'The shop assistants' strike, confined though it was to only one London store, came as a shock to the general public. The strike weapon has for so long been the sole monopoly of railwaymen and miners that the fact that such a respectable, law-abiding and, as will be shown, long-suffering' section of the community as the shop assistants should emulate them was not in the least anticipated. The public is out of sympathy with this means of redressing grievances because it has on more than one occasion been grossly abused. Yet it is by this means alone that the worker has secured for himself a living wage. The shop assistants as a class have perforce had to be more long suffering than industrial workers, owing to lack of organization, but for years they, too, have worked for less than a living' wage.
Weatrntest axp Poorest, Owners of large business concerns, colliery, mine and mill owners, are amongst the wealthiest in the land. How comes it that their employees are the most impoverished in the community? It gives furiously to think. Facts and. figures are more convincing than talk and rhetoric. It has been interesting to gather together from various reliable and thoroughly trustworthy sources" the minimum wages actually paid to-day in different business establishments such as drapery and provision stores. Glancing at a weekly wage and taking into account the present-day value of that wage we shall see at a glance whether shop workers are or are not justified in fighting for better conditions.
Provision merchants are in many instances not offering their employees a living wage; the scale varies from 23/-, 34/-, 35/- to 42/- a week. Clerks in a large London store get 14/- to 35/- a week. The average wage for a male clerk is 45/-, but many hundreds are only getting 30/- and 35/-. Managers of provision stores are getting £3 a week, which is 5/- less than the wages they received when they joined up. In one of the largest tea companies the girls are receiving a week, and the whole scale, in spite of an enormous turnover, disgracefully low. Amongst packers, men of 45 and 50, are gctting 25/-"and 30/- a week.
In many provincial towns, ex-soldiers are having to go back to their work as shop assistants at a wage of 30/- a week. If the men refuse the work, they are often told that women can be had for several shillings less. In one of the London stores men who have served with the firm for twenty and thirty years are only getting from 30/- to *40/- a week.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.