Salvation Army

• Fiji Division
• Tonga Region

REPLY TO CHARGES OF SWEATING

Commissioner Nicol, of the Salvation Army, has given a general denial to the charges of sweating made against the Army by the Trade Union Congress at Bath.

The following statement has been forwarded for publication by Colonel Clement T. Jacobs, chief secretary of the men's social work of the Salvation Army:

“Some misleading and reckless statements were made at the Trade Union Congress last Wednesday concerning one of our labour factories in Hanbury street, Whitechapel. Wholesale underselling and sweating were charged against the management. As the executive officer in chare, among other branches of the Army's men's social work, of the department responsible for the oversight of that factory, permit me to correct and refute some of the statements referred to:

“1. We are deliberately charged with underselling. I deny the charge. We do not undersell, and it is noteworthy that in the speeches delivered not one of the delegates cited the name of a builder who had lost a job in consequence of our quoting prices below the regular trade price. We do not, and never have, under any circumstances, sold any of the articles manufactured and produced at this labour factory below the regular trade prices governing such goods. Nearly all our work is done in keen competition with others, and I may mention that so close and careful are we in this matter that we do not even succeed in obtaining so much as one-third of the work of other departments of the Salvation Army for which we tender. Instead of lessening the demand for trade union labour, it is well known that the Army has created a large number of new industries, which today benefit thousands of bona fide working men.

“2. We are further charged with sweating the men who seek the labour factory as a refuge in industrial storms. Now I grant that we do not pay the men according to the trade union scale, but why? Because our labor factories are really hospitals. We take in broken down men, unfortunate people for whom the trade unions are doing nothing, some drunkards and poor fellows who have lost heart in the battle. We never pretend to pay them wages in the ordinary sense unless they rise to be foremen or regular employees, and we set them to work in the best way we can and at the best they can do. Some we teach to earn their living later on. We befriend them all so far as they will allow, and in return for their labour we see their wants are supplied. If they were in the circumstances of ordinary workmen - able to obtain work and able to keep it when they had obtained it - they would not press to come to us. The price or grant allotted to the men is not determined by the efforts of the Army to compete successfully with other shops. There is not a scintilla of truth in the insinuation. It is determined by the Average capacity of the worker.

“3. One of the delegates was especially reckless in his statements. He virtually described this particular workshop as a penal settlement. He can never have been inside it, otherwise he would be aware that we have neither bolts nor bars to prevent the escape of the men. If dissatisfied with the conditions or if they wish to leave for any other reason, they can do so when they like. Opportunities are afforded them for looking for work, and we are so anxious to encourage them in this respect that no reasonable appeal to us is ever refused - Monday or any other day.

“4. The further astounding statement has been put forward that deductions are made from the weekly grants to the men 'for clothes and boots, mostly supplied by a philanthropic public'. That statement is untrue. No such deductions are made. No second-hand clothes are supplied to the Handury street men. We supply them with new clothes and boots, which the men purchase at the same price as we pay to the wholesale house. Is this sweating?

“5. One speaker also repeated an old charge, denied more than once in support of the alleged sweating, by stating that our men were paid [solely] for making bay windows, whereas, as a trade member of Parliament he must know that this is simply impossible. The [illegible] are paid for putting the pieces together only, after these pieces have been prepared in the usual way by another section of workers, who are paid for doing their branch of the article.”

Otago Witness, October 30, 1907