Drink as a Barrier to Industrial Progress

Evening Star, Issue 8772, 12 March 1892, Page 2 (Supplement)

Drink as a Barrier to Industrial Progress

Mr Joseph Leicester, secretary of the Glass Blowers' Trade Society, has addressed the following letter to the Right Hon, Sir Lyon Playfair, M.P.:— Dear Sir Lyon,—l have read with great interest, and I trust with much profit, your very able leoture on the limitation of the hours of labor, and I consider you are deserving the thanks of the working men of this country for the words of wisdom and thoughts whioh characterise your leoture. I think your main contention is that if all workers worked eight honest hours a day up to the point of duty it would be sufficient for the wants of the world, and would afford ample time for healthy leisure, as well as for social and moral improvement, You will pardon me, Sir Lyon, when I say that it is in the application of these ideas where you fail. To me it appears that you have not taken cognisance of all the various circumstances and conditions of the trades of the country. I contend that a hard-and-fast line of an eight hour day for all trades is impossible. In my own trade (that of glaes) there are great numbers of men in the lamp season (winter) who cannot work in summer, and in order to live at all must put on double powers when they can, An eight • hour day by law would wipe them out, as well as ruin that important industry, and would smite the workmen hip and thigh, in that it would take from the consumption of trade all that the purchasing power of our wages could buy; for money not earned is money not spent. Co-operation itself depends on the twofold principle that each producer shall be also a consumer, and no man can consume what he cannot purchase. The reason of this is very obvious—that our country is flooded with foreign glass, and, as you say, one fraction of a penny in the price of dozens of articles, determines the trade in that article, and we know, only too well, that the conditions of labor on the Continent are such, both in the inordinate length of their hours as well as their starvation wages, that any hard-and-fast line of limitation in our trade would make it utterly impossible for our branch of that trade to exist at all.

The building trade is another instance of this kind. Sometimes, in consequence of bad weather, they must make most of their time in good weather. An eight-hour day would prevent this, and would soon bring about such a condition of things as would make it vexatious and unbearable. The felt hat trade is another instance. That industry is very greatly affected by the seasons, as well as the caprices of fashion. It often happens that it stands still through some change of fashion, or the latenesß of warm weather; there are no orders, then there comes a rush, and it is to the advantage of all, both men and masters, that the best time should be made to make up for lost time. The legal eight hours would ruin them.

Some suppose that an eight-hour day would find work for more men, but in our industry we painfully find that the men out are altogether unfitted to do the work required, and it is only in very brisk times that we can make use of them. If the unfit are to be thrust in to spoil material and to make a class of work not wanted, it is the surest way to ruin any industry. We had a big order the othor day for one firm in Loudon of a rather common character, and although we had one in four out of work, jet none could be found to do the work, The order was sent to Germany. The fact is that unfit men cannot replace the fit or do their work.

I take it that if a man works nine or ten hours a day he will earn more than if he worked only eight hours. More earned means more spent. More spent ought to mean more trade, and theref )re a blessing to the workmen by increasing trade. But if as much is produced under the eight hourß as under the nine or ten hours, then the eight-hour day cannot find employment for more men. We now work 20 per cent, less time than we did forty years ago; food is much cheaper, and wages are from 40 to 80 per cent, higher, and yet pauperism and misery stalk the land in all their dismal and ghastly hideousness. Our foreign trade has increased 600 per cent, this last fifty years, while the population is baroly doubled ! What, theD, accounts for this dismal cry from the workers, calling piteously for Parliament to fix tho hours of labor—and this after the fierce conflict of the past age to get rid of Parliamentary interference with our labor. The curse of the last age is to be the blessing of this, In our struggle for freedom we have got rid of the twin demons priestcraft and statecraft. But we have not conquered the foul tyranny of ourselves. This is the problem of the future. The cause of the multitudinous misery around us is not far to seek. The land is flooded with ckunkerice, and the earnings of the nation are wasted—or, what is more horrible, are sunk in a foul source of demoralisation and shame. I have held office in a powerful and wealthy trade organisation for over forty yeacß, and am a living witness to the terrible havoc drink is doing amongst oui brethren. To look over my books for the lass forty years is to look into a dark and hideous charnel-house strewn with victims of the drink. Each day brings its wretched quota of men neglecting work or spoiling it. So vast is this terrible drink plague that not a factory escapes it. One employer writes me: "Competition is so fierce that I am compelled to strain every nerve to keep my trade going. My fires arc burning and my metal is in the furnace, yet half the men are in tho public-house instead of being at work. It means poverty to them, and ruin to me." Another writes : " I am compelled to discharge three men through drink out of eighteen; can you get me three sober men in their places? Drink is our difficulty." These man are all in arrears, and not one penny of benefit, bo they go to General Booth or the workhouse to swell the overswollen pauper list, while other victims are getting ready for the same fate. Another writes me : " The men you send me are of a very low type, drunken and depraved, a disgrace to the firm. They deprave and demoralise the young, and so the heart-sick, weary, and horrible work goes on."

A man with four children gets discharged through drink from the above firm. They are starving this bitter weather. The Charity Organisation is robbed of Ub funds to support this drink-made pauper ; else his innocent children would starve. Another from the same firm has a drunken wife. I find him dyiqg in bed while his wife lies on the floor beastly drunk. She is paid Ll7 to bury him. On the very night of tho funeral Bhe ia found dead drunk, lying in the street, and is carried on a stretcher to the police station, and is now an inmate of Lambeth Workhouse, plundering the public for her keep, I look over my quarterly report for the Christmas quarter, and find one man in fivo in arrears through drink, and two expelled from tho same cause. If they got out of work they have no support and must beg or starve or suffer untold horrors. It is not, Sir Lyon, here and there, but all over the nation that this demon drink is doing its ghastly work. Tho chief constable of the Forest of Dean writes: "Trade has doubled, so has drunkenness and crime." Mr George Howarth, of Manchester, I believe the very largest cotton spinner in the world, the other day opposed the granting of three licenses opposite one of his mills on tbo ground that public-houses were cursing his workmen. "If these licenses are granted (said he) I shall pull down my mills and remove them to a lighter-taxed neighborhood, where no temptation can demoralise my workmen. I have laid down machinery at a oost of over LIOO.OOO. I want the best men in the trade, But you gentlemen have surrounded my factories with drink dens, whiobare ruining my men. Either this must stop or I must go." The licenses were refused, for Mr Howarth was and is the largest ratepayer in Manchester.

Mr B. Whitwortb, late M.P. for Drogheda, declared in Exeter Hall that Monday's drinking of the men lost his firm over L 30.000 a year—over 4. per cent, upon an invested capital of L 73.000, whioh was just the difference between the Belgian iron and his own.

Now, in considering this subject, Sir Lyon, you have to oonsider two things. First, the relative position, as well as the positive position, of the British workman. Trade goes from country to country accord-

fog to fixed laws. The tteAtot the world came here because we Mold do more of it and better than others, «d it will leave, us unless we continue to do bo, and to tnu momentous calculation drunkenness is an item it would be fatal to overlook, and if the army of labor Is to eonqtttT. «»»* ™ u " be subject to martial law—must, tad ?Z! watched by a vigilance committee* P f th? 8 . 6 it seeks to destroy. Fonder, Sif Lyon", t0 one tremendous fact, the leading fast tO the economy and very existence of Great Britain: Every year 250 millions of pounds are Bnent by the British nation in intoxicating drink—"spent," as the cant phrase goes. But how much of it is wasted 7 and how little of this vast sum is there which is not wasted ? And thia in the land where every seventh adult person is buried in a pauper's coffin. This calculation is patent to the world. Any man can verify the figures. It consists of money spent in drink, of waste land, capital, and labor in produoing drink, loss of labor by destruction and theft, by pauperism, destruction, and crime, by sickness, insanity, premature deaths, police prosecutions, courts of justice, support of thousands upon thousands of criminals, etc. This expenditure would pay off the National Dabt in five years. I beg of you, Sir Lyon, to mark this further. This 250 millions is not reproductive. Expenditure ought to be for the wealth of society, and wealth ought to mean " weal" or wellbeing ; it ought to be creative. It really comes to this: that the mighty army established at the yearly cost of 250 millions is really an army of paupers, thieves, or useless persons, maintained at the coot of , the nation. The position of England, j staggering in the greatness of her way, is at j once ridiculous and sublime. •• We suckle fools because we chronicle small beer." Nay, we do more. The law of supply and demand —which spends 250 millions, not on food or clothes, education or factories, not on beef or corn or household necessaries and knowledge, but on that which neither satisfies nor reproduces—thi3 at onco accounts for the millions of our pauperß, for lowness of wages, etc.; for we oannot haye capital and drink it, We can't keep pauper manufactories, and yet expect the worker to get enough to eat, while " Hell is so merry with the harvest home." No, no, Sir Lyon. This question awaits the statesmanship of labor. Co-opsration can only succeed when each man is a consumer. A nation that wastes its precious means must suffer the awful penalty of its doings. My only hope, Sir Lyon, is that the frightful misery and sorrow resulting from this waste may wake our perceptions up to removing the cause of the fearful evil.