I
 
 This Record ,— 
 
 of the Pioneer Labours of a former 
 Associate of the Institution of Civil 
 Engineers is, -with much pleasure/ 
 
 presented by Lord Brassey. 
 to Members of Council of Association 
 of OhainberB of Ooinmerce. 
 
 24, PARK LANE, 
 
 W. March, 1916.
 
 -mBsasssratBmH
 
 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 THE EEWARD OF LABOUE AND 
 THE COST OF WORK 
 
 FOUNDED ON THE EXPERIENCES OF 
 THE LATE MR. BRASSEY 
 
 BY 
 
 EARL BRASSEY, G.C.B. 
 
 A VOLUME OF EXTRACTS, 
 REVISED, AND PARTIALLY REWRITTEN 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 
 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 
 FOURTH AVENUE & 30th STREET, NEW YORK 
 
 BOMBAY, CALCUTTA. AND MADRAS 
 
 1916 
 
 All rights re terved
 
 
 Q 0EG.1K1 
 
 i^'
 
 HD 
 3390 
 
 575 WO 
 PEEFACE 
 
 ^2 The re-editing of my old book on ' Work and 
 
 ^ Wages,' at the date of publication so cordially and 
 
 <^ favourably received, has proved a far harder task 
 
 OQ than had been anticipated. I had thought simply to 
 
 reprint ; I have had to a great extent to re-write ; and 
 
 the demand has been too heavy for a worn veteran. 
 
 I might well have desisted. It had probably been 
 
 better to commit the matter to a young man, 
 
 free from other calls, fresh in body and in intellect. 
 
 \q I have stuck to the job, inspired chiefly by an un- 
 
 o djnng love for my father, whose qualities and whose 
 
 memory I revere more and more as the years go by. 
 
 In so far as his — or, indeed, any — name can survive 
 
 through the mists which enshroud all things after 
 
 the lapse of fifty years, I should wish my father to 
 
 be remembered chiefly as he is represented in the 
 
 portrait so admirably drawn by his friend and 
 
 biographer. Sir Arthur Helps. I could wish that 
 
 the men of the present day could recall my father 
 
 as I remember him in the years long past, when he 
 
 invited me, as the greatest pleasure he could give 
 
 a2 
 
 
 C3
 
 iv PREFACE 
 
 to his son, then a mere boy, to accompany him 
 on a visit of inspection to a great railway in 
 construction. I have a Uving impression of those 
 long walks along a line, on which thousands of 
 workers were busily employed. As the news 
 passed that my father was coming every man left 
 off working, though paid by the piece. They lined 
 the road and gave him a hearty cheer. My father 
 shook hands with every ganger, sub-contractor, 
 and, indeed, every navvy whom he remembered. 
 He called them all by their names — in many cases 
 by their Christian names — and inquired how they 
 were getting on. If they were not making fair 
 earnings, terms of contract were revised. Old 
 undertakings in far-off countries were discussed, 
 and recollections were exchanged. 
 
 My father was proud of his navvies, and justly 
 so. There were giants in those days. Well do I 
 remember those gangs of sturdy workers, generally 
 men of the North, in stature not inferior to, in weight 
 exceeding, those noble soldiers of the Household 
 Regiments, of which the nation is so proud, and 
 who, in these later days and under unaccustomed 
 conditions, have well and worthily sustained the 
 never-to-be-forgotten glories of the past. 
 
 The exertion to which the navvy is accustomed 
 is too severe for the agricultural labourer, until 
 he has become accustomed to the more arduous
 
 PREFACE V 
 
 occupation. When an agricultural labourer begins 
 to work on a railway, he is disposed to lie down 
 at three o'clock in the afternoon, fatigued and in- 
 capable of continuing his efforts. After an interval 
 of twelve months, receiving higher wages, and 
 having better food, he will get into fitter condition 
 to perform his task without difficulty. A large 
 contractor, long associated with my father, once 
 told me that at Macclesfield, in 1847, for exca- 
 vating an unusually heavy cutting, many men from 
 Lincolnshire were employed, not one of whom was 
 under 5 feet 10| inches in height. Those who have 
 been long connected with railway construction state 
 that they know many navvies who have attained 
 to a great age. 
 
 It is good to remember that the public works 
 executed by my father, as a pioneer contractor 
 in almost every part of the civilised world, have 
 proved a lasting benefit to mankind. Cheap and 
 speedy communication has been provided, and, 
 through all the changes which invention has intro- 
 duced, the railway continues an indispensable 
 resource of civilisation. 
 
 ' Work and Wages ' was originally published 
 as a sequel and supplement to the biography by Sir 
 Arthur Helps.^ It gave, in so far as the details 
 could be collected, the rates of wages usually paid 
 
 1 Life and Labours of Thomas Braisey, 1805-1870.
 
 vi PREFACE 
 
 in every country in which work was undertaken. 
 Daily rates differed widely. It was an invariable 
 rule to pay by the piece for work done. By 
 this system, carefully carried out under skilful 
 superintendence, the cost differed little, except 
 in the case of sparsely peopled countries. This 
 important result of an unequalled experience in 
 every quarter of the globe was published to the 
 world in ' Work and Wages.' It was shown 
 how rare were the advantages, how common the 
 disadvantages, of cutting down the reward of 
 labour. 
 
 The writer has a due sense of the restrictions 
 which should be imposed on whatever might savour 
 of praise of self. It is, however, simple justice, to 
 say that the publication of ' Work and Wages,' 
 in 1872, was an incident which, at the time and 
 in the circumstances, seemed, in the words of 
 Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb, to mark an epoch. 
 The estimate of enlightened public opinion must 
 be gauged by the criticisms of the Press. They 
 were numerous and in every case commendatory. 
 Nothing can be quoted at this late date beyond 
 one specimen of the language of the reviewers of 
 long ago. ' Work and Wages ' was honoured by 
 notices in the ' Quarterly ' and the ' Edinburgh.' 
 Having the latter at hand, it may perhaps be 
 permissible to reprint a brief extract :
 
 PREFACE vii 
 
 Work and Wages. By Thomas Brassey, M.P. 
 London : 1872. 
 
 ' No subject can more urgently demand, or more 
 amply repay, the study of the intelligent inquirer than 
 the great question of Work. From the inexhaustible 
 fountain of labour springs all that constitutes the wealth 
 of nations. The power, the dignity, and the happiness 
 of a people are at the same time the result, and the 
 expression, of the energy and capacity for labour which 
 characterise the race. From the wheel of the potter, 
 from the yet ruder shed of the brickmoulder, to the 
 noblest work of the sculptor ; from the rudest scratching 
 of the soil to the highest triumph of scientific agri- 
 culture ; from the first lesson in the dame school to the 
 master-speech of the great statesman in the senate ; 
 all that can enrich and ennoble a nation is bound 
 together by the golden links of industry. No philosophy 
 can be other than superficial, no statesmanship can be 
 other than barbarous, that is ignorant or negligent of 
 the great natural laws that regulate the application 
 of Labour. 
 
 ' To the formation of a theory of industrial law 
 worthy the name of Science, the volume before us 
 furnishes a contribution of extraordinary value. Kindly 
 and worthy motives have led to its production. The 
 writer is evidently anxious to show how thoroughly 
 some of those who have of late spoken loudly on the 
 subject of labour are in ignorance of the very elements 
 of the question they have professed to solve. Nor is 
 he less desirous to raise the courage of those who, 
 looking at the disturbances in our industrial system 
 that are chiefly due to artificial causes, despond as to
 
 viii PREFACE 
 
 the future of the country. But it is not so much in 
 the argument, as in the rich store of industrial facts, 
 collected from indicated sources, and brought together 
 in available order, that the value of the book consists. 
 Such a field for investigation in industrial philosophy 
 has not before been offered to the world in so com- 
 pendious a form ; and the value of the facts collected 
 is enhanced, rather than diminished, by the considera- 
 tion that no special theory is propounded by the writer. 
 Thus we have not only ample illustration of the course 
 and play of industry, in every quarter of the globe ; 
 but we have the naked facts presented in a natural 
 light, without even an unconscious effort so to twist or 
 so to colour them as to make them available for the 
 establishment of any favourite dogma.' — Edinburgh 
 Review, July 1873. 
 
 Many years have elapsed . The unpretending book 
 referred to above has long since been out of print. 
 A few friends, fellow-members of the Political 
 Economy Club, have expressed the wish that some 
 portions of it should be reprinted, as being useful 
 for the guidance of all who have to deal with 
 the management of labour. In complying with a 
 request which it was highly gratifying to receive, 
 the author indulges the hope that he is thereby 
 doing something to add to the store of economic 
 knowledge. 
 
 ' Work and Wages ' brought its author under 
 notice. He was sought for, far and wide, to talk 
 of his father as an employer of labour. The present
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 volume includes a reprint of a few of the addresses 
 delivered. The complete list, published in 1878, 
 in a volume entitled ' Lectures on the Labour 
 Question,' comprised lectures given at various 
 places on the following subjects : — 
 
 1. Labour and Capital. Birkenhead, 1871. 
 
 2. The Nine Hours' Movement. Newcastle, 1873. 
 
 3. Wages in 1873. Norwich, 1873. 
 
 4. Public Elementarv Education in the United States. 
 
 Hastings, 1873. 
 
 5. The Duties of the Church in Relation to the Labour 
 
 Question. Hastings, 1873. 
 
 6. Co-operative Production. Halifax, 1874.^ 
 
 7. The South Wales Colherj^ Strike, 1874. 
 
 8. Influences affecting the Price of Labour in England, 
 
 1876. 
 
 9. On Canada and the United States. Hastings, 1873. 
 
 10. Work and Wages m 1877. Leicester, 1877.' 
 
 11. Labour at Home and Abroad. Leicester, 1877.' 
 
 12. Comparative Efficiency of English and Foreign 
 
 Labour. London, 1878. 
 
 13. The Rise of Wages in the Building Trades of London. 
 
 London, 1878.' 
 
 From a later volume, which appeared in 1879, 
 the chapter on ' Foreign Competition — the Com- 
 parative Efficiency of English and Foreign Labour,' 
 is here republished. 
 
 It may not unfittingly be added that the task of 
 compilation which the author of ' Work and Wages ' 
 
 1 Now reprintod.
 
 X PREFACE 
 
 was originally moved to undertake was one of 
 extreme difficulty. His honoured father, the first 
 organiser of labour on the colossal scale required 
 by modern enterprises of transportation, had left 
 no record of his work behind, except the faithful 
 remembrances of his chief employes. Their assist- 
 ance was invoked. They were severally interviewed, 
 and invited to record their recollections of service. 
 Their depositions were taken down by Messrs. 
 Gurney in shorthand, and formed some twenty- 
 four volumes of manuscript. From these materials 
 Sir Arthur Helps compiled his memoir, entitled 
 ' Life and Labours of Thomas Brassey,' and the 
 present writer the volume on ' Work and Wages.' 
 For both of us it is enough to say that we sought 
 no reward. Ours was a labour of love. 
 
 B. 
 
 December 4, 1915.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP-IHR PAOt 
 
 1 
 
 I. Conditions of Labour 
 
 II. Wages axd the Cost of Work . 
 
 III. Wages Generally 
 
 IV. Co-operative Production .... 
 V, Familistere de Guise 
 
 VI. Work and Wages in J 877 . 
 
 VII. Labour at Home and Abroad 
 
 VIII. On the PiIse of Wages in the Building Trades 
 
 of London 
 
 8 
 
 27 
 49 
 82 
 88 
 103 
 
 115 
 
 IX. Foreign Competition— Comparative Efficiency 
 
 of English and Foreign Labour . . .145
 
 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 CONDITIONS OF LABOUR 
 
 It seems fitting to open with a few general remarks 
 as to the rights and claims of workers. Tiie present 
 writer thankfully remembers that he was from the 
 beginning able to take an unprejudiced view of the 
 organisation of labour. He never shared the fears 
 of those who thought that Trades Unions had the 
 power to extort rates of payment on a non-remunera- 
 tive basis from employers of labour. 
 
 ' When,' says Adam Smith, ' in any country the 
 demand for those who live by wages is continually 
 increasing, the workmen have no occasion to com- 
 bine to raise their wages. The demand increases 
 necessarily with the increase of the revenue and 
 stock of every country, and cannot possibly increase 
 without it ' . . . ' It is in the progressive state, 
 while a society is advancing to further acquisition, 
 rather than when it has acquired its full complement 
 of riches, that the condition of the labouring poor, 
 and of the great body of the people, is the happiest 
 and most comfortable. It is healthy in a stationary, 
 and miserable in a declining state. The progressive 
 state is, in reahty, the cheerful and the hearty state 
 M B
 
 2 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 in all the different orders of society. The stationary 
 is dull, the declining melancholy.' 
 
 After many bitter struggles, the right of com- 
 bination for the purpose of obtaining improved 
 terms for labour has now been conceded to the 
 working men in every country of the civilised world. 
 There is nothing new under the sun. The Guilds 
 of the Middle Ages were the forerunners of the 
 Trades Unions of to-day. The strikes of modern 
 times have had their counterpart in the Jacquerie 
 riots of the fourteenth century. 
 
 When we take into view the great changes 
 brought about in the industrial organisation of this 
 country during the last century — the substitution 
 of steam for manual power, and of machinery for 
 hand labour — and remember that the resources 
 of science can be fully developed only when appHed 
 on a large scale, the reasons why workmen have 
 gathered together in recent times, in number so 
 vast, round our great industrial centres, are not 
 far to seek. When operatives have been thus 
 assembled in great numbers, under the same roof, 
 tending the same machine, and working at the same 
 table, is it not natural — nay, reasonable — that they 
 should take combined action on all questions of 
 mutual interest ? In this most legitimate manner 
 Trades Unions have had their origin. 
 
 The recognition of the rights of free labour came 
 late in the history of the world. Neither the Greeks 
 nor the Romans recognised the liberty of labour. 
 From the third to the thirteenth century the Church 
 was the most faithful protector of the labouring
 
 CONDITIONS OF LABOUR 3 
 
 man. In later times, Parliaments did much to 
 secure liberty for the labourer. Turgot, the First 
 Minister of Louis XVI., fully appreciated the rights 
 of free labour. In his Edict of 1776 he says : — 
 ' Dieu, en donnant a I'homme des besoins, a fait 
 du droit de travailler la propriete de tous les hommes, 
 et cette propriete est la premiere, la plus sacree, et 
 la plus imprescriptible de toutes.' This Edict, the 
 first proclamation of the just and equitable princi- 
 ples noAv universally accepted, was cancelled in the 
 darker times, after the fall of Turgot. 
 
 No employer, on any fair view of conditions, 
 can object in principle to the organisation of labour. 
 We cannot but honour and admire the sentiments 
 of fraternal sympathy which prompt men to pro- 
 mote each other's advancement in life by that 
 mutual aid and support which Trades Unions are 
 intended to afford. Trades U^nions, like large 
 standing armies, may be a provocation of war ; but 
 if a strike should unfortunately occur the conduct 
 of the workmen will probably be as much superior 
 to that of the rioters in the manufacturing districts 
 in the early part of the present century as the 
 discipline of a standing army is superior to that of 
 a guerilla band. 
 
 In the days when ' Work and Wages ' was first 
 printed, Sir Francis Crossley was taking a leading 
 and broadminded part among employers of labour. 
 In a debate on the appointment of the Trades 
 U^nions Commission in 1867, he said there was ' a 
 good deal of unreasonable feeling abroad that it 
 wa« wrong for working men to sell their labour at 
 
 B 2
 
 4 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 the best price. Their labour was the only thing 
 that they had to sell ; and the best thing to do was 
 to leave these matters to take their natural course. 
 It was a great mistake, on the part of employers, 
 to suppose that the lowest priced labour was always 
 the cheapest. If there were not so much desire to 
 run down the price of labour, and the masters showed 
 a more conciliatory spirit, there would be fewer 
 strikes and outrages.' 
 
 So, too, by Mr. John Stuart Mill ; ' Wages, 
 like other things, are regulated, either by com- 
 petition or by custom. In this country there are 
 few kinds of labour of which the remuneration 
 would not be lower than it is if the employers took 
 full advantage of their power.' 
 
 The conditions of labour, whether in regard to 
 profits or in regard to wages, are complex in the 
 highest degree. Bastiat, in his ' Harmonies Econo- 
 miques,' said, and said truly : ' Le capital, jusqu'ou 
 qu'il porte ses pretentions, et quelque heureux 
 qu'il soit dans ses efforts pour les faire triompher, 
 ne pent jamais placer le travail dans une condition 
 pire que I'isolement. En d'autres termes, le capital 
 favorise tou jours plus le travail par sa presence 
 que par son absence.' This is a statement of fact 
 which all thinkers admit. How unreasonable to 
 expect ready assent to such a proposition from rude 
 and untaught workers with the hand. 
 
 The energy and the enterprise for which the 
 leaders of British industry are justly renowned, 
 while of advantage under prosperous conditions 
 in increasing the employment of labour, inevitably
 
 CONDITIONS OF LABOUR 5 
 
 lead to fluctuation and trouble. Again and again 
 production has been unduly stimulated in every 
 branch of British industry. When the reaction 
 has taken place and prices have fallen, from the 
 markets being overstocked, we are told that the 
 price of labour and foreign competition are the 
 causes of our inevitable misfortunes. It was weU 
 said by an able and candid writer in the Leeds 
 Mercury, ' If foreign competition were the cause of 
 our distress, we should be justified in expecting 
 that, in countries competing successfully with us, 
 the manufacturers would be in a prosperous state.' 
 This was not the case . All were calling out at the same 
 time that they were ruined by foreign competition. 
 At the date of the publication of ' Work and 
 Wages,' the Halifax Chamber of Commerce gave 
 utterance to the well-considered opinion that ' it 
 was demonstrable that the great cause of the de- 
 pression and the unremunerative character of the 
 worsted trade had been the too rapid increase of 
 machinery, both in spinning and weaving, which 
 were stimulated both by permanent and temporary 
 causes, such as the French Treaty and the American 
 War.' 
 
 The same remarks would apply equally to the 
 iron trade and all the other leading industries of 
 the country. The very spirit of enterprise which 
 has made England prosperous tends to produce 
 great fluctuations in the labour market. When 
 trade is good, our ironfounders and cotton-spinners 
 are only too ready to increase the productive 
 resources of their estabUshments.
 
 6 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 In former days wages on the Thames were ex- 
 ceptionally high. In proof of the preference shown 
 by the working classes for a more moderate rate of 
 wage with constant employment, wages in the dock- 
 yards may be compared with those paid in private 
 shipbuilding yards. A table was compiled by 
 Admiral King Hall, C.B., giving the rates in Sheer- 
 ness Yard in the years 1840, 1859, and 1869. Tables 
 showing the current rates at the corresponding 
 period in the private yards on the Thames were 
 prepared by Mr. John Hughes, sometime manager 
 of the Mill wall Works. These were published in 
 the first edition of ' Work and Wages.' 
 
 At a time when shipwrights in London were 
 earning from 65. Qd. to 75. a day, the shipwrights 
 in Sheerness Yard, men at least as skilled as those 
 employed by the private shipbuilders, were content 
 with 45. Qd. Though they could at any time have 
 put their tools into their baskets, and at the end of 
 an hour and a half's journey by rail have obtained 
 employment from the private shipbuilders at the 
 higher rate of wages, they preferred more moderate 
 wages Avith a certainty of employment, to higher 
 wages under more precarious conditions. 
 
 The rate of wages cannot long continue so high 
 as to deprive capital of its fair return. Neither 
 can it long continue below the amount necessary 
 to maintain the labourer and his family. The 
 fluctuations between the two limits depend entirely 
 upon the varying demand for labour. To the em- 
 ployer, rates of wages arc of small importance. 
 The essential is to get the work in hand done for a
 
 CONDITIONS OF LABOUR 7 
 
 certain sum of money. The scale of wages should 
 be liberal. It should be fixed. This brings us to 
 the plan, every^vhere, in so far as it was practicable, 
 adopted by the writer's father — that of payment 
 by the piece. 
 
 Mr. Mault, Secretary to the Builders' Associa- 
 tion of Birmingham, stated to the Trades Unions 
 Commissioners that of the 900,000 men employed 
 in the building trades, not more than 90^,000 were 
 members of Trades Unions and that, although aim- 
 ing at securing uniformity throughout the country, 
 the wages of masons varied in different parts from 
 4ld. to 7|c?. per hour, the v/ages of bricklayers from 
 4^6?. to 8d., and those of carpenters from 4-|<i. to 
 S^d. These figures conclusively prove the fallacy 
 of the idea that Trades Unions can secure for their 
 cHents uniform rates of wages. 
 
 Organisation may lead to an advance of ■wages 
 at a somewhat earlier date. Competition among 
 employers would be equally beneficial to the work- 
 ing people. Mr. Robinson, Managing Director of 
 the Atlas Works, Manchester, said in his evidence 
 before the Trades Unions Commissioners : ' I do 
 not think the Unions have altered the rate of wages. 
 The changes are rather due to the demand for labour 
 in particular branches. Between 1851 and 1861 
 no advance took place in the wages of the engineers, 
 though theirs is the most powerful of the Trades 
 Societies ; in the case of the boiler makers, without 
 the aid of labour organisation wages rose from 265. 
 to 325. Qd:
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 WAGES AND THE COST OP WORK 
 
 Daily wages afford no real measure of the actual 
 cost of work. Let us take examples near home. 
 At the commencement of the construction of the 
 North Devon Railway the wages of the labourers 
 were 2s. a day. During the progress of the work 
 their wages were raised to 2s. 6d. and 3s. a day. 
 The work was executed more cheaply when the men 
 were earning the higher rate of wage than when they 
 were paid at the lower rate. Again, in London, 
 in carrying out a part of the Metropolitan Drainage 
 Works in Oxford Street, the wages of the brick- 
 layers were gradually raised from 6s. to 10s. a day ; 
 the brickwork was constructed at a cheaper rate 
 per cubic yard after the wages of the workmen had 
 been raised to 10s. than when they were paid at the 
 rate of 6s. a day. 
 
 On the Grand Trunk Railway a number of 
 French-Canadian labourers were employed. Their 
 wages were 3s. Qd. a day, while the Englishmen 
 received from 5s. to 6s. a day. The English did the 
 greatest amount of work for the money. 
 
 The wages of the Dutchmen engaged in the con- 
 struction of the Dutch Rhenish Railway varied 
 from Is. Qd. to Is. 8^. a day, when paid by the day. 
 At piecework they could earn 2s. or 2s. Qd. Good
 
 WAGES AND THE COST OF WORK 9 
 
 workmen from the Lincolnshire fens would have 
 made 35. 6d. at similar work. 
 
 Both English and French masons Avere employed 
 in large numbers on the Alderney Breakwater in 
 1852. The Englishmen earned 05. 6d. to 6s. ; the 
 Frenchmen 4s. a day. 
 
 An opportunity occurred during the building 
 of the refreshment-room at Basingstoke for testing 
 the cost of work with great accuracy. On one side 
 of the station a London bricklayer was employed 
 at 55. 6d. a day, and on the other two country brick- 
 layers at 3s. 6d. a day. it was found, by measuring 
 the amount of work performed, without the know- 
 ledge of the men employed, that the London brick- 
 layer laid, without undue exertion, more bricks in 
 a day than his two less skilful country fellow- 
 labourers. 
 
 In the construction of the Paris and Rouen 
 Railway in 1842 an opportunity was afforded of 
 comparing British and foreign wages and cost of 
 work. This Railway was the first large work 
 executed on the Continent. About 10,000 men 
 were employed in its construction, of whom up- 
 wards of 4000 were Englishmen. Such an exodus 
 of English labour to continental Europe never 
 before occurred. A special effort was made to 
 secure the services of English workmen on this 
 particular contract. It was a question whether 
 native workmen could be obtained in sufficient 
 numbers, and it was still more doubtful whether 
 they would possess the necessary skill and ex- 
 perience for carrying out railway works, at that
 
 10 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 period a novelty, even to English engineers, and 
 entirely unknown on the Continent. Under these 
 exceptional circumstances a large body of English- 
 men were sent over to Normandy. 
 
 The contractors sought by every possible means 
 to mitigate the inconveniences of residence in a 
 foreign country. They established schools and pro- 
 vided clergymen. An English physician was ap- 
 pointed as superior medical attendant for the whole 
 of the works. Resident surgeons attended the sick 
 and wounded, and also the wives of the workmen. 
 It is scarcely necessary to observe that the employ- 
 ment of English manual labour abroad must always 
 be costly, and a somewhat doubtful policy. In this 
 particular case it was not found to be disadvan- 
 tageous from a pecuniary point of view. 
 
 The contract for the Paris and Rouen line 
 included some difficult works. There were four 
 bridges across the Seine, and four tunnels, one of 
 them one mile and five-eighths in length, passing 
 through hard limestone. The Enghsh were chiefly 
 employed on the difficult work. The French 
 labourers drew away the stufif, or wound it up the 
 shafts. The mining was done by Englishmen. In 
 the tunnels the skilled work was all carried out by 
 them. At one time there were five hundred English- 
 men living in the village of Rollebois, most of whom 
 were employed in the adjacent tunnel. These 
 English navvies earned 5s. a day ; the Frenchmen 
 25. Qd. a day. On comparing the cost of two 
 adjacent cuttings in precisely similar circumstances, 
 the excavation was made at a lower cost per cubic
 
 WAGES AND THE COST OF WORK 11 
 
 yard by the English navvies than by the French 
 labourers. 
 
 In the same quarry, at Bonnieres, in which 
 Frenchmen, Irishmen, and Enghshmen were em- 
 ployed side by side, the Frenchmen received three 
 francs, the Irishmen four, and the Englishmen six 
 francs a day. The Englishman was the most 
 advantageous workman of the three. 
 
 It may be gathered from the experience obtained 
 on my father's Continental contracts that, as a 
 general rule, the superiority of English workmen 
 was most conspicuous when they tirst commenced 
 work in a country in which no railways had been 
 previously constructed. The inexperience of the 
 French in large engineering works is proved con- 
 clusively by the fact that the works on the Paris 
 and Rouen line having been divided into innu- 
 merable separate contracts, for each of which a 
 separate tender was made, in every case the tender 
 of Messrs. Brassey and Mackenzie was fifty per cent. 
 under the lowest tender of the French contractors. 
 Increased experience enabled the French workmen 
 to earn higher wages, and, on the other hand, closer 
 contact with men of less vigorous habits gradually 
 diminished the energy of the English labourers. 
 For ordinary work, Frenchmen soon become almost 
 as efficient as Englishmen, as the following dialogue 
 with Mr. Milroy, a member of my father's staff, 
 clearly explains : — 
 
 ' In the particular work you have been speaking 
 of, the two great trades employed were masons and 
 carpenters ? ' Mr. Milroy : ' Yes, I found plenty of
 
 12 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 good masons and carpenters in France. The latter 
 are, in my opinion, superior for such works to 
 English carpenters, both in the quality of the work 
 done and in the price at which they do it. Their 
 tools also are particularly well adapted to the work. 
 This may arise from Paris having been, in a great 
 measure, built of timber, filled in between with 
 small rubble stones and stucco, and then plastered 
 outside. The men seemed to have acquired a 
 speciahty for that work, and could do it better than 
 any carpenters I have ever seen. What I have 
 stated was proved in 1853, when I went back. I 
 then went on to the Caen and Cherbourg line. 
 There was only a sprinkling of Englishmen then. 
 The agents and sub-contractors, who went out with 
 me, had acquired the language sufficiently, when 
 formerly engaged in France, to carry on their 
 communications with the French workmen without 
 interpreters. Upon the Paris and Rouen line we had 
 a large proportion of English labourers, but on the 
 Caen and Cherbourg Une a very small proportion ; 
 yet the one line was constructed quite as cheaply as 
 the other.' 
 
 And now let us turn to leading foreign authorities 
 on the relative value of English and French labour. 
 The speeches of M, Thiers and the protectionists 
 in the French Chamber described the condition of 
 French industry in years long past in terms which 
 give little occasion for envious feelings in the EngHsh 
 reader. They say that in mixed woollen and cotton 
 stuffs England had beaten France ; that we pro- 
 duced 10,000,000 tons of iron as contrasted with an 
 
 1
 
 WAGES AND THE COST OF WORK 13 
 
 annual production of 1,000,000 tons in France ; 
 that the French had no heavy goods to export ; that 
 having given up differential rates, they had to import 
 all their colonial and eastern produce from England ; 
 and that the merchant navy was rapidly decaying. 
 Comparing the relative positions of England and 
 France, in reference to cotton manufactures, 
 M. Thiers stated that while England worked up 
 3,000,000, France only worked up from 600,000 to 
 700,000 bales, and that the cost of production was 
 from 15 to 20 per cent, less in England than in 
 France. ' It was,' he said, ' the cheap industry 
 of Rouen which suffered most from EngUsh com- 
 petition. The genius of England was for cheapness 
 — that of France for quality.' 
 
 The relative importance of the cotton manu- 
 facture in the different countries of Europe was also 
 compared by M. de Forcade in the course of the same 
 debate. His statement gave the following results : 
 that England had 30,000,000 spindles, France 
 6,800,000, the Zollverein 2,500,000, Russia 1,800,000, 
 Austria 1,700,000, Switzerland 1,500,000, Belgium 
 600,000, and Italy 450,000 spindles. It is well here 
 to remind the reader that the statistics quoted 
 represent the state of things fifty years ago. 
 
 As in these later days so in earlier times costs 
 of work have been reduced by improved methods, 
 and by the greatly extended use of machines. 
 
 Mr. Nasmjrth, in his evidence before the Trades 
 Unions Commissioners, described how the long 
 strike of 1851 developed to the utmost the use of 
 labour-saving machinery. ' The great feature,' he
 
 14 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 said, ' of our modern mechanical improvement has 
 been the introduction of self-acting tools. All that 
 a mechanic has to do, and which any lad is able to 
 do, is, not to labour, but to watch the beautiful 
 functions of the machine. All that class of men 
 who depended upon mere dexterity are set aside 
 altogether. I had four boys to one mechanic. By 
 these mechanical contrivances I reduced the number 
 of men in my employ, 1500 hands, fully one half. 
 The result was that my profits were much in- 
 creased.' 
 
 ' In the cotton mill of Messrs. Ho ulds worths, in 
 Glasgow, a spinner employed on a mule of 3360 
 spindles and spinning cotton 120 hanks to the 
 pound, produced, in 1823, working 74| hours in the 
 week, 46 pounds of yarn, his nett weekly earnings 
 for which amounted to 26s. Id. In 1833, the rate 
 of wages having in the meanwhile been reduced 
 13^ per cent., and the time of working having been 
 lessened to 69 hours, the spinner was enabled by the 
 greater perfection of the machinery to produce, 
 on a mule of the same number of spindles, o2| pounds 
 of yarn of the same fineness, and his nett weekly 
 earnings were advanced to 295. lOcZ.' 
 
 A much more considerable economy than this was 
 effected by increasing the size of the mules. Mr. 
 Cowell, in the Supplementary Report of the Factory 
 Commissioners, gave the following example of the 
 effect on the spinner's earnings : — ' In the early part 
 of last year a spinner produced 1 6 pounds of yarn of 
 No. 200 from mules of the power of 300 to 324 
 spindles. Consulting the list of prices, I perceive
 
 WAGES AND THE COST OF WORK 15 
 
 that in May he was paid 35. Gd. a pound ; this gives 
 545. for his gross receipts, out of which he had to 
 pay 135. for assistants. This leaves him with 4l5. 
 earnings. His mules are now converted into mules 
 of the power of 648 ; he is paid 2s. 5d. a pound 
 instead of 35. 6d. ; but he produces 32 pounds of 
 yarn of the fineness of 200 hanks to the pound in 
 69 hours. His gross receipts are immediately raised 
 to 775. 4d. He requires five assistants to help him ; 
 but deducting 275. for their pay from his gross 
 receipts, there remains a sum of 505. 4:d. for his net 
 earnings for 69 hours' work, instead of 4l5., an 
 increase of more than 20 per cent., w^hile the cost 
 of the yarn is reduced ISd. per pound,' 
 
 Mr. Alfred Field describing, as must often be 
 repeated, the state of things fifty years ago, told the 
 Ck^mmittee on Scientific Education that, in the 
 United States, a workman in the hardware trade 
 earned double the daily wages of an English work- 
 man ; but labour-saving appliances had been 
 brought to such perfection that in twenty-five classes 
 of hardware goods the United States were able to 
 export largely into countries in which the pay of 
 artisans is scarcely a quarter of the wage paid in 
 America. They sent their spades, shovels, axes, 
 coopers' tools, and pumps to England ; although 
 raw material and wages were twice as dear in the 
 United States as in England. 
 
 It is by improved methods of husbandry and 
 by superior machinery alone that agriculturists are 
 enabled to pay higher wages and higher rents and 
 yet obtain a moderate return on their capital, and
 
 16 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 some remuneration for their scientific education 
 and personal attention to their business. 
 
 As an instance of the incapacity of unskilled men 
 in its most exaggerated form, I may mention a case 
 which occurred in Jamaica, on the only railway 
 which had been executed in that Island. The usual 
 plant required for the construction of the railway had 
 been sent out, and the native labourers were supplied 
 with barrows for the purpose of removing the earth. 
 When these men began to work they w^ere so ignorant 
 of the mechanical advantages to be derived from the 
 use of the barrow that they placed these vehicles, 
 laden with earth, upon the top of their heads ; and 
 it was not without much expostulation that the 
 English foremen were enabled to induce them to 
 try the effect of placing the barrow on a plank, and 
 wheeling instead of carrying the load, 
 
 A few remarks may now be offered, showing, in 
 numerous instances, that low rates of wages by no 
 means ensure low cost of work. The examples 
 quoted are taken mainly from official reports from 
 Russia, Eastern Europe, Belgium, America, India. 
 First let us take a report by Mr. Michell as to 
 economic conditions in Russia at the date when he 
 wrote. 
 
 An apprehension of the military power of Russia, 
 which a certain school of politicians are too ready to 
 entertain, might, perhaps, be changed to pity if they 
 knew the condition of the Russian peasantry, and 
 their inability to bear the strain of a long pro- 
 tracted war. Even in peace they were engaged 
 throughout their lives in an exhausting struggle
 
 WAGES AND THE COST OF WORK 17 
 
 for bare existence. From abject poverty the women 
 were compelled to share unceasingly in the out- 
 door labours of the men. The infant mortality in 
 Russia in years gone by was appalling. The 
 peasant women of Russia gave birth to their off- 
 spring under circumstances equally perilous to the 
 life of the mother and the child. Their confinement 
 often took place in a barn or a stable. They had no 
 medical attendance, and in three days at the utmost 
 they were once more employed in hard field labour. 
 The result of such privation and suffering was that 
 a large proportion of infants died within a week 
 after their birth. The number of males living at the 
 age of five years, in proportion to the total number 
 of the population, was 20| per cent, less in Russia 
 than in Great Britain, France, and Belgium. The 
 shortness of the average duration of life in Russia 
 was equally lamentable. In the North- West Pro- 
 vinces, the average limit of life was between twenty- 
 two and twenty-seven. In the Volga basin and 
 South-Eastern Provinces it was twenty years ; in 
 Viatka, Perm, and Orenburg, only fifteen years. 
 
 The Blue Book on the Tenure of Land in Foreign 
 Countries did honour to our diplomatic service. 
 Numerous examples were given, showing that where 
 labour is cheapest, the indifference to labour-saving 
 machinery was most conspicuous ; and that where 
 labour was dearest it was most effectually 
 economised. These axioms were strikingly illus- 
 trated by a comparison of the agriculture of Russia 
 and Prussia with the agriculture of the United 
 States and of those European countries in which 
 labour was most liberally paid. 
 
 C
 
 18 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 In Russia the day labourer's wages ranged from 
 8d. to Is. 4:d. with food, the cost of which was from 
 2d. to 3d. a day. The average pay of the female 
 labourer was 6|rf. a day, with the addition of food. 
 During harvest, the male labourer could command 
 from I5, 4d. to 25. Sd. a day with food ; the female 
 labourer from Q^d. to 2s. 8d. a day with food. The 
 yield of crops in Russia was said by Mr. Michell to 
 be less than half the yield obtained in England or 
 Saxony, and smaller than in any other country in 
 Europe. 
 
 The miserable pay of the women employed in the 
 manufactories of Russia suggests some observations 
 as to the evils which necessarily arise from sub- 
 jecting the female population to excessive manual 
 labour. In aU the less civilised countries of Europe 
 women are compelled to share in the manual labours 
 of men. This practice is in a large degree the cause 
 of that very poverty which it is intended to alleviate. 
 The introduction of so many additional hands into 
 the labour market has a marked effect in diminishing 
 the reward of labour. On the Lemberg-Czemowitz 
 line, in some places, half the people employed were 
 women. They earned 1.60 franc a day, and the men 
 from 2 to 3 francs a day. 
 
 Mr. Mill in his ' Political Economy ' quotes a 
 statement by Professor Jones, in which he said that 
 the Russians, or rather those German writers who 
 have observed the manners and habits of Russia, 
 supply some remarkable facts : ' Two Middlesex 
 mowers,' they say, ' will mow in a day as much grass 
 as six Russian serfs, and in spite of the dearness of
 
 WAGES AND THE COST OF WORK 19 
 
 provisions in England and their cheapness in Russia, 
 the mowing of a quantity of hay, which would cost 
 the EngUsh farmer half a copeck, wiU cost the 
 Russian proprietor three or four copecks.' The 
 Pnissian Councillor of State, Jacobi, is considered 
 to have proved that in Russia, where everything is 
 cheap, the labour of the serf was twice as expensive 
 as that of the labourer in England. In Austria the 
 labour of a serf was one-third of that of a free hired 
 labourer. 
 
 Let us turn from Russia to Eastern Europe. 
 On the Bukovina line the wages of the men for 
 picking were Is. 6d. per day, while the women, who 
 worked only with the shovel, earned about 6c?. a day 
 less than the men. The cost of living for a man 
 and his wife and three children in Hungary may 
 be stated approximately at Is. a day. In those 
 countries the cost of unskilled labour is small. 
 The struggle for life is so severe that every child, 
 the moment it can add the smallest fraction to the 
 earnings of the family, is sent into the fields. The 
 sacrifice of these earnings, however scanty, for a 
 few years, for the purpose of acquiring a knowledge 
 of a skilled trade, is impossible with a peasantry so 
 destitute. The cost of skilled labour is thus dis- 
 proportionately high. 
 
 Speaking of Ireland — the Ireland of over half a 
 century ago — Mr. Joseph Hume, in a speech on the 
 Combination Laws, delivered in the House of Com- 
 mons on June 29, 1825, said that he had heard it 
 stated ' that low wages were a good thing. That he 
 denied. Low wages tended to degrade the labourer. 
 
 c2
 
 20 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 It was the high wages which the English artisan 
 received, compared with the miserable pay of the 
 Irish labourer, which made the former so superior 
 in energy.' 
 
 The inferiority of the Irish labourer in the days 
 of Mr. Hume is described and fully explained in the 
 Report of the Irish Railways Commissioners pre- 
 sented to Parliament in 1837: 'In the northern 
 province the people were better lodged, clothed, and 
 fed than in the other provinces ; wages were higher. 
 Food consisted chiefly of meal, potatoes, and milk.' 
 
 ' In the southern districts the food of the popula- 
 tion was inferior, consisting at best of potatoes and 
 milk, without meal. The wage of the labourer 
 varied from Is. to 8d. a day. The condition of the 
 inhabitants of the western district was inferior even 
 to that of the people of the south of Ireland. Their 
 food consisted of potatoes alone, without meal, and, 
 in most cases, without milk. Their cabins were 
 wretched hovels, their beds were of straw, and the 
 wages of the labourer were reduced to the lowest 
 point, being, upon the average, not more than 6d. 
 a day.' Poverty and misery had deprived the 
 people of all energy. Every motive to exertion was 
 destroyed ; agriculture was in the rudest and the 
 lowest state. 
 
 The effect of these depressing circumstances, 
 aggravated of course by the backward state of 
 agriculture, was strikingly illustrated in the defi- 
 ciency of produce, and in the amount of work per- 
 formed by Irish labour, compared with that of the 
 same class in England.
 
 WAGES AND THE COST OF WORK 21 
 
 The Irish Poor Law Commissioners stated that 
 the average produce of the soil in Ireland was not 
 much above one half the average produce in England, 
 whilst the number of labourers employed in agricul- 
 ture was., in proportion to the quantity of land under 
 cultivation, more than double, viz. as five to two. 
 Thus ten labourers in Ireland raised only the same 
 quantity of produce that four labourers raised in 
 England, and this produce was generally of an 
 inferior quahty. So striking a disproportion, 
 though generally admitting of very considerable 
 quaHfication with reference to the different nature 
 and degree of faciUties afforded to the labourer in 
 the two countries, still showed a decided advantage 
 in favovTr of the English workman, and went far 
 to prove the dearness of ill-requited labour. 
 
 Turn to India. On the Delhi and Umritzar 
 Railway it was found, as I was informed by Mr. 
 Henfrey, my father's resident partner, that, mile for 
 mile, the cost of railway work was about the same 
 as in England. Earthwork was executed by the 
 cooUes at a cheaper rate than at home, but native 
 skilled labour was more expensive. The wages 
 paid were : — masons, 10 to 12 rupees a month ; 
 carpenters, 15 to 18 ; bricklayers, 8 to 12. The 
 execution of the works on a railway in India was 
 generally undertaken by small contractors or 
 middlemen, who in many cases were shopkeepers. 
 There was a difficulty in obtaining experienced 
 sub-contractors, and in consequence it was necessary 
 to employ a numerous body of English foremen. 
 Hence the cost of supervision was greatly enhanced, 
 
 9 DEai92l . )
 
 22 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 and was found to amount on the average to twenty 
 per cent, on the entire outlay. 
 
 Before the railways caused an increased demand 
 for labour in India, wages ranged from 4:d. to 4|c?. 
 a day. The demand for labour raised wages con- 
 siderably. Even then the coolies were not paid 
 more than Gd. a day. These wages far more than 
 sufficed to supply their wants. Their food con- 
 sisted of two pounds of rice a day, mixed with a little 
 curry. The cost of living on this, their usual diet, 
 was only Is. a week. For I5. Qd. they could live in 
 comparative luxury. On the railways of India it 
 has been found that great increase of pay has neither 
 augmented the rapidity of execution nor added to 
 the comfort of the labourer. The Hindoo workman 
 knows no other want than his daily portion of rice. 
 The torrid chmate renders water-tight habitations 
 and ample clothing alike unnecessary. The labourer 
 therefore desists from work as soon as he has pro- 
 vided for the necessities of the day. Higher pay 
 adds nothing to his comforts ; it serves but to 
 diminish his ordinary industry. 
 
 In proportion as skill and manual dexterity are 
 required, the differences in the cost of constructing 
 engineering works disappear. In Italy, as in India, 
 it has been found that a numerous but unskilled 
 population, in a climate where the necessaries of life 
 are inexpensive, can undertake the mere manual 
 labour at a cheaper rate than in England ; though 
 this is only true when works are not pushed on so 
 rapidly as to require the importation of labour from 
 a distance. Wlien the local labourers are alone
 
 WAGES AND THE COST OF WORK 23 
 
 employed, the Italian villagers, men, women, and 
 children, carrying earth to and fro in baskets on their 
 heads, and as ignorant as the coolies themselves of 
 the resources and appliances of mechanical science, 
 can execute earthwork about as cheaply as in India. 
 On the other hand, masonry and other work re- 
 quiring skilled labour is rather dearer in Italy than 
 in England. 
 
 In Mauritius the interesting experience ac- 
 quired in the construction of a railway by my 
 father's partner, Mr. Longridge, estabUshed the 
 same result as in the cases already quoted. Though 
 the daily wages were low, with due allowance 
 for extra supervision, the cost of earthwork, rock 
 cutting, and masonry was quite as great as the cost 
 in England. Sldlled work, as, for example, car- 
 pentry, was from twenty to twenty-five per cent, 
 more costly in Mauritius than in England. 
 
 The wages paid in Great Britain are higher than 
 in any other country Yet even with respect to 
 bridges, viaducts, tunnels, and aU works of art on 
 railways, they can be executed at a cheaper rate in 
 England than in any other country in the world, 
 where the rate of wages is lower. Masonry costs as 
 much in Italy as in Manchester. This approximate 
 uniformity of cost is exhibited in all cases. The 
 superiority of the Englishman to the workman of 
 other nations was equally remarkable, whenever 
 there was an opportunity of employing them side 
 by side. 
 
 The differences of character and capabihties, 
 which tend in such a remarkable degree to establish
 
 24 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 an equality in the cost of labour in every part of the 
 world, have occupied the attention of many thought- 
 ful and penetrating minds. Mr. John Stuart Mill 
 says that ' individuals or nations do not differ so 
 much in the efforts they are able and wiUing to make 
 under strong immediate incentives, as in their 
 capacity of present exertion for a distant object, 
 and in the thoroughness of their application to work 
 on ordinary occasions. This last quality is the 
 principal industrial excellence of the Enghsh people. 
 This efficiency of labour is connected with their whole 
 character, with their defects as much as with their 
 good quahties. The majority of Englishmen have 
 no life but in their work — that alone stands between 
 them and ennui. The absence of any taste for 
 amusement or enjoyment of repose is common to all 
 classes. The effect is that where hard labour is the 
 thing required, there are no better labourers than 
 the Enghsh.' 
 
 The experience of practical men confirms the 
 opinion expressed by Montesquieu, in the ' Esprit 
 des liOis ' — ' II y a dans I'Europe une espece de 
 balancement entre les nations du Midi et celles du 
 Nord. Les premieres ont toute sorte de commodites 
 pour la vie et pour les besoins ; les secondes ont 
 beaucoup de besoins et peu de commodites pour 
 la vie. L'equilibre se maintient par la paresse 
 qu'elle a donnee aux nations du Midi, et par I'in- 
 dustrie et I'activite qu'elle a donn6es a celles du 
 Nord.' 
 
 In a paper furnished to the Select Committee on 
 East India Finance by Sir Bartle Frere, some re-
 
 WAGES AND THE COST OF WORK 25 
 
 markable examples were given of a rise in wages in 
 consequence of the increased competition for labour 
 for railways and other great public works. The 
 following table shows the variations in the average 
 monthly wages of a carpenter in Bombay : 
 
 1830-39 1840-49 1850-59 1863 
 
 s. d. s. d. s. d. 8. 
 
 30 4 28 10 32 7^ 58 
 
 The wages of a coolie at the same periods were : 
 
 1830-39 1840-49 1850-59 1863 
 
 s. d. s. d. s. d. s. d. 
 
 14 9| 12 3^ 14 2 27 
 
 Everywhere in the vicinity of railway works the 
 Collectors remark on their great effect in raising 
 wages. The practice of promptly paying for all 
 labour in liberal money-wages caused an important 
 social revolution in the habits of all who live by 
 labour, even at a great distance from the railway 
 works. The labourers often travelled from their 
 homes 200 miles to obtain work so paid, returning 
 home at the harvest-time. 
 
 The rise in wages in Bombay had increased the 
 number of consumers of superior quahties of grain 
 and meat. The increased consumption had raised 
 the cost of living. The advance in the cost of living 
 had had the effect of raising the rate of wages. 
 Moreover, the increased external trade of Bombay, 
 the influx of money for the purchase of commodities 
 and the consequent depreciation in the purchasing 
 power of buUion, and the increased demand for 
 labour, had by their combined influence produced
 
 26 
 
 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 an astonishing advance of wages in Bombay, as 
 compared with Bengal. 
 
 The difference between the rates in Bengal and 
 Bombay is shown below : 
 
 Carpenters 
 Masons . 
 Labouring coolies . 
 Horse-keepers 
 
 In Bengal 
 
 per Month 
 
 Rupees 
 
 9 
 
 In Bombay 
 
 per Month 
 
 Rupees 
 
 25 
 
 5A 
 
 6 
 
 5 
 
 21 
 
 9U 
 
 I quote the following from Mr. Michell : ' It 
 is fortunate that such an amehoration of the condi- 
 tion of the people is taking place. In many districts 
 black bread and water are the only food of the 
 people, and the cost of this meagre dietary varies 
 from 5s. to 6s. a month. 
 
 'Since 1853 we have subscribed no less than 
 £40,000,000 for Indian Railways. A considerable 
 portion of this sum has been paid to native labourers, 
 and the result has been that in the districts traversed 
 by these railways wages have advanced within a 
 short time no less than 100 per cent. In consequence 
 of the great demand for workmen, the price of labour 
 has increased to an extent still more marvellous 
 in Bombay.'
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 WAGES GENERALLY 
 
 In the widely scattered countries over which my 
 father's labours extended fluctuations in the rates, 
 as might have been expected, were wide. Let us 
 first take the wages current at the period when my 
 father first engaged in the construction of railways. 
 
 In the year 1837, on the Penkridge viaduct of the 
 Grand Junction Railway, wages for navvies were 
 28. 6d. to 25. 8d. per day, artisans 22s. to 23s. per 
 week. On the works of the Aire and Calder Naviga- 
 tion, executed in 1836, navvies working in butty- 
 gangs by piecework earned from 4s. to os., and in 
 some cases 6s. per day. On the London and 
 Birmingham Railway plate-layers, working on the 
 piece-work system, earned, by the day, 3s. 6d. 
 
 In 1837 wages advanced in Manchester from 4s. 
 to 4s. Qd. per day. Working hours — on Monday 
 from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. ; on the four following days 
 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. ; on Saturday 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. An 
 hour and three quarters each day was allowed for 
 meals. Thus the earnings were £1 7s. for 59| hours 
 of work. (In the spring of 1869 the wages in 
 Manchester were £1 13s. for a week of 55 hours.) 
 
 On the Trent Valley line, completed in 1846, 
 wages of navvies averaged 3s. to 3s. 6c?. On 
 many portions of the contract, during a great part
 
 28 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 of the time in which it was being executed, the 
 men worked night and day. At Nuneaton there 
 was no difficulty in engaging 100 men in the 
 course of three days to be employed in night work 
 alone. Men could not be found to do night work so 
 readily at the present time. 
 
 The following statement, prepared by Mr. 
 Mackay, a fine fellow whom I well remember as for 
 many years in the employ of my father, gives the 
 weekly wages earned by men employed on railway 
 works from 1843 to 1869. The notes furnish a 
 comparative statement of the cost of work re- 
 presented by the different rates of wages, and contain 
 a short explanation of the extent of the demand for 
 labour at the different periods included in the 
 Return : — 
 
 PERIODfl. 
 
 1843 1846 1849 1851 1855 1857 1860 1863 1866 1869 
 
 s. d. I. d. I. d. s. d. I. d. i. d. ». d. s. d. i. d. i. d. 
 
 Masons . . . 21 33 24 21 26 6 24 22 6 24 27 27 
 
 Bricklayers . . 21 30 24 21 25 6 22 6 22 6 24 27 25 6 
 
 Carpenters »nd 
 
 Blacksmiths . . 21 30 22 6 21 24 22 6 22 6 24 26 6 24 
 Navvies, Getters 
 
 (Pickmen) . . 16 6 24 18 16 19 18 17 19 20 18 
 Navvies, Fitters 
 
 (Shovellers) . . 15 22 6 16 6 14 17 17 16 17 18 17 
 Cost of labour only, 
 per cube )'ard : 
 Of brickwork .23 39 29 23 26 26 24 26 29 26 
 Of earthwork . 4J 7i 5 4 6i 6i 6 5J 6} 5i 
 
 1843. ' Gloucester and Bristol Railway, period of 
 general depression, provisions for men and horses 
 very cheap. Men plentiful, excellent workmen. 
 Clay cuttings, on the Gloucester to Stonehouse line, 
 taken out at Qd. a yard, inclusive of horse labour.' 
 
 1846. ' Lancaster and Carlisle, Caledonian, Trent 
 Valley, North Staffordshire, Eastern Union Railways
 
 WAGES GENERALLY 29 
 
 in construction. Height of the railway mania. 
 Demand for labour much in excess of supply. Work 
 going on night and day, even the same men working 
 continuously for several days and nights. In- 
 stances recorded of men being paid for forty-seven 
 days in one lunar month. Provisions dear. Ex- 
 cessively high wages, excessive work, excessive 
 drinking, indifferent lodgings caused great demorali- 
 sation to the good old navvy, already on the 
 decline.' 
 
 ' Great Northern, Oxford, Worcester and Wolver- 1849. 
 hampton, Oxford and Birmingham, Chester and 
 Holyhead Railways in construction. Great reduc- 
 tion in wages caused by the financial embarrass- 
 ments in October 1847, and political turmoils and 
 revolutions in 1848 on the Continent and at home. 
 General distrust, aggravated by the unsettled state 
 of affairs abroad. Works stopped in 1847 partially 
 resumed in 1848. The 1846 contracts not yet 
 completed. In 1849 work comparatively plentiful. 
 Provisions moderate in price.' 
 
 ' Shrewsbury and Hereford, North Devon, in 1851. 
 construction. Contracts taken in 1846 not all 
 completed. Great depression in the labour market. 
 But little work going on. Political affairs on the 
 Continent unsettled. Provisions very cheap.' 
 
 ' Leicester and Hitchin, Leominster and Kingston 1855. 
 Railways in construction. Work still slack during 
 this period. Best men gone to France, Spain, 
 Belgium, Switzerland, and Italy to Mr. Brassey's 
 works. Provisions dear, horse provender exces- 
 sively high, costing 5s. a day each horse.'
 
 30 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 1857. ' Shrewsbury and Crewe, Leominster and Kings- 
 ton Railways in construction. Work still very 
 slack ; the effects of the Crimean War had not 
 wholly passed away.' 
 
 I860. ' Knighton and Craven arms, Woofferton and 
 Tenbury, widening of Shrewsbury and Hereford, 
 Severn Valley Railway Works in construction. 
 Men plentiful, provisions cheap.' 
 
 1863. ' Tenbury and Bewdley, South Staffordshire, 
 Ludlow and Clee Hill, Wenlock, Nantwich and 
 Dra3rton, widening of Shrewsbury and Hereford, 
 Worm Valley drainage, Letton Valley drainage in 
 construction. Men plentiful, provisions rather 
 dear.' 
 
 1866. ' Wellington and Drayton, widening of Nantwich 
 and Drayton, Hereford Loop, Hooton and Parkgate, 
 Wenlock and Craven arms, Ebbw Vale in con- 
 struction.' 
 
 ' Silverdale and Drayton, Sirhowy, widening of 
 Abergavenny and Merthyr Railways, and London 
 drainage works in construction. Provisions rather 
 dear.' 
 
 The explanatory memorandum does not exhaust 
 the list of Mr. Brassey's contracts in progress at the 
 several dates mentioned. Those only are included 
 which happened to be in the recollection of the 
 writer, whose immediate field of observation was 
 necessarily limited to a few in the Midland 
 Counties. 
 
 The Crimean War produced a marked effect on 
 the rate of wages in every trade, both in England and 
 on the Continent. In the construction of the
 
 WAGES GENERALLY 31 
 
 Bellegarde Tunnel, two and a half miles in length, 
 on the Lyons and Geneva Jlaihvay, the wages of the 
 Piedmontese quarrymen rose from 2| to 3, 3|, and 
 4 francs a day. The Englishmen, working in shifts 
 of from six to ten hours each, w ere paid at the rate 
 of from 8 to 10 francs a day. Their wages were 
 raised, partly on account of the difficult nature of 
 the works. The shafts were from 600 to 700 feet 
 deep. 
 
 The same causes were producing the same results 
 on the Continent as in England, In Brussels such 
 was the demand for labour for excavation that the 
 men employed as navvies were actually receiving 
 higher wages than skilled masons. The wages of 
 the navvy in Brussels Mere 60 centimes an hour, 
 whereas the masons were receiving only 50 centimes. 
 
 Turning to the trades not directly connected 
 with raihvay construction, a review in the columns 
 of the Economist furnished a striking illustration 
 of the rise of wages consequent upon the activity 
 of trade. 
 
 In 1871 wages rose in the iron, engineering, coal, 
 and hardware trades from fifteen to twenty per cent. 
 In the Cleveland iron trade the rise w^as even greater. 
 The wages of labourers advanced from 3s. to 4s. a 
 day ; puddlers from 40s. per week to 55s. ; and from 
 5s. 3d. to 7s. per score of 7| tons. 
 
 In Lancashire and Yorkshire lads were being 
 imported from the country into the cotton trade. 
 Their wages commenced at from 15s. to 16s. per 
 week. The exports from the United Kingdom 
 reached the value of £319,000,000. The greatest
 
 32 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 increase took place in those trades in which the 
 wages had advanced the most. 
 
 Our exports of iron and steel doubled within a 
 period of seven years. The activity of the Welsh 
 iron manufacture was unprecedented. The follow- 
 ing statement, prepared by the proprietors of large 
 iron works in South Wales, shows the comparative 
 earnings of the workmen in their employ in the years 
 1842, 1851, and 1869 :
 
 
 M 
 
 -«oo 
 
 O O O !0 
 
 O O o o o o o 
 
 CO CO CO 
 
 
 • 00 o 
 
 O O C-l (N 
 
 .-tiMcoo oooofc: 
 
 . <M 00 CO C5 ci iri 
 
 
 * -H ?i 
 
 CO ro (M — 1 
 
 g 1 1 1 • 1 ' 1 
 
 
 o. 
 
 00 
 
 O 1 
 
 1 1 1 1 
 
 CCOOOO OOO/S 
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 D
 
 34 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 Take the Continent of Europe. At the great zinc 
 works known as the Vieille Montagne, near Liege, 
 where 6500 hands were employed, in twelve years 
 the wages had increased 45 per cent. 
 
 In the famous engine-building estabhshment at 
 Creuzot, founded by the father of Mr. Charles Manby, 
 10,000 persons were employed at the period under 
 review. The annual expenditure in wages amounted 
 to £400,000. Mechanics were paid, when the 
 estabhshment was first created, at the rate of 
 2| francs a day. Later on none received less than 5 
 francs a day. Between 1850 and 1866 the mean rate 
 advanced from 25. to 25. lid. per head, or 38 per 
 cent., and some men earned from 65. Sd. to 85. 4d!. 
 per day. In addition to their money wages, great 
 facilities were given to the workpeople, at the ex- 
 pense of the proprietors, for feeding, clothing, and 
 educating themselves and their famihes. Seven 
 hundred families of the operatives were lodged by the 
 company at 50 per cent, below the normal rate of 
 house rent, and 700 gardens were let at the nominal 
 rent of 2 francs per annum. 
 
 At MM. Schneider's, without the assistance of 
 a Trades Union, the working people had obtained, 
 during seventeen years, an augmentation of wage of 
 38 per cent. In England, in the corresponding 
 period, the most powerful of all the Trade Societies, 
 with an accumulated fund of £149,000, had found it 
 impossible to secure any increase in the earnings of 
 its members. 
 
 Mr. Fane says, in his report to Lord Stanley, 
 pubUshed at the date of pubUcation of ' Work and
 
 WAGES GENERALLY 35 
 
 Wages' in 1872, that 'the general rate of money- 
 wages in France had increased about 40 per cent. 
 in the last fifteen years, in those industries which 
 competed with foreigners in the neutral markets. 
 This rise in the money wages had been accompanied 
 by a considerable rise in the price of food and 
 clothing ; still, the relative proportions in which 
 money wages and the price of commodities had 
 risen left a margin in favour of the former.' 
 
 Examples without number might be quoted of the 
 rise in wages which contractors had to meet in the 
 execution of works in sparsely peopled countries. 
 
 When the Grand Trunk Railway was being con- 
 structed in Canada men were engaged in Lancashire 
 and Cheshire. On landing in Canada they received 
 40 per cent, more than they had been previously 
 earning in England for doing the same work. The 
 cost of the works was about 30 per cent, dearer. The 
 wages of labourers were 35. Gd. a day at the com- 
 mencement of the works. They rose to 65. a day 
 ere they were completed. Masons, whose wages 
 when in England were 55. a day, and who were taken 
 out to Canada at the expense of the contractors, 
 earned 7s. 6d. a day in the colony ; although the 
 cost of Hving was not greater in Canada than in 
 England. The supply of their labour in England 
 was abundant, while in Canada skilled artisans were 
 comparatively rare. 
 
 For the construction of a railway in New South 
 Wales, two thousand men were sent out from 
 England, at the joint expense of the contractors 
 and the Grovemment. The cost of hving for a 
 
 d2
 
 36 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 single navvy was IO5, a week ; as compared 
 with. 85. a week in England. Navvies, who in 
 England had been paid from 3s. 3d. to 3s. &d. per 
 day, received from 75. 6d. to 85. ; and the wages of 
 skilled hands were increased in proportion. The 
 daily wages of masons ranged from lis. to 13s. ; 
 bricklayers, lis. to 12s. ; brickmakers, 8s. to 10s. ; 
 and carpenters, 10s. to 12s. ; such an advance in the 
 rate of pay of the same men can only be explained 
 by the altered relations between the supply of labour 
 and the demand in the colony, as contrasted with 
 the mother country. 
 
 In Spain, in the construction of the railway from 
 Bilbao to Tudela, the wages earned by labourers, 
 which at the commencement of the contract were 
 Is. a day, rose, before the works were completed, 
 to 3s. a day. On the same contract the wages of 
 the masons increased, in the corresponding period, 
 from Is. 4fZ. to 5s. a day. 
 
 So in other parts of the world. One of the last 
 investigations made on my father's behalf was con- 
 nected with a project for a complete system of 
 railways in Persia. If the scheme had been carried 
 out, it was assumed that the pay of engine-drivers, 
 fitters, and stationmasters would be £250 a year, 
 and of foremen platelayers £120 a year. 
 
 Take South America. A fitter, whose wages in 
 England would be 30s. a week, commanded a salary 
 of £200 a year at Rosario in the Argentine Republic. 
 In Lima, in 1869, machinists received 10s. 6d. to I85. 
 per day ; boilermakers and smiths, 12s. to 18s. a 
 day ; plumbers, 10s. 6d. to 15s. ; common labourers,
 
 WAGES GENERALLY 37 
 
 35. 9d. to 65. Single men could board at Lima for 
 from 2s. Sd. to 3s. a day, and the rent of houses, 
 containing two or three rooms and a kitchen, 
 varied from £2 55. to £3 155. a month. 
 
 In Syria the rates of wages were higher than 
 might have been expected — not indeed because 
 capital was abundant, but because the supply of 
 labour was limited. In Alexandretta the daily 
 wages of common labourers were I5. 4c?. ; masons 
 and carpenters were paid from 25. Id. to 35. Id. a 
 day. In Aleppo the daily wages of masons were 
 25. Sd. to 25. 9d. ; carpenters, 2s. 2d. to 25. Id. ; 
 masons' labourers, I5. lOd., and masons' boys, 
 Is. 3d. 
 
 Miners worked, at the date of the writing of ' Work Mining 
 and Wages,' on the average twelve hours a day in En'nne- 
 South Wales, seven hours in the North of England. buUding, 
 The late Sir George EUiott, M.P., had found that 
 the cost of getting coals in Aberdare was 25 per cent, 
 more than in Northumberland. 
 
 The interesting pubhcations of Mr. Lowthian Bell, 
 a report to Congress of Mr. Commissioner Wells, the 
 Special Commissioner of Revenue in the United 
 States in 1868, and a report of Mr. Redgrave, one 
 of the Inspectors of Factories, contained many other 
 equally remarkable cases in various trades, all 
 tending to prove that the cost of labour cannot be 
 conclusively determined by the rate of daily wages 
 in the respective industries. 
 
 Mr. Lowthian Bell, in an address read at a 
 meeting of ironmasters in the North of England, 
 gave the result of his investigations into the cost 
 
 '^79722
 
 38 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 of smelting pig-iron in France. By a careful 
 inquiry at a large establishment he had ascertained 
 that forty-two men were there employed to carry 
 out the same amount of work which twenty-five 
 men were able to do at the Clarence factories on th6 
 Tees. In spite of the actual labour on a ton of pig- 
 iron for smelting being 20 per cent, cheaper in France 
 than in England, the entire smelting charges were 
 sensibly greater in France than in the general run of 
 work at Middlesbrough. Taking into account the 
 saving in respect of fuel, the cost of producing pig- 
 iron in France was 205., in some cases even 305., 
 per ton more than that exhibited by the cost-sheets 
 of the manufacturers. 
 
 The average cost of raising coal at the pit's 
 mouth in France was said by Mr. Lowthian Bell to be 
 from 55. 6d. to 65. a ton, and the average price of coal 
 II5. per ton — the price for small coal used by the 
 ironmasters being 85. 6d. as compared with 55., 
 the price paid by the Cleveland smelters. 
 
 Belgium raised 11,000,000 tons of coal annually, 
 and exported 4,000,000 to France. The average 
 cost of coal at the pit's mouth was from 55. Gd. to 75. 
 a ton. The price varied in 1867 from 95. 6d. to 
 IO5. 6d. a ton. Neither in France nor in Belgium 
 was the cost of extracting the coal reduced by the 
 low price of labour. In the manufacture of iron 
 the opinion of Mr, Bell was confkmed by Mr. Hewett, 
 an American ironmaster, who told the Trades Unions 
 Commissioners that the price of iron was £1 sterling 
 per ton higher at Creuzot than in England, and by 
 M. Michel Chevalier, who, in his introduction to the
 
 WAGES GENERALLY 39 
 
 Reports of the Jurors of the French Exhibition in 
 1867, said that rails were from 25 to 30 francs dearer 
 per ton in France than in England. A similar 
 difference was shown in the rails purchased for the 
 Mont Cenis Railway, the price of which at the 
 works in France was from £7 125. to £8 per ton, 
 while the price in England was £7 per ton. The 
 duty of £2 85. per ton which was then payable on 
 rails imported into France was a proof of the 
 conscious inability of the French ironmasters to 
 compete with our manufacturers in an open market. 
 
 Mr. Commissioner Wells, in a report to the 
 American Congress, discussed in minute detail the 
 comparative cost of labour in the principal manu- 
 facturing countries. Taking the puddhng of iron 
 as the representative process of the iron trade, he 
 said that he found that the average price of labour 
 per day for puddlers was from Is. Qd. to 75. lOd. in 
 Staffordshire ; 6s. 4:d. in France ; and from 4s. Qd. 
 to 5s. in Belgium ; yet the average price of merchant 
 bar-iron was £6 10s. in England, £7 in Belgium, and 
 £8 in France. 
 
 In a report on the condition of the textile indus- 
 tries in England, Mr. Redgrave, one of Her Majesty's 
 Inspectors of Factories, said that, while the foreigner 
 was under the same conditions as to the raw 
 material as the English manufacturer, and his fuel 
 was more expensive, his workpeople did not work 
 with the same vigour and steadiness as Englishmen. 
 ' All the evidence that has come before me has gone 
 to prove that there is a great preponderance in favour 
 of this country. Comparing the work of a British
 
 40 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 with a foreign spinner, the average number of 
 persons employed to spindles was — in France, one 
 person to fourteen spindles ; in Russia, one to 
 twenty-eight spindles ; in Prussia, one to thirty- 
 seven ; in Great Britain, one to seventy-four. But 
 I could j&nd many cotton-spinning factories in my 
 district in which mules containing 2200 spindles 
 are managed by one minder and two assistants.' ' I 
 have recently been told,' he continued, ' by one 
 who had been an English manager in a factory at 
 Oldenburg, that though the hours of work were 
 from 5.30 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day, only about the 
 same weight of work was turned off under English 
 overlookers as would be produced in a working day 
 from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. in this country. Under 
 German overlookers the produce was much less. 
 The wages were 50 per cent, less in many cases than 
 in England. The number of hands, in proportion 
 to machinery, was much larger. In some depart- 
 ments it was in the proportion of five to three. 
 In Russia the inefiiciency of the labour of the foreign, 
 as compared with that of the English, operatives 
 was even more striking. On a comparison of the 
 wages, supposing the Russian operatives to work 
 only sixty hours a week as they did in England, 
 instead of seventy-five as in Russia, their wages 
 would not be one-fourth the amount earned in 
 England. The wage must be taken into account 
 with the power of the operative as a producer ; and 
 herein will be found an advantage of the English 
 operative over the foreign competitor sufficient, 
 with some qualification, to counterbalance the mere 
 cheapness of wage.'
 
 WAGES GENERALLY 41 
 
 Mr. Wells, in the report to which I have already 
 referred, confirmed the view expressed by Mr. 
 Redgrave. He said that, ' whereas female labour 
 in the cotton manufacture was paid at from 125. 
 to 155. a week in Great Britain ; at from 75. 3d. to 
 95. Id. in France, Belgium, and Germany ; at from 
 25. 4:d. to 25. lie?, in Russia, the one thing which 
 was most dreaded by the Continental manufacturers 
 everywhere was British competition. The demand 
 for Protection was loudest in France, Austria, and 
 Russia, where the average wages reached their 
 minimum.' 
 
 Mr. Rendel, acting on behalf of many leading 
 Railway Companies in India, placed large contracts 
 for locomotives in England, as being far more 
 cheaply produced in this country than elsewhere, 
 His experience was by no means limited to the 
 purchase of locomotives. Rails and iron-bridge 
 work upon the largest scale had been supplied in 
 England for the Indian railways for which he had 
 acted. Tenders were obtained on all occasions, when 
 a large order had been given, by open advertisement ; 
 and all Continental makers had been as free to tender 
 and would be accepted on the same guarantees as 
 EngHsh makers. Yet out of the total expenditure 
 during the ten years preceding the publication of 
 ' Work and Wages ' of from £7,000,000 to £8,000,000 
 sterling on materials and plant for the East Indian 
 railways constructed under Mr. Rendel's super- 
 vision, with the exceptions I have made, the whole 
 of these contracts had been obtained by English 
 manufacturers.
 
 42 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 Another interesting and conclusive proof of the 
 success with which our engine-builders could compete 
 for the supply of locomotives was furnished by the 
 following schedule, prepared by Mr. W. P. Andrew, 
 of the tenders for ninety-four locomotives received 
 by the Punjaub Railway Company in answer to a 
 public advertisement in January 1866 : — 
 
 Tenders for Supply of Engines for the Punjaub 
 Railway. 
 
 Country from which Price per engine 
 
 tender received and tender 
 
 1. Germany £3156 
 
 2. England 2990 
 
 3. England 2960 
 
 4. England 2950 
 
 5. England 2850 
 
 6. England 2835 
 
 7. England 2810 
 
 8. England 2790 
 
 9. England 2750 
 
 10. Germany 2750 
 
 11. England 2685 
 
 12. Germany 2680 
 
 13. England 2680 
 
 14. Switzerland 2650 
 
 15. England 2650 
 
 16. England 2600 
 
 17. France 2595 
 
 18. England 2575 
 
 19. England 2500 
 
 20. Scotland 2424 
 
 21. Scotland 2395 
 
 Serious alarm was felt when, in 1865, fifteen 
 engines were ordered for the Great Eastern Rail- 
 way from MM. Schneider. These misgivings would
 
 WAGES GENERALLY 
 
 43 
 
 probably have been allayed had it been generally 
 known that at the same time when the fifteen 
 engines were ordered from Creuzot forty other 
 engines were ordered from English firms, and that 
 when MM. Schneider were subsequently asked to 
 undertake the construction of twenty-five more 
 engines at the price they had agreed to accept for 
 the fifteen engines originally ordered the offer was 
 declined. 
 
 The prices actually quoted by the various tenders 
 are given in the following table : — 
 Tenders for Fifty- five Goods and Twenty-five Passenger 
 Engines, June 1865. 
 
 Goods Passenger Mean 
 
 Enghsh makers . . £3350 £3350 £3350 
 
 3300 3350 3325 
 
 3250 3200 3225 
 
 3145 3085 3115 
 
 3115 3085 3100 
 
 3045 3135 3090 
 
 3100 3075 3088 
 
 No tender 2950 — 
 
 2950 2940 2945 
 
 Belgian makers . . 2890 2890 2890 
 
 English makers . . 2889 2790 2840 
 
 2745 2695 2720 
 
 2730 2590 2660 
 
 2600 No tender — 
 
 Schneider, Tender for Goods and Passenger Engines, 
 together, £2498. 
 
 Delivered in 
 
 English makers . . 2395 2280 Liverpool 
 
 2450 2300 
 
 2575 2240 
 
 2600 2400 
 
 2950 2700 Poti
 
 44 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 The extent to which our engine-building esta- 
 bUshments were employed upon foreign orders may 
 be proved by a comparison of their actual capabilities 
 with the following estimate of the home demand for 
 locomotives. In the year 1865 Mr. Manby found, 
 from careful analysis of returns made to him from 
 numerous railways, that the life of engines built 
 by Messrs. Robert Stephenson and Co. might be 
 taken at 480,000 miles. At that period the 
 ' train mileage ' of the United Kingdom equalled 
 120,000,000 miles. Then 120,000,000 ^ 480,000 = 
 250 + 50 engines (for contingencies) = 300 engines 
 worn out annually. Since the date of Mr. Manby's 
 calculation railway traffic has been enormously 
 increased. 
 
 The eminent English engineer at whose instance 
 the original order was entrusted to MM. Schneider 
 possessed, from long residence in France, a special 
 knowledge of French workmen ; and it was his 
 opinion that the price of that kind of labour in 
 France was not generally cheaper for a given quantity 
 of work than it was in England, while the material 
 of course cost at least as much. 
 
 In an interesting report on Belgian industry Lord 
 Howard de Walden remarked that the Belgians ex- 
 hibited their greatest quaUties in the manufacture 
 of arms at Liege. ' In all works in sheet-iron, for 
 example stoves, the Belgians excel ; but in wrought- 
 iron they are behind many other countries. A good 
 lock and key is nowhere to be found. It is cheaper 
 to buy one of EngUsh make. A tolerable horseshoe 
 is nowhere to be seen, nor are the agricultural
 
 WAGES GENERALLY 45 
 
 implements of good quality, and yet in carriage- 
 building they have been eminently successful.' 
 
 As practical mechanics the EngUsh are un- 
 surpassed. The presence of the English engineer, 
 the sohtary representative among a crew of foreigners 
 of the mechanical genius of his country, is a familiar 
 recollection to all who have travelled by sea. Consul 
 Lever, in his report of 1870 from Trieste, says that 
 in the vast estabHshment of the Austrian Lloyds 
 at that port a number of English mechanical 
 engineers are employed not only in the workshops 
 but as navigating engineers in the company's fleet. 
 Although there is no difficulty in substituting for 
 these men Germans and Swiss at lower rates of 
 payment, the uniform accuracy of the English, 
 their inteUigence, their consummate mastery of all 
 the details of their art, and their resource in every 
 case of difficulty have entirely established their 
 superiority. 
 
 The building and working of steamers involve 
 expenditure in almost all descriptions of labour — 
 the purchase of raw materials of every kind, as well 
 as the most elaborate machinery. 
 
 Mining is perhaps the most exhausting and 
 laborious of occupations. The English miner sur- 
 passes the foreigner all over the world. On the 
 Continent, long after earthwork and other operations 
 involved in the construction of railways had been 
 committed to the native workmen, EngUsh miners 
 were still employed in the tunnels. In making the 
 railway from Chambery, in Savoy, to the foot of 
 Mont Cenis, Piedmontese were employed in the
 
 46 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 comparatively easy work of tunnelling in the dry 
 rock ; Englishmen were stiU required in soft and 
 jdelding clay, subject to a constant influx of water. 
 
 Mr. Kitson, of Leeds, in his evidence before the 
 Select Committee on Scientific Instruction in 1868, 
 stated that in 1864, in consequence of a dispute 
 with the workmen at Leeds, he had engaged several 
 Frenchmen and Belgians. This experiment proved 
 that the ' foreign workmen were scarcely as intelli- 
 gent as our own.' ' We are not,' he said, ' inferior 
 in the manufacture of iron, machinery, and steel 
 to the foreign ironmasters. The English are equal 
 to the Belgians in the manufacture of iron, and are 
 superior in the manufacture of machinery.' 
 
 At locomotive-building works in Belgium the 
 work was rarely executed with the same precision as 
 in England. All the parts of English engines made 
 from the same pattern are interchangeable. This 
 was not always the case in Belgian engines. 
 
 It had been objected that Belgian rails were being 
 largely imported into England. It is true that 
 some 600 tons for the East Gloucestershire Railway 
 were supplied by a Belgian firm in 1865. The price 
 of these rails was £6 IO5. per ton, delivered at 
 Gloucester. A soUtary instance proves nothing as 
 to general comparative prices. It was because our 
 ironmasters were more fully employed than the iron- 
 masters in Belgium, and because the prices of rails 
 had in consequence fallen more rapidly in Belgium 
 than in England, that the order in question was 
 executed abroad. Since the year 1865 rails have 
 been made in England at a cheaper rate than that
 
 WAGES GENERALLY 
 
 47 
 
 paid for the Belgian rails supplied to the East 
 Gloucestershire Railway. 
 
 The fortunes of our Belgian rivals have been as 
 chequered as those of their English ironmasters. 
 The following table shows the fluctuations in Belgian 
 prices : — 
 
 Average Price per To7i of Belgian Rails. 
 
 Franca 
 For 1835, average price per ton 
 1836 
 
 1837 
 1838 
 1839 
 1840 
 1841 
 1842 
 1843 
 1844 
 1845 
 1846 
 1847 
 1848 
 1849 
 1850 
 1851 
 1852 
 1853 
 1854 
 1855 
 1856 
 1857 
 1858 
 1859 
 1860 
 1861 
 
 340,00 
 
 425,00 
 
 438,75 
 
 394,00 
 
 378,00 
 
 239,50 
 
 248,00 
 
 234,00 
 
 221,60 
 
 290,00 
 
 309,00 
 
 320,00 
 
 263,00 
 
 190,00 
 
 180,00 
 
 170,00 
 
 170,00 
 
 172,00 
 
 231,00 
 
 220,25 
 
 212,50 
 
 213,85 
 
 237,65 
 
 160,00 
 
 160,00 
 
 160,30 
 
 156,85
 
 48 
 
 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 For 1862, average price per ton 
 1863 
 1864 
 1865 
 1866 
 1867 
 1868 
 
 Average Price per Ton of Belgian Bails. 
 
 Francs 
 149,60 
 142,90 
 157,35 
 162,65 
 169,00 
 137,70 
 170,80 
 
 Much has been said, too, from time to time as to 
 the importation of iron girders from Belgium into 
 this country. Dr. Percy, in his evidence before 
 the Committee on Scientific Education, stated that 
 the iron girders imported from Belgium would 
 be made here if there were a larger demand. A 
 manufacturer would not alter his mills for a special 
 kind of girder unless there was considerable demand. 
 He urged, as a sufficient reason why there should be 
 no apprehension on this subject, the remarkable 
 success which had been achieved in England in the 
 production of armour-plates. It was well known 
 that in 1869 the productive powers of our rail-roUing 
 mills were strained to the utmost, and that almost 
 the whole of those rails were exported.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 CO-OPERATIVE PRODUCTION 
 
 Address to the Annual Conference of the Co-operative 
 Societies at Halifax, April 6, 1874, 
 
 The main purpose of the friends of the co-operative 
 movement is to secure to the great body of con- 
 sumers the means of obtaining the necessaries of 
 life at the lowest practicable cost, and of the best 
 quality. So long as this object is attained, it 
 matters not whether it be accomplished through 
 the co-operative associations, or by the agency of 
 the ordinary retailer. 
 
 The problem of co-operative production still 
 awaits solution. The equitable distribution of 
 profits between labour, capital, and the inventive 
 faculty, which creates, and the commercial and 
 organising faculty, which conducts, a business, is 
 the most important, as it is undoubtedly one of the 
 most difficult, of the social problems of our age. 
 
 Many think that in the actual organisation Inequality 
 of productive industry there is a disproportionate ° ^^* 
 assignment of profits to capital. As instances of 
 individual success are multipHed, so this conviction 
 of the injustice of the existing order of things in the 
 commercial world will be strengthened and con- 
 firmed. We may be able to prove that the capital 
 of the large capitahst ordinarily receives but a 
 
 E
 
 60 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 moderate return, and indeed is freely employed on 
 easier terms than a needy man would exact ; but 
 it is not less true that, measured by the strict 
 necessities of life, an accumulation of wealth must, 
 under all circumstances, be a superfluity. The 
 sentiments so naturally aroused by the spectacle 
 of this ungracious contrast between wealth and 
 poverty have found an illustrious, though not 
 unprejudiced, exponent in the poet Wordsworth : 
 
 Slaves cannot breathe in England — yet that boast 
 
 Is but a mockery ! when from coast to coast, 
 
 Though fettered slaves be none, her floors and soil 
 
 Groan underneath a weight of slavish toil, 
 
 For the poor many, measured out by rules 
 
 Fetched with cupidity from heartless schools. 
 
 That to an idol, falsely called ' The Wealth 
 
 Of Nations,' sacrifice a people's health, 
 
 Body and mind and soul ; a thirst so keen 
 
 Is ever urging on the vast machine 
 
 Of sleepless Labour, 'mid whose dizzy wheels 
 
 The power least prized is that which thinks and feels. 
 
 Socialism is the protest of labour against the 
 unequal distribution of the profits of production. 
 There cannot be equality in a society composed 
 of individuals unequally endowed in knowledge, 
 natural aptitude, and in physical and mental power. 
 But while there cannot be equality, there must be 
 justice. 
 Co-opera- Viewing the subject in the light indicated in these 
 duction, observations, success is much to be desired for the 
 experiment of adapting the co-operative principle 
 to productive industry. In a co-operative mill, or 
 workshop, or farm, the producers unite the double
 
 CO-OPERATIVE PRODUCTION 51 
 
 functions of capital and labour. The handicrafts- 
 man sits in judgment on the claims of the capital 
 provided by his own thrift and past labours. He 
 is not likely to appropriate an inadequate rate of 
 interest to a fund obtained from such a source. 
 He cannot, at the same time, apportion too much 
 to capital without doing an injustice to himself in 
 another capacity. 
 
 In the co-operative establishments there cannot, 
 in the nature of things, be contention between a 
 body of workmen and an individual whom they 
 regard with unfriendly eyes as a selfish monopolist. 
 Nor will the benefits be confined to co-operative 
 establishments alone. Disputes relating to wages 
 wiU be more easily adjusted when the capitalist is 
 enabled to refer the labourer to the rates of wages 
 prevaihng in co-operative establishments, where 
 they have been determined, not by a single in- 
 dividual suspected of being without sympathy for 
 the labourer, but by men who, in the capacity of 
 workmen, become the earners of wages fixed and 
 paid by themselves. 
 
 The desideratum in all labour disputes is a a stan- 
 standard set up by an impartial tribunal, by which ^^^^ °* 
 
 ^ ^ ^ . wages re- 
 
 it may readily be decided what constitutes a fair quired. 
 
 rate of wages. When co-operative production has 
 
 been introduced into all branches of industry 
 
 successfully and on a sufficiently extensive scale, 
 
 we shall have the universal gauge or measure of the 
 
 workman's rightful claims. From the day when 
 
 the workman will take his part in the deliberations 
 
 which accord to capital its fair rate of interest, and 
 
 e2
 
 52 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 to the wage-earner his due ; from the day when the 
 workman may count with certainty on a just and 
 equal participation in the profits of every enterprise 
 in which he is engaged in proportion to his merits, 
 we may venture to hope that strikes will cease 
 and that workmen will be content to devote them- 
 selves to the successful prosecution of the industry 
 in which they find their employment. If it should 
 appear an exaggeration of the powers of human 
 nature to adopt the principles on which Fourier 
 insisted and to regard all labour as a pleasure, it 
 is possible to conceive conditions in which labour 
 would appear more attractive than hitherto. The 
 labourer might have more satisfaction in working 
 under the direction of persons selected by himself 
 than he now experiences under the authority of an 
 employer upon whom he is entirely dependent as 
 the distributor of wages. 
 
 Advocates of the labour interest insist that 
 among capitalists there is a universal desire to 
 acquire wealth, and but little disposition to pay due 
 regard to the rights of others. There may be cases 
 in which these allegations are true. They do not 
 correctly represent the general tone and temper 
 of the employers of this country. In France and 
 Germany similar representations have gained many 
 credulous converts. In those countries, and es- 
 pecially in the former, there is much hostiHty 
 between masters and men. Even when kind and 
 considerate acts are done they are regarded with 
 suspicion. There is no such hostihty of class and 
 class in this country. That it does not exist is
 
 CO-OPERATIVE PRODUCTION 53 
 
 conclusively proved by the support given by multi- 
 tudes of working men at the recent general election 
 to Conservative candidates, who, among other 
 claims to favour, are supposed to be the chosen 
 defenders of the rights of property. 
 
 The disposition to be liberal towards workmen is 
 developed, as a general rule, in proportion to the 
 extent of the business and the capital of the em- 
 ployer. The love of gain is strongest among certain 
 smaller employers. The least generous members 
 of the class are often those who have most recently 
 raised themselves from the capacity of workmen 
 to that of employers. 
 
 There is a power for good in large accumulations 
 of capital in the hands of a single individual resolved 
 to make a right use of his resources. It is by such 
 men that some of the most judicious operations 
 have been carried out in this country for developing 
 the mineral resources of an untried district, for 
 the advancement of agriculture by costly drainage, 
 for the comfort of the poor by the erection of con- 
 venient dwelling-houses, for the improvement of our 
 towns and cities by the destruction of unwholesome 
 habitations and the erection of dwellings furnished 
 with all the contrivances of modern sanitary science, 
 and for the extension of the boon of railway com- 
 munication into thinly peopled districts. Works 
 such as these, however profitable in the long run, 
 generally involve a protracted lock-up of capital, 
 which the ordinary investor, who cannot afford 
 to lose for a long period the interest upon a com- 
 paratively slender capital, is unable to bear.
 
 tion. 
 
 54 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 Difficul- Apart, however, from such exceptional cases, the 
 
 operative argument in favour of a more equal participation in 
 organisa- profits is incontrovertible. The co-operative system 
 of production leads us that way. In its practical 
 application there are grave difficulties. In delibera- 
 tion the opinions of many counsellors serve to 
 establish sound conclusions in the mind. To govern 
 and administer, all experience proves the infinite 
 superiority of individual over corporate manage- 
 ment. ' There be three points of business,' says 
 Lord Bacon — ' the preparation, the debate or 
 examination, and the perfection. Whereof, if you 
 look for despatch, let the middle only be the work 
 of many, and the first and last the work of few.' 
 
 The following opinion of Mr. Erastus Bigelow, of 
 Massachusetts, quoted by Mr. Harris Gastrell, may 
 appropriately be cited : — ' The Corporation system 
 has been a serious hindrance to the proper diversifi- 
 cation of our manufactures. ... I will point out 
 briefly some of the disadvantages. When men who 
 are occupied with other pursuits decide to invest 
 capital in manufacturing corporations it is usually 
 done on grounds of general confidence. They invest 
 because others are investing. They believe, without 
 exactly knowing why, that such investments are 
 safe, and will be profitable ; or they follow the lead 
 of some friend, in whose knowledge and judgment 
 they confide. They do not act on their own ac- 
 quaintance with the nature and requirements of the 
 business ; for such an acquaintance can be made 
 only by careful investigation or actual experience. 
 The natural consequence of all this is that capital
 
 CO-OPERATIVE PRODUCTION 55 
 
 for the extension of old or the projection of new 
 manufacturing enterprises can seldom be obtained 
 at those times when it is most needed and might most 
 profitably be employed. This single feature of the 
 system is fatal to any true and healthy progress 
 under it. 
 
 ' The capital thus raised must be expended. An 
 agent is employed and enters on his work. Those 
 capitalists who have invested under the stimulus of 
 high profits are impatient for results, and urge him 
 to hasty action on ill-considered plans. A sudden 
 and unnatural demand for operatives is thus created, 
 raising the rate of wages and greatly enhancing the 
 cost of goods. Lastly, unity of purpose and action, 
 without which no business can be successfully pro- 
 secuted, can hardly be expected under the divided 
 responsibilities of a large corporate organisation.' 
 
 A ready means of applying the principle of limited Losses in 
 liability to all descriptions of business was created gtock 
 by the Joint Stock Companies Act of 1862. That com- 
 enactment gave great facilities for the sale of their ^^^^^' 
 property to joint-stock companies to men at the 
 head of large concerns, who were tired of hard work, 
 and anxious to hand down to their families an in- 
 heritance secured from the risks and fluctuations 
 of trade. 
 
 While there were many seeking to exchange the 
 wear and tear of business for the comparatively 
 easy life of the country gentleman, there was a large 
 body of inexperienced and sanguine investors who 
 had deluded themselves with the belief that it was 
 possible to conduct the most intricate operations
 
 66 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 of industry successfully without experience and 
 without that constant personal devotion to ad- 
 ministrative details which the individual manu- 
 facturers whose property they had purchased had 
 found it essential to bestow. In numerous instances 
 the purchasers have sustained a serious loss. The 
 explanation is not rarely to be found in the im- 
 perfect control exercised by a board of directors, 
 assisted by a salaried manager, as compared with 
 the administration of the individual employers. 
 Business Even in the choice of an agent, representative, or 
 
 of a rail- jj^aj^ager, a private individual has advantages over a 
 
 way con- o ' x o 
 
 tractor board. Take the case of a railway contractor. The 
 could not contracts for a long line of railway are subdivided, 
 
 be man- ."■ 
 
 aged by a for the purposes of the supervision of the work, 
 company. ^^^^ sections rarely exceeding eight to ten miles 
 in length. If the works are unusually heavy the 
 sections are shorter in proportion. A sub-agent 
 is placed in charge of each section, and an ex- 
 perienced agent has the general direction of the whole 
 contract. The principal contractor for the under- 
 taking, by paying frequent visits of inspection, has 
 opportunities of becoming acquainted with every 
 sub-agent in his employ. He observes the progress 
 made on his section. He can test his capability of 
 deahng with every kind of practical engineering 
 difficulty by moving him from railway to railway, 
 and putting him in charge of work in districts totally 
 dissimilar in their physical character and resources. 
 Gradually those employed in a subordinate capacity 
 have an opportunity of showing their powers. 
 There is ample scope for individual merit. The
 
 CO-OPERATIVE PRODUCTION 57 
 
 supervision of the agent having the general charge 
 will prevent the mistakes of a subordinate from 
 producing very serious consequences. Thus, with 
 the lapse of time, and without any grave risk of loss, 
 the contractor may form an opinion as to who are his 
 most trustworthy sub-agents, and can select principal 
 agents from among their number with confidence, 
 their powers having been thoroughly tested in a 
 subordinate capacity. Here it will be obvious that 
 long experience and continuity of management are 
 essential. A board will make appointments upon 
 the faith of testimonials. The private individual 
 will trust to personal observation. 
 
 Again, administrative success depends upon the 
 knowledge and management of details. The art of 
 organising large bodies of workmen will only be 
 obtained by previous experience on a smaller scale. 
 The general supervision of subordinates will be most 
 effectually exercised by one who, by close observa- 
 tion on the spot, whether in the tunnel, the workshop, 
 or the factory, has learned how to discharge in his 
 own person the duty he has delegated to others. 
 The greatest commanders and administrators have 
 ever been consummate masters of detail. Napo- 
 leon's arrangements for the marches undertaken by 
 his vast armies are admirable for the forethought and 
 the care wisely bestowed upon details. A council 
 or a board, only occasionally meeting, cannot 
 manage a business. Unless efficiently represented 
 by their officers and servants, they are practically 
 powerless. In a commercial point of view, great 
 profits in productive industry are generally obtained
 
 58 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 by infinite small economies. Directors in a board- 
 room can effect nothing in this way. Every economy 
 of expenditure must be suggested by close and 
 constant observation of the processes by which 
 materials are prepared, and labour applied to the 
 execution of the work. 
 Managers In the organisation of co-operative production 
 must be j^. jg essential to secure the services of individuals 
 
 liberally , m, 
 
 paid. competent to take the general management. The 
 manual operations will be skilfully and probably 
 more diligently performed in a co-operative esta- 
 blishment. The personal interests of the work- 
 men will be so directly advanced by their application 
 and perseverance, that they Avill naturally work 
 hard. Their best efforts will fail to ensure a satis- 
 factory result, unless the general organisation is 
 perfect also. 
 
 This organising faculty is a rare gift. It must be 
 combined with long experience and excellent judg- 
 ment, or the commercial result cannot be satis- 
 factory. Many possess, in an eminent degree, 
 inventive skill. Others have powers of persuasive 
 speech, which enable them for a time to command 
 great influence in financial circles. When, however, 
 they come to deal with practical questions, they 
 fail. Mechanical and scientific ability will not 
 command success unless united with prudence and 
 tact. High diplomatic qualities are often required 
 in the conduct of negotiations, both with the trade 
 out of doors and with the workmen employed. 
 Above all, there must be integrity and high-minded 
 resolution to withstand the temptations that come
 
 CO-OPERATIVE PRODUCTION 59 
 
 from the love of money and operate so strongly 
 on the minds of men of slender means and great 
 ambition. 
 
 We have the most conclusive evidence that the 
 administrative powers, of which I speak, are as rare 
 as they are essential, in the handsome salaries which 
 men possessing such qualifications often obtain, not 
 only as managers of large joint-stock companies, but 
 in the employ of private firms. When shall we find 
 co-operative shareholders ready to give £5000 a 
 year for a competent manager ? And yet the sum 
 I have named is readily paid by private employers 
 to an able lieutenant. 
 
 It is because there has been in co-operative 
 establishments a reluctance to pay what is necessary 
 to enlist first-rate ability in the management of the 
 business, that their operations have hitherto been 
 attended with very partial success. Only personal 
 experience of the difficulties of the task would 
 induce a body of workmen to reserve from their 
 earnings a sum sufficient to secure the services of 
 competent leaders. 
 
 Those interested in co-operative production Co-opera- 
 should not commence on a large scale a business ductio'n' 
 difficult to manage. A moderate capital is easily should bo 
 obtained. Large funds are not rapidly procured, scale. 
 Where only a few hands are engaged, the govern- 
 ment may be conducted on a purely democratic 
 basis. Where the energies of a multitude are 
 to be combined, there must be an enlightened 
 despotism. 
 
 In the case of a co-operative estabUahment, the
 
 60 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 persons entrusted with plenary powers must, as a 
 matter of course, be subject to the control of the 
 contributors of the capital. Their control should 
 be exercised only at stated, though sufficiently 
 frequent, intervals. It was rightly pointed out 
 by Mr. Morrison, in the debates at the last Con- 
 ference of Co-operative Societies, that, without 
 the concentration of management among a limited 
 number of persons, it would be impossible to preserve 
 the unity of tradition and administration, so es- 
 sential to establish the reputation of a factory or 
 workshop, and to secure the high prices consumers 
 are always ready to pay for goods of undoubted 
 quality. 
 
 The appointment of the manager by popular 
 election — the electors being the hand workers, who 
 are to serve under the chief, selected by themselves — 
 is not incompatible with continuity of management. 
 In a trading concern the acting partner or manager, 
 who has personal control, is rarely obtained by 
 hereditary succession. It is seldom that a man of 
 commercial genius has a worthy successor in his son. 
 The elective principle will be at least as well calcu- 
 lated as the hereditary to protect the workmen 
 from the disasters which must inevitably be caused 
 by incapacity in the management. 
 
 Co-operative societies of production would 
 doubtless have been established far more rapidly, 
 unless there had been formidable difficulties to be 
 surmounted. The most recent report shows that 
 the number of these societies may almost be counted 
 on the fingers. Though some of the experiments
 
 CO-OPERATIVE PRODUCTION 61 
 
 actually tried have been successful, the failures have 
 been more numerous than the successes. The 
 Paisley Manufacturing Society, the Hebden Bridge 
 Fustian Society, the Eccles Quilt Manufacturing 
 Society, the Lurgan Damask Manufacturing Society, 
 are examples of co-operative production successfully 
 conducted, but on a small scale. The promoters 
 have wisely held back from attempting more 
 ambitious undertakings. The Printing Society of 
 Manchester is a greater effort, and it is highly 
 flourishing. It is possible that the business is 
 of a kind which depends less on the administrative 
 ability of the manager than on the individual 
 exertions of the workmen. The Co-operative Print- 
 ing Society recently established in London has 
 failed to command a remunerative business. 
 
 The most important experiment in co-operative Ousebum. 
 production hitherto attempted in this country is 
 that of the Ouseburn Engine Works. This Com- 
 pany has sustained a severe loss ; strikes for higher 
 wages on the part of the workmen employed in one 
 department of the concern. The occurrence of a 
 strike in a co-operative establishment proves the 
 difficulty, though not the impossibiUty, of con- 
 ducting an undertaking on a democratic system, 
 when you have to deal with many classes of work- 
 men, possessing different and unequal quahfications. 
 
 The adjustment of the rates of wages in a case in 
 which some members of the co-operative body must 
 be paid at considerably higher rates than others, 
 requires on the part of the latter no common 
 measure of self-denial. It is sometimes hard to
 
 62 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 recognise the superior merits of others, even when we 
 have the means of forming an independent opinion 
 on their claims ; but when workmen, brought up 
 in one trade, are required to assign much higher 
 wages to artisans practising another trade, of the 
 exact nature and difficulty of which they have no 
 experience, they are naturally slow to recognise 
 what is due to superior skill. 
 
 In the case of the Ouseburn Company, the 
 causes of the early losses were explained by Dr. 
 Rutherford in his speech delivered on the occasion 
 of the visit of this Congress to the works, at their 
 last conference. Orders had been booked at too 
 low a price. The manager, by whom the directors 
 were advised, was much at fault. The head of the 
 undertaking should have been, as Dr. Rutherford 
 so justly urged, a practical engineer, as well as a 
 philanthropist. To secure the services of a com- 
 petent manager the remuneration required should 
 have been measured, not by a few hundred, but by 
 a iew thousand pounds. The history of the Ouse- 
 burn works is an illustration of the principles 
 already laid down. The early failure is attributable 
 to the want of that experience and technical and 
 practical knowledge, which can only be suppHed 
 by the appointment of a highly qualified engineer. 
 When such a man has been found, all will go well 
 with the Ouseburn Company. 
 
 The valuable reports of Her Majesty's Secre- 
 taries of liCgation describe many successful applica- 
 tions of the co-operative principle which may prove 
 encouraging to English enterprise.
 
 CO-OPERATIVE PRODUCTION 63 
 
 It is stated by Mr. Ford that the Executive Com- Co-opera- 
 mittee of the Tailors' Union in New York, on unUed 
 notifying the cessation of a strike, in which the States. 
 trade had been engaged in 1869, declared that their 
 policy would thenceforward be to abandon the 
 system of strikes, and to fight with the stronger 
 weapon of co-operation. 
 
 The co-operative principle has been adopted by 
 those strange religious sects, the Mormons, Shakers, 
 Economists, and Perfectionists. They have at- 
 tained to great success in the organisation of labour. 
 The Mormons at Salt Lake City have transformed 
 * a wilderness into a garden,' and I can speak from 
 personal knowledge when I say that the Shakers are 
 excellent farmers. 
 
 Co-operative foundries have been established 
 in New York and Massachusetts. There is an Iron 
 Foundry at Troy, in New York, which was started 
 in May 1866, with a capital of £2700 paid up. The 
 shares were fixed at £20, and limited in number to 
 2000. In the first year thirty-two men, in the 
 second seventy -five, in 1869 eighty-five men were 
 employed in the works. A dividend of 10 per cent, 
 was made in the first year, and 30 per cent, more was 
 paid on labour. The second year the dividends on 
 stock and labour amounted to 89 per cent. In 1869 
 they reached 100 per cent. The most skilled trades 
 earn, owing to their steady employment, 35 per 
 cent, more than the same classes of workmen would 
 earn at similar wages in any private foundry. 
 Great economy has been effected in the use of 
 materials, and the strictest disciphne is enforced.
 
 64 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 Up to the date of Mr. Ford's report, all the profits 
 due to individuals had been paid to them in shares, 
 with the view of applying the additional capital to 
 the enlargement of the works. 
 
 The co-operative movement, thus happily begun, 
 has been followed up with energy and spirit. Mr. 
 Archibald, our Consul-General in New York, writing 
 in 1872, says : ' During the past year, co-operative 
 concerns have been organised in several departments 
 of business, but with far greater success in in- 
 dustrial than in commercial matters. The Working 
 Men's Manufacturing Company, with a capital of 
 £25,000, has been formed at Emmaus. It is to be 
 conducted on the co-operative principle, and will 
 erect extensive works, including a foundry, forge, 
 and two machine shops, employing at the com- 
 mencement about 200 hands.' 
 
 Vienna. In Austria, the majority of the printers, though 
 in theory advocates of the views of Lassalle in 
 favour of Government workshops, in practice have 
 adopted the sound doctrine inculcated by Schulze- 
 Delitzsch, the eminent German economist, that every 
 man should trust to self-help, rather than place 
 his dependence on the Government. The printers 
 of Vienna have estabhshed a co-operative press. 
 Lord Lytton states in his report that 1500 printers 
 were, in 1869, negotiating for the purchase of another 
 office. 
 
 Sweden. Mr. Jocelyn, in his report of 1869, refers to the 
 progress of co-operative production in Sweden. 
 This most difficult form of labour organisation has 
 been particularly successful in that country. He
 
 CO-OPERATIVE PRODUCTION 65 
 
 attributes this fortunate result to a spirit of in- 
 dependence highly honourable to the Swedish 
 workmen. They will wilHngly risk their savings 
 for the sake of seizing an opportunity of rising 
 from a dependent position to the freedom of co- 
 operative industry. It has been found in Sweden 
 that the smaller undertakings of this nature are the 
 most prosperous. Where, on the other hand, many 
 are associated upon an equal footing for the promo- 
 tion of manufactures requiring unusual skill, there 
 is great danger of the whole becoming de facto the 
 property of a few of the original founders, while the 
 rest sink back into the condition of simple workmen 
 under their command. 
 
 While the efforts to estabhsh co-operative pro- 
 duction in this country have not thus far been 
 attended with a large measure of success, the 
 importance of the principle is so great, let us 
 deprecate the abandonment of further attempts in 
 the same direction. The wiser course will be to 
 avoid, as it has been already suggested, commencing 
 undertakings on a large scale. 
 
 When the business is of a kind that cannot be 
 carried out advantageously on a moderate footing, 
 the co-operative principle should be apphed to the 
 execution of sub-contracts for portions of the work, 
 to the supply of a part of a large order, or to the 
 execution of a single process in a complicated 
 manufacture. Let us take the business of a railway 
 contractor. When a railway contract has been 
 entered into, the principal contractor usually sub- 
 divides the works, and lets them out to sub-con- 
 
 F
 
 tracts. 
 
 66 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 tractors. On a long line of railway cutting, bridges, 
 tunnels, embankments, and stations are executed 
 by one or more separate contractors ; and thus the 
 co-operative system may readily be apphed to the 
 construction of every section of the largest under- 
 taking, after it has been sufficiently subdivided. 
 The same remarks apply to shipbuilding and many 
 other branches of industry, where the subdivision 
 of the work will give ample scope for the application 
 of the co-operative system, combined and organised 
 under an employer of superior administrative skill 
 and large resources. 
 Sub-con- It may be interesting to men who are engaged in 
 
 a great effort to organise a new and better system 
 for the application of capital and labour to produc- 
 tion, to hear some details of the methods adopted 
 by the English contractors who have been engaged 
 in the execution of great railway contracts both at 
 home and abroad. In the conduct of these works 
 the main object in view has been to give to the 
 workmen a personal interest in the performance of 
 an adequate quantity of work, in return for the wages 
 received. In the case of the contractor, it was 
 especially important to attain this object by making 
 it the interest of the labourer to do his fair share 
 of work, rather than by placing reliance on a 
 close personal inspection of his conduct. With the 
 development of railway enterprise, the practice was 
 adopted of inviting English contractors with com- 
 petent resources to undertake railway and other 
 works, not only in their own country, but in every 
 quarter of the globe. The difficulties of super-
 
 CO-OPERATIVE PRODUCTION 67 
 
 vision of necessity increased with the enlarged area 
 of their operations. It was essential to devise some 
 plan by which it should, if possible, be made an 
 advantage to every individual concerned to perform 
 his share of the common task to the best of his 
 abihty. 
 
 Thus the system of sub-contract and piece-work, 
 originally adopted by the pioneers of railway con- 
 struction, was extended to every operation where 
 it was possible to apply it. The general character 
 of the arrangements may perhaps be best explained 
 by the selection of an example taken from actual 
 practice. On the contract for part of the London 
 and South Western Railway between Basingstoke 
 and Winchester there was an unusual proportion 
 of excavation, amounting to some 3^ millions of cubic 
 yards on a length of eighteen miles. Not only were 
 the works of a heavy and costly nature, but the 
 time allowed for the completion was so short as to 
 render the utmost diUgence and energy necessary. 
 The operations were carried on night and day, and 
 1100 workmen were employed. 
 
 There was one cutting of unusual dimensions near 
 Winchester, which, in the deepest part, was from 
 90 to 100 feet in depth. Here, in spite of severe and 
 unfavourable weather, the works were pushed on 
 with the utmost diligence and determination. This 
 was done even at a considerable pecuniary sacrifice. 
 The contractor was anxious, above all things, to 
 maintain and increase the good reputation he had 
 already begun to establish, and of which he was 
 wisely jealous as the surest guarantee for his future 
 
 F 2
 
 68 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 success. At Micheldever there was one immense 
 embankment, about 85 feet in height ; and at 
 Popham Beacons a short cutting, not more than 
 10 chains in length, intervening between two tunnels, 
 of such a depth that 100,000 cubic yards were 
 excavated in order to make the cutting. 
 
 The whole of these works were executed by sub- 
 contract. The amount of work let to a particular 
 sub-contractor was determined by the appreciation 
 formed by the principal contractor or his agent of 
 the ability of the individual to carry out the work. 
 A man of superior qualifications was allowed to take 
 a sub-contract for an amount of work increasing 
 in magnitude in proportion to the confidence 
 entertained in his ability. Some of the sub-con- 
 tractors would take contracts for work costing in 
 the total £15,000 to £20,000, and employing from 
 150 to 200 men. 
 
 Frequently the sub-contractor Avould again let 
 his work to the navvies at so much a yard. They 
 worked in what were called butty gangs, or parties 
 of from six to twelve men. The navvies would take 
 a contract under a sub-contractor for excavating 
 so many yards of earth at so much per yard, 
 dividing the earnings equally amongst each other. 
 Disputes would frequently arise between the butty 
 gangs and the sub-contractors upon the question 
 of measurement. In such cases the resident agent 
 or representative of the principal contractor was 
 required to arbitrate. 
 
 When the work was organised in the manner 
 I have described, the function of the principal
 
 CO-OPERATIVE PRODUCTION 69 
 
 contractor was rather that of practical engineer 
 superintending the execution of the works by a 
 number of smaller contractors. The principal con- 
 tractor, being responsible to the engineer for the 
 faithful performance of the contract, would watch 
 the work done by the sub-contractors, and see that 
 it was executed in such a manner as to satisfy the 
 requirements of the engineer. He was not directly 
 the employer of the workmen or the navvies. The 
 policy was to avoid, as far as possible, engaging a 
 large number of workmen by the day, and to pay 
 every man concerned in proportion to results. 
 
 If little labour, little are our gains, 
 Man's fortunes are according to his pains. 
 
 The system of sub-contract was carried so far 
 that I have been informed by Mr. Harrison, the 
 experienced contractor from whom I have derived 
 the facts already quoted, that the very scaffolding 
 raised for the purpose of putting together the iron- 
 work of the bridges of the Severn Valley Railway was 
 mostly erected by sub-contractors. A carpenter 
 would take a sub-contract for the erection of such 
 scaffolding, fixing his price by the cubic foot. 
 
 Sub-contracts are much approved in the best Piece- 
 shipbuilding yards. The following observations, 7^^^. - 
 coming from one of the most eminent shipbuilders build- 
 in the United Kingdom, will be perused with i"g- 
 interest by students of the labour problem, whether 
 from a speculative or a practical point of view. 
 
 The opinions of the writer from whom I quote 
 fully substantiate the conclusions drawn by my
 
 70 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 father from a large experience in a totally different 
 field of industry : 
 
 ' The book and pamphlet on " Work and Wages " 
 you kindly gave me have interested me very much, 
 and directed my attention 'particularly to the past 
 and present of my trades. I say " particularly " 
 as, although I knew roughly how they stood, your 
 writings set me to make out with considerable, if not 
 perfect, accuracy some statistics which I felt sure 
 would interest you as much as myself. I have, 
 accordingly, put these into shape, premising you 
 are at liberty to use them in your " work," but 
 without mentioning names or otherwise, further 
 than as illustrating your views. The businesses 
 in which I am directly or indirectly engaged are 
 shipbuilding, engineering, forging and founding — 
 in fact, everything to complete steamships from 
 the rough cast of malleable iron. I have seen no 
 reason to regret keeping these several departments 
 under separate heads and management. 
 
 ' I purpose, however, now taking up iron ship- 
 building only, as being much the largest department, 
 and to compare two distinct periods or years — 
 1868 and 1873. In 1868 we had no piece-work. 
 Between then and 1873 we introduced it, with some 
 little difficulty, into the iron department and black- 
 smith work. We have not yet succeeded in bringing 
 it into play in the ship-carpenter and joiner and 
 some minor branches, but we bide our time. Fully 
 half our pays go to piece-work, leaving the balance 
 for time payment. It is because we only build high- 
 class passenger steamships that we continue to pay
 
 CO-OPERATIVE PRODUCTION 71 
 
 so large a number of men by the day rather than 
 by the piece. I may observe that the wood depart- 
 ment runs much higher in proportion to iron than 
 in yards mostly devoted to sailing ships or cargo 
 steamers. The steamships we built in 1868 and 
 1873 were almost identical in style of finish though 
 differing in tonnage. We had much trouble about 
 1868 with our iron hands. It was difficult to get 
 men, the demand exceeding the supply. The 
 introduction of the piece system — that is to say, 
 the payment by results — led to hard, or at least 
 fairly hard, work on the part of the skilled men, 
 and to ingenuity on their part and ours to save 
 unskilled labour by the introduction of machinery. 
 The result has been that skilled and unskilled men 
 make 50 per cent, to 75 per cent, more earnings. 
 We get the work per ton of iron in the ships about 
 20 per cent, cheaper ; and, from a much smaller 
 number of men being required, the supply is ap- 
 proximately equal to the demand. Since we intro- 
 duced piece-work we can estimate to within a 
 fraction what the iron and blacksmith work will 
 cost, and we could never do so before. Here I would 
 observe that all this has been accompHshed with 
 working time in 1873 reduced to 54 hours per week, 
 whereas in 1868 the men worked 60 hours a week. 
 As to the skilled hands — and they are all highly 
 skilled men — in the wood departments, we had to 
 pay higher wages in 1873 for 54 hours' work than 
 in 1868 with 60 hours'. We have, however, met 
 this by the introduction of machinery. Our joinery 
 and cabinet department is now Hke an engineer's
 
 72 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 shop, with tools for every description of work. 
 I may say in every part of our work, during the 
 past three or four years, we have been introducing 
 " steam " and other appHances where we could ; 
 and there has been generally sharper supervision 
 and attention on the part of those in charge, and 
 our manager over them. 
 
 * I may now come to results. In 1868 we 
 launched nine steamships, in round numbers ag- 
 gregating 13,000 tons. I take gross new measure- 
 ment in each case for the purpose of comparison. 
 The wages bill was £78,963 ; average number of 
 men and boys employed, 1776. In 1873 we 
 launched seven steamships, in round numbers 
 aggregating 18,500 tons ; wages bill, £91,838 ; 
 average number of men and boys employed, 1550. 
 In 1868 the average wage earned per week of 60 
 hours was about 175. Id. In 1873, per week of 
 54 hours, about 22s, Qd. In 1873 the cost per ton, 
 gross new measurement, in wages only, was fully 
 205. cheaper than in 1868, but this reduction is 
 due to the piece-work departments. We consider it 
 something to have met the increase in wages and 
 diminution in hours of the " time-workers " by the 
 means already mentioned. 
 
 ' I am not clear that these time-workers work 
 harder whilst they are at it than they did before 
 the advance in wages and the decrease in hours, but 
 we may have gained something from sharper over- 
 looking, As I have said, we have effected con- 
 siderable economies by the introduction of steam 
 machinery and other labour-saving appliances.
 
 CO-OPERATIVE PRODUCTION 73 
 
 ' The piece-work system keeps us clearer of 
 disputes and trouble with our men than we were 
 under the old method ; and men and employers 
 alike make a better result, I look to " payment by 
 results " as a system calculated to put an end to 
 many trade disturbances, but trades unions are 
 opposed to it. As ours is practically a non-union 
 yard, we hope in time to overcome the obstacles in 
 our way, and to make the one system universal. 
 Piece-work in the iron department of shipbuilding 
 is now general in the Clyde district. 
 
 ' As this year will complete my thirtieth in the 
 employment of labour, you will see that my ex- 
 perience of it is somewhat large.' 
 
 With these encouraging examples before them, 
 many employers may be glad to follow the same 
 course. No plan by which workmen may be made 
 to reahse that they row in the same boat with their 
 employers should be lightly set aside. It is good 
 pohcy to give up a portion of the profits of a pros- 
 perous year in order to avert the calamity of a 
 strike, with all its attendant evils of loss of profit 
 and bitterness and strife between masters and men. 
 Capital and labour are essentially necessary and 
 interdependent elements of production ; and the 
 man of business, not less than the philanthropist, 
 must desire to see the representatives of the two 
 interests closely aUied. It has seemed well to 
 remind this Conference of these and other efforts 
 to combine the principle of co-operation with the 
 undoubted advantages of undivided responsibility 
 in the administration of a large undertaking. The
 
 74 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 corporate system is not always applicable. Where 
 no special personal influence is needed for the 
 purpose of securing clients and customers, and where 
 the internal economy of an estabhshment can be 
 conducted by a regular routine, there will be no 
 practical disadvantage in the management of a 
 board or council. But when no transaction can 
 be completed without long and difficult negotiations ; 
 when an undertaking is of a kind that cannot be 
 conducted in accordance with fixed rules, and the 
 emergencies, which must from the nature of the 
 case arise, are always unforeseen, and must be 
 met on the spot by an administrator upon whose 
 skill and conduct all will depend — in such a case 
 the co-operative system, pure and simple, becomes 
 impossible ; and tlie ingenuity of masters and 
 workmen, wishing to work together in friendly 
 alliance, should rather be employed to devise 
 schemes, whereby the equitable distribution of 
 profits among the workmen may be combined with 
 the necessary concentration of authority in their 
 employer. 
 
 There must always be peculiar advantages in the 
 personal supervision (to borrow a French expression) 
 of an experienced ' chief of industry.' The earHer 
 railways of this country were completed with great 
 expedition. There was an anxious demand for 
 improved arterial communications by the new 
 method, the superiority of which was universally 
 acknowledged, so soon as it had been proved 
 practicable. In those days the difficulties of the 
 pioneers of the railway system were great. The
 
 CO-OPERATIVE PRODUCTION 75 
 
 best methods of surmounting the engineering pro- 
 blems encountered were not yet perfectly ascer- 
 tained. In driving a tunnel through a quicksand, 
 in forming a high embankment, or excavating a deep 
 cutting in treacherous and yielding soil, in carrying 
 a Une of railway over the trembhng bog, the con- 
 tractor sometimes endured the mortification of 
 seeing the labour of weeks destroyed in a moment. 
 
 When in trouble and anxiety, when a difficulty 
 in the execution of the works presented itself, his 
 representatives on the spot would seek for the 
 valuable advice of their chief. In such an emer- 
 gency he assumed the management of the works. 
 Nor did they ever recur to him without obtaining 
 valuable counsel, the fruits of a wider and more 
 varied experience than their own. It would, in 
 fact, have been impossible for any individual to 
 accumulate the same knowledge, without having 
 the same exceptional opportunity of keeping a 
 continual watch over a large number of operations 
 simultaneously in progress. 
 
 In a time of discouragement the personal visits of 
 the master, the words of kindness to the disheartened 
 workmen, the novel yet practical suggestions evolved 
 from a fresh and vigorous mind, brought to bear upon 
 a problem which had baffled the men more im- 
 mediately concerned, would never fail to cheer up 
 the industrial army, and arouse them to new and, 
 in the end, always victorious efforts. 
 
 These details will have sufficiently explained the 
 relations in which the railway contractor, or any 
 other large employer, should stand to the members
 
 76 
 
 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 Cases in 
 which co- 
 operative 
 system 
 not prac- 
 ticable. 
 
 of his numerous staff. It seems beyond dispute that 
 no board or council could ever take the place of an 
 individual fitted by character and experience for his 
 work, when such operations as I have described 
 are to be carried out successfully. The inspiration 
 given to subordinates under trying circumstances, 
 the stores of knowledge and experience of the en- 
 gineering art, the confidence imparted to engineers 
 and directors and shareholders by the personal 
 reputation of their contractor — these were ad- 
 vantages inseparable from purely personal manage- 
 ment and responsibiUty, and they never would have 
 been obtained from the cumbrous machinery of a 
 board. For these reasons co-operative organisation 
 will rarely prove effectual. A council of war never 
 fights ; and no difficult task in the field of peaceful 
 labour can be brought to completion without a 
 trusted leader. 
 
 M. Renan, in his interesting essay, ' La Reforme 
 intellectuelle et morale,' confirms these observations 
 from the results of French experience : — ' Rappelez- 
 vous ce qui a tue toutes les societes co-opera- 
 tives d'ouvriers : I'incapacite de constituer dans de 
 telles societes une direction serieuse, la jalousie 
 contre ceux que la societe avait revetus d'un mandat 
 quelconque, la pretention de les subordonner a 
 leurs mandants, le refus obstine de leur faire une 
 position digne.' 
 
 One more suggestion, and I close my remarks on 
 this aspect of the case. In many descriptions of 
 enterprise the commercial result cannot be ascer- 
 tained until after an interval of time has elapsed
 
 CO-OPERATIVE PRODUCTION 77 
 
 too long to be tolerable to a body of workmen 
 dependent on their weekly wages. I again choose 
 an illustration from the experiences of the railway 
 contractor. Take the case of a concession for a 
 long line of railway on the Continent. The first 
 conception of the project will probably come from 
 some local engineer. He makes a rude preliminary 
 survey of the country to be traversed. He comes to 
 England with his rough studies to seek the financial 
 aid and larger professional experience of one of our 
 eminent engineers or contractors. The negotiations 
 proceed, and the Enghsh promoters make a second 
 and a more careful examination of the scheme, 
 involving a repetition of the original survey. Plans 
 and an estimate are prepared at considerable 
 expense, and negotiations are thereupon com- 
 menced with the Government within whose terri- 
 tories the proposed railway will pass. Weary 
 months, and sometimes years, elapse before a 
 decision is obtained. Let us assume the decision 
 to have been favourable, and that a concession has 
 been granted. Then follows the execution of the 
 works, which, if the length of the railway is con- 
 siderable, may probably occupy a period of three 
 years. While the construction is progressing, 
 financial arrangements must be made in order to 
 form a company, to take over the concession from 
 the contractors, and to raise the capital for the 
 line by pubUc subscription. The subscription may 
 possibly be only partly successful. In that event, 
 the contractor must meet a large proportion of the 
 expenditure from his private resources. Before
 
 78 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 he has succeeded in disposing of his proportion of 
 the shares or bonds allotted to him, a European 
 war may have broken out. In that case, an in- 
 definite period must elapse before the securities are 
 realised. This is no imaginary picture. In the 
 business with which my name is identified, the 
 history of many transactions is a repetition of the 
 story I have narrated. It is not an exaggeration 
 to say that an interval of ten years ordinarily 
 elapsed between the opening of comm.unications 
 with the original promoters and the final payment 
 for the construction of the works. I^ooking to the 
 hazards and uncertainties of enterprises of this 
 •nature, no true friend of the working classes would 
 recommend them to risk their hard earnings in such 
 adventures. 
 
 The general business of the country, however, 
 is of a more stable and methodical character, and 
 better adapted for the application of the co-operative 
 principle. 
 
 There are other developments of the co-operative 
 principle on which the author insisted in his address, 
 but on which it is impossible to dwell in this reprint 
 —economy by buying at the stores, economy in 
 fuel and cooking, economy of liAdng in flats, united 
 efforts in forming shops, people's banks, charity 
 organisation. The independent inquiries recorded 
 in these pages relate mainly to the reward and the 
 management of labour. 
 
 Abroad, arrangements of the kind indicated 
 have been long established in every large town, 
 and especially in France and Italy, and they have
 
 CO-OPERATIVE PRODUCTION 79 
 
 been found to work most conveniently and eco- 
 nomically. 
 
 The English have been reproached, perhaps not 
 unjustly, as a nation destitute of resources for 
 amusement. Time given to innocent pleasure is 
 not wasted. There are other things besides fame 
 and money, for which it is worth our while to live. 
 To use the happy phrase of Mr. Goschen, ' a liveli- 
 hood is not a life.' It is not well to concentrate 
 all the thoughts on work, and take no pains to 
 provide pure and elevating enjoyment. 
 
 Let us hope the progress of education in England 
 may not be attended with the regrettable conse- 
 quences that have follov/ed from a wide diffusion 
 of knowledge in other countries. In the United 
 States, the result of universal education has been 
 to make the native-born Americans averse to 
 manual labour. The dignity of the pen is more 
 highly regarded than that of the hatchet or the 
 hammer. The youths of America universally prefer 
 to take very moderate pay as clerks, rather than 
 earn the wages, double their own in amount, given 
 to skilled artisans. The false estimate they have 
 formed of the prestige of a sedentary occupation is 
 due to their education. Even in Germany it has 
 been found that foremen in workshops, notwith- 
 standing their higher responsibilities, do not receive 
 proportionate wages. The general diffusion of 
 education has made most artisans competent, and 
 has made aU desire to undertake duties of super- 
 vision, and thus escape manual labour. 
 
 Education in Greece being practically gratuitous,
 
 80 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 thousands aspire to some calling more intellectual 
 than that of the manual labourer. Hence it is, that 
 while every deputy in the Representative Chambers 
 and every member of the Government is besieged 
 with applications for the smallest posts in the public 
 service, the labour market is largely suppHed from 
 Crete and Turkey. 
 
 I cannot conclude these observations on the 
 conditions of the labouring classes without reference 
 to the important influence which must follow from 
 the increasing facilities of communication between 
 distant centres of industry. Foreign travel, in 
 former times, was the exclusive privilege of the 
 wealthy. In some later day, when working men begin 
 to circulate more freely from country to country, 
 the class interests which they have in common will 
 inevitably tend to bring them together. They will 
 regard with stronger aversion those national 
 struggles in which, from motives of personal ambi- 
 tion, their rulers in past ages have been too ready 
 to engage. Already we see in Germany a party 
 being formed whose sympathies are for France. 
 The originators of the movement are the artisans 
 in the two countries. As their numbers increase, 
 they may exercise a valuable influence in promoting 
 Relations the blessed work of reconciliation. So, too, between 
 England England and the United States, the solidarity of the 
 and the two peoples is a surer guarantee for a close and 
 States. permanent alliance than the most elaborate con- 
 trivances of diplomacy. 
 
 Our best authors appeal with equal success to
 
 CO-OPERATIVE PRODUCTION 81 
 
 Anglo-Saxon readers in both hemispheres. In the 
 United States they are welcomed as men of whom 
 the American people are proud. They have con- 
 ferred distinction on the whole EngUsh-speaking 
 race. Our early history, our language, our litera- 
 ture, are links which should unite us together as no 
 other people can be united. 
 
 G
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 FAMILISTERE DE GUISE 
 
 M. Godin. Among many recent efforts to ameliorate the 
 condition of the working classes, one of the most 
 original and spirited has been made by Monsieur 
 Godin, the founder of the familistere, or general 
 dwelling-house, for his operatives and their families 
 at Guise. The principles of the scheme, and the 
 mode in which the attempt to develop these 
 principles has been conducted, are set forth by M. 
 Godin in his interesting volume entitled ' Solutions 
 Sociales,' from which the following details are 
 extracted. The originality of the plan and the 
 general idea underlying the whole conception of 
 the founder of the institution, that the condition of 
 the masses can be elevated only by their mutual 
 action for the common good, will be essentially ac- 
 ceptable to the friends of the co-operative movement. 
 Whether the familistere is a judicious application of 
 the principle is another question. 
 
 There have been many isolated efforts in France 
 and Belgium to improve the habitations of the 
 working class. At Miilhausen especially a large 
 number of houses for workmen have been erected, 
 constituting what has been called a Cite Ouvriere. 
 M. Godin objects that the dwellings erected at 
 Miilhausen are too cramped in dimensions ; that
 
 FAMIIJSTERE DE GUISE 83 
 
 the workmen having been encouraged to purchase 
 their cottages, the founder of the Cite Ouvriere has 
 lost all power of direction and control ; that the 
 rooms originally barely sufficient for the wants of a 
 family are sublet as lodgings ; that pig-styes are 
 constructed in the tiny garden attached to each 
 cottage ; and that thus dirt and noxious odours are 
 alloM'ed to pervade the suburb. M. Godin, not 
 wdthout some justification, finds fault with the term 
 Cite Ouvriere ; and he, perhaps justly, says that 
 the name implies the separation of those who by 
 their labours are the creators of wealth from those 
 who enjoy the use of that wealth by inheritance or 
 by successful speculation. 
 
 A more favourable opinion of the Cite Ouvriere 
 of Miilhausen has been formed by Lord Brabazon, 
 who says, in his able paper on the industrial classes 
 in France, that, ' the condition of the lease granted 
 to the workman allowing him, after a certain 
 number of years, to obtain the freehold of his house, 
 has an immense moral influence. His self-respect 
 increases, and he is enlisted on the side of order. 
 The absence of supervision removes a fruitful 
 source of irritation.' The Cites Ouvrieres erected 
 for the workmen of Paris, though possessing every 
 advantage of space, air and light, have never been 
 popular, because the strict discipline maintained — 
 as, for example, the closing of the gates at ten 
 o'clock at night — is an irksome restriction to the 
 excitable and pleasure-seeking population of the 
 French capital. 
 
 The criticisms applied to the Cite Ouvriere at 
 
 g2
 
 84 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 Miilhausen may be applied with greater reason to 
 London and the great towns of our own country. 
 The rich gather together in the most eligible situa- 
 tions. The price of land in certain positions 
 becomes so enormous that it is impossible to erect 
 houses at rates which, while not exceeding what 
 workmen can afford to pay, will be remunerative to 
 the owners and builders. Hence, the working class 
 are compelled to occupy more remote suburbs. 
 They live in daily contact with no other class but 
 their own. A consequent danger is incurred of 
 social disunion. This state of things is practically 
 inevitable under our existing system. It is not the 
 less a regrettable incident of the great increase in 
 our population. 
 
 M. Godin suggests that it is a paramount obliga- 
 tion of the wealthy to organise means for securing 
 to the masses a larger measure of the luxury and 
 comfort created by their toil and labour. 
 
 The tendency of modern industry has been, and 
 will continue to be, towards the concentration of 
 capital in large private or corporate estabhshments, 
 and to production by machinery, in substitution for 
 manual labour. The use of machinery necessarily 
 operates unfavourably to the interests of small 
 manufacturers without the resources of capital. 
 This general tendency of our industrial organisa- 
 tion has been promoted by the railway system. 
 Consumers have been enabled to obtain their supplies 
 from the cheapest markets, irrespective of those 
 considerations of transport which in former times 
 more than neutralised the advantages of different
 
 FAMILISTERE DE GUISE 85 
 
 localities for special branches of trade. Before the 
 introduction of railways, it was essential to obtain 
 the more bulky articles from the local producer. 
 Now the consumers are enabled to go to the localities 
 where the articles required can be produced of the 
 best quality and at the cheapest rate. 
 
 The attention of the employers has hitherto been 
 concentrated on the organisation of the factory and 
 the workshop, on the great scale required in the 
 present day, in order to carry on competition in 
 manufactures with success. Though much has been 
 done to organise the production, nothing has been 
 done to organise the consumption and the use of 
 products. 
 
 The problem of domestic consumption has been 
 solved in the opinion of M. Godin by the erection, 
 close to his workshops at Guise, of an edifice which 
 he calls a Social Palace. It is a vast barrack, 
 capable of containing 900 inhabitants. The building 
 is several storeys in height, and consists of three 
 large courts, surrounded by galleries communicating 
 with the rooms. Each room is let separately, so 
 that the lodgers can regulate the rents in exact 
 and constant proportion to their requirements. 
 The unmarried and the married, according to the 
 number of their family, can occupy a greater or 
 lesser number of rooms. The building cost £40,000. 
 The capital expended has been divided into shares 
 of small amount, with the view of inducing the work- 
 men to purchase them, and thus to become their own 
 landlords. The rents of the rooms give a return of 
 3 per cent, upon the capital. The profit upon the
 
 86 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 sale of provisions gives an additional percentage of 
 the like amount. 
 
 M, Godin quotes the principles advocated by 
 Fourier as the foundation of his system. By 
 grouping many famiUes together, each individual 
 is enabled to undertake, for the general service of 
 the community, that special function in which he 
 excels. Cooking, and all the domestic duties, may 
 thus be performed by persons specially selected. 
 At the famihstere there are general kitchens for the 
 whole establishment, from which the meals ordered 
 by lodgers are supplied. The children, as soon 
 as they can leave their mothers, are brought up 
 first of all in infant schools, and then in more ad- 
 vanced schools, where they receive an excellent 
 education. 
 
 It is contended that under this system the 
 working men enjoy by combination many of those 
 advantages which must otherwise be the exclusive 
 privilege of wealth. Cooking is often badly done 
 for the rich ; a fortiori, it is to be expected that it 
 will be unskiKul in the homes of the poor. To 
 command the services of efficient persons, whether 
 in the capacity of nurses or cooks, is regarded by M. 
 Godin as among the greatest advantages of ample 
 resources. By combination the occupants of the 
 Social Palace at Guise are enabled to place their 
 children, even at a tender age, under the care of 
 well-trained nurses, and to obtain their own food 
 properly cooked. 
 
 Where the working men live apart from each 
 other in small houses they are necessarily widely
 
 FAMILISTERE DE GUISE 87 
 
 scattered. They are at a distance from their work, 
 and their children are so far from school that their 
 attendance is always difficult and often most 
 irregular. 
 
 In case of illness the services of a medical man 
 may not be easily obtained. Nor can medical 
 comforts be provided as in an estabhshment having 
 a weU-equipped dispensary for the general use of 
 the inmates. 
 
 The Social Palace at Guise stands in the midst of 
 extensive and well-kept pleasure grounds on the 
 banks of the Oise. It has an excellent theatre, 
 where dramatic representations and concerts are 
 frequently given by associations formed for the 
 purpose by the operatives. 
 
 The internal management is carried on by com- 
 mittees composed of twelve men and twelve women. 
 The men devote themselves specially to questions 
 relating to the amehoration of the condition of the 
 workmen, the rates of wages, and the formation of 
 provident societies. The women supervise the 
 quahty of the provisions suppUed from the co- 
 operative stores and butchers' shops connected 
 with the Social Palace. They also superintend the 
 management of the children and the arrangements 
 for preserving order and cleanhness. 
 
 It is alleged that there is an entire absence of 
 crime in this singular community ; and that public 
 opinion, the more sensibly felt when all dwell 
 together under the same roof, has raised the tone 
 of conduct and morals above the standard generally 
 maintained among persons of the same class hving 
 in private dwellings.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 WORK AND WAGES IN 1877 
 
 Trades Union Congress, Leicester, October 1877 
 
 Before entering upon more important topics, I de- 
 sire to express my high appreciation of the honour 
 of being invited to address the Delegates from the 
 Trades Unions at their annual Congress. Con- 
 nected as I am with the employers of labour, you 
 cannot expect me to come here to encourage an 
 aggressive movement against men of my own order. 
 I shall strive to hold the equal scales of justice as 
 between capital and labour. 
 
 I have before had occasion to vindicate the 
 character of the English workman from unmerited 
 strictures. The same charges are renewed to-day, 
 and again I ask for evidence to prove that the 
 English workman is deteriorating. Has the volume 
 of our trade diminished while that of other nations 
 has increased ? This question may be satisfactorily 
 answered by a reference to Mr. Leone Levi's History 
 of British Commerce. We export produce and manu- 
 factures of the value of £6 3s. 2d. per head of our 
 population. France exports at the rate of £2 18s. 8c^. 
 Our trade doubled in the fifteen years 1855-1870. 
 The exports and imports in 1870 amounted to 
 £547,000,000. The progress has been well sus- 
 tained through the period of depression, from
 
 WORK AND WAGES IN 1877 89 
 
 which we have not yet by any means emerged. 
 In 1876 the total amount had grown to £631,000,000. 
 Mr, Levi truly observes, in commenting on these 
 remarkable figures, that what gives an open market 
 to British merchandise all over the world is its 
 universal adaptation to the wants of the popula- 
 tions of every climate. Luxuries are useless to the 
 masses of mankind. CaUco, iron, and hardwares 
 are necessaries even to the least civilised peoples. 
 The demand for these articles of universal necessity 
 would not be supplied almost exclusively from 
 England unless our labourers were ' really good 
 workers.' Wages may be higher here than else- 
 where. Production is cheaper, because labour is 
 more efficient and the cost of supervision is less. 
 The effectiveness of labour is shown by the growth 
 of exports. 
 
 The expansion of British exports of manufactures 
 is due to the co-operation of skiKul labour with well- 
 directed capital. The Enghsh workman may claim 
 to share with his employer the merit due to that 
 combination of cheapness of cost with excellence of 
 quality, which has secured for us the pre-eminence 
 we enjoy in the export trade of the world. Grave 
 faults are imputed to our working classes, and their 
 conduct in many instances may deserve censure. 
 But, when we look abroad, we hear exactly the 
 same complaints under similar circumstances. For 
 information on the relations between labour and 
 capital in foreign countries I would refer more 
 especially to the admirable reports of our Secretaries 
 of Legation and Consuls. Sir Henry Barron's
 
 90 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 report on Belgium in 1872 describes the condition of 
 that country in a period of unexampled prosperity. 
 A great rise in wages had taken place. The im- 
 providence of the people was aggravated with their 
 prosperity, and there was an actual decrease in the 
 deposits in the savings banks. Pig-iron doubled in 
 value in six months. The prices of labour and 
 materials rose to such exorbitant rates as to absorb 
 the whole profits of the trade. The zinc, glass, and 
 woollen industries have passed through crises of 
 equal severity. 
 Germany. In Germany, during the period of universal 
 inflation between 1871 and 1872, wages were ad- 
 vanced not less rapidly than in England. It was a 
 period of immense profits all round. The production 
 of iron was increased from 1,500,000 tons in 1871 to 
 2,250,000 tons in 1872. Prices of coal and pig-iron 
 advanced 100 per cent. The rise of wages in all 
 branches of trade was 37 per cent, over the average 
 of former years. The prices of all the raw materials 
 of industry were 50 per cent, higher. This great 
 prosperity brought about no permanent improve- 
 ment in the condition of the industrial classes. 
 The cost of living was increased to such a degree 
 that the workmen were but little better off than 
 before, and money was more freely expended in 
 intoxicating liquors. I must confine myself to a 
 single example in order to show what alternations 
 of misery and want were experienced in Germany. 
 The case is taken from the report of Mr. Savile, 
 Cliief Clerk of the Treasury Department of the 
 United States, and is pubhshed in a volume on
 
 WORK AND WAGES IN 1877 91 
 
 ' Labour in Europe and America,' compiled by 
 Mr. Young, Chief of the Bureau of Statistics of 
 the United States. Mr. Savile describes how, at 
 Chemnitz, a great manufacturing centre, the ad- 
 vance of wages from 1870 to 1872 was accompanied 
 by a still greater advance in the cost of living. 
 When the commercial reaction ensued wages fell 
 25 per cent. There was no corresponding fall in 
 the price of food. Widespread misery was the in- 
 evitable consequence. The meagre dietary of the 
 people did not include meat more than once a week. 
 A few^ touches will sometimes produce the most 
 striking effect in a picture. An audience of English 
 workmen will probably appreciate the low standard 
 of living to which the people had been reduced, when 
 it is mentioned that jVIr. Savile refers in hopeful 
 terms to the establishment of a market at Chemnitz 
 for the sale of horse-flesh, which, being com- 
 paratively cheap, gave them more for their money, 
 or enabled them to get meat oftener than 
 formerly. 
 
 In the large towns of Grermany there is a wide- 
 spread though morbid spirit of disaffection to the 
 political and the social organisation under which 
 they live. The Socialist agitation is described as a 
 purely negative opposition to the existing order of 
 things, and to every proposal of reform. It opposes 
 popular education, and it is indifferent to political 
 progress. The only exception to this negative 
 pohcy is the tendency to encourage strikes. 
 
 It is not necessary to insist at greater length on 
 the existence of troubles elsewhere. The burden we
 
 92 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 have to bear is not lightened because a heavier 
 load is imposed on others. We may therefore 
 proceed to examine the statement, so often repeated, 
 that labour is dearer in England than on the 
 Continent. 
 
 It is assumed that, because the scale of wages is 
 higher, there is a corresponding difference in the net 
 cost of production. Low wages do not necessarily 
 imply cheap production. Certain branches of trade 
 in Belgium have been already adverted to, and yet 
 in Belgium the wages of the mill operatives have 
 been reduced so low as scarcely to cover the cost 
 of subsistence in cheap seasons, and to leave the 
 workman with an inevitable deficit in dear seasons. 
 Not more than 40,000 workmen in the whole country 
 have accounts at the savings banks. 
 
 In those trades where we are exposed to foreign 
 competition, the English workman has, in the main, 
 performed an amount of work fully proportionate 
 to the difference of wages in his favour ; and the 
 fact that we are running a close race in some branches 
 of trade with a country where higher wages prevail 
 than those earned in England is a proof that the 
 cost of labour is not correlative with the scale of 
 wages. 
 
 A recent return of the import duties levied on 
 articles of British produce shows conclusively that 
 foreign producers, notwithstanding the nominal 
 cheapness of labour abroad, are themselves unable 
 to compete in the open market with our own manu- 
 facturers :
 
 WORK AND WAGES IN 1877 
 
 93 
 
 Article* 
 
 Bnssia 
 
 Germany 
 
 Belgiam 
 
 France 
 
 United 
 
 States 
 
 
 Per cent. 
 
 Per cent. 
 
 Per cent. 
 
 Per cent. 
 
 Per cent. 
 
 Cotton yarns 
 
 38 
 
 7 
 
 7 to 19 
 
 — 
 
 75 
 
 Jute (sacking 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 and canvas) 
 
 10 
 
 5 
 
 10 
 
 11 to 26 
 
 30 to 40 
 
 Ibok. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Pig . . 
 
 17 
 
 free 
 
 7 
 
 27 
 
 42 
 
 Bar 
 
 50 
 
 — 
 
 5 
 
 35 
 
 67 to 100 
 
 Rails for Bail- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ways . 
 
 28 
 
 — 
 
 5 
 
 35 to 50 
 
 46 to 83 
 
 And now let us compare wages. In the United Wages in 
 States, Mr. Lowthian BeU, in his report on the iron states. 
 exhibits at the Philadelphia Exhibition, gives the 
 following table of daily wages as the result of many 
 inquiries in 1874 : 
 
 Tbadks 
 
 United States 
 
 Norte of 
 England 
 
 Highest 
 
 Lowest 
 
 Average 
 
 Good men 
 
 Carpenters 
 
 Smiths . ... 
 
 Bricklayers 
 
 Machinists 
 
 Enginemen 
 
 8. d. 
 
 12 3 
 
 13 2 
 18 10 
 11 3 
 
 8. d. 
 
 5 7 
 
 6 2 
 
 7 6 
 7 6 
 
 s. d. 
 9 
 9 5 
 
 12 3 
 8 3 
 6 6 
 
 8. d. 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 5 6 
 5 10 
 5 6 
 
 In America, as in England, it wiU be observed 
 that the building trades are disproportionately paid. 
 The reason is the same in both cases : the demand is 
 essentially local. Wages are given which could not 
 be sustained if the price could be determined upon 
 a balance of demand and supply distributed over a 
 wider area. In all trades, subject in any degree to
 
 94 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 the influence of foreign competition, the American 
 workmen are conscious of the necessity of working 
 hard and well, in order to keep up the high wages 
 which they are at present earning. I do not shrink 
 from telling the representatives of English labour 
 whom I see before me, that any rules and regulations 
 whereby the native vigour of the British workman 
 is restrained must in the end prove fatal in their 
 consequences. No doubt the effects are less baneful, 
 in a commercial point of view, in the building and 
 other trades, which are not brought face to face with 
 foreign competitors. But, if improved dweUings 
 are urgently needed for the working classes, the 
 unwisdom of imposing rules and restrictions, tending 
 to augment the cost of building, must be patent 
 to all. 
 American These remarks may be enforced by a reference to 
 Mr. Lowthian Bell's comparison, made in 1874, of the 
 net cost of labour in the coal mines in the United 
 States and England. The American miners earned 
 on the average 95. a day. They worked for ten 
 hours, and extracted six tons of coal. The average 
 earnings of the English miners were 55. 2d. a day, 
 spending about seven hours in the pit and six in 
 actual work. This was equal to l5. 2d. per hour, 
 for which the quantity worked was about 11 cwt. 
 Miners in the United States got about 13 cwt., and 
 were paid l5. \d. an hour. It is admitted that this 
 comparison is not complete, unless the relative 
 facility of extraction is taken into consideration. 
 The work is generally easier in America than in 
 England. Still the fact remains that, while the 
 
 miners.
 
 WORK AND WAGES IN 1877 95 
 
 daily earnings in America were greater, the hours 
 were longer, and more work was done for a given 
 sum of money. 
 
 Provided the necessity of keeping down the cost, Chemnitz. 
 so as to be able to compete with other producers, is 
 duly recognised, and the cost of living is not raised 
 to such a point that the workmen are actually 
 poorer than before, as in the case already quoted 
 of the manufacturing population of Chemnitz, the 
 working classes are clearly justified in seeking to 
 better their condition. If they prefer to shorten 
 the hours of work they are not more deserving of 
 reproach than the successful employer who wisely 
 prefers to give less time to business and more to 
 nobler things. In either case it is a question of 
 fitness of opportunity. 
 
 Apathetic resignation is a condition very detri- 
 mental to the interests of capital, and truly melan- 
 choly to the labourer. In Mr. Young's volume the 
 manufacturing population of vSilesia is described as 
 destitute of any aspiration to better their condition 
 in life, while the monotony of their daily toil pro- 
 duces an inordinate longing for enjoyment. The 
 United States Consul thus describes the people 
 of Chemnitz ; ' A stupid nature and dull ambition, 
 with the inborn idea that they will labour all their 
 lives , as their fathers did before them, make the 
 working class of some portions of Germany perpetual 
 slaves to poverty, and the day is very far off when 
 they shall be emancipated from thraldom.' It is 
 because it is so important to inspire workmen with 
 the hope of bettering their condition that I have
 
 96 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 always advocated the principle of payment by 
 results. My father entertained the firmest con- 
 victions on this point. Many trades unions object 
 on the ground that payment by the piece leads to 
 overwork and bad workmanship. Whatever the 
 form of payment, whether it be by piece-work, 
 contract, gratuity for extra diligence, or percentage 
 upon profits, it is essentially necessary to give to the 
 workman a personal motive for exertion. This must 
 come from the prospect of participation in the 
 profits which have been earned by his labour. 
 Rate of That profits on the average are not immoderate 
 
 England" *'^® workers in England have conclusive proof. 
 Take the dividends paid on railways. The share 
 and loan capital of the railways of the United 
 Eangdom forms an enormous total of £630,000,000. 
 The average amount of dividend or interest returned 
 for 1875 is represented by the modest figure of 
 4.54 per cent. The rates of interest on preferential 
 capital, being more imiform than the dividends on 
 ordinary shares, afford the most accurate gauge of 
 the ordinary returns on English investment, which 
 present no speculative features. The process of 
 converting terminable loans into debenture stock 
 has of late been going forward with rapid strides. 
 The amount increasea from £67,000,000 in 1831 to 
 £123,000,000 in 1875. In the same period the rate 
 of interest on these investments was reduced from 
 4.25 to 4.18 per cent. The fact that debenture 
 stocks, bearing only 4 per cent, interest, can be 
 issued by our railway companies, at the rate of 
 £16,000,000 a year, must be a positive proof to the
 
 WORK AND WAGES IN 1877 97 
 
 working classes that they are not overcharged for 
 the use of capital. 
 
 This fact might be estabUshed upon evidence of 
 a still wider and more conclusive kind than that 
 afforded by the prices of railway securities. We 
 might refer, for example, to the average Bank rate 
 of discount. The rate for each year since 1867 has 
 been as follows :— 2|, 2i, 3i, 3^, 2|, 4|, 4|, 3|, 3^, 
 and 2 1 per cent. If the secure profits of business 
 had been greatly in excess of the Bank rates, there 
 would have been less money on deposit, and higher 
 rates would have been charged for banking accom- 
 modation. 
 
 No less than 75,000 miles of railway have been Demand 
 constructed in the United States. A large pro- g^ppj^ 
 portion of the capital required has been raised in regulate 
 Germany and the United Kingdom upon terms more ^^s^s- 
 favourable to the capitalist than are obtainable here. 
 Setting aside the speculative stocks, the rates of 
 interest obtainable in the United States, as com 
 pared with the United Kingdom, on a first-rate 
 security, may be taken to be as 6 to 4. Fortu- 
 nately for the English workman, there are some 
 considerations apart from the rate of interest which 
 make in his favour. If these did not exist, the 
 depletion of capital in this country would become 
 a very serious question. 
 
 I have spoken of the faults of the workmen. In 
 fairness I am bound to say that the present depres- 
 sion of trade cannot be wholly laid to their charge. 
 If we examine the recent labour movement, in order 
 of time the inflation of trade preceded the inflation 
 
 H
 
 98 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 of wages. When the labourer had gained command 
 of the situation, he in many instances gave a smaller 
 return, both in quantity and quality of work, for 
 the increased wages that were earned. The capi- 
 taUst, however, must bear his share of responsibility. 
 Capitahsts, employers of labour, investors and 
 lenders of money, overstock markets and cause 
 goods to be sold at ruinous prices, and by en- 
 couraging speculative building temporarily raise 
 wages. 
 
 For the sake of brevity, it will be necessary 
 to confine ourselves almost exclusively to an ex- 
 amination of the recent history of the iron trade. 
 Iron In America the panic in the iron trade began to 
 America, nianifest its approach in 1873. Mr. Lowthian Bell 
 tells us that the ironmasters complain that the 
 construction of railways had been encouraged, in 
 the period more immediately preceding the panic, 
 by the action of Congress. Millions of acres of 
 public lands had been given to the companies, as 
 an inducement to make railroads which were not 
 needed. Upon this there supervened a disastrous 
 crisis. The unduly rapid extension of railways 
 caused an excessive demand for rails. The supply not 
 being equal to the demand, and a heavy protective 
 tariff being imposed on imported rails, the American 
 ironmasters reahsed immense profits. They rapidly 
 increased the rolling capacity of their mills to an 
 extent not warranted by the permanent prospects 
 of trade. The consumption of rails in 1872 was 
 1,630,000 tons, of which 1,000,000 tons were made 
 in America. In 1875 the capacity of the rail miUs
 
 WORK AND WAGES IN 1877 99 
 
 had been augmented to 1,940,000 tons. In the 
 interval, hoAvever, a panic in railways had reduced 
 the consumption of rails to 810,000 tons. The 
 capacity of the mills had been increased to two and 
 a half times the requirements. A collapse ensued, 
 from which there is no immediate prospect of 
 recovery. 
 
 The experiences of the American ironmasters British 
 were repeated in the contemporary history of the "'o"'''*^®- 
 British iron trade, though the fluctuations were 
 less violent. The course of events is succinctly 
 narrated in Mr. Lowthian Bell's report. The 
 increased demand for coal and iron commenced in 
 1871. The increase amounted to 6| per cent, for 
 coal and 22 per cent, for iron. In pig-iron there was 
 an increased production of 664,000 tons in 1871, and 
 of 110,000 tons in 1872 ; the totals being for 1870— 
 coals, 117,000,000 tons ; pig-iron, 6,627,000 tons. 
 The supply was still deficient. Pig-iron rose to 
 122s. 6^;. in August 1872. In 1873 the average 
 price of 1155. was maintained throughout the year. 
 The production fell off to the extent of 175,000 tons. 
 The difficulty of obtaining fuel was the cause of 
 diminution. Coke, which could be had for 125. 
 in 1870, rose to 425> a ton in 1873. British con- 
 sumers were obliged to compete, as purchasers 
 of fuel, with foreign consumers. Meanwhile labour 
 rose at the blast furnaces 50 per cent. The cost 
 of production was increased fully one-third. In 
 1874 the reaction set in rapidly. Cleveland pig- 
 iron receded from 1155. to 675. 6d. In 1875 the 
 price fell to 545., the average for the year being
 
 stock 
 companies, 
 
 100 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 605. By this time a considerable economy had been 
 effected in the cost of the manufacture, and there 
 was a small margin of profit. In 1876 there was a 
 further reduction of wages, and if the trade was 
 nevertheless unprofitable it was due to causes 
 independent of the cost of labour. To an un- 
 biassed mind this brief retrospective narrative will 
 scarcely support the assumption that the violent 
 dislocations which have occurred were attributable 
 to the action of the workmen. 
 Joint- Again, the manufacturing industry of the country, 
 
 especially in coal and iron, has been injured by the 
 abuse of the facilities afforded by the Joint-Stock 
 Companies Acts for the conversion of private 
 into corporate enterprises. Mr. Gladstone has de- 
 nounced in telling language the folly of investors, 
 who deluded themselves with the belief that they 
 could expect, as shareholders in a company, to reap 
 all the profits which had before been earned by 
 trained and experienced manufacturers, who had 
 spent their early lives in learning, and their maturer 
 years in the administration of, a complicated 
 industry. In most cases the companies, on taking 
 over the business from the vendors, expended large 
 sums in additional plant and buildings. In order 
 to find employment for their enlarged establish- 
 ments, contracts were taken with no regard to price. 
 The administration was often entrusted to directors 
 without technical or practical knowledge, who could 
 not know whether the tenders they were submitting 
 were based on sound calculations. 
 
 This discussion of the labour problem must be
 
 WORK AND WAGES IN 1877 101 
 
 brought to a close with a few general remarks 
 on Trades Unions, It has been asserted by Sir 
 Edmund Beckett, who gives expression to views 
 very widely entertained, (1) that trades unions are a 
 combination to do less work for the given wages ; 
 (2) that they teach the fatal doctrine that it is the 
 business of working men to do no more than the 
 least they can be paid for. 
 
 These grave charges may be true in a measure. 
 They are not the whole truth. If it be true that 
 bad workmanship is advocated by trades unions, 
 it must at least be admitted that the national 
 reputation is still high for the production of many 
 important articles of a quality far superior to that 
 obtained abroad. In textile industry the quality 
 of our woollens, prices being taken into considera- 
 tion, is unrivalled. In ship-building, machinery, 
 and hardware we have an admitted superiority. 
 We are practically monopolists of the unsubsidised 
 traffic through the Suez Canal. 
 
 The existence of trades unions must be accepted Trades 
 as a necessary consequence of the new phases mto 
 which productive industry has entered ; and the 
 only practical question is, hoAV to direct this im- 
 portant and extensive organisation into a useful 
 channel. The working classes must always be more 
 or less in a state of uncertainty as to the profits 
 which their employers may from time to time 
 be realising. This must, however, be known, in 
 order to decide whether they have a right to demand 
 an advance of wages, or, what is the same thing, a 
 reduction in the hours of labour. The organisation
 
 102 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 of the trades unions may be usefully employed for 
 tlie purpose of obtaining reliable information from 
 independent sources, both at home and abroad. 
 As a practical suggestion, I venture to add, do not 
 grudge an ample salary to a competent adviser. 
 The action of the trades unions need not be con- 
 fined to the single question of wages. You have 
 shown in the present Congress that you appreciate 
 your responsibilities in the watchful observation 
 of legislative measures affecting the welfare of 
 the people. You may act as peacemakers in the 
 negotiation of terms of agreement between masters 
 and men ; you may use your influence in securing 
 the observance of the conditions of a treaty, or 
 acquiescence in the decrees of courts of arbitration. 
 Let me conclude by expressing once more my 
 gratitude for your kind invitation to be present at 
 this Congress. To possess your confidence is an 
 honour of which I am very sensible. It is the most 
 regrettable incident of the organisation of industry 
 on a large scale that the personal relations between 
 employers and their workmen have become less 
 intimate than before. In my own case the dis- 
 continuance of my father's business has deprived 
 me of opportunities, which I should have greatly 
 prized, of associating with the working class. Many 
 prejudices may be removed by an honest inter- 
 change of ideas, face to face, in a spirit of con- 
 ciliation, and with a mutual and sincere desire to 
 reach the truth and to maintain justice.
 
 France. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 LABOUR AT HOME AND ABROAD 
 
 Lecture at the Central Hall, Leicester, October 1877 
 Having discussed Trades Unionism on two previous EnglMi 
 occasions during the present Congress, I shall confine France, 
 myself this evening to other subjects, which may 
 probably be interesting to an audience composed 
 of the representatives of the great trades of the 
 country. 
 
 The industrial classes in England still retain many Wages in 
 advantages, in regard to their standard of living, 
 over the operatives of continental Europe. The 
 physical condition of a large portion of the French 
 population has not materially changed during 
 the last twenty-five years. It is stated in Lord 
 Brabazon's report that there are nine million 
 families in France., of whom one miUion are in easy 
 circumstances. The inhabitants of towns in France 
 constitute about two-fifths, in England four-fifths 
 of the entire population. The food of the French 
 workman is inferior to that to which the English- 
 man is accustomed. In Rouen and many other 
 manufacturing towns the dwellings of the labouring 
 classes are wretched. The condition of the female 
 weavers of France is thus described by Monsieur 
 Jules Simon : ' They are miserably lodged, clothed, 
 and fed ; and with all this they are obhged to work 
 twelve hours a day.'
 
 104 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 In In Belgium, again, where wages are extremely 
 
 egium. YQy^^ the working classes are as a consequence 
 wanting in strength and vigour. The employer 
 would secure a more advantageous return for the 
 money expended on labour if the workmen were 
 more liberally paid. Mr. Grattan, the British 
 Consul at Antwerp, gives a melancholy description 
 of the condition of the working classes of Belgium. 
 ' The standard of wages,' he says, ' taking all things 
 into consideration, is undoubtedly insufficient to 
 satisfy the legitimate wants of the working popula- 
 tion.' The average wages of mill operatives do 
 not exceed Is. 8d. a day. ' The working days 
 will hardly exceed 250 in the year, making a 
 maximum earning of £20 in a j^ear, or about 85. a 
 week. Adding, in the case of the married operative, 
 with a wife and three children, lOd. a day, earned 
 by some member of the family, a weekly amount 
 of lis. will possibly be realised. The expenses of 
 the family, calculated at the lowest possible rate, 
 in ordinary seasons, fully absorb the earnings. In 
 dear seasons the expenditure will exceed the earnings 
 by at least 45. a week. Beer, meat, and sugar are 
 not included in the dietary. Diminish the family 
 by one child, or add one-third to the wages of the 
 operative, and it still remains next to impossible 
 to make both ends meet. There are probably from 
 ten to twenty thousand working men's households 
 in Belgium in this sad position.' This description 
 sufficiently proves that the wages of many trades 
 in Belgium have been reduced to the minimum 
 required for the meagre subsistence of the people. 
 Nor has the industry of Belgium escaped the de-
 
 LABOUR AT HOME AND ABROAD 105 
 
 pression experienced elsewhere. To minimise wages 
 
 is not the most effectual method of securing economy 
 
 of production. It is a cheaper and a happier rule 
 
 to give a fair day's wages for a fair day's work. 
 
 I forbear to touch upon the social aspect of the 
 
 subject. The prosperity of trade must be a thing 
 
 little to be desired if it could only be attained at the 
 
 price of misery and destitution. 
 
 The last report by Captain Tyler on the railways Cost of 
 
 of the British Empire throws some light on the 5°^^^^^ 
 , . 1 1 1 r -, • Railways. 
 
 relations between wages and the cost of production 
 in this country. While the wages of all classes of 
 workmen employed in the construction of railways 
 have advanced, the average cost per mile of railway 
 open has remained for many years approximately 
 the same— £34,099 in 1858; £34,100 in 1870; 
 £38,000 in 1875. As Captain Tyler remarks, the 
 more recent railways have, with the exception of the 
 Metropolitan and some others, been constructed 
 at a much lower rate of cost per mile than the 
 figure of £34,000 given as the average from 1858 
 to 1870. The pressure of the higher price of 
 labour has stimulated in the utmost degree the 
 contriving and organising faculties of employers. 
 More machinery has been used, an ever-widening 
 experience has suggested more effective and econo- 
 mical methods of work. Profits have been reduced 
 to a minimum. 
 
 Turn to foreign countries. In the iron trade 
 the state of affairs in Germany and Belgium — 
 countries of low wages — is most unsatisfactory. 
 In France the railway iron trade is dull, Creuzot 
 being described as abnost deserted.
 
 106 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 Depression has been severe in the coal trade. 
 No blame attaches to the workers. In 1876, 
 according to the circular of Messrs. Fallows, opera- 
 tives worked steadily throughout the year. ColUers' 
 wages had fallen 12^ per cent. ; the market value 
 of coal had fallen at least 20 per cent. 
 
 The reduction in prices in the coal and iron 
 trades may be appreciated from the following 
 figures : 
 
 1872-3 1876 
 
 Common engine-coal at pit 75. Qd. 2s. 6d. 
 
 Ordinary pig-iron at works £6 to £7 £2 55. to £3 
 
 Staffordsliire bars . . . . £16 £8 
 
 Best Bessemer rails . . £16 105. £6 155. 
 
 The profits derived from the inflated prices just 
 quoted gave sudden and colossal fortunes to the 
 employers and unexampled wages to the workmen. 
 The cost of production speedily exhausted the 
 spending power of the consumers. Numbers of 
 furnaces are standing idle. 
 
 British trade has suffered at least as much from 
 reckless competition as from exorbitant wages. A 
 considerable proportion of the profits of the em- 
 ployers in the iron and coal trades was applied 
 to the sinking of new pits and the extension of 
 works, which have ever since remained but partly 
 employed, the capital invested having thus been 
 wholly unproductive. 
 Over-pro- All the foreign markets have been overstocked 
 
 with British goods. In order to encourage sales 
 in a glutted market, prices are reduced. To cover 
 the reduction in prices, manufacturers exercise their 
 
 duction.
 
 LABOUR AT HOME AND ABROAD 107 
 
 ingenuity to produce a showy article of inferior 
 quality. The reputation of British goods in China 
 has been almost ruined by the use of size to give a 
 fictitious appearance to cotton goods. Sir Brooke 
 Robertson, the British Consul at Canton, in a recent 
 report, has pointed out in the most forcible language 
 the necessity for restoring the character of British 
 industry in the East by an abandonment of these 
 practices. 
 
 I have pointed out how the returns upon capital Foreign 
 have been diminished at least as much by rash ^^enta 
 speculation as by the aggression of trades unions. 
 The contractors for loans to foreign States not 
 entitled to financial credit have worked the London 
 Stock Exchange until the supply has at length been 
 exhausted. The misplaced confidence of the public 
 has been destroyed by the revelations of the Com- 
 mittee appointed to investigate the subject. A 
 field no doubt there is for the reproductive employ- 
 ment of the savings of the Old World in the 
 development of the resources of the New. Many 
 a brave and laborious settler in the Far West of 
 North America, or in the wilds of Austraha, could 
 convert to profitable use a weU- timed loan of £100 
 from the unemployed deposits in the custody of 
 the London bankers. But how are you to bring 
 together the lender and the borrower ? 
 
 There must obviously be more prudence in Short 
 the application of capital. The exaggerated profits *^"^®" 
 of 1871 cannot be revived. It has been pro- 
 posed by the trades unions that the depreciation of 
 prices should be arrested by a limitation of supply,
 
 108 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 and that the mill operatives should work short time. 
 Such a suggestion must be received with extreme 
 caution, lest, by making production more costly, 
 you raise the price of British goods in the neutral 
 markets to such a point that you are undersold by 
 the foreign manufacturer. Again, if, by restricting 
 its use, you prevent the money invested in costly 
 machinery from being reproductive, the result must 
 be that capital will be diverted from manufacturing 
 to other branches of business where a more satis- 
 factory return can be obtained. There are cases 
 in which it is the wisest course, in the interest alike 
 of capital and labour, to compensate for low profits 
 by selling a greater quantity of the commodity. 
 In other cases of overtrading, the appropriate remedy 
 is a temporary limitation of production. There are 
 no abstract rules for all the varied contingencies 
 which may arise in the industrial world. Each case 
 must be dealt with according to circumstances. 
 It is equally the duty of the workman and of his 
 employer to watch closely and continuously the 
 course of events, with a view to select a fitting 
 opportunity for the advancement of prices or the 
 improvement of wages. Every alteration, whether 
 of prices or wages, is a question of expediency and 
 opportunity. 
 Condi- In all classes an advance of wages must be made 
 
 under subject to two conditions. The cost of English 
 which labour must not be permitted to exceed the cost of 
 ma^^be foreign labour, nor the scale of prices be raised 
 raised, beyond the capacity of the consumer to bear them. 
 On the other hand, if the working men offered no
 
 LABOUR AT HOME AND ABROAD 109 
 
 resistance to the downward pressure, the reduction 
 would continue until wages had been reduced to the 
 minimum required to cover the cost of subsistence. 
 The employers would reap no benefit. Keen com- 
 petition would give everything to the consumer. 
 If labour were cheaper in England than it is, the 
 workman would share with the whole body of con- 
 sumers the advantages of a reduction in the cost 
 of living, which would go far to compensate for the 
 reduction of wages. 
 
 Much of the objection which exists in the public Cost of 
 mind to trades unions rests on general reluctance England. 
 to see any effort made to raise the price of labour ; 
 but if it be inexpedient to seek for an advance of 
 wages, all those requirements or prejudices which 
 make the cost of living of the working classes dearer 
 in this country than on the Continent may with 
 equal justice be condemned. The British workman 
 has a prejudice against brown bread, and insists 
 on eating white bread. If he were content with 
 brown bread, he would live more cheaply. But what 
 is the effect of this prejudice ? It is that the British 
 workman will prefer to labour more and live on white 
 bread, rather than labour less and live on brown 
 bread. It is needless to give further details in 
 illustration. All political economists are agreed 
 that a high standard of living is an encouragement 
 to industry, and that a low standard of living tends 
 to indolence. A demand for higher wages is only 
 the aspiration to a higher standard of living in 
 another form ; and, provided that it be recognised 
 that for the higher wages an equivalent must be
 
 110 
 
 WORK AND WAGP:S 
 
 Workmen 
 iu the 
 United 
 States. 
 
 given in better work and more work, there can be 
 no objection to the demand. A rise in wages, 
 without an equivalent increase in work performed, 
 is only possible where there is a margin of profit 
 available for division among the workmen. It is 
 the business of trades unions to gather materials 
 for forming a judgment as to whether such a margin 
 exists. Where it does not exist, and the workman 
 knows that he must do more work or better work 
 in order to secure an advance of wages, the aspiration 
 for a higher standard of living is distinctly beneficial 
 both to capital and labour. 
 
 I pass from the abstract rules of political economy 
 to the practical results of high wages, as exhibited 
 in the social condition of the industrial population of 
 the United States. During the period of prosperity 
 anterior to the recent collapse of trade in the United 
 States, there is reason to believe that the working 
 man in America, like his fellow-labourer in England, 
 spent nearly the whole of his earnings on the main- 
 tenance of his family and household. If, however, 
 his savings were not appreciably greater, his standard 
 of living was much higher than that of the corre- 
 sponding classes in our own country. In New York 
 the dwellings of the workmen were often crowded 
 to excess, and the same remark is applicable to some 
 of the towns of New England. For the most part, 
 the working people of the United States inhabited 
 comfortable houses and enjoyed an abundance of 
 good food and clothing. Their children enjoyed 
 the advantage of an admirable system of pubhc 
 elementary education . The circumstances of eighty-
 
 LABOUR AT HOME AND ABROAD 111 
 
 one workmen, including carpenters, masons, shoe- 
 makers, and mill hands, were examined by the 
 Bureau of Statistics in the State of Massachusetts 
 in 1874. The results are given as follows : 
 
 EXPENDITURE 
 
 Rent $146 58 
 
 Fuel 51 19 
 
 Groceries 350 38 
 
 Meat and fish . . . . 108 28 
 
 Milk 25 47 
 
 Clothing, boots and shoes . 114 65 
 
 Dry goods 28 27 
 
 Rehgion and books . . . 23 18 
 
 Sundries 38 76 
 
 Total . . . . $886 76@45. 2(i.3=£184 
 
 The earnings were as follows : 
 
 The father $619 18 
 
 The children . . . . 310 78 
 
 Total . . . . $929 96@45.2c;. = £195 
 
 Number of rooms occupied ... 6 
 
 Persons in family 6 
 
 Children at school 2 
 
 Five houses were reported as unpleasant in 
 situation, eight were moderately, the rest well 
 furnished, thirteen contained pianos, and three 
 had organs. All the families save three were * well 
 dressed.* Yet, with all these comforts, not to say 
 luxuries, only sixteen had deposited money in savings 
 banks. 
 
 The advantages enjoyed by the working classes
 
 112 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 in the United States are seriously diminished by 
 the protective pohcy of the country. The trade is 
 confined to the home market ; and the fluctuations 
 must be more frequent and more violent than in a 
 country which has commercial relations with the 
 whole world. In the case of a country which has 
 a large export trade, the demand for goods, if dull 
 in one market, will probably be brisk in another. 
 Under a free-trade policy employment will ac- 
 cordingly be more regular. No condition can be 
 more trying to the working classes than the alterna- 
 tion of high wages and certain employment with 
 intervals of complete inactivity. We have had 
 much experience of this evil in England. It is 
 aggravated in America by the existence of the 
 protective tarifif, which makes manufactures so dear 
 as to render exportation impossible. 
 
 The depression of trade in the United States has 
 brought more suffering on the working classes in that 
 country than the English operatives have endured, 
 although I fully recognise the claims of our fellow- 
 countrymen to our sympathy. This is shown by the 
 reports received from my old friend Mr. Thomas 
 Connolly. In a letter, republished in the Economist, 
 he says that in Pennsylvania, which has a population 
 of 3 1 millions, there are more people out of work 
 than in all England. A few individual cases may be 
 quoted. A steel-roller at Distin's saw factory, who 
 came out from Sheffield at 7 dollars a day, is now 
 working, two days a week, at 3| dollars a day. 
 The men on the Delaware and Western Railroad 
 had to submit to three reductions in 1876, which
 
 LABOUR AT HOME AND ABROAD 113 
 
 brought down the wages of good workmen to 45. lOd. 
 a day. The only emigrants who are now required 
 in the United States are agricultural labourers and 
 men who can buy land and settle on it. 
 
 The most serious difficulties of the working 
 classes in England arise from : 
 
 1. Overcrowding in our densely peopled cities. 
 
 2. An excessive supply of labour in certain 
 industries. 
 
 The gifted author of ' The New Republic ' has 
 described the unlovely conditions in which the 
 dwellers in great cities are in too many cases com- 
 pelled to exist. ' Consider,' he asks, ' how the 
 human eye delights in form and colour, and the ear 
 is tempered to harmonious sounds ; and then think 
 for a moment of a London street — think of the 
 shapeless houses, the forest of ghastly chimney pots ! ' 
 
 We may look for improved conditions under the 
 provisions of the Industrial DweUings Act, carried 
 through Parliament by the Home Secretary, at the 
 instance of my friend and colleague, Sir Ughtred J. 
 Kay-Shuttle worth , 
 
 I cannot bring these remarks to a conclusion 
 without expressing my deep satisfaction that many 
 men and women, some young in years and great 
 favourites in high society, with every temptation 
 to live a Ufe of pleasure, devote night after night 
 to the organisation of workmen's clubs, to the 
 furtherance of the co-operative movement. There 
 are earnest advocates of your cause in classes of 
 society which have no practical knowledge of your 
 aims and objects or of your condition of hfe. 
 
 I
 
 114 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 The vindication of the rights of property, and the 
 scientific explanation of the causes of the accumula- 
 tion of wealth in some fortunate individuals, are 
 themes I cannot now discuss. To the wise man 
 riches are a weighty responsibility, and to the weak 
 man a sore temptation. While the follies of the 
 one are contemptible, the anxieties of the other 
 may sometimes deserve the sympathy of the 
 independent artisan. Far as they are apart, the 
 various classes of society depend on one another. 
 In their union consists our national strength and 
 individual happiness. It was to promote that 
 union that I came among you, and I go away with 
 many grateful memories of my visit to Leicester.
 
 CHAPTER VITI 
 
 ON THE RISE OF WAGES IN THE BUILDING TRADES 
 OF LONDON 
 
 Read before the Royal Institute of British Architects, 
 February 4, 1878 
 
 The present Paper has been prepared in compliance 
 with an invitation of long standing, which I esteem 
 it a great honour to have received. The delay in the 
 preparation of the following statement is due to the 
 pressure of many engagements, and to my pro- 
 tracted absence on a voyage of circumnavigation. 
 Even now I should have been quite unable to have 
 performed my task without the aid and co-operation 
 of others. I have little spare time for such an 
 investigation, and no technical knowledge. Under 
 these circumstances I applied to Messrs. Hunt and 
 Stephenson, the well-known surveyors. As repre- 
 sentatives of the builders, I communicated with my 
 old friends, Messrs. Lucas Brothers ; and lastly, 
 with a view to obtain a fair statement on behalf of 
 the workmen, I asked the co-operation of Mr. Howell. 
 If the following paper possesses any importance as 
 a contribution to the sum of knowledge on that 
 labour movement which constitutes one of the most 
 urgent questions of our time, it is to the practical 
 authorities whom I have quoted that its value must 
 be attributed. 
 
 I2
 
 116 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 To the Council of this Institute belongs the 
 credit of suggesting that a review of the alterations 
 in the rates of wages in the building trades should 
 be prepared. It is only by bringing into view the 
 fluctuations in prices during a tolerably extended 
 period that the relation between cause and effect can 
 be satisfactorily traced, and principles laid down 
 for the future guidance of masters and men. It was 
 truly said by Lord Bolingbroke, that 'history is phil- 
 osophy teaching us by examples how to conduct our- 
 selves in all the struggles of pubUc and private life.' 
 I begin by giving a statement of the increase of 
 wages and reduction of working hours in the building 
 trades in London from 1837 to 1847. The current 
 wages of building operatives in London from the 
 year 1836 were 5s. per day of ten hours, or 30s. 
 per week of sixty hours. This rate was generally 
 adopted, though not universally paid in all branches 
 of the building trades until 1847. In fact, it was 
 only established as the standard rate by dint of 
 protracted efforts, extending over a period of 
 several years. Masons and bricklayers were the 
 first to secure an advance. Carpenters, plasterers, 
 and painters followed. 
 
 Surveying a period of 30 years, there has been 
 a reduction since 1847 of 7| hours in time — that 
 is to say, from 60 hours per week to 52-| hours. 
 The current wages in 1847 were at the rate of 55. per 
 day of 10 hours, or 30s. per week for 60 hours' work. 
 In 1877 the current wages were £1 12s. 4|c?. for 52| 
 hours' work, being an increase of wages amount- 
 ing to 9s. 4|fZ. per week. This represents a rise of
 
 BUILDING TRADES: RISE OF WAGES 117 
 
 31 1 per cent, on the original scale of wages, at the 
 rate of 305. per week, and of 12| per cent, in time 
 value, or a total advance in 30 years of 44 percent. 
 Messrs. Lucas have prepared a memorandum 
 giving the various wages by the day or the hour 
 both for labourers and mechanics. It will be 
 seen upon examination that these figures, although 
 stated in a different form, correspond exactly with 
 those contained in Mr. Howell's Paper : 
 
 Memorandum of the Cost of Materials and Labour^ 
 d-c, in the Building Trades 
 
 Sept. 1853. Wages per day of 10 hours= 
 60 hours per week were .... 
 
 Sept. 4, 1853, to March 22, 1861. Wages 
 per day of 10 hours =60 hours per week 
 were 
 
 March 23, 1861, to Sept. 27, 1865. Pay- 
 ment by the day was discontinued, and 
 the men were paid at the rate per hour of 
 
 Sept. 28, 1865, to May 4, 1866. Ditto 
 
 May 5, 1866, to July 5, 1872. 
 
 July 6, 1872, to Aug. 1, 1873. 
 
 Aug. 2, 1873, to present time. „ 
 
 Mechanics 
 
 Labourers 
 
 i 
 
 5 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 5 6 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 7 
 
 
 
 4} 
 
 7^ 
 
 
 
 4=^ 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 H 
 
 8| 
 
 
 
 5i 
 
 9 
 
 
 
 H 
 
 The present Working Hours are : 
 Monday 9 hours 
 
 Tuesday . 
 Wednesday 
 Thursday . 
 Friday 
 Saturday . 
 
 9^ 
 
 Total . . . . 52i hours 
 as compared with 60 hours for the summer and 47 hours 
 for the winter season, commencing six weeks before and 
 ending six weeks after Christmas.
 
 118 
 
 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 This shows an increase of 50 per cent, in the 
 wages of mechanics, and 64 per cent, in those of 
 labourers. There is a loss in time of 7| hours per 
 week. The men now only work 52-^ instead of 60 
 hours — a reduction of 12| per cent, in time ; 
 mechanics receive 395. 4|(i. for the 52J hours, 
 instead of 305. for 60 hours ; the labourers also 
 work 12| per cent, less time and receive 255. 2d. 
 for 52| hours as against I85. for 60 hours. 
 
 It is a remarkable circumstance that the most 
 important advances have been obtained by the 
 unskilled workmen. The lower the original rate 
 of wage the greater has been the advance. This is 
 clearly shown in the following table prepared by 
 Mr. Stephenson : 
 
 Memorandum with reference to the Comparative Cost 
 of Wages and Materials for Builders^ Works in 1865 
 and 1875 
 
 Wages 
 
 In 1865 
 per hour 
 
 In 1875 
 per hour 
 
 Increase 
 
 
 d. 
 
 d. 
 
 
 Excavatoi-3 . 
 
 4i 
 
 6i 
 
 28 per cent. 
 
 Bricklayers 
 
 n 
 
 9 
 
 20 
 
 
 Masons .... 
 
 n 
 
 9 
 
 20 
 
 
 „ Fixers 
 
 8 
 
 9| 
 
 20 
 
 
 Carpenters 
 
 7* 
 
 9 
 
 20 
 
 
 Joiners .... 
 
 7i 
 
 9 
 
 20 
 
 
 Smiths .... 
 
 n 
 
 9 
 
 20 
 
 
 Plasterers 
 
 n 
 
 9 
 
 20 
 
 
 Painters and Glaziers . 
 
 7 
 
 8i 
 
 22 
 
 
 Plumbers 
 
 8i 
 
 10 
 
 174 , 
 
 
 General Labourers 
 
 4i 
 
 5| 
 
 35 
 
 
 Scaffolders 
 
 4i 
 
 6i 
 
 28 
 
 
 Plumbers' Labourers . 
 
 4| 
 
 6i 
 
 28 

 
 BUILDING TRADES: RISE OF WAGES 119 
 
 It might have been expected that in trades where 
 the Unions were most completely organised the 
 greatest advances would have been secured. This 
 has not happened. While the number of the un- 
 skilled labourers is not Umited by any necessity for 
 a preliminary apprenticeship, it is they who have 
 reaped the greatest benefit by the increased demand 
 for labour. The rise in the rate of wages is doubtless 
 due partly to the increased cost of living. The pay 
 of those labourers whose wages were nearest to 
 a mere subsistence-level has been most sensibly 
 influenced by the changes which have led to an 
 increase in the cost of articles of the first necessity. 
 
 Let us now ascertain how far the cost of building 
 has been influenced by the increased cost of labour. 
 First, as to the cost of materials. Messrs, Lucas 
 observe ' The cost of materials fluctuates from time 
 to time, but as a whole we fmd that the average cost 
 is about the same as formerly, the reduction of duty 
 on bricks, timber, glass, &c., being in our favour.' 
 
 The increase of wages, according to Messrs. 
 Lucas, ought to have been more than covered by 
 the introduction of machinery for many building 
 operations, for hoisting all materials instead of 
 carrying by hod and raising by hand labour ; for 
 grinding mortar and for the execution of aU kinds 
 of carpenter's, joiner's, and mason's work. They 
 say, however, that their experience shows that the 
 cost of building has actually increased from 20 to 
 30 per cent., and this increase is entirely due to 
 the small amount of work now done by the men, 
 compared with what they did some few years ago.
 
 120 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 As an illustration of this, they refer to the new 
 station, hotel, locomotive works, and goods' sheds 
 at York, which they have recently erected for the 
 North Eastern Railway Company. These works 
 were of great magnitude, and were superintended 
 by one of the most experienced and able members 
 of their staff. The materials were bought for less 
 than the estimated price, and the introduction of 
 steam-power to an unusual extent — in fact, whenever 
 it could be used — effected an immense saving upon 
 the labour. But all these advantages were more 
 than neutralised by the indolence of the men. 
 A conspicuous instance is quoted. The labour upon 
 the brickwork, which would formerly have cost 385. 
 per rod by piece-work, was estimated at a price 
 which Mr. Harrison, the Engineer of the North 
 Eastern Railway Company, considered liberal for 
 such work, namely, £3 3s. per rod. The actual 
 cost was a little more than £5 or £1 17s. per rod 
 more than Messrs. Lucas received from the Company. 
 In this case, therefore, a loss of 55 per cent, was 
 sustained upon the estimate for labour. If, however, 
 the men had done a fair and proper amount of work 
 the cost would have been as follows : 
 
 £ s. d. 
 With wages at the price formerly paid, 
 
 at the rate of M. per hour . . 1 18 per rod 
 Add 50 per cent, for increase of wages 
 
 at present time 19 „ 
 
 2 17 „
 
 BUILDING TRADES: RISE OF WAGES 121 
 
 In point of fact, the actual cost, as before stated, 
 was a little over IOO5. per rod, and this notwith- 
 standing aU the additional advantage of the 
 possession of steam-power. This illustration proves 
 beyond all doubt that the men at the present time 
 do very little more than half the work for 9d. per 
 hour that they formerly did for Qd. 
 
 These experiences of a large building firm are 
 corroborated from a different and perhaps a more 
 impartial point of view by Messrs. Hunt and 
 Stephenson. An opportunity of applying an ac- 
 curate test to determine the depreciation or appre- 
 ciation in the cost of buildings has recently occurred, 
 Mr. Stephenson having been called upon to make a 
 close professional estimate of the cost of re-erecting 
 an ordinary dweUing-house which had been built 
 in 1865 for the sum of £5000. The building in 
 question was demoUshed to make room for a Metro- 
 pohtan Railway Extension. It would cost £5624 
 to rebuild it in 1875. The following are some 
 details as calculated by Mr. Stephenson :
 
 122 
 
 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 o 
 o 
 o 
 >n 
 
 w 
 
 
 
 g a> 
 
 
 
 
 -*-? 
 
 00 
 
 
 
 
 
 o 
 
 s 
 
 
 
 o 
 
 hn"^ 
 
 i5 
 
 
 H 
 
 a 
 
 s 
 
 ■< 
 
 •^ 
 
 
 
 
 « ,/, 
 
 
 ^ s 
 
 o o 
 
 ^•'^'S 
 
 ^■H 
 
 o 
 
 q (S 
 
 
 is 
 
 «rt I 2 I I I I I I I I I 
 
 • "* OS i-H ?-( 
 
 
 
 'e 
 
 •g o 
 
 '« 
 e 
 
 > 
 
 
 
 bs 
 
 
 
 o 
 
 
 o 
 
 B 
 
 S 
 
 <4) 
 
 •<?> 
 
 •fe^ 
 
 
 
 I>^ 
 
 K 
 
 V 
 
 O 
 
 s? 
 
 u 
 
 ^ 
 
 8 
 
 K] 
 
 Ph ° 
 
 a" 
 
 So 
 
 csi-1 
 
 
 gs 
 
 S Q)aO»000"300iftOW50 
 
 X3 pL(QjC7iC<IC0N*N?DC^<?»«O'HiO 
 
 P. S3 C3 ^ * 
 
 « I 
 
 I I 
 
 C< lO I CO i-H IM 
 
 
 (M T* 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 N 
 
 
 ► <o I ■<*< < 
 
 U5 f-H liD CO ■^ 
 q^ C<» CO i-H 
 
 c^S)h'"'''^C3^iM';o g<i 
 
 
 oooooooc^ot--i 
 
 CO 00 (M (M i-l iH 
 
 OOOOOOOCOOCOl 
 
 oo o oo c 
 
 > »A o o lO >rs o ^ ^ 
 
 >i-i <n 00 ■* 00 CO e 
 
 5^g 
 
 OI0OOU5O<3iCOtfl)O 
 
 |i< 
 
 
 i:a^ 
 
 <y 
 
 c3 c3 
 
 o w to 4J rr a -ri S J2 ^ .y 
 
 SfPSwOI-JtBPHfllOf^ 
 
 
 m 3 ^ S <^ 
 1^
 
 BUILDING TRADES: RISE OF WAGES 123 
 
 Having given the results of the experience of 
 large employers in this country, it may be inter- 
 esting to you to know that the diminished industry 
 of foreign operatives under the same conditions 
 has been even more conspicuous. The follow- 
 ing paragraph recently appeared in the Times 
 newspaper : 
 
 * At the time when prices were most inflated the 
 work and wages of masons in Berlin were submitted 
 to a crucial test. Between 1868 and 1873 the wages 
 of this class of operatives were increased by 50 per 
 cent. In the former year a certain number of 
 masons were accustomed to dress 618 stones of a 
 particular description in a week. In 1873 the same 
 number of men dressed in the same time no more 
 than 304 stones, less than half ; and as they were 
 paid as much for the smaller as the greater quantity, 
 it follows that the cost of building a house in Berlin 
 had more than doubled within a period of six years. 
 A similar process has been going on, with more or 
 less rapidity, in most of the cities of Germany and 
 Switzerland. Professor Gustav Kohn, in a pamphlet 
 recently published {Deutsche Zeit- und Streit-Fragen. 
 Heft 11. Vertheurung des Lebensunterhaltes in der 
 Gegenwart. Von Gustav Kolin. Berlin, 1876), com- 
 pares the cost of building in London and Ziirich, and 
 although there is no great difference between the 
 two places in the price of materials, he arrives at the 
 conclusion that it costs twice as much to erect and 
 finish a house in the Swiss city as in the metropolis 
 of Great Britain, and to this difference he attributes 
 the fact that rents are so much higher in the latter
 
 124 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 place than in the former. In order to arrive at a 
 just conclusion, he eliminates from his comparison 
 the business and fashionable quarters, where the 
 question might be complicated by the elements of 
 expensive sites and heavy ground rents, and chooses 
 in the most outward periphery of the town a locaUty 
 which is to Ziirich what Wimbledon is to London. 
 If the result of the Professor's investigations is to be 
 trusted, a dwelling that at Wimbledon is rented at 
 £40 a year could not be obtained at Ziirich for less 
 than from 1500 francs to 2000 francs a year. And 
 as wages, the cost of materials, the value of money 
 and of land, are approximately the same in both 
 places, it follows that the difference in rents must 
 arise from the superior skill of Enghsh builders and 
 the greater efficiency of Enghsh labour. This is 
 the conclusion of Herr Kohn, based as well on 
 induction as on his own personal observation and 
 inquiries.' 
 
 Mr. Howell contends that the net cost of building 
 has not increased in proportion to the advance of 
 wages. He points to the use of machinery in some 
 branches, to the introduction of better appliances 
 in others, and to the development of greater skill 
 in special branches. As a rule, he considers that the 
 foremen are much superior in ability and character 
 to the majority of those who previously had charge 
 of large undertakings. As an instance of work 
 being done more cheaply, he refers to a statement 
 made to him by a mason of considerable experience 
 and skill, to the effect that each of the blocks
 
 BUILDING TRADES: RISi: OF WAGES 125 
 
 of the fluted columns at the British Museum 
 cost, on an average, £5, whereas now he would be 
 glad to undertake any number of them at £3 IO5. 
 each. 
 
 This reduction in the price of stonework for the 
 British Museum would, however, only be possible 
 upon the piece-work system. Piece-work is 
 earnestly desired by the masters. Messrs. Lucas 
 remark ' By the rules and regulations of the trades 
 unions no set-work or piece-work is allowed. 
 
 ' The foregoing observations apply to archi- 
 tectural buildings onlj^ and not to contracting and 
 engineering works. These are mainly carried out 
 upon the plan adopted by the late Mr. Brassey, that 
 of set-work. A certain amount of pay is offered for a 
 given amount of work. The men are paid for any 
 work done in excess of the minimum amount 
 allowed, and this is the only fair and satisfactory 
 course to be adopted in the building trades in the 
 interests of the men, the masters, and of the public 
 generally.' 
 
 Having given in detail the successive advances 
 in wages, and shown the increase in the cost of 
 building, it will be interesting to inquire how far the 
 condition of the operatives has been substantially 
 improved by the rise in the rates of wages. Has 
 there been any appreciable improvement in their 
 food and in their dwelUngs ? Is their leisure time 
 profitably and iimocently employed ? Mr. Ho well 
 has suppHed a complete statement on this subject. 
 We will take first the article of meat. The rise
 
 126 
 
 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 in the price of meat is concisely shown in the sub- 
 joined table : 
 
 Date 
 
 Average Prices 
 
 Beef— 
 per stone 
 
 Increase 
 
 Per 
 cent. 
 
 Mutton — 
 per stone 
 
 Increase 
 
 Psr 
 cent. 
 
 1847-53 
 1853-67 
 1867-73 
 1874-75 
 1876-77 
 
 «. d. 
 
 4 2i 
 
 5 OJ 
 
 6 6 
 5 8i 
 5 11 
 
 8. d. 
 
 10 
 
 1 4 
 1 6 
 1 9i 
 
 20 
 30 
 35i 
 39 
 
 ' .. d. 
 
 4 5 
 
 5 9 
 
 6 4 
 6 6 
 6 9 
 
 *. d. 
 
 1 4 
 
 1 11 
 
 2 
 2 6 
 
 30 
 43 
 
 45 
 50 
 
 In round figures, the price of meat, wholesale in 
 the market, has increased, in the case of beef about 
 40 per cent., mutton about 50 per cent. Pork has 
 increased proportionately, and bacon at a higher 
 rate still. The price obtained for beasts at the 
 Annual Cattle Shows from 1847 to 1877 is as follows : 
 From 1847 to 1856 inclusive, the average price 
 ranged from 45. per stone for seconds, to 55. 1\d. 
 for prime cattle. From 1857 to 1866 inclusive, 
 the average price ranged from 45. \d. for seconds, 
 to 65. 2d. for prime qualities. From 1867 to 1877 
 inclusive, the average price ranged from 55. Q\d. for 
 seconds, to 85. \\d. for prime meat. During the 
 latter period the quality of meat has greatly im- 
 proved. On the other hand, the poorer classes have 
 had to pay more per pound for inferior meat than the 
 wealthier classes have paid for joints of the best 
 quality. The retail price of meat to working people 
 has been increased not less than 75 per cent., or 
 oftener 80 per cent., and butchers are more careful
 
 BUILDING TRADES : RISE OF WAGES 127 
 
 than formerly not to cut to waste. Hence, there 
 are fewer pieces called ' block ornaments.' This is 
 equally true as regards slices of bacon. Poultry 
 and fish have advanced in price nearly, if not quite, 
 in the same ratio as meat. Rabbits fetch even a 
 higher price in proportion. As for hares and other 
 game, the poorer classes seldom taste such things. 
 They know nothing of them, except what they see 
 at the poulterers' shops. 
 
 Take next the items of bread, vegetables, 
 clothing, and rent. The price of British wheat has 
 varied from 505. Qd. per quarter in 1848 to 745. 8d. in 
 1855, the highest quotation during the past thirty 
 years. Since 1864 it has varied from 40«. 2d. to 
 645. 5d. in 1867. The average prices quoted for the 
 last five years have been : In 1873, 6I5. 8^. ; 1874, 
 445. 2d. ; 1875, 455. 3d. ; 1876, 505. 3d. ; 1877, 
 5I5. 9d. The ordinary baker's bread in the poorer 
 districts is now Id. and l^d. per 4-lb. loaf. It has 
 not been so low as Qd. per loaf for some years. Very 
 inferior bread is nominally cheaper, though actually 
 it is the dearest, in proportion to the solid nourish- 
 ment it contains. The prices of potatoes and other 
 vegetables as sold at the greengrocers' shops have 
 gone up during the past thirty years as much as 
 100 per cent. Potatoes, formerly sold at a half- 
 penny per pound, and then at the rate of 3 lbs. for 
 2d., are now l^d. per pound, being an increase of 
 over 100 per cent. Cabbages, which could be 
 bought at a halfpenny each, are now 2d. or 2ld, 
 Turnips, formerly sold at 2d. per bunch, are now 
 from 5d. to Qd. The price of parsnips has advanced
 
 128 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 from a halfpenny to three halfpence ; and all other 
 kinds of garden produce are equally enhanced in 
 price. Coal, butter, and cheese are most important 
 items, especially the two former. Many thousands 
 of the Avorking-classes purchase their coal by the 
 cwt. or in sacks. For some years past the lowest 
 price charged per cwt. has been I5. Qd. or 305. per 
 ton. In 1872-73 the price went up to 505. per ton. 
 The coal consumed by the work people is generally 
 inferior, and the purchasers are robbed in weight 
 and measure. Those who live in apartments have 
 seldom room for more than a sack at a time. In 
 newer houses room is provided for half a ton or a ton. 
 The article of butter has ranged from I5. 6d. per lb. 
 to Is. lOd. for inferior qualities, described as little 
 better than mere grease. The consumption of salt 
 butter has diminished of late years. Brittany 
 butter has been substituted. Cheese, cheap in days 
 gone by, is now rather a luxury. It is not used by 
 poor people as it was formerly. The only articles 
 on which there has been a reduction are sugar and 
 tea. Most working people concur in saying that tea, 
 as sold at the grocers, is not so good as formerly. 
 House rent has greatly increased. Apartments of 
 two rooms on a floor have gone up from 45. 6d. and 
 55. Qd. to 85. Qd. and 95. per week. The rent of 
 single rooms has risen from 25. 9d. and 35. 6d. to 55. 
 and 55. Qd. Small houses are scarce. For a house 
 with four rooms and a wash-house the rents have 
 advanced from 65. or 65. Qd. to IO5. or lis. 
 Peabody's Buildings and the Model Dwellings are 
 full to repletion. So great is the demand for
 
 BUILDING TRADES: RISE OF WAGES 129 
 
 accommodation that enough names are down on the 
 books to fill several more blocks of houses. Boots 
 and shoes are dearer, and the leather is not so good. 
 These articles are of the first importance to working 
 people, who have to work out of doors, or walk 
 long distances. Clothing has also gone up in price, 
 although not in the same proportion as other 
 articles. Apparel, however, is usually bought 
 ready-made by machinery, and as machine-sewing 
 is inferior to hand-sewing, clothing is less durable. 
 Cottons and flannels are cheaper, but stuffs and 
 homespuns are dearer, at retail prices, and the 
 quahty is much depreciated. Almost every little 
 article of domestic consumption has increased in 
 price. Though the increase in cost may only 
 amount to a halfpenny, the advance is often equi- 
 valent to a rise of 40 to 50 per cent, on a small item. 
 It is the universal complaint of the wives of workmen 
 in the present day that they have a difficulty in 
 ' keeping house ' in consequence of the dearness of 
 everything. The working classes obtain their 
 supplies under peculiar disadvantages, from being 
 obhged to buy in small quantities at hucksters' 
 shops, or what are called ' general shops,' where 
 they pay the best price for very inferior articles. 
 The poorer the neighbourhood, the greater the 
 difficulty in obtaining articles of good quality ; 
 and yet the prices charged are very nearly equal 
 to those charged for the best qualities in the best 
 establishments. 
 
 The well-managed Co-operative Stores of the 
 North of England have provided a most effective 
 
 K
 
 130 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 means of supplying the wants of the working classes. 
 In the metropolis co-operative organisation has 
 been but slowly and imperfectly developed. Per- 
 haps the very number of the population has made 
 co-operation more difficult. Less cohesion, less 
 interdependence, and less mutual sympathy will be 
 found in the multitudinous masses of the metropolis 
 than in the more compact populations of our northern 
 cities, where similarity of employment and a more 
 uniform social status bind the people together, and 
 both dispose and enable them to combine more 
 readily for a common object. Mr. Howell concludes 
 by stating that, with all the drawbacks which he 
 has enumerated, the majority of workmen's houses 
 are far superior to those of the same class thirty 
 and even twenty years ago. There is an air of 
 comfort and cleanliness as a general rule in the homes 
 of the artisans and mechanics, which shows progress 
 and improvement ; and there are fewer wretched 
 homes even in the poorest localities than of old. 
 
 I have given in exienso Mr. Howell's statement as 
 to the economic condition of the operatives in the 
 metropolis. It affords much food for reflection. 
 It has been shown in the tables prepared by Messrs. 
 Hunt and Stephenson, Messrs. Lucas, and Mr. 
 Howell, that, during the period embraced in our 
 review, wages have advanced 50 per cent, for 
 mechanics, and 64 per cent, for labourers. In the 
 same period, however, the cost of living has in- 
 creased in such proportions that the wives of the 
 workmen have experienced an ever-increasing 
 difficulty in making both ends meet. Mr. Howell,
 
 BUILDING TRADES: RISE OF WAGES 131 
 
 indeed, describes a general improvement in the 
 interior of th.e workmen's houses ; but that ameho- 
 ration is probably due to advancing civilisation 
 rather than to the increased spending power of the 
 people. Improved taste, more refined habits, and 
 a more restricted indulgence in intoxicating liquors 
 would have converted a great number of the miser- 
 able hovels of thirty years ago into comfortable 
 dwellings, even though wages had remained at the 
 former rates, Mr. Howell's remarks as to the 
 improvement observable in the dwellings must be 
 understood to apply almost exclusively to the 
 mechanics ; and we may venture to hope that the 
 majority of the skilled workmen have made a good 
 use of their increased wages. 
 
 The recent report of Mr. Plunkett on the railway 
 riots in America gives most interesting details on the 
 relation between wages and the cost of living in the 
 United States. In America, with every advance in 
 wages, there has been a corresponding rise of prices, 
 while, owing to the fall in prices which has followed 
 the recent reductions of wages, working men in 
 regular employment have suffered no privation of 
 the necessaries of life. Workmen are perfectly 
 entitled to take advantage of every turn of the 
 market in their favour. It is a delusion to suppose 
 that a general advance in the rates of wages, ac- 
 companied as it must be by a corresponding advance 
 in prices, is pure gain to themselves. 
 
 In connection with this subject, I must once more 
 express my conviction that an exaggerated im- 
 pression prevails of the power of the trades unions 
 
 K 2
 
 132 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 to advance wages by the mere completeness of their 
 organisation, apart from other influences, which are 
 more effective and more natural in their opera- 
 tion. In every controversy with the masters the 
 trades unions occupy a prominent position as the 
 spokesmen and advocates of the workmen. The 
 trades unions cannot possibly force the employers 
 to carry on their operations at a loss, neither can 
 they compel the public to buy an article or to build 
 a house at a price which they cannot afford to pay. 
 The wages of mechanics in the building trades have 
 been rapidly raised and are now kept up solely by 
 the constant demand for labour in those trades. 
 The active prosecution of building operations seems 
 somewhat inconsistent with the general depression 
 in almost every other branch of trade. The cause of 
 this apparent anomaly is to be found in the failure 
 of joint-stock undertakings and the revelations 
 of the Foreign Loans Committee. Until a recent 
 period a large proportion of the savings of the 
 country were being absorbed in the conversion of 
 private manufacturing and trading establishments 
 into corporate undertakings. Large sums were 
 lent to weak and almost unknown Governments, 
 who had succeeded in alluring the too credulous 
 public by the offer of high rates of interest. Ex- 
 perience has shown that Boards of Directors, with 
 little personal interest in their work and no technical 
 knowledge, cannot take the place of an individual 
 manager having a large stake in the result, and 
 qualified by technical training and long experience 
 to conduct a difficult business. The joint-stock
 
 BUILDING TRADES: RISE OF WAGES 133 
 
 mania has now happily subsided. It would be 
 impossible in the present temper of the public mind 
 to introduce on the Stock Exchange, with any 
 prospect of success, a loan to a needy foreign State 
 of the second rank. In the absence of other oppor- 
 tunities for investments, the savings of the country 
 are now being applied to building operations. In 
 the suburbs of the metropohs and in the environs 
 of our provincial towns, long rows of houses are 
 rising up built with borrowed capital. Timid 
 people who are afraid of employing their money 
 in more distant operations are satisfied Avith the 
 security offered by a mortgage on houses erected 
 in their own neighbourhood. They possess, in the 
 form of a mortgage on buildings, a tangible security, 
 and one the value of which they perfectly under- 
 stand. Building has accordingly been carried on 
 with unrelaxed energy, and possibly in excess of the 
 wants of the public. Meanwhile, the demand for 
 mechanics and labourers has been sustained at a 
 time when industrial operations generally have been 
 contracted. Thus we see a strike amongst the 
 masons for an advance of wages at a time when the 
 only strikes which are taking place in other trades 
 are strikes against a reduction. 
 
 Is the present activity of the building trade 
 likely to continue ? This is a question which well 
 merits the attentive consideration of our workmen. 
 Is it not an inevitable consequence of the con- 
 tinued depression of trade, that the savings of the 
 country, which have lately been invested so freely in 
 mortgages on new buildings, must be temporarily
 
 134 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 reduced in amount ? If this be so, the demand for 
 labour will slacken, and wages must ultimately fall. 
 It is further to be observed that the depression 
 of trade, so serious in this country, has been still 
 more marked abroad. There are large multitudes 
 of skilled men without employment on the Con- 
 tinent. If they are introduced into this country, 
 the English workman has no more right to complain 
 or to resist than the Avorkmen in France, who 
 quietly suffered my father to take over a body of 
 5000 English navvies to make the railway from 
 Paris to Rouen. The bricks in the tunnels under the 
 city of Rouen were all laid by London bricklayers. 
 
 It was argued at the recent conferences of the 
 International that a general rise of wages can only 
 be obtained by a combination among the workmen 
 of all nations. The country in which production 
 is dear will be driven out of the market by the 
 production of other countries in which work is done 
 at a cheaper rate. The same principle applies to 
 the building as to every other trade. Hitherto, 
 owing to the difficulty of communication, the rates 
 of wages have been determined by local circum- 
 stances. Railways have tended to diminish these 
 local inequalities, because the supply of labour 
 can now be drawn from an ever-widening area. 
 In the shipbuilding yards on the Thames the great 
 mass of the joiners are Scotchmen, and there is but 
 a slight difference between the wages on the Thames 
 and on the Clyde. It is as easy to introduce masons 
 from Hamburg as to bring joiners from Scotland. 
 There need be no fear of the competition of foreigners 
 with Englishmen, if only the latter will be true to
 
 BUILDING TRADP:S : RISE OF WAGES 135 
 
 themselves. All workmen labour at a disadvantage 
 in a foreign land. 
 
 Tlie substitution of payment by time for payment 
 by results is a most unfortunate innovation. Piece- 
 work under adequate supervision is the only system 
 which is equitable alike to the employer, the work- 
 man, and the public. There can be no objection 
 to mechanics earning 75. or 85. a day, provided they 
 have fairly earned their high wages by a just amount 
 of work. The employer will raise no objection 
 to the payment of liberal wages provided he knows 
 what he will be required to pay, and how much work 
 will be done day by day. On the other hand, it is 
 utterly wrong that good men and bad men should be 
 paid at an uniform rate of 10c?. per hour. It is a 
 system which could only have been forced upon the 
 building trades by the unusual scarcity of labour". 
 Such a system is only enforced by that evil spirit 
 of jealousy, described with so much power by 
 Dante in the 17th canto of the Purgatorio : 
 
 E clii, per esser sue vicin soppresso, 
 
 Spera eccellenza, e sol per questo brama 
 Ch' el sia di sua grandezza in basso messo : 
 
 E chi podere, grazia, onore, e fama 
 Teme di perder perch' altri sormonti, 
 Onde s' attrista si, die '1 contrario ama : 
 
 The passage is thus translated by Longfellow : 
 
 There are, who, by abasement of their neighbour, 
 Hope to excel, and therefore only long 
 That from his greatness he may be cast down ; 
 
 There are, who power, grace, honour, and renown 
 Fear they may lose because another rises. 
 Hence are so sad that the reverse they love.
 
 136 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 The depression in trade to which I have already 
 referred may lead to a contraction in building 
 operations ; and it would be well that the oppor- 
 tunity should be embraced for setting the relations 
 between employers and employed in the building 
 trades on that equitable basis on which business 
 in every other branch of trade has been conducted. 
 No industrial organisation can be sound in which, 
 to use the words of Mr. Herbert Spencer, ' duty 
 done and income gained do not go hand in hand, 
 and the failure will be great in proportion as the 
 dependence of income upon duty is remote.' 
 
 The conclusions to be drawn from our investiga- 
 tion may be summed up as follows : 
 
 I. During the last thirty years there has been an 
 increase in wages of 44 per cent., and in the cost of 
 building of 20 to 30 per cent. 
 
 II. The advances of wages have been largely 
 absorbed in the enhanced cost of living. 
 
 III. The increase in wages has been caused by 
 unprecedented activity in the building trade. 
 
 IV. The prospect of a more satisfactory organisa- 
 tion of the building trades depends on the adoption 
 of an equitable system of payment by piece. 
 
 I have narrated the story of the rise of wages 
 in the building trades with strict impartiality. 
 Many of those present regard the trades unions 
 with a dread which I do not share. I can fully 
 understand why it is that the trades unions are not 
 viewed with especial favour by the master builders, 
 who have been perpetually thwarted. It is hard to 
 have to yield to the dictation of irresponsible men,
 
 BUILDING TRADES: RISE OF WAGES 137 
 
 and to be required to pay wages at rates never con- 
 templated at the time when contracts have been 
 entered into. I sympathise with those who have 
 suffered many losses and vexations. If the unions 
 connected with the building trades have given 
 trouble, it has been the consequence of a great and 
 sustained demand for labour. For years past no 
 skilled mechanic in the metropolis has ever known 
 what it is to be without employment. Our ancient 
 and noble capital has been extended with extra- 
 ordinary rapidity. Large numbers of successful 
 men in commercial or professional careers, in the 
 provinces or abroad, have been attracted to London, 
 and made it year by year more and more the centre 
 of British society in all its various grades, and 
 a place of meeting for persons of every taste and 
 pursuit, whether artistic, scientific, or literary. 
 The man of pleasure and the severe student can here 
 always find congenial companions and gratify their 
 special tastes. It may appear that wages have been 
 advanced under the pressure of the trades unions. 
 Competition among the masters for labour, of which 
 there was an insuificient supply, has been the primary 
 cause of its enhanced value. If the demand for 
 buildings were to abate in any sensible degree, the 
 price of labour would fall in proportion. The 
 instance which I have quoted at Ziirich shows what 
 advances will take place in the price of labour under 
 the same conditions in which the London builders 
 have been placed, and that, too, in a land of ex- 
 ceptionally cheap labour. 
 
 Complaints are urged of the indifference of the
 
 138 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 trades unions to the interests of the public. No 
 doubt such organisations have been estabhshed to 
 promote the interests of a class, and not for the 
 general good of society. Experience of the motives 
 and actions of the leaders of the trades unions has 
 led me to believe that, although their energies are 
 concentrated on the single object of improving the 
 position of their clients, they do not seek to promote 
 their objects by violent measures. I attended the 
 late Congress of the trades unions at Leicester. I 
 was the only man of my own order who did attend, 
 and I can bear testimony to the admirable manner 
 in which the proceedings were conducted. The 
 programme of subjects for discussion was reason- 
 able and appropriate. The questions Avhich it was 
 proposed to ventilate in Parliament were fitting 
 topics for parliamentary debate. There was a 
 creditable freedom from class prejudices. Contrast 
 the proceedings at Leicester with the debates of 
 the International Society on the Continent, or the 
 recent demonstrations in New York, where non- 
 sensical declamation was applauded which would 
 never have been listened to in this country. Have 
 any of the trades unions of London ever maintained 
 that ' To protect the useful classes against the 
 avarice of capitalists, or the derangements of trade, 
 the various branches of useful industry should be 
 instituted by the Governments upon equitable 
 principles, and thereby furnish employment to 
 those who might be otherwise idle ' ? Has it 
 ever been resolved at a mass meeting in this city 
 ' That the time has arrived for all working people
 
 BUILDING TRADES : RISE OF WAGES 139 
 
 to resist by all legal means the oppression of capital 
 and the robbery which it perpetrates on labour ' ? 
 We have in the English working people a body of 
 men less likely to be led awa}'^ by visionary ideas, 
 less ready to listen to vague and envious denun- 
 ciations, more strongly influenced by a sense of 
 duty and more law-abiding than the corresponding 
 classes in any other country. With all these merits 
 they are not exempt from human infirmity. The 
 principle of self-interest is strong with them as it is 
 with their masters, and it is not always enlightened. 
 They seek to sell their labour to the highest bidder, 
 just as the masters demand the best price which 
 the very keen competition amongst themselves 
 allows them to secure. I am not an advocate of a 
 too acquiescent temper of mind. The industrial 
 capacity of workmen cannot be developed unless 
 they live in reasonable comfort in houses in which 
 they take a pride, provided with adequate sus- 
 tenance and encouraged by the prospect of bettering 
 their condition. It is not in countries where the 
 standard of living is lowest, and the pleasures of 
 hope are denied, that production is most rapid 
 and economical. ' La pesanteur des charges,' 
 said Montesquieu, ' produit d'abord le travail ; le 
 travail I'accablement ; I'accablement I'esprit de 
 paresse.' 
 
 I conclude with one practical suggestion. The 
 labour problem will find its natural solution in an 
 increased supply of labour. It is for this purpose 
 that a handful of foreigners has been lately intro- 
 duced. Would it not be more easy and more
 
 140 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 satisfactory to train up the youth of our own 
 country in greater numbers to be skilled handi- 
 craftsmen ? The reluctance to perform manual 
 labour is a great and growing evil — an evil which 
 has its origin, not so much in a dislike to hard work, 
 as in that false social system which gives to the man 
 at the desk a higher rank than it accords to him 
 who stands in a fustian jacket at the mason's bench. 
 Popular education is good ; let us guard ourselves 
 against its attendant risks. Let us take care that 
 the educational advantages which we are now giving 
 to the people are not perverted. 
 
 Mr. Plunkett quotes from the Philadelphia 
 Times some very pertinent observations : ' What 
 a terrible satire upon our boasted free school system 
 is conveyed in the word " educated " ! Our 
 children have their poor little brains crammed 
 full of all kinds of impossible knowledge of names 
 and dates and numbers, and unintelligible rules. 
 There is absolutely no room left to hold any of the 
 simple truths which former generations deemed 
 more important than all the learning of the books. 
 The result is, that they leave school ignorant 
 of what is most essential, and outside of the 
 schools there is no provision for their learning 
 anything.' 
 
 It is by a courteous bearing in all the relations of 
 life that the privileged classes can best testify their 
 sense of the real dignity which attaches to honest 
 labour, and show their conviction that the skilful 
 labour of the hands is not inconsistent with culture 
 and refinement.
 
 BUILDING TRADES : RISE OF WAGES 141 
 
 DISCUSSION 
 
 Mr. G. E. Street, R.A., presided. The speakers 
 included able representatives as well of the workmen 
 as the employers. On the side of the workmen were 
 Mr. George Howell and Mr. George Potter — names 
 honoured and remembered by those who, in days gone 
 by, carefully followed labour questions. Mr. Lucas 
 and Mr. TroUope were able champions of the employers. 
 The Chairman impartially summed up. He spoke 
 with the commanding authority belonging to one who 
 has designed some of the finest buildings of the present 
 age : ' I have been very much pleased to see the good 
 temper with which this discussion has be?n carried 
 on, and my only regret is that we have not had more 
 representatives of the masons and the working classes 
 present than we have had. Unfortimately, I called 
 upon one of them at the very outset, and put him in 
 this way a little at a disadvantage, for which I have to 
 apologise to him. I think that Mr. Brassey put before 
 us very clearly the statement of the case — more clearly, 
 indeed, than we have had it dealt with by anybody 
 this evening. He pointed out very fairly that the in- 
 creased cost of Hving, and of everj^hing that the work- 
 ing man has to provide, justified a considerable ad- 
 vance of wages. The question, as he put it, appears 
 to me to resolve itself into one simply of supply and 
 demand. He has pointed out what has not been com- 
 mented on to-night, and what is of the greatest im- 
 portance, that the common labourer, who is not benefited 
 by any trades society, has increased his wages during 
 the period to the extent of about 64 per cent., while 
 the skilled mechanic has only increased his by 50 per 
 cent. Speaking for architects, but wdth the most 
 kindly feeling for working men, I must say that the 
 result of my experience is certainly very much to con-
 
 142 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 firm what is said by Mr. Lucas and others on that side 
 — that we do not get at the present day the same amount 
 of work that we used to get, that the quahty has not a 
 tendency to improve, and that, in spite of the state- 
 ments which Mr. Howell and Mr. Potter make — that 
 they only fix the minimum amount any man may earn, 
 as a mere matter of fact, fixing a minimum rate must 
 almost always fix a imiform and maximum rate also. 
 The result is that we see, for instance, such a class as 
 the masons, with whom I personally am most concerned, 
 who work upon Gothic architecture — and it requires a 
 very skilled mason to make a good Gothic workman 
 — compelled to work — and it is monstrous that it should 
 be so — at the same wages as the man who does an 
 altogether inferior sort of work. Certainly on these 
 terms nobody will rise from a dead level. The work- 
 men's object should be just what the object of the archi- 
 tect is, to encourage the good workman and to let the 
 rest see before them the example he sets, and the much 
 higher position in which he stands, by reason of his 
 ability and the superior quality, and perhaps quantity 
 too, of the work he does. How do you suppose men 
 rise in other professions ? By doing, not as little as 
 they can, but as much as they can, in hours far longer 
 than those of the workman, and therefore, if it is the 
 result of the action of trade societies that men are 
 limited in the amount of work they are allowed to do, 
 they are condemned, not by a hostile critic, but, in my 
 case, by one who is very anxious to see the working 
 man get his rights, and who is most emphatically opposed 
 to the notion of there being any " wickedness " — though 
 too often much want of prudence — in strikes. I see 
 no wickedness in a strike, so long as it is to obtain a 
 fair day's pay for a fair day's work. The wickedness 
 is when it prevents the best workman from earning 
 the best wages, and in spite of any denial one does often
 
 BUILDING TRADES: RISE OF WAGES 143 
 
 find particular workmen objected to because they do 
 too much work. I have myself known such cases as 
 that quoted by Mr. Gates, and of which he gave us the 
 particulars. They are not imaginary cases. An archi- 
 tect who goes about the country as I do meets with 
 these difficulties in all directions, and knows that they 
 do occur ; and without knowing what all the rules are, 
 and what all the exact decisions of the societies may 
 be on the subject, that is one of the practical results of 
 their action. The statement that they only insist upon 
 a minimum amount of wages is at the same time met, 
 unless I am very much mistaken, by the fact that, if a 
 builder proposed to give two rates of wages, nearly all 
 the men who work for him would probably absent 
 themselves forthwith. My own experience is certainly 
 of that kind. The societies undoubtedly interfere 
 more or less with the freedom of the workman. The 
 discussion we have had to-night, if it does nothing else, 
 will show the representatives of the working classes 
 how little hostihty there is to them or to their true 
 interest ; and I must say that I tliink the speech of 
 Mr. Lucas was creditable to him in every way. I trust 
 that the outcome of all this will be that workmen will 
 consider, if, at the present moment, they are defeated 
 in the attempt they have made to raise their wages 
 beyond a certain point, still that the masters have their 
 interests necessarily just as much as their o\\ti in view ; 
 for what they have to consider is, whether in granting 
 an increase of wages they will not be ruining the busi- 
 ness that keeps them both ? What Mr. Lucas has 
 said about the replacement of brickwork by concrete 
 is quite true. The tendency of the rules which the 
 societies are making is to destroy all art. If we dare 
 to have nothing but concrete done by labourers at the 
 lowest wages, and if stone-masonry and good brickwork 
 are to become things of the past, I think that good
 
 144 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 architecture will also entirely disappear from the field, 
 and that we as architects shall have to give up our work. 
 Therefore, in the interests of my profession, and in the 
 interests of the workmen, I appeal to the representa- 
 tives of the working men to-night to reconsider their 
 position ; and I do hope that sooner or later these 
 rules of the societies (which are so mysterious that 
 when they are quoted on the one side they are always 
 denied on the other) shall be so far modified as to en- 
 courage good work and honest work, and to render it 
 impossible for anybody long to say — as it has been said 
 this evening, and in a way that most of us, from our 
 experience, could confirm — that, as a rule, men do not 
 feel it their duty to do the greatest amount of work 
 in the best way and in the shortest time.'
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 FOREIGN COMPETITION — COMPARATIVE EFFICIENCY 
 OF ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LABOUR 
 
 {Reprinted from Volume on Foreign Work and 
 English Wages, imhlished in 1879) 
 
 Before entering upon other subjects, some observa- Excess of 
 tions may not be superfluous with reference to the ^^^ 
 excess of our imports over our exports. It has been exports, 
 assumed that we have paid for our importations by 
 calhng in capital from abroad, and that the debts 
 due to us from foreign nations have been rapidly 
 diminishing in amount. A clear and satisfactory 
 explanation of the disproportion in question has, 
 however, been given by Mr. Shaw Lefevre in his 
 address to the Statistical Society. 
 
 ' The excess in the value of our imports over that Mr. Shaw 
 of our exports has increased from the average of explana- 
 £58,000,000 in 1867-69 to £118,000,000 in 1875-77, tions. 
 and reached the enormous sum of £142,000,000 in 
 1877. Making, however, an addition of 10 per cent, 
 to the value of our exports, in respect of freight, 
 insurance and profit, and a deduction of 5 per cent, 
 from the value of our imports in respect of freight 
 and other charges, as Mr. Newmarch has explained 
 is necessary, the difference is considerably reduced ; 
 for the years 1863 to 1870 this difference averaged 
 
 L
 
 146 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 £25,000,000 ; in 1871 it fell to £4,000,000 ; in 1872 
 there was an excess value of exports of £8,000,000 ; 
 in 1873 the excess of imports was £12,000,000 ; in 
 1874, £26,000,000 ; in 1875, £47,000,000 ; in 1876, 
 £77,000,000 ; in 1877, £97,000,000 ; and for 
 ten months of the current year it is £74,000,000. 
 Comparing the three years of great commercial 
 activity, 1871-73, with the three last years, the 
 total difference in value for the first period was 
 £5,000,000, or nearly £2,000,000 a year, and for 
 the last period £217,000,000 or £72,000,000 a 
 year.' 
 Payments In this Connection the remittances of dividends 
 invested ^^^ interests on capital invested abroad must also 
 abroad, be taken into view. Mr. Giffen has estimated the 
 annual income from the capital so invested at 
 £65,000,000. In the ten years, 1867-77, nearly 
 £600,000,000 sterling must have been invested in 
 foreign securities. 
 
 According to Mr. Seyd, the indebtedness of 
 foreign countries to the United Kingdom is not 
 less than from £1,000,000,000 to £1,100,000,000, 
 bearing an annual interest of from £40,000,000 to 
 £50,000,000. Making allowance for defaulters, the 
 sum to be remitted annually to this country cannot 
 be less than £30,000,000. In addition to these 
 large remittances on private account, the Govern- 
 Bupplied ment draws some £15,000,000 a year on India. It 
 by excess jg ^y ^he excess in the value of the imports that 
 
 m value of ,, *^ n i ti i i <> • 
 
 imports, the vast sums annually due to li^ngland tor interest 
 on our foreign investments are paid, and the means 
 provided for meeting the various charges, and for
 
 ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LABOUR 147 
 
 paying to us the profits we realise on our exported 
 goods. 
 
 The large expenditure in England imposes a other 
 most serious burden on the finances in India. The ^oy^t°r- 
 
 balancing 
 
 revenue is singularly deficient in elasticity, and the facts. 
 mass of the people live from hand to mouth on 
 mere subsistence wages. The interest on foreign 
 loans, and the drawings on India, should be nearly 
 sufficient to restore the balance between the value 
 of the imports and the exports. But we must also 
 bring into account the sums payable to this country 
 in respect of the profits of trading on the goods 
 exported and imported, and the earnings of the 
 ships chiefly sailing under the British flag in which 
 those goods are carried. The value at which im- 
 ported goods are calculated includes every element 
 of cost, freight, proflt, commissions, and insurance. 
 The value of the exports, on the other hand, is 
 incomplete ; it is the mere cost of the manufacture, 
 exclusive of freights, insurance, commissions and 
 profits. Again, as M. Leroy Beaulieu points out, 
 there is a natural tendency to undervalue goods 
 exported to countries where heavy duties are levied 
 ad valorem. Hence we find in the trade of every 
 commercial or rather manufacturing nation, in a 
 greater or less degree, a similar excess in the value 
 of the imports over the exports. 
 
 The total importations of the commercial nations 
 exceed their exportations by not less than 15 per 
 cent. The table pubUshed in a statistical work by 
 Dr. Neumann-Spellart gives the total importations 
 and exportations for the five quarters of the globe.
 
 148 
 
 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 
 Importations 
 
 ExportatioDB 
 
 Europe .... 
 
 America 
 
 Asia .... 
 
 Australia 
 
 Africa .... 
 
 Francs 
 
 28,202,000,000 
 
 4,864,000,000 
 
 2,445,000,000 
 
 1,189,000,000 
 
 672,000,000 
 
 Francs 
 
 21,681,000,000 
 
 5,636,000,000 
 
 3,208,000,000 
 
 1,122,000,000 
 
 783,000,000 
 
 Total . . 
 
 37,372,000,000 
 
 32,430,000,000 
 
 The 
 
 nation not 
 living 
 beyond its 
 means. 
 
 Alleged 
 produc- 
 tion of the 
 crisis by 
 foreign 
 com- 
 petition. 
 
 The causes of the disparity between the total 
 values of the exports and imports have been ex- 
 plained in the preceding remarks, and it will be 
 evident on a full consideration of the circumstances, 
 that the apprehension that we are living as a nation 
 beyond our means rests on no solid foundation. 
 Indeed, as M. Leroy Beaulieu remarks, the magni- 
 tude of our import trade, so far from its affording 
 a just ground for anxiety, must be regarded as a 
 proof of the greatness of our resources and the 
 stability of our power. The large balance against 
 this country which formerly existed can be fully 
 and satisfactorily explained, and a marked re- 
 duction in the excess value of our imports has 
 recently taken place. 
 
 The crisis through which we are passing has been 
 attributed by many to foreign competition. The 
 true view was given by the Earl of Beaconsfield 
 in the House of Lords. Our foreign competitors 
 may have succeeded for a time in producing a 
 limited number of articles at a lower cost or of a 
 more convenient pattern, but we have not been
 
 ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LABOUR 149 
 
 beaten in any important branch of trade in a fair 
 and open competition. 
 
 The articles imported in increased quantities are 
 chiefly food and raw materials. For example, the 
 goods sent to us by Russia, valued at £22,000,000 
 or £4,500,000 in excess of our importations in 1876, 
 consisted mainly of corn, flax, linseed, sugar and 
 tallow. The increased importations from Germany 
 consisted of corn, potatoes and sugar. A certain 
 increase was observable in the silk and woollen 
 goods imported through Holland, but neither 
 Belgium, France, nor Portugal showed any ap- 
 preciable change in the value of the import trade 
 from those countries. The import trade from the 
 United States, amounting to the vast sum of 
 £78,000,000, is composed almost exclusively of food 
 and raw materials. 
 
 The main augmentation in the American exports 
 in the interval from 1868 to 1878 consists of food 
 and the raw materials of industry. The exporta- 
 tion of the principal manufactured articles is still 
 on an insignificant scale. 
 
 Mr. Newmarch has shown in a clear and 
 comprehensive tabular statement the conspicuous 
 superiority of the United Kingdom over every other 
 manufacturing country in respect to the exportation 
 of articles of native production and manufacture. 
 The subjoined table, with Mr. Newmarch's com- 
 mentary on the figures, has been extracted from 
 his able paper, recently read before the Statistical 
 Society, on the progress of the Foreign Trade of 
 the United Kingdom, 1856-77. 
 
 Nature of 
 articles so 
 imported. 
 
 Our 
 
 predomi- 
 nance in 
 the export 
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 ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LABOUR 151 
 
 ' It wiU scarcely be said that on the face of these 
 figures the United Kingdom suffers in any particular 
 when compared with any one of the four countries 
 for which the imports and exports are given at each 
 of the four dates during the sixteen years ; or 
 indeed with all the four countries (France, Austria, 
 Russia, and United States) in combination ; in 
 other words, the 30,000,000 people in the United 
 Kingdom, aided by Free Trade, bear most advan- 
 tageous comparison with the 150,000,000 relying 
 upon protection. Thus : 
 
 INCREASE IN IMPORTS, 1860-75. 
 
 Four foreign countries, France, 
 
 Austria, Russia, and United £206,000,000 = 265. 
 
 States per head. 
 
 United Kingdom .... £164,000,000=1005. 
 
 per head. 
 
 INCREASE IN EXPORTS, 1860-75. 
 
 Four foreign countries . . . £160,000,000 = 225. 
 
 per head 
 United Kingdom .... £90,000,000 = 525. 
 
 per head. 
 
 If the several countries be compared singly with the 
 United Kingdom, as in fairness they should be, 
 seeing that the population is about equal (Russia 
 excepted), and the climate better, and the natural 
 resources greater than the United Kingdom, not 
 one of them exhibits progress in any degree 
 approaching that of the United Kingdom.' 
 
 Mr. Newmarch proceeds to examine the statistics Unenu- 
 
 ^ merated 
 
 articles.
 
 152 
 
 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 of the supplementary imports and. exports — that is 
 to say, the large number of new and miscellaneous 
 articles which grow up year by year, and for the 
 sake of conciseness and uniformity, have to be 
 entered in the official tables under the title of 
 ' Unenumerated Articles.' It will be found that 
 these two classes present the following highly 
 satisfactory results : 
 
 Progress of Supplemental Imports and Exports. 
 United Kingdom, 1856-1877. Declared Values. 
 
 Imports 
 
 (a) Remainder 
 of enumerated 
 
 (b) C/nenume- 
 rated 
 
 Percentage of 
 total Imports 
 
 Exports 
 (a) Remainder 
 
 of enumerated 
 (6) Z7nenume- 
 
 rated 
 
 Percentage of 
 total Exports 
 
 1877 
 
 1870 
 
 1866 
 
 1860 
 
 1866 
 
 £ 
 45,000,000 
 39,000,000 
 
 £ 
 17,000,000 
 64,000,000 
 
 £ 
 
 6,000,000 
 
 55,000,000 
 
 £ 
 
 4,000,000 
 42,000,000 
 
 £ 
 
 3,000,000 
 
 36,000,000 
 
 84,000,000 
 
 81,000,000 
 
 61,000,000 
 
 46,000,000 
 
 38,000,000 
 
 Per cent. 
 21 
 
 Per cent. 
 25 
 
 Per cent. 
 22 
 
 Per cent. 
 21 
 
 Per cent. 
 22 
 
 £ 
 21,000,000 
 17,000,000 
 
 £ 
 16,000,000 
 11,000,000 
 
 £ 
 
 10,000,000 
 
 8,000,000 
 
 £ 
 
 4,000,000 
 9,000,000 
 
 £ 
 6,000,000 
 8,000,000 
 
 38,000,000 
 
 27,000,000 
 
 18,000,000 
 
 13,000,000 13,000,000 
 
 Per cent. 
 19 
 
 Per cent. 
 13 
 
 Per cent. 
 11 
 
 Per cent. 
 10 
 
 Per cent. 
 11
 
 ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LABOUR 153 
 
 ' We have here a doubling of the supplemental 
 imports in the twenty-one years 1856-77, or from 
 £38,000,000 to £84,000,000, the proportion of the 
 total imports remaining at 21 per cent. 
 
 ' The supplemental exports increase nearly three- 
 fold, as from £13,000,000 to £37,000,000 and the 
 proportion to the total exports rises from 11 to 
 19 per cent.' 
 
 The wise statesmanship which has generally Our 
 distinguished the government of this country has advan^ 
 placed our trade and commerce in the most tagesasa 
 favourable position for international competition, natioru 
 The ' Westminster Review,' in an article published 
 on January 1, 1876, points out that in no other 
 country but our own have wealth and population 
 kept pace with debt. 
 
 The comparative lightness of the taxation is Moderate 
 an obvious advantage in our favour. We possess taxation. 
 advantages of climate to which Mr. Smith very 
 properly adverted. Our climate may be fickle, and 
 our skies obscured by clouds, but there is no season 
 of year in which manual labour cannot be efficiently 
 performed. Our working classes are free from the Exemp- 
 
 ... , . , . 1 . tion from 
 
 conscription which imposes such an oppressive conscrip- 
 burden on the populations of France and Germany. tio°- 
 In the universal liability to military service the 
 industry of those powers is burdened with a tax 
 which more than neutralises any advantage they 
 may possess in the comparative cheapness of labour. 
 Mr. Smith summed up his able statement with 
 a cheering and well-founded assertion that our 
 working classes can, if they choose, beat all their
 
 154 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 foreign rivals, both in the excellence and in the 
 thorough honesty and cheapness of their work, 
 and may thus maintain their long-established 
 supremacy in the markets of the world. 
 Beneficial In his paper on the Progress of the Foreign 
 
 free trade "Trade with the United Kingdom, from which we 
 in have already quoted, Mr. Newmarch has given 
 
 ^ '^" ■ an exhaustive enumeration of the beneficial results 
 of the bold and enlightened fiscal policy adopted 
 in our own country. He appropriately refers to the 
 inauguration of free trade by Sir Robert Peel in 
 1846, and to the advice tendered by that great 
 statesman, that the best way to compete with 
 hostile tariffs was to encourage free imports. At 
 the end of a generation, as Mr, NcAvmarch points 
 out, having faithfully followed Sir Robert Peel's 
 advice, we have seen our imports rise from 
 £70,000,000 to £380,000,000, and a fabulous ac- 
 cumulation of wealth has been formed in the 
 country. By our free trade system the United 
 Kingdom has become the great mart of the world 
 for the exchange of merchandise, and for settling 
 international claims. It has given rise to what 
 Mr. Newmarch designates as a triangular system 
 of trade which goes very far to neutralise the evils 
 of protective tariffs. 
 
 ' The United States cannot help taking tea px d 
 silk from China, and cannot help China refusing i o 
 take tobacco and raw cotton in exchange. Hence 
 the United States cannot help sending the tobacco 
 and raw cotton to England, and u^ing the proceeds 
 • in the purchase of English credits available to
 
 ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LABOUR L55 
 
 discharge the China debt. In h'ke manner it is 
 every day more true that England pays for a large 
 part of its imports not directly to the country A 
 from whence they come, but indirectly to other 
 countries to which A happens to be in debt. 
 
 ' The true nature of foreign trade is that the 
 nations of the world should resemble not merely a 
 single country, but a large town within that country, 
 throughout the streets, lanes and aUeys of which 
 there shall be kept up as constant, rapid and easy 
 a current of dealings as prevails among the natives 
 of the town itself.' 
 
 Mr. Newmarch steadfastly maintains that tried 
 by every statistical test, the extraordinary growth 
 of our foreign trade and the accumulation of capital 
 in the United Kingdom have been the result of 
 steady adherence to the free trade maxims of 
 
 (1) Cultivating the imports, and leaving the 
 exports to cultivate themselves ; 
 
 (2) Regarding the benefit of the consumer as the 
 paramount object to be attained. 
 
 "\^Tiile experience has shown that free trade has 
 conferred immense benefits on Great Britain, it 
 cannot be doubted that it would have been a still 
 better thing if the same enlightened principles had 
 been more universally adopted. 
 
 It is not from the cheap labour of Belgium, as the Future 
 writers of the manifestoes from time to time issued morcial 
 by the associations of employers would have us supre- 
 believe, but from the dear but skilful and energetic Amenca 
 labour of the United States, that the most formidable 
 competition wiU hereafter arise. IVIr. Gladstone,
 
 156 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 in his contribution to the North American Review, 
 entitled ' Kin beyond Sea,' has rightly said that the 
 commercial supremacy of the world must ultimately 
 pass from the United Kingdom to the United States. 
 The territory at their command is, in comparison with 
 the narrow area of the United Kingdom, unlimited, 
 and it possesses every natural advantage. The soil 
 is fertile ; the mineral wealth is inexhaustible ; and 
 the increase in the population has been so rapid 
 that Professor Huxley has predicted that when the 
 second centenary of the republic is celebrated, the 
 American people will have increased from 40,000,000 
 to 200,000,000. 
 Sir J. The marvellous energy of this vast population in 
 
 Hawk- utilising the great resources of their country called 
 
 shaw s ° ° -^ 
 
 testimony forth the approving testimony of Sir John Hawk- 
 to the ghaw in his report on the Exhibition at Philadelphia : 
 of her ' The 70,000 miles of railway already constructed, 
 people. ^j^g ramifications of the electric telegraph, and its 
 application to uses more extended and varied even 
 than in our own country, the crowd of steamboats 
 wherever navigation is possible and public con- 
 venience can be promoted, the building of cities 
 like Chicago, which after the great fire in four or five 
 years has arisen out of its ashes a more beautiful 
 city than before — all these tell of the increase of 
 wealth, and speak still more strongly of the public 
 and patriotic spirit of the people. 
 
 ' To me who visited the United States on a former 
 occasion, but so long ago that Chicago was then but 
 a village, and Philadelphia had not more than one 
 half its present population, when its railways were
 
 ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LABOUR 157 
 
 only beginning to be made, with wooden bridges 
 and temporary works, when its vast mineral wealth 
 was nearly untouched, and wood was burned where 
 coal is now consumed, the astonishing changes, 
 and the vast progress since made, appear greater 
 than perhaps to others whose visits have been more 
 frequent.' 
 
 That the United States must hereafter command 
 a dominant position is certain, but there is no 
 immediate prospect of a competition which can be 
 injurious to our own manufacturers. The American 
 export trade is continually increasing, both in bulk 
 and value, but hitherto the growth in the export of 
 manufactured goods has been unimportant. Agri- 
 cultural products constitute the great bulk of their 
 export trade. The success of the American manu- 
 facturers, in so far as it depends on the effective 
 appHcation of labour, is certainly not due to the low 
 scale of wages. On the contrary it is the high price 
 of labour which has been the main incentive to the 
 application of the national genius to the invention 
 of labour-saving machinery. 
 
 The surprising economic results which followed American 
 the outbreak of the Civil War are thus described g^^i^' 
 by Mr. Wells : ' The outbreak of Civil War in 1861, machi- 
 audits vigorous prosecution until 1865, acted as an ^^^^' 
 immense stimulus to invention and discovery in the 
 Ncvthern States, and led to an application of labour- 
 saving machinery and methods to the work of 
 production which, taking time into consideration, 
 has probably no parallel in the world's experience. 
 .... With certainly not more than five millions
 
 158 
 
 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 Farming 
 in the 
 Western 
 States. 
 
 of male adults engaged in agriculture, mechanic arts, 
 manufactures, and transportation in the Northern 
 States in 1860, the close of the war, in 1865, found 
 more than a million of adults enrolled in the service 
 of the Northern armies. But the industrial products 
 of these same States, especially the products of 
 agriculture, did not in general decrease during the 
 war period by reason of the diversion of labour 
 noted, but on the contrary, and mainly through the 
 invention and use of labour-saving machinery, 
 they largely increased. Thus, for example, the 
 amount of Avheat raised in Indiana in 1859 was 
 15,219,000 bushels, but in 1863, notwithstanding 
 that this State, out of a population in 1860 of 
 1,350,000, had furnished to the army more than 
 124,000 fighting men, its product of wheat exceeded 
 20,000,000 bushels ; and what was true of Indiana 
 was also true of Iowa, Illinois, and other agricultural 
 States, and in respect to productions other than 
 wheat.' 
 
 By ingenious mechanical labour the Americans 
 are now competing successfully against the cheap 
 manual labour of Switzerland, and we learn from 
 the report of Mr. Beauclerk, the Secretary of the 
 Legation at Berne, for the year 1878, that the 
 diminished exportation of watches to the United 
 States has inflicted severe losses on the hand- 
 workers in Switzerland. 
 
 Industry and ingenuity have enabled the 
 Americans to conquer in a remarkable degree the 
 many difficulties which obstruct their industrial 
 development ; but while a wide extent of soil
 
 ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LABOUR 159 
 
 remains untilled, the most profitable and congenial 
 occupation of the people must be pastoral and 
 agricultural rather than manufacturing. 
 
 The natural expansion of the population over the 
 plains of the West was for a time arrested by the high 
 protective duties which secured excessive profits to 
 manufacturers, and led to a development of produc- 
 tion beyond the requirements of the country. A 
 reaction has naturally followed from the excessive 
 development of manufacturing industry. Of 716 
 furnaces in existence in 1877, 446 are out of blast, 
 and the workmen are rapidly leaving the factories 
 and ironworks and resorting to the unsettled lands 
 in the Western States. The rapid growth of Kansas Growth of 
 may be taken as an example of the impetus given *^'''^^' 
 to an agricultural State by the extensive migration 
 from the manufacturing districts. The population 
 has increased since 1875 from 531,000 to 700,000. 
 In 1872 the entire number of acres under cultivation 
 in the State was 2,476,862, and the value of the 
 product thereof 25,265,109 dollars. In 1877 the 
 acres under cultivation reached 5,595,304, and the 
 value of the product therefrom 45,597,051 doUars. 
 In 1878 the acres under cultivation exceeded 
 6,500,000, the increase being nearly a milUon acres 
 in a single year. A similar movement, though of 
 course on a smaller scale, is taking place in our own 
 country, where agricultural labour is gradually 
 returning from the furnaces to the farms. 
 
 The migration from the industrial centres to Migra- 
 the agricultural States of the West is prominently arT^°^g . 
 noticed in the annual report of the American
 
 160 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 mercantile agency of Messrs. Dun & Co., quoted by 
 the ' Economist ' in the annual review of the trade 
 of 1878. The sales of land by the national govern- 
 ment increased from 3,338,000 acres in the year 
 ending the 30th of June, 1877, to 7,562,000 acres in 
 the succeeding year. An equal increase has taken 
 place in the sale of lands by the State land agencies 
 and railroad land offices. It is estimated that no 
 less than 20,000,000 acres were newly settled in 
 1878, and that not less than 100,000 families, repre- 
 senting a population of half a million, have changed 
 their abodes and their pursuits in the same period. 
 Wages can never long remain at a low level in the 
 United States, while the working man can transport 
 himself and his family from the irksome employment 
 of the factory to the free life of the Western plains. 
 The profits realised upon agriculture in the Missis- 
 sippi Valley, as the ' Economist ' observes, exercise 
 a paramount influence in determining the average 
 rate of wages in the manufacturing industries of 
 the United States. The prospects of agriculture in 
 the West were never more favourable than at the 
 present time, and we have, therefore, reason to 
 believe that the cost of industrial labour will be 
 sustained for some time to come on the existing 
 scale. As an evidence of the attractions of an 
 agricultural life to populations engaged in factories 
 and ironworks, I may refer to the fact mentioned 
 by Mr. Henderson in his recent paper in the ' Con- 
 temporary Review,' that on the average the working 
 staff of the American factories is changed once in 
 three years.
 
 ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LABOUR 161 
 
 In a paper contributed to the ' Fortnightly Mutations 
 Review ' by Mr. Atkinson, of Boston, we are informed fl^^l 
 that during the last thirty years the factory popula- popula- 
 tion of New England has passed through three *^°°- 
 phases. First came the sons and daughters of the 
 New England farmer ; but they have now betaken 
 themselves to easier and better paid employments. 
 The native operatives of New England were suc- 
 ceeded by the Irish ; but the Irish, in their turn, 
 saved money, and bought the farms deserted by the 
 New England yeomen who had emigrated to the 
 richer lands in the west. French Canadians now 
 supply the labour formerly furnished by the Irish 
 emigration, and, it is said, exhibit in manufacturing 
 industry a vigour and energy of which they gave no 
 indications while dwelling on their little strips of land 
 on the banks of the River St. Lawrence. It will be 
 admitted that American industrial enterprise has 
 made great progress, and that an abundant supply 
 of labour will at all times be furnished by emigra- 
 tion ; but for the reasons which have been enu- 
 merated, commodities in the production of which 
 labour is a principal factor, must at the present 
 time be cheaper in England than in the United 
 States, although our goods may be excluded from 
 the American market by a prohibitory tariff. 
 
 M
 
 162 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 Comparative Efficiency of English and Foreign 
 Labour. 
 
 Wages not I now proceed to discuss the character and 
 answer- conduct of the British workman, always so severely 
 collapses criticised in a time of commercial depression. When 
 of trade, trade expands and every available man finds 
 employment, wages inevitably rise. When trade 
 collapses it is said, and often most unjustly, that 
 the inflation of wages has been the main cause of 
 our disasters. It is owing to the constant and 
 unnecessary augmentation of our manufacturing 
 resources that the market has been overstocked, 
 and that a general depreciation of prices has been 
 brought about. 
 Our loss If we test the comparative efficiency of British 
 
 apparent l^bour by the amount of our exports, we shall see that 
 with pro- we have lost ground chiefly in our trade with the 
 coimtries gr^at manufacturing countries where the supply of 
 capital and labour has been abundant, and where 
 we have to encounter a serious protective tariff. 
 It is in those very countries in which the growth 
 of manufactures has been most rapid, and against 
 which we have been told to be on our guard as 
 formidable rivals, that the apprehension of British 
 competition is most keenly felt. The progress of 
 our trade with non-manufacturing countries and 
 in neutral markets is not unsatisfactory, 
 not in The following figures are taken from the Board of 
 
 markets. Trade tables. The comparison is made between
 
 ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LABOUR 163 
 
 1873, when our exports were at the highest point 
 they have ever attained, and 1877 : 
 
 Oountries 
 
 Java and other possessions in 
 the Indian Seas 
 
 Algeria 
 
 The Philippines .... 
 
 Morocco 
 
 Venezuela 
 
 Ecuador 
 
 Japan 
 
 British possessions 
 
 Exports 
 
 £ 
 
 774,673 
 
 65,565 
 
 439,177 
 
 365,364 
 
 541,620 
 
 109,383 
 
 1,884,145 
 
 71,147,707 
 
 1877 
 
 2,088,775 
 276,000 
 
 1,314,169 
 465,258 
 633,740 
 255,618 
 
 2,460,275 
 75,752,150 
 
 It is difficult to obtain an impartial opinion 
 on the subject of our investigation from persons 
 practically familiar with the capabilities of the 
 working man. In pursuing my inquiry I have 
 keenly felt the loss of the valuable counsels of my late 
 father. He had enjoyed unequalled opportunities 
 of comparing the industrial powers of many nations. 
 He felt generously towards the working man, and 
 he was ever ready to pay liberally for vigorous and 
 efficient labour. 
 
 In seeking for opinions on this difficult question English 
 of the relative eflficiency of English and foreign '^o^pared 
 labour, it is before all things necessary that the foreign 
 witnesses should be free from bias. I would rather ^^^°^- 
 take the opinion of a literary man or of J an 
 economist than that of a manufacturer on such a 
 subject.
 
 164 
 
 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 Defoe's 
 compari- 
 son of 
 English 
 and Dutch 
 labourers. 
 
 Dutch 
 labourers 
 at the 
 present 
 time. 
 
 Mr. Lecky, in his ' History of the Eighteenth 
 Century,' quotes a passage from Defoe's pamphlet 
 entitled ' Giving Alms no Charity,' which gives a 
 vivid picture of the labouring men of England in the 
 beginning of the last century. A bad system of poor 
 relief had already wrought a pernicious influence on 
 the peasantry. ' I affirm,' says Defoe, in the 
 passage quoted by Mr. Lecky, ' of my own know- 
 ledge that when I wanted a man for labouring work, 
 and offered 95. per week to strolling fellows at my 
 door, they have frequently told me to my face that 
 they could get more a begging. Good husbandry 
 
 is no English virtue It neither loves nor 
 
 is beloved by an Englishman. The English get 
 fortunes, and the Dutch save them ; and this 
 observation I have made between Dutchmen and 
 Englishmen, that where an Englishman earns his 
 205. a week and but just lives, as we call it, a Dutch- 
 man with the same earnings grows rich, and leaves 
 his children in a very good condition. Where an 
 English labouring man with his 95. a week lives 
 wretchedly, a Dutchman with the same money will 
 live tolerably.' 
 
 By the kindness of Mr. Watson who has had 
 extensive experience in the construction of public 
 works in Holland, I am enabled to give some facts 
 which show how the Englishman compares with the 
 Dutchman in our own day, nearly two centuries 
 after Defoe's pamphlet was written. 
 
 In summer the Dutch mechanic begins his day's 
 labour at 5 a.m. and ends at 7 p.m., with 2| hours* 
 interval. In mnter he commences work at 7 a.m. 
 and ends at 5.30 p.m., with pauses of an hour and 
 
 i
 
 ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LABOUR 165 
 
 a half. The workman's food costs from Is. 3d. to 
 Is. Qd. a day. The English labourer, who consumes 
 more meat and beer, would probably spend from 
 25. to 25. 6^. 
 
 Education amongst Dutch mechanics is more 
 advanced than with us. Carpenters and brick- 
 layers can generally understand and work to a 
 drawing, and write and read fluently. 
 
 With the view of comparing the cost of work in 
 Holland and in England, Mr. Watson analj^sed the 
 cost of some sea locks executed in Holland in 1870, 
 1871 and 1872. The brickwork cost £1 Is. 2d. per 
 cubic yard. On a railway contract near London, 
 executed in 1878, the price of ordinary brickwork 
 was found to be £1 45. 4:d. per yard. The quality 
 of the Dutch work is better than the English. 
 The bricks are excellent, and the workmanship 
 cannot be surpassed. In Holland the wages of a 
 good bricklayer average 3s. lOd. per day of ten hours. 
 The Englishman will do about the same amount of 
 work, but his wages for ten hours of labour in or 
 near London, until a recent date, were about 8s. 
 a day. 
 
 Extending the comparison to earth work, the 
 cubic j'^ard costs by Dutch labour 3.02d. ; by 
 English labour 3.63c?. The transport of earth to 
 long distances is of rare occurrence in Holland. In 
 this particular the men are not expert, and the work 
 is quite as costly as in England. 
 
 Carpenters for rough work are paid in Holland 
 from 4:d. to 4|rf. per hour. They are good workmen, 
 but not so active as Englishmen. It may be assumed 
 that the labour of four Englishmen would be equal
 
 166 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 to that of five Dutchmen ; but the four Englishmen, 
 at the London price of 6s. Qd. per day, would cost 
 £1 65. as compared with the sum of I85. 9d. which 
 would be paid for the five Dutchmen — thus making 
 the English work about 46 per cent, dearer than 
 the Dutch. The quality of the carpenters' work is 
 excellent, but joiners cannot compete in quality or 
 finish with London workmen. 
 
 In a report made by the director of a large 
 engineering establishment at Amsterdam to the 
 proprietors, comparing the Thames and the Clyde 
 prices and results with those obtained on his own 
 works, it is assumed that three Englishmen would 
 accomplish as much as four Dutchmen, but the 
 wages of the former averaged Sd. per hour, and 
 the wages of the latter were 5d. As regards quality, 
 though not equal in finish to London work, excellent 
 steam-engines and machinery are now turned out 
 of the Dutch establishments. 
 
 The cost of labour of all descriptions in Holland 
 has risen at least 30 per cent, during the last ten 
 years, with a corresponding rise in the cost of 
 living. 
 
 It will be observed that Mr. Watson sets the cost 
 of labour in the rural districts of Holland in com- 
 parison with its cost in the vicinity of London 
 during a period of exceptional activity in the building 
 trades. I cannot, therefore, accept his statement as 
 a final judgment. We should take the prices paid 
 for piece-work in the provinces, and the rates of 
 wages paid throughout a period of at least ten years, 
 in order to arrive at a fair average.
 
 navvy. 
 
 ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LABOUR 167 
 
 Gangs of navvies are to be seen at work at the The 
 present day in the vicinity of London, composed of n^f^r/ 
 men whose physical power and energy have never 
 been exceeded in any former generation. They are 
 worthy successors of the stalwart delvers of the 
 earth who excavated the canals and constructed our 
 vast network of railways. Having witnessed with 
 the highest admiration the performances of the 
 Lincolnshire labourers recently employed upon the 
 extension of the Victoria Docks, I addressed some 
 inquiries to Messrs. Lucas & Aird as to the amount 
 of work executed and the remuneration paid to the 
 navvies. It should be explained that the depth 
 of the excavation is about thirty feet below the 
 level upon which the excavated earth is deposited. 
 The earth to be removed consisted mostly of heavy 
 clay and peat. It is cut up with a grafting tool into 
 cubes twelve inches deep by ten inches by nine 
 inches, and carefully packed on the barrows, which 
 will hold about ten pieces. Each barrow-load 
 weighs from 3| to 4 hundredweight. Four navvies 
 are employed in filling the barrows and running 
 them to the foot of an incline. The runner runs 
 his barrow with the assistance of a horse up the 
 incline, making an ascent of thirty feet in perpendi- 
 cular height, at an angle of perhaps sixty degrees. 
 Having arrived at the summit of the incline, he 
 wheels the barrow a distance of eighteen yards to the 
 tip. The average quantity these men fill in one day 
 is about eighteen cubic yards of clay and twenty- 
 two cubic yards of peat. Their average earnings 
 are Is., and they work about eight hours per day.
 
 168 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 The quantity of victuals they consume may be 
 estimated at 2 lbs. of meat, 2 lbs. of bread, but not 
 so much vegetables in proportion. Ale is their 
 principal drink, of which they consume about five 
 quarts during the working hours. On Monday 
 morning these men are remarkable for a great 
 display of clean white clothes in which they begin 
 their week's work. As a rule they are quiet, and with 
 a few exceptions are civil to those in charge of the 
 work, and so long as they are fairly treated give 
 little trouble. 
 
 The average stature of the Lincolnshire navvies 
 is not inferior to the standard of the Household 
 Cavalry, and the development of physical strength 
 in their sinewy frames is greater in proportion as their 
 labours are more arduous than those of a mounted 
 trooper in the piping times of peace. 
 
 It would have been interesting to examine the 
 cost of engineering works in all parts of Europe, 
 and materials are not wanting ; time and space, 
 however, do not admit of such an investigation on 
 the present occasion. We will therefore proceed 
 Cost of to examine the comparative cost of labour in the 
 ironworks mines and iron works. Mr. Lowthian Bell is a 
 nnd col- hmh authority on this subiect. With reference to 
 France, the cost of labour in the ironworks and collieries 
 in France, the inquiries instituted by Mr. Lowthian 
 Bell in 1867 furnish ample information. Com- 
 paring the wages paid in France with the British 
 standard, Mr. Lowthian Bell reported that blast- 
 furnace keepers in France were satisfied with 45. 
 for a day's wages, a low rate no doubt as compared
 
 ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LABOUR 169 
 
 with English wages, but every French furnace had 
 a second keeper. Mr. Lowthian Bell took infinite 
 pains to obtain correct data as to the quality of the 
 work and the quantity of iron made at each furnace. 
 He found that at the furnaces on the Tees twenty- 
 five individuals performed an amount of work 
 identical with that executed by forty-two men at a 
 French furnace. In spite, therefore, of the wages 
 being, as nearly as he could estimate, 20 per cent, 
 cheaper, the cost of the labour employed in smelting 
 a ton of pig-iron was sensibly greater at the French 
 works than at Middlesbrough. 
 
 The enhanced value of provisions had produced In 
 the same influence on the price of labour in Belgium ^ ^^""^ 
 as in France. Colliers worked in six-hour shifts 
 and went down the pit twice in the twenty-four 
 hours ; they worked, therefore, twelve hours a day, 
 and earned from 25. to 2s. 4|c?. per shift. A blast- 
 furnace keeper only earned 25. 4|c?. to 25. Q^d. per 
 day ; but then he had such help as brought up the 
 cost of this description of labour to 6-|cZ. to Id. a ton 
 for foundry iron, and for forge iron to a trifle above 
 4tZ. There were two chargers to each furnace, who, 
 however, only received 25. a day. The women were 
 chiefly employed in coke burning and their Avages 
 were I5. a day. In Belgium the same want of 
 appliances for the saving of labour at the furnaces 
 was observed as in France ; the result being that, 
 notwithstanding the low rate of wages, the sum 
 paid on a ton of iron in Belgium was about the 
 same as in England. 
 
 The following comparative data are taken from a ^^ t^e 
 
 ° ^ United 
 
 States.
 
 170 
 
 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 paper written on the occasion of Mr. Lowthian Bell's 
 visit to the Exhibition at Philadelphia : 
 
 Ooal-hewera 
 
 'Hours of 
 actual Work 
 
 Tons of 
 Coal daUy 
 
 Daily Net 
 Earnings 
 
 Durham 
 
 Northumberland 
 United States (bituminous 
 coal) 
 
 5-39 
 5-52 
 
 10-0 
 
 3-90 
 315 
 
 6-00 
 
 8. d. 
 5 
 4 9 
 
 8 6 
 
 The average earnings throughout Great Britain 
 were about 5s. 2d. per day, or wyi. per hour of 
 actual work. In 1874 the rates, were Is. 2d. per 
 hour, for which the quantity worked was about 
 11 cwt. per man. In Northumberland and Durham 
 the miners are supplied with firing and live rent- 
 free, which makes their wages worth an additional 
 1^6^. per hour, as compared with the earnings of 
 colliers in the United States. 
 
 In America in 1874 the hewers got 13 cwt. of 
 coal and were paid about \s. Id. per hour. It thus 
 appears that at that date the advantage was rather 
 on the side of the pitmen of this country. 
 
 In November 1874 the price paid for puddUng 
 iron on the Tees wa^ IO5. 9c?. per ton ; the average 
 price in the United States at the same date was 
 £1 Os. Id. Since 1874 the price at Middlesbrough 
 has been reduced from IO5. 9c?. to 8s. 3c?., or 
 2s. 6(?. per ton. During the same period the 
 amount of reduction in the United States varied 
 from 2s. to 4s. 6c?. per ton ; but these conces- 
 sions had been obtained at the expense of
 
 ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LABOUR 171 
 
 considerable interruptions to work and some serious 
 disturbances. 
 
 Mr. Lowthian Bell could detect no difference 
 between the Old and the New Country in the skill 
 of manipulation exhibited by the workmen em- 
 ployed in the rolling-mills. The cost for labour 
 per ton was fully 25 per cent, higher in America 
 than in our own country. 
 
 Mr. Lowthian Bell gives the following as the 
 earnings of workmen employed in ironworks on the 
 continent of Europe for the year 1873, the period 
 of the highest wages in this country and in 
 America : 
 
 Belgium 
 Silesia . 
 
 Coal-hewers 
 
 Ironstone Miners 
 
 Puddlers (12 hoars) 
 
 45. to 7s. 2d. 
 
 in 8 hours 
 
 35. Qd. in 10 
 
 hours 
 
 s. d. S. d. 
 2 6 to 3 7 
 
 per day 
 
 1 10 in 8 
 
 hours 
 
 s. d. s. d. 
 Ist hand, 5 6 
 2nd „ 2 10 to 3 2 
 1st „ 4 9 
 2nd „ 3 2 
 
 It is satisfactory to know that, after his wide and Tbe com- 
 
 11- 1 XT • n T;r. 1 1 parison in 
 
 searchmg mquiry both in the United Kingdom and favour of 
 in America, Mr. Lowthian Bell arrives at the con- England, 
 elusion that in regard to cheapness and efficiency of 
 the labour the workmen engaged in the ironworks 
 of Great Britain have nothing to fear from foreign 
 competition, even where the hours are longer and 
 the scale of wages measured by the day is much 
 lower than in our own country. 
 
 We shall now proceed to give some information 
 bearing on the comparative efficiency of workmen 
 employed in mining.
 
 172 
 
 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 Output of Mr. Lumley, in his report on the Belgian coal 
 mhiTs^of ^^^^^ ^^^ 1876, gives details as to the average output 
 Belgium ; of coal per man in the province of Hainault : 
 
 
 
 
 
 Average 
 
 Years 
 
 1st Division 
 
 2ud Division 
 
 3rd Division 
 
 for whole 
 
 
 
 
 
 Province 
 
 
 Tons 
 
 Tons 
 
 Tons 
 
 Tons 
 
 1867 
 
 157 
 
 193 
 
 198 
 
 180 
 
 1868 
 
 151 
 
 209 
 
 204 
 
 183 
 
 1869 
 
 156 
 
 215 
 
 217 
 
 190 
 
 1870 
 
 162 
 
 211 
 
 215 
 
 191 
 
 1871 
 
 158 
 
 212 
 
 206 
 
 188 
 
 1872 
 
 178 
 
 224 
 
 229 
 
 206 
 
 1873 
 
 169 
 
 202 
 
 210 
 
 191 
 
 1874 
 
 152 
 
 184 
 
 193 
 
 174 
 
 1875 
 
 157 
 
 191 
 
 195 
 
 178 
 
 1876 
 Average 
 
 155 
 
 192 
 
 184 
 
 174 
 
 159 
 
 203 
 
 205 
 
 185 
 
 From this table it appears that the productive 
 power of the workman has not increased, the fact 
 being that it does not depend solely on the progress 
 of the industry, but also on the will and the calcula- 
 tions of the workman, who regulates his production 
 according to his impressions of the position of the 
 trade and the future course of prices. 
 
 The average wages in the Hainault collieries in 
 1876 were £41 85. per man, a reduction of £5 15s. 
 on the previous year. When business is brisk, the 
 Belgian miner is not afraid to work his best, ' know- 
 ing that his wages will not be questioned ; when 
 demand wanes and he sees no chance of a revival, 
 he diminishes his production for fear of having his 
 wages reduced. This accounts for the increase of 
 1866 and the subsequent fall, and for the improve-
 
 ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LABOUR 173 
 
 ment which took place during the revival towards 
 the end of 1869 and the beginning of 1870, but 
 which was succeeded by a decrease during 1870 and 
 1871.' 
 
 It is somewhat curious to observe how dia- Superior 
 metrically different is the conduct of the Belgian du°tive 
 and the English miner under the same conditions, capacity 
 Let us compare the Belgian figures with some ^j-msh 
 English statistics, extracted from the columns of miner, 
 the Times. 
 
 In 1861 the industrial census shewed that 385,000 
 miners were employed to get 86,000,000 tons of coal, 
 showing an average of 223.3 tons of coal raised per 
 man. Last year, however, 494,000 miners raised 
 134,610,000 tons of coal, being an average of 272.4 
 tons per man. 
 
 The last reports of the Inspectors of Mines give 
 the output of minerals in the collieries of the United 
 Kingdom. Mr. Dickenson gives the average in the 
 districts of North and East Lancashire at 301 tons 
 per person employed, being an increase of 23 tons 
 per head. He attributes the increase to the efforts 
 of the miner to make up for lower wages. From the 
 mining districts of Scotland Mr. Alexander gives 
 the output per workman for 1873 at 256 tons, 
 increasing in 1877 to 318 tons. Mr. Evans reports 
 as follows from the Midland district : ' The quantity 
 of minerals raised during the year was 13,000,000 
 tons, giving employment to 50,285 persons. In the 
 year immediately preceding this the production was 
 about 12,500,000 tons, persons employed 52,448. 
 This shows that a decrease of 2163 persons worked 
 half a million more tons of coal than the year before.'
 
 174 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 The relative capacity of the miners in Belgium 
 
 and England may be measured by the difference 
 
 between the output in the province of Hainault 
 
 and the general average for the United Kingdom. 
 
 In the one case it is 272 tons per man, in the other 
 
 185 tons. I believe the average relative industrial 
 
 capability of the workmen of the two countries 
 
 approximates very closely to the proportion which 
 
 the output from the English miners bears to the 
 
 output from the Belgian. 
 
 Energy The Manchester correspondent of the Times gives 
 
 Brit^rh ^^^ following illustration of the endurance of our 
 
 operative, operatives and of their energy and capacity for 
 
 making a rational use of adversity. 
 
 ' In a large mill where the wages paid before the 
 late reduction were £500 a week, and where the 
 simple reduction of 10 per cent, would leave the 
 amount £450, it turned out that after the reduction 
 had been submitted to, the employers had £510 to 
 pay instead of any smaller sum. The explanation 
 is that the workpeople had been more diligent 
 at their looms, and by this effort of self-discipHne 
 some of them, if not all, earned more money at the 
 reduced rate than they had earned before the strike. 
 They also did more work, and produced a larger 
 quantity of cloth at the cheaper rate, so that their 
 employers could afford to sell it more cheaply in 
 proportion ; and they contributed in their degree 
 towards swelling the production which their leaders 
 are so anxious to limit. They were not to bo 
 blamed, but commended, for making the best of their 
 own situation.'
 
 ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LABOUR 175 
 
 The industrial capabilities of Germany are 
 seriously impaired by the disaffection of the work- 
 men to the Government and the established order 
 of things, both social and commercial. A well- 
 informed contributor to the ' Edinburgh Review ' 
 of July 1878 states that German workmen abhor 
 all forms of religion as antagonistic to socialism. 
 The great commercial centres afford a congenial soil 
 for the new doctrines. 
 
 In the debates in 1876 on the German Criminal German 
 Supplementary Law, Prince Bismarck declared that and^'^ 
 the Socialist Press ' contributed to cause the stagna- Socialism. 
 tion of trade, and to make a German working day 
 less productive than a French or English working 
 day.' The Prince referred the members of the 
 Reichstag in proof of this to their own observation 
 of Frenchmen working by the side of Germans in 
 Berhn ; and he declared anyone could see that a 
 French builder executed in a day more and better 
 work than a German ; the result is that German work 
 cannot compete in the world's markets with French. 
 Prince Bismarck traced the decline to Socialist 
 agitation for undefined and unrealisable objects, 
 and he was not sanguine of any cure for the disease 
 except poverty.' Commenting on Prince Bismarck's 
 observations, the ' Edinburgh Reviewer ' very truly 
 observes that poverty is the most certain cure for 
 the onslaught which labour designs against capital. 
 If the Socialist schemes were carried into effect, 
 the workmen would speedily find that capital does 
 something more than feed on their earnings. The 
 practical consequences of social disaffection in
 
 176 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 Germany were brought out at a conference of the 
 several shipowning associations of Germany recently 
 held at Berlin. It was stated that German ship- 
 owners had been compelled to have recourse to 
 foreign shipbuilding yards, their own workmen 
 being unsteady and unreliable, and entirely under 
 the pernicious influence of trades unions and 
 socialistic associations, 
 inferio- An interesting comparison of the relative capa- 
 
 German bilities of English and German workmen was lately 
 to British given in the ' Leeds Mercury,' from an occasional 
 
 workmen. i . .^ i. r • • • j • 
 
 correspondent, the result oi inquiries made m 
 Prussia, in Saxony, in Bohemia, in Austria, in 
 Hungary, and in Roumania. 
 
 ' " We find our Englishmen," said one gentleman 
 who employs about a score of English mechanics 
 along with three or four score North Germans, " by 
 far the best men we can possibly get, I have no 
 doubt, indeed, that a single Englishman is worth 
 two Germans." 
 
 ' " In what way ? " I asked. 
 
 ' " In the power of using his head as well as his 
 hands. Your German mechanic can do his routine 
 work very well, and he will do it at wages of only 
 half the amount paid to an Englishman, but let him 
 get into any difficulty — such as the breakdown of 
 part of the machinery — and you see at once his 
 inferiority to his English colleague. He doesn't 
 know what to do, but his first idea is that he must 
 make a great noise, and let everybody know that a 
 terrible misfortune has happened. Then if by any
 
 ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LABOUR 177 
 
 accident he is able to put the thing right again, 
 he gets all the more credit from his master for 
 his wonderful achievement ; whilst if, on the other 
 hand, he cannot do anything, he has the satisfaction 
 of knowing that nobody has expected him to succeed 
 in repairing the mischief. The Englishman, how- 
 ever, in such a case says nothing to anybody, but 
 he looks about him, finds out for himself where 
 the injuries are, uses his wits, and gets the thing 
 put right again before anybody is aware that an 
 accident has happened." 
 
 ' " Yes," interrupted one of my companions who 
 happened to have a special knowledge of the subject, 
 " but remember that you are speaking of picked 
 Englishmen, carefully selected for you out of one 
 of the largest manufacturing shops in Great Britain. 
 You will not find that the average English workman 
 has anything like the superiority to the average 
 German that you claim for him." 
 
 ' " I am not so sure of that," pursued my original 
 informant. "It is true that mine are picked men, 
 but I have the pick of the Germans also, and my 
 (Conclusion is that whilst the German may be 
 trusted to do a routine piece of work, in which he has 
 been thoroughly trained, nearly, if not quite, as 
 well as the Englishman, in all labour in which you 
 use your head, or, as Opie said, ' mix your colours 
 with brains,' the Englishman ranks far before all 
 foreigners." ' 
 
 Very recently it has been determined to man the 
 engine-rooms and stoke-holes of the French mail 
 
 N
 
 178 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 steamers running between Dover and Calais with 
 
 Frenchmen. It is a significant circumstance that one 
 
 EngHshman is still to be retained as second engineer. 
 
 In case a bad breakdown should occur, it is needless 
 
 to say that the entire responsibility would devolve 
 
 on our fellow-countryman. 
 
 The tex- Turning to the textile industries we have in Mr. 
 
 dustries : Mundella a most competent authority, from personal 
 
 Mr. Mun- experience both in Nottingham and on the Con- 
 
 conT-^ tinent. He tells us that the Englishman, though 
 
 parison of much less sober, less instructed, and less refined, 
 
 British . . ... , . , 
 
 and IS yet more inventive, and can give more good 
 
 foreign suggestions to his master than the artisan of any 
 
 labour, ^f^ . -^ 
 
 other country. 
 
 Mr, Mundella has published a valuable collec- 
 tion of evidence in a paper on the ' Conditions 
 on which the Commercial and Manufacturing 
 Supremacy of Great Britain depends,' which 
 was read before the Statistical Society in March 
 1878, He says that 'no question has been so 
 fully discussed as that of the present efficiency 
 of English labour. According to some, both its 
 quality and productiveness have declined in pro- 
 portion as its costliness has increased. While 
 expressing my belief that much that has 
 been said has been unnecessarily severe and in 
 some instances grossly unjust, it is impossible 
 to deny that the high wages earned in the coal 
 and iron trades during the late period of inflation 
 have added little to the material or moral well- 
 being of many of the workers in these branches
 
 ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LABOUR 179 
 
 of industry. But if this is true, as I fear it is 
 of too many, it is not true of all.* A sudden 
 and exceptional rise of the rate of profits or of 
 wages in any branch of business is seldom more 
 than temporary, and rarely brings with it 
 lasting benefit to either employer or employed. 
 This part of our inquiry has such an important 
 bearing upon the question under consideration, that 
 I propose to consider it more fully than any 
 other. . . . 
 
 ' While fully and painfully conscious of the 
 defects of my countrymen, and regretful as any man 
 of that recklessness, intemperance, and thriftlessness 
 which are the characteristics of too many, and which 
 have led them to waste the opportunities afforded 
 them by a time of exceptional prosperity, I am of 
 opinion that their energy, efficiency and skill have 
 suffered no diminution, and that they are to-day, as 
 they have been in the past, superior in these qualities 
 to the workmen of any other nation. There is a 
 strenuousness of effort, a rapidity and deftness in 
 their movements which I have never seen equalled 
 except in the United States. The American, being 
 of the same race, I rank as the equal of the English- 
 man. I do not believe he is superior, only so far 
 
 * Mr. J. W. Pease, M.P., in giving evidence before the Coal 
 Committee of 1873, said : ' I found from the secretary of one of the 
 building societies, that he had on liis books 268 pitmen from the 
 district in which our collieries are worked. . . . Those men had 
 deposited in the year 1872, £3900. Another secretary said that 
 from looking over his books he found that the men in the group of 
 collieries just named had deposited, on an average, £300 a month 
 in bia building society.' 
 
 n2
 
 180 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 as he excels in temperance and intelligence. This 
 opinion is founded upon long experience, personal 
 observation, and the evidence afforded by competent 
 and impartial witnesses. I have often in my own 
 experience compared the production of French, 
 German and American workmen with that of the 
 English, from machinery in every case made in 
 England, and I have never known the Frenchman 
 or German to produce the same quantity of work 
 as the Englishman, although their working hours 
 were longer. Generally the production fell short 
 from 20 to 25 per cent. The American under equal 
 conditions will produce nearly, though not quite, 
 as much. Wherever I have found him producing 
 more, it was due to his having been furnished with 
 better machinery and appliances to work with. 
 Where considerable physical strength is required in 
 connection with technical skill, I have invariably 
 found the continental workman much slower 
 than the Englishman, and the production in this 
 case not more than two-thirds of our own. It is 
 quite true that even more than a corresponding 
 reduction is made from the wages, but this does 
 not compensate for the diminished productiveness 
 of the capital, machinery and plant employed, 
 and for the consequent increase in the working 
 expenses, 
 
 ' In a lecture delivered by Mr. Alexander Red- 
 grave, in November 1871, before the Philosophic 
 Institute of Bradford, he gives the following 
 statistics as to the proportion of spindles to persons
 
 ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LABOUR 181 
 
 employed in the cotton factories of the various 
 continental States : 
 
 In France . , .14 In Belgium . . .50 
 ,, Russia . . .28 ,, Saxony . . .50 
 „ Prussia . . .37 ,, Switzerland , . 55 
 ,, Bavaria . . .46 ,, Smaller States of 
 „ Austria . . .49 Germany . . 55 
 
 ,, United Kingdom . 74 
 
 ' " Incidentally," he adds, " the following state- 
 ments have been made to me by managers of cotton 
 factories, showing the relative capacity of work 
 of the Englishman and foreigner. 
 
 ' " In Germany the working hours were (at that 
 time) from 5.30 a.m. to 8.30 p.m. every day, in- 
 cluding Saturday. In a cotton factory there a 
 manager calculated that the same weight was 
 produced when superintended by English over- 
 lookers as in sixty hours in England ; but if the 
 work was superintended by German overlookers, 
 the weight produced would be much less. 
 
 * " As another instance : In Russia the factories 
 work night and day one hundred and fifty hours 
 per w^eek, there being two sets each working seventy- 
 five hours per week. Taking the year round, the 
 manager of a cotton factory there considered that, 
 in England, as much would be produced in sixty 
 hours per week. He also said that no weaver ever 
 had more than two looms, and that the speed of the 
 machinery was about one-third less than in this 
 country." ' 
 
 Some few years since I had opportunities of 
 inquiring into this subject, both in France and in
 
 182 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 Germany, and from every quarter, and especially 
 from English overlookers, I received the strongest 
 assurances that the English workman was un- 
 approachable in the amount of good work turned 
 out and in steadiness, that the relative cheapness 
 of wages did not counterbalance the steadiness and 
 quickness of the Englishman at his work. 
 
 I have reason to know that the proportion of 
 spindles to operatives employed on the Continent, 
 quoted by Mr. Redgrave in 1871, has in the interim 
 considerably augmented. Improved machinery has 
 in the same period been largely introduced in our 
 own cotton-mills, while the hours of continental 
 labour have considerably diminished, and the wages 
 increased. The restrictions on the employment of 
 children and young persons are now more severe in 
 France, Germany and Switzerland than with us. 
 
 From M. Taine's well-known ' Notes on England ' 
 we draw the following comparison between the 
 English and French workman. 
 
 After referring to the more sahent types of British 
 workmen, to their strongly nourished, hardy and 
 active frames, their phlegmatic, cool, and perse- 
 vering natures, he thus continues : 
 
 ' French manufacturers tell me that with them 
 the workman labours perfectly during the first hour, 
 less efficiently during the second, still less during 
 the third, and so goes on diminishing in efficiency, 
 until in the last hour he does little good at all. 
 His muscular force flags, and above all, his attention 
 becomes relaxed. Here [in England], on the con- 
 trary, the workman labours as well during the last
 
 ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LABOUR 183 
 
 as the first hour ; but, on the other hand, his work- 
 day is one of ten hours and not of twelve, as with 
 us. By reason, however, of this better sustained 
 attention, the Enghshman gets through more work. 
 At Messrs. Shaw's, of Manchester, to manage 2400 
 spindles one man and two children are found 
 sufficient ; in France it needs two men and three, 
 four, and sometimes more children for the same 
 
 purpose But in certain quahties ' (says 
 
 M. Taine), ' as in the matter of taste, artistic finish, 
 and the like, the Frenchman has the advantage. 
 He is more imaginative, less mechanical, and by con- 
 sequence that power of concentration, of stubborn, 
 persevering and sustained application where the 
 labour is monotonous, which so distinguishes the 
 English workman and gives him his pre-eminence, 
 is lacking in the French.' 
 
 In 1873 a circular was addressed to Her Majesty's 
 representatives abroad at the instance of the National 
 Association of Factory Occupiers, requesting them to 
 furnish information as to the spinning and weaving 
 of textile fabrics in the countries to which they were 
 accredited. This was in anticipation of the factory 
 legislation which took place in the following year. 
 In Belgium, where there are no legislative restric- 
 tions, and where labour is cheap and abundant, 
 Mr. Kennedy, our representative, reported ' that 
 the flax and cotton industries have remained 
 stationary during the past ten years. The two 
 or three factory occupiers whom I met ' (he further 
 observes) ' asserted that they could not pretend 
 to compete mth England. Manchester manu-
 
 184 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 facturers, they said, could select their cotton on 
 its arrival at Liverpool, close to their mills. Coal 
 was cheaper and handier at Manchester than at 
 Ghent. England, again, was the only producer of 
 good machinery, and likewise possessed ready 
 markets for her products in her vast colonial 
 possessions. And lastly, English operatives were 
 far superior to Flemish. On this latter point all 
 were agreed that the Englishman, being better fed, 
 possesses greater physical power, and produces as 
 much work in ten as the Fleming in twelve hours, 
 and having greater intelligence and mechanical 
 knowledge, comprehends the machinery he works, 
 and can point out to the foreman in case of ob- 
 struction the cause of the accident, whereas in Ghent 
 half an hour is constantly lost in seeking for the 
 cause of a stoppage in the machinery. 
 
 ' With the exception ' (continues Mr. Kennedy) 
 ' of the long-established export trade of Belgian 
 woollen yarn to Scotland, I may state, as the result 
 of my inquiries, that there is little, if any, regular 
 exportation of Belgian textile fabrics to Great 
 Britain for consumption there. Occupiers of 
 factories at Verviers assured me that they never 
 exported a piece of cloth directly to England ; 
 and the same story was repeated to me by mill- 
 owners at Ghent in regard to yarns and tissues both 
 of flax and cotton. The reasons for the possible 
 successful competition of Belgian with British 
 textile fabrics must be sought for in the lower rate 
 of wages, the longer hours of labour, and the cheaper 
 railway transport in Belgium as compared with
 
 ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LABOUR 185 
 
 Great Britain. But notwithstanding these apparent 
 advantages, it does not appear that British manu- 
 facturers have anything to fear from their rivals in 
 Belgium.' 
 
 Our Minister in Switzerland thus expresses 
 himself, in his report, as to the workman in that 
 country : 
 
 ' The Swiss workman is in most respects inferior 
 to the British workman. He has neither the physical 
 strength nor the energy and activity of the latter. 
 He is stolid in appearance, apathetic in tempera- 
 ment, slow and awkward in his movements, yet by 
 no means wanting in intelligence. He is steady, 
 methodical, industrious and painstaking. Though 
 of a saving disposition, no inducement in the shape 
 of higher wages will stimulate him to extra exertion.' 
 
 Mr. Harris, our representative in the Netherlands, 
 reports thus : 
 
 ' There is a general opinion, not unfrequently 
 shared by the workmen themselves, that the Dutch 
 labourer is not equal in point of skill to the foreign 
 workman — that he is slower at his work, and turns 
 it out in a less finished state.' 
 
 The single exception in which equality is claimed 
 is that of the United States, where it is urged that, 
 although the wages are higher than Avith us, the 
 additional labour performed nearly compensates. 
 As I have already intimated, I believe this state- 
 ment to be erroneous where all the conditions are 
 equal. 
 
 In 1873, Mr. Alexander Redgrave, Chief In- 
 spector of Factories, accompanied by Mr. Jasper
 
 186 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 Redgrave, sub-inspector, visited France and Belgium 
 for the purpose of investigating the ' hours of labour, 
 wages, production and like details ' in the textile 
 industries of those countries. They were armed 
 with letters from the Right Honourable H. A. 
 Bruce, the Home Secretary, which secured for them 
 ' the official recognition of the French and Belgian 
 Governments.' They instituted the most searching 
 investigation into the questions which formed the 
 subject of their inquiry, and the result was given 
 in a most interesting pamphlet of fifty pages. I 
 give the following extract from their concluding 
 remarks : 
 
 ' The value of the English workman still remains 
 pre-eminent, though the interval between him and 
 his competitors is not so great as it was. He has not 
 retrograded, but they have advanced, and that 
 advance has been chiefly caused by manufacturers 
 importing and copying from England that machinery 
 which supplies the place of strength, steadiness and 
 perseverance. The Belgians are an industrious and 
 painstaking race, but, with the French, they lack 
 that intentness of purpose which is the character- 
 istic of the Englishman. They are given to gossiping, 
 their attention is not as close, they are moved and 
 excited by more trifling causes than an English- 
 man. Then, again, whatever may be the proneness 
 of the Englishman to indulgence in habits of in- 
 temperance, there is no question for a moment of the 
 vast superiority of the cotton, woollen and flax 
 factory operative in England over the French and 
 Belgian workman of the same class.'
 
 ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LABOUR 187 
 
 In every town the complaint against the 
 operative was ' drunkenness.' It was difficult to 
 make manufacturers understand that the English 
 textile factory operatives went to their work as 
 punctually on the Monday as on any other morning. 
 Those who knew England were of course aware of 
 the different manner in which Sunday is kept ; 
 but they nevertheless thought that quiet drinking 
 would go on to such an extent on the Sunday 
 as to make its mark on the Monday morning's 
 work. 
 
 Although the foreign factory operative is not, 
 as has been said, nearly so far behind an Englishman 
 as he was a few years since, yet in all those occupa- 
 tions in which a call is made upon physical en- 
 durance and perseverance, the Englishman certainly 
 maintains his pristine eminence. The Yorkshire 
 foreman of founders who has been mentioned was 
 certainly not backward in speaking well of his 
 Belgian workmen, but he said they could not do 
 the work like an Englishman ; they could neither 
 keep to their work nor do the same amount in the 
 same time. This was a fact acknowledged by all, 
 and accounted for partially by the difference in 
 the nature of the sustenance of the operatives in 
 England. 
 
 There is a striking family likeness in the allega- 
 tions made by the employers of all countries against 
 the efficiency of their workmen. In a series of 
 valuable and exhaustive papers on the ' Wage 
 Statistics of Germany,' by Dr. Leo de Leeuw, he 
 shows that in various branches of the iron trade
 
 188 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 wages advanced from 60 to 100 per cent., and in 
 some instances reached as high as 500 per cent. 
 ' Yet,' he says, ' according to the unvarying testi- 
 mony of the employers, the actual wages earned in 
 1872 and subsequent years were scarcely in excess 
 of the wages earned before 1867. The workmen 
 took the difference in idleness and dissipation ; in 
 most establishments it became the rule to close 
 from Saturday night to Tuesday morning, and 
 it was only on Wednesdays that work was fairly 
 resumed,' 
 
 I have seen extracts from the German newspapers 
 respecting the dissipated habits and general deteri- 
 oration of the German workman, that corresponded 
 so closely with what has been said about English 
 workmen, that one might have been the translation 
 of the other. Even the champagne story has been 
 current, but the consumption has been attributed, 
 in Germany, to the working builders, whereas in 
 England it was accredited to the miner. 
 
 Dr. Leeuw adduces statistics to show how large 
 a diminution of work accompanied the increase 
 of wages in the building trade of Berlin. The 
 following is a literal translation of his statement : 
 
 ' It has lately been shown in the Berlin building 
 trade that the rise in wages went hand in 
 hand with the decrease of labour in the following 
 proportions : 
 
 'From 1862 to 1873 the time of work was re- 
 duced from eleven to ten hours per day ; the 
 day-labourer's wages rose in the same period from 
 1 reichsthaler to 1 reichsthaler 14.5 silbergroschen,
 
 ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LABOUR 189 
 
 i.e. 50 per cent. Out of fifty buildings constructed 
 in each year, the numbers are found as follows : 
 
 Year 
 
 Number of 
 
 Number of 
 
 Number per 
 
 Days worked 
 
 Stones laid 
 
 Man per Day 
 
 1862 
 
 30,217 
 
 18,795,000 
 
 623 
 
 1863 
 
 31,419 
 
 21,114,000 
 
 672 
 
 1864 
 
 36,504 
 
 24,349,000 
 
 667 
 
 1865 
 
 41,305 
 
 27,020,000 
 
 654 
 
 1866 
 
 28,428 
 
 19,260,000 
 
 681 
 
 1867 
 
 26,608 
 
 17,084,000 
 
 642 
 
 1868 
 
 27,204 
 
 16,814,000 
 
 618 
 
 1869 
 
 47,599 
 
 20,230,000 
 
 446 
 
 1871 
 
 33,364 
 
 13,379,000 
 
 401 
 
 1872 
 
 36,666 
 
 12,052,300 
 
 326 
 
 1873 
 
 1 
 
 38,888 
 
 11,683,000 
 
 304 
 
 And now let us turn to our most eminent Testi- 
 statisticians — men who survey the oscillations of ™g™upo? 
 trade from an absolutely neutral standpoint, and riority of 
 who have spent their lives, not in battling with more labo^ur: 
 or less numerous bodies of workmen for small 
 reductions of wage, or in minimising concessions 
 when they are compelled to make them, but in 
 measuring the broad results of international com- 
 petition. 
 
 I take, first, the following passage from Porter's Mr. 
 ' Progress of the Nation.' ' The amount of skilled ^°'*^'"' 
 labour performed in a given time by any given 
 number of our countrymen is commonly greater 
 than that accomplished by the like number of any 
 other people in Europe. To this circumstance it is 
 in great part owing that, with a higher rate of daily 
 wages paid for fewer hours of toil than are required 
 in other countries, our manufacturers have been
 
 190 
 
 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 Professor 
 
 Leone 
 
 Levi; 
 
 Mr. MiU; 
 
 Mr, 
 Wilson ; 
 
 able under otherwise adverse circumstances to 
 maintain the superiority over their rivals.' 
 
 The work of Mr. Porter has been carried down 
 to the present day by Professor Leone Levi, Con- 
 firming the favourable opinion of Mr. Porter, he 
 describes Britain as a perfect beehive of human 
 labour. Taking space and population into account, 
 possibly there is no other country in the world 
 where there is a larger proportion of labourers, 
 where harder work is gone through all the year 
 round, and where the reward of labour is more 
 liberal than in the United Kingdom. 
 
 Mr. Mill summed up what he conceived to be the 
 main features in the character of the British work- 
 man in the following passage : 
 
 ' Individuals or nations do not differ so much in 
 the efforts they are able and willing to make under 
 strong immediate incentives, as in their capacity of 
 present exertion for a distant object, and in the 
 thoroughness of their application to work on ordi- 
 nary occasions. This last quality is the principal 
 industrial excellence of the English people. This 
 efficiency of labour is connected with their whole 
 character ; with their defects as much as with their 
 good qualities.' 
 
 A generation has passed away since Mr. Mill 
 placed on record the opinion I have quoted, and I 
 find his views confirmed in the pages of Mr. Wilson, 
 who in his valuable volume entitled ' The Resources 
 of Modern Countries compared ' has given us the 
 latest collection of evidence on this subject. The 
 following passage embodies the final result of Mr.
 
 ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LABOUR 191 
 
 Wilson's elaborate inquiry : ' I have generally come 
 to the conclusion that as yet our supremacy has not 
 been substantially interfered with. The backward 
 wave which has swept the trade of the whole world 
 downwards, has been due to causes too universal 
 to lead us to suppose that any special decrease in 
 the producing and monopolising capacity of England 
 has occurred. Let the conditions be the same as 
 they are now, when business enterprise again revives, 
 and we shall on the whole be able to retain the 
 position we now hold. We shall be the largest 
 carriers in the world, the largest manufacturers, 
 and the most extensive employers of both labour 
 and money. The resources and advantages of the 
 country in ships, in machinery, in mines, in skilled 
 labour, in teeming population, in unopened stores 
 of coal and iron, and in geographical position, are 
 such as no other country can at present lay claim to, 
 and with these we have nothing to fear. Not only 
 so, but year by year the growth of our own colonies 
 in wealth and certain kinds of producing capacities 
 must tend to strengthen our hands and to make the 
 trade supremacy of England more assured. No 
 other country that the world has ever seen has had 
 so extended an influence, and as yet there are almost 
 no signs of the decay of this vast empire.' 
 
 The advantages acquired by Great Britain in Mr. New- 
 international commerce during the last twenty years ^^^'^^ ' 
 are shown with admirable force and clearness by 
 Mr. Newmarch in his recent essay on ' Reciprocity.' 
 He there shows us, to use his own words, ' why it is 
 that since 1856 the foreign merchandise imported
 
 192 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 has risen in amount or value by 117 per cent., 
 while the British merchandise exported has risen 
 in value only 74 per cent., or, put in a more simple 
 form, why it is that in 1877-75 we got 205. worth 
 of foreign goods for lis., while in 1859-56 we had 
 to pay 145. In the twenty years we have acquired 
 such an enlarged power over the foreigner by means 
 of accumulation of capital and improved production, 
 that he now has to send us 145. worth of his mer- 
 chandise in all the cases in which twenty years ago 
 he had to send us only lis. worth.' 
 Mr. Wells; Again, when a note of alarm is sounded as to 
 the incursioUvS of the manufacturers of the United 
 States into the Manchester markets, we may point to 
 some examples of successful competition by British 
 with American manufacturers. I quote the fol- 
 lowing from an essay by Mr. Wells, entitled ' How 
 shall the Nation regain Prosperity ? ' 'In 1874 
 Chili imported from Great Britain more than 
 55,000,000 yards, and from the United States only 
 5,000,000 yards of cotton cloth. This little State, 
 one of the smallest among the nations, with a 
 population of about 2,000,000, imported more 
 cotton cloth, to supply her wants, from Great 
 Britain in 1874, than the United States exported 
 that same year in the aggregate to all foreign 
 countries combined.' 
 
 In 1874 the export of cotton goods to the Argen- 
 tine Republic was in excess of 40,000,000 yards, 
 while for the year 1875-6 the export from the 
 United States of the same fabrics was officially 
 reported at 155,000 yards.
 
 ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LABOUR 193 
 
 Mr. Morley bore weighty testimony. ' They Mr. 
 are turning out,' he said in a recent paper, ' a ^^°"®y* 
 greater quantity of work in Lancashire for each 
 spindle and loom per week than at any previous 
 period in the history of the trade, and more than 
 they are doing in any other country in Europe, 
 however many hours they may work.' He reminds 
 us that it Avas admitted by the Manchester Chamber 
 of Commerce in 1876, when trade was still profitable 
 to employers, that the price of cahco was lower than 
 in any year save one in the history of the cotton 
 trade. Again, as he most fairly argues, ' If it were 
 true that it is the action of the workmen that 
 disables us in foreign competition, then we should 
 expect that the more labour entered into the cost 
 of production, the greater would be our disad- 
 vantage in the competition. But in the cotton 
 trade, at all events, exactly the contrary of this is 
 true. The articles in the production of which 
 labour is the most expensive element are just those 
 in which competition is least formidable. A com- 
 mon shirting, sold, say at 7s., and which has cost 
 only 2s. in wages, is exposed to competition. But 
 a piece of fine cambric, sold, say at 9s. 3c?., has cost 
 45. 6d. in wages, and yet in this description of 
 goods, in which labour is the main element of cost, 
 we have complete command of the markets.' 
 
 The ' Economist,' in reviewing Mr. Courtney's The 
 papers in the ' Fortnightly Review,' gives a more i^st!°°' 
 sanguine, and, as I beHeve, a truer \aew of the 
 capabihties of the British workman than we have 
 been accustomed to hear expressed by those who 
 
 O
 
 194 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 find an easy explanation of the present condition 
 of trade in the increased wages and diminished 
 energy of our workmen. ' At this moment in- 
 dustries cleave to particular places in spite of equally 
 favourable or more favourable conditions existing 
 in other spots. No reason, for example, in the way 
 of " cheap power " retains the alpaca trade of 
 Bradford in that town. There is quite as much 
 "power" in Creusot, as is shown in the iron ii\dustry 
 of that place ; wool and cotton are as easily pro- 
 curable, and the market, Paris, is, if anything, more 
 accessible. Yet the mixed wool and cotton manu- 
 facture does not go there, but remains in Bradford. 
 There are ports in the United States which are 
 better fitted in all respects for the shipbuilding 
 trade than any ports in England, and yet ship- 
 building flourishes here and does not flourish across 
 the Atlantic. We do not know of any sound reason 
 in economics why Nottingham should beat Genoa 
 in the manufacture of its special fabrics. Genoa 
 can obtain cotton as easily as Nottingham, and 
 silk more easily ; its artisans are probably the more 
 adaptable of the two ; and the difference in the cost 
 of the fuel used must, if we consider the minute cost 
 of coal-carrying and the small amount required, 
 be nearly imperceptible. Notliing in the cheapness 
 of coal can enable English manufacturers to import 
 silk from Japan, manufacture it, and then sell 
 dresses in Yeddo of a fabric with which no Japanese 
 can hope to compete. There must be something 
 in the English character, in its strenuousness, its love 
 of order, and its fidelity to work, which gives it a
 
 ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LABOUR 195 
 
 superiority ; and we see no reason why this character 
 should in any degree deteriorate. Certainly it will 
 not deteriorate because we are nearly at the end of 
 our resources in easily obtained coal. We incline 
 to believe that our countrymen have been injured, 
 if at all, by a superiority too easily acquired, and 
 that continued adversity would develop in them an 
 energy, industry, and power of combination with 
 which no nation can compete, not even America, 
 where a stimulus is lacking which is always present 
 in England. This stimulus is want of choice. Mr. 
 Courtney forgets that the option of working on the 
 land, which is present to the American and the 
 French ha,ndicraftsman, is wanting to the English. 
 He cannot take a farm, or grow grapes, or do any- 
 thing else but manufacture. He is shut up in an 
 island so small, and cultivated on so peculiar a 
 system, that he must manufacture or go away, and 
 acquires of necessity the hereditary skill which in 
 India appertains to the man who is forced by 
 caste or opinion to continue an hereditary trade. 
 Even if he has to import coal — and the transit of 
 coal across the Atlantic would not greatly increase 
 its price — he would find in his own energy the 
 means of compensating for that outlay, as he 
 already has done for his outlay upon food. His 
 great competitor, the American, though quite as full 
 of energy, has not the same inducement to expend 
 it upon work, and as a matter of fact does not 
 expend it. He has, for example, as Mr. Hussey 
 Vivian says, coal and iron as ready to his hand as 
 the Englishman. He has quite as much knowledge,
 
 196 
 
 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 Drinking 
 habits of 
 our opera- 
 tives. 
 
 Prodi- 
 gality of 
 American 
 miners. 
 
 and perhaps, on the whole, rather greater in- 
 ventiveness. He is no further from Asia for com- 
 mercial purposes, and ought, therefore, to obtain 
 a monopoly of the Asiatic trade in small steel 
 goods. Yet he does not, his only preference being 
 in the axe, which, residing in a half-cleared country, 
 he has been compelled by immediate necessity 
 to make decidedly better than his English rival. 
 The Englishman may of course, like the Cornish 
 miner, be induced to emigrate, but if he does not 
 he will retain, we conceive, a manufacturing faculty 
 akin to his pohtical faculty, which will still give 
 him a fair chance in the markets of the world.' 
 
 The opinion has gained wide acceptance that a 
 large proportion of the earnings during the period 
 of prosperity which preceded the present crisis 
 was wasted in intemperance. We learn from Dr. 
 Farr's report to the Registrar-General that during 
 the three years of high wages in 1871-73 the 
 consumption of spirits in the United Kingdom was 
 36,000,000 gallons a year. During the three sub- 
 sequent years of idleness the average consumption 
 was 42,000,000 gallons. Dr. Farr conjectures that 
 the hours formerly spent in the workshop were 
 passed idly in the public-house, and that this is 
 the reason why a larger consumption took place 
 in a period during which a very considerable re- 
 duction of wages had taken place. 
 
 Complaints of the misconduct of their workmen 
 are at least as frequent in America as in this country. 
 Describing the cost of mining in the Lake Champlain 
 district. Mr. Harris Gastrell states : ' The labourers
 
 ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LABOUR 197 
 
 are largely foreign, Irish and others. The miners 
 do not, as a rule, save. One of their chief modes 
 of spending is to keep a horse and " buggy " and 
 drive about. The vehicles in a miners' village were 
 certainly astonishingly numerous. A library, pro- 
 vided for the men at a cost to each of Is. a month, 
 has been given up on account of the men objecting 
 to the payment, and a former condition of work, 
 that their children should be sent to the free school 
 provided, has been abandoned.' 
 
 In 1860 the standard of wages was 87|- cents a 
 day. It then rose to 2 dollars in 1872, and was 
 in 1873 2 dollars 25 cents for common labour. 
 It was beheved that the men saved more when 
 paid at the rate of 87^ cents a day than they 
 did when the great rise in their wages had taken 
 place* 
 
 M. Favre admits in his reports to the Due 
 d'Audififret-Pasquier's Commission that drunken- 
 ness, though still rare in the south, had become a 
 threatening scourge in the north, the east, the west, 
 and the centre of France. 
 
 I might have added largely to the opinions which Indige- 
 have been quoted. No more impartial authorities labour. 
 could have been consulted than those now laid under 
 contribution. It was my father's conclusion, after 
 a long and wide experience, that in fully peopled 
 countries the cost of railways and other pubUc 
 works was nearly the same all over the world, and 
 that for every country the native labour, when 
 obtainable, was, with rare exceptions, the cheapest 
 and the best.
 
 198 
 
 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 The 
 English 
 labourer 
 abroad. 
 
 Advan- 
 tages of 
 climate 
 and race. 
 
 British 
 enterprise 
 in Cyprus. 
 
 For a task of exceptional difficulty, one requiring 
 all that dogged courage and determination to which 
 Mr. Mill refers, the British miner and navvy are 
 unsurpassed. After a long residence abroad the 
 Englishman adopts the diet and habits of the popu- 
 lation around him. He lives as they live, and 
 works as they work. Climate counts for much in 
 the physical condition of the human frame. 
 
 The preceding observations as to the uniformity 
 observable in the cost of works do not apply to 
 newly settled countries. Amid the sparse popula- 
 tions of the colonies labour is necessarily dearer 
 than elsewhere, 
 
 I have referred to the invigorating effects of a 
 cold climate. The influence both of climate and 
 race is abundantly displayed in the many admirable 
 qualities of the British people. 
 
 The enterprise of our colonists and our merchants 
 is irrepressible. During my visit to Cyprus I rode 
 side by side with a man who had been driven only 
 a few weeks before by the Kaffirs from his farm on 
 the borders of Natal, He was then making a gallant 
 effort to retrieve his fortunes in Cyprus by carrying 
 parcels on horseback between Kyrenia and Larnaka, 
 riding a distance of forty miles every day under a 
 burning sun. On the following morning I pur- 
 chased some Australian preserved meat from a 
 merchant at Larnaka, who had just arrived from 
 Vancouver's Island, where trade had been flagging 
 ever since the island ceased to be a free port, and 
 who had come to try his fortune in another outpost 
 of the British Empire.
 
 ENGLISH AND FOREIGN LABOUR 199 
 
 If we turn from the merchant to the manufacturer 
 we recognise less brilUancy, perhaps, and less of 
 that wise caution which distinguish the Frenchman, 
 but we perceive an inexhaustible energy and ad- 
 mirable skill in administration. 
 
 The British workman with all his admitted Faults 
 faults, and notwithstanding his incessant clamour fence^3^° 
 for higher wages in prosperous seasons, and his of the 
 hopeless resistance to reductions in adverse times, workman 
 stands before all liis rivals in many essential qualities. 
 His faults seem inseparable from the characteristic 
 national virtues. As it has been truly said, ' On a 
 tou jours les defauts de ses quaUtes.' Beaten we may 
 be at last by the exhaustion of our natural resources, 
 never through the inferiority of the ironworkers, 
 the spinners, and the weavers of the United Kingdom. 
 Their habits of industry are derived by inheritance 
 from their forefathers, confirmed by the example 
 of their fellow-workmen, and stimulated by emula- 
 tion. Their labours are wrought in the most favour- 
 able climate in the world for the development of 
 the bodily and mental energy of man. 
 
 My knowledge of the working quaUties of our Character 
 labouring population has been chiefly acquired ^j^^}^ 
 afloat, and my confidence in the British workman seaman, 
 is strengthened by intimacy with our seafaring 
 people. I find my own experience confirmed in a 
 recent report from our Consul at Nantes, who gives 
 a practical illustration of the distinguishing charac- 
 teristics of the English and French seamen. An 
 EngUsh vessel, manned by an Enghsh crew, will 
 generally, he says, beat a French competitor out of
 
 200 WORK AND WAGES 
 
 the field, though in many ways the latter navigates 
 his vessel more cheaply ; and why ? Because there 
 is on board the French vessel a laxity of discipline 
 unknown to us. Captain and crew naviguent en 
 famille ; both law and custom require the captain 
 to consult his men in an emergency. 
 
 It has often been said that the British seaman 
 submits less readily to disciphne than the Swede 
 or the Dane, and that in the ordinary routine of a 
 sea life he cannot always be relied upon to use his 
 utmost energies ; but when the trial comes of nerve 
 and strength and skill, he is rarely found wanting. 
 
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