Part 4 (2/2)

1. A larger proportion of the work in sweating trades is work for which there is a very irregular demand. Irregularity of employment, or, more accurately speaking, insufficiency of employment--for the ”irregularity”

is itself regular--forms one of the most terrible phases of the sweating system. The lower you descend in the ranks of labour the worse it is. A large number of the trades, especially where women are employed, are trades where the elements of ”season” and fas.h.i.+on enter in. But even those which, like tailoring, s.h.i.+rtmaking, shoemaking, furniture and upholstery, would seem less subject to periodic or purely capricious changes, are liable in fact to grave and frequent fluctuations of the market. The average employment in sweating trades is roughly estimated at three or four days in the week. There are two busy seasons lasting some six weeks each, when these miserable creatures are habitually overworked. ”The remaining nine months,” says Mr. Burnett, ”do not average more than half time, especially among the lower grade workers.”

This gives us one clue to the ability of the small workshop to survive-- its superior flexibility from the point of view of the employer.

”High organization makes for regularity; low organization lends itself to the opposite. A large factory cannot stop at all without serious loss; a full-sized workshop will make great efforts to keep going; but the man who employs only two or three others in his own house can, if work fails, send them all adrift to pick up a living as best they can.”[26]

Since a smaller sweating-master can set up business on some 2 capital, and does not expect to make much more profit as employer than as workman, he is able to change from one capacity to the other with great facility.

2. The high rent for large business premises, especially in London, makes for the small workshop or home-work system. The payment of rent is thus avoided by the business firm which is the real employer, and thrown upon the sub-contractor or the workers themselves, to be by them in their turn generally evaded by using the dwelling-room for a workshop.

Thus one of the most glaring evils of the sweating system is seen to form a distinct economic advantage in the workshop, as compared with the large factory. The element of rent is practically eliminated as an industrial charge.

3. The evasion of the restrictions of the Factory Act must be regarded as another economic advantage. Excessive hours of labour when convenient, overcrowding in order to avoid rent, absence of proper sanitary conditions, are essential to the cheapest forms of production under present conditions. It does not pay either the employing firm or the sub-contractor to consider the health or even the life of the workers, provided that the state of the labour market is such that they can easily replace spent lives.

4. The inability to combine for their mutual protection and advantage of scattered employes working in small bodies, living apart, and unacquainted even with the existence of one another, is another ”cheapness” of the workshop system.

5. The fact that so large a proportion of master-sweaters are Jews has a special significance. It seems to imply that the poorer cla.s.s of immigrant Jews possess a natural apt.i.tude for the position, and that their presence in our large cities furnishes the corner-stone of the vicious system. Independence and mastery are conditions which have a market value for all men, but especially for the timid and often down- trodden Jew. Most men will contentedly receive less as master than as servant, but especially the Jew. We saw that the immigrant Jew, by his capacities and inclinations, was induced to make special efforts to subst.i.tute work of management for manual labour, and to become a profit- maker instead of a wage-earner. The Jew craves the position of a sweating-master, because that is the lowest step in a ladder which may lead to a life of magnificence, supported out of usury. The Jewish Board of Guardians in London, though its philanthropic action is on the whole more enlightened than that of most wealthy public bodies, has been responsible in no small measure for this artificial multiplication of small masters. A very large proportion of the funds which they dispensed was given or lent in small sums in order to enable poor Jews ”to set up for themselves.” The effect of this was twofold. It first a.s.sisted to draw to London numbers of continental Jews, who struggled as ”greeners”

under sweaters for six months, until they were qualified for a.s.sistance from the Jewish Board of Guardians. It then enabled them to set up as small masters, and sweat other ”greeners” as they themselves were sweated. It was quite true that the object of such charity was the most useful which any society could undertake; namely, that of a.s.sisting the industrially weak to stand on their own legs. But it was unfortunately true that this early stage of independence was built upon the miserable dependence of other workers.

6. But while, as we see, there are many special conditions which, in London especially, favour the small workshop, the most important will be found to consist in the large supply of cheap unskilled labour. This is the real material out of which the small workshop system is built. In dealing with the other conditions, we shall find that they all presuppose this abundant supply of labour. If labour were more scarce, and wages therefore higher, the small workshop would be impossible, for the absolute economy of labour, effected by the factory organization with its larger use of machinery, would far outweigh the number of small economies which, as we have seen, at present in certain trades, favour and make possible the small workshop. Every limitation in the supply of this low-skilled labour, every expansion of the alternatives offered by emigration, access to free land, &c., will be effectual in crus.h.i.+ng a number of the sweating workshops, and favouring the large factory at their expense.

-- 5. Irresponsibility of Employers.--The third view of the sweating System lays stress upon its moral aspect, and finds its chief cause in the irresponsibility of the employer. Now we have already seen that this severance of the personal relation between employer and employed is a necessary result of the establishment of the large factory as the industrial unit, and of the ever-growing complexity of modern commerce.

It is not merely that the widening gap of social position between employer and employed, and the increased number of the latter, make the previous close relation impossible. Quite as important is the fact that the real employer in modern industry is growing more ”impersonal.” What we mean is this. The nominal employer or manager is not the real employer. The real employer of labour is capital, and it is to the owners of the capital in any business that we must chiefly look for the exercise of such responsibility as rightly subsists between employer and employed. Now, while it is calculated that one-eighth of the business of England is in the hands of joint-stock companies, const.i.tuting far more than one-eighth of the large businesses, in the great majority of other cases, where business is conducted on a large scale, the head of the business is to a great extent a mere manager of other people's capital.

Thus while the manager's sense of personal responsibility is weakened by the number of ”hands” whom he employs, his freedom of action is likewise crippled by his obligation to subserve the interests of a body of capitalists who are in ignorance of the very names and number of the human beings whose destiny they are controlling. The severance of the real ”employer” from his ”hands” is thus far more complete than would appear from mere attention to the growth in the size of the average business. Now it must not be supposed that this severance of the personal relation between employer and employed is of necessity a loss to the latter. There is no reason to suppose that the close relation subsisting in the old days between the master and his journeymen and apprentices was as a rule idyllically beautiful. No doubt the control of the master was often vexatious and despotic. The tyranny of a heartless employer under the old system was probably much more injurious than the apathy of the most vulgar plutocrat of to-day. The employe under the modern system is less subject to petty spite and unjust interference on the part of his employer. In this sense he is more free. But on the other hand, he has lost that guarantee against utter dest.i.tution and degradation afforded by the humanity of the better cla.s.s of masters. He has exchanged a human nexus for a ”cash nexus.” The nominal freedom of this cash relations.h.i.+p is in the case of the upper strata of workmen probably a real freedom; the irresponsibility of their employers has educated them to more self-reliance, and strengthened a healthy personality in them. It is the lower cla.s.s of workers who suffer. More and more they need the humanity of the responsible employer to protect them against the rigours of the labour-market. The worst miseries of the early factory times were due directly to the break-up of the responsibility of employers. This was slowly recognized by the people of England, and the series of Factory Acts, Employers' Liability Acts, and other measures for the protection of labour, must be regarded as a national attempt to build up a compulsory legal responsibility to be imposed upon employers in place of a natural responsibility based on moral feeling. We draft legislation and appoint inspectors to teach employers their duty towards employes, and to ensure that they do it.

Thus in certain industries we have patched up an artificial mechanism of responsibility.

Wherever this legal responsibility is not enforced in the case of low- skilled workers, we have, or are liable to have, ”sweating.” Glancing superficially at the small workshop or sweating-den, it might seem that this being a mere survival of the old system, the legal enforcement of responsibility would be unnecessary. But it is not a mere survival. In the small workshop of the old system the master was the real employer.

In the modern ”sweating” den he is not the real employer, but a mere link between the employing firm and the worker. From this point of view we must a.s.sign as the true cause of sweating, the evasion of the legal responsibility of the Factory Act rendered possible to firms which employ outside workers either directly or indirectly through the agency of ”sweaters.” Although it might be prudent as a means of breaking up the small workshop to attempt to impose upon the ”middleman” the legal responsibility, genuine reform directed to this aspect of ”sweating,”

can only operate by making the real employing firm directly responsible for the industrial condition of its outdoor direct or indirect employes.

This responsibility imposed by law has been strengthened as an effective safeguard of the interests of the workers by combination among the latter. In skilled industries where strong trade organization exists, the practical value of such combination exceeds the value of restrictive legislation.

”In their essence Trade Unions are voluntary a.s.sociations of workmen, for mutual protection and a.s.sistance in securing the most favourable conditions of labour.” ”This is their primary and fundamental object, and includes all efforts to raise wages or prevent a reduction of wages; to diminish the hours of labour or resist attempts to increase the working hours; and to regulate all matters pertaining to methods of employment or discharge, and modes of working.”[27] Engineers, boiler- makers, cotton-spinners, printers, would more readily give up the a.s.sistance given them by legislative restriction than the power which they have secured for themselves by combination. It is in proportion as trade combination is weak that the actual protection afforded by Factory and Employers' Liability Acts become important. Just as we saw that sweating trades were those which escaped the legislative eye; so we see that they are also the trades where effective combination does not exist. Where Trade Unions are strong, sweating cannot make any way. The State aid of restrictive legislation, and the self help of private combination are alike wanting to the ”sweated” workers.

Chapter VI.

Remedies for Sweating.

-- 1. Factory Legislation. What it can do.--Having now set forth the three aspects of the industrial disease of ”Sweating”--the excessive supply of unskilled labour, the multiplication of small employers, the irresponsibility of capital--we have next to ask, What is the nature of the proposed remedies? Since any full discussion of the different remedies is here impossible, it must suffice if we briefly indicate the application of the chief proposed remedies to the different aspects of the disease. These remedies will fairly fall into three cla.s.ses.

The first cla.s.s aim at attacking by legislative means, the small workshop system, and the evils of long hours and unsanitary conditions from which the ”sweated” workers suffer. Briefly, it may be said that they seek to increase and to enforce the legal responsibility of employers, and indirectly to crush the small workshop system by turning upon it the wholesome light of publicity, and imposing certain irksome and expensive conditions which will make its survival in its worst and ugliest shapes impossible. The most practical recommendation of the Report of the Lords' Committee is an extension of the sanitary clauses of the Factory Act, so as to reach all workshops.

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