THE TRADE BOARDS BILL.
THE debate on the Trade Boards Bill in the Lords on Monday was of that thoroughly unsatisfactory kind with which we have of late years grown familiar when tie subject is social reform. There were differences, no doubt, in the form of the Speeches. The 'Opposition were a shade more outspoken in their criticism than the Ministerialists. But no one professed to have any, clear notion of how the Bill would work, or in what way it was to benefit the unfortunate sempstresses whose miserable condition has led to its introduction. Lord Hamilton of Dalzell, who moved the second reading, seemed to think that he had proved his case when he asked their Lordships whether they thought that wages insufficient to purchase the necessaries of life. should' continue. It is already, he said, a punishable offence to allow an animal dependent on us to starve. Is it too much to ask that this law shall be extended, to human beings ? Lord Hamilton's love of analogf has made him a littlecareless in the use of ,it. We punish a man who allows 'an animal dependent on him to starve because it is absolutely dependent on 'him, and because if he does not choose to feed it properly he can have it killed. Neither of these conditions is satisfied in the case of the aerapstress. Her relation to her employer is one of con- tract, and, though circumstances' have unfortunately made it a very one-sided contract, it is hardly safe to legislate' as though she is not, and, can never hope to be, any . more an independent agent -than an animal is. Lord Hamilton had bc■ 'this time become so impressed by his own reasoning that any doubt as to the wisdom of the "new departure " which the, Bill is had dis- appeared.. -We do not wonder at this. The compre- hensive 'sentence in which he described the way in which the Bill will work would secure our Support for it if only we could, believe it to be accurate.' In the trades with 'which ;the 'Bill deals there are, he says, three classes of employers.: those .who already pay fair wages • those who would like to pay them if they were not afraid of having their prices " cut " by a lower class of employers • , and this lower class—the sweaters proper—who pay unfair wages from love of the thing, or at all events of the profits which it brings in. The first class are outside the Bill altogether. They do the right thing already, and they will go on doing it. The second class will be helped by the Bill. Hitherto they have paid their workpeople "wages insufficient to purchase for them the necessaries of life," but they have done so with regret. They will gladly pay the proper sums if they can be secured against the competition of employers who have no coin- 'passionate scruples to keep down. Everything turns, then, .on- the third- class, the genuine sweaters, and they will be got rid of by the Bill. This is a conclusive argument, if this last assumption turns out to be true. For as yet, it must be remembered, it is an assumption and nothing mom. It may.belong—for anything we can see to the contrary, it dces belong—to a type of which there are already too many examples. The philanthropist who is convinced that he can put down any evil under the sun if he can but get it forbidden by Act of Parliament is only too common amongst us, and Lord Hamilton's assumption constitutes his whole stock-in-trade. There is a community, as familiar to us as though it really existed, in which "Off with his head ! " was held to redress every wrong, and this is precisely the process which the Bill applies to sweaters. "Pay your workpeople the proper wage for their work," the law will say, and at once the wages will be paid. Would that it were so. But in order to make it so Parliament must possess the divine attribute of speaking the word and it is done. The statute-book is largely filled with the records of instances in which Parliament has spoken the word—usually several times over—and nothing has been done.
What is there to save the Trade Boards Bill from adding another entry to this long list? No doubt if the sweater pays lower wages than those fixed by the law he will have committed a punishable offence. But the punishment even of a punishable offence requires a conviction, and a con- viction requires witnesses. Well, it may be said, what can be easier than to produce them? The sweater is not a popular person among his workpeople. They will not be anxious to shield him when the law calls him to account. On the contrary, they will come in crowds to the Police Court to testify to the fact that whereas the law says that he is to pay them 15s. a week, he has not paid them even 5s. (These are purely imaginary figures, of course.) Will they ? Let us imagine for a moment the Lind of speech which the sweater will make to them before breaking the law as set forth in the Bill. If he is wise in his generation, he will leave them in no doubt as to his intention to obey the law. But the supporters of the Bill sometimes seem to forget what is included in obedience to this par- ticular law. They argue as though the law ordered the sweater to pay the wages fixed by the Trade Board. It does nothing of the End; it only orders him not to pay any lower wage. What the sweater will do, therefore— presuming him to know his interest—will be to call his workpeople together and give them a general dismissal. "I don't want to do this," he will say, "but I can't help myself. The wages I have been paying you are miserably poor ; I don't deny that. But they are all it is worth my while to give you, and, as I don't profess to be a philanthropist, I can't give you any more. Good morning." The immediate effect of this little oration will be to bring together two sets of people whose interest it is to evade the law, and we wish we could share Lord Hamilton's confidence that this contact will have no evil results. To us it seems very likely to have results which in many cases will make the law quite useless. We cannot pretend to foresee the precise expedients that the sweater and the sweated will resort to, but we have a very strong conviction that when employers who want to get certain work done for 5s. a week for which the law says that they must pay 15s., and. workpeople who have hitherto accepted 5s. and. now see even this sum taken away from them, get together they will hit upon some method. of keeping the law in the letter while breaking it in the spirit. It will be a matter of immense importance to both parties. Neither by character nor by methods probably is the sweater likely to attract the workpeople to whom it will answer his purpose to pay the legal wage. Neither by character nor by training are - his former workpeople likely to find, the sort of work on which the payer of the legal wage will insist. The livelihood, such as it is, of both will be on the eve of disappearing, and we can imagine nothing better calculated to stimulate mutual ingenuity. In that sense the Trade Boards Bill may prove an educational measure. In every other sense we fear it is predestined to failure. To make it water-tight, indeed, a clause should have been added declaring it a penal offence in the scheduled trades for an employer not to continue to employ as many people as formerly, or to cease from employing altogether. This was the sort of way in which under the Ancien Regime in Prance the Government dealt -with people who tried to evade their laws. When, after they had raised the Salt-tax, the people bought less salt, "You are evading your fiscal obligations," said the Govern- ment. "Henceforth we order every family to buy so much salt a year." Are we coming, we wonder, to every employer in the scheduled trades being ordered to employ so many hands whether he likes it or not ? We cannot share even the limited hope which led Lord Lansdowne to support the second reading. He has two grounds for this hope. The first is that he regards the ' Bill as an experiment. The second is that the establishment of the Boards will educate these "weak and. unorganised." workpeople to see the need of combination, and by degrees to form themselves into Trade-Unions. As for the former anticipation, there is only one way in which an Act of Parliament can have the nature of an experiment, and that is when it is so entirely temporary that it will expire at a certain not very remote date unless it is renewed. Though even this expedient is often made valueless by successive applications of the Expiring Laws Continuance Act, it does keep the experimental character of the Act before the eyes of those who are interested in its working But the Anti-Sweating Bill will be as much a fixture as any other Bill passed by large majorities and amid general assent. We do not mean that it will not be found to need amend- ment. On the contrary, it will need it soon and often ; but the effect of this will probably be seen in proposals to make it more rigorous, and therefore more effective. This sort of legislation, it will be argued, cannot be applied suc- cessfully except on a great scale. The minimum wage may be declared sound in principle, but it cannot work well in practice when only a very few trades are brought under its operation. The authors of the first Trade Boards Bill did not see this, or thought it hopeless to make Parliament see it. The authors of subsequent Bills directed to the same end will be wiser. The minimum wage has its day of small things in 1909; before five years are over it will be in possession of the whole field. So much for the experimental character of the new legislation. When we turn to its merits as a half-way house to Trade-Unionism in these underpaid industries we are equally unconvinced. Men learn to do things by doing them. They may have to be helped to do them in the first instance, but if that help merely does the work for them it can be of no possible use. Men learn swimming by going into the water and trying to swim. They may want some aids in the first instance, but they must be aids given them in the water. If they are taken out on to the bank and bidden employ themselves there, they will never be swimmers. We agree altogether with Lord Salisbury that combination is "the most desirable remedy." Indeed, we go much further, for to our thinking it is the only remedy. But we shall not bring this remedy more within reach by trying one quack medicine after another by way of substitute. The man who has a store of bottles in his cupboard, to each of which he has successively pinned his faith, will probably be the last man to place himself under proper medical treat- ment. In this case, however, we admit that a remedy— of a kind—will in all probability be found in no very long time. In proportion as the Trade Boards Bill is effective at home it will be effective, in another sense, abroad. If its authors are right in their forecast, ill-paid labour will disappear, and the cheap goods which cheap labour pro- duces will go with them. Then will come the opportunity of the foreigner. Goods similar to those which have hitherto been made in England will pour in from other countries, and from underselling others the sweater will come to be himself undersold. How is a Free-trade Government to meet" dumping" of this kind,—" dumping" produced, it must be remembered, not by the play of natural forces, which ordinarily bring their compensations with them, but by their own wilful act ? Only, so far as we can see, by making way for a Government which will at once impose Protective duties on the classes of goods which have hitherto been produced. by sweated labour.
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