_, mentions as the first of the four princ.i.p.al grievances of workmen--”the hours are too long.” Long hours have been accepted on both sides partly because during the War the call of the country for increased output, especially of munitions, was so urgent, and partly because it was thought that higher profits would thereby be obtained, and certainly higher wages earned. It seems, however, well established that longer hours do not necessarily mean increased output.

There is a limit to the time during which a man can do even routine work effectively. If men were to be regarded only as machines for turning out work of a certain cla.s.s, very long hours would be bad business. Where the work involves special skill and thought the evil results of long hours, even measured simply by the gross amount done, are still more serious. Everyone who has had to do with young students and still more with parents disappointed by their sons' failures must again and again have found that the cause of failure was too many hours devoted to reading. The students acquired the habit of sitting over their books worrying their minds, but really absorbing nothing. A senior wrangler has been known to find five or six hours a day of real work at mathematics as much as he could stand. Of course, work involving little hard physical exertion and hardly any mental effort can go on much longer, but the very monotony which in some ways makes it easy, has a deadening effect. A factory operative minding a ”mule” being asked: ”Is it not very hard work always watching and piecing threads?” answered, ”No, but it is very dree work.” But the evil effects of too long hours are not confined to the fact that unrest or disputes arise from the state of feeling produced nor to the diminution of production due to fatigue. Recurrent strains continued over a long period indeed deteriorate even things which are inanimate. The ”fatigue of metals” has been the subject of careful investigations. It is time that fatigue of human beings, even looked at as machines, were more fully considered.[5]

The great and often permanent physical injury caused by too prolonged work is specially serious for women. Many women are such willing workers that they go on overtaxing their strength. Among girls and women students the fatigue from overstrain in preparing for examinations, from which boys and men may rapidly recover, often results in permanent physical and even mental degeneration. Many who have watched the effects of such continuous study would advocate a complete sabbatical year in which systematic study should be suspended entirely for girls at some period between fourteen and eighteen.

It is impossible to have a healthy nation if the majority, or any very large part of it, work for excessive hours even in the factories where the best methods are employed to make the conditions as healthy as possible. Medical men of the highest authority regard the influence of too prolonged hours of work as one which urgently demands attention.

Enlightened and experienced men of business like Lord Leverhulme have expressed very strong views on the subject. Man, however, cannot be looked on as a mere machine for production, nor is even health the only question for him as a human being. He must have time for other pursuits, for recreation, for a fuller life. As civilisation and education advance this need becomes stronger. The duller the work the greater the need for those who have any natural mental activity to find resources of interest outside. The pleasure derived from literature and science should be open to all. No one who knows working people can deny that the demand for it exists. A fitter on weekly wages used to show in a poor cottage one of the best collections of British b.u.t.terflies and moths, made entirely by himself. Many of them had been captured late at night on Chat Moss. A hair-dresser has told how to watch the habits of birds was the delight of his Sunday bicycle rides; his a.s.sistant called attention to some little known poet whose works had a special appeal for him; another said it was the study in his rare holidays at the seaside and in local museums of some form of animal life--the name of it, now forgotten, would convey no meaning to most University graduates--that made his interest in life. You may find a large audience of workmen interested in a lecture on Sh.e.l.ley, and some of them as well acquainted with his poems as the lecturer. Such cases as these may perhaps be exceptional, but given opportunity and sympathetic help and advice, they might be multiplied almost indefinitely. Other men want time for cultivation of allotments, which ought to be within the reach of thousands of urban workers who find in them a perennial source of interest. A growing number take a keen pleasure in seeing something of the beauties of their own country. Tramping through the Yorks.h.i.+re dales and knowing them well, it was interesting to meet one who knew them better, and to find that he was a chimney-sweep, who saved up his earnings to spend his holidays regularly there.

The success of the Workers' Educational a.s.sociation shows both the strength of the demand among the workmen, and sometimes, too, among working women, for intellectual life and their capacity to make use of any opportunities offered for regular study. It is to be hoped that its promoters will not forget that some branches of natural science and literature, opening new realms of interest removed from the ordinary cares of life, are at least as important subjects for study as economic and social problems, and that one of the most important of such problems is how to give those who must earn their daily bread by work that is often dull and wearisome, the opportunity of sharing as far as possible in the intellectual life. We may well wish Mr. Mansbridge and his friends success as pioneers in the work of reconstruction, and renewed and extended activity when the pressure of War requirements is removed.

It is to be hoped that the original ideals of the a.s.sociation may never be forgotten.

The aim of the a.s.sociation is neither technical, i.e., to make workmen better qualified for their special work, nor to attain a higher general education with a view to their obtaining employment of a different cla.s.s and ceasing to be manual workers. It is to enable them, while continuing to earn their living by manual work, to partic.i.p.ate in the fuller life given by intellectual activity. There are some subjects which can be pursued and studied _thoroughly_ with pleasure and profit without any long or exact preliminary training. With some wise guidance in reading and some stimulating criticism to help him, the workman can really obtain all that is important from the study of the literature of his own language--to learn to know and to enjoy the best that has been written.

It is of no importance that he will probably not become a ”literary expert,” able to trace the influence of this or that obscure writer of one age or country on the literature of another. It is to be hoped that he will not learn the kind of literary jargon affected by so many modern critics, or attempt in his essays to imitate those who think that obscurity indicates profundity. There are some sciences, too, especially certain branches of natural science, which can be pursued by men whose time is mainly taken up by manual work.

The idea of erecting an educational ladder by which all will proceed from the elementary to the secondary school and thence to the University, is a false one. Any such ladder must continue to be narrow at the top. It is impossible in any economic conditions that we are likely to see in our time that the majority of our people will be able to devote their whole lives to study until the age at which a University course can be finished. Indeed, for all cla.s.ses there is a modern tendency to prolong the school period unduly, to keep boys under the discipline and following the methods of the secondary school until nineteen years of age, so that they finish a University course, which is also becoming more prolonged, after twenty-three, and then at last take up their vocational training. Neither parents nor the nation can afford to make such a course the normal one. It is no doubt of the greatest importance to secure a career for special talent so that poverty shall not prevent a really able boy or girl following such a course of study as would enable his or her talents to have their full scope. The old Grammar Schools, especially in the North of England, afford many examples of poor boys who by means of their school and University scholars.h.i.+ps were enabled to obtain the best training the country could give, and so attain the highest positions in Church and State. These must necessarily be the few. It is a cruelty by means of scholars.h.i.+ps to tempt those who have neither the financial means nor exceptional talent to try for a career in which there will really be no opening for them.

Even with the limited number of scholars.h.i.+ps which local authorities have been able to offer, there have been many cases in which bitter complaints have been raised that young people had been induced to prepare themselves for some walk in life in which there was no demand for their services. Of course, the more knowledge is required in various industries the more scope there will be for those who have had a long training, but there is nothing more injurious to the State than to turn out a number of persons who have had a prolonged academic training, but who are not able to do something for which there is a demand, and for which the world is willing to pay. The results of such a course of action may be seen on a large scale in India. In one of the colleges of an Indian University in a large manufacturing town, fourteen young men--very agreeable and frank, outspoken fellows--met at random in one of the hostels, were asked what, on completing their college course, they intended to do; twelve answered to become ”pleaders,” and two hoped for something in the Government service. None proposed to follow manufacturing industry, agriculture, or commerce. The legal profession which they proposed to enter was so crowded that pleaders are said to have been competing with each other to obtain cases by a kind of Dutch auction regarding fees, and also to promote litigation wilfully in order to obtain a living. It is from a kind of ”intellectual proletariat” in all countries, that dangerous political agitators are drawn who take up political life not to improve the conditions of their fellows, but to find some sort of a career for themselves, having no useful occupation to turn to.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 5: Since the above lines were written I hear that a Committee of Inquiry has been appointed by the Government to report on the subject.]

CHAPTER XII

WAGES[6]

_How shall we better distribute the product of industry, and allay the unrest of which we hear so much? There's only one way--by improving our methods of production. To effect this the earnest and active co-operation between those engaged in industry must be employed._

_... No longer must a man be supported by his union when he refuses to mind two lathes because the custom of the factory confines him to one. No longer must an employer a.s.sign as a reason for cutting prices that the man's wages are too high.... Each side must endeavour better to understand the outlook of the other._--SIR HUGH BELL.

The second grievance mentioned in the _Quarterly_ article already referred to is: ”The wages are too low.” To remedy this grievance, increased productivity, along with greater economy in working, is the first essential in order to obtain the funds out of which higher wages can be paid; the second, to get a fair allocation and distribution of the profit made. Increased benefit will also be a stimulus to better work.

For a crowded country like ours to maintain a leading position in industry is obviously a necessary condition either of welfare or progress. It is of first importance to secure work of high quality. A highly civilised and trained nation must hold its own by the superior quality of the articles produced as well as by being able to supply both its own needs and to compete in prices with others by the quant.i.ty of output. It may be possible, for example, to hold the market for fine spinning when other countries are well able to supply coa.r.s.e yarns from their own factories. Hitherto this country has been able to maintain a lead in industry largely through causes which are no longer operative.

Thus, we had (1) a settled Government when Germany and Italy were divided into a number of small and inefficient and often very badly governed States, when France was exhausted and unsettled, and when America was only in its infancy; and (2) the advantage due to the fact that the great discoveries and inventions which advanced industry were mostly made in Britain, when industry was developing at the close of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century. Many of these inventions were made by manual workers who, by intuitive genius, saw what was needed to meet the requirements that arose in practice. There was not then that fund of acc.u.mulated scientific knowledge and experience in existence which anyone must have before he can make any advance or improvement to-day. There was an interesting print published some forty years ago giving portraits of the Englishmen who had made contributions to practical science and who might have been a.s.sembled together in one room in 1808. It included many who made their inventions as manual workers. Murdock, who invented a new lathe, and developed the use of coal gas, worked until over forty years old for a wage of a pound a week; Davy had been apprenticed to an apothecary; Bramah, who invented a new hydraulic press, once worked with a village carpenter; Bolton and Watt and Nasmyth, the inventor of the steam hammer, were practical engineers. Never in the world's history has there been such a galaxy of practical talent and inventive power as those whose portraits are shown in this picture. Now a larger amount of preliminary knowledge as to what has already been done and of the sciences is necessary, in most cases at least, before useful inventions can be made. The more widely this scientific knowledge can be made available throughout all cla.s.ses in the country the greater is the possibility of maintaining our lead. It is also important to maintain, so far as technical education can give it, skill in carrying out methods already established and improving them, and also in making the worker more adaptable to new conditions and altered circ.u.mstances instead of being a mere machine able to do one cla.s.s of work only, and adhering simply to the one rigid method which he may have learnt. But knowledge and training are not all that is wanted.

It is essential that all cla.s.ses connected with industry should realise that increased production in established and well-understood industries is essential, and that it can only be obtained, first, by willing and vigorous work on the part of the workman, aiming at producing as much as possible in the hours during which labour can be efficiently carried on without detriment to health or depriving the labourer of the opportunities of enjoying a life outside his daily routine; and, secondly, by the increased use of the best machinery and labour-saving appliances and working such machinery to its fullest capacity. Instead of that, it has often been the policy to restrict the production of each man's labour, one reason being lest there should not be enough employment to go round, and also to view the introduction of machinery which might displace labour with hostility and suspicion. In order to give the leisure which the workman needs for a full and healthy life, and to provide a wage which will enable him to secure the comforts which he rightly desires, as well as to obtain adequate remuneration for those who manage businesses, and interest on their money for those whose capital is to be embarked in them, increased production is necessary; but it cannot be expected that workmen will realise this or desire the result unless they know certainly that they will obtain at once a benefit from it. It has too often been the case that where some new invention has been made, or new machinery introduced, or the conditions of trade have enabled an industry to be more profitable, the workman has not shared in the benefits obtained until he has pressed for an increase of wages, even to the extent of striking or threatening to strike. The faults and jealousies leading to restricted production are not all on one side. Cases have arisen when a manager has let out a piece of work to a group of workmen at a price which has resulted in a larger output in a given time at less cost, though the amount paid to each man has been higher owing to increased diligence, yet the employers raised objections, because the wages earned were ”more than such men ought to have.”

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