The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke Volume II Part 37

But his most important service to Labour in the direction of administration is connected with the Home Office Vote. Though Bills were closely followed by him in Committee, he refused to take part in any obstruction upon them, holding that "all obstruction is opposed to the interests of Radicalism, in the long-run." Acting on this view, he with others helped the Government to get votes in Supply. The true policy was, in his view, to obtain "ample opportunity for the discussion of important votes at those times of the Session when we desire to discuss them." So he dealt with Home Office administration on its industrial side. Some more marked and centralized criticism of the workings of this great department was necessary than that supplied by questions in Parliament, correspondence, and private interviews. The administration of the War Office, the conduct of Foreign Affairs, or of the Admiralty, claimed the attention of the House of Commons as the annual vote on the Estimates came round. It was not so with the "Ministry of the Interior,"

and it was practically left to Sir Charles to create that annual debate on the Home Office Vote, which dealt with the industrial side of that department's administration. Year after year he reviewed its work, forcing into prominence the Chief Inspector's Report on Factories and Workshops; examining the orders, exemptions, exceptions, and regulations, by which the Home Office legislates under the head of administration, always with a view to the levelling up of industrial conditions and the promotion of a universal incidence of protection for the workers. "We can trust no one but Sir Charles Dilke in Parliament to understand the principles of factory legislation," wrote Mr. Sidney Webb in comment on some destructive Government proposals as to industrial law. This appreciation of the fundamental ideal underlying our legislative patchwork of eccentricities went hand in hand with a half- humorous and half-lenient understanding of his countrymen's att.i.tude to such questions. "We pa.s.sed Acts in advance of other nations," he said, "before we began to look for the doctrines that underlay our action, and long before we possessed the knowledge on which it was said to have been based." But for one afternoon in the year the attention of the House of Commons was intelligently focussed on the details of the suffering of those, the weakest workers of all, on whose shoulders the fabric of our industrial system rests. Matters left previously to the agitation of some voluntary society or to the pages of the "novel with a purpose"

were marshalled according to their bearing on different administrative points, and discussed in orderly detail. The overwork of women and girls in factory or workshop; the injury to health and the risks that spring from employment in dangerous trades; poor wages further reduced by fines and deductions; the employment of children often sent to work at too early an age, to stagger under loads too heavy for them to bear; the liability to accident consequent on long hours of labour--these were the themes brought forward on the Home Office Vote, not for rhetorical display, but as arguments tending to a practical conclusion, such as the inadequacy of inspection or the insufficient numbers of the available staff.

In the atmosphere thus created much progress was possible. Take, for example, one dangerous trade, that of the manufacture of china and earthenware, in which during the early nineties suffering which caused paralysis, blindness, and death, was frequent and acute. Speaking as late as 1898 on the Home Office Vote, and quoting from the official reports, Sir Charles showed that the cases for the whole country amounted to between four and five hundred out of the five to six thousand persons exposed to danger. Under his persistent pressure Committee after Committee inquired into this question and promulgated special rules; attention was focussed on the suffering, and this evil, though still unfortunately existing, abated both in numbers and acuteness, till at his death the cases had fallen to about a fifth of those notified in 1898.

His standpoint was one which raised industrial matters out of the arena of party fight, and on both sides of the House he found willing co-operators.

Help came not from the House of Commons alone. Lord James of Hereford, Lord Beauchamp, Lord Milner, lent their aid on different occasions, and Lord Lytton paid generous tribute to one "who was always ready to place his vast knowledge and experience, his energy and industry, at the service of any cause which has for its object the social well-being of the people of this country."

In Sir Charles's crowded day, the early luncheon at half-past twelve which allowed time for talk before the House met was often set aside for interviews. During the meal itself conversation for the greater part ranged wide, but towards the end he would turn to his guest with a demand for information on the point at issue, or, if his advice were needed, with an appeal for questions. The ma.s.s of information which he elicited was due to the simplicity of his talk with all who came to him.

"He asked me my views as if I were of his own standing," said the young secretary of the Anti-Sweating League after his first interview.

[Footnote: Apart from these scattered conversations, Sir Charles met the united representatives of trade-unionism once a year at the opening of Parliament, for then the Trade-Union Congress Parliamentary Committee lunched with him and talked over Labour questions at the House of Commons. This custom, which began in 1880 and lasted through Mr.

Broadhurst's secretaryship, was resumed in 1898, and was continued to the end, and the meeting was fruitful of results. "These annual conversations," says Mr. Davis, "had much more to do with the policy of the legislative Labour party than could be understood by the party as a whole, but always the object was to aid the main aspirations of the Trade-Union Congress; indeed, from 1901 to 1906 the luncheons were followed by a conference of Labour and Radical members in one of the conference-rooms, where arrangements were made to support Labour Bills or to oppose reactionary proposals made by a reactionary Government.

This would have continued, but in 1906 the larger Labour party returned to Parliament made it unnecessary."

The advent of the "larger Labour party," though it affected the conferences, did not affect the social meetings, which ceased only with Sir Charles Dilke's death. The last of these dinners was one at which the Parliamentary Committee in their turn entertained him, paying warm tribute to the years of help he had given to the trade-union movement.

It was in the vacation, but there was a full attendance, all the provincial members of the Parliamentary Committee without exception coming up or staying in London for the dinner. One of his prized possessions in the after-months was the gold matchbox they gave him, inscribed with the badge of the Trade-Union Congress and the word "Labour." Round it were engraved his name and the date of the Parliamentary Committee's presentation.]

The reformer does not generally count on the aid of representatives of the great Government departments, yet the independent and non-party att.i.tude of Sir Charles and the friends who worked with him for Social Reform secured not only the attention of successive Ministers, but also the help of those permanent officials who finally came to do him honour at the dinner which commemorated the pa.s.sing of the Trade Boards Act in 1910.

Conspicuous among the friends who worked with him in the House of Commons for the promotion of Social Reform in different directions were Mr. H. J. Tennant (afterwards Secretary for Scotland in Mr. Asquith's Coalition Government), Captain Norton (now Lord Rathcreedan), Mr.

Masterman, and Mr. J. W. Hills, member for Durham, a leader of the Social Reform group among the Conservatives. Mr. Hills's estimate of this side of Sir Charles's Parliamentary achievements may fitly be given here:

"Dilke's interest in Labour questions sprang not only from his sense of justice and sympathy with the unfortunate, but also from his clear and logical mind, which recognized that starvation, underpayment, and servile conditions are the negation of that democracy in which he believed for the United Kingdom and the Empire. For this reason he was the admitted champion of the coloured races; and he was the originator of a growing school of reformers of all countries, who realize that the nations of the world must advance together, for if one lags behind all suffer. He therefore took a most active interest in the International a.s.sociation for Labour Legislation; he was the mainstay of the English branch, and he kept closely in touch with men like Dr. Bauer of Switzerland, M.

Fontaine of France, and M. Vandervelde of Brussels, who were working on the same lines in other countries. Of the earlier and more difficult part of the work I saw nothing, for when I joined the a.s.sociation it had an a.s.sured position, and had behind it two great outstanding successes--the abolition of white phosphorus in the making of matches, and the regulation of nightwork for women. His knowledge of foreign countries, his familiarity with their industrial questions and modes of thought, and his facility in their languages, gave him, by common consent, a position such as no one holds now. The work has been little recognized in England; our Government, unlike foreign Governments, was slow to give help to the a.s.sociation, and it was only Dilke's unbounded energy that compelled them to support this important and hopeful movement.

"What struck me about his position in domestic Labour questions was that his support or opposition was always the dominating fact of the situation. What his relations were with Labour I do not know--he never talked about it; but I have no doubt that he was their counsellor and adviser throughout their history.

"Dilke had a deeper hold on Labour than his knowledge and ability alone would have given him. He held their hearts and affection as well. They looked upon him as the one man who had always stood up for the workers, through bad and good report, whether they had votes or had not. He had championed their cause when they were voiceless, when it had little support in Parliament and gave little advantage at elections. Nowadays such championship is both easy and profitable, but that was by no means the case in the sixties and seventies. It was exceedingly unpopular, and out of touch with the political philosophy of all except a few. I was greatly struck with this at the dinner given to Dilke in 1910 to celebrate the pa.s.sing of the Trade Boards Act. I realized that many had come there to do honour to the one man who had always fought for them. They knew that so long as he was alive there was someone who would support them, regardless of consequences.

"Of his activities in Parliament, I remember most vividly those in which I was personally concerned. In two such cases I was on the opposite side; in two I worked with him. The Trade Disputes Act of 1906 was in reality carried by Dilke and Shackleton, for the Government were hopelessly compromised by the two voices with which nearly all their leaders had spoken. Again in 1907, when I was trying to plead for Preferential Trade, he marshalled against it all the force of his wide knowledge and ripe experience.

"On the other hand, in 1909 the luck of the ballot enabled me to bring in a private member's Bill, and I introduced Dilke's Sweated Industries Bill. Dilke was to second it. When the Bill came on I was laid up with influenza, but I was determined to go to the House, and got out of bed to do so, though when I got there I was only capable of a few sentences and had to return to bed. But the effect of the introduction of Dilke's Bill was to stir up the Government, so much so that a few days later Winston Churchill introduced his Bill, which, being a Government Bill, took precedence of ours and became law as the Trade Boards Act. In 1910 again, on the Home Office Vote, an occasion on which Dilke always made a masterly review of the industrial history of the year, he asked me to second him, and to deal particularly with lead-poisoning in the Potteries. He always tried to detach Labour questions from party. It was entirely owing to him that I took an interest in the subject.

"I never actually worked with him, but I should imagine that he worked at a pace that few could follow. He was wonderful at mastering facts, and he had the instinct of knowing what facts were important. His method must have been somewhat unconventional, for not only did he tear the heart out of a book, but he frequently tore pages out as well. He had got what he wanted, and the rest was waste paper."

III.

The testimony of Mr. Hills has touched on several objects for which Sir Charles worked till his death, but of these one upon which he struggled to establish an international understanding--that of the minimum wage-- claims a fuller consideration. The interdependence of Labour was always apparent to him, and under the sympathy for suffering which inspired his action on such questions as the native races or the treatment of the alien Jew, there lay the sense that the degradation of any cla.s.s of labour in one country affected its status in all, and that to be insular on industrial questions was to undermine everything that the pioneers of English Labour had fought for and achieved.

The wages of many workers were left untouched by the imperfect development of trade-unionism. Sweating was the result. To check this evil, machinery must be created by legislation to deal with low wages, while international understanding was essential here, as in other questions of Social Reform, to enable the democracies of the various countries to keep abreast.

The question of the minimum wage had occupied Sir Charles Dilke's attention from the days of his discipleship to John Stuart Mill. He had been much impressed by the debates which took place during his presidency in 1885 at the Conference on Industrial Remuneration. A few years later he had been present at a meeting convened by the Women's Trade-Union League during the Trade-Union Congress at Glasgow, and the impression made on him by that meeting he thus described:

"I had long been used to Labour meetings, but was then brought face to face with hopeless difficulties, heartbreaking to the organizer, because of a rooted disbelief among the workers in the possibility of improvement. There is a stage in which there is hope--hope for the improvement of wages and of conditions, possibly to be won by combined effort. There is a stage, familiar in the East End of London, when there is no hope for anything, except, perhaps, a hired feather and the off-chance of an outing. Yet even the roughest trades employing women and children in factories or large workshops, to be found in the East End or in the outskirts of Glasgow, have in them the remote possibility of organization. Home industries in many cases have not even that bare chance. There is in them a misery which depresses both the workers and those who would help them. The home life of the poorest cla.s.s of factory workers is not much, but it means, nevertheless, a great deal to them. The home life of the home worker is often nothing. The home becomes the grinding shop.

Factory slavery finds a refuge even in a hard home. 'Home' slavery has none.... It is in this cla.s.s, utterly incapable of fixing a minimum wage for itself, that the evil of its absence stands revealed in its worst form."

Turning, as was his custom, to our colonies for successful experiment and example, he discussed with Mr. Deakin (the Victorian Minister of whom he prophesied in 1887 that he would be the First Prime Minister of that federated Australia which was then called "Deakin's Dream") the example of a Wages Board which was being introduced in Victoria. An Anti-Sweating League had been formed in 1893 in Victoria, and had adopted this scheme, carrying it into law in 1895. The vital part of the scheme was the creation of Conciliation Boards on which representatives of employers and employed were represented--Boards which should discuss wages and fix a minimum rate in the trade concerned.

As opposed to any larger scheme of conciliation for all trades, this plan had to Sir Charles's mind certain marked advantages: it would not interfere with the activities of the great trade-unions which already stood possessed of similar voluntary machinery, while its application only to those whose depressed and miserable condition invoked public sympathy would create an atmosphere likely to induce successful and harmonious development.

In 1898 he introduced his Wages Boards Bill, from that time annually laid before Parliament; but it made no progress, and there were moments when even his optimism almost failed. It was not till 1906, when a Sweated Industries Exhibition was organized by the _Daily News_, that a step forward was made. The sight of the workers, engaged in their ill-remunerated toil, brought home to the public an evil till then too little realized. The movement was international. A similar exhibition in Berlin had already been held, and others now followed in America, in Continental countries, in Scotland, and in various parts of England. In this country a National Anti-Sweating League came into existence. A great meeting of trade-unionists and Labour representatives was held at the Guildhall, Sir Charles Dilke presiding on the first day, and the question of the minimum wage was debated by Labour; Sir George Askwith, Mr. Sidney Webb, and Mr. W. P. Reeves, with other Colonial representatives, speaking from the platform. Many conferences followed, and M. Vandervelde came from Belgium, M. Arthur Fontaine from France, to combat insular and Tariff Reform arguments, and to point out that the movement was not confined to our own sh.o.r.es. A great deputation representative of every shade of political opinion, introduced by Sir Charles Dilke and the Archbishop of Canterbury, waited on the Prime Minister on December 4th, 1908, and laid their views before him. Sir Charles put the Bill into the hands of the Labour party in Parliament. A Committee of the House was appointed to consider the question of home work and the proposed measure, and, after the stages which Mr. Hills has described, it became law as the Trade Boards Act in 1909. The Act at first applied to only four trades, but there have been several additions. Of the first extension made after Sir Charles's death, and of the probability of the adoption of the scheme by other countries, Sir George Askwith wrote: "It will be the first stone on Sir Charles's cairn. I can see them all coming up the hill, nation by nation."

[Footnote: France, the first nation to reach the hill-top, pa.s.sed her Minimum Wage Act for home workers in 1915.

Minimum rates of wages under the Trade Boards Act were in operation in Great Britain (February, 1915) as follows:

_Female Persons over 18_ _per Week of 52 Hours._ Per Hour. Per Week.

Ready-made and wholesale bespoke tailoring, and shirt-making 3-1/2d. 15s. 2d.

Chain-making 2-3/4d. 11s. 11d.

Paper-box-making 3-1/4d. 14s. 1d.

Lace-finishing 2-3/4d. 11s. 11d.

Sugar confectionery and food-preserving 3d. 13s. 0d.

Tin-box-making 3-1/4d. 14s. 1d.

Metal hollow-ware 3d. 13s. 0d.

It is to be noted that these rates of wages, which are in every case much higher than those they supplanted, were fixed before or in the early part of the War, and owe nothing to the general inflation of earnings which took place at a later stage. From the figures of the Board of Trade Enquiry into Earnings and Hours of Labour, published in 1909, it appears that about one-third of the women employed in factories and workshops were at the time of the Enquiry in receipt of wages of less than 10s. per week, and the minimum rates above mentioned must be considered in relation to these, and not to later figures.

In the various trades, shirt-making and lace-finishing excepted, minimum rates of wages have also been fixed for adult male persons. These rates before the War were, save in one case, 6d. per hour or upwards, and probably one-quarter of the adult male workers in the trades benefited by them.

The relief given by the Boards to groups of particularly ill-paid women, such as the chain-makers, the matchbox-makers in East London, and the lace-finishers, has been the subject of many articles in the Press.

In the chain-making trade, where the Board affected both wives and husbands, the family income increased, in many cases, by 15s. and upwards per week. The bearing of these higher rates of wages on the food and clothing of those who received them, the physical condition of the school-children, and personal and social habits, forms part of the story which Mr. R. H. Tawney tells in _Minimum Rates in the Chain-making Trade_.]

On April 14th, 1910, there followed the dinner to celebrate the pa.s.sing into law of his favourite project, and at that dinner, under the presidency of Dr. Gore, then Bishop of Birmingham, representatives of Liberalism, Labour, and Conservatism met to do Sir Charles honour. There were many tributes paid to one whom Mr. Will Crooks dubbed "the greatest of anti-sweaters," and of them the happiest was, probably, that of Dr.

Gore:

"Sir Charles has played a great part publicly. In finding out, however, what has been going on behind the scenes, I am led to know that, great as has been the public part, there is a greater part Sir Charles has played in that region which the newspapers do not penetrate--the region where important decisions are hatched and matured, and differences made up, before appearances are made in public. His zeal has been unquenchable and consistent."

After Sir Charles's death, the same friend described his knowledge as "supreme and incomparable in all matters relating to industries and industrial law, transcending that of any of his contemporaries."

Sir Charles Dilke's nature led him to discount personal tributes, and his verdict on the triumph of the minimum-wage principle is best summed up in the words of Renan which he sent to one who worked with him: "C'est ainsi qu'il se fait que le vrai, quoique n'etant compris que d'un tres pet.i.t nombre, surnage toujours, et finit par l'emporter."

There is no part of his work which brings out more the quality of "self-effacement" to which Mr. Sidney Webb alludes. The cause of Labour is not even yet a popular one, and there are many who held and hold that his interest in it was not calculated to strengthen the political position of one to whom men looked as a military expert, or an authority on foreign affairs. But to him a grasp of social questions and a full recognition of the place which Labour should hold in the modern State were essential parts of a statesman's equipment, and appeals on the ground of a weakening of his position by his unremitting care for Labour interests could not have a feather's weight in the balance for one in whom the chord of self had long since been struck and pa.s.sed in music out of sight.

APPENDIX I

Statistics by Sir Bernard Mallet, Registrar-General

In 1907 Sir Charles Dilke, who had been a member of the Royal Statistical Society since 1866, accepted an invitation to become its President, in which capacity he served for two years, with notable advantage to the society. As the writer of the notice which appeared in the journal on the occasion of his death observed:

"While Sir Charles Dilke would have declined the t.i.tle of statistician, and, indeed, frequently referred to himself as a 'mere user' of statistics, he possessed in a high degree what may be termed the statistical instinct. His genius for marshalling facts in orderly sequence, his pa.s.sion for precision of statement even in minute detail, his accurate recollection of figures, as, indeed, of everything which he stored in the chamber of his encyclopaedic memory, are all primary attributes of the ideal statistician, though in his case the wide range and magnitude of the subjects in which he was interested led far beyond the field of statistical investigation." [Footnote: _Journal of the Royal Statistical Society_, February, 1911 p. 320]