MR. GIFFEN ON WAGES.
IT is an agreeable change to pass from the atmosphere which commonly surrounds popular oratory on economic questions to that in which Mr. Giffen is accus- tomed to carry on his investigations. The difference between the two is the difference between separate worlds. The popular speaker has the advantage of Mr. Giffen in that he knows exactly what it is that he wants to prove. Mr. Giffen is constantly exposed to the irritating necessity of having to hold his judgment in suspense. The popular speaker approaches the subject with the confident air of a man whose mind is made up. He starts with his conclu- sion, instead of working up to it. This distinction neces- sitates a corresponding distinction in the treatment of facts. The popular speaker abhors averages, Mr. Giffen revels in them. The one looks over the vast field of recorded cases, and picks out those which suit his purpose. The other takes them as they come, and records the lesson they convey with no a priori pre- ference for one lesson over another. From Mr. Giffen, therefore, we can learn all that the subject has to teach us. It may not be much, but if so, it is because the educa- tional value of the subject is small. Statistics are not invariably fruitful ; the figures that come out are some- times so various that one set seems simply the contra- dictory of another. Sometimes, on the other hand, they are infinitely fruitful. A whole group of fallacies is dispersed in a moment by the mere admission of an uncoloured light. One such example occurs in Mr. Giffen's evidence before the Royal Commission on Labour last Tuesday. The favourite commonplace of the Socialist orator is that the poor are always growing poorer. The hope of getting the better of their poverty is continually de- ferred. If the country is prosperous, it is the rich who thereout suck the advantage. If the country has to struggle with bad times, it is the rich who escape the burden, and the poor who have to bend their shoulders to bear it. For the' proof of these statements, the listener is commonly referred to his own experience. Does not he feel more degraded than he once was ? Does he not see the increase of wealth in others, and compare it with his own hopeless condition ? Against this we have to set Mr. Giffen's cold and impartial figures. They tell a different and a more encouraging story. It is not true that the poor are continually growing poorer. So far as regards the relative wealth of rich and poor, there has been no change during the last fifty years. At the beginning of the period, the income of the working class was two-fifths of the income of the whole country. At the end of this period, the income of the working class is two-fifths of the income of the whole country. If there has been any change, it makes slightly in favour of the working classes. If we turn from the relative to the absolute wealth of the two classes, we find that there has been a great increase in each case. Fifty years ago, Mr. Giffen calculates that the total income of the country was 500 millions, or about £20 per head ; now it is between 1,400 and 1,500 millions, or 437 per head. Fifty years ago, the income of the working class was 200 millions, or £40 per adult male ; now it is about 680 millions, or £80 per adult male. Of course, it would be easy to make too much of this. It proves nothing, for example, as to the fairness of the present distribution of wealth, and so supplies no answer to the man who says that the working class, instead of having two-fifths of the total income of the country, ought to have three-fifths or four-fifths. But it does this. It shows that the present distribution of wealth is not so unjust as to put any impediment in the way of the growing prosperity of the working class. It has not prevented them from doubling their income in the course of half a century. More than this, the figures suggest a presumption that if the distribution of wealth had been very unfair, a class which was thus growing in prosperity would have been able to do more than advance pari panic with the rich. It would have wrested from them some of the wealth which was not justly theirs. Instead of this, we find that the prosperity of the one class has entailed a like pros- perity on the other, that as capital has increased, wages have risen, that the two powers, which are sometime represented as irreconcilably hostile, have all the time had a strong com- mon interest. Is it certain that an assault upon capital would have no other result than to change the relative propor- tions of the wealth of the two classes—that the income of the whole country remaining the same, three-fifths of it would iu future belong to the working class and two-fifths to the rich ? Might not the result work out quite dif- ferently, and the relative wealth of the two classes remain the same while the total wealth of the nation decreased ? FY 't we know is, that with the existing distribution, the remaa of each class has doubled ; we ought to be very sure that this process would go on just as steadily, before we substitute for the existing distribution of wealth another more favourable to the working class. It may take £3 of capital to produce £2 of wages. If this is so, the result of making that £3 into £2, might be not to make the 42 into £3, but simply to lower the amount of wages in pro- portion to the reduction of capital. The £80 per adult male does not, of course, represent his actual average earnings. The figure is arrived at by crediting him with his share of the labour of women and children. In the thirty-eight separate occupations in which Mr. Giffen has tabulated wages, the average yearly wage of the man is £64, and of the woman just half that amount. Of the total number, nearly 60 per cent. earn about the average. This table omits three very important trades,— railways, buildings, and agriculture. For these the yearly averages are 459, 470, and £39, agriculture coming out at not much more than half the average of the thirty-nine trades, and only a little better than the average of the women engaged in them. These figures make it unnecessary to inquire further into the causes of the exodus from the villages. So long as agriculture brings a man £39 a year, and the average earnings in other trades are £64, the more energetic men and the better workmen will leave agriculture alone. It is true that the better-paid employments are not exclusively urban, but they are so to a large extent ; and the young man who is drawn by the rumour of higher wages naturally goes to the large towns to seek for them. It will be noticed also that though wages have steadily risen, and are now double what they were half-a-century back, they are still very far below those which workmen are sometimes supposed to make. Thus we read occasionally that curates are paid a salary which an artisan would strike rather than accept. As a matter of fact, the average wage of the artisan is just half the salary of the worst-paid curate; while of those whose wages are above the average wage, only 1.8 per cent. earn more than 40s. a week. There is no occasion, therefore, to swell the chorus of regrets that may occa- sionally be heard at the exemption of the artisan from Income-tax. His contribution to that impost, if he were made liable to it, would not be appreciable. Mr. Giffen's figures with regard to Trade-Unions show that they have a smaller hold on the working-class popu- lation than most people would have expected. Out of seven millions of adult labourers, considerably less than one million belong to Unions. Even this number, how- ever, are responsible for an appreciable, though not large, loss of wages. In 1891, £1,500,000 might nave been earned but for strikes. As the average duration of a strike is only three weeks, Mr. Giffen is not sure that even this ap- parent loss of a million and a half is not made up by larger earnings during the remaining forty-nine weeks. The bad effect of strikes is to be chiefly looked for in their tendency to divert trade into new channels, and to invite foreign competition. We infer, however, from Mr. Giffen's remark, that increased thrift would have a great effect in raising the wages of the working classes ; that he is of opinion, on the whole, that Unionism tends to raise wages. One con- sequence, at least, of greater thrift would be to increase the incomes of Trade-Unions, and it is not easy to see how wages could be raised by an increase in the savings of the working class, except so far as that increase augmented their ability to stand out for higher pay. Even as it is, the aggregate of working-class savings is a considerable item in national finance. Taking Unions, Co-operative Societies, and Savings-Banks together, Mr. Giffen esti- mates the annual amount at £6,200,000, and this does not include the sums spent in the purchase of furniture, or invested in Friendly Societies and Building Societies. On the whole, Mr. Giffen's picture of the condition of the working class is encouraging. Beneath his sober statistics lies the evidence of steady progress,—progress whist)). may be expected to go steadily upward, unless it is arrested by the disposition apparent in some quarters to get more from the capitalist goose than the daily golden egg.
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