|
September 1851 My dear Martineau, . . . In a day or two I am meditating a visit to Froude, who is in Wales, and too much in solitude. Gladstone's letters just now are a powerful stimulus to public opinion. . . . Not the Socialists only, but numbers of workmen besides treat it as an abstract wickedness in a master to offer lower wages than are at any particular time existing. They have never any objection to a rise of wages; so I cannot say they treat the existing rate as a divinely appointed amount; but they do not see that if they are unwilling to bind themselves not to strike for a rise, they ought to concede in the master a moral right to lower. . . . What is to be done with those who will go on enunciating and propagating dangerous general maxims as abstract axiomatic truth? . . . Your method of making the masters determine how many shall enter a trade will succeed; but I do not see that it will succeed in ejecting. In the years of railroad excitement the London newspapers were enormously overworked, and a great increase no doubt took place in the numbers of printers (perhaps also in their wages); now the printers for some time have been in comparative depression. . . . I do not contend that all lowering of wages by masters is merciful and just, but that some may be; whereas the Socialists and Co. instantly declaim against all or any lowering, without entering into any details as to present or past history of the trade. When I said that machinery is in every light the friend of the poor, I do not think I overlooked the occasional mischief caused by its sudden introduction. . . . The effect of machinery is in the long run a steady rise of wages as well as a cheap supply of goods: the advantage to the poor is universal and permanent, the evil is partial and transitory. Moreover, the evil is immensely aggravated by their perverseness. Three generations of hand-loom weavers have been propagated in spite of the notorious misery it must cause. Machinery does not raise the rate of profits or interest; it does raise the rate of wages: compare Manchester and Buckingham in proof. . . . I do not think I am at all carried into reaction by unjust attacks on capitalists, but I am very strongly by the [right or wrong] belief that the first great want of the workmen is better morality and more thriftiness, not better masters or higher wages. I have not dared to print half of what are my convictions on this head. . . . The sufferings of the poor from bad air and bad water are quite a separate chapter. High wages do little to cure this. Indeed, in Manchester the workmen habitually prefer to save a shilling a week in house rent and spend it in beefsteaks, when the shilling would have got them a healthy instead of an unhealthy lodging. Bricklayers' wages are at present high in London; what is the consequence? I have at present a bit of a dwarf wall building in my garden. The men leave their work; I complain; the builder replies: "Men will not come to work on a Monday without much trouble." I fear this means that they drink on Sunday and are very "seedy" on Monday morning. The very men who are excited by high wages to drinking and idleness will make a violent outcry when a fall of wages takes place, and moreover will get the ear and sympathies of Maurice and Co. for their outcry. As to the milliners and tailors, my wife has the same experience as Mrs. Carlyle, that there are no good workwomen out of work, or earning low wages. Mrs. Wedgwood tells me that the Ladies' Committee could not get women to make the shirts. . . . Those who cannot get good wages are women who have spent their prime in idleness, and cannot work well enough to satisfy ladies. They sew badly, and get a poor pittance from the shops. As to tailors, I give more for a coat by four or five shillings than I did twenty-five years ago. . . . Until our national morality is much improved, and our moral organization repaired, there must be a large body of persons without any trade, art, or connection who will throw themselves into what seems to be the easiest art, and by their numbers will swamp it. . . .
Ever your affectionate
|