Cornell University Library 
 HD4918.S7 
 
 Socialism and national minimum, 
 
 3 1924 001 624 281 
 
THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 NEW YORK STATE SCHOOL 
 
 OF 
 
 INDUSTRIAL AND LABOR 
 
 RELATIONS 
 
 AT 
 
 CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
a Cornell University 
 y Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 924001 624281 
 
Sixpence Nett 
 
 Also In Quarter Cloth, gilt top. Is. nett. 
 
 Socialism 
 and National 
 Minimum, by 
 
 Mrs. Sidney \yebb 
 Miss B. L. Hutchins 
 and the Fabian Society 
 
 b 
 
 IIS 
 S7 
 
 The 
 
 A. C. 
 
 Fabian 
 
 Fifield, 
 
 Socialist 
 
 44 Fleet 
 
 Series No. 6. 
 
 Street, E.C 
 
THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 NEW YORK STATE SCHOOL 
 
 OF 
 
 INDUSTRIAL AND LABOR 
 
 RELATIONS 
 
 AT 
 CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
THE FABIAN SOCIALIST SERIES, No 6 
 
 iSOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
THE FABIAN SOCIETY 
 
 FOUNDED 1883 
 
 THE FABIAN SOCIETY consists of men and women 
 who are Socialists, that is to say, in the words of its 
 " Basis," of those, who aim at the reorganization of society, 
 by the emancipation of Land and Industrial Capital from 
 individual and class ownership, and the vesting of them in th§ 
 conimunity for the general benefit. . . . For the attainment 
 of these ends the Fabian Society looks to the spread of Socialist 
 opinions, and the social and political changes consequent there- 
 on. It seeks to promote these by the general dissemination of 
 knowledge as to the relation between the individual and society 
 in its economic, ethical, and poUtical aspects. 
 
 The Society welcomes as members any persons, men or 
 women, who desire to promote the growth of Socialist opinion 
 and to hasten the enactment of Socialist measures, and it 
 exacts from its members no pledge except a declaration thgt 
 they are Socialists. 
 
 The Society is largely occupied in the endeavour to discov^ 
 in what way the principles of Socialism can be applied both to 
 the political problems which from time to time come up for 
 settlement, and to those problems of the future which are i|, 
 yet rather political theory than actual poUtics. It holds forj 
 nightly meetings for the discussion of papers on such subjeci 
 by members and others, some of which are published £» 
 Fabian Tracts. 
 
 The Society includes : — 
 
 I. Members, who must sign the Basis and be elected by 
 
 the Committee. Their subscription is not fixe(%> 
 each is expected to pay according to his means, 
 They control the Society through their Executi^J 
 Committee and at business meetings. 
 
 II. Associates, who sign a form expressing generi 
 
 sympathy with the objects of the Society, and ps^ 
 not less than los. a year. They can attend all except 
 specially private meetings, but have no control 
 over the Society and its policy. 
 III. Subscribers, who must pay at least 53, a year, and 
 
 can attend the lectures. 
 The monthly paper, " Fabian News," and the Fabian 
 Tracts are sent as published to all three classes. 
 
 Lists of Publications, Annual Report, Form of Application 
 as Member or Associate, and any other information can be 
 obtained on application, personally, or by letter, of 
 
 The Secretary of the Fabian Society, 
 
 3 Clement's Inn, Strand, London, W.C. 
 
SOCIALISM AND 
 
 II 
 
 NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 By 
 
 MRS. SIDNEY WEBB, 
 
 MISS B. L. HUTCHINS, 
 
 AND THE FABIAN SOCIETY 
 
 The Fabian Socialist Series, No. 6 
 
 LONDON 
 A. C. FIFIELD, 44 FLEET STREET, E.G. 
 
 1909 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. THE ECONOMICS OF FACTORY LEGIS- 
 LATION. By MRS. SIDNEY WEBB . 5 
 
 II. GAPS IN OUR FACTORY LEGISLATION. 
 With a Postscript on the Report of 
 THE Select Committee on Home Work. 
 By MISS B. L. HUTCHINS ... 50 
 
 III. THE CASE FOR A LEGAL MINIMUM 
 
 WAGE. By THE FABIAN SOCIETY . 65 
 
SOCIALISM AND 
 NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 I. THE ECONOMICS OF FACTORY 
 LEGISLATION 
 
 By MRS, SIDNEY WEBB 
 
 The Need for Regulation. — It is well to begin this little 
 book with a warning. When Modern Factory Legislation 
 was introduced a hundred years ago, women did not con- 
 cern themselves with such matters. Men did ; and it is 
 possible to prove, by the experience of a century, that 
 they began, with the best intentions, by making every 
 mistake that could possibly be made on tiie subject. 
 
 Now, the women of to-day are no cleverer than the men 
 of that time. The sole advantage they have over the men 
 of the eighteenth century is their knowledge of what has 
 happened during the nineteenth century. Unfortunately, 
 some of the pofitically active women of to-day have not 
 acquired that knowledge — do not even know that it is 
 available. They are arguing exactly as the men of their 
 class argued when they, too, had no experience to guide 
 them. Accordingly they are making the same mistakes, 
 and laying down the same Nihilistic " laws," with the 
 same good intentions, and the same high-minded anxiety 
 to secure, for every working woman, the personal Uberty 
 of a householder with at least three servants. My warning 
 is, then, to form no conclusion until you know the facts. 
 However richly your mind may be furnished, and your 
 character fortified, by unexceptionable political principles, 
 if you try to solve modern industrial problems by simply 
 
 17815 
 
6 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 asking, with regard to each proposal for industrial legis- 
 lation, Is its apparent public principle one of your own 
 private principles, you wUl be doing exactly what has 
 been done before by all the men who have gone hopelessly 
 astray on the subject. And such straying makes a much 
 graver difference than the difference between being wrong 
 and being right on a technical point. It has led men, and 
 is now leading women, passionately opposed to tyranny 
 and " sweating," to spend their lives in fighting the battle 
 of the tyrant and the sweater against his victims. And 
 it has led, and is stiU leading, those who, caring less for 
 individual hardships, place the welfare of their country 
 before everything, to resist every measure for the invigora- 
 tion of England's industrial strength and the raising of 
 her international prestige, as an attempt to handicap her 
 in competition with the nations who are still foolish enough 
 to believe that their strength lies in the weakness and 
 degradation of their workers. 
 
 At first sight any dictatorial interference by a govern- 
 ment official between two private persons making an 
 ordinary contract, when it involves no offence against 
 morality, seems an intolerable infringement of personal 
 liberty. And when the contract is one for the sale and 
 purchase of labour, and the interference goes to the lengti 
 of preventing the transaction from taking place unle^ 
 certain conditions are complied with, so that the labourer 
 is deprived, in his need, of a job on terms which he is 
 willing to accept and the employer to give, the action of 
 the government may easily seem, to his middle-clail 
 friends and patrons, a denial of his right to work, ana 
 therefore of his right to hve. And for this view there was, 
 in the eighteenth century, high economic authority. 
 " The patrimony of a poor man," says Adam Smith, " lies 
 in the strength and dexterity of his hands ; and to hinder 
 him from emplo3dng this strength and dexterity in what 
 manner he thinks proper, without injury to his neighbour, 
 is a plain violation of this most sacred property." * The 
 employer feels no less aggrieved. It is upon " freedom of 
 
 * Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, 1776. Edition by J. R, 
 M'Culloch, 1839, p. 55. 
 
ECONOMICS OF FACTORY LEGISLATION 7 
 
 enterprise " that he has been taught to rely for the reward 
 of exceptional talent, expensive education, and the fruits 
 of past saving. " The right of every man to employ the 
 capital he inherits or has acquired according to his own 
 discretion, without molestation, so long as he does not 
 infringe on the rights and property of others, is one of 
 those privileges which the free and happy constitution 
 of this country has long accustomed every Briton to con- 
 ceive as his birthright." * Finally, the whole body politic, 
 though it is, through its own factory inspector, itself the 
 aggressor in the matter, has its grievance too ; for we 
 have all learnt how greatly the national wealth and pros- 
 perity depend on the free exercise of enterprise and initia- 
 tive of our inventors, manufacturers, and traders. 
 
 AH these arguments against Factory Legislation are as 
 self-evident to the ordinary man and woman of the upper 
 or middle class as the statement that the sun rises in the 
 east and sets in the west is to the man in the street. But 
 exactly as our faith in the Ptolemaic system of the Uni- 
 verse has been shattered by a more accurate observation 
 of facts and by unravelling the connections between these 
 facts, so has our faith in the good results of free compe- 
 tition in the labour market been destroyed by a more 
 intimate knowledge of the hfe and labour of our working 
 people, and by a careful analysis of the actual process of 
 bargaining between employer and wage-earner. 
 
 On the facts alone, the weight of evidence is overwhelm- 
 ingly against unfettered competition among wage-earners 
 for employment. For three-quarters of a century com- 
 mittees of both Houses of ParUament, and Royai Com- 
 missions composed of all the available experts, have sat 
 and Mstened to the tale of degradation and misery brought 
 about by individual bargaining between capitaUst and 
 wage-earner. From the horrors of the unregulated textile 
 industries prior to 1833 — " a state of slavery more horrid 
 than the system of colonial slavery " — to the revelations 
 in 1890 before the House of Lords Committee on the 
 Sweating System, we hear the same dismal refrain, of 
 
 * Report of the House of Commons Committee on the State of 
 the Woollen Manufacture in England, 4 January, 1806, p. 12. 
 
8 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 " earnings barely sufficient to sustain existence : hours of 
 labour such as to make the lives of the workers periods 
 of almost ceaseless toil : sanitary conditions injurious to 
 the health of the persons employed, and dangerous to the 
 public." * And it is at least remarkable that in this inter- 
 minable series of pubhc inquiries, initiated by ministers of 
 different political parties, conducted almost exclusively 
 by members of the capitahst and brain-working class, 
 actuated by all sorts of motives, and swayed by very 
 varying bias, there has never been a single case in which 
 the verdict has been in favour of Free Competition in the 
 Labour Market. It is, in fact, upon the recommendations 
 of these Committees and Commissions that our successive 
 Factory Acts, Truck Acts, Mines Regulation Acts, and 
 Workmen's Compensdtion Acts have been based. From 
 the first instalment of state regulation in 1819, in the 
 feeble attempt to limit the hours of children in cottort 
 mills, down to the inclusion of washerwomen in 1895, and 
 the universally applicable prohibitions of the Truck Act 
 of 1896, we see the Labour Code constantly extended and 
 elaborated, until, at the present time, every individual 
 wage-earner in mining or manufacturing is included under 
 one or other of its provisions. 
 
 But evidence drawn empirically from facts, though it 
 may justify the action of the practical man, is not scien4 
 tifically conclusive. Our legislators may have been mis-l 
 taken in inferring that because they always found certain 
 specific evils in unregulated trades it was the absence of 
 regulation that caused the evils. The low wages, long; 
 hours, and bad sanitation of unregulated occupations — \ 
 what, in fact, we now caU, " sweating " — and the betteii 
 conditions prevailing in regulated industries, might be pure, 
 coincidences. To complete our conviction that they standi 
 in the relation of cause and effect we must be able to trace 
 the actual process by which " individual bargaining " does, 
 as a matter of fact, bring about a beating down of the. 
 livelihood of the manual worker below the level of efficient 
 citizenship. This laying bare of the actual working of freei 
 
 * Final Report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords 
 on the Sweating System, 1890. ; 
 
ECONOMICS OF FACTORY LEGISLATION 9 
 
 competition in the labour market has been the main 
 achievement of economic science during the last thirty 
 years. 
 
 First, we must realise the essential and permanent in- 
 equality in bargaining power between the individual wage- 
 earner and the capitaHst employer. When the conditions 
 of the workman's hfe are settled, without any collective 
 regulation, by absolutely free contract between man and 
 man, the workman's freedom is delusive. Where he bar- 
 gains, he bargains at a hopeless disadvantage ; and on 
 many of the points most vital to his health, efficiency, and 
 personal comfort he is unable to bargain at all. 
 
 Let us see how this comes about. We will not take a 
 time of bad trade, when five workmen are competing for 
 one situation. We will assume that the whole labour 
 market is in a state of perfect equilibrium ; that there is 
 only one workman wanting work and only one situation 
 vacant. Now, watch the process of bargaining between 
 the employer and the workman. If the capitalist refuses 
 to accept the workman's terms, he will, no doubt, suffer 
 some inconvenience as an employer. To fulfil his orders 
 he will have to " speed up " some of his machinery, or 
 insist on his workpeople working longer hours. Failing 
 these expedients, he may have to delay the dehvery of his 
 goods, and may even find his profits, at the end of the 
 year, fractionally less than before. But, meanwhile, he 
 goes on eating and drinking, his wife and family go on 
 living, just as before. His physical comfort is not affected : 
 he can afford to wait until the labourer comes back in a 
 humbler frame of mind. And that is just what the labourer 
 must presently do. For he, meanwhile, has lost his day. 
 His very subsistence depends on his promptly coming to 
 an agreement. If he stands out, he has no money to meet 
 his weekly rent, or to buy food for his family. If he is 
 obstinate, consumption of his little hoard, or the pawning 
 of his furniture, may put off the catastrophe ; but, sooner 
 or later, slow starvation forces him to come to terms. And 
 since success in the higghng of the market is largely deter- 
 mined by the relative eagerness of the parties to come to 
 terms — especially if this eagerness cannot be hidden — ^it 
 
10 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 is now agreed, even on this ground alone, " that manual 
 labourers as a class are at a disadvantage in bargaining."* 
 
 But there is also a marked difference between the 
 parties in that knowledge of the circumstances which is 
 requisite for successful higgling. " The art of bargaining," 
 says Jevons, " mainly consists in the buyer ascertaining 
 the lowest price at which the seller is willing to part with 
 his object, without disclosing, if possible, the highest price 
 which he, the buyer, is wiUing to give. . . . The power of 
 reading another man's thoughts is of high importance in 
 business." f Now the essential economic weakness of the 
 isolated workman's position, as we have just described it, 
 is necessarily known to employer and his foreman. The 
 isolated workman, on the other hand, is ignorant of the 
 employer's position. Even in the rare cases in which the 
 absence of a single workman is seriously inconvenient to 
 the capitalist employer, this is unknown to any one outside 
 his office. What is even more important, the employe]^; 
 knowing the state of the market for his product, can foritt 
 a clear opinion of how much it is worth his while to give, 
 rather than go without the man altogether, or rather than 
 postpone closing with him for a few weeks. Meanwhile 
 the isolated workman is wholly in the dark as to how 
 much he may stand out for. 
 
 At such disadvantages it is comparatively a minor 
 matter that the manual worker is, from his position and 
 training, far less skilled than the employer or his foreman, 
 in the art of bargaining itself. This art forms a large part 
 of the daily life of the employer, whilst the foreman is 
 specially selected for his skiU in engaging and superin- 
 tending workmen. The manual worker, on the contrary, 
 has the very smallest experience of, and practically no 
 training in, what is essentially one of the arts of the capi* 
 talist employer. He never engages in any but one sort of 
 bargaining, and that only on occasions which may be 
 infrequent, and which, in any case, make up only a tiny 
 fraction of his life. 
 
 * Principles of Economics, by Prof. A. Marshall. 3rd edition 
 (London, 1895). Book VI, ch. iv, p. 649. 
 
 •f W. S. Jevons, Theory of Political Economy. 3rd edition 
 (London, 1888), ch. iv, p. 124. 
 
ECONOMICS OF FACTORY LEGISLATION ii 
 
 Here, then, we have the first part of the explanation 
 why unfettered individual bargaining produces bad con- 
 ditions of employment. But this is not all. We often 
 forget that the contract between employer and workman 
 is to the employer simply a question of the number of 
 shilUngs to be paid at the end of the week. To the work- 
 man it is much more than that. The wage-earner does 
 not, like the shopkeeper, merely sell a piece of goods 
 which is carried away. It is his whole life which, for the 
 stated terms, he places at the disposal of his employer. 
 What hours he shall work, when and where he shall get 
 his meals, the sanitary conditions of his employment, the 
 safety of the machinery, the atmosphere and temperature 
 to which he is subjected, the fatigue or strains which he 
 endures, the risks of accident or disease which he has to 
 incur : all these are involved in the workman's contract 
 and not in his employer's. Yet about the majority of 
 these vital conditions he cannot bargain at all. Imagine 
 a weaver, before accepting employment in a Lancashire 
 cotton mill, examining the quantity of steam in the shed, 
 the strength of the shuttle-guards, and the soundness of 
 the belts of the shafting ; an engineer prying into the 
 security of the hoists and cranes, or the safety of the 
 lathes and steam hammers among which he must move ; 
 a dressmaker's assistant computing the cubic space which 
 will be her share of the workroom, criticising the ventila- 
 tion, warmth, and lighting, or examining the decency of 
 the sanitary accommodation ; think of the woman who 
 wants a job at the white-lead works testing the poisonous 
 influence in the particular process employed, and reckon- 
 ing, in terms of shillings and pence, the exact degree of 
 injury to her health which she is consenting to incur. No 
 sensible person can really assert that the individual opera- 
 tive seeking a job has either the knowledge or the oppor- 
 tunity to ascertain what the conditions are, or to determine 
 what they should be, even if he could bargain about them 
 at all. On these matters, at any rate, there can be no 
 question of free contract. We may, indeed, leave them 
 to be determined by the employer himself ; that is to say, 
 by the competition between employers as to who can 
 
12 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 most reduce the expenses of production. What this means 
 we know from the ghastly experience of the early factory 
 system ; when whole generations of our factory hands 
 were stunted and maimed, diseased and demoralised, 
 hurried into early graves by the progressive degeneration 
 of conditions imposed on even the best employers by the 
 reckless competition of the worst. 
 
 And if we consider the hours of labour, we shall see 
 that, in the typical processes of modern industry, indi- 
 vidual choice as to the length of the working day has 
 become impossible. The most philanthropic or easy- 
 going builder or manufacturer could not possibly make 
 separate arrangements with each of his work-people as 
 to the times at which they should come and go, the par- 
 ticular intervals for meals, or what days they should take 
 as holidays. Directly we get machinery and division of 
 labour — directly we have more than one person working 
 at the production of an article — all the persons concerned 
 are compelled, by the very nature of their occupation, to 
 work in concert. This means that there must be one 
 uniform rule for the whole establishment. Every work- 
 man must come when the beU rings, and stay as long as 
 the works are open ; individual choice there can be none. 
 The hours at which the bell shaU ring must either be left 
 to the autocratic decision of the employer, or else settled 
 by collective regulation to which every workman is com- 
 pelled to conform. 
 
 Such are the disadvantages at which, when the labour 
 market is in a state of perfect equihbrium, the isolated 
 individual workman stands in bargaining with the capi-l 
 talist employer. But it is, to say the least of it, unusual, 
 in any trade in this country, for there to be no more 
 workmen applying for situations than there are situations 
 to be filled. When the unemployed are crowding round 
 the factory gates every morning, it is plain to each man 
 that, unless he can induce the foreman to select him rather 
 than another, his chance of subsistence for weeks to come 
 may be irretrievably lost. Under these circumstances 
 bargaining, in the case of isolated individual workmen, 
 becomes aljsolutely impossible. The foreman has only to 
 
ECONOMICS OF FACTORY LEGISLATION 13 
 
 pick his man and tell him the terms. Once inside the 
 gates, the lucky workman knows that if he grumbles at 
 any of the surroundings, however intolerable ; if he de- 
 murs to any speeding up, lengthening of the hours, or 
 deductions ; or if he hesitates to obey any order, however 
 unreasonable, he condemns himself once more to the semi- 
 starvation and misery of unemployment. The alternative 
 to the foreman is merely to pick another man from the 
 eager crowd. The difference to the employer is imper- 
 ceptible. 
 
 So far, the argument that the isolated workman, un- 
 protected by any law or other collective regulation, must 
 necessarily get the worst of the bargain, rests on the 
 assumption that the capitalist employer will take full 
 advantage of his strategic strength, and beat each cleiss 
 of wage-earners down to the lowest possible terms. In so 
 far as this result depends upon the will and intention of 
 each individual capitaUst the assumption is untrue. There 
 are, in every industry, intelligent, far-sighted, and pubhc- 
 spirited employers who take a positive pleasure in aug- 
 menting the wages and promoting the comfort of their 
 work-people. Why not trust to the free play of the bene- 
 volent instincts to secure humane treatment for the 
 worker ? 
 
 The obvious reply is that the employer is not always 
 benevolent. Besides, there are equally conclusive replies 
 which are not obvious, the chief of them being that the 
 employer is no more free to give good treatment than the 
 labourer is to refuse bad. The employer has to sell his 
 product in competition with aU the other employers, and, 
 if he does not keep his expenses of production down to 
 the lowest point they can attain, he will be undersold and 
 ruined. Unless he is protected by some species of mono- 
 poly, such as the possession of a patent or a widely adver- 
 tised name, or membership of a syndicate or trust, he is 
 constantly finding himself as powerless as the workman 
 to withstand the pressure of competition. Every expense 
 that does not directly " pay " — that is, every disinterest- 
 edly benevolent expense — ^must be imposed simultaneously 
 on the whole body of employers, or the least scrupulous 
 
14 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 and most necessitous of them will promptly retrench it, 
 reduce the price of the product, and thus tempt away the 
 customers of those who refuse to follow suit. In fact, the 
 /Supposed freedom of the employer to protect the worker 
 is as illusory as the supposed freedom of the worker to 
 protect himself.* -^ 
 
 The question remains, can the private consumer do any- 
 thing in the matter ? From time to time we see attempts 
 made, usually by philanthropic ladies, to form " con- 
 sumers' leagues," the members of which pledge themselves 
 to boycott Somebody's matches, to abstain from buying 
 shirts stitched by Tom Hood's garret-sempstress, and, in 
 short, to repudiate the bait of cheapness. 
 
 All such attempts necessarily fail to cope with the evil. 
 And for this failure there are j&ve main reasons. To begin 
 with, the plan of tracing the history of the article back to 
 the factory or garret in which it was manufactured, or 
 the severad factories or garrets in which its component 
 parts were manufactured, is usually quite impracticable, 
 and in any case is only open to persons of considerable 
 means and leisure, endowed with capacity for industrial 
 investigation. Secondly, the rough test of qucdity or 
 expensiveness is wholly misleading. The finest and most 
 expensive broadcloth, made in the West of England 
 factories, is the product of worse-paid labour than the 
 cheap " tweeds " of Dewsbury or Batley. Costly hand- 
 made lace is, in actual fact, usually the outcome of cruelly 
 long hours of labour, starvation wages, and incredibly bad 
 sanitary conditions ; whilst the cheap article, which 
 Nottingham turns out by the ton, is the output of a closely 
 combined trade, enjoying exceptionally high wages, short 
 
 • The case of the domestic servant is still often adduced, by other- 
 wise well-educated persons, as if it contradicted the need for Trade 
 Unionism or Factory Legislation. As a matter of fact, it greatly 
 strengthens the argument in their favour. What crushes the 
 unprotected worker in the sweated trades is the pressure of the 
 competitive profit-making of which that worker is the humble 
 instrument. The domestic servant, as usually understood, is not 
 an instrument of competitive profit-making, and is therefore not 
 subject to this pressure. Wherever the servant is such an instru- 
 ment, as in restaurants and lodging-houses, all the well-known 
 symptoms of sweating are found. 
 
ECONOMICS OF FACTORY LEGISLATION 15 
 
 hours, and comfortable homes. Thirdly, it is of no use 
 to prefer the dearer shop to one which offers the same 
 articles at cutting prices. Even if the consumer made the 
 Quixotic rule of paying the old-fashioned price for every- 
 thing, he has no ground for hoping or believing that the 
 shopkeeper will pass his bounty on to the wholesale dealer, 
 the wholesale dealer to the manufacturer, and the manu- 
 facturer to the wage-earner. Fourthly, the consumer has, 
 in many cases, absolutely no choice left to him. It is the 
 characteristic of cheap articles, energetically pushed by 
 their producers, that they drive their competitors out of 
 the market, so that the consumer must often use a sweated 
 product or go without. Finally, we have the fact that an 
 enormous proportion of our sweated workers are employed 
 in producing goods for export to other countries. Unless 
 we could include in our " consumers' league " the millions 
 of Hindoo, Chinese, and Negro purchasers of our exports, 
 no such action can ever put an end to the sweating system. 
 Hence it is futile to expect that the evils of " sweating " 
 — that is, starvation wages, excessive hours, and unhealthy 
 work-places — can be abolished, or even appreciably les- 
 sened, by the individual employer of benevolent instincts, 
 or by the individual customer indifferent to price and 
 capable of investigation. If we are in earnest to stop the 
 physical and mental degradation of large sections of the 
 wage-earners, we must, by one means or another, enforce 
 on all employers a minimum of humane order as the 
 inviolable starting-point of competition. 
 
 Parasitic Industries and Foreign Competition. — So 
 
 far, the case for the Factory Acts is simple enough ; and those 
 who have hitherto opposed such legislation solely because 
 they imagined that the workers could otherwise protect 
 themselves against sweating, without the restraints of an 
 additional law, may leave tiie matter here. But from the 
 wider point of view of the statesman it is not so easily 
 disposed of. It may be desirable that every wage-earner 
 should have healthy conditions of employment secured to 
 him by law ; but none the less must the nation cut its 
 coat according to its cloth. If it is a very poor nation 
 
i6 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 (though with our present powers over Nature no civilised 
 nation need nowadays be very poor), its people must work 
 hard and long for little wages ; if a rich one, its people 
 must still produce its income and live within it. If it 
 depends on foreign trade, it must not hamper or destroy 
 that trade. Consequently, the statesman, and those who 
 are thoughtful and wide-minded enough to take the 
 statesman's view, will not be satisfied with a demonstra- 
 tion that Factory Acts protect the individual worker from 
 oppression by the individual employer. They will require, 
 in addition, a demonstration, first, that legislatively regU* 
 lated industry is not less economical, from the national point 
 of view, than unregulated industry ; and, second, that the 
 regulation will not react disastrously on our foreign trades 
 
 These demonstrations do not spring into view quite so 
 alertly as the one made in the last section ; but they are 
 quite practicable and conclusive, and, if patiently followed, 
 not difficult to grasp. j 
 
 Let us first take the question whether the cheapness of 
 labour in a sweated industry is nationally economicai^ 
 that is, whether it is cheap to the nation as well as to the 
 sweater. i 
 
 We have seen how, in trade after trade in which the 
 wage-earners were unprotected by any kind of collecti^ 
 regulation, it has been found that they were reduced to 
 " earnings barely sufficient to sustain existence, hours tt 
 labour -such as to make the lives of the worker periods of 
 almost ceaseless toil, sanitary conditions injurious to the 
 health of the persons employed and dangerous to tfi^ 
 public." This, clearly, is the minimum below which even i 
 the most hard-pressed or the most grasping employ 
 is unable to descend — the bare subsistence needed i„ 
 keep his workers alive from moment to moment whilst' 
 they are hired. What has only of late been reahsed is the' 
 effect of such conditions upon our national wealth. It' 
 may be enough for the in^vidual employer if his worW 
 people remain alive during the period for which he hires 
 them. But for the continued efficiency of the nation's 
 industry, it is indispensable that its citizens should not^ 
 merely continue to exist for a few months orJyears,'[bu§ 
 
ECONOMICS OF FACTORY LEGISLATION 17 
 
 should be well brought up as children and maintained for 
 their full normal life unimpaired in health, strength, and 
 character. The human beings of a community form as 
 truly a portion of its working capital as its land, its ma- 
 chinery, or its cattle. If the employers in a particular 
 trade are able to take such advantage of the necessities 
 of their work-people as to hire them for wages actually 
 insufficient to provide enough food, clothing, and shelter 
 to maintain them and their children in health ; if they are 
 able to work them for hours so long as to deprive them of 
 adequate rest and recreation ; or if they subject them to 
 conditions so dangerous or insanitary as positively to 
 shorten their lives ; that trade is clearly using up and 
 destroying a part of the nation's working capital. When 
 we are deahng with other factors of production, such as 
 machinery or agricultural land, the folly of such a process 
 of exhaustion or deterioration is at once apparent. The 
 land agent who would lease arable or pasture land to a 
 farmer without insisting on proper covenants against 
 misuse or exhaustion of the soil would be held guilty of 
 incompetence or fraud. The manufacturer who attempts 
 to lower his cost of production by not repairing or re- 
 placing his machinery earns the contempt of his fellows, 
 and, in due course, the bankruptcy court. The reason 
 why the employer sees no analogy between " sweated " 
 labour and deteriorating machinery is plain. In the case 
 of the machinery, he has sooner or later to pay the capital 
 value of what he has worn out. In the case of the labour, 
 he hires it by the week, and, in the absence of collective 
 regulation, hires it without covenant to maintain its 
 efficiency. If the workers thus used up were horses — 
 as, for instance, on an urban tramway — the employers 
 would have to provide, in addition to the daily modicum 
 of food, shelter, and rest, the whole cost of breeding and 
 training the successive relays necessary to keep up their 
 estabhshments. In the case of free human beings, who 
 are not purchased by the employer, this capital value of 
 the new generation of workers is placed gratuitously at his 
 disposal, on payment merely of subsistence from moment 
 to moment, so long as hired. 
 
i8 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 Industries: yielding only a bare minimum of momentary 
 subsistence are therefore not really self-supporting. In 
 deteriorating the physique, intelligence, and character of 
 their operatives, they are drawing on the capital stock of 
 the nation. And even if the using up is not actually so 
 rapid as to prevent the " sweated " workers from pro- 
 ducing a new generation to replace them, the trade is 
 none the less parasitic. In persistently deteriorating the 
 stock it employs, it is subtly draining away the vital 
 energy of the community. It is taking from these workers, 
 week by week, more than its wages can restore to them. 
 A whole community might conceivably thus become 
 parasitic on itself, or, rather, upon its future. If we 
 imagine all the employers in all the industries of the king- 
 dom to be, in this sense, " sweating " their labour, the 
 entire nation would, generation by generation, steadily 
 degrade in character and industrial efficiency. Now, in 
 human society, as in the animal world, the lower type 
 developed by parasitism, characterised as it is by the 
 possession of smaller faculties and fewer desires, does not 
 necessarily tend to be eliminated by free competition; 
 on the contrary, the degenerate forms may flourish ia 
 their degradation, and destroy the higher type, like weeds 
 in a neglected garden. Evolution, in a word, if unchecked 
 by man's selective power, may result in Degeneration, as 
 well as in what we choose to call Progress. 
 
 One of the common forms of industrial parasitism is 
 that in which an employer, without imparting any ade- 
 quate instruction in a skilled craft, gets his work done 
 by boys and girls who live with their parents and work 
 practically for pocket-money. Here he is clearly receiving 
 a subsidy or bounty from the parents — that is, from the 
 industry by which the parents live — which gives his pro- 
 cess an economic advantage over those worked by fully- 
 paid labour. But this is not all. Even if he pays the boys 
 or girls a wage sufficient to cover the cost of their food, 
 clothing, and lodging so long as they are in their teens, 
 nevertheless, if he dismisses them as soon as they become 
 adults, he is in the same predatory case. For the cost of 
 boys and girls to the community includes not only their. 
 
ECONOMICS OF FACTORY LEGISLATION 19 
 
 daily bread between thirteen and twenty-one, but also 
 their nurture from birth to the age of beginning work, 
 and their maintenance as adult citizens and parents. If 
 a trade is carried on entirely by the labour of boys and 
 girls, and is supplied with successive relays who are dis- 
 missed as soon as they become adults, the mere fact that 
 the employers pay what seems a good subsistence wage 
 to the young people does not prevent the trade from 
 being economically parasitic. The employer of adult 
 women is in the same case where, as is usual, he pays 
 them a wage insufficient to keep them in full efficiency 
 irrespective of what they receive from their parents, 
 husbands, or lovers. 
 
 In all these instances the efficiency of the services 
 rendered by the young persons or women is being kept 
 up out of the earnings of some other class. These trades 
 are, therefore, as clearly receiving a subsidy as if the 
 capitalists were paid a bounty out of the taxes, or as if the 
 workers were being given a " rate in aid " of wages. The 
 employer of subsidised woman or child labour gains 
 actually a double advantage over the self-supporting 
 trades : he gets without cost to himself the extra energy 
 due to the extra food, and he abstracts — ^possibly from the 
 workers at a rival process, or in a competing industry — 
 some of the income which might have increased the 
 energy put into the other trade. 
 
 This phenomenon of industrial parasitism disposes at 
 one blow of the superficial notion that sweated wares are 
 cheap to the nation even when they are low in price to 
 the consumer. On the contrary, they are the only wares 
 that are not cheap at any price. Their production is a 
 process of impoverishment : from the statesman's point 
 of view it is not production at all, but waste. 
 
 And now, if we proceed at once to the second question 
 — that of foreign trade — it will be plain from the begiiming 
 that the only point to be settled is whether this waste 
 can be converted into wealth by exchanging its results 
 for the products of other nations. An absurd question, 
 apparently; and yet during the first fifty years of the 
 nineteenth century, the sweating entrepreneur in the 
 
20 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 unregulated industries sought to warn off the timid legis- 
 lator by declaring that, if the cost of production (to him- 
 self) were raised by requiring shorter hours or better 
 sanitary conditions, " the trade would go out of the 
 country." As we have seen, the cost of production to 
 himself was no measure of the cost of his products to the 
 country ; and as a matter of fact, act after act has been 
 passed regulating particular industries, and these have 
 not left the country, but have, on the contrary, increased 
 and flourished. In face of this continued growth and 
 prosperity of the most highly regulated industries, and 
 of the constant withdrawal of orders for our " sweated " 
 products, the outcry about foreign competition has per- 
 ceptibly weakened. 
 
 Nevertheless, the true relation of foreign competition 
 to industrial parasitism has only lately been clearly ascer- 
 tained. The question raised by the parasitic traders, in 
 their desperate pleas against extinction by factory legisla- 
 tion, are oftener disregarded than correctly answered. 
 To clear up the point, let us assume that conditions of 
 employment good enough to provide for the adequate 
 repair and replacement of the human labour-force ex- 
 pended do, at any rate at first, raise the cost of production 
 and so limit the demand for the product. What bearing 
 has this fact on our policy as a nation ? 
 
 We have already seen that the right answers to economic 
 questions are seldom the superficially obvious answers, 
 and often the very opposite of them. The real move- 
 ments of international trade are quite as unexpected to 
 the man who regards his own factory as the centre of the 
 world's industry, as those of the heavenly bodies are to 
 the man who regards the earth as the centre of the universe. 
 
 English producers of commodities for foreign markets, 
 and those who manufacture, for home consumption, com- 
 modities that can be imported from abroad, find their in- 
 dustries expanding or contracting according as the prices 
 of their products rise and fall in other countries as well as 
 at home. This may be clearly seen in the case of English 
 coal. The cargoes from Cardiff and the Tyne go all over 
 the world, and find, in many foreign parts, practically no 
 
ECONOMICS OF FACTORY LEGISLATION 21 
 
 competitors. But how far inland our coals wiU push 
 into each continent varies with every change of price. In 
 Germany the Silesian and Westphalian mines, in Australia 
 those of New South Wales, and in South Africa those of 
 the Cape and Natal already supply a great part of the 
 local demand. The geographical limit at which the use 
 of English coal ceases to be cheaper than the inland supply 
 is seen in practice to be as sensitively mobile as the ther- 
 mometer. And if we turn from the influence of foreign 
 production on our exports to that of imports on home 
 production, we may watch the area of wheat-growing in 
 Great Britain expanding or contracting in close correspond- 
 ence with the oscillations of the world-price of wheat. 
 
 So far, the success of any class of EngUsh producers in 
 competing for the world's custom would seem to depend 
 exclusively on their ability to undersell the foreign pro- 
 ducers of the same article. But national economy is not 
 so simple as this. Even private individual economy carries 
 one beyond so crude a position, as the following examples 
 show. It may be assumed that if a Prime Minister or 
 Imperial Chancellor were to give his whole mind to the 
 art of lighting fires and dusting furniture he might be able 
 to accomplish both feats in, say, three minutes less than 
 an average housemaid. Nevertheless it would be very bad 
 economy for such a statesman to light his own fire and 
 dust his own study instead of paying a housemaid to do 
 it for him. Economy for him means making the best 
 use of his time and talents as a whole, and not doing any- 
 thing merely because he can do that particular thing better 
 than somebody else. Now, a nation is under the same 
 obligation as an individual. For it, economy does not 
 consist in offering to the world-market every article which 
 it could produce more cheaply than foreigners. What it 
 has to do is to put its energy into producing for export 
 those articles in which its advantage over the foreigner is 
 the greatest. 
 
 Now comes the practical question. How are we to 
 ensure that exactly those articles are selected for export 
 which fulfil the above condition ? At present the selec- 
 tion is left to the competition of our export manufacturers. 
 
22 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 Each of these manufacturers imagines that he is competing 
 with foreign manufacturers ; and so he is for English 
 customers. But for foreign orders he is really competing 
 with the rival exporters of his own country. The 
 reason he does not see this is simple enough. He strikes 
 at his unseen home competition through the body of the 
 whole mass of foreign trade. For instance, suppose we 
 have a fall in the cost of production of English machinery, 
 coal, and textiles. As a result the manufacturers and 
 coal-owners of Lancashire and Cardiff get a number of 
 additional orders, which have hitherto gone to foreign 
 firms. This result is perfectly satisfactory to Lancashire 
 and Cardiff : they inquire no further, and are convinced 
 that their gain is the nation's gain. But other things have 
 happened of which they know nothing. The additional 
 goods they have exported will be paid for by additional 
 imports. Now, since one does not " send coals to New- 
 castle," these additional imports will clearly not be im- 
 ports of machinery, coal, and textiles. They may be 
 American food-stuffs or Australian wool, German glass 
 wares or Belgian iron. What is the result ? The York' 
 shire farmer, glass-manufacturer, or ironmaster, loses the 
 equivalent of the trade which the Lancashire and Cardifi 
 manufacturer has gained, and he never knows where the 
 blow has come from. Lancashire and Cardiff exult in 
 their victory over the foreigner ; the foreigner complains 
 to his government that Lancashire and Cardiff are ruining 
 him ; some other foreigner exults in his victory over 
 Yorkshire ; and Yorkshire complains to the Engli^i 
 government that foreign competition is driving its trade 
 out of the country. Yet all that has really happened is 
 that Lancashire and Cardiff have taken away from York- 
 shire some of its export trade ; and all that England has to 
 consider is whether it is better for the nation as a whole 
 that it should export Lancashire and Cardiff products or 
 Yorkshire products. 
 
 The free-traders of fifty years ago assumed that this 
 did not matter — ^that Enghsh exports were English ex- 
 ports anyhow. Let us take an instance — a typical in- 
 stance — to show that it does matter very vitally indeed. 
 
ECONOMICS OF FACTORY LEGISLATION 23 
 
 Suppose the jobbing home workers in the Sheffield cheap 
 cutlery trade keep down the price of their product by 
 working long hours, without expensive sanitary pre- 
 cautions, at the starvation wages of cut-throat competi- 
 tion, they may gain by their wretchedness a miserable 
 victory over French and German blades in the market. 
 The effect of this victory is to prevent the importation of 
 foreign blades and even to promote additional exports of 
 Shefi&eld goods. Its further effect is to cause the importa- 
 tion of other commodities in the place of these foreign 
 blades. The brothers and cousins of the Sheffield cutlers, 
 earning high wages in the Yorkshire glass works and iron 
 furnaces, may therefore find their employment diminished 
 by the persistent influx of German glass and Belgian iron. 
 Here you have the sweated, parasitic, export trade driving 
 out the self-supporting one. Carry that process far enough 
 and it will make, of cdl England, the same den of poverty, 
 disease, crime, exhaustion, and premature death that 
 Lancashire was before the Factory Acts rescued her and 
 placed her among the most prosperous of English industrial 
 counties. We may therefore, with perfect exactness, apply 
 to our unregulated sweated industries the words of the 
 shrewd observers who exposed the evils of the Old Poor 
 Law. " Whole branches of manufacture," they said, 
 " may thus foUow the course, not of coal mines or streams, 
 but of pauperism ; may flourish hke the fungi that spring 
 from corruption in consequence of the abuses which are 
 ruining aU the other interests of the place in which they 
 are established, and cease to exist in the better adminis- 
 tered districts in consequence of that better administra- 
 tion." * 
 
 We now see why sweating must be barred in the in- 
 terests of our international position, as well as of our in- 
 sular soundness. We see our country, not as a single 
 shop competing with the great shops of a dozen other 
 nations for the custom of the planets, but rather as a great 
 bazaar in which all the dealers compete with one another 
 for the custom of the foreigner as he stroUs past the booths. 
 
 * First Report of Poor Law Commissioners, 1834, p. 65 ; or re- 
 print of 1884 (H.C. 347 of 1884); Industrial Democracy, p. 755. 
 
24 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 In that bazaar the cotton-spinner and the coal-hewer 
 compete with the farmer, and the farmer with the optician 
 and watchmaker. Every EngUsh manufacturer and 
 trader competes with all the other English manufacturers 
 and traders, bazaar fashion ; and the fact that they all 
 mistake the foreigner for their competitor, and honestly 
 condole with one another on the losses which they them- 
 selves have mutually inflicted on each other, has to be 
 discounted by the statesman as he discounts so many 
 other popular delusions. 
 
 Now there are two main ways of competition in trade, 
 whether for home or foreign custom — an upward way and 
 a downward way. On the upward way the competitor 
 strives to succeed by increased efficiency of production, 
 by more intelligent and therefore more economical organ- 
 isation, by the invention or adoption of new processes, 
 and by improving the character, and therefore the product, 
 of the labour employed. On the downward way the com- 
 petitor strives to cheapen his product and enlarge his 
 profit by throwing as much as possible of the cost of the 
 labour he employs on the rates, the charities, and, above 
 all, on the other industries. He pays starvation wages to 
 his adult workers, and " sweats " them without regard, 
 to their health or endurance, knowing that when they 
 are disabled or worn-out, the hospital and the workhouse 
 wiU receive them at the expense of the community. He 
 reUes as far as possible on the labour of women and children, 
 knowing that these will be partly supported by the wages 
 earned by their husbands and parents in other industries. 
 And, by these purely parasitic methods, he puts his pro- 
 duct on the market at a fictitiously low price, which compels 
 his rivals in the same trade to copy his methods, or lose 
 their customers. What is even worse, this fictitious 
 cheapness enables him to displace, from our export trade,, 
 some other English industry not resorting to such equivocal « 
 methods of reducing the expenses of production. Clearly, ' 
 this success is the result, not of " Free Trade," but of a 
 " bounty," and one of the worst sort — a bounty not de- f, 
 liberately conferred as an act of pubUc policy, but filched I 
 from other sections of the community. Clearly, too, all 
 
ECONOMICS OF FACTORY LEGISLATION 25 
 
 the export trade which the parasitic sweated industry 
 wins, is not won for the nation at all, but is merely diverted 
 from better-paid occupations. The conclusion is irresistible. 
 The first condition of national efficiency and national 
 prosperity is the resolute blocking of the downward way, 
 and the intelligent policing of the upward, by factory 
 legislation. 
 
 For the sake of those who may remember enough of 
 the economics of the Manchester school to be puzzled by 
 the obviousness of a practical conclusion so opposed to 
 their maxim of Laissez Faire, it is worth pointing out 
 how their error arose. They were so much taken up with 
 the idea of removing the State-created fiscal barriers and 
 bounties between nations that they overlooked the bounties 
 which the sweating employers were pocketing by sleight 
 of hand, without the knowledge or intention of the State. 
 M'Culloch and Nassau Senior, Cobden and Bright, realised 
 clearly enough that a grant of money aid to a particular 
 industry out of the rates or taxes enabled that industry 
 to secure more of the nation's brains and capital and more 
 of the world's trade, than was economically advantageous. 
 They even understood that the use of unpaid slave labour 
 constituted just such a bounty as a rate in aid of wages. 
 But they never clearly recognised that the employment of 
 children, the over-work of women, or the payment of 
 wages insufficient for the maintenance of the operative 
 in full industrial and domestic efficiency, stood, economic- 
 ally, on the same footing. If the object of " Free Trade " 
 is to promote such a distribution of capital, brains, and 
 labour among countries and among industries, as wiU 
 result in the greatest possible production with the least 
 expenditure of human efforts and sacrifices, the factory 
 legislation of Robert Owen and Lord Shaftesbury formed 
 as indispensable a part of the Free Trade movement as the 
 tariff reforms of Cobden and Bright. " During that 
 period," wrote the Duke of Argyll of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, " two great discoveries have been made in the 
 Science of Government : the one is the immense advantage 
 of abolishing restrictions upon trade ; the other is the 
 absolute necessity of imposing restrictions on labour. . . . 
 
26 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 And so the Factory Acts instead of being excused as ex- 
 ceptional, and pleaded for as justified only under extra- 
 ordinary conditions, ought to be recognised as in truth 
 the first legislative recognition of a great Natural Law, 
 quite as important as Freedom of Trade, and which, like 
 this last, was yet destined to claim for itself wider and 
 wider appUcation." * 
 
 The Lessons of Experience.— It is now clear that the 
 extirpation of " sweating " by individual acts of self- 
 defence on the part of the wage worker, or of benevolence 
 on the part of the employer, is impossible, and that the 
 enforcement of a compulsory minimum is sound in prin- 
 ciple. Let us see how it has worked out in practice. 
 
 The two great industries which, at the beginning of the 
 nineteenth century, were conspicuous for the worst horrors 
 of sweating were the textile manufactures and coal 
 mining. Between 1830 and 1850 the ParUamentary 
 inquiries into these trades disclosed sickening details of 
 starvation wages, incredibly long hours, and conditions 
 of work degrading to decency and health. The remedy 
 applied was the substitution, for Individual Bargaining 
 between employer and operative, of a compulsory mini- 
 mum set forth in Common Rules prescribing standard 
 conditions of emplojmient. Some of these Common Rules 
 related to wages, others to hours, and others, again, to 
 safety and sanitation. Some of them were imposed and 
 enforced by legislation ; others by collective agreements 
 entered into between the Trade Unions and the employers' 
 associations. Which of these two methods of imposing 
 Common Rules is the better will be considered presently. 
 For the moment we are only concerned with the fact that 
 both of them abolished, as far as they went, the freedom 
 of the individual employer and the individual operative 
 to make what bargains they pleased with one another. 
 Masters and work-people alike found themselves deprived 
 of their old liberty to under-cut certain prescribed wages, 
 hours and conditions of work. What was the result? 
 Fortunately there is no dispute. Every one who knoWS 
 * The Reign of Law (London, 1867), pp. 367, 399. 
 
ECONOMICS OF FACTORY LEGISLATION 27 
 
 these great industries agrees in declaring that the horrors 
 which used to prevail under Individual Bargaining have 
 been brought to an end. The terms " cotton operative " 
 and " coal miner," instead of denoting typically degraded 
 workers, as they did in 1830, are now used to designate 
 the very aristocracy of our labour. And when, to-day, 
 those who are interested in the industrial progress of 
 women need an example of a free and self-reliant class of 
 female wage-earners, earning full subsistence, enjoying 
 adequate leisure, and capable of effective organisation, 
 they are compelled to turn to the great body of Lancashire 
 cotton- weavers, now for half a century " restricted " in 
 every feature of their contract. 
 
 Nor has the remedy for sweating ruined the trades to 
 which it has been applied. If, for instance, we compare 
 the distribution of industry in Great Britain fifty years 
 ago with that of the present day, we are struck at once by 
 the enormous increase in the proportion occupied by 
 textile manufactures (especially cotton), ship-building, 
 machine-making, and coal-mining, as compared with 
 agriculture and with those skilled but unorganised handi- 
 crafts like watchmaking, for which England was once 
 celebrated. To whatever causes we may ascribe the 
 success of the former industries, the old protests that 
 regulation meant ruin to them are disposed of by the fact 
 that they are exactly those in which the individual em- 
 ployer has not been free to make any bargain he chose 
 with the individual operative, but has had to comply 
 with Common Rules, enforced, for the whole industry, 
 by the Trade Union or the Factory Inspector. Concur- 
 rently with the enormous expansion of these regulated 
 trades, has been the gradual ousting, even from the home 
 market, of our manufactures of the commoner sorts of 
 joinery, glass, paper, and cutlery — all of them articles in 
 which the operatives have never been able to secure 
 effective regulation either by Trade Unions or Factory 
 Acts. 
 
 Thus, if we were to judge merely by actual experi- 
 ence, the substitution, for Individual Bargaining, of com- 
 pulsory minimum conditions embodied in Common Rules, 
 
28 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 not only gets rid of sweating, but is positively advantageous 
 to the trade concerned. That this is no mere coincidence, 
 we shall see if we examine how these Common Rules act. 
 Paradoxical as it may seem, the mere existence of com- 
 pulsory minimum conditions of employment, below which 
 no employer and no workman may descend, directly im- 
 proves the employer, improves the operative, and im- 
 proves the processes of manufacture. 
 
 We must first realise how entirely the modern Labour 
 Code differs from the regulations that were current in 
 the Middle Ages. A long series of statutes from Edward 
 the Third to James the First determined the maximum 
 amount of money to be given, or leisure to be allowed, 
 by the employer to his work-people. Any person offering 
 or accepting better conditions of employment was subject 
 to severe penalties. The modem device of the Common 
 Rule is based upon a diametrically opposite principle. It 
 invariably enforces a Minimum beyond which no employer 
 may descend : never a Maximum upon which he may not, 
 if he chooses, considerably improve. This is equally true 
 of the Common Rules enforced by law, and of those em- 
 bodied in an agreement between the Trade Union and the 
 associated employers. An employer who, for one reason 
 or another, desires to fill his works with the most respect- 
 able young women, does not restrict himself to the already 
 high standard of comfort and decency enforced by the 
 Factory Act : he sees to it that the workrooms are cheer- 
 ful, warm and light ; provides dining-rooms and cloak- 
 rooms, hot water, soap and towels, without the usual irritat- 
 ing charges ; takes care to prevent any opportunity for the 
 foreman's petty tyrannies ; and strives to make a kindly 
 and cheerful spirit pervade the whole establishment. 
 When the Common Rule is enforced by voluntary collec- 
 tive agreement, the Trade Union never objects to an 
 employer attracting superior workmen to his establish- 
 ment by adopting a scale of wages in excess of its standard ; 
 by introducing an eight hours' day ; or by promising full 
 wages during holidays or breakdown. 
 
 Thus, unUke the medieval statutes, the modern device 
 of the Common Rule in no way limits the competition of 
 
ECONOMICS OF FACTORY LEGISLATION 29 
 
 employers for workmen, or stereotypes the condition of 
 the wage-earners at any existing low level of comfort. 
 On the contrary, the mere enforcement on all employers 
 of standard conditions, even if these amount to no advance, 
 but merely embody the wages, hours, and sanitation 
 already given by the average employer, inevitably trans- 
 forms what was formerly the mean into a new minimum. 
 Silently there is set up, in the eyes both of employers 
 and workmen, a new mean between the conditions which 
 even the worst employer now finds himself compelled 
 to give, and those which the best employer voluntarily 
 concedes to his work-people. Presently, the public 
 opinion of the trade seeks to incorporate this new mean 
 in an amendment of the Factory Act, or a new agreement 
 between the Trade Union and the associated employers. 
 If the economic conditions are favourable, and the agita- 
 tion is wisely and moderately conducted, it will sooner 
 or later attain its end, and thus raise conditions another 
 step. Every employer knows that this has been the 
 actual experience of trade after trade in which a Common 
 Rule has been enforced. Thus, the enforcement of a 
 minimum in any trade is found by experience to have two 
 separate effects on the livelihood of the wage-earners. It 
 not only protects the most necessitous individuals and 
 the mpst helpless classes from any degradation of their 
 Standard of Life. Its very enforcement silently starts 
 influences in the minds of the employers and work-people 
 which result in successive improvements in the conditions 
 enjoyed by the whole trade. 
 
 So far, the advantages of a Common Rule are all on 
 the side of the wage-earners. If there were no counter- 
 balancing advantages to the employer, it would seem as if 
 the cost of production would be thereby increased. Yet 
 the experience is all the other way. In trade after trade 
 in which Common Rules have been enforced, the cost of 
 production has gone down. The explanation of this 
 paradox has been discovered by watching the other effects 
 of the Common Rule. The mere enforcement, on all the 
 employers in a trade, of standard rates of wages, a normal 
 working day and prescribed conditions of sanitation and 
 
30 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 safety, itself causes an improvement in the- services ren- 
 dered by the operatives, stimulates the managers to in- 
 troduce new processes and machinery, and expands the 
 business of those establishments which are most favour- 
 ably situated, best equipped and most skilfuUy conducted. 
 
 Again, in the selection of new workers, and in the organ- 
 isation of the factory, the very existence of definite Com- 
 mon Rules impels the employer to require a much higher 
 standard of character and conduct than he would other- 
 wise exact. And the fact that the employer's mind is 
 constantly intent on getting the best possible workmen 
 silently and imperceptibly reacts on the wage-earners. 
 The young man and woman knowing that they cannot 
 secure a preference for employment by offering to put up 
 with conditions worse than the standard, seek to commend 
 themselves by good character, technical skill, and general 
 intelligence. Hence, under the moral force of a Common 
 Rule, there is not only a constant selection of the most 
 efficient and weU-conducted candidates, but also a posi- 
 tive stimulus to the whole class to become ever more self- 
 controlled and efficient. 
 
 But can we get the wage-earner, male or female, to 
 respond to this continuous incitement to self-improvement? 
 Here the most obvious effects of enforcing a Standard 
 Rate of Wages, a Normal Working Day, and definite con- 
 ditions of sanitation and safety become of great im- 
 portance. Give the human being good ventilation, decent 
 surroundings, adequate periods of rest and sufficient food, 
 and, like a well-kept horse, you can get much better work 
 out of him. The unskilled labourer who is only half fed, 
 whose clothing is scanty and inappropriate to the season, 
 who lives with his wife and children in a single room in a 
 slum tenement, and whose spirit is broken by the ever- 
 recurring irregularity of employment, cannot by any in- 
 centive be stimulated to much greater intensity of effort, 
 for the simple reason that his method of life makes him^ 
 physiologically incapable of either the physical or mental^ 
 energy involved. SimDarly, in manufactures as yet un- 
 regulated, we find the female " trouser-hand " or slipper- 
 maker, earning a shilling a day, paying eighteenpence a 
 
ECONOMICS OF FACTORY LEGISLATION 31 
 
 week rent for a corner of a garret, feeding on weak tea 
 and bread and pickles, working for twelve or fifteen hours 
 out of every twenty-four, with neither the heart nor the 
 strength to learn a new machine or take her part in any 
 complicated system of division of labour. Her master 
 may force her to have fewer wants : he cannot get out of 
 her more effective service. 
 
 But take any one of these sweated workers who is not 
 yet completely shattered in health and character, give her 
 a few weeks' employment in a comfortable home, with 
 regular meals and proper periods of rest, and you will 
 observe a slow revival of her faculties, an increase in her 
 strength, and usually a growth of self-control and general 
 capacity. Watch the same experiment tried on a larger 
 scale and for a longer period, and the results are still more 
 convincing. Nothing could be more striking than what 
 actually happened in Lancashire. In 1830, the cotton 
 operatives were in a condition of " sweating " as bad as 
 that at present prevailing at the East-End of London, 
 Competition, free from regulation, had in half a century 
 produced a race of pale, stunted and emaciated creatures, 
 irregular in their lives and dissolute in their habits. Their 
 case appeared so desperate that, for those who believed 
 in Laissez Faire, " the only hope," as Harriet Martineau 
 confessed, " seems to be that the race will die out in two 
 or three generations."* Fortunately, Harriet Martineau's 
 advice was not taken, and the experiment was tried of 
 placing the cotton trade under definite Common Rules as 
 to wages, hours, and sanitation. These, from 1833 on- 
 ward, have constantly been more strictly enforced, either 
 by law or collective agreement. The result has been 
 marvellous. In the course of half a century, those once 
 sweated workers have gradually become energetic, self- 
 reliant, and self -controlled men and women, working with 
 unrivalled speed and efficiency during their strictly limited 
 hours, and maintaining, in their comfortable! homes, 
 almost a " bourgeois " standard of family life. This ex- 
 perience does not stand alone. In every trade or district 
 
 * Harriet Martineau's Autobiography, by Maria Weston Chapman 
 (London, 1877), Vol. Ill, p. 87. 
 
32 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 in which the operatives, by the device of the Common 
 Rule, have secured better conditions of employment, we 
 find a general testimony to an increase in the speed, 
 regularity, and quality of their work. Thus it has been 
 proved by repeated experiment that the enforcement, in 
 any trade, of standard conditions of employment, directly 
 and certainly improves the quality of the work done. 
 This improvement is brought about not merely by securing 
 to the operative more food, more rest, and greater im- 
 munity from accident and disease, but also by enormously 
 strengthening the social forces which make for industrial 
 righteousness : that is, for regularity, self-control, trust- 
 worthiness and technical skill. And this improvement 
 spreads beyond the persons immediately affected. In the 
 crowded hfe of our cities, any change in the individual, 
 whether in physical health or moral character, is com- 
 municated in an almost mysterious way to his fellow- 
 citizens. One degraded or ill-conducted worker will 
 demoralise a family ; one disorderly family inexplicably 
 lowers the conduct of a whole street ; the low-caste hfe 
 of a single street spreads its evil influence over the entire 
 quarter ; and the slum quarter, connected with the others 
 by a thousand unnoticed threads of human intercourse, 
 subtly deteriorates the standard of health, morality, and 
 public spirit of the whole city. Fortunately, though this 
 is less often noted, improvement is as contagious as deteri- 
 oration. Habits of regularity, punctuality, self-control, 
 and even good manners learnt in a well-regulated factory, 
 sooner or later become customary in the home. Men and 
 women habituated to the perfect ventilation and elaborate 
 sanitary conveniences enforced by the factory inspector, 
 will no longer put up with cottages built " back to back," 
 windows that won't open, stopped-up drains, and the 
 barbarous common " privies " of neglected slums. Young 
 men and women growing up in families in which regularity 
 of employment has been the reward of skill and character, 
 and the weak submission to conditions below the standard 
 is denounced as fraudulent, develop a desire to become 
 skilled workmen, enjojdng conditions at least equal to 
 those of their parents. It is homes such as these — not 
 
ECONOMICS OF FACTORY LEGISLATION 33 
 
 those of the sweated workers — ^which give us the race of 
 sturdy working-class citizens, capable of voluntary co- 
 operation or political self-government. And it is by having 
 the labour of such citizens at his command that the em- 
 ployer can undertake enterprises which have never been 
 possible in the past with slave labour, even to monarchs 
 with an unlimited command of it, and with the assistance 
 of an intellectual and artistic culture which may without 
 offence be described as at least not inferior to that of our 
 Chambers of Commerce. 
 
 Considered from the narrower standpoint of the financial 
 prosperity of a particular industry, the enforcement of a 
 compulsory minimum of well-being by Common Rules has 
 the inestimable, but incidental, advantage of improving 
 not only the labour but the management and the processes 
 of the trade concerned. When all the employers in a 
 trade find themselves precluded, by the existence of a 
 Common Rule, from lowering the conditions of employ- 
 ment — ^when, for instance, they are legally prohibited 
 from crowding more operatives into their mills or keeping 
 them at work for longer hours, or when they find it im- 
 possible, owing to a strictly enforced Piece-work List, to 
 nibble at wages — ^they are driven, in their competitive 
 struggle with each other, to seek advantage by other 
 methods. In this way the insistence on standard minimum 
 conditions of emplo3mient positively stimulates the in- 
 vention and adoption of new processes of manufacture. 
 This has been, as a matter of fact, the actual origin of the 
 making and adoption of new inventions in trade after 
 trade. A classic instance, noticed by Karl Marx, was 
 reported by the Government Factory Inspectors in 1858.* 
 When all the employers in the woollen manufacture found 
 themselves debarred from the labour of little children, 
 they soon invented the piecing machine. Forty years 
 later, when a shght limitation was, for the first time, put 
 upon the hours of labour of laundry women, the immediate 
 result was the introduction of machinery in order, as the 
 Chairman of the Eastbourne Sanitary Steam Laundry 
 
 ' * Capital, Part LV, chap, xv, sec. 2 ; Vol. II, p. 390 of English 
 Translation of 1887 ; Industrial Democracy, p. 725. 
 
34 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 Company explained to his shareholders, " to enable the 
 women to do the work in less time."* In Victoria, wher 
 the Legal Minimum Wage was enacted for the boot and 
 shoe operatives, we were expressly informed by the Factorj 
 Inspector in i8g8 that " a large increase in the amount ol 
 labour-saving machinery is taking place in anticipation 
 of the coming into operation of the determination (of the 
 minimum wage) of the Boot Board."t A year later, Miss 
 Cuthbertson, another of the Victorian Factory Inspectors, 
 reports the effect of the enforcement, among the women 
 in the slop clothing trade, of the legal minimum wage of 
 twenty shillings per week. " The mode of manufacture," 
 she reports, " has been materially altered since the deter- 
 mination (of the minimum wage by the Clothing Board) 
 came into operation. Machine work has been substituted 
 in so many places for hand work, and the sectional prin- 
 ciple of manufacture has been adopted in the large fac- 
 tories." J At the same time the total number of women 
 working at the trade had increased by eight per cent, in a 
 single year. 
 
 And if we want to see the converse of the proposition, 
 that the compulsory enforcement of minimum conditions 
 by means of Common Rules positively increases the 
 efficiency of the industry, we are provided with a contem- 
 porary object lesson in the fruit-preserving (jam-making) 
 factories. In 1878, when this industry was first brought 
 under inspection, the employers protested against any 
 regulation of the hours of labour, or even of sanitation,, 
 during the jam-making season, on the plea that the fruit 
 had to be dealt with as it was delivered. The House of 
 Commons, instead of insisting that the employers should 
 exert their brains so as to cope with difficulties inherent in 
 their particular trade, weakly accepted their plea, and 
 exempted them from the Common Rules enforced on other 
 industries. What has been the result ? The majority 
 of British jam factories at the beginning of the twentieth 
 
 * Laundry Record, ist March, 1897 ; Industrial Democracy, p. 727, . 
 where other instances will be found. I 
 
 t Report of the Chief Inspector of Factories (Victoria), 1898, p. 9, 
 j Ibid., 1899. 
 
ECONOMICS OF FACTORY LEGISLATION 35 
 
 century, presented, during the summer months, scenes of 
 overwork, overcrowding, dirt, and disorder, hardly to be 
 equalled by the cotton mills at the beginning of the nine- 
 teenth century. By 1901 the Inspector's Reports had 
 convinced the Government that it was essential to place 
 these industries imder the sanitary provisions of the Fac- 
 tory Act, but unfortunately exemptions as to hours of work 
 are stiU granted, and long overtime is allowed. Miss 
 Anderson received a serious complaint of excessive over- 
 time in the height of summer, but foimd she could do 
 nothing, as the letter of the law had been complied with 
 and the necessary notices sent in. " Nothing remained 
 for the inspectors but to note the fact that aU concerned 
 were distressingly overworked. The one satisfactory feature 
 was the striking improvement that had been made in cleanli- 
 ness, ventilation, and lavatory arrangements."* The ex- 
 emption permitted by the legislature's kind-hearted 
 regard for " emergency processes " is constantly being 
 taken advantage of for processes where no emergency 
 exists. Thus the overtime conceded for summer jam- 
 making is also used in winter for marmalade-making and 
 lemon-preserving. 
 
 The exemption from regulation is also responsible for 
 corresponding deficiencies in the technical administration 
 of the industry. The very fact that the employers are 
 legally free to make their operatives work without limit 
 makes them disinclined to put thought and capital into 
 improving the arrangements. The better disposed of 
 them admit that the present system tempts them to buy 
 carelessly ; to make no adequate use of the telegraph and 
 telephone in regulatiag deliveries ; to dispense with cold 
 storage, " so that it is a common custom to keep the fruit 
 in workrooms exposed to heat, steam, and the deteriorating 
 influence of congregated humanity." And, as if on purpose 
 to complete the proof that these short-comings are not 
 inevitable in the business, and are merely the result of a 
 disastrous exemption from regulation, we have the fact 
 that, here and there, in different parts of the kingdom, a 
 
 * Annual Report of the Factory Inspectors for 1906, p. 225. 
 Italics added. 
 
36 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 few firms stand out as preferring the " upward way " ; 
 scientifically organising their supplies, providing cold 
 storage, working their operatives only normal hours, and 
 seeing to it that the workplaces are clean and healthy. 
 If the " downward way " were barred by law, as it is in 
 cotton-spinning, all jam-making firms would long ago 
 have been forced into the same course. " Why should I 
 provide storage room," asked a manufacturer of the factory 
 inspector, " when I work as long as is needful to finish 
 the fruit which has been delivered ? " " The abuse of the 
 exemption," remarked another, " is spoiling the jam trade. 
 Those who insist on the necessity for it are those who 
 hang about the markets till they can get fruit at the very 
 lowest rate " (that is, when it is just " on the turn "). 
 " The unsatisfactory conditions found in this trade," the 
 factory iaspector adds, " are clearly resultant on the absence 
 of regulation. . . . Fruit is undoubtedly easily affected 
 by atmosphere and by uncleanly conditions, and the sur- 
 roundings in which the manufacture is often carried on 
 account largely for the rapid deterioration of the fruit. . . . 
 The mere fact that one employer, regardless of all other 
 considerations, takes advantage of lack of regulation, 
 makes competition so difficult that others are in self- 
 defence driven to equally objectionable practices."* 
 
 We might indefinitely prolong the list of examples of 
 the effect of the Factory Acts and Trade Unions in im- 
 proving the processes of manufacture and the organisation 
 of the factory. 
 
 This is now seen by the enlightened capitalist. Sir 
 WiUiam Mather declared in 1892 that the indirect influence 
 of the Trade Unions has stimulated the efiiciency of business 
 organisation.! More recently Mr. Edward Cadbury, a 
 large employer of labour, advocated Trade Unionism for 
 women and girls. " If good discipline is to be maintained 
 he writes, " there must be justice without favouritism, a 
 
 * Annual Report of the Chief Inspector of Factories and Work- 
 shops for the year 1898, section on "Fruit Preserving Factories,"! 
 pp. 173-178 ; cf. more recent reports. 
 
 f W. Mather, Contemporary Review, November, 1892 ; Industrial 
 Democracy, p. 727. 
 
ECONOMICS OF FACTORY LEGISLATION 37 
 
 high moral tone, a sense of self-respect, and esprit de corps 
 among the workers. In order to obtain these last two 
 factors some kind of independent organisation such as 
 a Trade Union is exceedingly helpful. . , . The educa- 
 tional effect of an organisation for common ends in de- 
 veloping a spirit of independence, foresight, and fellowship 
 cannot be overestimated. ... A trade organisation does 
 away with the friction due to petty complaints and prevents 
 ill-considered strikes, since grievances can be discussed 
 and remedied."* Scientific opinion has justified the action 
 of the imions on somewhat similar grounds. " Trades 
 Unions were overwhelmingly right when they demanded 
 as the first requisite for the mental, moral, or physical im- 
 provement of the labouring man a shortening of the hours 
 of toil. Nothing more degrading or benumbing to all that 
 is best in human nature has ever been devised than the 
 grinding, treadmill routine of muscular labour which was 
 exacted of the labour world fifty years ago, and is yet 
 exacted to-day in regions where labourers are unable to 
 protect themselves."! 
 
 Thus, the effect of a compulsory minimum on the 
 organisation of industry, like its effect on the manual 
 labourer, and the brain - working entrepreneur, is all in 
 the direction of increasing efficiency. It in no way abolishes 
 competition, or lessens its intensity. What it does is 
 perpetually to stimulate the selection of the most efficient 
 workmen, the best-equipped employers, and the most 
 advantageous forms of industry. It in no way deteriorates 
 any of the factors of production ; on the contrary, its 
 influence acts as a constant incentive to the further im- 
 provement of the manual labourers, the machinery, and 
 the organising ability used in industry. Whether with 
 regard to Labour or Capital, invention or organising ability, 
 the mere existence of a uniform Common Rule in any 
 industry promotes alike the selection of the most efficient 
 factors of production, and their combination in the most 
 advanced type of industrial organisation. And these re- 
 
 * Edward Cadbury, Woman Worker, Febraary, 1908. 
 t Dr. Woods Hutchinson, Harper's Magazine, March, 1907, 
 p. 602. 
 
38 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 suits are permanent and cumulative. However slight 
 may be the visible effect upon the character or physical 
 efficiency of the wage-earner, or the employer within one 
 generation : however gradual may be the improvement in 
 processes or in the organisation of the industry, these 
 results endure and go on intensifying themselves so that 
 the smallest steps forward effect, in time, an advance of 
 the utmost importance. 
 
 ^ Poor Agriculture. — We are now in a position to under- 
 stand more completely the result upon all our trades of 
 the foreign competition, that we have described. We saw 
 that its effect was to put each particular home trade into 
 fierce competition with every other home trade — a com- 
 petition not only for custom, but also for brains, labour, 
 and the use of capital. In this competition, it is clear, any 
 lowering of the employer's expenses of production gives an 
 advantage to the trade concerned. Thus the parasitic 
 trades, where the employers are able to exact from their 
 workers more labour-force than they replace, tend to ex- 
 pand at the expense of other industries. On the other 
 hand, we have shown that the regulated trades are also 
 able to lower their cost of production, not by sweating 
 but by the increased efficiency caused by the enforce- 
 ment of Common Rules. The regulated trades, therefore, 
 also tend to expand at the expense of other industries. 
 
 Who then are the victims of the subsidised competition 
 of the parasitic trades on the one hand, and of the increased 
 efficiency of the regulated trades on the other ? The 
 answer is clear. The losers in the industrial struggle are 
 those trades which are, at the same time, unregulated and 
 self-supporting — ^which receive, in fact, neither the subsidy 
 of parasitism nor the stimulus of regulation. Of these, 
 in the United Kingdom of the last fifty years, the principal 
 has been agriculture. The farmer has been free from all 
 Common Rules. In the absence of any legal minimum or 
 effective Trade Unionism, he has always been free to hire 
 his labour at the lowest possible wages. He is able to 
 insist that the day's toil shall endure from sunrise to sunset, 
 and is under no obligation to take expensive precautions 
 
ECONOMICS OF FACTORY LEGISLATION 39 
 
 against accidents or unhealthy exposure. But owing to 
 the geographical conditions of the industry, it so happens 
 that he gets no more labour-force than he replaces by his 
 low wages and uncomfortable conditions. He has no op- 
 portunity of securing fresh relays of workers from better- 
 paid sections of the community. He has, in the vast 
 majority of cases, to rely on a small group of families, 
 with whom agriculture has been hereditary — ^who for 
 generations have had no more to live on than the farmer 
 has given them. Hence the scanty food and clothing, long 
 hours, exposure to weather, and insanitary housing accom- 
 modation of the rural population produces slow, lethargic, 
 and unintelligent labour. 
 
 The industry, moreover, because of its " freedom " from 
 regulation, gets none of the stimulus to improvement 
 which, as we have seen, is caused by the enforcement of 
 the Common Rule. It is therefore not surprising that, 
 in a century of unparalleled technical improvement in 
 almost every productive process, the methods of agricul- 
 ture have, we believe, changed less than those of any other 
 occupation. In the rivalry between trades it has steadily 
 lost ground, securing for itself an ever- dwindling propor- 
 tion of the nation's capital, and losing constantly more and 
 more of the pick of the population which it nourishes. In 
 the stress of international competition it has gone in- 
 creasingly to the wall, and far from being selected, Uke 
 such highly regulated trades as coal-mining and cotton- 
 spinning, for the supply of the world-market, it finds itself 
 losing more and more even of the home trade ; not to any 
 specially favoured one among its rivals, but to all of them ; 
 not alone in wheat-growing, but in every other branch of 
 its operations. 
 
 The case of agriculture may be paralleled by those of 
 certain other industries which, escaping the advantage of 
 regulation, have failed to make up for their " freedom '' 
 by any parasitic subsidy. The steady decline of the nail 
 manufacture in the Black Country is directly to be attri- 
 buted to its freedom to work below the level of decent 
 subsistence. Owing to the disinclination of Parliament 
 to interfere with the " domestic workshop," and to the 
 
40 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 absence of Trade Unionism, the nail workers have been 
 without any effective Common Rules as to wages, hours, 
 or sanitation. To each individueil warehouseman it has 
 seemed easier to take full advantage of the competitive 
 struggle for employment, and lower the rate of payment, 
 than to set up a factory, introduce machinery, and organise 
 a trained staff. Unfortunately for this calculation, the 
 nail workers, like the agricultural labourers, are not re- 
 cruited from other sections of the community. The em- 
 ployers find that they can get no relays of unexhausted 
 workers. Every cut at rates, every lengthening of the 
 working day, involves, therefore, a corresponding deteriora- 
 tion in the human beings concerned and their degenerate 
 successors ; causes increased irregularity, misconduct, and 
 disorder ; and so reduces the quantity and quality of the 
 work done that the employers may, after a hundred years 
 of such experience, well be justified in their assertion that 
 the labour is not worth even starvation wages.* 
 
 The Inevitable Conclusion. — We can now sum up the 
 case for the regulation of labour. 
 
 I. Unfettered freedom of competition for employment, 
 in industries carried on for profit, enables (and in most 
 instances compels) the employer to beat down the ordinary 
 manual worker to the lowest terms compatible with con- 
 tinued existence. This, we find, as a proved matter of 
 fact, to be the invariable concomitant, in the England of 
 
 * We should like to urge the Women's Suffrage party carefully to 
 consider Factory Legislation from the point of view developed 
 above. There are those who urge that it is unfair that women's 
 hours of work should be restricted, while as yet women have no 
 voice in the selection of the governments that make the regulation. 
 Would it not be more politic to argue that women who desire to 
 become full citizens need all the strength they can gain from laws 
 that prevent the exploitation of their labour? The Lancashire 
 women, who for generations have been protected by the law, and 
 have had at least some leisure to think for themselves, and gained 
 experience in organising with their fellows, are better and more 
 effective workers for the suffrage than are the sweated workers of 
 East London, who, in Professor Ashley's striking phrase, form a 
 constant supply of "cheap and docile labour," unprotected either 
 by law or Trade Union. 
 
ECONOMICS OF FACTORY LEGISLATION 41 
 
 to-day, of industries conducted for profit in which there 
 are no Common Rules enforced, either by law or Trade 
 Unionism. 
 
 2. Unregulated trades are of three distinct types : Sub- 
 sidised Labour Trades, Labour-Deteriorating Trades, and 
 Self-Supporting Bare-Subsistence Trades. In Subsidised 
 Labour Trades, women, young persons, and children are 
 paid wages insufi&cient to maintain them at the required 
 standard of health, conduct, and efiSciency ; but the 
 balance is made up to them by their relations employed 
 in better-paid occupations. In Labour - Deteriorating 
 Itades, paying equally insufficient wages, any such pecu- 
 niary subsidy is unusual; therefore the workers, rapidly 
 deteriorating under their bad conditions, are constantly re- 
 placed by relays of individuals from other sections of the 
 community, who are " used up " in their turn, and passed 
 on to the hospital or the workhouse. In Self-Supporting, 
 Bare-Subsistence Trades, the employers are debarred alike 
 from pecimiary subsidy to their labour, and from recruiting 
 it by new relays of unexhausted individuals. However 
 inferior may be their wages and other conditions of em- 
 ployment, they get, and know that they can get, no more 
 labour-force than they replace. 
 
 3. In industries of the first two types — ^the Subsidised 
 Labour Trades and the Labour-Deteriorating Trades — the 
 cost of production is lowered, and the expansion of the 
 industry artificially favoured, exactly as if the employers 
 received a " drawback " or " bounty " from the national 
 exchequer. As regards the health and industrial efficiency 
 of the workers concerned, industries of the first type are 
 economically somewhat analogous to those which, imder 
 the Old Poor Law, received a " rate in aid " of wages. In 
 mdustries of the secondtype, tlieparasifein_is disastrous 
 to the community.^~^^at fhey''abstr^r^m_^e nation 
 is no "merS^bney tax, but th e energy, c apacity, aiid 
 charartpr nf .successive generations of citizens. Finally, 
 m industries oTtEeTBfrd- type, llr e~lot-T3f'^he operatives 
 may be hard ; but the""eiivpIoyer gets no advantage oyer 
 other trades ; and the workers, together with their families, 
 are at any rate, at their low level, comple tely main tained. 
 
42 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 4. These bad conditions of employment — popularly 
 known as " sweating " — are not inevitable. In one trade 
 after another, where they formerly prevailed, they have 
 been effectually cured. A himdred years of experiment 
 proves that the remedy is the substitution, iastead of 
 Individual Bargaining, of a minimum enforced by Common 
 Rules, prescribing standard rates of wages, a normal work- 
 ing day, and definite conditions of sanitation and safety. 
 Wherever these are really enforced, whether by Collective 
 Bargaining (Trade Unionism), or by Legal Enactment 
 (Factory Acts), or both, the evils of the sweating system 
 are unknown. 
 
 5. The regulation of an industry by these Common 
 Rules is not only not injurious to it : it is positively ad- 
 vantageous. The Common Rules prevent the employers 
 from exacting labour-force in excess of that which their 
 wages replace. They heighten the incentive to invention 
 and intelligent management, increase the total product, 
 and lower its cost. They defeat the false national economy 
 of " nibbling at wages," " cribbing time," and parasitism. 
 These results are on record in trade after trade, where the 
 effective enforcement of Common Rules has actually 
 resulted in an improvement of processes, a better organisa- 
 tion of labour, increased stimulus to the brain-working 
 managers, and the progressive advance in health, intelli- 
 gence, and conduct of the manual labourers. 
 
 6. In the United Kingdom to-day, under the stress of 
 keen foreign competition, we see two sets of industries 
 gaining ground in the world-market. On the one hand, 
 those trades which enjoy a high degree of regulation, such 
 as coal-mining, cotton-spinning, and ship-building, easily 
 go ahead of their competitors at home or abroad. On the 
 other hand, such sweated trades as the manufacture of 
 slop-clothing, with its subsidy of unpaid-for cheap labour, 
 expand and flourish. The industries which are really 
 dwindling under the competition of other trades are those 
 which — ^like English agriculture — find themselves unable 
 to get more out of their workers than they pay for, but 
 do not enjoy the economic advantages of regulation. 
 
 7. The expansion of the regulated trades is entirely 
 
ECONOMICS OF FACTORY LEGISLATION 43 
 
 advantageous to the community, both financially and in 
 its efEect on the character of the citizens. On the other 
 hand, the expansion of the parasitic trades is entirely 
 injurious to the community : the pecuniary profit is 
 delusive, and not a real asset, whilst the physical and 
 moral deterioration of the operatives amounts, in sober 
 truth, to a succession of national calamities. 
 
 The conclusion, forced upon us by a century of experi- 
 ence, is that we must, if we are to maintain our position 
 as a strong and efficient race, enforce in every industry, 
 by one method or another, definite Common Rules pre- 
 scribing a National Minimum of wages, leisure, education, 
 sanitation, and safety.* 
 
 The Need for Law. — It will have occurred to some of 
 our readers that in the foregoing description of the actual 
 working and results of the Common Rule, we have ignored 
 the distinction that some of these regulations are enforced 
 by Law and others by Trade Union action. The fact is 
 that the use of the two methods of enforcement has, hither- 
 to, been so indiscriminate that it is not possible to investi- 
 gate the working of the Common Rule without taking 
 both methods of enforcement together. Thus, within our 
 own EngUsh-speaking Empire, we find a Standard Rate of 
 Wages for men, women, and children in some places 
 enforced by the Courts of Law, as in Victoria ; whilst in 
 other places, such as England, it is left to the Trade 
 Unions. On the other hand, in Lancashire the law regu- 
 lates in detail the humidity and temperature of the cotton 
 mills, and prescribes the very wording of the wage-ticket ; 
 conditions which are elsewhere left to voluntary agreement. 
 As for the hours of labour : though women, young persons, 
 and children are, in England, nominally regulated as 
 regards all manufactures, it is only in the textile industries 
 that the law can be said to have been effectually defined 
 
 * For a detailed application of the Policy of a National Minimum 
 — with full consideration of such "difficulties" as are presented by 
 children and women, the unemployed and the unemployable, the 
 competition of boys and women with men, the inequality of 
 standards between skUled and unskilled — the reader must refer to 
 Industrial Democracy', Part III, chap, iii, section (e). 
 
44 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 and enforced. On the other hand, in the most up-to-date 
 Colonial legislation about the hours of work, no distinction 
 is made between one trade and another. Railwaymen 
 in England find their hours of labour limited by Board of 
 Trade Order, made pursuant to Act of Parhament ; whilst 
 railwaymen in Victoria have to rely on their Trade Union 
 in this respect. On the other hand, miners in Victoria 
 have an Eight Hours Day by law, whereas miners in 
 England have still to fight the matter out with their em- 
 ployers. And if we turn to the no less important conditions 
 of Sanitation and Safety, we find every country, in every 
 decade, differing widely from the rest, as to which particular 
 Common Rules it enforces by law, and which it prefers 
 to leave to Collective Agreement between employers and 
 employed.* 
 
 There is, of course, a great difference between Trade 
 Unionism and Factory Legislation, but it so happens that 
 this difference does not concern the present argument. 
 Some people, indeed, profess to approve of the principle 
 of the Common Rule when it is a matter of Trade Unionism, 
 and to object to it when it is a matter of Factory Legisla- 
 tion, because, as they say, they dislike compulsion, and 
 regard Trade Unionism as merely a matter of voluntary 
 agreement. But this is a mistake ; if there is to be a 
 Common Rule at all, it must, it is clear, supersede the 
 individual decision. The very object of a Standard Rate, 
 a Normal Day and definite conditions of Sanitation and 
 Safety, is not to benefit a few exceptionally strong or 
 favoured workers, who may have deliberately agreed to 
 it, but to estabHsh a dyke which shall stave off the pressure 
 of competition from the liveUhood of all the workers in 
 the trade, and throw it upward upon the quality of the 
 service rendered by both brain-workers and manual 
 labourers. Clearly, so far as the Trade Union maintains 
 this dyke, it inevitably exercises a very real compulsion on 
 those employers and those wage-earners who would other- 
 
 * For an exhaustive account of Trade Unionism, the reader 
 must be referred to S. and B. Webb's History of Trade Unionism 
 (London, 1894), and for an analysis of all the different regulations 
 and methods to Parts II and III of Industrial Democracy. 
 
ECONOMICS OF FACTORY LEGISLATION 45 
 
 wise have made individual bargains at a lower level. Take, 
 for instance, the Oldham weaver, who works under both 
 methods. The rate of her wages is determined entirely 
 by Trade Unionism ; her hours of labour and sanitary 
 conditions are fixed by law. But there is no more individual 
 choice in one than in the other. An employer or a weaver 
 would find it easier and less costly to defy the Factory 
 Inspector and work overtime, than to defy the Trade 
 Union and evade the Piece-work List of Prices. Or, take 
 the Northumberland coal-miner. He, for particular reasons, 
 objects to have his hours fixed by law. But we need be 
 under no delusion as to his " personal liberty " or his views 
 on that subject. If any inhabitant of a Northumberland 
 village offered to hew coal below the rate fixed by the 
 Trade Union for the whole county, or if he proposed to 
 work two shifts instead of one, the whole village would 
 rise against him, and he would find it absolutely impossible 
 to descend the mine, or to get work anywhere in the 
 coxmty. 
 
 But though the enforcement of the Common Rule by 
 Trade Unionism is, and must necessarily be, just as much 
 a matter of compulsion as its enforcement by Factory 
 Legislation, there are interesting and important differences 
 between these two methods. Trade Unionism both de- 
 velops and teaches democratic self-government. In times 
 of exceptional profits it enables the strong trades, and 
 especially the stronger sections of such trades, to make 
 successively larger and larger demands, and so to raise 
 their own standard of life above the National Minimum en- 
 forced by law. But this attempt must necessarily be 
 purely experimental, and conducted exclusively at the 
 cost of the persons who are to be profited. In so far as 
 any rise in the level of the Common Rule results in an 
 increase in the efficiency of the industry, each Trade Union 
 can safely push its own interests. But any such attempt 
 will be dependent for success on forces which cannot be 
 foreseen, and many of which are unconnected with the 
 efi&ciency of the manual workers themselves. The rapidity 
 of industrial invention in a particular trade, the extent 
 to which it is recruited by additional brain-workers, the 
 
46 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 ease with which new capital can be obtained, will deter- 
 mine how quickly the Trade Union can, by raising its 
 Common Rule, stimulate efficiency, and concentrate the 
 business in its most advantageous centres. And there is 
 another direction in which, under a system of private enter- 
 prise, a Trade Union may successfully push its members' 
 interests. A legal monopoly or exclusive concession, a 
 ring or syndicate, will secure for the capitalists of the trade 
 exemption from competition and exceptional gains. The 
 same result occurs whenever there is a sudden rush of 
 demand for a new product or a sudden cheapening of 
 production. If the wage-earners in those trades are 
 strongly organised, they can extract some part of these 
 exceptional profits from the employers by the method of 
 collective bargaining. From the point of view of the 
 community there is no reason against this ""sharing of 
 the plunder," as the expenditure of the workmen's share, 
 distributed over thousands of families, is just as likely to 
 be socially advantageous as that of the swollen incomes of 
 a comparatively small number of newly enriched employers. 
 On the other hand. Trade Unionism has " the defects 
 of its qualities." It is often said that " it helps those 
 who help themselves." Unfortunately, this phrase comes 
 to nothing more than the assertion that the workers can 
 help themselves by voluntary combination in many cases 
 in which they cannot help themselves by individual action. 
 But effective voluntary combination is only possible where 
 the conditions of the industry mass the workers together, 
 and driU and discipline them to joint action — that is to 
 say, only in the factory and the mine, and, as we shall 
 presently see, not always even there. For the majority 
 of wage - earners, scattered singly, or in groups of two 
 or three, in separate farms, yards, shops, or kitchens 
 throughout the country, combination is impossible. In- 
 deed, even the most flourishing Trade Unionism finds that 
 it has to rely on Factory Legislation to secure its minimum, 
 and to estabUsh its main Common Rules permanently. 
 Besides, in spite of enormous advantages of Trade Union- 
 ism to the worker, the employer, and the nation, the fact 
 that it operates sectionally, pursuing the interest of a 
 
ECONOMICS OF FACTORY LEGISLATION 47 
 
 single trade or group of amalgamated trades rather than 
 of the whole community, produces conflicts between 
 trade and trade, and between skilled Unionists and out- 
 siders seeking admission to their trade, which are by no 
 means always conducted or settled in the public interest. 
 Strong Trade Unions have often insisted on conditions 
 injurious to other classes and detrimental to the community. 
 In an elaborate description of Trade Union Regulations we 
 have shown that Trade Unions have not limited them- 
 selves to the modem device of the Common Rule : they 
 have, in some places, and at some times, endeavoured to 
 obtain a monopoly of the service for their own members 
 by limiting apprentices, excluding foreigners and women, 
 by obstructing machinery, and restricting output, and by 
 otherwise insisting on an exclusive " right to a trade."* 
 And above all, the attempts of Trade Unions on the one 
 hand, and Employers' Federations on the other, to enforce 
 their demands, whether these be wise and beneficial or 
 grasping and injurious, frequently lead to strikes and lock- 
 outs, causing often serious economic harm to the community 
 as a whole. 
 
 The relative advantages and disadvantages of Trade 
 Unionism do not, however, concern us here. What we 
 are discussing is the best available means of preventing 
 " sweating " and industrial parasitism. This remedy we 
 have found in the enforcement, throughout each trade, 
 for each class of workers, of Common Rules prescribing 
 the minimmn conditions of employment. These Common 
 Rules we have shown to be in successful operation in many 
 prosperous trades, enforced sometimes by law and some- 
 times by Trade Unionism. And it so happens that the 
 very conditions which produce the evils of sweating and 
 industriar parasitism make it quite impossible for the un- 
 fortunate workers to help themselves. There is not, and 
 never has been, in any sweated trade, a Trade Union 
 capable of enforcing a Common Rule. After a whole 
 
 * The bad side of Trade Unionism is fully treated in Industrial 
 Democracy, see Part II, chapters x and xi, on "The Entrance to a 
 Trade" and "The Right to a Trade"; and also Part III, chapter iii, 
 section (a), "The Device of Restriction of Numbers." 
 
48 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 century of attempts, we may quite certainly say that there 
 never will be such a Trade Union. Before wage-earners 
 can exercise the intelligence, the deliberation, the self- 
 denial, and the administrative capacity that are necessary 
 for effective Trade Unionism, they must enjoy a certain , 
 standard of physical health, a certain surplus of energy, 
 and a reasonable amount of leisure. But these are the 
 very conditions which are always absent in the sweated 
 trades : their absence is, in fact, the essence of sweating. 
 It is, for instance, hopeless for the casual dock labourers 
 of London to attempt, by collective bargaining, to maintain 
 any effective Common Rules against the will of their , 
 employers. Even if every man employed at dock labour ' 
 in any given week were a staunch and loyal member of the 
 Trade Union ; even if the Union had funds enough to 
 enable these men to stand out for better terms, they 
 would still be unable to carry their point. The employers 
 could without appreciable loss fill their warehouses the 
 very next day by an entirely new set of men, who would 
 do the work practically as well. There is, in fact, for un- 
 specialised manual labour a practically unlimited " reserve 
 army," made up of the temporarily unemployed members 
 of every other class. As these form a perpetually shifting 
 body, and the occupation of " general labouring " needs 
 no apprenticeship, no combination, however co-extensive 
 it might be with the labourers actually employed at any 
 one time, could deprive the employer of the alternative 
 of engaging an entirely new gang. The same reason 
 makes it for ever hopeless to attempt, by collective bar- 
 gaining, to raise appreciably the wages of the common 
 run of women workers. It is, on the face of it, cruel 
 mockery to preach Trade Unionism, and Trade Unionism 
 alone, to the sempstress sewing day and night in her garret, 
 for a bare subsistence ; to the white lead or pottery worker 
 whose health is undermined by wrist -drop or "potter's 
 rot " ; but though these cases supply the most sensational 
 instances, the disability for Trade Unionism extends over 
 the whole field of unregulated female labour. Where, as 
 is usually the case, female labour is employed for practically 
 unskilled work, needing only the briefest experience ; 
 
ECONOMICS OF FACTORY LEGISLATION 49 
 
 or, where the work, though skilled, is of a kind into which 
 every woman is initiated as part of her general education, ' 
 no combination wiU ever be able to enforce, by its own 
 power, any standard rate, any normal day, or any definite 
 conditions of sanitation and safety. No reasonable person 
 could, we imagine, expect the boys and girls (who form 
 in some of the parasitic trades the bulk of the labour 
 employed) to be able to combine to exact from their em- 
 ployers healthy workplaces and " half-time " for technical 
 education. When any British statesman makes up his 
 mind to grapple seriously with the problem of the " sweated 
 trades " he will have to expand the Factory Acts into a 
 systematic and comprehensive Labour Code, prescribing 
 minimum conditions of wages, leisure, education, and 
 health, for each class of operatives, below which the com- 
 munity will not allow its industry to be carried on. 
 
II. GAPS IN OUR FACTORY 
 LEGISLATION* 
 
 By miss B. L. HUTCHINS 
 
 THE following suggested amendments and additions 
 to the Factory Act do not, of course, represent the 
 whole difference between the actual and the ideai, between 
 that which is and that which ought to be. If an enhghtened 
 Government in a new country, with industries as yet un- 
 developed, were to have a free hand in determining the 
 conditions under which employment should be carried on, 
 vmhampered by custom, prejudice, or poverty, it could 
 construct, and hope to enforce, a much more advanced 
 and generous scheme, and be it observed, there is httle 
 doubt that such legislation would be, not only advantage- 
 ous to the health of the people, but a powerful aid towards 
 industrial efficiency. There is a great mass of evidence 
 which tends to show that labour carried on for compara- 
 tively short hours, under the best sanitary conditions, 
 and for Mgh wages, eliminating the competition of child 
 labour, is very muclx more productive than is the work of 
 sweated industries, where the opposite conditions prevail. 
 Further, it is evident that a country in which such a high 
 standard of conditions could be maintained would enjoy 
 an enormous advantage over its commercial competitors 
 from the diminution of poverty, disease, and pauperism, 
 which would be its reward. 
 
 Our position in England is very different. Factory 
 legislation had its small beginnings in the early nineteenth 
 
 * Reprinted from " The Economic Journal," June, 1908, hy hind 
 permission of the Editor, 
 
 SO 
 
GAPS IN OUR FACTORY LEGISLATION 51 
 
 century, at a time when industry was already more or 
 less demoralised by umegulated, one might say anarchic, 
 competition, when child labour was recognised by custom 
 and even approved by philanthropy, and capital had 
 established a sort of prescriptive right to the utmost ex- 
 ploitation of labour. No statesman at that time could 
 dare to dream of a large constructive scheme of social 
 reform — the very poverty of the people would have made 
 such an idea impossible. AU that was attempted was to 
 set Umits to competition in its worst excesses, to prevent 
 the night work of children, for instance, and to restrict 
 their hours of labour. Even these measures, tardy and 
 inadequate as they seem to us, had a great deal of preju- 
 diced opposition to meet. The roots of custom and habit 
 are hard to disentangle in an old country Uke ours, and 
 the reformer has perforce to content himself with progress 
 step by step, ever dogged and hindered by the knowledge 
 that the greatest obstacle to progress is that very poverty of 
 the people that he is working to diminish. We may be 
 perfectly convinced of the soundness of the economic 
 argument that long hours and insanitary conditions 
 diminish efficiency, and, therefore, in the long run, tend 
 to keep wages low, but we cannot entirely put aside the 
 reflection that a higher standard of requirements wiU 
 perchance lessen the earnings of the already underpaid, 
 or even throw them out of work, at the moment. Factory 
 legislation has never aimed at more than the redress of 
 the abuse most clearly perceived at a given moment. It 
 has in this way, however, progressed from small beginnings 
 until at the present day it forms, not, indeed, the compre- 
 hensive scheme of race preservation indicated above, but 
 at all events a very substantial measure of protection 
 against the manifold dangers incidental to industry, 
 dangers from which " the labourer," to use the vague 
 generalisation of the classical economists, is usually either 
 by age, sex, ignorance, or economic dependence, not 
 capable of guarSng himself or herself. Our social reform 
 is a process of becoming rather than of being. The in- 
 dividuahst asks despairingly, " Where are we to stop ? " 
 The Socialist answers, " Certaiijy not yet." Opportunist 
 
52 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 methods and piecemeal reform are the English tradition. 
 Consequently the work, like women's work, " is never 
 done." The subject of the present article is merely to 
 point out the next steps. We may separate the subject- ; 
 matter as follows : (i) Duration of work ; (2) Health and ■ 
 safety ; (3) Payment of wages. 
 
 I. Hours of Work. — ^As regards the hours of work, there 
 is a growing feeUng that these are too long, especially for 
 growing girls. The period of employment under i Edw. 
 VII. c. 22 is for women and young persons (i.e. boys and 
 girls from 14 to 18) 12 hours, with intervals for meals , 
 which must not be less than i| hours in non-textile fac- | 
 tories and workshops, and 2 hours in textile factories. 
 This means that any girl of 14, or of 13, who has passed 
 the educational requirements in force, may work " round 
 the clock," i.e. from 6 to 6, 7 to 7, or 8 to 8. When I have 
 put the matter thus in addressing meetings of ladies not , 
 famihar with the subject, I have sometimes been met 
 with an incredulous look, and the objection, " I thought 
 the Factory Act had altered all that." It certainly is 
 somewhat remarkable that a century of legislation has 
 done no more for these young growing girls, who, at a 
 peculiarly critical and important age, may still be em- 
 ployed for hours longer than most men consider a proper 
 working day for themselves. Shorter hours for all pro- 
 tected workers would seem to be an appropriate measure 
 of relief. It may be remarked that in non-textile factories ( 
 it has for some time been customary not to work the full | 
 legal hours. About nine hours is the rule, for instance, ' 
 in the Birmingham brass works ; an employer in this 
 trade once very kindly explained to me in detail how it 
 was that he found it actually bad economy to keep going 
 more than nine hours, because the girls could not keep 
 their attention fixed longer, made more " scrap " and 1 
 wasted material. This seems to be commonly recognised i 
 in metal work, pottery, etc., but for some obscure reason 
 textile factories customarily work the full legal hours— i( 
 10 per day. Now it is important to remember that these 
 hours mean more work and more fatigue than they did 
 
GAPS IN OUR FACTORY LEGISLATION 53 
 
 when the normal day was first introduced 50 odd years ago. 
 The speeding up of machinery has increased the strain, 
 and even as long ago as 1872 shorter hours were agitated 
 for by the trade imions. In the following year Dr. Bridges 
 and Mr. Holmes were instructed by the Local Government 
 Board to hold an inquiry as to the health of women and 
 young workers in textiles. They reported, after taking a 
 considerable quantity of evidence, that since the passing 
 of the Act of 1847, the strain on the workpeople had cer- 
 tainly increased, i.e. each operative had a larger amount 
 of machinery to attend to ; the machinery was driven at 
 greater speed ; the practice of giving overlookers and 
 foremen a premium on the work done impelled them to 
 exact steadier and harder work than formerly. The Act 
 of 1874, however, merely required an additional half-hour 
 for rest and meals daily. In the intervening period the 
 strain has undoubtedly increased. One of H.M.'s in- 
 spectors teUs me that " both in cotton and woollen the 
 strain of the full hours with speeding up is almost intolerable 
 to the less robust women and girls." Miss Anderson, 
 Chief Lady Inspector, stated before the Physical Deteriora- 
 tion Committee that in her opinion the legal hours were 
 too long — " longer for women than men would stand in 
 their own organised industries" (Evidence, q. 1498). 
 Her Memorandum, included with the Committee's Report, 
 should also be studied in this connection. Dr. OUver, in 
 considering the subject of " speeding up," writes : " That 
 there is greater strain upon the nervous system, more 
 exhaustion, and consequently need for greater leisure, few 
 will deny, and that in many instances the hard work in- 
 duces premature old age goes without saying. Will this 
 speeding up tend to make female mill-workers better 
 mothers and help them to give birth to healthy and robust 
 children, or to infants who are puny, ill-nourished, and of 
 a highly-strung, nervous system ? . . . There is a limit 
 beyond which the speeding of machinery cannot be run 
 without detriment to the health of the operators, unless 
 their hours of work are materially shortened." (OUver, 
 Diseases of Occupations, p. 3.) The extreme monotony 
 of factory work is in itself a cause of strain. This was 
 
54 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 noted by Dr. Bridges and Mr. Holmes in the report already 
 quoted (p. 43), and has more recently been observed by 
 Miss Vines (see Factory Inspectors' Report for 1904, p. 
 260). 
 
 But although the textile factories customarily work up 
 to the full limit of the legal hours, it has to be noted that 
 they are by law better regulated than the non-textUe 
 factories. In the former, work may not be continued by 
 a child, young person, or woman for more than 4J hours 
 without a break. In the latter the spell may be, and 
 frequently is, 5 hours. Taking into consideration the 
 hurry and pressure under which modern industry is carried 
 on, this is too long a spell. Another grievance is that the 
 pause for a midday meal is frequently too short. An 
 hour's interval must be allowed before 3 o'clock p.m., 
 but this hour may be divided, half an hour taken perhaps 
 before beginning work (8.30 instead of 8), and only half an 
 hour need then be allowed for dirmer. The results of so 
 inadequate an interval after a long morning's work are 
 considered by Miss Anderson to be very serious. This 
 restriction of the dinner hour appears to be a common 
 custom in the London dress trades, and accounts for much 
 indigestion, anaemia, and sickly looks noticeable among 
 the young women working in these trades. 
 
 Overtime. — Another highly desirable reform in regard 
 to hours of work would be the aboUtion of overtime. 
 This has been consistently advocated by the trade unions, 
 especially by the Women's Trade Union League, for many 
 years. Overtime has been made illegal for young persons 
 in all trades, and also for women in textile, and in some 
 non-textile, industries. Exemptions are still permitted in 
 industries in which the nature of the employment is sup- 
 posed to require elasticity, as, for instance, the making of 
 wearing apparel, Christmas presents, etc. etc. The Lady 
 Inspectors constantly emphasise the evils of the long hours 
 of work allowed in fruit preserving. The workers in these 
 employments are thus liable to be kept for very long spells 
 of work at certain seasons. Considering how long the 
 daily hours under the Factory Act still are, it appears utterly 
 
GAPS IN OUR FACTORV LEGISLATION 5$ 
 
 unreasonable to require overtime as well. A master once 
 said to me, " In nine hours the girls have done as much 
 work as it is in them to do." The permission of overtime 
 is simply a premium on irregularity and bad organisation. 
 Permission to make up lost " time " and work overtime 
 used to be granted in the textile industry, but it has 
 gradually been recognised as a source of weakness, the 
 exceptions have been shut off one by one, and the " normal 
 day " has become more and more the standard. The trend 
 is unmistakably towards the prohibition of overtime, and 
 the sooner the better, if we value the health of working 
 girls and women. 
 
 Hours of Young Workers. — It is necessary to remark 
 here that even if the worldng day is reduced by one hour 
 and overtime prohibited, the state of things is still not 
 satisfactory in regard to young workers. A fuU day's 
 work, whether lo hours or g, ought not to be required of 
 a boy, still less of a girl, of 13 or 14. The question is a 
 difficult one, because, as most people now know, the 
 organisation of a textile factory (possibly of other factories) 
 involves a subdivision of labour, which renders the elder 
 and more skilled workers dependent on the co-operation of 
 the younger and less skilled. The spinner cannot work 
 without his "piecer." This difficulty might perhaps be 
 got over by raising the age of half-timers to 16. If this 
 operated as a discouragement on the emplojmient of young 
 workers, it might, on the other hand, tend to increase the 
 demand for the labour of adult women, and raise their 
 wages. One of H.M.'s inspectors teUs me that the present 
 tendency is to employ girls rather than women, which has 
 the effect of depressing piece rates. From the social point 
 of view, adult workers should be preferred. May not 
 some of the high infant mortahty of the cotton towns be 
 due to the overstrain of women in their early life, before 
 and whilst attaining maturity ? 
 
 2. Washing Appliances.— In regard to improving the 
 regulations for health much might be said, did space per- 
 mit. It is a singular fact that with aU our national pride 
 
S6 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 in cleanliness, the Factory Act includes no provision in 
 regard to washing apphances, save for certain specified 
 dangerous trades. In France this provision is required 
 in factories and workshops generally ; English law ap- 
 parently regards wash-basins, soap, and towels as an ex- 
 pense only to be justified when deadly peril, such as lead 
 or phosphorus poisoning, is involved. In a recent report. 
 Miss Anderson says that the need for washing appliances 
 is increasingly felt among women and girls (surely a 
 hopeful sign), and has a moral and social, as well as a 
 hygienic, value. The girl who is contented to go home 
 dirty and unkempt from the long day's work is not the 
 most self-respecting of workers. Even in cases where the 
 work is specially hot and dirty (is not most work more 
 or less hot and dirty ?), the lady inspectors have no power 
 to do more than advise this provision, which one would 
 expect the ordinary self-respect of employers to dictate. 
 Miss Anderson says that employers will complain to her 
 of the roughness or carelessness of the young women they 
 employ, yet do not realise how extraordinarily " rough, 
 primitive, and uncivilised " are the surroundings in which 
 too often they place their employees, or how closely these 
 phenomena are related. It is pleasanter to read that the 
 same observer has often noted with surprise and admiration 
 the efforts working women will make, in the face of the 
 greatest difficulties, to turn homewards with a neat and 
 cleanly appearance. The Chief Inspector has said that 
 washing accommodation has a civilising influence, and he 
 has rarely known such provision to be unused or despised. 
 Probably no class in any society takes such an open and 
 almost childish pride in the habits that promote physical 
 health and refinement as the Enghsh wealthy classes. 
 Might they not occasionally ask themselves what are the 
 conditions in the houses from which they draw their rents, 
 the factories from which they draw their profits, or the 
 industries in which they invest their capital ? Much is 
 done by the best employers, and the law might surely try 
 to awaken the sleeping conscience of the worse. 
 
 Medical Inspection.— Another important point in re- 
 
GAPS IN OUR FACTORY LEGISLATION S7 
 
 gard to health is the medical inspection of young persons 
 to ascertain their physical fitness for work or for special 
 kinds of work. This is already done for children on 
 entering the factory, and the inspectors have power to 
 require the certifying surgeon to make a reinspection of 
 young persons under i6. It was represented to the 
 Physical Deterioration Committee that this re-examination 
 might properly be made general and compulsory, and ex- 
 tended to all young workers under i8 or even 21. Dr. 
 Scott pointed out that some boys, who might be fully 
 capable of useful work, were yet too slow-witted to deal 
 safely with machinery, and might be the cause or the vic- 
 tim of horrible accidents. The same gentleman strongly 
 urged the medical inspection of boys before working in 
 coal mines, and the abolition of half-time for children. 
 He considered that boys who came straight from school 
 to work at 14 made better and more capable and regular 
 workers. Another observer, who has recently visited a 
 good many factories on business, has told me he was 
 greatly struck by the fact that the employment of children 
 seems to be dying out in the best conducted factories, and 
 to linger on in those which are most crowded, worst 
 ventilated, and altogether precisely the most undesirable 
 for children to be in. 
 
 Other Provisions for Health. — Among other provisions 
 for health which are still not required by law, but are 
 urgently needed, their absence forming the subject of many 
 complaints to the women inspectors, are the provision of 
 messrooms ; these are chiefly needed in large works, 
 and might be dispensed with in small workshops or where 
 there are facihties for meals accessible in the immediate 
 neighbourhood. It is important that messrooms should 
 be under the supervision of the inspector, instead of, as 
 now, outside it. Cloakrooms or provision suitable for 
 outdoor garments are also highly necessary, many workers 
 having a long walk and arriving wet through in bad weather. 
 The provision of adequate light in workrooms is a singular 
 omission from the law. One of the lady inspectors writes 
 to me that some provision is necessary to ensure that both 
 
S8 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 by day or artificial light all workers should have sufiicieni 
 and properly placed light on their work. An inadequate 
 or badly placed arrangement causes straining of eyesight, 
 stooping or twisting of shoulders, headache, not to men- 
 tion more terrible dangers from machinery worked in 
 shadow or in an uncertain, fitful hght. The lighting of 
 staircases, passages, yards, and sanitary conveniences is 
 also necessary both for physical and moral reasons. 
 
 Maternity. — In regard to one of the most important 
 of the Factory Act provisions for health — namely, the 
 prohibition of work after confinement — ^it is not possible 
 here to say much, as the adequate discussion of it would 
 take us outside the subject of the Factory Act. Every 
 competent person is agreed that the prohibition of work 
 for one month is altogether insufficient, but every one also 
 knows that the poverty of the women themselves is the 
 most frequent cause of breaches of the law, and in default 
 of some system of national insurance or compensation for 
 the expenses of maternity, it is difficult to see how the 
 period of unemplojmient can be extended. One useful 
 amendment, however, could be made in the existing law, 
 and that is the deletion of the word " knowingly." At 
 present the employer can escape a fine if he can show 
 that he did not know, or could not be expected to know, 
 that the woman had given birth to a child within four 
 weeks. It has actually been decided in a court of law 
 that an employer which is a company cannot have cog- 
 nisance of such a fact, and, therefore, is not liable to a fine 
 for employing the woman in such circumstances (see 
 Report for 1904, p. 273). It is extremely difficult for the 
 inspectors to get a conviction under this section, even 
 when the offence is practically certain. Other useful 
 provisions would be to require that the occupation of 
 mothers be returned in the registration of the deaths of 
 infants, and to require mothers to produce a medical 
 certificate on returning to work. But the main question 
 is an economic one, which cannot be dealt with under 
 the Factory Act alone. 
 
GAPS IN OUR FACTORY LEGISLATION S9 
 
 Heavy Weights. — The carrying of heavy weights by 
 women and young persons is frequently mentioned by 
 H.M.'s inspectors as being highly dangerous to health. 
 Of all uses to put a woman to, surely that of beast of burden 
 is one of the most repugnant and inhuman. Some pro- 
 vision could surely be made to check the practice, which 
 in the case of children has been forbidden by the Act of 
 1903. The enforcement of similar regulations in the case 
 of women and girls would result either in the increased 
 employment of men or in the more extended use of labour- 
 saving appliances, as troUeys, etc., either of which would 
 be far better social economy than the overstrain of these 
 poor women, often bearing the triple burden of mother, 
 wife, and industrial worker. 
 
 Dust. — Miss Anderson has stated that in her opinion 
 it is possible to conduct factory labour in such a manner 
 as to involve no harm to health whatever. The conditions 
 that injure health, as, for instance, the quantity of dust 
 generated in certain processes, are not essential to any 
 employment, but admit of a remedy if due scientific means 
 are used. It is interesting to recall that about 90 years 
 ago Sir Richard Arkwright described to Peel's Committee 
 the means he used to prevent dust in the process of cleaning 
 cotton, and said there need be no dust. Miss Anderson 
 told the Physical Deterioration Committee that among 
 the causes adverse to health in industry were dusty pro- 
 cesses, extremes of temperature, and working in a damp 
 atmosphere. There has been a great improvement in the 
 appUcation of exhaust ventilation to the removal of in- 
 jurious dust and in remedies for defective structural con- 
 ditions, but much yet remains to be done. There seems 
 to be a' general opinion among experts that progress now 
 lies in the direction of raising the general standard of 
 hygiene, by means of cleanliness, ventilation, and Ught, 
 the maintenance of proper space between machines and 
 between the workers employed, freedom from dust, and 
 control of temperature, all of which conditions are now 
 felt to be more important on the whole than the adoption 
 of specific precautions for dangerous trades. 
 
6o SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 3. Payment of Wages.— In regard to wages, no dis- 
 cussion can here be attempted of the proposed law re 
 wages boards, which is treated in another article, though 
 I may perhaps be allowed to say in passing that I regard 
 the extreme poverty and underpayment of large classes 
 of workers as the main evil of their condition, and fully 
 believe that Factory Acts and Public Health Acts, valu- 
 able as these are, cannot adequately protect workers who 
 are too underpaid to combine together for the enforcement 
 of the law. But the present law as to the payment of 
 wages undoubtedly needs strengthening. The Women's 
 Trade Union League has for many years demanded the 
 aboUtion of fines and deductions. Miss Clementina Black, 
 in her book, Sweated, Industry (p. 41 et seq.), tells us how 
 fines, which the outsider might innocently suppose to be 
 instituted as a means of preserving discipUne amongst 
 giddy young workers, are actually a profit-making device 
 among low-class employers. Miss Black quotes wage- 
 books in which fines and deductions amounted to a sum 
 varying from 10 to 30 per cent, of wages. In another 
 case workers were charged rent for their place in the factory. 
 In others charges are made for the use of machines, or 
 even for cleaning the workroom, one ingenious employer 
 paying 15s. to the scrubber, while the pence collected 
 from the workers amounted to twice that sum. Some 
 charge for hot water to make tea, and it can be easily 
 seen that even a small charge of this kind, when put upon 
 a number of workers, would bring in a sum much in excess 
 of the cost of water. Deductions for spoilt work are often 
 grossly unfair, as with jam and preserve making, where 
 one or two jars in a few hundreds are sure to crack with 
 the heat. The unlucky girl who chances to wash the 
 cracked jar will be charged for damage she is probably 
 entirely unconnected with, and may even be made to 
 pay the seUing price of the pot of jam. Other deductions 
 are inflicted for punishment ; and of these Miss Black 
 teUs a significant story. One of the best employers who 
 have come within her observation said, when questioned 
 on this head, " If I could not run a factory without fines 
 I should be ashamed to run one at all." Another employer 
 
GAPS IN OUR FACTORY LEGISLATION 6i 
 
 of a very different stamp defended himself against a charge 
 of excessive fining by asserting that, without fines, Ms 
 factory would be a " bear-garden." Comment is super- 
 fluous. Perhaps the worst kind of fine is that used by 
 employers who deduct a surplus from those piece-workers 
 who make up a total rather better than usual. I have 
 myself been told by a girl in reference to a certain factory : 
 " It doesn't do to work too well there — they cut you 
 down directly." Miss Black mentions a factory where 
 the foreman deducts one or two shillings from the week's 
 pasmient if he thinks the girl entitled to it has " earned 
 too much." Can anything more demoralising than such 
 a system be imagined ? Fines and deductions should be 
 abolished, and the " Particular Clause," which provides 
 that the worker shall be made fully acquainted with the 
 piece rates he or she is working for, needs extension to 
 all piece-work trades. In isolated cases employers in 
 industries not under the clause have voluntarily adopted 
 it, showing that they realise the advantage of having a 
 fair and above-board agreement. Legislation is also 
 necessary to bring out-workers more completely under 
 the Truck Acts, the decision of the High Court in Squire 
 V. The Midland Lace Co. having unfortunately placed out- 
 side the protection of the law a large class of needy workers.* 
 
 Postscript. — Since the above was written, the Report 
 of the Select Committee on Home Work has appeared, 
 and it seems appropriate here to make some mention of 
 this important document, deaUng, as it does, with a sub- 
 ject in which members of the Fabian Society have con- 
 stantly interested themselves. We have first to welcome 
 and draw attention to the tone and style of the Report, 
 which is distinctly advanced, and contains many gratifying 
 indications that the Collectivist propaganda has not been 
 altogether in vain. After briefly summarising the evils of 
 sweated work, the long hours, insanitary conditions, and 
 
 * See report on the Truck Acts in the Factory Inspector's Report 
 for 1906, p. 239, and a report of the above case in the Factory 
 Inspector's Report for 1904, p. 281. The Court stated that it gave 
 its decision reluctantly and recommended amendment of the law. 
 
62 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 low pay that have been brought to their notice by a large 
 number of witnesses, the Committee recognise that no pro- 
 posals which fail to increase the income of these people 
 can have any appreciable effect in improving their con- 
 dition. Improved sanitation and cleanUness are no doubt 
 desirable, but poverty is the root of the trouble. 
 
 In a very interesting passage on page xiv., sec. 38, they 
 state their opinion that in regard to the general policy of 
 Parliament in regulating or providing for the regulation 
 of wages, it is no more improper for Parliament to estab- 
 lish a minimum scale of remuneration than it is to establish 
 such a standard of sanitation, ventilation, or remission of 
 work. If it be said that many industries cannot be carried 
 on at all if a minimum rate is to be enforced, stiU, wisely 
 reply the Committee, this is only what has been said in 
 olden times when the earher Factory Acts were passed ; 
 and surely, even if the prophecy were true, " it would be 
 better that any trade which could not exist if such a 
 minimum of decent and humane conditions were insisted 
 upon should cease." This is excellent, and exactly what 
 the Fabian Society has been saying for twenty years. 
 
 But, however excellent in principle, the Report is open 
 to criticism in detail. The framers appear to have (quite 
 rightly) given the greater part of their attention to the 
 question of a minimum wage, which no doubt is by far 
 the most important question, and the one as to which 
 there may be the most opposition. They appear to have 
 hurried over the question of sanitary measures in a some- 
 what perfunctory manner, and with an imperfect mastery 
 of the existing law. For instance, on page xii., sec. 31, 
 they advise the extension of " Section 9 of the Public Health 
 Act, 1875," with respect to factories and workshops which 
 are not kept in a cleanly state, or are iU-ventUated or 
 overcrowded, to rooms in which Home Work is done. 
 Now, sec. 9 of the PubUc Health Act, as Mrs. Ramsay 
 MacDonald has pointed out, does not deal with any matter 
 of this kind, and probably 9 is a misprint for sec. 91, 
 which can be found in any handbook of the Factory Acts, 
 It provides, among other things, that any factory, work- 
 shop or workplace (italics mine) not kept in a cleaiJy state. 
 
GAPS IN OUR FACTORY LEGISLATION 63 
 
 or not ventilated in such a manner as to render any foul 
 air or dust generated by the work done innocuous, or so 
 overcrowded as to be dangerous or injurious to health, 
 may be deemed to be a nuisance, and dealt with sum- 
 marily under the Act. Sec. 92 requires the local authori- 
 ties to make inspections of their district from time to 
 time, so as to ascertain what nuisances exist and enforce 
 the powers of the Act to abate the same. So the local 
 authorities already have the power which the Committee 
 advises should be given them. The same with their re- 
 commendation that the factory inspector should have 
 power to enforce the law if the local authority neglect or 
 overlook their duty; this power is already possessed by 
 the factory inspectors, under sec. 4 of the Factory Act, 
 igoi. What is really needed is an increase in the numbers 
 of inspectors, both in the central and local bodies ; and, in 
 the case of local sanitary inspectors, to strengthen their 
 position in cases where unfortunately the interests of 
 members of the Council are against efficient inspection. 
 The appointment of quahfied women inspectors ought to 
 be required of all local sanitary authorities. 
 
 More serious, however, than these sUps is the absence of 
 any attempt to place responsibiUty for insanitary struc- 
 tural conditions on the landlord. Mr. Booth, in Life and 
 Labour in London (vol. iv., pp. 345-7), and Mrs. Sidney Webb, 
 in How to do away with the Sweating System, and else- 
 where, have consistently recommended imposing this duty 
 on the owner of houses, who often makes a handsome 
 profit out of letting rooms that are quite unfit for human 
 beings to live, sleep, wash, and work in. When fashion 
 and prosperity quit a particular district, the houses are 
 often " made down," as the Scotch call it ; that is, let off 
 in tenements of one or two rooms apiece. This means 
 that the water supply and sanitary accommodation that 
 were originally intended for a family have to be shared up 
 or used in common by five or six different tenants or, it 
 may be, many more. It ought to be compulsory for a 
 landlord letting a house in this manner to adapt the 
 arrangements to suit the larger number of tenants. This 
 is, of course, a question that applies also to poor persons 
 
64 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 who are not home workers ; but it is most pressing in the 
 case of home workers, because the very fact of work being 
 done at home introduces a fresh element of dirt and dis- 
 order. It has been stated before the Home Work Com- 
 mittee that structural sanitation has greatly improved of 
 late years, but domestic uncleanliness is still very notice- 
 able among these workers. The inadequacy and incon- 
 venience of water supply is here an important factor. 
 It is still not at all uncommon for houses in poor districts 
 to contain but one water-tap for all the inhabitants, and 
 this probably on the basement floor. " Domestic un- 
 cleanliness " is not a surprising phenomenon among people 
 who have to carry aU their water up several fUghts of 
 stairs, and then boil it over a small fire if they are so 
 exacting as to want it hot. The whole question of sweat- 
 ing, on its sanitary side, is intimately bound up with the 
 housing question, and it is a great pity that the Home 
 Work Coimnittee did not follow Mr. Booth and Mrs. Webb 
 in recommending that the landlord should be made re- 
 sponsible for the conditions in the tenements from which 
 he draws his rents. The recommendation made by the 
 Committee that the keeping of out-workers' lists by em- 
 ployers should be more strictly enforced will probably not 
 be of much use unless the co-ordinate responsibility of the 
 landlord, advised by Mr. Booth and Mrs. Webb, be intro- 
 duced. As a matter of fact, the first thing a sanitary 
 inspector always tells one when asked about out-workers 
 is that their powers under the Public Health Act are much 
 more useful than the Usts required by the Factory and 
 Workshops Act. What is wanted is " the establishment 
 of a minimum of soundness and sanitary convenience in 
 houses, below which it should be illegal to inhabit a house 
 at all " (Wells, Mankind in the Making, p. 102), rather 
 than special regulations for out-workers, which might 
 easily cause rents to be raised against a very poor class. 
 
 B. L. H. 
 
III. THE CASE FOR A LEGAL 
 MINIMUM WAGE 
 
 IN a discussion of the institution of a National Legal 
 Minimum Wage there is no need to deal with the 
 fascinating but abstract subject of the right of the State 
 to interfere with the conditions under which persons em- 
 ploy, or are employed. The development of factory legis- 
 lation and its effects upon national life and industry have 
 settled the question as to the limits of State regulation in 
 this sphere once and for all by proving that experience 
 alone can show where these limits ought to be fixed. The 
 only real criticism to which industrial legislation is now 
 subjected is not on the ground of principle, but on the 
 practical question of effectiveness in points of detail, and 
 such criticism leads to continual demands being made 
 for the extension of legislation to secure a standard mini- 
 mum of leisure and safety for an increasing number of the 
 workers. 
 
 State Minima. — But not only in matters of safety and 
 leisure has the State assumed, with general approval, the 
 duty of fixing a standard. All normal children, and many 
 who are abnormal, are legally required in the interests of 
 national mental efficiency to receive a minimum of in- 
 struction ; every person is supposed to be compelled to 
 conform to a certain sanitary minimum ; and in housing 
 the State is gradually feeling its way to the enforcement 
 of a minimum of health and comfort. These measures, 
 aiming at the protection of the masses from the evil effects 
 of anarchic industrial conditions, are, however, limited to 
 p. considerable extent in their utility by the failure of the 
 State to secure sufficient remuneration to those industrially 
 
 E 6s 
 
66 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 employed. There appears to be a superstition held by 
 economists and pohticians, even by those who have no 
 prejudice against State regulation in itself, that the cash 
 relation between employer and employed is so sacred that 
 to interfere with it by law is to commit the unpardonable 
 economic and pohtical sin. Moreover, it was thought 
 that the worker would become educated through com- 
 pulsory Education Acts ; healthy through Public Health 
 Acts ; comfortably housed through Housing Acts ; and 
 that the inevitable result of this education, health, and 
 comfort would be increased mental and physical efficiency 
 capable of effecting a dead lift in wages all round. This 
 expectation has not been reahsed, as may be easily gathered 
 from recent well-known inquiries into social conditions. 
 It is glaringly apparent that an alarming proportion of the 
 mass of the people, in spite of the efforts of the State by 
 indirect and partial means to raise the standard of life, 
 do not receive sufficient wages to provide for a healthy 
 physical existence. The researches of Mr. Charles Booth 
 and Mr. B. S. Rowntree indicate that it is probable that 
 at least twelve millions of our population are living just 
 on or below a level of bare subsistence. This estimate 
 appears to be so well founded that a responsible politician, 
 Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman to wit, adopted it as an 
 argument in favour of the return of the Liberal Party to 
 power. It is true that according to Mr. Rowntree a good 
 deal of this degrading poverty arises from the careless and 
 unscientific expenditure of incomes, which, if carefully 
 and scientifically expended, would be just sufficient to 
 maintain physical efficiency. The class which suffers 
 through this cause would not be directly assisted by the 
 enforcement of a legal minimum wage of the kind we shall 
 discuss, but below it there is another class which does not 
 receive enough to maintain physical efficiency, no matter 
 how wisely the family expenditure may be regulated. 
 Nothing but a rise in family income can help this lower 
 class. 
 
 Wages Clauses in Public Contracts.— In spite of 
 the protests of old-fashioned economists against the legal 
 
THE CASE FOR A LEGAL MINIMUM WAGE 67 
 
 regulation of wages, the State, both central and municipal, 
 has begun to act upon the principle that no sweating or 
 underpayment must be allowed in its direct or indirect 
 service. The adoption by public bodies of a " standard," 
 " fair," " agreed," or " trade union " rates of wages 
 clause in forms of tender for their work is undoubtedly 
 a small step in the direction of the regulation of wages by 
 the State, even though it may be simply a public endorse- 
 ment of a private agreement arrived at between employers 
 and a trade union. And when a municipal body goes 
 further, and, finding that there is no " standard," " fair," 
 " agreed," or " trade imion " rate in a particular trade, 
 proceeds to fix a minimum wage for members of that 
 ' trade when it is engaged upon pubUc work, either directly, 
 or through the medium of a contractor, a longer and still 
 more important step in the same direction has been taken 
 and the infringement of the right of free contract in matters 
 of wages becomes extremely flagrant. The London County 
 Council for several years has fixed minimum rates to 
 be paid by contractors who carry out its tailoring work ; 
 and, recently, the companies who take the contracts for 
 keeping clean the acres of glass in London's educational 
 and other pubUc buildings have been bound by the Council 
 to pay a minimum rate per hour to the men engaged upon 
 the work. Along these lines something has been done to 
 help weak and unorganised sections of labour to attain 
 a higher standard of comfort. But there are strict limita- 
 tions to the efficacy of wage clauses in contracts for pubhc 
 work. It is very difficult in an occupation which is either 
 'badly organised or wholly without a trade organisation to 
 make certain that the clauses are observed. In those 
 ^trades where unionism is strong the natural tendency of 
 the contractor to try to get round the labour conditions 
 of his contract can be more or less effectively checked. 
 Where unionism is either absent or weak the way of the 
 transgressing contractor is easy. Moreover, the number 
 M persons employed directly or indirectly upon municipal 
 or State work under regulated conditions, while increasing, 
 j? at present comparatively small, and although the 
 number of contractors who carry out such work is large 
 
68 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 the regulated conditions do not apply to all their employees^ 
 but only to those engaged in executing the public contracts. 
 Hence we find that the tailoring contractor to the London 
 County Council will pay the minimum rate for the Council 
 work ; but it is understood that the worker who is given 
 a park-keeper's suit to make up is compelled to balance 
 the advantage in wages accruing therefrom by taking a 
 certain quantity of other work for her employer's private 
 customers at a far lower rate of pay than the County 
 Council's minimum. To parody the showman's classic 
 phrase, what she gains on the regulated municipal uniform 
 she loses on the unregulated private overcoat. 
 
 Therefore, although the introduction of wages clauses 
 and the fixing of minimum rates in connection with public 
 work are extremely desirable and useful, they do not pro- 
 mise to be either efficient or speedy as a means of improv- 
 ing the lot of those for whom an immediate rise in income 
 is the only salvation. They are mentioned here simply as 
 illustrations of the fact often overlooked, that the State, 
 in spite of the serious warnings of economists, has begun, 
 if only in a very tentative way, to take an intelhgent 
 interest in the terms of the cash nexus between employer 
 and employed. 
 
 Obsolete and Modern Economic Theory—" All 
 
 generous minds," says the most genial of American essayists, 
 " have a horror of what are commonly called facts." One 
 need not possess a very generous mind to have a horror of 
 what used to be called political economy. It is now happily 
 banished to Saturn ; but it must not be supposed that 
 genuine economic science has been banished with it. 
 The Satumian economy was the economy of middle class 
 professional life, in which every man is his own employer 
 and capitalist, absurdly applied to modern industrial 
 civilisation by college professors. It misled the nation 
 on every practical issue ; and it would, if it could, prevent 
 the enactment of a minimum wage law by giving yet 
 another mistaken verdict against it. Those who are 
 desirous of learning in detail the arguments in support 
 of such a verdict, and also how they may be effectively 
 
THE CASE FOR A LEGAL MINIMUM WAGE 69 
 
 demolished, are referred to Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb's 
 Industrial Democracy. But the professors still protest. 
 They were against the Factory Acts ; against the pre- 
 vention of capitalist exploitation of children of tender 
 years; against the fencing of dangerous machinery; 
 against trade combinations of the working people; in a 
 word, against the whole trend of modem industrial and 
 social legislation. Against the enactment of a minimum 
 wage law they reason as they taught the individuaUstic 
 opponents of the Ten Hours Bill to reason sixty years 
 ago. They urge that the cost of production would be 
 increased in the industries where the minimum wage was 
 enforced, and that therefore they would inevitably shrink 
 or collapse owing to the falling off in the demand for their 
 products which would result from the rise in price caused 
 by the increased cost of production. This would tend to 
 swell the ranks of the unemployed, and the last stage of 
 the sweated worker would be worse than the first. This 
 argument is based upon the assumption that the industries 
 referred to can only exist by the employment of sweated 
 labour. The practical opposition to the abolition by 
 legislation of insanitary, unsafe, and unhealthy factories 
 and workshops, and to the State prevention of excessive 
 overworking of women and children, was based upon similar 
 assumptions. " The cotton industry wiU be ruined," said 
 the Lancashire millowner in effect, backed up by the 
 economic professors, "if it is compelled to bear the ex- 
 pense of making decent the places in which the manufac- 
 ture is carried on." Speaking in the House of Commons 
 in 1855 against a BiU for the compulsory fencing of ma- 
 chinery, John Bright said that if the Bill passed he would 
 advise his partners to shut up their mills because the 
 legislature would not allow them to employ their hands 
 at a profit.* Needless to say, there was still a handsome 
 dividend to be drawn from the cotton industry after the 
 cost of fencing machinery had been met ; and the Lanca- 
 shire mills are still open, thereby showing scant respect 
 for college-made economics. We know now that the effect 
 
 * Simpson, Many Memories of Many People, pp. 263-264 ; quoted 
 by Prof. Dicey in Law and Opinion in England. 
 
70 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 of stopping competition in wages at the expense of the 
 vitahty of the workers is, to quote from Industrial Demo- 
 cracy, to concentrate it upon efficiency. A minimum wage 
 would continue and intensify that salutary concentration. 
 Doubtless a number of the weakest and least efficient 
 workers would then be excluded from employment where 
 formerly they had been able to keep themselves partially 
 aUve by their sweated and inefficient labour, inefficient 
 because underpaid. This result, instead of being deplored, 
 should be welcomed. It would draw attention to the 
 urgent need for the State to take in hand the problem 
 of the unemployable — a problem which arises mainly 
 through the absence of a national minimum wage. Even 
 if some occupations were unable to bear the cost of a 
 minimum wage, it would obviously be a national benefit 
 for them to disappear rather than to continue by living 
 upon the life capital of the nation. 
 
 Wages Law in New Zealand. — Before going further 
 into detail with regard to the proposed law it will be well 
 at this stage to consider an important practical objection, 
 namely, that although it might be possible to draft on 
 paper a satisfactory Minimum Wage Bill, and even get 
 it passed, the Act would break down in practice owing to 
 the immense difficulties which would arise in its adminis- 
 tration. It is urged that the work of calculating and 
 fixing the minimum wage rate and of inspection for the 
 prevention of evasion would be so vast and minute that 
 the wit of man could not devise machinery capable of 
 coping with it. When, however, we turn to Australasia, 
 we find laws in operation there demanding a system of 
 administrative organisation more complex than would 
 be required in connection with a minimum wage law founded 
 on the cost of Uving. The New Zealand Arbitration Acts, 
 the effect of which has been the institution of legal 
 minimum rates of wages on the basis of what each trade 
 arbitrated upon will bear, entail upon the members and 
 officials of the Conciliation Boards and the Court of Arbi- 
 tration a vast amount of labour in settling multitudinous 
 points of greatdifficulty which would not arise here under 
 
THE CASE FOR A LEGAL MINIMUM WAGE 71 
 
 a minimum wage law. Some idea of what those labours 
 have been may be formed from the following quotation 
 from State Experiments in Australia and New Zealand, by 
 the Hon. William Pember Reeves : 
 
 " The trades that have come under the awards of the 
 tribunals have been those of the bootmakers, seamen, 
 goldminers, coalminers, printers, tailors, millers, carpenters, 
 plumbers, painters, moulders, drivers, saddlers, tailoresses, 
 dressmakers, sawmillers, engineers, ironworkers, furniture- 
 makers, bakers, confectioners, butchers, grocers' assistants, 
 and others of less importance. The questions arbitrated 
 upon have aheady included most of the hard nuts which 
 students of labour conflicts know so well. Among them 
 are hours of labour, holidays, the amount of day wages, 
 the price to be paid for piece-work, the proportion of 
 apprentices, the facilities fo be allowed to trade union 
 officials for interviews with their men, the right of em- 
 ployers to engage non-unionists, or to discharge or refuse 
 to engage unionists, the conduct of unionists in refusing 
 to work side by side with ' free labourers,' and pressure 
 exerted by employers to induce them to join a private 
 benefit society." 
 
 Yet, in spite of the hardness of the nuts mentioned by 
 Mr. Reeves, they have been successfully cracked without 
 any serious strain upon the machinery provided for the 
 purpose, or any strong or widely spread dissatisfaction 
 arising with the methods adopted. 
 
 State Action in Victoria.— Again, the Shops and Fac- 
 tories Act of the State of Victoria, Australia, which so far 
 is the boldest experiment entered upon for the stamping 
 out of sweating and industrial parasitism, necessitates 
 an elaborate system of inquiry and inspection in each trade 
 brought under the Act. The measure, besides being one 
 for the regulation of factories and shops on the ordinary 
 lines, also contains clauses which make it an actual mini- 
 mum wage law, and accordingly deserves special attention. 
 
 The Act as passed in 1896 provided for the appointment 
 of special boards to fix wages and piecework rates for 
 persons employed either inside or outside factories in 
 
72 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 making clothing or wearing apparel or furniture, or in 
 breadmaking or baking, or in the business of a butcher or 
 seller of meat. Special boards might be appointed for 
 any process, trade, or business usually or frequently carried 
 on in a factory or workroom, provided a resolution had 
 been passed by either House of Parliament declaring it 
 to be expedient to appoint such a board. The special 
 boards were to consist of not less than four or more than 
 ten members and a chairman, and to hold office for two 
 years. Half the members (elected as prescribed) were to 
 be representatives of employers and half of employees. 
 If the employers' or employees' representatives were not 
 elected the Governor in Council was given the power to 
 appoint representatives. He was also empowered to fill 
 all vacancies. The members of a board might elect a 
 chairman (not being one of such members) ; if they did 
 not elect a chairman the Governor in Council might appoint 
 one. The members of these boards were to be paid los. 
 per full day, 5s. per half day, the chairman £1 per day with 
 travelling allowances. A board might fix either time 
 rates or piecework rates, or both ; must also fix the hours 
 for which the rate of wages was determined, and the pay- 
 ment for overtime, and in fixing wages might take into 
 consideration the nature, kind, and class of work, and the 
 mode and manner in which the work was to be done, the 
 age and sex of the workers, and any matter which might be 
 prescribed by regulation. A board could settle the pro- 
 portion of apprentices or improvers to be employed in 
 any process, trade, or business, and the wage to be paid 
 to them ; and in fixing such wage might consider age, 
 sex, and experience. The determination of a special 
 board was to apply to every city and town and might 
 be extended by the Governor in Council to any borough or 
 shire or part of a shire. A board could determine that 
 manufacturers might be allowed to fix piecework rates 
 based on the minimum wage. That is to say, the board, 
 after fixing time wages itself, might leave it to employers 
 to pay a fair equivalent to their pieceworkers. The Chief 
 Inspector might, however, challenge any rate so paid, 
 and the employer might have to justify it before the board. 
 
THE CASE FOR A LEGAL MINIMUM WAGE 73 
 
 The Success of the Victorian Act— The boards set 
 up for the baking, clothing, bootmaking, shirtmaking, and 
 underclothing trades, in spite of intricate complications, 
 found it possible to arrive at determinations which have 
 given general satisfaction. The furniture trade board had 
 the most onerous task, as certain sections of the trade 
 are in the hands of the Chinese, whose idea of honouring 
 Factory Acts of this kind is to contravene them. Though 
 collusion between Chinese masters and their Chinese 
 workpeople to outwit the inspector in matters of wages 
 and hours was glaringly obvious, the cunning of the yeUow 
 man was too often superior to that of the representative of 
 the law when it became a question of securing legal proof 
 that the regulations had been broken. Yet even here 
 sweating has been checked to a very great extent, and the 
 conditions of the trade in 1901 were reported as far superior 
 to those prevailing before the establishment of the wages 
 board. 
 
 It is important to note that the alleged tendency of a 
 minimum wage to become the maximum has not shown 
 itself. In May, 1902, the Chief Inspector asserted that 
 whereas in the clothing trade, in 1901, the minimum wage 
 for adult males was 45s. per week, the average paid was 
 53s. 6d. For adult females the minimum was 20s., the 
 average 22s. 3d. He instanced similar differences in the 
 boot, furniture, and shirtmaking trades. 
 
 Owing to the favourable results of the working of these 
 six boards, twenty-six other trades have been brought 
 under the operation of the Act — amongst others, the 
 aerated water trade, artificial manure making, bedstead 
 making, brassworking, brewing, brickmaking, coopering, 
 dressmaking, jam-making, ironmoulders, pastrycooks, 
 plate-glass making, stonecutting, tinsmithing, wood 
 workiag, etc. etc. 
 
 By the end of 1904 determinations had been made by 
 the above 32 boards, except in the case of the tinsmiths, 
 where the fixing of piecework rates caused delay. In all 
 cases rises in wages had been made, and in nearly every 
 instance the staff of inspectors reported that the decisions 
 of the boards had been acted upon without any serious 
 
74 SOCIALISMTAND^NAnONAl- miJNiiviuivi 
 
 friction taking place. In two industries only does it 
 appear that trouble arises. One is the furniture trade, 
 which suffers from the blight of yellow labour. According 
 to the Chief Inspector's report of December, 1904, a case 
 of evasion by a white firm engaged in the furniture trade 
 was discovered, and the employer was compelled to hand 
 over to his underpaid workmen the sum of £40 each. It 
 should be mentioned in passing that a weakness of the 
 Act is that no provision appears to be made for punishing 
 the men as well as the employers in a case of collusion. 
 The other of the two troubled trades is that of dressmaking. 
 Here dissatisfaction has been caused by the low minimum 
 wage fixed by the board, which, following the example 
 of all the other boards, based its award upon the principle 
 of giving what the trade would bear. 
 
 In 1903 a court was created in order that appeals against 
 the determinations of the wages boards might be heard. 
 By December, 1904, only one case had come before the 
 court — an appeal by the employers in the artificial manure 
 industry against a decision fixing a minimum wage of 
 40s. 6d. The employers were successful, the award being 
 reduced to 36s. This dearth of employment for the Appeal 
 Court may fairly be taken as further evidence that the 
 Act is working smoothly. 
 
 The Victorian Act, 1896, was intended as an experiment 
 to be tried for three years only. In 1899 it was amended 
 slightly and extended for two years plus a session of Parlia- 
 ment. In 1902, when a sudden dissolution of the Victorian 
 Parliament endangered it, an Act was got through again 
 extending its life, this time until 1905. The Chief In- 
 spector of Factories, in December, 1904, reported strongly 
 in favour of the Act being made a permanent one. Last 
 year (1905) the Act was again renewed.* 
 
 It has been urged that the successful working of the 
 Australasian laws affecting wages and dealing with com- 
 plicated and minute details, throws no light upon the 
 question as to whether similar laws would be practicable 
 in England, because the population of Australasia is less 
 
 * For further details of Australasian labour laws, see Fabian 
 Tract No. 83. 
 
THE CASE FOR A LEGAL MINIMUM WAGE 75 
 
 than one-tenth that of the United Kingdom. This objec- 
 tion is easily disposed of. Melbourne, Manchester, and 
 Birmingham have practically the same population : five 
 hundred thousand each. The notion that the experience 
 of Melbourne is useless as a guide to Manchester is flatly 
 contrary to common sense. The two cities resemble each 
 other far more closely than Shrewsbury resembles Sheffield. 
 
 The Proper Basis of a Minimum Wage Law.— 
 
 So far we have been discussing the objections to State 
 interference with wages, and to the fixing of any kind of 
 minimum wage by Act of ParUament. We now have to 
 consider the form such an Act would take in this country. 
 
 The Act should aim at the fixing and enforcement of a 
 wage sufficient to enable our workers to be maintained 
 in healthy existence. Therefore the wages should be 
 calculated on what the worker requires for physical health 
 and efficiency, and not on what the trade will bear. The 
 latter method, obviously resulting in the fixing of different 
 minimmn rates for each trade, would come under the 
 head of wage regulation, whicli, in the interests of in- 
 dustrial peace, may be extremely desirable, but is some- 
 thing quite apart from the establishment and enforcement 
 of a national minimum wage in the interests of physical 
 and industrial efficiency. The minimum wage would not 
 replace " standard " or " trade imion " rates where these 
 were the higher amount. 
 
 In the second place the law must be national : that is, 
 must apply to the whole country in order that no district 
 shall undersell another in the labour market at the cost 
 of national vitality. Thirdly, since the last condition 
 cannot be fulfilled by equal money wages all over the 
 country, the Act must be drafted on the assumption that 
 it is possible to determine a national minimum of real 
 wages : that is to say, such a wage as, worked out in its 
 cash equivalent, will equahse all local variations in cost 
 of Uving. 
 
 Relative Wages of Men and Women.— The necessity 
 for fixing a lower wage for women than for men raises one 
 
76 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 of the greatest difficulties in the way of an equitable 
 solution of the problem ; and it may be said at once that 
 it is a difificulty which cannot be fairly adjusted without 
 bringing the Poor Law to the aid of the Minimum Wage. 
 
 The reason for paying men more highly than women is 
 that under our marriage institutions the man is the woman's 
 paymaster for her domestic work. This domestic work, 
 including childbearing and the rearing of children, is 
 onerous, dangerous, and absolutely indispensable to society. 
 But the woman is not directly paid for it : she is given, 
 instead, a legal claim on her husband's means, name, 
 and status. Therefore it is admitted that the man, 
 having to support another adult and their children, must 
 receive a wage sufficient to maintain these several persons, 
 whilst the woman is regarded industrially as a single 
 woman, needing only enough to support herself. 
 
 The objections to such an arrangement are obvious. 
 Some men are not married, and are therefore receiving 
 family wages for single life. What is far worse, some 
 women are widows with children ; and these women are 
 receiving the wages of a single adult, and starving a family 
 on it. 
 
 To novices in political science it may seem simple to 
 establish two wages, one to be paid to married and the 
 other to single workers. But in competitive commerce 
 such solutions are Utopian. If married men cost more 
 in the labour market than single ones, employers would 
 never employ a married man where a single one was avail- 
 able ; and the married men would thus tend to be driven 
 out of the market by the single ones. The same would be 
 true of women. Further, if women and men were paid at 
 the same rates, men would always be employed in prefer- 
 ence to women wherever possible, because, fairly or un- 
 fairly, male labour is considered industrially superior to 
 female. The demand for " equal wages for men and 
 women " is perfectly well known to trade unionists as a 
 device for keeping women out of men's trades. Any 
 attempt to maintain two prices in the labour market for 
 the same article, or to maintain the same price for two 
 different qualities of the same article, must fail, because 
 
THE CASE FOR A LEGAL MINIMUM WAGE 77 
 
 nobody will buy at the higher price when he can get what 
 he wants at the lower, and nobody will take second quality 
 when he can get first quality for the same money. There- 
 fore, whilst the present competitive system of employ- 
 ment by competing private enterprises prevails, the in- 
 dustrial minimum wage must conform to three conditions : 
 (a) It must be lower for women than for men ; (6) all 
 men must have the same minimum wage, and all women 
 the same minimum wage ; (c) the man's wage must be 
 enough to support a family, and the woman's to support 
 a single independent adult. 
 
 This leaves the problems of the bachelor and the widow 
 with children imsolved, just as they are left unsolved by 
 our present system. 
 
 The case of the bachelor may be disregarded for two 
 reasons : (a) if the minimum wage secures enough to the 
 married man, it is no evil, but only a negligible inequity, 
 to let the bachelor have a little more than enough ; (b) the 
 practice of working men at present shows that, as a matter 
 of fact, they do not find that they can provide themselves 
 with domestic service and companionship more cheaply 
 as bachelors than by marriage. 
 
 The case of the widow cannot be set aside in this way. 
 Nothing can be more deplorable than the position of a 
 woman who, in addition to industrial work, hcis to be both 
 father and mother to a family, and yet can get only the 
 wages of an underpaid single person. It is impossible 
 for her to maintain her health and self-respect under 
 such circumstances. When her children grow up they are 
 more hkely to join " the residuum," and become a heavy 
 charge on the community, than to add to its resources. 
 She must be rescued from this miserable and mischievous 
 condition. But a minimum wage law alone cannot rescue 
 her, though it alone can make her rescue possible. The 
 only way of meeting her case is to give her, as a matter 
 of right, sufficient assistance from public funds to enable 
 her, with the aid of free pubUc schools, and free meals in 
 them, to make up her income to the standard for heads of 
 families. There is no element of charity in this. The 
 death of her husband has cut off the payment made 
 
78 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 through her husband for her services to society in bearing 
 and rearing children; and the continuation of this pay- 
 ment through another channel is no more than her due. 
 
 One of the weightiest arguments in favour of a minimum 
 wage law is that it would make such an arrangement 
 workable for the first time. Without such a law, the 
 widow's allowance would be used, as soldiers' pensions 
 now are, to cheapen her labour and drag down the wages 
 of her competitors to the level of what starving widows 
 could be driven to accept in addition to their allowances. 
 This is what happened in the case of the old parish allow- 
 ances which were so ruthlessly cut off under the Poor Law 
 of 1834. Wages went down ; outdoor relief went up ; 
 and employers got labour at the expense of the rates, with 
 results that were morally and industrially ruinous. But 
 the merciless and inconsiderate cutting off the allowances 
 altogether without making other provision for the widow 
 was not a remedy : it was a catastrophe to which we are 
 indebted for our present problem of the unemployable 
 and our physical deterioration scare. The cruelties of 
 the new Poor Law have, in their own way, been as great 
 a failure as the indulgences of the old one. They stand 
 to-day condemned as perhaps the most disastrous of the 
 many practical blunders produced by the application of 
 individuaUst economics to social problems. Had the 
 reformers of that day looked at the situation from a social 
 point of view, they would have placed the workers behind 
 the bulwark of a legal minimum wage instead of abandon- 
 ing them to the horrors of unrestrained competition in 
 a market where sordid selfishness was dehberately wor- 
 shipped as a divine ordinance for ensuring the spontaneous 
 welfare of the human race. 
 
 PubUc provision for widows with famiUes will raise no 
 difficulty whatever when it has a minimum wage for women 
 as its fulcrum. Instead of a rate in aid of wages, it will 
 become a form of State endowment of motherhood and 
 orphanage. As such it might weU have terrified the 
 politicians of seventy years ago, who were in the first panic 
 of an unprecedented increase of population. But to-day 
 we are in the first panic of a most alarming diminution of 
 
THE CASE FOR A LEGAL MINIMUM WAGE 79 
 
 our birthrate ; and anything that promises to relieve the 
 family anxieties which have so powerfully spread the 
 artificial restriction of the population since 1880 is on that 
 account alone highly desirable. 
 
 It only remains to note that the funds for such allow- 
 ances should not come from local rates or be cormected 
 with any stigma of " pauperism." The burden — or rather 
 the investment, for it would pay us enormously in national 
 health — is essentially a national and not a local one ; 
 and its fittest source is taxation of rent, interest, and in- 
 dustrial profits. 
 
 The Unemployable. — A minimum wage law cannot help 
 the unemployable. On the contrary, we must frankly 
 face the fact that it will increase their numbers at first. 
 For in competitive commerce unemployable is not an 
 absolute but a relative term. A man who is employable 
 at twelve shillings a week may be unemployable at twenty- 
 four. A woman who is employable at four shillings a 
 week may be unemployable at twelve. On the other hand, 
 a man who is actually employed at eighteen shillings may 
 be quite employable at twenty-four, and a woman actually 
 employed at twelve quite employable at eighteen. That 
 is, if their employer had either to raise their wages or refuse 
 to employ them at aU, he would raise their wages and be 
 content with less profit. Consequently it must not be 
 assumed that all the workers who are now receiving less 
 than the legal minimum would be thrown out of employ- 
 ment. But some of them would. Our social anarchy has 
 created not only an absolutely unemployable class, but 
 a class just above them which is commercially only just 
 worth employing at starvation wages in busy times. If 
 the employers had to pay these a standard subsistence 
 wage, however modest, they would discharge them at 
 once and add them to the ranks of the absolutely unem- 
 ployable. What is more, there are whole industries de- 
 pendent on sordidly cheapened labour which would be 
 wiped out by the minimum wage. And there would be 
 indignant letters to the press from benevolent persons 
 shocked by individual cases of poor men and women de- 
 
So SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 prived of their little wage and flung into destitution, with 
 much furious clamour from the sweated trades and their 
 landlords and shareholders. But the destruction of the 
 trades which subsist only by sweating is one of the bene- 
 ficent results which the minimum wage is expressly devised 
 to accomplish. And it is far cheaper for the nation to 
 deal with the unemployable as destitute persons by wisely 
 adapted poor law methods than to allow them to drag down 
 decent workers to their level by the competition in the 
 labour market. Besides, it must be remembered that 
 whereas under the present system there is a constant 
 supply of imemployables produced by abject poverty and 
 the physical and moral deterioration it creates, a minimum 
 wage would aboUsh this poverty and so cut off the supply. 
 We should have only one generation of ordinary unem- 
 ployables to deal with. When they died out, we should 
 only have the casual imbeciles and criminals ; and even 
 these would be enormously reduced in number, as they 
 too are largely poverty products. 
 
 There is another most important deduction to be made 
 from the total of temporary destitution to be apprehended 
 from the first effects of a Minimum Wage Law. It is quite 
 a mistake to suppose that all the direct recipients of starva- 
 tion wages are starved. A large number of them are 
 weU-fed and even blooming lasses who are really supported 
 at home by their parents, but are willing to work in a 
 factory for the sake of five or six shillings a week pocket- 
 money and the comparative gaiety of factory Ufe. The 
 father, having to support the girl in any case out of his 
 earnings, is glad to have her demands for money not only 
 stopped, but actually replaced by a contribution of a few 
 shillings to the housekeeping. It seems an excellent 
 arrangement to all immediately concerned ; but it involves 
 incalculable social mischief. Not only is the woman, 
 when she has to support herself wholly, or is perhaps left 
 a widow with several children, compelled by the com- 
 petition of the girls to starve on five or six shillings a week ; 
 but the trade at which she is working is not a genuinely 
 self-supporting one : it is parasitic on the trades in which 
 the fathers of the girls work, and produces all the in- 
 
THE CASE FOR A LEGAL MINIMUM WAGE 8t 
 
 dustrial and social evils which recent economic investiga- 
 tions have brought home to parasitic trades. If this 
 practice were defeated by a Minimmn Wage Law, the girls 
 would not be deprived of their hvelihood, but simply 
 sent back to their families with the prospect of re-entering 
 industrial life later on with a sufficient wage secured by 
 law. And the temptation to the parents to rely to some 
 extent on their children's earnings, either by resisting 
 reductions of wage less determinedly, or working less, 
 or spending more in questionable ways — a tendency which 
 sometimes ends in the reduction of the wages of a whole 
 family to the sum formerly earned by the father alone — 
 would be removed. 
 
 In short, much of the loss of employment and the 
 bankruptcy of parasitic trades which the enactment of a 
 Minimum Wage Law might involve would be blessings in 
 a very thin disguise. But as to the unemployables, 
 however lightheartedly we may look forward to a future 
 when they shall have disappeared, we must not forget 
 the first effect of the law will be to throw more of them 
 on our hands, and that they must not be left to starve. 
 As social invalids, they will have to be dealt with in some 
 of the known forms of disciplined colonies for unemploy- 
 ables ; cured, reformed, or trained as far as possible, and 
 treated with as much consideration as the nature of their 
 case permits. 
 
 In fixing the relative wages of men and women, regard 
 must be had to the fact that family hfe costs much less 
 per head than single life. If, for instance, it were calcu- 
 lated that thirty shillings a week would be a sufficent 
 minimum for a family of five persons, it would by no means 
 follow that six shillings a week would suffice for a single 
 woman. A woman with six shillings a week could live 
 decently on it only by getting received into a family ; 
 and this would reproduce the evils of parasitic trade 
 exactly as if she were a daughter. Her wage must be 
 calculated on the basis of the needs of a single adult 
 
 ' living independently without any other resources. It will 
 then be found that the difference between the man's 
 
 .! wage and the woman's will be much less than at present, 
 
82 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUm 
 
 and will probably be scarcely more than sufficient to pro- 
 tect women from having to compete with men in the 
 labour market at equal wages. 
 
 Finally, it must never be forgotten, in dealing with the 
 wages of women, that the possibility of eking out insufficient 
 wages by occasional or systematic prostitution is always 
 present, and that there are trades in which the employers 
 have as little scruple in taking this into account in the 
 wages they offer as a hotel-keeper has in taking tips into 
 account in the wages he pays a waiter. And as the hotel 
 practice has the effect of making it compulsory on a waiter 
 to accept tips if he is not prepared to starve, so women 
 may be, and sometimes are, compelled to resort to prosti- 
 tution to keep themselves alive. Their minimum wage 
 should, therefore, be sufficiently high to save them from 
 so demoralising an alternative, and even from having to 
 escape from it by contracting clearly xmdesirable marriages. 
 
 The Real Minimum Wage. — The first provision of the 
 Minimum Wage Law would be one for the ascertainment 
 of the minimum of food and clothing necessary for the 
 healthy subsistence of {a) an average family, reckoned as 
 consisting of a man, his wife, and three children ; and (b) 
 an adult woman living by herself. This could be made the 
 duty of either a Special Commission appointed for the pur- 
 pose, or of the Labour Department of the Board of Trade. 
 The researches recently conducted by the Labour Depart- 
 ment into working class budgets would form an admirable 
 basis for the prosecution of the necessary inquiries. The 
 task would not be one of extreme difficulty. Mr. B. S. 
 Rowntree, in his book on Poverty in York, goes very 
 carefully into the matter, and has drawn up tables of the 
 minimum amount of food needed for adults and children 
 for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency. He 
 bases his estimates upon the results of the scientific ex- 
 periments of Professor Atwater, of the U.S. Depart- 
 ment of Agriculture, and of Dr. Dunlop, who made a 
 series of studies upon the dietaries of prisoners in Scotland. 
 Mr. Rowntree's tables follow in some respects the dietaries 
 for paupers framed by the Local Government Board; 
 
THE CASE FOR A LEGAL MINIMUM WAGE 83 
 
 but they axe not so generous, nor would they cost as much. 
 
 His figures as to the amount of poverty which festers 
 
 .under the shadow of York Minster, have been criticised as 
 
 (exaggerated, but no one will accuse him of asking for a 
 
 I highly luxurious diet as a minimum. The question of 
 
 I clothing and indispensable household necessities would be 
 
 less easy to settle. Mr. Rowntree bases his estimate upon 
 
 inquiry among those who know what poverty means, and 
 
 he arrives at the conclusion that an adult cannot be 
 
 decently and fairly warmly clad under 6d. per week, nor 
 
 a family of five under 2S. 3d. per week. Household neces- 
 
 sfiles (including fuel) he estimates at 2S. 8d. per family per 
 
 week. 
 
 The investigations which would be made by the sug- 
 gested special Commission or by the Labour Department 
 might lead to a higher standard being fixed. It could 
 hardly be put lower. The Postmen's Federation, in 
 making elaborate calculations in connection with this 
 subject some time ago, for the purpose of convincing the 
 Postmaster-General that many of their number were unable 
 to maintain physical well-being on the wage they received, 
 naturally took a less modest basis than that adopted by 
 Mr. Rowntree. Its figures total up to 50 per cent. more. 
 
 The minimum of food, clothing, and indispensable house- 
 hold necessities having been determined, the law would 
 enact that the national minimum wage in its two categories 
 should provide for these, plus the rent of house-room 
 complying with the legal requirements of sanitation and 
 accommodation . 
 
 « The Minimum Wage in Cash. — The translation of the 
 national minimum of real wages into money wages ac- 
 cording to the local variations in prices and rents, would 
 be made a part of the duties of county councils and of 
 borough and urban district councUs with populations of 
 not less than 50,000. In London the County Council 
 should be the authority for this purpose. 
 ; There are good grounds for believing that in regard to 
 the main items of the real wage, local variations in price 
 will be found not to be very great, except, of course, in 
 
84 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 the case of rent and rates. The report of the inquiries 
 made by the Postmen's Federation, to which reference 
 has already been made, included indefinite returns as 
 to the cost of Uving from 412 towns throughout Great 
 Britain and Ireland, and these show that the prices of 
 food-stuffs do not vary to any considerable extent. The 
 report adds that although an article of daily consumption 
 may be cheaper in one part of the country, this advantage 
 is usually coimterbalanced by the higher cost of another 
 article of common use. 
 
 By way of illustration, let us take Mr. Rowntree's 
 estimate. In York, where rents are evidently low, the 
 money wage for an adult man, reckoned as the responsible 
 head of an average family, works out at 21s. 8d. per week. 
 The rent in this case is put at 4s. per week. In London, 
 house-room, satisfying legal requirements as to sanitation 
 and accommodation for an average family, could not be 
 obtained for less than 7s. 6d. per week. Certain is it that 
 it cannot be built for less. This would bring the cash 
 minimum wage for the metropohs to just about 25s., 
 which robs the London County Council's " moral mini- 
 mum " of 24s. of its austere virtue. These figures are 
 given simply as illustrations, and must not be taken as 
 representing the amount which ought to be fixed as the 
 minimum cash wage. Mr. Rowntree's budget of food, 
 clothing, and shelter would most hkely be rejected as 
 being far too meagre. 
 
 Besides the duty of fixing the cash minimum wage for 
 the district, the local bodies mentioned should be given 
 the authority to enforce it. For this purpose a staff of 
 local inspectors would be required. It would be well if 
 these inspectors, although officials working imder the 
 direction of the local authority, were appointed and dis- 
 missed only with the sanction of the Labour Department, 
 which should also be empowered to settle the qualifica- 
 tions required for the positions. A certain proportion of 
 the salaries of the inspectors should be paid out of 
 the Imperial Exchequer, as a return for the powers ex- 
 ercised by the Labour Department in connection with 
 these o£ficials. 
 
THE CASE FOR A LEGAL MINIMUM WAGE 85 
 
 Trade Boards. — A necessary part of the administrative 
 machinery would be trade boards in each acting local 
 authority's area for each trade or group of trades. The 
 constitution of these boards would be on the Unes of the 
 Special Wages Boards of Victoria — say two or three 
 representatives of the employers and an equal number 
 of the employees, with a chairman. As the workers in 
 trades within the scope of the Minimum Wage Law would 
 in the main be without enough organisation to elect 
 representatives, it should be the duty of the local authority 
 to nominate them. In default of suitable persons inside 
 a trade persons of ability and impartiality should be chosen 
 from outside. The chief function of these boards would 
 be to translate the weekly minimum wage into piecework 
 rates : that is to say, to determine the number of articles 
 to be made or the quantity of work to be done in an hour. 
 This task implicitly involves the fixing of the length of 
 the normal working week. There would be little dif&culty 
 in the case of factories and workshops where the number 
 of hours is already fixed at 56 per week, but in domestic 
 workshops it is impossible to regulate hours of labour. 
 Domestic workshops must be placed on an equahty with 
 factories and workshops, unless we wish to put a pre- 
 mium on sweating ; and the only way to do this is to 
 enact that the boards shall convert the legal weekly 
 wage into piece rates on the basis that for all classes 
 of factories and workshops 56 hours constitute a normal 
 week. Whatever the minimum wage may be, one-fifty- 
 sixth of it wiU be an hour's pay, and what the boards will 
 have to do is to fix the number of articles to be made in an 
 hour. 
 
 We might very well go a Uttle further in imitation of 
 Victorian precedents by making the rates for home work 
 higher than those paid for work done in the employer's 
 workrooms, and thus compensate the home worker for 
 the cost of rent, light, etc. Incidentally this would help 
 to drive work out of the home into the workshop. In 
 addition, the boards would deal with the proportion of 
 children and young persons that might be employed, 
 and the minimum wages to be paid to them, and with 
 
86 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 any other question relating to hours of labour and to 
 wages arising through the operations of the Act and not 
 already covered implicitly or explicitly by other industrial 
 legislation. 
 
 These determinations — ^to use the term adopted in 
 Victoria — of the trade boards would be sent to the Labour 
 Department for ratification. Before ratification they 
 would be checked by the Department for the purpose 
 of amending any too great local variations in working 
 hours, piecework rates or other details, and to ensure 
 the greatest possible uniformity in the minimum conditions 
 of any widely distributed trade. The Labour Department 
 should also be empowered, in conjunction with the local 
 authority, to assist in drawing up a determination when a 
 trade board found it impossible to arrive at an agreement. 
 When ratified by the Labour Department the determina- 
 tions should have the force of law, and any employer not 
 complying with their provisions should be hable to a heavy 
 fine or imprisonment. Where collusion between em- 
 ployer and employed was discovered both parties should 
 be punished proportionately. Inspectors would have the 
 power to inspect the wages books of employers, and to 
 institute proceedings under direction of the local authorities 
 for any breaches, or suspected breaches, of the Act. Home- 
 work employers must now keep registers of the names and 
 addresses of persons so employed, and would further be 
 compelled to take receipts for wages, showing the work 
 done and the rate paid. The difficulties of enforcing a 
 minimum wage for home work are certainly formidable; 
 but they appear to have been smmounted in Australasia. 
 With the occupation of those engaged as shop assistants, 
 waiters, waitresses, and the like, or as domestic servants, 
 the complications of a wage paid partly in cash and partly 
 in food and sleeping accommodation, and sometimes cloth- 
 ing, will be troublesome. But here, as in many other 
 spheres of employment, much of the apparent difficulty in 
 fixing a minimum wage arises from the present lack of 
 systematisation. By means of the trade boards it should 
 be possible to evolve improved conditions for labour even 
 out of the chaos of sweating in cheap retail drapery, or 
 
THE CASE FOR A LEGAL MINIMUM WAGE 87 
 
 the overworked life of the general slave to suburban 
 snobbery or boarding-house brutality. 
 
 The Minimum Wage Law in Operation.— It will 
 have been noticed that the proposed law is not intended to 
 be of immediate universal application. The Act would 
 have to be applied gradually but systematically. The pro- 
 cedure would be as follows : Directly the minimum of 
 real wages had been fixed by the Special Commission, or 
 the Labour Department, the county council, borough 
 council, or urban district council, as the case might be, 
 would transform this wage into a local cash equivalent. 
 It would then appoint its inspectors, who would inquire 
 into the conditions of the local industries. This inquiry 
 would not take up much time, as sweated industries are 
 always well known. Taking the trades with the worst 
 conditions first, the local authority, acting on the informa- 
 tion and advice of its inspectors, would appoint trade 
 boards in these occupations. This might be caUed sche- 
 duhng a trade under the Minimum Wage Act. Directly the 
 boards were appointed, the local authority would inform 
 the Labour Department of the fact. The Labour Depart- 
 ment would send the information to all other local au- 
 thorities, instructing them at the same time to take im- 
 mediate steps for the formation of trade boards in these 
 scheduled trades, if any existed in their districts. This 
 would systematise and hasten the work of arriving at 
 determinations applying to the whole country. Directly 
 such a determination had been made, public notification 
 would be given of the date when it would come into opera- 
 tion. It would be necessary to arrive at determinations 
 for the whole area of an industry before action was taken 
 for enforcement, otherwise those portions of the country 
 in which local authorities neglected or delayed their work 
 might for a time undersell districts in which local authorities 
 were active and conscientious. In cases of undue delay 
 or culpable negligence on the part of any local authorities, 
 the Labour Department should have the power to apply 
 to their areas the determinations already made by other 
 local authorities. 
 
88 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 Proceeding in this way every trade could be brought 
 under the operations of the Act. In practice there might 
 be no necessity for the institution of trade boards in some 
 industries owing to the prevalence of satisfactory con- 
 ditions ; and these industries might not therefore be 
 scheduled. StiU, in connection with nearly every trade 
 or group of trades there is a fringe of so-cayed unskilled 
 labour which is not receiving sufficient for the maintenance 
 of healthy existence. Hence it is likely that few occupa- 
 tions would remain outside the scope of the Act were it 
 efficiently administered. 
 
 Probable Effects of the Law.— As there will be local 
 variations in the minimum cash wage owing chiefly to 
 variations in rent, there will be an increasing tendency for 
 industries — so far as greater cost in wages is not compen- 
 sated by market advantage, or proximity to sources of 
 raw material — to move from the high-rent to the low-rent 
 districts, that is to say, from the large and crowded manu- 
 facturing cities to the small town or to the cotmtry. 
 Migration of this kind, which is already going on, is to be 
 welcomed for obvious reasons. Home work, under a 
 strict administration of our Minimum Wage Law, would 
 tend to become more expensive than that carried on in 
 the factory, and this handicapping of domestic industry 
 would be a great social advantage. The institution, of the 
 trade boards would bring to the weakest sections of the 
 workers a sense of the power of organisation and combina- 
 tion which, it is not too much to predict, would induce 
 them to use the minimum wage as a stepping-stone to 
 further improvements in industrial conditions. That 
 there would be at first a great deal of friction aroused by 
 the minute inspection, especially of wages books, required 
 by the law, is highly probable. But it must be remembered 
 that to-day many public bodies, in order to investigate 
 charges of breach of contract in matters of wage payments, 
 insist upon the right to examine the books of firms who 
 carry out public work. The higher the standing of the 
 firm the less trouble there is in exercising this right. It 
 is certain that in England, as in Australia, when the first 
 
THE CASE fOR A LEGAL MINIMUM WAGE 89 
 
 horror of the shock caused by State interference with 
 the cash nexus is over, the better employers will heartily 
 welcome the means of ridding themselves of the com- 
 petition of those who employ parasitic labour. 
 
 As to the effect of the law upon our foreign trade, Mr. 
 and Mrs. Sidney Webb have shown that the abolition 
 oi paxasitic labour would not necessarily lead to a reduc- 
 tion in the volume of our export trade ; and, moreover, 
 that a sweated trade will not be Ufted from its degraded 
 position by a protective tariff on the products of a foreign, 
 competing trade. But with the institution of a national 
 minimum wage a new question arises, which is not alto- 
 gether one of abstract economics. Under a Minimum 
 Wage Law the manufacture of goods in England under 
 sweated or parasitic conditions becomes unlawful, and by 
 inference the sale of such goods ought to be made a breach 
 of the law in the same sense as selling illicit whiskey. 
 Therefore, it follows from a Minimum Wage Law that the 
 importation of goods made under sweated conditions 
 abroad must be prohibited. The difficulty of deciding 
 what is the foreign equivalent of sweating, and the im- 
 possibiHty in many cases of tracing the foreign goods 
 through aU the processes of their manufacture, are ob- 
 stacles to the complete enforcement of such regulations ; 
 but this is not a sufficient reason for abandoning the at- 
 tempt. 
 
 The National Dividend Increased. — What is the 
 number of persons who would immediately feel the effects 
 of the enactment of a legal minimum wage ? If we take 
 Mr. Rowntree's figures with regard to the primary poverty 
 in York as fairly representative of the whole kingdom, we 
 should have about five millions of people who are members 
 of families that have incomes insufficient to maintain 
 merely physical efficiency. This is the class that breeds 
 the weak, the unfit, in a word the residuum. Many of its 
 members, it is true, would not be capable of earning even 
 the low minimum suggested by Mr. Rowntree. These 
 would become the imemployable. To the others, the 
 largest proportion, an increased wage would give the 
 
90 SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM 
 
 increased mental and physical vitality which are a nation's 
 real capital. The manufacture of human wreckage by 
 the process of semi-starvation would be in greater part 
 checked and controlled. Indirectly the classes above 
 this lowest would benefit. There would be a gradual 
 growth in the national dividend, arising from the greater 
 power of production due to the increase of physical efficiency 
 and the share of each grade and each trade in the dividend 
 would be increased accordingly. A Minimum Wage Law 
 cannot cure the evils which arise from the foolish spending 
 of incomes small or great, but it would act as a palliative 
 of those evils which arise from the existence of incomes 
 that are sufficient for the barest necessaries of life. 
 
 Since the above was written the Select Committee on 
 Home Work, first appointed in 1907, to which the 
 Sweated Industries Bill was committed, has issued its 
 Report. The following is the summary of its conclusions :— 
 
 1. That there should be legislation with regard to the 
 rates of payment made to home workers who are employed 
 in the production or preparation of articles for sale by 
 other persons. 
 
 2. That such legislation should at first be tentative and 
 experimental, and be Umited in its scope to home workers 
 engaged in the tailoring, shirtmaking, underclothing, and 
 baby linen trades, and in the finishing processes of machine- 
 made lace. The Home Secretary should be empowered, 
 after inquiry made, to estabhsh Wages Boards for any 
 other trades. 
 
 3. That wages Boards should be estabUshed in selected 
 trades to fix minimum time and piece rates of pa5raient 
 for home workers in those trades. 
 
 4. That it should be an offence to pay or offer lower 
 rates of payment to home workers in those trades than 
 the minimum rates which had been fixed for that district 
 by the Wages Board. 
 
 5. That the delivery and collection of work done at 
 home should be done by persons in the direct employ and 
 pay of the employer. Where that has not been done, the 
 amount which a worker could earn in a specified time 
 
THE CASE FOR A -LEGAL MINIMUM WAGE 91 
 
 should be calculated on a basis which included the time 
 spent in fetching and returning the work as time occupied 
 in doing the work. 
 
 6. That all home workers who are employed by other 
 persons in producing or preparing articles for sale should 
 be required to register their name, address, and class of 
 work at, and receive a certificate of such registration from, 
 the offices of the local authority, and that the keeping of 
 accurate outworkers' Usts by employers should be strictly 
 enforced. 
 
 7. That it should be an offence for any person to employ 
 any home worker to produce or prepare any articles for 
 sale by another person unless the worker produce a cer- 
 tificate of registration. 
 
 8. That the provisions of Section 9 of the Public Health 
 Act, 1875, with regard to factories and workshops which are 
 not kept clean or are ill- ventilated or overcrowded should 
 be extended to rooms in which home work is done, and 
 power should be given to sanitary and factory inspectors 
 to inspect them and secure the enforcement of the law. 
 
 9. That the full protection of the Truck Act should be 
 secured to home workers. 
 
 These conclusions, and the arguments on which they are 
 based, are, on the whole, in agreement with the opinions 
 and proposals in these pages. There is, however, one im- 
 portant omission. The Committee do not state what 
 should be the basis of the minimum wage. To fix it ac- 
 cording to " what the trade will bear " would not cure the 
 evils of sweating. As akeady stated, the minimum wage 
 must be calculated on what the worker requires for physical 
 health and efficiency. 
 
 WILLIAM BRBNDON AND SON, LTD. 
 PRINTERS. PLYMOUTH 
 
Just Published 
 
 1^6 pages. Crcwn %vo. Chth gilt. is. 6d, nett. 
 
 The 
 
 Public Health Agitation 
 
 1833-48 
 
 By B. L. Hutchins 
 
 Joint Author of " A History of Factory Legislation " and 
 " Socialism and National Minimum." 
 
 Contents : — Edwin Chadwick and the Factory Commission of 
 1833 — Edwin Chadwick and the Poor Law Commission of 1834 — 
 Edwin Chadwick and the Agitation for Sanitary Reform and Board 
 of Health of 1848 — Dr. Thomas Southwood Smith — Simon — 
 Rumsey — Lord Shaftesbury — Charles Kingsley — Florence Night- 
 ingale — Conclusion and Appendices of Mortality Tables 
 1 840-1 900, 
 
 " An interesting period of nineteenth century history is dealt 
 with in this volume, from an unusual standpoint — the book will 
 appeal to a large and growing public, describing as it does the first 
 awakening of the public conscience to the common responsibility 
 for social evils." — Yorkshire Observer. 
 
 " The period dealt with in this book is of the highest importance 
 in the social history of the nineteenth century. . . . The influence 
 of Chadwick on the social progress of his time can scarcely be 
 over-estimated, and the author has done well to devote a large 
 portion of the book to sketching his career. — Aberdeen Free Press, 
 
 "A readable and useful book. . . . To no men more than to 
 two of those commemorated in The Public Health Agitation, Chad- 
 wick, and Sir John Simon, is due the present fabric of Public 
 Health Acts in this and other civilized countries." — Athenaum. 
 
 "Miss Hutchins has set out in attractive form the main facts 
 about the origins of humane sanitary legislation in England. ... It 
 is especially interesting to study with the Report of the second 
 Poor Law Commission in our hands." — Nation, 
 
 London : A. C. Fifield, 44 Fleet Street, E.G. 
 
Just Published 
 
 The Minority Report of the 
 Poor Law Commission 
 
 Edited, with Introductions, by Sidney 
 and Beatrice Webb 
 
 Vol. I. — The Break-up of the Poor Law 
 
 Chtk extra, ^It, 600 pages. Demy Svo, ys. 6d. nett 
 
 Vol. II. — The Public Organisation of the 
 Labour Market 
 
 Cloth extra, gilt, ^^6 pages, Demy %vo, 5/. nett 
 
 These two books are undoubtedly the most important con- 
 tributions to the solution of modern problems of unemployment 
 and poverty that have been made in the present generation. 
 They form the basis of a new and hopeful stage of political 
 reconstruction, and no student of social economics should fail 
 at once to procure them. 
 
 Contents of Vol. I. Introduction — The General Mixed 
 Workhouse of to-day — The Outdoor Relief of to-day — Birth and 
 Infancy — Children under Rural Authorities — The Curative 
 Treatment of the Sick by Rival Authorities — The Mentally 
 Defective — The Aged and Infirm — Charge and Recovery by Local 
 Authorities — Settlement and Removal — Grants in Aid — Super- 
 vision and Control by the National Government — The Scheme 
 of Reform — Summary of Conclusions and Recommendations. 
 
 Contents of Vol. II. Introduction — The Able-bodied under 
 the Poor Law — The Able-bodied and Voluntary Agencies — The 
 Able-bodied under the Unemployed Workmen Act — The Distress 
 from Unemployment as it exists to-day — Proposals for Reform — 
 ^Summary of Conclusions and Recommendations. 
 
 London : Longmans, Green & Co., Paternoster Row, E.G. 
 
New Books 
 
 Natural Monopolies, in Relation to 
 
 Social Democracy. By Charles Derwent 
 
 Smith. Cloth gilt, 1 60 pages. 2s.61i.nett. 
 
 The Public Health Agitation, 
 
 1 833-1 848. By B. L, HutchinS. Joint author 
 of " A History of Factory Legislation." (A series of lectures de- 
 lirered at the London School of Economics in 1908.) Cloth gilt, 
 1 60 pages. 2s. 6d. nett. 
 
 The Fallacy of Speed. An Essay 
 
 by Thomas F. Taylor. Grey boards, Fscap. 8vo. IS. nett. 
 
 Socialism Sc National Minimum. 
 
 By Mrs. Sidney Webb, Miss B. L. Hutchins, 
 
 and the Fabian Society. FaHan Socialist Series, No 6. 
 Wrappers 6</. nett. ^ cloth gilt top. i/. nett. Postage i</. and 2i/. 
 
 Wastage of Child Life. By Dr. 
 
 J. Johnston. Fabian Socialist Series, No. 7. Wrappers 6d. 
 nett. \ cloth gilt top. is. nett. Postage id, and zd. 
 
 " No Votes for Women." a Reply 
 
 to recent Anti-SufFrage Publications. By Lady 
 Constance Lytton. 3</. Post free, ^y. 
 
 God the Known and God the 
 
 Unknown. By Samuel Butler, Author of «'Ere. 
 
 whon." (First issued in Tie Examiner in 1879, ^"^"^ °°' '•'"'* 
 republished.) Crown 8to. is. 6d. nett. Postage ^d. 
 
 Closer Union. By Olive Schreiner. A 
 
 Letter on South African Union, with a Plea for the Natives. 
 Boards, is. nett. Postage i|^.-/. 
 
 London : A. C. Fifield, 44 Fleet Street, E.C. 
 
PUBLICATIONS OF THE FABIAN SOCIETY. 
 FABIAN BOOKS. 
 
 Fabian Essays in Socialism. Edited by Bernard Shaw. New 
 
 Preface by the Editor. 50,000 sold. Paper 6d. net, cloth 
 
 IS. 6d., postage ajd and 4d. 
 This Misery of Boots. By H. G. Wells. Fcap. 8vo. Paper 
 
 3d., post-free 4d., or 2s. 3d. per doz, post-free 2s. 7d. 
 Fabianism and the Empire. Edited by Bernard Shaw. Post- 
 
 ftee IS. ijd. 
 Ballads and Ljrrics of Socialism. By E. Nesbit. Paper 
 
 6d. net, cloth is. net, postage id. and 2d. 
 Fabian Tracts. Bound. Complete set of those in print, i vol. 
 
 Buckram 4s 6d., post-free 5s. 
 Tract Index and Catalogue Raisonne. An abstract of 
 
 Tracts, Nos. l to 139. 3d. 
 
 FABIAN TRACTS. 
 
 id. each (postage Jd.), or gd. per dozen (postage 3d.), unless stated 
 
 otherwise. 
 
 No. I. On Socialism in its Various Aspects. 
 
 51. Socialism True and False. By Sidney Webb, l.c.c. 
 
 5. Facts for Socialists, nth Edition. Revised 1908. 
 
 7. Capital and Land. 7th Edition. Revised 1908. 
 
 142. Rent and Value. Adapted from Fabian Essays "by Mrs. 
 
 Bernard Shaw. 
 
 45. The Impossibilities of Anarchism. By Bernard Shaw. 2d. 
 
 69. The Diflaculties of Individualism. By Sidney Webb 
 
 113. Communism. By William Morris. 
 
 107. Socialism for Millionaires. By Bernard Shaw. 
 
 15. English Progress towards Social Democracy. By 
 Sidney Webb. 
 
 72. The Moral Aspects of Socialism. By Sidney Ball, m.a. 
 
 139. Socialism and the Churches. By the Rev. John 
 
 Clifford, D.D. 
 
 141. The same in Welsh. 
 
 133. Socialism and Christianity. By the Rev. Percy Dearmer. 
 
 42. Christian Socialism. By the Rev. Stewart D. Headlam. 
 
 78. Socialism and the Teaching of Christ. By the Rev. 
 
 John Clifford, D.D. 
 
 87. A Welsh Translation of No. 78. 
 II. On the Application of Socialism to particular Problems, 
 
 No. Municipal and State Control of Industry. 
 
 143. Sosialaeth yng Ngoleuni'r Beibl. Can J. R. Jones. 
 128. The Case for a Legal Minimum Wage. 
 
 125. Municipalization by Provinces. 
 
No. 
 
 119. Public Control of Electric Power and Transit. 
 
 123. The Revival of Agriculture. A National Policy. 
 
 115. State Aid to Agriculture. By T. S. Dymond. 
 
 121. Public Service versus Private Expenditure. By 
 
 Sir Oliver Lodge. 
 
 84. The Economics of Direct Employment. 
 
 122. Municipal Milk and Public Health. By Lawson Dodd. 
 86. Municipal Drink Traffic. 4th Edition, 1905. 
 
 85. Liquor Licensing at Home and Abroad. 
 
 No. Sousing. 
 
 76. Houses for the People. A description of the powers of 
 
 local authorities for housing. 
 109. Cottage Plans and Common Sense. By Raymond 
 
 Unwia 
 No. Factory Acts and Conditions of Labour. 
 
 140. Child Labour under Capitalism. By Mrs. Hylton Dale., 
 
 112. Life in the Laundry. A summary of conditions and reforms.! 
 
 130. Horae-work and Sweating. By Miss B. L. Hutchins. 
 48. Bight Hours by Law. A practical solution. 
 
 23. The Case for an Eight Hours Bill. 
 
 83. state Arbitration and the Living Wage. 2nd ed.l 
 
 75. Labor in the Longest Reign. By Sidney Webb. i 
 
 No. Other Problems. 
 
 136. The Village and the Landlord. By Edward Carpenter, 
 
 131. The Decline in the Birth Rate. By Sidney Webb. 
 118. Secret of Rural Depopulation. By Col. D. C. Pedder. 
 
 98. State Railways for Ireland. 
 
 124. State Control of Trusts. By H. W. Macrosty, b.a. 
 82. The Workmen's Compensation Act, 1906. 
 
 III. On General Politics and the Policy of Fabian Society, 
 
 No. 
 
 127. Socialism and Labor Policy. 
 
 116. Fabianism and the Fiscal Question. An alternative 
 
 policy. 
 108. Twentieth Century Policy. By Sidney Webb. 
 70. Report on Fabian Policy (to Internal. Socialist Workers); 
 41. The Early History of the Fabian Society. By 
 Bernard Shaw. 
 No. IV. On Books. 
 
 182. A Guide to Books for Socialists. 
 29. What to Read. A classified list of books. 6d. net. 
 
 A complete list of Tracts and Leaflets sent on application to the Secretary, 
 
 THE FABIAN SOCIETY, 3 CLEMENT'S INN, LONDON, W.C) 
 
New Books 
 
 Robert Owen : Soci?.l Pio- 
 
 neer. By Joseph Cla^rton. U. nett. 
 
 Quarter ckth, gih tap, is. Postages, id. and 2d. 
 *' SociaJ Reformers-" No- j 
 
JAN ^ 7 
 
 The 
 
 Fabian Socialist Series 
 
 An authoritative popular library of Socialist thought, 
 hy themoit prominent members of the Fabian Society 
 
 ^6 pages, ttltractive wrappers, 6d. each tutt {postage i4.) 
 or \ cloth gilt top, is. each nett {postage zd.) 
 
 VOLUMES NOW READY. 
 
 1. Socialism and Religion. 
 
 By the Rev<. Stewart D. Hkadi.*m, Peicy Diaimii, and Jsnn 
 CurroRD, 
 
 2. Socialism and Agriculture. 
 
 . Bjr Edward CAinHTER, T. S. Dymdhs, »nd Cou Piddii. 
 
 3. Socialism and Individualism. 
 
 Bj Sidney Webb, Sidney Bai,i, Bernard Shaw^ and Sn Outer 
 Loose. 
 
 4. The Basis and Policy of Socialism. 
 
 By S:oNiY Webb, ami the Fabian Society. 
 
 5. The Commonsense of Municipal 
 
 T^fnAinrr By Bernard Shaw. With new prciice, 
 1 raumg. Poitaget i}d. & 2d, 
 
 6. Socialism and National Minimum. 
 
 By Mu. Sidney Webb, Mih B. L, Hvtchini, and the Fabian 
 Society. 
 
 7. Wastage of Child Life : its Causa- 
 
 tion and Prevention . By j. john.ton, «.d. 
 
 " There ia not a man or woman in England who would not be the better 
 for reading these tracts. They are Ri^mirably written, and attractirely 
 ■et out. They give n> at good an acccnmt as can well be given of Evolution' 
 ary Socialism. They kindle thought ; and ttimulate criticism ; «nd nourish 
 hope. . . . They represent the embodied Fabkn min-l." 
 
 Caam Sccti Holland, in Tlit CntmoawtaUb (on the first 4 Tolomes), 
 
 London : A. C. Fifield, 44 Fleet Street, E.C. 
 
Cornell University Library 
 HD4918.S7 
 
 Socialism and nationai minimum, 
 
 3 1924 001 624 281