The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
asylums? Why not let them do some of the hand work for which no brains are required? As they are idiots they would probably be willing to work for even less than the ideal "living wage". If Mr Grinder had ever tried he would know that manual workers have to concentrate their minds and their attention on their work or they would not be able to do it at all. Neither can I agree with what he says about the masters being the "friends" of their workmen, because he knows as well as we do that no matter how good or benevolent an employer may be, no matter how much he might desire to give his men better conditions, it is impossible for him to do so, because he has to compete against other employers who would not adopt his methods. It is the bad employer, the sweating, slave-driving employer, who sets the pace for the others. If any employer to-day were to resolve to pay his workmen such wages as he would be able to live upon in comfort himself, and if he did not require them to do more work every day than he himself would like to perform, he would be bankrupt in a month.
'Mr Grinder tells us that the interests of masters and men are identical, but if an employer has a contract it is to his interest to get the work done quickly for the sake of his profits, but the sooner the job is done, so much the sooner will the men be out of employment. How can it be true then that their interests are identical?
'Again, let us suppose that an employer is, say, thirty years of age when he commences business, and that he carries it on for twenty years, and employs forty men more or less regularly during that period, and that their average age is also thirty years. At the end of the twenty years it usually happens that the employer has made enough money to enable him to live for the remainder of his life in ease and comfort. But what about the workmen? All through those twenty years they have earned but a bare living wage, and have had to endure such privations that those who are not already dead are broken in health.
'In the case of the employer there had been twenty years of steady progrees towards ease and leisure and independence. In the case of the majority of the men there were twenty years of deterioration, twenty years of steady, continuous sinking towards the scrap heap, the workhouse, and premature death. How can it be true to say that their interests were identical with those of their employer?
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