The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2

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One neglected class of Labour whose grievances he sought to remedy by a
measure which has not yet reached fulfilment was that of the shop
assistants. Year after year, from 1896, he spoke at their meetings,
introduced their Bill in the House of Commons, urged its points,
inspired its introduction in the Lords, till at last the Liberal
Government, in 1909, introduced proposals embodying its main features.
The question of the representation of the shop assistants on the Grand
Committee when the Bill should reach that stage was discussed by him
just five days before his death, and many attributed very largely to his
absence the fact that the Government were obliged to permit mutilation
of their proposals before they became law in 1911. The National Union of
Shop Assistants have commemorated his work for them by giving his name
to their new headquarter offices in London.

An amusing tribute to his legislative activities and the effect they
produced on reactionaries is to be found in a speech by that famous
"die-hard" of the individualist school, the late Lord Wemyss, who warned
the House of Lords that their lordships should always scrutinize the
measures that came from "another place," and "beware of Bills which bear
on their backs the name of that great municipal Socialist, Sir Charles
Dilke."

A minor but important characteristic of Sir Charles's views as an
administrator was his conviction that wherever the interests of women
and children are concerned the inspectorate should include an effective
women's staff. The appointment of women inspectors for the Local
Government Board made by him in 1883 was a pioneer experiment, which he
vainly urged Sir William Harcourt to follow in the Home Department--a
reform delayed till twelve years later, when Mr. Asquith as Home
Secretary carried it out.

But his most important service to Labour in the direction of
administration is connected with the Home Office Vote. Though Bills were
closely followed by him in Committee, he refused to take part in any
obstruction upon them, holding that "all obstruction is opposed to the
interests of Radicalism, in the long-run." Acting on this view, he with
others helped the Government to get votes in Supply. The true policy
was, in his view, to obtain "ample opportunity for the discussion of
important votes at those times of the Session when we desire to discuss
them." So he dealt with Home Office administration on its industrial
side. Some more marked and centralized criticism of the workings of this
great department was necessary than that supplied by questions in
Parliament, correspondence, and private interviews. The administration
of the War Office, the conduct of Foreign Affairs, or of the Admiralty,
claimed the attention of the House of Commons as the annual vote on the
Estimates came round. It was not so with the "Ministry of the Interior,"
and it was practically left to Sir Charles to create that annual debate
on the Home Office Vote, which dealt with the industrial side of that
department's administration. Year after year he reviewed its work,
forcing into prominence the Chief Inspector's Report on Factories and
Workshops; examining the orders, exemptions, exceptions, and
regulations, by which the Home Office legislates under the head of
administration, always with a view to the levelling up of industrial
conditions and the promotion of a universal incidence of protection for
the workers. "We can trust no one but Sir Charles Dilke in Parliament to
understand the principles of factory legislation," wrote Mr. Sidney Webb
in comment on some destructive Government proposals as to industrial
law. This appreciation of the fundamental ideal underlying our
legislative patchwork of eccentricities went hand in hand with a half-
humorous and half-lenient understanding of his countrymen's attitude to
such questions. "We passed Acts in advance of other nations," he said,
"before we began to look for the doctrines that underlay our action, and
long before we possessed the knowledge on which it was said to have been
based." But for one afternoon in the year the attention of the House of
Commons was intelligently focussed on the details of the suffering of
those, the weakest workers of all, on whose shoulders the fabric of our
industrial system rests. Matters left previously to the agitation of
some voluntary society or to the pages of the "novel with a purpose"
were marshalled according to their bearing on different administrative
points, and discussed in orderly detail. The overwork of women and girls
in factory or workshop; the injury to health and the risks that spring
from employment in dangerous trades; poor wages further reduced by fines
and deductions; the employment of children often sent to work at too
early an age, to stagger under loads too heavy for them to bear; the
liability to accident consequent on long hours of labour--these were the
themes brought forward on the Home Office Vote, not for rhetorical
display, but as arguments tending to a practical conclusion, such as the
inadequacy of inspection or the insufficient numbers of the available
staff.

In the atmosphere thus created much progress was possible. Take, for
example, one dangerous trade, that of the manufacture of china and
earthenware, in which during the early nineties suffering which caused
paralysis, blindness, and death, was frequent and acute. Speaking as
late as 1898 on the Home Office Vote, and quoting from the official
reports, Sir Charles showed that the cases for the whole country
amounted to between four and five hundred out of the five to six
thousand persons exposed to danger. Under his persistent pressure
Committee after Committee inquired into this question and promulgated
special rules; attention was focussed on the suffering, and this evil,
though still unfortunately existing, abated both in numbers and
acuteness, till at his death the cases had fallen to about a fifth of
those notified in 1898.

His standpoint was one which raised industrial matters out of the arena
of party fight, and on both sides of the House he found willing
co-operators.

Help came not from the House of Commons alone. Lord James of Hereford,
Lord Beauchamp, Lord Milner, lent their aid on different occasions, and
Lord Lytton paid generous tribute to one "who was always ready to place
his vast knowledge and experience, his energy and industry, at the
service of any cause which has for its object the social well-being of
the people of this country."

In Sir Charles's crowded day, the early luncheon at half-past twelve
which allowed time for talk before the House met was often set aside for
interviews. During the meal itself conversation for the greater part
ranged wide, but towards the end he would turn to his guest with a
demand for information on the point at issue, or, if his advice were
needed, with an appeal for questions. The mass of information which he
elicited was due to the simplicity of his talk with all who came to him.
"He asked me my views as if I were of his own standing," said the young
secretary of the Anti-Sweating League after his first interview.

[Footnote: Apart from these scattered conversations, Sir Charles met the
united representatives of trade-unionism once a year at the opening of
Parliament, for then the Trade-Union Congress Parliamentary Committee
lunched with him and talked over Labour questions at the House of
Commons. This custom, which began in 1880 and lasted through Mr.
Broadhurst's secretaryship, was resumed in 1898, and was continued to
the end, and the meeting was fruitful of results. "These annual
conversations," says Mr. Davis, "had much more to do with the policy of
the legislative Labour party than could be understood by the party as a
whole, but always the object was to aid the main aspirations of the
Trade-Union Congress; indeed, from 1901 to 1906 the luncheons were
followed by a conference of Labour and Radical members in one of the
conference-rooms, where arrangements were made to support Labour Bills
or to oppose reactionary proposals made by a reactionary Government.
This would have continued, but in 1906 the larger Labour party returned
to Parliament made it unnecessary."

The advent of the "larger Labour party," though it affected the
conferences, did not affect the social meetings, which ceased only with
Sir Charles Dilke's death. The last of these dinners was one at which
the Parliamentary Committee in their turn entertained him, paying warm
tribute to the years of help he had given to the trade-union movement.
It was in the vacation, but there was a full attendance, all the
provincial members of the Parliamentary Committee without exception
coming up or staying in London for the dinner. One of his prized
possessions in the after-months was the gold matchbox they gave him,
inscribed with the badge of the Trade-Union Congress and the word
"Labour." Round it were engraved his name and the date of the
Parliamentary Committee's presentation.]

The reformer does not generally count on the aid of representatives of
the great Government departments, yet the independent and non-party
attitude of Sir Charles and the friends who worked with him for Social
Reform secured not only the attention of successive Ministers, but also
the help of those permanent officials who finally came to do him honour
at the dinner which commemorated the passing of the Trade Boards Act in
1910.

Conspicuous among the friends who worked with him in the House of
Commons for the promotion of Social Reform in different directions were
Mr. H. J. Tennant (afterwards Secretary for Scotland in Mr. Asquith's
Coalition Government), Captain Norton (now Lord Rathcreedan), Mr.
Masterman, and Mr. J. W. Hills, member for Durham, a leader of the
Social Reform group among the Conservatives. Mr. Hills's estimate of
this side of Sir Charles's Parliamentary achievements may fitly be given
here:

"Dilke's interest in Labour questions sprang not only from his sense
of justice and sympathy with the unfortunate, but also from his
clear and logical mind, which recognized that starvation,
underpayment, and servile conditions are the negation of that
democracy in which he believed for the United Kingdom and the
Empire. For this reason he was the admitted champion of the coloured
races; and he was the originator of a growing school of reformers of
all countries, who realize that the nations of the world must
advance together, for if one lags behind all suffer. He therefore
took a most active interest in the International Association for
Labour Legislation; he was the mainstay of the English branch, and
he kept closely in touch with men like Dr. Bauer of Switzerland, M.
Fontaine of France, and M. Vandervelde of Brussels, who were working
on the same lines in other countries. Of the earlier and more
difficult part of the work I saw nothing, for when I joined the
association it had an assured position, and had behind it two great
outstanding successes--the abolition of white phosphorus in the
making of matches, and the regulation of nightwork for women. His
knowledge of foreign countries, his familiarity with their
industrial questions and modes of thought, and his facility in their
languages, gave him, by common consent, a position such as no one
holds now. The work has been little recognized in England; our
Government, unlike foreign Governments, was slow to give help to the
association, and it was only Dilke's unbounded energy that compelled
them to support this important and hopeful movement.

"What struck me about his position in domestic Labour questions was
that his support or opposition was always the dominating fact of the
situation. What his relations were with Labour I do not know--he
never talked about it; but I have no doubt that he was their
counsellor and adviser throughout their history.

"Dilke had a deeper hold on Labour than his knowledge and ability
alone would have given him. He held their hearts and affection as
well. They looked upon him as the one man who had always stood up
for the workers, through bad and good report, whether they had votes
or had not. He had championed their cause when they were voiceless,
when it had little support in Parliament and gave little advantage
at elections. Nowadays such championship is both easy and
profitable, but that was by no means the case in the sixties and
seventies. It was exceedingly unpopular, and out of touch with the
political philosophy of all except a few. I was greatly struck with
this at the dinner given to Dilke in 1910 to celebrate the passing
of the Trade Boards Act. I realized that many had come there to do
honour to the one man who had always fought for them. They knew that
so long as he was alive there was someone who would support them,
regardless of consequences.

* * * * *

"Of his activities in Parliament, I remember most vividly those in
which I was personally concerned. In two such cases I was on the
opposite side; in two I worked with him. The Trade Disputes Act of
1906 was in reality carried by Dilke and Shackleton, for the
Government were hopelessly compromised by the two voices with which
nearly all their leaders had spoken. Again in 1907, when I was
trying to plead for Preferential Trade, he marshalled against it all
the force of his wide knowledge and ripe experience.

"On the other hand, in 1909 the luck of the ballot enabled me to
bring in a private member's Bill, and I introduced Dilke's Sweated
Industries Bill. Dilke was to second it. When the Bill came on I was
laid up with influenza, but I was determined to go to the House, and
got out of bed to do so, though when I got there I was only capable
of a few sentences and had to return to bed. But the effect of the
introduction of Dilke's Bill was to stir up the Government, so much
so that a few days later Winston Churchill introduced his Bill,
which, being a Government Bill, took precedence of ours and became
law as the Trade Boards Act. In 1910 again, on the Home Office Vote,
an occasion on which Dilke always made a masterly review of the
industrial history of the year, he asked me to second him, and to
deal particularly with lead-poisoning in the Potteries. He always
tried to detach Labour questions from party. It was entirely owing
to him that I took an interest in the subject.

"I never actually worked with him, but I should imagine that he
worked at a pace that few could follow. He was wonderful at
mastering facts, and he had the instinct of knowing what facts were
important. His method must have been somewhat unconventional, for
not only did he tear the heart out of a book, but he frequently tore
pages out as well. He had got what he wanted, and the rest was waste
paper."

III.

The testimony of Mr. Hills has touched on several objects for which Sir
Charles worked till his death, but of these one upon which he struggled
to establish an international understanding--that of the minimum wage--
claims a fuller consideration. The interdependence of Labour was always
apparent to him, and under the sympathy for suffering which inspired his
action on such questions as the native races or the treatment of the
alien Jew, there lay the sense that the degradation of any class of
labour in one country affected its status in all, and that to be insular
on industrial questions was to undermine everything that the pioneers of
English Labour had fought for and achieved.

The wages of many workers were left untouched by the imperfect
development of trade-unionism. Sweating was the result. To check this
evil, machinery must be created by legislation to deal with low wages,
while international understanding was essential here, as in other
questions of Social Reform, to enable the democracies of the various
countries to keep abreast.

The question of the minimum wage had occupied Sir Charles Dilke's
attention from the days of his discipleship to John Stuart Mill. He had
been much impressed by the debates which took place during his
presidency in 1885 at the Conference on Industrial Remuneration. A few
years later he had been present at a meeting convened by the Women's
Trade-Union League during the Trade-Union Congress at Glasgow, and the
impression made on him by that meeting he thus described:

"I had long been used to Labour meetings, but was then brought face
to face with hopeless difficulties, heartbreaking to the organizer,
because of a rooted disbelief among the workers in the possibility
of improvement. There is a stage in which there is hope--hope for
the improvement of wages and of conditions, possibly to be won by
combined effort. There is a stage, familiar in the East End of
London, when there is no hope for anything, except, perhaps, a hired
feather and the off-chance of an outing. Yet even the roughest
trades employing women and children in factories or large workshops,
to be found in the East End or in the outskirts of Glasgow, have in
them the remote possibility of organization. Home industries in many
cases have not even that bare chance. There is in them a misery
which depresses both the workers and those who would help them. The
home life of the poorest class of factory workers is not much, but
it means, nevertheless, a great deal to them. The home life of the
home worker is often nothing. The home becomes the grinding shop.
Factory slavery finds a refuge even in a hard home. 'Home' slavery
has none.... It is in this class, utterly incapable of fixing a
minimum wage for itself, that the evil of its absence stands
revealed in its worst form."

Turning, as was his custom, to our colonies for successful experiment
and example, he discussed with Mr. Deakin (the Victorian Minister of
whom he prophesied in 1887 that he would be the First Prime Minister of
that federated Australia which was then called "Deakin's Dream") the
example of a Wages Board which was being introduced in Victoria. An
Anti-Sweating League had been formed in 1893 in Victoria, and had
adopted this scheme, carrying it into law in 1895. The vital part of the
scheme was the creation of Conciliation Boards on which representatives
of employers and employed were represented--Boards which should discuss
wages and fix a minimum rate in the trade concerned.

As opposed to any larger scheme of conciliation for all trades, this
plan had to Sir Charles's mind certain marked advantages: it would not
interfere with the activities of the great trade-unions which already
stood possessed of similar voluntary machinery, while its application
only to those whose depressed and miserable condition invoked public
sympathy would create an atmosphere likely to induce successful and
harmonious development.

In 1898 he introduced his Wages Boards Bill, from that time annually
laid before Parliament; but it made no progress, and there were moments
when even his optimism almost failed. It was not till 1906, when a
Sweated Industries Exhibition was organized by the _Daily News_, that a
step forward was made. The sight of the workers, engaged in their
ill-remunerated toil, brought home to the public an evil till then too
little realized. The movement was international. A similar exhibition in
Berlin had already been held, and others now followed in America, in
Continental countries, in Scotland, and in various parts of England. In
this country a National Anti-Sweating League came into existence. A
great meeting of trade-unionists and Labour representatives was held at
the Guildhall, Sir Charles Dilke presiding on the first day, and the
question of the minimum wage was debated by Labour; Sir George Askwith,
Mr. Sidney Webb, and Mr. W. P. Reeves, with other Colonial
representatives, speaking from the platform. Many conferences followed,
and M. Vandervelde came from Belgium, M. Arthur Fontaine from France, to
combat insular and Tariff Reform arguments, and to point out that the
movement was not confined to our own shores. A great deputation
representative of every shade of political opinion, introduced by Sir
Charles Dilke and the Archbishop of Canterbury, waited on the Prime
Minister on December 4th, 1908, and laid their views before him. Sir
Charles put the Bill into the hands of the Labour party in Parliament. A
Committee of the House was appointed to consider the question of home
work and the proposed measure, and, after the stages which Mr. Hills has
described, it became law as the Trade Boards Act in 1909. The Act at
first applied to only four trades, but there have been several
additions. Of the first extension made after Sir Charles's death, and of
the probability of the adoption of the scheme by other countries, Sir
George Askwith wrote: "It will be the first stone on Sir Charles's
cairn. I can see them all coming up the hill, nation by nation."

[Footnote: France, the first nation to reach the hill-top, passed her
Minimum Wage Act for home workers in 1915.

Minimum rates of wages under the Trade Boards Act were in operation in
Great Britain (February, 1915) as follows:

_Female Persons over 18_
_per Week of 52 Hours._
Per Hour. Per Week.

Ready-made and wholesale bespoke tailoring,
and shirt-making 3-1/2d. 15s. 2d.
Chain-making 2-3/4d. 11s. 11d.
Paper-box-making 3-1/4d. 14s. 1d.
Lace-finishing 2-3/4d. 11s. 11d.
Sugar confectionery and food-preserving 3d. 13s. 0d.
Tin-box-making 3-1/4d. 14s. 1d.
Metal hollow-ware 3d. 13s. 0d.

It is to be noted that these rates of wages, which are in every case
much higher than those they supplanted, were fixed before or in the
early part of the War, and owe nothing to the general inflation of
earnings which took place at a later stage. From the figures of the
Board of Trade Enquiry into Earnings and Hours of Labour, published in
1909, it appears that about one-third of the women employed in factories
and workshops were at the time of the Enquiry in receipt of wages of
less than 10s. per week, and the minimum rates above mentioned must be
considered in relation to these, and not to later figures.

In the various trades, shirt-making and lace-finishing excepted, minimum
rates of wages have also been fixed for adult male persons. These rates
before the War were, save in one case, 6d. per hour or upwards, and
probably one-quarter of the adult male workers in the trades benefited
by them.

The relief given by the Boards to groups of particularly ill-paid women,
such as the chain-makers, the matchbox-makers in East London, and the
lace-finishers, has been the subject of many articles in the Press.

In the chain-making trade, where the Board affected both wives and
husbands, the family income increased, in many cases, by 15s. and
upwards per week. The bearing of these higher rates of wages on the food
and clothing of those who received them, the physical condition of the
school-children, and personal and social habits, forms part of the story
which Mr. R. H. Tawney tells in _Minimum Rates in the Chain-making
Trade_.]

On April 14th, 1910, there followed the dinner to celebrate the passing
into law of his favourite project, and at that dinner, under the
presidency of Dr. Gore, then Bishop of Birmingham, representatives of
Liberalism, Labour, and Conservatism met to do Sir Charles honour. There
were many tributes paid to one whom Mr. Will Crooks dubbed "the greatest
of anti-sweaters," and of them the happiest was, probably, that of Dr.
Gore:

"Sir Charles has played a great part publicly. In finding out,
however, what has been going on behind the scenes, I am led to know
that, great as has been the public part, there is a greater part Sir
Charles has played in that region which the newspapers do not
penetrate--the region where important decisions are hatched and
matured, and differences made up, before appearances are made in
public. His zeal has been unquenchable and consistent."

After Sir Charles's death, the same friend described his knowledge as
"supreme and incomparable in all matters relating to industries and
industrial law, transcending that of any of his contemporaries."

Sir Charles Dilke's nature led him to discount personal tributes, and
his verdict on the triumph of the minimum-wage principle is best summed
up in the words of Renan which he sent to one who worked with him:
"C'est ainsi qu'il se fait que le vrai, quoique n'etant compris que d'un
tres petit nombre, surnage toujours, et finit par l'emporter."