WORKMEN'S DAY-DREAMS. T HE attack on the Labour Commission for allowing
the representatives of London labourers to say their say, is irritatingly unjust. One of the great objects of that Commission—in our judgment, the very first object—is to ascertain accurately what the labourers are thinking about, what their secret wishes are, and what are the ideas which, though they seldom rise to the surface, frequently govern their action. It is said that to publish such ideas is to popularise them ; but that is contrary to the whole ex- perience of free countries, which shows that delusions die away as soon as they are freely discussed. The reason why so many country-folk still believe in witchcraft is that, from fear of the ridicule of the educated, they keep the belief secret, handing it down for generations from mouth to mouth. It is said that permission to give such evidence makes its givers needlessly important ; but there is no truth in the argument, for witnesses like Mr. Tillett had become important before they exposed their views to the scrutiny of the well-informed. And it is said that the "wild" witnesses are not workmen, but only workmen's advisers, "paid agitators," persons seeking, not remedies for evils, but popularity for themselves ; but that argument only increases the value of their evidence. If such witnesses, like many journalists and more politicians, are only seeking to curry favour with the masses, they will be careful to make no statement which the masses disapprove. Pew men become popular by saying things at variance with the deep convictions of the majority, and none expect to be popular for doing so. The " wild " evidence of such men is, therefore, direct evidence of their followers' opinions, and invaluable because it shows sensible people where enlightenment is wanted, and to what point argument can usefully be directed. At present, the best economists are often in the position of the Corn- wall clergyman who besought his parishioners to attend the services more regularly. To his delight they com- plied, and it was five years before he found out that they all prayed for plenty of profitable wrecks. The wit- nesses in the present instance who seem the wildest, are revealing new and most important facts. We all knew that workmen wanted shorter hours, and some of us were aware that they denied the moral right of workmen to remain outside Unions, or, as Mr. Quelch put it, denied " that liberty to combine included the right not to com- bine," but we question if ten educated men in the country were aware that London labourers desire to prohibit the old from working, not because labour is severe on the old, but because the strong who work hard " ought " to mono- polise the lighter berths which the old now fill. Every repre- sentative man examined as yet has been on that side, and Mr. Tilled, who spoke on the subject for the dockers, gave detailed reasons for his opinion. He attributed the great prevalence of hernia among the men who lift weights, to the employment of the old. If the latter were dismissed or pensioned, the young would not lift weights so often, but would lift one day and do light work the next, and then they would not get hernia ! Here are his words :— "You wish old men's labour to be regulated, so that it shall not compete with able-bodied men ?—That is so. Years ago the heavy work was shared amongst the men generally, but now a system has been introduced into the docks by which the strong men do the heavy work, and they are forced to remain at it, while light labour is done by other men. In one case, where this had been the prac- tice for some years, there was a gang called The Happy Eight,'—eight lusty fellows who worked for a few years ; but there was hardly one out of that gang that was not suffering now from hernia, and most of them were double —which meant that they were able to work a little while suffering. Now, if they had not been kept to this very hard work and had shared with other men, they would have been sound in wind and.limb now."
An opinion like that, sincerely entertained by thousands of strong men, is enough of itself to prevent their taking precautions against hernia ; and to say that it ought not to be ventilated is simply silly. Now that it is ventilated, somebody will doubtless ask Mr. Tillett if he finds that dockers do not get ruptured on Mondays. If they do, as well as on other days, his queer surgical theory goes at once to the winds, for if light work is a preventive, so a fortiori is rest. He might just as well say that a man who was abroad one day and at home the next would never be rained upon, and need not therefore ever put on a waterproof. Nor, we would add, were most men aware that workmen were consciously so indifferent to liberty as these witnesses declare themselves to be. We all knew, as a matter of fact, that Socialism must involve unlimited interference with liberty, but most of us 'fancied that this was not perceived by its advocates. It appears from this evidence, on the contrary, that they do see it, and have made up their minds that they can do without liberty. There is none, said one witness smilingly, except in an African desert.
It will, too, be new to most men to perceive how com- pletely the old dread and jealousy of the State has vanished from the minds of 'workmen. So far from looking on the State as an enemy, as their grandfathers did, they look upon it as their only trustworthy friend.
They distrust the masters, and they accuse the Companies of habitual treachery and fraud ; but they believe in the State and the Municipality. They all clamour for In- spectors and State supervision ; they will allow the State to fix hours and regulate wages, and whip, or at all events coerce, the incurably lazy ; and they are all ready to make the Municipality the sole employer of labour. It never seems to occur to them that the State could be harsh, or that a body of employers elected by ratepayers might be as mean as a Board of Guardians which is elected just in that way. They confide in the State's impartiality with touching completeness, and actually believe that, if he were only master, nobody would be so liberal as Bumble, or so inclined to pay to the weak the same wages as the strong ! That change of feeling, the result, of course, of their own confidence in their own voting strength, is of the last importance, may in fact, and we think will, regulate the direction of great social changes ; and to say that evidence which demonstrates it past question should not be received, is mere political obscurantism. We may regard. State control of industry as noxious to any degree, but if great bodies of voters think otherwise, the frank expression of their views by representatives whom they trust can only be beneficial.
Nor can we admit that the evidence of the " wild " witnesses is nothing but the expression of individual eccentric opinions, and therefore undeserving the atten- tion either of Parliament or the country. On the contrary, the one thing which alarms us in their evidence is that they all say substantially the same thing, all repeat, sometimes in a kind of mechanical way, a sort of credo with an air of the most sincere conviction. The basis of their thought in all cases is that a working man is not simply a human being like other men, but is something else besides. He is a man, in their view, who from birth to death serves the community at the cost of hurt to himself, and who, therefore, from birth to death should be specially protected, super- vised, and made comfortable. He should in childhood be educated by the community without charge ; in man- hood should be provided with such work as he likes best, or can do best—the national workshops are to embrace every trade—at a minimum wage of 30s. a week ; and in old age, that is, after sixty, should, even if still strong and willing to work, be peremptorily "superannuated," without being considered a pauper, at the expense of the community. He should be inspected by a State officer at all times, lest he come to any harm. If his work demands strength, he should have periods of easy labour, lest perchance he should be ruptured. If his work involves danger, his master should avert the danger, and if the master is careless, he should not be fined, but should be sent to prison. If the workman is not physically strong, he should be paid as if he were ; and if he is "physically in- capable," whether through fault or misfortune, he should receive, if a family man, 30s. a week ; "if a single man, 20s.; and if a widow, 15s." This is not, it will be observed, a repe- tition of the French doctrine of man's claim on the universe simply as human being. These witnesses press no abstract idea like that. They have no feeling for the community as a whole, except that it is taxable a misericorde when money is wanted for the working man. Their view is strictly limited to him, but as regards him, Mr. Tillett puts the view of his position in a nutshell :— " Soldiers were pensioned now, and the State ought to recognise that it directly profited more by the productive capacity of the worker than it profited by the destructive capacity of the soldier. The man worn out at the loom, the mill, or in the docks should be considered of as much value as the soldier." We need not say that view would, if it were accepted, revolutionise society from top to bottom ; and to object to its expression by those who entertain it, seems to us incredibly unwise. We might just as well object to the explanation of a religious faith because we held it to be untrue, or contrary to human reason. We are not concerned to-day to criticise these opinions, or even to repudiate them. They point to the existence of an ideal world among workmen which to us appears detestable, much more detestable than the one Sir Julius Vogel once sketched in a paper which we would recom- mend to witnesses before the Labour Commission. They do not care any more than he did about possibilities, and his plan, whether put forward in jest or earnest, beats theirs altogether, alike in justice and in the completeness with which it fulfils the intent of all such schemes. He proposed that the State should, as its first and greatest expenditure, provide out of taxes an allowance of a, pound a week for every family, whether its head were Duke or -dustman, and then leave the social question as at present to settle itself. Nobody would starve, nobody would be robbed for another's benefit ; and as the usual incentive to exertion is not so much comfort as comparative comfort, the stimulus to effort would only be diminished in an in- finitesimal degree. If that scheme had only the merit of possibility, it would be really a very fine suggestion, and it is certainly juster than Mr. Tillett's, which would tax the architect to the bone in order that the mason, who is only hand to the architect's head, should flourish and grow fat. We are, however, intending only to state opinions, not to answer them, and we will conclude with one which we think we detect in the evidence, and which is at all events consolatory. The anti-social feeling is becoming gentler. The day of the old savage levelling seems to be over. The " wild " witnesses are still very wild, still disposed to look on poverty as a virtue, and the possession of capital as an offence ; but they do not ask for redistribution, or regard equality as anything but a counsel of perfection. They seek rather to secure for every one an irreducible minimum of the means of comfort, and if the world can only begin on 30s. a week, are comparatively careless about the rest. That bit of their philosophy was very well, though vaguely, stated by Mr. Hart, of the Dockers' Union in Wapping, a man who has done some hard work in his life, who had much practical evidence to give, and who has, as will be seen, a sell-distrust from which the majority of witnesses are amusingly free :—" Are there any other matters on which you would like to give us information P—I should like to say that I believe the labouring class in general will always be dissatisfied, not merely because they are so badly off, but because there is so much wealth in the country, and their share is so small. My idea is that they will begrudge that wealth until they get such a share of it as will enable them to live with their families in comfort. When they can do that, they will bear no grudge to those who are better off. I believe there are means for bringing that about, but I leave them to those who are better educated than I am." Most of the truth about the English social question is contained in those sentences, which con- dense volumes of unwritten opinion. We shall be very glad of more evidence from men like Mr. Hart, but all the same we are not sorry that the Labour Commission allows the day-dreamers to speak out. Gases are seldom noxious when they reach the upper air.
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