passed, however, we find the Times writing thus in its leading article of August 31, 1889: It is all very well. for the directors to plead that there is an enormous surplus of such labour, and that the men they employ are at least better off than if they had no employment at all. But the fact remains that they have encouraged the growth of this wretched and shiftless class by their daily distribution haphazard of an uncertain quantity of employment, and that the relations established between them and these casual labourers are of a thoroughly demoralizing and inhuman kind. The Times is neither more moral nor more sympathetic than the average common-sense middle-class Englishman; it represents his opinions only too faithfully. The fact is that the strike forced the general public for the first time to look closely at the conditions of dock labor, and the moral sense of the community declared that, come what might to dividends or trade, such a state of things could not be allowed to continue. This was a lesson which the dock directors, when they gave Miss Potter their account of the situation, had yet to learn. The chapter needs supplementing in several ways before it can be regarded as an adequate survey of the problem. For instance, it was declared at the time of the strike, upon the high authority of Mr. Thomas Sutherland, M.P., the chairman of the P. and O. company, that "probably one-half of the capital outlay of the London and St. Catherine Dock, and East and West India Dock Company may be considered obsolete for all practical purposes," and that it was upon this capital, sunk on obsolete arrangements, that the directors were trying to earn profits.1 This of course did not make it any better for existing shareholders, many of whom had acquired their stock recently, but it needs to be mentioned before we can understand what "making no profit" really means. Again, it would have been worth while to have laid more stress upon the part played by excessive competition in reducing the profits of the two great dock companies. The rivalry between the London and St. Catherine company and the East and West India company; the time of high profits before and after the opening of the Suez canal; the construction by the former company of the Victoria and Albert docks, and by the latter of the Tilbury docks; cut-throat competition and the disappearance of profits; - this is a sequence of events which would have shown itself sooner or later even if the volume of trade had not diminished. It contains in it no factor peculiar to the docks it does but illustrate a danger common to all forms of permanent investment under modern conditions. First high profits; then specula 1 Cf. the London Spectator for August 31, 1889, p. 260, foot-note. tive investment; then an excessive supply of the particular service or commodity; and then reckless competition to obtain business on any terms. In America we have become familiar enough with the result of such competition in the shape of railroad discriminations. And like American railroads, the London docks also are beginning to find that safety lies in combination. Since 1888 the two great companies have, I understand, been working under a joint committee, have been able in consequence to raise their rates and have obtained a profit. The next chapter, on "The Tailoring Trade," is also by Miss Potter, but gives the impression of a more thorough study of the subject. The leading characteristic of the industry is thus summed up: We have here a new province of production, inhabited by a peculiar people, working under a new system, with new instruments, and yet separated by a narrow and constantly shifting boundary from the sphere of employment of an old-established native industry. On the one side of this line we find the Jewish contractor with his highly organized staff of fixers, basters, machinists, button-hole hands and pressers, turning out coats by the score, together with a mass of English women, unorganized and unregulated, engaged in the lower sections of the trade; whilst on the other side of the boundary, we see an army of skilled English tradesmen [artisans] with regulated pay and restricted hours, working on the traditional lines of one man one garment [p. 209]. The English workman makes hand-sewn garments for the better shops, which supply customers ready to pay a good price for a good article ; the Jewish contractor, machine-made “balloons," chiefly for the supply of wholesale houses with cheap ready-made clothing. So far as East London is concerned, it is this "ready-made" or cheap "bespoke " trade, in the hands of a compact Jewish community resident mainly in Whitechapel, that we have chiefly to consider. There are 901 workshops, of which 685 employ less than 10 hands, 201 from 10 to 25, and only 15 over 25. Most of the shops are overcrowded and insanitary ; and at busy seasons the hours of labor are excessively long. But there is little or no "sweating" as it is commonly understood, viz. the squeezing of profit out of the actual worker by an idle middleman. The middleman, as distinct from the wholesale house on the one side and the labor-contractor on the other, has disappeared. In the vast majority of the shops, the contractor, or employer, works fully as hard as his employees, his standard of living is practically the same, while his profits are precarious and seldom greater than a fair reward for the labor of organization. As to the 15 shops employing more than 25 persons, here the contractor does probably make a very fair income. But on the other hand the condition of his workpeople is better the workshop is more healthy and comfortable, partly because he can afford to engage special premises for the work, partly because it comes under the supervision of the factory inspectors; and employment is more steady. The great evil of the situation is just the opposite: it is the ease with which men can set up as independent masters, and the consequent multiplication of small shops. The work of these shops is the manufacture of coats. In the manufacture of cheap trousers and waistcoats there is another set of conditions. Here the competition is between the labor of gentile women, the wives and daughters of irregularly employed laborers, the vast majority of them working in their own homes for wholesale houses or distributing contractors, - on the one side, and on the other, provincial factories, also chiefly employing women. The distributing contractor here also is disappearing; and the miserable wage of the women in East London is due largely to the competition of the factory where the conditions of life are certainly far higher. "Bootmaking," by Mr. Schloss, and "The Furniture Trade," by Mr. Aves, are two of the longest papers in the volume, and in each case the manufacture is so subdivided, that it is well nigh impossible to give a brief summary of the chapter. In the first of these trades hand-sewn boots made to order occupy somewhat the same position as the better class of coats among tailors; while machine-sewn ready-made boots correspond to the "balloons." In the latter field it is as easy as in tailoring to set up as a small contractor employing half a dozen hands, though here the contractor does not undertake the whole manufacture, but only a branch of it, such as the making of uppers (the contractors and employees in this case being generally women), the lasting or the finishing (chiefly in the hands of Jews). In the last two branches, the "team-system" an extreme application of the principle of division of labor has been introduced during the last few years. It is thus described by Mr. Schloss : A series of operations, formerly entrusted collectively to a single artisan, is split up in such a manner that one part of the work- that which requires the greatest degree of skill-is performed by a workman who, possessing a relatively high degree of ability, is fairly able to insist upon an adequate remuneration, while the remainder of the work is placed in the hands of men whose greatly inferior competence in their craft forces them to accept a much lower rate of wages [p. 270]. Readers of Mill may remember with what respect Mr. Babbage is quoted as having pointed out "an advantage derived from division of labor not mentioned by Adam Smith," viz. the classification of work people according to ability. The effect of this in the boot trade is to substitute for a body of fairly skilled all-round workmen, receiving a tolerable remuneration, a small number of highly skilled men with a relatively high wage, and a great mass of miserably-paid unskilled labor. As newly arrived Jews will accept lower wages and work longer hours than English workmen, another result is that the industry has been largely transferred to foreign hands. Still the master lasters and finishers, with but few exceptions, make no considerable profit. "What the man has to gain by being a sub-contractor instead of a journeyman is chiefly an increased chance of continuous employment" (p. 294). The busy season lasts only from four to six months; and although some few are able to fill up the slack time by alternative employments, "some hundreds of the lasters" (and the same seems to be true of the finishers), "men often of considerable skill in their craft, can for many, and those the bitterest, months of the year obtain little or no employment, and frequently suffer great privations" (p. 268). The furniture trade has much the same general characteristics, - extreme subdivision, and the multiplication of small shops working not for the retailer or private customer but for the wholesale dealer. It also is localized in a small area, chiefly Bethnal Green and Shoreditch. In marked contrast to the prevalent tendency towards the large or factory system of manufacture in most other branches of industry, all the forces in this trade tend to the strengthening of a system of manufacture so small that it may often be called domestic. This development is encouraged by the growth of sawmills tenanted largely by small sawyers and turners "to the trade," and by the creation during the last thirty years of a conveniently near market in the warehouses of Curtain Road. The level of comfort and wages, however, is considerably higher than in the tailoring and bootmaking trades, owing to the greater skill required and to the greater steadiness of employment, which is affected but little by the seasons. Many of the better men earn as much as they did fifteen years ago, and as there has been a considerable fall in prices, their earnings go further; but they certainly have to work at a greater pressure. Mr. Fox's chapter on "Tobacco Workers" is more cheerful, revealing to us as it does a labor market where fairly good wages are obtained. This seems to be due, primarily, to the circumstance that all the work of the trade (with the exception of a small part of the cigarette making) is necessarily carried on in factories. This, again, is accounted for by the fact that the annual excise license and other excise regulations make necessary a certain amount of capital, "ranging probably from £50 to £60," before setting up in business. An additional reason is that the manufacture of tobacco requires heavy and expensive machinery. The domestic workshop, the chief difficulty in the three preceding trades, cannot make its appearance. The factory system, bringing the operatives together in considerable numbers, has facilitated the formation of strong trades unions, which have been able to keep up wages; and it has also facilitated government inspection as to sanitation and hours of labor. The excise tax, often supposed to be an evil, in that it prevents a man from "rising in life" and becoming a master on his own account, is shown to be a blessing, precisely for that very reason. Mr. Fox seems to think that the only persons who have to complain at present are the manufacturers, who are played off one against another by the retail dealers; and he suggests that they should follow the example of their men and organize. Even that grievous thing, a "combine," may have a good side. Passing over the small group of silk operatives, numbering in all some 1674 (of whom 1260 are weavers), residing in Spitalfield, and employed chiefly in the manufacture of silk for neckties and scarfs, we come to Miss Clara Collet's chapter on "Women's Work." This deals with the making of shirts, ties, trimmings, umbrellas, corsets and stays; with furriers (employed largely by small "chamber masters "), the making of boxes, match boxes ("the last resort of the destitute, or the first occupation of little girls expected to make themselves useful between school hours "), brushes, matches and confectionery, and with a few minor industries. Miss Collet has succeeded in saying much that seems to be both new and true on a somewhat hackneyed subject. She remarks, for instance, that where a trade is irregular, the employment of outdoor hands has at least this good result, that it enables the employer to keep a small indoor staff permanently employed. Irregularity in the employment of married women who work at home is at least a lesser evil than irregularity in the employment of girls. It is a striking fact, again, that among factory workers there is a general uniformity of wage, although the match girls and jam girls have neither to exercise so great skill nor to work so hard as capmakers and bookbinders. The explanation is that the former, with many others employed in such rough work as ropemaking and the like, come from a lower class and earn their own livelihood; the latter, with those employed in other genteel occupations, are the daughters of clerks or upper-class artisans, living with their parents and competing with one another only to procure dress and luxuries. It will be convenient to postpone for a moment Mr. Booth's chapter on "Sweating," which opens Part III, and look next at Mr. Llewellyn Smith's chapter on "Influx of Population." This provides a much-needed corrective for the vague ideas that were prevalent as to the connection |