Sec. 8. The relation of a worker to other persons in the family is such that, in determining the minimum wage for any member, it is right to take the standard of comfort of the family as the basis, and to consider the mutual relations of the several workers upon this basis. We shall find that not merely is the wage of the woman affected by the industrial condition of the adult male worker, but that the wage of the latter is affected by women's wages, while the wages of child labour exercise an influence upon each. The problem is one of the distribution of work and wages among the several working members of a family, how much of the family work and how much of the family wage shall fall to each. As the children, and in many cases the women, are not free agents in the transaction, it may often happen that they are employed for wages which represent neither the cost of subsistence nor any other definite amount but the prevalent opinion of the dominant male of the family. A "little piecer" in a Lancashire mill may get wages more than sufficient for his keep, while many a farm boy or errand boy could not keep himself in food out of the earnings he brings home. This element of economic unfreedom in the lives of many women and most children must not be left out of sight in a consideration of the comparative statistics of wages for men, women, and children. Men workers often fail to recognise that by encouraging their wives and driving their children to the mills or other industrial work, they are helping to keep down their own wages. Men's wages in all the textile industries of the world are low as compared with those prevalent in industries demanding no higher skill or intelligence, but in which women take no important part. If the male textile workers used their rising intelligence and education to keep their women and children out of the mills, men's wages must and would distinctly rise.[254] The low wages paid to both men and women in many branches of textile work as compared with wages in other industries on approximately the same level of skill, goes for the most part to the consuming public in reduced prices of textile wares. It is true the Lancashire and certain of the Yorkshire textile operatives often enjoy a fairly high family wage, but they give out a more than correspondent aggregate of productive energy.

American statistics yield some striking evidence in illustration of the depressing influence exercised upon male wages by the labour of women and children. "Among factory operatives, all branches taken together, the wives and children who contribute to the support of the family are, on an average, as one and a quarter to each family, while among those employed in the building trades the average of wives and children who work is only one to every four families. Hence in the building trades the wages of the man supply about 97-1/2 per cent. of the total cost of the family's living, while among the factory operatives the wages of the man only supply 66 per cent., or two-thirds, of the cost of the family's living, because the other one-third is furnished by the labour of the wife or children. Nor is this because the cost of living of the factory operative family is greater than that of the labourer in the building trades, for while the average family in the building trades contains 4-1/2 persons, that of the factory operative contains 5-7/8 persons.[255] The total cost of living in the former is about $50 a year more than in the latter, and the wages of the man in the former are nearly $250 a year more than those of the latter."[256] Similar evidence is tendered from other trades, the gist of which is summed up in the Report of the Labour Bureau of Massachusetts in the following words:—"Thus it is seen that in neither of the cases where the man is assisted by his wife or children does he earn as much as other labourers. Also that in the case where he is assisted by both wife and children he earns the least."[257]

Sec. 9. But though the minimum wage of women and children is, strictly speaking, not to be measured by any ascertainable standard of subsistence, so far as the factory work of adult women is concerned 10s. may be said to be a standard wage. Factory wages, excepting for cotton-weavers, seldom vary widely from this sum. Differences of difficulty, disagreeability, or skill have little power to raise wages much above 10s., or to depress them much below. Moreover, fluctuations of trade and prices have very little effect upon this wage. Though women are largely employed in industries where improvements in machinery and methods have immensely increased the productivity of labour, their wages are very little higher than they were half a century ago. Since this rate prevails in many industries where an adequate supply of women's labour cannot be drawn from married or "assisted" women, and where the wage must be sufficient to tempt women who have to keep themselves, 10s. may be said to be the "bare subsistence" wage for women. The wide prevalence of this wage and its independence of conditions of locality, time, nature of work, have made it generally recognised as a "customary wage," and for any casual work, or any new employment requiring ordinary feminine skill or exertion, 10s. is regarded as sufficient remuneration for a woman. The basis of this custom is the knowledge that women can always be induced to work for a bare subsistence measured at 10s. or thereabouts, or for extra comforts procurable by this sum regarded as a subsidiary income.[258]

It appears that the wages of bare subsistence and the wages of extra comforts have a certain tendency to equality in some of the low-paid factory trades of London, though accompanied by a difference in the quality and intensity of the labour involved.

The following diagram exhibits the uniformity of factory wages in East End women's industries:—



Upon this table Miss Collet bases the following opinion:—"The most striking feature is the uniformity of maximum wages and the difference in the skill required, and I believe it to be the fact that the match girls and the jam girls, who are at the bottom of the social scale, do not have to work so hard for their money as, for example, the capmakers and bookbinders, who, in the majority of cases, belong to a much higher social grade. And whereas the bookfolder or booksewer who earns 11s. a week exercises greater skill, and gives a closer attention to her work, than the jam or match girl who earns the same amount, that sum which would be almost riches to the dock-labourer's daughter represents grinding poverty to the daughter of the clerk or bookbinder, with a much higher standard of decency, if she is by any chance obliged to depend on herself. How is it that this uniformity prevails, and that efficiency brings with it nothing but the privilege of working harder for the same money?"[259]

Miss Collet's reply to the question is, that while the match and jam girls pay the full price of home, board, and lodging, the others often pay nothing, spending all they get upon dress and amusement. This, taken along with the influence of the competition of home-workers in the bookfolding and booksewing trades, explains the fact that the harder and higher-skilled work gets no higher wages.

Sec. 10. A knowledge of the productivity of labour as measuring the maximum wage-level, and of "wants" or standard of comfort as measuring the minimum wage-level, does not enable us to determine even approximately the actual wage-level in any industry. The actual wage may be fixed at any point between the two extremes. So far as competition is an active determinant, everything will depend upon the quantitative relation between supply and demand for labour. When there is a short supply of labour available for any work, wages may rise to the maximum; when there is more labour available than is required, wages will fall towards the minimum. But, as we have already admitted, competition works very slowly and inadequately in many of the industries in which women and children are engaged. The force of custom, assisted by ignorance of the labour market, prevents women from taking advantage of an increased demand or a decreased supply of labour to lift this wage above the customary level towards the level of productivity. Women are more contented to live as they have lived than men. As Miss Collet says, "the contentment of women themselves, when they have obtained enough for their standard of living, is another reason why competition is so ineffective among highly-skilled workers."[260]

This "contentment" or apathy, partly the result of ignorance, partly the result of sex feebleness, enhanced by the exhausting burden of present industrial conditions, is alluded to by the several reports of the sub-commissioners to the Labour Commission as a chief difficulty in the effective organisation of women workers, even when the work is conducted in large factories.

In other ways, woman is less of a purely "economic" creature than man. The flow of labour from one occupation to another, which tends to equalise the net advantages amongst male occupations, is far feebler among women workers, notwithstanding that trade union barriers and the vested interests of expensively-acquired skill are less operative in woman's work. The reluctance of women to freely communicate to one another facts regarding their wage and conditions of labour is particularly noted as a barrier to united action.

Those who have investigated the conditions of women workers in towns are agreed as to the enormous influence of class and aesthetic feelings in narrowing the competition. "The girl who makes seal-skin caps at a city warehouse does not wish to work for an East End chamber-master, even though she could make more at the commoner work; just as a soap-box maker would not care to make match-boxes, even though skilled enough to make more by it."[261] This sensitiveness of social distinction in industrial work, based partly upon consideration of the class and character of those employed, partly upon the skill and interest of the work itself, is a widespread and powerful influence among women workers. It tends to bring about that equalisation of wages in skilled and unskilled industries which, as we have seen, practically exists, for if there is an economic rise of wages in the lower grades of work, it does not tempt the competition of high-skilled workers, while a corresponding rise in the wages of the higher grades would draw competitors from the lower grades to qualify themselves for undertaking work which would at once give them more money and more social respect. The lower wages often paid for more highly-skilled work simply mean that the women take out a larger portion of their wage in "gentility." This influence, which is operative amongst men, reducing the wages of routine-mental labour to the level of common unskilled manual labour, is powerful in all ranks of women, rising perhaps in its potency with the social status of the woman. Considerations of "gentility" enable us to obtain "teachers" for board schools at an average "salary" of L75 per annum, as compared with L119 for men, the fixed scale of women teachers in the same grade being 16 per cent. less than for men.

Thus custom, ignorance, contentment, social prejudices operate in different ways and in different degrees to prevent women workers from claiming in higher wages that share of the increased capacity of the community for making wealth which men workers have been able to procure.

Sec. 11. The above-mentioned forces operate chiefly as barriers of free economic competition. But women are equally at a disadvantage when and in so far as they do compete for work, and wages. Weak, unorganised units of labour, they are compelled to make terms with large organised masses of capital. By the organised action of trade unionism the majority of skilled working men have been able to raise their wages far above the bare subsistence minimum, and to hold it at the higher level until a firm standard of higher comfort is formed to be a platform for further endeavour. With a few significant exceptions, skilled women workers have been unable to do the same. Instead of presenting a firm, united front to their employers in their demand for higher wages, or their resistance of a fall, they are taken singly and compelled to submit to any terms which the employers choose to impose, or custom appears to sanction. The consequence is that in most instances skilled women workers are paid very little higher wages than unskilled women workers. The high value due to their skill goes either to the employer in high profits, or, where keen competition operates, to the consumer in low prices; the woman who puts out skill is paid not according to her worth but according to her wants. Yet the possession of technical skill is the basis of trade organisation. Wherever a number of women workers possess a particular skill and experience, and are engaged in fairly stable employment, the requisites of effective trade organisation exist. By combination these women can wield an economic power, measured by the difficulty and cost of dismissing them en masse and replacing them by less skilled and experienced labour, which they can use as a lever to raise their wages and other conditions of employment by a series of steps until they approach the maximum limit imposed by their productivity. That such action is feasible is proved by experience. Concerted action of factory women in several minor trades, both in London and in the provincial towns, has been attended with success. The examples of the cigar-makers at Nottingham, the women at Messrs. Bryant & May's, the rope-makers in a large East London factory, show what can be done by determined combination, even confined to workers in a single factory. But the crucial case is furnished again by the textile industries. In the Lancashire weaving, where men and women are working side by side in the same sheds, and are members of the same trades unions, we find the one notable exception to the low wages of women. Here women's weekly earnings are nearly the same as men's. The weaving is unquestionably skilled work, but so also is a great deal of other textile work not nearly so well paid. It is beyond doubt the power of the joint union of male and female weavers that alone maintains these wages for women. The same is the explanation of the equality of wages paid to men and women in the Sheffield file-making.

"But what if the Union should break down? It is as certain as anything based on experience can be, that in a few weeks, or even days, it would be possible for the employers to reduce the wages of the women-weavers; that rather than lose their work, women would consent to the reduction; that as they accepted lower wages, men would drop off to other industries, and would cease to compete for the same work; and that in a comparatively short time power-loom weaving would be left, like its sister, cotton-spinning, to women workers exclusively, and wages fall to the general level of women's wages."[262] Where these conditions of strong combination in trades unions do not exist we find that women's weekly wages fall considerably below men's in the weaving trades. This is so in most of the woollen industries of Yorkshire, and still more in the minor and more scattered textile work in other counties.[263] In the spinning-mills of Lancashire the women, combined in unions of their own, are able to obtain wages considerably higher than those which prevail elsewhere for similar work, though not so high as that of weavers. The following table, in which spinning and weaving and other departments are "pooled" for purposes of wages, is sufficient to indicate the advantage Lancashire women enjoy from their strong industrial position, as compared on the one hand with average factory work and wages, on the other hand with the less favourably placed worsted and linen industries, and even with the woollen.

Weekly Wages. Average. Cotton. Woollen. Worsted. Linen. s. d. s. d. s. d. s. d. Men 25 3 23 2 23 4 19 9 Lads and boys 9 4 8 6 6 6 6 3 Women 15 3 13 3 11 11 8 11 Girls 6 10 7 5 6 2 4 11[264]

Thus we see that whereas men's wages are nearly the same in the three chief English industries, women's wages vary widely, yielding a very great advantage to the Lancashire cotton-workers.

Sec. 12. It cannot, however, reasonably be maintained that the whole of this economic advantage owned by weavers and other women workers in Lancashire is due directly to organisation. It is no doubt partly due to the conditions which also make Trade Unionism effective, an abundant demand for female labour in relation to the supply. In the less concentrated woollen industries of the West of England, where a large supply of female labour is available beyond the demand, the difference between men's and women's wages is far greater than it is even in those parts of Yorkshire where women are but slightly organised. This brings us to the most vital point in the problem of the industrial position of women. When there is an over-supply of labour qualified to compete for any work, wages must fall to the minimum of "wants" unless those in possession of the work are so strongly organised as to prevent outsiders from effectively competing. In a highly-skilled trade the workers may often have a practical monopoly of the skill, which gives them both power to organise and power when organised. But in a low-skilled trade, or where employers are able to introduce unlimited numbers of girls into the trade, there exists no such power to organise. Those who most need organisation are least able to organise. This is the crux for low-skilled male labour, and the great mass of women's industries are in the same economic condition, because the kind of skill required is possessed or easily attainable by a much larger number of competitors for work than are sufficient to meet the demand at a decent wage. The deep abiding difficulty in the way of organising women workers lies here. Cut out as they are, by physical weakness, by lack of the means of technical training, in some cases by organised opposition of male workers, or by social prejudices, from competing in a large number of skilled industries, their competition within the permitted range of occupations is keener than among men: not merely in the unskilled but in the skilled industries the available supply of labour is commonly far in excess of the demand, for the skill is generally such as is common to or easily attainable by a large number of the sex. To this must be added the consideration that a larger proportion of women's industries are concerned with the production of luxuries which are peculiarly subject to fluctuation of trade by the elements of season, weather, fashion, and rise or fall of incomes. Finally, a much larger proportion of women's work is done in small factories, in workshops, and in the home, under conditions which are inimicable to the effective organisation of the workers. Until out-work is much diminished, and effective inspection and limitation of hours in small workshops drives a much larger proportion of women workers into large factories, where closer social intercourse can lay the moral foundation of trade organisation in mutual acquaintance, trust, and regard, there is little prospect of women being able to raise their "customary" wage considerably above its present subsistence level, or to obtain any considerable alleviation of the burdensome conditions of excessive hours of labour, insanitary surroundings, unjust fines, etc., from which many women workers suffer.

Women cannot in most of their industries organise effectively under present conditions. In each trade, therefore, the workers employed are surrounded by a permanent mass of potential "black legs" willing to take their labour from urgent need, ignorance, or thoughtlessness, and possessing or able to attain the small skill required. In men's industries, save in the most unskilled, there is not a constant over-supply of labour, in most women's industries there is.

Sec. 13. Comparing women's wages with men's we are now able to sum up as follows:—The smaller productivity of woman's work makes the possible maximum wage lower; the smaller wants of women make the possible minimum wage lower; the greater weakness of women as competitors, arising chiefly from excess of supply of labour, makes their actual wage approximate to the lower rather than to the higher level.

In regarding productivity as a measure of maximum wage it is necessary to guard carefully against one misapprehension. So far as we are comparing the wage of men and women engaged upon the same work, the smaller wages of the latter may easily be seen to have some relation to the smaller product of their labour. But when productivity is expressed in terms of the selling value of the work no such measurement is open to us. We are thus thrown back on market value and are told that the reason women get so little is that what they make fetches so low a price. But the circularity of this argument will appear on revising the question and asking, "Why do women's products sell so cheap?" the obvious answer being, "Because the cost of labour in them is so little,"—i.e., because women receive low wages. But if we refuse to take selling prices as the measure of productivity, what measure have we? No accurate measure of effort, skill, or efficiency is open if we refuse the scale of the market itself. Yet if we consider the conditions of wages and prices in such "sweated" trades as shirt-making, we cannot but conclude that the consumer gets the advantage of the "sweating"; that is to say, a certain portion of the productivity of the workers passes to the consumer through the agency of low prices. That which might have gone to the shirt-makers in decent wages has gone to the purchaser. This criticism of course posits a measurement of productivity at variance with that afforded by competition, or, more strictly speaking, it discounts the abnormal terms of the competition in the sweated industry. If we say that 1s. 11-1/2d. as the retail price of a shirt is a "sweating" or unfair price, we mean that the skill and effort embodied in this product would, if there were absolute equality of competition and absolute fluidity of labour, be measured at say 3s. It is true that no such measurement is open to us, and all such estimates are guesswork. But the idea which underlies the sentiment against "sweating" is a true one, although it has no exact practical embodiment so long as our only meaning of "value" is value in exchange at present competitive rates. It is therefore not inaccurate to represent productivity as forming the maximum wage, though we may have no exact measure of productivity at hand. The fact that any increase in productivity of labour is liable under certain circumstances of competition to pass away entirely to the consumer, is no reason for denying that an increase of productivity has taken place which might under other circumstances of competition have gone to the producer as higher wages. Though productivity as a measure of maximum wages is more or less of an unknown quantity, it is none the less true that as this "unknown" fluctuates so the possibility of high wages fluctuates.

Sec. 14. If the above analysis is correct it is not difference of sex which is the chief factor in determining the industrial position of woman. Machinery knows neither sex nor age, but chooses the labour embodied in man, woman, or child, which is cheapest in relation to the degree of its efficiency. Thus the causes which depress woman's industry are chiefly the same which depress the industry of low-skilled men and children. In each case the limits of productivity and "wants" are lower than for skilled men workers, while the terms of their competition keep their wages to the lower level and check the full incentive to efficiency. Setting aside the case of children, who are protected in some degree from the full effects of competition upon the conditions of their employment, the industrial case of women is closely analogous to that of low-skilled men. The physical weakness of the one corresponds with the technical weakness of the other so far as efficiency is concerned; in both cases the low standard of wants gives a low minimum wage, while the excessive supply of labour, rendering concerted action almost impossible, keeps wages close to the minimum.

Sec. 15. The displacement of male adult labour which is going on by female, and, when permitted, by child labour, does not necessarily imply that women and children are doing more work and men less than they used to do. Before the industrial revolution women were quite as busily and numerously engaged in industry as now, and the children employed in textile and other work were often worked in their own homes with more cruel disregard to health and happiness than is now the case. Even now the longest hours, the worst sanitary conditions, the lowest pay, are in the domestic industries of towns which still survive under modern industry. But though the regular factory women and the half-timers are generally better off in all the terms of their industry than the uninspected women and children who still slave in such domestic industries as the trimmings and match-box trades, the growing tendency of modern industry to engage women and children away from their homes is fraught with certain indirect important consequences. When industry was chiefly confined to domestic handicrafts, the claims of home life constantly pressed in and tempered the industrial life. The growth of factory work among women has brought with it inevitably a weakening of home interests and a neglect of home duties. The home has suffered what the factory has gained. Even the shortening of the factory day, accompanied as it has been by an intensification of labour during the shorter hours, does not leave the women competent and free for the proper ordering of home life. Home work is consciously slighted as secondary in importance and inferior, because it brings no wages, and if not neglected is performed in a perfunctory manner, which robs it of its grace and value. This narrowing of the home into a place of hurried meals and sleep is on the whole the worst injury modern industry has inflicted on our lives, and it is difficult to see how it can be compensated by any increase of material products. Factory life for women, save in extremely rare cases, saps the physical and moral health of the family. The exigencies of factory life are inconsistent with the position of a good mother, a good wife, or the maker of a home. Save in extreme circumstances, no increase of the family wage can balance these losses, whose values stand upon a higher qualitative level.

The direct economic tendency of machine-industry to take women and children away from the home to work must be looked upon as a tendency antagonistic to civilisation.[265] In the case of children, factory legislation of increasing severity has been necessary to prevent the spread or continuance of the evil.[266] The factory regulations restricting and protecting women are directly continuous with this policy, and may be regarded in the light of a protection of the home against the undue encroachments of the machine. How far further restrictions may be left to voluntary action and the growth of a saner estimate of values, or how far further legal protection of the home may be required, it remains for history to determine.

APPENDIX.

The following Table of Factory Legislation is constructed to illustrate the lines along which State protection of labour has advanced in this century in England. Four laws of development are clearly discernible:—

1. Movement along the line of strongest human feeling. Weakest workers are protected first, pauper children who are the least "free" parties in a contract, then protection advances to other children, young persons, women, men.

2. Protective legislation moves from the more highly organised to the less highly organised structures of industry. Cotton-mills are sole subjects of earliest Factory Acts, then woollen, then other textile trades, trades subsidiary to textile industries, non-textile factories, larger workshops, domestic workshops, retail trade, domestic service.

3. Growing complexity of aims and of legislative machinery. Primarily Factory Acts aim at regulation of quantity of labour. Reductions of the working-day forms a backbone of this legislation. A twelve-hour day, ten, nine, eight, covering wider classes of workers and applied to a larger number of industries, marks the line of movement. With each advance the basis of protection is broadened, other considerations of machine-fencing, sanitation, education, etc., entering more largely into the Acts.

4. Increased effectiveness of legislation with growth of centralised control. Local initiative and control proves ineffective, yields to State inspection, the number of inspectors growing, and their power increasing. Improvements in the mechanism of central control, an increased number of inspectors, working men and women inspectors, are the distinguishing features of recent State protection of labour.

LEADING POINTS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF FACTORY LEGISLATION.

- - Class of Industries Workers Nature of Date. affected. chiefly Regulations. protected. - - 1802 Cotton and 'other Apprenticed 12 Hours Day. mills' (applied Pauper Night-work regulated. exclusively to Children. Education, sanitation. cotton). 1819} Do. Children Prohibition of work 1820} Do. (not under 9 years. Young Paupers). persons (under 16) a 12 hour day. Regulation for meal-time. Amendment of 1802 Act. 1825 Do. Do. Shortened Saturday labour. Penalties provided for breach of Factory Regulations. 1833} All Textile Children 48 Hours Week for 1834} Industries. and Young Children (9-13), 69 Persons. Hours for Young Persons (13-18). Prohibits night-work for Young Persons. Children in Silk Mills, 10 Hours Day. 1842 Mines. Children and No underground Women. work. 1844} Children, Factory Acts applied. to } Printworks. Young 'False relay' system 1846} Persons, for children checked. Women. 6-1/2 Hours Day for Children. Female Young Persons age raised to 21. 12 Hours Day for Women. No night-work for women. 1847} Textile Factories, Do. 10 Hours Day, to } Printworks, etc. afterwards 10-1/2 1850} Hours Day for Young Persons and Women, practically for Men. 1860 Bleaching and Do. Do., with special Dyeing. regulations for overtime. 1860 Coal and Iron All Restriction on male Mines. Workers. labour under 12. Safety, ventilation, etc. 1863 Finishing Children, } processes in Young } Bleaching and Persons, } Dyeing, Women. } Bakehouses, Alkali } Works. } } 1864 Non-textile Do. } Factory Acts Factories, } generally (Earthenware, } applied. Fustian Cutting, } Cartridges, } Lucifer Matches, } Paper-staining). } 1867 All Factories Do. Factory Acts Extension & Workshops. Act. Workshops Regulation Act, applying to Workshops. Factory rules affecting hours, education, etc. in modified form. 1867 Agriculture. Children, Act for Suppression of Women. Agricultural Gangs fixing minimum age at 8, regulating employment of Women. 1870 Printworks, Children, Application of chief Bleaching, Young provisions of 1867 Dyeing. Persons, Factory Act. Women. 1871 Brickworks and Children and Forbids employment. Fields. Young Female Improved conditions Persons. for Women. 1873 Agriculture. Children. Minimum age raised to 10. 1878 Factories, Children, Consolidation of Workshops, Young Factories & Agriculture. Persons, Workshops Act Women, (extending some (incidentally provisions to Men). agriculture). 1891 Do. Do. Amendment of Factories & Workshops Act. Age for Children raised to 11. Protection in dangerous trades. 1892 Shops. Children, Limits working-day. Young Persons. 1893 Various All Restrictions on Trades. workers. dangerous trades. 1893 Railways. Adult males Restrictions on hours of labour.

- - Mode of Effectiveness. Date. Administration. - - 1802 Local Justices Virtually to appoint inoperative. visitors. 1819} Do. Do. 1820} 1825 Do. Generally (Millowners and evaded. relatives prevented from acting on the Bench in reference to Factory Acts.) 1833} Government 1 out of every 11 1834} Inspectors (4). millowners convicted in 1834, in spite of defiant attitude of magistrates. 1842 Mine Inspectors. 1844} Government Improved to } Inspectors. administration, 1846} but 'false relay' system reestablished. Fines inadequate. 1847} Increased Staff of Largely defied or to } Government evaded for some 1850} Inspectors. time. 1860 1860 Mine Inspectors. 1863 1864 1867 Workshops Act left Workshops Act at first to local dead letter in authorities, 1868-69. brought under Later, fines Factory Inspectors, inadequate. 1871. Inspectors inadequate. 1867 1870 1871 1873 1878 Increased Staff of Inspectors. 1891 Board of Trade power to schedule dangerous trades. 1892 1893 Appointment of working men and women Inspectors. 1893 Increased number of Inspectors.

FOOTNOTES:

[239] The figures for the periods 1841 to 1881 are drawn from Mr. Charles Booth's Occupations of the People. The figures for 1891 are drawn from the Census Report, and arranged as nearly as possible in accordance with Mr. Booth's classification.

[240] Here also the figures for 1891 give a result slightly divergent from the above. While the number of women employed continues to increase, reaching 691,441, the number of men employed are greater than in 1881, amounting to 408,392, a large proportionate increase, though less than that of the women.

[241] The recent statistics of tailoring and shoemaking, which are becoming more and more machine industries, mark this movement strongly. In the tailoring trade, while male workers increase from 107,668 in 1881 to 119,496 in 1891, female workers increase from 52,980 to 89,224. In the boot and shoe trade, while men increase from 180,884 to 202,648, women increase from 35,672 to 46,141. In Leicestershire and Northamptonshire, where boots and shoes are a machine-industry, 40 women are employed to 100 men, though the proportion for the whole industry is only 23 women to 100 men.

[242] Report to Commission of Labour on Employments of Women, pp. 142, 146.

[243] Quoted Wells, Contemporary Review, 1887, p. 392.

[244] Marsden, Cotton Spinning, p. 296, etc. S. Andrew, Fifty Years Cotton Trade, p. 7.

[245] This fourfold classification—(1) manual, (2) routine-mental, (3) artistic, (4) intellectual—is a serviceable suggestion of Mr. Sidney Webb in his paper upon woman's wages (Economic Journal, vol. i., 1881).

[246] Report to Commission of Labour on Employment of Women, p. 141.

[247] Webb, Economic Journal, vol. i. p. 658.

[248] I am informed, however, in Lancashire, that the strongest and ablest male workers will not undertake weaving, finding it tedious and monotonous.

[249] Women sometimes abuse the superior competitive powers contained in their lower standard of subsistence, and the smaller number of those dependent on them, to undersell male labour. In Sheffield file-making, where women are paid the same list of prices as men, it is said that they practise sweating in their homes to the detriment of male workers. So in carpet-weaving at Halifax; recently when the men struck against a reduction upon their wage of 35s., women took the work at 20s. (Lady Dilke, "Industrial Position of Women," Nineteenth Century, Oct. 1893.) In watch-making, "the hand-work for which men were paid about 18s. a-week is now done by women with machinery for about 12s." (Report to Labour Commission on Women's Employments, p. 146.)

[250] Dr. Bertillon (Journal de la Societe de Statistique de Paris, Oct.-Nov. 1892) shows that among the Lyons silkworkers (1872-89) and in the Italian Societies (1881-85) the sickness of women is considerably greater than of men. In Lyons 9.39 days as compared with 7.81 for men; in Italy 8.5 as compared with 6.6.

[251] This holds, for example, of many branches of the fur, trimmings, stays, umbrella, match-box trades, and the "finishing" departments of the trousers and shirt trades in East London. Cf. Miss Collet in Labour and Life of the People, vol. i.

[252] In the United States the general standard of money wages for working women in cities is considerably higher than in England. The average wage throughout the country was recently estimated to amount to $5.24 per week, or just under 21s. But the divergences from this average are much wider than in England. The lowest wages fall almost to the lowest English level, for some 3 per cent. of the number averaged were earning less than 8s. a week. About 20 per cent. were earning between 14s. and 19s. per week. The earnings in the chief textile industries show wide variations, yielding, however, a rough average of about 20s. weekly wages in cotton mills, and about 22s. in woollen mills. A general comparison would yield a standard of some 15s. as the customary wage corresponding to the 10s. in England (Report of the Commissioner of Labour, 1888, chap. iii. and Table xxix.). Some allowance, however, must be made for the more expensive living in American cities. However, in spite of the fact that organised action is almost unknown among women workers in America, the real wages are higher than in England. This is partly owing to the general insistence upon a higher standard of consumption, partly to the fact that a larger number of employments are open to women than in England, and partly to the higher skill and intelligence they put into their work. Thus the maximum wage, measured by productivity, is higher, the minimum, measured by "wants," is higher, while the terms of competition do not so generally keep down actual wages to the minimum.

[253] Labour and Life of the People, vol. i. p. 410.

[254] It must, however, be borne in mind that the results of such a policy followed by Lancashire, or any other single part of the textile industry of the world, would be qualified or even negatived if the example was not followed by their competitors.

[255] This effect of industrial opportunities for women and children in promoting early and more fruitful marriages is also illustrated in Lancashire; the average family of the factory operative is considerably higher than the average for the working classes as a whole.

[256] Gunton, Wealth and Progress, p. 169.

[257] Report of the Statistics of Labour, p. 71.

[258] Dr. Smart has a valuable treatment of the subject in his pamphlet, Women's Wages, pp. 22-25.

[259] Labour and Life of the People, vol. i. p. 469.

[260] Labour and Life of the People, vol. i. p. 460.

[261] Ibid., vol. i. p. 459; cf. also p. 469.

[262] Smart, Woman's Wages, p. 23.

[263] In some cases where women are found getting the same rate of wages as men, the industry is a woman's industry in which a few lower-skilled or inferior male workers are employed. The woman's scale dominates, the men who are employed descending to it. This is the case in some weaving trades where men work still almost entirely with hand-looms, leaving women with a practical monopoly of power-loom work. (Report of Woollen Manufactures in Miscellaneous English Towns, pp. 98, 99.) Where both men and women are freely engaged in the same class of work, the men are always (save in the area of the Lancashire trade unions) paid at higher rates: where the same rates are paid they are determined upon the woman's scale. The comparison between Huddersfield and other cloth-making towns in Yorkshire establishes this point. "In the cloth mills of these three districts, Bradford, Huddersfield, and Leeds, men and women engaged upon the same work at the looms receive the same pay. In the Huddersfield district the proportion of men to women among the weavers is much greater than it is in the districts of Bradford, Halifax, or Leeds, and in the Huddersfield districts alone there is a weaver's scale, according to which women are paid from 15 to 50 per cent. below men. The proportion of women is, however, rapidly increasing; and I found many firms where the scale is not in operation. At some places men and women were paid alike upon the woman's scale. At other firms men were paid at a slightly higher rate than women, the women's scale being the basis of calculation for all classes of work." (Miss Abraham in Reports on Employment of Women to the Labour Commission, p. 100.)

[264] Report on Principal Textile Trades, p. xxv.

[265] The evidence adduced by Dr. Arlidge in his Diseases of Occupations regarding the effects of factory life upon the physique of children is conclusive. See p. 38, etc.

[266] See Appendix on Factory Legislation.



CHAPTER XIII.

MACHINERY AND THE MODERN TOWN.

Sec. 1. The Modern Industrial Town as a Machine-product. Sec. 2. Growth of Town as compared with Rural Population in the Old and New Worlds. Sec. 3. Limits imposed upon the Townward Movement by the Economic Conditions of World-industry. Sec. 4. Effect of increasing Town-life upon Mortality. Sec. 5. The impaired quality of Physical Life in Towns. Sec. 6. The Intellectual Education of Town-life. Sec. 7. The Moral Education of Town-life. Sec. 8. Economic Forces making for Decentralisation. Sec. 9. Desirability of Public Control of Transport Services to effect Decentralisation. Sec. 10. Long Hours and Insecurity of Work as Obstacles to Reforms. Sec. 11. The Principle of Internal Reform of Town-life.

Sec. 1. In the last few chapters we have examined some of the influences of modern machine-production upon men and women in the capacity of producers, in relation to character, duration, intensity, regularity of employment, the remuneration of labour, and the economic relations which subsist between workers and employers. It remains to give special consideration to one factor in the environment of modern industrial life, which is of paramount importance upon the public, both in its working and living capacity.

The biggest, and in some respects the most characteristic of machine-products is the modern industrial town. Steam-power is in a most literal sense the maker of the modern town. When the motive-power of industrial work was chiefly confined to the forces stored in man, the economy obtained by collecting larger numbers of men to work in close proximity to one another was comparatively small, and was commonly outweighed by the difficulty of securing for them a sufficient supply of food and other commodities, and by the greater immobility of labour at a time when fixed local associations were a strong binding force, and transport was slow and expensive. When the earlier machinery drew its motive-power chiefly from water, the local attachment and wide distribution of this power prevented the concentration of industry from advancing very far. Only in proportion as steam-power became the dominating agent did the economies of factory-production drive the workers to crowd ever more densely in the districts where coal and water for generating steam were most accessible, and to throng together for the most economical use of steam-power in industry.

This rapid appreciation of the economies of centralised production, heedless of all considerations, sanitary, aesthetic, moral, found a hasty business expression in these huge hideous conglomerations of factory buildings, warehouses, and cheap workmen's shelters, which make the modern industrial town. The requirements of a decent, healthy, harmonious individual or civic life played no appreciable part in the rapid transformation of the mediaeval residential centre, or the scattered industrial village into the modern manufacturing town. Considerations of cheap profitable work were paramount; considerations of life were almost utterly ignored. So swift, heedless, anarchic has this process been, that no adequate provisions were made for securing the prime conditions of healthy, physical existence required to maintain the workers in the most profitable state of working efficiency. Only of recent years in a few of the larger manufacturing towns has some slow revival of the idea of civic life, as distinct from the organised manipulation of municipal affairs for selfish business purposes, begun to manifest itself. The typical modern town is still a place of workshops, not of homes.

Transport-machinery, the railway and the steamship, have been almost as important factors in the making of towns as manufacturing-machinery. By easily, quickly, and cheaply bringing food from a distance, they make town work and town life upon a large scale possible; by imparting increased fluidity to capital and labour, they continually increase the economic advantages of highly concentrated industry. In the opening up of new countries like the United States and Australia, the railway is the literal maker of the town, in older countries it is the chief alimental channel.

The pace at which this concentration of population in large towns proceeds is the most serviceable measurement of the progress which the various parts of the industrial world are making in machine-industry.

There are changes other than those of industrial method which help the townward movement. The spirit of curiosity and enterprise stimulated by education and the newspaper press, a desire for freer and more varied social intercourse, a love of sensation and amusement, a seeking after culture and intellectual development, in some cases the mere promptings of idleness, discontent, or even criminal desires, drive an increasing proportion of the younger rural population towards the towns. But it is the combination of industrial changes in which machinery plays the central part—the increased application of machinery to agriculture reducing the demand for agricultural labour, the development of manufacturing industries in towns, the labour of transport and distribution requiring centralised machinery—that makes this movement physically and economically feasible. The shift in the proportionate demand for labour in towns and in country attributable to machine-production is a principal direct agent in the movement.

Sec. 2. In England, par excellence the manufacturing country, the growth of the town as compared with the country is strongly marked during the last thirty years.

1861. 1871. 1881. 1891.

Urban Population[267] 62.3 64.8 66.6 71.7 Rural " 37.7 35.2 33.4 28.3

During the decennium 1881-91 there was a considerable check in the immigration from the country into the large towns, though the proportion of townsfolk to country folk grew even more rapidly than in the preceding ten years.[268]

In Holland and Belgium, notwithstanding a large migration to foreign lands, the towns grow far quicker than the total population. Thus in Holland in the period 1870-79 the towns increased 17.25, while the rural districts only increased 6.8. In Belgium, where the emigration across the border is still larger, there is a tide of migration of the parochial or country population continually setting towards Antwerp, Brussels, and Liege.[269]



This flow of population to the towns is not affected to any considerable extent either by the rate of growth of the population itself or by the small stake in the land possessed by the bulk of the agricultural population in such a country as England. For in France, where the growth of population during the last half century has been extremely slow, and where the majority of the agriculturists have a definite stake in the soil, the growth of the town population is most remarkable. In Germany also, where peasant-proprietors are very numerous, the towns continually absorb a larger proportion of the population. In 1871 the urban population of the empire was 36.1 per cent. of the total, in 1885 it was 41.8 per cent. In Austria, Hungary, Sweden, Italy, a similar movement is clearly traceable. The above diagram relating to movements of French population indicates that Paris has been growing more rapidly than other French towns. In other industrial countries also it is found that the pace of growth varies for the most part directly with the size of the town. In England, it is true that the largest cities show during the last decennium a certain slackening in the pace of growth. But the towns between 20,000 and 100,000 are still growing far more rapidly than those between 5,000 and 20,000, while those below 5,000 fail to keep pace with the general rise of population. This fact obtains the clearest recognition in the preliminary report of the census of 1891.[270] "The urban population increases then very much more rapidly than the rural population. And not only so, but the larger, or rather the more populous the urban districts,[271] and the more decided therefore its urban character, the higher, generally speaking and with many individual exceptions, is the rate of growth."

The movement is then not merely to town life, but to large-town life. The following diagram shows the rate of growth of the chief European centres of population during the present century:—



The figures relating to Germany are peculiarly instructive upon this point:—

GERMANY—RATE OF INCREASE OF GOVERNMENT DISTRICTS.[272]

+ -+ + Times in which such rate occurred. Per Cent. -+ + Town Districts. Rural Districts. + -+ -+ + Increase. 30 3 25-30 2 20-25 10 1 15-20 33 2 11-15 65 9-11 55 4 5-9 50 35 3-5 8 69 1-3 56 0-1 1 28 Decrease. 1-0 1 18 3-1 22 5-3 3 0-5 4 + -+ -+ +

+ + + German Empire. 1871. 1886. Rate of Increase. + + + Towns over 100,000 1,968,000 3,327,000 69 per cent. " " 20,000 3,147,000 4,147,000 31 " " " 5,000 4,588,000 5,694,000 24 " " " 2,000 5,086,000 5,734,000 12 " Rural Population 26,219,000 26,318,000 3 " + + +

But the movement is by no means confined to the densely-populated countries of Europe. If we turn to the "new world" we find it illustrated still more remarkably. In the United States of America, long before the population approached its present height, and while large tracts of fertile land still remained to be parcelled out, the towns began to absorb more and more of the population. The following diagram will show this movement to have been continuous, and with a gathering momentum as the century moved on:—



What holds of the United States holds also of the newly settled countries with small populations, as New South Wales, Victoria, Canada, and even Manitoba,[273] Argentina, and Uruguay. Nearly one-third of the whole population of New South Wales is resident in Sydney, and a fourth of the population of Queensland in Brisbane. Victoria presents the most striking case. In 1881 its four largest towns contained more than two-fifths of the whole population, Melbourne alone holding one-third.

In Canada there is the same diminution of rural and growth of town population. New Brunswick contains 14 counties; in the decade 1871-81 only one of these showed a slight diminution, but not less than 7 in the decade 1881-91. The 18 counties of Nova Scotia all showed an increase in 1871-81, 8 showed a decrease in 1881-91. Quebec contains 61 counties, 10 of which showed a decrease in 1871-81, 26 in 1881-91. Ontario has 48 counties, only 4 of which showed slight decrease in 1871-81; 20 showed a much more rapid decrease in 1881-91.

The following table shows that the accelerating decrease of the rural parts is accompanied by a correspondingly accelerating increase of the chief towns:—

1871. 1881. 1891. Kingston[274] 12,407 14,091 19,264 London 15,826 26,266 31,977 Ottawa 21,545 31,307 44,154 Hamilton 26,717 35,961 48,980 Toronto 56,092 96,196 181,220 132,586 203,821 325,595

The portentously rapid growth of the largest cities is of course not wholly attributable to economic causes. To form the capital cities of the New World, political and social influences have co-operated with industrial. Nor can these causes be ignored in explaining the rapid growth of certain European capitals, especially Berlin, Paris, London, and Vienna. But the effective operation of these forces is largely dependent on the modern machinery of transport, and in the main these great centres must be regarded as manufacturing and commercial towns.

Though the lack of any common statistical basis prevents us from being able to trace with exactitude the comparative pace of this movement in different countries, we know enough to justify the general conclusion that this centralising tendency varies directly with the degree of material civilisation attained in the several countries by the mass of the population. In England, France, United States, Australia, where steam engines, electric light, newspapers, and all the most highly elaborated mechanical contrivances are available in towns, the growth of town life is most rapid; in Russia, Turkey, India, Egypt, where mechanical development is still far behind, the townward march is far slower. As the area of machine-industry spreads, so this movement of population will become more general, and as towns grow larger so it would appear that this power to suck in the rural population is stronger and more extensive.

Sec. 3. These facts and figures do not, however, of themselves justify the conclusion that a larger proportion of the world's population is moving into towns. In all the advanced industrial countries a smaller proportion of the population is engaged in those extractive and domestic industries which belong to rural life, a larger proportion in the manufacturing and distributive industries which belong to towns. But this movement is made possible by the fact that an increasing proportion of the food and the raw materials of manufacture used in these countries is drawn from the labour of the more backward countries. The increase of the area of the industrial world is effecting such a division of labour as hands over an ever-increasing proportion of the agricultural work to the inhabitants of those countries which do not rank as civilised industrial countries. The known growth of certain large trading centres in India, China, Egypt, South Africa, etc., does not justify us, in the absence of careful statistical inquiry, in assuming that an increased proportion of the inhabitants of these and other more backward portions of the globe is passing into town life. Unless agricultural machinery and improved agricultural methods are advancing more rapidly in these great "growing areas" than we have a right to suppose, it would seem that there must be some increased demand for agricultural and other rural labour which shall, partially, at any rate, compensate for the diminished demand for such kinds of labour in the more advanced industrial communities. For although a large number of the industries subsidiary to agriculture, the making of tools, waggons, gates, fencing, etc., have now passed from the country to the towns, while the economies of machinery and improved cultivation have advanced so far that it is alleged that three men working on soil of average quality can raise food for one thousand, still the growth of population with a constantly rising standard of material consumption seems likely to prevent any net diminution in the proportion of labour engaged upon the soil in the industrial world. So long as modern methods of production and consumption in civilised countries require an ever-increasing quantity of raw materials, it would seem a priori unlikely that a smaller proportion of the whole industry of the world should be devoted to agricultural and other extractive industries, and a larger amount to the manufacturing and distributive industries, where the chief economies of machine-production are so largely applied.

Since this growth of town population is quicker in the advanced industrial communities, slower in the less advanced, so it may well be the case that, in the countries which are but slightly and indirectly affected by modern industry, it does not exist at all. There exist, however, no satisfactory data upon which a judgment may be formed upon this point.

Sec. 4. The effects of this concentration of population upon the character and life of the people are multifarious. For convenience in grouping facts, these effects may be considered in relation to (A) physical health, (B) intelligence, (C) morals, though it will be evident that the influences placed under these respective heads act and react upon one another in many intricate and important ways.

(A) The best test of the effect of town life upon the population is afforded by a comparison of the rates of mortality of town and country population respectively.

DEATH-RATE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY DISTRICTS OF ENGLAND, 1851-90.[275]

- Annual Deaths per 1000. Deaths in Town Districts to Years. England 100 Deaths in and Town. Country. Country in equal Wales. numbers living. - 1851-60 22.2 24.7 19.9 124 1861-70 22.5 24.8 19.7 126 1871-80 21.4 23.1 19.0 122 1881 18.9 20.1 16.9 119 1882 19.6 20.9 17.3 121 1883 19.5 20.5 17.9 115 1884 19.5 20.6 17.7 117 1885 19.0 19.7 17.8 111 1886 19.3 20.0 18.0 111 1887 18.8 19.7 17.2 115 1888 17.8 20.9 17.4 114 1889 17.9 19.3 16.4 118 1890 20.9 17.4 120 -

But as matters stand at present the statistics above quoted do not mark the full extent of the difference of healthfulness in town and country. When allowance is made for age and sex distribution in town and country population, the difference in death-rate appears much greater. For in the towns are found (a) a much larger proportion of females; (b) a larger proportion of adults of both sexes in the prime of life; (c) a much smaller proportion of very aged persons:[276] hence if conditions of health were equal in town and country, the town death-rate would be lower instead of higher than that of the country. The Report of the Census of 1881[277] calls special attention to this point, which is commonly ignored in comparing death-rates of town and country. "If we take the mean (1871-80) death-rates in England and Wales at each age-period as a standard, the death-rate in an urban population would be 20.40 per 1000, while the death-rate in the rural population would be 22.83. Such would be their respective death-rates on the hypothesis that the urban districts and the rural districts were equally healthy. We know, however as a matter of fact that urban death-rates, instead of being lower than rural death-rates, are much higher. The difference of healthiness, therefore, between the two is much greater than the difference between their death-rates."

The same facts come out in comparing Paris with the rest of France. At each age the death-rate for Paris is higher than for France.

Age.[278] Paris. France. 1886. 1877-80.

0 to 1 year 230? 170? 1 to 5 years 58.2 28 15 to 20 " 9.1 6 30 to 40 " 13.6 10 60 to 70 " 51.2 41

The English statistics indicate a slight and by no means constant tendency towards a diminution of the difference between town and rural mortality, due no doubt to improvements in city sanitation and to some general elevation of the physical environment and standard of living among a large section of the working classes. The same slight tendency is visible in France. During the period 1861-65 the urban death-rate was 26.1, as compared with 21.5, the rural death-rate; during the period 1878-82 the rates were respectively 24.3 and 20.9.[279]

Such indications of hygienic progress in our towns are not, however, sufficient to justify any expectation that the life of industrial towns will be made as healthy as that of the country. It is not possible to ignore the fatal significance of the continuous flow of an increasing proportion of the younger, healthier, and more vigorous part of the country population into town life. Dr. Ogle, who has collected much evidence upon this subject, sums up as follows:—"The combined effect of this constantly higher mortality of the towns, and of the constant immigration into it of the pick of the rural population, must clearly be a gradual deterioration of the whole, inasmuch as the more energetic and vigorous members of the community are consumed more rapidly than the rest of the population. The system is one which leads to the survival of the unfittest."

Sec. 5. Not only is life on an average of shorter duration in the towns, but it is of inferior physical quality while it lasts. The lowering of the townsman's physique not merely renders him less able to resist definite assaults of disease but injures his general capacity of work and enjoyment. This progressive deterioration of physique accounts for the unceasing flow of fresh country blood into the towns. In spite of the advantage of possession and knowledge of the town, the townsman cannot hold his own in the competition for town work; the new-comer jostles the old-comer from the best posts, and drives him to depend upon inferior and more precarious occupations for a living. Economic conditions, acquired social tastes, and impaired powers of physical labour prevent the feeble town blood from flowing back into the country to recruit its vigour. Hence the impasse which forces problems of town poverty and incapacity ever more prominently upon the social reformer.

In dealing with the diseases of occupations, Dr. Arlidge says, "It is a most difficult problem to solve, especially in the case of an industrial town population, how far the diseases met with in it are town-made and how far trade-made; the former almost always predominate."[280]

It is not indeed possible to clearly distinguish the two classes of effects. Since machinery makes the industrial town, it makes it as a place to work in and a place to live in, and though certain trade conditions will operate more directly upon the inhabitants as workers, their effects will merge with and react upon the life-conditions of the town. The special characteristics of town work which cause ill-health and disease are—

(a) The predominance of indoor occupations, involving unwholesome air.

(b) The sedentary character of most work in factories or workrooms, or otherwise the lack of free play of physical activities.

(c) The wear and tear of nerve fibre (e.g., in boiler-making, weaving sheds, etc.).

(d) The wearisome monotony and lack of interest attending highly specialised and sub-divided machine-industry, producing physical lassitude.[281]

(e) Injuries arising from dust fumes, or other deleterious matter, or from the handling of dangerous material or tools.

Much valuable work has been done of recent years by French, German, and English physicians and statisticians, throwing light upon the specific diseases appertaining to various industries, and giving some measurement of their extent. But though certain specifically industrial qualities have a considerable place in swelling the mortality of towns, Dr. Arlidge is fully justified in his opinion that in industrial centres more of the diseases are town-made than trade-made. The statistics of infant mortality are conclusive upon this point. In comparing the death-rates for town and country, the difference is far wider for children below the industrial age than for adults engaged in industrial work. Mr. Galton has calculated that in a typical industrial town the number of children of artisan townsfolk that grow up are little more than half as many as in the case of the children of labouring people in a healthy country district.[282] The figures quoted above from M. Levasseur relating to France point to a similar conclusion. Many of the evils commonly classified as belonging to specific industries, in particular the foul atmosphere, imperfect sanitation, and overcrowding, which are found in many factories and most city workshops, are rightly regarded as town-made rather than trade-made, for they are the normal and often the necessary accompaniments of a congested industrial population. In qualification of this, having regard to the effects of machine-development, we must remember that the worst hygienic conditions of town work are found in those branches of industry which have lagged behind in industrial evolution, while the best hygienic conditions are found in the most highly-organised branches of textile industry. "Generally speaking, the more elaborate and costly the machinery, the more excellent the architecture. Thus in textile works machinery acquires its maximum of importance, and by its dimensions necessitates commodious shops, buildings of great size, and well-ordered arrangements to facilitate the performance of the mutually dependent series of operations carried on."[283]

Legal restrictions upon unhealthy and dangerous employments, shorter working hours, adequate inspection, the stimulus given by such measures to a more rapid application of highly-developed machinery, may succeed in reducing considerably the physical evils directly arising from town industries. But the town will still remain a more unhealthy place to live in than the country, and as on the one hand the fundamental and paramount importance of a healthy physical environment receives fuller recognition, and on the other hand larger leisure and opportunities of enjoyment and development make life more valuable to the mass of the workers than it is at present, the pressure of this problem of town life will grow apace.

Sec. 6. (B) That town life, as distinguished from town work, is educative of certain intellectual and moral qualities, is evident. Setting aside that picked intelligence which flows to the town to compete successfully for intellectual employment, there can be no question but that the townsman has a larger superficial knowledge of the world and human nature. He is shrewd, alert, versatile, quicker, and more resourceful than the countryman. In thought, speech, action, this superiority shows itself. The townsman has a more developed consciousness, his intelligence is constantly stimulated in a thousand ways by larger and more varied society, and by a more diversified and complex economic environment. While there is reason to believe that town work is on the average less educative than country work, town life more than turns the scale. The social intercourse of the club, the trade society, the church, the home, the public-house, the music-hall, the street, supply innumerable educative influences, to say nothing of the ampler opportunities of consciously organised intellectual education which are available in large towns. If, however, we examine a little deeper the character of town education and intelligence certain tolerably definite limitations show themselves. School instruction, slightly more advanced than in the country, is commonly utilised to sharpen industrial competition, and to feed that sensational interest in sport and crime which absorbs the attention of the masses in their non-working hours; it seldom forms the foundation of an intellectual life in which knowledge and taste are reckoned in themselves desirable. The power to read and write is employed by the great majority of all classes in ways which evoke a minimum of thought and wholesome feeling. Social, political, and religious prejudices are made to do the work which should be done by careful thought and scientific investigation.

Scattered and unrelated fragments of half-baked information form a stock of "knowledge" with which the townsman's glib tongue enables him to present a showy intellectual shop-front. Business smartness pays better in the town, and the low intellectual qualities which are contained in it are educated by town life. The knowledge of human nature thus evoked is in no sense science, it is a mere rule-of-thumb affair, a thin mechanical empiricism. The capable business man who is said to understand the "world" and his fellow-men, has commonly no knowledge of human nature in the larger sense, but merely knows from observation how the average man of a certain limited class is likely to act within a narrow prescribed sphere of self-seeking. Town life, then, strongly favours the education of certain shallow forms of intelligence. In actual attainment the townsman is somewhat more advanced than the countryman. But the deterioration of physique which accompanies this gain causes a weakening of mental fibre: the potentiality of intellectual development and work which the countryman brings with him on his entry to town life is thwarted and depressed by the progressive physical enfeeblement. Most of the best and strongest intellectual work done in the towns is done by immigrants, not by town-bred folk.

Sec. 7. (C) This intellectual weakness of town life is best expressed in terms which show the intimate relation between intelligence and morals. A lack of "grit," pertinacity of purpose, endurance, "character," marks the townsman of the second generation as compared with the countryman. As the intellectual powers of the townsman, though quantitatively impaired, are more highly developed than those of the countryman, so it is with his "morals." In positive attainments of conscience, virtue, and vice, the townsman shows considerable advance. This point is commonly misunderstood. The annals of crime afford irrefutable evidence of the greater criminality of the towns. London, containing less than one-fifth of the population of England and Wales, is responsible for more than one-third of the annual number of indictable crimes.[284] In France the criminality of the urban population is just double that of the rural population.[285] In 1884-86, out of each 100,000 city population sixteen were charged with crimes; out of each 100,000 rural population only eight. It is indeed commonly recognised in criminology that, other things being equal, crime varies with the density of population. There is no difficulty in understanding why this should be so. The pressure of population and the concentration of property afford to the evil-disposed individual an increased number of temptations to invade the person or property of others; for many sorts of crime the conditions of town life afford greater security to the criminal; social and industrial causes create a large degenerate class not easily amenable to social control, incapable of getting regular work to do, or of doing it if they could get it.

If the town were a social organism formed by men desirous of living together for mutual support, comfort, and enjoyment in their lives, it might reasonably be expected that a wholesome public feeling would be so strongly operative as to outweigh the increased opportunities of crime. But, as we have seen, the modern town is a result of the desire to produce and distribute most economically the largest aggregate of material goods: economy of work, not convenience of life, is the object. Now, the economy of factory co-operation is only social to a very limited extent; anti-social feelings are touched and stimulated at every point by the competition of workers with one another, the antagonism between employers and employed, between sellers and buyers, factory and factory, shop and shop.

Perhaps the most potent influence in breaking the strength of the morale of the town worker is the precarious and disorderly character of town work. That element of monotonous order, which we found excessive in the education afforded by the individual machine to the machine-tender, is balanced by a corresponding defect in machine-industry taken as a whole. Town work, as we have seen, is more irregular than country work, and this irregularity has a most pernicious effect upon the character of the worker. Professor Foxwell has thus strikingly expressed the moral influences of this economic factor: "When employment is precarious, thrift and self-reliance are discouraged. The savings of years may be swallowed up in a few months. A fatalistic spirit is developed. Where all is uncertain and there is not much to lose, reckless overpopulation is certain to be set at. These effects are not confined to the poorer classes. The business world is equally demoralised by industrial speculation, careful prevision cannot reckon upon receiving its due return, and speculation of the purest gambling type is thereby encouraged. But the working class suffers most."[286]

The town as an industrial structure is at present inadequate to supply a social education which shall be strong enough to defeat the tendencies to anti-social conduct which are liable to take shape in criminal action. The intellectual training given by town life does not, as we have seen, assist in stimulating higher intellectual and moral interests whose satisfaction lies above the plane of material desire. There is indeed some evidence that the meagre and wholly rudimentary education given to our town-dwellers is, by reason of its inadequacy, a direct feeder of town vices. The lower forms of music-hall entertainment, the dominant popular vice of gambling, the more degraded kinds of printed matter, owe their existence and their financial success to a public policy which has confined the education of the people to the three R's, making it generally impossible, always difficult, for them to obtain such intellectual training as shall implant higher intellectual interests with whose pursuit they may occupy their leisure. But, in taking count of the criminality and vice of large towns it is not just to ignore a certain counter-claim which might be made. If our annals of virtue were kept as carefully as our annals of vice, we might find that town life stood higher in the one than in the other. There are more opportunities to display positive goodness and positive badness in the town; life is more crowded and more rapid, and it is likely that acts of kindness, generosity, self-denial, even of heroic self-sacrifice, are more numerous in the town than in the country. The average townsman is more developed morally as well as intellectually for good and for evil. That the good does not more signally predominate is in no small measure due to the feeble social environment. Public opinion is generally a little in advance of the average morality of the individuals who compose the public. Here is a mighty lever for raising the masses. But where the density of population is determined by industrial competition, rather than by human-social causes, it would seem that the force of sound public opinion is in inverse proportion to the density of population, being weakest in the most crowded cities. In spite of the machinery of political, religious, social, trade organisations in large towns, it is probable that the true spiritual cohesiveness between individual members is feebler than in any other form of society. If it is true that as the larger village grows into the town, and the town into the ever larger city, there is a progressive weakening of the bonds of moral cohesion between individuals, that the larger the town the feebler the spiritual unity, we are face to face with the heaviest indictment that can be brought against modern industrial progress, and the forces driving an increased proportion of our population into towns are bringing about a decadence of morale which is the necessary counterpart of the deterioration of national physique.

So far as we are justified in regarding the modern town and the tendency to increased town life as results of machinery and industrial evolution, there can be little doubt of the validity of these accusations. The free play of economic forces under the guidance of the selfish instincts of commercial individuals, or groups of individuals, is driving an increased proportion of the population of civilised countries into a town life which is injurious to physical and moral health, and provides no security for the attainment of an intellectual life which is worth living.

Sec. 8. But powerful as these centralising forces have been during the last century and a half, we are not justified in assuming that they will continue to operate with gathering momentum in the future, and that the results which are assigned to them will increase in magnitude. Such an assumption would ignore two groups of counteracting forces which are beginning to manifest themselves in the more advanced industrial communities.

The first of these groups consists of a number of directly counteracting or decentralising forces.

As a town grows in size the value of the ground on which it stands grows so rapidly that it becomes economically available only for certain classes of industrial undertaking, in which the occupation of central space is an element of prime importance. In all large commercial cities the residential quarters are driven gradually farther and farther away from the centre by incessant encroachments of business premises. The city of London and the "down town" quarter of New York are conspicuous examples of this displacement of residential buildings by commercial. The richer inhabitants are the earliest and quickest to leave. As the factory or the shop plants itself firmly among the better-class dwelling-houses, these inhabitants pass in large numbers to the outskirts of the town, forming residential suburbs which, for some time at any rate, are free from the specific evils of congestion. This encroachment of the factory and the shop at first has little effect, if any, in thinning the residential population of the district. While the shopkeepers and their employees live in the neighbourhood, and the factory workers can afford to pay the rent for houses or lodgings near their work, the central population will grow denser than before. But as the city grows in size and commercial importance, an increasing number of the most central sites will pass from manufactory premises and shops into use for warehouses and business offices, and for other work in connection with distribution and finance. The workers on these premises will, in the case of the wealthier, be unwilling, in the case of the poorer be unable, to live near their work; where factories and shops remain, the great mass of the employees will not be able to afford house-rents determined by this competition of a more valuable commercial use of land. So we find that the number of inhabitants of the city of London diminishes in each recent census, and the same is true as regards the most valuable portions of Paris, New York, and other large cities. This decentralising force is, however, only in full operation in the very centre of the largest cities. The first effect of the competition of commercial with living premises is to raise house-rents and to drive the poorer population into narrower, less commodious, and less sanitary dwellings. Where ground landowner and builder have a free hand the market value of central ground for small, lofty, cheap-built slums can be made to hold its own for a long time with the business premises which surround them. Even when ground value has risen so high as to displace many of these slums, the tendency is for the latter to spring up and thicken in districts not far removed from the centre. Thus in London the densest population is found in Whitechapel and St. George's in the East. Indeed, there is evidence that these districts have already reached "saturation point," that is to say, the pressure of business demands for ground, the increased competition of the dwellers themselves, and the growing restrictions imposed by law and public opinion upon the construction of the most "paying" forms of house property, prevent any further growth of population in these parts. As this saturation point is reached in one district, the growth of dense population goes on faster in the outlying districts, and, with forms which vary with local conditions, the same economic forces manifest themselves with similar results over a wider area. The poorer population shifts as short a distance as it can, and then only when driven by a rise of rents. Even when it moves somewhat farther out it seldom gets far enough to escape the centralising forces. Residential working-class districts like West Ham become rapidly congested by the constant flow of population from more central places. Moreover, the same decentralising forces are set up in the large suburban districts, by the planting there of factories and other industrial works designed to take advantage of a large supply of labour close at hand, and land procurable at a lower rental. This applies also to many of the suburbs originally chosen as residential quarters of the well-to-do classes. The whole western district of London, comprised by Kensington, Notting Hill, Hammersmith, etc., contains large and designed areas of dense poverty and overcrowding. So far as the mass of poorer workers in London and other large cities are concerned, it would appear that their endeavour to escape beyond the limits of congested city life has hitherto been unavailing: the decentralising forces of rising ground rents, uncomfortable and insanitary dwellings, are ever at work, but the centralising forces set up by any large number who seek an outlet in the same direction, with close spacial limitations to their migrating tendency, are too strong. High rents, a fuller appreciation of the hygienic advantages of more space, and of proximity to country air and country scenes, have induced an increasing number of the "middle" classes, and even of those who, in a pecuniary sense, form the upper working class, to incur the expenditure of time, trouble, and railway fares involved in living sufficiently far from the centre to avoid the centralising pressure. The most important practical problem of social reform to-day is how to secure this option of extra-city life for the mass of city workers. If the economies of low ground rent and slightly cheaper labour were sufficiently large to induce the establishment of manufactories at considerable distances from large centres of population, we might look in time to see the large industrial town give place to a number of industrial villages, gathered round some single large factory or "works." The growing facilities of communication with large towns at increased distances, afforded by recent expansions of railway service, and by improvements in telegraphic and telephonic media, have done something towards this form of decentralisation. Round Manchester and other larger northern manufacturing towns an increasing number of factories are springing up; in the United States the same phenomenon is still commoner. Smaller rents, cheaper living, lower wages, especially in textile mills where women are largely employed, and lastly, more submissive labour, are everywhere the economic stimuli of this decentralisation of manufacture. Assuming that some more cheaply and easily transmissible motor-power can be found for manufacture, and that a cheap and readily available transport service by steam or electricity is widely spread, it seems not unlikely that the economies of decentralised manufacture may widely or even universally outweigh the primary centralising economies which created our great manufacturing towns. Whether a wide diffusion of industrial villages, which might be of a size and structure to reproduce in a somewhat less virulent form many of the physical and moral vices of the larger towns, and which possibly might retard or nullify some of the educative and elevating influences springing from the organisation and co-operative action of large masses of workers, can be regarded as a desirable substitute or remedy for our congested city life, is open to grave doubt. A whole country like England, thickly blotched at even intervals by big industrial villages comprised of a huge factory or two with a few rectangular streets of small, dull, grimy, red-brick cottages, and one or two mansions standing inside their parks at the side remote from the factories, would, from an aesthetic point of view, be repulsive to the last degree; and out of a country, the whole of which was thus ordered for pure purposes of industrial economy, it is difficult to believe that any of the higher products of human effort could proceed. But the possibility of some such outcome of the decentralising forces already visible must not be ignored. It is even likely that the labour movement, advancing as it does more rapidly in large manufacturing centres than elsewhere, may, by increasing the freedom and power of labour associated upon a large scale, apply an additional stimulus to the entrepreneur to place his business undertakings so as to make strongly combined action of labourers more difficult. American manufacturers are distinctly actuated by this motive in selecting the locality of their factories, and have been able in many cases to maintain a despotic control over the workers which would be quite impossible were their factories planted in the middle of a large city.[287]

Sec. 9. This method of partial decentralisation depends in large measure, it is evident, upon such progress in the transport services for persons, goods, and intelligence as shall minimise the inconvenience of a less central position, rendering the location of the business a matter of comparative indifference. But it is to improved transport services that we may look to facilitate a kind of decentralisation, the net gain of which is less dubious than that arising from the substitution of a large number of industrial villages for a small number of industrial towns. Is it not possible for more town-workers to combine centralised work with decentralised life—to work in the town but to live in the country? May not this advantage, at present confined to the wealthier classes, be brought within the reach of the poorer classes? Some small progress has been made of recent years towards the realisation of this ideal. Three chief difficulties stand in the way of success: the length of the working-day, which makes the time required for travelling to and from a distant home a matter of serious consideration; the defective supply of convenient, cheap, and frequent trains or other quick means of conveyance; the irregularity and uncertainty of tenure in most classes of labour, which prevents the establishment of a settled house chosen with regard to convenient access to a single point of industry. Some recent progress has been made in large cities, such as Vienna, Paris, and London, in providing workmen's trains and by the cheapening of train and 'bus fares; but such experiments are generally confined within too narrow an area to achieve any satisfactory amount of decentralisation, for the interests of private carrying companies demand that the largest number of passengers shall travel from the smallest number of stations. It would appear that considerable extension of direct public control over the means of transport will be required, in order to secure to the people the full assistance of modern mechanical appliances in enabling them to avoid the mischief of over-crowded dwellings. For such purposes the railway has now replaced the high-road, and we can no more afford to entrust the public interest in the one case to the calculating self-interest of private speculation than in the other case. A firm public control in the common interest over the steam and electric railways of the future seems essential to the attainment of adequate decentralisation for dwelling purposes. Private enterprise in transport, working hand in hand with private ownership of land, will only substitute for a single mass of over-crowded dwellings a number of smaller suburban areas of over-crowded dwellings. The bicycle alone, among modern appliances of mechanical speed, can safely be entrusted to the free private control of individuals, and, if one may judge by the remarkable expansion of its use, it seems likely to afford no trifling assistance to the decentralising tendencies.

Sec. 10. The removal of the other two barriers belongs to that joint action of labour organisation and legislation which aims at building up a condition of stable industrial economy. One of the most serviceable results of that shortening of the working-day, upon which public attention is so powerfully concentrated, would be the assistance it would render to enable workmen and workwomen to live at a longer distance from their work. So long, however, as a large proportion of city workers have no security of tenure in their work, are liable at a day's or a week's notice, for no fault of their own, to be obliged to seek work under another employer in a distant locality, or if employed by the same master to be sent to a distant job, now to find themselves without any work at all, at another time to have to work all hours to make up a subsistence wage, it is evident that these schemes of decentralisation can be but partial in their application. An increased stability both in the several trades and in the individual businesses within the trade is a first requisite to the establishment of a fixed healthy home for the industrial worker and his family.

Sec. 11. It is, however, unlikely that any wide or lasting solution of the problem of congested town life will be found in a sharp local severance of the life of an industrial society which shall abandon the town to the purposes of a huge workshop, reserving the country for habitation. The true unity of individual and social life forbids this abrupt cleavage between the arts of production and consumption, between the man and his work. It is only in the case of the largest and densest industrial cities, swollen to an unwieldy and dangerous size, that such methods of decentralisation can in some measure be applied. In these monstrous growths machinery of decentralisation may be evoked to undo in part at any rate the work of centralising machinery. In smaller towns, where the circumference bears a larger proportion to the mass, a spreading of the close-packed population over an expanded town-area will be more feasible, and will form the first step in that series of reforms which shall humanise the industrial town. The congestion of the poorer population of our towns, and the struggle for fresh air and elbow-room which it implies, is the most formidable barrier to the work of transforming the town from a big workshop into a human dwelling-place, with an individual life, a character, a soul of its own. The true reform policy is not to destroy the industrial town but to breathe into it the breath of social life, to temper and subordinate its industrial machine-goods-producing character to the higher and more complex purposes of social life. An ample, far-sighted, enlightened, social control over the whole area of city ground, whether used for dwellings or for industrial purposes, is the first condition of the true municipal life. The industrial town, left for its growth to individual industrial control, compresses into unhealthily close proximity large numbers of persons drawn together from different quarters of the earth, with different and often antagonistic aims, with little knowledge of one another, with no important common end to form a bond of social sympathy. The town presents the single raw material of local proximity out of which municipal life is to be built. The first business of the municipal reformer then is to transform this excessive proximity into wholesome neighbourhood, in order that true neighbourly feelings may have room to grow and thrive, and eventually to ripen into the flower of a fair civic life. "A modern city," it has been well said, "is probably the most impersonal combination of individuals that has ever been formed in the world's history."[288] To evoke the personal human qualities of this medley of city workers so as to reach within the individual the citizen, to educate the civic feeling until it take shape in civic activities and institutions, which shall not only safeguard the public welfare against the encroachments of private industrial greed, but shall find an ever ampler and nobler expression in the aesthetic beauty and spiritual dignity of a complex, common life—all this work of transformation lies in front of the democracy, grouped in its ever-increasing number of town-units.