house of commons, april 28, 1909

it is a serious national evil that any class of his majesty's subjects should receive in return for their utmost exertions less than a living wage.

it was formerly supposed that the workings of the laws of supply and demand would in the regular and natural course of events, and by a steady progression, eliminate that evil, and achieve adequate minimum standards. modern opinion has found it necessary greatly to refine upon these broad generalisations of the truth, and the first clear division that we make to-day in questions of wages, is that between a healthy and unhealthy condition of bargaining.

where, as in the great staple trades of this country, you have powerful organisations on both sides, with responsible leaders [240]able to bind their constituents to their decisions, conjoined with automatic scales, or arbitration or conciliation in case of a deadlock, there you have a healthy condition of bargaining, which increases the competitive power of the industry, which continually weaves more closely together the fortunes of capital and labour, and which enforces a constant progression in the standards of living and of productive power. but where, as in what we call "sweated trades," you have no organisation at all on either side, no parity of bargaining between employers and employed, where the good employer is continually undercut by the bad, and the bad again by the worse; where the worker whose whole livelihood depends on the trade is undercut by the worker to whom it is only a second string; where the feebleness and ignorance of the workers and their isolation from each other render them an easy prey to the tyranny of bad masters, and middlemen one step above them upon the lowest rungs of the ladder, and themselves held in the grip of the same relentless forces—there you have a condition not of progress but of progressive degeneration. and just as in the former case the upward tendency will [241]be constant if it is not interrupted by external power, so in the latter case the demoralisation will continue in a squalid welter for periods which are quite indefinite so far as our brief lives are concerned.

we have seen from the investigations of the last twenty years, when the phenomena of sweating have been under close and scientific review, that there is no power of self-cure within the area of the evil. we have seen that while the general advance in the standards of work and wages has on the whole been constant, these morbid and diseased patches, which we call the sweated trades, have not shared in that improvement, but have remained in a state of chronic depression and degeneration. the same shocking facts, in some cases the same pitiful witnesses, were brought before the select committee last year as before lord dunraven's committee in 1888. indeed i am advised that in some respects wages and conditions are worse than they were twenty years ago. nor are these melancholy facts confined to any one country. sweating is not a peculiarity of great britain. practically the same trades experience the same evils in all other industrial countries. france, germany, austria, and america [242]reproduce with great exactness under similar economic conditions the same social evils, and in those countries, as in ours, sweated industries—by which i mean trades where there is no organisation, where wages are exceptionally low, and conditions subversive of physical health and moral welfare—cast dark shadows in what is, upon the whole, the growing and broadening light of civilisation.

there is a clear reason for this, which is in itself at once a justification for the special treatment which we propose for these trades, and a means of marking them off more or less definitely from the ordinary trades. in the case of any great staple trade in this country, if the rate of wages became unnaturally low compared to other industries, and the workers could not raise it by any pressure on their part, the new generation at any rate would exercise a preference for better pay and more attractive forms of industry. the gradual correction of depressed conditions over large periods of time is thus possible. but in these sweated industries there is no new generation to come to the rescue. they are recruited from a class rather than from a section of the community. the widow, [243]the women folk of the poorest type of labourer, the broken, the weak, the struggling, the diseased—those are the people who largely depend upon these trades, and they have not the same mobility of choice, exerted, tardily though it be, by a new generation, but which is undoubtedly operative upon the great staple trades of the country. that is an explanation which accounts for the same evils being reproduced under similar conditions in different countries, separated widely from one another and marked by great differences of general conditions.

i ask the house to regard these industries as sick and diseased industries. i ask parliament to deal with them exactly in the same mood and temper as we should deal with sick people. it would be cruel to prescribe the same law for the sick as for the sound. it would be absurd to apply to the healthy the restrictions required for the sick. further, these sweated trades are not inanimate abstractions. they are living, almost sentient, things. let the house think of these sweated trades as patients in a hospital ward. each case must be studied and treated entirely by itself. no general rule can be applied. [244]there is no regulation dose which will cure them all. you cannot effect quicker cures by giving larger doses. different medicines, different diets, different operations are required for each; and consideration, encouragement, nursing, personal effort are necessary for all. great flexibility and variety of procedure, and a wide discretionary power, entrusted to earnest and competent people, must characterise any attempt to legislate on this subject.

the central principle of this bill is the establishment of trade boards, which will be charged with the duty of fixing a minimum wage. i am very anxious to give these trade boards the utmost possible substance and recognition. they will be formed on the principle of equality of representation for employers and employed, with a skilled official chairman or nucleus. that is the principle i have adopted in the new arbitration court recently established. that is the principle which will govern the system of labour exchanges, shortly to be introduced, and other measures which may come to be associated with labour exchanges, and i think it is an excellent principle.

at the same time, do not let us suppose [245]that these trade boards will, in the first instance, be very strong or representative bodies. they are to be formed in trades mainly worked by women, where no organisation has ever yet taken root, where there are as yet no means of finding and focusing an effective trade opinion. where possible, they will be partly elective; in many cases they will, i expect, have to begin by being almost entirely nominated. in some cases it will be upon the official members alone that the main burden will fall. i could not ask the house to confer upon bodies of this nebulous character, not representative, not elective in any democratic sense, responsible not to constituents, nor to a public department, nor to parliament itself in any way, the absolute and final power of enforcing by the whole apparatus of the law any decision, whether wise or foolish, upon wage questions to which they may come by the narrowest majority. the work which we entrust to them wholly and finally is sufficiently difficult and important. we direct them by this bill to prescribe minimum rates of wages. they are to find the minimum rate. for that purpose they are as well qualified as any body that we could devise. [246]in this sphere their jurisdiction will be complete. the board of trade will not retry the question of what is the right minimum rate. another and quite different question will be decided by the board of trade. they will decide whether the minimum rate which has been prescribed by the trade board commands sufficient support in the trade to make its enforcement by inspection and prosecution likely to be effective.

that is the division between the responsibility which the trade boards will have and the responsibility which we shall reserve to ourselves. i shall be quite ready in committee to express that intention, which is in the bill, in a simpler and stronger manner, and to make the function of the board of trade a positive and not a negative one, so that when the trade board has fixed the minimum rate of wages it shall, after an interval of six months, acquire the force of law, and shall be enforced by compulsory powers, unless in the meanwhile the board of trade decides or rules otherwise. for my part, i gladly give an assurance that it is our intention to put the compulsory provisions of this bill into full effect upon at least one of the trades in the schedule, [247]at as early a date as possible, in order to bring about the fulfilment of a much-needed and long-overdue experiment.

now i come to the probationary period, and i know that there are a great many who have stated that it is mere waste of time. i, on the contrary, have been led to the opinion that it is vital to any practical or effective policy against sweating. it is no use to attempt, in trades as complex and obscure as these with which we are dealing, to substitute outside authority for trade opinion. the only hope lies in the judicious combination of the two, each acting and reacting upon the other. a mere increase of the penal provisions and inspection would be a poor compensation for the active support of a powerful section within the trade itself. it is upon the probationary period that we rely to enable us to rally to the trade board and to its minimum wage the best employers in the trade. in most instances the best employers in the trade are already paying wages equal or superior to the probable minimum which the trade board will establish. the inquiries which i have set on foot in the various trades scheduled have brought to me most satisfactory assurances from nearly all the [248]employers to whom my investigators have addressed themselves.

for the enforcement of this act, and for the prevention of evasion and collusion, i rely upon the factory inspectors, who will report anything that has come to their notice on their rounds and who will make themselves a channel for complaints. i rely still more upon the special peripatetic inspectors and investigators who will be appointed under the act by the board of trade, who will have to conduct prosecutions under the act, and who will devote all their time to the purposes of the act. these officers will incidentally clothe the trade boards with real authority, once the rate has been enforced, in that they will be responsible to the trade board, and not to some powerful department of government external to the trade board itself. i rely further upon the support of the members of the trade boards themselves, who will act as watch-dogs and propagandists. i rely upon the driving power of publicity and of public opinion. but most of all i put my faith in the practical effect of a powerful band of employers, perhaps a majority, who, whether from high motives or self-interest, or from a combination of the two—they are not [249]necessarily incompatible ideas—will form a vigilant and instructed police, knowing every turn and twist of the trade, and who will labour constantly to protect themselves from being undercut by the illegal competition of unscrupulous rivals.

an investigator in the east end of london writes:

"the people who can check evasion are the large firms. their travellers form a magnificent body of inspectors, who ought to see that the act is enforced. the checking of evasion will have to be carried out, not so much by visiting workshops and home-workers as by hearing where cheap, low-class goods are coming into the market, and tracing the goods back to the contractors who made them."

there are solid reasons on which we on this side of the house who are free traders rely with confidence, when we associate ourselves with this class of legislation. first of all, we must not imagine that this is the only european country which has taken steps to deal with sweating. the first exhibition of sweated products was held in berlin, and it was from that exhibition that the idea was obtained of holding that most valuable series of exhibitions [250]throughout this country which created the driving power which renders this bill possible. i am advised that german legislation on some of these questions has even anticipated us. in other countries legislation is pending on principles not dissimilar from those which we advocate. in bavaria and baden the latest reports are to the effect that the official government reports of inquiries recommend almost the same and in some cases stronger provisions than those to which we now ask the assent of the house of commons. this may be said in a different form of austria. all this movement which is going on throughout europe, and which is so pregnant with good, will be powerfully stimulated by our action in this country, and that stimulus will not only facilitate our work by removing the argument which causes hon. gentlemen opposite anxiety, but it will also, i think, redound to the credit of this country that it took a leading and prominent position in what is a noble and benignant work.

i was delighted to hear the leader of the opposition say, in a concise and cogent sentence, that he could easily conceive many sweated trades in which the wages of the workers could be substantially raised [251]without any other change except a diminution of price. sir, the wages of a sweated worker bear no accurate relation to the ultimate price. sometimes they vary in the same places for the same work done at the same time. and sometimes the worst sweating forms a part of the production of articles of luxury sold at the very highest price. we believe further, however, that decent conditions make for industrial efficiency and increase rather than diminish competitive power. "general low wages," said mill, "never caused any country to undersell its rivals; nor did general high wages ever hinder it." the employers who now pay the best wages in these sweated trades maintain themselves not only against the comparatively small element of foreign competition in these trades, but against what is a far more formidable competition for this purpose—the competition of those employers who habitually undercut them by the worst processes of sweating. i cannot believe that the process of raising the degenerate and parasitical portion of these trades up to the level of the most efficient branches of the trade, if it is conducted by those conversant with the conditions of the trade and interested in it, will necessarily result [252]in an increase of the price of the ultimate product. it may, even as the right hon. gentleman has said, sensibly diminish it through better methods.

sir, it is on these grounds, and within these limits, that i ask for a second reading for this bill.

the principles and objects are scarcely disputed here. let us go into committee and set to work upon the details, actuated by a single-minded desire to produce a practical result. it is by the evidences of successful experiment that, more than any other way, we shall forward and extend the area of our operations; and in passing this bill the house will not only deal manfully with a grave and piteous social evil, but it will also take another step along that path of social organisation into which we have boldly entered, and upon which the parliaments of this generation, whatever their complexion, will have to march.