Part 4 (1/2)
-- 9. The Purchaser as ”Sweater.” A third view, a little longer-sighted than the others, casts the blame upon the purchasing public. Wages must be low, we are told, because the purchaser insists on low prices. It is the rage for ”cheapness” which is the real cause, according to this line of thought. Formerly the customer was content to pay a fair price for an article to a tradesman with whom he dealt regularly, and whose interest it was to sell him a fair article. The tradesman could thus afford to pay the manufacturer a price which would enable him to pay decent wages, and in return for this price he insisted upon good work being put into the goods he bought. Thus there was no demand for bad work. Skilled work alone could find a market, and skilled work requires the payment of decent wages. The growth of modern compet.i.tion has changed all this.
Regular custom has given way to touting and advertising, the bond of interest between consumer and shopkeeper is broken, the latter seeks merely to sell the largest quant.i.ty of wares to any one who will buy, the former to pay the lowest price to any one who will sell him what he thinks he wants. Hence a deterioration in the quality of many goods. It is no longer the interest of many tradesmen to sell sound wares; the consumer can no longer rely upon the recommendation of the retailer as a skilled judge of the quality of a particular line of goods; he is thrown back upon his own discrimination, and as an amateur he is apt to be worsted in a bargain with a specialist. There is no reason to suppose that customers are meaner than they used to be. They always bought things as cheaply as they knew how to get them. The real point is that they are less able to detect false cheapness than they used to be. Not merely do they no longer rely upon a known and trusted retailer to protect them from the deceits of the manufacturer, but the facilities for deception are continually increasing. The greater complexity of trade, the larger variety of commodities, the increased specialization in production and distribution, the growth of ”a science of adulteration” have immensely increased the advantage which the professional salesman possesses over the amateur customer. Hence the growth of goods meant not for use but for sale--jerry-built houses, adulterated food, sham cloth and leather, botched work of every sort, designed merely to pa.s.s muster in a hurried act of sale. To such a degree of refinement have the arts of deception been carried that the customer is liable to be tricked and duped at every turn. It is not that he foolishly prefers to buy a bad article at a low price, but that he cannot rely upon his judgment to discriminate good from bad quality; he therefore prefers to pay a low price because he has no guarantee that by paying more he will get a better article. It is this fact, and not a mania for cheapness, which explains the flooding of the market with bad qualities of wares. This effectual demand for bad workmans.h.i.+p on the part of the consuming public is no doubt directly responsible for many of the worst phases of ”sweating.” Slop clothes and cheap boots are turned out in large quant.i.ties by workers who have no claim to be called tailors or shoemakers. A few weeks' practice suffices to furnish the quantum of clumsy skill or deceit required for this work. That is to say, the whole field of unskilled labour is a recruiting-ground for the ”sweater” or small employer in these and other clothing trades. If the public insisted on buying good articles, and paid the price requisite for their production, these ”sweating” trades would be impossible. But before we saddle the consuming public with the blame, we must bear in mind the following extenuating circ.u.mstances.
-- 10. What the Purchaser can do.--The payment of a higher price is no guarantee that the workers who produce the goods are not ”sweated.” If I am competent to discriminate well-made goods from badly-made goods, I shall find it to my interest to abstain from purchasing the latter, and shall be likewise doing what I can to discourage ”sweating.” But by merely paying a higher price for goods of the same quality as those which I could buy at a lower price, I may be only putting a larger profit in the hands of the employers of this low-skilled labour, and am certainly doing nothing to decrease that demand for badly-made goods which appears to be the root of the evil. The purchaser who wishes to discourage sweating should look first to the quality of the goods he buys, rather than to the price. Skilled labour is seldom sweated to the same degree as unskilled labour, and a high cla.s.s of workmans.h.i.+p will generally be a guarantee of decent wages. In so far as the purchaser lacks ability to accurately gauge quality, he has little security that by paying a higher price he is securing better wages for the workers.
The so-called respectability of a well-known house is a poor guarantee that its employes are getting decent wages, and no guarantee at all that the workers in the various factories with which the firm deals are well paid. It is impossible for a private customer to know that by dealing with a given shop he is not directly or indirectly encouraging ”sweating.” It might, however, be feasible for the consuming public to appoint committees, whose special work it should be to ascertain that goods offered in shops were produced by firms who paid decent wages. If a ”white list” of firms who paid good wages, and dealt only with manufacturers who paid good wages, were formed, purchasers who desired to discourage sweating would be able to feel a certain security, so far, at any rate, as the later stages of production are concerned, which ordinary knowledge of the world and business will not at present enable them to obtain. The force of an organized public opinion, even that of a respectable minority, brought to bear upon notorious ”sweating” firms, would doubtless be of great avail, if carefully applied.
At the same time, it must not for a moment be imagined that the problem of poverty would be solved if we could insure, by the payment of higher prices for better qualities of goods, the extermination of the sweating trades. This low, degraded and degrading work enables large numbers of poor inefficient workers to eke out a bare subsistence. If it were taken away, the direct result would be an accession of poverty and misery. The demand for skilled labour would be greater, but the unskilled labourer cannot pa.s.s the barrier and compete for this; the overflow of helpless, hopeless, feeble, unskilled labour would be greater than ever. Whatever the ultimate effects of decreasing the demand for unskilled labour might be, the misery of the immediate effects could not be lightly set aside.
This contradiction of the present certain effect and the probable future effects confronts the philanthropist at every turn. The condition of the London match-girls may serve as an ill.u.s.tration of this. Their miserable life has rightly roused the indignation of all kind-hearted people. The wretched earnings they take have provoked people to suggest that we should put an end to the trade by refusing to buy from them. But since the earnings of these girls depend entirely on the amount they sell, this direct result of your action, prompted by humane sentiment, will be to reduce still further these miserable earnings; that is to say, you increase the suffering of the very persons whose lot you desire to alleviate. You may say that you buy your matches all the same, but you buy them at a shop where you may or may not have reason to believe that the attendants are well paid. But that will not benefit the girls, whose business you have destroyed; they will not be employed in the shops, for they belong to a different grade of labour. This dilemma meets the social reformer at each step; the complexity of industrial relations appears to turn the chariot of progress into a Juggernaut's car, to crush a number of innocent victims with each advance it makes. One thing is evident, that if the consuming public were to regulate its acts of purchase with every possible regard to the condition of the workers, they could not ensure that every worker should have good regular work for decent wages.
In arriving at this conclusion, we are far from maintaining that the public even in its private capacity as a body of consumers could do nothing. A certain portion of responsibility rests on the public, as we saw it rested on employers and on middlemen. But the malady is rightly traceable in its full force neither to the action of individuals nor of industrial cla.s.ses, but to the relation which subsists between these individuals and cla.s.ses; that is, to the nature and character of the industrial system in its present working. This may seem a vague statement, but it is correct; the desire to be prematurely definite has led to a narrow conception of the ”sweating” malady, which more than anything else has impeded efforts at reform.
Chapter V.
The Causes of Sweating.
-- 1. The excessive Supply of Low-skilled Labour.--Turning to the industrial system for an explanation of the evils of ”Sweating,” we shall find three chief factors in the problem; three dominant aspects from which the question may be regarded. They are sometimes spoken of as the causes of sweating, but they are better described as conditions, and even as such are not separate, but closely related at various points.
The first condition of ”sweating” is an abundant and excessive supply of low-skilled and inefficient labour. It needs no parade of economic reasoning to show that where there are more persons willing to do a particular kind of work than are required, the wages for that work, if free compet.i.tion is permitted, cannot be more than what is just sufficient to induce the required number to accept the work. In other words, where there exists any quant.i.ty of unemployed compet.i.tors for low-skilled work, wages, hours of labour, and other conditions of employment are so regulated, as to present an attraction which just outweighs the alternatives open to the unemployed, viz. odd jobs, stealing, starving, and the poor-house. In countries where access to unused land is free, the productiveness of labour applied to such land marks the minimum of wages possible; in countries where no such access is possible, the minimum wages of unskilled labour, whenever the supply exceeds the demand, is determined by the attractiveness of the alternatives named above.
A margin of unemployed labour means a bare subsistence wage for low- skilled labour, and it means this wage earned under industrial conditions, such as we find under the ”sweating system.” In order to keep the wage of low-skilled labour down to this minimum, which can only rise with an improvement in the alternatives, it is not required that there should at any time exist a large number of unemployed. A very small number, in effective compet.i.tion with those employed, will be quite as effectual in keeping down the rate of wages. The same applies to all grades of skilled labour, with this important difference, that the minimum wage can never fall below what is required to induce less skilled workers to acquire and apply the extra skill which will enable them to furnish the requisite supply of highly-skilled workers. Trade Unions have instinctively directed all their efforts to preventing the compet.i.tion of unemployed workers in their respective trades from pulling down to its minimum the rate of wages. The strongest of those have succeeded in establis.h.i.+ng a standard wage less than which no one shall accept; unemployed men, who in free compet.i.tion would accept less than this standard wage, are supported by the funds of the Union, that they may not underbid. Unions of comparatively unskilled workers, who are never free from the compet.i.tion of unemployed, and who cannot undertake permanently to buy off all compet.i.tors ready to underbid, endeavour to limit the numbers of their members, and to prevent outsiders from effectively competing with them in the labour market, in order that by restricting the supply of labour, they may prevent a fall of wages. The importance of these movements for us consists in their firm but tacit recognition of the fact, that an excessive supply of unskilled labour lies at the root of the industrial disease of ”sweating.”
-- 2. The Contributing Causes of excessive Supply.--The last two chapters have dealt with the princ.i.p.al large industrial movements which bear on this supply of excessive low-skilled labour; but to make the question clear, it will be well to enumerate the various contributing causes.
[Greek: a]. The influx of rural population into the towns constantly swells the supply of raw unskilled labour. The better quality of this agricultural labour, as we saw, does not continue to form part of this glut, but rises into more skilled and higher paid strata of labour. The worse quality forms a permanent addition to the ma.s.s of inefficient labour competing for bare subsistence wages.
[Greek: b]. The steady flow of cheap unskilled foreign labour into our large cities, especially into London, swollen by occasional floods of compulsory exiles, adds an element whose compet.i.tion as a part of the ma.s.s of unskilled labour is injurious out of proportion to its numerical amount.
[Greek: g]. Since this foreign immigration weakens the industrial condition of our low-skilled native labour by increasing the supply, it will be evident that any cause which decreases the demand for such labour will operate in the same way. The free importation from abroad of goods which compete in our markets with the goods which ”sweated” labour is applied to make, has the same effect upon the workers in ”sweating”
trades as the introduction of cheap foreign labour. The one diminishes the demand, the other increases the supply of unskilled or low-skilled labour. The import of quant.i.ties of German-made cheap clothing into East London shops, to compete with native manufacture of the same goods, will have precisely the same force in maintaining ”sweating,” as will the introduction of German workers, who shall make these same clothes in East London itself. In each case, the purchasing public reaps the advantage of cheap labour in low prices, while the workers suffer in low wages. The contention that English goods made at home must be exported to pay for the cheap German goods, furnishes no answer from the point of view of the low-skilled worker, unless these exports embody the kind of labour of which he is capable.
[Greek: d]. The constant introduction of new machinery, as a subst.i.tute for skilled hand-labour, by robbing of its value the skill of certain cla.s.ses of workers, adds these to the supply of low-skilled labour.
[Greek: e]. The growth of machinery and of education, by placing women and young persons more upon an equality with male adult labour, swells the supply of low-skilled labour in certain branches of work. Women and young persons either take the places once occupied by men, or undertake new work (e.g. in post-office or telegraph-office), which would once have been open only to the compet.i.tion of men. This growth of the direct or indirect compet.i.tion of women and young persons, must be considered as operating to swell the general supply of unskilled labour.
[Greek: z]. In London another temporary, but important, factor must be noted. The compet.i.tion of provincial factories has proved too strong for London factories in many industries. Hence of late years a gradual transfer of manufacture from London to the provinces. A large number of workers in London factories have found themselves out of work. The break-up of the London factories has furnished ”sweating trades” with a large quant.i.ty of unemployed and starving people from whom to draw.
Regarded from the widest economic point of view, the existence of an excessive supply of labour seeking employments open to free compet.i.tion must be regarded as the most important aspect of the ”sweating system.”
The recent condition of the compet.i.tion for casual dock-labour brought dramatically to the foreground this factor in the labour question. The struggle for livelihood was there reduced to its lowest and most brutal terms. ”There is a place at the London Docks called the cage, a sort of pen fenced off by iron railings. I have seen three hundred half-starved dockers crowded round this cage, when perhaps a ganger would appear wanting three hands, and the awful struggle of these three hundred famished wretches fighting for that opportunity to get two or three hours' work has left an impression upon me that can never be effaced.
Why, I have actually seen them clambering over each other's backs to reach the coveted ticket. I have frequently seen men emerge bleeding and breathless, with their clothes pretty well torn off their backs.” The compet.i.tion described in this picture only differs from other compet.i.tions for low-skilled town labour in as much as the conditions of tender gave a tragical concentration to the display of industrial forces. This picture, exaggerated as it will appear to those who have not seen it, brings home to us the essential character of free compet.i.tion for low-skilled labour where the normal supply is in excess of the demand. If other forms of low-skilled labour were put up to be scrambled for in the same public manner, the scene would be repeated _ad nauseam_. But because the compet.i.tion of seamstresses, tailors, s.h.i.+rt- finishers, fur-sewers, &c., is conducted more quietly and privately, it is not less intense, not less miserable, and not less degrading. This struggle for life in the shape of work for bare subsistence wages, is the true logical and necessary outcome of free compet.i.tion among an over supply of low-skilled labourers.
-- 3. The Multiplication of ”Small Masters.”--Having made so much progress in our a.n.a.lysis, we shall approach more intelligently another important aspect of the ”sweating system.” Mr. Booth and other investigators find the tap-root of the disease to consist in the multiplication of small masters. The leading industrial forces of the age, as we have seen, make for the concentration of labour in larger and larger ma.s.ses, and its employment in larger and larger factories. Yet in London and in certain other large centres of population, we find certain trades which are still conducted on a small scale in little workshops or private houses, and those trades furnish a very large proportion of the worst examples of ”sweating.” Here is a case of arrested development in the evolution of industry. It is even worse than that; for some trades which had been subject to the concentrating force of the factory system, have fallen into a sort of back-wash of the industrial current, and broken up again into smaller units. The increased proportion of the clothing industries conducted in private houses and small workshops is the most notorious example. This applies not only to East London, but to Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, and other large cities, especially where foreign labour has penetrated. For a large proportion of the sweating workshops, especially in clothing trades, are supported by foreign labour. In Liverpool during the last ten years the subst.i.tution of home- workers for workers in tailors' shops has been marked, and in particular does this growth of home-workers apply to women.
A credible witness before the Lords' Committee stated that ”at the present moment it would be safe to say that two-thirds of the sweaters in Liverpool are foreigners,” coming chiefly from Germany and Russian Poland. In Leeds sixteen years ago there were only twelve Jewish workshops; there are now some hundreds.
Since a very large proportion of the worst sweating occurs in trades where the work is given out, either directly or by the medium of sub- contract, to home-workers, it is natural that stress should be laid upon the small private workshops as the centre of the disease. If the work could only be got away from the home and the small workshop, where inspection is impracticable, and done in the factory or large workshop, where limitations of hours of labour and sanitary conditions could be enforced, where the force of public opinion could secure the payment of decent wages, and where organization among workers would be possible, the worst phases of the malady would disappear. The abolition of the small workshop is the great object of a large number of practical reformers who have studied the sweating system. The following opinion of an expert witness is endorsed by many students of the question--”If the employers were compelled to obtain workshops, and the goods were made under a factory system, we believe that they could be made quite as cheaply under that system, with greater comfort to the workers, in shorter hours; and that the profits would then be distributed among the workers, so that the public would obtain their goods at the same price.”[25] It is maintained that the inferior qualities of shoes are produced and sold more cheaply in the United States by a larger use of machinery under the factory system, than in London under a sweating system, though wages are, of course, much higher in America. Moreover, many of the products of the London sweating trades are competing on almost equal terms with the products of provincial factories, where machines are used instead of hand-labour.
-- 4. Economic Advantages of ”Small Workshops.”--The question we have to answer is this--Why has the small workshop survived and grown up in London and other large cities, in direct antagonism to the prevalent industrial movement of the age? It is evident that the small workshop system must possess some industrial advantages which enable it to hold its own. The following considerations throw light upon this subject.