LIVING AND MINIMUM WAGE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 94, 20 April 1912, Page 10

LIVING AND MINIMUM WAGE.

11 No, industry is worth retaining which cannot pay it® workers a living wage for a fair day's work, and no regulations are too severe to check that worst enemy of the working classes — the man who, though able, refuses to do a fair day's work fora fair day's wage," writes Mr. B. Seebohm Rowntree, author of^ "Poiverty,"* ,"Land and Labour," etc., ih the London Daily Chronicle. He goes on to s&y : "To those who fear that England will be ruined if the workers sucoeed in .securing efficiency wages, I would point out that there is no lack in this country of either, unused or illused land or unused capital — and even if some industries which can only exist on sweated labour will cea£e, so long as land and capital are available to unite with displaced labour you have all the factors necessary for the production of wealth. There heed be no fear that it will pass the wit of intelligent statesmanship so to ' combine these factors that England shall grow, not poorer, but infinitely richer, because at last she ha» realised that to underpay and underfeed her unskilled labourers is not only bad economy but bad Christianity and bad civilisation.. " The coal strike which nov/, alas ! is upon us, will force the nation to consider much more fully than hitherto how far the demand for the establishment of a minimum wage is desirable from the national standpoint; and when we use the word ' national ' we must remember that probably about three-fourthe of the population belong to the working classes. In seeking to answer this question, all will agree that it is .obviousJy opposed to the national interest that any large proportion — indeed, that any — of* its workers should, although in regular work, be working for wages which, no matter how economically laid out, are yet insufficient to maJntain a family of moderatp size in. a state of mere physical efficiency. Recent sociological investigations have, however, shown that there are many hundreds of thousands, possibly million's, of persons belonging' to families of which this is true. "The fact is that, after absolutely necessary expenditure for rent, fuel, light, clothing, and household sundries has been met, food sufficient to maintain an average family in a btato of physical efficiency cannot be provided on the ordinary wages *of an line killed labourer. Hanging 611 the edge of the unskilled labour market', there is constantly an army of starving unemployed men fighting for a job at almost any price. So long ,as this is. &o, organisation wdl be impossible. "