Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress. : Appendix Volume XX. Report by Mr. Cyril Jackson on boy labour together with a memorandum from the General Post Office on the conditions of employment of telegraph messengers.

  • Great Britain. Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress.
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress. : Appendix Volume XX. Report by Mr. Cyril Jackson on boy labour together with a memorandum from the General Post Office on the conditions of employment of telegraph messengers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    and steam power .... Thus the parasitic trades not only abstract part of the earnings of other wage earners, and use up the capital stock of material vigour; they actually stand in the way of the most advantageous distribution of the nation's industry and thus prevent its capital, brains, and manual labour from being in the aggregate as productive as they otherwise would be. Or as they write elsewhere, When an employer without imparting any adequate p 749^ instruction in a skilled craft gets his work done by boys and girls who live with their parents and work practically for pocket money, he is clearly receiving a subsidy or bounty which gives his process an economic advantage over those worked by fully paid labour. But this is not all. Even if he pays the boys and girls a wage sufficient to cover the cost of their food, clothing and lodging so long as they are in their teens, and dismisses them as soon as they become adults, he is in the same case. For the cost of boys and girls to the community includes not only their daily bread between 13 and 21, but also their nurture from birth to the age their beginning work and their maintenance as adult citizens and parents. I have quoted at some length from Mr. Sidney Webb because he deals with the question of boy labour from a purely economic standpoint, and only as a part of a general consideration of industrial conditions. He has never specially interested himself in the boys themselves. The various men and women who have assisted in this enquiry have been largely engaged in work among boys, and it might therefore have been said that they have looked at the matter too exclusively from the boys' standpoint, rather than from that of the community as a whole. The actual facts collected show sufficiently how important is the problem from the boy's point of view, but in suggesting remedies we must be careful not to ignore the wider question. In trying to reform the conditions of the Post Office, for example, the interest of the whole community must be considered. As suggested by Professor Sadler, that Depart- ment must be included among parasitic trades. Because it is a public Department, it is all the more necessary to enquire into the telegraph messengers as exhaustively as possible. Hence their case has been treated at somewhat disproportionate length. The Appendix I., Postmaster-General will recognise that there is no animus in the matter,* but that a PP- public Department must not only set an example in foresight, but can also be more easily a,djusted than the competitive industry of individual employers, in that it has a monopoly, and can arrange its work as it pleases. Practically, with a stroke of the pen, he could revise the ages of admission to, and dismissal from the service, reduce the number of boys to an apprenticeship standard for the supply of the adult posts, and if, as might very likely be the case, the saving on lower wages the boys would earn on entering did not quite balance the increased cost of keeping elder boys, he would have the support of public opinion if his Department did not at first show a balance of profit, but had to Appendix I., resort to the Treasury for aid. Ultimately, in all probability there would be no deficit, p. 29. In the case of the errand boy and shop boy of the small private employer, it is obvious that there is no such easy means of dealing with his future absorption in industry. In the large industries there should be a readjustment of conditions, but prob- ably the initiative must come from an extension of State regulation of boy labour. This can be most easily effected by further raising the age of school attendance, or by a system of compulsory continuation schools. It must be recognised that much boys' work is wholly uneducative and deteriorates instead of developing the man, and that this must be prevented. One of the largest industries—the textile!—is still partly based on half- time child labour. It is probable that the operatives are really more to blame for this than the employers, many of whom are not very satisfied as to the advantages of child labour. The old contention that the manipulative skill required compelled the employ- ment of children of 12, because after that age their figures lose suppleness, is not now heard so frequently. If it be true that of 10 half-timers only one is ultimately going to become a spinner, we have no right to sacrifice the 9 to the skill of the one in any case; but it is beginningAo be admitted that these children do not, in fact, spend the bulk of their time in manipulation. The little piecer does odd jobs about the mills, far more than he pieces. Much of his work could be better done by machinery; he really becomes a piecer at 15 or 16. Further, if suppleness of finger requires early practice, it should not pass the wit of man to discover some form of manual training in the schools, * Of course the present Postmaster-General has no personal responsibility for the growth of the system which he inherited from a long line of predecessors. He has, however, responsibility for its continuance, t See Appendix II., p. 81.