PROSPERITY AND PANIC. T ILE ordinary signs of national prosperity continue
to show themselves with what our commercial and manufacturing soothsayers must regard as provoking regularity. England ought to have been ruined years ago. She has wilfully set at naught all the counsels that have been given her for her good. She has allowed her- self to be elbowed out of every market and bested in every race, when, had she only listened to her true friends, she would have had the whole trade of the world in her hands. In America, especially, there are workmen who can, and do, beat English workmen at their own business. We are indebted for this piece of information to a repre- sentative of the Daily Mail, who has extracted it from "a prominent American." This "prominent American " has in a very high degree that faculty of praising his own country with which citizens of the United States are commonly, though by no means always justly, credited. He goes to Sheffield and he is "greatly struck." But the innocent British workman must not flatter himself that this effect is due to anything that he or his fellows have done. Not at all. He is struck " by the large number of American tools in use there." Think of it, he says to the humbled Britisher," the headquarters of the English steel trade cannot make what it wants for its own use." We are wrong all round. 0 ur builders cannot get contracts because the regulations of the Trade-Unions are fatal to rapid work. Our manufacturers lose trade because " they cling too much to hand labour and to obsolete machinery." As to your working man, says our critic, "you had better not ask me what I think of him." As a matter of fact, nobody does seem to have asked him, but the flow of exposition comes on just the same. In comparison with the American working man he comes off badly at every point. He is less intelligent, worse educated, and dirtier. He puts up with poorer food and inferior drink. He has no desire to better himself. In fact, he is the victim of an "abject conservatism," of " blind adherence to custom," and of " selfish indifference to the interests of his employers."
Of course there is some truth in these sweeping charges. American machines do sometimes work more quickly than English machines. Trade-Union rules do some- times interfere with rapidity of execution. The working man is not always intelligent, nor does he always read his own interests correctly. But there is something to be said on the other side. The backwardness of British trade and the stupidity of British traders ought between them to spell ruin. But somehow they never do. We go on prospering in spite of all predictions to the contrary.
We read the depressing remarks of this " prominent American," and we are quite prepared to find the confirma- tion of them in the Income-tax returns, in the rate of wages paid, and in the number of hours worked. These manufacturers who calmly put up with inferior tools and inferior workmanship must surely be reaping the fruits of their own carelessness. Here and there exceptional pros- perity may still, perhaps, be found, but on any large average employers must surely be getting poorer. By this time, too, these stupid and untaught workmen must be finding out that impoverished employers mean im- poverished artisans. When work is leaving England for abroad, when orders cease to come in, and contracts go across the Atlantic, wages must be steadily falling, and a constantly increasing percentage of workmen must be tasting the sweets of enforced idleness. This is how things should be. What they are, however, is something quite different. The Income-tax returns go steadily up. Wages, on the whole, have never been so good. The pro- portion of men in fall work in all the leading industries is unusually large. These things may not disprove what the "prominent American" tells us he saw at Sheffield and elsewhere, but they do show that the conclusions he draws from what he saw are not beyond question. The large number of American tools in use at Sheffield may not, as he thinks, prove that " the headquarters of the English steel trade cannot make what it wants for its own use." It may only prove that at Shef- field time and labour can be best employed in using tools made by other people. Our American critic forgets, possibly, that there is such a thing as division of labour, and that now that the world is more and more becoming one huge workshop, it may con- ceivably be more economical that tools should be made in one country for the workmen of all other countries. American workmen may have a special aptitude for making tools, and English workmen a special aptitude for using them when made. Why, in that case, should we be disturbed because the workmen of each country confine themselves to the work for which they are severally best suited ?
The lamentations that we so often hear over the migra- tion of British trade do not, as a matter of fact, seem justified by our statistics. But even if they were justified by statistics it would not follow that this migration is the fault either of British workmen or of British employers. It might only mean that other countries had found out that they could do for themselves what we have been accustomed to do for them. That is a discovery which they were certain to make in the end. Our manufacturing supremacy was the creation of circumstances, some of which were certain to come to an end because they in no way depended on any action or merit of ours. It was our own industry and skill that enabled us to make the most of our exceptional wealth in coal and iron. But when this wealth ceased to be exceptional, when it was found to be shared with other countries, the exclusive demand for our skill and industry necessarily came .to an end. From being only a customer the world has become a rival. That is the inevitable consequence of natural and economic changes. But the spirit in which to meet these changes is not that of blind determination to ignore the changes that have come about ; rather it should. be that of watchful readi- ness to adapt ourselves to the new conditions which have followed upon these changes. That we may have fallen short even in this respect is quite possible. All we contend is that the evidence which is adduced in support of this position stops as yet some way short of proof.
Even the Trade-Unions, mischievous as in some cases they probably are, are not likely in the long run to be 'as specially disastrous to England as is sometimes supposed. We feel the pinch of their rules now because our Unions are better organised than those of other countries. But for this very reason we may not feel it so much by and by. The " prominent American " quotes a case in which an American contractor found it cheaper to import brick- layers from New York than to employ London bricklayers. The reason was that the rules of their Union forbade the London men to lay more than a certain number of bricks a day, whereas the New York •men worked under no such restrictions. In other words, trade will migrate from England to countries where Trade-Unions either do not exist, or have wiser rules. It must not be forgotten, how- ever, that Trade-Unionism is not a product peculiar to England. It is more developed here, and consequently has more power to give effect to the rules it lays down. But the artisans of other countries are perfectly aware of this fact, and it is only a sense of their present weakness that pre- vents them from making regulations quite as stringent as any that our Unions make. The tendency of trade organisation is everywhere to grow stronger, and it may very well be that a few years hence the contractor we have mentioned will find bricklayers' work in New York quite as much hampered by unwise trade regulations as the same work in London. It is idle for employers in any country to suppose that they will always be able to make their bargains without reference to their workmen. They may do so for a time, but only for a time, and so far as their superiority over English employers rests on this basis alone, it is hardly worth our while to take special measures to defeat it.
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