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Approaching the subject with the conviction that most of the evil admitted to exist must be the result of the worker's own defective training and inability to make the best and most of the wages received, it very soon became plain that, while this remained true, deeper causes were at work, and that unseen forces must be weighed and measured before just judgment could be possible.
This is taken to a wicket marked 100 or 130 as the case may be, and there stands a cashier with his money in piles of 100 or 130 francs counted ready to hand; he sweeps in the coupon, sweeps out the cash. "Next!" I became interested in the worker's side of this organisation. I insist on seeing the entrances, the clothes-changing places, the lavatories, and so forth of the organisation.
Here, after a time-study was made of the quicker girls in all the operations, different tasks were set for different weights of material; and if the task was accomplished, a bonus was paid, amounting, roughly speaking, to a quarter of the worker's hourly wage.
Rings of every description in the political and the working world combine for general spoliation, and the honest worker's money jingles in every pocket but his own. Granting all that may be urged as to the capitalists' investment of brain-power and acquired skill, as well as of money with all the risks involved, they are the inactive rather than the active factors in production.
Nor would it be fair to allege that the will plays no part in all these renouncements. We have seen that each worker's larva can be transformed into a queen if lodged and fed on the royal plan; and similarly could each royal larva be turned into worker if her food were changed and her cell reduced. These mysterious elections take place every day in the golden shade of the hive.
I can see her yet in our tiny Welsh cottage, her foot on a wooden cradle rocking a baby, my baby brother, her hands busy with her knitting, her voice lifted in jubilant song for hours at a time. And all her songs were songs of praise. She thanked God for life and for strong hands to labor for her little ones. In those days furniture was rare, and few were the pieces in a worker's home.
Even in these cases, the aim pursued and attained is not the force that operates, since the result achieved had many other conditions besides the worker's intent, and that intent itself had causes which it knew nothing of. Every "historical force" pompously appealed to breaks up on inspection into a cataract of miscellaneous natural processes and minute particular causes.
Steward's doctrine is well expressed by a couplet which was very popular with the eight-hour speakers of that period: "Whether you work by the piece or work by the day, decreasing the hours increases the pay." Steward believed that the amount of wages is determined by no other factor than the worker's standard of living.
Fish plays an important part in the domestic economy of dwellers within a reasonable distance of the sea, and forms a considerable item in the food-stuffs of the working classes. It is fairly cheap, and is cooked so as to get the full value of it. This, which Napier described as "the ordinary food of the Portuguese," is the backbone of the worker's menu.
If this concurrence of observation is sound the reason for the social worker's preference for the deserter as material with which to work is not far to seek. With the deserter as described, the problem is chiefly to alter his point of view; with the non-supporter it is, in addition, to stiffen his will and to increase his capacity a far more complicated task.
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