How the Workers are Butchered on the Rand. (1913)

From the August 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

Putumayo is not such ancient history that one person here and there, with an exceptional memory for grisly tales of barbarity and suffering, can with an effort recall something of the facts of that interesting case. The present writer endeavoured to show that the wave of indignation which swept over the land, from the Cabinet Ministers in our immaculate Parliament to the poet (!) (now deceased) who once stirred the nation’s soul with a deathless poem calling upon the British bulldogs to “Hurry Up for Pity Sake !” (the merit of which poem was handsomely acknowledged by it being printed on red cotton handkerchieves and sold at a price within the means of all who had a nose to wipe thereon) might well have been let loose over equally deserving happenings very much nearer home.

That statement did not meet with universal approval. It seemed incredible to some that those smart, jovial, silk-hatted gentlemen who rush to and fro between Park Lane and Throgmorton Street, and who carry so gracefully the knighthoods and honours heaped upon them by the Liberal Government, could ever be guilty, could even fall under suspicion of being guilty, of any such atrocities as those with which those strange-named servants of a British company turned the peaceful Putumayo into a river of blood and tears in a “Devil’s Paradise.”

Recent happenings in South Africa, however, in which British miners, and British soldiers, and British (!) capitalists, and British knights, and the highest of high officers of the British Crown, are concerned, show clearly enough that in all essentials, the “cultured” ones of our Western civilisation are quite aa capable, given the materials, as any Portuguese half-breed in the pay of British capital, of creating a “Devil’s Paradise” of their own, with British blood and brawn, on the soil of the British Empire.

All the humbug of that sly old servant of Satan, W. E. Gladstone, who covered his machinations in the interests of the ruling class with a slime of “moral” cant, in which the “wrongs” of the Balkan people quivering under the spiked and envenomed heel of “Abdul the Damned” were in particular made to be a mat, jealously guarded and preserved, for him to clean his begrimed boots on, has been, it seems, bequeathed in trust and with compound interest, to the Liberal party. While they are busy fulminating against the “White Slave Trader” at home, they are, with brutal cynicism, crowning the blood-reeking fortunes of South African millionaires with titles. So that the political funds of the “Great Liberal Party” may benefit, they make murder respectable by covering it with the cloak of knighthood. 

Those who do not know how, and at what cost of working class suffering and misery, these South African fortunes have been amassed, are invited to think over the scanty particulars reproduced from a Press which, under a system, fails to suppress much that they would for the simple reason that sensation (and advertisements) is their life’s blood.

“‘However healthy a Transvaal rock-drill man may appear to be on his return to this country,’ Dr. Haldane told the Departmental Committee on Industrial Diseases in 1907, ‘he will probably be dead within a year or two.'” (“Pall Mall Gazette,” 7.7.13.)

“The death rate of one section of the men who mine the gold—the machine men or rock drillers—is over 230 per thousand from one disease—miner’s phthisis—alone. Such a death rate from a single occupational disease must be unparalleled in the whole industrial world. It can only be compared with King Leopold’s Congo Free State.

“Speaking before a representative meeting of mining engineers in Johannesburgh in September last Mr. Koetze, the Government mining engineer, said : ‘Sooner or later every worker underground in these mines will contract miner’s phthisis.’

“The practical result of commissions of inquiry have been recommendations that water be used to keep down the dust which causes the disease. These recommendations have been urged upon the mineowners, in each case with the same result—utter callousness and neglect.”

These extracts were written by Dr. G. L. Ugmara, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P., and were reproduced in the “Morning Leader” for December 2, 1911.

“No less than 10,000 people die in these mines every.” (Mr. Merriman.)

“Miners’ phthisis is said to be due to the inhalation of fine dust which arises not merely from rock-drilling without the accompaniment of water, but also from the blasting operations with explosives. Last year more than 1,000 of 3,000 men examined by the Medical Commission were found to have phthisis. No rock-driller could work in the mines for sixteen years and escape it. Death took place as a rule before the age of forty. Here is a table which showed at that time how inevitable is the doom of any man who undertakes this work :—

Years of service Percentage of men affected

    2½ 25

    4½ 55

    6½ 70

   10½ 80

   13½ 90

   16½ 100 ” 

“Daily News.”

“Then all the miners and the population know that the mine owners are responsible in the same way for the death among the Kaffirs, which Mr. Sauer, the Minister for Native Affairs, has characterised, as regards the natives from tropical countries, as little short of murder. There was no need for any limitation in the phrase. The probability is that over 100,000 natives have been killed in the mines since the war.” (Mr. R. L. Outhwaite, M.P., in “Reynolds’s,” 6.7.13.)

There can be no escape from such a mass of evidence supplied by the capitalists’ own tools and fellows. Ten thousand victims in a year ! It would take a continent of Putumayos to equal this stupendous crime. When the war was raging we were told that they were “painting the map red,” but never in those days of open and avowed slaughter were such libations of blood poured out to the “Imperial idea” as have been run out, as from a vast broken cask, every year since, to satisfy the blood-thirsty vampires of Park Lane, in the ultra-respectable West End of London.

It is the story of Whitehaven retold in more callous letters. There miners were hurled to death because it would cost their safe and comfortable masters something to ventilate the mine in accordance with the first clause of their own Mines Act. On the Rand thousands of working-class lives are thrown away annually because it would absorb some of the knighted owners’ profits to spray with water in the process of rock-drilling, and to allow time for the dust to settle after a “blast” before the men returned to the “face.” It is the story of rubber retold, on a scale more in keeping with the dignity of the yellow commodity.

It cannot be pleaded that this wholesale murder of black and white is the work of a few of the capitalists alone. It is aided and connived at by the whole master class as such. How the British Government imposed a “hut tax” upon the natives whose land they had stolen, and sent a military force to enforce the payment of the paltry sums that could never pay the expense of collecting them, in order to drive the blacks into the mines to earn the money in which alone the taxes were payable, may not be entirely forgotten by some who do not especially treasure the memory of these curious incidents. It reads and looks and smells remarkably like some of the means resorted to by the “brigands” who cost virtuous England the price of a special commission and a House of Commons inquiry. Ten thousand victims a year ! Oh, the stinking hypocrisy of the howl that greeted the revelation of the Peruvian atrocities !

The war which was engineered in order that the mine owners might squeeze another four million pounds profit per annum out of the writhing and quivering carcasses of their white and black slaves was the work of a Tory administration, but it was reserved for a Liberal Government to make the Transvaal a “self-governing” colony, in order that they might be able to say when miners were to be butchered on the Rand : “We cannot interfere.” Strange, is it not, that when the Outlanders were supposed to be writhing in agony under the indignity of being without the franchise, the fact that they were under a foreign Government did not prevent the full armed might of the British Empire being used to “see them righted,” but now that these miners are being massacred in cold blood by troops provided and paid by the British Government, under the direction of a high officer of the British Crown, on soil painted red” with the blood of ten thousand British soldiers, nothing can be done because the Transvaal is a self-governing British colony !

I say nothing about the lives lost in the so-called rioting. Where life is held so cheap it seems little enough to make a bother about. But whose estimate of working-class life is it that counts ten thousand workers lives as of less importance than the cost of providing safe conditions for the mining of 40 million pounds worth of gold ? Think of that great army of workers—men of your own class—who must march to death to produce one year’s output of gold from South African mines. Ten thousand of them, black and white. For every million pounds 250 lives. We have been nurtured on grim and haunting pictures of the unspeakable Arab slave-caravans, but was ever anything more appalling enacted in all Africa than is enacted by these silk-hatted brigands of Park Lane, West ?

Fellow workers, very guarded must be the language of the revolutionary who would criticise those who engineered a great war in order to grab the mines, who have butchered you on a hundred shambles from Peterloo and Featherstone to Llanelly and the Rand, who waste your lives by raising the loadline of ships, and by refusing to adopt automatic couplings on the railways, who murder you by thousands for the mere cost of ventilating coal mines at home and spraying the dust in the mines of South Africa. To speak too plainly of these things is to ask to be sent to prison, for those who set so little store on your lives have taken every cunning care to so hedge about their victims with laws and armed force that they must die almost unheard. Hence much must be left to the reader’s imagination. But attention is directed to that clause in our Declaration of Principles which declares that the “armed forces of the nation exist only to conserve the monopoly by the capitalist class of the wealth taken from the workers”. Its contradiction, in the face of every military action since the war, from Sir George White’s (the “hero” of Ladysmith) smashing of the coal porters’ strike at Gibraltar to the latest gun-boat demonstration at Leith and cold-blooded butchery in the streets of Johannesburgh, is here challenged. It cannot be seriously and truthfully contradicted.

If this is true, then it is true also that the hope of the workers lies in obtaining control of those armed forces by capturing political power.

That is the way out—the Socialist way. First to deprive the murder class of political control by ceasing to elect them and their Labour allies to Parliament—electing Socialists instead—then by expropriating them and establishing the Socialist Commonwealth. There is no other way.

A. E. Jacomb

Public Safety V. Railway Profits. I. The Cleaner. (1913)

From the June 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

That Fateful Letter.

The workers in general, and railwaymen in particular, have heard a great deal respecting the “safety of the public” and the “welfare of the country” from the masters and their hangers-on just lately. We also saw the letter of Mr. A K. Butterworth (General Manager N.E.R.) to driver Knox; and, unfortunately, since then one or two “accidents” have taken place which might well make the man in the street wonder whether a train is altogether safe to ride in.

We have in front of us a very big and important question, and it would be impossible in a short article to treat it in all its branches. I propose to deal with a section of the railway workers and their conditions of service, about whom the people know very little ; and, as is always the case in like circumstances, a section that is lied about by the prostitute Press and orators of the master class, in the hope of turning public opinion against them. I refer to the men employed in what is known as the “Running Section” of the Locomotive Department of the lines. Let me explain.

The Loco. Dept. consists of all men connected with the Loco, shed work, and also the “running” section, but these latter are classed separately from the rest of the employees because they are employed to “run” the road. The men are doubtless better known as drivers, firemen, and cleaners.

A glance at the title of this article would seem to open up a question of safety in the mind of the thoughtful reader, and I have no hesitation in saying that, as at present run, safety is not the first consideration of the railway magnates. It is profit they think of first, and the services are not safe for many reasons, all of which have a direct bearing on the making of profit.

If safety was the first consideration of the companies, obviously the men who actually work the trains, viz., drivers and firemen, would be assured of a decent living so as to keep them fit for their perilous duties ; also the machines they work would be kept thoroughly roadworthy and in the pink of condition. This, however, I know from experience with two of the leading companies in this country, is not the case.

The men are sadly overworked ; their machines, many of them, are not properly road-worthy, and their wages, especially considering their responsibility, are low.

What We Shall See.

Before going any further it would, perhaps, be as well to look into the conditions of service of the men, as these conditions have a direct bearing on the safety of the services. In doing this we shall have to start with the lad who, after passing a medical examination at the hands of the railway doctor, and an eyesight test at the hands of the Loco. Superintendent or his deputy, starts in the service as an engine cleaner. This is the lad who will be a fireman at some future time, and then driver.

The safety question will not be greatly dealt with in looking at the conditions of the cleaner, for he is not yet “on the road.” Nevertheless it is necessary, I think, to examine the conditions under which he works, if only to see what qualifications he has for taking up the duties of fireman when his turn comes. We shall see that no provision is made to properly teach him the various parts of his engine, and that his daily work becomes a bore to him through the speeding up to which he is subjected.

On most of the trunk lines the lads start at 18 or older, so as to take their turn on night work. They begin by cleaning shunting engires. and are usually on for 10¼ working hours and start at 17s. a week as a rule. These engines are nearly always in a very bad condition, and the lads have to work hard—many such engines running a fortnight without having a “wiper” put on them.

An Irishman's Rise.

About twelve months of this, and then comes the first promotion—to local passenger engines, which are kept almost as dirty. The lads as a rule get 2d. a day rise then, and work in gangs, the work amounting to 1½ engines per man per night (very little or no day work is the rule when on these engines), so that the cleaners are no better off for their extra 1s. a week.

The lads then get another “promotion,” and go on tender engines. Further speeding-up is now resorted to by reducing the working hours to 9, in which time the lads have to clean the mammoth locomotives of to-day. A number of companies have the “contract” clearer, who has always the same engine to clean. It is, however, impossible to clean the biggest modern engines in 9 hours—indeed, they would in some cases take nearer 20. So a great deal of the engine is “left.”

The “contract” cleaner has no appointed time on duty. He has to vary with the “turn” of his engine, which means turning out at all hours of the day or night. A holiday is an unlooked for privilege, and even a day off in the summer is more than many dare ask for.

The man, having his regular engine, takes a pride in it, and would kick up a noise if he were barred going on his machine because it has only a “light” trip “on” it, which often is the case. It is a rule that if an engine looks anything like “respectable” it can “run round,” thus overworking the cleaner by making him “tear off” two or three trips instead of one.

I may say here that the wages of these men are the highest paid for cleaning (the G.N.R. in London district formerly paid 3s. 10d. per day) but they are rapidly disappearing, and are now almost a thing of the past.

Dirt and Dividends.

The directors and shareholders demanding a greater return on their investments, expenses have to be cut down, regardless of safety or anything else. So a number of companies clean their engines by piecework, at miserable rates, and the wages of the man then depends upon how be “stands” with the foreman. (This system has recently been introduced on the G.N.) Another system extensively employed is to have the work done by day work by gangs, the men getting different engines daily. Under this method no pride can be taken by the cleaners in the machines.

Under both the last-mentioned systems the “contract” man is done away with because he is not cheap enough. Engines go out two, three, or four days without a clean, so it is impossible for a driver to make a minute inspection of the parts to see they are not broken. This, which is a very important matter affecting the “welfare of the public,” and the fact that an engine may “run hot” and delay several trains, besides causing a great inconvenience on and off the shed, and a host of other things, are thrown to the winds in the interest of increased dividends. If a machine fails and the driver cannot give a "satisfactory” explanation to the Loco. Superintendent, he can be fined and thus help to swell the coffers of the human vampires that live upon him.

To sum up, the highest standing wage a cleaner can depend upon is in the neighbour­hood of 19s. a week on the trunk lines, for which he puts in at least 54 hours. In the country the wages paid are much lower.

The state of the engines proves conclusively that there are not nearly enough men, and what men there are are immensely overworked, with plenty of dirt, night-work, inconvenience to self and family, bad smells on shed, and the lads often working feet deep in hot water. In addition there is a good deal of bullying from the foreman, who is generally a man who has failed on the footplate.

A Premium on Ignorance.

The average period a man does cleaning is about four years, and from the way he is overworked there is no chance for him to learn much about his engine. Nor is he given a rules-book order to enable him to make himself acquainted with the rules of the road (the Midland does give rules-books after six months). There are, however, “educational classes” on some companies (e.g., the G.N.), but they are not successful, and the attendance is small. The men have to attend in their own time, and with their state of overwork, and that great curse, overtime, it is not to be wondered at that very few attend the classes, the lecturers at which as a rule are drivers.

In working hours the lads are sent home or fined for trifling offences, and kept in abject slavery, so their mind is turned against their work. As a result of these conditions they can not take it up with the interest necessary to become good enginemen and to befit them to be in charge of trains. It is, therefore, little wonder that, at the end of four years or so, when the lad goes up to “pass” for a spare fireman, he often fails in the exam.—which means more shed slavery, or, what is the rule on a number of lines, the sack.

Those who get through, however, owing to the unscientific way they are trained and the low wages paid, are not fit, from the point of view of public safety, to be in charge of an engine—which, by the way, is quite in accordance with the standing orders of capitalism and the production of profit.

And the unscientific training of enginemen through their period as cleaners, is pretty well certain to last until the system that trains men for profit instead of for usefulness and safety is swept into oblivion.

J. Sevier

[To be Continued.]

Public Safety versus Railway Profits. II. The Fireman. (1913)

From the July 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

[Continued from last issue.]

 

We will now look into the conditions of the spare firemen and firemen of the trunk lines, and in doing so we shall be concerned with men that are actually working the trains.

The spare fireman is a man that has been “passed” to act as a fireman when needed, but who is not always engaged in firing. When he is not doing so he is booked “shed duty as required,” and as often as not goes back to cleaning or other shed work. We can briefly pass him bye, because when firing he is under the conditions of a regular fireman.

His working hours are ten without a break, as a rule, and his pay is anything from 3s. to 4s. a day when employed firing. But he must exceed five hours in order to get this. When on “shed duty” the wage is something less (usually 3s. 6d.), which is another instance of the shameless robbery of these men, seeing that it is not through their fault that they are “put back” in the shed, or “cancelled.” Once a man is passed for firing he should be treated and paid as such.

As a rule the spare fireman’s week is six days. Occasionally, however, it is seven days. He is usually on shunting work, but is sometimes put on long trips—a common practice on the M.R. The period of spare-firing is about two or three years, then the man undergoes a further exam. for a regular fireman.

His promotion generally follows in the order of seniority, but the company “reserves the right of choice for promotion irrespective of seniority”—a clause which obviously leaves plenty of room for jobbery.

Once a man is passed as a regular fireman he is always at work on engines, either on or off shed ; so in looking at his working conditions we shall commence to get to grips with the indictment that has already been levelled at the companies: that the men are overworked and underpaid, which are circumstances not consistent with public safety.

Let us briefly look at his conditions. Ten hours constitute his working day. This, for a man standing over a furnace which (according C. I. Bowen Cooke, of the L.N.W., in his book “British Locomotives”) developes a temperature of 5,027 degree Fah., is excessive.

To give some idea of the nature of the work let me quote from an article, “A day’s work on the footplate,” which appeared in that capitalist, organ, “The Railway Magazine,” Oct. 1909, and in which the author says : “With 14½ on (a moderate load) I fire up every two minutes, and sometimes oftener.” That this is no exaggeration is shown by the fact that on some of the big engines the coal consumed is about 50 lbs. per mile.

Before leaving the shed the fireman has to make up his fire, assist in oiling, clean and trim his lamps, fetch oil for his driver, and in many cases clean his “front” and otherwise assist his driver to get the engine ready to back on the train. By this time he must be “squared up” and have steam up to anything between 140 to 225 lbs per square inch.

To get the engine ready to leave the shed half an hour is allowed ; to get “on train” from shed another half hour generally, but sometimes only a quarter. In “British Locomotives” Mr. Cooke (Chief Mechanical Engineer L.N.W.) says (p. 353): “Firemen should come to work before booked, and make all preparations with comfort to himself and his driver”—a thing all firemen have to do, for to get an engine ready in a proper manner to ensure safety in the time allowed is impossible, and many firemen “sign on” as much as half an hour before booked in order to make these preparations.

After an engine has run a trip one way “the fire must be cleaned, etc., in readiness for the return journey.” (“British Locomotives,”.p. 370). In the running, when not actually firing, “the fireman must assist his driver in sighting the signals.” (Rule 139.) This is the way that he “learns the road.”

After the return journey is completed and the engine is “on shed,” it has to be “put away,” which means thoroughly cleaning all the parts affected by fire, “turning” the engine, filling the tank, and locking up the tools, etc., reporting any losses of same. For this he is allowed half an hour, which is quite inadequate. He then “signs off,” and is at liberty for nine hours (eight on the L.B.S.C.) from that time. But “in cases of emergency” he may be called out before he has had nine hours off. No matter what “turn” he is booked, after nine hours have expired from his “signing off,” he is the “property” of the company employing him, and is liable to be “called out” at any time. If he is not at home when he is required he is cautioned or reprimanded, and often fined or suspended, for “not being available for duty when required.”

The man’s turn, as a rule, varies daily, and he does not know what turn he will be until the previous day (the Midland and the L.N.W. keep their men fairly well informed of their turns). As aforesaid, his working day is ten hours, but often circumstances compel him to work overtime, especially when starting his career as fireman on the main line, for which, of course, he is paid. Often a fireman does twelve hours or so, then has nine hours off, for two and three days together, the result being that he is tired before commencing his day’s work. This, by the way, being consistent with the companies’ ideas of “safety,” to say nothing of Rule 6 and the dangerous way he may have to cross running roads during the day’s work to carry out the detestable rule 35.

Anyway, his week must not exceed six, or sometimes seven, days (which is quite enough), so after his nine hours off periods he is given a rest of something like sixteen to twenty hours, but only nine of them are his—he is company’s property for the rest of the time, for which he receives nothing.

Of course, anyone with a whit of sense can see that the “men only drive and fire for about four hours per day and are paid ten” (“A Day’s Work on the Footplate,” “Railway Magazine,” Oct. 1909), and the statement of Mr. J. Gooday (Gen. Manager G.E.R.) and his directors, who consider that the “time the men are on duty counts only in the actual running” (“Railway Magazine,” March 1907), is mere piffle, and is only intended to poison the mind of the man in the street, who regards such statements, emanating from such journals and gentlemen, as gospel truth.

It will be seen that the life of a fireman is worry from beginning to end, with bad rest, bad coal, bad engines, bad conditions generally, and bad pay—with which I will deal later.

Now we come to conditions which are rather peculiar to most sons of toil, but which play an important part in dividend making as applied to the Loco. Depts. of the trunk lines. I refer to “lodging,” one of the biggest curses that can befall the loco. man, whether driver or fireman. The sum allowed for a “lodge” is 1s. 6d., and if it exceeds twelve hours, 2s. 6d. The latter price, however, is easily wangled by “calling out” the man a minute or before the twelve hours have expired.

The “main line” men are affected by this, on some lines more than on others. On short lines it is unknown. The men working the long distance goods trains are generally safe for a “lodge out,” because they can only get one way by the time their day is up. They, therefore, on their scanty wages, have to keep two homes going, to say nothing of making a smoke as the result of the bad coal supplied. (See “British Locomo­tives,” p. 346.)

The fireman’s wages vary from 3s. 6d. to 5s. 6d. per day, according where and by whom he is employed—a good average through the country being about 30s. a week. A main line man might get somewhere about 35s. if he is lucky; but besides “lodging,” time worked that he is not paid for, and time at home “waiting” after his nine hours are up for which, as I have said, he gets nothing, and many other expenses connected with the calling, he has to run something like 950 miles.

The wages are nothing like sufficient, neither are there enough men by half, as the long-distance engine working and “lodging” will show. And engines work daily double journeys of 180 odd miles.

The usual term of firing is from twelve to sixteen years, and it is a period of excessive robbery from beginning to end. And while such conditions prevail, and such a set of men are worked as they are, the “welfare and safety” of the travelling public is impossible.

J. Sevier

[To be Continued.]

Public Safety versus Railway Profits. III The Driver. (1913)

From the August 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

[continued from last issue.]

How often has one gone on any busy station and seen a crowd of people gathered round a large engine just about to “get away” with a world famous train ! And how often have we heard very harsh and untrue things said about the men thereon, especially in the neighbour­hood of August 1911, by the master class, and even by many misguided workers !

“The men have fine jobs and get good money, and they ought not to be allowed anywhere where beer and spirits are sold, nor to smoke, for the responsibility of these men is great, and every precaution should betaken.” That is what I have often heard from “gentlemen,” and that, no doubt, expresses the ideas of many people on the subject.

I will attempt to show what a “fine job” and what “good money” falls to the lot of the engine driver.

As regards beer, Carrie Nation herself could not have said anything stronger ; besides, it implies that the majority of accidents are due to drink, which is not the case—though doubtless there have been times when a loco. man has been at fault in this respect.

I am not advocating the “Standard’s” “right to get drunk.” I agree that “every precaution should be taken.” But to debar the men from having any beer or tobacco is not precaution, but only tyranny. Real precautions cost money, and hence lower dividends, so they are not taken.

At the commencement of these articles I stated that in order to cope with the dangers of their calling, all men of the running department should be assured of a decent living, decent conditions, perfect machinery, good education, and encouragement. All this is essential to making a man thoroughly efficient. But all, alas! is sadly lacking.

The fireman who has done about sixteen years swinging the shovel first undergoes a very stiff exam, to see if the fire has “killed” his eyes. If such is the case he is ruthlessly cast aside, but if he gets through he is in for an exam. of the engine that no one has taught him—unless it is his driver, who only tells him what he has had to find out for himself. If he passes he is then a “spare driver” : i.e., he drives if there is a job, but if not he has to go firing, with a corresponding reduction in pay. He is usually “spare driving” about four years, and then, after passing more exams, and tests, he becomes a full-blown driver.

Let us look at this man, whom we perhaps have seen with a pipe on as he sits down for a minute or two before running something like 350 miles. Upon his presence of mind and vigilance depends the safe running of the train, and one would think that, to keep him fit for a task that must tax him to the utmost, he above all men would be assured of decent conditions, pay, and rest. But far from this is the case.

The driver’s hours are ten, and there is plenty of overtime. And besides being “in steam” at home, for which he is not paid, he is a victim of “lodging out.”

It will be quickest, perhaps, to describe a driver’s day’s work. His first duty is to “sign on.” He must then read the notices—whether they concern him or not he must read and know them—and sign a book saying that he has read them. He then proceeds to get his engine ready. “Everything that could possibly go wrong must be examined” (“British Locomotives,” p. 348). At the same time he must oil the whole of the working parts. Often he must make a shunt to get water and coal. Having done all this, he “whistles up,” and goes right away to back on to his train at a terminus or wait for it at a road-side station.

From signing on to “right away” half an hour is allowed (in the interest of safety) which is far too short a time in which to do the work satisfactorily on the big engines of to-day. This is well known to the officials, as Mr. Bowen Cooke says that the statement that the firemen should come on before booked applies equally to the drivers. (“British Locomotive,” p. 383.)

Often only a quarter of an hour is allowed to get on the train, and this is the first the public sees of the driver—when he has been at work an hour and a half.

When the driver backs on the train he delivers a “ticket” to the guard, who times the train throughout the trip, stating whether he is early or late at various points and why. And if the driver is not “to time,” and no “satisfactory” excuse is forthcoming, it means a fine or suspension, even if the engine is vastly overloaded.

Another examination of the brake apparatus is made here to see if it is all right on the train, in accordance with rule 3d Vacuum Appendix, and the guard tells him what load he has on, and the brake-power under his control.

The average express-train load throughout the country is about 350 tons behind the tender on passenger, and about 45 waggons (average capacity 10 tons) or about 750 tons on goods trains. (These waggons, by the way, are loose coupled, and have no brake-power provided to “hold” them, except it be a 10- or 20-ton egg-box). Even this seems, in the eyes of those jealous guardians of the “public safety,” the railway directors, to be too much, for within the last few weeks a goods guard on the Midland Railway was dismissed for refusing to take a train with insufficient brake-power, according to that company’s own rules. To have taken the train would have directly affected the driver in working it, and woe betide him if he lost control over it !

We must now consider the “homework” a driver has to do to properly work his train. He has an Appendix consisting of about 1,200 pages, with the working time-table, which he must know—for he dare not take his eyes off the road while he is running. Weekly notices are issued to him in reference to any alterations of signals and repairs to the road, and he must be prepared to act on them. Many a “day off” of a driver is taken up in learning all this printed matter, which is, in effect, part of his work, and for which he receives nothing.

We must not, however, forget the Rule Book, containing over 260 rules, which it is impera­tive he must know.

Still now the signal is “off,” the flag waved and whistle blown and we are on the move. Through rain, snow, fog, wind, and boiling sun this frail hero is now “doing his duty,” ever mindful of what he has behind him, and knowing only too well what it means if he does not get over the road to time—at speeds which are sometimes criminally excessive. But we are a queer people in a queer system.

Besides driving his own train the driver must be prepared to safeguard trains travelling on the opposite road (Rule 191c), and occasionally to assist the fireman, either manually or viva-voce. He must make no “unnecessary” noise in the working, nor must smoke be emitted from the engine, for either of these offences are rewarded with a fine or suspension, and in the case of smoke it falls on the fireman as well, for “being concerned with driver in making a smoke when working train” (“British Locomotives,” p. 346.)

After he has worked one way according to written orders, the driver “comes off” the train and gets into a siding or the nearest loco. shed, and there “another examination must be made by the driver in readiness for the return journey” (“British Locomotives,” p. 370). The return trip is performed as before, after which the engine is taken to the shed and again examined, and put away.

When the driver leaves his train the guard gives him back his tickets, which he then has to copy out on to a “way-bill,” also stating what coal and oil he has had, what coaches attached and detached, and make out a report of any irregularity in the day’s work.

This bill sometimes takes half an hour to write out, and then the driver has to enter in the “repair book” whatever he may have found wrong with the engine during his examinations and in the running. He then finds out his turn for the next day, “books off,” and goes home.

From the time of arriving on the shed half an hour is allowed to get clear away and “book off,” but it usually takes nearer an hour.

Such is a very brief outline of a day’s work on the footplate. The number of hours worked by a driver in a week actually on the job amounts to anything between 60 and 80, to say nothing of the work of memorising he has to get through at home.

Now a word as to the pay. “Spare” drivers, as a rule, get 5s. 6d. per day, and when firing 6d. less. The “registered” driver usually starts at 6s., and continues at this for three years or so, until he has advanced to occasionally getting a “running” job. Many companies then “bracket” the pay of drivers. If a “bracketed” man runs six miles he is entitled to 7s. a day; if he runs less he only gets 6s. And, needless to say, the mileage is made up as a rule so that he only gets the 6s, I know of a case where one mile is deliberately cut out of the mileage table in order to “dish” drivers out of 1s. a day. From A to B is three miles, but the return trip over the opposite pair of rails is only given as two, so the driver making that journey, though he actually runs six miles, is only allowed to book five !

Generally when a man is properly “on the road” (i.e., does little or no shunting), his wage is 7s. a day. Occasionally 8s. is the highest wage of a main-line driver in this country, and this, with all expenses to be paid, including “lodging” away from home, is shamefully inadequate.

The average shunting and local drivers’ wage is from 36s. to 42s. a week, and on the main lines it is higher where the mileage rates are in force. Long distance engine working is a favourite dodge of the companies’ to save additional engines and men ; so, as a general thing, many companies lay it down that 150 miles shall be a day’s work. But owing to the long distance working, many men get 1¼ , 1½, or 2 days in one, which looks very nice—on paper.

The men, however, are worn out after these long trips, and where they are in vogue, usually follow a long trip by a short one. This often means 9 hours off after having worked 12, 13, and sometimes even 14 hours on the job, which is clearly a menace to public safety.

Other companies have the “trip” system—so much for the trip—which on a number of lines means hours worked for nothing at all. A few companies work on “classification,” paying different rates for different trains worked ; so many a man’s hours are paid at two or three different ratings in one day.

Anyway, the average “crack” driver’s earnings are a little less than £2 10s. per week, for which, as in the case of the fireman, something like 950 miles must be run.

The safety of the driver or the public is not allowed to stand in the way of the sweating of the railway servants and the heaping up of profits. Signals are placed anywhere, and not in the best position to be read ; and many of them cannot be seen until one is quite close to them. On most lines no difference is shown by night between a “home” and a “distant” signal, nor are the slackening notice-boards illuminated. In the “interests of public safety” the driver has to guess where these notices—in fact, many lines discard them altogether. The same applies to water trough, and crane notice boards, and also gradient boards. Chance rules the road. The driver is even placed on the wrong side of the engine to see the signals and station work himself, and he has to ask his mate to look for him. Even in the matter of stopping a train the “actual” brake-power is not known : only the “absolute” power is shown when running, and the actual power at the driver’s command often falls short of that shown on the brake gauge. Nothing is told him as to where to apply the brake—he has to find this out from his own experience.

A further example of the elaborate precautions taken to procure safety is found when, in long-distance working, the driver has to leave the regulator and swing the shovel because the half-starved fireman becomes exhausted. And again in the common practice of putting a young and inexperienced fireman on a heavy job in order to save a few pence—which re-acts on the driver. At the best his hands and mind are over-crowded, and it is murder to impose these additions to his duties.

Now that we have briefly looked at the conditions under which our enginemen work, we can truthfully say that their lot is a hard one, and that it is a period of continual overwork. Any child knows full well that such a state of affairs cannot exist side by side with safety. A study of what is here laid bare will show that the conditions of labour of the men upon whom the safety of those using the railways depends constitute a public scandal. But there is still more speeding-up in the air so far as the Loco. Dept. is concerned, which will make railway travelling still more dangerous. And until the railway magnates, together with all other property owners, are dispossessed, and the railways, together with all the other means and instruments of production and distribution, become socially owned, profit will be the first consideration, and the public welfare and safe services quite a secondary matter.

J. Sevier

                                                                 [To be Continued.]

Public Safety versus Railway Profits. IV The Engine. (1913)

From the September 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

[Continued from last issue.]

After even thus briefly reviewing the working conditions of the footplate men, I doubt whether anybody will question that the Loco. running conditions are bad, and that the “elaborate precautions” for the public safety that we hear so much about are entirely wanting. We now come to another part of our survey, namely, the machines that the men have to work.

Like the men, the engines are overworked. They are also supplied with poor coal and oil, and are nothing like sufficiently examined or repaired. The officials’ motto is : “As long as the wheels go round let her run.” Let me quote the “Railway Magazine” for October 1908 : —

“The proper cleaning of an engine is a great help to economy. The valves, packing, tubes, and firebox do not always get examined until trouble o! a serious nature exists.”

This is giving the game away with a vengeance. But the men get fined or otherwise punished if a mishap of any kind happens whilst working, as I have stated before.

To show how injustice is done to the men in the way of fines for losing time, etc., I may say a lot of it is entirely due to the bad state of the engines and to the villainous coal supplied (see “Drivers in Difficulties,” “Railway Magazine,” November 1911).

Now we will look at the working of an engine. The first thing after being left the previous day is to have the repairs that the driver entered in the repairs book carried out. This, by the way, is done in a very loose fashion, and, as often, as not, the repairs, like the cleaning, remain undone, unless they happen to be of such a nature as to almost stop the engine.

Many a time I have known defects in the brake apparatus to be ignored for days together, as also defects in the injectors, which might easily cause trouble on the road. Frequently, too, the regulators are allowed to get in such a condition as to “blow through” very badly. Before now I have seen engines at work with loose tyres, and spring hangers almost cut away, and very often the “blowing” of glands and cylinder covers is passed over as nothing.

The parts of the machine looked after most carefully are the boiler and the firebox, but even these are in a bad state, the continual breakage of firebox stays, and the number of leaking and burst tubes being ample evidence of this.

Next comes the cleaning (!) and perhaps a “wash out” of the boiler—a process which, if properly carried out, saves a great deal of fuel and prevents the boiler burning away. (The general rule is about 300 iniles between each “wash out,” but on local engines, where there is a fire for a week on end. a proper examination of the boiler even is out of the question, to say nothing of washing out.)

Next an “examiner” (!) looks rapidly over the engine, and then comes the driver’s examination. This last, after knocking off ten minutes for finding the engine, getting out and replacing his cans and tools, etc., would work out at about twenty minutes—which, of course, is quite inadequate.

After the run another examination is made as before described. Once a month is about the usual interval for a thorough examination of the engine, for which it is “stopped” for two or three days. Generally eighteen months or two years elapse between the engine being the subject of “heavy” repairs, during which period the machine has to run some 100,000 miles.

In the face of all this it is really amusing to observe the righteous indignation of the companies and their henchmen in the matter of the driver’s glass of beer—clearly enough exposed, by the facts herein described, as a shallow and pitifully cheap artifice to cover their own callous disregard of their passengers’ safety, and cast suspicion for all the disasters that have happened in the past and will, under the conditions imposed by the greed for dividends, most certainly happen in the future, upon the men who work the rotten and uncared-for engines.

The trunk lines build their own engines—often by piece-work—and it can be guessed how it is done. If the imagination is not lively enough to serve, perhaps Col. Van Dolop’s remarks upon the cause of the Stoat’s Nest disaster (L.B.S.C.) on Jan. 29, 1910 will assist.

According to the Colonel’s report the accident was “caused by shifted wheel. The wheel was examined, and the grip between the wheel and axle can only have been a very loose one, and on most railways it is not customary to test whether wheels have a firm grip on their axles.”

There is many an engine on the road to-day, on which the automatic brake apparatus is next to worthless, and it is a bye-word amongst drivers on suburban passenger trains that they lose a lot of time through not being properly able to release the brake owing to the bad state of the apparatus. In fact, even to-day on a few lines, there are engines that work goods and coal trains of fairly heavy weight (whose stock is not “braked”) which are fitted with the hand brake only—which is a fine state of affairs, and likely to prove pretty costly to somebody in a case of emergency.

Now just a word on overloading, which is a common occurrence, especially during the busy seasons. Often excessive loads are placed behind comparatively small engines, with the result that, to get along to time, the machines are “flogged” to the utmost, which obviously overstrains the working parts and overworks the men.

Is it to be doubted that a full and adequate explanation of many of the “accidents” which take place from time to time (and there are many that the public never hear of) is to be found in all this callous, pinching, false economy ? When an enquiry (!) is held, the companies are time after time shielded by the person who issues the report of the enquiry, as the shipowners were shielded in the Board of Trade “enquiry” into the loss of the “Titanic.” That is what such institutions and such “enquiries” are for. In the case of the “enquiry” into the cause of the Shrewsbury disaster, rather than indict the master class, those appointed to make the investigation attributed the “accident” to the alleged fact that the men “sleep on the footplate whilst, on duty.” (See decision of Col. Yorke, “Railway Magazine,” June 1908.)

CONCLUSION.

Now a final word in reference to the situation. It must not be thought that the whole of the defects of the railway systems have been brought forward. Space has permitted me to deal only with a few of the principle abuses connected with the calling of the loco. men, who are at least as much concerned and as responsibly engaged in the running of the trains as any other section of the railway slaves. I doubt if, after having read the irrefutable statements which have appeared in this series of articles, anyone can continue to hold the opinion that the railway magnates really do run the safe services they would have us believe.

Now the railways are a necessary institution in our modern life, and the safety of the services should be the first consideration of, not only all who have anything to do with their provision and maintenance, but also of all who have occasion to use them. Therefore we will see if any remedy can be applied, and if so, what it is.

There is no solution under private ownership except “cutting down expenses” and the extension of the “control” we have heard so much about lately. The masters have no ideas in railway working outside of this. And as for the Trade Unions, the National Programmes of 1907 and 1911 of the A.S.L.E. & F. and the A.S.R.S. (the section dealing with loco. men) was a poor contrivance, and only calculated to give the present bad conditions a new lease of life. The “four eights” are no remedy for the railwayman, because they would soon be nullified by the increased cost of living, etc. Moreover, such items as lodging and long-distance engine working figured prominently, whilst such necessary items as the fitting of all engines with power brakes—items which have a direct and vital bearing on safety—were omitted.

The Trade Unions may effect something, but they will never be able to grapple properly with the safety question, and often it looks as if the “leaders” do not intend to do so—the N.E.R. betrayal re Knox and A.S.R.S. to wit. Some of them, no doubt, are in earnest, and so are the rank and file, but they are not conscious of their position in society.

Now let us look at the claims of that nostrum, State Ownership of Railways, and see if that would solve the “problem.”

We have no State lines in England but there are plenty in Europe, of which Mr. Bell, speaking of a tour through various countries on the Continent which own State lines, said they are not beneficial, either to the workers or to the public. “I am satisfied” he declared, “that, bad as are the conditions of British Railwaymen, they are far in advance of State owned railways on the Continent, and if conditions there are a fair sample of them, then save the British Railwayman from them.” (“Railway Magazine,” December 1908.)

Besides, we have an example in the frequent strikes which occur on the French State railways. For, after all, the State of to-day is merely the master class, so that anything owned by the State is just the property of the proper tied class.

The only remedy, therefore, is that which is proposed by the Socialist, viz., that the railways shall be owned and controlled by the whole community for their own use. This, of course, can only be accomplished through the complete overthrow of the master class and the taking of all the means and instruments of production and distribution by the community for the community. When this condition of affairs is brought about the people will see to it that the safety, both of those who operate the railways and those who use them, shall be the first consideration, far transcending all question of speed or economy.

Only when this property condition has been instituted, when there is no longer any question of “cutting down expenses” in order to provide big dividends for idle shareholders and princely salaries for parasitic directors and jacks in office, will the services be safely run and the community be able to use them to the fullest extent.

Such a condition is Socialism, therefore only Socialism is the remedy for the unsafe and unsatisfactory conditions under which the railway services are run.

J. Sevier

Children in labour (1988)

From the October 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

The traditional view of child labour is summed up in a Low Pay Unit pamphlet:

"Child Labour" conjures up images of the pauper apprentices of Tudor times and the rag and dust sifters and mill children of the early industrial revolution. Its heyday was during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when industrialisation drew upon the labour of children in new and more wholesome ways than had been customary in the family economy of earlier years.

(Working Children 1985)

Newspaper reports in recent years however. suggest that child labour is neither a thing of the past nor confined to delivering newspapers, baby sitting or similar chores normally associated with children's work. "Scandal of pin money Pupils'' was the headline in the Daily Express on 12 December 1977; "Slave Labour ", screamed the Daily Mirror, 20 October 1982. In April 1973 The Times reported that three schoolboys, all aged thirteen, were employed in a factory operating highly dangerous, defective power presses for 17 pence an hour.

Child labour does of course have a long history. In an agrarian economy, where there was no distinction between employment in the home and other labour, men, women and children each had a task to perform tending crops and providing for everyday necessities. Children also played a role in industrial labour. The daughters and sons of artisans frequently helped in the manufacturing process or were apprenticed in the trade of their parents. Children of weavers had a staged career of tasks given to them according to their age and abilities, ranging from fetching and carrying to treading cotton, winding bobbins and spinning. Life for these children was hard and often involved long hours of work.

In the late sixteenth century children orphaned due to the death or poverty of their parents became the responsibility of the parish in which they lived. A system arose of apprenticing orphans to local craftsmen or placing them in special workshops to learn a trade. This was administered by local justices whose main concern was to rid the parish of any unwanted burden. The treatment of orphans varied from employer to employer but cases of cruelty and sadism were not unknown.

With the coming of the industrial revolution the parish workshops evolved into factories and the exploitation of children as slave labour was common. The practice of apprenticing orphans continued as late as the 1840s, when boards of guardians in Staffordshire, Yorkshire and Lancashire were found to be

. . . still getting rid of pauper boys of six. seven and eight by apprenticing them to colliers with a guinea thrown in "for clothes".

(E.P. Thompson: The Making of the English Working Class)

Child labour in modern times is seen as one of the unacceptable features of capitalism. Apologists for the system moralise about it but at the same time seek to convince us that a society in which a majority are economically coerced and treated as mere factors in the profit-making machine is the best the human race can hope to achieve. Workers are employed because they produce an economic surplus over and above their wages, which are inevitably very low for a large section of the workforce. According to the Low Pay Unit, figures for April 1986 show that 17 per cent of full-time workers were being paid less than £2.40 an hour, while over a third were receiving less than £3.00. Of the women who work part-time, 50 per cent were earning less than £2.40 an hour and 75 per cent received less than £3.00 an hour. In total, around 2 million women part-time workers and 1.6 million full-time workers. both men and women, received less than £2.40 an hour, including overtime pay. (Low Pay Unit: Britain's False Economy. 1987.)

When confronted by the exploitation of child labour socialists reply that the only answer is to end the system where a majority of men. women and, in many cases, children are treated as economic units. This can only be done by establishing, by democratic political means, a world-wide system where the means of production are owned in common and production takes place solely to meet the people's needs. In such a society the exploitation endemic in employment will be replaced by voluntary co-operation to produce the things people have democratically decided they need. All will have the right to take part in decisions about what is to be produced and how production is organised. Let's take a look at what the alternative — doing "something now" — has achieved in the last 180 years in the area of child labour.

One of the earliest pieces of legislation was the 1802 Health and Morale of Apprentices Act. Its aim was to limit children's working hours and its main concern was with pauper apprentices. It sought to abolish night work and limited the working day of apprentices in cotton mills to twelve hours. There were also provisions made for school on Sunday and proper clothing and sleeping arrangements. [To]  make sure that employers complied with the act, four independent factory inspectors were appointed to enforce the law among the 3,000 textile manufacturing establishments of the time.

Apart from the low standards set by the act, its major flaw was that enforcement depended on magistrates who were in most cases mill owners themselves. Similar problems affected another act passed in 1819 and sponsored by Sir Robert Peel, which outlawed employment in cotton mills for children under the age of nine. As it had no independent inspectorate it was largely ignored by mill owners.

Next came the Factory Act of 1833, which was based on the evidence of the Sadler Committee of 1832 and the Factory Commission of 1833. It outlawed the employment in all textile factories of children under the age of nine; between nine and thirteen no child was allowed to work more than 48 hours a week; for those aged thirteen to eighteen the limit was sixty-nine hours and anyone under twenty one years was prohibited from night work. Such was the concern to [missing text]

In 1840 a further factory commission investigated employment in the mines, discovering even worse conditions than those existing in the mills. Small children were used to operate ventilation traps which involved sitting in the dark, sometimes thirteen to fourteen hours. Other children were used to hurry coal down shafts, pushing great loads for miles with their heads while bent double. Soon after the commission published its report in 1842, the Mines Act was passed which prohibited the employment underground of children under ten and women. It also restricted the number of hours and types of work performed by children.

An important turning point in controlling child employment came with the Elementary Education Act of 1870. This provided elementary education on a national basis and set up an administration system of local school boards to keep track of attendance. The 1880 Education Act made school attendance compulsory for the first time and a child could only leave school at ten if he or she satisfied the attendance requirements. Children with poor attendance records were not allowed to leave until the age of thirteen. Prior to the 1880 act. the Factory and Workshops Act of 1878 had extended the 1833 Act to all factories and raised the minimum age of employment to ten. which also limited the hours children under fourteen could work to half the normal working day.

In 1920 the International Labour Organisation and the League of Nations met in Washington to draw up a convention on the employment of children binding on all ratifying nations. In Britain it was embodied in the Employment of Women. Young Persons and Children Act of 1920, which tied together past legislation and provided a list of types of employment which were prohibited to children under a minimum working age.

Subsequent acts such as the Children and Young Persons Act, 1933, the Factory Act of 1961 and the Infants Children and Young Persons Act. 1963 form the basis of modern child labour law. The most important aspects of these acts are the prohibition of child employment in industrial undertakings, a minimum age of thirteen for part-time employment, restrictions on hour and times of work done by children and the provision for local authority bye-laws which can set higher standards than the minimum requirements. There exists a wide variation between local authorities as to the extent of provisions under these bye-laws and the degree of care that is taken to see that they are enforced.

As with the nineteenth century act the major problem with more recent legislation concerns enforcement, responsibility for which falls mainly on three bodies — the Health and Safety Inspectorate. Local Authority Health Officers and the Education Welfare services. All of these bodies have other tasks apart from discovering the illegal employment of children and all are massively understaffed. It is estimated that the Health and Safety Inspectorate has only 750 general factory inspectors to cover 730,000 manufacturing establishments. Much of the education and welfare surveillance work on child labour is done by educational welfare officers through voluntary overtime, patrolling the streets outside normal hours of work.

Due to this understaffing routine inspections are more frequent in large firms or those where the risk of accident is considered high (for example, chemical plants). Less visible firms may never see a factory inspector. As a result "back street firms" — most likely to employ child labour illegally are least likely to be visited. In addition, educational welfare staff have no specific right of entry. As the Inner London Education Authority states:

The more serious kinds of illegal employment in factories, restaurants and building sites tend not to be detected because educational welfare staff have no specific right of entry.

(Working Children, pp. 12-13)

In 1973 an attempt was made to reduce the uncertainty surrounding the legal protection given to working children. The Employment of Children Act received the Royal Assent on 23 May of that year but as yet it still remains on the statute book and has never been fully implemented.

It is therefore not surprising that child labour is still widespread in modern Britain. A survey carried out by the Low Pay Unit and Open University in 1982-3 estimates its extent. Interviews of 1,700 children in the London, Luton and Bedfordshire areas found that, apart from newspaper delivering, children were employed in a wide range of jobs including retailing, catering and cleaning. Close to one in ten children in the survey had more than one job and half of these had more than two. While newspaper delivery accounted for one third of all children working, shop work accounted for one in five and farm work and cleaning both accounted for 13 per cent. A variety of other work performed by children included hotel and catering. painting and decorating, sewing machining. modelling, clerical work and work in street markets. More than one in five children were employed in manual jobs, cleaning, furniture removals, construction labour and garage work. The findings confirm that a majority of these children were in one way or another working illegally. An analysis of the data for London found that four out of five were illegally employed, either under age, working illegal hours or working in jobs they should not have been doing.

It does not require a degree in economics to appreciate that children are forced to work because of the financial position of their families. The survey indicated that there was a definite relationship between the socio-economic position of the families and child labour. The highest proportion of working children in the survey were from manual working class backgrounds (51 per cent) and the unemployed (52 per cent).

Neither is it any mystery why employers use child labour. It is of course a source of cheap and easily disposable labour power and savings can be made not only directly on wages but also indirectly. Children are invariably paid "cash in hand", do not appear on employers’ records and therefore are not subject to national insurance contributions. They are not members of a trade union even where the company is unionised. Neither have they any of the rights of adult workers, such as the right to claim unfair dismissal, the right to an itemised pay slip and, as they pay no national insurance, they have no right to sick pay. Furthermore they are not classified as employees under the Health and Safety at Work Act. If injured at work children have no right to compensation unless their parents can prove in court that the employer has been negligent in some respect. Since most children are employed illegally, taking such cases to court could result in the parents being deemed parties to such negligence.

Despite the large number of health and safety regulations applying to the employment of children, a large minority of those surveyed reported having accidents while in their current jobs. One third of all boys and 29 per cent of girls reported some accident or injury. The main causes were heavy weights, broken glass, slipping or falling and injuries from materials and machinery. Of all the children at work only 19 per cent of boys and 18 per cent of girls were given uniforms or any kind of protective clothing by their employers.

Apart from accidents, the health of working children suffers in other ways. In 1970 a group of teachers in Tynemouth conducted a survey of pupils to discover why so many were falling asleep in class. They discovered that of the 390 interviewed over one third were working illegally and many of them were being grossly overworked and underpaid. As the Low Pay Unit pamphlet suggests, these findings illustrate the fallacy of the view that employment is good for children's health and education. An official of the National Association of School Masters stated:

Children are late to school, fail to do their homework, fall asleep during lessons and are unable to take part in any out of school activities such as sports because they have to report to work.

(Working Children, p.32)

The exploitative use of child labour is not a thing of the distant past. Reform via legislation has failed. The enactment of new laws may give the illusion that something is being done but this is merely a surface appearance; the problem remains because its root cause has not been treated. Doing something now may sound appealing but the reality is that nothing changes because a system unfit for men. women and children remains firmly in operation.

Ray Carr

Blogger's Note:

Sadly, the original text was garbled in places. It looks like there was a typesetting/proof-reading mishap. I couldn't see any notices of corrections in later Standards.

Death on principle (1982)

From the October 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Asbestos is the Greek word for unquenchable, which fairly describes its devouring effect on the human body. It is a fibre embedded in a rock found in many parts of the world — Canada (where there are the largest deposits). Zimbabwe. Russia and Cyprus. South Africa has a lot of the especially unquenchable blue asbestos and the USA is the world’s principal manufacturer of asbestos products. The rock is quarried from holes in the ground, then crushed to extract the fibre which can be processed into yarns and cloth or compounded into rubber and cement. Its great value is in a high resistance to heat and to electricity, which means that it is widely used in the building industry and for gasket and brake linings.

It is only in recent years that asbestos has been recognised as a deadly killer responsible for incurable, agonising illness. One of the victims featured in the TV film about asbestos sufferers — Alice, A Fight for Life — recalled when the mill workers would lark about with the stuff, wearing it in wigs and beards, unaware of the appalling risks they were running. Now, a local council sends its workers-to rip the stuff out of houses and flats dressed in space suits of protective clothing, as if they were handling the most perilous of radioactive materials.

Asbestos kills through the inhalation of a dust of its minute but durable fibres which stay in the lungs for life, causing asbestosis — a respiratory disease — lung cancer or mesothelioma, a cancer of the membrane of the lungs or the abdomen. One of the companies exposed in the TV film — Turner Brothers Asbestos (TBA) — described it as a process in which the asbestos particles "get right down into the lungs and file away the tissue”. This sounds ghastly enough but was in fact a clumsy attempt to play down the risks.

This same safety memorandum, which was given to all employees of TBA. asserted that: "Health problems are caused only if a lot of asbestos dust is breathed into the lungs over many years". In truth there are examples of people contracting asbestos-related diseases after as little as two weeks’ contact and the woman who once fooled around with an asbestos wig worked with it for only nine months. One study of the TBA factory in Rochdale found that 58 per cent of the employees were showing the first symptoms of asbestos-related diseases; another found one worker in four actually suffering from the diseases.

The recognition of asbestos as a twentieth century industrial killer has loosed a flood of demands for compensation for its victims, which threatens to gather force into a deluge. This might force TBA to pay out rather more than the no-obligation grant of about £10 a week they have made to some of the families of their dead employees. Sometimes they gave nothing at all, other than the wreath which they sent to the funeral. (The TV researchers traced a lot of the asbestos victims through pathetic thanks for the flowers in the Deaths column of the local paper.)

While their workers were suffering and dying. TBA were devoting themselves to concealing the extent of the problem. Their safety memorandum breezily assured everyone: “Working with asbestos is a bit like working with gas — you've no problems so long as you stick firmly to a few simple rules". They did not publish a report of their own company doctor which showed the incidence of asbestos-related diseases at TBA to be 75 times what the company admitted to. Weeks after the TV programme, in face of the mounting evidence of the dangers, TBA conceded that some of their estimates had been wrong but they adopted a new, equally spurious, defence — that 30 per cent of mesothelioma cases happen spontaneously. TBA did not concede that they make their profits through putting people to work with a peculiarly nasty and dangerous material; the work could be a lot safer — as safe as human ability allows—but this would cost a lot of money and file away some of those profits like workers’ lungs.

TBA is not the only asbestos company to be in trouble. In America there is the more spectacular and provocative Manville Corporation, which was once the world's largest processor of asbestos. We say "was" because Manville recently went bankrupt. There was no suicide among the corporation’s penitent executives over this because Manville is in fact financially healthy. According to the Guardian of September 7, at the time it had $15 million in cash, apart from its other assets, and continues its business as normal. Manville's bankruptcy was a ruse, calculated to protect it against the claims of the sick and crippled workers. There are some 16,500 of these claims at present and more are on the way.

Of course there was an indignant outcry at Manville's cynical but effective manoeuvre. One American Congressman accused the Corporation of leaving behind “. . . the wreckage of their workers’ and consumers' lives". But there was also some support for the company, from American bankers and lawyers, who are trained to applaud an effective preoccupation with taking in the profits, even if it costs the lives of the people who make them. The tragic fact is that those smug, desiccated business people who stood up for Manville had social reality on their side, unlike those who were in pain or dying because they had worked for the Corporation or the others who were angry about it all.

The first part of that reality is that asbestos can yield some very impressive profits for the people who own the quarries where it is extracted and the plants where it is processed. The second part is that those profits arise, not just from the fact that human beings apply their abilities to the mining and the processing, but that this takes place under certain social relationships. The owners, who receive the profits, are part of a social class who monopolise the means of production and distribution. The workers, who make the profits, have no ownership; their part in the relationship is to be exploited as they produce asbestos, or things made from it, with the object of being sold to realise the profits.

Within this relationship there are no rights or moral obligations; there is only an antagonism of interests. The employers don't owe their workers a living and when a worker is killed as a result of their employment the employers are being generous when they send a bunch of flowers to the cemetery. If the facts about asbestos make an embarrassing scandal that is only because the employer/worker relationship is so widely misunderstood and obscured.

Capitalism tags everything with a price — even a person’s life. There are people, called actuaries, who are trained to work out those prices and to express them in terms of insurance premiums and payouts. 'These calculations have no room for sentiment or emotion; it has been known for a small part of one particular person's body — a film star's legs, a footballer’s feet — to be insured for hundreds of times more than the entire body of the people who watch them perform. This cold-blooded process extends into other fields and will play its part in deciding, say. whether to develop an airport runway or build a motorway or some other assault on the lives of the people living around it.

Any investment in industrial safety must be subject to those same actuarial principles. Safety itself is a profit element; to kill workers too early in their life effectively reduces the supply of future exploitation-fodder. The skill — if that is the word — is in finding the balancing point, when safety measures cost too much or when adverse publicity from meddling media people begins to affect investment in the firm. In any case it is always worthwhile to fight a rearguard action, even if it is over the wrecked and wasted bodies of the victims of actuarial principles.

Another woman in the TV film, who died at the age of 55. was at first judged to be ineligible under the rules for any compensation at all; although she was dying from asbestosis the doctors who "examined" her found no symptoms. Two months before she died, in great pain, hardly able to move and heavily drugged, she mistook the date when her disability began, which meant that under the rules she was entitled to only a limited payment. After her death, and a post mortem, the authorities agreed that she had been completely disabled and should have received a total of about £18,000.

No comment was made on the degradation of it all — the exploitation, being put to work with a lethal substance; then the sickness, the withering away onto the scrap heap observed by doctors and bureaucrats, all concerned that nobody should get more than the rules allowed. No comment was made, that all of this was done in accordance with those actuarial calculations so essential to a society in which the overriding priority is the production of wealth for profit.

At the end of the 18th century a child called Robert Blincoe was sent as an apprentice to various factories in Nottinghamshire. There he was beaten and tortured, his hair torn out and his teeth filed down in his head. His was not an isolated case and eventually there was a massive protest. His sufferings were in accordance with the actuarial principles of the first days of industrial capitalism, which laid it down that it paid to operate factories and mines with starving, battered children.

Has capitalism improved since then? Observe how those same principles operate now — the tortured bodies of the asbestos victims, the contemptuous evasions of the employers’ public relations staff, the insult of the company flowers on the grave. And be warned that here, behind the anger and grief, is this society’s enduring reality.

Ivan

Warning: capitalism can harm your health (1994)

From the August 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Part of the socialist case against capitalism is that in a society based on ruthless competition the control of economic costs will always take priority over the needs of human beings. Therefore plans to cut government and business costs by weakening health and safety regulations are of little surprise to socialists.

The government gave notice of its intentions last November when in the Queen’s Speech it announced a Deregulation Bill which many feared was directly aimed at diluting some of the Health and Safety laws. This Deregulation Bill would give government departments and ministers the power to abolish laws by parliamentary order (Labour Research, January 1994).

At the beginning of this year it was announced that the Health and Safety Executive, the body responsible for enforcing health and safety standards, was to make 230 cuts in jobs over the next two years because the government has reduced its grant. Its budget has been cut by £5 million for the period 1994-95. In 1995-96 it will get only £192 million which is £10 million less than it asked for. In the coal-mining industry the pit deputies union NACODS failed in an attempt in the High Court to prevent the introduction of new mine safety regulations which will weaken safety standards in the pits. The Management and Administration of Safety and Health in Mines Regulations Act of 1993 takes away the role of pit supervisors to monitor safety at pits. This role will now be given to safety inspectors who will have no legal powers and can be overruled by management (Labour Research, February 1994).

Lower standards

Despite improvement in conditions for most workers since the early stages of capitalist industrial production, many workers still suffer illness, injury and even loss of life due to avoidable accidents at work or through diseases directly related to their working environment. Statistics for 1993 show that 430 workers were killed through their employment and there were 88,536 injuries reported to the enforcing authorities (Labour Research, January 1994).

An example of the type of dangers still facing workers in their employment concerns people working with or coming into contact with asbestos.

The effects of inhaling asbestos dust have been known for decades. Asbestos causes asbestosis, a disabling and ultimately fatal scarring of the lungs, lung cancer which is almost always fatal, and mesothelioma, a painful and fatal cancer of the lining of the lung or stomach. Amongst the workers most affected are miners, dockers, those involved in the manufacturing of asbestos products, building workers using products containing asbestos and those who work in or maintain buildings which contain decorating asbestos products. It has been estimated by the Department of Employment that some six million tonnes of the three main types of the product crocidolite blue asbestos, amosite brown asbestos and chrysotile white asbestos had been imported into the UK by 1986.

The widespread use of asbestos left a legacy of almost 3,000 people dying of asbestos-related cancer last year. Asbestos is responsible for more cancers than any other industrial substance. According to recent research by Professor Peto of the Institute of Cancer Research and the Health and Safety Executive, death rates due to mesothelioma alone will increase from around 1,000 in 1991 to between 2,500 and 3,000 a year. As usual under a system designed to meet profit rather than human need, the victims of these avoidable diseases are very often not properly compensated particularly where they have been exposed to asbestos contained in the buildings they work in.

Obstacles to compensation

Various obstacles are put in the way of claiming so-called benefits. To be able to claim compensation workers have to have worked in certain prescribed industries. This generally means they would have to have had some direct contact with the substance via actual asbestos materials or the machinery or appliances used in the manufacture of asbestos products. Under these limitations for claiming compensation it is estimated that 43 percent of mesothelioma victims actually die before they receive their benefit (Labour Research, March 1994).

Despite all the evidence about the health hazards from working with asbestos there are few signs of a complete ban on all types of the substance. In fact William Bernard, president of the American asbestos workers’ union, at a recent conference on construction safety in the USA, gave the following warning:

"Asbestos manufacturers are once again on the assault. They are arguing that a particular type of asbestos chrysotile is not hazardous to health. They are asking the European Community and World Health Organisation to allow it to be used again, especially for use in third world countries" (Labour Research, March 1994).

The fact that workers still suffer illness, injury and death through their employment is yet another indictment of a system of production for profit. It is also an indictment of the failure of reformism. Not only have years of reformist political parties and trade unions campaigning on such issues failed to resolve the problems, at present we are seeing moves designed to weaken already inadequate health and safety legislation.

Profits first

As with other issues reformism cannot succeed as it fails to get to the root cause of the problem — a social system where human well-being must take secondary place to controlling economic cost for the sake of profit. The failure of reformism can also be seen by the fact that in arguing for, in this case, better health and safety provisions reformists accept a capitalist agenda. The TUC, for example argue for better health and safety on the basis that in the long run it will prove "cost effective". The TUC points out that an analysis of the costs and benefits of legislation such as those prepared by the Health and Safety Executive have shown the legislation involved to be "cost positive".

The economic cost benefit argument may or may not be correct but this is not the point. From the point of the majority of us who have to sell our ability to work to an employer in order to live, and so the potential victims of the profit system, our health and lives must come first and to hell with profit. In the short-term the best way to protect our health and ultimately our lives is to organise collectively and effectively at the point of production in order to assert our own interests as against those of our employer. This factor is more important than arguing for improved health and safety legislation.

Ultimately this issue proves once again that the real choice facing us is a society' based on profit which dominates our lives at present as against that of one based on human need for which we need to organise to bring about. As with so many other issues capitalism has proved that it cannot safeguard our health and life in the production process. If capitalism cannot afford the economic cost of health and safety our answer must be that we cannot afford capitalism.

Ray Carr