The true meaning of Welfare Supervision. (1916)

From the September 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

Signs are not wanting that at the cessation of hostilities on the Continent and the other fronts a return of the old industrial struggles will once again be the order of the day. Even now politicians and the Press vie with each other in an endeavour to gloss over the struggle of the classes, and here and there ladle out to both employers and employees the need for a “give-and-take” policy.

The old wheezes of “co-partnery” and “profit-sharing,” which have been tried in certain businesses, have not worked out as satisfactorily as was anticipated, owing to the flood of light shed thereon by Socialist thought and criticism. And so to-day we find an agitation springing up on every hand for “Welfare Supervisors.” It is somewhat significant how fresh devices are introduced one after another in order to give a new lease of life to capitalist production and to further rivet the chains of wage-slavery around the workers.

With the institution of the ministry of munitions further official notice was given to this question of “Welfare Supervisors,” and at the same period “The Times” newspaper pointed out how, in the German workshops, this ministering to the inner man and attendance to the congenial conditions of workshop life greatly facilitated the method of production. The Health of Munition Workers Committee which was appointed issued a report in which they stated : “The provision of facilities for obtaining a hot meal at the factory are often inadequate, especially for night workers. Frequently the arrangements made for heating carried food are also wholly insufficient. Yet the munition worker, like the soldier, requires good rations to enable him to do good work.” The last clause of the report goes on to say : “The rapid growth of commercial undertakings, and in particular of munition works, makes it difficult or impracticable for the management to deal, unless by special arrangement, with the numerous problems of labour efficiency, and the personal welfare of the employee. Yet without some such special arrangement there cannot fail to be “diminished output, discontent, and unsmooth working.” Thus we see that ” Welfare Supervisors” are necessary in order to ensure that the workers shall at certain intervals, take in just sufficient fuel and oil to keep the machine running smoothly !

In this connection also “The Stratford Express” for August 12th and 19th published two articles entitled “The Human Element in Factories” by B. Seebohm Rowntree. To reverse the order of things, I venture to quote the concluding paragraph first. It says : “After more than 20 years experience of welfare supervision in my own factory, I am thoroughly convinced of the wisdom of appointing welfare supervisors where large numbers of girls are employed. They not only promote the well-being, the health and efficiency of the girls, but they save the management an enormous amount of trouble. And it must be remembered that an increase of efficiency is important, not only to employers, but also to the workers, for there cannot be progressive improvement in wages unless there is progressive improvement in methods of production.” Here we have the frank confession of a member of the employing class who freely admits that it pays to look after and improve the general conditions of factory life. The phase “it must be remembered that an increase of efficiency is important, not only to employers, but also to the workers, for there cannot be progressive, improvement in wages unless there is progressive improvement in methods of production,” merely demonstrates the fact that the more efficient the workers become, combined with the elimination of wasted energy and better conditions of labour, the greater is the surplus-value produced for the employer with a lesser number of wage-slaves required to produce a given quantity of commodities. The sop offered as an inducement to greater effort on the part of the workers—that they will get a “progressive improvement in wages”—further emphasises the measure of their exploitation.

Our author in his opening remarks tells his readers that “Welfare supervision is simply the creation in a factory of those conditions which enable each individual worker to be and to do his best.” He then goes on to say that so long as factories were small there was no need of any special organisation to secure this end, for with the close relationship of master and employee every worker could be put to the work best fitted for him ; but as factories grew larger and larger this personal relation was crowded out. “The employer no longer knew his workers even by name. They came to be impersonal ‘factory hands’ to him, who were treated in the mass, without individual consideration.” To most of our readers this will be commonplace.

Moreover, Mr. Rowntree says “some employers may think that welfare supervision is merely a fad. This is quite a mistaken view. It is not only good . . . but it is thoroughly sound business from the standpoint of the employer ;” and “it is stupid to treat workers in the mass.” Then, he goes on to ask : “What should we think of an employer who treated his machinery in the mass ? As a matter of fact he watches his mechanical equipment with extraordinary care. It is continually tested to find out if there is any overstrain. A man goes round with an oil can all day long to see that there is no unnecessary friction anywhere.” After pointing out the care and attention which is paid to the machinery the writer suggests that a similar method should be applied to the human beings who are infinitely more complex and delicate, and adds : “If only employers would treat their employees with as much consideration as they do their machines, they would have less difficulty in getting satisfactory output.” With regard to the hours of labour for girls and women a suggestion of a 48 hour week is put forward, and we are informed that the employer “is wise who adopts this course.” A little later one observes the following remark : “I question whether it ever pays to keep on working girls for more than 54 hours a week.” With regard to the question of workers partaking of lunch it is put forward with all seriousness that “a short break of, say, ten minutes in the middle of the morning is a distinct advantage.” On the subject of canteens the writer is equally emphatic, and he goes on to say that the Americans recognise “much more fuJly than we do the advantages of good canteen arrangements in the works, adding that unless girls (and the same is equally true regarding men) in a factory can get a comfortable midday meal and a restful dinner hour, they cannot be expected to do a good afternoon’s work. He also mentions that some employers look upon comfortable mess rooms and canteens as luxuries and an expense which brings in no return. “Nothing is further from the truth,” is his rejoinder to these people. Even such things as lighting, heating, and ventilation are touched upon, with the further remark that we (the bosses) are quite alive to the importance of these things in our own offices.

The method of engaging the newcomer to the factory is next dealt with at great length, it being suggested that the applicant should be engaged by the “welfare supervisor” instead of by the foreman. The supervisor would then have a talk with the applicant and ascertain her qualifications, and having decided to recommend her for employment would “try to interest her in it, making her feel both that the firm intends to do the ‘square thing’ by her, and that she must do the ‘square thing’ by the firm.” This reminds one of the old idea depicted on Trade Union banners showing the two hands clasped representing Capital and Labour ; and strange to say, these relics of the earlier days of trade union activity are still to be seen dragged through the streets on occasions when there is no possibility whatever of obscuring the class struggle ! The identity of interests, forsooth ! The robbed and the robbers doing “the square thing” ! What balderdash !

One could go on and quote more extensively from these articles, but I think sufficient has been culled to show that the whole purpose underlying them is simply an object lesson to the employing class on how, under the pretence of an interest in the welfare of their slaves, they can better exploit them. Fellow-workers, let it be an object lesson to you also.

T.

The Socialist Forum: A question of gold and prosperity. (1931)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

A question of gold and prosperity.

Editor of Socialist Standard.

Sir,—Your notion that the relation between gold and trade depression is “an illusion,” and that it can be “easily dispelled” is erroneous. The relation is not, as you seem to imagine, such that the stock held by individual countries can secure their prosperity in face of world depression. The relation is between the rate of increase of the world’s stock of gold as against that of other primary products, and the statistics for the period 1850-1913 show that when this relative gold supply was increasing primary prices rose, and that when it decreased their prices fell—vide the figures and chart of Professor Cassel and Mr. Kitchin re-published in the first interim report of the Gold Delegation of the League of Nations. The ill effects of a downward trend of prices upon industry and employment are well established, and the relation between gold and trade depression is now only disputed by those who are concerned to maintain a deflationary policy, or who are ignorant of Professor Cassel’s work.

Geoffrey Biddulph.

Church Street, S.W.7.

October 18th, 1931.

Reply:

Mr. Biddulph “corrects” a notion which we do not hold. That he attributes it to us can only be due to careless reading of the article in question. We made it quite clear that we were concerned (as indeed, we always are) with the main problem of the workers, not with the problems of different sections of the capitalist class.

The difference between Mr. Biddulph and ourselves can be illustrated from his notion that rising prices, due to an increasing supply of gold, mean prosperity. We do not deny that prosperity may come to the manufacturing and trading capitalists : but what of the workers?

The table to which Mr. Biddulph refers us, and from which we have ourselves quoted recently, shows a very great increase in the world supply of gold from 1890 to 1914. Do we, then, find the workers prosperous? In 1901 Mr. Seebohm Rowntree found a third of the workers below a very meagre level of existence which he called the poverty line. In 1903 Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman endorsed Rowntree’s findings and declared that “about 30 per cent. of the population is living in the grip of perpetual poverty.” In 1904 Sir Leo Money (then Mr. Money) ascertained that 96 persons out of every 100 died owning less than £100, while the other 4 out of every 100 possessed an average of over £9,000 each. He found that about one-seventieth of the population owned far more than half of the entire wealth of the United Kingdom.

If this is what Mr. Biddulph means by-prosperity—i.e., prosperity for the few—we do not dispute it. But we repeat our statement that the main problems of the workers have nothing to do with the supply of gold.

Ed. Comm.

A new social revolution (1945)

From the November 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

Faulty reasoning and as a result faulty conclusions are very often due to the lack of consideration of vital factors involved. Proposals, for instance, are often made by various would-be-reformers to improve the lot of the workers whilst retaining the present economic set-up, that is the capitalist system. Bearing upon this it is worth while considering an article written by a reformer of longstanding, Mr. B. Seebohm Rowntree which appeared in the "Evening Standard,” (February 20th, 1945), headed, “A New Industrial Revolution.”

We are told that if the aim of the Government as regards “the maintenance of a high and stable level of employment after the War is achieved it will revolutionise the status of the workers.” May we quickly add that if the aforesaid does occur it will also revolutionise the ideas that Socialists hold on capitalism, but since we are aware of the fact that the only time our masters seem to be able to keep all of us busy is in the preparation or in the actual waging of war we are quite confident that Socialists will need to make no changes of their ideas now that the slaughter has abated. The fact of the matter is that the only way the status of the workers can be revolutionised is by the abolition of capitalism. No such proposition is made by Mr. Rowntree.

The proposals that are elaborated are based on the contingency that “if a state of full-employment is stabilised, authority, based on the ability to dismiss employees will largely disappear.” Mr. Rowntree need not have gone to the trouble of racking his brain as to how to deal with this question. The Socialist assures him that this ticklish problem will not arise in peacetime, and that our masters’ authority to employ or dismiss us at his beck and call will remain unaffected. On the contrary, all the things point to the strengthening of his hand. However, let us pause for a moment to consider how the above assertion of the employer's freedom to employ or dismiss is contradicted, in almost the next breath. Apparently, it seems, that now the owner is not the authority any more. “As a matter of fact all those employed in industry are SERVANTS OF THE CONSUMERS. It is the consumers who give the orders, and the greatest industrial magnates must obey them if he wants to stay in business. So the master and servant relationship within an industrial enterprise is unrealistic.” Following from this one is inclined to suggest that employers should now unite to resist the encroachments of their common enemy, the consumer! This childish argument is based on the fallacy of ignoring the fact that the producers, that is the working-class, are at the same time the vast majority of the consumers and secondly, that they have by no means that independence of choice which Mr. Rowntree is too hasty in crediting them with. How many of us for instance would consume our daily “sausage and mash” at the factory canteen or local cafe if we could but take a stroll down to Claridges or the Dorchester and there exercise a freer and far more welcome independence of choice? Further, has Mr. Rowntree forgotten the extent to which our own tastes are artificially formed for us, and therefore restricted, by constant plugging and advertisement. For the vast majority of consumers, i.e., the workers, the ability to pick and choose between one product and another is largely nonexistent. They have to buy what the big monopolies have decided to produce and have to like it, for the simple reason that they cannot afford to do anything else. Freedom of choice is restricted to the rich consumers and that invariably means luxuries which workers never can enjoy so long as capitalism lasts.

As a result of his fallacious idea that the consumers are the real masters in society, Mr. Rowntree comes to the conclusion that “employers should regard themselves and all their employees as being fellow-servants.” That says he, “is their true relationship.” We are told that some employers would resent this suggestion. May we inform Mr. Rowntree that there are quite a lot of workers who would resent this equally as much. The cold fact of reality is that the production and distribution services under capitalism are incidental to the making of profits. And since the making of profits involves the exploitation of the workers we should like to know how the receivers of profit, i.e., the employers can be the “fellow-servants” of those who produce it for them.

Further we discover that Mr. Rowntree wishes to introduce a greater degree of democracy into industry. He proposes that (a) arbitration boards be set up to deal with breaches of factory rule and (b) to establish Works Councils “on which members of the administrative staff and representatives elected by the workers should serve.” His reasons for desiring these proposals to be put into effect are not hard to discover. According to Mr. Rowntree it “would remove the chance of a strike occurring where the workers consider that a worker has been wrongfully punished.” Workers, so we are led to believe, would “feel that they are part of the show.” Employers could confidently expect a good and a growing response front the workers and of course it would mean “Prosperity for industry.” As regards the latter slogan let it be once again emphasized that prosperity for industry means the OWNERS of industry. We note too, that the workers will only be allowed to “feel” part of the show; they will only be “treated” as co-partners. This vague language is not a strange one to our apologists for capitalism. Even if the proposal mentioned were put into effect the enslaved position of the working class would not be altered in the slightest. It is extremely doubtful even that they could possibly serve the interests of the workers in their daily struggle against their profit-hunting masters, if we are to judge by the biased behaviour of the war time arbitration boards. Most likely they would prove a very effective instrument in the hands of the capitalist class to perpetuate their system of exploitation. Remember well that in the war despite “full-employment,” arbitration boards and factory committees, strikes and industrial unrest have been very prevalent and peace and harmony have not been produced in industry. This must necessarily be so because the conflict of interests between master and slave, in this case capitalist and wage-slave, is irreconcilable, in war or out of war. Since Mr Rowntree seems to be very concerned with actualities let the Socialist Party inform him that as long as industry is monopolised by a small section of the population who use it as a source for their profit and power so long will peace and harmony of effort be an unrealisable fantasy. May we further suggest that there was no need of him to dwell upon the desirability of a “new industrial revolution.” This revolution has already been accomplished in the course of the last 150 years. What is urgently required, however, is a new social revolution, the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of Socialism. This would place into the hands of the whole community the ownership and control of the instruments of production and distribution. The degradation and humiliation of wage-slavery would then be a thing of the past.

Max Judd

Doubts and Difficulties: Do the Workers Live on the Verge of Starvation? (1906)

From the September 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

Much discussion has been evoked at one time or another as to the statement alleged to have been made by Sir H. Campbell Bannerman that twelve millions of the population of Britain were living on the verge of starvation. To many people the important question has been as to whether the afore-mentioned individual made or did not make the assertion substantially given above. In all the discussions I have heard on the subject the question has never arisen whether the statement, whether made or not, was true in substance or in fact.

o o o o

To the Socialist the matter is one of vital interest. Half a century ago Karl Marx, after a close and searching examination of the conditions of English industry, arrived at the theoretic position that so long as the present basis of industrialism—the capitalist, privately-owned property basis—existed, for so long would the wages of the worker be determined by the cost of his subsistence, that is, by the barest amount necessary for maintaining the worker and his family. This theory arrived at by deducing from the basic laws of capitalist production, he verified it by a careful review of the conditions of the workers as found in practice and as described in the reports of Royal Commissions appointed to enquire into such conditions.

o o o o

True as the theory of a bare subsistence wage was found to be some sixty years ago so to-day is it true that the wage of the worker is similarly governed. An exhaustive analysis of present day conditions is not necessary to satisfy us as to the truth of this but for the benefit of some who may not have sifted the evidence for themselves, a few pointers may be useful in showing where the evidence may be found.

o o o o

A good many years have now elapsed since Mr. Charles Booth set himself the task of exposing the “wild” statements of the Socialist as to the poverty of the workers. The result of his work is shown in his “Life and Labour of the People of London,” a remarkable indictment of our vaunted civilisation. The figures he gave of the poverty of the London workers showed that the statements of the Socialist were not an exaggeration but an understatement of the position. 1,300,000 of the population of London, or over 30 per cent. of the people of the richest mother-city in the world, were receiving a wage of less than a guinea a week !

o o o o

A guinea a week was the mark at which he had drawn his poverty line, and there were in London thirteen hundred thousand people below that poverty line. Assuming that this rate of poverty ruled throughout the whole of the United Kingdom we should, taking the population figures of 1901, have 30 per cent. of a population of 41,600,000 living under the poverty line adopted by Mr. Booth. Thirty per cent, of 41,600,000 ! 12,480,000 !! What a picture of misery, of degradation may be conjured up by a contemplation of these figures !!!

o o o o

It was, however, always open to critics to contend that owing to London’s premier position men and women were more likely to drift thither than to other towns, and that in any event, in the rural districts, such a rate of poverty must be impossible. Unfortunately for this contention, it was not in accordance with the facts, and subsequent investigation has proved that what obtains in London obtains likewise in rural villages like Egremont, and in small provincial towns like York.

o o o o

With Egremont I do not intend to deal, and I shall also pass over investigations into similar and subsidiary poverty problems in other towns. But with regard to York I may be permitted to write at somewhat greater length.

o o o o

In the Autumn of 1899, which was a period of comparative prosperity, Mr. Seebohm Rowntree conducted a house to house investigation into the conditions of working-class families in York. The results he arrived at were published for him by Messrs. Macmillan & Co. in a book called “Poverty. A Study of Town Life.” From this it appears that in York in 1899 “families comprising 20,302 persons, equal to 43.4 per cent. of the wage-earning class, and to 27.84 per cent. of the total population of the city, were living in poverty,” and Mr. Rowntree sums up by saying that the fact that nearly 30 per cent. of the population are found to be living in poverty is of the gravest significance.

o o o o

30 per cent. of the population in York. 30 per cent. of the population in London. Truly remarkable the way in which the results of capitalism are uniformly displayed. At page 133 he explains that the poverty of unskilled labour is due to low wages. I believe I have formerly quoted the following remarkable passage but it bears repetition:—

o o o o

“It is thus seen that the wages paid for unskilled labour in York are insufficient to provide food, shelter, and clothing adequate to maintain a family of moderate size in a state of bare physical efficiency. It will be remembered that the above estimates of necessary minimum expenditure are based upon the assumption that the diet is even less generous than that allowed to able-bodied paupers in the York Workhouse, and that no allowance is made for any expenditure other than that absolutely required for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency.

“And let us clearly understand what ‘merely physical efficiency’ means. A family living upon the scale allowed for in this estimate must never spend a penny on railway fare or omnibus. They must never go into the country unless they walk. They must never purchase a half-penny newspaper or spend a penny to buy a ticket for a popular concert. They must write no letters to absent children, for they cannot afford the postage. They must never contribute anything to their church or chapel, or give any help to a neighbour which costs them money. They cannot save, nor can they join sick club or Trade Union, because they cannot pay the necessary subscriptions. The children must have no pocket money for dolls, marbles, or sweets. The father must smoke no tobacco, and must drink no beer. The mother must never buy any pretty clothes for herself or for her children, the character of the family wardrobe as for the family diet being governed by the regulation, ‘Nothing must be bought but that which is absolutely necessary for the maintenance of physical health, and what is bought must be of the plainest and most economical description.’ Should a child fall ill it must be attended by the parish doctor; should it die, it must be buried by the parish. Finally, the wage-earner must never be absent from his work for a single day.

“If any of these conditions are broken, the extra expenditure involved is met, and can only be met, by limiting the diet ; or, in other words, by sacrificing physical efficiency.

“That few York labourers receiving 20/- or 21/- per week submit to these iron conditions in order to maintain physical efficiency is obvious. And even were they to submit, physical efficiency would be unattainable for those who had three or more children dependent upon them. It cannot therefore be too clearly understood, nor too emphatically repeated, that whenever a worker having three children dependent on him, and receiving not more than 21s. 8d. per week, indulges in any expenditure beyond that required for the barest physical needs, he can do so only at the cost of his own physical efficiency, or of that of some members of his family.”

The italics in all cases are Mr. Rowntree’s.

o o o o

In face of these statements we can only conclude that there is more than sufficient evidence to show that at least twelve millions of our people are living below the poverty line, and that those living on the poverty line are on the verge of starvation. Nor is this all. Those who to-day are above the poverty line may to-morrow be below and vice versa. The conditions persist though the persons vary. Says J. A. Hobson “Only three out of every ten persons in the richest country in Europe belong to a class which is able to live in decent comfort . . the other seven are of necessity confined to a standard of life, little, if at all, above the line of bare necessity.”

o o o o

The persons differ. Again I quote from “Poverty.” “The life of a labourer is marked by five alternating periods of want and comparative plenty. During early childhood, unless his father is a skilled worker he probably will be in poverty; this will last until he, or some of his brothers or sisters, begin to earn money and thus augment their father’s wage sufficiently to raise the family above the poverty line. Then follows the period during which he is earning money and living under his parents’ roof; for some portion of this period he will be earning more money than is required for lodging, food, and clothes. This is his chance to save money. If he has saved enough to pay for furnishing a cottage, this period of comparative prosperity may continue after marriage until he has two or three children, when poverty will again overtake him. This period of poverty will last perhaps for ten years, i.e., until the first child is fourteen years old and begins to earn wages, but if there are more than three children it may last longer. While the children are earning, and before they leave the home to marry, the man enjoys another period of prosperity—possibly, however, only to sink back again into poverty when his children have married and left him, and he himself is too old to work, for his income has never permitted his saving enough for him and his wife to live upon for more than a very short time.

“A labourer is thus in poverty, and therefore underfed

(a) In childhood when his constitution is being built up.

(b) In early middle life—when he should be in his prime.

(c) In old age.”

o o o o

It thus appears that the number of the workers at some time or other below the poverty line is not confined to 43 per cent. It is true that this is the number at any one time. But the individuals at present below will to-morrow be above and their places will be occupied by others of their class. But the “aboves” and the “belows” cancel one another and we thus derive the result that the normal condition of the working class is to exist on the poverty line. The worker has absolutely no guarantee that he will escape from the position of having to receive less than is necessary to maintain him in a state of merely physical efficiency.

o o o o

The reason for this condition of things is that he must sell his labour-power in “free” competition with his fellows in an ever overstocked labour market. Hence no reform can do anything for him. The only remedy is to abolish the present method of private property-holding, the operation of which can be shown as the cause of the overstocked labour market with its necessary corollary of a subsistence wage. This abolition would be no mere destructive policy, but would be the preliminary to a system of common property holding, the end of which would be care of all and not the aggrandisement of a few.

o o o o

I think, therefore, that there can be little doubt that the statement that twelve millions of our population are on the verge of starvation is an understatement of the case, and that if this were clearly recognised to be the result of capitalism there would be a more speedy growth of a Socialist Party in this country than at present seems probable.

o o o o

Be that as it may the struggle has commenced, and to those who have studied the question there cannot be any doubt that victory lies with the working class and with Socialism.

Economicus.

Books and pamphlets for sale. (1906)

Advert from the March 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

An interesting selection of books and pamphlets. The following are available online:

• Capital
• Six centuries of work and wages
• Poverty
• Communist Manifesto
• Wage Labour and Capital
• Socialism and the Worker
• How I Became a Socialist
• The Social Revolution

Spokeshave's 'Jones' Boy' is not available on the net but there's an interesting article on its background over at the Kate Sharpley Library blog.

Doubts and Difficulties: The Wealth of the Wealthless Workers. (1905)

The Doubts and Difficulties column from the June 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Wealth of the Wealthless Workers.

A correspondent writes: “I am very pleased to welcome your new venture in opening a Doubts and Difficulties section in the Socialist Standard. I think that the ventilation of all difficulties in the way of a full acception of Socialism and Socialist principles is of the greatest educational utility, and that this section of the Socialist Standard deserves the support of all Socialists. With the experience gained in this way the answers will tend to become less crudely expressed and will prove doubtless a valuable contribution to the education of our propagandists.”

* * *

I thank my correspondent for his appreciation and may assure him that I am keenly alive to the imperfection of my methods of expression. The Board School education which most of us workers have received does not lend itself to the building up of a graceful literary style. At the same time a knowledge of working-class life and an understanding of its inner meaning is forced upon us as we live and work amongst our fellows. And if experience of the bitterness and misery engendered by the grinding poverty of the every-day life of the working-class is of any advantage in understanding the condition of the wage worker I think I am so far equipped for my present task.

* * *

Another correspondent has set me the following conundrum: “In your ‘Doubts and Difficulties’ in the May Standard you say that the spinner enters the labour market possessed of only his labour-power which he is compelled to sell so as to secure his means of livelihood. Is this so ? Does not the spinner—the working-class—own a considerable amount of wealth in Savings Banks, Friendly Societies, and Trade Unions, and does not this fact vitiate your entire argument? ”

* * *

I think we shall find that the contention in the above argument is not a sound one and that it is in fact one of the stock arguments of the apologist of the capitalist regime in favour of the present system. When the Socialist points out that thrift is impossible for the worker because his wages are determined by the average cost of his subsistence we are told that he has been thrifty as is shown by the Savings Bank deposits and that as he has been thrifty and has been able to save some of his wages they must have been more than the cost of his subsistence and that the Socialist position was therefore futile and absurd.

* * *

The first fallacy which is made in reckoning up those “savings of the working classes” is to count in several huge sums twice over. We are told grandiloquently of the £198,000,000 in the Post Office and Trustee Savings Banks and of the £45,000,000 deposited with Friendly Societies, forgetting that special provision is made by the Post Office Savings Bank for the receiving of the funds of Friendly Societies and Trades Unions. But we do not desire to press this point. We can afford—such is the strength of our case—to take the highest possible estimate and assume that these deposits aggregate £300,000,000.

* * *

The question which now arises is : Who has deposited this £300,000,000? The capitalist apologists of the press, the platform, and the pulpit assume that it is wholly the savings of members of the working-class. We contend that such an assumption is a grotesque fallacy.

* * *

Let us ask ourselves another question. Where do the small shopkeeper, the small trader, the less successful professional and business men deposit their money, and where do the children of these classes and even of the richer middle-class keep their savings ?

* * *

I do not think that it can be in the ordinary bank—whether private or joint-stock—inasmuch as they refuse to carry on their business except for the profit of the banker and that profit cannot be derived from a banking account unless a minimum balance is guaranteed. In small credit banks an average of say £50 would be required, while larger banks require considerably higher balances to be maintained.

* * *

It is not possible for the working-class to have accounts with these banks and neither is it possible for the average small trader to do so. As far as possible he requires his money to be in circulation. He uses it to replenish his stock—to increase the quantity of his goods available for turnover. At the same time the whole of his money cannot be tied up in this way. He buys on credit and has to meet his bills when they fall due and he has to save his money for the purpose. The ordinary bank not being convenient for his purpose he avails himself of the facilities afforded by the Post Office Savings Bank.

* * *

So with his children. They use the Savings Bank to put away the pennies and shillings they save from the sweet-stuff shop and often have accounts which aggregate to more than the yearly earnings of the working man.

* * *

As to the proportion of the deposits which belong to working men, I may mention the result of an investigation made into this question in the United States of America by Lucien Saniel. His conclusion was that 10 per cent. would more than cover the share invested by the working-class of that country.

* * *

In America we are informed by the Reports of the Commissioner of Labour of the United States, the average wage is 30 per cent. higher than in the United Kingdom, and we should consequently expect that the savings of the working-class there were higher in proportion than of the working-class in this country. But even taking it that the working-class here own 10 per cent. of the high estimated savings given above, the result would be £20,000,000 as representing the savings of the working-class.

* * *

I am informed further that many of these deposits are very temporary in their nature. The wage deposited on Saturday afternoon is often withdrawn the following Thursday, and the working-class in the large towns deposit in the Savings Bank to meet the contingency of rent, holiday, or even more interesting domestic occurrences.

* * *

This, however, only refers to the better paid mechanic who has a wage somewhat higher than the working-class average and can sometimes afford a holiday. Taking all the facts, I think we must take it as fully borne out that the working-class as a class are never more than a few weeks from starvation and that as a class they own nothing beyond their labour-power—their power to perform work.

* * *

While the better class mechanic getting a relatively higher wage because he has somewhat reduced the number of similarly situated mechanics competing for employment can save against a rainy day that never fails to come, the ordinary worker is getting less than the average cost of his subsistence and can save nothing.

* * *

Take the case of the worker of Ridgmount as depicted by our Comrade R. H. Kent in a recent issue of the Socialist Standard. Any saving made by those workers can only be at the expense of the necessities of their wives and children. Individuals may of course save if they remain single, but marriage soon uses up the savings and reduces such individuals to the dead level of a starvation existence.

* * *

When we are informed that 43 per cent. of the working-class population of York are living in poverty we are interested to know how the standard of poverty is understood and Mr. Rowntree is kind enough to inform us.

* * *

He says : “It is thus seen that the wages paid for unskilled labour in York are insufficient to provide food, shelter and clothing adequate to maintain a family of moderate size in a state of bare physical efficiency. It will be remembered that the above estimate of necessary minimum expenditure is based upon the assumption that the diet is even less generous than that allowed to able-bodied paupers in the York Workhouse, and that no allowance is made for any expenditure other than that absolutely required for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency.”

* * *

“And let us clearly understand what ‘merely physical efficiency’ means. A family living upon the scale allowed for in this estimate must never spend a penny on railway fare or omnibus. They must never go into the country unless they walk. They must never purchase a halfpenny newspaper or spend a penny to buy a ticket for a popular concert. They must write no letters to absent children, for they cannot afford to pay the postage. They must never contribute anything to their church or chapel, or give any help to a neighbour which costs them money. They cannot save, neither can they join Sick Club or Trade Union, because they cannot pay the necessary subscriptions. The children must have no pocket money for dolls, marbles, or sweets. The father must smoke no tobacco and must drink no beer. The mother must never buy pretty clothes for herself or for her children, the character of the family wardrobe as of the family diet being governed by the regulation. Nothing must be bought but that which is absolutely necessary for the maintenance of physical health, and what is bought must be of the plainest and most economical description. Should a child fall ill it must be attended by the Parish doctor; should it die it must be buried by the Parish. Finally, the wage earner must never be absent from his work for a single day.”

* * *

“If any of these conditions are broken, the extra expenditure involved is met, and can only be met, by limiting the diet; or in other words by sacrificing physical efficiency.”

* * *

“That few York labourers receiving 20s. or 21s. per week submit to these iron conditions in order to maintain physical efficiency is obvious. And even were they to submit, physical efficiency would be unattainable for those who had three or more children dependent upon them. It cannot, therefore, be too clearly understood, nor too emphatically repeated, that whenever a worker having three children dependent on him, and receiving not more than 21s. 8d. per week, indulges in any expenditure beyond that required for the barest physical needs, he can do so only at the cost of his own physical efficiency, or that of some members of his family.”

* * *

In every case the italics are those of Mr. Rowntree. Under those conditions it would be criminal for any man to try to save, and he must remain possessed only of his power to work. He must sell his power to work, which is himself, in order to live. By thus selling himself he acknowledges himself a slave bound by the will of the master who buys him. The English wage worker is veritably a wage-slave and among them is—

Economicus.

By The Way: Canadians on Germany (1945)

The By The Way Column from the February 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

Canadians on Germany

The Canadian Army newspaper, The Maple Leaf, has conducted a poll among Canadian troops now fighting, on post-war treatment of Germany.

“Less than ten per cent, suggested the partition of Germany, and less than ten per cent, the separation of Prussia from Germany”.—(Daily Herald, January 3rd, 1915.)

The Maple Leaf’s comment was: —

“The whole wipe-out-the-German-nation idea is knocked on the head by these men. Many even mentioned this idea and pointed out that they considered it absurd and impossible. . . . There is a general impression among these fighting men that any term of war debt in money or any partition of Germany is very likely to lead to another war !”

Everybody who does a job of work for a living knows how quickly one’s pre-conceived notions of a particular job vanish when you come up against the job itself.

Perhaps if Lord Vansittart and one or two others (Pollitt & Co., etc.) had a few weeks fighting at the front, it might alter their ideas.

* * *

More Belt Tightening

“Two of our large banks, Barclays and the District, report larger profits in 1944 than in 1943. Barclays’ net. figure has improved from £1,584,000 to £1,673.000, and the District Bank from £434,000 to £449,000. In each case the dividends remain unchanged. Barclays Bank are paying 10 per cent. on the ‘A’ and 14 per cent, on the ‘B’ and ‘C’ stocks, and the District Bank 18⅓ per cent. on the ‘A’ and ‘C’ shares and 10 per cent. on the ‘B’ shares.”(News-Chronicle, January 5th, 1945.)

“Midland Bank profits for 1944 have passed the Two million mark for the first time since 1939. The figure is £2,038,274, against £1,984,396 for 1943. Dividend is maintained at 10 per cent.

“Westminster Bank profits are up. Dividend remains 18 per cent. on the £4 shares, and 12½ per cent. on the stock.

“‘Big Five’ aggregate profits for the year are 4.1 per cent. higher—£8,004,602—a new war peak.”—(Herald, January 10th.)

“Lend to the End” (18 per cent.)

* * *

Can We (?) Afford It?

A spate of writings on this theme is now filling the columns of the public press.

The end of the European war is alleged to be in sight, though some of the optimists (as usual) seem to be equipped with conveniently powerful telescopes.

We are approaching the period when the rosy promises of the early days—”jobs, homes, security,” etc.—made to induce war-enthusiasm, are beginning to fall due.

It’s the “morning after the night before.” The first ominous grey shadows of a frigid winter’s morning to dispel the romantic illusions of Churchillian radio rhetoric.

Members of Parliament, professors and “experts” are vieing in the attempt to calm the people down. “Don’t expect too much !” The things we want have got to be paid for! “There isn’t the money!” “How can we do it? Can we afford it? ” is their monotonous refrain.

Imposing arrays of figures are cited showing how poor WE (?) really are.

“By a great act of faith, we have mortgaged our, as yet, non-existent national income with colossal charges for education and social services. . . . Two questions at once arise. Can we stand this staggering expenditure? Will we stand it?” asks Captain Gammans, Tory M.P. for Hornsey.— (Evening News, December 27th, 1944.)

The “staggering expenditure” referred to is Two thousand millions a year. The current expenditure for 1944, according to Capt. Gammans himself, is Three thousand millions.

The plain simple man might well ask, “If we can stand it in 1944, why not 1947 or 8?”

But, no! it’s not so simple. You see, war-time is “abnormal.’

“What are the things on which we have set our hearts? They are social security, a greatly improved medical service, an educational system which will enable a poor child to enjoy the same advantages as a rich one. family allowances, good houses for everyone at rents they can afford, and on top of all these, and other things I have not mentioned, we are to achieve a rising standard of living”.—(B. Seebohm Rowntree,  Evening Standard, November 30th.)

“Economists tell us that to pay for them we must increase our exports by 50 per cent, above the pre-war figure, but we can only do this if we can sell our goods in the world markets at competitive prices.”— (B. Seebohm Rowntree.)

“The first is that we succeed in restoring a sufficient volume of export trade to provide for the essential imports, without which we do not eat or remain an industrial power at all. The second is that our industry and agriculture are efficient”—(Capt. Gammans.)

Our readers will see at once that we have two bright new boys for the “Export or Bust” chorus, now being produced at colossal expense, in inglorious Technicolour, by the British capitalist class.

They are bright new boys—both of them—because they have thought up one or two new ghost stories to curdle the blood of the British working man.

First, Mr. Rowntree (we’re glad his cocoa is a bit more nourishing than his arguments) : —

“Let us make no mistake. We cannot get these things merely by a redistribution of existing wealth; a little may be possibly got that way, but by far the greater part of the cost involved, which may run into hundreds of millions of pounds a year, can only be met bv increasing the total amount of wealth produced.”

Now Capt. Gammans : —

“If we were to confiscate every income of over £1,000 a year and distribute it among the rest of the community, each person in this country would benefit to the extent of only about 3s. 9d. a week.”

This is a perfectly simple straightforward proposition as old as the hills. It will be found in “Value, Price and Profit,” by Marx, published seventy years ago. It was the argument of Citizen Weston. He said, as Marx graphically put it, that “what prevented working men getting more out of the bowl (of soup) was its smallness.” Marx called this argument “rather spoony.” Interestingly enough, F. A. Ridley in the New Leader and Michael Foot in the Daily Herald say the same thing.

Ridley is supposed to be writing about Socialism and Equality. He actually writes: “Under Socialism everyone would get exactly the same.” (New Leader, September 2nd, 1944.) This is nonsense. Ridley goes on : —

“The extreme left—anarchists, S.P.G.B., etc.—will demand the application of the classic formula, ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.’ . . . ‘To each according to his needs’ is an Utopian formula … it outstrips the present capacity of society.”

In other words, workers go short because there’s not enough. By the way, the S.P.G.B. is not the “left,” extreme or otherwise, but THE Socialist Party.

Lastly, Michael Foot (Daily Herald, January 9, 1945) :

“Now the subtle point about all this propaganda is that part of it is true. It is true that many British industries are hopelessly inefficient. It is true that an increase in production per man hour could, under certain other conditions, greatly increase the wealth of the community.”

So, according to Ridley, industry has not the “capacity”; to Foot, it is “inefficient.”

The bowl is too small. Seventy years ago Marx said that it was not the “narrowness of the bowl nor the scantiness of its contents” (“Value, Price and Profit,” Chap. II.), but the smallness of their spoons which prevented working men getting a larger portion.

The Government has now published figures of war-time production. The increase in production of wealth, despite war difficulties, is simply staggering. Despite the fact that some things (aeroplanes, e.g.) are produced in quantities for which no pre-war criterion exists—it is not unfair to say that, generally speaking, production has more than doubled, while workers’ consumption has been more than halved. (“Statistics relating to the War Effort of the United Kingdom,” Stationery Office.) It has never been the Socialist case that a redistribution of existing wealth would solve the poverty problem under capitalism.

Reference to our pamphlet “Socialism” (page 9) shows that:—

“Even with the present wasteful use of the productive forces there is enough wealth produced to raise the standard of living of the great mass of the population. Mr. Colin Clark, M.A., in his recent book, “The National Income, 1924-31,” estimates that if the total national income were equally distributed, every family mould have received about £349 during 1929, £311 during 1930, and £298 during 1931. These amounts are equal to about £6 14s. a week, £6 11s. a week, and £5 13s. a week for the years in question. In point of fact, they got about half this sum.”

Now, with production more than doubled, despite the absence’ of millions of the most fit, we’re told we are not producing enough to go round.

“The great inequality of income is, moreover, only one aspect of the poverty problem. Capitalism not only bestows on the rich a large share of the wealth produced, but—even more important—it keeps the total amount of wealth produced far below the possible total.”— (“Socialism,” page 10.)

This is the answer to Capt. Gammans (Tory), Seebohm Rowntree (Liberal), Michael Foot (Labour), F. A. Ridley (I.L.P.).

The abolition of capitalist ownership of the means of wealth production will remove the “chocks” from under the landing wheels of the productive system.

What has happened during this war, where the amazing capacity of a modern working class has been demonstrated, due to temporary, insatiable military demand, is a slight indication of what that working class can do, relieved of exploitation, and with the end of futile occupations like advertising, and fighting for and waiting on parasites.

We Socialists are not to be frightened by horror stories about whether WE can afford it.

We shall not be led up the garden path of renewed fierce competition and rivalry to export more than our American and German brothers, leading to a new war.

To-day we can make our bowl of soup as large as we like—once we’ve knocked the shovels out of the capitalists’ hands by intelligent political action—and issued everybody with a spoon.

Horatio.

Editorial: The Cost of Living Farce (1937)

Editorial from the November 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Government is conducting an inquiry among 30,000 families to discover how they spend their wages. The resulting figures will be used as the basis of a new cost of living index to show from month to month whether and by how much the cost of living has increased or decreased. The old index, which dates back to 1904, is considered out of date, but the new one will be just as farcical as the other. The inquiry is not designed to discover how much good food a human being needs to maintain health and how much money that food costs, but simply to discover how the worker spends his wages. Whether the wages are too low to maintain health is not regarded by the Government as being its business.

Three things show the Government’s attitude in its true colours. The first is the fact that though Government employees for years had a cost of living bonus system, the bonus was never more than part of the full increase in the cost of living. The Government flatly refused to grant the full amount. The second is that at all times thousands of Government employees have been receiving wages which were shown by authoritative estimates to be too low to provide the necessities of life.

The third thing is that the Government, which is spending an extra £1,500 million pounds on armaments, has just refused a request by the Trade Union Congress that the pay of the unemployed should be increased in keeping with the rise in prices (Daily Telegraph, October 18th, 1937).

How inadequate is the level of wages, whether in Government employment or outside, has just been demonstrated again by the issue of a revised edition of Mr. Seebohm Rowntree’s “Human Needs of Labour” (Longmans, 1937, 2s. 6d.).

In it he estimates that at 1936 prices the minimum amount needed to keep a family of man, wife and three dependent children living in a town is 53s. a week. It is assumed for this purpose that the wage is paid for 52 weeks a year (i.e., that the worker has paid holidays) and that he receives 53s. all the time, not only at the time when he actually has three children; because he has got to get his home together, and no allowance is made for this in calculating the 53s. Moreover, the 53s. does not apply to London or to any place where rents and traveling expenses are unusually high. Mr. Rowntree allows only 9s. 6d. for rent and rates and 1s. for travelling to and from work, both of which are absurdly low for London. Mr. Rowntree admits that in London rents may range up to 20s. or 25s. (p. 89) and that his 53s. must be increased accordingly. It would in such cases be in the region of 70s., apart from the inadequacy of the allowance for food, referred to below. The dietary, costing 20s. 6d. a week for the family of five, is based on a minimum estimate of what adults and children need to maintain health drawn up by a committee appointed by the British Medical Association. But whereas that committee specified 14 pints of fresh milk a week, Rowntree substitutes 12 tins of skimmed milk, condensed (p. 84). If fresh milk were allowed for, the weekly cost would be 1s. 9d. greater, i.e., 3s. 9d. a week throughout the year instead of 2s.

Mr. Rowntree admits, too, that if he adopted the diet drawn up by the Health Committee of the League of Nations, a diet designed to secure perfect health—and not merely to prevent malnutrition—it would cost another 6s. a week (p. 160).

For expenditure for the family of five after paying for rent and rates (9s. 6d.), food (20s. 6d.), clothing (8s.), fuel and light (4s. 4d.) and household sundries (1s. 8d.) Mr. Rowntree allows only 9s. to cover everything else, including travel to and from work, entertainment, holidays, books, beer, tobacco, etc., etc. He has the grace to admit (p. 101) that he is “almost ashamed to put forward so low an estimate.” As he says elsewhere (p. 12), out of this 9s., the amount expected to cover "holidays, beer and tobacco, amusements . . . travelling, other than fares to and from work, or contingencies of any kind,” is 3s. 4d. a week, or ” little more than the cost of a cocktail.” Mr. Rowntree’s standard of 53s. (with an additional 15s. or more in London owing to high rents and the cost of travel to and from work, and more still for families with over three children) is, therefore, plainly far below a reasonable or even a minimum  standard for health. Yet everybody knows, and Mr. Rowntree admits (p. 125), that our wonderful capitalism fails to provide even that standard for millions of workers. When Mr. Rowntree defends the deliberate choice of a standard so low that he is almost ashamed of it because “I want to make my figure . . . one which is unassailable " (p. 101) he is only saying in a roundabout way that capitalism never will give the workers a standard that is fit for human beings.

Editorial: A Deadly Parallel. (1913)

Editorial from the May 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

  "To-day you have greater poverty in the aggregate in the land than you have ever had.”
                             Lloyd George at Cardiff, December 1911. 

"Since 1905 the income of the Income Tax paying class has increased by £188,000,000."—Mr. Chiozza Money in the “Daily Chronicle,” 18.4.13.

It is May Day again—a day symbolic of, and sacred to, all that the children of toil have lost. It is May Day—the day when the ghost of the departed joy of life stalks abroad for all working- class eyes to see, lest working-class minds, sepulchred in their grey stone prisons, forget. It is May Day, the day when, in old-time fancy. Nature balances her books and commences another busy round—therefore it is a peculiarly fitting day for our annual stock taking.

The two quotations at the head of this column might have been left to tell their own tale but for the circumstance that they serve a very useful purpose in our survey. They put the total at the foot of the balance sheet in figures that cannot be challenged. They cry aloud that all the ceaseless toil of those who do the work of the world results in nothing but dead loss to them, while the idlers become more opulent than ever!

“It is not that we are not making progress,” mumbles Lord Haldane to bis fellow parasites at the Eighty Club. It looks like it, indeed. Lloyd George confirms the statement when he assures the money-grabbers of the Kingdom in his Budget speech that despite the all-round increase in the cost of maintaining their thieves’ kitchen, no new taxes will be required to be levied — the growth of their plunder far outstrips the stupendous cost of their armaments, and the pimpling increase in their expenditure upon "social reform.”

Yes, our masters are making fine progress — there can be no doubt about that. But how is it with the working class ? What progress are we making ? Sixteen months ago the man who, from his official position, should know as much about it as anyone in the Kingdom, told us that we had “greater poverty in the aggregate” than we have ever had before. That “greater poverty’’ is the gift of our boasted civilisation, not to the idle and lazy, not to those who don't work for their livelihood, but to the industrious, to those who toil in very weariness and pain. It is the fruit of all our wonderful invention, the offering of our conquest of the elements. We harnessed the wind to our wheels and made water turn our grindstones for us. We conquered steam for our purpose, and have entrammelled electricity. But every fresh conquest has made us work harder; every new outburst of the torrent of wealth has made us poorer; every addition to the good things which our hard hands produce has sent us hungrier to bed.

Those who think that against all this must be set what they are pleased to refer to as the “inestimable blessings of civilisation” may have those inflated blessings reduced to their true value in very short time.

Mr. Seebohm Rowntree made a calculation of the cost of the primary necessaries for a family of five persons. The dietary was too stringent to allow for beer, tobacco or butcher’s meat, and the limit of luxury was touched in tea—once a week. Here is the table :—

	S.	d.
Expenditure on Food	12	9
Rents and Rates	4	0
Clothing, including boots	2	3
Fuel	1	10
Lighting, washing material, furniture, crockery, etc.		10
	21	8

Low as this estimate is, Mr. Rowntree found just upon a third of the total population of York, a typical provincial city, existing either below, upon, or very little above it. Mr. C. Booth found a like condition of things existing in London, while other investigators have shown that such poverty is general all over the country.

Now you who are looking for the “amenities of civilisation” have before you the condition of things as they affect nearly one third of the people of the richest country in the world, or rather, as they did affect them ten years ago, before prices had risen to their present height, and before “poverty in the aggregate” had the altitude at which Lloyd George finds it to-day.

But where are you to find the “blessings of civilisation” ? Are they in the first line: “Food 12s. 9d.” ? A farmer could not keep five pigs on the money. Are they in the second or third lines? A savage would scorn the stinking prison dens in which so many of our children are born and die, and would decline the responsibility of clothing five bodies on 2s. 3d. a week.

All the amenities for which these workers have exchanged the fresh air, the pure food, the leisure and natural freedom of their forefathers must be sought in the line: “Lighting, washing materials, furniture, crockery, etc. 10d.” Medicines and medical attendance, insurance, newspapers and books, postage stamps, bus, tram and railway fares, the cinema, the theatre, the bicycle, the country excursion, and the thousand and one other “blessings of civilisation” have to be paid for, in the case of nearly one-third of the people of wealthy, merry England, with what is left, after paying for soap, soda and candles, pots, pans and dishes, bedding, carpets and the piano, out of 10d. a week! Seven days of the amenities of modern civilisation for the surplus of 2d. per head!

Oh, if the workers would only understand that all this “progress,” which under the social system at present obtaining, runs to their masters, and leaves those who do the work every day in more abject poverty, could so easily be made to give every unit of society a full and a happy existence, free from the cankering anxiety of insecurity, free from the withering blight of never ending toil!

Ah, well! since the only way is through Socialism, it follows that it is also through the Socialist propaganda, and so long as this goes forward we can say with Lord Haldane—we are making progress.