The Alien Invasion :: CHAPTER V. ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS.

CHAPTER V. ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS.

The economic aspect of this many-sided question is undoubtedly one of the gravest and most worthy of consideration. The unlimited influx of cheap, destitute, foreign labour, cannot but exercise a prejudicial effect upon the wages of the native working-classes. It forces the decent British workman to compete on unequal terms with those who are willing to work for any wage—however meagre—for any number of hours, and amid surroundings filthy and disgusting in the extreme. I do not of course say that it has this effect upon wages in all industries, but only in those trades which the evil has yet reached. These are not great trades, perhaps, in the sense of the textile or metal industries, but they are considerable industries all the same, and they give employment to hundreds of thousands of men and women.

In the trades and districts chiefly affected, this is the agency which reduces the price of labour to a level below that upon which Englishmen and Englishwomen can with decency and self-respect exist, and which renders effectual combination impossible. Every one with any practical knowledge of business, will admit that it is the lowest price which rules the market. If then we have a body of men combining together for the purpose of getting what they consider to be a fair wage, how can they maintain that combination, if, when a strike occurs, or any little dispute arises between employer and employed, by which the employed hope to get a little better terms for themselves, the destitute foreigner steps in ready to undersell them, and to work for little or next to nothing at all? Nor, as things stand, can the employers be greatly blamed either. In these trades few of them are great capitalists, the battle of life is pretty hard on them too, and in struggling to better themselves, they naturally seize every legal means that offers.

One of the worst features of this system is the "multiplication of small masters." The subject is a tempting one, but space forbids me to dwell on it. I would only say that the competition among these small employers is almost as fierce as the competition among the employed. Much indignation has been directed against the "sweater," the bloated human spider, who, according to Alton Locke, sucks the life-blood of his victims, or who more recently has been presented to us in the pages of Punch as a gorgeously-apparelled, champagne-drinking, cigar-smoking Hebrew, who, as he rakes in his gold, laughs and grows fat upon the sufferings of the wretched creatures sacrificed to his greed.

Such monsters do exist. Of that there can be no doubt. They are by no means exclusively Hebrews, neither are they confined to the tailoring trade alone; nor is it necessary to go as far as Whitechapel in search of them. But a dispassionate study of the facts will show that the great bulk of the "sweaters" are very poor; and that with their profits driven down by competition, they can hardly make a living. In fact, both employers and employed are alike the victims of this fierce competitive struggle, and of the craze for cheapness at any cost. The result is that the market is flooded with a quantity of cheap and inferior articles which injure the trade, and destroy the demand for good English work.

At present, the two trades most affected are the cheap tailoring and boot-making. In the former, as a direct consequence, all the horrors of "sweating" reign supreme. In the latter, the cheaper kind of work is now taken by foreigners entirely; hundreds of Englishmen who were formerly employed in it at a fair wage are driven out of employment, and now seek in vain for work. "Oh," but I hear some say, "they can turn their hands to something else." But it is not so easy for a man who has been apprenticed and brought up to a certain trade, to turn his hand to "something else." His craft is his bread, his trade is his capital; it is dear to him, for upon it he has lavished all his skill, all his energies. It is hard that he should be robbed of it by the foreigner. These two trades are not the only ones affected. In the cabinet-making, chair-turning, cigar-making, cheap fur trade, and other industries, the same evil is beginning to work, and always with similar baleful results. Labour is displaced; Englishmen are robbed of their work; and if they do not become paupers or something worse, they are driven from their homes to seek their fortunes anew in some distant land.

The evil effect of this unchecked immigration upon the price of labour is very marked. I have collected together a few articles made by "sweated" workpeople in the East End, and have traced out the cost of labour in each instance. These samples include a wooden "Windsor" chair, solidly put together, and neatly turned; it was sold for 1s. 9d., and the price paid for making it was 2-1/2d. A fur collarette of hareskin, dyed gray and lined—really a very decent-looking article—was sold for 1s. 6d.; labour received, 1-3/4d. A pair of button boots, leather-lined throughout, were bought for 3s. 11-1/2d.; labour received 2-1/2d. for the "lasting" (i.e. sewing, heeling, and putting together); this 2-1/2d. did not include nails, wax, thread, all necessary to the work, which had to be found by the workman. Three pairs of boots can be "lasted" in an hour. There is also the "finishing," which costs 2d., and five pairs can be "finished" in an hour. But the most striking instance of all is that of a knickerbocker suit, well-made, and properly adorned with braid, made by a "sweated" workwoman in the East End. It was bought at a shop for 2s. 11d., and the woman received for making it 5-1/2d.; which wretched pittance did not include needles, thread, and material used in the binding, all of which had to be found by the person "sweated." Now, I put it fairly and dispassionately to any unprejudiced person, if honest labour has no better reward to offer than this, what wonder if thousands of our people, in despair of earning a decent livelihood, are driven into vice and degradation—the men to drink, the women to prostitution?

Much has been said and written about the exact number of these alien immigrants, which, as has already been pointed out, in the present dearth of trustworthy statistics, cannot be accurately ascertained. It is not merely a question of numbers. I submit that it matters comparatively little to the main argument whether the arrivals in one particular year were a few thousands more or a few thousands less, or the precise numbers of "those who return again to the Continent," when there are already so many of these indigent foreigners in our midst. Even supposing for the sake of argument—I do not for one moment admit it—that the numbers arriving are comparatively small, they would still have a very bad effect upon the price of wages, in the trades and industries upon which they entered. The inflow of a comparatively small number into a neighbourhood where much of the work is low-skilled and irregular, will often produce an effect which seems quite out of proportion to the actual number of the invaders. From the native labourer's point of view, the mere fact of the presence of these low-living foreigners, ready as they are at any moment to step in and undersell his labour, constitutes a standing menace to his interests. In all the trades in which they are employed, the rate of wages is being perpetually beaten down.

Thus it follows that any argument drawn from the number of these destitute aliens, as compared with the total population of the United Kingdom, is obviously wide of the mark. We must consider their distribution in particular localities and particular trades; more than that, in order to arrive at any valuable result, we must examine also into the local and trade distribution of foreign labour conjointly.

In this connection the evidence comes almost entirely from the East End of London. As we have seen, the two trades principally affected are the cheap tailoring and boot-making. Let us consider the latter first.

Mr. Freak, Secretary of the Shoemakers' Society, stated before the Immigration Committee, that over 10,000 foreigners were engaged in the boot-making trade in the East End of London. He said:—"Until within ten or fifteen years ago, the Jew foreigners did not affect our trade much; but by degrees they have taken the work that men generally learned their trade on, such as the commoner class of work. They simply have taken it to themselves entirely, and the effect has been that hundreds of our men have to walk about, particularly in winter-time, who used to be employed on that class of work. These Jew foreigners work in our trade at this common work sixteen or eighteen hours a day, and the consequence is, they make a lot of cheap nasty stuff that destroys the market, and injures us. And if we have a strike on, or any little dispute occurs in our trade, when we might otherwise get a little better terms for ourselves, they go and take the work at any price, and so defeat our ends in getting or attempting to get our proper wages." Mr. Freak reckons that about 25 per cent. of the persons engaged in the whole of the boot and shoe trade in the city of London are foreigners; but that the commoner kind of work is monopolized by foreigners entirely. He further said that the introduction of this pauper labour has seriously affected the rate of wages received by the English operatives, not of course so much in the best shops, but very greatly in the commoner class of work. It had also the effect of reducing the employment of a large number of Englishmen, and of driving hundreds out of work altogether. He went on to say:—"I know that at the time when I first came to London, any one could get work at the middle or common class of goods; and now they are sent out to the homes or given to the sweaters, who take them on the system that they are working themselves in the way I have mentioned; and the price is reduced so low that to work single-handed a man could not get his living. He has to sweat his children or his wife; and if a man and his wife and children do not want anything more than just bread and cheese and sleep, then they might get a living out of it; because some of these Jews who come over will not come out of the house for a whole week. They will sleep in the same place where they work day after day. They simply get food and the barest raiment to cover them, and that is all they can get for their work. I do not think that these foreign Jews have created any new industry; but they have made the industry in common work more beastly, and I do think that they are doing an injury in our foreign markets by the stuff that they make, because a great quantity of it is made of cardboard and composition. The leather that is put into the sole is simply a bit of veneer. It is simply a thin sole covered over a composition—clump as we call it. It is composed of shreds of leather, ground up, and stuck together."

Now let us consider the cheap tailoring trade in the East End. It appears, upon the evidence of Dr. Ogle, whose work it is to prepare the statistical part of the Census, and whose opinion upon all such matters stands deservedly high, that of the persons engaged in the tailoring trade, in the parish of St. George's-in-the-East, over 80 per cent. are foreigners. Mr. Zeitlin, Secretary of the Jews' branch of the Tailors' Association, himself a Russian Jew, stated before the same Committee that there were altogether employed in the East End of London about 25,000 tailors, of whom 10,000 are men and 15,000 women. Out of the 10,000 men, "mostly foreigners and not born here," three-parts are Jewish, and one part not Jewish; and of the women three-parts are English, and one part Jewesses.

Mr. John Burnett, Labour Correspondent of the Board of Trade, who was specially deputed in August 1887 to make inquiries into the Sweating system in the East End of London, reported that matters were much worse there of late years, because of the "enormous influx of pauper foreigners." He made a rough calculation that of some 20,000 tailors in the East End of London, 15,000 were foreigners—that is, persons not born in England; and of the remaining 5000, nearly all were Jews born in England, who might almost be described as foreigners also, since in their habits and their customs they have nothing in common with the native community. He stated that there were not more than 250 Englishmen employed in the cheap tailoring trade in the whole East End of London. They have all been driven out by Jews. There is, however, still a considerable employment of Englishwomen. Mr. Burnett also drafted a memorandum on the immigration of foreigners, and in it he stated that in respect of the trades and districts chiefly affected by it, the evil had assumed serious aspects. He considered that London, Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Glasgow—to some extent Edinburgh, and also some other Scotch towns—were affected by the evil. There is of course the general lack of actual statistics as to the precise amount of the foreign population in these towns; but the Glasgow Trades' Council, for instance, though it has no specific information to hand on the subject, states generally that the tailoring in that city is overrun by Polish Jews. Mr. Burnett contemplates the time when the ready-made clothing trade will be entirely in foreign hands.

The presence of foreign immigration is felt also, though to a lesser extent, in cabinet-making and other trades. In the cabinet-making trade, Mr. Burnett estimates that of 23,000 persons engaged in it in London, 4000 are foreigners, chiefly Germans, and many of them German, Russian, and Polish Jews. He draws a distinction between the Germans pure and simple, and the German, Russian, and Polish Jews, for this reason. The Germans are found in the superior workshops of the West End, and they are found receiving the same rate of wages as their English shop-mates; but in the cases of the Russian and Polish Jews at the East End, they are receiving a much lower rate when they are employed, and they are employed on inferior work under entirely different conditions.

The foregoing considerations make it clear that the effect of foreign immigration upon the condition of our own workmen is not to be measured by the small percentage foreigners bear to the general population of the United Kingdom; but by their distribution in the particular trades of particular localities.

It is impossible to deny the displacing power of so large an addition to labour, in trades already overcrowded. The fact that under such circumstances the new-comers find employment, infers of necessity the displacement of labour previously employed. It implies also the denial of employment to natives anxious to obtain it. Nor is this large intrusion of a foreign element confined in its effects to the displacement of native labour alone. It brings down to its own level labour that is not displaced. In all trades that do not require long apprenticeship and technical skill, the supply of labour is greatly in excess of the demand. Competition to obtain employment is in consequence cruelly severe. The inevitable results are, the evasion of the law respecting factories and workshops, the reduction of wages to the lowest minimum, and the extension of the hours of work to the utmost limits of human endurance.

The effect of foreign immigration upon our labouring population is far greater than might at first be supposed. Its inevitable effect is the degradation of all the native labour employed, to the level of the foreign labour which is brought into competition with it. When the struggle is between those accustomed to a higher, and those accustomed to a lower standard of life, the latter can obviously oust the former and take their work. Just as a base currency drives out of circulation a pure currency, so does a lower standard of comfort drive out a higher one.

What do competent authorities say on the subject of native labour?

Mr. Goodman, who was a member of the Executive Committee of the Liverpool Tailors' Society, stated in his evidence before the House of Lords' Committee, that fifteen years ago the Sweating system only existed to a very limited extent in Liverpool; but that now it was carried on in a most extensive manner. He said that he accounted for its existence to a very large extent by the influx of foreigners, principally Jews. "At the present moment, fully two-thirds of the sweaters in Liverpool are foreigners; the majority of whom, as I have already stated, are not tailors at all, and have never served one hour in the tailor trade properly as an apprentice. I was told by a Jew some time ago, and he made a serious complaint to me on that head, that he was already finding the competition of his own people so severe, that being a practical man, he should have to do as they had done in many cases, lower his prices, or else he could not make a living. The competition, even amongst the Jews, is getting so severe that the prices are constantly tending to decrease; and I believe that to-day they are very much lower than they were a few years ago in Liverpool, through this competition of foreigners amongst themselves, together with their competition with the natives."

Mr. Allen, Secretary of the Master Tailors' Association in Liverpool, stated that, "As an Association, we have discussed the matter, and we are opposed to it in the main (i.e. foreign immigration), and we passed a resolution that the importation of pauper aliens be prohibited with this condition, the prohibition not to extend to skilled workmen imported under contract."

Mr. Keir, General Secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Tailors, thus moderately and dispassionately stated the case:—"I hardly know that it would be wise to stop immigration altogether. That would be an unnatural and hardly fair way of doing the thing; but I think it ought to be regulated in some way, and that the poorest, and most miserable, and the unskilled, perhaps, of foreign labour ought not to be thrown upon the markets of England to oppose and to act detrimentally to the interests of the English people. I do not think it would be wise, and I don't know that we could advocate, and I am sure any intelligent man would not advocate altogether, the complete prohibition of foreign labour; but at the same time I think there must be, or ought to be, some means devised whereby skilled labour should contend against skilled labour in a fair and straight market. It is not skilled labour against skilled labour; it is poverty thrown in our midst, and it is poverty competing with itself, as it were; and struggling in that way, and the manner in which they live, the food they eat, and the circumstances under which they exist, deprive them altogether of the comforts of home, you may almost say, as far as Englishmen, Scotchmen, or Welshmen are concerned."

One point remains to be noted. It has been urged that these immigrant aliens do not enter upon native trades, but introduce new industries of their own. If that were really the case, such a contention would undoubtedly have much weight. The Huguenots established new industries of silk, glass, and paper; the Flemings introduced the finer class of weaving into England; in both of these cases the alien influx was beneficial. But it cannot be seriously maintained that these low-class Jewish immigrants have stimulated or created new wants. They have created no new trade; they have debased old ones. I admit that they almost monopolize the cheap clothing trade, but even here they have created no new kind of industry.

The power of the German, Russian, or Polish Jew, accustomed to a lower standard of life, to undersell the English worker in the English labour market must be admitted by all, though the exact importance of it is, I know, a disputed point. The industrial degradation of the "sweated" workers arises from the fact that they are working surrounded by a "pool of unemployed," or superfluous supply of labour. So long as this standing pool remains, and so long as it is ever being augmented by the endless influx of cheap, destitute foreign labour, so long it is difficult to see how the wages of the low unskilled workers can be materially raised. Let the pool be gradually drawn off, and wages will rise, since the combined action of the workers will no longer be able to be defeated by the eagerness of the foreigner to take their work and wages. But the pool can never be drawn off until the stream which so largely recruits it is cut off at its source. If once this foreign influx is stopped, it will decrease by the natural process of evaporation.

Let us take a national view. The true standard of a nation's prosperity is to be found in the prosperity of its working-classes. The higher the rate of wages the better is the condition of the working-classes; the cheaper the labour of a country, the lower the condition of the people therein. One of the surest signs of the real rise of a nation is the elevation of the masses in their wages, their habits, their homes, their scale of living, and their condition generally. Anything which tends to reduce the price of labour tends also to reduce the labourer's standard of comfort and prosperity, and there can be no manner of doubt that this continuous influx of destitute foreigners does tend both directly and indirectly to reduce the profits of the wage-earning classes. Wages follow certain inexorable laws of supply and demand. If the supply of human labour exceeds the market demand, then the men will be beaten down; and how can the supply do otherwise than exceed the demand, when the market is being continually flooded by the influx of the cheapest kind of foreign labour?

"Unrestricted immigration," said a witness before the United States Committee, "is the degradation of American labour." If that be true in a country of such enormous resources as the United States, how much more true must it be in our own densely-populated little island? It is the high rate of wages which has given to the American workmen their unexampled prosperity as citizens. It is the recognition of this truth which has induced the United States Government to guard its doors so jealously against the entrance of the destitute and unfit of other lands. And they are right, not only on economic grounds, but for other reasons as well, since all history teaches us that in the long run degraded labour is sure to avenge itself upon all the classes above it.

"Rely upon yourselves; by societies, combinations, and well-directed strikes, you can secure higher wages and better conditions for yourselves." Such are the words of the "old" Trades Unionism, and in the main they are true enough. But in this instance they fall beside the mark; for, as I have already pointed out, combination is rendered impossible by this fierce competition of destitute labour from abroad. In the industries affected, any man or woman, or any body of men or women, who refused to work upon the sweating prices quoted, would be simply turned away, and their places filled by the foreigner. They are literally living from hand to mouth. They know that if they lose their wage one week, they will be destitute the next, and starving the week after. Under these circumstances it is not surprising to find that there exists among the native working-classes the strongest feeling against the great and increasing invasion of their rights. This feeling is not only confined to the trades chiefly affected, it is rapidly spreading throughout the country. So far as I have been able to judge, the feeling among the working-classes in favour of restrictive measures is practically unanimous. A vast majority of the great Trades Unions and Labour Organizations—not only those immediately affected, but others as well—have passed strongly-worded resolutions on the subject, recognizing that though the evil may not yet have sensibly affected their particular industry, yet it tends indirectly to do so. That the labour organizations are fully alive to the importance of this question is shown by the following letter, taken almost at random from hundreds of similar communications which have reached me during the last few months. It is from the Secretary of the "National Society of Amalgamated Brassworkers," Birmingham.[18] The arguments are so clearly and cogently put, that they are well worthy of being quoted here.

"The Executive desire me to say that they are unanimously of opinion that the time has come when the State should regulate, in the interests of British labour, the immigration of destitute aliens; and that they have observed with alarm the injury done to their brethren in the East End of London and other parts of the country by this element of unfair competition. My Executive desire me also to say that these conclusions are arrived at reluctantly, as they would like this country to be a really happy England, giving welcome to the oppressed of every land. While, however, they hold this view strongly, they are also of opinion that this broad principle must not be allowed, to any appreciable extent, to be the means of pauperizing English men and English women. The unchecked admission of this force has spread enough misery; and it is hoped that your efforts will bring about such restrictions as will put an end to an evil which has been the means of providing a surplus labour market to become a ready prey to the sweater."

These are weighty words. They come from an important Society, which, though its members have not yet felt the shoe pinch themselves, they recognize the truth of the old saying, "If one member suffers, all the other members suffer with it." This utterance does not stand alone; it is but an echo of the opinion of similar organizations throughout the country.[19] The English workman is naturally patient and law-abiding. It is his nature to suffer and be strong. All that he asks for—and surely it is not an unreasonable request—is that he should be allowed a fair field for his energies in the land that gave him birth. If this be denied him, then, sooner or later, will follow consequences, which, to quote Herbert Spencer, "no man may tell in language."

It is because this movement is so essentially a workingman's movement that I am confident of its ultimate success. Let us look the situation in the face. The balance of power has passed into the hands of the wage-earning classes—three-fourths of the electorate are wage-earners; I use the word in its widest sense. Therefore, it follows as a matter of course, that just as the land-owning classes when they had the power made laws in their interests; and the trading-classes when they had the power passed laws for their interests; so the working, wage-earning classes of this country, now that they have the power, will use it to protect and advance their interests likewise. And what can touch their interests more nearly than this unrestricted immigration of destitute foreign labour? "The flowing tide is with us." Whatever may be the immediate interests of the hour, labour questions constitute the politics of the future. There are signs all round the world that social problems and labour questions are gradually taking the place of older issues over which men have contended. There is no likelihood now of a war about creeds, no dynastic contest is now on the cards; the rivalries of nations and of races are not as potent as they were; but the lot of the "dim millions," the labouring-classes, who were ignored by all the warriors and statesmen of the past, is now forcing its way to the front. The contest which is gathering will not be around "exhausted factories and obsolete policies," as Mr. Disraeli said in 1852, but living problems, coming home to the hearts and to the firesides of all labouring men. Labour legislation is the legislation of the future; and it needs no prophetic eye to foresee that one of the leading measures in the labour programme of the future will be to protect the English working-men against this perpetual pouring in of destitute foreigners. Hitherto in only one constituency, Lewisham, has this question found a prominent place in an electioneering programme. We all know the result of that election. As it was at Lewisham, so will it be before long in every urban constituency throughout England. "Why," the working-classes are asking, "should we be robbed of our birthright by the refuse population of other countries?" Why, indeed! People are beginning to see that a great and crying evil flourishes in our midst; and when that fact has been thoroughly digested, means will soon be found to remedy it.

Clyx.com