The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Introduction.
• Biographical and Critical.
• Author’s Preface to the First French Edition.
• Author’s Preface to the English Edition.
• Book I.: Evolution and Retrogression.
• Chapter I.: Social Retrogression.
• Chapter II.: Socialist Programmes.
• Chapter III.: Character of Political and Intellectual Progress.
• Chapter IV.: Character of Social Progress.
• Chapter V.: The Evolution of Property.
• Chapter VI.: Doctrinal Contradictions of the Socialists.
• Chapter VII.: Practical Self-contradiction of the Socialists.
• Book II.: Socialistic Sophisms.
• Chapter I.: Labour and Wealth.
• Chapter II.: On the Limits of Collectivist Society.
• Chapter III.: The Law of Supply and Demand.
• Chapter IV.: The %u201ciron Law%u201d of Wages.
• Chapter V.: Integral Wages.
• Chapter VI.: To Each According to His Needs.
• Chapter VII.: The Abolition of Wages.
• Chapter VIII.: Machinery.
• Chapter IX.: Excessive Production.
• Chapter X.: Economic Crises.
• Chapter XI.: Cheapness.
• Chapter XII.: The Game of the Gullible.
• Chapter XIII.: Socialistic Methods.
• Chapter XIV.: Facts Compared With Socialist Statements.
• Chapter XV.: Redistribution of Wealth.
• Book III.: Socialistic Legislation.
• Chapter I.: Putting Socialistic Sophisms In Force.
• Chapter II.: The Regulation of Child Labour.
• Chapter III.: Female Labour and the Law.
• Chapter IV.: Compulsory Idleness of Lying-in Women.
• Chapter V.: National Labour and Foreign Workmen.
• Chapter VI.: Trade Syndicates.
• Chapter VII.: Registry Offices.
• Chapter VIII.: Nature of %u201clabour Laws.%u201d
• Book IV.: Socialistic Morality and Respect For the Law.
• Chapter I.: Contempt For the Law.
• Chapter II.: Servile Labour and Free Labour.
• Book V.: Strikes and Social War.
• Chapter I.: Cost and Consequences of Strikes.
• Chapter II.: The Causes of Strikes.
• Chapter III.: During the Strike.
• Chapter IV.: Social War.
• Book VI.: Responsibilities.
• Chapter I.: Parliament and Strikes.
• Chapter II.: Subsidies to Strikers.
• Chapter III.: The Executive, the Judicature, and Strikes.
• Chapter IV.: Liberty and Anarchy.
• Chapter V.: The Socialism of Employers.
• Chapter VI.: Militarism, Protection, and Socialism.
• Conclusion.

CHAPTER III.

FEMALE LABOUR AND THE LAW.

(I.) English Example—Over-production—Spinning, in Normandy and the Vosges—Hypocrisy as to Motives and Contempt of Facts—Infantile Mortality—Substitution of Indigence for Ease, and Beggary for Labour—The Sixty Exceptional Days — Eleven p.m., and Morality — Other Exceptions: Seven Hours out of Twenty-four—Book-stitchers—Suppression of Female Labour for the Benefit of Men—All Light suspected—(II.) Results of the Law in Practice—Deceptions—Protestations—Strikes—(III.) Real Aim—Suppression of Female Labour—Hypocrisy of the Congress of Tours — Equality of Wages and Political Rights—Married Women outside the Factory—Too much Amiability.

I. After many years of discussion, the law has arrived not only at the regulation of child labour, but also at the regulation of the labour of full-grown women. For the latter it has prohibited night work save in a certain number of excepted cases provided for in the public administrative regulations. It is here we find the grotesque side of these laws: those who frame them, themselves recognising their absurdity, and correcting them by exemptions.

I opposed this law in speeches which I delivered on June 2nd, 9th and 11th, 1888, and on February 4th, 1889; and I shall confine myself to recalling some of the arguments of its supporters. Generally, when we economists call in the aid of events which have taken place in the largest field of economic experience in the world—England—we are very badly received. But on this occasion it is England which established the regulation of female labour; and how the advocates of the law rang the changes again and again on this argument! Nevertheless, the Act of 1878, which rules in this matter, and which contains no less than 65 pages and 10 pages of tables, has been modified ten times. It gives rise to monstrous absurdities, such as that if a workwoman is found alone in a factory while her companions are at breakfast, this renders her employer liable to a fine.

At bottom, the economic argument put forward in advocacy of this measure was that of over-production; and applied just as much to night work for men as to female labour. M. Lyonnais, one of its champions, ended by deploring the invention of gas and electric lighting. There was, too, another gentleman who deserves notice—M. Richard Waddington, Reporter of the Committee in favour of this law, and a spinner in Normandy. They do not work at night there, and thus do not “injure trade.” In the Vosges, however, they do work at night, and therefore rapidly “destroy trade.” To suppress female night labour was an easy way of suppressing trade competitors!

Such things as these are not proclaimed on the house-tops. The law is invested with a palisading of pretexts which we may be sure to find in all legislative work of this nature, and the hypocrisy of which is only equalled by the contempt shown for facts.

It was asserted that female labour was a cause of mortality amongst children. Demography proves that infant mortality is most prevalent in a certain number of the Departments of the south, where there is little or no manufacturing industry. People speak tenderly of the preservation of children, but in order to save them, the good circumstances of their fathers and mothers is a first condition. If poverty caused by restrictions on labour, condemns the children in some homes to consumption, has good work been done from the point of view of their education and health?

If this poverty forces certain households, that in the past have only relied on their own labour and energies, to have recourse to public or private assistance, is this throwing them into beggary a good way of strengthening family ties, or of raising their moral standard? By this law, which prohibits night work for women, under the pretext of morality, we say to them: “Go anywhere you like, go anywhere except to the factory!” The law does not apply to theatres, music-halls and other places. Wherefore this exception?

According to Paragraph 3 of Article 5 of the law, the regulations for its public administration authorise night labour during sixty days, but only up to 11 o’clock. This applies particularly to the Parisian trade and industries, which, they wished to admit, are subject to occasional times of pressure, which are very useful as compensations for dead seasons.

M. Waddington said that he had, by inspection, satisfied himself that sixty days would suffice. Be it so; but if sixty days suffice, of what use is the law? Do people employ night labour for pleasure? This labour receives double pay; it entails lighting expenses; and it is not so good. Would it not be more simple to let each one act for himself, instead of subjecting all employers to the caprices and insolences of an inspector? But from the point of view of morality, how intelligent is this rule of sending all the work-women away at 11 o’clock at night! And if there is a ball to-morrow at the Presidency of the Republic, or at the house of the Minister of Commerce, bound to administer this law, or given by the fierce Socialist at the Town Hall, will there not be some dressmaking establishments forced to infringe it?

During the busy season, the legislature deprives these dressmakers and seamstresses of part of their income, which they might have saved. Does it indemnify them during the slack season? Paragraph 5 goes further. It authorises night labour, which, it seems, is no longer destructive to morality and the family, if thus sanctioned; but “the labour must in no case exceed 7 hours out of 24.” M. Felix Martin pointed out to the Senate the position of book-stitchers. They would arrive at the factory at nine in the evening. They might remain there till four in the morning. They must be turned out, without fail, at that hour, whether it rained or froze, whether light or dark; and then it would be forbidden to these women to reappear at the factory during those 17 hours which would be the complement of the 24. What will be the result? Under pretence of protecting the women stitchers, the law closes the factory against them, and has them replaced by men!

If the law can prevent work in the factory, it cannot prevent work in the home; and if neighbours gather together round one lamp, close to the same stove, has not a workshop here been formed? When a guardian of the peace sees a light burning in an attic, ought he not to point it out as suspicious, and ought not the inspectors to go and ascertain if it does not burn for guilty women, who instead of being outside are shut in doing work?1

II. The application of the law of November 2nd has given rise to deceptions, called forth protests, and provoked strikes. Three hundred and twenty-eight labourers from Abbeville expressed themselves thus in a Parliamentary petition:—

“It is especially in winter that the disastrous effects of the new law are felt, when, hindered by fogs, rain, frost, or snow, we are often for days and weeks together unable to do a good day’s work. How, then, are we to live, if, under the pretext of protecting us, we are deprived of the power of prosecuting our work when the weather is favourable? Is the field labourer prevented from remaining at his work as long as he likes, and when he can? Why then expect differently of us?”

. . . . . .

“Thus, on the one hand, we have frequent stop-pages, on the other, the impossibility of letting our children work, who will be given over to vagabondage and libertinism by the very terms of this law. This inevitably means, for all of us, and for our families, destitution, immorality, and misery, with all the evils which they bring in their train.”

Consequently, the petitioners ask:

“1. To enjoy entire liberty of work.”

“2. To be allowed, as in the past, to let their children work with them, under their protection and supervision, in all the workshops, from twelve years of age.”

The manufacturers of the Seine-Inférieure, in whose favour M. Richard Waddington seemed to make the law, have pointed out all its drawbacks: Reduction of the daily wage, abolition of the few minutes of breathing time, which until then the workmen had enjoyed after their entrance into and before their leaving the factories; new distribution of the hours of labour, etc.

In other places strikes have broken out, of which the most considerable was that at Amiens. It broke out because the workman was stunned by realising that the law would shorten his hours of labour and reduce his wages; for without the aid of women and children he can do nothing.

III. Moreover, many of those who proposed, defended, and voted for this law, did not conceal the fact that its real object was, not only to provide a law for the limitation of the hours of labour of the adult man, but to at once put it in force in all factories where the product is the outcome of the combined work of men, women, and children. And it also had another object, more or less concealed. It was to create protection in favour of male, as opposed to female, labour.

From the moral point of view, this is certainly grievous; but it is necessary to declare, that for more than thirty years, men’s policy has been to do away with the competition of female labour. They frankly declare it, and we charge them with the retrograde act. But they do worse than this; they wish to quietly suppress female labour. They screen their real aim behind a heap of tinsel borrowed from Tartuffe’s wardrobe.1 The Socialist Congress of Tours (November, 1892) adopted a resolution declaring that “women ought to receive an equal wage with men.” As a matter of principle, one can only acknowledge the justice of the formula: to equal labour, equal pay! But in conformity with custom, the outcome of woman’s traditional habits of order, economy, and sobriety, she is able to accept work equal to that performed by man, at a lower salary.1 It is not, then, out of solicitude for the equal rights of woman, that the Congress accepted this formula. Its gallantry was not stirred by an ideal of justice, but by a spirit of self-defence.

The Socialists of Tours took this formula of justice as a means of concealing their fundamental thought. They then went on more frankly to say:—Married women must be excluded from the workshop.” But they did not add that the man was to undertake to supply her needs more thoroughly by taking all his wages home. They banish married women from the factories, though, in many manufactures, they do work at which men would be very clumsy. If women’s wages, added to those of the men, gives to their households, not only more comfort, but also something to put by and security for old age, what tyranny is it for the Tours Socialists to forbid them to live more comfortably, and to acquire capital, by thus exerting themselves?

If the man is thrown out of work, or if the husband cannot entirely provide for the needs of the household, they forbid the married woman to come to the rescue, and force the whole household to beg in the streets or to seek relief from the parish! This is a strange way of respecting the dignity of labour!

In return, and as compensation, the Tours Socialists assure women “that they shall enjoy the same rights as men, and be politically emancipated.” In proclaiming these rights, they forget the first right of all—the right of each one of us to use his powers and faculties as seems to him best; a right which is nothing more than the exercise of each one’s personal proprietorship in himself; a right of which none can be deprived without the most monstrous tyranny; a right which is called freedom to work, and which Socialists scorn, just as slave-owners scorned it!

To prevent the married woman from working, and at the same time to assure her that she shall enjoy equal rights with man, is an amiable joke, as is also the promise of her political emancipation. The worthy Socialists of Tours offer her this shadow of the rights which are hers, while they manifest their good faith by commencing with an endeavour to confiscate the substance. Were this not so, they would be very careful not to speak of this political emancipation, because the first use to which woman would put it, would be to demand access to situations which are still entirely reserved to man.

This resolution of the Congress of Tours shows a curious intellectual and moral condition amongst those who voted for it. They should have told us brusquely:—We do not want to have women in trade, because they compete with us.” We should then have understood them. It would have been clear, frank, and sincere. But, not having had the courage to do this loyally, they constitute themselves the good apostles of the rights of women, and represent themselves as their protectors and allies, at the very moment when they want to deprive them of the right to work. They drive them from the workshop, saying to them with tongue in cheek:—It is for your good.” They deprive them of their wages, whilst throwing them a kiss: “It is for love of you!” They really are too amiable and too affectionate. If these Tours’ Socialists have not borrowed their processes from the casuists painted by Pascal, I compliment them on their inventive genius: they have re-discovered them.

[1]Already the note has been sounded here for the inspection of domestic workshops. Some Socialists wish to crush out small producers, and especially domestic work, because they think that the larger the scale of production the easier is it taken over by the State.—Ed.

[1]I do not doubt that there are some Socialists of this class, just as there are some self-styled Individualists, who are eloquent for laissez-faire, while their real anxiety is for the maintenance of their, or their clients’, unjust privileges; and there is a more numerous class, on both sides, who, while not consciously grinding their own axes, are really biased by their interests. But I do not believe that the best Socialists or the best Individualists are open to this charge; and in any case it is better to argue the point at issue without bandying such imputations.

In the present case there is the less need to assign hypocritical motives, as the ultimate object of the Socialists on the question of sex is quite clear. Their final aim is to turn women, as such, into pensioners of the State—thus regularising and generalising that payment for sex-function which is the very essence of prostitution—and legally abolishing paternity. Mr. Grant Allen gave a Glimpse into (the Socialistic) Utopia, in the Westminster Gazette, of 9th January, 1894; but those who wish to fill in the hazy portions of his picture should read Socialism and Sex, by Professor Karl Pearson, in To-day, of February, 1887, since reprinted in his Ethic of Freethought; Mr. E. Belfort Bax’s essay in To-day, of June, 1888; and Mr. G. A. Gaskell’s pamphlet on The State Endowments of Mothers.

Those who desire to know the real outcome of Socialism should always read what Mr. Bax has to say on it, for he despises opportunism, and is far too honest to wrap up his meaning in equivocal expressions or even euphemisms. “Change in the mode of possessing wealth,” says Professor Karl Pearson, “connotes to the scientific historian a change in the sex relationship.” “Historically,” says Mr. Belfort Bax, “sex relations, like other relations, have changed with the principle on which wealth is produced and distributed.” Speaking of promiscuity, he adds:—I should observe that we are here concerned, not with Civilised man, but with Socialised man, which makes all the difference; for Collectivism is undeniably a reversion, if you like to call it so, to primitive conditions. . . . The fact that group-marriage obtained in early society should rather be (as far as it goes) a presumption in favour of something analogous to it obtaining in the future.—Ed.

[1]There is neither reason nor justice in this payment of similar work at a lower rate, when done by women instead of men. It is based on custom, which finds its chief support in the political subjection of woman, and would not long outlive her enfranchisement.—Ed.