The scandalous price of bread in Cork 100 years ago

It is a thing too gravely and glaringly unjust, too hard on the poor, too unfair to the rich, too gross a give-away of those who are clamouring for better terms for the worker to be pushed out of sight without any effort being made to put an end to a state of affairs which is a source of hardship to employees in the bread trade and to the employed of every other trade.

When wages are low in any trade there is discontent in that trade and we are treated to much flatulent invective against the employer, who is denounced in all moods and tenses. 

But when a lot of workmen demand and get a most extravagant rate of pay, which is not merely a wrong to the employer by placing him in a false light before the public with whom he is dealing but is also at the same time a great hardship upon the whole body of workers, no effort is voluntarily made to set matters right and do justice to all concerned.

When meat is dear, or butter or bacon, it hits a lot of people, but when bread is dear everyone suffers, and the burden presses most heavily upon people who have a family of young children to feed. 

The price of bread in Cork is a scandal of a very bad kind. Everyone knows that, and yet nothing is done towards putting an end to it by those who are responsible for the equitable adjustment of trade disputes and differences. 

When a charge of profiteering is made against the master bakers, they retort by saying: 

The high price of bread is not to be attributed to greed on our part, but on the part of the men we employ to make the bread; high wages must be met by high price.

Upon this the employers have proved their case. At all events they have given facts and figures to prove that the rate of wages they pay at present is largely if not wholly, responsible for the present profiteer price of bread.

I have given figures proving that the pay of a working baker in Cork is much higher than the pay of the same class of workman in London, Dublin, Belfast or Limerick, and that the work the Corkman does for that pay is much less. 

This detailed allegation has not been denied, it has not been explained away, it has not been defended. There was published a few days ago a letter signed “Baker’s Wife,” in which it was contended that the extortionate over-wage was justified by the fact that the men had to work “in a stuffy bakehouse”, and also suggests that they should be accommodated in a large commodious bakehouse built on a specially selected site! 

O yeh! what next? Perhaps this fastidious baker’s wife would like to have the bread baked in drawing-rooms with conservatories attached, and chesterfield couches in silk. 

How many millions of working people have to earn their living (make their bread) in “stuffy” places with poisonous atmospheres far different from the pure heat of a bakehouse. 

What about the stokehole’s of steamers for stuffiness and heat? A naval stoker once told me that stoking in the tropics was the nearest thing he could imagine to the real Hell. 

This aesthetic baker’s wife reminds me of a British charwoman who, when hired by a friend of mine during the utterly servant-less days of the war, said with great dignity – “Most people that has me to work sends their car for me.” 

"I have no motor car,” said my friend, without the ghost of a smile. But if you cannot walk and can get anyone to wheel you, you are quite welcome to the garden wheelbarrow." 

The charlady shied at the barrow.

Does the “Baker’s Wife” realise that the wage exacted by her husband is making things harder for a lot of poor people, for the men and the wives of men of all other trades? “Dog should not eat dog.” 

Trade Unions

And when the workmen of one trade, by demanding an extortionate wage, inflict loss and hardship on men in all other trades, things are in a bad way. Where do the “Unions” come in? I have asked, and I repeat the query, for some explanation of the extortionate wage demanded by the bakers, but no explanation has been put forward. 

What I should also like to know is, how such a wage was ever sanctioned by any trade union. It is generally avowed by the Trades’ Unions that they are out to protect the workingman from the sweater.

That is a laudable object, of which every right-minded person must approve. I loathe sweaters, and I have denounced them over and over again. But will the Trades Unions do nothing to prevent one trade from preying upon all the others by gross profiteering in their labour? 

I am very desirous to know who fixed the rate of wages for bakers in Cork? Was that rate of wages, I wonder, submitted to and approved by any Trades Union tribunal, and if approved, upon what grounds?

Was that strike backed up by the Bakers’ Society or by the Trades Unions generally? My periscope is visionless as to those things, and I can sight nothing but a No Man’s Land of blank ignorance. There are things the public are entitled to know and must know before long. 

Up to the present, there has not been a single word from any official of the Bakers’ Society, nor from the United Trades as to the profiteering wage, which is keeping up, or helping to keep up, the price of bread in Cork in spite of the fall in flour. 

When the employer is in fault, tongues wag and puns work at a tremendous rate, and very nasty things are said of any employer who wants too much work for his money, but when employees demand too much money for their work apparently it is an occasion for profound silence!

Is it to be supposed that such silence can be maintained? This question cannot decently or honourably be cast into the limbo of unsolved problems without some effort at solution, it is so grave a reproach to the workmen concerned, and so great a source of hardship to every worker in the city.

The “Baker’s Wife” complained of the price of bacon and other commodities. What does the carpenter’s wife, bricklayer’s wife, the blacksmith’s wife, and the wife of every other workman in the city think of the price of bread?

There may indeed be some solid reason, not yet revealed, why the working baker in Cork puts such a high value on his labour. The public ought to be given that reason without delay, so that its validity may be allowed or disallowed – as the facts may dictate. 

If there be no special cause to justify the present rate of bakers’ wages, then the rate should be at once revised so that bread may be obtainable at a reasonable price. This is a demand which may well be advanced in the name of every working man in Cork.

• First published in the Cork Examiner, October 7, 1922