UC-NRLF

EMD flED

industry Series, II

SOME PROBLEMS OF

URBAN AND RURAL

INDUSTRY.

Sczsnt He Management * <L D, Hu COLE, MA,

Women in Industry - « MARION PHEJUOPS, D3c.

The Pttitkm of Agriculture in

Industry - . c. S. ORWIN.

The Position of the Rural Worker

in Industry - ^ - A. W, ASHBY.

RUSKIN COLLEGE, OXFORD.

GIFT OF

PUBLISHED BY THE COUNCIL OF
RUSKIN COLLEGE.

The Reorganisation of Industry Series. II.

SOME PROBLEMS OF

URBAN AND RURAL
INDUSTRY.

PAPERS

BY

G. D. H. COLE, M.A.
MARION PHILLIPS, D.Sc. (Econ.)
C. S. ORWIN.
A. W. ASHBY.

With Criticisms.

net

RUSKIN COLLEGE, OXFORD.

BIRMINGHAM :
BIRMINGHAM PRINTERS, LTD., 42-44, HILL STREET.

1917

PREFATORY NOTE.

E success of the Conference held at Oxford under the auspices
of Ruskin College, in July, 1916, and the extensive demand
for the published Report of its proceedings, seemed to justify
the holding of a second conference at Bradford ; and, as it is hoped
to arrange for a number of other conferences from time to time, it has
been decided to issue reports in a series entitled " The Reorganisation
of Industry," of which this forms the second volume.

At Oxford the wish was expressed by more than one delegate that
Rural Problems might form the subject of discussion on some future
occasion, and two of the papers here printed — those by Mr. Orwin
and Mr. Ashby- — with the discussions to which they gave rise, are the
outcome of this suggestion.

The inadequacy of British literature on " Scientific Management "
and the growing importance of the subject will justify its inclusion
in the programme of the Conference ; and the usefulness of the dis-
cussion on Mr. Cole's paper was greatly enhanced owing to the fact
that its opener is a well-known employer of labour, as those present
were in this way enabled to hear the subject dealt with from the point
of view of both employers and employed.

There is no need to emphasise the importance of the many problems
connected with the subject of " Women in Industry," discussed in
the paper by Dr. Marion Phillips.

The four papers, having been circulated beforehand amongst the
delegates, were not re&d at tjie' meetin'gs, but the writers introduced
their subjects by short speeches which .have been here summarised

instead of bein^ ,r.;uted verbatim; m. order to avoid repetition.

»• • • •.»

The College, of course, does not hold itself responsible for all the
views expressed, but it publishes this little book in the belief that it
will be of service to those whose thoughts are already occupied with
industrial reorganisation, and with the hope that it may encourage
further study of the problems with which it deals.

H. SANDERSON FURNISS,

Principal of Ruskin College.
Oxford, April, 1917.

SOME PROBLEMS OF URBAN
AND RURAL INDUSTRY.

AN ACCOUNT OF PROCEEDINGS AT THE CONFERENCE

OF WORKING-CLASS ASSOCIATIONS HELD IN BRADFORD

ON MARCH 16th AND 17th, 1917.

(Notes taken by E. T. Hunt, Oxford.}

FIRST SESSION.

The Rt. Hon. C. W. Bowerman, M.P. (Chairman of the Council of
Ruskin College), having been detained on important business, one of
the other members of the Council — Mr. James Bell (Secretary, Oldham
Weavers' Association) — presided during the Conference.

In opening the proceedings, Mr. Bell said that the Executive of
Ruskin College was composed entirely of representatives of Trade
Unions, the Co-operative Societies, and the Club and Institute Union.
On their behalf he welcomed the delegates, and said that the Council
thought it desirous, even during the war, that something should be
done to keep the College in touch with the working-class movement.
Some time ago there was a similar conference held in Oxford, and those
who had read the small book reporting that conference would recognise
that their efforts in Bradford were likely to do good. The Council
wanted the workers to have the best possible education — they did not
want to make them Socialists, or any other " ists." If they became
Socialists as a result of education, well and good ; but the main point
was to build up a well-educated movement, so that the workers could
have a chance of working out their own salvation.

SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT.

By G. D. H. COLE, M.A.

I make no apology for confining this paper within comparatively
narrow limits, or for enlarging principally on those features of ' Scientific
Management ' which seem to me both most immediately important
and of most vital concern to labour. I should like it to be understood
at the start that I am dealing not with the general questions of the
application of scientific principles to industrial management, but with
the more particular question of their application to human beings.
I shall therefore have nothing to say of many matters which fall under
the head of Scientific Management, where they do not directly and
immediately affect the human element in the factory. That the
application of scientific principles to industrial organisation is a good
thing we can all agree in the abstract ; and we can at least reach an
agreement in practice where only inanimate objects are affected.
The improvement of industrial research, of factory organisation, of
the estimating of costs of production, of the routing of jobs, of the dove-
tailing of orders, and of the co-ordination between factory and factory
undoubtedly call for more ' science,' and there can be no quarrel
with any attempt to apply science purely in such spheres. There is a
real sense in which industrial management is a science, just as there is
a real sense in which political government is a science.

The advocates of the various systems which go by the name of
4 Scientific Management ' make, however, a far wider claim than this.
For Mr. Taylor, who invented the name if not the thing, the place of
' science ' in industrial management is not merely important, but
all-embracing. His aim, at least, was to substitute in industry ' the
government of fact and law for the rule of force and opinion.' He
conceived industrial management not merely as a science, but as an
exact science, furnishing an absolute and unchallengeable answer to
every question, laying down natural laws with reference not simply
to the machinery of the factory, but also to the behaviour, motions,
tasks, and methods of remuneration of all the workers employed in it.
He claimed that his system was ' democratic,' not because it established
the principle of self-government by the workers in the factory, but
because it made government an absolute and exact science, no less
independent of the actual managers of any particular factory than of
the workers employed in it.

The extreme claims of Mr. Taylor have been considerably modified
by his theoretical successors, and very much more modified wherever
Scientific Management has been applied in practice. Nevertheless,
in so far as Scientific Management is a doctrine at all. it does rest upon
the belief that industrial organisation is an exact science, and that in

the factory the government of natural law must replace the rule of
force and opinion.

This view is, of course, highly controversial, and, despite Mr. Taylor's
elaborate promises of the beneficent effects which his system would
have upon the workers, it is, I think, a theory which Labour is not
likely to accept. The central point at issue can most easily be made
clear by an analogy. We are all familiar with disputes concerning the
place of the expert in political government. From time to time, writers
have arisen who have proclaimed that the government of men is an
exact science, and that its basis and application should be determined
by law and not by opinion. In all ages, from Plato to that talented
French publicist, M. Emile Faguet, in our own day, such writers have
challenged democracy as the denial of political science and as the ' cult
of incompetence.' For the inexact and unscientific opinion of demo-
cracy they have desired to substitute the rule of knowledge by placing
the expert in the seat of power. Against them, democrats have con-
tended that, while the expert and science have their place in government,
the social life of man is finally not a matter of abstract science, but a
matter of positive will. They have based their conception of society
upon the will of the governed, and have made the realisation of self-
government their primary objective.

I do not think the advocates of Scientific Management in industry
really believe in political democracy ; but they are, as a rule, careful
to maintain that there is no analogy between industry and politics.
Democracy, they say, may be good enough in politics ; but it will
not do in industry. Whatever politics may be, they hold that industrial
management is an exact science.

This point of view I challenge. I hold firmly that no sphere of
human action or conduct can be reduced to the formulae of an exact
science. I hold that political self-government is good, not simply as
ministering to ; efficiency,' but because it is self-government ; and I
hold that in every sphere of human action self-government is in itself
good, because the greatest of man's achievements is self-government.
I set out, then, from a fundamental criticism of the whole principle
on which Scientific Management rests, and with an assertion that
self-government is good in industry as well as in politics.

This is no denial that the expert has a place — and an important
place — in industry ; but it is a denial that the expert can be regarded
as supreme. No less than in politics, the problem of democracy in
industry is that of reconciling its own rule with an adequate recognition
of the expert ; but my point is that this is a problem for democracy
to solve, and cannot be made a point against democracy itself.

Throughout this paper, then, I shall have primarily in mind the
principle of industrial democracy, and I shall regard it as the weightiest
of arguments against any system that it makes against self-government.
I postulate at the outset that our ideal in industry should be that
of securing self-government for the workers engaged in it ; and I am
not interested in arguing with those who decisively reject this principle.

6

4 Humanitarian ' arguments, based upon the effect of Scientific Manage-
ment upon the ' welfare ' of the workers, may be important, but th'-y
are secondary.

I cannot attempt to define Scientific Management in any more
concrete terms than I have employed in speaking of the general principle
behind it. As soon as we pass from its theoretical position to the
practical applications of that principle, we are confronted with a vast
and heterogeneous mass of proposals. From these I must merely
select those with which I propose to deal. In its application to Labour,
Scientific Management is based upon a ' scientific ' investigation of
the conditions under which work is carried on. By elaborate studies
of the time taken on particular jobs or parts of jobs, and of the motions
made in and necessary for the execution of such jobs, the ' scientific
manager ' seeks to arrive at an accurate knowledge of the ' best '
conditions to be adopted in his factory. He seeks to equip himself
with information in respect of every job bearing on the following,
among other, points : —

(a) The method and amount of payment necessary to secure the

lowest labour cost per unit of the product ;
(6) The method of production, the hours and conditions of labour,

the rest pauses, the amount of supervision, etc., necessary

to secure the same ends.

Now, this description of the methods and aims of Scientific Manage-
ment includes what many of its advocates will regard as a misrepre-
sentation. Our object, they will say, is not fundamentally that of
securing ' the lowest labour cost per unit of the product ' ; it is that
of finding the ' best ' and ' most scientific ' methods of payment,
hours and conditions of labour, rest pauses, amount of supervision,
methods of production, etc. It is the fundamental doctrine at least
of Mr. Taylor, the founder of the system, that these things go together.
The ' best ' and most scientific adjustments do also secure the lowest
labour costs, and also make for the common advantage of all parties
concerned — the profiteer, the manager, the worker, and the public.

For this claim we should not, I think, be prepared to take Mr. Taylor's
word, even if those who have to apply Scientific Management in practice
were purely disinterested persons. Still less can we be content to do
so when we consider the conditions under which the system has to be
applied. Industry to-day is owned and controlled by persons who are
not, and cannot be, ' in business for their health.' Self-interest and,
failing that, competition, impel them to seek the lowest labour cost
without too much regard for the effect upon others. Where it pays
them to manage ' scientifically,' they will do so if they have the
intelligence ; where it does not pay them, or they are unintelligent,
they will persist with unscientific management. If all managers were
perfectly intelligent, and further if Scientific Management always paid
its promoters, it would no doubt be universally adopted ; but this
would be no proof of its beneficent effect upon the workers or the
community. The ' best ' for Capitalism is not necessarily the best for

Labour or the best for the community. Indeed, in practice, the
capitalist's criterion of what is ' best ' lies in the profit he can secure
from it. This does not mean that it is necessarily bad for Labour ;
but it does not mean either that it is necessarily good.

We are driven back, therefore, upon a further study of the practical
proposals of the advocates of Scientific Management, and upon these
we must endeavour to pass judgment.

The ' scientific method ' of the system, as we have seen, is based
primarily upon time and motion study. The object of time-study is,
by long series of experiments, to find out how long a job ought to
take — that is, to establish a scientific standard time for the job or task
for the worker. The object of motion-study is, by similar experiments,
to find out the method of doing the job in the shortest possible time,
or, to a less extent, with the least possible effort. Speaking broadly,
motion-study is to determine the method to be adopted by the worker
in performing the job : time-study is to determine how much he or
she is to be paid for it.

Motion-study naturally takes different forms, and assumes varying
degrees of importance, according to the nature of the operation. It has
reached the largest proportions in purely manual operations, such as the
classic instance of loading pig-iron on to a truck, or the laying of bricks,
or sewing by hand in a tailoring establishment. In such cases an attempt
is made to standardise the operation, so that it is performed in the least
possible number of motions, or in the shortest possible time, or with the
minimum of effort. These, obviously may not be compatible. The
speeding-up of an operation by the elimination of useless motions may
involve either more or less effort, or the number of motions may be
increased while the time is diminished. The accusation has been made
that in many such cases the employer gets a greater output by placing
a far greater strain on the worker, who may even be worn out by
overdrive and thrown on the scrap-heap like an old machine. The object
of motion-study is indeed largely that of making the worker into a
machine.

In the case of machine operations, the effect of motion-study may
be rather different. In such a case, the machine itself, in proportion to
its automatic character, dictates the actual motions to be used in
working it, and motion-study is therefore likely to suggest an alteration
or adaptation of the machine, sometimes such an alteration as to remove
work from a skilled to a semi-skilled or unskilled category. Apart
from this, however, some ' scientific managers ' carefully prescribe even
for skilled craftsmen the motions and methods to be employed on
complex machines and operations. Here, again, then, the tendency
of Scientific Management is towards standardisation of both machines
and men. To this point I shall return later.

Time-study has reference mainly, though not exclusively, to methods
of payment. In endeavouring to discover by experiment the standard
time for a job, what the manager mainly wants to find out is how much
the job will cost him in payment to the worker for doing it. Upon

8

time-study are based the elaborate systems of payment by results
which are associated with Scientific Management. All the leading
advocates of the theory have their own systems of wage payment,
and all these are systems of payment by results.

Payment by results, advocated in the name of industrial efficiency,
is indeed placed foremost in the programme of Scientific Management
theorists. Of their system it is only a part ; but since it is easily
detached from the rest and possesses obvious superficial attractions
for the employer, it is very often adopted without any attempt to
apply ' science ' to the other parts of the business. Time-study in
such cases becomes almost purely a means to the fixing of wages.

There are, however, obvious reasons why time-study may be useful
to the employer quite apart from payment by results. It is, indeed,
perfectly compatible with a time-work system. Before estimating
on a contract, the employer wants to know what the labour-cost of the
job will be, and accurate study of the time taken on similar jobs in the
past will clearly help him to be ' scientific ' in forecasting the cost of
production. There is a clear case for more science in this direction,
for an important inducement to rate-cutting and speeding-up is lack
of accuracy in forecasting the labour-cost of a job. Even if it is not
used as a method of increasing output, or of devising ' scientific '
methods of payment, time-study may be very useful to the employer.

Here, Jiowever, we are concerned with the effect produced on Labour,
and we must therefore pass on to a description of the various ' efficiency '
systems of payment put forward by apostles of Scientific Management.
The actual systems in use are legion, both in America and in Great
Britain ; we shall have to content ourselves with the chief types.

The two simplest methods of paying Labour are time-work and
piece-work. The employer may pay his workers in accordance with the
time spent in his service, or in accordance with the output secured — at
so much per hour, per day, per week, or per month, or at so much per
piece, per ton, per mile, etc. It has often been pointed out that these
two methods of payment have, to a great extent, a common basis :
the hourly rate has reference to a more or less defined output which the
employer expects from the worker, and failing which he is likely to
dismiss the worker ; while the piece-rate invariably has reference to
a more or less defined standard of living to be attained by the worker.
To say this is only to say that, on whatever basis wages are paid, they
are mainly governed by the supply of, and demand for, labour.

The common basis appears more clearly in the two most simple
variants of the two methods. Task-work, retaining the time basis,
imposes on the worker a definite task to be performed in the time,
and. if this is not done, a corresponding deduction is made from the
wages. This happens only where the workers are weak and unorganised .
On the other hand, wherever Trade Unionism is strong, piece-work
is usually worked only on condition that a standard time rate of pay-
ment is guaranteed irrespective of output.

9

None of these methods is ' scientific ' enough for the advocates of
Scientific Management,and the three American leaders of the movement
— Taylor, Gantt, and Emerson — have all put forward methods of their
own. To these methods and to the various premium bonus systems
in operation in this country, we must now turn our attention.

The Taylor system, now almost extinct in its pure form, is that of the
differential piece-rate. It is in fact a combination of task-work with a
double piece-rate. . First, on a basis of time-study, a task is fixed to
be accomplished in a given time — say five ' pieces ' an hour. Two piece-
rates are then fixed, and all workers who fall below the standard task
are paid at the lower piece-rate, while all who reach or exceed the task
are paid for their whole product at the higher rate. It is thus a system
of rewards and punishments : the slack or the inefficient worker is
not paid any guaranteed time-rate, and is moreover penalised by a low
piece-rate. The quicker worker, on the other hand, is not merely paid
more in proportion to output, but is paid at a higher rate per piece.
The result is obvious. Between two workers of almost the same
capacity, a great gulf is fixed. The worker who is below the fixed
level of output is left with three possible alternatives : either to reach
by overdrive the standard output, or to leave the industry, or to
starve. The slow worker is either overdriven, or eliminated, or starved.
Taylor assumes that he or she is eliminated ; but under the conditions
of unorganised or sweated industry he or she is fully as likely to be
starved, especially in cases where overhead costs are light, and the
employer has no special motive for desiring a high level of output
from the individual worker. Indeed, it is the testimony of investigators
that this is what has actually happened in some so-called ' scientific
management ' shops. There is no semblance of justice in Taylor's
system, which does not even remunerate the worker according to
output.

Gantt's system, known as the task and bonus system, has been far more
widely adopted. It is, in fact, an improved version of Taylor's. It
also begins by fixing a standard task — say, again, five ' pieces ' an hour.
It then fixes a piece price (say 2d. a ' piece ') and an hourly rate
(2d. X 5=10d.). This hourly rate is guaranteed irrespective of output ;
but the worker who reaches or exceeds the standard task receives
a bonus (say of 30 per cent.) on the piece-price. The effect of this
system can be best set out by way of a table : —

NUMBER OF PIECES EARNINGS PRICE

MADE PER HOUR. PER HOUR. PER PIECE.

3 .. .. lOd 3.3d.

4 .. .. 10d 2.5d.

5 .. .. Is. Id 2.6d.

6 . . . . Is. 3.6d 2.6d.

7 Is. 6.2d 2.6d.

This table clearly shows certain things which the system is so devised
as to conceal. In the first place, the price per piece is uniform for all

10

workers who reach or exceed the standard task, and in this the system
resembles straight piece-work. In the second place, the guaranteed
day rate is illusory, in that what is guaranteed is not a real day rate
at all, but a rate lower than that of the worker who reaches, but does
not exceed, the standard output. In fact, the system only differs
from straight piece-work with a guaranteed day rate in one respect,
that it does not guarantee a real day rate, but only a fictitious rate.
In this respect it reaches by a crooked road a similar result to that
which has been reached by some of the arbitration tribunals under the
Munition Acts during the war, by guaranteeing to the piece-worker
only a fictitious day rate lower than that of the time-worker.

The method of payment associated with the name of Harrington
Emerson is far more complicated than that of either Gantt or Taylor.
The Emerson system also sets a standard task and guarantees a time-
rate irrespective of output. Its distinctive character lies in the detailed
graduation of the efficiency bonus by which it rewards greater output.
Under this system every range of output is graded as a degree of
efficiency. The standard output as determined by time-study is treated
as 100 per cent, efficiency, and every lesser output is graded as a smaller
percentage of efficiency. A time-rate (say lOd.) is fixed, and this is
guaranteed in all cases. At a fixed percentage of the standard efficiency
(say 61 per cent.) a bonus is granted, and this bonus increases in
geometrical progression as the worker approaches the standard efficiency,
after which it proceeds by arithmetical progression. A table will serve
to make this clear. Suppose the hourly rate guaranteed to be 10d.,
and the standard task five ' pieces ' per hour, the table will then read :

PERCENTAGE OF BONUS EARNINGS PRICE

STANDARD EFFICIENCY. PER CENT. PER HOUR. PER PIECE.

60 0 10d. 3.3d.

67 \ 10.05d. 3d.

73 1 lO.ld. 2.8d.

76 2 10.2d. 2.6d.

79 3 10.3d. 2.6d.

82 4 10.4d. 2.5d.

85 5 10.5d. 2.47d.

90 10 lid. 2.44d.

95 15 11.5d. 2.42d.

100 20 Is. 2.40d.

101 21 Is. O.ld. 2.39d.
105 25 Is. 0.5d. 2.38d.
110 30 Is. Id. 2.36d.

It is clearly shown by this table that, under the Emerson system,
the piece-rate slowly falls as the output increases. A time-rate is
guaranteed ; but, as in the Gantt system, this is a fictitious time-rate
considerably below the rate paid for the standard output.

Last, but not least, comes the premium bonus system, which, alone
among efficiency methods of payment, has a considerable hold in this

11

country. This system has several forms, but all are only refinements
of the two simplest, to which I confine myself in this paper. Under
the premium bonus system, the first step is to fix a standard time allow-
ance for the job. The worker is guaranteed his hourly rate for the time
spent on the job, and over and above the hourly rate is paid a premium
calculated according to the time saved.

Of the premium bonus system there are two main varieties, known
by the names of their inventors as the Halsey and the Rowan system.
Under the Halsey system, the worker is paid his time rate plus a
percentage (usually 30 per cent, or 50 per cent.) of the time saved.

This again can be clearly explained by a table, the hourly rate being
once more supposed to be 10d., the standard allowance for the job
10 hours, and the bonus 50 per cent, of the time saved.

Hours spent

Hours

Hourly

Hourly Earning

s Equivalent

on Job.

Saved.

Earnings

for Equal

Piece-work

on Halsey

Output on

Price.*

System.

Piece-work

12

-2

lOd.

lOd.

Is.

10

0

lOd.

lOd.

lOd.

9

1

10.5d.

ll.ld.

9M.

8

2

11.25d.

12.5d.

9d. '

7

3

12.14d.

14.2d.

8Jd.

6

4

13.33d.

16.6d.

8d.'

The Rowan system, for which British manufacturers have shown a
marked preference, is far more ingenious. The worker is again guaran-
teed his time rate, and in addition is paid a bonus on the hours saved
on the following principle : —

time saved

Bonus =— - xtime taken,

time allowed

Thus, if ten hours is allowed for a job, and the worker does it in
eight hours, he is paid his time-rate for eight hours + tfe of 8 times
his time rate.

A table comparing the Halsey and the Rowan systems will serve
to show clearly wherein they differ : —

HALSEY.

ROWAN.

Hours

Hours

Hourly

Equivalent

Hourly

Equivalent

taken.

saved.

earnings.

piece price.

earnings.

piece price.

10

0

lOd.

lOd.

lOd.

lOd.

8

2

11.25d.

9d.

Is.

9.6d.

5

5

Is. 3d.

7.5d.

Is. 3d.

7.5d.

3

7

Is. 10.5d

6.5d.

Is. 5d.

5.1d.

1

9

4s. 7d.

5.5d.

Is. 7d.

1.9d.

*This calculation of what the earnings of piece-work would have been assumes that the
basis time under the premium system is a real and not a fictitious time. In fact, the basis time
is usually lengthened to allow of a premium being earned, That is to say, it is a fictitious
standard, and the comparison is made in order.to show that it is such.

12

Thus, it will be seen, the Rowan system is more favourable to the
workman when more than half the time allowed is taken for the job
(i.e., in ordinary cases) ; but as soon as the half-way point is passed,
the Halsey system is immensely more favourable. Similarly till the
half-way point, the cost per piece is greater to the employer under the
Rowan system ; but when that point is passed, the Rowan system
offers him an enormous advantage.

Under the Halsey system, it is in theory possible for the workman
to earn five times his time rate ; under the Rowan system he can
never reach double time, even if his productivity increases tenfold.
It is urged by employers that the Rowan system is to be preferred,
because it gives them less inducement to cut the rate when too long
a time has been allowed in the original fixing of the basis. This, how-
ever, seems to be an attempt to remove temptation out of the employer's
way by limiting rigidly the amount of wages a workman can earn.

Under both forms of the premium bonus system there is a piece-rate
which falls sharply as the output increases. The guaranteed time-rate
is, however, in this case the actual rate paid for the standard output.

A comparison of the above systems gives some curious results. The
claim of the advocates of Scientific Management is that they are
prepared to pay for output. ' Payments by results ' is the motto
inscribed upon their banners. Yet when we examine their systems,
we find that nowhere is the amount of payment exactly proportionate
to the work done, as in a pure piece-work system. Under Taylor's
system there are two piece-rates, with a sudden leap from the one
to the other when the standard output is reached. Under Gantt's
system, the piece-rate falls till the standard is reached, then rises slightly
and thereafter remains stationary. Under Emerson's system and under
the premium bonus system, the piece-rate falls continually. The four
may perhaps be represented thus : —

TAYLOR

GANTT

EMERSON

HALSEY

ROWAN

Now, it must be remembered that the greater the output secured
by the employer in a given time from a given worker,especially a machine
worker, the less are the overhead charges per unit of the product.
The employer, therefore, under three of these systems secures a double
advantage : for he reduces his standing charges, and at the same time
pays the worker less per piece. It is difficult to see either rhyme or
reason in such a method of remuneration, except from the employer's
point of view. It can, indeed, only appear just to those whose minds

13

are obsessed with the idea of a pre-ordained standard of Living for the
workers which it is almost immoral for them to exceed.

A second objection to all these systems, in so far as they claim to be
scientific, is that they all rest at some point upon a rate fixed by purely
arbitrary methods. Mr. Taylor may claim that his system makes
collective bargaining unnecessary by determining wage-rates on a basis
of economic law ; but the piece-rates upon which his system is based
are fixed in a purely arbitrary manner. All the time-study in the world
cannot show how much ought to be paid for a job ; it can only show
the length of time a job ought to take. Whether the hourly rate
should be 10d., or 10s., or £10, no amount of time-study can decide.
An hourly rate or a piece-price must be fixed or assumed before the
' scientific manager ' can set his system of payment to work ; and as
there can be no scientific method employed in fixing such a rate, the
rate is essentially a matter for bargaining on a collective basis.

Some scientific managers may object to this statement on the ground
that, by a combination of time and motion-study, they can determine
the varying degrees of skill, attention, etc., required for various jobs,
and thereby arrive at a justly graduated scale of wage-rates. This
adjustment, however, is purely relative, and assumes a standard rate
or rates as already in existence. We may know that A's skill is twice
as great as B's, and we may conclude that we ought to pay A twice as
much as B ; but this will not hel p us to determine how much we ought
to pay either of them.

This, most advocates of the system would now admit ; but it is
important to make the point because it destroys, once and for all,
Taylor's claim that Scientific Management does away with the need
for bargaining about wages, and substitutes law for force in the deter-
mination of wage rates. It does, and can do, nothing of the sort ;
for it does not, and cannot, . touch the question of the proper division
of the product between Labour and Capital, or of the impropriety of
any such division. Scientific Management does nothing to remove
the need for collective bargaining and Trade Union organisation,
and it is therefore of the greatest importance to look carefully at its
effect upon them.

This brings us to the greatest of all the objections to ' scientific *
methods of payment — that they are unintelligible to the ordinary
worker. We have described above only the simplest forms of the
systems advocated : and these in themselves would be enough to baffle
many workers. But in practice every disciple of the masters of the
movement has his own system, so that methods vary from shop to
shop, from department to department, and from job to job. The
result is that, in the majority of cases, the workers do not try to under-
stand the system on which they are being paid, but simply judge it
by the amount of money they receive at the end of the week. The
objection to this state of affairs will be obvious to anyone who has
even the smallest belief in the value of self-government. It concentrates
knowledge in the hands of the expert, and leaves the governed with

14

only the vaguest conception of the system that controls them. This
is in itself enough to condemn all methods of payment too complicated
to be easily understood by the ordinary worker.

We have seen that the worker is apt to judge ' scientific ' systems of
payment purely by the amount whuich they enable him to earn. In
so far as this is the case, the gradual fall in the piece-rate which is
characteristic of such systems is concealed, and the worker is unaware
that his extra effort is a source of more than proportionate profit to
the employer. He may be making more money ; and that is, prima
facie, an argument in favour of the system.

Scientific managers have nearly always encountered opposition on
the part of the workers when they have attempted to introduce these
systems. But it is notorious that, when once men have got used to a
thing, they are far more ready to put up with it. The innovator's
main difficulty is to get his scheme fairly launched without a stoppage ;
once it is established, he has a fair hope of keeping it in existence,
even if it is unpopular. He is therefore willing to make concessions
at the start, in order to make the scheme go. Now, it is clear that in
all the systems we have described, the actual earnings of the workers
depend upon the point at which the standard task of Taylor and
Gantt, the 100 per cent, efficiency of Harrington Emerson, and the
standard time allowance of the premium bonus system are fixed.
Fix them liberally and high earnings will follow ; illiberally, and earnings
will be low.

Here again there is a flaw in the * scientific ' character of Scientific
Management. Time and motion study do not and cannot decide
whether the standard ought to be set on the basis of the superior
worker or the ordinary worker, or on an average struck to cover all
workers. They may suggest, after experiment, which method is most
profitable to the employer ; but they cannpt easily prove this, and they
certainly do not show which is the best method for the community.

In order to get his system accepted the more easily, the scientific
manager may be inclined at the outset to fix a liberal standard, allowing
a considerable margin for earnings over the standard rate. When his
system has got into working order, the temptation to cut these rates,
which he will regard as far too liberal, becomes great. It is indeed
a principle laid down by advocates of the system that standard tasks,
times, and prices must not be altered unless the method of manufacture
is changed ; but this principle, by no means always observed in the
letter, is far less often observed in the spirit. It is a constant complaint
of the workers, and ' impartial ' investigators have borne it out, that
in many cases a very slight change in the method of manufacture is
made the excuse for a drastic cutting of the price for the job. Nor is
this all. The method of manufacture is often changed for no other
purpose than to enable the price to be cut.

Some scientific managers realise the unfairness of this, but hold
that it can be met by more accurate methods of fixing the standards.
Accordingly, the job is priced not as a whole, but separately for each

15

minute operation or process included in it, and a guarantee is given
that there shall be no change in price on any process that is not altered.
Thus, on a job priced at Is., and consisting of six operations ranging
from 3d. to Id. in price, a change in process on one of these operations
(price 2d.) might have been made an excuse for a' drastic cut, say to
8d. for the whole job. Under the system now suggested it would only
be possible to cut on the 2d. paid for the operation actually affected
by the change.

This is obviously fairer, as far as it goes ; but it is only capable of
application to highly standardised jobs. This raises a wider question
which we must now discuss.

Different systems of payment are suitable to different classes of work.
There are obviously many jobs which can only be done on time-work,
and these include all jobs, such as most railway work, which are not
measurable in terms of output, or in which the worker has no control
of his output. There are certain jobs which can be worked on piece-
work even without a guaranteed day rate. A case in point is much of
the work in the iron and steel industry, where, given a tonnage rate,
the worker can be sure of a fairly regular level of output. If it were
not for the abnormal place and similar questions, which make a
minimum necessary, the same might be true of coal-hewing. In other
cases, a guaranteed time-rate is absolutely necessary, because the
worker cannot be sure of a regular output, or because there is no
assurance that the piece-work prices will give a regular yield.

The whole range of machine operations can be divided very broadly
into two classes — repetition work and individual work. On repetition
work, the operative sticks to a narrow round of operations and pro-
duces constantly a more or less uniform product. On individual or
general work, on the other hand, the worker has usually a wider range
of operations to perform, and the product varies from day to day or
from week to week, both in character and in amount. It is clearly
far easier to fix a standard of output and a constant price on repetition
work than on individual work. No matter how great the number of
operations performed may be, if they are of a recurring character,
a standard price can with a fair chance of success be fixed for them.
The cotton industry, with its elaborate weaving price-lists, affords
the best example of this ; but the method of the weavers' list could
easily be applied over a far larger range of industries than now to jobs
which are measurable in terms of output.

The measurement of individual or general work is a far more compli-
cated matter. Work of this class is usually far more skilled than
repetition work, and, as the product varies continually, it is far more
difficult to fix a standard price. Nevertheless, great efforts have been
made by scientific managers and, in this country, by advocates of the
premium bonus system, to apply their method to the widest possible
range of skilled individual work. So far as the premium bonus system
in this country is concerned, the result has very often been the fixing

16

of basis times which have no sort of scientific sanction, in much the
same haphazard way as piece prices are habitually fixed.

Here and there, however, there are cases in which the method of
time and motion study has been carefully applied to individual as well
as to repetition work. The result in such cases is often something like
this. There is an enormous difference between skilled men in their
ways of doing the same job. Men set their tools differently, and use
different tools for the same job, and this difference of method is clearly
a constant attribute of skill. The first tendency of the scientific
manager is to prescribe in detail to the skilled man how he shall do his
work — what tools he shall use, and how he shall use them. A second
tendency follows inevitably. On many classes of work, sub-division
is accomplished, and a large part of the work is taken away from the
skilled man, and passes into the category of semi-skilled or unskilled
work. And, of course, when such a change takes place, the employer
claims to pay for the less skilled part of the job at a lower rate. This
tendency has been very manifest during the war period, and many of
the most difficult disputes have arisen over it.

The tendency, then, of scientific management is not simply in the
direction of ' scientific ' systems of payment, but also in that of
standardisation and the elimination of skill. In the storm centre, the
engineering industry, its effect is to increase the amount of skilled
labour required for the tool-room, while more than proportionately
decreasing the skilled labour in the machine shops. In face of this
tendency, which is no doubt largely inevitable, but which the war has
greatly accelerated, the skilled mechanic sees himself threatened with
the loss of his livelihood. The scientific manager replies that the
increase of output made possible by the new methods will create so
large a new demand as to absorb all the skilled labour. Even if this
were true in the long run, it could hardly be expected to satisfy the
skilled workman, whose economic position does not enable him to think
in terms of the distant future.

There is a further tendency which arises directly out of those which
we have just described. Standardisation takes the form not only of
sub-division of labour within a works, but also, and increasingly, of
the specialisation of works. The specialised shop or works, concen-
trating upon a single type of product, has long been established in
America, and is now making great headway here. It is likely to make
more headway after the war ; for it is clear that many big manufacturers
have settled in their own minds that the future of the National Factories
is to be as specialised shops under private ownership.

This brings us to a further point. The general engineering shop,
in which the proportion of individual work is high, is usually making
mainly for special orders, and only to a small extent for stock. The
specialised shop, on the other hand, which concentrates on repetition
work, makes mainly for stock. During the war the existence of an
unlimited demand has, of course, produced over all industry the con-
ditions of making for stock.

17

One of the most frequent complaints by workmen against ' scientific '
systems is that, by increasing the output per worker, they create
unemployment. It is the opinion of many investigators of the system
that the effects in this respect differ in degree in specialised and general
shops. In the general shop, a system of strong inducements to a big
hourly or daily output does produce unemployment, because it prevents
the " nursing of work " and causes men to crowd the greatest possible
output into one day or week, even if they have to stand off the next.
These conditions exist also in the specialised shop, but not in the same
degree, because it is possible for a shop that is making for stock to
preserve a more regular level of output.

It is not, I think, generally realised what an enormous proportion
of the unemployment in many industries really consists in ' standing
off ' for a few days or weeks. This temporary unemployment is the
worker's curse ; for it means that he bears the burden out of his wages
of maintaining himself during slackness of work as part of the employer's
reserve of labour. The adoption of ' scientific ' systems of payment,
which give the worker an* inducement to ' go all out ' irrespective of
the volume of work available, undoubtedly tends to increase the amount
of temporary unemployment, and this is one of the most serious
criticisms that can be levelled against it — a criticism which could only
be surmounted by placing the whole burden of such unemployment
upon the industry itself.

Economists and employers are very apt to scout the idea that there
is any truth in the workmen's claim that ' scientific ' systems of induce-
ment to output produces unemployment ; but I think the above para-
graphs show clearly one point wherein the workmen's contention is
true.

Out of this long survey I can now proceed to draw together the
threads of a conclusion.

In the first place, there is no essential or necessary connection between
the application of scientific principles to industry and the adoption of
fancy systems of payment which are unintelligible to the ordinary
workman. These systems are uniformly false to their own premises,
in that they do not provide for remuneration according to output or
effort. They are not ' scientific,' both because science cannot determine
the amount of payment that ought to be made, because science cannot
show whether the standard should be based on the exceptional, the
average, or the ordinary worker, and because their effect in respect of
earnings depends upon the arbitrary fixing of a standard by the manage-
ment, or by bargaining between the management and the workers.
They are perhaps less unjust in their application to repetition than to
individual jobs ; but they are also less necessary, because the more
automatic the machine the less control, generally speaking, has the
worker over his or her output. They are fundamentally unjust in
their application to individual work, because on much work of such
a class it is impossible to set an absolute and invariable standard, and
also because the conditions under which such work has to be performed

18

often differ widely from job to job. In short, they are fundamentally
unscientific, unless the science in question is purely the science of
unrestrained profiteering.

Time-work on some jobs, and piece-work with a guaranteed weekly
rate on others, offered all the inducements to output which ought to
be afforded ; and the decision on any class of work as between time-
work and piece-work ought to be made by negotiation between the
employers and the Trade Unions on the merits of each case. Where
piece-work is adopted, more scientific systems of determining piece-
prices ought to be devised ; but the determination ought to be made
jointly by the two sides, and the science necessary for it ought to be in
the possession of both.

This brings me to my second point. Time-study, motion-study,
and the other expedients of scientific management may have very
beneficent results, especially in such spheres as the study of industrial
fatigue and the relation of output to hours of labour. But here again,
science must not be the monopoly of the management or of the employer.
The Trade Unions must equip themselves with the knowledge that is
required, and ; science ' must become the handmaid of collective
bargaining. Just as it is one thing to say that ' welfare ' is desirable,
and quite another to approve of ' welfare work ' under the employer's
control, it is one thing to desire industry to become more scientific,
and quite another to accept ' Scientific Management ' at the hands
of the employing class. Taylor's contention that under such conditions
an equal balance will be struck between the management and the
workers, because both will be subject to the " rule of law," is unmiti-
gated nonsense.

Thirdly, Scientific Management presents a number of real dangers
to industrial democracy. The methods of payment it suggests are a
crude appeal to individualism, and it is generally agreed among Trade
Unionists that where they are adopted the morale and sense of solidarity
among the workers are lowered. It sets each man's hand against
other's, and inaugurates a system of cut-throat competition between
worker and worker, even in the same grade. In many of its applications
it may be fatal to collective bargaining and the standard rate, though
this is not necessarily or universally true of all parts or aspects of it.
It is most true where scientific managers adopt the device of a 'scientific'
grading of labour which sub-divides the workers into very small groups,
or even treats each worker individually on his merits. Against such
tendencies Trade Unionism must fight. It must preserve at all cost
its effective right of collective bargaining, the standard rate, and the
solidarity of Labour.

Fourthly, Scientific Management tends to make more impassable
the gulf between Labour and Management. This is an aspect of it
which I have been compelled, for reasons of space, largely to omit
from my survey ; but I must refer to it shortly here. It has a new
conception of forernanship, by which the foreman becomes a scientific
expert, and by which the foreman of to-day is replaced by a series of

19

' functional foremen,' each of whom is an expert in a particular branch
of the work, or a particular phase of time or motion-study. For such
foremen it recommends elaborate special methods of training. In
place of promotion from the ranks of the workers it would find its
foremen by special selection, and train them largely away from the
workshop. In this way the foremen would come to have less of the
Labour and more of the employer's point of view, and would become,
far more than now. a new class of dependents on Capitalism. For one
who believes, like myself, that one of the next steps for Trade Unionism,
in its gradual assumption of control over industry, will be to take
altogether out of the employers' hands and vest in the Trade Union
the appointment of foremen and the organisation of the workshop,
this appears as a counter-move on the part of Capitalism to remove
the foremen from the possibility of control by Labour. The way for
Labour, to my thinking, is the gradual conquest of management.
For this, Labour must equip itself with scientific and industrial know-
ledge ; and, while it is doing so, it must resist any move by the employing
class which will make more difficult the conquest of industrial control.

This is one of the reasons why there can be no alternative to the
actual and literal restoration of Trade Union rules. These rules are the
beginnings of democratic industrial legislation. They are resented
by the employers as invasions of capitalist autocracy, and as outrages
upon capitalistic ' competence.' The employer, on his own showing,
knows how to run industry : the workman does not. If that is so,
I reply that the workman must learn, and that the best way for him
to do so is for him to increase his control. Let Trade Union rules
be improved, by all means ; but they must be improved by the Trade
Unions. They must be restored because they point the way to industrial
self-government.

My fifth point follows logically. The employer, I have said, on his
own showing, knows how to run industry. Does he ? It would seem
that during the war he has been discovering very rapidly that he does
not, if we can judge from the cry for reorganisation which has arisen
in the employers' own ranks. There is a very wide scope indeed for
scientific reorganisation of industrial methods ; and if the employers
would devote to these half the attention which they devote to trying
to bully, badger, bribe, or cajole labour into the acceptance of unscientific
systems of payment by results, it would be better for all concerned.
The biggest and most natural field for science in industry is in the
management of inanimate objects ; and there let it be applied to the
full. Where it affects men, and is applied to men, its effects are far
more problematical.

Sixthly, we have seen that the workers are very largely justified
in their belief that, in many cases, scientific systems may create
unemployment by creating conditions under which temporary unem-
ployment is profitable to the employer. If this is to be counteracted,
it should surely be done by placing the burden of unemployment, not
upon the State, but upon the industry concerned. Let the employers

20

be compelled to pay to the Unions a maintenance allowance for all
members affected by such unemployment, and one motive for the
offering of unscientific inducements to Labour will disappear and in
addition a big step will have been taken in the direction of
decasualisation.

I have omitted from this paper far more than I have put in, and
I have preferred to dwell at some length on a few points to ranging
breathlessly over the whole field. I do not pretend that I have surveyed
Scientific Management ; but I have tried to bring out those features
of it which seem to me to have the clearest application to the conditions
of our own industry to-day. Scientific Management contains many
good features to which no objection can be taken ; but its claim to
be a watertight and complete scientific system for industry is as false
as its claim to be democratic. Our problem in industry is the creation
of an efficient and democratic system. We must apply science ; but
we must not allow science to be a class monopoly. The Trade Unions
must train themselves for control ; and, in doing so; they must resist
all changes which would have the effect of destroying or weakening
their economic power. They must not, for their own sakes, block
all industrial change ; but they must adapt it to their needs as well as
themselves to it. We cannot expect a truly efficient system in industry
until we have an enlightened democracy capable of controlling industry :
we cannot abolish the class-struggle with a blast from the trumpet of
science. But we can make up our minds that the end towards which
we must strive is industrial self-government ; and we can test the
schemes of Scientific Management by means of this principle. If we
do this, we shall not find it wholly bad ; but we shall find in it many
dangers against which Labour must be on its guard.

In speaking on his paper, Mr. Cole said that the paper could not
cover the whole ground, but he had tried to work out a few of the more
important points in relation to Scientific Management. In particular,
payment by results had been selected because it was the crucial
question at the present time, and would play an important part
between Capital and Labour after the war. The tremendous
claims made by the founders of the system would not be
put forward by advocates of Scientific Management at the present
day. From the point of view of the employer and the industrial
expert, the main claims were efficiency, to meet the need for
greater output, and the effect upon wages — that is, the claim that
under right management the workers would get an increase in wages.
This seemed a sufficient argument to many advocates ; but a mere
increase in wages was not enough. We must not ignore the effects
which the system might have on the working class — the loss of
independence and the power of self-government. Even if the
system did offer an increase in efficiency, he would oppose it if it did
away with the possibility of self-government for the organised workers.

21

Just as the workers could not afford to have a " welfare " system
which was entirely out of their control, they could not afford to have
applied to industry a science which was out of their control. But
there was a sense in which Scientific Management, in the sense of the
fuller application of scientific methods to industry, would inevitably
come, and one of the future tasks of the trade unions would be to
adapt themselves to its principles. Even those things, however, that
were good in Scientific Management, if rightly applied, should not be
accepted by the trade-union movement until it was in a position to
exercise control over them. The official element in the trade-union
movement must have a more expert training than it had to-day, and
there must be a better workshop organisation, capable of meeting the
management on equal terms to discuss the problems of the industry
with full knowledge.

DISCUSSION.

MR. C. G. RENOLD (of Hans Renold, Ltd., Manchester), in opening
the discussion, read the following paper :—

In criticising Mr. Cole's presentation of Scientific Management I feel
considerable hesitation. What he has described seems so heinous
and tyrannical that I am almost afraid to present another side of the
question lest I appear to condone the crimes of which he accuses the
scientific manager.

I would like to point out, however, at the outset, that many of Mr.
Cole's charges are levelled, not at Scientific Management at all —
considered as an alternative to existing systems — but apply to the whole
capitalist system itself. And in these charges I very largely agree with
him.

Therefore, before dealing with what Scientific Management is, it
seems to me necessary to lay down clearly what it is not, as some of
Mr. Cole's criticisms are directed at claims which are not put forward
seriously by any of the saner leaders of the movement. Thus, it is not,
and does not claim to be, a solution of the industrial problem ; it does
not settle, on any grounds of cosmic necessity, what proportion of the
products of industry ought to go to the various factors engaged,
namely, workman, management, capitalist, etc. ; it does not solve
the unemployment problem ; it does not settle, from absolute con-
siderations, what are the qualities of energy and skill of the " standard
worker " ; it does not infallibly ensure that all intercourse between
management and men shall be harmonious and pleasant by sub-
stituting law and reason for force. It is quite true that claims somewhat
of this kind were made by Mr. F. W. Taylor. They were not, however,
the foundation of his system, but were afterthoughts. They were
never, I think, held seriously by anyone but Mr. Taylor, and certainly
will not stand examination for one minute. But all these problems,
the division of the product, unemployment, etc., were in existence

long before the ideas behind Scientific Management were formulated
into a system. They are not problems created by the introduction of
Scientific Management, and it is hardly fair to criticise the system
because it does not solve them. Scientific Management, not being
primarily concerned with them, leaves them, in essence, where it finds
them. I hope to show, however, that, due to the greater clearness
and precision of organisation bound to obtain under Scientific Manage-
ment, some of these problems are easier to approach than heretofore.

The ideas behind the various systems known as Scientific Management
are concerned primarily with the technique of management and not
with the fundamental reconstruction of the industrial system. Manage-
ment in industry is concerned with the choosing, bringing together,
proportioning and arranging of the various factors of production, with
a view to their maximum productivity in the long run. These factors
in production are of two distinct kinds — human and inanimate ; in
other words, the workman on the one hand, and the raw material, tools,
plant, etc., on the other ; and the two kinds of factors must be dealt
with in quite different ways and largely from different points of view.
Thus, the object of the manager should perhaps rather be described
as the arranging, controlling, and proportioning of the material factors
so that the efforts of the human factor may be as productive as possible.
Considered in this way, management is a permanent element in any
corporate action, and would be just as necessary to industry under a
system of control by the workers as it is now under the capitalist system.
This being so, the technique of management is well worth studying
for its own sake, quite apart from its influence on problems outside
its proper scope, such as the general structure or conditions of industry.
It is of course obvious that Labour is vitally concerned in any modifi-
cation of conditions which a new system of management may effect ;
but criticism of the two aspects — viz., technique and subsidiary effects —
should be kept quite distinct. The first question is, how far does
Scientific Management succeed in furthering the objects of management?
and secondly, are the conditions of industry which would exist under
Scientific Management more favourable or less favourable to the
development of the legitimate interests of Labour ?

The means by which Scientific Management attacks its problem of
the correlation of the factors of production are as follows : —

1. Study of the work to be done, material, tools, methods, etc.

2. The selection of the individual men most suited for particular
kinds of work and the training of them for that work.

3. Establishing standards of work and corresponding payment ;
fixing times for doing jobs and offering payment for their suc-
cessful accomplishment.

4. The functionalising of control — the specialising on the part of
the various officers of the management on such functions as
control of flow of work, inspection, store keeping, cost collecting,
etc.

23

It is, I think, clear that the aim of each of these four propositions
would be acceptable to management under systems of State Socialism
or Guild Socialism, just as much as under Capitalism, provided that
the working out of them does not introduce conditions incompatible
with good citizenship on the part of the workers. I suggest, therefore,
that in considering these four propositions of Scientific Management
three tests should be applied, namely : —

1. Do they, in fact, succeed in making the efforts of the workman
more ' productive ' ? or, in other words, in rendering the com-
bination of the human and material factors in production
more efficient than hitherto ?

2. Do they enable the workman to attain a higher standard of
living ?

3. Do they make it more possible or less for the workers to under-
take some of the functions of management ?

Dealing with the first of these tests, there is no question whatever
that the detail study of work always enables a greater output to be
obtained from the same effort; indeed, in discussing Scientific
Management a great deal is always made by Labour critics of the
extraordinary increases in production which are in fact obtained,
and these are apt to be condemned as being simply instances of
increased effort on the part of the workmen, due to driving and
resulting in strain and overwork. It should be realised that there
are two quite distinct sources of increased production under such
systems as Scientific Management, namely : first, increases due to
re-arrangements of tools, methods, processes, or movements ; and
secondly, the calling forth of increased effort from the workmen by
the offering of some special payment. The proportion of the increase
due to one cause as compared with the other differs in every case,
but in general on machine work, the increase due to changed methods
is several times greater than that due to increased exertion. The
first increase is due chiefly to the efforts of the management, the second
to those of the man. The special payment is made partly to compensate
the workman for increased exertion and partly for being required to
work to detailed instructions. How great this extra pay should be,
and how it should be calculated, are obviously among the most difficult
questions with which Management and Labour are concerned. It
should be noted, in passing, however, that there is no case at all for
ascribing all the increase to the efforts of the workman. Moreover,
the increase of product is not by any means all gain, as the work of
carrying out the study and of operating the system based on it is
expensive and has a first claim on the increased product.

Dealing still with the effect of the system in increasing productivity,
it is clear that the selection of men and the functionalisation of control
also tend in this direction. When all the various jobs in a works have
been studied and the requirements for their performance are known, it is
obviously much easier to transfer men who are not making good, or who
are dissatisfied, at one job to another, for which their particular skill and

24

temperament make them more suitable. The requirements of the new
job being known makes it much easier to teach the transferred man.
This sorting out of the square pegs to the square holes clearly makes
better use of the powers of all. The feature of the specialisation of
management functions, which has the most easily recognised effect
on productivity, is probably the control of the flow of work. Under
other systems, where the foreman is expected to exercise all the func-
tions of management, he is generally more efficient from a technical
point of view than as a planner and arranger of his work, and a good
deal of waiting about between jobs is the result. This waiting is very
much reduced, and a greater proportion of the man's time is spent on
productive work, under a system where the flow of work is planned
and routed by an authority specialising on this duty. There is therefore
no doubt in my mind, and I think this will probably be accepted by
you also, that Scientific Management satisfies the first of the three
tests proposed and may be expected really to increase the productivity
of industry.

The second test, namely, the effect on the standard of living of the
workers, must be considered from two points of view. First, as to the
proportion between remuneration and effort ; and secondly, the effect
on the status of the workman. The question of schemes of remunera-
tion I propose to leave till later.

With regard to the second point, there is a very general fear that
the skilled workman will be rendered unnecessary, and will be either
eliminated or degraded by being restricted to a narrow range of work,
carried out on prescribed methods. It is alleged that the splitting up
of jobs, likely to result from study and investigation, enables much
work, previously done by skilled men, to be carried out by unskilled.
These are undoubtedly real objections, and must be met if at all possible;
but here I would point out that subdivision of work was not introduced
by Scientific Management. It is a part of the change from handicraft
to machine production, and has been a more or less acute problem ever
since the Industrial Revolution. While probably we all agree that the
ideal of individual craftsmanship is more attractive than that of
machine-tending, there is no possibility in sight of realising it on any
general scale. We cannot go back to industry by handicraft — all we
can do is to make the conditions of machine production as consistent
as possible with the development of good citizenship.

Now as to whether Scientific Management exaggerates the danger of
degradation of the skilled man, is not clear. My own opinion is that
it does not, and I offer the following arguments in support.

1st — It is not by any means all work which, when studied, can be
carried out by less skilled men than previously. The methods laid
down as the result of study are often more intricate and require more
skill for carrying out than before. The speed of working may be so
increased that the workman's skill is still required, not to lay down
the method itself, but to make the adjustments to the tools and the
machines to enable the speed to be maintained.

25

2nd — There are, however, many jobs to which this does not apply,
and the work, after study, can be carried out by less skilled men.
In this case some of the skilled men will generally be needed for super-
vision of a group of machines manned by the new grade of labour.
Admittedly this does not account for all of the displaced men, but the
discrepancy is less great than would appear since the system requires
not only more skilled supervision at the machines themselves, but more
skilled men generally in the way of tool-makers, time-study men,
experimenters, etc., the proportion of skilled management staff* to
workmen being two or three times as great under Scientific Management
as under less detailed systems.

3rd — For the absorption of the remainder of the skilled men we shall
have to look to the expansion of the industry due to the increased
efficiency and consequent lowering of price. Our own experience
does, in fact, bear this out. This process has been in operation at our
works for five or six years, and not only has no skilled man been dis-
charged in consequence, but there has been an almost continual demand
for more skilled men than were available. It would be quite reasonable
for Labour to demand some guarantee in this respect. The same
consideration applies to unemployment generally. Periodic unemploy-
ment, and more particularly " standing- off," is due to faulty organisa-
tion of industry — and the employers, as being chiefly responsible for
the organisation, should obviously bear the cost.

In considering the question of the degrading of skilled men another
aspect of the matter must not be lost sight of, namely, that the change,
as regards the unskilled or semi-skilled man who is introduced, is a
distinct advance in status. He is raised often from the level of a casual
labourer to that of a man with a definite trade. This is probably more
marked under Scientific Management because of the training which it
is part of the system to provide for all workers.

It may still be objected that even though the skilled men of the
present generation may not suffer, due to their absorption either on
studied jobs which remain skilled work, or by being required for super-
vision, or due to expansion of industry, the proportion of skilled men
to unskilled in the trade will gradually decrease. This is probably
true, but I see no grounds for believing that the disturbance of the
proportion will be any greater under Scientific Management than would
otherwise be the case. We have even a striking instance in our own
works, where the proportion of skilled men has actually been increased
as the result of study ; the automatic machine department — previously
manned by 80 semi-skilled men and four skilled foremen — is now
run by five skilled foremen, approximately 30 skilled setters, and
120 unskilled women. The proportion previously was 4-80, but is
now 35-120.

It has already been pointed out that transferences of men from one
job to another are easier under Scientific Management since the require-
ments of each job are more accurately known. The same consideration
applies to promotion, and on this question our experience is directly

26

contrary to Mr. Cole's fears. In our drawing office we have men who
were machine men. Our time-study men were some of the first
workers who were studied. The planning department is manned
very largely by machine men. We find that just the very opposite
is the case to what Mr. Cole fears.

The duties and requirements of the various management posts are
studied and scheduled almost as closely as the machine processes.
This is a natural result of the breaking up of the general control pre-
viously exercised by all grades of management officers and the
instituting of specialised control. One of the specialisations effected
under this scheme is the supervision of the human element, as such,
throughout the whole works organisation. This results in more
attention being paid to the discovery of latent talent and a greater
ease in making promotions, due, on the one hand, to this increased
knowledge of the individual capacities of workmen and staff, and on
the other, to the more exact knowledge of the requirements of any post
which is to be filled.

To sum up the considerations relating to the second test, I am
inclined to think that Scientific Management is likely to bring about
a general upgrading of workers rather than to have the opposite effect.
This is distinctly evident in three directions : —

1. Promotion of the skilled man from machine to supervision.

2. The semi-skilled man is enabled to do a better class of work
than he could possibly do otherwise.

3. The functionalisation of management makes promotion all up
the line easier.

The test which I gather is of most interest to you here is the effect
which Scientific Management is likely to have on the possibility of
increased control of industry by the workers. Personally I have a
great deal of sympathy for this desire, and I am convinced that Scientific
Management makes progress in this direction very much more possible
than it is at present. Don't run down Scientific Management because
it does not specifically offer joint control. Neither does the present
system.

At present, bargaining between the trade union and the employer
is, to all intents and purposes, limited to a settlement of the time work
rate and of the minimum percentage above this which piece work
should yield. The setting of individual piece rates is, in the engineering
trade at least, largely a matter for settlement between the worker himself
and the management — or, if you like, is imposed by the management.
I do not suggest that, under Scientific Management, it would be prac-
ticable for every standard time, and the corresponding rate, to be
referred, individually, to the trade union officials, but if the general
principles under which a time is set and payment made are agreed
to between the management and the union, the union will in effect
have achieved a considerable amount of control over the setting of
individual rates. The principles on which agreement would have to
be reached would cover the general method of making a time study ;

27

the scale of allowances to be added to the ideal time-studied time
to provide for fatigue ; the proportion which the payment for standard
production should bear to the time rate ; the method of graduating
the payments above and below the standard ; the method on which
changes of process should be taken into account ; and, lastly, the
scale of allowances for unforeseen contingencies. Once these prin-
ciples have been settled, the times so set, and the payment for reaching
standard production, for individual jobs would fall into line with a
very fair regularity, and could really be considered as having been
settled in conjunction with the union. Particular times could always
be challenged by a union official, and the method of working out
could be investigated to see that the principles agreed to were being
put into practice. This is not possible with the present haphazard
methods for setting piece rates. It is only by a detailed study of the
work to be done that such bargains can be satisfactory, and it follows
that the conditions of the bargain must be set out fully and minutely
if disputes as to the good faith of the parties are to be avoided. In
other words, the detailed instructions for carrying out work, which are
such a feature of Scientific Management, enable general bargaining
between trade union and employer to be applied with fairness to
particular cases.

It seems to me that the trade unions, so far from objecting to detail
study and instructions, should insist that rates should be set on no
other principle ; and they should make themselves at least as competent
as the management to deal with work from this point of view.

A word of warning is perhaps necessary in this connection. It is use-
less to object to such methods on the ground that the systems which
result are complicated. The conditions which affect the productivity
of any particular process are necessarily complicated, and if the effects of
changes in these conditions are to be taken into account a very elaborate
scheme must be evolved — e.g., allowances for fatigue, allowances for
changed conditions, tools, material, etc. I think the unions would
also have to be prepared for rates which proved unexpectedly easy to
be revised, both on the ground of competition from other employers
and of jealousy among the workers caused by abnormal earnings on
the part of individuals. If the trade unions are to undertake manage-
ment they must master the technique and be better managers than the
present employers. The problems to be faced by them will be just
the same as face the management under present conditions, and trade
unions will do well to study Scientific Management in order to be ready.

I now propose to deal with the question of remuneration for effort.
Mr. Cole accepts time work and, under certain conditions, straight
piece work, as fair and satisfactory, but alleges that all other systems
are frauds. His argument is based on the fact that under the various
bonus systems quoted the price per piece falls. The argument is
ingenious, but, I think, misleading. I am not personally wedded to
any particular system of efficiency payment, and if a very strong point
were made by the unions that nothing but piece work should be allowed,

28

I should not have any very great difficulty in accepting it. But the
allegation of fraud is misleading. The point of view which I wish to bring
forward is, broadly, that there is no fundamental difference between
straight piece work and the various systems of bonus ; the difference
between them is more a matter of convenience than of principle.

Beginning with time work, Mr. Cole states that " the hourly rate
has reference to a more or less defined output .... while the piece
rate invariably has reference to a more or less defined standard of
living." Now the standard of living obviously depends on the wages
actually earned per week, and it is well known that piece work rates
are in fact regulated with the object of yielding a certain agreed increase
on the time rate. In both cases, therefore, a more or less defined
amount of work is expected for a certain payment. The difference is
chiefly an accepted difference in intensity of work. Day work speed is
admittedly not the best of which the workman is capable, while piece
work speed is supposed to be so, and the price per piece is calculated
to yield, at the supposed maximum intensity of effort, a definite pro-
portion above the time rate, say 25 per cent, or 33 per cent. Now,
all bonus systems start from the same point of view, namely, the fixing
of a standard output at the supposed maximum intensity of work
and the pay of something more than the day work rate for it. In
essence all three are task systems. Mr. Cole applies as the test to all
the bonus systems the piece price per article at various efficiencies of
production, and shows that in general the price per piece falls with
increased production. This test it seems to me is not vital — the vital
question being the task set and the payment offered for it. The
variation of the payment above and below the task is rather a matter
of convenience than of principle.

As there may still be some points raised by Mr. Cole with which I have
not dealt, I propose to run through his summary and to make any
further comments still needed. His first point is : " Fancy methods
of payment are unnecessary for the application of scientific principles
to industry." His objections to them are the falling piece rate, whicli
has already been dealt with, and their lack of scientific basis. To
support this he contends : —

" Science cannot determine the absolute amount of payment, but
only the relative amount as between one worker and another.

" Science cannot show which worker to take as standard.

" The effect on earnings depends on arbitrary fixing of standards
by the management.

" They (bonus systems) are unjust in their application to individual
work as against repetition work."

But all these objections apply with equal force to straight piece
work, and should not be brought forward, therefore, as objections to
Scientific Management.

Secondly, Scientific Management is objected to because the con-
ditions of employment are imposed by the employer on the worker.
This objection applies to the whole industrial system, and is not special

29

to Scientific Management. I agree that Labour should take a greater
part in the work of management, and I have tried to show that the
detail study of work, which is the outstanding feature of Scientific
Management, renders joint action of Labour and Management more
possible.

Thirdly, the methods of payment advocated by the exponents of
Scientific Management are " a crude appeal to individualism and set
each man's hand against the others." If this is the case, it applies
with still more force to straight piece work, since the variation of
payment above and below the accomplishment of the standard task is
greater than on any of the premium systems. If this is felt to be a very
grave objection, I do not think that the paying of bonus to individual
men for their individual production is essential. Either the men could
pool their excess earnings and divide them evenly of their own accord,
or bonus could be paid on the total output of a group of workers.

Fourthly, an impassable gulf is said to be fixed between Labour
and Management as the result of Scientific Management. Our ex-
perience is directly contrary to this.

Fifthly, it is recommended that Scientific Management should be
applied to inanimate objects, and not human beings. I agree that
by far the greatest savings can be made by re-arranging the material
factors in production. But it should be noted that this fact somewhat
weakens the claim of Labour to share in the increase. Mr. Cole considers
it waste of time to try to induce Labour to accept any of the unscientific
systems of payment by result to which he has raised so much objection.
I must again emphasise that there is no essential difference between
piece work and bonus work. Both depend on the fixing of a standard
time for a given job and the payment of a fixed sum, which can be the
same in both cases, for its accomplishment. The method of setting
the standard time followed under Scientific Management is unquestion-
ably more scientific than the usual rough and ready basis for piece
prices.

Sixthly, with regard to unemployment, I am not convinced that
Scientific Management affects this, one way or the other, but I quite
agree that the cost of unemployment whether produced by Scientific
Management, or by the present conditions of industry, should fall on
the employer.

In conclusion I wish to say that I hold no brief for any particular
system of Scientific Management. My firm has applied many of its
ideas for a number of years past, but I make no extreme claims for it.
I do not expect it to bring the industrial millennium. That depends
on the qualities of statesmanship shown by the leaders of Labour
on the one side, and of the Employers on the other.

Scientific Management is only concerned with the details, not the
fundamentals, of the problem. Its primary aim is to increase the
productivity of industry. This, apart from any other consideration,
is a matter of national importance. The distribution of the products
of industry is quite a separate question.

30

I appeal to you, therefore, as leaders of Labour opinion, to examine
sympathetically any device for increasing production, provided it does
not place Labour in a worse position than before. Don't condemn
Scientific Management out of hand, because it does not, of itself, place
Labour in complete control of Industry. I have tried to show that it
makes an increase in Labour's share of management no more difficult
to achieve than do present conditions, and I believe it even makes it
easier. Meanwhile the rate of production of wealth will have been
increased by the adoption of the general ideas of study, selection, and
training underlying Scientific Management.

A DELEGATE said he understood Mr. Renold to say that a certain
corporation paid compensation for men displaced by the introduction
of machinery. Could he tell them if he had any idea what sort of
scheme of compensation was accepted by this corporation ?

MR. WM. JEFFS (Ten Acres and Stirchley Co-operative Society) :
As a workman I know what it is to work under the system, and therefore
can speak of it from a practical point of view. I have worked under
good employers, with mutual confidence between workman and master,
but the employers instituted Scientific Management, and things have
gone from bad to worse. Efficiency has gone up, but mutual confidence
has disappeared. The object of the system is to gain at the expense
of the workman ; it has the tendency to make an old man of one at 50.
The workman gets a few shillings extra per week, but that cannot buy
his life back again. After seven or eights hours' work he is physically
unfit for anything else. There are some good points in Scientific
Management ; but there must be reason, give-and-take, and confidence
on both sides if it is going to be a success. The system seems to hurry
the workman too hard. In about five hours he gets Is. lOd. extra,
but he saves 4s. 2d. Of course it pays to give the man Is. lOd. to get
4s. 2d. extra out of him.

MR. EDGERTON (London Society of Compositors): Better manage-
ment is a good thing all will agree, but it should be for the benefit of
the workman just as much as for the employer. I agree with Mr.
Renold that it would not do away with a great deal of skilled labour :
in many cases it makes unskilled and semi-skilled labour more skilled
and increases the status of the worker, but I would like explained why
every system of Scientific Management brings the pay line down after
the efficiency mark has been reached, increasing the profit and reduc-
ing the pay. If a machine will do an extraordinary amount of work
employers are prepared to pay more for it, therefore, if a worker can
do more why not pay him more ?

MR. G. MIDDLETON (Postal and Telegraph Clerks' Association) :
I would like to know if Mr. Renold accepts Mr. Cole's challenge as to
the degrading of labour under Scientific Management ? Mr. Renold
did say something on this point, but it was not clear to me. He said
that very often the proportion of skilled workers was increased, but
his illustration was confined to a particular department in his own

31

works. What is the general effect ? In Prof. Hoxie's book the weight
of evidence is against Mr. Renold in this respect. I understand the
investigation (of which the book is a report) was conducted by an
impartial investigator, assisted by a Scientific Management expert
and a nominee of the American Federation of Labour — but it is im-
possible to go into the points raised in it here. I think Mr. Cole's
advice excellent, that all trade unionists should study this important
question of Scientific Management — it is something we ought to know
more about ; and in this respect Labour is likely to be caught napping.

MR. A. C. MABBS (Coventry Trades Council) : Scientific Management
should be discussed at the present time, because we have to face the
question of increased production. After the war the advocates of the
system will be first in the field, with a good prospect of catching the
worker unawares. I think Ruskin College is to be congratulated on
getting an employer to come to the conference, and if Scientific Manage-
ment is carried out by him in his works in the spirit expressed here,
the effects will be much less harmful than in many other places. We
do not get a greater production at the present time because of the
antagonism between employer and employee, and Scientific Manage-
ment will be likely to increase this. Great as has been the increase
in production since the beginning of the war, it is nothing to what
could be done if the antagonism could be eliminated. You cannot do
this by Scientific Management or anything of that kind. We must get
hold of industry, so that everyone becomes a part of the management —
it must be made to the interest of all to produce more than they were
producing before. Get that, and the present difficulties will melt
away in a very rapid way. This is the only possible cure. The most
advanced section of the workers are out for control all the way down,
and particularly control in the workshop — get it, and everybody will
be looking out to. save labour, and therefore we shall have better
results.

MR. ALD. W. WHEATLEY, J.P. (Huddersfield Trades Council) :
According to my conception Scientific Management based on human
understanding should be taken from the point of view of living, not of
profit. Instead of all this deep research and inquiry how human beings
could be made to produce more, we should organise things in order
to make more of life, and not for simply producing something — many
of us have not lived yet ! We must produce the things required in
the most scientific fashion, work as little as possible, and enjoy this
world. It is not possible for capital to exist as it is to-day and yet
appease the men who are producing wealth. Every man is producing
tons and tons more than he consumes, and there is something else to
be done besides speeding-up. After working 60 hours a man may not
be getting sufficient, but his ' brother ' who employs him is piling up
wealth in his ledger from the worker's blood and sinew. We have to
learn that it is our human duty to make life beautiful, happy, and
contented, and we must work on that basis or none at all.

32

MB. P. MYERS (A.S.E.) : Both speakers have emphasised the need
for men in the trade union movement to make themselves masters
of their particular industry. Human nature being what it is, trade
unions should hold out to their men the incentive of the possibility of
improving their position by their intelligence, and we should try to
bring about the conditions favourable to the development of the most
intelligent. I personally would fear the control of industry by the
workers at the present time, as Labour is not qualified for the task.
The application of Scientific Management all round might make it
possible for an enormous number of men and women now casually
employed to improve their position, and so raise the standard of life
of a large number. There may be some danger of labour being exploited
to a still greater extent, but the most intelligent are the least in danger
of exploitation. By intelligently understanding our own industries
we could raise the level of our members, and put them in such a position
that they could not be exploited. We must fit ourselves in this respect,
and having done this we shall have found out the method of assuming
control.

MB. W. B. NEVILLE (Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society) : I repre-
sent a section of the workers who are controlling industry. As a
Co-operative official, Scientific Management has occupied my spare
moments for some time — not only the human element, but also the
workshop and factory ; and it is only when the workers thoroughly
understand Scientific Management in all its phases that they will be
fitted to control industry. My own society has recently established
a bakery on the most advanced scientific principles, not only with
machinery but also with organisation of labour, and the result is that
we are able to sell a cheap loaf, and this has brought increased trade
to the society. The better the understanding of Scientific Management,
the more will the worker be able to prove his fitness to take control
of industry when the day comes.

MB. COLE'S REPLY.

Management may be responsible for a very great amount of the
increase in production, but I do not see why the results of these improve-
ments should go to the shareholders rather than to labour : the dis-
tribution of wealth ought to be independent of who creates it, and
should be distributed on just principles, which in the last resort would
mean equality. I am not opposed to efficiency in industry, but to
' efficiency systems ' of payment, by which the employer tries to get
the last ounce out of the worker. Mr. Renold has said that he had
in his firm been able to absorb all surplus labour, but I do not think
the general adoption of Scientific Management will make it possible
to absorb all skilled labour. Another point, with which I am in
agreement with Mr. Renold, is that the method of paying wages is
not of fundamental importance in Scientific Management. I was very
glad to hear him say that if the trade union offered a fundamental
objection to any efficiency system of payment he would not regard

33

it as absolutely vital. Getting rid of the efficiency method of payment
would open the way to a consideration of the other questions on their
merits. Mr. Kenold also said that time-study methods were bound to
be complicated, but I want to say that the method of payment must
be simple, even if the calculations on which it is based are abstruse,
and I want men able to understand these complications to do the
bargaining about piece work prices on behalf of Labour. Mr Kenold
said you could not fix piece prices by collective bargaining — you cannot
perhaps decide once for all all the little details, but the method of
payment could be much fairer than it is at present if you had better
organisation in the workshop, and trade union officials were better
equipped to deal with such matters. There should be no ' efficiency '
system unless there is a really strong intelligent control by the workers
in the workshop. I do not think the relations of Labour and Capital
will be improved after the war, and I hope they will not, because I
believe in the class-struggle and regard their interests as irreconcilable.
Any system which supposes co-operation between Capital and Labour
will break down. This is not vital to all the arguments put forward
on behalf of Scientific Management. I think it quite conceivable that
some of the suggestions made by Scientific Management, rightly
used and fully understood, would strengthen the trade union
movement. I merely criticised the things which would weaken the
movement, and which Labour ought not to accept. All employers
are not like Mr. R-enold : for every good one you will get a hundred
bad variations of so-called Scientific Management. Most employers
will try to adopt its worst features, particularly. ' efficiency ' methods
of payment by results, especially as employers have increased their
organisation and production so much during the war, and will desire
cheap labour power for world competition after the war.

ME. RENOLD'S KEPLY.

The first speaker raised the point about skilled labour displaced by
machinery. I believe I am right in saying that there is a large cor-
poration which has adopted an arrangement with the trade union
whereby they undertake that not more than 5 per cent, shall be displaced
in any one year, and for those so displaced they will pay to the trade
union fund a sum equal to what the trade union has paid to these
men. I believe the same arrangement is in force regarding ordinary
unemployment, i.e., they recoup the union for the amount of unemploy-
ment benefit. The other criticisms fall into three general lines : one
is, that the present method of running industry is nothing more than
an exploitation of the worker, and that Scientific Management is a
trick to turn the screw a little more. Such a charge applies to the
whole industrial system and contains, no doubt, some truth, but it is
not what we are here to discuss. My point was that Scientific
Management would offer a chance of progress in the direction of
increased control by labour of industry.

34

As regards the degradation of the skilled worker and the absorption
of surplus skilled labour : one speaker cited Hoxie as tending
to show that the workman was degraded. I think there is a
misconception of the whole contention. The immediate point is, will
skilled workers of the present generation have jobs in the next
few years ? I think they will, and I think we must leave it
there. Our experience bears out my argument. Our firm certainly
has been growing, but it is the firms who take the most progressive line
who do grow. It does not apply to everything that increased pro-
duction will mean an increased demand ; but to most things, if you
can make them cheaper. My impression of the Hoxie investigation
is that Scientific Management was not really practised in any of the
places investigated : the employers merely tried to put into effect various
dodges, but anything like a real scientific study of conditions was not
made anywhere. I have visited a number of these supposed scientific-
ally managed firms, but my impression was that, far from their teaching
us, we could teach them something about a really scientific basis.
I think Hoxie shows that. The result of such methods is to increase
antagonism. A speed boss would have to have special training, but
I don't think the speed-boss system would work in an engineering shop.
We certainly found, when we tried to control the flow of work separately,
that it broke down, and we came back to a system of management in
which the foreman, as local manager, is supreme over all the functions
of management, supported by expert assistants, and that arrangement
was easily worked. The foreman of a large department has a technical
assistant who is a specialist on the process, an " order-of-work "
assistant, an inspection assistant, and a store-keeping assistant. It is
easier to pick out people from the ranks able to fill these specialist
jobs than it would be to fill each post by a foreman who would have
to be a good hand at all of them. The foreman under our arrangement
has to be, primarily, a manager of these specialists, and the best
specialists get promoted to the foremen's positions.

Another criticism was that it is no use tinkering at the present
system — Scientific Management may be more productive, but as far as
labour is concerned the whole of the present system must go and the
capitalist must be abolished, the worker taking over control. We
are not here to discuss that, and, as an employer, I hardly like
to offer an opinion, but under such a system conditions will not
be altered so much as you appear to think. There must be
management, and the mere fact that Trade Union affairs do not
always go smoothly should be taken as a lesson that in the very
much more complicated communities, with which industry will be
concerned, there will be just the same cleavage between management
and worker, and the same difficulty of the workman in understanding
all the conditions and considerations which affect the management.
I do not think that criticism goes far ; if you run industry you have
to know the technique of management, and this is quite a distinct
profession. One of the greatest difficulties of payment by results (no

35

doubt, ultimately, it would be far better to do away with this and
have payment to men as men) is the jealousy when one man gets a
great deal more than the next man to him, and these discrepancies
are greater in some kinds of work than others. It seems to me a
convenience to make the gradation of the payment rather less steep,
so that the less skilled man does not suffer so much, but on the other
hand the more skilled man does not gain so much.

36
SECOND SESSION.

WOMEN IN INDUSTRY.

By MARION PHILLIPS, D.Sc. (Econ.),

(General Secretary of the Women's Labour League).

There are two ways in which the war has deeply affected the whole
outlook of women in industry. From those two there flow a number
of immensely significant alterations, not only in the point of view
of women themselves, but also in the estimation of and indeed in their
actual value to the whole community. But the roots of the many
changes which we see around us in the position of women, changes
that are psychological as well as economic, are due to two fundamental
changes of the social balance. The one is the absence of many millions
of men from their homes for service in the forces of army or navy, or as
munition workers, and the other is the fact that, for the first time,
the demand of the employer for the woman worker has been greater
than the demand of the woman worker for employment.

The change brought about by the first is not so much a change
in economic relations as a change in outlook, a psychological alteration
in the* mind and spirit and bearing of women. For the absence of
many millions of husbands has thrown upon the wives the full control
and responsibility for the family life. I do not want to undervalue
the responsible share which women have always necessarily had in
these tasks, but the taking away of the husband and father has altered
entirely, for the time being, the basis of the partnership which every
married life, happy or unhappy, successful or unsuccessful, is bound
to observe. For the first time, women of all sorts and kinds, of all
phases of weak and strong characters, with experience of the world
and without it, have had to face the conditions of a country at war,
and to deal with the problems it has created as independent individuals
without anyone at hand to take responsibility or to decide their action
for them. More than that, they have had to act without consultation
with their nearest and most intimate counsellor ; and again I say,
whether or no most husbands give good or bad counsel, the position
of women, deprived of all possibility of that counsel, is an entirely
new one. The effect of it can be seen all around us, and I think there
is little doubt that it is bringing about changes in the character and
strength of mind of women which are yet incalculable. But they
will have to be reckoned with in the future, and the effect of this freedom
from any sort of control or advice from the ordinary partner and
commonly leader of their joint life, has certainly given to the everyday
woman a new grasp of experience, widened her outlook, and increased
her confidence in her own judgment, until she faces the world to-day
from a totally new angle.

37

In this new independence of the wife, she has undoubtedly been
helped by the effective strength of the industrial army of women.
Women of all ages up to thirty-five at any rate, have found themselves
wanted in the industrial world in a new way. They have been wanted
not merely as cheap labourers, scarcely worthy of their hire, but as
responsible and well paid workers with the full dignity that skill,
steadiness, and capacity establish. I do not say for a moment that
there are no cases to-day of underpaid women workers. Any Trade
Union office has but to turn over the pages of its correspondence to
find plenty such instances ; but I do say that the opportunities for
women to rise above the old level of the industrial drudge have for
the first time since the Industrial Revolution been widely opened.
There are to-day hundreds of thousands of women who are earning
the first living wages paid to women in industry, and there are many
thousands who are earning wages equal to those of the men whom they
are replacing. More than that, though at any one time there may
always be found a handful of unemployed women here or there, there
has never before been a time when the work has been waiting for the
woman, rather than the woman been begging for the work. High
wages can be earned. Regular and indeed often too regular and too
long-continued employment can be readily found. Skilled trades are
opened. The highest posts in the factory world are open too, and women
have for the moment a fair field and favour for their industrial skill
to wax great and their wages to grow larger.

Even in the case of those women and girls whose wages are still
low, the influence of women's improved industrial outlook is having
its effect, and not only is this shown in the growing number of Trade
Unionists amongst women, but also in the improved bearing and
independence of the workers even in sweated trades.

The increased wages, the increased demand, the increased opportunity
for skill to find itself welcomed and rewarded, — all these have both
an economic and psychological effect on women. I may seem to
labour too much this change in outlook. If I do, it is because I want
men to realise that in dealing with the problems of women's work
in the future they have to think of the women under this new aspect,
as women who have learnt their own value as workers, learnt the
independence that a real living wage can confer, and learnt that men
do not hold a monopoly of industrial skill and capacity. If some
women knew that already, their numbers were few, and their con-
victions lacked widely gathered proofs. To-day there are proofs all
around us, and women know their strength. It will be well for both
employers and fellow workers to understand that in future the woman
in industry is a far stronger competitor, both mentally and economically,
than in the past. But I believe that if they see these things, and
if the male worker realises them and what they imply, the term
competitor may be relegated to the dark ages of the past and the term
colleague be substituted.

It is towards this co-operation between the workers of both sexes,
this recognition of equality of right for both, with due allowance for
the needful regulation of their energies in the interest of the whole
community, in equality of opportunity (to use the old phrase), that I
believe industrial salvation must be found. The old custom of woman
acting as the useful drudge and tool of the employer, always at hand
to cheapen the wage bill, always docile with the docility of the economic
slave and the meekness of the permanently underfed, has reacted
with deadening effect upon the male worker's standard of living.
In the changing conditions of a world at war there has arisen a possibility
of removing that menace of industrial oppression, and with the coming
of peace it should be one of the first objects of the Trade Union world
to set on a firm basis a new partnership between men and women
workers, so strongly knit by the common interests of both that no
disturbing element can cause its dissolution.

The present position of women and the changes wrought by the
war have been very fully and carefully dealt with in the Report of the
Standing Joint Committee of Industrial Women's Organisations, pub-
lished with its endorsement by the Joint Committee on Labour After the
War.* This report sets forth the present and then deals with proposals
for the future, and I want just to summarise a few of the results reached.
The Report shows clearly the extent to which wages for women
have risen and the result of the facts put forward is this : — Wages
have risen to some extent in all trades in which women are employed ;
but in those in which organisation is weak, the rise has been for the
most part of a couple of shillings a week by way of war bonus, or by
a slight increase of the rate per hour, and only in the case of learners
has been strongly marked ; where there are Trade Boards the rise
has been gradually gained after much pushing by the Trade Unions,
and the recorded increases are as follows : —

" The Sugar Confectionery Trade Board decided on a minimum
rate of 3d. per hour prior to the war (though this rate was not
' fixed ' until after the war). A rate of 3Jd. has now been
provisionally fixed. In the tailoring and shirtmaking trades the
pre-war minimum was 3|d., and proposals to fix a minimum rate
of 4d. have just been issued. It will be seen that to maintain these
minima at their pre-war value a rate of 4Jd. in the first case and
of 5d. in the other should have been made."

But where women have replaced men in the well organised trades,
e.g., engineering, wood work, etc., the wages of women have been
brought by Trade Union action to a far higher level. It is unnecessary
for me here to go into the details of increases, the extent to which women
replacing men have gained the same wages, whether piece or time,
the extent to which by action under the Munitions of War Acts a rate
of £1 a week was first fixed as a maximum and minimum both in work

* " The Position of Women after the War," price 2d. To be obtained from
The Labour Party, 1, Victoria Street, S.W.

39

other than substitution for skilled men, and finally under the most recent
regulations 18/- made a minimum and the rates above that made
more elastic.

What is to be noticed is that it is only where organisation, either
of the men in the engineering trade or on the railways, or in the dyeing
and bleaching trade, or amongst the women as in some centres of
unskilled or semi-skilled work, has been strong, that the increases
of women's wages have been marked, and I believe that it is the fact
that where the men have believed that the substitution of women is
entirely temporary it will be found that they have been somewhat
indifferent to equality of rate. Wherever they have realised the
possibility of women remaining in a trade they have been more fully
alive to the importance of getting economic equality between men
and women.

It may be said that while women's wages have increased so that
the prevailing rate of ll/- before the war may be compared to a rate
of near £1 now, it is a wage which is only nominally higher on account
of the high cost of living. This is undoubtedly an important qualifica-
tion, but at the same time I think it will be found that, taken all round,
reckoning the greater regularity of employment, the prevalence also
of overtime, and the number getting above the prevailing rate, it is
the fact that women are receiving even in real as opposed to money
wages a considerable increase.

Nor is a nominal increase wholly unimportant in looking to the
future. Even though prices may fall, it can be made difficult to lower
wages which have once risen. The number of shillings per week
quickly gets a support of custom.

But they are gaining that increase at considerable cost in certain
other ways. If they have been able to get more food, and I believe
up to the present that has been the case, they have also been giving
far more of their strength.

This comes about in two ways. Women have been doing much
work which was previously held to be unhealthy or unsuitable, and
from which they have previously been excluded. I think the grounds
for these exclusions have often been slight, and the exclusion has
been influenced sometimes by fear of their effect on wages rather than
on the ground given of unhealthy or immoral or generally unsuitable
conditions. But it is certain that in many cases the grounds were
real, and that at present women are employed on many processes
which we should be sorry to see them continuing to work at. Anything
which they can by any possibility do at the moment, they are now
doing, with very little consideration for the after-effects. They are
also working under less rigid factory regulations, and constant over-
time, Sunday work, and night shifts will all have their effect on women's
strength in the future as well as in the present. Moreover, under the
double pressure of economic need and patriotic zeal, married women
with children are more than ever before taking part in industry. The
effects here are not on themselves alone, but the babies and children are

40

becoming more and more the sufferers. Take, for instance, the position
as to Munition Creches.

The Munitions Department is encouraging with advice, exhortation,
and finally with financial aid, the establishment of creches for the
munition worker's children. Well and good, we say ; it is better that
the mother should place her babies in a well-ordered creche rather
than leave them for the day with this neighbour or that — a haphazard
method at the best. Yes, but ' by the day ! ' What we are not
realising is that creches are being established not only for the care
of the children by day, but for the care of them by night.* In certain
areas, mothers working on night shifts can board their little ones out
by the night or by the week. Thus a new condition of affairs is growing
up, and women working in National Filling Factories who have young
babies are actually being advised to wean them, because the work
does not agree with the production of mothers' milk. Add to this
that the mother is having the terrific strain of working at night and
minding a home — and probably a cross, milk-fed baby — by day !
What chance will the next baby have after this experience ? The fact
is that the demand for workers should be better regulated, and that
no nursing mother should be employed, not only not on night shift,
but not on work which makes suckling unhealthy for the child.

I have said nothing of the risk of planting creches in or near explosive
works. I have said nothing of the health of infants and tiny children
taken to and fro in the crowded trains or trams to the creches at
unearthly hours at nightfall or at dawn. But I want to point out to
you that this whole method means a very forcible breaking up of the
family life of the community, and that it is a curious commentary on
the old abuse of the Socialists who were supposed to favour such a
process and to desire the barrack system for child-rearing ! So far
as I know the Labour movement, through the War Emergency: Workers'
National Committee, has made the only protest against this pitiful
destruction of the baby's home.

But home life is being broken in another direction also. To get
the necessary mobility of labour, workers have been moved from one
district to another until in every large munition centre there are
thousands of women, often no more than young girls, living in hostels,
or lodgings, or huts. The effect of heavy work and long hours under
these conditions must be far greater than when they live at home,
for there is in the ordinary home a different kind of care and comfort
from that of lodgings or the most approved type of hostel. There is
also a certain restraint which parents and brothers and sisters, friends
and familiar surroundings exercise, which is lost when labour comes
to be so mobile as it is now ! The system has also encouraged schemes
of almost military discipline, and in many cases all sorts of interference
in the lives of the workers by their employers, welfare workers, and
official and unofficial philanthropists. Thus the influence of the dis-

* I do not know whether these creches are subsidized by the Munitions Department

cipline of the workshop has been carried very often into the private lives
of the workers. The dangers of this are too obvious to need comment.
But while we can see in many directions that the pressure of war
needs has had its bad sides, that women have in certain respects lost
protective legislation which once helped them, and that the home
conditions have been worsened in many ways, it has always to be
remembered that before the war the conditions for women, so far as
wages were concerned, were so intolerable that anything which relieve?
the economic pressure upon them has a balance of advantages. I am
inclined to think that the essential condition, the primary condition
for welfare, is sufficient food, and I know that many working women
have for the first time known what it is to get sufficient food since
they began to do war work. They have not all succeeded even in that,
but the level of food consumption amongst women and girls has risen
surprisingly and has created a new demand which the future will
have to try and satisfy.

Their old industrial slavery was a slavery of a hopeless kind. The
low wages and the lack of scope together pressed them down into a
helpless kind of drudgery. The possibilities of good industrial work,
even when not achieved, are a hopeful feature, and every woman is
affected by the sense that she may rise to a higher industrial level.

But in the brief sketch I have given of the significant features of
to-day, I hope that I have not painted too sharp and distinct a picture.
I have tried to bring out the salient points and, to sum them up in the
fewest words, I should say that they were these : —

A demand for women in industry of all kinds, and the opening

to them of skilled and well paid work.
A general raising of wages, from amounts of a few shillings to

treble or quadruple their former earnings.
A raising of the woman's standard of life and expectation for the

future.
Heavy pressure upon physical strength and a general dispersion

and scattering of home groups.

A great influx into industry of married women with young children.
A great growth of independence of mind and action amongst

women and girls.
A growing belief in capacity and desire for equality with male

workers-
There has been an increase of women workers over pre-war numbers
of something little short now of one million, and about half of these
have gone into industry. How far all of these will desire to remain
in employment it would be hard to say. But this is clear — the woman
who has earned a good wage and known what it is to have her own
money to spend will not readily give up the economic freedom and
scope in life that it has given to her. On the other hand, women are
as interested as men, since most women become wives, and so enter
into a close partnership with the male worker, in the maintenance
of a high standard of wages for men and also in the sufficiency of

42

employment for men. No wife or daughter admires the laundress's
husband. It is pretty generally held by women that nothing is worse,
socially as well as economically, than the unemployed man. And her
honourable understanding with the men who have entered their country's
service in the army or navy, or on national work of other kinds,
is that on their return the women shall not keep their jobs away from
them. That is clearly the right position. The returning man gets
his job. The woman must in fairness give way to his claim. But
there are many jobs to which men will never return. There are changes
in work which have swept away the old positions, there are men who
have given their lives, there are men who have given their strength
and come back crippled, there are men who will go seeking more
adventurous paths of work for the future. -And there may be certain
paths of employment that will demand more workers than ever before.
But take it all round, I believe we must face the fact that with our
present army of workers the amount of work available will not be
sufficient to go round. What is to be the action of the community
in face of that ? It might be to say, " Well, there is one thing clear :
the emergency of war alone called women into industry of this or that
kind — we must go back to the old scheme of pre-war days and shut
women out again ; we must make room for the men at all costs, and
back again to their ill-paid work with its narrow scope of unskilled
and semi-skilled avenues of employment the women must go." That
indeed would be the strictest interpretation of the Trade Union's
pledge for the reinstatement of their rules. And they have the right
to demand it if they feel it just and wise to do so ; or would it be better
to hold it in reserve to use if the conditions of their waiving it should
not be fair and reasonable and to the advantage of the community ?
To re-establish wholesale exclusion would, I am convinced, be the
worst possible way of dealing with the situation. To begin with,
it would not work. It would simply create, in organised as well as
unorganised trades, a confusion of interests in which the men would
find the employers seeking cheap labour and combining with the
women to gain it. The women have — and it is well to remember it — a
distinct margin between their old and their new wages, and a still
greater one between their old wages and the men's wages. With that
margin, the employer would have scope to use his power as a bargainer
and as an organiser of cheap labour, and he would be able to break
through the solidarity of labour with effective force. And the women
could not justly be blamed for accepting his offer.

What the male worker has to do is to find a way of knitting together
the interest of men and women (they are really one if honestly faced)
so that justice can be done with corresponding advantages to both.

The first step is to see how far the army of industrial workers is
rightly recruited. Ought there to be all these men and women, boys
and girls, seeking work ? The answer is a simple and a negative one.

Take boys and girls out of industry entirely until they are fourteen
and, by successive steps, fifteen, and finally sixteen, and keep them

43

in school, where they rightly belong. And do not let the matter stop
at that. Keep them there for at least part of their day until they are
eighteen.

Turn next to the mother at work. The case here is not so simple,
because passion has played its part in the old discussion of married
women's work. I believe that compulsory exclusion has nothing to
recommend it ; but I believe that economic pressure on the mother
to earn has nothing to recommend it either ! The true solution of
this problem has to be found in a revolutionary measure, the endowment
of motherhood or childhood, whichever way you like to put it. There
will be a beginning of this in the pitiful number of war orphans. They
will be the little pensioners of the State. I think that this sad neces-
sity of war shows us the right way. It would, if rightly extended, give
a new life to children — a life in which their mothers would play a far
larger share than of old. It would, this endowment of motherhood, give
the mother back from the factory to the home, and free her for
her desired tasks of home-making ; but it would give her a new position
since she would be there by free choice and not be the slave of a com-
pelling restraint.

The industrial field would thus be relieved of a peculiarly necessitous
and dangerous kind of competitor, and the reduction of the hours of
labour and the discouragement of overtime would again help the
situation, ^.nd it would help even in securing that increased pro-
ductivity of labour which will be a necessity in the after-war world.

But while I feel very strongly that the total exclusion of women
from the trades hitherto closed to them would be a mistake, I recognise
that there are many processes and even trades in which it is not well
that they should work. Health and general surroundings count for
much, and it is clear to every observer in the industrial world that
under the conditions of to-day the woman and girl worker does need
protection against the exploitation of her health and character. There
are trades, probably, which .are not unhealthy, but may be described
as unsuitable — a good euphonious term covering some real and many
vague misgivings. It is of course not an ideal world that we live in,
and human beings readily fall to low levels under hard conditions.

Physically, the objections to various trades are less difficult to define ;
and war-time experience has given us a mass of evidence as to women's
capacity, which clears the position of many obscurities. Admitting,
then, that the exclusion of women on these two grounds may be
advisable in the interests of the whole body of workers as well as of
the women, what method should be followed to define the limits of
them?

If one way is more wrong than another, I think it is the method
of the Trade Union rule where the Trade Union has a membership
entirely male or almost entirely male. The sense of unfairness
will never be lost if that method is to be adopted. The Trade Union
rule may follow on investigation, but investigation should be made
by a representative and well-instructed body. The Joint Committee

44

make, in their report, what I think is the best suggestion on this
matter. They propose " the appointment of an Inter-departmental
Committee, consisting of representatives of Trade Unionists (including
women), of doctors (including women doctors), and persons experienced
in the inspection of factories and the employment of women. This
Committee would consider what employments may be harmful to
women workers, and make recommendations thereon to the Govern-
ment, through the Ministry of Labour and the Home Office. The
Committee would become a permanent advisory committee, its reports,
where suitable, forming the basis of legislation." This has also been
agreed to in a resolution unanimously passed by the Labour Party
Conference in January last.

Probably after the recommendations of this Committee had been
made it would be sufficient to adopt Trade Union rules and not to have
legislation ; for clearly the matter is a changing one — new processes
and new conditions may from time to time alter entirely the point
of the decision. The Committee would be needed to revise its
decisions as circumstances might be shown to have changed.

But the chief cause of exclusion, even when it has been expressed
in other ways, has been the fear of woman as a wage cutter. There
is good reason for this fear in the industrial history of the last hundred
years. There can be no doubt that women have been the weapon
by which over and over again wages have been lowered and processes
altered to the workers' disadvantage. The woman and the unskilled
male worker have stood in much the same position, but women have
been even worse bargainers than the unskilled men. It is not because
women are less capable as workers, but less capable as bargainers,
less capable as organisers, less capable as industrial fighters, that they
have been used to undercut the wages of men. And the reasons are
not inherent in women ; they have been the result of innumerable
forces working against their economic, social, and political emancipation.
The ideas of men about women which have been shared by women have
weakened women's strength as industrial units. There has also been
the whole group of facts which we sum up in the one word of mother-
hood, but which are many of them only the result of bad social and
economic arrangements of the nation's life and in no way inseparable
from the position both of wife and mother. I have a belief that so
soon as we understand the causes we can set to work to bring about
different results. For none of these disadvantages under which
women have laboured as wage-earners are unsusceptible of modification.
The will to alter them is the only thing needful, and the necessity
under which that will shall find itself forced to act is now upon us.
For the time has arrived when united action on behalf of men and women
wage-earners can prevent the old reproach of blackleg being used to
women in the future.

The chief difficulty, little recognised by the male trade unionist in
general, has been the very low wages paid to women in the majority
of trades in which she was employed. Sweated trades have been

45

synonymous terms with women's trades. The first necessity is to
ensure that no worker, whether man or woman, shall work for a wage
less than shall enable him or her to live a decent and a pleasurable
life. The institution of a living wage, however, cannot be made by
establishing at one sweep one level minimum throughout the country.
That would be to rush upon disaster in two senses. It would either
cause a sudden dislocation of industry — which the country could ill
bear at the period of dislocation after the war — or it would establish
a minimum which, if sufficiently low on the one side, would be far
too low on the other. It would be at once a means of raising wages
a little in bad trades but of lowering them in good trades. A far
sounder method is to build on the already planned lines of the Trade
Boards, placing under their operation every trade which does not
normally pay a living wage to the men and women who work in it.
Thus the means of levelling up, giving time for the trade to readjust
itself to the new conditions and to profit by the productivity of the more
efficient and better fed workers, so as to rise to progressively higher
levels of wage-paying. But alongside these trades are the better
organised and more skilled trades in which the normal payments
have reached the level of a living wage. For these the question
of the continued employment of women is more difficult. For in
these it is that the difficulty of adjusting equal pay for equal work
without lowering or endangering the standard rate is chiefly felt.
The only way appears to me to be that recommended by the Joint
Committee. They propose : —

" Establishment in these trades of Employment Boards constituted

as under, and with the objects and powers described.
Constitution. — Equal numbers of representatives of employers
and employed, the latter being appointed by the workers
themselves, and including women as well as men. The chairman
to be chosen from a panel drawn up by the Ministry of Labour.
The Board to be called together by the Government, and supplied
by the Government with secretarial and office requirements.
Objects. — To decide upon the conditions under which women
should be employed in the trade, so as to secure economic
equality between men and women workers. They would also
have to consider how far the partially trained women who have
been brought into the work during the period of emergency can
be given an opportunity to gain further training.
The general aims of the Employment Boards would be to establish
a minimum wage which would ensure to every worker, man
or woman, the possibility of maintaining a decent and healthy
standard of life.

Power to enforce decisions. — The decisions of such a body should

be legally binding and subject to arrangements for revision/'

This has been endorsed by the Joint Labour Committee, and seems

to me to be of very far-reaching importance. It would cover by a

system of Joint Boards the whole body of trades which have recently

46

admitted women into their more highly skilled and better paid branches.
It would be the beginning of that joint control of industry within
those trades which many of us hope will be an immediate outcome of
the war, a joint control which shall gradually merge into the sole control
of the people, acting through their organisations under the final
control of the State. But that takes us into a realm of controversy
which I need not enter here. The questions raised by the woman in
industry are not so barren of controversial points that we need go
seeking them !

These proposals complete the machinery, other than that of Trade
Union organisation, which seems to me necessary. Organisation is a
necessity if the suggested scheme is to work. The women, if ad-
mitted into a trade on Trade Union conditions — and such would be
the result of the decisions of these Boards — must logically be admitted
into full membership of the Trade Unions. But there is an undoubted
need for special arrangements for organising women within the Unions.
The same weapons of organisation, the same methods of educating
the members, the same approach does not do for both sexes. The
women and girls must be reached by women organisers if they are
to be gained in full numbers. Especially is this necessary in the case
of less skilled workers. They must have their own meetings, their
own propaganda — the same in its ends but differing in its ways, and
they must be brought into the task of taking responsibility and office
in their own organisation. There must also be fuller representation
of women by women on the governing bodies of the Unions.

The fact of the matter is that women workers have been in the
past badly neglected by the male trade unionist. This is not in the
least degree surprising — indeed, it was inevitable. The Trade Union
had its set ways of working, and had developed for men under the
guidance of men, and was not to be easily adapted to the differing
methods needed to draw in the women. Efforts were often made that,
after a momentary success, ended in failure. The poverty of the woman
worker was the cause, first and foremost ; but there were other reasons,
too. Discouraged by failure, the Unions, with hands full of more
business than their officers, so largely voluntary and with a full day's
work at other tasks, could get through, naturally found it difficult
to make another attempt ; and there has been the fundamental
difficulty that the sense of equality was not felt, though lip service
might be given it at conferences and the like. The men have believed
that women had a naturally inferior industrial position to themselves,
just as the employers believed it ; in fact, the community in general
accepted it. The war has so largely broken through that belief that
it seems unlikely that it can ever be set up again.

There is this to be said for the women of this country : in strikes
and other industrial battles women have been wonderfully firm and
loyal, and that in spite of the severe privation from which they have
so often suffered. There is a readiness to keep the solidarity of the
ranks, especially in times of crisis. This has been tested and proved.

47

There has been far less reason for it in between times, because the men
have themselves acquiesced in a division between the sexes industrially
which has not favoured solidarity. Now it is noticeable that during
the war period the solidarity of women of all classes has been greatly
increased. Many women of the comfortable classes have gone into
munition work. They constantly find themselves coming into the
very closest and most sympathetic relationship with the working
women who are their fellow employees, and this is so even where at
the commencement feeling was very divided. The fact of this new
solidarity amongst women has been pointed to as a danger for the male
worker in the future. I think it is only so if the male worker chooses
to make it a danger. The working woman will be always ready to
join forces with him industrially, as she is ready to join with him
socially. After all, the men and women are together outside the
workshop, and it is not a difficult thing to bring them into a close
partnership of interest and loyalty inside it. But there is a distinct
tendency through the agency of welfare work, which is almost wholly
looked at from the woman's side, to imply that the woman worker
needs the welfare worker as the man needs his Trade Union. Indeed,
that is one of the serious dangers in the present form of welfare work.
It makes play with the undeniable fact that women are much more
fastidious and more impressed by the comfort and cleanliness and
social amenities of their workplaces than men. The danger can be
corrected, however, by the Trade Unions taking a greater interest
in these questions and insisting upon the replacement of the official
welfare worker by the workers' own shop committee. But an attention
to the amenities of the working-day life would do much to interest
women in the affairs of their trade union branches.

The fact of the matter is that real solidarity has never yet been aimed
at for more than momentary crises. Whenever it is, the men will find
the women ready. In one great trade it has been partially gained
already, and that because the wage demand of each sex has always
been the same. I mean in the cotton textile industry. But even in that
case the solidarity is only partial, because women have never yet
claimed equal share in the management of the Unions or in the real
control of their own affairs. They have been content to leave it to
the men for so long that little short of revolution seems likely to alter
that balance. But when it is altered, the men as well as the women
will find it to their advantage — will find that the life of the Unions
themselves will become more varied, many-sided and influential,
touching on far more things than wages, and becoming imbued with
a spirit of more than collective bargaining.

It is for that widening of industrial progress that I think we must
work now in readjusting the relation between the men and women
workers. With the settlement of the economic question are bound up
many questions of social and spiritual meaning and significance.
The freedom of the worker cannot be achieved unless the woman
as well as the man is free. Just as the presence of a class of low- waged

48

black labour, industrially and politically backward, drags the white
worker down to a lower level, so the drudgery of female labour in the
past has dragged down male labour with it. And it has done worse
than that : it has lowered the whole standard of life for the community,
lowered the vitality of the mothers of the race, made thousands of
women the prey of vicious living, kept the worst forms of slavery alive
amongst us. With the passing of this class of industrial drudge into
the better paid ranks of labour, and with the free admission of women
into every trade for which they can fit themselves, with their attain-
ment of an equal standard of pay with that of the male worker, and
with the growing influence of their greater delicacy of mind and spirit
on the industry of the world, there gleams before us a better hope
than the past has shown of -the development of a nation strong in
spirit and body, in generosity and self-control, a nation which has
grown in stature because it has been nourished on freedom.

In speaking on her paper, Dr. Marion Phillips said that her first
point was the present condition of women's labour and the effect
which the war had had upon industry. The good effects were infinitely
more important than the bad ones ; these were, the improvement in
the standard of wages and the wide opening of industrial paths
hitherto closed to women. In the past they had been restricted to the
lower paid branches of unskilled and semi-skilled employment, to a
certain number of highly skilled but badly paid employments, and
to quite skilled and fairly well paid work in the textile industries ;
but in the last only had they been able to sell their labour on the same
footing as men ; still even there the best paid work was men's and
not women's. During the war women's work had improved all round.
It was not only that they had been admitted into every trade in
which their strength and skill were sufficient, but the wages in the
trades in which they had been accustomed to work had improved.

As to the future, the big question was what attitude the men, especi-
ally the men's trade unions, were going to take towards women when
the war was over ? The trade unions had the promise of full reinstate-
ment of rules : under the old rules women were excluded in many cases,
and the community were bound to see full restoration carried out
if the trade unions demanded it. The trade unions should not give
away one scrap of their rights until they were certain what they would
get instead. But they ought to consider whether they would have
the old rules reinstated entirely, or whether they could not get something
better. In dealing with women they had to face realities, and consider
the women's, the employer's, and the trade union's positions. They
could not imagine that women would readily face a situation whereby
they were totally excluded from a large number of trades in which
they were fully capable of doing the work. In the margin between
pre-war and war-time wages there was a very big scope for bargaining
with women on the part of the employer, and he would not hesitate

49

to make good use of it. If the employer fixed wage-rates below the
men's but above the old rates for women, it would be a difficult thing
for the woman who was dependent on her employment to refuse to
work for them. It was perfectly natural that men should see the danger
of women's competition in undercutting wages, but that danger had
been overcome in those unions which fixed the basis of payment as
4 equal pay for equal work.' She saw no reason why that principle
should not be extended throughout all industry, so that women would
come in only with an equality of economic standing.

There was a point, constantly raised, over which there had been
many bitter quarrels in the past — suitability — which was going to be
raised again by one at least of the trade unions. It was claimed,
e.g., by the Vehicle Workers' Union, that 'bus and tram conducting was
unsuitable employment for women. She thought that a trade union
of which the vast majority were men should not be the sole judges
of a question of that sort : it was a matter upon which evidence could
be given — the body to decide the question should .be representative
of men and women, not only of the particular trade concerned, but
also of men and women in general, doctors, and people with a
knowledge of industrial employment generally.

The whole of the questions referred to in her paper required a change
of outlook as well as system ; and they had to look at the matter
from a different point of view : not to go on saying that women were
the people who undercut wages, but to give them a chance not to
undercut. And the facilities for women to enter trade unions must
be increased in every possible way, to assist in gathering in the unskilled
and semi-skilled women in larger numbers. This was one of the root
problems — no scheme for adjusting relations between men and women
in industry would work unless both the men and the women were
strongly organised. If men and women worked together in this,
with the real intention of attaining unity, there would be more hope
in the future than ever before.

QUESTIONS.

Question : Does Dr. Phillips not think that, the war wastage has
been, and will be, so great that there will be room for a great many
more women in industry ?

Answer : I do not think the war wastage will be so great as to
materially alter the number of men seeking employment. On the other
hand, certain women will not marry because the men they would have
married have been lost, and there will be, in addition, a large number
of widows. I think all will be needed in the first few years, but an

50

industrial slump may come, and we don't know how soon. If, however,
we, can carry out our hope of raising the part-time school age to 18,
we have a very good way of preventing the market from being
overstocked with adult labour.

Question : Would it not be a better suggestion, and more beneficial
to the future of the race, than that just put forward, that all married
women with dependents should not be employed in industry ?

Answer : The greatest industrial reform we could have in this country
would be to keep boys and girls at school for 20 hours until they are 18.
The social and industrial effect would be enormous. It is inimical
to forbid married women to work unless ample provision is made for
them, and the number who would then want to go out to work is few ;
the desire of most women is to look after their homes.

Question: The lecturer said that wages before the war were 11s.
and the present wages 20s., and that the employer would probably
work on that margin to lower the standard. Does she think that
women will go on being window cleaners, lamp lighters, and tram and
'bus conductors, or that the organised workers will submit to women
being employed if a* slump comes, so throwing a large number of men
out of work ?

Answer : The 11s. is based on the Board of Trade returns of 1911,
and is rather a favourable figure. The predominant wage at present I
calculate at about £1 — without being dogmatic. A great many women
will remain as conductors, but about window cleaning I do not know.
Women have taken with great pleasure to the outdoor employments
thrown open to them. If there is a slump, men will have a smaller
chance of turning the women out.

Question : If motherhood were endowed, does Dr. Phillips not think
that employers would calculate that in the family income, like every-
thing else ; and would not this tend to deteriorate the economic value
of women ?

Answer : I have not much fear of that, if the workers are well
organised — employers are not all-powerful. If the workers care to
use brains as well as hands, they can get what they like.

Question : Is it not our duty to keep women out of the factory
more than in the past ? Would not this be better for the well-being
of the race and the nation ?

Answer : Certain trades are not fit for women, and they ought to
be kept out of these trades ; but the question of suitable trades should
be enquired into by a properly constituted body. Give women a

51

decent wage and enough to eat ; it is absurd to think their poor health
is due to the work they do : if they were fed properly they would be
much stronger than most people think. They must not be treated as
dependants, but as people of some value in the world.

Question : Is not the question of suitability of employment rather a
question of the bad conditions which, if remedied, would make certain
occupations suitable ?

Answer: Better Factory Acts and better hours are badly needed
for men and women, and men put up with conditions which they
ought never to have put up with : it distinctly lowers the standard
of life to allow these to continue.

DISCUSSION.

MR. J. G-. NEWLOVE (General Secretary, Postal and Telegraph Clerks*
Association :) —

The impression that I got after reading Dr. Marion Phillips' paper
was, here is yet another illustration of the^ fact that the war has now
gone on long enough to produce its own platitudes, and one of these is
that ' nothing will ever be the same again.' I doubt whether the
war will have very much permanent influence upon the question
of the greater independence of women. We have to be on our guard
against drawing too hasty inferences from war conditions, as the
conditions are totally artificial ; and my first general criticism is that
I think the earlier part of the paper tries to extract a greater measure of
advantage in the direction of the effect of the war upon woman's future
than the circumstances of the case really warrant. I think also her
observation that the war has thrown woman more upon her own
resources is not quite so well-founded as she would lead us to under-
stand. I mention this because she draws an important inference
from it — that the men having gone away to the war will teach women
greater personal economic independence. Although millions of men
have gone, there are still millions of men left, and one of the things
which has struck me in my personal circle is that although, as Dr.
Phillips says, woman's partner — her husband — may have gone to the
war, there are still a number of men folks in the family circle at
hand to give advice, with whom she can discuss her difficulties.
Dr. Phillips has drawn a too lurid picture of the possible effects in
thinking that this factor is going to help women towards a higher
conception of independence in future. Much as we all wish it, I think
we ought to be quite certain that we have the right facts concerning
the matter.

52

I had a little difficulty when reading the paper to understand just
•what Dr. Phillips' real position is in regard to the question of women's
wages. In one part of the paper one is led to believe that the matter
of £. s. d. is much about the same as it was before the war ; in another
part one comes to the conclusion that there has been a remarkable
improvement. * After what she has said to-night, I have definitely
come to the conclusion that she thinks there is not, on the whole,
very much improvement, especially when she says that after all, what
you have to consider is not how many shillings a woman gets, but what
she can get for the shillings. If we consider it from that point of view
we can very safely say there has not been any big upward movement
in women's wages, such as we have been led to think, as a result of
war experience. But even if there has been an increase in " real "
wages — and I think there has — we have some important considerations
to bear in mind. First, that woman — speaking of industry gener-
ally— is at the moment occupying more or less of a monopoly position,
the competitive factor having been completely removed. If in these
circumstances wages did not go up, we should wonder what had
happened. The second point is — and I suggest it is an extremely
important one — that wages of women for war work are ruling com-
paratively high as compared with women's wages before the war,
for the very important reason that the employer of labour, as we gener-
ally understand him, is not paying that wage, but the State is paying
it ; and therefore we have to ask ourselves the very pertinent question :
What prospects will there be of wages remaining at the war level after
the war, when the State is no longer paying the wages but the
private employer is called upon to pay them ?

The war is being used by the extreme feminists as a lever for the
demand that women shall be employed throughout industry irrespective
of any conditions whatever. But perhaps it is not quite fair for me
to assume that Dr. Phillips takes up that position. I want to oppose
the view that women shall be employed in industry because they are
women, and to make the suggestion that women shall be employed
in any industry according to their suitability. I quite agree with
Dr. Phillips that in order to get the problem properly tackled it is of
the utmost importance that the women shall be consulted and shall
have an equal say in the selection both of the industry and of the type
of woman, but I strongly hold that to use the war as an argument for
the employment of women here, there, and everywhere, irrespective
of other conditions, is extremely dangerous from the men's, the women's,
and the community's point of view. If I read aright the report of the
Standing Joint Committee to which she refers — and all interested in
after-the-war reconstruction should get a copy — they are at some
pains to call attention to the extreme social dangers of the employment
of women irrespective of the conditions governing the industry from
the physiological point of view. I think we shall all agree that the
higher women's wages can be brought, the better it is for the women
-and the better for the men, if the problem is approached from the

53

essentially sex point of view. We cannot afford to ignore that very
important and difficult part of the subject, and I think all of us feel
that in trying to tackle this part of industrial reconstruction we want
to avoid as far as possible anything which will even have a tendency
towards creating sex antagonism. If we do not avoid this we shall
simply be playing into the hands of the employing classes, and we
cannot afford to do that. While it may be an advantage that women's
wages should show an actual upward tendency, I very much doubt
whether it is an ultimate advantage to secure that at too high a price.
I think we shall pay too high a price for it in the period of reconstruction
unless the question of the employment of women is considered in a
thoroughly scientific manner, because we have had sufficient experience
during the war to make some estimate of the social dangers that will
possibly arise as a result of the employment of women in particular
forms of industrial life. There is not only the difficulty of physical
strain, but also of mental strain, upon women ; there is also the equally
important problem of the effect upon children. According to all
accounts there has been a marked increase of late of juvenile crime.
Reports all over the country are showing that the absence of the mother
in employment is reflecting itself in the actions of the children. That
state of affairs is extremely dangerous.

Whatever we may hold about the present position and its probable
effects, there can be absolutely no doubt that the experience of the
war will increase the proportion of women to men in the community,
and from that a number of very important sociological effects follow.
The increase in disproportion of the sexes must have a fundamental
effect, not only upon marriage, but also upon other matters which arise
out of that state — for instance, upon family life, the growth of the
population, the relations between the sexes from an economic stand-
point. Also the experience of the war will mean that at its conclusion
there will be an increase in the number of women requiring work for
wages. It is very difficult to say, even approximately, what the
number may be, but personally I rather doubt Dr. Phillips' estimate.
I should not imagine that the number of extra women working for
wages, based on experience up to date, will be anything like one million.
We have to decide what I think are three very important questions :
(1) the basis of suitable occupations for women's employment ; (2)
the type of suitable women for those employments ; and (3) the
basis of payment for the work which has to be done.

As to the basis of suitable occupations. My own view, for what
it is worth, is that this problem could be solved with very little trouble.
I think a careful study of the census returns for the last 50 years would
help to solve the problem of the basis of suitability. We could safely
conclude that the occupations which, according to the census, show a
steady and persistent increase in the number of women employed are
suitable occupations for the extension of women's labour. As to the
second point— suitable women for such employments. I am treading

54

here on dangerous ground, and I shall probably cut right across Dr.
Phillips' opinions, but my own view is that no married woman or
widow with a family should be employed. I feel very strongly that the
widow must be excluded, and the married woman with a family also,
even if the husband is one of the unfortunate men disabled in the war.
Looking at it from the point of view of the community purely I would
insist that, because the future of the community depends upon the
children, the community should see to the proper endowment of the
mothers of our race. As to the basis of payment. On this point I
confess I am somewhat disappointed with the paper. To my mind,
Dr. Phillips has not tackled this difficult question, and I am sure she
will agree that because it is difficult that is no reason why it should
not be tackled. I thought she was going to deal with it when I read
that part of her paper in which she refers to the importance of redeeming
the promises to the men, while not doing anything, if we can help it, to
injure the interests of the women. I think we must face it from the
point of view that, as far as we can see at present, the pre-war standard
for fixing wages as between men and women is likely to remain. The
pre-war standard, roughly, regarded the average man as merely a
channel through which a certain amount of money passed which was
necessary to keep the community going. He was not paid so much per
week purely and simply because he worked so many hours, but because
he was looked upon as a person who was going to keep not only himself
but several other people, while the average woman was not in that
position. Before the war the situation was that the average man
supported, roughly, five people, and the average woman one and a half
people. We may be certain that as a result of the war that proportion
will be disturbed, and that there will be an upward tendency as regards
the responsibilities of working women. That fact alone would justify
a reconsideration of the whole question of women's wages, but it does
not get us away from the fundamental basis upon which wages of men
and women are fixed.

Accepting the extension of women's employment in industries
previously open to them and their introduction into industries pre-
viously recruited entirely by men, we are faced with the important
question of maintaining, and possibly of increasing, the rates of wages
in these industries. War experience justifies the conclusion, I think,
that employers will not be eager to disturb the pre-war practice of
paying women a less wage because they are women, and Dr. Phillips
very rightly emphasises the importance of undertaking now the question
of organisation. In this connection we should profit by experience
and avoid the setting up of separate organisations on a basis of sex.
Women should be encouraged to join the Unions on precisely the same
conditions as men. They should enjoy the same benefits and under-
take the same responsibilities. In my own organisation this has been
so for years, and, on the whole, the results have justified the accept-
ance of dual membership. I thoroughly agree that both sexes should
be adequately represented on the governing bodies of the Unions,

55

central and local, but neither women nor men should be elected
because of sex, but because of their suitability. In a union with a
dual membership, one of the chief dangers to be guarded against is
that of the general interest being made subordinate to that of sex.
Hence, while I do not disagree with Dr. Phillips when she says " there
must also be fuller representation of women by women on the govern-
ing bodies of the unions," I urge most strongly that wherever possible
women and men shall be elected to responsible positions by the whole
membership.

I heartily agree with Dr. Phillips when she warns us to pay attention
to the " agency of welfare work." We all desire satisfactory working
conditions. Rest rooms for the men as well as the women, and all
the other appurtenances which go to make our working lives more
pleasant. But efforts are being made to professionalise welfare work,
and the most effective way by which the Trade Unions can counteract
this tendency is to pay greater attention to working conditions, and
demand to be heard in regard to them. But this opens up the
fundamental problem of industrial control which it would not be right
to develop on the present occasion.

MR. STUART BUNNING (Postmen's Federation) : In the Cotton
Weavers' Amalgamation the difficulty of wages has been got over,
and men and women receive the same rates — but the word ' rate '
is very misleading. Men and women do not get the same money
even in that industry. Are we to assume that in fixing rates we must
have a system of piecework in all occupations ? If we have bodies
to assess the suitability of women and men for different classes of work,
to fix wages, and so on, we are getting so near to so-called Scientific
Management that we shall not know the difference.

MR. A. G. CARTER (Coventry Trades Council) : The questions which
Mr. Newlove says we must settle are women's questions, and they
must decide them. The unions must realise that women are going
to stop in industry, and if they are wise they will get them into the
unions and use their power to get the same standard of wages and
conditions for women as for men, and so eliminate undercutting and
competition between the sexes. Whether women are to go to work
is a question for them to decide. There are large numbers of married
women in industry to-day who are there not for economic reasons
but for the love of it, and they will stop there. The question should
be looked at from a sensible point of view, regarding women not as
inferior beings but as equals.

MR. JESSE ARGYLE (Working Men's Club and Institute Union) :
Dr. Phillips referred to the proposal of the W.E.A. for part time attend-
ance at school for all children up to 18 ; I believe this is coming, and
it would make a great difference in regard to employment for adults,
not only in withdrawing children from factories and workshops, but

56

also in employing thousands of women for teaching, and many other
developments in our educational system will absorb a large number
of women. There are some employments not suitable for women ;
but bad conditions in factories are largely due to the apathy of the
workers themselves. There is no reason why the conditions of the
bulk of employments should not be made so good that they would
be quite fit for women.

MR. H. E. CLAY (Leeds Trades Council) : I think that the position
taken up by the London and Provincial Vehicle Workers' Union,
to which Dr. Phillips referred, was a fairly sensible one — that is, first,
to secure the reinstatement of all old employees and, second, to argue
that the conditions are of such a nature that the job is unsuitable for
women. In this district, and more especially in Leeds, in normal times,
there are duties extending over a period of 14 to 16 hours, and men
have to turn out at 3-15 a.m., and sometimes earlier, to get to work ;
in certain cases they get two meals in about three hours, and then go
eight hours before another meal. Taking this into consideration,
and the stress of weather, I would not like my wife or sister to be
employed at it. The conditions are wrong, but the conditions are
in existence ; and if women remain in the industry for a protracted
period it will have a bad effect on future generations. I do not agree
with total exclusion if women are paid the same wages as men for the
same work, but this is not the case in any town in the country. I have
a return from 90 towns where women are employed ; in some towns
they are getting the same rate, but less bonus ; in the North, generally,
they start at the men's minimum and stop there. There are 11,000
women at present in tramway work, and this will constitute a serious
question for the men. We have no complaint except from the purely
physical point of view, if they are treated not as women but as tramway
conductors.

Miss B. THOMAS (Postal and Telegraph Clerks' Association) : I wish
to dissociate myself from many of Mr. Newlove's remarks. In my
opinion, the State are not paying the higher rates of pay earned by
women nowadays. The only thing the men are entitled to do is to
organise and to see that women do not undercut wages, and then the
most efficient men or women will get the posts.

MR. EDGERTOX (London Society of Compositors) : Dr. Phillips has
been quite candid in telling us what exactly is at the back of women's
minds respecting the Government's pledge that trade union rules
should be reinstated after the war. This is the first time the women's
advocates have told us plainly and clearly that this cannot be, and
apparently they are going to see that the Government does not keep
its pledge. There is one great danger : the trade unions who were
responsible for the pledge are very much depleted, owing to the enor-
jnous number of men called to the colours, and the women who are

57

now in industry have got there owing to national necessity. The
big trade unions must consider what their members will say when
they come back and find their old positions occupied by women, possibly
at less wages.

THE CHAIRMAN : As no one has yet spoken for the textile trades,
in which women are largely employed, and as I represent a society of
which about 97 per cent, of the members are women, I hope that
the conference will allow me to make a few comments. It is scarcely
true to say that married women would not be in industry if it were not
for the strain of economic circumstances — the facts are against it.
Dr. Phillips admits that in Lancashire, in the cotton industry, the
wages of women are high, and in that industry are the largest number
of married women. She also said that women must be organised by
women organisers if they are to be gained in full numbers, but the
women have been more largely and better organised in the cotton
than in any other industry in the country, and by men organisers.
Further on she said that women, even in the cotton industry, have not
claimed an equal share in management with the men. They have not
claimed this, but they, have the right when they care to exercise it —
our committees and official positions are open to female members
equally with the men, and they take their place on many committees
with the men. On my own committee there is a majority of women,
and they show as much intelligence and grasp of business as the men.

DR. PHILLIPS' REPLY.

To take the Chairman's comments first : the facts are not against
me. In the cotton industry the trade union is the oldest one on a large
scale in the country, and women were in that employment from the
beginning, which creates a rather different situation from that of the
mass of unskilled and semi-skilled labour that exists in other parts of the
country. I quite agree that the cotton industry has organised the workers
without having women organisers, but they have not yet succeeded in
developing amongst the women that consciousness of the importance
of trade union work that we would like to see, and this is reflected
in the fact that they do not come forward to take the administrative
posts. As to wages : I do not say that the prevailing wage for women
now is about 20s., as there are far more women above that wage than
there used to be above the old wage of 11s. The figure is not an average,
but the figure at which the greatest number of women are paid — and
there are a very large number above it. Women taking men's places
are, on the whole, getting well above that rate ; but of course the
biggest increase of women in industry has been in the industries in
which they were previously employed ; so that while it is true that
20s. is not such a big increase when we consider what it will buy, the
hopes of women are very much higher than ever because of the possi-
bility of getticg really big wages. In munition factories some are

58

getting £2 to £3, and even £4, and that is a very big change from the
old idea, and I am quite sure that women's independence has distinctly
increased. Now that women get more money they feel very differently
about their work ; they will not go back to the old position.

Some of you men are really hypocrites, and the women do not take
you quite seriously when you talk about your great concern for us. The
treatment of women, industrially or socially, by men in the past has not
been such that women take so much notice of what you say on this score.
If you honestly said " We fear you will pull down wages " we should
have a great deal more respect for you. Of course women should not
be employed on tramway shifts that take them to work at 3 o'clock
in the morning, but that does not mean that all employment of the
kind is unsuitable. Look at the employment that women take part
in to-day — the horrible little sweat-shops, the abominable conditions
under which they work, the tin box making trade and the jam factory,
the long hours and the hideous conditions, for low wages for which
they cannot possibly get enough to eat. Do you think these really
compare well with tram and 'bus conducting ? It is one thing to make
a fuss about that — but if you made a fuss about the other as well
I should have much more sympathy with you. As to the exclusion
of women, it will not work, and is unfair. Do married women not work
in the textile trades because of their economic position ? They know
their families can get a great deal more of the necessaries of life if they
are at work than if they are not, and I do not think that the ordinary
wage of the working man is so large that there is no economic necessity
for the wives not to work. The vast majority of women do not wish
to go out to work if they can get along comfortably in their homes
without doing so, but there are women who are better at work than at
home. Some find it better for themselves and their families to make
a good wage at their particular work than to stay at home looking
after children, which may not happen to be the job suited to their
temperament : it is no more a fact that every woman is a good house-
keeper and mother than that every man is a good painter. One other
point — the plan set out in the paper is a fairly definite one as to the
question of conditions in industry, and it is a practical thing to put
forward, but it does not necessarily mean that because you say you
want equal pay for equal work you must have piecework for
everything. Men have time rates, and if the men in any occupation
have a time rate you must also reckon what it shall be for women.
Whatever plan you have in various kinds of work you can have the
same plan for men and women ; there is no need for any difference
in practice. Such Boards as we suggest would be the best sort of body
to decide what to do. In regard to Mr. Newlove's remarks, I do not
think that you can say there was a definite pre-war standard for
fixing wages between men and women. Wages were not fixed on such
a definite standard, but the men protected their standard rate against
the vast mass of unorganised unskilled labour, both of men and women,
especially against women, by their general exclusion from the skilled

59

trades, and in future they will have to revise this. I want to be quite
clear now. The trade unions have a right to the reinstatement of their
rules, and it would be madness to give up a single one of the rules
unless they were convinced that the alternative was good. One of the
speakers rather implied that I had given away a deeply rooted plot
on the part of women workers in this matter. I do not believe that
there is one union that really thinks it would be to its advantage to
get every single rule reinstated that they had before the war. What
they have to do is to make a good bargain, and, as far as women are
-concerned, all we want is that women shall be admitted on a basis
which will keep up the standard rate of wages for men and women.

60
THIRD SESSION.

THE PLACE OF AGRICULTURE IN
INDUSTRY.

By Mr. C. S. ORWIN

(Director of the Institute for Research in Agricultural Economics,
University of Oxford).

For some years before the great war the feeling was growing among
the urban population of England that all was not well with our country-
side, and this feeling may be said to have materialised for the first
time in a constructive form during the Land Campaign of the present
Prime Minister in 1909. It is not necessary to dwell upon the causes
which led to the decline of British agriculture. In the main they are
the outcome of a belief in the continuance of a condition of peace
among the greater nations of the world, a belief which grew in strength
year by year since last we were at war with our neighbours, and in
proportion as the bonds by which the workers of all nations are united
appeared every year to be drawn tighter. While peace lasted, and-the
sea routes remained open, we could safely depend upon receiving the
half of our food supplies from abroad.

With the war it has been brought home to us, with a force that
nothing but war could have given, that upon the freedom of these
sea-routes depends our very existence. We have realised for the first
time how the application of science to methods of destruction might,
in certain conditions, bring us to serious want if not to actual starvation.
Now that our belief in a condition of unbroken peace has been shattered,
we are bound to consider the question whether our national policy
will not have to be re-shaped upon a different foundation ; and among
the many after-war problems, nothing of greater importance than the
reconstruction of rural life could occupy the public mind.

The only alternative policy to that of depending upon foreign
countries for one-half of our food supplies is that we should grow
enough food ourselves to make us independent in a crisis. Whether
these islands could produce enough food to maintain the whole
population under normal conditions is doubtful ; but it is confidently
asserted by those who have examined the problem that under a system
of extended tillage we should have no difficulty in keeping the people
of the country in a condition of reasonable health and efficiency even
in the face of a complete blockade. Agriculture is not an industry
in which changes can quickly be introduced. It took the Germans
a generation to organise their farming so that they should be practically
self-supporting in war-time even with a rapidly increasing population,
and it will be years before we can get within measurable distance
of the same position, even if we set to work for that end at once. But

61

if the maximum amount of land were to be gradually converted from
pasture into tillage, not only would our normal supply of food be very
largely increased, but immediately upon the suggestion of an outbreak
of war a scheme of war-cropping, designed to produce the maximum
of food for direct consumption, could be put into action.

However, the farmer is not likely to undertake the risk of an extension
of his arable farming under the conditions which have prevailed during
the past generation. Grass farming is safe and pleasant ; it requires
less capital and less labour than arable farming, and it is less dependent
for success or failure upon the seasons. Thus, unless there are sufficient
grounds for believing that the growth of the world-population, combined
with the exhaustion of the supply of uncultivated wheat lands, will
cause prices to remain in the future at a higher level than those pre-
vailing in pre-war days, the conclusion is forced upon us that an
extension of the tillage area of Great Britain, for the production of
more food, will only be brought about through artificial stimulus.
Nor can that artificial stimulus be applied simply by the condition of
war-prices. Even with wheat at 80s. per quarter, and the price of
bread advanced by 100 per cent., farmers have found- it impossible,
in a moment, to take advantage of the prices to grow more food. The
labour is not there, the horses are not there, the implements are not
there, and the technical skill is not there, so that to leave the breaking-up
of grass until the emergency arises is to court failure. In dealing with
this question of policy there must be no hesitation and no half -measures.
If we are going to aim at increasing our own food supply to the extent
of being self-supporting during a war, we must set on foot immediately
some policy which will give the British farmer sufficient confidence
in the market to induce him to bring about a re-conversion of large
areas of grass-land into tillage.

It is for the working men of Britain to say whether they will apply
this stimulus to the farmer, or whether they will trust to our ability
to keep the sea routes open in all circumstances ; the former course
might cost the nation a few millions annually, the latter — if the trust
were not fulfilled — might bring the people face to face with starvation.
This is the greatest question, probably, which we shall be called upon
to decide in the near future. It is a question particularly for the
urban industrial population, for. as the Germans have proved, in a
time of national scarcity it is the town-dwellers who suffer most, since
no system of control can prevent the rural worker from consuming his
own vegetables and putting his own fowl in the pot. Let the great
industrial classes realise that they have got to face this question and
to make up their minds what the national policy is to be. It has
not yet been put to them plainly and forcibly, but there is no doubt
that the sooner they realise the nature of the decision they have got
to make, the better for their future it will be.

Whatever the decision to which the nation may come in this question
of the reorganisation of agriculture from the outside, much is still
waiting to be done for it by means of internal reorganisation before it

62

can take its proper place amongst national industries. That position
can never be attained until farming can be said to be taking a much
fuller advantage of scientific knowledge, both as applied to technical
processes, and to management, so as to produce more nearly the
maximum of food for the nation and also to offer a better life to the
worker. At the present time neither of these conditions is satisfied.
We find that over far too large a proportion of the country the general
standard of farm management is below that of the best farms, with
the inevitable result that only a low standard of production is achieved
and the condition of life of those concerned is correspondingly low.
In this way the industry shows itself unattractive alike to the capitalist
and to the worker to a degree which distinguishes it from all other
industries.

It seems necessary, therefore, to examine the organisation of the
farming industry to see in what respects it differs from that of other
productive enterprises, and to what extent benefit might result from
a reorganisation of the methods of agricultural production. We find
that English farming is in the hands of a large number of small
capitalists ; some styles of management, such as fruit farming, call
for a larger investment of money than others, such as sheep farming ;
but no man can embark on any kind of farm management in this
country without capital, so that the industry is closed to the man who
has nothing but his brains to invest. These small capitalists are men
equipped for the most part with a high degree of technical knowledge
in certain directions ; they understand the handling of the soil, and
know when it is in a proper state for cultural operations, and when
these should not be attempted ; they also possess that wonderful
' eye for stock ' which enables them to appreciate differences
imperceptible to any but those who have spent their early days on
the land. But in other directions no less important to the full develop-
ment of farming the farmer's knowledge is often much less complete.
His training in the commercial side of his business is usually very
inadequate ; his knowledge of accounts is often so slight that he cannot
prepare a statement of his financial position upon which his bankers
could act in making him advances of capital, nor can he produce a
profit and loss account upon which the Inland Revenue authorities
can assess him to income-tax, while the fact that scientific book-keeping
affords the only reliable means by which to control and develop an
enterprise has never been realised by him at all.

Again, he is quite unfamiliar with the discoveries of modern agri-
cultural science ; the action of manures, the relative values of feeding-
stuffs, the physiology of plant and animal life, the nature and control
of animal and plant diseases, — all these things, important though they
be, are quite outside the equipment of the average farmer. Moreover
the prevailing system of weights and measures, and that of market
customs, operate against the producer and too much in favour of the
distributor. A bushel of wheat may be anything from 60 Ib. to 72 Ib. ;
beef and mutton are sold by the head instead of by weight, which

63

practice gives an enormous advantage to the butcher, who can test his
judgment by the scales ; and in one market in the Eastern Counties
butter is still sold by the yard. Again, we find that in most parts of
England the size of farms and of fields is such as to render the use of
machinery difficult, if not impossible. Holdings are too small to
warrant the investment of capital in labour-saving appliances, which
would stand idle for the greater part of the year, and the sub-division
of the farms themselves into small enclosures makes the employment
of steam or petrol-driven machinery both troublesome and expensive.*

Lastly, under the present organisation of the agricultural industry
we find that the position of the farm worker in most parts of the country
compares very unfavourably with that of men engaged in other indus-
tries. His hours are long, his wages are low, his housing is often bad,
his opportunities are very few, and the consequent difficulty of attracting
men to the land, or even of retaining those already working on it, has
become notorious.

In emphasising these weaknesses in agricultural organisation no slur
is intended upon those engaged in the industry. Farming has been
hampered by tradition to an extent unknown in other and newer forms
of industry, and progress has been hindered by the difficulty of bringing
together men whose occupations tend to keep them always apart, so
that any form of combination either by the farmers or their men for
the sake of their mutual protection or advancement is less easily
accomplished than in urban industries, where all the parties concerned
may be living within an area comprised in a few square miles.

Now there is a tendency to regard these weaknesses in agricultural
organisation as being inherent to the industry, and most of the measures
which have been attempted or proposed for their alleviation are based
on a recognition of them as being something inevitable, only to be
palliated so far as may be. Most County Councils maintain an official
known as the County Agricultural Organiser, whose duty it is to
bring to the farmer results of scientific discovery by telling him how to
feed his stock and Crops, and how to combat plant and animal diseases.
The Board of Agriculture has put in motion machinery for the creation
of live-stock societies, which bring the services of high-class deeding
stock within the reach of small farmers ; it has also made attempts,
at various times, to establish State banking institutions for giving
to the industry the financial assistance which farmers alone amongst
producers have difficulty in obtaining. Lastly, the needs of the worker
have been recognised, and attempts have been made to increase his
income and provide him with the opportunity of rising in his calling
by the statutory provision of allotments and small holdings.

All this work is very valuable, and much more of it is called for,
but at the same time it is important to bear in mind that such work

* Few people realise the waste of land in this country caused by unnecessary
fences. In Oxfordshire alone the roadside hedges occupy an area of 1,500 acres.

64

cannot be regarded as tending to remove the disabilities of the agri-
cultural industry ; it will certainly tend to mitigate them, but to rest
content with efforts made along these lines is to rest content with a
transitional and incomplete system of organisation. The occasional
visits of the most skilful County Agricultural Organiser cannot supply
deficiencies in the farmer's scientific knowledge, nor can adventures
in speculative banking on the part of the State replace in a really
satisfactory manner the farmer's ignorance of commercial systems.
The provision of allotments, too, is a recognition of the inadequacy
of the labourer's wage ; and small holdings, though they may provide
a stepping-stone to higher things for a few thrifty men, will do nothing
to help the great mass of farm workers, who are bound to remain workers
for wages all their lives. Changes intended to bring about a real
improvement in farming must be more radical than these.

What we have to recognise is that agriculture is still an unorganised
industry. It stands to-day midway between the small, self-contained
and self-sufficing enterprise, run in the main to grow food for the
occupier's household, and the industrial organisation under which the
workers are catering for the market and looking to a monetary return
to enable them to secure the necessaries of life. In an industrial
country the former condition is an anachronism, and what English
rural reformers have got to do if agriculture is ever to take its proper
place in our national economy is to direct all their energies towards
the evolution of a farming system based on large-scale production.
It is generally accepted that in other forms of enterprise large-scale
production is the only possible basis for organisation, and it is only by
the adoption of this standard in agriculture that this country can hope
to provide the maximum of food for the nation, and the greatest
reward for the worker.

Let us see how this system would act as a solution of the problems
already enumerated. The development of the large, industrialised
farm would at once open agriculture as a profession to the man with
nothing to invest beyond his energy and his ability. For nearly a
generation State-aided agricultural colleges and the agricultural
departments of the Universities have offered opportunitfes to men to
equip themselves in the science and practice of farming, and numbers
of young men have availed themselves of them. A few of these men
who were able to command capital have started farming in this country,
and others, have found openings in the growth of a demand for specially
qualified men to act as lecturers, as the need for instruction in agri-
cultural sciences became more generally recognised. But the greater
number of those without capital have been compelled to emigrate,
either to those countries where land is to be obtained, or else to manager-
ships in joint-stock enterprises engaged in some form of tropical
agriculture — tea, rubber, indigo, and so on. Thus, the new and great
force which should have been brought to bear on food production at
home has been lost to the country. The English farmer does not
employ managers, the scale of his operations would hardly justify this

65

course, and the landlord engaged in running a home farm is usually
content to employ as bailiff a man who is nothing more than an elderly
farm labourer, and who has had no opportunity of learning anything
more than the practical side of farm work. Such a man, though not
infrequently put in charge of farming capital running into thousands
of pounds, rarely commands a wage of more than thirty shillings or
two pounds per week, and the employer gets from him work of a standard
corresponding to the standard of pay. With large scale production
would come a demand for trained men to act as managers of departments
and as scientific advisers, and many men who have that love of farming
inborn in most people, but who never give a serious thought to its
indulgence, would turn to agriculture as a profession just as they now
turn to engineering and other vocations, and in this way a new and
powerful force would be brought to bear upon the industry.

Not only would the technical management of farming be greatly
stimulated by large-scale production, but the commercial organisation
would gain enormously. The study of markets and of marketing
would form an important branch of the work. The middleman is
not always the rapacious exploiter of producer and consumer that
he is so often represented as being, for not infrequently he is quite as
ignorant as the farmer of changes in supply and demand which occur
outside the narrow circle in which he moves ; but however this may be,
the big-scale enterprise would be to a large extent independent of him,
and would be able to place its foods on the best market, while it would
study simultaneously the questions of grading, packing, and trans-
porting produce, the difficulties surrounding which are quite beyond
the grasp of the small producer.

The financial organisation of urban industries could be applied
equally to agriculture if the scale of operations warranted, and with
the same beneficial results. The farmer usually dismisses the question
of book-keeping with the remark that he has no time for accounts
and no money to pay a book-keeper, and so in directing his management
he is deprived of the great assistance provided by cost-accounting, nor
can he make the eloquent appeal through the balance-sheet when
seeking to finance his operations. It is the habit of farmers to obtain
their financial help by taking long credits with their merchants and
tradespeople, a method far more expensive than the risk demands,
or than many of the farmers realise. The large-scale enterprise with
its staff of accountants would find in its books the surest indications
of profitable developments, and would be able to influence in the
direction of English agriculture the flow of capital just now attracted
to rubber-growing in the Tropics, or to other industries in all parts
of the world.

The development of the large, industrialised farm should therefore
go far to increase the amount of technical skill bearing upon agriculture,
and thus to increase production. It should also reduce the cost.
Just as the majority of our roads were laid out and constructed for
slow-moving vehicles and light transport, and are in consequence

66

ill-adapted for modern conditions of locomotion, so the small farms
and smaller inclosures into which the country is divided make it
difficult for the farmer to take advantage of modern mechanical
inventions. It has already been pointed out that the numbers of
unnecessary hedges and fences not only waste valuable land, but also
hinder the performance of mechanical operations. Another great
hindrance in the path of the small farmer who wishes to take advantage
of mechanical power is the fact that the scale of his production does
not justify the use of his capital in these labour-saving appliances.
The process of hay-making, for example, has been revolutionised
during the last twenty years by the introduction of machinery, so that
on the best farms the grass is not touched by manual labour from the
time when it is cut to the time it reaches the mouths of the live-stock
which consume it. At the same time, the great majority of farmers
are unable to avail themselves of this process simply because the
interest and depreciation on the capital invested in the various machines
outweigh the saving of labour on the small areas to be dealt with.
Farmers who are thus compelled to forego these results of modern
invention are also deprived of another very considerable advantage
which helps to make the use of machinery so valuable on the farm.
This is the concentration of labour on any particular job requiring to
be done at speed. No farm manager can control the weather, but the
big organisation can make itself far less dependent upon it than the
small one. It is a common experience on heavy land that the soil
is too wet for ploughing in the late part of the winter, whilst a few
days of dry weather will bake it so hard that no implements can work
it. In the short time at his disposal between these two conditions,
the farmer may have been able to do no more than to draw a few
furrows across the fields, whereas if he had at his command the use of
steam or other form of mechanical power, he could probably get the
whole of the work done at the most favourable moment, working
double shifts, if necessary, and even day and night.

We now come to the last and most important consideration of all,
namely, the position of the agricultural worker under a system of
large-scale production. Under the present system he is very largely
a Jack-of-all-trades, badly paid and often badly housed. It is not
surprising, therefore, that there should be a constant stream of migration
from the country on the part of the younger and more enterprising
men. While it is not possible or even desirable to check this movement
entirely, the fact is recognised that the country should not thus be
drained of the strongest and most intelligent of the men. Attempts
to deal with the situation have had little effect ; the result of the offer
of allotments has been, as statistics show, that only where wages
are unusually low is there any real demand for the allotment ; the
same would be true of the organisation of ' home industries ' for
labourers, and more particularly for their wives, for these are nothing
more or less than ' sweated industries.' The advocates of these systems
say, in effect, " we recognise that you cannot earn enough at agriculture

67

to keep yourself and your family by working all day, and our remedy
for the situation is to offer you the opportunity of working half the
night."

What, then, would be the position of the labourer in the large-scale
enterprise ? In the first place he could specialise ; instead of being
a Jack-of -all-trades and moving from one job to another he could
attach himself to one department and stay there. As a specialist
he would be able to command a better salary. .It is a common ex-
perience in these days to see a small engine installed for working the
barn machinery of the farm. It probably runs only for a few hours
a week, and the man in charge can hardly expect to be remunerated
as an engineer ; on the large farm one man, or possibly more, would
be employed continuously with the machinery, and would earn the
pay of a mechanic. This opportunity to specialise would further provide
the labourer with the chance, almost unknown at present, of rising
in his profession, for there would always be a demand for foremen
and even managers at the heads of departments, and these would be
recruited from the ranks of the workers just as in any other industry.
In this way the economic independence of the farm worker would be
assured. On the big farm, too, combination for social advancement
would be possible, and in the stir and bustle of a great enterprise
much of the monotony of rural life would vanish.

A confirmation of the suggestion that large-scale production would
increase the output of food per man, and would thus allow of higher
wages, is to be found in the interesting paper by Mr. T. H. Middleton.
C.B., on ",The Recent Development of German Agriculture." In this
article it is shown that the production of food per hundred acres in
Germany is much greater than in England ; on the other hand, if the
number of workers be brought into the account, it appears that the
production per man is fully twenty per cent, higher in this country. Now
in England less than 16 per cent, of the land consists of holdings under
fifty acres, whereas in Germany nearly one-half of the total cultivated
area (48.5 per cent.) is made up of these units of production. It is
fair to assume that the greater opportunity for the employment of
horse labour and machinery on the larger holdings in this country
contribute to make the English farm labourer a more efficient workman
than his German equivalent, and that any development which will
increase still further the opportunities for using machinery will make
the labourer's toil still more productive. The comparative rates of
wages in the two countries provide further proof, unless, of course,
the German farmer is able to retain a greater share of the profits of
agriculture. With the increase in the efficiency of labour, and the
consequent rise in wages, would come the solution of the housing
problem without resort to uneconomic means, for so soon as the farm
labourer can offer a commercial rent for his house, the small investor
will not be backward in supplying the demand.

The objections to the factory principle from the point of view of the
social and intellectual well-being of the worker will at once occur in

68

considering the policy of industrial development which is suggested
here as the means of giving agriculture its proper place amongst our
national industries. But whilst the utmost care would be needed in
steering clear of the many pitfalls which would beset the path of the
organiser for big-scale production in farming as in other things, the
farm manager would have the advantage of the experience of the great
trades and trades unions to draw upon, and to help him to set his course
fair. Moreover it must be remembered that agriculture, however
highly organised and scientifically managed, would of its very nature
be free from the monotony which tends to become inseparable from
' scientific management ' in industry. The work in the open field,
changing with the seasons, the daily association with the live-stock,
in fact, the close contact with nature in every form, — all these things will
make it impossible for the farm worker ever to lose that personal
interest in his work which every man must feel if he is to make the
best use of his training and of the qualities born in him.

The industrialisation of agriculture has therefore possibilities such
as no other industry can afford, for while the development of large-
scale production would allow full scope for the brains and energy of
the business man, it would not be attended by the disadvantages
which follow upon industrialisation in large towns. The moment
has come when the inadequate production of the country, and the
pressing need for improvement, have been brought home not only
to those concerned in agriculture but to every man and woman in
England ; and if full advantage is taken of the opportunities which
this realisation brings, the whole organisation of farming will be so
reconstructed as to make it one of the most profitable, as well as one
of the most attractive of professions.

In speaking on his paper. Mr. Orwin emphasised once more the two
points : (1) that it was for the nation as a whole to consider the questions
relating to the increase of our home-grown food supply ; (2) that a
complete reorganisation of the industry itself was essential for its success.
He urged that both these points are a matter of national policy, and
that particularly in regard to the former it rests with the people to
decide upon the form of policy which is to be the solution of the agri-
cultural problem. The country can only become self-supporting in
time of war if the tillage area is extended, and this will not be undertaken
unless the market outlook for cereals is more attractive to the farmer
in the future than it has been in the past. In ordinary times the farmer
would not produce sufficient food, but in the face of a situation like
that of to-day it would be possible, if we had the extra tillage, quickly
to inaugurate a system of national farming by which we could maintain
ourselves for several years. We should give up to a large extent
producing foods consumed by stock to make meat, and produce more
food directly consumable by the population, living largely upon our

69

cattle — that is, our capital invested in live-stock ; and by this means
we could make ourselves self-supporting for a very considerable period.
At the present time it takes about 6 Ibs. of corn food to produce 1 Ib.
of pork. In a time of emergency we should aim at eating as much
of the corn ourselves as possible and live upon our stock of live-stock
in the country. He thought that during an emergency we could
look forward to making ourselves quite independent of imported foods
during a time of complete blockade, if we had a larger area of arable
land. The nation must decide whether it will face the risk of an
interruption in its imports of food, or whether it will try to secure itself
by stimulating home production by some form of permanent guarantees,
such as the temporary measures recently promised by the Prime
Minister.

QUESTIONS.

Question : Is it possible to turn grass into arable land and still produce
milk?

Answer : It has been demonstrated many times that, by the readjust-
ment of farm management in particular cases, arable crops can be grown
and dairy farming carried on successfully.

Question : Does the lecturer think that large scale farming would
be as productive as a comprehensive system of small holdings with
implements and distribution worked co-operatively ?

Answer : I am a warm advocate of co-operation, but anything done
with small farms organised co-operatively could be done as well, or
better, with large farms. There would be the difficulty of the
simultaneous demand for implements owned co-operatively — everybody
would want them at the same time.

Question : The lecturer said that the housing question was one of
low wages. Having regard to the enormous amount of money required
for higher wages, does not this lead up to nationalisation of the farming
industry ?

Answer : I am sure that it is a question of wages. The landowner
will tell you that he cannot afford to build cottages for 2s. 6d. a week
rent, and labourers cannot pay more. Of course nationalisation
may come. Any policy for the development of farming must depend
for its success upon the way the people in the industry come into line.
If they don't come into line, we shall have to have nationalisation.

70

Question : Would industrial farming increase the number of people
employed on the land if machinery and implements were extensively
used?

Answer : I think so. You would need more people to deal with it.
But it is doubtful whether you could get a largely increased population
on the land without resorting to uneconomic means of production.
You might by returning to spade labour, but this would reduce the
standard of living very considerably.

Question : As capital can get a better return in other industries,
how can it be induced to come into farming ?

Answer : The statement that other industries pay better cannot be
supported. I should say that there are few better-paying industries
than farming.

Question : Then how do you account for the lack of capital ?
Answer : By the lack of commercial organisation.

Question : Are there any statistics to show the amount of money
earned in farming at the present time, and are these earnings on the
increase ?

Answer : There are no statistics ; but I think the upward move in
prices shows that farming must be becoming more profitable. I have
some recent figures showing the net returns per man employed in
agriculture, which give a total of about £130 to £140 per year.

DISCUSSION.

MR. ALDERMAN R. MORLEY (Workers' Union) :

I am one of those who have only had contact with the land on the
lines which Mr. Orwin has condemned, as I had the misfortune to be
born in an agricultural district. In the latter part of the paper he says
that, however you organise agriculture, you will never, in his opinion,
get the workers in agriculture to be so uninterested in their work
as the worker in the factory and the mill ; this is the difference between
agriculture and all other undertakings, and, because of this, I think
the suggestion of large scale farming is not the wisest suggestion.
Our outlook has to be governed by the fact that we are living on an
island, that our area is restricted, and that therefore intensive
culture would appear to be necessary rather than large farm culture.
All the improvements of the latter can be got by co-operation.

71

Mr. Or win mentions the fact that we have a lot of waste land owing to
hedges — you can do away with hedges under co-operative farming,
just the same as under large farm production ; that is a question merely
of detail, and is not affected in the ultimate utilisation of the land to
the best advantage. The objection that implements co-operatively
used would be wanted by different people in the co-operative society
at the same time is answered by the fact that just the same machinery
for the same acreage would be needed on a large farm. In very many
parts where reasonable effect has been given to the Small Holdings Acts
the co-operative use of machinery has been and is being worked to
advantage. He also contends that, even with co-operative use of
machinery, during a large part of the year the machinery would be
idle — it would be just as idle on the large farm. Generally speaking,
the two things that seem to make the paper hardly the best solution
for our present problem is that farming is quite a different undertaking
from all other enterprises because of the effect of contact with the land
upon the worker, and that whatever benefit can be got by large farming
can be got by co-operative farming properly organised.

I think that the failure of farming is caused by the lack of permanency
in tenure, and it is no good endeavouring to find a solution under private
control ; it is absolutely futile so long as an ordinary person can use
or misuse the land in our restricted area to suit his own whims, fancies,
or financial outlook, regardless of the welfare of the people. Our
first care should be to restore the land to the nation — no artificial rules
or orders of this system or that policy will be effective unless the nation
owns and governs its own area and the policy is dictated from that
standpoint.

I think the principle behind the large farm idea is wrong : a nation
should not organise its agricultural industry on the basis that somebody
is going to make a big profit, but it ought to organise its food pro-
duction on the lines of its national needs, for the building up of its
national life and to keep us together as a nation. It seems to me that
we are pottering about and tinkering with half-measures instead of
getting to the dead bottom level, making the land serve the people
and not pay John Smith 10 per cent, or 20 per cent.

Then with regard to the question of housing : it is perfectly true
what the lecturer said. The farmer cannot afford to build and get
only Is. or 2s. 6d. rent — but why cannot he ? Because the foolish
fellow does not pay sufficient wages. He wants wages low, so that
he can put his produce on the market and get a good profit ; and if
he invests money in cottages he also wants a good return on that.
The whole thing is preposterous, and, as a nation, we have to realise
this one great essential — at any rate if we are going to continue as a
nation — that the land must be the people's and must be used for the
people ; and that the principle of production for private profit must go,
and the policy be introduced, whether it be co-operative or otherwise,
of giving the man who is doing the actual work the direct reward

72

for his labour without the interposition of capitalism. Whether we
are going to have large farms or small co-operative farms — whichever
policy is pursued — the anomaly which exists to-day must be removed.
Let us make ourselves self-supporting as a nation, and produce our
commodities for the well-being of the community and not for private
profit.

MR. A. E. MABBS (Coventry Trades Council) : I was surprised to
hear a plea for the uprooting of the present system of agriculture in
one part of Alderman Morley's speech and a plea for small holdings
in other parts. It seems that some people are unable to learn from the
past experience of this and other nations. We are intimately connected
through the war with a country which has tried small holdings, not for
a few years, but for generations, and there is not a more gigantic failure
in the world : the small holdings in France are made to pay, more or
less, but as a matter of fact they are mortgaged up to the hilt — they
are made to pay only by the labour of children from a very early age.
I do not desire our working class to enter into conditions of that kind.
We shall have to apply the same methods to agriculture as have proved
successful in all other industries — that is, of large concerns properly
organised and managed. We shall get the best results by getting the
best brains to specialise.

MR. STUART BUXNING (Postmen's Federation) : It does not appear
to me that these problems can be dealt with except by bringing in the
State. Nationalisation will not solve everything, but when dealing
with the necessaries of life for the people, there is great reason for the
State to step in and to see that proper measures are taken. I had an
exhaustive enquiry undertaken as to housing conditions in rural
districts four years ago, and found that in a good many cases the
reason for insufficient housing was not because it would not pay to
build, but because the landlord would not sell the land. This difficulty
again brings us back to nationalisation.

MR. LIDDALL BRIDGE (Working Men's Club and Institute Union) :
The difficulty is that, before you can deal with the land you must get
possession of it, and at the present time that is impossible for the
ordinary man in certain parts of the country, because of the custom
of so-called " entail." Generally speaking there is no such thing as
entail in law in this country at the present time. If a landlord
has property, he has only the right to settle that property for
life and lives in being and for 21 years after. But he gets out of the
difficulty this way : if he has a son, he can leave it to him and to his
child when he is 21, but he can do no more ; and when the grandchild
is 21, his father will say to him " If you do not resettle this land, I will
let you starve." That is why we have what are called compound
settlements. The time has come when the land should be made free
in order that tilling could be made successful, and so that a man should

73

have a chance of looking forward to the time when he will be his own
landlord, because if he has that ambition he will put his best into the
land.

MR. W. B. NEVILLE (Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society) : We are
all anxious to see a larger number of people employed in the open air,
and to stop the drift from the countryside to the town, but if we have
large farms the number of people employed will most certainly not be
increased. I prefer a system of small holdings, co-operatively arranged
and administered, or, if you like, supervised by a Government Depart-
ment. The absence of compulsion in agricultural administration will
have to be remedied. To-day the farmer can grow what he likes,
or, if he likes, let the land go out of cultivation or use it for pleasure,
and there is no Government Department to say that he shall not do
so. Agricultural reformers tell us that we cannot make a man grow
this or that, and that it would be impossible to apply compulsion.
But during the war this is the only industry where compulsion has not
been applied on a large scale. If the millers are told what to do, and the
bakers, who turn the produce of the farmer into food, what to bake,
then it is all the more necessary that we should see that the farmer
grows what the country desires.

ME. A. STACEY (Mexboro' Trades Council) : The whole solution lies
in removing the influence of the landlord. In many districts the terms
of the tenancy impose conditions as to cropping the land upon farmers.
The landlord has no right to decide the crop to be grown, and under
State control he would have to be satisfied with fixing the rent only.
The land should be used from the point of view of the people, and not
from that of those who simply draw the rents.

MR. H. E. CLAY (Leeds Trades Council) : I am rather struck by Mr.
Orwin's point that we could not produce all the food we required,
but that we could adopt a system which would allow of modifications to
enable us to meet a crisis like the present one. I do not know what
position Mr. Orwin takes up as to whether it would not, after all, be
better as an alternative to use those portions of the world which are
best adapted for growing certain things, placing such regions under
international control.

MR. ORWIN'S REPLY.

Mr. Morley's opinions and mine are really not very wide apart, as
nearly everything that can be carried out with small holdings can be
carried out by large scale production. Nationalisation I will not touch
upon. As regards freehold : if you imagine farmers going into farms
of 5,000 or 10,000 acres, surely the first thing they would want would
be the freehold : a combination of individuals to work an industrial

74

farm would require this before putting in their capital. As to co-opera-
tive organisation : this, I think, would have a better effect on large
than on small farms ; the hay-making machinery could not be used
all the time, of course, but the one-acre man is obviously at a disadvan-
tage compared with the 500-acre man ; and if you have 500 one-acre
men you would have to move the machines about from place to place,
to an extent not necessary on a large farm, and thus lose a great
many quarter-days. Co-operative organisation could be just as
successful on large farms as on small holdings. As to the French
holdings : I had a conversation with a Belgian gentleman connected
with the Ministry of Agriculture in Brussels before the war, who
told me that the best element in the Flemish population was the
small-holders — they were no trouble at all, and were a very tine
race. * But,' he said, ' in another 50 years there will be none. In
England you have your manufacturing industries and your Colonies,
and you cannot hope to extend small holdings for that reason.
Our people are brought up to work on small holdings, but as soon as
they realise what can be done with an emigration ticket, we shall lose
the lot." I am still of the same opinion as to housing. I am sure
it is a question of putting the agricultural labourer into such a position
that he can pay an ordinary rent for a house. As to the question of
policy in dealing with the farmer : the report of Lord Milner's Com-
mittee of 1915 on the Increase of Food Production was the first occasion
when guaranteed prices were recommended, and in that report the
suggestion was made that, if this policy were carried out, the whole
of the land of the country should be scheduled and farmers should be
instructed as to what they should produce ; but such a policy could
not be adopted without giving the farmer some guarantee. As to the
landlord question : two hundred years ago landlords played a bigger
part than they do now, and that is the explanation of those clauses
in farm agreements telling the farmer how he must farm, to which
one speaker took exception. Originally they were not framed with
the intention of restriction, as the landlord was then the best farmer
in the district, and he was simply giving the tenant the benefit of- his
experience and helping him to the best advantage. Although there
are plenty of good landlords nowadays (which is a fact that some people
overlook) we know perfectly well that, taking them on the whole,
thev do not occupy the same position in agriculture to-day. The last
Agricultural Holdings Act removed the effect of that clause
restricting cropping, and at the present time the farmer has absolute
liberty to grow on his land what he pleases. The landlord is, as a matter
of fact, in rather a curious position : he is being told to play a larger
part in agriculture, and yet, on the other hand, every change in legisla-
tion makes it more and more difficult for him to take any active part
in agricultural development. I am sorry that speakers did not deal with
the question of a policy for the nation with regard to stimulating pro-
duction. I hoped that some of you would have dealt with the question
of guaranteed prices, and subsidies, and other unsound things which

75

some people think necessary. I do hope that although you have not
discussed these things here you will do so afterwards. The organisation
of the farm affects the workers on the farm, but does not affect the
nation : whether we are going to increase our home production
affects us all, and vitally. Mr. Clay suggested international agreements
to organise the production of the world so that every part produced
what it was best fitted to produce. Can we depend on international
peace and international agreements ? Is it better to take that risk,
or to adopt some otherwise uneconomic methods to make us inde-
pendent of international alliances ? The demand must come from you
if anything is to be done.

76
FOURTH SESSION.

THE POSITION OF THE RURAL
WORKER IN INDUSTRY.

By ARTHUR W. ASHBY

(Late Research Scholar in Agricultural Economics under the
Board of Agriculture).

Agriculture is still our greatest industry, but, strange to say, it is
yet organised on the small-scale system. Further, it has been to some
extent in a state of decline, and the prevailing conditions made it
necessary to run businesses on a system of low costs. Thus its em-
ployees have suffered from all the disadvantages of a small-scale
industry, while enjoying few of the supposed advantages of such a
system. During the last thirty years the employees of most farms
have not obtained opportunities for becoming craftsmen or developing
craft skill and ideals in any greater degree than most factory employees.
On a few farms where high class live-stock has been bred or reared,
or where vegetable and fruit growing has been developed, and on a
few dairy farms, or yet a very few mixed farms on which the
manager retained some ideals of cultivation, opportunities for developing
craft knowledge and skill have been open ; but even on these farms
remuneration has not always increased with skill and knowledge.

The prevailing sizes of English farms are indicated by this table :

Average Proportion

Size. Number. Total Acreage Size to Total

in Acres. Acreage.

50 to 100 acres 59,514 4,340,952 72 16.01

100 to 150 „ 31,860 3,940,343 123 14.53

150 to 300 „ 37,615 7,848,424 208 28.95

Over 300 acres 14,413 6,698,221 478 24.70

The number of employees varies with the type of business, but on
an average 4.8 persons, including farmers, are engaged on one hundred
acres.

Excluding farmers and their relatives, and women, approximately
three men per 100 acres are employed. On the smaller farms the
relatives of the farmer supply a much larger proportion of the labour

77

than on the larger farms. Thus, taking an average, employment on
farms will be approximately as follows : —

Men

per farm. Total.

59,514 farms of an average of 72 acres 1 59,514

31,860 „ „ „ 123 „ 3 95,580

37,615 ., „ „ 208 „.. 61 238,094

14,413 478 15 216,195

609,383
Total Males employed in Agriculture in England and

Wales, 1911 609,105

Where a high ratio of capital is employed, as in the case of com-
mercially developed vegetable and fruit production, or sometimes in
dairying, and on good arable farms, the number of men employed
per 100 acres will be much higher than the average, and on poor farms,
especially poor pasture,the number will be very much below the average,
and on the poorest pasture farms may fall to one man per 100 acres.

Under such conditions the rural worker is both industrially and
socially scattered and isolated. Men work in small groups in which
there is very little standardisation of the conditions of employment,
hours, rate or standard of work, wages, or perquisites. Conditions
vary in detail from farm to farm even within a given district, and they
vary in important particulars from district to district. As a result of
the social isolation there is very little opportunity for close comparison
of conditions or of the results of those conditions either by employers
or employees. In one district a custom of Saturday half -holiday may
be established with good results, but in another district within fifty
miles distance labourers are backward in making a demand for such
a concession because they cannot see how it could be arranged, while
employers would deny that it is possible to arrange for such a concession.

But the prevailing size of farm businesses presents obstacles to the
progress of the rural worker of fundamental importance. In particular
it limits the employment of machinery and power, while providing
few opportunities for developing craft skill, and provides little scope
for progressive advancement of the worker. The small application
of machinery and mechanical power to the production of comparatively
small farms results in a low rate of production per man. In 1907 it
was estimated that the value of the annual production of British
agriculture amounted to only £90 per person engaged. The output
per man in many other industries amounted to a much higher figure.
The average for all industries in England and Wales, including those
in which over 50 per cent, of the employees are women, in which pro-
duction is low, was £104. In some industries the value of production
per person amounted to nearly £200 per annum.

If this difference in relative production remains, the best possible
system of the distribution of wealth produced in agriculture can never

78

make the condition of the agricultural worker equal to the standard
of workers in other large industries. But it is worthy of notice that the
rate of production per man in British agriculture has been rising during
the last thirty or forty years. The total production of agriculture fell
slightly, perhaps ten per cent., between 1871 and 1911, but the number
of persons engaged in agriculture declined by about 30 per cent, during
the same period. As a result it was possible to slightly increase wages
and to shorten hours even while prices were rapidly falling.

The maintenance of production while agriculturists were declining
in numbers was made possible by the adoption of machinery. During
the last thirty years of the nineteenth century nearly all implements
and machines employed on farms became more efficient and adaptable,
and the increased use of machinery for harvest work made possible a
considerable economy in human labour. In particular, harvesting
machines did away with the necessity for a large amount of casual
labour, thus regularising employment. Further application of machinery
and power will be necessary if the standard of production per man is
to be raised. The small farm does not provide the ideal unit for the
application of machinery and power. On small farms, too, the farmer
and his family occupy all the positions of management. In agriculture
as now organised there is very little scope for specialisation of function
either in management or labour. The boy who begins work on a farm
at the age of twelve or thirteen years generally reaches the maximum
of his advancement at twenty-five or thirty years of age, sometimes
before. He may begin with odd work in the stable or yard, sometimes
as a boy with a team. As he gets older he is trusted to work horses
himself. Perhaps later he may change his employment and become
an attendant on cattle, or he may in many counties become an ordinary
day-man or 'dataller.'* After the age of twenty-five a few men who
have gained experience obtain positions as shepherds, head-stockmen,
or head-carters ; but on farms up to 200 acres in size these positions
do not carry much responsibility, and consequently little advance in
economic or social position.

A few other labourers may advance to the position of farm foreman
or bailiff. The number of these positions open to men was increasing
from 1851 to 1901; but has since slightly declined. In 1851 the number
was 10,561 ; in 1901, 22,623 ; and in" 1911, 22,141. The increase in
the number of these positions has been primarily due to the process
of ' laying farm to farm,' by which separate farms, often lying at a

* The preponderance of ' ordinary labourers ' is shown by the Census classifica-
tion of males engaged in agriculture (England and Wales, 1911) : —

Farmers and Graziers 208,761

Sons and Relatives 97,689

Farm Bailiffs and Foremen 22,141

Shepherds 20,838

Cattlemen 69,094

Horsemen 128,122

Not otherwise distinguished, or ' ordinary labourers ' 425,063

79

distance apart, are occupied by one farmer, who needs a foreman on
the farm distant from his residence ; and to the increase in small
residential estates, the owners of which employ a bailiff to manage
the land connected with the residence. The decline since 1901 may be
due to the return of some farms to separate occupation. This develop-
ment has undoubtedly created openings for some intelligent labourers,
but the proportion of foremen and bailiffs to total employees is very
small, and some of the positions are held by persons who have been
farmers, and their sons.

With agriculture organised on a small scale it might be presumed
that extensive opportunities would arise for the erstwhile labourer to
obtain control of land and capital. This has not proved to be the case.
The proportion of labourers who can, apart from the Small Holdings
Act, become small-holders or farmers, varies in different counties. In
some parts of Devon and Cornwall, where farms are small, as many as
40 per cent, have been labourers or are the sons of labourers ; but
taking England as a whole at least 70 per cent, of the farmers are of
farming stock — i.e., descendants of men who have been employers in
agriculture — and it would be rash to assume that the other 30 per cent,
had been labourers or were the sons of labourers. Many, perhaps most
of them, are sons of other inhabitants of the countryside, particularly
of tradesmen whose business is connected with agriculture. As distinct
from farms, small holdings that have come into existence independently
of the Small Holdings Act vary in number and proportion in different
counties, the proportion being high in such counties as Cornwall,
Cheshire, Lancashire, Holland division of Lincolnshire, Staffordshire,
Cambridgeshire, and Bedfordshire, where either dairying or market-
gardening fostered these holdings.*

Since 1908 the number of small holdings established by County
Councils has also varied. In some counties the number of holdings
would provide opportunities for advancement for as many as 6 or 7
per cent, of the labourers, in others less than one per cent. These
holdings, too, tend to be more numerous in the market-gardening and
dairying districts. But not nearly all the old small holdings or those
recently established are sufficiently large to support a family. Taking

*NUMBER OF SMALL AGRICULTURAL HOLDINGS IN ENGLAND AND WALES, 1915.

Average Proportion

Size. Number. Acreage. Size in to Total

Acres. Acreage.

1 to 5 acres 91,570 282,980 3 1.05

5 to 20 acres 121,698 1,366,990 11 5.04

20 to 50 acres 78,454 2,636,094 33 9.72

In the most numerous groups of small holdings, between one and five, and five
and twenty acres, there are many which cannot be classified as agricultural units.
A study of 360 holdings in Oxfordshire showed that only 32 per cent, were genuine
units in agricultural production. The others, while producing crops, were run
as adjuncts to other businesses. Also, many holdings in these classes consist
solely of pasture let as ' accommodation land ' to tradesmen and others. Some
of the holdings in the 20 to 50 acre group are in practice attached to other holdings,
thus constituting a medium-sized farm.

80

the country as a whole the Small Holdings Act has not provided oppor-
tunity for more than 3 per cent, of the farm labourers to become con-
trollers of land, even if all holdings were occupied by erstwhile labourers,
which is not the case. The majority are occupied by men who were
not farm labourers previous to obtaining a small holding.

Perhaps some 4 per cent, of the labourers can actually become small
holders, and a few become larger farmers. Also about 2 per cent,
can become bailiffs or foremen. But in any case not more than 7 or
8 per cent, can rise to positions of control of land and capital, while
they remain in the industry ; and i or the majority of the remainder
their positions and earnings are fixed by the standard of the class
they attain by the age of twenty-five or thirty years.

The ' agricultural ladder ' which has been talked about since
Mr. Chamberlain began his land campaign in 1885 has not been realised,
nor are there any signs of realising an ' agricultural ladder ' which
would be open to even half of the labourers. The lower rungs of that
ladder were supposed to be allotments and small holdings ; but the
allotment came into rural economy to provide a means by which the
labourer could turn his leisure to account and thus obtain a subsidiary
source of income to eke out the insufficient income received in the form
of wages. The demand for allotments in rural areas was always most
keen where wages were lowest and employment most irregular. As
employment is regularised or wages tend to rise there is a tendency
amongst labourers to relinquish their allotments. The demand for
small holdings, also, depends to a considerable extent on the rate of
wages. It is not most keen where wages reach the lowest level, because
in those districts there is no surplus of income from which to save the
capital necessary for even the smallest holding. However, a study
of the demand for small holdings since 1908 has revealed the fact that
the demand is comparatively small in the districts in which rates of
wages exceed the average. The average earnings of ordinary agri-
cultural labourers in 1907 were 17s. 6d. per week, and dividing the coun-
ties into groups in which earnings are above and below the average
it is found that only 15 per 1,000 labourers have applied for small
holdings from 293,000 labourers in counties in which earnings exceed
the average, while 25 per 1,000 have applied for holdings from 294,000
labourers in counties in which earnings are below the average. If this
diagnosis can be trusted, it tends to show that an improvement in the
general conditions of employment would be more welcome to the rural
worker in general than the offer of small holdings.

The conditions under which small holdings are obtained and worked
might be made easier by changes in the law and its administration,
by the provision of capital and the organisation of co-operative systems,
and these changes should be secured for workers who are keen to obtain
control of land and capital and capable of managing them. But no
extension of small holdings which can be foreseen will radically affect
the position of the rural worker. In 1911 there were nearly 500,000
men over the age of twenty years employed in agriculture. Under

81

most systems of cultivation an area of about 25 acres is necessary to
provide for a family ; and to provide holdings of this size for this
number of men would require nearly half the cultivated area of England
and Wales. It is, however, almost impossible to imagine the establish-
ment of even 100,000 holdings, and such a miracle would still leave
the rural workers without any solution of their general problems.

There are, too, many reasons for caution in the process of establishing
small holdings. Chief of these is that production is apt to be more
costly, especially in human labour, on small than large units. The
production per acre is generally higher on small than large farms, but
production per man is usually much lower ; and it is upon the production
per man that the standard of living of the actual producer ultimately
depends. Also, the general position of the rural worker is somewhat
weakened by the establishment of the keenest and most intelligent
workers on holdings of their own, for this tends to rob the class of its
natural industrial leaders. The small holder often remains the political
leader of his associates amongst the labourers, but his industrial interests
change to some extent on his becoming an independent cultivator.

So long as the great bulk of the land is cultivated in units on which
hired labour must be employed, and the majority of the workers must
be employees, it is to the advantage of the worker, the farmer, and the
nation to retain the better class workers on the larger holdings.

The question of rates of wages will not be ultimately settled even if
legal minimum rates become the reality they promise to be.* There
will be constant necessity for adjustment of details, and if minimum
rates are to accomplish the aim of retaining population on the land

* Previous to 1914 a good deal of attention had been given to rates of wages
earned by agricultural labourers, and there should be no need to give figures.
Since 1914 the changes in the rates of wages have varied considerably. In some
districts with a large proportion of labourers over forty years of age the changes
have been slight and tardily made ; in other districts where a large proportion
of young men were employed the changes came more quickly and were more im-
portant. In the summer of 1916 it was officially stated that the general increase
amounted to 30 per cent., but there are still many districts in which cash wages
do not exceed £1 per week, and some in which they had not reached that figure
at the end of last year. This increase in rates is not sufficient to meet the rise in
prices, but in many cases employment and earnings are more regular than a few
years ago, and conditions are better to that extent. From the employers' point
of view the increases are considerable as they have mostly been given to men over
military age, whilst the most vigorous of the young horsemen or ordinary labourers
have gone into the army or to industrial employment. It is now claimed that the
action of the Director of National Service has established a minimum wage of
25s. per week for all farm workers who enrol under his scheme, and it is stated
that a Government Bill is in preparation to make this minimum general.

Wages of women field workers before the war varied between Is. and 2s. per day,
but were generally about Is. 6d. The rates now paid vary from 3d. per-hour
for odd work, to 12s. and up to £1 per week of 48 to 54 hours for weekly work.
Up to the end of 1916 some women were still working for 6s. per week. In no
district would the average rate amount to more than£l per week for the-time worked,
and nowhere, except in Scotland, would the average for the year amount to £1
per week. In many districts the average earnings for the year would vary between
£20 and £40 for women who are wholly or mainly self-supporting.

82

there must be provision for progressive advances similar to the
advances made in other industries, otherwise the economic attraction
of urban industries will remain. The keen worker and intelligent
citizen will be needed in the organisation necessary for making adjust-
ments. Indeed, no system of adjusting rates of wages is likely to be
entirely successful which does not involve the interest and action of
the most numerous party to the contract. With much regulation
and supervision of a police character by public officials it may be
possible to enforce a statutory minimum wage in the determination
of which the labourer has had no part, but such a system will leave him
in the position of a minor in the social world, for whom everything is
decided and carried out by superior persons.

The best method of maintaining and adjusting rates of wages would
be by an extension of trade union activity in the villages. Prior to
the war some extension was taking place, with hopeful results. The
National Agricultural Labourers' Union had been growing in numbers
and becoming active in several counties, including Lancashire, Cheshire,
Northampton, Norfolk, Essex, and Somerset. Other unions also had
some branches in rural areas. In Scotland, also, a union of farm workers
had been very successful, especially in negotiations. Whatever method
of adjusting and supervising rates of wages is adopted, it is essential
that it should require personal initiative on the part of the labourer,
and this will require some form of mutual association.

Employers in agriculture have long had both formal and informal
(mostly informal) agreements to control rates of wages, and to bargain
on equal terms the men must prepare group opinions and demands.
In this sphere the best of the workers are needed. Obstacles to the
development of common action have been enormous : the incomes of
the labourers have not been sufficient to provide a surplus for the
adequate support of an organisation ; the natural leaders of the men —
the young, intelligent workers — were mostly drawn to the towns ;
and the men were isolated, working in small groups, under varying
conditions. Prior to the war the growing strength of the union was
due largely to the growing interest of young men. If these return
to the farms and wages are raised by public action the outlook should
be hopeful.

The farmer's interest in the retention of good men on farms ought
to be obvious, but it has not always been obvious to the farmer. In
large districts in the Midlands and Southern Counties the standard
of work on farms has sunk to a very low level, owing to the fact that
most farmers held out no incentive to good work on the part of their
employees. Almost any young man of the Midlands who has worked
for some time in a Northern county will tell of the greater speed and
higher standard of work in the North, and most prefer the better class
work where wages are adequate to pay for it, even while they feel bound
to ' work according to the pay ' in the low-wage areas. In the Midland
and Southern counties a greater application of intelligence and skill
is required, together with provision of more and better implements

83

and machines as in the North, rather than a much greater demand upon
the physical efforts of the worker.

A new standard of knowledge and craft skill will be eminently re-
quired if progress is to be made in agriculture, and in the development
of such a standard the interest of the nation is as great as that of the
farmer. Not only does the nation need more food, but it needs the
brighter, keener, rural population that must develop with higher
standards of work and better conditions of employment.

There is much danger that it will be difficult to establish new standards
of work on farms of the prevailing size, and especially that the workers
will not be provided with the machinery and power necessary to
increase and improve production without calling for heavier physical
exertion. For this reason it is important that workers should consider
the advantages of the establishment of larger farms which is being
advocated.

There is also some danger that the standard of work, together with
the general standard of living in rural districts, may be reduced by the
invasion of women's labour. For forty years or more the number of
women employed in agriculture has been diminishing, and in most
districts this has been regarded by the workers as a sign of social
advance. In general, women on farms have been casual workers,
and, as rates of wages have been low, the existence of the self-supporting
female worker has been a precarious one. The work allotted to them
has been of an unskilled and intermittent character, and under the
conditions now prevailing* there is a general tendency to give the
unskilled work to women. f This work in itself does not offer an

* 19K).

f WOMEN ENGAGED IN AGRICULTURE, 1911.

Farmers and Graziers 20,027

Daughters and Relatives 56,856

Bailiffs and Forewomen 25

Shepherds 6

In charge of cattle 4,934

In charge of horses

Ordinary Labourers 8,280

Woodmen 2

Nurserymen, Seedsmen, Florists 1,170

Market Gardeners, including Employees 2,449

Other Gardeners (not domestic) . . ." 583

Agricultural Machine Proprietors and Attendants 60

Others 330

Total 94,722

Of these, 70,000 are unmarried, 7,000 are married, and 17,000 are widows. It
is now estimated that there are 60,000 additional women employed on the land,
and as the ratio of ' ordinary labourers ' amongst women ordinarily employed in
agriculture is high it is not likely that new employees will be given positions
requiring skill or carrying responsibility.

84

adequate career to women, nor do the}* frequently develop sufficient
skill in field work to open up careers for themselves. A great increase
in women field workers would almost inevitably reduce the standard
of work. On the other hand, if a woman is to marry and settle down,
this field work is not a satisfactory training for housewifery. Nowhere
in country districts is the art of the housewife at such a low ebb as in
districts in which it is common for women to work in the fields. The
effect of unskilled field work on the character and bearing of women
may easily be seen in districts in which numbers have been employed.
Agriculture, especially progressive agriculture, can offer careers to
many women in the lighter branches of skilled work in the dairy industry,
market-gardening, fruit-farming, and poultry-keeping ; and if rural
industries develop alongside progressive agriculture, the factories for
making butter and cheese, sugar or starch, etc., should provide openings
for them. Without intelligent and energetic womeu no real develop-
ment of country life will be possible, but unskilled field work does not
develop the type of woman that will be required.

There is also the question of boy labour* and the training of adolescents
for skilled and responsible work. The work of many a boy of thirteen
years of age on farms is merely that of bootblack, messenger, and general
drudge. He is half attached to the kitchen, half attached to the yard,
and few of his duties require much skill or intelligence. The age of
fourteen years is sufficiently early to begin learning the real work
of the farm, and ultimately much better results would be obtained
if part-time education could be continued after this age is reached.
There are no technical schools for farm workers similar to those in which
the town engineer is trained, yet if he is to do skilled work it will make
as great demands on general intelligence. and special skill as the work
of the engineer. In the provisions for agricultural education which
will be made after the war, the need of the farm worker must be
remembered. Many of the evening technical classes which have been
held in country villages have been more or less failures. Teachers
were not always the best ; the boy had little incentive to study or work
because increased skill did not bring increased wages, and his daily
work left little available energy for evening study. The technical
education of the future will have to be given in the day-time, either
whole days during certain seasons, or part-time during the autumn
or winter. If they had contact with skilled men on the farms where
they were employed, many boys would pick up the rudiments of know-
ledge and skill, and develop a taste for technical education.

* In 1901 there were nearly 20,000 boys between the ages of 10 and 14 years
engaged in agriculture, and in 1911 less than 10,000, or less than half the number
at the previous census. The decline in number was especially important among
boys of 10 to 13 years of age. This class fell from 3,376 in 1901 to 587 in 1911.
But from July, 1914, to July, 1916, some 15,000 boys under normal age had been
released from school for farm work, and the number is now probably 20,000.
In all there are probably nearly 30,000 boys under 14 years of age employed on
farms.

85

The reasons for the employment of boys under fourteen years have
been the demand of farmers for supposed cheap labour and the parents'
need of the small earnings. The wages of these young boys did not
often exceed 4s. per week, and a small increase in the earnings of adults
over the real value of pre-war rates would in most cases compensate
for the loss of the £10 or so to which the yearly earnings of the boy
amounted.

There are many social problems which also affect the position of
the labourer, and perhaps chief amongst these is that of housing.
The shortage of cottages or deficiency in quality cannot be separated
from the question of economic return from the agricultural industry.
Cottages are not built or improved because owners of land who provide
cottage equipment cannot build so as to secure the current rate of return
on capital invested. Farm rents are often too low to cover the cost
of new or better cottage equipment. In some cases, however, cottages
have been built as a matter of social duty. Investors in small property
do not build or improve cottages for the occupation of farm workers
because their rates of wages do not provide a margin sufficient to pay
for better housing accommodation. Where the difficulty is one of
absolute shortage of cottages, many complaints have been made against
the restrictions imposed by local bye-laws ; but in the main these'
local bye-laws are based on fair demands for a standard of housing
under modern conditions ; and in view of the general complaints as
to deficiency in quality it is useless to build cottages which will not.
meet the fair demands of the labourer and his wife.

The shortage of cottages in rural areas is often the cause of hard
•conditions, for the labourer who lives in a ' tied ' cottage may have
to leave his cottage and, it may be, the district, as well as his employ-
ment at the end of a short notice. With an adequate supply of free
cottages this hardship would be mitigated.

It is difficult to see how farm organisation can be carried out without
the residence of some men such as carters and shepherds in cottages
attached to the farm ; but they should not be penalised in any way
because of such residence. They might be granted a little relief by a
legal provision that a month's notice should be required for the ter-
mination of the tenancy of the cottage, without reference to the notice
required to leave employment. This would tend to disorganise the
farm occasionally, but it would make the employer considerate with
regard to giving notice. It is regrettable that in some districts there
is a tendency to attach cottages to farms in excess of the number re-
quired for those men who must live near to stock, thus placing the
otherwise free cottages under the control of farmers. Nothing robs
the labourer of his liberty more than this.

The only satisfactory solution of the rural housing problem will be
found in a policy of building houses by local sanitary authorities.
So far as possible their schemes should be of a self-supporting character,
for subsidisation in the form of provision of cheap capital means a
grant in aid of the low wages paid in the industry. In districts in which

36

large, highly-capitalised farms were established they would probably
provide houses for a large number of their employees, but to obviate
the possibility of hardship in the case of dismissal or dispute a certain
number of free cottages would be required.

On the whole, the economic position of the rural worker depends
upon the general conditions prevailing in the industry. While the
urban worker is directly interested in the quantity and quality of the
produce of the land, the rural worker is more directly interested in
the methods by which it is produced and their economic results. It
might be possible to double the present production of the land and yet
reduce the general standard of living of those engaged in its production.
The townsman's interest is to obtain the greatest net production of
food per acre after feeding the population engaged in agriculture,
thus securing food supplies for himself. The rural worker can always
produce enough food for his family, and his main interest is in securing
a high rate of production per man, for on that depends the standard
of living of himself and his family. As he produces more food than he
consumes, he is interested in the maintenance or increase of prices,
while the urban worker who is a consumer is concerned that they shall
not rise.

The problem of production in agriculture is to increase the quantity
without increasing the unit cost of the goods produced. In other
words, to get the maximum quantity of food for a given quantity of
labour and capital expended. Comparisons have recently been made
between the agricultural systems of this country and Germany,
apparently to the disadvantage of the British system ; but while the
German farmer is supposed to feed from 70 to 75 persons and the British-
farmer only 45 to 50 persons from each 100 acres of cultivated land,
the German system requires 18.3 persons and the British system only
5.8 for the cultivation of each 100 acres. Thus each person engaged
in British agriculture feeds 7.6 persons, and each person engaged in
Gferman agriculture feeds only 3.8 persons. Some modification of this
statement is required, because of the large proportion of women
employed in German agriculture, but the production 'per man in Germany
probably does not amount to more than two-thirds of the production
per man in this country. The result of this difference is seen in the
difference between the rates of wages, for even with a better system
of distribution in Germany wages of German agricultural workers are
not equal to those paid in Great Britain.*

* A comparison of earnings (including cash wages and extras) of agricultural
workers in different countries does not provide for a full comparison of the standards
of life of this class in various countries, largely because of possible differences
in the use which is made of earnings, and also partly because of some other circum-
stances outside the employment of the men. such as the amount of work done and
wages earned by their wives. But the amount of earnings is the main element
in the determination of the standard of life of the working classes, and the following
comparison may be given.

(Note continued on page 87).

87

The production of British agriculture could be increased to an
enormous extent without reaching the point at which unit cost of goods
would be increased. But this will be made possible only by study of the
best methods of production and the application of capital, knowledge,
and skill in every sphere. Some measures may be necessary to create
confidence in the industry, but no artificial measures alone can secure
an economic increase in agricultural production. The interest of the
rural worker is to obtain a system of production which, while making
less demands on mere physical exertion, will increase the return from
labour and yet provide him scope for self-expression in the course of
his work. This can only be obtained on such farm-units as will admit
of vast improvements in the application of machinery to many tasks,
the employment of specialised knowledge in spheres of management,
and the employment of increased skill in spheres of labour.

But the end of life is not production of goods : it is the production
of more and better life. To enable the rural worker to reach this end,
vast endeavours will be necessary outside the sphere of his labours.
The position of the rural worker in the political sphere, both national
and local, is extremely weak. He is apt to be much sought after by
persons of all parties during general elections, but because he has no
organisation the rural worker cannot enforce demands or claim redemp-
tion of promises in the periods intervening between general elections
when Parliament is actually at work. In local politics he is a much-
administered, passive person, who is at the mercy of locally elected
or nominated governors, but more perhaps at the mercy of the salaried
officials of local bodies. In such matters as the administration of the
Housing Acts, which are of vital interest to him, he has no power.
Nor will he obtain power until some kind of voluntary association

Farm and forest workers in Germany were divided into five classes, the earnings
of which, in 1906, were as follows : —

GERMAN EMPIRE.

Proportion to Average Annual

Total Workers. Earnings,
per cent.

Class 1 .14 £39— £45

II 2.50 £33— £39

III 24.00 £27— £33

IV 42.00 £21— £27

V 31.00 £15— £21

The bulk of the male labourers would be included in the third class, large numbers
of workers in the lower classes being women and youths.

ENGLAND AND WALES.

Proportion to

Number of Farm Workers, 1901. Total. Average Annual

per cent. Earnings.
1907

Shepherds 25,354 4.16 £50

Cattlemen 81,302 13.36 £49

Horsemen 154,377 25.36 £48

Ordinary Labourers 348,072 57.12 £45

88

can be formed to provide for representation of his interests. Persons
with larger incomes and possessing more leisure cannot afford the time
or money necessary to understand the almost endless stream of laws,
orders, and regulations supposed to be administered in rural areas ;
and to enforce consideration of his interest the rural worker will have
to provide and pay for representation. Here again the young and
intelligent men are wanted to organise the rank and file of the trade
union or other voluntary association, and from whom to select and
train representatives.

In a wider social sphere, also, there is much to be done to make
rural life bright and congenial to the men with intellectual and social
interests. A large amount could be done through the village schools
if we could develop a philosophy of rural life similar to those developing
in other countries in which the rural workers form a much larger
proportion of the total population. The village clubs and recreation
grounds must also grow in numbers and importance. Many villagers
will soon find their own forms of recreation when leisure and a little
surplus income are available, but there is some danger that they may
follow the rather thin commercial amusements of the towns.

The urban worker can do much to assist the rural worker in the
matters of association and education, upon which the improvement
of rural social life depends, but he will first have to get a much better
conception of the character of the rural worker than that which is now
common. Ever since Edwin Markham wrote The Man with the Hoe
it has become quite common to regard the agricultural labourer less
as a man than as a creature or a thing. This attitude is often found
in literature, even in literature circulating amongst industrial workers,
and seems to be quite commonly accepted. According to this idea
the agricultural labourer is a thing with a ' bowed back,' and ' empty
face,' a ' loose and brutal jaw,' a ' slanting brow/ and a ' stunned
and stolid mind,' * Brother to the ox.'

" A thing that grieves not and that never hopes."

His name is ' Hodge,' with all its implications in common
parlance. There is only one other class in industrial life to which a
name is so commonly and closely applied, and that is the merchant-
seamen. But ' Jack ' is a name honourable in its implications, not
derogatory as in the case of ' Hodge.' To find a real analogy for the
common denomination of the farm worker we should have to go back
to the days previous to the Plimsoll agitation and the Seamen's Union,
when the merchant-seaman was known as ' Poor Jack.' In recent
years there has been only one analogy to the name of ' Hodge,' and
that was ' Tommy Atkins ' in the days when the army was largely
recruited from the misfits of the industrial world. ^K

To those of us who have worked and lived with the agricultural
labourer the current idea of him and the name were only significant of
the blindness of those who held or used them. We might be often
disappointed by his industrial or political weakness, but we had only
to remember the obstacles he had to encounter, and the small proportion

89

of the industrial community who take a keen interest in social move-
ments even with greater opportunities, to understand and forgive.

Those who meet the rural worker personally know well, sometimes
to their cost, that he is independent and tenacious of the rights he has
been used to exercise, and quick to a high degree to discern rights or
pririleges he may exercise. Mr. J. F. Duncan, the secretary of the
Scottish Farm Servants' Union, who has been used to a better paid
class of farm labour, says the farm worker of England " is certainly
not the dull, spiritless creature which imaginative writers have always
presented to us as the typical ' Hodge ' of England." The rural worker
differs from the urban worker chiefly, if not wholly, in the external
circumstances that he has no trade or class organisation through which
he can express his feeling of industrial or political grievance or voice
his industrial or political aspirations, that his facilities for education
have been poorer, that his work does not bring him into contact with
so many people and thus stimulate mental intercourse and imagination,
and that his opportunities for social intercourse have been more con-
fined. These circumstances can be changed and the rural worker
fitted to exercise the power his numbers entitle him to, both in the
industrial and political world. The urban worker can give him much
assistance towards this end. But the first need is a development of
industrial conditions which will provide him an adequate income and
some leisure wherewith to improve the higher personal and social
phases of the life of his family.

In speaking on his paper, Mr. Ashby said that the industrial workers
present might think that the interests of industrial workers and rural
workers in agricultural questions were identical ; and under some
circumstances this was the case. When a question arose as to the
absolute supply of food their interests, as consumers, were identical ;
but when the question of methods of production arose, the industrialists
were concerned only as consumers, while agricultural workers were
concerned as producers, and as they produced more than sufficient
to support their families, and their financial interests depended upon
the surplus of production, interests at once diverged.

At the present moment we had a population of 46,000,000 and a
cultivated area of 46,000,000 acres. It might be possible to extend
that area a little, but even so it would work out to barely 1J acres
per person. Were we, as a nation, to try to be self-supporting on the
basis of one acre or 1 J acres per person, it was probable that the dieting
of the people would be much less rich and varied than at present.
One question the industrial workers would have to settle, because of
their political power, was whether we should try to sustain the popula-
tion on this basis, regardless of cost or the result on dieting, or whether
we should develop our farming on economical lines without attempting
to stimulate production by means of tariffs or subsidies. This was
why a number of people advocated large farms. The large farm,

90

with the benefit of plenty of capital and brains, could produce more
per acre than was produced at the present time, and, what was
more important so far as the producer was concerned, could secure
greater net output per man ; for on that standard depended the
standard of living for the rural worker.

To attain these objects we needed larger holdings, but the policy of
the large farm system did not mean what is called extensive cultivation.
Cultivation on the large farm of 1,000, 5,000, or 10,000 acres could be
just as intensive, almost as productive per acre, as on the small existing
farms, or even small holdings. But there was this important difference
— the co?t of production was not so great. The agricultural labourer
could not secure more responsibility in his work or more payment for
skill or knowledge on the little farm : he could not do this even if the
whole country were cut up into small holdings for his benefit. But he
could do it if the present system of hereditary capital and management
were broken down, to let in the man who was a trained agriculturist
and to develop the commercial side of agriculture so that capital —
whether from the State or through the Banks — could be invested in
the industry.

QUESTIONS.

Question : What is the cause of the difference in the production per
individual in Great Britain and Germany ?

Answer : One reason for the difference in production per man is
the fact that the average size of British farms is far greater than the
average size of German ones ; and I think you will find that with
small farms you have low production per man, partly because it is
almost impossible to apply machinery, at any rate, so economically
on a small as on a large unit.

Question : The lecturer tried to point out that the large farms pro-
duced more than allotments or small holdings. I don't think they do.
Does Mr. Ashby find that the large farmer produces more than the
allotment holder or small holder ? The ordinary average earnings of
the ordinary labourer in 1907 for England and Wales were £45 per
year, he says : how does he get that amount ?

Answer : If you take small holdings of 5 to 10 acres on fairly good
soil near a town, and then a farm 20 miles away from a town, you can
prove that the small holding produces five times the value, per acre,
of the big farm, but the system of farming and the possibility of
production are absolutely different. If you wish to compare production
you must take small holdings and large holdings producing the same
commodities. It would be difficult to prove that the small holders on the
whole produce very much more per acre than the big farmers, especially
if you make a fair comparison. The market garden holding has been

91

the best type of small holding, but it seems that the limit in the creation
of these holdings has almost been reached. Now, apart from this year,
there is occasionally a glut of vegetables, and usually the supply is
quite equal to the demand. If you multiply that class of holding you
will get a glut and lose a lot of money. The figure of £45 is arrived at
by multiplying 17s. 6d. by 52 weeks — i.e., the average weekly wages

?'ven in the Board of Trade return of wages in agriculture in 1907.
he figure covers earnings — i.e., wages and all perquisites.

Question : Do I understand that it required 18 persons in Germany
to do the work five were doing in the British Isles, and that it took
100 acres to feed 70 Germans, and the same area to feed 40 Britishers ?

Answer : The difference, in part, is due to the fact that there is a
much larger proportion of women employed in German agriculture ;
and, further, that there is an enormous proportion of small farms
there, on which practically all the cultivation is done by manual labour.

Question : Can the lecturer give us any information as to the relative
productivity in America ? Are the big farms more developed there ?

Answer : I would not compare the American system with our own.
In some States they have barely got beyond the process of exhaustion
of the virgin soil. If you take the whole of the States, the productivity
per acre would not be anything like the same as ours.

Question : How does Mr. Ashby come to the conclusion that large
farms will be beneficial to the agricultural labourer ?

Answer : It is quite certain that where you get the poorest form of
management and the lowest capitalisation, there you get the lowest
paid and the lowest type of worker. Wherever you get commercial
stimulus in agriculture, as in the Eastern Counties and North-west
Lancashire, there you get the most highly paid workman and the best
type.

DISCUSSION.

MR. T. MACKLEY (National Union of Agricultural Labourers) : —

I am an agricultural labourer by profession, as I left school at nine
years of age to go on the land, and what I have learnt in the way of
education since has been by the help of such institutions as Ruskin
College. At one time I was thrown out of work, with a widowed mother
and sister to keep, and I took the place of a town working man quite
in ignorance that I was competing with him and cutting down his
wages : that is why I took up the work of organising agricultural
labour. In last week's Railway Review there is a very fine cartoon
where the agricultural labourer is telling the railway worker that his

92

place is now at the bottom of the form — he now has a minimum wage
above that of the railway worker. Claud Hamilton's boast used to
be that the G.E.R. could always get men for the railways at Is. a week
more than they could earn on the land : we are not now going to allow
him to use the agricultural labourer to make profits for the railways.
It may interest you to hear a little of the Norfolk Movement, as we
call it to-day. In Norfolk there are now 10,000 members of our Union,
and I think we shall get the wages to 30s. instead of 25s. in that district.
If you want work on the land there, you now have to produce your
Trade Union card before you get it. That has been brought about in
four years. We at first asked for 2s. a week increase ; the farmers
would not listen, but we said we would take Is. and ask for more. We
asked for more later, and got 2s. Then we wanted the farmers to meet
us — and remember that in Norfolk you have the strongest Farmers'
Federation in England, both financially and in membership. They
would not meet us, and they organised a blackleg system to stop us
from bringing the men on a particular farm out on strike ; perhaps
there were men in Bradford who were receiving 5s. a week from the
Norfolk Farmers' Federation to be ready at their beck and call — but
again we spiked their guns. We asked the men to a conference of every
branch of the Union, and asked for power to demand more wages —
not how much, but more — and then asked the Farmers' Federation
to meet us and settle the matter as amicably as possible. They would
not listen to this — we were paid agitators, creating discord and discon-
tent among the working classes ! The men agreed to put in their
notices, and — like the Boers in the Boer war — we adopted guerrilla
tactics. We put the notices in on one farm and left the next one, and
so on. One farmer, who had received 43 notices, asked one man
what he had sent in that scrap of paper for, and the man told him
he had argued with him for nearly 40 years on the question of wages
and hours, but was always talked over, and that he was now employing
a man who knew more about it than himself. Every man of the 43
told him the same thing — every one of the 1,000 men referred the
masters to the head office ! After a conference of more than two hours
we obtained 3s. After this we got the Federation to meet us again,
and agree to £1 a week, and they further agreed that any federated
farmer who did not pay £1 a week would not get help with the blacklegs.
We got wages to 22s., and now we are asking for 30s. ; and there is
not a man in Norfolk who belongs to our Union who says that 30s. is
the final. We want a real living wage for the agricultural labourer,
and I will say that the Government's proposal for 25s. a week is a mere
misleading term. It includes all the perquisites — house, rent, etc.
If we get the 25s. without any stipulation, it means that the farmer
can go to the labourer who is getting 24s. a week, give him the 25s.
and charge him 2s. 6d. a week for rent, which will be Is. 6d. a week
knocked off. I have heard what Mr. Ashby says, that the English
labourer produces £90 per annum ; but up'against that is the evidence
of the Duke of Marlborough— at any rate he is not an agricultural

93

labourer — who said in the House of Lords that any agricultural labourer
was worth £250 a year ; and one of our friends — an agricultural labourer
— put this very nicely into verse :

From early morn till late at night

We work at arduous toil ;
We plough and sow, and reap and mow,

To earn wealth from the soil.

We're told — in spite of all we do —

Our labour does not pay ;
So we must work for sweated wage —

Our masters always say.

" When thieves fall out," the honest man

Sometimes gets back his own ;
When labour's scarce, and truth leaks out,

Some startling facts are shown.

A noble duke now says we're " worth

" Two hundred and fifty pounds
" A year " as workers on the land —

How grand such figures sounds.

This works out at FIVE POUNDS A WEEK,

'Tis true ; but yet we're poor —
We have to be content with ONE,

Whilst someone else takes FOUR.

This unfair distribution means :

The wealth we workers earn
Oft gives the power to other men

To make us poor folk mourn.

It seems to me a better way
•* Would be for all who delves
To hand the idler just ONE POUND,
And keep FOUR for ourselves.

The way such can be done is plain :

Each labourer must unite
In one great Union — firm, and strong,

And ready for the fight.

Then, brother, come ! fall into line

To fight 'gainst being poor.
Come on ! increase that POUND a week

Until it gets to FOUR.

94

As to conditions. There are very few industrial workers who have
given five minutes' consideration to the rural problem of this country.
Can you imagine going to work on Monday morning — I won't say for
how many hours, but something like the tramwayman under the old
system, whose little boy asked the mother when he went home to dinner
on Sunday who that strange man was ? With agricultural labourers
living in tied cottages, the work is never done from Monday morning
till Sunday night ; there is no opportunity of standardising hours as
well as wages. There are men at the present moment who actually
work 108 hours a week for a wage of something like 17s. I was in a
village only last week on the borders of Yorkshire, where they are
actually receiving 16s. a week, with 4d. deducted for stamp licking !
If you want to know the real condition of the agricultural labourer, here
is an exact copy of a letter I had handed to me one night, when I was
about to speak at a meeting. A woman came into the room, and handed
me this : >; Dear Sir, — I am sending you a line of how eight in family
is kept on 16s. a week and Is. for Sunday work — no potatoes. The
farmer reckons to pay £1 a week, but keeps back 3s. for house rent —
(you will notice we never get behind with our rent !) Where are all
our clothing, boots, and club money coming from ? P.S. — Excuse me
not giving name and address, as I am afraid if my husband's boss got
to know I had written this he would give him the sack and turn us all
out of doors." Have you ever been in that position, when you have
to choose between being a man, or a crawling thing at the foot of another
man because you could not see your wife and children suffer ? If God
ever intended a man to be in that position there is no just God in this
country. The woman gives a list of things she has to purchase in the
week for 17s., and it comes to 17s. lOd. — and then I learned for the
first time in my life that you could get 17s. lOd. out of 17s. I often
wondered how my wife managed when I was out of work fifteen months
because I joined a Trade Union : now I know something of how it
is done.

Mr. Ashby spoke about the need for the standardisation of working
conditions. In Norfolk alone we have about fifteen different working
systems. We want one set of terms and conditions, just as we have
now one set wage. When first I took up a post in this Union, in 1913,
the men's wages in south-west Norfolk were 9s. 6d. and 10s. 6d. a week
at the outside ; in the north-west they were slightly higher. We now
have them everywhere at 25s. a week, and I expected a wire this after-
noon saying what the Government has decided in an arbitration case
on the question of a 30s. minimum.

There is just one other point. I often get up against my Trade
Union friends because I insist that the agricultural labourer —
perhaps above all men — is a skilled man. Whether the farmer
can afford to pay high wages remains to be seen. I have a balance
sheet of a farmer before the war, which shows that for every
£1 he paid in wages he put in his own pocket £4 Is. lOd., after all
deductions — rent and other things — had been reckoned off. One other

95

instance, of a farmer (who told me this himself), regarding last year's
potatoes : "I had 48 acres of potatoes ; I sold 308 tons at £11 a ton
for eating purposes, and 50 tons at £12 10s. for seed potatoes — a total
sum of £4,013. The total cost in rent, labour (both horse and manual),
seed and manure, came to £1,300, leaving a net profit of £2,713. And
you are paying for that to-day ! But we say : Pay the labourer who
does the work — surely he has the right to more than he is getting,
to enable him to approach to a Christian life. We want a living wage,
the abolition of all the different standards of hours of work ; and we
want you to realise that you can do much to help us, for —

Down the ages men have struggled —

Some have fallen in the strife ;
Yet step by step they mounted upwards,

That we, their children, might have life.
Then let us carry on that struggle,

Till it may be truly said
Men and women, little children,

Are assured their daily bread.

MR. JESSE ARGYLE (Working Men's Club and Institute Union) : My
sympathies are entirely with the agricultural labourer in this struggle.
No class has been more hardly dealt with in the country, and I think
the remedy for their position will have to be found in the proper organisa-
tion and development of the industry, and on trade union lines, and not
in the expansion of small holdings. Mr. Ashby said there were about
half a million employed in agriculture, and the idea of giving each a
small holding, and at least 25 acres, was absurd. In addition there are
also about 270,000 farmers and their relatives getting a living out
of the land, and if we take away their land we must at least leave them
small holdings for themselves. I- agree as to the hard work and poor
living for small holders, as I have experienced some of it. In my early
youth I spent a few years with an uncle who was in a way a small
holder, and my scanty school hours were robbed to hoe, dig potatoes,
look after the pony and the pigs, and other like jobs ; and in order to
make up a living we had also a stall in the market. Probably the reason
why rural workers put up with the long hours and hard living is because
to some extent there is no inducement in country life for anything else.
There is practically nothing else to do but work and sleep, possibly
varied by a visit to the tap room when there is sixpence to spend.
In addition to giving good wages, we have to make their lives more
attractive, and to try to take away the dreary dulness and monotony.

MR. A. G. CARTER (Coventry Trades Council) : Owing to the tied
cottage system the agricultural labourer — especially where the Union
is unable to collect enough men to form a branch — is absolutely in
the hands of the farming class. I have a particular instance in mind
where a man voted at the last election against the wishes of the farmer ;

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