Britain For The British Part 20

Is it likely, then, that we can keep all our foreign trade, or that what we keep will be as profitable as it is at present?

During the last few years there have emanated from the Press and from Chambers of Commerce certain ominous growlings about the evils of Trade Unionism. What do these growls portend? Much the same thing as the mutterings about the need for lowering wages.

Do we not remember how, when the colliers were struggling for a "living wage," the Press scolded them for their "selfishness"? The Press declared that if the colliers persisted in having a living wage we should be beaten by foreign compet.i.tors and must lose our foreign trade.

That is what is hanging over us now. A demand for a general reduction of wages. That is the end of the fine talk about big profits, national prosperity, and the "workshop of the world." The British workers are to emulate the thrift of the j.a.panese, the Hindoos, and the Chinese, and learn to live on boiled rice and water. Why? So that they can accept lower wages and retain our precious foreign trade.

Yes; that is the latest idea. With brutal frankness the workers of Britain have been told again and again that "if we are to keep our foreign trade the British workers must accept the conditions of their foreign rivals."

And that is the result of our commercial glory! For that we have sacrificed our agriculture and endangered the safety of our empire.

Let us put the two statements of the commercial school side by side.

They tell us first that the workers must abandon the land and go into the factories, because there they can earn a better living.

They tell us now that the British worker must be content with the wages of a coolie, because foreign trade will pay no more.

We are to give up agriculture because we can buy more food with exported goods than we can grow; and we must learn to live on next to nothing, or lose our foreign trade.

Well, since we left the land in the hope that the factories would feed us better, why not go back to the land if the factories fail to feed us at all?

Ah! but the commercial school have another string to their bow: "You cannot go back to the land, for it will not feed you all. This country will not produce enough food for its people to live upon."

So the position in which the workers are placed, according to the commercial school, is this: You cannot produce your own food; therefore you must buy it by export trade. But you will lose your export trade unless you work for lower wages.

Well, Mr. Smith, I for one do not believe those things. I believe--

1. That we can produce most of our food.

2. That we can keep as much of our trade as we need, and

3. That we can keep the trade without reducing the wages of the workers.

In my next chapter I will deal with the question of foreign trade and the workers' wages. We will then go on to consider the question of the food supply.

For the argument as to our defencelessness in time of war through the inevitable rise in the price of corn, I am indebted to a pamphlet by Captain Stewart L. Murray of the Gordon Highlanders. I strongly recommend all working men and women to read that pamphlet. It is ent.i.tled _Our Food Supply in Time of War_, and can be ordered through the _Clarion_. The price is 6d.

CHAPTER XI

HOW TO KEEP FOREIGN TRADE

The problem is how to keep our foreign export trade.

We are told that unless we can compete in price with foreign nations we must lose our foreign trade; and we are told that the only means of competing with foreign nations in price is to lower the wages of the British worker.

We will test these statements by looking into the conditions of one of our great industries, an industry upon which many other industries more or less depend: I mean the coal trade.

At the time of the great coal strike the colliers were asked to accept a reduction of wages because their employers could not get the price they were asking for coal.

The colliers refused, and demanded a "living wage." And they were severely censured by the Press for their "selfishness" in "keeping up the price of coal," and thereby preventing other trades, in which coal was largely used, from earning a living. They were reproached also with keeping the price of coal so high that the poor could not afford fires.

Now, if those other trades which used coal, as the iron and the cotton trades, could not carry on their business with coal at the price it was then at, and if those trades had no other ways and means of reducing expenses, and if the only factor in the price of coal had been the wages of the collier, there might have been some ground for the arguments of the Press against the colliers.

But in the iron trade one item of the cost of production is the _royalty_ on the iron. Royalty is a kind of rent paid to the landlord for getting the iron from his land.

Now, I want to ask about the iron trade, Would it not be as just and as possible to reduce the royalty on iron in order to compete with foreign iron dealers as to reduce the wages of the iron-worker or the collier?

The collier and the iron-worker work, and work hard, but the royalty owner does nothing.

The twenty-five per cent. reduction in the colliers' wages demanded before the great strike would not have made a difference of sixpence a ton in the cost of coal.

Now the royalties charged upon a ton of manufactured pig iron in c.u.mberland at that time amounted to 6s. 3d.; whereas the royalties on a ton of manufactured pig iron in Germany were 6d., in France 8d., in Belgium 1s. 3d. Now read this--

In 1885 a firm in West c.u.mberland had half their furnaces idle, not because the firm had no work, but simply owing to the high royalties demanded by the landowner. This company had to import iron from Belgium to fulfil their contract with the Indian Government. With a furnace turning out about 600 tons of pig iron per week the royalties amounted to 202, while the wages to everyone, from the manager downwards, amounted to only 95. This very company is now amongst our foreign compet.i.tors.

The royalties were more than twice the amount of the wages, and yet we are to believe that we can only keep our iron trade by lowering the wages.

The fact is that in the iron trade our export goods are taxed by the idle royalty owner to an amount varying from five to twelve times that of the royalty paid by our French, German, and Belgian compet.i.tors.

Now think over the iron and cotton and other trades, and remember the a.n.a.lysis we made of the cost of production, and tell me why, since the rich landlord gets his rent, and since the rich capitalist gets his interest or profits out of cotton, wool, or iron, the invariable suggestion of those who would retain our foreign trade by reducing the cost of production amounts to no more nor less than a reduction of the poor workers' wages.

Let us go back to the coal trade. The collier was called selfish because his demand for a living wage kept up the price of coal. The reduction asked would not have come to 6d. a ton. Could not that sixpence have been saved from the rents, or interest, or profits, or royalties paid at the cost of the production of other goods? I think you will find that it could.

But leave that point, and let us see whether there are not other factors in the cost of coal which could more fairly be reduced than could the wages of the collier.

Coals sells at prices from 10s. to 30s. a ton. The wages of the collier do not add up to more than 2s. 6d. a ton.

In the year before the last great coal strike 300,000 miners were paid 15,000,000, and in the same time 6,000,000 were paid in royalties. Sir G. Elliot's estimate of coal owners' _profits_ for the same year was 11,000,000. This, with the 6,000,000 paid in royalties, made 17,000,000 taken by royalty owners and mine owners out of the coal trade in one year.

So there are other items in the price of coal besides the wages of the colliers. What are they? They may be divided into nine parts, thus--

1. Rent.

2. Royalties.

3. Coal masters' profits.

4. Profits of railway companies and other carriers.

5. Wages of railway servants and other carriers' labourers.

6. Profits of merchants and other "middlemen."

7. Profits of retailers.

8. Wages of agents, travellers, and other salesmen.

9. The wages of the colliers.