below which they can never have sunk for any length of time.* Out of the four millions of women who are working for wages at the present time, a very large percentage must be earning practically no better subsistence than their grandmothers did. It is at least doubtful whether any previous age could show so large a total number at this low level. And if we might sum up in one general impression the different facts as to comparative wages, we should, I think, have to come to this conclusion: Whilst the skilled male craftsman has largely increased his income, and a practically new class of responsible and fairly well-paid laborers and machine-minders has come into existence, there exists now a greater sum, though a smaller proportion, of hopeless destitution than at any previous time. It appears at any rate highly probable that in 1897 there are positively more people in Great Britain who are existing at or near starvation wages than there were in 1837, although their number bears a smaller proportion to the whole. It must not, of course, be forgotten that prices are not the same now as in 1837. The workman pays much more in rent than he did then, not only on account of the positive rise of rent, but also because a far larger proportion of the total population now live and work in towns. Meat, too, and milk, with a few other articles, are dearer. But I see no reason to doubt the statistical conclusion that prices are on the whole lower than in 1837. The reduction in the price of bread is worth more to the agricultural laborer or to the family at sheer subsistence level in London than any alteration in the price of meat. The rise in rent is a real and most serious deduction from the increase of wages, and is no doubt a great cause of the destitution of the urban residuum. The proportion of the income which is paid away for rent is, of course, greatest in the very poorest class, and this accordingly suffers most from the rise. But it is far from being equal to the advance in the money wages of the skilled artizan, whose weekly earnings certainly procure for himself and his family a considerably larger share of comfort and civilisation than could have been commanded by his grandfather. My conclusion is that, on the whole, wages are not only higher but are also worth more than they were before. On the other hand, the increased cost of rent, and meat and milk, presses with undue severity upon the helpless poor of our great cities, and does much to keep their condition down to the old bad level. Irregularity of Employment. But it would be misleading to consider only the rate of wages without paying at least equal attention to the extent to which the workman is irregularly employed. The weekly earnings of a stonemason, for instance, may run up to 36/- or 42/- for the time that he is in constant employment, but any estimate of his yearly income would be fallacious in the extreme if it did not take into account that he usually earns little or nothing during the winter months. We cannot, therefore, usefully compare rates of wages unless we at For statistics of women's wages-scarcely mentioned by Sir R. Giffen-see an article by the present writer in the Economic Journal, December, 1891; and Studies in Economics by Professor W. Smart (London; 1895). the same time endeavor to estimate whether employment has become more or less intermittent and irregular. Now, on this point of comparative regularity of employment, we have at present practically no statistical information, and the most diverse accounts are given by different witnesses. If we were to believe some of our friends we should conclude that irregularity of employment was a new thing, the product of the competitive system in its decay, unknown to our forefathers. But whatever may have been the case in that semi-mythical golden age of the hand industry, it is quite certain that sixty years ago there were periods of bad trade and widespread lack of employment. Of this we find abundant evidence in all directions. It is unnecessary to do more than refer to the large number of persons who at that time received Poor Law relief. A better index to the chronic lack of employment in the winter months is given by the way in which the numbers in receipt of relief went up as soon as the cold weather set in. But evidence of another, and perhaps more trustworthy kind, is to be found in the records of the old Trade Unions. The skilled craftsman, earning good wages while at work, was then, as now, loth to throw himself on the parish, and some of the early Trade Societies were formed largely with the object of providing maintenance for their members when out of work. Out-of-work pay, or, as it is sometimes expressively termed, " idle aliment," was, as far as I am aware, not given in 1837 by any Trade Union, but elaborate provisions were made to enable men who could not find employment in their town to go on tramp in search of it. "Tramp" had not then become a term of reproach, and the "tramps' room was a regular feature of every public-house patronized by one of the larger Trade Societies. The tramp had usually exhausted all his scanty funds before he made up his mind to wander, and it was therefore necessary to organize a regular system of daily relief all over the kingdom. Already, before the middle of the eighteenth century, the wool-combers were associated from Taunton to the Tees in a single widespread association for relieving their travelling members. Their example was followed within a few years by the wool-staplers, and long before 1824 the compositors also appear to have covered the land with a network of local societies, one of whose chief aims was the mutual relief of each other's tramps. The little society of ironmoulders, which started at Bolton in 1809, soon expanded into an organization of national extent with similar objects. The member "clear on the books" who was driven to travel, received a clear card" which entitled him to a bed in the tramps' room and a shilling or so from the branch secretary at each of the society's branches on his route until he came to a place where he found a job, or until he became "box-fast" and entitled to no more relief. It is needless to say that in those days there were few railways, and practically no cheap means of transit. The tramp, therefore, invariably walked from stage to stage, exposed to all the inclemency of the weather, for he could receive no more than one day's allowance at each station, and the stations were often many The tramping system has not entirely died out, but most societies abandoned it between 1840 and 1870, generally substituting the present "home donation" in its Jace; see History of Trade Unionism. miles apart. And so we find, for instance, the bookbinders enacting in 1835 that "members whose shoes had become defective after travelling eighty miles with a document, could have them repaired at the Union's expense by obtaining an order from the local secretary of the town he was in to that effect." Of the extent to which this tramping system was used little exact information can be obtained; but the entries in the branch minute-books of this period show that a considerable number of bona fide tramps were at all times on the road, and every now and then the complaints became frequent and loud of the large numbers of men arriving with cards from other towns, or leaving, furnished with the same credentials, in search of work elsewhere. It would therefore be incorrect to assume that irregularity of employment is any new thing, or even that it is greater now than sixty years ago. The building trades were just as much checked by the cold weather then as now. The frozen-out gardeners were quite as familiar a sight to our forefathers as they are to us. The farm laborer depended on the parson and the squire for his winter coals. and blankets to at least as great an extent as he will this winter. And if we turn to the more widespread destitution caused by change in fashion or a commercial crisis we find the records of sixty years ago full of evidence of the existence of depressions at least as acute as any we suffer from to-day. The year 1842 was the culminating point of that "rebellion of the belly" which had begun three years before in the Birmingham and Newport riotings, and which took the form of a demand for the "People's Charter"; and throughout the whole period between 1837 and 1848 we find the Chartist movement swelling and contracting in almost exact correspondence with the acuteness of the economic distress of the people. In 1841 and 1842 things got very bad indeed. The harvest for four successive years was wretchedly deficient, and trade seemed to be coming to an end altogether. Genuine hunger strikes took place, and the staple industries of Yorkshire and the Midlands were nearly at a standstill. The cotton trade was so bad that in 1842 some bitter jester placarded Stockport with bills announcing that the whole town was to let. The sufferings of Bolton in January, 1842, are described by one of the strong men of the time in language which palpitates with anger. Anything like the squalid misery, the slow, mouldering, putrifying death by which the weak and feeble of the working classes are perishing here, it never befel my eyes to behold nor my imagination to conceive. And the creatures seem to have no idea of resisting or even repining. They sit down with oriental submission, as if it was God and not the landlord that was laying his hand upon them'.'* Nor was this widespread lack of employment peculiar to 1842. The following instructive diagram represents the percentage of the members of the Ironfounders' Society in each year, from 1831 to 1896, and of the members of the London Society of Compositors in each year, from 1848 to 1896, who were fortunate enough to be in employment, and is compiled from the official statistics published by those societies. Out of the sixty-six years shown in the case of the * Colonel Perronet Thompson, in the Sun, 9th January, 1842. 95 94 93 92 91 1890 89 8888 Average Percentages of the Friendly Society of Ironfounders who were in employment during each of the years 1831 to 1896 inclusive; and of members of the London Society of Compositors who were in employment in each of the years 1848 to 1896 inclusive. [Thick black line (. ): Friendly Society of Ironfounders. Dotted line ): London Society of Compositors.] The figures at top and bottom of diagram denote the years; those at the sides, the percentage in employment. 1850 51 88 47 46 1845 44 43 42 41 1840 36 1835 34 33 32 1831 |