t.ANU & WATER 
bepteniDer 7, 1916 
Welfare Work in Factories 
By The Editor 
Sf^)C lAL work may be said to be the fashion of 
the hour. But it is a good deal more than that. 
There is a K'Pnuinc desire among all classes of 
the comnuuiity to become better acquainted 
than heretofore with the ctjnditions under which their 
neighbours live and work. The King and Queen gave 
expression to this feeling even before the war by their 
visits to factories, collieries, pit-villages, etc. It has 
grown so strong among educated women that at the 
j^resent time the great majority of girl-undergraduates 
in Women's Colleges who look forward to making their 
own way in the world, elect of their own free-will to go 
in for social work. 
Among the tirstfruits of this spirit of adventure 
is this *b()ok. Miss Dorothea Proud, the author, who is 
Australian by birth and a B.A. of the' University of 
anelaide. was thi; tirst Catherine Helen Spence Scholar 
in Sociology. In her preface, she mentions that being 
f^'ee to select any branch of that science, she decided to 
study Welfare Work, as she had seen its beneticial 
results in one or two instances in Australia, and desired 
to tind out what was being done in England and with 
what results. The harvest of her labours is contained in 
this volume, which is modestly d'jsignated a thesis. Bs 
this as it may, the work will, w^ believe, be accepted 
as a standard book on Welfare Work at its present stage. 
We venture to predict it will be the starting point for 
other books on factory conditions, and also prove a 
strong stimulant to a closer study of the conditions of 
industrial England. 
There are two ob\ious ways for a reviewer to handle a 
work of this nature. He may either contine himself to 
the technical side and criticise favourably or adversely 
the manner in which the facts have been collected and 
collated, or leaving aside this narrow view point he may 
simply concern himself with the broad lessons to be 
learnt from the facts and deal with the book itself as a 
chapter on an important section of national life. It was 
in the latter spirit that the present writer read Miss 
Proud's illuminative volume. 
Trades Unions 
It has been said that the very existence of Trades 
Unions is the most damning indictment of the brutality 
of industrial England in the Victorian era in that they 
were only called into existence to safeguard men, women 
and children from conditions of labour Httle short of 
slavery. There is truth in this saying, but there is 
equal truth in the fact that it was the employers them- 
selves who initiated factory reforms, and that the origin 
of improved conditions in modern factories can be traced 
clearly back for more than a century to the good em- 
ployer who realised even then that workmen were not 
soulless mechanics but neighbours towards whom he had 
a duty to discharge. It is an instance of a little leaven 
leavening the whole lump. But the point we wish to 
make here, for it is so clearly established by this author, 
is that there has never been an unbridged deep-cut chasm 
between capital and labour. The dividing gulf has ex- 
isted as it always must exist between any two bodies of 
men whose interests, identical up to a point, then diverge 
and in a sense conflict, but from the earliest factory days 
the gulf has always been bridged, very slightly and frailly 
at the first, as it were a hanging bamboo trestle across 
a Himalayan torrent, but each generation of good em- 
ployers took care that the bridge was strengthened and 
improved. There is still ample room for further broaden- 
ing, and for increased stability, if the dividing gulf is to be 
rendered in the future a less dangerous scission in the 
body politic than it has been hitherto. 
It is not an easy task. W'e read of a managing director 
of a cloth factory who wrote down that " he thought it 
possible, without hurt or loss to the texture, to humanise 
and Christianise the hands." That was sixty years ago, 
and we should ' like to think that the smug spirit 
'Welfare Work: Employers' ICxperimcnts ^^or Imprmittg H'orkini; 
Ciinlitions in Factories. By !i. Dorothea Proud. With ,i I'orcword 
by -Mr. Lloyd-Gcorge. (U. Bell and Sons, 7s. Od. 
these words signify was entirely dead in England to-day. 
We are afraid it is not ; and it is this mental attitude, 
that is inclined to regard " the hand " as of lower value 
than the manufacture which is not infrequently at the 
root of labour troubles. 
Tlie Good Employer 
But at the same time, the employer who takes 
the exactly opposite view and tries to do his best for 
his workmen does not find the way easy. The sincere 
champions of the working classes fear two things — an 
easy content and charity. " They suggest that Welfare 
Work at its best tends to make indiviciuals content with 
tlieir lot and callous as to the lot of their fellows ; and 
so weakens the social instinct which is humanity's natural 
safeguard." But, adds Miss Proud, " industrial con- 
tent is so far off that such a menace is but dimly recog- 
nised and excites little public sympathy ; but the em- 
ployer who would reall}' promote the welfare of the 
workers cannot afford to ignore their gropings towards a 
corporate ideal." 
Reading this work and perceiving the immense and 
complex difticulties of the modern industrial world, one 
is apt to forget it is composed of human beings. One 
seems to be standing upon a tall cliff above the sea. 
Smooth though the surface of the ocean may be at 
the moment, there is ever the ebb and flow of its 
waters ; one hears the little waves groping through hidden 
channels and moaning and sighing along an unseen shore, 
always restless, always in the mass moving backward or 
fonvard. One knows what a small thing, a gust or two 
of wind miles away, may move them into fury. As with 
the unresting waves of the ocean, so with these masses 
of eager never satisfied humans. There must always 
be movement so long as there is healthy hfe, and that 
the life of industrial England is healthy, splendidly 
healthy, has been proved again and again on battlefield, 
in trench and in workshop during the last two years. \Mien 
these waters are troubled, there is only one thing that can 
smooth them — the chrism of sympathy. This springs 
from a knowledge of primal facts even more than from 
kindliness of disposition. A.nd from this point of view, 
a work such as Miss Proud's thesis is beyond price. No 
intelligent bsing can read it without rising with a fuller 
conception and a clearing understanding of the multi- 
tudinous difliculties which confront the honest and sincere 
man, be he employer or workman, who desires to elevate 
and render happier the fives of his fellow-beings. 
It is to be hoped that this book will attract a large 
circle of readers. It is written in a pleasant and easy 
style, and gives chapter and verse for its statements 
and facts. Many of the suggestions it contains are 
valuable, and welfare workers will find much useful in- 
formation in its pages, while the multiform endeavours 
to improve the conditions of factory workers in recent 
years will be a revelation to those who have never seri- 
ously considered the industrial problem, though always 
ready to talk glibly about it. 
In her introduction, the author defines welfare work as 
" consisting of voluntary efforts on the part of employers 
to improve within the existing industrial system, the 
conditions oi employment in their own factories." If 
this definition be accepted then the fact that welfare work 
has become so common points to kindlier and more 
sympathetic relations between capital and labour. It 
may be, as we are told some maintain, that it is due to 
"enlightened selfishness" — a phrase which contains a 
silly sneer, for we have yet to discover how to eliminate 
self from any action ; unselfishness is only a form of 
enlightened selfishness. But the motive which the sneer 
is intended to suggest is that employers improve the lot 
of the employed in order to improve their work and 
increase its pecuniary value. Let it be so. If by 
augmenting the bulk of happiness we can by the same 
process magnify and better the output of work, who 
would not join in the crusade with joy ? No wonder 
educated woman is eager to enter into welfare work. 
