A PRIEST IN A FACTORY
By A PRIEST IN A FACTORY Church in Great Britain today is in a situation not very dissimilar from that of its beginnings in the Roman Empire, and it is questionable whether it is not time to adopt the methods of ministry which it adopted then. The world is largely pagan ; the whole ministerial system of this country is based on the tacit assumption that the population is Christian. The Roman Empire was converted, in so far as it was converted at all, by a nucleus of living cells within the working life of its people, and the ministers of the Church in its very early days—particularly St. Paul—were ordinary men of the world making their living among their fellow men and women. The Church of today certainly needs a large army of ordinary Christians who recognise their call to be active cells in their places of work. My own conviction that a certain number of its ministers should live this life also led me to secure a job recently in an ordinary factory engaged partly on war production. What follows records my impressions and reflections up to date.
The first thing which struck me on the first day at work was the almost incredible friendliness of everyone to everyone, aptly symbolised by a warm smile and an actual word of welcome from k woman working at a lathe in the " shop " where I was sent ; further experience has done nothing to modify this conviction: the spirit of co-operation among the workers themselves, their readiness :o help one another, their sympathy for one another, are profoundly :efreshing. This general friendliness is shared also by the employers hemselves, whd are known and respected personally throughout the firm, and by charge-hands, and foremen, whose position is perhaps the most difficult of all, as " between the upper and nether mill- stone."
I have not attempted to hide, indeed I have gone out of my way to make known, my priestnood. After. some initial surprise the only difference which it has made is that numbers of total strangers ha% e gone out of their way to stop and talk to me on all kinds of subjects directly or indirectly bearing on religion, or to ask me how I am getting on and how I like the work. The opportunities for Christian propaganda and witness in all the many casual con- versations of the working day—if one is alive to them—are con- siderable ; this is particularly the case with regard to those members of the firm who have illness in the family—their readiness and even eagerness to accept whatever help a priest can give is noticeable. There is on the whole surprisingly little bad language, and almost no dirty talk, so far as I can see, among the older men: some of this is due to the undoubtedly good influence of women in the workshop ; their presence is respected. Such foul talk as I have heard is usually, as one ought to have expected, on the lips of boys who still think it sounds " big" to swear or talk dirt. Incidentally, I have discovered little or no bitterness towards the Germans, and indeed some sympathy for their position under bombing—which may possibly be due to fading memories of the unpleasantness of the Blitz of 194o-41.
Coming now to general considerations, motives and " the system,"
I_ come also to criticism. Everyone's god, broadly speaking, is money. Money is the sole motive, the only concern, for Work : the criterion of all value, the object of the worker's life. If one asks, money for what? one gets no answer, beyond the ordinary needs of life and family. This is the terrible nemesis which production for profit gets, and deserves to get, that the worker produces only for his profit, too. For example, on the last working night before Christmas I was the only man in the factory who did any work at all for the first five hours, and not more than four or five did any at all that night : yet all clocked in, and will draw the wages for a tol-hour night's work. No one asks what would happen if the Army knocked off for Christmas: no one considers that they are robbing " the guv'nor " or the Government. If the staff let them get away with it (and the staff do, because they are helpless), then the workers will get what they can out of this for any other " mild " swindle.
A good deal of this attitude, though not all, can be traced to
the system of wages by piece-work, which may be necessary enough for the war emergency, but is in my opinion profoundly anti- Christian in its effects if regarded as .a permanent system. Piece- work roughly means that you are paid both by how muth you do and how fast you do it ; and this is all very well for an' insatiable military demand backed by an illimitable public purse. But here are the criticisms. First, the set time and price of piece-work is made by an average worker in consultation with a foreman : it pays the worker to go fairly slow when doing the experimental piece- work, because thereafter whoever does the work faster than the set time gets higher pay ; on the other hand, if it is shown by experience that a lot of people can work faster than the set time, the price of the job will be lowered, so it does not pay to go at full speed when the price is once set. In either case the naturally slow worker is penaliSed ; but the most vicious effect is that when every moment and incident in work varies the pay to be received, one's mind is automatically forced into one groove, " How much will this cost me? How much will I get out of this? " I know, because I have tried. One just cannot work without thinking of money all the time ; and, further, there are occasional jealousies and natural worries among fellow-workers when one man finds that another can go much faster than himself. He thinks that the price and official pace of the job will be altered, in both cases against his own capaci- ties, or he sees that another man, not through merit but through natural knack, is earning more than he for perhaps less real struggle. Finally, in times of peace, when the market is variable and not insatiable, the general effect of piece-work—if it increases production, as it is meant to do, by introducing the motive of higher profit for the worker—in the long run is self-destruction. For over-production involves a glut on the market, which is the beginning of the vicious circle of trade depression, or it involves cutting out less speedy or " efficient " competitors, which means unemployment in the trade as a whole for the benefit of a section of it, which in the long run has an equally bad effect even on the successful competitor.
What, then, is the alternative solution if we accept the fact that men as a whole will not produce without some profit-making motive? The answer seems to be that meii might be induced to do their best in production either for the good of the firm as a whole (as the nearest concrete body which is easily visualised and understood) or in the interests of more leisure and a wider development of life in general, such as is not possible under conditions of war and overtime: such ends as these might be regarded as useful sublima- tions of the profit motive. I would suggest that the efficient and speedy worker should be rewarded not, as now, with higher indi- vidual pay, but with shares in the firm, and that such shares should also be given to workers who have given the firm good service over a fair period, regardless of their speed of production. Such shares should carry a controlling interest in the firm—not according to the number of shares, but by some system of election of directors in rotation from all the shareholders who were willing to serve. Thus successful work would entitle a man to a share in the manage- ment as well as ownership of the business. As an alternative option I would allow a man to take out his shares in shorter hours of work—particularly when it was seen that production had reached the limits of the market's demands—thus enabling him to develop his life in other ways in leisure time. And, in any case, when workers' hours and rate of production were under consideration, firms should act both in collaboration with the trade as a whole and with consumers' councils, who would represent the market for the goods.
This is a sketch of the problem, rather than a worked-out solution ; but I am convinced of one thing—that the real difficulty of " being a Christian in business " is not so much a question of the individual's morals at work as of the motive and system of his production as a whole. The Church must not dodge this problem, and unless she is prepared to stand for some form of communal control and ownership in business and production for the needs of the community, besides a basic living wage not dependent upon the accidents of a man's capacity, and unless she is prepared to sacrifice any security which she herself now has by reason of a different system, in illy opinion she will be neglecting the heart of the problem.
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