THE SHOPMEN . S PETITION.
WE fear the Shopmen who met in Hyde Park on Sunday to plead for shorter hours are not in the right road. ' They represented a most important body, numbering, it is stated, 320,000 in London • alone, men and women taken together, and they have a genuine grievance. A very large proportion of them, who serve in the East End and the suburban districts, or in the poorer shops, which depend in part on evening business, are very much overworked. It is a habit among litterateurs to pity the shopwomen in the great drapers' shops because they stand about so much, and to satirise shopmen as an idle class, addicted to overdressing,
and unusually vulgar. In reality, however, even if the vulgarity is admitted, the dressing, where it prevails, is a business requirement—the only remedy, in fact, for slovenliness—and the labour exacted is exceedingly hard. The drapers' and grocers' men, fel. example, -clean and arrange the shops, doing frequently as heavy -work in the way of lifting and carrying as artisans, and then -stand through the whole day, evening, and part of the night, almost incessantly engaged in work which, though not hard 'labour in the strict sense, is very trying both to the body and,
the patience, and is protracted far beyond what most artisans will bear. The latter clamour for eight hours' work a day, and seldom ao more than ten ; but the shopman
in the poorer districts Who escapes with twelve hours is fortunate, and, as Lord Cairns and Canon Farrar told a meeting on Thursday, he is often required to work fourteen, and even sixteen hours. That is an excessive stint, especially as it is demanded for wages less than those of artisans, in air which is seldom pure, and under con- ditions which often involve a maximum of insecurity. The shopman can he thrown out of work not only by his own de- fault or his own ill-health, but by the failure of the concern he works in ; and once out of employ, finds himself in presence of a crushing competition for admittance. Unless he is known, he may wait months for a berth ; and he is during those months more pressed by actual want than decent workmen, with their numerous associations, allow themselves to be.
We cannot wonder that the Shopmen should hold meetings, and talk "of addressing their Representatives," and appeal to Parliament to interfere on their behalf. They see that Parlia- ment does interfere in factories and mines and unhealthy trades, and cannot understand why the-all-powerful machinery of the State should not be invoked to rescue them also from over-toil.
It should be invoked when assistants under age are concerned, and, in our judgment, when women, even if full-grown, are visibly over-worked, under conditions with which inspectors can deal. Many of the best and ablest women in England hold, we know, that such interference is wrong ; that women can take care of themselves, and that interference only reduces their chance of earning a livelihood for themselves. That objection is sound in principle, but, as a matter of fact, we fear that, amidst the existing competition and with the exist- ing social arrangements, large numbers of women are free agents only in name, and the State may as justifiably protect them as apprentices or children. Men have more variety of resources, are not so easily coerced by others, and have, above all, more means of forming combinations for self-defence. Nothing prevents the shopmen from striking for ten hours' work, if they will only endure the necessary sacrifices, while to reduce their hours to ten by statute would involve an excessive interference with human liberty. A very few minutes' reflection will show the shopmen how this is. They will, we suppose, agree that the shopkeeper who keeps his place open by his own labour and that of his family must be exempted from the statute.
If not, he is simply prohibited from doing work which is in itself unobjectionable, or profitable to the com- munity, and which he wishes to do, and which, as in many cases he may plead, he must do, in order to pay his taxes.
He has as much right to do it as to sit still, unless he is a pub- lican, in which case considerations of police unknown in other trades interfere with the natural right to work. If, however, the owner of a shop cannot be prevented from working at his own discretion, how can the adult journeyman, who is equally free—in fact, more free, for the pressure of taxation does not fall on him so directly and inexorably—be prohibited from assisting in the work for pay ? It is impossible, unless some evil could be shown to accrue to the community from late hours, and that would be very difficult. Much of the shop- ping of the poor must be done by gaslight, or not done at all ; and with English ideas of Sunday, the Saturday-night trading is almost unavoidable. Parliament, in fact, could not prohibit late hours for shopmen, without laying down a principle which would compel it to regulate the labour of the entire com- munity, and insist that no barrister, or physician, or engineer should work himself to death for the sake of fees. We can imagine such a society, as we can imagine a society in which unhealthy labour shall be accounted an immorality, as tending, like drunkenness or opium- eating, to impair faculties it is a duty to preserve ; but it would be a society very unlike the English, in which individual- ism would be accounted reprehensible, and the responsibility for conduct would be partially, at least, suspended. The shopmen must either strike, or seek work with which they can be better content.
The Shopmen say they cannot strike,--first, because they cannot live out of work ; and secondly, because there is so much -competition for vacancies. But is that strictly true? Have they ever seriously tried to found the Aid Societies without which, of course, striking is absolutely out of the question ? They would find, we think, if they did, that although they would have more difficulties than the artisans, from the fact that the masters can actually do much of the indispensable work, and from the competition of female assistants, their
knowledge is sufficiently valuable to their employers to give them a certain hold. The tradesmen of a district could no more afford to lose all their assistants than a factory to lose all its hands, and the shopmen have one advan- tage which the operatives have not. The masters' interest is with them, not against them. To a 'millowner, two extra hours of work a day means, in a busy time, large extra profit, may mean five per cent, upon his capital ; but to a shopkeeper it means of itself nothing, except extra worry and endurance. If he can get as much custom in eight hours as he can in twelve, life is all the easier for him ; and if a whole district agrees, he can get it. The shopmen, therefore, have only to contend up to the point at which employers will combine, to find them all with them, instead of antagonistic. When millowners combine, it is for a lock-out ; but shopkeepers, when they combine, lock-out customers, not hands. That is an immense advantage for the shopmen, and we cannot but think that if they would only combine to secure subsistence allowances for dismissed assistants, they would find that, what with the pressure of opinion, the dislike of new candidates for the excessive hours, and the feeling of the masters that the long hours would not be wanted if they also combined, they would speedily carry their point. We suppose the truth is they find a difficulty in combining, because they all really hope that servitude will only be temporary, and they will become employers in their turn; and that, no d oubt, is an obstacle to the foundation of Defence Funds. But then they must re- member that in that hope is a mitigation of the evils they suffer worth almost any other, and one which the workmen whom they ought to imitate do not, in most trades, enjoy. They aught to face the difficulties, form a Defence Fund, and resolutely make reasonable hours a condition of skilled service. Parliament, they may rely on it, cannot help them.
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