Bounteous Bournville. (1908)

From the October 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Among the many devices adopted for the purpose of befuddling the minds of the working-class, a strong favourite is the one of loudly advertising the actions of the “good” members of the capitalist class and emphasising what they “do” for the workers. We are told of their contributions to various charitable institutions, their subscriptions to various funds, and of the thought and care they exercise in looking after those in their employ.

A typical instance of the latter point is Messrs. Cadbury’s model village at Bournville. Gallons of good ink and yards of paper have been used in describing the superiority Bournville possesses over the ordinary village or the working-class quarters of our large cities. Let us see how these “advantages” benefit the workers living in this model village.

When one first enters “Cadburytown,” the wide streets planted with trees, the semi-detached houses, each pair of different design, with large gardens in the rear and smaller gardens in the front, certainly convey the idea that this is a far healthier and more pleasant place to live in than most villages of the same size. True, the attempt to vary every pair of cottages has resulted in some weird and wonderful specimens of domestic architecture, but we may let that pass. A spacious recreation ground with a fine pavilion and a large allotment ground are also shown with pride to the visitor. He is also carefully informed that inside the large factories everything is clean and bright, and that Mr. Cadbury is himself frequently present to deal with any trouble or complaint that may arise. Inside the factory a gymnasium is fitted up and the younger of the employees partake of exercise, for a fixed period, during working hours. Up to a certain age—18 years I believe—costumes are provided for the girls entering the “gym” ; after that age they must provide such costume themselves.

But the Socialist is still unconverted. He has one or two questions to ask. He has already noticed that every garden is in a certain stage of cultivation. There are differences, of course, but all are cultivated in some degree. Then he learns that prizes are given for the best gardens and, to prevent ignorance of horticulture being advanced as a reason for not competing, two gardeners are employed for the purpose of instructing the tenants in the arts and mysteries of cultivating a small holding. The allotments, too, are ample, and from a cursory inspection it would seem that most of the tenants take up at least one plot.

After working during the day in the factory, the cocoa worker can enjoy the fresh air and the fragrance of Nature by working on his garden or allotment land ; or he may take a turn at cricket or football practice on the recreation ground. He is expected to compete for the garden prizes, for what would be the use of providing professional gardeners to instruct him if he does not take advantage of their services ? Thus between his cottage garden, the allotment plot, and the recreation ground he finds himself under the aegis of Cadbury from the moment he awakes till he retires to his well-earned rest.

Those of the working class who have attempted to follow any regular or systematic course of study, know only too well the serious handicap that working as a wage-slave during the day imposes upon them, and how difficult it is to apportion their scanty spare time to the best advantage. At Bournville the worker is completely safeguarded against any such worries by the simple expedient of filling up his time outside the factory with work—of a different kind, perhaps, to that inside—under the eye of Cadbury. It might be inconvenient for Cadbury and the rest of the capitalist class were he to spend his spare time in studying, say, the source of surplus value, or the cause of unemployment. Therefore he must have something else to do—and he has.

Just before leaving, a question perhaps occurs to the visitor that the array of “good” things done by the capitalist had, up till then, driven into the back-ground. “What are the wages paid here?” he asks, and is surprised to find that no one seems to know. By dint of some enquiries he gradually discovers that most of the employees are paid at piece-work rates. But in addition to this they are expected to turn out a certain quantity in a given time ; in other words, it is not only piece work, but task work.

The tyro in economics may wonder why the employer should trouble about the quantity the worker turns out seeing that the latter is only paid for what he produces. Like other capitalists, however, Cadburys have long learnt that the establishment expenses are going on all the same, and that the larger the quantity of articles this can be spread over, the relatively cheaper is the production.

And now the iron hand inside the velvet glove is beginning to be discerned. If a worker does not keep up to the standard speed set by the employer, he or she is required to give an explanation. Do they not live in a healthy place with plenty of open-air occupations ? Are not the houses fairly roomy and healthy, so different to the crowded town slum ? Is not the gymnasium provided in the works, to be used during the employer’s time, on purpose to keep the worker physically fit ? And the wage-slave at Bournville would be obliged to answer “yes” to all these questions. Then why are you not able to keep up at the pace fit for the highest physical efficiency at present humanly possible? And some plausible excuse must be found, or there is a vacancy soon after.

To do him the barest justice it must be admitted that Cadbury himself admits that it is not philanthropy, but entirely business reasons that lay behind the establishment of Bournville. To obtain the maximum output from the worker he or she must be in the highest state of physical efficiency. This again can only be obtained by supplying the worker with the means of keeping in good health. Hence the detached cottages and large air space at Bournville. Hence also the gymnasium in the factory.

The gardens, allotments, and recreation ground are part of a more general scheme for binding the employees, body and mind, to their employers by keeping them completely under the employers’ control every moment of their lives. Despite their “superior” surroundings, the employees at Bournville are more completely enslaved, and certainly as much exploited, as the workers in the ordinary industrial centres. The form under which the exploitation takes place may differ, but the essence remains. Cadbury, no more than any other capitalist, can get wealth out of the air. It can only be produced by the application of human energy to the nature-given materials. Large subscriptions to various lists and the subsidising of a daily paper can only take place when some section of the working class is being robbed of the results of their applied labour-power. Attempts to “sugar” the pill by building “model” villages and fitting up gymnasiums cannot hide the fact of its being a pill, while, as shown above, the “sugar” is more than compensated for by the increased enslavement of the employees. One does not hear of a union among the workers at Bournville, for, of course, there is no need of such a thing where the worker can speak to his employer personally and place his grievance—or demands—before him first hand ; while, in his isolation, he is wondering what on earth the man working next to him is going to do. Not by misleading the workers into thinking there are “good” and “bad” capitalists, but by showing them that all capitalists and employers can only exist by robbery will the emancipation of the working class be hastened. Only by using their scanty leisure to learn the lesson of Socialism put forward by the S.P.G.B. will they get rid of the superstition that an alteration in the form or methods of exploitation can alter their position. With that lesson learnt the days of Cadbury, Bournville, and Bunkum will be over.

Jack Fitzgerald

Loving fathers of industry. (1914)

From the July 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

An interesting advertisement booklet recently published by Messrs. Joseph Crosfield & Sons, the Warrington soapworkers’ exploiters, shows how “model employers” dominate even the “private life” of their wage slaves, dictating as to how they should spend their scanty leisure.

After giving the names of the directors and other parasites who “run” the business, the pamphlet shows us how increased efficiency in the worker only benefits the capitalist class. For it states: “It is compulsory upon all boys and girls (employees) between the age of 14 and 17 to attend an evening school at least three nights a week. The course of instruction for boys is naturally concerned with questions relating to their line of work.” (Italics mine.)

Not a bad wheeze, teaching the poor kiddies their trade at night schools in their all too meagre spare time, after they have put in 8½ hours hard graft at the works for their lords and masters ! It is obvious, of course, that no time will be lost at work in teaching these youngsters soap making ! For the workers’ time is money to the capitalist.

We are then told that in the day-work departments, the 9½ hour day has been reduced to an 8½ hour day, “and events have proved that as much work as previously is done in the shorter hours.” Will the “B.S.P.” please note, that if the 8 hour day for all workers came into vogue, the capitalists would see to it, as they have done in this case, that the workers’ output was not lessened, but that they would be “speeded up,” so that the same or even an in­creased output was maintained in the shorter working day, with less expense to the masters in running machinery, lighting and heating the factories, etc.

With an eye to business the firm tells us: “The physical aspect of education is not over­ looked, for all work-girls up to the age of 17 undergo a course of gymnastics during the winter months.” Because strong, healthy, well-developed workers can obviously turn out more and better work than weak, unhealthy, and ill-nourished workers. So that from a purely busi­ness point of view—the point of view the master class always take—this little incidental expense well repays the employers.

Under the ironical heading “Social Recreation during Leisure Hours,” we are informed that the firm provide a company of the 4th Battalion, South Lancashire Regiment (Territorials), also a company of boy-scouts.

Note the masters’ determination to inocculate their workers with that brain-disease, patriotism. One can imagine how useful would these same workers be in defending their masters’ property against foreign invaders, or more probably, strike rioters.

Verily, the capitalist moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform !

This, we are told, is how the firm take a keen interest in the social life of the work-people ! Not much time for these workers to study their slave position in society. The firm see to it that their workers’ minds are diverted into less revolutionary and dangerous channels.

“Garden Village” employers go one better even, by providing their workers with libraries filled with capitalist works, libraries from which working class books and papers are vi­gorously excluded. Gardening, too, is taught, and thus the workers keep the “garden village” well cultivated in their spare time, without expense to the employers. Free fire brigade staff, ambulance staff, and gardening staff ! And so on, ad nauseam.

After giving a description of the soapmaking the pamphlet concludes with photos, several showing the work-people cheering and flag-wagging, on the occasion of a recent visit to the works of our royal parasites.

The enormous profits made out of the unpaid labour of the workers by soap kings was demonstrated by the “Daily Chronicle,” (24.4.14). According to that rag, Messrs. Joseph Watson & Sons, the Leeds soapmakers, made a profit of £103,999 last year, as compared with £84,215 in the year previous.

How much more of this devilish game will you workers submit to ? Aren’t you tired of being referred to in contemptuous terms as the working asses? or are you going to quietly wait for that last phase of this rapidly decaying system, State Capitalism, with its universal “model employers,” “garden villages,” “ideal conditions of labour,” “co-partnership,” “profit-sharing,” etc.; which is really more intensified slavery still—to a hide-bound State, instead of private employers—than that which exists at present ?

Capitalism has long since outstayed its wel­come ; why not organise with us and overthrow it at once ? “Now is the accepted time ”

A. C. Kelly

Editorial: Capitalism and Christianity. (1929)

Editorial from the March 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Truths of Quakerism
When the Socialist points to the continual struggle between employers and workers, and to the accompanying strife and ill-will as evils which are inseparable from a social system in which property is owned by one class and wealth is produced by another, he is often met with the answer that the discord, the strikes and lock-outs, are the result not of the economic organisation, but of the defects of the human beings concerned.

Thus the Christian will tell us that if only we would all show a spirit of brotherhood, the spirit of Christ, and exercise forbearance, and be unselfish, all our industrial troubles would vanish. For the most part employers and workers, even those who are nominally Christian, make no special effort to apply their Christian principles to their relationships with each other. If a certain trade union appoints an official chaplain, and if other unions habitually open their meetings with prayer, most of the people concerned do not treat these conventional practices as having any useful bearing on the business of the organisation. There are, however, religious persons — the Quakers, for example—who do profess that their religion can and does have a very intimate bearing on their everyday activities, including the running of a business. Thus the Cadbury family claim that the application of Quaker principles to industry has made Bournville something of a model for the industrial world, containing the hope of a solution for the problems of modern industry.

We have always contested that view. Bournville embodies no feature which is essentially Quaker; it solves no problems except certain problems of the Cadburys as employers of labour; and it offers no hope for the working class. The idea that the granting of certain health-promoting facilities to the staff brings a return in the shape of greater productivity which exceeds the outlay is not new, and is not confined to Quakers. Nor is the practice of paying wages above the average to a picked staff of more than average skill and fitness. Its motive in general is the securing of greater profits. Its application comes from a more than usually acute perception of the conditions of capitalist production. It is limited in scope by the nature of the work performed in the particular concern, and it is obviously only of special service to the Fords and Cadburys so long as it has not been applied throughout industry. If all employers were to bid against each other for the pick of the workers it would cease to be any more profitable than paying a lower wage for workers of average efficiency, and if all employers offer the same facilities to their staff, each particular firm loses the advantage it formerly obtained in having employees who would remain in the same employment for a long period, thus eliminating the cost of training new employees.

The question has been raised in an acute form by the application of “rationalisation” to the Cadbury cocoa business, the subject of an article in the “New Leader" (Feb. 22) by a Quaker member of the I.L.P., Mr. W. J. Chamberlain. Mr. Chamberlain, it may be added, is editor of a Labour journal, the Birmingham “Town Crier," and has been an active member of the I.L.P. for many years.

He confirms our view that the Cadbury welfare schemes have been a very successful form of advertising, and in this respect alone have been worth many thousands of pounds to the firm in creating a demand for their goods. Now, however, with the application of new methods and the installation of new machinery,

  Many hundreds of men and women have been sacked by the firm during the past twelve months—men and women who have spent the best years of their life in the service of the firm.

Three weeks ago, he says, there were distressing scenes when another 400 women, some of them over 40 years of age, who had been with the firm since early girlhood, were added to Birmingham's 30,000 unemployed. They have little chance of finding fresh employment, and their specialised skill is useless outside the chocolate and cocoa industry. The firm “admitted that there has been no falling off in trade," but the dismissals were necessary “in order to reduce the staff to an economic level." Mr. Chamberlain denies that the grant of a few pounds to some of the dismissed can be regarded as generous treatment to men and women who have given a life of service. Mr. Chamberlain concludes that “even Quakers cannot combine Christianity with capitalism." and that this “is the greatest indictment of Capitalism that we have had in our time." No doubt Mr. Chamberlain would define “Christianity" differently from us, but the first of these two statements appears to be the reverse of true. Surely the truth is that the Cadburys have combined Christianity and Capitalism very successfully indeed. They have made very large profits—the proof of success in a capitalist world—and at the same time they have succeeded in earning and retaining a reputation for Christian principle and brotherliness which has been so effective that among its numerous devotees was to be numbered Mr. W. J. Chamberlain.

“I confess," says Mr. Chamberlain, “that as members of the Society of Friends, I had hoped for great things from Quaker employers. I had hoped that they might have given a bold lead to ether employers. But with the action of the Cadbury family my hope has vanished."

One striking thing about the article is the extraordinary lack of knowledge and thought it indicates in its author. Mr. Chamberlain knew that of the directors of Cadbury’s all but one “are Liberals or Tories, and therefore upholders of capitalism.” He has been in the I.L.P. since 1904. That is to say he has been engaged in preaching to others that (in the words of the I.L.P. slogan) "Socialism is the only hope." Yet for all these years he has retained a belief that far from Socialism being the only hope, there was a much easier and nearer one, i.e., the application of Quaker principles by Quaker capitalists to capitalist industry. Not until 25 years have passed does he discover that “my hope has vanished, and I know now that we shall have to wait for a Socialist Government to rescue for the workers not benevolence, but justice."

It has taken twenty-five years for an I.L.P. speaker and writer to learn that capitalism is a system of society organised not for the satisfaction of human needs directly, but in the first place for profit-making.

When next members of the I.L.P. tell us that it is useless preaching “pure" Socialistic doctrine to the poor, benighted workers because they don’t understand, we shall be tempted to reply that the really big problem before the Socialist propagandist is the conversion of the leading lights of the I.L.P.

Exhibition Review: Port Sunlight (2018)

Based on ‘The New Frock’ by William Powell Frith

Exhibition Review from the October 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is a truism to say that art and commerce are closely related: under capitalism, artists have to earn enough to live, commercial galleries have to survive, and other galleries often need to attract sponsorship from companies. Rarely, though, is the relationship quite as close as that involving William Lever (1851–1925).

Lever was the son of a wholesale grocer, and he expanded the family business by having soap manufactured in pre-wrapped bars. Then he set up the firm of Lever Brothers, which made the soap itself, initially in Warrington but then at a larger purpose-built factory on the Wirral. He used the brand name Sunlight, and the area where the factory was situated was termed Port Sunlight. As his company expanded, both in Britain and overseas, employing 85,000 workers at its height, he became immensely rich.

His initial interest in art was to buy paintings that could be copied and have the word ‘Sunlight’ and an advertising slogan added, so that they could be used as posters. One of the best-known was based on the painting ‘The New Frock’ by William Powell Frith (who objected to the use of his art for commercial purposes). Later Lever acquired a taste for collecting, and built up a substantial collection of paintings, sculptures, furniture, textiles and porcelain. Much of this can be seen at the Lady Lever Art Gallery, which opened in 1922. There are many portraits, such as one of Emma Hamilton as a Bacchante, and a number of works by Pre-Raphaelites such as Rossetti and Burne-Jones (both associates of William Morris).

Many of Lever’s workers were housed in the specially-built Port Sunlight village. A few minutes’ walk from the art gallery are the Port Sunlight Museum and a worker’s cottage. It is often described as ‘an original garden village’, but it was run in a very authoritarian way: for instance, all the houses had gardens but tenants were not allowed to keep chickens in them, and there were strict rules on taking in lodgers. Houses were rented from Lever Brothers, and losing your job meant losing your home. The ideas behind the village were not just philanthropic, as Lever believed that children who lived in a slum would grow up to be ‘a danger and terror to the State’.

Lever Brothers became part of the giant Unilever company in 1930, and from 1979 houses in Port Sunlight were sold when they became vacant, as Lever’s paternalistic approach to housing his employees had long been unfashionable. The village now looks like a rather anachronistic settlement, though both art gallery and museum are well worth visiting.

Paul Bennett

The Utopian Outlook (1927)

From the April 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is over a hundred years since Robert Owen gave to the world at large his “New View of Society," now republished by Messrs. J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., in Everyman’s Library (price 2s., cloth). Modern industry based upon machinery was still in its infancy, though it was developing rapidly and revolutionising the mode of life of millions of workers.

The French Revolution with its flowery promises had resulted in bitter disillusion for the workers and given rise to the Napoleonic wars. An unprecedented trade boom gave way to an equally remarkable slump. In the place of overwork stepped unemployment, and destitution appeared widespread just at the moment when the production of wealth had reached its zenith. The rumblings of discontent everywhere were shaking the confidence of members of the ruling class in the permanence of the social structure.

As a member of that class Owen came forward with his plan. For something like thirty years he had been gaining experience as manager and ultimately owner of various industrial undertakings, and he had learnt to appreciate the important part played by the conditions of employment in moulding the character and habits of the workers, and he had the intelligence to apply his knowledge with practical advantage to himself.

He discovered that his employees produced more when their hours of labour were shortened and the sanitary and educational conditions of their existence were improved, and he jumped to the conclusion that what was possible in his case was possible in all cases; and that all that was required in order to bring heaven to earth was for him to make known his success.

To his fellow-manufacturers he addressed an appeal to follow his example and urge the Legislature to limit hours of labour for adults as well as children, and to prohibit the employment of the latter under a certain age. To various prominent and influential members of the aristocracy he proposed that the Government should establish villages of industry run on similar lines to his own in order to absorb the unemployed and relieve the pressure on the Poor Rate. To the workers he preached patience and goodwill towards their exploiters in the hope that the latter would mend their ways.

“ Rich and poor, governors and governed, have really but one interest ” (p. 154).

For Owen, the struggle between the workers and their exploiters was an evil to be got rid of by preaching, while the effort on the part of the former to obtain political power was regarded as vain and futile by this forerunner of reformers. Professing to regard all men as the creatures of their circumstances, he yet failed to appreciate his own short-sightedness, itself the product of his class outlook.

Nevertheless, his work possessed at the time considerable critical value. He exposed the anarchy and waste of competition, the mainspring of capitalism. He showed the futility of expecting to eliminate crime while leaving the causes thereof untouched. He flattened out the pretensions of myriad religious sects to be the harbingers of brotherly love. In a word he exploded the comfortable notions of social progress which the Manchester School of bourgeois thought endeavoured to spread.

Industrial progress and the political development accompanying it thrust Owen’s views into the background so far as the advanced workers were concerned. The legalisation of the Trades Unions, the Ten Hours Act and the winning of the franchise, all these were the result of struggle and not of mere persuasion.

They cleared the field for independent action by the workers, and on that basis Marx developed his theory of the class struggle as the means of ushering in the new society.

The followers of Owen degenerated either into sectarian cranks pursuing semi-monkish experiments in the form of isolated colonies, or mere humbugs trying to beat the tradesmen at their own game of profit-making by means of “divi-” stores. While Marx applied the materialist method to enable the workers to discover the means of their own emancipation, the Holyoakes and others tried to erect Secularism to the dignity of a new religion.

Owen’s ideas have been assimilated in part by many of the members of the capitalist class. The Leverhulmes, the Cadbury’s, and the Ford’s have all applied his teachings in so far as they paid to do so, and have posed as men of originality. All the politicians who uphold capitalism pay lip-service to his notion of goodwill and harmony between the classes. The "social problem” is far from solution however as ever it was. It will remain so until the workers, driven to learn by experience, accept the discoveries of Marx as their guide and forsake the leadership of parasitic, self-appointed "friends."

In opposition to the capture of political power and the common ownership of the means of life, all that these friends can offer — from the Labour  "Left" to the Tory "Right" — is Utopia

Eric Boden