Part 3 (2/2)

Boot-making.--The hand-sewn trade, which const.i.tutes the upper stratum of this industry, is executed for the most part by skilled workers, who get good wages for somewhat irregular employment. There are several strong trade organizations, and though the hours are long, extending occasionally to thirteen or fourteen hours, the worst forms of sweating are not found. So too in the upper branches of machine-sewn boots, the skilled hands get fairly high wages. But the lower grades of machine- made boots, and the ”sew-rounds,” i.e. fancy shoes and slippers, which form a large part of the industry in London, present some of the worst features of the ”sweating system.” The ”sweating master” plays a large part here. ”In a busy week a comparatively competent 'sweater' may earn from 18s. to 25s. less skilful hands may get 15s. or 16s. but boys and newly-arrived foreigners take 10s., 8s., 7s., or less; while the masters, after paying all expenses, would, according to their own estimates, make not less than 30s., and must, in many cases, net much higher sums. Owing, however, to the irregularity of their employment, the average weekly earnings of both masters and men throughout the year fall very greatly below the amount which they can earn when in full work.”[23] For the lowest kinds of work an ordinary male hand appears to be able to earn not more than 15s. per week. A slow worker, it is said, would earn an average of some 10s. to 12s. per week. The hours of labour for sweating work appear to be from fifteen to eighteen per diem, and ”greeners” not infrequently work eighteen to twenty hours a day. Women, who are largely used in making ”felt and carpet uppers,” cannot, if they work their hardest, make more than 1s. 3d. a day. In the lowest cla.s.s of work wages fall even lower. Mr. Schloss gives the wages of five men working in a small workshop, whose average is less than 11s. a week.

These wages do not of course represent skilled work at all. Machinery has taken over all the skilled work, and left a dull laborious monotony of operations which a very few weeks' practice enable a completely unskilled worker to undertake. Probably the bulk of the cheapest work is executed by foreigners, although from figures taken in 1887, of four typical London parishes, it appeared that only 16 per cent, of the whole trade were foreigners. In the lower cla.s.ses of goods a considerable fall of price has occurred during the fast few years, and perhaps the most degraded conditions of male labour are to be found in the boot trade. A large proportion of the work throughout the trade is out-work, and therefore escapes the operation of the Factory Act. The compet.i.tion among small employers is greatly accentuated by the existence of a form of middleman known as the ”factor,” who is an agent who gets his profit by playing off one small manufacturer against another, keeping down prices, and consequently wages, to a minimum. A large number of the small producers are extremely poor, and owing to the System which enables them to obtain material from leather-merchants on short credit, are constantly obliged to sell at a disadvantage to meet their bills.

The ”factor,” as a speculator, takes advantage of this to acc.u.mulate large stocks at low prices, and throwing them on the market in large quant.i.ties when wholesale prices rise, causes much irregularity in the trade.

The following quotation from the Report of the Lords' Committee sums up the chief industrial forces which are at work, and likewise ill.u.s.trates the confusion of causes with symptoms, and casual concomitants, which marks the ”common sense” investigations of intricate social phenomena.

”It will be seen from the foregoing epitome of the evidence, that sweating in the boot trade is mainly traced by the witnesses to the introduction of machinery, and a more complete system of subdivision of labour, coupled with immigration from abroad and foreign compet.i.tion.

Some witnesses have traced it in a great measure, if not princ.i.p.ally, to the action of factors; some to excessive compet.i.tion among small masters as well as men; others have accused the Trades Unions of a course of action which has defeated the end they have in view, namely, effectual combination, by driving work, owing to their arbitrary conduct, out of the factory into the house of the worker, and of handicapping England in the race with foreign countries, by setting their faces against the use of the best machinery.”[24]

s.h.i.+rt-making.--Perhaps no other branch of the clothing trade shows so large an area of utter misery as s.h.i.+rt-making, which is carried on, chiefly by women, in East London. The complete absence of adequate organization, arising from the fact that the work is entirely out-work, done not even by cl.u.s.ters of women in workshops, but almost altogether by scattered workers in their own homes, makes this perhaps the completest example of the evils of sweating. The commoner s.h.i.+rts are sold wholesale at 10s. 6d. per dozen. Of this sum, it appears that the worker gets 2s. 1d., and the sweater sometimes as much as 4s. The compet.i.tion of married women enters here, for s.h.i.+rt-making requires little skill and no capital; hence it can be undertaken, and often is, by married women, anxious to increase the little and irregular earnings of their husbands, and willing to work all day for whatever they can get. Some of the worst cases brought before the Lords' Committee showed that a week's work of this kind brings in a net gain of from 3s. to 5s.

It appears likely that few unmarried women or widows can undertake this work, because it does not suffice to afford a subsistence wage. But if this is so, it must be remembered that the compet.i.tion of married women has succeeded in underselling the unmarried women, who might otherwise have been able to obtain this work at a wage which would have supported life. The fact that those who work at s.h.i.+rt-making do not depend entirely on it for a livelihood, is an aggravation rather than an extenuation of the sweating character of this employment.

-- 4. Some minor ”Sweating” Trades.--Mantle-making is also a woman's industry. The wages are just sufficiently higher than in s.h.i.+rt-making to admit the introduction of the lowest grades of unsupported female workers. From 1s. 3d. to 1s. 6d. a day can be made at this work.

Furring employs large numbers of foreign males, and some thousands of both native and foreign females. It is almost entirely conducted in small workshops, under the conduct of middlemen, who receive the expensive furs from manufacturers, and hire ”hands” to sew and work them up. Wages have fallen during the last few years to the barest subsistence point, and even below. Wages for men are put at 10s. or 12s., and in the case of girls and young women, fall as low as 4s.; a sum which is in itself insufficient to support life, and must therefore be only paid to women and girls who are partly subsisted by the efforts of relatives with whom they live, or by the wages of vice.

In cabinet-making and upholstery, the same disintegrating influences have been at work which we noted in tailoring. Many firms which formerly executed all orders on their own premises, now buy from small factors, and much of the lowest and least skilled work is undertaken by small ”garret-masters,” or even by single workmen who hawk round their wares for sale on their own account. The higher and skilled branches are protected by trade organizations, and there is no evidence that wages have fallen; but in the less skilled work, owing perhaps in part to the compet.i.tion of machinery, prices have fallen, and wages are low. There is evidence that the sub-contract system here is sometimes carried through several stages, much to the detriment of the workman who actually executes the orders.

One of the most degraded among the sweating industries in the country is chain and nail-making. The condition of the chain-makers of Cradley Heath has called forth much public attention. The system of employment is a somewhat complicated one. A middleman, called a ”fogger,” acts as a go-between, receiving the material from the master, distributing it among the workers, and collecting the finished product. Evidence before the Committee shows that an acc.u.mulation of intricate forms of abuse of power existed, including in some cases systematic evasion of the Truck Act. Much of the work is extremely laborious, hours are long, twelve hours forming an ordinary day, and the wage paid is the barest subsistence wage. Much of the work done by women is quite unfit for them.

-- 5. Who is the Sweater? The Sub-contractor?--These facts relating to a few of the princ.i.p.al trades in the lower branches of which ”sweating”

thrives, must suffice as a general indication of the character of the disease as it infests the inferior strata of almost all industries.

Having learnt what ”sweating” means, our next question naturally takes the form, Who is the sweater? Who is the person responsible for this state of things? John Bull is concrete, materialistic in his feeling and his reasoning. He wants to find an individual, or a cla.s.s embodiment of sweating. If he can find the sweater, he is prepared to loathe and abolish him. Our indignation and humanitarianism requires a scape-goat.

As we saw, many of the cases of sweating were found where there was a sub-contractor. To our hasty vision, here seems to be the responsible party. Forty years ago _Alton Locke_ gave us a powerful picture of the wicked sub-contracting tailor, who, spider-like, lured into his web the unfortunate victim, and sucked his blood for gain. The indignation of tender-hearted but loose-thinking philanthropists, short-visioned working-cla.s.s orators, a.s.sisted by the satire of the comic journal, has firmly planted in the imagination of the public an ideal of an East London sweater; an idle, bloated middleman, whose expansive waistcoat is decorated with resplendent seals and watch-chains, who drinks his Champagne, and smokes his perfumed cigar, as he watches complacently the sunken faces and cowering forms of the wretched creatures whose happiness, health, and very life are sacrificed to his heartless greed.

Now a fair study of facts show this creature to be little else than a myth. The miseries of the sweating den are no exaggeration, they are attested by a thousand reliable witnesses; but this monster human spider is not found there. Though opinions differ considerably as to the precise status of the sweating middleman, it is evident that in the worst ”sweating” trades he is not idle, and he is not rich. In cases where the well-to-do, comfortable sub-contractor is found, he generally pays fair wages, and does not grossly abuse his power. When the worst features of sweating are present, the master sweater is nearly always poor, his profits driven down by compet.i.tion, so that he barely makes a living. It is, indeed, evident that in many of the worst Whitechapel sweating-dens the master does not on the average make a larger income than the more highly paid of his machinists. So, too, most of these ”sweaters” work along with their hands, and work just as hard. Some, indeed, have represented this sweating middleman as one who thrusts himself between the proper employer and the working man in order to make a gain for himself without performing any service. But the bulk of evidence goes to show that the sweater, even when he does not occupy himself in detailed manual labour, performs a useful work of superintendence and management. ”The sweater in the vast majority of cases is the one man in the workshop who can, and does, perform each and any branch of the trade.”

For the old adage, which made a tailor the ninth part of a man, has been completely reversed by the subdivision of work in modern industry. It now takes more than nine men to make a tailor. We have foremen or cutters, basters, machinists, fellers, b.u.t.ton-holers, pressers, general workers, &c. No fewer than twenty-five such subdivisions have been marked in the trade. Since the so-called tailor is no tailor at all, but a ”b.u.t.ton-holer” or ”baster,” it is obvious that the working of such a system requires some one capable of general direction.

This opinion is not, however, inconsistent with the belief that such work of ”direction” or ”organization” may be paid on a scale wholly out of proportion to the real worth of the services performed. Extremely strong evidence has been tendered to show that in many large towns, especially in Leeds and Liverpool, the ”sweating” tailor has frequently ”no practical knowledge of his trade.” The ignorance and incompetence of the working tailors enables a Jew with a business mind, by bribing managers, to obtain a contract for work which he makes no pretence to execute himself. His ability consists simply in the fact that he can get more work at a cheaper rate out of the poorer workmen than the manager of a large firm. In his capacity of middleman he is a ”convenience,” and for his work, which is nominally that of master tailor, really that of sweating manager, he gets his pay.

Part of the ”service” thus rendered by the sweater is doubtless that he acts as a screen to the employing firm. Public opinion, and ”the reputation of the firm,” would not permit a well-known business to employ the workers _directly_ under their own roof upon the terms which the secrecy of the sweater's den enables them to pay. But in spite of this, whether the ”Jew sweater” is really a competent tailor or is a mere ”organizer” of poor labour, it should be distinctly understood that he is paid for the performance of real work, which under the present industrial system has a use.

-- 6. Different Species of Middlemen.--It may be well here to say something on the general position of the ”middleman” in commerce. The popular notion that the ”middleman” is a useless being, and that if he could be abolished all would go well, arises from a confusion of thought which deserves notice. This confusion springs from a failure to understand that the ”middleman” is a part of a commercial System. He is not a mere intruder, a parasitic party, who forces his way between employer and worker, or between producer and consumer, and without conferring any service, extracts for himself a profit which involves a loss to the worker or the consumer, or to both. If we examine this notion, either by reference to facts, or from _a priori_ consideration, we shall find it based on a superst.i.tion. ”Middleman” is a broad generic term used to describe a man through whose hands goods pa.s.s on their way to the consuming public, but who does not appear to add any value to the goods he handles. At any stage in the production of these goods, previous to their final distribution, the middleman may come in and take his profit for no visible work done. He may be a speculator, buying up grain or timber, and holding or manipulating it in the large markets; or he may be a wholesale merchant, who, buying directly from the fisherman, and selling to the retail fishmonger, is supposed to be responsible for the high price of fish; he may be the retailer who in East London is supposed to cause the high price of vegetables.

With these species of middlemen we are not now concerned, except to say that their work, which is that of distribution, i.e. the more convenient disposal of forms of material wealth, may be equally important with the work of the farmer, the fisherman, or the market-gardener, though the latter produce changes in the shape and appearance of the goods, while the former do not. The middleman who stands between the employing firm and the worker is of three forms. He may undertake a piece of work for a wholesale house, and taking the material home, execute it with the aid of his family or outside a.s.sistants. This is the chamber-master proper, or ”sweater” in the tailoring trade. Or he may act as distributor, receive the material, and undertake to find workers who will execute it at their own homes, he undertaking the responsibility of collection.

Where the workers are scattered over a large city area, or over a number of villages, this work of distribution, and its responsibility, may be considerable. Lastly, there may be the ”sub-contractor” proper, who undertakes to do a portion of a work already contracted for, and either finds materials and tools, and pays workers to work for him, or sublets parts of his contract to workers who provide their own materials and tools. The mining and building trades contain various examples of such sub-contracts. Now in none of these cases is the middleman a mere parasite. In every case he does work, which, though as a rule it does not alter the material form of the goods with which it deals, adds distinct value to them, and is under present industrial conditions equally necessary, and equally ent.i.tled to fair remuneration with the work of the other producers. The old maxim ”nihil ex nihilo fit” is as true in commerce as in chemistry. In a compet.i.tive society a man can get nothing for nothing. If the middleman is a capitalist he may get something for use of his capital; but that too implies that his capital is put to some useful work.

-- 7. Work and Pay of the Middleman.--The complaint that the middleman confers no service, and deserves no pay, is the result of two fallacies.

The first, to which allusion has been made already, consists in the failure to recognize the work of distribution done by the middleman. The second and more important is the confusion of mind which leads people to conclude that because under different circ.u.mstances a particular cla.s.s of work might be dispensed with, therefore that work is under present circ.u.mstances useless and undeserving of reward. Lawyers might be useless if there were no dishonesty or crime, but we do not therefore feel justified in describing as useless the present work they do. With every progress of new inventions we are constantly rendering useless some cla.s.s or other of undoubted ”workers.” So the middleman in his various capacities may be dispensed with, if the organization of industrial society is so changed that he is no longer required; but until such changes are affected he must get, and deserves, his pay. It may indeed be true that certain cla.s.ses of middlemen are enabled by the position they hold to extract either from their employers or from the public a profit which seems out of proportion to the services they render. But this is by no means generally the case with the middleman in his capacity of ”sweater.” Even where a middleman does make large profits, we are not justified in describing such gain as excessive or unfair, unless we are prepared to challenge the claim of ”free compet.i.tion” to determine the respective money values of industrial services. The ”sweating” middleman does work which is at present necessary; he gets pay; if we think he gets too much, are we prepared with any rule to determine even approximately how much he ought to get?

-- 8. The Employer as ”Sweater.”--Since it appears that the middleman often sweats others of necessity because he is himself ”sweated,” in the low terms of the contract he makes, and since much of the worst ”sweating” takes place where firms of employers deal directly with the ”workers,” it may seem that the blame is s.h.i.+fted on to the employer, and that the real responsibility rests with him. Now is this so? When we see an important firm representing a large capital and employing many hands, paying a wage barely sufficient for the maintenance of life, we are apt to accuse the employers of meanness and extortion: we say this firm could afford to pay higher wages, but they prefer to take higher profits; the necessity of the poor is their opportunity. Now this accusation ought to be fairly faced. It will then be found to fall with very different force according as it is addressed to one or other of two cla.s.ses of employers. Firms which are s.h.i.+elded from the full force of the compet.i.tion of capital by the possession of some patent or trade secret, some special advantage in natural resources, locality, or command of markets, are generally in a position which will enable them to reap a rate of profit, the excess of which beyond the ordinary rate of profit measures the value of the practical monopoly they possess. The owners of a coal-mine, or a gas-works, a special brand of soap or biscuits, or a ring of capitalists who have secured control of a market, are often able to pay wages above the market level without endangering their commercial position. Even in a trade like the Lancas.h.i.+re cotton trade, where there is free compet.i.tion among the various firms, a rapid change in the produce market may often raise the profits of the trade, so that all or nearly all the employing firms could afford to pay higher wages without running any risk of failure. Now employers who are in a position like this are morally responsible for the hards.h.i.+p and degradation they inflict if they pay wages insufficient for decent maintenance. Their excuse that they are paying the market rate of wages, and that if their men do not choose to work for this rate there are plenty of others who will, is no exoneration of their conduct unless it be distinctly admitted that ”moral considerations” have no place in commerce. Employers who in the enjoyment of this superior position pay bare subsistance wages, and defend themselves by the plea that they pay the ”market rate,” are ”sweaters,” and the blame of sweating will rightly attach to them.

But this is not to be regarded as the normal position of employers.

Among firms unsheltered by a monopoly, and exposed to the full force of capitalist compet.i.tion, the rate of profit is also at ”the minimum of subsistence,” that is to say, if higher wages were paid to the employes, the rate of profit would either become a negative quant.i.ty, or would be so low that capital could no longer be obtained for investment in such a trade. Generally it may be said that a joint-stock company and a private firm, trading as most firms do chiefly on borrowed capital, could not pay higher wages and stand its ground in the compet.i.tion with other firms. If a benevolent employer engaged in a manufacture exposed to open compet.i.tion undertook to raise the wages of his men twenty per cent, in order to lift them to a level of comfort which satisfied his benevolence, he must first sacrifice the whole of his ”wage of superintendence,” and he will then find that he can only pay the necessary interest on his borrowed capital out of his own pocket: in fact he would find he had essayed to do what in the long run was impossible. The individual employer under normal circ.u.mstances is no more to blame for the low wages, long hours, &c., than is the middleman.

He could not greatly improve the industrial condition of his employes, however much he might wish.

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