The Commonweal/Volume 1/Number 2/The Industrial Remuneration Conference
THE INDUSTRIAL REMUNERATION CONFERENCE.
A gentleman in Edinburgh wanted to know this so badly that he actually gave a thousand pounds to have it argued out. Seven other gentlemen: Thomas Burt, M.P., J. Burnett, Professor Foxwell (of Cambridge), Frederick Harrison, the Earl of Dalhousie, K.T., Sir Thomas Brassey, K.C.B., M.P., and Mr. Giffen, were accordingly appointed Trustees. The Statistical Society, invited to name half-a-dozen others to form a Committee, nominated Sir Rawson Rawson, K.C.M.G., C.B., Professor Leone Levi, F. G. P. Nelsou, Stephen Bourne, David Dale (of Darlington), and the Rev. W. Cunningham (of Cambridge). These thirteen co-opted R. D. Roberts, A. II. D. Ackland B. Jones, W. II. Hey, and W. Crawford (of Durham), to serve on the committee with them. The Rev. W. Cunningham was appointed secretary; and Prince's Hall, Piccadilly, was engaged for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in the last week in January, in order to submit the questions to a Conference, at which Sir Charles Dilke undertook to preside. Now in order to have a Conference it is necessary to have persons to confer with. In this instance representative capitalists, workmen, economists, statisticians, and others specially interested in the question, 125 in all, were invited in certain proportions: 24 per cent. being Capitalists, 40 per cent. Trades' Unionists, 8 per cent. Friendly Society men, 12 per cent. Co-operators, and 16 per cent. a miscellaneous assortment of economists, socialists, individualists, philanthropists, over-populationists and and so forth. None of the 125 were personally invited. They were selected and sent up as delegates by the clubs, chambers of commerce, unions or societies to which the Committee had applied; and hence they had what the English people call a representative character: that is, they had the power of saying exactly what they pleased for three days in the name of the people who voted for them, just as a member of Parliament has for seven years. It will be seen that the proportion between the representation of capital and labour was, on the whole, favorable to the latter; and the advantage so allowed to the workers was not in any way decreased by the selection of papers or speakers. The arrangements of the Conference seemed perfectly fair throughout, and Sir Charles Dilke's treatment of the speakers was much more considerate than their treatment of him.
On the first day, Wednesday, January 28, the question before the Conference was: “Has the increase of the products of industry within the last hundred years tended most to the benefit of capitalists and employers, or to that of the working classes, whether artisans, laborers, or others? and in what relative proportions in any given period?”—Here was an opportunity for the statisticians. They rushed at it; and figures and percentages raged form ten o'clock until sunset. Mr. Giffen had his familiar say upon the subject; and Sir Thomas Brassey consoled the workers by pointing out that profits were constantly falling—“tending to a minimum.” His paper, however, was not merely a dry economic contribution to the figures of the labour question. Towards the close it soared into eloquence. “The excesses of self-indulgence,” said Sir Thomas, “have been held up to universal obloquy by the Poet-laureate in the opening lines of the Palace of Art. To the truly wise man, a life of ease presents no allurements. He knows how hard it is to avoid giving provocation to envy and hatred. He is humbled and saddened by the perpetual consciousness of the misery around him. Taste and the sense of duty alike point to simplicity of life. Wealth, if valued at all, will be valued only as a power which it is his duty to use as a steward for the public good.” It is impossible to describe the zest with which the reputation of the famous Brassey yacht and the envied Brassey diamonds gave to the applause with which this peroration was received by the assembly.
Mr. Loyd Hones followed with a paper which set forth clearly and forcibly the history and evolution of British industry much as Marx has described them. In the debate which followed, the capitalists and their retainers contended that statistics prove that the workman is better off than he has ever been, and that his position is steadily improving. The workers, on the other hand, contended that their personal experience proves that wages, as measured by purchasing power, have fallen. The capitalists objected that the personal experience of one or two workmen proves nothing. The workmen retorted that facts are better than figures; and that workmen agree better on their facts than statisticians on their figures. Mulhall, Leone Levi, Giffen, Baxter, Mechi, and Bagehot were cited, questioned, overthrown and set up again, cheered and laughed at in turn: the general impression left by it all being that half the figures were guess-work and the rest beside the point; that the workers taken as a whole, skilled and unskilled together, have gained ground on the proprietors; and that the proprietors feel ill-used in consequence. There was the usual dispute as to the position of the agricultural labourer, some describing him as a starved helot with ten shillings a week, and others angrily insisting that he is an overfed and pampered prodigal with fourteen. An effective speech by Mr. Ball, of the Agricultural Labourer's Union, threw much light on the fourteen-shilling calculation. Mr. Saunders, of the English Land Restoration League, also contributed useful to the discussion of the question. Mr. Glode Stapelton, from the Fabian Society, ventured on the then ice by raising the question of the morality of interest. The honors of the day, however, were borne off by Miss Edith Simcox, whose paper made such an impression that the demand for copies outran the supply before she had finished reading it.
On the second day the question proposed was: “Do any remediable causes influence prejudicially, (a) the continuity of industrial employment, (b) the rates of wages, (c) the well-being of the working classes?” Professor Marshall, of Cambridge, one of the authors of “The Economics of Industry,” which may be taken as a standard text-book of political economy, came forward with a paper which was one of the disappointments of the Conference. Professor Marshall thinks that we are much better off than we were, and admits that we might be much better of than we are; but considers that we are too apt to undervalue the former circumstance and to overrate the other. He deplored the vagaries of fashion, thought we might easily restrain them (this was, on the whole, the wildest view advanced at the Conference), and lamented the effect of annuitants of variations in the purchasing power of money. The delegates, who seemed in a vigorous revolutionary mood, evidently thought the Cambridge professor's attitude timid and his proposals paltry, and did not pause to consider whether he had not done a little service by studiously selecting for utterance points that, however insignificant, were not likely to be touched by anyone else. The discussion subsequently ran on co-operation, fair-trade, and profit-sharing, a plausible trick which was advocated by Mr. Sedley Taylor in one of the papers, and exposed by Professor Beesley in a speech admirable for its clearness and freedom from any attempt at oratorical display. Mr. Bradlaugh, as delegate of the Land Law Reform League, spoke early in the day on the impossibility of workmen ascertaining the truth as to the profits of their employers, with reference to which boards of arbitration are supposed to regulate wages. He advocated the establishment of a bureau of statistics on the model of that at Massachusetts. Mr. Ann Ellis, of the Huddersfield and District Woollen Weavers, made a very clever speech, in the course of which she deftly whipped up the skirt of her jacket and placed it close under the eyes of the astonished President as a sample of shoddy which was retailed at nearly four times the price she received for making it. A prolonged roar of applause rewarded this capitally planned and executed appeal to the common sense of the audience against the statisticians. Mr. Burnett, speaking to Mr. Lowthian Bell's paper, made the most convincing speech of the day, except perhaps Professor Beesley's.
On Friday, the last day, the Conference discussed “Whether the more general distribution of Capital or Land, or the State management of Capital and Land, would promote or repair the production of wealth and the welfare of the Community?” This was the field-day of Socialists and Land Nationalisers. Mr. Alfred Russell Wallace brought forward a scheme of compulsory allotment as a stepping-stone to his well-known Nationalisation scheme, which was advocated in a paper by Professor Newman. Mr. Balfour, M.P., in arguing against the proposals of Mr. Henry George (whose influence on the delegates was evidently strong) showed that he knew his own side of the question, which is more than can be said for many of Mr. George's opponents. Mr. J. Wilson, of the Miners' National Union, spoke with much natural eloquence on the injustice of the royalties levied by landlords from hard-working miners; but Mr. Wordsworth Donnisthorpe, as a mine-owner, assured him that the royalties, if abolished, would be saved to the capitalist and not to the miner. Lord Bramwell's paper, which without cant or compromise insisted on downright individualism, was read by Mr. Donnisthorpe, who represented the Liberty and Property Defence League, and who certainly showed himself second to no Socialist either in comprehension of the social problems under discussion or moral courage in dealing with them. Frederic Harrison, in a long paper, weak on the economic side, proposed to moralise the capitalist, as the phrase goes; or rather to wait and hope that the capitalist will grow out of his bad habits. Dr. G. B. Clark, delegated by the Highland Land Law Association, assailed Professor Nicholson with fierce and contemptuous invective for his paper on the land question. Dr. Clark wrought the delegates to the highest pitch of excitement attained during the Conference; and the subsequent speeches fell comparatively flat, with the exception of a stirring address by John Burns, of the Social Democratic Federation, and a speech on the ethics of the question from the Rev. Stewart Headian that agreeably and completely disappointed those strangers who, seeing a clergyman rise to speak, naturally expected something essentially unchristian from him. Shortly after he left the platform the Conference broke up with the usual votes of thanks and mutual admiration drill.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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