Alternative Models of Economic Organisation and Existing Checks Against Free Competition

Black argued that free competition and laissez faire were not the only possible or necessary model of organisation in a successful national economy. Even in industrialised Britain, she pointed out, alternative models existed side by side with free competition and proved by their success the viability of their underlying principles of fair pay and fixed rates of wages. She countered Manchester liberalism by pointing out that some departments of the modern British economy already demonstrated that a state of unchecked competition was neither necessary for a trade's success, nor was it even desirable. There existed certain branches of the economy which were entirely free of the evil of underpayment.

Crafts of skill like baking and brewing, gold smiths or carpentry, for instance, trades which demanded years of training, appeared to be immune against sweating, Black specified. So were certain departments of specific trades, like the printing trade which employed skilled type-setters alongside sweated delivery personnel. Black also listed the professions, hospitals, museums, libraries, the army and navy, the civil service and the post office to illustrate her point that trades might be run without the kind of free competition which set in motion the cycle of underpayment.

“Military and naval officers are not asked what is the lowest figure at which they will consent to serve their country”, Black stated rather dryly; “nor do we find in advertisements for town clerks or borough surveyors that preference will be given to the candidate willing to accept a reduction of pay.” ⁷⁴³

Even the trades most notorious for sweating like the dress-making trades featured wide differences in payment from one workshop or factory to the next. Black told of two girls, living within walking distance of each other in the East End who both worked pressing trousers. While one could make up to 16s a week in a firm of good reputation, the other was paid but 7s for the same work⁷⁴⁴. In the public transport business, the London County Council demonstrated that sweating traffic workers was not a necessary condition for staying in business. On the contrary, by introducing a ten hours day, a minimum rate of wages and extra pay for overtime for those occasions when fog, fires or heavy traffic delayed a journey, the LCC had established itself firmly in the business. More still, by offering better and safer service than its competitors, the LCC-run transport business had actually

743 Black, Clementina, Sweated industry and the minimum wage, 1907, p.181

744 Black, Clementina and Adele Meyer, Makers of our Clothes: a case for trade boards. Being the results of a year's investigation into the work of women in London in the tailoring, dressmaking, and underclothing trades, 1909, p.50

steadily expanded and made profits for the past decade⁷⁴⁵. Black inferred from these examples that underpaying labour was not essential for staying in business even where competitors resorted to that means.

Cooperative societies, which ran on the basic principle of fair prices for fair work, were in Black’s eyes another flourishing example of an alternative model of industrial and commercial organisation.

They, too, had proven successful in the face of sweated competition. The movement had considerable momentum and should not be underestimated in size and influence, Black believed.

She recounted that in 1904, the total value of goods sold by cooperative societies was £90.681.406.

Their membership ran to 2.103.113 people. Black pointed out that apart from checking free competition and ensuring fair trade, cooperatives had the added benefit of making men and women feel part of a larger community and the inheritors of a tradition. “[I]n the ocean of commercial competition”, Black wrote, “cooperation lies like a fertile land inhabited by workers who are putting into their own pockets the profits of their buying and selling, and very often also of their labour.”⁷⁴⁶ Checks against free competition were thus already in place in certain sectors of the British economy. Black explained that moreover there also existed a number of attempts to interfere with and to keep at bay the worst excesses of laissez-faire in other trades. She once more pointed to the terms of the Factory Acts. They had shortened hours of work for women and children and contributed to shortening those of men, introduced regular breaks, provided against overcrowding in the workplace and introduced the instrument of factory inspection. Although the Acts were not universally observed, in many trades they bore visible effects. “Sanitary conditions are still sometimes far from satisfactory, although greatly bettered of late years”, Black wrote. “There is perhaps no point upon which the influence of women inspectors has been more beneficial.”⁷⁴⁷

Black remained true to her roots when she argued that the most effective check on free competition in existence was trade unionism. The analysis of the interrelation between poverty and wages in modern industry had shown Black that the individual was absolutely powerless by him- or herself to raise his or her wage. “The individual worker”, she wrote, “who has no sort of monopoly [read:

skill, A. M.] is no more able to regulate the payment for his services than an apple or a sack is able to regulate its market price,”⁷⁴⁸ By combining and agreeing on a certain minimum among themselves workers could to some extent withstand underpayment and break up the downward spiral of sweating.

The method of combining had proven particularly successful among workers of a certain level of

745 Black, Clementina, Sweated industry and the minimum wage, 1907, p.101

746 Black, Clementina, Sweated industry and the minimum wage, 1907. p.180

747 Black, Clementina, Sweated industry and the minimum wage, 1907, p.33

748 Black, Clementina, Sweated industry and the minimum wage, 1907, p.169

training who could not be replaced quickly and easily as the example of the Lancashire cotton mills illustrated. Once again, Black insisted that some degree of regulation could prove beneficial to both sides of the bargain, employers as well as employed. Not only had the union in the cotton mills of Lancashire negotiated higher wages and shorter hours for the workers, but the benefits of their activism could also be reaped by the mill owners whose profits had soared thanks to the greater strength, health and efficiency of their better-paid labourers.

It was true, Black admitted, that with strikes the unions employed a powerful weapon potentially disruptive of trade. But in strikes, as in a war, Black explained, responsibility for the conflict rested with both parties and seldom in equal degree. In Black's eyes, the apportionment of blame depended largely on the cause for which each party fought. While the employer in most instances fought for cheap labour and the unions primarily for access to the amenities of life which the employer already enjoyed, Black was in no doubt who was to be condemned in industrial conflict. “In nine cases out of ten”, Black argued, “the union is really fighting the battle of the whole nation, while the employer is fighting against it.”⁷⁴⁹ Poverty was a great enemy of trade and progress and by fighting poverty, the unions supported the cause of national efficiency and economic growth.

Yet, with all her faith in the beneficial features of trade unionism, her experience as honorary secretary of the Women’s Protective and Provident League during the 1880s had taught Black that trade unions by themselves were unable to destroy sweating in many industries, especially those in which the fabrication of parts was let and sublet “until the origin of the whole [was] found in the dim, one-roomed tenement of the slum where the victim of the sweater [carried] on her tragic struggle with famine”⁷⁵⁰. Labour combinations had succeeded in regulating wages in the great industries whose operations could only be carried on on a great collective scale. But there, too, were exceptions. The trade union of railway workers had grown strong over the past couple of years; yet, it had not succeeded in securing for its members reasonable working hours or decent rates of pay⁷⁵¹. Trade Unionism had never yet been permanently successful in shortening the hours and raising the pay of casual and temporary labour, of the unskilled, homeworkers and women labourers, although the Women’s Trade Union League, as the Women’s Provident and Protective League called itself since 1891, had made some headway among the latter in recent years⁷⁵². Workers needed to have a certain level of pay and a certain amount of independence at their disposal in order to be able to combine, make contributions to a joint fund and to face the risk of unemployment or dismissal which went with labour disputes, Black explained. “Thus, the very poorest are shut out from the

749 Black, Clementina, Sweated industry and the minimum wage, 1907, p.184

750 Black, Clementina, Sweated industry and the minimum wage, 1907, p.XXIV

751 Black, Clementina, Sweated industry and the minimum wage, 1907, p.33ff.

752 Black, Clementina, Some Current Objections to Factory Legislation for Women, 1902, p.195

only means by which the workers, as such, can improve their condition”⁷⁵³, she stated. They in particular needed outside help and collective interference with the course of unlimited competition in order to be lifted onto a level where they were truly free to and capable of making their own bargains.

6. The Costs to the Community and the Need for Collective