RESOLUTION. (Hansard, 6 April 1888)

§ MR. BAUMANN (Camberwell, Peekham)
, in rising to move as an Amendment— That in the present condition of the labour market, it is expedient, with a view to giving employment to a greater number of workmen, to discontinue the practice of working overtime in Government Yards and Factories, so far as may be done without injury to the Public Service, said, that it was unnecessary to offer any apology to the House for asking it to postpone the consideration of the Estimates for a short time in order to turn its attention, if only for an hour or so, to a subject which was quite as interesting and quite as important, both from an economic point of view, as the saving or the squandering of the nation's taxes. The condition of the labour market and of the sources of employment raised questions which not only puzzled philosophers and statisticians, but constituted for the practical politician the one question of supreme importance at the present time. The one subject which seemed to escape the sweep of our statesmen's telescope was the small Island in which we lived and had our being. He might be paradoxical and parochial in his ideas, but he could not help thinking that the number and the prospects of our unemployed artizans at home formed a subject quite as worthy of consideration as the condition of Egypt, the Canadian Fishery Question, the Indian liquor question, or the remuneration of that interesting person, the Royal rat-catcher. What was the present condition of the labour market? It was generally computed that there 602 were at the present time some 7,000,000 of adult male workers in the Three Kingdoms. According to the speech delivered by the hon. Member for the Rhondda Valley (Mr. Abrahams) last December, at the annual Congress of the Trades Union at Swansea, there were at the present time 900,000 workmen out of employment, and according to the same authority, the 6,000,000 workmen were working on an average 9 hours a-day. The hon. Gentleman went on to say that if that average of 9 hours a-day were reduced to 8 hours, the immediate effect would be to absorb 750,000 out of the 900,000 unemployed. He imagined, however, although, of course, he spoke under correction, that out of the 7,000,000 workmen there were 5,500,000 in employment and 1,500,000 out of employment, and he put the average daily normal working hours at 10 instead of 9, or 60 hours a-week. The average overtime worked by each man was 12 hours a week, which was a little loss than the average overtime at the Woolwich and Enfield Factories in 1885. As the normal hours of labour were 60 per week, and the average amount of overtime 12 hours per man, seeing that 12 was the fifth of 60, it followed that if the average of 12 hours overtime were distributed it would absorb 1,100,000 out of the 1,500,000 of unemployed artizans. Now, the Government of this country was every large, if not the largest, employer of labour. It employed, or did until recently, at Woolwich and Enfield alone, more than 10,000 men, and at the five great Dockyards it employed 21,000. It was, therefore, necessary to look with special solicitude to see what attitude the Government took up on the subject of overtime. He should also be glad to learn from some Member of the Government what view they took of the respective merits of overtime and night shifts. He thought it was necessary that there should be an authoritative declaration on the subject in order that the country might know the mind of the Government, especially as there was reason to believe that a sensible and wholesome alteration had been made recently. What the public were able to learn from Parliament Returns was that in the year 1885–6—he apologized for the age of the figures he was compelled to give, but it would have taken too long to bring the figures 603 up to a more recent date—in the year 1885–6, out of a total of 10,254 men employed at the Government establishments at Woolwich and Enfield, 7,760 worked, on an average, 12½ hours per week overtime for 37 weeks out of the 52. The total number of hours overtime worked at Enfield and Woolwich in that year was 4,832,950, which, if distributed among fresh men, would have given employ to 1,549 hands for 52 weeks at 60 hours a-week. Thus every five men working overtime kept out a sixth. It was, however, said that the sixth man was not there to accept employment, and, therefore, that the Government must work overtime because the necessary labour was not available. He know it was a prevalent belief that all those called the unemployed were unskilled labourers, and some persons went so far as to say that the unemployed were for the most part thieves and roughs. Heaven knew what the unskilled artizans might come to if they were left no alternative but crime and the workhouse. Unfortunately it had been shown that up to the present time a largo percentage of the most skilled workmen had for some time past been living on the unemployed benefit fund of the Trades Unions. He wished to prove that the sixth man was there, and to prove, also, from statistical tables and from the Trades Unions returns, published in the form of a Blue-Book, that highly skilled artizans of the very same description as those who had been working overtime in the Government Dockyards and factories were walking about the streets and factories waiting for employment and living on the unemployed benefit funds of the Trades Unions. What was the description of men who had been working overtime at Woolwich and Enfield? They were engine fitters, engineers, smiths, boiler makers, iron ship-builders, moulders, carpenters, joiners, wheelwrights, masons, brickmakers and others. It hon. Members would turn to the tables of the Trades Union Societies they would find that in the year 1886 there were in the Amalgamated Society of Engineers 7.4 per cent of its members receiving assistance from the unemployed benefit fund, and necessitating an expenditure on the part of that Society of £1 12s. 5½d. per member; of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Engineers 7.8 604 per cent of its members were receiving assistance from the unemployed benefit fund, necessitating an expenditure of £1 12s. 7d. per member; the Steam-Engine Makers' Society had 5.8 per cent of its members receiving assistance from the unemployed benefit fund, necessitating an expenditure of £1 2s. 11d. per member; the Friendly Society of Iron Founders had no loss than 13.9 per cent of its members receiving assistance from the united benefit fund, involving an expenditure of £2 14s. 7d. per member; the United Society of Boiler Makers and Iron Shipbuilders had 22.2 of its members receiving assistance from the unemployed benefit fund, entailing an expenditure of £l 7s. 11d. per member; the United Kingdom Pattern Makers Association had 9.6 per cent of its members receiving assistance from the united benefit fund; and the Associated Blacksmiths' Society had 14.4 per cent receiving in a similar way. He maintained that those tables were a splendid record of the fight which the Trades Unions of the country had been making with distress and the want of employment; but the Trades Unions could not go on indefinitely standing this strain upon their resources. There was another feature in regard to overtime work, which he desired to bring under the notice of the House—namely, its costliness and its extravagance. By paying wages of time and a half or time and a quarter to a tired man, they were paying an appreciated price for a depreciated article. He put the produce value of overtime work at a quarter below that of ordinary time; but they paid a quarter more for it. In this way for 4,800,000 hours of overtime work, which was in round numbers the amount of overtime work done in Woolwich and Enfield in 1885, the men claimed and were paid wages for 6,000,000 hours at time and a quarter, or 7,200,000 hours at time and a half. But the produce value was worth a quarter less than ordinary time; so that for 3,600,000 hours' work they paid 6,000,000 hours' wages. This feature of overtime work was perfectly familiar to all large employers of labour, and he was not surprised to find that the Government officials one and all united in condemning the wastefulness and extravagance of overtime. This was shown by the 605 evidence given before Lord Morley's Committee on the Manufacturing Departments of the Army, which reported last year. Among the witnesses examined was Colonel Barlow, the Superintendent of the Royal Laboratory at Woolwich, who said, in answer to question 3,302— I think it advisable to spread your work over as large a number of men as you can. In the case of overtime you give the men a good deal of extra pay for the time being, and then it stops; and, so far as the men themselves are concerned, that is a positive disadvantage. I think as a Government work we are right to employ a greater number of men instead of employing a smaller number and giving them a tremendous amount of work. For instance, I found them working up to 10 o'clock at night, and as soon as I could, I introduced night shifts and extended the work over a greater number. General Maitland, the Superintendent of the Gun Factory objected to overtime on the ground that it was extravagant and wasteful; as also did Mr. Hurst, Accountant and Auditor to the Manufacturing Departments, on the score of expense. The Committee on the Administration of the Dockyards reported in the previous year. Before that Committee, in 1886, Admiral Herbert, Admiral Superintendent at Portsmouth Dockyard, in answer to question 1,615, condemned "extra, time" as very expensive, and said— That it was impossible for men to work those long hours and give us any return proportionate for our money. Mr. John Ruddy and Mr. Robert Barnaby joined in the same view. That was a formidable list of witnesses, and he would like to know, and the public were interested in knowing, whether the public had really parted for ever with a system of work which was so unjust to those who had no work at all, which was so costly to the ratepayers, and which was so injurious to the moral and physical welfare of this generation. He would like to know whether it was the fact that overtime had been forbidden at Woolwich and Enfield. He should like to know further, whether that prohibition extended to all Government Departments of labour, and whether it was a temporary suspension or a permanent regulation. The House knew that six weeks overtime had already been worked at Enfield this year. He should like to know what was the nature of the work 606 done by overtime, and if the work could not have been done by night shifts. He would further like to know if in the future the Government were going to substitute working by night shifts for a system of working by overtime. He asked these questions in no spirit of hostility to the Government. He simply asked for information which he thought would be interesting to those who were specially concerned with this branch of the labour question. The question of overtime in Government yards, shops, and factories, and its relation to the labour market, was merely the fringe of that very much larger question which, to an over-populated country, was the one question of supreme moment and surpassing interest—namely, the general distribution of wages and employment throughout the country. It seemed to him to be a question of whether one man was to work overtime and another man to work no time, of whether two men were to work for eight hours or one man for 16 hours. It seemed to him to be a question whether the labourer Dives would allow the labourer Lazarus to pick up the crumbs which fell from his table, or whether he would insist on sweeping them up for his own benefit. We know that any universal application of an Eight Hours' Bill would be impossible in a society like ours, and, it possible, it would be undesirable. It would be impossible, because, before contemplating the adoption of an Eight Hours' Bill, they must first of all get foreign workmen in other countries to reduce their hours of labour, or else they must shut them out of this country by the strictest protection. Any advocate of an Eight Hours' Bill who did not realize that was playing a game at blind man's buff. An Eight Hours' Bill would be impossible in the second place, because intellectual labour and the retail work of redistribution in shops differed essentially from manual labour, and could not be controlled by the same measures. He repeated, therefore, that it was impossible to put a whole society into the Procrustean bed of an Eight Hour Bill. But the working classes themselves had the same power over their hours of labour as they had over the wages they received. They could reduce their hours by the same lever by which they raised their wages; it was by the working classes themselves that 607 the hours of labour must be shortened in this country. It was by combination, by the pressure of public opinion, by voluntary association, rather than by any Eight Hours' Bill that the excessive hours of labour in this country must be shortened. It had already been done in South London by a voluntary closing movement, under the auspices of his hen, Friend the Member for Dulwich (Mr. Maple). They were told that working men who got overtime liked that overtime, and, like all monopolists, refused to share it with their unemployed brethren. He very much doubted that, because, in the first place, working men were very just to one another, and because, in the second place, the unemployed were a terrible tax on the employed, a far greater tax upon the working classes than to any other class. Not only were they a burden on the rates of the parish and the funds of the Union, but upon the earnings of the working men from whom the unemployed were always begging or borrowing. The truth was, that a country with an overstocked labour market like ours must be prepared to do one of two things—either to secure by some means or another a more equal distribution of wages and employment, or be prepared to deal with a very large increase of the pauper and criminal classes. We must face this, because it faced us. Those who would not face facts were sure to be made to feel them. It was the same problem which 40 or 50 years ago stung the sardonic humour of Carlisle into prophecies—then described as the mutterings of dyspepsia—now being realized day by day. It was the same problem which moved the fierce indignation of Kingsley, and which lent to the pages of Disraeli's Sybil their most pathetic interest. The same problem was now again before us, but under conditions how changed. There was now a larger population, no Corn Laws to abolish, no landed aristocracy at whose doors they could lay the burden of their sufferings. The condition of the landed classes in tins country was pitiable in the extreme, was almost such as might "draw iron tears down Pluto's cheek." That condition had been reached while we had been enjoying the unrestricted importation of every article under the sun, human beings included. For 40 years the gospel of every man for himself and the Devil take the hindmost, 608 had been preached and practised in this country with amazing success. It had produced cheap money and the sweating system; a million of unemployed, and money so cheap that the Chancellor of the Exchequer came down and reduced the interest on the National Debt. What a commentary on the gospel of gain from ruin! A period of unexampled cheapness of money, said the hon. Baronet the Member for the University of London (Sir John Lubbock) and a population of something like 5,000,000 of men, women, and children who could get no work or wages, or who were forced to work under conditions which had lately been revealed, and which made a very ugly stain indeed on the gorgeous garment of our modern civilization. Was it not time, then, to take stock of our industrial condition, and were they not entitled to look to the Government for guidance and direction on that labour question, for on no question more than that did the public of this country require more guidance and direction, because economic distress was always more dangerous and more difficult to deal with than political discontent. He expected to receive a sympathetic, and a satisfactory answer from the Government; and he was certain that the formal repudiation of the principle of overtime by the Government would have a sensible and salutary effect in diminishing excessive hours of labour throughout the country, and would thus be a first step towards that more equal distribution of profits, wages, and work which alone could save an over-populated country from industrial anarchy and social ruin. The hon. Member concluded by moving the Amendment which stood in his name.

§ MR. HOWARD VINCENT (Sheffield, Central)
seconded the Amendment.

§ THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (Mr. E. STANHOPE) (Lincolnshire, Horncastle)
said, that his hon. Friend the Member for Peckham had brought forward a very interesting subject in moving his Resolution; but he was afraid that, speaking on behalf of the Government, he could not accept the assumptions contained in that Resolution. Those assumptions were two in number. His hon. Friend assumed, first, that there was a practice of working overtime in the Government Dockyards and manufactories; and, next, that if that practice were discontinued a greater number of persons would be employed in those establishments. He was afraid that his hon. Friend and he approached that subject horn somewhat different points of view. His hon. Friend approached it from the point of view of the condition of the labour market and the dearth of employment which existed in many places. Everybody, of course, had great sympathy with the unemployed workmen, and must feel that it was exceedingly desirable that the trade of the country should be in such a state as to give full employment to all our working population. The Government, therefore, had great sympathy with his hen. Friend when he expressed the earnest desire that work might in some way or other be found for the unemployed. But they had to approach matters affecting the Government manufacturing establishments from a somewhat different point of view from that of his hon. Friend. They had to conduct the Government yards and factories in the manner which would secure the greatest efficiency and the greatest economy. Those were the rules by which alone they must be guided; and, looking at the question from that point of view, the Government absolutely condemned systematic overtime. They thought that systematic overtime was costly, both as regarded the money that was expended and as regarded the quality of the work that was produced. He might point out that they had not in the Departments either under the First Lord of the Admiralty or under the Secretary of State for War any systematic overtime at all. His hon. Friend had quoted certain Returns which went as far back as 1885–6, and complained that there was no material to his hand of later date; but if he had gone to the Library he would have 610 found there a continuation of the Return that was moved for by the hon. Member for East Bethnal Green (Mr. Howell) last year, and which had since been presented, showing the amount of overtime at Enfield and Woolwich in 1886–7. From that Return it would be seen that, although in 1885–6, during a time of great pressure, there was a considerable amount of overtime at those manufacturing establishments, yet since that date the amount of overtime had been enormously reduced, and at present there was no systematic Overtime at all, When his right hon. Friend the present First Lord of the Treasury (Mr. W. H. Smith) was at the War Office he looked into that matter very carefully, and issued an order that the practice of overtime must be discontinued except in cases of urgency at the manufacturing establishments of the War Office; and since that period the practice had been discontinued, and at present systematic overtime did not exist there. As to the Dockyards, he could not, of course, speak with anything like the same authority; but he had obtained from his noble Friend the First Lord of the Admiralty (Lord George Hamilton) the information that the working of overtime in the Dockyards and Factories of that Department was entirely discontinued so far as could be done without injury to the Public Service, and was only resorted to in cases of great urgency or emergency, where it was necessary to advance come special parts of the work, and that it had been arranged to work night-shifts wherever practicable. So that as regarded the Dockyards systematic overtime was altogether discontinued. It was, of course, perfectly clear that occasional overtime must sometimes take place, as, for instance, for the repair of machinery or the preparation for night-shifts, or to advance some special part of the work for which special skilled labour was required. His hon. Friend had referred to overtime being worked at Enfield Factory at a very recent period. It was true that overtime was sanctioned for a few weeks at Enfield in order to advance special parts of the new rifle, which required special skill, and which they wished to advance as quickly as possible. It was their desire to put the new rifle into the hands of the troops for manual drill with the least possible delay, and 611 that could only be attained by employing certain special men overtime for a short period. If he, as Secretary of State for War, had interfered and not allowed that limited amount of overtime the only effect would have been to delay the time at which the new rifle was put into the hands of the troops, and it would not have been possible to employ one single additional man at Enfield. Therefore, as regarded the Government establishments they had discontinued systematic overtime, and they did not resort to overtime except in cases of urgency. They could give his hon. Friend no further assurance than that. In a case of urgency they must claim the right to employ the men in the Dockyards and Government manufacturing establishments for overtime if the interests of the Public Service required it. But, as his hon. Friend said his main object was to obtain a declaration from the Government in regard to overtime, his hon. Friend would admit that he had now given as full and complete an assurance as to their policy and practice as could be fairly asked from them; and therefore he supposed that his hon. Friend would not think it necessary to put the House to the trouble of a Division on his Resolution.