The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IN INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 23, 1911. WAGES IN ENGLAND.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 6, 23 August 1911, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IN INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 23, 1911. WAGES IN ENGLAND.

Last week a cable message reached us from London to the effect that Parliament was considering the appointment of a Royal Commission to inquire into the problem presented by the stationary character of wages and the increased cost of living. \ ery few people, even in the overseas dominions, require to bo told that the rates of wages ruling in England are remarkably low, hence the great industrial upheaval which has just taken place; but there are not many outside those immediately interested who give a thought to the inadequate remuneration received by almost every branch of industry in the Old Country. In the building trades in England bricklayers receive from 37s 6d to 40p 6d; masons, 37s 2d to 39s Id; carpenters, 36s 2d to 39s Id; plumbers, 35s 4d to 39s 9d; painters, 31s 6d to 375; labourers, 23s 6d to 275. In the engineering trades fitters receive 32s to 365; turners, 32s to 365; smiths, 32s to 365; patternmakers, 3-ls to 38s; labourers, 18s to 225. In the printing trade compositors aro paid from 23s to 335. The agricultural labourer is still worse off, as low as 12s per week being paid to men with largo families. Under the head of “Wages for Fifteen Years” Mr .ChiozKa Money, M.P., writes in the “Nation” :—“I do not think it is generally realised that, during the last fifteen years—and fifteen years is no small part of an average lifetime—the wages of the Rritish workman have fallen. The subject is one of exceeding interest and importance, for the progress of a nation must chiefly be measured by the standard of life of the wage-earning classes,which in this country form, with their dependents, about throe-fourths of the entire population. The statement that the standard of life of three-fourths of the Rritish people has fallen in half n generation is implicit in the statement. with which I begin this article, and it is extraordinary that the working classes cannot find amongst their thirty-five millions some clarion voice to compel attention to the underpayment of labour.” Mr Chiozza Money gives a remarkable sot of figures to prove Ids point. The main items, shown by percentages, for the years 1895 to 1910, arc these: —

1895 1910 Wages 89.1 101 Wholesale prices ... 91.0 108.8 Retail London prices ... 93.2 109.9 The net effect of these three items is to show that while in fifteen years wages have only increased 13.3 per cent, wholesale prices have increased 19.5 per cone, and retail prices 17.9 per cent; or, as Mr Money puts it, “wo see that, while money wages have increased about thirteen per cent retail prices have increased so much that real wages have fallen in the fifteen \oars. 'The money wages of the trades referred to increased by over

rhirteen per cent in tli-o fifteen vends .•evicwcd. It is exceedingly doubtful, owcvor, whether money wages as a .. hole made as great an increase. Corcain it is that tlio wages ot general '.abourors, railway servants, carmen, md many others, were very nearly

tatioaary, and that the earnings of the considerable army of casual workrs remained at a dead level.” Mr Money then turns to the question ot profits, and finds that, in the same rears—lß9s • to 1910 —the gross ass^

:ssmcnts to income tax have increased ■>v a total of £402,000,000 a year, or 19 per cent. The average income, Loo, of the income-tax payer has increased by 38 per cent, or from an average of £698 to £984. Wo are now enabled to make a comparison of the movements of wages and profits respectively. In 1895-1910, the money wages rose by about thirteen per cent, while the wages of the income tax classes, who, with their families, may he termed the “upper : ive millions,” rose about thirty per cent. For both classes alike, as for the lower-middle classes that lie between them, prices rose, hut the great rise in the cost of living in the period means very much to the wage-earner, and very little to the payers of income tax. Why is it that British workmen have not been able to secure a fairer share of the product of mental and manual labour?” One reason Mr Money gives is that the strength of trade unions, relatively to that of the employers’ federations, has diminished of late, and that our trade unions exhibit a lack of expansion which is not creditable to the education, the wisdom, or the collective feeling of the working classes. In ton years British trade unions have increased only 23 per cent, while German unions have increased 240 per cent, and, as a result, “German money wages have increased much more rapidly than British money wages have since 1899.”