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INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY

INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY
BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE

WEBB. NEW EDITION IN TWO
VOLUMES BOUND IN ONE.

LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO., 39
PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON,
NEW YORK, AND BOMBAY. 1902.

PREFACE

WE have attempted in these volumes to give a scientific
analysis of Trade Unionism in the United Kingdom. To
this task we have devoted six years' investigation, in the
course of which we have examined, inside and out, the
constitution of practically every Trade Union organisation,
together with the methods and regulations which it uses to
attain its ends. In the History of Trade Unionism, published
in 1894, we traced the origin and growth of the Trade
Union movement as a whole, industrially and politically,
concluding with a statistical account of the distribution of
Trade Unionism according to trades and localities ; and a
sketch from nature of Trade Union life and character. The
student has, therefore, already had before him a picture of
those external characteristics of Trade Unionism, past and
present, which — borrowing a term from the study of animal
life — we may call its natural history. These external
characteristics — the outward form and habit of the creature —
are obviously insufficient for any scientific generalisation as to
its purpose and its effects. Nor can any useful conclusions,
theoretic or practical, be arrived at by arguing from " common
notions" about Trade Unionism ; nor even by refining these
into a definition of some imaginary form of combination
in the abstract. Sociology, like all other sciences, can ad-
vance only upon the basis of a precise observation of actual
facts.

The first part of our work deals with Trade Union Struc-
ture. In the Anglo-Saxon world of to-day we find that Trade
Unions are democracies : that is to say, their internal constitu-

vi Industrial Democracy

lions arc all based on the principle of " government of the
people by the people for the people." How far they are
marked off from political governments by their membership
being voluntary will be dealt with in the course of the analysis.
They are, however, scientifically distinguished from other
democracies in that they are composed exclusively of manual-
working wage -earners, associated according to occupations.
We shall show how the different Trade Unions reveal this
species of democracy at many different stages of development.
This part of the book will be of little interest to those who
want simply to know whether Trade Unionism is a good or
a bad influence in the State. To employers and Trade
Union officials on active service in the campaign between
Capital and Labor, or to politicians hesitating which side
to take in a labor struggle, our detailed discussions of the
relations between elector, representative, and civil servant ;
between central and local government ; and between taxation
and representation — not to speak of the difficulties connected
with federation, the grant of " Home Rule " to minorities, or
the use of the Referendum and the Initiative — will seem
tedious and irrelevant. On the other hand, the student of de-
mocracy, not specially interested in the. commercial aspect of
Trade Unionism, will probably find this the most interesting
part of the book. Those who regard the participation of the
manual-working wage-earners in the machinery of government
as the distinctive, if not the dangerous, element in modern
politics, will here find the phenomenon isolated. These thou-
sands of working-class democracies, spontaneously growing up
at different times and places, untrammelled by the traditions or
interests of other classes, perpetually recasting their constitu-
tions to meet new and varying conditions, present an unrivalled
field of observation as to the manner in which the working
man copes with the problem of combining administrative
efficiency with popular control.

The second part of the book, forming more than half its
total bulk, consists of a descriptive analysis of Trade Union
Function : that is to say, of the methods used, the regulations

Preface vii

imposed, and the policy followed by Trade Unions. We
have done our best to make this analysis both scientifically
accurate and, as regards the United Kingdom at the present
day, completely exhaustive. We have, of course, not enumer-
ated every individual regulation of every individual union ;
but we have pushed our investigations into every trade in
every part of the kingdom ; and our analysis includes, we
believe, every existing type and variety of Trade Union
action. And we have sought to make our description
quantitative. We have given statistics wherever these could
be obtained ; and we have, in all cases, tried to form and
convey to the reader an impression of the relative proportion,
statical and dynamic, which each type of regulation bears to
the whole body of Trade Union activity. In digesting the
almost innumerable technical regulations of every trade, our
first need was a scientific classification. After many experi-
ments we discovered the principle of this to lie in the psycho-
logical origin of the several regulations : that is to say, the
direct intention with which they were adopted, or the im-
mediate grievance they were designed to remedy. Our
consequent observations threw light on many apparent con-
tradictions and inconsistencies. Thus, to mention only two
among many instances, the student will find, in our chapter on
" The Standard Rate," an explanation of the reason why some
Trade Unions strike against Piecework and others against
Timework ; and, in our chapter on " The Normal Day," why
some Trade Unions make the regulation of the hours of
labor one of their foremost objects, whilst others, equally
strong and aggressive, are indifferent, if not hostile to it.
The same principle of classification enables the student to
comprehend and place in appropriate categories the seem-
ingly arbitrary and meaningless regulations, such as those
against " Smooting " or " Partnering," which bewilder the
superficial observer of working-class life. It assists us to
unravel the intricate changes of Trade Union policy with
regard to such matters as machinery, apprenticeship, and the
admission of women. It serves also for the deeper analysis

viii Industrial Democracy

of the division of the whole action of Trade Unionism into
three separate and sometimes mutually exclusive policies,
based on different views of what can economically be effected,
and what state of society is ultimately desirable. It is
through the psychology of its assumptions that we discover
how significantly the cleavages of opinion and action in the
Trade Union world correspond with those in the larger world
outside.

It is only in the third part of our work — the last four
chapters of the second volume — that we have ventured into
the domain of theory. We first trace the remarkable change
of opinion among English economists as to the effect of Trade
Unionism on the production and distribution of wealth. Some
readers may stop at this point, contented with the authorita-
tive, though vague, deliverances favorable to combination
among wage-earners now given by the Professors of Political
Economy in the universities of the United Kingdom. But
this verdict, based in the main upon an ideal conception
of competition and combination, seems to us unsubstantial.
We have, therefore, laid before the student a new analysis of
the working of competition in the industrial field — our vision
of the organisation and working of the business world as it
actually exists. It is in this analysis of the long series of
bargainings, extending from the private customer in the
retail shop, back to the manual laborer in the factory or the
mine, that we discover the need for Trade Unionism. We
then analyse the economic characteristics, not of combination
in the abstract in a world of ideal competition, but of the
actual Trade Unionism of the present day in the business,
world as we know it. Here, therefore, we give our own
theory of Trade Unionism — our own interpretation of the
way in which the methods and regulations that we have
described actually affect the production and distribution of
wealth and the development of personal character. This
theory, in conjunction with our particular view of social
expediency, leads us to sum up emphatically in favor
of Trade Unionism of one type, and equally emphatically

Preface ix

against Trade Unionism of another type. In our final
chapter we even venture upon precept and prophecy ; and we
consider the exact scope of Trade Unionism in the fully
developed democratic state — the industrial democracy of the
future.

A book made up of descriptions of fact, generalisations
into theory, and moral judgments must, in the best case,
necessarily include parts of different degrees of use. The
description of structure and function in Parts I. and II. will,
we hope, have its own permanent value in sociology as an
analytic record of Trade Unionism in a particular country at
a particular date. The economic generalisations contained
in Part III., if they prove sound on verification by other
investigators, can be no more than stepping-stones for the
generalisations of reasoners who will begin where we leave
off. Like all scientific theories, they will be quickly broken
up, part to be rejected as fallacious or distorted, and part
to be absorbed in later and larger views. Finally, even
those who regard our facts as accurate, and accept our
economic theory as scientific, will only agree in our judg-
ment of Trade Unionism, and in our conception of its
permanent but limited function in the Industrial Democracy
of the future, in so far as they happen to be at one with us
in the view of what state of society is desirable.

Those who contemplate scientific work in any depart-
ment of Sociology may find some practical help in a brief
account of the methods of investigation which we have found
useful in this and other studies.

To begin with, the student must resolutely set himself
to find out, not the ultimate answer to the practical
problem that may have tempted him to the work, but what
is the actual structure and function of the organisation
about which he is interested. Thus, his primary task is
to observe and dissect facts, comparing as many specimens

x Industrial Democracy

as possible, and precisely recording all their resemblances
and differences whether or not they seem significant. This
does not mean that the scientific observer ought to start with
a mind free from preconceived ideas as to classification and
sequences. If such a person existed, he would be able to
make no observations at all. The student ought, on the
contrary, to cherish all the hypotheses he can lay his hands
on, however far-fetched they may seem. Indeed, he must
be on his guard against being biassed by authority. As an
instrument for the discovery of new truth, the wildest sugges-
tion of a crank or a fanatic, or the most casual conclusion
of the practical man may well prove more fertile than verified
generalisations which have already yielded their full fruit.
Almost any preconceived idea as to the connection between
phenomena will help the observer, if it is only sufficiently
limited in its scope and definite in its expression to be capable
of comparison with facts. What is dangerous is to have only a
single hypothesis, for this inevitably biasses the selection of
facts ; or nothing but far-reaching theories as to ultimate
causes and general results, for these cannot be tested by any
facts that a single student can unravel.

From the outset, the student must adopt a definite prin-
ciple in his note -taking. We have found it convenient to use
separate sheets of paper, uniform in shape and size, each of
which is devoted to a single observation, with exact particulars
of authority, locality, and date. To these, as the inquiry
proceeds, we add other headings under which the recorded
fact might possibly be grouped, such, for instance, as the
industry, the particular section of the craft, the organisation,
the sex, age, or status of the persons concerned, the psycho-
logical intention, or the grievance to be remedied. These
sheets can be shuffled and reshuffled into various orders,
according as it is desired to consider the recorded facts in
their distribution in time or space, or their coincidence
with other circumstances. The student would be well-
advised to put a great deal of work into the completeness
and mechanical perfection of his note-taking, even if this

Preface xi

involves, for the first few weeks of the inquiry, copying and
recopying his material.

Before actually beginning the investigation it is well to
read what has been previously written about the subject.
This will lead to some tentative ideas as to how to break
up the material into definite parts for separate dissection.
It will serve also to collect hypotheses as to the con-
nections between the facts. It is here that the voluminous
proceedings of Royal Commissions and Select Committees
find their real use. Their innumerable questions and
answers seldom end in any theoretic judgment or practical
conclusion of scientific value. To the investigator, however,
they often prove a mine of unintentional suggestion and
hypothesis, just because they are collections of samples
without order and often without selection.

In proceeding to actual investigation into facts, there are
three good instruments of discovery : the Document, Personal
Observation, and the Interview. All three are useful in
obtaining preliminary suggestions and hypotheses ; but as
methods of qualitative and quantitative analysis, or of verifica-
tion, they are altogether different in character and unequal
in value.

The most indispensable of these instruments is the
Document. It is a peculiarity of human, and especially of
social action, that it secretes records of facts, not with any
view to affording material for the investigator, but as data
for the future guidance of the organisms themselves. The
essence of the Document as distinguished from the mere
literature of the subject is the unintentional and automatic
character of its testimony. It is, in short, a kind of
mechanical memory, registering facts with the minimum of
persona] bias. Hence the cash accounts, minutes of private
meetings, internal statistics, rules, and reports of societies of
all kinds furnish invaluable material from which the in-
vestigator discovers not only the constitution and policy of
the organisation, but also many of its motives and intentions.
Even documents intended solely to influence other people,

xii Industrial Democracy

such as public manifestoes or fictitious reports, have their
documentary value if only as showing by comparison with
the confidential records, what it was that their authors
desired to conceal. The investigator must, therefore,
collect every document, however unimportant, that he can
acquire. When acquisition is impossible, he should copy the
actual words, making his extracts as copious as time permits ;
for he can never know what will afterwards prove significant
to him. In this use of the Document, sociology possesses a
method of investigation which to some extent compensates
it for inability to use the method of deliberate experiment.
We venture to think that collections of documents will be to
the sociologist of the future, what collections of fossils or skele-
tons are to the zoologist ; and libraries will be his museums.
Next in importance comes the method of Personal
Observation. By this we mean neither the Interview nor
yet any examination of the outward effects of an organisation,
but a continued watching, from inside the machine, of the
actual decisions of the human agents concerned, and the play
of motives from which these spring. The difficulty for the
investigator is to get into such a post of observation without
his presence altering the normal course of events. It is
here, and here only, that personal participation in the work of
any social organisation is of advantage to scientific inquiry.
The railway manager, the member of a municipality, or the
officer of a Trade Union would, if he were a trained investi-
gator, enjoy unrivalled opportunities for precisely describing
the real constitution and actual working of his own organisa-
tion. Unfortunately, it is extremely rare to find in an active
practical administrator, either the desire, the capacity, or the
training for successful investigation. The outsider wishing
to use this method is practically confined to one of two
alternatives. He may adopt the social class, join the
organisation, or practise the occupation that he wishes to
study. Thus, one of the authors has found it useful, af
different stages of investigation, to become a rent collector,
a tailoress, and a working-class lodger in working-class

Preface xiii

families ; whilst the other has gained much from active
membership of democratic organisations and personal par-
ticipation in administration in more than one department.
Participation of this active kind may be supplemented by
gaining the intimacy and confidence of persons and organisa-
tions, so as to obtain the privilege of admission to their
establishments, offices, and private meetings. In this passive
observation the woman, we think, is specially well-adapted
for sociological inquiry ; not merely because she is accustomed
silently to watch motives, but also because she gains access and
confidence which are instinctively refused to possible com-
mercial competitors or political opponents. The worst of
this method of Personal Observation is that the observer can
seldom resist giving undue importance to the particular facts
and connections between facts that he happens to have seen.
He must, therefore, record what he has observed as a set of
separate, and not necessarily connected facts, to be used merely
as hypotheses of classification and sequence, for verification by
an exhaustive scrutiny of documents or by the wider-reaching
method of the Interview.

By the Interview as an instrument of sociological inquiry
we mean something more than the preliminary talks and
social friendliness which form, so to speak, the antechamber
to obtaining documents and opportunities for personal
observation of processes. The Interview in the scientific
sense is the skilled interrogation of a competent witness as
to facts within his personal experience. As the witness is
under no compulsion, the interviewer will have to listen
sympathetically to much that is not evidence, namely to
personal opinions, current tradition, and hearsay reports of
facts, all of which may be useful in suggesting new sources
of inquiry and revealing bias. But the real business of the
Interview is to ascertain facts actually seen by the person
interviewed. Thus, the expert interviewer, like the bedside
physician, agrees straightway with all the assumptions and
generalisations of his patient, and uses his detective skill to
sift, by tactful cross-examination, the grain of fact from the

xiv Industrial Democracy

bushel of sentiment, self-interest, and theory. Hence, though
it is of the utmost importance to make friends with the head
of any organisation, we have generally got much more actual
information from his subordinates who are personally occupied
with the facts in detail. But in no case can any Interview
be taken as conclusive evidence, even in matters of fact. It
must never be forgotten that every man is biassed by his
creed or his self-interest, his class or his views of what is
socially expedient. If the investigator fails to detect this bias,
it may be assumed that it coincides with his own ! Conse-
quently, the fullest advantage of the Interview can be obtained
only at the later stages of an inquiry, when the student has
so far progressed in his analysis that he knows exactly what
to ask for. It then enables him to verify his provisional
conclusions as to the existence of certain specified facts, and
their relations to others. And there is a wider use of the
Interview by which a quantitative value may be given to a
qualitative analysis. Once the investigator has himself
dissected a few type specimens, and discovered which among
their obviously recognisable attributes possess significance for
him, he may often be able to gain an exhaustive knowledge
of the distribution of these attributes by what we may call
the method of wholesale interviewing. One of the most
brilliant and successful applications of this method was Mr.
Charles Booth's use of all the School Board visitors of the
East End of London. Having, by personal observation, dis-
covered certain obvious marks which coincided with a scien-
tific classification of the East End population, he was able,
by interviewing a few hundred people, to obtain definite par-
ticulars with regard to the status of a million. And when
results so obtained are checked by other investigations — say,
for instance, by the Census, itself only a gigantic and some-
what unscientific system of wholesale interviewing — a high
degree of verified quantitative value may sometimes be given
to sociological inquiry.

Finally, we would suggest that it is a peculiar advantage,
in all sociological work, if a single inquiry can be conducted

Preface xv

by more than one person. A closely-knit group, dealing
contemporaneously with one subject, will achieve far more
than the same persons working individually. In our inquiry
into Trade Unionism we have found exceptionally useful, not
only our own collaboration in all departments of the work,
but also the co-operation, throughout the whole six years, of
our colleague and friend, Mr. F. W. Galton. When the
members of a group " pool " their stocks of preconceived
ideas or provisional hypotheses ; their personal experience of
the facts in question, or of analogous facts ; their knowledge
of possible sources of information ; their opportunities for
interviewing, and access to documents, they are better able
than any individual to cope with the vastness and com-
plexity of even a limited subject of sociological investigation.
They can do much by constant criticism to save each other
from bias, crudities of observation, mistaken inferences, and
confusion of thought. But group -work of this kind has
difficulties and dangers of its own. Unless all the members
are in intimate personal communication with each other,
moving with a common will and purpose, and at least so far
equal in training and capacity that they can understand each
other's distinctions and qualifications, the result of their
common labors will present blurred outlines, and be of little
real value. Without unity, equality, and discipline, different
members of the group will always be recording identical
facts under different names, and using the same term to
denote different facts.

By the pursuit of these methods of observation and
verification, any intelligent, hard-working, and conscientious
students, or group of students, applying themselves to
definitely limited pieces of social organisation, will certainly
produce monographs of scientific value. Whether "they will
be able to extract from their facts a new generalisation,
applicable to other facts — whether, that is to say, they will
discover any new scientific law — will depend on the possession
of a somewhat rare combination of insight and inventiveness,
with the capacity for prolonged and intense reasoning. When

xvi Industrial Democracy

such a generalisation is arrived at, it provides a new field of
work for the ensuing generation, whose task it is, by an
incessant testing of this " order of thought " by comparison
with the " order of things," to extend, limit, and qualify the
first imperfect statement of the law. By these means alone,
whether in sociology or any other sphere of human inquiry,
does mankind enter into possession of that body of organised
knowledge which is termed science.

We venture to add a few words as to the practical value
of sociological investigation. Quite apart from the interest
of the man of science, eager to satisfy his curiosity about
every part of the universe, a knowledge of social facts
and laws is indispensable for any intelligent and deliberate
human action. The whole of social life, the entire structure
and functioning of society, consists of human intervention.
The essential characteristic of civilised, as distinguished from
savage society, is that these interventions are not impulsive
but deliberate ; for, though some sort of human society may
get along upon instinct, civilisation depends upon organised
knowledge of sociological facts and of the connections between
them. And this knowledge must be sufficiently generalised to
be capable of being diffused. We can all avoid being practical
engineers or chemists ; but no consumer, producer, or citizen
can avoid being a practical sociologist. Whether he pursues
only his own pecuniary self-interest, or follows some idea of
class or social expediency, his action or inaction will promote
his ends only in so far as it corresponds with the real order of
the universe. A workman may join his Trade Union, or
abstain from joining ; but if his decision is to be rational,
it must be based on knowledge of what the Trade Union is,
how far it is a sound benefit society, whether its methods
will increase or decrease his liberty, and to what extent its
regulations are likely to improve or deteriorate the conditions
of employment for himself and his class. The employer who
desires to enjoy the maximum freedom of enterprise, or to
gain the utmost profit, had better, before either fighting his
workmen or yielding to their demands, find out the cause and

Preface xvii

meaning of Trade Unionism, what exactly it is likely to give
up or insist on, its financial strength and weakness, and its
hold on public opinion. Common hearsay, or the gossip of
a club, whether this be the public-house or a palace in Pall
Mall, will no more enable a man intelligently to " manage his
own business," than it will enable the engineer to build a
bridge. And when we pass from private actions to the par-
ticipation of men and women as electors, representatives, or
officials, in public companies, local governing bodies, or the
State itself, the inarticulate apprehension of facts which often
contents the individual business man, will no longer suffice.
Deliberate corporate action involves some definite policy,
communicable to others. The town councillor or the cabinet
minister has perpetually to be making up his mind what is
to be done in particular cases. Whether his action or
abstention from action is likely to be practicable, popular,
and permanently successful in attaining his ends, depends on
whether it is or is not adapted to the facts. This does not
mean that every workman and every employer, or even every
philanthropist and every statesman, is called upon to make
his own investigation into social questions any more than
to make for himself the physiological investigations upon
which his health depends. But whether they like it or not,
their success or failure to attain their ends depends on their
scientific knowledge, original or borrowed, of the facts of the
problem, and of their causal connections. Perfect wisdom
we can never attain, in sociology or in any other science ;
but this does not absolve us from using, in our action, the
most authoritative exposition, for the time being, of what is
known. That nation will achieve the greatest success in the
world-struggle, whose investigators discover the greatest body
of scientific truth, and whose practical men are the most
prompt in their application of it.

What is not generally recognised is that scientific investi-
gation, in the field of sociology as in other departments of
knowledge, requires, not only competent investigators, but a
considerable expenditure. Practically no provision exists in

xviii Industrial Democracy

this country for the endowment or support from public funds
of any kind of sociological investigation. It is, accordingly,
impossible at present to make any considerable progress
even with inquiries of pressing urgency. Social reformers are
always feeling themselves at a standstill, for sheer lack of
knowledge, and of that invention which can only proceed
from knowledge. There is, we believe, no purpose to which
the rich man could devote his surplus with greater utility to
the community than the setting on foot, in the hands of
competent investigators, of definite inquiries into such
questions as the administrative control of the liquor traffic,
the relation between local and central government, the popu-
lation question, the conditions of women's industrial employ-
ment, the real incidence of taxation, the working of municipal
administration, or many other unsolved problems that could
be named. It may be assumed that to deal adequately
with any of these subjects would involve an out-of-pocket
expenditure for travelling, materials, and incidental outlays
of all kinds, of something like ;£iooo, irrespective of the
maintenance of the investigators themselves, or the possible
expense of publication. To make any permanent provision
for discovery in any one department — to endow a chair —
requires the investment of, say, ;£ 10,000. At present, in
London, the wealthiest city in the world, and the best of all
fields for sociological investigation, the sum total of the
endowments for this purpose does not reach ;£ioo a year.

It remains only to express our grateful acknowledgments
to the many friends, employers as well as workmen, who have
helped us with information as to their respective trades.
Some portions of our work have been read in manuscript or
proof by Professor Edgeworth, Professor Hewins, Mr. Leonard
Hobhouse, and other friends, to whom we are indebted for
many useful suggestions and criticisms. Early drafts of
some chapters have appeared in the Economic Journal,
Economic Review, Nineteenth Century, and Progressive Revieiv
in this country ; the Political Science Quarterly in New York ;

Preface xix

and Dr. Braun's Archiv fur Sociale Gesetzgebung und Statistik
in Berlin. They are reproduced here by permission of the
editors. A large portion of the book was given in the form
of lectures at the London School of Economics and Political
Science during 1896 and 1897.

SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB.

41 GROSVENOR ROAD, WESTMINSTER,
LONDON, November 1897.

INTRODUCTION TO THE 1902
EDITION

(FOURTH IMPRESSION. FIFTH THOUSAND.)

THE issue of Industrial Democracy in a cheaper edition,
uniform with the History of Trade Unionism, gives us an
opportunity of writing a new introductory chapter.

We have practically nothing to add to the descriptive
and analytic part of the book. During the four years which
have elapsed since its publication, the Trade Union world
has not appreciably changed in structure or function.1 The
Trade Union " methods " of Mutual Insurance, Collective
Bargaining, and Legal Enactment — the multifarious Trade
Union " regulations " described in our chapters on the
Standard Rate and the Normal Day, New Processes and
Machinery, and the Entrance to a Trade — retain their
several places in the workmen's constant struggle to uphold
and improve the Standard of Life of their class. But whilst
the Trade Union world itself has remained unaltered, the
closing years of the nineteenth century have witnessed a
gradual change in Trade Union environment, alike in law
and in public opinion, which has lately risen, suddenly and
dramatically, into public consciousness. By a series of
remarkable legal decisions of the House of Lords, the Trade
Unions of the United Kingdom have seen their use of the

1 Trade Union membership and Trade Union funds have, indeed, greatly
increased, until, at the present time, there are not far short of two million
members, with accumulated funds of nearly four millions sterling. But these
statistical details, including some analysis of the direction of growth, we reserve
for the forthcoming edition of the History of Trade Unionism, in which we deal
also with the principal strikes of the last decade.

xxii Industrial Democracy

Method of Collective Bargaining seriously curtailed. At
the same time, an equally remarkable series of legislative
experiments in the Britains beyond the sea have made
possible applications of the Method of Legal Enactment
hitherto undreamt of.

We must first refer, in order to bring our analysis up to
date, to a few statutory changes in the United Kingdom
between 1897 and 1902. The minimum age at which
children may be employed in factories or workshops (pp.
768-69) is now twelve, and in mines, thirteen ; but practically
nothing has been done to prevent other industrial work by
children of school age,1 and we are still very far from any
effective enforcement of the National Minimum of Educa-
tion which our Legislature professes to have adopted. The
serious evil of " boy labor " (pp. 482-89, 768-71) has not been
grappled with. The long array of Acts and Amending Acts
dealing with the conditions of employment in factories and
workshops (pp. 771-73) have now been consolidated in the
Factory and Workshops Act of 1901, which includes a few
amendments of detail. But the law still fails to secure,
even to women and children, that National Minimum of
Sanitation and Rest which it purports to give. Whole
classes of women workers (p. 772) remain excluded by
pedantries of definition. The numerous exceptions as
to overtime and other relaxations still hamper administra-
tion (pp. 349-51). The sections dealing with laundries
(P- 365), outworkers (p. 772), and unhealthy trades (pp.
363-64) continue, in the main, illusory and inoperative.
We may refer, on this whole subject, to The Case for the
Factory Acts (London, 1901), edited by Mrs. Sidney
Webb. The objectionable Truck Act of 1896 (pp. 211,
373» 799) has not been amended, but it is right to say
that it has been found, in practice, much less irksome to
employers or workmen than they severally expected. This
is due to the fact that it has been only slightly operative.

1 See the Report of the Departmental Committee on the Employment of Chil-
dren of School Age, 1 90 1 .

Introduction to the 1902 Edition xxiii

The grievances with which the workmen hoped that it
would deal (pp. 315-18, 840) have still to be remedied.1
The Workmen's Compensation Act of 1897 (pp. 387-
91) has now been extended to persons employed in
a^nculliire^but not yet to workshop operatives, seamen,
carmen, or building workrjieja--engajred J3n_jbuiljdjngs less
than thirty feet in height. The employers (or, rather, the
insurance companies in their names) have displayed a most
fertile ingenuity in raising quibbles intended to limit the
application of the law, but the highest judicial tribunal has,
on the whole, given full effect to the intention of Parliament,
and has made a badly-drafted statute really operative. It
should be added that the actual cost of compensating for
accidents has proved less than was anticipated — unfortu-
nately, as we suggested (pp. 375-76), much less than it would
cost the employers to prevent them. It remains, therefore,
more important than ever, not only to extend the Act to
the workers at present outside its scope, but also, in the
interest of the community as a whole, to enforce in all
occupations an effective National Minimum of Sanitation
and Safety (pp. 375-78, 385-87, 771-73)-

But the changes in the law effected by Parliament
during the past four years are of less importance to Trade
Unionism than those made by the judges, notably by the
House of Lords in its judicial capacity. By a series of
unexpected decisions, beginning with Allen v. Flood, on the
1 4th of December 1897, and ending, for the moment, with
Quinn v. Leathern, on the $th of August 1901, the highest
court of appeal has entirely changed the legal position of
Trade Unions. We have, therefore, to consider in what
way these decisions affect the conclusions expressed in our
Appendix on " The Legal Position of Collective Bargaining "
(pp. 8S3-62).2

1 We may correct an error in the note to p. 211. The Act proved not to
apply to the deductions referred to, and no exemption order was necessary.

2 The principal judgments in these cases have been reprinted in The Law and
Trade Unions : a Brief Review of Recent Litigation specially prepared at the in-
stance of Richard Bell, M.P. (London, 1901). But the law on the whole subject

xxiv Industrial Democracy

The most far-reaching of these decisions, and the one")
which gives importance to all the others, is that in the case(
of The Taff Vale Railway Company v. The Amalgamated I
Society of Railway Servants. There had been a disput/
between the railway company and many of its employees.
A strike took place, which was sanctioned by the governing
body of the Trade Union, and was conducted by its
authorised officers. It was alleged that, in furtherance of
this strike, some of the agents of the Trade Union had
committed unlawful acts, and incited others to commit
them, to the injury and damage of the railway company.
Instead of prosecuting in a criminal court the persons
alleged to have been guilty of these offences, the company
applied to the Chancery Division of the High Court of
Justice for an injunction to restrain from committing such
acts, not only certain of the persons implicated, but also the
Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants itself. The
company also commenced a civil suit against the society in
its corporate capacity, claiming a large sum as damages for
what were alleged to be its wrongful acts. The society
pleaded that, whatever might be the personal liability of
individual officers or members, the Trade Union itself could
not, in its corporate capacity, be made the object of an
injunction, or be sued for damages. It was contended that,
under the circumstances described in our History of Trade
Unionism, the Legislature had deliberately abstained from
giving Trade Unions the privileges of incorporation, and
had expressly provided against their being sued as corporate
bodies. This view had been universally accepted by friends
and foes alike. The immunity of Trade Unions from
corporate liability for damages had been repeatedly made
the subject of official comment, and even of recommendations
by Royal Commissions. For twenty years after the Act

is now most conveniently to be found in the little volume of annotated statutes
and cases, of which we have made use, entitled Trade Union Law, by
Herman Cohen and George Howell (London, 1901). This gives exact
references to the official reports.

Introduction to the 1902 Edition xxv

of 1871 no action against a Trade Union in its corporate
capacity was ever maintained in the English Courts.1 But
on the 22nd of July 1901, the House of Lords decided that
the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, though
admittedly not a corporate body, could be sued in a
corporate capacity for damages alleged to have been caused
by the action of its officers, and that an injunction could be
issued against it, restraining it not merely from criminal,
but also from other unlawful acts. Moreover, in their
elaborate reasons for their judgment, the law lords expressed
the view that not only an injunction, but also a mandamus
could be issued against a Trade Union ; that a registered
Trade Union could be sued in its registered name ; that
even an unregistered Trade Union might be made collect-
ively liable for damages, and might be sued in the names
of its proper officers, the members of its executive committee,
and its trustees ; that the corporate funds of a Trade
Union could be made answerable for costs and damages,
even if they were in the hands of trustees ; and that the
trustees of Trade Union funds might be joined as parties
to a suit against the Trade Union, or might be separately
proceeded against for recovery of damages and costs
awarded against their Trade Union, whether registered
not. The effect of the judgment, in short, is to impose
upon a Trade Union, whether registered or not — although
not incorporated for other purposes — complete corporate
liability for any injury or damage caused by any person
who can be deemed to be acting as the agent of the Trade
Union, not merely in respect of any criminal offence which
he may have committed, but also in respect of any act, not
contravening the criminal law, which the judges may, froi
time to time, deem wrongful.

1 In 1892, and again in 1895, civil proceedings were successfully taken
by employers against combinations of workmen ; see Trollope and Others v.
The London Building Trades' Federation and Others, 1892 (mentioned at p.
86 1), and Pink v. The Federation of Trade Unions, etc., 1895. These
cases were, however, not seriously defended, not fully argued, and not carried
to the highest tribunal.

xxvi Industrial Democracy

We do not propose to waste time in discussing whether
this judgment of the House of Lords was or was not in
accordance with the law of the land on the morning of the
decision. There has seldom been an instance in which a
judicial decision has so completely and extensively reversed
the previous legal opinions, and — we do not hesitate to say
—the conscious intention, thirty years before, of Parliament
itself. But the case was fully and ably argued, and the
decision of the five law lords was unanimous. According
to the British Constitution, the view which they have taken
of the law is now as definitely the law as if it had been
embodied in an Act of Parliament. How does it affect
Trade Unionism ?

At first sight there would seem little or nothing to
complain about. The judgment professes to make no
change in the lawfulness of Trade Unionism. No act is
ostensibly made wrongful which was not wrongful before.
And if a Trade Union, directly or by its agents, causes
injury or damage to other persons, by acts not warranted in
law, it seems not inequitable that the Trade Union itself
should be made liable for what it has done. The real
grievance of the Trade Unions, and the serious danger to
their continued usefulness and improvement, lies in the un-
certainty of the English law, and its liability to be used as a
means of oppression. This danger is increased, and the
grievance aggravated, by the dislike of Trade Unionism and
strikes which nearly all judges and juries share with the rest
of the upper and middle classes.

The public opinion of the propertied and professional
classes is, in fact, even more hostile to Trade Unionism and
strikes than it was a generation ago. In 1867-75, when
Trade Unionism was struggling for legal recognition, it
seemed to many people only fair that, as the employers
were left free to use their superiority in economic strength, the
workmen should be put in a position to make a good fight
of it against the employers. Accordingly, combinations and
strikes were legalised, and some sort of peaceful picketing

Introduction to the 1902 Edition xxvii

was expressly authorised by statute. So long as no physical
violence was used or openly threatened, the mild tumult
and disorder of a strike, a certain amount of harmless
obstruction of the thoroughfares, and the animated persuasion
of blacklegs by the pickets, were usually tolerated by the
police, and not seriously resented by the employers. Jjt-alJ-
belonged to the conception of a labor dispute as a stand-up
Eween the parties, in which "~tEe~ State' could do no
more than keep the ring. Gradually this conception has
given way in favour of the view that, quite apart from the
merits of the case} the stoppage of work by an industrial
dispute is a public nuisance, an injury to the commonweal,
which ought to be prevented by the Government. More-
over, the conditions of the wage contract are no longer
regarded only as a matter of private concern. The gradual
extension of legislative regulation to all industries, and its
successive application to different classes of workers and
conditions of employment, decisively negatives the old
assumption of the employer that he is entitled to hire his
labor on such terms as he thinks fit. On the other hand,
public opinion has become uneasy about the capacity of
English manufacturers to hold their own against foreign
^colfipetition, and therefore resents, as a crime against the
community, any attempt to restrict output or obstruct
machinery, of which the Trade Unions may be accused.
And thus we have a growing public opinion in favour of
some authoritative tribunal of conciliation or arbitration, and
an intense dislike of any organised interruption of industry
by a lock-out or~ strike, especial ly^wherr-this^ is promoted by
a Trade Union which is believed — often on the strength of
the wildest accusations in the newspapers — to be unfriendly
to the utmost possible improvement of processes in its trade.
Under the influence of this adverse bias the courts of
law have, for the last ten years, been gradually limiting
what were supposed to be the legal rights of Trade Unions.
There has been, it is true, no attempt to bring back the
terrors of the criminal law, the use of which, as an instru-

xxx Industrial Democracy

the official's incitement, some of the workmen strike without
notice, or otherwise break their contracts of service, even
though the Trade Union official did not intend that they
should do so. And if the judges should eventually hold
that any particular strike was not warranted, or, though
warranted in itself, that wrongful (though not criminal) acts
were committed in pursuance of it, which he might have
been expected to foresee, the Trade Union official who
ordered the strike might very likely be made answerable in
damages for the loss suffered by any person through the
wrongful acts which he had indirectly but unwillingly
caused. In all these cases, wherever a Trade Union official
would be liable, the Trade Union itself is now made
collectively liable. And it follows from the general law of
principal and agent, that whenever any officer of a Trade
Union, in the ordinary course of his business, and within
the apparent scope of his employment, does anything for
which he is liable to be sued for damages, the Trade Union
for which he is acting becomes also liable, though he may
have acted without orders, or contrary to the general policy
of his Trade Union, or even in direct contradiction to the
private instructions which he had received from its executive
committee. Finally, whenever the Trade Union is liable to
be sued, it will be open to the aggrieved person to apply
to the Chancery Division of the High Court of Justice for
an injunction against the Trade Union and its officials,
peremptorily restraining them from committing any of the
acts complained of. The issue of such an injunction will
be within the discretion of a single Chancery judge, and if
it is disobeyed, it can be enforced by summary imprison-
ment, without trial, for an indefinite period, for what is
called " contempt of court."

Such we believe to be now the law, according to the
best opinion that a well-informed counsel could give to his
client. But so vague and ill-defined, so complicated and
uncertain, is the English law on such subjects as conspiracy
and libel — indeed, the whole law of torts — to say nothing

Introduction to the 1902 Edition xxxi

of that relating to principal and agent, that we cannot
pretend that our statement is to be depended on. The
very uncertainty is in itself a serious grievance. If a
Trade Union executive could know precisely what was the
law, it could take care not to infringe it, and might have
some chance of compelling its officers to keep within their
legal rights. This is now impossible. All that a Trade
Union can be sure of is that, whenever the action of any
one of its officers causes any injury^ or loss to ati^-etrrpToyer,
or to any workman outside its ranks, it will be open to any
such person, at slight expense, to commence an action
against the Trade Union for damages. This will mean, at
least, a solicitor's bill. If the action comes into court the
Trade Union will know that, though the jury may give a
verdict as to the bare facts, the judgment will, in nine cases
out of ten, depend practically on the judge's view of the
law. And though we all thoroughly believe in the honesty
and impartiality of our judges, it so happens that, in the
present uncertainty, the very law of the case must necessarily
turn on the view taken of the general policy of Trade
Unionism. If the judges believed, as we believe, that
the enforcement of Common Rules in industry, and the
maintenance of a Standard Rate, a Normal Day, and
stringent conditions of Sanitation and Safety, were positively
beneficial to the community as a whole, and absolutely
indispensable to the continued prosperity of our trade, they
would no more hold liable, for any damage v/hich, in the
conduct of its legitimate purpose, it incidentally caused to
particular individuals, a reasonably managed Trade Union
than a militant Temperance Society or the Primrose League.
But a clear majority of our judges evidently believe, quite
honestly, that Trade Unionism — meaning the enforcement
of Common Rules on a whole trade — is anomalous, objec-
tionable, detrimental to English industry, and even a wicked
infringement of individual liberty, which Parliament has
been foolishly persuaded to take out of the category of
crimes. Their lack of economic training and their ignorance

XXX11

Industrial Democracy

of economic science is responsible for this state of mind.
Unfortunately, their preoccupation with the technical side
of their own profession renders it unlikely that they will
dispel this ignorance by any careful study of labor
problems. When, therefore, they have to decide whether
a particular injury, caused by the operations of such a
combination, is or is not actionable, they would not be doing
their duty, holding the view that they do of its harmfulness,
if they did not treat it much more severely than they would
if precisely similar acts were committed by associations which
they thought to be beneficial to the community — say, for
instance, by a combination of capitalist employers, in the
course of the fierce and unrelenting competition of inter-
national trade. The result is that Trade Unions must expect
to find practically every incident of a strike, and possibly
every refusal to work with non-unionists, treated as action-
able, and made the subject of suits for damages, which the
Trade Union will have to pay from its corporate funds.

We do not mean to suggest that every little labor
trouble is likely to be followed by a crop of actions against
the Trade Union concerned. Employers generally find it
too convenient to be on good terms with well-managed
Trade Unions to wish to break off friendly negotiations
with them. But it will always be open for employers or
non-unionist workmen to issue a writ, and in cases of serious
dispute it is scarcely likely that they will all forego so easy
a means of harassing their opponents. Trade Unions will
not all of them find their funds denuded by heavy law costs
and damages. It may even be some time before a serious
case occurs. But the liability will be always present. It
is not too much to say that, except in the most compact
and well-disciplined industries, a Union will, so far as its
finances are concerned, when fighting is necessary, henceforth
have to fight with a halter round its neck.1

1 No mere pious declarations in the rules will protect a Trade Union from
actions for damages, if wrongful acts are done by the Trade Union itself or by
iis agents acting within the apparent scope of their authority. The judges will

Introduction to the 1902 Edition xxxiii

Ought the law to be amended ? We say, at once, that
Trade Unions would, in our opinion, not be warranted in
claiming to have restored that complete immunity from
legal proceedings which Parliament intended to confer upon
them in 1871-76. We see no valid reason why, if the law
were put into a proper state. Trade Unions should not be
liable to be sued for damages in their corporate capacity, in
respect of any injury wrongfully done by them or their
agents to other persons. If, for instance, a Trade Union
in its corporate capacity publishes a newspaper, it can
hardly claim, as regards actions for libel, to be treated
differently from any individual publisher of a newspaper.
Nor can we see any justification for such an amendment of
the Conspiracy and Law of Property Act, 1875, as would
make lawful the only sort of picketing likely to be effective
in keeping off blacklegs during a strike. Moreover, if a
Trade Union violates its own rules, or does anything plainly
outside their scope, there seems no ground for preventing
any dissatisfied member from restraining its action by an
injunction.1 Finally, if a Trade Union or its official
deliberately persuades or induces men to break legally
binding existing contracts of service into which they have
entered, the Trade Union deserves to pay damages. So
far the recent interpretation of the law must, we think, be
accepted. But Trade Unions have certainly a good claim
to have their legal rights and liabilities clearly defined, and
precisely and authoritatively set forth. At present the law
is merely a trap in which any one of them may at any
moment be caught. We may go further. So long as the
community decides to let the conditions of the wage-contract
be settled by bargaining, both parties must, in common
fairness, be left equally free to protect their own interest by
combined action, even if such combined action causes
damage to the opponent or to others. It is a mockery of

go behind the rules, if necessary, and form their own conclusion as to the real in-
tentions, purposes, and instructions of the executive committee or general secretary.
1 Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants for Scotland v. The Motherwell
Branch of the Society.

xxxiv Industrial Democracy

justice to fell the workmen that they are allowed to com-
bine, and to strike, in order to exact better terms from their
employers, and then to cast them in damages whenever
they, in the exercise of this right, and without infringing
the criminal law, cause damage to other persons. Every
strike, like every other kind of war, necessarily causes
damage to other persons — damage which the strikers can
clearly foresee, and which the Legislature must as clearly
have foreseen when it sanctioned the terms of labor being
left to this kind of private war.1 Moreover, every strike —
as public opinion now keenly feels — causes injury to the
community as a whole.2 This may well be a reason for
superseding strikes as a method of settling the terms of
the contract of service. But it is not fair to the workmen
to try indirectly to put down strikes by making the Trade
Unions liable for damages for what is incidental to a strike.
It is handing them over to the employers with their hands
tied. Trade Unions have, therefore, a good claim for an
alteration of the law.3

1 "The third section of [the Conspiracy and Protection of Property] Act
distinctly legalises strikes in the broadest terms, subject to the exceptions
enumerated in the fourth and fifth sections." — Lord Chief-Justice Coleridge in
Gibson v. Lawson (1891).

2 Here lurks a danger to the Trade Unions of a revival of the old use
of the criminal law against them. It is by no means clear that a conspiracy,
neither contemplating nor committing any criminal act, but violating an actionable
private right, may not in itself be a criminal offence, if the actionable private
right is one in which the public has a sufficient interest. See p. 857.

3 It may be of service if we submit in precise form the draft of such a bill
as Trade Unionists might properly press upon the Cabinet, members of Parlia-
ment, and candidates for that position.

A BILL ENTITLED AN ACT TO AMEND THE LAW RELATING TO
TRADE DISPUTES

1. No agreement, combination, or conspiracy entered into by or on behalf
of an association of employers or a Trade Union in contemplation or furtherance

if a trade dispute, and no act committed in pursuance of any such agreement,
combination, or conspiracy, shall be actionable, if such act would not be action-
able if committed by one person without agreement, combination, or conspiracy

1 any kind, and if such agreement, combination, or conspiracy would not be
indictable as a crime.

2. No act committed, and no agreement, combination, or conspiracy entered
into, by or on behalf of an association of employers or a Trade Union in con-

Introduction to the 1902 Edition xxxv

However unlikely it may seem that our present Parlia-
ment would consent to effect such an alteration of the law
as the Trade Unionists desire, we venture to point out that
the existing position is not one that can endure. The two
millions of Trade Unionists, comprising probably one-fifth
of the nationat'eTectoraTe, Twill certainly not consent to give
up the enforcement of Common Rules determining standard
minimum wages and other conditions throughout each trade.
In this policy they will be supported by all working-class
opinion, and will be acting in accordance with the teachings
of economic science.1 The alternative of free and unfettered
Individual Bargaining — in which each workshop has its own
peculiar working hours, its own standard of sanitation, and
its own arrangements for preventing accidents, exactly as its
owner chooses to prescribe, whilst each workman makes his
own separate contract for each job with his own employer —
has been proved, by a whole century of experience, to lead

templation or furtherance of a trade dispute, shall be actionable by reason only
of the motive for which it was committed or entered into, or of there being no
lawful excuse or motive for such act, agreement, combination, or conspiracy.

3. No agreement, combination, or conspiracy by or on behalf of an associa-
tion of employers or a Trade Union in contemplation or furtherance of a trade
dispute shall be indictable as a crime if no act itself punishable as a crime is
contemplated or committed, whether as means or end, by or in pursuance of
such agreement, combination, or conspiracy.

4. The words "trade dispute between employers and workmen" in the third
section of the Conspiracy and Law of Property Act of 1875 shall therein have
the same meaning as " trade dispute" in this Act.

5. The words "association of employers" and "Trade Union" shall, for
the purposes of this Act, both include any association of persons, whether
registered or not, which attempts to regulate or influence any or all of the
conditions of employment in one or more occupations, and shall also include any
alliance, federation, or combination of two or more such associations.

6. The words "trade dispute" shall include any dispute, difference of
opinion, or failure of agreement, existing or contemplated, between one or more
employers or an association of employers, and one or more workmen or a Trade
Union, or any alliance, federation, or combination of any of them, whether
registered or incorporated or not, and whether or not such dispute, difference of
opinion, or failure of agreement relates to the employment of any of the persons
concerned, or to any pecuniary or other interest of any of them, and whether
they or any of them belong to the same or different trades or places or societies.

1 See Part III. Chap. i. "The Verdict of the Economists"; Chap. ii. "The
Higgling of the Market"; and Chap. iii. "The Economic Characteristics of
Trade Unionism "

xxxvi Industrial Democracy

to "sweating." The necessary Common Rules can be
enforced only by two methods, Collective Bargaining and
Legal Enactment. If Collective Bargaining, with its in-
evitable accompaniment of collective abstention from work
and .occasional stoppages of industry, is, by the judges'
interpretation of the law, made impossible, or even costly
and difficult, the whole weight of working-class opinion will
certainly be thrown in favor of Legal Enactment. We do
not ourselves deprecate this course, but whether Lord
Penrhyn and trie railway companies, the Shipping Federation
and the engineering employers, would see any advantage in
it seems to us doubtful.

We pass now to the second great change in Trade Union
environment. Whilst in the United Kingdom the House of
Lords has been making the Method of Collective Bargaining
virtually inoperative, the Legislatures of the young and
vigorous democracies of Australia and New Zealand have
been proving how much more elastic, and how much more
applicable to modern conditions than has hitherto been
supposed, is the alternative Method of Legal Enactment.
When we were writing in 1897, the legislation of Victoria
and New Zealand was still in its first experimental stage,
and but little was known of its actual working (see pp. 246,
488, 770, 776, 814). It has since been greatly extended
in scope as experience has been gained, and it has been
carefully described by both official and critical observers.
We had ourselves, in 1898, the opportunity of seeing both
the Victorian and the New Zealand systems at work, and
we spent some time in watching and inquiring, among friends
and foes alike, as to the actual results of the experiment.
We are more than ever convinced that both Victorian and
New Zealand statutes deserve favorable consideration by
the employers and the statesmen, no less than by the work-
men and the philanthropists of the Mother Country.

The Victorian legislation * is less well known in England

1 The best account of the Victorian system and its actual working is the New
South Wales Government Report of Royal Commission of Inqziiry into the Work-

Introduction to the 1902 Edition xxxvii

than that of New Zealand. By the Factories and Shops
Act, 1896, after a series of vain attempts to put down
" sweating " by other means, special " wage boards " were
constituted in certain oppressed trades. These were em-
powered to fix a minimum standard wage for the trade, for
both factory and outworkers, by time and by the piece ;
and also the maximum proportionate number of apprentices
or improvers under eighteen years of age, and the minimum
to be paid to them. The " Common Rules " thus prescribed
for the trade became, in effect, part of the Factory Acts,
and were enforced by the factory inspectors, like any other
requirements of the Acts, by summary proceedings in the
police courts.

This Act only related to six specially sweated trades,
and applied only to Melbourne and its suburbs. In 1900,
after four years' experience, the law was widened in all
directions. The powers of the boards were extended so as
to cover practically the whole colony. It was also provided
that a board should be formed in any trade or business for
which either House of Parliament had passed an approving
resolution. It is significant of the appreciation of the law
that no fewer than twenty-one more boards were at once
constituted, in protected and unprotected industries alike,
and many of them at the request of the employers in the
trades concerned. This was the case, for instance, with the

ing of Compulsory Conciliation and Arbitration Laivs (Sydney, 1901), by Judge
Backhouse. The laws themselves can be best consulted in the convenient
edition of the Factories and Shops Acts^ by Harrison Ord (Melbourne, 1900).
A succinct account of the system, with particulars of recent decisions by the
boards, is given by Mrs. W. P. Reeves, in her chapter in The Case for the
Factory Acts (London, 1901). See also an article by the Hon. W. P.
Reeves in the Economic Journal, Sept. 1901, entitled "The Minimum Wage
Law in Victoria and South Australia " ; the annual reports of the Chief
Inspector of Factories (Melbourne) for 1896-1900 inclusive; and the evidence
given to the Royal Commission at present (December 1901) sitting to inquire
into the results of the law. The report of this Commission, to be published
shortly, will give us the most authoritative account of the working of the
system. It should be added that the Victorian wage board clauses were, in
December 1900, enacted almost word for word by the Legislature of South
Australia.

xxxviii Industrial Democracy

boards for the printers (compositors), carriage-builders, cigar-
makers, coopers, engravers, saddlers, stonecutters, tanners,
and others.

These wage-boards are composed of between four and
ten representatives, half elected by the employers and half
by the operatives in the particular trade. The board may
choose its own chairman, who has a casting vote ; and in
many of the trades employers and employed have easily
agreed upon a trusted outsider — a judge, a minister of
religion, or a responsible government official. In case of
disagreement the Government appoints a chairman, choosing
usually an outsider of judicial character. The board then
sets to work to determine what shall be the standard
minimum rate of wages in the trade, and it is interesting to
find that, after a more or less protracted but quite friendly
" higgling," the representatives have frequently been able to
agree on their decision without invoking the chairman's
casting vote. The minimum rate thus fixed may be made
applicable to any person or class of persons, factory hands
or outworkers, by time or by piece ; and it is expressly
provided that the board is to take into consideration " the
nature, kind, and class of the work, and the mode and
manner in which the work is to be done, and the age and
sex of the workers, and any matter which may from time to
time be prescribed." The board prescribes the maximum
number of hours, usually eight, to be worked for the daily
wage, and what minimum rate shall be paid for overtime,
but does not actually limit the working time (which is
limited by law only for women, miners, etc.). Power is
reserved to the Chief Inspector of Factories to grant to
aged or infirm workers a licence, for twelve months at a
time, to work for less than the prescribed rates, and he may
also do the same for young improvers without full experi-
ence. This provision was added in the 1 900 Act, experience
having shown both its necessity and its practicability. It
should be added that the members of the boards receive from
public funds a payment of ten shillings for a full day's

Introduction to the 1902 Edition xxxix

session, and five shillings for a half-day's session, the chair-
man receiving double pay.

Under this Act a legal minimum wage has, in certain
trades, been fixed and enforced for five years, and in many
other trades for a shorter period. Thus, the minimum
weekly wage for tailoresses was fixed, to begin with, at
twenty shillings a week, that for shirtmakers at sixteen
shillings, and that for adult male boot and shoe operatives
at forty-two shillings, these time rates being in each trade
also translated into equivalent piecework lists. These wages
were considerably above what many of the operatives had
previously been receiving, but notwithstanding this fact
neither the volume of trade nor the employers' profits appear
to have been affected. We could not ascertain that there
had been, up to 1898, any diminution of employment in the
trades concerned ; on the contrary, the numbers at work had
certainly increased. We could find no evidence that prices
had risen, and we were informed by employers that they had
not done so. Nor were the employers themselves dissatis-
fied with the result. The explanation of the paradox lies,
as we satisfied ourselves, in the very significant fact that,
when the employers found themselves compelled to pay a
standard wage to all whom they employed, they took care
to make the labor as productive as possible — they chose
their workers more carefully, kept them fully employed,
introduced new processes and machinery, and in every way
made the industry more efficient. The effect of stopping
competition of wages is, as Mundella from practical experi-
ence pointed out over thirty years ago (see p. 723), to
concentrate it upon efficiency. The whole experience of
the Victorian wage-boards, alike in their successes and in
their failures, confirms our analysis of the economic results
of the Common Rule (pp. 7I5-39)-1

1 It should be stated that this Act, like all factory and sanitary laws, has
absolutely failed to become effective among the Chinese. Experience in Victoria,
as elsewhere, seems to show that it is impossible to enforce any form of the
" National Minimum " on a Chinese population in a white city — a fact of extreme
significance in the question of the desirability of their admission or exclusion.

xl Industrial Democracy

What the Victorian law does is, in effect, to compel
employers and workmen to formulate, by common consent,
minimum conditions for their own trade, which can be
altered when and as required, but which are for the time
being enforced by law. No employer is compelled to con-
tinue his business, or to engage any workman ; but if he
chooses to do so, he must, as a minimum, comply with
these conditions, in exactly the same way as he does with
regard to the sanitary provisions of the Factory Acts. No
workman is compelled to enter into employment or for-
bidden to strike for better terms, but he is prevented from
engaging himself for less than the minimum wage, exactly
as he is prevented from accepting less than the minimum
sanitation. The law, in fact, puts every trade in which a
wage-board is established in the position of the best organised
industries in this country, where every firm and every
workman finds the conditions of employment effectively
regulated (as regards a minimum) by a collective agreement
—with the added advantages that in Victoria the enforce-
ment of the Common Rules becomes the business of the
professional factory inspector ; that no individual can break
away from the agreement ; and that no strikes, picketing, or
other disorderly proceedings are ever needed to maintain its
operation. This seems to us a distinct advance on the
anarchic private war to which the settlement of the condi-
tions of employment is otherwise abandoned.

It is obvious that the Victorian system brings greater
advantages to the weaker trades than to those strongly
organised. This, to our mind, is one of its merits. The
pressing need in the England of to-day is not any increase
in the money wages of the better-paid and stronger sections
of the wage-earners, but a levelling up of the oppressed classes
who fall below the " Poverty Line." The boilermakers in the
shipbuilding towns, the Lancashire cotton-spinners, and the
Northumberland coalminers may do by their own strength
(though not without the cost of constant friction and occa-
sional disastrous wars), as much as, qr more than any suqh

Introduction to the 1902 Edition xli

law could do for them. But the unskilled laborers, the opera-
tives whose organisation is crippled by home work, and the
women workers everywhere, can never, in our opinion, by
mere bargaining, obtain either satisfactory Common Rules
or any real enforcement of such illusory standards as they
may get set up. We think that experience in this and
other countries confirms the economic conclusion that there
is no way of raising the present scandalously low Standard
of Life of these classes, except by some such legal stiffening
as that given by the Victorian law.

We do not suggest that the Victorian law is by any
means perfect. It is reported, no doubt correctly, that it is
evaded and disobeyed in particular cases, as is also the law
against theft and murder, but this we do not count as a
serious objection to it or any other law. The Chief Inspector's
licences to work under price are liable to abuse, but honestly
worked as the system now is, we do not regard this excep-
tional treatment of workers actually incapable of " a fair
day's work " as any drawback. It is anomalous that the
wage-boards should not be able to frame Common Rules as
to the maximum working hours and the many conditions of
employment other than wages. More serious is the attempt
to limit the number of apprentices, which — in spite of the
action of Lord James in the English boot and shoe manu-
facture (pp. 482-89) — we think wholly inexpedient and
prejudicial. We doubt, moreover, whether it will be found
possible, in the long-run, to work a system of separate
boards for the innumerable separate and often badly defined
trades. Finally, we object to the retention, as the basis of
the whole law, of the old conception that the amount of the
wage in each trade is a matter for each trade to settle
exclusively for itself, without regard to the interests of the
community. In our view, the real justification for the inter-
ference of the law is the injury to the community as a whole
that results from any form of industrial parasitism — from
the payment, for instance, of wages insufficient for the full
maintenance, under healthy conditions, of the workers and

xlii Industrial Democracy

their families. We should, therefore, have preferred an
explicit statement of this principle by the Legislature, exactly
as is done in the Factory Acts with regard to certain other
conditions of employment, together with a definite statutory
minimum wage and maximum normal day, determined by
physiological considerations, and not to be infringed by any
trade whatsoever.1 It would then have been possible to
have limited the formation of wage-boards to those occupa-
tions in which the operatives were alleged to be working
under conditions in any respect worse than those of the
" National Minimum " — a much more limited task than that
of fixing standard rates in all industries whatsoever — and
to have confined their scope to the comparatively easy duty
of applying the statutory minimum to the particular circum-
stances of those trades.

It is interesting to notice that, although New Zealand 2
attacked the problem from the other end, aiming primarily
at preventing strikes, this has worked out, in practice, to
the Victorian solution of enforcing by law certain definite
minimum conditions of employment throughout each trade.
By the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act of 1894,
now superseded by the consolidating Act of 1900, a com-
plete system of industrial tribunals was established, and
empowered to deal with labor disputes of all kinds. Taking
the law as it now stands, we find, in each of the seven
districts into which the Colony is geographically divided, a

1 The obvious difficulties in the way of such a minimum are dealt with at
PP- 774-95-

2 The latest and most impartial account of the New Zealand system is the
New South Wales Report of Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Working of
Compulsory Conciliation and Arbitration Laws (Sydney, 1901), by Judge Back-
house. The Hon. W. P. Reeves (Agent-General in London for New Zealand),

devised and carried through the Act of 1894, has graphically described its

*mg in The Long White Cloud (London, 1899) and other works; and in

rate detail in his Experiments of Seven Colonies, shortly to be published.

:e also A Country -without Strikes and Newest England, both by H. D. Lloyd ;

ind Le Socialisms sans Doctrines, by Albert Metin. For the ablest hostile

the law, apart from mere theoretical denunciations, the student must

1 to the series of articles in the Otago Daily Times for September 1901,

by Dr. John Macgregor.

Introduction to the 1902 Edition xliii

local Board of Conciliation, composed of two members
elected by the registered Employers' Associations and two
by the registered Trade Unions, with a chairman chosen by
themselves. In default of election of members or chairman,
the Government appoints. This Board does not initiate
any proceedings, but deals with any local industrial dispute,
whatever the trade, which may be referred to it by a Trade
Union, an Employers' Association, or a single employer.
Immediately any dispute has been, by either party, so referred
to the Board, anything in the nature of a strike or lock-out
is expressly prohibited, under penalty of .£50. The Board
has authority to make full inquiry into the circumstances,
except that it cannot compel the production of books. It
then makes suggestions for a settlement. If these sugges-
tions are accepted by both parties, they are embodied in an
" industrial agreement," which may be made unalterable for
any specified term not exceeding three years, and which in
any event binds the parties until it is superseded by any
new agreement or award. Every such agreement is now
enforceable by legal process, with the same effective authority
as if it had been enacted as a law. If the parties will not
agree the Board is to make a definite " recommendation " as
to what, in its opinion, ought to be the settlement. Any
dissatisfied party may thereupon, within a month, carry the
case to the Court of Arbitration. Failing such an appeal,
the Board's " recommendation " becomes binding on the
parties as if it were an industrial agreement.

The Court of Arbitration consists of three members
appointed by the Government : the president, a judge of
the Supreme Court ; and two persons recommended by the
Employers' Associations and Trade Unions respectively. This
Court has the full powers of an ordinary court of justice to
investigate any case brought before it by way of appeal
from the " recommendation " of a Board of Conciliation ;
and is free to act according to " equity and good conscience "
without being bound by legal pedantries. It makes an
award in such terms as it thinks fit, extending, it may be,

xliv Industrial Democracy

to a whole trade, either in a specified district or throughout
the Colony, and including at its discretion any related or
competing industry. The penalty for breach of the award
may be any sum not exceeding ^500 on an association, for
payment of which the members of the association are made
liable individually up to ;£io each. Thus, once any dispute
is referred to a Board of Conciliation, either by a Trade
Union or an employer, it is certain to lead, either by agree-
ment of the parties, or by their acceptance of the " recom-
mendation " of the Board, or else by the authoritative
award of the Court of Arbitration, to the enactment of
legally binding " Common Rules " for the trade, which
continue in force until they are varied by subsequent pro-
ceedings of a similar character.1

The evolution of the New Zealand system, from 1894
to 1900, appears to us to be full of instruction. In its first

1 How extensive is the scope of the authority of these tribunals may be seen
from the definition of their sphere. They are to settle all disputes about
"industrial matters," and

"'Industrial matters' mean all matters affecting or relating to work done,
or to be done by workers, or the privileges, rights, and duties of employers or
workers in any industry, not involving questions which are or may be the subject
of proceedings for an indictable offence ; and without limiting the general nature
of the above definition, includes all matters relating to —

" (a) The wages, allowances, or remuneration of workers employed in any
industry, or the prices paid or to be paid therein in respect of such
employment.
" (6) The hours of employment, sex, age, qualification, or status of workers,

and the mode, terms, and conditions of employment.

" (f) The employment of children or young persons, or of any person or
persons, or class of persons in any industry, or the dismissal of or
refusal to employ any particular person or persons or class of persons
therein.

" (d) The claim of members of an industrial union of employers to preference
of service from unemployed members of an industrial union of
workers.
" (e) The claim of members of industrial unions of workers to be employed

in preference to non-members.
" (/) Any established custom or usage of any industry, either generally or in

the particular district affected.

Industry ' means any business, trade, manufacture, undertaking, calling
or employment ^in which workers are employed.

Worker ' means any person of any age or either sex employed by any
employer to do any skilled or unskilled manual or clerical work for hire or reward
in any industry."— Act of 1900.

Introduction to the 1902 Edition xlv

form, the law aimed ostensibly and primarily at affording
means by which labor disputes could be amicably composed,
and, in case of need, compulsorily settled by an award,
which might, if certain steps were taken by the parties, be
made enforceable by legal process. The local Boards of
Conciliation failed, in two-thirds of the cases brought before
them, to bring about any settlement, one party or the other
promptly carrying the issue to the Court of Arbitration.
This seems to have been due partly to the employers' dis-
satisfaction with the composition of the Boards, to which
they had at first refused to elect members. But it soon
became evident that the workmen valued the Court of
Arbitration more than the Boards, for the very important
reason that the award of the Court could be made legally
binding on the trade, which was, until 1900, not the case
with any decision of a Board. The Trade Unions, at first
somewhat cold, became enthusiastic supporters of the Act
when they found that, instead of merely preventing strikes,
it enabled Common Rules for the industry to be made as
legally binding as the Factory Acts. They became, in fact,
as Mr. Reeves, the author of the law, admits, "rather too
enthusiastic indeed, for they have shown a tendency to make
too frequent a use of it."1 Every trade sought to get its
Common Rules embodied in law. This, however, is a rush
which will probably exhaust itself as trade after trade finds
its conditions settled by an authoritative award, which will,
in any case, need amendment only on specific points, and
may be made unalterable for a three years' term. The
result is, to use the words of a bitter opponent, " it is
necessary to put aside altogether the idea that our Act is
simply a device for preventing strikes. It is nothing of the
kind. It is a device for putting the regulation of trades,
occupations, and industries under the control of a statutory
court" 2

Nor do the employers object. At first they usually

1 The Long White Clozid.
2 Dr. John Macgregor, of Wellington, New Zealand.

xlvi Industrial Democracy

stood aloof, allowed the Government to appoint their
members to the Conciliation Boards in default of election,
and practically ignored the Act. But this attitude was
given up on better acquaintance with the law and its
working. After a time the great majority of employers
openly professed their approval of the principle of the Act,
and their satisfaction with the Court of Arbitration. One
great captain of industry, who had been badly beaten in the
Court of Arbitration, and compelled to accept an award
which he bitterly resented, candidly confessed to us in 1898
that he had since found that the peace and assurance of
peace given by the award, together with the certainty that
he was not being undercut by rival employers, quite made
up to him the increase of wages he had been compelled to
pay. He could now, he said, "sleep at night," confident
that there would be no interruption of his business. The
enactment of Common Rules for each trade has, in fact,
been discovered, in practice, not only to increase produc-
tivity, but also to leave unaffected the opportunities of
particular employers to reap the full advantage of their
position, connection, or capacity. And thus we find, to give
only one instance, when the Act of 1900 was before the
Legislature, with its express authorisation of the enactment
of a Legal Minimum Wage, " the Canterbury Employers'
Association," one of the most influential bodies in the Colony,
desiring " to impress upon the Government that they are
thoroughly in accord with the principles laid down in the
Conciliation and Arbitration Act. Any hostility they may
have shown in the past was mainly due to the fact that the
Act was made to apply to a certain section of the industrial
community only. The Government now propose to remove
this, and if the Bill now before the House is amended in the
direction suggested by the Association, they are strongly of
opinion that it would be impossible to conceive of a more use-
ful measure, properly administered, that would prove of such
immense benefit to all sections of the industrial community."
It is, however, not strictly accurate to say that the Act

Introduction to the 1902 Edition xlvii

has prevented all strikes. There have been about half a
dozen small strikes in New Zealand since 1894, but they
have all been among workmen to whom the Act had not, at
the time, been applied. If there is no industrial agreement
or award in force in any trade, a strike may still occur, but
it can be stopped at once if the employer chooses to apply
to the local Conciliation Board. The operatives cannot
approach the Board except in the capacity of a Trade
Union or registered " industrial association," so that, in
absolutely unorganised trades, in which the employers prefer
not to apply to the Board, disputes may still take place.
As, however, any seven workers in any occupation may form
a registered association, the case is now of rare occurrence.
There has at no time been a strike in contravention of an
award under the Act. " It is hardly necessary to point out,"
writes Judge Backhouse, "that the Act makes no attempt
to insist on an employer's carrying on his business, or on a
man's working under a condition that he objects to. All it
says is that, where a Board or the Court has interfered, the
business, if carried on at all, shall be carried on in the
manner prescribed ; if the workman works, he shall work
under the conditions laid down. There is nothing to pre-
vent a strike in detail ; nothing which will preclude a man
from asking for his time [i.e. wages earned] and leaving."
That is to say, the conditions of employment imposed by
the New Zealand Court, like those of the Victorian wage-
boards, become binding on the employers only as standard
minimum conditions, analogous to those of the Factory Acts.
By the end of 1 901, after seven years' experience of the system,
with the one exception of agriculture, all important industries,
whether protected by the tariff or not, including coal and gold
mining, the mercantile marine, the building, textile, and en-
gineering trades, printing, the railway service, sheep-shearing,
meat-freezing, and many minor occupations, have brought
themselves voluntarily within the scope of the law. We can
only add our personal testimony to that given by every careful
investigator into the circumstances of New Zealand, that there

xlviii Industrial Democracy

is, so far, no evidence of injury to its industrial prosperity; that
after seven years' trial, there is no party — scarcely even any
section of a party — advocating or desiring the repeal of the
law ; that it is, on the contrary, almost universally approved
of by employers as well as workmen ; and that there is
every indication that its operation has been of great and
enduring benefit to the community as a whole. The world
is certainly indebted to New Zealand — and, in particular, to
Mr. W. P. Reeves — for an original and highly significant
object lesson in labor legislation. It may be added that
New South Wales and Western Australia, after elaborate in-
vestigation and prolonged discussion, enacted, in 1900-1901,
laws following closely the text of that of New Zealand.

The differences between the Victorian and New Zealand
systems are full of interest. In Victoria the wage-board,
once established, itself takes the initiative, and immediately
sets to work, without waiting for a dispute, to frame Common
Rules for the whole trade. The New Zealand tribunals
cannot themselves initiate proceedings, and must wait until
a dispute — -which means, in practice, a mere refusal by em-
ployer or Trade Union of the other's request — is expressly
referred to them. But once any occupation in New Zealand
has come under an industrial agreement or an award, though
the terms may be indefinitely varied from time to time, some
" Common Rules " for the trade will practically always exist.
In Victoria, again, the award of the wage-board can never be
anything but a minimum. It can contain nothing to prevent
an employer from offering better terms, or a Trade Union
from striking to get better terms. In New Zealand the law
originally contained no mention of a minimum wage, and
though this is now expressly authorised by the statute, there is
theoretically nothing to prevent the tribunals (like the justices
under the Elizabethan statutes) from enacting precise rates or
conditions, which would be maxima as well as minima, for-
bidding employers to offer more, and binding the Trade Union
not merely to abstain from a strike, but also to refrain from
collectively asking for better terms, or conspiring to obtain

Introduction to the 1902 Edition xlix

them by a concerted refusal to renew contracts of service.
In practice, however, the New Zealand awards are always
worded as minima, not as maxima — a distinction which we
regard as vitally important to the interest of the community,
as well as to that of the wage-earners, as the enactment
of any maximum discourages efficiency and stops all pro-
gress. There is, in fact, no real difference between the
Colonies on this point, as it was, from the first, taken for
granted in New Zealand that the agreements and awards
must take the form only of minimum conditions, seeing that
any individual workman above the lowest grade of efficiency
could, even with a maximum, always have resorted to the
" strike in detail " as a means of enforcing his " rent of
ability." The point is, however, of such vital importance
that we should prefer to see the tribunal expressly limited to
the enactment of minimum, not maximum conditions. A
more practical difference between the two Colonies is that,
in Victoria, the enforcement of the prescribed minimum
becomes the duty of the Government, through its factory
inspectors, and breaches of the award are proceeded against,
at the public expense, in the police courts. In New Zea-
land the enforcement of the award is left to the vigilance of
the parties concerned, and the necessary legal proceedings
are at their own expense, and take place only in the Court
of Arbitration. In Victoria each trade must have its own
board, which now acts for the whole of that trade through-
out the Colony. In New Zealand, though there is provision
for the appointment, by way of exception, of special boards
for particular cases, this has not been taken advantage of,
and each district has its own local board, dealing with all
the trades in that district, whilst a single Court of Arbitra-
tion deals with all trades all over the Colony. Finally, we
have the highly significant difference that, whereas in
Victoria the settlement of the conditions of employment is
regarded as entirely a matter for the trade concerned, with-
out opportunity of appeal, in New Zealand they are dealt
with by tribunals of first instance and a court of appeal, both

1 Indiistrial Democracy

representing, not the trade concerned, but the community
as a whole, and thus charged to have regard to the para-
mount interest which the public has in the maintenance
and progressive advance, alike of the operatives' Standard of
Life and of industrial productivity. It is the conscious
adoption of this latter principle, by public opinion and the
Legislatures of three such important states as New Zealand,
New South Wales, and Western Australia, that we regard
as the most important feature of these proceedings.

We venture to forecast some of the changes in Trade
Union structure and function which will be brought about
by these alterations in its environment. First and foremost
we anticipate a change among Trade Unionists in their
appreciation of the relative merits of Collective Bargaining
and Legal Enactment (pp. 253-57). Collective Bargaining
necessarily implies the alternative of a collective refusal to
come to terms, that is to say, a strike or lock-out. But the
decisions of the judges go very far in the direction of
making a strike impossible. A Trade Union may, it is
true, still lawfully conduct a strike, provided that it is
carried out without a breach of the peace ; without threaten-
ing any employer that his business will be temporarily
brought to a standstill ; without causing any damage to
third parties ; without publishing anything that, though
true, is technically libellous ; without obstructing the
thoroughfare, or " watching and besetting " any place ; and
without even any two men trying, in concert, peacefully to
persuade a blackleg to remain loyal to his order. There
may be a few Trade Unions, such as the Lancashire Cotton-
spinners, the Northumberland Coalminers, or the ship-
building Boilermakers which (able as they are to enforce
compulsory membership on all persons working at the
trade, and so highly skilled as to be incapable of being
replaced) could successfully conduct a strike under these
conditions, without rinding their funds denuded by law
expenses and damages. But the vast majority of Trade
Unions comprise only a part of the workers in their trades,

Introduction to the 1902 Edition li

and in many cases it would be possible, in an emergency,
for the employers to get workers of other trades to replace
them. With Trade Unions of this kind every strike
inevitably leads to proceedings which, though not criminal,
may now be held actionable. Moreover, Trade Unions are
becoming every day more conscious of the fact that, for the
great mass of manual workers who exist below the " Poverty
Line," even this amount of collective action is impracticable.
To the underfed, badly housed, and overworked man or
woman, deprived of the leisure as well as of the strength
necessary for organisation — to the isolated outworker or
assistant in the small workshop — Collective Bargaining is
wholly and for ever out of the question. All these con-
siderations are cutting at the root of that buoyant faith of
the older Trade Unionists in the abstract " right of combina-
tion," by which they meant the right to a free fight with
the employers. On the other hand, the success of the
Colonial experiments is rapidly opening the eyes of English
employers and workmen to new ways of using the Method
of Legal Enactment, and new advantages of its application.
For instance, the word " arbitration " has, in the course of
four years, completely changed its common meaning.
When we wrote our chapter on Arbitration (pp. 222-45)
we could still use the term exclusively for a voluntary
recourse to a voluntarily chosen tribunal whose award was
only voluntarily accepted. Now arbitration in labor disputes
has come to mean, in most people's minds, merely a par-
ticular form of social machinery by which the conditions
of employment can be authoritatively settled, and strikes
prevented, whether individual employers or individual work-
men like it or not. The interesting differences between
the systems of New Zealand and Victoria, with their
equally interesting imitations in New South Wales, Western
Australia, and South Australia, show how elastic and how
closely applicable to the details of each trade and town the
once rigid law may be.

Passing now from the " methods " to the " regulations "

Hi Industrial Democracy

of Trade Unionism, we look for even greater changes. Our
analysis of these regulations showed that they fell, for all
their multifariousness, into two classes — the Device of the
Common Rule and the Device of Restriction — classes which
are sharply marked off from each other, which rest on
absolutely different assumptions, and which are mutually
contradictory in their social results. We showed that
economic science found nothing to condemn in the Device
of the Common Rule ; that, in fact, in all regulations
based on this principle — notably those relating to the
Standard Rate, the Normal Day, and prescribed conditions
of Sanitation and Safety — Trade Unionism positively pro-
moted efficiency, stimulated both workmen and employers
to greater productivity, and tended constantly to improve
both human character and technical processes. On the
other hand, we demonstrated that the regulations based
on the Device of Restriction — whether of numbers or
output, whether in the use of machinery or in transformation
of processes — were wholly injurious not only to the trade
concerned and to the community as a whole, but also to
the manual worker himself. It is to be counted as one of
the great merits of British Trade Unionism that it has,
during the past hundred years, with practically no outside
assistance, been steadily subordinating and discarding the
Device of Restriction, which it had inherited partly from
the regulations of the Craft Gilds and partly from the
instincts of unorganised hired labor ; substituting for it,
as we proved with reference to trade after trade, its own
characteristic invention of the Device of the Common Rule.
Already, in 1897, we were able to show that the Device of
the Common Rule was, in British Trade Unionism, both
the predominant and the growing element, whilst the
Device of Restriction lingered only in a minority of trades,
in which it was becoming steadily more discredited.

This eminently desirable tendency will now, it is clear,
receive a great stimulus. Public opinion so keenly appre-
ciates the danger of German and American rivalry in

Introduction to the 1902 Edition liii

industry, and international competition is becoming so
intense and all-pervading, that every kind of limitation or
restriction of productive power is seen to be almost criminal.
What with law and popular disapproval, and the better
instruction of the workmen themselves, to which Trade
Unionism has so much contributed, we expect to see the
remnants of the Device of Restriction — especially all forms
of Restriction of Numbers — rapidly disappear from the
Trade Union world. Restriction of effort, and reluctance
to make the most of machinery — already extinct in the
trades governed by collectively-agreed-to Standard Lists of
Piecework Prices — will linger longest in those occupations
in which either timework or competitive piecework survives,
and in which the employers refuse or neglect to set their
brains to work, in conjunction with the Trade Union
officials, to devise more intelligent methods of remuneration.
In such trades employers and workmen alike will continue
to suffer the consequences of their own stupidity.

On the other hand, the decisive approval which economic
science gives to the Device of the Common Rule is reinforced
by the growing public appreciation of the national import-
ance of preventing every kind of " sweating." As a nation
we are becoming keenly conscious of the fact that the
existence of whole classes who are chronically underfed,
ill-clothed, badly housed, and overworked, constitutes not
only a grievance to these unfortunates themselves, but also
a serious drain upon the vitality and productivity of the
community as a whole. The only effective way to prevent
the national loss involved in the existence of " parasitic
trades " is seen to be the compulsory extension to them of
those Common Rules which the stronger trades have got
for themselves. The idea of a compulsorily enforced
" National Minimum " — already embodied in our law as
regards sanitation and education — is now seen to be appli-
cable as regards rest and subsistence. And just at the time
when the successful experiments of Victoria and New
Zealand have been proving to us that a Legal Minimum

liv Industrial Democracy

Wage is not at all an impossibility, and that it actually
works, and works well, there comes the new Act of the
New South Wales Legislature, with its express adoption of
the principle, under the very name that we invented for it
four years ago. By this statute, passed in December 1901,
at the instance of Mr. Bernhard Wise, the Court of Arbitra-
tion is empowered to declare that any practice, usage,
condition of employment, or industrial dealing shall, with
such limitations and exceptions as the Court may declare,
become a " Common Rule " for all persons employed in the
industry under consideration, to be henceforth obeyed by
every employer, and to be enforced by drastic penalties.

One probable application of the policy of the National
Minimum seems to us so urgently required for national safety
that we give it special prominence. Perhaps the gravest
social symptom at the opening of the twentieth century is
the lack of physical vigor, moral self-control, and technical
skill of the town-bred, manual-working boy. In the indus-
trial organisation of to-day there are hundreds of thousands
of youths, between fourteen and twenty-one, who are taken
on by employers to do unskilled and undisciplined work, at
comparatively high wages for mere boys, who are taught no
trade, who are kept working long hours at mere routine, and
who are habitually turned adrift, to recruit the ranks of
unskilled labor, as soon as they require a man's subsistence
(pp. 482-85, 704-15, 768-69, 811). We see four acute
evils arising out of the existence of this class. Ministers of
religion deplore the " hooliganism " of our great cities. No
less serious is the physical degeneracy, which is leading our
military advisers to declare that 60 per cent of the adult
male population now fail to reach the already low standard
of the recruiting sergeant. At the same time, there is a
constant deficiency in the supply of highly skilled labor,
whilst all educationists agree that it is impossible to give
adequate technical training with such voluntary attendance as
can be got from lads after ten or twelve hours' employment
(p. 77°)- Finally, in this suppression of the adult male

Introduction to the 1902 Edition Iv

operative by successive relays of boys between fourteen and
twenty-one, we have, as we have shown (pp. 482-89, 768-7 i),
one of the most insidious forms of industrial parasitism. From
the point of view of the community, we cannot afford to
regard the growing boy as an independent wealth-producer,
to be satisfied by a daily subsistence : he is the future citizen
and parent, for whom, up to twenty-one, proper conditions
of growth and training are of paramount importance. Every
industry employing boy-labor, and not providing adequate
physical and mental training, is using up the stock of the nation,
and comes under condemnation as a parasitic trade (p. 771).

Now, although philanthropists and statesmen have de-
plored this complex evil, no systematic treatment of it
has yet been undertaken. The Trade Unions, to whom it
presents itself primarily as the increase of " boy-labor," have
found no better device against it than the so-called " appren-
ticeship " regulations (pp. 482-89). But the old system of
individual apprenticeship to the master craftsman, with its
anomalous restrictions of age and number, and its haphazard
amateur instruction, is, as regards nearly all trades, dead
and past reviving. Any attempt to resuscitate it inevitably
takes the form of a mere limitation of numbers, or other
narrowing of the entrance to a trade — a policy which, as we
have demonstrated, does not cure the evil, and is seriously
prejudicial to masters and men alike, to the trade itself, and
to the whole community (pp. 454-89, 768-71). Unfortu-
nately, this limitation of the number of apprentices has now
been embodied in both New Zealand and Victorian law,
and we desire therefore to draw pointed attention, not only
to the utter futility of this device, but also to the existence
of a more excellent way.

We see no remedy for the grave social evils resulting
from the illegitimate use of boy-labor, and the consequent
industrial parasitism, except in an appropriate application of
the Policy of the National Minimum (pp. 770-71). The
nation must, at any inconvenience, prevent such conditions
of employment of boys as are demonstrably inconsistent

Ivi Industrial Democracy

with the maintenance of the race in a state of efficiency as
producers and citizens. As regards youths under twenty-one
the community is bound, in its own interest, to secure for
them, not as at present, daily subsistence and pocket-money,
but such conditions of nurture as will allow of the con-
tinuous provision, generation after generation, of healthy and
efficient adults. What is required for the " hooligan " is
adequate opportunity for physical culture and effective
technical training, and the systematic enforcement of these
by law. This means, we suggest, an extension of the exist-
ing " half-time " system. We see no reason why the present
prohibition to employ a boy in a factory or workship for
more than thirty hours in a week should not be extended
to all occupations, and at least up to the age of eighteen.
The twenty or thirty hours per week thus saved from in-
dustrial employment should be compulsorily devoted to a
properly organised course of physical training and technical
education, which could, under such circumstances, be carried
out with a thoroughness and efficiency hitherto undreamt of.
Meanwhile employers would remain free to engage boys, but
as they could get them only for half-time, they would not
be tempted to hire them except for the legitimate purpose of
training up a new generation of craftsmen. Finally, we may
add that if at any time it should be deemed necessary for
the purpose of home defence to have the nation trained to
arms, a mere extension of such a half-time system to the
age of twenty-one would enable every citizen to be drilled
and taught the use of the rifle without the slightest interrup-
tion of wage-earning or any segregation in barracks. We
suggest that the "citizen-army" of the future will, in the
United Kingdom, more probably take this form than that of
conscription by ballot or any universal military service for
one or two years at a stretch.

SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB.

41 GROSVENOR ROAD, WESTMINSTER,
LONDON, December 1901.

CONTENTS

PART I
TRADE UNION STRUCTURE

CHAPTER I

PAGE

PRIMITIVE DEMOCRACY . . ... . . 3

CHAPTER II

REPRESENTATIVE INSTITUTIONS . . . . 38

CHAPTER III
THE UNIT OF GOVERNMENT . . . . . . 72

CHAPTER IV

INTERUNION RELATIONS 104

PART II
TRADE UNION FUNCTION

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION .... MS

THE METHOD OF MUTUAL INSURANCE . . . . 152

Iviii Industrial Democracy

CHAPTER II

PAGE

THE METHOD OF COLLECTIVE BARGAINING 173

CHAPTER III
ARBITRATION ...... 222

CHAPTER IV
THE METHOD OF LEGAL ENACTMENT . . . . 247

CHAPTER V
THE STANDARD RATE . . . . . . . 279

CHAPTER VI
THE NORMAL DAY ........ 324

CHAPTER VII
SANITATION AND SAFETY . . . . . . . 354

CHAPTER VIII
NEW PROCESSES AND MACHINERY ..... 392

CHAPTER IX
CONTINUITY OF EMPLOYMENT ...... 430

PART II
TRADE UNION FUNCTION— Continued

CHAPTER X

PAGE

THE ENTRANCE TO A TRADE . . . . . -453

(a) APPRENTICESHIP . . - . . . . . 454

(b} THE LIMITATION OF BOY-LABOR . . . .482

(<:) PROGRESSION WITHIN THE TRADE . . . . 489

(d) THE EXCLUSION OF WOMEN . . . . 495

CHAPTER XI

THE RIGHT TO A TRADE . ..... . . . 508

CHAPTER XII

THE IMPLICATIONS OF TRADE UNIONISM . . ". . . 528

CHAPTER XIII

THE ASSUMPTIONS OF TRADE UNIONISM . •-. ,< . . 559

lx Industrial Democracy

PART III
TRADE UNION THEORY

CHAPTER I

PAGE

THE VERDICT OF THE ECONOMISTS . . 6°3

CHAPTER II
THE HIGGLING OF THE MARKET . 654

CHAPTER III
THE ECONOMIC CHARACTERISTICS OF TRADE UNIONISM . 703

(a) THE DEVICE OF RESTRICTION OF NUMBERS . 704

(b) THE DEVICE OF THE COMMON RULE . . . 715

COMMON RULE ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF INDUSTRY 740

(d) PARASITIC TRADES 749

(e) THE NATIONAL MINIMUM ..... 766

(/) THE UNEMPLOYABLE ' 784

(g) SUMMARY OF THE ECONOMIC CHARACTERISTICS OF

THE DEVICE OF THE COMMON RULE . . . 789

(//) TRADE UNION METHODS ..... 796

CHAPTER IV
TRADE UNIONISM AND DEMOCRACY . . . 807

Contents Ixi

APPENDICES

PAGE

I. — THE LEGAL POSITION OF COLLECTIVE BARGAINING IN

ENGLAND ......... 853

II. — THE BEARING OF INDUSTRIAL PARASITISM AND THE
POLICY OF A NATIONAL MINIMUM ON THE FREE TRADE
CONTROVERSY ........ 863

III. — SOME STATISTICS BEARING ON THE RELATIVE MOVE-
MENTS OF THE MARRIAGE AND BIRTH-RATES, PAUPER-
ISM, WAGES, AND THE PRICE OF WHEAT . . . 873

IV. — A SUPPLEMENT TO THE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF TRADE

UNIONISM 878

INDEX . ....... 901

PART I
TRADE UNION STRUCTURE

VOL. I

CHAPTER I

PRIMITIVE DEMOCRACY

IN the local trade clubs of the eighteenth century,
democracy appeared in its simplest form. Like the citizens
of Uri or Appenzell 2 the workmen were slow to recognise
any other authority than " the voices " of all concerned.
The members of each trade, in general meeting assembled,
themselves made the regulations, applied them to particular
cases, voted the expenditure of funds, and decided on
such action by individual members as seemed necessary
for the common weal. The early rules were accordingly
occupied with securing the maintenance of order and
decorum at these general meetings of " the trade " or
" the body." With this view the president, often chosen
only for the particular meeting, was treated with great
respect and invested with special, though temporary,

1 Copyright in the United States of America, 1896, by Sidney and Beatrice
Webb.

2 The early Trade Union general meetings have, indeed, many interesting
resemblances, both in spirit and in form, to the " Landesgemeinden," or general
meetings of all citizens, of the old Swiss Cantons. The best description of these
archaic Swiss democracies, as they exist to-day, is given by Eugene Rambert in
his work Les Alpes Suisses : Etudes Historiques et Nationales (Lausanne, 1889).
J. M. Vincent's State and Federal Government in Switzerland (Baltimore, 1891)
is more precise and accurate than any other account in the English language.
Freeman's picturesque reference to them in The Growth of the English Constitu-
tion (London, 1872) is well known.

4 Trade Union Structure

authority. Thus the constitution of the London Society
of Woolstaplers, established 1785, declares "that at every
meeting of this society a president shall be chosen to
preserve the rules of decorum and good order ; and if any
member should not be silent on due notice given by the
president, which shall be by giving three distinct knocks on
the table, he shall fine threepence ; and if any one shall in-
terrupt another in any debate while addressing the president,
he shall fine sixpence ; and if the person so fined shall
return any indecent language, he shall fine sixpence more ;
and should any president misconduct himself, so as to cause
uproar and confusion in the society, or shall neglect to
enforce a strict observance of this and the following article,
he shall be superseded, and another president shall be chosen
in his stead. The president shall be accommodated with
his own choice of liquors, wine only excepted." x And the
Articles of the Society of Journeymen Brushmakers, to
which no person was to be admitted as a member " who is
not well-affected to his present Majesty and the Protestant
succession, and in good health, and of a respectable char-
acter," provide " that on each evening the society meets there
shall be a president chosen from the members present to
keep order ; to be allowed a shilling for his trouble ; any
member refusing to serve the office to be fined sixpence. If
any member dispute on politics, swear, lay wagers, promote
gambling, or behave otherwise disorderly, and will not be
silent when ordered by the chairman, he shall pay a fine of
a shilling." 2

The rules of every old society consist mainly of safe-
guards of the efficiency of this general meeting. Whilst
political or religious wrangling, seditious sentiments or songs,
cursing, swearing, or obscene language, betting, wagering,
gaming, or refusing to keep silence were penalised by fines,
elaborate and detailed provision was made for the entertain-

1 The Articles of the London Society of Woolstaplers (London, 1813).

2 Articles of the Society of Journeymen Brushmakers, held at the sign of the
Craven Head, Drury Lane (London, 1806).

Primitive Democracy 5

ment of the members. Meeting, as all clubs did, at a public-
house in a room lent free by the landlord, it was taken as
a matter of course that each man should do his share of
drinking. The rules often prescribe the sum to be spent at
each meeting : in the case of the Friendly Society of Iron-
founders, for instance, the member's monthly contribution in
1809 was a shilling " to the box," and threepence for liquor,
" to be spent whether present or not." The Brushmakers
provided "that on every meeting night each member shall
receive a pot ticket at eight o'clock, a pint at ten, and
no more." l And the Manchester Compositors resolved
in 1826 " that tobacco be allowed to such members of this
society as require it during the hours of business at any
meeting of the society." 2

After the president, the most important officers were,
accordingly, the stewards or marshalmen, two or four members
usually chosen by rotation. Their duty was, to use the
words of the Cotton-spinners, " at every meeting to fetch all
the liquor into the committee room, and serve it regularly
round " ; 3 and the members were, in some cases, " forbidden
to drink out of turn, except the officers at the table or
a member on his first coming into the town." 4 Treasurer

1 The account book of the little Preston Society of Carpenters, whose mem-
bership in 1807 averaged about forty-five, shows an expenditure at each meeting
of 6s. to 75. 6d. As late as 1837 the rules of the Steam-Engine Makers'
Society provided that one-third of the income — fourpence out of the monthly
contribution of a shilling — "shall be spent in refreshments. . . . To prevent
disorder no person shall help himself to any drink in the club-room during club
hours, but what is served him by the waiters or marshalmen who shall be
appointed by the president every club night." Some particulars as to the dying
away of this custom are given in our History of Trade Unionism, pp. 185, 186 ;
see also the article by Prof. W. J. Ashley on "Journeymen's clubs," in Political
Science Quarterly, March 1897.

2 MS. Minutes of the Manchester Typographical Society, 7th March 1826.

3 Articles, Rules, Orders, and Regulations made and to be observed by and
between the Friendly Associated Cotton- spinners within the township of Oldham
(Oldham, 1797 : reprinted 1829).

4 Friendly Society of Ironfounders, Rules, 1809. The Rules of the Liverpool
Shipwrights' Society of 1784 provided also " that each member that shall call for
drink without leave of the stewards shall forfeit and pay for the drink they call for
to the stewards for the use of the box. . . . That the marshalmen shall pay the over-
plus of drink that comes in at every monthly meeting more than allowed by ths

6 Trade Union Stritcture

there was often none, the scanty funds, if not consumed
as quickly as collected, being usually deposited with the
publican who acted as host. Sometimes, however, we
have the archaic box with three locks, so frequent
among the gilds; and in such cases members served
in rotation as " keymasters," or, as we should now say,
trustees. Thus the Edinburgh Shoemakers provided that
" the keymasters shall be chosen by the roll, beginning at
the top for the first keymaster, and at the middle of the
roll for the youngest keymaster, and so on until the roll
be finished. If any refuse the keymaster, he shall pay
one shilling and sixpence sterling."1 The ancient box of
the Glasgow Ropemakers' Friendly Society (established
1824), elaborately decorated with the society's "coat of
arms," was kept in the custody of the president, who was
elected annually.2 Down to within the last thirty years
the custom was maintained on the " deacons' choosing,"
or annual election day, of solemnly transporting this box
through the streets of Glasgow to the house of the new
president, with a procession of ropespinners headed by a
piper, the ceremony terminating with a feast. The keeping
of accounts and the writing of letters was a later develop-
ment, and when a clerk or secretary was needed, he had
perforce to be chosen from the small number qualified for
the work. But there is evidence that the early secre-
taries served, like their colleagues, only for short periods,

society ; and no member of this society is allowed to call for or smoak tobacco
during club hours in the club room ; for every such offence he is to forfeit and
pay fourpence to the stewards for the use of the box." — Articles to be observed by
a Society of Shipwrights, or the True British Society, all Freemen (Liverpool,
1784), Articles 8 and 9.

1 Articles of the Journeymen Shoemakers of the City of Edinburgh (Edinburgh,
!778) — a society established in 1727.

2 Articles and Regulations of the Associated Ropemakers1 Friendly Society
(Glasgow, 1836), repeated in the General Laws and Regulations of the Glasgow
Ropemakers' Trade Protective and Friendly Society (Glasgow, 1 884). The members
of the Glasgow Typographical Society resolved, in 1823, "that a man be pro-
vided on election nights to carry the box from the residence of the president to the
place of meeting, and after the meeting to the new president's house." — MS.
Minutes of general meeting, Glasgow Typographical Society, 4th October 1823.

Primitive Democracy 7

and occupied, moreover, a position very subordinate to the
president.

Even when it was necessary to supplement the officers
by some kind of committee, so far were these infant demo-
cracies from any superstitious worship of the ballot-box,
that, although we know of no case of actual choice by lot,1
the committee-men were usually taken, as in the case of the
Steam-Engine Makers' Society, " in rotation as their names
appear on the books." 2 "A fine of one shilling," say the
rules of the Southern Amicable Union Society of Wool-
staplers, " shall be levied on any one who shall refuse to serve
on the committee or neglect to attend its stated meetings,
. . . and the next in rotation shall be called in his stead." 3
The rules of the Liverpool Shipwrights declared " that the
committee shall be chosen by rotation as they stand in the
books ; and any member refusing to serve the office shall
forfeit ten shillings and sixpence."4 As late as 1843 we
find the very old Society of Curriers resolving that for this
purpose " a list with three columns be drawn up of the
whole of the members, dividing their ages as near as possible
in the following manner : the elder, the middle-aged and the
young ; so that the experience of the elder and the sound

1 The selection of officers by lot was, it need hardly be said, frequent in
primitive times. It is interesting to find the practice in the Swiss " Landes-
gemeinden." In 1640 the " Landesgemeinde " of Glarus began to choose eight
candidates for each office, who then drew lots among themselves. Fifty years
later Schwyz followed this example. By 1793 the " Landesgemeinde " of Glarus
was casting lots for all offices, including the cantonal secretaryship, the steward-
ships of dependent territories, etc. The winnei often sold his office to the
highest bidder. The practice was not totally abolished until 1837, and old men
still remember the passing round of the eight balls, each wrapped in black cloth,
seven being silvern and the eighth gilt. — Les Alpes Suisses ; fetudes Historiques
et Nationals, by Eugene Rambert (Lausanne, 1889), pp. 226, 276.

2 Rules of the Steam- Engine Maker? Society, edition of 1837.

3 Rules of the Southern Amicable Union of Woolstaplers (London, 1837).

4 Articles to be observed by the Association of the Friendly Union of Shipivrights,
instituted in Liverpool on Tuesday, \\th November 1800 (Liverpool, 1800), Rule
19. The London Sailmakers resolved, in 1836, "that from this evening the
calling for stewards shall begin from the last man on the committee, and that
from and after the last steward the twelve men who stand in rotation on the
book do form the committee." — MS. Minutes of general meeting, 26th September
1836.

8 Trade Union Structure

judgment of the middle-aged will make up for any deficiency
on the part of the young." l In some cases, indeed, the
members of the committee were actually chosen by the
officers. Thus in the ancient society of Journeymen Paper-
makers, where each " Grand Division " had its committee of
eight members, it was provided that " to prevent imposition
part of the committee shall be changed every three months,
by four old members going out and four new ones coming
in ; also a chairman shall be chosen to keep good order,
which chairman, with the clerk, shall nominate the four
new members which shall succeed the four old ones." 2

The early trade club was thus a democracy of the most
rudimentary type, free alike from permanently differentiated
officials, executive council, or representative assembly.
The general meeting strove itself to transact all the
business, and grudgingly delegated any of its functions
either to officers or to committees. When this delegation
could no longer be avoided, the expedients of rotation
and short periods of service were used " to prevent im-
position " or any undue influence by particular members.
In this earliest type of Trade Union democracy we find, in
fact, the most childlike faith not only that "all men are
equal," but also that " what concerns all should be decided
by all."

It is obvious that this form of democracy was compatible
only with the smallest possible amount of business. But it
was, in our opinion, not so much the growth of the financial
and secretarial transactions of the unions, as the exigencies of

1 MS. Minutes of the London Society of Journeymen Curriers, January 1843.

2 Rules and Articles to be observed by the Journeymen Papermakers throughout
England '(1823), Appendix 1 8 to Report on Combination Laws, 1825, p. 56. The
only Trade Union in which this example still prevails is that of the Flint Glass
Makers, where the rules until lately gave the secretary "the power to nominate
a central committee (open to the objection of the trade), in whose hands the
executive power of the society shall be vested from year to year." — Rules and
Regulations of the National Flint Glass Maker? Sick and Friendly Society (Man-
chester, 1890). This has lately been modified, in so far that seven members are
now elected, the central secretary nominating four "from the district in which
he resides, but open to the objection of the trade." — Rule 67 (Rules, reprinted
with additions, Manchester, 1893).

Primitive Democracy 9

their warfare with the employers, that first led to a departure
trom this simple ideal. The legal and social persecutions to
which Trade Unionists were subject, at any rate up to 1824,
made secrecy and promptitude absolutely necessary for suc-
cessful operations ; and accordingly at all critical times we
find the direction of affairs passing out of the hands of the
general meeting into those of a responsible, if not a repre-
sentative, committee. Thus the London Tailors, whose
militant combinations between 1720 and 1834 repeatedly
attracted the attention of Parliament,1 had practically two
constitutions, one for peace and one for war. In quiet times,
the society was made up of little autonomous general meet-
ings of the kind described above at the thirty " houses of
call " in London and Westminster. The organisation for war,
as set forth in I 8 1 8 by Francis Place, was very different :
" Each house of call has a deputy, who on particular occasions
is chosen by a kind of tacit consent, frequently without its
being known to a very large majority who is chosen. The
deputies form a committee, and they again choose, in a
somewhat similar way, a very small committee, in whom,
on very particular occasions, all power resides, from whom
all orders proceed, and whose commands are implicitly
obeyed ; and on no occasion has it ever been known that
their commands have exceeded the necessity of the occasion,
or that they have wandered in the least from the purpose
for which it was understood they were appointed. So perfect
indeed is the organisation, and so well has it been carried
into effect, that no complaint has ever been heard ; with so
much simplicity and with so great certainty does the whole
business appear to be conducted that the great body of
journeymen rather acquiesce than assist in any way in it." 2
Again, the protracted legal proceedings of the Scottish Hand-

1 See the interesting Select Documents illustrating the History of 7*rade
Unionism : I. The Tailoring Trade, edited by F. W. Gallon (London, 1896),
being one of the "Studies" published by the London School of Economics
and Political Science.

2 The Gorgon, No. 20, 3rd October 1818, reprinted in The Tailoring 7radt
by F. W. Gallon, pp. 153, 154.

I0 Trade Union Structure

loom Weavers, ending in the great struggle when 30,000
looms from Carlisle to Aberdeen struck on a single day
( i oth November 1812), were conducted by an autocratic com-
mittee of five, sitting in Glasgow, and periodically summon-
ing from all the districts delegates who carried back to their
constituents orders which were implicitly obeyed.1 Before
the repeal of the Combination Laws in 1824, the employers
in all the organised trades complained bitterly of these " self-
appointed " committees, and made repeated attempts to
scatter them by prosecutions for combination or conspiracy.
To this constant danger of prosecution may be ascribed
some of the mystery which surrounds the actual constitution
of these tribunals ; but their appearance on the scene when-
ever an emergency called for strong action was a necessary
consequence of the failure of the clubs to provide any con-
stitutional authority of a representative character.

So far we have dealt principally with trade clubs confined
to particular towns or districts. When, in any trade, these
local clubs united to form a federal union, or when one of
them enrolled members in other towns, government by a
general meeting of " the trade," or of all the members, be-
came impracticable.2 Nowadays some kind of representa-

1 Evidence before the House of Commons Committee on Artisans and
Machinery, 1824, especially that of Richmond.

2 A branch of a national union is still governed by the members in general
meeting assembled ; and for this and other reasons, it is customary for several
separate branches to be established in large towns where the number of members
becomes greater than can easily be accommodated in a single branch meeting-
place. Such branches usually send delegates to a district committee, which thus
becomes the real governing authority of the town or district. But in certain
unions the idea of direct government by an aggregate meeting of the trade still so
far prevails that, even in so large a centre as London, resort is had to huge mass
meetings. Thus the London Society of Compositors will occasionally summon
its ten thousand members to meet in council to decide, in an excited mass
meeting, the question of peace or war with their employers. And the National
Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives, which in its federal constitution adopts a
large measure of representative institutions, still retains in its local organisation
the aggregate meeting of the trade as the supreme governing body for the district.
The Shoemakers of London or Leicester frequently hold meetings at which the
attendance is numbered by thousands, with results that are occasionally calamitous
to the union. Thus, when in 1891 the men of a certain London firm had
impetuously left their work contrary to the agreement made by the union with

Primitive Democracy 1 1

tive institutions would seem to have been inevitable at this
stage. But it is significant to notice how slowly, reluctantly
and incompletely the Trade Unionists have incorporated in
their constitutions what is often regarded as the specifically
Anglo- Saxon form of democracy — the elected representative
assembly, appointing and controlling a standing executive.
Until the present generation, no Trade Union had ever
formed its constitution on this model. It is true that in the
early days we hear of1 meetings of delegates from local

the employers, their branch called a mass meeting of the whole body of the
London members (seven thousand attending), which, after refusing even to hear
the union officials, decided to support the recalcitrant strikers, with the result
that the employers "locked out" the whole trade. (Monthly Report of the
National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives, November 1891.) In 1893 tne
union executive found it necessary to summon at Leicester a special delegate
meeting of the whole society to sit in judgment on the London members who
had decided, at a mass meeting, to withdraw from the national agreement to
submit to arbitration. The circular calling the delegate meeting contains a vivid
description of the scene at this mass meeting: "The hall was well filled, and
Mr. Judge, president of the union, took the chair. From the outset it was soon
found that the rowdy element intended to again prevent a hearing, and thus make
it impossible for our views to be laid before the bulk of the more intelligent and
reasonable members. ... If democratic unions such as ours are to have the
meetings stopped by such proceedings, ... if the members refuse to hear, and
insult by cock-crowing and cat-calls their own accredited and elected executive,
then it is time that other steps be taken." The delegate meeting, by 74 votes to
9, severely censured the London members, and reversed their decision (Circular of
Executive Committee, I4th March 1893 : Special Report of the Delegate
Meeting at Leicester, I7th April 1893). In most unions, however, experience
has shown that in truth "aggregate meetings" are "aggravated meetings," and
has led to their abandonment in favor of district committees or delegate meetings.
* In the History of Trade Unionism, p. 46, we described the Hatters as hold-
ing in 1772, 1775, and 1777, "congresses" of delegates from all parts of the
country. Further examination of the evidence (House of Commons Journals,
vol. xxxvi. ; Place MS. 27,799-68; Committee on Artisans and Machinery)
inclines us to believe that these "congresses," like another in 1816, comprised
only delegates from the various workshops in London. We can discover
no instance during the eighteenth century of a Trade Union gathering made up
of delegates from the local clubs throughout the country. But though the con-
gresses of the Hatters probably represented only the London workmen, their
" bye-laws " were apparently adopted by the clubs elsewhere, and came thus to
be of national scope. Similar instances of national regulation by the principal
centre of a trade may be seen in the "resolutions" addressed "to the Wool-
staplers of England " by the London Society of Woolstaplers, and in the
"articles to be observed by the Journeymen Papermakers throughout England,"
formulated at a meeting of the trade at large held at Maidstone. In the loose
alliances of the local clubs in each trade, the chief trade centre often acted, in
fact, as the "governing branch."

i 2 Trade Union Structure

clubs to adopt or amend the " articles " of their association.
A "deputation" from nine local societies of Carpenters
met thus in London in 1 8 2 7 to form the Friendly Society
of Operative House Carpenters and Joiners, and similar
meetings were annually held to revise the rules and
adjust the finances of this federation. It would have
been a natural development for such a representative
congress to appoint a standing committee and executive
officers to act on behalf of the whole trade. But when
between 1824 and 1840 the great national societies of
that generation settled down into their constitutions, the
congress of elected representatives either found no place at
all, or else was called together only at long intervals and for
strictly limited purposes. In no case do we see it acting
as a permanent supreme assembly. The Trade Union met
the needs of expanding democracy by some remarkable
experiments in constitution-making.

The first step in the transition from the loose alliance of
separate local clubs into a national organisation was the
appointment of a seat of government or " governing branch."
The members residing in one town were charged with
the responsibility of conducting the current business of the
whole society, as well as that of their own branch. The
branch officers and the branch committee of this town accord-
ingly became the central authority.1 Here again the leading
idea was not so much to get a government that was repre-

1 In some of the more elaborate Trade Union constitutions formulated between
1820 and 1834 we find a hierarchy of authorities, none of them elected by the
society as a whole, but each responsible for a definite part of the common admini-
stration. Thus The Rules and Articles to be observed by the Journeymen Paper-
makers'^ 1823 provide "that there shall be five Grand Divisions throughout
England where all money shall be lodged, that when wanted may be sent to
any part where emergency may require." These "Grand Divisions" were the
branches in the five principal centres of the trade, each being given jurisdiction
over all the mills in the counties round about it. Above them all stood " No. I
Grand Division " (Maidstone), which was empowered to determine business of
too serious a nature to be left to any other Grand Division. This geographical
hierarchy is interesting as having apparently furnished the model for most of the
constitutions of the period, notably of the Owenite societies of 1833-1834, includ-
ing the Builders' Union and the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union itself.

Primitive Democracy 1 3

sentative of the society as to make each section take its turn
at the privileges and burdens of administration. The seat
of government was accordingly always changed at short
intervals, often by rotation. Thus the Steam-Engine Makers'
rules of 1826 provide that " the central branch of the society
shall be held alternately at the different branches of this
society, according as they stand on the books, commencing
with Branch No. I, and the secretary of the central branch
shall, after the accounts of the former year have been balanced,
send the books to the next central branch of the society." l
In other cases the seat of government was periodically deter-
mined by vote of the whole body of members, who appear
usually to have been strongly biassed in favor of shifting it
from town to town. The reason appears in this statement
by one of the lodges of the Ironfounders : " What, we ask,
has been the history of nearly every trade society in this
respect ? Why, that when any branch or section of it has
possessed the governing power too long, it has become care-
less of the society's interests, tried to assume irresponsible
powers, and invariably by its remissness opened wide the
doors of peculation, jobbery, and fraud." 2

The institution of a " governing branch " had the advantage
of being the cheapest machinery of central administration
that could be devised. By it the national union secured
its executive committee, at no greater expense than a small
local society.3 And so long as the function of the national

The same geographical hierarchy was a feature of the constitution of the Southern
Amicable Society of Woolstaplers until the last revision of rules in 1892. In only
one case has a similar hierarchy survived. The United Society of Brushmakers,
established in the eighteenth century, is still divided into geographical divisions
governed by the six head towns, with London as the centre of communication.
The branches in the West Riding, for instance, are governed by the Leeds com-
mittee, and when in 1892 the Sheffield branch had a strike, this was managed by
the secretary of the Leeds branch.

1 Rule 19 ; rules of 1826 as reprinted in the Annual Report for 1837.

2 Address of the Bristol branch of the Friendly Society of Ironfounders to the
members at large (in Annual Report for 1849).

3 Both the idea of rotation of office, and that of a local governing branch, can
be traced to the network of village sick-clubs which existed all over England in
the eighteenth century. In 1824 these clubs were described by a hostile critic as
"under the management of the ordinary members who succeed to the several offices

14 Trade Union Structure

executive was confined to that of a centre of communication
between practically autonomous local branches, no alteration
in the machinery was necessary. The duties of the secretary,
like those of his committee, were not beyond the competence
of ordinary artisans working at their trade and devoting only
their evenings to their official business. But with the multi-
plication of branches and the formation of a central fund, the
secretarial work of a national union presently absorbed the
whole time of a single officer, to whom, therefore, a salary
had to be assigned. As the salary came from the common
fund, the right of appointment passed, without question, from
the branch meeting to "the voices" of the whole body of
members. Thus the general secretary was singled out for a
unique position : alone among the officers of the union he
was elected by the whole body of members. Meanwhile the
supreme authority continued to be " the voices." Every pro-
position not covered by the original " articles," together with
all questions of peace and war, was submitted to the votes
of the members.1 But this was not all. Each branch, in

in rotation ; frequently without being qualified either by ability, independence, or
impartiality for the due discharge of their respective offices ; or under the control
of a standing committee, composed of the most active and often the least eligible
members residing near the place of meeting." — The Constitution of Friendly Societies
upon Legal and Scientific Principles, by Rev. John Thomas Becher (2nd edition,
London, 1824), p. 50.

Comparing small things with great, we may say that the British Empire is
administered by a "governing branch." The business common to the Empire as
a whole is transacted, not by imperial or federal officers, but by those of one part
of the Empire, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland ; and they are
supervised, not by an Imperial Diet or Federal Assembly, but by the domestic
legislature at Westminster.

1 The very ancient United Society of Brushmakers, which dates from the early
part of the eighteenth century, retains to this day its archaic method of collecting
" the voices." In London, said to be the most conservative of all the districts, no
alteration of rule is made without " sending round the box " as of yore. In the
society's ancient iron box are put all the papers relating to the subject under dis-
cussion, and a member out of employment is deputed to carry the box from shop
to shop until it has travelled "all round the trade." When it arrives at a shop,
all the men cease work and gather round ; the box is opened, its contents are read
and discussed, and the shop delegates are then and there instructed how to vote
at the next delegate meeting. The box is then refilled and sent on to the next
shop. Old minutes of 1829 show that this custom has remained unchanged, down
to the smallest detail, for, at any rate, a couple of generations. It is probably
nearly two centuries old.

Primitive Democracy 1 5

general meeting assembled, claimed the right to have any
proposition whatsoever submitted to the vote of the society
as a whole. And thus we find, in almost every Trade Union
which has a history at all, a most instructive series of experi-
ments in the use, misuse, and limitations of the Referendum.
Such was the typical Trade Union constitution of the
last generation. In a few cases it has survived, almost
unchanged, down to the present day, just as its pre-
decessor, the archaic local club governed by the general
meeting, still finds representatives in the Trade Union
world. But wherever an old Trade Union has maintained
its vitality, its constitution has been progressively modified,
whilst the most powerful of the modern unions have been
formed on a different pattern. An examination of this
evolutionary process will bring home to us the transitional
character of the existing constitutional forms, and give us
valuable hints towards the solution, in a larger field, of the
problem of uniting efficient administration with popular
control.

We have already noted that, in passing from a local to
a national organisation, the Trade Union unwittingly left
behind the ideal of primitive democracy. The setting apart
of one man to dcrthe clerical work destroyed the possibility of
^equal and^d^ntical service by all the members, and laid the
rauji^kfion of a separate governing class. The practice of
requiring members to act in rotation was silently abandoned.
Once chosen for his post, the general secretary could rely with
confidence, unless he proved himself obviously unfit or grossly
incompetent, on being annually re-elected. Spending all
day at office work, he soon acquired a professional expert-
ness quite out of the reach of his fellow -members at
the bench or the forge. And even if some other member
possessed natural gifts equal or superior to the acquired
skill of the existing officer, there was, in a national organisa-
tion, no opportunity of making these qualities known. The
general secretary, on the other hand, was always adver-
tising his name and his personality to the thousands of

[ 6 Trade Union Structure

members by the printed circulars and financial reports, which
became the only link between the scattered branches, and
afforded positive evidence of his competency to perform
the regular work of the office. With every increase in the
society's membership, with every extension or elaboration
of its financial system or trade policy, the position of the
salaried official became, accordingly, more and more secure.
The general secretaries themselves changed with the develop-
ment of their office. The work could no longer be
efficiently performed by an ordinary artisan, and some
preliminary office training became almost indispensable.
The Coalminers, for instance, as we have shown in our
description of the Trade Union world, have picked their
secretaries to a large extent from a specially trained section,
the checkweigh-men.1 The Cotton Operatives have even
adopted a system of competitive examination among the
candidates for their staff appointments.2 In other unions any
candidate who has not proved his capacity for office work
and trade negotiations would stand at a serious disadvantage
in the election, where the choice is coming every day to be
confined more clearly to the small class of minor officials.
The paramount necessity of efficient administration has
co-operated with this pe.manence in producing a progressive
differentiation of an official governing class, more and more
marked off by character, training, and duties from the bulk
of the members. The annual election of the general
secretary by a popular vote, far from leading to frequent
rotation of office and equal service by all the members,
has, in fact, invariably resulted in permanence of tenure
exceeding even that of the English civil servant. It is
accordingly interesting to notice that, in the later rules
of some of the most influential of existing unions, the
practical permanence of the official staff is tacitly recognised
by the omission of all provision for re-election. Indeed, the

1 History of Trade Unionism, p. 291.

2 Ibid. p. 294 ; see also the subsequent chapter on " The Method of Collective
Bargaining," where a specimen examination paper is reprinted.

Primitive Democracy ij

Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton-spinners goes
so far as expressly to provide in its rules that the general
secretary " shall continue in office so long as he gives satis-
faction." l

While everything was thus tending to exalt the position
of the salaried official, the executive committee, under whose
direction he was placed, being composed of men working at
their trade, retained its essential weakness. Though modi-
fied in unimportant particulars, it continued in nearly all the
old societies to be chosen only by one geographical section
of the members. At first each branch served in rotation as
the seat of government. This quickly gave way to a system
of selecting the governing branch from among the more
important centres of the trade. Moreover, though the desire
periodically to shift the seat of this authority long manifested
itself and still lingers in some trades,2 the growth of an
official staff, and the necessity of securing accommodation
on some durable tenancy, has practically made the head-
quarters stationary, even if the change has not been ex-
pressly recorded in the rules. Thus the Friendly Society
of Ironfounders has retained its head office in London since
1846, and the Friendly Society of Operative Stonemasons
since 1883. The United Society of Boilermakers, which
long wandered from port to port, has remained in Newcastle
since 1880; and finally settled the question in 1888 by
building itself palatial offices on a freehold site.3 Here again

1 Rule 12 in the editions of Rules of 1891 and 1894.

2 Notably the Plumbers and Irondressers. In 1877 a proposal at the general
council of the Operative Bricklayers' Society to convert the executive into a shift-
ing one, changing the headquarters every third year, was only defeated by a cast-
ing vote. — Operative Bricklayers' Society Trade Circular, September 1877.

3 Along with this change has gone the differentiation of national business from
that of the branch. The committee work of the larger societies became more than
could be undertaken, in addition to the branch management, by men giving only
their evenings. We find, therefore, the central executive committee becoming a
body distinct from the branch committee, sometimes (as in the United Society of
Operative Plumbers) elected by the same constituents, but more usually by the
members of all the branches within a convenient radius of the central office. Thus
the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters gives the election to the members within
twelve miles of the head office — that is, to the thirty-five branches in and near
Manchester— and the Friendly Society of Ironfounders to the six branches of the

VOL. I C

1 8 Trade Union Structure

the deeply-rooted desire on the part of Trade Union demo-
crats to secure to each section an equal and identical share
in the government of the society has had to give way before
the necessity of obtaining efficient administration. In ceas-
ing to be movable the executive committee lost even such
moral influence over the general secretary as was conveyed
by an express and recent delegation by the remainder of the
society. The salaried official, elected by the votes of all the
members, could in fact claim to possess more representative
authority than a committee whose functions as an executive
depended merely on the accident of the society's offices being
built in the town in which the members of the committee
happened to be working. In some societies, moreover,
the idea of Rotation of Office so far survived that the
committee men were elected for a short term and disqualified
for re-election. Such inexperienced and casually selected
committees of tired manual workers, meeting only in the
evening, usually found themselves incompetent to resist, or
even to criticise, any practical proposal that might be brought
forward by the permanent trained professional whom they
were supposed to direct and control.1

In face of so weak an executive committee the most
obvious check upon the predominant power of the salaried
officials was the elementary device of a written constitution.
The ordinary workman, without either experience or imagina-
tion, fondly thought that the executive government of a
great national organisation could be reduced to a mechanical
obedience to printed rules. Hence the constant elaboration
of the rules of the several societies, in the vain endeavor to
leave nothing to the discretion of officers or committees. It
was an essential part of the faith of these primitive democrats
that the difficult and detailed work of drafting and amending

London district. In the United Society of Boilermakers, down to 1897, the
twenty lodges in the Tyne district, each in rotation, nominated one of the seven
members of which the executive committee is composed.

1 The only organisation, outside the Trade Union world, in which the execu-
tive committee and the seat of government are changed annually, is, we believe,
the Ancient Order of Foresters, the worldwide federal friendly society.

Primitive Democracy 19

these rules should not be delegated to any particular person
or persons, but should be undertaken by " the body " or " the
trade " in general meeting assembled.1

When a society spread from town to town, and a meeting
of all the members became impracticable, the " articles " were
settled, as we have mentioned, by a meeting of delegates, and
any revision was undertaken by the same body. Accordingly,
we find, in the early history of such societies as the Iron-
founders, Stonemasons, Carpenters, Coachmakers, and Steam-
Engine Makers, frequent assemblies of delegates from the
different branches, charged with supplementing or revising
the somewhat tentative rules upon which the society had
been based. But it would be a serious misconception to
take these gatherings for " parliaments," with plenary power
to determine the policy to be pursued by the society. The
delegates came together only for specific and strictly limited
purposes. Nor were even these purposes left to be dealt
with at their discretion. In all cases that we know of the
delegates were bound to decide according to the votes
already taken in their respective branches. In many
societies the delegate was merely the vehicle by which
" the voices " of the members were mechanically con-
veyed. Thus the Friendly Society of Operative Stone-
masons, at that time the largest and most powerful Trade

1 This preference of Trade Unionists for making their own rules will remind
the political student that "direct legislation by the people" has an older and
wider history with regard to the framing and revising of constitutions than with
regard to ordinary legislation. Thus, already in 1779 the citizens of Massa-
chusetts insisted on asserting, by popular vote, that a constitution should be
framed, and equally on deciding that the draft prepared should be adopted. In
1818 the Connecticut constitution included a provision that any particular
amendment to it might be submitted to the popular vote. In Europe the first
constitution to be submitted to the same ordeal was the French constitution of
r793> which, though adopted by the primary assemblies, never came into force.
The practice became usual with regard to the Swiss cantonal constitutions after
the French Revolution of 1830, St. Gall leading the way in July 1831. See the
elaborate treatise of Charles Borgeaud on The Adoption and Amendment of
Constitutions (London, 1895); Bryce's The American Common-wealth (London,
1891); and Le Referendum en Suisse by Simon Deploige (Brussels, 1892), of
which an English translation by C. P. Trevelyan and Lilian Tomn, with
additional notes and appendices, will shortly be published by the London
School of Economics and Political Science.

2O Trade Union Structure

Union, held annual delegate meetings between 1834 and
1839 f°r tne s°le PurPose of revising its rules. How limited
was the power of this assembly may be judged from the
following extract from an address of the central executive :
" As the delegates are about to meet, the Grand Committee
submit to all lodges the following resolutions in reference to
the conduct of delegates. It is evident that the duty of
delegates is to vote according to the instructions of the majority
of their constituents, therefore they ought not to propose any
measure unless recommended by the Lodges or Districts
they represent. To effect this we propose the following
resolutions : that each Lodge shall furnish their delegates
with written instructions how to vote on each question they
have taken into their consideration, and that no delegate
shall vote in opposition to his instructions, and when it
appears by examining the instructions there is a majority
for any measure, it shall be passed without discussion." * The
delegate meeting of 1838 agreed with this view. All lodges
were to send resolutions for alterations of rules two months
before the delegate meeting ; they were to be printed in the
Fortnightly Return, and discussed by each lodge ; the delegate
was then to be instructed as to the sense of the members by
a majority vote ; and only if there was no decided majority
on any point was the delegate to have discretion as to his
vote. But even this restriction did not satisfy the Stone-
masons' idea of democracy. In 1837 the Liverpool Lodge
demanded that " all the alterations made in our laws at the
grand delegate meeting" shall be communicated to all the
lodges " for the consideration of our society before they are
printed."2 The central executive mildly deprecated such a
course, on the ground that the amendment and passing of
the laws would under those circumstances take up the whole
time of the society until the next delegate meeting came
round. The request, however, was taken up by other

1 Stonemason? Fortnightly Return, May 1836 (the circular issued fortnightly
to all the branches by the executive committee).
a Ibid. May 1837.

Primitive Democracy 21

branches, and by 1844 we find the practice established of
making any necessary amendment in the rules by merely
submitting the proposal in the Fortnightly Return^ and adding
together the votes taken in each lodge meeting. A similar
change took place in such other great societies as the Iron-
founders, Steam-Engine Makers, and Coachmakers. The
great bulk of the members saw no advantage in incurring
the very considerable expense of paying the coach fares of
delegates to a central town and maintaining them there at
the rate of six shillings a day,1 when the introduction of
penny postage made possible the circulation of a fortnightly
or monthly circular, through the medium of which their
votes on any particular proposition could be quickly and
inexpensively collected. The delegate meeting became, in
fact, superseded by the Referendum.2

By the term Referendum the modern student of political
institutions understands the submission to the votes of the
whole people of any measure deliberated on by the repre-
sentative assembly. Another development of the same prin-
ciple is what is called the Initiative, that is to say, the right of
a section of the community to insist on its proposals being
submitted to the vote of the whole electorate. As a repre-
sentative assembly formed no part of the earlier Trade Union
constitutions, both the Referendum and the Initiative took
with them the crudest shape. Any new rule or amendment
of a rule, any proposed line of policy or particular application
of it, might be straightway submitted to the votes of all the

1 In 1838 a large majority of the lodges of the Friendly Society of Operative
Stonemasons voted "that on all measures submitted to the consideration of our
Society, the number of members be taken in every Lodge for and against such a
measure, and transmitted through the district Lodges to the Seat of Government,
and in place of the number of Lodges, the majority of the aggregate members to
sanction or reject any measures." — Fortnightly Return, ipth January 1838.

2 It is interesting to find that in at least one Trade Union the introduction of
the Referendum is directly ascribed to the circulation in England between 1850 and

1860 of translations of pamphlets by Rittinghausen and Victor Considerant. It is
stated in the Typographical Circular for March 1889, that John Melson, a Liver-
pool printer, got the idea of "Direct Legislation by the People" from these
pamphlets, and urged its adoption on the union, at first unsuccessfully, but at the

1861 delegate meeting with the result that the Referendum was adopted as the
future method of legislation.

22 Trade Union Structure

members. Nor was this practice of consulting the members
confined to the central executive. Any branch might equally
have any proposition put to the vote through the medium of
the society's official circular. And however imperfectly the
question was framed, however inconsistent the result might
be with the society's rules and past practice, the answer re-
turned by the members' votes was final and instantly operative.
Those who believe that pure democracy implies the direct
decision, by the mass of the people, of every question as it
arises, will find this ideal realised without check or limit in the
history of the larger Trade Unions between 1834 and 1870.
The result was significant and full of political instruction.
Whenever the union was enjoying a vigorous life we find, to
begin with, a wild rush of propositions. Every active branch
had some new rule to suggest, and every issue of the official
circular was filled with crude and often inconsistent projects
of amendment. The executive committee of the United
Kingdom Society of Coachmakers, for instance, had to put
no fewer than forty-four propositions simultaneously to the
vote in a single circular.1 It is difficult to convey any
adequate idea of the variety and, in some cases, the absurdity
of these propositions. To take only those recorded in the
annals of the Stonemasons between 1838 and 1839; we
have one branch proposing that the whole society should go
in for payment by the hour, and another that the post of
general secretary should be put up to tender, " the cheapest
to be considered the person elected to that important
office." 2 We have a delegate meeting referring to a vote of
the members the momentous question whether the central
executive should be allowed " a cup of ale each per night,"
and the central executive taking a vote as to whether all the
Irish branches should not have Home Rule forced upon
them. The members, under fear of the coming Parliamentary

1 Quarterly Report, June 1860.

2 The sale of public offices by auction to the highest bidder was a frequent
incident in the Swiss " Landesgemeinden " of the seventeenth century. See
Eugene Rambert's Les Alpes Suisses ; Etudes Historiques et Nationales, p. 225.

Primitive Democracy 23

inquiry, vote the abolition of all " regalia, initiation, and
pass-words," but reject the proposition of the Newcastle
Lodge for reducing the hours of labor " as the only method
of striking at the root of all our grievances." The central
executive is driven to protest against " the continual state of
agitation in which the society has been kept for the last ten
months by the numerous resolutions and amendments to
laws, the tendency of which can only be to bring the laws
and the society into disrespect." l As other unions come to
the same stage in development, we find a similar result.
" It appears evident," complains the executive committee of
the Friendly Society of Ironfounders, " that we have got into
a regular proposition mania. One branch will make propo-
sitions simply because another does ; hence the absurd and
ridiculous propositions that are made." 2 The system worked
most disastrously in connection with the rates of contributions
and benefits. It is not surprising that the majority of work-
men should have been unable to appreciate the need for
expert advice on these points, or that they should have
disregarded all actuarial considerations. Accordingly, we
find the members always reluctant to believe that the rate
of contribution must be raised, and generally prone to listen
to any proposal for extending the benefits — a popular bias
which led many societies into bankruptcy. Still more dis-
integrating in its tendency was the disposition to appeal to
the votes of the members against the executive decision that
particular individuals were ineligible for certain benefits. In
the United Kingdom Society of Coachmakers, for instance,
we find the executive bitterly complaining that it is of no
use for them to obey the rules, and rigidly to refuse accident
benefit to men who are suffering simply from illness ; as in
almost every case the claimant's appeal to the members,
backed by eloquent circulars from his friends, has resulted
in the decision being overruled.8 The Friendly Society of

1 Fortnightly Return, July 1838.

* Ironfounders1 Monthly Report, April 1855.

United Kingdom Society of Coachmakers' Qtwrterly Report, September 1859.

24 Trade Union Structure

Ironfounders took no fewer than nineteen votes in a single
year, nearly all on details of benefit administration.1 And
the executive of the Stonemasons had early occasion to
protest against the growing practice under which branches,
preparatory to taking a vote, sent circulars throughout the
society in support of their claims to the redress of what they
deemed to be personal grievances.2

The disadvantages of a free resort to the Referendum
soon became obvious to thoughtful Trade Unionists. It stands
to the credit of the majority of the members that wild and
absurd propositions were almost uniformly rejected ; and in
man)/ societies a similar fate became customary in case of
any proposition that did not emanate from the responsible
executive.8 The practical abandonment of the Initiative
ensued. Branches got tired of sending up proposals which
uniformly met with defeat. But the right of the whole
body of members themselves to decide every question as
it arose was too much bound up with their idea of
democracy to permit of its being directly abrogated, or even
expressly criticised. Where the practice did not die out
from sheer weariness, it was quietly got rid of in other ways.
In one society after another the central executive and the
general secretary — the men who were in actual contact with
the problems of administration — silently threw their influence
against the practice of appealing to the members' vote. Thus
the executive committee of the United Kingdom Society of
Coachmakers made a firm stand against the members' habit
of overruling its decision in the grant of benefits under the
rules. The executive claimed the sole right to decide who
was eligible under the rules, and refused to allow discontented
claimants to appeal through the official circular. This caused
great and recurring discontent ; but the executive committee

1 Report for 1 869.

2 Fortnightly Return, 1 8th January 1849.

3 The political student will be reminded of the very small number of cases
in which the Initiative in Switzerland has led to actual legislation, even in
cantons, such as Zurich, where it has been in operation for over twenty years.
See Stiissi, Referendum und Initiative ini Canton Zurich.

Primitive Democracy 25

held firmly to their position and eventually maintained it.
When thirteen branches of the Operative Bricklayers' Society
proposed in 1868 that the age for superannuation should
be lowered and the office expenses curtailed, the general
secretary bluntly refused to submit such inexpedient proposals
to the members' vote, on the excuse that the question could
be dealt with at the next delegate meeting.1 The next step
was to restrict the number of opportunities for appeals on
any questions whatsoever. The Coachmakers' executive
announced that, in future, propositions would be put to the
vote only in the annual report, instead of quarterly as hereto-
fore, and this restriction was a few years later embodied in
the rules.2 Even more effectual was the enactment of a rule
throwing the expense of taking a vote upon the branch which
had initiated it, in case the verdict of the society proved to
be against the proposition.3 Another device was to seize the
occasion of a systematic revision of rules to declare that no
proposition for their alteration was to be entertained for a
specified period : one year, said the General Union of Car-
penters in 1863 ; three years, declared the Bookbinders'
Consolidated Union in 1869, and the Friendly Society of
Operative Stonemasons in 1878 ; ten years, ordained the
Operative Bricklayers' Society in iSSp.4 Finally, we have
the Referendum abolished altogether, as regards the making
or alteration of rules. In 1866 the delegate meeting of the
Amalgamated Society of Carpenters decided that the execu-
tive should " not take the votes of the members concerning
any alteration or addition to rules, unless in cases of great
emergency, and then only on the authority of the General
Council."5 In 1878 the Stonemasons themselves, who forty
years previously had been enthusiastic in their passion for
voting on every question whatsoever, accepted a rule

1 Monthly Circular, April 1868.

8 Quarterly Report^ November 1854; Rules of 1857.

3 Rules of the Associated Blacksmiths Society (Glasgow, 1892), and many
others.

4 Monthly Report, October 1889.
6 Monthly Circular, April 1866.

26 Trade Union Structiire

which confined the work of revision to a specially elected
committee.

Thus we see that half a century of practical experience
of the Initiative and the Referendum has led, not to its
extension, but to an ever stricter limitation of its application.
The attempt to secure the participation of every member in
the management of his society was found to lead to in-
stability in legislation, dangerous unsoundness of finance, and
general weakness of administration. The result was the early
abandonment of the Initiative, either by express rule or through
the persistent influence of the executive. This produced a
further shifting of the balance of power in Trade Union con-
stitutions. When the right of putting questions to the vote
came practically to be confined to the executive, the Referen-
dum ceased to provide the members with any effective control.
If the executive could choose the issues to be submitted^the
occasion on which the question should be put, and the form in
which it should be couched, the Referendum, far from supply-
ing any counterpoise to the executive, was soon found to be
an immense addition to its power. Any change which the
executive desired could be stated in the most plausible
terms and supported by convincing arguments, which almost
invariably secured its adoption by a large majority. Any
executive resolution could, when occasion required, thus be
given the powerful moral backing of a plebiscitary vote.1
The reliance of Trade Union democrats on the Referendum
resulted, in fact, in the virtual exclusion of the general body
of members from all real share in the government. And

1 Mr. Lecky points out (Democracy and Liberty ', vol. i. pp. 12, 31, 32) how,
in France, "successive Governments soon learned how easily a plebiscite vote
could be secured and directed by a strong executive, and how useful it might
become to screen or justify usurpation. The Constitution of 1795, which founded
the power of the Directors ; the Constitution of 1799, which placed the executive
power in the hands of three Consuls elected for ten years ; the Constitution of 1802,
which made Buonaparte Consul for life, and again remodelled the electoral system ;
the Empire, which was established in 1804, and the additional Act of the Con-
stitution promulgated by Napoleon in 1815, were all submitted to a direct popular
vote." The government of Napoleon III., from 1852 to 1870, was ratified by
four separate plebiscites. See also Laferriere, Constitutions de la France depuh
If8<); Jules Clere, Histoire du Souffrage Universel.

Primitive Democracy 27

when we remember the practical subordination of the
executive committee to its salaried permanent officer, we
shall easily understand that the ultimate effect of such a
Referendum as we have described was a further strengthen-
ing of the influence of the general secretary, who drafted the
propositions, wrote the arguments in support of them, and
edited the official circular which formed the only means
of communication with the members.

We see, therefore, that almost every influence in the
Trade Union organisation has tended to magnify and con-
solidate the power of the general secretary. If democracy
could furnish no other expedient of popular control than the
mass meeting, the annual election of public officers, the
Initiative and the Referendum, Trade Union history makes
it quite clear that the jriere_rjr£,ssure of aHministrative needs
would inevitably result in the general body of citizens losing
all effective control over the government. It would not be
difficult to point to influential Trade Unions at the present
day which, possessing only a single permanent official, have
not progressed beyond the stage of what is virtually a
personal dictatorship. But it so happens that the very
development of the union and its business which tends, as
we have seen, to increase the influence of the general
secretary, calls into existence a new check upon his personal
authority. If we examine the constitution of a bank or joint
stock company, or any other organisation not formed by the
working class, we shall find it almost invariably the rule that
the chief executive officers are appointed, not by the members
at large, but by the governing committee, and that these
officers are allowed a free hand, if not absolute power, in the
choice and dismissal of their subordinates. Any other plan,
it is contended, would seriously detract from the efficient
working of the organisation. Had the Trade Unions
adopted this course, the general secretary would have
been absolutely supreme. But working-class organisations
in England have, almost without exception, tenaciously
clung to the direct election of all officers by the general

28 Trade Union Structure

body of members. Whether the post to be filled be
that of assistant secretary at the head office or district
delegate to act for one part of the country, the members
have jealously retained the appointment in their own hands.
In the larger trade societies of the present day the general
secretary finds himself, therefore, at the head, not of a staff of
docile subordinates who owe office and promotion to himself,
but of a number of separately elected functionaries, each
holding his appointment directly from the members at large.!
Any attempt at a personal dictatorship is thus quickly
checked. There is more danger that friction and personal
jealousies may unduly weaken the administration. But the
usual outcome is the close union of all the salaried officials
to conduct the business of the society in the way they think
best. Instead of a personal dictatorship, we have, therefore,
a closely combined and practically irresistible bureaucracy.

Under a constitution of this type the Trade Union
may attain a high degree of efficiency. The United Society
of Boilermakers and Ironshipbuilders (established 1832;
membership in December 1896, 40,776) is, for instance,
admittedly one of the most powerful and best conducted of
English trade societies. For the last twenty years its career,
alike in good times and bad, has been one of continuous
prosperity. For many years past it has dominated all the
shipbuilding ports, and it now includes practically every
ironshipbuilder in the United Kingdom. As an insurance
company it has succeeded in paying, even in the worst years
of an industry subject to the most acute depressions, benefits
of an unusually elaborate and generous character. Notwith-
standing these liberal benefits, it has built up a reserve fund
of no less than £175,560. Nor has this prosperity been

1 Even the office staff has been, until quite recently, invariably recruited by
the members from the members ; and only in a few unions has it begun to be
realised that a shorthand clerk or trained bookkeeper, chosen by the general
secretary or the executive committee, can probably render better service at the
desk than the most eligible workman trained to manual labor. The Operative
Bricklayers' Society, however, lately allowed their executive committee to appoint
a shorthand clerk.

Primitive Democracy 29

attained by any neglect of the militant side of Trade
Unionism. The society, on the contrary, has the reputa-
tion of exercising stricter control over the conditions of its
members' work than any other union. In no trade, for
instance, do we find a stricter and more universally enforced
limitation of apprentices, or a more rigid refusal to work
with non-unionists. And, as we have elsewhere described,
no society has more successfully concluded and enforced
elaborate national agreements applicable to every port in the
kingdom. Moreover, this vigorous and successful trade
policy has been consistent with a marked abstention from
strikes — a fact due not only to the financial strength and
perfect combination of the society, but also to the implicit
obedience enforced upon its members, and the ample dis-
ciplinary power vested in and exercised by the central
executive.1

The efficiency and influence of this remarkable union is,
no doubt, largely due to the advantageous strategic position
which has resulted from the extraordinary expansion of iron-
shipbuilding. It is interesting, however, to notice what a
perfect example it affords of a constitution retaining all the
features of the crudest democracy, but becoming, in actual
practice, a bureaucracy in which effective popular control has
sunk to a minimum. The formal constitution of the Boiler-
makers' Society still includes all the typical features of the
early Trade Union. The executive government of this great
national society is vested in a constantly changing committee,
the members of which, elected by a single district, serve only
for twelve months, and are then ineligible for re-election
during three years. All the salaried officials are separately
elected by the whole body of members, and hold their posts
only for a prescribed term of two to five years. Though
provision is made for a delegate meeting in case the society
desires it, all the rules, including the rates of contribution and

1 See the enthusiastic description of this organisation in Ztim Socialen Frieden
(Leipzig, 1890), 2 vols., by Dr. G. von Schulze-Gaevernitz, translated as Social
Peace (London, 1893), pp. 239-243.

30 Trade Union Structure

benefit, can be altered by aggregate vote ; and even if a
delegate meeting assembles, its amendments have to be
submitted to the votes of the branches in mass meeting.
Any branch, moreover, may insist that any proposition
whatsoever shall be submitted to this same aggregate vote.
The society, in short, still retains the form of a Trade Union
democracy of the crudest type.

But although the executive committee, the branch
meeting and the Referendum occupy the main body of the
society's rules, the whole policy has long been directed and
the whole administration conducted exclusively by an infor-
mal cabinet of permanent officials which is unknown to the
printed constitution. Twenty years ago the society had the
good fortune to elect as general secretary, Mr. Robert Knight,
a man of remarkable ability and strength of character, who
has remained the permanent premier of this little kingdom.
During his long reign, there has grown up around him a staff
of younger officials, who, though severally elected on their
individual merits, have been in no way able to compete with
their chief for the members' allegiance. These district dele-
gates are nominally elected only for a term of two years, just
as the general secretary himself is elected only for a term of
five years. But, for the reasons we have given elsewhere, all
these officials enjoy a permanence of tenure practically equal
to that of a judge. Mr. Knight's unquestioned superiority in
Trade Union statesmanship, together with the invariable
support of the executive committee, have enabled him to
construct, out of the nominally independent district delegates,
a virtual cabinet, alternately serving as councillors on high
issues of policy and as ministers carrying out in their own
spheres that which they have in council decided. From the
written constitution of the society, we should suppose that
it was from the evening meetings of the little Newcastle
committee of working platers and rivetters that emanated all
those national treaties and elaborate collective bargains with
the associated employers that have excited the admiration of
economic students. But its unrepresentative character, the

Primitive Democracy 3 1

short term of service of its members and the practical rota-
tion of office make it impossible for the constantly shifting
executive committee to exercise any effective influence over
even the ordinary routine business of so large a society. The
complicated negotiations involved in national agreements are
absolutely beyond its grasp. What actually happens is that,
in any high issue of policy, Mr. Knight summons his district
delegates to meet him in council at London or Manchester,
to concert, and even to conduct, with him the weighty
negotiations which the Newcastle executive formally endorses.
And although the actual administration of the benefits is
conducted by the branch committees, the absolute centralisa-
tion of funds and the supreme disciplinary power vested in
the executive committee make that committee, or rather the
general secretary, as dominant in matters of finance as in
trade policy. The only real opportunity for an effective
expression of the popular will comes to be the submission of
questions to the aggregate vote of the branches in mass
meeting assembled. It is needless to point out that a
Referendum of this kind, submitted through the official
circular in whatsoever terms the general secretary may
choose, and backed by the influence of the permanent staff
in every district, comes to be only a way of impressing the
official view on the whole body of members. In effect
the general secretary and his informal cabinet were, until the
change of 1895, absolutely supreme.1

In the case of the Boilermakers, government by an
informal cabinet of salaried officials has, up to the present
time, been highly successful. It is, however, obvious that a
less competent statesman than Mr. Knight would find great
difficulty in welding into a united cabinet a body of district

1 In 1895, aftgr tnis chapter was written, the constitution was changed, owing
to the growing feeling of the members in London and some other towns, that their
bureaucracy was, under the old forms, completely beyond their control. By the
new rules the government is vested in a representative executive of seven salaried
members, elected by the seven electoral districts into which the whole society
is divided, for a term of three years, one-third retiring annually. — Rules of the,
United Society of Boilermakers, etc. (Newcastle, 1895). It is as yet too soon to
comment on the effect of this change, which only came into operation in 1897.

32 Trade Union Structure

officers separately responsible to the whole society, and
nominally subject only to their several district committees.
Under these circumstances any personal friction or disloyalty
might easily paralyse the whole trade policy, upon which the
prosperity of the society depends. Moreover, though under
Mr. Knight's upright and able government the lack of any
supervising authority has not been felt, it cannot but be
regarded as a defect that the constitution provides no prac-
tical control over a corrupt, negligent, or incompetent general
secretary. The only persons in the position to criticise
effectually the administration of the society are the salaried
officials themselves, who would naturally be indisposed to
risk their offices by appealing, against their official superior,
to the uncertain arbitrament of an aggregate vote. Finally,
this constitution, with all its parade of democratic form,
secures in reality to the ordinary plater or rivetter little if
any active participation in the central administration of
his Trade Union ; no real opportunity is given to him for
expressing his opinion ; and no call is made upon his
intelligence for the formation of any opinion whatsoever.
In short, the Boilermakers, so long as they remained
content with this form of government, secured efficient
administration at the expense of losing all the educative
influences and political safeguards of democracy.

Among the well-organised Coalminers of the North of
England the theory of "direct legislation by the people"
is still in full force. Thus, the 19,000 members of the
Northumberland Miners' Mutual Confident Association (estab-
lished 1863) decide every question of policy, and even many
merely administrative details, by the votes taken in the several
lodge meetings ; l and although a delegate meeting isTield
every quarter, and by a rule of 1894 is expressly declared to
" meet for the purpose of deliberating free and untrammelled
upon the whole of the programme," its function is strictly
limited to expressing its opinion, the entire list of propositions

1 See, for instance, the twenty-five separate propositions voted on in a single
batch, gtli June 1894. — Northumberland Miners' Minutes, 1894, pp. 23-26.

Primitive Democracy 33

being then " returned to the lodges to be voted on." 1 The
executive committee is elected by the whole body ; and
the members, who retire after only six months' service, are
ineligible for re-election. Finally, we have the fact that the
salaried officials are themselves elected by the members at large.
To this lack of organic connection between the different parts
of the constitution, the student will perhaps attribute a certain
instability of policy manifested in successive popular votes.
In June 1894, a vote of all the members was taken on the
question of joining the Miners' Federation, and an affirmative
result was reached by 6730 to 5807. But in the very next
month, when the lodges were asked whether they were pre-
pared to give effect to the well-known policy of the Federa-
tion and claim the return of reductions in wages amounting to
sixteen per cent, which they had accepted since 1892, they
voted in the negative by more than two to one ; and backed
this up by an equally decisive refusal to contribute towards
the resistance of other districts. " They had joined a
Federation knowing its -principles and its policy, and im-
mediately after joining they rejected the principles they had
just embraced," was the comment of one of the members

1 Rule 15. We see here a curious instance of the express separation of the
deliberative from the legislative function, arising out of the inconvenient results
of the use of the Imperative Mandate. The committee charged with the revision
of the rules in 1893-1894 reported that "the present mode of transacting business
at delegate meetings has long been felt to be very unsatisfactory. Suggestions
are sent in for programme which are printed and remitted to the lodges, and
delegates are then sent with hard and fast instructions to vote for or against as
the case may be. It not unfrequently happens that delegates are sent to support
a vote against suggestions which are found to have an entirely different meaning,
and may have a very different effect from those expected by the lodges when
voting for them. To avoid the mischief that has frequently resulted from our
members thus committing themselves to suggestions upon insufficient information,
we suggest that after the programmes have been sent to the lodges, lodges send
their delegates to a meeting to deliberate on the business, after which they shall
return and report the results of the discussion and then forward their votes by
proxy to the office. To carry out this principle, which we consider is of the
greatest possible interest and importance to our members, no more meetings will
be required or expense incurred than under the present system, while on the other
hand lodges will have the opportunity of casting their votes on the various
suggestions with full information before them, instead of in the absence of this
information in most cases, as at present." — Report of 3rd February 1894, in
Northumberland Miners' Minutes, 1894, pp. 87-88.

VOL. I P

34 Trade Union Structure

of their own executive committee.1 This inconsistent action
led to much controversy, and the refusal of the Northumber-
land men to obey the decision of the special conference, the
supreme authority of the Federation, was declared to be
inconsistent with their remaining members of the organisation.
Nevertheless, in July 1894 they again voted, by 8445 to
5507, in favor of joining the Federation, despite the power-
ful adverse influence of their executive committee. The
Federation officials not unnaturally asked whether the re-
newed application for membership might now be taken to
imply a willingness to conform to the policy of the organisa-
tion which it was wished to join. On this a further vote was
taken by lodges, when the proposition to join was negatived
by a majority of over five to one.2

It may be objected that, in this instance of joining the
Miners' Federation, the question at issue was one of great
difficulty and of momentous import to the union, and that
some hesitation on the part of the members was only to be
expected. We could, however, cite many similar instances
of contradictory votes by the Northumberland men, on both
matters of policy and points of internal administration. We
suggest that their experience is only another proof that,
whatever advantages may be ascribed to government by the
Referendum, it has the capital drawback of not providing the
executive with any policy. In the case of the Northumber-
land Miners' Union, the result has been a serious weakening
of its influence, and, on more than one occasion, the gravest

1 Report of Conference, 23rd September 1893, in Northumberland Miners'
Minutes, 1893.

2 It should be explained that the Referendum among the Northumberland
Miners takes two distinct forms, the " ballot," and the so-called "proxy voting."
Questions relating to strikes, and any others expressly ordered by the delegate
meeting, are decided by a ballot of the members individually. The ordinary
business remitted from the delegate meeting to the lodges is discussed by the
general meeting of each lodge, and the lodge vote, or "proxy," is cast as a whole
according to the bare majority of those present. The lodge vote counts from one
to thirty, in strict proportion to its membership. It is interesting to note (though
we do not know whether any inference can be drawn from the fact) that the two
votes in favor of the Federation were taken by ballot of the members, whilst
those against it were taken by the " proxy " of the lodges.

Primitive Democracy 35

danger of disintegration.1 Fortunately, the union has enjoyed
the services of executive officers of perfect integrity, and of
exceptional ability and experience. These officers have
throughout had their own clearly defined and consistent
policy, which the uninformed and contradictory votes of the
members have failed to control or modify.

It will not be necessary to give in detail the constitution
of the Durham Miners' Association (established 1869), since
this is, in essential features, similar to that of the Northumber-
land Miners.2 But it is interesting to notice that the Durham
experience of the result of government by the Referendum
has been identical with that of Northumberland,3 and even
more detrimental to the organisation. The Durham Miners'
Association, notwithstanding its closely concentrated 60,000
members, fails to exercise any important influence on the
Trade Union world, and even excites complaints from the
employers as to " its internal weakness." The Durham coal-
owners declare that, with the council overruling the executive,
and the ballot vote reversing the decision of the council, they
never know when they have arrived at a settlement, or how
long that settlement will be enforced on a recalcitrant lodge.

It is significant that the newer organisations which have
sprung up in these same counties in direct imitation of the
miners' unions give much less power to the members at large.
Thus the Durham Cokemen's and Laborers' Association, which,
springing out of the Durham Miners' Association in 1874,
follows in its rules the actual phrases of the parent organisa-
tion, vests the election of its executive committee and officers,
not in the members at large, but in a supreme " council."

1 See, for instance, the report of the special conference of 23rd September
1893, expressly summoned to resist the "disintegration of our Association." —
Northumberland Miners' Minutes, 1893.

2 In the Durham Miners' Association the election of officers is nominally
vested in the council, but express provision is made in the rules for each lodge to
"empower" its delegate how to vote.

3 This may be seen, for instance, from the incidental references to the Durham
votes given in the Miners' Federation Minutes, 1893-1896; or, with calamitous
results, in the history of the great Durham strike of 1892 ; or in that of the Silk-
stone strike of 1891. The Durham Miners' Minutes are not accessible to any
non-member.

^6 Trade Union Structure

Much the same may be said of the Durham County Colliery
Enginemen's Mutual Aid Association, established 1872; the
Durham Colliery Mechanics' Association, established 1879;
and (so far as regards the election of officers) the Northumber-
land Deputies' Mutual Aid Association, established 1887.

If, therefore, democracy means that everything which
" concerns all should be decided by all," and that each citizen
should enjoy an equal and identical share in the government,
Trade Union history indicates clearly the inevitable result.
Government by such contrivances as Rotation of Office, the
Mass Meeting, the Referendum and Initiative, or the Delegate
restricted by his Imperative Mandate, leads straight either to
inefficiency and disintegration, or to the uncontrolled domin-
ance of a personal dictator or an expert bureaucracy. Dimly
and almost unconsciously this conclusion has, after a whole
century of experiment, forced itself upon the more advanced
trades. The old theory of democracy is still an article
of faith, and constantly comes to the front when any organi-
sation has to be formed for brand-new purposes ; * but Trade
Union constitutions have undergone a silent revolution. The
old ideal of the Rotation of Office among all the members
in succession has been practically abandoned. Resort to the
aggregate meeting diminishes steadily in frequency and im-
portance. The use of the Initiative and the Referendum has

1 We may refer, by way of illustration, to the frequent discussions during
1894-1895 among the members of the political association styled the " Independ-
ent Labor Party." On the formation of the Hackney Branch, for instance, the
members "decided that no president and no executive committee of the branch
be appointed, its management devolving on the members attending the weekly
conferences " (Labour Leader, 26th January 1895). Nor is this view confined to
the rank and file. The editor of the Clarion himself, perhaps the most influential
man in the party, expressly declared in his leading article of 3rd November 1894 :
"Democracy means that the people shall rule themselves; that the people shall
manage their own affairs ; and that their officials shall be public servants, or dele-
gates, deputed to put the will of the people into execution. ... At present there
is too much sign of a disposition on the part of the rank and file to overvalue the
talents and usefulness of their officials. ... It is tolerably certain that in so
far as the ordinary duties of officials and delegates, such as committee men or
members of Parliament, are concerned, an average citizen, if he is thoroughly
honest, will be found quite clever enough to do all that is needful. . . . Let all
officials be retired after one year's services, and fresh ones elected in their place.'

Primitive Democracy 37

been tacitly given up in all complicated issues, and gradually
limited to a few special questions on particular emergencies.
The delegate finds himself every year dealing with more
numerous and more complex questions, and tends therefore
inevitably to exercise the larger freedom of a representative.
Finally, we have the appearance in the Trade Union world of
the typically modern form of democracy, the ejected-repfe-
sentatiye assembly, appointing and controlling an executive
committee^uTrder whoseMdirection the permanent official staff
performs its work,

CHAPTER II

REPRESENTATIVE INSTITUTIONS

THE two organisations in the Trade Union world enjoying
the greatest measure of representative institutions are those
which are the most distinctly modern in their growth and pre-
eminence. In numbers, political influence, and annual income
the great federal associations of Coalminers and Cotton
Operatives overshadow all others, and now comprise one-fifth
of the total Trade Union membership. We have elsewhere
pointed out that these two trades are both distinguished by
their establishment of an expert civil service, exceeding in
numbers and efficiency that possessed by any other trade.1
They resemble each other also, as we shall now see, in the
success with which they have solved the fundamental problem
of democracy, the combination of administrative efficiency
and popular control. In each case the solution has been
found in the frank acceptance of representative institutions.

In the Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton-
spinners, which may be taken as typical of cotton organisa-
tions, the "legislative power" is expressly vested " in a meeting
comprising representatives from the various provinces and dis-
tricts included in the association." 2 This " Cotton-spinners'
Parliament " is elected annually in strict proportion to

1 History of Trade Unionism, p. 298 ; see also the subsequent chapter on
"The Method of Collective Bargaining."

2 Ruks of the Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton-spinners (Man-
chester, 1894), p. 4, Rule 7.

Representative Institutions 39

membership, and consists of about a hundred representatives.
It meets in Manchester regularly every quarter, but can be
called together by the executive council at any time. Once
elected, this assembly is, like the British Parliament, abso^
lutely supreme. Its powers and functions are subject to no
express limitation, and from its decisions there is no appeal.
The rules contain no provision for taking a vote of the
members ; and though the agenda of the quarterly meeting
is circulated for information to the executives of the district
associations, so little thought is there of any necessity for the
representatives to receive a mandate from their constituents,
that express arrangements are made for transacting any other
business not included in the agenda.1

The actual " government " of the association is conducted
by an executive council elected by the general representative
meeting, and consisting of a president, treasurer, and secretary,
with thirteen other members, of whom seven at least must
be working spinners, whilst the other six are, by invariable
custom, the permanent officials appointed and maintained
by the principal district organisations. Here we have the
" cabinet " of this interesting constitution — the body which
practically directs the whole work of the association and
exercises great weight in the counsels of the legislative body,
preparing its agenda and guiding all its proceedings. For
the daily work of administration this cabinet is authorised
by the rules to appoint a committee, the " sub-council," which
consists in practice of the six " gentlemen," as the district
officials are commonly called. The actual executive work is
performed by a general secretary, who himself engages such
office assistance as may from time to time be necessary. In
marked contrast with all the Trade Union constitutions which
we have hitherto described, the Cotton-spinners' rules do not

1 Rule 9, p. 5. The general representative meeting even resembles the British
Parliament in being able itself to change the fundamental basis of the constitution,
including the period of its own tenure of office. The rules upon which the
Amalgamated Association depends can be altered by the general representative
meeting in a session called by special notice, without any confirmation by the
constituents. — Rule 45, pp. 27-28.

40 Trade Union Structure

give the election of this chief executive officer to the general
body of members, but declare expressly that " the sole right
of electing a permanent general secretary shall be vested in
the provincial and district representatives when in meeting
assembled, by whom his salary shall be fixed and deter-
mined." l Moreover, as we have already mentioned, the
candidates for this office pass a competitive examination, and
when once elected the general secretary enjoys a permanence
of tenure equal to that of the English civil service, the rules
providing that he " shall be appointed and continue in office
so long as he gives satisfaction." 2

The Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton-
spinners is therefore free from all the early expedients for
securing popular government. The general or aggregate
meeting finds no place in its constitution, and the rules con-
tain no provision for the Referendum or the Initiative. No
countenance is given to the idea of Rotation of Office. No
officers are elected by the members themselves. Finally, we
have the complete abandonment of the delegate, and the sub-
stitution, both in fact and in name, of the representative. On
the other hand, the association is a fully-equipped democratic
state of the modern type. It has an elected parliament,
exercising supreme and uncontrolled power. It has a cabinet
appointed by and responsible only to that parliament. And
its chief executive officer, appointed once for all on grounds
of efficiency, enjoys the civil-service permanence of tenure.3

1 Rule 12, p. 6. 2

3 The other branches of the cotton trade, notably the federations of weavers
and cardroom hands, are organised on the same principle of an elected repre-
sentative assembly, itself appointing the officers and executive committee, though
there are minor .differences among them. The United Textile Factory Workers'
Association, of which the spinners form a part, is framed on the same model,
a "legislative council," really an executive committee, being elected by the
"conference," or representative assembly. (This organisation temporarily
suspended its functions in 1896.) Moreover, the rules of the several district
associations of the Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton-spinners exhibit
the same formative influences. In the smaller societies, confined to single
villages, we find the simple government by general meeting, electing a committee
and officers. Permanence of tenure is, however, the rule, it being often expressly
provided that the secretary and the treasurer shall each "retain office as long as
he gives satisfaction." More than half the total membership, moreover, is

Representative Institutions 41

We have watched the working of this remarkable consti-
tution during the last seven years, and we can testify to the
success with which both efficiency and popular control are
secured. The efficiency we attribute to the existence of
the adequate, highly-trained, and relatively well-paid and
permanent civil service.1 But that this civil service is
effectively under public control is shown by the accuracy
with which the cotton officials adapt their political and
industrial policy to the developing views of the members
whom they serve. This sensitiveness to the popular
desires is secured by the real supremacy of the elected
representatives. For the " Cotton-spinners' Parliament " is
no formal gathering of casual members to register the decrees
of a dominant bureaucracy. It is, on the contrary, a
highly -organised deliberative assembly, with active repre-
sentatives from the different localities, each alive to the distinct,
and sometimes divergent, interests of his own constituents.
Their eager participation shows itself in constant " party
meetings " of the different sections, at which the officers and
workmen from each district consult together as to the line
of policy to be pressed upon the assembly. Such consulta-
tion and deliberate joint action is, in the case of the Oldham
representatives at any rate, carried even further. The consti-
tution of the Oldham Operative Cotton-spinners' Provincial
Association is, so far as we know, unique in all the annals of
democracy in making express provision for the " caucus." 2

included in two important " provinces," Oldham and Bolton, which possess
elaborate federal constitutions of their own. These follow, in general outline,
the federal constitution, but both retain some features of the older form. Thus
in Oldham, where the officers enjoy permanence of tenure and are responsible
only to the representative assembly, any vacancy is filled by general vote of the
members. And though the representative assembly has supreme legislative and
executive powers, it is required to take a ballot of all the members before deciding
on a strike. On the other hand, Bolton, which leaves everything to its repre-
sentative assembly, shows a lingering attachment to rotation of office by providing
that the retiring members of its executive council shall not be eligible for re-election
during twelve months.

1 The nineteen thousand members of the Amalgamated Association of Opera-
tive Cotton-spinners command the services of ten permanent officials, besides
numerous local officers still working at their trade.

2 The " caucus," in this sense of the term, is supposed to have been first

4$ Trade Union Structure

The rules of 1891 ordain that "whenever the business to be
transacted by the representatives attending the quarterly
or special meetings of the Amalgamation is of such import-
ance and to the interest of this association as to require unity
of action in regard to voting by the representatives from this
province, the secretary shall be required to summon a special
meeting of the said representatives by announcing in the
monthly circular containing the minutes the date and time
of such meeting, which must be held in the council room at
least seven days previous to the Amalgamation meeting
taking place. The provincial representatives on the amalga-
mated council shall be required to attend such meeting, to
give any information required, and all resolutions passed by
a majority of those present shall be binding upon all the
representatives from the Oldham province attending the
amalgamated quarterly or special meetings, and any one
acting contrary to his instructions shall cease to be a repre-
sentative of the district he represents, and shall not be allowed
to stand as a candidate for any office connected with the
association for the space of twelve months. The allowance
for attending these special meetings shall be in accordance
with the scale allowed to the provincial executive council." 1
But even without so stringent a rule, there would be but
little danger of the representatives failing to express the
desires of the rank and file. Living the same life as their
constituents, and subject to annual election, they can scarcely
fail to be in touch with the general body of the members.
The common practice of requiring each representative to
report his action to the next meeting of his constituents, by
whom it is discussed in his presence, and the wide circulation

introduced about the beginning of this century, in the United States Congress, by
the Democratic Party. See the Statesman's Manual, vol. i. pp. 294, 338 ;
Woodrow Wilson, Congressional Government ', 1 2th edit. (New York, 1896), pp.
327-330; Lalor's Cyclopedia of Political Science (New York, 1891), vol. i. p.
357. The " caucus" in the sense of "primary assembly" is regulated by law
in many American States, especially in Massachusetts. See Nominations for
Elective Office in the United States, by F. W. Dallinger (London, 1897).

1 Rule 64, pp. 41-42, of Rules and Regulations for the Government of the
Oldham Operative Cotton-spinners' Provincial Association (Oldham, 1891).

Representative Institutions 43

of printed reports among all the members furnish efficient
substitutes for the newspaper press. On the other hand, the
facts that the representative assembly is a permanent insti-
tution wielding supreme power, and that in practice its
membership changes little from year to year, give it a very
real authority over the executive council which it elects every
six months, and over the officers whom it has appointed.
The typical member of the "Cotton-spinners' Parliament"
is not only experienced in voicing the desires of his
constituents, but also possesses in a comparatively large
measure that knowledge of administrative detail and of
current affairs which enables him to understand and control
the proceedings of his officers.

The Coalminers are, as we have elsewhere mentioned,
not so unanimous as the Cotton Operatives in their
adoption of representative institutions. The two great
counties of Northumberland and Durham have unions which
preserve constitutions of the old-fashioned type. But when
we pass to other counties, in which the Miners have come
more thoroughly under the influence of the modern spirit,
we find representative government the rule. The powerful
associations of Yorkshire, Lancashire, and the Midlands are
all governed by elected representative assemblies, which
appoint the executive committees and the permanent officers.
But the most striking example of the adoption of repre-
sentative institutions among the Coalminers is presented by
the Miners' Federation of Great Britain, established 1887.
This great federal organisation, which now comprises
two -thirds of the Coalminers in union, adopted from the
outset a completely representative constitution. The supreme
authority is vested in a "conference," summoned as often
as required, consisting of representatives elected by each
county or district association. This conference exercises
uncontrolled power to determine policy, alter rules, and levy
unlimited contributions.1 From its decision there is no

1 This was expressly pointed out, doubtless with reference to some of the old-
fashioned county unions which still clung to the custom of the Referendum or the

44 Trade Union Structure

appeal. No provision is made for taking the votes of the
general body of members, and the conference itself appoints
the executive committee and all the officers of the Federa-
tion. Between the sittings of the conference the executive
committee is expressly given power to take action to promote
the interests of the Federation, and no rule savoring of
Rotation of Office deprives this executive of the services of
its experienced members.

The " Miners' Parliament," as this conference may not
improperly be termed, is in many respects the most im-
portant assembly in the Trade Union world. Its regular
annual session, held in some midland town, lasts often for a
whole week, whilst other meetings of a couple of days' dura-
tion are held as business requires. The fifty to seventy
members, who represent the several constituent bodies, consti-
tute an exceptionally efficient deliberative assembly. Among
them are to be found the permanent officers of the county
unions, some of the most experienced of the checkweigh-men
and the influential leaders of opinion in the mining villages.
The official element, as might be expected, plays a prominent
part in suggesting, drafting, and amending the actual pro-
posals, but the unofficial members frequently intervene with
effect in the business-like debates. The public and the press
are excluded, but the conference usually directs a brief and
guarded statement of the conclusions arrived at to be supplied
to the newspapers, and a full report of the proceedings —
sometimes extending to over a hundred printed pages — is
subsequently issued to the lodges. The subjects dealt with
include the whole range of industrial and political policy,
from the technical grievance of a particular district up to the
" nationalisation of mines." l The actual carrying out of the

Imperative Mandate, in the circular summoning the important conference of
July 1893 > "Delegates must be appointed to attend Conference with full power
to deal with the wages question."

1 Thus the agenda for the Annual Conference in 1894 comprised, besides
formal business, certain revisions of rules and the executive committee's report,
the Eight Hours Bill, the stacking of coal, the making of Saturday a regular
whole holiday, the establishment of a public department to prevent unscrupulous
competition in trade, the amendment of the Mines Regulation and Employers'

Representative Institutions 45

policy determined on by the conference is left unreservedly
to the executive committee, but the conference expects to be
called together whenever any new departure in policy is
required. In times of stress the executive committee shows
its real dependence on the popular assembly by calling it
together every few weeks.1 And the success with which the
Miners' Federation wields its great industrial and political
power over an area extending from Fife to Somerset and a

Liability Acts, international relations with foreign miners' organisations and the
nationalisation of mines. It may here be observed that the representatives at
the Federal Conference have votes in proportion to the numbers of the members
in their respective associations. This practice, often called "proxy voting," or,
more accurately, " the accumulative vote," has long been characteristic of the
Coalminers' organisations, though unknown to any other section of the Trade
Union World. Thus the rules of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain are
silent as to the number of representatives to be sent to the supreme " Conference,"
but provide "that each county, federation or district vote upon all questions
as follows, viz. : one vote for every 1000 financial members or fractional part of
1000, and that the vote in every case shall be taken by numbers " (Rule lo,
Rules of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain, 1895). A similar
principle has always been applied at the International Miners' Conferences,
and the practice prevails also in the several county unions or federations. The
Lancashire and Cheshire Federation fixes the number of representatives to be
sent to its Conferences at one per 500 members, but expressly provides that the
voting is to be "by proxy" in the same proportion. The Midland Federation
adopts the same rule. The Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Durham, and West
Cumberland associations allow each branch or lodge only a single representative,
whose vote counts strictly in proportion to the membership he represents. This
"accumulative vote" is invariably resorted to in the election of officers and in all
important decisions of policy, but it is not uncommon for minor divisions to be
taken, unchallenged, on the principle of " one man one vote." It is not easy to
account for the exceptional preference of the Coalminers for this method of voting,
especially as their assemblies are, as we have pointed out, in practice more
" representative " in their character, and less trammelled by the idea of the
imperative mandate, than those of any other trade but the Cotton Operatives.
The practice facilitates, it is true, a diminution in the size of the meetings, but
this appears to be its only advantage. In the absence of any system of " pro-
portional representation " it affords no real guide to the relative distribution of
opinion ; the representatives of Yorkshire, for instance, in casting the vote of the
county, can at best express the views only of the majority of their constituents,
and have therefore no real claim to outvote a smaller district, with whose views
nearly half their own constituents may be in sympathy. If, on the other hand,
the whole membership of the Miners' Federation were divided into fairly equal
electoral districts, each electing a single member, there would be more chance
of every variety of opinion being represented, whilst an exact balance between
the large and the small districts would nevertheless be preserved.

1 During the great strike in 1893 the Conference met eight times in six
months,

46 Trade Union Structure

membership numbering two hundred thousand, furnishes
eloquent testimony to the manner in which it has known
how to combine efficient administration with genuine popular
assent.

The great federal organisations of Cotton Operatives and
Coalminers stand out from among the other Trade Unions
in respect of the completeness and success with which they
have adopted representative institutions. But it is easy to
trace a like tendency throughout the whole Trade Union
world. We have already commented on the innovation,
now almost universal, of entrusting the task of revising rules
to a specially elected committee. It was at first taken for
granted that the work of such a revising committee was
limited to putting into proper form the amendments pro-
posed by the branches themselves, and sometimes to choosing
between them. Though it is still usual for the revised rules
to be formally ratified by a vote of the members, the revising
committees have been given an ever wider discretion, until
in most unions they are nowadays in practice free to make
changes according to their own judgment.1 But it is in
the constitution of the central executive that the trend
towards representative institutions is most remarkable, the
old expedient of the " governing branch " being superseded
by an executive committee representative of the whole body
of the members.2

1 There is a similar tendency to disapprove of the Imperative Mandate in the
principal Friendly Societies. The Friendly Societies' Monthly Magazine for
April 1890 observes that " Lodges are advised ... to instruct their delegates
as to how they are to vote. With this we entirely disagree. A proposition till
it is properly thrashed out and explained, remains in the husk, and its full import
is lost. Delegates fettered with instructions simply become the mechanical
mouthpiece of the necessarily unenlightened lodges which send them, and there-
fore the legislation of the Order might just as well be conducted by post."

2 Thus the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (established 1872)
administers the affairs of its forty-four thousand members by an executive committee
of thirteen (with the three officers), elected annually by ballot in thirteen equal
electoral districts. This committee meets in London at least quarterly, and
can be summoned oftener if required. Above this is the supreme authority of
the annual assembly of sixty delegates, elected by sixty equal electoral districts,
and sitting for four days to hear appeals, alter rules, and determine the policy of
the union. A similar constitution is enjoyed by the Associated Society of

Representative Institutions 47

This revolution has taken place in the National Union
of Boot and Shoe Operatives (37,000 members) and the
Amalgamated Society of Engineers (87,313 members), the
two societies which, outside the worlds of cotton and coal,
exceed nearly all others in membership. Down to 1890 the
National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives was governed
by a local executive council belonging to a single town,
controlled only by occasional votes of a delegate assembly,
meeting, at first, every four years, and afterwards every two
years. Seven years ago the constitution was entirely trans-
formed. The society was divided into five equal electoral
districts, each of which elected one member to serve for two
years on an executive council consisting of only these five
representatives, in addition to the three other officers elected
by the whole body of members. To the representative execu-
tive thus formed was committed not only all the ordinary
business of the society, but also the final decision in cases of
appeals by individual members against the decision of a
branch. The delegate meeting, or " National Conference,"
meets to determine policy and revise rules, and its decisions
no longer require ratification by the members' vote. Although
the Referendum and the Mass Meeting of the district are
still formally included in the constitution, the complication
and difficulty of the issues which have cropped up during the
last few years have led the executive council to call together
the national conference at frequent intervals, in preference
to submitting questions to the popular vote.

Locomotive Enginemen and Firemen (established 1880). It is this model that
has been followed, with unimportant variations in detail, by the more durable of
the labor unions which sprang into existence in the great upheaval of 1889,
among which the Gasworkers and the Dockers are the best known. The practice
of electing the executive committee by districts is, as far as we know, almost
unknown in the political world. The executive council of the State of Penn-
sylvania in the eighteenth century used to be elected by single -member
districts (Federalist, No. LVII.), and a similar arrangement appears occa-
sionally to have found a place in the ever-changing constitutions of one or two
Swiss Cantons. (See State and Federal Government in Switzerland, by
J. M. Vincent, Baltimore, 1891.) We know of no case where it prevails
at present (Lowell's Governments and Parties in Continental Europe, London,
1896).

48 Trade Union Structure

In the case of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers
the constitutional revolution has been far more sweeping.
In the various editions of the Engineers' rules from 1851 to
1891 we find the usual reliance on the Mass Meeting, the
Referendum and the direct election of all officers by the
members at large. We also see the executive control vested
in a committee elected by a single district, — the chairman,
moreover, being forbidden to serve for more than two years
in succession. In the case of the United Society of Boiler-
makers we have already described how a constitution of
essentially similar type has resulted in remarkable success
and efficiency, but at the sacrifice of all real control by the
members. In the history of the Boilermakers from 1872
onwards we watch the virtual abandonment in practice, for
the sake of a strong and united central administration, of
everything that tended to weaken the executive power.
The Engineers, on the contrary, clung tenaciously to every
institution or formality which protected the individual
member against the central executive.1 Meanwhile, although
the very object of the amalgamation in 1851 was to secure
uniformity of trade policy, the failure to provide any salaried
official staff left the central executive with little practical
control over the negotiations conducted or the decisions
arrived at by the local branch or district committee. The
result was not only failure to cope with the vital problems

1 In financial matters, for instance, though every penny of the funds belonged
to the whole society, each branch retained its own receipts, subject only to the
cumbrous annual "equalisation." The branch accordingly had it in its power to
make any disbursement it chose, subject only to subsequent disallowance by the
central executive. Nor was the decision of the central executive in any way
final. The branch aggrieved by any disallowance could, and habitually did,
appeal — not to the members at large, who would usually have supported the
executive— but to another body, the general council, which met every three years
for the express purpose of deciding such appeals. There was even a further
appeal from the general council to the periodical delegate meeting. In the
meantime the payment objected to was not required to be refunded, and it will
therefore easily be understood that the vast majority of executive decisions were
instantly appealed against. And when we add that each of these several courts
of appeal frequently reversed a large proportion of the decisions of its immediate
inferior, the effect of these frequent appeals in destroying all authority can easily
be imagined.

Representative Institutions 49

of trade policy involved in the changing conditions of the
industry, but also an increasing paralysis of administration,
against which officers and committee-men struggled in vain.
When in 1892 the delegates met at Leeds to find a remedy
for these evils, they brought from the branches two leading N
suggestions. One party urged the appointment, in aid of
the central executive, of a salaried staff of district delegates,
elected, in direct imitation of those of the Boilermakers, by
the whole society. Another section favored the transforma"
tion of the executive committee into a representative body,
and proposed the division of the country into eight equal
electoral districts, each of which should elect a representative
to a salaried executive council sitting continually in London,
and thus giving its whole time to the society's work.
Probably these remedies, aimed at different sides of the
trouble, were intended as alternatives. It is significant of
the deep impression made upon the delegate meeting that it
eventually adopted both, thus at one blow increasing the
number of salaried officers from three to seventeen.1

Time has yet to show how far this revolution in the
constitution of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers will
conduce either to efficient administration or to genuine
popular control. It is easy to see that government by
an executive committee of this character differs essentially
from government by a representative assembly appointing
its own cabinet, and that it possesses certain obvious dis-
advantages. The eight members, who are thus transferred
by the vote of their fellows from the engineer's workshop to.
the Stamford Street office, become by this fundamental
change of life completely severed from their constituents.
Spending all their days in office routine, they necessarily
lose the vivid appreciation of the feelings of the man

1 It is interesting to observe that the United Society of Boilermakers, by
adopting in 1895 a Representative Executive, has made its formal constitution
almost identical with that of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. The vital
difference between these two societies now lies in the working relation between
the central executive and the local branches and district committees ; see the
subsequent chapter on "The Unit of Government."

VOL. I E

50 Trade Union Structure

who works at the lathe or the forge. Living constantly in
London, they are subject to new local influences, and tend
unconsciously to get out of touch with the special grievances
or new drifts of popular opinion on the Tyne or the Clyde,
at Belfast or in Lancashire. It is true that the representa-
tives hold office for only three years, at the expiration of
which they must present themselves for re-election ; but
there would be the greatest possible reluctance amongst the
members to relegate to manual labor a man who had once
served them as a salaried official. Unless, therefore, a re-
vulsion of feeling takes place among the Engineers against
the institution itself, the present members of the representa-
tive executive committee may rely with some confidence on
becoming practically permanent officials.

These objections do not apply with equal force to other
examples of a representative executive. The tradition of
the Stamford Street office — that the whole mass of friendly-
society business should be dealt with in all its details by the
members of the executive committee themselves — involves
their daily attendance and their complete absorption in
office work. In other Trade Unions which have adopted
the same constitutional form, the members of the represent-
ative executive reside in their constituencies and, in some
cases, even continue to work at their trade. They are called
together, like the members of a representative assembly, at
quarterly or other intervals to decide only the more im-
portant questions, the detailed executive routine being
delegated to a local sub -committee or to the official staff.
Thus the executive committee of the National Union of
Boot and Shoe Operatives usually meets only for one day
a month ; the executive committee of the Associated Loco-
motive Engineers and Firemen is called together only when
required, usually not more than once or twice a month ; the
executive council of the Amalgamated Society of Railway
Servants comes to London once a quarter, and the same
practice is followed by the executive committee of the
National Union of Gasworkers and General Laborers. It is

Representative Institutions 5 1

evident that in all these cases the representative executive,
whether formed of the salaried officials of the districts or of
men working at their trade, has more chance of remaining in
touch with its constituents than in the case of the Amalga-
mated Society of Engineers.

But there is, in our opinion, a fundamental drawback to
government by a representative executive, even under the
most favorable conditions. One of the chief duties of a
representative governing body is to critin'sp. ^control, and
direct the permanent official staff, by whom the policy of the
"organisation muyractualljTbe carried out. Its main function,
in fact, is to exercise real and continuous authority over the
civil service. Now all experience shows it to be an essential
condition that the permanent officials should be dependent
on and genuinely subordinate to the representative body.
This condition is fulfilled in the constitutions such as those
of the Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton-spinners
and the Miners' Federation, where the representative assembly
itself appoints the officers, determines their duties, and fixes
their salaries. But it is entirely absent in all Trade Union
constitutions based on a representative executive. Under this
arrangement the executive committee neither appoints the
officers nor fixes their salaries. Though the representative
executive, unlike the old governing branch, can in its corporate
capacity claim to speak in the name of all the members, so
can the general secretary himself, and often each assistant
secretary. All alike hold their positions from the same
supreme power — the votes of the members ; and have their
respective duties and emoluments defined by the same
written constitution — the society's rules.

This absence of any co-ordination of the several parts
of the constitution works out, in practice, in one of two
ways. There may arise jealousies between the several officers,
or between them and some of the members of the executive
committee. We have known instances in which an incom-
petent and arbitrary general secretary has been pulled up
by one or other of his colleagues who wanted to succeed to

52 Trade Union Structure

his place. The suspicion engendered by the relation of
competitors for popular suffrage checks, it may be, some
positive malpractices, but results also in the obstruction of
useful measures of policy, or even in their failure through dis-
loyalty. More usually the executive committee, feeling itself
powerless to control the officials, tends to make a tacit
and half-unconscious compact with them, based on mutual
support against the criticism of their common constituents.
If the members of the committee are themselves salaried
officials, they not only have a fellow-feeling for the weak-
nesses of their brother officials, but they also realise vividly
the personal risk of appealing against them to the popular
vote. If, on the other hand, the members continue to work
at their trade, they feel themselves at a hopeless disadvantage
in any such appeal. They have neither the business ex-
perience nor the acquaintance with details necessary for a
successful indictment of an officer who is known from one
end of the society to the other, and who enjoys the advantage
of controlling its machinery. Thus we have in many unions
governed by a Representative Executive the formation of
a ruling clique, half officials, half representatives. This
has all the disadvantages of such a bureaucracy as we have
described in the case of the United Society of Boilermakers,
without the efficiency made possible by its hierarchical
organisation and the predominant authority of the head of
the staff. To sum up, if there are among the salaried repre-
sentatives or officials restless spirits, " conscientious critics," or
disloyal comrades, the general body of members may rest
assured that they will be kept informed of what is going on,
but at the cost of seeing their machinery of government
constantly clogged by angry recriminations and appeals. If,
on the other hand, the men who meet at headquarters in
one or another capacity are "good fellows," the machine
will work smoothly with such efficiency as their industry and
capacity happens to be equal to, but all popular control
over this governing clique will disappear.

We see, then, that though government by a representa-

Representative Institutions 53

tive executive is a real advance on the old expedients, it is
likely to prove inferior to government by a representative
assembly, appointing its own cabinet and officers. But a
great national Trade Union extending from one end of the
kingdom to the other cannot easily adopt the superior form,
even if the members desire it. The Cotton Operatives enjoy
the special advantage of having practically all their member-
ship within a radius of thirty miles from Manchester. The
frequent gatherings of a hundred delegates held usually on
a Saturday afternoon entail, therefore, no loss of working
time and little expense to the organisation. The same con-
sideration applies to the great bulk of the membership of
the Miners' Federation, three-fourths of which is concentrated
in Lancashire, West Yorkshire, and the industrial Midlands.
Even the outlying coalfields elsewhere enjoy the advantage
of close local concentration, so that a single delegate may
effectively represent the hundreds of lodges in his own
county. And it is no small consideration that the total
membership of the Miners' Federation is so large that the
cost of frequent meetings of fifty to seventy delegates bears
only a trifling proportion to the resources of the union.
Very different is the position of the great unions in the
engineering and building trades. The 46,000 members of the
Amalgamated Society of Carpenters in the United Kingdom,
for instance, are divided into 623 branches, scattered over
400 separate towns or villages. Each town has its own
Working Rules, its own Standard Rate and Normal Day, and
lacks intimate connection with the towns right and left of it.
The representative chosen by the Newcastle branch might
easily be too much absorbed by the burning local question of
demarcation against the Shipwrights to pay much attention
to the simple grievances of the Hexham branch as to the
Saturday half-holiday, or to the multiplication of apprentices
in the joinery shops at Darlington. Similar considerations
apply to the 497 branches of the Amalgamated Society of
Engineers, whose 80,000 members in the United Kingdom
are working in 300 different towns. In view of the increasing

54 Trade Union Structicre

uniformity of working conditions throughout the country, the
concentration of industry in large towns, the growing facili-
ties of travel and the steady multiplication of salaried local
officials," we do not ourselves regard the geographical difficulty
as insuperable. But it is easy to understand why, with so
large a number of isolated branches, it has not yet seemed
practicable to constitutional reformers in the building or
the engineering trades, to have frequent meetings of repre-
sentative assemblies.

The tardiness and incompleteness with which Trade
Unions have adopted representative institutions is mainly
due to a more general cause. The workman has been slow
to recognise the special function of the representative in a
democracy. In the early constitutional ideals of Trade
Unionism the representative finds, as we have seen, absolutely
no place. The committee-man elected by rotation of office
or the delegate deputed to take part in a revision of rules
was habitually regarded only as a vehicle by which "the
voices " could be mechanically conveyed. His task required,
therefore, no special qualification beyond intelligence to
comprehend his instructions and a spirit of obedience in
carrying them out. Very different is the duty cast upon
the representative in such modern Trade Union constitutions
as those of the Cotton Operatives and Coalminers. His
main function is still to express the mind of the average
man. But unlike the delegate, he is not a mechanical
vehicle of votes on particular subjects. The ordinary Trade
Unionist has but little facility in expressing his desires ;
unversed in the technicalities of administration, he is unable
to judge by what particular expedient his grievances can
best be remedied. In default of an expert representative he
has to depend on the professional administrator. But for
this particular task the professional administrator is no more
competent than the ordinary man, though for a different
reason. The very apartness of his life from that of the
average workman deprives him of close acquaintance with
the actual grievances of the mass of the people. Immersed

Representative Institutions 55

in office routine, he is apt to fail to understand from their
inconsistent complaints and impracticable suggestions what
it is they really desire. To act as an interpreter between
the people and their servants is, therefore, the first function
of the representative.

But this is only half of his duty. To him is entrusted
also the difficult and delicate task of controlling the pro-
fessional experts. Here, as we have seen, the ordinary man
completely breaks down. The task, to begin with, requires
a certain familiarity with the machinery of government, and
a sacrifice of time and a concentration of thought out of the
reach of the average man absorbed in gaining his daily
bread. So much is this the case that when the administra-
tion is complicated, a further specialisation is found necessary,
and the representative assembly itself chooses a cabinet, or
executive committee of men specially qualified for this duty.
A large measure of intuitive capacity to make a wise choice
of men is, therefore, necessary even in the ordinary repre-
sentative. Finally, there comes the important duty of
deciding upon questions of policy or tactics. The ordinary
citizen thinks of nothing but clear issues on broad lines.
The representative, on the other hand, finds himself con-
stantly called upon to choose between the nicely balanced
expediencies of compromise necessitated by the complicated
facts of practical life. On his shrewd judgment of actual
circumstances will depend his success in obtaining, not all
that his constituents desire — for that he will quickly recognise
as Utopian, — but the largest instalment of those desires
that may be then and there possible.

To construct a perfect representative assembly can,
therefore, never be an easy task ; and in a community ex-
clusively composed of manual workers dependent on weekly
wages, the task is one of exceptional difficulty. A
community of bankers and business entrepreneurs finds it
easy to secure a representative committee to direct and
control the paid officials whom it engages to protect its
interests. Constituents, representatives and officials are

56 Trade Union Structure

living much the same life, are surrounded by the same
intellectual atmosphere, have received approximately the
same kind of education and mental training, and are con-
stantly engaged in one variety or another of what is
essentially the same work of direction and control. More-
over, there is no lack of persons able to give the necessary
time and thought to expressing the desires of their class and
to seeing that they are satisfied. It is, therefore, not
surprising that representative institutions should be seen
at their best in middle- class communities.1 In all these
respects the manual workers stand at a grave disadvantage.
Whatever may be the natural endowment of the workman
selected by his comrades to serve as a representative, he
starts unequipped with that special training and that general
familiarity with administration which will alone enable him
to be a competent critic and director of the expert pro-
fessional. Before he can place himself on a level with the
trained official whom he has to control he must devote his
whole time and thought to his new duties, and must there-
fore give up his old trade. This unfortunately tends to
alter his manner of life, his habit of mind, and usually also
his intellectual atmosphere to such an extent that he
gradually loses that vivid appreciation of the feelings of the
man at the bench or the forge, which it is his function to
express. There is a certain cruel irony in the problem
which accounts, we think, for some of the unconscious
exasperation of the wage-earners all over the world against
representative institutions. Directly the working-man
representative becomes properly equipped for one -half of
his duties, he ceases to be specially qualified for the other.
If he remains essentially a manual worker, he fails to cope
with the brain-working officials ; if he takes on the character
of the brain-worker, he is apt to get out of touch with
the constituents whose desires he has to interpret. It will,
therefore, be interesting to see how the shrewd workmen of

1 In this connection see the interesting suggestions of Achille Loria, Les Bases
Economiques de la Constitution Sociale (Paris, 1893), PP- 150-154.

Representative Institutions 57

Lancashire, Yorkshire, and the Midlands have surmounted
this constitutional difficulty.

In the parliaments of the Cotton-spinners and Coalminers
we find habitually two classes of members, salaried officials
of the several districts, and representative wage-earners still
working at the mule or in the mine. It would almost seem
as if these modern organisations had consciously recognised
the impossibility of combining in any individual representa-
tive both of the requirements that we have specified. As it
is, the presence in their assemblies of a large proportion of
men who are still following their trade imports into their
deliberations the full flavor of working-class sentiment. And
the association, with these picked men from each industrial
village, of the salaried officers from each county, secures that
combination of knowledge, ability, and practical experience
in administration, which is, as we have suggested, absolutely
indispensable for the exercise of control over the professional
experts. If the constituencies elected none but their fellow-
workers, it is more than doubtful whether the representative
assembly so created would be competent for its task. If,
on the other hand, the assembly consisted merely of a
conference of salaried officials, appointing one or more of
themselves to carry out the national work of the federation,
it would inevitably fail to retain the confidence, even if it
continued to express the desires of the members at large.
The conjunction of the two elements in the same repre-
sentative assembly has in practice resulted in a very efficient
working body.

It is important to notice that in each of the trades the
success of the experiment has depended on the fact that the
organisation is formed on a federal basis. The constituent
bodies of the Miners' Federation and the Amalgamated
Association of Operative Cotton - spinners have their
separate constitutions, their distinct funds, and their own
official staffs. The salaried officers whom they elect to sit as
representatives in the federal parliament have, therefore, quite
other interests, obligations, and responsibilities than those of

58 Trade Union Structure

the official staff of the Federation itself. The secretary of
the Nottinghamshire Miners' Association, for instance, finds
himself able, when sitting as a member of the Conference of
the Miners' Federation, freely to criticise the action of the
federal executive council or of the federal official staff, with-
out in any way endangering his own position as a salaried
officer. Similarly, when the secretary of the Rochdale
Cotton-spinners goes to the quarterly meeting at Manchester,
he need have no hesitation in opposing and, if possible,
defeating any recommendation of the executive council of
the Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton-spinners
which he considers injurious to the Rochdale spinners. In
the form of the representative executive, this use of salaried
officers in a representative capacity is likely to tend, as we
have seen, to the formation of a virtually irresponsible
governing clique. But in the form of a federal representative
assembly, where the federal executive and official staff are
dependent, not on the members at large but on the assembly
itself, and where the representatives are responsible to quite
other constituencies and include a large proportion of the
non-official element, this danger is reduced to a minimum.

We have now set before the reader an analysis of the
constitutional development of Trade Union democracy. The
facts will be interpreted in different ways by students of
different temperaments. To us they represent the long and
inarticulate struggle of unlettered men to solve the problem
of how to combine administrative efficiency with popular
control. Assent was the first requirement. The very
formation of a continuous combination, in face of legal
persecution and public disapproval, depended on the active
concurrence of all the members. And though it is con-
ceivable that a strong Trade Union might coerce a few
individual workmen to continue in its ranks against
their will, no such coercive influence could permanently
prevail over a discontented majority, or prevent the secession,
either individually or in a body, of any considerable number
who were seriously disaffected. It was accordingly assumed

Representative Institutions 59

without question that everything should be submitted to
" the voices " of the whole body, and that each member
should take an equal and identical share in the common
project. As the union developed from an angry crowd
unanimously demanding the redress of a particular grievance
into an insurance company of national extent, obliged to
follow some definite trade policy, the need for administrative
efficiency more and more forced itself on the minds of the
members. This efficiency involved an ever-increasing special-
isation of function.1 The growing mass of business and the
difficulty and complication of the questions dealt with involved
the growth of an official class, marked off by capacity, training,
and habit of life from the rank and file. Failure to specialise
the executive function quickly brought about extinction. On
the other hand this very specialisation undermined the popular
control, and thus risked the loss of the indispensable popular
assent. The early expedients of Rotation of Office, the
Mass Meeting, and the Referendum proved, in practice, utterly
inadequate as a means of securing genuine popular control.
At each particular crisis the individual member found himself
overmatched by the official machinery which he had created.
At this stage irresponsible bureaucracy seemed the inevitable
outcome. But democracy found yet another expedient, which
in some favored unions has gone far to solve the problem.
The specialisation of the executive into a permanent expert
civil service was balanced by the specialisation of the legis-
lature, in the establishment of a supreme representative
assembly, itself undertaking the work of direction and control
for which the members at large had proved incompetent.
We have seen how difficult it is for a community of manual
workers to obtain such an assembly, and how large a part is

1 " The progressive division of labour by which both science and government
prosper." — Lord Acton, The Unity of Modern History (London, 1896), p. 3.
" If there be one principle clearer than another, it is this : that in any business,
whether of government or of mere merchandising, somebody must be trusted. . . .
Power and strict accountability for its use, are the essential constituents of good
government." — Woodrow Wilson, Congressional Government (New York, 1896),
1 2th edit.

60 Trade Union Structure

inevitably played in it by the ever-growing number of salaried
officers. But in the representative assembly these salaried
officers sit in a new capacity. The work expected from them
by their employers is not that of execution, but of criticism
and direction. To balance the professional civil servant we
have, in fact, the professional representative.

This detailed analysis of humble working-class organisa-
tions will to many readers be of interest only in so far as it
furnishes material for political generalisations. It is there-
fore important to consider to what extent the constitutional
problems of Trade Union democracy are analogous to those
of national or municipal politics.

The fundamental requisites of government are the same
in the democratic state as in the Trade Union. In
both cases the problem is how to combine administrative
efficiency with popular control. Both alike ultimately
depend on a continuance of general assent. In a voluntary
association, such as the Trade Union, this general assent
is, as we have seen, the foremost requirement : in the
democratic state relinquishment of citizenship is seldom a
practicable alternative, whilst the operation of changing
governors is not an easy one. Hence, even in the
most democratic of states the continuous assent of the
governed is not so imperative a necessity as in the Trade
Union. On the other hand, the degree of administrative
efficiency necessary for the healthy existence of the state is
far greater than in the case of the Trade Union. But whilst
admitting this transposition in relative importance, it still
remains true that, in the democratic state as in the Trade
Union, government cannot continue to exist without com-
bining a certain degree of popular assent with adequate
administrative efficiency.

More important is the fact that the popular assent is in
both cases of the same nature. In the democratic state, as
in the Trade Union, the eventual judgment of the people is
pronounced not upon projects but upon results. It avails
not that a particular proposal may have received the prior

Representative Institutions 61

authorisation of an express popular vote ; if the results are
not such as the people desire, the executive will not continue
to receive their support. Nor does this, in the democratic
state any more than in the Trade Union, imply that an
all-wise government would necessarily secure this popular
assent. If any particular stage in the march of civilisation
happens to be momentarily distasteful to the bulk of the
citizens, the executive which ventures to step in that direction
will be no less ruthlessly dismissed than if its deeds had been
evil. All that we have said as to the logical futility of the
Referendum, and as to the necessity for the representative,
therefore applies, we suggest, even more strongly to demo-
cratic states than to Trade Unions. For what is the lesson
to be learned from Trade Union history ? The Referendum,
introduced for the express purpose of ensuring popular
assent, has in almost all cases failed to accomplish its object.
This failure is due, as the reader will have observed, to the
constant inability of the ordinary man to estimate what will
be the effect of a particular proposal. What Democracy
requires is assent to results ; what the Referendum gives is
assent to projects. No Trade Union has, for instance,
deliberately desired bankruptcy ; but many Trade Unions
have persistently voted for scales of contributions and benefits
which have inevitably resulted in bankruptcy. If this is the
case in the relatively simple issues of Trade Union admini-
stration, still more does it apply to the infinitely complicated
questions of national politics.

But though in the case of the Referendum the analogy
is sufficiently exact to warrant the transformation of the
empirical conclusions of Trade Union history into a political
generalisation, it is only fair to point out some minor
differences between the two cases. We have had occasion
to describe how, in Trade Union history, the use of the
Referendum, far from promoting popular control, has some-
times resulted in increasing the dominant power of the
permanent civil service, and in making its position practically
impregnable against any uprising opinion among its con-

62 Trade Union Structure

stituents. This particular danger would, we imagine, scarcely
occur in a democratic state. In the Trade Union the
executive committee occupies a unique position. It alone
has access to official information ; it alone commands expert
professional skill and experience ; and, most important of all,
it monopolises in the society's official circular what corre-
sponds to the newspaper press. The existence of political
parties fairly equal in knowledge, ability, and electoral
organisation, and each served by its own press, would always
save the democratic state from this particular perversion of
the Referendum to the advantage of the existing government.
But any party or sect of opinion which, from lack of funds,
education, or social influence, could not call to its aid the
forces which we have named, would, we suggest, find itself as
helpless in face of a Referendum as the discontented section
of a strong Trade Union.

We have seen, moreover, that there is in Trade Union
government a certain special class of questions in which the
Referendum has a distinct use. Where a decision will
involve at some future time the personal co-operation of
the members in some positive act essentially optional in its
nature — still more where that act involves a voluntary
personal sacrifice, or where not a majority alone but
practically the whole body of the members must on pain of
failure join in it, — the Referendum may be useful, not as a
legislative act, but as an index of the probability that the
members will actually do what will be required of them.
The decision to strike is obviously a case in point. Another
instance may be found in the decisions of Trade Unions
or other bodies that each member shall use his municipal or
parliamentary franchise in a particular manner. Here the
success or failure of the policy of the organisation depends not
on the passive acquiescence of the rank and file in acts done
by the executive committee or the officers, but upon each
member's active performance of a personal task. We cannot
think of any case of this kind within the sphere of the
modern democratic state. If indeed, as Mr. Auberon Herbert

Representative Institutions 63

proposes, it were left to the option of each citizen to determine
from time to time the amount and the application of his
contributions to the treasury, the Chancellor of the Exchequer
would probably find it convenient, prior to making up the
estimates, to take a Referendum as a guide to how much
would probably be paid. Or, to take an analogy very near
to that of the Trade Union decision to strike, if each soldier
in the army were at liberty to leave at a day's notice, it
would probably be found expedient to take a vote of the
rank and file before engaging in a foreign war. In the
modern democratic state, however, as it actually exists, it is
not left to the option of the individual citizen whether or not
he will act in the manner decided on. The success or
failure of the policy does not therefore depend on obtaining
universal assent and personal participation in the act itself.
Whether the citizen likes it or not, he is compelled to pay
the taxes and obey the laws which have been decided on by
the competent authority. Whether or not he will maintain
that authority in power, will depend not on his original
impulsive judgment as to the expediency of the tax or the
law, but on his deliberate approval or disapproval of the
subsequent results.

If Trade Union history throws doubt on the advantages
of the Referendum, still less does it favor the institution of
the delegate as distinguished from the representative. Even
in the comparatively simple issues of Trade Union admini-
stration, it has been found, in practice, quite impossible to
obtain definite instructions from the members on all the
matters which come up for decision. When, for instance, the
sixty delegates of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers
met in 1892 to revise the constitution and trade policy of
their society, they were supposed to confine themselves to
such amendments as had previously received the sanction of
one or other of the branches. But although the amendments
so sanctioned filled over five hundred printed pages, it was
found impossible to construct from this material alone any
consistent constitution or line of policy. The delegates were

64 Trade Union Structure

necessarily compelled to exercise larger freedom and to frame
a set of rules not contemplated by any one of the branches.
And this experience of the Engineers is only a type of what
has been going on throughout the whole Trade Union world.
The increased facilities for communication, on the one hand,
and the growth of representative institutions, on the other,
have made the delegate obsolete. Wherever a Trade Union
has retained the old ideal of direct government by the people,
it has naturally preferred to the Delegate Meeting the less
expensive and more thoroughgoing device of the Referendum.
For the most part the increasing complication and intricacy
of modern industrial affairs has, as we have seen, compelled
the substitution of representative institutions. These con-
siderations apply with even greater force to the democratic
state.

Trade Union history gives, therefore, little support to
the Referendum or the Delegate Meeting, and points rather
to government by a Representative Assembly as the last
word of democracy.1 It is therefore important to see whether
these Trade Union parliaments have any lesson for the
political student. The governing assemblies of even the
most democratic states have, unlike Trade Union parliaments,
hitherto been drawn almost exclusively from the middle or
upper classes, and have therefore escaped the special difficulties
of communities of wage-earners. If, however, we assume that
the manual workers, who number four-fifths of the population,
will gradually become the dominant influence in the elector-
ate, and will contribute an important and increasing section
of the representatives, the governing assemblies of the Coal-

1 " There are two elements co-existent in the conduct of human affairs — policy
and administration — but, though the confines of their respective jurisdictions
overlap, the functions of each must of necessity be exercised within its own
domain by its own hierarchy — the one consisting of trained specialists and
experts, intimately conversant with the historical traditions of their own depart-
ment and with the minutest details of the subjects with which they are concerned,
the other qualified by their large converse with whatever is influential and
intelligent in their own country or on the European Continent, and, above all,
by their Parliamentary talents and their tactful appreciation of public opinion, to
determine the general lines along which the destinies of their country should be
led."— Speech by the Marquis of Dufferin, Times, I2th June 1897.

Representative Institutions 65

miners or Cotton Operatives to-day may be to a large extent
prophetic of the future legislative assembly in any English-
speaking community.

One inference seems to us clear. Any effective participa-
tion of the wage-earning class in the councils of the nation
involves the establishment of a new calling, that of the
professional representative. For the parish or town council
it is possible to elect men who will continue to work
at their trades, just as a Trade Union branch can be
administered by committee-men and officers in full work.
The adoption of the usual Co-operative and Trade Union
practice of paying travelling expenses and an allowance for
the actual time spent on the public business would suffice
to enable workmen to attend the district or county council.
But the governing assembly of any important state must
always demand practically the whole time of its members.
The working-man representative in the House of Commons
is therefore most closely analogous, not to the working miner
or spinner who attends the Coal or Cotton Parliament, but
to the permanent and salaried official representatives, who,
in both these assemblies, exercise the predominant influence
and control the executive work. The analogy may therefore
seem to point to the election to the House of Commons of
the trained representative who has been successful in the
parliament of his trade.

Such a suggestion misses the whole moral of Trade
Union history. The cotton or coal -mining official repre-
sentative succeeds in influencing his own trade assembly
because he has mastered the technical details of all the
business that comes before it ; because his whole life has
been one long training for the duties which he has to
discharge ; because, in short, he has become a professional
expert in ascertaining and representing the desires of his
constituents and in bringing about the conditions of their
fulfilment. But transport this man to the House of
Commons, and he finds himself confronted with facts and
problems as foreign to his experience and training as his
VOL. i F

66 Trade Union Structure

own business would be to the banker or the country gentle-
man. What the working class will presently recognise is
that the duties of a parliamentary representative constitute
as much a new business to the Trade Union official as the
duties of a general secretary are to the ordinary mechanic.
When workmen desire to be as efficiently represented in
the Parliament of the nation as they are in their own
trade assemblies, they will find themselves compelled to
establish a class of expert parliamentary representatives,
just as they have had to establish a class of expert trade
officials.

We need not consider in any detail what effect an influx
of " labor members " of this new type would probably have
upon the British House of Commons. Any one who has
watched the deliberations of the Coal or the Cotton Parlia-
ment, or the periodical revising committees of the other
great unions, will have been impressed by the disinclination
of the professional representative to mere talk, his impatience
of dilatory procedure, and his determination to "get the
business through" within working hours. Short speeches,
rigorous closure, and an almost extravagant substitution
of printed matter for lengthy " front bench " explanations
render these assemblies among the most efficient of demo-
cratic bodies.1

More important is it to consider in what respects,
judging from Trade Union analogies, the expert professional
representative will differ from the unpaid politician to whom
the middle and upper classes have hitherto been accustomed.
We have already described how in the Trade Union world
the representative has a twofold function, neither part of
which may be neglected with impunity. He makes it just
as much his business to ascertain and express the real
desires of his constituents as he does to control and direct
the operations of the civil servants of his trade. With the

1 These representative assemblies present a great contrast to the Trade
Union Congress, as to which see the subsequent chapter on "The Method of
Legal Enactment."

Representative Institutions 67

entrance into the House of Commons of men of this type,
the work of ascertaining and expressing the wishes of the
constituencies would be much more deliberately pursued
than at present. The typical member of Parliament to-day
attends to such actual expressions of opinion as reach him
from his constituency in a clear and definite form, but
regards it as no part of his work actively to discover what
the silent or inarticulate electors are vaguely desiring. He
visits his constituency at rare intervals, and then only to
expound his own views in set speeches at public meetings,
whilst his personal intercourse is almost entirely limited
to persons of his own class or to political wire-pullers.
Whatever may be his intentions, he is seldom in touch
with any but the middle or upper class, together with
that tiny section of all classes to whom " politics " is of
constant interest. Of the actual grievances and " dim in-
articulate" aspirations of the bulk of the people, the lower
middle and the wage-earning class, he has practically no
conception. When representation of working-class opinion
becomes a profession, as in the Trade Union world, we see
a complete revolution in the attitude of the representative
towards his constituents. To find out what his constituents
desire becomes an essential part of his work. It will not do
to wait until they write to him, for the working-man is slow
to put pen to paper. Hence the professional Trade Union
representative takes active steps to learn what the silent
members are thinking. He spends his whole time, when
not actually in session, in his constituency. He makes few
set speeches at public gatherings, but he is diligent in
attending branch meetings, and becomes an attentive listener
at local committees. At his office he is accessible to every
one of his constituents. It is, moreover, part of the regular
routine of such a functionary to be constantly communicat-
ing with every one of his constituents by means of frequent
circulars on points which he believes to be of special interest
to them. If, therefore, the professional representative, as we
know him in the Trade Union world, becomes a feature of

68 Trade Union Structure

the House of Commons, the future member of Parliament
will feel himself not only the authoritative exponent of
the votes of his constituents, but also their " London
Correspondent," their parliamentary agent, and their
expert adviser in all matters of legislation or general
politics.1

It is impossible to forecast all the consequences that
would follow from raising (or, as some would say, degrading)
the parliamentary representative from an amateur to a pro-
fessional. But among other things the whole etiquette of
the situation would be changed. At present it is a point
of honor in a member of Parliament not to express his
constituents' desires when he conscientiously differs from
them. To the " gentleman politician " the only alternative
to voting as he himself thinks best is resigning his seat.
This delicacy is unknown to any paid professional agent.
The architect, solicitor, or permanent civil servant, after
tendering his advice and supporting his views with all his
expert authority, finally carries out whatever policy his
employer commands. This is also the view which the
professional representative of the Trade Union world takes
of his own duties. It is his business not only to put before
his constituents what he believes to be their best policy and
to back up his opinion with all the argumentative power he
can bring to bear, but also to put his entire energy into
wrestling with what he conceives to be their ignorance, and
to become for the time a vigorous propagandist of his own
policy. But if, when he has done his best in this way, he
fails to get a majority over to his view, he loyally accepts
the decision and records his vote in accordance with his
constituents' desires. We imagine that professional repre-
sentatives of working-class opinion in the House of Commons
would take the same course.2

1 " Representatives ought to give light and leading to the people, just as the
people give stimulus and momentum to their representatives." — J. Bryce, The
American Commonwealth (London, 1891), vol. i. p. 297.

2 It is interesting to notice that in the country in which the "sovereignty of

Representative Institutions 69

This may at first seem to indicate a return of the pro-
fessional representative to the position of a delegate. Trade
Union experience points, however, to the very reverse. In the
great majority of cases a constituency cannot be said to have
any clear and decided views on particular projects. What
they ask from their representative is that he shall act in the
manner which, in his opinion, will best serve to promote
their general desires. It is only in particular instances,
usually when some well-intentioned proposal entails im-
mediately inconvenient results, that a wave of decided
opinion spreads through a working-class constituency. It
is exactly in cases of this kind that a propagandist campaign
by a professional debater, equipped with all the facts, is of
the greatest utility. Such a campaign would be the very
last thing that a member of Parliament of the present type
would venture upon if he thought that his constituents were
against him. He would feel that the less the points of
difference were made prominent, the better for his own
safety. But once it came to be understood that the final
command of the constituency would be obeyed, the repre-
sentative would run no risk of losing his seat, merely because
he did his best to convert his constituents. Judging from
Trade Union experience he would, in nine cases out of ten,
succeed in converting them to his own view, and thus
perform a valuable piece of political education. In the
tenth case the campaign would have been no less educa-
tional, though in another way ; and, whichever was the
right view, the issue would have been made clear, the facts
brought out, and the way opened for the eventual conversion
of one or other of the contending parties.

Trade Union experience indicates, therefore, a still further
development in the evolution of the representative. Working-

the people " has been most whole-heartedly accepted, the Trade Union practice
prevails. The members of the Swiss " Bundesrath " (Federal Cabinet) do not
resign when any project is disapproved of by the legislature, nor do the members
of the " Nationalrath " throw up their legislative functions when a measure is
rejected by the electors on Referendum. Both cabinet ministers and legislators
set themselves to carry out the popular will.

70 Trade Union Structure

class democracy will expect him not only to be able to
understand and interpret the desires of his electors, and
effectively to direct and control the administrating executive :
he must also count it as part of his duty to be the expert
parliamentary adviser of his constituency, and at times an
active propagandist of his own advice. Thus, if any inference
from Trade Union history is valid in the larger sphere, the
whole tendency of working-class democracy will unconsciously
be to exalt the real power of the representative, and more
and more to differentiate his functions from those of the
ordinary citizen on the one hand, and of the expert admini-
strator on the other. The typical representative assembly of
the future will, it may be suggested, be as far removed from
the House of Commons of to-day as the latter is from the
mere Delegate Meeting. We have already travelled far from
the one man taken by rotation from the roll, and changed
mechanically to convey " the voices " of the whole body. We
may in the future leave equally behind the member to whom
wealth, position, or notoriety secures, almost by accident, a
seat in Parliament, in which he can, in such intervals as his
business or pleasure may leave him, decide what he thinks
best for the nation. In his stead we may watch appearing in
increasing numbers the professional representative, — a man
selected for natural aptitude, deliberately trained for his new
work as a special vocation, devoting his whole time to the
discharge of his manifold duties, and actively maintaining
an intimate and reciprocal intellectual relationship with his
constituency.

How far such a development of the representative will
fit in with the party system as we now know it ; how far it
will increase the permanence and continuity of parliamentary
life ; how far it will promote collective action and tend to
increasing bureaucracy ; how far, on the other hand, it will
bring the ordinary man into active political citizenship, and
rehabilitate the House of Commons in popular estimation ;
how far, therefore, it will increase the real authority of the
people over the representative assembly, and of the repre-

Representative Institutions 71

sentative assembly over the permanent civil service ; how far,
in fine, it will give us that combination of administrative
efficiency with popular control which is at once the requisite
and the ideal of all democracy — all these are questions that
make the future interesting.

CHAPTER III

THE UNIT OF GOVERNMENT

TPIE trade clubs of the eighteenth century inherited from
the Middle Ages the tradition of strictly localised corpora-
tions, the unit of government necessarily coinciding, like that
of the English craft gild, with the area of the particular city
in which the members lived. And we can well imagine that
a contemporary observer of the constitution and policy of
these little democracies might confidently have predicted that
they, like the craft gilds, must inevitably remain strictly
localised bodies. The crude and primitive form of popular
government to which, as we have seen, the workmen were
obstinately devoted, could only serve the needs of a small
and local society. Government by general meeting of all
the members, administration by the forced service of indi-
viduals taken in rotation from the roll — in short, the ideal
of each member taking an equal and identical share in the
management of public affairs — was manifestly impracticable
in any but a society of which the members met each other
with the frequent intimacy of near neighbours. Yet in spite
of all difficulties of constitutional machinery, the historian
watches these local trade clubs, in marked contrast with the
craft gilds, irresistibly expanding into associations of national
extent. Thus, the little friendly club which twenty -three
Bolton ironfounders established in 1809 spread steadily over
the whole of England, Ireland, and Wales, until to-day it
numbers over 16,000 members, dispersed among 122 separate

The Unit of Government 73

branches. The scores of little clubs of millwrights and
steam-engine makers, fitters and blacksmiths, as if impelled
by some overmastering impulse, drew together between 1 840
and 1851 to form the great Amalgamated Society of
Engineers. The Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and
Joiners (established 1860) has, in the thirty-five years of its
existence, absorbed several dozens of local carpenters' societies,
and now counts within its ranks four-fifths of the organised
carpenters in the kingdom. Finally, we see organisations
established, like the Amalgamated Society of Railway
Servants in 1872, with the deliberate intention of covering
the whole trade from one end of the kingdom to the other.
How slowly, painfully, and reluctantly the workmen have
modified their crude ideas of democracy to meet the exigencies
of a national organisation, we have already described.

But it was not merely the workman's simplicity in matters
of government that hampered the growth of national organisa-
tion. The traditional policy of the craftsman of the English
town — the restriction of the right to work to those who had
acquired the " freedom " of the corporation, the determined
exclusion of " interlopers," and the craving to keep trade
from going out of the town — has left deep roots in English
industrial life, alike among the shopkeepers and among the
workmen. Trade Unionism has had constantly to struggle
against this spirit of local monopoly, specially noticeable in
the seaport towns.1

Down to the middle of the present century the ship-
wrights had an independent local club in every port, each of
which strove with might and main to exclude from any
chance of work in the port all but men who had learnt their
trade within its bounds. These monopoly rules caused
incessant friction between the men of the several ports.
Shipwrights out of work in one town could not perma-
nently be kept away from another in which more hands were

1 It is interesting to note that the modern forms of the monopoly spirit are
also specially characteristic of the industry of shipbuilding ; see the chapter on
" The Right to a Trade."

74 Trade Union Structure

wanted. The newcomers, refused admission into the old port
society, eventually formed a new local union among them-
selves, and naturally tended to ignore the trade regulations
maintained by the monopolists. To remedy this disastrous
state of things a loose federation was between 1850 and
1860 gradually formed among the local societies for the
express purpose of discussing, at annual congresses, how to
establish more satisfactory relations between the ports. In
the records of these congresses we watch, for nearly thirty
years, the struggle of the monopolist societies against the
efforts of those, such as Glasgow and Newcastle, whose
circumstances had converted them to a belief in complete
mobility of labor within a trade. The open societies
at last lost patience with the conservative spirit of the
others, and in 1882 united to form a national amalgamated
union, based on the principle of a common purse and
complete mobility between port and port. This organisa-
tion, the Associated Shipwrights' Society, has, in fifteen
years, succeeded in absorbing all but three of the local
societies, and now extends to every port in the kingdom.
" In these times of mammoth firms, with large capital," writes
the general secretary, " the days of local societies' utility have
gone by, and it is to be hoped the few still remaining outside
the consolidated association of their trade will ere long lay
aside all local animus and trivial objections, or personal
feeling ... for the paramount interest of their trade." l

The history of the Shipwrights' organisation is typical
of that of other port unions. The numerous societies of
Sailmakers, once rigidly monopolist, are now united in a
federation, within which complete mobility prevails.'2 The
Coopers' societies, which in the port towns had formerly
much in common with the Shipwrights, now, with one excep-
tion, admit to membership any duly apprenticed cooper from

1 Twelfth Annual Report of Associated Shipwrights' Society (Newcastle, 1 894),
p. xi.

2 Rules for the Guidance of the Federation of the Sailmakers of Great Britain
and Ireland (Hull, 1890).

The Unit of Government 75

another town. But the main citadels of local monopoly
in the Trade Union world have always been the trade clubs
of Dublin, Cork, and Limerick. The Dublin Coopers have,
even at the present time, a rigidly closed society, which
refuses all intercourse with other unions, and maintains,
through an ingenious arrangement, a strict monopoly of this
important coopering centre j1 and the Cork Stonemasons,
who are combined in an old local club, whilst insisting on
working at Fermoy whenever they please, will not, as we
learn, suffer any mason, from Fermoy or elsewhere, to obtain
employment at Cork.

Even in Ireland, however, the development of Trade
Unionism is hostile to local monopoly. Any growing in-
dustry is quickly invaded by members of the great English
societies, who establish their own branches and force the
local clubs to come to terms. One by one old Irish unions
apply to be admitted as branches into the richer and more
powerful English societies, and have in consequence to accept
the principle of complete mobility of labor. The famous

1 The arrangement is as follows : The Dublin Coopers do not prohibit
strangers from working in Dublin when more coopers are wanted. On such
occasions the secretary writes to coopers' societies in other towns, notably Burton,
stating the number of men required. Upon all such outsiders a tax of a shilling
a week is levied as " working fee," half of which benefits the Dublin society, the
other half being accumulated to pay the immigrant's return fare. As soon as
work shows signs of approaching slackness, the "foreigner" receives warning
that he must instantly depart : it is said that his return ticket is presented to him,
with any balance remaining out of his weekly sixpence. As many as 200
" strangers " will in this way sometimes be paid off, and sent away in a single
week. By this means the Dublin Coopers (a) secure absolute regularity of
employment for their own members, (b] provide the extra labor required in busy
times, and (c) maintain their own control over the conditions under which the
work is done. The employers appear to be satisfied with the arrangement, which,
so far as we have been able to ascertain, is the only surviving instance of what
was once a common rule of port unions. Thus, the rules of Queenstown Ship-
wrights' Society, right down to its absorption in the Associated Shipwrights'
Society (in 1894), included a provision that "no strange shipwright" should be
allowed to work in the town while a member was idle. And the Liverpool
Sailmakers' Society (established 1817) has, among the MS. rules preserved in the
old minute-book, one providing that "strangers" with indentures should be
allowed to work at "legal sail-rooms," but should members be unable to obtain
employment elsewhere, then " the stranger shall be discharged and the member be
engaged."

76 Trade Union Structure

" Dublin Regulars," a rigidly monopolist local carpenters'
union, claiming descent from the gilds, and always striving
to exclude from admission any but the sons of the members,1
became, in 1890, at the instance of its younger members, one
of the 629 branches of the Amalgamated Society of Car-
penters and Joiners, bound to admit to work fellow-members
from all parts of the world. Among the Irish Shipwrights,
too, once the most rigidly monopolist of all, this tendency
has progressed with exceptional rapidity. The annual report
of the Associated Shipwrights' Society for 1893 records2
the absorption in that year alone of no fewer than six old
Irish port unions, each of which had hitherto striven to
maintain for its members all the work of its own port.

But although the growth of national organisation has
done much to break down this spirit of local monopoly,
we do not wish to imply that it has been completely
eradicated. The workman, whether a Trade Unionist or
not, still shares with the shopkeeper and the small manu-
facturer, the old instinctive objection to work "going out
of the town." The proceedings of local authorities often
reveal to us the " small master," the retail tradesman,
and the local artisan all insisting that " the ratepayers'
money " should be spent so as directly to benefit the local
trade. Trade Unionists are not backward in making use
of this vulgar error when it suits their purpose, and the
" labor members " of town or county councils can seldom
refrain, whenever it is proposed "to send work into the
country," from adopting an argument which they find so
convincing to many of their middle-class colleagues.8

1 See, for instance, the detailed account of it given in the Report on Trade
Societies and Strikes of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science
(1860), pp. 418-423.

2 Tivelfth Annual Report of the Associated Shipwrights' Society, p. xi. (New-
castle, 1894).

3 During the first eight years of the London County Council (1889-97) several
attempts were made to confine contracts to London firms. It is interesting to
note that these all emanated from middle-class members of the Moderate Party, and
that they were opposed by John Burns and a large majority of the " Labor
Members " and Progressives, as well as by the more responsible of the " Moderates."

The Unit of Government 77

But if we follow the Labor Member from the council
chamber to his Trade Union branch meeting, we shall
recognise that the grievance felt by his Trade Unionist
constituents is not exclusively, or even mainly, based on
the " local protectionism " of the shopkeeper and the small
manufacturer. What the urban Trade Unionist actually
resists is not any loss of work to a particular locality, but
the incessant attempt of contractors to evade the Trade
Union regulations, by getting the work done in districts in
which the workmen are either not organised at all, or in
which they are working at a low Standard Rate. Thus the
Friendly Society of Operative Stonemasons incurs consider-
able odium because the branches in many large towns insert
in their local rules a prohibition of the use of stone imported
in a worked state from any outside district. But this general
prohibition arises from the fact that the practical alternative
to working the stone on the spot is getting it worked in the
district in which it is quarried. Now, whatever mechanical
or economic advantage may be claimed for the latter
practice, it so happens that the quarry districts are those
in which the Stonemasons are worst organised. In these
districts for the most part, no Standard Rate exists, the
hours of labor are long and variable, and competitive piece-
work, unregulated by any common agreement, usually prevails.
Moreover, any transference of work from the Stonemasons
of large cities where jobs dovetail with each other, to the
Stonemasons of quarry villages, entirely dependent on the
spasmodic orders for worked stone received by the quarry
>wner, necessarily involves an increase in the number of
Stonemasons exposed to irregularity of work, and habitually
on tramp " from county to county.1

1 For instance the "Working Rules to be observed by the Master Builders
and Operative Stonemasons of Portsmouth," signed in 1893, by ten master
builders and four workmen, on behalf of their respective associations, include the
following provision, " That no piecework be allowed and no worked stone to
come into the town except square steps, flags, curbs, and landings, and no brick-
' yers to fix worked stone." The London rules are not so explicit. As formally
jreed to in \ 893 by the associations of employers and employed, they provide

78 Trade Union Structure

We may trace a similar feeling in the protests frequently
made by the branches of the National Union of Boot and
Shoe Operatives, against work being sent into the country
villages, or even from a centre in which wages are high, to
one working under a lower " statement." That this is not
merely a disguised " local protectionism " may be seen from
the fact that the Northampton Branch actually resolved in
1888 to strike, not against Northampton employers sending
work out of the town, but against a London manufacturer
sending his work to Northampton.1 In 1889, the Executive
Council of the same union found itself driven to take action
against the systematic attempts of certain employers to
evade the wages agreement which they had formally entered
into, by sending their work away to have certain processes

that " piecework and subcontracting for labor only shall on no account be resorted
to, excepting for granite kerb, York paving and turning." The London Stone-
masons, however, claim, as for instance in their complaint in 1894 against the
Works Department of the London County Council, that this rule must be
interpreted so as to exclude the use in London of stone worked in a quarry
district. This claim was successfully resisted by the Trade Union repre-
sentatives who sat on the Works Committee. We subsequently investigated
this case ourselves, tracing the stone (a long run of sandstone kerb for park
railings) back to Derbyshire, where it was quarried and worked. We found the
district totally unorganised, the stonemasons' work being done largely by boy-
labor, at competitive piecework, without settled agreement, by non-unionists,
working irregular and sometimes excessive hours. It was impossible not to feel
that, although the London Stonemasons had expressed their objection in the
wrong terms and therefore had failed to obtain redress, they were, according
to the " Fair Wages " policy adopted by the County Council and the House
of Commons, justified in their complaint. Unfortunately, instead of bringing
to the notice of the Committee the actual conditions under which the stone
was being worked, they relied on the argument that the London ratepayers'
money should be spent on London workmen. This argument, as they afterwards
explained to us, had been found the most effective with the shopkeepers and
small manufacturers who dominate provincial Town Councils. The Trade
Unionist members of the London County Council proved obdurate to this
economic heresy.

1 Shoe and Leather Record, 28th July 1888. In the same way a general
meeting of the Manchester Stonemasons, in 1862, decided to support a strike-
against a Manchester employer who, carrying out a contract at Altrincham, eight
miles off, had his stone worked at Manchester, instead of at Altrincham, as
required by the working rules of the Altrincham branch. In this case, the
Manchester Stonemasons struck against work coming to themselves at a higher
rate per hour than was demanded by the Altrincham masons. — Stonemasons'
Fortnightly Return^ September 1862.

The Unit of Government 79

done in lower - paid districts. These employers were
accordingly informed, not that the work must be kept in
the town, but that, wherever it was executed, the "shop
statement " which they had signed must be adhered to. It
was at the same time expressly intimated that if these
employers chose to set up works of their own in a new
place, " they will be at perfect liberty to do so," without
objection from the union, even if they chose a low-paid
district, " provided that they pay the highest rate of wages
of the district to which they go." l

We have quoted the strongest instances of Trade Union
objection to " work going out of the town," in order to
unravel, from the common stock of economic prejudice, the
impulse which is distinctive of Trade Unionism itself. It is
customary for persons interested in the prosperity of one
establishment, one town or one district, to seek to obtain
trade for that particular establishment, town or district.
Had Trade Unions remained, like the mediaeval craft gilds,
organisations of strictly local membership, they must, almost
inevitably, have been marked by a similar local favoritism.
But the whole tendency of Trade Union history has been
towards the solidarity of each trade as a whole. The
natural selfishness of the local branches is accordingly always
being combated by the central executives and national
delegate meetings, in the wider interests of the whole body
of the members wherever they may be working. Just in
proportion as Trade Unionism is strong and well established
we find the old customary favoritism of locality replaced
by the impartial enforcement of uniform conditions upon
all districts alike. When, for instance, the Amalgamated
Association of Cotton Weavers, in delegate meeting assembled,
finally decided to adopt a uniform list of piecework prices,
the members then working at Great Harwood found no
sympathy for their plea that such a measure would reduce

1 The "National Conference" of the Union passed a similar resolution in
1886; Monthly Report of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives,
January 1887 and February 1889.

80 Trade Union Structure

their own exceptionally high rates. And although it was
foreseen and declared that uniformity would tend to the
concentration of the manufacture in the most favorably
situated districts, to the consequent loss of the more remote
villages, the delegates from these villages almost unanimously
supported what was believed to be good for the trade as a
whole.1

In another industry, the contrast between the old " local
protectionism " and the Trade Unionist view has resulted in
an interesting change in electioneering tactics. The London
Society of Compositors and the Typographical Association
have, for the last ten years, used more electoral pressure with
regard to the distribution of local work, than any other Trade
Union. So long as parliamentary electors belonged mainly to
the middle class, a parliamentary candidate was advised by his
agent to distribute his large printing orders fairly among all
parts of his constituency, and under no circumstances to employ
a printer living beyond its boundary. Now the astute agent,
eager to conciliate the whole body of organised workmen in
the constituency, confines his printing strictly to the best
Trade Union establishments, although this usually involves
passing over most of the local establishments and sometimes
even giving work to firms outside the district. The influence
of the Trade Union leaders is used, not to maintain their
respective trades in all the places in which they happen to
exist, but to strengthen, at the expense of the rest, those
establishments, those towns, and even those districts, in which
the conditions of work are most advantageous.

We see, therefore, that in spite of the difficulties of
government, in spite of the strong inherited tradition of
local exclusiveness, and in spite, too, of the natural selfish-
ness of each branch in desiring to preserve its own local
monopoly, the unit of government in the workmen's organ-
isations, in complete contrast to the gilds of the master-

i Special meeting of General Council of Amalgamated Association of Cotton
Weavers, soth April 1892, attended by one of the authors j see other instances
cited in the chapter on "The Standard Rate.n

The Unit of Government 8 1

craftsmen, has become the trade instead of the town.1
Our description of this irresistible tendency to expan-
sion has already to some extent revealed its cause, in the
Trade Union desire to secure uniform minimum conditions
throughout each industry. In our examination of the
Methods and Regulations of Trade Unionism, and in our
analysis of their economic working, we shall discover the
means by which the wage-earners seek to attain this end,
and the reasons which convince them of its importance.
In the final part of our work we shall examine how far such
an equality is economically possible or desirable. For the
moment the reader must accept the fact that this uniformity
of minimum is, whether wisely or not, the most permanent
of Trade Union aspirations.

Meanwhile it is interesting to note that this conception
of the solidarity of each trade as a whole is checked by
racial differences. The great national unions of Engineers
ind Carpenters find no difficulty in extending their organisa-
tions beyond national boundaries, and easily open branches
in the United States or the South African Republic, France
or Spain, provided that these branches are composed of British
workmen.2 But it is needless to say that it has not yet
ippeared practicable to any British Trade Union even to
suggest amalgamation with the Trade Union of any other
mntry. Differences in legal position, in political status, in
industrial methods, and in the economic situation between

1 Where at the present day a widespread English industry is without a pre-
Dnderating national Trade Union, it is simply a mark of imperfect organisation.

ms the numerous little Trade Unions of Painters, and Chippers and Drillers
:lude only a small proportion of those at work in the trades.

2 The Amalgamated Society of Engineers had, in 1896, 82 branches beyond
ic United Kingdom, and the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners no

fewer than 87. About half of these are in the United States or Canada, and
most of the remainder in the Australian Colonies or South Africa. The Engineers
had one branch in France, at Croix, and formerly one in Spain, at Bilbao,
where the United Society of Boilermakers also had a branch until 1894. In the
years 1880-82 the United Society of Boilermakers even had a branch at Con-
stantinople. The only other English Trade Union having branches beyond sea
is the Steam-Engine Makers' Society, which has opened lodges at New York,
Montreal, and Brisbane.

VOL. I G

82 Trade Union Structure

French and English workers — not to mention the barrier of
language — easily account for the indisposition on the part
of practical British workmen to consider an international
amalgamated union. And it is significant that, even within
the British Isles, the progress towards national union has
been much hampered by differences of racial sentiment and
divergent views of social expediency. The English carpenter,
plumber, or smith who finds himself working in a Scotch
town, is apt to declare the Scotch union in his trade to be
little better than a friendly society, and to complain that
Scotch workmen are too eager for immediate gain and for
personal advancement sufficiently to resist such dangerous
innovations as competitive piecework, nibbling at the
Standard Rate, or habitual overtime. The Scotchman
retorts that the English Trade Union is extravagant in its
expenditure, especially at the head office in London or
Manchester, and unduly restrictive in its Regulations and
Methods. In some cases the impulse towards amalgama-
tion has prevailed over this divergence as to what is socially
expedient. The United Society of Boilermakers, which
extends without a rival from sea to sea, was able in 1889,
through the loyalty of the bulk of its Scottish members, to
stamp out an attempted secession, aiming at a national
society on the banks of the Clyde, which evoked the support
of Scottish national feeling, voiced by the Glasgow Trades
Council. In other cases Scotch pertinacity has conquered
England. The Associated Shipwrights' Society, the rise and
national development of which we have already described,
sprang out of the Glasgow Shipwrights' Union, which gave
to the wider organisation its able and energetic secretary,
Mr. Alexander Wilkie. The British Steel Smelters' Associa-
tion (established 1886) has spread from Glasgow over the
whole industry in the Northern and Midland districts of
England. In both these cases the Scotch have " stooped
to conquer," the Scottish secretary moving to an English
town as the centre of membership shifted towards the south.
But in other trades the prevailing tendency towards complete

The Unit of Government 83

national amalgamation is still baffled by the sturdy Scotch
determination — due partly to differences of administration
but mainly to racial sentiment — not to be " governed from
England." l The powerful English national unions of Car-
penters, Handworking Bootmakers, Plumbers, and Bricklayers
have either never attempted or have failed to persuade their
Scottish fellow-workmen to give up their separate Scottish
societies. The rival national societies of Tailors are always
at war, making periodical excursions across the Border, this
establishment of branches in each other's territories giving
rise to heated recriminations. In many important trades,
such as the Compositors, Stonemasons, and Ironfounders,
effective Trade Unionism is as old in Scotland as in
England, and the two national societies in each trade, whilst
retaining complete Home Rule, have settled down to a
fraternal relationship, which amounts to tacit if not formal
federation.

Ireland presents a similar case of racial differences,
working in a somewhat different manner. Whereas the
English Trade Unions have keenly desired union with
Scottish local societies, they have, until lately, manifested a
marked dislike to having anything to do with Ireland.2 This
has been, in some cases at least, the result of experience.

1 Analogous tendencies may be traced in the Friendly Society movement,
though to a lesser extent. The Scottish lodges of the Manchester Unity of Odd-
fellows have their own peculiar rules. The Scottish delegates to the Foresters'
High Court at Edinburgh in 1894, were among the most strenuous opponents
of the proposal to fix the headquarters (at present moving annually from town to
town) in London or Birmingham. And though exclusively Scottish Orders have
never yet succeeded in widely establishing themselves, it is not uncommon for
Scottish lodges to threaten secession, as when, in 1889, five Scottish lodges of
the Bolton Unity of the Ancient Noble Order of Oddfellows endeavoured to start
a new "Scottish Unity" (Oddfellows' Magazine, March 1889, p. 70). Such a
secession from the Manchester Unity resulted in the " Scottish Order of Odd-
fellows" which has, however, under 2000 members. There exist also the "St.
Andrew's Order of Ancient Free Gardeners of Scotland," with 6000 members, and
a " United Order of Scottish Mechanics," with 4000 members, which refuse to
merge themselves in the larger Orders.

2 Scottish branches are declared by Trade Union secretaries to be profitable
recruits from a financial point of view, because they are habitually frugal and
cautious in dispensing friendly benefits.

84 Trade Union Structure

From 1832 down to 1840, Irish lodges were admitted to
the Friendly Society of Operative Stonemasons, on the same
footing as English, whilst the Scotch masons had already
their independent organisation. The fortnightly reports
during these years reveal constant friction between the
central executive and the Irish branches, who would not
agree among themselves, and who persisted in striking
against members from other Irish towns. At the Delegate
Meeting in 1839 the Irish branches had to be specially
deprived of the right to strike without prior permission, even
in those cases in which the rules allowed to English branches
the instantaneous cessation of work to resist encroachments
on established customs.1 But even with this precaution
the drain of the Irish lodges upon the English members
became unendurable. At length in 1840, the general
secretary was sent on a special mission of investigation,
which revealed every kind of financial irregularity. The
Irish lodges were found to have an incurable propensity to
dispense benefits to all and sundry irrespective of the rules,
and an invincible objection to English methods of account-
keeping. The Dublin lodge had to be dissolved as a
punishment for retaining to itself monies remitted by the
Central Committee for other Irish lodges. The central
executive who, in 1837, had successfully resisted a proposi-
tion emanating from a Warwickshire district in favor of
Home Rule for Ireland, " as such separation would injure
the stability of the society," 2 now reported in its favor. " We
are convinced," says the report, " that a very great amount
of money had been sent to Ireland for the relief of tramps,
etc. ... to which they had no legal right. . . . However
much a separation may be regretted, we feel convinced that
until they are thrown more on their own resources, they will
not sufficiently estimate the benefits derivable from such an
institution to exert themselves on its behalf." 3 The receipts

1 Rules of the Friendly Society of Operative Stonemasons (edition of 1839).

2 Resolutions of the Delegate Meeting 1837.
3 Stonemason? Fortnightly Return, 2nd January 1840.

The Unit of Government 85

from Ireland for the year had been £47 : IDS., whilst the
remittances to Ireland had amounted to no less than £545.
It is not surprising that the society promptly voted the
exclusion of all the Irish branches.

In 1850 the Executive Committee of the Provincial
Typographical Association were "reluctantly compelled to
declare their conviction that no English executive can
successfully manage an Association embracing branches so
geographically distant and so materially different in their
regulations and their mode of remuneration as those of the
sister kingdom." The union thereupon gave up the one
Irish branch (Waterford) which had not already insisted on
its independence, and refused to entertain any proposals for
new ones.1 Other societies which, in more recent years, have
had Irish branches appear to have found them equally un-
profitable, and a source of constant trouble. The records of
the Amalgamated Society of Tailors are full of references to
the extravagance and financial mismanagement of its Irish
branches. During the year 1892 no less than four of the
principal Irish branches of the society were rebuked by the
Executive Council upon this account. One of these had sub-
sequently to be closed, the Executive stating that its " report
is altogether wrong, and does not balance. The contributions
do not average lod. per member, and the rent of the club-
room is more than the whole income from the branch. If a
satisfactory explanation is not sent at once the branch must be
closed."2 Finally, in 1896, the Executive of the Associated

1 Half -Yearly Report of the Provincial Typographical Association, 3ist
December 1850.

2 Quarterly Report of the Amalgamated Society of Tailors, April 1892.
Report on the Ennis branch. In this connection the following extract from the
proceedings of the High Court of the Ancient Order of Foresters in 1894 will
be interesting. The executive had found it necessary to hold a special investiga-
tion into the affairs of the Dublin District ; and they recommended the grant of
certain advantages upon condition of reform. This proposal led to a lively
debate. "Were they going," said one prominent Forester, "to encourage
extravagant, reckless, and fraudulent mismanagement? The report presented
to them showed distinctly that there had been extravagant, reckless, and
fraudulent mismanagement. . . . Not less than £997 had been voted by
previous High Courts towards the relief of Dublin Courts. . . . The Order's

86 Trade Union Structure

Shipwrights' Society reported that it had been compelled
" to close the Dublin branch, notwithstanding that the E. C.
had instructed both the general secretary and the Humber
Delegate to visit them. We have not been able to
receive any correct reports from them for some time, and
the only word we could get from them was that there was
no work and no money, yet when your representatives
visited them the officers were so busy working they had not
time to convene a meeting of members. . . . Your E. C.
offered to have all the idle men sent to ports where em-
ployment could be found them, but we are informed where
this has been done some of these men, notwithstanding all
that has been done for them, refused to pay up their
arrears, and rather than pay left their employment and went
home. . . . When the branch books were examined it was
found they were paying both sick and unemployed benefit
to members who were not entitled to it, and the branch
officers were receiving salary for work they failed or refused
to do. Seeing the Dublin branch entirely ignored the
registered rules, your E. C. had no other option but to
close the branch. The different branches must deal with
these men should they come to their ports."1

So strong, however, is the dominant impulse towards the
complete union of a trade from one end of the United
Kingdom to the other, that it seems, during the last few
years, to be slowly overcoming the reluctance of both English
and Irish organisations. From 1889 onward, we find such
great national unions as the Carpenters, Railway Servants,
Engineers, Tailors, and Shipwrights freely opening branches
in Irish towns and absorbing the surviving trade clubs of

Chief Official Valuer said 'the members have never done their duty.' That
officer thereupon interposed with the remark, ' It was believed that in connection
with sickness there was a good deal of malingering.' Another prominent
Forester said he would attach the (Dublin) Courts to the Glasgow District. . . .
There was only one element of danger, and it was of putting too many Irishmen
together."— Foresters' Miscellany (September 1894), p. 180.

1 The Fifty-eighth Quarterly Report, July to September 1896, of the Associ-
ated Society of Shipwrights, p. 8.

The Unit of Government 87

local artisans.1 The Provincial Typographical Association,
now become the Typographical Association, has, since 1878,
opened sixteen branches in Ireland, and now employs a
salaried organiser for that island, whose efforts have brought
in many recruits. This tendency has been greatly assisted,
especially in the engineering and shipbuilding trades, by the
remarkable industrial development of Belfast. Since 1860
a constant stream of skilled artisans from England and
Scotland have settled in that town, with the result that it
now possesses strong branches of all the national unions of
both countries. With the shifting of the effective centre of
Irish Trade Unionism from Dublin to Belfast has come an
almost irresistible tendency to accept an English or Scottish
government. On the other hand, attempts to unite the
separate local societies of Irish towns in national Trade
Unions for Ireland have almost invariably failed, the Irish
clubs displaying far more willingness to become branches of
British unions than to amalgamate among themselves.2

Past experience of British Trade Unionism seems, there-
fore, to point to the whole extent of each trade within the
British Isles as forming the proper unit of government for
any combination of the wage-earners in that trade. Any
unit of smaller area produces an organisation of unstable
equilibrium, either tending constantly to expansion, or liable
to supersession by the growth of a rival society. But there
is a marked contrast between the union of Scotland with
England, and that effected between either of them and
Ireland. The English and Scottish Trade Unions federate
or combine with each other on equal terms. If complete
amalgamation is decided on, it is frequently the Scotchman,
bringing with him Scotch procedure and Scotch traditions,

1 The Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants now (1897) possesses no
fewer than 56 Irish branches, the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and
Joiners 56, the Amalgamated Society of Tailors 35, the Amalgamated Society of
Engineers 19, and the Associated Shipwrights' Society 9.

2 Almost the only Irish national trade society is the Operative Bakers of
Ireland National Federal Union, formed in November 1889. An Irish Trade
Union Congress has been held annually since 1894.

88 Trade Union Structure

who is chosen to reign in England, the centre of government
being shifted almost automatically to the main centre of the
industry. Union with Ireland invariably means the simple
absorption of the Irish branch, and the unconditional accept-
ance of the English or Scottish rules and organisation. This
is usually brought about by the English or Scottish immi-
grants into Ireland, aided by sections of Irish members who
desire to escape from the weakness of internal dissensions,
and to secure the benefits of efficient administration, with the
support of a comparatively wealthy and powerful organisation.1
Passing now from the boundaries of the autonomous
state to the relation between central and local authorities
within it, we watch the Trade Unionists breaking away
from the traditions of British Democracy. In the political
expansion of the Anglo-Saxon race, the development of
local institutions has at least kept pace with the extension
of empire. In the other great organisations of the British
working class, which have, equally with Trade Unionism,
grown from small local beginnings to powerful corporations
of national, or even international extent, the workmen have
successfully maintained the complete independence of each
local unit. The Co-operative Movement includes within the
British Isles a nominal membership as great as that of Trade
Unionism, with financial transactions many times larger in
amount. The 1 700 separate Co-operative Societies have
united in the colossal business federations of the English
and Scottish Wholesale Societies, and in the educational
and political federation called the Co-operative Union.
But though the Co-operative Movement has gone through
many developments since its re-birth in 1 844, and has built
up a u State within the State," the great federal bodies have

1 It may not be improper to observe, for English political readers, that
the authors are divided in opinion as to the policy of granting Home Rule to
Ireland, and are therefore protected against bias in drawing political inferences
from Trade Union experience in this respect. If it is thought that the facts
adduced in this chapter tell against Irish self-government, the considerations
brought forward in the next chapter may be regarded as making against the
policy of complete union with Great Britain.

The Unit of Government 89

remained in all cases nothing but the agents and servants of
the local societies.1 And if we turn to a movement still
more closely analogous to Trade Unionism, we may watch
in the marvellous expansion of the "Affiliated Orders"
among the friendly societies, the growth of a world-wide
working-class organisation, based on an almost complete
autonomy of the separate " lodges " within each " Order." 2
To the members of an Oddfellows' Court or a Foresters'
Lodge any proposal to submit an issue of policy to the
federal executive would seem an unheard-of innovation. But
it is in their financial system that this insistence on com-
plete local autonomy shows itself most decisively. How-
ever strongly the qualities of benevolence or charity may
prevail among the Foresters or the Oddfellows, it has never
occurred to their rich Courts or Lodges to regard their
surplus funds as being freely at the disposal of those which
were unable to meet their engagements. Each retains and
controls its own funds for its own purposes, and its surplus
balances are considered as being as much the private
property of its own particular members as their individual
investments.

To outward seeming the scattered members of a national
Trade Union enjoy no less local self-government than those
of the Ancient Order of Foresters or the Manchester
Unity of Oddfellows. If the reader were to seek out, in some
tavern of an industrial centre, the local meeting-place of the
Foresters or the Carpenters, the Oddfellows or the Boiler-
makers, he might easily fail, on a first visit, to detect any
important difference between the Trade Union branch and
the court or lodge of the friendly society. The Oddfellows
who use the club-room on a Monday, the Carpenters who
meet there on a Tuesday, the Foresters who assemble on a
Thursday, and the Stonemasons or Boilermakers who come

1 The Co-operative Movement in Great Britain, by Beatrice Potter (Mrs.
Sidney Webb).

2 See The Friendly Societies' Movement (London, 1885) and Mutual Thrift
(London, 1892), by the Rev. J. Frome Wilkinson, and English Associations of
Working Men, by Dr. J. Baernreither (London, 1892).

9<D Trade Union Structure

on successive Fridays, all seem " clubs " managing their own
affairs. Every night sees the same interminable proces-
sion of men, women, and children bringing the contribution
money. When the deliberations begin, they all affect the
same traditional mystery about "keeping the door," and
retain the long pause outside before admitting the nervous
aspirant for " initiation " ; they all " open the lodge " with the
same kind of cautious solemnity, and dignify with strange
titles and formal methods of address the officers whom they
are perpetually electing and re-electing. But if the visitor
listens carefully he will notice, in the Trade Union business,
constant references to mysterious outside authorities. The
whole branch may show itself in favor of the grant of
benefit to a particular applicant, but the secretary will
observe that any such payment would have to come out
of his own pocket, as the central executive has intimated
that the case is not within its interpretation of the rules.
The branch treasurer may announce that the balance in
hand has suddenly sunk to a few pounds, as he has been
ordered by the central office to remit £100 to a branch at
the other end of the kingdom. And when a question arises
as to some dispute with an employer, the visitor will be
surprised to find that this characteristic Trade Union business
is not in the hands of the branch at all, but is being tlealt
with by another outside authority, the " district," on instruc-
tions from the general secretary. 1

Trade Unionism has, in fact, been based from the outset
on the principle of the solidarity of the trade. Even the
eighteenth-century clubs of handicraftsmen, without national
organisation of any kind, habitually contributed their surplus

1 Branch meetings of Trade Unions are private, but it is not impossible for a
bona-fide student of Trade Unionism to gain admission as the friend of one of the
officials. The authors have attended branch meetings of almost every trade in
various industrial centres, and have found their proceedings of great interest, not
only as revealing the inner working of Trade Unionism, but also as displaying
the marked differences of physique, intellect, and character between the different
sections of the wage-earning class, often erroneously regarded as homogeneous.
Some of these differences are referred to in the chapter on " The Assumptions of
Trade Unionism."

The Unit of Government g i

balances in support of each other's temporary needs. When
the clubs drew together in a national union, it was
assumed, as a matter of course, that any cash in pos-
session of any branch was available for the needs of any
other branch. Thus we learn from the resolution of the
Stonemasons' Delegate Meeting of 1833, that the several
lodges were expected spontaneously to send their surplus
monies to the aid of any district engaged in a strike.1 This
archaic trustfulness in the brotherhood of man still contents
such a conservative -minded trade as the Coopers, whose
" Mutual Association " remains only a loose alliance of local
clubs, aiding each other's disputes by voluntary grants.2 But
in the large industries the same spirit soon embodied itself
in formal machinery. Among the Stonemasons the primi-
tive arrangement was, it is not surprising to learn, in the
opinion of the " Grand Central Committee," " wholly in-
efficient," each district sending only such funds as it chose,
and selecting which out of several districts on strike it would
support. The next step, which appears in the first manu-
script rules (probably of 1834), was to make each branch
" immediately contribute a proportionate share " of the cost
of maintaining each strike, fixed by the Grand Committee.
Finally, in 1837, we have what has become the typical Trade
Union arrangement of a fund belonging, not to the branch,
but to the society ; available only for the purposes prescribed
by the rules, but within those purposes common to the whole
organisation.

It is easy to understand why the Stonemasons, dispersed
over the country in relatively small groups, each conscious
of its own isolation and weakness in face of the great
capitalist contractor, should quickly seize the idea of a
common " war-chest." The Carpenters, working under much

1 Circular of "Grand Central Committee," held in Manchester, 28th
November 1833, preserved in the records of the Friendly Society of Operative
Stonemasons.

2 See the various " monthly reports" of the Mutual Association of Coopers.
A proposal is under discussion to form a central fund, fed by regular contributions
for the aid of any branch under attack.

0,2 Trade Union Structure

the same circumstances, express this feeling in the following
terms : " Although oceans may separate us from each other,
our interests are identical ; and if we become united under
one constitution, governed by one code of rules, having one
common fund available wherever it may be required, we thus
acquire a power which, if judiciously exercised, will protect
our interests more effectually and will confer greater advan-
tages than can possibly be derived from any partial union." 1
But we may see the same process of financial centralisation
at work in trades densely concentrated in a small area. The
Cotton-spinners of Oldham and the surrounding towns were,
down to 1879, organised as a federation of ten financially
autonomous societies, each collecting, expending, and invest-
ing its own funds. The great trade struggle of 1877-78
revealed the weakness of this form of organisation. To
quote the words of an official of the trade,2 " The result
was that when a strike occurred, some of the branches were
on the point of bankruptcy, whilst others were in a good
position as regards funds for maintaining the struggle. They
soon found out their real fighting strength was gauged, not
by the worth of their richest branch, but by the poorest. It
was another exemplification of the old law of mechanics that
the strength of the chain is represented by its weakest link.
After the struggle they remedied the defect by enacting that
all surplus funds should be deposited in one common
account." Since that time each division of the Lancashire
Cotton-spinners has adopted the principle of centralised funds.
"We hold," says the General Secretary of the Bolton
SpinnerSj " that where the labour of any number of men is
subject to the same fluctuations of trade, when the product
of their labour goes into the same market, and when the
prices and conditions which regulate their wages are identical,
it is imperative upon such men, if they wish to protect their

1 Preface to the Rules of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners
(Manchester, 1891).

^ 2 The late John Fielding, secretary of the Bolton Provincial Operative Cotton-
spinners' Association, one of the ablest leaders of the Cotton-spinners.

The Unit of Government 93

labour, to combine together in one association. It is not
sufficient that they shall join separate district societies which
in time may boast of possessing a respectable reserve fund
entirely under their own control. We have no hesitation in
saying that any such accumulated funds are of little use in
promoting their purely trade interests." l

The paramount necessity of a central fund, available for
the defence of any branch that might be involved in indus-
trial war, has become so plain to every Trade Unionist that
society after society has adopted the principle of a common
purse. But a common purse, as one or two striking instances
among successful friendly societies prove, does not, in itself,
necessarily involve the establishment of a dominant central
executive wielding all administrative power. Where business
can be reduced to precise rules, into the carrying out of
which no question of policy enters, and no discretion is
allowed, experience shows, as we shall presently see, that
local branch administration may be as efficient and econo-
mical as that of a central authority. But the expenditure
of the Trade Union funds is determined, not exclusively by
the legislation of its members, but largely by the judgment
of its administrators. In all matters of trade protection,
whether it be the elaboration of a complicated list of piece-
work prices, the promotion of a new factory bill, the nego-
tiation of a national agreement with the associated employers,
or the conduct of a strike, it passes the wit of man to pre-
scribe by any written rule the exact method or amount of
the expenditure to be incurred. It follows that the larger
and most distinctive part of Trade Union administration,
unlike the award of friendly benefits, cannot be predeter-
mined by any law or scale, but must be left to the discretion
of the executive authority. To vest this discretion abso-
lutely and exclusively in the central executive representing
the whole body of members is, it is plain, the only way by
which those who have contributed the income can retain

1 Annual Report of the Bolton Provincial Operative Cotton-stinners' Associa-
tion, 1882.

94 Trade Union Structure

any control over its expenditure. But this development
necessarily entails the withdrawal from the branches of all
real autonomy in issues of policy and in the expenditure of
their part of the common income. It follows necessarily from
the merging of the branch monies into a fund common to
the whole society, and from the replenishment of this fund
by levies upon all the members alike, that no local branch
can safely be permitted to involve the whole organisation in
war. Centralisation of finance implies, in a militant organi-
sation, centralisation of administration. Those Trade Unions
which have most completely recognised this fact have proved
most efficient, and therefore most stable. Where funds have
been centralised, and power nevertheless left, through the
inadvertence or lack of skill of the framers of the rules, to
local authorities, the result has been weakness, divided
counsels, and financial disaster.

This cardinal principle of democratic finance has been
only slowly and imperfectly learnt by Trade Unionists, and
a lack of clear insight into the matter still produces calami-
tous results in large and powerful organisations. To take,
for instance, the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, which
was formed for the express purpose of bringing about a
uniform trade policy under the control of a central executive.
It was intended to secure this result by providing that strike
pay should be awarded only by the central executive, leaving
the branches to dispense the other benefits prescribed by
the rules. But unfortunately this strike pay amounts only to
five shillings a week, it being assumed that the member leav-
ing his work will also be receiving the Out of Work donation
of ten shillings a week, awarded by his branch. This con-
fusion of trade with friendly benefits has resulted in a serious
weakening of the authority of the central executive in matters
of trade policy. Whenever the men working in any engineer-
ing establishment are dissatisfied with any decision of their
employer, they can appeal to their own branch, and, on
obtaining its permission, may drop their tools, with the
certainty that they will receive at the cost of the whole

The Unit of Government 95

society the Out of Work benefit of ten shillings a week.1
The matter will be reported, in due course, by the district
committee to the central executive, even if the branch itself
does not trouble to apply for permission to pay the additional
five shillings a week contingent benefit. But meanwhile,
war has been declared, and has actually begun ; the local
employers may have retaliated with a lock-out, the whole
district may even have " come out " in support of their
fellow-workmen ; and the society may find its prestige and
honor involved in maintaining a great industrial conflict
without its central executive ever having decided that the
point at issue was one which should be fought at all. This,
indeed, is precisely what happened in the most disastrous
and discreditable of recent trade disputes, the prolonged
strike of the Engineers and Plumbers in the Tyneside ship-
building yards in 1892, when thousands of men were idle
for over three months, not in order to raise the Standard ot
Life of themselves or any other section of the workers, but
because the local Engineers and Plumbers could not agree
as to which of them should fit up two -and -a -half inch
iron piping. It would be easy for any student of the
records of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers to pick
out many other cases in which branches have, by paying
the Out of Work donation to members refusing work,
initiated important trade movements on their own account,
without the prior knowledge or consent of the central
executive.

This unfortunate confusion between Out of Work
benefit and strike pay is not the only ambiguity that
perplexes the administrators of the Amalgamated Society of
Engineers. Although any authorised dispute is supported

1 This injurious practice has been greatly strengthened by the fact that the
"contingent fund," out of which alone the strike pay could formerly be granted,
has often been abolished and subsequently re-established, by votes of the
members. During the periods in which the contingent fund did not exist, the
society had no other means of resisting encroachments than the award of Out of
Work benefit to members who refused to submit to them. But this left the
decision to the branch, though the funds which it dispensed were levied equally
on the whole society.

9 6 Trade Union Structure

from the funds of the society as a whole, it is left to the
local members through their district committee to begin the
quarrel. This would seem to mean complete local autonomy,
and it is cherished as such by the more active branches.
But the rule also provides that the resolutions of district
committees shall be " subject to the approval " of the central
executive, the ultimate veto, though not the direction of the
policy, being thus vested in headquarters. The incapacity of
the Engineers to make up their minds whether or not they
desire local autonomy in trade policy, has more than once
placed the society in an invidious and even ludicrous position.
Thus, in the autumn of 1895 the Belfast branches, with the
confirmation of the central executive, struck for an advance.
The federated employers thereupon locked out, not only all
the Belfast engineers, but also those on the Clyde. In the
negotiations which ensued the central executive naturally
represented the society, and eventually arranged a com-
promise, which was approved by the Clyde branches. The
Belfast branches, on the other hand, refused to accept the
agreement or to consider the strike at an end, and went on
issuing full strike pay, from the funds of the whole society,
to all their members. The central executive found itself
bitterly reproached by the federated employers for what
seemed a breach of faith, and public opinion was scandalised
by the lack of loyalty and discipline. Eventually the dead-
lock was ended by the central executive taking upon itself
peremptorily to order the Belfast members to resume work,
without waiting for the resolution of the district committee.
Whether the central executive had any right to intervene at
all, otherwise than by confirming or disallowing a resolution
of the district committee, became a matter of heated con-
troversy; and the Delegate Meeting of 1896 not only passed
a resolution censuring this action, but also framed a new
rule which expressly deprives both the central executive and
the district committee of the power of closing a dispute, by
making the consent of a two-thirds majority of the local
members — some or all of whom must be the very persons

The Unit of Government 9 7

concerned — necessary to the closing of a strike.1 This
fanatical attachment of the Engineers to an extreme local
autonomy — their persistent assumption that any one section,
however small and unimportant, ought to be allowed to draw
on the funds of the whole society in support of a policy of
which the majority of the members may disapprove — has
done incalculable harm to the Amalgamated Society of
Engineers. It has been the source of a continuous and need-
less drain on the society's resources. It has more than once
involved thousands of members in a lock-out, when they had
no quarrel of their own. It deprives the federated employers
of all confidence in those who meet them on the workmen's
behalf. And, most important of all, it effectually prevents
the society from maintaining any genuine defence of the
conditions of its members' employment. National agree-
ments such as are concluded by the United Society of Boiler-
makers, the Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton-
spinners, and the National Union of Boot and Shoe
Operatives, by which a general levelling-up of conditions is
secured, must necessarily be out of the power of an organ-
isation which cannot give its negotiators the mandate of a
common will.

The same conflict between centralisation of finance and
the surviving local autonomy of the branches may be traced
in the rules of most of the unions in the building trade.
Here the tradition has been to require the assent of the
whole society, or of the central executive as its representa-
tive, before any branch may strike, or even negotiate, for an
increase of wages or new trade privileges. But it has been
no less firmly rooted in the practice of the building trades,
for any branch, or even any individual workman, instantly
to cease work, without consulting the central executive,
whenever an employer makes an encroachment on the
existing Working Rules of that town. In such cases, by
the rules of most of the national unions in these trades,
strike pay is granted by the branch as a matter of course.

1 Rules of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (London, 1896), p. 54.
VOL. I H

98 Trade Union Structure

A branch is accordingly expressly authorised to involve the
whole society in war, whenever its own interpretation of
existing customs is challenged by an employer, even in the
minutest particular. We may easily imagine how greatly
international hostilities would be increased, if the governor
of every colony or out-lying dependency were authorised
instantly to declare war, in the name and on the resources
of the whole empire, whenever, in his own private judg-
ment, any infringement of national rights had taken place.
And although, in the Trade Union instance, each particular
branch dispute is usually neither momentous nor prolonged,
the result is a captious and spasmodic trade policy, some-
times even ridiculous in its inconsistency, which the central
executive has no effective power to check. The Friendly
Society of Operative Stonemasons and the Operative Brick-
layers' Society have, until recent years, specially suffered from
a constant succession of petty quarrels with particular em-
ployers, most of which would have been avoided if the point
at issue had been made the subject of quiet negotiation by
an officer acting on behalf of the whole society.1 This has
been dimly perceived by the leaders of the building trades.
Among the Bricklayers and Stonemasons, the traditional
right of the branch to strike against encroachments, without
authorisation from the central executive, has hitherto been
too firmly held to be abolished ; but the newer editions
of the rules expressly limit this right to certain kinds
_of encroachment, and require the branch to obtain the

1 Sometimes the interpretation placed by two branches on the Working Rules
of one or both of them may seriously differ. The Kendal branch of the
Friendly Society of Operative Stonemasons had, in 1873, m ^ts Working Rules,
a provision requiring employers to provide dinner for men sent to work beyond
a certain distance from their homes in the town. A Kendal employer sent
members of the Kendal branch to a place twenty miles away which was
within the district of another branch having no such rule. The Kendal masons
insisted on their employer complying with the Kendal rules, whereupon he
replaced them by men belonging to the local branch, who contended that the
Kendal rules did not apply to work done in their district. This fine point in
interpretation led to endless recrimination between the two branches, and much
local friction. Finally the issue was referred to a vote of the whole society, which
went against the Kendal branch. — Fortnightly Return, October 1873.

The Unit of Government 99

authority of the whole society before resisting any other
kind of attack. The Amalgamated Society of Carpenters
and Joiners has advanced a step further in centralisation
of policy. For the last twenty years its rules have expressly
forbidden any branch to strike " without first obtaining the
sanction of the executive council . . . whether it be for a
new privilege or against an encroachment on existing ones." l
It is no mere coincidence that the Amalgamated Society of
Carpenters and Joiners, though younger than many other
societies in the building trades, is now the largest and most
wealthy of them all.

The difficulties that beset the Amalgamated Society of
Engineers and the Operative Bricklayers' Society have been
overcome by the United Society of Boilermakers, a union
which has found a way to combine efficient administration
of friendly benefits with a strong and uniform trade policy.
Here the problem has been solved by an absolute separa-
tion, both in name and in application, between the trade
and friendly benefits. The " donation benefit " for the
support of the unemployed is restricted to " a man thrown
out of employment through depression of trade or other
causes," testified by " a note signed by the foreman or
by three full members that are working in the shop
or yard he has left," and proved to the satisfaction of
the officers of the branch. This benefit cannot be given to
a man leaving his employment on a dispute of any kind
whatsoever. Strike pay is an entirely separate benefit,
awarded, even in the case of a single workman, only by the
central executive, and payable only upon its express and
particular direction.2 It follows that, although the branches
administer the friendly benefits, they are not allowed to deal
in any way with trade matters. If any dispute arises between
an employer and his workmen, or even between him and one
of his workmen, the case is at once taken up by the district
delegate, an officer appointed by and acting for the whole

1 Rule 28, sec. 10 of edition of 1893, p. 66.
2 Rules of the United Society of Boilermakers (Newcastle, 1895).

ioo Trade Union Structure

society, in constant communication with the general secretary
at headquarters. No workman may drop his tools, or even
give notice to his employer, over any question of trade
privileges, except with the prior authorisation of the district
delegate ; and to make doubly sure that this law shall be
implicitly obeyed, not a penny of benefit may be paid by
the branch in any such case, except on the express direction
of the central executive.

Nevertheless, the Trade Union branch, even in the most
centralised society, continues to fulfil an indispensable function
in Trade Union administration. As an association for mutual
insurance, for the provision of sick pay, funeral expenses, and
superannuation allowance, the Trade Union, like the friendly
society, governs its action by definite rules and fixed scales
of benefit, which are nowadays settled as an act of legisla-
tion by the society as a whole. Even the Out of Work
benefit — the " Donation " or " Idle Money," which none but
trade societies have found it possible to undertake, is dealt
with in the same manner. The printed constitution of the
typical modern union prescribes in minute detail what sums
are to be paid for sickness or out of work benefit, and
attempts to provide by elaborate rules for every possible
contingency. The central executive rigidly insists on the
rules being obeyed to the letter, and it might at first seem
as if nothing had been left for the branch to do. This
is very far from being the case. To protect the funds
from imposition, local and even personal knowledge is
indispensable. Is a man sick or malingering ? Has an
unemployed member lost his situation through slackness of
his employer's business or slackness of his own energy?
These are questions that can best be answered by men
who have worked with him in the factory, know the
foreman who has dismissed him, and the employer
who has refused to take him on, and are acquainted
with the whole circumstances of his life. Here we find
the practical utility which has kept the Trade Union
branch alive as a vital part of Trade Union organisation.

The Unit of Government 101

It serves as a jury for determining, not questions of policy,
but issues of fact.1

And if for a moment we leave the question of local self-
government, and consider all the functions of the branch, we
shall recognise the practical convenience of this institution
even in the most highly centralised society. It is no small
gain in a democratic organisation to have insured the regular
meeting together of the great bulk of the members, under
conditions which lead directly to the discussion of their
common needs. Nor is the educational value of the branch
meeting its only justification. In every Trade Union, whether
governed by the Referendum or by a Representative Assembly,

1 The utility of this jury system, if we may so describe the branch function,
may be gathered from the experience of other benefit organisations. It is, to
begin with, significant that the great industrial insurance companies and collecting
societies, with their millions of working-class customers, and their ubiquitous
network of paid officials, but without a jury system, find it financially impossible
to undertake to give even sick pay, let alone out of work benefit. The Prudential
Assurance Company, the largest and best managed of them all, began to do so,
but had to abandon it because, as the secretary told the Royal Commission on
Friendly Societies in 1873, "after five years' experience we found we were
unable to cope with the fraud that was practised." Among friendly societies
proper, in which sick benefit is the main feature, it is instructive to find that
it is among the Foresters and Oddfellows, where each court or lodge is financially
autonomous, that the rate of sickness is lowest. One interesting society, the
Rational Sick and Burial Association (established in 1837 by Robert Owen and
his "Rational Religionists"), is organised exactly like a national amalgamated
Trade Union, with branches administering benefits payable from a common fund.
In this society, as we gather, the rate of sickness is slightly greater than in the
Affiliated Orders, where each lodge not only decides on whether benefit shall be
given, but also has itself to find the money. Finally, when we come to the
Hearts of Oak Benefit Society, the largest and most efficient of the centralised
friendly societies having no branches at all, and dispensing all benefits from the
head office, we find the rate of sickness habitually far in excess of the experience
of the Foi-esters or the Oddfellows, or even of the Rationals, an excess due,
according to the repeated declarations of the actuary, to nothing but inadequate
provision against fraud and malingering. During the eight years 1884-91, for
instance, the "expected sickness," according to the 1866-70 experience of the
Manchester Unity of Oddfellows (all districts), was 1,111,553 weeks; the actual
weeks for which benefit was drawn numbered no fewer than 1,452,106, an
excess of over 30 per cent (An Enquiry into the Methods, etc., of a Friendly
Society, by R. P. Hardy, 1894, p. 36). "Centralised societies," says the
Rev. Frome Wilkinson, " will never be able to avoid being imposed upon ; not
so, however, a well-regulated branch of an affiliated society with its machinery in
good working order" (The Friendly Societies Movement, p. 193). See also
" Fifty Years of Friendly Society Progress," by the same author, in the Oddfellow?
Magazine for 1888.

tO2 Trade Union Strucfaire

the branch forms an integral part of the legislative machinery.
If the laws are made by the votes of the members, it is
the branch meeting which is the deliberative assembly, and
usually also the polling place. When the society enjoys
fully developed representative institutions, the branch becomes
at once a natural and convenient electoral division, and
supplies, what is so sorely needed in political democracy, a
means by which the representative must regularly meet every
section of his constituents. In other trades it is common to
require that no important alteration of the society's rules shall
be put before the Representative Assembly until it has been
first discussed, and sometimes voted on, by one or more of
the branches. In attending branch meetings we have found
most interesting that part of the evening which is taken up
with the reports made by the branch representatives on the
local Trades Council, on a district or joint committee of the
trade, or in the Representative Assembly of the society itself.
It has often occurred to us how much it would enliven and
invigorate political democracy if the member of Parliament
or the Town Councillor had habitually to report to, and
discuss with, every section of his constituents, supporters and
opponents alike, all the public business in which they were
interested. Quite apart, therefore, from any administrative
functions, organisation by branches has manifold uses, even
in the most centralised society. But these uses have little
connection with the problem of centralisation and local
autonomy. In all these respects the branches are not separate
units of government, but constitute, in effect, a single mass
meeting of members, geographically sliced up into aggregates
of convenient size.

Thus, in the vexed problem of how to divide ad-
ministration between central and local authorities, Trade
Union experience affords no guide, either to other volun-
tary associations or to political democracy. The extreme
centralisation of finance and policy, which the Trade Union
has found to be a condition of efficiency, has been forced
upon it by the unique character of its functions. The lavish

Interunion Relations 105

a cotton-spinning mill, with 40 pairs of mules, will employ
about 90 cardroom operatives, mostly women, the men earn-
ing from 1 8s. to 305. per week and the women 123. 6d. to
1 93. 6d. ; 40 adult male mule-spinners, earning, by piecework,
from 303. to 503. per week ; 80 boys and men as piecers,
engaged and paid by the mule-spinners at 6s. 6d. to 2os. per
week ; and 2 overlookers with weekly salaries of 425. and
upwards. The adjacent cotton -weaving shed, with 800
looms, will employ about 260 male and female weavers, paid
by the piece and earning from 143. to 2os. per week ; 8
overlookers (men), paid by a percentage on the weavers'
earnings, and getting 323. to 423. per week ; 10 twisters and
drawers, earning at piecework 255. to 323. per week; 5
warpers and beamers working by the piece and making from
2 os. to 303. per week ; 3 or 4 tapesizers with a fixed weekly
wage of 425. per week ; a number of children varying from
I to 50, employed by the weavers as tenters, and paid small
sums ; and a manager over the whole with a salary of £200
or £300 per annum.1

All these operatives may be engaged by a single em-
ployer, work upon the same raw material, and produce for
the same market. They have obviously many interests in
common. But for all that they do not form a simple unit of
government. It is impossible to devise any constitution which
would enable these six or more classes of cotton operatives
to form an amalgamated union, having a common policy, a
common purse, a common executive, and a common staff of
officials, without sacrificing the financial and trade interest of
one, or even all of the different sections. It suits the well-
c paid sections, such as the Spinners, Tapesizers, Beamers,
^ Twisters, Drawers, and Overlookers, to pay a high weekly
als(contribution, which would be beyond the means of the
paitTardroom Operatives and the Weavers. But the manner in
ls> a%ich each section desires to apply its funds varies even

execut

Compare the still more detailed classification of workers incidentally given
e Board of Trade Keport by Miss Collet on Ike Statistics of Employment
/omen and Girls, C. 7564, 1894.

106 Trade Union Structure

more than their amount. The Tapesizers, deriving their
strategic strength from their highly specialised skill, the
impossibility of replacing them, and the small proportion
which their wages bear to the total cost of production, can
afford to spend their funds on ample sick and funeral benefits.
With a uniform time rate in each district, and few occasions
for dispute with their employers, they need no offices or
salaried officials whatsoever. It pays the Spinners and
Weavers, on the other hand, to maintain a highly skilled
professional staff for the purpose of computing and maintain-
ing their earnings under the complicated lists of piecework
prices. But the Weavers stand at the disadvantage of need-
ing also a large staff of paid collectors to secure the regular
payment of contributions from the girls and married women,
who are indisposed to bring their weekly pence to the public-
house in which the branch meeting is still frequently held.
This applies also to the Cardroom Operatives, but these,
working usually at time rates, do not need the weavers' skilled
calculator. The Beamers, Twisters, and Drawers, on the one
hand, and the Overlookers on the other, have again their own
peculiarities. To unite, in any common scheme of contri-
butions and benefits, classes so diverse in their means and
requirements, appears absolutely impossible. Still more
difficult would it be to provide for the effective representation
upon a common executive of sections so different in numerical
strength. Not to mention the Tapesizers and Overlookers,
who must be completely submerged by the rest, it would be
difficult to induce the 19,000 well-paid, well-officered, and
well-disciplined Spinners to submit their trade policy to the
decision of the 22,000 ill-paid Cardroom Operatives or the
85,000 Weavers, of whom two-thirds are women. On the
other hand, the Weavers would not permanently forego the
advantage of their overwhelming superiority in numbers, nor
would the Spinners allow the Tapesizers an equal voice with
themselves. But even if a representative executive could, by
some device, be got together, it would not form a fit body
to decide the technical questions peculiar to each class.

Interunion Relations 107

On each point as it arose, the experts would be in a
minority, and the decisions, -whatever their justice, would
invariably cause dissatisfaction to one section or another.
Moreover, quite apart from technical details, the moments of
strategic advantage differ from section to section. It may
suit the Spinners to move for an advance, at a time when the
weaving trade is depressed, and both will be more ready to
move than the Overlookers. The Tapesizers, on the other
hand, will prefer, to any overt strike, the silent withdrawal of
one man after another from a recalcitrant employer, until he
is ready to offer the Trade Union terms. It is obvious that
a council representing such diverse elements would find it
extremely difficult to maintain an active and consistent
course. On the other hand, all the sections of Cotton
Operatives have manifold interests in common. Every
factory act regulating the sanitation, hours of labor,
machinery, age of children, and inspection of factories,
directly or indirectly concerns every worker in the mill.
Such industrial dislocations as Liverpool " cotton corners,"
or the employers' mutual agreement to reduce stocks by
working short time, affect all alike. The policy of the
Indian Secretary, the Minister of Education, or the Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer, may, any moment, touch them all
on a vital point. If, therefore, the Cotton Operatives are to
have any effective voice in regulating these essentially trade
matters, their organisation must in some form be co-extensive
with the whole cotton industry.

Another instance of these difficulties is presented by the
great industry of engineering. A century ago the small
skilled class of millwrights executed every kind of engineer-
ing operation, from making the wooden patterns to erecting
in the mill the machines which had been constructed by
their own hands. The enormous expansion of the engineer^
ing industry has long since brought about a division of
labor, and the mechanics in a great engineering establish-
ment to-day are divided into numerous distinct classes of
workers, who are rarely able to do each other's work. The

io8 Trade Union Structure

pattern-makers, working in wood, have become sharply
marked off from the boilermakers and the ironfounders.
The smiths, again, are distinguished from the fitters, turners,
and erectors. Another form of specialisation has arisen with
the increased use of other metals than iron and steel, and
we have brass -founders, brass-finishers, and coppersmiths.
Each generation sees a great development in the use of
machines to make machines, so that a modern engineering
shop, in addition to the time-honored lathe, includes a be-
wildering variety of drilling, shaping, boring, planing, slotting,
milling, and other machines, attended by wholly new classes
of machine-minders and tool-makers, displaying every grade
of skill. Finally, we have such new kinds of work, with new
classes of specialists, as are involved in the innumerable
applications of iron and steel in modern civilisation, such as
iron ships and bridges, ordnance and armour-plating, hydraulic
apparatus and electric-lighting, sewing-machines and bicycles.
To discover the exact limits of a " trade " in these closely
related but varied occupations is a task of supreme difficulty.
All are working in the same industry, and in the large
establishments of to-day, all may be engaged by a single
employer. The same recurring waves of expansion and
contraction sooner or later affect all alike. On the other
hand, there exist between the separate occupations great
varieties of methods of remuneration, standard earnings, and
strategic position. The strictly - apprenticed boilermakers
(shipyard platers) working in compact groups, at co-operative
piecework, earning sometimes as much as a pound a day,
find it advantageous in good times to roll up, by large sub-
scriptions, a huge reserve fund, to maintain a staff of special
trade officers to arrange their piecework prices at every port,
and to provide handsomely for their recurring periods of
trade depression. At the other end of the scale we have the
intelligent laborer become an automatic machine-minder,
securing relative continuity of low-paid employment by
working any simple machine in any kind of engineering
establishment, and interested mainly in the opening of every

Interunion Relations 109

operation to the quickwitted outsider. The pattern-maker
again, working in wood, at a high time rate, has little in
common with the piece-working smith at the forge. When
trade begins to improve, the pattern-makers, followed by the
ironfounders, will be busy long before the smiths, fitters,
and turners, and, if they wish to recover the wages lost in
the previous depression, must move for an advance whilst
all the rest of the engineering industry is still on short time.
Finally, there is the difficulty of the method and basis of
representation. Shall the government be centred in an iron
shipbuilding port, where the boilermakers would be supreme,
or in an inland engineering centre, when the fitters and
turners would have an equally great preponderance ? How
can the tiny groups of pattern-makers, dispersed over the
whole kingdom, get their separate interests attended to amid
the overwhelming majorities of the other classes ? Any
attempt to represent, upon an executive council, each dis-
tinct occupation, let alone each great centre, must either
ignore all proportional considerations, or involve the forma-
tion of a body of impossible dimensions and costliness.

We see, therefore, that within the circle of what is usually
called a trade, there are often smaller circles of specialised
classes of workmen, each sufficiently distinctive in character
to claim separate consideration. The first idea is always to
cut the Gordian knot by ignoring these differences, and
making the larger circle the unit of government. So fas-
cinating is this idea of " amalgamation " that it has been
tried in almost every industry. The reader of the History
of Trade Unionism will remember the remarkable attempt
in 1 833-34 to form a national "Builders' Union," to com-
prise the seven different branches of building operatives.
The same years saw a succession of general unions in the
cloth-making industry. In 1844, and again in 1863, the
coalminers sought to combine in one amalgamated union
every person employed in or about the mines, from one end
of the kingdom to the other. The " Iron Trades " again
were, between 1840 and 1850, the subject of innumerable

i io Trade Union Structure

local projects of amalgamation, in which not only the " Five
Trades of Mechanism," but also the Boilermakers and the
Ironfounders were all to be included. We need not describe
the failure of all these attempts. More can, perhaps, be
learnt from the experience of the great modern instance, the
Amalgamated Society of Engineers.

It does not seem to have occurred to William Newton,
when he launched this famous amalgamation, that any diffi-
culty could arise as to the classes of workers to be included.
What he was primarily concerned about was to merge in
one national organisation all the various local societies of
engineering mechanics, whether pattern-makers, smiths, turners,
fitters, or erectors, working either in iron or brass. But
" sectionalism " stood, from the very first, in the way. The
various local clubs of Smiths and Pattern-makers objected
strongly to sink their individuality in a general engineers'
union. In the same way, the more exclusive Steam-Engine
Makers' Society, in which millwrights, fitters, and turners
predominated, refused to merge itself in the wider organisa-
tion. To Newton and Allan all these objections seemed to
arise from the natural reluctance of local clubs to lose their
individuality in a national union. This dislike, as they
rightly felt, was destined to give way before the superior
advantages of national combination. But subsequent ex-
perience has shown that the resistance to the amalgamation
was due to more permanent causes. The merely local
societies dropped in, one by one, to their greater rival. But
this only revealed a more serious cleavage. The present
rivals of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers are, not any
local engineers' clubs, but national societies each claiming
the exclusive allegiance of different sections of the trade.
The pattern-makers, for instance, came to the conclusion in
1872 that their interests were neglected in the Amalgamated
Society of Engineers, and formed the United Pattern-makers'
Association, which now includes a large and increasing
majority of this highly skilled class. The Associated Society
of Blacksmiths, originally a Glasgow local club, now dominates

Interunion Relations \ 1 1

its particular section of the trade on the Clyde and in
Belfast, and has branches in the North of England. The
Brass-workers, the Coppersmiths, and the Machine-minders
have now all their own societies of national extent. The
result has been that the Amalgamated Society of Engineers
does not realise Newton's idea as regards any section what-
ever. The Boilermakers, who refused to have anything to
do with amalgamation, and who have persistently put their
energy into organising their own special craft, have succeeded,
as we have mentioned, in forming one undivided, consolidated,
and centralised society for the entire kingdom. Very different
is the condition of the engineers. Neither the fitters nor the
smiths, the pattern-makers nor the machine-minders, the
brass-workers nor the coppersmiths, are united in any one
society, or able to maintain a uniform trade policy, even for
their own section of the industry. For all this confusion, the
enthusiastic adherents of the Amalgamated Society have gone
on preaching the one remedy of an ever-wider amalgama-
tion. " The future basis of the Amalgamated Society," urged
Mr. Tom Mann in 1891, " must be one that will admit every
workman engaged in connection with the engineering trades,
and who is called upon to exhibit mechanical skill in the
performance of his labor. This would include men on
milling and drilling machines, tool-makers, die-sinkers, and
electrical engineers, and it would make it necessary to have
the requisite staff at the general office to cater for so large a
constituency, as there are at least 250,000 men engaged in
the engineering' and machine trades of the United Kingdom,
and the work of organising this body must be undertaken
by the A. S. E." * Somewhat against the advice of the
more experienced officials, successive delegate meetings have
included within the society one section of workmen after
another. At the delegate meeting of 1892, which opened
the society to practically every competent workman in the
most miscellaneous engineering establishment, it was even

1 Address to the East End Institute of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers,
London, in Trade Unionist ', loth October 1891,

1 1 2 Trade Union Structure

urged by some branches that the boundaries should be
still further enlarged, so as to permit the absorption of
plumbers and ironfounders. This proposal was with some
reluctance rejected, but only on the ground that it would
have brought the Amalgamation into immediate collision
with the 16,278 members of the Friendly Society of Iron-
founders (established 1809); and with the compact and
militant United Operative Plumbers' Society (established
1848, membership 8758), rivals too powerful to be lightly
encountered. Each successive widening of the amalgama-
tion brings it, in fact, into conflict with a larger number of
other unions, who become its embittered enemies. The very
competition between rival societies which Newton's amal-
gamation was intended to supersede, has, through this all-
inclusive policy itself, been rendered more intense and
intractable.

And here it is imperative that the reader should fully
appreciate the disastrous effect of this competition and rivalry
between separate Trade Unions. The evil will be equally
apparent whether we regard the Trade Union merely as a
friendly society for insuring the weekly wage-earner against
loss of livelihood through sickness, old age, and depression
of trade, or as a militant organisation for enabling the
manual worker to obtain better conditions from the capitalist
employer.

Let us consider first the side of Trade Unionism which
has, from the outset, been universally praised and admired,
the " ancient and most laudable custom for divers artists
within the United Kingdom to meet and form themselves
into societies for the sole purpose of assisting each other in
cases of sickness; old age, and other infirmities, and for the
burial of their dead." l Now, whatever weight may be given,
in matters of commerce, to the maxim caveat emptor — how-
ever thoroughly we may rely, as regards articles of personal
consumption, on the buyer's watchfulness over his own

1 Preamble to Rules of the Friendly Society of Ironmongers (Manchester,
1809), and to those of many other unions of this epoch.

Interunion Relations 1 1 3

interests — it is indisputable that, in the whole realm of
insurance, competition does practically nothing to promote
efficiency. The assumption which underlies the faith in
unrestricted competition is that the consumer is competent
to judge of the quality of what he pays for, or that he will at
any rate become so in the act of consumption. In matters
of financial insurance no such assumption can reasonably be
maintained. Apart from the dangers of irregularities and
defalcations, the whole question of efficiency or inefficiency
in friendly society administration is bound up with the
selection of proper actuarial data, the collection and verifica-
tion of the society's own actuarial experience, and the con-
sequent fixing of the due rates of contribution and benefits.
When rival societies bid against each other for members,
competition inevitably takes the form, either of offering the
common benefits at a lower rate, or of promising extravagant
benefits at the common rate of subscription. The ordinary
man, innocent of actuarial science, is totally unable to
appreciate the merits of the rival scales put before him.
To the raw recruit the smallness of the weekly levy offers
an almost irresistible attraction. Nor does such illegitimate
competition between societies work, as might be supposed,
its own cure. The club charging rates insufficient to meet
its liabilities will, it is true, in the end bring about its own
destruction. But the actuarial nemesis is slow to arrive, as
many years must elapse before the full measure of the
liability for death claims and superannuation allowances
can be tested. And when the inevitable collapse comes,
the prudent society gains little by the dissolution of its
unsound rival. A club which has failed to meet its engage-
ments, and has been broken up, leaves those who have been
its members suspicious of all forms of organisation and
indisposed to renew their contributions. The payment for
some time of high benefits in return for low subscriptions
will have falsified the standard of expectation. Those who
have lost their money ascribe the failure to the dishonesty
or incapacity of the officers, to the workmen's lack of loyalty,
VOL. I I

i 1 4 Trade Union Structure

to any cause, indeed, rather than to their own unreasonable-
ness in expecting a shilling's worth of benefits for a sixpenny
contribution.

In the case of Friendly Societies proper, and in that of
Insurance Companies, the untrustworthiness of competition
as a guarantee of financial efficiency has been fully recog-
nised by the community, and dealt with by the legislature.1
Trade Unions, however, have, for good and sufficient reasons,
been left outside the scope of these provisions.2 But, as a
matter of fact, competition between Trade Unions on their
benefit club side is even more injurious to their soundness
than it is to Friendly Societies proper, Dealing as they do,
not with a specially selected class of thrifty citizens, but
with the whole body of men in their trade ; unable, owing to
their other functions, to concentrate their members' attention
upon the actuarial side of their affairs ; and destitute of any
authoritative data or scientific calculation for such benefits
as Out of Work pay, Trade Unions must always find it
specially difficult to resist a demand for increase of benefits, or
lowering of contribution. If two unions are competing for the
same class of members, the pressure becomes irresistible.

The history of Trade Unionism is one long illustration of
this argument. In one trade after another we watch the
cropping up of " mushroom unions," their heated rivalry

1 It is unnecessary for us to do more than refer to the long series of statutes,
beginning in 1786, which provide for the registration, publication of accounts,
public audit, and even compulsory valuation of Friendly Societies and Industrial
Insurance Companies. By every means, short of direct prohibition, the State
now seeks to put obstacles in the way of "under-cutting," and, to use the words
of Mr. Reuben Watson before the Select Committee on National Provident
Insurance in 1885 (Question 893), discourages "the formation of new societies
on the unsound principles of former times." Within the two great "affiliated
orders " of Oddfellows and Foresters, which together comprise at least half the
friendly society world, the legal requirements are backed by an absolute prohibi-
tion to open any new lodge or court without adopting, as a minimum, the definitely
approved scale of contributions and benefits. Even with regard to middle-class
life assurance companies, Parliament has not only insisted on a specific account-
keeping and publication of financial position, but has, since 1872, practically
stopped the uprising of additional competitors, by requiring a deposit of ^"20,000
from any new company before business can be begun.

2 See the chapter on "The Method of Mutual Insurance."

Inierunion Relations 1 1 5

with the older organisations, and consequent mad race for
members ; and finally, after a few years of unstable existence,
their ignoble bankruptcy and dissolution. Meanwhile the
responsible officials of the older societies will have been
struggling with their own " Delegate Meetings " and " Revising
Committees," to maintain a relatively sound scale of con-
tributions and benefits. Any attempt at financial improve-
ment will have been checked by the representations of the
branch officers that the only result would be to divert all the
recruits to their rasher and more open-handed competitors.
The records of every important union contain bitter
complaints of this injurious competition. The Friendly
Society of Ironfounders, for instance, which dates from 1809,
is one of the oldest and most firmly established Trade
Unions. Its 16,000 members include an overwhelming
majority of the competent ironmoulders in England, Ireland,
and Wales. For over sixty years it has collected and
preserved admirable statistical data of the cost of its various
benefits, to provide for which it maintains a relatively high
rate of contribution and levies. In August 1891, a leading
member called attention to the touting for membership
that was going on among his trade in certain districts.
" I have now noticed," he concludes, " three distinct
societies that enter moulders (ironfounders) who are
eligible to join us. They offer, more or less, a high rate
of benefit at a low rate of contribution^ Whether they
are likely to fulfil their promises I leave to the judgment of
any thoughtful man who will sit down and compare their
rates of contribution and benefits with the statistical figures
of our society, as shown continually in the annual reports.
Those figures have been arrived at by experience, which is
•the truest basis of calculation for the future, and I would
commend them to the notice of all who set themselves the
task of computing the maximum rate of benefit to be
obtained at the minimum rate of subscription." J Nor was

1 Letter from H. G. Percival in the Monthly Report of t fie Friendly Society
of Ironfounders (August 1891), pp. 18-2 1.

1 1 6 Trade Union Structure

this warning unneeded. When, in the very next month, the
Ironfounders met in delegate meeting to revise their rules,
branch after branch suggested, in order to outstrip the
attractions of their extravagant rivals, an increase of
benefits, without any addition to the contribution. Thus
Gateshead, Keighley, and Greenwich urged that the Out of
Work benefit should be increased by more than ten per
cent ; Huddersfield and Oldham sought to raise the maxi-
mum sum receivable in any one year ; Barrow, Halifax,
and Liverpool asked that travellers should be allowed
sixpence per night instead of fourpence ; Oldham tried
largely to increase the scale of superannuation allowances,
and to raise the Accident Grant from ^50 to ;£ioo ;
St. Helens and many other branches demanded a ten per
cent increase of the sick benefit ; whilst Brighton, Keighley,
and Wakefield proposed to raise the funeral money from
£10 to £12. On the other hand, Chelsea proposed a
reduction of the entrance fee by 33 per cent, whilst
Gloucester sought to lower it by one-half ; Liverpool would
take in men up to the age of 45, instead of stopping at
40 ; and Wakefield suggested the abandonment of any
medical examination at entrance.1 Fortunately for the
Ironfounders, their officers, with the statistical tables at
their back, were able to stave off most of these pro-
posals. But even responsible officials are forced to pay
heed to this reckless competition. Thus in 1885, when
certain branches of the Steam - Engine Makers' Society,
getting anxious about their old age, suggested that the
provision for the superannuation benefit should be increased,
the central executive demurred to raising the contribution,
pointing out " the keen competition " for membership which
they had to meet, "just as though we were engaged in
commerce. In every workshop," they continue, " we have
numerous societies to contend with, some of whose members

1 Suggestions from Branches of the Friendly Society of Ironfounders . . . for
consideration at the Delegate Meeting to be held in September 1891 (London,
1891).

Interunion Relations 1 1 7

think that taking a man from another society and squeezing
him into theirs is a valiant act. Many cases will occur to
all, but we give one instance. We learned of the Pattern-
makers' Association taking members of ours for an entrance
fee of 55., placing them in benefit at once, and even giving
them credit for ten years' membership, should they apply for
superannuation in the future." J These examples enable us
to understand why it is that the Trade Unions accumulating
the largest reserve funds to meet their prospective liabilities
are to be found in the trades in which a single union is
co-extensive with the industry. Thus, among the larger
organisations, the United Society of Boilermakers with a
balance in 1896 of £175,000, or £4 : 7 : 6 per head of its
41,000 members, towers above all other societies in the
engineering and shipbuilding trades.

We have dwelt in some detail upon the evils of com-
petition between Trade Unions considered merely as benefit
clubs, because this part of their function has secured universal
approval. But assuming that the workmen are right in
believing trade combination to be economically useful to
them — assuming, that is to say, that the institution of Trade
Unionism has any justification at all — the case against com-
petition among unions becomes overwhelming in strength.
If a trade is split up among two or more rival societies,
especially if these are unequal in numbers, scope, or the
character of their members, there is practically no possibility
of arriving at any common policy to be pursued by all the
branches, or of consistently maintaining any course of action
whatsoever. "The general position of our society in Liverpool,"
reports the District Delegate of the Amalgamated Society
of Engineers in 1893, "is far from satisfactory, the work of
organising the trade being rendered exceptionally difficult,
not only by the existence of a large non-union element,
bwt by the existence of a number of sectional societies.
Here, as elsewhere, these small and unnecessary organisations

1 Steam- Engine Makers' Society ; Executive Council Report on Revision of
Rules, 25th July 1885.

1 1 8 Trade Union Structure

are the causes of endless complications and inconvenience.
How many of these absurd and irritating institutions actually
exist here I am not yet in a position to say, but the following
are those with which I am at present acquainted : Smiths and
Strikers (Amalgamated), Mersey Shipsmiths, Steam-Engine
Makers, United Pattern-makers, Liverpool Coppersmiths,
Brass -finishers (Liverpool), Brass -finishers (Birmingham),
United Machine Workers, Metal Planers, National Engineers.
All these societies are naturally inimical to our own, yet how
long shall we be able to tolerate their existence is another
question. . . . The Boilermakers would never permit any
section of their trade to organise apart from them ; why we
should do so is a question which will assuredly have to be
settled definitely sooner or later."1 The "small and unnecessary
organisations " naturally take a different view. The general
secretary of the United Pattern-makers' Association, in a
circular full of bitter complaints against the Amalgamated
Society of Engineers, thus describes the situation : " For the
information of those who may not be intimately acquainted
with the engineering trade, we may explain that the Pattern-
makers form almost the smallest section of that trade — the
organised portion being split up into no less than four
different sections [societies] — the largest section outside the
ranks of the United Pattern-makers' Association belonging to
the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. It will be easily
understood that this division makes it very difficult for our
society to act on the offensive with that promptitude which
is often essential to the successful carrying out of a particular
movement, as we have to consult with and obtain the co-
operation of three societies other than our own ; and as our
trade in these societies are in an insignificant minority, it is
perhaps only natural that so far as the Amalgamated Society
of Engineers is concerned, legislation for the trades that
comprise the vast majority of its members should have a
priority over a consideration of those questions which concern

1 " Report of Organising District Delegate (No. 2 division) of Amalgamated
Society of Engineers" in Quarterly Report for quarter ended March 1893.

Interunion Relations 119

so small a handful as the Pattern-makers belonging to their
society." l An actual example of the everyday working life
of a Trade Union branch will show how real is the difficulty
thus caused. "Our Darlington members," reports the Pattern-
makers' Executive, " have been engaged in a wages movement
which has had in one respect a most unsatisfactory termination.
The * Mais ' 2 and non-society men pledged themselves to assist
our members to get the money up, until the critical moment
arrived when notices were to be given in. The non-society
element and the * Mais ' then formed an ignominious com-
bination, and declined to go any further in the matter, the
Darlington branch of the ' Mais ' writing our Secretary to
the effect that they would not permit their P.M.'s [Pattern-
makers] to strike. They only number three, and the non-
society men twice as many, so fortunately they could not do
the cause very much injury. The advance was conceded by
every firm excepting the Darlington Iron and Steel Works,
where our men were drawn out, leaving two * Mais ' and their
present allies, the non-society men, at work. Your general
secretary wrote the executive committee of the ' Mais ' on
the subject over three weeks ago, but so insignificant a
matter as this is apparently beneath the notice of this august
body, as no reply has yet been vouchsafed." 3

Trade Union rivalry has, however, a darker side. When
the officers of the two organisations have been touting for
members, and feeling keenly each other's competition, oppor-
tunities for friction and ill-temper can scarcely fail to arise.
Accusations will be made on both sides of disloyalty and
unfairness, which will be echoed and warmly resented by the

1 Circular of United Pattern-makers' Association (on Belfast dispute), 22nd
June 1892. The same note recurs in the Report of Proceedings of the Sixth
Annual Meeting of the Federation of Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades
(Manchester, 1896). "As a consequence of their present divided state," said
Mr. Mosses, the general secretary of the United Pattern-makers' Association,
at this meeting, "they had one district going in for advances, followed in a
haphazard fashion by other districts ; and one body of men coming out on strike
for the benefit of others who remained at their work."

2 Members of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers.

3 Monthly Report of the United Pattern-makers' Association, September 1889.

1 20 Trade Union Structure

rank and file. Presently some dispute occurs between an
employer and the members of one of the unions. These
workmen may be dismissed by the employer, or withdrawn
by order of their own district committee. The officers of the
rival union soon hear of the vacancies from the firm in
question. Members of their own society are walking the
streets in search of work, and drawing Out of Work pay from
the funds. To let these take the places left vacant — to
" blackleg " the rival society — is to commit the gravest crime
against the Trade Unionist faith. Unfortunately, in many
cases, the temptation is irresistible. The friction between
the rival organisations, the personal ill-feeling of their officers,
the traditions of past grievances, the temptation of pecuniary
gain both to the workmen and to the union, all co-operate to
make the occasion " an exception." At this stage any pretext
suffices. The unreasonableness of the other society's demand,
the fact that it did not consult its rival before taking action,
even the non-arrival of the letter officially announcing the
strike, serves as a plausible excuse in the subsequent recrimi-
nations. Scarcely a year passes without the Trade Union
Congress being made the scene of a heated accusation by one
society or another, that some other union has " blacklegged "
a dispute in which it was engaged, and thereby deprived its
members of all the results of their combination.1

1 Whenever rivalry and competition for members have existed between unions
in the same industry we find numberless cases of " blacklegging." The relations,
for instance, between the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, and all the sectional
societies, abound in unfortunate instances on the one side or the other. The two
societies of Bricklayers have, in the past, frequently accused each other's members
of the same crime. The "excursions across the Border" of the English and
Scottish societies of Tailors and Plumbers have been enlivened by similar recrimi-
nations, which are also bandied about among the several unions of general
laborers. The Coalmining and Cotton manufacturing industries are honorably
free from this feature. An exceptionally bad case of an established union becoming,
through blacklegging, a mere tool of the employers, came to light at the Trade
Union Congress of 1892, and was personally investigated by us.

The Glasgow Harbour Laborers' Union, established among the Clyde steve-
dores in 1853, had, up to 1889, maintained an honorable record for stability and
success. In the latter year it found itself, with only 230 members, menaced with
extinction by the sudden uprising of the National Union of Dock Laborers in
Great Britain and Ireland, a society organised on the antagonistic idea of including
every kind of dock and wharf laborers in a national amalgamation. The small,

Interunion Relations 1 2 1

The foregoing detailed description has placed the reader
in a position to appreciate the disastrous effect of com-
petition between Trade Unions for members. Whilst
seriously impairing their financial stability as benefit clubs,
this rivalry cuts at the root of all effective trade combination.
It is no exaggeration to say that to competition between
overlapping unions is to be attributed nine- tenths of the
ineffectiveness of the Trade Union world. The great army
of engineering operatives, for instance, though exceptional in
training and intelligence, and enrolled in stable and well-
administered societies, have as yet not succeeded either in
negotiating with the employers on anything like equal terms,
or in maintaining among themselves any common policy
whatsoever. An even larger section of the wage -earning
world — that engaged in the great industry of transport — has
so far failed, from a similar cause, to build up any really
effective Trade Unionism. The millions of laborers, who

old-fashioned, and local society, with its traditions of exclusiveness and "privilege,"
refused to merge itself, but offered to its big rival a mutual " next preference "
working arrangement — that is to say, whilst each society maintained for its own
members a preferential right to be taken on at the wharves or yards where they
were accustomed to work, it should accord to the members of the other society
the right to fill any further vacancies at those yards or wharves in preference to
outsiders. The answer to this was a peremptory refusal on the part of the
National Union to recognise the existence of its tiny predecessor, whose members
accordingly found themselves absolutely excluded from work. The National
Union no doubt calculated that it would, in this way, compel the smaller society
to yield. But at the very moment it had a great struggle on hand, both in Liver-
pool and Glasgow, with one of the principal shipping firms. Communications
were quickly opened up between that firm and the Glasgow Harbour Laborers',
Society, with the result that the latter undertook to do the firm's work, and thus
at one blow not only defeated the aggressive pretensions of the National Union
but also secured its own existence. This line of conduct was repeated whenever
a dispute arose between the employers and any Union on the Clyde. When the
Hlast-furnacemen on strike had successfully appealed to the National Amalgamated
Sailors' and Firemen's Union, not to unload Spanish pig iron, the Glasgow Harboui
Laborers' Union promptly came to the employers' rescue. During the strike of
the Scottish Railway Servants' Union, the same society was to the fore in supplying
"scab laborers." Its crowning degradation, in Trade Union eyes, came in an
alliance with the Shipping Federation, the powerful combination by which the
employers have, since 1892, sought to crush the whole Trade Union movement
in the waterside industries. Its conduct was, in that year, brought before the
Trade Union Congress, which happened to meet at Glasgow, and the Congress
almost unanimously voted the exclusion of its delegates.

i 2 2 Trade Union Structure

must in any case find it difficult to maintain a common
organisation, are constantly hampered in their progress by
the existence of competing societies which, starting from
different industries, quickly pass into general unions, in-
cluding each other's members. Indeed, with the remarkable
exceptions of the coal and cotton industries, and, to a
lesser extent, that of house-building, there is hardly a great
trade in the country in which the workmen's organisations
are not seriously crippled by this fatal dissension.

Now, experience shows that the permanent cause of this
competitive rivalry and overlapping between unions is their
organisation upon bases inconsistent with each other. When
two societies include and exclude precisely the same sections
of workmen, competition between them loses half its bitter-
ness, and the solution of the difficulty is only a question of
time. We see, for instance* since 1862, the Amalgamated
Society of Carpenters and Joiners rapidly distancing its elder
competitor, the General Union of Carpenters and Joiners
(established 1827). But because the members of both
societies belong to identically the same trade, are paid by
the same methods, earn the same rates, work the same hours,
have the same customs and needs, and are in no way to
be distinguished from each other, the branches in a given
town find no difficulty in concerting, by means of a joint
committee, a common trade policy. And although the
existence of two societies weakens the financial position of
the one as well as of the other, the identity of the members'
income and requirements, and their constant intercourse, tend
steadily to an approximation of the respective scales of
contribution and benefits. Under these circumstances the
tendency to amalgamation is, as we have seen in the pre-
ceding chapter, almost irresistible, and is usually delayed
only by the natural reluctance of some particular official to
abdicate the position of leadership.

The problem which the engineers, the transit workers,
and the laborers have so far failed to solve, is how to
define a trade. Among the engineers, for instance, there is

Interunion Relations 123

no general agreement which groups of workmen have
interests sufficiently distinct from the remainder as to make
it necessary for them to combine in a sectional organisation ;
and there is but little proper appreciation of the relation
of these sectional interests to those which all engineering
mechanics have in common. The enthusiast for amalgama-
tion is always harping on the necessity of union amongst
all classes of engineering workmen in order to abolish
systematic overtime, to reduce the normal hours of labor,
and to obtain recognition of Trade Union conditions from
the government. To the member of the United Pattern-
makers' Association or of the Associated Blacksmiths,
these objects, however desirable, are subordinate to some
re - arrangement of the method or scale of remuneration
peculiar to his own occupation. The solution of the
problem is to be found in a form of organisation which
secures Home Rule for any group possessing interests
divergent from those of the industry as a whole, whilst
at the same time maintaining effective combination through-
out the entire industry for the promotion of the interests
which are common to all the sections.

Fortunately, we are not left to our imagination to devise
a paper constitution which would fulfil these conditions. In
another industry we find the problem solved with almost
perfect success. We have already described the half-
dozen distinct classes into which the Cotton Operatives are
naturally divided. Each of these has its own independent
union, which carries on its own negotiations with the
employers, and would vigorously resist any proposal for
amalgamation. But in addition to the sectional interests
of each of the six classes, there are subjects upon which two
or more of the sections feel in common, and others which
concern them all. Accordingly, instead of amalgamation
on the one hand, or isolation on the other, we find the
sectional unions combining with each other in various
federal organisations of great efficiency. The Cotton-
spinners and the Cardroom Operatives, working always for

124 Trade Union Structure

the same employers in the same establishments, have
formed the Cotton -Workers' Association, to the funds of
which both societies contribute. Each constituent union
carried on its own collective bargaining and has its own
funds. But it agrees to call out its members in support
of the other's dispute, whenever requested to do so, the
members so withdrawn being supported from the federal
fund. The Cotton-spinners thus secure the stoppage of
the material for their work, whenever they withdraw their
labor, and thereby place an additional obstacle in the way
of the employer obtaining blackleg spinners. The Card-
room Operatives on the other hand, whose labor is almost
unskilled, and could easily be replaced, obtain in their
disputes the advantage of the support of the indispensable
Cotton-spinners. No federation for these purposes would be
of use to the Cotton -weavers, who often work for employers
devoting themselves exclusively to weaving, and whose
product goes to a different market. But the Cotton-weavers
join with the Cotton-spinners and the Cardroom Operatives
in the United Textile Factory Workers' Association, a purely
political organisation for the purpose of obtaining and en-
forcing the factory and other legislation common to the
whole trade.1 And it is interesting to notice that the
Cotton Operatives not only refrain from converting this
strong and stable federation into an amalgamation, but even
carry the federal form into the different sections of their
industry. The 19,000 Cotton-spinners, for instance, form
a single righting unit, which, for compactness and absolute
discipline, bears comparison even with the United Society
of Boilermakers. But though the Cotton-spinners call their
union an amalgamation, the larger " provinces " retain the
privilege of electing their own officers, and of fixing their
own contributions for local purposes and special benefits,
and even preserve a certain degree of legislative autonomy.
The student who derives his impression of these organisa-
tions merely from their elaborate separate rules and reports,

1 This organisation was temporarily suspended in 1896.

Interunion Relations. 125

might easily conclude that, in the relation between the
Oldham or Bolton " province," and the " Representative
Meeting" of the Amalgamated Association of Operative
Cotton-spinners, we have a genuine case of local and central
government. This, however, is not the case. The partial
autonomy of the " provinces " of Oldham and Bolton is not
a case of geographical, but of industrial specialisation.
Each " province " has its own peculiar trade, spinning
different "counts" for widely different markets. Each is
governed by its own peculiar list of piecework prices, based
on different considerations. And though the prevailing
tendency is towards a greater uniformity of terms and
methods, there is still a sufficient distinction between the
Oldham and Bolton trades themselves, and between those
of the smaller districts, to make any amalgamation a
hazardous experiment. Similar considerations have hitherto
applied to the Cotton - weavers, who have, indeed, only
recently united into a single body. Differences of trade
interests, not easy of explanation to the outsider, have
hitherto separated town and town, each working under its
own piecework list. These sectional differences resulted,
until lately, in organisation by loosely federated autonomous
groups. It is at least an interesting coincidence that the
increasing uniformity of conditions which, in 1884, per-
mitted the concentration of these groups into the Northern
Counties Amalgamated Association of Cotton-weavers, re-
sulted, in 1892, in the adoption, from one end of Lancashire .
to the other, of a uniform piecework list.

The history of Trade Unionism among the Coalminers
also supplies instructive instances of federal action.
In Northumberland and Durham the present unions
included, for the first ten years of their existence, not
only the actual hewers of the coal, but also the Deputies
(Overlookers), the Enginemen, the Cokemen, and the
Mechanics employed in connection with the collieries. This
is still the type of union in some of the more recently
organised districts. Both in Northumberland and in

126 Trade Union Structure

Durham, however, experience of the difficulties of com-
bining such diverse workers has led to the formation of
distinct unions for Deputies, Cokemen, and Colliery
Mechanics. Each of these acts with complete independ-
ence in dealing with the special circumstances of its own
occupation, but unites with the others in the same county
in a strong federation for general wage movements.1 And
if we pass from the " county federations " which are so
characteristic of this industry, to the attempts to weld all
coal-hewers into a single national organisation, we shall see
that these attempts have hitherto succeeded only when they
have taken the federal form. In 1868 and again in 1874
attempts at complete amalgamation quickly came to grief.
Effective federation of all the organised districts has, on the
other hand, endured since i863.2 We attribute this pre-
ference for the federal form, not to the difficulty of uniting
the geographically separated coalfields, but to the divergence
of interests between them. Northumberland, Durham, and
South Wales, producing chiefly for foreign export, feel
that their trade has little in common with that of the
Midland Coalfields, which supply the home market. The
thin seams of Somersetshire demand different methods of
working, different rates of remuneration, and different
allowances, from those in vogue in the rich mines of York-
shire. The " fiery " mines of Monmouthshire demand quite
a different set of working rules from the harmless seams of
Cannock Chase.3 It was, therefore, quite natural that, in
1887, when a demand arose for a strong and active national
organisation, this did not take the form of an amalgamated
union. The Miners' Federation, which now includes 200,000
members from Fife to Somerset, is composed of separate

1 The Durham County Mining Federation, established 1878, includes the
Durham Coalminers, Enginemen's, Cokemen's, and Mechanics' Associations.
The Northumberland associations have not established any formal federation but
act constantly together.

2 See History of Trade Unionism, pp. 274, 287, 335, 350, 380.

3 See, for instance, the animated discussion on proposed clause to restrict
shot-firing, National Conference of Miners, Birmingham, 9th-i2th January 1893.

Inter union Relations \ 2 7

unions, each retaining complete autonomy in its own affairs,
and only asking for the help of the federal body in matters
common to the whole kingdom, or in case of a local dispute
extending to over 1 5 per cent of the members. Any
attempt to draw tighter these bonds of union would, in all
probability, at once cause the secession of the Scottish
Miners' unions, and would absolutely preclude the adhesion
of Northumberland, Durham, and South Wales.1

1 Other industries afford instances of federal union. The compositors employed
in the offices of the great London daily newspapers, at specially high wages, and
under quite exceptional conditions, have, since 1853, formed an integral part of
the London Society of Compositors. But they have, from the beginning, had
their own quarterly meetings, and elected their own separate executive committee
and salaried secretary, who conduct all their distinctive trade business, moving
for new privileges and advances independently of the general body. One or
more delegates are appointed by the News Department to represent it at general
or delegate meetings of the whole society, whilst two representatives of the Book
Department (which comprises nine-tenths of the society) sit on the newsmen's
executive committee. There is even a tendency to establish similar relations
with the special " music printers." The National Union of Boot and Shoe
Operatives presents an example of incipient federation. The union is made up
of large branches in the several towns, each possessing local funds and appointing
its own salaried officials. In so far as the members belong to an identical
occupation, the tendency is towards increased centralisation. But it has become
the rule for the members in each town to divide into branches, not according
to geographical propinquity, but according to the class of work which they do.
Thus, in any town, " No. I Branch " is composed exclusively of Rivetters and
Finishers, "No. 2 Branch" are the Clickers, and where a separate class of
Jewish workers exists, these form a "No. 3 Branch." The central executive
is elected by electoral divisions according to membership, and has hitherto
usually been composed exclusively of the predominating classes of Rivetters and
Finishers. But the Clickers, whose interests diverge from those of their
colleagues, have, for some time, been demanding separate representation, which
they have now been informally granted by the election of their chief salaried
official as treasurer of the whole union. A similar movement may be discerned
among the Finishers, as against the Rivetters (now become "Lasters"), and it
seems probable that this desire for sectional representation, following on partial
sectional autonomy, will presently find formal recognition in the constitution.

The building trades afford an interesting case of the abandonment of the
experiment of a general union in favor of separate national societies, which are
not at present united in any national federation. The Builders' Union of 1830-34
aimed at the ideal afterwards pursued in the engineering industry. All the
operatives engaged in the seven sections of the building trade were to be united
in a single national amalgamation. This attempt has never been repeated. ^ In
its place we have the great national unions of Stonemasons, Carpenters, Brick-
layers, Plumbers, and Plasterers, whilst the Painters and the Builders' Laborers
have not yet emerged from the stage of the local trade club. Between the
central executives of these societies there is no federal union. In almost every

128 Trade Union Structitre

These examples of success and failure in uniting several
sections of workmen in a single unit of government, point
to the existence of an upper and a lower limit to the
process of amalgamation. It is one of the conditions of
effective trade action that a union should include all the
workmen whose occupation or training is such as to enable
them, at short notice, to fill the places held by its members.
It would, for instance, be most undesirable for such inter-
changeable mechanics as fitters, turners, and erectors, to
maintain separate Trade Unions, with distinct trade policies.
And if the Cardroom Operatives could easily " mind " the
self-acting mule of the Cotton-spinners, it might possibly
suit the latter to arrange an amalgamation between the two
societies, just as the Rivetters found it convenient to absorb
the Holders-up into the United Society of Boilermakers and
Iron Shipbuilders.1 There appears to be no advantage in
carrying amalgamation (as distinct from federation) beyond
this point. But there are often serious difficulties in going
even thus far. The efficient working of an amalgamated
society requires that all sections of the members should be
fairly uniform in the methods of their remuneration, the
conditions of their employment, and the amount of their
standard earnings. Moreover, it may confidently be pre-
dicted that no amalgamation will be stable in which the
several sections differ appreciably in strategic position, in
such a manner as to make it advantageous for them to

town there has, however, grown up a local Building Trades' Federation, formed
by the local branches to concert joint action against their common employers,
as regards hours of labor and local advances or reductions of wages, both of
which are in each town usually simultaneous and identical for all sections. We
have elsewhere referred to the difficulties arising from this separate action of each
town, and it is at least open to argument whether the building trades would not
be better advised to form a national federation to concert a common national
policy, having federal officials in the large towns, who would, like the district
delegates of the United Society of Boilermakers, represent the whole organisation,
though acting in consultation with local committees.

1 The Holders-up were admitted into the society in 1881, at the instance of
the general secretary, who represented that Holders-up were indispensable fellow -
workers and possible blacklegs, and must therefore be brought under the control
of the organisation, more especially as they were beginning to form separate clubs
of their own.

InierUnion Relations 129

move at different times, or by different expedients.
Finally, experience seems to show that in no trade will a
well-paid and well-organised but numerically weak section
permanently consent to remain in the subordination to
inferior operatives, which any amalgamation of all sections
of a large and varied industry must usually involve.

Let us apply these axioms to the tangle of competing
societies in the engineering trade. The fitters, turners,
and erectors who work in the same shop, on the same job,
under identical methods of remuneration, for wages ap-
proximately equal in amount, and who can without difficulty
do each other's work, form, no doubt, a natural unit of
government.1 We might perhaps add to these the smiths,
though the persistence of a few separate smiths' societies,
and the uprising of joint societies of smiths and strikers,
may indicate a different cleavage. With regard to the
pattern-makers, it is easy to understand why the United
Pattern-makers' Association is now attracting a majority of
the men entering this section of the trade. These highly
skilled and superior artisans constitute a tiny minority amid
the great engineering army ; they usually enjoy a higher
Standard Rate than any other section ; and any advances
or reductions in their wages must almost necessarily occur
at different times from similar changes among the engineers
proper. It is even open to argument whether, for Collective
Bargaining, the pattern-makers are not actually stronger when
acting alone than when in alliance with the whole engineering,
industry. We are, therefore, disposed to agree with the con-
tention of the United Pattern-makers' Association that "when
the interests of our own particular section are concerned, we
hold it as the first principle of our Association that these
interests can only be thoroughly understood, and effectively
looked after, by ourselves."2 The same conclusions apply,

1 In 1896, though the Amalgamated Society of Engineers enrolled the un-
precedented total of 13,321 new members, all but 1803 of these belonged to the
classes of fitters, turners, or millwrights.

2 Preface to Rules of the United Pattern-makers' Association (Manchester,
1892).

VOL. I K

1 3o

Trade Union Structure

though in a lesser degree, to some other sections now included
in the Amalgamated Society, and they would decisively
negative the suggestion to absorb such distinct and highly
organised trades as the Plumbers and Ironfounders.1

This conclusion does not mean that each section of the
engineering trade should maintain a complete independence.
" We quite acknowledge," state the Pattern-makers, " that
it would be neither politic nor possible to completely sever
our connection with the organisation representative of the
engineering trade, and we are always ready to co-operate
with contemporary societies in movements which affect the
interests of the general body." 2 There are, indeed, some
matters as to which the whole engineering industry must act
in concert if it is to act at all. A great establishment like
Elswick, employing 10,000 operatives in every section of
the industry, would find it intolerable to conduct separate
negotiations, and fix different meal-times or different holidays
for the different branches of the trade. We find, in fact, the
associated employers on the North-east Coast expressly com-

1 Our analysis thus definitely refutes the suggestion that the quarrels be-
tween the engineers and plumbers, and the shipwrights and joiners respectively,
might be obviated by the amalgamation of the competing unions. The two
trades overlap in a few shipbuilding jobs, but in nine-tenths of their work it
would be impossible for an engineer to take the place of the plumber, or a ship-
wright that of a joiner, or vice versd. In strategic position the plumber differs
fundamentally from the engineer, and the joiner from the shipwright. The
engineering and shipbuilding trades are subject to violent fluctuations, which
depend upon the alternate inflations and depressions of the national commerce.
The building trades, on the other hand, with which nine-tenths of the joiners and
plumbers must be counted, vary considerably according to the season of the year,
but fluctuate comparatively little from year to year ; and the general fluctuations
to which they are subject do not coincide with those of the shipbuilding and
engineering industries. By the time that the wave of expansion has reached the
building trades, the staple industries of the country are already in the trough of
the succeeding depression. It would have been difficult to have persuaded a
Newcastle engineer or a shipwright in the spring of 1893, when 20 per cent of
his colleagues were out of work, that the plumbers and carpenters were well
advised in choosing that particular moment to press for better terms. Finally, we
have the almost insuperable difficulty of securing adequate representation for the
9000 plumbers, scattered in every town amid the 87,000 engineers ; and, on the
other hand, the 14,000 shipwrights concentrated in a few ports amid the 49,000
joiners spread over the whole country.

2 Preface to Rules of the United Pattern-makers' Association (Manchester,
1892).

Interunion Relations 131

plaining in 1890, " of the great inconvenience and difficulty
experienced in the settlement of wages and other general
questions between employers and employed"; and ascribing
the constant friction that prevailed to the " want of uniformity
of action and similarity of demand put forward by the
various societies representing the skilled engineering labor."
Collective Bargaining becomes impracticable when different
societies are proposing new regulations on overtime in-
consistent with each other, and when rival organisations,
each claiming to represent the same section of the trade, are
putting forward divergent claims as to the methods and
rates of remuneration. The employers were driven to insist
that the " deputations meeting them to negotiate . . . should
represent all the societies interested in the question under
consideration." * And when the method to be employed is
not Collective Bargaining but Parliamentary action, federal
union is even more necessary. If the mechanics in the
great government arsenals and factories desire modifica-
tions in their conditions of employment, union of purpose
among the tens of thousands of engineering electors all over
the country is indispensable for success.

So long, however, as the Amalgamated Society of
Engineers claims to include within its own ranks every
kind of engineering mechanic, and to decide by itself the
policy to be pursued, a permanent and effective federal
organisation is impossible. Any attempt to combine in the
same industry the mutually inconsistent schemes of amal-
gamation and federation may even intensify the friction.
Thus we find, in 1888, to quote again from a report of the

1 Circular of the Iron Trades Employers' Association on the Overtime Ques-
tion, October 1891. We attribute the practical failure of the Engineering
operatives to check systematic overtime, an evil against which they have been
striving ever since 1836, to the chaotic state of the organisation of the trade. A
similar lack of federal union stood in the way of the London bookbinders in 1893,
when they succeeded without great difficulty in obtaining an Eight Hours' Day
from those employers who were bookbinders only. In the great printing estab-
lishments, such as Waterlow's and Spottiswoode's, they found it practically
impossible to arrange an Eight Hours' Day in the binding departments, whilst
the printers continued to work for longer hours.

132 Trade Union Structure

United Pattern-makers' Association, "the sectional societies
(on North-east Coast), indignant at the arbitrary manner in
which the Amalgamated Society of Engineers had acted,
federated together with the avowed object of resisting a
repetition of any such behaviour in case of further wages
movements, and asserting their right to be consulted before
definite action was taken. ... It is impossible," continues
the report, " to dissociate the action of our contemporaries
(the Amalgamated Society of Engineers) from their recent
unsuccessful attempt at amalgamating the various sectional
societies ; and it would seem that they, rinding it impossible
to absorb their weaker brethren by fair means, had resolved
to shatter the confidence they have in their unions by
showing them their impotence to influence, of themselves,
their relations between their employers and members." l The
" Federal Board," thus formed by the smaller engineering
societies on Tyneside in antagonism to their more powerful
rival, lasted for three years, but failed, it is needless to say,
in securing industrial peace. A more important and more
promising attempt has been marred by the persistent absten-
tion of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. In 1890,
Mr. Robert Knight, the able general secretary of the United
Society of Boilermakers, succeeded, after repeated failures, in
drawing together in a powerful national federation the great
majority of the unions connected with the engineering and
shipbuilding industries. This " Federation of Engineering and
Shipbuilding Trades of the United Kingdom " includes such
powerful organisations as the United Society of Boilermakers,
40,776 members ; the Associated Shipwrights' Society, 1 4,2 3 5
members ; and the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and
Joiners, 48,631 members, who are content to meet on equal
terms such smaller unions as the Steam-Engine Makers'
Society, 7000 members ; the United Operative Plumbers'
Society, 8758 members; the United Pattern-makers' Associa-
tion, 3636 members; the National Amalgamated Society of
Painters and Decorators, and half a dozen more minute

1 Monthly Report of the United Pattern-makers' Society, January 1889.

Interunion Relations 133

sectional societies. This federation has now lasted over seven
years, and has fulfilled a useful function in settling disputes
between the different unions. But as an instrument for
Collective Bargaining with the employers, or for taking
concerted action on behalf of the whole industry, it is useless
so long as the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, with its
87,455 members, holds resolutely aloof. And the Amal-
gamated Society of Engineers, still wedded to the ideal of
one undivided union, cannot bring itself to accept as per-
manent colleagues, the sectional societies which it regards
as illegitimate combinations undermining its own position.1

1 The first numbers of the Amalgamated Engineers' Monthly Journal — an
official organ started on the accession of Mr. George Barnes to the general
secretaryship — shows that thinking members of the Amalgamation are coming
round to the idea of federal union with the sectional societies, and others con-
nected with the engineering and shipbuilding industry. Thus Mr. Tom Mann, in
the opening number (January 1897, pp. 10-11), declares "that the bulk of the
Amalgamated Society of Engineers' men are ashamed ... of their present power-
lessness. . . . Whence comes the weakness ? Beyond any doubt it is primarily due
to the fact that no concerted action is taken by the various unions. . . . That is,
the Amalgamated Society of Engineers has not yet learnt the necessity for form-
ing part of a real federation of all trades connected with this particular profession.
. . . What member can look back over the last few years and not blush with shame
at what has taken place between the Amalgamated Society of Engineers and the
Plumbers, and the Boilermakers and Shipbuilders ; and who can derive satisfac-
tion in reflecting upon the want of friendly relations between the Amalgamated
Society of Engineers . . . and the Pattern-makers and Shipwrights, and Steam -
Engine Makers, etc. ? A fighting force is wanted . . . and this can only be
obtained by a genuine federation of societies connected with the trades referred
to. ... The textile workers (cotton) have federated the various societies, and
are able to secure united action on a scale distinctly in advance of that of the
engineering trades." And in the succeeding issue Mr. John Burns vigorously
strikes the same note. " To really prevent this internecine and disintegrating
strife, the first step for the Amalgamated Engineers this year is to join at once
with all the other unions in [a] federation of engineering trades." Two months
later (April 1897, pp. 12-14) comes a furious denunciation of the proposal,
signed "Primitive," who invokes the "shades of Allan and eloquence of Newton "
against this attempted undoing of their work. "Just because a few interested
labor busybodies have got it into their heads that they can run a cheap-jack
show for every department of our trade with the same effect as our great combina-
tion, we are to drop our arms, pull down our socks, hide our tail under our
nether parts, and shout 'peccavi.' . . . Sectional societies for militant purposes
are useless, and therefore they only exist — where such is practised — as friendly
societies. . . . Amalgamation is our title, our war-cry and our principle ; and
once we admit that it is necessary to ' federate ' with sectional societies we give
away the whole case to the enemy. . . . Federation with trades whose work-
shop practice is keenly distinct from our own is a good means to a better end.

134 Trade Union Structure

If now, looking back on the whole history of organisation
in the engineering trade, we may be " wise after the event,"
we suggest that it would have been better if the local
trade clubs had confined themselves each to a single section
of engineering workmen, and if they had then developed into
national societies of like scope. Had this been the case, and
could Newton and Allan have foreseen the enormous growth
and increasing differentiation of their industry, they would
have advocated, not a single comprehensive amalgamation,
but a federation of sectional societies of national extent, for
such purposes as were common to the whole engineering
trade. This federation would have, in the first instance,
included a great national society of fitters, turners, and
erectors on the one hand, and smaller national societies of
smiths and pattern-makers respectively. And as organisa-
tion proceeded among the brass-workers, coppersmiths, and
machine-workers, and as new classes arose, like the electrical
engineers, these could each have been endowed with a
sufficient measure of Home Rule, and admitted as separate
sections to the federal union. This federal union might then
have combined in a wider and looser federation, for specified
purposes, with the United Society of Boilermakers, the
Friendly Society of Ironfounders, the Associated Shipwrights'
Society, and the other organisations interested in the great
industry of iron steamship building and equipping.1

One practical precept emerges from our consideration of
all these forms of association. It is a fundamental condi-
tion of stable and successful federal action that the degree
of union between the constituent bodies should correspond
strictly with the degree of their unity of interest. This will

Federation with trades whose shop practice is similar, whose interests are
identical, and who ought to be with us in every fight, is a maudlin means to a
general fizzle." The question is now (August 1897) a subject of keen debate in
the society.

1 The several national societies of Carpenters, Plumbers, Painters, Cabinet-
makers, etc., would, in respect of their members working in shipbuilding yards,
also join this Federation ; whilst they would, at the same" time, continue to be in
closer federal union with the Bricklayers, Stonemasons, and other societies of
building operatives.

Interunion Relations 135

be most easily recognised on the financial side. We have
already more than once adverted to the fact that a scale
of contributions and benefits, which would suit the require-
ments of one class, might be entirely out of the reach of
other sections, whose co-operation was nevertheless indis-
pensable for effective common action. But this is not all.
We have to deal, not only with classes differing in the
amount of their respective incomes, but also with wide
divergences between the ways in which the several classes
need to lay out their incomes. The amount levied by the
federal body for the common purse must therefore not only
be strictly limited to the cost of the services in which all
the constituent bodies have an identical interest, but must
also not exceed, in any case, the amount which the poorest
section finds it advantageous to expend on these services.

But our precept has a more subtle application to the
aims and policy of the federal body, and to the manner in
which its decisions are arrived at. The permanence of the
federation will be seriously menaced if it pursues any course
of action which, though beneficial to the majority of its
constituent bodies, is injurious to any one among them.
The constituent bodies came together, at the outset, for
the promotion of purposes desired, not merely by a
majority, but by all of them ; and it is a violation of the
implied contract between them to use the federal force,
towards the creation of which all have contributed, in a
manner inimical to any one of them. This means that,
where the interests diverge, any federal decision must be
essentially the result of consultation between the representa-
tives of the several sections, with a view of discovering the
" greatest common measure." These issues must, therefore,
never be decided merely by counting votes. So long as the
questions dealt with affect all the constituents in approxi-
mately the same manner, mere differences of opinion as to
projects or methods may safely be decided by a majority
vote. If the results are, in fact, advantageous, the dis-
approval of the minority will quickly evaporate ; if, on the

136 Trade Union S true litre

other hand, the results prove to be disadvantageous, the
dissentients will themselves become the dominant force. In
either case no permanent cleavage is caused. But if the
difference of opinion between the majority and the minority
arises from a real divergence of sectional interests, and is
therefore fortified by the event, any attempt on the part of
the majority to force its will on the minority will, in a
voluntary federation, lead to secession.

Thus, we are led insensibly to a whole theory of " pro-
portional representation" in federal constitutions. In a homo-
geneous association, where no important divergence of actual
interest can exist, the supreme governing authority can safely
be elected, and fundamental issues can safely be decided, by
mere counting of heads. Such an association will naturally
adopt a representative system based on universal suffrage
and equal electoral districts. But when in any federal body
we have a combination of sections of unequal numerical
strength, having different interests, decisions cannot safely
be left to representatives elected or voting according to the
numerical membership of the constituent bodies. For this,
in effect, would often mean giving a decisive voice to the
members of the largest section^ or to those of the two or
three larger sections, without the smaller sections having any
effective voting influence on the result. Any such arrange-
ment seldom fails to produce cleavage and eventual secession,
as the members of the dominant sections naturally vote for
their own interest. It is therefore preferable, as a means of
securing the permanence of the federation, that the represen-
tation of the constituent bodies should not be exactly propor-
tionate to their respective memberships. The representative
system of a federation should, in fact, like its finances, vary
with the degree to which the interests of the constituent
bodies are really identical. Wherever interests are divergent,
the scale must at any rate be so arranged that no one con-
stituent, however large, can outvote the remainder ; and,
indeed, so that no two or three of the larger constituents
could, by mutual agreement, swamp all their colleagues. If

Inter union Relations 137

for instance, it is proposed to federate all the national unions
in the engineering trade, it would be unwise for the Amalga-
mated Society of Engineers to claim proportional represen-
tation for its 87,000 members, mainly fitters and turners,
as compared with the 10,000 pattern-makers, smiths, and
machine -workers divided among three sectional societies.
And when a federation includes a large number of very
different constituents, and exists for common purposes so
limited as to bear only a small proportion to the particular
interests of the several sections, it may be desirable frankly
to give up all idea of representation according to member-
ship, and to accord to each constituent an equal voice.
Hence the founders of the Federation of the Engineering
and Shipbuilding Trades exercised, in our opinion, a wise
discretion when they accorded to the 9000 members of the
Operative Plumbers' Society exactly the same representation
and voting power as is enjoyed by the 41,000 members of
the United Society of Boilermakers, or by the 49,000 members
of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters. A federal body
of this kind, formed only for certain definite purposes, and
composed of unions with distinct and sometimes divergent
interests, stands at the opposite end of the scale from the
homogeneous " amalgamated " society. The representatives
of the constituent bodies meet for the composing of mutual
differences and the discovery of common interests. They
resemble, in fact, ambassadors who convey the desires of their
respective sovereign states, contribute their special knowledge
to the common council, but are unable to promise obedience
to the federal decision, unless it commends itself as a suit-
able compromise, or carries with it the weight of an almost
unanimous consensus of opinion.1

The problem of finding a stable unit of government and
of determining the relation between superior and subordinate
authorities seems, therefore, to be in a fair way of solution

1 We revert to these considerations when, in describing the Trade Union
machinery for political action, we come to deal with such federations as the
Trade Union Congress and the local Trades Councils.

138 Trade Union Structure

in the Trade Union world. With the ever - increasing
mobility of labor and extension of industry, the local trade
club has had to give place to a combination of national
extent. So long as the craft or occupation is fairly uniform
from one end of the kingdom to the other, the geographical
boundaries of the autonomous state must, fn the Trade
Union world, ultimately coincide with those of the nation
itself. We have seen, too, how inevitably the growth of
national Trade Unions involves, for strategic, and what may
be called military reasons, the reduction of local autonomy
to a minimum, and the complete centralisation of all financial,
and therefore of all executive government at the national
headquarters. This tendency is strengthened by economic
considerations which we shall develop in a subsequent
chapter. If the Trade Union is to have any success in
its main function of improving the circumstances of its
members' employment, it must build up a dyke of a uniform
minimum of conditions for identical work throughout the
kingdom. This uniformity of conditions, or, indeed, any
industrial influence whatsoever, implies a certain uniformity
and consistency of trade policy, which is only rendered
possible by centralisation of administration. So far, our
conclusions lead, it would seem, to the absolute simplicity
of one all-embracing centralised autocracy. But, in the
Trade Union world, the problem of harmonising local ad-
ministration and central control, which for a moment we
seemed happily to have got rid of, comes back in an even
more intractable form. The very aim of uniformity of con-
ditions, the very fact that uniformity of trade policy is
indispensable to efficiency, makes it almost impossible to
combine in a single organisation, with a common purse, a
common executive, and a common staff of salaried officials,
men of widely different occupations and grades of skill,
widely different Standards of Life and industrial needs, or
widely different numerical strengths and strategic oppor-
tunities. A Trade Union is essentially an organisation for
securing certain concrete and definite advantages for all its

Internnion Relations 139

members — advantages which differ from trade to trade
according to its technical processes, its economic position,
and, it may be, the geographical situation in which it is
carried on. Hence all the attempts at " General Unions "
have, in our view, been inevitably foredoomed to failure.
The hundreds of thousands of the working class who joined
the "Grand National Consolidated Trades Union "in 1833-34
came together, it is true, on a common basis of human brother-
hood, and with a common faith in the need for a radical
reconstruction of society. But instead of inaugurating a
" New Moral World," either by precept or by political revolu-
tion, they found themselves as a Trade Union, fighting the
employers in the Lancashire cotton mills to get shorter
hours of labor, in the Leeds cloth trade to obtain definite
piecework rates, in the London building trade to do away
with piecework altogether, in Liverpool to abolish the sub-
contractor, in the hosiery trade to escape from truck and
deductions. Each trade, in short, translated " human brother-
hood " into the remedying of its own particular technical
grievance, and the central executive was quite unable to
check the accuracy of the translation. The whole history
of Trade Unionism confirms the inference that a Trade
Union, formed as it is, for the distinct purpose of obtaining
concrete and definite material improvements in the conditions
of its members' employment, cannot, in its simplest form,
safely extend beyond the area within which those identical
improvements are shared by all its members — cannot spread,
that is to say, beyond the boundaries of a single occupa-
tion. But the discovery of this simple unit of government
does not exhaust the problem. Whilst the differences
between the sections render complete amalgamation im-
practicable, their identity in other interests makes some bond
of union imperative. The most efficient form of Trade
Union organisation is therefore one in which the several
sections can be united for the purposes that they have in
common, to the extent to which identity of interest prevails,
and no further, whilst at the same time each section preserves

140 Trade Union Structure

complete autonomy wherever its interests or purposes diverge
from those of its allies. But this is only another form of
the difficult political problem of the relation of supreme to
subordinate authorities. Whilst the student of political
democracy has been grappling with the question of how to
distribute administration between central and local author-
ities, the unlettered statesmen of the Trade Union world
have had to decide the still more difficult issue of how to
distribute power between general and sectional industrial
combinations, both of national extent. The solution has
been found in a series of widening and cross-cutting federa-
tions, each of which combines, to the extent only of its own
particular objects, those organisations which are conscious
of their identity of purpose. Instead of a simple form of
democratic organisation we get, therefore, one of extreme
complexity. Where the difficulties of the problem have
been rightly apprehended, and the whole industry has been
organised on what may be called a single plane, the result
may be, as in the case of the Cotton Operatives, a complex
but harmoniously working democratic machine of remarkable
efficiency and stability. Where, on the other hand, the
industry has been organised on incompatible bases, as among
the Engineers, we find a complicated tangle of relationships
producing rivalry and antagonism, in which effective common
action, even for such purposes as are common to all sections,
becomes almost impossible.

Trade Union organisation, if it is to reach its highest
possible efficiency, must therefore assume a federal form.
Instead of a supreme central government, delegating parts
of its power to subordinate local authorities, we may expect
to see the Trade Union world developing into an elaborate
series of federations, among which it will be difficult to
decide where the sovereignty really resides. Where the
several sections closely resemble each other in their cir-
cumstances and needs, where their common purposes are
relatively numerous and important, and where, as a result,
individual secession and subsequent isolation would be

Interunion Relations 141

dangerous, the federal tie will be strong, and the federal
government will, in effect, become the supreme authority.
At the other end of the scale will stand those federations,
little more than opportunities for consultation, in which
the contracting parties retain each a real autonomy, and
use the federal executive as a convenient, but strictly
subordinate machinery for securing those limited purposes
that they have in common. And we have ventured to
suggest, as an interesting corollary, that the basis of re-
presentation should, in all these constitutions, vary accord-
ing to the character of the bond of union, representation
proportionate to membership being perfectly applicable only
to a homogeneous organisation, and decreasing in suitability
with every degree of dissimilarity between the constituent
bodies. Where the sectional interests are not only distinct,
but may, in certain cases, be even antagonistic, as, for
instance, in industries subject to demarcation disputes, rule
by majority vote must be frankly abandoned, and the repre-
sentatives of societies widely differing in numerical strength
must, under penalty of common failure, consent to meet
on equal terms, to discover, by consultation, how best to
conciliate the interests of all.

PART II

TRADE UNION FUNCTION

INTRODUCTION

"THE chief object of our society is to elevate the social
position of our members," is the comprehensive truism by
which the ordinary Trade Union defines its function. This
simple assertion, of what we may term " corporate self-help,"
is, in many of the older unions, embellished by rhetorical
appeals to the brotherhood of man, and realistic descriptions
of the precarious position of the weekly wage-earners. Thus
the " main principle " that actuated the " originators " of the
Friendly Society of Ironfounders " was that of systematic
organisation, and the desire of forming a bond of brotherhood
and sympathy throughout the trade, in order that those who,
by honest labor, obtained a livelihood in this particular
branch of industry might, in their combined capacity, more
successfully compete against the undue and unfair encroach-
ments of capital than could possibly be the case by any
number of workmen when acting individually." l " We are
willing to admit," observe the founders of the Amalgamated
Society of Engineers, " that whilst in constant employment
our members may be able to obtain all the necessaries, and
perhaps some of the luxuries of life. . . . Notwithstanding
all this, there is a fear always prominent on the mind of him
who thinks of the future that it may not continue, that to-
morrow may see him out of employment, his nicely-arranged

1 Rtiles of the Friendly Ironmoulders' [now Ironfounders'] Society, instituted
for the purpose of muttial relief in cases of old age, sickness, and infirmity, and
for the burial of their dead : "Made at Bolton, igth June 1809. Allowed
at Quarter Sessions, igth July 1809" (Bolton, 1809); see edition of 1891,
preface.

VOL. I If

146 Trade Union Function

matters for domestic comfort overthrown, and his hopes of
being able, in a few years, by constant attention and frugality,
to occupy a more permanent position, proved only to be a
dream. How much is contained in that word continuance,
and how necessary to make it a leading principle of our
association ! "

But these descriptions of the ultimate objects of working-
class organisation afford us little clue to the actual operation
of Trade Unionism. The Trade Unionists of our own
generation are more explicit. With dry and ungrammatical
precision the great modern unions give as their " Objects "
long strings of specific proposals, in which are incidentally
revealed, with perfect frankness, the means relied upon to
achieve these ends. The Amalgamated Association of Opera-
tive Cotton-spinners " is formed to secure to all its members
the fair reward of their labor ; to provide for the settlement
in a conciliatory manner of disputes between employer and
employed, so that a cessation of work may be avoided ; the
enforcement of the Factory Acts or other legislative enact-
ments for the protection of labor ; to afford pecuniary
assistance to any member who may be victimised or without
employment in consequence of a dispute or lock-out or when
disabled by accident."2 The Miners' Federation of Great
Britain declares that its objects of association " are to take
into consideration the question of trade and wages, and to
protect miners generally ; to seek to secure mining legislation
affecting all miners connected with this Federation ; to call
conferences to deal with questions affecting miners, both of a
trade, wage, and legislative character ; to seek and obtain an
eight hours' day from bank to bank in all mines for all
persons working underground ; to deal with and watch all
inquests upon persons killed in the mines where more
than three persons are killed by any one accident ; to seek

1 The original Rules and Regulations of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers
(London, 1851), made at Birmingham, September 1850.

2 Rules of the Amalgamated Association cf Operative Cotton-spinners (Man-
chester, 1891).

Introduction 147

to obtain compensation where more than three persons are
injured or killed in any one accident, in all cases where
counties, federations, or districts have to appeal, or are
appealed against, from decisions in the lower courts." l The
National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives (established
1874) declares that "The objects of the union are: the
establishment of a central fund for the protection of members
and advancement of wages ; the establishment of healthy and
proper workshops, the employers to find room, grindery,
fixtures, fire, and gas, free of charge ; the establishment, as
far as practicable, of a uniform rate of wages for the same
class of work throughout the union ; to abolish sweaters and
control the system of apprentices ; to reduce the hours of
labor ; to assist members who are compelled to travel in
search of employment ; the introduction of Industrial Co-
operation in our trade ; the use of all legitimate means for
the moral, social, educational, and political advancement of
its members ; also to make provision for the union being
represented by a Parliamentary Agent ; to raise funds for the
mutual support of its members in time of sickness, and for
the burial of deceased members and their wives ; to establish
a system of inter-communication with the Boot and Shoe
Operatives of other countries." 2 Finally, we may cite the
most prominent and successful of the so-called " new unions,"
formed in the great uprising of 1889. The rules of the
National Union of Gasworkers and General Laborers state
that " The objects of the union are to shorten the hours of
labor, to obtain a legal eight hours' working day or forty-eight
hours' week ; to abolish, wherever possible, overtime and Sun-
day labor, and where this is not possible, to obtain payment
at a higher rate ; to abolish piecework ; to raise wages, and
where women do the same work as men, to obtain for them
the same wages as paid the men ; to enforce the provisions
of the Truck Acts in their entirety ; to abolish the present
system of contracts and agreements between employers and

1 Miners' Federation of Great Britain — Kttles (Openshaw, 1893).
2 Rules of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives (Leicester, 1892).

148 Trade Union Function

employed ; to settle all labor disputes by amicable agree-
ment whenever possible ; to obtain equality of employers and
employed before the law ; to obtain legislation for the better-
ing of the lives of the working class ; to secure the return of
members of the union to vestries, school boards, boards of
guardians, municipal bodies, and to Parliament, provided such
candidates are pledged to the collective ownership of the
means of production, distribution, and exchange ; to set aside
annually a maximum sum of £200, to be used solely for the
purpose of helping to return and maintain members on public
representative bodies ; to assist similar organisations having
the same objects as herein stated." l

We must, however, not look to the formal rules or
rhetorical preambles for a scientific or complete account of
Trade Union action. Drafted originally by enthusiastic
pioneers, copied and recopied by successive revising com-
mittees, the printed constitutions of working-class associa-
tions represent rather the aspirations than the everyday
action of the members. More trustworthy data may be
obtained from a scrutiny of the cash accounts, or from a
close study of the voluminous internal literature of the
unions — the monthly, quarterly, and yearly reports of the
central executives, the frequent official circulars on particular
questions, and the elaborate verbatim notes of conferences
and joint committees. The printed documents circulated by
some societies include the diary of their principal trade
official, detailing his day-by-day negotiation with employers.2
Other unions publish to their members periodical reports
from their district delegates stationed in the principal indus-
trial centres, containing valuable information as to the move-
ments of trade, graphic accounts of disputes with employers
or other societies, and appeals for guidance as to the policy to
be pursued. To the student of sociology this literature —
poured out to the extent of hundreds of volumes annually—

J Rules of the National Union of Gasworkers and General Laborers of Great
Britain and Ireland (London, 1894).

2 See the extracts printed in the chapter on "The Standard Rate,"

Introduction \ 49

is of fascinating interest. It affords a graphic picture of the
actual structure and working of the modern world of manu-
facturing industry, with its constant changes of process and
shiftings of trade. It lays bare, more completely than any
other records known to us, the real nature and action of
democratic organisation in the Anglo-Saxon race. And,
what is most relevant to our present purpose, it reveals, with
all the pathos of success and failure, the working of the
various Trade Union Methods and Regulations with the
underlying assumptions as to social expediency on which
they are based.

But documents, however frank and confidential, are apt to
distort facts as well as to display them. A heated recrimi-
nation between a local official and the general secretary, a
dispute about the wages on a new process, affecting only a
tiny minority of the members, or a Parliamentary agitation
for a new clause in the Factory Acts will loom large in the
proceedings of the year, and may seem to represent the bulk
of the union's activity. Meanwhile, the branches may have
been engaged in a peaceful but successful maintenance of
their old-standing Working Rules, or a new regulation may
silently have become habitual, or an old one silently dropped,
without this action on the part of the majority of the
members rising to the surface in any document whatsoever,
public or private. To complete the knowledge yielded by
documents, the student must watch the men at work, and
discuss the application of particular regulations with em-
ployers, managers, and foremen — not omitting the factory
inspector and the secretary to the Employers' Association —
he must listen to the objections of the small master and the
blackleg ; above all, he must attend the inside meetings of
branches and district committees, where the points at issue
are discussed in technical detail with a frank explicitness
which is untrammelled either by the prejudices of the rank
and file or the fear of the enemy.

This combined plan of studying documents and observing
men is the one that we have, during our six years' investi-

150 Trade Union Function

gation, attempted to follow. In the ensuing chapters we
endeavor to place before the reader an accurate descrip-
tion of the Methods and Regulations actually practised by
British Trade Unionism. We shall see the Trade Unionists,
from the beginning of the eighteenth century down to the
present day, enforcing their Regulations by three distinct
instruments or levers, which we distinguish as the Method
of Mutual Insurance, the Method of Collective Bargaining,
and the Method of Legal Enactment. From the Methods
used to enforce the Regulations, we shall pass to the Regu-
lations themselves. These we shall find grouping themselves,
notwithstanding an almost infinite variety of technical detail,
under seven main heads — the Standard Rate, the Normal
Day, Sanitation and Safety, New Processes and Machinery,
Continuity of Employment, the Entrance into a Trade,
and the Right to a Trade — all of which we examine in
separate chapters. This will lead us to the Implications of
Trade Unionism — certain practical outgrowths and necessary
consequences of Trade Union policy which require elucida-
dation. Finally, we shall bring into light the Assumptions
of Trade Unionism — the fundamental prejudices, opinions, or
judgments lying at the root of Trade Union policy — an
analysis of which will serve at once to explain and to sum-
marise the various forms of Trade Union action.

In the course of this comprehensive description of Trade
Unionism as it is, we shall not abstain from incidentally
criticising the various Methods and Regulations, and the
different types of Trade Union policy, in respect of the
success or failure of Trade Unions to apply them to the facts
of modern life. But in this part of our book we care-
fully avoid any discussion as to the effects of Trade Unionism
upon industry, and, above all, we make no attempt to decide
whether it has or has not resulted in effectively raising
wages, or otherwise improving the conditions of employment.
We venture to think that there can be no useful discussion
of the economic validity of Trade Unionism until the student
has first surveyed its actual contents. Our examination of

Introduction 1 5 1

the theory of trade combination — the possibility, by deliberate
common action, of altering the conditions of employment ;
the effect of the various Methods and Regulations upon the
efficiency of production and the distribution of wealth ; and
the ultimate social expediency of exchanging a system of
unfettered individual competition for one of collective regula-
tion— in a word, our judgment upon Trade Unionism as a
whole — we reserve for the third and final part of this book.

CHAPTER I

THE METHOD OF MUTUAL INSURANCE

IN a certain sense it would not be difficult to regard all the
activities of Trade Unionism as forms of Mutual Insurance.
Whether the purpose be the fixing of a list of piecework
prices, the promotion of a new factory bill, or the defence
of a member against a prosecution for picketing, we see
the contributions, subscribed equally in the past by all the
members, applied in ways which benefit unequally particular
individuals or particular sections among them, independently
of the amount which these individuals or sections may them-
selves have contributed. But this interpretation of insurance
would cover, not Trade Unionism alone, but practically every
form of collective action, including citizenship itself. By
the phrase " Mutual Insurance," as one of the Methods of
Trade Unionism, we understand only the provision of a
fund by common subscription to insure against casualties ;
to provide maintenance, that is to say, in cases in which a
member is deprived of his livelihood by causes over which
neither he nor the union has any control. This obviously
covers the " benevolent " or friendly society side of Trade
Unionism, such as the provision of sick pay, accident benefit,
and superannuation allowance, together with " burial money,"
and such allowances as that made to members of the
Amalgamated Society of Tailors who are prevented from
working by the sanitary authorities, owing to the presence
of infectious disease in their homes. But it includes also

The Method of Mutual Insurance 1 5 3

what are often termed " trade " benefits ; grants for replacing
tools lost by theft or fire, and " out-of-work pay," from the
old-fashioned "tramping card " to the modern " donation "
given when a member loses his employment by the tem-
porary breakdown of machinery or " want of pit room," by
the bankruptcy of his employer or the stoppage of a mill,
or merely in consequence of a depression in trade. " The
simplest and universal function of trades societies," it
was reported in 1 860, " is the enabling the workman to
maintain himself while casually out of employment, or
travelling in search of it."1 On the other hand, our
definition excludes all expenditure incurred by the union as
a consequence of action voluntarily undertaken by it, such
as the cost of trade negotiations, the " victim pay " accorded
to members dismissed for agitation, and the maintenance of
men on strike. These we omit as more properly incidental
to the Method of Collective Bargaining. We also leave to
be dealt with under the Method of Legal Enactment the
provision for the legal aid of members under the Employers'
Liability, Truck, or Factory Acts.

Trade Union Mutual Insurance, thus defined, comprises
two distinct classes of benefit : " Friendly " and " Out of
Work." There is an essential difference between the
insurance against such physical and personal casualties as
sickness, accident, and old age on the one hand, and, on the
other, the stoppage of income caused by mere inability to
obtain employment.

Friendly Mutual Insurance, in many industries the oldest
form of Trade Union activity, has been adopted by practically
every society which has lasted. Here and there, at all times,
one trade or another has, in the first emergence of its
organisation, preferred to confine its action to Collective
Bargaining or to aim at Legal Enactment.2 But directly

1 Report of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science on
Trade Societies and Strikes (London, 1860), p. xx.

2 See for the so-called "New Unionism" of 1889, the History of Trade
Unionism, pp. 401, 406.

154 Trade Union Function

the combination has settled down to everyday life, we find
it adding one or other of the benefits of insurance, and often
developing into the most comprehensive Trade Friendly
Society. For the past hundred years this insurance business
has been steadily growing, not only in volume, but also in
deliberateness and regularity.

In providing friendly benefits the Trade Union comes
into direct competition with the ordinary friendly society
and the industrial insurance company. The engineer or
carpenter who joins his Trade Union might insure against
sickness, old age, and the expenses of burial, by joining the
" Oddfellows " and the " Prudential " instead. And from
an actuarial point of view the Amalgamated Society of
Engineers or Carpenters is not for a moment to be com-
pared with a friendly society of good standing. Unlike the
registered friendly society, the Trade Union, even if registered,
does not enter into any legally binding contract. A Trade
Union cannot be sued ; and the members have individually
no legal remedy against it. A member who has paid for a
whole lifetime to the sick and superannuation funds may, at
any moment, be expelled and forfeit all claim, for reasons
quite unconnected with his desire for insurance in old age.
Against the decision of his fellow-members there is, in no
case, any appeal. Moreover, the scale of contributions and
benefits may at any time be altered, even to the extent of
abolishing benefits altogether ; and such alterations do, in
fact, frequently take place, in spite of all the protests of
minorities of old members. And it is no small drawback
to the security of the individual member that, in a time of
trade depression, just when he himself is probably poorest,
he is invariably required to pay extra levies to meet the
heavy Out of Work liabilities, on pain of being automatically
excluded, and thus forfeiting all his insurance. It is a
further aggravation that in any crisis the Trade Union,
unlike the friendly society, regards the punctual discharge of
its sick and superannuation liabilities as a distinctly secondary
consideration. The paramount requisite of an organisation

The Method of Mutual Insurance 1 5 5

professing to provide against sickness and old age is abso-
lute security that the accumulated funds will be reserved
exclusively to meet the growing liabilities. But in a Trade
Union there is no guarantee that any of its funds will be
reserved for this purpose. During a long spell of trade
depression the whole accumulated balance may be spent in
maintaining the members out of work. An extensive strike
may, at any time, drain the society absolutely dry. The
Friendly Society of Operative Stonemasons, for instance,
has, during its sixty years' existence, twice been reduced
to absolute beggary, in 1841 by a prolonged strike, and in
1879 by the severe depression in trade. A still older and
richer union, the Friendly Society of Ironfounders, not only
spent every penny of its funds in 1879, but borrowed many
thousands of pounds from its members' individual savings to
meet the most pressing of its liabilities.1 This " hole in the
stocking" is not mended by any nominal allocation of a
certain part of the income, or a specific share of the funds,
to the sick or superannuation liabilities. No Trade Union
ever dreams of putting any part of its funds legally or
effectively out of the control of its members for the time
being ; and when a time of stress comes, the nominal alloca-
tion offers no obstacle to the " borrowing " of some or all
the ear-marked balance for current purposes. Trade Union-
ists, in short, subscribe their money primarily for the main-
tenance or improvemervtjof their wages or other conditions,
of employment : "onlyafter this object has been secured do *
they expect or desire any sick or other friendly benefits, and
their rules proceed always on the assumption that such
benefits are payable only if and when there is a surplus in
hand.

This entire want of legal or financial security has
hitherto prevented actuaries from giving serious considera-
tion to the problems of Trade Union insurance.2 The

1 History of Trade Unionism , pp. 157, 334.

2 This lack of knowledge and absence of serious study has not prevented
leading actuaries from denouncing stable and well-managed Trade Unions as

156 Trade Union Function

consequence is that the Trade Union scales of contributions
and benefits do not rest on any actuarial basis, and represent,
at best, the empirical guess-work of the members. Scarcely
any attempt has yet been made to collect the data necessary

financially unsound, even on their friendly society side, and inevitably destined to
early bankruptcy. Before the Royal Commission of 1867-68, for instance, two
of the principal actuaries demonstrated that both the Amalgamated Society of
Engineers and the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters were insolvent to the
extent of many hundreds of thousands of pounds, and that they were necessarily
doomed to collapse. In spite of the patent falsification of these prophecies, and
the continued growth in wealth of the great unions, similar denunciations and
predictions are still repeated by actuarial authorities ignorant of their own
ignorance.

A Trade Union differs fundamentally from a friendly society or insurance
company, which undertakes to provide definite payments for a specified premium.
A Trade Union is not only free at any time to revise, or even suspend, its
benefits ; it can, and habitually does, increase its income by levies. Thus,
whilst the nominal contribution of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers is a
shilling per week, the actual amount received from the members during the ten
years 1886-95 averaged, for the whole period, one shilling and twopence halfpenny
per week (Eighth Report by the Chief Labour Correspondent on Trade Unions^
C. 8232, 1896, p. 404), and the rules expressly provide that "when the funds
are reduced to ^3 per member the contributions shall be increased by such sum
per week as will sustain the funds at not less than that amount" (Rule XXV. of
edition of 1896, p. 121). A society with such a rule can obviously never
become insolvent so long as it retains any members, and chooses to meet its
engagements.

But there is another and no less important difference in actuarial position
between a Trade Union and a friendly society. A friendly society is rightly
deemed unsound if the contributions paid by the members when young do not
enable a fund to be accumulated to meet the greatly increased liabilities for sick-
ness, superannuation, and burial as they grow older. A society may have cash in
hand, and yet be steering into bankruptcy, if the average age of its members is
increasing, or might presently (by a stoppage of recruiting) be found to be
increasing. This rapid increase of liabilities with advancing age constitutes what
insurance experts denounce as "the vice of assessmentism " — the fallacious
assumption that the year's payments can safely be met by the year's levies on the
members for the time being. But where membership is universal, the average
age, and therefore the liabilities, do not, and cannot, increase. If sick-pay,
superannuation, and burial were provided by the State for all citizens, the number
of cases year by year would, from an actuarial point of view, remain constant, or
would be affected only by the slow and gradual changes in national health. A
single trade is, in this respect, in much the same position as the nation, and when
a Trade Union habitually includes all the operatives in its industry the percentage
of benefit cases is remarkably uniform. Moreover, even in less universal organ-
isations, where the motives for joining are very largely unconnected with
friendly benefits, and there is no competing union, the result is practically the
same. As a matter of fact, the average age of the members of well-established
Trade Unions, so far as this can be ascertained, remains remarkably stable, and
seems to increase only with the general improvement in sanitation.

The Method of Mutual Insurance 1 5 7

for a more precise computation ; and even such elementary
facts as the average age of the members, or the special
death rate or sickness rate of the occupation, are often
unknown. There is no graduation of contributions accord-
ing to age, practically no attempt at medical selection of can-
didates for membership, and a complete uncertainty as to
what interest will be received on investments, or whether the
funds will be invested at interest at all. In short, the Trade
Union, considered merely as a friendly society, does not
profess to afford its members any legal security or certain
guarantee against destitution in sickness or old age. Its
promises of superannuation allowances, and even of sick pay,
are, in reality, conditional on there being money left over
after providing for other purposes. " The right " [of members
to] "any benefit," wrote Daniel Guile, in 1869, in the name
of the Ironfounders' Executive, " only exists as long as the
Society has power to pay it. Any determination of the
exact amount of return a member may rightly expect for a
particular amount of contribution rests upon averages of a
nature far too abstruse to be entered upon here, and for
which, indeed, even the groundwork is wanting." * In face
of this lack of security, and absence of actuarial basis, it
seems at first sight surprising that union after union should
add to its purely trade functions the business of an ordinary
friendly society. But, as Professor Beesly remarked in 1867,
" it is much more economical to depend upon one society
combining all benefits, than to contribute to a friendly
society for sick and funeral benefits, and to a union for tool
and accident benefit and trade purposes." 2 Whether or not
the ordinary artisan appreciates the economy effected by
" concentration of management and consequent lessening of
working expenses," he at any rate realises that it is less
irksome to pay to one club than to several. But this hardly
explains the persistent advocacy of sick pay and superannua-

1 Monthly Report of the Friendly Society of Ironfounders, October 1869.
* E. S. Beesly, The Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners (London,
1867), p. 4.

1 58 Trade Union Function

tion allowance by experienced Trade Union officials. Their
belief in the advantage of developing the friendly society
side of Trade Unionism rests frankly on the adventitious
aid it brings to working-class organisation. The benefit
club side serves, in the first place, as a potent attraction to
hesitating recruits. To the young man just " out of his
time " the prospect of securing support in sickness or un-
employment is a greater inducement to join the union, and
regularly to keep up his contributions, than the less obvious
advantages to be gained by the trade combination. " It
helps," says Mr. George Howell, "to bind the members to
the union when possibly other considerations might inter-
pose to diminish the zeal of the Trade Unionist pure and
simple." J

Moreover, when, as is usually the case, the whole contri-
bution goes into a common fund, the society gains the advan-
tage of an additional financial reserve, which can be used in
support of its trade policy in time of need, and replaced as
opportunity permits. Such great Trade Friendly Societies
as the Boilermakers', Engineers', Stonemasons', and Iron-
founders' have, as we have seen, never hesitated to deplete
their balances in order to enable their members to withstand
encroachments on their Standard of Life. Thus, the addition
of friendly society benefits, bringing, as it does, greatly
increased contributions, enables the Trade Union to roll
up an imposing reserve fund, which, even if not actually
drawn upon, is found to be an effective " moral influence " in
negotiations with employers.

We see, therefore, that the friendly society element
supplies to Trade Unionism both adventitious attractions
and an adventitious support. But this is not all. In a
strong and well-organised union, the existence of important
friendly benefits may become a powerful instrument for
maintaining discipline among the members, and for enforcing
upon all the decisions of the majority. If expulsion carries
with it the loss of valuable prospective benefits, such, for

1 Trade Unionism, New and Old, by George Howell (London, 1892), p. 102.

The Method of Mutiial Insurance 159

instance, as superannuation, it becomes a penalty of great
severity. Similarly, when secession involves the abandon-
ment of all share in a considerable accumulated balance, a
branch momentarily discontented with some decision of the
majority thinks twice before it breaks off in a pet to set up
as an independent society. Thus the addition of friendly
benefits has been, on the whole, a great consolidating force
in Trade Unionism. We can, therefore, quite understand
why thoroughgoing opponents of trade combinations have,
like the associated employers who came before the Royal
Commission in 1867, vehemently denounced the combination
of trade and friendly society as illegitimate and dangerous.1

Friendly benefits have yet another advantage from the
point of view of the Trade Union official. To the permanent
salaried officer of a great union, with his time fully occupied
by his daily routine, it is no small gain that sick pay and
superannuation allowance exercise a great effect in " keeping
the members quiet." This was perceived, as early as 1867,
by a shrewd friend of the great Amalgamated Societies, the
" New Unionism " of that time. " The importance of the
principle [of providing all the usual benefits offered by
friendly societies] will be best understood," observes Professor
Beesly, " by looking at the character and working of the

1 " The combination of trade with benefit purposes was astutely conceived,
with a view to increase the strength of trade organisations. The benefit element
was first to decoy, and then to control. The lure of prospective benefits having
attracted members, the dread of confiscation was to enforce obedience." — Trade
Unionism, by James Stirling (Glasgow, 1869), p. 43.

There is absolutely no warrant for the accusation — still often repeated — that
the use of all the Trade Union funds for strike purposes when the members so
decide, amounts, morally if not legally, to malversation. The Chief Registrar of
Friendly Societies, questioned on this very point by the Royal Commission on
Labor, emphatically upheld the Trade Union practice. "The primary object of
the Trade Union," said Mr. Brabrook, " is protection of trade, and all the rest
is merely subsidiary. . . . The great bulk of members of Trade Unions know
perfectly well that they will not get the benefit in sickness if their money has
been previously spent in trade purposes, and they are perfectly willing it should
be so spent if emergency or necessity arises " (Questions 1561-3). Mr. J. M.
Ludlow, who preceded him in office, entirely confirmed this view. To hypothe-
cate any Trade Union funds for benefit purposes, he added, "might be to the
ruin of the Trade Union, and therefore to the ruin of the men who had contri-
buted those funds" (Questions 1783-8).

1 60 Trade Union Function

old-fashioned unions in which it is not adopted. The men
combine purely for ' trade purposes.' The subscription is
insignificant, sometimes only a penny a week. The members
probably belong to the Oddfellows or Foresters for the
benefit purposes ; and their financial tie to their union being
so weak, they join it or leave it with equal carelessness.
Nevertheless, small as the subscription is, a fund will in
course of time be accumulated. There is nothing to do with
this fund. There it is, eating its head off, so to speak. The
men become impatient to use it ; so a demand is made on
the employers, irrespective perhaps of the circumstances of
the trade. A strike follows. The members live on their
fund for a few weeks, and when it is exhausted they give in.
Such societies may be called Strike Societies, for they exist
for nothing else." l " A trade society without friendly
benefits," Mr. John Burnett has frequently declared, " is
like a standing army. It is a constant menace to peace."
And thus we find the employers of this generation abandon-
ing the criticisms of their predecessors in 1867, and reserving
their bitterest denunciations for the purely trade society.

With regard to the other branch of their Mutual Insurance
business, the Trade Unions occupy a unique position. How-
ever imperfectly Trade Unions may discharge the function of
providing maintenance for their members when out of work,
they undertake here a service which must, in their absence,
remain unperformed. No other organisation, whether com-
mercial or philanthropic, has yet come forward to protect
the wage-earner against the destitution arising from lack of
employment.2 Experience seems to indicate that Out of

1 E. S. Beesly, The Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners, p. 3
(London, 1867).

2 Certain experiments have been made since 1894 at Berne, Basle, and St. Gall
(Switzerland) ; at Cologne (Germany) ; and at Bologna (Italy), in the direction
of municipal insurance against unemployment, either voluntary or compulsory.
An account of these experiments, which do not appear to have been very
successful, will be found in the Rapport sur la Question du Chdinage, published
by the French Government, Conseil Superieur du Travail (Paris, 1896, 398 pp.) ;
and Circulars 2. and 5 (Series B) of the Musee Social, Paris, containing an
elaborate bibliography ; to which we can add Charles Raaijmakers, Verzekering
tegen IVerkloosheid (Amsterdam, 1895).

The Method of Mutual Insurance 1 6 1

Work pay cannot be properly administered except by bodies
of men belonging to the same trade and working in the
same establishments. Therefore it is not remarkable that
Trade Unions should give most of their attention to the
administration of their Out of Work benefits. We find, in
fact, that although funeral benefit is almost universal, and
accident allowance very widely adopted, these, like insurance
of tools, make up in the aggregate a very small proportion
of the total expenditure. And though sick pay and super-
annuation stand for appreciable sums, it is Out of Work
benefit which takes the most important place in the Mutual
Insurance business, its limits being extended in many instances,
whilst others are cut down.1 To a middle-class body it
would seem natural to give a kind of preferential lien on
the funds, to insure the continuance of the weekly allowances
to the sick and superannuated members already on the books.
A Trade Union not only refrains from taking this course,
but actually gives a preference, in effect, to its Out of Work
payments, usually continuing them at the full rate, even
when its funds are being rapidly exhausted, until it has
parted with its last penny. The secret of this bias does
not lie altogether in the immense difference in permanence
between middle class and working class employment. The
main object of the individual member may be to provide
against the personal distress which would otherwise be caused
to himself and his family by the stoppage of his weekly
income. But the object of the union, from the collective
point of view, is to prevent him from accepting employment,
under stress^jDiLsta^vatieiV^11"^^ common

'jurlgmeiiT'of the trade, would be injurious to its interests.
This has been recognised from the earliest times as a leading

1 Thus, the Rules and Regulations of the Operative Bleachers, Finishers, and
Dyers' Association (Bolton, 1891) provide (Rule 24), under the head of sick pay,
only for a case not met by the mere friendly society. " Should any member,
having his family afflicted with smallpox or other infectious disease and as a
consequence be temporarily discharged from following his employment, such
member shall be entitled to the ordinary out of work pay. But if such member
become afflicted himself his pay shall cease,"

VOL. I M

1 62 Trade Union Function

object of Out of Work pay. Already, in 1741, it was
remarked that the woolcombers " support one another,
insomuch that they are become one society throughout the
kingdom. And that they may keep up their price^ to encourage
idleness rather than labor, if any one of their club is out
of work, they give him a ticket and money to seek for work
at the next town where a box-club is, where he is also
subsisted, suffered to live a certain time with them, and used
as before ; by which means he can travel the kingdom round,
be caressed at each club, and not spend a farthing of his
own or strike one stroke of work. This has been imitated
by the weavers also, though not carried through the kingdom,
but confined to the places where they work." 1

We find the economic result of this tramping system
exercising the minds of the Assistant Poor Law Commissioners
of 1834. A leatherdresser "belongs to an incorporated or
combined trade ; the directors of this Combination issue
tickets to the members. These tickets are renewed from
time to time. The holder of one goes from place to place,
but must not take the same road more than once in six
months. With these intervals he is again and again
assisted. . . . This ticket is available in every part of the
United Kingdom where a club or lodge of the trade is
established. The individual in question might have had
work at ^i per week, but he refused to take it, or indeed
3<DS. per week ; nothing under £2 would satisfy him ; and
when pressed for reasons to account for his refusing such
offers — when asked whether it would not be better to get
£i per week than to trust to casual sources of support, he

1 A Short Essay upon Trade in General, by a Lover of his Country (London,
1741), quoted in the History of the Worsted Manufacture in England, by John
James (London, 1857). How the employers felt the independence thus given to
the workers may be inferred from the following advertisement in the Leicester
Herald, of June 1792:— "To Master Woolcombers. The Journeymen Wool-
combers in Kendal have left their work, and illegally combined to raise their wages
which are already equal to what is paid to the Trade in any part of the Kingdom :
they have also granted blanks, or certificates, to E. Hewitson, apprentice to Mr.
Pooley ; T. Parkinson, to Mr. Barton ; and W. Wilkinson, to Mr. Strutt, who
without such blanks or certificates must have remained with their masters,"

The Method of Mutual Insurance 163

replied that he should not like to be * turned black ' (query —
' returned black ') which would be the case if he worked under
price."1

Gradually the Trade Unions themselves make clear the
real object of this system of mutual insurance. In 1844
the Spring Knife Grinders' Protection Society of Sheffield
declare that the " object to be accomplished is to grant relief
to all its members that are out of work ; that none may
have the painful necessity of applying for relief from the
parish, or comply with the unreasonable demands of our
employers or their servants? 2 The Flint Glass Makers
express the same idea. " Our wages depend on the supply
of labor in the market ; our interest is therefore to restrict
that supply, reduce the surplus, make our unemployed com-
fortable^ without fear for the morrow — accomplish this> and we
have a command over the surplus of our labor, and we need
fear no unjust employer?* Four years later the Delegate
Meeting of the Amalgamated Engineers resolved to extend
by nine weeks the period during which a member was allowed
to receive continuously the Out of Work allowance. It was
successfully argued that "when bad trade did arrive ... it
brought with it the absolute necessity of a continuous dona-
tion ; for men, who were unemployed for so long a time as
to run through their donation altogether, would be compelled
either to seek parish relief, or take situations on terms injurious
to the trade. In the event of their doing the latter, the
Society would exercise but little control over them if it
did not entitle them to some benefit. For the protection of
the trade, then, it was stated to be absolutely necessary to make
the donation continuous, so that the members of the Society
should be able to resist the inducement of acting contrary to
the general rules of a District? 4 Finally, we may cite the

1 Report of Poor Law Commission of 1834 ; Appendix, p. 900 a.

2 Manuscript Rules of the Spring Knife Grinders' Protection Society of Sheffield
in old account book, dated 1844.

3 Flint Glass Makers' Magazine •, opening editorial, No. I, Sept. 1850.

4 Minutes of the Second Delegate Meeting of the Amalgamated Society of
Engineers^ p. 38 (London, 1854). The Constitution and Rules qf the Associated

164 Trade Union Function

case of the Associated Shipwrights' Society, which has only
within recent years systematically adopted regular Out of
Work payments. The argument, used by the general
secretary at the Delegate Meeting in 1885, which finally
decided the matter, was as follows : " It is utterly impossible,"
Mr. Wilkie told his members, "to secure trade protection
when a third or a half of your trade are walking about idle
and starving. And unless members of the trade were pre-
pared to buy up, more or less, its surplus labor in the market,
it never could have the actual trade protection desired." *

This historical explanation of the underlying object of
the Out of Work benefit is borne out by the actual practice
of to-day. Whilst all the members of a Trade Union are
enjoined to do their utmost to find situations for their unem-
ployed brethren, and whilst these are forbidden, under severe
penalty, to "refuse work when offered," yet this is always
subject to a fundamental condition, so obvious to the Trade
Union mind as to need no explicit statement in the rules.
A member is not only permitted to refuse job after job
if these are offered to him below the " Standard Rate " of
remuneration, or otherwise in contravention of the normal
terms : he is absolutely forbidden to accept work on any
but the conditions satisfactory to his branch. The visitor
at a branch meeting of the Engineers or Carpenters will
hear members, in receipt of Out of Work pay, report to the
branch that they have been offered situations on such and
such terms, and ask whether it is considered right that they
should accept them. The branch will discuss the question

Ironmoulders of Scotland (Glasgow, 1892) explicitly recognise the use of the
Out of Work Benefit as a means of maintaining their standard of wages. " Any
member leaving for want of work . . . shall be paid idle benefit . . . but,
if leaving on own accord, he shall have no claim to benefit. The phrase
' want of work ' shall refer to all kinds of dismissal without fault of the member
— slackness, underpayment, resisting a reduction of wages, or unjustifiable abuse or
ill-treatment from employer or foreman. . . . ' Own accord ' shall mean all kinds
of dismissal for irregularity, absence without leave except from illness, in-
sobriety, and captious or voluntary dismissal." (Rule 30, sec. 4.)

1 Address of General Secretary at Delegate Meeting of Associated Shipwrights'
Society, 1885.

The Method of Mutual Insurance 165

from the point of view of the probable effect on the Standard
Rate ; and whilst they may permit a maimed or aged member
to accept five shillings a week less than the normal wage of
the district, they will prefer to keep a fully competent and
able-bodied man "on donation," rather than sanction any
departure from the Common Rule.1

Here we are outside the domain of actuarial science.
Even if it should prove possible to reduce to an arithmetical
scale of contributions and benefits the loss of income caused
by mere slackness of trade, it must always be out of the ques-
tion to determine what rate of Out of Work benefit can safely
be awarded in return for a given subscription, if the accept-
ance of employment depends on the policy of the society
with regard to its Standard Rate. Such a condition takes
us out of the category of insurance as provisionally defined
above. As understood and administered by all Trade Unions,
the Out of Work benefit is not valued exclusively, or even
mainly, for its protection of the individual against casualties.
In the mind of the thoughtful or experienced Trade Unionist
its most important function is to protect the Standard Rate
of wages and other normal conditions of employment from
being "eaten away," in bad times, by the competition of
members driven by necessity to accept the employers' terms.

The reader will now understand why this Mutual Insur-
ance must be regarded, not as the end or object, but as one
of the Methods of Trade Unionism. At first sight nothing
could appear more simple than the mutual provision of
support in order to enable a man to seek work elsewhere,
and not be under an absolute compulsion to accept whatever
terms an employer may offer. In its economic effect upon
the labor market it seems no more than would result from
the existence of individual savings in a savings bank. But

1 The Rules to be observed by the members of the Bury and District Tape-
sizers' Friendly Protective Society (Bury, 1888) provide (p. 7) that "if any member
who is out of work and receiving pay make application for a situation or be sent
for, and he is offered a less rate of wage than he has been paid before, he shall
be at liberty to take it or not, and if he refuse to take it he shall not have his pay
stopped."

1 66 Trade Union Function

Trade Unions, as Fleeming Jenkin pointed out, are far more
potent in this respect than any savings bank, " because they
enable the community of workmen to acquire wealth. . . .
The individual workman knows that his reserve fund will be
nearly useless unless his neighbour has a reserve fund also.
If each workman in a strike trusted to his own funds only,
the poorer ones must give in first ; and these would secure
work, while the richer, after spending a part of their reserve,
would find themselves supplanted by the poorer competitors,
and the sacrifice made uselessly. A combined reserve fund
gives great power by insuring that all suffer alike. The
Trade Union, therefore, has a permanent action in raising
wages, because it enables men to accumulate a common
fund, with which they can sustain their resolution not to work
unless they obtain such pay as will give increased comfort." l
If this collective reserve fund coexists with a common
understanding as to the terms without which no member
will accept employment, it is obvious that we have a deliberate
and conscious use of Mutual Insurance, not to relieve indi-
vidual distress, but to enforce a Trade Union Regulation.

The Method of Mutual Insurance is pursued, more or
less consciously, by every union that gives benefits at all.
Until Collective Bargaining was permitted by the employers,
and before Legal Enactment was within the workmen's reach,
Mutual Insurance was the only method by which Trade
Unionists could lawfully attain their end. Hence its high
favor with the group of astute officials who led the work-
men between 1845 an^ l$7$- Dunning, in fact, expressly
gives it as the main method of Trade Unionism. " Singly
the employer can stand out longer in the bargain than the
journeyman ; and as he who can stand out longest in the
bargain will be sure to command his own terms, the work-
men combine to put themselves on something like an equality
in the bargain for the sale of their labor with their employer.
This is the rationale of trade societies. . . . The object in-

1 " Graphic Representation of the Laws of Supply and Demand," by Fleeming
Jenkin, in Recess Studies (Edinburgh, 1870), pp. 183-4.

The Method of Mutual Insurance 1 6 7

tended is carried out by providing a fund for the support of
its members when out of employ, for a certain number of
weeks in the year. This is the usual and regular way in
which the labor of the members of a trade society is protected,
that the man's present necessities may not compel him to
take less than the wages which the demand and supply of
labor in the trade have previously adjusted."1

The same view was expressed by William Allan, the
first secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers.
" We are very little engaged in regulating " rates of wages, he
told the Royal Commission in 1867, "they regulate them-
selves, if I may use the expression. If a member believed,"
he continued, "that he was not getting a proper rate of
wages, the society would encourage him in objecting, that is
to say, would pay him his benefit while out of employment.
. . . The man would go to the branch to which he belonged,
and would there state that he was only receiving a certain
rate of wages ; if he wished to leave his employment he
would ask the question whether under the circumstances he
would be entitled to what we call donation, that is Out of
Work Benefit, if he left the situation ; and in all probability
the society would say, you can leave and we will pay you
the benefit. Or they might say, we believe you are getting
as much as you ought to expect." 2

In some small and highly organised trades of skilled
handicraftsmen, this method of enforcing Trade Union
regulations by Mutual Insurance has tacitly elaborated into
an effective weapon, not only of defence, but also of aggres-
sion. We may instance the Spanish and Morocco Leather
Finishers' Society, a small but powerful union, practically
co-extensive with the craft, which has not for fifty years

1 T. J. Dunning, Trades Unions and Strikes : their Philosophy and Intention
(London, 1860), p. 10. See also Dunning's articles on " Wages of Labour and
Trade Societies," in the second, third, and fourth numbers of the Bookbinders'
Trade Circular (1851) ; History of Trade Unionism, p. 179.

2 First Report of the Commissioners appointed to enquire into the Organisation
and Rules of Trades Unions and other Associations (London, 1867). Evidence of
W. Allan, Questions 787-789.

1 68 Trade Union Function

ordered a formal strike, or in any way overtly " intervened
between employer and employed." Nevertheless, it has
known how to enforce a detailed uniform price-list in every
centre, new or old, in which the trade is carried on ; it has
maintained this piece-work list practically unaltered for fifty
years, notwithstanding many improvements in processes ; it
has, consequently, kept up its members' earnings to certainly
more than £2 per week ; and it has successfully enforced a
rigid limitation of apprentices, there being nowhere more
than one to seven journeymen. Yet no overt collective
movement is ever made. If any employer refuses to conform
to the regulations, even in the slightest degree, the members
leave him one by one, and receive Out of Work benefit, which
may continue for thirty-nine weeks.1 It is usually found, we
are told, that an employer remedies any grievance after he
has had to put up with a new man every week or two for a
few months. In 1845 tne Old Smiths' Society, which had
suffered severely between 1827 and 1844 from numerous
small strikes, removed from their rules all provision for these
pitched battles with their employers, in favor of this more
silent form of pressure. The preamble to the rules, drawn up
by the Delegate Meeting of 1845, adds, "Disputes . . . can
only be settled by friendly consultations between both master
and man, imbued with the spirit of mutually imparting facts,
with a view to render assistance to each other ; if this, in con-
nection with the efforts of mutual and disinterested friends,
cannot be accomplished, we say then let men and masters
part ; offer no opposition ; the men, however great or small
their number, to be supplied with means of existence until
they obtain other situations of work from the funds of the
society ; and the employers to obtain other men as best they
may ; and we contend that this unassuming quiet plan of
operations is, according to its number of members, accom-
plishing, and will continue to accomplish, infinitely more real
good to the trade in all its ramifications, at a minimum

1 Rules to be observed by the Members of the Leeds Friendly Society of Spanish
and Morocco Leather Finishers (Leeds, 1879).

The Method of Mutual Insurance 1 69

expense to its members, than any other plan of operation by
any other society." * The same position was aimed at by
the Flint Glass Makers in 1850, when their magazine was
advocating the use of this nameless weapon which we have
christened, for our own convenience, the " Strike in Detail."
" As man after man leaves, . . . then it is that the proud
and haughty spirit of the oppressor is brought down, and he
feels the power he cannot see." 2

This application of mutual insurance may be made the
method of enforcing any Common Rule whatsoever ; and a
very effective instrument it is. An employer whose workmen
leave him one by one, after due notice, may find little diffi-
culty in filling their places. But if the new-comers, after a
brief stay, one by one give notice that they, too, will leave,
he is placed in a serious difficulty. He cannot close his
doors and appeal for support to his fellow-employers, as
there is no strike, and no refusal on the part of the Trade
Unionists to accept his terms. Nevertheless, his constant
inability to retain any workman for more than a week or
two, may easily become so harassing that he will be forced
to inquire carefully in what respect his employment falls
below the standard of the trade, and to conform to it. The
Trade Union, on the other hand, runs no risk of retaliation,
and, as only a few men are on the books at any one time,
incurs the minimum of expense. As a deliberate Trade
Union policy, the Strike in Detail depends upon the extent
to which the union has secured the adhesion of all the com-
petent men in the trade, and upon their capacity for
persistent and self-restrained pursuit of a common end. It
could, accordingly, never become the sole method of any but
a small, wealthy, and closely knit society ; but in such a
society it may easily, in its coercive effect on the employer,
surpass even an Act of Parliament itself.

1 Report on Trade Societies' Rules by Mr. (now the Rt. Hon.) G. Shaw
Lefevre in Social Science Association's Report on Trades Societies and Strikes
(London, 1860).

2 Flint Glass Makers' Magazine, July 1850.

170 Trade Union Function

The Strike in Detail is only a more deliberate and
self-conscious application of the method of maintaining the
standard of life by Mutual Insurance customary among all
Trade Unionists. It is impossible to draw any logical dis-
tinction between the action of the little union of Leather
Finishers and that of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers,
as explained by William Allan and T. J. Dunning, or indeed
any union which maintains a member in idleness rather than
allow him to accept work " contrary to the interests of the
trade." The persistent adhesion of Trade Unionists to the
Out of Work benefit, and their secondary adoption of what
we have called the friendly society business, appear as a
perfectly consistent, homogeneous policy the moment the
true Trade Union point of view is caught. Any provision
which secures the members of the trade against destitution
prevents an employer taking advantage of their necessities.1
Not Out of Work benefit alone, but also sick pay, grants to
replace tools or property lost or burnt, burial money for wife
or child, and especially accident benefit and superannuation
allowance, all serve to enforce the claim of the workman " to
be dealt with as an intelligent being, and not merely as a
bale of goods or article of merchandise. This," emphatically
declares the Friendly Society of Ironfounders, " is, then, the
main and central pillar of our organisation. Around it are
clustered those monetary benefits that are stated above, and
it is from this grand standpoint those benefits must all be
estimated : for from this point only it is at all possible to
come to a right and fair conclusion as to their real value to
individual members." 2

1 We may cite a curious small case among the Curriers. The London
journeymen curriers have always strenuously resisted the employers' attempts to
make them take out shoe hides at an average weight, instead of weighing each
one separately. In 1854 certain members represented to the union that their
employer had taken advantage of the slackness of work in the winter season to
try to enforce this practice upon them ; and that if the union would make them
each a loan, they could dispense with sending in their bills to their employer for
that week, which would have a good effect as demonstrating their power to stand
out. The union readily agreed to lend each man a pound on condition that he
drew no wages that week. MS. Minute Book, 1854.

2 Preface to Rules to be observed by the Members of the Friendly Society of

The Method of Mutual Insurance 171

Mutual Insurance, even when considered purely as a
Method of Trade Unionism, is by no means beyond criticism.
The lack of legal or financial security of the friendly benefits
may be worth tolerating by a wage-earner for the sake of the
trade as a whole ; but it is none the less an evil on that
account. And even the successful Strike in Detail of the
Leather Finishers has grave drawbacks, from its own stand-
point. No Trade Unionist would deny that the deliber-
ately concerted Common Rules, to which workmen and
employers must alike conform, ought to be framed after
consideration, not of the desires of one class alone, but from
all points of view. The method of Mutual Insurance leaves
no place for discussion with the employers. Each party
makes up its own mind, relies on its power of holding out,
and leaves the issue to depend merely on secret endurance.
Frank and full discussion might have revealed facts previously
unknown, which would have altered the views of the parties.
It might have been discovered that some points most keenly
insisted on by one side were regarded as unimportant by the
other. The influence of public opinion would have moderated
the negotiations. These tendencies make, in Collective Bar-
gaining, for a compromise often representing a real gain to
both parties. For all this, the Method of Mutual Insurance
allows no place. It is, therefore, not surprising to find that
the most highly developed and successful modern organisa-
tions make little use of Mutual Insurance as a method of
industrial regulation. Among the Coalminers and Cotton
Operatives, who together comprise a fifth of the Trade
Union world, friendly benefits, and even Out of Work
donation, play only the most trifling part. And it is sig-
nificant that the United Society of Boilermakers, in many

Ironfounders (London, 1891). It is interesting to find that this use of Mutual
Insurance among workers was elaborately explained and defended in 1819 by
the well-known Baptist minister, the Reverend Robert Hall ; see his pamphlets,
An Appeal to the Pttblic on the Subject of the Framework Knitters' Fund (Leicester,
1819), and A Reply to the Principal Objections advanced by Cobbett and others
against the Framework Knitters' Friendly Relief Society (Leicester, 1821), both
included in his Works (London, 1832), vol. iii.

172

Trade Union Function

respects the most successful of the great unions, whilst
utilising to the full a most elaborate system of Mutual
Insurance, keeps the provision against unavoidable casualties
entirely distinct from its trade objects. For all that concerns
the maintenance and improvement of the conditions of em-
ployment the Boilermakers, like the Coalminers and the
Cotton Operatives, resort to one or other of the alternative
Methods of Trade Unionism, Collective Bargaining, or Legal
Enactment.

CHAPTER II

THE METHOD OF COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

THE nature of the Method of Collective Bargaining will be
best understood by a series of examples.

In unorganised trades the individual workman, applying
for a job, accepts or refuses the terms offered by the employer,
without communication with his fellow-workmen, and with-
out any other consideration than the exigencies of his own
position. For the sale of his labor he makes, with the
employer, a strictly individual bargain.1 But if a group of
workmen concert together, and send representatives to con-
duct the bargaining on behalf of the whole body, the position
is at once changed. Instead of the employer making a
series of separate contracts with isolated individuals, he meets
with a collective will, and settles, in a single agreement, the
principles upon which, for the time being, all workmen of a
particular group, or class, or grade, will be engaged. For
instance, in' a cabinet-making shop, if a new pattern is
brought out, the men in the shop hold a brief and informal
meeting to discuss the price at which it can be executed, the

1 The phrase " Individual Bargaining " is used incidentally by C. Morrison
in his Essay on the Relations between Labour and Capital (London, 1854), as
equivalent to "what may be called the commercial principle," according to which
" the workman endeavours to sell his labor as dearly and the employer to pur-
chase it as cheaply as possible" (p. 9).

We are not aware of any use of the phrase "Collective Bargaining" before
that in The Cooperative Movement in Great Britain (London, 1891), p. 217, by
Beatrice Potter (Mrs. Sidney Webb), where it is employed in the present sense.

1 74 Trade Union Function

rough basis being whether, taking into account the un-
familiarity of the work, and the nature of the task, they can
make no less net wages per hour than they have been
hitherto earning. The foreman has meanwhile been estimat-
ing the job in his own way, on much the same basis as the
men, but probably arriving at a slightly lower figure. The
men's representative talks the matter over with the foreman,
and some compromise is come to, the job standing at that
price for the whole shop. This process differs from that of
a series of individual bargains with the separate workmen, in
that the particular exigencies of each are ruled out of con-
sideration. If the foreman had dealt privately with each
man, he might have found some in such necessity that he
could have driven them to take the job practically at any
price rather than be without work for even half a day.
Others, again, relying on exceptional strength or endurance,
would have seen their way to make the standard earnings at
a piecework rate upon which the average worker could not
even subsist. By the Method of Collective Bargaining the
foreman is prevented from taking advantage of the competi-
tion of both these classes of men to beat down the earnings
of the other workmen. The starving man gets his job at
the same piecework rate as the workman who could afford
to stand out for his usual earnings. The superior crafts-
man retains all his advantages over his fellows, but without
allowing his superiority to be made the means of reducing
the weekly wage of the ordinary worker.

This example of the Method of Collective Bargaining is
taken from the practice of a " shop club " in a relatively
unorganised trade. The skilled artisans in the building
trades afford a typical instance of the second stage. The
" shop bargain " of such a trade as the cabinet-makers merely
rules out the exigencies of the particular workmen in a
single establishment. But this establishment is exposed to
the undercutting of other establishments in the same town.
One employer might have to give exceptional terms to his
" shop club " in a sudden rush of urgent orders, whilst the

The Method of Collective Bargaining 175

workmen in other firms might be virtually at the masters'
mercy owing to bad trade. Directly a Trade Union is
formed in any town, an attempt is made to exclude from
influence on the terms, the exigencies of particular employers
no less than those of particular workmen. Thus in the
building trades we find the unions of Carpenters, Bricklayers,
Stonemasons, Plumbers, Plasterers, and sometimes those of
the Painters, Slaters, and Builders' Laborers obtaining formal
" working rules," binding on all the employers and work-
men of the town or district. This Collective Bargaining,
arranged at a conference between the local master builders,
and the local officials of the national unions, settles, for a
specified term, the hours of beginning and ending work, the
minimum rate of wages, the payment for overtime, the age
and number of apprentices to be taken, the arrangements as
to piecework, the holidays to be allowed, -the notice to be
given by employers or workmen terminating engagements,
the accommodation to be provided for meals and the safe
custody of tools, and numerous allowances or extra payments
for travelling, lodging, "walking time," "grinding money,"
etc. These elaborate codes, unalterable except by formal
notice from the organisations on either side, thus place on a
uniform footing as regards the hiring of labor the wealthiest
contractor and the builder on the brink of bankruptcy, the
firm crowded with orders and that standing practically idle.
On the other hand, the superior workman retains his freedom
to exact higher rates for his special work, whilst the employer
of superior business ability, or technical knowledge, and the firm
enjoying the best machinery or plant, preserve, it is claimed,
every fraction of their advantage over their competitors.1

1 The number of these " working rules " in force in the United Kingdom
has never been ascertained, but it must be very large, there being scarcely any
town in which one or other of the building trades has not obtained a formal
treaty with its employers. Our own collection of these treaties, in the building
trades alone, numbers several hundreds. Specimens will be found in the Labour
Gazette of the Board of Trade for November 1894 ; and in Le Trade Unionisme
en Angleterre, edited by Paul de Rousiers (Paris, 1897), pp. 68-70. The British
Library of Political Science, 10 Adelphi Terrace, London, contains these and
other Trade Union documents.

176 Trade Union Function

The building trades, in which one town does not
obviously compete with another, have hitherto stopped at
this stage of Collective Bargaining. Where the product of
different towns goes to the same market, we see, in the best
organised industries, a still further development. The great
staple trades of cotton-spinning and cotton-weaving have
ruled out, not merely the exigencies of particular workmen
in one mill, or of particular mills in one town, but also those
of the various towns over which the industries have spread.
The general level of wages in all the cotton-spinning towns
is, for instance, settled by the national agreements between
the Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton-spinners
and the Master Cotton-spinners' Association. No employer,
and no group of workmen, no district association of em-
ployers, and no " province " of the Trade Union, can propose
an advance or accept a special reduction from the estab-
lished level of earnings. General advances or reductions are
negotiated at long intervals, and with great deliberateness,
between the national representatives of each party. Thus
we see ruled out, not merely all personal or local exigencies,
but also the temporary gluts or contractions of the market,
whether in the raw material or in the product. All firms
in a district, and all districts in the industry being, as far as
possible, placed upon an identical footing as to the rate at
which they obtain human labor, their competition takes, it is
contended, the form of improving the machinery, getting the
best and cheapest raw material, and obtaining the most
advantageous market for their wares.

A similar series of collective agreements exists in some
other industries. Among the iron-shipbuilders, for instance,
a gang of platers will bargain, through their first hand, as to
the exact terms upon which they will undertake a job in the
building of an iron ship. But the foreman cannot offer, or
the men accept terms which in any way conflict with the
" district by-laws " — a detailed code regulating hours, over-
time, extra allowances, and often also the piecework rates
for ordinary work, formally agreed to by the district com-

The Method of Collective Bargaining 177

mittee of the Trade Union and the local association of
employers. Moreover, the district by-laws, unalterable for
a fixed term, exclude the influence of any sudden glut or
famine in the labor market, or any temporary fluctuation of
the trade of the port. But this is not all. The district
by-laws are themselves subject to the formal treaties on such
matters as apprenticeship and the standard level of wages
concluded between the United Society of Boilermakers and
Iron-shipbuilders and the Employers' Federation of Ship-
building and Engineering Trades. These treaties, settling
certain questions for the whole kingdom, rule out on those
points the exigencies of particular localities, and place all
ports upon an equality. Thus the collective bargain made
by the group of platers on a particular job in one establish-
ment of a certain town imports a hierarchy of other collective
bargains, concluded by the representatives of the contracting
parties in their gradually widening spheres of action.

This practice of Collective Bargaining has, in one form
or another, superseded the old individual contract between
master and servant over a very large proportion of the
industrial field. " I will pay each workman according to
his necessity or merit, and deal with no one but my own
hands," — once the almost universal answer of employers —
is now seldom heard in any important industry, except in
out-of-the-way districts, or from exceptionally arbitrary
masters.1 But it is interesting to notice that Collective
Bargaining is neither co- extensive with, nor limited to,
Trade Union organisation. A few old -standing wealthy
unions of restricted membership have sometimes preferred,
as we saw in the last chapter, to attain their ends by the
Method of Mutual Insurance, whilst others, at all periods,
have been formed with the express design of attaining their
ends by the Method of Legal Enactment. On the other

1 Mr. Lecky observes (Democracy and Liberty, vol. ii. p. 361) that collective
agreements "are becoming, much more than engagements between individual
employers and individual workmen, the form into which English industry is
manifestly developing. "

VOL.1 N

1 78 Trade Union Function

hand, whole sections of the wage-earning class, not included
in any Trade Union, habitually have their rate of wages and
often some other conditions of their employment settled by
Collective Bargaining. We do not here refer merely to such
cases as the " shop-bargain," which we have just described.
The historic strikes of the London building trades in 1859,
and the Newcastle engineers in 1871, were both conducted
by committees elected at mass meetings of members of the
trade, among whom the Trade Unionists formed an insig-
nificant minority.1 In the history of the building and
engineering trades there are numerous instances of agree-
ments being concluded, on behalf of a whole district, by
temporary committees of non - unionists, and where the
Trade Unions themselves initiate and conduct the negotia-
tions the agreements arrived at habitually govern in these
industries, not the members alone, but the great bulk of
similar workmen in the district. Here and there an
eccentric employer may choose to depart from the regular
terms, but the great majority find it more convenient to
comply with what becomes, in fact, the " custom of the
trade." So thoroughly has the Collective Bargaining been
recognised in the building trades, that county court judges
now usually hold that the " working rules " of the district
are implied as part of the wage -contract, if no express
stipulation has been made on the points therein dealt with.
Collective Bargaining thus extends over a much larger
part of the industrial field than Trade Unionism. Precise
statistics do not exist, but our impression^js__that». in all
skilled trades, where men work in concert, on the employers'
premises, ninety per cent of the workmen find, either their
rate of wages or their hours of work, and often many other
details, predetermined by a collective bargain in which they
personally have taken no part, but in which their interests
Have beerTdealt with by representatives of their class.

But though Collective Bargaining prevails over a much
larger area than Trade Unionism, it is the Trade Union

1 History of Trade Unionism, pp. 210, 299 ; compare pp. 302, 305.

The Method of Collective Bargaining 1 79

alone which can provide the machinery for any but its most
casual and limited application. Without a Trade Union
in the industry, it would be almost impossible to get a
Common Rule extending over a whole district, and hopeless
to attempt a national agreement. If therefore the collective
bargain aims at excluding from influence on the bargain, the
exigencies of particular firms or particular districts, and not
merely those of particular workmen in a single establishment,
Trade Union organisation is indispensable. Moreover, it is
the Trade Union alone which can supply the machinery for
the automatic interpretation and the peaceful revision of the
general agreement. To Collective Bargaining, the machinery
of Trade Unionism may bring, in fact, both continuity and
elasticity.

The development of a definite and differentiated
machinery for Collective Bargaining in the Trade Union
world coincides, as might be expected, with its enlargement
from the workshop to the whole town, and from the town to
the whole industry. As soon as a Trade Union properly so
called comes into existence with a president and secretary,
it becomes more and more usual for these officers to act as
the workmen's representatives in trade negotiations. This is
the stage in which we find nearly all the single-branched
unions, such as those of the Sheffield trades, the Dublin
local societies, the Coopers, Sailmakers, and other small and
compact bodies of workmen all over the kingdom. Even
where the growth of a local union into a national society
has necessitated the appointment of a salaried general
secretary, giving his whole time to his duties, it is exceptional
to find him conducting all, or even the bulk of the negotia-
tions of its members with their employers. In the United
Operative Plumbers' Association, for instance, practically the
whole of the Collective Bargaining is still conducted by the
branch officials, or by representative workmen specially selected
as delegates. A further stage is marked by the creation of
permanent committees, unconcerned with the ordinary branch
administration, to deal solely with local trade questions.

1 80 Trade Union Function

Thus the bulk of the Collective Bargaining of the members
of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers was, until 1892,
conducted by the society's district committees, each acting
for the whole of a local industrial district, in which there
-e often many branches. These negotiators are, like the
>ranch officials, men working at their trade, and only spas-
todically engaged in special business of industrial nego-
tiation. Even disputes of such national importance as the
costly and disastrous strikes of the Tyneside engineers of
1891, were initiated and managed by the local district
committees and their officials, that is to say, by workmen
called from the workshop only for the time required by the
society's business. Over more than one-third of the Trade
Union world, including such old established and widely
extended unions as the Friendly Society of Operative Stone-
masons, the Friendly Society of Ironfounders, and the
Operative Bricklayers' Society, the workmen have not
developed ^an^_jnpj^L_s^eidajisedmachinery for Collective
Bargaining than the branch or^onsWct--ee{»ffi4ttee of men
working at their trade, meeting representative employers
when occasion arises. This primitive machinery, although a
great advance on the " shop-club," has manifest disadvantages.
If, as often happens, a personal quarrel or local bitterness is
at the bottom of the dispute, the prominent local workman
who represents his fellows can hardly escape its influence.
And, apart from personal antagonisms and questions of
temper, the fact that it is the conditions of his own life that
are involved does not conduce to that combination of
courage and reasonableness most likely to lead to a lasting
settlement. If the negotiator himself is fortunately placed,
or would personally be much injured by a strike, he will
be tempted to acquiesce in conditions not advantageous to
the whole trade. In the reverse case — perhaps the more
common — the energetic and active-minded workman, whom
his fellows choose to represent them, is apt to find, in the
joy of the fight, a relief from the monotony of manual
labor. If a strike ensues, it brings to him at any rate the

The Method of Collective Bargaining 1 8 1

compensation that for a few weeks, or perhaps months,
he becomes the paid organise1r~6F"the^mie¥VJQyerwhelrned,
it is true, with anxious and harassing work, but temporarily
exchanging a position of passive obedience for one of active
leadership.

But, apart altogether from the disturbing influence of the
" personaf equation," it is obvious that the manual workers
will stand at a grave disadvantage if they do not command
the services of an expert negotiator. Unfortunately for his
interests, the workman has an inveterate belief in what he
calls a " practical man " — that is, one who is actually working
at the trade concerned. He does not see that negotiation
is in itself a craft, in which a man must have had a special
training before he can be considered a " practical " man for
the business in hand. The proper adjustment of the rate
of remuneration in a given establishment requires, to begin
with, a wide range of industrial and economic knowledge.
Unless the workman's negotiator is accurately acquainted
with the rates and precise conditions prevailing in other
establishments and in other districts, he will be unable to
criticise the statements which will be made by the employer,
and incapable of advising his own clients whether their
demand is a reasonable one. Without some knowledge of
the economic conditions of the industry, the state of trade,
the number of orders in hand or to be expected, and the
condition of the labor market, his judgment of the opportune-
ness or strategic advantage of the men's demand will be of
no value. The mechanic kept working for fifty or sixty
hours a week at one narrow process in a single establishment
would be an extraordinary genius if he could acquire this
information. Nor would a knowledge of the facts alone
suffice. The best kit of tools will not make a man a good
carpenter without that training in their use which experience
alone can give. The quick apprehension and mental agility
which make up the greater part of the art of using facts are
not fostered by days spent in physical toil. Finally, the
perfect negotiator, like the perfect carpenter, attains his

1 82 Trade Union Fimction

expertness only by incessant practice of his art. Here again,
the workman is at a special disability compared with the
captain of industry. The making of bargains and agree-
ments, which occupies only an infinitesimal fraction of a
workman's life and thought, makes up the daily routine of
the commercial man.

These considerations have slowly overcome the work-
man's objections, and have, in the most powerful unions,
together comprising over a third of the aggregate member-
ship, caused the bulk of the Collective Bargaining to be
gradually transferred from the non-commissioned officers to
the salaried civil service of the movement. Especially in
the piecework trades has the amateur negotiator most clearly
demonstrated his inefficiency. When the workman's re-
muneration depends on a combination of many different and
constantly changing factors — the novelty of the pattern, the
character of the material, the variations in the machinery,
the speed of the engine — success in bargaining demands, in
addition to all the other qualifications, a special aptitude for
quickly seizing the net result of proposed changes in one or
more of the factors. It is in the piecework trades therefore
that we find the machinery for Collective Bargaining in its
most highly developed form. The great staple industries of
cotton, coal, and iron, together with boot and shoe-making,
and the hosiery and lace trades, have especially developed
elaborate and complicated organisations for Collective Bar-
gaining which have excited the admiration of economic
students all over the world.

We must here plunge into a maze of complicated
technical detail relating to these industries, each of which
has developed its machinery for Collective Bargaining in its
own way, and we despair of making the reader understand
either our exposition or our criticism unless he will keep
constantly in mind one fundamental distinction, which is all-
important. This vital distinction is between the making of
a new bargain, and the interpreting of the terms of an
existing one. Where the machinery for Collective Bargaining

The Method of Collective Bargaining 1 83

has broken down, we usually discover that this distinction
has not been made ; and it is only where this fundamental
distinction has been clearly maintained that the machinery
works without friction or ill-feeling. Let us consider first
the interpretation of an existing bargain. Directly a general
agreement or formal treaty has been concluded in any trade
between the general body of employers, on the one hand,
and the general body of workmen on the other, there arises
a practically incessant series of disputes as to the applica-
tion of the agreement to particular cases. Thus, as we shall
see, the highly elaborate and precisely detailed lists of the
English Cotton-spinners do not prevent, in one or other of
the thousands of mills to which they apply, the almost
daily occurrence of a difference of opinion between employer
and operative as to the wages due. Similarly the unanimous
agreement of a " uniform statement " in the boot and shoe
trade leaves open endless questions as to the classification of
the ever-changing patterns called for by the fashion of each
season. The determination of the " county average " of the
Northumberland or Durham coalminer leaves it still to be
determined what tonnage rate should be fixed for any
particular seam, in order that the workmen may earn the
normal wage. The point at issue in these cases is not the
amount per week which the workmen in any particular
establishment should be permitted to earn — for that has, in
principle, already been settled — but the rate at which, under
the actual conditions of that establishment, and the class of
goods in question, the piecework price must be computed in
order that the average earnings of a particular section of
workmen shall amount to no more and no less than the
agreed standard. This, it will be seen, is exclusively an
issue of fact, in which both the desires and the tactical
strength of the parties directly concerned must be entirely
eliminated. For conciliation, compromise, and balancing of
expediencies, there is absolutely no room. On the other
hand, it is indispensable that the ascertainment of facts
should attain an almost scientific precision. Moreover, the

184 Trade Union Function

settlement should be automatic, rapid, and inexpensive.
The ideal machinery for this class of cases would, in fact,
be a peripatetic calculating-machine, endowed with a high
degree of technical knowledge, which could accurately
register all the factors concerned, and unerringly grind out
the arithmetical result.

When we come to the settlement of the terms upon
which a new general agreement should be entered into, an
entirely different set of considerations is involved. Whether
the general level of wages in the trade should be raised or
lowered by I o per cent ; whether the number of boys to
be engaged by any one employer should be restricted, and if
so, by what scale ; whether the hours of labor should be
reduced, and overtime regulated or prohibited, — are not
problems which could be solved by even the most perfect
calculating-machine. Here nothing has been decided, or
accepted in advance by both parties, and the fullest possible
play is left for the arts of diplomacy. In so far as the issue
is left to Collective Bargaining there is not even any question
of principle involved. The workmen are frankly striving to
get for themselves the best terms that can permanently be
exacted from the employers. The employers, on the other
hand, are endeavouring, in accordance with business prin-
ciples, to buy their labor in the cheapest market. The issue is
a trial of strength between the parties. Open warfare — the
stoppage of the industry — is costly and even disastrous to
both sides. But though neither party desires war, there is
always the alternative of fighting out the issue. The
resources and tactical strength of each side must accordingly
exercise a potent influence on the deliberations. The pleni-
potentiaries must higgle and cast about to find acceptable
alternatives, seeking, like ambassadors in international con-
ference, not to ascertain what are the facts, nor yet what
is the just decision according to some ethical standard or
view of social expediency, but to find a common basis which
each side can bring itself to agree to, rather than go to war.
Finally, however wise may be the decision come to, the

The Method of Collective Bargaining 1 85

acceptance and carrying out of the collective bargain
ultimately arrived at, depends upon the extent to which the
negotiators express the feelings and command the confidence
of the whole class affected. All these considerations must
be taken carefully into account in the formation of successful
machinery for Collective Bargaining.

The most obvious form of permanent machinery for
Collective Bargaining is a joint committee, consisting of
equal numbers of representatives of the employers and work-
men respectively. This may almost be called the " orthodox "
panacea of industrial philanthropists. For over thirty years,
since the experiments of Sir Rupert Kettle and Mr. Mun-
della, employers and workmen have been persistently urged
to adopt the form of a " board of arbitration and concilia-
tion," consisting of representatives of each side, and with or
without an impartial chairman or an umpire. Such a joint
committee, it has been supposed, could thrash out in friendly
discussion all points in dispute, and arrive at an amicable
understanding. In intractable cases, the umpire's decision
would cut the Gordian knot. Readers of the History of
Trade Unionism will remember how eagerly this idea was
taken up by the organised workmen in certain great
industries, and how, in coalmining and iron and steel in
particular, it has since enjoyed the favor both of employers
and employed. We need not stop to describe all the cases
in which this form of machinery has, from time to time, been
adopted. We shall best understand its operation by con-
sidering a couple of leading instances, the " joint boards " of
the boot and shoe trade, and the " joint committees " of the
Northumberland and Durham coalminers.

The great machine industry of boot and shoe-making
has been provided, for some years past, with a formal and
elaborate constitution, mutually agreed to by employers and
employed, and expressly designed " to prevent a strike or
lock-out, and to secure the reference of all trade disputes to
arbitration." J The machinery for Collective Bargaining thus

1 Rules for the Prevention of Strikes and Lockouts, etc., i6th August 1892,

1 86 Trade Union Function

established puts into concrete form all the aspirations of
enthusiastic advocates of " industrial peace." We have first
a " local board of conciliation and arbitration " in every
important centre of the trade. To this board, formed of
an equal number of elected representatives of the local
employers and the local Trade Unionists, must be referred
"every question, or aspect of a question, affecting the
relations of employers and workmen individually or col-
lectively." If the board cannot agree, the question goes
to an impartial umpire, acceptable to both sides. Issues
affecting the whole industry were, until 1894, dealt with by
a national conference of great dignity and importance.
Nine chosen leaders of the Federated Associations of Boot
and Shoe Manufacturers of Great Britain met, in the council
chamber of the Leicester Town Hall, an equal number of
elected representatives of the National Union of Boot and
Shoe Operatives. These elaborate debates, conducted with
all the ceremony of a State Trial, were presided over by an
eminent and universally respected solicitor, sometime mayor
of the town. If no agreement could be arrived at, the
conference enjoyed the services, as umpire, of no less an
authority than Sir Henry (now Lord) James, formerly
Attorney-General, before whom, sitting as a judge, the issue
was elaborately reargued by the spokesmen of each side.
Finally as a means of influencing the public opinion of the
trade, there were published, not only the precise and
authoritative decisions of the conference or the umpire, but
also a verbatim report of all the proceedings.1

We can imagine how this elaborate and carefully
thought out machinery for Collective Bargaining would have

appended to Report of Conference, 1892. These rules, which are signed by
three employers and three workmen, on behalf of their respective associations,
consist of fifteen clauses defining the constitution and method of working both
of the "Local Board of Conciliation and Arbitration," and of the "National
Conference." They will be found in the Board of Trade Report on Strikes and
Lockouts 0/1893, c> 7566 of 1894, pp. 253-257.

2 The "transcript of the shorthand writers' notes" of the Conference of August
1892, and the subsequent trial before the umpire, forms a volume of 152 pages
of rich material for the student of industrial organisation.

The Method of Collective Bargaining 1 8 7

delighted the heart of the enthusiastic believers in " boards
of conciliation and arbitration." Nor need it be contested
that it has been the means of effecting many peaceful settle-
ments in the industry. But we do not think that any one
conversant with the trade, or any student of the voluminous
reports of the proceedings, will deny that the boards have
been the cause of endless friction, discontent, and waste of
energy among workmen and employers alike. Scarcely a
quarter passes without the operatives, in some district or
another, revolting against their local board ; condemning or
withdrawing their representatives ; and even occasionally
refusing to obey the award of the umpire.1 The employers
are, on their side, no better satisfied than the men, and in
1894 the national conference was brought to an end by the
secession of the federated manufacturers, and their resolute
refusal to submit the issues to arbitration. The result was a
stoppage in 1895 of practically the entire industry from one
end of the kingdom to the other, which was only brought to
an end by the half-authoritative interference of the Board of
Trade.2

If we examine this general discontent we find it taking
different forms among the workmen and the employers
respectively. The operatives complain that, when a general
agreement has been concluded they cannot get any speedy
or certain enforcement of it through the local boards.
Thus, the Bristol representative at the annual delegate
meeting in 1894, complained bitterly of the dilatory way in
which his local board acted in its interpretation work.
Questions " had been hanging about from six to nine months
from the board to the umpire. Decisions had been given
by the umpire on boots after a delay of eight or nine

1 The local boards, of which twelve were in existence at the end of 1894,
date from 1875. The Stafford Board was dissolved in 1878, and the Leeds
Board in 1881. The years 1891-94 saw no fewer than seven dissolutions, and
the important centres of Stafford, Manchester, and Kingswood still remain without
boards. The National Conference, established in August 1892, met five times
in the next three years, the sittings being suspended on the withdrawal of the
employers in December 1894.

2 See the Labour Gazette, April and May 1895.

1 88 Trade Union Function

months. ... In one case in the factory where he worked a
boot was sent to the arbitration board, and thence to the
umpire. The decision arrived at by the latter was in favor
of the men. There was something like seven shillings each
due to two or three men on that particular boot. But one
of them had left the town in the interim, and the result of
the delay was that he was practically swindled out of the
seven shillings. New samples had been introduced at the
beginning of the year, and the shoes had been made under
protest, at a price the employers had quoted, till the end of
the season. Then, perhaps, when the season was ended,
they got a decision in their favor, face to face with all the
difficulties of getting back the money due to them. . . .
This continual delay sickened the whole of them in Bristol,
and although there had not been a ballot taken on the
question of arbitration in Bristol, he felt sure there were over
ninety per cent of the men opposed to it." ]

The Kingswood Local Board broke up in 1894, the
umpire resigning his post in disgust. Discussion had pro-
ceeded upon a " statement " for " light " boots, and points
in dispute were submitted to the umpire by the board. The
bulk of the manufacturers thereupon flatly refused to send
any samples of the boots in question, and thus made it im-
possible for the umpire to decide the cases submitted to him.2
This produced the greatest possible irritation among the men,
who urged that, as the employers had failed to submit to the
umpire's award, the operatives' claim should be adopted.
These cases might be indefinitely multiplied from all the
centres of the industry. But delay is not the only objection
brought by the operatives against the working of the local
boards. When at last the umpire's decision has been given
it has often failed to command the assent, and sometimes
even to secure the obedience of the workmen. This arises,
we believe, from the class of umpire whom it has been

1 Report of the Edinburgh Conference, May 1894 (the delegate meeting of
the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives).

2 Shoe and Leather Record, 3<Dth November 1894.

The Method of Collective Bargaining 189

necessary to choose. The questions of interpretation neces-
sarily turn, not on any general principle, but on extremely
technical trade details, which are unintelligible to any person
outside the industry.1 In the absence of any paid pro-
fessional expert, permanently engaged for precisely this
work, the umpire has in practice to be chosen from among
the employers, the board usually agreeing upon a leading
manufacturer in another district. This reliance on the
unpaid service of a non-resident increases the delay. But
what is more important is, that however generally respected
such an umpire may be, it is inevitable that, when his award
runs counter to the claim of the operatives, these should
accuse him of class bias. The alternative of choosing one
of the officials of the union would, it need hardly be said, be
equally distasteful to the employers.

The discontent of the employers is directed chiefly to
another feature of the organisation. The work of the local
boards is so laborious and incessant that the great magnates
of the industry cannot spare time to attend. On questions
of interpretation, they would be willing to leave the busi-
ness to their managers or smaller employers. But besides
questions of interpretation the local board have perpetually
brought before them disputes which turn upon the admission of
what the employers regard as " new principles." If the local
board, with the concurrence of its employer-members, decides
the issue, all the other employers in the district, some of
whom may be " captains of industry " on a huge scale, find
a new regulation made binding on them in the conduct of
what they regard as " their own business." If on the other
hand the local board remits such issues — virtually the

1 Thus the umpire for the Norwich Local Board had to award rates to be
paid in the following cases, remitted from a single meeting, (i) "A woman's
5ths if changed from self- vamp to calf vamp; (2) a girl's 4ths if changed from
self-vamp to glace kid vamp ; (3) a woman's 4th's ditto ; (4) a girl's kid button
levant seal vamp or golosh ; (5) a girl's glace kid one finger strap ; (6) a woman's
kid elastic mock button front shoe sew-round." The award, which is equally
unintelligible to the general reader, will be found in the Shoe and Leather Record
Annual for 1892-93, p. 121.

190 Trade Union Function

conclusion of new general agreements — to the national con-
ference, all the employers in the kingdom find themselves
in a similar predicament. Moreover, in a publicly conducted
national conference, formed of equal numbers from each
party, neither the representative workmen nor the representa-
tive employers dare concede anything to their opponents, or
even submit to a compromise. The result is that every
important issue is inevitably remitted by the conference to
the umpire. Lord James has accordingly found himself in
the remarkable position of imposing laws upon the entire
boot and shoe-making industry, prescribing for instance, not
only a minimum rate of wages, but also a precise numerical
limitation of the number of boy-learners to be engaged by
each employer, the conditions under which alone a wholesale
trader may give work out to sub-contractors, and the extent
to which employers shall themselves provide workshop
accommodation, and the date before which such premises
shall be in use. This, it is obvious, goes beyond Collective
Bargaining. The awards of Lord James amount, in fact,
to legislative regulation of the industry, the legislature in
this case being, not a representative assembly acting on
behalf of the whole community, but a dictator elected by the
trade.1

It is therefore not surprising to find the employers
quickly protesting against so drastic and far-reaching
an arrangement. But it was one to which they had ex-
plicitly and unreservedly pledged themselves. They had
promised, by the rules of the i6th August 1892, that
" every question or aspect of a question affecting the
relations of employers and workmen individually or collectively
should in case of disagreement be submitted for settlement,"
first to the local board, then to the national conference, and

1 It is a minor grievance of the employers that no distinguished lawyer
can be found to give the unpaid and laborious service of an umpire, who is not
also a politician. It is impossible for the employers to avoid the suspicion
that any politician will be unconsciously biassed in favor of the most numerous
section of the electors. See the significant quotation given in the footnote at
p. 240.

The Method of Collective Bargaining 1 9 1

finally, if need be, to the umpire. That this promise was
not confined to questions of interpretation is made manifest
by the express mention in the same document of the settle-
ment of disputes involving " new principles." In the long
discussion which led up to the signing of the rules, they
had, in fact, successfully pleaded for adopting " honestly and
unreservedly arbitration pure and simple, and for every
dispute, and under all conditions." * In their anxiety to
remove every chance of a stoppage of their industry, they
had overlooked the fundamental distinction between questions
of the interpretation of an existing contract and questions
as to the terms of a new settlement. If they had listened
to the warning of the able editor of their own trade organ,
they would not have made this blunder. The very month
before the conference of 1892 he was urging exactly the
distinction upon which we insist. " Employers," he wrote,
"have never contended that arbitration would settle every
conceivable kind of dispute between capital and labor.
But they have contended that where certain established
principles are already recognised by both szdesy the adjustment
of details can better be settled by arbitration than in any
other way. ... It must be obvious that, whatever the
future may bring, employers could not now prudently allow
every dispute with their workmen to be settled by a third
person. To say nothing of the question of boy labor which
is now at issue, a number of others may be mentioned
regarding which the employer could not consent to surrender
any portion of his discretion or responsibility." 2 The sub-
sequent events quickly proved that this view of the state
of mind of the average employer was correct, and that the
chosen representatives of the Federated Associations of Boot
and Shoe Manufacturers had failed to understand the words
which they were, with all solemnity, using. When the

1 Speech of Mr. Gale, a leading employer. Third day of Conference,
August 1892. The men had wished to exclude any question of a general reduc-
tion of wages, whereupon the employers had insisted that no exception whatever
should be made.

2 Shoe and Leather Record^ July 1892.

192 Trade Union Function

workmen brought up cases of actual disputes that had arisen
about boy labor, machinery, the "team system," and the
employment of non-unionists, the employers protested that
they had never meant such questions as these to be discussed
at all. The president had, of course, no alternative but to
hold them bound to their explicit agreement, and to overrule
their protests. After prolonged ill-feeling, the associated
employers revolted, and withdrew their representatives from
the national conference, alleging first of all, that the work-
men had in some cases refused to abide by the award of
the umpire, and further, that the national conference had
become " a legislative tribunal for the trade." *

Thus experience of the working of the elaborate machinery
for Collective Bargaining provided in the boot and shoe
industry has revealed many imperfections. Some of these
have been avoided in our second example, the conciliation
boards and the joint committees of the Northumberland and
Durham coalminers. Here we have, to begin with, a clear
distinction maintained between the machinery for interpreta-
tion and that for concluding a new agreement. The earnings
of the miners in both counties are determined ultimately by
general principles2 applicable to the whole of each county,
which are revised at occasional conferences of representative

1 Manifesto of Federated Associations of Boot and Shoe Manufacturers of
Great Britain, 2Oth December 1894. For documents and exact particulars of
the dispute which thereupon arose, see Labour Gazette, April and May 1895 >
also the Shoe and Leather Record^ and the Monthly Reports of the National Union
of Boot and Shoe Operatives from October 1894 to June 1895. We nave here
dealt with the matter, not on its merits, but only in so far as it illustrates the
machinery for collective bargaining. The agreement brought about by the Board
of Trade on igth April 1895, which now governs the industry, expressly excludes
four specified subjects from discussion by the local boards and makes no provision
for a national conference. But so far as we understand the document, no dis-
tinction is even now made between questions of interpretation and questions as
to the terms of a new agreement. Both kinds of questions are, as before, to be
decided where necessary by the umpire.

2 These general principles include a normal standard wage, with a corre-
sponding normal tonnage rate, applicable to the whole county. This is called
the " County Average," a somewhat misleading phrase as the normal rate is not,
and has long not been, a precise "average" of the actual earnings of all the
miners in the county, and is now only a conventional figure upon which percentages
of advance or reduction are based.

The Method of Collective Bargaining \ 93

workmen and employers.1 Neither in Durham nor in
Northumberland has this board of conciliation anything to
do with the interpretation of the formal agreement from time
to time arrived at, or with the incessant labor involved in
its application. Its meetings, held only at rare intervals,
command the presence of the greatest coal-owners in the
county, and of the most influential miners' leaders specially
elected for the purpose. The board deliberates in private,
and publishes only its decisions. Resort to the umpire,
or in Northumberland to the casting vote of the chairman,
is rare, the usual practice being for a frank interchange
of views to go on until a basis of agreement can be
found. On the other hand, all questions of interpretation or
application are dealt with by another tribunal, which goes
on undisturbed even when one or other party has temporarily
withdrawn its representatives from the board of conciliation.
In marked distinction from the conciliation board, the "joint
committee " in each county meets frequently, and is engaged
in incessant work. But this committee is expressly debarred
from dealing with " such as may be termed county questions,
or which may affect the general trade," 2 and is rigidly con-
fined to the application of the existing general agreement to
particular mines or seams.3

1 In Durham this conference is, since February 1895, called "The Board of
Conciliation for the Coal Trade." The rules of that date provide for eighteen
representatives of each side, with an umpire to be mutually agreed upon, or in
default nominated by the Board of Trade. In Northumberland, the corresponding
" Board of Conciliation " now consists of fifteen on each side, with an independent
chairman having a casting vote, to be nominated, in default of agreement, by the
Chairman of the Northumberland County Council. The name and constitution
of these boards are frequently varied in minor details.

2 Durham Miners' Joint Committee Rules, November 1879.

3 Owing to the great differences in the ease and facilities with which the coal
is got in different mines and different seams of the same mine, it is impossible,
consistently with uniformity in the rate of payment for the whole work done, to
apply any identical tonnage rate throughout the county. When it is found that
the men in any mine constantly earn per day an amount which departs appreciably
from the normal (the so-called " County Average"), the employer or the work-
men appeal for a readjustment of the tonnage rate in that particular instance. It
must be counted as a grave defect in the miners' organisations outside North-
umberland and Durham that no systematic arrangements exist for this adjust-
ment of the standard wage to the particular circumstances of each mine or seam.

VOL. I O

194 Trade Union Function

For deliberateness and impartiality this tribunal leaves
nothing to be desired. The members, all of whom are
practically acquainted with the industry, do not directly
represent either of the parties concerned in any dispute, and
have no other interest than that of securing uniformity in
the application of a common agreement. The chief dis-
advantage of the tribunal is that which we have already
seen complained of in the local boards of the boot and shoe
trade. For deciding mere issues of fact, as to the circum-
stances of a particular seam or pit, a joint committee is
necessarily a cumbrous, expensive, and dilatory machine.
Every case involves the journeying to Newcastle of witnesses
on both sides, and their examination by all the members of
the committee. This consumes so much time that cases
frequently stand in the agenda for several months before
being reached, a fact which leads to great dissatisfaction to
those concerned.1 Moreover, it is often impossible to come
to any decision without personal inspection of the seam, and
difficult cases are therefore constantly referred for decision
to one employer and one workman, with power to choose an
umpire. This results in a more precise ascertainment of
facts, but increases the delay and expense. Finally, there is
in such cases no guarantee that the decisions, arrived at by
different sets of people, will preserve that exact uniformity
which it is the special function of the tribunal to enforce.

Thus, the much-advertised expedient of a single joint
committee of employers and employed to deal with all
questions that arise between them, has not proved a wholly

In Lancashire, Derbyshire, and other districts of the Miners' Federation, for
instance, there is no better protection of the standard wage than pit-lists, pre-
scribing tonnage rates for individual collieries. No machinery exists for ensuring
uniformity (of the rate of pay for the amount of work) between these lists, or even
for revising their rates to meet the changing circumstances of particular seams.
If a miner finds he is earning a very low amount per day, he applies to his lodge
meeting for permission to leave and receive strike benefit. More or less informal
negotiations may then be opened with the mine manager, who often fixes a new
rate, in consultation either with the group of miners themselves, or with the lodge
officials, or in some instances with salaried agents of the union.

1 This is especially the case in Durham, where the number of mines dealt
with is very large.

The Method of Collective Bargaining \ 95

satisfactory machinery for Collective Bargaining. The ex-
pediency of having separate machinery for the essentially
different processes of interpreting an existing agreement and
concluding a new one is, we think, clearly demonstrated.
For one of these two processes, the application and inter-
pretation of an existing agreement, a joint committee is a
cumbrous and awkward device. A better solution of the
problem has been found in the Lancashire cotton trade.
The cotton operatives, like the Northumberland and Durham
coalminers, have distinguished, clearly and sharply, between
the formation of a new general agreement and the applica-
tion of an existing agreement to particular cases. But they
have done more than this. Unconsciously and, as it were, in-
stinctively, they have felt their way to a form of machinery for
Collective Bargaining which uses the representative element
where the representative element is needed, whilst on the
other hand it employs the professional expert for work at
which the mere representative would be out of place.

We will first describe the machinery for the interpreta-
tion of an existing agreement. The factors which enter into
the piecework rates of the Lancashire cotton operatives are
so complicated that both the employers and the workpeople
have long since recognised the necessity of maintaining
salaried professional experts who devote their whole time to
the service respectively of the employers' association and the
Trade Union. The earnings of a cotton-spinner, for instance,
depend upon the complex interaction of such factors as the
" draw " of the mule, the number of its spindles, and the
speed with which the machinery works. To compute the
operative's earnings, even with the aid of the elaborate
printed tables known as the " List," entails no ordinary
amount of arithmetical facility. But it is especially the
custom of allowing the operative compensation for defective
material or old-fashioned machinery and the employer a
corresponding allowance for improvements, which has thrown
the collective bargaining, as regards interpretation, entirely
into the hands of professional experts. Thus, if an Oldham

196 Trade Union Function

operative finds his earnings falling below the current figure,
either because the raw cotton is inferior or the machinery
obsolete, or if an employer speeds up his engine or introduces
improvements, the experts on each side visit the mill, and
confer together as to the net effect of the change. If the
deficiency in earnings is considered to be due to imperfection
in the raw material, or to the old-fashioned character of the
machinery, the employer is required to add a specified per-
centage to the normal piecework rate, so that the work-
man may not suffer. On the other hand, if the employer
has effected special improvements, by which the product is
augmented, without increasing the strain on the operative,
he is allowed to deduct a corresponding percentage from the
" List " price. • The cotton -weavers have what is essentially
the same machinery for calculating the characteristic technical
details of their trade.

The importance and complication of the duties thus
entrusted to the salaried officials of the cotton-spinners' and
cotton-weavers' unions has led to the adoption of an interest-
ing method of recruiting this branch of the Trade Union
Civil Service. The Cotton -weavers, in 1 86 1, subjected the
candidates for the then vacant office of general secretary to
a competitive examination.1 This practice was adopted by
the Cotton-spinners, and is now the regular way of selecting
all the officials who are to concern themselves with the
intricate trade calculations. The branches retain the right of

1 Mr. Thomas Birtwistle, the successful candidate on this occasion, was,
after over thirty years' honorable service of his Trade Union, appointed by the
Home Secretary an Inspector in the Factory Department, as the only person
competent to understand and interpret the complicated methods of remuneration
in the weaving trade. His son, brought up in the Trade Union office, has since
also been appointed a factory inspector. The successful candidate at the Bolton
Cotton-spinners' examination in 1895 was> a^er two years' service as Trade
Union Secretary, engaged in a similar capacity by the local Master Cotton-
spinners' Association. So far as we know, this is the first instance of a Trade
Union official transferring his services from the operatives to the employers, and it
throws an interesting light on the transformation of the " labor leader " into the
professional accountant. The bulk of the daily work of the Trade Union
officials in the cotton industry consists, in fact, in securing the uniform observance
of a collective agreement, a service which, like that of a legal or medical pro-
fessional man, could, with equal propriety, be rendered to either client.

The Method of Collective Bargaining 1 97

nominating the candidates, and the members, acting through
their Representative Assembly, their right of election. But
between the day of nomination and that of election all
the candidates submit to a competitive examination, con-
ducted by the most experienced officers of the unions. A
fairly stiff paper is set in the arithmetic and technical cal-
culations required in the trade, and each candidate writes
an essay. But a prominent part is played by an oral
examination, in which the examiners assume the part of
employers, cross-question the candidates one by one on the
alleged grievances of which they are supposed to have come
to complain, and do not refrain, in order to test their wits
and their good temper, from adopting the bullying manners
of the worst employers. The marks gained by all the candi-
dates are printed in full detail, the name of the glib-tongued
" popular leader " being sometimes followed by the comment
of " entirely wrong " or " not worked " in all his arithmetical
calculations, and by infinitesimal marks for spelling, writing,
and conduct under cross-examination. The result is usually
the election of the candidate who has obtained the highest
marks, but the Representative Assembly occasionally exercises
its discretion in giving a preference to a candidate of known
character or good service, who has fallen a few marks behind
the best examinee.1

1 OPERATIVE COTTON-SPINNERS' PROVINCIAL ASSOCIATION OF
BOLTON AND DISTRICT.

Offices : 77 St. George's Road, Bolton.

Examination Paper for Candidates applying for situation of Gen. Sec. of the
above Association.

2$th January 1895.

Subject I. — Calculations.

1. Find the number of stretches put up in a week, and the price per 100
required to produce a gross wage of £3 : 9 : 7 per pair of mules, from the follow-
ing particulars : — Number of spindles in one mule, 1090. From 56^ hours,
deduct 2j hours for cleaning and accidental stoppages, and one hour and ten
minutes for doffing. Speed of each mule, 4 stretches in 75 seconds.

2. Taking the stretches as ascertained by the previous question to be each

198 Trade Union Function

It is to this method of selection that we attribute the
remarkable success of the officials of the Cotton Trade Unions
in obtaining the best possible terms for their members. We
regard it as a great disadvantage to the Trade Union world
that the system has not hitherto spread to other unions.
It seems to us to combine the advantages of competitive
examination and popular selection, and it ensures the union
against the serious calamity of finding itself saddled with an
incompetent officer.

This part of the machinery for Collective Bargaining
among the Cotton Operatives — the meeting of the salaried
professional experts on each side — deals, as we have said,
only with questions of interpretation, that is, the application

64^ inches long, how many hanks would the week's production amount to, and
what price per 1000 hanks would be required to bring out the wage previously
given ?

3. Assuming the standard price paid for producing a certain count of yarn to
be I2s. yd. per 100 Ibs., what would the price be after a reduction of 7.9 per
cent, and what percentage would it require to bring back the reduced price to
the original amount ?

4. Divide .3364502 by .001645.

5. Extract the square root of 8o's counts to three places of decimals, and
then ascertain the required turns per inch for both twist and weft, the assumed
standard being the square root of the counts, multiplied by 3^ ior weft, and 3$
for twist.

6. If good fair Egyptian cotton is advanced from 47Arths to 4$d. per lb., what
would be the rate per cent of the increase ? Also what would be the amount of
the broker's commission on a sale of 1000 bales of 480 Ibs. each, at one-quarter
of one per cent, and what would be the difference in his commission as between
selling at one price and the other ?

7. An upright shaft runs at the rate of 80 revolutions per minute, and has on
it a wheel with 70 teeth driving a wheel with 40 teeth on the line shaft. Over
each pair of mules there is on the line shaft a drum 40 inches in diameter driving
a counter pulley 16 inches in diameter. On the counter shaft is a drum 30 inches
in diameter, driving a rim-pulley 15 inches in diameter. Give the revolutions of
the rim shaft per minute.

8. Assuming a rim shaft to be making 680 revolutions per minute, with a
2o-inch rim, a ii^-inch tin roller-pulley, a 6-inch tin roller, and spindle wharves
rfths of an inch in diameter, what will be the number of revolutions of the
spindles per minute, after allowing T\th of an inch each to the diameter of the tin
roller and spindle wharves for slipping of bands ?

17. — Writing; Composition, and Spelling.

Compile an essay on Trade Unions, with special reference to their useful
features. The essays must not exceed about 1200 words, and the points taken

The Method of Collective Bargaining \ 99

to particular jobs, or particular processes, of the existing
general agreements accepted by both 'sides. When it comes
to concluding or revising the general agreement itself — a
matter in which not one firm or operative alone is interested,
but the whole body of employers and workmen — we find the
machinery for Collective Bargaining taking the form of a joint
committee composed of a certain number of representatives
of each side. Thus the Cotton-spinners, whilst leaving to
the arbitrament of the secretaries of the district union
and district employers' association all questions relating to
particular mills or particular workmen, revise the details of
their lists in periodical conferences in which the leading
employers of the district concerned arrange the matter with
the leading trade union officials and representative operatives.
And when the point at issue is not the alteration of the
technical details of the list, but a general reduction or advance
of wages by so much per cent throughout the trade, or a
general shortening of the working time, we see the matter

into consideration will be handwriting, spelling, composition, and the clear concise
marshalling of whatever facts or arguments are adduced.

III. — Oral Examination.

Each candidate will be examined separately as to his capacity for dealing
orally with labour disputes. On this point they will have to formulate what
they consider would be a complaint requiring immediate attention, and the
examiners will question them, and possibly urge some arguments against the
views advanced.

Candidates will be allowed from ten in the forenoon to five in the afternoon
to complete their examination in the two first subjects, with one hour for dinner.
Candidates will not be allowed to refer to any books or papers. The third
subject (oral examination) will not be taken until Sunday, the 27th instant, at
I o'clock.

THOMAS ASHTON, j Examiners,
JAS. MAWDSLEY, )

Thirteen candidates in all entered for this examination. The examiners
allowed a maximum of 50 marks for each sum, and loo marks each for writing,
spelling, composition, and oral examination, making 800 marks the maximum
attainable. The number of marks obtained by the candidates varied from 195
to 630. The post was finally given to the second candidate in the list (610
marks), who was an old and esteemed officer of the union, and whose second
place at the examination was chiefly due to his obtaining lower marks for hand-
writing than the most successful candidate.

20O Trade Union Function

discussed between appointed representatives of the whole
body of the employers, attended by their agents and solicitors,
and the central executive of the Amalgamated Association
of Operative Cotton-spinners as representing all the district
unions.

In the case of the English Cotton-spinners the lists of
prices have been so carefully and elaborately worked out
that even district conferences are of only occasional occur-
rence. The general policy of both employers and operatives
is against any but rare and moderate variations of the
standard earnings. Such questions as hours of labor and
sanitation do not, among the Cotton Operatives, for reasons
that we shall explain in a subsequent chapter, fall within the
sphere of the Method of Collective Bargaining. The joint
conferences of the whole trade take place therefore only in
momentous crises, and are accompanied by all the solemnity
and strenuousness of an assembly on whose decision turns
the question of peace or war.

It is interesting to see one of these momentous confer-
ences at work. The historic all-night sitting which settled
the great Cotton-spinners' dispute of 1893, and concluded
the agreement which has since governed the trade, was
vividly described by one of the leading Trade Union officials
who took part in it. The employers had demanded a
reduction of 10 per cent, whilst the men had urged that it
would be better to reduce the number of hours worked per
week. The stoppage had lasted no less than twenty weeks,
practically every mill in the whole industry being closed.
Feeling on both sides had run high, but after frequent
negotiations and incessant newspaper comment, the points
at issue had been narrowed down, and both parties felt the
need of bringing the struggle to an end. To escape the
crowd of reporters the place of meeting was kept secret, and
fixed for 3 P.M. at a country inn, to which the whole party
journeyed together in the same train.

" On the employers' side was Mr. A. E. Rayner, looking
all the better for his holiday at Bournemouth. With him

The Method of Collective Bargaining 201

were some sixteen or seventeen others, amongst whom were
Mr. Andrew, Mr. John B. Tattersall, and Mr. James Fletcher
of Oldham. There was also Mr. John Fletcher, Mr. R S.
Buckley, and Mr. Smethurst of the Ashton district, who
took with them Mr. Dixon to keep them in countenance.
Mr. Sidebottom of Stockport also gave a kind of military
flavor to his colleagues, whilst Mr. John Mayall of Moseley
attended to look in and lend some dignity to the occasion,
in which he was assisted by Mr. W. Tattersall, secretary of
the federation. On the operatives' side Mr. Ashton, Mr.
Mellor, and Mr. Jones did duty for Oldham ; Mr. Wood, Mr.
Rhodes, and Mr. Carr represented the Ashton district ; whilst
the general business was attended to by Mr. Mullin, Mr.
Mawdsley, Mr. Fielding, and some dozen others, whilst Mr.
D. Holmes, Mr. Wilkinson, and Mr. Buckley had a watch-
ing brief for the winders and reelers. Perhaps we ought not
to omit mentioning that the employers had brought with
them Mr. Hesketh Booth, clerk to the Oldham magistrates,
who was counterbalanced by Mr. Ascroft, another Oldham
solicitor, who had accompanied the cardroom hands.

" Those whose names we have mentioned, with others,
made up a party of between thirty and forty, and after taking
a few minutes to straighten themselves up after leaving the
train, they settled down to business. Mr. A. E. Rayner was
unanimously voted to the chair. . . . Both sides had prepared
and got printed a series of proposals, and the employers had
. . . them printed side by side on the same sheet. In many
of them there was nothing to differ about except the word-
ing, as the idea aimed at was the same in both cases. But
the clause dealing with the reduction was the first, and in
their sheets the employers had left the amount out, whilst
the operatives had put in 2\ per cent. The employers wished
the discussion on this point to be deferred to the end of the
meeting, but feeling that unless a settlement could be arrived
at on this, the whole of the time spent on the other clauses
would be wasted, the operatives insisted it should be taken
first. The employers then retired, and after being absent some

2O2 Trade Union Function

time, returned and offered to accept a reduction of 3 per
cent. The operatives then retired, and after a prolonged
absence, offered to recommend the acceptance of sevenpence
in the pound.1 Then came an adjournment for tea, and
further discussion on the same subject followed, which was,
however, carried on by means of deputations from one section
to the other, as it was found that much better progress was
made by this system than by all being together, with its
concomitant long speeches, which generally came to nothing.
This point ultimately disposed of in favour of the sevenpence,
some minor clauses were got through, the next discussion
being on the arrangement of intervals between the times
when wages can be disturbed. This discussion brought up
the time to after ten o'clock, and everybody was tired and
anxious to be going home. . . . But as there seemed to be
every prospect of being able to ultimately agree, it was con-
sidered that they should not run the risk of rendering the
meeting useless by separating. In order to give the jaded
men an opportunity for freshening up, an adjournment for
half an hour was therefore agreed to, during which cold
remains of the tea vanished. This, combined with a smoke
and a stroll in the open air, put everybody right, and when
business was resumed it went on swimmingly. There was
little said by the employers over their clause, that union
operatives must work amicably with non-union men, and
another affirming that in any proposal to change the rate of
wages the state of trade for the three previous years must be
taken into account. . . . When this work was done the
remaining clauses which affirm the desirability of (employers
and operatives) working together for the promotion of
measures conducive to the general interests of the trade, were
soon gone through, and at nearly four o'clock in the morning
the jaded disputants rushed off to get a little change of air
whilst the agreement was being picked out from piles of
papers and put together in proper form. At this stage a
little diversion was occasioned by the arrival of a cab con-

1 Equal to 2.916 per cent.

The Method of Collective Bargaining 203

taining a reporter of one of the Manchester papers, who,
after hunting all over South-east Lancashire for the meeting-
place, had at last found the right spot. This bit of enterprise
having been rewarded by about six lines of something, he
rushed off back to catch his paper. Just after five (after
fourteen hours) the documents were in shape, and the
requisite signatures attached, and with a few, evidently heart-
felt congratulatory remarks from the chairman, and a vote of
thanks having been given to him, the proceedings closed." *

The machinery for Collective Bargaining developed by
the Cotton Operatives, in our opinion, approaches the ideal.
We have, to begin with, certain broad principles unreservedly
agreed to throughout the trade. The scale of remuneration,
based on these principles, is worked out in elaborate detail
into printed lists, which (though not yet identical for the
whole trade) automatically govern the actual earnings of
the several districts. The application, both of the general
principles and of the lists, to particular mills and particular
workmen, is made, not by the parties concerned, but by the
joint decision of two disinterested professional experts, whose
whole business in life is to secure, not the advantage of
particular employer or workmen by whom they are called in,
but uniformity in the application of the common agreement
to all employers and workmen. The common agreements
themselves are revised at rare intervals by representative
joint committees, in which the professional experts on both
sides exercise a great and even a preponderating influence.
The whole machinery appears admirably contrived to bring
about the maximum deliberation, security, stability, and
promptitude of application. And whilst absolutely no room
is left for the influence upon the negotiations of individual
idiosyncrasies, temper, ignorance of fact, or deficiency in
bargaining power, whether on the side of the employer or

1 "How matters were arranged," Cotton Factory Times, 3ist March 1893;
see Labour Gazette, May 1893. The formal treaty, known as the " Brook lands
Agreement," will be found in the Board of Trade Report on Wages and Hours
of Labour, Part II., Standard Piece Rates, 1894, C, 7567, p. 10.

204 Trade Union Function

the operative, the uniform application of an identical method
of remuneration throughout the whole trade leaves the able
capitalist or energetic workman free to obtain for himself the
full advantage of his superiority.1

The reader who has had the patience to follow the fore-
going exposition will have seen that, taking the Trade Union
world as a whole, the machinery for Collective Bargaining
must be regarded as extremely imperfect. We do not here
discuss whether Collective Bargaining is, or is not, economi-
cally advantageous to the workmen or to the community.
We may, however, assume that it is desirable, if it exists,
that it should be carried on without friction. And if for the
moment we take the Trade Union point of view, and assume
the expediency of a Common Rule, excluding the influence
of particular exigencies, it is essential that this Common
Rule should be wisely and deliberately determined on,
uniformly applied, and systematically enforced. This de-
mands machinery which, over the greater part of the Trade
Union world, has not yet been developed. Throughout the
great engineering and building trades, and indeed, in nearly all
the timework trades, Collective Bargaining, though practically
universal, is carried on in a haphazard way with the most
rudimentary machinery, and usually by amateurs in the craft
of negotiation. The piecework trades have, in the main,
been forced to recognise the importance of commanding the
services of salaried professionals to deal with their complicated
lists of prices. Only among the Cotton-spinners and Cotton-
weavers, however, do we yet find any arrangement for
ensuring, by a technical examination, for continuity of expert

1 The United Society of Boilermakers, whose hierarchy of agreements we
have described, has, in effect, similar machinery for Collective Bargaining. New
agreements are concluded at meetings with the employers, in which the expert
salaried officials are associated, at any rate in form, with representative workmen.
The machinery for interpretation consists, in effect, of a joint visit by salaried
officials representing respectively the associated employers and the Trade Union.
"They had tried a joint committee on the Tyne," said Mr. Robert Knight, " but
the employers could not spare the time, for all their local disputes mostly required
visiting, and so they came to prefer a reference to a delegate who was their
representative, and he met the men's delegate with the best results." — Newcastle
Leader "Extra" on Conciliation in Trade Disfrites (Newcastle, 1894), p. 15.

The Method of Collective Bargaining 205

services. Finally, we see the whole machinery for Collective
Bargaining seriously hampered, except in two or three trades,
by the failure to make the vital distinction between inter-
preting an existing wage contract, and negotiating the terms
upon which a new general agreement should be entered into.
We must, in fact, conclude that, among the great unions
only the Cotton-spinners, Cotton-weavers, and the Boiler-
makers, and, to a lesser extent, the North of England and
Midland Iron-workers * and the Northumberland and Durham

1 For the rules, history, and working of these Boards, see Industrial 'Conciliation ,
by Henry Crompton ; Industrial Peace, by L. L. F. R. Price (London, 1887) ;
Sir Bernhard Samuelson's paper in February 1876 before the British Iron Trade
Association; the evidence before the Royal Commission on Labor, 1892,
particularly that of Messrs. Whitwell and Trow, Group A, 14,974 to 15,482;
and the summary of the rules at p. 368 of the Parliamentary Paper, c. 6795, xn-
Reports of their proceedings are given in the monthly Ironworkers' Journal, the
organ of the Iron and Steel Workers of Great Britain. Though these Boards
have repeatedly been described, their observers have, in our opinion, dealt rather
with the formal than with the real constitution, and with the aspirations rather
than with the actual results of the organisation. An important but scarcely
noticed element in the problem is the fact that a certain proportion of the work-
men are themselves employers of subordinate labor. Exactly what classes of
workmen — puddlers, millmen, mechanics, enginemen, laborers, etc. — are entitled
to vote in the election of representatives, and how effectively all the different
grades are actually represented on the Boards, has never been described. It is
reported that a large number of the cases dealt with by the Midland Board at
any rate, concern differences, not between a firm and its wage-earners, but
between a manual-working sub-contractor and his subordinates, the latter not
being represented on the Board. With regard to the actual results of the Boards,
the student would have to investigate whether the rates fixed from time to time
did not operate rather as maxima than as minima ; whether, that is to say, the
incompleteness and lack of authority of both the employers' and the workmen's
organisations did not lead to many firms taking advantage of the awards of the
Board to stave off larger demands from their workmen, whilst at other times
using their own strategic position to compel the men to accept lower terms than
the Board was awarding. In January 1893, for instance, one of the union
officials deplored, in a meeting of the members, " the private reductions which
they had submitted to all round," in contravention of the rates fixed by the
Midland Board (Ironworkers1 Journal, January 1894). Some years later the
men's dissatisfaction led to the following manifesto: "Amongst large numbers
of the workmen there is a growing opinion that the Board is unsatisfactory, and
that it would be to the workers' interests to dissolve it. It is stated that
employers only appeal to the Wages Board when it suits them, and that they
ignore its principles and rules, when by so doing they can take undue advantage
of their workmen, so that the maintenance of the Wages Board is only beneficial
to the employer and prejudicial to the interests of the workmen. . . . Even the
employer section fear to enforce adherence to its rules because of giving offence
to those employers who simply look upon the Board as a convenience for imposing

206 Trade Union Function

Miners, can be said to be adequately equipped with efficient
machinery for Collective Bargaining.

The foregoing analysis of the Method of Collective
Bargaining, and of the machinery by which it is carried out,
will have revealed to the student two of its incidental charac-
teristics, which to some persons appear as fatal evils, and to
others merely as the " defects of its qualities." The keen
Individualist will scent an element of compulsion in the
so-called " voluntary " agreements governing the conditions
of a whole trade. The ardent advocate of " industrial peace"
will fail to discover any guarantee that the elaborate nego-
tiations between highly-organised classes will not end in a
declaration of war instead of a treaty of agreement.

That some measure of compulsion is entailed by the
Method of Collective Bargaining no Trade Unionist would
deny. Trade Unionists, as we have explained, value Collec-
tive Bargaining precisely because it rules out of account the
particular exigencies of individual workmen or establishments.
With this exclusion of exigencies there comes necessarily
a certain restriction on personal idiosyncrasy, which some
would describe as a loss of liberty. When, for instance, the
employers and workmen in a Lancashire town collectively
settle which week shall be devoted to the annual " wake,"
even the exceptionally industrious cotton-spinner or weaver
finds himself bound to keep holiday, whether he likes it or
not. It is impossible to make common arrangements for
numbers of men without running counter to the desires of
some of them. The wider the range of the Common Rule,
and the more perfect is the machinery for its application and
enforcement, the larger may be the minority which finds
itself driven to accept conditions which it has not desired.
It follows that the Trade Union must provide, in its consti-

unjust conditions upon their workmen." (Official Circular from the Executive
Council of the Associated Iron and Steel Workers of Great Britain, loth August
1896, in Ironworkers' Journal, September 1896). For analogous cases under
the North of England Hoard, the student should investigate the action of the
Stockton Malleable Iron Company (see Ironworkers Journal, January 1894).
and that of the Barrow Steel Works (Ibid. January 1896).

The Method of Collective Bargaining 207

tution, some means of securing the obedience of all its
members to the regulations decided upon by the majority.
The rules of all unions, from the earliest times down to the
present day, contain clauses empowering the fining of dis-
obedient members, the alternative to paying the fine being
expulsion from the union. We have already pointed out
that the development of the friendly society side of Trade
Unionism incidentally makes this sanction a penalty of very
real weight, and one which can be easily enforced. To this
pecuniary loss may, moreover, be added the incidents of
outlawry. When a union includes the bulk of the workmen
in any industry, its members invariably refuse to work along-
side a man who has been expelled from the union for
" working contrary to the interests of the trade." In such a
case expulsion from the union may easily mean expulsion
from the trade. But whilst the Trade Union has thus most
drastic punishments at its command, the individual member
is habitually protected from tyranny or caprice by an elab-
orate system of appeals, which ensure him against condemna-
tion otherwise than according to the positive laws of his
community. This disciplinary system is, of course, usually
applied to men who deliberately undermine the Common
Rule by accepting lower terms than those collectively agreed
to.1 But it is also used against workmen who break the
agreement in the other direction. " To give one illustration,"
said the general secretary of the United Society of Boiler-
makers, to the Royal Commission on Labor, " we had a case

1 The Trade Unionist feeling against men who work "under price" is
expressed in the following quotation from the Amended General Laws of the
Amalgamated Society of Cordwainers (London, 1867), one of the most ancient
of unions : —

" A scab is to his trade what a traitor is to his country, and though both
may be useful to one party in troublesome times, when peace returns they are
detested alike by all ; so when help is wanted a scab is the last to contribute
assistance, and the first to grasp a benefit he never labored to procure ; he cares
only for himself, but he sees not beyond the extent of a day ; and for momentary
and worthless approbation would betray friends, family, and country. In short,
he is a traitor on a small scale— he first sells the journeymen and is himself after-
wards sold in his turn by his master, until at last he is despised by both and
deserted by all. He is an enemy to himself, to the present age, and to posterity/'

208 Trade Union Function

at Hartlepool a short time since, where a vessel was in for
repairing, and the men knew that the vessel was in a hurry,
and thought there was a very good chance to get an advance
in their wages, so they went to their foreman, and made a
demand for 2s. a week advance. The foreman, knowing the
arrangement between our association and the employers'
association, refused to give the advance, and at once wired to
me at Newcastle, and by the orders of the council I sent back
to say that the employer was to give the men the advance
as asked for, because we did not want to stop the work, as
the ship was in a hurry, and we wanted to get her off. The
employer gave the men the advance as asked for, and we at
once sent to the firm requesting the firm to tell us the
amount of money they had paid to the men as advances of
wages on that job. When the job was completed those
particulars and details were sent to us at Newcastle, and also
the names of the men who were engaged upon the job, and
who had made the demand. As soon as that was done our
council ordered the members who received the money to
refund that again to the Society, and we sent a cheque from
the head office to that firm equal to the amount of the
advances given." l In another case men knowing that their
employer was under a time limit for the completion of a
ship made a sudden demand for a rise. Precisely the same
action was taken by the union, and the men were also fined
" for dishonorable behaviour to employer under contract to
deliver."

1 Royal Commission on Labor, Group A, Question 20,718. The frequency
with which this disciplinary power is exercised may be judged from an extract
from the Monthly Report for May 1897, referring only to a single district. The
list is not usually published.

"The following members have been dealt with by the committee during
April : —

F. F., foreman, holding two jobs at Heyes, 405.

T. B., rivetter, doing plater's work, IDs.

E. T., plater, neglecting his work through drinking, los.

J. J., rivetter, doing plater's work, 2OS.

H. R., excessive overtime, 305.

T. C., using abusive language to Strike Secretary, IDS.

R. D., using disgusting and obscene language to Mr. W. H., foreman, ios,M

Tke Method of Collective Bargaining 209

In the world of modern industry this submission of the
personal judgment to the Common Rule extends far beyond
the range of those who, by Trade Union membership,
may be considered to have agreed to forego an individual
decision. When the associated employers in any trade
conclude an agreement with the Trade Union, the Common
Rule thus arrived at is usually extended by the employers,
as a matter of course, to every workman in their establish-
ments, whether or not he is a member of the union.1 This
universal application of a collective bargain to workmen
who have neither personally nor by representatives taken
any part in it, is specially characteristic of the Sliding Scale.
In the ironworks of the North and Midlands the awards
of the accountants engaged by the joint committees of
employers and workmen habitually govern every wage
contract in the establishments concerned, however distaste-
ful the whole proceeding may be to a particular section of
workmen. The position of the South Wales coalminers is
even more striking. Not a third of the 120,000 men are
even professedly members of any Trade Union, or in any way
represented in the negotiations, and of the organised work-
men a considerable proportion, forming three separate unions,
each covering a distinct district, expressly refused to agree
to the 1893 Sliding Scale, and withdrew their representatives
from the joint committee. Nevertheless, the whole of the
120,000 men, with infinitesimal special exceptions, find
their wages each pay-day automatically determined by the
accountant's award. In this case the associated employers,
in alliance with a minority of the workmen, enforce, upon

1 This practice has recently received authoritative official confirmation. Certain
boot manufacturers in Bristol and Northampton, whilst holding themselves bound
to give to members of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives the terms
specified in the collective agreements, claimed the right to pay what they liked to
the non-unionists they employed. On the issue being referred, at the instance of
the Trade Union, to the Permanent Secretary of the Board of Trade as umpire,
he decided that the decisions of the Local Boards were, unless expressly re-
stricted, applicable to unionists and non-unionists alike, although the latter were
in no way parties to the agreement. See Award of 6th May 1896, in Labour
Gazette, May 1896.

VOL. I P

2io Trade Union Function

an apathetic or dissentient majority, under pain of exclusion
from the industry or exile from the district, a method of
remuneration and rates of payment which are fiercely
resented by many of them. In instances of this kind it is
the employers who are the instruments of coercion. In
other industries we find the Trade Union, acting in alliance
with the Employers' Association, putting its own forms of
pressure on dissentient employers, who refuse to join the
association, or to conform to the arrangements agreed to
by the industry as a whole. The records of the local
boards in the boot and shoe trade contain many appeals
from the representatives of the Associated Employers to the
National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives, in which the
union is incited to use all its influence to compel rival firms
to conform to the trade agreements. Here a majority of
workmen, at the instance of, and in alliance with a majority
of employers, practically force a minority of both masters
and men to accept the Common Rules which have com-
mended themselves to the main body of the trade. In
short, experience shows that any successful attempt to
arrange common terms in a highly - developed modern
industry, inevitably leads, however " voluntary " may be
the basis of the associations concerned, to a virtually com-
pulsory acquiescence in the same terms, if not throughout
the whole trade, at any rate by many firms and many work-
men who have in no sense willingly agreed to them.

This compulsion takes a more obvious form when it is a
question of providing the cost of the machinery by which the
common arrangements are made and applied. In the South
Wales coalfield, where, as we have seen, the Silding Scale is
practically universal, a compulsory deduction of sixpence
per annum is made by the employers from the earnings of
about 40,000 men, whether or not they individually agree
with the Sliding Scale, or are members of any Trade Union.
In the Rhondda Valley, and in a few other districts, the
compulsion goes a step farther. The employers com-
pulsorily deduct a few pence per month from their work-

The Method of Collective Bargaining 2 i i

icn's earnings, as the contribution to the Trade Union. A
irtain agreed percentage is retained by the employer and
lis clerks for their trouble, and the balance is handed over
the agents of the men's unions. By far the largest and
lost important miners' union in South Wales has no other
ibscription than this compulsory deduction in the em-
ployer's pay office, and is without any lodges, branch
officials, or other organised machinery. To all intents and
purposes, therefore, Trade Union membership, summed up,
as it is, in this enforced contribution to maintain officials
with whom the employers can negotiate, is, over a large
part of the South Wales coalfield, absolutely compulsory.1

But whilst the compulsory Trade Unionism of the
South Wales coalfields, as enforced by the employers,
extends to the collective arrangements, and to payment
for their cost, it makes no provision for ensuring that the
apathetic or dissentient workers shall have any opportunity
of expressing their desires, or of taking any part in con-
trolling their own side of the business. As most of the
men from whom the Sliding Scale pence are deducted are
not even nominally on the roll of any Trade Union, they
are never troubled to vote on any question, and the work-
ing-men members on the Sliding Scale committee, repre-
senting the small minority of men on the books of the

1 A similar compulsory membership characterises the manufactured iron
trade. The Midland Iron and Steel Wages Board decided that employers should
compulsorily collect from all their operatives the contribution due in respect of
the men's share of the Board's expenses. Some employers neglected to do this,
and on complaint made by the Operatives' Secretary, the Chairman of the Board
held that all employers were bound to make the deduction (Ironworkers' Journal,
March 1895). The North of England Manufactured Iron Board adopts the
same practice. The Truck Act of 1896 forbids any such^ deduction, and, in
order to enable ilTEo-bu .lunlinuud, Mr. Trow, the Operatives' Secretary, moved
and carried a resolution that the Home Secretary should be asked to make an
order excluding their trade from the scope of the Act (Ironworkers' Journal,
March 1897). The Midland Board unanimously joined in the application on
the express ground, as stated by the Chairman, that the Act " might have the
effect of preventing them deducting the contributions of the men to the Wages
Board" (Iromvorker? Journal, April 1897). It will be interesting to see
whether the Home Secretary extends his sanction to the principle of compulsory
contribution, by complying with the request, and issuing an order exempting
the whole trade from the Truck Act.

212 Trade Union Function

several unions, conclude such agreements with the employers,
and make such disposition of the compulsory deductions, as
seem best in their own eyes, or in those of their immediate
constituents. We have, in fact, in this remarkable case,
an instance of collective administration without democratic
control. In another case in the same industry, where
collective action and compulsory payment is enforced by
the law, provision is at least made for a ballot to be taken.
We have described elsewhere l how long and persistently
the Miners' Trade Unions have fought to obtain the right
to have their own agent at the pit mouth, to see that their
members are not defrauded in the computation of their
tonnage earnings ; and we have also pointed out how in-
valuably these checkweighers have served as union officials.2
By the Coal Mines' Regulation Act of 1887 it was enacted
that, whenever a mere majority of the workers in any coal
pit, to be ascertained by a ballot vote, decided to appoint a
checkweigher, the amount of his wages should be shared
among all the workers in the pit who were paid according
to the weight of coal gotten, and that it should be com-
pulsorily deducted from their earnings, whether they voted
for the appointment or against it.

More generally, however, it is left to the Trade Union
to take such steps as it can to enforce the common trade
agreements, and to collect for itself the expenses involved.
This may be effected in two ways. Following the example
of the South Wales Coal-owners, the Trade Union may
enforce, throughout the whole trade, an agreement concluded
between a section of the employers and the employed,
levying a compulsory tax for the purpose upon all persons

1 History of Trade Unionism, pp. 289, 453.

2 Among the amendments of the law now sought by the Miners' Federation
is one enabling the hewers in any mine to appoint an assistant checkweigher, at
the expense of the whole pit, to act whenever " the said checkweigher is acting in
any other capacity for or on behalf of the workmen of the colliery." "What
they wanted to do," explained the Yorkshire representatives at the Miners'
Conference in 1896, "was to make it so that the men employed at any colliery
could appoint an assistant checkweigher to look after the work when the weigher
was away on association business."

The Method of Collective Bargaining 2 1 3

at work. Thus the old close corporation of Dublin Coopers,
whilst allowing strangers to work, does not admit them to
membership, but insists that they shall obey all the regula-
tions of the union, and contribute weekly to its funds so
long as they work in the town. But this " taxation without
representation " is alien to working class sentiment, and the
almost universal practice of Trade Unionism is to expect
every member of the trade to bear his share, not only in the
cost of its administration, but also in the work of its govern-
ment. " We contend," declare the Flint Glass Makers,
"that it is the imperative duty of men who live by a trade
to support, protect, and keep it in a respectable condition.
Men who refuse to subscribe to the funds of a Trade Union
never can be looked upon by those who are members of
such a union with that feeling of satisfaction and respect
which makes one happy in the thought that unity of action
is the aim of all for the good of each other." T Hence we
have, not only compulsory acceptance of the trade customs
but also compulsory membership of the Trade Union con-
cerned. In old days, when any Trade Union action was
a criminal offence, this compulsion easily passed into per-
sonal violence.2 But British Trade Unionists now content
themselves with the more peaceful method practised by the
employers. An employer habitually refuses to engage any
workman who does not agree to his workshop rules, or to those
adopted by the employers' association. In the same way,
the Trade Unionist will, if he can, refuse to accept work in
an establishment where he is obliged to associate with non-
unionists ; " working beside a non-unionist," say the Flint

1 Address of Central Committee, Flint Glass Makers' Magazine, May 1889.

2 In the History of Trade Unionism we have described the practice of
"rattening," for which some of the Sheffield trade clubs were, up to 1867, un-
happily notorious. In the early part of the century the trade clubs of Dublin
and Glasgow had an equally evil reputation for personal violence (see History of
Trade Unionism, pp. 3, 31, 79, 149, 154, 242). With the growth of legal
freedom for Trade Unions to employ peaceful, and really more effective, sanctions,
this resort to summary lynch law has died out. We know personally of no
instance in which, during the present generation, physical violence has been used
to compel Trade Union membership.

214 Trade Union Function

Glass Makers, " is bad enough to a man of brain and
principle, without having to suffer the indignity of being
compelled to assist him in his labor. . . . This being so
we do not hesitate to say that before an employer engages
a unionist, he ought to clear all the non-unionists off the
premises. Where we have demanded this, it has been
done." This is put even more definitely by the Coal-
miners. The minutes of the Derbyshire Miners record, for
instance, under date of 1892, "that this Executive Com-
mittee recommend our members, where the majority are
union men, to use every legal effort to induce others to
join, and failing this we advise our members neither to
work nor ride with them, but that due notice of their
intention to take such actions be given to the management
in each case before being put into practice." l

There is a strange delusion in the journalistic mind that
this compulsory Trade Unionism, enforced by refusal to work
with non-unionists, is a modern device, introduced by the
"New Unionists" of 1889. Thus Mr. Lecky states as a
fact 2 that the establishment of monopolies, and the exclusion,
" often by gross violence and tyranny," of " non-unionists
from the trades they can influence " is specially marked
"among the New Unionists." But any student of Trade
Union annals knows that the exclusion of non-unionists is,
on the contrary, coeval with Trade Unionism itself, and that
the practice is far more characteristic of its older forms than
of any society formed in the present generation. The trade
clubs of handicraftsmen in the eighteenth century would
have scouted the idea of allowing any man to work at their
trade who was not a member of the club. And at the

1 Minutes of Executive Meeting, Derbyshire Miners' Association, July 1892.
It is an incident of this refusal, on the part of the employer or on that of the
wage-earner, to consent to work with persons of whose conduct he disapproves,
that employers seek to insist on " character notes," workmen classify firms into
"fair" and "unfair," and the associations on both sides circulate to their
members "blacklists" of the men who have made themselves objectionable,
towards the employers in the one case, and towards their fellow workmen in the
other.

2 Democracy and Liberty ', vol. ii. p. 348.

The Method of Collective Bargaining 2 1 5

present day it is especially in the old-fashioned and long-
established unions that we find the most rigid enforce-
ment of membership. Among the Coalminers it is the
men of Northumberland, Durham, and the West Riding
of Yorkshire, strongly combined for a whole generation,
who have set the fashion of absolutely refusing to "ride"
(descend in the cage) with non-unionists.1 In the best
organised industries indeed, whether great or small, such as
the Boilermakers, Flint Glass Makers, Tape-sizers, or StufT-
pressers — the very aristocracy of " Old Unionists " — the
compulsion is so complete that it ceases to be apparent. No
man not belonging to the union ever thinks of applying for
a situation, or would have any chance of obtaining one. It
is, in fact, as impossible for a non-unionist plater or rivetter
to get work in a Tyneside shipyard, as it is for him to take
a house in Newcastle without paying the rates. This silent
and unseen, but absolutely complete compulsion, is the ideal
of every Trade Union. It is true that here and there an
official of an incompletely organised trade may protest to
the public, or before a Royal Commission, that his members
have no desire that any workman should join the union
except by his own free will. But, however bond fide may
be these expressions by individuals, we invariably see such
a union, as soon as it secures the adhesion of a majority of
its trade, adopting the principle of compulsory membership,

1 For an extreme instance of this boycott of non-unionists, see the remarkable
letter of William Crawford, the leader of the Durham miners, given in full, at
p. 280 of the History of Trade Unionism, and written, we believe, about 1870.
" Regard them," said Crawford, " as unfit companions for yourselves and your
sons, and unfit husbands for your daughters. Let them be branded, as it were,
with the curse of Cain, as unfit to mingle in ordinary, honest, and respectable
society." But this extension of the ostracism from the workplace to the home,
from industrial relations to social life, is repugnant to British working-class senti-
ment, and has never extensively prevailed. However illogical may be the dis-
tinction, there is a general feeling, now spreading, we think, to other classes of
society, that it is inexpedient to extend social ostracism beyond the sphere of
the offence. Business men habitually deal with others of known bad character in
private life, so long as their commercial dealings are unobjectionable. On the
other hand, English society does not refuse to meet at dinner statesmen of good
private character, whose public acts it deems in the last degree unscrupulous.
The more logical policy advocated by Crawford is regarded as fanaticism.

216 Trade Union Function

and applying it with ever greater stringency as the strength
of the organisation increases.

Whatever we may think of these various forms of com-
pulsion, it is important to note that they are in no way
inconsistent with the old ideal of " freedom of contract " —
the legal right of every individual to make such a bargain
for the purchase or sale of labor as he may think most
conducive to his own interest, — and that they are, in fact,
a necessary incident of that legal freedom.

When an employer, or every employer in a district, makes
the Sliding Scale a condition of the engagement of any work-
man, the dissentient minority are " free " to refuse such terms.
They may, in the alternative, break up their homes and leave
the district, or learn another trade. The wage-earners can-
not be denied a similar freedom. When a workman chooses
to make it a condition of his acceptance of employment
from a given firm, that he shall not be required to asso-
ciate with colleagues whom he dislikes, he is but exercis-
ing his freedom to make such stipulations in the bargaining
as he thinks conducive to his own interest. The employer
is " free " to refuse to engage him on these terms, and if the
vast majority of the workmen are of the same mind, he is
" free " to transfer his brains and his capital to another trade,
or to leave the district. But to any one not obsessed by
this conception of " freedom," it will be obvious that a mere
legal right to refuse particular conditions of employment is
no safeguard against compulsion. Where practically all the
competent workmen in an industry are strongly combined,
an isolated employer, not supported by his fellow capitalists,
finds it absolutely impossible to break away from the " custom
of the trade." The isolated workman who objects to Trade
Unionism finds himself in the same predicament. The coal-
hewer in a Northumberland village has no more real freedom
of choice as to whether or not he will join the union than a
Glamorganshire miner has about working under the Sliding
Scale. The workmen's case for Trade Unionism and the
employers' case against it both proceed on the same assump-

The Method of Collective Bargaining 2 1 7

tion.1 Wherever the economic conditions of the parties concerned
are unequal, legal freedom of contract merely enables the
superior in strategic strength to dictate the terms. Collective
Bargaining does not get rid of this virtual compulsion : it
merely shifts its incidence. Where there is no combination
of any kind, the strategic weakness of the individual wage-
earner, unable to put a reserve price on his labor, forces
him to accept the lowest possible terms. When the work-
men combine the balance is redressed, and may even incline,
as against the isolated employer, in favor of the wage-earner.
If the employers meet combination by combination, the com-
pulsion exercised upon individual capitalists or individual
wage-earners may become so irresistible as to cease to be
noticed. In the most perfected form of Collective Bargaining,
compulsory membership becomes as much a matter of course
as compulsory citizenship.

If, indeed, we examine more closely the common argu-
ments against this virtual compulsion, we shall see that the
customary objection is not directed against the compulsion
itself, but only against the persons by whom it is exercised,
or the particular form that it takes. The ordinary middle-
class man, without economic training, is wholly unconscious
of there being any coercion in an employer autocratically
deciding how he will conduct " his own business." 2 But the
very notion of the workmen claiming to decide for themselves
under what conditions they will spend their own working
days strikes him as subversive of the social order. The
ardent Trade Unionist, on the other hand, resents the
" tyranny " of the employer's workshop rules, but sees no
harm in a strong union relentlessly enforcing its will on the
capitalists, without deigning to consult with them beforehand.

1 This assumption is examined in detail in our chapter on "The Higgling of
the Market."

2 " The capitalists or master class . . . think the internal arrangements of
their establishments, hours, mode of payment or contract no more the affairs of
the public than the routine of a man's own household." — " Trade Unions and their
Tendencies," by Edmund Potter, F.R.S., Social Science Association Transactions,
1860, p. 755.

2i8 Trade Union Function

The modern compromise between these diametrically opposite
views, and one now attracting a growing share of public
approval, is the settlement of the conditions, neither by the
workmen nor by the employers, but by collective agreement
between them. It is this feeling that accounts for the ever-
increasing favor for Boards of Conciliation and Arbitration
and joint committees of all sorts. Public opinion, that is to
say, accepts as inevitable the submission of the individual to
the Common Rule, and seeks merely to ensure that this
submission should be based upon due representation of the
persons directly concerned. The most fervent advocates of
this Collective Bargaining between the representatives of
employers and employed welcome, in the interests of In-
dustrial Peace, the application of these collective agreements
over whole districts of an industry, and for specified long
terms, though this necessarily involves the compulsory
acquiescence of individual firms and individual workmen
who would have preferred to make separate bargains. And
thus we come, step by step, to the remarkable proposal of
the Chairman of the Royal Commission on Labor, the Duke
of Devonshire, himself a great employer, concurred in by
seven other eminent members, that Trade Unions and
Employers' Associations, extending over whole trades, should
be encouraged to become definitely incorporated bodies,
expressly authorised to conclude collective agreements for
their constituents, and empowered to secure the compliance
of all their members with these new trade laws by legally
enforcible penalties, " every member of a (duly registered)
association being during membership held to be under a
contract with the association for observance of the collective
agreement," the association being given " the right to recover
damages from those of its members who infringed the collec-
tive agreement." l

1 See the Report, signed by the Duke of Devonshire, the Right Honorable
Leonard Courtney, M.P., and six other members, C, 7421, p. 117. This pro-
posal is further examined in our chapter on "The Implications of Tiade
Unionism."

The Method of Collective Bargaining 2 1 9

But the essential reasonableness of English public opinion
sets limits to all these forms of legal freedom of contract and
economic compulsion, whether it is the capitalist's " freedom
of enterprise," the wage-earner's "freedom of combination,"
or the freedom of representative joint committees to decide
what shall be the customs of the trade. When it becomes
obvious that individual capitalists are using their strategic
advantage to compel the wage-earners to accept conditions
patently dangerous to life, health, or character, middle-class
opinion supports legislation to curb their greed. When a
group of workmen strike against machinery, or to enforce
some obviously anti-social regulation, they find themselves
deserted by the general body of Trade Unionists, frequently
thwarted by other members of their trade, and even con-
demned by the executive of their own union. And when
the Duke of Devonshire and Mr. Leonard Courtney pro-
posed, in the Royal Commission on Labor, to give increased
power of trade regulation to free associations of employers
and employed, they were met by the objection that such
joint agreements in particular trades might easily become
prejudicial to the interests of other industries or of the general
body of consumers. At the root of all these instinctive
qualifications of logical doctrines, there lies a half-conscious
admission that neither employers nor employed are morally
free to ignore the interest of the community as a whole.
This reveals to us an inherent shortcoming of every attempt
to determine the conditions of industry by mere contract
between capitalists and workmen. Even in the most per-
fected forms of Collective Bargaining, when each of the
parties is fully represented, and the agreement arrived at
really expresses the combined desires of both, there is no
guarantee that the terms are such as will be conducive to
the welfare of the community.

We have left to the last what is usually regarded as the
capital drawback to the Method of Collective Bargaining,
even in its most perfect development. In the machinery
adopted by the Lancashire Cotton Operatives, for instance,

22O Trade Union Function

there is no provision for the contingency of a failure to come
to an agreement. In such a contingency the bargaining
simply comes to an end, and we have that deliberate collec-
tive refusal on the part of the employers to give work, or
on the part of the operatives to accept work, which is known
as a " lock-out " or a " strike." These cessations of work
are, in our view, necessarily incidental to all commercial
bargaining for the hire of labor, whether individual
or collective, just as the customer's walking out of the
shop, if he does not consent to the shopkeeper's price, is
incidental to retail trade.1 This, we need hardly observe,
is a very different matter from the ignorant assumption that
there is some necessary connection between strikes and
Trade Unions. We have already noted the existence of
Trade Unions which prefer the Method of Mutual Insurance
to that of Collective Bargaining, and do not therefore engage
in strikes at all ; and we shall elsewhere instance Trade
Union organisations whose operation is confined to the
Method of Legal Enactment. On the other hand, long
before a Trade Union comes into existence in any industry.
Collective Bargaining, as we have already explained, prevails
in a more or less elaborate form ; and, with Collective Bar-
gaining, the inevitable resort to concerted refusal to work.
It is a matter of simple history that strikes have been far
more numerous in industries which have practised Collective
Bargaining without Trade Unionism, than in those in which
durable combinations have existed.2 The influence of Trade
Unions on strikes is indeed exactly similar to their influence
on Collective Bargaining. The elaboration of the " shop

1 The bitterest opponents of Trade Unionism admit this. " Strikes, I con-
sider," said a leading employer in 1860, "as the action and the almost inevitable
result of commercial bargaining for labor. They will always exist." — "Trade
Unions and their Tendencies," by Edmund Potter, F.R.S., Social Science Associa-
tion Transactions, 1860, p. 75^.

2 We need only remind the reader of the incessant " pit strikes " of the
Northumberland and other coalfields prior to the miners' organisation in per-
manent Trade Unions ; of such angry insurrections as those of the Luddites in
1811 and the "plug riots" of 1842; and of the perpetual series of "shop dis-
putes " that still go on among those handicrafts which have not advanced in
organisation beyond the "shop bargain."

The Method of Collective Bargaining 2 2 1

bargain " into the local " working rules," and of these again
into the national agreement has naturally been accompanied
by a similar extension of the " shop dispute," into a local
strike, and of this again into a general stoppage of the
industry. In this connection we may quote the Royal Com-
mission on Labor, " that when both sides in a trade are
strongly organised and in possession of considerable financial
resources, a trade conflict, when it does occur, may be on a
very large scale, very protracted and very costly. But just
as a modern war between two great European States, costly
though it is, seems to represent a higher state of civilisation
than the incessant local fights and border raids which occur
in times or places where governments are less strong and
centralised, so, on the whole, an occasional great trade con-
flict, breaking in upon years of peace, seems to be preferable
to continued local bickerings, stoppages of work, and petty
conflicts." *

But whether or not we accept this flattering analogy,
it is impossible to deny that the perpetual liability to
end in a strike or a lock-out is a grave drawback to the
Method of Collective Bargaining. So long as the parties to
a bargain are free to agree or not to agree, it is inevitable
that, human nature being as it is, there should now and again
come a deadlock, leading to that trial of strength and endur-
ance which lies behind all bargaining. We know of no
device for avoiding this trial of strength except a deliberate
decision of the community expressed in legislative enact-
ment. One favourite panacea, incidentally referred to in our
account of the boot and shoe trade — the reference of the
dispute to an impartial arbitrator — we reserve for a separate
chapter.

1 Fifth and Final Report of the Royal Commission on Labor, 1894, C, 7421,
p. 36. Mr. Lecky echoes this report. " There can be little doubt that the
largest, wealthiest, and best-organised Trade Unions have done much to diminish
labor conflicts." — Democracy and Liberty, vol. ii. p. 355.

CHAPTER III

ARBITRATION

THE essential feature of arbitration as a means of determin-
ing the conditions of employment is that the decision is not
the will of either party, or the outcome of negotiation between
them, but the fiat of an umpire or arbitrator. It is dis-
tinguished from that organised negotiation between Trade
Unions and Employers' Associations which we have termed
Collective Bargaining, in that the result is not arrived at by
bargaining at all, the higgling between the parties being, in
fact, expressly superseded. On the other hand, it is not
Legal Enactment, though it bears some resemblance to this
form, because the award is not obligatory on either of the
parties. Their refusal to accept it, or their ceasing to obey
it, even if they have promised to do so, carries with it no
coercive sanction.

These characteristics of arbitration, as a method of
settling the conditions of employment, come to the front on
every typical occasion. We see the employers and workmen
at variance with each other. Negotiations, more or less
formally carried on, proceed up to a point at which a dead-
lock seems inevitable. To avert a stoppage of the industry,
both parties agree to " go to arbitration." They adopt an
impartial umpire, either to act alone or with assessors
representing each side. Each party then prepares an
elaborate " case," which is laid before the new tribunal.
Witnesses are called, examined, and cross-examined. The

Arbitration 223

umpire asks for such additional information as he thinks
fit. Throughout the proceedings the utmost latitude is
allowed. The " reference " is seldom limited to particular
alternatives, or expressed with any precision.1 The umpire,
in order to clear up points, is always entering into conversa-
tion with the parties. Practically no argument, however
seemingly irrelevant, is excluded ; and evidence may be
given in support of claims founded on the most diverse
economic theories. Finally, the umpire gives his award in
precise terms, but usually without stating either the facts
which have influenced him or the assumptions upon which
he has made up his mind. The award — and this is an
essential feature — carries with it no legal sanction, and may
at any moment be repudiated or quietly ignored by any
capitalist or workman.2

1 Thus the operatives may be asking for an Eight Hours' Day, the dismissal
"of an unjust foreman, and the abolition of sub-contracting, whilst the employers
urge a reduction of wages and the more regular attendance of the men. The
umpire's award may include any or all of these points, and might conceivably
decide all in favour of the respective claimants.

2 A list of the principal works on arbitration will be found at p. 323 of our
History of Trade Unionism. Mention should have been made among them of
the report on Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration prepared by Carroll D.
Wright for the Massachusetts Labor Bureau (Boston, i8Si); and J. S. Jeans's
Conciliation and Arbitration in Labour Disputes (London, 1894) can now be
added. The most important recent publications have been made on the Conti-
nent. We may cite, in particular, the bulky volume of the French "Office du
Travail," entitled De la Conciliation et de F arbitrage dans les Conflits Collectifs
entre patrons et ouvriers en France et a I'ttranger (Paris, 1893) » the numerous
reports and pamphlets by Julien Weiller of Mariemont, Belgium ; and Conseils de
Findustrie et du travail by Charles Morisseaux (Brussels, 1890). The English
experience is well discussed by Dr. von Schulze-Gaevernitz in Zttm Socialen
Frieden (Leipzig, 1890), translated as Social Peace (London, 1893).

The student should note that there has been, until quite recently, no clear
distinction drawn between Collective Bargaining, Conciliation, and Arbitration.
Much of what is called Arbitration or Conciliation in the earlier writings on the
subject amounts to nothing more than organised Collective Bargaining. Thus,
the classic work of Mr. Henry Crompton (Industrial Conciliation, London, 1876)
describes, as "conciliation," the typical cases in which representative employers
and workmen meet to bargain on behalf of the trade. The Nottingham hosiery
board, established in 1860, often described as a model of arbitration, was, in
effect, nothing more than machinery for Collective Bargaining, no outsider being
present, the casting vote being given up, and the decisions being arrived at by
what the men called " a long jaw." In 1868 Mr. Mundella observed in a lecture,
" It is well to define what we mean by arbitration. The sense in which we use
the word is that of an arrangement for open and friendly bargaining ... in

224 Trade Union Function

Yet arbitration has one characteristic feature in common
with the higgling of employers and workmen which it super-
sedes. The arbitrator's award is a general ordinance, which,
in so far as it is accepted, puts an end to Individual Bargain-
ing between man and man, and thus excludes, from influence
on the terms of employment, the exigencies of particular
workmen, and usually also those of particular firms. It
establishes, in short, like Collective Bargaining, a Common
Rule for the industry concerned. We can therefore under-
stand why the Trade Unionists from 1850 to 1876 so
persistently strove for arbitration, and so eagerly welcomed
the gradual conversion of the governing classes to a belief in
its benefits. At a time when the majority of employers
asserted their right to deal individually with each one of
their " hands," habitually refused even to meet the men's
representatives in discussion, and sought to suppress Col-
lective Bargaining altogether by the use of ambiguous
statutes and obsolete law, it was an immense gain for the
Trade Unions to get their fundamental principle of a Common
Rule adopted.1 During the last twenty years arbitration has
greatly increased in popularity among the public, and each
ministry in succession prides itself on having attempted to
facilitate its application. Whenever an industrial war breaks
out, we have, in these days, a widespread feeling among the
public that both parties should voluntarily submit to the
decision of an impartial arbitrator. But however convenient
this solution may be to a public of consumers, the two
combatants seldom show any alacrity in seeking it, and can

which masters and men meet together and talk over their common affairs openly
and freely." — Arbitration as a Means of Preventing Strikes, by A. J. Mundella
(Bradford, 1868).

1 Arbitration was accordingly opposed by the more clear-sighted of the
opponents of Trade Unionism. "Our main objection," said one of the leading
critics, "both to arbitration and conciliation, as palliatives of Unionism, is that
they sanction, nay necessitate, the continuance of the system of combination, as
opposed to that of individual competition. ... In so doing we lend the
authority of public recognition to the pestilent principle of combination, and
sanction the substitution of an artificial mechanism for that natural organism
which Providence has provided for the harmonious regulation of industrial
interests." — Trade Unionism, by J^mes Stirling (Glasgow, 1869), p. 50.

Arbitration 225

rarely be persuaded to agree to refer their quarrel to any
outside authority. Although arbitration has been preached
as a panacea for the last fifty years, the great majority of
" captains of industry " still resent it as an infringement of
their right to manage their own business, whilst the leaders of
the organised workmen, once enthusiastic in its favor, now
usually regard it with suspicion. The four years, 1891-95, saw,
in Great Britain, four great industrial disputes in as many
leading industries. But neither in cotton manufacture nor in
coal-mining, neither in the great machine industry of boot-
making nor in engineering, could the capitalists and workmen
agree to let their quarrels be settled by an impartial umpire.
What happened in each of these instances — and they were
typical of many others — was the breaking off of Collective
Bargaining, a prolonged stoppage and trial of endurance,
ending, not in arbitration but in a resumption of Collective
Bargaining, and the conclusion of a fresh agreement under
new and more favorable auspices.

At first sight this disinclination of workmen or employers
to submit their claims to an impartial tribunal appears per-
verse and unreasonable. Business men, it is said, almost
invariably refer disputes between themselves to more or less
formal arbitration, and would never dream of stopping their
own industry, or drying up the source of their own profits,
merely because they could not agree upon an impartial
umpire. And if this be true in commercial transactions,
where the alternative is nothing worse than an action at law,
how much stronger the need must seem when the alternative
may easily involve the bankruptcy of capitalists, the semi-
starvation of thousands of operatives, and the temporary
paralysis, if not the permanent injury, of an important
national industry? Unfortunately this taking analogy,
drawn from the arbitration between business firms, rests on
the old confusion between interpreting an existing agree-
ment and concluding a new one. Commercial arbitrations
are invariably concerned with relations already entered into,
either by existing contracts or under the law of the land.
VOL. I Q

226 Trade Union Function

No business man ever dreams of submitting to arbitration
the terms upon which he shall make new purchases or future
sales.1 Arbitration in commercial matters is therefore strictly
confined to questions of interpretation, both parties resting
their claims on a common basis, the existence of which is
not in dispute between them. Now, issues of interpretation
of this kind are incessantly occurring between employers and
employed, even in the best-regulated industries. In these
cases, as we shall hereafter point out, whilst there is no in-
superable objection to arbitration, there is no real necessity
to resort to it. Nor is it for this class of disputes that
arbitration is usually proposed. The great strikes and lock-
outs which paralyse a whole industry almost invariably arise
not on issues of interpretation, but on the proposal of either
workmen or employers to alter the terms upon which, for
the future, labor shall be engaged.

The position of the employers who object to the fixing
of the terms of the wage contract by the fiat of an arbitrator
has, from the first, been logical and consistent. In a weighty
article which appeared, twenty years ago, in the official organ
of the National Association of Employers of Labor, we find
the case stated with perfect lucidity : —

" The sphere of arbitration in trade disputes is strictly
and absolutely limited to cases of specific contract, where the
parties differ as to the terms of the contract, and are willing,
for the sake of agreement and an honorable fulfilment of
their engagements, to submit the points in dispute to
competent men mutually chosen. Where there is a basis
and instrument of agreement by the parties to which they

1 The frequently cited " Conseils de Prud'hommes " of France (established
first at Lyons in 1808, and since greatly developed in all industrial centres) are
strictly confined to the settlement of disputes arising out of existing contracts, or
(as regards minor matters) the application of the law. In no case do they presume
to fix the rate of wages for future engagements. They are indeed merely cheap and
convenient legal tribunals, which make efforts to compose a dispute before pro-
ceeding to pronounce judgment upon it. For a useful account of these councils,
see E. Thomas, Les Conseils ties Prud'1 homines % leur Histoire et leur Organisation
(Paris, 1888). We understand that this is the character also of the similar
tribunals which exist in various German States and elsewhere.

Arbitration 227

wish to adhere, and on which arbiters have something
tangible to decide upon, it is seldom difficult for impartial
men to elicit an adjustment fair and equitable to both sides.
Arbitration is thus constantly of use in business matters on
which differences of view have arisen, and is as applicable to
questions between workmen and employers where there is a
specific contract to be interpreted as in any other branch of
affairs. It is better than going to law, much better than
running away from the contract, striking, coercing, and fall-
ing into civil damages or criminal penalties, and raising on
the back of such unfortunate consequences a blatant and
endless protest against ' the labor laws.' But cases in which
there are specific contracts absolutely define the sphere
of arbitration. To apply the term ' arbitration ' to the rate
of wages for the future, in regard to which there is no ex-
plicit contract or engagement, and all the conditions of which
are unknown to employers and employed, is the grossest
misnomer that can be conceived. It is certain that neither
workmen nor employers could be bound, nor would consent
to be bound, even were it possible to bind them, by such
arbitrary decrees ; and that the law, therefore, can never give
such decrees even any temporary force, unless we are to fall
back into the long obsolete tyranny of fixing the rate of
wages by Act of Parliament, or by ' King in Council/ or
by ' Communal Bureau of Public Safety,' or whatever the
supreme power may be." 1

Thus, from the employers' point of view, the supersession
of the higgling of the market by the fiat of an arbitrator
is, on its economic side, as indefensible an interference with
industrial freedom as a legal fixing of the rate of wages.
But an arbitrator's award has additional disadvantages.
A law would at any rate be an authoritative settlement,
which disposed of the question beyond dispute or cavil. An
arbitrator's award, on the other hand, even if it is accepted
by the Trade Union, may not commend itself to all the
workmen. The employers who accept it may not unnaturally

1 Capital and Labour, 1 6th June 1875.

228 Trade Union Function

feel that they have surrendered their own freedom, without
securing any guarantee that the workmen, or some indispens-
able sections of them, will not promptly commence a new
attack on which to provoke a stoppage of the industry. A
law, moreover, is a Common Rule, enforced with uniformity
on all alike. The arbitrator's award, on the other hand,
binds only those firms and those workmen who were parties
to it. In almost all industries there are some establishments,
and often whole districts, which remain outside the employers'
association, and in which masters and men persist in conduct-
ing their businesses in their own way. And there is no
guarantee that some firms will not break away from the
association, and join the ranks of these unfettered outsiders.
If the arbitrator's award has secured better terms to the
operatives than the masters are unanimously willing to
concede, the good and honorable employers are penalised
by their virtue. The proceedings of the " Boards of
Conciliation and Arbitration " of the boot-making industry
contain many complaints by employers that the awards are
not enforced on rival firms, who are consequently undercut-
ting them in the market. If our factory or mines legislation
had been enforced only on specified good employers, and had
left untouched any firm who objected to the regulations, so
intolerable an injustice would quickly have led to a repudiation
of the whole system.

If we turn from the employers to the Trade Unionists,
we find a steadily increasing disinclination among workmen
to agree to the intervention of an arbitrator to settle the
terms of a new wage contract. This growing antipathy l to

1 We may cite as evidence of this antipathy some recent declarations made in
the names of the three most powerful organisations in the United Kingdom. It
is expressly stated (for instance, in the Derbyshire Miners' Executive Council
Minutes of the 2nd of June 1891) that it was the idea that the Royal Commission
on Labor was intended to introduce a ' ' huge arbitration system " that determined
the whole Miners' Federation steadfastly to refuse to have anything to do with
that inquiry. " We are opposed to the system altogether," declared Mr. Mawdsley
before that Commission (Group C, Answer 776), on behalf of the Lancashire
cotton operatives. And Mr. Robert Knight, giving evidence on behalf of the
United Society of Boilermakers (Group A, Answer 20,833), definitely negatived
the idea of arbitration, explaining as follows : "I speak from long experience of

Arbitration 229

arbitration is, we think, mainly due to their feeling of
uncertainty as to the fundamental assumptions upon which
the arbitrator will base his award. When the issue is whether
the " standard earnings " of the Lancashire Cotton-spinners
should or should not be decreased by ten per cent, there
is no basis accepted by both parties, except the vague
admission that the award should not be contrary to the
welfare of the community. But this offers no guidance to
the arbitrator. Judge Ellison, for instance, acting in 1879
in a Yorkshire coal -mining case, frankly expressed the
perplexity of an absolutely open-minded umpire. "It is
[he said] for (the employers' advocate} to put the men's wages
as high as he can. It is for (the merits advocate) to put them
as low as he can. And when you have done that it is for
me to deal with the question as well as I can ; but on what
principle I have to deal with it I have not the slightest idea.
There is no principle of law involved in it. There is no
principle of political economy in it. Both masters and men
are arguing and standing upon what is completely within their
rights. The master is not bound to employ labor except
at a price which he thinks will pay him. The man is not
bound to work for wages that won't assist (subsist) him and
his family sufficiently, and so forth. So that you are both
within your rights ; and that's the difficulty I see in dealing
with the question." *

But this cold-blooded elimination of everything beyond
the legal rights of the parties is neither usual in a wages
arbitration, nor acceptable to either side. Each of the parties
implicitly rests its case on a distinct economic assumption,
or even series of assumptions, not accepted by the other side,

the working of this large organisation that I represent here to-day, and I say that
we can settle all our differences without any interference on the part of Parliament
or anybody else." The same feeling is shared by smaller societies. "Our
experience of arbitration," states the secretary of the North Yorkshire and Cleve-
land (Ironstone) Miners' Association, " was that we always got the worst of it, and
so since 1877 it has been firmly refused." — Joseph Toyn, in Newcastle leader
"Extra" on Conciliation in Trade Disputes (Newcastle, 1894), p. 9.

1 Report of South Yorkshire Collieries Arbitration (Sheffield, 1879), P- 49-
The umpire was the Judge of the Sheffield County Court.

230 Trade Union Function

and often not expressly stated. The employers will often
hold that, in order to secure the utmost national prosperity,
wages should rise and fall with the price which they can
obtain for their product. Or it may be urged that the wage
bill must, under no circumstances, encroach upon the parti-
cular percentage of profit assumed to be necessary to prevent
capital from leaving the trade.1 These assumptions would,
at one time, have been acquiesced in by many leading
workmen, although, perhaps, not by the rank and file. But
during the last twenty years, the leaders of the most power-
ful organisations have definitely taken up the view that con-
siderations of market price or business profit ought, in the
interests of the community, to be strictly subordinated to
the fundamental question of " Can a man live by the trade ? "
It is urged that the payment of " a living wage " ought, under
all circumstances, to be a " first charge " upon industry, taking
precedence even of rents or royalties, and of the hypothetical
percentage allowed as a minimum to capital in the worst
times. The skilled mechanic moreover will claim that the
length of his apprenticeship warrants him in insisting, like
the physician or the barrister, on a minimum fee for his
services below which he cannot be asked to descend. The
arbitrator's award, if it is not a mere " splitting the difference,"
must be influenced by one or the other of these assumptions,
either as a result of the argument before him, or as the
outcome of his education or sympathies. However judicial
he may be in ascertaining the facts of the case, the relative
importance which he will give to the rival assumptions of
the parties can scarcely fail to be affected by the subtle

1 Mr. Mawdsley (Amalgamated Association of Cotton-spinners) is very emphatic
on this point. " If we had arbitration we should have much less wages than we
are getting now. Arbitrators generally go in for a certain standard of profit for
capital — generally speaking, it has been 10 per cent. Mr. Chamberlain has
always said that capital ought to have 10 per cent. If the arbitrator went in
for 10 per cent in the cotton trade, we should have a very big reduction of wages;
and we are not going to have it." — Evidence before Royal Commission on
Labor, Group C, Answer 774. We believe the case to which Mr. Mawdsley
referred is Mr. Chamberlain's award in the South Staffordshire Iron Trade in
1878.

Arbitration 231

influences of his class and training. The persons chosen
as arbitrators have almost invariably been representative of
the brain -working class — great employers, statesmen, or
lawyers — men bringing to the task the highest qualities of
training, impartiality, and judgment, but unconsciously imbued
rather with the assumptions of the class in which they live
than with those of the workmen. The workmen's growing
objection to arbitration is, we believe, mainly due to their
deeply -rooted suspicion that any arbitrator likely to be
accepted by the employers will, however personally impartial
he may be, unconsciously discount assumptions inconsistent
with the current economics of his class.1

There is, however, one industry in which, for eight-and-
twenty years, arbitration has been habitually resorted to, for
the settlement of the terms of new wage contracts. This
one exception to the usual dislike of arbitration will, we
think, prove the correctness of the foregoing analysis. " The
Board of Conciliation and Arbitration for the Manufactured
Iron Trade of the North of England," which has existed since
1869, has long been the classical example of the success
of arbitration. Besides providing by the machinery of a
standing committee for the settlement of interpretation
differences, and by half-yearly board meetings for discussing
general questions, the rules direct the reference of intractable
disputes to an outside umpire. On twenty separate occasions

1 We have collected particulars of no fewer than 240 cases of industrial
arbitration, ranging from 1803 to the present day. Excluding mere questions
of interpretation, and disputes between workmen themselves, we have found only
one case in which, in an arbitration for a new agreement between employers and
employed, any person of the wage-earning class has been accepted as umpire.
In May 1893 the Northampton Board of Arbitration for the Boot and Shoe
Trade appointed Mr. F. Perkins, a working laster, as umpire. (Monthly Report
of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives, May 1893).

The arduous and often thankless task of acting as umpire or sole arbitrator is
usually undertaken without fee or reward of any kind. Lord James has long
given his invaluable services to the boot and shoe trade without remuneration.
Dr. Spence Watson, who lately completed his fiftieth arbitration, told us that he
had only thrice received any payment whatever, once his railway expenses, once
a small fee, and in one case, which involved several weeks' labor, a more substantial
payment. The barrister-umpire, called in, in some sense as a professional expert
to unravel an intricate case, is occasionally paid.

232 Trade Union Function

during the last twenty-eight years this provision has come
into operation with regard to the settlement of the con-
ditions of future wage contracts ; and on every occasion the
arbitrator's award has been accepted by both employers and
employed.

It is an interesting confirmation of the view we have
taken that, in this one industry in which arbitration has
achieved a continued success, we find the workmen and the
employers agreeing in the economic assumptions upon which
wages should be fixed, and upon which, therefore, the arbitrator
is asked to proceed. It has for more than a generation been
traditional among ironmasters that the wages of the opera-
tives ought to vary with the market price of the product.1
Since the formation of the Board, in 1869, this assumption
has been accepted by both parties as the main, and often as
the exclusive, rule for the settlement of wages. In the reports
of the arbitration proceedings we find both parties constantly
reaffirming this principle, each in turn resorting to other
considerations only for the sake of argument when the main
assumption is for the moment calculated to tell against them.
" We entirely agree," declare the operatives in 1877," that our
wages should be regulated by the selling price of iron."2 Next
time it is the employers who assert the same rule. " The
eight years sliding-scale arrangement," states their spokesman
in 1882, "we believe was the principle of determining wages
by the selling price of iron, and it would be extremely diffi-
cult, if not dangerous, permanently to depart from that."8
There is, in fact, as a careful student observes, " a general
understanding running throughout the cases and pleadings,
both of masters and men, that wages should follow the

1 See the illustration quoted at pp. 484-486 of the History of Trade Unionism.
"Old Thorneycroft's Scale," by which puddlers' wages advanced or receded one
shilling for each pound sterling per ton in the price of "marked bars," dates, it
is said, from 1841 ; see Mr. Whitwell's evidence before Royal Commission on
Labor, 1892, Group A.

2 Report of Arbitration before Mr. (now Sir David) Dale, July 1877, Indus-
trial Peace > p. 63.

3 Report of Arbitration before Mr. (now Sir J. W.) Pease, April 1882, Ibid.
p. 63.

Arbitration

233

selling prices of iron." l This was expressly stated by Dr. R.
Spence Watson in the letter which accompanied his fifth
award as arbitrator for this board. Whilst observing that
" the wages paid in the Staffordshire district, which competes
with the North of England in the employment of ironworkers,
as well as to some extent in the trade itself, is a factor which
cannot be disregarded, [he declares that] in the course of the
arguments it was admitted on both sides that . . . the realised
price of iron, as shown by the figures taken out by the
accountant to the board, may be considered the principal
factor in the regulation of wages. ... It is upon this state-
ment [he continues] and these admissions that I am called
upon to give my award." 2

It will be apparent that arbitration on issues of this
kind comes really within the category of the interpretation

>r application of what is, in effect, an agreement already
arrived at between the parties. The question comes very
near to being one of fact, answered as soon as the necessary

igures are ascertained beyond dispute. It is therefore not
surprising to learn that, during eight of the twenty-eight

rears of the Board's existence, variations of wages were
automatically determined by a formal sliding scale, and that
even during the intervals in which no definite scale was
adopted the Board itself was able, on eight separate occa-
sions, to agree to advances or reductions without troubling
the arbitrator at all. We need not discuss whether the
acceptance by employers and operatives alike of the
assumption that wages must follow prices is, or is not,
advantageous to the workmen, or to the industry as a
whole. But it is evident that the continued success of

irbitration in the North of England Iron Board, dealing, as
it does, mainly with the interpretation or application of an
existing common basis of agreement, affords no guide to
ler trades in which no such common basis is accepted,

1 Industrial Peace, p. 90.

2 Letter and award of the 28th November 1888 ; Report of Wages Arbitration
before R. S. Watson, Esq., LL.D. (Darlington, 1888).

234 Trade Union Function

and in which the claims of the respective parties rest on
opposite assumptions.1

But the success of the North of England Manufactured
Iron Board, and the more qualified results of similar
tribunals in the Midland iron trade, and the Northumber-
land and Durham coal-mining industry, whilst they give no
real support to arbitration as a panacea for strikes, seem at
first to open up a new field of usefulness for the arbitrator
in the settlement of issues of application or interpretation.
These questions of interpretation or application to particular
cases are always arising, even in the best-regulated trade,
and to provide machinery for their peaceful and indisputable
decision is of great importance. Here we have not merely
identical assumptions by the two parties, but a precise
bargain by which both agree to be bound. Unfortunately
it is just in these issues, for which arbitration seems a
natural expedient, that its adoption has been found, in
practice, most difficult. The application of a general agree-
ment to the earnings of particular individuals, or to the

1 The Midland Iron and Steel Wages Board, which has had an intermittent
existence since 1872, was formed on the model of the North of England Board,
which it closely resembles. Owing to the inferior organisation of the workmen
in Staffordshire and Worcestershire, it has not always worked smoothly, but
wage variations have almost always been made by the Board according to a
sliding scale, formal or implied, whilst a standing committee applies the general
principles to "local questions." See the evidence of Mr. (now Sir B.) Hingley
before the Royal Commission on Labor, 1892, and the references given in the
preceding chapter.

Among the Northumberland and Durham coalminers, though arbitration as
to the terms of new agreements has been repeatedly resorted to, it has been only
partially successful in preventing strikes. The Northumberland Miners' Mutual
Confident Association went to arbitration on five occasions between 1873 and
1877. But in 1878 the owners forced a reduction without submitting to arbitra-
tion, the result being a nine weeks' strike. Between 1879 and 1886 the level of
wages was automatically regulated by a sliding scale. In 1887 the employers
again insisted on a special reduction, the result being a disastrous strike of
seventeen weeks. Since that date alterations in the level of wages have been
mutually agreed to by the joint " Wages Committee " without resort to arbitra-
tion. The Durham Miners' Association (established 1869) had four arbitrations
between 1874 and 1876, and worked under a sliding scale from 1877 to 1889.
This did not prevent a six weeks' strike in 1879, terminated by another arbitra-
tion. Variations in wages between 1889 and 1892 were mutally agreed to, but
in 1892 there ensued the longest and most embittered dispute ever known in the
trade.

Arbitration 235

technical details of particular samples or processes, is at
once too complicated, and of too little pecuniary importance,
to make it possible to call in an outside arbitrator.1 The
intractable questions, to take one trade as an example,
which perplex the local boards in the boot and shoe
industry relate only to a few shillings, and frequently
concern only one or two workmen. For such issues it is
obviously impossible to obtain, either for love or money, the
services of any personality eminent enough to command the
respect of the whole body of employers and workmen.
Where the standard of earnings of large bodies of men, or
the prevention of a serious industrial war, are concerned,
public spirit will induce men of the calibre of Lord James
or Dr. Spence Watson to spend whole days, without fee or
reward, in bringing about an adjustment. In commercial
arbitrations which involve considerable sums, recourse is had
to eminent lawyers, who are paid large fees for mastering
the intricate details of each case. This sort of arbitrator is
far too expensive a person to be available for the applica-
tion of general wage contracts to particular cases, and the
statesman or philanthropist cannot spare the time. On the
other hand, if, as in the boot and shoe trade, recourse is had
to some one engaged in the industry, it is difficult to avoid
the suspicion of class bias. The big employer from another
district, whose services are usually called in, can hardly be
expected to content the workmen. The employers, on the

1 Thus, when in 1891, in an arbitration between the West Cumberland Iron
and Steel Company and their workmen, the arbitrator (Dr. Spence Watson) was
asked to fix the actual rates at which particular men were to be paid, he declined
the task as one outside the possible capacity of any arbitrator. " What has
always happened," said Dr. Spence WTatson, "in every arbitration I have had
hitherto ? There has been a general question of percentage. . . . The principle
of the thing is the thing to leave to arbitration. The detail of the thing, as to
how it is to affect this or that or the other, never can be left to arbitration. . . .
Already over this matter I have given up several nights to go through these
papers and work them in this way and that way, but I have not the knowledge,
and you cannot give me the knowledge. . . . Surely the question of individual
payment is a question for the manager of the works and the men of the works,
and not for a third party." — MS. proceedings. We are indebted to Dr. Spence
Watson for permission to examine these and other papers, and for many valuable
suggestions and criticisms.

236 Trade Union Function

other hand, will not consent to be bound by the decision of
an operative.

It is, fortunately, unnecessary for the employers and
workmen to get into this dilemma. The correct analogy
from the commercial world for all these issues of interpreta-
tion is, not the elaborate and costly reference to arbitration,
but the simple arrangements for taking an inventory, in
connection with a contract of purchase or hire. Instead of
calling in an outside authority, eminent enough to be known
and trusted by both sides, each party is represented by an
inexpensive expert habitually engaged on the particular
calculations involved. The two professional men seldom
find any difficulty in agreeing upon an identical award.
This corresponds exactly to the machinery which is em-
ployed with such success in the Lancashire cotton trade.
The two secretaries who visit the mill in which any question
of interpretation has arisen correspond in all essentials to
the two house-agents employed respectively by the owner
and the incoming tenant of a furnished house. In the
interpretation of wage contracts there is even more justifi-
cation for this method than in taking an inventory. The
object of the house-agent on either side is to get the best
terms for his client. But the professional experts who visit
a cotton mill, in response to a complaint from operative or
employer, are not employed by or responsible to either of
the parties directly concerned. And though one represents
the associated employers, and the other the combined work-
men, both are retained and paid to secure an identical
object, namely, absolute uniformity between mill and mill.
So far as regards the application to the particular cases of
existing general contracts between employers and workmen,
arbitration, though possible, is therefore but a clumsy device.
The only way of getting an efficient umpire for such
technical work would be permanently to employ a pro-
fessional expert of high standing to give his whole time to
the business. But directly an industry is sufficiently well
organised to afford the expense of an efficient paid umpire,

Arbitration 237

it can find in the joint meeting of the salaried experts of
both sides a far more speedy, economical, and uniform
method of settling questions of interpretation than any
arbitration could provide.1

The reader is now in a position to estimate how far
arbitration is likely to serve as a panacea against strikes or
lock-outs, or even to become a permanent feature of the
most highly organised machinery for Collective Bargaining.
In the really crucial instances — the issues relating to the
conclusion of a new agreement — habitual and voluntary
recourse to an umpire may be expected, we think, only in
the unlikely event of capitalists and workmen adopting
identical assumptions as to the proper basis of wages. We
have seen how unreservedly the best-educated workmen of
the North of England accepted, between 1870 and 1885,
the capitalists' assumption that it was only fair that wages
should vary with the selling price of the product. For
twenty years the miners of South Wales have acquiesced in
the same doctrine. If this view were to become accepted in
other trades, it is conceivable that arbitration would become
more popular among them. On the other hand, there is
growing up among workmen a strong feeling in favor of a
fixed minimum Standard of Life, to be regarded as a first
charge upon the industry of the country, and to be deter-
mined by the requirements of healthy family life and
citizenship. If the capitalists should accept this view,
arbitrations might become common, the explicit reference,
in every case being what conditions were required in the
industry to enable the various grades of producers to lead
a civilised life. But no such agreement on fundamental
assumptions is at present within view. We are therefore

1 In the rare cases in which the two house-agents fail to agree, we understand
that the practice is for them privately to refer the matter to another professional,
whose decision they both adopt as their own. If in the Lancashire cotton trade,
the employers' and workmen's district secretaries do not agree upon an issue of
interpretation, it is, in practice, referred to the joint decision of the central
secretaries. But on such issues of fact, if identical principles are thoroughly
accepted by loth sides, there is seldom any intractable difference of opinion between
frofessipnaj experts.

238 Trade Union Function

constrained not to place any high expectations upon the
fiat of an umpire as a method of preventing disputes as to
future conditions of labor. Nor can we estimate very
highly the practical value of arbitration in the application
to particular cases of existing general agreements. In
promptitude, technical efficiency, and inexpensiveness the
" impartial outsider " is inferior to the joint meeting of the
salaried secretaries of either side.

But although arbitration is not likely to supersede
Collective Bargaining, or to prevent the occasional breaking
off of negotiations, it has great advantages, in all but the
best-organised trades, as a means of helping forward the
negotiations themselves. The first requisite for efficient
Collective Bargaining is for the parties to meet face to face,
and in an amicable manner to discuss each other's claim.
But this initial step is often one of difficulty. We are apt
to forget, in view of the regular negotiations in such highly
organised trades as the Cotton Operatives, the Boilermakers,
and the Northumberland and Durham Coalminers, how new
and unusual it still is for capitalists and workmen to meet
on an equal footing, to recognise each other's representative
capacity, and to debate, with equal good temper, technical
knowledge, and argumentative skill, upon what conditions
the employer shall engage " his own hands." Even to-day,
in the great majority of trades, the masters would think it
beneath their dignity voluntarily to confer with the Trade
Union leaders on equal terms ; and they would resent as
preposterous the idea of disclosing to them their profit and
loss accounts, or even the prices they are obtaining for their
product. Yet it is upon these facts that they base their
demand for a reduction of wages, or their refusal of an
advance. The workmen, on the other hand, especially in
such half-organised trades, are full of prejudices, misconcep-
tions of the facts, and Utopian aspirations. Under these
circumstances, even if the employers consent to meet the
men at all, there can be no frank interchange of views, no
real understanding of each other's position — in short, no

Arbitration 239

effective negotiation. Recourse to an impartial umpire is
one way out of these difficulties. The employer's dignity is
not offended by appearing before an eminent jurist or states-
man, sitting virtually in a judicial capacity. It is regarded
as only natural that the arbitrator should ask for the
statistical facts upon which each party bases its case. The
mere fact of each having to set forth its claims in pre-
cise terms, in a way that can be maintained under cross-
examination, is already a great gain. But if the arbitrator
is tactful and experienced, he can do a great deal more
to bring the parties to agreement. He discovers, by kindly
examination, what precisely it is that each party regards as
essential, and persuasively puts on one side any irritating
reminiscences of past disputes, or theoretic arguments going
beyond the narrow limits of the case. In friendly conversa-
tion with each side in turn, he draws out the really strong
arguments of both, restates them in their most effective form,
and in due course impresses them, in the most conciliatory
terms, on the notice of the opponent. Those who have read
the proceedings before such an experienced arbitrator as Dr.
Spence Watson, will, we are sure, agree with us in feeling
that his wonderful success as an umpire is far more due to
these arts of conciliation than to any infallibility in his
awards. In case after case we have been struck by the fact
that, long before the end of the discussion, many of the issues
had already been disposed of, the points remaining in dis-
pute being so narrowed down by a mutual recognition of
each other's case that when the award is at last given each
party is predisposed to accept it as inevitable.

In this patient work of conciliation lies the real value of
arbitration proceedings. There is no magic in the fiat of an
arbitrator as a remedy for strikes or lock-outs. If either
party really prefers fighting to conceding the smallest point
to its adversary — that is, in those cases in which either em-
ployers or the workmen have an overwhelming superiority
in strength — there will be no submission to arbitration. If
both parties are willing to bargain, and are sufficiently well

240 Trade Union Function

organised and well educated to be capable of it, no outside
intervention will be needed. In those industries, however,
where organisation has begun, but has not yet reached the
highest form ; where the employers are forced to recognise
the power of the men's union, but have not yet brought
themselves to meet its officials on terms of real equality ;
where the workmen are strong enough to strike, but do not
yet command the services of experienced negotiators, the
intervention of an eminent outsider may be of the utmost
value. It is of small importance whether his intervention
takes the form of " arbitration " or " conciliation " — that is
to say, whether he is empowered to close the discussion by
himself delivering an " award " as umpire, or whether he
must wait until he can bring the parties to sign an " agree-
ment" drawn up by himself as chairman. In either case
his real business is not to supersede the process of Collective
Bargaining, but to forward it. And in view of the usual
impossibility of agreeing upon any common assumption as
to the proper basis of wages ; in face of the workman's
suspicion of the brainworker's training, and the employer's
fear l of electioneering considerations ; and having regard to
the importance of securing universal concurrence in the
result, we are inclined to believe that the intervention of the
" eminent outsider " will, as a rule, be at once more accept-
able and more likely to be successful if he avowedly acts
only as a " conciliator." 2

This inference is supported by the events of the last few
years. On three notable occasions outside intervention has
been evoked to settle a serious industrial conflict. In 1893
Lord Rosebery, at the express desire of the Cabinet, settled
a dispute which had for sixteen weeks stopped the coal

1 Thus, in the draft rules of a Foreman's Benefit Society, established by some
of the leading Tyneside employers, there is a provision for referring to arbitration
any dispute between the society and a member. The draft rule significantly
adds : " The following cannot be selected as arbitrator : Persons either candi-
dates for or holding political, municipal, or other positions acquired by votes ;
ministers of religion."

2 "In conciliation the disputants endeavour to convince each other, in arbi«
tration to convince a third party. As in. the first case, both sides have equa?

A rbitration 2 4 1

trade of the Midlands of England. In 1895 Sir Courtenay
Boyle, Permanent Secretary of the Board of Trade, drew
up the agreement which terminated the great strike in the
boot trade. And Lord James, a distinguished member of
the Conservative Ministry of the day, in January 1896
brought about, after protracted negotiations, a settlement
of the dispute between the Clyde and Belfast shipbuilders
and their engineers. But notwithstanding the official posi-
tion of these magnates, it is significant that in no case were
they asked, and in no case did they attempt, to cut the
Gordian knot by the judicial decree of an umpire or arbi-
trator. It was not their business to inquire into the merits
of the case. They were not called upon to make up their
minds whether the employers or the workmen were in the
right. They had not even to choose between the rival
economic assumptions on which the parties rested their
respective claims. Their function was to persuade the
representatives of both sides to go on negotiating until a
basis was discovered on which it was possible for them to
agree.

This work of conciliation is, we believe, destined to play
a great and for many years an increasing part in the labor
struggles of this country. In the present state of public
opinion the intervention of an outside " conciliator " is, as
regards the imperfectly organised trades, a precursor of
regular Collective Bargaining. In many trades the em-
ployers themselves are not united in any association : in
many others they still haughtily refuse to discuss matters
with their workmen. In prolonged disputes public opinion
now almost forces the parties to resume negotiations ; and

knowledge of the matter in hand, they must endeavour to show clearly the strong
points of the case, and those only. Any attempt at simple advocacy would be
thrown away. The appeal must be to acknowledged facts. But, in the second
case, advocacy is necessary, and all its many devices — the undesirable as well as
the undeniably good. There is a strong antagonism throughout. Arbitration is
better than striking or locking out, but inferior to conciliation. Industrial peace
in any form is better than industrial war." — " Compulsory or Voluntary Concilia-
tion," by R. Spence Watson, Ironworkers' Journal, June 1895.

VOL. I R

242 Trade Union Function

the intervention of an eminent outsider is found the best
lever for Collective Bargaining. His social position or official
status secures for the proceedings, even among angry men,
a certain amount of dignity, order, and consideration for
each other's feelings, whilst it prevents any hasty rupture
or withdrawal. So long as Lord Rosebery was willing to
go on sitting, it was practically impossible for either the
coalowners or the coalminers to stop discussing. But pro-
longed discussion does not lead to agreement unless the
parties get on good terms with each other, and are brought
into a friendly mood. It is the conciliator's business to see
that this atmosphere of good humour is produced and main-
tained. The excellent luncheon which Lord Rosebery pro-
vided for owners and workmen alike was probably more
effective in creating harmony than the most convincing
arguments about "the living wage." All this, however, is
but preliminary to the real business. We have already
described the important part played by a tactful and ex-
perienced arbitrator in drawing out the best points in each
party's case, restating them in the most persuasive form, and
eliminating from the controversy all unnecessary sources of
irritation or non-essential differences. The ideal conciliator
adds to this a happy suggestiveness and fertility in devising
possible alternatives. Throughout the discussion he watches
for the particular points to which each party really attaches
importance. He has a quick eye for acceptable lines of
compromise. At the right psychological moment, when
discussion is beginning to be tedious to both sides, he is
ready with a form of words. This is the crisis of the pro-
ceedings. If the parties are physically and mentally tired,
and yet pleased with themselves and no longer angry with
their opponents ; if the conciliator is adroit in his drafting,
and finds a formula which, whilst making mutual concessions
on minor points, includes, or seems to each party to include,
a great deal of what each has been contending for, the
resolution will be agreed to, if not by acclamation, at
any rate after a few minor amendments to save the dignity

Arbitration

243

of one side or the other ; and almost before some of the
slower-minded representatives have had time to think out all
the bearings of the compromise the agreement is signed, and
peace is secured.

We see, therefore, that outside intervention in wages
disputes may be of the highest value, and we anticipate that
it will, for many years to come, in all but the best-organised
trades, play a great, and even an increasing, part. But its
function will not be that of " arbitration," properly so called,
but rather that of "conciliation," though this will continue
to be sometimes carried on under the guise of arbitration.
Instead of aiming at superseding Collective Bargaining, the
arbitrator will more and more consciously seek to promote
it. In fact, so far from being the crown of industrial organ-
isation, the reference of disputes to an impartial outsider is
a mark of its imperfection. Arbitration is the temporary
expedient of incompletely organised industries, destined to
be cast aside by each of them in turn when a higher stage,
like that of the Cotton Operatives or the Boilermakers, is
attained. The Government of 1896, therefore, did well to
cut down its arbitration bill to a modest " Conciliation Act."
The pretentious legislation of 1867 and 1872, from which
so much was expected, is now simply repealed. The Board
of Trade is empowered, in case of an industrial dispute, " to
inquire into the causes and circumstances of the difference."
It may intervene as the friend of peace, to persuade the
parties to come to an agreement. If a conciliator is desired,
it may appoint one. Finally, if both parties join in asking
that the settlement shall proceed in the guise of arbitration,
and wish the Board of Trade to select the arbitrator for them,
the Board of Trade may accede to their request, as it might
have done without any Act at all ! l

1 The report of the first year's working of this Act, presented to Parliament
in July 1897, shows that 35 applications were made to the Board of Trade. In
7 cases the Board refused to intervene. Of the other 28 cases, 18 were settled
by more or less formal conciliation, and 5 by arbitration, one of which was a
demarcation dispute between different bodies of workmen, and the other 4 were
small local disputes, all in badly-organised trades or districts. Three cases,

244 Trade Union Function

The conclusion will disappoint those who see in arbitra-
tion, not a subordinate and temporary adjunct to Collective
Bargaining, but a panacea for stoppages of industry. The
popularity of arbitration has deep roots. At the back of
the peremptory public demand for the settlement of any
strike or lock-out, there lurks a feeling that in the interests
of the whole community neither employers nor workmen
ought to be allowed to paralyse their own industry. If one
side or the other persists in standing out, we have a clamour
for " compulsory arbitration " : that is, the intervention of
the power of the State. We need not enter into the numer-
ous suggestions that have been made for " State Boards of
Arbitration," authoritative intervention by the Board of
Trade, or the deposit, by both parties, of sums of money
to be legally forfeited upon breach of the award. The
authors of such suggestions always find themselves in a
dilemma. If resort to this kind of arbitration is still to
be voluntary, the liability to penalties or legal proceedings
is not calculated to persuade either employers or workmen
to come within its toils.1 If, on the other hand, it is to be
compulsory, it will amount to legal enactment of a novel
kind. It may well be argued that the community, for the
protection of the public welfare, is entitled to step in and

including the notorious strike at Lord Penrhyn's slate quarries, and that of the
boot operatives at Norwich, remained intractable, owing to arbitration being
refused, twice by the employers and once by both parties.

1 The following extract from a recent report of so experienced and well-
informed a society as the United Textile Factory Workers' Association is
significant : " Boards of Conciliation. — Any number of Bills are constantly being
introduced on this question, but your Council do not see that any useful purpose
can be served by their becoming law. The assumption on which all these
proposals are based is that . . . when the return goes down the wages of labor
and the profits of capital should go down together. . . . The umpire is never a
workman, but always a member of the upper class, whose sympathies and interest
lie in the direction of keeping wages down. . . . They believe that the Bills
now being brought forward are meant as so many traps with which to catch a
portion of the workers' wages, and they have consequently opposed them "
(Report of the Legislative Council of the United Textile Factory Worker? Associa-
tion for 1893-94, p. 14). See also the reports of the conferences between the
Miners' Federation and the leading coalowners during 1896, in which the work-
men's representatives throughout opposed any arbitration scheme by which, as they
repeated, " a man can come in and settle what we could not settle among ourselves. "

Arbitration 245

decide the terms upon which mechanics shall labor, and
upon which capitalists shall engage them. In such a case
the public decision could perhaps best be embodied in the
award of an impartial arbitration tribunal, invested with all
the solemnity of the State. But here we pass outside the
domain of " arbitration " properly so called. The question
is then no longer the patching up of a quarrel between
capitalists and workmen, but the deliberate determination
by the community of the conditions under which certain
industrial operations shall be allowed to be carried on.
Such an award would have to be enforced on the parties
whose recalcitrance had rendered it necessary. This does
not imply, as is sometimes suggested, that workmen would
be marched into the works by a regiment of soldiers, or that
the police would open the gates (and the cashbox) of stubborn
employers. All that the award need decree is, that if
capitalists desire to engage in the particular industry they
shall do so only on the specified conditions. The enforce-
ment of these conditions would become a matter for official
inspection, followed by prosecutions for breaches of what
would in effect be the law of the land. Here, it is true,
we do find an effective panacea for strikes and lock-outs.
Although industrial history records plenty of agitations and
counter-agitations for and against the fixing by law of various
conditions of employment, there has never been either a
lock-out or a strike against a new Factory or Truck Act.
But by adopting this method of avoiding the occasional
breaking off of negotiations which accompanies Collective
Bargaining, we should supersede Collective Bargaining alto-
gether. The conditions of employment would no longer
be left to the higgling of masters and men, but would be
authoritatively decided without their consent in the manner
which the community, acting through an arbitrator, thought
most expedient. " Compulsory arbitration " means, in fact,
the fixing of wages by law.1

1 Such a form of compulsory arbitration is contained in the Factories and
Shops Act of 1896 of the Colony of Victoria, which provides (sec. 15) that, "in

246 Trade Union Function

order to determine the lowest price or rate which may be paid to any person for
wholly or partially preparing or manufacturing either inside or outside a factory,
or workroom, any particular articles of clothing, or wearing apparel, or furniture,
or for breadmaking, or baking, the Governor in Council may, if he think fit,
from time to time appoint a special Board," to consist half of representatives of
employers and half of employed. The Board may then prescribe the minimum
rates to be paid for particular articles, by piecework for home work, and by either
time or piece for factory work. Any employer paying less than the minimum
thus fixed is made liable to a fine, and, on a third offence, the registration of his
factory or workroom (without which he cannot carry on business) "shall, without
further or other authority than this Act, be forthwith cancelled by the Chief
Officer." The working of this virtually legal fixing of a minimum wage will be
watched with interest by economists. Under the New Zealand Act of 1894,
passed by the Hon. W. P. Reeves, now Agent-General for the Colony in London,
labor disputes in which Trade Unions are concerned may be referred, first to
Public Conciliation Boards, and, failing a settlement, to an Arbitration Court,
composed of a Judge of the Supreme Court, with two assessors. This Court
may, at its discretion, make its award enforceable by legal process. A fuller
account of this Act will be found in our final chapter. The Conciliation and
Arbitration Acts of New South Wales (1892) and South Australia (1894) have
been practically unsuccessful. ("Quelques experiences de la Conciliation par
l'£tat en Australasie," by Anton Bertram in Revue &£conomie
July 1897.)

CHAPTER IV

THE METHOD OF LEGAL ENACTMENT

WE do not need to remind the student of the History of
Trade Unionism that an Act of Parliament has, at all times,
formed one of the means by which British Trade Unionists
have sought to attain their ends. The fervor with which
they have believed in this particular Method, and the extent
to which they have been able to employ it have varied
according to the political circumstances of the time. The
strong trade clubs of the town handicraftsmen, and the
widely extended associations of woollen workers of the
eighteenth century relied mainly upon the law to secure the
regulation of their trades. So much was this the case that
the most celebrated student of eighteenth -century Trade
Unionism declares that " the legal prosecution " of trans-
gressors of the law was the chief object l of these combina-
tions, and that, in fact, English Trade Unionism "originated
with the non-observance of" the statutes fixing wages and
regulating apprenticeship. Its fundamental purpose, says Pro-
fessor Brentano, was " the maintenance of the existing legal
and customary regulations of trade. As soon as the State
ceased to maintain order it stepped into its place." 2 It is
true that later investigation has brought to light some ancient
unions, which, springing out of sick clubs, or impetuous

1 Brentano's Gilds and Trade Unions (London, 1870), p. clxxiv. (or p. no
of reprint).

2 Ibid. p. clxxvii. (or p. 1 1 3 of reprint).

248 Trade Union Function

strikes, adhered to the rival Methods of Mutual Insurance
and Collective Bargaining. But Dr. Brentano's generalisa-
tion as to the objects and methods of eighteenth-century com-
binations has, in the main, been confirmed and strengthened.
It would have been remarkable if the Trade Unions had not
taken this line. Even before the stringent act of 1799
against all workmen's combinations, the very idea of Col-
lective Bargaining was scouted by employers, and strongly
condemned by public opinion. On the other hand, the
majority of the educated and the governing classes regarded
it as only reasonable that the conditions of labor should be
regulated by law. Accordingly we find the operatives who
objected to the innovations threatening their accustomed
livelihood, confidently appealing against their new employers,
to Quarter Sessions, Parliament, or the Privy Council. We
see the Trade Unions forming committees to put the law in
force ; maintaining solicitors to fight their cases in the law
courts ; expending large sums in preparing tables of rates,
to be enforced by the magistrates ; marshalling evidence
before Quarter Sessions in support of these lists ; appearing
by counsel at the bar of the House of Commons and before
the House of Lords Committees in quest of new legislation,
or in opposition to bills of the employers ; and finally organ-
ising all the machinery of political agitation, with its showers
of petitions, imposing demonstrations in the streets, Parlia-
mentary lobbying, and occasionally, where the members
happened, as freemen, to possess the franchise, the swaying
of elections.1

With the adoption, by Parliament and the law courts,
of the doctrine of laisser faire, all this machinery fell into
abeyance. It soon came to be waste of money to organise
petitions, to send up delegates and witnesses, or to pay the
fees of solicitors and counsel, only to be met by a doctrinaire
refusal to go into the merits of the case. From 1800
onward we find every Committee of the House of Commons

1 Illustrations of all these forms of Trade Union activity during the eighteenth
century will be found in the History of Trade Unionism, pp. 27, 33, 34, 40-54.

The Method of Legal Enactment 249

reporting in the same strain. " They are of opinion that no
interference of the legislature with the freedom of trade, or
with the perfect liberty of every individual to dispose of his
time and of his labor in the way and on the terms which
he may judge most conducive to his own interest can take
place without violating general principles of the first import-
ance to the prosperity and happiness of the community,
without establishing the most pernicious precedent, or even
without aggravating, after a very short time, the pressure of
the general distress, and imposing obstacles against that
distress being ever removed." * Debarred alike from overt
Collective Bargaining and from Legal Enactment, the Trade
Unions of the first quarter of the century fell back on the
Method of Mutual Insurance, largely tempered by the use
of secret coercion. Those who refused to work " contrary
to the interests of the trade " were supported with enthusi-
astic generosity, whilst " knobsticks " were boycotted, and
even assaulted. When employers retaliated by criminal
prosecution, or dismissal of Trade Unionists, the operatives
broke out into sullen strikes or angry riots, accompanied by
machine breaking and crimes of violence. It was largely
the hope of putting an end to this veiled insurrection that
induced a landlord Parliament to repeal the Combination
Laws, and thus, for the first time, enabled the Trade Unions
openly to carry on negotiations with their employers.

Throughout the next quarter of a century Trade Union
activity was mainly devoted to building up the machinery
for Collective Bargaining.2 This is easily explained. Whilst
the Philosophic Radicals, and indeed much of the educated

1 Report of Committee on Petitions of Artisans, I3th June 1811 ; History of
Trade Unionism, p. 54.

2 The fact that it was at this stage in their history that the working class
combinations forced themselves on the attention of Political Economists and the
press, goes far, we think, to account for the common idea that Trade Unionism
consists exclusively of Collective Bargaining, with its accompaniments of " sticks
and strikes." Between 1824 and 1869, practically all the criticism or de-
nunciation of Trade Unionism took the form of homilies about the futility of
Collective Bargaining and the wickedness of strikes. Even the Political Econo-
mists seem to have been unaware either of the history of the combinations which

250 Trade Union Fimction

public opinion of that generation, worked with the unions in
widening and safeguarding their resort to the Method of
Collective Bargaining, any idea of regulating by law the
conditions of labor of the ordinary workman was regarded
by a middle-class electorate as out of the question. Those
industries in which there was (owing to the attention of
philanthropists or the existence of peculiar grievances) any
chance of obtaining special legislation still strove to enforce
their Common Rules by the Method of Legal Enactment.
The reader of the History of Trade Unionism will re-
member how vigorously and effectively the unions of textile
workers supported, between 1830 and 1850, the various
" Ten Hours' " bills advocated by Robert Owen and Lord
Shaftesbury. The combinations of the coalminers, basing
their claims on the unknown horrors of underground life,
were even more insistent, from 1843 onward, in demand-
ing successive Mines Regulation Acts. The Hand-loom
Weavers and the Stocking -frame Workers long continued
pathetically to urge the old arguments in favor of a
legal rate of wages, whilst all sections of organised workmen
spasmodically attempted to get legal protection for their
earnings by an effective prohibition of " truck." But with a
House of Commons dominated by employers of labor, the
operatives in trades employing only adult males, and free
from exceptional grievances, for the most part laid aside
their traditional method.

With the enfranchisement of the town artisan in 1867,
and the county operative and miner in 1885, we see the
relative preference between the three methods again shifting.
The case for the legal limitation of the hours of work of
adult men was, for instance, explicitly stated at the beginning
of the Cotton-spinners' agitation for the Nine Hours' Bill.
" We are often told," declared their official manifesto in 1871,
" that any legislative interference with male adult labor is

they were criticising, or of the nature and variety of their objects and methods.
This lop-sided appreciation of Trade Union purposes and Trade Union methods
still lingers in leading articles and popular economic text-books.

The Method of Legal Enactment 25 1

an economic error, and it is further urged that as the labor
of the working man is his only capital, he should not be
restrained in the use or application of it. ... Now, though
at first sight the above reasoning, if reasoning it may be
called — seems plausible enough, yet there is a lurking fallacy
in it all the more dangerous because of the artful manner in
which it is attempted to place the Legislature and the work-
ing population in a false position in relation to each other.
... It is a sound principle of universal law established by
the wisdom of more than two thousand years that where in
the necessary imperfection of human affairs the parties to a
contract or dealing do not stand on an equal footing, but one
has an undue power to oppress or mislead the other, law
should step in to succour the weaker party. ... It behoves
us as working men to inquire what is wrong in the present
factory system, and, if need be, ask the legislature to interfere
in our behalf . . . whether the time has not arrived when
Parliament should be appealed to to secure a curtailment of
the hours of factory labor. ... If some of our legislators
should manifest a disposition to abdicate their legislative
functions so far as we are concerned, it may be well to
remind them that election day will again come round when
their abdication will be accepted." *

This change of political conditions explains, not only the
increasing demand for new Factory and Mines Acts, addi-
tional Railway and Merchant Shipping regulations, and the
prevention of accidents and truck, but also the upgrowth,
since 1868, of such exclusively political Trade Union organi-
sations as the United Textile Factory Workers' Association,
and such predominantly political associations as the Miners'
Federation of Great Britain, together with the formation of
a general political machinery throughout the Trade Union

1 Circular signed by the general secretary of the Amalgamated Association of
Operative Cotton-spinners, " on behalf of " the delegate meeting, nth December
1871; History of Trade Unionism, pp. 295-96. It will be remembered that
this Trade Union has always consisted exclusively of men. In our History of
Trade Unionism we have pointed out how the Nine Hours' agitation was event-
ually conducted to a successful issue " behind the women's petticoats."

252 Trade Union Function

world, in the form of Trades Councils, the Trade Union
Congress, and the Parliamentary Committee.

It is probable that no one who is not familiar with Trade
Union records has any adequate conception of the number
and variety of trade regulations which the unions have
sought to enforce by Act of Parliament. The eighteenth-
century combinations seem to have limited their aspirations
to the fixing of a minimum rate of wages, the requirement
of a period of apprenticeship, and the determination of the
proper proportion of apprentices to journeymen. With the
advent of manufacture on a large scale we see the factory
operatives and miners taking up the subjects of sanitation
and overcrowding, safety from accidents, and the length of
the working day. Besides the universal demand that em-
ployers should be made liable for accidents, and forbidden to
make any deductions from wages, we have large sections of
the Trade Union world demanding an Eight Hours' Day, the
prohibition of overtime, and the specifying of definite holi-
days ; others insisting on the weekly payment of wages, the
disclosure of the " particulars " on which the piecework wage
is based, and the abolition of all fines and deductions what-
soever. The National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives
ask for the exclusion of alien immigrants, and the compulsory
provision of workshop accommodation by the employers ;
whilst the Amalgamated Society of Tailors will be content
with nothing short of the legal abolition of home work. The
Carmen seek, year after year, for an Act of Parliament to
enforce their rule that one man shall not be put in charge of
two carts ; the Boilermakers, Enginemen, and Plumbers ask
that none but certificated craftsmen shall be allowed to hold
certain positions ; the Textile Workers want to regulate the
temperature and humidity of the spinning-mills and weaving
sheds ; whilst the Seamen have a lengthy code of their own
extending from an amendment of the laws of marine in-
surance to the qualifications of a sea-cook, from an improved
construction of sea-going vessels to increasing the sum allowed
on advance notes, from the enactment of a fixed scale of

The Method of Legal Enactment 253

manning to the inspection of the ship's medicine chest. Nor
does this enumeration by any means exhaust the list. Every
Parliament sees new regulations of the conditions of employ-
ment embodied in the already extensive labor code, whilst
each successive Trade Union Congress produces a crop of
fresh demands.1 Whether for good or for evil, it appears
inevitable that the growing participation of the wage-earners
in political life, and the rising influence of their organisations,
must necessarily bring about an increasing use of the Method
of Legal Enactment.

But a resort to the law as a means of attaining Trade
Union ends has, from the workmen's point of view, certain
grave disadvantages. Its chief drawback is the prolonged
and uncertain struggle that each new regulation involves.
Before a Trade Union can get a Common Rule enforced by
the law of the land, it must convince the community at large
that the proposed regulation will prove advantageous to the
state as a whole, and not unduly burdensome to the con-
sumers. The workmen's grievance has, therefore, to be
published to the world, to bear discussion in public meetings,
and to meet the criticism of the newspapers. Members of
Parliament must be persuaded to take the matter up, and
made so far to believe in the justice of the claim as to be will-
ing to importune ministers or bore the House of Commons
with the -subject. In due course a Royal Commission is
appointed, which hears evidence, collects statistics, and makes
a report. Presently a new Factory or Mines Bill is drafted
by the Home Secretary, and, on the combined advice of

1 See the reports of the various Trade Union Congresses, especially since
1885. It is to be observed that, under the Constitution of the United States,
most of the statutes thus desired by English Trade Unionists, like much of the
legislation already in force, might be held void, as violations of the constitutional
right of freedom of contract. Among the American statutes already disallowed
by the courts on this ground are truck acts, acts requiring weekly or fortnightly
pays, or forbidding coalowners to compute their tonnage rates of wages on
screened coal only, acts prohibiting employers from discharging men merely
because they are Trade Unionists, and a factory act limiting the hours of labor
of adult women. See Handbook to the Labor Law of the United States (New
York, 1896), by F. J. Stimson.

254 Trade Union Function

Government inspectors, medical experts, sympathetic em-
ployers, and, perhaps, a few representative workmen, some
kind of clause is inserted to effect, usually not what the
Trade Union has been asking for, but the minimum which,
in the light of all the evidence, seems indispensable to avert
the grossest of the evil. At the committee stage in the
House of Commons the clause is pulled to pieces by the
spokesmen of the employers on the one hand, and by those
of the workmen on the other. But the great majority of the
members have, like the minister himself, no direct interest on
either side, and speak rather for the general public of con-
sumers anxious to " keep trade in the country " and foster
cheapness, than with a view to secure exceptional advan-
tages for the particular section concerned. Thus each step
has to be gained by a process of persuasion. To win over
in succession the electors, the Members of Parliament, the
Ministers of the Crown, and — most difficult task of all — the
permanent professional experts, requires, in the officers of a
Trade Union, a large measure of statesmanship, and, in the
rank and file of the members, a combination of wise modera-
tion, dogged persistency, steadfast loyalty to leaders, and
" sweet reasonableness " at a compromise, not usually charac-
teristic of popular movements. At its best the process is
a slow one. The Lancashire " Nine Hours' Movement," for
instance, attained, perhaps, a more rapid and complete success
than any other agitation for factory legislation. Yet it cost
the Cotton-spinners four years' expensive and harassing work
before the bill reducing the factory day was wrung from a,
reluctant legislature.1 On the other hand, the " Nine Hours''
Day" of the engineers, gained in 1871 by the Method of
Collective Bargaining, was won within six months of the first
negotiations with the employers.2 Nor is the victory ever
complete. What Parliament ultimately enacts is never the
full measure of what has been asked for. The Cotton
Operatives, for instance, did not get their Nine Hours' Day,

1 History of Trade Unionism, pp. 295-298.
2 Ibid. pp. 299-302.

The Method of Legal Enactment 255

but only a 56^ hours' week. By the Method of Collective
Bargaining, on the other hand, Trade Unions have not
infrequently gained from employers, at times of strategic
advantage, not only the whole of their demands, but also con-
ditions so exceptional that they would never have ventured
to embody them in a legislative proposal. We shall here-
after see how this consideration deters strong Trade Unions,
like the United Society of Boilermakers and Iron Ship-
builders, from going to Parliament about such unsettled
problems as Demarcation of Work or the Limitation of
Apprentices, on which they feel that they can exact better
terms than would be conceded to them by the community
as a whole. But taking merely the hours of labor we may
note how, whilst Parliament has not yet been converted even
to an Eight Hours' Day for Miners, the coal-hewers of North-
umberland and Durham have long since secured by Collective
Bargaining a working day for themselves of less than 7 hours,
and a working week which never exceeds 37 hours.

At first sight, it may seem strange that, in face of all
these difficulties and disadvantages, the Trade Unions should
so persistently, and even increasingly, seek for legislative
regulation of their respective industries. The explanation
is that, however tedious and difficult may be the process of
obtaining it, once the Common Rule is embodied in an Act of
Parliament, it satisfies more perfectly the Trade Union aspira-
tions of permanence and universality than any other method.
It is, as we have shown, as yet rare for a Trade Union to have
been able to establish by the Method of Collective Bargain-
ing anything like uniform conditions throughout the whole
country. Such prominent and wealthy unions, for instance^
as the Amalgamated Society of Engineers and the Amal-
gamated Society of Carpenters, find themselves compelled
to recognise hours of labor varying, in different towns, from
48 to 57 per week in the one case, and from 41 to 60 in
the other.1

1 The Grays and Woolwich Arsenal branches of Engineers among others,
stand at 48 hours, whilst the Vale of Leven branch works 57. Among the

256 Trade Union Function

But even where any Trade Union rule exists, either
national or local, there are, as we have mentioned, always
some extensive districts, and some important establish-
ments, in which the rule is either not recognised at all, or
is systematically evaded. An Act of Parliament, on the
contrary, applies uniformly to all districts, whether the Trade
Union is strong or non-existent, and to all employers,
whether or not they belong to the Employers' Association.
It corresponds, in fact, to the ideal form of Collective
Bargaining, a National Agreement made between a Trade
Union including every man in the trade, and an Employers'
Association from which no firm stands aloof. Like such an
agreement it excludes, from influence on the wage-contract,
the exigencies, not only of particular workmen or particular
establishments, but also those of particular districts. But it
goes a stage farther in this direction. A National Agree-
ment, however stable, is always liable to be changed, in
accordance with the relative strength of employers and
employed, at each of the successive inflations and depressions
which characterise modern industry. The Cotton-spinners,
for instance, whose standard earnings are determined by an
exceptionally stable National Agreement, have, during the
last twenty years, agreed to twelve alterations of this standard,
five times upward and seven downward. But once any part
of the conditions of employment has been deemed of suffi-
cient importance to the community to be secured by law, it
is beyond the reach of even the most extreme commercial
crises. In the blackest days of 1879, when many cotton
manufacturers were reduced to bankruptcy and the operatives
suffered a reduction of twenty per cent of their wages, no
one ever suggested that the expensive statutory requirements
as to the sanitation of the factory, or the fencing of dangerous

Carpenters, taking the mid-winter hours, the Middleton branch works 41^ hours,
the Bury branch 43^, and those of Prestwich and Radcliffe 44, whilst Yarmouth,
Yeovil, and many Irish branches are still at 60. See Statistics of Rates of Wages,
etc.> published by the A.S.E. in 1895, and the Annual Report of the Amalgamates
Society of Carpenters for 1 894. Compare, too, the Reports on Wages and
of Labour ; published by the Board of Trade, C, 7567, 1894.

The Method of Legal Enactment 257

machinery should be relaxed. In our History of Trade
Unionism we have shown 1 how seriously, in these years, the
Nine Hours' Day of the engineering and building trades
secured by Collective Bargaining, was nullified by the
practice of systematic overtime. But neither inflation nor
depression has, as a matter of fact, led to any alteration
since 1874 m ^e length of the Cotton-spinners' Normal Day,
which the Factory Act in effect prescribes. The Common
Rule embodied in an Act of Parliament has, therefore,
the inestimable advantage, from the Trade Union point
of view, of being beyond the influence of the exigencies of
even the worst times of depression. And, if we may judge
from the history of the last fifty years, such a rule is more
apt to " slide up " than to " slide down." Once any regula-
tion has been adopted, it becomes practically impossible
altogether to rescind it, whilst the movement of public
opinion, notably on such matters as education, sanitation,
safety, and shorter hours of labor, has been steadily in
favor of increased requirements in the normal Standard of
Life.2 These characteristics of the Method of Legal Enact-
ment have, as we shall see in subsequent chapters, an
important bearing on the kind of Regulations which the
Trade Unionists seek to enforce by this particular Method.
But before we consider the rules themselves, we have first to
describe the nature and extent of the Trade Union machinery
for using the method.

The Trade Unions have not yet developed, for their
application of the Method of Legal Enactment, even so
much formal machinery as they possess for the Method of
Collective Bargaining. This backwardness, is, in the main,
to be attributed to the difficulty of the task. The dominant
tendency in Trade Union history is, as we have seen, to

1 Page 333.

2 This "partiality," however, is not an inherent attribute of the Method of
Legal Enactment. Its existence during the present generation is, we hold, due
to the shifting of political power from the middle class, who had become opponents
of any restriction of competition, to the wage-earners, who have continued to
believe in regulation.

VOL. I S

258 Trade Union Function

make the trade throughout the country the unit of organ-
isation. But to bring any proposal effectively before the
legislature, that is to say, to persuade members of Parliament
to take the matter up, Trade Union leaders must convert,
not the employers and workmen in their own industry
wherever carried on, but the electors of particular con-
stituencies, to whatever trade they belong. An organisation
according to localities has, therefore, to be superposed upon
an organisation according to trades.

Two great industries — cotton and coal — have been able
to surmount this difficulty, and these alone have as yet
developed any effective political machinery. The powerful
unions of Cotton Operatives, for instance, three-fourths of
whose 132,000 members are to be found in ten constitu-
encies within twenty miles of Bolton, have, during the past
twenty -five years, constructed a special organisation for
obtaining and enforcing the legislative regulations which
they desire. The five societies of Spinners, Weavers, Card-
room Operatives, Beamers, and Overlookers are federated
in the United Textile Factory Workers' Association, which
carries on no Collective Bargaining, and possesses no insur-
ance side, but has for its sole object " the removal of any
grievance . . . for which Parliamentary or Governmental
interference is required." l The Representative Assembly 2
of this federation, consisting of nearly 200 delegates from
a hundred local branches, amalgamates all sections of the
Cotton Operatives into one solid union for their common
political purposes. But it is the Federal Executive,8
appointed annually by this Representative Assembly, that,
governs the Parliamentary policy and organises the political
force of the Trade. This Cabinet, composed in the main of
the salaried officials of the separate unions, meets regularly
throughout the year, exclusively for political business. At
these private meetings, held in the parlor of a Manchester

1 Rules of 1890.

* Called the "General Council."
8 Called the "Legislative Council"

The Method of Legal Enactment 259

public-house, all rhetoric and formality is banished, and the
complaints of the constituents are discussed with cynical
shrewdness. If they appear to admit of any legislative or
administrative remedy, the president and secretary — who
are invariably leading officials of the Spinners and the
Weavers respectively — are directed to take the matter up.
These officers are wise enough to call in expert assistance.
There is usually some eminent lawyer representing a
Lancashire constituency, who is glad to put his brains freely
at the disposal of so influential an organisation. A clause
or a bill is drafted, and communications are opened up with
the Home Office. Once certain of the technical accuracy
and administrative feasibility of the proposals, the Federal
Executive opens a vigorous political campaign. Public
meetings are organised, at which the local members of
Parliament, or in default, the opposition candidates, are
impartially invited to preside. By these meetings not only
the 300,000 persons employed in or about the cotton mills,
but also the other electors, and the Parliamentary candidates
themselves, are patiently educated. It is no small help in
this process that the Cotton Operatives have what is virtually
their own organ in the press, and that their leading officials
write, in addition, much of the " labor news " in the provincial
newspapers. When the Parliamentary session opens, the
struggle is transferred to the lobby of the House of Commons.
It is perhaps a fortunate chance that the present general
secretary of the Spinners belongs to the Conservative party,
whilst the general secretary of the Weavers is a staunch
adherent of the Liberals. No member for a cotton con-
stituency, to whichever party he may belong, escapes the
pressure. Meanwhile, in order to smooth the way for
legislation, the employers will have been approached with
a view to arriving at some common policy which the trade,
as a whole, can press on the Government. The millowners,
for instance, will be persuaded not to oppose increased
factory regulation, on consideration of the operatives joining
them to stop a threatened Indian import duty, or combining

260 Trade Union Function

in support of " the rehabilitation of silver." When a general
election comes near an urgent appeal is issued to all the
132,000 members, reminding them that they should vote
only for those candidates, of whatever political party, who
promise to support the trade programme. No one can read
the frequent circulars, the minutes of the conferences with
employers and members of Parliament, the reports of the
public meetings, dinners to factory inspectors and deputa-
tions to the Home Office, the leading articles in the Cotton
Factory Times, and the " questions to candidates " for election
in Lancashire constituencies, without admitting that the
Cotton Operatives have known how to construct a political
machine of remarkable efficiency. The result is that the
legislative regulation of the Cotton trade has been carried
to a point far in advance of any other industry, whilst the
law is enforced with a stringent regularity unknown in other
districts.1

In the case of the Cotton Operatives the close observer
may suspect that the political machinery is better than the
material out of which it is made. Absorbed in chapels and
co-operative stores, eager by individual thrift to rise out of
the wage-earning class, and accustomed to adopt the views
of the local millowners and landlords, the Cotton Operatives,
as a class, are not remarkable for political capacity. In the
interest that they take in public affairs they are behind the
coalminers of the North and Midland districts of England.
Among these underground workers the instinct for democratic
politics is so keen that they have, for over twenty years, sent
their own officials to represent them in the House of Commons.
Like the Cotton Operatives they have exceptional political
opportunities, four -fifths of the whole membership being
massed in a relatively small number of Parliamentary con-
stituencies. These advantages are, however, largely neutral-
ised by the fact that they are, for political purposes, divided

1 The meetings of the United Textile Factory Operatives' Association were
temporarily suspended in 1896, the officials stating that the time was inopportune
for any further extension of factory legislation.

The Method of Legal Enactment 261

into two hostile factions, the Miners' Federation on the one
hand, and the county unions of Northumberland and Durham
on the other.

The miners of Northumberland and Durham were, for
over a generation, the pioneers and energetic leaders of the
movement in favor of the legal regulation of the conditions
of labor in the mine. We need not again describe the
machinery of the active legal and Parliamentary campaigns
between 1843 and 1887. From the appointment of the
" Miners' Attorney-General " down to the death of Alexander
Macdonald, the promoters of the successive Mines Regulation
Acts drew their strongest support from the two Northern
counties. We have described elsewhere * the curious com-
bination of industrial circumstances and economic theories
which have brought the Northumberland and Durham unions
to a standstill as regards the legal regulation of their trade.
They still nominally retain a separate political machinery
under the name of the National Union of Miners.2 But the
effective political influence of the miners of these counties is
now expressed mainly by their three officials having seats in
the House of Commons. These members, in conjunction
with the leading local officials of the Northumberland and
Durham Unions, object to the extension of legal regulation,
and actively oppose the Eight Hours' Bill.

The great bulk of the miners have, however, retained
their belief in the Method of Legal Enactment, and are to-day
even more persistent than their fathers in demanding its
further application. The Miners' Federation of Great Britain
(established 1887, and now counting 200,000 members),
which we described in our chapter on "The Unit of Govern-
ment," is essentially a political organisation. It deals, it is
true, also with Collective Bargaining, in so far as anything

1 History of Trade Unionism, pp. 284-292, 377-380.

2 This federal body, formed by Alexander Macdonald exclusively for Parlia-
mentary purposes, once included practically all the miners' unions in the kingdom,
and was, in its time, the most influential political organisation in the Trade
Union world. To-day it is confined to the two unions of Northumberland and
Durham, and retains only a shadowy separate existence.

262 Trade Union Function

approaching to a National Agreement is concerned. But all
the ordinary business of Mutual Insurance and Collective
Bargaining is performed by the separate county unions, and
nine-tenths of the federal work relates, like that of the United
Textile Factory Workers' Association, to matters in which
legislative or governmental interference is required. Like the
Cotton Operatives, too, the Miners' Federation acts through a
Representative Assembly and an Executive which is virtually
a cabinet of the salaried officials of the constituent Unions.
It is a matter of common knowledge that this organisation
exercises great political power, and it is, in Parliamentary
influence, second only to the United Textile Factory Workers'
Association. In one respect it is even stronger. Owing to
the loyalty of the miners to their leaders, and to their demo-
cratic fervor, the Parliamentary and local elections in mining
constituencies may be said to be entirely controlled by the
miners' organisations. No candidate can be elected who
does not support their programme. It is in the manipula-
tion of both political parties in the House of Commons that
the Miners fall behind the Cotton Operatives. The Miners'
Federation has, in the first place, to struggle against the very
serious obstacle presented by the resolute hostility of the
Northumberland and Durham unions. In the Parliament of
1892-95 if Mr. Pickard or Mr. Woods proposed some measure
desired by the Miners' Federation, he was pretty sure to be
answered not by an employer, but by Mr. Burt or Mr.
Fenwick, speaking for the miners of the two Northern
counties. The fact too, that all the miners' representatives
in the House of Commons are loyal supporters of one political
party interferes, to some extent, with their influence both with
that party and with its opponents. And although this great
federation can count among its officials men of ability,
experience, and unquestioned integrity, we are inclined to
doubt whether the general level of technical and economic
knowledge among them is quite as high as that of the staff
of the Cotton Operatives, recruited as the latter is by
competitive examination. It is, perhaps, due to this fact that

The Method of Legal Enactment 263

the Miners' officials do not as yet realise the necessity of
expert legal and Parliamentary counsel in their deliberations,
and make far less use than the Cotton Operatives of outside
help. They have no intercourse with the Government Mines
Inspectors, and, unlike the Cotton Operatives, they do not
enjoy the advantage of constantly meeting, on terms of easy
equality, the salaried officers of the employers' associations.
Moreover, they have no organ of their own in the press, and
they seldom contribute to other newspapers. Strong in their
numbers and their concentrated electoral power, the Miners
have, in fact, hitherto somewhat suffered from their isolation.
But notwithstanding all these drawbacks, the steady improve-
ment and progressive elaboration of the Mines Regulation
Acts, in the face of powerful capitalist opposition, bears
eloquent testimony to the past and present effectiveness of
the Miners' political organisations.

No trade society other than those connected with cotton
and coal has developed any effective machinery for obtaining
the legal regulations which are demanded by its members.
This is, in some cases, to be attributed to the absence, among
the rank and file, of any keen desire for special Acts of
Parliament. Some powerful unions, like the United Society
of Boilermakers, which enforces a rigid limit on the number
of apprentices, are comparatively indifferent to the law as an
instrument for obtaining the conditions of labor that they
desire. But there are other trades which feel, even more
strongly than the Cotton Operatives and Miners, their
dependence on the Method of Legal Enactment as the only
effective way of securing what they consider fair conditions
of employment. Not to mention such modern organisations
as those of the Gasworkers and Seamen, whose objects are
mainly legislative, we watch old-established unions like the
Amalgamated Society of Tailors, the several societies of
cutlery workers of Sheffield, and the Hosiers of the Midland
Counties all basing their aspirations on the legal regulation
of homework, and the prohibition of insidious forms of
"truck." Typical "old unionists" like the Ironfounders,

264 Trade Union Function

Stonemasons, and Engineers are constantly voting by large
majorities in favor of drastic legal enactments providing for
the better sanitation of their workplaces, for additional pre-
cautions against accidents, for the compulsory compensation
of those who suffer through negligence, for the adoption in
all public contracts of the Standard Rates of Wages, and last,
but in recent years not least, for the suppression of overtime,
and the maintenance of a Legal Day. And yet it is not too
much to say that, as regards all these points, the organised
Trade Unions, with their hundreds of thousands of electors,
exercise, to-day, practically no appreciable influence on the
House of Commons and, unlike the Cotton Operatives and
Miners, have not learnt either to supplement the efforts of
sympathetic philanthropists, or to strengthen the hands of
willing politicians. The problem of superposing an organisa-
tion according to locality upon one according to trades, has,
in fact, proved too complicated for Trade Union statesman-
ship.

We shall best understand this failure by considering first
the difficulties that prevent any single trade from attaining
political influence, and then the kind of organisation by which
such difficulties might be overcome. The typical Trade
Union has its members scattered in small groups, each of
which makes up a tiny fraction of an electoral constituency.
The adult male Cotton Operatives of Oldham practically
dominate the local electorate, but the Oldham Plumbers
number only 69, and the Oldham Carpenters only 152
— contingents too small to be able to impress their views
on Parliamentary candidates. At Morpeth again, the Coal-
miners have, for over twenty years, been able to actually
return one of their own officials as the member. But the
Morpeth Tailors number only five, and are thus practically
helpless. Even in London, where the Amalgamated Society
of Tailors dominates its own skilled branch of the trade, its
two thousand members are spread over sixty constituencies.
It is evident that the only way by which the men engaged
in such widely dispersed industries as building and tailoring

The Method of Legal Enactment 265

can force their grievances on an ignorant public or a reluctant
Parliament, is by combined action among the different trades
of each constituency. Even the Engineers, who are in certain
centres aggregated in large numbers, are politically weakened
in their own strongholds by their division into sectional
societies. And joint action is even more clearly necessary
in the case of the great number of little local trades, which
have not the compensation of numerous branches and a large
aggregate membership. Now, the long and varied experience
of the Cotton Operatives and, to a lesser extent, that of the
Coalminers prove that if a political federation is to be
successful, three conditions are absolutely indispensable.
There must, in the first place, be a vigorous central executive,
to which is entrusted the entire direction of all the pro-
ceedings. In effective connection with this central committee,
there must be local organisations in the various constituencies,
always prompt to obey the directions of the leaders, and to
subordinate other interests to the main object. Finally, the
central committee must not only have in its service an
adequate staff of able men as officials, but must also know
how to command, either for love or money, and be willing
frequently to use, the professional advice of trained experts in
law, in Parliamentary procedure, in administration, and in
what may be called general politics.

It may at first be thought that, in the annual Trade
Union Congress, the Parliamentary Committee, and the local
Trades Councils, the Trade Union world possesses a political
machinery fulfilling these elementary conditions. There is a
Representative Assembly, to which nearly every organised
trade sends delegates. This assembly has nothing to do
with Mutual Insurance or Collective Bargaining, and deals
exclusively with the political interests of the Trade Union
world. It elects a Cabinet of thirteen members, on which
sit some of the ablest salaried officers of the movement.
The duty of this " Parliamentary Committee " is expressly
defined to be "to watch all legislative measures directly
affecting the question of Labor, to initiate such legislative

266 Trade Union Function

action as Congress may direct, and to prepare the programme
for the Congress." 1 Finally there exist, in over a hundred
towns, which together elect a third of the House of Commons,
joint committees of the local Trade Union branches, formed
" to watch over the general interests of Labor — political and
social — both in and out of Parliament."2 But a short
examination of the constitution and working of this organ-
isation will, we think, make clear that, whatever outward
resemblances to an effective political machine it may pos-
sess, it lacks all the essential conditions of efficiency and
success.

Let us, to begin with, take the Parliamentary Committee,
upon which, to follow the analogy of the Cotton Operatives,
should fall the duties of formulating a national Trade Union
programme, of guiding the deliberations of the Trade Union
Congress, of directing the necessary political campaign
throughout the constituencies, and finally, of conducting the
desired measures through Parliament. But the Parliamentary
Committee has, for the last twenty years, had practically no
means of fulfilling these functions. The central executives
of the unions, from whom alone any responsible statement of
the trade grievances and proposals can be obtained, seldom
dream of communicating their desires to the Parliamentary
Committee, This has naturally followed from the fact that
there is no central staff able to cope with such proposals as
have from time to time come in.3 For all the Parliamentary
and other business of the Trade Union world as a whole,
there is provided only a single secretary, who is usually one
of the " Labor Representatives " in the House of Commons,

1 Amended Standing Orders, drawn up by Parliamentary Committee,
November 1894.

2 Rules of the London Trades Council, revised March 1895. The Manchester
and Salford Trades Council (established 1866) declares that its objects are "to
watch over the social and political rights and interests of Labor, local and
national, but not of party political character. Its duties shall be to direct the
power and influence possessed by its constituents, in promoting and supporting
such measures as may appear likely to increase the comfort and happiness of the
people, and generally to assist in securing the ends for which Trade Unions were
called into existence." (Report for 1890.)

3 Histcry of Trade Unionism^ pp. 356-358, 470-474.

The Method of Legal Enactment 267

with prior duties to his own constituency. For the last five
years the occupant of the post has been a salaried official of
his own union, busily occupied with its particular sectional
interests. The Parliamentary Committee admittedly pays
only for the leavings of his time and attention, a large part
of the salary of £200 1 going, in fact, to the son or friend
who does the routine office work during his frequent absences
from London. It is therefore impossible for the Parlia-
mentary Committee to investigate grievances, or to form an
independent judgment on technical proposals. The members
of the Committee are, no doubt, severally quite competent to
deal with their own trades, but for the Committee as a whole
to act on this assumption necessarily means its implicit
acceptance of the technical proposals of any one of its
members. As regards the vast majority of unrepresented
trades the Committee has absolutely no means of ascertaining,
either what is complained of, or what remedies are practicable.
Nor does it ever occur to the Parliamentary Committee to
attempt to make up for this deficiency by seeking expert or
professional advice, for which Congress has never been asked
to provide funds. We despair of making any middle-class
student realise the strength and persistency of this disinclina-
tion of Trade Unionists to call in outside counsel. A Board
of Railway Directors or a Town Council do not imagine
that they are bartering their independence or impairing their
dignity when they consult an engineer or a solicitor, or when
they employ an actuary or a Parliamentary draughtsman.
Though they are themselves what the Trade Unionists would
call " practical men " they invariably commit even their own
proposals to professional experts to be critically examined
and put into proper form. But owing, we believe, to a
combination of sturdy independence, naYve self-complacency,
and an extremely narrow outlook on affairs, the Parliamentary
Committee, like most Trade Union organisations, apparently
regard themselves as competent to be their own solicitors,
their own actuaries, and even their own Parliamentary

1 Raised, in 1896, to ,£300.

268 Trade Union Function

draughtsmen.1 It is unnecessary to add that, in each
capacity, they attain the proverbial result.

Any idea of intellectual leadership of the Trade Union
world has accordingly long since been abandoned by the
Parliamentary Committee. This has entailed the degenera-
tion of the Trade Union Congress. The four or five hundred
members coming from all trades and parts of the kingdom
are largely unknown to each other and new to their work.
Each delegate brings to the meeting his own pet ideas and
legislative projects. In order to make such a Representative
Assembly into a useful piece of democratic machinery, the
first requisite is a strong " Front Bench " of responsible
leaders, who have themselves arrived at a definite and con-
sistent policy. But this, as we have seen, is beyond the
capacity of the Parliamentary Committee in its present lack
of information, staff, and expert counsel. What happens, in
fact, is that a few stock resolutions are moved by members
of the Committee, but nine-tenths of the time of Congress is
given to the casual proposals sent in by the rank and file.
These are not examined or reported on by the Parliamentary
Committee, or even referred for consideration to special
committees elected for the purpose. They appear higgledy-
piggledy in the agenda of the Congress sitting as a whole,
the order in which they are discussed being decided by lot.2
The bewildered delegates, fresh from the bench or the mine,
find themselves confronted with a hundred and fifty hetero-
geneous proposals, some containing highly technical amend-
ments of the statutes relating to particular trades, others
being mere pious aspirations for social amelioration, and
others, again, involving far-reaching changes in the economic
and political constitution of the country. All these come
before Congress with equal authority ; are explained in five-

1 We have already mentioned that the United Textile Factory Workers'
Association is honorably distinguished among Trade Unions for its freedom from
this defect. The Co-operative and Friendly Society Movements have, to a large
extent, learnt a similar lesson.

2 Some improvement has been made in this respect during the last year or
two, the notices of motion being now classified according to their subjects.

The Method of Legal Enactment 269

minute speeches ; and as regards four out of every five, get

deliberative assembly checking and ratifying a programme
prepared, after careful investigation, by a responsible Cabinet,
the Trade Union Congress is now an unorganised public meet-
ing, utterly unable to formulate any consistent or practical
policy.

In the absence alike of an effective central executive, and
of any definite programme, it is of minor import that the
joint committees which should act in the several constituencies
are themselves inefficient, and completely divorced from the
other parts of the machine. We do not need to repeat our
detailed description and working of the Trades Councils.3 It
is obvious that if such Councils are to be of any use in
influencing the constituencies, they must receive the confidence
and support of the central executive of each trade, and
strictly co-ordinate all their political action with that of the
Parliamentary Committee. But for reasons on which we
have elsewhere dwelt, the central executives of the national
trade societies view with suspicion and jealousy the very
existence of local committees over whose action they have
no control. The Parliamentary Committee, which ought to
exercise that control, has, in the absence of a real programme
and of anything like an office staff, for many years given up
all attempts to direct, or even to influence, the bodies through
which alone it could conduct an effective electoral campaign.
Without leadership, without an official programme, and without
any definite work, the Trades Councils have become, in effect,
microscopic Trade Union Congresses, with all the deficiencies
of unorganised public meetings. Their wild and inconsistent
resolutions, no less than their fitful and erratic action, have
naturally increased the dislike of the central executives, and
of the salaried officials who dominate the Parliamentary
Committee. Since 1895 they have even been excluded
from participation in the Trade Union Congress. Thus

1 History of Trade Unionism, pp. 467-470,
2 Ibid. pp. 440-444, 466, 467.

270 Trade Union Function

there is now no working connection between the central com-
mittee and the organisations in the several constituencies.

We see therefore that, notwithstanding a great parade of
political influence, the Trade Union world, as a whole, is
really without an organised machinery for using the Method
of Legal Enactment. This outcome of thirty years' effort
may well lead to doubts whether it is practicable to construct
efficient machinery for the political business of the whole
Trade Union world. Some persons may suggest that the ex-
perience of the Cotton Operatives and the Coalminers points
rather to the development of separate political machinery
for each great group of industries. On this assumption
we should have political federations of the Engineering and
Shipbuilding trades, of the various branches of the Clothing
Trade, of the Building and Furniture Trades, and perhaps
even of the Transport Workers and the General Laborers.
But whether the machinery for using the Method of Legal
Enactment covers the whole Trade Union world, or is con-
fined to particular sections, it will not be possible for it to
obtain even such success as has been won by the Cotton
Operatives and the Coalminers without a radical change in
spirit, if not also in form. It may safely be predicted that
no Parliamentary organisation of the Trade Union world will
be politically effective until the narrow limits of its action are
definitely recognised, and until the separate functions of the
Central Federal Executive, the Representative Assembly,
and the Local Councils are clearly understood, and placed in
proper co-ordination with each other.

Let us first consider the importance of recognising the
narrow limits within which such political influence must be
exercised. We have here, in fact, a particular application
of the principles upon which, as we showed in our chapter
on " Interunion Relations," any combined action must be
based. The paramount condition of stable federation is, as
we have suggested, that the constituent bodies should be
united only in so far as they possess interests in common,
and that in respect of all other matters they should retain

The Method of Legal Enactment 2 7 1

their independence. The Trade Union Congress is a federa-
tion for obtaining, by Parliamentary action, not social reform
generally, but the particular measures desired by its constituent
Trade Unions.1 These all desire certain measures of legal
regulation confined to their own particular trades, and they
are prepared, if this limitation is observed, to back up each
other's demands. On many important subjects, such as Free-
dom of Combination, Compensation for Accidents, Truck, Sani-
tation, " the Particulars Clause," the weekly payment of wages,
and the abolition of disciplinary fines, they are united on
general measures. But directly the Congress diverges from
its narrow Trade Union function, and expresses any opinion,
either on general social reforms or party politics, it is bound
to alienate whole sections of its constituents. The Trade
Unions join the Congress for the promotion of a Parlia-
mentary policy desired, not merely by a majority, but by all
of them ; and it is a violation of the implied contract between
them to use the political force, towards the creation of which
all are contributing, for the purposes of any particular political
party. The Trade Unionists of Northumberland and Durham
are predominantly Liberal. Those of Lancashire are largely
Conservative. Those of Yorkshire and London, again, are
deeply impregnated with Socialism. If the Congress adopts
the Shibboleths, or supports the general policy of any of
the three parties which now — on questions outside Trade
Unionism — divide the allegiance of British workmen, its
influence is at once destroyed. The history of the Trade
Union Congress during the last twenty years emphatically
confirms this view. Whether it is " captured " by the
Liberals (as in 1878-85) or by the Socialists (as in 1893-94);
whether it is pledged to Peasant Proprietorship or to Land
Nationalisation ; whether it declares in favor of Bimetal-
lism or the " Nationalisation of the means of production,

1 In the course of our subsequent analysis of the Trade Union Regulations
themselves, and in our final survey, we shall discover the political programme for
the Trade Union world. See the chapters on " The Economic Characteristics
of Trade Unionism " and " Trade Unionism and Democracy."

272 Trade Union Function

distribution, and exchange," it equally destroys its capacity
for performing its proper work, and provokes a reaction
which nullifies its political influence.

Once this limitation were understood and definitely
recognised, it would become possible to weld the separate
parts of the existing Trade Union organisation into a political
machinery of considerable influence. The first requisite
would be a central federal committee, meeting exclusively
for the definite political purposes which we have indicated.
To this Parliamentary Committee the central executive of
each national trade would bring its particular grievances,
with the remedies proposed, just as the Weavers' executive
submits to the United Textile Factory Workers' Association
its objections to over- steaming and its proposals for the
abolition of this practice. On no account must any proposal
be taken up by the Parliamentary Committee which had not
received the express endorsement of the central executive of
the trade concerned. Any departure from this rule would
bring the federal committee into conflict with its real con-
stituents, and deprive it of all guarantee that the proposal
had been accepted by the bulk of the members most directly
to be affected. But this endorsement would not in itself
suffice. The Parliamentary Committee, acting in- conjunction
with the officers of the trade concerned, would have to take
expert advice as to the extent of the grievance, the practica-
bility of the remedy proposed, and the best form in which it
could be put. The approved legislative proposals of the
several trades could then be marshalled into a precise and
consistent Parliamentary programme, from which all vague
aspirations or rhetorical claptrap would be excluded. When
the programme for the year had, after careful investigation
and thought, at last been framed, it would have to be pre-
sented to a Representative Assembly of all the trades. In
emphatic contrast with the practice of the present Trade
Union Congress, it should be made a cardinal rule that no
proposition for political action should be brought before the
Assembly, unless it had first been submitted to the Parlia-

Tke Method of Legal Enactment 273

mentary Committee for investigation and report. With such
a rule the delegates from each trade would find before them
the proposals which had been sent up by their executives,
couched in the best possible language, and recommended to
the delegates of the other trades by the cumulative authority
of the officials of the industry concerned, the skilled political
staff of the Parliamentary Committee itself, and the legal and
administrative experts who had been consulted. At this
stage, discussion by all the trades would serve to reveal any
latent divergence of interest or policy which would militate
against the electoral success of even a perfectly devised
programme. But such an assembly would fulfil a much
more important purpose than merely amending and ratify-
ing an official programme. It would enable the leaders to
explain the several items, and demonstrate to the whole
Trade Union world their necessity, adequacy, and consistency
with the common interests of all Trade Unionists.

The programme once settled, the work of political
agitation would begin. Here the Parliamentary Committee
would have to be supplemented by a local federation in each
constituency. This local body would naturally be formed,
like the present Trades Councils, of representatives from all
the Trade Union branches in the constituency, or in the
town. It would be vital to its efficiency and success that
the central executives of the several trades should regard its
constitution as of national importance to them ; urge their
branches to elect their most responsible members ; and give
them every encouragement to contribute their quota of the
local expenses from the society's funds. It goes without
saying that these local councils must, no less strictly than
the Trade Union Congress, avoid all bias in favor of one or
other political party, and confine themselves rigidly to Trade
Union objects. But their proceedings must be subject to a
yet narrower limit. Unlike the existing Trades Councils,
they must realise that it is no part of their business to
frame the Parliamentary programme even in matters on
which all their constituent branches are unanimous. This
VOL. I T

274 Trade Union Function

follows from the fact that each trade must be dealt with as a
national unit. Before the Engineers or the Tailors can hope
to get any amendment of the law relating to their trade, all
the branches from one end of the kingdom to the other must
be prepared to back up an identical demand ; and the
demand must be formulated in terms capable of being
pressed upon Ministers and the administrative experts.
This identity and precision can only be secured by central
action. The work of the local Trades Councils must, there-
fore, as regards all Parliamentary action, be executive only.
Both in order to retain the confidence of the central executive
of each trade, and to function properly as a part of the
political machine, the local councils would have rigidly to
confine themselves to pushing the official Trade Union
programme for the time being. If any of their members
wanted this programme altered, he could bring his proposal
forward in the local branch of his own union, have it voted
upon by his fellow-tradesmen, and get it sent up to his own
central executive. If it was not a matter on which his own
Trade Union could be induced to take action, it would most
assuredly not be fit for adoption by a federation of Trade
Unions. The local Trades Council would, without inter-
fering with general policy, find abundant occupation in
organising and educating the local Trade Unionist electors ;
in carrying out the frequent instructions received from the
skilled political staff of the Parliamentary Committee in
watching and criticising the action of the Parliamentary
representatives of the constituency, to whatever party they
belonged ; in supplementing and supervising the local work of
the mines, factory, and sanitary inspectors ; and, wherever it
was thought fit, in conducting a municipal campaign. For
all elections to local bodies, it could, of course, frame its
own programme. Here it would have to act as its own
Representative Assembly. Like the Trade Union Congress
the Trades Council would have to elect and to trust a
responsible cabinet ; to restrict it to a Trade Union as dis-
tinguished from a general political programme ; to provide it

The Method of Legal Enactment 275

with officers and funds adequate to its task ; to expect that
it should act only after inquiry and expert or professional
advice ; and above all, to insist that it should keep itself free
from suspicion of acting in the interests of any particular
party.

We are thus brought back, at each stage of the organ-
isation, to the paramount need of intellectual leadership.
Without concerted federal action between the trades, no
progress can be made in carrying out their desires for the
use of the Method of Legal Enactment. Without a central
committee really directing and concentrating the action of
the local councils, no electoral campaign can ever be effec-
tive. Without a " Front Bench " of responsible leaders, no
Representative Assembly can ever formulate a consistent
programme, or rise above the dignity of a public meeting.
The great officials of the leading trades must realise that it
is their duty, not merely to stir up their own branches to
feeble and fitful agitation for the particular legal reforms that
they desire themselves, but to get constructed the federal
organisation which alone can secure their accomplishment.
In this federal organisation they must themselves take the
leading part. For this work they are at present, with all
their capacity and force, usually quite unfit. Each man
knows his own trade, and the desires of his own union, but
is both ignorant and indifferent as to the needs or desires of
every other trade. Before they can form anything like a
Cabinet with a definite and consistent policy, they must
learn how to frame a precise and detailed programme which
shall include the particular legislative regulations desired by
each trade, whilst avoiding the Shibboleths of any political
party. Nor is this an impossible dream. At one period, as we
have elsewhere described,1 the Trade Union world possessed,
in " the Junta " and their immediate successors, an extremely
efficient Cabinet, which both led the Trade Union Congress
and directed the action of the Trades Councils. In close
communication with the executives of the great trades, and

1 History of Trade Unionism, pp. 215-283.

276 Trade Union Function

making unstinted use of expert counsel, this Junta prepared
a reasoned and practicable programme ; explained it to
representative gatherings by which it was ratified ; and
enlisted the Trades Councils in an organised electoral
campaign in its support. The result was seen in the
memorable Parliamentary triumphs of 1871 and 1875.
With the passing away of the Junta, and the breach between
the Parliamentary Committee and its unpaid counsellors,
this effective leadership came insensibly to an end. If the
machinery is again to become effective, the Parliamentary
Committee must realise that its duty is to lead both the
Trade Union Congress and the Trades Councils ; to
formulate its own policy ; to provide itself with an adequate
salaried staff; and, above all, to make the fullest possible
use of professional experts. With the creation of a
strongly centralised, and thoroughly equipped political
federation confining its work exclusively to Trade Union
objects, the organised trades might reasonably hope to obtain
the same measure of success in the detailed legal regulation
of the conditions of their labor, as that achieved by such
" old Parliamentary hands " as the Coalminers and the
Cotton Operatives, whilst these latter unions would find
their power to obtain further regulation in their own trades
indefinitely increased by the effective support of the whole
Trade Union world.1

1 The degeneration of the whole political machinery has, during the last
few years, become so obvious to the leading Trade Unionists, that spasmodic
attempts at reform have been made. We cannot, in this analytical volume, go
into the details of the story of how the Parliamentary Committee of 1895, by tne
casting vote of its chairman, imposed a brand new constitution on the Trade
Union Congress. We need only remind the reader that by the new Standing
Orders, which were held to govern the Cardiff Congress before they were
adopted, the Parliamentary Committee brought in three important innovations.
No Trade Unionist could be elected as a delegate unless he was either a paid
official of his own union, or else still working at his original trade. The Trades
Councils were excluded from all representation or participation in the Congress.
And, most important of all, the method of voting in Congress was changed from
the ordinary practice of Representative Assemblies to a system of voting by
trades. These alterations, it will be seen, do not proceed along the lines which
we have suggested. There is no proposal to increase the efficiency or strengthen
the staff of the Parliamentary Committee, or to co-ordinate the several parts of

The Method of Legal Enactment 277

the political machine. Instead of intellectual leadership being provided, we see
an attempt merely to silence or exclude the troublesome elements. We need
not dwell upon the first of the alterations, aimed, as it was, merely at one or two
influential delegates whose exclusion was desired by the dominant officials. By
abruptly turning out the Trades Councils, who actually initiated the Congress
twenty-seven years before, and had ever since taken a vigorous part, the
Parliamentary Committee cut adrift the very bodies upon which any effective
Trade Union campaign in the constituencies must depend. The Trades Councils,
thus " outlawed " from the Trade Union world, are now centres of bitter hostility
to the salaried officials of the great trades ; sources of dissension and political
weakness, instead of being valuable supports and allies. But the most important
and, as we think, most injurious change was that effected in the method of
voting. Prior to 1895, though the Unions were allowed to send delegates in
proportion to their membership and contribution to the Congress funds, each
delegate had an individual vote, and no proxy voting was allowed. In this
way, the larger unions could, if they chose to send their full number of dele-
gates, exercise their due proportion of voting power. But the officials of some
powerful societies found the arrangement inconvenient. In some cases their
societies demurred to the expense of sending more than three or four delegates,
and thus failed to secure a proportionate influence. In other cases when the full
number of delegates was sent, some of these insisted on exercising an independent
judgment, and voted according to their own political sympathies, or in response
to appeals from the smaller trades. In the absence of any leadership of the
Congress as a whole, independence degenerated into anarchy. To the practical
officials of the Coal and Cotton industries, the flighty and irresponsible behaviour
of the Congress appeared likely to militate against the success of the particular
technical measures promoted by their own unions. It does not seem to have
occurred to them that it might be their duty to put their brains into the
business ; to come forward as the Cabinet of the Congress, formulating a con-
sistent policy for the Trade Union world as a whole ; and boldly to appeal for
the confidence and the pecuniary support by which alone any policy could be
carried into effect. The investigation and co-ordination of the needs of the
several trades would have involved, instead of an occasional pleasant jaunt to
London, a good deal of hard thinking, and many tedious consultations with
experts of all kinds. It was easier to put themselves in a position mechanically
to stop the passing of any resolution which seemed likely to be injurious to their
trades. The four representatives of the coal and cotton industries on the
committee, therefore, insisted on the adoption of the so-called "proxy voting"
used by the Miners' Federation in their own conferences. Under this system
each trade as a whole is accorded the number of votes to which its aggregate
membership entitles it, but is not required to send more than a single delegate.
If more than one are sent, they may decide among themselves how the vote of
the trade shall be cast, and may even entrust their voting cards to one among
their number, and leave the Congress. It is obvious that this mechanical system
of voting tends to throw the entire power in the hands of the officials. In fact,
already at the Congress of 1895, one society, enjoying forty-five votes, sent only
its general secretary to represent it, and as this economical practice leaves the
voting power of the union unimpaired, it will certainly be adopted by others.
By this system the officers of the great unions have secured their own permanent
re-election on the Parliamentary Committee, and, whenever needed, the power
to reject any proposal before Congress, without incurring either the " intolerable
toil of thought," which due consideration of the needs of the smaller trades would
involve, or the trouble of any intellectual leadership of the Congress as a whole.

278 Trade Union Function

It will henceforth be less than ever necessary for the officials of the great trades
to intervene in the debates, or to seek to guide the less experienced sections of
the Trade Union world. Already at Cardiff signs were not wanting that in
future Congresses we shall see the big officials, holding the pack of voting cards
allotted to their own unions, listening contemptuously to the debating of the
smaller trades, and silently voting down any proposition which displeases them.

But the new Standing Orders do more than destroy the value of the Trade
Union Congress as a deliberative assembly, and deprive it of its functions as
a representative gathering through which the policy and programme of the
Parliamentary Committee might be explained to the Trade Union world. The
new system of voting contravenes, in the worst possible way, the principles of
representation which we have, in our chapter on " Interunion Relations,"
deduced from the nature of federal association, and is therefore fraught with
the gravest danger to the stability of the Congress. The Congress, including as
it does, many divergent, and even opposing interests, can never be more than a
loose federation for the limited purposes which its several sections have really in
common. Its decisions ought therefore to be arrived at, not by mere majority
vote, but by consultation between the sections, with a view of discovering the
"greatest common measure." But under the present system the Miners' Federa-
tion and the United Textile Factory Workers' Association together number a
third of the membership represented at the Congress, whilst so long as they act
in conjunction with the Amalgamated Societies of Engineers and Carpenters, and
the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives, they constitute an absolute
majority of any possible Congress. To give to five trades an absolute majority
over the combined forces of all the rest, must, if persisted in, either extinguish
any chance of energetic political co-operation by the others, or else lead to these
forming a new federation of their own.

CHAPTER V

THE STANDARD RATE

. s

AMONG Trade Union Regulations there is one which stands
out as practically universal, namely, the insistence on pay-
ment according to some definite standard, uniform in its
application. Even so rudimentary a form of combination as
the " shop club " requires that all its members shall receive,
as a minimum, the rate agreed upon with the foreman for
the particular job. The organised local or national union
carries the principle further, and insists on a Standard Rate
of payment for all its members in the town or district. The
Standard Rate, it should be observed, is only a minimum,
never a maximum. The Friendly Society of Operative
Stonemasons, for instance, agrees (1897) with the London
Central Master Builders' Association that all its able-bodied
members shall receive not less than tenpence halfpenny per
hour. But the Society has no objection to an employer
offering a particular stonemason, whose skill or character
is valued, any higher rate that he may choose. The
Amalgamated Society of Tailors, in conjunction with the
Master Tailors' Association of the particular town, settles a
" log " fixing the payment for each kind of garment. But
this does not prevent West End master tailors, with the full
sanction of the union, paying some members far above the
London log rates. In fact, though there are certain seeming
exceptions with which we shall deal separately, we know of
no case in which a Trade Union forbids or discourages its

280 Trade Union Fimction

members from receiving a higher rate of remuneration, for
the work actually performed, than the common Standard
Rate fixed for the whole body.

But although the Standard Rate is a minimum, not a
maximum, the establishment of this minimum necessarily
results in a nearer approximation to equality of rates than
would otherwise prevail. Trade Union officials who have had
to construct a piecework list, or to extend such a list from one
shop to the whole town, or from one town to the whole
trade, know that, in order to secure a standard list of prices,
they have had to pare down the rates hitherto enjoyed by
particular shops or even particular towns. It is exactly
this willingness on the part of the more fortunately situated
sections of the trade to forego, for the sake of a Standard
Rate, the higher rates which happen, by some accident, to
have become current for a particular line of work, that makes
uniformity possible. We have already cited, in describing
how Trade Unionism breaks down local monopoly, the case
of the Cotton -weavers, who discovered that, in order to secure
a uniform list of piecework prices — meaning, to the majority
of members, an advance of wages — one or two districts had
to consent to a positive reduction of the rates they had
hitherto enjoyed.1 The powerful society of Flint Glass
Makers has recently afforded us an even more striking
example. When in 1895 the Flint Glass Makers concerted
with their employers a uniform "catalogue of prices" for all
the glass works in Yorkshire, the York branch, which enjoyed
higher rates than any other in the county, at first vehemently
protested. A uniform list, they urged, "was impracticable,
unless by some section of us making enormous sacrifices";
and its enforcement would involve the "edifying spectacle of
a Trade Union compelling its members to work at a reduced
wage, when neither they nor the employer desired it." z
Notwithstanding this protest, the members of the union

1 See the chapter on "The Unit of Government."

z Letter from T. Mawson, a member of the York branch, in the Flint Glass
Makers' Magazine, October 1895 ; vol. ii. No. 8, pp. 427, 428.

The Standard Rate 281

approved the preparation of the uniform list, which was
submitted to general meetings of all the Yorkshire branches.
The issue was thus put before the York members, and though
it was made clear that the new list would involve a reduction
of their own earnings, the feeling in favor of uniformity was
so strong that, as the general secretary records, out of a total
of eighty-four members in the branch at the time, " the vote
against the catalogue was only the miserable total of nine." l

This conception of a Standard Rate is, as we need hardly
explain, an indispensable requisite of Collective Bargaining.
Without some common measure, applicable to all the work-
men concerned, no general treaty with regard to wages
would be possible. But the use of a definite standard of
measurement is not merely an adjunct of the Method of
Collective Bargaining. It is required for any wholesale
determination of wages upon broad principles. The most
autocratic and unfettered employer spontaneously adopts
Standard Rates for classes of workmen, just as the large
shopkeeper fixes his prices, not according to the higgling
capacity of particular customers, but by a definite percentage
on cost.2 This conception of a consistent standard of
measurement the Trade Union seeks to extend from
establishments to districts, and from districts to the whole
area of the trade within the kingdom.

This Trade Unionist insistence on a Standard Rate has
been the subject of bitter denunciation. The payment of "bad
and lazy workmen as highly as those who are skilled and indus- .
trious," 3 " setting a premium on idleness and incapacity,"

1 Address of the Central Secretary of the Society, in the Flint Glass Makers'
Magazine, October 1895 > vo^ "• No. 8, pp. 447-451.

2 Practical convenience and the growth of large establishments have, no
doubt, much to do with the adoption of uniformity. The little working master,
or small employer, could know personally every workman, and adjust without
much difficulty a graduated rate of wages. But the modern employer of labor
on a large scale cannot be bothered with precisely graduated special rates for
each of his thousand "hands." It suits him better to adopt some common
principle of payment, simple of application by his clerks and easily comprehended
by the workmen.

Measures for putting an End to the Abuses of Trade Unions, by Frederic
Hill (London, 1868), p. 3. So persistent is this delusion that Mr. Lecky, writing

282 Trade Union Function

"destructive to the legitimate ambition of industry and merit,"
that " worst kind of Communism, the equal remuneration of
all men," are only samples of the abusive rhetoric of capitalists
and philosophers on the subject. Even as lately as 1871
a distinguished economist poured out the following tirade
against the assumed wickedness of the Trade Unions in
this respect : " Not yet, but in course of time, as economic
principles become popularly understood, we shall see Trade
Unions purged of their most erroneous and mischievous
purpose of seeking an uniform rate of wages without regard
to differences of skill, knowledge, industry, and character.
There is no tenet of Socialism more fatal in its consequences
than this insidious and plausible doctrine — a doctrine which,
if acted upon rigidly for any length of time by large classes
of men, would stop all progress. Put in plain language it
means that there shall not be in the world any such thing as
superior talent or attainment ; that every art and handicraft
shall be reduced to the level of the commonest, most
ignorant, and most stupid of the persons who belong to it." 1

Such criticisms are beside the mark. A very slight
acquaintance with Trade Unionism would have shown these
writers that a uniform Standard Rate in no way implies
equality of weekly wages, and has no such object. For
good or for evil, the typical British workman is not by any
means a Communist, and the Trade Union regulations are,
as we shall see, quite free from any theoretic " yearnings for
equal division of unequal earnings."

The misapprehension arises from a confusion between
the rate of payment and the amount actually earned by the
workman. What the Trade Union insists on, as a necessary
condition of the very existence of Collective Bargaining, is a
Standard Rate of payment for the work actually performed.
But this is consistent with the widest possible divergence

in 1896, naively echoes the charge against the Trade Unions by implying that
" they insist on the worst workman being paid as much as the best." — Demo-
cracy and Liberty, vol. ii. p. 385.

1 Presidential Address of William Newmarch at Social Science Congress of
1871 (Transactions of Social Science Association, 1871, p. 117).

The Standard Rate 283

between the actual weekly incomes of different workmen.
Thus we have the significant fact that the Standard Rate
insisted on by the great majority of Trade Unionists is, not
any definite sum per hour, but a list of piecework prices.
The extent to which these piecework lists prevail throughout
the country is seldom realised. Even those who have heard
of the elaborate tonnage rates of the Ironworkers, Steel-
smelters, and Coalminers, and the complicated cotton lists,
which together govern the remuneration of a fourth of the
Trade Union world, often forget the innumerable other
trades, in which (as with the Tailors, Bootmakers, Com-
positors, Coopers, Basketmakers, Brushmakers) lists of prices,
signed by employers and employed, and revised from time to
time, date from the very beginning of the century.1 When,
as in all these cases, the Standard Rate takes the form of a
schedule of piecework prices, it is clear that there can be no
question of equalising the actual earnings of different work-
men. One basketmaker or one coalminer may be earning
two pounds a week, whilst another, receiving the same
Standard Rate and working the same number of hours,
may get less than thirty shillings ; and another, putting in
only half-time, may have only ten or fifteen shillings for his
week's income.

Nor can it be assumed that in the industries in which
the Trade Union rate is not based on piecework, but takes the
form of a definite standard wage per hour, this necessarily
implies equality of remuneration. Even where workmen in
such trades put in the same number of hours, their weekly
incomes will often be found to differ very materially. Thus,
whilst ordinary plumbing, bricklaying, and masonry is paid
for at uniform rates per hour, directly the job involves any
special skill, the employer finds it advantageous to pay a
higher rate, and the Trade Union cordially encourages this
practice. The superior bricklayer, for instance, is seldom

1 These piecework lists can now be conveniently studied in the admirable
selection published by the Labor Department of the Board of Trade as Part II.
of the Report on Wages and Hours of Labor, 1894 [C, 7567,-!].

Trade Union Function

employed at the Standard Rate, but is always getting jobs
at brick-cutting (or " gauge work "), furnace-building, or sewer
construction, paid for at rates from ten to fifty per cent
over the standard wage. In all industries we find firms with
"special reputations for a high class of production habitually
paying, with full Trade Union approval, more than the
Trade Union rate, in order to attract to their establishment
the most skilful and best conducted workmen. In other
cases, where the employer rigidly adheres to the common
rate, the superior workman finds his advantage, if not
actually in higher money earnings, in more agreeable
conditions of employment. In a large building the
employer will select his best stonemasons to do the carving,
an occupation not involving great exertion and consistent
with an occasional pipe, whilst the common run of workmen
will be setting stones under the foreman's eye. The best
carpenters, when not earning extra rates for " staircasing "
or " handrailing," will get the fine work which combines
variety and lightness, and is done in the workshop, leaving
to the rougher hands the laying down of flooring and other
heavy mechanical tasks. These distinctions may seem
trivial to the professional or business man, who to a large
extent controls the conditions under which he works. But
no workman fails to appreciate the radical difference in
net advantageousness between two different jobs, one in-
volving exposure to the weather, wear and tear of clothing,
monotonous muscular exertion, and incessant supervision,
and the other admitting a considerable share of personal
liberty, agreeably diversified in character, and affording scope
for initiative and address. Though there may be in such
cases equality in the number of shillings received at the end
of the week, the remuneration for the efforts and sacrifices
actually made will have been at very different rates in the
two cases.

We do not wish to obscure the fact that a Standard
Rate on a timework basis does, in practice, result in a nearer
approach to uniformity of money earnings than a Standard

The Standard Rate 289

If he were paid by the hour or the day, he would need, in
order to maintain the same rate of remuneration for the
work done, to discover each day precisely to what degree
the machinery was being " speeded up," and to be perpetually
making demands for an increase in his time wages. Such
an arrangement could not fail to result in the employer
increasing the work faster than the pay.

Under a system of payment by the amount of yarn spun,
the operative automatically gets the benefit of any increase in
the number of spindles or rate of speed. An exact uniformity
of the rate of remuneration is maintained between man and
man, and between mill and mill. If any improvement takes
place in the process, by which the operative's labor is
reduced, the onus of procuring a change in the rate of pay
falls on the employer. The result is, that so effectually is
the cotton-spinner secured by his piecework lists against
being compelled to give more work without more pay, that
it has been found desirable deliberately to concede to the
employers, by lowering the rates as the number of spindles
increases, some share of the resulting advantages, in order
that the Trade Union may encourage enterprising mill-owners
in the career of improvement. The cotton-weavers have a
similar experience. The weaver's labor depends upon the
character of the cloth to be woven, involving a complicated
calculation of the number of " picks," etc. Time wages
would leave them practically at the employers' mercy for all
but the very easiest work. But by a highly technical and
complex list of piecework rates, every element by which the
labor is increased effects an exactly corresponding variation
in the remuneration. Only under such a system could any
uniformity of rate be secured.

In another great class of cases piecework is preferred by

machine, i.e. mental strain. Those who have observed the mulespinner in
Oldham in the midst of the whirling of 2500 spindles, or the female worker in
Burnley environed by four or six shuttles, working at the speed of 200 picks per
minute, know what a higher degree of mental application is here demanded." —
The Cotton Trade in England and on the Continent t by Dr. G. von Schulze-
Gaevernitz (London, 1895), pp. 126, 127.

VOL. I U

290 Trade Union Function

the workmen, with the same object of securing a Standard
Rate, but under entirely different conditions. The coal-
miners have, in some counties, had a long experience of
both time wages and piecework, with the result that, where-
ever there is a strong Trade Union, piecework is insisted on for
all hewers. The explanation is to be found in the circum-
stances under which the work is done. Employers have
found it impossible to supervise by foremen or managers the
numerous hewers scattered in the recesses of the mine. The
only possible alternative to paying the hewers at piecework
rates, was to let out the different parts of the mine to
working contractors, who engaged hewers by the hour to
work alongside them. This was the notorious " Butty
System," against which the organised hewers have persistently
struggled. It was found that, whatever was the customary
standard of daily time wages, the " Butty Master," who set
the pace, was always increasing the quantity of work to be
done for those wages by himself putting in ah unusual
intensity of effort. It is obvious that, under this system, the
ordinary hewer lost all security of a Standard Rate. It paid
the Butty Master to be always " speeding up," because he
received the product, not of his own extra exertion alone,
but of that of all his gang. The only method by which the
ordinary hewers could secure identity of rate was to dispense
with the Butty Masters, and themselves work by the piece.

We shall find exactly the same preference for piecework
wages in other trades among men who work under a sub-
contractor, or in subordination to another class of workmen
paid by the piece. The strikers, for instance, who work with
smiths paid by the piece, were themselves formerly paid time
wages. In most parts of the country they have now been
successful in obtaining the boon of a piecework rate pro-
portionate to that of the smiths, so that they are secured
extra remuneration for any extra spurt put on by the smith.
Another large class of workmen in a somewhat similar
position have not been so fortunate. The shipyard " helpers,'
who work under the platers (iron-shipbuilders), are paid b}

The Standard Rate 291

the day, whilst the platers receive piecework rates. The
first object of any combination of helpers has always been
to secure piecework rates, in order that their remuneration
might bear some proportion to the rapidity and intensity of
work, the pace being set by the platers. But owing to the
strength of the Boilermakers' Union, to which the platers
belong, the helpers have never been able to attain their
object.1 The iron and steel industries afford numerous other
instances in which workers paid by the day are in sub-
ordination to workers paid by the piece. In all these cases,
the subordinate workers desire to be paid by the piece, in
order that they may secure a greater uniformity in the rate
of payment for the work actually done.

Coming now to the trades in which piecework is most
strongly objected to by the operatives, we shall find the
argument again turning upon the question of uniformity of
the rate of remuneration. The engineers have always protested
that the introduction of piecework into their trade almost
necessarily implied a reversion to Individual Bargaining. The
work of a skilled mechanic in an engineering shop differs
from job to job in such a way as to make, under a piece-
work system, a new contract necessary for each job. Each
man, too, will be employed at an operation differing, if only
in slight degree, from those of his fellows. If they are all
working by the hour, a collective bargain can easily be made
and adhered to. But where each successive job differs from
the last, if only in small details, it is impossible to work out.
in advance any list of prices to which all the men can agree
to adhere. The settlement for each job must necessarily be
left to be made between the foreman and the workman
concerned. Collective Bargaining becomes, therefore, im-
possible. But this is not all. The uncertainty as to the

1 See, for the Boilermakers' or Platers' Helpers, the paper by J. Lynch, in
the Report of the Industrial Remuneration Conference (London, 1885), and the
discussion at the Trade Union Congress of 1878. Many of the helpers are now
members of the National Amalgamated Union of Labor and other laborers'
unions ; see the evidence given on their behalf before the Royal Commission on
Labor, I7th May 1892, Group A.

292 Trade Union Function

time and labor which a particular job will involve makes
it impossible for the foreman, with the best intentions in the
world, to fix the prices of successive jobs so that the workman
will obtain the same earnings for the same effort. And
when we remember the disadvantage at which, unprotected
by collective action, the individual operative necessarily
stands in bargaining with the capitalist employer, we shall
easily understand how the Amalgamated Society of Engineers
should have been led to declare that, under this system of
settling a special price for each job, " it is well known that
piecework is not a bargain, but a price dictated by the
employer and lowered at will." And the report adds that
" the system has often been made the instrument of large
reductions of wages, which have ended in the deterioration of
the conditions of the workmen. ... If an expert workman,
by his skill and industry, earns more than his neighbour, and
much more than his daily wages come to, a reduction is at
once made, and made again until eventually the most expert
is only able, by intense application and industry, to earn a
bare living, whilst the less skilful is reduced below living
prices." l

We could cite from the reports of the great national
unions of the Engineers, Ironfounders, and Carpenters innu-
merable similar protests against piecework in their trades,
all based upon the proved impossibility of maintaining a
Standard Rate, if each job has to be separately priced. It

1 Abstract Report of the Council's (of the A. S. E.) Proceedings, September
1860 to April 1862, pp. 24-26.

This process of fixing a piecework rate for all the men, by the speed of an
exceptionally expert workman under special pressure, has been more than once
unconsciously revealed by employers. Already in 1727, in a manual entitled
The Duty of a Steward to his Lord, by Edward Laurence, naive directions are
given how to achieve this object. ' ' Also if any new sort of work is to be done,
not mentioned in the following particulars, the Steward's best way is to hire a
good labourer and to stand by him the whole day to see that he does a good day's
work, and then to measure the same, in order to know what it is worth." The
efficacy of piecework, as an expedient for reducing wages was described in a letter
to the Times in 1852 by Charles Walker and Sons, an engineering firm. " When
work which has been done daywork is put on the piece, the employer usually
regulates the piecework price a little tinder the price of it at day-work, knowing

The Standard Rate 293

is, however, more interesting to watch the same conviction
being gradually borne in upon the mind of an exceptionally
able employer. In 1876, William Denny, the well-known
Clyde shipbuilder, who had put his whole establishment on
piecework rates, delivered a remarkable lecture on the
advantages of this method of remuneration, alike to the
employer and to the workmen, specially commending the
intensity of competition which it secured. He was utterly
unable to understand why the workmen objected to a system
which, in giving an "increase of from 25 to 50 per cent in
his wages — and this increase my experience confirms as a
rule — puts at once within his power a more comfortable and
easy style of living, combined with an opportunity of saving,
which, if he is a sober and careful man, will enable him to
enjoy a pleasant old age, and even to lay by sufficient money
to enable him to refuse on his own account any rate of
payment which he deems insufficient." l

Notwithstanding all these allurements, the Trade
Unions persisted in their objection. After ten years' further
experience of the working of piecework, William Denny at
last perceived the real root of the men's protest. In an
interesting letter written in 1886 he describes his own
conversion : —

At the time I published my pamphlet The Worth of Wages, I was
under the impression piecework rates would regulate themselves as I
then assumed time wages did. A larger experience of piecework has
convinced me that, excepting in cases where rates can be fixed and made

how production is increased by it. But he finds that men do work in quantity
far beyond what they have been doing daywork, earning often los. per day, when
at daywork they had done much less than half the work at 55. 6d. per day. So
much, indeed, is this the case, that manufacturers have made it a private rule that
men for their extra work should earn 'time and quarter' or 'time and third,'
and have reduced the price accordingly ; that is, where 55. was the man's day pay,
the price should be so arranged that ultimately he should earn 6s. 3d. or 6s. 8d.
per day. This method we do not quite agree with, and we believe it has made
men complain" (Times, Qth January 1852). Thus the employer not only gets
the advantage of an increased output upon the same fixed capital, but actually
contrives also insidiously to alter, to his own profit, the proportion between the
muscular energy expended by the workman and the amount of food which the
latter obtains.

1 The Worth of Wages, by William Denny (Dumbarton, 1876).

294 Trade Union Function

a matter of agreement between the whole body of the men in any works
and their employers, piecework prices have not a self-regulating power,
and are liable, under the pressure of heavy competition, to be depressed
below what I would consider a proper level. You must understand
there is a broad and very real distinction in piecework between the kind
of work which can be priced in regular rates and that in which contracts
are taken by the men for lump jobs of greater or less extent. In the
former kind of piecework it is easily possible for the rates to be effectively
controlled by the joint efforts of the employers and the workpeople, as
it is in the case of time wages. In the latter, owing to there being no
definite standard, it is quite possible that the prices may be raised too
high for competitive efficiency, or depressed to too low a point to recoup
the workmen for the extra exertion and initiative induced by the very
nature of piecework. In such work as that of rivetters, iron fitters, and
platers and in much of carpenters' work standards of price or rates can
be arranged or controlled, and the workers are not likely to endure any
arrangement they may consider inequitable. They are indeed much
more likely by insisting on uniform rates for a whole district to do
injustice to the more intelligent and energetic employers, who, by
introducing new machinery and new processes, are directly influential
in drawing work to their districts. It is evident that if piecework rates
are not reduced so as to make the improvements in machinery and
methods introduced by such employers fully effective in diminishing cost
of production, there will be a tendency on their part to abandon these
attempts, with diminished chances of work for their districts. In the
case of such improvements it is possible to reduce rates without in any
way reducing the effective earnings of the work-people. I may say that
in our own experience we have almost invariably found our workers
quite willing to consider these points fairly and intelligently. Frequently
they themselves make such suggestions as materially help us to reduce
cost of production. Such cases of invention and helpfulness on their
part are rewarded directly through our awards scheme of which you have
particulars.

In the second kind of piecework, involving contracts which cannot
be arranged by rates and controlled by the whole body of the workers,
the prices are necessarily a matter of settlement between individual
workmen and small groups of workmen and their foreman. Here it
depends upon the control exercised by the heads of the business whether
this kind of piecework drifts into extravagances, or into such reductions
of contract prices as either to reduce them to less than the value of time
wages or to so little above time wages that they do not compensate the
men for their extra exertions. We have found in testing such piecework
that the best method is to compare the earnings made by these piece-
workers in a given period with the time wages which they would have
received for the same period ; and it is the duty of one of our partners
to control this section of the work, and he does it almost invariably to

The Standard Rate 295

the advantage of the men. Our idea is that the men should be able to
average from 25 to 50 per cent more wages on such piecework within
a given time than their time wages would amount to. There are
occasional and exceptional cases where the results are less or more
favourable. Where they are less favourable, we consider them to be
not only a loss to the men, but disadvantageous to ourselves ; and our
reason for this is very clear, as unless the men feel that their exertions
produce really better wages, and that increased exertions and better
arrangements of work will produce still further increases of wages, there
is an end to all stimulus to activity or improvement.

I know an instance in which a well-meaning foreman, desirous of
diminishing the cost of the work in his department, reduced his piece-
work prices to such a point that he not only removed all healthy stimulus
to activity from his workmen, but produced among them serious discon-
tent. Our method of piecework analysis and control enabled us to
discover and remedy this before serious disaffection had been produced.
I know another instance in which a foreman, while avoiding the mistake
I have just mentioned, gave out his contracts in such small and scattered
portions, and under such conditions as to the way in which the work
was to be done and as to the composition of the co-partneries formed
by the men, that he not only reduced their earnings to very nearly time
rates, but created very serious disaffection among them. He was in the
habit of forcing the men to take into their co-partneries personal
favourites of his own, who very naturally became burdens upon those
co-partneries. As soon as our returns and inquiries revealed to us these
facts, we insisted that the contracts entered into with the men should be
of a sufficient money amount to enable them to organise themselves and
their work efficiently. We removed the defective arrangements above
referred to, and laid down the principle that their co-partneries were to
be purely voluntary. We were enabled by these means, and without
altering a single price, to at once raise their earnings from a level a little
above what they could have made on time wages to a very satisfactory
percentage of increase and to remove all discontent. These two in-
stances will show you how necessary it is in this kind of piecework that
there should be a direct control over those who are carrying it out.
When the heads of a business are absentees or indifferent the most
effective way in which the workmen can control such piecework would
be by taking care that the standard of time wages was always kept
perfectly clear and effective, and that regular comparisons per hour on
piecework were made. Such comparisons would immediately enable
them to arrive at a correct conclusion as to whether the prices paid them
were sufficiently profitable.

There is besides a mixed kind of piecework in which skilled work-
men employ laborers at time wages to do the unskilled portion of their
work for them, Here, too, some kind of control is required, as instances
occasionally occur in which the skilled workmen treat their laborers,

296 Trade Union Function

either intentionally or unintentionally, with harshness. I have even
known an instance in which such piecework contractors reduced their
laborers' time wages on the pay day without having given them any
previous notice. On the other hand, there are instances in which these
laborers behaved in an unreasonable and unfair spirit to the skilled work-
men who employ them.

In conclusion, I would say that the method of piecework is one
which cannot be approved or condemned absolutely, but is dependent
upon the spirit and the way in which it is carried out for the verdict
which should be passed upon it. It is imperative in such kinds of
piecework as by their nature cannot be reduced to regular rates that
either the employer should take the responsibility of safeguarding his
workmen's interests, or that the workmen themselves should, by such a
method as I have suggested, obtain an effective control over them.

There are besides conditions in which even piecework rates of a
general nature may become instruments of very great hardship. I mean
instances in which the workers are incapable of effective resistance, and
in which employers are either themselves ground down under the force
of a competition with which they are unable to cope, or in which, while
the employers possess extreme powers of position and capital, they are
deficient in any corresponding sense of responsibility to their workpeople.
I hope the day is not far distant in which an absentee employer would
be looked upon with as much contempt and disapproval as are absentee
landlords. If such a healthy public opinion should ever become domi-
nant, it is to be hoped it will be most active in influencing those employers
whose works are conducted in great part or wholly upon the piecework
method.1

We have, in this able explanation, a frank admission of
the whole case of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers
against the introduction of piecework into their trade. No
Trade Unionist could have expressed more forcibly than
Denny has done the impossibility of a uniform rate under
a system of individual piecework bargains. It is true that
Denny trusted to the personal intervention of an enlightened
and benevolent employer to mitigate the evil. But we need
not wonder that the workmen have hesitated to admit a
system which avowedly involves the complete surrender of
their position. Moreover, it is at least doubtful whether the
good employer, who protected his workmen against his own

1 Life of William Denny, by A. B. Bruce (London, 1889), p. 113 ; see the
article on Denny (who lived from 1847 to 1887) in the Dictionary of Political
Economy.

The Standard Rate 297

foreman's zeal to lower the expense of production, would long
survive in competition with his less scrupulous rivals, who
drove the sharpest possible bargain with their hands.

It is interesting to observe that the hint thrown out by
William Denny, as to the importance of workmen systemati-
cally checking all the piecework earnings by the standard
time rate, has since been followed up by the Amalgamated
Society of Engineers. In some cases, piecework is now
recognised by the union, even in highly organised districts,
on the understanding that every man in the shop shall draw
every week time and a quarter wages, ivhatever his production
has been. If at the end of a job there is a balance due to
him, he is allowed to receive it. Now, it is obvious that
under this arrangement it is possible to maintain something
like a uniform rate. The natural tendency of the foreman
to reduce the rates is checked by his knowledge, first, that in
no case will it profit him to make the piecework price work
out at less than time and a quarter, even for the slowest men
in the shop ; and secondly, that, unless the piecework prices
work out sufficiently above that minimum to furnish a real
incentive for extra exertion, the operatives, secure in any
event of time and a quarter wages, would quietly drop back
to time-work speed. Such a method of remuneration can-
not, however, be classed as piecework proper. It is rather a
high scale of time wages, with a bonus on extra output.1

The considerations which converted William Denny
from his enthusiasm for competitive piecework apply, not
only to the various departments of the engineering and ship-
building trades, but also to the work of carpenters, plumbers,
stonemasons, and bricklayers. In all these trades there is so
much difference between job and job that piecework is
inconsistent with Collective Bargaining. The work of the
plumber engaged to lay pipes, of varying sizes, in all kinds
of situations, can obviously be estimated only by the time

1 For other varieties of "bonus on output," see the acute discriminations of
Mr. D. F. Schloss in The Methods of Industrial Remuneration, 2nd ed. (London,
1894).

298 Trade Union Function

employed. The masons, chiselling stones of varied hardness,
different shapes, and more or less free from troublesome
flaws, could not possibly frame a list of piecework rates
which would yield identical wage to identical effort. The
same is true of the multifarious work of the carpenter and
joiner. When we come to the actual erection of houses, in
brick or stone, it may, at first sight, seem as if uniformity
was more possible. But if we watch the line of bricklayers
or stonemasons working side by side at building a wall, or
putting up the carcase of a house, we shall see that it would
be impossible precisely to reckon up the work accomplished
by any individual among them. Nor has this ever been
attempted by the most exacting employer. " Piecework," in
putting up walls or houses, has, indeed, been the subject of
long and bitter controversy among the bricklayers. But
piecework in this trade has always meant, not the payment
of each individual workman by the piece, but the letting out
of a sub-contract for the whole job to a " piecemaster," who
gets it done by bricklayers at time wages. This system of
sub-contract, mistermed " piecework " to the confusion of
outsiders, is objected to for the same reason as the coal-
miners allege against the " Butty System." The working
sub-contractor forces the pace in order to gain the advantage,
not of his own extra exertion alone, but also that of his
gang. It is, in fact, a fraudulent attempt to obtain piece-
work exertion whilst paying only time wages. And as the
system, in the opinion of the experts, almost inevitably tends
to the " scamping " of the work by the sub-contractor or piece-
master, it has long since been given up by respectable builders,
and is now usually prohibited in architects' specifications.

In marked contrast with the Trade Unions, such as the
Cotton Operatives and Coalminers, which insist on piece-
work, and with those, such as the Bricklayers and Stone-
masons, which insist on timework, stand those societies which
accept with seeming indifference either method of remunera-
tion. The various Trade Unions of the compositors, in all
parts of the country, have, for over a century, formally

The Standard Rate 299

recognised both the " scale " of piecework rates and the
" stab " or time wages. In the numerous revisions of the
collective agreements between employers and employed, the
compositors have constantly striven to maintain a standard
rate. " Speaking generally," reports the Revision Sub-
Committee to the London Society of Compositors in 1890,
" our desire has been to so amend the scale as to place all

>mpositors as far as possible on an equality, no matter what
;lass of work they may be engaged upon, or whether employed
is piece or 'stab hands — allowance, of course, being made for

le varying capabilities of those employed." l Although the

rork of a compositor includes many different varieties, these,
unlike certain engineering operations, are all capable of fairly
>recise enumeration in a " scale" extending to between 30 and
40 pages octavo. Thus, piecework is in no way inconsistent
with Collective Bargaining, or the maintenance of a Standard
Rate, and is therefore not objected to. On the other hand,
the compositor is not liable to be " speeded up," nor yet over-
Iriven by machinery or a zealous foreman, so that there is no
ison to object to time wages, if the employer prefers this

'•stem.2 As a matter of fact most straightforward setting-up

1 Report of Sub- Committee appointed to revise the London Scale of Prices,
[890.

2 The system of payment by the piece was apparently universal in British
printing offices in the eighteenth century. The introduction of "establishment,"
or time wages, was an innovation of the employers at the beginning of the present
century, consented to by the operatives with much reluctance, and denounced by
some of them as leading to reduction of rates. (See Place MSS. 27,799-99/103.)
The acceptance of both systems of remuneration has involved the enactment of
various subsidiary rules to check unfair wages calculated to depress rates. Thus
employers are not allowed to change from one system to another without due
notice, as otherwise the operative would be required to do all difficult composition
by the piece, the "fat" (or profitable work) being given out at time wages.
Elaborate arrangements are made for the fair distribution of " the fat," the
"clicker" who hands out the "copy" to the different compositors being
appointed and frequently paid by the "chapel," the ancient organisation of the
workmen in each printing office. Many disputes have arisen from employers
attempting to withhold "the fat" from the piecework compositors; or, on the
other hand, to use the pieceworkers to force the pace of the timeworkers.
Compositors' unions therefore prefer that the employer should confine himself to
one system or the other.

In 1876 a joint committee of the Glasgow master printers and their com-
positors decided that the "clicking system," or fair sharing of the "fat," was

3OO Trade Union Function

of ordinary book matter and daily newspaper work is done
by the piece, whereas corrections and special jobs difficult of
calculation are done by " stab " men.

The other leading instance of an impartial acceptance
of both piecework and time wages is offered by the United
Society of Boilermakers and Iron-shipbuilders. Here the
bulk of the work in building new ships is done by the piece,
at rates settled, as we have already mentioned, between the
district committee of the union and the particular firms or
the local employers' association. On the other hand, repair-
ing work, which cannot be classified in advance, is done at
time wages. Thus the by-laws for the Mersey district
declare that " piecework of any description is not allowed on
repair jobs in either wet or dry docks ; and no man shall be
in any way compelled to put in any given number of rivets,
or tasked as to other work, which he shall do during the
day ; but in all cases, the principle of a fair day's work for
a fair day's pay be faithfully and honorably carried out by
every member of this Association." l We see the same
distinction unconsciously influencing another trade, the Tin-
plate Workers, who, less fortunate than the Boilermakers,
have not succeeded in organising their whole trade into a
single society. The General Union of Tinplate Workers,
with Liverpool for its headquarters, whose work is mainly
connected with shipbuilding, and is so diverse as to render it
difficult, if not impossible, to construct any piecework list,
insists on time wages. On the other hand, the National
Amalgamated Tinplate Workers' Union, with its headquarters
at Wolverhampton, which comprises mainly the artificers
of sheet metal pots and pans, has a regular list of prices, and
prefers to work by the piece. So closely does this difference
of policy coincide with difference of work that the Manchester
Branch of the General Union (the shipyard society), which

equivalent to an addition to a farthing per 1000, this advance being conceded to
the compositors in shops where that system did not prevail. — MS. Minutes of
Glasgow Typographical Society, I2th December 1876.

1 By-laws for the Mersey District United Society of Boilermakers and Iron-
shipbuilders (Liverpool, 1889).

The Standard Rate 301

finds itself by exception employed in the fashioning of pots
and pans, refuses to abide by the principle of time work
followed by the port branches, and elects to work by the
piece. In both cases the aim is the same, namely the main-
tenance of a Standard Rate. But the difference of policy
between the two societies, arising, as can be seen, from the
difference in their respective tasks, is not clearly understood
by either, and is the subject of constant friction between
lem. And so it happens that (forgetting the example of
its own Manchester Branch) the General Union of Tin-
plate Workers accuses the National Amalgamated Tinplate
Corkers' Union of betraying the central position of Trade
Unionism by not insisting on time wages. On the other
ind, the latter society, confident in its piecework lists, sees
10 reason why it should not establish branches of piece-
workers in the ports, where time work has hitherto prevailed,
ind where piecework would probably break down all Collec-
ive Bargaining.

This instance indicates how unconscious particular Trade
Unions may be of the principles upon which their empirical
iction has really been based. The same unconsciousness
>metimes leads to a persistence in whichever method of
remuneration has been customary, long after the circum-
tances have changed. Thus the Cabinetmakers, among
whom Collective Bargaining in any elaborate form has prac-
tically disappeared, might possibly have maintained their
>rganisation if they had, like the Bricklayers and Stone-
lasons, insisted on reverting to time wages. At the begin-
ning of this century, the Cabinetmakers had elaborate lists
of prices, collectively agreed to between employers and
employed ; and we have ample evidence of the efficiency
with which the contemporary cabinetmakers' unions conducted
their Collective Bargaining. In consequence of the great
changes in and multiplication of patterns, and the alteration
of processes, the lists have long since been obsolete, and no
one has yet found it possible to classify the innumerable jobs
now involved in the manufacture of furniture. " Estimate

302 Trade Union Function

work,"" lump work," and other forms of the individual bargain
accordingly prevail. So strong, however, has been the tradi-
tion and custom of piecework in the trade that none of the
various unions which have from time to time arisen during
the last half century have been able to stand out for time
wages. Collective action accordingly now seldom rises higher
than the " shop bargain," and even this frequently breaks
down.

Another instance of a customary adherence to a tradi-
tional method of remuneration is to be found in the Iron-
founders' and Engineers' rigid refusal to recognise piecework
even on those jobs which involve the constant repetition of
precisely the same operation. We have already explained
why the bulk of the work in an engineering shop cannot be
done at piecework rates consistently with Collective Bargain-
ing. But with the enormous expansion of the trade, and the
application of machinery to particular processes, a considerable
section of engineers and " machine moulders " have long found
themselves turning out a constant succession of identical
articles for which it would be quite practicable to frame a
uniform piecework list which would allow of Collective
Bargaining. So strong, however, was the traditional feeling
of the mechanics against piecework (meaning " estimate work "
and Individual Bargaining) that the Amalgamated Society
of Engineers positively refused, down to 1892, to allow any
employer to introduce any piecework whatsoever, with the
consequence that establishment after establishment became
closed to the union. At last, at their quinquennial " Parlia-
ment "in 1892, the Engineers decided to permit the formation
of piecework lists, in the cases in which they were practicable,
and appointed salaried officers to carry out this new form of
Collective Bargaining. The Friendly Society of Ironfounders
still refuses to take this step, with the result that the auto-
matic machine process of casting has fallen to a separate
class of workmen, who are not eligible for membership to
this old-established union.

We are now in a position to come to some general con-

The Standard Rate 303

elusion as to the attitude which Trade Unions take up with
regard to piecework and time work. It is not true that
Trade Unions object to piecework as such ; in fact, a majority
of Trade Unionists either willingly accept, or else positively
insist on, that system of remuneration. Nor is it true that
employers universally prefer piecework. The members of
the great race of sub-contractors in all industries are always
trying to employ time workers, in order to obtain for them-
selves the fullest possible advantage of their own driving
power. In the same way, employers whose machinery is
rapidly improving complain of the inequity of the piecework
system, as being apt to deprive them of part of the advantage
of an increase in the speed of working. What the capitalist
seeks is to get more work for the old pay. Sometimes this
can be achieved best by piecework, sometimes by time work.
Workmen, on the other hand, strive to obtain more pay for
the same number of working hours. For the moment, at
any rate, the individual operative can most easily secure this
by piecework. But not even for the sake of getting more
pay for the same number of hours' work will the experienced
workman revert to the individual bargain, with all its dangers.
Accordingly the Trade Unions accept piecework only when
it is consistent with Collective Bargaining, that is, when a
standard list of prices can be arrived at between the em-
ployers on the one hand, and the representatives of the whole
body of workmen on the other. As a matter of fact this is
practicable, so far as concerns anything above mere unskilled .
laboring, in a majority of the organised industries, in which,
therefore, piecework prevails by consent of both masters and
men. It is, indeed, impossible to decide whether Trade
Unionism has, on the whole, favored or discouraged the
substitution of piecework for time wages. On the one hand,
every increase in Trade Union organisation, and especially
every extension of the class of salaried Trade Union officials,
has made more possible the arrangement of definite piecework
lists. This process is now extending from trade to trade.
The very establishment of these lists has, on the other hand,

304 Trade Union Function

lessened the employers' desire to introduce piecework, whilst
to any method of remuneration involving individual bargain-
ing, such as " estimate " or " lump " work, the Trade Unions
have shown implacable hostility.

And just as the fundamental idea of the Standard Rate
has enabled us to understand the Trade Union attitude
towards piecework, so, too, we shall find it throwing light
upon various minor regulations of particular Trade Unions.
Various unions of operatives working at time wages have from
time to time attempted to secure a real, as distinguished from
a nominal identity in the rate of remuneration, by fixing, not
merely the minimum money wage, but also the maximum
amount of work to be done for that wage. Some of these
rules have obtained notoriety as classic instances of the folly
and perversity of Trade Unions. The fifth by-law of the
Bradford Lodge of the Laborers' Union of 1867 was quoted
before the Trade Union Commission as follows : " You are
strictly cautioned not to outstep good rules by doing double
the work you are required, and causing others to do the same,
in order to gain a smile from the master." l And the fol-
lowing rule of the Leeds Lodge of the Bricklayers' Laborers'
Union was at the same time given : " Any brother in the
Union professing to carry any more than the common
number, which is eight bricks, shall be fined one shilling, to
be paid within one month, or remain out of the benefit until
such fine be paid."2 Nor were such rules entirely confined
to unskilled laborers. The Manchester Bricklayers' Associ-
ation were stated, in 1869, to have a rule providing that
" Any man found running or working beyond a regular speed
shall be fined 2s. 6d. for the first offence, 5s. for the second,
I os. for the third, and if still persisting, shall be dealt with
as the Committee think proper." 3 The Friendly Society of
Operative Stonemasons adopted, in 1865, the following rule :

1 Evidence of Mr. A. Mault, Secretary of the Manchester Builders' Associa-
tion.^ Q. 3120.

Ibid. Q. 3122.
3 \V. T. Thornton, On Labour (London, 1869), pp. 350, 351.

The Standard Rate 305

" In localities where that most obnoxious and destructive
system generally known as ' chasing ' is persisted in, lodges
should use every effort to put it down. Not to take less
time than that taken by an average mason in the execution
of the first portion of each description of work is the practice
that should be adopted among us as much as possible ; and
where it is plainly visible that any member or other in-
dividual is striving to overwork or * chase ' his fellow-work-
men, thereby acting in a manner calculated to lead to the
discharge of members or a reduction of their wages, the party
so acting shall be summoned before the lodge, and if the
charge be satisfactorily proved a fine shall be inflicted." 1

These and similar regulations, widely advertised by the
Trade Union Commission of 1867-69, met with universal
condemnation. It does not seem to have been perceived
that, however bad were their secondary results, they were, in
their inception, a necessary protection of any Standard Rate
upon a time-work basis. It is a necessary incident of the
collective bargain that one man should not underbid another ;
and this underbidding can as easily take place by the offer
of more work for the same hour's wage, as by the offer of
the normal amount of work for a lower hourly wage. By
underbidding in the hourly rate, this would be lowered for
all. It follows equally that by underbidding in point of the
intensity of effort, this would, in the same way, soon be
raised for all. But the workmen's by-laws were designed
also to meet a more insidious attack. Many pushing fore-
men, in building contracts, intent on getting the utmost work
out of their men, were accustomed to bribe particular work-
men with beer, or by the promise of a slightly increased rate
of pay, to work at exceptional speed, with the object of
"pulling on" all the other workmen to the same speed.
These " bell horses," as they were termed by the workmen,
were, in fact, used to increase the intensity of the work be-
yond the normal standard tacitly implied in the collective

1 Rule n, Class 2, p. 31, in Laws of the Friendly Society of Operative
Stonemasons (Bolton, 1867).

VOL. I X

306 Trade Union Function

bargain, much in the same way as the pieceworking Butty
Master forced the speed of the time-working coal hewer.
The practice was, in fact, a method of obtaining extra work
from the whole gang, whilst paying only one or two men in
the gang for the extra exertion involved. When done with-
out the men's knowledge, the practice amounted to a fraudu-
lent evasion of the bargain.

Such practices on the part of employers and their foremen
would quickly have rendered a Standard Rate and Collective
Bargaining impossible, and it was not unnatural that the
workmen should have adopted regulations in their own de-
fence. The coal hewers and the strikers, exposed, as we have
seen, to being similarly " driven," met the attack by insisting
on themselves receiving piecework rates. The cotton-spinners
and cotton-weavers protected themselves against the constant
" speeding up " of the machinery by elaborating their piece-
work lists. The builder's laborer whose fetch and carry
work could hardly be paid by the piece could find no other
expedient than fixing by collective agreement the maximum
task as well as the minimum wage.

But if the use of " bell horses " is a fraud on the men,
the regulations devised to check this practice may easily
work out so as to be a fraud on the employer. He has, in
effect, contracted for his labor at an all-round rate, on the
assumption that he receives a normal average of work. In
the group of workmen there will, of course, be some of
average speed, together with a few quicker men, and a few
slower. Any regulations which tend to restrict the quick
workers necessarily lower the average of the whole, upon
which the collective bargain has by implication been based.

This practice of " levelling down " the quantity of labor
is seen at its worst when it is used as a weapon not of
defence but of aggression. It is one thing to prohibit indi-
vidual workmen from allowing themselves to be used as a
means of exacting unpaid extra labor from their fellows. It
would be quite another matter if Trade Unions, unable to
raise the sum of their wages, advocated to all their members

The Standard Rate 307

an insidious diminution of their energy without notice to the
employer. This might be as much a fraudulent alteration of
the implied bargain as the practice of the Butty Master. We
know of one case of this nature, the so-called " go canny"
policy, adopted for a short time by the National Union of
Dock Laborers in Liverpool. The employers had stead-
fastly refused to increase the remuneration for their low-paid
work, and the men found themselves powerless to obtain
what they considered a living wage. In desperation they
adopted the expedient of not putting any energy into their
work. In this somewhat remarkable case the laborers
alleged that they were only following the practice of the
commercial man. " There is no ground for doubting," observed
the report of their executive committee, " that the real rela-
tion of the employer to the workman is simply this — to secure
the largest amount of the best kind of work for the smallest
wages ; and, undesirable as this relation may be to the work-
man, there is no escape from it except to adopt the situation
and apply it to the common-sense commercial rule which
provides a commodity in accordance with the price. . . . The
employer insists upon fixing the amount he will give for
an hour's labor without the slightest consideration for the
laborer ; there is, surely, therefore, nothing wrong in the
laborer, on the other hand, fixing the amount and the
quality of the labor he will give in an hour for the price
fixed by the employer. If employers of labor or purchasers
of goods refuse to pay for the genuine article^ they must be
content with shoddy and veneer. This is their own orthodox
doctrine which they urge us to study." x

From the old standpoint of a purely competitive indi-
vidualism, it is not easy to deny the men's right to sell an
adulterated form of labor if they think it to their advantage

1 Report of Executive of the National Union of Dock Laborers in Great Britain
and Ireland, 1891 (Glasgow, 1891, pp. 14-15). The men quoted the following
sentence from Jevons's Primer of Political Economy : " The employer, generally
speaking, is right in getting work done at the lowest possible cost ; and if there
is a supply of labor forthcoming at lower rates of wages, it would not be wise in
him to pay higher rates."

308 Trade Union Function

to do so. If, as in the instance cited, the men openly pro-
claim their intention, there is no question of fraud ; and they
may, from this point of view, fairly claim to be acting like
an exceptionally honest trader who, whilst selling shoddy
goods, does not pretend that they are anything else. The
employers may retaliate by dismissal. The men may, in
return, persuade their successors to adopt the same method.
The quarrel becomes a " struggle for existence," in which
the " fittest " in these arts of war may survive.

We have, however, come to believe that in such inter-
necine struggles the interests of the community as a whole
almost inevitably suffer. In spite of the protests of John
Bright, successive Parliaments have prohibited the adultera-
tion of commodities. But adulteration of labor is infinitely
more injurious to the community. We have, in fact, in this
case a striking illustration of the utter fallacy of the statement
that " labor is a commodity, ... an article saleable and pur-
chaseable," which could not logically be treated " as any-
thing else." l We cannot separate the quantity or quality of
the day's work from its effect upon the health and character of
the human being who is rendering it. The sub-contractor's
practice of " driving," the constant pressure upon a man to
work always at the very top of his speed, will quickly break
down the health of the worker, and impoverish the nation by
producing premature old age. On the other hand, systematic
loitering will destroy the character and efficiency of even the
most resolute worker. In adulterating the product, you
adulterate the man. To the unskilled laborers of a great
city, already demoralised by irregularity of employment and
reduced below the average in capacity for persistent work,
the doctrine of " go canny" may easily bring about the final
ruin of personal character. It was an instinctive apprecia-
tion of this truth which led the responsible Trade Union
officials unhesitatingly to denounce the new departure of the

1 Speech of the well-known capitalist opponent of Trade Unions, Edmund
Potter of Manchester, Social Science Association's Report on Trade Societies and
Strikes, 1860, p. 603.

The Standard Rate 309

Liverpool dock laborers. It remains, so far as we know, a
unique instance in Trade Union annals. l

When we turn from time workers to pieceworkers, we
find the subsidiary regulations called into being to defend the
Standard Rate wholly free from any objectionable character,
beyond a certain inevitable complexity. The first series of
these is concerned with accuracy of measurement. Employers
have always claimed the right of making, by their agents or
themselves, all the calculations involved in preparing their
pay sheets, and they have expected the operatives implicitly
to accept their figures. Against this contention the Trade
Unions have persistently and successfully struggled. In all
the cases in which the operative is unable easily to check
the computation, it is obvious that such an arrangement left
the Standard Rate entirely at the master's mercy. " In weigh-
ing how was the collier to obtain justice ? He was at the
bottom of the pit, and could not see the master's nominee at
the top — and so again there arose the cry of being cheated
in weight. For years this was a bone of contention ; and
in revising the Inspections (Mines Regulation) Act of 1860,
the delegates of the men prevailed upon the Government to
insert a clause, ordering that coal should be duly weighed
by a just steelyard at the pit's mouth, and that the men
might, at their own cost, appoint a checkweigh-man who
should not further interfere with the working but to see and
take an account of the men's work. Opposition to this clause
was strongly offered by the delegates of the employers . . .
the masters did not want a weighing clause at all. ... A
compromise was submitted to. The weighing clause was
incorporated with another clause — the 2Qth — with a rider

1 It is only fair to Trade Union officials to say that the two enthusiasts who,
in despair of otherwise benefiting the unfortunate laborers, initiated this policy,
did not belong to the ranks of the workmen — a fact which the reader of their
able and ingenious argument will already have perceived. They were shortly
afterwards formally excluded, as middle-class men, from the Trade Union Con-
gress at Glasgow in 1892. When, in 1896, it was suggested that a similar policy
should be adopted by the International Federation of Ship, Dock, and River
Workers, it was opposed by such leaders as Ben Tillett, and rejected by the
members' vote.

310 Trade Union Function

added to it by the employers, viz. that the checkweigh-man
should be selected from persons employed at that colliery." 1

Without casting any special imputation on coalowners,
it may be said that the miners' suspicions have been so far
borne out by evidence that Parliament has progressively
strengthened the clause thus adopted in 1860. As the law
now stands, a simple majority of the miners in any one pit
can decide to have a checkweigh-man elected by the pit, and
paid by a compulsory stoppage from the earnings of every
pieceworker employed, including even those who voted against
the proposal. Any person who is or has been a miner may
be elected to the post, whether the employer likes it or not,
and the law courts insist that he shall be allowed free access
to the weighing machines, and given every facility for check-
ing the weights.

A further step in the same direction has been taken at
the instance of the powerful unions of cotton operatives.
What the coal miners have obtained is the right to have the
employers' calculations checked by the men's official. The
textile operatives have obtained, not only the publication in
advance by the employer of the exact particulars on which
he will calculate the piecework earnings, but have also secured
the appointment of a Government officer specially charged
with seeing that these particulars are correctly stated.2 The
"particulars clause," adopted for cotton -weavers in the
Factory Act of the Conservative Government of 1891, and
extended to all textile workers by the amending Act of the
Liberal Government of 1895, will, in all probability, be
applied, within a few years, to all piecework trades in which
the computation of earnings lends itself to mistake or fraud.8

1 Transactions and Results of the National Association of Coal, Lime, and
Ironstone Miners of Great Britain (London, 1863), p. vii.

2 It is much to the credit of the North-East Lancashire Operative Weavers'
Association, and to the fair-mindedness of the leading employers, that the veteran
official of the weavers' union, who had for a generation fought the men's battles,
was, by common consent, marked out as the fittest person to hold this important
new office. Mr. T. Birtwistle has fully justified his appointment, and has given
universal satisfaction to all parties.

3 The Factory Act of 1895 empowers the Home Secretary to apply this

The Standard Rate 311

By this clause the employer is required to state in writing,
before the job is begun, all the particulars (including the rate
of payment) required for the precise computation of the
operatives' earnings.

But there are other ways of defrauding the pieceworker
besides inaccurate calculations. The weight of coal hewn by
each miner may be accurately measured at the pit's mouth,
but if he is sent to work in a distant or difficult seam, the
standard tonnage rate may be very far from securing identical
pay for identical effort. The cotton-spinner finds his list of
prices a delusion if his mules have to be frequently stopped
to repair breakages caused by the bad quality of the raw
cotton. And even those who are aware of the coalminers'
" county basis," and of the elaborate " cotton lists," seldom
realise how technical and how minute are the adjustments
which are necessary to attain this end, or how manifold and
incessant are the complaints requiring attention. The best
way of bringing the facts home to the general reader will,
we think, be to give a few extracts from actual proceedings.
Thus, the Joint Committee of the Northumberland Coal-
owners and Miners settled, in a single day, the following as
well as many other cases : —

Burradon. — Agreement confirmed. Yard Seam, East Side, until
end of current quarter, is. 7^d. per ton ; afterwards is. 6jd. per ton.

Cramlington, Amelia Pit. — Agreement confirmed : (a) Yankee Jack
system shall be abolished whenever the owners find it convenient to do
so, and upon such abolition the hewing prices in the Low Main and Yard.
Seams shall be advanced 9 per cent. In the case of the Main Coal
Seam the unscreened hewing prices shall be 63 per cent of the present
round coal hewing prices, and upon such abolition they shall be advanced
9 per cent.

Walker. — Agreement confirmed. Beaumont and Brockwell Seams.
Long wall or broken hewing price shall be paid when 40 yards from
commencement of long wall, i.e. 40 yards from fast wall side.

New Backworth. — Men request payment for lamps when required to
use them in the whole. To be paid extra id. per ton in bord and pillar

clause, by mere administrative order, to any piecework trade, and it was so
applied in 1897 to manufacturies of handkerchiefs, aprons, pinafores, and blouses ;
and to those of chains, anchors, and locks.

312 Trade Union Function

whole workings, in accordance with county arrangement, when required
to use lamps.

Seaton Burn. — Owners desire hewing price for long wall in Bowes'
coal in Low Main Seam to be fixed. That standard prices now being
paid be reduced 3d. per ton.1

Even more diversified are the adjustments of the cotton
operatives. Here are some extracts from the diary of the
secretary of the Bolton spinners : —

January 5th, 1892. — Mr. Pennington, of the Hindley Twist Com-
pany, Hindley, called here this morning. He agreed to weekly pays,
and to discontinue the system of one spinner to two pairs of mules. I
am to go through the mills on Monday next, and if spinning is not satis-
factory, will be made so ; and we are to see in what way the mules can
be speeded up so as to give better wages. Work is to be resumed on
Thursday morning.

January 6th.— Went to Peake's Place Mill (Messrs. Tristram's),
Halliwell, and arranged that the men on the three pairs of mules
spinning coarse counts shall receive 2s. 6d. a week extra, until certain
alterations and repairs to the mules shall have been made.

January 6th. — Accompanied by Mr. Percival (the secretary of the
employers' association), I went to Mr. Robert Briercliffe's Mill, Moses
Gate. They have no less rims in stock, so it was agreed that the prices
per 100 Ibs. for spinning in No. I Mill shall be increased 6d. for one
month during which the work is to be made satisfactory. The firm
have likewise conceded the request of their men, and will adopt payment
by indicator. The notice to leave work is consequently withdrawn.

January 8th. — Complaints are to hand from Messrs. M'Connell and
Co.'s Sedgwick Mill, Manchester, of bobbins breaking ; being short of
doffing tins ; and of the men on six pairs of mules being unable to earn
the basis wages.

January 1 2th. — From our men at Waterloo Mill, Bolton, comes a
complaint of the rooms being too cold, and also irregular running of the
engine.

January iQth. — Have tested the counts at Melrose Mill, and found
the average 2^ hanks wrong. The men are to leave work at breakfast
time to-morrow if counts are not put right.

April 7th, 1893. — Mr. Percival and myself, at the request of Messrs.
James Marsden and Sons, went through their No. 4 Mill to look at the
spinning on the counts complained of on Tuesday. We found it below
the usual standard at this firm, and Mr. Joseph Marsden undertook to
see to its rectification.

1 Proceedings of Joint Committee on I4th November 1891 (Northumberland
Miners' Minutes t 1891).

The Standard Rate 313

April loth. — Want of window blinds is the complaint from our men
at the Parkside Mill, Golborne.

April 1 8th. — Our members at Messrs. Robert Haworth, Ltd., Castle
Hill Mill, Hindley, complain of the overbearing conduct of their over-
looker. On investigation, found that they were more to blame than
the overlooker.

May Qth. — The drosophore humidifier at Robin Hood, No. 2 Mill,
is so detrimental to the health of the men that I am to request the firm
not to use it further.

June 1 2th. — Mr. Percival, Mr. Robinson, and myself went to Howe-
bridge Mills to test counts in No. 2 Mill. We found them fully one
hank finer than are paid for. The firm promise to put them right, but
that is not sufficient for us, as they will be wrong again before the week
end. We suggested they should adopt payment by indicator, and the
firm subsequently agreed to try a few pairs.1

We see the same determination to obtain identical pay-
ment for identical effort in the Trade Union regulations
enforcing specific additions for extra exertion or incon-
venience. Hence the " Working Rules," drawn up in almost
every town by the master builders and the several sections
of building operatives, include, besides the standard rate
for the normal hours and ordinary work, determinate charges
for " walking time " beyond a certain distance, and " lodging
money " when sent away from home.2 In trades in which ^
men provide their own steel tools, " grinding money " is a
usual extra.8 When any class of work involves special un-
pleasantness or injury to clothing, " black money " or " dirty
money " is sometimes stipulated for. Thus, the boilermakers
and engineers receive extra rates for jobs connected with
oil-carrying vessels. " Men working inside the ballast-tanks or
between the deep floors under the engine-beds, after the vessel
has been regularly employed at sea, to receive one quarter

1 These diaries are printed in the Annual Reports of the Bolton Operative
Cotton-spinners' Provincial Association.

2 See, for instance, the Local Code of Rules for the Guidance of Masons,
signed by the Central Association of Master Builders of London and the Friendly
Society of Operative Stonemasons, 2$rd June 1892.

3 " Pattern-makers, millwrights, and machine joiners on dismissal must receive
two hours' notice, so as to grind their tools, or be paid two hours in lieu thereof."
London By-laws of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, April 1894, clause iv.
Rule vi. p. 7.

314 Trade Union Function

day, or two and a quarter hours extra for each full day or night,
as compensation for the very dirty work." ] The foregoing are
all instances of "extras" charged by Trade Unions of time-
workers. But we find a similar list put forward by Trade
Unions on a piecework basis. The National Union of Boot
and Shoe Operatives prescribes, in minute and technical
detail, for a long list of extra pieces of work, to be specially
paid for. And a large part of the length and complication
of the well-known " scale " of the Compositors is due to their
insistence on explicitly defined extra rates for every kind
of composition involving more labor than " common matter."
It is impossible to convey any adequate idea of the number
and variety of the " extras " thus formally agreed to between
employers and employed : " bottom notes," " side notes,"
" under runners," " small chases," " large pages," " pamphlets,"
" catalogues," " undisplayed broadsheets," " table work,"
" column work," "parallel matter," "split fractions," "superiors,"
" inferiors," " slip matter," " interlinear matter," " prefatory
matter," " indices," " appendices," and what not. Finally, as
if to discourage vain learning, Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac,
and similar languages, together with " pedigrees," are " to be
paid double the price of common matter." 2

We do not think that, after so long and detailed an
examination of the Standard Rate, we need weary the reader
by any lengthy exposition of the Trade Union regulations
prohibiting arbitrary fines and deductions, or any form of
" truck." It may seem unreasonable for the workmen to
object to the employer's system of maintaining discipline in
the factory. But if that system takes the form of imposition
of fines for minor offences, and, as is usually the case, the
employer puts the fines into his own pocket, it is clear that
the average amount of the fines per week is, in effect, an
exactly proportionate reduction of the Standard Rate. An
employer using this method of enforcing the necessary

1 Rule VI. of By-laws for the Mersey District, United Society of Boiler-
makers. 1889.

2 The London Scale of Prices for Compositors' Work. 1891.

The Standard Rate 315

discipline finds himself buying his labor cheaper than his
competitors, by an amount varying precisely in proportion
to the frequency and severity of the penalties which he him-
self imposes.1 The same arbitrary character attaches to the
once universal system of making the operatives pay for minor
breakages, or for incidental requirements of their work. " In
the good old times of low wages, irregular work, and poor
living," ironically writes an official of the Cotton-spinners,
"operatives used to have to pay for broken bobbins, gas,
new brushes, find their own oil-cans, renew parts of their
machines that got broken, and no end of other nice little
things that made a fair hole in their wages." 2 Against all
these practices the Cotton-spinners have long since made
good their protest. The Cotton- weavers, of whom a large
majority are women, are still occasionally imposed upon, and
the rules of their unions accordingly still include a peremptory
injunction against submitting to any such deductions. " Never
pay, or agree to pay," say, for instance, the Preston rules,
" for any shuttles, forks, brushes, or any piece of machinery,
matter, or thing belonging to the master, or used in his
business in any way whatsoever, except what you may have
by sheer negligence wilfully or maliciously broken or de-
stroyed ; and if they stop it from your wages, bring the case
before the Committee at their next meeting." 3 But it is not

1 A system of fines may be less objectionable if the money goes to the
operatives' sick club, or some other fund for their common benefit. But sick
clubs or superannuation funds connected with particular establishments, especially
if membership is compulsory, are objectionable from the Trade Union point of
view on other grounds, notably that of diminishing the operative's independence.
This subject is further examined in the chapter on " The Implications of Trade
Unionism."

2 Cotton Factory Times, 22nd July 1892.

3 Rules of the Preston and District Power Loom Weavers' Association (Preston,
1891), p. 20.

In piecework trades, the employer seeks to escape paying for any but perfect
articles, and usually claims the right to reject, without appeal, any that he chooses.
This has led to a whole series of conflicts in different industries. The Trade
Unionist contention has been ( I ) that the operative should not be made to suffer
for failures due to the imperfection of material, or defects in the process ; (2) that
in any case, if the employer refuses to pay anything for the work on the ground
of its imperfection, he should not retain the article for his own profit, but destroy

316 Trade Union Function

only such arbitrary charges as fines and deductions, which
necessarily vary from mill to mill, that are fundamentally
inconsistent with the collective settlement of a Standard
Rate. Even such uniform, regular, and definite payments
as the " loom rent " of the hand-working weaver of cotton,
silk, or carpets, the frame rent of the hosiery worker, and the
trough or wheel rent of the Sheffield cutler, have been found,
by long and painful experience, to be equally destructive of
any definite standard of earnings. This arises from their
being continuous and calculated by time, whilst the operative's
work is irregular and paid for by the piece. In all these
cases rent of the machine is exacted by the employer whether
the operative is given work or not. Thus, as the framework
knitters allege, when they paid rent for their frames, the
employers were tempted to spin out the work over much
longer periods than was necessary, doling it out in very small
portions in order to keep them paying rent as long as

it ; and (3) that there should be some means of appeal against the employer's
arbitrary judgment in his own cause. Thus the Potters have fought a long battle
for the last sixty years against the condition termed "good from oven," by which
the workman is only paid for such articles as come out perfect from the firing
oven. As he has no power to select material, and no control over the firing of
the oven, this condition throws upon him not only the cost of his own negligence,
but also that due to imperfection of raw material, defects of fixed plant, and care-
lessness of foremen or other operatives. It is a further aggravation that the
employer arbitrarily decides which articles should be rejected as imperfect, and
was formerly even free to retain and sell those which he had thus escaped paying
for. After the great strike of 1836 the Staffordshire Potters succeeded in
remedying the latter grievance. It was agreed that articles rejected as imperfect
should be broken up, a great temptation being thus removed from unscrupulous
employers. But " good from oven " still remains the basis of payment, the
Trade Union demand of "good from hand " being still resisted by the employers.
In the same way the Glass Bottle Makers, who have several rules in their agree-
ments with their employers defining minutely the circumstances under which
men may or may not be charged for spoiled work, have one declaring " that
bottles picked out (as spoiled) be not broken down until the men have had an
opportunity of inspecting them, but in no case shall they be kept beyond the
following day." Article 10 of the Agreement for 1895 . . . bet-ween the York-
shire Glass Bottle Manufacturers' Association, and the Glass Bottle Makers of
Yorkshire United Trade Protection Society (Castleford, 1895).

A particularly aggravated form of the same grievance is resisted by the
Friendly Society of Ironfounders, whose members are all paid by time. Not-
withstanding this, and the fact that they neither choose the raw material nor
direct the process, attempts are from time to time made by employers to make
deductions for castings which turn out badly.

The Standard Rate 3 1 7

possible. And the Macclesfield silk-weavers complain that
they are kept always half employed, the giver-out of work
rinding his advantage in getting it done on as many separate
looms as possible, from each of which a full weekly rent is
derived. It is easy to see how such a system may open a
way for personal tyranny and exaction. It is more to our
immediate purpose to notice how incompatible it is with
Collective Bargaining and a Standard Rate. If the employer
can give out work in unequal quantities to different operatives,
but deduct from each an equal sum at the end of the week,
no fixed piecework list will secure identical pay for identical
work. If A is given thirty pieces to weave, and B only
fifteen, both may be paid at the same rate of a shilling per
piece, and both may pay the same loom rent of five shillings
per week. Yet at the end of the week, the net remuneration
for weaving one piece will have been to A tenpence and to
B eightpence. Thus the rate of payment for identical work
will vary from operative to operative, from week to week,
and even from firm to firm, according to the way in which,
at the uncontrolled discretion of the employers, the work is
distributed.1 A similar objection applies, it will be seen, to
the whole system of " truck," or the compulsory purchase by
the operatives of commodities or^rrratcrials supplied by the
employers.2 This is resisted by the unions on the larger

1 Many minor payments similar in principle to loom rent exist in various
industries. Where the operatives are unorganised, and especially if they are
women or girls, employers are apt to attempt to charge them for some part of the
manufacturing process, or for incidental stores or material. This is sometimes
done to avoid the cost and trouble of proper supervision to prevent waste and
breakages. In other cases it arises as an incident of a growing specialisation of
function. Thus, cotton-weavers used to oil their own looms, but the employers
found that it was better done by a professional oiler, who was thereupon
employed. Any attempt to deduct even a penny per week per pair of looms to
pay his wages is peremptorily stopped by the Weavers' union. Similar develop-
ments of specialisation in cotton-spinning might be cited — the uprise of the
" strap-piecer " and the "bobbin-carrier" for instance. But no deduction for
their wages is permitted by the Cotton-spinners' unions (Cotton Factory Times,
loth June 1892). Women woollen weavers are, however, still made to pay the
"tuner" of their looms, his work of "setting " the warp and weft being done by
the male weavers for themselves.

2 The Miners' Conference in 1863 made this a special subject of complaint.
1 « The truck system still prevails in Scotland and Wales, despite of both equity

318 Trade Union Function

ground that it amounts to an insidious enslavement of the
wage-earner and his family. But it is also inconsistent with
any uniformity in the net rate at which employers obtain
their labor, and with definite standard of real income of the
wage-earner under such a system, notwithstanding a nominal
uniformity of rate, both labor cost and real wages will vary
according to the extent of the truck business in each firm,
the economy and ability with which this subsidiary store-
keeping is managed, and the profit or " loading" which each
employer chooses to exact, the latter amounting, in effect, to
a fraud upon the workman.1

We see, therefore, that the adoption of a Standard Rate
— that is, of payment for labor according to some definite
standard, uniform in its application — is not by any means
so simple a matter as would at first sight appear. Whether
we accept payment by the hour or payment by the piece,
so great are the complications of modern industry, and so
ingenious are the devices for evasion, that a long series of
subsidiary regulations is found necessary to defend the main
position. The whole argument for this series of subsidiary

and law. That no man should be forced, as a condition of work, to spend his
money on necessaries for the benefit of his employer is both law and reason. In
Scotland . . . the men are only paid by the fortnight, the month, or longer ;
and in the interim tickets for food or clothing are furnished, by which, at certain
shops, articles are furnished at an enormous overcharge above a fair market
average of cost. In some cases the poor collier rarely sees current coin, all being
forestalled betwixt the term of pay and work. . . . Allied to this, in Stafford-
shire and elsewhere, the butties and doggies, or middlemen, still continue to
influence and compel the colliers to spend part of their wages in drink, as a
condition of employment. In other cases, in Yorkshire, candles and powder
must be purchased of the steward, or some other man, at exorbitant prices above
the market rate of profit." — 7"ransactions and Results of the National Association
of Coal i Lime, and Ironstone Miners of Great Britain (London, 1863), p. xi.

These practices have now been stopped by the miners' unions in all well-
organised districts. Similar grievances are, however, still complained of in some
other trades, where the operatives are powerless to insist on the Truck Acts being
obeyed in spirit as well as in the letter.

1 " Wherever the workmen are paid in goods, or are compelled to purchase
at the master's shop, the evils are very great ; much injustice is done to the men,
and much misery results from it. Whatever may have been the intentions of the
master in such a case, the real effect is to deceive the -workman as to the amount
he receives in exchange for his labor" — On the Economy of Machinery and
Manufactures, by Charles Babbage (London, 1832), p. 255.

The Standard Rate 319

regulations rests, it is clear, upon the principal contention.
It seems, therefore, worth while to rehearse the Trade
Unionist's argument. We have seen that it is a fundamental
article of the Trade Union faith that it is impossible, in a
system of competitive industry, to prevent the degradation
of the Standard of Life, unless the conditions of labor are
ittled, not by Individual Bargaining, but by some Common
Lule. But, without the uniform application of some common
standard, collective settlement of these conditions, whether
by bargain, arbitration, or law, is plainly impossible.1 Where
employer is competing with employer, each will claim that,
if he must forego the chances of Individual Bargaining, he
should at any rate be made to pay no more for his labor
lan his rivals. With this contention the Trade Unionist
icartily agrees, and thus we get admitted, as the basis of the
Common Rule, the principle of identical pay for identical
iffort, or, as it is usually termed, the Standard Rate. This,
we have seen, is the very opposite to equality of wages.
[ow accurately this principle of identical pay for identical
fort can be applied to the varying capacities of different
workmen, or to the varying difficulties of particular tasks,
whether it can be most precisely carried into effect by
payment by time or payment by the piece, depends upon the
character of the process and the intelligence and integrity of
the parties. But it is obviously futile to settle, by collective
regulation of any kind, a Standard Rate of identical pay for
identical effort, if an unscrupulous employer is free to evade
this by demanding extra work or additional wear and tear ;
by deducting anything from the wage agreed upon ; or by

1 The dependence of combination among workmen upon the existence of a
Standard Rate was well expressed, from the employer's point of view, by
Alexander Galloway, the well-known engineer, and friend to Francis Place. "I
have always found that in those employments where the wages were uniform ....
there have always been combinations among those men. Now in all those trades
where the men have made their own individual engagements, we never see any-
thing like combinations. . . . That which has struck most effectually at the
root of all combination among workmen is to pay every man according to his
merit, and to allow him to make his own agreement with his employer." — Evidence
in First Report of Committee on Artisans and Machinery^ 1824, p. 27.

320 Trade Union Function

obtaining, at the cost of his workmen, by any transaction
with them, any other monetary advantage whatever. In
short, if the fundamental object of Trade Unionism, the
enforcement of a Common Rule, has any justification at all,
the principle of the Standard Rate must be conceded, and
if a Standard Rate is admitted, the subsidiary regulations
which we have described follow as a matter of course.

This general conclusion in favor of a Standard Rate-
a point on which every Trade Unionist would unhesitatingly
agree — leaves many questions with regard to wages unsettled.
One of these is, on what principle, and to what extent, the
Standard Rate should, in the same industry, vary from town to
town. The employers in the out-of-the-way districts are apt
to contend that the workman must put up with a low rate,
because of the inferiority of their machinery, their heavy
charges for freight, and other local disadvantages. But there
seems no reason why the workman should lower his standard
of life, and forego his claim to identical pay for identical
effort, merely because the capitalist chooses to carry on his
business amid unprofitable surroundings. Whether Trade
Unionists should go in for equality of nominal wages (a
uniform national standard rate), or, making allowance for
difference in the cost of living, claim only equality of real
wages (involving varying local rates), has never been settled
in principle. There are obvious practical difficulties in
carrying out the latter idea, as it is impossible to measure
with any precision differences in the cost of living in different
districts. Accordingly we find most of the " county " unions,
especially those of the cotton operatives and coalminers,
aiming at a uniform county rate, irrespective of local circum-
stances. Similarly, the strong old union of hand paper-
makers, working entirely in a few small provincial towns,
easily maintains a uniform rate for the whole industry.1 But

1 A uniform Standard Rate is said to have formed one of the principal demands
of the great French strike of 1791, which extended to many trades and to all
parts of France (Du Cellier, Histoire des Classes Laborieuses en France, pp. 320-
322 ; Decree of the National Assembly of I4th June 1791).

The Standard Rate 32 i

directly the cost of living becomes appreciably different, even
the strongest unions admit variations in local rates. The
Journeymen Hatters' Fair Trade Union of Great Britain and
Ireland, the old-established society of silk hat makers, has a
uniform price list, but allows its London branch to add 10
per cent to the general rates. When we come to the larger
and more widely distributed unions, we see the widest
possible divergence. Thus the 631 branches of the Amal-
gamated Society of Carpenters in Great Britain and Ireland
recognise no fewer than twenty rates, varying from 5d. per
hour in Truro to lod. per hour in London. Here, as in
many other cases, we may well doubt whether even equality
of real wages has been attained. Not only has there been
no attempt by any large union to secure a national uniform
rate, but there is a tendency for officers and executive
committees to be apathetic with regard to the process of
" levelling up," which would be necessary to obtain equality
of real wages. The result is that Trade Unionism cannot be
said yet to have progressed beyond the securing of a local
Standard Rate. This leaves the workmen exposed to the
constant attempts of employers to " level down " the rates in
the better-paid districts, in order, as they assert, to meet the
competition of the lower -paid districts. Our own idea is
that the assumed differences in the cost of living, taking one
thing with another, resolve themselves practically into differ-
ences in the rent of a workman's dwelling. The expedient of
the Hatters seems, therefore, the most practical thing to aim at.
There would be many advantages in the enforcement of a
uniform Standard Rate in all districts of an industry, treating
all provincial towns and urban districts on an equality, but
adding a percentage for the exceptional high rents payable
in London, and, if necessary, deducting a percentage in
respect of the very low rents in a purely agricultural district,
in the cases in which, as in the building trades, the industry
comprises both town and country. These percentages could
be calculated on easily ascertained and undisputed facts.1

1 Instead of a uniform Standard Rate for all the establishments in each town
VOL. I Y

322 Trade Union Function

A more obvious problem with regard to wages must be
deferred to a subsequent chapter. We can imagine that the
reader has had in his mind an uneasy feeling that we are
evading what he conceives to be the crucial point, namely,
the share of the joint product to be allotted for the remunera-
tion of the manual labor. But the Trade Union Regulation
with which we are dealing — the insistence on a Standard
Rate — is not an end but a means : not any particular sum
of money per week, but a device for obtaining for the whole
body of competitors something better than they would
get by Individual Bargaining. Thus the Sheffield Fork-
grinders, the Dock Laborers, the Engineers, and the Steel
Smelters all insist on the Standard Rate. But if we look at
the weekly earnings for which each trade is righting, we find

or district, we occasionally find attempts to enforce two or three different rates for
what are assumed to be different grades of work. Thus the Scottish Tailors
recognise in many towns two, and in Glasgow and Edinburgh three classes of
shops, those requiring a better quality of tailoring being compelled to pay a half-
penny or even a penny per hour more than the lowest Trade Union rate. The
custom is for the employers to classify themselves, the union objecting if any
attempt is made, for instance, to get " dress goods " (superfine black broadcloth)
made at the second-class rate, or (in Edinburgh and Glasgow) "tweeds" at the
third class. In so far as these different rates correspond to real and ascertainable
differences in the class of work, they are, it is clear, not inconsistent with the
principle of a uniform Standard Rate. In some cases, however, the different
rates depend more on the custom and tradition of the various shops than upon any
definite difference in the work done. Thus the London branch of the National
Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives has long recognised three different
" Statements," applying respectively to firms deemed first, second, or third class.
An establishment which has hitherto paid the first-class " Statement " is not
allowed to do any work at a lower "Statement," for fear this should lead
insidiously to the reduction of the rates of the first-class men. On the other hand,
there is nothing to prevent a firm, hitherto classed as third or second class, from
making at these lower rates goods nearly identical with those usually produced at
the first-class "Statement." The result is that the first-class firms are always
finding themselves undersold (or at any rate, believing themselves to be under-
sold) by enterprising firms on the second-class statement. The employers and
the experienced officials of the union have, for ten years, been urging the
abolition of these separate " Statements," and the preparation of the uniform list
for all London firms, with carefully gradated piecework rates for every kind of
boot. Hitherto all attempts at uniformity have broken down, owing mainly to
the rooted belief of the union that no reduction of existing rates ought anywhere
to be conceded. As a consequence, the first-class employers are said to find a
constantly increasing difficulty in maintaining their position in London. The
controversy can be best followed in the Shoe and Leather Record for the last ten
years.

The Standard Rate 323

this varying from twenty-four shillings a week up to three
times that amount. One thing will be clear, even to the
most superficial observer. There is, in the Trade Union
world of to-day, absolutely no trace of any desire for
equality of wages. The cardroom operatives in a Lanca-
shire Cotton mill, earning from ten to twenty shillings a
week, will unhesitatingly come out on strike to assist the
cotton-spinners to maintain a Standard Rate, paid out of
the products of the combined labor of the two sections,
averaging forty shillings a week. The local federations of
the building trades, whose members work side by side
at the same job, collectively insist, in their treaties
with the employers, on half a dozen different rates per
hour for the different crafts, the Stonemason habitually
getting fifty per cent more than the Builders' Laborciv-aad
the rates, in the present generation, showing no tendency
to approximate. Unanimity of Trade Union policy
does not, in fact, extend beyond the use of a common
device. How much money each trade will claim, no less
than how much each will actually receive, depends, in
practice, on the traditions, customs, and present opportunities
of the particular trade and section concerned. The ex-
pectations and aspirations of the operatives, the arguments
adduced in justification of their demands, and, to some
extent, the particular Trade Union Method employed
to enforce them, will, as we shall show in our chapter on
the Assumptions of Trade Unionism, depend principally
on the Doctrine or Doctrines as to social expediency by
which the policy of the particular union is, for the time
being, directed.

CHAPTER VI

THE NORMAL DAY

AFTER the Standard Rate, the most universal of the Trade
Union Regulations is what we have termed the Normal
Day, the determination of a uniform maximum working
time for all the members of a craft.1 This claim to fix the
limits of the working day is peculiar to the manual-working
wage -earner. Corporations of lawyers, doctors, architects,
and other professional brainworkers insist, with more or less
stringency, on scales of minimum fees, below which no
practitioner is allowed to undertake work. But the con-
ception of a precise Common Rule as to the hours during
which an individual shall work is foreign both to the pro-

1 By the term "Normal Day" we mean the "maximum working day" of
Schaffle {Theory and Practice of Labour Protection, London, 1893) and
Frankenstein (Der Arbeiterschtitz, Leipzig, 1896), not the elaborately equated
"normal day" of Rodbertus (Der Normalarbeitstag, Berlin, 1871), varying
according to the assumed intensity of labor in different occupations. The latter
academic conception has never penetrated to the minds either of English Trade
Unionists or German Social Democrats.

From the economic standpoint there has been as yet little scientific investi-
gation of the results of fixing the maximum working day. The Eight Hotirs
Day, by Sidney Webb and Harold Cox (London, 1891), and E. L. Jaeger's
Geschichte und Literatur des Normalarbeittages (Stuttgart, 1892) give the
principal references, to which may now be added Hadfield and Gibbins' A
Shorter Working Day (London, 1892) ; C. Deneus, La Journte de Huit
Heures (Ghent, 1893); H. Stephan, Der Normalarbeitstag (Leipzig, 1893);
Professor L. Brentano's Ueber das Verhaltniss von Arbeitslohn und Arbeit szeit
zur Arbeitsleistung (Leipzig, 1893), translated as Hours and Wages in Relation
to Production (London, 1894); Jonn Rae> Eight Hours for Work (London,
1894) ; and Maurice Ansiaux, Heures de Travail et Salaires (Paris, 1896).

The Normal Day 325

pertied and to the brain-working class. Nor has it always
characterised the wage -earners. The trade clubs of the
eighteenth century claimed a legal rate of wages, or a standard
list of prices, they insisted on a limitation of apprentices, or
sought to enforce the Elizabethan Statutes ; but not until
the close of the century do we find any widespread com-
plaints of the length or irregularity of the working day.
From the beginning of the present century the demand for
a deliberately fixed limit of hours for each day's work, to
be arranged either by Collective Bargaining or by Legal
Enactment, has spread from one occupation to another,
until to-day the great majority of the Trade Unions make
the regulation of working hours one of their foremost objects.
Nevertheless, there exist even to-day small sections of the
working class world who resist any Common Rule as to
their hours, and prefer that each individual should be free to
labor when and for as long as he may choose. We have,
therefore, to seek some explanation, not only of the present
popularity of the idea of a Normal Day, but also of its
comparatively modern growth, and of its rejection by certain
sections of Trade Unionists.

In modern industry the settlement of the hours of labor
differs in an essential particular from that of the rate of
payment for the work done. In the absence of any form
of collective regulation, the rates of wages are determined
by Individual Bargaining between the capitalist employer
and his several " hands " ; and a distinct and varying
agreement as to the amount of remuneration is made with
each operative in turn. This is seldom the case with
regard to the length and distribution of the working day.
In all the numerous industries in which work is not done
on the employer's premises, but is still " given out " to be
done at home, the manual worker, paid " by the piece," is as
free as the author, doctor, or conveyancer, to fix the number
of hours, and the exact part of the day or week or year,
that he chooses to spend in labor. He has, of course, like
the professional man, to suit the convenience of his clients.

326 Trade Union Function

He must be on the spot to receive work when it comes, and
he must finish it by the time it is required. He must be
willing to do extra work in the busy season, and even to
turn night into day to cope with a special rush of orders.
But subject to this condition, each man can settle for him-
self the exact hours at which he will begin his work, and the
intervals he will allow himself for meals and rest. Unless he
is driven, by reason of the low rate at which he is paid, to
work "all the hours God made" in order to get bare
subsistence, he may break off when he likes to gossip with
a friend or slip round to the public-house ; he may, in the
intervals, nurse a sick wife or child ; and he can even
arrange to spend the morning in his garden, or doing odd
jobs about the house. No one acquainted with the daily
life of the home-working, skilled craftsman, earning " good
money," will ignore the large use that such a man makes of
his freedom. For good or for evil his working hours are
determined by his own idiosyncrasies. Whether he desires
to earn much, or is content with little ; whether he is a slow
worker or a quick one ; whether he is a precise and punctual
person governing himself and his family by rigid rules, or
whether he is " endowed with an artistic temperament,"
and needs to recover on Monday and Tuesday from the
"expansion" of the preceding days — these personal character-
istics will determine the limits and distribution of his working
time.1

1 The injurious effect upon the personal character of the " average sensual
man" of this freedom to stop working whenever he feels inclined, is referred to
in our chapter on " The Implications of Trade Unionism." The axiom that the
vast majority of the manual workers, like other men, are the better for a certain
degree of discipline, would not find ready acceptance among the rank and file of
Trade Unionists, and, therefore, can hardly be given as a Trade Union argument
in favor of a Normal Day. But the more thoughtful workmen would concur
with the dictum of an early admirer of the factory system, that when operatives
were " obliged to be more regular in their attendance at their work, they became
more orderly in their conduct, spent less time at the ale-house, and lived better
at "home " (Memoirs of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society,
Second series, London, 1819, vol. iii. p. 129, in a paper "On the Rise and
Progress of the Cotton Trade," read in 1815 by John Kennedy). "I always
observed," wrote an old compositor in 1859, " that those trades who had settled
wages, such as masons, wrights, painters, etc., and who were obliged to attend

The Normal Day 327

Very different is the position of the factory operative,
Instead of each individual being able to work as he chooses,
the whole establishment finds itself, by the nature of things,
subject to a Common Rule. In a textile mill, a coal mine, a
shipbuilding yard, an engineering firm, or a great building
operation it is economically impossible to permit the individual
workman to come or go as he feels inclined. Each worker
forms part of a complex co-operative process, needing for its
proper fulfilment an exact dovetailing of the task of every
machine and every " hand " in the work as a whole. To
arrange particular hours of labor to suit the varying
desires, capacities, and needs of the different operatives,
would be obviously incompatible with the economical use
of steam power, the full employment of plant, or the highly
organised specialisation brought about by division of labor.
There is no longer a choice between idiosyncrasy and uni-
formity. A common standard, compulsory in its application,
is economically inevitable. The only question is how and
by whom the uniform rule shall be determined. In the
absence of collective regulation, whether in the form of Legal
Enactment or Collective Bargaining, this uniform rule is
naturally made by the employer.1 And it is a special
aggravation of this subordination, that, under the circum-
stances of the modern capitalist industry, the employer's
decision will perpetually be biassed in favor of lengthening
the working day. With regard to his domestic servants,
the capitalist is free to determine the amount of toil solely
with a view of keeping them in the highest possible efficiency.
But the same man investing capital in expensive machines,
worked by power, finds, even when he pays by the piece, a

regularly at stated hours, were not so much addicted to day drinking as printers,
bookbinders, tailors, shoemakers, and those tradesmen who generally were on
piecework, and not so much restricted in regard to their attendance at work except
when it was particularly wanted." — Scottish Typographical Circular, March
1859.

1 " It should always be remembered," remark the Cotton-spinners in 1860
" that anterior to the introduction of factory legislation, the employers dictated
the hours of labor to their work-people." — Rides of the Amalgamated Association
of Operative Cotton- spinners, edition of 1860, preface.

328 Trade Union Function

positive profit in every additional moment that his costly
plant is being employed. Competition is always forcing
him to cut down the cost of production to the lowest
possible point. Under this pressure other considerations
disappear in the passion to obtain the greatest possible
" output per machine." ]

Between these two historic types of the domestic handi-
craftsman and the factory operative, there are various
intermediate forms in which Individual Bargaining as to the
hours of labor is as possible as Individual Bargaining with
regard to the rate of payment. In occupations such as
agriculture, and even in special departments of the great
industries, it is at any rate practicable for an employer to
vary the hours of his several workpeople, or, in other words,
to make, if he likes, a bargain with each according to his
capacity, just as the ordinary capitalist claims to be allowed
to pay each man " according to his merit." Where this is
the case, the workman's need for a Normal Day depends
on considerations strictly analogous to those which cause
him to need a Standard Rate. If each workman is free to
conclude what bargain he chooses with regard to his working
hours, the employer will, it is contended, be able to use the
desires or exigencies of particular individuals as a means of
compelling all the others to accept the same longer working
day.

So far we have considered the Trade Union demand for
a Normal Day only in relation to the personal freedom of
the operative to take such leisure as he may deem necessary

1 "The great proportion of fixed to circulating capital . . . makes long
hours of work desirable. . . . The motives to long hours of work will become
greater, as the only means by which a large proportion of fixed capital can
be made profitable. When a laborer," said Mr. Ashworth to me, "lays
down his spade, he renders useless for that period a capital worth eighteenpence.
When one of our people leaves the mill, he renders useless a capital that has
cost ^100." — Nassau Senior, Letters on the Factory Act (London, 1837),
pp. 11-14.

" Hence that remarkable phenomenon in the history of modern industry, that
machinery sweeps away every moral and natural restriction on the length of the
working day." — Marx, Capital^ Part iv. ch. xv. sec. 3 (vol. ii. p. 406 of
English Translation of 1887).

The Normal Day 329

or desirable. But to the Trade Unionist, as to the rank and
file of the manual working class, the length of the day's work
and the amount left over for leisure is of secondary import-
ance beside the vital question of the sum earned. Keen as
is the average workman to secure more time to himself, he
is far keener to obtain more money to spend. In all time-
work trades in which Trade Unionism exists the operative
gets extra pay for extra hours, usually at a higher rate,
whilst the whole race of pieceworkers obviously increase
their earnings by working overtime.1 Every progressive
lengthening of the working day would therefore seem to
bring with it, as a compensating advantage, a corresponding
increase in the weekly income of the wage-earner.2

1 In certain unorganised occupations men, and especially women, are still
required to work longer hours to cope with a press of orders without getting any
additional payment for the extra labor. But this is seldom the case in trades in
which there is any kind of organisation.

2 This is exactly how it appears to the well-to-do literary man. Thus, Mr.
Lecky is much concerned at the diminution of earnings which he supposes to
be caused by the Factoiy Acts. " Take, for example, the common case of
a strong girl who is engaged in millinery. For, perhaps, nine months
of the year her life is one of constant struggle, anxiety, and disappoint-
ment, owing to the slackness of her work. At last the season comes
bringing with it an abundant harvest of work, which, if she were allowed
to reap it, would enable her in a few weeks to pay off the little debts
which weigh so heavily upon her, and to save enough to relieve her from all
anxiety in the ensuing year. She desires passionately to avail herself of her
opportunity. She knows that a few weeks of toil prolonged far into the night
will be well within her strength, and not more really injurious than the long
succession of nights that are spent in the ball-room by the London beauty whom
she dresses. But the law interposes, forbids her to work beyond the stated hours,
dashes the cup from her thirsty lips, and reduces her to the same old round of
poverty and debt. What oppression of the poor can be more real and more
galling than this?" — Democracy and Liberty (London, 1896), vol. ii. p. 342.

It is interesting to contrast with this imaginary instance the reports of the
responsible women officials who are in actual contact with facts, and conversant
with the views of the operatives. Writing in 1894, Miss May Abraham (the
Senior Woman Factory Inspector) reports that " by dressmakers and milliners . . .
legal overtime is almost universally condemned. A dressmaker's assistant, whose
legal working day had, for a considerable period, lasted from 8 A.M. to 10 P.M.,
said to me in the presence of her fellow- workers, ' The overtime exception just
spoils the Factory Act.' The chorus of approval with which her remark was
endorsed was a clear indication of general discontent, and further experience
showed that this had been but one expression of an almost universal feeling. . . .
In factories where the payment is by piecework, or in some districts, as in
Dublin, where a stipulated sum is allowed for overtime, the weight of hostile

330 Trade Union Function

Now, if Trade Unionists believed that this apparent
result was the real result, — that freedom to work longer hours
invariably, or even usually, meant a corresponding increase
of income, — we doubt whether there would have arisen any
general movement in favor of limiting the hours of labor.
But, rightly or wrongly, Trade Unionists are convinced that
irregular or unlimited hours have an insidious influence upon
wages, first upon the Standard Rate and ultimately upon
the amount earned by each man per week.

This conviction springs from the personal experience of
the manual working wage-earner. At any Trade Union
meeting where the hours of labor are discussed, it may
happen that a young and energetic member will suggest
that he would prefer a larger income to increased leisure.
But one old member after another will get up and explain
that as a young married man he had felt the same, but that
experience of workshop life had taught him that " what was
gained in hours was lost in rates " — an assertion which finds
immediate and unhesitating confirmation from the bulk of
the meeting. If after the meeting the visitor argues the
point with the leading men, and suggests that their personal
experience may not warrant so large a generalisation as that
a lengthening of hours will necessarily lead to a reduction
of the rate of payment per hour or per piece, they will
retort by asking, why it is that Royal Commissions and
official statistics are always laying bare this almost universal
coincidence between long and irregular hours, low rates of
pay, and small weekly earnings. Nor will they fail to give
an explanation, based on actual experience. " Our members,"

opinion is not so pronounced ; but even here, with the inducement of a supple-
mentary wage, it is only the most unthinking of the workers who favor the
system. . . . The consequent effect on the health of the workers is exceedingly
injurious ... I believe . . . that by the, workers [the abolition of all over-
time] would be welcomed with feelings of the warmest gratitude" (Report of (he
Chief Inspector of Factories for 1893, c- 736^ of 1894, p. 11). This and other
reports contain abundant confirmation of Miss Abraham's view. "Could a
secret ballot be taken," says Mr. Cramp, one of the Superintending Inspectors,
" of all the workers affected by the overtime clauses of the Factory and Workshop
Acts, I am convinced that very few would be found voting for its continuance."
— Ibid. p. 299.

The Normal Day 331

they will say, " look on thirty shillings as a fair week's wage.
If they make it, they are content ; if they don't make thirty
shillings, they come to the branch and complain. When
a master increases the hours, say from fifty-four to sixty, it
seems at first a clear gain to the men, who make more money.
Presently, on some excuse, the foreman announces a ten per
cent cut in rates. The men grumble, but as most of them
will still make thirty shillings a week, they put up with a
reduction against which they would certainly have come out,
if it had meant their only making twenty-seven shillings.
After a time the weaker men find they can't keep up their
output for such long hours. In a few months, the average
weekly earnings of the shop will have dropped, and the men
will be wearing themselves out for even less money at the
end of the week than they had before. Again and again
we have seen this happen, and no amount of middle-class
theory will make us believe it is not so."

The Trade Union official who has read his economic text-
book will put the argument in more systematic form. When
an employer engages a laborer at so much a week, the
length of the working day clearly forms an integral part of
the wage-contract. A workman who agrees to work longer
time for the same money underbids his fellows just as
surely as if he offered to work the same time for less money.
He sells each hour's work at a lower rate. Among all time-
workers, therefore, who are paid by the day, week, or month,
the insistence on a Normal Day is a necessary element in
the maintenance of their Standard Rate.

Where piecework prevails, or where the time-worker is
paid by the hour, the case is, to the Trade Unionist, no less
clear. At first sight it would seem that liberty to work for
longer hours leaves the Standard Rate unaffected, whilst it
increases the amount of the weekly earnings of industrious
men. This seems so obvious to the middle-class mind that
employers have for generations been honestly unable to
understand why a pieceworking Trade Union should concern
itself about the hours of labor at all. According to the

33 2 Trade Union Function

Trade Unionists, this is to ignore the plain teaching of
economics, as well as the experience of practical men. To
them it seems obvious that the actual earnings of any class
of workers are largely determined by its Standard of Com-
fort, that is to say, the kind and amount of food, clothing,
and other commodities to which the class has become firmly
accustomed.1 It would not be easy to persuade an English
engineer to work at his trade for thirteen shillings a week,
however excessive might be the supply of engineers. Rather
than do such violence to his own self-respect, he would work
as a laborer, or even sweep a crossing. On the other hand,
however much in request a Dorsetshire laborer might find
himself it would not enter into his head to ask two pounds a
week for his work. There is, in fact, the Trade Unionist
asserts, in each occupation a customary standard of livelihood,
which is, within a specific range of variation, tacitly recognised
by both employers and employed. Upon this customary
standard of weekly earnings, the piecework or hour rates
are, more or less consciously, always based.2 If there is no
limit to the number of hours that each man may work or the
employer may require, some exceptionally strong men, able,
if only for a few years, to work unceasingly from morning
till night, will earn an income far beyond the customary
standard of their class. In any bargaining about the Piece-
work List these large earnings will be quoted by the employer
as typical of what every workman might do if only he were
industrious, and will be urged as grounds why a reduction

1 This assumption — that the rate of wages of any race or class of wage-earners
is largely determined by the standard of expenditure — enunciated by Adam Smith
and generally accepted by later economists, will be further examined in our
chapter on " The Higgling of the Market " ; and the argument that the bulwark
against competitive pressure afforded by this instinctive Standard of Life is
enormously strengthened by the Methods and Regulations of Trade Unionism,
will be elaborately analysed in the chapter on "The Economic Characteristics of
Trade Unionism."

55 "A price list has always implicitly (and as will be seen sometimes explicitly)
a time-basis, i.e. it is generally understood that the piece-rates agreed on are such
as to enable the average worker with average exertion to earn a certain weekly
wage." — Board of Trade (Labor Department) Report on Wages and Hours oj
Labour Part II.> Standard Piece Rates, C. 7567. — I. 1894, p. vii.

The Normal Day 333

in the rate is only reasonable.1 Nor is this merely a ques-
tion of successful argument. The exceptional men them-
selves will not be inclined to hazard, by any dispute, what
is to them ample livelihood, and will oppose any attempt
on the part of the Union to resist reductions or apply for
advances. The hours thus exceptionally worked tend, there-
fore, insidiously to become customary for the whole trade,
and the piecework rates are gradually lowered so as to yield,
on the longer hours, a weekly income corresponding to the
standard of expenditure to which the class is accustomed.
The ultimate result upon the Standard Rate of leaving the
hours of labor unlimited is accordingly the same in the case
of payment by the piece or hour as it is in the case of pay-
ment by the day or week. If, as the Trade Unionists con-
tend, unrestrained competition among the individual operatives
tends to lengthen the working day for all alike, it also insidi-
ously lowers the rate of remuneration for the work done.
The men who have started longer hours gradually find
themselves earning no more than they had formerly done in
the customary day, whilst all the rest discover that they can
only maintain their old wages by similarly increasing their
working time. Thus the whole class gives in return for its
customary livelihood increased labor and energy, involving
greater wear and tear, and the weaker members, unable to
keep up the strain, are forced down to a lower level of sub-
sistence. The same arguments, therefore, which lead the
Trade Unionist to insist on a definite Standard Rate, impel
him, quite apart from any advantage to be gained from
increased leisure and irrespective of the system under which
he is paid, vigorously to uphold the Normal Day.2

1 See the instances cited by the Shipwrights and Coopers in the subsequent
note.

2 It might, indeed, be urged that the Trade Unionist argument in favor of
collective regulation of the hours of labor, considered merely as a means of keeping
up the price at which the wage-earner sells each unit of energy, has a broader
psychological basis than the argument for a Standard Rate itself. If it be true,
as is always asserted both by employers and by Trade Union officials, that the
individual manual worker is far keener to maintain and add to his income than
to preserve or increase his leisure, it seems to follow that a Trade Union which

334 Trade Union Function

The Trade Unionist position with regard to the Normal
Day is therefore extremely complicated. So long as we fix
our attention solely on the proportion between work and
leisure, the wage-earners fall, as we have seen, into three
classes. To the " hands " employed in a co-operative process,
involving the use of costly plant and machinery, and carried
on upon a large scale, the fixing of a Normal Day appears
the only alternative to leaving their working hours to be
determined, and in all probability gradually lengthened,
according to the autocratic judgment of their employer. To
the domestic handicraftsman, on the other hand, working in
his own garret, any collective regulation of the hours of work
is a distinct curtailment of his personal liberty, an evil in
itself requiring considerable justification before he will be
persuaded to adopt it. For the workmen in the intermediate
class of industries, in which the length and distribution of
the working day can practically vary from individual to
individual, the question will depend partly on the extent to
which hours of leisure offer any attraction to them, and partly
upon the degree to which they realise the perils of Individual
Bargaining. Assuming the Trade Unionist position that the
wage-earners can obtain better conditions by collective action,
all the workmen in the industries standing between the
domestic handicraft and the factory system, who desire to
protect or increase the amount of their leisure, will naturally
come more and more to insist on a Normal Day as a neces-
sary condition of this collective action. But this simple
classification by no means disposes of all the variations.
With all classes of workers a second and usually more potent
consideration enters into the argument, namely, the result of
irregular or unlimited hours of labor upon the weekly earn-
ings. To the time-worker paid by the day, week, or month,
the Normal Day is obviously a part of his bargain for a

insisted on a rigid limitation of working time whilst leaving the rate of pay to the
chances of Individual Bargaining, would, in the end, secure for its members a
higher level of remuneration for a given expenditure of energy, than a Trade
Union which insisted on a Standard Rate, but left the length and intensity of the
day's labor to individual agreements.

The Normal Day 335

Standard Rate. The worker by the piece or by the hour
will be more or less disposed to insist on Common Rules
fixing working time, in the degree that the circumstances of
his industry and his personal observations convince him that
unregulated hours of labor tend to lower the rate of remunera-
tion of the whole class.1

This elucidation of the Trade Union argument gives us
the necessary clue both to the historical development of the
Hours' Movement and to its present position in the Trade
Union world. During the eighteenth century the predomi-
nant type of Trade Unionist was the handicraftsman working
as an individual producer. The weavers and frame -work
knitters, whose combinations to enforce a Standard Rate
date from the very beginning of that century, worked in their
own homes. Out - work prevailed, too, alongside of the
employers' workshop in many other of the organised trades,
such as the shoemakers, cutlers, woolcombers, and hatters.
And even where workshop industry was the rule the familiar
relations between the master workman and the journeymen,
the absence of machinery and motive power, and the general
slackness of discipline enabled the members of such trade
clubs as the sailmakers, coopers, curriers, and calico block-
printers to put in attendance at irregular intervals. This
practical freedom to leave off at any particular moment,
though it was not incompatible with what we should now
consider excessive hours of toil, gave the operative a sense of
personal liberty which naturally disinclined him to suggest
any collective regulation of his working day. Eighteenth-
century attempts to impose a Common Rule fixing the hours

1 It will be needless to remind the historical student of the numerous gild
ordinances by which the independent master craftsmen of the Middle Ages, though
individually at liberty to leave off when they chose, deliberately sought to fix the
maximum hours of labor of each trade, mainly in order, as we think, to prevent
the working time being insidiously lengthened, and the standard rate of payment
undermined, by unfettered competition. Thus the Spurriers, in 1345, fix the
maximum working day from dawn to curfew ; the Hatters, Pewterers, and many
others in the fourteenth century prohibit night- work ; and the Girdlers, in 1344,
forbid work "after none has been wrung" on Saturdays or festival eves.—
Memorials of London and London Life, by H. T. Riley (London, 1 868).

336 'Irade Union Function

of labor for all the members of a craft are accordingly con-
fined to operatives paid by the day or week, and working on
the premises of their employers. Thus, the establishment of
a maximum day of fourteen hours (less meal-times) was a
leading demand of that combination of " the Journeyman
Taylors in and about the Cities of London and Westminster,"
which we have cited as one of the earliest Trade Unions. " 'Tis
certain," runs the workmen's petition, " that to work fifteen
hours per day is destructive to the men's health, and especially
their sight, so that at forty years old a man is not capable
by his work to get his bread." And from the masters'
petition we learn that the men " insist upon and have twelve
shillings and ninepence per week (instead of ten shillings and
ninepence per week, the usual wages), and leave off work at
eight of the clock of night (instead of nine, their usual hour,
time out of mind)."1 And turning to other trades, it is
significant that while there is, during the whole of the
eighteenth century, no trace of any hours' movement among
the pieceworking coopers of London, the day-working coopers
of Aberdeen are found, as early as 1732, " entering into
signed associations among themselves, whereby they become
bound to one another under a penalty not to continue in their
masters' service, or to work after seven o'clock at night,
contrary to the usual practice."2 The only other cases of
eighteenth-century movements that we know of for regular
or shorter hours occurred among the saddlers and bookbinders

1 An Abstract of the Master Taylors Bill before the Honourable House
of Commons; with the Journeymen's Observations on each Clause of the
said Bill (London, 1720). Similar movements are recorded among the tailors
of Aberdeen in 1720 and 1768 (Bain's Merchant and Craft Gilds, p. 261),
and those of Sheffield in 1720 (Sheffield Iris, 8th August 1820). See, for
all these instances, the interesting collection of original Documents Illustrating
the History of Trade Unionism, No. I. The Tailoring Trade, by F. W.
Gallon, published by the London School of Economics and Political Science
(London, 1896).

2 Bain's Merchant and Craft Gilds of Aberdeen, p. 246. A similar distinction
may be drawn between the pieceworking hatters, who continued to work unlimited
hours in their own homes, and the London hat-finishers, who, working by time
on the employers' premises, struck in 1777 for a reduction of hours. — House of
Commons Journals, vol. xxxvii. p. 192 (i8th February 1777)-

The Normal Day 337

in the last years of the century,1 who at that time worked
by the day and were in the employers' workshops.

The isolated and exceptional cases of the tailors, hat-
finishers, saddlers, and bookbinders emphasise the general
indifference relating to the hours of labor which marks
eighteenth-century Trade Unionism.2 This indifference was
not wholly due to the greater laxity with regard to hours
and workshop discipline possible under a system of individual
production. For the protection of their Standard Rate the
eighteenth -century handicraftsmen were able to resort to
methods no longer open to the modern Trade Unionist. The
clubs of town artisans sought to protect their position by the
stringent enforcement of the laws requiring a seven years'
apprenticeship, and imposing a limit on the number of persons
learning the craft. The home-working weavers petitioned
Parliament, in some cases successfully, for the legal enforce-
ment of their customary rates of payment. The position of
the eighteenth-century Trade Unionist was in many respects
analogous to that of the modern solicitor or doctor, who,
maintaining his Standard Rate by high educational tests
and the exclusion of unauthorised competitors, is unable to
understand what justification can be urged for the imposition
of a uniform Normal Day.

Very different is the record of the nineteenth century.
With the introduction of machinery moved by power, and
the rapid development of the factory system, the operatives
in the new textile industries lost all individual control over
their working day. " Whilst the engine runs," wrote an
, acute observer of the new industry, " the people must work.
Men, women, and children are yoked together with iron and
steam. The animal machine — breakable in the best case,

1 See the Saddlers' "Addresses," preserved in the Place MSS., 27,799-112,
114; and Dunning's "Account of the London Consolidated Society of Book-
binders, " in the Social Science Association Report on Trade Societies and Strikes,

* 1860, p. 93.

2 Adam Smith, as Marx pointed out, habitually treated the working-day as a
constant quantity. — Capital, Part IV. ch. xix. (vol. ii. p. 552 of English trans-
lation of 1887).

VOL. I 7.

338 Trade Union Function

subject to a thousand causes of suffering, changeable every
moment — is chained fast to the iron machine, which knows
no suffering and no weariness." Accordingly we find the
combinations of the Cotton-spinners, from the very begin-
ning of their history, eagerly supporting the efforts of phil-
anthropists to obtain from Parliament a legal regulation
of the hours of Jabor. The successive Factory Acts thus
obtained applied in terms, it is true, only to women and
children. But it was obvious to contemporary observers that
the whole strength of the agitation came from the men's
desire for a legal restriction of their own working day.1 In
1867 the leaders of the Lancashire Cotton-spinners' unions
summoned a delegate meeting expressly " to agitate for such
a measure of legislative restriction as shall secure a uniform
Eight Hours' Bill in factories, exclusive of meal -times, for
adults, females, and young persons ; and that such Eight
Hours' Bill have for its foundation a restriction on the moving
power." 2 It was, however, impossible to induce the Parlia-
ment of these years even to listen to the idea of a direct
legal limitation of the hours of adult male workers ; and
when, in 1872-74, the Lancashire operatives successfully
agitated for a further reduction of the working day, they were
astute enough to couch their demand in terms of a mere
amendment to the Ten Hours' Act of 1847. Twenty years
later we find the recognised organ of the same union declar-
ing that " now the veil must be lifted and the agitation
carried on under its true colours. Women and children
must no longer be made the pretext for securing a reduction
of working hours for men. The latter must speak out and
declare that both they and the women and children require

1 Thus, R. H. Greg, citing the Report of the Royal Commission on Factories,
vol. i. p. 47 of 1837, observes : "It is obvious, therefore, that the condition of
children has been only the cloak for an ulterior object, which object is now
frankly avowed to be the same for which the agitation of 1833 took place, namely,
the attainment of the Ten Hours' Bill, or a Bill for preventing any factory from
working more than ten hours in any one day. " — The Factory Question Considered
in Relation to its Effects on the Health and Morals of those employed in Factories,
etc. (London, 1837), p. 17.

2 Beehive^ 23rd February 1867 ; History of Trade Unionism, p. 295.

The Normal Day 339

less hours of labor in order to share in the benefits arising
from the improvements in productive machinery. The work-
ing hours cannot be permanently reduced by Trade Union
effort. ... It is only by the aid of Parliament that work-
ing hours can be made somewhat uniform." 1 In another
great industry the operatives had found themselves equally
at the mercy of their employer's decision as to the working
day. The coalminers, working underground, can descend
and ascend only when the mine manager chooses to leave
the shaft free from coal-drawing, and set the men's cage in
motion. Hence the coalminers, as soon as they were effectively
organised, began to agitate for a fixed working day. Already
in 1844-47 we find Martin Jude, the miners' leader, making
"an Eight Hours' Bill" one of the foremost objects of the
Miners' Association of Great Britain and Ireland, which in
those years covered all the English coalfields. From 1863
to 1 88 1 it was, as we have described,2 an important plank
in the programme of Alexander Macdonald. Finally, in
1885 we find the Lancashire Miners' unions expressly
insisting that the legal limit should apply to men and
boys alike — a demand which was quickly taken up by all
the miners' unions except those of Northumberland and
Durham.8

Meanwhile the transformation of the building and
engineering industries was causing the clubs of artisans and
mechanics to insist on a definite limit to the working day
also in these trades. The growth of large machine-making
establishments, and the coming in of the general " con-
tractor" for building operations, both dating from the first
quarter of the present century, resulted in the supersession
of the small working master, and the massing together of
large numbers of workmen, using expensive machinery and
plant, and co-operating under strict discipline in a single
undertaking. In the great upheaval of the Building Trades
in 1833-34, the prohibition of overtime appears as one of

1 Cotton Factory Times, 26th May 1893.
" History of Trade Unionism, pp. 284-289. 3 Ibid. pp. 378, 379.

340 Trade Union Function

the men's demands, and the Builders' Laborers, in particular,
insisted on extra pay for working beyond their regular hours
on Saturdays.1 In 1836 we discover the London Engineers
engaged in an eight months' struggle with their employers for
the establishment by mutual agreement of a definite Normal
Day for the whole trade ; a struggle which ended in the
fixing of a Sixty Hours' week, and, for the first time in the
engineering trade, the penalising of overtime by extra rates.
Before this strike, though the day's work was nominally ten
and a half hours, the constant prevalence of overtime, without
any extra rate of payment, gave the men no protection what-
ever against the systematic lengthening of hours by any
individual employer.2 How soon the building operatives
secured the same hours is not recorded, but already in 1846
we find the Liverpool Stonemasons demanding a Nine
Hours' Day. From this time forward the records of both the
engineering and building Trade Unions show the movement
for the more strict observance and progressive shortening
of the Normal Day to have been continued without inter-
mission. The elaborate treaty concluded in 1892 between
the London Building Trade Unions and the associated
Master Builders, by which the working time for all building
work within twelve miles of Charing Cross was fixed for

1 See the Masters' Address, I2th June 1833, in An Impartial Statement of
the proceedings of the members of the Trades Union Societies and of the steps taken
in consequence by the Master Tradesmen of Liverpool (Liverpool, 1833). Also
the Statement of the Master Builders of the Metropolis in explanation of the
differences betiveen them and the -workmen respecting the Trades Unions (London,
1834). It may be mentioned that the minute books of the Glasgow Joiners,
whose secretary was a leading Owenite, contain, between 1833 and 1836, frequent
regulations intended to secure the Normal Day. At the general meeting in March
1833, for instance, they formally adopted the working rules of the Scottish
National Union, which penalised overtime by "time and a half" rates. In
1836 we find the Society, after a successful strike, insisting, not only on a
standard wage of 2os. a week, but also on the total prohibition of overtime for
that season. From 1834 onward they were waging constant war on the practice
of working by artificial light, securing its prohibition in 1836 after a prolonged
strike.

2 Article by Mr. John Burnett in the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, 3rd July
1875 ; Paper read by William Newton on behalf of the Executive of the Amal-
gamated Society of Engineers at the Dublin Meeting of the Social Science
Association, 1861.

The Normal Day 34 1

every week in the year, with extra rates intended to penalise
all overtime, is only one of the latest of a practically unbroken
series of collective agreements.

But though the conception of a Common Rule as to the
hours of labor has now spread to all classes of Trade
Unionists, whether paid by time or by the piece, handi-
craftsmen or factory operatives, there is, among the different
trades, a marked difference in the intensity with which the
demand is pressed upon the employers and the public. Here
again our analysis of the Trade Union argument helps us to
understand the facts. The Cotton Operatives and Coal-
miners are the most strenuous advocates of definitely limited
and uniform hours of labor. This is not surprising when
we remember that, in both these industries, the beginning
and leaving off of work depends, not on the will of the
operative but on the starting and stopping of the engine ;
when we realise further that in both cases the trades are
" open " to all comers, and that the Standard Rate is pro-
tected neither by the Limitation of Apprentices nor the
exclusion of laborers from other occupations. The engineer-
ing and building operatives follow at some distance the
textile operatives and miners in demanding a strictly defined
working day. Almost invariably paid by time, they have
recognised that some collective agreement as to the hours of
work is a necessary part of their bargain for the sale of their
labor.1 But the economic necessity for uniform hours is

1 We are able to watch the growth of the conception of the Normal Day in
some of the handicrafts gradually passing into the system of capitalist establish-
ments carried on upon a large scale. Thus, the Provident Union of Shipwrights
of the Port of London, an old trade club which emerged into publicity when the
Combination Laws were repealed, resolved, on the 4th of October 1824, "that every
member of this Union will not engross a greater share of work than what he can
accomplish by working regular hours, viz. : not before six o'clock in the morning,
nor later than six in the summer evening ; and that no candle work be performed
after the people on the outside have left work, so that every opportunity may be
given to those out of employ." And it is instructive to notice that the men's
main reason for this innovation was declared to be ''that it was necessary to
regulate a day's work in consequence of the masters stating, when a man had
worked for fourteen or sixteen hours, that they earned IDS. per day, although
there was one-half as regarded the number of hours." The same motive shortly
afterwards impelled the London Coopers, who are pieceworkers, to make a

342 Trade Union Function

with them neither so obvious nor so absolute as in the mine
or the cotton-mill ; and in both these industries the unions
have relied, for the protection of their Standard Rates, on
their traditional policy of insisting on a period of apprentice-
ship, limiting the number of boys, and excluding " illegal men."
With the disuse of apprenticeship, and the impracticability
of maintaining a policy of exclusion, the engineering and
building Trade Unions are insisting, with ever -increasing
urgency, on the rigid enforcement of a definitely limited
Normal Day. Where, on the other hand, the unions still
rely for the defence of their Standard Rate upon such
apprenticeship regulations as are enforced by the United
Society of Boilermakers, and, less universally, by the various
unions of Compositors, their policy with regard to the Normal
Day is more uncertain. In both these trades, as we have
seen, timework and piecework are equally recognised by the
union. In both cases the union unhesitatingly insists on a
definite Normal Day for all work paid for by time. But
owing to the existence of other defences of the Standard
Rate, and of the practical freedom of these hand workers to
arrange their own rate of speed, and the details of their
working time, their faith in any uniform Normal Day for
pieceworkers partakes rather of the nature of a pious
opinion.

With archaic trades this lukewarmness passes into in-
difference, if not even hostility. The most important, and
in many respects the most typical union of this class, is the
Amalgamated Society of Boot and Shoe Makers. This
small and highly skilled class of handicraftsmen, some of
whom still work in their own homes, have been strongly

similar regulation. Hitherto, as the secretary of the union explained, no limits
had been set to the working day, and "some strong young men will work from
three in the morning till nine at night." The result was that the men "found
there was advantage taken by their employers ; and that where there was a differ-
ence that was resorted to." And the London Compositors expressly stipulated
in the Scale of Prices accepted by the employers in 1810, that the time of begin-
ning work should be formally agreed upon between the master and the " com-
panionship " ; that it should be uniform for all the men ; and that night or
Sunday work should be paid for at higher rates.

The Normal Day 343

combined for more than a century, and have, from the first,
strictly maintained a Standard List of prices. But working
invariably by hand, paid by the piece, and enjoying a
customary privilege of coming in and out of the employer's
workshop as they thought fit, they have never troubled to
settle a Normal Day. Although the trade has been, for
half a century, steadily declining before the competition of
the machine-made product, the workmen have not been
driven to consider the effect of their irregular hours upon
their Standard Rate. In olden times they enforced a strict
limitation of apprentices, and during the present generation
the number of boys who have learnt the trade has been so
small 1 that the highly skilled bootmaker, supplying the
perfect workmanship called for by a class of rich customers,
has maintained what are really monopoly earnings. A some-
what analogous case is that of the United Society of Brush-
makers, a strong organisation of skilled handworkers, whose
printed lists of prices have been accepted by the employers from
1805 downwards. In this trade, where handwork has always
prevailed, the operatives, who are individual producers, have
from time immemorial gone in and out of the employer's work-
shop when they chose. For the protection of their Standard
Rate they have clung to their old limitation of apprentices,
and have never yet sought to enforce a Normal Day. But
it is the Sheffield trades which furnish the great majority of
unions indifferent to the Normal Day. Here we have a
system of individual production which dates, as regards its
main features, from the last century. The employer gives
work out, to be done by the operative, either on his own
" wheel " at home, or on one temporarily rented in a public
" tenement factory." The unions, unable properly to control
the Individual Bargains made by their members, who receive
and return their work alone, and at irregular intervals,

1 This is due, we think, partly to the current impression that hand shoemaking
is rapidly dying out, partly to the abnormal demand for boys at relatively good
wnges in the enormously expanding machine bootmaking industry, and partly to
the relatively high degree of technical proficiency now required to obtain employ-
ment at the handmade trade.

344 Tirade Union Function

struggle fitfully to maintain a Standard Rate by the most
archaic regulations on apprenticeship. The practical failure
of these regulations, and the constant degradation of the
rates, leads the more thoughtful workmen to denounce the
whole system of individual production, and to urge its super-
session by the factory system, where collective regulation,
both of wages and hours, would become possible. But the
average Sheffield cutler, accustomed to the apparent personal
liberty of his present life, is as yet proof against the economic
arguments of his leaders.

The demand for a Common Rule determining the work-
ing hours for all the members of a trade is therefore, even in
the Trade Union world of to-day, neither so universal nor
so unhesitating as the insistence on a Standard Rate of pay-
ment. On the other hand, the regulation of hours is less
complicated and more uniform than the regulation of wages.
The most rigid enforcement of an absolutely uniform
Standard Rate is not inconsistent, in well-organised trades,
with a very large elasticity, specially devised to meet the
highly complex conditions and varying circumstances of
modern industry. Any such elasticity with regard to the
hours of labor is fatal to the maintenance of a Normal Day.
We see this illustrated by the actual working of Trade
Union agreements with regard to " Overtime." As soon as
the employer was precluded from requiring the attendance
of his workmen for as long as he might choose, he very
naturally made it a stipulation, in conceding a customary
fixed working day, that some provision should be made for
emergencies. It might any day become important to him,
owing to a sudden rush of pressing orders or similar causes,
that some or all of his operatives should give more than the
usual hours of work. The Trade Union leaders found no
argument against this claim. Moreover they saw their way,
as they thought, to making the privilege a source of extra
wages to their members. It was generally agreed that the
overtime so worked should be paid for at a higher rate-
frequently " time and a quarter," or " time and a half." This

The Normal Day 345

arrangement appeared a reasonable compromise, advantageous
to both parties. The employers gained the elasticity which
they declared to be necessary to the profitable carrying on
of their business, and were able, moreover, to take full
advantage of a busy season. The workmen, on the other
hand, were recompensed by a higher rate of payment for the
disturbance of their customary arrangement of life, and the
extra strain of continuing work in a tired state. The con-
cession involved a deviation from the Normal Day, but the
exaction of extra rates would, it was supposed, restrict over-
time to real emergencies. For a whole generation accord-
ingly, both employers and workmen regarded the arrangement
with complacenc)'.

Further experience of these extra rates for overtime work
has convinced nearly all Trade Unionists that they afford
the smallest degree of protection to the Normal Day, whilst
they are productive of evil consequences to both parties. In
spite of the extra rates, employers have, in many trades,
adopted the practice of systematically working their men
for one or two hours a day overtime, for months at a stretch,
and, in some cases, even all the year round. In the engin-
eering and shipbuilding trades in particular, the desire for
prompt delivery, in years of good trade, appears to be so
great, and the competition for orders is at all times so keen,
that each employer thinks it to his advantage to promise to
complete the machine, or launch the vessel, at the earliest
possible date. The result is that the long hours become
customary, and subject to alteration at the will of the em-
ployer. Nor has the individual workman any genuine
choice. An establishment in which it is a constant practice
to work ten or twenty hours a week overtime, does not long
retain in employment a workman who prefers his leisure to
the extra payment, and who therefore leaves his bench or
his forge vacant when the clock strikes.

Whilst the practice of systematic overtime deprives the
workman of any control over his hours of labor, the Trade
Unionists are beginning to realise that it insidiously affects

346 Trade Union Function

also the rate of wages. If there is any truth in the
economists' assumption that it is the customary standard
of life of each class of workers which, in the long run, subtly
determines their average weekly earnings, systematic overtime,
if paid for as an extra, must, it is clear, tend to lower the
rate per hour. That frequent opportunities are afforded for
working overtime is, in fact, often given by employers as an
excuse for paying a low rate of weekly wages. Where pay-
ment is made by the piece, it is usually impossible in practice
to distinguish between " time " and " overtime," 1 and in such
cases a promise of systematic overtime, enabling the men to
make up their total earnings to the old standard, is a common
inducement to them to submit to a reduction of their piece-
work rates. But the timeworker is, in reality, as much at
the mercy of the employer as the pieceworker. The promise
of " time and a quarter " for the extra hours is a powerful
temptation to the stronger men to acquiesce in a reduction
of the Standard Rate of payment for the normal working day.
Moreover, when bad times come, and the demand for a
particular kind of labor falls off, there is an almost irre-
sistible tendency for the amount of the overtime to increase.
The employers see in it a chance of reducing the cost of
production by spreading the heavy items of rent, interest on
machinery, and office charges over more hours of work.

1 A firm desiring to work overtime has thus a special inducement to introduce
payment by the piece, and this has led, in some districts of the engineering trade,
to the total destruction of Collective Bargaining. — The Report specially prepared
by t/ie Amalgamated Society of Engineers for the Royal Commission on Labor
(London, 1892), which gives the result of an inquiry made of the branches as to
the relative prevalence of Overtime and Piecework in the several towns of the
kingdom. It is significant that it is the machine-making centres, Keighley, Col-
chester, Gainsborough, Ipswich, Lincoln, and Derby that stand out as having the
lowest Standard Rates (275. to 295. per week). Every one of these branches
reports the prevalence of systematic overtime to a large extent, and of piecework.
The case would be even stronger if statistics could be obtained from unorganised
districts and non-union firms, where competitive piecework and systematic over-
time are the invariable accompaniments of low rates. "For many years past,"
writes Mr. Tom Mann, "it has been the deliberate practice in some of the
agricultural machine shops to run a quarter [day] overtime five nights in the
week, and in consequence of this the Standard Rate is very low, and the actual
working day is one of twelve hours." — Amalgamated Engineers' Monthly Journal,
January 1897, p. 12.

The Normal Day 347

The workmen are tempted to make up, by extra labor, their
drooping weekly earnings. Exactly at the moment when
the community needs, perhaps, ten per cent less work from
its engineers or its building operatives, a large number of
these are pressed and tempted to give ten per cent more
work — to the end that nearly twenty per cent of the trade
can find no employment whatever ! The barrister or the
medical man, when the demand for his labor is slack, is not
expected or desired to work more hours in the day. The
old-fashioned handicraftsman equally reduced his working
hours in slack times, and increased them when trade was
brisk. In the case of the great machine industries the tend-
ency is, in the absence of a precisely fixed and rigid Normal
Day, all in the contrary direction. It is impossible to con-
vince the Trade Unionist of the excellence of an arrangement
which periodically results in an extra large percentage of
members draining the society's funds by Out-of-Work Pay,
at the very moment that other members are working an
extra large number of hours overtime. Even the employers
are now beginning to object to the arrangement. They feel
that it is unbusinesslike to pay higher rates for tired work.
And they assert that the men's desire to get these higher
rates sometimes leads to dawdling during the day, in order
that the overtime may be prolonged.1

The necessity for precision and uniformity in the deter-
mination of the working hours has been found by experience
to be equally absolute where the Normal Day is enforced by
the Method of Legal Enactment. The elaborate code which
now regulates the hours of labor of women and children in
British industry consists of two main divisions, relating re-
spectively to textile manufacture and to other industries, the

1 The really unprofitable character of systematic overtime was detected by a
shrewd German lawyer in 1777. Justus Mb'ser relates that when the building
operatives worked overtime on his new house, he saw himself thereby defrauded,
as the men in the long hours really got through in the aggregate less work in
return for the day's pay. " Public authority," he adds, " should here intervene
and forbid overtime, which is a fraud on the employer and the customer alike." —
"On the Work clone in the Hours of Recreation," in Patriotische Phantasien
(Berlin, 1858), vol. iii. p. 151, noticed \n'R'ce\i\.a.\\Q'sArbeitszeitundArbettsleistung.

348 Trade Union Function

former dating practically from 1833, the latter, it may almost
be said, only from 1867. This difference in antiquity is
reflected in the varying degree of rigidity attained.

Dealing first with the Normal Day in textile manu-
factures, the Act of 1833 (which applied, in express terms,
only to persons under eighteen years of age) prescribed a
maximum of twelve hours a day, less one and a half hours for
meals. But it left it open to the discretion of the millowners
to have their factories open any hours between 5.30 A.M.
and 8.30 r.M., and to fix the meal-times as they chose, whilst
time lost through breakdown of machinery might be made
up as overtime. The factory inspectors soon found that this
elasticity destroyed the efficacy of the law. We need not
relate the incidents of the long struggle waged by the
Cotton Operatives' unions to secure a genuine limitation of
the factory day. One by one the loopholes for evasion were
closed up. The right to make up time lost by breakdowns
was (as regards mills worked by steam) expressly abolished,
the hours of beginning and ending work were definitely
prescribed, the times for meals were fixed, all hours were to
be reckoned by a public clock. In short, by the Acts of
1847, 1850, and 1874 the right of the millowner to work
any extra, or even any different, hours from those prescribed
by law, on any excuse whatsoever, has been absolutely taken
away. However much the circumstances of one mill or
one district may differ from those of another ; whatever may
be the nature of their respective trades or the character of
their markets ; whether they work with cotton or wool, flax
or jute, silk or worsted ; however pressing may be the rush
of sudden orders ; whatever time may have been lost by an
accident to the boiler ; the precisely determined Normal
Day for the protected classes in a textile mill must not be
encroached upon, and may not even be temporarily varied
to suit the convenience either of employer or operatives.
In the case of the textile industry sixty years' experience
enabled the Trade Unionists to persuade the expert officials
of the Factory Department, and even a reluctant House of

The Normal Day 349

Commons, that however specious may be the arguments for
elasticity and qualifications, it is only by the rigid enforce-
ment of precisely fixed and uniform hours that the Normal
Day can be really protected.

In other trades, in which factory legislation is of more
recent introduction, we see the same lesson in process of
being learnt. Between 1860 and 1867 the Ten Hours'
Normal Day was introduced for the protected classes in
other industries. The Act of 1878 systematically applied
it to all non- textile factories and workshops. But the
House of Commons could not bring itself to make its
uniform rule precise and effective. Endeavors were made,
by sanctioning overtime under certain conditions, by en-
abling the hours of beginning and ending work to be varied,
by permitting the prescribed meal-times and holidays to
be altered, and by exempting particular processes from
particular restrictions, to meet the varying circumstances of
different industries. So deeply rooted was the feeling
against uniformity that the exceptions and qualifications of
the 1878 Act commended themselves even to the Chief
Inspector of Factories. In spite of his experience in the
textile mills, Mr. Redgrave could welcome with complacency
the " undulating and elastic " line of the new Act, " drawn to
satisfy the absolute necessities and customs of different
trades in different parts of the kingdom," especially men-
tioning the " extension of hours to meet sudden emergencies,
as the case of occupations in which the operatives have to.
meet regular slack seasons." * Twenty years' trial of this
" undulating and elastic line " has convinced the officials
administering the Act that no such uncertain rule
can be maintained. The whole experience of the Factory
Department proves that no limitation of the working
day can really be enforced, unless there are uniform and
definitely prescribed hours before and after which work
must not be carried on. The overtime regulations,

1 Annual Report of ff.M. Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops, 1878
(C. 2274 of 1879), p. 5.

Trade Union Function

hailed as one of the sensible advantages of the Act of
1878, have gone far to neutralise any regulation of hours
at all. The report of the Chief Inspector for 1894 is full of
complaints by his staff of the impossibility of maintaining
the Normal Day in face of the " partial, unsound, and piece-
meal privilege" thus given to unfair employers, and of
the " modifications " which constitute " a most weakening
element in workshop inspection." l The knowledge that
overtime may be " carried on for forty-eight times in a year
is often made," says one inspector, " an excuse for working
until 10 P.M. for three or four nights every week in the
season." 2 " The steady increase of overtime notices which
we receive," declares another, " leads me to infer that . . .
occupiers of factories or workshops . . . are exercising those
privileges without due regard to the spirit of the law, which
only regards overtime as an exceptional contingency, only
to be used when exceptional circumstances require it. ...
Overtime employment leads to more undetected evasions of
the laws than all the other offences under factory and
workshop legislation." 8

Overtime, in fact, is to-day seldom the " exceptional over-
time " contemplated by the Act ; but, to use the words of
one inspector, merely a means of enabling the employers to
" keep their shops open late " on Saturday nights, and of
causing " females to be kept " systematically late at work
" in dressmaking without a farthing of extra remuneration." 4
" I believe, therefore," officially reports Miss May Abraham,
Senior Woman Inspector in 1893, " that although a with-
drawal of the overtime exception would meet with protest
from employers who have developed its use from an excep-
tion into a principle, there are' some who would welcome,
and many who would be indifferent to such an amendment ;
that the large class of employers engaged in the textile and

1 Report of the Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops ', 1894 (C. 7745, rf
1895), pp. 49, 50.

2 Ibid. p. 56 (Mr. Mackie, Assistant Inspector).

8 Ibid. p. 194 (Mr. Dodgson, Inspector). * Ibid. p. 191.

The Normal Day 35 1

allied trades, from whom permission to work overtime has
been rigidly withheld, would greet as a measure of justice its
withdrawal now from trades logically no more entitled to
the exception than their own : and that by the workers its
abolition would be welcomed with feelings of the warmest
gratitude." x When Mr. Lakeman, after a whole genera-
tion of work in London factory inspection, has to account for
the long and irregular hours still worked in defiance of the
Act, he emphatically declares " that overtime is the root of
the mischief, for it has choked the law with partiality and
modifications." 2

We have left to the last what is perhaps the most
marked distinction between the Trade Union regulation of
the Standard Rate and that of the Normal Day. Instead
of the bewildering variety which characterises the claim to a
Standard Rate, where each trade, and each section of a trade,
has its own price, we have, with regard to the Normal Day,
comparative simplicity and uniformity. During the last
sixty years, the demand for a Normal Day has come in the
guise of a succession of waves of popular agitation for a
common and uniform reduction of the hours of labor for all
trades alike. The Ten Hours' agitation of the Lancashire
Cotton Operatives spread, as we have seen, to the builders,
engineers, tailors, and other craftsmen, and resulted, between
1830 and 1840, in the very general adoption of Ten Hours
as the Normal Day in the larger towns. Similarly, the
Nine Hours' Movement, started by the Stonemasons in
1846, spread, during the next thirty years, throughout the
whole range of industry, and resulted by 1871-74 in the
almost universal acceptance of Nine Hours as the Normal
Day of artisans, mechanics, and factory workers and the
laborers working in association with any of these classes.
And it may perhaps be inferred that we stand, at the

1 Report of the Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops for 1893 (C. 7368
of 1894), pp. ii, 12.

2 Ibid. p. 50. See also the Opinions on Overtime (London, 1894), published
by the Women's Trade Union League.

35 2 Trade Union Fimction

present day, in the first years of a similar general move-
ment which will result in the equally widespread adoption of
Eight Hours as the standard working day in all branches of
British industry.1

Here at last we do come to something like communistic
feeling among British workmen. The aristocratic shipwright,
pattern-maker, or cotton-spinner, who would resent the idea
that the unskilled laborer or the woman worker had any
moral claim to as high a Standard Rate as himself, readily
accepts, when it comes to a question of hours, the doctrine
of complete equality. The explanation is simple. The most
rigid class distinctions of the wage -earning world have, in
the matter of hours of labor, to bend before the mechanical
necessity for a Common Rule. The same economic influ-
ences which make it impossible for each weaver in a mill to
come in and out as he or she chooses, make it convenient,

1 The successive reductions in working hours have been very imperfectly
recorded. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the ordinary working day
of indoor trades in London seems to have been from 6 A.M. to 9 P.M., whilst men
working out of doors left off at 6 P.M., or at dark. We have described the attempt
of the tailors in 1720 to shorten the day by one hour, and from a rare work in the
Guildhall and Patent Office Libraries, dated 1747 (A General Description of All
Trades, Anon.), it would seem that, by the middle of the century, a few other trades
had followed their example. The bookbinders (1787) and saddlers (1793)
secured a further reduction to thirteen hours less meal-times, and in 1794 the
bookbinders gained what would now be called a io£ hours' day (12 hours less
meal-times). Our impression is that at the opening of the present century this
had become in London the usual working day for all the skilled handicraft trades
working by time. By 1834, at any rate, the London building trades had secured
a ten hours' day and in 1836, the London engineers obtained the same reduction.
Within ten years this became general in most of the large towns, and was adopted
for the textile factories in the celebrated Ten Hours' Bill of 1847. Tne Nine
Hours' Movement begins with the Liverpool stonemasons in 1846, but does not
become general until 1859-61, nor fully successful until 1871. Meanwhile an
agitation had arisen among the skilled artisans for a Saturday half-holiday. The
building trades had secured a " four o'clock Saturday" in some towns by 1847,
making a 58^ hours' week. By 1861 this had become in London a "two
o'clock Saturday," or 56^ hours a week, an arrangement which was adopted for
the textile factories by the Act of 1874. When, in 1871, the Nine Hours' Day
was won by the engineering and building trades, it took the form of 1 1 hours less
i^ hours meal- times, for five days, and six hours less half an hour for breakfast on
Saturday, thus securing 54 hours with a "one o'clock Saturday." In 1890 the
engineering trades on the Tyne and Wear, desiring a more complete half-holiday,
demanded and obtained a "twelve o'clock Saturday" (53 hours). On the great
general revision of hours in the London building trades in 1892, the week was

The Normal Day 353

if not absolutely necessary, for the hours of beginning and
leaving off work to be identical, not for the weavers only,
but also for all the different classes of workpeople employed
in the establishment. And it has been a special feature of
the industrial development of the past thirty years more and
more to include, in a single establishment, not merely different
sections of one trade, but also the most diverse industrial
processes subsidiary to the production of the finished article.
In the leading engineering and shipbuilding yards of the
Tyne and Clyde, or the great works of the railway com-
panies— to cite only a few out of many examples — we find
to-day workmen of a hundred different trades working in a
single establishment whose hours of labor are almost neces-
sarily governed by the same " steam hooter," or factory bell.1
Any regulations relating to the length or distribution of
the working day tend, therefore, to be identical for all classes
of operatives.

fixed at 50, 47, and 44 hours according to the season, averaging 484 hours
through the year, and always securing the Saturday half-holiday. Finally, we
have the adoption, between 1889 and 1897, of the Eight Hours' Day in over five
hundred establishments, including the Government dockyards and workshops,
nearly all municipal gasworks, and a majority of the London engineering and
bookbinding establishments, together with isolated firms all over the country.

This progressive reduction relates, it need hardly be said, only to the nominal
standard hours of the most advanced districts, and takes no account either of the
prevalence of overtime, or of the lingering of longer hours in other districts. In
the absence of precise and authoritative statistics as to the amount of overtime
worked at different periods per person employed, it is impossible to give any
inductive proof of the lengthening of hours by systematic overtime at the moment
when, owing to a slackening of demand, less of the work is demanded by the
community. But the same tendency may be seen in the recorded changes in the
Normal Day itself. In the extraordinarily busy years of 1871-72 the engineering
employers had agreed with the Trade Unions that the week's work should
be 54 hours, and, on the Clyde, 51 hours only. When the great stagnation
of 1878-79 fell upon the industry, and there was much less engineering work
to be done, the employers decided " that the time has arrived . . . when the
idle hours which have been unprofitably thrown away, must be reclaimed to
industry and profit, by being redirected to reproductive work " (Secret Circular of
the Iron Trades Employers' Association, December 1878). They therefore made
a general attempt to increase the week's work to 57 or 59 hours. A similar
attempt was made in the building trades. For an account of this backwardation
in hours, see History of Trade Unionism, pp. 331, 334.

1 See, for this tendency to an " integration of processes " in competitive industry,
the Economic Heresies of the London County Council^ by Sidney Webb (London,
1894), a paper read at the Economic Section of the British Association in 1894.
VOL. I 2 A

CHAPTER VII

SANITATION AND SAFETY

IN the great establishments of modern industry, where large
numbers of manual workers are massed together, the wage-
contract implicitly includes many other conditions besides
those of the time to be spent in labor, and the rate at which
this is to be paid for. The wage-earner sells to his employer,
not merely so much muscular energy or mechanical ingenuity,
but practically his whole existence during the working day.1
An overcrowded or badly-ventilated workshop may exhaust
his energies ; sewer gas or poisonous material may under-
mine his health ; badly -constructed plant or imperfect
machinery may maim him or even cut short his days ;
coarsening surroundings may brutalise his life and degrade
his character — yet, when he accepts employment, he tacitly
undertakes to mind whatever machinery, use whatever
materials, breathe whatever atmosphere, and endure what-
ever sights, sounds, and smells he may find in the employer's
workshop, however inimical they may be to health or safety.
On all these points Individual Bargaining is out of the
question. The most ingenious employer would find it
impossible to bargain separately with individual workers as

1 "It matters nothing to the seller of bricks whether they are to be used in
building a palace or a sewer ; but it matters a great deal to the seller of labor,
who undertakes to perform a task of given difficulty, whether or not the place in
which it is to be done is a wholesome and a pleasant one, and whether or
not his associates will be such as he cares to have." — Principles of Economics^
by Professor A. Marshall (London, 1895), 3rd edit- P- 646-

Sanitation and Safety 355

to the temperature of the workshop or the use of the
ventilating fan, the fencing of the machinery or the provision
of sanitary accommodation : he cannot make any particular
concession to a consumptive weaver in the matter of the
amount of steam to be injected into the weaving shed, or
give special terms to a cautious miner with regard to the
construction of the cage or the thickness of the rope on
which his life will depend. These conditions are necessarily
identical for all the operatives concerned. The issue, therefore,
is not whether there shall be a Common Rule excluding the
exigencies of particular workers, but by whom and in whose
interest that Common Rule shall be made.1

The Trade Unionist demands for safe, healthy, and com-
fortable conditions of work appear to date only from about
1 840, and can scarcely be said to have become a definite part of
Trade Union policy until about iS/i.2 This long-continued
indifference to the risks of accident and disease was, as we
need hardly remind the reader, common to all classes. So
long as sickness and casualties were regarded as " visitations

1 The individual operative " can quarrel no more with the foul air of his
unventilated factory, burdened with poisons, than he can quarrel with the great
wheel that turns below " (The Wages Question, by Francis A. Walker, New York,
1876, London, 1891, p. 359). "Where a large number of men are employed
together in a factory ... all must conform to the wishes of the majority, or the
will of the employers, or the customs of the trade." — The State in Relation to
Labour, by W. Stanley Jevons (London, 1887), p. 65.

2 The coalminers, however, always asked for safeguards against the perils of
the mine. As early as 1662, it is said that 2000 colliers of Northumberland and
Durham prepared a petition to the King, asking, among other things, that the
mine owners should be required to provide better ventilation of the pits. Already
in 1676, the Government, in the person of the Lord Keeper North, was suggesting
that a second shaft ought always to be provided (The Miners of Northumberland
and Durham, by Richard Fynes, Blyth, 1873). Similar desires were expressed
by the earliest of the Miners' unions in 1809 and 1825, and in such pamphlets
as A Voice from the Coalmines, or a Plain Statement of the grievances of the
pitmen of the Tyne and Wear (South Shields, 1825), and An earnest address
and urgent appeal to the people of England on behalf of the oppressed and
suffering pitmen of the Counties of Northumberland and Durham (Newcastle,
1831). In no other industry do we trace any request prior to 1840 for more
sanitary conditions of employment (as distinguished from higher wages or shorter
hours). Neither in the Parliamentary inquiries of 1824, 1825, and 1838, nor in
the numerous investigations of the Commissioners connected with the Factory
Acts, Poor Law, or Health of Towns, have we found any evidence that the
operatives of that time pressed for healthier conditions of work.

356 Trade Union Function

of God," to be warded off by prayer and fasting, effective
sanitary regulations were not to be expected either from
the workmen's combinations or from Parliament itself.1
And whilst the theologian was attributing the workman's
ill -health to the Act of God, the political economist
was assuring him that any unusual risk to health or life,
like any extra discomfort, inevitably brought with it sub-
stantial compensation in the shape of higher wages. We
therefore find that in the comparatively few cases between
1700 and 1840, in which Trade Unions made any complaint
of dangerous or insanitary conditions, they brought forward
the grievance without any idea of establishing regulations to
prevent such conditions for the future, but merely as an
argument in favor of the concession of shorter hours or higher
wages.2 We need not follow the gradual disappearance of
the theological explanation of disease before the progress of
science. Of greater interest to the economic student is the
growth of an opinion among the Trade Unionists, that the
compensation for insanitary conditions brought about by
" the free play of natural forces," was of a totally different
character from that prophesied by Adam Smith and his
followers. To the intelligent Trade Union official it became
increasingly evident that the compensatory effect of bad
conditions of employment took the form, not of higher rates

1 Public health legislation dates only from about 1840 ; see Glen, Histoy of
the Law relating to Public Health, loth edition (London, 1888). The first general
Public Health Act was not passed until 1848.

2 Thus, when in 1752, the combination of journeymen tailors of London com-
plained that, by their having to work from six in the morning until eight at night,
" sitting so many hours in such a position, almost double on the shopboard, with
their legs under them, and poring so long over their work by candlelight, their
spirits are exhausted, nature is wearied out, and their health and sight are soon
impaired," all they asked for was an extra sixpence a day wages (77ie Tailoring
Trade, by F. W. Gallon, London, 1896, p. 53 ; published by the London School
of Economics and Political Science). And when, in 1777, the far-sighted and
observant Justus Moser was impressed by the injury to health caused by the
conditions under which apprentices and young journeymen were put to work,
nothing in the nature of factory legislation occurred to him ; his remedy was a
technical institute which should supersede apprenticeship altogether. — " Is not
an Institute required for Artisans ?" in Patriotische Phantasien (Berlin, 1858),
vol. Hi. p. 135.

Sanitation and Safety 357

paid by the employer, but of a lower grade of character
among the workpeople. When the conditions of safety,
health, and comfort in the trade fell below the standard of
other occupations, the Trade Union official did not find that
his members got higher wages.1 What happened was that
his union was presently made up of workers of coarser fibre,
worse character, and more irregular habits. And this result
was brought about not entirely, or even mainly, by the
refusal of respectable persons to enter trades in which the
risks to life, health, and character were exceptionally great.
For the great mass of workers, in districts dependent on
particular industries, there was practically no choice of occu-
pation, and hence, over large areas of the United Kingdom,
physical enfeeblement and moral deterioration became the
lot of good and bad alike. Even in the rare cases in which
exceptionally strong unions obtained for their members some
definite compensation for risk of disease and death, the more
thoughtful workmen could not fail to realise that the extra
money was no real equivalent for the lives prematurely cut
short, the constitutions ruined by disease, or the characters
brutalised by coarsening surroundings.

Thus, in the Trade Union world of to-day, there is no
subject on which workmen of all shades of opinion, and all
varieties of occupation, are so unanimous, and so ready to
take combined action, as the prevention of accidents and the
provision of healthy workplaces. We do not propose to
enumerate, or even to summarise in any detail, the various
regulations upon which Trade Unions have insisted for the
protection of the life, health, and comfort of their members.
These necessarily differ from trade to trade according to the

1 For over a century economic manuals have reproduced Adam Smith's
celebrated analysis of the causes of differences in wages, without any investigation
of the facts of industrial life. " There is hardly a grain of truth," wrote Fleeming
Jenkin with refreshing originality in 1870, "in the doctrine that men's wages are
in proportion to the [un-]pleasantness of their occupation. On the contrary, all
loathsome occupations are undertaken by apathetic beings for a miserable hire. . .
The best paid is [also] the most pleasant life." — "Graphic Representation of
the Laws of Supply and Demand," by Fleeming Jenkin, in Recess Studies
(London, 1870), p. 182.

358 Trade Union Function

technical processes and particular grievances of the industry,
Sometimes it is the prevention of accidents that is aimed at.
Thus, the United Society of Boilermakers has insisted, in
its elaborate agreement with the Ship Repairers' Federation
of the United Kingdom, upon the following clause : " The
employers undertake that, before men are put to work on
[repairing the great tank ships for carrying petroleum in
bulk, in which dangerous vapour accumulates], an expert's
certificate shall be obtained daily to the effect that the tanks
are absolutely safe. Such certificate to be posted in sorm
conspicuous place." * Innumerable other regulations aim at
the removal of conditions injurious to the workers' health.
Thus, the various Trade Unions of " ovenmen " (potters]
have for a whole generation protested against being fore
to empty the ovens before these have been allowed to
cool, on the express ground that this unnecessary exposui
to a temperature between 170 and 210 degrees Fahrenheit
is seriously detrimental to health. Several strikes hai
taken place solely on this point, and the Staffordshire Oven-
men's Union now has a by-law authorising the support
any member who is dismissed for refusing to work in
temperature higher than 120 degrees.2 The Northern
Counties Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton-
weavers has repeatedly withdrawn its members from weav-
ing sheds into which the employers insisted on injecting an
undue volume of steam, and it succeeded, in 1889, in obtain-
ing a special Act defining the maximum limit to which thi<
practice might be carried.3 The carelessness of employei

1 Payment for repairs on oil vessels : Agreement between the Ship Repairers
Federation of the United Kingdom and the United Society of Boilermakers, signed
at Newcastle, I2th January 1894. Similar agreements have been made by tl
Amalgamated Society of Engineers (Tyneside District) with the Federation (I4th
September 1894), and (Newport and Cardiff District) with the Engineers and
Shipbuilders Employers' Association of Newport and Cardiff, 2ist March 1895,
and in other seaports.

2 Information given to us by the officials ; see also Dr. J. T. Arlidge, The
Pottery Manufacture in its Sanitary Aspects (London, 1892), p. 17.

3 Royal Commission on Labor, evidence Group C ; the Cotton Cloth
Factories Act, 1889 (52 & 53 Viet. c. 62), amended by the Factory Acts of 1891
and 1895. See the interesting investigation into the results of this legislation by

Sanitation and Safety 359

with regard to the sanitary condition of the places in which
their wage -earners have to work has led to many fitful
struggles. Perhaps the most notable, and at the same time
significant example is that of the Glasgow tailors. As far
back as 1854 we find the union resolving that the members
employed in a certain notorious underground cellar " should
finish their jobs and leave, until a better workshop was
got." ] In the next year an attempt was made to prohibit
all working in underground rooms. The general meeting
resolved : " That those employers who have pit-shops at
present receive notice to get proper workshops, otherwise the
men will be obliged to refuse to work in all shops the same
not being above ground." 2 During the following years, the
energetic journeymen tailors put into force all the methods
of Trade Unionism to attain their end. Mutual Insurance
was employed to a remarkable extent, any member choosing
to leave an underground workshop being allowed four shillings
a week over and above the ordinary Out-of-Work pay. This
induced the better class of employers to resume Collective
Bargaining, to agree to provide suitable workrooms for their
men, and even to submit them to the inspection of the
Trade Union officials. But neither Mutual Insurance nor
Collective Bargaining availed to put down the evil among the
worst employers. The union then turned to the law. An in-
fluentially signed memorial was presented to the Town Council
in order to obtain a by-law prohibiting the use of underground
workshops altogether, and though this request does not appear
to have been complied with, the increasing stringency of the
sanitary law to some extent served the purpose.3

a Home Office Committee of experts, Report of a Committee appointed to inquire
into the -working of the Cotton Cloth Factories Act, 1889 [C, 8348], 1897.

1 MS. Minutes of Glasgow Tailors' Society, April 1854.

2 Ibid. January 1855.

3 Report on Trade Societies and Strikes : National Association for the Promo-
tion of Social Science, 1860, p. 280, where it is erroneously stated that the clause
desired was actually embodied in a local Act of Parliament. We can trace no
such provision, and underground workshops are, if properly ventilated, still per-
mitted by law. But the use of premises below the ground-level as dwellings is
restricted by the Public Health Acts, and the Factory Act of 1895, sec. 27,

360 Trade Union Function

But safety and health are not the only requirements.
Many trades enforce a series of regulations designed merely
to secure the comfort and convenience of the operatives. In
the innumerable " Working Rules " which govern the build-
ing trades of the various towns, the Trade Unions generally
insist on a clause to compel the employer to provide a dry
and comfortable place in which the men may take their
meals, lock up their tools in safety, and rest under cover in
storms of rain.1

It will be unnecessary to give further examples. The long
and elaborate code of law which now governs employment
in the factory and workshop, the bakehouse and printing
office, on sea and in the depths of the mine, is itself largely
made up of the Common Rules designed for the protection
of the operatives' health, life, or comfort, which have been
pressed for by Trade Unions, and have successively com-
mended themselves to the wisdom of Parliament. And the
Trade Union Regulations of this class, whether enforced by
the Method of Collective Bargaining or by that of Legal
Enactment, are constantly increasing in number and variety.
Every revision of " Working Rules," or other collective
agreements with employers, is made the occasion for new
stipulations. Each meeting of the Trade Union Congress
sees new proposals under this head formally endorsed by the
representatives of other trades. Scarcely a session of Parlia-
ment now passes without new Common Rules for the pro-
forbids the occupation of any such premises as bakehouses if they were not
actually employed as soch on 1st January 1896.

1 Thus, to give only four instances out of our collection of many hundreds,
the London Stone Carvers are found insisting, as early as 1876, "that, as a pro-
tection from the weather, and to prevent loss of time, all carvers on outdoor jobs
to be supplied with tarpaulins or other suitable covering " ; the London Plasterers
stipulate (1892) that "employers shall provide, where practicable and reasonable,
a suitable place for the workmen to have their meals on the works, with a
laborer to assist in preparing them " ; the Nottingham Bricklayers require (1893)
" that there shall be a lock-up shop provided for workmen to get their meals in
and put their tools in safety"; and the Portsmouth Stonemasons (1893) insist
" that suitable shops and mess-houses be erected on all jobs where necessary."
All these Working Rules, it will be remembered, are formally agreed to and
signed by the representatives of the employers and the Trade Union.

Sanitation and Safety 361

tection of the health or safety of one or other class of
operatives being, amid general public approval, added to our
Labor Code.1

We attribute the rapid development of this side of Trade
Unionism to the discovery by the Trade Union leaders that
it is the line of least resistance. Middle-class public opinion,
which fails as yet to comprehend the Common Rule of the
Standard Rate and is strongly prejudiced against the fixing
of a Normal Day, cordially approves any proposal for pre-
venting accidents or improving the sanitation of workplaces.
The alacrity with which capitalist Parliaments met these
requests came as a surprise to the Trade Union officials.
To the sweated journeyman tailor at the East End, the fact
that he was compelled to labor in an overcrowded workroom
seemed less detrimental to his health than the excessive
hours of daily toil that were exacted from him. The girls
in a London jam factory are still puzzled as to why the
Government should compel their employer to provide them
with costly sanitary conveniences, and yet permit him to go
on paying wages quite inadequate for their healthy subsist-
ence. It cannot be of more urgent importance to the com-
munity to insist on sanitary refinements than to secure the
fundamental requisites of healthy life and citizenship. Nor
is one set of Common Rules less inconsistent with " freedom
of enterprise" than the other. With regard to Sanitation
and Safety the law has not scrupled to " thrust a ramrod "
into the delicate mechanism of British industry, in the shape
of rigid rules enforced on all manufacturers alike. Whether
a factory be new or old, large or small, in the crowded slums
of a manufacturing town or on the breezy uplands of the
country side, gaining huge profits for its proprietor or actually
running at a loss, the community insists on the observance
of uniform rules as to cubic space, ventilation, meal-times,
stoppages for cleaning, fire-escapes, doors opening outwards,

1 During the ten years, 1887-1896, there were passed no fewer than thirteen
separate Acts relating to the conditions of employment in factories, workshops,
mines, shops, or railways, besides several general Public Health Acts.

362 Trade Union Function

fencing of machinery, degrees of humidity and temperature,
water supply, drainage, and sanitary conveniences, separate
for each sex. It is in vain that the manufacturers point out
to the House of Commons that these requirements constitute
as real and as burdensome an increase in their cost of pro-
duction as a shortening of the hours of labor, and that the
Factory Inspector's requisition for a ventilating fan and the
erection of additional sanitary conveniences may result in the
actual closing of the oldest and least profitable mills.

It is not easy to find an adequate explanation of this
state of mind. Something, we think, is to be attributed to
the general fear of infectious disease, which the ordinary
middle -class man associates more with overcrowding and
defective sanitation than with insufficient food or overtaxed
energies. Along with this fear of infection there goes a real
sympathy for the sufferers, ill-health and accidents being
calamities common to rich and poor. More, perhaps, is due
to the half-conscious admission that, as regards Sanitation
and Safety at any rate, the Trade Union argument is borne
out by facts, and that it is impracticable for the individual
operative to bargain about these conditions of his labor.
And another factor may come into the decision. There still
exists a certain scepticism as to whether the wage-earner is
capable of wisely expending any larger wages than will keep
body and soul together, or of usefully employing any greater
leisure than is necessary for sleep.1 Ventilating bricks and
shuttle-guards, whitewash and water-closets cannot be spent
in drink or wasted in betting. Mingled with this economic
consideration there is even a subtle element of Puritanism —
the vicarious asceticism of a luxurious class — which prefers

1 To the Iron Trades Employers' Association of 1878 — an organisation which
included the leading captains of British industry — a reduction of wages and a
lengthening of hours appeared a positive economic advantage to the community.
"It has appeared to employers of labor," said their secret circular urging a
return to longer hours of labor and a general reduction of rates of payment,
" that the time has arrived when the superfluous wages which have been dissipated
in unproductive consumption must be retrenched, and when the idle hours which
have been unprofitably thrown away must be reclaimed to industry and profit by
being redirected to reproductive work." — History of Trade Unionism, p. 331.

Sanitation and Safety 363

to give the poor " what is good for them," rather than that
in which they can find active enjoyment.

With public opinion in this state, and a House of Com-
mons predisposed to favor sanitary legislation, it might be
imagined that the necessary Common Rules for securing
health and safety would have been systematically applied to
every industry. This, however, is not the British way of
doing things. Neither the permanent officials of the Home
Office, nor even the Cabinet Ministers themselves, ever dream
of considering it their duty to discover and investigate evils
which have not been formally brought to their notice, nor
spontaneously to initiate remedial measures which have not
been persistently pressed on them by outside agitation.
The House of Commons itself has not yet outgrown its
traditional attitude of a court, to which suitors must them-
selves bring petitions if they desire to have their grievances
remedied, and must present their case too, in certain pre-
scribed forms, on pain of seeing it, however gross the evil,
ignored for many years. The result is that the Common
Rules necessary to secure health and safety in particular
trades are placed on the Statute Book, not according to the
urgency of the need, or the extremity of the evil, but accord-
ing to the strength of the pressure which is brought to bear.
In many individual cases this pressure has come from the
philanthropists. The agitations which led to the prohibition
of the use of "climbing boys" to clean chimneys (I84O),1

1 It took over sixty years' agitation to complete this reform. In 1817 a
Select Committee exposed the horroi-s to which the "climbing boy" was exposed.
Legislation followed in 1834, when the employment of boys under ten was for-
bidden, and it was made a criminal offence for a master to send a child up a
chimney when it was actually on fire ! This caused the insurance companies to
petition against the measure. In 1840 the minimum age for chimney-sweep
apprentices was raised to sixteen, and a formal prohibition of their being com-
pelled to ascend chimneys was embodied in the law. This remained largely
ineffective until, in 1 864, the Chimney Sweepers' Regulation Act punished with
imprisonment and hard labor any master who sent a boy up a chimney. The
last case of a boy dying in the chimney — once not unusual — occurred in 1875,
when another Act was passed increasing the stringency of the law. For a general
survey of the progress in this protective legislation, see The Queen's Reign for
Children, by W. Clarke Hall (London, 1897).

364 Trade Union Function

and of the employment of children in theatres (1889),
derived their force from the ability with which their advo-
cates appealed to middle-class sentiment. Similar adroit
management accounts for Mr. Plimsoll's success in 1876 in
extending the Merchant Shipping Acts, though on this occa-
sion the political influence of the organised Trade Unions
came effectively into play.1 The protective rules in the
Mines Regulation Acts have, on the other hand, been
initiated since 1843 by the Coalminers' leaders themselves,
though the direct influence of the Mining Unions has been
aided by general public sympathy. But it is in the Common
Rules secured by the Cotton Operatives that we see the most
striking result of Trade Union pressure. The Factory Acts
which their support enabled Mr. Oastler and Lord Shaftes-
bury to carry between 1833 and 1847 were mainly directed
to a limitation of the hours of labor. Since 1870, how-
ever, the ingenuity and persistence of the cotton officials
have greatly extended the scope of the legal regulation of
their trade. The elaborate and detailed provisions of the
law as to stoppages for cleaning and protection of machinery,
the ventilation of the mills, and the exact space to be allowed
between the fixed and moving parts of the mule, the regu-
lation of the temperature and the degree of humidity in the
weaving-shed, go far beyond anything that Parliament has
yet done in the way of collective regulation of the conditions
of labor in the factories and workshops of other trades.2

1 History of Trade Unionism, p. 356.

2 This is the more remarkable in that cotton manufacture is an industry in
which the margin of profit has long been steadily declining, and has, according to
many authorities, now almost vanished. Foreign competition, too, is admittedly
keen and increasing. On the other hand, the wholesale slop clothing trade has,
during the present generation, expanded by leaps and bounds, and has notoriously
produced colossal fortunes. Yet whilst the cotton operatives secure from Parlia-
ment refinement after refinement at the cost of their employers, the unfortunate
men and women employed by the wholesale clothiers, whose woes were laid bare
by the House of Lords Committee on the Sweating System, 1888-90, are still
practically excluded from the protection of the Factory Inspector. See " The
Lords' Report on the Sweating System," by Beatrice Potter, Nineteenth Century,
Tune 1890 ; and Fabian Tract No. 50, Sweating: its Cause and Remedy (London,
"i893)-

Sanitation and Safety 365

On the other hand, the genuine public sympathy with the
unfortunate chain and nail worker in the Black Country,
with the London " fur -puller " and match-box maker, with
the laundress or the dock-laborer, has resulted in nothing
but sham legislation of an entirely illusory character.1
Experience proves, in fact, that public sympathy with the
worker's desire for Common Rules securing safe and healthy
conditions of work leads to effective regulation only when
the grievances, besides being graphically and persistently
pressed on the House of Commons, are accompanied by
proposals for reform which have been worked out in all their
technical detail by practical experts. To put it concretely,
the factory legislation which each trade has obtained, has,
during the last twenty years, varied in stringency and
effectiveness, not according to the misery of the workers or
the profitableness of the enterprise, but almost exactly with
the amount of money which the several unions have expended
on official and legal assistance.

So far we have dealt only with the promotion of health
or safety by means of specific regulations prescribing the
conditions which experience has shown to be necessary to
prevent accident or disease. In one direction, however, the
Trade Unionists have departed from this, the general line of
their policy, and have sought safety in imposing upon the
employer, not positive regulations to prevent the evil, but an
obligation to pay compensation for it when it has happened.
This leads us to the long and bitter controversy connected
with " Employer's Liability," in which, during the last twenty
years, both workmen and politicians have more than once
shifted their ground. To understand the changing features
of this controversy, we must examine, in some detail, both its
history and its various aspects.2

1 On the futility of the laundry clause in the Factory Act of 1895, see tne
article, "Law and the Laundries," in the Nineteenth Century, December 1896,
published by the Industrial Sub-Committee of the National Union of Women
Workers.

2 The best account of this difficult subject is the Home Office Memorandum
printed as Appendix CLIX. to the Labor Commission Blue Book, C. 7063,

366 Trade Union Function

By the common law of England a person is liable, not
only for his own negligence, but for that of his servant acting
as such. It does not appear that this law was, in old times,
made use of by workmen against their employers — probably
no one thought of such an insurrectionary proceeding — but
in 1837 an action (Priestley v. Fowler) was brought against
a butcher by one of his assistants to recover compensation
for injuries resulting from the overloading of a cart. It was
proved that the overloading was due to the negligence of a
fellow-servant. On this ground the judges decided that the
injured servant could not recover compensation from the
common employer. This decision is now deemed by some
scientific jurists to have been bad law ; l but, good or bad, it
founded the distinction which has ever since been made
between strangers, to whom the employer is responsible for
the negligence of his servants, and the servants themselves.

III. A (1894), pp. 363, 384, and the comments by Sir F. Pollock in the same
volume (Appendix clviii. pp. 346-348), with Mr. A. Birrell's Four Lectures
on the Law of Employers' Liability at Home and Abroad (London, 1897).
The Report and Evidence of the Select Committee of 1887 (H. C. No. 285
of 1887) is also important. For a more detailed and technical account of
the law and its development, see Employers and Employed, by W. C. Spens
and R. F. Younger (London, 1887), or Duty and Liability of Employers, by
W. H. Roberts and G. H. Wallace (London, 1885). The Trade Union view is well
given in the pamphlet Employers' Liability : " Past and Prospective Legislation,
with Special Reference to Contracting- Out," by Edmond Brown (London, 1896).
This is ably criticised in the Daily Chronicle pamphlet, The Workers' Tragedy
(London, 1897). For another point of view, see Mr. Chamberlain's article in
the Nineteenth Century, November 1892, and his speeches in Parliament during
May and July 1897 ; Miners' Thrift and Employers' Liability, by G. L. Campbell
(Wigan, 1891) ; and Employers' Liability: What it Ought to Be, by Henry W.
Wolff (London, 1897). The exhaustive report of the French Government
"Commission de Travail" for 1892 contains full information on Continental
legislation, as to which see the interesting proceedings of the International
Congresses on Industrial Accidents, held at Paris, 1889, Berne, 1891, Milan,
1894 (Brussels, 1897) ; Dr. T. Bodiker's Die Arbeiterversichentng in den
Europdischen Staaten (Leipzig, 1895) ; and the elaborate bibliography published
in Circular No. I, Series B, of the Musee Social (Paris, 1896).

1 Sir Frederick Pollock remarks, in the Memorandum already cited, " I
think the doctrine of the American and English Courts (for it is American quite
as much as English) is bad law as well as bad policy. The correct course, in my
judgment, would have been to hold that the rule expressed by the maxim
respondeat superior, whatever its origin or reason, was general. . . . No such
doctrine as that of common employment has found place in the law courts of
France or of any German State."

Sanitation and Safety 367

The lawyers explained that the workmen must be held
implicitly to have contracted to take upon themselves, as
part of the risk incidental to their calling, the possible negli-
gence of fellow-employees, for whose action, therefore, the
common employer could not fairly be considered liable.

To the manual worker this distinction, for which Lord
Abinger was chiefly responsible, seemed an intolerable piece
of " class legislation." The workman, injured in the actual
performance of his duty, was at least as fit an object for
compensation as the chance passer-by. The exception,
moreover, destroyed all real responsibility of the largest
employers even for their own negligence. In mines and
railways, and in the large establishments characteristic of
modern industry, the legal " employer " was seldom present
or in personal direction of the operations. He might be
guilty of the grossest carelessness in choosing his managers ;
he might not provide sufficient means for proper appliances ;
he might worry his agents to increase the speed of working,
deliberately bringing pressure to bear on his superintendents
and foremen to increase the output or lower the cost of
production, to the hazard of the lives of all concerned. Yet
because he did not give the specific order, or direct the use
of the particular machine, out of which the accident arose,, he
escaped all liability for compensation to his injured workmen,
on the plea that the negligence was that of their fellow-
worker, the manager whom he had put in authority over
them.

Under these circumstances, a Trade Union agitation for
" employers' liability " was sooner or later inevitable. It was
started by Alexander Macdonald, the leader of the coal-
miners, whose remarkable career we have traced in our
History of Trade Unionism} At the conference of miners'
delegates at Ashton-under-Lyne in 1858, bitter complaint

1 See the History of Trade Unionism, pp. 284-292 ; the Report of the Confer-
ence of the National Association of Coal, Lime, and Ironstone Miners of Great
Britain and Ireland [at Leeds in 1863] (London, 1864) ; Macdonald 's speech in
the similar report for 1881 (Manchester, 1881) ; and his speech in Report of tke
Eleventh Annual Trade Union Congress (Bristol, 1878), pp. 17, 18.

368 Trade Union Function

was made that many of the collieries were without what
would now be considered the most ordinary safeguards against
accidents. No real effort was made by the Government to
enforce the merely elementary provisions of the Mines
Regulation Act of 1842. The frequent mine explosions
which marked the years 1860-67, culminating in the terrible
catastrophes at the Hartley, Edmunds Main, and Oaks
Collieries, where hundreds of miners lost their lives, brought
the question of the responsibility of the employer prominently
to the front. " How long then," asked the miners at their con-
ference in 1863," shall such conduct and workings be tolerated ?
To talk of humanity is nothing, and the law as now carried
out is useless. To make the result costly is, then, the only
present remedy. . . . When men's lives are held to be sacred
their safety will be looked to as a matter of vital importance.
At present we ask them to be considered costly, and com-
pensation to be awarded accordingly. Many are alive to
costs who are dead to all higher feeling, and these should be
dealt with accordingly." ] It is easy to understand the miners'
policy. Their industry was already subject to elaborate
Common Rules, which were steadily increasing in number and
scope. What was lacking, in the absence of any serious
Government inspection, was some means of compelling com-
pliance with the rules. Failure to observe them was primd
facie evidence of negligence on the part of the manager of
the mine. If the Miners' union could recover damages from
the mine-owner whenever an accident occurred in a colliery
where the law had not been obeyed, the risk of having to pay
out several thousand pounds would, it was argued, induce the
employer to take the prescribed precautions against accidents.
The proposed right of the operative to sue an employer was
merely a practical method of enforcing obedience to the
Common Rules regulating the industry. Thus, to Alexander
Macdonald, employers' liability presented itself only as one
of the instruments of his general policy of obtaining legal

1 Transactions and Results of the National Association of Coal etc. Miners of
Great Britain (London, 1863), pp. x.-xiii.

Sanitation and Safety 369

protection for the health and life of the underground
workers.

This argument was soon reinforced by another. In 1872
the proposal was, at the instance of the newly-formed Amal-
gamated Association of Railway Servants, taken up by the
Trade Union Congress. Inspired, as the Congress then was,
by the able men who were fighting the battle for the work-
men's freedom of association, it was eager to denounce all
laws which excluded manual workers from the personal
rights enjoyed by other classes of the community. To the
Parliamentary Committee of these years the wage-earner's
disability to recover compensation from his employer, in cases
in which a stranger could successfully have sued, seemed
another of the invidious disabilities to which the law at that
time subjected workmen as such. The lawyer's contention
that the wage-earner, by entering into a contract of service,
had placed himself in a position different from that of the
ordinary citizen, was incomprehensible to them. "There seems
to be no sufficient reason," declared the Parliamentary Com-
mittee in 1876, "for these exceptions to the general law.
Negligence in the employer, or in some person for whose
conduct he is ordinarily responsible, and whom he has the
power to dismiss, must of course be shown. But if that is
shown, why should more be required in the case of a workman
than in any other case. The present state of the law takes
away a motive for the exercise of careful control and super-
vision by the employer. It even makes it his interest not
to examine too minutely into the way in which his work is
carried on, lest he should be held to have personally inter-
fered, and to have become personally liable. The proposed
alteration of the law would not be any exceptional legislation
in favor of workmen : it would be merely the repeal of an
exceptional exclusion of them from the ordinary protection
of the law." l

1 Parliamentary Committee's Report to the Ninth Annual Trade Union
Congress, i8th September 1876, pp. 3, 4 ; see History of Trade Unionism,
chap. vii. Between 1872 and 1879 no fewer than eight Employers' Liability
VOL. I 2 B

370 Trade Union Function

The energetic agitation between 1872 and 1880 was
entirely based on these two arguments. Almost every
session saw the matter brought before Parliament in one
form or another ; and each Ministry in succession promised
to effect an amendment of the law. At last, in 1880, by
the skill and persistence of Mr. Broadhurst, an Employers'
Liability Act was passed, which went far to meet the con-
temporary Trade Union demands. The " doctrine of common
employment " was not absolutely abolished ; but an employer
was made liable to compensate his injured workmen when-
ever the accident resulted from the negligence of any super-
intendent, manager, or foreman, or from obedience to any
improper order or rule. A special clause, put in for the
benefit of railway servants, made the employer responsible
for the negligence of any person in charge of railway signals,
points, or engine.

Though the workmen (and, in particular, the miners and
railway servants) thus obtained a large measure of the reform
they had demanded, experience soon convinced the Trade
Unionists that, even to the extent that the 1880 Act went,
placing the workman in the same position as the ordinary
citizen did practically nothing to secure his safety from
accident. The argument that the wage-earner ought to be
placed, as regards compensation for accidents, in the same
position as any one else, led also to the conclusion that he
should be free to enter into any contract as to his legal rights,
whether by way of compromising an accident already suffered
or by way of compounding, in advance, for any possible acci-
dent in the future. The employers accordingly met the new
Act by inventing the device since known as " contracting out."

It was decided in 1882, in Griffiths v. The Earl of
Dudley,1 that if a workman continued in employment after
receipt of a notice that he must forego all his rights under

Bills were introduced in the House of Commons ; see the interesting pamphlet
by Mr. C. H. Green, Employers' Liability: Its History, Limitation, and Exten-
sion (London, 1896), written by an insurance official from an insurance point of
view.

1 9 Queen's Bench Division, 357.

Sanitation and Safety 371

the Act, and accept, in lieu thereof, a claim on a benefit
club to which the employer contributed, he was held to have
entered into a contract to relinquish the rights given him by
the Act of 1880. The consequences of this decision were
soon apparent. It did not suit a large employer to be
exposed to the risk of an indefinite liability, or to the worry
of being sued for compensation by every aggrieved workman.
It became a custom in many collieries, and in some railway
and other large undertakings, to establish a special accident
fund or benefit society, to which both employer and workmen
subscribed, and from which was provided, without litigation
substantial relief in all cases of accident, whether due to
proved negligence or not. This enabled the partners or
shareholders to satisfy their moral responsibilities to disabled
workmen at the least possible expense and trouble to them-
selves, since their wage-earners directly contributed a portion
of the fund, and the total amount of the firm's payment was
precisely defined in advance. Such a fund, moreover, tended
to attach their workmen permanently to their service by dis-
posing them to abide by the employer's conditions, rather
than forfeit, by going elsewhere, their claims on the firm's
benefit society. Above all, the existence of such a fund,
providing as it did for all accidents whatsoever, enabled the
firm confidently to insist that its workmen should "contract
out " of the Employers' Liability Act, and thus forego the
more limited but legally enforced claims for compensation
which they could otherwise make under it.

The vehemence and persistency with which the entire
Trade Union world has protested against this practice of
" contracting out " has all through been incomprehensible to
the middle-class man. To him the whole object of Em-
ployers' Liability is compensation to the injured workman or
his family. If by a special accident fund this compensation
can be provided, not merely for some, but for all accidents
whatsoever, and if, moreover, the expense of litigation can
thereby be avoided, it seems a clear gain to both parties.
What the middle-class man fails to realise is that this is to

372 Trade Union Function

remit the all-important question of safety of the workman's
life to the perils of Individual Bargaining. The Trade
Unionists assert that the workman's consent to forego his
legal claim is given practically under duress, since a man
applying for employment has no free option whether or not he
will join the firm's benefit society, and so relieve his employer
from that pecuniary inducement to guard against accidents
which the Act was intended to afford. Moreover, it is said
that this inability of the individual workman to bargain
about the conditions of his employment leads, in certain
instances, to his being simply defrauded, the benefit of the
employer's fund being inferior to what he could obtain by
relying on the Act and paying his contributions to an ordi-
nary friendly society. But the fundamental Trade Union
objection is that this " contracting out," even if willingly
acquiesced in by each individual workman, is against public
policy, as defeating the primary purpose of the Act. If the
employer, they say, can avoid all liability for negligence by
making an annual contribution, fixed in advance, he has no
inducement to take precautions against individual accidents.
Macdonald's idea of protecting the workman's life by making
accidents costly is, in fact, thereby entirely defeated.

For the last fifteen years the Trade Union leaders have,
therefore, waged bitter war against " contracting out," 1 and
have persistently forced upon Parliament their demand for
an express prohibition of the practice. In 1893 the Cabinet
was converted to the Trade Union position. Once again the
Trade Unionists found all their demands embodied in a
Government Bill, which successfully passed the House of
Commons. An amendment was inserted by the House of
Lords preserving the liberty of contracting out of the Act,
but under certain significant new safeguards.2 In emphatic
condemnation of the practice of the London and North-

1 The London and North- Western Railway Company, and all but one of the
South-West Lancashire coalowners at present (1897), explicitly compel all their
operatives to "contract out."

2 The House of Lords' Amendment, together with the final discussion upon
it, will be found in Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, I3th February 1894.

Sanitation and Safety 373

Western Railway Company and the Lancashire Coalowners,
the House of Lords declared that " contracting out " was in
no case to be made a condition of the workman's being given
employment. It was not even to be left any longer to Indi-
vidual Bargaining. No " contracting out " was to be per-
mitted unless the financial basis of the employer's benefit
society had been approved by the Board of Trade as fair to
the workmen. But this was not all. No " contracting out"
was to be allowed, however favorable to the men might be
the consideration offered, unless it had been collectively agreed
to by the workers in the establishment considered as a whole.
For this purpose, elaborate provision was proposed for a
" secret ballot " of the workers to be taken under authority
of the Board of Trade at intervals of not less than three
years ; and a two-thirds majority was to be necessary for
consent. Thus, under no circumstances was it to be within
the option of an individual wage-earner, acting as an indi-
vidual, to forego his legal rights. In spite of this remarkable
concession to the central position of Trade Unionism — the
objection to Individual Bargaining — the majority of the
House of Commons, at the instance of its working-men
members, preferred to abandon the Bill rather than accept an
amendment allowing the detested contracting out under any
conditions whatsoever.1

The controversy has now been narrowed down to so fine
a point that the Trade Union leaders may any day get from

1 The bitterness with which the Trade Union officials object to "contracting
out," and the underlying reason which led them to refuse even the safeguarded
provision of the House of Lords' Amendment, are, we think, connected not with
"contracting out" as such, but with the existence of employers' benefit societies.
An accident fund or benefit society, confined to the workmen in a particular
establishment, is, as we shall see in our chapter on "The Implications of Trade
Unionism," in many ways inimical to Trade Unionism. Employers' benefit
societies are far older than the Act of 1880, and exist in many firms which do
not contract out. Moreover, contracting out may take place, as in the South
Wales coalmines, with an accident fund common to the whole area, and thus
independent of any one employer. Employers' benefit societies cannot therefore
be swept away by a side wind. If public opinion is to be led to agree to their
prohibition, this must come, like the removal of other deductions from wages, by
an amendment of the Truck Acts.

374 Trade Union Fimction

one party or the other the legislation they desire. We
are, however, inclined to believe that just as they were dis-
appointed with the Act of 1880, though it gave them prac-
tically what they then demanded, so they will find equally
unsatisfying any measure on the lines of the Bill of 1893-94,
about which they were so enthusiastic. The fact is there is
no reason to believe that the mere prohibition of " contracting
out " will do anything to diminish the number of accidents.
Attempts have been made to prove that the comparatively
few undertakings in which contracting out prevails have a
higher percentage of accidents than those in which the
Act applies. But no statistical evidence yet adduced
on the subject will stand examination.1 It is said, for
example, that in Lancashire and Wales, where the coal-
miners contract out, the proportion of accidents is appreci-
ably higher than in Yorkshire or Northumberland, where
they do not. But this was the case also before the Act
of 1880: moreover, the proportion of accidental deaths
to persons employed seems to be diminishing more rapidly
in Wales and Lancashire than in Northumberland. It is
even gravely argued that the London and North -Western
Railway Company has eight times as many accidents as the
Midland — as if nothing turned on the different definitions of
an accident ! The truth is, there is no such difference of
pecuniary interest as is supposed between the employer who
" contracts out," and the one who remains subject to the Act.
In the vast majority of cases the employer does not take
the trouble to ask his workmen to bargain away their legal
rights ;2 he protects himself against the worry of litigation by
the simpler device of insurance. On payment of a definite
annual premium to an ordinary insurance company he is
indemnified against any loss by claims under the Act, the

1 A well-known barrister, who has been engaged in between three and four
hundred Employers' Liability cases, almost exclusively on the side of the workmen,
informed us that his experience has convinced him that the legal liability for
compensation had no effect whatever in preventing accidents, at any rate in coal-
mining.

2 Thus, in 1891, only 119,122 coalminers, out of 648,450, had contracted

Sanitation and Safety 375

company, to boot, taking all the trouble off his hands. The
fear of damages may here and there induce a small master
to obey, more promptly than before, the factory inspector's
order to guard a driving wheel or fence a lift shaft. But in
the great staple industries, insurance against accidents, at a
rate of premium which is, in practice, uniform for all the
firms in the trade, is becoming almost as much a matter of
course as insurance against fire. Thus, even where the work-
men retain all their legal rights, the employer has usually no
more pecuniary interest in preventing accidents than he has
where they have been compelled to contract out of the Act.
" Contracting out," with its accompanying contribution to an
employer's benefit society, is, in fact, itself only a minor form
of insurance.

Insurance stands, therefore, in the way of the Trade
Union plan of preventing accidents by making them costly.
In the case of ships at sea, this fact has occasionally led
philanthropists to suggest that insurance should be pro-
hibited. But insurance is merely a private bargain, often
indeed only a co-operative arrangement between friends ;
and no such prohibition could possibly be enforced. Be-
sides, insurance is itself only a device for spreading an
occasional lump sum payment equally over a number of
years : so that the largest establishments prefer to be their
own insurers. Here the setting aside of a few hundred
pounds a year to form a fund out of which to pay compen-
sation for occasional workmen's accidents is a flea-bite
compared with the cost and trouble of adopting the elab-
orate precautions that might totally prevent their occurrence.
This brings us to the economic centre of the whole argu-
ment. What has been discovered is, that in the majority of
industries it costs less, whether in the form of an annual

out, the practice being unknown in Northumberland, Durham, Yorkshire, the
Midlands, and Scotland. Of railway companies, only the London and North-
Western (compulsorily), and the London, Brighton, and South Coast (optionally),
employ this expedient. In other industries we know only very few cases— such
as Messrs. Chance's great glass works, and Mr. Assheton Smith's Dinorwic slate
quarries — where the men contract out.

376

Trade Union Function

premium or in that of an occasional lump sum out of profits,
to compensate for accidents than to prevent them.1

Considered as a method of preventing industrial accidents,
the whole system of employers' liability is an anachronism.
When Parliament became convinced that no coal mine could
be safely worked without a second shaft, it did not seek to
mend matters by conceding to the miners a right of recover-
ing compensation from the mine-owner who worked without
such a shaft. What happened was that all mine-owners
were peremptorily ordered to have a second shaft, under
penalty of heavy fines for each day's neglect to comply with
the law. When public opinion demanded that the operatives
in a crowded factory should not be exposed to the risk of
being burnt to death, the House of Commons never thought
of removing this risk by any process of compensation ; it
commanded every mill-owner to provide proper fire-escapes,
or be punished by the police magistrate. This is the
method of our factory, mines, railways, and merchant ship-
ping Acts, and all our public health legislation. " Imagine,
for the sake of illustration," wrote Jevons in 1887, "that
there is in some factory a piece of revolving machinery
which is likely to crush to death any person carelessly
approaching it. Here is a palpable evil which it would be

1 Thus, to take only one industry, there can be little doubt that the large
number of accidents to railway servants (on an average, over forty every day,
a quarter of which are connected with moving vehicles) could, as regards
shunters, be at once diminished by the universal adoption of such appliances
as automatic couplings ; and that in particular, the almost daily sacrifice of
platelayers could be avoided by the rigging-up of temporary signals. But to
adopt such precautions throughout the extensive English railway system would
be extremely expensive, and possibly irksome.

The trifling amount of the premium that suffices to meet all compensation and
costs under the Act of 1880 is, in this connection, very significant. The Iron
Trades Employers' Association covers the liability of firms employing 28,000 men
in engineering and shipbuilding by a premium varying from fifteen to twenty-
seven pence per £100 paid in wages. In the building trade it is four shillings
per ^100. In Northumberland and Durham the coalowners have a mutual insur-
ance association, to which they pay annually a sum sufficient to meet all damages
and costs which any of their members have to pay under the Act of 1 880. Their
total payments during five years were only ^400 a year, a sum which would not
have gone far in providing any safeguards in all their collieries. See Evidence
before Select Committee on Employers' Liability, 1887 (H- C. No. 285).

Sanitation and Safety 377

unquestionably well to avert by some means or other. But
by what means ? " And he concluded that there was one
" mode of solving the question, which is as simple as it is
effective. The law may command that dangerous machinery
shall be fenced ; and the executive government may appoint
inspectors to go round and prosecute such owners as disobey
the law." 1

This sounds simple ; but it involves two troublesome
preliminaries. First, an elaborate technical investigation to
ascertain exactly what practical precautions should be
adopted ; and, second, to induce a capitalist Parliament to
enforce them against negligent employers. In 1872 the
latter condition was so hopeless that the Trade Union
leaders of that day could see nothing for it but to fall back
on the indirect method of making accidents costly to the
employer. But public opinion has made a prodigious stride
during the last twenty years. Parliament no longer refuses
to regulate, in minute detail, the processes of particular
industries. Though both the scope and the administration
of our industrial legislation still leave much to be desired,
it now takes only a few years' agitation for a group of
philanthropists or a well -organised Trade Union to get
embodied, either in an Act of Parliament or in a " special
rule " of the Home Secretary, any well-considered regulation
for promoting health or safety which has been approved
by the scientific experts. Meanwhile, in one industry after
another, the inspection necessary for the enforcement of the
law is steadily becoming a reality. By the Coal Mines
Regulation Act of 1887 the miners in any pit are enabled
to appoint two inspectors of their own, who are empowered
to inspect, once a month, every part of the workings, and
formally to record their report upon them. In 1858 there
were only eleven Government inspectors of mines, all told.
By 1896 this number had been increased to thirty-nine
(including assistant inspectors), and the service made much

1 The State in Relation to Labour, by W. S. Jevons (London, 1887), pp.
1-4.

378 Trade Union Function

more efficient. In the ten years 1884-1893 over four
thousand railway workers lost their lives by accidents with-
out the Board of Trade troubling even to inquire into more
than a dozen of the cases ; now, with the appointment of two
railway workers as assistant inspectors, about half the fatal
accidents that take place are made the subject of elaborate
official investigation, with a view of suggesting precautions
to prevent their recurrence.1 In short, the protection of
the worker against industrial accidents has now become part
of the acknowledged work of Government. An avoidable
casualty in a factory or a mine is no longer regarded merely
as an injury to the individual, to be atoned for by the pay-
ment of money compensation : under modern legislation it is
an offence against the community punishable by the magistrate.
From this public obligation to provide for health and safety
there can obviously be no "contracting out." Nor is it
possible for the employer to evade his liability by any
payment to an insurance company. The inspector and the
magistrate are empowered to see, not only that the fine is
paid, but also that the law is complied with. The idea of
relying for the protection of life and health upon the chance
activity of interested plaintiffs in search of personal compen-
sation, seems, to the modern jurist, archaic. Like murder,
theft, and embezzlement, the unnecessary risking of the
workers' lives has passed from the domain of civil to that of
criminal law.

Let us now leave the arguments used in support of
employers' liability by the Trade Union officials, and con-
sider why it secures the suffrages of the rank and file.
What the individual workman sees in the proposal is, not
so much a vague chance of lessening the risk of accidents,
as the certainty of a lump sum down when one occurs, to
enable him or his widow to set up a little shop. To the
miner or the railway servant it seems an intolerable hardship
that his family should be reduced to beggary through no

1 Report of General Secretary to Annual General Meeting of the Gtneral
Railway Workers' Union (London, 1897), pp. 12- 1 7.

Sanitation and Safety 379

fault of his own. What he wants is, not to find out whose
fault the accident is — as likely as not it is nobody's fault —
but to be compensated for his misfortune. That is also the
concern of the community, which has an admitted interest in
fulfilling for him that " established expectation " upon which
foresight and deHberateness in life depend. Here all inquiries
as to whether the accident is caused by the personal negligence
of the manager or the carelessness of a fellow-workman, or
whether it is the result of a fog or an inexplicable explosion,
are quite beside the question. Whether from the standpoint
of the community or from that of the injured workman, the
notion of making compensation in any way dependent on
such considerations is pure inconsequence. Accordingly,
wherever the community itself undertakes public services, it
is every day compensating more equitably those who suffer
bodily injury in the performance of their duties. In the
army and navy, the Civil Service, and the police, in the Fire
Brigade, and other branches of municipal administration,
though the treatment of weekly wage-earners is still far from
being as favorable as that of salaried officers, we see con-
stantly a fuller acceptance and more generous interpretation
of their right to compensation. Private individuals and
corporations sometimes show a sense of the same responsi-
bility. In many particular instances large industrial under-
takings will give a " light job," or even a pension, to a clerk
or workman disabled in their service. Whenever a sensa-
tional accident occurs at sea or in the mine, subscriptions
pour in to save the sufferers or their widows and orphans
from the workhouse. In short, in all those cases in which
public opinion can now be directly appealed to, it is found
to be largely in agreement with the workman that it is
intolerable for his livelihood to be cut short through no
shortcoming or fault in his own character or conduct.

We have said above, parenthetically, that an accident is
as likely as not to be nobody's fault. It is necessary to
emphasise this, because most accidents are, to use the
traditional phrase of the bill of lading, " the act of God."

380 Trade Union Function

In the great majority of industrial casualties — probably in
three cases out of four — it is impossible to prove that the
calamity has been due to neglect on any one's part. A flash
of lightning or a storm at sea, a flood or a tornado, irre-
sponsibly claim their victims. The greatest possible care in
buying materials or plant will leave undiscovered hidden
flaws which one day result in a calamity. In other cases,
the accident itself destroys all trace of its own cause. In
many, perhaps in most, of the casualties of the ocean or the
mine, the shunting yard or the mill, the difficulties in the
way of bringing home actual negligence to any particular
person are insuperable.1

Here, then, we discover a fundamental objection to the
doctrine of employers' liability — its irrelevance to the issue
between the community and the injured workman, and its
practical inapplicability, even as an arbitrary makeshift, to
most of the cases it is aimed at. Actual experience indi-
cates that it neither prevents accidents, nor insures their
victims. And it has the further drawback that to compel
the workman to extract his compensation from the employer
is inevitably to plunge him into litigation. Even where
compensation can now be recovered the law costs are a
serious evil. Moreover, unless the sufferer happens to
belong to a strong and wealthy Trade Union, which takes
his case up, it is usually quite impossible for him to fight
it at all, from lack of both knowledge and funds ; so that he
is practically driven to accept any compromise offered by the
employer. The Home Office itself admits the failure. In

1 The proportion of industrial accidents for which actual or constructive
negligence by the employer can be shown has been variously estimated at from
one-tenth to one-half of the whole. The Employers' Liability Assurance Cor-
poration, which insures employers against their liability under the Act of 1880,
found that, in this class of policies, claims were made on them for only 24 per
cent of the accidents reported ; and estimated that, in another class of policies,
where all accidents whatsoever were insured against, only 3026 out of 26,087
admitted claims (or less than one-eighth) represented accidents for which the
employer might have been held legally liable. See evidence before Select Com-
mittee on Employers' Liability, 1887 (H. C. No. 285), pp. 4165-4308, and
Appendices.

Sanitation and Safety 381

its official memorandum on the state of the law it goes so
far as to say, " the truth is that to the workman litigation
under the Act of 1880 has more than its usual terrors. It
is not merely that litigation is expensive, and that he is a
poor man and his employer comparatively a rich one : it
is that when a workman goes to law with his employer, he,
as it were, declares war against the person on whom his
future probably depends ; he seeks to compel him by legal
force to pay money ; and his only mode of doing so is the
odious one of proving that his employer or his agents — his
own fellow -work men — have been guilty of negligence."
Finally, such migratory workers as seamen find legal
remedies against their employers absolutely illusory, owing
to the impossibility of collecting and keeping together their
witnesses, if these are fellow-seamen, during the law's delays.

Let us now examine the question from the employer's
point of view. Why should he bear the cost of an accident
which is the " act of God," merely because it happens to
have occurred on his premises, especially when the same
unavoidable calamity which has injured his employees may
have crippled, or even ruined, his own business ? And even
in the case of accidents due to his own neglect, how can any
proportion be depended on between the degree of his culp-
ability and the penalty of adequately providing for all the
sufferers ? One accident may involve the payment of a five-
pound note to a man who has been laid up for a week with
a scalded hand : an exactly similar accident, caused in an
exactly similar way, may kill or disable for life a score of
people. The most criminal negligence may lead only to a
breakdown which hurts nobody, whilst a very venial over-
sight may make an employer liable to fabulous compensa-
tion. Thus there is injustice in making him liable for
avoidable accidents, and no justice at all — no sense, in fact
— in making him liable for unavoidable ones. Is it to be
wondered at that employers resolutely resist Liability Bills
in Parliament without regard to party exigencies ?

We now see why the provisions of the Employers'

382 Trade Union Function

Liability Act of 1880, like those of the score of Bills which
have since been introduced for its amendment, are inadequate
and even illusory. It was, no doubt, pleasant to get, under
the Act, some pecuniary compensation for a comparatively
small class of cases, which would otherwise have remained
unprovided for. It would no doubt have been a boon to a
larger number of sufferers if the Bill of 1893-94 had been
passed. But such measures, however useful they may be to
particular sections of wage-earners, deal only with a small
proportion of the cases of hardship, and do not discriminate
in their favor on any logical or permanently tenable ground.
Abandoning, then, the idea that systematic provision for
the sufferers from industrial accidents can be got out of
any possible penalties for negligence, however widely the
lawyers may stretch the term, what shall we say to the
suggestion, as yet scarcely whispered by Trade Unionists,
that the law should be so extended as to make provision for
sufferers from all industrial accidents, whether due to the
proved negligence of any superior or not. Both in Germany
and Austria this idea has been already embodied in elaborate
schemes of universal provision for accidents, which rank
among the most remarkable of social experiments. In
England the proposal has appeared as a natural outcome of
the Trade Union idea of maintaining the continuity of the
worker's livelihood. At the Trade Union Congress of 1877,
universal provision for all industrial accidents, the funds to
be provided by a tax on commodities, was suggested by a
London compositor, as an alternative to the usual employers'
liability resolution. It was vehemently denounced by
Thomas Halliday, a leader of the coalminers, who said
" they wanted no tax upon coal. What they wanted was
that their lives and their bodies should be preserved. The
best way to secure this was to make the employers re-
sponsible,, and make them pay the cost. What they
wanted was not money, but their lives and limbs preserved."
This view was endorsed by Alexander Macdonald and
accepted by the Congress amid loud cheers. Thus, the

Sanitation and Safety 383

rooted belief in employers' liability as a means of preventing
accidents, coupled, perhaps, with the fear of a deduction from
wages for compulsory insurance, brushed aside a proposal
which deserved more careful consideration. By it we are,
indeed, taken outside the domain of anything that can be
called employers' liability, however much the phrase may
be strained. This involves a reconsideration of the incidence
of the burden. To compel employers to incur the liability
implied by adequate compensation for all accidents what-
soever, would, whether done directly or by insurance, involve
a serious burden upon every enterprise, which would certainly
be shifted, though not without friction and expense, on to
the customers, in the form of higher prices. What is more,
it would fall unequally upon different industries according to
their risk, and would thus be transferred unequally to different
classes of consumers, not at all in proportion to their ability
to bear this new burden, but partly at haphazard, partly in
proportion to their actual consumption. At every " reper-
cussion " of the tax, there would be an additional " loading,"
so that the ultimate charge on the consumer would, as in
the case of excise duties on raw materials, far exceed the
original sum. As soon as public opinion is prepared to
decide that all accidents ought to be compensated for, it
will be at once easier, fairer, and more economical to provide
the necessary annual sum from public funds, and to raise a
corresponding revenue in accordance with the recognised
canons of taxation.

Upon the question likely to interest politicians — how
soon public opinion will arrive at such a point — all that can
be said is that the electors are rapidly becoming aware that
accidents are an inevitable part of the cost of modern
industry ; indeed, statistically considered, they are not
accidents at all, but certainties. And, as we have seen, the
public conscience, which has never been perfectly easy on
the subject — how could it be in a great mining, manufac-
turing, and seafaring community like ours ? — grows per-
ceptibly more sensitive from decade to decade. The question

384 Trade Union Function

cannot be let alone : some solution must be found. At
present what stands most conspicuously in the way of
public provision for all sufferers from accidents, coupled
with factory legislation for their prevention, and criminal
prosecutions for the punishment of negligence, is the
belief in Employers' Liability. And Employers' Liability,
as we have seen, breaks down at every point. The con-
clusion is obvious.

It would be an incidental, but very advantageous, result
of any scheme of public provision that every accident would
have its inquest. There would be many gains in extending
the present system of public inquiry into casualties. Such
an inquiry is now held, (a) by the coroner, if death .has
resulted, or (in the City of London) if there has been a fire ;
(b) by an officer of the Board of Trade, in cases where a
ship has been wrecked or a railway accident involving
injury to passengers has occurred ; and (c) by an officer of
the Home Office in mining accidents. Industrial accidents
of every kind must at least be notified to a public office.
If a public " inquest " were held, by a duly qualified public
officer (with or without a jury), whenever an accident caused
loss of life or limb, or other serious bodily harm, to a
wage-earner in the course of his employment, the investi-
gation and publicity would probably do much to secure
compliance with the Factory or Mines Regulation Acts,
and so diminish the number of accidents. If any system
of public provision for the sufferers were established, such
an inquest would serve a useful purpose in determining
whether a casualty had been caused by somebody's negli-
gence or by carelessness on the part of the sufferer himself,
or whether it was, in the strict sense, an accident. Where
the casualty had arisen from the employer's failure to
comply with the law, or from any other gross negligence, a
criminal prosecution would naturally follow, any fine im-
posed thus indirectly reimbursing the State for the expense
caused. When the sufferer himself had, by carelessness,
brought about his own calamity, his compensation could be

Sanitation and Safety 385

wholly or in part withheld, though if death had ensued
there would be no public advantage in making his widow
and orphans go short of necessary maintenance. The
compensation itself should in all cases be payable by the
Government out of public funds. Whether there is any
practical advantage in the Government, as in Germany
and Austria, then levying the amount on corporations of
employers (and through them upon the consumers and wage-
earners), instead of directly upon the taxpayers as such,
seems to us extremely doubtful. Such a system of finance
contravenes, like an excise duty on raw materials, all
the orthodox canons of taxation. It is perhaps more to
the point to say that any attempt to levy an insurance
premium upon the workman's weekly wage would, in
this country, encounter the unrelenting opposition of the
whole Trade Union and friendly society world.1

If now we look back on the whole Trade Union argu-
ment from the workman's point of view, it is easy, we think,
to see running through it one simple idea. Whether we
study the regulations imposed by the Collective Bargaining
of the iron and building trades, or the elaborate technical
provisions of the Factory, Mines, and Merchant Shipping
Acts ; whether we disentangle the complicated issues of
" common employment " or those of " contracting out," we
always strike the same root principle, a resolute protest by
the manual worker against being required to sell his life or
health, in a3ctftioTr-to his labor. The individual wage-earner
knows that he may always be bribed or terrorised into
accepting conditions of employment injurious to health or
dangerous to life or limb. He therefore seeks, through his
Trade Union, to prohibit Individual Bargaining on these
points, and to enforce, in all establishments, those conditions
of employment which experience has shown to be necessary
for sanitation and safety. It is in vain that the economists

1 See, on this point, the significant Minority Report by Mr. Henry Broadhurst,
M.P., in the Report of the Royal Commission on the Aged Poor, 1893-95, C.
7684, p. xcviii.

VOL. I 2 C

386 Trade Union Function

have assured him that extra risks bring higher wages ; or
the employers offered him liberal inducements in return
for " contracting out " of protective legislation. What the
Trade Unionist has, for a whole generation, uniformly
answered, is that he will not " coin his blood for drachmas."
Hence his persistent hankering after Common Rules, which
shall definitely prescribe how much cubic space shall be
allowed, what safeguards against accidents shall be adopted,
and what provisions shall be made for protection against
disease and discomfort. What is remarkable is that, in
this resolute determination to lift out of the sphere of
"personal freedom" the option to suffer disease, maiming,
or death, public opinion has emphatically endorsed the
Trade Union view. It is no longer permitted to the sailor
to decide whether he will, for extra wages, accept the risk
of going to sea in an overloaded ship, or to the cotton
operative whether, in order to get employment at all, he will
put up with a weaving-shed dripping with steam. We do
not now leave it to the white lead worker or the enameller to
bargain with their employers as to the extent to which they
will risk their health by dispensing with costly precautions ;
or allow the coalminer the option of earning high wages
by foregoing the elaborate ventilation of an exceptionally
perilous pit. And it is not only in the ever -lengthening
Factory, Mines, Railways, and Merchant Shipping Acts that
this conversion of the public is apparent. The Employers'
Liability Act of 1880 was itself a proof that Parliament
overrode the lawyers' contention that the workmen must im-
plicitly accept, as part of the wage contract, whatever risk to
life or health was incidental to their industry. When, in
order to evade this law, employers invented the device of
" contracting out," a Liberal House of Commons decided
actually to prohibit the risk of accident being made a matter
of contract at all, whilst even the Conservative House of
Lords resolved that under no circumstances could it be left
to Individual Bargaining. Finally, the slackness which has
now come over the whole controversy of Employers'

Sanitation and Safety 387

Liability is, we think, to be attributed largely to a half-
conscious appreciation by the public that the mere making
of accidents costly — a liability which can always be insured
against — is not the way to prevent them, and that to foist
an illusory liability on the employer for constructive negli-
gence is not the way to provide for the sufferers. As far as
the United Kingdom is concerned, the practical conclusion is
to prescribe, by definite technical regulations, the precautions
against accident and disease which experience and science
prove to be necessary ; to punish any breach of these
regulations whether any accident has happened or not ; to
hold a public inquiry into every serious case of accident,
and (as part of the punishment) make the employer pay a
forfeit to the State according to the degree of his guilt,
whenever the accident has resulted from any breach of the
rules or other clear negligence ; and to provide from public
funds for the injured workman and his family, however the
accident has happened, according to the extent of their
needs.

The foregoing analysis of the Trade Union controversy
upon Employers' Liability was written in August 1896, and
published in January iSp?.1 Since that date the whole
situation has been changed by the introduction and passage
into law of Mr. Chamberlain's revolutionary " Workmen's
Compensation Bill." This measure is admittedly no final
solution of the problem, and we prefer, therefore, to leave
intact our detailed examination of the position in which the
controversy stood in 1896, rather than attempt a hasty
reconstruction on the basis of an Act as yet untested by
experience.

The measure which the Conservative Government of
1897 has passed as an alternative to the Liberal Govern-

1 Progressive Review.

388 Trade Union Function

ment's proposal of 1893-94, seems, in an almost dramatic
manner, to give the go-by to all the old controversies.1
Instead of quibbling over the degree to which the employer's
liability for negligence can be stretched, the new law makes
him, in most of the great industries of the country, individ-
ually liable to compensate his workmen for all accidents
suffered by them in the course of their employment, whether
caused by negligence or not. Thus, without expressly
abolishing the doctrine of " common employment," the law,
by securing a certain limited compensation for every acci-
dent whatsoever, now puts the workman in an altogether
different position from the injured stranger, who can claim
only in case of the employer's real or constructive negligence.
And although "contracting out" is nominally permitted,
provided that the scheme is certified by the Chief Registrar
of Friendly Societies as being not less favorable to the
workman than his position under the Act, so wide is now
the scope of the law and so stringently is this exception
guarded, that most of its attractiveness to the employer will
have disappeared. The Trade Unionists were, accordingly,
well advised in accepting Mr. Chamberlain's bill, notwith-
standing its limitations and defects. The right to compen-
sation for all accidents, now granted to about a third of the
manual workers, cannot permanently be withheld from the
other two-thirds, and the numerous flaws that will certainly
manifest themselves in the working of so novel and so
far-reaching a statute, may be confidently left to the
amending bills to which one Government after another will
find itself committed.

The particular employers upon whom the new law im-
poses a large and indefinite pecuniary liability have, we
think, a real grievance. Certain industries have been thus
burdened, whilst others, no less liable to accidents,2 have

1 For a bitter attack on this measure from the Conservative employer's point
of view, see J. Buckingham Pope's Conservatives or Socialists (London, 1897).

2 Besides all the processes of agriculture, the building or repairing of houses
less than 30 feet high, and all workshop industries, the Act excludes seamen and

Sanitation and Safety 389

been left free. Even within the bounds of a single trade,
establishments using one process are made liable to pay
compensation for casualties which no care or precaution
could prevent, whilst others, using a different process, escape
any but the illusory liability of the old law. The novel
penalty for accidents to which some employers are thus
subjected bears no relation to the degree of their guilt in
trying to prevent them ; a casualty due exclusively to the
" act of God " will cost them no less than one due to their
own personal negligence. In practice the liability to com-
pensation is simply insured against, and employers within
the scope of the new Act find themselves saddled with an
extra insurance premium, constituting an addition to the
cost of production from which other capitalists are exempt.

The two- thirds of the manual workers whom the Act
now excludes are suffering from an injustice which can-
not easily be redressed on the lines of the present law.
It may be practicable to put a liability to pay com-
pensation for all accidents upon a railway company, a
coalowner, or the registered occupier of a steam factory.
Even in these cases, if the employer neglects to insure,
the sufferers in an extensive accident may sometimes find
their claims baulked by the firm's bankruptcy. But a large
proportion of the excluded workmen are employed by small
masters, themselves often little removed from the status of
wage-earners, or by migratory contractors of one kind or
another, only just living from hand to mouth. Insurance in
such cases would be unusual, if not even impossible. Any
serious accident in their little industry would, on the one
hand, reduce them to bankruptcy, and, on the other, deprive
the sufferers of any real chance of extracting compensation
from them. Yet the two-thirds of the wage-earners thus
employed cannot permanently be denied the compensation
for all accidents now granted to the other third. If it is
socially expedient to compensate the workers in the great

fishermen ; carmen and drovers and others dealing with horses and cattle ; and
such riverside occupations as boatmen and lightermen.

390 Trade Union Function

industries for all accidents, there is neither equity nor good
sense in withholding a like compensation from those who
suffer accidents in other trades.

In our opinion, there must inevitably be a development,
either towards the formation of compulsory trade groups,
collectively responsible for the accidents occurring in the
establishments of their members, or else towards simple State
compensation. The former plan, adopted in Germany and
Austria, has the economic advantage of making each in-
dustry self-supporting, and thus avoiding the disastrous con-
sequences of the growth of " parasitic trades," on which
we dwell in the subsequent chapter on " The Economic
Characteristics of Trade Unionism." It would, moreover,
emphasise the Trade Unionist principle that an industry
should be regulated not by the will of individual employers,
but by its own Common Rules. Organisation among em-
ployers, and therefore Collective Bargaining, would be greatly
promoted, with the result that a great impulse would prob-
ably be given to Trade Unionism itself. But the necessary
regimentation of employers and their control by rigid rules
would be extremely distasteful to English capitalists, whilst
there would be real difficulty in adapting any such organisa-
tion to the remarkable variety, complexity, and mobility of
English industry. Simple State compensation avoids all
these difficulties, and requires no more regimentation or regis-
tration than is already submitted to by every mine or factory
owner. If it is desired, as the Marquis of Salisbury declared in
the House of Lords in support of Mr. Chamberlain's bill, to
create a great life-saving machine, State compensation affords
the most effective means to this end. The fact that the Treasury
paid for every casualty would change the official bias about
dangerous trades, and we should promptly have the Govern-
ment setting its scientific advisers and factory inspectors to
work to devise new means of preventing accidents, to be
enforced by the Factories, Mines, Railways, and Merchant
Shipping Acts. The public inquests into all serious cases
would themselves do much to make the capitalists take

Sanitation and Safety 39 1

every possible precaution, and the Factory Inspector's
criminal prosecution of careless employers, which could not
be " insured against " or avoided by bankruptcy, would do
the rest. Nor would the employers object. Now that Mr.
Chamberlain has, in most of our staple trades, made them
individually liable for all accidents, a Government which
proposed, as the only practicable way of extending compen-
sation to the other industries, to place the liability directly on
the State, and to spread its cost impartially over the whole
body of income-tax payers (requiring, perhaps, an additional
threepence in the pound), might count on the powerful sup-
port of the great capitalists in the coal, iron, and railway
industries, who would find themselves relieved of the special
and exceptional burden now cast upon them.

CHAPTER VIII

NEW PROCESSES AND MACHINERY

A GENERATION ago it was assumed, as a matter of course,
by almost every educated person, that it was a cardinal tenet
of Trade Unionism to oppose machinery and the introduc-
tion of improved processes of manufacture. " Trade Unions,"
said a well-known critic of the workmen in 1860, "have
ever naturally opposed the introduction of machinery, such
introduction tending apparently to reduce the amount of
manual labor needed, and thus pressing on the majority.
No Trade Union ever encouraged invention."1 In support
of this opinion might have been quoted, for instance, the
editor of the Potters' Examiner, an influential leader of the
Potters' Trade Unions, who in I 844 could still confidently
appeal to experience in ascribing all the evils of the factory
operatives to this one cause. " Machinery," he wrote, " has
done the work. Machinery has left them in rags and with-
out any wages at all. Machinery has crowded them in
cellars, has immured them in prisons worse than Parisian
bastilles, has forced them from their country to seek in other
lands the bread denied to them here. I look upon all
improvements which tend to lessen the demand for human
labor as the deadliest curse that could possibly fall on the
heads of our working classes, and I hold it to be the duty of

1 "Trades Unions and their Tendencies," by Edmund Potter, F.R.S., in the
Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science
(London, 1860), p. 761.

New Processes and Machinery 393

every working potter — the highest duty — to obstruct by all
legal means the introduction of the scourge into any branch
of his trade."

Nowadays we hear no such complaints. When in 1892
Professor Marshall published a careful criticism of Trade
Union policy and its results, he deliberately refrained from
taking into account or even mentioning, the traditional
hostility of Trade Unions to inventions or machinery.1 And
when in 1894, the Royal Commission on Labor reported
the result of its three years' elaborate and costly inquiry into
the claims and proceedings of the workmen's organisations,
it found no reason to repair this significant omission. The
Commissioners heard the complaints of employers in every
trade, and certainly exhibited no desire to gloss over the faults
of the workmen. But if we may trust the summary of evi-
dence embodied in the lengthy Majority Report, resistance to
machinery no longer forms part of the procedure of British
Trade Unionism. Although the Commissioners analysed the
" rules and regulations " of hundreds of separate Trade
Unions, in none of them did it discover any trace of antag-
onism to invention or improvement.2

The fact is that Trade Unionism on this subject has
changed its attitude. It is quite true that during the first
half of the century the Trade Unionist view was that so
forcibly expressed in the Potters' Examiner. But in 1859
it was noticed by a contemporary scientific observer that
neither the Trade Unions in general, nor even those in the
same industry, showed any real sympathy with the
Northamptonshire bootmakers' strike against the sewing-
machine, " deeming it neither desirable nor practical to resist
the extension of mechanical improvements, although very
sensible of the inconvenience and suffering that are sometimes
caused by a rapid change in the nature and extent of the

1 Elements of the Economics of Industry (London, 1892), Book VI. ch. xiii.
" Trade Unions."

2 See, in particular, the voluminous analysis of Rules of Associations of
Employers and of Employed, C. 6795, PP- xu- 5X3' 1892.

394 Trade Union Function

employment afforded in any particular trade."1 In 1862 the
Liverpool Coopers, who had formally boycotted machinery in
1853, resolved " that we permit any member of this society
to go to work at the steam cooperage." 2 During this decade
the Monthly Circular of the Friendly Society of Ironmoulders
contains numerous earnest exhortations by the Executive
Committee to the members not to resist " the iron man," the
new machine for iron moulding. " It may go against the
grain," they say in December 1864, " for us to fraternise with
what we consider innovations, but depend upon it, it will
be our best policy to lay hold of these improvements and
make them subservient to our best interests."3 The United
Society of Brushmakers, which had in 1863 and 1867 sup-
ported its members in refusing to bore work by steam
machinery, and had formally declared that they must " on no
account set work bored by steam by strangers," * revised its
rules in 1 868, and decided " that should any of our employers
wish to introduce steam power for boring, no opposition shall
be offered by any of our divisions, but each division shall have
the discretionary power of deciding the advantage derived
from its use." 5 These conversions gain in emphasis and
definiteness from decade to decade, until, at the present day,
no declaration against innovations or improvements would
receive support from the Trade Union Congress or any

1 " Account of the Strike of the Northamptonshire Boot and Shoe-makers in
1857, 1858, 1859," by John Ball, F.R.S., Irish Poor Law Commissioner and
(1855-1858) Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies; better known as the
founder of the Alpine Club. Printed in the Report of Social Science Association
on Trade Societies and Strikes, 1860, p. 6. The same volume refers (p. 149) to
the fact that the organ of the Chainmakers' union " did not hesitate to condemn
as foolish the strike of the shoemakers in the Midland Counties against the intro-
duction of machinery."

2 MS. Minutes of the Liverpool Coopers' Friendly Society, July 1853 and
September 1862.

3 Friendly Society of Ironmoulders, Monthly Circular, December 1864.

4 Annual Report of the United Society of Brushmakers for 1863. See also
Report for 1867.

6 Rules of the United Society of Brushmakers, edition of 1869. Such few
disputes as have since occurred in this society have arisen (like that at Norwich
in 1892) over the exact amount of the piecework rate to be paid on machine
work.

New Processes and Machinery 395

similar gathering.1 Among all the thousand-and-one rules
of existing Trade Unions we have discovered only a single
survival of the old irreconcilable prohibition, and that in
a tiny local industry, which is rapidly fading away. The
Operative Pearl Button and Stud Workers' Protection
Society, established at Birmingham in 1843, and numbering
about 500 members, enjoys the distinction of being, so far as
we are aware, the only British Trade Union which still pro-
hibits working by machinery. Its latest " Rules and Regula-
tions " declare " that the system of centering by the engine
be annihilated in toto, and any member countenancing the
system direct or indirect shall be subject to a fine of two
pounds. Any member of the society working at the trade
by means of mill-power either direct or indirect, shall be
subject to a fine of five pounds." 2

But every newspaper reader knows that the introduction
of machinery still causes disputes and strikes ; and no doubt
many excellent citizens still pass by the reports of such dis-
putes as records of the old vain struggle of the handworker
against the advance of industrial civilisation. An examina-
tion of the reports would, however, show that the dispute
now arises, not on the question whether machinery should
be introduced, but about the conditions of its introduction.
The change has even gone so far that there are now, as we
shall show, instances of trouble being caused by Trade Unions

1 The latest case in which a union has ordered a strike simply against the
introduction of machinery into a hand industry is, so far as we know, that of the
Liverpool Packing Case Makers' Society in 1886. The strike failed, and the
men have since worked amicably with the machine, and have now become com-
pletely reconciled to it on finding, as their secretary informed us, that it had
largely increased the trade.

2 Rules and Regulations to be observed by the members of the Pearl Btitton and
Stud Worker? Protection Society, held at the Baptist Chapel, Guildford Street,
Birmingham (Birmingham, 1887), Rule 26, p. 14.

We believe that two or three of the old-fashioned trade clubs in branches of
the Sheffield Cutlery trades, such, for instance, as the File Forgers and the Table-
blade Forgers, still refuse to recognise the new machines which are largely at
work in their trades, and which are therefore operated by a new class of workmen.
On the other hand, other local unions such as the File cutters, Sawsmiths, and
the Pen and Pocket Blade Forgers, have made no objection to the machines, and
liave encouraged their members to take to them.

396 Trade Union Function

putting pressure on old-fashioned employers to compel them
to adopt the newest inventions. The typical dispute to-day
is a dispute as to terms. The adoption of a new machine,
or the introduction of a new process, in superseding an old
method of production, usually upsets the rates of wages based
on the older method, and renders necessary a fresh scale of
payment. If wages are reckoned by the piece, the employers
will seek to reduce the rate per piece ; if by time, the workers
will claim a rise for the increased intensity and strain of the
newer and swifter process. In either case the readjustment
will involve more or less higgling, in which the points at issue
are seldom confined merely to the amount of remuneration.
The degree of difficulty in any such readjustment will
depend on the good sense of the parties to the negotiations ;
and in this as in other matters good sense has to be acquired
by experience. Some industries, cotton -spinning for ex-
ample, have had a century of experience of readjustments
of this kind, which have accordingly become a matter of
routine. But in trades in which the use of machinery,
and even the factory system itself, are still comparatively
new developments, the readjustments are seldom arrived at
without a struggle.

As a typical instance of a trade in this stage, take the
modern factory industry of boot and shoe manufacture, which
is notorious for incessant disputes about the introduction of
machinery. In this trade the compact little union of handi-
craftsmen, working for rich customers, has long since been
outstripped by its offshoot, the National Union of Boot and
Shoe Operatives, formed exclusively of factory workers, and
numbering, at the end of 1896, 37,000 members. We have
here an industry which is being incessantly revolutionised
by an almost perpetual stream of new inventions and new
applications of the old machines. The workmen are noted
for their turbulence, want of discipline, and lack of education.
The employers, themselves new capitalists without traditions,
exposed to keen rivalry from foreign competitors, are eager
to take the utmost advantage of every chance. The disputes

New Processes and Machinery 397

are endless, and the prolonged conference proceedings, the
elaborate arguments before the arbitrators, and the complicated
agreements with the employers are all printed in full, afford-
ing a complete picture of the attitudes taken up by the
masters and the men.

The employers' indictment of the operatives has been

graphically summed up by their principal literary spokesman.

(< It is true," says the editor of the employers' journal, " that

objection does not take the form of rattening or direct refusal

to work with the machines ; experience has taught the union

a more efficacious way of marshalling the forces of opposition.

To say openly that labor-saving appliances were objected to

would be to estrange that public sympathy without which

Trade Unionism finds itself unable to live. So other methods

are adopted. The work done by the machines is belittled ;

it is urged that no saving of labor is effected by their use ;

the men working the machines exercise all their ingenuity

in making machine work as expensive as hand labor.

There exists among workmen what amounts to a tacit

understanding that only so much work shall be done within

a certain time, and, no matter what machines are introduced,

the men conspire to prevent any saving being effected by

their aid. It is of no use to mince words. The unions are

engaged in a gigantic conspiracy to hinder and retard the

development of labor-saving appliances in this country.

The action of their members in failing to exercise due

diligence in working new machines is equivalent to absolute

dishonesty. It is, indeed, positively painful to any one who

has been accustomed to see, for example, finishing machinery

running in American factories, to watch English operatives

using the same machines. In America the men work, they

run the machines to their utmost capacity, and vie with each

other in their endeavor to get through as much work as

possible. But in an English factory they seem to loaf away

their time in a manner which is perfectly exasperating. If

they run a machine for five minutes at full speed, they seem

to think it necessary to stop it and see that no breakage has

398 Trade Union Function

occurred. Then they walk about the shop, and borrow an
oil-can or a spanner, wherewith to do some totally unnecessary
thing. This occupies anywhere from five minutes to an hour,
and then the machine is run on again for a few minutes ;
and if the operator is questioned, he says, ' machines are no
good ; I could do the work quicker and better by hand.'
And so he could, for he takes care not to allow a machine to
beat a shopmate working by hand on the same job, and, in
short, does all he can to induce manufacturers to abandon
mechanical devices and go back to hand labor. The spirit
of comradeship is carried to a ridiculous extent, and no man
dare do the best he can, lest his fellow-workmen should be,
as he foolishly thinks, injured. ... It seems to be a settled
policy with the men, not to try to earn as much money as
possible per week, but as much as possible per job, in other
words, to keep the cost of production as high as possible." l

Assuming all this to be true in fact — and, so far, at any
rate as times of strained relations are concerned, there is no
reason to question its accuracy — let us supplement it by two
other facts which would hardly have been inferred from it.
First, that in the American boot factories which work at such
high pressure, the high pressure is invariably paid for by
piecework rates. Second, that in England it is the workmen
who demand that, in conjunction with the new machines they
should be allowed to work by the piece, as they have hither-
to been accustomed, and that it is the employers who have
resolutely insisted on taking the opportunity of changing to
fixed day wages.2 Here lies the clue to the whole difficulty.
We have already explained, in connection with the Cotton-
spinners, how piecework is the only possible protection of the
Standard Rate for men who are working machines of which

1 The Shoe and Leather Record, ipth February 1892.

2 Thus one of the so-called " Seven Commandments " — the ultimatum of the
employers against which the great strike of 1895 took place — was the following
"That the present is not an opportune time for the introduction of piecework in
connection with lasting and finishing machinery "(Labour Gazette^ November 1894).
The lasters and finishers have been accustomed to work by the piece ever since
the beginning of the factory boot industry.

New Processes and Machinery 399

the rate of speed is always being increased. On such machines
payment by the hour, day, or week involves the exacting
from the operative an ever-increasing task of work in return
for the old wages. In the case of the boot operatives the
question is complicated by the fact that the new machines
have introduced a new organisation of the factory, the work-
man steadily becoming less and less of an individual producer,
working at his own speed, and more and more a member of
a " team," or set of operatives each performing a small part
of the process, and thus obliged to keep up with each other.
This enforced " speeding up " would be all very well if the
old plan of paying by the piece were continued. But when
the " more efficient organisation of labor " is coupled with
the introduction of a fixed day wage, the workmen see in it
an attempt to lower the Standard Rate of remuneration for
effort, by getting more labor in return for the old payment.

This position the employers fail even to comprehend.
" I know," said the President of the Employers' Association
in 1 894, " that it will be said it is slavery, pace-making, and
driving, and that sort of thing. . . . But the manufacturers
contend that that is not so. For instance, when men are put
to work in a team, they are waited on hand and foot, and
they are never kept waiting for anything, whereas when they
have to ' shop ' their (own) work a waste of time is involved.
That time is saved under the team system." l It is part
of the brainworker's usual ignorance of the conditions of
manual labor that the leaders of the employers could naively
imagine that, to be " never kept waiting for anything," is an
advantage to the man paid a fixed daily wage. To the
workman it means being kept incessantly toiling at the very
top of his speed for the whole nine hours of the factory day.
When this high pressure is demanded for the old earnings,
it amounts to a clear attempt to lower the Standard Rate.
How this attitude strikes an employer in the same trade,

1 Report of the National Conference between employers and employed, 6th-8th
January 1894; reprinted in Monthly Report of the National Union Boot and
Shoe Operatives, January 1894.

400 Trade Union Function

conversant with American conditions, may be judged from
the following instructive letter written in reply to the editorial
first quoted. " Let us take a look into an English machinery-
equipped factory. What do we see there ? Precisely what
you state, only much worse. The workmen, or very often
boys, who work on weekly wages, try how little work they
can do and how badly they can do that little. They don't
seem to care a scrap so long as they get the time over,
and are glad when the time comes to clear out of the factory
and the day's monotony is over. They are continually medd-
ling with their machines and throwing them out of order.
Then the engineer has to be called in. The result is a loss
of time, a loss of work, and expense also. All this to my
mind arises from a mistaken policy which English manufacturers
adopt in employing so much boy labor and the weekly wages
system. If the piecework system were adopted, and only
expert men employed on the machines, better work would be
the result, at less cost, and the workman would earn higher
wages. Is not that the secret why an American manufacturer
can produce his goods at a lower labor cost than similar
goods can be produced in this country, while at the same time
the American operative is earning much higher wages than
his English brother?"1

It will not unnaturally be asked why the English em-
ployers should wantonly raise difficulties by choosing the
awkward moment of the introduction of new machinery, to
compel their workmen to abandon the piecework system of
remuneration, which has for several generations been custom-
ary, and to substitute for it a fixed daily wage. The manu-
facturers explain that, if piecework rates were conceded in
connection with the new machines, and if the scale were
calculated on the basis of the workmen's weekly earnings at
the old process, the men would very soon so increase their
skill and quickness as to earn £3 or £4 per week, instead of
the time rate of 26s. as at present. But this, as every cotton
manufacturer would recognise, is, economically speaking, no

1 Letter in Shoe and Leather Record, 25th February 1892.

Nezv Processes and Machinery 401

argument at all. The able secretary of the Boot and Shoe
Manufacturers' Association has repeatedly urged upon his
members that such a result would in no way raise the cost of
production per pair of boots, and, on the contrary, would
positively lower it, by enormously increasing the output per
machine. Unfortunately, such arguments are thrown away
on untrained employers, who even when they are contemplat-
ing the widest extension of their profits, can seldom view
with equanimity the prospect of paying their workmen any
larger amount per week than that to which they are
accustomed.1

The workmen in the factory boot trade, equally un-
trained in industrial policy, are no less unreasonable than
the employers, and on a cognate point. They, too, are so
scandalised at the prospect of an increased reward being
gained by any one else, that they propose unreasonable and
impossible courses in order to prevent it. When, in 1894,
the Leicester Branch of the National Union of Boot and
Shoe Operatives appointed a committee to draw up a
Piecework List for work done in conjunction with the new
machinery, these workmen na'fvely proceeded on the basis
of retaining the " Statement " of piecework rates under the
old process, merely deducting, for each article, a percentage
estimated to produce a saving to the employer exactly
equivalent to the interest he would pay on the cost of the
new machinery.2 Thus, whilst the terms proposed by the

1 An American observer notes the same feeling among German employers.
" In Berlin even, I found this narrow-minded begrudging of a working-man's higher
earnings. In piecework they reduce the rate of pay of the greater output which
brings higher earnings than the general rate. . . . The manufacturers returned to
the day rate. . . . because the masters found that the men made too much money
under the piecework system." — The Economy of High Wages, by J. Schoenhof
(New York, 1892), p. 400.

The same struggle took place between 1850 and 1860 on the introduction of
the factory system and steam power into the Coventry ribbon trade, the operatives
demanding piecework rates and the employers insisting on introducing fixed day
wages, " partly because the piecework system is a more troublesome one than that
of weekly wages, but chiefly because it would work a forfeiture to them of the
benefit from the increase of the productiveness of their machinery." — Social Science
Association, Report on Trade Societies and Strikes, p. 325.

2 Minutes (in MS.) of the "Piecework Committee," which sat from April to

VOL. I 2 D

402 Trade Union Function

employers would leave the workmen no incentive to use the
new machines, those proposed by the workmen would leave
the employers no incentive to introduce them.

The feeling of the workmen in this matter is a super-
stition from the era of individual production. The operative
bootmaker has inherited a rooted belief that the legitimate
reward of labor is the entire commodity produced, or its
price in the market. This idea was the economic backbone
of Owenite Socialism, with its projects of Associations of
Producers and Labor Exchanges.1 In the first number of
the Poor Man's Guardian, a widely-read journal of 1831, it
was expressed in the following verse : —

Wages should form the price of goods ;

Yes, wages should be all,
Then we who work to make the goods,

Should justly have them all ;
But if their price be made of rent,

Tithes, taxes, profits all,
Then we who work to make the goods,

Shall have, just none at all ! 2

When the operative bootmaker proceeds to draft a piece-
work list for the new machines, the rates that he proposes
really express in figures his economic assumption that " wages
should be the price of goods." This state of mind leads
him calmly to suggest, in effect, that he should receive the
entire net advantage of every new invention. The employer
puts in an equally untenable claim to enjoy the whole benefit

September 1894. This Committee was attended by the prominent workmen of
the Leicester Branch and the Branch officials. It is only fair to say that when
it was seen that the rates proposed worked out to an increase of wages in some
cases amounting to as much as 40 per cent, the more experienced officials of the
union protested against its proceedings as likely to bring the whole policy of the
union into disrepute.

1 History of Trade Unionism, ch. iii.

2 Place MSS., 27,791-240. The verse is now reprinted in Dictionary of
Political Economy under "Chartism"; and in the Life of Francis Place, by
Graham Wallas (London, 1897). The same idea inspired the proposals of
Lassalle, and most of the inferences drawn from Karl Marx's Theory of Value,
whilst it still lingers in the declarations and programmes of German Socialism and
its derivatives. It is, of course, inconsistent with present economic views as to
the "unearned increment," arising from the progress of invention and organisation

New Processes and Machinery 403

of the improvement, and regards the workmen's claim as an
attack, not on the community, but on himself. But whatever
the employer may desire, the community believes that, in
the majority of cases, competition quickly transfers his new
gains to the consumer in the shape of reduced prices. In
all these contentions, therefore, public opinion is apt to be
against the workmen's claim, even to the extent of ignoring
their legitimate demand for an increase of earnings com-
mensurate with the greater strain of the new process. The
employers have sometimes known how to use this argument
with great effect on public opinion. The London Master
Builders' Committee complained, in 1859, that the men's
argument in favor of a shortening of hours "implied that
the benefits to be derived from machinery are not the
property of society, of its inventors, of those who apply it,
but are to be appropriated by those whose labor it is
alleged it will displace." 1

When the increase in production does not depend on a
new machine, but arises merely from a further division of
labor, even the experienced leaders of the operatives are
honestly unable to conceive how any one can dispute the
men's claim to enjoy the whole increase. In 1894 a Bristol
firm was charged before the " National Conference " (the
central joint-board) " with having introduced a new system
of working in Bristol," the so-called " team system," which
resulted in the men collectively producing more boots per

of population and capital in dense masses, upon which the modern English
Socialist bases his demand for collective ownership of the means of production,
and the subordination of the producer to the citizen, and the individual to the
community. See Fabian Tract, No. 51, Socialism, True and False, and the
Report on Fabian Policy, presented by the Fabian Society to the International
Socialist Congress, 1896 (Fabian Tract, No. 70).

Though the Owenite assumption here referred to was formerly accepted by
large masses of English workmen, and though it still lies at the root of the
desire for Co-operative Associations of Producers, it cannot be said to characterise
the Trade Unionism of the present day, and it will accordingly not be discussed
in our chapter on " The Assumptions of Trade Unionism." The student should
consult, besides the works of Owen, Hodgskin, Thompson, Lassalle, and Marx,
Dr. Anton Menger's Das Recht auf den vollen Arbeitsertrag.

1 Report on Trade Societies and Strikes^ Social Science Association, 1860, p. 62.

404 Trade Union Function

day than before. As the charge was coupled with an
alteration from piecework to fixed wages, there would have
been some justification for a complaint that the Standard
Rate was being imperilled, by the exaction of ever-increasing
exertion for a fixed weekly wage. But instead of taking
this point, the union claimed that unless the day wage was
so fixed that the cost of each boot to the employer remained
no less than before, the alteration should be regarded as a
reduction of wages.1 The men's case was so prejudiced by
this argument that the President (Alderman Sir Thomas
Wright) not only rejected their claim, but also went so far
as to say that, provided the mere weekly earnings were
undiminished, the change of process was not an alteration
of conditions, thus altogether ignoring the question of the
increased effort and strain involved.

The student of this remarkable series of disputes will not
fail to notice that the employers and the workmen both take
up positions which are inconsistent with their own arguments.
The employers have, in the fullest and most unreserved
manner, given in their adhesion to the principle of Collective
Bargaining with regard to all the conditions of labor. They
have emphasised their adhesion to this principle by insisting
on the establishment of a most elaborate machinery for
carrying on this Collective Bargaining, of which they make
constant use. It is therefore inconsistent of them to claim
that any employer has a right to " introduce machinery at
any time without notice," and that changes in " the internal

1 The claim and argument will be found in the Report of the National Con-
ference of the Boot and Shoe Trade, August 1893. "Supposing," asked the
President, "the alteration from piecework to daywork resulted in the worker
receiving more money, would you say that was an alteration of which he had a
right to complain ? " To this question the obvious answer was that if the new
process involved greater exertion or strain than the old, an actual increase of
weekly earnings might well mean a lowering of the Standard Rate (of remuneration
for effort), and thus involve a grievance to the workmen. But instead of taking
this line the men's spokesman said, " I should say that if a particular individual
got that money and the employer got eleven dozen of work done at the price of
ten dozen provided by the Statement, that that involved a reduction of wages."
The same confusion of ideas appears in the cases of "team system" discussed at
the National Conference of January 1894.

New Processes and Machinery 405

economy of the factory or the manipulation of the workmen "
are matters for the autocratic decision of each individual
factory owner. It is no doubt, a question for each employer
to determine whether or not he will introduce a particular
machine, just as it is for him alone to decide whether or not
he will engage twenty additional workmen. But the regula-
tions and conditions under which the men will be engaged,
or will change their habits of work, are obviously matters
which, on the assumption of Collective Bargaining, cannot be
settled by the will of one party to the wage contract, or even
by the agreement of particular employers and particular
workmen, but must be arranged as a Common Rule by
negotiation between the authorised representatives of both
sides. The employers, moreover, have repeatedly adopted in
their negotiations the principle of the Standard Rate, that
is, the uniform maintenance throughout the trade of identical
payment for identical effort. It is therefore inconsistent of
them to insist on fixed time wages, on a change of process
which must inevitably result in progressively increasing the
intensity of effort imposed on the workmen. Unless there
is some arrangement by which the operatives are ensured
progressively increasing earnings, proportionate to this pro-
gressively increasing intensity, the employers are under-
mining the Standard Rate, that is, insidiously diminishing
the rate of payment for a given amount of effort The
operatives, on the other hand, whilst recognising that their
very existence as factory bootmakers depends on the super-
session of the individual hand bootmaker, are always re-
senting the further division of labor and the increased use
of machinery. And though they take their stand on the
fundamental principle of maintaining the Standard Rate,
and therefore of insisting on a Piecework Statement, they
yet cannot bring themselves in the new processes to propose
rates which would work out, even at the start, to earnings
equivalent only to their present wages. If the men frankly
asked for an increase in their Standard Rate of so much
per cent, to be worked out in detail by a revision of the

406 Trade Union Function

" Statement," the claim would be discussed on its own
merits, as an incident in the perennial higgling between
employers and employed. It may well be that the moment
when profits are being largely increased by a change of
process, is a specially opportune occasion for a rise of wage.
But, when the demand for an advance is disguised in an
assumption that any departure from the old " Statement " is
to be resisted as a positive reduction, the employers get into
a state of inarticulate rage at what seems to them the
intellectual dishonesty of the men's proceedings. If the
operatives desire to maintain the modern Trade Union
principle of the Standard Rate, they must abandon, once
for all, the diametrically opposite assumption that " wages
should be the price of goods," and at once set about the
compilation of a new piecework list applicable to the great
variety of machines and diversity of conditions in the various
factories. Such a list would, no doubt, cost trouble, especially
in view of the survival of many small manufacturers, each
using only one or more of the new machines. But similar
difficulties were met and overcome twenty years ago when
the trade became a factory industry, and American experience
shows that they are not insuperable to-day.1

The gradual introduction of composing and distributing
machines into the English printing trade affords an instance
of somewhat similar difficulties in another industry. These
machines began to be used about 1876, but, owing to the
imperfections of the earlier inventions, it was not until the

1 The experience of the English Co-operative Wholesale Society, whose
colossal boot factory remained unaffected by the general stoppage of 1895, is
interesting in showing how an exceptionally able manager, himself once an
operative, has (in anticipation of the agreement of a piecework list for the new
processes) partially solved the problem, by making the weekly wages roughly
proportionate to the increasing output. On a certain " lasting machine " the out-
put varies from 666 pairs per week to as much as 1270, according to the skill
and zeal of the operator. Mr. Butcher has known how to encourage zeal and
skill, by refusing to adhere to the uniform rate per week given by many of the
employers to all their workmen in each process ; paying as much as 405. to the
principal operator, and (instead of taking on boys) giving 355. a week even to
his "followers." He declares his intention, on the output rising to 1500 pairs a
week, to increase the wages to £2 : los.

New Processes and Machinery 407

last decade of the century that their competition with the
old hand compositor came to be seriously felt. The advent
of the machine has throughout been most distasteful to the
men. But the Compositors' Trade Unions have from the
first disclaimed any desire to prevent its introduction, or to
forbid the members to work it. Their policy has been to
secure the new employment to their own members on terms
which protected their Standard Rate. No pretension on
their part to receive the whole advantage of the Linotype
machine is on record, but it is asserted that they have
claimed a share of it. The Chairman of the Linotype
Company, speaking to his shareholders in 1893, declared
that " Nearly all the offices which have taken the Linotype
are union offices — in some cases working by day, and in
other cases working by piece. Surely that is sufficient
proof that the labor difficulty is not a very serious one. The
union [men] have, in my opinion, acted very fairly towards
us. All they have said is this : * Our men think you have
an invention which is a great advantage to the trade — saves
a great deal of money and labor — and the men should have
their fair share of the advantages.' Let the masters pay
them fairly, and then I believe there will be no difficulty
whatever in introducing this machine."1 In 1894, the
London Society of Compositors was able to come to a
satisfactory agreement with the newspaper proprietors, who
have up to the present been the chief users of the machine,
and it is now at work in the London newspaper offices under
conditions formally accepted by both parties.2

1 Speech of the Chairman of the Linotype Company, at the Ordinary General
Meeting of Shareholders, Cannon Street Hotel, London, nth May 1893.

2 New and amended rules agreed to at a Conference between the Representa-
tives of the London Daily Newspaper Proprietors, and of the London Society of
Compositors, held at Anderton's Hotel on 7th June 1894.

Composing machines.

1. All skilled operators — i.e. compositors, justifiers, and distributors, as dis-
tinct from attendants or laborers — shall be members of the London Society of
Compositors, preference being given to members of the Companionship into
which the machines are introduced. Distribution to be paid at a minimum rate
of 385. per week of 48 hours, day-work.

2. A Probationary Period of three months shall be allowed, the operator to

408 Trade Union Function

Now let us turn from the trades in which the introduc-
tion of new machinery is recent enough to be a source of
continual friction to those in which this has long ceased to
be the case. In the great industries of cotton-spinning and
cotton-weaving every part of the machinery employed has,
during the last hundred years, been enormously improved.
In the early stages of this mechanical progress each step
was the subject of furious strife between masters and men,
on much the same lines as the battles now being fought in
the boot and shoe industry. For the last thirty years, how-
ever, the unions have genuinely abandoned all idea of oppos-
ing improvements, or of exacting the whole advantage of
their introduction. The conditions under which any improve-
ments in machinery shall be introduced have, by common
consent, long since been taken out of the hands of the
individual employer, or the particular group of operatives.
Any change whatsoever in "the internal economy of the
factory, or the manipulation of the workmen by the
employer" — which, to the new class of boot manufacturers,
seems a matter for their own autocratic decision — is, in the
cotton industry, referred as a matter of course for prior
deliberation and agreement between the expert salaried
officials of the Trade Union and the Employers' Association.
As the basis of negotiation, the principle of maintaining in-
tact the Standard Rate of payment for a given quantity of
effort is unreservedly accepted by both sides. The employers

receive his average weekly earnings for the previous three months. During this
period he shall not undertake piecework.

3. In all offices when composing machines are introduced, the operators and
case hands shall commence composition simultaneously. . . . Compositors and
operators in such offices to be guaranteed two galleys per day of seven working
hours on Morning papers, and on Evening papers twelve galleys per week of 42
hours.

4. The scale of prices for machine work shall be, Linotype, 3^d. per one
thousand ens for day-work in Evening paper offices, 3|d. per thousand ens for
work done in Morning paper offices, £d. per one thousand extra on all types above
brevier ; Hattersley, 4d. per one thousand ens for Evening paper work, and 4^d.
per one thousand ens for Morning paper work.

This agreement was, in 1896, superseded by a more elaborate one, framed
on similar lines. — See Labour Gazette, August 1896.

New Processes and Machinery 409

recognise that any increased speed or complexity of the
process means increased intensity of effort to the operative,
which must therefore be remunerated by progressively in-
creasing earnings. They would never dream of suggesting
the substitution of fixed time rates of wages, and they agree,
without demur, to a Piecework List which, definitely fixed
in advance, completely secures to the workmen these pro-
gressive earnings. On the other hand, the operatives have
unreservedly abandoned any idea that "wages should be
the price of goods." We can imagine the amusement with
which such experienced Trade Union officials as Mr. Mawds-
ley or Mr. Wilkinson would listen to the suggestion that
any lowering of the cost per yard to the employer must
necessarily be a reduction of wages to the operative. They
would reply that, so long as the cotton operative was assured
of his Standard Rate, he had no concern with the cost of
production at all, except that any reduction resulting from
wise administration or improvement of process was posi-
tively advantageous to the workmen, by securing for their
product an ever-extending market. The Trade Unions of
cotton operatives actually meet the innovating employers
half-way, by agreeing to a piecework rate which decreases
with every rise in the productivity of machinery. The
employer therefore knows that every improvement that he
can introduce will bring him a real, though not an unlimited,
saving in his cost of production. The operatives, on the
other hand, have the assurance that the graduated piecework
rates, already settled by mutual agreement, after careful
consideration by their expert officials, will not only protect
their present weekly earnings, but will also immediately
remunerate them for any increased effort involved. They
have learnt, moreover, by experience, that any consciousness
of the increased effort will soon disappear as the closer
attention and quicker movement become habitual. It is
true that by accepting a lower piecework rate they give up
any claim to monopolise for themselves the " unearned
increment " of the new invention. On the other hand, they

4io Trade Union Function

are secured by the employers' concession of a predetermined
Piecework List, in all the " rent " of the new dexterity which
practice at the new process inevitably produces. Thus, the
steadily rising speed of working, which to the boot opera-
tive, compelled by his employer to labor at a fixed time
wage, is " pace-making and slavery," means to the cotton-
spinner a welcome addition to his weekly earnings, and a
permanent rise in his Standard of Life.

The United Society of Boilermakers and Iron-ship-
builders base their agreements with their employers on
similar principles. Thus the internal economy of the vast
shipbuilding industry of the North-East coast of England
is governed by the following formal treaty as to new appli-
ances, etc. : " Notwithstanding any of the above clauses the
shipbuilders are to be entitled to a revision of rates on
account of labor-saving appliances, whether now existing
and not sufficiently allowed for, or hereafter to be intro-
duced ; for improved arrangements in yards ; for rates to
be paid in vessels of new types where work is easier, and
for other special cases. The terms of these revisions to be
adjusted by a committee representing employers and the
Boilermakers' and Shipbuilders' Society. The men shall in
like manner be entitled to bring before the said committee
any jobs, the rates of which may require revision due to new
conditions of working, structural alterations in vessels, or
any other cause." This agreement met with some opposi-
tion from a section of the workmen, who objected to any
allowances being made for machinery, etc. To this com-
plaint the Executive Committee of the union replied : " It
is well known to the oldest shipyard plater in our society
that he can go into some yards and plate a vessel at 10
per cent per plate less in one yard than he can in another
on account of the difference in machinery. The employer
therefore who has the best machinery is being paid for his
machines through having his work done at a cheaper rate.
. . . This is done all over, and rightly so. It is well known
to our platers that, on account of the difference of facilities

New Processes and Machinery 4 1 1

for doing work in the different yards, we have never been
able to get a standard list of prices for plating." l

We may now sum up what seems to us the outcome of
Trade Union experience in dealing with new processes and
machinery, and what, judging from the general tendency
and the example of the Cotton Operatives, may_be expected
to becojme_the universaljjolicy. We see, in the first place, /
that the old attempt of the handicraftsman to exclude the 1
machine has been definitely abandoned. Far from refusing'
to work the new processes, the Trade Unionists of to-day
claim, for the operatives already working at the trade, a
preferential right to acquire the new dexterity and perform
the new service. In asserting this preferential claim to
continuity of employment, they insist that the arrangements
for introducing the new process, including not only the rates
of wages but also the physical conditions of work, are
matters to be settled, not solely by one of the parties to the
wage contract, but after discussion between both of them
Moreover, on the principle of Collective Bargaining, the
matter is not one which can be left even to agreement
between any particular employer and his workpeople, but
one which must be settled by negotiation, as a Common Rule
to be enforced on all employers and operatives in the
particular trade.2 When this Collective Bargaining takes
place, the Trade Union always proceeds on the fundamental
assumption that under no circumstances must the " improve-
ment " be allowed to put the operative in any worse position
than he was before. The change of technical process,
which may revolutionise all the conditions of this working

1 Monthly Report of the United Society of Boilermakers and Iron -shipbuilders,
January 1895.

2 This claim, to make the circumstances under which a change of process
shall take place a matter for Collective Bargaining, has only lately been admitted,
or even comprehended by employers ; and the demand would, in many trades,
still be regarded as preposterous. Until 1871, indeed, combination for any
other objects than improvement in wages or hours was a criminal offence, and it
nsver occurred, even to a good employer, that the most momentous change in
the method of working could be a matter for mutual arrangement between his
workpeople and himself.

412 Trade Union Fimction

life, is calculated greatly to increase the productivity of his
labor, and should, it is claimed, at any rate not be made the
occasion of any encroachment on the privileges or advan-
tages which he has hitherto enjoyed. This involves, not
only that his weekly earnings shall be maintained, but also
that the length of the working day, the amount of physical
or mental exertion required by his task, or the discomfort or
disagreeableness of his work shall either not be increased, or
else that any increase shall be fully paid for by extra rates.
It will, moreover, be demanded that any defensive or other
regulations, which have hitherto been accepted, shall be
continued and made applicable to the new conditions. The
pieceworker will expect a definitely settled detailed list of
prices ; the timeworker will require any accustomed protec-
tion against being " driven " beyond the normal speed,
whilst in trades in which apprenticeship has hitherto been
regulated a continuance of the regulation will be insisted
on.1 All this merely comes to a demand that the condition
and status of the workman should not be deteriorated by
Ithe change which is to bring a new profit to the employer.
To this there will sometimes be added the further claim
which stands, it is obvious, on a different footing, that the
wage-earner should receive some of the advantages to be
derived from the improvement, and that he should therefore
take the opportunity of obtaining, as a condition of his
acceptance of the new process, some positive increase in his
Standard Rate.

1 Comfort and habits of life often play an important part in these negotiations,
leading sometimes to obstruction, sometimes to encouragement of a change.
Thus the Yorkshire Glass Bottle Makers' Society refused in 1875 to work with
a new gas furnace, because they declared it would involve a three-shift system ;
an objection paralleled by the Northumberland and Durham miners' refusal to
shorten the hours of boys, because it will probably involve a change from two
to three shifts. In both cases the men assert that the alteration of hours would
be inconvenient and unpleasant to them. On the other hand, when in 1876 a
new system of " pot-setting " was invented in the glass trade, which was safer
and more rapid than the old process, the Yorkshire Glass Bottle Makers' Society
passed a resolution demanding its adoption, and insisting on those firms which
still retained the old plan paying 2s. per man for the operation, as compared
with only 6d. for the new system. — See the Annual Reports of the Yorkshire
Glass Bottle Makers' Society for 1875 and 1876.

New Processes and Machinery 4 1 3

It is interesting to observe that, with the acceptance of this
new policy by the employers, and its complete comprehension
by the workmen, it is not the individual capitalist, but the
Trade Union, which most strenuously insists on having the
very latest improvements in machinery. In the English
boot and shoe trade, every improvement is, as we have seen,
made the occasion of a prolonged wrangle between employers
and workmen. In Lancashire it quickly becomes a grievance
in the Cotton Trade Unions, if any one employer or any one
district falls behind the rest. The explanation of this differ-
ence is obvious. No employer takes any trouble to induce
the laggards in his own industry to keep up with the march
of invention. Their falling behind is, indeed, an immediate
advantage to himself. But to the Trade Union, repre-
senting all the operatives, the sluggishness of the poor or
stupid employers is a serious danger. The old-fashioned
master spinners, with slow-going family concerns, complain
bitterly of the harshness with which the Trade Union
officials refuse to make any allowance for their relatively
imperfect machinery, and even insist, as we have seen, on
their paying positively a higher piecework rate if they do
not work their mills as efficiently as their best -equipped
competitors. Thus, the Amalgamated Association of
Operative Cotton -spinners, instead of obstructing new
machinery, actually penalises the employer who fails to
introduce it ! This remarkable difference, in the attitude
of both workmen and employers, between the two great
English industries of cotton-spinning and bootmaking, goes
far to explain their very different standing as regards
technical efficiency. The English^ boot manufacturer is
always complaining of the far higher efficiency of the
splendidly -equipped factories of Massachusetts and Con-
necticut. The Lancashire cotton mill, in the amount of
output per operative, easily leads the world.

There remains one other type of case to be dealt with,
namely that in which the new process, instead of being
worked by the old skilled hands, supersedes them by a class

414 Trade Union Function

of entire novices. As this happens to be the very type
which, from its association with tragic episodes in industrial
history, strikes the public imagination most forcibly, and has
accordingly become a commonplace in the denunciations of
our industrial system from the more extreme platforms of
social reform, its omission, so far, may have struck the
reader as an unexpected oversight. It is possible for the
introduction of a new machine or process to annihilate the
utility of a workman's skill as completely as the photograph
has annihilated the miniature, the railway train the stage
coach, or petroleum the snuffers. The heart-rending struggle
of the handloom weavers against the power loom is perhaps
the best-known instance. Let us follow, step by step, or
rather stumble by stumble, the road to ruin of an in-
sufficiently organised trade supplanted by machinery.1

When the handicraftsman begins to find his product
undersold by the machine-made article, his first instinct is
to engage in a desperate competition with the new process,
lowering his rate for hand labor to keep pace with the
diminished cost of the machine product. This is obviously
the "line of least resistance." No newly-devised machine,
worked by novices, and not yet perfectly adapted to the
process, can convince a skilled handworker that it will
ever succeed in turning out as good an article as he can
make, or that the saving of time will be at all considerable.
The very fact that a lad or a girl at ten or fifteen shillings
a week can perform the new process with ease, only con-
firms him in his attitude of disparagement and incredulity.

1 The struggle of the small hand industry against the factory system can be
best studied at present in Germany and Austria, where the position is being
described in detail by scores of competent observers. See, among other studies,
Professor Gustav Schmoller's Zur Geschichte der Deutschen Kleingewerbe im ityh
fahrhundert (Halle, 1870); Dr. Eugen Schwiedland's Kleingewerbe tind Haus-
industrie in Oesterreich (Leipzig, 1894), 2 vols. ; and his two Reports Ueber eine
gesetzliche Regelung der Heimarbeit (Vienna, 1896 and 1897) ; Dr. Kuno
Frankenstein's Die Deutsche Hausindustrie^ 4 vols. ; the article " Hausindustrie "
by Prof. Werner Sombart in Conrad's Handworterbuch der Staatswissenschaften,
vol. iv. ; and the magnificent series of monographs on particular trades or
districts, published by the "Verein fur Sozial Politik " as Untersuchungen uber
die Lage des Handwerks in Deutschland (Leipzig, 1894-97), 12 volumes.

New Processes and Machinery 4 1 5

In such a mood a man does not throw away the skill which
is his property and staff of life, to consent to become either
a machine-minder at one-half or one -third of his accustomed
wages, or else begin life afresh in some entirely new
occupation. He confidently pits his consummate skill
against the first clumsy attempts of the undeveloped machine,
and finds that a slight reduction in the Standard Rate for
hand labor is all that seems required to leave his handi-
craft in full command of the market. His well-intentioned
friends, the clergyman and the district visitor, the news-
paper economist and the benevolent employer, combine
to assure him that this — the Policy of Lowering the Dyke
— is what he ought to adopt. But, unfortunately, this is to
enter on a downward course to which there is no end. The
machine product steadily improves in quality, and falls in
price, as the new operatives become more skilled, and as the
speed of working is increased. Every step in this evolution
means a further reduction of rates to the struggling hand-
worker, who can only make up his former earnings by
hurrying his work and lengthening his hours. Inevitably
this hurry and overwork deteriorate the old quality and
character of his product. The attempt to maintain his
family in its old position compels him to sacrifice everything
to the utmost possible rapidity of execution. His wife and
children are pressed into his service, and a rough and ready
division of labor serves to economise the use of the old
thought and skill. The work insidiously drops its artistic
quality and individual character. In the losing race with
the steam engine, the handwork becomes itself mechanical,
without acquiring either that uniform excellence or accurate
finish which is the outcome of the perfected machine.
Presently, the degraded hand product will sell only at a
lower price than the machine-made article. The worse the
work becomes the more irregular grows the demand.
Those select customers, who have remained faithful to the
hand product, find, by degrees, that its former qualities have
departed, and they one by one accept the modern substitute.

416 Trade Union Function

And thus we reach the vicious circle of the sweated in-
dustries, in which the gradual beating down of the rate of
remuneration produces an inevitable deterioration in the
quality of the work, whilst the inferiority of the product
itself makes it unsaleable except at prices which compel the
payment of progressively lower rates. The handworker,
who at the beginning justifiably felt himself on a higher
level than the mechanical minder of the machine, ends by
sinking, in physique and dexterity alike, far below the level
of the highly-strung factory operative. There is now no
question of his taking to the new process, which has
risen quite beyond his capacity. He passes through the
long-drawn-out agony of a dying trade.

This, in main outline, is the story of the handloom
weavers in all the branches of the textile industry.1 We see
the same grim evolution going on to-day in the chain and
nail trade in the Black Country, and among the unorganised
sections of the tailors and cabinetmakers. We need not
dilate on the misery to which these unfortunate workers are
reduced. But it is important to observe how the interests
of the consumers are affected by this " Policy of Lowering
the Dyke." It is, in the first place, to be noted that it in no
way stimulates the spread of machinery or the perfecting of
the new process. The constant yielding of the handworker
even diminishes the pressure on his employer to adopt the
newest improvements, and positively tempts him to linger
on with the old process. So long as he can compete with
his rival by another cut off wages, it will not seem worth
while to lay out capital and thought in new machinery.
Thus, the transition from the old system of production to
the improved methods is delayed, to the loss of the consumer
for the time being. But what is perhaps of greater import-
ance to the community is the disappearance of any real

1 "Heartbroken and objectless in their squalid poverty, their insight into the
active stirring world beyond them, with its various moving springs and wires,
became perverted, and they stuck to their falling trade with a kind of obstinate
fatalism." — John Hill Burton, Political and Social Economy (Edinburgh, 1849),
p. 29.

New Processes and Machinery 417

alternative to the machine product. The degradation of the
handworker's craft, resulting, as we have seen, directly from
the forcing down of his Standard Rate, deprives the nation
of the charm given to the old country stuffs and furniture
by their artistic individuality. Even the machine-made
product is the worse for the deterioration of the handicraft.
It gradually loses the ideal of perfect workmanship and
artistic finish, to which the inventor and operative were
perpetually striving to approximate. It is, indeed, difficult
to discover any advantage whatsoever, either to the handi-
craftsman or to the community, in a policy which, whilst
failing to stimulate the use of labor-saving machinery,
neither saves the handworkers from misery, nor preserves to
the community what is of value in their handicraft.

Here, then, we have the dramatic instance as it actually
occurs ; and certainly the reality is as harrowing as the most
fervidly descriptive platform orator can make it appear. And
yet its tragedy is incomplete without the final demonstration
that the really cruel stages of all this suffering are needless,
and are caused not by the iron march of industrial evolution,
but simply by the adoption on the part of the workmen and
their employers of this " Policy of Lowering the Dyke." We
have failed to discover a single instance of supersession by
machinery, in which it would not have been possible for the
superseded handicraft at least to have died a painless death.
There are industries which have been changed by machinery
as thoroughly as weaving, but in which, owing to the enforce-
ment ot a different policy by the Trade Unions concerned,
the handworkers have not only survived, but are to-day
busier, more highly paid, and more skilful than ever they
were before.

The Amalgamated Society of Cordwainers, an organisa-
tion dating from the eighteenth century,1 had, up to 1857,
enjoyed a complete immunity from any invasion by machinery

1 See History of Trade Unionism, p. 51, where a circular of 1784 is quoted.
The organisation was reformed in 1862, and in 1874 it took the name of the
Amalgamated Society of Boot and Shoe Makers.

VOL. I 2 E

4i 8 Trade Union Function

or new processes. The application of the sewing-machine to
bootmaking, and the successive introduction of new inven-
tions led, between 1857 and 1874, to a complete revolution
in the trade. At first the rank and file of the workmen
bitterly resented the change of conditions, and the employer
introducing a new machine was often met by the most
unreasonable demands. But the Executive Committee of
the Trade Union, whilst maintaining intact the established
scale of prices for handwork, steadfastly refused to sanction
any resistance to the new processes. On the contrary, it
persistently advised all its members who failed to get hand-
work at the established high rates, to accept employment at
the new factories at whatever they could get, and gradually
to work out a new piecework list adapted to the altered
conditions. In order to secure this fresh " Statement "
these members were advised to join hands with the new men
whom the factory brought into the trade, and freely to admit
them into their branches. Thus, already in 1863, it was
resolved "that men employed in the rivetting and finishing
peg-work, and those working in factories, be recognised, and
can belong to any section, or form sections by themselves."1
This policy, pressed on the members at every opportunity,
was quickly accepted, with the result that the union found
itself, in a very few years, composed of two distinct classes
of membeis, handicraftsmen and factory workers. When

1 The Trade Sick and Funeral Lavas of the Amalgamated Society of Cord-
wainers (London, 1863). The "rivetters" became a separate class, when,
about 1846, rivetting was introduced in place of stitching. See the manifesto of
the Leicester shoemakers, quoted by Marx, Capital, Part IV. chap. xv. sec. 7
(vol. ii. p. 457 of English translation of 1887). The operatives in the factory
boot manufacture are at present divided into the following classes: (i) the
" clickers," the men and lads who cut from skins the sections of the boot and
uppers; (2) " rough -stuff cutters," the men who cut the bottom material by
knives set in powerful machines; (3) "fitters," men who place the upper
leathers in position for " closing "; (4) " machinists " (often women) who " close "
or stitch the uppers; (5) Blasters," men or boys who place the closed uppers
over the last and attach the bottom material (in hand-sewn work these are known
as " makers," in " pegged work," now nearly obsolete, they are called " pegmen "
or "rivetters"); (6) the "finishers," who blacken the edges, clean the soles,
and generally polish up the boot. The two latter classes form a large majority
of the whole.

New Processes and Machinery 4 1 9

the latter began actually to outnumber their old-fashioned
colleagues, it was found convenient, as we have already
mentioned, that they should break off, and form a society of
their own, the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives.
The Amalgamated Society of Cordwainers, now again con-
fined to the handicraftsmen, has ever since continued to
pursue the same line of policy. It has remained on amicable
terms with the new society, neither competing with it for
members, nor in any way obstructing its remarkable growth.
But what is more important, it has steadfastly refused to
allow its own members to compete in cheapness with the new
process. If a handmade boot is desired, the old scale for
handwork must be paid. Many consequences have resulted
from this policy, some of which might not, at first sight,
have been expected. As the employers found no way of
getting a commoner class of boots made by inferior hand
labor at low rates, machinery has gone ahead by leaps and
bounds. But it has created an entirely new trade for itself.
The keeping up of a high level of price for the handmade
article has not destroyed the demand, but has, on the con-
trary, given it permanence and stability. The employers,
rinding themselves bound in any case to pay the old scale of
rates, have had to concentrate their attention on obtaining
the finest possible workmanship, as only in this way were
they able to tempt their customers to prefer the necessarily
expensive handmade product. Those persons who are pre-
pared to pay well for first-class workmanship find therefore
that they can still obtain exactly what they require, and
hence remain faithful to the handmade boot. Meanwhile,
the handicraftsmen have become a select body, not because
they have closed their ranks, but because none but men of
long training and exceptional skill can find employment at
the recognised scale, or do the highly-finished work which
the employers require in return for such high rates. Com-
petition between the handicraftsmen takes, in fact, the form
of a continuous elimination of the less skilled among them,
who are encouraged, in their youth, to go into the machine

420 Trade Union Function

trade. The result has been that the skilled hand boot-
makers, whilst somewhat diminishing in numbers, have
positively improved their scale of prices and average earn-
ings, and more than maintained their level of skill. Finally,
notwithstanding a continuous improvement in the efficiency
of bootmaking machinery, the handmade boot still remains
an ideal to which inventors and factory managers are per-
petually striving to approximate their commoner product.

This analysis of the policy of the Amalgamated Society
of Boot and Shoe Makers finds a remarkable confirmation
in the analogous case of the paper manufacturers. A gener-
ation ago this old trade of skilled handworkers, closely
combined since the middle of the eighteenth century,1 was
seriously menaced by the rapid spread of machine-made
paper. Foreign competition, too, began, on the repeal of the
paper duty in 1861, to cut into the trade of the English
manufacturers, and the United Kingdom, from being a large
exporter of paper, gradually became a large importer. The
hand papermakers, who had, from time immemorial, enjoyed
wages 15 or 20 per cent higher than those even of skilled
artisans in other trades, made no attempt to prevent or to
discourage the introduction of paper-making machinery, or
even to secure the new work for their own members. The
machine-workers were at first admitted to membership of
the handworkers' union, but few of them joined, and (as in
the analogous case of the boot and shoe operatives) it was
afterwards found more convenient for the new class of work-
men to form organisations of their own.2 The highly-paid

1 " Our Society," said the spokesman of the Original Society of Papermakers
in 1891, "can go back, according by the records, to 150 or 160 years." Its
very archaic rules, preserved in the appendix to the Report of the Committee
on Combinations of Workmen^ 1825, are referred to in the History of Trade
Unionism, p. 80.

2 It was stated in evidence in 1874 that "the Society is composed of some
700 men, of whom 420 are employed in vat mills," the former comprising a very
large proportion of the entire handmade trade, and the latter only a triflim
proportion of the machine trade (Report of Arbitration on the Question of an
Advance in Wages . . . loth July 1874, Maidstone, 1874, p. 53). At present
(1897) the machinemen are organised in two separate unions, the Amalgamated
Society of Papermakers, a strong body in the South of England, and the National

New Processes and Machinery 421

handworkers were incessantly advised to moderate their
demands, so as to enable their employers to compete with
the new machine mills, which started up in every county.
As early as 1864 a leading employer gave them an ominous
warning. " When you see . . ." he said, " regular machine
mills (such as I intend to stand by, if driven from the vats)
rising up around you . . . remember the old fable of ' The
Goose with the Golden Eggs ' . . . lest . . . you lose the
position in which you now stand." l " How can we compete
with the machine paper unless wages are reduced ? " asked
a millowner in 1891. "I say the best course for you to
adopt," replied the spokesman of the operatives, " is to keep
up the quality and the price of handmade paper." 2 This
policy has been consistently pursued by the Trade Union.
Far from consenting to lower its members' rates of pay, it
has taken every opportunity to raise them. " We have never
had a reduction of wages in the paper trade," declared the
men's secretary in 1 874.® "In 1839," a leading employer
told the arbitrator, " there was an increase of wages, in 1853
a slight modification, in 1854 a slight increase, another
increase in 1865, in 1869 a slight increase, when beer money
was given instead of beer. ... So we went on from 1838
to 1872, giving these three or four rises, and, in 1872, a rise
of sixpence per day was conceded by the employers without
any great fuss " ; 4 the pay of a first-class vatman for a " day's
work" in a Kentish mill being now 6s. 5d., as compared
with 45. 7d. in i84O.5 It is interesting to find the workmen
expressly comparing their own attitude with that of the

Union of Paper Mill Workers of Great Britain and Ireland, a weaker society
with membership chiefly in the North of England and in Scotland.

1 Notes of Proceedings at a Meeting of Paper Manufacturers and Journeymen
Papermakers Relative to an Advance in Wages (Maidstone, 1864), p. 34.

2 Report of Arbitration Meeting between Employers and Employed in the
Handmade Paper Trade ... on 29th January 1891 (Maidstone, 1891), p. 65.

3 Arbitration Report of 1874, pp. 14, 17. "Never once in the history of
the trade had there been a reduction of the prices." — Report of Meeting of
Employers and Employed ... on 1 5th September 1884 (Maidstone, 1884),
p. 1 8.

4 Arbitration Report of 1891, pp. 45-46.

6 See table of rates in the Arbitration Report of 1874, p. 33.

422 Trade Union Function

Amalgamated Society of Cordwainers, and justifying it on
the same grounds. " There is no doubt," declared their
spokesman in 1891, "that handmade paper will continue to
hold its own in the market. There are now many branches
of industry where machines play a very important part in
the production of various goods. . . . [But] if you want a
splendid article in those materials, you must have handmade.
. . . The same remark applies to the shoemaking trade.
Handmade shoemakers now command higher wages than
ever they did in the history of the trade. Their services
have become much more important and valuable since the
introduction of machines, which now manufacture all parts
and all kinds of shoes. The people know that if they want
a good boot they must have handmade. It seems to me
. . . that handmade paper is precisely in the same position.
If people want the genuine article they will, notwithstandinj
the cost, go in for handmade paper." l That this policy
has, in the paper trade, been attended by success is admittt
on all sides. The rigid maintenance of high rates for hand-
made paper has given the utmost possible encouragement t<
the introduction of machinery, wherever machinery could
possibly be employed. The production of machine-mad<
paper has accordingly advanced by leaps and bounds, to th(
great advantage of the public in the cheapening of the article
for common use. But this enormous increase of productioi
has in no way injured the trade in the superior handmade
paper. No attempt is made to compete in cheapness with
the machine-made product, the manufacturers, like their opera-
tives, preferring to concentrate their attention on turning
out as different a grade of quality as possible. The result
has been in the highest degree remarkable. Instead of
handmade paper mills having " to be closed all over the
country," as was expected in 1860, it was reported to the
arbitrator that by 1874 there were actually considerably
more vats at work than had ever formerly existed ; that by
1891 the number of vats and the amount of the sales had

1 Arbitration Report of 1891, p. 10.

New Processes and Machinery 423

still further increased ; and that " the last sixteen years have
been the most successful sixteen years that we have ever known
in the trade." x All this is fully conceded by the employers.
"The masters," declared their spokesman in 1891, "never
made such large profits in the old days as they have made
since. I admit [that] my father, for instance, who had a
good mill, could only make a bare living." 2 Meanwhile the
speed and continuity of the work has been steadily increased,
until the actual output in pounds of paper per man per year
in the best-equipped mills is now greater than it has ever
been in the history of the craft. The prosperity of the
employers, as their leading representative explained in 1891,
" has been due to two causes. In the first place there has
been — and I think the other gentlemen present will bear me
out in this — a great increase of sobriety and steadiness on
the part of the men. There was a time when they did not
work, sometimes for weeks together, five days a week. . . .
That is one great cause to which I attribute our prosperity.
. . . The other cause is the introduction of improvements by
the masters. The mills are very different from what they
used to be. ... It is easier for the men to make seven days
a week now than it was years ago to make six days. . . .
Formerly there were many breakdowns at our mills. . . .
All these things have been changed." 3 We see, therefore,
that in spite of the adverse influence exercised, as we shall
show in a later chapter, by the Trade Union Restriction of
Numbers and the monopoly enjoyed by the old-established
employers, the enforcement of a high Standard of Life in the
handmade paper trade, far from destroying the livelihood
either of masters or men, has been accompanied by a marked
advance in their prosperity, and a distinct differentiation
between the old product and the new. The policy of main-
taining simultaneously the quality and the price of the hand-

1 Arbitration Report of 1891, p. 30. 2 Ibid. p. 46.

3 Ibid. pp. 50-51. In the handmade paper trade "a day's work" is a
definite quantity of paper, varying according to size and weight. It has no relation
to the period of employment.

424 Trade Union Function

made article, whilst it* has given a positive encouragement to
the introduction of machinery into the trade, has proved, in
fact, the salvation of the hand papermaker's craft.

Much the same policy has been pursued by the Amalga-
mated Association of Operative Cotton-spinners with regard
to the introduction of "ring-spinning," an ingenious appli-
cation of the old " throstle-spinning," which dates from about
1 88 1. By the substitution of the "ring frame" for the
" mule," it has been found possible, in the manufacture of
certain " counts " of cotton (the coarser " twist " up to
about "So's"), greatly to diminish the amount of skill
and effort required. What formerly demanded the con-
centrated attention of a highly -skilled man is now within
the capacity of an untrained woman. Had this invention
been made fifty years ago, the mule- spinners would un-
doubtedly have done their utmost to prevent its adoption,
and to exclude women from any participation in cotton-
spinning. But no such action has been taken, or even
suggested. Although the Cotton -spinners' Trade Union,
especially in its close alliance with the Weavers and Cardroom
Operatives, now exercises a far more effective control over
the industry than at any previous period, ring spinning by
women has, during the last fifteen years, been allowed to
grow up unmolested.1 It was practically impossible for the
adult male spinners, earning two pounds a week, to insist
on claiming for themselves work which could be done by
women at fifteen shillings a week. But they might have
attempted to stave off the innovation by lowering the rates
for their own work, and thereby discouraging their employers
from making the change. This, as we have seen, was the
policy followed two generations ago by the handloom weavers.
The Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton-spinners
adopted an entirely different course. When an employer
complained that he could no longer compete with rivals who

1 The ring-frame spinners were even received into the Amalgamated Associa-
tion of Card and Blowing Room Operatives, with the full assent of the Spinners
officials, as being the most suitable textile organisation for them to join.

New Processes and Machinery 425

had adopted the ring frame, unless his mule-spinners would
accept a lower rate, he was told that under no circumstances
could any " lowering of the dyke " be permitted. What he
was offered was, as we have described, a revision of the
piecework list so arranged as to stimulate him to augment
the rapidity and complexity of the mule, in order that the
mule-spinners, increasing in dexterity, might simultaneously
enlarge the output per machine and raise their own earnings.
The cotton -spinners in short, like the hand bootmakers,
preferred to meet the competition of a new process by
raising their own level of skill, rather than by degrading
their Standard of Life. The result has been that, except
under certain circumstances, the mule has, up to now, fairly
held its own. The number of mule-spinners, like the number
of hand bootmakers, remains about stationary, and this
without the slightest attempt or desire to close the trade
to newcomers. Like the bootmakers, indeed, the mule-
spinners are subject to a constant process of selection, the
employers naturally refusing to engage, at such high rates,
any but the most skilled men.

There is, however, one point, on which the policy of the
cotton-spinners with regard to the ring frame, and that of the
papermakers with regard to the machine, has fallen short
of the policy of the hand bootmakers with regard to the
factory system. The Amalgamated Society of Cordwainers
did its utmost, as we have seen, to organise the new class of
factory workers,1 so that these could, as quickly as possible,
secure a new Standard Rate commensurate with the skill
and effort required. This, it will be obvious, is really a
necessary corollary of the maintenance of a Standard Rate.
The adoption of a new process must, on the whole, be
deemed an advantage to the community when it effects a
real saving of labor or economy of skill. But it is a very

1 " That clickers, stuff-cutters, pegmen, finishers, and machinists working at
the shoe trade are admitted into society. That all women working at the shoe
trade be admitted into the Association upon the same terms, and entitled to the
same rights of membership as the men." — Resolution of the National Union o?
Boot and Shoe Operatives' Conference, i6th September 1872.

426 Trade Union Function

different thing when the attractiveness of the new process to
the employer is due, not to any real economy of human
labor, but to the chance of employing a helpless class of
workers at starvation wages. Unless the workers at the
new process are paid wages sufficient to maintain them at
the required new level of skill and efficiency, the new process
must be, in some way, parasitic on the community. To give
a concrete instance, if the daughter of a mule-spinner, reared
in a comparatively comfortable household, and maintained at
home at a cost of fifteen shillings a week, offers her services as
a ring-spinner at ten shillings a week, the competition between
the mule and the ring frame may reasonably be deemed
" unfair." If the woman had to live on the ten shillings,
her strength, her capacity of attention, her regularity of
attendance, and possibly her respectability, would inevitably
degrade. She could, moreover, not bring up, on her wages,
a new generation of ring-spinners to replace her. So long
as the underpaid worker is otherwise partly maintained —
perhaps the most usual case with women and children — the
employer is, in effect, receiving a bounty in favor of a
particular form of production, and the community has no
assurance that the competition between the processes will
lead to the survival of the fittest. " Whole branches of
manufacture," to use the weighty words of the Poor Law
Commission of 1834, "may thus follow the course, not of
coal mines or streams, but of pauperism : may flourish
like the fungi that spring from corruption, in consequence of
the abuses which are ruining all the other interests of the
place in which they are established, and cease to exist in
the better administered districts in consequence of that better
administration." * From the point of view of the com-
munity, therefore, it is vital that, however low may be the
standard of skill and strength required by the new process,
there should be maintained such a level of wages as will, at
any rate, fully sustain the new operatives at that standard.

1 First Report of Poor Law Commissioners, 1834, p. 65 of reprint of 1884
(H. C. 347).

New Processes and Machinery 427

From the point of view of the workers at the old process, it
is clearly of the utmost consequence that the new process
should get no false stimulus by such a " bounty " as we have
described.

This argument, to which we shall recur in our chapter
on " The Economic Characteristics of Trade Unionism," is
only slowly penetrating into the minds of the mule-spinners.
Unlike the Amalgamated Society of Cordwainers, the Amal-
gamated Association of Operative Cotton-spinners took no
trouble to organise their new competitors, the women ring-
spinners, to whom the employers were allowed to pay as
little as they pleased. After fifteen years' experience, how-
ever, this idea is beginning to dawn on the officials of the
Cotton-spinners' Union, though no positive action can yet
be recorded.1 But it has never yet occurred to the old-
fashioned close corporation of hand papermakers that they
are in any way called upon, in their own interest, to assist
the comparatively unskilled operatives in the machine paper-
mills of the North of England to secure a proper Standard
Rate. And the Amalgamated Society of Tailors never
dreams of taking steps to organise the ill-paid women of
the clothing factories.

We see, then, that where skilled labor is replaced by
unskilled, the paramount importance of maintaining the
Standard of Life warns off the handworker, both from any
claim to work the new process and from any attempt to
compete in cheapness with machine work. The hand
bootmakers, the hand papermakers, and the cotton mule-

1 Thus, in May 1896, we find the following warning note in the organ of the
Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton-spinners. In the ring-frame
spinning, "employers and their agents have practically had the whole field to
themselves in the matter of fixing prices and wages, as they have had no oppo-
sition from Trade Unions and their officials, and under the circumstances they have
taken great care to pay little enough for the labor of the operatives who are
employed on the frames. . . . The rapid increase of this class of spinning is
preventing the extension of mule-spinning, and so damaging the future prospects
of the little piecers of to-day. The Spinners' Union have made a mistake in not
paying attention to getting ring-spinners as members of their association, and
framing a list of wages to govern this class of labor." — Cotton Factory 2'imes,
1 5th May 1896.

428 Trade Union Function

spinners have, in their several ways, discovered another
policy, viz. : rigorously to enforce the old high rate of pay
for the old work, frankly to abandon to the machine any
part of the trade within its scope, and more and more to
concentrate attention on maintaining and differentiating the
peculiar qualities of their own special article. But this
enlightened self-interest requires, from the economic stand-
point, to be supplemented by a consideration of the claims
of other classes of operatives. The Trade Unionist is begin-
ning to recognise that he has a deep interest in maintaining
the Standard Rates of other sections of workers. The logical
outcome of Trade Union experience in all these difficult
cases seems, indeed, to be a minimum standard of remunera-
tion for effort, whatever the grade of labor, so that, under
no circumstances, would any section of workers find itself
reduced below the level of complete maintenance.1 Whenever
an employer seeks to substitute a lower for a higher grade
of labor, it is only by some such enforcement of a minimum
that the community can avoid the pernicious bounty to
particular occupations or processes, irrespective of their
social advantageousness, that is involved in the labor being
partially maintained from other sources than its wages.2

1 We must refer the reader for a full explanation of this difficult point of
Trade Union theory to our chapter on ' ' The Economic Characteristics of Trade
Unionism."

2 The employers' proposal that one operative should attend to two or more
machines falls economically under the head of "speeding up," rather than under
that of a change of process, and has therefore been implicitly dealt with in our
chapter on "The Standard Rate." The wage-earner's traditional resentment
of any labor-saving innovation is here mingled with his even stronger objection to
what is commonly an attempt to evade the Standard Rate, by exacting more
bodily exertion or mental strain for the same money. Thus the Carmen, paid by
time, at a rate for which they are accustomed to mind one horse and cart,
strongly protest against one man being required to attend simultaneously to two
vehicles. The same feeling influences pieceworkers unless they are sufficiently
protected by a Standard List to have confidence that the increase in the day's
task and earnings will not be followed by a reduction of rates. The women
cotton- weavers of Glasgow, who are practically unorganised, and whose piecework
rates, unprotected by any effective list, are always going down to subsistence
level, stubbornly refuse to work more than one loom each. The cotton-weavers
of Lancashire, on the other hand, whether men or women, relying confidently on
their strong Trade Union and their Standard Lists, willingly work as many

New Processes and Machinery 429

looms — two, four, and even six — as they can manage (see " The Alleged Difference
between the Wages of Men and Women," by Sidney Webb, Economic Journal ',
December 1891). The employers' attempt to induce engineers to attend to
more than one lathe or other machine has led to much friction. In this instance
it is not clear to us what is the exact issue. If it is suggested that the engineer
should, for the weekly wage hitherto paid for one machine, in future mind two,
the case is merely one of an attempted reduction of the Standard Rate, which the
men naturally resist. We are unable to gather whether the employers have
made it plain that they propose to increase the time wages — say to time and a
half — when two machines are minded, or whether they are prepared to establish
and bind themselves to adhere to a Standard List of piecework rates, which
would automatically secure to the operative an increase in earnings proportionate
to the increase in strain. If either of these courses were adopted, we see no
reason why the engineers should not, like the cotton-weavers, willingly mind as
many machines as they can without undue strain. If the employers claim the
right to assign an operative to as many machines as seems fit to them, without
arranging special rates with the Trade Union officials, this is simply a denial of
the elementary right of Collective Bargaining, and will be fought as such.

CHAPTER IX

CONTINUITY OF EMPLOYMENT

THE Trade Union Regulations which we have described in
the foregoing chapters have dealt exclusively with the main-
tenance and improvement of the conditions of employment :
they have left untouched the problem of unemployment. A
Standard Rate, a Normal Day, and safe and healthy con-
ditions of work are of no avail if there is no work to be got.
"We are willing to admit," said the Engineers of 1851, and
the Cloggers of 1872, "that whilst in constant employment
our members may be able to obtain the necessaries of life.
Notwithstanding all this, there is always a fear prominent
in the mind of him who thinks of the future that it may
not continue ; that to-morrow may see him out of employ-
ment, his nicely -arranged matters for domestic comfort
overthrown, and his hopes of being able, in a few years, by
constant attention and frugality to occupy a more permanent
position, proved only to be a dream. How much is contained
in that word ' continuance,' and how necessary to make it a
leading principle of our society ! " l " In a fluctuating trade,"
say the Tailors, " many who depend for the necessaries of
life on their daily toil are often deprived of employment in
the most inclement season. They wander through the

1 Preface to Rules and Regulations of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers
(London, 1851), and also to Rules of the Rochdale Operative doggers'1 Society
(Rochdale, 1872). The same sentence occurs, with verbal variations, in other
Trade Union rules. (The doggers make the "clogs," or wooden shoes, com-
monly worn in the streets by the Lancashire operatives.)

Contin uity of Employment 4 3 1

country from city to town, and from town to village, in
search of employment, but, alas, in vain. This continues
until, upon the mind of an honest man, the thought rests
like an incubus, When and how shall I relieve myself of this
degradation ? " *

We touch here the " dead point " in our analysis of
Trade Union Regulations. In spite of the vital importance
of the question to men dependent on weekly wages for their
whole livelihood, no Trade Union has hitherto devised a
regulation which secures continuity of livelihood as a con-
dition of employment.

At first sight it would seem as if the best way to obtain
Continuity of Employment would be to require the employer,
as a condition of getting the workman's service at all, to
enter into a contract of hiring for a specified long term.
This is not the course which the Trade Unionists have
followed. Engagements for long terms were once common
in many trades, and farm-servants in some parts of the
country are still engaged for the year. But the mobility
and vicissitudes which characterise modern industry are
hostile to such permanence, and employers have come to
prefer the shortest possible engagements, often insisting on
freedom to discharge their operatives at a few hours' notice.
This tendency, far from being resisted by the Trade Unions,
has invariably been encouraged by them. The Coalminers
of Northumberland and Durham fought hard to get rid of
their "yearly bond"; the Staffordshire Potters in 1866
enthusiastically threw off the " annual hiring " ; the " monthly
pays," once common in all occupations, have been replaced
by weekly, or at most, fortnightly settlements ; and many
Trade Unions have, at one time or another, expressly pro-
hibited their members from entering into longer engagements,
a prohibition now generally omitted as the practice has
become obsolete.2

1 Preamble to Rules of the Amalgamated Society of Tailors (Manchester,
1893).

* Thus the Scottish Ironmoulders' Society has, since 1838, forbidden engage-

43 2 Trade Union Function

This policy needs no explanation for any one who under-
stands the Trade Union position. The " yearly bond " or
annual hiring always meant, in practice, the conclusion of
a separate agreement between the employer and each indi-
vidual workman, and especially when the various terms of
service did not expire on a uniform date, was incompatible
with Collective Bargaining. Moreover, once the agreement
was entered into, the wage-earner found himself, at any rate
for the specified term of notice, practically at the mercy
of the employer's interpretation of the conditions. The
wage contract seldom contains express stipulations with
regard to any other points than the amount of remuneration,
and perhaps the hours of labor, and it is always implied
that the wage-earner binds himself to obey all lawful and
reasonable commands of his " master." It is in the wage-
earner's power to throw up his job when he likes that his
status differs most essentially from that of a slave, and if he
foregoes this power, and binds himself for a long term to
put up with practically whatever conditions, outside those
expressly stipulated for, the employer may choose to impose,
it is obvious that the Trade Union loses all power of protect-
ing him against economic oppression.1 The briefest possible
term of service, terminable at a day or a week's notice on
either side, has accordingly come to be preferred, for different
reasons, by both employers and Trade Unionists.2 This

ments longer than "from pay to pay," the rule now in force (1892) providing
"that no member of this association shall enter into any engagement, either
directly or indirectly, for any given time longer than from pay to pay, unless
specially authorised by Executive." The United Kingdom Society of Coach-
makers, whose rule on the subject dates from 1840, now ordains (1896 edition)
that "no member be allowed to article himself under penalty of expulsion."
The Tinplate Workers of Glasgow had a rule in 1860 that no member should so
engage himself as to prevent his leaving his employer with two weeks' notice ;
the Liverpool Painters said one week. — Report on Trade Societies and Strikes^
by the Social Science Association (London, 1860), pp. 133, 297.

1 We recur to this aspect of the wage contract in our chapter on " The Higgling
of the Market."

2 It was a special aggravation of the "yearly bond" among the Coalminers
that, whilst the workman bound himself for a whole year to hew coal whenever
required by a particular employer, that employer did not guarantee to find
him continuous employment, and could lay the pit idle whenever he chose

Continuity of Employment 433

does not mean, as regards the great majority of industries,
that the employers are incessantly changing their workmen,
or workmen their employers. Wherever costly and intricate
machinery is used, and wherever the processes of different
workmen are dovetailed one into the other, it pays the em-
ployer to retain, even at some sacrifice, the services of the
same body of men, accustomed to his business and to each
other. In these trades accordingly, a well-conducted work-
man may rely on retaining his employment so long as his
employer has work to be done.

In other industries this absence of any permanent engage-
ment between master and man leaves the employer free to
get his work done to-day by one set of workers, and to-
morrow by quite another set. Whenever work is " given
out " to be done in the workers' own homes, the employer
can dole out the jobs as he chooses, sometimes to one
family, sometimes to another. A wholesale clothing con-
tractor in East London has thus hundreds of different
families looking to him for work, amongst whom his fore-
man will, each week, arbitrarily apportion his orders. The
London Dock Companies maintain what is essentially the
same system with regard to their casual labor, the fore-
man, at certain periods of the day, selecting fresh gangs of
men from among the crowd of applicants at the dock gates.
Both outworkers and dockers are nominally free to seek
work elsewhere, when not engaged by their usual employer.
But as they are expected, under pain of being struck off the
list, to present themselves to ask for work at certain hours,
they practically lose any real chance of obtaining other
employment.1 This extreme discontinuity of employment

(R. Fynes, The Miners of Northumberland and Durham, Blyth, 1873). A similar
one-sidedness is found in other old contracts of hiring. The chief examples of
genuinely bilateral agreements for long terms relate to indoor servants, seamen,
and mechanics sent on jobs abroad.

1 "The Docks," by Beatrice Potter (Mrs. Sidney Webb), in Charles Booth's
Life and Labor of the People (London, 1889), vol. i. of first edition; and
H. Llewellyn Smith and Vaughan Nash, The Story of the Docker? Strike
(London, 1889). This system of engaging casual labor by the hour still prevails
in the London docks, but it has, since 1890, been modified by an increase in the
VOL. I 2 F

434 Trade Union Function

is not confined to unskilled laborers or low - paid home
workers. In many skilled handicrafts, where the work is
done individually and by the piece, the operative is required
to remain in the employer's workshop, or at his beck and
call, without being guaranteed either work or pay. " There
are firms," reported to the Royal Commission on Labor
the representative of the Sheffield trades, " which require
their workpeople to present themselves to the managers to
receive work at certain times during the day. When they
have entered the place in the morning the gates are closed,
and whether they have work or not they cannot leave the
premises till noon, except by special permit from the firm,
and so from noon to evening. ... I know of a case in the
steel trade where the men were expected to be in the firm
from 9 A.M. to 6 P.M., if they had but five shillings' worth of
work during the week. The men struck against it." l The
Macclesfield Silk -weavers are in an even worse position.
The employers " give out " work to be done in the weavers'
own homes, and distribute it so irregularly that a workman
may be kept idle for days or even weeks. Nevertheless, as
the handloom belongs to the employer, the operative has to
pay loom-rent for it week by week with absolute continuity,
whether any work has been given to him or not, and he is
forbidden by the owner of the loom to use it for any other
manufacturer who might offer work.

To capitalists concerned only for present profit, this
extreme discontinuity of employment offers several ad-
number of men who are given preferences for employment. The dockers
now divided into three registered classes (permanent men, A list, and 13 list, e
man being numbered in his own class), and one unregistered class (C or casuals).
No guarantee of employment is given to any man, but each day's work is allotted,
as far as it will go, strictly according to the order of the classes and the numeric
order of the men in each class. Thus, the regularity of employment of tl
preference men has been increased at the expense of making the work of tl
casual docker less continuous than before. In so far as the change is a stej
towards the total abolition of the casual system, it must be regarded as
improvement. — See Charles Booth, Life and Labor of the People, vol. vii.
(London, 1896); and the chapter on " Les Unions de Dockers" in Le Trac
Unionism en Angleferre, edited by Paul de Rousiers (Paris, 1897).

1 Evidence of C. Hobson, Q. 19,029, before Royal Commission on Labor
(Group A), 24th March 1892.

Continuity of Employment 435

vantages. Where the industry is seasonal or otherwise
irregular in volume, as in the case of dock labor and the
clothing trade, the employer is able, without expense to
himself, to expand or contract his working staff in exact
proportion to the state of the weather or change of tides or
seasons. The giver-out of work can at any moment quad-
ruple his production to fulfil a pressing order, and then drop
back to the current demands of a slack season, without
incurring factory-rent or other standing charges. The army
of men and women standing at his beck and call cost him
nothing except for the actual hours that they are at work.
And the very existence of such a " reserve army " places
each member of it more completely at his mercy with regard
to all the conditions of employment. Wherever this " reserve
army " exists in conjunction with home-work, or otherwise
under circumstances making Individual Bargaining inevitable,
the employer can practically dictate terms. How disas-
trously the whole arrangement operates for the workers con-
cerned has been described by every observer of the sweated
trades.

To oppose such a disastrous irregularity of work is a
fundamental principle of Trade Unionism. Unfortunately,
where the system prevails, the workers are seldom in a
position to combine for their own protection. We see a
feeble attempt to cope with the evil in the regulation of
the Dock, Wharf, and Riverside Laborers' Union, that any
man taken on in the London docks shall be guaranteed at
least four hours' continuous work. Certain classes of rail-
way servants complain that, whilst they are forbidden by the
railway company to take any other employment, they are
given only casual and intermittent work, and paid only by
the job. To remedy this grievance the General Railway
Workers' Union is proposing that it should be enacted by
law that every person who is required "to give the whole of
his time to the service of the company shall, unless legally
dismissed from such service, before his employment is termi-
nated, be entitled to a week's notice, or a week's wages in lieu

43 ^ Trade Union Function

of notice, and he shall be entitled to full weekly wages
while in such employment." ] But examples of Trade Union
policy on this point must be sought in the more strongly
organised trades in which, though so dangerous a discon-
tinuity does not actually exist, there is some danger that
it might, if not resisted, insidiously creep in. Thus, the
highly-paid compositors in London daily newspaper offices
who must stand by waiting for copy to come in, and then
work at lightning speed to catch the press, insist on all
the men in attendance being guaranteed " a galley and
a half" — that is, being paid 53. gd. on a morning paper,
or 55. 4 |-d. on an evening paper — whether they are actu-
ally required to do as much work or not.2 The old-
fashioned union of hand-working Papermakers goes farther,
and rigidly enforces the Regulation known as the " Six
Days' Custom," which ensures that not less than six days'
work, or the equivalent payment, shall be found each week
for all the men employed. If an accident occurs, or an
engine breaks down, the employer no more thinks of
depriving his workmen of their livelihood during the stoppage
than he does that of his clerks or manager. He can dis-
charge his men by giving them the customary fortnight's
notice, or by paying them the customary forfeit of one
guinea, but so long as he retains their services he must pay
them at least the agreed minimum of weekly wages.3

1 General Secretary's Report to Annual General Meeting 1897.

2 The minimum used to be "one galley"; then the rule ran, in mystic
phrase, "one galley four hours' work, and extra pay for more than a quarter
galley an hour when asked to pull out." We are indebted to Mr. C. Drummond
for the following explanation. The newspaper compositors, being paid by the
piece, and guaranteed a minimum of work, can do it at their own speed. But in
order that the "printer" (i.e. manager of the department) may have some control
over the time taken, it is agreed that the maximum within which one galley must
be completed is four hours, though the compositor will, for his own sake, seldom
take so long. It happens very occasionally, when the " printer " is compelled to
insist on the utmost possible speed, that he will order the men to "pull out," i.e.
use every effort. Men working under such an order are entitled to extra pay
for all over a quarter of a galley done in an hour.

3 " That the Six Days' Custom be as follows : Twenty-two post per day and
ten on Saturday" (Rules and Regulations of the Original Society of Papermakers >
Maidstone, 1887), Rule 28. The French paper-makers in the eighteenth century

Continuity of Employment 437

Similarly, the Flint Glass Makers have a binding custom by
which the employer is required to find his men a minimum
of " eleven moves a week," being thirty-three hours' work, or
pay a corresponding amount in wages.1

In other trades where work is irregular, the Trade
Union objection to its being arbitrarily distributed by the
employer — leading, as this does, to the extreme dependence
of the wage-earner — has led to regulations for "sharing
work." If the workmen know that, however scanty may be
the work to be done, it will be fairly distributed among them
all, there is much less temptation for the poorer or more
grasping members to seek to secure themselves by offering
to accept worse conditions of employment.2

The most primitive form of sharing work is seen in the
' turnway " societies of the Thames watermen, for regulating
the " turns," or order in which the men plying at any
particular " stairs " serve the passengers who present them-
selves.3 What is essentially the same arrangement is
presented by the " House of Call " system, under which,
among the Tailors, Compositors, Bakers, Upholsterers, and
sometimes Joiners and Painters, the employer wanting a

required six weeks' notice on either side. — Du Cellier, Histoire des Classes
Laborieuses en France (Paris, 1860), p. 292.

1 This custom is recognised in the trade, and is enforced by County Court
judges, if the wage contract includes no express stipulation to the contrary. See
the cases reported in the Flint Glass Maker? Magazine, August 1874 and March
1875* m the Birmingham and Rotherham County Courts.

2 The growth of the great industry and the world commerce led to a similar
development in French Trade Unionism. Du Cellier (Histoire des Classes
Laborieuses en France, p. 385) notes that, after 1830, the workmen's associations
were occupied in devising means to mitigate the evils of unemployment. Where
the work was individual in character, the employer was obliged to give the jobs
in succession to the several workmen in their order on the roll. "Where the work
was done in concert, it was shared equally by the whole staff, instead of the
number being reduced.

3 These "turnway societies," incidentally described in Mayhew's London
Labour and the London Poor (London, 1851), are probably of great antiquity.
There were societies of watermen at Rotherhithe in 1789, and of those "usually
plying at the Hermitage Stairs" in 1799, whilst already in 1669 we read that
"our Gravesend watermen, by some temporary and mean pretences of the late
Dutch war, have raised their ferry double to what it was, and finding the sweet
thereof, keep it up still " (Thomas Manley's Usury at Six per Cent Examined,
London, 1669). See the History of Trade Unionism, pp. ir, 20.

43 8 Trade Union Function

workman is encouraged or required to send to a place of
resort for the unemployed, and the man who has been longest
on the list is, if suitable, deputed to fill the vacancy.1 This
arrangement, which is in some trades worked for the mutual
convenience of both parties, may degenerate into a refusal
to the employer of any power of selection. Thus the Flint
Glass Makers insist on the employer taking the member who
has been the longest out of work,2 whether he is competent,
or suitable, or not ; and the Silk Hatters expressly arrange
so that the employer may not even see the man assigned to
him, before he is engaged.3 This is, in effect, to maintain
a craft monopoly, having all the economic characteristics of

1 The Compositors at London, Glasgow, Manchester, etc., use the Trade
Union Office for this purpose ; and the Engineers at Manchester keep a "vacant
book " in their local office. Most of the smaller trades use particular public-
houses as their " House of Call," the publican often himself keeping the register
of the unemployed. For incidental descriptions of the " House of Call" system,
see The Tailoring Trade, by F. W. Gallon.

In France the practice of sharing employment was carried so far in some
of the incorporated handicrafts that the member who had been longest in
continuous work ceded his place in favor of any who had remained a certain
time unemployed. — Du Cellier, Histoire des Classes Laborieuses en France, p. 289.

2 Rules and Regulations of the National Flint Glass Makers Sick and Friendly
Society (Manchester, 1891). Rule X. is as follows: "When a man falls out
of employment the F[actory] Secretary] shall inform the District] Secretary]
who shall at once write to the C[entral] Secretary] for an unemployed certificate ;
and when a man is applied for by an employer the F.S. shall apply to the
D.S., and should there be no one suitable in the district, he shall write to
the C.S. stating what kind of man is wanted, wages, etc., so that there be no
mistake as to the man sent to fill the situation. When an employer applies for
men the unemployed roll shall be consulted before any promotions be granted
either to journeymen or apprentices. Note. — Rule X. is not intended to compel
a master to engage any man to whom he has a reasonable objection, the same
to be considered by the District Committee." The Flint Glass Makers* Magazine
contains many references to employers' complaints of this procedure.

3 The Silk Hatters' custom is so universal that it is only incidentally referred
to in the rules. As explained to us by officers of the union it is as follows :
" Employers are not allowed to choose, or even to see, workmen whom they
engage. A member out of work calls at a hatter's workshop, and sends in a
small card (the 'asking ticket'), showing that he is a financial member (i.e. not
in arrear with his contribution), and what branch of work he does. The
journeymen in each workshop take it in turns to attend to such cards. On its
being sent in, the man whose turn it is goes in to the employer and asks, ' Do you
want a bodymaker ? ' (or a shaper, as the case may be). This is called ' asking
for' the unemployed member. If the employer says 'yes,' the man is told to
come in and commence. If ' no,' his card is returned, and he goes off to the
next shop."

Continuity of Employment 439

a drastic restriction of numbers, with which it is invariably
combined.1

Any such restriction on the employer's freedom of choice
between one workman and another is, however, quite
exceptional. More generally, the Trade Union seeks to
promote the sharing of work by regulations directed against
the greed or selfishness of its own members. Thus the Ship-
wrights' Provident Union of the Port of London retains to the
present day the substance of its original rule of 1824 that " no
member shall engross a greater quantity of work than he can
accomplish by working the regular hours of the trade, viz.
not before or after the recognised working hours per day
throughout the year ; and that no work be performed inside
after the men on the outside of the ship have left work, so
that every opportunity may be given to those who are out
of employ." 2 The same intention inspires the regulations
in many handwork trades against " smooting " or " foxing "
or " grassing," that is, working for a second employer after
putting in a full day elsewhere. Thus the Manchester
Union of Saddlers provides that " no member of this union
shall be allowed habitually to work for any other employer
than the one by whom he is regularly employed, except
there are none out of work in the branch. And no member
shall be allowed to obtain any work at this trade whilst in a
situation, to do after his working hours for any person except
his own employer." 3 And the Wool Shear Benders and
Grinders, a tiny Sheffield handicraft, absolutely prohibit
their members from working in any other wheel or factory
than the one in which they are regularly employed.4 An

1 We recur to this subject in our chapter on " The Economic Characteristics of
Trade Unionism."

2 Rules of the Shipwrights' Provident Union of the Port of London ; see
ihe original wording in a note to the chapter on "The Normal Day."

3 Rules of the Union of the Saddler S, Harness Makers, etc. (Manchester, 1889).
Similar rules exist in many other trades, such as the Compositors, Brushmakers,
Coachmakers, etc.

4 The Yorkshire Glass Bottle Makers' Society lias a signed agreement with all
the employers, which is renewed annually. Among other matters, it provides that
"in the event of any furnace being out for repairs, slack trade, or stopped for

440 Trade Union Function

extreme case is presented by the Scythe Grinders' Trade
Protection Society, which arranges for its members a definite
year's engagement, in all cases terminating on the 6th of July
(Old Midsummer Day), by which it is understood that no
man is ever discharged during the year for slackness of trade,
the ebbs and flows of the work of each establishment being
shared among the staff with which it started the year. But
these are archaic survivals. In the great modern unions
any desire to promote the sharing of work by regulations of
this type is merged in the general objection to Overtime,
and the maintenance of the Normal Day.

The common Trade Union desire to maintain the Normal
Day, especially in its manifestations against Overtime and in
favor of a Reduction of the Hours of Labor, has at all times
been strengthened by the belief that a strict regulation of the
working time would incidentally cause employment to be
more continuous. Thus, the Amalgamated Association of
Operative Cotton-spinners, in supporting Lord Shaftesbury's
u Ten Hours' Bill," gave as one of their objects, " a more
equitable adjustment or distribution of labor, by means of
shortening the hours of labor."1 And when, in 1872, there
was a new movement for reducing the Normal Day, the
same idea recurs in the argument that this would " secure

any other cause, the workmen shall, as far as practicable, share the work ; provided,
nevertheless, that if after a furnace has been out for four months, and there is no
probability of its being started again, the master to be at liberty to discharge the
surplus workmen."

1 Circular of iQth January 1845, in Minute Book. Fifteen years later the
Cotton-spinners thus referred to their successful agitation : "It should always
be remembered that anterior to the introduction of factory legislation, the em-
ployers dictated the hours of labor to their workpeople ; and in the various
localities those hours varied accordingly, ranging from seventy-four hours and
upwards. As, however, in some instances the mills were kept running night
and day, we shall certainly be under the mark in assuming that the average
hours worked at that time, throughout the country, were 75 per cent per week.
It is obvious that sixty people working seventy-five hours per week would produce
nearly as much as seventy-five now do working sixty hours, and thus from 20 to 25
per cent of the factory population would be thrown destitute upon the streets. It
is equally clear, moreover, that it is the scarcity or redundance of labor in the
market which regulates the rate of wages ; and, as under the circumstances we
have named, some of the workpeople would be almost worked to death, while
those thrown out would be reduced to a state bordering on starvation from the

Continuity of Employment 441

them moderate but constant employment."1 In so far as
this means only that a reduction of the hours of those in
employment would, other things being equal, cause the work
to be shared among a larger number of operatives, and so
prevent some from being wholly unemployed, the case is,
like that of the Shipwrights whose rule we have quoted,
merely one of sharing work. As unemployed men have to
be maintained somehow, generally by their fellow-members,
it may well be more convenient to the whole body that the
largest possible number should be employed for the normal
hours, than that some should be working abnormally long
days, and others walking the streets in search of a job. In
times of general depression of trade, or of temporary contrac-
tion of demand for a particular industry, such an arrange-
ment seems to the Trade Unionist obviously reasonable.
The employer, on the other hand, more than usually eager
in bad times to reduce the cost of production, would prefer
to lengthen the hours of labor, so as (at time wages) to get
more work for the same weekly wage, or (at piece rates) to
get a larger output in proportion to his standing charges.
Hence we arrive at the paradox that it is generally in times
of depression, when the world requires less carpentering or
engineering work to be done, that attempts are made to
lengthen the Normal Day of those carpenters and engineers
who are in employment at all, with the result that the
number out of employment is unnecessarily increased. In
1879, f°r instance, at a time of exceptional contraction of

want of it, the wages of labor would, as a matter of course, from the intense
competition to obtain employment, come down to starvation point ; and all our
efforts, whether exerted singly or in concert, would be utterly powerless to arrest
their downward course. It is clearly then the duty and interest of every worker
in the factories of this country to resist, by every legitimate means in his power,
not only any attempt to violate the law by overworking women, young persons,
and children, but to treat with contempt all overtures by which it is sought to
induce him to work more than sixty hours per week, inasmuch as this righteous
law is the palladium of his success in his endeavour to improve his social con-
dition."— Rules of the Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton-spinners,
edition of 1860, preface.

1 Circular of 7th January 1872, ibid. See, for other examples, The Eight
Hoiin,' Day, by Sidney Webb and Harold Cox (London, 1891).

44 2 Trade Union Function

business, the Clyde shipbuilders insisted on increasing the
working hours from fifty-one to fifty-four per week, and the
Manchester builders added from two to three hours to the
working week.1 It is in face of attempts of this sort that
the Trade Union Regulations for maintaining the Normal
Day seem incidentally to protect the workers from an
unnecessary discontinuity of employment.

The reader will see on closer examination that these
Regulations, though apparently directed towards Continuity
of Employment, are in reality designed primarily to prevent
the evils of Individual Bargaining, and to save the workmen,
especially in bad times, from falling into personal dependence
on the employer or his foreman. Thus the Trade Union
objection to the conditions of employment being fixed in
advance for long periods completely disappears, as we may
learn from the little example of the Scythe-grinders, when
this fixing takes place by the Method of Collective Bargaining.
The " Working Rules," for which all sections of the building
trade persistently struggle, habitually determine the rates of
wages, hours of labor, and many other conditions for an
indefinitely long period, from which neither employers nor
workmen can depart without giving six months' notice. The
Miners' Federation in 1893 willingly bound themselves to
continue to accept the then existing rates of wages for a
year, in return for a corresponding pledge from the associated
employers not to seek a reduction during that period. In
like manner, the Trade Union objection to the doling out of
work in slack seasons ceases when this distribution is made
in accordance with any such collective arrangement among
the operatives themselves as those that we have just de-
scribed.2 None of these regulations secures^ or even attempts

1 History of Trade Unionism, pp. 332-334.

2 The workers may even resort to the primitive expedient of casting lots ;
thus the Rules and Regulations of the Warpers' True Benevolent Sick and Burial
Society (Rochdale, 1884) prescribe "that when a mill stops working where our
members are employed, and it is obvious that such stoppage will be for some
time, when all the men are finishing their work within two days, they shall cast
lots whose name shall be first on the list."

Continuity of Employment 443

to secure, to the workmen a full week's work or a full week's
wage for every week in the year. They have little real bear-
ing on Continuity of Employment and are, in substance,
only incidents of the Method of Collective Bargaining, re-
quired to maintain the Standard Rate and the Normal Day.

There are, in fact, no Trade Union Regulations placing
upon the employer the obligation of providing continuous
employment for the wage -earners whom he chooses to
engage. Wisely or unwisely the Trade Unions have tacitly
accepted the position that the capitalist can only be ex-
pected to find them wages so long as he can find them
work. Continuity of employment becomes, therefore, con-
tingent upon continuity of the consumer's demand, or more
precisely, upon an exact adjustment of Supply and Demand.
Both employers and workmen wish this adjustment made and
continuity secured. But capitalists and manual workers have,
with a few exceptions on both sides, advocated diametrically
opposite ways of obtaining it. When business becomes slack
and sales fall off, the employer's first instinct is to tempt
customers by lowering prices. He assumes that, whatever
may be the cause of the depression, he can still get orders, and
so keep his mills going full time, if only he is enabled to quote
a sufficiently low price for his product. For this reduction
he looks mainly to the rate of wages. The landlord insists
on his fixed rent or royalty, and the mortgagee or debenture
holder on his fixed interest. It would be fatal to economise
on buildings, machinery, or plant, which must either be kept
up to their highest efficiency or replaced earlier than need
be at serious cost to himself. It is not worth while, and it
is contrary to the brainworker's tradition, to nibble at the
salaries of managers or clerks. The conclusion seems
inevitable. The alternative to stopping altogether is, whilst
the employer temporarily foregoes some of his profits, the
workman shall forego some of his wages.

The Trade Unionists entirely dissent from this policy.1

1 Thus, the factory bootmakers, in a time of great depression of trade,
emphatically protested against the employers' policy "When in consequence

444 Trade Union Function

They point out that, to them, it is not a question of tem-
porarily diminishing surplus profits ; what is at stake is their
weekly livelihood, the actual housekeeping of their families
and themselves. To the vast majority of workmen, a ten
per cent reduction of wages means an actual diminution of
food and warmth, an actual privation in the way of clothing
and house-accommodation, which they declare to be physi-
cally exhausting and detrimental to their industrial efficiency.
No manufacturer would think it wise to let his buildings and
machinery fall into disrepair, or to reduce the ration and
stable accommodation of his horses ; why, asks the Trade
Unionist, should he adopt this suicidal policy with regard to
the most important factors of his productive efficiency, — the
human laborers whom he employs ? 1 If the employer, under
the pressure of competition in slack times, tempts the con-
sumer to buy his particular commodity by indefinitely
worsening the conditions of employment, he is, in thus
deteriorating the physique and character of successive relays
of workers, giving away what does not belong to him, the
capital value of the human beings in his service.

It is a further aggravation to the Trade Unionist that
he believes the sacrifice demanded of him by the employer
to be worse than useless. Merely to offer commodities at a
lower price in no way increases the world's aggregate demand

of the reckless unscrupulous competition among capitalists we find our com-
merce becoming less day by day, banks stopping payment, firms which had
become bywords in the past for their supposed stability found to be in a state of
hopeless insolvency, we protest against that doctrine which would find a panacea
for these evils in a general reduction of the wages of the workers or an increase
in their hours of labor." — Monthly Report of the National Union of Boot and
Shoe Operatives (December 1879).

1 The acceptance by employers of contracts at prices which cannot possibly
be made to pay at the existing rates of wages is a subject of constant complaint.
The preface to the Bylaws, Order of Business, and Rules of Order of the Window -
Glass Workers of England (Sunderland, 1886) declares, "Whilst admitting that
sometimes pressure is brought to bear on the capitalists or employers, [that]
in too many instances, instead of offering any resistance, they accept terms that
are disadvantageous to themselves, trusting to their power of remunerating
themselves by legally pilfering a portion off each of their workers' weekly
earnings ; and there is no limit to the extremes to which labor can be pushed,
unless it be that fixed by the Poor-Law authorities and the price paid for their
test labor."

Continuity of Employment 445

for commodities. It may suit the immediate purposes of a
single employer, by undercutting his rivals, to engross their
trade. It might conceivably suit all the employers in a
particular trade, by cheapening their wares, to engross more
of the aggregate demand for commodities than would other-
wise come their way.1 But in either case the total demand
remains the same, being, in fact, identical with the total
product, and all that has happened is a gain in continuity
in one direction, balanced by an equivalent loss somewhere
else Thus, the Trade Unionist declares a lowering of price
to be no real cure for a general depression of trade. When
such a policy is adopted all round, the aggregate income of
the producers is no greater than it would have been if they
had kept up their rates and done less work. The only
result is that the workers have to do more work for the same
money, and though the wage-earners share, as consumers, in
the benefit of the lowered prices, the fact that they only
consume a third of the product makes the operation a net
loss to their class.2 If it is retorted that one country may,
by a judicious cheapening of its products, engross more than
its normal share of the diminished trade of the world, and
so keep its own wage -earners employed at the cost of

1 It must not be forgotten that a fall in the wages of any particular section of
workers would, at best, produce a much less than proportionate fall in the retail
price of their product. Thus, when the Northumberland coal hewers are urged
to submit to a ten per cent reduction, in order to stimulate the demand for their
coal, they may well reply that, receiving as they do on an average about I5d. per
ton of coal hewn, this ten per cent reduction of wages, which would mean a
serious shrinking of their family incomes, could not possibly result in lowering the
price to the London consumer to a greater degree than from 245. to 235. io£d.
per ton, or by about a half per cent.

The actual variations of price have, in most industries, little connection with
variations of wages. " During the last twenty years the retail price of cotton
thread has varied from a penny to twopence per spool of 200 yards — that is, loo
per cent — following, more or less closely, the variations of manufacturers' prices.
All this time the wages of women workers, who constitute the great majority of
operatives in the thread mills, have scarcely varied." — Prof. W. Smart, Studies in
Economics (London, 1896), p. 259.

2 In the United Kingdom from three-fifths to two-thirds of the annual pro-
duct of commodities and services are consumed by the one-fifth of the population
above the wage-earning class ; see the reference to official statistics given in Facts
for Socialists (Fabian Tract, No. 5).

446 Trade Union Function

foreigners, the Trade Unionist has the reply that, according
to the orthodox Theory of International Trade, any such
artificial stimulus to national industry must necessarily be
as powerless to increase the total volume of the trade as
a Protective Tariff or a system of Bounties on Exports.
We shall examine the whole of this argument in our chapter
on " The Economic Characteristics of Trade Unionism." It
concerns us here only as explaining the persistent Trade
Union policy of fighting their hardest against any lowering
of wages, and submitting only to superior force.1

But certain sections of the Trade Union world do not
stop at this negative attitude. They have propounded, as
a means of coping with depression of trade, a diametrically
opposite policy, which they have done their best to press
their employers to adopt. The Cotton Operatives and Coal-
miners — trades which we are always having to couple
together — have repeatedly met their employers' demands for
reduction of wages by an equally confident demand for a
restriction of the output. This policy dates from the very
beginning of the century. Thus, to quote an official report
of 1844, " It can scarcely be credited by one calmly investi-
gating the state of this large body of laborers, that many
thousands of them — in fact, the whole of the colliers and
miners in Lanarkshire, with a few exceptions, amounting to
1 6,000 men — have, for many years past (since the repeal of
the Combination Laws in 1825), placed themselves under
regulations as to the amount of their labor, which, had they
been attempted to be enforced by the authority of any
government whatsoever, in any country calling itself civilised,
would have roused the indignation of every thinking man, as
against an act of the most intolerable despotism. And yet

1 In our History of Trade Unionism we have described how, for a few years,
a small number of unions, mainly in the coal and iron industries, accepted the
employers' arguments, and agreed to the celebrated arrangement of the Sliding
Scale, which the Coalminers have now practically abandoned. We refer to this
method of adjusting wages in our chapter on " The Assumptions of Trade Union-
ism." Particulars of all known Sliding Scales are given in Appendix II. of the
History of Trade Unionism.

Continuity of Employment 447

these regulations were intended by the working colliers . . .
for the maintenance of wages at a fair level, for their protec-
tion against overwork, and against an overstocking of the
market of labor and the market of coal. ... A certain day's
work, called the * darg,' is fixed, which the colliers themselves
allow no one to exceed." *

The policy of regulating the output of coal in proportion
to the demand for it at the current price has always remained
a leading principle of the Coalminers. The " darg," or limit
to the day's product of the individual hewer, has at no time
extensively prevailed, and is to-day characteristic not of good
Trade Union districts, but only of the half-organised Ayrshire
and Lanarkshire pits. In England restriction of output has
taken the form only of a counter proposal, justifying the
miners' refusal to lower wages.2 When the coalowners have
pleaded their accumulating stocks of coal as a reason why
wages and prices should be lowered, in order to stimulate
demand, the miners have suggested that Supply and Demand

1 Report of Commissioner to inquire into Coalmining, No. 592 of 1844, vol.
xvii. p. 31, quoted in J. H. Burton's Political and Social Economy (Edinburgh,
1849). In one or two old piecework trades — notably some branches of the Potters
and Glass Bottle Makers — a similar limitation of individual output has prevailed
under the name of "stint" or "tantum." " In our light metal shops," wrote
the secretary of the North of England Glass Bottle Makers' Society in 1895,
" the Society has a tantum fixed, which the men are not allowed to exceed : if
they do it is paid into the Society, as a reference to the reports will show. . . .
I give you a copy of the tantum for light metal in our district as mentioned : —

Reputed Quarts . ;. . . . no dozen.

10 oz. Codd's ..... 105 ,,

5 oz. Codd's . . . -v • . 115 ,,

Imperial Pints . . . . . 115 ,,

Reputed Pints above 12 oz. . . . 115 „
Do. under 12 oz., no restriction.

All bottles made in excess of the above the money is paid into the funds of the
Society." — Report of the Rates of Wages, Lists of Numbers, etc., of the Glass
Bottle Makers of Great Britain and Ireland (Castleford, 1895), P- 49-

2 The Rules of the Miners'1 United Association of the County of Fife (Dunferm-
line, 1868) refers in the preamble to " the fearful stocks of coal which have accumu-
lated in the county, which evil stands out like a bold monster, to defy us in
having our just rights." The Articles of Regulation of the Operative Collieries
of Lanark and Dumbarton of 1825 declared "that there should never be allowed
to be any stock of coals in the hands of any of the masters." — See Huskisson's
Speeches (London, 1831), vol. ii. pp. 369, 371.

448 Trade Union Function

should be adjusted rather by diminishing the output than
by forcing coal upon unwilling buyers. In one recent
instance the Trade Union gave a practical illustration of this
policy. In March 1892 the Miners' Federation saw its
members threatened with a reduction of wages by coal-
owners unable to keep up their sales. The men resolved
to "take a week's holiday," with the result that the stocks
were temporarily diminished, and the reduction was not
insisted on.1

1 This policy of restricting the output has, under the name of " Limitation of
the Vend," long been characteristic of the coal trade. From 1771 to 1844, a
period of seventy-three years, there existed, almost continuously, a systematic
organisation among the coalowners of the Tyne and Wear for fixing price and
output. " The colliery owners met annually and agreed upon what was called
the 'basis,' that is, the proportion which each colliery should sell of the total
'vend.' They met monthly, and sometimes fortnightly, to fix what was called
the ' issue ' for the following month. There was an understanding as to the
price at which each colliery should sell. A fine of from 35. to 55. per Newcastle
chaldron was paid by those who at the end of the year had exceeded their
quantity, and this was received by those who were short ' (D. A. Thomas). The
result was that prices were greatly and continuously raised. It appears that so
long as the arrangement effected an actual restriction of the total output, it worked
satisfactorily enough to the coalowners. But eventually each coalowner strove,
by opening new pits and increasing their capacity, to increase his own "basis."
The arrangement then ceased to restrict the total output, and became only one of
"sharing work," which came to an end in 1844 by the revolt of the larger
collieries, who desired to work their pits to the full capacity. Particulars are to
be found in the Reports and Evidence of the Parliamentary Committees of 1800,
1829, 1830, and 1873 on the coal trade (G. R. Porter's Progress of the Nation,
London, pp. 283-286 of 1847 edition ; Cunningham's Growth of English Industry
and Commerce, vol. ii. p. 463 ; Some Notes on the Present State of the Coal
Trade, by D. A. Thomas, M.P., Cardiff, 1896). Mr. Thomas proposes to
institute a similar " Limitation of the Vend " for South Wales, urging that if each
colliery agreed to produce only its allotted quota of the total output, prices would
be automatically maintained, without the need of any concerted action among
the sellers as to price, and without actually limiting the total supply below the
demand for it at existing prices. This proposal seems to contain, in not
providing against a reckless increase in the number and capacity of pits, the
same inherent weakness that eventually broke up the Tyne and Wear arrangement.

The coalowners in Westphalia and Pennsylvania have gone farther. The
Rhenish Westphalian Coal Syndicate has, since 1893, conducted all sales for the
Westphalian coalowners, fixing both price and output. The Coalowners'
Association of Pennsylvania, in conjunction with the great railway companies,
has an essentially similar arrangement for the supply of anthracite. Sir George
Elliot's bold proposal (described in the Times of 2Oth September 1893) °f an
amalgamation of all the coalmines of the United Kingdom into a single company
of ;£ 1 1 0,000, ooo, subject to a government control over rises in price, may
eventually be adopted in preference to a merely capitalist trust.

Continuity of Employment 449

For twenty years a similar policy has been urged by the
Cotton Operatives at each recurring period of contraction of
trade. In the great depression of 1878, when the value of
English exports of cotton piece-goods fell no less than 17
per cent below those of 1872, the employers insisted that
only by a 10 per cent reduction could they continue their
trade. The weavers denied that any such reduction would
" remove the glut from an overstocked cloth market,"
especially in view of the fact that the quantity of piece-goods
exported was no less than before, but offered to give way,
provided that the employers would, on their side, consent
to put all the mills on short time, so as to stop the over-
production.1 Again, in the depression of 1885, the employers
pressed for a reduction, and the operatives — this time the
spinners — formally offered to "accept a reduction of 10 per
cent and four days a week ; 5 per cent and five days ; or
full rates with full time." 2 " The employers," as their able
secretary explains, " looked upon this as a fallacy, knowing
from experience that short time meant increased cost of
production." 8

We do not propose to enter into the complicated
economic arguments which are urged for and against this
policy of meeting the vicissitudes of demand by a deliberately
regulated production.4 Whatever may be said in favor of
Restriction of Output, any systematic use of this device is
out of the reach of mere associations of wage-earners. They
can, of course, temporarily stop all production by simultane-
ously refusing to work, as in a strike or in the week's holiday
arbitrarily taken by the Miners' Federation in 1892. But

1 See the Cotton- weavers' manifesto of June 1878, given in the History of
Trade Unionism, pp. 329, 330.

2 Minutes of Sub-Committee, Executive Committee, and Representative
Meeting of the Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton-spinners, June
1885.

3 Fifty Years of the Cotton Trade, by Samuel Andrew (Oldham, 1887),
p. 10.

4 The Trade Union position in the controversy of 1878 was ably maintained
by Mr. (now the Right Hon.) John Morley, in his Over Production ; an address
delivered at the Trade Union Congress, 1878 (Nottingham, 1879).

VOL. I 2 G

450 Trade Union Function

when the industrial machine is in motion, any direct limita-
tion of output is beyond the power of the Trade Union. A
strongly-organised union might insist that no member should
produce more than a given quantity per day (the Coal-
miners' " darg "), or that all the establishments in the trade
should work only a limited number of hours per week (the
Cotton Operatives' "short time"). But neither of these
expedients has, in practice, any effective result in diminishing
the total amount of production below what the employers
desire. It is always possible to employ more miners in the
pit, to work additional seams, or even to open up new pits.
The millowner puts in additional machines, and directly
prices rise owing to the rumour of restriction, old mills are
reopened and new ones erected. Any attempt on the part
of the wage -earners to limit the output of the individual
operative, though it may cause inconvenience, or increase
the expense of carrying on the industry, has, therefore, no
practical effect in restricting the total amount that will be
produced. Hence, though the English Coalminers and
Cotton Operatives remain firmly convinced that it would be
desirable for their employers to restrict production, they
have taken no steps to effect this restriction by Trade
Union Regulation.1 The Trade Unionists in short, like
the majority of English employers, have hitherto stood
helpless before the inscrutable ebb and flow of demand, and
have accepted as inevitable the corresponding fluctuations
of work.

Thwarted in their efforts to secure continuity of em-
ployment, either from the employer or from the consumer,

1 Restriction of output is, in fact, an employer's device, not a workman's, and
it is usually practised (as in the Coalowners' "Limitation of the Vend" or an
ordinary Trust) without the help of the wage-earners, though occasionally (as in
the "Alliances" of the Birmingham bedstead manufacturers hereafter described)
with the co-operation of the Trade Union. Its economic effect is incidentally
referred to in our chapter on " The Economic Characteristics of Trade Unionism."
We may say at once that, from the workman's point of view, it is of no avail
in maintaining wages unless it is accompanied by the Common Rule of the
Standard Rate, and that with such a Common Rule it is unnecessary and
useless.

Continuity of Employment 451

particular Trade Unions have turned their force in another
direction. If they cannot protect themselves against the
fluctuating demands of the capitalist and the consumer, they
can at any rate build up barriers against their fellow-work-
men. Hence, we find certain sections of the Trade Union
world of to-day clinging to the mediaeval expedients of
apprenticeship and limitation of the recruits to a trade,
the exclusion of women, and the maintenance, as against
other workmen, of a vested interest in an advantageous
means of livelihood.

It is significant that it is only at this point in our analysis
of Trade Union regulations that we find ourselves face to
face with the idea of " monopoly." The Standard Rate, the
Normal Day, and a safe and healthy place of work can be
simultaneously enjoyed by the entire wage-earning class of
the country. So far from there being any desire that these
conditions should be a privilege of any class or section, the
Trade Unionists claim that, on any of these points, a success-
ful stand made by one union renders it positively easier for
other grades of workmen to put forward similar claims.
When the contractors and master builders in any town have
been induced to agree to definite Standard Rates for all the
bricklayers, stonemasons, and carpenters in their employment,
they are predisposed to complete the arrangement by con-
ceding a Standard Rate even to the laborers. And when
the leading unions in a town press the Town Council either
itself to pay " Trade Union wages," or to compel its con-
tractors to do so, this demand is always intended to apply
equally to all classes of wage-earners. Still more is this the
case with regard to the Normal Day, which almost inevitably
tends, as we have seen, to become identical for all classes
of operatives in the same establishment. Finally, all the
regulations for securing the sanitation of the workplace and
the prevention of accidents necessarily benefit the wage-
earners without distinction of grade, merit, or sex. But in
the regulations with which we deal in the next two chapters,
based upon the idea of a vested interest in a trade, asserted

452 Trade Union Function

by one set of workmen to the exclusion of others, we have
a claim of an entirely different nature, akin to those put
forward by the holders of " free-hold offices," ecclesiastical
benefices, or Civil Service appointments, when these are
threatened with abolition or reorganisation.

CHAPTER X
THE ENTRANCE TO A TRADE

THE trade clubs of eighteenth -century handicraftsmen re-
garded the limitation of apprentices and the exclusion of
illegal men as the pivot of their Trade Unionism. Down
to 1814 the policy of regulating the entrance into a trade
could claim the sanction of law, and the workmen's organ-
isations did their utmost to prevent the repeal of the Statute
of Apprentices.1 Notwithstanding the legal opening of
every occupation, the Parliamentary committees of 1824-25
and 1838, and the Royal Commission of 1867 revealed
numerous cases in which Trade Unions sought to regulate
the entrance into their respective trades. It has accordingly
been assumed by many writers that the policy of restricting
numbers forms an integral part of Trade Unionism. In the
following pages we shall examine how far this assumption
holds true of the Trade Unionism of the present day ; we
shall estimate the number of Trade Unions that aim at
restricting the entrance into their trades ; and we shall
analyse the actual working of such regulations in order to
discover how far they succeed in effecting their object. For
the purpose of this analysis it will be convenient to classify
all rules dealing with admission to a trade under the four
heads of Apprenticeship, Limitation of Boy-Labor, Pro-
gression within the Trade, and the Exclusion of Women.

1 History of Trade Unionism, pp. 54-56.

454 Trade Union Function

(a) Apprenticeship

The Trade Union Regulations as to Apprenticeship,
unlike those for maintaining the Standard Rate, were not
invented by the Trade Unions themselves. They can scarcely
be said even to have been modified or developed, like the
workmen's policy with regard to new processes and machin-
ery, by Trade Union experience. So far as any system of
apprenticeship still lingers in the Trade Union world, this is,
in form and in purpose, practically identical with that which
prevailed long before Trade Unionism was heard of.1

The modern Trade Unionist has, in this matter of ap-
prenticeship, inherited two distinct and contradictory tradi-
tions. We have, on the one hand, the remnants of the
formal, legal, indentured apprenticeship to the master-crafts-
man, with its reciprocal obligations between the employer and
his apprentices. The master undertook to teach the boys
all the mysteries of his craft. The apprentices undertook to
serve for a long term for wages below the market rate.
As Paley tersely puts it, " instruction is their hire." 2 Round
this " apprenticeship to the employer," descended to us from
the ordinances made by the master-craftsmen's gilds, there
had grown up already in mediaeval times a whole series
of restrictive conditions, the exaction of fees or premiums,

1 With the system of apprenticeship considered as part of the organisation of
mediaeval industry, we make no attempt to deal. There has been little detailed
study either of the facts or of the economic results of this system in the United
Kingdom. Adam Smith's celebrated denunciation ( Wealth of Nations, Book I.
chap. x. part 2) has been criticised by several of his commentators, notably
by Dr. William Playfair in the edition of 1805 ; see also the latter's
pamphlet, A Letter to the . . . Lords and Commons . . . on the Advantages of
Apprenticeships (London, 1814). The subject has also been dealt with by Dr.
L. Brentano in his Arbeitergilden der Gegenwart (Leipzig, 1871), vol. ii. pp.
143-155. A pamphlet, The Origin, Objects, and Operation of the Apprentice
Laws (London, 1814), preserved in the Pamphleteer, vol. iii., gives the masters'
case for freedom. See Dr. Cunningham's Growth of English Industry and Com-
merce, vol. ii. p. 578, etc. ; and History of Trade Unionism, pp. 54-56, etc. A
recent article, " The Fair Number of Apprentices in a Trade," by C. P. Sanger,
Economic Journal, December 1895, gives useful mathematical formulae.

2 Moral and Political Philosophy, Book III. part i. chap. xi. ( "Apprentice-
ship").

The Entrance to a Trade 455

rigid limits of age, a definite long term of servitude, and a
limitation of the number of apprentices permitted to each
employer.1 These regulations, designed for the double
purpose of securing technical training and protecting the
craftsmen in their economic monopoly, have their repre-
sentatives in modern Trade Unionism. On the other hand,
we find, alongside this formal apprenticeship, the custom of
" patrimony," that is to say, a privilege enjoyed from time
immemorial, by the journeymen in certain occupations, of
bringing their own sons into the trade, and themselves
informally instructing them in the processes of the craft.
This " apprenticeship to the journeyman," hitherto unde-
scribed by historian or economist, stands in sharp contrast
to the other system. It seems never to have been regulated
by law or gild ordinance, and to have rested only on the
customs of the workshop. It was, in fact, not a rival system,
but a privileged exemption from the operation of the law.
The craftsman father could bring his son into the workshop
at what age he chose, and for what period he deemed fit.
He needed no legal indentures or formal contract. He
paid no fee or tax, and was usually subject to no supervision
from the authorities of the trade. He could sometimes
introduce all his sons in succession, or even simultaneously,
without restriction of numbers. Thus, the characteristic
idea of apprenticeship to the journeyman has little reference
to the well-being of the trade as a whole, but is essentially
that of personal privilege, based upon an hereditary vested
interest. This tradition of " patrimony," which is still

1 The "masterpiece," the production of which was a condition of admission
to journeymanship, does not seem to have been a feature of English apprentice-
ship. The " wander j ah re," or customary years of travel from town to town at
its close, were likewise unknown, as a regular custom, in this country. These
and other differences warn us, in the absence of English evidence, against assum-
ing that apprenticeship in England ran the same course, or led to the same con-
sequences as the system in France, Germany, and the Rhine Valley, as described,
for instance, in Levasseur, Histoire des Classes Ouvritres en France ; Fagniez,
Etudes sur ? Industrie et la classe industrielle a Paris ; Martin -Saint -Leon,
Histoire des Corporations de Metiers ; Schanz, Zur Geschichte der Deutschen
Gesellenverbande im Mittelallef ; or Schmoller, Die Strassburger Tucker und
Weberzunft.

456 Trade Union Function

strong in many trades, constantly affects or nullifies, by
its laxity, irregularity, and inequality, the deliberate regu-
lation and systematic uniformity aimed at by the system
of apprenticeship by legal indentures and its modern de-
rivatives.

We shall best understand the character of these two
streams of tradition by examining typical instances of
existing Trade Union Regulations in particular industries.
By far the best modern example of -an effective system of
apprenticeship to the employer is that now embodied in the
elaborate treaty concluded between the United Society of
Boilermakers and Iron -shipbuilders and nearly all the
master shipbuilders of the United Kingdom. Here we
have a formal code of rules precisely regulating the ad-
mission of apprentices in all the ports of the kingdom.
There is, to begin with, a clear distinction between the lad
engaged as a " plater's marker " or " rivet boy," who is
taught nothing, but is paid full wages, and the apprentice
who is taught the trade. When a boy is taken as an ap-
prentice, which must in any case be before he is eighteen
years of age, he enters into formal indentures or written
agreement, by which he is bound to serve for five years, at
specified low rates of wages, which are, from first to last,
far less than he could earn as a rivet boy. In return, the
employer formally contracts to give him adequate instruc-
tion as a plater and rivetter. No apprentice may leave
his employer before the expiration of the five years' term
of servitude, unless with express permission in writing, and
the Trade Union is able to enforce the most rigid boycott
of any lad who runs away from his indentures. The num-
ber of apprentices taken by any firm is not to exceed two
to every seven journeymen, the ratio being computed on
the average number employed during the past five years,
with special consideration for rapidly growing establish-
ments and other exceptional cases. Finally, the engage-
ment of apprentices is left absolutely and exclusively to the
employers, no journeyman having any right to bring his

The Entrance to a Trade 457

own son into the trade otherwise than as an employer's
apprentice.1

Here, it will be seen, we have a system of apprentice-
ship to the employers reproducing, in all essential features,
the typical educational servitude of the Middle Ages. To
become a boilermaker-apprentice the modern rivet-boy fore-
goes often half his actual earnings, and finds himself at the
age of twenty-one or twenty-two getting only ten shillings a
week. On the other hand, the employer encumbers his yard
with a raw lad, who instead of being kept to mere mechanical
routine, has to be always trying his hand at work for which
he is not yet competent. And once entered on, these reci-
procal obligations are practically binding on both parties.
The apprentice, it is true, no longer becomes a member of
the employer's family, and neither party looks to the law, "or
to any public authority, to enforce the contract. But these
elaborate regulations are much more than mere Trade Union
by-laws. A formal treaty signed, not only by a Trade
Union practically co-extensive with the industry, but also
by nine-tenths of the employers is, to all intents and pur-
poses, a coercive law. It is, in fact, practically impossible
for any youth to enter the iron-shipbuilding trade in Great
Britain except in the way prescribed by the united masters
and men.

To see in full force the other stream of tradition —
apprenticeship to the journeyman — we must turn from the
great modern industry of iron-shipbuilding to the forty or

1 Memorandum of Arrangement re the Apprentice Question between the
Employers and the Committee of the Boilermakers and Iron-shipbuilders* Society r,
nth October 1893, signed by Col. H. Dyer (of Armstrong's Works, Elswick)
as Chairman of the Employers' Committee, and Mr. R. Knight as General
Secretary, on behalf of the Trade Union. The United Society of Boilermakers
strove, at first, for a ratio of one apprentice to five journeymen, which some
employers thought insufficient to keep up the trade (see Memorandum, by Mr. J.
Inglis, of the firm of A. and J. Inglis, Glasgow ; and his Evidence before the
Royal Commission on Labor, C. 6194, iii. Group A; more fully explained by
him in The Apprentice Question, a paper printed in the Proceedings of the
Philosophical Society of Glasgow, 1894). From Mr. Inglis's latest paper and from
Mr. Sanger's article already cited, we gather that the present ratio of two to
seven is, according to the best available data, a " fair " one, providing, not only
for the maintenance, but also for a normal increase of the trade.

458 Trade Union Function

fifty ancient handicrafts composing the Sheffield cutlery
trade. Three hundred years ago apprentices in Sheffield
were formally indentured to the master craftsman, enrolled
at the Court Leet, and at the end of their prescribed term
of servitude publicly admitted to the trade. But as far back
as 1565 we find existing an exemption of craftsmen's sons
from all fees, formalities, and indentures.1 What was then
apparently an exception has to-day become practically the
only avenue to employment. Apprenticeship to the em-
ployer, now become a capitalist giver-out of work, has almost
entirely disappeared. The journeyman, who seldom works
on his employer's premises, engages his own boy assistant,
who is nowadays never formally indentured or bound for
any specified period. Hereditary succession has become
the dominant idea. " No journeyman," say the Britannia
Metal Smiths, " shall take an apprentice except such be his
own or a journeyman's son, who must be under seventeen
years of age, but he cannot have an apprentice in addition
to his own son or sons." 2 This is put more curtly by the
Razor Hafters. " That no boys be admitted to the trade
except members' sons." a

When the ordinary method of recruiting a trade is for
fathers to instruct their own sons, any collective regulation of
apprenticeship becomes practically impossible. The father
brings in his boy when he finds it convenient, teaches him
what he chooses, and pays him anything or nothing as may
be arranged between them. The enforcement of a definite
period of educational servitude becomes impracticable. More-
over, any effective limitation of the number has to be given
up. The commonly accepted ratio of apprentices to adult
workmen in modern industry is one boy to every four or
five men. But every Sheffield craftsman would feel it an
intolerable grievance not to be able to bring his own son

1 The History of Hallamshire, by Joseph Hunter (London, 1869), p. 150;
see the excellent account of the trade up to 1860 by Frank Hill, in the Social
Science Report on Trade Societies and Strikes (London, 1860), pp. 521-586.

2 Rules of the Britannia Metal Smiths'1 Provident Society (Sheffield, 1888).

3 Rules of the Razor Hafters' Trade Protection Society (Sheffield, 1892), p. 6.

The Entrance to a Trade 459

into his trade. Hence the most restrictive of the Sheffield
rules allows each workman of a certain age to have at all
times one apprentice of his own. Usually, as with the
Scythe Grinders, though the childless journeyman may teach
only one son of another member, the happy father has the
privilege of bringing all his boys up to his own craft. In
some of the Sheffield trades we find the workmen endeavor-
ing to restrict the numbers entering the craft, but the idea
of hereditary right to the trade makes these attempts take a
peculiar and futile form. The Wool Shear Grinders, the
Razor Hafters, and the Edge Tool Forgers l among others
compel the adult craftsman to wait seven years before he
brings in a boy ; the Razor Grinders add two years more,
making the minimum age thirty ; whilst other clubs fix
twenty-five or twenty-seven as the age before which " no
member shall take an apprentice." 2 In exceptional cases
some attempt is also made to get back the old idea of a
genuine period of educational servitude, and formal testing
of competency. The Britannia Metal Smiths have a rule
that " any journeyman having a son or an apprentice shall
not leave him to work to himself. If he leave him, he must
put him to some other journeyman, to complete his time,
unless he first obtain the sanction of a general meeting," and
" every boy on completing his apprenticeship shall be re-
ported upon by the men working at the firm as to his
abilities, before he is accepted by the Trade. If it be found
that the said boy is incompetent as a workman, the Com-
mittee shall institute an inquiry, and, if possible, to ascertain
the cause, and take the necessary steps to prevent a similar
misfortune." 3

1 Rules of the Edge Tool Forgers' Union (Sheffield, 1873), p. 6.

2 Similar limitations are to be found in gild ordinances. Thus the ordinances
of the Gild of the Tailors of Exeter declare that a newly-made freeman shall be
allowed to have " the first yeere butt oon seruauant ; the second yeere II ; the
nird in ; and a prentise if he be able " (English Gilds, by Toulmin Smith,
p. 316). And the Ordinances of the Shearmen of London, made in 1350,
declare " that no one of this trade shall receive any apprentice if he be not a
freeman of the City himself, and have been so for a term of seven years at least."
— Riley's Memorials of London and London Life (London, 1868), p. 247.

3 Rules of the Britannia Metal Smiths'1 Provident Society (Sheffield,

460 Trade Union Function

Among the Stonemasons we find a formal apprenticeship
to the employer coexisting with the custom of Patrimony.1
The following detailed description of the way in which the
trade is actually recruited at the present day, given to us by
a trustworthy and intelligent member of the union, has been
confirmed by our own investigations. " The printed Rules of
the Stonemasons as to apprentices vary from town to town.
Usually they include a limit of o^eboy to fivep£^six_rnen,
and require that, after working three" months^atthe trade,
the lad must be actually bound apprentice for a period of
five or seven years. Indentures are not insisted on, but some
sort of agreement is usual, and these boys are, of course,
always ' to the employer/ These rules, which are generally
yery strictly enforced, apply, however, only to outside ordinary
boys who are brought into the trade. In addition to these,
every mason is permitted to bring as many of his sons as he
likes into the trade, and teach them without any regulations
or apprenticeship. Usually the man keeps his son at work
as a telegraph boy, or otherwise, until he is sixteen or seven-
teen years of age, and strong enough to enter the trade and
become useful. Then he is brought into the shop and works
for the employer as an improver. The men always push their
sons forward as rapidly as possible, and insist on their getting

Judging by the context the rule applies primarily to employer's apprentices. In
some of the Sheffield trades the gradual transformation into factory industries has
led to boys being apprenticed also to the capitalist employer. The number of
these apprentices is strictly limited by the Trade Unions, and even here the
restriction retains traces of the paternal type. Thus the Britannia Metal Smiths
have a rule that ' ' no master shall have more than one apprentice at one time ;
if two or more partners they can have one each ; and for limited companies, for
the first ten men or fractional part thereof one boy, from eleven to twenty-five
men two boys, and so raising one boy to every fifteen additional men."

1 This custom of Patrimony in English trade deserves further study, especially
in reference to its resemblance to the common gild and municipal regulation
permitting the son of a freeman, without other qualification, to take up his own
freedom of the gild or the city on coming of age. We know of no evidence
actually connecting the Trade Union custom with the gild or municipal practice.
Besides the Stonemasons and the Sheffield trades, traces of the privilege are to
be found also among the old unions of Woolstaplers, Millwrights, Coopers,
Block-printers, Skinners, Beamers, Twisters, and Drawers, Warpers, Spanish and
Morocco Leather Finishers, and a few other handicrafts. It was formally
abolished by the London Society of Compositors at the revision of their rules

The Entrance to a Trade 461

full man's pay the moment they are entrusted with a man's
work to do. In point of fact the trade is almost entirely
recruited by this means. Very few lads are bound, and very
few outside boys enter the trade. The employers are not
anxious to have them, because for the first three or four
years they earn nothing and spoil a good deal of stone.
^Drf the other hand, the men object to them because for the
last year or two they are doing a man's work at a good deal
below man's pay, while the member's son entering the trade
is pushed forward as rapidly as possible, and compelled by
the men to demand the man's rate as soon as he is a capable
workman, or else leave the shop and go elsewhere. . . . The
rule does not in effect amount to any limitation in the number
of learners. Men have been known to bring up as many as
six or seven sons to the trade, and such a course is not
resented by the others. Hence there is no complaint of
undermanning the trade ever heard. In Cornwall and some
other quarrying districts, where the men are paid piecework,
the learners are absolutely confined to sons of members, and
they work direct for their father or other workman, and never
for the employer. But there is no other limit, and no fixed
period of servitude enforced." l

in 1879. Continental history reveals what may, perhaps, be an analogous
custom, according to which craftsmen's sons were admitted to the freedom of
the craft after a shorter period of apprenticeship, an easier test of proficiency,
and lower fees ; see, for instance, Du Cellier, Histoire des Classes Laborieuses en
France^ p. 219.

1 This is one of the instances in which a mere inspection of printed documents,
or even a desultory questioning of Trade Union officials, would only mislead the
student. There is a common impression that the Stonemasons strictly enforce a
long period of educational servitude, and insist on formal indentures. This is
frankly stated to any inquirer by the officials of the union. But it does not occur
to them to explain that this is not the way in which the trade is actually recruited.
Nor do we find any mention of hereditary privilege, or indeed any reference to
the regulation of apprenticeship, in any of the editions of the rules issued since
the Royal Commission inquiry of 1868. To find any indication of the actual
practice we must go back to the earlier rules. The Laws of the Friendly Society
of Operative Stonemasons (Bolton, 1867) contain, at p. 32, the following clause,
elaborated from similar clauses in previous editions: " Boys entering the trade
on no occasion to exceed sixteen years of age, and to be legally bound apprentice
till twenty-one years of age. No boy to work more than three months without
being legally bound. . . . The sons, or step-sons of masons be allowed the scale

462 Trade Union Function

The case of the Stonemasons will bring home to the
reader the manner in which the Trade Union regulations
as to apprenticeship elude any scientific classification. Here
we have a trade which seems, at first sight, to be strictly
regulated in numbers, age, and fixed period of apprenticeship,
all formally defined and rigidly enforced. From this point
of view it belongs to the same class as the United Society
of Boilermakers. Closer scrutiny reveals, however, the
presence, not of formal indentures, reciprocal obligations,
fixed period of servitude and limitation of numbers, but of
the laxity characterising the hereditary right of all crafts-
men's sons to scramble up into journeymen as best they can,
insisting all the time on getting the full market rate of
wages for boy-labor. Indeed, if we took the extreme case
of Cornwall, or other quarrying districts, where the journey-
man takes the apprentice, we should have an exact repro-
duction of the type presented by the Sheffield trades.

We have chosen the Boilermakers, the Sheffield cutlers,
and the Stonemasons for special description, because they
comprise between them by far the majority of workmen who
systematically enforce any apprenticeship regulations at all.
All the other trades in which any effective regulation of
numbers exists, do not together include as many numbers as
the United Society of Boilermakers.1 But it is among these
smaller unions that we find some of the most stringent
limitations. Thus, whilst the Boilermakers allow two
apprentices to seven journeymen, the Felt Hat Makers2 and
the Flint Glass Cutters 8 have one to five only ; the Litho-
graphic Printers permit one to five, but with a maximum of

of initiation, the same as legal apprentices at the age of eighteen years. . . . No
boys to be admitted into this society . . . except they have been legally bound,
or are masons' sons or step-sons. "

1 Among them may be mentioned the hand papermakers, gold-beaters,
basketmakers, brushmakers, coopers, sailmakers, woolstaplers, calico block-
printers, and block-cutters — all characteristically old-fashioned handicrafts.

2 Rules of the Amalgamated Society of -Journeymen Felt Hatters (Denton,
1890), p. 26.

3 Amended Laws of the United Flint Glass Cutters' Mutual Assistance and
Protective Society (Birmingham, 1887), p. 19.

The Entrance to a Trade 463

six in any one firm j1 the Flint Glass Makers allow one to
six ; 2 the Trimming Weavers of Leek declare that there
shall be only one " to every seven going looms " ; 3 and the
same ratio of one learner to seven journeymen is prescribed
by the Nottingham Lace Trade.4 The old - established
union of Silk Hat Makers declares that any manufacturer
" employing three journeymen and having been in business
twelve months, shall be entitled to one apprentice, and for
ten men, two apprentices ; and one for every ten men in
addition to that number," and " that employers' sons be
reckoned as other apprentices, and not additional as hereto-
fore." 5 Finally, the Yorkshire Stuff Pressers insist that " in
any one shop the number of apprentices shall not exceed
one to every ten men," 6 and this extreme limitation is also
insisted on by our old friends the Pearl Button Makers,
though the fact is not mentioned in the rules.

The apprenticeship regulations that we have so far
described have one characteristic in common. The elaborate
national treaty of the Boilermakers, the stringent exclusive-
ness of the Pearl Button Makers, the hereditary succession
of the Sheffield trades, and the curiously duplex system of
the Stonemasons are all actually enforced in their respective
trades. It is just this characteristic of reality which makes
these instances exceptional in the Trade Union world of
to-day. Other unions retain in their books of rules a more
or less formal definition of apprenticeship, and a vote of the
members would at any time reveal an overwhelming majority
theoretically in favor of the strictest regulations of entrance.

1 Rules of the Amalgamated Society of Lithographic Printers of Great Britain
and Ireland (Manchester, 1887), p. 26.

2 Rules and Regulations of the National Flint Glass Makers1 Sick and Friendly
Society of Great Britain and Ireland (Manchester, 1890), p. 19.

3 Rules of the Associated Trimming Weaver? Society (Leek, 1893), p. 5.

4 Prices to be paid for various classes of goods in the Levers Branch of the
Lace Trade (Nottingham, 1893), p. 47. The same rule obtains in the other
branches of the trade.

6 Rules of the Journeymen Hatters* Fair Trade Union of Great Britain and
Ireland (London, 1891), p. 46.

6 Rules of the Leeds, Halifax, and Bradford Stuff Presser? Trades Union
Society (Bradford, 1888), p. 23.

464 Trade Union Function

And yet in these same trades we find the actual conditions of
entrance so unregulated that the ranks of the Trade Unionists
themselves are largely recruited by men who have not come
in by the recognised gate. Typical instances are afforded
by the printing and engineering industries.

The case of the Compositors is specially significant. We
have here a handicraft requiring no small degree of education
and manual dexterity, which has ranked, from the outset, as
a highly-skilled craft. During the eighteenth century a
seven years' term of apprenticeship was universal, and the
local trade clubs at the beginning of the present century
unhesitatingly excluded from membership and employment
any person who presumed to come into the trade through any
but the traditional avenue. Nor has the trade become any
easier to learn. Neither machinery nor division of labor
has yet enabled the capitalist employer to split up the old
craft into sections, each calling only for a low grade of skill.
Employers and workmen still agree that the only way to
attain proficiency is for a boy to be put through a prolonged
course of actual technical instruction in a number of separate
processes, from deciphering manuscripts to " displaying "
advertisements.1 Accordingly, a large proportion of the best
employers in each generation have cordially acquiesced in
the attempt made by the Compositors' Trade Unions to
maintain the long period of formal servitude, and have often
not objected to a reasonable limitation of the number of
apprentices. Yet to-day it is probable that a very consider-
able proportion of the men who obtain work as compositors,
and join Compositors' Trade Unions, have undergone no period
of educational servitude at all, with or without indentures,
and have " picked up " such knowledge of the trade as they
possess whilst earning a full market rate of wages. What
is of even more importance from the Trade Unionist point
of view, the attempt to set any limit to the total number of
persons entering the trade has totally failed.

1 The most improved machine, the linotype, demands, indeed, an even higher
level of skill and a more varied proficiency than that of the compositor at case.

The Entrance to a Trade 465

This failure of the Compositors' Trade Unions to carry
out their apprenticeship regulations is mainly due to the
remarkable spread of the printing industry during the present
century. In the case of the Boilermakers the rapid increase
of the industry has progressively strengthened the union,
and has, in particular, resulted in the actual enforcement of
a genuine apprenticeship system. But the development of
iron -shipbuilding has taken place almost exclusively in
gigantic establishments, carried on by a distinct class of
employers. The printing trade, on the other hand, once
concentrated in half a dozen towns, has to-day crept into
every village, the vast majority of printing offices being tiny
enterprises of small working masters. The compositor,
moreover, has to deal with a variety of employers, from the
London daily newspaper or the great publishers' printer,
down to the stationer's shop in a country town or the fore-
man of a subsidiary department of a railway company,
wholesale grocer or manufacturer of indiarubber stamps.
When the enterprising workman sets up his hand press in a
suburban back street, and takes a boy to help him in his
jobbing trade, he is not the kind of employer over whom a
Trade Union can exercise any effective control. The Trade
Union does not even hear of the numerous instances in
which a printing press is set up in the basement of a great
advertising manufacturer who chooses to do his own printing
on the premises. In all such cases the employment of boy-
labor is absolutely unrestricted in numbers, and unregulated
by any educational requirements. The standard of quality
and speed of working is of the lowest, but the youth who in
such shops picks up an elementary acquaintance with " case,"
presently gets taken on as a cheap " improver " by the little
country stationer, and eventually, whether competent or not,
drifts to London to pick up casual employment as a
journeyman.

With an industry pushing out shoots in this way into
all the nooks and crannies of the industrial world, it would
tax the ingenuity of the most astute Trade Union official to
VOL. II 2 H

466 Trade Union Function

maintain any effective control over entrance to the craft,
Unfortunately for the Compositors, the rules which their local
societies have enforced have actually played into the hands
of their enemies. Every Compositors' union has persistently
striven to maintain something very like the mediaeval
apprenticeship in its own town, quite irrespective of what
was happening elsewhere. The boy who would enter the
printing trade in Manchester or Newcastle must be formally
" bound " to an employer for seven years, during which he
naturally has to forego part of the market rate of wages.
He must commence his service at an early age, and complete
it with one and the same firm. Nor does he find it easy to
become an apprentice at all. Instead of the Boilermakers'
ratio of two apprentices to seven journeymen, applied im-
partially to all firms, the Compositors' unions almost always
impose a definite maximum, however large the establishment.
Thus, no printing office in Glasgow may have more than ten
apprentices ; in Leeds none more than seven ; in Hull none
more than three ; and in Manchester, " in order to adjust the
balance of supply and demand, and maintain a fair remu-
neration of labor, the maximum number of apprentices in
each recognised office shall be three for the composing room
and two for the machine room." l Thus, the great printing
establishment of the Manchester Guardian, employing over a
hundred compositors, is allowed to take no more apprentices
than the jobbing master with a dozen men.2

This lopsided limitation has had a most unexpected

1 Rules of the Manchester Typographical Society (" instituted November
!797")> Manchester, 1892, p. 35.

2 The rules of the compositors' unions generally prescribe a ratio of
apprentices to journeymen, which, in the case of small masters, is liberal. The
Manchester Typographical Society, for instance, allows a small master, having
only two journeymen, to take a couple of apprentices. But, unlike the apprentice-
ship regulations in other trades, this ratio is not applied to the large establish-
ments, which are subject to a definite maximum, far below the number that
the ratio would allow. How severely this maximum limits the total number of
apprentices in the best Manchester firms may be judged from the fact that twelve
of its printing establishments employ half the compositors in the city, having
between them 1000 men, and being entitled according to the rule to only sixty
apprentices.

The Entrance to a Trade 467

result. It might be imagined that Trade Union statesman-
ship would aim at recruiting the trade from boys brought
up in the large establishments, affording systematic training
in every branch of the craft, and pervaded, as they usually
are, by a strong Trade Union feeling.1 But the aggregate
number of apprentices allowed to such firms is grotesquely
insufficient to maintain the trade. When new journeymen
are wanted, they have, in three cases out of four, to be drawn
from the small establishments, and ultimately from the small
towns and rural districts in which neither Trade Unionism
nor apprenticeship can be said to exist. Here there is
nothing to prevent an unscrupulous employer from taking
on as many boys as he chooses, keeping them to the most
elementary processes of the craft, and turning them adrift in
an untrained state as soon as they begin to ask journeyman's
wages. The direct result of the Compositors' " maximum "
of apprentices in the large establishments of the strong Trade
Union towns is, accordingly, to use, as the chief breeding
ground and recruiting ground of the craft, exactly those
shops and those districts in which there is the least likeli-
hood of the boys receiving any proper training. Hence we
arrive at the paradoxical conclusion that it is the very
maintenance of these apprenticeship regulations by the local
Compositors' unions that has made the trade now practically
an " open " one. As in the country districts any number of
boys are, in fact, learning to be compositors, and eventually
drifting into the towns, the unions are in a dilemma. If
they rigidly maintain their apprenticeship rules, and decline
to admit these " illegal men," they find themselves foiled in
their negotiations with the employers by the presence of a
steadily growing crowd of non-union men, indisposed to

1 It is interesting to note that there is at least one instance of a Trade Union
which consciously adopts this more enlightened policy. The Manchester Union
of Upholsterers (now the Manchester Branch of the Amalgamated Society of
Upholsterers) has a by-law for the regulation of apprentices which limits the
number of lads in small shops and those doing only the cheap common kinds of
work to one to six men, while the large shops and those doing high-class work
are allowed one to three men.

468 Trade Union Function

defer to an organisation from which they are excluded. In
order to gain any effective power of Collective Bargaining,
the union must make up its mind to admit practically all the
men who. are actually working at the trade in the particular
district, whether they have been apprenticed or not. Nearly
all the local Compositors' unions have had periodically thus
to " open their books," and take in the " illegal men." And
the London Society of Compositors, which includes a third
of the Trade Unionist compositors in the United Kingdom,
has, since 1879, avowedly admitted to membership any
compositor who actually obtains employment in a " fair
house" in London, whether he has learnt the trade by
apprenticeship or not.1 The provincial societies still usually
profess to confine their membership to men who can produce
evidence of having served a seven years' term, but as they
all admit without demur any printer who gets employment
in the town with a card of membership of any other Com-
positors' union, including the large open society of the
Metropolis, any journeyman whom an employer will engage
on the standard piece scale finds no difficulty, whether he has
been apprenticed or not, in becoming a fully recognised
member of the trade. In short, what is limited is, not the
total number of recruits to the trade in the kingdom as a
whole, but the proportion of such recruits who receive the
educational advantages of the apprenticeship system.

The experience of the Engineers has been no less in-
structive than that of the Compositors, though in another
way. The local trade clubs of smiths and millwrights at
the beginning of the present century autocratically excluded
from employment all men who could not produce their
indentures.2 Sir William Fairbairn relates how, when in
1 8 1 1 he obtained a situation as a millwright at Rennie's,

1 " Every compositor working as a journeyman, overseer, storekeeper, reader,
or in any other capacity in a fair house . . . shall be eligible as a member." —
Rules of the London Society of Compositors (London, 1894), p. 6.

2 Clubs of smiths, millwrights, and "mechanics" took a leading part in the
prosecutions and petitions of the 1813 movement to enforce the apprenticeship
laws. — History of Trade Unionism, pp. 53-56.

The Entrance to a Trade 469

the foreman told him that he could not start until he had
been accepted by the Trade Union. Failing to produce duly
attested indentures, he was refused permission to work, and
driven to tramp away from London and seek a situation in
a non-unionist district.1 Similar regulations lasted down to
our own day. The Amicable and Brotherly Society of
Journeymen Millwrights, a Lancashire Union dating certainly
from the beginning of the century, maintained down to 1855
its old by-laws restricting the number of apprentices, and
rigidly insisting on proof of servitude. They declare that
" any person wishing to join, whose parents have neglected
to provide him with a proper indenture, shall be compelled
to produce a sworn affidavit, attested by two respectable
witnesses, that he has worked at the trade five, six, or seven
years, in a millwright's shop, or with a millwright known to
the trade, as an * apprentice, and he shall pay any sum not
less than £3 : ios., or more than £5, that a general meeting
may decide." He shall be " proposed by a free member,
and if it afterwards be proved that he was not legally qualified
the said member shall be fined £5. Any person bringing a
doubtful indenture shall be subject to the same terms of
entrance." 2 The same conception underlay the rules of the
Amalgamated Society of Engineers for the first thirty years
of its existence. The preface to the edition of 1864 de-
clares that " if constrained to make restrictions against the
admission into our trade of those who have not earned a right
by a probationary servitude, we do so, knowing that such

1 The Life of Sir William Fairbairn, edited by W. Pole (London, 1877),
p. 89; Trade Unionism, by W. Saunders (London, 1878); History of Trade
Unionism, pp. 75 and 187.

2 Another old union declared "that one apprentice be allowed to five
journeymen ; nevertheless if the number be complete, the eldest, or next eldest, son
of a millwright be allowed to work at the trade " (Rules of the Philanthropic
Society of Journeymen Millwrights, 1855). How far the high entrance fees and
rigid requirements were intended to provide technical education and restrict the
actual numbers entering the trade, and how far they were designed merely to
protect the hereditary " vested interest " of the members' sons, is unknown to us.
It is quite possible that the millwrights, at the beginning of this century, were, in
reality, mainly recruited much in the same way as the stonemasons of to-day : a
reference to the privileges of the eldest sons of millwrights, in the preface to Sir
W. Fairbairn's Treatise on Mills and Millwork, seems to point in this direction.

470 Trade Union Function

encroachments are productive of evil, and when persevered
in unchecked, result in reducing the condition of the artisan
to that of the unskilled laborer, and confer no permanent
advantage on those admitted. It is our duty, then, to
exercise the same care and watchfulness over that in which
we have a vested interest, as the physician does who holds
a diploma, or the author who is protected by a copy-
right." l And yet to-day we find the Amalgamated Society
of Engineers, and nearly all its sectional rivals, freely admit-
ting to membership any man, whether apprenticed or not,
who has worked for five years in an engineering establish-
ment, even if merely as a boy or as a machine minder, and
who, at the time of his candidature, is obtaining the Standard
Rate of wages for his particular branch of the trade.

This complete collapse of the apprenticeship regulations
among the Engineers has not, we think, been due to any
unreasonableness in the regulations themselves. Unlike the
Compositors, the Engineers have never sought to impose an
absolute maximum limit of apprentices, or in any way to dis-
courage the instruction of a proportionate number of boys by
the large firms. What they have aimed at in their rules and
in their negotiations with employers, has been some such
arrangement as that now universally accepted by the iron-
shipbuilders. But, less fortunate than the United Society of
Boilermakers, the Engineers have found their efforts brought
to nought by a progressive disintegration of their old handi-
craft. We have here, in fact, the typical case of the break-
down of apprenticeship under the influence of the Industrial
Revolution. " The millwright of the last century," says Sir
William Fairbairn, " was an itinerant engineer and mechanic
of high reputation. He could handle the axe, the hammer,
and the plane with equal skill and precision ; he could turn,
bore or forge with the ease and despatch of one brought up
to these trades, and he could set out and cut in furrows of a
millstone with an accuracy equal or superior to that of the
miller himself. . . . Generally he was a fair arithmetician,

1 Rules of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, etc. (London, 1864).

The Entrance to a Trade 471

knew something of geometry, levelling, and mensuration, and
in some cases possessed a very competent knowledge of
practical mathematics. He oould calculate the velocities,
strength, and power of machines : could draw in plan and
section, and could construct buildings, conduits, or water-
courses, in all the forms and under all the conditions required
in his professional practice ; he could build bridges, cut
canals, and perform a variety of work now done by civil
engineers."1 So varied a proficiency could only be
attained by a long period ot educational servitude. The
workshops of a great engineering firm of to-day present us
with an entirely different spectacle. What the millwright
formerly executed with the hammer and the file is now
broken up into innumerable separate operations, each of
which has its appropriate machine. But this is not all. A
distinctive feature of the introduction of machinery into the
engineering trade is the remarkable variety and diversity of
the " power-moved tools " now required in a large machine
shop. A gigantic cotton mill often contains only row after
row of a single type of self-acting mule or power loom. An
engineering establishment will have in use a long array of
different types of drilling, planing, boring, slotting, and
milling machines, together with a bewildering variety of
applications of the old-fashioned lathe. The precise degree
of skill and trustworthiness required to work each of these
machines, or even to execute different jobs upon one of
them, is infinitely varied. The simple drilling machine or
the automatic lathe continuously turning out identical copies
of some minute portion of an engine can be tended by a
mere boy. Some work executed on an elaborate milling
machine, on the other hand, taxes the powers of the most
accomplished mechanic. Yet so numerous are the inter-
mediate types that the increase in difficulty from each
machine to the next is comparatively small. Thus the
youth or the laborer who begins by spending his whole day

1 A Treatise on Mills and Milhuork, by Sir William Fairbairn (London,
1 86 1), preface.

472

Trade Union Function

in " minding " the simplest driller or automatic lathe, may
" progress " from one process to another with little further
instruction, until, by mere practice on a succession of
machines, the sharp boy becomes insensibly a qualified
turner or fitter. We need not here discuss whether this
" progression " of the more intelligent boys and laborers is
not accompanied by the drawback that the majority, from
lack of deliberate technical instruction, remain all their lives
incapable of any but the simplest routine work. Nor need
we dispute the assertion often made that such a "progression"
fails, even with the clever and ambitious, to produce an all-
round proficiency in mechanical engineering. The fact
remains that an ever-increasing number of boys and laborers
do climb up this ladder, and become sufficiently competent
to obtain employment as fitters, turners, and erectors.

The Amalgamated Society of Engineers has, therefore,
during a whole generation, been in a dilemma. Its traditional
policy was to exclude the unapprenticed interlopers as
" illegal men," and this, on the whole, was the tendency down
to 1885. But it found itself powerless to prevent progression
within the trade, or to draw a line at any particular machine,
in order effectively to separate into distinct classes the
"machine-minders" who were "engineers" from those who
were " laborers." A Trade Union may conceivably
strengthen its position if, by limiting the number of persons
learning the trade, it restricts the number of competitors for
its particular kind of employment. But once those com-
petitors exist, their presence on the market as non-unionists
is fatal to the Method of Collective Bargaining. Hence the
Amalgamated Society of Engineers has had to recognise
facts and abandon regulations which were being so exten-
sively evaded. For the last ten years each successive
delegate meeting has opened the society to new classes of
workmen, whether apprenticed or not, until, as we have
already mentioned, any adult man who actually obtains
employment at the Standard Rate of his particular town and
grade, is, in practice, welcomed as a recruit.

The Entrance to a Trade 475

selves. Yet no part of the strength and success of this Trade
Union can be attributed to a limitation of apprentices, or to
any monopoly_£gature whatsoever. The number of persons
learning-^to be cotton -spinners is, and has always been
unrestricted. The trade is usually recruited from the class
j0f " piecers," two of whom work under each spinner, and are
paid by him.1 Thus, instead of the ratio of two apprentices
to seven journeymen insisted on by the Boilermakers, or that
of one to ten men maintained by the Pearl Button Makers, the
Cotton-spinners positively encourage as many as two to each
spinner, a ratio which is approximately ten times as great as
is required to recruit the trade. Far from there being any
scarcity of candidates for employment, the great majority of
piecers have to abandon all hope of getting mules, and find
themselves compelled to turn to other occupations. Nor is
any definite period of service insisted upon. Any man may
become a spinner as soon as he can induce an employer to
trust him with a pair of mules, and to pay him for his product
according to the standard list of piece-work prices.2 The
fact that under these circumstances the Standard Rate of a
cotton-spinner has been kept up for a whole generation, and
that his average earnings have positively increased, may be
for the moment left as an economic problem to those who
still retain the old belief that the limitation of numbers and
the exclusion of competitors is a necessary part of efficient
Trade Unionism.3

1 Occasionally the employer has tried to have only one boy-piecer to two
spinners. This system, called "joining" or "partnering," is always resisted by
the union, which insists on each spinner having two piecers under him, on the
ground that any other arrangement must necessarily involve a diminution of
spinners' earnings. The delegate meeting of the Amalgamated Association of
Operative Cotton -spinners in December 1878 resolved "that this meeting
greatly deplores the system of joining, and pledges itself to use every effort to get
that system abolished." Since that date, at the cost of many small strikes, the
Lancashire operatives have gained their point, and have now each two piecers,

2 Once in the trade, he is required to join the Trade Union, but no impediment
is placed in his way.

3 The London Plumbers present an interesting case, economically similar in
this respect to the Cotton-spinners. The employers in London do not engage
boys or apprentices to assist the men in plumbing, or to learn the trade. The
custom is for each plumber to be attended by an adult laborer, known as the

476 Trade Union Function

Thus, notwithstanding a strong Trade Union feeling in
favor of apprenticeship regulations, these cannot be said to
be enforced to-day over more than a small fraction of the
Trade Union world, and, with the remarkable exception of
the Boilermakers, even this fraction is steadily dwindling. It
is especially in such industrial backwaters as Dublin and Cork ;
in such homes of the small-master system as Sheffield and
Birmingham ; and in such old-fashioned handicrafts as glass-
blowing and hat -making, that the archaic apprenticeship
regulations linger. Over by far the largest part of the
limited field in which apprenticeship once prevailed, the
system has gone practically out of use, and restrictive barriers,
once supported by universal approval, and fondly kept up by
the trade clubs of the eighteenth century, have, during the
past hundred years, gradually been swept away. Finally,
so far from apprenticeship regulations forming a necessary
part of Trade Unionism, a positive majority of the Trade
Unionists now belong to occupations in which no shadow of
apprenticeship has ever existed.

To explain this state of affairs, we must distinguish
between the disuse of apprenticeship as an educational system,
and its failure as a method of restricting the entrance into a
craft. The abandonment of apprenticeship as a form of
technical training is not due to the discovery of any satis-
factory alternative. There is, on the contrary, a remarkable
consensus of opinion among " practical men," that the present
state of things is highly unsatisfactory. But many economic
causes have contributed to make obsolete the definite period
of educational servitude at wages below the market value
of the boy's time. Whatever might be the ultimate effect
on the welfare of the trade or the future of the boy, this
educational servitude does not now immediately remunerate

"plumber's mate." Any employer is at liberty to promote a plumber's mate to
be a plumber whenever he chooses, provided only that he pays him the plumber's
Standard Rate. Notwithstanding the fact that the number of " plumber's mates,"
who form the class of learners, is four or five times as numerous as would suffice
to recruit the trade, the London branches of the United Operative Plumbers'
Society effectively maintain a high Standard Rate.

The Entrance to a Trade 477

any of the parties concerned. The employer with a large
establishment does not care to be bothered with boys if he
has to teach them the whole trade. Even if the thrifty
father offers £20 or ^30 as a premium, this is no temptation
to the capitalist of our own day, paying hundreds of pounds
a week in wages alone. He prefers to divide his processes
into men's work and boys' work, and to keep each grade
permanently to its allotted routine. Now that it is no
longer possible for the apprentice to enter his master's house-
hold, and all gild discipline has been abolished, the employer
feels that he has little control over a boy whom he is legally
bound to keep for the stated term. " The advantage," as a
great builder remarked to us, " is all on the side of the
apprentice." But the boy does not think so. There are
to-day so many opportunities for boys to earn relatively
high wages without instruction, that they are not easily
induced either to enter upon a term of educational servitude
at low rates, or to continue on it if they have begun. " The
anxiety of the boy to obtain full money as soon as possible
is largely responsible," we are told, " for the absence of
apprentices." The father, too, is naturally tempted to let
his son earn six to fifteen shillings a week either as a tele-
graph messenger or errand boy, or as porter in some factory
or workshop, rather than forego most of this supplement
to the family income in order merely that his son may be
called an apprentice instead of a boy.

But it would be unfair to attribute this disinclination
to apprenticeship merely to a dislike to sacrifice present
income to future advantage. In the industrial organisation
of to-day, the workman finds it very difficult, if not in some
cases impossible, to place his boy in any occupation in which
he will be taught a skilled trade. Even when he can
apprentice him, he has little security that the boy's instruction
will be attended to. And if we pass from the individual
father to the members of the craft in their corporate capacity,
we shall see that the system of apprenticeship has lost what
was really its main attraction. " No one," said Blackstone,

478 Trade Union Function

" would be induced to undergo a seven years' servitude,
if others, though equally skilful, were allowed the same
advantages without having undergone the same discipline."
What the father and the apprentice were willing to pay for
was, not the instruction, but the legal right to exercise a
protected trade. When this right to a trade could be
obtained without apprenticeship, as, for instance, by way of
" patrimony," father and sons alike have always been eager
to forego its educational advantages. Whenever a Trade
Union has failed to maintain an effective limitation of
numbers, it very soon gives up striving after any educational
servitude.1

In certain exceptional occupations, apprenticeship can
still be made use of to regulate the entrance to the trade.
Where the work is carried on, not by individual craftsmen,
but by associated groups of highly skilled wage-earners, it is
practically within the power of these groups, if supported
by the public opinion of their own community, to exclude
any newcomer from admission. This " group-system " goes
far, we think, to account for the exceptional effectiveness of
the Trade Union regulations on apprenticeship among the
Boilermakers, Flint Glass Makers, Glass Bottle Makers, and
Stuff Pressers. If the trade_ concernedconstitutes by itself
only a tiny but ' indispensable fraction~~BT~artaTge industry,
it will not be worth the employer's while to object to even
unreasonable demands, so long as the Trade Union takes
care to fill each Vacancy as it occurs, and ensures him against
any interruption of work. The proprietor of a cotton mill
is comparatively indifferent to the restrictive rules insisted
on by the Tapesizers, the. Beamers, Twisters, and Drawers,

1 It will be noticed that, as among the various forms of apprenticeship that
we have described, the actual educational advantages vary roughly in proportion
to the actual exclusiveness. The " patrimony " of the Sheffield trades and Stone-
masons involves practically little limitation of numbers, and offers, on the other
hand, the very minimum of security for technical instruction. The real limitations
of the Boilermakers and Flint Glass Makers, on the contrary, whilst they result
in something like a craft monopoly, do give the community in return a genuine
educational servitude, and provide for the constant "selection of the fittest" boys
by the employers.

The Entrance to a Trade 479

and even the Overlookers, whose wages form but a trifling
percentage of the total cost of production.1 It is only in the
industries in- which, by exception, one or other of these con-
ditions prevails, that we see maintained or revived any
effective Trade Union limitation of apprenticeship. Over
all the rest of the industrial field the barrier is broken down
by the stronger forces of the mobility of capital, and the
perpetual revolutionising of industrial processes.2 No Trade
Union has been really able to enforce a limitation of appren-
tices if new employers are always starting up in fresh centres ;
if the craft is frequently being changed by the introduction
of new processes or machinery ; if alternative classes of
workers can be brought in to execute some portion of the
operation. These are precisely the conditions which are
typical of most of the industries of the present century.

Trade Unions might, it is true, appeal to the law. But
apart from the insuperable difficulties of adapting any legally
enforced apprenticeship to the circumstances of modern
industry, it is easy to see that no revival of the system would
gain the support of public opinion. From the point of view
of the community the old system has three capital disadvan-
tages. There is no security to the public that the appren-
tice will be thoroughly and efficiently taught. It is no
longer the " master craftsman " who himself instructs the
boy and has a direct pecuniary interest in his early pro-
ficiency. The scores of apprentices in a modern shipyard

1 It is to this consideration, we think, that the Patternmakers in engineering
establishments, and the Lithographic Printers in the great firms which now
dominate that trade, owe their relatively effective position as regards apprentice-
ship.

2 The sawyers exhibit a curious evolution. The old hand sawyers of the
early part of the century were notorious for the strength and exclusiveness of their
Trade Unions. The introduction of the circular saw, driven by steam power,
led to the supersession of the old handicraftsmen by a new class of comparatively
unskilled workers, who were drawn from the ranks of the laborers, and remained
for some years unorganised. With the increasing speed and growing complica-
tion of mill-sawing machinery, these mill-sawyers have, in their turn, become a
highly specialised class, whom an employer finds some difficulty in supplanting
by laborers. The comparative stability which the industry has now attained
has enabled these machine workers to establish an effective union, which is gradu-
ally enforcing a fixed period of apprenticeship.

480 Trade Union Function

are necessarily left mainly to learn their business for them-
selves, by watching workmen who are indifferent or even
unfriendly to their progress, with possibly some occasional
hints from a benevolent foreman. In these days of peda-
gogic science, elaborately trained teachers, and " Her Majesty's
Inspectors of Schools," the haphazard relation between the
apprentice and his instructors will certainly not commend
itself to the deliberate judgment of the community. More-
over, all history indicates that an apprenticeship system must
leave outside its scope the large proportion of boys who
recruit the vast army of unskilled laborers. In the absence
of an apprenticeship system, the abler and more energetic of
these succeed, as we have seen, in " picking up " a trade, and
in progressing, as adults, according to their capacities. One
of the darkest features of the whole history of apprenticeship
is the constant necessity, if the system is to be maintained at
all, of excluding, from the protected occupations, all " illegal
men." We need not weary the reader with mediaeval in-
stances.1 But it will be obvious that the elaborate Appren-
ticeship Treaty concluded between the Boilermakers and their

1 It is usually forgotten that gild membership, and the right to carry on a
skilled craft, at no time extended to the great army of laborers. The case of the
Bladesmiths may serve to remind us of the existence of a vast mass of unappren-
ticed workers. On the loth October 1408 the masters of the trade of the
" Blaydesmiths " in London presented a petition and a code of articles for the
government of the trade to the Mayor and Corporation. These articles were
read and approved, and they include one, "That no one of the said trade shall
teach his journeymen the secrets of his trade as he would his apprentice, on the
pain aforesaid " (namely a fine of 6s. 8d. for the first offence, los. for the second,
and 133. 4d. for any further offence). The journeymen alluded to here were no
doubt the " strikers" who assisted the smiths in their task. — See Riley's Memo-
rials of London and London Life (London, 1868), p. 570.

How large was the proportion of unapprenticed laborers is perhaps roughly
indicated by the fire regulations of the Common Council of London in 1667,
when the " handicraft companies " of Carpenters, Bricklayers, Plasterers, Painters,
Masons, Smiths, Plumbers and Paviours were ordered to elect yearly for each
company, 2 Master Workmen, 4 Journeymen, 8 Apprentices and 16 Laborers to
form a Fire Brigade (Jupp, History of the Carpenter? Company, London, p. 284).
There are many occupations to-day in which the number of unskilled laborers
exceeds that of the skilled craftsmen ; and it may well be that the gilds at no
time included more than a minority even of the adult male workers. — See His-
tory of Trade Unionism , p. 37 ; Du Cellier, Histoire des Classes Laborieuses en France
(Paris, 1860), p. 204; Mrs. Green, Town Life in Fifteenth Centtiry, ii. 103.

The Entrance to a Trade 481

employers necessarily closes the door of advancement to the
crowd of rivet-boys and platers' helpers in an iron-shipyard,
some of whom would otherwise find themselves able to pick
up the trade. The Carpet-weavers are driven to prohibit
any person, other than a " registered creeler " (the apprentice),
" to be at the front of the loom or otherwise doing the work
of the weaver," l lest he should insidiously learn the art. The
Calico-printers absolutely forbid their " tenters," or laborers,
ever to touch the " doctor " (the long knife which adjusts
the precise amount of coloring matter), or even to come in
front of the machine. Unless a sharp line is drawn, either
by law or by custom, between duly apprenticed craftsmen
and " illegal men," it is obvious that no apprenticeship system
can long exist. Finally, when such a separate class is
created, the community can never tell to what extent it is
being mulcted for the maintenance of the system. It was,
in fact, the cost to the community, and, as he thought, the
excessive cost, that led Adam Smith so fervently to denounce
the whole apprenticeship system, with its inevitable conse-
quences of monopoly wages and profits. In our own day,
it is impossible to calculate how much it costs the community
to educate a boilermaker or glassblower. We may infer
that we are paying for it in the relatively high wages of these
protected trades, but how much we are paying in this way,
and upon whom this burden is falling, it is impossible to
compute. Undemocratic in its scope, unscientific in its
educational methods, and fundamentally unsound in its
financial aspects, the apprenticeship system, in spite of all
the practical arguments in its favor, is not likely to be
deliberately revived by a modern democracy.2

1 Rules of the Power Loom Carpet-weavers* Mutual Defence and Provident
Association (Kidderminster, 1891).

2 It may be inferred that technical education, even more than common
schooling, is too immediately costly, if not also too remote in its advantages, to
be within the means of the great majority of parents. Individual capitalists, who
are not necessarily interested in the future welfare even of their own trades, will
not bear the expense of teaching a new generation of skilled workmen — whom
they may never need to employ. Thus, though Mr. Inglis strongly objected
to any limitation of the number of apprentices, he explains why he and other

VOL. II 21

482 Trade Union Function

(]}} The Limitation of Boy -Lab or

The abandonment of the old period of educational servi-
tude has, in some instances, created a new problem. When
the employer finds himself freed from all obligation to teach
his boys, and is, on the other hand, obliged to pay them the
full market value of their time, he naturally prefers to keep
them continuously employed on such routine work as they
can best perform. The manufacturing process is therefore
subdivided, so that as large a portion as possible shall fall
within the competence of boys kept exclusively to one
particular task. From the point of the Trade Union, this
constitutes a new grievance. It is no longer a case of
objecting to an undue multiplication of apprentices, leading in
course of time to an unnecessary increase in the number of
competent workmen seeking employment. What the men
complain of is that the employers are endeavouring, by an
alteration of the manufacturing process, to dispense with
skilled labor, or, indeed, with adult labor altogether. So far
this complaint may appear only another instance of " New
Processes and Machinery," a subject sufficiently dealt with in
a preceding chapter. If the employer, by any change of
process, can bring his work within the capacity of operatives
of a lower grade of strength or skill, it is useless, as we have
seen, for the superior workers who were formerly employed
to resist the change. When, however, the innovation involves,
not the substitution of one class of adults for another, but of
boys for men, a new argument has to be considered. To
the grown-up workmen in a trade, it seems preposterous that
they should be thrown out of employment by their youthful
sons being taken on in their places. Their aggravation is

employers agreed to the Trade Union restriction. "We have," he says, "oui
business proper to attend to, and cannot devote all our energies to striving for
the greatest good of the greatest number" (The Apprentice Question, p. 10).
If the community desires to see a constant succession of skilled craftsmen, the
community as a whole will have to pay for their instruction. Even with an
apprenticeship system, the community, as we suggest above, really paid in the
long run.

The Entrance to a Trade 483

increased when they see these sons, not taught any
skilled craft, but kept, year after year, at the simplest routine
work, and discharged in favor of their younger brothers
as soon as they begin to ask the ordinary wage of an adult
laborer.

To prevent this evil, some Trade Unions, which have
given up the requirement of a period of educational servitude,
have attempted to enforce a simple limitation of boy-labor.
They may make no objection to any number of boys being
properly taught their craft, and so rendered competent
workmen. Such apprentices would naturally be put first
to the simpler processes. But when these simpler tasks are
permanently separated from the rest, and handed over to a
distinct race of boys, who are not intended to learn the
remainder of the work ; when the number of boys so employed
is steadily increased, and the number of adult workmen
diminished, the change is always fiercely resisted by the
Trade Union. We need only describe the leading instance,
that of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives.
Here the substitution of boys for men has been hotly con-
tested for many years. At first the union sought to meet
the case by enforcing the usual apprenticeship regulations.
But with the growing use of machinery and subdivision of
labor, " any attempt to restrict the entrance by making the
conditions not so profitable at first — by making the wage
small and the years long " J — was broken down by the fact
that boys, taking short views of their own advantage,
preferred to earn the relatively higher wages of unapprenticed
machine-minders. This led, as one of the men's spokesmen
declared in 1892, to "the wholesale flooding of the market
with boys, and the wholesale discharging of men. ... I
have proof before me of where a number of fathers in this
town (Leicester) have been discharged, and their sons set on
in their places. . . . We have firms to-day — though we ask
for the limitation of I boy to 5 men — we have firms in
Leicester where they have 5 men to 6 boys, 19 men to

1 National Conference, 1893 ; proceedings before Umpire.

484 Trade Union Function

1 4 boys, 2 3 men to 1 1 boys, 5 men to 2 1 boys, i 3 men to
I 8 boys, 6 men to 4 boys, 3 men to 9 boys, and 3 men to
i boy." l The men complained that this state of things not
only deprived them of employment, but that it also prevented
those who were employed from getting the Standard Rate.
"In the town I come from (Norwich)," said another re-
presentative, " it is all very well for employers to say, ' I
will pay a certain price for your labor.' But the moment a
man asks for the price agreed upon he is discharged, and a
boy is put in his place." 2

The union accordingly asked that the maximum number
of boys in any factory should be fixed at the ratio of one to
every five journeymen. The employers did not dispute the
facts. They refused to discuss whether the change was for
the public advantage or not. They fell back on the simple
position that the employment of boys was a matter entirely
" within the province of the employer, and that it is not
a question in which the workmen may rightly interfere."
They declared that any limit on the number of boys would
be " not only an encroachment on the right of manufacturers
to manage their own business in their own way, but also
it is impracticable, and cannot be carried out, because of the
varying circumstances of the various portions of the trade,
and of the various employers and various towns." 3 The issue
was in due course remitted to the umpire, Sir Henry (now
Lord) James, in pursuance of the collective agreement de-
scribed in our chapter on " The Method of Collective Bargain-
ing." The employers used every argument in defence of
their " right " to carry on their own business in their own
way. The men's demonstration of the evils of this excessive
use of boy-labor was, however, so overwhelming that the
umpire felt bound to admit their contention. In a remark-
able award, dated 22nd August 1892, the principle of re-
stricting, by Common Rule, the proportion of boys to be
employed by any manufacturer in the boot and shoe trade

1 National Conference, 1893 ; proceedings before Umpire, 1892, p. 62,
* Ibid. p. 63. 3 Ibid. pp. 94, 96.

The Entrance to a Trade 485

was definitely established, the ratio being fixed at one to
three journeymen.1

It is not easy to imagine the feelings with which Nassau
Senior or Harriet Martineau would have viewed the spectacle
of an eminent Liberal lawyer imposing such a restriction
on " the right of every man to employ the capital he inherits,
or has acquired, according to his own discretion, without
molestation or obstruction, so long as he does not infringe on
the rights or property of others." 2 Lord James was con-
vinced that he had to cope with a real evil. That a genera-
tion of highly-skilled craftsmen should be succeeded by a
generation incapable of anything but the commonest routine
labor, seemed to him to be a disadvantage, not only to the
craftsmen themselves, but also to the community. The com-
petition between the boys and their fathers is, it was argued,
an " unfair " one.3 The wages paid in a boot factory to a boy
between thirteen and eighteen, though large in comparison
with those given to the old-fashioned apprentice, are far
below the sum on which the race of operatives could be

1 "In the matter of an arbitration between the National Union of Boot and
Shoe Operatives, and the National Federation of Associated Employers of Labor
in the Shoe Trade, I, the undersigned, having taken upon myself the burden of
the said Arbitration, and having heard the parties thereto by themselves and their
Witnesses, do now in respect of the matters in dispute submitted to me, adjudge
and determine as follows : ' That in respect of the work carried on by Clickers,
Pressmen, Lasters, and Finishers, the Employers of Labor in Shoe Factories
and Workshops shall in each department respectively be restricted in the employ-
ment of boys (under 18) to one boy to every three men employed. And that
where the number of men employed shall not be divisible by three, one boy may
also be employed in respect of the fraction existing, either less than three, or
above each unit of three.

"That whilst the above restriction is general in its prima facie application, I
further adjudge that it may be inexpedient in certain Factories and Workshops in
which the manufacture of goods called 'Nursery Goods,' and other goods of a
common quality and of a low price is carried on." Other clauses provided for
the adaptation by the Local Boards of the general restriction to such low-class
firms, and for the reference of disputes to an umpire. — National Conference,
1892, p. 149.

2 Report of the Committee on the State of the Woollen Manufacture in England,
4th July 1806, p. 12; History of Trade Unionism, p. 56.

3 See our chapter on "New Processes and^Machinery," for other instances of, in
this sense, "unfair" competition ; and our chapter on "The Economic Characteristics
of Trade Unionism," for fuller consideration of the results of" parasitic trades."

486 Trade Union Function

permanently maintained, and therefore below what may be
called the boy's cost of production. An employer carrying
on his factory entirely by boy - labor, and yet giving the
boys no educational training, is, therefore, enjoying a positive
subsidy in aid of just that form of industrial organisation
which is calculated to be, in the long run, the most injurious
to the community.

But though the excessive multiplication of boy - labor
may be a grave social danger, and though Lord James's
remedy of limitation is not without precedent,1 we think that
experience points to the impossibility of any Trade Union
coping with the evil in this way. Even Lord James's award,
with all its decided acceptance of the principle of restriction,
gave away the men's case by its exceptions. He refused
to bind those employers who " manufactured goods called
* Nursery goods ' and other goods of a common quality
and of a low price," on the ground that no uniform ratio of
boys to men was applicable to their branch of the trade. In
this refusal there can be no doubt that he exercised a wise
discretion. To have insisted on these " Nursery " manu-
facturers doing work by adult labor which was actually being
performed by boys would have resulted only in their
immediate withdrawal from the Federation of Employers,
and so from the scope of the award. Thus, these low-class

1 We know of no other instance of the direct limitation of the number of boy
workers in a trade by the award of an arbitrator, or even by mutual consent of the
employers and men, though the award of Mr. T. (afterwards Judge) Hughes in
the case of the Kidderminster Carpet Weavers in 1875, by which the number of
boys allowed to actually work on looms was limited to one to five men, was given
partly on these grounds (see Report of Conference of Manufacturers and Work-
men before T. Hughes, Esq., Q.C., at . . . Kidderminster, ^oth July 1875.
Kidderminster 1875). But there are several instances of regulations by Trade
Unions aiming at this end. Thus in 1892 the Brassfounders3 Society at Hull
succeeded in enforcing a very strict limitation of the number of boys in each shop,
in order to stop the competition of excessive boy-labor. The Whitesmiths in the
North of England, the Coppersmiths of Glasgow, and the Packing-case Makers in
Bradford and other towns have made similar efforts to check the growth of this
practice, whilst the Amalgamated Wood Turners' Society of London, in a circular
to their employers in 1890, urged that all lads in the trade should be apprenticed
for five years, "a system which, when carried out, would be as great a blessing
for the lad as for the master, and remove the unfair competition of boy-labor."

The Entrance to a Trade 487

manufacturers, together with all small masters and non-
associated firms, go on employing as many boys as they
choose. The umpire's award, in fact, only applied to those
cases in which it was least required. The National Union
of Boot and Shoe Operatives accordingly finds itself in much
the same position with regard to boy - labor as the
Typographical Association does with regard to apprentices.
It nominally possesses the power of limiting the number,
but this power is only effective in high-class establishments,
and not even in all these. The only result of enforcing
the limit is thus, not any restriction of the total number
of boys in the trade, but merely their concentration in
particular districts or particular establishments from which,
as they grow up, they overflow to the others. The trade
remains, therefore, as overrun as ever, with the added evil
that it tends more and more to be recruited from the least
educational channels.

In other trades the failure to put any effective restriction
on the employment of boy-labor has been even more decided
than among the Boot Operatives and the Compositors. The
Engineers and Ironmoulders, for instance, have from time
to time attempted to enforce a limit of boy -labor. Such
regulations can for a time be enforced in strong Trade
Union towns, in those branches of the trade which absolutely
demand skilled workmen, and in establishments where Trade
Unionism has gained a firm hold. But in the meantime the
boys, even in Trade Union strongholds, will have been
crowding into the workshops of small masters, or of those
low-grade establishments which rely almost exclusively on
boy-labor. At the same time, as in the analogous case of
Trade Union Regulations on apprenticeship, the non-unionist
districts will be bringing in an unlimited number of recruits,
who have grown up outside Trade Union influence.

It may be objected that this drawback to any limitation
of boy-labor relates, not to the regulation itself, but to the
method by which it is enforced. If instead of a mere
voluntary agreement, the limitation were imposed by law,

488 Trade Union Function

its universal application would, it may be argued, effectually
put a stop to the abuse that is complained of. Such a law
would, however, have to be considered from the point of view
of those whom it excluded from the trade, as well as from
that of those whom it protected. A community which per-
emptorily limited the number of boys whom employers might
engage would find itself under an obligation to provide some
other means of maintenance for those who remained over.
If the law attempted to distribute the annual supply of boys
proportionately over all the industries of the country, it would
have to get over the difficulty, which Lord James found
insuperable, of framing any Common Rules that could be
applied to the different grades of establishments, in all the
innumerable varieties of occupation — to say nothing of the
complications arising from trades which employ no boys
at all, and from others in which boys only are required.
Finally, in order to arrive at the necessary adjustment
between the total supply of boy-labor and the demand for
it, as well as to hit off the happy mean between undue
laxness and economic monopoly in any particular trade, it
would need to be based upon data as yet absolutely unknown,
as to the rate at which each trade was increasing, and the
length of the average operative's working life.1 In short,
whilst any legal restriction on the number of boys to be

1 See " The Fair Number of Apprentices in a Trade," by C. P. Sanger, in
Economic Journal, December 1895.

The Factories and Shops Act of 1896 (No. 1445) of the Colony of Victoria
empowers (sec. 15) a special Board appointed by the Governor, and consisting of
equal numbers of employers and employed, to fix, in the Clothing, Bootmaking,
Furniture, and Breadmaking industries, " the number or proportionate number
of apprentices and improvers under the age of eighteen years who may be em-
ployed within any factory or workroom, and the lowest price or rate of pay-
payable " to them. Any person employing more than the number or proportion
so fixed is made liable to fine, and, on a third offence, the registration of his
factory or workroom " shall without further or other authority than this Act be
forthwith cancelled by the Chief Inspector." If this law is ever put effectively
in force, its working will deserve the careful attention of economists.

We should ourselves be inclined to look for a remedy of the evil of excessive
boy-labor, not to any Trade Union Regulation, nor yet to any law limiting numbers,
but (following the precedent set with regard to children's employment) to a simple
extension of Factory Act and educational requirements ; see our chapter on " The
Economic Characteristics of Trade Unionism."

The Entrance to a Trade 489

employed in a particular industry can scarcely fail to be

inequitable, any general restriction on the number of

boys to be employed in all trades whatsoever is plainly
impossible.

We come now to a small but interesting series of
Trade Union Regulations which have hitherto escaped
attention. There are some trades which are not recruited
from boys at all, but from adult men, who leave their
previous work and " progress " to more responsible duties.

TJlllSv-Jthe T nnrlnn EnnHf^^jTavim^

employ boys, the Operative Society of Bricklayers is now
largely recruited, in the very numerous Metropolitan branches,
from young builders' laborers, who are permitted to decide,
up to the age of twenty-five, whether they will permanently
abandon the hod for the trowel.1 In this case the pro-
gression is practically ^unregulated by any definite rule.
Elsewhere the arrangements are sometimes more elaborate?
Thus, the ^malLJdanchester^ Slaters' and "Laborers' Society
practically admits to membership, as a laborer, any man
who is actually working with a slater, and it is from such
laborers that the ranks of the slaters are recruited. But
although the laborers form a majority of the society, the rules
provide for^strjctregulation of this progressjpa< Any slater's
laborer who desires to become a slater must first serve seven
years in the lower grade, and then apply to the secretary of
the union. A committee of six practical slaters is then
appointed, by whom the candidate is examined in all the
mysteries of the art. If he passes this ordeal, he is recognised
as a slater, and entitled to demand the full slater's pay. The
number of laborers so promoted is limited to three in each
year.2

1 It must be borne in mind that, as part of the defence of the Standard Rate,
no laborer is permitted to do occasional work as a bricklayer.

2 Rules of the Manchester and Salford District Slaters' and Laborers' Society
(Manchester, 1890). The London plumbers, in the absence of boy apprentices,

4QO Trade Union Function

A more complicated system of progression is to be found
in some trades in which the operatives are divided into
different grades. Among the Steel Smelters the sub-
ordinates, known as wheel-chargemen, who are recruited from
ordinary laborers, perform the onerous task of bringing to
the furnace the heavy loads of pig-iron with which it is
charged. The men actually engaged in the smelting opera-
tions are divided into three grades, having varying degrees
of responsibility for the successful issue of this very costly
process, but all alike engaged in severe physical exertion and
exposed to excessive heat. When a vacancy occurs in the
third or lowest grade, one of the wheel-chargemen is promoted
to fill it. A vacancy in any of the higher grades must be
offered first to any workman of that particular grade who
happens to be out of employment. If no such candidate
appears, it is then filled by selection by the employer from
the next lower grade. A precisely similar arrangement is
combined with apprenticeship among the Silk-dressers, who
are divided into apprentices, third hands, second hands, and
first hands. Among the Flint Glass Makers the hierarchy
of grades is even more complex. An apprentice may
become either a " footmaker " or may, if he is competent,
skip that grade and become at once a " servitor." But no
" servitor " may become a " workman," and no " footmaker "
a " servitor," so long as any man in the higher grade is out
of employment.1 In the strongly-organised United Society

are, as we have already mentioned, assisted by men known as " plumbers' mates,"
who have a union of their own. An employer is free to promote a plumber's
mate to be a plumber, whenever he considers him to be worth the plumbers'
Standard Rate. In most parts of the country the " forgers " or smiths in
manufacturing establishments are similarly recruited from the strikers who work
in conjunction with them, and who are in the same union.

1 Thus a Flint Glass Maker, advocating a scheme for the absorption of the
unemployed, declared that " the servitor that has been waiting for an opportunity
to get to the Workman's chair would then get his desire ; the Footmaker that was
put to make foot when he was bound apprentice, and is still in that position,
although he may be thirty years of age, and perhaps more than that, with a wife
and family dependent, upon him, and the reason of his still being in that position
is not that he has not the ability to be in a higher one, but because there has been
no vacancy only where there has been an unemployed man ready to fill it and
keep him back." — Letter in Flint Glass Makers' Magazine, November 1888.

Entrance to a Trade 491

of Boilermakers this system of progression is curiously
worked in with the existence of an inferior grade of operatives,
who are freely admitted to the union, but are only permitted
to progress under certain conditions. The platers, angle-iron
smiths, and rivetters who form the bulk of the society are
mostly recruited under the strictly-regulated apprenticeship
system which we have described. But there is also another
class of members, called " holders up," who are less skilled
than their colleagues, and who were only admitted to the
union in 1882. A "holder up" may progress to be a plater
or rivetter if he becomes competent for their work, but only
on condition that no member of the superior grade is out of
work in the district in question. Similarly, a plater, rivetter,
or angle-iron smith is not allowed to change to another
division of the trade so long as any member of that division
is seeking employment.

The trades in which this system of regulated progression
prevails cannot be said to be entirely " open," as an employer
is not permitted to promote a favourite operative in such a
way as to leave unemployed any workman of a higher grade.
On the other hand, regulated progression differs from
apprenticeship, in the total absence of any desire to reduce
the number of candidates below that of places to be filled.
No obstacle is thus placed in the way of an expansion of
trade ; and when bad times return there are more operatives
of all classes than there are places to fill. The arrangement
is, in fact, merely one for giving to all the members of each
grade the utmost possible continuity of employment, at the
cost of practically confining the opportunities of individual
promotion to the periods of expanding trade.

There are some reasons for expecting this system of
regulated progression to become more widely prevalent in
British industry. It is specially characteristic of modern
trades, and the modern form of business on a large scale. It
is adapted to the typical modern device of splitting up a
handicraft into a number of separate processes, each of which
falls to the lot of a distinct grade of workmen. It is con-

49 2 Trade Union Function

sistent with the decay of apprenticeship, and the " picking
up " of each process in turn by the sharp lad and ambitious
young mechanic. It goes a long way to secure both the
main objects of Trade Unionism, continuity of livelihood,
and the maintenance of the Standard of Life. It has no
invidious exclusiveness, or attempt at craft monopoly. It
lends itself to a combination of all the different grades of
workmen in a single industry, whilst enabling each grade to
preserve its own feeling of corporate interest. What is even
more significant, the system secures to the manufacturing opera-
tives in large industries much the same sort of organisation as
has spontaneously come into existence among the great army
of railway workers, and in the Civil Service itself. In the graded
service of the railway world, whilst there is no fixed rule on
the subject, it is usual for the general manager and the
directors to fill vacancies in the higher posts by selecting the
most suitable candidates from the next lower grade. New-
comers enter, in the ordinary course, at the bottom of the
ladder, and progress upwards as vacancies occur. In times
of depression, when the staff remains stationary, or has to be
reduced, the contraction operates mainly at the bottom.
Recruiting for the lowest grade is practically suspended.
Higher up, vacancies may remain unfilled and promotion thus
be checked, but actual dismissals for want of work are rare,
and are only resorted to in cases of absolute necessity. This
continuity of livelihood, which prevails largely in great
banking corporations, and, indeed, in all extensive business
undertakings, is still more characteristic of the British Civil
Service. The Postmaster-General, who is by far the largest
employer of labor in the country, never dismisses a man for
lack of business, and fills practically all the higher grades of
his service by promotion from the lower as vacancies occur.
The union of competing firms into great capitalist corpora-
tions or syndicates, such as those already prevailing in the
salt, alkali, and cotton thread trades, and the growth of
colossal commercial undertakings under single management,
appears likely to bring with it, as a mere matter of con-

The Entrance to a Trade 493

venience and discipline, the creation of a similarly graded
service in each monopolised industry.

In the case of the Civil Service, as in the Army and
Navy, this system of regulated progression is combined
with an objectionable feature. Although here and there
a man of exceptional ability or influence may be pitch-
forked into a high post, over the heads of others, the great
majority of vacancies in the upper grades are filled by
mere seniority, tempered only by the passing over of officers
who are notoriously inefficient. No such idea of seniority
is to be found in the Trade Union regulations. The manager
of a steel works has full liberty to pick out the most com-
petent wheel-chargeman to be a Third Hand. He may fill
vacancies in the class of Second Hands from the ablest of the
Third Hands, and then choose the very best of the Second
Hands to keep up the select group of First Hands on whom
the principal responsibility rests.1 The Silk-dressers leave it
absolutely to the employer to pick out, for any vacancy in
the higher grades, whichever workman in the lower he may
think best qualified for the place. Once a man has been
deliberately promoted by his employer to a particular grade,
he is entitled, under the Trade Union system of regulated
progression as in the Civil Service, to a preference for work
of that or any higher class, over any man of an inferior grade.
But under these Trade Union regulations the members of
any particular grade can urge, as among themselves, no other
claim than that of superior efficiency. The very conception
of seniority, as constituting a claim to advancement, is foreign
to Trade Unionism. Whatever arrangements may be made
to protect the vested interests of those already within the
circle, there is never any idea of preferring, among the
candidates for admission, either those who are oldest or those

1 A short period of service in the lower grade before promotion is sometimes
stipulated for in the rules : —

" That no person be allowed to work (as a) second hand before being one year,
nor (as a) first hand before being three years at the trade." — Constitution and
Rules of the British Steel Smelters' Amalgamated Association (Glasgow, 1892),
p. 30.

494 Trade Union Function

who have served longest. It is a special characteristic
of the industrial world, as compared with the more genteel
branches of the public service, that such special promotion
comes, as a rule, not to the old but to the young ; not
to the workman grown gray and stiff at his mechanical
task, but to the clever young artisan who reveals latent
powers of initiative organisation or command.1 Against such
promotion according to merit no Trade Union ever urges a
word of objection.

But although the Trade Union world is singularly free
from any idea of promotion by seniority, there are, here as
elsewhere, traces of what may be called local protectionism,
in conflict with the more general class interest. Thus it is
a cardinal tenet of the Amalgamated Association of Opera-
tive Cotton-spinners that, whilst it is for the operatives to
insist on a universal enforcement of the Standard Rate, it is
for the employer, and the employer alone, to determine whom
he will employ. When a pair of mules are vacant, the mill-
owner may entrust them to whomsoever he pleases, provided
that the selected person instantly joins the union and is paid
according to the " List." But the operatives in the particular
mill have not infrequently resented the introduction of a
spinner from another mill, even if he is a member of their
own union, when there are piecers who have grown up in
the service of the firm, and have long been waiting for the
chance of becoming spinners. The able officials and leaders
of the Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton-spinners
throw their weight against any such feeling on the ground
that it is inconsistent with Trade Unionism. The same con-
flict of the local with the general interest has come up among
the Steel Smelters, whose system of regulated progression is so
elaborate. At one branch (Blochairn Works, Glasgow) the
Wheel-chargemen (there called " helpers ") objected to vacan-

1 This is, to some extent, the case also in the more business-like branches of the
British Civil Service, where the aristocratic tradition is absent. The large graded
services of the Post Office, Customs, and Excise are mainly governed by a system
of " promotion according to merit," vacancies being filled by selection among the
next lower grade, irrespective of seniority.

The Entrance to a Trade 495

cies among the Third, Second, or First Hands in their particular
establishment being filled by unemployed men of those
grades, coming from elsewhere. They demanded that the
wheel-chargemen, and the men in other lower grades, should
have a preference for any vacancies that occurred in their
own steelworks. Any such substitution of a vertical for a
horizontal cleavage of the trade would, it is clear, be incon-
sistent with the regulated progression enforced by the British
Steel Smelters' Amalgamated Association, and would have
seriously hampered the employers' choice of operatives.
The union accordingly refused to recognise the claim of the
Blochairn helpers, and they were eventually excluded from
its ranks.1

(d) The Exclusion of Women

So far we have taken for granted that the candidate for
admission to the trade belongs to the male sex. In this we
have followed the ordinary Trade Union books of rules,
which, in nine cases out of ten, have found no need to refer
to the sex of the members. The middle-class Anglo-Saxon
is so accustomed to see men and women engaged in identical
work as teachers, journalists, authors, painters, sculptors,
comedians, singers, musicians, doctors, clerks, and what not,
that he unconsciously assumes the same state of things to
exist in manual labor and manufacturing industry.2 But in
the hewing of coal or the making of engines, in the building
of ships or the erecting of houses, in the railway service or
the mercantile marine, it has never occurred to the most

1 We need not do more than mention the demand — put forward by the
Enginemen's and the Plumbers' Trade Unions — that the possession of a certificate
of competency, awarded by some public authority, should be made a condition of
practising their respective trades. Regulations of this kind already govern, not
only the learned professions, but also the mercantile marine, and, to a growing
extent, the elementary school service. Protection of the interests of the consumer
may possibly cause them to be extended to some other occupations ; Massachusetts
Law 265 of 1896 requires a certificate for gasfitters.

2 Similarly, the entrance into industrial occupations of a relatively small number
of middle-class women has given rise to a quite disproportionate impression as to
the extent to which the employment of women has increased ; see the Board of
Trade Report by Miss Collet on the Employment of Women and Girts, p. 7,

496 7^rade Union Function

economical employer to substitute women for men.1 And
thus we find that, contrary to the usual impression, nine-
tenths of the Trade Unionists have never had occasion to
exclude women from their organisations. Even in the
industries which employ both men and women, we nearly
always find the sexes sharply divided in different depart-
ments, working at different processes, and performing different
operations.2 In the vast majority of cases these several
departments, processes, and operations are mutually com-
plementary, and there is no question of sex rivalry. In others
we find what is usually a temporary competition, not so
much between the sexes, as between the process requiring
a skilled man, and that within the capacity of a woman
or a boy laborer. Our chapter on " New Processes and
Machinery " has described the Trade Union policy with regard
to the substitution of unskilled for skilled labor. The
present section has, therefore, only to treat of the com-
paratively small number of cases in which, without any
change of process, women attempt to learn the same trade
and perform the same work as men.

The intensity of the resentment and abhorrence with
which the average working man regards the idea of women
entering his trade, equals that displayed by the medical
practitioner of the last generation. We have, to begin with,
a deeply-rooted conviction in the minds of the most con-
servative of classes, that, to use the words of a representative
compositor, " the proper place for females is their home."8
The respectable artisan has an instinctive distaste for the
promiscuous mixing of men and women in daily intercourse,

1 The women who worked in coalpits before the Mines Regulation Act of
1842 did the work, not of the coal-hewers, but of boys. The sweeping pro-
hibition of women working in underground mines happened not to be a Trade
Union demand, for the miners were at the moment unorganised. It was pressed
for by the philanthropists on grounds of morality.

2 See "The Alleged Difference between the wages of Men and Women," by
Sidney Webb (Economic Journal, December 1891); Women and the Factory
Acts, by Mrs. Sidney Webb (Fabian Tract, No. 67).

3 Report of Proceedings of the Meeting of Delegates from the Typographical
Societies of the United Kingdom and the Continent (London, 1886), p. 25.

The Entrance to a Trade 497

whether this be in the workshop or in a social club.1 These
objections, which often spring from mere old-fashioned
prejudice, tend to hide, and in the eyes of progressive
reformers, to discredit, the Trade Union objection to a new
class of " blacklegs." No employer would dream of sub-
stituting women for men, unless this resulted in his getting
the work done below the men's Standard Rate. The facts
that women have a lower standard of comfort than men, that
they seldom have to support a family, and that they are
often partially maintained from other sources, all render them,
as a class, the most dangerous enemies of the artisan's
Standard of Life. The instinctive Trade Union attitude
towards women working at a man's trade is exactly the
same as that towards men who habitually " work under
price," except that it is reinforced in the case of women by
certain social and moral prejudices which, in our day, and
among certain reformers, are beginning to be considered
obsolete. But under the pressure of the growing feeling in
favor of the " equality of the sexes " the Trade Unions have,
as we shall see, changed front. They began with a simple
prohibition of women as women. From this point we shall
trace the development of a new policy, based, like that
relating to new processes, not on exclusion, but on the

1 As regards many trades, there is much force in this objection. Where
men and women work independently of each other, in full publicity, and in, com-
paratively decent surroundings, as is the case with the male and female weavers
in a Lancashire cotton mill, there is little danger of sexual immorality. But
where a woman or girl works in conjunction with a man, especially if she is
removed from constant association with other female workers, experience both in
the factory and the mine shows that there is a very real danger to morality.
This is increased if the work has to be done in unusual heat or exceptional dress.
But the most perilous of relations is that in which the girl or woman stands in a
position of subordination to the man by whose side she is working. No one
acquainted with the relation between cotton-spinner and piecer can doubt the
wisdom, from the point of view of public morality, of the imperative refusal of
the Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton-spinners to allow its members
to employ female piecers. Even in the weaving sheds, where the relations
between the weavers themselves are satisfactory, the subordination of the women
weavers to the male overlooker leads to frequent scandals. The statutory
exclusion of women from working in underground mines is, we believe, universally
approved.

VOL. II 2 K

498 Trade Union Function

maintenance of a definite Standard Rate for each grade of
labor.

The eighteenth-century trade clubs of hatters, basket-
makers, brushmakers, or compositors would have instantly
struck against any attempt to put a woman to do any part
of their craft.1 It is interesting that the only case in which
we can discover this categorical prohibition still actually
existing in a current book of rules of to-day is that of the
archaic society of the Pearl Button Makers, whom we have
already noticed as extreme in their limitation of apprentices
and unique in their peremptory prohibition of machinery.
" No female allowed," laconically observes their regulation, " in
the capacity of either piecemaker, turner, or bottomer. Any
member working where a female does either [process] shall
forfeit one pound, and should he continue to do so shall be
excluded."2 In some other small indoor handicrafts, where
the work requires no great strength or endurance, employers
have, here and there, fitfully sought to teach women the trade.
The men, whether organised or not, have done their best to
exclude these new competitors, and the employers have not
found the experiment sufficiently successful to induce them
to continue it.3

Wherever any considerable number of employers have
resolutely sought to bring women into any trade within their

1 It will be needless to recall to the reader similar prohibitions by the
masters' gilds. Thus the Articles of the London Girdlers (1344) provided
"that no one of the said trade shall set any woman to work, other than his
wedded wife or his daughter." The "Braelers" (brace-makers) and Leather-sellers
of London and the Fullers of Lincoln had the same rule. — Riley's Memorials, pp.
217, 278, 547 ; Toulmin Smith's English Gilds, p. 180.

2 Rules and Regulations to be observed by the Members of the Operative Pearl
Button and Stud Worker? Protection Society (Birmingham, 1887), p. 12.

3 It has sometimes happened that the women, though acquiring a certain
amount of skill in most of the process, have failed in some essential part. Thus
when an employer brought his own daughters into the trade of silver-engraving,
they were never able, with all his tuition, to pick up the knack of "pointing"
their "gravers." The experiment has not been repeated. An attempt was made,
some years ago, to teach women to be " twisters and drawers " in a Lancashire
cotton mill. The innovation did not, however spread, as the women could
never do the "beaming," and it has been abandoned. In this case, by exception,
the incident has left its trace in the Trade Union rules. The very exclusive
society of " Beamers, Twisters, and Drawers" now provides "That all malt

The Entrance to a Trade 499

capacity, the Trade Unions have utterly failed to prevent
them. The most interesting case is that of the compositors.1
About 1848 the great printing firm of M'Corquodale intro-
duced women apprentices into its letterpress-printing works
at Newton-le-Willows in Lancashire, and this example has
since been followed by other employers in various towns.
There can be no doubt that the male compositors, whether
Trade Unionists or not, have been, from first to last, ex-
tremely hostile to this innovation, and that they have done
their best to prevent it. Down to 1886 all the compositors'
Trade Unions expressed, either in their rules or in their
practice, this uncompromising policy of exclusion. This
policy was justified by the men on the ground that the
women worked far below the Standard Rate, and that
" unfair " employers made use of them to break down the
men's position. In Edinburgh, for instance, the compositors'
great strike of 1872-73 was defeated, and the union reduced
to impotence by the importation of " female blacklegs," who,
as the Board of Trade declares, have " completely revolu-
tionised the trade in that city.2 In London, where there are
probably two hundred women compositors, these set up
"1000 ens" of copy for 5^d. to 6d., as compared with a
Standard Rate which works out at about 8^d., for work of
identical quantity and quality.

The compositors' policy of rigid exclusion from member-
ship failed to keep the women out of their trade. Whenever
an employer thought it worth his while to engage women
compositors, he ignored the union altogether, and set up a
distinct establishment. More than one great London firm
has, for instance, a " fair house " in the Metropolis, where

persons wishing to learn the trade of Twisting and Drawing, shall first obtain a
shop to work at when he has learned, and procure a certificate from the manager
to show that he has engaged him. No youth under sixteen years of age shall be
allowed to learn the trade of Twisting and Drawing, and not then, unless there
be a vacancy in the mill where he is introduced, and no member out of work on
the books." — Rules of the Blackburn District of the Amalgamated Beamers,
Twisters, and Drawers' Association (Blackburn, 1891), p. 12.

1 See " Women Compositors," by Amy Linnett, in Economic Review,
January 1892.

2 Board of Trade Third Report on Trade Unions, C. 5808, 1889, p. 125.

5OO Trade Union Function

none but Trade Unionists are employed, and another estab-
lishment in one of the small towns of the Home Counties,
where no Trade Unionist works, and where the employment
of women is absolutely unrestricted. Smaller firms employ-
ing women take girl apprentices, and rely almost exclusively
on female labor.

The futility of the policy of exclusion, combined with
the growth of a Socialistic disapproval of trade monopoly,
induced the largest compositors' society to alter its tactics.
In 1886 we find the able general secretary of the London
Society of Compositors (Mr. C. J. Drummond)1 carrying,
at an important conference of all the compositors' Trade
Unions, a resolution " that, while strongly of opinion that
women are not physically capable of performing the duties
of a compositor, this conference recommends their admission
to membership of the various Typographical Unions upon
the same conditions as journeymen, provided always the
females are paid strictly in accordance with scale."2 This
resolution has been acted upon by the London Society of
Compositors, the most important of the unions represented,
which is now open to women on exactly the same terms as
to men.3

What the London Society of Compositors has only
lately discovered, the Lancashire weavers have, for two
generations, unconsciously acted upon. Here there has
never been any sex distinction. The various organisations
of weavers have, from the introduction of the power-loom,
always included women as members on the same terms as
men. The piecework list of prices, to which all workers

1 Now on the staff of the Labor Department of the Board of Trade.

2 Report of Proceedings of the Meeting of Delegates from the Typographical
Societies of the United Kingdom and the Continent (London, 1886), pp. 23-25.

3 It is interesting to trace this change of attitude among the London com-
positors, partly to a dim and imperfect appreciation of the foregoing argument,
and partly also to the growth of Socialist ideas, and the conception of equality of
rights ; see the History of Trade Unionism, pp. 384, 394. We believe that during
ten years only one woman compositor has ever claimed admission to the London
Society of Compositors. On it being proved that, employed at Mr. William
Morris's Kelmscott Press, she was paid at the Standard Rate, she was promptly
enrolled as a member (Printing News , October 1892).

The Entrance to a Trade 501

must conform, applies to men and women alike. But it is
interesting to observe that the maintenance of a Standard
Rate has resulted in a real, though unobtrusive, segregation.
There is no attempt to discriminate between women's work
and men's work as such. The uniform scale of piecework
prices includes an almost infinite variety of articles from the
plain calico woven on narrow looms to the broad and heavy
figured counterpanes which tax the strength of the strongest
man. In every mill we see both men and women at work,
often at identical tasks. But, taking the cotton-weaving
trade as a whole, the great majority of the women will be
found engaged on the comparatively light work paid for at
the lower rates. On the other hand, a majority of the men
will be found practically monopolising the heavy trade, priced
at higher rates per yard, and resulting in larger weekly earn-
ings. But there is no sex competition. A woman of excep-
tional strength, who is capable of doing the heavy work,
cannot take advantage of her lower Standard of Life, to
offer her services at a lower rate than has been fixed for
the men. She is not, as a woman, excluded from what is
generally the men's work, but she must win her way by
capacity, not by underbidding. On the other hand, though
the rates fixed for the lighter work have been forced up to
a point that is high relatively to the women's Standard of
Life, the wages that can be earned at this grade are too. low
to tempt any but the weaker men to apply for such looms.
In short, the enforcement of a definite Standard Rate,
practically unalterable in individual cases, serves, in itself, to
prevent sex competition. The candidates for employment
tend to segregate into virtually non- competing groups
according to their grades of strength and skill.1

1 This principle of a classification of work, and strict segregation of the sexes,
is now to be found in various other trades. Thus, the very old-fashioned society
of goldbeaters sought, down to recent years, absolutely to exclude women. The
Rules of the Goldbeater? Trade Society (London, 1875) provided "That no mem-
ber be allowed to work for a master who employs females on the premises or
elsewhere under the penalty of immediate erasure." But this absolute exclusion
is now given up in favor of a strict separation between the men's and women's
tasks. The later Rules of the Goldbeaters' Trade Society (London, 1887) expressly

502 Trade Union Function

Precisely the same result has occurred in the hosiery
trade, where men and women have for many years belonged
to the same organisations and worked side by side. Here
the machinery is undergoing a constant evolution, one stage
of which affords an interesting example of the relation of
men and women workers. At the beginning of 1888 the
men working on " circular rib frames " found themselves
being ousted by the women working at lower rates. They
accordingly demanded, in March 1888, that a uniform rate
of 3d. per dozen should be paid to men and women alike.
The women protested, saying that if they were to charge the
men's price they would be all dismissed. A compromise was
agreed to, which allowed the women to work at a farthing
per dozen less than the men. This led in May to " the dis-
missal of the (male) circular rib frame hands from H.'s firm
for women to work. The farthing difference as agreed to
by the workpeople themselves under the pressure of circum-
stances created the evil." ..." It seems to us," continues
the Secretary of the Union, " that the simplest and best way
of meeting the difficulty will be to agree what frames shall
be a man's and what a woman's job." From the June report
we see that this suggestion of the Executive Council was
adopted by both male and female workers, it being decided
that the women should work the " old " machines and the
men the " new" ones ! This ingenuous proposal was accepted
by the women until they found that the " old " machines
were, of necessity, being steadily replaced by new ones.
Ultimately an agreement was arrived at that the men
should work the large, or " eight -head " frames, and the
women the small, or " six-head " frames. This segregation
of the sexes was secured, not by the exclusion of one
sex or the other from either machine, but an ingenious

allow that a member " may work at any shop where females are employed,
provided he does not assist them or be assisted by them in any part of the work."
And the brushmakers, who once strove against women working at all, now seek
merely to keep them to their own class of work. " Any member boring pan
or machine work for women shall be expelled." — General Trade Rules of the
United Society of Brushmakers (London, 1891), p. 24.

The Entrance to a Trade 503

adjustment of the Standard Rate. The women retained
their privilege of working at a farthing per dozen less than
the men, a concession which gave them a virtual monopoly
of their own machine. On the other hand, it was agreed
between the union and the employers that, as between
the " six-head " frame and the " eight-head " frame, an extra
allowance of a farthing per dozen should be paid to com-
pensate for the lesser output of the smaller machine. This
prevented the smaller (or women's) machine from encroaching
on the work for which the larger (or men's) machine was
best fitted. The result has been that, whilst their weekly
earnings may differ widely, the women actually obtain the
same rate per dozen on their own machine as the men do
on theirs, whilst complete segregation of the sexes is secured,
and all competition between men and women as such is
practically prevented.1

The experience of the Lancashire Cotton-weavers and the
Leicestershire Hosiers affords, we think, a useful hint to the
London Society of Compositors. To complete its policy
with regard to women's labor, the latter should not merely
admit to membership those women who prove their capacity
to do a man's work, but should also take steps to organise
the weaker or less efficient female compositors whom this
condition excludes. As in the case of alternative processes,
the welfare of each party is bound up with the maintenance
of the other's Standard Rate. It is easy to see that the
women compositors, as a class, stand to lose if the men's
employers were to regain the trade from the firms employ-
ing women by reducing the men's wages. On the other
hand, the men suffer if, owing to the defenceless state of the
women and their partial maintenance from other sources,
employers are able to obtain their labor at wages positively
below what would suffice to keep it in constant efficiency, if
the women depended permanently on their wages alone. To
prevent any such " bounty " being indirectly paid by other

1 Amalgamated Hosiery Union, Monthly Reports for 1888 ; and personal
information in 1893 and 1896.

504 Trade Union Function

classes of the community to the employer of female labor, it is
necessary that the women should be in a position to maintain
a Standard Rate for their own work, even though this may
have to be fixed lower than that of the men. Now, Trade
Union experience shows that the first condition of the con-
temporary maintenance of two different Standard Rates, in
different grades of the same industry, is that there should be
a clear and sharp distinction between them. In the case of
the Cotton-weavers this is secured by the different kinds of
work, to each of which a definite scale of prices is assigned.
The Hosiery Workers accomplish the same result by a differ-
entiation of machine. In the case of the Compositors, though
there are many kinds of work for which women have never
been found suitable, it is impossible to make any complete
classification of men's work and women's work. The only way
of preventing individual underbidding by persons of a lower
standard of comfort is to segregate the women in separate
establishments or departments, and rigidly to exclude each
sex from those in which the other is employed in type-
setting.1 If this segregation, which is desirable for moral as
well as for economic reasons, were strictly enforced, it would
be highly advantageous for the London Society of Com-
positors to recognise these women, and to organise them,
either as a " woman's branch," or as an affiliated society.
The women could then collectively decide for themselves the
standard weekly earnings that ought to be demanded by the
ordinary woman compositor, and get a " scale " of piecework
prices for women's jobs worked out on this basis. The
fundamental necessity for the Compositors, from a Trade
Union point of view, is, therefore, not the exclusion of
women as women, but the rigid insistence that any
candidate for admission into their particular branch of
the trade should obtain the Standard Rate. If women
are incapable of earning the same piece-work rate as men,
they are, on this argument, rightly relegated to the easier

1 This need not exclude the employment of a man in the women's department
to do laboring or engineering work.

The Entrance to a Trade 505

lines of work in which their lower standard of effort can
be fully remunerated.

We may now sum up the present Trade Unionist
position. The old prohibition of women competitors, against
which the women's advocates have so often protested, was
as unnecessary as it was invidious. All that is requisite,
from a Trade Union point of view, is that the woman's
claim for absolute equality should be unreservedly con-
ceded, and that women should be accepted as members
upon precisely the same terms as men. Nor can the champion
of the " equality of the sexes " logically demand from the
Trade Unions any further concession. The women's advo-
cates are, in fact, in a dilemma. If they argue that women,
though entitled to equality of treatment, may nevertheless
work " under price," in order to oust male Trade Unionists
from employment, they negative the whole theory and
practice of Trade Unionism. If, on the other hand, they
ask that women shall be specially privileged to act as black-
legs, without suffering the consequences, they abandon the
contention of an equality of treatment of both sexes.
Within the world of manual labor, at any rate, " equality "
between the sexes leads either to the exclusion of women
from the men's trades, or else to the branding of the whole
sex as blacklegs.

There is, however, no necessity to get into this dilemma.
It is unfair, and even cruel, to the vast army of women
workers, to uphold the fiction of the equality of the sexes in
the industrial world. So far as manual labor is concerned,
women constitute a distinct class of workers, having different
faculties, different needs, and different expectations from
those of men. To keep both sexes in the same state of
health and efficiency — to put upon each the same degree of
strain — implies often a differentiation of task, and always
a differentiation of effort and subsistence.1 The Common

1 Professor Edgeworth puts an interesting problem {Mathematical Psychics^
p. 95). "When Fanny Kemble visited her husband's slave plantations, she
found that the same (equal) tasks were imposed on the men and the women, the

506 Trade Union Fimction

Rules with regard to wages, hours, and other conditions,
by which the men maintain their own Standard of Life
are usually unsuited to the women. The problem for the
Trade Unionist is, whilst according to women the utmost
possible freedom to earn an independent livelihood, to
devise such arrangements as shall prevent that freedom
being made use of by the employers to undermine the
Standard of Life of the whole wage -earning class. The
experience of the Lancashire Cotton -weavers and the
Leicestershire Hosiers points, we think, to a solution being
found in the frank recognition of a classification of work.
The essential point is that there should be no under-bidding
of individuals of one sex by individuals of the other. So
long as the competition of men is virtually confined to the
men's jobs, and the competition of women to the women's jobs,
the fact that the women sell their labor at a low price does
not endanger the men's Standard Rate, and the fact that
men are legally permitted to work all night does not diminish
the women's chance of employment. In the vast majority
of trades, as we have seen, this industrial segregation of the
sexes comes automatically into existence, and needs no ex-
press regulation. In the very small number of cases in
which men and women compete directly with each other for
employment, on precisely the same operation, in one and
the same process, there can, we believe, be no effective Trade
Unionism until definite Standard Rates are settled for men's
work and women's work respectively.

This does not mean that either men or women need to
be explicitly excluded from any occupation in virtue of their
sex. All that is required is that the workers at each opera-
tion should establish and enforce definite Common Rules,
binding on all who work at their operation, whether they
be men or women. The occupations which demanded the

women accordingly, in consequence of their weakness, suffering much more
fatigue. Supposing the [employer] to insist on a certain quantity of work being
done, and to leave the distribution of the burden to the philanthropist, what
would be the most beneficent arrangement — that the men should have the same
fatigue, or not only more task, but more fatigue ? "

The Entrance to a Trade 507

strength, skill, and endurance of a trained man would, as at
present, be carried on with a relatively high Standard Rate.
On the other hand, the operatives in those processes which
were within the capacity of the average woman would aim
at such Common Rules as to wages, hours, and other con-
ditions of labor, as corresponded to their position, efforts, and
needs. The experience of the Lancashire Cotton-weavers
indicates that such a differentiation of earnings is not
necessarily incompatible with the thorough maintenance of a
Standard Rate, and also that it results in an almost com-
plete industrial segregation of the sexes. Women are not
engaged at the men's jobs, because the employers, having to
pay them at the same high rate as the men, find the men's
labor more profitable. On the other hand, the ordinary
man does not offer himself for the woman's job, as it is paid
for at a rate below that which he can earn elsewhere, and
upon which, indeed, he could not permanently maintain him-
self. But there need be no rigid exclusion of exceptional
individuals. If a woman proves herself capable of working
as well and as profitably to the employer as a man, and is
engaged at the man's Standard Rate, there is no Trade
Union objection to her being admitted to membership, as in
the London Society of Compositors, on the same terms as a
man. If, on the other hand, a man is so weak that he can
do nothing but the light work of the women, these may. well
admit him, as do the Lancashire Weavers, at what is virtu-
ally the women's rate. The key to this as to so many other
positions is, in fact, a thorough application of the principle
of the Standard Rate.

CHAPTER XI

THE RIGHT TO A TRADE

AN " overlap " between two trades, leading to a dispute as
to which section of workmen has a " right " to the job, may
occur in more than one way. A new process may be
invented which lies outside the former work of any one
trade, but is nearly akin to two or more of them. In such
a case, each trade will vehemently claim that the new pro-
cess " belongs " to its own members, either because the same
material is manipulated, the same tools are used, or the same
object is effected. But even without a new invention the
same conflict of rights may arise. The lines of division
between allied trades have hitherto often differed from town
to town, and the migration of employers or workmen, or
even the mere imitation of the custom of one town by the
establishments of another, will lead to serious friction. A
new firm may introduce fresh ways of dividing its work, or
an old establishment may undertake a new branch of trade.
There may even be an unprovoked and naked aggression,
by a strongly organised class of workmen, upon the jobs
hitherto undertaken by a humbler section. In any or all of
these ways, the employers may find their desire to allot their
work to particular classes of workmen sharply checked by
conflicting claims of " right to the trade."

It is in the great modern industry of iron-shipbuilding
that we find the most numerous and complicated disputes
about " overlap " and " demarcation." The gradual trans-

The Right to a Trade 509

formation of the passenger ship from the simple Deal lugger
into an elaborate floating hotel has obscured all the old lines
of division between trades. Sanitary work, for instance, has
always been the special domain of the plumber, and when
the sanitary appliances of ships became as elaborate as those
of houses, the plumber naturally followed his work. But,
from the very beginning of steam navigation, all iron piping
on board a steamship, whatever its purpose, had been fitted
by the engineer. Hence the plumbers and fitters both
complained that " the bread was being taken out of their
mouths " by their rivals. We need not recite the numberless
other points at which the craftsmen working on a modern
warship or Atlantic liner find each new improvement bringing
different trades into sharp conflict. The Engineers have, on
different occasions, quarrelled on this score with the Boiler-
makers, the Shipwrights, the Joiners, the Brassworkers,
the Plumbers, and the Tinplate Workers ; the Boiler-
makers have had their own differences with the Ship-
wrights, the Smiths, and the Chippers and Drillers ; the
Shipwrights have fought with the Caulkers, the Boat and
Barge Builders, the Mast and Blockmakers, and the
Joiners ; the Joiners themselves have other quarrels with
the Mill-sawyers, the Patternmakers, the Cabinetmakers,
the Upholsterers, and the French Polishers ; whilst minor
trades, such as the Hammermen, the Ship Painters, and the
" Red Leaders," are at war all round. Hence an employer,
bound to complete a job by a given date, may find one
morning his whole establishment in confusion, and the most
important sections of his workmen " on strike," not because
they object to any of the conditions of employment, but
because they fancy that one trade has " encroached " on the
work of another. The supposed encroachment may consist
of the most trivial detail. The shipwrights admit that the
joiners may case (or line with wood) all telegraph connections
throughout the ship, except only when these happen to go
through cargo spaces, coal bunkers, and the hold. When a
joiner passes this magic line even in a job of a few hours,

5io Trade Union Function

the whole of the shipwrights will drop their tools. On the
other hand, when the joiners' blood is up, they will all go on
strike rather than see the shipwrights do even a few feet of
what they regard as essentially their own work. Under these
circumstances a task which one man could do in an hour
may stop a whole shipyard. On one occasion, indeed, a
great shipbuilder on the Tyne, finding his whole establish-
ment laid idle by such a quarrel, and utterly unable to bring
the men to reason, finally took off his coat and did the disputed
work with his own hands.1

These trivial disputes sometimes blaze up into industrial
wars of the first magnitude. The leading case which took
place on the Tyne a few years ago is thus described by a
great shipbuilder. "For some time before 1890 the division
of work between joiners and shipwrights had led to unpleasant
relations between them, and to interference with the progress
of work. . . . The disputes became so frequent and angry
when the large amount of Government work came to the
Tyne, that the employers urged the delegates of the two

1 Demarcation disputes, though frequent and serious in certain industries, are
entirely absent from some, and only rarely occur in others. They are, for instance,
practically unknown in the textile trades and the extractive industries, which
together make up a half of the Trade Union world. It is especially in the group
of trades connected with the building and equipping of ships that they are trouble-
some. They also occur, though to a lesser extent, throughout the engineering
and building trades. Roughly speaking, we may say that they are characteristic
of about one quarter of the whole Trade Union membership. We know of no
systematic description or analysis of this controversy. The student can only be
referred to the materials relating to the particular cases elsewhere cited, especially
the minutes of proceedings of the various joint committees, and to the evidence
given before the Royal Commission on Labor, 45th day. (See Digest for
Group A, vol. iii. C. 6894, x. pp. 48-54.) In earlier ages, when the right to a
continuance of the accustomed livelihood was recognised by law and public opinion,
disputes arising from the encroachments of one craft on the work of another were
habitually settled by what was, in effect, a judicial decree, exactly as if the point
at issue had been the boundary between two landed estates. Thus the apportion-
ment of work between the carpenters and the joiners was a fruitful cause of dispute.
A Committee of the Common Council of the City of London made an elaborate
award in 1632, defining in detail the particular kinds of work to be done by the
Companies of Carpenters and Joiners respectively, " deal coffins" being assigned,
as a knotty question, to both in common. — The History of the Carpenters' Company^
by Jupp (London, 1848). A similar dispute between the carpenters and joiners
of Newcastle-on-Tyne, who, down to 1589, were combined in a single gild, was

The Right to a Trade 5 1 1

societies to refer their differences to an independent and
capable arbitrator, promising that they would, as employers,
accept any award that he made. . . . Mr. Thomas Burt, M.P.,
was proposed by the joiners and accepted by the shipwrights.
A very long, patient, and exhaustive inquiry was made into
the practices in the Tyne and other places, past and present ;
evidence was taken from old hands, delegates, and all who
could throw light upon the history of the division of work. . . .
After an investigation extending over five and a half months,
Mr. Burt issued his award, allotting, out of 168 items in
question, 96 to the joiners and 72 to the shipwrights.
The joiners . . . disputed the fairness of the findings of the
arbitrator they had themselves proposed, and left their
employment for fourteen weeks. . . . Many vigorous attempts
were made by the employers to induce the joiners to work
to the award without success. . . . Ultimately . . . the joiners
were called upon by the united trades in the Tyne to submit
their contentions absolutely to a Committee or Court corn-
settled by an award of similar character, "chists for corpses " being, curiously
enough, equally made common to the two trades (Beach's Newcastle Companies,
pp. 31-33). And, to turn to quite other industries, we find the tanners and whit-
tawyers disputing as to the limits of their crafts, "the assize of a white tawyer"
being, as Stow declared, " that he make nor tawe no Ledder but Shepe's Ledder,
Gotes Ledder, Horses' Ledder, and Hindes Ledder " (Jupp, p. 337), leaving to
the tanner the dressing of ox skins, which required the use of bark. The disputes
between the London Cordwainers and the " cobelers from beyond sea" raged in
J39S so fiercely that the king "commanded John Fresshe, Mayor of the said city,
that the said Cobelers should gain their living as they had done from of old . . .
and that it might be declared what of right should belong to the one party and
the other." Whereupon, after solemn inquiry, it was ordained, among other
things, " that no person who meddles with old shoes shall meddle with new shoes
to sell." [Indenture of Agreement between the Cordwainers and the Cobblers,
1 4th August 1395 ; Memorials of London and London Life, by H. T. Riley
(London, 1868), pp. 539-541.] This, however, did not bring peace, and in 1409
"our most dread lord the King sent his gracious letters under his Privy Seal
unto Drew Barantyn," the then Mayor, which led to renewed inquiry, and a
more detailed apportionment of work, assigning to the cobblers the clouting of
" old boots and old shoes with new leather upon the old soles, before or behind,"
but " that if it shall happen that any person desires to have his old boots or
bootlets resoled, or vamped and soled, or his galoches or shoes resoled, the same,
if it can be done, shall pertain at all times to the said workers called Cordwainers
to do it." [Inquisition made for the Regulation of the Cordwainers and the
Cobblers, I5thjune 1409, Ibid. pp. 571-574.] A detailed study of the demarca-
tion disputes of former ages would probably be of considerable interest.

512 Trade Union Function

posed of one representative from six or seven different trade
societies. . . . This Court, at their first meeting, ordered the
joiners to resume work on Mr. Burt's award. ... In January
1 89 1, the plumbers and fitters agreed to appoint representatives
to discuss and settle the demarcation of their respective
trades . . . owing to the friction that was growing between
the two. . . . Conferences between the parties took place :
witnesses were examined for the fitters and for the plumbers ;
the practice for several years back was carefully investigated ;
an agreement was eventually signed by the parties, but . . .
it led to disputes . . . the moment it was published, and
produced a strike as soon as it was attempted to be worked
to. ... Each of the two parties read the provisions in utter
disregard of the other's views and interests, and in equal
disregard of the interests of the employers, and . . . disputed
points . . . kept the two trades apart for nine weeks. . . .
An agreement was arrived at, however, on the i8th June
1891, at a conference between employers, fitters, and
plumbers. . . . The Committee met seventeen times . . .
settled two sections out of a list of twenty-six, the Chairman
giving his decision against the objection of the engineers to
the three-inch limit on iron-piping. . . . The fitters rose in
a body, charged the Chairman with unfairness, and left the
Committee altogether. . . . The other two parties . . . issued
an award on the 28th October 1891. The employers were
appealed to by the plumbers ... to put the award into
force, and did so, with the result that the fitters left their
employment . . . and a second strike ensued on the division
of the same work as before in April. . . . After a strike of
twelve weeks . . . they [were driven to resume] work upon
the award of the Joint Committee. . . . The principal
difficulty in composing the disputes has arisen from the
variety of the practice in different works and districts. . . .
Each society proposes to itself to have the largest possible
number of its members employed at the same time . . . and
to this end tries to secure the whole of the work it considers
belongs to its members according to usage and custom. . . .

The Right to a Trade 5 1 3

The employers' interest is remorselessly sacrificed by the
disputants."1

It will not, we think, be difficult for the reader to picture,
even from this bald narrative, the state of disorganisation
and chaos into which these recurring disputes threw the
great industries of Tyneside between _ iS^oand 1893.
Within the space of thirty-five months, there werePno tewer
than thirry-fivp weeks ia-which one or other of the four most
important sections of workmen in the staple industry of the
district absolutely refused to work. This meant the stoppage
of huge establishments, the compulsory idleness of tens of
thousands of other artisans and laborers, the selling -up of
households, and the semi-starvation of thousands of families
totally unconcerned with the dispute. Nor was the effect
confined, as far as the Trade Unionists were concerned, to
these sensational but temporary results. The men were, in
fact, playing into the hands of those employers who wished
to see Trade Unionism destroyed. The internecine warfare
on the Tyne has left all unions concerned in a state of local
weakness from which they have by no means yet recovered,
and under which they will probably suffer for many years.
Their loss of members and of money is the least part of
the evil. When one society is fighting another, the whole
efficacy of Trade Unionism, as a means of improving the
conditions of employment, is, for the moment, paralysed.
Even if the angry strife between the two sets' of workmen
does not lead actually to mutual " blacklegging," it effectively

1 Extracted from an interesting Memorandum by Mr. John Price, of Palmer
and Co., Limited, Shipbuilders and Engineers, Jarrow, which was prepared for
the Royal Commission on Labor but was not published by that body.

Among the voluminous pamphlet literature on these disputes the most
important documents are the several Reports of Conferences between the employers
and the several engineering unions in Newcastle on 9th March, 22nd March,
22nd April, and 26th April 1892 ; the set of Manifestoes published by the United
Operative Plumbers' Association (Liverpool, 1892) ; the Report of the Arbitration
Proceedings on the question of the apportionment of work to be done by the Ship-
wrights and the Joiners (Newcastle, 1890) ; the publications on the subject by the
Shipwrights and the Joiners respectively ; and the Report of the Proceedings of
the Board of Conciliation in revising the award of Air. Thomas Bitrty M.P.
(Newcastle, 1890). The Newcastle Daily Chronicle from 1890 to 1893 contains
frequent references.

VOL. II 2 L.

5 1 4 Trade Union Fimction

destroys their power of resisting any capitalist encroachment.
An employer who desires to beat down his men's terms need
only send, on some trivial pretext, for the district delegate of
the overlapping trade. The mere rumour that the agent of
the rival union has been seen to enter his office will probably
excite sufficient apprehension to bring his men to instant
submission. Thus, whilst these demarcation disputes cause,
to the employers, the wage-earners, and the community at
large, all the moral irritation and pecuniary loss of an
ordinary strike or lock-out, they must, under all circum-
stances, weaken all the unions concerned in their struggle
for better conditions.

We are, therefore, face to face with an apparently in-
comprehensible problem. If the workmen have all to lose
and nothing to gain by fighting over the demarcation
between trades, how is it that their responsible leaders do
not peremptorily interfere to prevent such quarrels ? The
explanation is to be found in the character of the workmen's
claims. To them the issue is not one of expediency, but of
moral right. " We are fighting this battle," declared the
United Pattern-makers' Association in 1889, "on the prin-
ciple that every trade shall have the right to earn its bread
without the interference ot outsiders ; a principle jealously
guarded by every skilled trade . . . and one which we are
fully determined shall likewise apply to us." * " It is our duty,"
declared the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, " to exercise
the same care and watchfulness over that in which we have
a vested interest as the physician does who holds a diploma,
or the author who is protected by a copyright." 2 " The
machine," says their Tyne District Delegate in 1897, "no
doubt is part of the employer's invested capital, but so is the
journeyman's skilled labor." 8 The Associated Shipwrights'
Society expressly stated in 1893, with reference to a new

1 Circular of United Pattern-makers' Association, iQth December 1889.

2 Preface to Rules of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (London, 1891),
p. 6.

3 Amalgamated Society of Engineers' Journal, March 1897.

The Right to a Trade 5 1 5

dispute on the Clyde, that " while we do not object to any
firms dividing their works into departments, or sub-letting
portions of the vessels they are building, still we do most
respectfully and emphatically contend that no employers
should, in suiting their convenience, give away another man's
means of living, any more than that no workman would be
allowed or justified to go into an employer's office and take
his money from his safe and give it to another." l " The
sacredness of property," writes the Liverpool Delegate of the
Engineers in 1897, "is surely applicable to labor, which is
as much our property as the lathes are the property of the
employer." 2 And if we look through the reports of the
unions we have mentioned, or of those in any branch of the
building trades, we shall find abundant references, not to the
pecuniary advantage of the workmen or the convenience of
the employer, but to " our trade rights," or " our universal
right and custom," and to a righteous resistance of " encroach-
ment, theft, and confiscation." " Do the Bricklayers aim at
extinguishing us altogether ? " pathetically remonstrate the
Slaters and Tilers. " They roam all over a building from the
cellar to the highest point, devouring everything and any-
thing that they choose, no matter what other trade it may
belong to — slating, roof-tiling, wall-tiling, floor-tiling, paving,
setting stone landings, sills, heads, and steps, plastering,
knobbing, whitewashing, etc." 3

It is, fortunately, unnecessary for us to discuss the work-
man's initial assumption that it is desirable, in the public

1 Minutes of Line of Demarcation Joint- Committee of Shipwrights and Joiners
(Glasgow, 1893), Part II. P- 7> "The Shipwrights' Statement."

2 Amalgamated Society of Engineers' Journal, March 1897.

3 Correspondence in the Star, quoted in Builder, 8th April 1893. This
sense of wrong is aggravated by an exaggerated consciousness of the pecuniary
drain on the union funds involved in the payment of out-of-work benefit to the
displaced members. At a branch meeting attended by one of the authors,
when a demarcation dispute was under discussion, the fact that the work wrong-
fully engrossed by the rival trade would have sufficed to take three unemployed
members off the books, and so save this great amalgamated union thirty-six
shillings a week, was repeatedly adduced as a reason for aggressive action. The
aggressive action subsequently cost that same union, at the lowest computation,
many thousands of pounds.

516 Trade Union Function

interest, for him to be assured of a reasonable continuity of
livelihood.1 Nor need we here determine whether, if it
were possible to secure this end by fencing off each craft
from encroachment, the social advantage of this assurance of
livelihood would or would not outweigh the drawbacks of the
expedient. It so happens that in the advanced industrial
communities of our time, the circumstances are so complex,
and so perpetually changing, that it passes the wit of man
to define the "right to a trade" in any way that will not
produce the most palpable absurdities.

The first attempt is always to base the right on custom.
It is natural enough that the workmen in any one town should
expect and desire that the prevailing habits of work should
be adhered to. But irrespective of the fact that the " custom
of the trade " is found to vary from town to town, and even
from establishment to establishment, it is obvious that this
affords, of itself, no rule when, as is almost invariably the
case, the point at issue is some novel process or some hitherto
unfamiliar product. Each party then interprets the custom
in a different way. It may at first sight seem to be con-
venient to take, as a guide, the object or purpose of the
product. The shipwrights, in fact, will sometimes claim as
their right all that concerns the construction and fitting of
ships. But a modern ship now includes everything that is
found in a luxurious hotel ; and a shipwright, on this inter-
pretation, would not only have to work in steel as well as in
wood, but would also have to be an accomplished engineer,
boilermaker, brassfinisher, plumber, joiner, cabinetmaker,
French polisher, upholsterer, painter, decorator, and electric
light and bell fitter. And if, in search of some dividing line
between these manifestly different crafts, we turn to the tools
required, we come to no less incongruous results. Fifty
years ago it would have been admitted without question that
it was for the shipwright to use the adze and the mallet, and
for the joiner to employ the hammer and the plane. But
the deck of a modern passenger steamer cannot be completed

1 We recur to this point in our chapter on " Trade Union Assumptions."

The Right to a Trade 5 1 7

without using all these tools, together with others borrowed
from the cabinetmaker and glazier, and machines altogether
unheard of in former times. If each craft is to be confined
to the tools which have characterised it from time immemorial,
the ship would be crowded with workmen each waiting for
the moment to perform his little bit of the common task ;
all responsibility for the watertight character of the deck
would be lost, and there would still be altercations as to who
should use the newly -invented machines. Nor does the
material used afford us any dividing line. If this were
accepted, the advance of sanitation, with the disuse of leaden
pipes, would involve the ousting of the whole body of
certificated plumbers, in favor of engineers and bricklayers
destitute of sanitary knowledge. Moreover, in the crucial
instances of demarcation trouble, the material concerned is
common to both parties. Shipwrights, joiners, and cabinet-
makers all work in wood ; and shipwrights, boilermakers,
engineers, tinplate workers, and plumbers all handle iron.
If the substance fails to afford a dividing line, the disputants
will often fall back on its thickness. The central point in
dispute on the Tyne for two years may, in fact, be said to
have resolved itself into whether the limit of size of the iron
pipes to be fitted by the engineers and the plumbers
respectively, should be 2\ or 3 inches, and whether the
joiners should or should not be confined to wood-work of
\\ inch thickness.1 The demarcation disputes between the
boilermakers on the one hand, and the Chippers and Drillers

1 "Mr. Ramsey (Shipwrights). — The question of the thickness of material is
again introduced. I ask is it fair that the joiner trade should have all the say
as to thickness of wood ? Is it not a fact that both trades manipulate all thicknesses
of wood in their jobs ? We lay and fix any kind of feathered and grooved ceiling
in cargo spaces in the hold of a vessel. . . . We have objected all along to this
Joint Committee dealing with this question of thickness of wood because we con-
sider the principle is not sound. . .

" Mr, Roger (Joiners). — . . . Have we not the same liberty as a trade to
introduce a thickness as the other side has to object to it ? . . . We hold we are
not exorbitant in our claim for lining i^ inches and under. It stands to reason
that joiners are the more competent men to do that class of work. I would like
to ask the other side where, in the ancient shipbuilding from Noah up to fifty
years since, they used nails for fastening. . . . We claim all lining from i£ inches

518 Trade Union Function

on the other, turn chiefly on the size of the holes which each
trade may cut in the iron plates.1 The doctrine of the right
to the trade thus leads us to the absurd result that a par-
ticular task has to be allotted to one trade or another, not
according to its acquaintance with the purpose to be served,
or to its familiarity with the tools or material used, but ac-
cording to the exact thickness of the pipe or board, or the
precise diameter of the hole in the iron plates, which the
fad, fashion, or science of the hour may prescribe. -The
necessity of discovering some line which can be precisely
defined and accurately measured, leads, in fact, to a purely
arbitrary distribution of work, which has the added demerit
of the greatest possible instability.

all this turmoil the employers have an easy
remedy. " The proper cure," declared the representative of
the Belfast shipbuilders, " is to revert to the old state of
affairs, where the employer selected the men most suited to
do the work " ; or, as the representative of the Tyneside ship-
builders put it, " to uphold the right of an employer to employ
whatever workmen he believes will best serve the purposes
of his trade or business without any regard to trade
societies." And the Scottish shipbuilders declared through
their representative, that " whether a plumber may join
a 2 -inch pipe, but not one of 2^ inches, whether a
joiner may dub a plank or a shipwright may plane a rail,
must appear to a disinterested person extremely trivial ; "
and they proposed summarily to " get rid altogether of this
fertile cause of quarrel by abolishing all arbitrary boundaries

and under, simply because it is material we are in the habit of working, and
because it is fastened to the grounds. . . .

" Mr. Wilkie (Shipwrights). — ... In past years when there was no ma-
chinery [the joiners] might have made this claim, but that has all disappeared with
the introduction of machinery. . . . The joiners lay claim to this work because the
vessels carry passengers one way. I hold our claim is far more legitimate, seeing
they carry cargo the other way. . . . Clearly, if it is to be fitted up for cargo it
is shipwrights' work pure and simple." — Minutes of Line of Demarcation Joint-
Committee of Shipwrights and Joiners (Glasgow, 1893).

1 Report of Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Meeting of the Federation of
Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades (Manchester, 1896).

The Right to a Trade 5 1 9

between different handicrafts, and leaving it to the master
... to settle . . . how work is to be distributed. . . ."

To the reader of the foregoing chapters, the Trade
Union objection to any such abolition of the boundaries
between craft and craft will at once be clear. If there is to
be concerted action among the workmen — if, for instance,
there is to be any representative machinery for Collective
Bargaining, — it is absolutely necessary that the membership
of each Trade Union should be precisely defined, so that
each workman may know by what collective agreements he
is bound.1 It is, in fact, a condition of any organisation by
trades that the lines between the trades, though not necessarily
unalterable, should not be wantonly infringed at the mere
caprice of a single employer.

But there is a further objection. If an individual em-
ployer were free, without encountering any resistance from
the Trade Union concerned, to dispense with the services of
men to whom he was paying the agreed Standard Rate, and
to hand their work over bit by bit to some other sections of
workmen, whom he could induce — perhaps actually through
their own Trade Union — to work at a lower price, all hope
of maintaining a Standard Rate for the more highly skilled
unions would be at an end. Unless a Trade Union is to
give up its whole case, it is bound, at all hazards, to maintain
the principle that the Standard Rate, agreed to by the
associated employers, shall be paid, in all establishments, for
all the kinds of work to which it was mutually intended to
apply.

A solution has therefore to be found which, whilst pro-
tecting the employer against the intolerable annoyance of
unprovoked stoppages, the worry caused by any friction
between trades, and the loss occasioned by " overlap " of
work,2 shall guarantee the Trade Unionists against encroach-

1 This would obviously be even more necessary than at present if the Duke of
Devonshire's proposal to make these collective agreements legally enforcible were
adopted ; see the chapter on "The Method of Collective Bargaining."

2 "A further and most material point in the estimation of the employer, and
largely affecting his interest in cheapening and expediting the work, lies in the

520 Trade Union Function

ments on their Standard Rate, and prevent any undermining
of their organisation. The experience of the last few years
points, we think, to the need, if they are to cope with the
difficulty, for the development of new structure in the Trade
Union world, and for the adoption of a new principle.

When a demarcation dispute now occurs between two
well-organised trades, the first attempt of their more reason-
able representatives is to come to a mutual agreement as to
how the work should be divided between them. Thus the
numerous differences between the Boilermakers and the
Engineers at Cardiff were amicably settled in 1891 by a
formal treaty between the local branches.1 But such
negotiations will, like other Collective Bargaining, occasionally
end in a deadlock. Here we have a case for which arbitration
would seem to be specially fitted. There is, it is true, no
dominant assumption shared by both sides on which the
award can be based. But all the trades concerned accept,
in principle, the same inconsistent array of different
assumptions, and the decision cannot, as we have seen, be
other than an arbitrary one. The main requirement, there-
fore, is that the arbitrator should not be suspected of being
influenced by any other assumption than those admitted by

necessity there is that no one trade should, what is called, ' overlap ' another.
Which means that when one trade takes up a job on which others are to be sub-
sequently engaged before it is completed, the work shall be so divided to each,
that each in due rotation shall complete his share before the next commences upon
his share, and that when the last has finished his portion the job shall be finished
too. This is necessary to secure economy, quickness, and to fix responsibility in
the performance of the job."

1 This treaty is embodied in the " Ports of Cardiff, Penarth, and Barry By-
laws " signed by five representatives of the United Society of Boilermakers, five
of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, one of the Steam-Engine Makers'
Society, and one of another smaller body of engineers. The preamble is as follows :
" For the purpose of more clearly defining and setting forth particular questions in
dispute, and in consequence of certain misunderstandings arising between members
of the Boilermakers' Society and those of the above-named engineers, respecting
their respective claims to particular jobs in connection with the art of boilermaking
and iron shipbuilding, we hereby agree that the undermentioned jobs may be
worked at in the above ports by the respective parties without let or hindrance."
The by-laws consist of five printed pages of technical details, providing for the
assignment of certain specified work to the boilermakers and the engineers
respectively.

The Right to a Trade 5 2 1

the parties. This points to the establishment of a tribunal
by the Trade Unions themselves.

We see such a tribunal arising in the Federation of the
Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades, to which we have more
than once alluded. During the last seven years innumerable
cases of " overlap " and " encroachment " have been quietly
disposed of by this tribunal, to the general satisfaction of
all concerned. The transformation of the Executive Council
of this Federation, formed of the chief salaried officials of
fourteen unions, into a supreme court of arbitration in
demarcation disputes takes place in the simplest manner.1
If the Boilermakers of any port make a complaint that the
Smiths are encroaching on their trade, neither party is
allowed to cause any stoppage of work, and the Federal
Executive is summoned to meet at a convenient centre.
The officials of the two trades concerned bring up their
witnesses and act as advocates. If the council is not satisfied
that all the facts have been brought out, two members —
say the general secretaries of the Steam Engine Makers'
and Shipwrights' societies — are deputed to investigate the
dispute on the spot, to consult with the employer, and to

1 The present rule is as follows : —

Dispute between Societies. — If any dispute takes place between any of
the societies forming this Federation, unless amicably settled, such dispute shall
be referred to a Court of Arbitration selected by the parties affected by the
dispute. When a Court is required the parties shall, if possible, mutually agree
upon three disinterested referees ; failing this, each party to the dispute shall
appoint one or two Arbitrators, who must be Trade Unionists ; the two or four
Arbitrators to appoint an Umpire, and, in the event of the Arbitrators failing to
agree, his decision shall be final and binding. The Umpire shall not be selected
from any trade which may come into conflict with either of the parties to the
difference. If a Court of Arbitration is not appointed within one month of an
application being made for a reference to arbitration, the Executive shall have
power to step in and appoint either Arbitrators or Umpire, as the case might be.
The Court, when formed, to decide as to place of meeting, method of procedure,
etc. ; each party to pay half of the expenses, unless otherwise ordered by the
Court. That when a Court of Arbitration is required by any society in the
Federation the Executive of said society shall notify the Secretary of the
Federation, who shall then write to the other party affected to appoint an
Arbitrator or Arbitrators as the Federation rules prescribe. — Report of Proceed-
ings of the Fifth Annual Meeting of Federation of Engineering and Shipbuilding
Trades (Manchester, 1895).

522 Trade Union Function

report to a future meeting, when a decision is come to. The
ten or twelve experienced Trade Union officials, who thus
adjust the differences between trade and trade, form an
almost ideal body for this purpose. They are free not only
from personal but also from class bias. Whether 2\ inch
iron piping shall be fixed by an engineer or a plumber is
of no consequence to the pattern-maker or the shipwright.
Whether cabin lockers are to be prepared by the cabinet-
maker and fixed by the joiner, or whether either trade should
begin and finish the whole job, is a matter of indifference to
the plater or the ironmoulder. Neither directly nor indirectly
have the adjudicators any other interest than that of prevent-
ing all stoppage of work by effecting a permanent settlement.
In this task they are aided by the fact that they start with
the same stock of unconscious assumptions as both the
trades concerned. Such arguments as " priority, position,
and purpose," which appear to the aggrieved capitalist as
fantastic and irrelevant as the lawyer's doctrine of " common
employment" does to the injured workman, receive that
serious attention which their iteration on both sides demands.
The adjudicators are steeped in the technical details of the
workshop, from processes and material to the evasions of the
employers and the tricks of the workmen. They possess, in
fact, to the full, the highest possible qualification of a judicial
authority, the unbounded confidence of the disputants, not
only in their knowledge and sympathy, but also in their
absolute impartiality as regards the issues in dispute.
Finally, it is no small advantage that, although their award
has no legal validity, it carries with it a certain latent coercive
authority. It would be difficult, if not impossible, for any
constituent body of the Federation deliberately to disregard
an award to which it had consented, without incurring the
serious penalty of finding its members practically excluded
from employment by a general boycott of the other workmen.1

1 We may here remind the reader how, in our chapter on " Interunion Rela-
tions," we pointed out that a federation of heterogeneous bodies would not be stable
if based on simple majority rule. It is interesting to notice that the success of

The Right to a Trade 523

But though a tribunal of this kind may, in demarcation
cases, cut the Gordian knot, neither its deliberations nor
its awards can permanently command confidence unless it is
able to map out some definite and consistent policy, accepted
by its litigants and adhered to in all its own decisions.
Moreover, it cannot permanently secure industrial peace
unless this policy coincides with the interests of the em-
ployers and is based on some assumption in which they can
agree. Such a policy cannot be found in any doctrine of
" the right to a trade," because, as we have shown in the
crucial instances of new kinds of work, both parties may,
with equal reasonableness, claim that equity is on their
side. The solution of the problem is to be found in quite
another direction. It is admitted that, within the limits of
a single trade and a single union, it is for the employer, and
the employer alone, to decide which individual workman he
will engag;e, and upon which particular jobs he will employ
him. What each Trade Union asks is that the recognised
Standard Rate for the particular work in question shall be
maintained and defended against possible encroachment.
If the same conception were extended to the whole group of
allied trades, any employer might be left free, within the
wide circle of the federated unions, to employ whichever man
he pleased on the disputed process, so long as he paid him

the Federation of the Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades as a court of arbitra-
tion is entirely dependent on its frank abandonment of any idea of representation
in proportion to membership. Every union admitted, whether large or small,
sends two representatives to the annual meeting, which elects one from each
trade — invariably its salaried official — to form the federal executive. It is
obvious that if the United Society of Boilermakers or the Amalgamated Society
of Carpenters insisted on having twenty times the amount of representation or
voting power as the Associated Blacksmiths or the United Pattern-makers, these
latter would have no confidence in any award of an executive on which their
rivals had so predominant a voice. Unfortunately, this very idea of equality,
which has been a condition of the success of this federation, has hitherto stood in
the way of the adhesion of the largest society concerned in the engineering
and shipbuilding trades. The Amalgamated Society of Engineers, claiming to
include within its own ranks all sections of skilled engineering mechanics, has
hitherto found it inconsistent with its dignity to associate on equal terms with such
smaller sectional societies as the United Pattern-makers' Association and the
Associated Blacksmiths. Here again the idea of an all-embracing amalgamation
has prevented the effective organisation of the Trade Union world.

524 Trade Union Function

the Standard Rate agreed upon for the particular task. The
federated Trade Unions, instead of vainly trying to settle to
which trade a task rightfully belongs, should, in fact, confine
themselves to determining, in consultation with the associated
employers, at what rate it should be paid for}

If this simple principle were adopted, — say, in the great
shipbuilding yards of the North-East coast, — and if it were
frankly accepted by the associated employers and the
Federation of Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades, the
way would clear. The Standard Rate within the un-
questioned domain of each particular trade would be deter-
mined, as at present, by Collective Bargaining between the
associated employers and the Trade Union concerned. But
directly any dispute arose as to which trade a job should
belong — whether between employer and workman, or between
different sections of wage-earners — the Collective Bargaining
as to the rate of payment for that job would at once pass
out of the hands of both the unions concerned, and would
be undertaken, on behalf of the whole body of allied trades,
by the Federation. The dispute would, therefore, be referred
to the federal officials to negotiate, with the representatives
of the associated employers, a definite Standard Rate for that
particular task. In determining this special rate, they would
be guided solely by the character of the work relatively to
other operations in the same district. When, as in the
notorious disputes between the fitters and plumbers, and the
joiners and shipwrights, the earnings of both sets of work-
men were practically identical, and the volume of work in

1 This suggested solution has now been tentatively put forward by the young
man of exceptional ability who in 1896 became general secretary of the
Amalgamated Society of Engineers. Writing on the dispute with the Federation
of Engineering Employers as to the employment of laborers on machines, Mr.
George Barnes declared that " the whole question from our point of view is
really one of wages, and inasmuch as the employers disclaim any intention of
invading our territory as skilled mechanics, we believe that a mutually satisfactory
solution of the difficulty is to be found in local joint committees, with a reference
to the Board of Trade : such committees to decide — having due regard to class of
machines, quality of work, and standard rate of district — upon the -wage to be
paid. We shall send in these proposals in proper form. " — Amalgamated Engineers'
Monthly Journal, April 1897.

The Right to a Trade 525

dispute was of little consequence, the officials of the federated
workmen and the associated employers would quickly arrive
at an agreed rate. When, as in the more difficult case of
a laborer being put to work a new machine, the rates
widely diverged, the agreement would involve a longer
bargaining. The representative of the associated employers
would try to adduce evidence that the work was within the
capacity of any general laborer fetched out of the street,
and was therefore only worth sixpence an hour. The repre-
sentative of the federated Trade Unionists would seek to
establish that the work really required an engineer's skill or
training, and that the particular laborer employed happened
to be an exceptional man, who ought to be earning the
engineer's rate of tenpence an hour. The advocates on both
sides, representing great federations of which the actual dis-
putants formed an infinitesimal proportion, would certainly
manage to agree upon a rate for that special work, rather
than involve the whole body of their clients in war. Once
the special rate for the disputed process was authoritatively
determined, the individual employer might engage any work-
man he pleased at that rate, whether he belonged to the
Amalgamated Society of Engineers or to the humbler United
Association of Machine Workers, or even to the National
Laborers' Union. Thus, subject to the Standard Rate for
the disputed work being fixed by Collective Bargaining
between the associated employers and the federated Trade
Unions, any shipbuilder would be at liberty, as between trade
and trade, to select which man he pleased to do the work.

For the federated Trade Unions there would remain the
further question whether, in the interests of the most perfect
organisation, the workman so selected should be transferred
from one union to another, or allowed to remain in his old
society. If the job was only a temporary one, it would be
unnecessary to make any change. If, on the other hand,
the task for which he was selected was habitually performed
by members of another union, or if it necessitated close com-
panionship with them, it would probably avoid friction if he

526 Trade Union Function

were transferred to the roll of the other union. With
this, however, the employers would have nothing to do, and
the particular internal regulations decided upon by the
federation would, as in all other cases, be finally determined
by its constituents.1

This solution would not, we think, be objected to by
employers who, like the great captains of industry of
the North -East coast, have become accustomed to deal-
ing with bodies of organised workmen. It involves no
assumptions other than those to which they have long
since agreed. The rates for the disputed jobs would be
settled, as they are at present, not by the individual em-
ployer or workman, but by collective agreements made by
the associated employers. The only difference would be
that instead of making that collective agreement with a
single Trade Union, the officials of the associated employers
would deal, as regards the disputed jobs, with officials repre-
senting the whole body of Trade Unionists in the district.
The employers would be freed from the annoyance of finding
their works stopped by the men's quarrels, and they would
be confirmed in their freedom to allot their jobs in the way
they thought best.

The Trade Unionists, on the other hand, would secure
their fundamental principle of maintaining the Standard
Rate and all the machinery for Collective Bargaining. They
would gain complete protection against any attempt to make
the introduction of a new machine or a new product an

1 In making these transfers of particular workmen from union to union, a
difficulty might arise from the difference in rates of contribution and scales of
benefit between different societies. This could easily be surmounted, as regards
the workman, by the new society admitting him at once to full benefits, accord-
ing to his length of membership in the union he leaves. Mutual arrangements of
this sort already exist for the transfer of members between Scottish and English
unions in the same trade, and some others. If the unions giving large benefits
demurred to accepting members on these terms, it would be easy for the Federa-
tion to smooth the way by giving from federal funds, in respect of each man
officially transferred on demarcation grounds, a sum equal to the accumulated
balance per member possessed by his new colleagues. Any such question of
financial adjustment between union and union would easily be settled by the
practical good sense of Trade Union officials.

The Right to a Trade 527

excuse for lowering the rate hitherto paid for a particular
grade of skill. On the other hand, they would have frankly
to abandon the obsolete doctrine of a "right to a trade."
They would have to allow each individual employer com-
plete freedom, provided that he paid the Standard Rates
agreed upon for the various kinds of work, to allot them
among the trades as he found most convenient, irrespective
of past custom. And if the Trade Unions wished to avoid
friction among the workmen, and perfect their organisation,
they would have to give up all idea of restricting the entrance
into the several unions, otherwise than by requiring their
recruits to be able to earn the recognised Standard Rate.
In both cases, as this and the preceding chapter will have
shown, they would only be giving up a principle which the
vast majority of unions, over the greater part of the field of
British industry, have found it impossible to carry out.

CHAPTER XII

THE IMPLICATIONS OF TRADE UNIONISM

IN the preceding chapters we have attempted systematically
to analyse all the current regulations of British Trade
Unionism ; we have still to set forth and explain certain
features of Trade Union policy which are implied in the use
of its Methods or are subsidiary to the enforcement of its
Regulations.

We will begin with the Method of Mutual Insurance.
We have seen how important a part is played, except in a
few industries, by the friendly society side of Trade Unionism
— how it supplies both adventitious attraction and adven-
titious support to the workmen's combinations, even when its
use as a separate method of enforcing common rules has faded
out of sight. Trade Unionists are proud of the great insur-
ance societies which have been built up by their own efforts,
and most determinedly oppose any project which seems
inimical to their continued prosperity. This affords an
explanation of the deadweight of silent opposition which
the Trade Unions have hitherto thrown against all compet-
ing schemes of insurance. When the rival project is an
employer's benefit society, the Trade Unionists object to it
for many additional reasons, with which we shall deal in a
subsequent part of this chapter. But even when an insur-
ance project is quite unconnected with industrial objects,
and takes the impersonal form of a Government Old Age
Pension scheme, the Trade Unionists strenuously object to

The Implications of Trade Unionism 529

any premium to be levied by way of deduction from their
weekly earnings or other form of direct contribution, which
would, it is feared, make the workmen less ready to subscribe
to a trade friendly society. We find this feeling clearly
expressed in Mr. Broadhurst's Minority Report in the Aged
Poor Commission of 1895. "The evidence tendered by
working class witnesses goes, in my opinion, to show that
any scheme involving contributions, otherwise than through
the rates and taxes, would meet with much opposition from
the wage -earners of every grade. The Friendly Societies
and the Trade Unions, to which the working class owe so
much, naturally view with some apprehension the creation
of a gigantic rival insurance society backed by the whole
power of the Government. The collection of contributions
from millions of ill-paid households is already found to be
a task of great difficulty, intensified by every depression of
trade or other calamity. For the State to enter into com-
petition for the available subscriptions of the wage-earners
must necessarily increase the difficulty of all Friendly
Societies, Trade Unions, and Industrial Insurance Companies,
whose members and customers within the United Kingdom
probably number, in the aggregate, from eleven to twelve
millions of persons. On the other hand, Mr. Charles Booth's
proposal for the grant of a pension from public funds, without
personal contributions, may secure the hearty support both
of the Trade Unions and the Friendly Societies."1

So far the Trade Unions stand shoulder to shoulder with
the ordinary friendly societies. But when it comes to defin-
ing the legal status of the two forms of combination, they at
once part company. The friendly societies, confining them-

1 Minority Report of Mr. Henry Broadhurst, M.P. (Friendly Society of
Operative Stonemasons), in Report of the Royal Commission on Aged Poor
(C. 7604), 1895, p. xcix.

This hostility is naturally most marked among members of the great trade
friendly societies. The coalminers, who make practically no use of friendly
benefits in their Trade Unionism, have always shown themselves willing to
encourage the Permanent Relief Funds, through which, by the joint subscriptions
of employers and employed, provision is now made for the sufferers from accident
within the limits of a given coalfield.

VOL. II 2 M

53O Trade Union Function

selves strictly to one definite function, have obtained the
privilege, on registration of their rules and submission of
their accounts, of becoming legally incorporated bodies, able
to enter into enforcible contracts with their members and
outsiders, and to sue or be sued in their corporate capacity.
Such complete legalisation does not suit the great trade
societies. Some measure of incorporation they must have,
in order that the money subscribed by all alike may not,
with impunity, be embezzled by those in whose hands it is
placed. But the whole friendly society business of a Trade
Union is, as we have seen in the chapter on " The Method of
Mutual Insurance," only an adventitious adjunct, strictly sub-
ordinate to its main function of securing, for its members,
better conditions of employment. In pursuit of these better
conditions the Trade Union must be free, in any emergency,
to use every penny of its funds in the fight. It does not
therefore undertake to maintain all or any of its benefits, if a
majority of the members for the time being wish the cash in
hand to be applied to other purposes. Moreover, it is, as we
explained in the chapter on " The Method of Collective Bar-
gaining," an essential condition of Trade Union action that
the decision of the great mass of the members should be
enforced on individual recalcitrants. A member who persists
in acting in flagrant disobedience to the rules of the associa-
tion he has joined, whether they relate to friendly benefits
or not, must eventually incur the penalty of expulsion, in-
volving the forfeiture of all claim to future benefit. A Trade
Union would therefore be fatally hampered if it entered into
legally binding contracts to pay particular benefits, or if it
were possible for an aggrieved member to appeal, against
the decision of his fellow-members, to the unfriendly courts
of justice. But this inimical action of discontented members
is not the whole danger. Though combination in restraint
of trade is no longer a criminal offence, it may still, as we
shall see, be made the ground of a civil action for damages.1
The indefinite and anomalous state of the law with regard

1 See the Appendix on "The Legal Position of Collective Bargaining."

The Implications of Trade Unionism 53 i

to libel and conspiracy leaves open, too, a wide door for
harassing proceedings. Already, any agent or official of a
Trade Union is liable to be sued by an employer or non-
unionist workman, whenever the Trade Union action has,
through him, caused loss or damage. If the Trade Union
could be sued in its corporate capacity, the members would
quickly find the funds which they had subscribed for sick
and funeral benefits, attached at the suit of employers
aggrieved by a threat to strike, by the libel of an injudicious
branch secretary, or by the insolence of a picket. Thus,
whilst complete incorporation might protect the individual
member against a majority of his fellows, it would put his
provision for sickness and old age at the mercy of employers'
claims for damages. The insecurity of the friendly society
side of Trade Unionism is, in fact, inherent in the conjunc-
tion of trade and friendly purposes, and complete legalisation
would actually diminish, rather than increase, the likelihood
of the funds subscribed for friendly benefits being ultimately
applied to meet them.

These considerations explain the peculiar legal status
which the Trade Unionists of 1868-71 succeeded in winning
for their associations. The Trade Union Act of 1871, whilst
giving a duly registered union much the same status as a
friendly society so far as the protection of its property was
concerned, expressly provided that a Trade Union should
not be able to sue, nor be liable to be sued, in respect of
any agreement between itself and its members, or with an
employers' association or another union. Trade Unions, in
fact, have not been clothed with legal personality any further
than for the limited purpose of protecting their funds against
theft or embezzlement. They are thus in the anomalous
position, to quote the Majority Report of the Labor Com-
mission, of exercising " collective action without legal col-
lective responsibility." * This peculiar status the Trade
Unionists wish to maintain. The Trade Union Minority of

1 Fifth and Final Report of the Royal Commission on Labor \ 1894 (C. 7421),
par. 149, p. 54.

532 Trade Union Function

the Labor Commission resolutely refused to entertain the
suggestion " that it would be desirable to make Trade
Unions liable to be sued by any person who had a grievance
against the action of their officers or agents. To expose
the large amalgamated societies of the country with their
accumulated funds sometimes reaching a quarter of a million
sterling, to be sued for damages by any employer in any
part of the country, or by any discontented member or non-
unionist, for the action of some branch secretary or delegate,
would be a great injustice. If every Trade Union were
liable to be perpetually harassed by actions at law on
account of the doings of individual members ; if Trade
Union funds were to be depleted by lawyers' fees and costs,
if not even by damages or fines, it would go far to make
Trade Unionism impossible for any but the most prosperous
and experienced artisans. The present freedom of Trade
Unions from any interference by the courts of law — anomalous
as it may appear to lawyers — was, after prolonged struggle
and Parliamentary agitation, conceded in 1871, and finally
became law in 1875. Any- attempt to revoke this hardly-
won charter of Trade Union freedom, or in any way to
tamper with the purely voluntary character of their associa-
tions, would, in our opinion, provoke the most embittered
resistance from the whole body of Trade Unionists, and
would, we think, be undesirable from every point of view." l

Passing now to the Method of Collective Bargaining, we
notice, in the first place, that it implies the removal of all
legal prohibition of combination " in restraint of trade." So
long as trade combination was a criminal offence, the Method
of Collective Bargaining was not open either to employers or
to workmen, and Trade Unionists, when they could not get
legislation, had to resort to secret compacts among them-
selves, resting on the Method of Mutual Insurance. Free-
dom of combination is now professedly conceded, so far as
the criminal law is concerned, but even in England there are

1 Fifth and Final Report of the Royal Commission on Labor ; 1894 (C. 7421),
p. 146.

The Implications of l^rade Unionism 533

signs, as will be seen from our appendix on the Legal Position
of Collective Bargaining, that, as regards civil liability, Trade
Unionists have still a battle to fight. If the recent decisions
are upheld, the employers will be able to proceed for heavy
damages against any Trade Union official who uses the ordi-
nary arts of bargaining on behalf of his constituents, or
who even advises the workmen of a particular firm to refuse
the employer's terms. Every strike will bring a shower of
writs, ending in bankruptcy proceedings ; and Trade Union
executives, finding themselves exposed to this harassing
persecution, will again become secret conspiracies. If, there-
fore, Collective Bargaining is to survive as a method of Trade
Unionism, Parliament will have to complete the work of
1871-75, and definitely instruct the judges that nothing is
to be actionable in labor disputes when done by or in
pursuance of a combination of workmen, which would not
be actionable if done by a partnership of traders as part of
their business, and in the pursuit of their personal gain.

But the workman's freedom of contract, and, still more,
his freedom of combination, necessarily involves, as we have
seen, his freedom to stipulate with whom he will consent
to associate in his labor. This liberty to refuse to accept
engagements in establishments where non-unionists are
employed, is, in such highly-organised trades as the North-
umberland Coalminers or the Lancashire Cotton-spinners,
tantamount to compulsory Trade Unionism. And wherever
Collective Bargaining is perfected by such formal machinery
as the Joint Boards or Joint Committees of the North of
England Manufactured Iron Trade, or the Northumberland
and Durham Miners, or by such national treaties as those
regulating the wages and other conditions of labor of the
Boilermakers, hand Papermakers, and factory Boot and Shoe
Operatives, the collective regulations become virtually binding
throughout the whole trade. The compulsion on the in-
dividual, it need hardly be said, is none the less real and
effective because it takes an impersonal, peaceful, and entirely
decorous form. A plater or rivetter who, because he is out*

534 Trade Union Function

side the United Society of Boilermakers, is politely refused
work by every shipbuilder on the North-East coast, is just
as much compelled to join the union, as if membership were,
by a new Factory Act, made a legal condition of employment.
Collective Bargaining thus implies, in its fullest develop-
ment, compulsory Trade Unionism. It was the recognition
of this fact which led to the remarkable proposal of the Duke
of Devonshire, and some of the most eminent of his colleagues
on the Labor Commission, to enable Trade Unions to enter
into legally binding collective agreements on behalf of all
their members. The great employers of the North of England
find that there is, in their highly - organised industries,
practically no non-unionist minority which they can play off
against the Trade Union, whose officials therefore virtually
speak in the name of all the available workmen. On the
other hand, they have no guarantee that individual branches
or members will loyally abide by the collective agreement
when it is made. It was therefore proposed, by five of the
largest employers of labor on the Commission,1 that when a
collective agreement had been made between a Trade Union
and an Employers' Association, these bodies should be, in their
corporate capacities, responsible in damages for any breach
by their members, and should be entitled, on the other hand,
to recover such damages from the individuals who had in-
fringed the treaty. This suggestion was, as we have mentioned,
vehemently objected to by the Trade Unionists, because it

1 See the "Observations appended to the Report" (C. 7421), pp. 115-119.
These were signed, not only by the Duke of Devonshire (himself a great employer
of labor in many industrial undertakings), but also by Sir David Dale of Darling-
ton (Ironmaster and Coalowner), Mr. Thomas Ismay (Shipowner), Mr. George
Livesey (Gas Company Director), and Mr. William Tunstill (Railway Director).
They also gained the support of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, Mr. Leonard Courtney,
and Sir Frederick Pollock. This proposal has more than once received the
approval of the Times. Thus, in a leading article of the loth June 1897, relating
to the progress of the Trade Unions, it observed that "at present, though freed
from the most serious of the disabilities under which they once labored, they
have no true corporate existence ; they cannot make enforceable contracts ; they
can bind, broadly speaking, their members to nothing. One of the few practical
suggestions which emerged from the stream of loose talk passing through the Labor
Commission was a proposal that this should be altered — a proposal which found
favor with some of the most sober-minded of the members of the Commission."

The Implications of Trade Unionism 535

was incidentally intended to give the Trade Union a legal
personality, which would render it liable to be sued in the
law courts by any disaffected member or aggrieved outsider.
So sweeping a change in Trade Union status was, how-
ever, not necessary for the Duke of Devonshire's proposal.
His object would have been secured if it had been provided
that the Trade Union should be liable to be sued only in
respect of collective agreements made with the Employers'
Association, and then only for definite penalties specified in
such agreements. To this definitely restricted liability no
Trade Union need object, provided that it were given, as was
contemplated, the corresponding right to recover the penalty
from its members in default, and provided that the Employers'
Association were made reciprocally responsible to the Trade
Union for the defaults of particular employers.

Any such legal enforcement of collective agreements as
was proposed by the Duke of Devonshire and his colleagues
would, of course, greatly encourage the use of Collective
Bargaining as a Method of Trade Unionism. It was, in
fact, expressly with the view of facilitating this " substitution
of agreements between associations for agreements between
individual employers and individual workmen," which the
Commissioners had found to be " on the whole, in accordance
with the public interest," that so momentous a change was
proposed. Trade Unionists would entirely agree that it
would " result in the better observance, for definite periods,
of agreements with regard to wage-rates, hours of labor,
apprenticeship rules, demarcation of work, profit-sharing, and
joint insurance schemes." In all but the best organised
industries, the workmen's difficulty is, not so much to get
better terms granted, as to get them adhered to. Such
grievously oppressed trades as the bakers, the tramwaymen,
the dock laborers, and almost any section of women workers,
may often, by a sensational strike, and the support of public
opinion, secure an agreement promising better conditions
of employment. But the day after the agreement is signed
it begins to crumble away. One employer after another

536 Trade Union Function

" interprets " it in his own fashion, and the workers in his
establishment, no longer upheld by the excitement of a
general strike, and frequently not precisely understanding
what is happening, are induced to acquiesce by fear of losing
their employment, if not by actual threats of dismissal. If
the Trade Union could sue any such employer for damages
for breaking the collective agreement, its terms would, for the
time being, become, in effect, part of the law of the land.
The highly -organised trades would find their advantage
rather in the direction of improved discipline among their
own members. Until the expiration of the collective agree-
ment at any rate, a recalcitrant minority would find itself
confronted, not only by the displeasure of the majority, but
also by all the terrors of the law courts.1 Any such arrange-
ment would therefore greatly strengthen the influence of the
Trade Union as a whole, and would, in all industries, tend
enormously to the development of such an expert Trade
Union Civil Service as is already enjoyed by the Cotton
Operatives. Whether this addition to the compulsory
character of Collective Bargaining would prove as harmless
to the consumers as it would to the great employers ; whether,
to use the phrase of Mr. Gerald Balfour, M.P., the Duke of
Devonshire's " Socialism by Trade Option " is a safe kind of
Socialism for the community to establish ; affords an interest-
ing problem for consideration by economists and statesmen.
The Method of Legal Enactment has implications of its
own, which compel us to touch on the wider question of the
part taken by the Trade Unionists in the party struggles of
politics. We have already described how Mutual Insurance
and Collective Bargaining depend on the legal status of the
Trade Unions. Freedom of combination, protection for

1 If a Trade Union were made liable for the observance of the agreement for
a definite period, it is obvious that no member of the union could be permitted
to withdraw for that period, at any rate so far as concerns observing the agreement
and contributing towards its expenses. Thus, Trade Union membership would
become, in effect, not only universally compulsory, but also irrevocable for a long
term. The same would be the case with regard to membership of an employers'
association.

The Implications of Trade Unionism 537

Trade Union funds, and liberty to strike have not been
gained without political conflicts, in which the Trade Unionists
have had to use every means of influencing the legislature.
But these questions have involved only certain definite legal
reforms, outside the scope of party politics ; and they could,
once Parliament was convinced, be finally disposed of. It
is only in connection with the Method of Legal Enactment
that the Trade Unions, as such, find it necessary to secure a
permanent influence in the House of Commons. Every year
one section or another calls for new regulations to be passed
into law, in the form of an amendment of the Factory or Mines,
Railway or Merchant Shipping Acts. The administration of
these statutes requires constant supervision, which can only
be effectively exercised from the House of Commons. And
with the growth of the public administration of industry,
whether central or local, the Trade Unions consider it
essential that they should be in a position to secure the strict
observance of the standard conditions by the national and
municipal employers of labor.

It was, therefore, a vital political necessity that the Trade
Unionists should obtain complete electoral rights. From 1831
to 1884 the banners of the Unions always appeared at the
great demonstrations in favor of Parliamentary Reform. The
whole strength of the Trade Union movement was thrown
on the side of the ballot, the removal of tests and property
qualifications, and everything that promised to facilitate the
expression of Trade Union views in Parliament and on local
bodies. Thus, between 1860 and 1885, when the Liberal
Party was striving for extensions of the franchise, and the
Conservative Party was, with the exception of a few months
in the session of 1867, fiercely resisting reform, the Liberal
leaders could count on the adhesion of the great bulk of the
Trade Unionists. During these years every prominent Trade
Union official belonged to the Radical Wing of the Liberal
Party.1

1 The revulsion of feeling between 1871 and 1874, caused by the incredible
stupidity of the Liberal Cabinet of those years in connection with the criminal

538 Trade Union Function

But this alliance with the Liberal Party has proved only
temporary. The completion of electoral reform has. since
1885, fallen into the background, the Liberal leaders being
indifferent, if not actually hostile, to the Trade Union
demands for Manhood Suffrage, Payment of Members, and
Payment of Election Expenses, whilst the lukewarm official
proposals for Registration Reform have evoked no enthusiasm.
Trade Union politics have therefore entered on a new phase.
The Trade Unionists, having obtained the vote, now wish to
make use of it to enforce, by Legal Enactment, such of their
Common Rules as they see a chance of getting public opinion
to support. Here they find themselves almost equally
balanced between the claims of rival political parties. Judged
by past performances, the Conservatives are less un-
sympathetic to the legal regulation of industry than the
Liberals ; whilst the Workmen's Compensation Act of 1897
has placed the Trade Unionists under a fresh obligation to
the Conservative Party. On the other hand, the Collectivist
wing of the present Liberal Party is beginning, by pro-
fessions of conversion from " Manchesterism," and large pro-
mises of future legislation, to make a special bid for Trade
Union support. The leaders on both sides are candidly
hostile to the principle of collective regulation, and the
Yorkshire Coalminer or Lancashire Cotton -spinner may
ivell doubt whether Sir William Harcourt and Mr. John
Morley are any nearer in agreement with him than Mr.
Balfour or Mr. Chamberlain. Meanwhile a third party
has arisen, to point the moral and compete for the workmen's
suffrages. The Socialist candidates are ready to promise

persecution of Trade Unionism, led, as we have described in our History of Trade
Unionism (pp. 256-280), to an organised revolt, to independent candidatures,
and to a certain transference of votes to progressive Conservatives who agreed to
satisfy the Trade Union demands. The popular Conservative legislation of
1874-75 (the Trade Union Act and the " Factories (Health of Women) Act"),
which embodied a great measure of what the Trade Unionists had been asking for,
no doubt detached a large section of workmen from their alliance with Liberalism,
especially in Lancashire. But so strong was the impulse towards an extension of
the franchise that the leaders, even in Lancashire, made up their quarrel with the
Liberal Party, and acted with it until the Reform Bills of 1884-85 were safely
passed into law.

The Implications of Trade Unionism 539

the Trade Unionists a systematic and complete regulation of
all the conditions of employment. But they show a lament-
able deficiency of technical knowledge of the exact regula-
tions required, and they mingle their proposals with
revolutionary Shibboleths as to the " nationalisation of the
means of production, distribution, and exchange," which the
bulk of the Trade Unionists fail even to comprehend.
Accordingly, the strong desire of nearly all sections of Trade
Unionists for this or that measure of legal enactment does
not at present produce much effect on general politics.
Unlike their demand for the franchise, it does not, for the
moment, attach them, as Trade Unionists, to any political
party. But it implies that they would be strongly, and even
permanently, drawn to any political leader, of whatever party,
who shared their faith in the efficacy of the Common Rule,
and who convinced them that he had the technical know-
ledge, the will, and the Parliamentary power to carry into
law such proposals for legal regulation as each trade from
time to time definitely demanded.

If now we leave the Methods of Trade Unionism, and
pass to its Regulations, we shall see that these, too, have
their own implications, and that Trade Unionists oppose or
accept certain industrial forms according as these appear to
be inimical to Trade Union progress, or the reverse. Fore-
most among these implications is the strong Trade Union
objection to " Home Work," that is, to work being given out
by the employer, to be done elsewhere than in the factory
or workshop which he provides.1 In all the industries in
which " out-working " prevails to any considerable extent, this

1 Under this head we include all arrangements under which the manual-
working wage-earner performs his task elsewhere than in a factory or workshop
provided and controlled by his employer. The term " home work " is sometimes
used to designate only work taken home by factory workers after the expiration
of their factory day (see Home Work amongst Women, by Margaret H. Irwin,
Glasgow, 1897). On the other hand, the "outworker" may not work in his
own home, but (as at Sheffield) on a "wheel" or "trough" rented in a "tene-
ment factory," or (as sometimes among the Scottish hand Shoemakers) in a
co-operative workshop rented by a group of workmen or by the Trade Union
itself.

540 Trade Union Fimction

objection, steadily growing in intensity for the last half-
century, has latterly risen into a crusade. The National
Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives J and the Scottish Tailors'
Society now put the complete abolition of home work in the
front of their programme. The English Tailors' Union,
though it includes home workers, is scarcely less emphatic.
" If," reports the General Secretary, " we cannot altogether
abolish this curse we can at least prevent its growth, and
wherever there is the slightest sign of the system being
introduced into towns where it has hitherto been unknown,
it is our duty not to tolerate it for a single minute, but use
our utmost endeavors to oppose its introduction, and
stamp it out as far as lies in our power in all places where it
at present exists." 2

This vehement objection to home work comes as a
surprise to persons unfamiliar with the actual conditions of
the wage-earner's existence. One of the principal grievances
that Trade Unions are formed to remedy is, as we have seen,
the autocratic manner in which the employer, in any unregu-
lated trade, determines at what hours his workshop will open
and close, when his workpeople shall take their meals or
enjoy their holidays, how fast and how continuously they
shall work, and a host of petty regulations, easily passing,
with a brutal foreman, into gross personal tyranny. From
all this the man or woman working in the home is apparently
free. Once the work is taken out of the employer's ware-
house, the worker is at liberty to do it when and where and
how he pleases, free from the constant supervision and
arbitrary meddling of the foreman. Home work has, to the
philanthropist, certain sentimental attractions. There is no
breaking-up of family life. Husband and wife can work side

1 The National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives puts high up among its
objects the "establishment of healthy and proper workshops, the employers to
find room, grindery, fixtures, fire, and gas free of charge." — Rules of the National
Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives (Leicester, 1892).

2 Report of the Fourteenth Conference of Deputies of the Amalgamated Society
of Tailors, held in Liverpool, August 1891 (Manchester, 1891); Secretary's
Report to the Conference, p. 1 7.

The Implications of Trade Unionism 541

by side at a common task, whilst the babies frolic around,
and the child from school prepares its lessons under the
father's eye. No peremptory factory bell summons the wife
and mother from her housekeeping or family cares. Cook-
ing the dinner, nursing the baby, teaching the child
apprentice — all can be dovetailed into each other, and into
the breadwinning craft. The task of every member of the
household can be adjusted to their several capacities, even
the aged grandfather by the fireside, and the school-girl on
her half-holiday, being usefully employed. When illness
comes, one member of the family can nurse another, whilst
continuing to earn a subsistence. The custom of working
at home seems, in fact, to combine all possible advantages.
To personal freedom and domestic bliss, there is added the
greatest economy of time and the utmost utilisation of
capacity.1

Unfortunately, the facts of the home worker's life in no
way correspond to this Utopian picture. To take work
home means, in the words of a boot operative, " to make
home miserable."2 It is conceivable that the highly -educated
and well -disciplined journalist, barrister, banker, or stock-
broker might find it pleasant to do all his professional work
under the eyes of his wife, and amid the playing of his well-
bred children. But even he would hardly like to work, eat,
and sleep, not to say also cook and wash, in one and the
same apartment. The middle-class admirer of home work
forgets that the "home" of the ordinary town wage -earner
consists of one, or, at most, of two small rooms, and that his
work is not done in pen and ink, but in leather, cloth, fur, hot
metal, glue, and other substances involving dirt, smells, and
effluvia. It is impossible to use, as a workshop, the living
room of a family, without submitting to conditions of tem-
perature and atmosphere, crowding and disorder, which are

1 See the description in Dr. Kuno Frankenstein's Der Arbeittrschutz
(Leipzig, 1896).

2 Monthly Report^ National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives, March
1891.

542 Trade Union Function

destructive to health and comfort. All these conditions
make the workshop -home positively repulsive to father,
mother, and children alike, and every opportunity is sought
of escaping from it — the man to the public-house, the woman
to gossip with her neighbours, and the children to the
streets.1 Instead of maintaining the integrity of the family,
and fostering the domestic virtues, it is accordingly frequently
asserted by the most experienced observers that no influence
is at the present day more ruinous than home work in its effect
on family life and personal character.

Public opinion is, therefore, for reasons of sanitation,
family life, and personal character, tending more and more
to deprecate any combination of the workshop with the
living-room. What has influenced the Trade Unionist is
much more the discovery that the custom of home work has
a ruinous effect upon wages. In the trades in which this
custom prevails, the standard earnings of the home workers
are far below the wage customary for equally skilled labor

1 Some glimpse of what home work implies even to a man of very exceptional
character, is afforded by the following extract from the Autobiography of Francis
Place. (See the History of Trade Unionism^ chap, ii.) " The consequences of a
man and his wife living in the same room in which the man works is mischievous
to them in all respects, and I here add, as a recommendation to all journeymen,
tradesmen, and other workmen ... to make almost any sacrifice to keep
possession of two rooms, however small and however inconveniently situated as
regards the place of their employment. Much better is it to be compelled to
walk a mile or even two miles to and from their work to a lodging with two
rooms, than to live close to their work with one room. ... A neat clean room,
though it be as small as a closet, and however few the articles of furniture, is of
more importance in its moral consequences than any one seems hitherto to have
supposed. The room in which we now lived was a front room at a baker's
shop. The house had three windows in the front, two in the room and one in
a large closet at the end of the room. In this closet I worked. It was a great
accommodation to us ; it enabled my wife to keep the room in better order ; it
was advantageous, too, in its moral effects. Attendance on the child was not, as
it had been, always in my presence. I was shut out from seeing the fire lighted,
the room washed and cleaned, and the clothes washed and ironed, as well as the
cooking. We frequently went to bed as we had but too often been accustomed to
do, with a wet or damp floor, and with wet clothes hanging in the room. Still a
great deal of the annoyance and too close an interference with each other in many
disagreeable particulars (which having but one room made it inevitable) were
removed — happily removed for ever." — Place's MS. Autobiography, quoted
in Labor in the Longest Reign, by Sidney Webb (London, 1897) ; now included
in the Life of Francis Place by Graham Wallas (London, 1897).

The Implications of Trade Unionism 543

in the factory industries. The chain and nail workers in
the Black Country, the trouser and " juvenile suit " hands in
East London, the garret cabinetmakers of Bethnal Green,
the cottage bootmakers of the Leicestershire villages, and
more noteworthy even than these, the skilled outwork-
ing cutlers of Sheffield, were all found, by the House of
Lords' Committee on the Sweating System (1890), to be
suffering to an extent that could " hardly be exaggerated,"
from " earnings barely sufficient to sustain existence ; hours
of labor such as to make the lives of the workers periods of
almost ceaseless toil, hard and unlovely to the last degree ;
sanitary conditions injurious to the health of the persons
employed and dangerous to the public,"1 In every one of
the trades in which this august Committee reported that
" sweating " prevailed, the custom of working in the
operatives' own homes was discovered to exist. To the
Trade Unionist this close connection between home work
and low wages is no mere coincidence. Experience shows
that work given out to be done otherwise than on the
employers' premises almost invariably becomes the subject

1 Report and Evidence of the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the
Siveating System (H. L. 62 of 1890); see also "The Lords and the Sweating
System," by Beatrice Potter (Mrs. Sidney Webb) in Nineteenth Century, June
1890; and the references given in Fabian Tract, No. 50, "Sweating, its Cause
and Remedy."

It must not be supposed that the custom of "giving out" work to
be done in the workers' own homes is a new or an increasing evil. It is, on the
contrary, merely the surviving remnant of what was once in many trades the
prevailing system. In our History of Trade Unionism (pp. 28, 32, 48) we have
incidentally described its prevalence in the West of England cloth manufacture,
in the hosiery trade, among the Sheffield cutlers, the Spitalfields silk-workers,
and the Scottish cotton-weavers. In the early stages of capitalist industry a
manufactory, as Du Cellier observes with regard to France, "was not the site
but the centre of an industry ; the manufacturer produced the samples and designs
. . . but had generally not a single loom working in his own house " (Histoire
des Classes Laborieuses en France, p. 222). It was an innovation to collect a
number of wage-earners in the employer's own workshop, where they worked
under constant supervision, and could practise division of labor. In all
important industries of Great Britain this has now become the dominant indus-
trial form. It is where the two systems are still competing with each other —
where factory and home work co-exist and produce for the same market — that the
evil of " sweating" is at its worst. — Der Arbeiterschutz, by Dr. Kuno Franken-
stein (Leipzig, 1896), p. 492.

544 Trade Union Function

of isolated, personal bargaining between the individual wage-
earner and the capitalist employer. " To people working
each in their own little shop" writes Mr. John Burnett, " from
early morning until late at night, combination is above all
things difficult. . . . One man or one woman can be played
off against another, and the prices of labor are thus subject
to the daily haggle of workers competing for bread. This is
clearly and unmistakably the result of the small workshop
system, which is undoubtedly the root of many, if not all the
evils from which the nailworkers suffer."1 The same con-
sequences of " outwork " were noticed by a careful observer
of the Liverpool tailors as long ago as 1860. "The work,"
wrote Mr. (now Sir) Godfrey Lushington, " admits of being
done at home, and the operative who engages himself on
these terms loses the benefit of the check which the presence
of his fellows maintains upon the encroachments of the
employer. In such a trade it must always be difficult to
establish united action. . . . The common method of reduc-
tion is for the employer to produce a garment and say, ' I
had this made for IDS. 6d., I cannot pay you 133. 6d. for a
similar article. You too must make it for ics. 6d. or go
elsewhere.' The Society cannot prevent this." 2 Home
work, in fact, necessarily involves Individual Bargaining,
and makes, moreover, the enforcement of any Common Rule
practically impossible.

Finally, experience proves the home worker's " freedom "
as to the hours of labor to be delusive. It is true that the
Soho tailor can break off when he chooses, and go round to
the public-house for a drink ; or the woman " picking peas "
in a back alley of Peterborough 3 may get up now and again

1 Report to the Board of Trade on the Sweating System at the East End of
London, H. C. No. 331 of 1888.

2 Report of the Social Science Association on Trade Societies and Strikes
(London, 1860). Article on the Liverpool Tailors by Mr. (afterwards Sir)
Godfrey Lushington, who subsequently became permanent Under-Secretary of
State for the Home Department.

3 One of the principal women's industries in the City of Peterborough is picking
dried peas ; sorting by hand the black or defective peas from those of lighter

of Lords' Committee, "the lives f
"Periods of a,most ceailes toil - TV
compulsion to «work _,, ' tO'h Thls

hastened by the eat whthichT
demand that the product sS
tln>e. It is one of the Sf
to the employers, as they franl!

Committee, that the utmost posL°T

of pressing orders fa Unfe«ered

normal working day. To meet

** "ason," thousands of
, be automatically

subtle economic

of ™* can
by a definite

°f "°Utwork"
H°USe °f Lords'
'" the ex«ution
conceP«on of a

thus to

and to
a" the

emp'°yer'

abstract, from the total rematon O
advantages of room, fire, S an

wh,ch would otherwise te provided
are these insidious effects

The operatives emp,oyed r «n,

presses have to submit to redurt ±, ^ ^ °" th° em^^
of hours, under the threat of A * ?nsofwages and extensions
°f Jhe business to thefr ou7Wor '' ^ °" °f "« and m-e
in fact, makes a TS53S C°mPetit-s.' Home
Closely related to the *

Work is their rooted

of both ' '

» OL.

flour; e

'he outdoor „,,„

2 N

546 Trade Union Function

system. To a certain section of social reformers this seems
incomprehensible. The wage-earners are perpetually com-
plaining that they are deprived of access to the means of
production, and that rents and profits are monopolised by a
relatively small class. The existence, in certain industries, of
numerous small establishments would seem to afford, at least
to the most energetic workmen, an obvious means of rising
to the rank of masters. Yet these " stepping-stones to higher
things " are objected to, not so much by the thriftless work-
man, careless of his future, but by the most thoughtful and
experienced Trade Unionists, that is, by exactly the men
whose superiority in energy, persistency, and organising
power might reasonably be expected to lead to their
personal success.

The explanation of this paradox will not be difficult for
those who appreciate the Trade Union position. Working
men do not combine in order to assist a few of the best
among their number to escape out of their class, but for
the purpose of raising the class itself. To some shrewd
economists it seems even a misfortune to the wage-earning
class that they should, as Professor Marshall observes,
" every year give over to the ranks of the rich a great number
of the strongest and ablest, the most enterprising and far-
seeing, the bravest and the best of those who were born
among themselves." l " What is really important for working
men," says Dr. J. K. Ingram, "is, not that a few should rise
out of their class — this sometimes rather injures the class by
depriving it of its more energetic members. The truly vital
interest is that the whole class should rise in material com-
fort and security, and still more in moral and intellectual
attainments." 2

1 Inaugural Address delivered at the Ipswich Co-operative Congress (Man-
chester, 1889), p. 14.

2 Work and the Workman, being an address to the Trade Union Congress at
their meeting in Dublin^ i6th September 1880, by J. K. Ingram (Dublin, 1880).
It must not be inferred that, because Trade Unions are opposed to the small
master system, they have any objection to their members rising to superior
positions. The energetic Trade Unionist, often a branch official, is frequently
selected for the post of foreman, which he accepts with the full approval of his

, we find a l "* ^ the Smali

among economists, capitalists InH T"""0"3 ^eement
d'fons of cmploymen ^S'th" sm"^ "' that the co»-
wage-earners are habitually and I In S°fH.masto °«ers to his
hose of the great establi hment " 1' "'Iff1*' Worse 'han
health, decency, and «SSSe of " [ '^ C°"Cerns the
'"stance, there is no comparison h t oP^atives, for

factory and the CwJSSSnJt*"1 ^ m°der" boot-
" of the small maste Nor n, T" °f "garden work-
quotations to prove that H?. W6 Weary the Deader
the rates of payment L^ h°Ur?f 'abor ™ 'onger

'° '"

yment r

establishments than in the °It c'"'^ ^"^ sl
-Jch they compete. The vefy advanf enterPr-es with
•ndustry on a , J^ advantages which are causing

system-the utmost S^* the «-"« mastef
division of labor, the obta „"
°" the cheapest terms, the use

f , °f

of th^i l"^ raw
the ° '

_e e m a

e for existence, to be perneT "^ in his desperate
lengthening the hour of labor ^2 *< * l^"8 at wa^ and
^hom he employs. It s a 'SIfrnfi ?Se'f Md for those
master system is found to be a fhl""* faCt that *e small

as Home Work itself ^f^^.c of the sweated

^al opportunity of 5S7i SyStem of the Great IndusT,^ rr O"S' To the

548 Trade Union Function

were proved to exist, we may watch the poverty-stricken
maker of tables and chairs hawking his wares along Curtain
Road, selling direct to the export merchant or to the retail
tradesman, or perchance to the private customer. In
the manufacture of cheap boots in the Metropolis, of cheap
cutlery at Sheffield, of indifferent nails at Halesowen, we
meet with this same sorrowful figure — the small master or
outworker buying his material on credit, and selling his
product to meet the necessities of the hour ; in all instances
underselling his competitors great and small. Respectable
employers, interested in a high standard of production, Trade
Unionists keen for a high standard of wage, agree in attri-
buting to this pitiful personage the worst evils of the sweating
system." 1

If then the Trade Unionists declare, to use the words of
a Sheffield secretary, that the small masters " are a curse to
the trade . . . paying starvation wages to those whom
necessity compels to work for them," this is not due to any
personal dislike of the small masters, or to any aspersion on
their character. It is merely the recognition by Trade
Unionists of an economic fact. Thoughtful workmen in the
staple trades have become convinced, by their own experi-
ence, no less than by the repeated arguments of the econo-
mists, that a rising standard of wages and other conditions
of employment must depend ultimately on the productivity
of labor, and therefore upon the most efficient and econo-
mical use of credit, capital, and capacity. In all these
respects the small master system stands, by common con-
sent, condemned. When, therefore, we find the whole
influence of Trade Unionism constantly acting against this
system, and, as one employer na'rvely put it to us, " playing
into the hands of the great establishments," we must at any
rate credit it with the desire so far to promote the utmost
possible efficiency of production.

This scientific argument against the small master system

1 "The Lords and the Sweating System," by Beatrice Potter (Mrs. Sidney
Webb), Nineteenth Century, June 1890.

- - -

the

«. put p»ctical,e ^« ty enforcing fc Con,;."
.yera. Society SJ Srdl ' ' Tte °P™*«

our town

;s«

SE==S,ST.

550 Trade Union Function

work done, that is the clearest possible proof that they have
no right to exist as such. There is no animus against small
manufacturers, but a praiseworthy determination to place all,
large and small, upon an equal wage basis ; and he would
be a bold man who would dare to find fault with such an
arrangement." * It is exactly at this " equal wage basis " and
similar Common Rules throughout the whole of an industry
that Trade Unionism persistently aims. The ablest leaders of
the workmen's combinations are therefore instinctively biassed
in favor of what we may term a horizontal cleavage of
industrial classes, and they are necessarily prejudiced against
any interference with this stratification. They are conse-
quently found opposing all vertical cleavages whatever, not
merely where, as in the cases of Home Work and Small
Masters, these involve worse conditions for the wage-earners,
but also in the less noxious forms of employers' benefit
societies and profit-sharing.

At first sight nothing seems more kindly and humane
on the part of the employer, and less open to objection from
the workman's standpoint, than the establishment of a Sick
and Burial Club in connection with each large establishment.
A few pence per week are stopped from the operatives'
earnings, and to the fund thus formed the employer often
adds the disciplinary fines, and frequently a substantial con-
tribution from the firm, in whose business the growing capital
is invested. To the middle-class philanthropist the work-
man's sullen hostility to any such arrangement appears
" ungrateful." But to any one who has ever understood the
assumptions on which the whole Trade Union movement is
based, the wage-earner's objection will be clear enough. It
is not merely that the workmen feel no guarantee that, in
the particular financial arrangements imposed on them, they
are getting their money's worth ; nor is the objection due
to any doubt as to the security of the fund — to any fear
that, just when they need their sick pay or superannuation,
the trade may be depressed and the firm bankrupt. What

1 Editorial in Shoe and Leather Record, vol. x. p. 254, loth April 1891.

Ttie Implications of Trade Unionism 55!

the Trade Unionists recognise is that the separate interest
thus created cuts them off from their fellow-workmen in
other establishments — that a vertical cleavage is set up which
interferes with Trade Unionism. We have seen how the
fact of the men being compelled to insure against sickness,
cost of burial, and old age in the employer's fund renders
them indisposed to pay over again to the Trade Union.1
But there is a more fundamental objection. If, as is usual,
a workman forfeits all his benefits should he voluntarily
leave the service of the particular firm, there is a strong and
growing inducement held out to him to remain where he is,
and thus to accept the employer's terms. He loses, in fact,
that perfect mobility which, as economists have often pointed
out, is a necessary condition of his making the best possible
bargain for the sale of his labor. And, to the Trade
Unionist, it is a crowning objection that the workman so
tied shuts himself out from all the advantages of concerted
action with his fellows. Any general adoption of employers'
benefit societies would, in fact, go far to render Trade
Unionism impossible.

Schemes of profit-sharing are, from a Trade Union point
of view, open to similar objections. Unless the Standard
Rate and other conditions are rigidly adhered to, the work-
men in profit-sharing establishments may easily be losing
far more in wages than they gain in " bonus " or share of
profit.2 But it is an even more serious objection that any
separate arrangements with particular employers destroy
that community of interest throughout the trade on which
Collective Bargaining depends. The men employed by a

1 It was stated at the Annual Conference of Friendly Societies in March
1897 that particulars had been obtained of forty large industrial undertakings,
including the Midland Railway Company, in which insurance in the employer's
own benefit society was made compulsory on all persons employed, the premium
being peremptorily deducted from wages.

2 Thus, it is unusual for a profit-sharing establishment to afford its operatives
a larger bonus than 5 per cent on their wages, and few do even as well as this.
But except in the most rigidly organised trades, in the strongest Trade Union
districts, it is common to find some employers paying several shillings per week
below the Standard Rate ; still more, to find Piecework Lists in different establish-
ments varying from 10 to 20 per cent.

552 Trade Union Function

specially " benevolent " firm, with a really generous profit-
sharing scheme, will not be disposed to join heartily with
the rest in any movement for higher wages, lest they should
lose the bonus or other privileges which they already enjoy.
Yet whilst they stand aloof, contented with their Standard
Rate of wages because of these exceptional privileges, it is
difficult for the workmen elsewhere to make any effective
stand for a higher rate. To the Trade Unionist it seems a
very doubtful kindness for an employer to indulge his feelings
of philanthropy in such a way as to weaken the capacity
of the workmen for that corporate self-help on which their
defence against unscrupulous employers depends. Looking
at the matter from the Trade Union standpoint, an employer
who desired permanently to benefit the workmen in his
trade would seek in every way to promote the men's own
organisation, and would therefore make his own establish-
ment a pattern to the rest in respect of the strictest possible
maintenance of the Standard Rates of wages, hours of work,
and other conditions of employment. This would tend to
make it more easy for the workmen in other establishments
to insist on the same advantages. If he wished to do more
for his own workmen, and could afford it, he would scrupu-
lously avoid any departure from the standard methods of
remuneration, and any form of benevolence which created
any division between his workmen and their fellows. What
he would do would be to offer a simple addition to the
common Standard Rate, or a simple reduction of the Normal
Day without any diminution of earnings. In this way any
indirect effect upon the workmen in the other establishments
would be in the direction of facilitating their claiming similar
advances.

This strong objection of the Trade Unionists to any
blurring of the line between the capitalist profit-maker and
the manual-working wage-earner, and their preference for
the Great Industry, might, at first sight, seem to point to-
wards the desirability of concentrating each trade in the
hands of one great employer. But such a concentration of

The Implications of Trade Unionism 553

business may, from the Trade Union point of view, easily
be carried too far. When in any trade the establishments
are all sufficiently large to make it easy for the workmen to
combine, the Trade Union fights at the greatest strategic
advantage if it is confronted by a number of employers,
varying considerably in their pecuniary resources and oppor-
tunities for profit-making. Thus, in any coal, engineering, or
cotton strike, the circumstances of the employers differ so
greatly that, however closely they may be combined, there is
a strong tendency for some of them to split off from the rest.
Those making exceptional profits will not care obstinately
to stand out against the men's demands, and so lose trade
which they may never regain, when agreement with the
Trade Union would still leave them a handsome surplus.
To firms insufficiently supplied with capital, moreover, a
long stoppage may easily be more disastrous than anything
that the Trade Union asks for. In the private meetings of
any employers' association during a strike, these two classes
are always pressing for a settlement, and if they fail to
persuade their more slow-going and highly-capitalised com-
petitors to accept their view, they are apt at last to make
peace on their own account, and so destroy any chance of
the employers' successful resistance.1 If, on the other hand,
the whole industry is controlled by a single colossal em-
ployer, or if it is distributed among a small number of non-
competing employers — especially if the monopoly is in any
way protected against new rivals — the Trade Union finds its
Methods of Mutual Insurance and Collective Bargaining
practically useless. This is the case with the railway com-

1 "1 was one of the committee," observed Mr. Samuda, the great London
shipbuilder, "for carrying on that contest (the engineers' lock-out of 1851), and
the difficulties that existed in maintaining a combination among the masters were
enormous, because there were so many masters whose necessities were so great
that they could not act to the extent of resisting demands that they thought
unjust. It was only men who were thoroughly independent, and who did not
care for closing their works, that could stand the difficulty, and face the insolvency
that was brought upon weaker houses by resisting the unjust demands of the
workmen." — Evidence before the Royal Commission on Trade Unions, 1868,
Q. 16,805.

554 Trade Union Function

panics in the United Kingdom, and some of the great
capitalist trusts in the United States. Against the unlimited
resources, the secured monopoly of custom, and the absolute
unity of will enjoyed by these modern industrial leviathans,
the quarter of a million accumulated funds of the richest
Trade Union, and the clamor of even one or two hundred
thousand obstinate and embittered workmen, are as arrows
against ironclads. In such cases the only available method
of securing a Common Rule is Legal Enactment — difficult,
in the face of interests so powerful, for the Trade Unions to
obtain, but once obtained, in so highly organised an industry,
easy of application and enforcement. We may therefore
infer that the extreme concentration of industry into trusts
and monopolies will lead, either to Trade Union failure and
decay, or else to an almost exclusive reliance on the Method
of Legal Enactment.

When the concentration reaches its most complete form,
and industry passes into State Ownership, the Trade Unions
find new considerations entering into their problems.
When the employer is the State itself, the strongest and
richest Trade Union is as powerless to stand out for terms
as the individual workman. A long strike will bankrupt
dozens of employers and seriously reduce the dividends of
even the wealthiest trust. But if all the workmen in the
Admiralty dockyards stayed out for a year, neither the Civil
Servant manager nor the citizen proprietor would find his
daily income even fractionally diminished. The Trade
Unions are so conscious of this economic helplessness that
they never order a strike in a Government establishment,
and they scarcely, indeed, attempt to bargain with so over-
whelming an omnipotence. Wherever the State is dominated
by classes or interests who do not share the Trade Union
faith, the Trade Unionists, as such, will therefore be dead
against the extension of State Socialism in their own particular
industries.1 The case is altered if the conditions of Govern-

1 Thus the German delegates to the International Miners' Congress of 1897
iheld in London) objected to the resolution in favor of the " nationalisation of the

The Implications of Trade Unionism 555

ment employment can be influenced by democratic public
opinion. If Parliament were really prepared to insist on the
conditions of Government employment being brought into
conformity with Trade Union regulations, any extension of
the public administration of industry might well secure Trade
Union support. At present, however, the Trade Union in-
fluence on the conditions of Government employment is, in
spite of appearances, extremely ineffective. The Trade Union
world, with the exception of the Cotton Operatives and
Coalminers, is, as we have pointed out, unable to make its
political power felt in Parliament. Nor is the House of
Commons, as at present organised, competent, even if it
were really willing, effectively to supervise the internal
administration of the great public departments. Finally,
we have the fact that the present generation of the higher
Civil Servants — our real rulers in points of administrative
detail — are, for the most part, invincibly ignorant both of
industrial organisation and modern economics, and are
usually imbued with the crudest prejudices of the Manchester
School. It is in vain that Ministry after Ministry avows its
intention of abandoning competition wages, and of making
the Government a " model employer." The permanent
heads of departments have no intention of departing from
the " sound " principles which they brought into the service
in 1 860 or 1870. Hence, a Trade Union secretary will often
declare that the Government, instead of being the best, is one
of the very worst employers with whom he has to deal.

But even in the most complete and the most perfectly
organised Democracy, there would be influences which would

mines," on the express ground that " they in Germany had found that the capitalistic
State was the worst possible employer, and the worst enemy and opponent of
the workers. There happened to be in Germany some very large State mines,
and the conditions of the workers in these mines was infinitely worse than else-
where. Now the State was indifferent during mining disputes. If it possessed
all the mines, it would be as an employer more powerful and more tyrannical
than a private employer" (Daily Chronicle, 1 2th June 1897). It is interesting
to note that the French and Belgian delegates unanimously supported the
resolution, together with a majority of the English (those from Northumberland
and Durham alone dissenting), whilst the Germans, though mostly members of
the Social Democratic Party, abstained.

556 Trade Union Function

prevent the Government, as an employer, giving universal satis-
faction to the Trade Unions. Though the working-class vote
would be overwhelming, each section of wage-earners would
find itself a small minority among the rest, and would dis-
cover accordingly how difficult it was to force its own
peculiar grievances upon public attention. And, though any
section that was " underpaid " or " overworked " would get
sympathetic support, there would be a strong tendency in
the average man to object to any terms that were out of the
common. Sections of workmen who had, under private
enterprise, been enjoying exceptionally high wages or short
hours, or who had been enforcing strict limitation of
numbers or other monopoly conditions, would find it difficult
to maintain these by appeals to the multitude. The men in
these trades would accordingly, as Trade Unionists, tend
always to be discontented with Government employment.
Thus, public administration of industry under Democratic
control will be most popular among those larger sections of
the wage-earners, who at present suffer from the weakness of
their strategic position, and will remain unpopular among
the smaller and better organised sections, who can now take
advantage of their corporate strength to exact from their
private employers monopoly terms.

These considerations apply with less force to municipal
employment. The Town Council, though more powerful
in Collective Bargaining than any private employer, has
nothing like the omnipotence of the great State Department.
A strike at the municipal gas retorts, or in the workshops of
the Borough Engineer, is a serious matter, which must be
quickly brought to an end, under penalty of the immediate
displeasure of the citizen-consumers. And whilst the Town
Council is weaker than Parliament in strategic position, it is
also more amenable to public opinion. Municipal electoral
machinery has been more thoroughly democratised than
parliamentary, and is therefore easier of access to the local
unions. No great issues of foreign policy, religion, currency,
or constitutional reform divide the workmen's ranks. The

The Implications of Trade Unionism 557

moral effect of the Town Council's policy with regard to the
conditions of employment is understood by every Trade
Unionist. Once the Town Councillors are converted, the per-
manent officials have no chance of evading or obstructing the
decision of the local Representative Assembly. Moreover,
the lowlier grades of manual labor contribute a larger pro-
portion of the municipal than they do of the national
employees.1 There is as yet nothing in the municipal
service comparable to the great establishments of highly
skilled shipwrights and engineers of the national dock-
yards and arsenals. It is, as we have suggested, far more
easy for the Trade Unions to obtain electoral support
for a universal " moral minimum," or " fair wages," based on
the cost of subsistence, than for any superior conditions,
established by trade custom or gained by strategic advantage,
in respect of particular sections of workmen. We therefore
find the skilled trades less hostile, as Trade Unionists, to the
municipal administration of industry than to any extension
of State employment, whilst the " sweated trades " and the
unskilled laborers clamor for the abolition of the con-
tractor, and the direct employment of labor, as their main
hope of salvation.

If, now, we look back on the incidental features of Trade
Union policy described in this chapter, we may gain some
insight into the kind of social arrangements to which
Trade Unionism predisposes the British workman of our
own day.

Most fundamental of all considerations to the Trade
Unionist is complete freedom of association. This means,
that whilst the law must afford full protection to the funds
of workmen's associations, it should leave them as much
as possible alone ; and that it should, in particular, regard
nothing as criminal or actionable if done by or in pursuance

1 Thus, in London in 1891, even after a general improvement of conditions,
Mr. Charles Booth found that the great class of " Municipal Labor " came
within six of the worst of his eighty-seven occupations, in the percentage of families
living in an overcrowded condition. — Life and Labour of the People^ vol. ix. p. 8-

558 Trade Union Function

of a combination of workmen which would not be criminal
or actionable if done by a partnership of traders in pursuit
of their own gain. But whilst the Trade Unionists insist on
their combinations being let alone by the law, they wish to
use the law to attain their own particular end — the systematic
regulation of the conditions of employment by means of the
Common Rule. Hence their desire for a completely demo-
cratised electoral system, in which the will of the majority
shall really prevail. With regard to the organisation of
industry, we see the Trade Unions setting themselves
decidedly against any vertical cleavage of society, which
interferes with the solidarity of the manual-working wage-
earners as against the capitalist employers. This means
that Trade Unionists, as such, are not in favor of the
" abolition of the wage system," or even of any tampering
with it. They would, on the contrary, wish to see simple
employment at wages supersede all forms of profit-making
by manual workers. They are thus solidly against Home
Work, Small Masters, and Profit-Sharing, and in favor of
the Great Industry, with its bureaucratic hierarchy of salaried
officials. When, however, the Great Industry passes into
public administration, Trade Unionists, as such, regard the
change with mixed feelings. Government Employment goes
far to make two out of their three Methods impracticable,
and they have as yet no confidence in the will and capacity
of the House of Commons to overcome the hostility to
labor of the permanent Civil Service. With local authorities
the Trade Unions have a better chance, but even here, though
the underpaid and overworked sections welcome municipal
employment, the most highly paid unions hesitate to invite
the verdict of public opinion on their restrictive regulations
and monopoly conditions.

CHAPTER XIII

THE ASSUMPTIONS OF TRADE UNIONISM

So far we have confined ourselves to setting forth and
explaining the actual policy of British Trade Unionism, as
manifested in the Methods and Regulations of the several
Unions, and their direct implications. We have still to
examine these Methods and Regulations, together with the
policy of Trade Unionism as a whole, in the light of
economic science, and from the point of view of the com-
munity. But before we pass to this new task it is important
to drag into full light the assumptions on which the Trade
Unionists habitually base both their belief in Trade Union-
ism itself and their justification of particular demands.
These assumptions, seldom explicitly set forth, will serve at
once to explain, and in a sense to summarise, the Methods
and Regulations which they inspire.

We have first the typical assumption of all reformers in
all ages — the conviction that economic and social conditions
can, by deliberate human intervention, be changed for the
better.1 Trade Unionists have never even understood the

1 This belief in the possibility and desirability of deliberately altering the
conditions of social life is often regarded as unscientific, if not as impious. Any
intentional change is denounced as " artificial " — it being apparently supposed
that changes unintentionally produced are more "natural" than others, and more
likely to result in the ends we desire. Even Mr. Lecky makes it a matter of
reproach to Trade Unionism, modern Radicalism, and other movements which
he dislikes, that their policy is "to create a social type different from that which
the unrestricted play of social forces would have produced " — a policy which he
declares "belongs to the same order of ideas as the Protectionism of the past"

560 J^rade Union Function _m

view — still occasionally met with — that there is an abso-
lutely predetermined " Wage-Fund," and that the average
workman's share of the produce depends exclusively on the
arithmetical proportion between the total of this fund and
the number of wage-earners. They assume, on the contrary,
that the ratio in which the total product of industry is shared
between the property-owners, the brain-workers, and the
manual laboring class respectively, is a matter of human
arrangement, and that it can be altered, effectively and per-
manently, to the advantage of one class or another, if the
appropriate action be taken. This assumption we shall
examine in detail in the next chapter.

For the improvement of the conditions of employment,
whether in respect of wages, hours, health, safety, or comfort,
the Trade Unionists have, with all their multiplicity of Regu-
lations, really only two expedients, which we term, respect-
ively, the Device of the Common Rule, and the Device of
Restriction of Numbers. The Regulations which we have
described in our chapters on the Standard Rate, the Normal
Day, and Sanitation and Safety, are but different forms of one
principle — the settlement, whether by Mutual Insurance,
Collective Bargaining, or Legal Enactment, of minimum con-
ditions of employment, by Common Rules applicable to
whole bodies of workers. All these Regulations are based
on the assumption that when, in the absence of any Com-
mon Rule, the conditions of employment are left to " free
competition," this always means, in practice, that they are
arrived at by Individual Bargaining between contracting
parties of very unequal economic strength. Such a settle-
ment, it is asserted, invariably tends, for the mass of the

(Democracy and Liberty, vol. ii. p. 383). To any scientific student of sociology
such language is unintelligible. "To create a social type different from that
which the free play of social forces would have produced " without such " artificial
intervention " is a policy which Trade Unionism shares, not only with fiscal pro-
tection, but with all education and invention, the Church of England and the Courts
of Justice, private property and the family, and all other social institutions, good,
bad, or indifferent. Civilisation itself is nothing but the creation of a social type
different from that which the unrestricted play of social forces would have pro-
duced without the deliberate, or "artificial," intervention of man.

T lie Assumptions of Trade Unionism 561

workers, towards the worst possible conditions of labor —
ultimately, indeed, to the barest subsistence level — whilst
even the exceptional few do not permanently gain as much
as they otherwise could. We find accordingly that the
Device of the Common Rule is a universal feature of Trade
Unionism, and that the assumption on which it is based
is held from one end of the Trade Union world to the
other. The Device of Restriction of Numbers stands in a
different position. In our chapter on the Entrance to a
Trade we have described how the Regulations embodying
this device, once adopted as a matter of course, have suc-
cessively been found inapplicable to the circumstances of
modern industry. The assumption on which they are based
— that better conditions can be obtained by limiting the
number of competitors — would not be denied by any Trade
Unionist, but it cannot be said to form an important part in
the working creed of the Trade Union world. In summing
up the economic results of Trade Unionism it is on these
two Devices of the Common Rule and Restriction of
Numbers that we shall concentrate our criticism.

But these initial assumptions as to the need for Trade
Unionism and the efficacy of its two devices do not, of them-
selves, account for the marked divergence between different
Unions, alike in the general character of their policy and in
the Regulations which they enforce. The universal belief in
a Common Rule affords, to begin with, no guidance as to
how much wages the members of a particular trade will
claim or receive, or how many hours they will consider to be
a proper working day. There is, in fact, no " Trade Union
Rate of Wages," but many different rates — not even a
" Trade Union Working Day," but hours of labor varying
from occupation to occupation. This divergence of policy
comes out even more strikingly in the adoption or rejection
of the Device of Restriction of Numbers, a few trades still
making the strict Limitation of Apprentices and the Exclu-
sion of Illegal Men a leading feature of their policy, whilst
others throw their trades absolutely open to all comers, and
VOL. II 20

562 Trade Union Function

rely exclusively on the maintenance of the Common Rule.
This divergence of policy and difference in type between one
Trade Union and another comes out strongly in the choice of
the Methods by which they enforce their Regulations. The
Boilermakers, for instance, rely very largely on Collective
Bargaining, whilst the Coalminers get at least as much by
Legal Enactment as by any other Method. During the
eighteenth century any trade wishing to enforce apprentice-
ship regulations turned, as a matter of course, to the law.
To-day no union would resort to Parliament on such a
point. A hundred and fifty years ago it was especially the
skilled craftsmen who wanted their wages fixed by Legal
Enactment. At present such favor as is shown to this idea
comes almost exclusively from the lowlier grades of labor.
On all these points the action of any particular union — the
way in which it will seek to use the Device of the Common
Rule — is mainly determined by the views of its members as
to what is socially expedient. In the wider world of politics
we see the electors supporting the policy of one or other
political party mainly according as they approve or dis-
approve of the general conception of society on which it pro-
ceeds. The Trade Unionists, in their narrower sphere of the
conditions of employment, are influenced by three divergent
conceptions of the principle upon which wages, hours, and
other terms of the labor contract ought to be determined.
These three assumptions, which we distinguish as the
Doctrine of Vested Interests, the Doctrine of Supply and
Demand, and the Doctrine of a Living Wage, give us the
clue to the conflicting policies of the Trade Union world.

By the Doctrine of Vested Interests we mean the
assumption that the wages and other conditions of employ-
ment hitherto enjoyed by any section of workmen ought
under no circumstances to be interfered with for the worse.
It was this doctrine, as we have seen, which inspired the long
struggle, lasting down to about 1860, against the introduction
of machinery, or any innovation in processes. It is this
doctrine which to-day gives the bitterness to demarcation

The Assumptions of Trade Unionism 563

disputes, and lies at the back of all the Regulations dealing
with the " right to a trade." * It does more than anything
else to keep alive the idea of " patrimony " and the practice
of a lengthened period of apprenticeship, whilst it induces
the workmen of particular trades to cling fondly to the ex-
pedient of limiting the numbers entering those trades, even
after experience has proved such a limitation to be imprac-
ticable. But the Doctrine of Vested Interests extends much
further than these particular Regulations. There is scarcely
an industry in which it will not be found, on one occasion or
another, inspiring the defence of the customary rates of wages
or any threatened privilege. In some cases, indeed, we find
the whole argument for Trade Unionism based on this one
conception. The Engineers, for instance, in 1845 supported
their case by a forcible analogy. " The youth who has
the good fortune and inclinations for preparing himself
as a useful member of society by the study of physic, and
who studies that profession with success so as to obtain
his diploma from the Surgeons' Hall, or the College of
Surgeons, naturally expects in some measure that he is
entitled to privileges to which the pretending quack can
lay no claim ; and if in the practice of that useful profes-
sion he finds himself injured by such a pretender, he has the
power of instituting a course of law against him. Such are
the benefits connected with the learned professions. But the
mechanic, though he may expend nearly an equal fortune,
and sacrifice an equal portion of his life, in becoming ac-
quainted with the different branches of useful mechanism, has
no law to protect his privileges. It behoves him, therefore,

1 We see this, for instance, among the Engineers. " The question as to a
turner working the horizontal boring lathe at the Pallion [Works] . . . remains
unsettled ; the employers adhering to their right of ' selecting the men and
apportioning the work.' The issue appears to be clean cut, and stated with
perfect frankness. The vested interest — equally with employers — of workmen in
a trade by probationary servitude is apparently to be set at naught. To displace
a journeyman, as indicated, in the exercise of the 'right of selecting,' in the
manner proposed, is as much a wrong as if the same process was proposed to be
adopted with respect to the employer's capital." — Report of Tyneside District
Delegate, in Amalgamated Engineers' Monthly Journal, May 1897.

564 Trade Union Function

on all reasonable grounds, and by all possible means, to
secure the advantages of a society like this to himself." 1 The
same idea is put with no less clearness by some of the smaller
trades. " Considering," say the Birmingham Wireworkers,
" that the trade by which we live is our property, bought by
certain years of servitude, which gives to us a vested right,
and that we have a sole and exclusive claim on it, as all will
have hereafter who purchase it by the same means. Such
being the case, it is evident it is our duty to protect, by all
fair and legal means, the property by which we live, being
always equally careful not to trespass on the rights of others.
To that end we have formed this Association," etc.2

This conception of vested interests is sometimes carried
as far by working men as by the powerful organisation which
has latterly become distinctively known as " The Trade."
Thus the Coopers, whose chief employers then as now were
the brewers, were in 1883 keenly resenting the spread of
education and temperance, and the threatened measure of
" Local Option." " Several Yorkshire towns," remarked their
official circular, "have for years until recently been great
centres of industry in the export line. These centres of
industry are swept away, and nothing I am sorry to say
has turned up to replace them, the consequence being that
all these men had to obtain blocks elsewhere. There is also
the spread of education, an all-powerful influence we are
bound to feel, and a blow from which we shall not easily
recover. There is also that great Northern baronet, Sir
Wilfrid, he too, like Demetrius the Silversmith of Macedonia,
and Alexander the Athenian Coppersmith, has wrought us

1 Rides and Regulations to be observed by the Members of the Journeymen
Steam Engine and Machine Makers' and Millwrights* Friendly Society (Glasgow,
1845). This analogy is repeated in substance in many editions of the rules of
the Amalgamated Society of Engineers.

2 Extract from Address, prefaced to the Rules and Regulations of the Birming-
ham Friendly Society of Wire Weavers, a small union instituted August 1869.
The same preamble was used by the Railway Springmakers of Sheffield in the
Rules of their Society in 1860; see "Report on Trade Societies' Rules" in the
Report on Trade Societies and Strikes of the National Association for the Pro-
motion of Social Science (London, 1860), pp. 131-132.

The Assumptions of Trade Unionism 565

much evil, and from the tone of his speeches means to continue
to dp so." 1

It is difficult for middle-class observers, accustomed to
confine the doctrine of " vested interests " to " rights of
property," to understand the fervor and conviction with
which the skilled artisan holds this doctrine in its application
to the " right to a trade." This intuitive conviction of natural
right we ascribe, in great part, to the long and respectable
history of the idea. Down to the middle of the eighteenth
century it was undisputed. To the member of a Craft Gild
or Incorporated Company it seemed as outrageous, and as
contrary to natural justice, for an unlicensed interloper to
take his trade as for a thief to steal his wares. Nor was
this conception confined to any particular section of the
community. To the economists and statesmen of the time
the protection of the vested interests of each class of trades-
men appeared a no less fundamental axiom of civilised
society than the protection of property in land or chattels.
"Our forefathers," said the Emperor Sigismund in 1434,
" have not been fools. The crafts have been devised for this
purpose that everybody by them should earn his daily bread,
and nobody shall interfere with the craft of another. By
this the world gets rid of its misery, and every one may find
his livelihood."2 "The first rule of justice," said the Parlia-
ment of Paris three hundred and fifty years later, "is to
preserve to every one what belongs to him ; this rule consists,

1 Monthly Report of the Mutual Association of Coopers, Feb. 1883. This
conception of a "vested interest " in the nation's drinking habits may be paralleled
by the attempts made to give the "sanctity of property" to the employer's power
of hiring his labor cheap, or working it excessive hours. Thus Sir James
Graham, speaking in the House of Commons as a responsible minister of the
Crown, solemnly denounced the Ten Hours' Bill of 1844 as "Jack Cade
Legislation" (Greville's Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria, vol. ii. p. 236 ;
see The Eight Hours' Day by Sidney Webb and Harold Cox, London, 1891,
p. 240), and a leading Lancashire manufacturer in 1860 publicly argued that
"the power of the Trade Union . . . robs (for I can use no milder term) . . .
the capitalist of his right to purchase." — " Trades Unions and their Tendencies,"
by Edmund Potter, a paper printed in the Transactions of the National Association
for the Promotion of Social Science, 1860, p. 758.

2 Goldasti's Constitutions Imperiales, vol. iv. p. 189, quoted by Dr. Brentano,
p. 60 ; History of Trade Unionism, p. 19.

566 Trade Union Function

not only in preserving the rights of property, but still more
in preserving those belonging to the person, which arise from
the prerogative of birth and of position." l " To give to all
subjects indiscriminately," argued on that occasion the
eminent Advocate -General Se"guier, "the right to hold a
store or to open a shop is to violate the property of those
who form the incorporated crafts."2

But this conception of a vested interest in a trade, though
it derives sanction among an essentially conservative class
from its long and venerable history, does not rest upon
tradition alone. To men dependent for daily existence on
continuous employment, the protection of their means of
livelihood from confiscation or encroachment appears as
fundamental a basis of social order as it does to the owners
of land. What both parties claim is security and continuity
of livelihood — that maintenance of the " established expecta-
tion" which is the "condition precedent" of civilised life. And
it is easy to trace this social expediency to an elementary
observation on personal character. When misfortune arrives
in consequence of a man's own act or default, it may well
bring the compensation of inducing him to change his habits.
But when individuals or classes are overwhelmed by disasters
which they could have done nothing to avert, experience
shows that, though they may be led to passive resignation,
they are not stimulated to self-reliance, and they are apt, on
the contrary, to be rendered inert or reckless. We do not
expect deliberate foresight or persistent industry from a
community living on a volcano.3 This, indeed, is the

1 Remonstrance by the Parliament of Paris against Turgot's Decrees abolishing
the Corvee and the Jurandes ; Life and Writings of Turgot, by W. Walker
Stephens, p. 132 ; Jobez, La France sous Louis XVI. i. 329-331.

2 Speech of the Advocate Seguier on behalf of the Jurandes at the Lit de
Justice for registering Turgot's Decree ; Life and Writings of Turgot, by W.
Walker Stephens, p. 134 ; QLnvrcs de Turgot, ii. 334-337 ; Foncin, liv. iii. c. ix.

3 Buckle notices the effect of earthquakes in weakening character; "men
witnessing the most serious dangers which they can neither avoid nor understand,
become impressed with a conviction of their inability, and of the poverty of their
own resources " (History of Civilisation, vol. i. p. 123). Middle-class critics often
deplore the " heedlessness " as to the future — the lack of persistent carrying out
of a deliberate plan of life — which marks the laborer engaged in a fluctuating

The Assumptions of Trade Unionism 567

fundamental argument against anything which weakens the
feeling of security of private property, that is, against any
" shock or derangement being given to the expectation which
has been founded on the laws of enjoying a certain portion
of good." 1 And if we pass from the ownership of property
to its occupation under contract, we shall recognise the same
argument in the agitation long and successfully carried on
by Irish and English farmers for a law which should secure
them in their " tenant right." It has now been conceded
that we cannot expect occupiers of land to exercise the
self-sacrifice, foresight, and energy necessary to keep their
holdings in the highest possible efficiency, if the results of
their work can be arbitrarily confiscated whenever a landlord
chooses to exercise his legal right of ejecting a tenant. A
similar consideration lies at the base of the universal conviction
in favor of a legally regulated currency. Bimetallists and
monometallists alike deplore the disastrous effect on national
enterprise if, in the absence of a deliberately settled standard
of value, the reasonable expectations of merchants and
manufacturers are set at naught by currency fluctuations
over which they can have no control. We need not weary
the reader by citing other instances (such as the law of
patents and copyright, the universal practice of compensation
for abolition of office, and all the thousand and one claims
of persons "injuriously affected," which are sanctioned by
the English Lands Clauses Consolidation Acts),2 whereby the
community has deliberately sought to defend particular

trade, and, to some extent, the whole manual labor class. We attribute this
characteristic difference between the English middle and working classes largely
to the feeling of the weekly wage-earner that he is dependent for the continuity
of his livelihood on circumstances over which he has no control, and that he
is, by the modern habit of engaging and dismissing workmen for short jobs,
made keenly sensible of fluctuations which he can do nothing to avert.

1 Bentham, Principles of the Civil Code, part i. ch. vii. The Whig leaders
in 1816 deprecated any discussion by the House of Commons of sinecure offices,
and even of excessive salaries, on the ground, as Francis Homer wrote to Lord
Holland, that "it is a ticklish thing to begin to draw subtle distinctions about
property." — Memoirs and Correspondence of Francis Horner^ M.P. (London,
1843), vo1- »• P- 386.

2 Principles of the Law of Compensation^ by C. A. Cripps, Q.C., 3rd edition
(London, 1892).

568 Trade Union Function

persons or classes against the evil effect on character that
ensues on finding their efforts and sacrifices nullified by
circumstances which they were powerless to avert. When
we remember this vast network of defence, built up during
the present century in protection of the security and continuity
of livelihood of brain-workers and property-holders, it is
strange that it is just these classes who fail to comprehend
the weekly wage-earner's craving for the same boon. " An
industrious man," says one of the workmen's spokesmen,
" having learnt a trade, or enabled by any honest means to
earn a superior living, is equally entitled to an adequate
indemnity if his trade or property is interfered with, or
rendered less advantageous, as the owner of a water-mill,
who has compensation if the water is withdrawn. Every
description of property has ample protection, except the
poor man's only property, his and his children's industrious
habits."1

1 A Comparative Statement of the Number of Laborers employed in the Execu-
tion of the same Quantity of Work if executed by Hand or Machine^ J. Jarrold
(Norwich, 1848). Sismondi pointed out in 1834 that "to make a true calcula-
tion of what society gains by any mechanical invention there must be deducted
from it the loss experienced by all the working men who had been dismissed by
it, till they have found an employment as advantageous as the one they had
before." — " On Landed Property," in Revue Mensuelle d* Economic Politique,
February 1834 ; translated in his Political Economy and the Philosophy of
Government (London, 1837), page 168.

It is not enough to assert, as is often done, that any recognition of the
workman's vested interest in his trade would be incompatible with the industrial
mobility which is indispensable to modern society. The community cannot, of
course, allow the vested interest of any individual or section to stand in the way
of a change which is for the public benefit. This admittedly applies to all vested
interests, whether in land, personal property, public offices, or anything else.
But when the property owner or the holder of a public office is concerned, the
necessary mobility is secured without inflicting loss on the individuals affected,
by the simple device of pecuniary compensation. It is difficult to see why persons
whose occupations are " injuriously affected " by a railway or other enterprise
carried out by Parliamentary powers, should not be compensated for the injury
done to their means of livelihood in the same way as the landowner is. This
claim to legislative indemnity of displaced workmen was recognised by J. S. Mill.
The social advantage derived from the application of new processes and machinery
does not, he declares, "discharge governments from the obligation of alleviating,
and, if possible, preventing, the evils of which this source of ultimate benefit is or
may be productive to an existing generation . . . and since improvements which
do not diminish employment on the whole almost always throw some particular
class out of it, there cannot be a more legitimate object of the legislator's care

The Assumptions of Trade Unionism 569

But although the philosophic student may recognise the
common origin of all forms of " vested interest " in man's
shrinking from the great social evil of a disappointment
of " established expectation," he will not so readily admit
the virtue of the panacea. It may well be that, as applied
to particular forms of personal interest, the remedy may
bring with it social evils greater than those which it cures.
Thus, public opinion now sides with Turgot and Adam
Smith in their denunciation of the evil effects of the close
corporations, by which successive generations of craftsmen

than the interests of those who are thus sacrificed to the gains of their fellow-
citizens and of posterity " (Principles of Political Economy, by J. S. Mill, Book I.
chap. vi. sec. 3, p. 62). We are not aware of any case in which this humane
principle has been acted upon. It is true that, in the case of workmen displaced
by an invention, it would neither be possible nor desirable to pay them lump sums
of money. But if they are willing to work the new process, there seems no
equitable reason why they should not be kept on at their former wages, even at
a considerable temporary loss to the community. The action of the English
legislature in awarding compensation for disturbance of vested interests has,
indeed, been capricious in the extreme, depending, perhaps, on the momentary
political influence of the class concerned. Thus, no compensation was given to
the large class of lottery keepers and their servants, either for loss of capital or
loss of occupation, when private lotteries were, in 1698, suddenly prohibited. The
shipowners and merchants who had invested a large capital in specially designed
slave-carrying ships received no compensation when the slave trade was abolished
in 1807. On the other hand, when, in 1834, the slaves in the British Colonies were
converted into indentured servants, twenty millions sterling were voted to the
owners, though no other country, before or after, has taken this course. The
owners of Irish Parliamentary Boroughs were compensated when the Union
deprived them of these seats, but the owners of English Parliamentary Boroughs,
which had equally been recognised sources of income, received nothing when the
Reform Bill of 1832 swept them away. In our own day, when a Town Council
sets up its own works, and uses public funds to dispense altogether with its former
contractors, it pays them no compensation for loss of capital or livelihood. But
if the new workshops so much as darken the view from the contractor's windows,
the town must pay damages. Parliament gives public authorities full power to
ruin, if they can, the private owners of existing gas-works by setting up public
electric lighting works, and even to destroy the business of joint-stock cemeteries
by starting public burial-grounds. But the House of Commons has jealously
refused to permit any Town Council to put up gas-works of its own, whilst any
private gas-works are in the field as opponents ; or even to sink its own wells to
get a new and entirely different supply of water for the public, without first fully
compensating any existing water company, not for taking away any land, works,
or water, or infringing any monopoly rights, but simply for loss of income.
Whether the holder of an annually granted terminable license to sell intoxicating
liquors would or would not be equitably entitled to compensation if Parliament
decided for the future not to renew it, is a hotly contested question.

570 Trade Union Function

were legally assured of a customary livelihood, whether they
kept pace with the times, or jogged along contentedly in
the old routine. In exactly the same strain it has been
urged by opponents of the institution of private property,
that, at any rate, in the form of inherited wealth, it over-
reaches its aim, and by securing a livelihood independent of
personal exertion, positively counteracts its primary purpose
of encouraging each generation to put forth its fullest
energies. As against the gilds, modern democracy denies
the right of any group or section to monopolise, to the
exclusion of less fortunate outsiders, any opportunity of
public service. In the same way opponents have argued
against private property that, by creating a virtual monopoly
of land and capital in the hands of a comparatively small
class, the right of exclusive ownership actually hinders whole
sections of citizens from that access to the instruments of
production by which alone they can exercise their faculties.
It is significant that almost the same phrase — " the right to
work " — was used by Turgot as an argument against the
gilds, and by Louis Blanc as an indictment against private
property in capital and land.1

It was, however, not these general arguments that in-
duced Parliament to throw over the vested interests of the
handicraftsmen. Amid the rush of new inventions, a legal
" right to a trade," or a legal limitation of apprentices, whilst
it remained an irksome restriction, ceased to safeguard the
workman's livelihood. The only remedy for the consequent
disturbance of vested interests would have been to have
stereotyped the existing industrial order, by the absolute
prohibition of machinery or any other innovation. To the
statesman, keen on securing the maximum national wealth,
any such prohibition appeared suicidal. To the new class
of enterprising captains of industry, all restrictions stood in

1 "The right to work is the property of every man, and this property is the
first, the most sacred, and the most inalienable of all " (Introduction to the Law
for the Suppression of "Jurandes," CEnvres de Tztrgot, par E. Daire, Paris, 1844,
vol. ii. p. 306). This "droit a travailler " preceded by seventy years the "droit
an travail " of Louis Blanc.

The Assumptions of Trade Unionism 571

the way of that free use of their capital from which they
could derive private wealth. The dispossessed craftsmen
could themselves devise no feasible alternative to laisser
faire, and no one among the dominant classes thought of
any means of compensation. As the Industrial Revolution
progressed, the objection to any interference with mobility
increased in strength. New armies of workpeople grew up,
without vested interests of their own, and accordingly
opposed to any conception of society which excluded them
from the most profitable occupations. Finally, we have the
rise in influence of the great body of consumers, loth to
admit that the disappointment of the " established expecta-
tion " of particular sections of workers is any adequate
ground for refraining from the cheapest method of satisfying
their ever-changing desires. The result is that even Trade
Unionists feel the Doctrine of Vested Interests to be out of
date. It is still held with fervor by the more conservative-
minded members of every trade, to whom it fully justifies
such restrictive regulations as they are able to maintain.1 It
is naturally strongest in the remnants of the time-honored
ancient handicrafts. Those who have troubled to explore
the nooks and crannies of the industrial world, which have
hitherto escaped the full intensity of the commercial struggle,
will have found in them a peculiar type of Trade Union
character. Wherever the Doctrine of Vested Interests .is
still maintained by the workmen, and admitted by the
employers — where, that is to say, the conditions of employ-
ment are consciously based, not on the competitive battle,
but on the established expectations of the different classes —
we find an unusual prevalence, among the rank and file, of
what we may call the " gentle " nature — that conjunction of
quiet dignity, grave courtesy, and consideration of other

1 Thus, even in 1897 we find an aged compositor writing, "It is useless
saying we cannot resist the machine. I say we can and must. Are we to
prostrate ourselves before this Juggernaut of a 'higher civilisation,' and be
crushed out of existence without a protest ? ... To live by his own industry is
every man's birthright, and whoever attempts to curtail that right is a traitor to
the community." — Letter in Typographical Circular, February 1897.

572 Trade Union Function

people's rights and feelings, which is usually connected with
old family and long-established position. But this type of
character becomes every day rarer in the Trade Union
world. The old Doctrine of Vested Interests has, in fact,
lost its vitality. It is still secretly cherished by many
workmen, and its ethical validity is, in disputes between
different Trade Unions, unhesitatingly assumed by both
sides. But we no longer find it dominating the mind of
Trade Union leaders, or figuring in their negotiations with
employers, and appeals for public support. Whatever fate
may be in store for other forms of vested interests, the
modern passion for progress, demanding the quickest possible
adaptation of social structure to social needs, has effectually
undermined the assumption that any person can have a
vested interest in an occupation.

When, at the beginning of this century, the Doctrine of
Vested Interests was, as regards the wage-earners, definitely
repudiated by the House of Commons, the Trade Unionists
were driven back upon what we have termed the Doctrine
of Supply and Demand. Working men were told, by friends
and foes alike, that they could no longer be regarded as
citizens entitled to legal protection of their established ex-
pectations ; that labor was a commodity like any other ;
and that their real position was that of sellers in a market,
entitled to do the best they could for themselves within the
limits of the law of the land, but to no better terms than
they could, by the ordinary arts of bargaining, extract from
those with whom they dealt. It was the business of the
employer to buy " labor " in the cheapest market, and that
of the workman to sell it in the dearest. It followed that
the only criterion of justice of any claim was ability to en-
force it, and that the only way by which the workmen could
secure better conditions of employment was by strengthen-
ing their strategic position against the employer. In the
History of Trade Unionism we have described how, after
the collapse of the Owenite Utopianism of 1833-34, this
doctrine came as a new spirit into the Trade Union move-

The Assumptions of Trade Unionism 573

ment. Thus the Flint Glass Makers, whose strong and
restrictive combination dates from 1849, have avowedly
based their whole policy upon " Supply and Demand."
"When," wrote their chief officer in 1869, "we find Mr.
Nasmyth explaining [to the Royal Commission on Trade
Unions] the advantage to the employer of a supply of
surplus labor, it is easy to understand the consequences to
the workmen that an unlimited supply of new hands might
have in any market, and their objections to the practice.
That the State should enforce any such limitation would
certainly be most impolitic. But the conduct of those who
refuse to work under a system of an unlimited number of
apprentices appears to us precisely similar to that of those
employers who insist on it. Both parties are seeking to do
the best for their own interests, and neither pretends to
consider the interests of those whom their conduct may
affect. The masters find it cheaper to employ as many
boys as they can, and they leave the displaced workmen to
their own resources. The men on their side find it their
interest to decline to work with an unrestricted supply of
boys, and leave the unemployed youth to do the best they
can for themselves. The employer declines all responsibility
as to the consequences of displacing a number of middle-
aged workmen by boys, on the ground that it is the interest
of capital to find the cheapest labor it can. The workmen
find it is the interest of their body not to work on such
terms. In this battle of interest, in which neither party
acknowledge any obligation beyond that of securing their
own interests, absolute impartiality appears to us to be the
only safe rule of the State. So long as no breach of the
general law results, and no legislative restriction exists, the
consequences of their conduct must be borne by each party
for themselves." 1

Between 1843 an^ 1880 the Doctrine of Supply and
Demand, though never universally accepted, occupied a
dominant place in the minds of most of the leaders of Trade

1 Editorial in the Flint Glass Makers' Magazine, vol. vi. No. 7 (March 1869).

574 Trade Union Function

Union thought. Viewed in the light of the workmen's ex-
perience of the evils of Individual Bargaining, and of the
weakness of merely local unions, it meant the establishment
of strong national societies, heaping up great reserve funds,
and seeking to control the supply of labor in a whole
industry from one end of the kingdom to the other. It
involved, moreover, the gradual substitution of a policy of
inclusion for that of exclusion. Instead of jealously restrict-
ing Trade Union membership to men who had " earned " a
right to the trade by a definite apprenticeship under re-
strictive conditions, the unions came more and more to use
all lawful means of enforcing membership on every com-
petent workman whom they found actually working at their
trade, however questionable might have been the means by
which he had acquired his skill. The policy with regard
to apprenticeship underwent, accordingly, a subtle change.
The ideas of patrimony, of the purchase and sale of " the
right to a trade," and of a traditional ratio between learners
and adepts, gradually faded away, to be replaced by a frank
and somewhat cynical policy of so regulating the entrance
to an industry as to put the members of the union in the
best possible position for bargaining with the employers.
This conscious manipulation of the labor market, the direct
outcome of the Doctrine of Supply and Demand, took
different forms in different industries. Among the Flint
Glass Makers, for instance, it led to an absolutely precise
adjustment, entrance to the trade and progression from grade
to grade being so regulated as instantly to fill every
vacancy as it occurred, but so as to leave no man in any
grade unemployed. " It is," they declared, " simply a
question of supply and demand, and we all know that if we
supply a greater quantity of an article than what is actually
demanded, that the cheapening of that article, whether it be
labor or any other commodity, is a natural result." 1 The
inference was a strict limitation of boy-labor. " Look to
the rule and keep boys back ; for this is the foundation of

1 History of Trade Unionism, p. 183.

The Assumptions of Trade Unionism 575

the evil, the secret of our progress, the dial on which our
society works, and the hope of future generations." l The
Cotton-spinners, accepting the same assumption that their
wages must depend exclusively on the strength of their
strategic position in the market, find that exactly the
opposite policy is the best suited to attain their end. In-
stead of attempting to restrict the number of boys, they
insist that every spinner shall be attended by two piecers, a
ratio of learners to adepts ten times as great as is needed to
keep up the supply. This regulation is insisted on in all
negotiations with the employers, expressly on the ground
that only by such an arrangement can the union secure for
its members the highest possible remuneration.2 But the
most obvious result of the change of doctrine was a revolu-
tion in policy with regard to wages and hours. Under the
influence of the Doctrine of Vested Interests, the eighteenth-
century Trade Unionists had confined themselves, in the
main, to protecting their customary livelihood ; asking
advances, therefore, not when profits were large, but when
the cost of living had risen. Under the influence of the
view that wages should be determined by the strategic
position of the combined wage-earners, the Trade Unionists
of the middle of the present century boldly asserted a claim,
in times of good trade, to the highest possible rates that
they could exact from employers eager to fulfil immensely
profitable orders. Middle-class public opinion, which had
accepted as inevitable the starvation wages caused by
Supply and Demand in the lean years, was shocked in
1872-73 at the rumor of coalminers and ironworkers, in
those times of plenty, demanding ten shillings or even a
pound a day, and faring sumptuously on green peas and
champagne. The great captains of industry, though genuinely
alarmed at the Trade Union pretensions to share in the

1 Flint Glass Makers' Magazine, September 1857; History of Trade Unionism,
p. 184.

2 For the economics of this paradox — in our opinion more valid than the
position of the Flint Glass Makers — see the subsequent chapter on " The Economic
Characteristics of Trade Unionism."

57° Trade Union Function

profits of good times, found it difficult to refuse this
application of their own Doctrine of Supply and Demand.
We find them accordingly arranging, particularly in the coal
and iron industries, an intellectual compromise with the Trade
Union leaders, which took form in the celebrated device of
the Sliding Scale. The Durham and Northumberland coal-
owners, and the North of England iron-masters, abandoned,
once for all, the theory that wages should be determined by
the competition of individual workmen among themselves,
or by the skill in bargaining of the individual employer.
They thus frankly conceded the central position of Trade
Unionism, namely, the advantage of a Common Rule co-
extensive with the industry. They gave up, moreover, any
claim to take advantage of the glut of labor, which occurs
from time to time, and which, under the Sliding Scale, is
not admitted as a plea for any reduction of wages. The
Trade Unionists, on their side, agreed to forego making any
use of the occasional short supply of labor, when they
might otherwise have secured an advance. But they also
made a more important concession. By agreeing that the
rate of wages should automatically vary with the price of
the product, they accepted the employers' contention that
the workman's income should be determined by Supply and
Demand, though it was Supply and Demand applied, not
directly to labor, but to the product of labor. In the coal
and iron trades, the selling price of the product, as fixed by
the competitive market, was taken as a rough index of the
average profitableness of the industry for the time being. Thus,
the workman's position, as regards his proportion of the pro-
duct of industry, became that of a humble partner. But he
was a partner without any share in the management — with-
out, in particular, any voice in that adjustment of the amount
of production to the intensity of demand, upon which the
selling price of his product, and therefore his livelihood,
necessarily depended. Hence the cry among the coal-
miners that no one coal-owner should be allowed, by reckless
over-production, to depress the price for the whole trade,

The Assumptions of Trade Unionism 577

and so lower both profits and wages all round. They argued
that, if the daily bread of half a million miners' households
was to vary automatically with the price of coal — if the
workmen, by agreeing to a Sliding Scale, were to forego
their right to fight for better terms — then the fixing of the
price, as against the consumer, should itself form a part of
the general collective agreement upon which the whole
industry depended.1 This would have meant, in fact, a
gigantic coal -trust governed by a joint committee of capi-
talists and workmen, regulating output, prices, and rates of
wages, a combination which British coal-owners, despite
several attempts, have hitherto failed to establish. The
miners, except in South Wales, have therefore abandoned
the Sliding Scale, and have now, as we shall presently
describe, come under the influence of another doctrine.2

Meanwhile, the step which the coal-owners have never
been able to take has been taken by most of the Birmingham
metal trades. Since 1 890 a remarkable series of " Alliances "
have been concluded between the Employers' Associations
and the Trade Unions of the various sections of the staple
industry of Birmingham, based on the idea of a partnership

1 See our chapter on " Continuity of Employment " for a description of the
policy of restricting output.

2 The fall of prices since 1873, to whatever cause it may be attributed, would
have made any general adoption of the Sliding Scale disastrous to the wage-
earners. Between 1867-77 (taken as par) and 1896, Mr. Sauerbeck's Index-
Number, representing the general level of prices, has fallen continuously from
100 to 6 1, the decline having no relation to the extent of business or to the
aggregate employers' profits, both of which are much greater now than at
any former period. The advocates of a Sliding Scale contemplate, it is true, a
periodical revision of the basis. But in a period of falling prices, the onus of
making the change would always be on the wage-earners, and even if they over-
came this serious obstacle, they would necessarily stand to lose so long as each
particular basis was adhered to. In a period of rising prices, as, for instance,
between 1850 and 1873, the employers would be at a similar disadvantage.
The fact is that, whether we adopt one assumption or another, the rate of wages
has no assignable relation to the fluctuations in the price of the product. There
seems i,o valid reason why the wage-earner should voluntarily put himself in a
position in which every improvement in productive methods, every cheapening
of the cost of carriage, every advance in commercial organisation, every lessening
of the risks of business, every lightening of the taxes or other burdens upon
industry, and every fall in the rate of interest — all of which are calculated to
lower price — should automatically cause a shrinking of his wages.

VOL. II 2 P

Trade Union Function

between employers and workmen to increase the profitableness
of the trade as a whole.1 The terms of the " Alliance " be-
tween " the Associated Bedstead and Fender Mount Manu-
facturers, and those operatives (strip casters, stampers,
spinners, turners, burnishers, dippers, and solderers) who are
members of the Bedstead and Fender Mount (Operatives)
Association," are typical of all these agreements. " The object
of the Alliance shall be the improvement of selling prices,
and the regulation of wages upon the basis of such selling
prices . . . thereby securing better profits to manufacturers
and better wages to workpeople." To secure this object the
employers and workmen alike agree to combine against
any manufacturer who sells below the agreed price, or
attempts to reduce wages. " This understanding shall
include a pledge on the part of the manufacturers not to
employ any but association workpeople (over 21 years of
age), excepting by special arrangement with the Operatives'
Association," and on the part of the workmen not to work
for any but those manufacturers who sell their goods at such
prices as are from time to time decided upon by " a Wages
Board, to be formed of an equal number of employers and
employed." " The first advances of prices would be
recommended to the Wages Board whenever it was con-
sidered safe to make such advance . . . that is, when all
.the workpeople have joined their Association, and when all
the manufacturers have agreed together to sell at the prices
fixed by the Employers' Association. . . . The bonus paid
to the members of the Operatives' Association shall be
increased at the rate of five per cent advance of bonus upon
wages for every ten per cent advance . . . upon present

1 These " Alliances," which form a significant even though perhaps a
temporary industrial development, have elaborate printed agreements, almost
identical in their terms. Some idea of the spirit underlying them may be
gathered from a pamphlet, The New Trades Combination Movement, its Principles
and Methods, by E. J. Smith (Birmingham, 1895), on behalf of the employers ;
and from an article by W. J. Davis (Secretary of the National Society of
Amalgamated Brassworkers) in the Birmingham and District Trades Journal for
July 1896. The Birmingham Daily Post for the years 1895-96 contains many
articles and letters on the subject.

The Assumptions of Trade Unionism 579

selling prices " (irrespective of changes in the market price of
metal as the raw material).

We have in these Birmingham " Alliances," of which
half a dozen have lately sprung into existence, an ex-
ceptionally developed manifestation of the doctrine that the
conditions of employment should be left to Supply and
Demand, or, to put it in another way, should correspond to
the relative strategic position of the parties to the bargain.
Each party naturally does its best, within the limits ' of the
law, to improve its own position in the market. The work-
men, rinding themselves individually powerless to stand out
for better terms, combine in order to strengthen themselves
against the employers. The employers, on their side, combine
to protect themselves against the workmen. Finally both
parties, discovering no other way of maintaining the price of
their product, upon which both wages and profits are deemed
to depend, unite their forces in order to exact better terms
from the community for the trade as a whole, and incidentally
to protect themselves against what they choose to consider
the unfair competition of a few individuals among them. Nor
is such an alliance either so new or so unique as might be
supposed. The imperfect organisation of employers and
workmen alike, and the absence of a mutual understanding
between them, has hitherto stood in the way of the adoption
of formal or elaborate treaties of this nature. But a tacit
assumption, acted on by both employers and workmen, may,
in some industries, be as effective in keeping up prices and
excluding competitors as a published treaty. Thus, the
uniformly friendly relations between the little group of manu-
facturers of hand-made paper, and the union of the skilled
handicraftsmen employed, are certainly maintained by a half-
conscious compact to hinder new competitors from entering
the trade.1 And in such trades as the Plumbers, Basket-

1 Thus, the employers have long allowed the union to limit most strictly the
number of apprentices, even to the point of there being "not a spare hand in the
trade." The workmen have frequently pointed out how well this suits the
interests of the present employers, alleging that " it would be a great inducement

580 Trade Union Function

makers, and many others, it is common to find, in the
" Working Rules," or even in the constitution of the Trade
Union, a regulation inserted at the instance of the employers
which prohibits or penalises work being done directly for
ihe_canstHftei7-er for any class of employers who might
become the business rivals of those who have entered into
the agreement.

We see, therefore, that the Doctrine of Supply and
Demand differs in the most practical way from the Doctrine
of Vested Interests. Instead of being inconsistent with the
facts of modern industry, it seems capable of indefinite
development to meet the changing conditions of the world-
commerce. Far from being antagonistic to the business spirit
of the present century, it falls in with the assumption that
the highest interests of Humanity are best attained by
every one pursuing what he conceives to be his own interest
in the manner, within the limits of the law of the land, that
he thinks best for himself. It is, moreover, merely applying
to the relations of capital and labor the principles which
already govern the business relations of commercial men to
each other. Whether the capitalist can bargain individually
with his workpeople, or is forced by their combination to
deal with them collectively, the Doctrine of Supply and
Demand seems to put the matter on a strictly business
footing. The relation between employer and wage-earner,
like that between buyer and seller, becomes, in fact, merely
an incident in the " beneficent private war which makes one
man strive to climb on the shoulders of another and remaifK
there." l Seen in this light, the unsystematic inequality,
which is the result of the modern industrial struggle, has

for capital to enter the trade if labor could be got," but that the Trade Union
regulations made the "vat trade," in effect, "a close corporation. . . . There
has long been a mutual agreement between the two parties. . . . There have
been little disputes from time to time, no doubt, but they have been more in the
nature of family jars than anything else." — Arbitration on the Question of an
Advance in Wages . . ., Rupert Kettle, Esq., Q.C., Arbitrator (Maidstone, 1874),
p. 64.

1 Poptdar Government, by Sir Henry Maine (London, 1885), p. 50.

The Assumptions of Trade Unionism 585

as to bring the actual hours of work within what the Board
may consider to be " reasonable limits," and may compel
compliance with the revised schedule under penalty of a fine
not exceeding a hundred pounds a day.1 To the vast

1 The average public opinion of the propertied classes on these points has
been well expressed by the Right Hon. Sir Lyon (now Lord) Playfair, F.R.S., in
his essay On the Wages and Hours of Labor (London, 1892; published by the
Cobden Club). "It is to the interest of all of us that the weak should be pro-
tected against the strong ; and hence it is right to enact factory laws to regulate
the hours of labor for women and children, and these react without law in
shortening the hours of labor of men. Children are the growing generation of
men and women, and their labor should be of a kind that will not stunt their
growth. True, women may be adults [why "may"?]; and why should we
class them with children ? Because it is to the interest of all of us that female
labor should be limited so as not to injure the motherhood and family life of a
nation. . . . It is to the interests of all of us that work should be carried on in
normal conditions of health, so that workshops should not maim or stunt
humanity. It is not in the power of individual workmen to protect themselves
from defective machinery or bad ventilation ; so it is in the interests of all of us
to make laws for their preservation from preventable causes of mortality." Lord
Playfair then proceeds to denounce any interference by the State with regard to
the hours of labor or wages of adult men, on the grounds (i) "that it would
be impossible for the State to intervene in the management of trade, because, if
it did so, it becomes responsible for the success or failure of each particular
undertaking," and (2) " that it is, not a theory, but a law of economics surely
established, that decline and degradation follow the loss of self-activity." Lord
Playfair nowhere explains why these arguments do not equally negative any
State interference with the hours of adult women, or any legal prescription of
elaborate and costly sanitary provisions in factories containing only adult men.
Nor does he explain why the same assumption of general wellbeing, upon which
'•<e ;ustifies State interference with adult women's hours and adult men's water-
sets, would not equally justify State interference with adult women's wages
and adult men's hours. The whole essay is full of similar jumps from, one
hypothesis to another, without warning to the reader, or explanation of the
reason for the substitution. It is, in fact, a remarkable instance of the manner in
which even a man trained in one science will, in dealing with the subject matter
of another in which he has had no systematic training, use the logic of the un-
educated. It is therefore not surprising that, in the very next year after this
authoritative deliverance against any State interference with the hours of adult
men, it was Lord Playfair himself who piloted through the House of Lords the
bill empowering the Board of Trade peremptorily to stop excessive hours of
labor among railway servants, and who even resisted an amendment to confine
the scope of this protective measure to persons engaged with the movement of
traffic (House of Lords Journals, vol. cxxv. 1893). Lord Playfair has, so far as
we know, not yet explained why this State intervention in the complicated
railway industry has not made the Government " responsible for the success or
failure of each particular undertaking" ; nor yet why "decline and degradation"
has not followed "the loss of self-activity" among the railway servants. The change
of attitude in England with regard to regulation of the hours of railway servants
has been elaborately analysed by Professor Gustav Cohn in two articles on " Die

586 Trade Union Function

majority of Trade Unionists the intellectual assumption on
which Parliament has acted with regard to the hours of
women and railway servants appears to apply all round.
The average Trade Unionist unconsciously takes it for
granted that the hours of labor, whether fixed by Collective
Bargaining or Legal Enactment, ought to be settled without
reference to the momentary strategic position of the section
concerned. We have already noticed that, with one or two
remarkable exceptions, the richer and more powerful sections
of the wage-earners put forward no claim to shorter hours of
labor than those enjoyed by their less advantageously placed
colleagues, and that the successive requests for shorter hours
have usually formed part of contemporary general movements
extending from one end of the Trade Union world to the
other, and based on the plea that the shorter working day
proposed was desirable in the interests of physical health
and civic efficiency.

When we pass from the circumstances amid which the
wage-earner is to work, and the number of hours which he
must spend in labor, to the amount of money which he will
receive as wages, we find the protest against the Doctrine of
Supply and Demand much less universal, and only recently
becoming conscious of itself. During the whole of this
century middle-class public opinion has scouted the idea that
the actual money wages of the operative could possibly be
governed by any other considerations than the relative
strategic positions of the parties to the bargain. And
although the Trade Unionists have never thoroughly ac-
cepted this doctrine, even when that of Vested Interests had
become manifestly impossible, they have, until recent years,
never succeeded in intelligibly setting forth any contrary
view. No reader of the working-class literature for the last
two hundred years can, however, doubt the existence of an
abiding faith in quite another principle. Deep down in
their hearts the organised workmen, even whilst holding the

Arbeitszeit der Englischen Eisenbahnbediensten," in the Archiv fur Eisenbahn-
wesen for 1892 and 1893 respectively.

The Assumptions of Trade Unionism 587

Doctrine of Vested Interests, or acquiescing in that of Supply
and Demand, have always cherished a feeling that one condi-
tion is paramount over all, namely, that wages must be so
fixed that the existing generation of operatives should at any
rate be able to live by their trade. "We ask," say the
United Silk Throwers in 1872, "for a fair day's wages for a
fair day's work. . . . What is a fair day's wage ? Brethren,
... no one can deny it, the due reward for our labor may be
summed up in these words, Shelter, Food, and Raiment both
for ourselves, our wives, and our children." l Throughout all
the negotiations about Sliding Scales, we see constantly
emanating from the rank and file of the operatives the
demand that the Scale should begin from a minimum below
which wages could under no circumstances be reduced. In
this they had the support of the ablest working-class thinker
of the time. "The first thing," wrote Lloyd Jones in 1874,
"that those who manage trade societies should settle is a
minimum which they should regard as a point below which
they should never go. ... Such a one as will secure suffici-
ency of food, and some degree of personal and home comfort
to the worker ; not a miserable allowance to starve on, but
living wages. The present agreements they are going into,
on fluctuating market prices, is a practical placing of their
fate in the hands of others. It is throwing the bread of
their children into a scramble of competition, where every-
thing is decided by the blind and selfish struggles of their
employers." 2 "I entirely agree," wrote Professor Beesly,
" with an admirable article by Mr. Lloyd Jones in a recent
number of the Beehive^ in which he maintained that colliers
should aim at establishing a minimum price for their labor,

1 Preface to Rules of the United Silk Throwers' Trade and Friendly Society ,
"commenced 24th October 1868" (Derby, 1872). In the Practical Uses and
Remarks on the Articles of the Operative Colliers of Lanark, Dumbarton, and
Renfrewshire (Glasgow, 1825), a pamphlet preserved in the Place MSS. (27,805),
the phrase occurs, "our aim is lawfully to obtain a bare living price for our
arduous labor."

2 " Should Wages be Regulated by Market Price ? " Beehive, i8th July 1874 ;
see also his article in the issue for 4th March 1874, anr^ History of Trade
Unionism, pp. 325-327.

588 Trade Union Function

and compelling their employers to take this into account as
the one constant and stable element in all their speculations.
All workmen should keep their eyes fixed on this ultimate
ideal." l For fifteen years this idea of a " Living Wage "
simmered in the minds of Trade Unionists. The labor up-
heaval of 1889 marked its definite adoption as a fundamental
assumption of Trade Unionism, in conscious opposition both
to the Doctrine of Vested Interests and to that of Supply
and Demand. The Match Girls had no vested interests to
appeal to, and Supply and Demand, to the crowd of hungry
laborers struggling at the dock gates, meant earnings abso-
lutely inconsistent with industrial efficiency. The General
Manager of one of the dock companies himself admitted the
fact. " The very costume," he told the House of Lords, in
which the dock laborers " presented themselves to the work
prevents them doing work. The poor fellows are miserably
clad, scarcely with a boot on their foot, in a most miserable
state; and they cannot run, their boots would not permit them.
. . . There are men who come on to work in our docks (and
if with us, to a much greater extent elsewhere) who come on
without having a bit of food in their stomachs, perhaps
since the previous day ; they have worked for an hour and
have earned 5d. ; their hunger will not allow them to con-
tinue ; they take the $d. in order that they may get food,
perhaps the first food they have had for twenty-four hours.
Many people complain of dock laborers that they will not
work after four o'clock. But really, if you only consider it,
it is natural. These poor men come on work without a
farthing in their pockets ; they have not anything to eat in
the middle of the day ; some of them will raise or have a
penny, and buy a little fried fish, and by four o'clock their
strength is utterly gone ; they pay themselves off ; it is
absolute necessity which compels them. . . . Many people
complain of their not working after four, but they do not
know the real reason." 2 The result, in fact, of leaving wages

1 Beehive, i6th May 1874 ; History of Trade Unionism, p. 326.

2 Evidence before House of Lords Committee on the Sweating System ; The

The Assumptions of Trade Unionism 589

to be settled solely by the relative strategic positions of the
parties to the bargain is to drive whole sections of the popu-
lation to accept earnings so low, and so irregularly discon-
tinuous, as to be wholly insufficient for the maintenance of
any muscular strength. It was, we think, this unexpected
discovery, made by the House of Lords Committee on
Sweating, and by Mr. Charles Booth and his colleagues, that
brought public opinion to the aid of the strikers of 1889,
and compelled the employers to yield, at any rate for the
moment, to demands which neither the Match Girls nor the
Dockers had any power to obtain by the strength of their
own combinations.

Four years later the same assumption gained world-wide
celebrity under Lloyd Jones's own phrase of a " Living Wage."
When the members of the Miners' Fedexatioft-wciu menaced,
in the trade contraction of 1892-93, with a serious reduction
of wages, they definitely repudiated the Doctrine of Supply
and Demand, and maintained their right, whatever the state
of trade, to a minimum sufficient to secure their efficiency as
producers and citizens. " They held it as a matter of life
and death," said the Vice-President of the Miners' Federation
in 1892, "that any condition of trade ought to warrant the
working man living. They held that it was a vital principle
that a man by his labor should live, and notwithstanding
all the teachings of the political economists, all the doctrines
taught by way of supply and demand, they said there was a
greater doctrine over-riding all these, and that was the
doctrine of humanity. They believed that the working-man
was worthy of his hire, and held at the present moment that
wages were as low as they ever ought to be." * " We have
come to the conclusion," repeated the President of the same
organisation in 1894, "that prior to 1887 the men were not
earning a living wage, that is, they had not sufficient wage at

Story of the Dockers* Strike, by Llewellyn Smith and Vaughan Nash (London,
1889), p. 47.

1 Speech of Sam Woods, M.P., at the Annual Conference of the Miners'
Federation of Great Britain, held at Hanley, January 1892, pp. 9-10.

59° Trade Union Function

the end of the week to properly feed and clothe their
children and pay their way in the world. We think that
thirty per cent added on to the rate of wages then paid will
secure to the men what we believe to be the rate of wages
which will consummate that desirable object." l

We can now form a definite idea of the assumption
which this generation has set up against the Doctrine of
Supply and Demand, and which we have termed the Doctrine
of a Living Wage. There is a growing feeling, not confined
to Trade Unionists, that the best interests of the community
can only be attained by deliberately securing, to each section
of the workers, those conditions which are necessary for the
continuous and efficient fulfilment of its particular function in
the social machine. From this point of view, it is immaterial
to the community whether or not a workman has, by birth,
servitude, or purchase, acquired a " right to a trade," or what,
at any given moment, may be his strategic position towards
the capitalist employer. The welfare of the community as a
whole requires, it is contended, that no section of workers
should be reduced to conditions which are positively incon-
sistent with industrial or civic efficiency. Those who adopt
this assumption argue that, whilst it embodies what was good
in the two older doctrines, it avoids their socially objection-
able features. Unlike the Doctrine of Vested Interests, it
does not involve any stereotyping of industrial processes, or
the protection of any class of workers in the monopoly of a
particular service. It is quite consistent with the freedom
of every wage-earner to choose or change his occupation, and
with the employer's freedom to take on whichever man he
thinks best fitted for his work. Thus it in no way checks
mobility or stops competition. Unlike the Doctrine of
Supply and Demand it does not tempt the workmen to limit
their numbers, or combine with the employers to fix prices,

1 Private Minnies of Proceedings at a Joint Conference between Representa-
tives of the Federated Coal-owners and the Miners1 Federation of Great Britain and
Ireland, Lord Shand in the Chair (London, 1894); speech of Mr. B. Pickard,
M.P., p. 17.

The Assumptions of Trade Unionism 591

or restrict output. It avoids, too, the evil of fluctuations
of wages, in which the income of the workers varies, not
according to their needs as citizens or producers, nor yet to
the intensity of their exertion, but solely according to the
temporary and, as far as they are concerned, fortuitous
position of their trade. On the other hand, the Doctrine of
a Living Wage goes far in the direction of maintaining
" established expectation." Whilst it includes no sort of
guarantee that any particular individual will be employed at
any particular trade, those who are successful in the com-
petition may feel assured that, so long as they retain their
situations, the conditions of an efficient and vigorous working
life will be secured to them.1

The most obvious drawback of the Doctrine of a Living
Wage is its difficulty of application. There is, to begin with,
a loss of theoretical perfection in the fact that the indispens-
able minimum conditions prescribed for each occupation
cannot practically be adapted to the requirements of each
individual, but must be roughly gauged by needs of the
normal type. It may well be that a consumptive weaver or
a short-sighted engineer requires, for his continued preserva-
tion, atmospheric conditions or elaborate fencing of machinery
which would be wasted on the vast majority of his colleagues.
It might be found that an exceptionally delicate girl ought
not to work more than five hours a day, or that a somewhat
backward laborer with a sick wife and a large family could
not maintain himself in physical efficiency on the standard
wages of his class. But this is not a practical objection.
The prescription of certain minimum conditions does not
prevent the humane employer from voluntarily granting to
any exceptionally unfortunate individuals for whom the
minimum is insufficient whatever better terms are physically

1 Thus the Doctrine of a Living Wage does not profess, any more than does the
Doctrine of Vested Interests or that of Supply and Demand, to solve the problem
of the unemployed or the unemployable. All three doctrines are obviously
consistent with any treatment of that problem, from leaving the unemployed and
the unemployable to starvation or mendicancy, up to the most scientific Poor
Law classification, or the most complete system of state or trade insurance. •

59 2 Trade Union Function

possible. What it does prevent is the taking advantage of
the strategic weakness of such individuals, and their being
compelled to accept positively worse conditions of employ-
ment than their stronger colleagues. A more serious
difficulty is our lack of precise knowledge as to what are the
conditions of healthy life and industrial efficiency. In the
matter of sanitation this difficulty has, within the past fifty
years, been largely overcome. With regard to the proper
limits to be set to the duration of toil, we are every year
gaining more information from the doctors and the physio-
logists, and a Select Committee, called upon to decide upon
evidence the maximum working day consistent, in any
particular industry, with the healthy existence, home life,
and citizenship of the average workman, would arrive, with-
out much difficulty, at a reasonable decision. The case is
very different with regard to wages. There are practically
no scientific data from which we can compute the needs of
particular occupations. The customary standards of life
differ from class to class to such an extent as to bear no dis-
coverable relation to the waste and repair involved in the
respective social functions of the various grades. It would,
it is true, be possible for our imaginary Select Committee to
come to some definite conclusion as to the amount of food
stuffs, clothing, and house accommodation, without which no
family could, in town and country respectively, be maintained
in full physical and mental health. But directly we compare
the muscular exhaustion of the steel-smelter, plater, or flint
glass maker, with the intensity of mental application of the
cotton-spinner, engraver, or linotype operator, we have as
yet no data from which to estimate the cost of the extra
food, clothing, and recreation called for by the greater waste
of muscle and nerve of any of these sections, over that
incurred by the day laborer or the railway porter. And
even if we could come to some conclusion as to the " normal
ration " required to keep each trade in health, we should still
be unable to decide how much must be added in each case
to gompersate for irregularity of employment. The stone-

The Assumptions of Trade Unionism 593

masons and the painters, who are rendered idle at every
frost, the boilermakers and the engineers, subject to the
intense fluctuations of speculative shipbuilding, are in a very
different position from the railway servants and municipal em-
ployees, whose weekly incomes are practically uninterrupted.
There is yet another difficulty. If special wages were fixed
to meet the special needs of particular trades, neither the
employer nor the community would have any guarantee that
the extra sum allowed would be spent in extra nourishment,
proper recreation, or insurance against periods of unemploy-
ment. Nor are the better-paid sections of the wage-earners
at all prepared for any such application of the Doctrine of a
Living Wage. All the industries in which the Trade Unions
have succeeded in so controlling the conditions of employ-
ment as to secure exceptional rates of payment would
naturally object to any departure from the Doctrine of
Supply and Demand. The plater or rivetter, earning in
good times a pound a day, is quite alive to the fact that so
large alrtn^orne~cannarte proved to be required to main-
tain him in full efficiency, especially when he realises how
considerable a sum is actually spent by the " average sensual
man " in his class on gambling and drink. And, under the
capitalist system, his reluctance to give up his position of
advantage is justified by the fact, that whatever was saved
in wages would merely swell the incomes of the brain-
workers and shareholders, whose personal expenditure, and
that of their wives, seem to him even more anarchic and
wasteful than that of the ordinary working-class family.1
All these considerations unite to make public opinion slow to
apply to money wages the assumption already acted on with
regard to the sanitary conditions of employment, and to a
large extent accepted with regard to the hours of labor. We

1 There are sound reasons of public policy, as we shall attempt to show in
our chapter on "The Economic Characteristics of Trade Unionism," why the
better-paid sections should not forego their superior incomes. The Doctrine of
a Living Wage, though, as we shall demonstrate, valid as far as regards the estab-
lishment of a minimum Common Rule, does not supply a complete theory of dis-
tribution.

VOL. II 2 Q

594 Trade Union Function •

come, therefore, to the paradox that the Doctrine of a Living
Wage, which has profoundly influenced Trade Union policy
and public opinion with regard to all the other conditions of
employment, finds least acceptance with regard to money
wages. Our own impression is that, whilst the Doctrine of
Vested Interests is hopelessly out of date, and that of Supply
and Demand is every day losing ground, any application of
the Doctrine of a Living Wage is likely, for the present, to
be only gradual and tentative. In all that concerns Sanita-
tion and Safety it has been already adopted, in principle, by
Parliament and public opinion, though the actual securing
to every wage-earner of a safe and healthy place of work,
irrespective alike of what may have been customary in the
trade, and of the employer's fluctuating profits, or demand
for labor, is, owing to apathy and ignorance, still only im-
perfectly accomplished. With regard to the proportion of
the day to be spent in toil, public opinion emphatically
accepts the same doctrine in the case of children, and, for the
most part, in the case of women. The last ten years have
seen, moreover, a marked tendency to apply the same
principles to the hours of men, and in the case of railway
servants the responsibility for preventing labor in excess of
what is consistent with industrial efficiency has already been
assumed by the Board of Trade. In the matter of wages,
public opinion is far more undecided. Under an organisa-
tion of industry in which employment is irregular, personal
expenditure is uncontrolled, and surplus value accrues to the
landlord and capitalist, we cannot expect to see the Doctrine
of a Living Wage adopted, with regard to money incomes,
by any but those unfortunate classes whose wages are
manifestly below the minimum required for full physical
efficiency. The events of 1889 anc* 1893, and the subse-
quent attention paid to the wages of the lower grades of
workers under public bodies, indicate an approach to the view
that earnings positively inadequate for industrial efficiency
ought, in the public interest, and irrespective of Supply and
Demand, to be deliberately brought up to a proper level.

The Assumptions of Trade Unionism 595

The foregoing exposition of the assumptions of Trade
Unionism will have given the reader the necessary clue,
both to the historical changes in Trade Union policy from
generation to generation, and also to the diversity at present
existing in the Trade Union world. As soon as it is realised
that Trade Unionists are inspired, not by any single doctrine
as to the common weal, but more or less by three divergent
and even contradictory views as to social expediency, we no
longer look to them for any one consistent and uniform
policy. The predominance among any particular section of
workmen, or at any particular period, of one or other of the
three assumptions which we have described — the Doctrine of
Vested Interests, the Doctrine of Supply and Demand, and
the Doctrine of a Living Wage — manifests itself in the
degree of favor shown to particular Trade Union Regula-
tions. The general faith in the Doctrine of Vested Interests
explains why we find Trade Unionism, in one industry, or
at one period, expressing itself in legally enforced terms of
apprenticeship, customary rates of wages, the prohibition of
new processes, strict maintenance of the lines of demarca-
tion between trades, the exclusion of " illegal men," and the
enforcement of " patrimony " and entrance fees. With the
acceptance of the Doctrine of Supply and Demand we see
coming in the policy of inclusion and its virtually compulsory
Trade Unionism, Sliding Scales, the encouragement of im-
provements in machinery and the actual penalising of back-
ward employers, the desire for a deliberate Regulation of
Output and the establishment of alliances with employers
against the consumer. Finally, in so far as the Doctrine
of a Living Wage obtains, we see a new attention to the
enforcement of Sanitation and Safety, general movements
for the reduction of hours, attempts by the skilled trades to
organise the unskilled laborers and women workers, denuncia-
tion of Sliding Scales and fluctuating incomes, the abandon-
ment of apprenticeship in favor of universal education, and
the insistence on a " Moral Minimum " wage below which no
worker should be employed. Above all, these successive

596 Trade Union Function

changes of faith explain the revolutions which have taken
place in Trade Union opinion as to the relation of Labor
to the State. When men believe in the Doctrine of Vested
Interests, it is to the common law of the realm that they
look for the protection of their rights and possessions. The
law alone can secure to the individual, whether with regard
to his right to a trade or his right to an office, his privilege
in a new process or his title to property, the fulfilment of
his "established expectation." Hence it is that we find
eighteenth -century Trade Unionism confidently taking for
granted that all its regulations ought properly to be enforced
by the magistrate, and devoting a large part of its funds
to political agitations and legal proceedings. When the
Doctrine of Vested Interests was replaced by that of Supply
and Demand, the Trade Unionists naturally turned to Col-
lective Bargaining as their principal method of action.
Instead of going to the State for protection, they fiercely
resented any attempt to interfere with their struggle with
employers, on the issue of which, they were told, their wages
must depend. The Common Law, once their friend, now
seemed always their most dangerous enemy, as it hampered
their freedom of combination, and by its definitions of libel
and conspiracy, set arbitrary limits to their capacity of making
themselves unpleasant to the employers or the non-unionists.
Hence the desire of the Trade Unionists of the middle of
this century, whilst sweeping away all laws against combina-
tions, to keep Trade Unionism itself absolutely out of the
reach of the law-courts. The growth of the Doctrine of a
Living Wage, resting as this does on the assumption that
the conditions of employment require to be deliberately
fixed, naturally puts the State in the position of arbitrator
between the workman who claims more, and the employer
who offers less, than is consistent with the welfare of other
sections. But the appeal is not to the Common Law. It
is no longer a question of protecting each individual in the
enjoyment of whatever could be proved to be his customary
privileges, or to flow from identical " natural rights," but of

The Ass^^,mptions of Trade Unionism 597

prescribing, for the several sections, the conditions required,
in the interest of the whole community, by their diverse
actual needs. We therefore see the Common Rules for each
trade embodied in particular statutes, which the Trade
Unionists, far from resisting, use their money and political
influence to obtain. The double change of doctrine has
thus brought about a return to the attitude of the Old
Unionists of the eighteenth century, but with a significant
difference. To-day it is not custom or privilege which
appeals to the State, but the requirements of efficient citizen-
ship. Whenever a Trade Union honestly accepts as the
sole and conclusive test of any of its aspirations what we
have termed the Doctrine of a Living Wage, and believes
that Parliament takes the same view, we always find it,
sooner or later, attempting to embody that aspiration in the
statute law.

The political student will notice that there exists in the
Trade Union world much the same cleavage of opinion, upon
what is socially expedient, as among other classes of society.
All Trade Unionists believe that the abandonment of the
conditions of employment to the chances of Individual Bar-
gaining is disastrous, alike to the wage-earners and to the
community. But when, in pursuance of this assumption,
they take concerted action for the improvement of their con-
dition, we see at once emerge among them three distinct
schools of thought. In the special issues and technical con-
troversies of Trade Unionism we may trace the same broad
generalisations, as to what organisation of society is finally
desirable, as lead, in the larger world of politics, to the
ultimate cleavage between Conservatives, Individualists, and
Collectivists. The reader will have seen that there is, among
Trade Unionists, a great deal of what cannot be described
otherwise than as Conservatism. The abiding faith in the
sanctity of vested interests ; the strong presumption in favor
of the status quo ; the distrust of innovation ; the liking for
distinct social classes, marked off from each other by cor-
porate privileges and peculiar traditions ; the disgust at the

598 Trade Union Function

modern spirit of self-seeking assertiveness ; and the deep-
rooted conviction that the only stable organisation of society
is that based on each man being secured and contented in
his inherited station of life — all these are characteristic of
the genuine Conservative, whether in the Trade Union or
the State. In sharp contrast with this character, and, as
we think, less congenial to the natural bent of the English
workman, we have, in the great modern unions, a full measure
of Radical Individualism. The conception of society as a
struggle between warring interests ; the feeling that every
man and every class is entitled to all that they can get, and
to nothing more ; the assumption that success in the fight is
an adequate test of merit, and, indeed, the only one possible ;
and the bounding optimism which can confidently place the
welfare of the community under the guardianship of self-
interest — these are typical of the " Manchester School," alike
in politics and in Trade Unionism. But in Trade Unionism,
as in the larger sphere of politics, the facts of modern industry
have led to a reaction. As against the Conservative, the
Individualist Radical asserted that " all men are born free and
equal, with equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness." But it is now obvious that men are not born
equal, either in capacity or in opportunity. There has
accordingly arisen, in the Trade Union as in the political
world, a school of thought which asserts that a free struggle
among unequal individuals, or combinations of individuals,
means the permanent oppression and degradation of those
who start handicapped, and inevitably results in a tacit con-
spiracy among the more favored classes to maintain or
improve their own positions of vantage at the cost of the
community at large. The Collectivist accordingly insists on
the need for a conscious and deliberate organisation of society,
based, not on vested interests or the chances of the fight, but
on the scientifically ascertained needs of each section of
citizens. Thus, within the Trade Union movement, we find
the Collectivist-minded working-man grounding his regula-
tion of the conditions of employment upon what we have

The Assumptions of Trade Unionism 599

called the Doctrine of a Living Wage. In the wider world
of politics we see the Collectivist statesman groping his way
to the similar conception of a deliberate organisation of pro-
duction, regulation of service, and apportionment of income —
in a word, to such a conscious adjustment of the resources
of the community to its needs as will result in its highest
possible efficiency. In the Trade Union world the rival
assumptions exist side by side, and the actual regulation of
industry is a perpetually shifting compromise between them.
The political student may infer that, in the larger organisa-
tion of society, the rival conceptions of Conservatism, Indi-
vidualism, and Collectivism will long co-exist. Any further
application of Collectivism, whether in the Trade Union or
the political world, depends, it is clear, on an increase in our
scientific knowledge, no less than on the growth of new
habits of deliberate social co-operation. Progress in this
direction must, therefore, be gradual, and will probably be
slow. And the philosophical Collectivist will, we think, fore-
see that, whether in the regulation of labor, the incidence of
taxation, or the administration of public services, any stable
adjustment of social resources to social needs must always
take into account, not only the scientifically ascertained con-
ditions of efficiency, but also the " established expectation "
and the " fighting force " of all the classes concerned.

PART III
TRADE UNION THEORY

CHAPTER I

THE VERDICT OF THE ECONOMISTS

DOWN to within the last thirty years it would have been
taken for granted, by every educated man, that Trade
Unionism, as a means of bettering the condition of the work-
man, was " against Political Economy." x This impression
was derived, not so much from any explicit declaration of
the economists, as from the general view of wages which
enlightened public opinion had accepted from them. The
Theory of the Wage Fund, in conjunction with closely
related theories of the accumulation of capital and the
increase of population, seemed definitely to contradict the
fundamental assumptions on which Trade Unionism de-
pended. If Political Economy was understood to demon-
strate it was plainly impossible, in any given state
of capital and population, to bring about any genuine
and permanent rise of wages, otherwise than in the slow
course of generations, it was clearly not worth while
troubling about the pretensions of workmen ignorant of
economic science. Accordingly, for the first three quarters
of the century we find, beyond the accustomed denunciation
of outrages and strikes, practically nothing but a general
and undiscriminating hostility to Trade Unionism in the

1 Even the Christian Socialists, the Positivists, and the champions of labor
in Parliament usually regarded the pretensions of Trade Unionism as being in
contradiction to the orthodox Political Economy, in which they accordingly did
not believe !

604 Trade Union Theory

abstract, couched in the language of theoretical economics.
And although the theory, with all its corollaries, has now
been abandoned by economic authority, it still lingers in the
public mind, and lies at the root of most of the current
middle-class objections to Trade Unionism. We must there-
fore clear the ground of this obsolete criticism before we
can proceed to estimate Trade Union pretensions in the
light of the economic science of to-day.

We need not here enter into any detailed history or
elaborate analysis of the celebrated Theory of the Wage
Fund.1 As widely popularised by J. R. M'Culloch, from
1823 onward, this theory declared that " wages depend at
any particular moment on the magnitude of the Fund or
Capital appropriated to the payment of wages compared with
the number of laborers. . . . Laborers are everywhere the
divisor, capital the dividend." 2 Nor was this statement
confined to the truism that the average wages of the wage-
receiving class was to be found by dividing the aggregate

1 The most recent, and in many respects the best, account of this celebrated
theory is to be found in Wages and Capital : an Examination of the Wages Fiind
Doctrine (London, 1896), by F. W. Taussig, Professor of Political Economyjn
Harvard University. A Histoiy of the Theories of Production and Distribution
in English Political Economy from IJj6 to 184.8, by Edwin Cannan (London,
1893), contains an acutely critical analysis. The fullest exposition of the modem
economic view is, perhaps, The Wages Question : a Treatise on Wages and the
Wages Class (New York, 1876; London, 1891), by F. A. Walker. In the
Principles of Economics (Book VI. ch. ii. page 618 of 3rd edition, London,
1895) Professor Marshall explains in a long note what Ricardo and Mill really
meant by their statements on the wage-fund.

2 Article on "Wages" in Encyclop&dia Britannica (4th edition, 1823),
republished with additions as A Treatise on the Circumstances which determine the
Rate of Wages and the Condition of the Labouring Classes (London, 1851). A
widely read American follower of Ricardo and M'Culloch put the case as follows :
" That which pays for labor in every country is a certain portion of actually
accumulated capital, which cannot be increased by the proposed action of Govern-
ment, nor by the influence of public opinion, nor by combinations among the
workmen themselves. There is also in every country a certain number of
laborers, and this number cannot be diminished by the proposed action of Govern-
ment, nor by public opinion, nor by combinations among themselves. There is
to be a division now among all these laborers of the portion of capital actually
there present " {Elements of Political Economy \ by A. L. Perry, New York,
1866, p. 122). We understand that this work has run through about twenty
editions, and is still a popular text-book in the United States. An edition was
published in London in 1891.

The Verdict of the Economists 605

" fund devoted to their payment " by the number of the
laborers for the time being. What was insisted on was that
the amount of this " fund " was necessarily predetermined
by the economic circumstances of the community at any
given time. The amount of the " capital " depended on the
extent of the savings from the product of the past. The
extent of the fund to be appropriated to the payment of
wages depended on how much of that capital was required
for plant and materials. Hence the amount of the Wage
Fund at any particular moment was absolutely predetermined,
partly by the action of the community in the past, and, as
suggested by Cairnes, partly by the technical character of the
industries of the present.1 " There is supposed to be," wrote
J. S. Mill, "at any given instant a sum of wealth which is
unconditionally devoted to the payment of wages of labor.
This sum is not regarded as unalterable, for it is augmented
by saving and increases with the progress of society ; but it
is reasoned upon as at any given moment a predetermined
amount. More than that amount it is assumed that the
wage-receiving class cannot possibly divide among them ;
that amount and no less they cannot but obtain. So that
the sum to be divided being fixed the wages of each depend
solely on the divisor, the number of participants." 2 It
was a plain inference from this view that, whatever might
automatically occur in the future if one factor increased
faster than the other, the terms of the current bargain for

1 Some Leading Principles of Political Economy newly expounded (London,
1874), pp. 199-200.

2 Mill's review of W. T. Thornton's book On Labour, in Fortnightly Review,
May 1869; reprinted in Dissertations and Discussions (London, 1875), vo^
iv. p. 43.

This conception of a definitely limited wage-fund, all in hand at the
beginning of the year, and all replaced at its close, seems to have been derived
from the case of the English wheat -growing farmer, who was supposed to
calculate, when he had reaped his harvest, how much he could lay out in wages
until the next harvest was gathered in. A closer analogy would have been the
practice of English Government Departments, such as the Admiralty Shipbuilding
yards, which have allotted to them, at the beginning of each financial year,
definite sums, theoretically insusceptible of increase, to be expended in wages
during the year.

606 Trade Union Theory

the hire of labor at any particular moment were, as regards
the wage-earning class as a whole, absolutely unalterable,
whether by law or by negotiation. "There is no use," the
workmen were told, " in arguing against any one of the four
fundamental rules of arithmetic. The question of wages is a
question of division. It is complained that the quotient is
too small. Well, then, how many ways are there to make a
quotient larger? Two ways. Enlarge your dividend, the
divisor remaining the same, and the quotient will be larger ;
lessen your divisor, the dividend remaining the same, and
the quotient will be larger."1 The wage -earners in the
aggregate were at any moment already obtaining all that
could possibly be conceded to them at that moment, and
any gain made by one section of them could only be made
at the expense of their weaker colleagues. Conversely, any
reduction suffered by one section of the wage-earners was
necessarily and contemporaneously balanced by gain to
some other section. " All the capital," declared M'Culloch,
" through the higgling of the market will be equitably
distributed among all the laborers. Hence it is idle to
suppose that the efforts of the capitalists to cheapen labor
can have the smallest influence on its medium price." 2 It
followed with no less logic that any efforts of laborers in
the opposite direction were equally futile. Public opinion

1 Elements of Political Economy, by A. L. Perry, p. 1 23.

2 Even after a lifetime of economic study, M'Culloch could deliberately
repeat that " all the wealth of the country applicable to the payment of wages is
uniformly, in all ordinary cases, divided among the laborers. . . . It is impossible
for the employers of labor artificially to reduce the rate of wages " (A Treatise on
the Circumstances which determine the Rate of Wages and the Condition of the
Labouring Classes, London, 1851, pp. 48-49). "A single rich man may take
advantage of a single poor man by availing himself of the necessities or simplicity
of the latter. But the body of capitalists in any country will always pay away in
wages to the body of working men all the funds which they have applicable to
the employment of labor" {An Essay on the Relations of Labour and Capital,
London, 1854, by C. Morrison, p. 18). Fawcett apparently retained the
same view down to his death. "The capital of the country provides its wage-
fund. This wage-fund is distributed amongst the whole wage-receiving popula-
tion, and therefore the average of each individual's wages cannot increase unless
either the number of those who receive wages is diminished, or the wage-fund is
augmented." — Manual of Political Economy, by Henry Fawcett (London, 1869),
pp. 206-207 ; Lift, by Leslie Stephen (London, 1886), p. 157.

The Verdict of the Economists 607

accordingly unhesitatingly refuted Trade Unionism, to use
the words of one of the most eminent of modern economists,
" with a summary reference to the doctrine of the wage-fund.
Strikes could not increase the wage -fund, therefore they
could not enhance wages. If they should appear to raise the
rate in any trade, this must be due either to a corresponding
loss in the regularity of employment or to an equivalent loss,
in regularity or in rate, by some other trade or trades
occupying a position of economical disadvantage. Hence
strikes could not benefit the wages class." l But the
theory went much further than the mere negativing of
strikes and combinations. It left no room for any elevation
of the wage-earners even if the improvement justified itself
by an increase in productive capacity. If one section of the
wage-earners succeeded, by peaceful negotiation or Jaw, in so
bettering their own conditions of employment as positively
to increase their productive efficiency, this would still bring
no greater reward to the class as a whole. Though the
increase in the cost of their labor might soon be made up to
their employers by its greater product, yet this increased
drain on the wage-fund must automatically have depressed
the condition, and so lowered the efficiency of other sections,
with the result that, though the inequality between the
sections would have increased, the aggregate efficiency of the
wage-earners as a whole would not have risen. Thus every
factory act, which increased the immediate cost of woman or
child labor, had to be paid for by a contemporaneous
decrease in somebody's wages ; and every time a new
expense for sanitation or precautions against accidents was
imposed on the capitalists, some of the wage-earners had
automatically to suffer a diminution of income.2

1 The Wages Question, by F. A. Walker, p. 387. M'Culloch had expressly
observed in his article on " Combinations " in the Encyclopedia Britannica
(1823) that "nothing but the merest ignorance could make it supposed that
wages could really be increased by such proceedings. They depend on the
principle which they cannot affect, that is on the proportion between capital
and population ; and cannot be increased except by the increase of the former
as compared with the latter."

2 It followed logically that bad legislation could not depress, and good

608 Trade Union Theory

Though public opinion accepted the statical view of the
wage -fund as conclusive against the possibility of any
general alteration of the terms of the labor contract, this
crude conception supplied no answer to the assertion that
the workmen in any particular trade might need to defend
their own wages against special encroachment, or that they
might find it possible, if only at the expense of other sections
of wage-earners, to exact better conditions for themselves.
But here the Trade Unionists found themselves confronted
with the economic " laws " determining the employment of
capital. " If," observed M'Culloch, " the wages paid to the
laborers engaged in any particular employment be improperly
reduced, the capitalists who carry it on will obviously gain
the whole amount of this reduction over and above the common
and ordinary rate of profit obtained by the capitalists engaged

legislation could not raise, the condition of the wage-earners. M'Culloch and
Harriet Martineau went this length with regard to Combination Laws and
Factory Acts respectively.- " Looking generally to the whole of the employments
carried on in the country," wrote the former in 1823, and again in 1851, "we
do not believe that the Combination Laws had any sensible influence on the
average and usual rate of wages. That they occasionally kept wages at a lower
rate in some very confined businesses than they would otherwise have sunk to
may be true, though for that very reason they must have equally elevated them
in others" (article on "Combinations" in Encyclopedia Britannica, 4th edition,
1823 ; Treatise on the Circumstances -which determine the Rate of Wages,
London, 1851, p. 80). In 1833 Harriet Martineau wrote: "Mrs. Marcet is
sorry to find that Mr. E. R[omilly] and I are of the same opinion about the
Factory Bill, and I am very glad. She ought to hold the same, namely that
legislation cannot interfere effectually between parents and children in the present
state of the labor-market. Our operations must be directed towards proportioning
the labor and capital, and not upon restricting the exchange of the one for the
other ; an exchange which must be voluntary, whatever the law may say about it.
We cannot make parents give their children a half-holiday every day in the year,
unless we also give compensation for the loss of the children's labor. The case
of those wretched factory children seems desperate ; the only hope seems to be
that the race will die out in two or three generations, by which time machinery
may be found to do their work better than their miserable selves. Every one's
countenance falls at the very mention of the evidence which has lately appeared
in the papers " (Harriet Martineads Autobiography ', by Maria Weston Chapman,
London, 1877, vol. iii. p. 87). It is only fair to add that Harriet Martineau,
unlike M'Culloch, was converted by a wider knowledge of the facts of
industrial life. She herself records how what she saw in America brought her,
not only to appreciate the value of Robert Owen's ideas and to retract her former
economic dogmatism, but also to believe that the future possibly lay with a
Collectivist organisation of society. — Ibid. vol. i. p. 232,

The Verdict of the Economists 609

in other businesses. But a discrepancy of this kind could not
possibly continue. Additional capital would immediately
begin to be attracted to the department where wages are low
and profits high, and its owners would be obliged, in order to
obtain laborers, to offer them higher wages. It is clear,
therefore, that if wages be unduly reduced in any branch of
industry, they will be raised to their proper level, without
any effort on the part of the workmen, by the competition of
capitalists."1 Similarly, if the laborers insisted on better
terms in a particular trade, this must reduce its profitableness
to the employers. And capital being assumed to be both
mobile and omniscient, it at once began to " flow " out of
this less profitable industry, in order to " flow " in to the
other trades in which the cost of labor would simultaneously
and automatically have been reduced. The laborers who
had raised their conditions above the " proper " level found
themselves therefore between the horns of a dilemma. If they
all wished to be employed at their trade, wages must go back
to the old level, and (seeing that part of the previous wage-
fund had been diverted away) even temporarily below it. If,
on the other hand, they insisted on preserving their newly-
won better conditions, it was obvious that only a smaller
number of them could find employment, the more so
as the portion of the wage -fund invested in that trade
would positively have diminished. The displaced workmen,
as it was often explained to them, would thus have killed the
goose which laid the golden eggs. The few who continued
to find full employment at their trade might have gained,
but taking the trade as a whole, the men would clearly have
lost by the transaction.2 " And hence the fundamental prin-
ciple, that there are no means by which wages can be raised,

1 Article on "Combinations," by J. R. M'Culloch, vc\ Encyclopedia Britannica,
4th edition (Edinburgh, 1823), repeated in his Treatise of 1851.

2 If the attempt to get the better conditions were made by means of Mutual
Insurance or Collective Bargaining — as the economists always assumed would be
the case — it would therefore almost certainly fail, as the displaced workmen
would, sooner or later, be driven to compete for employment with those who
succeeded in getting work, with the result that things would revert to the old
level.

VOL. II 2 R

610 Trade Union Theory

other than by accelerating the increase of capital as compared
with population, or by retarding the increase of population
as compared with capital, and every scheme for raising
wages which is not bottomed on this principle, or which has
not an increase of the ratio of capital to population for its
object, must be completely nugatory and ineffectual." l

And when the Trade Unionists turned from the question
of wages to-day, to the possibility of raising them in the
following year, middle-class opinion had a no less conclusive
answer to their claim. The future wage-fund that would be
applicable for the payment of laborers in the ensuing year
was, of course, necessarily limited by the available posses-
sions of the community. But within that limit its amount
depended on the will of the owners. They might, if they
chose, consume any part of it for their own enjoyment, or
they might be tempted to abstain from this consumption,
and employ a larger or smaller proportion of their total
possessions in productive industry. Ricardo had incidentally
observed that the " motive for accumulation will diminish
with every diminution of profit," 2 and it was assumed without
hesitation that, whatever might be the various motives for
saving, these motives would be stimulated or depressed
according to the rate of interest which might be expected to
be gained from the capital so invested. " The higher the
rate of profit in any community, the greater will be the pro-
portion of the annual savings which is added to capital, and
the greater will be the inducement to save."3 It thus
followed that the rate at which capital, and therefore the
wage -fund, would be increased would vary according to
profit, rising when the rate of profit rose, and falling when
the rate of profit fell. " The greater the proportion of

1 Article on "Wages," by J. R. M'Culloch, in Encyclopedia Britannica, 4th
edition (Edinburgh, 1823) ; see his Principles of Political Economy (Edinburgh,
1825), part iii. sec. 7.

2 On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (London, 1817),
p. 136.

3 Article on the effects of machinery in the Westminster Review, January
1826, by W. Ellis, quoted by J. S. Mill (Principles of Political Economy,
Book IV. chap. iv. p. 441 of 1865 edition).

The Verdict of the Economists 611

wages to profits the smaller the tendency to national
accumulation." l Any rise of wages could, therefore, only
be temporary, and must quickly counteract itself, for "an
increase in wages reduces the profits, and reduces the induce-
ment to save and extend business, and this again tends to a
reduction of wages." 2 Cairnes, in an unguarded moment,
went even further. " Profits," he said, " are already at or
within a hand's breadth of the minimum . . . below which,
if the return on capital fall, accumulation, at least for the
purpose of investment, will cease for want of adequate
inducement." 3 This automatic check on the wage-earners'
pretensions applies, it is clear, to more than the money
wages. If by means of a Factory Act they had secured for
the future shorter hours or better sanitation, this prospect of
a reduction of profits would instantly limit the capitalists'
desire to accumulate, and would induce them as a class to
spend more of their incomes on personal enjoyment. " There
is only a certain produce," wrote one widely-read critic of
Trade Unionism, " to be divided between capitalist and
laborer. If more be given to the laborer than nature awards,
a smaller amount will remain for the capitalist ; the spirit of
accumulation will be checked ; less will be devoted to pro-
ductive purposes ; the wage-fund will dwindle, and the wage
of the laborer will inevitably fall. For a time, indeed, a
natural influence may be dammed back ; but only to act,
ultimately, with accumulated force. In the long run, God's
laws will overwhelm all human obstructions."4 On the

1 Trade Unionism, by James Stirling, p. 29.

2 T. S. Cree, A Criticism of the Theory of Trades Unions (Glasgow, 1 89 1 ), p. 25.

3 Some Leading Principles of Political Economy newly expounded, by J. E.
Cairnes (London, 1874), pp. 256-258. This unlucky prophecy was written
in that year of colossal business profits, 1873 ! At that date the yield on good
"trustee " securities in England was about £4 per ;£ioo. It has since fallen
(1897) by no less than 25 per cent, yet accumulation and investment have gone
on faster than ever.

4 Trade Unionism, with Remarks on the Report of the Commissioners on
Trades Unions, by James Stirling (Glasgow, 1869), 2nd edition, 1869; new
edition, 1889, pp. 26-27. This sapient work was translated into French by
T. N. Bernard, and published as L? Unionisms des Ouvriers en Angleterre. See
also the article by the same author in Recess Studies (Edinburgh, 1870).

6 1 2 Trade Union Theory

other hand, if wages remained low, and the rate of profit
high, the capitalists would as a class be tempted to limit
their personal expenditure, in order to take advantage of the
high profits by accumulating as much capital as possible.
Thus, as a recent opponent of Trade Unionism quite
logically explained, the laborer's " policy should be to make
the position of employers as pleasant and profitable as
possible, and to coax them into trade, just as a shopkeeper
tries to entice customers into his shop." * If wages relatively
to profits were low one year, they would tend automatically
to rise next year ; if they were high one year, they would
automatically be depressed in the following year.2

This theory of the rate of accumulation of capital, taken
in conjunction with the Theory of the Wage Fund, appeared
finally to dispose of every part of the Trade Union case.
But enlightened public opinion had yet another argument to
adduce, one which cut at the root, not of Trade Unionism
only, but of all genuine improvement of the condition of the
present generation of laborers, even if the capitalists actually
desired to share their own profits with them. This was the
celebrated " principle of population." Malthus had proved

1 T. S. Cree, A Criticism of the Theory of Trades Unions, p. 30.

2 " While the terms of a particular bargain are of importance to the individual
workman and employer concerned, they are not of much importance to the work-
men and employers as a whole, as there is always a compensating action going on
which is bringing wages to a true economical point." — Ibid. p. 10.

"The price of labor, at any given time and place, is not a matter left to the
volition of the contracting parties ; but is determined for them by a self-adjusting
mechanism of natural forces. The amount of capital devoted to production —
according to the prevalent strength of the effective desire of accumulation — deter-
mines the force of the demand for labor : the number of laborers desirous of
employment — in accordance with the prevalent strength of the instinct of popula-
tion— regulates the supply. All unknown to the capitalist and laborer, the rate
of wages is fixed for them, by the natural adjustment of these antagonist forces ;
the amount of labor demanded by the whole body of capitalists on the one hand,
the amount supplied by the whole body of laborers on the other. As Mr. Mill
himself has tersely put it, in his Political Economy, ' Wages . . . depend on
the ratio between population and capital.' When, therefore, the capitalist and
the laborer come to divide the product of their joint industry, they find the
division ready made to their hand. The profits due to the one, and the wages
due to the other, have been apportioned, by the unerring agency of natural
influences, and no room is left for cavil or coercion." — " Mr. Mill on Trades
Unions," by James Stirling, in Recess Studies (Edinburgh, 1870), p. 311.

The Verdict of the Economists 6 1 3

that human fecundity was, as a matter of fact, far in excess
of the actual increase of population, and that the numbers of
mankind were kept down by the positive checks of vice and
misery, notably by the privations and hardships suffered by
the poor. It was the part of wisdom to substitute, for these
positive checks, that prudential restraint which delayed
marriage or forewent parentage, and the only hope for the
laborers lay in a great extension of this prudential restraint,
so that the ratio of capital to wage-earners might increase.
This hope was at best a faint one, because the prudential
restraint would have to extend to the whole wage-earning
class, and would have to be maintained with ever-increasing
rigor, as the resulting fall in the rate of profit slackened the
rate of accumulation. And whatever degree of prudence
might animate the wage-earning class at any particular time,
it was taken for granted that the rate of increase must
habitually rise when wages increased, and fall when wages
were reduced. " Thus, if combination were for a time to
raise wages, the growth of the wage-fund would be unnatur-
ally retarded, whilst a fictitious stimulus would be given to
population by the momentary enrichment of the laboring
class. A diminished demand for labor would coincide with
an increased supply. The laborer's wages would be forced
down to starvation-point ; and his last state would be worse
than his first." * The ratio of population to capital was,
indeed, effectively defended on both sides from any but
transitory alteration. If capital fell behind population, wages
fell, but this very fall automatically brought about a
quickening of accumulation and a slackening of the increase
of population. If population fell behind capital, wages rose,
but this very rise caused a check to accumulation and a
stimulus to the increase of population. " Should a union
succeed," said the public opinion of the last generation, " in
shutting out competition, and so unnaturally raising wages
and lowering profits in some particular trade, a twofold
reaction tends to restore the natural equilibrium. An

1 Trade Unionism, by James Stirling, p. 29.

6 14 Trade Union Theory

increased population will add to the supply of labor, while
a diminished wage-fund will lessen the demand for it. The
joint action of these two principles will — sooner or later —
overcome the power of any arbitrary organisation, and restore
profits and wages to their natural level." l " Against these
barriers," said Cairnes, " Trade Unions must dash themselves
in vain. They are not to be broken through or eluded by
any combinations however universal ; for they are the
barriers set by Nature herself." 2

So firmly were the various parts of the economist's theory
bolted together, that there was only one way in which it was
even conceivable that a Trade Union could better the con-
ditions of its members. If the workmen in any trade could,
either by law or by an absolutely firm combination extending
from one end of the kingdom to another, permanently restrict
the numbers entering that trade, they might, it was admitted,
gradually force their employers to offer them higher wages.
Hence it was habitually assumed that the whole aim and
purpose of Trade Unionism was to bring about this position

1 Trade Unionism, by James Stirling, p. 27. " In a thickly populated country,
which has no vent for its surplus population abroad, Political Economy has but one
advice to give to the younger members of the poorer classes. The postponement of,
or abstinence from, marriage, ox from giving birth to children, to a veiy great extent, is
in such a case the only available preventive against the evils of too rapid an increase
of numbers." — C. Morrison, The Relations between Labour and Capital, p. 51.

2 Some Leading Principles of Political Economy newly expounded, by J. E.
Cairnes (London, 1874), p. 338. In contrast with the methods of abstract
reasoning, without inquiry into the facts of industry, which were pursued by the
economists of the time, may be mentioned the interesting descriptions of the
economic circumstances of the Sheffield trades published by Dr. G. Calvert
Holland. In his Mortality, Sufferings, and Diseases of Grinders, part ii. (Sheffield,
1842), he gives as the result of actual observation (p. 46) that the longer a branch
of the Sheffield trades has been in union, and the more perfectly it has been
maintained, the higher is the rate of remuneration that the workmen receive,
the lower is the degree of fluctuation in the trade, and the greater is the sobriety
and thrift of the workers. He adds — "We would even go a step further and
contend, that, with few exceptions, the respectability and substantial character
of the manufacturers exhibit a strict relation to the same circumstances, viz.
the degree to which the branch is associated. The system which gives unlimited
play to competition not only lowers wages and degrades the condition of the
masses, but ultimately reduces profits, narrows the liberality, and vitiates the
moral tone of the manufacturers." Dr. Calvert Holland's observations upon the
actual working of industrial competition appear to have been unknown, or at
any rate unheeded, by the economists of the time.

The Verdict of the Economists 6 1 5

of monopoly of a particular service. Such a monopoly was
plainly inimical to the interests of the community. The
increased drain on the wage-fund automatically depressed
the wages of the rest of the wage-earners. Their exclusion
from the ranks of the favored trade further intensified their
own struggle for employment. Finally, as capital had to
receive its normal rate of profit, the consumer found the
price of the commodity raised against him. Fortunately, as
the economists explained, such anti- social conduct could
practically never succeed. Even if the monopolists managed
rigidly to exclude new competitors from their trade, the rise
in price would attract foreign producers, and lead to an
importation of the commodity from abroad. If this were
prohibited, the consumer would begin to seek alternatives
for a commodity which had become too dear for his enjoy-
ment, and invention would set to work to produce the same
result by new processes, employing possibly quite a different
kind of labor. One way or another the monopolists would
be certain to find their trade shrinking up, so that a mere
exclusion of new-comers would no longer avail them. They
would find it impossible to maintain their exceptional con-
ditions except by progressively reducing their own numbers,
to the point even of ultimate extinction.

With so complete a demonstration of the impossibility of
" artificially " raising wages, it is not surprising that public
opinion, from 1825 down to about 1875, condemned im-
partially all the methods and all the regulations of Trade
Unionism. To the ordinary middle-class man it seemed
logically indisputable that the way of the Trade Unionists
was blocked in all directions. They could not gain any
immediate bettering of the condition of the whole wage-
earning class, because the amount of the wage-fund at any
given time was predetermined. They could not permanently
secure better terms even for a particular section, because this
would cause capital immediately to begin to desert that
particular trade or town. They could not make any real
progress in the near future, because they would thereby

616 Trade Union Theory

check the accumulation of capital. And finally, even if they
could persuade a benevolent body of capitalists to augment
wages by voluntarily sharing profits, the " principle of popula-
tion " lay in wait to render nugatory any such new form of
" out-door relief." " The margin for the possible improve-
ment of [the wage-earners'] lot," emphatically declared Cairnes
in 1874, "is confined within narrow barriers which cannot
be passed, and the problem of their elevation is hopeless.
As a body they will not rise at all. A few, more energetic
or more fortunate than the rest, will from time to time
escape, as they do now, from the ranks of their fellows to
the higher walks of industrial life, but the great majority will
remain substantially where they are. The remuneration of
labor as such, skilled or unskilled^ can never rise much above its
present level" * Trade Unionism was, in fact, plainly " in
this dilemma, that whether it fails or whether it succeeds in
its immediate object, its ultimate tendency is hurtful to the
laborer. If it fails, at once, in forcing higher terms on the
employers of labor, the whole cost of the organisation, in
money and exertion, is simply thrown away. ... If, on the
contrary, it should attain, for a time, a seeming success, the
ultimate result is even worse. Nature's violated laws vindicate
their authority by a sure reaction. The presumptuous mortal,
who dares to set his selfish will against divine ordinances,
brings on his head inevitable retribution ; his momentary
prosperity disappears, and he pays, in prolonged suffering,
the penalty of his suicidal success." 2

How far the current conceptions of economic theory

1 Some Leading Principles of Political Economy newly expounded (London,
1874), p. 348.

2 Trade Unionism^ by James Stirling, p. 36. " The bitter hostility to trade
unions, which at any rate till very recent years, was felt by the * upper ' and
enlightened classes, was doubtk-ss chiefly due to dislike of that loss of the more
petty delights of power which was involved in the substitution of the relation of
buyer and seller of work for the old relation of master and servant, but it was
fostered by the ' population and capital ' theory of wages, which really made
many people believe that associations of wage-earners, however annoying and
harmful to employers, must always be powerless to effect any improvement in
the general conditions of the employed." — Edwin Cannan, History of the Theories
of Production and Distribution (London, 1893), p. 393.

The Verdict of the Economists 6 1 7

really corresponded with the views of the best economists
of this period, we cannot here determine. Some of these
economists seem to have possessed almost a genius for
publishing what they did not mean to say, and the wage-fund
theory, even as it appeared to M'Culloch and Nassau Senior,
was probably very far from the mechanical figment of the
imagination that it now seems to us. And it is only fair to
point out that the theory of wages, which to-day fills so large
a place in economic thought, formed only an incidental and
wholly subordinate part of the teaching of the classic
economists. Their minds were directed to other problems :
to the evil that was being wrought by industrial and political
restrictions, which the generation of statesmen whom they
taught have since largely removed. Any fair appreciation of
their teaching is, accordingly, as difficult for the democracy
of to-day, as a balanced judgment on the Mercantile Theory
was to Adam Smith and his immediate followers. Nor was
the Wage Fund Theory a mere wanton invention. It
expressed in a definite formula certain salient facts of the
industry of that generation. The English farm laborer or
factory operative was obviously dependent on the wages
advanced to him week by week out of his employer's capital.
It was a matter of common observation that the number of
laborers taken on by the farmer, or of operatives by the mill-
owner, depended on the amount of capital that he could
command. At a time of rapidly growing population, and
manifold new inventions, the utmost possible increase of
capital was desirable, whilst the evils of the old Poor Law
made almost inevitable the blind adhesion to a crude Mal-
thusianism. The theories of the economists corresponded
with the prejudices of the rising middle class, and seemed to
be the outcome of every man's experience.

Meanwhile, the economists themselves were undermining
the structure which they had hastily erected. Qualification
after qualification was introduced, until after the last effort
at rehabilitation by Cairnes in 1874, the whole notion of a
wage-fund was abandoned. The economic text-books written

618 Trade Union Theory

since that date1 deal with it, if at all, only as a historical
curiosity, and the theory of distribution which has taken its
place, far from negativing the possibility of raising the con-
dition of the wage-earners, does not afford even a presumption
against wisely-directed Trade Union action. But the dis-
coveries of the economists have penetrated only slowly and
imperfectly into the public mind, and most of the current
opposition to Trade Unionism is still implicitly based on the
old theory. We must therefore, at the risk of wearying the
economic student, explain, in some detail, how it breaks
down at every point.2

Let us consider first the statical notion of a predetermined
wage-fund. It does not seem to have occurred to the
inventors of this figment that, whatever limit it might set to
the advances made to the laborers during the year, it in no
way determined the total amount of their remuneration for
the year. Even if the farmer's payments for labor up to the
harvest had to be restricted to a limited portion of last year's
product, this did not prevent him from distributing among
the laborers, at Martinmas (the usual end of the yearly
hiring), in addition to these advances, some part of the harvest
just reaped. As many economists have since pointed out,

1 We may cite, for instance, the economic text-books or treatises of Professors
Marshall, Nicholson, Conner, Mavor, Smart, and Symes.

2 It is pointed out by Cannan, Taussig, and F. A. Walker, that the Wage
Fund Theory was never accepted, to name only writers in English, by W.
Thompson, R. Jones, T. C. Banfield, Montifort Longfield, H. D. Macleod,
Cliffe Leslie, John Ruskin, or Thorold Rogers in our own country, or by Dr.
Wayland, Amasa Walker, Bowen, Daniel Raymond, and Erasmus Peshine Smith
in America. It was trenchantly attacked, not only by the Trade Unionists, the
Christian Socialists, and the Positivists (see, for instance, T. J. Dunning's Trade
Unions: their Philosophy and Intention (London, 1860), a work read and
praised, but not heeded, by J. S. Mill ; J. M. Ludlow's Christian Socialism
(London, 1851); and the admirable articles on Political Economy by Frederic
Harrison in the Fortnightly Review for 1867), but also explicitly in the language
of abstract economics by Fleeming Jenkin in March 1868, in an article in the
North British Revieiv ("Trade Unions: how far Legitimate"), and especially
by F. D. Longe in 1866, in his Refutation of the Wages Fund Theory of Modern
Political Economy ', as enunciated by Mr. Mill and Mr. Fawcett (London, 1866).
The well-known attack by W. T. Thornton, entitled On Labour, its Wrongful
Claims and Rightful Dues, its Actual Present and Possible Future (London,
1869), and the immediate recantation of the Wage Fund Theory by J. S. Mill,
first really attracted economic attention to the subject.

The Verdict of the Economists 619

no inconsiderable proportion of the world's laborers, especially
in the whaling, fishing, and mining industries, are actually
engaged on " shares," and find the amount of the last instal-
ments of their wages for the whole venture both regulated
by, and paid out of, the sum of utilities which they have
themselves created.1 Thus, even if there existed any pre-
determined portion of capital definitely ear-marked as the
wage-fund, it would still be only the measure of advances,
not of wages ; its amount would throw no light upon the
proportion of the income of the community which is obtained
by the wage-earning class ; and its limitation would in no
wise stand in the way of the year's remuneration of the class
as a whole being indefinitely augmented at the end of each
year, or on the completion of each undertaking, not out of
previously accumulated capital, but actually out of their
own product.

But there is, in fact, no such predetermined amount
applicable for the payment of wages, still less any fund set
apart at the beginning of each year, or any other period. The
wage-earners of the world are not, any more than the
capitalists of the world, fed for the entire year out of a store
of food and other necessaries, or paid out of an accumulated
fund of capital, actually in hand at the beginning of the year.
Whatever may be the tasks on which the workmen are
engaged, they are, as a matter of fact, fed, week by week, by
products just brought to market, exactly in the same way
as the employer and his household are fed. They are paid
their wages, week by week, out of the current cash balances
of their employers, these cash balances being daily replenished
by sales of the current product. The weekly drawings of the
several partners in a firm come from precisely the same fund
as the wages of their workpeople. Whether or not any
assignable limits can be set to the possible expansion of this
source of current income, it will be at once evident that there
is no arithmetical impossibility in the workmen obtaining a

1 This supplies Mr. Henry George (Progress and Poverty] with some of his
most telling demonstrations of the futility of the wage-fund theory.

62O Trade Union Theory

larger, and the employers a smaller, proportion of the total
drawings for any particular week. If all the hired laborers
in the world were, suddenly and simultaneously, to insist on
a general rise of wages, there is no mathematical impossibility
in the rise being contemporaneously balanced by an equal
reduction in the aggregate current drawings of the employers.
If the world's current supply of food and other necessaries be
supposed to be the limit, what is there to prevent the con-
sumption of the employers and their families from being
diminished ? Accordingly we find John Stuart Mill, in his
celebrated review of Thornton's book, unreservedly abandon-
ing the very notion of any predetermined wage-fund. " There
is no law of nature making it inherently impossible for wages
to rise to the point of absorbing, not only the funds which
[the employer] had intended to devote to carrying on his
business, but the whole of what he allows for his private
expenses beyond the necessaries of life. ... In short, there
is abstractedly available for the payment of wages, before an
absolute limit is reached, not only the employer's capital, but
the whole of what can possibly be retrenched from his private
expenditure, and the law of wages on the side of demand
amounts only to the obvious proposition that the employers
cannot pay away in wages what they have not got. . . .
The power of Trade Unions may, therefore, be so exercised
as to obtain for the laboring classes collectively both a larger
share and a larger positive amount of the produce of
labor." 1

But though it was this statical conception of a definitely
limited special wage-fund which gave the educated public
its " cocksureness " against the workmen, most of the econo-
mists themselves probably laid more stress on what we have
termed the dynamic aspect of the theory. If the laborers
compelled the employers to agree to give them better terms
for the future, this very rise of wages, causing a correspond-
ing fall in profits, would, it was argued, cause such a diminu-

1 J. S. Mill, Fortnightly Review, May 1869 ; Dissertations and Discussions,
vol. iv. pp. 46, 48.

The Verdict of the Economists 621

tion of saving as would presently counteract the rise. Thus
it followed that the rate of profit on capital, together with
the rate of wages, was, in any given state of mind of the
saving class, really unalterable. Any accidental variation in
the general rate of profit, whether upward or downward,
automatically set up a reaction which continued until the
normal was again reached. " Two antagonistic forces," it
was said, " hold the industrial world in equilibrio. On the
one hand, the principle of population regulates the supply
of labor ; on the other, the principle of accumulation
determines the demand for it." 1

Now, before examining this theory point by point, we
note that it contains a series of assumptions which were
neither explicitly stated nor in any way proved. It takes
for granted, in the first place, that Trade Union action must
necessarily diminish profits ; an assumption which simply
ignores the Trade Union claim — considered at length in the
next two chapters — that the enforcement of a Common Rule
positively increases the efficiency of industry. Secondly,
we have the assumption that a diminution of profits
necessarily implies a fall in the rate of interest on capital,
thus leaving out of account the possibility that a rise of
wages might mean simply an alteration in the shares of
different grades of producers, the entrepreneur class (and not
the mere investor) losing what the manual workers gain.
Finally, we have the assumption that the heaping up of
material wealth is the only way of increasing the national
capital. " The older economists," says Professor Marshall,
" went too far in suggesting that a rise in interest (or of
profits) at the expense of wages always increased the power
of saving ; they forgot that from the national point of view
the investment of wealth in the child of the working man is
as productive as its investment in horses and machinery. . . .
The middle, and especially the professional classes have
always denied themselves much in order to invest capital in
the education of their children, while a great part of the

1 Trade Unionism^ by James Stirling, p. 26.

622 Trade Union Theory

wages of the working classes is invested in the physical
health and strength of their children." l

But is it true that the growth of capital depends on the
rate of interest, so that " the greater the proportion of wages
to profits, the smaller the tendency to national accumulation"?2
Does the " motive for accumulation " diminish, as Ricardo
incidentally declared, " with every diminution of profit " ? 3
The great investigators who preceded Ricardo held an
exactly opposite view. Sir Josiah Child remarked two
centuries ago that the extremely low rate of interest in the
Netherlands towards the close of the seventeenth century,
far from diminishing accumulation, " was the causa causans of
all the other causes of the riches of the Dutch people." In
countries where the rate of interest was high, he observed
that " merchants, when they have gotten great wealth, leave
trading, and lend out their money at interest, the gain
thereof being so easy, certain, and great ; whereas in other
countries, where interest is at a lower rate, they con-
tinue merchants from generation to generation, and enrich
themselves and the State." 4 " Low interest," he emphatically

1 Principles of Economics, 3rd edition (London, 1895), Book IV. chap. vii. pp.
311, 318. The Trade Unionist may very well complain that the economists had,
at any rate, no warrant for the definiteness of their assumptions. Even if it be
granted that a fall in the rate of interest tends to diminish the amount saved, no
reason has been given for the supposition that any particular rise in the rate of
wages would necessarily tend to slacken accumulation precisely to such an extent as
to cause wages to fall hereafter by the amount of the rise. If, for instance, wages
rose generally by 10 per cent, and the cost fell entirely on interest, by how much
per cent would the rate be thereby lowered ? If it lowered the rate from 3 to 2^
per cent, by how much would the amount saved annually be reduced? If it
reduced the amount saved annually from 200 millions to 175 millions, by how
much would the general rate of wages be therefore lowered ? To none of these
questions can even an approximate answer be given. The tacit assumption of
the economists that, other things remaining equal, a rise in wages of 10 per cent
would necessarily produce such a fall in the rate of interest as would result in
such a diminution of the amount annually saved as would cause wages to fall
again by at least 10 per cent, will probably be considered by future ages as one
of the most extraordinary chains of hypothetical reasoning ever resorted to.

2 Trade Unionism, by James Stirling, pp. 28, 29.

3 On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (London, 1817), p. 136.

4 A New Discourse of Trade, 2nd edition (London, 1694), p. 8 ; quoted in
Principles of Economics, by Professor A. Marshall, Book IV. ch. vii. p. 316 of
3rd edition (London, 1895).

The Verdict of the Economists 623

declared, "is the natural mother of Frugality, Industry,
and the Arts."1 In Adam Smith's opinion a high rate
of profit was in many ways positively injurious to national
wealth. " But besides all the bad effects to the country
in general," said he, "which have already been mentioned
as resulting from a high rate of profit, there is one more
fatal, perhaps, than all these put together, but which, if we
may judge from experience, is inseparably connected with
it. The high rate of profit seems everywhere to destroy
that parsimony which in other circumstances is natural to
the character of the merchant. When profits are high that
sober virtue seems to be superfluous, and expensive luxury
to suit better the affluence of his situation. . . . Accumula-
tion is thus prevented in the hands of all those who are
naturally the most disposed to accumulate ; and the funds
destined for the maintenance of productive labor receive no
augmentation from the revenue of those who ought naturally
to augment them the most. . . . Light come light go, says
the proverb ; and the ordinary tone of expense seems every-
where to be regulated, not so much according to the real
ability of spending, as to the supposed facility of getting
money to spend." 2 Thus he infers that, after the " profits
on stock " or capital " are diminished, stock may not only
continue to increase, but to increase much faster than
before " ! 3

1 A New Discourse of Trade, 2nd edition (London, 1694), preface.

2 Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (London, 1776), Book IV. chap. vii.
p. 276 of M'Culloch's edition.

3 Ibid. Book I. chap. ix. p. 42.

The contrary assumption, on which so much of the opposition to Trade
Unionism is still based, was, until 1848, more often implied than explicitly stated
in economic treatises. Nassau Senior, who introduced to economics the term
"reward of abstinence," nowhere makes the statement that the amount of saving
varies with the rate of profit or interest. " Capitals," he says in one place,
"are generally formed from small beginnings by acts of accumulation which
become in time habitual," and in the hypothetical example he gives he actually
assumes that a decrease in the rate of profit will apply a new stimulus to accumu-
lation (Political Economy, p. 192). M'Culloch, too, regarded the amount of
accumulation as depending only on the extent of the margin for saving, not upon
the expectation of a high rate of interest or profit. " The means of amassing
capital will be greatest . . . where the net profits of stock are greatest. . . .

624 Trade Union Theory

The modern economist finds, in the actual facts of
industrial life, much that supports this view. It may be
true that here and there a capitalist employer, especially a
manufacturer or a farmer, will strive harder to increase his
capital if he sees the prospect of exceptional profit, than if
he can only just pay his way, though on the other side must
be set the fact that in this class high profits notoriously lead
to extravagant personal expenditure, and that it is, as Adam
Smith pointed out, not during periods of high profits, but
rather in bad times, that luxuries are retrenched. But there
is reason to believe that a large part — in these days perhaps
the greater part — of the saving of the world takes place quite
irrespective of the rate of interest that can be obtained for
the use of the capital. The strongest motives for saving —
the desire to provide for sickness and old age, or for the
future maintenance of children — go on, as the hoards of the
French peasantry show, whether profit or interest is reaped
or not. The whole history of popular savings banks demon-
strates that what is sought by the great bulk of the investing
population is security for their savings, not any particular
rate of interest. It is, in fact, within the experience of every
savings bank that some depositors, content to get this
security only, persist in increasing their deposits over the
maximum on which any interest is paid. No reduction in
the rate of savings bank interest ever causes anything like
a proportionate reduction in the amount of the deposits ;
usually, indeed, it causes no visible reduction at all. At the
other end of the social scale, though possibly for a different
reason, accumulation appears to proceed with equal indiffer-

Give to any people the power of accumulating, and we may depend upon it they
will not be disinclined to use it effectively. . . . No instance can be produced of
any people having ever missed an opportunity to amass." — Principles of Political
Economy, 1825, part ii. sec. 2.

Mr. Cannan has drawn our attention to an article by W. Ellis in the West-
minster Review for January 1826, which contains the first clear expression of the
other view. J. S. Mill seems to have been the first systematic economist in
England to give definite form to the statement that the rate of accumulation would,
in any given state of wealth and habit of mind, vary with the rate of interest to
be expected from capital. — Principles of Political Economy, Book I. chap. xi.

The Verdict of the Economists ^

ence to the rate of prot Ti,

and Vanderbilts, the SrftaTS^ ^''^ °f ^ Astors
the Cavendishes and'c *>^ ^^^ °f income by
*ons of the Rothschilds, donT as a "T^ aCCUm"Ia-
on how much per cent the* I'M- °f fact> depend

^ their new capita], but tthe ^'^ 6XpeCt to %*
over and above their curren" S^T* °f Sheer SUrP'»s
'° say the least of it extre i j °f exPe"diture. ft is

'arge c,ass whose fnco^f L "ttji "'' " "^ a" ^
need or desire to ^e£^ In excess of what they

th's year will be S^fS^^0^^ they inv J
•nterest will be 4 instead of 3 ^0^°' \*&t the rate of
expected that the rate will be onl^ , dlrain'^ed if it is
F'nally, there is a third type of f 2 'nStead of 3 per cent.
a"y change in the rate of profi° i, ?• ^ the effect of
d-rection, the amount of accutu I^T 7 " *he °PP°site
fall m the rate, and checked h bei"g increased by a

-ving of the world fa^wW, t^ A ^ P&rt °f ^
some future time, an incL m°tlve of obtaining at

to retire

amy in a country malon O a ^ear '° main-

°r 'f the recognised portio^for u the ECcePted stamp

ccumulation of capital « A" ff° P°SltiveIy stimulated
VOL. ii As the rate of interest falls,"

2 S

626 Trade Union Theory

says Professor Smart, " the motive of the richer classes to save
rather than to consume grows stronger." l And it must not
be forgotten that every fall in the rate of interest, by affording
new opportunities for its profitable investment in appliances
for increasing the productivity of labor, stimulates the desire
to invest and presently increases the power to save. Under
this head must come, too, the large and ever- increasing
form of compulsory saving which is represented by public
outlay on permanent works of utility. When a municipality
engages in large public works, it does more than find useful
investment for savings which would in any case have been
made. By making arrangements for repaying the loan
within a definite number of years — in England, on an average
about thirty — the ratepayers, besides paying the interest,
find themselves compelled to put by for the community, out
of their individual incomes, before they can begin to save
for themselves at all, a sum equal to the annual repayment
of debt. It can scarcely be doubted that this compulsory
saving, which no individual ratepayer regards as saving at
all, is, like taxation generally, to a large extent retrenched
from current personal expenditure, and is therefore, to this
extent, a clear addition to the capital of the community.
Now, the extent to which municipalities will raise loans for
public works, to be thus made up by compulsory savings,
depends in a very large degree on the rate of interest, rising
when that falls and falling when that rises. " Accordingly,"
concludes Professor Nicholson, "we cannot strictly speak of
a particular minimum rate in any society as necessary to
accumulation in general ; and if Adam Smith's opinion is
well founded, we cannot even say that a rise in the rate of
interest will increase, or a fall check accumulation. . . . The
growth of material capital depends upon a number of vari-
ables, of which the rate of interest is only one, and is,
furthermore, indeterminate in its effect? 2 To put it con-

1 Studies in Economics (London, 1895), p. 297.

2 J. S. Nicholson, Principles of Political Economy ^&\rfo\xgs\i 1893), P- 394-
Sir Josiah Child went so far as to predict that " the bringing down of interest in
this kingdom from six to four or three per cent will necessarily, in less than

The Verdict of the Economists 627

cretely, it is, to say the least of it, extremely doubtful
whether the accumulated capital of the United Kingdom
would be greater or less at the present time if the rate of
interest on the best security, instead of falling to a little over
2 per cent, had remained at 5 or 6 per cent, the rate at which
Pitt frequently issued Consols. Still less is it possible for
the economist to predict whether, our national habits being
as they are, the growth in wealth during the next hundred
years would be stimulated or depressed if the rate should
within that period fall even to I per cent. Considering, there-
fore, that the very poor and the very rich are, as regards
the actual accumulation of material wealth, practically unin-
fluenced either way ; that an increase of wages is likely
positively to increase that highly productive form of the
nation's capital, the physical strength and mental training
of the manual working class ; that the middle class is mainly
bent on securing permanent incomes for future maintenance,
and will therefore be induced to work longer and harder, and
save more, the lower the rate of interest descends ; that a
low rate of interest both stimulates inventions and promotes
their general adoption ; and that municipal and national
enterprise, if favored by a low rate of interest, grows by leaps
and bounds, economists are beginning to assert that a rise of
wages at the expense of profits would probably result, not in
less, but actually in more being produced, and taking all
forms of national wealth into account, that it might be
expected positively to increase the productive capital of the
community in one form or another. We do not understand
whether Professor Marshall goes this length, but " we may
conclude," he says, " in opposition to [the older economists],
that any change in the distribution of wealth which gives
more to the wage -receivers and less to the capitalists is
likely, other things being equal, to hasten the increase of
material production, and that it will not perceptibly retard the
storing-up of material wealth." *

twenty years' time, double the capital stock of the nation." — A New Discourse of
Trade, 2nd edition (London, 1694), p. 14.

1 Principles of Economics, by Professor A. Marshall, 3rd edition (London,

628 Trade Union Theory

So far the modern economic criticism of the current
middle-class view takes account only of a general bettering
of the conditions of labor and a general fall in the rate of
profit in all trades. If now we consider the more usual case
of an alteration in the profitableness of a particular industry,
the modern student finds it equally impossible to come to a
dogmatic conclusion against Trade Unionism. The older
economists made the convenient assumption that both
capital and labor were freely mobile as between one trade
and another, and that it was therefore impossible for any
important variations between wages and profits in different
trades to be of long continuance. Here, again, the popular
argument against Trade Unionism ignored the all-important
element of time. If the employers in one industry happened
to make large profits, additional capital, it was said, would
flow into that trade, and the workmen would thus, sooner or
later, find the demand for their services increased and their
wages raised. But why should the workmen wait? On
the economist's own showing, there would be nothing to
prevent a combination of all the workmen in the trade
taking advantage of the golden opportunity when profits
were high, and so increasing their wages as to absorb a
large share of this surplus for themselves.1 There would
then be no attraction for additional capital to enter the
trade, and therefore no reason why the surplus should not
continue to exist, to the benefit of the workmen in that trade.
Their wages would have risen relatively to those in other
trades, with the result that new workmen would be attracted
to it. But it is not easy for men to change their trades

1895), Book IV. chap. vii. p. 311. Some economists are beginning to suggest
that the world's stock of capital is largely determined by the world's need of capital
— accumulation beyond industrial requirements automatically causing destruction
of other capital. See the, on this point, suggestive works of Mr. J. A. Hobson.
1 " When profits rise in any branch of trade above the usual rate, the
masters evidently could, if they chose, afford to make over to the men as
additional wages, the whole difference between their old and their new profits.
They could do this if they pleased without reducing profits below the previously
current and usual rate. And being able to do this it is conceivable that they
might by a powerful union be constrained to do it." — W. T. Thornton, On
Labour (London, 1870), pp. 284, 285.

The Verdict of the Economists 629

with advantage, especially among the skilled crafts, and it
would take some years before the increased attractiveness of
the better-paid trade among boys choosing their occupations
caused any appreciable increase in the number of journey-
men. Moreover, this would be a clear case in which a
Trade Union might by close combination or legal enactment
better its conditions of employment without decreasing the
amount of work for its own members, and without depriving
the rest of the wage-earners of anything that they could
otherwise have obtained. All that would then have happened
would be that an increase in profits, which would otherwise
have gone first to the capitalists, and eventually to the con-
sumers, would have been lastingly secured by a section of the
workpeople. Hence the economist's own reasoning seems to
bear out the workmen's empirical conclusion, that Trade Union
action is most strikingly successful when it takes the form of
claiming advances at the moment that trade is profitable.

When we consider the country as a whole, in its com-
petition with other countries, the argument, though more
complicated, is equally inconclusive. If the wage-earners of
one country obtain, whether by law or by negotiation, better
sanitation, shorter hours, or higher wages than their colleagues
in other countries, and if these better terms for labor involve
a lower rate of profit on capital, it is suggested that capital
will " flow " out of the relatively unprofitable country, in
order to seek investment abroad. The improvement of the
conditions of labor would, under these circumstances, be
temporary only, as the resulting diminution of profits would
bring about its own cure. To the modern financial expert,
actually engaged in international transactions, this contention
seems highly problematical. He sees the rates of business
profits in different countries remain permanently divergent,
two or three times as much being habitually earned by
capitalist enterprises in one country, as compared with similar
enterprises in another. In spite of the assumed international
mobility of capital, even the rates of loan interest in different
countries remain very far from equality. And though capital

630 Trade Union Theory

flows here and there from time to time, the expert financier
detects nothing in the nature of that promptly - flowing
current from low-rate countries to high-rate countries which
might be expected to bring the divergence quickly to an
end, and which was assumed without evidence by a more
theoretic generation. His usual explanation is that, here as
elsewhere, it is far more important to the investor of capital
to obtain security than to gain an increased rate of interest.
This security depends upon a great variety of considerations,
among which, in these democratic days, not the least im-
portant is the state of mind of the wage-earning class.
Hence an improvement in the conditions of employment,
made at the cost of the capitalist, far from necessarily driving
more capital abroad, as Cairnes imagined, may positively
tend to 'keep it at home. Factory legislation, compulsory
sanitation, short hours of labor, a high level of wages, freedom
of combination, and generally the habit of treating the wage-
earners with consideration, may seem to make capital yield
a lower annual return to the investor than might be gained
in other countries. But if these things result in political
and social stability, if they increase the amenity of life, and
especially if they promise to erect a bulwark against revolu-
tion and spoliation, the investor will, as a matter of fact,
prefer to see his rate of interest gradually decline if the
reduction is accompanied by an increase in political security,
rather than seek higher gains in more discontented, and
therefore less stable communities. Thus the reaction set up
by a bettering of the condition of the English workmen at
the cost of the capitalist may be quite in the reverse
direction to that formerly imagined. But there is another,
and, as we think, more important reason for the apparently
inexplicable divergence between the rates earned by capital in
different countries. Capital does not of itself produce either
profit or interest, and can only really be used to advantage
when it is employed in conjunction with an efficient organ-
isation of industry, an adequate supply of skilled workmen,
and the ^dispensable element of business ability. It is

The Verdict of the Economists 631

probable that the profitableness of English industry would
be far more endangered by the emigration of all its skilled
craftsmen, or the desertion of its genuine captains ot
industry, than by any merely mechanical investments in
foreign lands. An increase of wages, by keeping at home
the most energetic and ingenious workmen, who might other-
wise have emigrated, thus tends positively to increase profits
in England. But the migration of skilled workmen, and
still more, that of brain-power, from one country to another,
depends on many other motives than the rate of pecuniary
reward. Here, again, the reaction set up by a fall in the
rate of profit may be quite in the contrary direction to that
formerly supposed. If an improvement in the condition of
the English working classes adds to the amenity of English
life, it may increase the attractiveness of England to the able
business man, and so in this way positively increase the
profitableness of English industry, and hence the reward of
the capitalist and brain-worker, by far more than the improve-
ment has cost. Where the business capacity is to be found,
there, in the long run, will be the capital. We need not
therefore be surprised to learn that there is absolutely no
evidence that the past fifty years' rise in the condition of the
English wage-earning class, taken as a whole, has had any
effect at all in making the available capital of England less
than it would have been made if the rise had not taken
place. The exceptionally great fall in the rate of interest
which has been so marked a feature of the period, and
especially of the last twenty years, is, in fact, a slight indica-
tion that the current is nowadays rather in the opposite
direction. England may have its Trade Unions, its growing
regulation of private industry, and its income-tax and death-
duties, but Germany has its revolutionary Social Democracy,
France its political instability, the United States its tariff
and currency troubles, India its famines, Cuba its chronic
rebellion, and South America its revolutions. One of the
greatest of the world's international financiers lately remarked,
with some surprise, that, in spite of the growing pretensions

632 Trade Union Theory

of the English legislature and the English Trade Unions to
interfere with private enterprise, and to enforce more liberal
conditions of employment, other countries were showing a
positively increasing desire to remit their savings for in-
vestment in English enterprises, and London seemed to be
becoming more attractive than ever to the able business man.

The abstract theories of wages and profits, which public
opinion once thought so conclusive against the Trade
Unionist assumptions, are thus seen, in the light of economic
science, to crumble away. But there were many educated
men, especially in the world of physical science and natural
history, who never accepted the wire-drawn arguments of the
Wage Fund, but who nevertheless saw, in the " principle of
population," a biological barrier to any real success of Trade
Unionism. Of what avail could it be for combinations of
workmen to struggle and strive for higher wages, when those
higher wages would only lead automatically to an increase
of population, which must inevitably pull down things again
to the old level? As one sympathetic friend of progress
regretfully expressed it, it was " the devastating torrent of
children " that blocked the way to any improvement of the
conditions of labor.1

Now, it is interesting to observe that, whereas the
Theory of the Wage Fund stood in opposition to every
kind of improvement of the conditions of employment, the
" principle of population " was supposed to negative only an
increase in money wages, or, more precisely, in the amount
of food obtained by the manual workers. No one sug-
gested that improved conditions of sanitation in the factory
had any tendency to raise the birth-rate ; and it would have
needed a very fervid Malthusianism to prove that a shorten-
ing of the hours of labor resulted in earlier marriages. No
argument could therefore be founded on the " principle of
population " against Trade Union efforts to improve the

1 "If only the devastating torrent of children could be arrested for a few
years it would bring untold relief." — J. Cotter Morison, The Service of Man
(London, 1887), preface, p. xxx.

The Verdict of the Economists 633

conditions of sanitation and safety, or to protect the Normal
Day. And the economists quickly found reason to doubt
whether there was any greater cogency in the argument
with regard to wages. Malthus and Ricardo had habitually
written as if the fluctuations in wages meant merely more or
less bread to the laborer's family, and the public assumed
therefore that every rise of wages implied that more children
would be brought up, and that every fall would result in a
diminution. But the wage-earning population, in 1820 as
now, included any number of separate grades, from the
underfed agricultural laborer of Devonshire, whose wages
were only eight shillings a week, to the London millwright
who refused to accept a job under two guineas a week.
Though it might be true that a rise in wage to the under-
fed laborer enabled him to bring up more children to
maturity, and might even induce him to marry at an earlier
age, it did not at all follow that a rise of wages would have
the same effect on the town artisan or factory operative,
who was already getting more than the bare necessaries of
existence. To the one class more wages meant chiefly
more food ; to the other it meant new luxuries or additional
amenities of life. The economists were quickly convinced
that a new taste for luxuries or a desire for additional
amenities had a direct effect in developing prudential
restraint. M'Culloch himself emphatically declared, on this
very ground, that " the best interests of society require that
the rate of wages should be elevated as high as possible —
that a taste for the comforts, luxuries, and enjoyments of
human life should be widely diffused, and, if possible, inter-
woven with the national habits and prejudices."1 From
the Malthusian point of view, the presumption was, as
regards the artisans and factory operatives, always in favor
of a rise in wages. For " in the vast majority of instances,
before a rise of wages can be counteracted by the increased
number of laborers it may be supposed to be the means of
bringing into the market, time is afforded for the formation

1 Principles of Political Economy, part iii. sec. 7.

634 Trade Union Theory

of those new and improved tastes and habits, which are not
the hasty product of a day, a month, or a year, but the late
result of a long series of continuous impressions. After the
laborers have once acquired these tastes, population will
advance in a slower ratio, as compared with capital, than
formerly ; and the laborers will be disposed rather to defer
the period of marriage, than, by entering on it prematurely,
to depress their own condition and that of their children."
In the same way, the presumption was strongly against any
reduction of the wages of any classes who were receiving
more than bare subsistence. " A fall of wages," continues
M'Culloch, "has therefore a precisely opposite effect, and
is, in most cases, as injurious to the laborer as their rise is
beneficial. In whatever way wages may be restored to their
former level after they have fallen, whether it be by a decrease
in the number of marriages, or an increase in the number of
deaths, or both, it is never, except in ... exceedingly rare
cases . . . suddenly effected. It must, generally speaking,
require a considerable time before it can be brought about ;
and an extreme risk arises in consequence lest the tastes and
habits of the laborers, and their opinion respecting what is
necessary for their comfortable subsistence, should be de-
graded in the interim. . . . The lowering of the opinions of
the laboring classes, with respect to the mode in which they
ought to live, is perhaps the most serious of all the evils
that can befall them. . . . The example of such individuals,
or bodies of individuals, as submit quietly to have their
wages reduced, and who are content if they get only the
mere necessaries of life, ought never to be held up for
public imitation. On the contrary, everything should be
done to make such apathy be esteemed disgraceful." l There
could not be a more emphatic justification of Trade Union
effort. The ordinary middle-class view that the " principle
of population " rendered nugatory all attempts to raise
wages, otherwise than in the slow course of generations,
was, in fact, based on sheer ignorance, not only of the facts

1 Principles of Political Economy, part iii. sec. 7.

The Verdict of the Economists 635

of working-class life, but even of the opinions of the very
economists from whom it was supposed to be derived.1 So
far were the classic economists from believing it to be use-
less to raise the wages even of the laborers, that M'Culloch
emphatically declared that " an increase of wages is the only,
or at all events the most effectual and ready means by
which the condition of the poor can be really improved." 2

The modern student of the population question finds
even less ground for apprehension than M'Culloch. The
general death-rate of the United Kingdom, like that of all
civilised countries, has steadily declined during the past half-
century of sanitation, but no connection can be traced
between this fall and any rise of wages ; there is, indeed,
some slight reason to believe that the death-rate has fallen
most among some sections of the wage-earners (for instance,
women of all ages) and in some districts (for instance, the
great cities) where the rise in wages has been relatively less
than elsewhere. But what the fanatical Malthusian most
relied on was the increase in births. To him it seemed
absolutely demonstrable that, in any given state of the
working-class, an increase of wages must inevitably be
followed by an increase of births. That the number of

1 M'Culloch expressly denied that, on a rise in wages, population would
naturally increase proportionately to the rise, " as it is sometimes alleged it would.
... It is not improbable merely, but next to impossible, that population should
increase in the same proportion." — Note VI. to his edition of the Wealth of
Nations (London, 1839), p. 473.

2 J. R. M'Culloch, A Treatise on the Circumstances which determine the Rate
of Wages (London, 1851), p. 49.

Nassau Senior also protested against the public view. "Those whose
acquaintance with Political Economy is superficial (and they form the great mass
of even the educated classes) have been misled by the form in which the doctrine
of population has been expressed. . . . Because increased means of subsistence
may be followed and neutralised by a proportionate increase in the number of
persons to be subsisted, they suppose that such will necessarily be the case. . . .
This doctrine . . . furnishes an easy escape from the trouble or expense im-
plied by every project of improvement. ' What use would it be ? ' they ask.
' . . . If food were for a time more abundant, in a very short period the popula-
tion would be again on a level with the means of subsistence, and we should be
just as ill off as before.' We believe these misconceptions to be extensively pre-
valent."— Nassau W. Senior, Political Economy, 2nd edition, in Encyclopedia
Metropolitana (London, 1850), p. 50.

636 Trade Union Theory

marriages went up and down according to the price of
wheat was a universally accepted generalisation. But that
generalisation, whatever may have been its truth a hundred
years ago, has long ceased to have any correspondence with
fact. The marriage-rate of the England of this generation,
drooping slowly downwards, bears no assignable relation
either to the falling prices of commodities, the rising wages
of male labor, or the growing prosperity of the country.
What is more important, the birth-rate has ceased to have
any uniform relation to the marriage-rate. The economists
have always looked with longing eyes on the example of
France, where the growth of population, and particularly the
number of births to a marriage, had, even when J. S. Mill
wrote in 1848, shown a steady decline, to which Mill
attributed much of the economic progress of the peasant
proprietors. This decline in the birth-rate is now seen to
be universal throughout North - Western Europe. Our own
country is no exception. Down to 1877, the birth-rate of
England and Wales had shown no sign of falling off, the rate
for each year oscillating about the mean of 3 5 per thousand.
But since 1877 the reduction has been great and continuous,
the rate in 1895 being only 30.4 compared with 36.3 in
1876, a fall almost identical with that in France between
1800 and 1850, which rilled J. S. Mill with so much hope.1
Unfortunately, though the decline in the English birth-
rate has now continued for twenty years, there has been as
yet no scientific investigation into its cause. It cannot be
ascribed to increased poverty or privation of the nation, or
of the working-class, for, as compared with previous times,
there can be no doubt that the incomes of the English wage-
earners have, on the whole, risen ; prices of commodities have
fallen ; and the general prosperity of the country has greatly
increased.2 And the impression of statisticians is that the

1 Principles of Political Economy, Book II. ch. vii. p. 178 of edition of
1865. The average birth-rate of France between 1801-10 and 1841-50 fell
about 5 per 1000.

2 For an estimate of this progress see Labor in the Longest Reign, by Sidney
Webb (London, 1897).

The Verdict of the Economists 637

diminution in the birth-rate throughout North-Western Europe
has not taken place among the poorest sections of the com-
munity. " After the researches of Quetelet in Brussels, Farr
in London, Schwabe in Berlin, Villerme and Benoison de
Chateauneuf in Paris, it is no longer possible to doubt that
the maximum of births takes place among the poorer class,
and that poverty itself is an irresistible inducement to an
abundant and disordered birth-rate." l Such facts as are now
beginning to be known point to the conclusion that the
fall in the birth-rate is occurring, not in those sections of the
community which have barely enough to live on, but in those
which command some of the comforts of life — not in the
"sweated trades," or among the casual laborers, but among
the factory operatives and skilled artisans. We can adduce
only one piece of statistical evidence in support of this hypo-
thesis, but that one piece is, we think, full of significance.

The Hearts of Oak Friendly Society is the largest cen-
tralised Benefit Society in this country, having now over two
hundred thousand adult male members. No one is admitted
who is not of good character, and in receipt of wages of
twenty-four shillings a week, or upwards. The membership
consists, therefore, of the artisan and skilled operative class,
with some intermixture of the small shopkeeper, to the
exclusion of the mere laborer. Among its provisions is

1 Population and the Social System, F. Nitti (London, 1894), pp. 153-162.
Adam Smith had observed that poverty "seems even to be favorable to
generation" (Wealth of Nations, Book I. chap. viii. p. 36). Professor Nitti has
his own explanation of the fact : "The long working days of 12, 14, and 15
hours make their intellectual improvement impossible, and compel them to seek
their sole enjoyments in those of the senses. Compelled to work for many hours
in places heated to a great temperature, often promiscuously with women ; obliged
to live upon substances which, if insufficient for nutrition, frequently cause a per-
manent excitability ; persuaded that no endeavor will better their condition, they
are necessarily impelled to a great fecundity. Add to this that the premature
acceptance of children in workshops leads the parents to believe that a large
family is much rather a good than an evil, even with respect to family comfort.
... It is clearly to be seen that a very high birth-rate always corresponds with
slight wages, long days of work, bad food, and hence a bad distribution of wealth.
. . . Nothing is more certain to fix limits to the birth-rate than high wages, and
the diffusion of ease." " Poverty," Darwin had observed, "is not only a great
evil, but tends to its own increase by leading to recklessness in marriage." — The
Descent of Man (London, 1871), vol. ii. p. 403.

638 Trade Union Theory

the " Lying-in Benefit," a payment of thirty shillings for each
confinement of a member's wife. From 1866 to 1880 the
proportion of lying-in claims to membership slowly rose from
21.76 to 24.72 per 100. From 1880 to the present time it
has continuously declined, until it is now only between 14 and
1 5 per i oo.

The " devastating torrent of children " in this million of
souls, forming 2,\ per cent of the whole population of the
United Kingdom, has accordingly fallen off by no less than
two-fifths, only fourteen being born where formerly twenty-
four would have seen the light. The reduction of the birth-rate
in this specially thrifty group of workmen's families has been
more than twice the reduction in the community as a whole.
The average age of the members has not appreciably changed,
having remained throughout between 34 and 36. The well-
known actuary of the Society, Mr. R. P. Hardy, watching
the statistics year by year, and knowing intimately all the
circumstances of the organisation, attributes this startling
reduction in the number of births of children to these speci-
ally prosperous and specially thrifty artisans entirely to their
deliberate desire to limit the size of their families.1

1 Our own impression, based on ten years' special investigation into English
working-class life, coincides with Mr. Hardy's inference. There can be no doubt
that the practice of deliberately taking steps to limit the size of the family has,
during the last twenty years, spread widely among the factory operatives and
skilled artisans of Great Britain. We may remind the reader that the Malthusian
propaganda of Francis Place and J. S. Mill was greatly extended, and for the
first time brought prominently before the mass of the people, by Charles Brad-
laugh, M.P., and Mrs. Annie Besant. (In chap. iii. of his pamphlet, Die
kunstliche Beschrankung der Kindewahl als sittliche Pflicht, 5th edition (Berlin,
1897), Dr. Hans Ferdy gives a careful history of this movement.) It is at any
rate interesting to note that the beginning in the fall of the birth-rate (1877)
coincides closely with the enormous publicity given to the subject by the prose-
cution of these propagandists in that very year.

We attribute this adoption of neo-Malthusian devices to prevent the burden
of a large family (which have, of course, nothing to do with Trade Unionism)
chiefly to the spread of education among working-class women, to their discontent
with a life of constant ill-health and domestic worry under narrow circumstances,
and to the growth among them of aspirations for a fuller and more independent
existence of their own. This change implies, on the part of both husband and
wife, a large measure of foresight, deliberateness, and self-control, which is out
of the reach of the less intelligent and more self-indulgent classes, and difficult
for the very poor, especially for the occupants of one-roomed homes.

The Verdict of the Economists

639

Table showing, for each year from 1866 to 1896 inclusive, the number
of Members in the Hearts of Oak Friendly Society at the beginning
of the year, the number of those who received Lying-in Benefit
during the year, the percentage of these to the membership at the
beginning of the year, and the birth-rate per 1000 of the whole
population of England and Wales. {From the annual reports of
the Committee of Management of the Hearts of Oak Friendly
Society, and those of the Registrar-General.}

Year.

Hearts of Oak Friendly Society.

England and
Wales: births
per looo of
the total
population.

Number of
Members at the
beginning of
each year.

Number of cases
of Lying-in
Benefit paid
during year.

Percentage of
cases paid to
total Member-
ship at begin-
ning of year.

1866

10,571

2,300

21.76

35-2

1867

12,051

2,853

23.68

35-4

1868 .

13,568

3,075

22.66

35-8

1869

15,903

3,509

22.07

34-8

1870

18,369

4,173

22.72

35-2

1871

21,484

4,685

21. 8l

35-0

1872

26,510

6,156

23.22

35-6

1873

32,837

7,386

22.49

35-4

1874

40,740

9,603

23.57

36.0

1875

51,144

12,103

23.66

35-4

1876

64,421

15,473

24.02

36.3

1877

76,369

18,423

24.11

36.0

1878

84,471

20,409

24.16

35-6

1879

90,603

22,057

24.34

34-7

1880

91,986

22,740

24.72

34-2

1881

93,615

21,950

23.45

33-9

1882

96,006

2l,86o

22.77

33-8

1883

98,873

2i,577

21.82

33-5

1884

104,239

2i,375

20.51

33-6

1885

105,622

21,277

20.14

32.9

1886

109,074

21,856

20.04

32-8

1887

111,937

20,590

18.39

31-9

1888

115,803

20,244

17.48

31.2

1889

123,223

20,503

16.64

3i.i

1890

131,057

20,402

15.57

30.2

1891

141,269

22,500

15.93

31-4

1892

153,595

23,47i

15.28

30.5

1893

169,344

25,430

15.02

30.8

1894

184,629

27,000

14.08

29.6

1895

201,075

29,263

14.55

30.4

1896

206,673

30,313

14.67

640

Trade Union Theory

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The Verdict of the Economists

641

We reach here an aspect of the population question of
which Malthus never dreamt, and on which further investiga-
tion is imperatively demanded.1 There are many indications
that the danger to be apprehended in North- Western Europe
during the coming century is not over-population at all, but
a deliberate restriction of population by the more prosperous,
more intelligent, and more thrifty sections, brought about by
the rise in the Standard of Life itself. This is not the place
for any discussion of this momentous fact. For the present
we are concerned only with the new light that it throws upon
the relation between the increase of population and the rate
of wages. Instead of " the principle of population " decisively
negativing any possibility of the success of Trade Unionism,

1 There are indications that the same result is happening in New England.
Thus, even as long ago as 1875, it was found that, of 393 working-class families
of Massachusetts, those of the skilled mechanics (earning $800 per annum)
averaged from one to two children less than those of the laborers (earning less
than $700 per annum).

Earnings of 393 families of Massachusetts in 1875, "with the number in family r,
averaged by groups of trades (rearranged}.

Trades.

Father's
yearly
wages.

Numbei
in
family.

Wife
and
chil-
dren
work-
ing.

Total

earnings
of wife
and chil-
dren.

Total
yearly
earnings
of family.

Skilled workshop handicraftsmen
Metal workers
Building trades
Teamsters ...
Mill operatives
Shoe and Leather workers

$
752.36
739-30
721.32
630.02
572.10
540.00

°i

I
I

$
69.04
90.51
73-oo
105.00

250.35
209.00

821.40
829.81
794-32
735-02
822.45
749.00

Average of these six groups

659.18

132.82

792.00

Metal workers' laborers .
Workshop laborers
Outdoor laborers ....
Mill laborers ....

458.09
433-06
424.12
386.04

256.08
232.02

257-93
284.08

714.17
665.08
682.05
670.12

Average of these four groups

425-32

6»

257.50

682.88

(Sixth Report on the Statistics of Labour of Massachusetts, 1876, p. 71.)
VOL. II 2 T

642 Trade Union Theory

as is still often believed by otherwise well-educated people, the
argument is all in the opposite direction. So far as we can
draw any inference at all from the facts of English life, there
is no reason to believe that a rise in wages, a reduction of
hours, or an improvement of the conditions of sanitation and
safety among any class of workmen, would cause any increase
in the birth-rate of that class ; and if the improvement in
conditions were to spread to section after section of workers
who are now below the level of the skilled artisan, there is
every reason to expect that it would result in a positive
decline in the birth-rate among those sections.1 To put the
matter concretely, if we could, by Collective Bargaining or
Legal Enactment, lift the London dock-laborers into an
economic position equal to that of the railway porters, there
would not only be no corresponding increase in the number
of children born to them, but, in all probability, we should in
a very few years find an actual diminution in the size of the
average family of the class ; and if Trade Unionism could
further raise both them and the railway porters to the

1 What is needed is a thoroughly scientific investigation of the subject from
all sides. First would come the statistical inquiry as to the exact extent and
distribution of the decline in the birth-rate. An analysis of the registrations of
births for selected years would show, for instance, whether the birth-rate was
uniform among all occupations, or varied from trade to trade ; whether it bore
any relation to the wage-levels of different industries, or to the average number
of rooms occupied by the families in these trades, as tabulated for London by Mr.
Charles Booth ; or whether it corresponded with the degree of Trade Union
membership. A similar analysis of births in the various friendly societies giving
" Lying-in Benefit" would be even more suggestive. It would also be possible to
use the Trade Union and Friendly Society machinery for taking voluntary censuses
of the families of men in different social grades, different trades, or different dis-
tricts. Such a diagnosis would prepare the way for a physiological inquiry into
the means used, and their physical effects, direct and indirect. It would then
be for the sociologist to discover the circumstances under the pressure of which
these practices were adopted, and what effect they were having on the economic
position of various classes, the institution of marriage, family life, and the great
social evil of prostitution ; most important of all, how sectional restriction of
births affected, in extent and character, the breeding ground of subsequent genera-
tions. Some preliminary investigations of this sort are being made by students
of the London School of Economics and Political Science, but are stopped for
lack of funds. We can imagine no way of spending a couple of thousand pounds
more likely to be useful to the community than such an investigation. To us it
seems, of all problems, the most momentous for the future of the civilised races.

The Verdict of the Economists 643

economic position of the " Amalgamated " Engineer, this
result would be still more certain and conspicuous.

Accordingly, we do not find any modern economist, how-
ever " orthodox " may be his bias, nowadays refuting Trade
Unionism by a reference either to the Wage Fund or to
the " Population Question."1 The "Theory of Distribution "
which to-day holds the field is of very different character,
and one from which the opponent of Trade Unionism can
derive little comfort. To begin with, it is declared that wages,
like other incomes, depend upon the amount of the aggregate
revenue of a community, not upon the amount of its capital.
" The labour and capital of the country," says Professor
Marshall, " acting on its natural resources, produce annually
a certain net aggregate of commodities, material and im-
material, including services of all kinds. This is the true
net annual income or revenue of the country ; or the
National Dividend ... it is divided up into Earnings
of Labor, Interest of Capital, and lastly the Producer's
Surplus, or Rent, of land, and of other differential advan-
tages for production. It constitutes the whole of them,
and the whole of it is distributed among them ; and the
larger it is, the larger, other things being equal, will be the
share of each agent of production." The extent and character
of the industries of the community, and the ever-changing
level of wages and prices, are determined by the perpetual
play of Supply and Demand, acting through the " law of
substitution." " The production of everything, whether an
agent of production or a commodity ready for immediate
consumption, is carried forward up to that limit or margin
at which there is equilibrium between the forces of demand
and supply. The amount of the thing, and its price, the
amounts of the several factors or agents of production used
in making it, and their prices — all these elements mutually

1 Thus, Professor Marshall, though he elsewhere uses expressions which
retain traces of the older view, observes, in the latest edition of his Principles of
Economics (London, 1895), as corrected by the fly-leaf, "it is indeed true that
a permanent rise of prosperity is quite as likely to lower as to raise the birth-
rate " (p. 594).

644 Trade Union Theory

determine one another, and if an external cause should alter
any one of them, the effect of the disturbance extends to all
the others." And the Rent, it will be seen, " is the excess
value of the return which can be got by its aid where labor
and capital are applied with normal ability up to the margin
of profitableness over that which the same labor, capital, and
ability would get if working without the aid of any such
advantage." Nor is this confined to land rent (or to " a
differential advantage not made by man "), for we are else-
where told " that the rent of land is no unique fact, but
simply the chief species of a large genus of economic pheno-
mena ; and that the theory of the rent of land is no isolated
economic doctrine, but merely one of the chief applications
of a particular corollary from the general theory of demand
and supply ; and that there is a continuous gradation from
the true rent of those free gifts which have been appropriated
by man, through the income derived from permanent im-
provements of the soil, to those yielded by farm and factory
buildings, steam engines, and less durable goods." The
result is a constant tendency to equality, but only to equality
of remuneration for the marginal use. " Other things being
equal, the larger the supply of any agent of production, the
further will it have to push its way into uses for which it is
not specially fitted, and the lower will be the demand price
with which it will have to be contented in those uses in
which its employment is on the verge or margin of not being
found profitable, and, in so far as completion equalises the
price which it gets in all uses, this price will be its price for
all uses." l

Thus, the effect of perfectly free and unrestrained in-
dividual competition among laborers and capitalists is, on
the one hand, to secure to their owners the entire differential
advantage of all those factors of production which are better
than the worst in normal use, and, on the other, to reduce
the personal remuneration for all the members of each class

1 Principles of Economic s> by Professor Alfred Marshall, 3rd edition (London,
1895), Book VI. chap. i. pp. 588, 591, 609, and chap. ix. p. 705.

The Verdict of the Economists 645

of producers to the level of the last, and least advantageously
situated, member of that class for the time being. The
modern economist tells each class of producers plainly what
will happen to their incomes if there is no interference with
free competition. The total net produce of the class may
be considerable ; the total utility and value of the services of
the class as a whole to the employers may be immense ; the
consumers themselves may be willing, rather than forego the
commodity, to pay a higher price. Nevertheless, if the work-
men in that particular class compete freely among them-
selves for employment, and the employers are unrestrained in
taking advantage of this " Perfect Competition," the price with
which all the members of the class will have to be content
will be set by the last additional workman in the class whose
" employment is on the verge or margin of not being found
profitable." Under Perfect Competition, " the wages of every
class of labor tend to be equal to the produce due to the
additional labor of the marginal laborer of that class." l

But what the isolated individual wage-earner thus fore-
goes, the employer does not necessarily gain. For the same
reasoning applies, as Professor Marshall points out, to capital
in all its mobile forms. The demand -price is determined,
not by the total utility of the advantages to be gained by
the use of each unit of capital, but by the utility of the last
unit of mobile capital, " in those uses in which its employment
is on the verge or margin of not being found profitable."
Competition among capitalists will force them to cede to the
consumer anything above the net advantages of the last, or
marginal, unit of mobile capital. Thus, under Perfect Com-
petition, it is on the one hand the landlord, or other owner
of the rents or " quasi-rents " of superior instruments of pro-
duction, and on the other the consumer, in proportion to the
extent of his consumption, who is always getting the benefit
of that " law of substitution " which pares down the incomes
of laborers and capitalists alike, whenever these, in particular

1 Principles of Economics, by Professor Alfred Marshall, 3rd edition (London,
1895), Book VI. chap. i. p. 584.

646 Trade Union Theory

instances, rise above the level for the time being of the
equivalent of the marginal use.1

All that abstract economics can nowadays tell us about
the normal rate of wages is, therefore, that under perfectly
free competition it will be always 'tending, for each distinct
and fairly homogeneous class of workman, to be no more
than can be got by "the marginal man" of that class, and in
so far as labor may be regarded as freely mobile between
the different grades, no more than would be given for the
" marginal man " of the community as a whole. How much
that will be cannot, even on the assumption of perfect com-
pletion and frictionless mobility, be determined by any
reasoning of abstract economics. " It appears, then, as the
conclusion of the argument," sums up our latest systematic
writer, " that there is no short and simple rule by which the
normal rate of wages in any employment can be deter-
mined over a long period or in the long run. We cannot
assign with any degree of precision the superior and the
inferior limits between which it must lie, and thus we cannot
fix upon any point about which the market rates must
oscillate."2

This necessary indeterminateness of the wage-contract,
even under perfect competition, was insisted on by Thornton
in 1869, and was thereupon mathematically demonstrated.

1 This Theory of Distribution would gain in logical completeness if, after the
manner of the classic economists, (i) we could assume that this equivalent of the
advantage of the marginal use of capital itself precisely determined, in any com-
munity, how much capital would be saved and productively employed — the rate
of accumulation being so affected by every variation from the "normal " rate of
interest as eventually to counteract the variation ; and if (2) we might believe
that the amount of the net produce of the marginal laborer determined how many
laborers would exist — the increase of population varying in exact correspond-
ence with these "normal" wages. But as -we do not know whether, human
nature being as it is, a rise in the rate of interest would on the whole augment
the amount of productive capital or decrease it ; or whether a rise in wages
would increase the birth-rate or diminish it, both the amount of capital and
the number of the population must, as far as abstract economics is concerned,
for the present be treated as indeterminate ; or, rather, as data which, for any
particular time and country, the abstract economist can only accept from the
statistician.

2 J. S. Nicholson, Principles of Political Economy (Edinburgh, 1893), p. 353.

The Verdict of the Economists 647

In a comparatively unnoticed paper, Fleeming Jenkin, a
physicist of rare power, showed the economists of 1870
that, on their own reasoning, it followed that the rate of
wages would vary according as the wage-earners took steps
for their own protection or not. In flat contradiction of the
current middle-class opinion, he concluded that the case of
" the laborer who does not bargain as to his wages ... is
the case of a forced sale, as at a bankruptcy, and of any
other sale by auction without a reserved price. . . . The
knowledge that goods must be sold, that, in fact, there is no
reserved price ... at once lowers the demand curve while
it raises the supply, and by a double action lowers the
price. . . . Both in a given market and on an average of
years, the power of bargaining will enable a seller to obtain
higher prices [than without that power]." l

The whole subject was minutely investigated in 1881
by Professor F. Y. Edgeworth, from the mathematical stand-
point, in a work which has received too little attention.
He sums up his argument as follows. " Suppose a market
consisting of an equal number of masters and servants,
offering respectively wages and service, subject to the
condition that no man can serve two masters, no master
employ more than one man ; or suppose equilibrium already
established between such parties to be disturbed by any
sudden influx of wealth into the hands of the masters. Then
there is no determinate, and very generally [no] unique
arrangement towards which the system tends under the
operation of, may we say, a law of Nature, and which would
be predictable if we knew beforehand the real requirements
of each, or of the average dealer ; but there are an indefinite
number of arrangements a priori possible, towards one of
which the system is urged, not by the concurrence of
innumerable (as it were) neuter atoms eliminating chance,
but (abstraction being made of custom) by what has been
called the Art of Bargaining — higgling dodges and designing

1 " Graphic Representation of the Laws of Supply and Demand," by Fleeming
Jenkin, in Recess Studies (Edinburgh, 1870), pp. 173, 175.

648 Trade Union Theory

obstinacy, and other incalculable and often disreputable
accidents." l

But competition between individual producers and con-
sumers, laborers and capitalists, is, as the economist is now
careful to explain, in actual life very far from perfect, and
shows no tendency to become so.2 Combination, we are
told,3 " is as much a normal condition of modern industry "
as competition, as, indeed, on the doctrine of freedom of
contract it is bound to be. When wage-earners combine
to improve the conditions of their employment, or when
employers, on the other hand, tacitly or formally unite to
reduce wages, — when, again, a great capitalist undertaking
enjoys a virtual monopoly of any kind of employment,
abstract economics is frankly incapable of predicting the
result. " If," says Professor Marshall, " the employers in
any trade act together and so do the employed, the solution
of the problem of wages becomes indeterminate. The trade
as a whole may be regarded as receiving a surplus (or quasi-
rent) consisting of the excess of the aggregate price which it
can get for such wares as it produces, over what it has to
pay to other trades for the raw materials, etc., which it buys ;
and there is nothing but bargaining to decide the exact shares
in which this should go to employers and employed. No
lowering of wages will be permanently in the interest of
employers which is unnecessary and drives many skilled
workers to other markets, or even to other industries in
which they abandon the special income derived from their
particular skill ; and wages must be high enough in an
average year to attract young people to the trade. This

1 Mathematical Psychics (London, 1881), p. 46, by F. Y. Edgeworth, now
Drummond Professor of Political Economy in the University of Oxford.

2 " In practical life such frictional disturbances are innumerable. At no
moment and in no branch of production are they entirely absent. And thus it is
that the Law of Costs is recognised as a law that is only approximately valid ; a
law riddled through and through with exceptions. These innumerable exceptions,
small and great, are the inexhaustible source of the undertaker's profits, but also
of the undertaker's losses."— The Positive Theory of Capital, by E. v. Bohm-
Bavverk, translated by W. Smart (London, 1891), p. 234.

3 Stitdies in Economics, by W. Smart, Adam Smith Professor of Political
Economy in the University of Glasgow (London, 1895), P- 259-

The Verdict of the Economists 649

sets lower limits to wages, and upper limits are set by
corresponding necessities as to the supply of capital and
business power. But what point within these limits should
be taken at any time can be decided only by higgling and
bargaining? *

We thus see that it is not only economically permissible,
but in the view of our best authorities necessary for self-pro-
tection, that the workmen should not simply acquiesce in what-
ever conditions the employer may propose, but that they
should take deliberate steps to protect themselves by " higgling
and bargaining," if they are not to suffer lower wages and
worse conditions of employment than there is any economic
necessity for. " If the workman," says Walker, " from any
cause does not pursue his interest he loses his interest^ whether
he refrain from bodily fear, from poverty, from ignorance,
from timidity, and dread of censure, or from the effects of
bad political economy which assures him that if he does not
seek his interest, his interest will seek him." 2 And if the
workmen ask how they can strengthen themselves in this
higgling and bargaining, how they are most effectually to
pursue their own interest, the answer of abstract economics
is now, positively, combination. " In that contest of endurance
between buyer and seller [of labor]," wrote J. S. Mill in 1869,
" nothing but a close combination among the employed can
give them even a chance of successfully competing against
the employers." 3 This was one of the conclusions that most
shocked Mill's economic friends of 1869, but it is one which
has since become an economic commonplace.4 In 1881

1 Elements of Economics of Industry, by Professor A. Marshall (London, 1892),
p. 341. "Demand and supply are not physical agencies which thrust a given
amount of wages into the laborer's hand without the participation of his own will
and actions. The market rate is not fixed for him by some self-acting instrument,
but is the result of bargaining between human beings — of what Adam Smith calls
'the higgling of the market.'" — J. S. Mill, Principles of Political Economy,
Book V. ch. x. sec. 5.

2 The Wages Question, by F. A. Walker (New York, 1876 ; London, 1891),
pp. 364, 411.

3 Fortnightly Reviciv, May 1869; Dissertations and Disciissions (London,
1876), vol. iv. p. 42.

4 " Combination is, in fact, the only way by which the poor can place them-

650 Trade Union Theory

Professor Edgeworth, in the work which we have already
quoted, placed it on the rock of mathematical analysis.
Summing up a long mathematical argument as to " the
general case in which numbers, natures, and combinations
are unequal," he declares that "combination tends to
introduce or increase indeterminateness ; and the final settle-
ments thereby added are more favorable to the combiners
than the (determinate or indeterminate) final settlements
previously existing." In his opinion, in fact, "the one thing
from an abstract point of view visible amidst the jumble
of catallactic molecules, the jostle of competitive crowds, is
that those who form themselves into compact bodies by
combination do not tend to lose, but stand to gain" * Nor
need the combination amount in any sense to a monopoly.
" If, for instance," proceeds Professor Edgeworth, " powerful
trade unions did not seek to fix the quid pro quo, the
amounts of labor exchanged for wealth (which they would
be quite competent to seek), but only the rate of exchange,
it being left to each capitalist to purchase as much labor as
he might demand at that rate, there would still be that sort
of indeterminateness favorable to unionists above described."
And no trade need refrain, out of consideration for the
interests of other trades, from doing the best it can for itself
in its negotiations with its own particular employers. " It is
safe to say," observes Professor Taussig, " that in concrete life
it happens very rarely, probably never, that a specific rise in
wages, secured by strike or trade union pressure or simple
agreement, can be shown to bring any off-setting loss in the
wages of those not directly concerned. . . . The chances are
against any traceable loss which would off-set the visible gain.
Certainly an unbiassed and judicious adviser, having the
interest of all laborers at heart, would hesitate long before
counselling any particular set of laborers against an endeavor

selves on a par with the rich in bargaining." — H. Sidgwick, Elements of Politics,
ch. xxviii. sec. 2, p. 579 of 2nd edition (London, 1897).

1 Mathematical Psychics (London, 1881), by Prof. F. Y. Edgeworth, pp.
43. 44-

The Verdict of the Economists 651

to get better terms from their employers, on the ground that
as an ulterior result of success some of their fellows might
suffer. If no other objection than this presented itself, he
could safely assert that economic science had nothing to say
against their endeavors, and much in favor of them." 1 Pro-
fessor Sidgwick has therefore no difficulty in reciting various
typical circumstances under which abstract economics show
it to be quite possible for Trade Unions to raise wages, and
in concluding that " in all the above cases it is possible for a
combination of workmen to secure, either temporarily or
permanently, a rise in wages ; whilst in none of them, except
the last, has such gain any manifest tendency to be counter-
balanced by future loss. And it does not appear that these
cases are in practice very exceptional, or that the proposition
that * Trade Unions cannot in the long run succeed in raising
wages ' corresponds even approximately to the actual facts
of industry," whilst there is really no ground for the conclusion
of the older economists " that if one set of laborers obtain an
increase of wages in this way, there must be a corresponding
reduction in the wages of other laborers." 2 Finally, we have
the deliberate judgment of Professor Marshall, cautiously
summing up his examination of the arguments for and
against Trade Unionism. " In trades which have any sort
of monopoly the workers, by limiting their numbers, may
secure very high wages at the expense partly of the employers,
but chiefly of the general community. But such action
generally diminishes the number of skilled workers, and in
this and other ways takes more in the aggregate from the
real wages of workers outside than it adds to those of
workers inside ; and thus on the balance it lowers average
wages.3 . . . Passing from selfish and exclusive action of this

1 Wages and Capital: an Examination of the Wages Fund Doctrine, by
F. W. Taussig, Professor of Political Economy in Harvard University (London,
1896), pp. 103, 104.

2 Principles of Political Economy, by Henry Sidgwick, Professor of Moral
Philosophy at the University of Cambridge (London, 1883), p. 363.

3 Other authorities doubt whether, on any reasoning of abstract economics,
this drawback can be shown necessarily to result. "If," observes Professor
Edgeworth, "it is attempted to enforce the argument against Trade Unionism by

652 Trade Union Theory

sort, we find that unions generally can so arrange their
bargaining with employers as to remove the special disad-
vantages under which workmen would lie if bargaining as indi-
viduals and without reserve ; and in consequence employers
may sometimes find the path of least resistance in paying
somewhat higher wages than they would otherwise have
done. In trades which use much fixed capital a strong union
may for a time divert a great part of the aggregate net income
(which is really a quasi-rent) to the workers ; but this injury
to capital will be partly transmitted to consumers, and partly,
by its rebound, reduce employment and lower wages. . . .
Other things being equal, the presence of a union in a trade
raises wages relatively to other trades. But the influence
which unions exert on the average level of wages is less than
would be inferred by looking at the influence which they
exert in each particular trade. When the measures which
they take to raise wages in one trade have the effect of
rendering business more difficult, or anxious, or impeding it
in any other way, they are likely to diminish employment in
other trades, and thus to cause a greater aggregate loss of wages
to other trades than they gain for themselves, and to lower
and not raise the average level of wages. . . . The power of
unions to raise general wages by direct means is never great ;
it is never sufficient to contend successfully with the general
economic forces of the age, when their drift is against a rise
of wages. But yet it is sufficient materially to benefit the
worker, when it is so directed as to co-operate with and to
strengthen those general agencies, which are tending to
improve his position morally and economically." l No

the consideration that it tends to diminish the total national produce, the obvious
reply is that Unionists, as 'Economic men,' are not concerned with the total
produce. Because the total produce is diminished it does not follow that the
laborer's share is diminished (the loss may fall on the capitalist and the
entrepreneur whose compressibility has been well shown by Mr. Sidgwick,
Fortnightly Review, September 1879) ; much less does it follow that there should
be diminished that quantity which alone the rational unionist is concerned to
increase — the laborer's utility." — Mathematical Psychics, p. 45.

1 Elements of Economics of Industry, by Prof. A. Marshall (London, 1892),
pp. 407, 408.

The Verdict of the Economists 653

economist of the present day can therefore look forward, as
the popular advisers of the middle class even within the
present generation confidently could, to a time when " the
fanatical faith of the working classes in the artificial
mechanism of combination will give place to trust in the
wiser, because more natural, system of individual competition ;
and the hiring of labor, like the exchange of commodities,
will be set free, to be regulated by the Heaven-ordained laws
of Supply and Demand." l

Thus, economic authority to-day, looking back on the
confident assertions against Trade Unionism made by
M'Culloch and Mill, Nassau Senior and Harriet Martineau,
Fawcett and Cairnes, has humbly to admit, in the words of
the present occupant of the chair once rilled by Nassau Senior
himself, that " in the matter of [Trade] Unionism, as well as
in that of the predeterminate wage-fund, the untutored mind
of the workman had gone more straight to the point than
economic intelligence misled by a bad method." 2 The
verdict of abstract economics is, in fact, decidedly in favor
of the Trade Union contention, if only within certain limits.
Whether this view of Trade Unionism in the abstract is
worth any more, in relation to the actual problems of
practical life, than the contrary verdict arrived at by the
economists of a preceding generation, is a matter on which
opinions will differ. For our own part, we are loth to pin our
faith to any manipulation of economic abstractions, with or
without the aid of mathematics. We are inclined to attach
more weight to a consideration of the processes of industrial
life as they actually exist. In the next chapter we shall
accordingly seek to follow out the course of that " higgling
and bargaining " upon which, as we have seen, the conditions
of employment admittedly depend.

1 Trade Unionism, by James Stirling, p. 55.
* Mathematical Psychics (p. 45), by F. Y. Edgeworth.

CHAPTER II

THE HIGGLING OF THE MARKET

IT is often taken for granted that the higgling of the
market, in which the workman is interested, is confined to
the negotiation between himself and his employer. But the
share of the aggregate product of the nation's industry which
falls to the wage-earners as a class, or to any particular
operative — notably the division of that portion which may
be regarded as the " debatable land " — depends not merely
on the strength or weakness of the workman's position
towards the capitalist employer, but also on the strategic
position of the employer towards the wholesale trader, that
of the wholesale trader towards the shopkeeper, and that of
the shopkeeper towards the consumer. The higgling of the
market, which, under a system of free competition and Indi-
vidual Bargaining, determines the conditions of employment,
occurs in a chain of bargains linking together the manual
worker, the capitalist employer, the wholesale trader, the
shopkeeper, and the customer. Any addition to, or sub-
traction from, this series of intermediaries between the
manual worker and the consumer — the excision of the
capitalist employer or of the wholesale or retail trader, the
insertion of a sub-contractor at one end or of a " tallyman "

1 The "tallyman" is a drapery hawker, visiting the houses of his customers,
and selling his wares upon a particularly objectionable system of credit. See
the article on "Tally System "in Chambers's Encyclopedia (London, 1874) ;
and the excellent article under "Tally Trade" in M'Culloch's Dictionary of

The Higgling of the Market 655

at the other — will be found, in practice, to materially alter
the position of all the parties. We must therefore examine
separately the conditions of each of these series of bargains.1

It will be convenient to put on one side for the moment
any consideration of gluts or scarcities — whether there is a
surplus of workmen seeking situations or of vacancies to be
filled ; whether manufacturers are heaping up stocks, or are
unable to keep pace with the orders they receive ; whether
the trader's "turn-over" is falling off or rapidly increasing.
These variations in supply and demand will, of course,
greatly affect the relative pressure of the forces which deter-
mine particular bargains. But fluctuations of this kind,
however important they may be to the parties concerned,
and however much we may believe them, in the long run, to
weight the scales in favor of one class or another, tend only
to obscure the essential and permanent characteristics of the
several relationships. To reveal these characteristics, we
must assume a market in a state of perfect equilibrium,
where the supply is exactly equal in quantity to the
demand.

We begin with the bargain between the workman and
the capitalist employer. We assume that there is only a
single situation vacant and only one candidate for it. When
the workman applies for the post to the employer's foreman,
the two parties to the bargain differ considerably in strategic
strength. There is first the difference of alternative. If the
foreman, and the capitalist employer for whom he acts, fail
to come to terms with the workman, they may be put to
some inconvenience in arranging the work of the establish-

Commerce and Commercial Navigation (London, 1882), pp. 1357-58 ; also C. S.
Devas's Groundwork of Economics (London, 1883), note to sec. 213, p. 443.

1 It is, in our view, one of the most unsatisfactory features of the older
economists, that they habitually ignored the actual structure of the industrial
world around them, and usually confined their analysis to the abstract figures of
" the capitalist " and " the laborer." For a brief description of the main outline
of English business structure see the article on " The House of Lords and the
Sweating System," Nineteenth Century ', May 1890, by Beatrice Potter (Mrs.
Sidney Webb). A systematic economic analysis of the actual mechanism of
English business life is badly needed.

656 Trade Union Theory

ment. They may have to persuade the other workmen to
work harder or to work overtime ; they may even be com-
pelled to leave a machine vacant, and thus run the risk of
some delay in the completion of an order. Even if the
workman remains obdurate, the worst that the capitalist
suffers is a fractional decrease of the year's profit.1 Mean-
while, he and his foreman, with their wives and families, find
their housekeeping quite unaffected ; they go on eating and
drinking, working and enjoying themselves, whether the
bargain with the individual workman has been made or not.
Very different is the case with the wage-earner. If he
refuses the foreman's terms even for a day, he irrevocably
loses his whole day's subsistence. If he has absolutely no
other resources than his labor, hunger brings him to his
knees the very next morning. Even if he has a little hoard,
or a couple of rooms full of furniture, he and his family
can only exist by the immediate sacrifice of their cherished
provision against calamity, or the stripping of their home.
Sooner or later he must come to terms, on pain of starvation
or the workhouse.2 And since success in the higgling of the

1 The latest critic of the theory of Trade Unionism denies this inequality, on
the ground that whilst the wage-earners must starve if the employers stand out,
the employers may be driven into bankruptcy if the workmen revolt (A Criti-
cism of the Theory of Trade? Unions ', by T. S. Cree, Glasgow, 1891, p. 20).
But this very argument assumes " a stoppage of work through a strike " — that is
to say, deliberately concerted action among the wage-earners — the very Trade
Unionism which the writer declares to be unnecessary.

2 It is interesting to find this situation clearly seen by an unknown French
writer of 1773: " Partout oil il y a de tres-grandes proprietes, et par conse-
quent, beaucoup de journaliers, voici comment s'etablit naturellement le prix des
journees : le journalier demande une somme, le proprietaire en propose un
moindre ; et comme il ajoute je puts me passer de vous plusieurs jours, voyez si
vous pouvez vous passer de moi vingt-quatre heures, on sait que le marche est
bientot conclu au prejudice du journalier." — Eloge de Jean Baptiste Colbert, par
Monsieur P. (Paris, 1773), p. 8. Three years later Adam Smith remarked
that " in the long run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his
master is to him, but the necessity is not so immediate" (Wealth of Nations,
London, 1776, Book I. ch. viii. p. 30 of M'Cullochs edition). Du Cellier
(Histoire des Classes Laborieuses en France} observes that " the struggle in the
labor market too often takes place, not between two equal contracting parties,
but between a money-bag and a stomach" (p. 324). "In the general course
of human nature," remarked the shrewd founders of the American Constitu-
tion, "power over a man's subsistence amounts to a power over his will"
(Federalist, No. Ixxix.),

The Higgling of the Market 657

market is largely determined by the relative eagerness of the
parties to come to terms — especially if this eagerness cannot
be hid — it is now agreed, even if on this ground alone, " that
manual laborers as a class are at a disadvantage in bar-
gaining." 1

But there is also a marked difference between the parties
in that knowledge of the circumstances which is requisite
for successful higgling. " The art of bargaining," observed
Jevons, " mainly consists in the buyer ascertaining the lowest
price at which the seller is willing to part with his object,
without disclosing, if possible, the highest price which he, the
buyer, is willing to give. . . . The power of reading another
man's thoughts is of high importance in business." 2 Now the
essential economic weakness of the isolated workman's posi-
tion, as we have just described it, is necessarily known to the
employer and his foreman. The isolated workman, on the
other hand, is ignorant of the employer's position. Even in
the rare cases in which the absence of a single workman is
seriously inconvenient to the capitalist employer, this is
unknown to any one outside his office. What is even more
important, the employer, knowing the state of the market
for his product, can form a clear opinion of how much it is
worth his while to give, rather than go without the labor
altogether, or rather than postpone it for a few weeks.
But the isolated workman, unaided by any Trade Union
official, and unable to communicate even with the workmen
in other towns, is wholly in the dark as to how much he
might ask.

With these two important disadvantages, it is compara-
tively a minor matter that the manual worker is, from his

1 Principles of Economics, by Professor A. Marshall, 3rd edition (London,
1895), Book VI. ch. iv. p. 649. Professor Marshall adds that " the effects of the
laborer's disadvantage in bargaining are therefore cumulative in two ways. It
lowers his wages ; and, as we have seen, this lowers his efficiency as a worker, and
thereby lowers the normal value of his labor. And in addition it diminishes his
efficiency as a bargainer, and thus increases the chance that he will sell his labor
for less than its normal value."

2 W. S. Jevons, Theory of Political Economy, 3rd edition (London, 1888),
ch. iv. p. 124.

VOL. II 2 U

658 Trade Union Theory

position and training, far less skilled than the employer or
his foreman in the art of bargaining itself. This art forms
a large part of the daily life of the entrepreneur, whilst the
foreman is specially selected for his skill in engaging and
superintending workmen. The manual worker, on the con-
trary, has the very smallest experience of, and practically
no training in, what is essentially one of the arts of the
capitalist employer. He never engages in any but one sort
of bargaining, and that only on occasions which may be infre-
quent, and which in any case make up only a tiny fraction
of his life.

Thus, in the making of the labor contract the isolated
individual workman, unprotected by any combination with
his fellows, stands in all respects at a disadvantage compared
with the capitalist employer. There is an even more serious
disadvantage to come. The hiring of a workman, unlike a
contract for the purchase of a commodity, necessarily leaves
many conditions not precisely determined, still less expressed
in any definite form. This indeterminateness of the labor
contract is in some respects a drawback to the employer.
In return for the specified wage, the workman has impliedly
agreed to give work of the currently accepted standard of
quantity and quality. The lack of definiteness in this respect
leaves him free to skulk or to scamp. But against this the
employer protects himself by providing supervision and by
requiring obedience to his foreman, if not also by elaborate
systems of fines and deductions. Whenever there is any
dispute as to the speed of work, or the quality of the output,
the foreman's decision is absolute. To the workman, how-
ever, the indeterminateness of his contract is a far more
fruitful source of personal hardship, against which he has no
practicable remedy. When an additional " hand " is taken on
in a manufacturing establishment, practically the only point
explicitly agreed upon between him and the foreman is the
amount of the weekly wage, or possibly the scale of piece-
work rates. How many hours he shall work, how quickly
or how intensely he is to exert himself, what intervals will

The Higgling of the Market 659

be allowed for meals, what fines and deductions he will be
subject to, what provision is made for warmth and shelter,
the arrangements for ventilation and prevention of accidents,
the sanitary accommodation, the noise, the smell and the dirt,
the foreman's temper and the comrades' manners — all this
has to be taken for granted, it being always implied in the
engagement that the workman accepts the conditions existing
in the employer's establishment, and obeys all his lawful
commands. It may be urged that, if the conditions are
worse than is customary, the workman will not accept the
situation, unless he is offered higher wages. But until he has
made his contract and actually begun work, he cannot know
what the conditions are, even if he could estimate their dis-
advantage in terms of money, and stand out for the higher
price. Moreover, unless fixed by law or Collective Bargain-
ing, these conditions may at any moment be changed at
the will of the employer, or the caprice of the fore-
man. Thus, when the isolated workman has made his
bargain, he has no assurance that it will be adhered to,
as regards any element other than the money wage, and
even this may be eaten into by unforeseen fines and de-
ductions. On all the other conditions of employment he
is, under an unregulated industrial system, absolutely in the
hands of the employer for the period of his engagement.
The workman may, indeed, give up his situation, and throw
himself again on the market, to incur once more the risk of
losing his subsistence whilst seeking a new place, and to
suffer afresh the perils of Individual Bargaining ; but even
if he makes up his mind rather to lose his employment
than to put up with intolerable conditions, he is not legally
free to do so without proper notice,1 and for his sufferings
during this period he has no redress.

Such are the disadvantages at which, when the labor

1 Leaving work without giving the notice expressed or implied in the contract
renders the workman liable to be sued for damages ; and such actions by the
employer against recalcitrant workmen are frequent, especially in the coal-mining
industry.

66o Trade Union Theory

market is in a state of perfect equilibrium, the isolated
individual workman stands in bargaining with the capitalist
employer. But it is, to say the least of it, unusual, in any
trade in this country, for there to be no more workmen
applying for situations than there are situations to be filled.
When the unemployed are crowding round the factory gates
every morning, it is plain to each man that, unless he can
induce the foreman to select him rather than another, his
chance of subsistence for weeks to come may be irretrievably
lost. Under these circumstances bargaining, in the case of
isolated individual workmen, becomes absolutely impossible.
The foreman has only to pick his man, and tell him the
terms. Once inside the gates, the lucky workman knows
that if he grumbles at any of the surroundings, however
intolerable ; if he demurs to any speeding-up, lengthening of
the hours, or deductions ; or if he hesitates to obey any
order, however unreasonable, he condemns himself once more
to the semi-starvation and misery of unemployment. For
the alternative to the foreman is merely to pick another man
from the eager crowd, whilst the difference to the employer
becomes incalculably infinitesimal. And it is a mistake to
suppose that the workman's essential disadvantages in
bargaining disappear in times of good trade, or even when
employers are complaining of a scarcity of hands. The
workman, it is true, need not then fear starvation, for he
may rely on finding another employer. But if he refuses
the first employer's terms, he still irrevocably loses his day's
subsistence, and runs a risk of seeing subsequent days pass
in the same manner. Moreover, the tramp after another
employer may often mean the breaking up of his home,
removal from his friends, dislocation of his children's educa-
tion, and all the hundred and one discomforts of migration
or exile.1 The employer, on the other hand, will be induced

1 Thus, in 1896, a year of exceptionally good trade, between five and six
hundred members of the Associated Shipwrights' Society obtained advances of
railway fares to enable them to move from their homes, where they were un-
employed, to other towns where work was to be had ; see Fifteenth Annual
Report of the Associated Shipwrights' Society (Newcastle, 1897), pp. 164-179.

The Higgling of the Market 66 1

to offer higher terms, rather than run the risk of foregoing
some part of the increased profits of brisk times. But the
extent of the " debatable land " is, in these times of high
profits, enormously increased, and no one but the employer
himself knows by how much. Here the difference in the
knowledge of the circumstances becomes all-important, and
fatally disadvantageous to the isolated workman. The
employer knows about what other firms have been paying
for their labor, and to what extent there is a real scarcity of
workmen ; hence he can judge how little he need offer to
make his place seem worth accepting to the unemployed
workman. The isolated workman, on the other hand, has
no knowledge whether the scarcity of labor extends beyond
his own town, or is likely to be prolonged ; whilst he has
not the slightest idea of how much he might stand out for,
and yet be taken on. In short, it would be easy to argue
that, in spite of the actual rise of his wages in times of good
trade, it is just when profits are largest that the isolated
workman stands at the greatest economic disadvantage in
the division of the " debatable land."

So far the argument that the isolated workman, unpro-
tected by anything in the nature of Trade Unionism, must
necessarily get the worst of the bargain, rests on the assump-
tion that the capitalist employer will take full advantage of
his strategic strength, and beat each class of wage-earners
down to the lowest possible terms. In so far as this result
depends upon the will and intention of each individual
employer, the assumption is untrue. A capitalist employer
who looks forward, not to one but to many years' produc-
tion, and who regards his business as a valuable property to
be handed down from one generation to another, will, if only
for his own sake, bear in mind the probable effect of any
reduction upon the permanent efficiency of the establish-
ment. He will know that he cannot subject his work-
people to bad conditions of employment without causing
them imperceptibly to deteriorate in the quantity or quality
of the service that they render. As an organiser of men, he

662 Trade Union Theory

will readily appreciate to how great an extent the smooth
and expeditious working of a complicated industrial concern
depends on each man feeling that he is being treated with
consideration, and that he is receiving at least as much
as he might be earning elsewhere. But apart from these
considerations of mere self-interest, the typical capitalist
manufacturer of the present generation, with his increasing
education and refinement, his growing political interests and
public spirit, will, so long as his own customary income is
not interfered with, take a positive pleasure in augmenting
the wages and promoting the comfort of his workpeople.
Unfortunately, the intelligent, far-sighted, and public-spirited
employer is not master of the situation. Unless he is pro-
tected by one or other of the dykes or bulwarks presently to
be described, he is constantly finding himself as powerless
as the workman to withstand the pressure of competitive
industry. How this competitive pressure pushes him, in
sheer self-defence, to take as much advantage of his work-
people as the most grasping and short-sighted of his rivals,
we shall understand by examining the next link in the
chain.

Paradoxical as it may appear, in the highly-developed
commercial system of the England of to-day the capitalist
manufacturer stands at as great a relative disadvantage to
the wholesale trader as the isolated workman does to the
capitalist manufacturer. In the higgling of the market with
the wholesale trader who takes his product, the capitalist
manufacturer exhibits the same inferiority of strategic posi-
tion with regard to the alternative, with regard to know-
ledge of the circumstances, and with regard to bargaining
capacity. First, we have the fact that the manufacturer
stands to lose more by failing to sell his product with
absolute regularity, than the wholesale trader does by
temporarily abstaining from buying. To the manufacturer,
with his capital locked up in mills and plant, continuity of
employment is all-important. If his mills have to stop even
for a single day, he has irrevocably lost that day's gross

The Higgling of the Market 663

income, including out-of-pocket expenses for necessary
salaries and maintenance. To the wholesale trader, on the
other hand, it is comparatively a small matter that his stocks
run low for a short time. His unemployed working-capital
is, at worst, gaining deposit interest at the bank, and all he
foregoes is a fraction of his profits for the year. Moreover,
as the wholesale trader makes his income by a tiny profit
per cent on a huge turnover, any particular transaction is
comparatively unimportant to him. The manufacturer,
earning a relatively large percentage on a small turnover, is
much more concerned about each part of it. In short,
whilst the capitalist manufacturer is " a combination in
himself" compared with the thousand workmen whom he
employs, the wholesale trader is "a combination in himself"
compared with the hundreds of manufacturers from whom
he buys. The disparity is no less great with regard to that
knowledge of the market which is invaluable in bargaining.
The manufacturer, even if he has a resident agent at the
chief commercial centre, can never aspire to anything like
the wide outlook over all the world, and the network of
communications from retail traders and shipping agents in
every town, which make up the business organisation of the
wholesale trader. The trader, in short, alone possesses an
up-to-date knowledge of the market in all its aspects ; he
alone receives the latest information as to what shopkeepers
find most in demand, and what native and foreign manu-
facturers are offering for sale. With all this superiority of
knowledge, it is a minor matter that, as compared with the
manufacturer, immersed in the organisation of labor and the
improvement of technical processes, the wholesale trader is a
specialist in bargaining, trained by his whole life in the art
of buying in the cheapest and selling in the dearest market.1

1 Where, as is the case in many trades, the wholesale trader sends out
travellers to visit the retail shopkeepers, the manufacturer is even more
dependent on him. For these travellers have great power to "push "one
line of goods rather than another, and if any wholesale house has a well-
established connection — still more, if its shopkeeping clients are in any way
dependent on it — it can seriously injure a particular manufacturer by boycotting

664 Trade Union Theory

Thus, when the manufacturer negotiates for an order, he
is, within certain undefined limits, at the mercy of the whole-
sale trader. He is told that the price of his product is too
high to attract customers ; that the shopkeepers find no
demand for it ; that foreign producers are daily encroaching
on the neutral markets ; and, finally, that there has just
come an offer from a rival manufacturer to supply the same
kind of article at a lower price. The manufacturer may
doubt these statements, but he has no means of disproving
them. He is keenly alive to the fact that his brother manu-
facturers are as eager as he is to get the order, and some of
them, he knows, are always striving to undercut prices.
Unless he is a man of substance, able to wait for more
profitable orders, or unless his product is a speciality of his
own, which no one else makes, he is almost certain to be
tempted, rather than lose the business, to accept a lower
offer than he meant to. The price he has accepted can
only work out in a profit by some lowering of the cost of
production. He consults his partners and his foreman as to
how this can be effected. Some slight improvement may
be possible in the technical process, or a new machine may
be introduced. But this takes both time and capital. If
neither law nor combination stands in the way, it is far
easier to meet the emergency by extracting more work from
his operatives for the same pay — by "speeding-up," by
lengthening hours, by increased rigor in respect of fines
and deductions, or by a positive reduction of time wages or
piecework rates. Any idea of introducing better sanitary
accommodation or further fencing of machinery is given up,
and all the working expenses are reduced to their lowest
limit. Whatever reluctance the good manufacturer may
have to take this course necessarily disappears when he finds

his product. The manufacturer may, of course, put his own travellers on the
road. But it is clearly more economical for the wholesale house to maintain the
travellers, so that the little shopkeeper can get all his stock at once, than for the
manufacturer of each article to have his own separate staff. The continued exist-
ence of the wholesale trader is thus as economically advantageous to all but the
largest manufacturers as it is to all but the largest retailers,

The Higgling of the Market 665

his more necessitous or less scrupulous rivals actually fore-
stalling him. For just as in every trade there are far-sighted
and kindly-disposed employers who feel for their workpeople
as for themselves, so there are others in whom the desire for
personal gain is the dominating passion, and whose lack of
intelligence, or financial " shadiness," shuts them out from
any other policy than "grinding the faces of the poor."
The manufacturer of this type needs no pressure from the
wholesale trader to stimulate him to take the fullest possible
advantage of the necessities of his workpeople ; and in face
of competition of this kind the good employer has no choice
but to yield. Anything, he says to himself, is better for his
workpeople than stopping his own mill and driving the
trade into such channels.

There is, moreover, another reason that makes the
manufacturer yield to the constant nibbling at price, which
forms so large a part of the art of the wholesale trader. In
order that the manufacturer may make a profit on the year's
trading he must obtain for his output, not only enough to
cover the outgoings for wages and raw material — the " prime
cost " of the finished product — but also the standing charges
of the manufactory, termed by Professor Marshall the "supple-
mentary cost." When a manufacturer is pressed to make a
bargain at the lowest price, rather than see his mill stand idle,
it is the " prime cost " which he thinks of as the minimum that
he can accept without loss, since the standing charges will
go on anyhow. Each manufacturer in turn prefers to sell at
" prime cost " rather than not get an order at all, with the
result, as the saying is, of " spoiling the market " for them-
selves and their rivals alike.1 The standing charges have to
be met somehow, and the harassed employer is forced to turn

1 It was especially this effect of manufacturers' competition to secure orders —
the frequent sales at prices covering " prime cost " only — that led to the formation
of the remarkable "alliances " in the Birmingham hardware trades described in the
chapter on " The Assumptions of Trade Unionism." To secure protection against
the resulting constant degradation of price is the usual motive for manufacturers'
rings and syndicates. The difference between " prime cost " and "supplementary
cost " in English industry is worth further economic and statistical investigation ;
see especially the chapter entitled " Cost Taking," in The New Trades Combina-

666 Trade Union Theory

for relief to any possible cutting-down of the expenses of
production, wages not excluded. Meanwhile, the wholesale
trader sees no possible objection to the reduction he has
effected. To him it is of no pecuniary consequence that a
large proportion of the manufacturers of a particular article
are only just managing to cover its " prime cost," and are
thus really losing money, or that the workpeople in the
hardest pressed mills or the least fortunate districts are,
owing to a worsening of conditions, beginning to degrade in
character and efficiency. If the product seriously falls off in
quality relatively to the price demanded, he can go else-
where ; and he makes, moreover, quite as large a percentage
on low-grade goods as on those of standard excellence.
And if he thinks about it at all, he regards himself as the
representative, not of a particular class of producers, but of
the whole world of consumers, to whom it is an obvious
advantage that the price should be lowered.

We need not wonder, therefore, at the chronic complaints
of manufacturers in every trade, that profits are always being
reduced, so that business is scarcely worth carrying on.
Even in years of national prosperity, when Income Tax and
Death Duties show that vast fortunes are being made some-
where, the employers who have no individual speciality,
whose output is taken by the wholesale trader, and
who are unable to form a " ring " or " alliance " to keep
up prices, bitterly complain that it is as much as they
can do to cover the " prime cost " of their products, or
that, at best, they find themselves earning only the barest
interest on capital.1 For the influences which we have

tion Movement, by E. J. Smith (Birmingham, 1895). For statistics relating to
American industry the student may consult the Report of the Commissioner of
Labor in the United States for i8go (Washington, 1891) and the valuable series
of Reports of Statistics of Manufactures of Massachusetts from 1886 to i8g6.
Particulars of English factory usage will be found in Factory Accounts, by
E. Garcke and J. M. Fells. The only English statistics consist of a brief
Report on the Relation of Wages to the Cost of Production, C. 6535, 1891.

In his Principles of Economics, Book V. chaps, iv. and vii., Prof. Marshall has
described the relative influence on exchange value of "prime" and "supple-
mentary " cost.

1 How keenly this pressure is felt by the manufacturers who are exposed tq

The Higgling of the Market 667

described affect the higgling of the market when the real
demand of the consumers is brisk as well as when it is
restricted. They amount, in fact, under a system of free
and unregulated competition, to a permanent pressure on
manufacturing employers to take the fullest possible ad-
vantage of their strategic superiority in bargaining with the
isolated workman.

But we should make a mistake if we imagined that the
pressure originated with the wholesale trader. Just as the
manufacturer is conscious of his weakness in face of the

full competition, may be judged from the following speech from Lord Masham —
the Samuel Lister who has made a colossal fortune from his legally protected
patents. Having explained why the Manningham Mills had earned less than
they were expected to earn, Lord Masham went on to argue that they had earned
a great deal more than most other concerns. " Lister & Co. had earned during
the eight years it had been a company an average of 4 per cent on the entire capital
— that was, throwing debentures, preference shares, and ordinary stock all into
one pool. If the money had been invested in agriculture, what would have
happened? He had invested the same amount in agriculture, for which he
got 2^ per cent and he bought to receive 3. He had lost as much money nearly in
agriculture as he had by his investment in Lister & Co. Then he would go on
to cotton. He saw in the Saturday Review an article stating that the cotton
spinning trade was paying, on the average of a large number of limited companies,
I ^ or i^r per cent. That looked so outrageous that he could not believe it. He cut
the statement out, and sent it to a gentleman who was in the cotton trade, and
whose father was in the cotton trade before him. That gentleman sent it back
again, saying that it was absolutely true, and he said, ' I will tell you something
else — I challenge the whole trade of Lancashire, and I will guarantee that the
whole trade of Lancashire is not on the capital invested paying as much as
Consols — not the spinning alone, but the whole manufacturing trade of Lancashire.'
So much with regard to two industries. Coming to iron, what was the state of
the iron trade two or three years ago ? Three years ago, at any rate, half the
iron concerns in England were standing, and those that were at work were
making no profit. They were declaring no dividend, and therefore, if the two
good years which they had had just recently were added to the back years, he
would guarantee that during the time of Lister & Co. the iron concerns had not
made on their capital the 4 per cent that Manningham had. Then he came to
another industry, on which he could speak with authority. It was one of the
greatest industries in England, and employed over 800,000 persons. If it went on
increasing as it had done it would be our greatest industry. He referred to coal.
He had been in the coal hole (laughter), and he knew that for several years he
made no interest, and he had very nearly as much money invested in it as in
Manningham."

This speech was made in January 1897, at a tmie °f roaring good trade, after
several years of more than average prosperity, when the aggregate profits of Great
Britain as a whole were apparently larger than they had been at any previous
period of its history !

668 Trade Union Theory

wholesale trader, so the wholesale trader feels himself help-
less before the retail shopkeeper to whom he sells his stock.
Here the inferiority is not in any greater loss that would
arise if no business were done, for the retailer is impelled to
buy by motives exactly as strong as those which impel the
wholesale house to sell. Nor is it in any difference in bargain-
ing power. In both these respects the wholesale house may
even have the advantage over the shopkeepers. But the
shopkeepers have a closer and more up-to-date knowledge
of exactly what it is that customers are asking for, and,
what is far more important, they can to some extent direct
this demand by placing, before the great ignorant body of
consumers, one article rather than another. They have,
therefore, to be courted by the wholesale trader, and induced
to push the particular " lines " that he is interested in.
There is, however, yet another, and even a more active, cause
for the weakness in strategic position of the wholesale trader.
His main economic function is to " nurse " the small shop-
keeper. The little retailer, with a narrow range of clients,
cannot buy sufficient of any one article to enable him to deal
directly with the maker ; he cannot, moreover, communicate
with the large number of separate manufacturers whose
products he sells ; nor could he spare the capital to pay cash
for his stock. The wholesale trader accordingly acts as his
intermediary. In the large city warehouse, the shopkeeper
finds collected before him the products of all the manufacturers
in the various branches of his trade ; he can take as small a
quantity of each as he chooses, and he is given as much
credit as his turnover requires. As long as this state of
things lasts the wholesale trader holds the field. But there
has been, for the last half century, a constant tendency
towards a revolution in retail trade. In one town or one
district after another there grow up, instead of numberless
little shops, large retail businesses, possessing as much
capital and commercial knowledge as the wholesale house
itself, and able to give orders that even the wealthiest
manufacturers are glad to receive. Hence the wholesale

The Higgling of the Market 669

house stands in constant danger of losing his clients, the
smaller ones because they cannot buy cheaply enough to
resist the cutting prices of their mammoth rivals, and these
leviathans themselves because they are able to do without
their original intermediaries. The wholesale trader's only
chance of retaining their custom is to show a greater
capacity for screwing down the prices of the manufacturers
than even the largest shopkeeper possesses. He is therefore
driven, as a matter of life and death, to concentrate his
attention on extracting, from one manufacturer after another,
a continual succession of heavy discounts or special terms of
some kind. This, then, is the fundamental reason why the
manufacturer finds the wholesale trader so relentless in
taking advantage of his strategic position. Though often
performing a service of real economic advantage to the
community, he can only continue to exist by a constant
" squeezing " of all the other agents in production.1

We come now to the last link in the chain, the competi-
tion between retail shopkeepers to secure customers. Here
the superiority in knowledge and technical skill is on the
side of the seller, but this is far outweighed by the excep-
tional freedom of the buyer. The shopkeeper, it is true, is

1 The effect of competitive pressure in reducing the percentage of profits to
turnover is well seen in the extreme cases in which one or more of the stages are
omitted. In the wholesale clothing trade, for instance, there may be, as we have
seen, only a single grade of capitalists between the "sweated" woman trouser-
hand and the purchasing consumer. This wholesale clothier, though he makes a
huge income for himself, extracts only the most infinitesimal sum out of each
pair of trousers or "juvenile suit." His success depends upon the fact that he
has a colossal trade, dealing every year in millions of garments, and turning over
his moderate capital with exceptional rapidity. Even if he were sentimentally
affected by the fact that the women to whom his firm gives out its millions of
garments earned only six to ten shillings a week, he could not appreciably raise
their wages by foregoing his whole profit, seeing that this amounts, perhaps, only
to a penny a garment. Or, to take another instance, the original shareholders
in the Civil Service Supply Association, who receive profits at the rate of literally
hundreds per cent per annum, cannot afford to put any check on their directors'
zeal for screwing down the manufacturers, or on their foremen's assiduity in keep-
ing down wages in their own producing departments ; for though the profit is
colossal, compared with the capital invested, it is derived from tiny percentages
on millions of transactions, and, if shared by all the wage-earners concerned in
the production and distribution of the articles, would amount to an infinitesimal
addition to their weekly wages.

670 Trade Union Theory

not bound to sell any particular article at any particular
time. But he must, on pain of bankruptcy, attract a constant
stream of customers for his wares. The customer, on the
other hand, is as free as air. He can buy in one shop as
well as in another. He is not even bound to buy at all, and
may abstain, not only without loss, but with a positive saving
to his pocket. He must, in short, be tempted to buy, and
to this end is bent all the shopkeeper's knowledge and
capacity. Now, with regard to the general run of com-
modities, the only way of tempting the great mass of con-
sumers to buy is to offer the article at what they consider a
low price. Hence a shopkeeper is always on the look-out
for something which he can sell at a lower price than has
hitherto been customary, or cheaper than his competitors are
selling it at. Competition between shopkeepers becomes,
therefore, in all such cases entirely a matter of cutting prices,
and the old-fashioned, steady -going business, which once
contentedly paid whatever price the wholesale trader asked,
is driven to look as sharply after "cheap lines" as the keenest
trader. It might be suggested that a shopkeeper could
equally outbid his rivals if he offered better quality at the
same price. But this would be to misunderstand the
psychology of the individual consumer.1 Owing to his lack
of technical knowledge, to say nothing of his imperfect means
of testing his purchase, the only fact that he can grasp
is, with regard to all nondescript commodities, the retail
money price, and all temptation must reach his mind through
this, the only medium. Under these circumstances, it is easy
to understand how the revolution in retail trade, to which we
have already referred, plays into the hands of the customer.
The mammoth establishments, having a much lower per-
centage of working expenses to turn over, are able to sell

1 Even the shops which rely on a reputation for quality as their main attrac-
tion, do not commit the mistake o'f merely offering a better article at the same
price as is elsewhere charged for common goods. If they did, they would quickly
find their customers deserting them. To retain the limited class of well-to-do
purchasers who insist on the best quality, a positively higher price must be
charged 1

The Higgling of the Market 6 7 1

at lower prices than the small shops, and they naturally do
their utmost to attract customers by widely advertising their
cheapness. The customers become used to these low prices,
and insist on them as the only condition upon which they
will continue to patronise the surviving smaller shops. These,
unable to reduce their working expenses, complain piteously
to the wholesale houses, who are, as we have seen, driven to
supply them on the lowest possible terms, lest they lose their
custom altogether.

We thus arrive at the consumer as the ultimate source
of that persistent pressure on sellers, which, transmitted
through the long chain of bargainings, finally crushes the
isolated workman at the base of the pyramid. Yet, para-
doxical as it may seem, the consumer is, of all the parties to
the transaction, the least personally responsible for the result.
For he takes no active part in the process. In the great
market of the world, he but accepts what is spontaneously
offered to him. He does not, as a rule, even suggest to the
shopkeeper that he would like prices lowered. All he does
— and it is enough to keep the whole machine in motion —
is to demur to paying half a crown for an article, when
some one else is offering him the same thing for two shillings.
It may be urged that he ought to be ready to pay a higher
price for a better quality. As a matter of fact, consumers,
whether rich or poor, do strive, in an almost pathetic way,
after some assurance of specific quality that would reconcile
them to paying the higher price. They recognise that their
own personal experience of any article is too casual and
limited to afford any trustworthy guidance, and they accord-
ingly exhibit a touching faith in " authority " of one kind or
another. Tradition, current hearsay as to what experts have
said, and even the vague impression left on the mind by the
repeated assertions of mendacious advertisements, are all
reasons for remaining faithful to a particular commodity, a
particular brand or mark, or even a particular shop, irrespec-
tive of mere cheapness. But to enable the consumers to
exercise this choice, there must be some easy means of

672 Trade Union Theory

distinguishing between rival wares. It so happens that the
bulk of the consumption of the community consists of goods
which cannot be labelled or otherwise artificially distinguished.
With regard to the vast majority of the purchases of daily
life, no one but an expert can, with any assurance, discrimi-
nate between shades of quality, and the ordinary customer is
reduced to decide by price alone. Nor could he, even on
grounds of the highest philanthropy, reasonably take any
other course. As a practical man, he knows it to be quite
impossible for him to trace the article through its various
stages of production and distribution, and to discover whether
the extra sixpence charged by the dearer shop represents
better wages to any workman, or goes as mere extra profit
to one or other of the capitalists concerned. If he is an
economist he will have a shrewd suspicion that the extra
sixpence is most likely to be absorbed in one form or another
of that rent of exceptional opportunity which plays so large
a part in industrial incomes. Nor need he, in any particular
case, have a presumption against low-priced articles as such,
nor even against a fall in prices. The finest and most ex-
pensive broadcloth, made in the West of England factories,
is the product of worse-paid labor than the cheap " tweeds "
of Dewsbury or Batley. Costly handmade lace is, in actual
fact, usually the outcome of cruelly long hours of labor,
starvation wages, and incredibly bad sanitary conditions,
whilst the cheap article, which Nottingham turns out by the
ton, is the output of a closely combined trade, enjoying ex-
ceptionally high wages, short hours, and comfortable homes.
In the same way the great fall in prices, which is so marked
a feature of our time, is undoubtedly due, in the main (if not,
as some say, to currency changes), to the natural and legiti-
mate reduction of the real cost of production ; to the im-
provement of technical processes, the cheapening of transport,
the exclusion of unnecessary middlemen, and the general
increase in intelligence and in the efficiency of social organ-
isation. It follows that the consumers, as consumers, are
helpless in the matter. The systematic pressure upon the

The Higgling of the Market 673

isolated workman which we have described has reference to
them alone, and serves their immediate interests, but it cannot
be said to be caused by anything within their volition, or to
be alterable by anything which they, in their capacity of
consumers, could possibly accomplish.1

Such, then, is the general form of the industrial organisa-
tion which, in so far as it is not tampered with by monopoly
or collective regulation, grows up under " the system of
natural liberty." The idea of mutual exchange of services
by free and independent producers in a state of economic
equality results, not in a simple, but in a highly complex
industrial structure which, whether or not consistent with
any real Liberty, is strikingly lacking in either Equality or
Fraternity. What is most obvious about it is, not any
freedom in alternatives enjoyed by the parties concerned,

1 This analysis of the actual working of the modern business organisation, with
its constant pressure on the seller, will remind the economic student of Professor
Bb'hm-Bawerk's brilliant and suggestive exposition of the advantage of " present "
over "future" goods. At every stage, from the wage-earner to the shopkeeper,
it is the compulsion on the seller to barter his "future goods" for "present
goods" which creates the stream of pressure. " It is undeniable," says Professor
Bohm-Bawerk, " that, in this exchange of present commodities against future, the
circumstances are of such a nature as to threaten the poor with exploitation of
monopolists. Present goods are absolutely needed by everybody if people are to
live. He who has not got them must try to obtain them at any price. To pro-
duce them on his own account is proscribed the poor man by circumstances. . . .
He must, then, buy his present goods from those who have them ... by selling
his labor. But in this bargain he is doubly handicapped ; first, by the position
of compulsion in which he finds himself, and second, by the numerical relation
existing between buyers and sellers of present goods. The capitalists who have
present goods for sale are relatively few ; the proletarians who must buy them
are innumerable. In the market for present goods, then, a majority of buyers
who find themselves compelled to buy stands opposite a minority of sellers, and
this is a relation which obviously is profoundly favorable to the sellers [that is,
the buyers of labor or wares] and unfavorable to the buyers [that is, the sellers of
labor or wares], . . . [This] may be corrected by active competition among
sellers [of present goods]. . . . Fortunately, in actual life this is the rule, not
the exception. But, every now and then, something will suspend the capitalists'
competition, and then those unfortunates, whom fate has thrown on a local
market ruled by monopoly, are delivered over to the discretion of the adversary.
. . . Hence the low wages forcibly exploited from the workers — sometimes the
workers of individual factories, sometimes of individual branches of production,
sometimes — though happily not often, and only under peculiarly unfavorable
circumstances — of whole nations." — E. von Bohm-Bawerk, The Positive Theory
of Capital (London, 1891), p. 360.

VOL. II 2 X

674 Trade Union Theory

but the general consciousness of working under pressure
felt by every class of producers. At each link in the chain
of bargainings, the superiority in " freedom " is so over-
whelmingly on the side of the buyer, that the seller feels
only constraint.1 This freedom of the purchaser increases
with every stage away from the actual production, until it
culminates in the anarchic irresponsibility of the private
customer, " free " alike from all moral considerations as to
the conditions of employment, and from any intelligent
appreciation of the quality of the product. On the other
hand, the impulse for cheapness, of which the consumer is
the unconscious source, grows in strength as it is transmitted
from one stage of bargaining to another, until at last, with
all its accumulated weight, it settles like an incubus on the
isolated workman's means of subsistence.

We pause here for a moment, in our analysis of the
industrial machine, to examine the case of the domestic
servant. The reader will see, from this description of the
higgling of the market, how pointless is the statement —
used as a conclusive argument against the need for Trade
Unionism, or its power to raise wages — of the good wages
enjoyed by domestic servants. There is no analogy between
the engagement of domestic servants to minister to the
personal comfort of the relatively rich, and the wage-contract
of the operative employed by the profit-maker. In the first
place, the conditions of domestic service put employer and

1 The existence of this feeling of constraint may be inferred from the efforts
which each grade of producers makes to propitiate the buyers. Every form of
bribery is used, from the sweated outworker's "tip" to the "giving-out fore-
man," the manufacturer's Christmas present to the "buyer" of the wholesale
house, the wholesale trader's dinner to the shopkeepers, and, finally, the cook's
perquisites from the butcher and -the dairyman. It is highly significant that it is
always the seller who bribes, never the buyer. Sometimes the seller's effort to
escape the pressure takes the form of attempting — usually by giving credit — to
entangle the buyer, so as to destroy his freedom to withhold his custom and
compel him to continue his purchases. Thus, the leather-merchant gives credit
to the boot-manufacturer, the boot-manufacturer to the shopkeeper, and the
shopkeeper to the artisan — the well-understood condition always being that the
buyer in each case continues to deal with the obliging seller, without too closely
scrutinising his prices. We have already mentioned the "tallyman," who finds
his profit in a similar entanglement of the necessitous customer.

The Higgling of the Market 675

employed much more on a par with regard to the bargain
than those of industrial wage-labor. The alternative to the
well-to-do woman of doing without a servant for a single
day is perhaps as disagreeable to her as the alternative to
the servant of being out of place ; and the worry and incon-
venience to the mistress of finding another servant is at least
as great as the discomfort to the servant of getting another
situation. In capacity of bargaining the servant is normally
as good as the mistress, whilst in technical knowledge she
is usually vastly superior. In the all-important matter of
carrying out the bargain, it is the mistress, with her lack of
knowledge, her indifference to details, and her preoccupation
with other affairs, whose own ease of body and mind is
at the mercy of the servant's hundred and one ways of
making herself disagreeable. The personal comfort enjoyed
by the servants in a typical middle-class household depends
mainly on themselves ; that of the mistress and her family
depends to an enormous extent on the goodwill of her
servants. But more important than all these considerations
is the fact that the conditions of employment of domestic
servants in middle or upper-class households are in no way
affected by the stream of competitive pressure that weighs
down the price of wares and the wages of their producers.
As each household works for its own use, and not for sale,
the temptation to " undercut " is entirely absent. It does
not make an iota of difference to one mistress that another
in the same town pays lower wages to her cook or her
housemaid. Social pressure acts, in fact, in exactly the
opposite direction. Such competition as exists between the
households of the well-to-do classes, whether in London or
county society, or in the more modest but not less comfort-
able professional or manufacturers' " set " of a provincial
town, takes the form of providing more luxurious quarters
and more perfect entertainment for desirable guests, and
therefore tends positively to raise the wages spontaneously
offered to clever and trustworthy servants. Under these
circumstances it might have been predicted that the rise in

676 Trade Union Theory

incomes, the greater desire for domestic comfort, and the
growing preoccupation of upper and middle-class women in
other things than housekeeping, would have resulted in a
marked increase in the wages of servants in private house-
holds.1 So helpless, in fact, are the " employers " in this
case that, if cooks and housemaids formed an effective Trade
Union, so as to use their strategic advantage to the utmost,
middle-class women would be forced to defend themselves
by taking refuge behind a salaried official or profit-making
contractor — for instance, by resorting to residential clubs,
boarding-houses, or co-operatively managed blocks of flats.
It is noteworthy that wherever the profit-maker intervenes,
the exceptional conditions enjoyed by domestic servants dis-
appear. Notwithstanding the constant demand for servants
in private households, the women who cook, scrub, clean, or
wait in the common run of hotels, boarding-houses, lodgings,
coffee-shops, or restaurants, are as ill-paid, as ill-treated,
and as overworked as their sisters in other unorganised
occupations.

So far we have mainly concerned ourselves with tracing
the stream of pressure to its origin in the private cus-
tomer. Now we have to consider the equally important
fact that, as each class of producers becomes conscious of
this pressure, it tries to escape from it, to resist or to evade
it. All along the stream we discover the inhabitants of the
" debatable land " raising bulwarks or dykes, sometimes
with a view of maintaining quiet backwaters of profit for
themselves, sometimes with the object of embanking their
Standard of Life against further encroachments. It is in

1 It is, we think, somewhat discreditable to English economists that they
should have gone on copying and recopying from each other's lectures and text-
books the idea that this rise in wages among the domestic servants of the well-
to-do classes constituted any argument against the validity of the case for Trade
Unionism in the world of competitive industry. We can only attribute it to the
fact that male economic lecturers and text-book writers have seldom themselves
experienced the troubles of housekeeping, either on a large or on a small scale,
whilst the few women economists have hitherto suffered from a lack of personal
knowledge of the actual relations between capitalist and workman in the profit-
making world.

The Higgling of the Market 677

this deliberate resistance to a merely indiscriminate pressure
that we shall find, not only the scope of the Methods and
Regulations of Trade Unionism by which certain sections
of the wage-earners protect and improve the conditions of
their employment, but also the fundamental reason for the
analogous devices of the other producing classes — the trade
secrets, patents and trade marks, the enormous advertising
of specialities, the exclusive franchises or concessions, the
capitalist manufacturer's struggle to supersede the trader,
and the trader's backstair effort to do without the capitalist
manufacturer, together with all the desperate attempts to
form rings and trusts, syndicates and " alliances " — by one
or other of which is to be explained the perpetual inequality
in the profits of contemporary industry, and the heaping up
of fortunes in particular trades. If it were not for this
deliberate erection of dykes and bulwarks we should find, in
all the old-established industries, every manufacturer and
trader making only the bare minimum of profit, without
which he would not be induced to engage in business at all,
and, we may add, every wage-earner reduced to bare sub-
sistence wages, below which he could not continue to exist.
But instead of this equality in constraint, with its implication
of equality in minimum remuneration, industrial life presents,
and has for over two centuries always presented, a spectacle
of extreme inequality, alike between classes, trades, and
individuals. We do not here refer to the differences of
remuneration that are commensurate with differences of
personal capacity, whether physical or mental : these, like the
differences in advantageousness of different sites and soils,
with their equivalent differences of land rent, will, by the
economist, easily be put on one side. But it is a matter of
common observation that there are, at any moment, huge
incomes being gained, now in one trade, now in another,
which bear no relation whatever to the relative capacity of
the manufacturers or traders concerned, or to the amount of
work that they perform. To take only this century, whilst
the brewers have always been piling up riches, we see the

678 Trade Union Theory

great fortunes made in cotton and other textiles a hundred
years ago succeeded by the fabulous profits of the coal-
owners and iron-masters, together with those of the machine-
making industry ; the great wealth amassed by the ship-
owners and foreign merchants followed by the expansion of
the wholesale grocers, the alkali producers, and the sewing-
machine manufacturers ; whilst to - day huge gains are
admittedly being reaped by the wholesale clothiers and
provision dealers, the great soap and pill advertisers, and the
bicycle makers. These times of great fortunes may, as
regards any particular trade or any particular firm, last only
a few years. But the experience of the last two centuries
furnishes no period in which they did not exist in one
quarter or another, and gives us no warrant for assuming
that they will, under anything like the existing order of
things, ever disappear. Though each particular case may
be temporary only, the phenomenon itself is of constant
occurrence. From the point of view of the community it
is, accordingly, not evanescent but permanent. It may, in
fact, be said to be even the most characteristic feature of the
present industrial system as compared with any other, and
it is one which vitally affects the life of every class. Without
the constant presence of these exceptional profits the indus-
trial world would differ as fundamentally from that in which
we now exist as a Co-operative Commonwealth or a Socialist
State. In our view, they cannot be philosophically accounted
for by any reference to " economic friction " or " lack of
mobility " : they are, as we shall now attempt to show, the
direct and necessary consequence, under the " system of
natural liberty," of the fact that the stream of pressure that
we have described impinges, not upon the normal weakness
of the isolated individual seller, but upon a series of very
unequal dykes and bulwarks, cast up by the different sections
of the industrial world. By passing these briefly in review,
we shall be prepared to see, in their due proportion, the
devices peculiar to the wage-earning class.

Let us note first one incidental and purely advantageous

The Higgling of the Market 679

effect of the constant pressure on all existing products and
in all existing markets. It stimulates the capitalist and
brainworker to desire to escape from these closely swept
fields, by discovering new products or new markets. The
ever-present instinct of every manufacturer or trader is to
invent an article which no rival yet produces, or to find
customers whom no one yet serves. Here at last he finds a
land of real freedom of contract, where he has the same
economic liberty to refuse to cheapen his commodity as the
buyer has to abstain from gratifying that particular desire.
He cannot, of course, actually dictate terms, for the customer
may always prefer to go on spending his income as he has
hitherto done. But price is settled without reference to fear
of competition, and is limited only by the extent and keen-
ness of the demand. Merely to be first in the field in such
a case often means a large fortune, which is but the reward
for opening up a fresh source of income to producers and
of satisfaction to consumers. But the capitalist is keenly
conscious of the completeness with which the stream of
pressure will presently deprive him of this economic liberty,
and he therefore hastens to throw up a dyke before the
stream reaches him. Two hundred years ago he turned,
like the artisan, to the Government, and applied as a matter
of course for a charter, giving him royal authority to exclude
" interlopers." When the House of Commons took the view
that there should be " no interference of the legislature with
the freedom of trade, or with the right of every man to
employ the capital he inherits, or has acquired, according to
his own discretion,"1 it might have been supposed that all
legal dykes and bulwarks against perfect freedom of com-
petition would be brought to an end. But though Parliament
has swept away, on this plea, every kind of vested interest
of the artisan, it has, throughout the whole century, per-
mitted one section of capitalists after another to entrench

1 Report on Petitions of the Cotton Weavers, 1811 ; Report of the Committee
on the State of the Woollen Mamifactttre in England, 1 806 ; History of Trade
Unionism, pp. 54, 56.

68o Trade Union Theory

themselves by laws which excluded other capitalists from
competing with them. There has even been lately a re-
crudescence of Chartered Companies, legally secured in the
enjoyment of exceptional privileges.1 But apart from this
accidental result of our growing Imperialism, the century
has witnessed the building up of an unparalleled system of
railway, gas, water, and tramway monopolies, founded on
private Acts of Parliament. Here, it is true, Parliament
reserves to itself the right at any time to license another
competitor. But the policy throughout has been never to
license a new undertaking in competition with one already
in the field, however profitably the business may have
resulted, unless the new promoters prove that there is a
sufficiently large group or section of customers who are still
unprovided with the service in question. Thus, it is never
admitted even as an argument in favor of a proposed new
water company or railway, that the one already in the field
is paying 10 per cent dividend. The new promoters do
not get their Act unless they convince a committee of each
House of Parliament that no existing company is actually
supplying the service which they desire to undertake. We
do not think that people realise to what an extent the
industrial wealth of the country is invested in channels thus
legally safeguarded. We roughly estimate that, excluding
land and houses, something like one -fourth of the total
capital of the United Kingdom is invested under private
Acts of Parliament, and in this way protected from the
stream of competitive pressure. It is not merely that the
privileged capitalists are able to retain the amount of custom
with which they first started. They share with the landlords

1 The modern form of charter carefully pays lip-homage to "freedom of
trade." But as it usually gives the privileged adventurers the exclusive ownership
of land and minerals, the right to levy import and export duties on all traders
(which, when the company itself trades, it pays only from one pocket to another),
and the power of constructing railways and ports and of making towns and
markets, the independent trader (in the Niger Territories, for instance) or the
independent miner (in Rhodesia, for instance) does not find his position financially
so different from that of the eighteenth - century "interloper" as might be
supposed.

The Higgling of the Market 68 1

the unearned increment arising from the mere growth of
population. They are even protected against the whole
community itself, which is not permitted co-operatively to
provide its own railways or water or gas, without first
satisfying the monopolist who is in the field. We need not
consider whether there was any other way of inducing
capitalists to embark in these large, and, at one time,
venturesome undertakings, otherwise than by thus according
them what is virtually a legal guarantee of protection for
their " established expectation." But this deliberate Parlia-
mentary policy of creating and maintaining vested interests
as the best means of securing the performance of particular
services — this virtual defence against the full stream of
competitive pressure enjoyed by a quarter of the whole
industrial capital of the community — is in itself an interest-
ing criticism of " the system of natural liberty."

If we pass now to another incidental advantage of the
pressure — the incessant attempts of manufacturers to improve
their technical processes — we shall find another successful
revolt against " the system of natural liberty." If by some
new invention, or new machine, the cost of production can
be reduced, or a superior article turned out, the manufacturer
will be able to yield to the pressure of the wholesale trader,
and yet make, at his ease, an increased profit for himself.
The effect of the pressure would thus, it would seem, be to
give the greatest possible stimulus to improvements in
technical processes. But unless the manufacturer can erect
some kind of dyke for his improvement, so as to prevent the
other manufacturers from adopting the same device, he will
very likely find that the invention has been a positive loss
to him and them alike. For by the time the principal
manufacturers have adopted the improvement, no one among
them is any better able to withstand the pressure of the
wholesale trader than he was before. The stream of
competition will have swept away the whole economic
advantage of the new invention by way of reduction of
price, to the advantage, first of the traders, and eventually

682 Trade Union Theory

of the customers. But this does not complete the existing
manufacturers' discomfiture. To adopt the new invention
will have involved an additional outlay of capital, and can
scarcely fail to have rendered obsolete, and so destroyed,
some portion of their previous possessions. Even at this
cost, the adaptation of the old mills to the new requirements
leaves much to be desired from the point of view of perfect
economy of production. Here is the chance for a new
capitalist to build an entirely new mill, equipped with the
very latest improvements, and making the utmost of the new
invention. The old manufacturers, to whose ingenuity and
enterprise the improvement was due, thus find themselves,
under a system of free and unregulated competition, placed
by it at a positive disadvantage. In this result lies the
justification of the Patent Laws, which give the owner of a
new invention a legal monopoly of its use for a term of
(in the United Kingdom) fourteen years. The present
century, and especially the present generation, has seen an
enormous extension of patents in every industry, it being
now actually rare to find any important manufacturer who
does not enjoy one or more of these defences against com-
petition. And though each of them lasts only for fourteen
years, capitalist ingenuity has found a way of indefinitely
extending their protection. Before one patent runs out,
another is secured for some subsidiary improvement in the
original invention, which the patentee has, of course, had the
best opportunity of discovering, or which he has bought from
a needy inventor. The right to manufacture the original
invention becomes in due course common to all, but is then
of little use to anybody, for the legally protected monopolist
of the latest improvement still holds the field. No estimate
can be formed of the amount of the capital that is thus by
patents legally protected from the pressure of free com-
petition, but its amount is enormous and daily increasing.

We have hitherto dealt with the various forms of legal
protection by which the capitalists have succeeded in
embanking their profits against the stream of competitive

The Higgling of the Market 683

pressure. We come now to other devices with the same
object. What the manufacturer seeks is in some way to
escape from the penetrating pressure exercised by the
wholesale trader. Stimulated by the desire to secure
increased profits for himself, the trader is always setting
his wits to work to see how he can transform the blind,
impartial pressure of the private customer into a force so
regulated and concentrated as to press always where there
is least resistance. His specialist skill in bargaining, his
trained appreciation of the minutest grades of quality, and
his quick apprehension of improvements in technical pro-
cesses, enable him so to play off the competing manufacturers
one against the other, as to make them yield up, more
quickly and more completely than would otherwise have
been necessary, the exceptional profits that he discovers them
to be enjoying. Thus, in the typically complete form of
modern business organisation, the wholesale and retail
traders act, virtually, as the expert agents of the ignorant
consumer. The manufacturers are always seeking to relieve
themselves of this expert criticism and deliberately adjusted
pressure on the price or quality of their wares, by entering
into direct relations with the private customer. This is the
economic explanation of the growth, during the present
generation, of the world-wide advertisement of distinctive
specialities, and the consequent development of the use of
trade marks or makers' names. If such an impression can
be created on the minds of consumers that thousands of them
will insist on purchasing some particular article, the manu-
facturer of that article gains enormously in his strategic
position towards the wholesale trader. It matters not for
this purpose whether the consumer's prejudice is or is not
founded on proved excellence : many a quack medicine gives
as secure a position of vantage as has been won by Cadbury's
Cocoa or Dr. Jaeger's woollens. This enormous development
of " proprietary articles," beginning with patent medicines,
but now including almost every kind of household requisite,
has led to an interesting form of bulwark against the

684 Trade Union Theory

lowering of prices. The manufacturer of a proprietary
article that has once secured the favor of the public, sees
little advantage in the cut-throat competition which results
in the customer getting it at a lower price. He does not
find that appreciably more of his speciality is sold when
customers can buy it for elevenpence instead of thirteen-
pence-halfpenny. What happens, however, in such a case
is that the pressure on the wholesale trader to give special
discounts, or otherwise lower the wholesale price, becomes
so irresistible, that, presently, the wholesale house finds it
practically unremunerative to deal in the article at all, to
the consequent loss of the manufacturer. The enterprising
proprietor of a distinctive speciality therefore attempts
nowadays to fix the price all along the line. For the pro-
tection of all parties concerned, he devises what is called an
" ironclad contract." He refuses to supply, or withholds the
best discount from, any wholesale trader who will not
formally bind himself, under penalty, not to sell below a
certain prescribed " wholesale price." He may even pre-
scribe a definite retail price, below which no shopkeeper may
sell his wares, under penalty of finding the supply cut off.
Our own impression is that, where the wholesale trader and
the retail shopkeeper continue to be employed at all in the
distribution of newly invented commodities, this strictly
protected and highly regulated business organisation is
already the typical form.1

1 These "ironclad contracts" are not easily seen by persons unconnected
with the particular trade, and we do not believe that any one has an adequate
idea of their rapid increase, or of the enormous proportion of the total trade to
which they now extend. We have had the privilege of studying their operation
in one of the largest of English wholesale houses, supplying household requisites
of every kind, and itself entering into scores of contracts of this sort. We have
now before us the confidential circulars of a manufacturer of well-known
specialities, dated 8th June 1896, from which we append some extracts. The
circular to retailers, after specifying the wholesale prices and discounts, continues :
"To avoid confusion of prices, and also to prevent 'cutting,' and secure a
legitimate profit for our customers, we respectfully require all whom we supply
not to sell under the prices named below. In the interests of our customers,
therefore, only those will be supplied who have signed an agreement to this effect."
The circular to the wholesale houses states that there will be paid " a bonus of
5 per cent conditional on goods not being ' cut ' below our own quotations to the

The Higgling of the Market 685

But although the shopkeeper prefers regulation of the
price of proprietary articles to the ruinous results of free
competition in their sale, he greatly dislikes proprietary
articles altogether. He is always trying to give a preference
to nondescript commodities, of which he can " push " one
make rather than another, and thus take advantage of the
customer's ignorance to secure larger profits.1 The manu-
facturers of proprietary articles retort by appointing their
own retail agents on a definite commission, thus bringing
into the field the vast number of bakers who sell packet tea,
or newsvendors who push a special brand of tobacco. A
new product, such as typewriting machines or bicycles, will
break away altogether from the typical business organisation,
and we see the manufacturers keeping in their own hands
both the wholesale and the retail trade, even absorbing also
the shipping business and the repairing. When neither
patent nor trademark, long-standing reputation nor world-
wide advertisement can be used as a bulwark, manufacturers
try to protect themselves by rings and other arrangements
to fix prices. So obvious is the pecuniary advantage of this
course, that it is only the long habits of fighting each other,
and the mutual suspicion thus engendered, which prevent a
much wider adoption of this expedient by English manu-
facturers.2 Finally, we have such bold attempts to abolish

retail trade. . . . This will enable wholesale houses ... to secure nearly 14
per cent profit, and will, we trust, ensure your continual interest in pushing (the
article)." See also an article on "Combination in Shopkeeping" in Progressive
Review, April 1897.

1 It is interesting to notice, in this connection, how willingly the Legislature
has lent itself, by the comprehensive provisions of the Merchandise Marks
Acts, to the legal protection of the security enjoyed by "proprietary articles"
against competition either in price or quality. A chemist may make " Condy's
Fluid" (the well-known disinfecting solution of permanganate of potash)
exactly in the same way as Condy, cheaper than Condy, and better than Condy,
but he must not sell, under the only name by which customers will ask for it, any
but the article supplied — it may be under an "ironclad contract" — by Condy
himself.

2 We may cite one of the many informal and unknown "rings," which
dominate particular branches of manufacture. The English hollow-ware
trade, for instance (the manufacture of metal utensils of all kinds) is
practically confined to about a dozen firms in and near Birmingham. These
have, for many years, united in fixing the prices of all the articles they manu-

686 Trade Union Theory

competition altogether, by the union of all rivals into a single
amalgamation, as have partially or wholly succeeded in the
screw, cotton-thread, salt, alkali, and indiarubber tyre in-
dustries in this country, and in innumerable other cases in
the United States.

In all the foregoing attempts to resist or evade the stream
of pressure, the device of the capitalist may be regarded as
some form of dyke, tending to maintain prices at a paying
level. In other cases we see a different expedient. We
have already noticed the fact that, when a new industry
springs up, there is nowadays a tendency to prevent any
differentiation of productive structure, and to retain all the
grades in a single hand. Thus the typewriter and bicycle
manufacturers, following in the wake of the great sewing-
machine producers, eliminate all the traders. But the
telescoping may start also from the other end. Out of the
village pedlar in the country, or the little town retailer of
cheap boots and clothes, has grown the colossal wholesale
clothier of our day, who gives out work to thousands of
isolated families all over the country ; sorts and labels in
his warehouse their diverse products ; supplies his own retail
shops in the different towns ; executes asylum and workhouse
contracts ; and ships, on his own account, to Cape Town or
Melbourne, the hundreds of thousands of " cheap suits "
annually absorbed by the Colonies. Here the characteristic
feature is not the keeping up of the price against the con-
sumer, but an exceptionally terrible engine of oppression of
the manual-working producer. In all the " sweated in-
dustries," in fact, the capitalist's expedient is not to evade
the pressure for cheapness, but to find a means of making
that pressure fall with all its weight on the worker. We
have already described the disadvantageous position of

facture. A uniform wholesale price-list is agreed upon, with three different
rates of discount. The firms are classified by common consent, according to the
perfection of finish of their wares and the prestige which they enjoy, into three
grades, each adhering to its corresponding rate of discount. This "ring" is
quite informal, but has for years been well maintained to the apparent satisfac
tion of its members.

The Htggling of tke Market 6o7

the isolated workman when hP h

™li or a factory. But he has 7T* *'* ** °W™ of a
of knowing what the other woricm 7 '**' the advantage
valuable moral support which crT" T ^ Md the '""-
sh-P of number, ^OreoVer as Te'h " ^ C°mpanio"-
factones, the Trade Union Method TiT"' '" mills ™*
Collective Bargaining, and VJ ^ h°ds °f Mutual Insurance,
the form of Common Rule, th Enactme"t erect dykes in
shall presently discuss BuUhe hrr0"1^6^15 °f Which «
these protections, and finds himtl?Tr ^ W1'th°Ut any °f
barest subsistence wage AnH u ed) as a rule' to the

t-de, these home-woTkers ^ ^ " Jn the -I^othlnJ
-thout any notion of a definite "t ^ ^ das^
Polish Jews and unskilled En",?, "^ °f Life"-for
at. any price( under ^ hwomen .will do any work,

dnven even below what^o^d £0 Th '[ "^ wi" b<=
« working efficiency. Thus in ^ &SS Pe™anently

Astern "the capita,/t em ^ ln the so-ca]led ,Sw ^

°f evading the downward Sure \ u^ 3 Way' not °4
retail trader normally exeSS , ? the Wholesale a"d

also of escaping the SjESff f T"6**1"*' but
regulat,on by which the facto™ of co«bination or legal

Standard of Life now usuallvTn T" ^''^ to ^duce the
colossal fortunes which hT^ £? h™SeIf C°nfr°nted- The
^ the wholesale clothi^^' ^ areksti» being, made
small section of capitalists of I C absorPt;on, by one

debatable land lying" b e^n ^ * V^ Wh°'e °f *a
sumer lgnorant ^ ee" the pr hat a carelgss ^

the industry, will continuqe ^ ^ <* the transformation of
subsid.sed women and a stream / & *" Wa&e tha' half-
lands will continue to accent 7 / °utCaSt Jews from °ther
altogether. ^ raAer than forego employment

dtictly "wh^ bn'e% ind/Cated -me

688 Trade Union Theory

formed and irresponsible consumers are always unconscien-
tiously exercising. To analyse adequately these various
expedients, to discuss how far they increase or diminish the
wealth of nations, to discover how they affect national
character or are consistent with this or that view of social
expediency, would require as detailed an investigation of the
actual facts of business organisation as we have undertaken
with regard to Trade Unionism. Such an investigation
would, we believe, yield results of the utmost value to the
community. One thing is clear. Those capitalist dykes
and bulwarks, short cuts and artificial floodings, have become
so constant and general a feature of the whole " debatable
land " of economic bargaining, that any discussion of the re-
lation between consumer and producer, or between capitalist,
brain-worker, and manual laborer, which is based on the
assumption of a mutual exchange of services among freely
competing individual bargainers, is, from a practical point of
view, entirely obsolete. We have, in fact, to work out a new
scientific analysis, not of any ideal state of " natural liberty,"
but of the actual facts of a world of more or less complete
economic monopolies — legal monopolies, natural mono-
polies, monopolies arising out of exploiting the prejudices of
consumers, and, last but not least, monopolies deliberately
constructed by the tacit or formal combination or amalgama-
tion of all the competing interests.1 But before passing
away from this, by the economist, as yet unexplored world,

1 In the Groundwork of Economic ~s, sec. 20, p. 33 (London, 1883), Mr. C.
S. Devas reminds us that, " in a wise moment,1' J. S. Mill objected to the abstract
methods of his father, and the other economic politicians of that school. "It is
not to be imagined possible," Mill said, " nor is it true in point of fact, that these
philosophers regarded the few premises of their theory as including all that is
required for explaining social phenomena. . . . They would have applied, and did
apply, their principles with innumerable allowances. But it is not allowances
that are wanted. ... It is unphilosophical to construct a science out of a few
agencies by which the phenomena are determined. . . . We ought to study all
the determining agencies equally \ and endeavor, as far as it can be done, to in-
clude all of them -within the pale of the science, else we shall infallibly bestow a
disproportionate attention upon those which our theory takes into account, while
we misestimate the rest, and probably underrate their importance." The quotation
is from Mill's System of Logic, Book VI., end of chap. viii.

The Higgling of the Market 689

we are compelled to note how it impinges on our own
province.1

In our analysis of the chain of bargainings which take
place between the manual worker and the private customer,
and so determine the wages of labor, we demonstrated, not
only that the isolated individual workman was at a serious
disadvantage in bargaining with the capitalist manufacturer,
but also that the capitalist manufacturer himself was to a
large extent powerless to offer terms above those prevailing
in other establishments. But this latter consideration, as we
now see, does not necessarily apply to any but those cases
in which there has been no obstruction of the full stream of
competitive pressure. If an individual employer is able to
ward off this pressure from the price of his product by an
exclusive concession or a patent, a trade mark, or even an
assured personal connection, or if the whole body of
employers can unite in a tacit or formal combination to

1 These monopolies, it will be observed, are, to a large extent, actually the
outcome of legal freedom of contract. If every man is to be free to enter into
such contracts as seem to him best in his own interest, it is impossible to deny
him the right of joining with his fellow-capitalists to fix prices, regulate produc-
tion, or actually to amalgamate all competing interests, if this is deemed most
advantageous. " Monopoly, "says Professor Foxwell, " is inevitable. . . It is a
natural outgrowth of industrial freedom" ("The Growth of Monopoly, and its
Bearing on the Functions of the State," in JRcvue cT Economic Politique, vol. iii.
September 1889). That this state of things involves the economic compulsion of
minorities, the ruin of newcomers by deliberate underselling, and the driving out
of the trade of any recalcitrant firm, is, as Mr. Justice Chitty lucidly explained in
the case of the Mogul Steamship Co. v. Macgregor, Gow, and Co., an inevitable
result of legal freedom of contract. The classic economists never made up their
minds whether, by a "system of natural liberty," they meant individual freedom
of contract, or free competition between individuals. As we have already
explained in our chapter on " The Method of Collective Bargaining," these two
social ideals are not only not identical, but hopelessly inconsistent with each
other. Alike in the world of capital and in the world of labor, individual freedom
of contract leads inevitably to combination, and this destroys free competition
between individuals. If we desire to maintain free competition between indi-
viduals, the only conceivable way would be such a state interference with con-
tracts as would prevent, not only every kind of association, but also every aliena-
tion of land and every transfer of small businesses to larger ones, which would
in any way cause or increase inequality of wealth or power. Indeed, it would
be an interesting point for academic discussion whether free competition among
equal units, supposing this to be desired and to be compatible with human nature,
can be permanently secured in any other way than by the " nationalisation of the
means of production, distribution, and exchange."

VOL. II 2 Y

690 Trade Union Theory

regulate the trade, the workpeople in these establishments
might, it may be argued, stand some chance of receiving
better wages. And in so far as these partial monopolies are
directed by public-spirited philanthropists, — so long, too, as the
exceptional profits remain in the hands of the original capital-
ists,— this presumption is borne out by facts. Such well-
known firms as Cadbury, Horrocks, Tangye, and a host of
other manufacturers of specialities, are noted for being
" good employers," that is, for voluntarily conceding to each
grade of labor better terms than similar workers obtain in
other establishments. But in this connection it is important
to remember that the standard by which the "good employer"
determines the conditions of labor is not any deliberate view
of what is required for full family efficiency and worthy
citizenship, but a practical estimate of what each grade of
workers would obtain from the ordinary employer, working
under competitive pressure. Hence a comparatively small
addition to weekly wages, a more equitable piecework list,
a larger degree of consideration in fixing the hours for
beginning or quitting work, the intervals for meals and the
arrangements for holidays, greater care in providing the little
comforts of the factory, or in rendering impossible the petty
tyrannies of foremen, — any of these ameliorations of the con-
ditions of labor will suffice, without serious inroads on profits,
to attract to a firm the best workers in the town, to gain for
it a reputation for justice and benevolence, and to give the
employer's family an abiding sense of satisfaction whenever
they enter the works, or cross the thresholds of their opera-
tives' homes. To this extent it is true that "the strength
of the capitalist is the shield of the laborer."1 But this
relatively humane relationship is nowadays seldom of long
standing. If the business grows to any size it will very
soon be formed into a joint-stock company, in which the old
partners may at first retain a large interest, but of which a
yearly increasing proportion is transferred to. outside share-
holders. These new shareholders, who will have bought in

1 Trade Unionism, by James Stirling (Glasgow, 1869), p. 42.

The Higgling of the Market 691

at a price yielding them no more than the current rate of
interest for that class of security, feel that they have no
margin of exceptional profit to dispose of. Even if the old
partners' families retain large holdings in their ancestral
concern, they have, by capitalising their profits, lost their
privilege of being benevolent with them ; and the share-
holders' meeting, the board of directors, and the salaried
general manager inevitably bring in " business principles,"
and pay no more for labor than they are compelled. And
when we pass to the gigantic capitalist corporations, admin-
istering legal monopolies, or to the colossal amalgamations
more and more dominating the industrial world, we find, in
sharpest contrast with the patriarchal employer of economic
romance, the daily changing crowd of share and debenture
owners, devoid of any responsibility for the conditions of
labor, and as uninformed and heedless as the consumer him-
self. It is not too much to say that, so far as concerns the
personal life of the 50,000 employees of the London and
North - Western Railway Company, the 55,000 ordinary
shareholders, who own that vast enterprise, are even more
ignorant, more inaccessible, and more irresponsible than the
millions of passengers whom they serve. The . situation
is intensified by the fact that, in the absence of law or
Collective Bargaining, these great capitalist monopolies can
practically dictate their own terms to their workpeople. If, as
is now admitted, the isolated workman stands at a serious
disadvantage in bargaining with the capitalist manufacturer,
what shall we say of the position of the candidate who
applies for the situation of porter or shunter to the officer
of a great railway company ? Here the very notion of
bargaining disappears. This does not mean that such
capitalists will necessarily dictate the absolute minimum
wage. The corporation decides, in its own interest, what
policy it will pursue as regards wages, hours, and other con-
ditions. Porters and shunters, plate-layers and general
laborers, can be had practically in any number at any price.
Whether it pays best to give the lowest wage on which the

692 Trade Union Theory

human animal can temporarily subsist, and be content with
a low level of muscular endurance, or whether it is better to
pay for superior men, and work them for ninety hours a
week, is a question which, in the absence of any interference
with " freedom of contract," is settled on much the same
principles as actuate a tramway company, deciding whether
it is more profitable to wear its horses out in four years or
in seven. And once the worker enters the employment of
any of these gigantic monopolists, the alternative to submis-
sion to his employer's commands is, not merely changing his
situation, but finding some new means of livelihood. For a
railway servant who leaves without a character, or with a
black mark against his name, knows perfectly well that he
will seek a situation in vain from any other railway company
in the kingdom. Thus it is only in exceptional instances,
and then only temporarily, that the wage-earners as a class
get any share of the extra profits secured to the capitalists
by their dykes and bulwarks. These exceptional profits are
quickly capitalised by their owners, and transferred to new
shareholders who come in at a premium. The more com-
plete and legally secured is the monopoly, the more certain
it is to be disposed of at a price which yields only a low
rate of interest — in extreme cases, such as urban waterworks,
approximating actually to the return on government secur-
ities themselves. On the other hand, the position of the
wage-earner is positively worsened, in the colossal capitalist
corporations, by the absence of effective competition for his
services by rival employers. The difference in strategic
position becomes so overwhelming that the wage-contract
ceases to be, in any genuine sense, a bargain at all.1

Amid all the capitalist devices that we have described,
the workmen's efforts to protect themselves against the full

1 ' ' To assume that the competition between the employer on the one hand, and
the wage-earners on the other, when the latter are unorganised and unprotected
by law, is a competition between equal units, is so fanciful and contrary to fact,
that any conclusions drawn from such an assumption can have little value under
present circumstances." — B. R. Wise, Indtistrial Freedom (London, 1892),
pp. 13, 15.

The HiggHng of the Market

— co,nparativel

things, no section of w ^ Capitalist u"^r-

secure from Par]iament he ^e-Jar"e« can nowadays
certa,n service. Unlike tZ XC'USIve "S** to perform a
"-chine, a workrnan ^ ~ .<* a newly-invented

-ost ingenious imp ™ .Ten wV '^ ™"°P°>y of
share of the productive pr^ffo ^ may make » his
tent to the inventor of a new trict f° C°Untry gra"ts a
Perhaps only a nove] V^T ™* of manual dexterity

enormously increases ^ pSJ^f ^ fi^ers— Wch
even the most ski,,ed J^"!^ of '"dusby. Nor can
h'mself, like the adverfeer of l*b°Kr m™ time assure to
secured tr.de mark, the faithful T^'*' °r °f a Iegally
Astant private consumers And^h f °f * iarge ^ «
earners form the base of thetdu I , * that the w^-
»«> -eaker c,ass be]ow ^ w±^ Pyramid' and have
Pressure, shuts them out from « ^ 7 Ca" transfer
as we have seen to profi S^JJ* f aS;°"S °f the
dykes and bulwarks C'°thier- A)

from becoming even aT l° Prevented such «a« pe™anently impossible

wi» be found SsJT-tant Part of ^e fiSish ?!OClatlon.s ^Producers"
Condon, first edition 18 '" ^ ^^^"^^^^ Movement_
Sldney Webb). W second edition

694 Trade Union Theory

industrial field, the wage-earners cling with stubborn obstinacy
to certain customary standards of expenditure. However
overpowering may be the strategic strength of the employer,
however unorganised and resourceless may be the wage-
earners, it is found to be impossible to reduce the wages and
other conditions of particular grades of workmen below a
certain vaguely defined standard. In the years of worst
trade, when thousands of engineers or boilermakers, masons
or plumbers, are walking the streets in search of work, the
most grasping employer knows that it is useless for him to
offer them work in their respective trades at ten or fifteen
shillings a week. Sooner than suffer such violence to their
feelings of what is fit and becoming to their social position,
they will work as unskilled laborers, or pick up odd jobs,
for the same, or even lower earnings than they refuse as
craftsmen. This stubborn refusal to render their particular
class of service for a wage that strikes them as outrageously
below their customary standard, does not depend on their
belonging to a Trade Union, for it is characteristic of
unionists and non-unionists alike, and is found in trades in
which no combination exists. Even the dock-laborer, who
frantically struggles at the dock-gates for any kind of employ-
ment, turns sulky, and discharges himself after a few hours,
if he is asked to work for a shilling a day. Nor does it
apply only to money wages. The British workman in the
building trades, though he is paid by the hour, and often
belongs to no union, will accept any alternative rather than
let his employer keep him habitually at work for fifteen
hours a day. Nor has this conventional minimum any
assignable relation to the cost of actual subsistence. The
young engineer or plumber, unencumbered by wife or child,
indignantly refuses to work for a wage upon which millions
of his fellow-citizens not only exist, but marry and bring up
families. On the other hand, though the London dock-
laborer will not go on working at a shilling a day, he
willingly accepts irregular work at a rate per hour which,
taking into account the periods of unemployment incidental

The Higgling of the Market 695

to his occupation, is demonstrably insufficient for sustained
physical health or industrial efficiency. This practical check
on the employer's power of reducing wages has always been
observed by the economists. " Where," observed J. S. Mill,
" there is not in the people, or in some very large proportion
of them, a resolute resistance to this deterioration — a deter-
mination to preserve an established standard of comfort —
the condition of the poorest class sinks, even in a progressive
state, to the lowest point which they will consent to endure." *
The classic economists were especially struck by the way in
which this determination to preserve an established standard
of comfort affected the level of wages in different countries,
and among different districts or races in the same country.2
" Custom," said Adam Smith, ..." has rendered leather
shoes a necessary of life in England. The poorest creditable
person of either sex would be ashamed to appear in public
without them. In Scotland, custom has rendered them a
necessary of life to the lowest order of men, but not to the
same order of women, who may, without any discredit, walk
about barefooted. In France they are necessaries neither
to men nor to women." a " The circumstances and habits of

1 J. S. Mill, Principles of Political Economy , Book IV. chap. vi. § I, p. 453.
"The habitual earnings of the working classes at large can be affected by
nothing but the habitual requirements of the laboring people ; these, indeed,
may be altered, but while they remain the same wages never fall permanently
below the standard of these requirements and do not long remain above that
standard." — Ibid. Book V. chap. x. § 5, p. 564.

2 " In England, for example, the lower classes principally live on wheaten
bread and butcher's meat, in Ireland on potatoes, and in China and Hindostan
on rice. In many provinces of France and Spain an allowance of wine is con-
sidered indispensable. In England the laboring class entertain nearly the same
opinion with respect to porter, beer, and cider ; whereas the Chinese and Hindoos
drink only water. The peasantry of Ireland live in miserable mud-cabins without
either a window or a chimney, or anything that can be called furniture ; while in
England the cottages of the peasantry have glass windows and chimneys, are well
furnished, and are as much distinguished for their neatness, cleanliness, and com-
fort, as those of the Irish for their filth and misery. These differences in their
manner of living occasion equal differences in their wages ; so that, while the
average price of a day's labor may be taken at from 2od. to 2s., it cannot be
taken at more than ;d. in Ireland, and 3d. in Hindostan." — J. R. M'Culloch,
A Treatise on the Circumstances which determine the Kate of Wages (London,
1851), p. 32.

3 Wealth of Nations, Book V. chap. ii. art. iv. p. 393.

696 Trade Union Theory

living prevalent in England," wrote Colonel Torrens, " have
long determined that women in the laboring classes shall
wear their feet and legs covered, and eat wheaten bread, with
a portion of animal food. Now, long before the rate of
wages could be so reduced as to compel women in this part
of the United Kingdom to go with their legs and feet un-
covered, and to subsist upon potatoes, with perhaps a little
milk from which the butter had been taken, all the labor-
ing classes would be upon parochial relief, and the land in
a great measure depopulated." l " These differences in their
manner of living," summed up M'Culloch, " occasion equal
differences in their wages." But whilst the fact was clearly
recognised, no satisfactory explanation of it was given. The
only reason for these differences in wages that the classic
economists could allege was that the customary " standard
of comfort" determined the rate at which the population
would increase — that any attempt by the employer to reduce
wages below this level would promptly cause fewer children
to be born, and thus alter the ratio of workers to wage-fund
twenty years hence ! 2 But this, it is obvious, does not tell
us why it is that the workman is able to refuse to accept
less to-day, even if population statistics still allowed us to
make any such assumption about the birth-rate. If the
economists had not been obsessed by the fallacy of a pre-
determined wage-fund, they would have perceived, in this
clinging of each generation to its accustomed livelihood, a
primitive bulwark against the innovation of fixing all the
conditions of labor by " free competition " among candidates
for employment. To the modern observer it is obvious that

1 Essay on the External Corn Trade, by Robert Torrens (London, 1815),
p. 58. See other references in Gunton's Wealth and Progress (London, 1888),

P- 193-

2 " Even though wages were high enough to admit of food's becoming more
costly without depriving the laborers and their families of necessaries ; though
they could bear, physically speaking, to be worse off, perhaps they would not
consent to be so. They might have habits of comfort which were to them as
necessaries, and sooner than forego which they would put an additional restraint
on their power of multiplication, so that wages would rise, not by increase of
deaths but by diminution of births." — J. S. Mill, Principles of Political Economy,
Book II. chap. xi. § 2, p. 209 (London, 1865).

7^ he Higgling of the Market 697

the existence, among all the workmen of a particular grade,
of an identical notion as to what amount and kind of weekly
expenditure constitutes snhsisfrenre, Js in itself equivalent- *o-
a tacit combination. It is, in fact, however it may have
come about, an incipient Common Rule, supported by a
universal and prolonged refusal to work, which is none the
less a strike"in that it'Ts^unconcerted'anorUnHeliberate. If
every artisan, without the slightest concert with his fellows,
is possessed by an unreasoning prejudice that he and his
family must consume wheaten bread, butcher's meat, beer,
and tea, instead of living on oatmeal, maize, potatoes, and
water, the employer will find it useless to suggest that " any
meal is better than none." He quickly discovers that if he
offers wages which will provide only the cheaper food, no
individual of the class that he requires will accept his situa-
tion. He is, in fact, face to face with what is virtually a
universal strike. Like all other strikes it may, for one reason
or another, presently fail. But as long as it lasts the alter-
native to the employer of coming to terms with the work-
man is, not one man's absence from his usual staff, but
getting no men at all — not foregoing a fraction of his profits,
but shutting up his establishment. It is accordingly plain
that, in a class of workmen among whom any such identical
notion as to the Standard of Comfort exists, the isolated
individual wage-earner bargains at greater advantage than
he would if he and his fellows were willing to accept any
kind of wages rather than none. The mere existence, among
all the workmen competing for a certain class of employment,
of an identical notion as to what constitutes their minimum
subsistence, amounts, therefore, even without concert or reserve-
fund, to a real bulwark against the pressure of competition.1

1 We are unable here to do more than refer to the existence of these popular
ideas as to the Standard of Life. How they originate — why, for instance, the
English workman should always have insisted on eating costly and unnutritious
wheaten bread, or why some classes or races display so much more stubbornness
of standard than others, would be a fruitful subject for economic inquiry. We
suggest, as a hypothetical classification by way of starting-point, that the races
and classes of wage-earners seem to divide themselves into three groups. There
are those who, like the Anglo-Saxon skilled artisan, will not work below a

698 Trade Union Theory

But this primitive bulwark — the instinctive Standard of
Life of uncombined resourceless wage- earners — has grave
defects. It is, in the first place, a weak bulwark, seldom
able to withstand the exceptional pressure of times of
adversity, especially as it often fails to cover equally the
whole length of the line. Moreover, it is usually weakest
in its upper parts, so that the employers, in periods of great
pressure, always succeed in planing it down a little. On
the other hand, owing to the absence of any deliberate
concert, it cannot practically be raised by the workmen's
own efforts, even when the pressure is withdrawn, and thus,
in the absence of any better protection or of the intervention
of some outside force, it is apt to become gradually lower
and lower. These defects arise, as we shall see, from (i)
the necessary indefmiteness of a merely instinctive Standard
of Life, (2) the absence of any material support for the
wage-earner's stubbornness, and (3) the impossibility with-
out concerted action of adjusting the workmen's instinctive
demands so as to meet the changing circumstances of the
industry.

customary minimum Standard of Life, but who have no maximum ; that is to
say, they will be stimulated to intenser effort and new wants by every increase of
income. There are races who, like the African negro, have no assignable mini-
mum, but a very low maximum ; they will work, that is, for indefinitely low
wages, but cannot be induced to work at all once their primitive wants are
satisfied. Finally, there is the Jew, who, as we think, is unique in possessing
neither a minimum nor a maximum ; he will accept the lowest terms rather than
remain out of employment ; as he rises in the world new wants stimulate him to
increased intensity of effort, and no amount of income causes him to slacken his
indefatigable activity. To this remarkable elasticity in the Standard of Life is,
we suggest, to be attributed both the wealth and the poverty of the Jews — the
striking fact that their wage-earning class is permanently the poorest in all Europe,
whilst individual Jews are the wealthiest men of their respective countries.

The position of the English working-woman in this connection would especi-
ally repay inquiry. The poverty-stricken widow, with children depending on
her for bread, will accept any rate of wages or any length of hours rather than
refuse employment. On the other hand, the well-brought-up daughter of the
artisan will obstinately insist on certain conditions of decency, comfort, and
"respectability" in her work. But owing to the fact that she so often is not
wholly dependent on her wages, she is apt to accept any rate of pay rather than
leave a comfortable and well-conducted factory, and employers often complain
that no stimulus of piecework or bonus will induce such women-workers to increase
their effort beyond a somewhat low maximum.

The Higgling of the Market 699

The lack of definiteness is an essential feature of any
merely instinctive standard. What the isolated individual
workman feels is that he is entitled to a certain mode of
living, a certain vague quantum of weekly expenditure, in
return for an equally vague quantum of daily work. Each
man translates this for himself into terms of wages, hours,
etc., and the translations of thousands of men in different
parts of the country inevitably differ among themselves.
All engineers, for instance, would agree that fifteen shillings
a week was far below their minimum standard. But, in the
absence of any concerted action, they would differ among
themselves as to whether its money equivalent at a particular
time and place was twenty-seven or twenty-nine shillings a
week, or whether any given piecework rate was or was not
a fair one. Still more indefinite is the workman's instinctive
Standard of Life with regard to the length of the working
day, meal times, and holidays ; fines and deductions of every
kind ; the conditions of over - crowding and ventilation,
decency and safety, under which his work is done ; and the
wear and tear of nerves, muscles, and clothes to which he is
exposed. These differences of translation are the employer's
opportunity. By constantly insisting upon taking, as the
standard on any point, the lowest translation made by any
candidate for employment, he is able gradually to beat all
the others down to that level.

It is a no less serious cause of weakness that, in the
absence of any collective reserve fund, the isolated individual
worker cannot hope to be able to stand out long against an
obstinate employer. However strong may be the repugnance
to accept what is felt to be less than the standard wage, the
workman who has no other resources than the sale of his
labor will find himself every day more strongly tempted by
necessity to accept something less than he claims. When
he is once in employment, his outspoken revolt against any
" nibbling " at wages, " cribbing time," or other worsening of
the conditions, will be checked, especially in periods of slack-
ness, by his reluctance to " quarrel with his bread and butter."

700 Trade Union Theory

What the most necessitous man submits to, all the others
soon find themselves pressed to put up with. Thus, in the
absence of any financial strengthening of the weakest
members, the bulwark of a merely instinctive Standard of
Life insidiously gives way before employers' importunities.

Finally, whilst the bulwark of a Standard of Life is
always yielding under the pressure of severe competition, it
does not get systematically built up again in the seasons
when the pressure is lightened. To the capitalist the scanty
profits of lean years are made up by largely swollen gains
in the alternating periods of commercial prosperity. . But a
wage determined only by an instinctive Standard of Life
does not rise merely because the employers are temporarily
making larger profits. The " habits and customs " of a
people — their ideas of what is necessary for comfort and
social decency — may, in the slow course of generations of
prosperity, silently and imperceptibly change for the better,
but they are unaffected by the swift and spasmodic fluctua-
tions which characterise modern industry. Thus, in years of
good trade, when no competent man need remain long
unemployed, though the pushing workman may, without a
Trade Union, temporarily exact better terms, the class as a
whole is apt to get only regular employment at its accustomed
livelihood. In the absence of mutual consultation and
concerted action, individuals may aspire to a higher standard,
but there can be no simultaneous and identical rise, and
thus no new consensus of feeling is brought to the aid of the
Individual Bargaining of the weaker men.

Trade Unionism, to put it briefly, remedies all these
defects of a merely instinctive Standard of Life. By inter-
preting the standard into precise and uniform conditions
of employment it gives every member of the combination
a definite and identical minimum to stand out for, and an
exact measure by which to test any new proposition of the
employer. The reader of our descriptions of the elaborate
standard rates and piecework lists, the scales fixing working
hours and limiting overtime, and the special rules for sanita-

The Higgling of the Market 70 1

tion and safety, which together make up the body of Trade
Union Regulations, will appreciate with what fervor and
persistency the Trade Unions have pursued this object of
giving the indispensable definiteness to the Standard of Life
of each section of wage-earners. And when we pass from
the Regulations of Trade Unionism to its characteristic
Methods, we may now see how exactly these are calculated
to remedy the other shortcomings of the wage -earners'
instinctive defence. By the Method of Mutual Insurance,
the most necessitous workman, who would otherwise be the
weakest part of the position, is freed from the pressure of
his special necessities, and placed in as good a position as
his fellows to resist the employer's encroachments. The
provision of a common fund enables, in fact, all the members
alike to get what the economists have called a " reserve
price" on their labor. Thus, the bulwark is made equally
strong all along the line. But the Method of Mutual
Insurance also carries a stage further this strengthening of
the weak parts of the defence. The money saved in good
years, when the Out of Work benefit is little drawn upon,
will be used to support the members in times of slack trade,
when the pressure will be greatest. Thus, the bulwark is
specially strengthened against the advancing tide. The
Method of Collective Bargaining brings a new kind of
support. When the terms of the contract are settled, not
separately by the individual workmen concerned, but jointly
by appointed agents on their behalf, an additional barrier is
interposed between the pressure acting through the employer,
and the apprehensions and ignorances of his wage-earners.
The conclusion of collective agreements not only excludes,
as we have explained, the influence of the exigencies of
particular workmen, particular firms, or particular districts,
but it also gives the combined manual workers the invaluable
assistance of a professional expert who, in knowledge of the
trade and trained capacity for bargaining, may even be
superior to the employer himself. The Method of Collective
Bargaining has the further advantage over reliance on a

Trade Union Theory

merely instinctive Standard of Life that the terms can be
quickly raised so as to take advantage of any time of rising
profits, and indefinitely adjusted so as to meet the require-
ments of an ever-changing industry. Finally, the Method
of Legal Enactment — the use of which by the workmen
demands a high degree of voluntary organisation, and above
all, an expert professional staff of salaried officers —
absolutely secures one element of the Standard of Life after
another by embodying them in our factory code, and thus
fortifies the workmen's original bulwark by the unyielding
buttress of the law of the land.

But this general description of Trade Unionism as the
Dyke of a definite Standard of Life, strengthened by the
existence of a common purse, the services of expert
negotiators, and the protection of the magistrate — though
it serves to indicate its place in the higgling of the market
— affords too indefinite a mark for useful economic criticism.
In the Second Part of this work we laid before the reader
an exhaustive analysis of the Regulations imposed by British
Trade Unionists, of the Methods by which they seek their
ends, and, finally, of the far-reaching views of social ex-
pediency upon which the policy of the various sections of
the Trade Union world is determined. In this analysis we
distinguished between what is universal and what is only
partial, and, above all, between the elements that are deepening
and extending, and those that are dwindling in scope and
intensity. What we have now to do is to follow out the
economic effects of each type, and thus enable the reader to
form some general estimate of the results upon our industrial
development, of the actual content of contemporary Trade
Unionism in this country.

CHAPTER III

THE ECONOMIC CHARACTERISTICS OF TRADE UNIONISM

THE economist and the statesman will judge Trade Unionism,
not by its results in improving the position of a particular
section of workmen at a particular time, but by its effects
on the permanent efficiency of the nation. If any of the
Methods and Regulations of Trade Unionism result in the
choice of less efficient factors of production than would other-
wise have been used ; if they compel the adoption of a lower
type of organisation than would have prevailed without them ;
and especially if they tend to lessen the capacity or degrade
the character of either manual laborers or brain -workers, that
part of Trade Unionism, however advantageous it may seem
to particular sections of workmen, will stand condemned. If,
on the other hand, any Trade Union Methods and Regulations
are found to promote the selection of the most efficient factors
of production, whether capital, brains, or labor ; if they tend
to a better organisation of these factors, and above all, if
their effect is progressively to increase the activities and
improve the character of both brain and manual workers,
then, in spite of any apparent contraction of the personal
power of the capitalist class, they will be approved by the
economist as tending to heighten the faculties and enlarge
the enjoyments of the community as a whole.1

1 Here and throughout this chapter we proceed on the assumption that it is
desirable for the community to "progress"; that is to say, that its members
should attain, generation after generation, a wider and fuller life by developing

704 Trade Union Theory

Let us take first the Trade Union Regulations, for, if
these have an injurious effect, it is unnecessary to consider
by what methods they are enforced. Notwithstanding their
almost infinite variety of technical detail these Regulations
can, as we have seen, be reduced to two economic
devices : Restriction of Numbers and the Common Rule.
To the former type belong the ancient Trade Union
prescriptions as to Apprenticeship, the exclusion of new
competitors from a trade, and the assertion of a vested
interest in a particular occupation. The latter type includes
the more modern rules directly fixing a Standard Rate,
a Normal Day, and definite conditions of Sanitation
and Safety.

(a] The Device of Restriction of Numbers

There is a certain sense in which every regulation,
whether imposed by law or public custom, laid down by
the employer or insisted on by the Trade Union, may be
said to restrict the entrance to an occupation. It is inherent
in any rule that its enforcement incidentally excludes those
who, for one reason or another, cannot or will not conform
to it. Thus, a firm which, as a matter of business routine,
requires its employees to be regular in their attendance, or
to abstain from smoking or drinking at their work, or which

increased faculties and satisfying more complicated desires. When, therefore,
for the sake of shortness, we use the phrase "Selection of the Fittest," we mean
the fittest to achieve this object of social evolution; and by the phrase "Func-
tional Adaptation," we mean the adaptation of the individual to an increase in
the strength and complexity of his faculties and desires, as distinguished from
" Degeneration," the corresponding decrease in faculties and desires. We are
aware that this assumption would not command universal assent. The whole
Eastern world, for instance, proclaims the opposite philosophy of life ; an Eng-
lishman, it is said, "seeks happiness in the multiplication of his possessions, a
Hindoo in the diminution of his wants." And there are, if we mistake not,
many persons in the Western world whose dislike of modern progress springs,
half unconsciously, from an objection to a life which, whilst satisfying more
complicated desires, makes increasing demands upon the faculties. To such
persons the whole argument contained in this chapter will be an additional reason
for disliking the more modern manifestations of Trade Unionism.

Economic Characteristics 705

systematically dismisses those who fail to attain a certain
speed, or repeatedly make mistakes, thereby restricts its
employment to operatives of a certain standard of conduct
or capacity. Similarly, the universal Trade Union insistence
on a Standard Rate of payment for a given quota of work
excludes, from the particular occupation those whom no
employer will engage at that rate. And when any
regulation, either of the employers or of the workmen, is
embodied in the law of the land, this new Factory Act
automatically closes the occupation to which it applies to
all persons who cannot or will not conform to its prescriptions.
The kingdom itself may be closed to certain races by -a
Sanitary Code, with which their religion forbids them to
comply. But there is a great distinction in character and
results between the incidentally restrictive effects of a
Common Rule, to which every one is free to conform, and
the direct exclusion of specified classes of persons, whether
they conform or not, by regulations totally prohibiting their
entrance. In the present section we deal solely with direct
attempts to secure or maintain a more or less complete
" monopoly " of particular occupations, either by limiting the
number of learners, or by excluding, on grounds of sex,
previous occupation, or lack of apprenticeship, persons whom
an employer is willing to engage, and who are themselves
willing to work, in strict conformity with the standard con-
ditions of the trade.

From the standpoint of industrial efficiency, the most
obvious characteristic of the Device of Restriction of Numbers
is the manner in which it influences the selection of the
factors of production. When situations are filled by com-
petitive examination, as for instance in the English Civil
Service, it is recognised that any restriction on the number
of candidates — still more, any limitation of the candidates to
persons of particular families, particular classes, or particular
antecedents — lowers the average of quality among the
successful competitors. The same consequence results from
any restriction which prevents an employer from filling all
VOL. II 2 Z

706 Trade Union Theory

his vacancies as they occur by selecting the most efficient
operatives, wherever he can find them. The mere fixing of
a ratio of apprentices to journeymen will exclude from the
trade some boys who would otherwise have learnt it, and
who might have proved the most capable operatives at the
craft. This is certain to be the case if the regulation takes
the form of exacting a high entrance fee, or of confining
admission to craftsmen's sons. Even without any restrictions
on apprenticeship, the requirement that the trade must be
entered before a prescribed age, by excluding the quick-
witted outsider who desires to change his occupation in after
years, necessarily tends to limit the range of the employer's
choice, and hence to make the average level of capacity lower
in the protected trade than it would otherwise be. And
whilst this limitation on the process of selection is injurious
even in old-established trades, it becomes plainly more harm-
ful when the question is the choice of men to work a new
machine or perform some novel service. The more restricted
the field from which the capitalist can pick these new opera-
tives, the lower will be their average level of capacity. Nor
is it merely the absence of unemployed workmen that im-
pedes the employer's freedom to select the most efficient man
to fill his vacancy. The constant existence of a remnant of
unemployed may enable an employer to get a " cheap hand,"
or help him to lower wages all round ; but the competition
of this " reserve army " does little or nothing to promote
efficiency. The fact that a man is out of work affords a
presumption that he has, for the moment, greater needs, but
not that he has greater faculties. To compel employers to
fill all vacancies from the unemployed remnant of the trade,
in preference to promoting the ablest members of the next
lower grade, is often to force them to engage, not the work-
men who promise to be the most efficient, but those who
have proved themselves below the average in regularity or
capacity. On the other hand, if the Restriction of Numbers
is carried so far that only one candidate presents him-
self to fill each vacancy, all selection disappears. Had the

Economic Characteristics 707

regulations of the Flint Glass Makers and the Silk Hatters
been enforced with absolute universality every employer in
those trades would have found himself compelled, whenever
a vacancy occurred in his establishment, either to accept the
Trade Union nominee, whatever his character or capacity, or
else leave the situation unfilled.

And whilst any limitation of the persons from whom
vacancies can be filled insidiously lowers the quality of the
recruits, the same influence deteriorates the men already in
the trade. When it is known that the master has no chance
of getting better workmen, or that his choice will be limited
to the unemployed remnant of the trade, the " average
sensual man " is apt to lose much of his incentive to
efficiency, and even to regularity of conduct. In those
trades in which the Device of Restriction of Numbers is
effectually practised, an employer habitually puts up with a
higher degree of irregularity, carelessness, and inefficiency in
his existing staff, than he would if he could freely promote a
learner or an assistant to the better-paid situation.

What is not so generally recognised is that, in trades in
which the workmen are able to make effective use of the
Device of Restriction of Numbers, the brain-workers of the
trade are themselves less select, and suffer a similar loss of
incentive to efficiency. In such completely organised and old-
fashioned trades as glass-blowing and hand papermaking, the
policy of limiting the numbers has been so effectively carried
out that capitalists who, when trade is brisk and profits large,
might desire to set up new works in competition with the
old establishments, are actually stopped by the difficulty of
obtaining an adequate supply of skilled workmen. Hence,
old-fashioned family concerns, with sleepy management and
obsolete plant, find the Trade Union regulations a positive
protection against competition. This is frequently admitted
in the negotiations between masters and men. In 1874, for
instance, the spokesman of the hand papermakers put
forward this profitable effect of his union's restrictive regula-
tions as a reason why the employers should concede better

708 Trade Union Theory

terms. " If," said he, " the men have good wages, the
masters as a rule make large profits, and large profits are
inducements which cause fresh capital to be embarked in a
trade. If, however, the men have a limit to the supply of
labor, no matter what the profits are, fresh capital cannot be
introduced, because if a man starts fresh vats he will have
no workmen to go on with. The rule as to limiting the
supply of labor therefore works both ways. As far as our
position in the vat trade is concerned we are like a close
corporation. ... It would be a great inducement for capital
to enter the trade if labor could be got, but . . . according
to our Rules and Regulations, competition is checked." l

From the point of view of the consumer, this use of the
Device of Restriction of Numbers by the workmen, and their
formation of a close corporation seems, at first sight, analogous
to the establishment of a capitalist ring or trust. Both
expedients aim at creating a profitable monopoly, for the
benefit of those already in the trade, by the exclusion of new
competitors. But there is an important difference between
the workmen's monopoly and that of the capitalists, in the

1 Arbitration on the Question of an Advance in Wages. . . . Rupert Kettle,
Q.C., Arbitrator (Maidstone, p. 64, 1874).

Similar conditions seem to have prevailed in the early factory industries
of France, after the impulse given by Henry II. (ca. 1550). Towards the end
of the seventeenth century the workers in the paper-mills, carpet factories, and
manufactories of looking-glasses are described as forming strong though un-
authorised corporations, which were encouraged by the employers, and which
were recruited exclusively from sons and sons-in-law of the workmen, so as
to form virtually a hereditary monopoly. The papermakers were so powerful
as to lead to special repressive laws for this industry in 1793 and again in
1796. — Du Cellier, Hisloire des Classes Laborieuses en France (Paris, 1860),
pp. 259, 260, 334 ; and, as regards the papermakers, the articles by C. M. Briquet
in the Revue Internationale de Sociologie, March 1897.

It is in this exclusion of new capital, and the consequent check to the process
of Selection of the Fittest among the employers, that we discover the fundamental
objection to the policy of Restriction of Output, which we described in our
chapter on " Continuity of Employment." It is, as we explained, impossible for
the Trade Union, by any methods or regulations of its own, to limit the aggregate
output. But the employers may, and occasionally do effect such a limitation,
with or without the co-operation of the Trade Union concerned. In so far as
this is effected by preventing or discouraging new capitalist enterprise, it tends to
diminish the efficiency of the industry, by checking the " elimination of the unfit "
among the employers.

Economic Characteristcs 7°9

type of industrial organisation that they set up, and in their
results upon productive efficiency. A successful Trust loses,
it is true, the goad to improvement that comes from the free
fight with other competitors. On the other hand, it retains
undiminished, and gives full scope to the profit -maker's
normal incentive to go on increasing his business and his
income. So long as an additional increment of capital
promises to yield more than the rate paid to the banker or
debenture holder for its use, the capitalist Trust will strive to
enlarge its output, and make the utmost possible improvement
in its processes. The owners of even the most absolute
monopoly do not find it pay to raise the price of their
product in such a way as to cause any serious falling-off in
the sales ; more commonly, indeed, as in the case of the
Standard Oil Company,1 they get an advantage by actually
lowering the price in order to stimulate the demand. They
are, in any case, perpetually tempted to engage the ablest
brains in the Trust's service, as well as to use the best machines
and the latest inventions ; for every cheapening of production
that can be effected enures wholly to their own advantage.
Hence, however large and disproportionate may be the
income drawn by the owners of the Trust, however arbitrary
and oppressive may be the social power that it exercises,
this capitalist monopoly has at any rate the economic
advantage of selecting and organising the factors of pro-
duction in such a way as to turn out its product at an ever
diminishing cost. A close corporation of workmen has,
on the contrary, no interest in enlarging its business. The
individual operatives who enjoy the monopoly have only their
own energy to sell, and they are accordingly interested in
getting in return for their definitely limited output as high
a price as possible. If they can, by raising price, exact the
same income for a smaller number of hours' work, it will
positively pay them to leave some of the world's demand
unsatisfied. They have nothing to gain by cheapening the

1 See Wealth Against Commonwealth, by Henry D. Lloyd (London, 1894) ;
E. von Halle, Trusts.

7io Trade Union Theory

process of production, and they stand actually to lose by
every invention or improvement in organisation that enables
their product to be turned out with less labor. Any altera-
tion, in short, will be repugnant to them, as involving a
change of habit, new exertion, and no pecuniary gain.
Rather than forego the utmost possible individual wage, it
would even pay them to stop all recruiting, and progressively
raise their price as their members drop off one by one, until
the whole industry dwindled away.

So far the Device of Restriction of Numbers appears
wholly injurious to industrial efficiency. There is, however,
one important effect in another direction. If, in the absence
of all regulation, the employers are free without let or hind-
rance to make the best bargain they can with the individual
wage-earners, whole sections of the population, men, women,
and children, will be compelled to live and toil under con-
ditions seriously injurious to their health and industrial
efficiency. Nor is this merely an empirical inference from
the history of an unregulated factory system, and from the
contemporary facts of the sweated industries. It is now
theoretically demonstrated, as we saw in our chapter on
"The Verdict of the Economists," that under "perfect
competition," and complete mobility between one occupation
and another, the common level of wages tends to be no
more than " the net produce due to the additional labor of
the marginal laborer," who is on the verge of not being
employed at all ! The Device of Restriction of Numbers
manifestly enables the privileged insiders to make a better
bargain with their employers — that is to say, to insist on
better sanitary conditions, shorter and more regular hours,
and, above all, a wage which provides for their families as
well as themselves, a more adequate supply of food and
clothing. However equivocal may be the device by which
this higher Standard of Life is secured, there can be no doubt
that, in itself, it renders possible a far higher degree of skill,
conduct, and general efficiency than the long hours, unhealthy
conditions, and bare subsistence wages which are found

Economic Characteristics 7 1 1

prevailing in the unregulated trades. In such a case the
Device of Restriction of Numbers must be credited with
indirectly preventing evil, and with producing a certain
increase of efficiency, as a set-off against the direct weaken-
ing of the incentive to improvement that we have been
describing. Thus, it is easy to accuse the Glass Bottle
Makers of injuring their industry by their drastic Restriction
of Numbers. But it is open to them to reply that the very
existence of their high level of technical skill depends on
their maintaining a high Standard of Life ; that the Restric-
tion of Numbers has been an effective means of maintaining
this high standard ; and that without it, their combination
would have crumbled away, their lists of Piecework Rates
would have been destroyed by Individual Bargaining, and
they themselves would have sunk to the low level of the
present outcasts of the trade, those incompetent and un-
organised workmen who pick up starvation wages by
making, in cellars and " crib-shops," the commonest kind of
medicine bottles. It was this consideration that induced
J. S. Mill to declare that such a " partial rise of wages, if
not gained at the expense of the remainder of the working
class, ought not to be regarded as an evil. The consumer
indeed, must pay for it, but cheapness of goods is desirable
only when the cause of it is that their production costs
little labor, and not when occasioned by that labor being ill-
remunerated. If, therefore, no improvement were to be
hoped for in the general circumstances of the working
classes the success of a portion of them, however small, in
keeping their wages by combination above the market rate
would be wholly a matter of satisfaction."1 Hence, from
the point of view of those who regarded Restriction of
Numbers as the only means by which wages could be
maintained at anything above subsistence level, there was
no argument against a Trade Union which adopted this
expedient to save its members from slipping into the
universal morass. During the fifty years that followed

1 J. S. Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Book V. ch. x. § 5, p. 564.

712 Trade Union Theory

the repeal of the Combination Laws the Trade Unionists
were incessantly told that " combinations of workmen . . .
always fail to uphold wages at an artificial rate, unless they
also limit the number of competitors." ] When the Flint
Glass Makers and the Compositors, the Papermakers and
Engineers adopted stringent apprenticeship regulations as
one of the principal devices of their Trade Unionism, in so far
as they were taking the only recognised means of protecting
from a useless degradation their relatively high Standard of
Life, and of maintaining unimpaired their relatively high
level of industrial efficiency, they were but applying the
current teachings of Political Economy.

To sum up, the Device of Restriction of Numbers, by
constantly baulking the free selection of the most capable
manual workers and entrepreneurs ; by removing from both
classes the incentive due to the fear of supersession ; by
stereotyping processes and restricting output ; and by per-
sistently hindering the re-organisation of industry on the
most improved basis, lowers the level of productive efficiency
all round. On the other hand, as compared with " perfect
competition," it has the economic advantage of fencing-off
particular families, grades, or classes from the general degrada-
tion, and thus preserving to the community, in these privi-
leged groups, a store of industrial traditions, a high level of
specialised skill, and a degree of physical health and general
intelligence unattainable at a bare subsistence wage. If,
therefore, we had to choose between perfect " freedom of
competition," and an effective but moderate use of the
Device of Restriction of Numbers — between, for in-
stance, the unregulated factory labor of the Lancashire of
the beginning of this century, on the one hand, and the
mediaeval craft gild on the other — the modern economist
would hesitate long before counselling a complete abandon-
ment of the old device.

1 J. S. Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Book II. chap. xiv. § 6, p. 243
of 1865 edition ; see also p. 229, " Every successful combination to keep up wages
owes its success to contrivances for restricting the number of the competitors. "

Economic Characteristics 713

We are fortunately saved from so embarrassing a choice.
In the first place, an effective use of the Device of Restriction
of Numbers is no longer practicable. In our chapters on
" The Entrance to a Trade " and " The Right to a Trade "
we have seen how small and dwindling is the minority of
Trade Unions which still rely on this means of protecting
their Standard of Life. The ever-growing mobility of
capital, and the incessant revolutionising of industrial pro-
cesses render impracticable, in the vast majority of occupa-
tions, any restriction, by the Methods of Mutual Insurance
or Collective Bargaining, of the candidates for employment.
The steadily-increasing dislike to the Doctrine of Vested
Interests makes it every day more hopeless to set up or
maintain, by the Method of Legal Enactment, any limitation
on the freedom of the competent individual to do any work
for which he is positively better fitted, than those by whom
it has hitherto been performed. Thus, only an infinitesimal
number of Trade Unions actually succeed in limiting
the number of persons who become candidates for
employment at their occupation. It is true that large
sections of the Trade Union world still, as we have seen,
cling to the old device. The Compositors, the Engineers,
the Ironfounders, the factory Boot and Shoe Operatives,
and, in many districts, one or other section of the
building trades limit, with more or less stringency, the
number of boy -learners in any one establishment. This
regulation can, however, only be enforced in establishments
or districts over which the Trade Union has exceptional con-
trol, and it is entirely nugatory in establishments dispensing
with Trade Union labor, and in districts where the skilled
workmen are only partially organised. Hence, as we have
pointed out in our chapter on " The Entrance to a Trade,"
these Trade Unions are not, by their apprenticeship regula-
tions, limiting the number of candidates for employment ;
they are merely providing, at considerable cost to themselves,
that the boys should be trained in the least skilled department
of the trade ; initiated into their industrial career by the

714 Trade Union Theory

worst employers and the most indifferent workmen ; and, we
may add, brought up with the feelings and traditions of
" blacklegs," instead of those of good Trade Unionists.
Whatever advantages may be thought to accrue from a
systematic and successful Restriction of Numbers, the partial
and lopsided application of this device by modern Trade
Unions is, we believe, economically as prejudicial to the
strategic position of their own members as it is to the
interests of the rest of the community.

More effectual in inducing the great majority of Trade
Unions to change their tactics has been the discovery — in
flat contradiction to J. S. Mill's authoritative dictum — that
they can successfully maintain a high Standard of Life, by re-
lying exclusively on the Device of the Common Rule. Thus,
the Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton-spinners
or the Northumberland Miners' Mutual Confident Association
— combinations which have, for a whole generation, success-
fully maintained relatively good wages and short hours,
together with a high level of sanitation and safety — have
never interfered in the employer's free choice of men, what-
ever their antecedents, to fill vacancies in their respective
trades. In the case of the Cotton-spinners the Trade Union
even insists, as we have seen, on there being always ten
times as many learners as would suffice to keep up the
trade. In so far as the Common Rules governing these
industries are enforced by law this may easily be understood.
The Device of Restriction of Numbers in no way increases
the power of a Trade Union to obtain an Act of Parliament
or to press for the rigid application of existing statutes ; it
tends, on the contrary, to diminish this power. Any success-
ful limitation of numbers necessarily restricts the growth of
the industry in question, and thus lessens the electoral area
over which it is dominant, whilst the maintenance of a close
monopoly alienates the sympathy of the excluded. More
paradoxical is the fact that it is not, in practice, found to
militate against the maintenance of Common Rules by Collec-
tive Bargaining, that a large qumber of people would like to

Economic Characteristics 715

come into the trade, or even that a crowd of candidates
apply for every situation that is vacant. The explanation
of this paradox must be sought in the economic characteristics
of the Device of the Common Rule.

(U) The Device of the Common Rule

We have sufficiently explained, in our chapters on
" The Standard Rate," " The Normal Day," and " Sanitation
and Safety," that the Device of the Common Rule is, from the
workman's point of view, always the enforcement of a mini-
mum, below which no employer may descend, never a maxi-
mum, beyond which he may not, if he chooses, offer better
terms. This is specially noticeable where the Common Rule
is enforced by law. An employer who, for one reason or
another, desires to fill his works with the most respectable
young women, does not restrict himself to the already high
standard of comfort and decency enforced by the Factory
Act ; he sees to it that the workrooms are cheerful, warm,
and light ; provides dining-rooms and cloak-rooms, hot water,
soap, and towels, free from the usual irritating charges ; takes
care to prevent any opportunity for the foreman's petty
tyrannies ; and strives to make a spirit of kindly considera-
tion pervade the whole establishment. When the Trade
Union has to enforce the Common Rule by Mutual Insurance
or Collective Bargaining, it never objects to an employer
attracting superior workmen to his establishment by adopt-
ing a scale of wages in excess of the Standard ; by intro-
ducing an Eight Hours' Day ; or by promising to pay full
wages during holidays or breakdowns. The mere adoption
of a Common Rule, even if it does no more than give
definiteness and uniformity to what has hitherto been the
average, current, or " fair " conditions of the industry, has
therefore the psychological effect of transforming a " mean "
into a " minimum " ; and hence of silently setting up, in the

716 Trade Union Theory

eyes of both employers and workmen, a new " mean "
between the best and worst conditions prevailing in the
trade.1

The Device of the Common Rule stands in sharpest
contrast, in all that concerns the selection of the factors of
production, with the Device of Restriction of Numbers. The
enforcement in any industry of a Standard Rate, a Normal
Day, and prescribed conditions of Sanitation and Safety does
not prevent the employer's choice of one man rather than
another, or forbid him to pick out of the crowd of applicants
the strongest, most skilful, or best -conducted workman.
Hence, the Common Rule in no way abolishes competition
for employment. It does not even limit the intensity of such
competition, or the freedom of the employer to take advantage
of it. All that it does is to transfer the pressure from one
element in the bargain to the other — from the wage to the work,
from price to quality. In fact, this exclusion, from influence
on the contract, of all degradation of price, whether it takes
the form of a lower rate of wages, longer hours of labor, or
worse conditions of sanitation and safety, necessarily heightens
the relative influence on the contract of all the elements that
are left. If the conditions of employment are unregulated, it
will frequently pay an employer not to select the best workman,
but to give the preference to an incompetent or infirm
man, a " boozer " or a person of bad character, provided that
he can hire him at a sufficiently low wage, make him work
excessive and irregular hours, or subject him to insanitary or
dangerous conditions. If the employer cannot go below a
common minimum rate, and is unable to grade the other
conditions of employment down to the level of the lowest
and most necessitous wage-earner in his establishment, he is
economically impelled to do his utmost to raise the level of

1 The Trade Unionist conception and application of a Standard Rate of re-
muneration stands, it need hardly be said, at the opposite pole from the mediaeval
fixing by law of a wage which it was equally an offence to diverge from in either
direction. There is no resemblance between the economic effects of fixing a
minimum wage, and those of establishing a maximum.

Economic Characteristics 717

efficiency of all his workers so as to get the best possible
return for the fixed conditions.1

This is the basis of the oft-repeated accusation brought
by the sentimental lady or district visitor against the Trade
Union Standard Rate, that it prevents an employer from pre-
ferentially selecting an old man, or a physical or moral
invalid, when there is a vacancy to be filled. But it is clear
that the efficiency of industry is promoted by every situation
being filled by the best available candidate. If the old man
is engaged instead of the man in the prime of life, the man
of irregular habits rather than the steady worker, there is a
clear loss all round.2 From the point of view of the
economist, concerned to secure the highest efficiency of the
national industry, it must be counted to the credit of the

1 " The consequence is," says Mr. Lecky, of the Trade Union Standard Rate,
" that the employer is necessarily driven to employ exclusively the most efficient
labor" (Democracy and Liberty, vol. ii. p. 347). It is often supposed that this
effect of a Standard Rate is confined to Time Wages. But it operates also when
(as is the case among the majority of Trade Unionists) the Standard Rate is a
Piecework List. Even if the employer pays only in proportion to the work done,
it is economically disadvantageous to him and to the community that his premises,
machinery, and brain-power should be used short of their maximum capacity.
This effect is intensified with every increased use of capital or brain-power in
industry. The economic compulsion on the cotton manufacturer to select the
most efficient workman to fill a vacancy is as much due to the high cost of
machinery as to the high Piecework List.

2 If all the fully competent workmen are already employed, and the weakling
or degenerate is the only candidate for the vacancy, he will be taken on, as con-
stantly happens when business is very brisk, notwithstanding the Standard Rate.
But if an old man or an irregular worker is, through philanthropic influence on
some employer, or through benevolent favoritism, given a preference, the result
is, in practical life, that some more competent workman is left unemployed.
Thus, the burden on the philanthropist is not lessened. It may even be
increased, for it probably costs more to keep an unemployed workman in the
prime of life, with full health and activities, and family obligations, than it does
to maintain the aged. Nor does this argument assume, as some may think,
any fixed "work fund." Whatever the demand may be for any particular
kind of service, efficiency requires that no weakling should be employed until every
more competent man is fully occupied. The hypothetical case in which whilst
every competent workman in the community is fully employed, there is still some
demand unsupplied, but not enough to make it worth while to pay the Standard
Rate to one marginal old man or inferior worker, may be abandoned to the casuist.
The necessary provision, both for the temporarily unemployed and the permanently
unemployable — a problem not created by the enforcement of the Standard Rate —
is dealt with in a later part of this chapter.

718 Trade Union Theory

Device of the Common Rule, that it compels the employer,
in his choice of men to fill vacancies, to be always striving,
since he cannot get a " cheap hand," to exact, for the price
that he has to pay, greater strength and skill, a higher
standard of sobriety and regular attendance, and a superior
capacity for responsibility and initiative.1

But the rigid enforcement of the Device of the Common
Rule does more than act as a perpetual stimulus to the
selection of the fittest men for employment. The fact that
the employer's mind is constantly intent on getting the best
possible workmen silently and imperceptibly reacts on the
wage -earners. The young workman, knowing that he
cannot secure a preference for employment by offering to
put up with worse conditions than the standard, seeks to
commend himself by a good character, technical skill, and
general intelligence. There is, accordingly, under a Common
Rule, not only a constant selection of the most efficient
candidates, but also a positive stimulus to the whole class to
become ever more efficient.2

We strike here upon the explanation of the paradox, to
which we have referred, that it is not in practice found to
militate against the maintenance of Common Rules by
Collective Bargaining that a large number of people would
like to come into the trade. If a Lancashire millowner or
a Northumberland coalowner, tempted by the large number
of candidates for employment, were to engage a new cotton-

1 Du Cellier (Histoire des Classes Laborieuses en France, Paris, 1860), in
referring to the great strikes which prevailed all over France in the spring of
1791 (pp. 320, 321), notes the effect of a Standard Rate in giving a positive advan-
tage to the efficient workman over the inefficient. Most writers in 1860 seem
to have assumed that its object was to put the lazy and inefficient workman on a
level with his more industrious rival.

2 The converse has often been pointed out by those who have studied the
influence of out-door relief, promiscuous charity, and casual labor. The fact that
a man without character, or of irregular habits, can get as easily taken on as a
casual dock-laborer, as the unemployed workman with the best possible testimonials,
is rightly regarded as exercising a demoralising influence on all London labor. If
the dock-companies were compelled to give, say twenty-four shillings a week to
every laborer who entered their employment, they would at once begin to pick
out only those men on whose regular attendance and faithful service they could
rely.

Economic Characteristics 719

spinner or coal-hewer on any other terms than those custom-
ary in the trade, all the other spinners or hewers in his
establishment would instantly " hand in their notices," and
eventually leave his service in a body. No " nibbling at
wages," or other standard conditions, would compensate
such an employer for the loss in efficiency that would be
involved in replacing his whole staff of spinners or hewers
by inexperienced hands. The more " open " is the trade,
and the more attractive are these standard conditions, the
more certain it is that the employers will find it economically
impossible to dispense with the services of the main body
of men already in employment.1 Where the minimum con-
ditions of employment are fixed and uniform, competition
takes the form of raising the standard of quality, and where
these minimum conditions are relatively high, the successful
candidates, picked as they are, out of a crowd of applicants,
become a very select class, which can be individually
recruited but not collectively replaced. The progressive
raising of the Common Rule, by constantly promoting the
" Selection of the Fittest," causes thus an increasing special-
isation of function, creating a distinct group, having a
Standard of Life and corporate traditions of its own which
each recruit is glad enough to fall in with. If we imagine a
community in which each industry was definitely marked
off by its own Common Rule, the strategic strength of the
workmen would be independent of any restriction on the
choice of a trade. The employers in each industry would
be free to pick their workmen where they chose, but, being
unable to go below the minimum wage, or otherwise degrade
the conditions of employment, they would be economically
compelled to select the very best men for the amount of work
required to satisfy the demand of the consumers. A
newly-arrived workman would equally be free to accept any

1 Hence the rare but prolonged general stoppages of work among the
Lancashire Cotton-spinners require no "picketing." The employers know that
they must have the same body of men back again, and they accordingly do not
open their mills until they have come to terms. The same may be said of the
Coalminers in all well-organised districts.

720 . Trade Union Theory

situation he could get, in whatever trade he chose, but as
he would find no opportunity of ousting a better man by
offering to do his work in an inferior way at a reduced wage,
he would be economically compelled to drop into the
particular occupation in which, under the given distribution
of demand and the given supply of special talent, his
additional labor would produce the greatest addition of
utility.

That the maintenance of a common minimum wage
should, of itself, automatically improve the quality of the
service will, to many readers, seem a paradox. Yet in all
other cases this result of the diversion of competition is an
accepted truism of practical economics. When a middle-
class governing body — a Town Council or a railway company,
for instance — needs a middle-class official, be he doctor or
architect, engineer or general manager, it invariably con-
centrates the competition on quality by stopping it off price.
The practical experience of business men has taught them
that to engage the doctor or general manager who offers to
come for the lowest salary would be a ruinous bargain.
They accordingly always first fix the salary that they will offer,
determining the amount according to the Standard of Life
of the particular social grade they seek to attract, and they
then pick the best candidate who offers himself at that
salary.1 The same effect of a fixed price is noticed even in
the sale of wares, though here the fixing of price is seldom
free from some element of monopoly. If rival producers of
goods are precluded, by custom or combination, from " under-
cutting " each other in the price of their wares, they devote
all their energies to outbidding each other in the quality.
Hence the fact that the accepted price for the morning
newspaper in the United Kingdom has long been uniformly

1 It is interesting to note that the suggestion, often made by inexperienced
"Labor members" of a public body, that it is absurd to offer the customary
high salary for a brain-working post, when there are (t plenty of men willing to
do the work for less money," is always held up to derision by their middle-class
colleagues — and, according to the Trade Unionists' own argument, rightly so — >
as being a "penny wise and pound foolish" policy.

Economic Characteristics 721

one penny in no way limits the competition between rival
editors. What it does is to concentrate the pressure on a
struggle to surpass in excellence of type and paper, prompt
and exclusive collection of news, brightness of literary style,
and every other form of attractiveness. So overpowering
is this impulse among railway companies that, in spite of
the strict limitation of the number of competing lines, and
their agreements among themselves, the general managers
are always trying to outbid each other for public favor in
the other ways that are left open to them, and the fact that
the three separate railways between London and the North
of England agree to charge identical fares is constantly
raising the quality of the service in speed, punctuality, and
comfort.

But whilst, in the absence of any kind of monopoly, the
adoption by all producers of an identical price automatically
tends to bring about an improvement in quality, there is, in
this as in other respects, a vital distinction between wares and
the workmen who produce them. In the case of the wares,
the tendency to improvement springs from the effect of the
Common Rule in shifting the pressure of competition from
price to quality. In the case of the workmen — influenced,
as we have seen, in the same way by the mere existence
of the Common Rule — we have also to consider the effect
on the living human being of improved sanitary conditions,
shorter hours of labor, and more adequate wages. If unre-
stricted individual competition among the wage -earners
resulted in the universal prevalence of a high standard of
physical and mental activity, it would be difficult to argue
that a mere improvement of sanitation, a mere shortening of
the hours of labor, or a mere increase in the amount of food
and clothing obtained by the workers or their families would
of itself increase their industrial efficiency. But, as a matter
of fact, whole sections of the wage-earners, unprotected by
Factory Act or Collective Bargaining, are habitually crushed
down below the level of physiological efficiency. Even in the
United Kingdom, at least eight millions of the population —
VOL. II 3 A

722 Trade Union Theory

over one million of them, as Mr. Charles Booth tells us, in
London alone — are at the present time existing under con-
ditions represented by adult male earnings of less than a pound
a week.1 The unskilled laborer who is only half fed, whose
clothing is scanty and inappropriate to the season, who lives
with his wife and children in a single room in a slum tenement,
and whose spirit is broken by the ever-recurring irregularity
of employment, cannot by any incentive be stimulated to much
greater intensity of effort, for the simple reason that his
method of life makes him physiologically incapable of either
the physical or mental energy that would be involved.2 Even
the average mechanic or factory operative, who earns from
2os. to 355. per week, seldom obtains enough nourishing
food, an adequate amount of sleep, or sufficiently comfortable
surroundings to allow him to put forth the full physical and
mental energy of which his frame is capable. No middle-
class brain-worker who has lived for any length of time in
households of typical factory operatives or artisans can have
failed to become painfully aware of their far lower standard of
nutrition, clothing, and rest, and also of vitality and physical
and mental exertion.3 It has accordingly been pointed out

1 See Sir R. Giffen's evidence before the Royal Commission bn Labor,
sitting as a whole, Questions 6942, 6943 ; Mr. Charles Booth, Life and Labour
of the People, especially vol. ix. p. 427.

2 "In England now, want of food is scarcely ever the direct cause of death ;
but it is a frequent cause of that general weakening of the system which renders
it unable to resist disease ; and it is a chief cause of industrial inefficiency. . . .
After food, the next necessaries of life and labor are clothing, house-room, and
firing ; when they are deficient the mind becomes torpid, and ultimately the
physical constitution is undermined. When clothing is very scanty it is generally
worn night and day ; and the skin is allowed to be enclosed in a crust of dirt.
A deficiency of house-room or of fuel causes people to live in a vitiated atmo-
sphere which is injurious to health and vigor. . . . Rest is as essential for the
growth of a vigorous population as the more material necessities of food,
clothing, etc." (Professor A. Marshall, Principles of Economics, 3rd edit. 1895,
pp. 277, 278 ; see also the interesting series of illustrative facts in The Ground-
work of Economics, by C. S. Devas, London, 1883). For M'Culloch's remarks,
see, among other references, section vii. of his Principles of Political Economy,
especially as to the " Advantages of a High Rate of Wages."

3 The rich and the middle-class seldom realise how scandalously low is the
standard of daily health among the wage-earners. Apart from actual disease or
disablement, the workman and his wife and family are constantly suffering from
minor ailments, brought about by unwholesome or deficient food, bad sanitation, the

Economic Characteristics 723

by many economists, from J. R. M'Culloch to Professor
Marshall, that, at any rate so far as the weakest and most
necessitous workers are concerned, improved conditions of
employment would bring with them a positive increase in
production. "A rise in the Standard of Life for the whole
population," we are now expressly told, " will much increase
the National Dividend, and the share of it which accrues to
each grade and to each trade." * We see, therefore, that the
Device of the Common Rule, so far as the wage-earner is
concerned, promotes the action of both forces of evolutionary
progress ; it tends constantly to the Selection of the Fittest,
and at the same time provides both the mental stimulus and
the material conditions necessary for Functional Adaptation
to a higher level of skill and energy.

Let us now consider the effects of the Device of the
Common Rule upon the brain-workers, including under this
term all who are concerned in the direction of industry.
When all the employers in a trade find themselves precluded,
by the existence of a Common Rule, from worsening the
conditions of employment — when, for instance, they are
legally prohibited from crowding more operatives into their
mills or keeping them at work for longer hours, or when
they find it impossible, owing to a strictly enforced Piece-
work List, to nibble at wages — they are driven, in their
competitive struggle with each other, to seek advantage in
other ways.2 We arrive, therefore, at the unexpected result

lack of sufficient rest or holiday, and absence of medical care. The brain-worker,
living temporarily in a wage-earning family, becomes positively oppressed by the
constant suffering, of one member or another, from toothache or sores, headache
or dyspepsia, and among the women, also from the dragging pains or chronic
anaemia brought about by hard work or exposure at improper times. In the
"Sweated" industries it is scarcely too much to say that the state of health,
which is normal among the professional classes of the present day, is almost
unknown.

1 Professor A. Marshall, Principles of Economics > 3rd edit. p. 779.

2 Thus Mr. Mundella writes of the Standard List of Prices enforced by the
Nottingham Hosiery Board : " Formerly, in times of depression, the greatest
irregularity prevailed, according to the individual character of the employers.
The hard and unscrupulous, trading on the necessities of the workmen, could
bring down wages below a reasonable level ; the more considerate must either
follow suit or be undersold. Our Board has changed all that. All now pay the

724 Trade Union Theory

that the insistence by the Trade Union on uniform condi-
tions of employment positively stimulates the invention and
adoption of new processes of manufacture. This has been
repeatedly remarked by the opponents of Trade Unionism.
Thus Babbage, in 1832, described in detail how the inven-
tion and adoption of new methods of forging and welding
gun-barrels was directly caused by the combined insistence
on better conditions of employment by all the workmen
engaged in the old process. " In this difficulty," he says,
" the contractors resorted to a mode of welding the gun-
barrel according to a plan for which a patent had been taken
out by them some years before the event. It had not then
succeeded so well as to come into general use, in consequence
of the cheapness of the usual mode of welding by hand labor ,
combined with some other difficulties with which the patentee
had had to contend. But the stimulus produced by the com-
bination of the workmen for this advance of wages induced
him to make a few trials, and he was enabled to introduce
such a facility in welding gun-barrels by roller, and such
perfection in the work itself, that in all probability very
few will in future be welded by hand - labor." * "Similar
examples," continued Babbage, " must have presented them-
selves to those who are familiar with the details of our
manufactories, but these are sufficient to illustrate one of the
results of combinations. ... It is quite evident that they
have all this tendency ; it is also certain that considerable
stimulus must be applied to induce a man to contrive a new
and expensive process ; and that in both these cases unless
the fear of pecuniary loss had acted powerfully the improve-
ment would not have been made? 2 The Lancashire cotton
trade supplied the same generation with a classic instance of

same price, and the competition is not who shall screw down wages the most, but
who shall buy material best, and produce the best article" — Arbitration as a
Means of Preventing Strikes, by the Right Hon. A. J. Mundella (Bradford, 1 868),
P- 15

1 C. Babbage, Economy of Manufactures (London, 1832), p. 246. The
welding of tubes of all kinds is now invariably done by machinery — a fact which
may be said to have made possible the modern bicycle.

2 Ibid. p. 248.

Economic Characteristics 725

" Trade Union folly " of this kind. Almost every contem-
porary observer declares that the adoption of the "self-
acting" mule was a direct result of the repeated strikes of
the Cotton -spinners between 1829 and 1836 to enforce
their Piecework Lists, and that many other improvements
in this industry sprang from the same stimulus. The
Edinburgh Review went so far as to say in 1835 that " if
from the discovery of the Spinning Frame up to the present,
wages had remained at a level, and workers' coalitions and
strikes had remained unknown, we can without exaggeration
assert that the industry would not have made half the
progress." l And, coming down to our own day, we have
ourselves had the experience of being conducted over a
huge steel-works in the North by the able captain of industry
who is practically engaged in its administration, and being
shown one improvement after another which had been
devised and adopted expressly because the workmen engaged
at the old processes had, through their powerful Trade
Unions, exacted high piecework rates. To the old econo-
mist, accustomed to the handicraftsman's blind hostility
to machinery, this undesigned result of insistence on high
wages seemed a proof of the shortsightedness of Trade
Union action. The modern student perceives that the Trade
Unions, in insisting on better conditions of employment than
would have been yielded by Individual Bargaining, were
" building better than they knew." To the wage-earners as
a class, it is of the utmost importance that the other factors
in production — capital and brain power — should always be

1 Edinburgh Review ', July 1835. Similarly, Marx notes that it was not
until the employment of women and young children in mines was forbidden that
coalowners introduced mechanical traction ; and that, as the Inspectors of
Factories report in 1858, the introduction of "the half-time system stimulated
the invention of the piecing machine " in woollen yarn manufacture, by which a
great deal of child labor was dispensed with ( Capital, Part LV. chap. xv. sec. 2,
vol. ii. p. 390 of English translation of 1887). In the Proceedings of the
Institute of Mechanical Engineers^ 1895 (p. 346), "the great amount of
ingenuity which had recently been expended in the charging and drawing of gas-
retorts" by hydraulic machinery was described as "the direct result of the labor
troubles experienced" since the formation of the Gas Workers' Union, and "it
showed what was the general tendency of such troubles, "

726 Trade Union Theory

at their highest possible efficiency, in order that the common
product, on which wages no less than profits depend, may be
as large as possible. The enforcement of the Common Rule
on all establishments concentrates the pressure of competi-
tion on the brains of the employers, and keeps them always
on the stretch. " Mankind," says Emerson, " is as lazy as it
dares to be," and so long as an employer can meet the
pressure of the wholesale trader, or of foreign competition,
by nibbling at wages or " cribbing time," he is not likely to
undertake the " intolerable toil of thought," that would be
required to discover a genuine improvement in the pro-
ductive process, or even, as Babbage candidly admits, to
introduce improvements that have already been invented.
Hence the mere existence of the Common Rule, by debar-
ring the hard-pressed employer from the most obvious source
of relief, positively drives him to other means of lowering
the cost of production. And the fact that the Common
Rule habitually brings to the operatives a greater reward
for their own labor, itself further increases the employer's
incentive to adopt labor-saving machinery. For " the lower
the day wage," we are told, " the smaller the rate of improve-
ment in labor-saving methods and machinery. . . . Where
labor is cheapest, the progress is the slowest." * Far from
being an advantage to industry, " the cheapness of human
labor where it prevails is the greatest incentive for the per-
petuation of obsolete methods. . . . The incentive is want-
ing for replacing, with large capital outlay, old and obsolete
by new and improved machinery. The survival of the
fittest is, therefore, so to speak, the result of a high wage
rate," 2 provided, that is to say, that the high rate is enforced
on all establishments alike. This is now seen even by the
capitalists themselves. " We employers," lately declared one
of the leading captains of English industry, " owe more than,
as a body, we are inclined to admit, to the improvements in
our methods of manufacture due to the firmness and independ-

1 The Economy of High Wages, by J. Schoenhof (New York, 1892), p. 276.
2 Ibid. pp. 38, 39.

Economic Characteristics 727

ence of trade combinations. Our industrial steadiness and
enterprise are the envy of the world. The energy and
pertinacity of Trade Unions have caused Acts of Parlia-
ment to be passed which would not otherwise have been
promoted by employers or politicians, all of which have
tended to improve British Commerce.1 . . . Every intelligent
employer will admit that his factory or workshop, when
equipped with all the comforts and conveniences and pro-
tective appliances prescribed by Parliament for the benefit
and protection of his workpeople — though great effort, and,
it may be, even sacrifice, on his part has been made to
procure them — has become a more valuable property in
every sense of the word, and a profit has accrued to him
owing to the improved conditions under which his work-
people have been placed." 2

Besides this direct effect in stimulating all the employers,
the mere existence of the Common Rule has another, and
even more important result on the efficiency of industry,
in that it is always tending to drive business into those
establishments which are most favorably situated, best
equipped, and managed with the greatest ability, and to

1 A recent instance is afforded by the humble industiy of washing clothes.
The chairman of the Eastbourne Sanitary Steam Laundry Company, Limited,
told his shareholders on 25th January 1897 that "the new Factory Act pre-
vented the hands working so long as they used to do, and the directors had been
obliged to provide machinery to enable them to do the work in less time "
(Laundjy Record, ist March 1897). The extraordinary backwardness of the art of
washing clothes, and the difficulty of obtaining skilled, regular, and honest
laundry workers, are, we suggest, largely due to the lack of stimulus to employers
and of decent conditions for the workpeople, resulting from the absence of
Common Rules.

2 W. Mather, Contemporary Review, November 1892. Here Mr. Mather
has the economists of to-day on his side. Professor Nicholson cites Thorold
Rogers as observing, " that every act of the legislature that seems to interfere
with the doctrine of Laisser Faire, and has stood the test of experience, has
been endorsed because it has added to the general efficiency of labor" (Rogers,
Six Centuries of Work and Wages, London, 1891, p. 528; Nicholson, Prin-
ciples of Political Economy, Edinburgh, 1893, ?• 331)' Mr. Mather, who is at
the head of a great engineering establishment, is the author of the following
interesting pamphlets : The Forty-eight Hours' Week : a Year's Experiment and
its Results at the Salford Iron Works (Manchester, 1894) ; A Reply to some
Criticisms on Mr. Mathers Report of a Year's Trial of the Forty -eight Hours' Week
(London, 1894).

728 Trade Union Theory

eliminate the incompetent or old-fashioned employer. This
fact, patent to the practical man, was not observed by the
older economists. Misled by their figment of the equality
of profits, they seem habitually to have assumed that an
increase in the cost of production would be equally injurious
to all the employers in the trade. The modern student at
once recognises that the Device of the Common Rule, from
its very nature, must always fail to get at the equivalent of
all differential advantages of productive agents above the
level of the worst actually required at any given time.
When, for instance, the Amalgamated Association of
Operative Cotton -spinners secures uniform piecework lists,
identical hours of labor, and similar precautions against
accident and disease in all English cotton mills, it in no
way encroaches upon the extra profits earned by firms of
long-standing reputation for quality, exceptional commercial
skill, or technical capacity. Similarly, it does nothing to
deprive mills enjoying a special convenience of site, the
newest and best machinery, valuable patent rights or trade
connections, of the exceptional profits due to these advan-
tages. This is still more apparent in the case of the coal-
miners, whose Mines Regulation Acts and "county averages"
of wages, applying equally all round, necessarily leave
untouched the vast incomes derived from the mining
royalties of all but the worst mine in use. The very nature
of this fundamental device of Trade Unionism — the neces-
sary uniformity of any rule that is to be common to the
whole trade — compels it to be fixed with reference to the
circumstances, not of the best, but of the worst establish-
ment at which the Trade Unionists wish to obtain employ-
ment. This does not mean that, in any well-organised trade,
the Standard Rate, or other Common Rule, will be fixed so
as to enable the economically weakest employers to con-
tinue in business. On the contrary, it is a matter of
common experience that every time a Trade Union really
secures a Common Rule, whether by Collective Bargaining
or Legal Enactment, it knocks another nail into the coffin

Economic Characteristics 729

of the least intelligent and worst-equipped employers in the
trade.1 We have already described how the small masters
in the boot and shoe industry denounce, as a conspiracy
of the great capitalists in the trade, any acceptance of a
" uniform statement," or of the high standard of workshop
accommodation insisted on by the National Union of Boot
and Shoe Operatives. In the building trades, it is the
small "jerry masters" who especially protest against the
" tyranny " of the " Working Rules," to which the contractor
in a large way of business willingly agrees. And in Lanca-
shire, it is in the backward villages, where many of the
mills are already shut up, that Factory Acts and Piecework
Lists are denounced for the relentless pressure with which
they force up the standard of efficiency to the level of
Oldham or Bolton.2

How far this policy of the " selection of the fittest "
among employers can be carried at any particular time is
a matter for delicate calculation. It is obviously to the

1 " We have been working at a loss for years," said a large cotton manu-
facturer to the Union secretary. " Yes," was the shrewd reply, "you have been
losing your little mills and building bigger ones." — First Prize Essay on Trades
Unions, by "Ithuriel" (Glasgow, 1875), p. 31.

2 This is a matter of deliberate policy with the modern Trade Union.
Thus, the official organ of the Cotton Operatives lately declared, in an article
written by a prominent Trade Union official, that "if a firm realises that it
cannot manufacture with profit to itself, and it is paying no more than others for
labor, it is better that that firm, harsh though the doctrine may seem, should
cease to exist, rather than the operatives should accept a reduction in wages and
drag the whole trade down with them."— Cotton Factory Times > i;th July 1896.

This result is then often pointed to as showing the folly of Trade Union
action in " driving capital out of the trade." But, so long as any better-managed,
better-equipped, or more favorably situated mill is capable of doing increased
business, the amount of effective capital in the trade will not be lessened through
the closing of the worst mill. The price remaining the same, and therefore
presumably the demand, the same quantity of the product will be produced and
sold. All that will have happened will be that the capital in the trade will, on
an average, be employed to greater advantage. How much scope there is, in
modern industry, for this concentration of business in the most advantageous
centres, may be judged from the admirable Statistics of Manufactures of Massa-
chusetts from 1886 to 1896, which show that, in the two or three thousand
separate establishments investigated, the average business done was only between
50 to 70 per cent of their full productive capacity — in some trades less than half
the possible output of the existing plant being made. — See the Eleventh Report,
Boston, 1897, pp. 99-104, 169.

730 Trade Union Theory

interest of the Trade Union so to fix the Common
Rule as to be constantly "weeding out" the old-fashioned
or stupid firms, and to concentrate the whole production
in the hands of the more efficient " captains of industry,"
who know how to lower the cost of the product without
lowering the wage. Thus, so long as the more advan-
tageously situated establishments in the trade are not
working up to their utmost capacity, or can, without losing
their advantage, be further enlarged, the Trade Union
could theoretically raise its Common Rule, to the successive
exclusion, one after another, of the worst employers, without
affecting price or the consumers' demand, and therefore
without diminishing the area of employment. By thus
" raising the margin of cultivation," and simultaneously
increasing the output of the more advantageously situated
establishments, this Device of the Common Rule may
accordingly shift the boundary of that part of the produce
which is economically of the nature of rent, and put some of
it into the pockets of the workmen.1 If, for instance, one
employer owns a patent which greatly reduces the cost of
production, he will be able, so long as his output amounts
only to a portion of the quantity demanded by the public at
the old price, to put into his own pocket the entire equivalent
of the improvement. But if the Trade Union, by gradually
raising its Standard Rate, drives all the other employers one
by one out of the trade, and concentrates the whole business
into its most advantageous centre, the aggregate cost of
production will be thereby greatly reduced. If the increased
profit is retained by the monopolist, there is no theoretic
reason why the workmen, if they are strong enough, should
not encroach on this surplus, until they had reduced it to
the current rate of profit of capital. There are, however,
practical limits to such a process. However advantageously

1 Ricardo and, more explicitly, J. S. Mill pointed out that anything which
increased the output of the more fertile farms would tend to reduce the aggregate
rent of agricultural land. — Principles of Political Economy , Book IV. ch. iii. § 4,
pp. 434-436 of 1865 edition.

Economic Characteristics 731

situated a particular establishment may be, we do not
find that it, in practice, absorbs the whole trade. Con-
siderations of locality and connection, of variety of
demand, of the lack of capital, and, above all, the absence
of desire or capacity to manage a larger business,
set limits to the indefinite extension of even the most
advantageously placed firm.1 And whilst these limits
interfere with the concentration of industry, other considera-
tions conspire to hinder the desire of the Trade Union to
push to the uttermost its policy of " levelling up." Though
it would immediately profit the trade as a whole, and
ultimately even its weakest members, the concentration
involves, to begin with, a painful wrench for those members
who would have to change their methods of working, often
alter their habits of life, and sometimes even migrate to a
new town. In such trades as the Engineers, the Boot and
Shoe Operatives, the Cotton-weavers, and the Compositors,
the Trade Union has, for whole generations, been struggling
to induce its most apathetic and conservative - minded
members to put on the adaptability and mobility of the
" economic man." The growth of " uniform lists " and
" national agreements " in one trade after another is a sign
that this difficulty is, in some cases, being overcome ; whilst
part of the increasing preference for the Method of Legal
Enactment is, in our view, to be attributed to the fact that
it presses uniformly on all districts, and thus positively
favors the concentration of each industry in the centres in
which it can most advantageously be carried on. It is
among the Lancashire Cotton-spinners that this far-sighted
policy has been pursued with the greatest persistency, with
the result, if we may believe the employers, of transferring
to the operatives, in higher wages and better conditions, no
small share of each successive improvement in production.

1 For an expansion of this idea see "The Rate of Interest and the Laws of
Distribution," by Sidney Webb, in Quarterly Journal of Economics, April 1888.
Thus, it cannot be assumed that the cost of the marginal production is equal in
good and bad establishments alike. Many other causes than marginal cost of
production determine the distribution of business.

732 Trade Union Theory

This result of the Common Rule — the constant selection
of the fittest among the directors of industry, and the con-
centration of business in the most advantageous centres — is,
strangely enough, often made a matter of reproach to Trade
Unionism. Thus, even so benevolent an employer as Sir
Benjamin Browne, looking back after twenty -six years*
experience of the Engineers' fixing of a Nine Hours' Normal
Day in 1871, blames the Trade Unions for thereby driving
business into the hands of the best-equipped firms. " From
this time," he declares, " more was done by large companies
and less by small employers, . . . more and more costly
and complicated machinery was introduced. . . . The
practical effect of the Nine Hours' Movement was to ruin
the small employer." 1 But seeing that the aggregate
volume of engineering work has admittedly not fallen off
— that it has, on the contrary, enormously increased — it
cannot but be regarded as an economic gain that this work
should be executed where it can be done to the greatest
advantage. If, in the absence of a Common Rule, the
" small employer," with his imperfect machinery and in-
sufficient capital, with inferior scientific training and inade-
quate knowledge of the markets, is enabled to divert business
from superior establishments by nibbling at wages, requiring
systematic overtime, overcrowding his factory, or neglecting
precautions against accident, his existence is not only de-
trimental to the operatives, but also a clear diminution of
the nation's productive efficiency. Hence the enforcement
of a Common Rule, by progressively eliminating the worst
equipped employers and concentrating the whole pressure of
competition on securing the utmost possible efficiency of
production, tends constantly to the development of the
highest type of industrial organisation.2

1 Letter to the Times of nth August 1897.

2 The student will find an interesting confirmation of much of the preceding
analysis, with illustrations drawn from the industry of to-day, in an able address
just delivered by a leading employer in the engineering trade. The Inaugural
Address by the President of the Manchester Association of Engineers (Mr. Joseph
Nasmith), published at Manchester (1897), is largely occupied with the means

Economic Characteristics 733

Thus, the effect of the Common Rule on the organisation
of industry, like its effect on the manual laborer, and the
brain-working entrepreneur, is all in the direction of increas-
ing efficiency. It in no way abolishes competition, or lessens
its intensity. What it does is perpetually to stimulate the
selection of the most efficient workmen, the best-equipped
employers, and the most advantageous forms of industry. It
in no way deteriorates any of the factors of production ; on
the contrary, its influence acts as a constant incentive to the
further improvement of the manual laborers, the machinery,

by which English employers can best meet foreign competition. He distinguishes
three factors of supreme importance, among them being neither low wages nor
long hours. "First, the economic effect of improved appliances; second, the
adoption of the best commercial methods ; and third, the fullest development of
the skill of all those engaged in an industry, and especially of the leaders. . . .
One of the direct consequences of the adoption of the newer methods and
appliances has been such a subdivision of some operations as to involve a fresh
organisation of labor. Instances will be well known in which the making of a
single article, as, for instance, the matrix used in the linotype machine, or the
spindles which are made for ring-spinning machines, involves the handling of
the article by fifteen or twenty workpeople, each of whom is charged with the
performance of one operation, forming possibly a small portion of those which
are needed to complete the whole article. This necessitates the design and
employment of a large number of machines or appliances, each of which is
intended to aid in effecting one of these minor operations, and calling for the
attention of a workman specially trained in its iise. In this way there has been
silently worked a revolution which is not always fully appreciated even yet, and
"which has had no less an effect than the elevation of the machine tender from a
subordinate to an important position in the economy of a workshop. It is in
consequence of the facility of subdivision which the ingenuity displayed in the
production of special appliances has brought about, that in all organised
industries the labor cost of any article continually tends to decrease. Probably
because the economic change which has taken place has only been partially
appreciated, we find people still making a great fuss about wages. As a matter
of fact the rate of wages is not necessarily a guide to the labor cost of an article,
and a wider recognition of this fact would prevent a good deal of trouble. . . .
Labor cost and not wages is the determining factor, and there is not necessarily
a direct connection between them. Indeed, it may be asserted that they are
often in inverse proportion, and that the more highly organised an industry is,
the greater is the tendency for that to be so. . . . Nothing has so much influence
upon this problem as the possibility of making articles in large numbers, and it
is in this direction that much remains to be done by engineers. Nothing
presents so hopeful a field for the future efforts of constructive engineers as the
design and manufacture of machines which will enable the manufacturers to

k produce all kinds of articles in the greatest possible numbers in any given time.
Wages become a secondary consideration under these circtimstances, and although
i change in the rate paid may for a time affect the economic conditions, it is not
'ong before the skill of the constructor has placed him abreast of the new conditions."

734 Trade Union Theory

and the organising ability used in industry. In short,
whether with regard to Labor or Capital, invention or organ-
ising ability, the mere existence of a uniform Common Rule
in any industry promotes alike the selection of the most
efficient factors of production, their progressive functional
adaptation to a higher level, and their combination in the
most advanced type of industrial organisation.1 And these
results are permanent and cumulative. However slight may
be the effect upon the character or physical efficiency of the
wage-earner or the employer ; however gradual may be the
improvement in processes or in the organisation of the
industry, these results endure and go on intensifying them-
selves so that the smallest step forward becomes, in time,
an advance of the utmost importance.

So far the substitution in any trade of the Common
Rule for the anarchy of Individual Bargaining would seem
to be in every way beneficial. We have now to consider
some characteristics which lead to a qualification of this
conclusion.

We have to note, in the first place, that the result, though
certain, may probably be slow. The passing of a Factory
Act enforcing a definite standard of sanitation or a normal
day, may be indispensable to prevent the progressive de-
gradation of whole classes of operatives ; by its diversion of
the pressure of competition it may re-establish the physique,
improve the character, and increase the efficiency of all sub-
sequent generations ; but the very day it comes into opera-
tion it will almost certainly raise the cost of labor to the
employer, if only for a time. The extension of a uniform
Piecework List to all the establishments in an industry may
eventually concentrate all the business in the best-equipped

1 The influence of a Common Rule in changing the nature and effects of com-
petition in industry, is, of course, not confined to the relation between employer
and workmen. The respective results on the character and efficiency of pro-
duction, of "complete freedom of enterprise," on the one hand, and of such
uniform restrictions as the Adulteration Acts, the by-laws relating to the con-
struction of buildings, or the regulations for the conduct of common lodging-
houses on the other, are well worth further study from this point of view.

Economic Characteristics 735

mills, managed by the most capable employers, and thus
positively reduce the cost of production ; but its first effect
will probably be to raise that cost in the old-fashioned or
outlying establishments not yet dispensed with. Like all
permanent changes in personal character or social organisa-
tion, the economic effects of the Device of the Common Rule
are gradual in their operation, and will not instantly reveal
themselves in an improvement of quality or a diminished
cost of production.

The response, moreover, in the way of added efficiency
will vary from trade to trade. The rapidity with which the
response will be given, the extent to which the improvement
can be carried, and the particular " curve of diminishing
return " that it will describe, will differ in each industry
according as its condition at the moment affords more or less
scope for the operation of the two potent forces of Functional
Adaptation and the Selection of the Fittest, on workmen and
capitalists respectively. Thus, the effect of the constant
selection among the operatives will vary according to
the range of choice which the technical circumstances of
the industry permit the employer to exercise. This
depends, in practice, for the skilled trades, upon the extent
to which the process itself requires the co-operation of
boys or other learners, from whom the skilled workers are
recruited. Hence, the mule- spinners, attended each by two
piecers — ten times the proportion of learners required to
keep up the trade — are a far more " selected " class than the
skilled hand-working tailors of the West End trade, who
need have no boys at all working by their side, and who are
largely assisted by women incapable of replacing them. We
do not wish to discuss the social expediency of an arrange-
ment, which attracts into an occupation every year thousands
of boys, nine-tenths of whom, after they have reached
maturity, find themselves skilled in an occupation which they
have no chance of following, and which they must perforce
abandon, at one period of their life or another, for some new
means of livelihood. But whatever may be the consequences

736 Trade Union Theory

of this arrangement to the unsuccessful piecers, its effect on
the cotton -spinners, as a class, is to make them a highly
selected aristocracy of ability, able to adapt themselves to
the progressive complication and "speeding-up" of the
machinery. Analogous differences exist between trade and
trade in regard to the extent to which Selection of the
Fittest can act on the employers, especially as to machinery
and location. Thus, the total absence of any form of
monopoly in cotton -spinning and cotton -weaving, and the
remarkable facility and cheapness with which Lancashire
capital can always be obtained for new cotton mills, gives
the cotton Trade Unions a special opportunity for increasing
the efficiency of the industry, by constantly driving out the
weakest firms. A complete contrast to this state of things
is presented by such legal or natural monopolies as railways,
waterworks, tramways, and gas works, where the Trade
Unions have to put up with whatever incompetent Board of
Directors or General Manager may happen to hold the field.
Nor is the difference between trade and trade any less in
regard to the action on the employers of Functional Adapta-
tion. Thus, the factory boot and shoe industry, supplied
almost day by day with fresh inventions, and constantly
recruited by the upstarting of new businesses, offers obviously
more scope for the improvements caused by pressure on the
brains of employers, than an industry like English agriculture,
where generation often succeeds to generation in the same
farm, and economic freedom of enterprise and mobility of
capital is comparatively rare. The only direction in which
progress could be at all equal as between trade and trade
seems to be the improvement of the operatives, brought
about by increased food, clothing, and rest. Even in this
respect there would be more scope for improvement in an
industry carried on by women or unskilled laborers, who are
likely to be chronically underfed or overworked, than in a
trade employing skilled artisans already earning a high
Standard Rate. But once the process of " levelling up " had
reached a certain point, this inequality of response would

Economic Characteristics 737

cease to be apparent. At this stage, the increase in
efficiency due to improvement in physical health and vigor,
like the increase in mental activity made possible by suffi-
ciency of food and rest, might be expected, in all trades,
to bear a fairly close relation to the improvement in the
workers' conditions, and would probably be subject to much
the same limits in all the industries of a particular country.
In every other respect trade differs widely from trade in the
rapidity and degree with which it responds in the way
of added efficiency, to the stimulus of the Common Rule.
And this difference between one trade and another, in the
potentiality of increased efficiency, bears, it will be obvious,
no definite relation to the strategic strength or political
power of the operatives. Whether the workers in any
particular trade will actually be able to extract from the
employers, either by Mutual Insurance, Collective Bargaining,
or Legal Enactment, higher wages, shorter hours, or improved
sanitation, depends, in practice, on many other circumstances
than those affecting the possibilities of increased efficiency.
Indeed, if we could admit any generalisation at all on the
point, we might infer, from the general " law of diminishing
returns," that a trade in which the wage -earners have
hitherto been too weak to obtain any Common Rule, would
be likely to yield a greater harvest of added efficiency than
an old-established, well-organised, and powerful industry, in
which the Trade Union had, for generations past, pushed
its advantages to the utmost, and so probably exhausted
most of the stimulus to increased Functional Adaptation and
Selection of the Fittest produced by the use of the Common
Rule.

There will, accordingly, be at any particular moment a
practical limit to the advantageous raising of the Common
Rule. The Selection of the Fittest, whether of employers,
workmen, establishments, or districts, can achieve no more
than to take the best for the purpose that the community at
the time supplies. Functional Adaptation, whether of work-
men or employers, or their mutual organisation, can go no
VOL. II 3 B

738 Trade Union Theory

further than the structure for the time being allows. And
though each successive rise in the Common Rule may pro-
duce its own increment of additional efficiency, there is a
rapidly decreasing return to each successive application of
pressure. Hence a Trade Union which has, in the first few
years of its complete organisation, succeeded in obtaining
considerable advances in its Standard Rate, sensible reduc-
tions of its Normal Day, and revolutionary improvements
with regard to the Sanitation and Safety of its workplaces
— all without injury to the extent and regularity of its
members' employment — may presently find that, in spite of
its perfected organisation and accumulated funds, its upward
course slackens, its movements for further advances become
less frequent or less successful, and, in comparison with the
contemporary gains of other industries, the conditions of
employment will remain almost stationary.

The Trade Unionist has a rough and ready barometer to
guide him in this difficult navigation. It is impossible, even
for the most learned economist or the most accomplished
business man, to predict what will be the result of any par-
ticular advance in the Common Rule. So long, however, as
a Trade Union, without in any way restricting the numbers
entering its occupation, finds that its members are fully
employed, it can scarcely be wrong in maintaining its
Common Rules at their existing level, and even, after a
reasonable interval, in attempting gradually to raise them.1

When the percentage of workmen out of employment
begins to rise, it is a sign that the demand for their particular
commodity has begun to slacken. This diminution of de-
mand may, as we shall presently see, be due to any one of
an almost infinite number of causes, quite unconnected with
the conditions enjoyed by the operatives. But one of these

1 This assumes, as is nearly always the case, that the wages and other condi-
tions of employment are within the limits of the fullest physiological efficiency.
So long as the family income of the typical skilled mechanic, even in England,
is less than £100 a year, and his hours of labor are more than forty or fifty per
week, the potentiality of improvement in physical and mental efficiency, in family
life and citizenship, no less than in industry, is great.

Economic Characteristics 739

possible causes is a rise in price, and one of the possible
factors in a rise in price is an advance of the Common
Rule which does not bring with it, in one form or
another, a corresponding increase in the efficiency of the
industry. Hence, although it can in no way be inferred
that the slackening of demand has been caused by the rise
in the level of the Common Rule, rather than to any other
of the many possible causes, yet this slackening, however it
is caused, must necessarily check any further advance. For
assuming the workmen to rely exclusively on the Device of
the Common Rule, it will not pay them to obtain a rise of
wages, a shortening of hours, or improved conditions of sani-
tation or safety at the cost of diminishing their own con-
tinuity of employment. To put it concretely, whenever the
percentage of the unemployed in a particular industry begins
to rise from the 3 or 5 per cent characteristic of " good
trade," to the 10, 15, or even 25 per cent experienced
in " bad trade," there must be a pause in the operatives'
advance movement.1

1 The critical reader may retort that, when demand is expanding, a rise in the
Common Rule unaccompanied by an increase in efficiency, may check the expan-
sion without actually throwing any men out of work. This might conceivably be
the case, if the particular rise in the Common Rule, which outstripped the increase
in efficiency, took place before the increased orders for the commodity were given,
and if the consequent rise in price merely choked off some or all of a coming
increase in demand. This, however, is not the actual sequence of events. What
happens first is that the increase in the demand shows itself in the receipt of
unusually large orders by the manufacturers. The existing workmen are required
to work full time, and then overtime ; most of the unemployed in the trade get
taken on ; boys and other learners are promoted and additional men are
inquired for ; old establishments are enlarged, and new ones are opened. On
this, the Trade Union asks for a rise in wages or a shortening of hours. If
this is conceded, and is not followed by increased efficiency, the rise in cost of
production and therefore in price can scarcely fail actually to cause some of the
men in employment to be discharged. The more completely organised is the
trade, the more precise is the index afforded by the percentage of members
"on donat'.on."

740 Trade Union Theory

[c] The effect of the sectional application of the Common Ride
on the distribution of industry

We have now to consider the effect of the Device of the
Common Rule, not on the particular trade that practises it,
but on the development of the nation's industry — that is to
say, upon the distribution of the capital, labor, and brain
power of any community among the different occupations
that are open to it. In the complicated ebb and flow of
the modern world of competitive industry the expansion or
contraction of a particular trade cannot be considered by
itself. The ordinary manufacturer or operative sees clearly
enough that the growth or decay of his own establishment
is intimately connected with the dwindling or expansion
of other establishments in the same trade. The economist
detects a similar rivalry between one occupation and
another, even within the same community ; and sees the
area of this competition between distinct classes of workers
indefinitely enlarged by international trade. Without a full
appreciation of this silent but perpetual struggle between
separate occupations, it is impossible to form any correct
estimate of the influence of any particular factor in the
distribution of industry.

We have, to begin with, the competition between alterna-
tive ways of manufacturing the same product. We need not
dwell on the historic struggles of the handloom weaver and
stocking-frame knitter against the operatives working with
power ; nor recur to the contemporary competition between
handmade clothing and boots, nails and ropes, and the
machine-made articles. What is more typical of our own
time is the rivalry of one machine-process with another, such
as the innumerable ways of producing steel, or, to take a
simpler instance, the competition in cotton-spinning between
the self-acting mule, worked by men and boys, and the
perfected ring-frame, worked by women. A new stage in
the competition is seen in the substitution of one material

Economic Characteristics 741

for another, as, for instance, iron for wood in the making of
bedsteads, and steel for iron in railway construction. A step
farther brings us to the invention of alternative ways of
fulfilling the same desire, exemplified in the rivalry between
the railway and the road, the horse and the electric motor.
Finally, there is a certain limited sense in which the operatives
making entirely unconnected commodities compete for cus-
tom, so that, as it is commonly alleged, the seasonal demand
for books and pianos fluctuates inversely with that for
cricket-bats and bicycles.

So far we have considered the nation as a self-contained
community, and we have regarded the customers as choosing
only between different products of their own country.
Foreign trade brings in a new complication. The English
producers of commodities for foreign markets, and those who
manufacture, for home consumption, commodities that can
be imported from abroad, find their industries expanding or
contracting according as the prices of their products rise and
fall in other countries as well as at home. This may be
clearly seen in the case of English coal. The cargoes from
Cardiff and the Tyne go all over the world and find, in many
foreign ports, practically no competitors. But how far inland
our coals will push into each continent varies with every
change of price. In Germany the Silesian and Westphalian
mines, in Australasia those of New South Wales, and in
South Africa those of the Cape and Natal already supply a
large part of the local demand, and the geographical limit at
which the use of English coal ceases to be cheaper than the
inland supply is seen in practice to be as sensitively mobile
as the thermometer. And if we turn to the influence of the
import trade, we may watch the area of wheat growing in
Great Britain expanding or contracting in close corre-
spondence with the oscillations of the world price of wheat.
So far the success of any class of English producers in com-
peting for the world's custom would seem to depend ex-
clusively on their ability to undersell the foreign producers
of the same article. But this is only half the truth. The

742 Trade Union Theory

distinctive effect of international trade is to bring into com-
petitive rivalry, without their being conscious of the fact,
many other trades within the particular country having no
apparent connection with each other. This will be obvious
to any one who considers for a moment the relation between
exports and imports. Without sounding the depths of the
orthodox " Theory of International Trade " or the mysteries
of the Foreign Exchanges, it will not be doubted that any
increase in our aggregate exports does, in practice, tend to
cause at any rate some increase in our aggregate imports. If
then, England for any reason increases its export trade — if,
for instance, a fall in the cost of production of English
machinery, coal, and textiles enables Lancashire and Cardiff
increasingly to get the better of their foreign rivals in neutral
markets — some increase will certainly reveal itself in our
import trade, not in machinery, coal, and textiles, but in entirely
different articles ; it may be, in American food stuffs and
Australian wool, or it may be in German glass wares and
Belgian iron. Exactly which articles will be sent to England in
increased quantities to pay for the increased foreign purchases
of machinery, textiles, and coal, will depend on the relative
cheapness of production, both at home and abroad, of all the
commodities consumed by England that can also be produced
abroad. It may be that food stuffs and wool, glass and iron,
can all be produced abroad actually cheaper than they are
selling in England. But the increase will tend to occur, not
in those commodities in which the difference is least, but
principally in those in which the difference is greatest.
Hence the expansion or contraction of English production
in a particular industry working for the home demand, is
affected, not only by the foreign producers of the same
commodity for the English market, but also by the expansion
and contraction of every English industry working for
export, and, yet again, by the conditions existing in all the
other English industries that are subject to the competition
of imports from abroad. The enormous increase in our
imports of food stuffs, and the consequent contraction of

Economic Characteristics 743

English agriculture, cannot therefore be dissociated from the
contemporary increase in our exports : it is the Lancashire
cotton-spinner and the Northumberland coal hewer who are
most seriously competing with the English farmer. Or, to
take another instance, if the jobbing home workers in the
Sheffield cheap cutlery trade keep down the price of their
product by working long hours, without expensive sanitary
precautions, at the starvation wages of cut-throat competition,
they may gain by their wretchedness a miserable exemption
from the competition of French and German blades in the
English market. But the effect of this exemption is to divert
the nation's imports into other commodities. The brothers
and cousins of the Sheffield cutlers, earning high wages in
the Yorkshire glass works and iron furnaces, may therefore
find their employment diminished by the persistent influx of
German glass and Belgian iron, and they will be entirely
unaware that the ebb and flow of their own trades have any
connection, either with the expansions and contractions of
the export trade of Lancashire on the one hand, or with the
cheapness of production of Sheffield cutlery on the other.
The same argument applies, it is clear, the other way round.
The shrewd officials of the Lancashire Cotton Operatives,
working largely for export, are as keenly aware as the
employers that in promoting a new Factory Bill, or in
resisting a reduction in their Piecework Lists, they must take
into account the competition of Massachusetts and Bombay.
But neither workmen nor employers in Lancashire realise
that in this matter of foreign markets they have to face no
less dangerous competitors at their own doors. Though the
aggregate volume of our export trade is automatically kept
up to a point that will discharge our foreign indebtedness, it
does not at all follow that the export of each commodity will
remain the same. England in this respect is like one great
shop, from which the foreigner will certainly buy some goods.
But how he will distribute his purchases among our different
products will depend on which of them, relatively to all the
others, offers the greatest advantage compared with foreign-

744 Trade Union Theory

made articles. If, without any alteration of the balance
of indebtedness, there springs up a new business able by
the relative cheapness or attractiveness of its product to
command a foreign market, the exports of all our other
commodities will tend to be injuriously affected by these new
sales. Thus, the development during the last twenty years
of a large export trade in ready-made clothing and hardware
must have, to some extent, tended to elbow out the elder
industries, perhaps those of cotton and wool, some of which
would, in the absence of these new competitors, necessarily
have expanded to balance the increase in our imports of
food stuffs.1 The Lancashire mule-spinners must therefore

1 Tliis assumes that there has been no addition to the capital, brain power,
and labor of the community. It has sometimes been urged that the upgrowth of
the wholesale clothing trade in East London has been made possible only by the
settlement of Jewish immigrants, and that the newcomers, creating a new export
trade, cause an actual addition to our imports, and thus neither diminish em-
ployment in other home trades nor restrict any existing export trade. It is,
accordingly, suggested that the Jewish immigration is not injurious to the English
wage-earners, and that it actually adds to English commercial prosperity.

As a matter of fact, neither the capital nor the brain power, which have
created the new export trade in slop clothing, have been provided by the Jewish
immigrants, nor is it by any means entirely carried on by immigrant labor. It
may be that the opportunity for the trade in its present form arises from the
presence of these and other workers of a low Standard of Life ; but the capital
and organising capacity have been supplied by our own countrymen ; and must
therefore be taken to have been diverted by this opportunity, away from other
industries, which find themselves thereby subtly restricted.

If, indeed, the immigrants brought with them their own capital and brain
power, and created a new industry exclusively for export, the result would be, as
suggested, an addition to our imports, and there would be no tendency to a
restriction of the other export trades. But the pinch would then be felt else-
where. The additional imports would, of course, not be the articles actually
consumed by the immigrants, and there would be a shifting of trade, some home
industries expanding under the additional demand, others dwindling under the
competition of the newly-stimulated imports. The total trade, apart from the
immigrants' own production and consumption, would neither be increased nor
decreased ; and the total wealth of the nation, apart from the immigrants' own
possessions and savings, not affected. The chief importance of the immigration
would then lie in its indirect effects on national character and capacity. If the
immigrants, like the Polish Jews, brought in a lower Standard of Life, the result
might be (besides increasing the overcrowding of the slums) a constant influence
for degradation. If, on the other hand, the immigrants, like the Huguenots,
introduced a higher Standard of Life, their example might produce a permanent
improvement in national character. There is also the obscure question of the
effect of the intermixture of races to be considered.

Economic Characteristics 745

realise that they are competing, not only with the women
ring-spinners in Lancashire itself and the mule-spinners in
the foreign cotton mills, but also with the English workers in
all the trades that produce any article whatsoever for sale to
the foreigner.

We come, therefore, to the conclusion that the employers
and operatives in any particular industry ought to regard
themselves as in the truest sense competing for business, no
less than for the supply of capital, brains, and manual labor,
with practically every other industry in the country, however
unconnected with their own it may seem to be ; and in this
competitive struggle the battle, it is obvious, will not always
be to the strong, nor the race to the swift. The ebb and
flow of business, and hence the distribution of the nation's
industry, and the production of one article rather than
another, depends on many conditions quite unconnected with
the conduct or efficiency of the employers or the workmen
concerned, or with their remuneration. A change of taste
or fashion, a scientific discovery, the upgrowth of a new class
of customers, a mere alteration in the nation's wealth, or in
its distribution between classes, a war or a famine, or even a
sumptuary law, will make some trades expand and others
dwindle, quite independently ol any increase or decrease in
the cost at which their products are being turned out. And
even if we restrict ourselves to the effect of price in stimulat-
ing or contracting the demand for a particular commodity,
it will be obvious that its cost of production will vary for
many reasons totally unconnected with the requirements of
the employers or the conditions of employment of the work-
people concerned. The varying abundance or scarcity of
the raw material, the ease and cost with which it can be
transported, the discovery of a new ingredient, the invention
of a new machine or a new process, a change in the incidence
of taxation — all these, and numberless other factors uncon-
nected with the conditions of employment affect cost of
production, and therefore price. It is, of course, this extreme
complication of factors — this almost infinite degree of

746 Trade Union Theory

Plurality of Causes and Intermixture of Effects — that makes
it impossible to prove or disprove the efficacy of Trade
Unionism by any enumeration of instances. What we have
to do is, assuming each trade to be incessantly subjected to
the keenest competition of every other trade at home and
abroad, to leave on one side all the other influences at work
and examine what effect the device of the Common Rule
itself exercises upon the distribution of industry.

We have seen, in our analysis of the economic effects of
the Common Rule on the industries in which it is applied,
that this regulation, with its gradual advance of level, posi-
tively tends to diminish the cost of production in those
industries. It follows that, other things being equal, they
will expand at a greater rate than the unregulated trades.
But it is characteristic of the expansion thus caused that it
brings incidental advantages to the whole industrial com-
munity. The fact that the labor and capital employed in
one or more of the nation's industries has become more
productive than before does not diminish the aggregate
demand or the aggregate purchasing power : on the contrary,
it increases it. Any shrinkage in particular trades, due to
the partial suppression of their products by the improving
industries, will be balanced by at least as much expansion
elsewhere, due to the increased purchases of these industries
themselves. Moreover, the increased incentive to the invention
and perfecting of labor-saving machinery, the added stimulus
to the discovery of new markets, new materials, and new
ways of satisfying existing desires, which, as we have seen,
is an inevitable reaction from the bulwark of the Common
Rule, provides the unregulated trades with a stream of ready-
made appliances, tested inventions, and new opportunities,
which would never have revealed themselves to their own
unstimulated brains. Similarly, the general raising of the
Standard of Life of any section of wage-earners improves
the national stock, from which all occupations draw their
recruits.1

1 Thus, the great English factory industry of boot and shoe manufacture, only

Economic Characteristics 747

But though the regulated industries, by progressively
raising the standard of mechanical ingenuity, organising
capacity, and physical strength, will have added to the national
capital in all its forms, their very superiority makes continu-
ously harder the struggle of the unregulated trades to main-
tain their position in the world's market. The rapid adoption
of new inventions almost inevitably involves the decay and
destruction of other trades. Thus, the enormous extension
of the use of iron bedsteads — the product of a highly-
organised trade — cannot fail to have contracted the manu-
facture of cheap wooden bedsteads in the sweating dens of
the East End " garret masters." This is obvious enough
when we consider the substitution of a new commodity for
the inferior article which formerly satisfied the same want, or
even the satisfaction of one need rather than another, as in
the competition between books and bicycles. International
trade, as we have seen, causes the same rivalry to exist
between industries apparently unconnected with each other.
Thus, the lowering of the cost of production of iron bedsteads
does not interfere merely with the English production of
wooden bedsteads : by its stimulus to the export of iron
bedsteads it positively increases the imports into England of
entirely different articles, and may, therefore, itself be one of
the factors in the contraction of English agriculture, and of
the manufacture of the cheaper sorts of glass, cutlery, and
wood work.

recently emerging from the quagmire of Home Work, and itself as yet producing
hardly any inventions, has been made possible by the amazing mental fertility
of Connecticut and Massachusetts, where the well -organised workmen exact
wages twice as high as their English rivals. Similarly, the Indian cotton-mills
have, without effort of their own, automatically received the inventions which,
if we may believe Babbage and the Edinburgh Review, owe their very
existence to the aggressive Trade Unionism of the Lancashire operatives.
And the able Englishmen who began life as artisans, and are now to be found
in responsible positions in so many continental factories, are plainly the result
of the comparatively high wages and short hours — not to speak of the training
in administration — which the English workmen in the regulated trades have
derived from their Trade Unionism. In these and many other ways those
countries and those industries in which a relatively high standard of life is
enforced, are perpetually dispensing to the world, out of their abundance, what
their unregulated rivals are unable to produce for themselves.

748 Trade Union Theory

More important in its detrimental effect on the unregu-
lated trades will be the diversion away from them of the
best industrial recruits. In industries unregulated by
Common Rules it may suit the immediate profit and loss
account of an employer to select, as his foreman, not the
man who can most improve the product or the process, but
the man who has the greatest capacity for nibbling at wages
or cribbing time. The fact that the Common Rules prevent
the beating down of wages, the lengthening of hours, or the
neglect of precautions against accidents or disease, automatic-
ally causes the selection, for the post of foreman or manager,
of men who have at their command, in the improvement of
machinery and organisation, far more permanent and cumu-
lative ways of reducing the cost of production than taking
advantage of the operatives' weakness. The concentration
of business in large establishments, which, as we have seen,
is one of the results of the Common Rule, directly encourages
the enlistment in the industry of men of specialised know-
ledge and scientific attainments. There is an enormous
difference, not as yet adequately realised, between the sort
of man who becomes the typical " small master " of the
unregulated trades, and the hierarchy of highly -trained
organisers, managers, buyers, travellers, agents, chemists,
engineers, metallurgists, electricians, designers, and inventors
who direct the business of great establishments. This differ-
ence in the quality of the recruiting is no less marked
among the manual laborers. No operative who is strong
enough, or intelligent enough, or regular enough to get into
a trade enjoying high wages, short hours, and decent con-
ditions of work will stay in an occupation affording him
inferior advantages. The high standard enjoyed by the
Lancashire cotton-spinners and engineers, or by the North-
umberland miners, causes these trades to draw to themselves
the pick of the young men in their respective districts.
Hence the final curse of the unregulated trades — they are
perpetually condemned to put up with the inferior labor
that cannot get employment elsewhere. Every rise in the

Economic Characteristics 749

conditions of life of the factory operative and the coalminer
makes it harder for the country district to retain the best
boys of the village. Every time the Board of Trade shortens
the hours or protects the lives of the railway servant ; each
new statute that increases the certainty and amount of his
compensation for accident ; every rise in the Standard Rate
that public opinion secures to him, indirectly makes the
struggle for existence harder for the farmer and the " little
master " in the country town.

(d) Parasitic Trades

We have hitherto proceeded on the assumption that the
competition between trades is unaffected by anything in the
nature of a subsidy or bounty. If the community chooses to
give to all the employers in a particular industry an annual
bounty out of the taxes, or if it grants to all the operatives
in that industry a weekly subsidy from the Poor Rate in aid
of their wages, it is obvious that this special privilege will,
other things being equal, cause the favored industry to out-
strip its rivals. The subsidy or bounty will enable the en-
dowed manufacturers to bribe the public to consume their,
article, by ceding to them what they have not paid for.
An analogous advantage can be gained by the employers
in a particular trade if they are able to obtain the use of
labor not included in their wage-bill. Under the competitive
pressure described in our chapter on " The Higgling of the
Market" some of the unregulated trades become, in fact,
parasitic. This occurs, in practice, in two distinct ways.

We have first the case of labor partially subsisted from
the incomes of persons unconnected with the industry in
question. When an employer, without imparting any
adequate instruction in a skilled craft, gets his work done by
boys or girls who live with their parents and work practically
for pocket-money, he is clearly receiving a subsidy or bounty
which gives his process an economic advantage over those

75O Trade Union Theory

worked by fully-paid labor. But this is not all. Even if
he pays the boys or girls a wage sufficient to cover the cost
of their food, clothing, and lodging so long as they are in
their teens, and dismisses them as soon as they become
adults, he is in the same case. For the cost of boys and
girls to the community includes not only their daily bread
between thirteen and twenty-one, but also their nurture from
birth to the age of beginning work, and their maintenance as
adult citizens and parents.1 If a trade is carried on entirely
by the labor of boys and girls and is supplied with successive
relays who are dismissed as soon as they become adults, the
mere fact that the employers pay what seems a good subsist-
ence wage to the young people does not prevent the trade
from being economically parasitic. The employer of adult
women is in the same case where, as is usual, he pays them
a wage insufficient to keep them in full efficiency, irrespective
of what they receive from their parents, husbands, or lovers.2
In all these instances the efficiency of the services rendered
by the young persons or women is being kept up out of the
earnings of some other class. These trades are therefore as
clearly receiving a subsidy as if the workers in them were
being given a " rate in aid of wages." The English farmer
pays, it is true, no higher wages, but then he receives in
return, since the abolition of the Old Poor Law, only what
he pays for : his low Standard of Life involves a low Stand-
ard of Work. The employer of partially subsidised woman
or child labor gains, on the other hand, actually a double
advantage over the self-supporting trades : he gets without
cost to himself the extra energy due to the extra food, and
he abstracts — possibly from the workers at a rival process,

1 To this, in strictness, should be added their maintenance in old age and
their burial. But only a small proportion of the aged wage-earners in the
United Kingdom are maintained, and eventually buried, out of their own savings
or the assistance of relations. Old age and burial, like education, have already
become to a great extent, in the form of charity or the Poor Law, charges upon
the community as a whole. See Pauperism aitd the Endowment of Old Age
(London, 1892), and The Aged Poor (London, 1894), by Charles Booth.

2 *' Women as a rule are supplementary wage-earners." — Charles Booth,
Life and Labour of the People, vol. ix. p. 205

Economic Characteristics 751

or in a competing industry — some of the income which
might have increased the energy put into the other trade.

But there is a far more vicious form of parasitism than
this partial maintenance by another class. The continued
efficiency of a nation's industry obviously depends on the
continuance of its citizens in health and strength. For an
industry to be economically self-supporting, it must, therefore,
maintain its full establishment of workers, unimpaired in
numbers and vigor, with a sufficient number of children to
fill all vacancies caused by death or superannuation. If
the employers in a particular trade are able to take such
advantage of the necessities of their workpeople as to hire
them for wages actually insufficient to provide enough food,
clothing, and shelter to maintain them in average health ;
if they are able to work them for hours so long as to deprive
them of adequate rest and recreation ; or if they can subject
them to conditions so dangerous or insanitary as positively
to shorten their lives, that trade is clearly obtaining a supply
of labor-force which it does not pay for. If the workers
thus used up were horses — as, for instance, on an urban
tramway — the employers would have to provide, in addition
to the daily modicum of food, shelter, and rest, the whole
cost of breeding and training, the successive relays necessary
to keep up their establishments. In the case of free human
beings, who are not purchased by the employer, this capital
value of the new generation of workers is placed gratuitously
at his disposal, on payment merely of subsistence from day
to day. Such parasitic trades are not drawing any money
subsidy from the incomes of other classes. But in thus
deteriorating the physique, intelligence, and character of
their operatives, they are drawing on the capital stock of the
nation.1 And even if the using up is not actually so rapid

1 The economic position of the slave-owner where, as latterly in the United
States and Brazil, the slaves had to be bred for the labor market, closely resembles
that of the tramway company using horse-power. So long as the African slave-
trade lasted, the importation of slaves being presumably cheaper than breeding
them, the industries run by slave labor were economically in much the same
position as our own sweated trades — that is to say, supplied with successive relays

752 Trade Union Theory

as to prevent the " sweated " workers from producing a new
generation to replace them, the trade is none the less
parasitic. In persistently deteriorating the stock it employs,
it is subtly draining away the vital energy of the community.
It is taking from these workers, week by week, more than
its wages can restore to them. A whole community might
conceivably thus become parasitic on itself, or, rather, upon
its future. If we imagine all the employers in all the
industries of the kingdom to be, in this sense, " sweating "
their labor, the entire nation would, generation by generation,
steadily degrade in character and industrial efficiency.1 And
in human society, as in the animal world, the lower type de-
veloped by parasitism, characterised as it is by the possession
of smaller faculties and fewer desires, does not necessarily
tend to be eliminated by free competition.2 The degenerate
forms may, on the contrary, flourish in their degradation,
and depart farther and farther from the higher type.
Evolution, in a word, if unchecked by man's selective power,

of cheap but rapidly deteriorating labor — and the cheapness of their product,
observed Mill, " is partly an artificial cheapness, which may be compared to that
produced by a bounty on production or on exportation ; or considering the means
by which it is obtained, an apter comparison would be with the cheapness of
stolen goods." — Principles of Political Economy ', Book III. ch. xxv. § 3, p. 413
of 1865 edition.

1 The practical agriculturist may see an analogy in the case of land. To the
theoretic economist land often appears as an indestructible instrument of production,
but the agricultural expert knows better. If under complete industrial freedom
the hirers of land sought only to obtain the maximum profit for themselves, it
would pay them to extract for a few years the utmost yield at the minimum out-
lay. The land so treated would be virtually destroyed as an instrument of pro-
duction, and could only be brought into cultivation again by a heavy outlay of
capital. But this would not matter to the hirer, if he was free to discard the
worn-out farm when he chose, and to take a fresh one. The remedy in this case
is found in the covenants by which the owner of the land regulates the use of it
by the hirer, so as to ensure that it shall be maintained in complete efficiency.

2 The apostles of laisser faire were sometimes startling in the extent to which
they carried their optimism. Thus, when Harriet Maitineau was driven by the
evidence collected by the Factory Commissioners in 1833 to admit that " the case
of these wretched factory children seems desperate," she goes on to add "the
only hope seems to be that the race will die out in two or three generations "
(Harriet Martineaifs Atitobiography, by Maria Weston Chapman, vol. iii. p. 88).
But there was no race of factory children dependent for continuance on its own
reproduction.

Economic Characteristics 753

may result in Degeneration as well as in what we choose to
call Progress.

We might have to accept as inevitable the incidental
evils of the parasitic trades if it could be urged that their
existence resulted in any positive addition to the national
wealth — that is to say, if they utilised capital and found
employment for labor that would otherwise have been idle ;
or if they fulfilled desires that must otherwise have remained
unsatisfied. But this is not the case. We have, to begin
with, the fact that the mere existence of any parasitic
industry tends incidentally to check the expansion of the
self-supporting trades, whether these are regulated or un-
regulated. Nor is it only such unprogressive industries as
agriculture that suffer. In cotton-spinning, the fact that
well-nurtured and respectable young women can be hired at
ten or twelve shillings a week is tempting the millowners to
substitute the ring-frame for the mule more extensively than
would be profitable if the employers had to pay a full sub-
sistence wage for their ring-spinners, or if they could get for
their ten or twelve shillings a week only such irregular and
inefficient workers as could or would permanently live on
that income. The fact that the female ring-spinners have
been brought up and are partly supported by the mule-
spinners themselves, or by other well-paid trades like the
engineers, is thus positively throwing more mule-spinners out
of work than would otherwise be the case. And there is, as
we have seen, a more subtle competition. The fact that the
wholesale clothing contractor is allowed to deteriorate and
use up in his service the unfortunate relays of sweated out-
workers who make his slop clothing, gives him actually a
constant supply of vital energy which he need not and does
not replace by adequate wages and rest, and thus makes it
possible for him to sell his product cheaper, and hence to
augment his export trade more than he could have done if
his industry were free from social parasitism. And every
expansion of this rival export trade tends, as we have seen,
to elbow out other sales to the foreigner — it may well be,
VOL. II 3 C

754 Trade Union Theory

therefore, to restrict the export, and therefore the manufacture,
of hardware, machinery, or textiles.

Nor can it be imagined that there is anything so peculiar
in the nature of the products of the " sweated trades," that
they could not be just as efficiently supplied to us without
their evil parasitism. We venture to assert, on the contrary,
that there is no article produced in the whole range of the
parasitic trades which could not be manufactured with greater
technical efficiency, and with positively less labor, by a
highly regulated factory industry. But just as in a single
trade the unregulated employer who can get " cheap labor "
is not eager to put in machinery, so in the nation, the enter-
prising capitalists who exploit some new material or cater for
some new desire inevitably take the line of least resistance.
If they can get the work done by parasitic labor^ they will
have so much the less inducement to devise means of per-
forming the same service with the aid of machinery and steam
power, and so much the less interest in adopting mechanical
inventions that are already open to them.1 Thus the parasitic
trades not only abstract part of the earnings of other wage-
earners, and use up the capital stock of national vigor:
they actually stand in the way of the most advantageous
distribution of the nation's industry, and thus prevent its

1 Professor Schmoller observes that "Self-interest in industrial society is like
steam in the steam-engine : only when we know under what pressure it is working
can we tell what it will accomplish" (Sendschreiben an Herrn von Treitscke^
Berlin, 1875, P- 37)- This is strikingly illustrated by the evil persistence in
England, owing to the absence of the pressure of a Standard Rate in the sweated
trades, of obsolete and uneconomical processes. *' Public attention was directed
with some force a short time ago to the wretched condition of the ' nailers ' in
the Dudley district. In America labor conditions of this kind are impossible
owing to the economic circumstances existing, yet nails are made at a labor cost
far lower than that common in the Dudley district. The output of a worker in
an American nail mill amounts to over 2^ tons per week, while the Staffordshire
nailer, working on his old method, only produces 2 cwt. Of what avail is it that
the workman in the latter case earn 155. only, and in the former £6 per week?
The labor cost per Ib. is in the one case o.8d. and in the other o.25;d. Thus
the earnings are eight-fold greater in the case of the American workman, while
the labor cost is only one-third that of the nail produced by the English workman.
This is ... only illustrative of a principle which runs through all industries. "-
Manchester Association of Engineers, Inaugural Address by the President, Mr.
Joseph Nasmith (Manchester, 1897), p. 6.

Economic Characteristics 755

capital, brains, and manual labor from being, in the aggre-
gate, as productive as they would otherwise be. So long as
we assume each industry to be economically self-supporting,
the competition between trades may be regarded as tending
constantly to the most productive distribution of the capital,
brains, and manual labor of the community. Each trade
would tend to expand in proportion as it became more
efficient in satisfying the public desires, and would be limited
only at the point at which some other trade surpassed it in
this respect. Every unit of the nation's capital, like every
one of its capable entrepreneurs and laborers, would tend
constantly to be attracted to the industry in which they
would produce the greatest additional product. If, however,
some trades receive a subsidy or bounty, these parasites will
expand out of proportion to their real efficiency, and will thus
obtain the use of a larger share of the nation's capital, brains,
and manual labor than would otherwise be the case, with the
result that the aggregate product will be diminished, and the
expansion of the self-supporting trades will be prematurely
checked. This tendency of industry to be forced by the
pressure for cheapness, not into the best, but into the lowest
channel, was noticed by the shrewd observers who exposed
the evils of the old Poor Law. " Whole branches of manu-
facture," they said, " may thus follow the course, not of coal
mines or streams, but of pauperism ; may flourish like the
fungi that spring from corruption, in consequence of the
abuses which are ruining all the other interests of the place
in which they are established, and cease to exist in the
better administered districts, in consequence of that better
administration." l

1 First Report of Poor Law Commissioners, 1834, p. 65, or reprint of 1884
(H. C. 347 of 1884). The disastrous effects on agricultural labor of the "rate in aid
of wages " of the old Poor Law have become an economic commonplace. It seems
to be overlooked that what is virtually the same bounty system prevails wherever
work is given out to be done at home. The scanty earnings of women outworkers,
with their intermittent periods of unemployment, inevitably lead to their being
assisted by private charity, if not also from public funds. Thus, a recent investi-
gator in Glasgow reports that " the returns of the Inspectors of the Poor show
that many outworkers, who are in receipt of wages too small to support them,

756 Trade Union Theory

This condition of parasitism is neither produced by the
self-helping efforts of the more fortunate trades to improve
their own conditions, nor can it be remedied by any such
sectional action. The inadequate wages, excessive hours,
and insanitary conditions which degrade and destroy the
victims of the sweated trades are caused primarily by their
own strategic weakness in face of the employer, himself
driven to take advantage of their necessities by the uncon-
scious pressure described in our chapter on " The Higgling of
the Market." That weakness, and the industrial inefficiency
to which it inevitably leads, are neither caused nor increased
by the fact that other sections of wage -earners earn high
wages, work short hours, or enjoy healthy conditions of
employment. If, as we have argued, these conditions,
enforced by the Device of the Common Rule, themselves
produce the high degree of specialised efficiency which
enables them to be provided, their existence is no dis-
advantage to the community, nor to any section of it. On
the contrary, the resulting expansion of the regulated trades
will have reclaimed an additional area from the morass. If,
on the other hand, they are not accompanied by a full
equivalent of efficiency, their existence in the regulated
industries, by increasing cost of production, must be a draw-
back to these in the competition between trades, and thus
positively lessen the pressure on the unregulated occupations
and the workers in them.2 On neither view can the relatively

though working full time, are aided from the rates. Moreover, although to an
extent which it is impossible to ascertain, many of the outworkers on low wages
are assisted by the churches and by charities. Here evidently part of the wages
is paid by outsiders. . . . The cheapness of goods made in such circumstances
is balanced by the increase in Poor Rates and in the demands on the benevolent."
— Home Work amongst Women, by Margaret H. Irwin (Glasgow, 1897).

2 Thus, in the international competition between trades, the maintenance
of wages at high rates by means of Restriction of Numbers is calculated to be
disastrous to the trade practising this device. The high price of the labor,
coupled with its declining efficiency, can scarcely fail to cause an increase in the
price of the product. If this comes into competition with foreign articles, or if a
cheap substitute can easily be found, the trade will quickly be checked and the
falling off in demand, leading to some workmen losing their employment, will
call for increased stringency in excluding fresh learners. The effect of the
Restriction of Numbers in any trade, if this is pushed so far as seriously to raise

Economic Characteristics 757

good conditions exacted by the coalminer or the engineer
be said to be in any way prejudicial to the chain and nail
maker of the Black Country or the outworking Sheffield
cutler, to the sweated shirtmaker of Manchester or the casual
dock laborer of an East London slum. Their influence, such
as it is, is all in the other direction. The fact that a brother,
cousin, or friend is receiving a higher wage, working shorter
hours, or enjoying better sanitary conditions is an incentive
to struggle for similar advantages.1

Unfortunately there is no chance of the parasitic trades
raising themselves from their quagmire by any sectional
action of their own. It is, for instance, hopeless for the
casual dock laborers of London to attempt, by Mutual
Insurance or Collective Bargaining, to maintain any effective
Common Rules against the will of their employers. Even
if every man employed at dock labor in any given week
were a staunch and loyal member of the Trade Union, even if
the union had funds enough to enable all these men to stand
out for better terms, they would still be unable to carry
their point. The employers could, without appreciable loss,
fill their warehouses the very next day by an entirely new

the price of the product, is, therefore, actually to drive more and more of the
nation's capital and labor from the restricted industry, and its progressive dwind-
ling, even to the point of complete extinction, or transfer to another countiy.

1 It may be said that one class of parasitic workers — women or child workers
— are partly supported from the wages of other operatives, usually better paid ;
and that their parasitism is thus made possible by the existence of these better
paid operatives, and therefore, in some sense, by Trade Unionism. There is,
however, no connection between the two. This kind of parasitism does, indeed,
imply a donor of the bounty as well as a recipient, but the existe/ice of differences
in income between individuals, or even between classes, is in no way dependent
on Trade Unionism. Moreover, there are some cases — such as the relation
between home work and casual dock labor in East London — in which two
equally low-paid occupations may be said, by their alternate mutual help, to be
parasitic on each other. The facility of obtaining "large supplies of low-paid
labor," says Mr. Charles Booth, "may be regarded as the proximate cause of the
expansion of some of the most distinctive manufacturing industries of East and
South London — furniture, boots and shoes, caps, clothing, paper bags, and card-
board boxes, matches, jam, etc. . . . They are found in the neighbourhood of
districts largely occupied by unskilled or semi-skilled workmen, or by those whose
employment is most discontinuous, since it is chiefly the daughters, wives, and
-widows of these men who turn to labor of this kind.'''' — C. Booth: Life and Labour
of the People (London, 1897), vol. ix. p. 193.

758 Trade Union Theory

set of men, who would do the work practically as well.
There is, in fact, for unspecialised manual labor a practically
unlimited " reserve army " made up of the temporarily
unemployed members of every other class. As these
form a perpetually shifting body, and the occupation of
" general laboring " needs no apprenticeship, no combination,
however co-extensive it might be with the laborers actually
employed at any one time, could deprive the employer
of the alternative of engaging an entirely new gang.
The same reason makes it for ever hopeless to attempt,
by Mutual Insurance or Collective Bargaining, to raise
appreciably the wages of the common run of women workers.
Where, as is usually the case, female labor is employed for
practically unskilled work, needing only the briefest experi-
ence ; or where the work, though skilled, is of a kind into
which every woman is initiated as part of her general educa-
tion, no combination will ever be able to enforce, by its
own power, any Standard Rate, any Normal Day, or any
definite conditions of Sanitation and Safety. This is even
more obvious when the parasitic labor is that of boys
or girls, taken on without any industrial experience at all.
Mutual Insurance and Collective Bargaining, as methods of
enforcing the Common Rule, become impotent when the
work is of so unskilled or so unspecialised a character that
an employer can, without economic disadvantage, replace
his existing hands in a body by an entirely new set of
untrained persons of any antecedents whatsoever.

The outcome of this analysis is that the strongest
competitors for the world's custom, and for the use of the
nation's brains and capital, will be the regulated industries
on the one hand, and the parasitic trades on the other — the
unregulated but self-supporting industries having to put up
with the leavings of both home and foreign trade, and a
diminishing quantity and quality of organising capacity and
manual labor.1 In what proportion a nation's industry will

1 It may be desirable to observe, in order to prevent possible misunderstand-
ing, that we propose this division of industries into three classes, as a Classification

Economic Characteristics 759

be divided among the two conquerors will, it is obvious,
depend primarily on the extent to which regulation is
resorted to. The more widespread and effective is the use
of the Device of the Common Rule, the larger, other things
being equal, will be the proportion of the population pro-
tected from the ravages of " sweating." On the other hand,
the more generally the conditions of employment are left to
be freely settled by Individual Bargaining, the wider will
grow the area of the parasitic trades. And omitting from
consideration those industries which are at once unregulated
and self-supporting — which succumb, as we have seen, before
either victor — it would require delicate economic investiga-
tion to estimate the relative advantage, in this day-to-day
struggle between industries, of the slow but cumulative
stimulus given by the Common Rule, on the one hand, and,
on the other, the immediate cheapening of production made
possible by parasitism, whether this takes the form of grants
in aid of subsistence from persons outside the industry, or
of an unremunerated consumption of labor's capital stock.
We might infer, from the respective economic characteristics

by Type, not by Definition. "It is determined, not by a boundary line without,
but by a central point within ; not by what it strictly excludes, but by what it
eminently includes ; by an example, not by a precept " (Whewell, History of
Scientific Ideas, vol. ii. p. 120; Mill, System of Logic > vol. ii. p. 276). Here,
as elsewhere in Nature, there are no sharp lines of division. The different trades
shade off from each other by imperceptible degrees. So far as we are aware,
there is no industry that is completely regulated, none that is completely un-
regulated and self-supporting, and none that is completely parasitic. Mule-spinning,
for example, is a highly-regulated industry, but in so far as it is fed with relays of
piecers whom it does not support, it is parasitic on other trades. Agriculture,
though mainly driven to be self-supporting, is, in some districts, parasitic on
occupations with which it is combined, such as fishing or letting lodgings ; and
though mainly unregulated, sometimes employs workmen at wages governed by
a Standard Rate, or residing in farm cottages, as to which there is some attempt
to enforce the Public Health Acts. The parasitic trades themselves usually
employ a modicum of organised labor, and their operations are frequently
divided between the highly-regulated factory and the unregulated home. It is
accordingly impossible to discover whether or not an industry is parasitic by any
such operation as dividing the total wages that it pays among the total number
of its employees. Any trade is so far parasitic if it employs any labor which is
not entirely maintained and replaced out of the wages and other conditions afforded
to that particular labor. Our remarks as to parasitic trades apply, therefore, to all
industries whatsoever, in so far as they are parasitic.

760 Trade Union Theory

of these two sources of industrial advantage, that the regu-
lated trades would expand steadily, generation after genera-
tion, improving the quality of their products even more
rapidly than reducing their price, and thus tending to oust
their rivals principally in the more complicated productive
processes and the finer grades of workmanship. The
parasitic trades, on the contrary, would form a constantly
shifting body, cropping up suddenly in new forms and
unexpected places, each in succession gaining a quick start
in the world's market by the cheapness of its product, often
realising great fortunes, but each gradually losing ground
before other competitors, and thus individually failing to
secure for itself a permanent place in the nation's industry.

Amid all the complications of human society, it is im-
possible to give inductive proof of any generalisation whatso-
ever. But the outcome of our analysis is certainly consistent
with the main developments of British trade during the
nineteenth century, and with its present aspect. If, for
instance, we compare the distribution of industry in Great
Britain fifty years ago with that of the present day, we are
struck at once by the enormous increase in the proportion
occupied by textile manufactures (especially cotton), ship-
building, machine -making, and coal-mining,1 as compared
with agriculture, and with those skilled handicrafts like
watchmaking, silk -weaving, and glove -making, for which
England was once celebrated. To whatever causes we may
ascribe the success of the former industries, it is at least
a striking coincidence that they are exactly those in which
the Device of the Common Rule, whether enforced by
Collective Bargaining or Legal Enactment, has been most
extensively and continuously applied. Equally significant
is the fact that the expansion of our manufactures is now
taking place, in the main, less in the lower grades of quality
than in the higher. Thus, it is in the finer " counts " of

1 These four great staple industries now contribute three-quarters of the whole
exports of British production, and an ever-increasing proportion of our manufac-
tures for home consumption.

Economic Characteristics 761

yarn, the best longcloth, and the most elaborately figured
muslins — not in the commoner sorts of cotton goods — that
Lancashire exports find their widest market. In ship-
building, the highly complicated and perfectly finished war-
ship and passenger liner are the most distinctively British
products. And English steam-engines, tools, and machinery
are bought by the foreigner in yearly increasing quantities,
not because they are lower -priced than many continental
manufactures, but because they more than retain their pre-
eminence in quality. Coincidently with this expansion in
the most skilled parts of our regulated trades has been the
gradual ousting, even in the home market, of our manu-
factures of the commoner sorts of joinery, glass, paper, and
cutlery — all branches in which the English workmen have
never been sufficiently organised to enforce a Standard Rate
or a Normal Day.1 We might follow out this coincidence
between expansion and regulation still further, pursuing it
across the cleavage of handwork versus machinery, and not-
ing the success of the highly organised Kentish hand paper-
makers and Nottingham machine laceworkers, in comparison
with the relative weakness before foreign competition of the
machine papermakers and hand laceworkers, both of which
have always been practically unorganised trades, earning low
wages. It is interesting to note that, with the exception of
the hand laceworkers, all these weak or decaying industries
are carried on by adult men, and therefore debarred from
the ordinary form of parasitic subsidy. But the most
remarkable decline of an unregulated and self-supporting
industry is afforded by British agriculture. The fact that
the English farmer has always been able to hire his labor
at practically its bare subsistence, and that, unlike the mill-
owner, he is free to exact unlimited hours of work, and is

1 In these very industries the more skilled branches of work, producing the
finer kinds of glass, cutlery, paper, and furniture, in which the men insist on high
standard conditions, have usually suffered comparatively little from foreign inva-
sion, in spite of the fact that their old-fashioned unions have retained the Device
of Restriction of Numbers, and have thus, as we believe, prevented an expansion
of their crafts.

762 Trade Union Theory

untrammelled by any sanitary requirements, has, we believe,
had the worst possible effect on agricultural prosperity. It
has, to begin with, deprived the typically rural industry of
anything but the residuum of the rural population. For
a whole century the cleverest and most energetic boys, the
strongest and most enterprising young men, have been
drained from the countryside by the superior conditions
offered by the industries governed by the Common Rule. It
follows that the employer has for generations had very little
choice of labor, and practically no chance of securing fresh
relays of workers from other occupations. Moreover, though
he may reduce wages to a bare subsistence, he can, in the
long run, get no more out of the laborers than his wages
provide, for it is upon them and their families that he must
rely for a continuance of the service. Hence the scanty
food and clothing, long hours, and insanitary housing accom-
modation of the rural population produce slow, lethargic, and
unintelligent labor : the low Standard of Life is, as we have
mentioned, accompanied by a low Standard of Work. What
is no less important, the employers have, of all classes,
troubled least about making inventions or improving their
processes. If a farmer .cannot make both ends meet, his
remedy is to get a reduction of rent. The very fact that an
agricultural tenant, unlike a mine owner or a cotton manu-
facturer, is not held rigidly to his bargain with his landlord,
and is frequently excused a part of his rent in unprofitable
years, prevents that vigorous weeding out of the less efficient,
and that constant supersession of the unfit, which is one of
the main factors of the efficiency of Lancashire. It is there-
fore not surprising that, in a century of unparalleled technical
improvement in almost every productive process, the methods
of agriculture have, we believe, changed less than those of
any other occupation. In the rivalry between trades it has
steadily lost ground, securing for itself an ever-dwindling
proportion of the nation's capital, and losing constantly more
and more of the pick of the population that it nourishes.
In the stress of international competition it has gone increas-

Economic Characteristics 763

ingly to the wall, and far from being selected, like such
highly regulated trades as coal mining or engineering, for the
supply of the world market, it finds itself losing more and
more even of the home trade ; not to any specially favored
one among its rivals, but to all of them ; not alone in wheat-
growing, but in every other branch of its operations. There
are, of course, other causes for the decline of English farming,
and we are far from pretending to offer a complete explana-
tion of its relatively backward condition, as compared, say,
with shipbuilding or machine -making. But the country
gentlemen of 1833-1847, who so willingly imposed the
Factory Acts on the millowners, and so vehemently objected
to any analogous regulations being applied to agriculture,
would possibly not have been so eager to support Lord
Shaftesbury if they had understood clearly the economic
effects of these Common Rules.1

1 Even within a trade the districts in which the Common Rule is rigidly
enforced will often outstrip those lacking this stimulus to improvement. Thus,
in cotton-spinning Glasgow once rivalled Lancashire, and for the first third of the
present century the two districts did not appreciably differ in the extent of their
regulation. During the last sixty years the growth of Trade Unionism in Lanca-
shire has led to a constant elaboration, raising, and ever more stringent enforce-
ment of the Common Rules by which the industry is governed. In Glasgow, on
the other hand, the operatives' violence and the employers' autocratic behaviour
led to serious outbreaks of crime between 1830 and 1837, followed by drastic
repression and the entire collapse of Trade Unionism in the textile industry.
From 1838 down to the present day the Glasgow cotton manufacturers have, so
far as Trade Unionism is concerned, been practically free to hire their labor as
cheaply as they pleased, whilst, owing to the lack of organisation, even the Com-
mon Rules of the Factory Acts have, until the last few years, been far less rigidly
enforced than in Lancashire. It is at least an interesting coincidence that during
this period, whilst other manufacturing industries have enormously progressed,
Glasgow cotton-spinning has steadily declined in efficiency. A lower grade of
labor is now employed, much of it paid only the barest subsistence wage ; the
speed of working and output per operative have failed to increase ; improvements
in machinery have been tardily and inadequately adopted ; and no new mills have
recently been erected. Only a few establishments now remain out of what was
once a flourishing industry, and it is doubtful whether all of these will long
survive.

Cloth manufacture supplies a similar example. The cloth mills of the West
of England have enjoyed the advantage of inherited tradition, and a world-wide
reputation for excellence of quality. Since the very beginning of the century the
industry has been entirely free from Trade Unionism. Wages have been exceed-
ingly low, and the Factory Inspector has certainly never been instigated to any
particular activity. Water-power is abundant and coal cheap, whilst canals and

764 Trade Union Theory

Unfortunately, the triumphant progress of the regulated
trades, as compared with the unregulated but self-supporting
industries, does not complete the picture of our industrial life.
In the crowded slums of the great cities, in the far out-stretch-
ing suburbs and industrial villages which are transforming so
much of Great Britain into cross -cutting chains of houses,
there are constantly springing up all sorts and conditions of
mushroom manufactures — the innumerable articles of wear-
ing apparel, cheap boots and slippers, walking-sticks and
umbrellas, mineral waters and sweetstuffs, the lower grades
of furniture and household requisites, bags and boxes, toys
and knick-knacks of every kind — in short, a thousand mis-
cellaneous trades, none of which can be compared in per-
manence or extent with any one of our staple industries, but
which in the aggregate absorb a considerable proportion of
the custom, capital, and organising capacity of the nation.
This is the special field of the " small master," driven per-
petually to buy his material on credit and to sell his product
to meet the necessities of the hour ; of the speculative trader
commanding capital but untrained in the technological details
of any mechanical industry ; of armies of working sub-
contractors, forced by the pressure of competition and the
absence of regulation to grind the faces of the poor ; and, on
the other hand, of the millions of unorganised workers, men,
women, and children, who, from lack of opportunity, lack of
strength, or lack of technical training, find themselves unable
to escape from districts or trades in which the absence of
regulation drives them to accept wages and conditions incon-
sistent with industrial efficiency. We are here in a region
seemingly apart from the world of the Great Industry to
which our country owes its industrial predominance. These

railways make both Bristol and London accessible. Yet the cloth manufacturers
of Gloucestershire, Somersetshire, and Wiltshire have throughout been steadily
losing ground before those of Yorkshire and Lancashire. This decline was
expressly attributed by one of the most enterprising of them to the lack of
stimulus to improvement, manifest alike among the foremen and the employers.
Whether our informant would have consciously welcomed the quickening of
Functional Adaptation and Selection of the Fittest, brought about by the Common
Rules of a strong Trade Union is, however, doubtful !

Economic Characteristics 765

' sweated trades " seldom enter into direct competition with
the highly -organised and self-supporting staple industries.
What happens is that one form of parasitism dogs the steps
of the other — the wholesale trader or sub-contractor using
up relays of deteriorating outworkers, underbids the factory-
owner resorting to the subsidised labor of respectable young
women. It is refreshing to notice that when one of these
sweated trades does get partially caught up into the factory
system, and thus comes under Common Rules with regard
to Hours of Labor and Sanitation, the factories, even when
they pay little more than pocket-money wages to their women
operatives, draw slowly ahead of their more disastrously
parasitic rivals.1 But this very competition of subsidised
factory labor with deteriorating outworkers makes things worse
for these latter. To what depth of misery and degradation
the higgling of the market may reduce the denizens of the
slums of our great cities is unsounded by the older econo-
mists' pedantic phrase of " subsistence level." Unfortunately
the harm that the sweater does lives after him. Men and
women who have, for any length of time, been reduced, to
quote the House of Lords' Committee, to " earnings barely
sufficient to sustain existence ; hours of labor such as to
make the lives of the workers periods of almost ceaseless toil,
hard and unlovely to the last degree ; sanitary conditions
injurious to the health of the persons employed and dangerous
to the public," 2 become incapable of profitable labor. What
they can do is to compete fitfully for the places which they
cannot permanently fill, and thus not only drag down the
wages of all other unregulated labor, but also contribute,
by their irregularity of conduct and incapacity for persistent
effort, to the dislocation of the machinery of production. But
this is not all. No one who has not himself lived among
the poor in London or Glasgow, Liverpool or Manchester,

1 In the slop clothing trade, the factories at Leeds and elsewhere, employ-
ing girls and women at extremely low wages, but under good sanitary conditions
and fixed hours, are steadily increasing.

2 Final Report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Sweating
System, 1890,

766 Trade Union Theory

can form any adequate idea of the unseen and unmeasured
injury to national character wrought by the social contam-
ination to which this misery inevitably leads. One degraded
or ill-conducted worker will demoralise a family ; one dis-
orderly family inexplicably lowers the conduct of a whole
street ; the low -caste life of a single street spreads its evil
influence over the entire quarter ; and the slum quarter,
connected with the others by a thousand unnoticed threads
of human intercourse, subtly deteriorates the standard of
health, morality, and public spirit of the whole city. Thus
though the morass does not actually gain on the portion of
the nation's life already embanked by the Common Rule,
we see it perpetuating itself, and, with the growth of popula-
tion, even positively increasing in area.1

(e) The National Minimum

Though Trade Unionism affords no means of putting
down industrial parasitism by sectional action, the analysis
of the economic effects of the Device of the Common Rule
points the way to the solution of the problem. Within a
trade, in the absence of any Common Rule, competition
between firms leads, as we have seen, to the adoption of
practices by which the whole industry is deteriorated. The

1 Whilst the proportion of those who fall below the level of healthy sub-
sistence has no doubt greatly decreased in the sixty years 1837-1897, there is good
reason to believe that their actual number is at least as large as at any previous
date. It may even be larger. See Labor in the Longest Reign, by Sidney Webb
(London, 1897). How extensive is the area occupied by low-paid occupations
may be inferred from Mr. Charles Booth's careful summary of his researches into
the economic condition of London's 4^ millions. "The result of all our
inquiries make it reasonably sure that one-third of the population are on or about
the line of poverty or are below it, having at most an income which, one time
with another, averages twenty-one shillings or twenty-two shillings for a small
family (or up to twenty-five or twenty-six shillings for one of larger size), and in
many cases falling much below this level. There may be another third who have
perhaps ten shillings more, or taking the year round, from twenty-five to thirty-
five shillings a week, among whom would be counted, in addition to wage-
earners, many retail tradesmen and small masters ; and the last third would in-
clude those who are better off." — Life and Labour of the People, vol. ix. p. 427.

Economic Characteristics 767

enforcement of a common minimum standard throughout
the trade not only stops the degradation, but in every way
conduces to industrial efficiency. Within a community, too,
in the absence of regulation, the competition between trades
tends to the creation and persistence in certain occupations
of conditions of employment injurious to the nation as a
whole. The remedy is to extend the conception of the
Common Rule from the trade to the whole community, and
by prescribing a National Minimum, absolutely to prevent
any industry being carried on under conditions detrimental
to the public welfare.1

This is, at bottom, the policy of factory legislation, now
adopted by every industrial country. But this policy of
prescribing minimum conditions, below which no employer
is allowed to drive even his most necessitous operatives, has
yet been only imperfectly carried out. Factory legislation
applies, usually, only to sanitary conditions and, as regards
particular classes, to the hours of labor. Even within this
limited sphere it is everywhere unsystematic and lop-sided.
When any European statesman makes up his mind to
grapple seriously with the problem of the " sweated trades "
he will have to expand the Factory Acts of his country into
a systematic and comprehensive Labor Code, prescribing the
minimum conditions under which the community can afford
to allow industry to be carried on ; and including not
merely definite precautions of sanitation and safety, and
maximum hours of toil, but also a minimum of weekly
earnings. We do not wish to enter here upon the compli-
cated issues of industrial politics in each country, nor to

1 The majority of English statesmen are convinced that France and Germany
in giving bounties out of the taxes to the manufacturers of sugar, are impoverish-
ing their respective communities, to the advantage of the consumers — often the
foreign consumers — of the sugar. Yet the cost to France and Germany of this
policy is merely a definite annual sum, equivalent to the destruction of an iron-
rlad or two. If we allow an industry to grow up, which habitually takes more
out of its workers than the wages and other conditions of employment enable
them to repair, — still more, if the effect of the employment is to deteriorate both
character and physique of successive relays of operatives, who are flung eventually
on the human rubbish-heap of charity or the Poor Law — is not the nation paying
to that industry a bounty far more serious in its cost than any money grant ?

768 Trade Union Theory

discuss the practical difficulties and political obstacles which
everywhere impede the reform and extension of the factory
laws. But to complete our economic analysis we must con-
sider what developments of the Trade Union Method ot
Legal Enactment would be implied by a systematic applica-
tion of the conception of a National Minimum, and how this
might be expected to affect the evils that we have described.
One of the most obvious forms of industrial parasitism
is the employment of child-labor. The early textile manu-
facturer found that it paid best to run his mill almost
exclusively by young children, whom he employed without
regard to what was to become of them when they grew too
big to creep under his machines, and when they required
more wages than his labor bill allowed. The resulting
degeneracy of the manufacturing population became so
apparent that Parliament, in spite of all its prepossessions,
was driven to interfere. The Yorkshire Woollen Workers
were seeking, like the Flint Glass Makers of to-day, to meet
the case by reviving the old period of educational servitude.
The Calico-printers were aiming, like the National Union of
Boot and Shoe Operatives before Lord James, at a simple
limitation of the number of boys to be employed.1 Neither
of these expedients was considered practicable. An alterna-
tive remedy was found in prohibiting the manufacturer from

1 Mimites of Evidence and Report of the Committee on the Petition of the
Journeymen Calico -printers, 4th July 1804, i;th July 1806; Hansard's Parlia-
mentary Debates, vol. ix. pp. 534-538 ; History of Trade Unionism, p. 50. Our
analysis of the economic competition between trades enables us to see that no
merely sectional measure would be of use against an illegitimate use of boy-labor.
For it is not only the adult workers of the particular trade who are injured. In
the competition of trade with trade, whether for home or foreign markets, the
illegitimate expansion of a bounty-fed industry necessarily implies a relative con-
traction of other and possibly quite unrelated trades. It is therefore not only,
and perhaps not even principally, the adult boot and shoe operatives who are
injured by the undue multiplication of boys in the great boot factories ; such
trades as the Flint Glass Makers, who succeed in rigidly limiting their own
apprentices, and agriculture, which receives the residuum of boys, probably
suffer equally, though in a more indirect way, from the fact that the boot and
shoe trade receives this subsidy in aid of its own export trade, and thus encourages
an increase of foreign imports which happen to come in the form of German glass
and American food stuffs.

Economic Characteristics 769

employing children below a certain age, and requiring him
to see that, up to a farther period, they spent half their days
at school. The Factory Acts have, as regards children, long
since won their way to universal approval, not merely on
humanitarian grounds, but as positively conducive to the
industrial efficiency of the community. There is, however,
still much to be done before the " Children's Charter " can be
said effectually to prevent all parasitic use of child -labor.
Though children may not be employed in factories until
eleven years of age, nor full time until they are thirteen or
fourteen, they are allowed to work at other occupations at
earlier ages. " In certain districts of England and Wales,
if a child of ten has obtained a certificate of previous due
attendance [at school] for five years, he may be employed
elsewhere than in a factory, workshop, or mine without any
farther educational test or condition, and without any restric-
tion as to the number of hours"1 Even if the law with
regard to the employment of children in factories were made
uniformly applicable to all occupations in all parts of the
United Kingdom, the present limits of age are obviously
inadequate to prevent parasitism. England has, in this
respect, lost its honorable lead in protective legislation, and
we ought at once to raise the age at which any boy or girl
may enter industrial life to the fourteen years already
adopted by the Swiss federal code,2 if not to the fifteen
years now in force in Geneva, and eventually to the sixteen
years demanded by the International Socialist and Trade
Union Congress of 1896. It is, however, in an extension of
the half-time system that we are likely to find the most
effective check on child - labor. We have already seen
reason to believe that the only way in which proper technical
training can now be secured for the great mass of the people

1 Report of Departmental Committee appointed to Inquire into the Conditions
of School Attendance and Child-Labor, H. C. No. 311 of 1893, P- 25- ^n
Ireland school attendance is compulsory only in the towns, and hence children of
any age may lawfully be employed in the country districts for any number of
hours, night or day, otherwise than in factories, workshops, or mines.

2 Swiss Federal Factory Law of 23rd March 1877.

VOL. IT 3D

77O Trade Union Theory

is by their deliberate instruction in educational institutions.
Such instruction can never be thoroughly utilised so long as
the youth has to perform a full and exhausting day's work
at the factory or the mine. There is much to be said, both
from an educational and from a purely commercial point of
view, for such a gradual extension of the half-time system as
would put off until eighteen the working of full factory
hours, in order to allow of a compulsory attendance at the
technical school and the continuation classes. Any such
proposal would, at present, meet with great opposition from
parents objecting to be deprived of their children's earnings.
Some of the more thoughtful Trade Unionists are, however,
beginning to see that such a development of the half-time
system, whilst affording the only practical substitute for the
apprenticeship training, would have the incidental advantage
of placing, in the most legitimate way, an effective check on
any excessive use of boy-labor by the employers.1 With
the contraction of the supply the rate of boy's wages would
rise, so that little less might even be earned for the half day
than formerly for full time. Boy - labor, therefore, would
become less profitable to the employers, and would tend to
be used by them only for its legitimate purpose of training
up a new generation of adult workmen.2 To prevent para-
sitism, in short, we must regard the boy or girl, not as an

1 See, for instance, the Report of the Trade Unionist Minority of the Royal
Commission on Labor ^ in C. 7421, 1894. A somewhat analogous arrangement
is already in force in Neuchatel, under its Apprenticeship Law of 1891, and in
some other Swiss cantons.

2 It might even become necessary for the community to pay a premium for
the proper technical education of boys in trades in which employers preferred
altogether to dispense with them. Under private enterprise it requires a certain
foresight and permanence of interest for individual employers to have any regard
for the rearing up of new generations of skilled operatives. Thus, whilst some
of the best shipbuilding establishments in the North of England bestow consider-
able attention on their apprentices, the rule in the Midland boot and shoe
factories is, as we have seen, to teach the boys practically nothing, and the
London builders have left off employing boys at all. It was found that, in 1895.
41 typical London firms in various branches of the building trades, employing
12,000 journeymen, had only 80 apprentices and 143 other "learners" in their
establishments. (See the report of an inquiry into apprenticeship in the London
building trades conducted by the Technical Education Board, published in the
London Technical Education Gazette, October 1895.)

Economic Characteristics 771

independent wealth-producer to be satisfied by a daily sub-
sistence, but as the future citizen and parent, for whom, up
to twenty-one, proper conditions of growth and education
are of paramount importance. Hence the Policy of a
National Minimum — the prohibition of all such conditions
of employment as are inconsistent with the maintenance of
the workers in a state of efficiency as producers and citizens
— means, in the case of a child or a youth, the requirement
not merely of daily subsistence and pocket-money, but also
of such conditions of nurture as will ensure the continuous
provision, generation after generation, of healthy and efficient
adults.

In the case of adults, parasitism takes the form, if we
may cite once more the unimpeachable testimony of the
House of Lords, of " earnings barely sufficient to sustain
existence ; hours of labor such as to make the lives of the
workers periods of almost ceaseless toil, hard and unlovely
to the last degree ; sanitary conditions injurious to the health
of the persons employed and dangerous to the public." 1
Each of these points requires separate consideration.

With regard to sanitation, the law of the United Kingdom
already professes to secure to every manufacturing operative,
whether employed in a factory or a workshop, and whether
man or woman, reasonably healthy conditions of employ-
ment. In addition to the general requirements of the Public
Health Acts, the employer has put upon him, by the Factory
Acts, as a condition of being allowed to carry on his industry,
the obligation of providing and maintaining whatever is
necessary for the sanitation and safety of all the persons
whom he employs whilst they are at work on his premises.
If the industry is one by its very nature unhealthy, the em-
ployer is required to take the technical precautions deemed
necessary by the scientific experts, and prescribed by special
rules for each occupation. So far the Policy of a National
Minimum of Sanitation would seem to be already embodied

1 Final Report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Sweating
System, 1890.

772 Trade Union Theory

in English law. But appearances are deceptive. Whole
classes of industrial wage-earners find themselves entirely
outside the Factory Acts, whilst even of those who are
nominally included, large sections are, in one way or another,
deprived of any real protection. Hence, far from securing
a National Minimum of Sanitation and Safety to every one,
the law is at present only brought effectively into force to
protect the conditions of employment of the strongest sections
of the wage-earners, notably the Coal miners and the Cotton
Operatives, whilst the weakest sections of all, notably the
outworkers of the " sweated trades," remain as much oppressed
in the way of sanitation as they are in hours of labor
and wages. If it is desired to carry out the Policy of a
National Minimum on this point, Parliament will have to
make all employers, whether factory-owners, small workshop
masters, or traders giving out material to be made up else-
where, equally responsible for the sanitary conditions under
which their work is done.1

When we turn from sanitation to the equally indispens-
able conditions of leisure and rest, English factory legislation
is still more imperfect. It has for fifty years been accepted
that it is against public policy for women to be kept to
manual labor for more than sixty hours a week, and this
principle is supposed to be embodied in the law. But here
again, the most oppressed classes — the women working day
and night for the wholesale clothiers, or kept standing all
day long behind the counter of a shop or the bar of a public-
house — who are absolutely excluded from the scope of the
law. Even where the law applies, it applies least thoroughly
in the most helpless trades. We have already described

1 A beginning has been made by the sections of the Factory Acts of 1891
and 1895 imposing upon persons giving out work to be done elsewhere than on
their own premises certain obligations with regard to the sanitary conditions of
their outworkers. In their present form, however, these sections are admittedly
unworkable, and no serious effort has yet been made to cope with the evils
revealed by the House of Lords' Committee on the Sweating System in 1890.
See Sweating, its Cause and Remedy (Fabian Tract, No. 50), How to do away
with the Sweating System, by Beatrice Potter (Mrs. Sidney Webb) (Co-operative
Union pamphlet), and the Trade Unionist Minority Report of the Royal
Commission on Labor, in C. 7421, 1894.

Economic Characteristics 773

how, in all non-textile industries, the overtime provisions
destroy the efficacy of the Factory Act,1 and, in such cases
as laundry-workers and dressmakers in small shops, render it
practically of no avail. It is one more instance of the irony
of English labor legislation that the women in the textile
mills have alone secured a really effective limitation of their
hours of labor, and this as low as 56^- hours a week, in
spite of the fact that they are, of all women workers, the
least helpless and, as a class, the best off. And when we
pass from women to men, the statute book with regard to
the hours of labor is at present a blank, relieved only by the
tentative provisions of the Railway Regulation Act of 1893.
Before we can be said to have established a National Mini-
mum of leisure and rest, the provisions of the Factory Acts
with regard to textile factories will have to be made appli-
cable, with the special modifications appropriate to each
particular occupation, to all manual workers whatsoever.

But sanitation and leisure do not, of themselves, maintain
the nation's workers in health and efficiency, or prevent
industrial parasitism. Just as it is against public policy to
allow an employer to engage a woman to work excessive
hours or under insanitary conditions, so it is equally against
public policy to permit him to engage her for wages in-
sufficient to provide the food and shelter, without which she
cannot continue in health. Once we begin to prescribe the
minimum conditions under which an employer should be
permitted to open a factory, there is no logical distinction
to be drawn between the several clauses of the wage
contract. From the point of view of the employer, one
way of increasing the cost of production is the same as
another, whilst to the economist and the statesman, con-
cerned with the permanent efficiency of industry and the
maintenance of national health, adequate food is at least as
important as reasonable hours or good drainage. To be
completely effectual, the Policy of the National Minimum
will, therefore, have to be applied to wages.

1 See a preceding chapter on "The Normal Day."

774 Trade Union J^heory

The proposition of a National Minimum of wages — the
enactment of a definite sum of earnings per week below which
no employer should be allowed to hire any worker — has not
yet been put forward by any considerable section of Trade
Unionists, nor taken into consideration by any Home
Secretary. This reluctance to pass to the obvious com-
pletion of the policy of factory legislation, at once logical
and practical, arises, we think, from a shrinking, both on the
part of workmen and employers, from having all wages fixed
by law. But this is quite a different proposition. The
fixing of a National Minimum of Sanitation has not pre-
vented the erection in our great industrial centres of work-
places which, compared with the minimum prescribed by the
law, are palatial in their provision of light, air, cubic space,
warmth, and sanitary accommodation. And a National
Minimum of leisure and rest, fixed, for instance, at the textile
standard of 56^ hours' work a week, would in no way
interfere with the Northumberland Coalminers maintaining
their 37 hours' week, or the London Engineers bargaining
for a 48 hours' week. There is even less reason why, with
regard to wages, the enactment of a National Minimum
should interfere with the higher rates actually existing, or in
future obtained, in the tens of thousands of distinct occupa-
tions throughout the country. The fact that the Committees
of the London County Council are precluded, by its Standing
Orders, from employing any workman at less than 245. a
week, does not prevent their engaging workmen at all sorts
of higher rates, according to agreement. And if the House
of Commons were to replace its present platonic declaration
against the evils of sweating by an effective minimum, the
superintendents of the various Government departments
would still go on paying their higher rates to all but the
lowest grade of workmen.

The object of the National Minimum being to secure the
community against the evils of industrial parasitism, the
minimum wage for a man or a woman respectively would be
determiced by practical inquiry as to the cost of the food.

Economic Characteristics 775

clothing, and shelter physiologically necessary, according to
national habit and custom, to prevent bodily deterioration.
Such a minimum would therefore be low, and though its
establishment would be welcomed as a boon by the unskilled
workers in the unregulated trades, it would not at all corre-
spond with the conception of a " Living Wage " formed by
the Cotton Operatives or the Coalminers. It would be a
matter for careful consideration what relation the National
Minimum for adult men should bear to that for adult women ;
what differences, if any, should be made between town and
country ; and whether the standard should be fixed by
national authority (like the hours of labor for young persons
and women), or by local authority (like the educational
qualification for child - labor). To those not practically
acquainted with the organisation of English industry and
Government administration, the idea will seem impracticable.
But, as a matter of fact, the authoritative settlement of a
minimum wage is already daily undertaken. Every local
governing body throughout the country has to decide under
the criticism of public opinion what wage it will pay to its
lowest grade of laborers. It can hire them at any price,
even at a shilling a day ; but what happens in practice
is that the officer in charge fixes such a wage as he believes
he can permanently get good enough work for. In the same
way the national Government, which is by far the largest
employer of labor in the country, does not take the cheapest
laborers it can get, at the lowest price for which they will
offer themselves, but deliberately settles its own minimum
wage for each department. During the last few years this
systematic determination of the rate to be paid for Govern-
ment labor, which must have existed since the days of Pepys,
has been more and more consciously based upon what we
have called the Doctrine of a Living Wage. Thus the
Admiralty is now constantly taking evidence, either through
the Labor Department or through its own officials, as to the
cost of living in different localities, so as to adjust its laborers'
wages to the expense of their subsistence. And in our

776 Trade Union Theory

local governing bodies we see the committees, under the
pressure of public opinion, every day substituting a deliber-
ately settled minimum for the haphazard decisions of the
officials of the several departments.1 What is not so
generally recognised is that exactly the same change is
taking place in private enterprise. The great captains of
industry, interested in the permanent efficiency of their estab-
lishments, have long adopted the practice of deliberately
fixing the minimum wage to be paid to the lowest class of
unskilled laborers, according to their own view of what the
laborers can live on, instead of letting out their work to sub-
contractors, whose only object is to exact the utmost exertion
for the lowest price. A railway company never dreams of
putting its situations out to tender, and engaging the man
who offers to come at the lowest wage : what happens is
that the rate of pay of porters and shunters is deliberately
fixed in advance. And it is a marked feature of the last
ten years that the settlement of this minimum has been, in
some of the greatest industries, taken out of the hands of the
individual employer, and arrived at by an arbitrator. The
assumption that the wages of the lowest grade of labor must
at any rate be enough to maintain the laborer in industrial
efficiency is, in fact, accepted by both parties, so that the
task of the arbitrator is comparatively easy. Lord James,
for instance, has lately fixed, with universal acceptance, a
minimum wage for all the lowlier grades of labor employed

1 An interesting survey of the steps taken to secure the payment of the
Standard Rate to persons working for public authorities in France, the United
Kingdom, Belgium, Holland, Italy, and Switzerland, is given by Auguste Keufer
in his Rapport tendant a rechercher les may ens de parer aux funestes consequences
du systeme actuel des adjudications (Paris, 1896, 48 pp.)- See also Louis Katzen-
stein, Die Lohnfrage unter dem Englischen Submissionswesen (Berlin, 1896) ;
the important Enquete of the Communal Council of Brussels into the effect of
fixing and of not fixing the rates of wages payable in public contract works,
2 vols. (Brussels, 1896) ; and the Report of the House of Commons' Committee on
the Conditions of Government Contracts (H. C. 334), July 1897.

In order to put a stop to the practice of engaging learners or improvers with-
out any salary whatsoever, the Victorian Factories and Shops Act of 1896 (No.
1445) enacts (sec. 16) that "no person whatsoever, unless in receipt of a weekly
wage of at least two shillings and sixpence, shall be employed in any factory or
workroom."

Economic Characteristics 777

by the North Eastern Railway Company.1 Indeed, the
fixing of a minimum wage on physiological grounds is a
less complicated matter, and one demanding less techno-
logical knowledge than the fixing of a minimum of sanitation ;
and it interferes far less with the day-by-day management of
industry, or its productivity, than any fixing of the hours of
labor, whether of women or men. To put it concretely, if
Colonel Dyer (of Armstrong's) and Mr. Livesey (of the South
Metropolitan Gas Works) could for a moment rid themselves
of their metaphysical horror of any legal regulation of wages,
they would admit that the elaborate Factory Act require-
ments in the way of Sanitation and Safety, and any limita-
tion of the Hours of Labor, constitute a far greater impediment
to their management of their own business in the way they
think best than would any National Minimum of wages for
the lowest grade of labor. As a matter of fact, what would
happen would be the adoption, as the National Minimum, of
the wages actually paid by the better establishments, who
would accordingly be affected only to the extent of finding
their competitors put on the same level as themselves.2

More formidable than any a priori objection to the
National Minimum on the part of employers who would
really be unaffected by it, would be the vehement obstruction
that any such proposal would meet with from the profit-

1 See his award in the Labour Gazette for August 1897.

2 We desire to emphasise the point that, whatever political objections there
may be to the fixing by law of a National Minimum Wage, and whatever
practical difficulties there may be in carrying it out, the proposal, from the point
of view of abstract economics, is open to no more objection than the fixing by law
of a National Minimum of Sanitation, or a National Minimum of Leisure, both
of which are, in principle, embodied in our factory legislation. Indeed, a
minimum wage, since it could in no way interfere with the fullest use of
machinery and plant, or otherwise check productivity, would seem to be even
less open to economic criticism than a limitation of the hours of labor.

It must not be supposed that the National Minimum of wages would
necessarily involve payment by time. There would be no objection to its taking
the form of Standard Piecework Lists, provided that these were combined, as
they always are in efficient Trade Unions, with a guarantee that, so long as an
operative is in the employer's service, he must be provided each week with
sufficient work at the Standard Piece Rate to make up the minimum weekly
earnings, or be paid for his time.

778 Trade Union Theory

makers in the parasitic trades. This obstruction would
inevitably concentrate itself into two main arguments. They
would assert that if they had to give decent conditions to
every person they employed, their trade would at once
becoare unprofitable, and would either cease to exist, or be
out of the country. And, quite apart from this
rinking of the area of employment, what, they would ask,
would become of the feeble and inefficient, the infirm and
the aged, the " workers without a character," or the " poor
widows," who now pick up some kind (that is, some part) of
a livelihood, and who would inevitably be not worth employ-
ing at all if they had to be paid the National Minimum
wage ?

The enactment of a National Minimum would by no
means necessarily involve the destruction of the trades at
present carried on by parasitic labor. When any particular
way of carrying on an industry is favored by a bounty or
subsidy, this way will almost certainly be chosen, to the
exclusion of other methods of conducting the business. If
the subsidy is withdrawn, it often happens that the industry
falls back on another process which, less immediately pro-
fitable to the capitalists than the bounty-fed method, proves
positively more advantageous to the industry in the long
run. This result, familiar to the Free Trader, is even more
probable when the bounty or subsidy takes the form, not of
a protective tariff, an exemption from taxation, or a direct
money grant, but the privilege of exacting from the manual
workers more labor-force than is replaced by the wages and
other conditions of employment. The existence of negro
slavery in the Southern States of America made, while it
lasted, any other method of carrying on industry economically
impossible ; but it was not really an economic advantage to
cotton-growing. The " white slavery " of the early factory
system stood, so long as it was permitted, in the way of any
manufacturer adopting more humane conditions of employ-
ment ; but when the Lancashire millowners had these more
humane conditions forced upon them, they were discovered

Economic Characteristics 779

to be more profitable than those which unlimited freedom oi
competition had dictated. There is much reason to believe
that the low wages to which, in the unregulated trades,
the stream of competitive pressure forces employers and
operatives alike, are not in themselves any more econo-
mically advantageous to the industry than the long hours
and absence of sanitary precautions were to the early
cotton mills of Lancashire. To put it plumply, if the
employers paid more, the labor would quickly be worth
more. In so far as this proved to be the case, the National
Minimum would have raised the Standard of Life without
loss of work, without cost to the employer, and without
disadvantage to the community. Moreover, the mere fact
that employers are at present paying lower wages than the
proposed minimum is no proof that the labor is not " worth "
more to them and to the customers ; for the wages of the
lowest grade of labor are fixed, not by the worth of the
individual laborer, but largely by the necessities of the
marginal man. It may well be that, rather than go without
the particular commodity produced, the community would
willingly pay more for it. Nevertheless, so long as the
wage-earner can be squeezed down to a subsistence or,
more correctly, a parasitic wage, the pressure of competi-
tion will compel the employer so to squeeze him, whether
the consumer desires it or not.

It may, however, be admitted that a prohibition of
parasitism would have the effect of restricting certain in-
dustries. The ablest, best-equipped, and best situated
employers would find themselves able to go on under the
new conditions, and would even profit by the change. The
firms just struggling on the margin would probably go
under. It might even happen that particular branches of
the sweated trades would fall into the hands of other
countries. If the French Government withdrew its pre-
sent bounties on the production of sugar, some French
establishments would certainly be shut up, and the total
exports of French sugar, other things remaining equal,

780 Trade Union Theory

would be diminished. But all economists will agree that
the mere keeping alive a trade by a bounty, whatever other
advantages it may be supposed to have, does not, of itself,
aggregate trade of the country, or the area of
employment. What the bounty does is to divert to sugar
Production capital and labor which would otherwise have
been devoted to the production of other articles, presumably
to greater profit, for otherwise the bounty would not have
been required. When the bounty is withdrawn this diver-
sion ceases, and the available capital and labor is re-distrib-
uted over the nation's industry in the more profitable way.
And if it be replied that there will be no demand for these
other articles, the answer is clear. If the bounty-fed sugar
ceases to be exported, the commodities given in exchange
for it cease to be imported, and have to be produced at
home. The capital and labor which formerly produced
sugar is now free to produce the commodities which were
formerly obtained by the export of the sugar. In short, the
aggregate product remaining the same, the aggregate demand
cannot be lessened, for they are but different aspects of one
and the same thing.

Exactly the same reasoning holds good with regard to
what we have called the parasitic trades. Assuming that
the employers in these trades have hitherto been getting
more labor-force than their wages have been replacing, any
effective enforcement of a National Minimum of conditions
of employment would be equivalent to a simple withdrawal
of a bounty. We should, therefore, expect to see a
shrinkage in these trades. But there would be at least a
corresponding expansion in others. Let us, for instance,
imagine that the wholesale clothiers are compelled to give
decent conditions to all their outworkers. It may be that
this will cause a rise in the cost of production of certain
lines of clothing. This will certainly diminish their export
sales, and might even close particular markets altogether.
This check to our export trade will have one of two results.
If our imports go on undiminished, the aggregate of our

Economic Characteristics 781

exports must, to meet our foreign indebtedness, be made
up somehow, and international demand will cause other
branches of our export trade to expand. Hence the result
of destroying parasitism in the wholesale clothing trade
would, on this hypothesis, be to cause a positive increase in
the exports, and thus in the number of producers, of such
things as textiles, machinery, or coal. But it may be urged
that the slackening of the wholesale clothing trade would
cause our imports to fall off. In that case there would at
last be a gleam of hope for the poor English farmer, whose
sales would expand to meet the demand formerly satisfied
by foreign food stuffs. Hence it follows that, whatever new
distribution of the nation's industry might be produced by
the prohibition of parasitism, there is no ground for fearing
that the aggregate production, and therefore either the
aggregate demand or the total area of employment, would
be in any way diminished.1

1 It may be interesting to follow out this argument to its logical conclusion.
Let us assume a country in which all trades whatsoever are parasitic — that is to
say, where every manual worker is working under conditions which do not
suffice to keep him permanently in industrial efficiency. In this case an enforce-
ment of a National Minimum would necessarily raise the expenses of production
to the capitalist employer (though not the actual labor cost) of all the commodi-
ties produced. The economist would nevertheless advise the adoption of the
policy. It would be of vital importance, in the economic interests of the com-
munity as a whole, to stop the social degradation and industrial deterioration
implied by the universal parasitism. The increased cost of production, due to
the stoppage of this drawing on the future, would cause a general rise in prices.
It is often assumed that such a rise would counteract the advantages of the higher
wages. Mr. Herbert Spencer, in the concluding volume of his Synthetic Philo-
sophy, naively makes this his one economic objection to Trade Unionism. "If,"
he says, "wages are forced up, the price of the article produced must presently
be forced up. What then happens if, as now, Trade Unions are established
among the workers in nearly all occupations, and if these unions severally succeed
in making wages higher ? All the various articles they are occupied in making
must be raised in price ; and each trade unionist, while so much the more in
pocket by advanced wages, is so much the more out of pocket by having to buy
things at advanced rates" {Industrial Institutions > London, 1896, p. 536). But
this is to assume that the wage-earners purchase as consumers the whole of the
commodities and services which they produce. We need not remind the reader
that this is untrue. In the United Kingdom, for instance, though the wage-
earners number four-fifths of the population, they consume — to take the highest
estimate — only between one-third and two-fifths of the annual aggregate of
products and services, the remainder being enjoyed by the propertied classes and
the brain -workers. Even if a general rise in wages, amounting to say fifty

782 Trade Union Theory

The question then arises what effect the prohibition of
parasitism would have on the individuals at present working
in the sweated trades. We need not dwell on the inevi-
table personal hardships incidental to any shifting of in-
industry or change of process. Any deliberate improvement

millions sterling, produced a general rise in prices to the extent of fifty millions
sterling, spread equally over all products, it could not be said that the wage-
earners as a class would have to bear on their own purchases more than one-third
to two-fifths of this additional price. If the rise in price was not spread equally
over all commodities and services, but occurred only in those consumed by the
other classes, the rise in wages would have been a net gain to the wage-earners.
Only in the impossible case of the rise occurring exclusively in the commodities
consumed by the wage-earning classes — these commodities being, as we have
seen, only one-third to two-fifths of the whole — would that class find its action
in raising wages nullified in the simple manner that Mr. Spencer imagines.
Hence it is, that even if a rise in the Standard of Life of the whole wage-earning
class produces an equivalent general rise in the price of commodities, the result
must nevertheless be a net gain to the wage-earners. This process might,
theoretically, be carried very far, the ultimate sufferers being the non-working
recipients of rent and interest, whose incomes, nominally unimpaired, would
purchase progressively less of the annual product. Practically, however, any
indefinite rise of wages would be limited by the impossibility of inducing the
community of citizen-consumers to sanction, in the interests of the lowliest
sections, anything in the way of a legal minimum wage — involving, as this would,
a mulcting of the vast majority of the better-off purchasers — which did not
commend itself to this majority as being necessary to the public welfare.

Nor can it be inferred that any such general rise in the price of labor, even if
it caused a general rise in the price of commodities, would adversely affect the
nation's foreign trade. A rise in the price of any one commodity has, almost
invariably, an immediate effect upon the volume of the import or export trade in
that commodity. But if the rise in prices is general and uniform in all the com-
modities of the community, the aggregate volume of the exports of that
community will not be diminished merely by reason of the rise. It is a truism,
not only of the academic economists, but also of the practical financiers of all
nations, that the imports of our country (together with any other foreign
indebtedness) must, on an average of years, be paid for by our exports, taking
into account any other obligations of foreigners to us. Any general increase in
the cost of labor, such as a rise in the Standard of Life, a general advance of
factory legislation, or a universal Eight Hours' Day if we may assume for the
sake of argument that this results in a iiniform rise of prices, would leave our
annual indebtedness to foreign countries undiminished, even if it did not increase
it by temporarily stimulating imports. Hence it is inferred with certainty that a
merely general and uniform rise in prices in one country will not prevent goods
to the same aggregate value as before from being exported to discharge that
indebtedness. To put it shortly, the mere fact that the manual laborers receive
a larger proportion, and the directors of industry or capitalists a smaller propor-
tion of the aggregate product, has no influence on the total volume, or the
profitableness to the nation, of its international trade. See Appendix II., in
which this question is fully dealt with.

Economic Characteristics 78 3

in the distribution of the nation's industry ought, therefore, to
be brought about gradually, and with equitable consideration
of the persons injuriously affected. But there is no need to
assume that anything like all those now receiving less than the
National Minimum would be displaced by its enactment.

We see, in the first place, that the very levelling up oi
the standard conditions of sanitation, hours, and wages would,
in some directions, positively stimulate the demand for
labor. The contraction of the employment of boys and
girls, brought about by the needful raising of the age for
full and half time respectively, would, in itself, increase the
number of situations to be filled by adults. The enforce-
ment of the Normal Day, by stopping the excessive hours
of labor now worked by the most necessitous operatives,
would tend to increase the number employed. Moreover,
the expansion of the self-supporting trades which would, as
we have seen, accompany any shrinking of the sweated
industries, would automatically absorb the best of the un-
employed workers in their own and allied occupations, and
would create a new demand for learners. Finally, the
abandonment of that irregularity of employment which so
disastrously affects the outworkers and the London dock-
laborers, would result in the enrolment of a new permanent
staff. All these changes would bring into regular work at
or above the National Minimum whole classes of operatives,
selected from among those now only partially or fitfully
employed. Thus, all the most capable and best conducted
would certainly obtain regular situations. But this con-
centration of employment would undoubtedly imply the
total exclusion of others who might, in the absence of
regulation, have " picked up " some sort of a partial
livelihood. In so far as these permanently unemployed
consisted merely of children, removed from industrial
work to the schoolroom, few would doubt that the
change would be wholly advantageous. And there are
many who would welcome a re-organisation of industry
which, by concentrating employment exclusively among

784 Trade Union Theory

those in regular attendance, would tend to exclude from
wage -labor, and to set free for domestic duties, an ever-
increasing proportion of the women having young children
to attend to. There would still remain to be considered
the remnant who, notwithstanding the increased demand for
adult male labor and independent female labor, proved to be
incapable of earning the National Minimum in any capacity
whatsoever. We should, in fact, be brought face to face with
the problem, not of the unemployed, but of the unemployable.

(/") The Unemployable

Here we must, once for all, make a distinction of vital
importance : we must mark off the Unemployable from
the temporarily unemployed. The case of the workman,
normally able to earn his own living, who is unemployed
merely because there is, for the moment, no work for him to
do, stands on an altogether different plane from that of the
man who is unemployed because he is at all times incapable
of holding a regular situation, and producing a complete
maintenance. Periods of unemployment, if only while
shifting from job to job, are, in nearly all trades, an inevi-
table incident in the life of even the most competent and the
best conducted workman. To diminish the frequency and
duration of these times of enforced idleness, to mitigate the
hardships that they cause, and to prevent them from producing
permanent degradation of personal character is, as we have
seen, one of the foremost objects of Trade Unionism.1 But
this evil, arising mainly from the seasonal or cyclical fluctua-
tions in the volume of employment for the competent, has
no relation to the problem of how to deal with the incom-
petent. So long as these two problems are hopelessly
entangled with each other, and habitually regarded as one
and the same thing, any scientific treatment of either of
them is impossible.

The problem of the Unemployable is not created by the

1 We recur to this in our next chapter, " Trade Unionism and Democracy."

Economic Characteristics 785

fixing of a National Minimum by law. The Unemployable
we have always with us. With regard to certain sections of
the population, this unemployment is not a mark of social
disease, but actually of social health. From the standpoint
of national efficiency, no less than from that of humanity, it
is desirable that the children, the aged, and the child-bearing
women should not be compelled by their necessities to earn
their own maintenance in the labor market. But in all
other cases, incapacity or refusal to produce a livelihood is a
symptom of ill-health or disease, physical or mental. With
regard to the principal classes of these Unemployable — the
sick and the crippled, the idiots and lunatics, the epileptic,
the blind and the deaf and dumb, the criminals and the
incorrigibly idle, and all who are actually " morally deficient "
— the incapacity is the result of individual disease from
which no society can expect to be completely free. But
we have a third section of the Unemployable, men and
women who, without suffering from apparent disease of body
or mind, are incapable of steady or continuous application,
or who are so deficient in strength, speed, or skill that they
are incapable, in the industrial order in which they find
themselves, of producing their maintenance at any occupation
whatsoever. The two latter sections — the physically or
mentally diseased and the constitutionally inefficient — may,
in all their several subdivisions, either be increased or dimin-
ished in numbers according to the wisdom of our social
arrangements. If we desire to reduce these Unemployable
to a minimum, it is necessary, as regards each of the sub-
sections, to pursue a twofold policy. We must, on the one
hand, arrange our social organisation in such a way that the
smallest possible amount of such degeneracy, whether physical
or mental, is produced. We must, on the other hand, treat
the cases that are produced in such a way as to arrest the
progress of the malady, and as far as possible restore the
patient to health.1

1 As regards bodily disease, this twofold policy is now prescribed by the
Public Health Acts. To maintain a high standard of health, " common rules"
VOL. II 3 E

786 Trade Union Theory

Now, we cannot here enter into the appropriate social
regimen and curative treatment best calculated to minimise
the production of the Unemployable in each subdivision, and
to expedite the recovery of such as are produced. These
physical and moral weaklings and degenerates must somehow
be maintained at the expense of other persons. They may be
provided for from their own property or savings, by charity
or from public funds, with or without being set to work in
whatever ways are within their capacity. But of all ways of
dealing with these unfortunate parasites the most ruinous to
the community is to allow them unrestrainedly to compete
as wage-earners for situations in the industrial organisation.
For this at once prevents competition from resulting in the
Selection of the Most Fit, and thus defeats its very object.1
In the absence of any Common Rule, it will, as we have
seen, often pay an employer to select a physical or moral
invalid, who offers his services for a parasitic wage, rather
than the most efficient workman, who stands out for the
conditions necessary for the maintenance of his efficiency.
In the same way, a whole industry may batten on parasitic
labor, diverting the nation's capital and brains from more
productive processes, and undermining the position of its
more capable artisans. And where the industrial parasitism
takes the form of irregular employment — as, for instance,
among the outworkers in all great cities and the London
dock-laborers — its effect is actually to extend the area of the
disease. The sum of employment given would suffice to
keep in regular work, at something like adequate weekly
earnings, a certain proportion of these casual workers. But
because it is distributed, as partial employment and partial
maintenance, among the entire class, its insufficiency and
irregularity demoralise all alike, and render whole sections

as to drainage and water-supply, nuisances, and overcrowding are enforced on
every one. To deal with such disease as nevertheless occurs, hospitals are
provided. And when it is supposed that the sick contaminate those who are
well, isolation and proper treatment are compulsory.

1 "The main function of competition is that of selection." — Professor Fox-
well (in the essay cited on p. 689).

Economic Characteristics 787

of the population of our large cities permanently incapable of
regular conduct and continuous work. Thus, the disease
perpetuates itself, and becomes, by its very vastness, incapable
of being isolated and properly treated. A dim appreciation
of the evil effects of any mixing of degenerates in daily life,
joined, of course, with motives of humanity, has caused the
sick and the infirm, the imbeciles and the lunatics, even the
cripples and the epileptics, to be, in all civilised communities,
increasingly removed off the competitive labor market, and
scientifically dealt with according to their capacities and
their needs. The " Labor Colonies " of Holland and Ger-
many are, from this point of view, an extension of the same
policy. To maintain our industrial invalids, even in idleness,
from public funds, involves a definite and known burden on
the community. To allow them to remain at large, in
parasitic competition with those who are whole, is to con-
taminate the labor market, and means a disastrous lowering
of the Standard of Life and Standard of Conduct, not for
them alone, but for the entire wage-earning class.1

Thus, in our opinion, the adoption of the Policy of
a National Minimum of education, sanitation, leisure, and
wages would in no way increase the amount of maintenance
which has to be provided by the community in one form or
another, for persons incapable of producing their own keep. It
would, on the contrary, tend steadily to reduce it, both by
diminishing the number of weaklings or degenerates annually
produced, and by definitely marking out such as exist, so
that they could be isolated and properly treated.2

1 If the wages of every class of labor, under perfect competition, tend to be
no more than the net produce due to the additional labor of the marginal laborer
of that class, who is on the verge of not being employed at all, the abstraction of
the paupers, not necessarily from productive labor for themselves but from the
competitive labor market, by raising the capacity of the marginal wage-laborer,
would seem to increase the wages of the entire laboring class.

2 The persons withdrawn from the competitive labor market, whether as
invalids or aged, paupers or criminals, need not necessarily be idle. It would,
on the contrary, usually be for their own good, as well as for the pecuniary
interest of the community, that they should do such work as they are capable of.
But it is of vital importance that their products should not be sold in the open
market. If their products are sold, they must inevitably undercut the wares

788 Trade Union Theory

The exact point at which the National Minimum should be
fixed will, however, always be a matter of keen discussion.
It will clearly be to the direct advantage of the wage-earning
class, and especially to the large majority of self-supporting
but comparatively unskilled adult laborers, that the National
Minimum should be fixed as high as possible, as this will
ensure to them a good wage. Moreover, every trade
momentarily hard pressed by foreign competition, whether
by way of import or of export trade, will see an advantage to
itself in raising the Standard of Life of those who are in-
directly its rivals. Even those employers who are already
paying more than the minimum will be drawn by their
economic interests in this direction. On the other hand, the
employers in trades using low-paid labor would resent the
dislocation to which a compulsory raising of conditions would
subject them, and they would find powerful allies in the
whole body of taxpayers, alarmed at the prospect of having

made by self-supporting operatives, who will therefore find their employment
rendered less continuous than it would otherwise be, and wJio will accordingly be
unable to resist the reductions forced upon them by their employers. This is not,
as is often argued, because the institution laborers displace other operatives, but
because they lower the price of the product. The psychological effect on the
market is even more serious than the direct displacement of custom. Every
private manufacturer fears that he may be the one destined to lose his customers
to the institution which need not consider cost of production at all ; and this fear
supplies the buyers with an irresistible lever for forcing down price. The harm
lies in this lowering of the Standard of Life of other classes, not in any mere
diversion from them of possible additional custom. Hence there is no economic
harm, and nothing but gain, in the inmates of institutions producing for consumption
or use inside the institution. This has no tendency to lower prices or wages out-
side, any more than the fact that sailors at sea wash their own clothes lowers the
wages of laundresses on land. And there would be no economic harm in the
supported workers performing the whole of some, new service for the community,
if this was within their capacity, and if it paid better to keep all the more
efficient workers employed in other ways. The same would be the case if the
service were not new, and if it were, with due consideration for existing workers,
wholly taken out of the domain of competitive industry. Thus the time might
arrive when all efficient Englishmen would be able to employ their brains and
labor to greater advantage than in growing cereals and breeding stock ; and the
main processes of agriculture might become, perhaps in conjunction with muni-
cipal sewage-farms, abattoirs, and dairies, exclusively Poor Law occupations, pro-
ducing not for profit but for the sake of providing healthful occupation for the
paupers, the infirm, and the aged, and selling their produce in competition only
with foreign imports at the prices determined by these.

Economic Characteristics 789

to maintain in public institutions an enlarged residuum of
the Unemployable. The economist would be disinclined to
give much weight to any of these arguments, and would
rather press upon the statesman the paramount necessity of
so fixing and gradually raising the National Minimum as
progressively to increase the efficiency of the community as
a whole, without casting an undue burden on the present
generation of taxpayers.

(g) Summary of the Economic Characteristics of the
Device of the Common Rule

The preceding analysis of the economic effects of the
Device of the Common Rule, first as practised by isolated
and separate trades, then as limited by the substitution of
alternative processes or alternative products, at home or
abroad ; and finally extended, by way of check on the illegi-
timate use of this substitution, from particular trades to the
community as a whole, will have revealed to the student the
conditions under which each trade, and the whole body of
wage-earners, will obtain the best conditions of employment
then and there practicable, and at the same time the manner
in which the utmost possible efficiency of the nation's industry
will be secured.

We see, to begin with, that the need for the Common
Rule is greatest at the very base of the social pyramid.1
The first necessity for obtaining the greatest possible effi-
ciency of the community as a whole, is so to control the
struggle for existence that no section is pushed by it into
parasitism or degeneration. In the interests of the eco-
nomically independent sections of wage-earners, whose labor

1 On the social importance of not abandoning to themselves those weakest
classes of wage-earners who are unable to form strong combinations, see Dr.
Heinrich Herkner's Die Sociale Reform ah Gebot des Wirtschaftlichen Fortschrittes
(Leipzig, 1891), ch. x. ; and the reports entitled Arbeitscinstellungen und Fort~
bildung des Arbeitcrvertrages (Leipzig, 1890), pp. 12, 35, etc.

790 Trade Union Theory

might be displaced by a parasitic class of workers, no less
than in the interests of the whole community of citizens,
threatened with the growth of degenerate or dependent
classes, it is vitally important to construct a solid basis for
the industrial pyramid, below which no section of wage-
earners, however great the pressure, can ever be forced.
Such an extension of the Device of the Common Rule from
the trade to the whole nation — the enforcement of National
Minimum conditions as to sanitation and safety, leisure and
wages, below which no industry should be allowed to be
carried on — would, we may infer, have the same economic
effect on the industry of the community as the introduction
of the Common Rule has on each particular trade. Thus it
would in no way prevent competition between trades, or
lessen its intensity. The consumer would be free to select
whatever product he preferred, whether it was made by men
or by women, by hand or by machinery, by his own country-
men or by foreigners. The capitalist would be free to
introduce any machinery, to use any process, or to employ
any class of labor that he thought most profitable to himself.
The operative, whether man or woman, would be free to
enter any trade, or to change from one trade to another, as
he or she might be disposed. All that the community would
require would be that there should be no parasitic labor ;
that is to say, that no employer should be allowed to offer,
and no operative should be permitted to accept, employment
under conditions below the minimum which the community
had decided to be necessary to keep the lowest class in full
and continued efficiency as producers and citizens. Under
these circumstances the pressure of competition would be
shifted from wages to quality. Alike between classes, pro-
cesses, and products, a genuine Selection of the Fittest, un-
handicapped by any bounty, would have free play. If one
class of operatives superseded another class, it would be
because the successful workers could perform the service
positively better than their rivals, whilst themselves accepting
no subsidy and suffering no deterioration. The result would

Economic Characteristics 791

be that, the necessary conditions of health being secured, the
struggle for existence would take the form of progressive
Functional Adaptation to a higher level, each class seeking to
maintain its position by improving its technical capacity.1

This National Minimum of conditions for the most help-
less and dependent grades of labor can, it is obvious, be
obtained only by the Method of Legal Enactment, and it
will represent, not the ideal condition which each section
strives to attain for itself, but what the bulk of better-off
citizens are willing to concede to a minority of less fortunate
persons in order to avoid the financial burden and social
contamination involved in the growth of parasitic or
degenerate classes. But if the maximum income for the
workers in each trade, and also the maximum efficiency of
the whole industrial machine is to be secured, no section
will remain satisfied with these minimum conditions. The
greatest possible progress will be obtained by each grade of
labor organising itself, and perpetually pushing upwards —
seeking by the Device of the Common Rule to divert, within
each occupation, the whole force of competition from wages
to quality, from remuneration to service, so as to secure always
the selection for employment of those individuals who have
the most developed faculties, rather than those who have the

1 To give only two out of many instances, we can imagine nothing more
calculated to improve the social position of women, and to render them
economically independent of their sexual relationship, than the gradual introduc-
tion of a legal minimum wage, below which their employment should not be per-
mitted. Nothing does so much at present to prevent women becoming technically
proficient in industry, and to deprive girls of incentive to acquire technical educa-
tion, than their feeling that they can obtain employment as they are, if only they
will accept low enough wages ! The result of the low wages is a deplorably low
standard of efficiency, due to lack alike of proper physiological conditions and of
stimulus to greater exertions. The improvement in the capacity and technical
efficiency of women teachers in the last twenty years, concurrently with the
introduction of fixed standards of qualification by the Education Department and,
to some extent, the adoption by School Boards of full subsistence wages, is
especially significant in this connection. The other instance is that of the casual
unskilled laborer of the great cities. At present he knows that he can earn his
miserable pittance by transient employment, without a character, without regu-
larity of attendance day by day, and without technical skill. A legal minimum
weekly wage would induce the employers to pick their men, and at once set up a
Selection of the Fittest for regularity, trustworthiness, and skill.

792 Trade Union Theory

fewest needs. The object of each section will be to raise its
own service to the highest possible degree of specialised
excellency, and to differentiate itself to the utmost from the
unspecialised and " unskilled " labor, commanding only the
National Minimum. In this way, each body of specialists
becomes able to insist on its own " rent of ability " or " rent of
opportunity." The more open the occupation is to newcomers,
and the more attractive are the conditions that are obtained by
those who are already employed, the more effective will become
the constant Selection of the Fittest. The more progressive
is the industry and the more opportunities it provides for
technical instruction, the greater will be the Functional Adapt-
ation to a higher level. And so long as this progressive
raising of the Common Rule brings with it, either through
Functional Adaptation or the Selection of the Fittest, an
equivalent increase in the operatives' own productive efficiency,
the added wages, or other improvement of conditions, will in
themselves constitute a clear addition to the income of the
community. And in so far as the maintenance of the Com-
mon Rule brings pressure to bear on the brains of the
employers, so as to compel them to improve the technical
processes of the trade ; and in so far as the progressive
raising of the standard concentrates industry in the hands of
the most capable employers, in the best-equipped establish-
ments, in the most advantageous sites, the organised wage-
earners, in seeking to improve their own conditions, will
incidentally have positively added to the resources of the
other classes of the community as well as to their own. So
far the improvement in the wage-earners' condition need not
lead to any rise in the price of commodities. When,
however, the operatives in any given industry have ex-
hausted the increased efficiency due to Functional Adapt-
ation and the Selection of the Fittest, whether acting on the
employers or on workmen, any further advance of wages
will, unless under very exceptional conditions, result in a
slackening of the demand for their product. The same
result happens in the more frequent case of the advance in

Economic Characteristics 793

wages outstripping for a time the increase in efficiency, or
again, even without a rise of wages or of prices, a change
of fashion or a new invention may cause the substitution of
another grade of labor. In all these cases, the progress of
the advance movement of a particular trade will be effectively
stopped by an increase in the proportion of its unemployed
members. This, indeed, marks the limit of the possible
advance in the conditions of any particular trade, beyond
which the progressive raising of the Common Rule, whether
by the Method of Collective Bargaining or by that of Legal
Enactment, fails to achieve its object. Against a positive
slackening of the consumers' demand, the producers have no
remedy. If, indeed, the wages and other conditions pre-
viously enjoyed have been unnecessarily good — if, that is to
say, they have been more than enough to maintain the
particular degree of specialised intensity of the trade in
question — it might theoretically pay the Trade Union to
submit to a reduction. In our opinion, this is seldom the
case in practice. Even in the relatively well-paid trades, in
times of comparative prosperity, the ordinary income of a
skilled mechanic — in England, from £80 to £150 per annum
— is below the amount necessary for the development in
himself, his wife, and his children of the highest efficiency
that they are capable of. If the consumers' demand is
falling off, and is being diverted to some other process or
some other product, the decline can seldom be arrested by
any slight fall in price, and the Trade Union may well think
that the comparatively small saving in the total cost of pro-
duction which would be caused by even a 10 or 20 per cent
decline of wages, would probably be quite illusory.1 On the

1 When the slackening of demand for a particular trade is not caused by any
substitution, but is the result merely of a universal contraction of the world's
industry — due, for instance, to a general failure of crops — there would be no
advantage in a reduction of wages, either in a particular trade, or generally of
the wage-earners of the world. As any such reduction could not possibly increase
the aggregate demand (which is the aggregate product), it would serve no other
purpose than to make up, to the capitalists of the world, part of the diminution
of income that they would otherwise suffer. Rather than submit to a lowering
of the standard conditions of employment it would be better, in such a case,

794 Trade Union Theory

other hand, there is, as we have shown in our chapter on " New
Processes and Machinery," no policy so disastrous for the
skilled operatives to pursue as to submit to any reduction of
wages, any lengthening of hours, or any worsening of sanitary
conditions, that in any way impairs their peculiar specialist
efficiency. In the interests of the community as a whole,
no less than of their own trade, such of their members as
remain in employment must at all hazards maintain un-
diminished the high standard of life which alone has per-
mitted them to evolve their exceptional talent. What a
Trade Union can do, if it finds the demand for its members'
services steadily falling off, is to set its expert officials to
discover the exact cause of this change of demand. If the
decline is not due to a merely temporary depression of trade
in general ; if, that is to say, there is going on an actual
substitution of process or product which is likely to continue,
the first duty of the Trade Union is to make the fact widely
known to its own members and the public, so that members
may seize every opportunity of escaping from the trade, and
so that parents may learn to avoid putting their sons to so
unpromising an occupation. The second duty of the
threatened trade is to look sharply into the conditions under
which the substituted article is being produced, or (in the
case of foreign competition) into the conditions of all the
export trades of the country. It may be that these are
escaping regulation altogether, or that there is a case for
demanding a rise in the legal minimum of conditions of
employment. The best policy of the threatened trade is,
therefore, to throw itself vigorously into the agitation for a
general levelling up of the National Minimum. And in this
policy they will find themselves increasingly supported by

for the workers of each community to maintain their rate unimpaired, and
subsidise their unemployed members. The frequent result of unregulated
competition in times of general depression of trade — that the hours of labor of
the workers in employment are positively lengthened because of their strategic
weakness, and the numbers unemployed thereby unnecessarily increased — is an
arrangement so insane that it would not be tolerated but for the superstition
that the anarchy of " Nature " was somehow superior to the deliberate adjust-
ments of science.

Economic Characteristics 795

public opinion. For if all the occupations enjoying any
organisation at all have been pursuing the policy of pushing
up their Common Rules and developing their own specialisa-
tion, there will have been set up, in the community as a
whole, a new conception of what is necessary for the decent
existence of any class of workers. In each trade, as we have
seen, the enforcement of a Common Rule automatically sets
up a new " mean " for the trade, which tends to become a
new minimum. Similarly, when a National Minimum has
been effectively enforced ; and when one occupation after
another has raised itself above that minimum to the extent
of its particular skill, there will have been created, in the
public opinion both of the wage-earners and other classes,
not excluding even the employers, a new standard of
expenditure for the average working-class family. The
psychological establishment of this new standard makes the
old minimum, once considered a boon, appear "starvation
wages." Hence a growing discontent among the poorest
classes of workers, and rising sympathy for their privations,
will lead eventually to a rise in the minimum. This rise will
be justified to the economists by the increase in efficiency
which the enforcement of the legal minimum will have
brought about. Thus, the whole community of wage-earners,
including the lowest sections of it, may by a persistent and
systematic use of the Device of the Common Rule, secure
an indefinite, though of course not an unlimited, rise in its
Standard of Life. And in this universal and elaborate
application of the Common Rule, the economist finds a sound
and consistent theory of Trade Unionism, adapted to the
conditions of modern industry ; applicable to the circum-
stances of each particular trade ; acceptable by the whole
body of wage-earners ; and positively conducive to national
efficiency and national wealth.

796 Trade Union Theory

(It) Trade Union Methods

Our survey of the economic characteristics of Trade
Unionism would not be complete without some comparison,
from an economic standpoint, of the three Methods by which,
as we have seen, Trade Unions seek to attain their ends.
At first sight this may seem unnecessary. When once a
Trade Union Regulation has been successfully enforced upon
the employers and workmen in a trade, it can be economically
of no consequence whether the Regulation has been obtained
by Legal Enactment, or Collective Bargaining, or by the
more silent but not less coercive influence that may be
exerted by Mutual Insurance. The owners of mining
royalties, the lessees of the coal, and the individual hewers
will find their faculties and desires affected in exactly the
same way, whether the tonnage-rates for the Northumberland
coal mines are fixed by law or by the irresistible fiat of the
Joint Committee. It is immaterial to the owner of an old-
fashioned cotton-mill whether the shortening of hours, or the
raising of the minimum cubic space required by each operative,
which finally destroys his margin of profit, is enforced by the
visits of the Factory Inspector or by those of the secretaries
of the Employers' and Operatives' Associations. It might
be urged, in short, that it is the Trade Union Regulation
itself which influences the organisation of industry, or alters
cost of production, profits, or price, not the particular Method
by which the Regulation is secured.

But this is to assume that, whether a Trade Union
Regulation is supported by one Method or the other, it will
be obtained and enforced with equal friction, equal effective-
ness, equal universality, and equal rapidity of application to
the changing circumstances. Thus, the general reduction of
the hours of labor, which characterised the decade 1870 to
1880, had distinctive economic results of its own, whether it
was effected by Legal Enactment (as in the textile mills), or by
Collective Bargaining (as in the engineering workshops). But
the economist cannot overlook the fact that the reduction was,

Economic Characteristics 797

in the one case, secured without any cessation of industry,
enforced universally on all establishments in the trade from
one end of the kingdom to the other, and rigidly maintained
without struggle in subsequent years. In the other case, the
reduction of hours cost the community a five months' stop-
page of engineering industry in one of its most important
centres, and many other struggles.1 It never became universal,
even in the same industry, and it has not been uniformly
maintained. On the other hand, the Engineers got the
reduction three years sooner than the Cotton Operatives, and
have been able, in times of good trade, in well-organised
districts, to obtain even further reductions. To complete the
economic analysis of Trade Unionism, we have therefore to
inquire how far these important differences in the application
of the Regulations are characteristic of the several Methods
by which they are enforced. In this inquiry, we may leave
out the Method of Mutual Insurance, which, in its economic
aspect, is hardly distinguishable from imperfect Collective
Bargaining, and which, except in a few small trades, may be
regarded as an adjunct of the other Methods.2 The question
therefore resolves itself into the manner in which the
economic results of the various Trade Union Regulations

1 History of Trade Unionism^ pp. 299-302.

2 This omits from consideration the purely Friendly Society side of Trade
Unionism. The provision made by wage-earning families against sickness and
accident, and the expenses of burial, has an important effect on their well-being,
and cannot be ignored by the economist. But in this respect, as we have seen in
our chapter on " The Method of Mutual Insurance," the Trade Unions amount to no
more than small offshoots from the great Friendly Society movement, and (as
regards death benefit) of the equally extensive system of "industrial insurance."
In the United Kingdom, these provide, in the aggregate, many times more
sick and funeral benefit than the whole of the Trade Unions put together. The
economic results of this form of saving, like that of mere individual hoarding or
deposit in a savings bank, are, therefore, in no way characteristic of Trade
Unionism. The Trade Union, as we have seen, is a bad form of Friendly
Society, and if it had to be considered exclusively as a Friendly Society, its
total lack of actuarial basis and absence of security would bring upon it the
severest condemnation. The main benefit provided by the Trade Union is, how-
ever, not sick pay or funeral money, but the Out of Work Donation, and this, as
we have pointed out, must be regarded, not as an end in itself, but as a means of
maintaining or improving the members' conditions of employment — as a method,
that is, of supporting the Trade Union Regulations.

7 98 Trade Union Theory

are modified, according as they are enforced by Collective
Bargaining or Legal Enactment.

Confining ourselves to the circumstances of this country
at the present time, we see that to obtain and enforce a
Trade Union Regulation by the Method of Collective
Bargaining necessarily involves, as we described in a previous
chapter, the drawback of occasional disputes and stoppages
of work. The seven hundred or more strikes and lock-outs
annually reported to the Board of Trade1 represent a con-
siderable amount of economic friction. The laying idle of
costly and perishable machinery and plant, the dislocation of
business enterprise, the diversion of orders to other countries,
the absorption in angry quarrels of the intellects which would
otherwise be devoted to the further development of 'our
industry — above all, the reduction to poverty and semi-
starvation of thousands of workmen — involve a serious
inroad upon the nation's wealth. This perpetual liability
to a disagreement between the parties to a bargain is a
necessary accompaniment of freedom of contract. We have
already pointed out that if it is thought desirable that the
parties to a bargain should be free to agree or not to agree,
it is inevitable that, human nature being as it is, there should
now and again come a deadlock, leading to that trial of
strength which lies behind all negotiations between free and
independent contracting parties. The Trade Union Method
of Collective Bargaining, though by its machinery for industrial
diplomacy it may reduce to a minimum the occasions of
industrial war, can never, as we have seen, altogether prevent
its occurrence. We need not dwell any further upon this
capital drawback of this particular Method of industrial
regulation, as it is one on which both public opinion and
economic authority are convinced, and of which, in our
judgment, they take even an exaggerated view.

1 The reports on the Strikes and Lock-outs of the year, which have been
annually published by the Labor Department of the Board of Trade since 1888,
and by various American State Governments, afford a valuable picture of the
number and variety of these disputes.

Economic Characteristics 799

The use by the Trade Unions of the Method of Legal
Enactment has the great economic merit of avoiding all the
waste and friction that we have been describing. Whatever
may be the result of a new Factory Act, it is not bought at
the cost of a strike or a lock-out. Even when a new enact
ment is supremely distasteful to both employers and operatives,
as in the case of the Truck Act of 1 896, there is no cessation
or interruption of the nation's industry. All that happens is
that employers and workmen importune their members of
Parliament, and go on deputations to the Home Secretary,
to beg for an amendment or a repeal of the obnoxious law.
The regulations themselves, like the clauses of the Truck Act
which are complained of, may be irksome, useless, or eco-
nomically injurious, but the method by which they have
been obtained and enforced has the inestimable merit of
peaceful ness.

The case of the Truck Act of 1896 supplies an instance
of a corresponding drawback of the Method of Legal Enact-
ment. An Act of Parliament is hard to obtain, and hard to
alter. It is therefore probable that an industry has to go
on for some years without the regulation which would be
economically advantageous to it, or to endure for some time
an obsolete regulation which could advantageously be amended.
This want of elasticity to meet changing circumstances is
specially noticeable in our legislative machinery of the present
day, when the one central legislature is patently incapable of
coping with the incessant new applications of law required
by a complicated society. It would be interesting to ask
whether this defect is inherent in the Method of Legal Enact-
ment. If the principle of regulating the conditions of
employment were definitely adopted by Parliament, there
does not seem any impossibility in the rules themselves being
made and amended by the fiat — carrying with it the force of
law — of an executive department, a local authority, or a com-
pulsory arbitration court for the particular industry.1 But

1 The ordinances of the craft-gilds, the by-laws of the mediaeval town councils,
and the fixing of rates of wages by the justices are familiar examples of law-

8oo Trade Union Theory

though a community which believed in regulating the condi-
tions of employment by law would be able greatly to simplify
and develop its legislative machinery, the making and amend-
ing of legally enforcible rules must, we believe, necessarily
be a more stiff and cumbrous process than the concluding
or modifying a voluntary trade agreement by a joint com-
mittee. If, therefore, it be desirable that the Regulation
itself, or the stringency with which it is interpreted or applied,
should be constantly shifted upwards or downwards, accord-
ing to the changing circumstances of the day, or the relative
positions of employers and workmen, the Method of Collective
Bargaining has undoubtedly a great advantage over the
Method of Legal Enactment.

So far, therefore, the Method of Legal Enactment is
superior in the characteristics of peacefulness and absence
of preliminary friction, whilst in the qualities of elasticity,
promptness of attainment, and facility of alteration, the
Method of Collective Bargaining holds the field. When we
come to the effectiveness of the Regulation — that is to say,
the rigidity, impartiality, and universality with which it is
applied — the issue is more open to doubt. In our analysis
of the economic effects of the Common Rule, we have seen
how important it is that it should really be co-extensive with
the industry in any community. It will clearly make all the
difference to the economic effect of a reduction of hours or
an advance in costly sanitary comforts, whether all competing

making, which, though they were open to many other objections, were lacking
neither in promptitude nor elasticity. " The substance no less than the form of
the law would, it is probable, be a good deal improved if the executive govern-
ment of England could, like that of France, by means of decrees, ordinances, or
proclamations having the force of law, work out the detailed application of the
general principles embodied in the Acts of the legislature " (A. V. Dicey, The
Law of the Constitution, ch. i. ; H. Sidgwick, Principles of Politics, ch. xxii. p.
433). Already, a large amount of our legislation is made in the form of " rules "
or " orders " by executive departments, sometimes under a general authority given
by statute, and only nominally laid before Parliament, sometimes by mere
executive authority ; see, for instance, the eight volumes of Statutory Rules and
Orders (London, 1897) in force having the authority of law. It is probable that
the increasing incapacity of the House of Commons to cope with its work will
lead to a silent extension of this practice. We shall, in fact, be saved by the
Royal Prerogative !

Economic Characteristics 80 1

employers are equally subjected to the regulation, or whether
this is enforced only on particular establishments or particular
districts. At first sight it would seem that this is an over-
whelming argument in favor of the law. In our own country
at the present day factory legislation applies uniformly from
one end of the kingdom to another. If it is properly drafted
and really intended to work, it will be conscientiously and
impartially enforced by the Home Office. But unfortunately,
though the machinery for enforcing the regulations is, in the
United Kingdom, exceptionally efficient, the regulations
themselves are still very imperfect. Outside the textile and
mining industries, it is not too much to say that they have
generally been drafted or emasculated by ministers or
legislators yielding to popular pressure, but themselves
opposed, in principle, to any interference with the employer's
" freedom of enterprise." Our Labor Code contains many
" bogus " clauses, which were, by their authors, never intended
to be applied, and which the most zealous Factory Inspectors
are unable to enforce. On the other hand, the regulations
which are secured in Collective Bargaining by the shrewd and
experienced officials of a powerful Trade Union, are, from the
outset, intended to work, and, when the trade is completely
organised, they are enforced with an unrelenting and detailed
exactitude unknown to the Factory Inspector or the magis-
trate's court. But whereas the law, however imperfect,
applies equally to all firms and to all districts, it is rare,
as we have seen, for a Trade Union to secure a " National
Agreement," and still more unusual for the whole trade to be
so well organised as to be able to enforce any uniform terms
upon all the employers. The usual result is that, though
the workmen enforce their Regulations on " society shops " in
" good " Trade Union towns with more than the severity of
the law of the land, there are numerous establishments, and
sometimes whole districts, over which the Trade Union has
absolutely no control.

Finally we have the question — to the statesman, as we
have seen, of vital importance — whether one or other Method
VOL. II 3 F

802 Trade Union Theory

is best calculated to prevent industrial parasitism. From the
point of view of the community, it is essential that every
industry should afford, to every person employed, at least
the National Minimum of sanitation and safety, leisure and
wages, in order to prevent any particular trade from get-
ting a virtual " bounty " from the community, in the form
either of partially supported labor, or of successive relays of
workers deteriorated in their use. Only under these condi-
tions, as we have seen, has the nation any assurance that its
industry will flow into those channels in which its capital,
brains, and manual labor will be applied to the greatest
economic advantage, and produce the greatest " National
Dividend." Now, it is an inherent defect of any sectional
action by particular Trade Unions that its success will
depend, not on the real necessities of the workers, but on
their strategic position. Under the Method of Collective
Bargaining the provisions for Sanitation and Safety would
differ from trade to trade, not according to the unhealthiness
or danger of the process, but according to the capacity of
the workers for organisation, the ability of their leaders, the
magnitude of their " war-chests," the relative scarcity of their
labor, and the " squeezability " of their employers. Where
the hours of labor are not affected by law, we find, in fact,
at the present time, that they vary from trade to trade with-
out the least reference to the average strength of the
workers concerned, or the exhausting character of their
labors. The London Silverworkers, the Birmingham Flint
Glass Makers, and the various classes of building operatives
in the Metropolis, enjoy, for instance, practically an Eight
Hours' Day, whilst the outworking Sheffield Cutlers, the
London Carmen, and the great race of Tailors everywhere
work at least half as long again for a smaller remuneration.
And, turning to the four millions of women wage-earners,
we come to the paradoxical result that, wherever unregulated
by law, the physically weakest class in the world of labor is
forced to work the longest hours for the least adequate sub-
sistence. It is clear that the National Minimum, whether

Economic Characteristics 803

with regard to sanitation or safety, leisure or wages, cannot
be secured, in the cases in which it is most required, other-
wise than by law.1

We see, therefore, that if, for the moment, we leave out
of account the Regulations themselves, the Method of Legal
Enactment has, where it can be employed, a considerable
balance of economic advantages over the Method of Collec-
tive Bargaining. It has, to begin with, the great merit of
avoiding all stoppages of industry and of causing the mini-
mum of economic friction. In our own country, at any rate,
a Regulation enforced by Legal Enactment will be more
uniformly and impartially applied throughout an industry as
a whole than is ever likely to be the case with a Regulation
enforced by Collective Bargaining. Its greatest drawback is
the cumbrousness of the machinery that must be set in
motion, and the consequent difficulty in quickly adapting
the Regulations to new circumstances. Hence the Method
of Legal Enactment is best adapted for those Regulations
which are based on permanent considerations, such as the
health and efficiency of the workers. The minimum require-
ments of Sanitation and Safety need no sudden modifications.
Much the same argument applies to the fixing of the Normal
Day and even of a minimum of wages, calculated so as to

1 Even when a Trade Union uses the Method of Legal Enactment for its
own benefit, it usually secures advantages for weaker classes. Thus, the adult
male cotton-spinners, in getting shorter hours and improved sanitation for them-
selves, have secured identical conditions for the comparatively weak women ring-
spinners of Lancashire, and for the practically unorganised women employed to
assist at mule-spinning in the mills of Glasgow. And this uniformity of regula-
tion, initiated by the 19,000 male spinners, has not only been extended to all
the 300,000 workers in cotton -mills, whether spinners, weavers, beamers,
twisters, or card-room hands, but also to the 200,000 factory operatives in the
competing products of the woollen, linen, and silk trades. Finally, whilst the
500,000 operatives in the textile trades thus already work under identical legal
conditions, there is a constant tendency, in every amendment of the Factory
Acts, to approximate to this " textile " standard the regulations applying to the
hours and sanitation of all the other industries of the country. In short, when
Parliament has to determine the conditions of employment, it tends necessarily,
whatever the trade, to base its action on one and the same common assumption
— on the necessity of securing to every class of workers at least the minimum
requirements of health and efficiency.

804 Trade Union Theory

prevent any class of workers from being driven down below
the standard of healthy subsistence. These are all matters
of physiological science. The Method of Legal Enactment
is, in fact, economically the most advantageous way of en-
forcing all Regulations based on the Doctrine of a Living
Wage.1

But the Method of Collective Bargaining has also its
legitimate sphere. In our analysis of the economic charac-
teristics of the Common Rule, we have pointed out how
essential it is, in the interests of each particular trade, and
also in those of the community as a whole, that no section
of workers should remain content with the National Minimum
secured by law, and that each trade should be perpetually
trying to force up its own Standard of Life so as to stimulate
to the utmost the forces of Functional Adaptation and the
Selection of the Fittest within the occupation. The several
sections of workers show no backwardness in demanding
all that they can get, and they often desire, as we have
seen, to get the law on their side. But if the Doctrine
of Vested Interests is abandoned, there are many reasons
which will prevent the use of the Method of Legal Enact-
ment for obtaining what we may call this sectional " Rent of
Ability," or " Rent of Opportunity." If, indeed, the workers
in any particular trade could prove to the representatives of

1 In support of this view we are glad to be able to quote an editorial of the
Times in the palmy days of that great organ of English public opinion. Re-
ferring to the movement in favor of shortening the hours of labor of shop
assistants, its leading article of the nth November 1846 observed: "Now we
would humbly suggest that, after all, an Act of Parliament would be the most
short and certain mode of effecting the proposed object. It would be universal
in its operation. It would admit of no partial exceptions or favoritisms. It
would be binding on all. It would be, we think, desired by all who hope to be
benefited by the change. A master who, out of spite, obstinacy, or the spirit of
martyrdom, would kick at a speech, or remain obdurate to a sermon, would bow
before the majesty of the law. There is more eloquence in a tiny penal clause
imposing a fine of £$ than in the graceful benevolence of Lord John Manners
or the historical resumes of Dr. Vaughan. No man would resist it often, or
resist it long. ... Let the young men and women . . . appeal to Parliament
to ratify by its fiat that principle which should be the boast and the mission
of every Legislature — to protect the poor from contumely and the weak from
oppression.'

Economic Characteristics 805

the whole community that their task required for its proper
fulfilment more than ordinary leisure and income, there is
no reason why they should not ask to have these exceptional
conditions embodied in a new Common Rule and secured by
law. But the attempts of the different trades to force up
their wages and other conditions above the National Mini-
mum, must, as we have learnt, be purely experimental. In
so far as any rise in the level of the Common Rule results
in an increase in the efficiency of the industry, each Trade
Union can safely push its own interests. But any such
attempt will be dependent for success on forces which cannot
be foreseen, and many of which are unconnected with the
efficiency of the manual workers themselves. The rapidity
of industrial invention in the particular trade, the extent to
which it is recruited by additional brain-workers, the ease
with which new capital can be obtained, will determine how
far and how quickly the Trade Union can, by raising its
Common Rule, stimulate increased efficiency and concentrate
the business in its most advantageous centres. And there
is also another direction in which, under a system of private
enterprise, a Trade Union may successfully push its members'
claims. In our chapter on " The Higgling of the Market " we
have seen how nearly every section of capitalists throws up
its own bulwark against the stream of pressure, in order to
enjoy its own particular pool of profit. A legal monopoly
or exclusive concession, a ring or syndicate, will secure for
the capitalists of the trade exemption from competition and
exceptional gains. The same result occurs whenever there
is a sudden rush of demand for a new product, or a sudden
cheapening of production. If the wage -earners in these
trades are strongly organised, they can extract some part of
these exceptional profits, which the employers will concede
if they are threatened with a complete stoppage of the
industry. From the point of view of the community there
is no reason against this "sharing of the plunder," as the
expenditure of the workmen's share, distributed over thousands
of families, is quite as likely to be socially advantageous as

806 Trade Union Theory

that of the swollen incomes of a comparatively small number
of newly-enriched employers.1

For these and all other kinds of " Rent of Opportunity,"
the law is obviously quite inapplicable. In short, for every-
thing beyond the National Minimum, and the technical
interpretation of this to secure to each trade the conditions
necessary for efficient citizenship, the wage-earners must rely
on the Method of Collective Bargaining.

1 But here again we must remind the reader that the Trade Union cannot,
by any Common Rule, trench upon the exceptional profits of particular firms.
Patents and Trade Marks, advertising specialities and proprietary articles are
therefore beyond its reach. It is only when, as in the case of the Birmingham
Alliances, the swollen profits extend over the whole industry that the Trade
Union can effectively insist on sharing the plunder. And it so happens that in
these cases the wage-earners are seldom sufficiently well organised even to defend
their own position. When the enlarged profits of the trade arise from a sudden
rush of demand or a sudden cheapening of production, it is usually a question (as
in the case of the sewing-machine and the bicycle) of a new product or a new
process, produced by workers who, newly gathered together, are unprotected
by effective combination. Accordingly, though the wage-earners in exceptionally
profitable industries often obtain continuous employment, and a slight rise of
wages, they practically never secure any appreciable share of the " pools of profit "
that we have described. Thus whilst the brewers, wholesale provision merchants,
patent medicine proprietors, soap and pill advertisers, wholesale clothiers,
sewing-machine makers, bicycle and pneumatic tyre manufacturers, and the
mineral water merchants have all during the past eight years been making
colossal profits, the wage -earners employed in these trades, who are almost
entirely unorganised, stand, on the whole, rather below than above the average
of the kingdom. In many of these cases the conditions of the wage-earners
have remained actually below the level of "a Living Wage."

CHAPTER IV

TRADE UNIONISM AND DEMOCRACY

IT might easily be contended that Trade Unionism has no
logical or necessary connection with any particular kind of
state or form of administration. If we consider only its
fundamental object — the deliberate regulation of the condi-
tions of employment in such a way as to ward off from
the manual-working producers the evil effects of industrial
competition — there is clearly no incompatibility between
this and any kind of government. Regulations of this type
have existed, as a matter of fact, under emperors and presi-
dents, aristocracies and democracies. The spread of the
Industrial Revolution and the enormous development of
international trade have everywhere brought the evils of
unregulated competition into sensational prominence. The
wise autocrat of to-day, conversant with the latest results of
economic science, and interested in the progressive improve-
ment of his state, might, therefore, be as eager to prevent
the growth of industrial parasitism as the most democratic
politician. Hence, we can easily imagine such an autocrat
enforcing a National Minimum, which should rule out of
the industrial system all forms of competition degrading to
the health, intelligence, or character of his people. The
rapid extension of factory legislation in semi -autocratic
countries during recent years indicates that some inkling of
this truth is reaching the minds of European bureaucracies.
What is distrusted in modern Trade Unionism is not its

808 Trade Union Theory

object, nor even its devices, but its structure and its methods.
When workmen meet together to discuss their grievances —
still more, when they form associations of national extent,
raise an independent revenue, elect permanent representative
committees, and proceed to bargain and agitate as corporate
bodies — they are forming, within the state, a spontaneous
democracy of their own. The autocrat might see in this
industrial democracy nothing more hostile to his supremacy
in the state than the self-government of the village or the
co-operative store. It is, we imagine, on this view that the
Czar of All the Russias regards with complacency the spon-
taneous activity of the Mir and the Artel. More usually,
however, the autocrat distrusts the educational influence of
even the most subordinate forms of self-government. And
when the association is national in extent, composed ex-
clusively of one class, and untrammelled by any compulsory
constitution, his faith in its objects or his tolerance for its
devices becomes completely submerged beneath his fear of
its apparently revolutionary organisation.1 Hence, though
European autocracies may greatly extend their factory
legislation, and might even, on the advice of the economists
or in response to the public opinion of the wage-earning
class, deliberately enforce a National Minimum of education,
sanitation, leisure, and wages, they are not likely to encourage
that pushing forward of the Common Rules of each section
by the method of Collective Bargaining, which is so char-
acteristic of British Trade Unionism, and upon which, as we
have seen, the maximum productivity of the community as
a whole depends.2

The problem of how far Trade Unionism is consistent
with autocratic government — important to the continental
student — is not of practical concern to the Anglo-Saxon.

1 In this respect, the old-fashioned Liberal stood at the opposite pole from
the autocrat. What he liked in Trade Unionism was the voluntary spontaneity
of its structure and the self-helpfulness of its methods ; even when he disbelieved
in the possibility of its objects, and disliked its devices.

2 It would seem to follow that, if we could suppose other things to be equal, an
autocracy would not attain so great a national wealth-production as a democracy.

Trade Unionism and Democracy 809

In the English-speaking world institutions which desire to
maintain and improve their position must at all hazards
bring themselves into line with democracy. The wise
official who has to function under the control of a committee
of management, carefully considers its modes of action and
the interests and opinions of its members, so that he may
shape and state his policy in such a way as to avoid the
rejection of the measure he desires. In the same way each
section of Trade Unionists will have to put forward a policy
of which no part runs counter to the interests and ideals of
the bulk of the people. Believing, as we do, in the social
expediency both of popular government, and of a wisely
directed Trade Unionism for each class of producers, we
shall end our work by suggesting with what modifications
and extensions, and subject to what limitations, British
Trade Unionism can best fulfil its legitimate function in
the modern democratic state. At this point, therefore, we
leave behind the exposition and analysis of facts, and their
generalisation into economic theory, in order to pass over
into precept and prophecy.

We see at once that the complete acceptance of demo-
cracy, with its acute consciousness of the interests of the
community as a whole, and its insistence on equality of
opportunity for all citizens, will necessitate a reconsidera-
tion by the Trade Unionists of their three Doctrines — the
abandonment of one, the modification of another, and the
far-reaching extension and development of the third.1 To
begin with the Doctrine of Vested Interests, we may infer
that, whatever respect may be paid to the " established
expectations " of any class, this will not be allowed to take
the form of a resistance to inventions, or of any obstruction
of improvements in industrial processes. Equitable con-
sideration of the interests of existing workers will no doubt
be more and more expected, and popular governments may
even adopt Mill's suggestion of making some provision for
operatives displaced by a new machine. But this con-

1 See Part II. chap. xiii. "The Assumptions of Trade Unionism."

8io Trade Union Theory

sideration and this provision will certainly not take the form
of restricting the entrance to a trade, or of recognising any
exclusive right to a particular occupation or service. Hence
the old Trade Union conception of a vested interest in an
occupation must be entirely given up — a change of front
will be the more easy in that, as we have seen,1 no union is
now able to embody this conception in a practical policy.

Coming now to the Doctrine of Supply and Demand,
we see that any attempt to better the strategic position of a
particular section by the Device of Restriction of Numbers
will be unreservedly condemned. Not only is this Device
inconsistent with the democratic instinct in favor of opening
up the widest possible opportunity for every citizen, but it
is hostile to the welfare of the community as a whole, and
especially to the manual workers, in that it tends to dis-
tribute the capital, brains, and labor of the nation less
productively than would otherwise be the case.2 Trade
Unionism has, therefore, absolutely to abandon one of its
two Devices. This throwing off of the old Adam of
monopoly will be facilitated by the fact that the mobility
of modern industry has, in all but a few occupations, already
made any effective use of Restriction of Numbers quite
impracticable.3 Even if, in particular cases, the old Device
should again become feasible, those Trade Unions which
practised it would be placing themselves directly in antag-
onism to the conscious interests of the remainder of their
own class, and of the community as a whole. And in so
far as industry passes from the hands of private capitalists
into the control of representatives of the consumers, whether
in the form of voluntary co-operative societies,4 or in that of

1 Part II. chaps, x. and xi. " The Entrance to a Trade " and " The Right to
a Trade."

2 See Part III. chap. iii. "The Economic Characteristics of Trade
Unionism," under the heading " The Device of Restriction of Numbers."

3 See Part II. chap. x. " The Entrance to a Trade."

4 Here and elsewhere in this chapter we mean by co-operative societies the
characteristic British type of associations of consumers, who unite for the purpose
of carrying on, by salaried service, the manufacture and distribution of the
commodities they desire. This form of co-operative society — the "store "and

Trade Unionism and Democracy 8 1 1

the municipality or the central government, any interference
with freedom to choose the best man or woman for every
vacancy, more and more consciously condemned by public
opinion, will certainly not be tolerated.

But the manipulation of the labor market to the
advantage of particular sections does not always take the
form of a limitation of apprenticeship, or any Restriction of
Numbers. Among the Cotton -spinners the piecers, and
among the Cotton-weavers the tenters, are engaged and paid
by the operatives themselves, whose earnings are accordingly
partly made up of the profit on this juvenile labor. It
therefore suits the interest of the adult workers, no less than
that of the capitalist manufacturers, that there should be as
little restriction as possible on the age or numbers of these
subordinate learners: the Cotton -spinners, in fact, as we
have more than once mentioned, go so far as to insist on
there being always ten times as many of them as would
suffice to recruit the trade. In this parasitic use of child-
labor, the Cotton Operatives are sharing with the manu-
facturers what is virtually a subsidy from the community as
a whole. The enforcement of a National Minimum would,

the "wholesale," together with their adjunct, the Co-operative Corn Mill —
accounts for nineteen-twentieths of the capital, practically all the distributive
trade, and three-fourths of the aggregate production of the British Co-operative
Movement (Third Annual Report of the Labour Department of the Board of
Trade, C. 8230, 1896, pp. 25-48). Though the commodities and services
supplied by voluntary associations of consumers will vary from time to time, we
regard this type of co-operative society as a permanent element in the democratic
state. However widely we may extend the scope of central or local government,
there will always be a place for voluntary associations of consumers to provide
for themselves what the public authority either cannot or will not supply. The
other type of organisation known as a co-operative society, the association of
producers, or so-called "productive society," stands in a very different position.
We see no future for this in the fully-developed democratic state. In its original
ideal form of a self-governing association of manual workers, it seems to us
(besides being open to grave objections) to have been made impossible by the
Great Industry, whilst the subsequent forms known as "co-partnership" appear
to us to be incompatible with Trade Unionism, and the indispensable mainten-
ance of the Common Rule. See The Co-operative Movement in Great Britain
(2nd edition, London, 1894), and 7^he Relationship between Co-operation and Trade
Unionism (Co-operative Union pamphlet, Manchester, 1892), both by Mrs.
Sidney Webb.

812 Trade Union Theory

as we have seen,1 involve such a raising of the minimum
age, both for half and whole time employment, as would
put a stop to this particular expression of corporate self-help.
Thus, the Doctrine of Supply and Demand will have to
manifest itself exclusively in the persistent attempts of each
trade to specialise its particular grade of skill, by progres-
sively raising the level of its own Common Rules. In so far
as this results in a corresponding increase in efficiency it
will, as we have shown,2 not only benefit the trade itself, but
also cause the capital, brains, and labor of the community
to be distributed in the most productive way. And the
demands of each grade will, in the absence of any Restric-
tion of Numbers or resistance to innovations, be automat-
ically checked by the liberty of the customer to resort
to an alternative product and the absolute freedom of the
directors of industry to adopt an alternative process, or to
select another grade of labor. Thus, the permanent bias of
the manual worker towards higher wages and shorter hours
of labor is perpetually being counteracted by another — his
equally strong desire for continuity of employment. If the
Common Rule in any industry at any time is pressed upward
further or more quickly than is compensated for by an
equivalent advance in the efficiency of the industry, the cost
of production, and, therefore, the price, will be raised, and the
consumers' demand for that particular commodity will, in
the vast majority of cases, be thereby restricted. The rise
of wages will, in such a case, have been purchased at the
cost of throwing some men out of work. And though the
working-class official cannot, any more than the capitalist
or the economist, predict the effect on demand of any
particular rise of wages, even the most aggressive members
of a Trade Union discover, in an increase of the percentage
of unemployed colleagues whom they have to maintain,
an unmistakable and imperative check upon any repeti-

1 Part III. chap. ill. "The Economic Characteristics of Trade Unionism."

2 Ibid, under the heading "The Effect of the Sectional Application of the
Common Rule on the Distribution of Industry."

Trade Unionism and Democracy 8 1 3

tion of an excessive claim. How constantly and effec-
tively this check operates on the mind of the Trade
Union officials can be realised only by those who have
heard their private discussions, or who have watched the
silent postponement of cherished aims by particular unions.
It is not fear of the employers' strength, or lack of desire
for shorter hours that is (1897) preventing the Cotton
Operatives from using their power to obtain an eight
hours' day or a rise in their piecework rates, but the ever-
present dread, quickened by the sight of unemployed
spinners and weavers on short-time, of driving away some of
the trade of Lancashire. Paradoxical as it may seem, the
sins of the Trade Unions in this respect would tend to be
those of omission rather than those of commission. Whether
with regard to sanitation, hours, or wages, each Trade Union
would, in its fear of encouraging new inventions, be apt to
stop short in its claims at an earlier point than the fullest
efficiency demanded, rather than push ever onward the
specialisation of its craft, at the cost of seeing some part
of it, to the common advantage, superseded by another
process.1

So far democracy may be expected to look on com-
placently at the fixing, by mutual agreement between the
directors of industry and the manual workers, of special
rates of wages for special classes. But this use of the
Method of Collective Bargaining for the advantage of parti-
cular sections — this " freedom of contract " between capitalists
and wage-earners — will become increasingly subject to the
fundamental condition that the business of the community
must not be interfered with. When in the course of bar-
gaining there ensues a deadlock 2 — when the workmen strike,
or the employers lock out — many other interests are affected
than those of the parties concerned. We may accordingly
expect that, whenever an industrial dispute reaches a certain

1 See Part II. chap. viii. " New Processes and Machinery."

2 See Part IT. chap. ii. "The Method of Collective Bargaining," chap. iii.
"Arbitration," and chap. iv. "The Method of Legal Enactment."

8 14 Trade Union Theory

magnitude, a democratic state will, in the interests of the
community as a whole, not scruple to intervene, and settle
the points at issue by an authoritative fiat. The growing
impatience with industrial dislocation will, in fact, where
Collective Bargaining breaks down, lead to its supersession
by some form of compulsory arbitration ; that is to say, by
Legal Enactment.1 And when the fixing of the conditions
on which any industry is to be carried on, is thus taken out
of the hands of employers and workmen, the settlement will
no longer depend exclusively on the strategic position of the
parties, or of the industry, but will be largely influenced by

1 In this connection, the provisions of the New Zealand Industrial Concilia-
tion and Arbitration Act, drafted and carried through by the Hon. W. P.
Reeves, are highly significant. By this Act (No. 14 of 1894, slightly amended
by No. 30 of 1865 and No. 57 of 1896) there is created a complete system of
industrial tribunals for dealing, from the standpoint of the public interest, not
only with the interpretation and enforcement of collective agreements expressly
made subject to them ; but also with industrial disputes of every kind. There
is, first, in each district a Board of Conciliation, consisting in equal numbers of
members elected by the employers' and workmen's associations respectively,
with an impartial chairman chosen by the Board from outside itself. Any party
to an industrial dispute — that is to say, an association of employers or of work-
men, or one or more employers though not associated — may bring the quarrel
before the Board, which is thereon required, whether the other party consents or
not, to inquire into the dispute, and do its best to promote a settlement. If
conciliation fails the Board is then required, within two months of the first
application to it, to "decide the question according to the merits and substantial
justice of the case." So far, the system is merely one of Compulsory Arbitration,
with a formal award which the parties are not bound to accept. But the Board
may, if it thinks fit, refer any unsettled dispute, with or without its own decision
on its merits, to the central Court of Arbitration, consisting of three members
appointed by the Governor, two on the nomination respectively of the associa-
tions of employers and employed, and one, who presides, from among the Judges
of the Supreme Court. If the local Board does not so remit the case, any party
to it may require the Board's report to be referred to the Court. The Court is
thereupon required to investigate the dispute in the most complete manner, with
or without the assent of any of the parties, and with all the powers of a court of
justice. Its award is, in all cases, nominally binding on the associations or
persons specified therein, for the period (not exceeding two years) named ; and
any award which refers to an association is binding not only upon all those
who are members at the date of the award, but also upon all those who sub-
sequently join during its continuance. But though the award is nominally
binding, it is within the discretion of the Court whether it shall be legally
enforcible. The Court may, if it thinks fit, either at once, or, on the applica-
tion of any of the parties, subsequently, file its award in the Supreme Court
office, when it becomes, by leave of the Court, enforcible as if it were a judg-
ment of the Supreme Court. The award may include an order to pay costs and

Trade Unionism and Democracy 8 1 5

the doctrine of a living wage. The Trade Union official
would then have to prove that the claims of his clients were
warranted by the greater intensity of their effort, or by the
rareness of their skill in comparison with those of the lowest
grade of labor receiving only the National Minimum ; whilst
the case of the associated employers would have to rest on
a demonstration, both that the conditions demanded were
unnecessary, if not prejudicial, to the workmen's efficiency,
and that equally competent recruits could be obtained in
sufficient numbers without the particular " rent of ability,"
demanded by the Trade Union over and above the National
Minimum.

expenses, and penalties for its breach, not exceeding ;£io against an individual
workman or ^500 against an association or an individual employer. The decision
of the Court of Arbitration, acting by a majority of its members, may, therefore,
at its discretion, be made part of the law of the land. When a dispute has once
been brought before a Board or the Court, " any act or thing in the nature of a
strike or lock-out " is expressly prohibited, and would presumably be punishable
as contempt.

During the three years that this Act has been in force, there have been alto-
gether sixteen labor disputes, and it has been successfully applied to every one of
them, half being settled by the Boards of Conciliation and half by the Court of
Arbitration. The awards have been uniformly well received by the parties, and
appear to have been generally obeyed. Several of them were filed in the
Supreme Court, and have thus obtained the force of law. So far the Act has
been entirely successful in preventing the dislocation of industry. This success
is no doubt largely due to the general support given by public opinion in the
Colony to the principle of arbitration. There is at present no provision enab-
ling the Boards or the Court to deal with a dispute, however disastrous to the
public welfare, in which none of the parties request its intervention. And as
there has been as yet no refusal to obey any of the awards, the actual process of
enforcement has not been tested in the law courts. It has been suggested that
an obstinate employer, refusing to join any association, and employing only non-
unionists, might escape jurisdiction by declining to recognise (and therefore
having no quarrel with) any Trade Union. Such a case occurred in South
Australia, where a less ably drafted Act on somewhat the same lines as that of
New Zealand is in force. The point was, however, not judicially decided
("Quelques Experiences de Conciliation par 1'Etat en Australie," by Anton
Bertram in Revue (TEconomie Politique, 1897). In the present state of public
opinion in New Zealand, this or any other evasion of the law would be very
narrowly viewed by the judges, and any flaw discovered would be promptly
cured by an amending Act. The Board or Court might easily be empowered to
deal, on its own initiative, with any dispute that it considered injurious to the
community, and also to take cognisance, as a dispute, of any wholesale dis-
missal of workmen, or of any explicit refusal to employ members of a duly
registered association.

816 Trade Union Theory

It is accordingly on the side of the Doctrine of a Living
Wage that the present policy of Trade Unionism will require
most extension. Democratic public opinion will expect each
trade to use its strategic position to secure the conditions
necessary for the fulfilment of its particular social function
in the best possible way — to obtain, that is to say, not what
will be immediately most enjoyed by the " average sensual
man," but what, in the long run, will most conduce to his
efficiency as a professional, a parent, and a citizen. This
will involve some modification of Trade Union policy.
Powerful Trade Unions show no backwardness in exacting
the highest money wages that they know how to obtain ; but
even the best organised trades will at present consent, as a
part of their bargain with the employer, to work for excessive
and irregular hours, and to put up with unsafe, insanitary,
indecent, and hideous surroundings.1 In all the better-paid
crafts in the England of to-day, shorter and more regular
hours, greater healthfulness, comfort, and refinement in the
conditions of work, and the definite provision of periodical
holidays for recreation and travel, are, in the interests of
industrial and civic efficiency, more urgently required than
a rise in the Standard Rate. Such an application of the
Doctrine of a Living Wage will involve, not only a growth
of deliberate foresight and self-control among the rank and
file, but also a development of capacity in the Civil Service
of the Trade Union movement. To haggle over an advance
in wages is within the capacity of any labor leader ; to
suggest to the employer and the legislature the "special
rules" calculated to ensure the maximum comfort to the
operatives, and cause the minimum cost and inconvenience to
the industry, demands a higher degree of technical expertness.2
Nor is it enough for each trade to maintain and raise its
own Standard of Life. Unless the better-paid occupations
are to be insidiously handicapped in the competition for the

1 See Part II. chap. vi. " The Normal Day," and chap. vii. " Sanitation
and Safety."

2 See Part II. chap, vii, " Sanitation and Safety."

Trade Unionism and Democracy 8 1 7

home and foreign market, it is, as we have demonstrated,1
essential that no one of the national industries should be
permitted to become parasitic by the use of subsidised or
deteriorating labor. Hence the organised trades are vitally
concerned in the abolition of " sweating " in all occupations
whatsoever, whether these compete with them for custom by
manufacturing for the same demand, or for the means of
production by diverting the organising capacity and capital
of the nation. And this self-interest of the better -paid
trades coincides, as we have seen, with the welfare of the
community, dependent as this is on securing the utmost
development of health, intelligence, and character in the
weaker as well as in the stronger sections. Thus we arrive
at the characteristic device of the Doctrine of a Living Wage,
which we have termed the National Minimum — the deliberate
enforcement, by an elaborate Labor Code, of a definite quota
of education, sanitation, leisure, and wages for every grade
of workers in every industry.2 This National Minimum the
public opinion of the democratic state will not only support,
but positively insist on for the common weal. But public
opinion alone will not suffice. To get the principle of
a National Minimum unreservedly adopted ; to embody it
in successive Acts of Parliament of the requisite technical
detail ; to see that this legislation is properly enforced ; to
cause the regulations to be promptly and intelligently adapted
to changes in the national industry, requires persistent effort
and specialised skill. For this task no section of the com-
munity is so directly interested and so well-equipped as the
organised trades, with their prolonged experience of industrial
regulation and their trained official staff. It is accordingly
upon the Trade Unions that the democratic state must
mainly rely for the stimulus, expert counsel, and persistent
watchfulness, without which a National Minimum can neither
be obtained nor enforced.

1 Part III. chap. iii. "The Economic Characteristics of Trade Unionism"
under the heading " Parasitic Trades."

2 Ibid, under the heading "The National Minimum."

VOL. II ^ G

818 Trade Union Theory

This survey of the changes required in Trade Union
policy leads us straight to a conclusion as to the part which
Trade Unionism will be expected to play in the manage-
ment of the industry of a democratic state. The intermin-
able series of decisions, which together make up industrial
administration, fall into three main classes. There is, first,
the decision as to what shall be produced — that is to say,
the exact commodity or service to be supplied to the con-
sumers. There is, secondly, the judgment as to the manner
in which the production shall take place, the adoption of
material, the choice of processes, and the selection of human
agents. Finally, there is the altogether different question of
the conditions under which these human agents shall be
employed — the temperature, atmosphere, and sanitary
arrangements amid which they shall work, the intensity
and duration of their toil, and the wages given as its
reward.

To obtain for the community the maximum satisfaction
it is essential that the needs and desires of the consumers
should be the main factor in determining the commodities
and services to be produced. Whether these needs and
desires can best be ascertained and satisfied by the private
enterprise of capitalist profit-makers, keenly interested in
securing custom, or by the public service of salaried officials,
intent on pleasing associations of consumers (as in the
British Co-operative Movement) or associations of citizens
(the Municipality or the State), is at present the crucial
problem of democracy. But whichever way this issue
may be decided, one thing is certain, namely, that
the several sections of manual workers, enrolled in their
Trade Unions, will have, under private enterprise or
Collectivism, no more to do with the determination of what is
to be produced than any other citizens or consumers. As
manual workers and wage-earners, they bring to the problem
no specialised knowledge, and as persons fitted for the per-
formance of particular services, they are even biassed against
the inevitable changes in demand which characterise a

Trade Unionism and Democracy 819

progressive community.1 This is even more the case with
regard to the second department of industrial administration
— the adoption of material, the choice of processes, and the
selection of human agents. Here, the Trade Unions con-
cerned are specially disqualified, not only by their ignorance
of the possible alternatives, but also by their overwhelming
bias in favor of a particular material, a particular process, or
a particular grade of workers, irrespective of whether these
are or are not the best adapted for the gratification of the
consumers' desires. On the other hand, the directors of
industry, whether thrown up by the competitive struggle
or deliberately appointed by the consumers or citizens,
have been specially picked out and trained to discover
the best means of satisfying the consumers' desires. More-
over, the bias of their self-interest coincides with the object
of their customers or employers — that is to say, the best
and cheapest production. Thus, if we leave out of account
the disturbing influence of monopoly in private enterprise,
and corruption in public administration, it would at first sight
seem as if we might safely leave the organisation of pro-
duction and distribution under the one system as under the
other to the expert knowledge of the directors of industry.
But this is subject to one all-important qualification. The
permanent bias of the profit-maker, and even of the salaried
official of the Co-operative Society, the Municipality, or the
Government Department, is to lower the expense of pro-
duction. So far as immediate results are concerned, it seems
equally advantageous whether this reduction of cost is secured
by a better choice of materials, processes, or men, or by some
lowering of wages or other worsening of the conditions upon
which the human agents are employed. But the democratic
state is, as we have seen,2 vitally interested in upholding the
highest possible Standard of Life of all its citizens, and
especially of the manual workers who form four-fifths of the
whole. Hence the bias of the directors of industry in favor

1 See Part II. chap ix. " Continuity of Employment."
2 See Part III. chap. iii. " The Economic Characteristics of Trade Unionism,"

820 Trade Union Theory

of cheapness has, in the interests of the community, to be
perpetually controlled and guided by a determination to
maintain, and progressively to raise, the conditions of
employment.

This leads us to the third branch of industrial administra-
tion— the settlement of the conditions under which the human
beings are to be employed. The adoption of one material
rather than another, the choice between alternative processes
or alternative ways of organising the factory, the selection of
particular grades of workers, or even of a particular foreman,
may affect, for the worse, the Standard of Life of the opera-
tives concerned. This indirect influence on the conditions
of employment passes imperceptibly into the direct determi-
nation of the wages, hours, *and other terms of the wage
contract. On all these matters the consumers, on the one
hand, and the directors of industry on the other, are per-
manently disqualified from acting as arbiters. In our chapter
on " The Higgling of the Market " l we described how in the
elaborate division of labor which characterises the modern
industrial system, thousands of workers co-operate in the
bringing to market of a single commodity; and no consumer,
even if he desired it, could possibly ascertain or judge of the
conditions of employment in all these varied trades. Thus,
the consumers of all classes are not only biassed in favor of
low prices : they are compelled to accept this apparent or
genuine cheapness as the only practicable test of efficiency of
production. And though the immediate employer of each
section of workpeople knows the hours that they work and
the wages that they receive, he is precluded by the stream of
competitive pressure, transmitted through the retail shop-
keeper and the wholesale trader, from effectively resisting the
promptings of his own self-interest towards a constant
cheapening of labor. Moreover, though he may be statistic-
ally aware of the conditions of employment, his lack of
personal experience of those conditions deprives him of any
real knowledge of their effects. To the brain-working captain

1 Part III. chap. ii.

Trade Unionism and Democracy 821

of industry, maintaining himself and his family on thousands
a year, the manual-working wage-earner seems to belong to
another species, having mental faculties and bodily needs
altogether different from his own. Men and women of the
upper or middle classes are totally unable to realise what
state of body and mind, what level of character and conduct
result from a life spent, from childhood to old age, amid
the dirt, the smell, the noise, the ugliness, and the vitiated
atmosphere of the workshop ; under constant subjection to
the peremptory, or, it may be, brutal orders of the foreman ;
kept continuously at laborious manual toil for sixty or seventy
hours in every week of the year ; and maintained by the food,
clothing,house-accommodation, recreation, and family lifewhich
are implied by a precarious income of between ten shillings and
two pounds a week. If the democratic state is to attain its
fullest and finest development, it is essential that the actual
needs and desires of the human agents concerned should be
the main considerations in determining the conditions of
employment.1 Here, then, we find the special function of the
Trade Union in the administration of industry. The simplest
member of the working-class organisation knows at any rate
where the shoe pinches. The Trade Union official is specially
selected by his fellow-workmen for his capacity to express the
grievances from which they suffer, and is trained by his calling
in devising remedies for them. But in expressing the desires
of their members, and in insisting on the necessary reforms,
the Trade Unions act within the constant friction -brake
supplied by the need of securing employment. It is always
the consumers, and the consumers alone, whether they act
through profit -making entrepreneurs or through their own
salaried officials, who determine how many of each particular
grade of workers they care to employ on the conditions
demanded.2

Thus, it is for the consumers, acting either through

1 See Part II. chap. v. "The Standard Rate," and chap. iii. "Arbitration."

2 This was the conclusion also of Fleeming Jenkin's mathematical analysis of
abstract economics. "It is the seller of labor who determines the price, but it is

822 Trade Union Theory

capitalist entrepreneurs or their own salaried agents, to decide
what shall be produced. It is for the directors of -industry,
whether profit-makers or officials, to decide how it shall be
produced, though in this decision they must take into account
the objections of the workers' representatives as to the effect
on the conditions of employment. And, in the settlement of
these conditions, it is for the expert negotiators of the Trade
Unions, controlled by the desires of their members, to state
the terms under which each grade will sell its labor. But
above all these, stands the community itself. To its elected
representatives and trained Civil Service is entrusted the duty
of perpetually considering the permanent interests of the State
as a whole. When any group of consumers desires something
which is regarded as inimical to the public wellbeing — for
instance, poisons, explosives, indecent literature, or facilities
for sexual immorality or gambling — the community prohibits
or regulates the satisfaction of these desires. When the
directors of industry attempt to use a material, or a process,
which is regarded as injurious — for instance, food products
so adulterated as to be detrimental to health, ingredients
poisonous to the users, or processes polluting the rivers or the
atmosphere — their action is restrained by Public Health Acts.
And when the workers concerned, whether through ignorance,
indifference, or strategic weakness, consent to work under
conditions which impair their physique, injure their intellect,
or degrade their character, the community has, for its own
sake, to enforce a National Minimum of education, sanitation,
leisure, and wages. We see, therefore, that industrial admini-
stration is, in the democratic state, a more complicated matter
than is na'fvely imagined by the old-fashioned capitalist,
demanding the " right to manage his own business in his own
way." In each of its three divisions, the interests and will of
one or other section is the dominant factor. But no section

the buyer who determines the number of transactions. Capital settles how many
men are wanted at given wages, but labor settles what wages the man shall
have." — " Graphic Representation of the Laws of Supply and Demand," by
Fleeming Jenkin, in Recess Studies (Edinburgh, 1870), p. 184.

Trade Unionism and Democracy 823

wields uncontrolled sway even in its own sphere. The State
is a partner in every enterprise. In the interests of the
community as a whole, no one of the interminable series of
decisions can be allowed to run counter to the consensus of
expert opinion representing the consumers on the one hand,
the producers on the other, and the nation that is paramount
over both.1

It follows from this analysis that Trade Unionism is not
merely an incident of the present phase of capitalist industry,
but has a permanent function to fulfil in the democratic state.

1 Some of the ablest Trade Union officials have already arrived at practically
this analysis. Thus, the last annual report of the Amalgamated Society of
Engineers, written by Mr. George Barnes, the new General Secretary, contains
an interesting exposition of the modern Trade Union view as to the respective
functions of the employers and the workmen in industrial administration. The
interest of the wage-earners and that of the community are, it is argued, identical,
" inasmuch as it is of public importance that a high standard of wages, and there-
fore a high purchasing power, should be maintained. The employer, on the
other hand, claims absolute freedom to exercise authority in the selection and
placing and paying of workmen, because he says he provides the machinery and
plant. But he forgets that this freedom in the conduct generally of business has
long since been taken away from him, and that he now only has liberty to conduct
industrial enterprise in accordance with public opinion, as embodied in Parlia-
mentary enactment and the pressure of Trade Unionism. As a result of these
humanising influences, hours of labor have been reduced, boy-labor curtailed,
machinery fenced, and workshops cleansed. In short, competition has been forced
up to a higher plane with immense advantage to the commonweal, so that the
employer's plea ' to do what he likes with his own ' is somewhat out of date, and
cannot be sustained. We are willing, however, to admit that in certain directions
both employer and employed should have freedom of action. Our society, for
instance, has never questioned the right of the employer to terminate contracts,
to select and discriminate between workmen, and to pay according to merit or
skill. But it has stipulated, and has a right to stipulate, for the observance of a
standard or minimum wage as a basis. And if, as has been stated by the
Employers' Council, the introduction of machinery has simplified production, and
widened the difference as between the skill of the machine and the hand operative,
then the wage of the handicraftsmen should be proportionately increased. The
introduction of machinery increases as well as simplifies production, and here,
surely, is sufficient gain for the employer and the purchaser, without trenching
upon the wage of the worker, whose needs remain the same whether tending a
machine or using his tools by hand. Upon this ground we base our claim, but,
convinced as we are that this, like most other questions, must ultimately be
settled in accord with the common interest, and believing as we do in the wisdom
contained in the utterance of the late Lord Derby that ' the greatest of all interests
is peace,' we are willing to leave the matter to the arbitrament of a public and
impartial authority, aided by technical knowledge from each side." — Amalgamated
Society of Engineers, Forty-Sixth Annual Report (London, 1897), pp. vi.-vii.

824 Trade Union Theory

Should capitalism develop in the direction of gigantic Trusts,
the organisation of the manual workers in each industry will
be the only effective bulwark against social oppression. If,
on the other hand, there should be a revival of the small
master system, the enforcement of Common Rules will be
more than ever needed to protect the community against
industrial parasitism.1 And if, as we personally expect,
democracy moves in the direction of superseding both the
little profit-maker and the Trust, by the salaried officer of
the Co-operative Society, the Municipality, and the Govern-
ment Department, Trade Unionism would remain equally
necessary. For even under the most complete Collectivism,
the directors of each particular industry would, as agents of
the community of consumers, remain biassed in favor of
cheapening production, and could, as brainworkers, never be
personally conscious of the conditions of the manual laborers.
And though it may be assumed that the community as a
whole would not deliberately oppress any section of its
members, experience of all administration on a large scale,
whether public or private, indicates how difficult it must
always be, in any complicated organisation, for an isolated
individual sufferer to obtain redress against the malice, caprice,
or simple heedlessness of his official superior. Even a whole
class or grade of workers would find it practically impossible,
without forming some sort of association of its own, to bring
its special needs to the notice of public opinion, and press
them effectively upon the Parliament of the nation. More-
over, without an organisation of each grade or section of
the producers, it would be difficult to ensure the special
adaptation to their particular conditions of the National
Minimum, or other embodiment of the Doctrine of a Living
Wage, which the community would need to enforce ; and it
would be impossible to have that progressive and experi-
mental pressing upward of the particular Common Rules of
each class, upon which, as we have seen, the maximum
productivity of the nation depends. In short, it is essential

1 See Part II. chap. xii. "The Implications of Trade Unionism."

Trade Unionism and Democracy 825

that each grade or section of producers should be at least so
well organised that it can compel public opinion to listen to
its claims, and so strongly combined that it could if need
be, as a last resort against bureaucratic stupidity or official
oppression, enforce its demands by a concerted abstention
from work, against every authority short of a decision of the
public tribunals, or a deliberate judgment of the Representative
Assembly itself.

But though, as industry passes more and more into
public control, Trade Unionism must still remain a necessary
element in the democratic state, it would, we conceive, in
such a development, undergo certain changes. The mere
extension of national agreements and factory legislation has
already, in the most highly regulated trades, superseded the
old guerilla warfare between employers and employed, and
transformed the Trade Union official from a local strike
leader to an expert industrial negotiator, mainly occupied,
with the cordial co-operation of the secretary of the Employers'
Association and the Factory Inspector, in securing an exact
observance of the Common Rules prescribed for the trade.
And as each part of the minimum conditions of employment
becomes definitely enacted in the regulations governing the
public industries, or embodied in the law of the land, it will
tend more and more to be accepted by the directors of
industry as a matter of course, and will need less and less
enforcement by the watchful officials concerned.1 The Trade
Union function of constantly maintaining an armed resistance
to attempts to lower the Standard of Life of its members
may be accordingly expected to engage a diminishing share
of its attention. On the other hand, its duty of perpetually
striving to raise the level of its Common Rules, and thereby
increasing the specialised technical efficiency of its craft, will
remain unabated. We may therefore expect that, with the
progressive nationalisation or rnunicipalisation of public
services, on the one hand, and the spread of the Co-operative
movement on the other, the Trade Unions of the workers

1 See Tart II. chap. iv. "The Method of Legal Enactment."

826 Trade Union Theory

thus taken directly into the employment of the citizen-
consumers will more and more assume the character of
professional associations. Like the National Union of
Teachers at the present day, they may even come to be
little concerned with any direct bargaining as to sanitation,
hours, or wages, except by way of redressing individual
grievances, or supplying expert knowledge as to the effect
of proposed changes. The conditions of employment depend-
ing on the degree of expert specialisation to which the craft
has been carried, and upon public opinion as to its needs,
each Trade Union will find itself, like the National Union
of Teachers, more and more concerned with raising the
standard of competency in its occupation, improving the
professional equipment of its members, "educating their
masters " as to the best way of carrying on the craft, and
endeavoring by every means to increase its status in public
estimation.1

So far our review of the functions of Trade Unionism in
the democratic state has taken account only of its part in
industrial organisation. But the Trade Unions are turned
also to other uses. At present, for instance, they compete
with the ordinary friendly societies and industrial insurance
companies in providing money benefits in cases of accident,
sickness, and death, together with pensions for the aged.2
This is the side of Trade Unionism which commonly meets
with the greatest approval, but it is a side that, in our
opinion, is destined to dwindle. As one class of invalids
after another is taken directly under public care, the friendly
benefits provided by the Trade Unions will no longer be
necessary to save their members from absolute destitution.

1 The industry with which the National Union of Teachers is mainly con-
cerned— elementary school-keeping — has, within a couple of generations, entirely
passed out of the domain of profit-making into that of a public service. The
Union (established 1870, membership at end of 1896, 36,793) has thus grown up
under a Collectivist organisation, and a comparison between its functions and those
of the manual workers' Trade Unions is full of interest and significance. Its
admirably compiled and elaborate Annual Reports afford constant illustrations
of the above inferences.

2 See Part II. chap. i. "The Method of Mutual Insurance."

Trade Unionism and Democracy 827

With any general system of compensation for industrial
accidents, provided or secured by the state itself, the costly
" accident benefit " hitherto given by Trade Unions will
become a thing of the past. The increasing use in sickness
of hospitals and convalescent homes, the growing importance
of isolation and skilled nursing, and the gratuitous provision
in public institutions of the highest medical skill — adopted
for reasons of public health — will incidentally go far to
relieve working-class families of the intolerable strain of
periods of bodily incapacity.1 Any Government scheme of
Old Age Pensions, such, for instance, as that proposed by
Mr. Charles Booth, would absolve the Trade Unions from
their present attempts, in the form of superannuation benefit,
to buy off the undercutting of the Standard Rate of wages
by their aged members. It is not that State provision
against the absolute destitution caused by accident, sickness,
or old age, will supersede, or even diminish, individual saving.
On the contrary, it is one of the grounds on which Mr.
Charles Booth and others advocate these measures,2 that the
state pension, by ensuring something to build on, will positively
stimulate thrift. But this supplementary saving, to provide
the little comforts and amenities beyond the state allowance,
will, in our opinion, not be made through the Trade Union.
As the manual workers advance in intelligence and foresight,

1 There is no reason why the burial of the dead should not — to the great
economic advantage of all concerned — become a public service and a common
charge. Probably a majority of all the funerals in the United Kingdom already
take place at the public expense, and the provision of burial grounds, once a
common form of profit-making enterprise, is becoming almost exclusively a public
function. In Paris, as is well known, the service of burial is performed by
a strictly regulated and licensed monopolist corporation, virtually public in
character.

2 On Old Age Pensions, see "The Reform of the Poor Law," by Sidney
Webb in Contemporary Review, July 1890, republished as Fabian Tract No. 17,
March 1891; the paper on "Enumeration and Classification of Paupers, and
State Pensions for the Aged," by Charles Booth, read before the Statistical Society,
December 1891, and republished as Pauperism, a Picture and Endowment of Old
Age, an Argument (London, 1892) ; and Pensions and Pauperism, by the Rev.
J. Frome Wilkinson (London, 1892). These proposals must be distinguished
from schemes of insurance, or making the poor provide their own pension, as to
which see Part II. chap. xii. "The Implications of Trade Unionism."

828 Trade Union Theory

they will more and more realise that a Trade Union, how-
ever honestly and efficiently administered, is, of necessity,
financially unsound as a friendly society. Hitherto the
actuarial defects of the friendly society side of Trade
Unionism have been far outweighed by the adventitious
advantages which it brought to the organisation in attract-
ing recruits, rolling up a great reserve fund, and ensuring
discipline. But in the democratic state these adventitious
aids will no longer be necessary. The Trade Union will be
a definitely recognised institution of public utility to which
every person working at the craft will be imperatively ex-
pected, even if not (as is already the case with regard to the
appointment of a checkweigher),1 legally compelled to con-
tribute. With Trade Union membership thus virtually or
actually compulsory, Trade Union leaders will find it con-
venient to concentrate their whole attention on the funda-
mental purposes of their organisation, and to cede the mere
insurance business to the Friendly Societies. Thus, with the
complete recognition of Trade Unionism as an essential
organ of the democratic state, the Friendly Societies and
Mutual Insurance Companies, confining themselves to the
co-operative provision of larger opportunities and additional
amenities to the aged, sick, or injured workman, will be
relieved from the competition of actuarially defective trade
societies, and may therefore be expected to expand and con-
solidate their own position as an indispensable part of social
organisation.

To this decay of the friendly society side of Trade
Unionism there will probably be one exception. In the
democratic state the evil effects of the alternate expansions
and contractions of demand will doubtless be mitigated by
the increasing regulation and concentration of industry, if
not also, as some would say, by the substitution, for the
speculative middleman, of the salaried official of the con-
sumers. But the inevitable fluctuations in the consumers'

1 See Part IT. chap. ii. "The Method of Collective Bargaining," and chap. v.
"The Standard Rate."

Trade Unionism and Democracy 829

own tastes, together with the vicissitudes ol harvests, will
at all times leave some workmen in some trades or in
some districts temporarily unemployed. Hence the Out of
Work Benefit, or Donation, will form a permanent feature of
the democratic state. This provision for temporarily un-
employed craftsmen, — to be carefully distinguished from
persons falling below the standard of the National Minimum,
or the unemployable — can, as we have suggested, be best
administered by the Trade Union. Even when, as in times
of severe depression, or in cases of supersession by a new
invention, some assistance of the temporarily unemployed is
given from public funds, it will probably be most economical
for it to take the form of a capitation grant to the Trade
Union, so calculated that the allowance to each unemployed
member is shared between the government and the dis-
tributing association.

But whilst Trade Unionism may be expected to lose
some of its present incidental functions, we suggest that
the democratic state will probably find it new duties to
fulfil. For most of the purposes of government, including
registration, taxation, the general education of the young,
and the election of representatives, the classification of the
citizens into geographical districts according to their place
of abode is, no doubt, the most convenient form. But there
are other purposes for which the geographical organisation
may usefully be supplemented by an organisation according
to professional occupations. The technical instruction of
our craftsmen would, for instance, gain enormously in vigor
and reality if the Trade Unions were in some way directly
associated with the administration of the technological
classes relating to their particular trades. Even now Trade
Union committees sometimes render admirable service by
watchful supervision of trade classes, by suggestion and
criticism, and by practically requiring their apprentices to
attend. And once it becomes clearly understood all round
that the object of Technical Education is not, by increasing
the number of craftsmen, to lower wages, but, by increasing

830 Trade Union Theory

the competence of those who have already entered the various
trades, positively to raise their Standard of Life, the Trade
Unions and the community as a whole will be seen to have
an identical interest in the matter. There is, in fact, no
reason why a Trade Union should not be treated as a
local administrative committee of the Technical Education
Authority, and allowed, under proper supervision, to conduct
its own technological classes with public funds.1 In other
directions, too, such as the compilation of statistics relating
to particular occupations, and the dissemination of informa-
tion useful to members of particular crafts, the democratic
state will probably make increasing use of Trade Union
machinery.

Finally, there is the service of counsel. On all issues of
industrial regulation, whether in their own or other trades,
the Trade Union officials will naturally assume the position
of technical experts, to whom public opinion will look for
guidance. But industrial regulation is not the only matter
on which a democratic state needs the counsels of a work-
ing-class organisation. Whenever a proposal or a scheme
touches the daily life of the manual -working wage -earner,
the representative committees and experienced officials of the
Trade Union world are in a position to contribute informa-
tion and criticism, which are beyond the reach of any other
class. They are, of course, ignorant, if not incapable, of the
complications and subtilties of the law. Their suggestions
are one-sided and often impracticable, and their opinion can
never be accepted as decisive. But whenever a minister
has to deal with such questions as the Housing of the People
or the Regulation of the Liquor Traffic, the administration
of the law by magistrates or county-court judges, the un-

1 There seems much to be said for combining trade classes with the provision
for the temporarily unemployed. A large proportion of the unemployed printers,
for instance, who hang about the office of the London Society of Compositors
waiting for a "call" from an employer, are very indifferent workmen, often
young men who have "picked up" the trade without any really educational
apprenticeship. There would be much advantage if their Out of Work Donation
were made conditional on their spending the idle time in perfecting themselves at
their craft.

Trade Unionism and Democracy 83 1

employed or the unemployable, the working of the Education
Acts and the Poor Law, or, to pass into quite another
department of the public service, the organisation of
popular recreation and amusement, he will find himself
obliged, if he wishes to make his legislation or administra-
tion genuinely successful, to discover the desires and needs
of the manual workers, as represented by the committees
and officials whom they elect.

This examination of the function of Trade Unionism
brings us face to face with its inherent limitations. Trade
Unionism, to begin with, does not furnish any complete
scheme of distribution of the community's income. The
Device of the Common Rule, can, by its very nature, never
reach any other part of the product than the minimum
applicable to the worst as well as to the best establishment
for the time being in use. It leaves untouched, as we have
shown,1 all that large proportion of the aggregate income
which is the equivalent of the differential advantages of the
various factors of production above the marginal level,
whether their superiority lies in soil or site, machinery or
organisation, intellect or physical strength. In short, as
between different localities, different establishments, or
different individuals, Trade Unionism leaves unaffected
everything in the nature of economic rent. And even if we
imagine each branch of productive industry throughout the
community to be amalgamated into a single capitalist trust
or government department, each grade or section of manual
workers would find itself receiving, not an aliquot part of the
total produce, but a wage depending either on the minimum
necessary for the efficient fulfilment of its particular function,
or, for all the grades above the National Minimum, upon the
degree of technical specialisation, and therefore of relative
scarcity, to which it had brought its particular service. The
disposal of the balance of the product — the administration,
that is to say, of the rent of land and capital — must, under

1 Part III. chap. iii. "The Economic Characteristics of Trade Unionism,"
under the heading "The Device of the Common Rule."

832 Trade Union Theory

any system of society, fall to the owners of the material
instruments of production.

Now, Trade Unionism has no logical connection with
any particular form of ownership of land and capital, and
the members of British Trade Unions are not drawn, as
Trade Unionists, unreservedly either towards Individualism
or towards Collectivism. Certain sections of the Trade
Union world, as we have pointed out in our chapter on " The
Implications of Trade Unionism," 1 find that they can exact
better terms from the capitalist employer than would be
likely to be conceded to them by a democratic government
department. Other sections, on the contrary, see in the
extension of public employment the only remedy for a
disastrous irregularity of work and all the evils of sweating.
This divergence of immediate interests between different
sections of producers will inevitably continue. But the
nationalisation or municipalisation of any industry — the
taking over of the telephones, ocean cables, railways, or mines
by the central government, or the administration of slaughter-
houses, tramways, river steamboats, or public-houses by the
Town Council — has to be determined on wider issues than
the sectional interests of the wage-earners employed. It is
in their capacity of citizens, not as Trade Unionists, that the
manual workers will have to decide between the rival forms
of social organisation, and to make up their minds as to how
they wish the economic rent of the nation's land and capital
to be distributed. And though, in this, the most momentous
issue of modern democracy, the manual workers will be
influenced by their poverty in favor of a more equal sharing
of the benefits of combined labor,2 they will, by their Trade
Unionism, not be biassed in favor of any particular scheme of
attaining this result outside their own Device of the Common
Rule. And when we pass from the ownership of the means

1 Part II. chap. xii.

2 " The social problem of the future we considered to be, how to unite the
greatest individual liberty of action with a common ownership in the raw material
of the globe, and an equal participation of all in the benefits of combined labor.'1' — •
John Stuart Mill, Autobiography (London, 1879), p. 232.

Trade Unionism and Democracy 833

of production and the administration of industry to such
practical problems as the best form of currency or the proper
relation between local and central government, or to such
vital questions as the collective organisation of moral and
religious teaching, the provision for scholarship and science
and the promotion of the arts — not to mention the
sharper issues of " Home Rule " or foreign affairs — the
members of the Trade Union world have no distinctive
opinion, and their representatives and officials no special
knowledge. We may therefore infer that the wage-earners
will, in the democratic state, not content themselves with
belonging to their Trade Union, or even to any wider
organisation based on a distinction of economic class.
Besides their distinctive interests and opinions as wage-
earners and manual workers, they have others which they
share with persons of every grade or occupation. The
citizen in the democratic state, enrolled first in his
geographical constituency, will take his place also in the
professional association of his craft ; but he will go on to
combine in voluntary associations for special purposes with
those who agree with him in religion or politics, or in the
pursuit of particular recreations or hobbies.

These considerations have a direct bearing on the
probable development of Trade Union structure. In
the first part of this work we described 1 how, in spite
of historical tradition, in spite of crude ideas of de-
mocracy suited only to little autonomous communities,
and in spite of a strong prejudice in favor of local
exclusiveness, the Trade Union world has, throughout its
whole history, manifested an overpowering impulse to the
amalgamation of local trade clubs into national unions, with
centralised funds and centralised administration. The
economic characteristics of Trade Unionism revealed to us
the source of this impulse in the fundamental importance to
each separate class of operatives that its occupation should

1 Part I. chap. i. " Primitive Democracy," chap. ii. " Representative
Institutions," chap. iii. "The Unit of Government."

VOL. II 3 IT

834 Trade Union Theory

be governed by its own Common Rules, applicable from one
end of the kingdom to the other. This centralisation of
administration, involving the adoption of a national trade
policy, and, above all, the constant levelling-up of the lower-
paid districts to the higher standard set in more advantageous
centres, requires, it is clear, the development of a salaried
staff, selected for special capacity, devoting their whole
attention to the commercial position and technical details
of the particular section of the industry that they represent,
and able to act for the whole of that section throughout the
nation. It is, as we saw in our chapter on " The Method of
Collective Bargaining," l because of the absence of such a staff
that so few of the Trade Unions of the present day secure
national agreements, or enforce with uniformity such Common
Rules as they obtain. The Trade Union of the future will,
therefore, be co-extensive with its craft, national in its scope,
centralised in its administration, and served by an expert
official staff of its own.

This consolidation of authority in the central office of the
national union for each craft will be accompanied by an in-
creased activity of the branches. In our description of Trade
Union Structure,2 we saw that the crude and mechanical expedi-
ents of the Initiative and the Referendum were being steadily
replaced, for all the more complicated issues of government, by
an organic differentiation of representative institutions. So
long as a union was contented with Government by Referendum
all that was necessary was an ambulatory ballot-box by
which an unemployed member collected " the voices " of each
factory or each pit. When a representative is appointed, the
branch meeting affords the opportunity for ascertaining the
desires of his constituents, impressing upon them his own
advice, and consulting with them in any emergency. The
branch thus becomes the local centre of the union's intellectual
life. At the same time it retains and even extends its

1 Part II. chap. ii.

2 Part I. chap. i. "Primitive Democracy," and chap. ii. "Representative
Institutions."

Trade Unionism and Democracy 835

functions as a jury or local administrative committee. For
even if the Trade Union gradually discards its purely
" friendly " benefits, the branch will have to administer the
all-important Out of Work Donation, supplemented, as this
may be, by a grant from public funds. And with the
increasing use which the democratic state may make of
Trade Union machinery, it will be the branch, and not the
central office, that will be charged with conducting technical
classes, collecting statistics, or disseminating information.
Finally, when the Trade Union world desires to make use
of the Method of Legal Enactment,1 or to supervise the con-
ditions of employment granted by local governing bodies,
the network of branches pervading every district affords, as
we have seen, the only practicable way of superposing an
organisation by constituencies on an organisation by trades.
There is one direction in which the branch (or, in the
larger centres, the district committee representing several
branches) will find this increase of work accompanied by
a decrease of autonomy. The central executive and the
salaried officials at the head office of each craft will be
principally occupied in securing national minimum conditions
of employment throughout the country. It will be for the
branches and their district committees to be constantly con-
sidering the particular needs and special opportunities of
their own localities. But the fact that the cost of any
" advance movement " falls upon the funds of the union as
a whole makes it imperative that no dispute should be
begun, and even that no claim should be made, until the
position has been carefully considered by the central ex-
ecutive representing the whole society. This precept of
democratic finance is made more imperative by every con-
solidation of the forces of capital. It is obvious that if the
demand of the branches in one town for an advance of
wages or reduction of hours is liable to be met by a lock-
out of the whole trade throughout the country, a union
which permits its local branches to involve it in war at

1 See Part II. chap. iv. "The Method of Legal Enactment."

836 Trade Union Theory

their own uncontrolled discretion simply courts disaster.
In matters of trade policy the branches or district com-
mittees, whilst undertaking even more of the work of
supervision, local interpretation, and suggestion, must de-
finitely give up all claim to autonomy.1

The need for centralisation of authority, as an in-
evitable consequence of centralisation of funds, is not the
only lesson in structure that the Trade Unions have derived
from their experience, or will learn as they realise their full
function in the democratic state. In our chapter on " Inter-
Union Relations " 2 we pointed out that the amalgamation of
different sections into a single society may easily be carried
too far. The formation of a central fund, filled by equal
contributions from all the members, inevitably leads to
equality of franchise and government by the numerical
majority. So long as the interests of all the members are
fairly identical, this majority rule, where efficient representa-
tive machinery has been developed, is the most feasible
contrivance for uniting administrative efficiency with popular
control. But whenever the association contains several
distinct classes of workers, having different degrees of skill,
divergent standards of expenditure, and varying needs and
opportunities, experience shows that any scheme of equalised
finance and centralised administration produces, even with
the best democratic machinery, neither efficiency nor the
consciousness of popular control, and hence is always in a
condition of unstable equilibrium. The several minorities,
keenly alive to their separate requirements and opportunities,
are always feeling themselves thwarted in pushing their own
interests, and deprived of any effective control over the con-
ditions of their own lives. In voluntary associations the
result is a perpetual tendency to secession, each distinct
section aiming at Home Rule by setting up for itself as
a separate national union. This limitation on the process
of amalgamation, arising out of the conditions of democratic

1 See Part I. chap. iii. "The Unit of Government."
2 Part I. chap. iv.

Trade Unionism and Democracy 837

structure, is fortified, as we can now see, by economic con-
siderations.1 The largest income for the wage-earners, and
the highest efficiency of industry, will, as we have pointed
out, be secured not by any uniform wage for manual labor
as such, or for all the operatives in any industry, but by
each distinct section of workers using the Device of the
Common Rule to raise to the utmost its own conditions of
employment. This persistent pushing forward of each class
of operatives, constantly imperilled, as it must be, by a rise
in the price of the product and a diminution of demand for
some particular section of labor, can be undertaken, it will
be obvious, only at the risk and cost of that section, and
therefore, in practice, on its own initiative, untrammelled by
the votes of other sections. We may therefore expect, in
the democratic state, not a single association of the whole
wage-earning class, nor yet a single amalgamated union for
each great industry, but separate organisations for such of
the various sections of producers as are so far specialised
from others as to possess and require separate Common
Rules of their own.

These separate national organisations will, however,
clearly have many interests in common. In such matters as
cubic space, ventilation, temperature, sanitary conveniences,
precautions against fire, fencing of machinery, and, last but
by no means least, the fixing and distribution of the Normal
Day, the conditions of employment must, in the majority of
manufacturing industries, be identical for all the grades of
labor in each establishment. Even for Collective Bargain-
ing they must necessarily develop some federal machinery
for concerting identical demands upon their common em-
ployers, and for supporting them by joint action. Moreover,
as we have pointed out, in all questions of this sort, the
democratic state will be influenced in the main by the
Doctrine of a Living Wage, and they will accordingly tend
more and more to be settled on physiological grounds and en-
forced by the Method of Legal Enactment. It is unnecessary

1 Part III. chap. iii. " The Economic Characteristics of Trade Unionism."

838 Trade Union Theory

to repeat that for any effective use of this Method in a Parlia-
mentary community, organisation by crafts is practically use-
less, unless it is supplemented by a geographical organisation
by constituencies. Hence we see rising in the Trade Union
world not only federal action among groups employed in one
establishment, such as the joint committees of the building
trades, but also such political federations as the United
Textile Factory Workers' Association, the local Trades
Councils, and the Trade Union Congress. But the economic
analysis of the Common Rule has shown us that there is a
third, and even more important, reason for this federal action
between different trades. It will, as we have seen, be a
primary duty of the Trade Unions in the democratic state
to maintain and progressively to raise, not their own Com-
mon Rules alone, but also the National Minimum for the
whole wage -earning class. To the national amalgamation
of each section, and the federal union of the different
sections in each great industry, there must be added a
federation of the whole Trade Union world.

Our vision of the sphere of Trade Unionism in the
democratic state does more than explain the development
of the Trade Union world into a hierarchy of federations.
It gives us also its political programme. The weakness
and inefficiency of the existing Trades Councils and Trade
Union Congress spring, as we have pointed out, not only
from their extremely imperfect structure, but also from an
entire misapprehension of their proper function.1 In spite
of the fact that Trade Unionists include men of all shades
of political opinion, — Conservatives from Lancashire,
Liberals from Scotland, Socialists from London and York-
shire, — the federal organisations of the British Trade
Unions of to-day are perpetually meddling with wide issues
of general politics, upon which the bulk of their constituents
have either no opinions at all, or are marshalled in the ranks
of one or another of the political parties. Resolutions
abolishing the House of Lords, secularising education,

1 See Part II. chap, iv, "The Method of Legal Enactment."

Trade Un^nism and Democracy 839

rehabilitating silver, establishing a system of peasant
proprietorship, enfranchising leaseholds, or " nationalising
the means of production, distribution, and exchange," —
questions in which the Trade Unionists, as such, are not more
interested, not better informed, nor yet more united than
other citizens, — find a place on Trade Union agendas,
and either get formally passed through sheer indifference, or
become the source of discord, recrimination, and disruption.
This waste of time and dissipation of energy over extraneous
matters arises, we think, mainly from the absence of any
clearly conceived and distinctive Trade Union programme.
In the democratic state of the future the Trade Unionists
may be expected to be conscious of their own special
function in the political world, and to busy themselves
primarily with its fulfilment. First in importance to every
section we put the establishment of a National Minimum of
education, sanitation, leisure, and wages, its application to all
the conditions of employment, its technical interpretation to
fit the circumstances of each particular trade, and, above all,
its vigorous enforcement, for the sake of the whole wage-
earning world, in the weak trades no less than in those more
able to protect themselves. But the systematic rehandling
of the Factories and Workshops, Mines, Railways, Shops, and
Merchant Shipping Acts, which is involved in this conception
of a National Minimum, will, as we have explained, only
secure the base of the pyramid. Upon this fundamental
ground level each separate craft will need to develop such
technical regulations of its own as are required to remove any
conditions of employment which can be proved to be actually
prejudicial to the efficiency of the operatives concerned. On
all these points, as we have seen, the claim of any particular
section for the help of the law may not only advantageously
be supported by all the other trades, but may also profitably
be conceded by the representatives of the community. And
since the utmost possible use of the Method of Legal Enact-
ment will, as we have seen, still permanently leave a large
sphere for the Method of Collective Bargaining, there must

840 Trade Union Theory

be added to the political programme of the federated unions
all that we have described as the Implications of Trade
Unionism.1 The federal executive of the Trade Union
world would find itself defending complete freedom of
association, and carefully watching every development of
legislation or judicial interpretation to see that nothing was
made criminal or actionable, when done by a Trade Union
or its officials, which would not be criminal or actionable
if done by a partnership of traders in pursuit of their own
gain. And the federal executive would be on its guard, not
only against a direct attack on the workmen's organisations,
but also against any insidious weakening of their influence.
It would insist on the legal prohibition of all forms of truck,
or deductions from wages, including fines, loom-rent, and
payments to national insurance funds or employers' benefit
societies. Above all, it would resist any attempt on the part
of the employer to transform the workman's home into a
workshop, and thus escape the responsibility for the carrying
out of the conditions of employment embodied in the law of
the land With a programme of this kind, the federal
executive would find itself backed by the whole force of the
Trade Union world, which would thus contribute to the
councils of the nation that technical knowledge and specialist
experience of manual labor without which the regulation of
industry can become neither popular nor efficient.

The student of political science will be interested in
considering what light the experience of the workmen's
organisations throws upon democracy itself. The persistence
of Trade Unionism, and its growing power in the state,
indicates, to begin with, that the very conception of
democracy will have to be widened, so as to include
economic as well as political relations. The framers of the
United States constitution, like the various parties in the
French Revolution of 1789, saw no resemblance or analogy
between the personal power which they drove from the
castle, the altar, and the throne, and that which they left

1 Part II. chap. xii. and Appendix I. as to the legal position.

Trade Unionism and Democracy 84 1

unchecked in the farm, the factory, and the mine. Even
at the present day, after a century of revolution, the great
mass of middle and upper-class " Liberals " all over the world
see no more inconsistency between democracy and unre-
strained capitalist enterprise, than Washington or Jefferson
did between democracy and slave -owning. The " dim, in-
articulate" multitude of manual-working wage-earners have,
from the outset, felt their way to a different view. To them,
the uncontrolled power wielded by the owners of the means
of production, able to withhold from the manual worker all
chance of subsistence unless he accepted their terms, meant
a far more genuine loss of liberty, and a far keener sense
of personal subjection, than the official jurisdiction of the
magistrate, or the far-off, impalpable rule of the king. The
captains of industry, like the kings of yore, are honestly
unable to understand why their personal power should be
interfered with, and kings and captains alike have never
found any difficulty in demonstrating that its maintenance
was indispensable to society. Against this autocracy in
industry, the manual workers have, during the century,
increasingly made good their protest. The agitation for
freedom of combination and factory legislation has been, in
reality, a demand for a " constitution " in the industrial
realm. The tardy recognition of Collective Bargaining and
the gradual elaboration of a Labor Code signifies that this
Magna Carta will, as democracy triumphs, inevitably be
conceded to the entire wage-earning class. " One thing is
clear," wrote, in 1869, a hostile critic ; " the relation between
workmen and their employers has permanently changed its
character. The democratic idea which rules in politics has
no less penetrated into industry. The notion of a governing
class, exacting implicit obedience from inferiors, and im-
posing upon them their own terms of service, is gone, never
to return. Henceforward, employers and their workmen
must meet as equals." l What has not been so obvious to
middle -class observers is the necessary condition of this

1 Trade Unionism, by James Stirling (Glasgow, 1869), p. 55.

842 Trade Union Theory

equality. Individual Bargaining between the owner of the
means of subsistence and the seller of so perishable a
commodity as a day's labor must be, once for all, abandoned.
In its place, if there is to be any genuine " freedom of
contract," we shall see the conditions of employment
adjusted between equally expert negotiators, acting for
corporations reasonably comparable in strategic strength,
and always subject to and supplemented by the decisions of
the High Court of Parliament, representing the interests of
the community as a whole. Equality in industry implies,
in short, a universal application of the Device of the
Common Rule.1

Besides the imperative lesson that political democracy
will inevitably result in industrial democracy, Trade
Unionism affords some indications as to the probable work-
ing of democratic institutions. We notice, in the first place,
that the spontaneous and untrammelled democracies of the
workmen show neither desire for, nor tendency to, " one dead
level " of equality of remuneration or identity of service. On
the contrary, the most superficial study of the Trade Union
world makes the old-fashioned merging of all the manual
workers into the " laboring class " seem almost ludicrous in
its ineptitude. Instead of the classic economist's categories

1 We attribute to an imperfect appreciation of the change of status many
industrial disputes, and a large proportion of the resentment of working-class
pretensions manifested by the brain - working and propertied classes. The
employer cannot rid himself of the idea that he has bought the whole energy and
capacity of the operative within the hours of the working day, just as the slave-
owner had bought the whole capacity of his slaves for life. The workman, on
the other hand, regards himself as hired to co-operate in industry by performing
a definite task, and feels himself defrauded if the employer seeks to impose upon
him any extra strain or discomfort, or any different duty, not specified in the
bargain. A similar misunderstanding lingers as to social relations. The
capitalist is very fond of declaring that labor is a commodity, and the wage
contract a bargain of purchase and sale like any other. But he instinctively
expects his wage-earners to render him, not only obedience, but also personal
deference. If the wage contract is a bargain of purchase and sale like any
other, why is the workman expected to touch his hat to his employer, and to
say "sir" to him without reciprocity, when the employer meets on terms of
equality the persons (often actually of higher social rank than himself) from
whom he buys his raw material or makes the other bargains incidental to his
trade ?

Trade Unionism and Democracy 843

of " the capitalist " and " the laborer," we see Trade Unionism
adopting and strengthening the almost infinite grading of
the industrial world into separate classes, each with its own
corporate tradition and Standard of Life, its own specialised
faculty and distinctive needs, and each therefore exacting its
own " Rent of Opportunity " or " Rent of Ability." And
when we examine the indirect effect of the Trade Union
Device of the Common Rule in extinguishing the Small
Master system and favoring the growth of the Great
Industry,1 we realise how effectively Trade Unionism extends
a similar grading to the brain-working directors of industry.
In place of the single figure of the " capitalist entrepreneur " we
watch emerging in each trade a whole hierarchy of specialised
professionals, — inventors, designers, chemists, engineers,
buyers, managers, foremen, and what not, — organised in
their own professional associations,2 and standing midway
between the shareholder, taxpayer, or consumer, whom they
serve, and the graded army of manual workers whom they
direct. Nor does this progressive specialisation of function
stop at economic relations. The internal development of
the Trade Union world unmistakably indicates that division
of labor must be carried into the very structure of democracy.
Though the workmen started with a deeply-rooted conviction
that " one man was as good as another," and that democracy
meant an "equal and identical " sharing of the duties of govern-
ment, as well as of its advantages, they have been forced to
devolve more and more of " their own business "on a specially
selected and specially trained class of professional experts.
And in spite of the almost insuperable difficulties which

1 Part III. chap. iii. "The Economic Characteristics of Trade Unionism."

2 It is not commonly realised how numerous and how varied are these pro-
fessional associations. Besides the obvious instances 01 the three "learned
professions," organisations of this kind now exist among all grades of brain-
workers in almost every department of social life. Not to speak of the archi-
tects, surveyors, engineers, actuaries, and accountants, we have such associations
as those of the Gasworks Managers, Colliery Managers, School Board Clerks,
Sanitary Engineers, Sanitary Inspectors, Medical Officers of Health, Inspectors
of Weights and Measures, different varieties of Foremen and Managers, and even
Ships' Clerks. No study of these professional associations, or of their extensive
Common Rules, has yet been ma.de.

844 Trade Union Theory

representative institutions present to a community of un-
leisured manual workers, we find union after union abandon-
ing the mechanical devices of the Referendum and the
Initiative, and gradually differentiating, for the sake of the
efficient administration of its own affairs, the Representative
from the Civil Servant on the one hand and the Elector on
the other. In short, whilst Trade Unionism emphasises the
classic dictum of Adam Smith that division of labor increases
material production, it carries this principle into the organ-
isation of society itself. If democracy is to mean the com-
bination of administrative efficiency with genuine popular
control, Trade Union experience points clearly to an ever-
increasing differentiation between the functions of the three
indispensable classes of Citizen-Electors, chosen Representa-
tives, and expert Civil Servants.1

Thus we find no neat formula for defining the rights and
duties of the individual in society. In the democratic state
every individual is both master and servant. In the work
that he does for the community in return for his subsistence
he is, and must remain, a servant, subject to the instructions
and directions of those whose desires he is helping to satisfy.
As a Citizen-Elector jointly with his fellows, and as a Con-
sumer to the extent of his demand, he is a master, determining,
free from any superior, what shall be done. Hence, it is the
supreme paradox of democracy that every man is a servant
in respect of the matters of which he possesses the most
intimate knowledge, and for which he shows the most expert
proficiency, namely, the professional craft to which he devotes
his working hours ; and he is a master over that on which
he knows no more than anybody else, namely, the general
interests of the community as a whole. In this paradox, we
suggest, lies at once the justification and the strength of
democracy. It is not, as is commonly asserted by the
superficial, that Ignorance rules over Knowledge, and Medio-
crity over Capacity. In the administration of society Know-
ledge and Capacity can make no real and durable progress
1 See Part I. chaps, i. to iv. "Trade Union Structure,"

Trade Unionism and Democracy 845

except by acting on and through the minds of the common
human material which it is desired to improve. It is only
by carrying along with him the " average sensual man," that
even the wisest and most philanthropic reformer, however
autocratic his power, can genuinely change the face of things.
Moreover, not even the wisest of men can be trusted with
that supreme authority which comes from the union of
knowledge, capacity, and opportunity with the power of
untrammelled and ultimate decision. Democracy is an ex-
pedient— perhaps the only practicable expedient — for pre-
venting the concentration in any single individual or in any
single class of what inevitably becomes, when so concentrated,
a terrible engine of oppression. The autocratic emperor,
served by a trained bureaucracy, seems to the Anglo-Saxon
a perilously near approach to such a concentration. If
democracy meant, as early observers imagined, a similar
concentration of Knowledge and Power in the hands of the
numerical majority for the time being, it might easily become
as injurious a tyranny as any autocracy. An actual study
of the spontaneous democracies of Anglo-Saxon workmen,
or, as we suggest, of any other democratic institutions, reveals
the splitting up of this dangerous authority into two parts.
Whether in political or in industrial democracy, though it is
the Citizen who, as Elector or Consumer, ultimately gives
the order, it is the Professional Expert who advises what the
order shall be.1

1 It is here that we discover the answer to Carlyle's question, "How, in
conjunction. with inevitable Democracy, indispensable Sovereignty is to exist :
certainly it is the hugest question ever heretofore propounded to Mankind "
(Past and Present, Book IV. chap. i. p. 311 of 1843 edition). The student of
Austin will probably find, in the industrial democracy of the future, that
Sovereignty, in the old sense, is as hard to discover as it already is in the
political democracies of to-day (see Professor D. G. Ritchie, Darwin and
ffegel, London, 1893). Whatever sphere may be allotted to private ownership
of land and capital, this will no more carry with it uncontrolled power to fix the
conditions of industry, than kingship does of fixing the conditions of citizenship.
In modern conceptions of society the old simple division into Sovereign and
Subject is entirely superseded by a complex differentiation of social structure and
function.

More interesting, perhaps, in the present connection, is Auguste Comte's
famous proposal to separate Social Knowledge from Social Power — to differentiate

846 Trade Union Theory

It is another aspect of this paradox that, in the
democratic state, no man minds his own business. In the
economic sphere this is a necessary consequence of division
of labor ; Robinson Crusoe producing solely for his own
consumption, being the last man who minded nothing but
his own business. The extreme complication brought about
by universal production for exchange in itself implies that
every one works with a view to fulfilling the desires of other
people. The crowding together of dense populations, and
especially the co-operative enterprises which then arise, extend
in every direction this spontaneous delegation to professional
experts of what the isolated individual once deemed " his
own business." Thus, the citizen in a modern municipality no
longer produces his own food or makes his own clothes ; no
longer protects his own life or property ; no longer fetches his
own water; no longer makes his own thoroughfares, or cleans or
lights them when made ; no longer removes his own refuse or
even disinfects his own dwelling. He no longer educates his
own children, or doctors and nurses his own invalids. Trade
Unionism adds to the long list of functions thus delegated
to professional experts the settlement of the conditions on
which the citizen will agree to co-operate in the national
service. In the fully-developed democratic state, the Citizen
will be always minding other people's business. In his
professional occupation he will, whether as brain-worker
or manual laborer, be continually striving to fulfil the desires
of those whom he serves, whilst, as an Elector, in his parish

a class of highly-educated Priests, possessing no authority, from the Admini-
strators, wielding uncontrolled authority under the constant moral influence of this
Spiritual Power. This proposal, though embodied in a fantastic form, seems at
first sight to approximate to that separation between Expert Knowledge and
Ultimate Control which we regard as a necessary condition of Liberty. In reality,
however, it would secure no such separation. The Administrators, highly
educated, specialised, and constantly acting on affairs, would possess both
Knowledge and Power, and would be irresistible. Comte's proposed differentia-
tion is much more that between two separate classes of Experts — the men of
pure science, investigating and discovering, and the practical men of action,
applying to the affairs of daily life the generalisations of science. In democracy,
these two classes of Experts, both absolutely essential to progress, are neither of
them entrusted with ultimate decision.

Trade Unionism and Democracy 847

or his co-operative society, his Trade Union or his political
association, he will be perpetually passing judgment on issues
in which his personal interest is no greater than that of his
fellows.

If, then, we are asked whether democracy, as shown by
an analysis of Trade Unionism, is consistent with Individual
Liberty, we are compelled to answer by asking, What is
Liberty ? If Liberty means every man being his own
master, and following his own impulses, then it is clearly
inconsistent, not so much with democracy or any other
particular form of government, as with the crowding together
of population in dense masses, division of labor, and, as we
think, civilisation itself. What particular individuals, sec-
tions, or classes usually mean by "freedom of contract,"
" freedom of association," or " freedom of enterprise " is free-
dom of opportunity to use the power that they happen to
possess ; that is to say, to compel other less powerful people
to accept their terms. This sort of personal freedom in a
community composed of unequal units is not distinguishable
from compulsion. It is, therefore, necessary to define Liberty
before talking about it, a definition which every man will
frame according to his own view of what is socially desirable.
We ourselves understand by the words " Liberty " or " Free-
dom," not any quantum of natural or inalienable rights, but
such conditions of existence in the community as do, in
practice, result in the utmost possible development of faculty
in the individual human being.1 Now, in this sense demo-
cracy is not only consistent with Liberty, but is, as it seems
to us, the only way of securing the largest amount of it. It
is open to argument whether other forms of government may
not achieve a fuller development of the faculties of particular
individuals or classes. To an autocrat, untrammelled rule over
a whole kingdom may mean an exercise of his individual
faculties, and a development of his individual personality, such
as no other situation in life would afford. An aristocracy, or

1 "Liberty, in fact, means just so far as it is realised, the right man in the
right place." — Sir John Seeley, Lectures and Essay 's, p. 109.

848 Trade Union Theory

government by one class in the interests ot one class, may
conceivably enable that class to develop a perfection in
physical grace or intellectual charm attainable by no other
system of society. Similarly, it might be argued that, where
the ownership of the means of production and the admini-
stration of industry are unreservedly left to the capitalist
class, this " freedom of enterprise " would result in a develop-
ment of faculty among the captains of industry which could
not otherwise be reached. We dissent from all these pro-
positions, if only on the ground that the fullest development
of personal character requires the pressure of discipline
as well as the stimulus of opportunity. But, however un-
trammelled power may affect the character of those who pos-
sess it, autocracy, aristocracy, and plutocracy have all, from
the point of view of the lover of liberty, one fatal defect.
They necessarily involve a restriction in the opportunity for
development of faculty among the great mass of the population.
It is only when the resources of the nation are deliberately
organised and dealt with for the benefit, not of particular indi-
viduals or classes, but of the entire community ; when the
administration of industry, as of every other branch of
human affairs, becomes the function of specialised experts,
working through deliberately adjusted Common Rules ; and
when the ultimate decision on policy rests in no other hands
than those of the citizens themselves, that the maximum
aggregate development of individual intellect and individual
character in the community as a whole can be attained.

For our analysis helps us to disentangle, from the
complex influences on individual development, those
caused by democracy itself. The universal specialisation
and delegation which, as we suggest, democratic insti-
tutions involve, necessarily imply a great increase in
capacity and efficiency, if only because specialisation in
service means expertness, and delegation compels selection.
This deepening and narrowing of professional skill may be
expected, in the fully - developed democratic state, to be
accompanied by a growth in culture of which our present

Trade Unionism and Democracy 849

imperfect organisation gives us no adequate idea. So long
as life is one long scramble for personal gain — still more,
when it is one long struggle against destitution — there is no
free time or strength for much development of the sympa-
thetic, intellectual, artistic, or religious faculties. When the
conditions of employment are deliberately regulated so as to
secure adequate food, education, and leisure to every capable
citizen, the great mass of the population will, for the first
time, have any real chance of expanding in friendship and
family affection, and of satisfying the instinct for knowledge
or beauty. It is an even more unique attribute of demo-
cracy that it is always taking the mind of the individual
off his own narrow interests and immediate concerns, and
forcing him to give his thought and leisure, not to satisfying
his own desires, but to considering the needs and desires of
his fellows. As an Elector — still more as a chosen Repre-
sentative1— in his parish, in his professional association, in his
co-operative society, or in the wider political institutions of
his state, the " average sensual man " is perpetually impelled
to appreciate and to decide issues of public policy. The
working of democratic institutions means, therefore, one
long training in enlightened altruism, one continual weigh-
ing, not of the advantage of the particular act to the
particular individual at the particular moment, but of those
" larger expediencies " on which all successful conduct of social
life depends.

If now, at the end of this long analysis, we try to formu-
late our dominant impression, it is a sense of the vastness and
complexity of democracy itself. Modern civilised states are
driven to this complication by the dense massing of their popu-
lations, and the course of industrial development. The very
desire to secure mobility in the crowd compels the adoption of
one regulation after another, which limit the right of every man
to use the air, the water, the land, and even the artificially
produced instruments of production, in the way that he may
think best. The very discovery of improved industrial
methods, by leading to specialisation, makes manual laborer
VOL. II 31

850 Trade Union Theory

and brain-worker alike dependent on the rest of the com-
munity for the means of subsistence, and subordinates them,
even in their own crafts, to the action of others. In the
world of civilisation and progress, no man can be his own
master. But the very fact that, in modern society, the
individual thus necessarily loses control over his own life,
makes him desire to regain collectively what has become
individually impossible. Hence the irresistible tendency to
popular government, in spite of all its difficulties and dangers.
But democracy is still the Great Unknown. Of its full scope
and import we can yet catch only glimpses. As one depart-
ment of social life after another becomes the subject of careful
examination, we shall gradually attain to a more complete
vision. Our own tentative conclusions, derived from the study
of one manifestation of the democratic spirit, may, we hope,
not only suggest hypotheses for future verification, but also
stimulate other students to carry out original investigations
into the larger and perhaps more significant types of demo-
cratic organisation.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX II1

THE BEARING OF INDUSTRIAL PARASITISM AND THE POLICY OF A
NATIONAL MINIMUM ON THE FREE TRADE CONTROVERSY

THE existence of parasitic trades supplies the critic of inter-
national Free Trade with an argument which has not yet been
adequately met. To the enlightened patriot, ambitious for the
utmost possible development of his country, it has always seemed a
drawback to Free Trade, that it tended, to a greater or lesser extent,
to limit his fellow-countrymen's choice of occupation. Thus, one
community, possessing great mineral wealth, might presently find
a large proportion of its population driven underground ; another
might see itself doomed to become the mere stock- yard and
slaughter-house of the world ; whilst the destiny of a third might be
to have its countryside depopulated, and the bulk of its citizens
engaged in the manufacture, in the slum tenements of great cities,
of cheap boots and ready-made clothing for the whole habitable
globe. To this contention the answer has usually been that the
specialisation of national function, whilst never likely to be carried
to an extreme, was economically advantageous all round. Such a
reply ignores the possibility of industrial parasitism. If unfettered
freedom of trade ensured that each nation would retain the industry
in which its efficiency was highest, and its potentialities were
greatest, this international " division of labor " might be accepted
as the price to be paid for getting every commodity with the mini-
mum of labor. But under unfettered freedom of competition there
is, as we have seen, no such guarantee. Within a trade, one district
may drive all the rest out of the business, not by reason of any
genuine advantage in productive efficiency, but merely because the
workers in the successful district get some aid from the rates or
from other sources. Within a community, too, unless care be

1 See Part III. chap, ui. "The Economic Characteristics of Trade
Unionism."

864 Appendix II

taken to prevent any kind of parasitism, one trade or one process
may flourish and expand at the expense of all the rest, not because
it is favored by natural advantages or acquired capacity, but merely
by reason of some sort of " bounty." Under Free Trade the inter-
national pressure for cheapness is always tending to select, as the
speciality of each nation in the world-market, those of its industries
in which the employers can produce most cheaply. If each trade
were self-supporting, the increased efficiency of the regulated trades
would bring these easily to the top, notwithstanding (or rather, in
consequence of) the relatively high wages, short hours, and good
sanitary conditions enjoyed by their operatives. If, however, the
employers in some trades can obtain labor partially subsisted from
other sources, or if they are free to use up in their service not only
the daily renewed energy, but also the capital value of successive
relays of deteriorating workers, they may well be able to export more
cheaply than the self-supporting trades, to the detriment of these,
and of the community itself. And this, as we have seen, is the
direct result of the very freedom of Individual Bargaining on which
the Free Traders rely. Indeed, if we follow out to its logical con-
clusion the panacea of unlimited freedom of competitive industry
both within the country and without, we arrive at a state of things
in which, out of all the various trades that each community pursues,
those might be " selected " for indefinite expansion, and for the
supply of the world-market, in which the employers enjoyed the
advantage of the greatest bounty; those, for instance, which were
carried on by operatives assisted from other classes, or, still worse,
those supplied with successive relays of necessitous wage-earners
standing at such a disadvantage in the sale of their labor that they
obtained in return wages so low and conditions so bad as to be
positively insufficient to maintain them permanently in health and
efficiency. Instead of a world in which each community devoted
itself to what it could do best, we should get, with the " sweated
trades," a world in which each community did that which reduced
its people to the lowest degradation. Hence the Protectionist is right
when he asserts that, assuming unfettered individual competition
within each community, international free trade may easily tend, not
to a good, but to an exceedingly vicious international division of
labor.

This criticism is not dealt with, so far as we are aware, in any of
the publications of the Cobden Club, nor by the economic defenders
of the Free Trade position. Thus, Professor Bastable, in his lucid
exposition of The Theory of International Trade (2nd edition,
London, 1897), assumes throughout that the prices of commodities

The Free Trade Controversy 865

in the home market, and thus their relative export, will vary accord-
ing to the actual " cost of production," instead of merely according
to their "expenses of production," to the capitalist entrepreneur.
Yet it is evidently not the sum of human efforts and sacrifices
involved in the production that affects the import or export trade,
but simply the expenses that production involves to the capitalist.
This absence of any reference to the possibility of the cheapness
being due to underpaid (because subsidised or deteriorating) labor,
enables Professor Bastable optimistically to infer (p. 18) that "the
rule is that each nation exports those commodities for the pro-
duction of which it is specially suited." Similarly Lord Farrer, in
The State in its Relation to Trade (London, 1883), when stating
the argument against Protection, simply assumes (p. 134) that the
industry for which the country is specially suited pays higher wages
than others. "One thing is certain, viz. that we cannot buy the
French or Swiss ribbons without making and selling something which
we can make better and cheaper than ribbons, and which consequently
brings more profit to our manufacturer, and better wages to our
workmen? And Mr. B. R. Wise, seeking in his Industrial Freedom
to revise and restate the Free Trade argument in the light of
practical experience, is driven to warn his readers that " it cannot be
too often repeated that the competition of abstract political economy
— that competition through which alone political economy has any
pretension to the character of a science — is a competition between
equal units," . . . and nothing could be further from the truth than
to suppose that " free competition " in the labor market bore any
resemblance to the competition between equal units that the current
expositions of Free Trade theory required.1

But though the existence of parasitic trades knocks the bottom
out of the argument for laisser faire, it adds no weight to the case
for a protective tariff. What the protectionist is concerned about
is the contraction of some of his country's industries ; the evil
revealed by our analysis is the expansion of certain others. The
advocate of a protective tariff aims at excluding imports ; the
opponent of "sweating," on the other hand, sees with regret the
rapid growth of particular exports, which imply the extension within
the country of its most highly subsidised or most parasitic industries.
Hence, whatever ingenious arguments may be found in favor of
a protective tariff,2 such a remedy fails altogether to cope with this

1 B. R. Wise, Industrial Freedom (London, 1882), pp. 13, 15.

2 For any adequate presentment of the case against international free trade,
the student must turn to Germany or the United States, notably to Friedrich List,
The National System of Political Economy, published in Germany in 1841, and

VOL. II 3 K

866 Appendix II

particular evil. If the expansion of the industries which England
pursues to the greatest economic advantage — say, for instance, coal
mining and shipbuilding, textile manufacture and machine-making
— is being checked, this is not because coal and ships, textiles and
machinery are being imported into England from abroad, but because
other less advantageous industries within England itself, by reason of
being favored with some kind of bounty, have secured the use of
some of the nation's brains and capital, and some of its export
trade. This diversion would clearly not be counteracted by putting
an import duty on the small and exceptional amounts of coal and
shipping, textiles and machinery that we actually import, for this
would leave unchecked the expansion of the subsidised trades,
which, if the subsidy were only large enough, might go on absorbing
more and more of the nation's brains and capital, and more and
more of its export trade. To put it concretely, England might
find its manufactures and its exports composed, in increasing
proportions, of slop clothing, cheap furniture and knives, and the
whole range of products of the sweated trades, to the detriment of
its present staple industries of cotton and coal, ships and machinery,
In the same way, every other country might find its own manufac-
tures and its own exports increasingly made up of the products of
its own parasitic trades. In short, the absolute exclusion by each
country of the imports competing with its own products would
not, any more than Free Trade itself, prevent the expansion within the
country of those industries which afforded to its wage-earners the
worst conditions of employment.1

A dim inkling of this result of international competition is at the
back of recent proposals for the international application of the
Device of the Common Rule. During the past seven years states-
men have begun to feel their way towards an international uniformity
of factory legislation, so as to make all cotton mills, for instance,
work identical hours, and workmen are aspiring to an international

translated by Sampson Lloyd (London, 1885) and the works of H. C. Carey.
The arguments of List and Carey were popularised in America by such writers as
Professor R. E. Thompson, Political Economy with Especial Reference to the In-*,
dustrial History of Nations (Philadelphia, 1882), H. M. Hoyt, Protection and
Free Trade the Scientific Validity and Economic Operation of Defensive Dtitics
in the United States, 3rd edition (New York, 1886); whilst another line has
been taken by Francis Bowen, American Political Economy. The whole
position has been restated by Professor Patten, in The Economic Basis of
Protection (Philadelphia, 1890), and other suggestive works which deserve more
attention in England.

1 It is unnecessary to notice the despairing suggestion that a protective duty
should be placed on the products of the sweated trades themselves. But these,

The Free Trade Controversy 867

Trade Unionism, by means of which, for example, the coalminers,
cotton-operatives, glass-workers, or dock-laborers of the world might
simultaneously move for better conditions. If, indeed, we could
arrive at an International Minimum of education and sanitation,
leisure and wages, below which no country would permit any section
of its manual workers to be employed in any trade whatsoever,
industrial parasitism would be a thing of the past. But inter-
nationalism of this sort — a "zollverein based on a universal
Factory Act and Fair Wages clause " — is obviously Utopian. What
is not so generally understood, either by statesmen or by Trade
Unionists, is that international uniformity of conditions within a
particular trade, which is all that is ever contemplated, would do
little or nothing to remedy the evil of industrial parasitism. In
this matter, as in others, a man's worst foes are those of his own
household. Let us imagine, for instance, that, by an international
factory act, all the cotton mills in the world were placed upon a
uniform basis of hours and child-labor, sanitation and precautions
against accidents. Let us carry the uniformity even a stage
further, and imagine what is impossible, an international uniformity
of wage in all cotton mills. All this would in no way prevent a
diversion of the nation's brains and capital away from cotton manu-
facture to some other industry, in which, by reason of a subsidy or
bounty, the employer stood at a greater relative advantage towards
the home or foreign consumer. The country having the greatest
natural advantages and technical capacity for cotton manufacture
would doubtless satisfy the great bulk of the world's demand for
cotton goods. But, if there existed within that same country any
trades carried on by parasitic labor, or assisted by any kind of
bounty, it would obtain less of the cotton trade of the world than
would otherwise be the case ; the marginal business in cotton would
tend to be abandoned to the next most efficient country, in order that
some brains and capital might, to the economic loss of the nation and
of the world, take advantage of the subsidy or bounty.1 We see,

as we have seen (if they are really parasitic industries like the wholesale
clothing manufacture, and not merely self-supporting but unprogressive industries
like English agriculture), will usually be exporting trades, not subject to the
competition of foreign imports. Merely to put an import duty on the odds and
ends of foreign-made clothing or cheap knives that England imports would in
no way strengthen the strategic position, as against the employer, of the
sweated outworkers of East London or Sheffield, or render the respectable young
women of Leeds less eager to be taken on at a pocket-money wage in the
well-appointed clothing factories of that city.

1 This hypothetical case is, we believe, not unlike the actual condition of the
cotton manufacture in the United Kingdom at the present time, in spite of the
absence of international uniformity.

868 Appendix II

therefore, that even an international uniformity of conditions
within a particular trade would not, in face of industrial parasitism
at home, prevent the most advantageously situated country from
losing a portion of this uniformly regulated trade. The parasitic
trades have, in fact, upon the international distribution of industry,
an effect strictly analogous to that which they have upon the home
trade. By ceding as a bribe to the consumer the bounty or subsidy
which they receive, they cause the capital, brains, and labor of the
world to be distributed, in the aggregate, in a less productive way
than would otherwise have been the case.

We can now see that the economists of the middle of the century
only taught, and the Free Trade statesmen only learnt, one-half of
their lesson. They were so much taken up with the idea of remov-
ing the fiscal barriers between nations that they failed to follow up
the other part of their own conception, the desirability of getting rid
of bounties of every kind. M'Culloch and Nassau Senior, Cobden
and Bright, realised clearly enough that the grant of money aid to a
particular industry out of the rates or taxes enabled that industry to
secure more of the nation's brains and capital, and more of the
world's trade, than was economically advantageous. They even
understood that the use of unpaid slave labor constituted just such
a bounty as a rate in aid of wages. But they never clearly recog-
nised that the employment of children, the overwork of women, or
the payment of wages insufficient for the maintenance of the opera-
tive in full industrial efficiency stood, economically, on the same
footing. If the object of " Free Trade " is to promote such a dis-
tribution of capital, brains, and labor among countries and among
industries, as will result in the greatest possible production, with the
least expenditure of human efforts and sacrifices, the factory legisla-
tion of Robert Owen and Lord Shaftesbury formed as indispensable
a part of the Free Trade movement as the tariff reforms of Cobden
and Bright. "During that period," wrote the Duke of Argyll of
the nineteenth century,1 "two great discoveries have been made
in the Science of Government : the one is the immense advantage
of abolishing restrictions upon Trade; the other is the absolute
necessity of imposing restrictions on labor. . . . And so the
Factory Acts, instead of being excused as exceptional, and pleaded
for as justified only under extraordinary conditions, ought to be
recognised as in truth the first legislative recognition of a great
Natural Law, quite as important as Freedom of Trade, and which,
like this last, was yet destined to claim for itself wider and wider
application."

1 The Reign of Law (London, 1867), pp. 367, 399.

The Free Trade Controversy 869

Seen in this light, the proposal for the systematic enforcement,
throughout each country, of its own National Minimum of educa-
tion, sanitation, leisure, and wages, becomes a necessary completion
of the Free Trade policy. Only by enforcing such a minimum on
all its industries can a nation prevent the evil expansion of its
parasitic trades being enormously aggravated by its international
trade. And there is no advantage in this National Minimum being
identical or uniform throughout the world. Paradoxical as it may
seem to the practical man, a country enforcing a relatively high
National Minimum would not lose its export trade to other countries
having lower conditions, any more, indeed, than a country in which
a high Standard of Life spontaneously exists, loses its trade to others
in which the standard is lower. If the relatively high National
Minimum caused a proportionate increase in the productive efficiency
of the community, it would obviously positively strengthen its com-
mand of the world market. But even if the level of the National
Minimum were, by democratic pressure, forced up farther or more
rapidly than was compensated for by an equivalent increase in
national efficiency, so that the expenses of production to the
capitalist employer became actually higher than those in other
countries, this would not stop (or even restrict the total of) our
exports. " General low wages," emphatically declare the econo-
mists, " never caused any country to undersell its rivals, nor did
general high wages ever hinder it from doing so." x So long
as we continued to desire foreign products, and therefore to import
them in undiminished quantity, enough exports would continue to
be sent abroad to discharge our international indebtedness. We
should, it is true, not get our tea and foodstuffs, or whatever else we
imported, so cheaply as we now do ; the consumer of foreign goods
would find, indeed, that these had risen in price, just as English
goods had. If we ignore the intervention of currency, and imagine
foreign trade to be actually conducted, as it is virtually, by a system
of barter, we shall understand both this rise of price of foreign goods,
and the continued export of English goods, even when they are all
dearer than the corresponding foreign products. For the English
importing firms, having somehow to discharge their international
indebtedness, and finding no English products which they can
export at a profit, will be driven to export some even at a loss — a
loss which, like the item of freight or any other expense of carrying
on their business, they will add to the price charged to the con-
sumer of foreign imports. They will, of course, select for export

1 J. S. Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Book III. chap. xxv. § 4,
p. 414 of 1865 edition.

8 70 Appendix II

those English products on which the loss is least — that is to suy,
those in which England stands at relatively the greatest advantage,
or, what comes to the same thing, the least disadvantage. There-
fore, if the rise in the expense of English production were uniform,
not only the total, but also the distribution of our exports would
remain unaffected. The foreign consumer, by reason of the cheap-
ness of production of his own goods, will then be getting English-
made goods at a lower price than would otherwise be the case — it
may be, even a lower price than the Englishman is buying them
at in his own country — just as the Englishman at the present time
buys American products in London at the comparatively low level
of English prices, and sometimes actually cheaper than they are sold
at in New York. For this process of exporting at an apparent loss,
as a set -off against a profitable import trade, actually takes place,
now in one country, now in another.1 It sometimes happens that
the same firm of merchants both exports and imports : more usually,
however, the compensatory process is performed through the banking
houses, and manifests itself in those fluctuations of the foreign
exchanges, which, though clear enough to the eye of the practical
financier and the economist, shroud all the processes of interna-
tional exchange from the ordinary man by a dense veil of paradox.

The practical check to a rise in the National Minimum comes,
indeed, not from the side of international trade, but, as we have
already explained, from the home taxpayer and the home consumer.
Every rise in the National Minimum not compensated for by
some corresponding increase in the efficiency with which the
national industry was carried on would imply an increase in the
number of the unemployable, and thus in the Poor Rate or other
provision for their maintenance ; and every increase in the expenses
of production would be resented as a rise in price by the bulk of
the population. The lowlier grades of labor, employing a majority
of the citizens, would clearly benefit by the improvement which the
rise would cause in their own conditions. Other grades of pro-
ducers, including the brain-working directors of industry, would find
their own "rent" of specialised or otherwise exceptional faculty
undiminished, even if they had to pay away more of it in taxes and
higher prices. The great and growing army of officials on fixed
incomes would loudly complain of the increased cost of living,
which would presently be met by a rise in salaries. But the real

1 When, for instance, the export of gold is prohibited, or when all the gold
has already been sent away ; or when, for any reason, less expensive ways of dis-
charging a balance of indebtedness do not exist. — See Goschen's Theory of the
Foreign Exchanges, or Clare's A. B.C. of the Foreign Exchanges.

The Free Trade Controversy 871

sufferers would be the rentier class, existing unproductively on their
investments. These persons would be hit both ways : they would
find themselves, by increased taxation, saddled with most of the
cost of the unemployable, and by higher prices, charged with at least
their share of the increase in the nation's wage-bill. Such a practical
diminution in the net income of the dividend-receiving classes would,
from Ricardo down to Cairnes, have been supposed to correct itself
by a falling off in their rate of saving, and therefore, as it was
supposed, in the rate of accumulation of additional capital. This,
as we have seen, can no longer be predicted, even if we cannot yet
bring ourselves to believe, with Sir Josiah Child and Adam Smith,
that the shrinking of incomes from investments would actually
quicken production and stimulate increased accumulation. What it
might conceivably do would be to drive the rentier class to live
increasingly abroad, with indirect consequences which have to be
considered.

We have hitherto left on one side the possible migration of
capital from a country, in which the National Minimum had been
unduly raised, to others in which labor could be hired more cheaply.
This is hindered, to an extent which we do not think is sufficiently
appreciated, by the superior amenity of English life to the able
business man. So long as our captains of industry prefer to live in
England, go abroad with reluctance even for high salaries, and return
to their own country as soon as they possibly can, it will pay the
owners of capital to employ it where this high business talent is
found. The danger to English industrial supremacy would seem to
us, therefore, to lie in any diminution of the attractiveness of life in
England to the able brain-working Englishman. An increase in the
taxation of this class, or a rise in the price of the commodities they
consume, is not of great moment, provided that facilities exist for them
to make adequate incomes ; and these rewards of exceptional talent
are, it will be remembered, in no way diminished by the Device of
the Common Rule. But any loss of public consideration, or any
migration of their rentier friends or relations, might conceivably
weaken their tie to England, and might, therefore, need to be counter-
acted by some increase in their amenities or rewards.1 Our own
opinion is that this increased amenity, and also this increased reward
of exceptional ability, would actually be the result of a high National
Minimum. It is difficult for the Englishman of to-day to form any

1 It would be interesting to inquire how far the fatal "absenteeism" of
Ireland's men of genius has been caused or increased by the reduction of Dublin
from the position of a wealthy and intellectual capital to that of a second-rate
provincial town.

872 Appendix II

adequate idea of how much pleasanter English life would be if we
were, once for all, rid of the slum and sweating den, and no class of
workers found itself condemned to grinding poverty ; if science had
so transformed our unhealthy trades that no section of the popula-
tion suffered unnecessarily from accident or disease ; and if every
grade of citizens was rapidly rising in health, intelligence, and
character.

It follows that each community is economically free, without feat
of losing its foreign trade, to fix its own National Minimum, accord-
ing to its own ideas of what is desirable, its own stage of industrial
development, and its own customs of life. The course and extent
of international trade — if we imagine all fiscal barriers to be removed,
and all bounties to be prevented — is, in fact, determined exclusively
by the desires of the world of consumers, and the actual faculties
and opportunities of the producers in the different countries ; not
by the proportion in which each nation chooses to share its National
Dividend between producers and property -owners. Each com-
munity may, therefore, work out its own salvation in the way it
thinks best. The nation eager for progress, constantly raising its
National Minimum, will increase in productive efficiency, and steadily
rise in health and wealth. But it will not thereby interfere with the
course chosen by others. The country which honors Individual
Bargaining may reject all regulation whatsoever, and let trade after
trade become parasitic ; but it will not, by its settling down into
degradation, gain any aggregate increase in international trade, or
really undermine its rivals.1 Finally, the nation which prefers to
be unprogressive, but which yet keeps all its industries self-support-
ing, may, if circumstances permit its stagnation, retain its customary
organisation, and yet continue to enjoy the same share in inter-
national commer;e that it formerly possessed.

1 Let us suppose, for instance, that the capitalists in the United States so far
strengthen their position as to put down all combinations of the wage-earners,
annul all attempts at factory legislation, and, in fact, prohibit every restriction on
Individual Bargaining as a violation of the Constitution. The result would
doubtless be a proletarian revolution. But assuming this not to occur, or to be
suppressed, and the rule of the Trusts to be unchecked, we should expect to see
the conditions of employment in each trade fall to subsistence level, and with the
advance of population, stimulated by this hopeless poverty, even below the
standard necessary for continued efficiency. The entire continent of America
might thus become parasitic, and successive generations of capitalists, served by
a hierarchy of brain-working agents, might use up for their profit successive
generations of degenerate manual toilers, until these were reduced to the level of
civilisation of the French peasants described by La Bruyere. But the total inter-
national trade of America would not be thereby increased ; on the contrary, it
would certainly be diminished as the faculties of the nation declined.

APPENDIX III1

SOME STATISTICS BEARING ON THE RELATIVE MOVEMENTS OF THE
MARRIAGE AND BIRTH-RATES, PAUPERISM, WAGES, AND THE
PRICE OF WHEAT.

IN connection with the relation of the number of births to the
number of marriages, and the connection of one or both of these
with the price of wheat, the amount of pauperism, or the rate of
wages, the following diagram and table may be of interest.

We have placed side by side the number of persons, per thousand
of the population in England and Wales, who were married or born
in each year from 1846 to 1895 inclusive; the number simul-
taneously in receipt of Poor Law relief on one day in each of the
years 1849 to 1895 inclusive; and the average recorded price of
wheat per imperial quarter for each year from 1846 to 1896. These
are the ordinary statistics of the Registrar-General's Reports. To
them we have added the weekly wages from 1846 to 1896 actually
paid to the engineman at a small colliery in the Lothians, taken
from the colliery books. Where the rate was altered during any
year, the average of the fifty-two weekly rates of that year has been
calculated. We have also added columns showing the Trade Union
Standard Rate for Stonemasons in Glasgow from 1851 to 1896,
averaged in the same manner, and that for Compositors in London
from 1846 to 1896, the latter (the "Stab" or time wages) changing
so rarely that it has been taken as constant for each year. And in
order to give some rough idea of the amount of real wages, to which
these money wages have been equivalent, we have in each case
reckoned out the " wages in wheat," the amount of wheat that the
Lothians Engineman, the Glasgow Stonemason, and the London
Compositor could have purchased each year with a full week's wages.
This does not, of course, express the " real wages " with any precision,

1 See Part III. chap. i. "The Verdict of the Economists."

874 Appendix III

for whilst the price of wheat has moved predominantly in one
direction, the amount paid by the workmen for meat and house-rent
has certainly moved considerably in the other. It must be re-
membered, too, that no allowance has been made for " lost time,"
periods of unemployment, and other deductions. The wages of the
Engineman are practically continuous throughout the year. The
Stonemason, on the other hand, is necessarily idle in the months of
frost, and probably loses more, even in the summer, by deductions
of one kind and another, than he gains by "overtime." The
London Compositor may be either employed with great constancy,
or be intermittently out of work. It does not seem possible to
ascertain whether these irregularities are greater or less than in
past times. Nor can it be assumed with certainty that the
wages at different periods represent a payment for the same labor.
The work of the Stonemason and the Compositor is, perhaps, not
essentially different to-day from that of the corresponding classes
fifty years ago ; the higher standard of speed and intensity now
required being set off against the reduction of the weekly hours.
On the other hand, the development of steam engines, and the in-
creased speed and complexity of their working, have transformed
the Engineman into a skilled and responsible mechanic, who is now
claiming to be a certificated professional.

The diagram and table of figures have been prepared by
Mr. F. W. Gallon :—

Persons married

per 1000 of the

population living

in England and

[To face page 874.]

gland and Wales,
and Wales.

purchasable with the weekly wages of a London
e Union Rate.

urchasable with the weekly wages of a Glasgow
e Union Rate.

urchasable with the actual weekly earnings of an

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APPENDIX IV

A SUPPLEMENT TO THE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF TRADE UNIONISM

THE following list of publications bearing on Trade Unionism and
combinations of workmen has no special connection with the present
work, and must be regarded merely as a supplement to the list, forty-
four pages in length, which formed Appendix VI. of the History of
Trade Unionism. It has been prepared in the same manner as the
original list. It accordingly omits all Parliamentary Papers, for
which the student should consult the excellent classified catalogues
issued by Messrs. P. S. King and Son of Westminster ; it omits all
local histories and records mentioned in the bibliography appended
to vol. i. of The Gild Merchant by Dr. Gross ; and it makes no
attempt to include ordinary economic works on the one hand, or
trade histories on the other. As before, we have given the reference
number in the British Museum catalogue, whenever we have been
able to find a copy of the work in that invaluable storehouse, and
we have mentioned other libraries only when no copy could be dis-
covered at the British Museum.

For the present work, even more than for the History of Trade
Unionism^ we have had to go, not to any regularly published books,
but to the voluminous internal literature of the Trade Unions them-
selves, of which hundreds of publications are issued annually. These
are still seldom collected or preserved by public libraries, though
they afford most valuable material to the student of sociology. The
British Library of Political Science (10 Adelphi Terrace, Strand,
London; director, Professor W. A. S. Hewins) has now been established
for the express purpose of collecting these and other materials for
sociological inquiry. Our own considerable collection of manuscript
extracts and printed documents relating to Trade Unionism, com-
paratively few of which are mentioned in the following list, has now
been deposited in this library, where it can be consulted by any
student

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ABERDEEN, Papers relating to the Trades of, 1777-1818. Aberdeen Pub. Lib.

Report on the affairs of the Guildry of. Aberdeen, 1836. 8vo.

Aberdeen Pub. Lib.
AGRICULTURAL and General Laborers, Federal Union of. Report to the

Trade Societies and general public of the United Kingdom. London, [1874].

8vo. Brit. Lib. Pol. Science.

AKROYD, EDWARD. On the present attitude of Political Parties. London

[Leeds printed}, 187 4. 8vo. 8138 g.

ALLEN, THOMAS. The history and antiquities of London, Westminster, South-

wark and parts adjacent. London, 4 vols. 8vo. 1827-1829. 2065 a.

ANSIAUX, M. Heures de travail et salaires, etc. Paris, 1896. 8vo.

08276 k. i.

Rapport sur la journee de huit heures de travail. Societe d'etudes sociales

et politiques. Bruxelks, 1897. 8vo. Brit. Lib. Pol. Science.

ANSTIE, J. [Chairman to the General Wool Meeting in the year 1788]. Obser-
vations on the importance and necessity of introducing improved machinery
into the Woollen Manufactory, etc. London, 1803. 8vo. 1138 i. 2 (2).

APPEAL, an, to Manufacturers on the present state of Trade, etc. Birmingham,
1795. 8vo. T. 1467 (16).

an, to the Editors of the Times in behalf of the Working Classes, etc.

London, 1845. 8vo. 1390 g. 21.

APPLEGARTH, R. Compulsory attendance at school. Reprinted from the
Sheffield Independent. {London, 1874?] 8vo. Brit. Lib. Pol. Science.

APPRENTICE LAWS. Resolutions of the Master Manufacturers and Tradesmen
of the cities of London and Westminster on the Statute 5 Eliz. c. 4. {Lon-
don, 1814.] fol. 1882 d. 2.

ARBITRATION between the North-Eastern Railway Company and their work-
men at Newcastle-on-Tyne and Gateshead, December 1889, Shorthand
notes of the. R. Spence Watson, arbitrator. MS., 213 pp. fol.

Newcastle-on-Tyne Lib.

ASHLEY, W. J. The Railroad Strike of 1894. [American Economic Associa-
tion.] Cambridge, Mass., 1895. 8vo. Brit. Lib. Pol. Science.

ASHWORTH, HENRY. An inquiry into the origin, progress, and results of the
strike of the Operative Cotton-spinners of Preston. Manchester, 1838.

Foxwell Coll.

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INDEX

ABATTOIRS, municipal, ii. 788
Aberdeen, combinations in, 336
Abinger, Lord, 367
Abraham, May (Mrs. Tennant), 329,

350

Absentee employers, 296

Abstinence, ii. 623

Accident benefit, 152, 170

Accidents, long indifference to, 355 ;
working rules against, 358 ; lead to
agitation for Employers' Liability,
368 ; frequency of, 374, 376 ; com-
pensation for, 378, 388, 390 ; inquiry
into, 378, 384, 390

Accumulation of capital, causes influ-
encing the, ii. 610-632, 871

Accumulative vote in Coalminers' con-
ferences, 45 ; at Trade Union Con-
gress, 277 ; absence of, in Federation
of Engineering Trades, ii. 523

Act of God, 356, 379

Activities in relation to wants, ii. 697,
704

Acton, Lord, 59

Actuarial difficulties of competing
unions, 113 ; increased by Direct
Legislation, 61, 115; affected by
legal position of Trade Unionism,
154 ; not yet properly studied, 156

Administration, at first by whole body
of members, 3 ; in times of war by
secret committees, 9 ; by general
mass meetings, 10 ; by a governing
branch, 12 ; by specialised officers,
1 6, 27 ; by a Cabinet, 30, 39, 43 ;
by a Representative Executive, 47 ;
need for specialisation of, 59 ; pro-
gressive centralisation of, 88-103;
function of the branch in, 100

Admiralty dockyards, ii. 554 ; analogy
to Wage Fund of, 605 ; minimum
wage of, 775

Adulteration Acts, ii. 734

Aged, Trade Union provision for the,
152-172 ; allowed to work below
Standard Rate, 165 ; compulsory in-
surance for, objected to, ii. 529 ;
pensions for, not objected to, 827

Agricultural land, exhaustion of, ii. 752

Agriculture, excluded from Workmen's
Compensation Act, 388 ; yearly
hirings in, 431 ; supplied idea of
Wage Fund, ii. 605 ; decay of, 761 ;
a Poor Law industry, 788

Alexander the Coppersmith, ii. 564

Alien immigrants, desire for exclusion
of, 252 ; effect of, ii. 744

Allan, William, no, 133, 134, 167,
170

Alliances, the Birmingham, ii. 577, 665,
806

Altrincham Stonemasons, 78

"Amalgamated," for societies so
termed, see under the respective
trades

A malgamated Engineers' Month ly Jour-
nal, 133; ii. 514, 515, 524, 563

Amalgamation, attractiveness of, 109 ;
in the building trades, 109 ; among
the Coalminers, 109 ; among the
Clothworkers, 109 ; among the En-
gineers, 1 10 ; difficulties as to basis
of, in; objections to, no, 128;
gradual differentiation of, from federa-
tion, 129-141 ; of trade and friendly
benefits, 157

America, early use of Referendum in, 19 ;
boot and shoe factories in, 398, 413 ;
trusts in, 448 ; ii. 582, 709 ; nail
mills in, 754 ; possible future of, 872

Andrew, .Samuel, 449

Annual election, of officers, 16 ; advo-
cated as democratic, 36 ; leads to
permanence of tenure, 16, 50 ;

QO2

Index

abandoned, 40 ; of executive com-
mittee causes weakness, 17

Annual hirings, 431 ; relation of, to
Wage Fund, ii. 618

Ansiaux, Maurice, 324

Appenzell, 3

Apprenticeship, ii. 454-481 ; literature
as to, 454 ; to the journeyman, 455 ;
custom of patrimony with regard to,
460, 478 ; statute of, 454 ; connection
of, with Doctrine of Vested Interests,
563 ; effect of limitation of, on com-
petition, 579 ; economic effects of, 706

Arbitration, Part II. ch. iii. p. 222 ;
out of place in questions of interpre-
tation, 183 ; character of, 222 ; scope
of term, 223 ; assumptions of, 230 ;
in iron trade, 231, 234; in coal-
mining, 234 ; compulsory, 244 ; in
Victorian and New Zealand law, 246;
ii. 814 ; operatives object to, 228 ;
employers object to, 227 ; on restric-
tion of boy-labor, ii. 484 ; in de-
marcation disputes, 521, 522 ; in
railway service, 776 ; future scope
for, 814. See Joint Committees and
Boards

Argyll, Duke of, ii. 868

Arlidge, Dr. J. T., 358

Armstrong's Engineering Works (Els-
wick), 104, 130 ; ii. 457, 777

Artel, the, ii. 808

Artificial changes, character of, ii. 560

Ashley, Professor W. J. , 5

Ashton, Thomas, secretary Oldham
Cotton-spinners, 199, 201

Asking ticket, 438

Assessmentism, vice of, 156

Association of Producers, 402 ; ii. 811 ;
of employers and employed to restrict
output, ii. 577

Assumptions of arbitrators, 230 ; of
Trade Unionism, vol. ii. Part. II. ch.
xiii. pp. 559-599

Atlantic liner, ii. 509, 761

Austin, John, ii. 845

Australian coal, ii. 741 ; wool, 742

Austria, accident insurance in, 382,
385 » 39O ; small master system in,
414

Autocracy, relation of Trade Unionism
to, ii. 807

Ayrshire Coalminers, 447

BABBAGE, C., 318; ii. 724, 726
Baernreither, Dr. J., 89
Bagman, spirit of the, ii. 581

Bain, E., 336

Bakers, an Irish national union of, 87 ;
Trade Union membership among,
287 ; insist on time work, 287 ; not
to work in any newly-opened under-
ground bakehouse, 360 ; support of,
by public opinion, ii. 535

Balfour, Rt. Hon. Arthur, ii. 538
— Kt. Hon. Gerald, ii. 536

Ball, John, 394

Ballot, not used by early trade clubs,
7 ; among Northumberland Coal-
miners, 34 ; required before a strike,
41, 62 ; among engineers, also before
closing strike, 96 ; suggested for
"contracting out," 373

Banfield, T. C, ii. 618

Bankruptcy, liability to, under Direct
Legislation, 23 ; as result of rivalry
between unions, 113; under stress
of bad trade or a prolonged strike,
155 ; difficulty of employers', in
accident cases, 389

Barge-builders, ii. 509

Barnes, George, 133 ; ii. 524, 823

Basketmakers, piecework lists of, 283 ;
apprenticeship among, ii. 462 ; pro-
tection of employers by, 579

Basle, municipal insurance against un-
employment at, 1 60

Bastable, Professor C. F., ii. 864

Batley, ii. 672

Beach, ii. 510

Rt. Hon. Sir Michael Hicks-, ii.

534

Beamers, wages of, 105 ; type of Trade
Unionism required by, 106 ; federal
relations of, 258 ; strategic position
of, ii. 478 ; exclusion of women by,
498. See also Cotton Operatives

Becher, Rev. J. T., 14

Bedstead manufacture, ii. 578, 741,

747 •

Beehive, the, 338 ; ii. 587, 588

Beesly, Professor E. S., 157, 159, 160 ;
"'• 587, 853

Belfast, growth of Trade Unionism in,
87 ; overlap in, ii. 518; Engineers, 96

Bell horses, 305

Benefits, evil of confusing friendly and
dispute, 94 ; successful administration
of, by Boilermakers, 99 ; need for
jury system, loo ; variety of, 105,
152; proposals to raise, 112, 116;
rivalry in amount of, 113, 115;
practice of new unions with regard
to, 153; insecurity of, 154, 159;

Index

903

actuarial criticism of, 155 ; use of, in
Trade Unionism, 158 ; fundamental
purpose of, 161 ; adjustment of, for
members taken over, ii. 526 ; objec-
tion to any State competition with,
529 ; lying-in, 638, 642 ; future of,
826

Bentham, Jeremy, ii. 567

Bernard, T. N., ii. 611

Berne, municipal insurance against un-
employment at, 1 60

Bertram, Anton, 246 ; ii. 815

Besant, Annie, ii. 638

Bibliography, ii. 878-900

Bimetallism at Trade Union Congress,
271

Birmingham, alliances at, ii. 577, 665,
806; Bedstead Makers, 578; Flint
Glass Makers, 802 ; Pearl Button-
makers, 395 ; ii. 463, 498 ; Wire-
weavers, 564

Birmingham Daily Post, the, ii. 578

Birrell, Augustine, 366

Birth-rate, ii. 636-643 ; in England for
past thirty years, 639 ; in France,
636. See Appendix III.

Birtwistle, Thomas, 196, 310

Blackburn Beamers, Twisters, and
Drawers, ii. 499

Blacklegging by rival Trade Unions,
120 ; by women, ii. 497, 499, 505

Blackstone, ii. 477

Bladesmiths, ii. 480

Blanc, Louis, ii. 570

Blatchford, R. P., 36

Bleachers, sick pay of, 161

Blochairn Works, ii. 494

Blockmakers, ii. 509

Blockprinters, ii. 460, 462

Board of Trade (including Labor De-
partment and Labour Gazette), 105,
156, 175, 186, 187, 192, 203, 209,
243, 256, 283, 285, 286, 332, 373,
398, 408 ; ii. 495, 499, 544, 584, 594,
777, 798, 811

Boat-builders, ii. 509

Bodiker, Dr. T., 366

Bohm-Bawerk, E. von, ii. 648, 673

Boilermakers, palatial offices of, at
Newcastle, 17 ; mode of electing
executive, 18; description of union of,
28, 99 ; change of constitution of, 31,
49 ; foreign branches of, 8 1 ; at-
tempted Scottish secession from, 82 ;
national agreements of, 97 ; clear
distinction between friendly and dis-
pute benefits among, 99 ; type of

Trade Unionism desired by, 108,
171 ; proposed inclusion of, with
engineers, no; wealth of, 108, 117 ;
inclusion of holders-up among, 1 28 ;
in federal union with other trades,
132; collective agreements of, 176;
machinery for Collective Bargaining
among, 204 ; object to arbitration,
228 ; system of fines among, 208 ;
refuse to work with non-unionists,
215 ; desire certificates of efficiency,
252 ; disinclination for legislation,
255j 263 ; work either piece or time,
287, 291, 300; Trade Union mem-
bership of, 287 ; relations to helpers,
291, 296 ; by-laws of, 300 ; indiffer-
ence of, to Normal Days, 342 ; re-
quire certificate of safety of oil tanks,
358 ; encourage machinery by allow-
ances, 410 ; regulation of apprentice-
ship by, ii. 456, 463, 470, 480 ; cases
of overlap of, 509 ; demarcation
agreements of, 520 ; position of, in
Federation of Engineering 'Trades,
523 ; rely mainly on Collective Bar-
gaining, 562 ; extreme fluctuations
in earnings of, 583 ; high wages of,

593

Bologna, insurance against unemploy-
ment at, 160

Bolton, concentration of cotton trade
round about, 258 ; Bleachers and
Dyers, 161 ; Cotton-spinners, 41, 92,
125, 312; ii. 729; Ironfounders, 72,
145 ; Stonemasons, 305

Bonus, system of, 297 ; ii. 551, 552

Bookbinders, declare rules unalterable,
25 ; obtain eight hours' day in Lon-
don, 131, 352 ; need for federal rela-
tions with compositors, 131 ; work
either piece or time, 287 ; Trade
Union membership of, 287 ; hours of
labor of, 336, 352 ; ancient drinking
habits of, 327

Boot and Shoe Operatives, branches
governed by tumultuous mass meet-
ings, 10 ; constitution of union of,
47 » 5° 5 object to work being sent
into the country, 78 ; national agree-
ments of, 97, 185-192 ; declared ob-
jects of, 147, 252 ; joint committees
and local boards of, 185-192 ; non-
unionists among, 209 ; political ob-
jects of, 252 ; insist on piecework,
286, 398 ; Trade Union membership
of, 286 ; serious friction among, over
machinery and the team system, 396-

904

Index

406 ; strike against sewing-machine,
393 ; claim whole value of product,
402 ; different classes of, 418 ; evolu-
tion of, from hand shoemakers, 418 ;
earnings of, 400, 406 ; employment
of boys among, 400 ; policy of, in
times of depression, 443 ; attempt to
limit boy-labor, ii. 483-487 ; compul-
sory character of collective agreements
of, 533 ; objection of, to home work,
540 ; to small masters, 548 ; effect of
Common Rules of, 549, 727. See
also Shoemakers

Booth, Charles, xiv, 433, 434 ; ii. 529,
557, 589, 642, 722, 750, 757, 766, 827

Borgeaud, C., 19

Boroughs, disfranchisement of, ii. 569

Bounty, ii. 749-760, 767

Bo wen, Francis, ii. 618

Box-club of Woolcombers, 162

Boycott of non-unionists, 29, 73, 75, 78,
80, 86, 121, 207, 213, 215, 407 ; ii.
458, 467, 475, 481, 483, 489, 508,

5i9» 533, 562, 707

Boy - labor, uneconomic nature of,
400 ; attempt to restrict, ii. 482-489 ;
Lord James's award as to, 485 ; con-
nection of limitation of, with Doctrine
of Supply and Demand, 573 ; econo-
mic effect of limiting, 704-715, 768 ;
relation of educational reforms to,
769; future of, 8n

Boyle, Sir Courtenay, 209, 241

Brabrook, E. M., Chief Registrar of
Friendly Societies, 159, 388

Bradford dyers, 287 ; builders' laborers,
304 ; Stuff-pressers, ii. 463 ; Packing-
case Makers, ii. 486

Brad laugh, Charles, ii. 638

Braelers, ii. 498

Branch governed by general meeting,
10, 40 ; institution of governing
branch, 12, 17 ; method of voting
among the Northumberland coal-
miners, 34 ; number of branches in
foreign countries, 81 ; in Ireland,
87 ; character of Irish branches, 84 ;
character of Scottish branches, 83 ;
decay of branch autonomy, 88-103 J
character of branch meetings, 90 ;
independence of branches among the
engineers, 94 ; function of the branch
as jury and unit of representative
government, 100 ; federal relations
between branches in building trades ;
128 ; use of, for Collective Bargain-
ing* 179; future of, ii. 834

Brass-workers, 108, in, 118, 134,287;

ii. 486, 509. See also Engineers
Brazil, slavery in, ii. 75 *
Brentano, Dr. Luigi, 247, 324, 347 ; ii.

454, 565

Bribery, prevalence of, ii. 674

Brick cutting, 284

Bricklayers, declare rules unalterable,
25 ; separate organisation of Scotch
and English, 83 ; spasmodic local
strikes of, 98 ; persistence of local
autonomy among, 98 ; federal rela-
tions of, 127, 134 ; accusations of
blacklegging among, 120 ; working
rules of, 175 ; machinery for Collec-
tive Bargaining among, 180 ; Trade
Union membership of, 287 ; differen-
tiation of work among, 283 ; object
to piecework, 287, 298 ; attempt to
limit speed of working, 304 ; hours
of labor of, 340, 352 ; insist on
place for meals, 360 ; in London,
recruited from laborers, ii. 489 ;
ancient gild of, 480 ; demarcation
disputes of, 515 ; prefer large em-
ployers, 549 ; baffled by the jerry-
builder, 549

Bright, John, 308 ; ii. 868

Briquet, C. M., ii. 708

Bristol Boot Trade Board, 187, 209

Britannia Metal Smiths, ii. 458, 459

British Library of Political Science, 175

Broadhurst, Henry, 370, 385 ; ii. 529

Brooklands Agreement, 203

Brown, Edmond, 366

Browne, Sir Benjamin, ii. 732

Bruce, A. B., 296

Brushmakers, order at meetings of, 4 ;
amount of drink allowed, 5 ; con-
stitutional form of union of, 13 ;
method of voting among, 14 ; piece-
work lists of, 283 ; indifference of, to
Normal Day, 343 ; objected to ma-
chinery, 394 ; apprenticeship among,
ii. 462 ; exclusion of women from,
502

Brussels, minimum wage at, ii. 776

Bryce, Rt. Hon. James, 19, 68

Buckle, II. T., ii. 566

ftuilde?-, the, ii. 515

Builders' laborers, working rules of,
!75> 3°4 : attempt to limit speed of
working, 304 ; insist on payment for
overtime, 340 ; progress to be brick-
layers, ii. 489

— Union of 1833-34, constitutional
form of, 12 ; unique character of,

Index

905

127 ; desired to prohibit overtime,
340

Building regulations, ii. 734

trades, survival of local auto-
nomy in, 97 ; friction between dif-
ferent branches of, 98, 120 ; attempt
at national amalgamation of, 109,
127 ; federal relations of, 127, 134 ;
local Building Trades Councils,
127 ; working rules of, 175, 304,
360 ; strike of, in 1859-60, largely
non-unionist, 178 ; object to piece-
work, 287, 297 ; chasing in, 305 ;
Trade Union membership of, 287 ;
desire for Normal Day in, 339 ; over-
time in, 340, 347 ; hours of labor
of, 340, 352 ; decay of apprentice-
ship in, ii. 489 ; absence of demar-
cation disputes in, 510; preference
of, for large employers, 549

Bureaucracy, beginning of, 15 ; primi-
tive democracy results in, 26, 36,
59 ; among the Boilermakers, 30 ;
controlled by Representative Assem-
bly, 43, 59 ; only partially controlled
by Representative Executive, 51

Burial, expenses of, 152, 154, 170; ii.
529, 75°, 797, 827

Burnett, John, 156, 160, 340; ii. 544

Burnley Cotton-weavers, 289

Burns, John, 76, 133

Burt, Thomas, 262; ii. 511, 512, 513

Burton, John Hill, 416, 447

Bury tapesizers, 165

Butcher, 406

Butty master system, 290, 298, 318

CABINET, government by, in the Trade
Union world, 30-46 ; among the
Boilermakers, 30 ; among the Cotton-
spinners, 39 ; among the Coalminers,
43 ; election of, by districts, 47 ; of
the Trade Union Congress, 265-278

Cabinetmakers, shop bargain among,
173 ; work either piece or time, 287,
301; Trade Union membership among,
287 ; disuse of piecework lists of,
301 ; degeneration of unorganised
sections of, 416; demarcation dis-
putes of, ii. 509, 517, 516 ; sweating
among the, 543

Cadbury's cocoa, ii. 683, 690

Cairnes, John Elliot, ii. 605, 611, 614,
6 1 6, 630, 653

Calico printers, ii. 462, 481, 768

Campbell, G. L., 366

Cannan, Edwin, ii. 604, 616, 618, 624

Capital, causes influencing accumula-
tion of, ii. 610-632 ; rate of interest
on, 611, 625, 627 ; flow of, 629 ; dis-
tribution of, among trades, 740-749

Capital and Labour, 227

Cardiff, trade agreements at, ii. 520 ;
export trade of, 741 ; Engineers, 358 ;
ii. 520

Cardroom operatives, wages of, 105 ;
type of Trade Unionism required by,
106 ; relation of, to spinners, 123,
128 ; federal relations of, 124, 258 ;
work either piece or time, 287 ;
Trade Union membership of, 287 ;
support Cotton-spinners, 323 ; admit
ring-spinners to membership, 424.
See also Cotton Operatives

Carey, H. C, ii. 866

Carmen, political objects of, 252 ; ex-
cluded from Workmen's Compensa-
tion Act, 389 ; long hours of, ii. 800

Carpenters, expenditure on drink, of
Preston, 5 ; formation of General Union
of, 12 ; mode of electing executive
among, 17 ; delegate meetings of,
19 ; declare rules unalterable, 25 ;
absorption of local societies of, 73,
76 ; wide dispersion of, 53, 8 1 ;
foreign branches of, 81 ; separate
organisation of Scotch and English,
83 ; Irish branches of, 86, 87 ; cen-
tralisation among, 91 ; relations be-
tween the two great unions of, 122 ;
divergence of interest between Ship-
wrights and, 130 ; federal relations
of, with other trades, 132, 134 ; as-
serted bankruptcy of, 156 ; working
rules of, 175 ; hours of labor of,
255, 340, 352 ; insist on time work,
287, 297 ; differentiation of work
among, 284 ; diversity of local
wages of, 321 ; desire of, for Normal
Day, 340, 352 ; object to overtime,
340 ; London gild of, ii. 480, 510 ;
demarcation disputes of, 509-519 ;
position of, in Federation of Engineer-
ing Trades, 523

Carpet- weavers, 286 ; ii. 481, 486

Casting vote, 193, 223. See also Arbi-
tration^ Umpire

Casual labor, effect of, 433 ; ii. 545,
7i8, 755. 757, 791

Caucus, use of, among the cotton-
spinners, 41

Caulkers, ii. 509

Cemeteries, vested interests of, un-
protected, ii. 569

906

Index

Certificate, proposed requirement of,
252 ; ii. 495 ; of safety in oil ships,
358 ; desired by Enginemen and
Plumbers, ii. 495

Chain and nail workers, 365, 416; ii.

543, 544, 583, 754, 757
Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J., 230, 366,

387, 388, 390 ; ii. 538

Chance's glassworks, 375

Chapel, printers', 299

Chapman, Maria Weston, ii. 608, 752

Character, effect of Restriction of
Numbers on, ii. 705 ; effect of the
Common Rule on, ii. 716

Charity, effect of, ii. 718, 756

Chartered companies, ii. 680

Chateauneuf, Benoison de, ii. 637

Checkweigher, often Trade Union
official, 16, 44, 212 ; ballot and com-
pulsory payment for, 212 ; ii. 828 ;
agitation for provision of, 309

Cheshire Coalminers, 45

Chester, picketing at, ii. 855

Child, Sir Josiah, ii. 622,623, 626, 871

Children's employment. See also Boy-
labor

Chippers and Drillers, imperfect
organisation of, 81 ; demarcation
disputes of, ii. 509

Christian Socialists, the, ii. 603, 618

Cigar makers, 286

Civil Service Supply Association, ii.
669

Clare, George, ii. 870

Clarion, the, 36

Clere, Jules, 26

Cleveland ironminers, 229 ; work by
the piece, 286; Trade Union member-
ship of, 286

Clickers. See Boot and Shoe Operatives
and Compositors

Clicking, among Compositors, 299

Climbing boys, abolition of, 363

Cloggers, 430

Cloth manufacture, prevalence of out-
work in, ii. 543

Clothing manufacture, inadequacy of
factory legislation as to, 364 ;
irregularity of employment in, 433 ;
sweating in, ii. 543, 763

Clyde. See Glasgow

Coachmakers, delegate meetings of, 19 ;
adopt Referendum, 21 ; gradually
restrict its use, 23 ; insist on time
work, 287 ; Trade Union member-
ship among, 287 ; object to engage-
ment, 432 ; forbid smooting, 439

Coal, international trade in, ii. 741

Coalminers, election of officers from
among checkweigh-men, 16 ; Nor-
thumberland and Durham, survival
of Direct Legislation among, 32 ;
effect of Imperative Mandate among,
33 ; method of voting among, 34, 45 ;
adoption of representative institutions
by, 38, 43 ; character of the represent-
ative among, 54 5 federal relations
among, 125 ; divergence of sectional
interests among, 126 ; small use of
friendly benefits among, 171 ; refusal
of, to work with non-unionists, 214 ;
demand for Mines Regulation Acts,
250, 261 ; hours of labor among,
255 ; political machinery of, 260 ;
political activity of, 260 ; difficulties
of, in Parliament, 262 ; influence of,
in Trade Union Congress, 278 ;
insist on piecework, 286, 290 ;
Trade Union membership among,
286 ; checkweighing of, 309 :
desire of, for Normal Day, 339 ;
desire precautions against accidents,
355, 368, 374, 382 ; attitude of, to
contracting out, 372, 374; policy of
restricting output, 446-450 ; impose
no restriction on entrance to trade,
ii. 474 ; prohibition of women work-
ing as, 496 ; absence of friendly
benefits among, 529 » compulsory
character of collective agreements of,
533 ; demand of, for Living Wage,
589 ; use of Sliding Scale among, 576.
See also Miners'1 Federation

Cobbett, W., 171

Cobblers, demarcation with Cord-
wainers, ii. 510

Cobden, Richard, ii. 868

Coffins, ii. 510

Cohn, Professor Gustav, ii. 585

Cokemen, 35, 125, 126. See also Coal-
miners

Colchester Engineers, 346

Collective Bargaining, origin of term, 1 73 ;
description of, 173-177; machinery
for, 179; incidental compulsion of,
206 ; extent of, 178 ; inclusion of
non-unionists in, 209 ; predominance
of, between 1824 and 1885, 249 ;
need of, with regard to hours of
labor, 327, 333 ; required for Sanita-
tion and Safety, 354, 386 ; must be
admitted with regard to new processes
and machinery, 404, 411 ; not com-
pletely legalised until 1871, 411 ; use

Index

907

of, for sharing work, 440, 442 ;
inconsistent with annual engagement,
432 ; with regard to apprenticeship,
ii. 456-472 ; strengthened by group
system, 478 ; with regard to boy-
labor, 483-488 ; with regard to pro-
gression, 490 ; with regard to women's
labor, 500-507 ; with regard to demar-
cation disputes, 520 ; proposed legal
enforcement of, 534 J by alliances of
masters and men, 577 ; future of, 804,

8i3
Collectivism, in Trade Unionism, ii.

598 ; future of, 807-850
Collet, Clara, 105 ; ii. 495
Colliery mechanics, 36, 125, 126
Cologne, insurance against unemploy-
ment at, 1 60

Combination, economic demonstration
of necessity for, ii. 649, 701

Laws, economic effect of, ii. 608

Committee. See Cabinet; Executive

Committee

Common employment, 366-370, 385,
388; ii. 522

Lodging Houses, ii. 734

Rule, Device of the, ii. 560

Communism, time wages described as,
282; British workmen not sympa-
thetic to, 282, 323 ; suggestion of,
as regards Normal Day, 353
Compensation desired for accidents,
271, 365-376 ; effect of 1897 Act for,
387 ; practice with regard to, ii. 566
Competition, analysis of effect of, ii.
654-702

between trades, ii. 740-749

between Trade Unions, 112;

leading to "blacklegging," 120 ;
rendering federation necessary, 112-
141 ; resulting in demarcation disputes,
ii. 508-527
Competitive examination for offices, 16,

196 ; specimen papers of, 197
Compositors, Manchester, allowed
smoking, 5 ; Glasgow, election
customs, 6 ; London, governed by
general meeting, 10 ; adopt Refer-
endum from continental democrats,
21; electioneering policy of, 80 ;
separate organisation of Scotch and
English, 83 ; irregularities of Irish
branches of, 85, 87 ; employ salaried
organiser for Ireland, 87 ; Trade
Union membership among, 287 ;
work either time or piece, 287, 298 ;
introduction of stab among, 299 ;

clicking system of, 299 ; drinking
habits of, 327 ; indifference of, to
Normal Day, 342 ; object to compos-
ing machines, 407 ; now work the
Linotype under collective agreement,
407 ; news men guaranteed a mini-
mum earning, 408, 436 ; policy of,
with regard to apprenticeship, ii.
464-468 ; with regard to women, 499-
507 ; wages of women as, 499 ; seek
to increase mobility, 731 ; proposed
trade classes for unemployed, 830
Compulsory service in Trade Union
offices, 5-7 ; acceptance of sliding
scale, 209 ; membership of joint
committees, 211 ; obedience to Trade
Union rules, 207 ; deduction of
weekly contribution, 209, 211 ; pay-
ment for checkweigher, 212; member-
ship of Trade Union, 213 ; Collective
Bargaining, 218 ; precautions against
accident, 361, 377 ; insurance
premiums strongly objected to, 385 ;
ii. 529 ; character of Collective
Bargaining, 534 ; trade classes for,
830

Comte, Auguste, ii. 845
Concentration of business, ii. 727
Conciliation, distinguished from arbitra-
tion, 223, 239 ; out of place in ques-
tions of interpretation, 183; not then
required in organised trade, 236 ;
recent cases of, 225, 241 ; real sphere
of, 238 ; working of English Act,
244. See Z\S,Q Joint Committees and
Boards

Condy's Fluid, ii. 685
Connecticut, early use of Referendum
in, 19; boot factories of, 400, 413;
ii. 727

Conseils de prud'hommes, 226
Conservativism, in Trade Unionism, ii.

597

Considerant, Victor, 21

Consumer, pressure of the, ii. 671

Consumption, influence of, ii. 671, 740,
746

Contingent fund, 95

Continuity of employment, vol. i. Part
II. ch. ix. pp. 430-453

of livelihood, an object of Trade

Unionism, 146, 430 ; an object of
accident compensation, 371, 378,
379 ; not secured by lowering rates
in competition with machine, 415;
nor yet by annual hirings, 431 ; in-
fluence of desire for, on demarcation

908

Index

disputes, ii. 515, 516. See also Con-
tinuity of Employment

Contracting out, 370-386

Contributions, collected by paid officers
among Cotton- weavers and Card-room
operatives, 106 ; proposals to lower,

112, Il6; rivalry in smallness of,

113, 115; objection to any rivalry
in collecting, 373, 385 ; adjustment
of, on transfer of members, ii. 526

Co-operative contract system, 295

movement, the, 88, 268, 406 ; ii.

693, 810, 811, 818, 819, 824

Coopers, local monopoly among, 74 ;
peculiar rules of the Dublin, 75, 213 ;
looseness of national organisation
among, 91 ; imperfect machinery for
Collective Bargaining among, 179 ;
taxation without representation among
Dublin, 213 ; Trade Union member-
ship among, 287 ; work either time
or piece, 287, 336 ; old piecework
lists of, 283 ; hours of labor of, 336,
341 ; desire of, for Normal Day, 342 ;
objected to machinery, 394 ; patri-
mony among, ii. 460 ; limitation of
apprenticeship among, 462 ; vested
interest of, in the liquor traffic, 564

Copartnership, ii. 811

Coppersmiths, 108, in, 118, 134; ii.
486, 509, 564. See also Engineers

Cordwainers. See Shoemakers

Cork Stonemasons, 75

Cornwall, Stonemasons in, ii. 461

Cotton Factory Times, 203, 315, 339,
427, 729, 857

Cotton manufacture, grades of workers
and wages in, 105 ; geographical
specialisation of, 125 ; concentration
of, about Bolton, 258 ; absolute pro-
hibition of overtime in, 348 ; extreme
regulation of, 348, 364 ; progress of
machinery in, 413 ; policy in, with
regard to gluts, 449 ; sexual morality
in the, ii. 497 ; causes of progress of,
725 ; concentration of business in,
729 ; foreign competition with, 743 ;
early child labor in, 752 ; state of,
867

operatives, appointment of officers

of, by competitive examination, 16,
196 ; adoption of representative in-
stitutions by, 38 ; character of the
representative among, 54 ; classes of,
and their wages, 105 ; federal rela-
tions among, 123, 258; small use of

friendly benefits among, 171 ; national
agreements of, 176 ; object to arbitra-
tion, 228 ; machinery for interpreta-
tion disputes, 195, 236 ; machinery
for Collective Bargaining among, 195-
204 ; Trade Union membership
among, 286 ; insist on piecework,
286, 288 ; particulars clause among,
310 ; diary of official of, 312 ; object
to deductions, 314 ; desire of, for
Normal Day, 338, 440 ; increasing
stringency of factory legislation for,
348, 364 ; support sanitary legislation,
364 ; cordially encourage improve-
ments, 409 ; penalise backward em-
ployers, 413 ; absence of restrictions
on entrance to the trade, ii. 474 ;
absence of demarcation disputes
among, 510

Cotton-spinners, drinking rules of, 5 ;
permanence of tenure of secretaryship
among, 17 ; constitution of union
of, 38 ; abandon federation for a
centralised amalgamation in each
province, 92, 124; national agree-
ments of, 97 ; wages of, 105 ; ii. 474 ;
type of Trade Unionism required by,
106 ; federal relations of, 123, 258 ;
technical specialisation of, 125 ; de-
clared objects of, 146 ; collective
agreements of, 176 ; fluctuations of
wages among, 256 ; manifesto upon
Nine Hours' Bill, 250 ; political action
of, 259 ; insist on piecework, 286,
288 ; Trade Union membership of,
286 ; desire of, for Normal Day, 327,
338 ; encourage improvements, 409 ;
penalise backward employers, 413 ;
do not resist women ring-spinners,
424 ; suggest short time instead
of reduction, 449 ; hours of labor
of, 440 ; absence of apprenticeship
restrictions among, ii. 475 ; system
of joining or partnering among, 475 ;
relation of, to piecers, 475, 494, 497 ;
leave selection to employer, 494 ;
compulsory character of Collective
Bargaining of, 533 ; intensity of
application of, 592 ; disuse of picket-
ing among, 719. See also Col fan
Operatives and Cotton-iveavers

spinners' Parliament, the, descrip-
tion of, 41 ; composition of, 57

thread, prices and wages in, 445

— -weavers promote uniformity of
rates, 79 ; wages of, 105 ; type of
Trade Unionism required by, 106 ;

Index

909

employ collectors, 106 ; federal rela-
tions of, 124, 258; adopt uniform
list, 79> I25 > tendency to centralisa-
tion, 125 ; political action of, 259 ;
object to over-steaming, 272, 358,
364 ; insist on piecework, 286 ;
Trade Union membership among,
286; object to deductions, 315 ;
desire of, for Normal Day, 338 ; en-
courage improvements in machinery,
409 ; suggest short time instead of
reduction, 449 ; sexual morality of,
ii. 497 ; have always admitted women
to membership, 500 ; sex segregation
by piecework rates, 501, 504, 507 ;
seek to increase mobility, ii. 731.
See also Cotton Operatives

County average, 183, 192, 193, 311 ; ii.
728

Court leet, ii. 458

Courtney, Rt. Hon. Leonard, 218,

219 5 "• 534

Coventry ribbon trade, 401

Cox, Harold, 324, 441 ; ii. 565

Crawford, William, 215

Cree, T. S., ii. 611, 612, 656

Creeler, ii. 481

Cripps, C.A., ii. 567

Crompton, Henry, 205, 223

Crusoe, Robinson, ii. 846

Cumberland Coalminers, 45 ; Iron-
workers, 235

Cunningham, Rev. W., 448; ii. 454

Curran v. Treleaven, ii. 854

Curriers, curious rotation of office
among, 7 ; remarkable use of Mutual
Insurance among, 170; insist on
piecework, 286 ; Trade Union mem-
bership among, 286

Custom, as affecting standard earnings,
ii. 695

Cutlers. See Sheffield trades

Daily Chronicle, the, 366 ; ii. 555

Daire, E., ii. 570

Dairies, municipal, ii. 788

Dale, Sir David, 232; ii. 534

Dallinger, F. W., 42

Darg, 446

Darlington Carpenters, 53 ; Pattern-
makers, 119

Darwin, Charles, ii. 637

Datal hands, desire piecework, 290 ;
insist on Normal Day, 331, 336, 340 ; j
tendency of employers to revert to,
400, 401

Davis, W. J., ii. 578

Deductions, Boot operatives object to,
147 ; ii. 540 ; Cotton operatives object
to, 314, 317 ; for spoiled work ob-
jected to, 315 ; Potters object to,
316 ; Glass Bottle Makers object to,
316 ; Ironfounders object to, 316 ;
Coalminers object to, 317 ; for em-
ployers' benefit society objected to,
373 > ii- 55° 5 f°r compulsory insur-
ance objected to, 272, 385 ; ii. 529 ;
for gas, grinding, etc., objected to,
540

Degeneration, definition of, ii. 704
Delegate, restricted function of, 19, 36 ;
sent to vote only, 14, 20, 35 ; sent to
discuss only, 33 ; is superseded by
the Referendum, 21 ; becomes an
unfettered representative, 37, 38, 44,
47 j 54j 63 ; subject to the caucus,
41

— meeting unknown in eighteenth-
century Trade Unionism, II ; to
frame or alter rules, 12, 19; sub-
jected to the imperative mandate, 14,

20 ; superseded by the Referendum,

21 ; passes into Representative
Assembly, 37, 46, 63

Demand, effect of, ii. 671 ; 740, 746
Demarcation, disputes as to, ii. 508-
527; trades affected by, 509, 510;
literature as to, 513 ; remedy for,
520-527 ; ancient cases of, 510 ; con-
nection of, with Doctrine of Vested
Interests, 562

Demetrius the silversmith, ii. 564
Democracy, structure and working of,
Part I. pp. 3-141 ; relation of Trade
Unionism to the future, ii. 807-850
Deneus, C, 324
Denny, William, 293-296, 297
Deploige, Simon, 19
Depression of trade, remedies for, 442-

449; ii. 793, 866
Deputies, 36, 125, 126
Derbyshire coalminers have no county
average, 194 ; object to arbitration,
228 ; refuse to work with non-
unionists, 214. See also Miners'
Federation

Derby engineers, 346
Devas, C. S., ii. 655, 688, 722
Devices, Trade Union, ii. 560
Devonshire, Duke of, 218, 219 ; ii. 519,

534, 535, 530
Dewsbury, ii. 672
Dicey, A. V., Professor, ii. 800
Dinorwic slate quarries, 375

Index

Direct legislation, history of, 19 ; Trade
Unionists learn the idea from Ritting-
hausen, 21 ; results of, 22 ; abandon-
ment of, 26 ; continuance of, in North-
umberland, etc. , 32 ; method of
among the London Brushmakers, 14

Distribution of Industry, effect of the
Common Rule on, ii. 740-749

District committee, 90, 95, 96, 179, 180

Delegate among the Boilermakers,

30 ; among the Engineers, 49 ; ap-
pointed for Ireland by Compositors, 87

Division of labor, in the art of
government, 59, 64 ; in cotton manu-
facture, 105 ; in engineering, 107 ;
geographical, 125 ; in the factory
boot industry, 403, 418 ; by means of
boys, ii. 482-488 ; by means of women,
498-507 ; in modern shipbuilding,
509, 519 ; in democracy, 844

Dockers, constitution of union of, 47 ;
" go canny " policy among, 307 ;
inadequacy of legislation regarding,
365 ; irregularity of employment
among, 433 ; ii. 757 ; organisation of,
in London, 433 ; public sympathy
with, ii. 535 ; miserable condition
of, in London, 588 ; effect of en-
forcing Standard Rate among, ii. 642,
718 ; incipient Standard among, 694

Doctrines, Trade Union, ii. 562

Document, the, preface, xi

Domestic servants, ii. 674

Donation, a variety of out of work pay,
155 ; extension of, among engineers,
163 ; introduction of, by shipwrights,
163 ; effect of expense of, in demarca-
tion disputes, ii. 515

Drawers, wages of, 105 ; type of Trade
Unionism required by, 105 ; federal
relations of, 123 ; exclude women,
ii. 498. See also Cotton Operatives

Dressmakers, overtime among, 329, 350

Drinking habits, 4, 5, 22 ; diminished
by factory system, 326 ; idea of a
vested interest in, ii. 564, 569

Drummond, C. J., 436; ii. 500

Dublin, type of Trade Unionism in, 75,
179, 213 ; Coopers, 75, 213 ; Stone-
masons, 84 ; Shipwrights, 86

Du Cellier, 320, 437, 438 ; ii. 480, 543,
656, 718

Dudley Nailers, ii. 754

Dufferin, Marquis of, 64

Dumbarton Coalminers, ii. 587

Dunning, T. J., 167, 337 ; *ii. 618

Durham joint boards and committees,

192, 234, 238; ii. 533; limitation
of the vend in, 448 ; county average
in, 183, 192, 193, 31 1 • political
sympathies of Trade Unionists of,
271 ; Cokemen, 35, 125; Coalminers,
35. 45. 125, 215, 255, 261, 355, 374,
376, 431, 448 ; ii. 533, 555 ; Colliery
Mechanics, 36, 125 ; Deputies, 125 ;
Enginemen, 35, 125

Dutch, effect of war with, 437

Dyer, Col. H., ii. 457, 777

Dyers, sick pay of, 161 ; insist on time
work, 287 ; Trade Union member-
ship among, 287

Dyke. See Standard Rate ; policy ot
lowering the, 417

EARNINGS, customary, ii. 694

Eastbourne Laundry-workers, ii. 727

Economic misconception of scope of
Trade Unionism, 249 ; basis of
accident insurance, 375 ; incidence
of compensation for accidents, 383 ;
Characteristics of Trade Unionism,
Part III. chap. iii. vol. ii. pp. 703-806

Economists, the verdict of the, Part III.
ch. i. vol. ii. pp. 603-653

Edge Tool Forgers, ii. 459

Edgeworth, Professor F. Y., xviii ; ii.
505, 647, 648, 650, 651, 652, 653

Edinburgh Shoemakers, 6 ; Tailors,
322 ; Compositors, ii. 499

Edinburgh Review, the, ii. 725-747

Education, ii. 476, 481, 769

Eight Hours' Day, among objects of
Miners' Federation, 146, 261 ; among
objects of Gasworkers, 147 ; general
desire for, 252 ; objected to by
Northumberland and Durham Coal-
miners, 261 ; desired in 1844, 339 ;
agitation for, in 1867, 338 ; largely
secured by 1897, 352 ; literature re-
lating to, 324

Election, annual, 16, 17, 36, 50; of
executive committee by districts, 47 ;
controlled by caucus, 41 ; after com-
petitive examination, 16, 197

Elliot, Sir George, 448

Ellis, W., ii. 6 10, 624

Ellison, Judge, 229

Emerson, R. W., ii. 726

Employers' benefit societies, 371, 373,
376 ; ii. 528, 550, 840

Employers' Liability, 365-391 ; literature
relating to, 366 ; origin of agitation
for, 367 ; failure of, to prevent
accidents, 374 ; difficulty of obtain-

Index

911

ing compensation under, 380, 389 ;
transformation of problem of, 387

Encroachment. See Demarcation.

Enfranchisement, effect of political, 80,
250 ; keenly desired by Trade
Unionists, ii. 537

Engagements objected to, 431

Engineering industry, evolution of,
107 ; ii. 470, 760

Engineers, desire of, for local autonomy,
48 ; recent revolution in constitution
of Amalgamated Society of, 49 ;
evolution of the delegate into the
representative among, 63 ; amalga-
mation of, 73 ; wide dispersion of,
53, 8 1 ; foreign branches of, 81 ;
Irish branches of, 86, 87 ; confusion
between friendly and dispute benefits
among, 94 ; spasmodic local trade
policy of, 94 ; dispute with Tyneside
plumbers, 95 ; ii. 509-518 ; dispute at
Belfast, 96 ; excessive local autonomy
among, 96 ; absence of national
agreements among, 97 ; projects of
amalgamation among, 109, in ; ab-
sorption of local societies, no; per-
sistence of sectional unions among,
no; friction between rival unions,
117 ; impossibility of complete amal-
gamation among, 112, 130; federal
relations among, 129; refusal of
A. S. E. to join federations of, 132 ;
ii. 523 ; Ten Hours' Day of, 340, 351,
352 ; declared objects of, 145 ;
asserted bankruptcy of, 156 ; policy
of, with regard to Out of Work benefit,
163, 167 ; District Committees
among, 1 80 ; machinery of, for Col-
lective Bargaining, 180 ; hours of
labor, 254, 255, 340, 351, 352 ; Nine
Hours' Movement of, 254, 352 ; poli-
tical desires of, 264 ; strike of, in
1836, 340 ; political weakness of,
265 ; object to piecework, 287, 291,
296, 302 ; Trade Union membership
among, 287 ; desire of, for Normal
Day, 339 ; overtime among, 346 ;
desire for continuity of livelihood,
430 ; apprenticeship regulations
among, ii. 468-473 ; boy-labor among,
487 ; demarcation disputes of, 509-
518; agreement of, with Boiler-
makers, 520 ; refusal of, to join
Federation of Engineering Trades,
523, 525 ; vested interests among,
563 ; seek to increase mobility, 731

Enginemen, 36, 125, 126, 252 ; ii. 495

Engrossing work, 439. See also De-
marcation

Ennis Tailors, 85

Entrance to a Trade, the, vol. ii. Part
II. ch. x. pp. 454-507

Equality of wage. See Standard Rate

Erectors, 108. See also Engineers

Erie, Sir W., ii. 857

Estimate work, 301

Executive committee chosen by rota-
tion, 7, 17, 29 ; in times of war secret
and autocratic, 9 ; nominated by the
officers, 8 ; appointed by the govern-
ing branch, 12, 17 ; differentiated
from branch committee, 17 ; weak-
ness of, 17, 30 ; its resistance to the
Initiative, 23 ; its capture of the
Referendum, 23, 26, 31 ; its trans-
formation into a cabinet, 30, 39, 43 ;
its election by districts, 46

Exeter Tailors, ii. 459

Expenses of production, best means of
lowering, ii. 733, 819

Expert, absence of the, in primitive
Trade Unionism, 8 ; development of,
in executive work, 15, 27, 40, 49 ; in
legislation and control, 54, 57, 65,
70 ; function of the, 55, 65, 69 ;
growth of, in negotiation, 182 ; need
of, in political action, 265 ; dislike
to consult, 268 ; future of, ii. 842

FABIAN Society, 364, 403, 445 ; ii.
496, 543, 772

Factory Acts, development of, 260, 310,
348, 361, 364; Trade Union support
Of, 250, 259, 338, 364, 440 ; ii. 537 ;
imperfect application of, to small
masters, ii. 549 ; economic effect of,
ii. 608, 630, 705, 725, 727, 760, 767

inspectors, relations of, with Trade

Union officials, 260 ; opinions on
overtime, 330, 349

system, effect of, on character,

326 ; upon desire for Normal Day,
327 ; in boot and shoe manufac-
ture, 396-406 ; strongly supported by
Trade Unions, ii. 54°~55°

Fagniez, ii. 455

Fair Wages clause, failure to carry out,
ii. 555 ; international, 867

Fairbairn, Sir William, ii. 468, 469,
470, 471

Farr, Dr. William, ii. 637

Farrer, Lord, ii. 865

Fawcett, Henry, ii. 606, 618, 653

Federalist, the, 47 ; ii. 656

Index

Federation, use of, in facilitating repre-
sentative institutions, 57 ; system of,
among the Cotton Operatives, 123,
258 ; among the Coalminers, 125 ;
among the Compositors, 127; among
the Boot and Shoe Operatives, 127;
in the building trades, 127 ; suggested
plan of, in the engineering industry,
129, 133 ; conditions of success of,
134; representative government in,

135 ; proportional representation in,

136 ; probable extension of, in Trade
Union world, 140, 270 ; use of, in
political machinery, 258, 270 ; result
of, in demarcation disputes, ii. 521-
527 ; future of, 837

Fells,J. M., ii. 666

Felt Hatmakers, 286 ; ii. 462

Fenwick, John, 262

Ferdy, Hans, ii. 638

Fielding, John, 92

Fife Miners, 446

File Cutters, 395

Forgers, 395

Fines, for breach of order in general
meeting, 4 ; for refusing office, 4,
6, 7 ; for not attending meetings, 7 ;
for bad conduct, 207 ; among Boiler-
makers, 207 ; for dishonorable be-
haviour to employer, 208 ; discip-
linary, objected to, 271, 314; effect
of, on Standard Rate, 315 ; upon
employers for neglect of precautions,
384, 387 ; often added to employer's
benefit society, ii. 550

Fire brigade of craftsmen, ii. 480

Fisheries, 389 ; ii. 619

Fishermen, excluded from Workmen's
Compensation Act, 389

Fitters. See Engineers

Flint Glass Cutters, ii. 462

Glass Makers, nomination of com-
mittee by secretary, 8 ; use of Strike
in Detail by, 169 ; provision for un-
employed among, 163, 438 ; de-
nunciation of non-unionists by, 213,
215 ; obtain uniform piecework list
at cost of lowering some local rates,
280 ; insist on piecework, 286 ;
Trade Union membership among,
286 ; insist on employment of next
on the roll, 438 ; arrangements for
finding employment, 438 ; are guar-
anteed minimum weekly earnings,
437 ; apprenticeship regulations of,
ii. 463, 478 ; ii. 768 ; progression
among, 490; application by, of

Supply and Demand to limitation of
boy-labor, 573 ; economic effect of
regulations of, ii. 707, 711

Foncin, ii. 566

Footmaker, ii. 490

Foreign branches, 81
— trade, ii. 733, 741, 754, 760, 780

Foresters, Ancient Order of, 18, 46,
83, 85, 89, 101, 114, 160

Foresters* Miscellany, the, 86

Foreman, position of, in Trade Unions,
ii. 546

Foxing, 439

Fox well, Professor H. S., ii. 581, 689,
786

Frame rent, 316

Framework Knitters. See Hosiery
Workers

France, use of plebiscite in, 26 ; paper-
makers of, 436 ; rotation of work in,
437» 438 5 changes of government in,
26 ; apprenticeship in, ii. 455 ; gild
membership in, 480 ; system of giving
out work in, 543 ; decline in birth-
rate in, ii. 636 ; monopolies in, 708 ;
great strike of 1791 in, 718; sugar
bounty in, 767, 779

Frankenstein, Dr. Kuno, 324, 414 ; ii.

54i, 543

Freedom of contract, 216, 219, 249,
327, 386; ii. 533, 581, 847

Freeman, E. A., 3

Free Trade, Appendix II. p. 863

French Polishers, ii. 509, 516

Friendly benefits in Trade Unionism,
152-172 ; effect of, in demarcation
disputes, ii. 515 ; possibility of ad-
justing differences of, 526 ; effect
of, in causing hostility to state insur-
ance, 529 ; and to employers' benefit
societies, 551 ; relative position of,
797 ; probable decline of, 826

societies, Scottish, 83 ; Irish

branches of, 85 ; autonomy of Courts
or Lodges, 89 ; ceremonies of, 90 ;
sick pay in, 101 ; rotation of office
in, 13 ; governing branch in, 13 ;
disapproval of Imperative Mandate
in, 46 ; regulation of, 1 14 ; Trade
Unions as, 152 ; alliance of Trade
Unions with, against state insurance,
ii. 528 ; future of, 826

Friendly Societies Monthly Magazine, 46

Fullers, ii. 498

Functional Adaptation, definition ol,
ii. 704

Fynes, Richard, 355, 433

Index

913

GAINSBOROUGH Engineers, 346

Gallon, F. W., xv, 9, 336, 356, 438

Garcke, E., ii. 666

Gas furnace, objection to, 412

Gasworks, vested interest in, ii. 569

Gas-workers, constitution of union of,
47, 50 ; declared objects of, 147 ;
political interests of, 263 ; leads to
introduction of machinery, ii. 725

Geneva, education in, ii. 769

George, Henry, ii. 619

Germany, accident insurance in, 382,
385, 390 ; industrial tribunals in, 226 ;
objection of employers in, to high
wages, 401 ; small master system in,
414 ; apprenticeship in, ii. 455 ;
Social Democrats of, object to State
ownership, 555 ; syndicates in, 448 ;
ii. 582 ; competition of coal of,
741 ; of glass and hardware of, 742 ;
sugar bounty in, 767. See also Free
Trade

Gibbins, II. de B., 324

Gibson v. Lawson, ii. 854

Giffen, Sir Robert, ii. 583, 722

Gilds, 335 ; ii. 459, 480, 498, 510, 511

Girdlers, ii. 498

Glasgow Blacksmiths, no ; Boiler-
makers, 82, 442 ; ii. 457 ; Carpenters,
340; ii. 517, 518; Compositors, 6,
299> 438 ; ii. 466 ; Coppersmiths, ii.
487 ; Cotton-spinners, ii. 763,- 803 ;
Engineers, 96, 352, 442 j Harbor
Laborers, 120; Ropemakers, 6 ; Ship-
wrights, 74, 82, 442; ii. 517, 518;
Steel Smelters, 82 ; Stonemasons, ii.
873; Tailors, 322, 359; Tinplate
Workers, 432 ; Trades Council of,
82 ; cotton trade of, ii. 762, 803 ;
home work in, ii. 539, 545, 755

Glass Bottle Makers, 286, 316, 447 ;
ii. 711

Glass-workers. See Flint Glass Makers
and Glass Bottle Makers

Glen, 356

Gloucestershire cloth manufacture, ii.
764

Glove-making, ii. 760

" Go canny" policy, 307

Goldasti, ii. 565

Goldbeaters, ii. 462, 501

Conner, Professor, ii. 618

"Good from oven," 316

Gorgon, the, 9

Goschen, Rt. Hon. G. J., ii. 870

Governing branch, n, 12, 17; in old
sick clubs, 13 ; in British Empire,
VOL. II

14 ; rotation of, 13, 17 ; in the
Ancient Order of Foresters, 18

Government, hours in workshops, 352 ;
attitude of Trade Unions towards
employment by, ii. 553 ; bias of
officials of, 555 ; attitude of Trade
Unions towards compulsory insurance
by, 529 ; bias of, to cheapness, 819

Graham, Sir James, ii. 565

Grand National Consolidated Trades
Union, 12, 139

Gravesend Watermen, 437

Great Harwood Cotton - weavers, 79,
280

Green, C. H., 370

Mrs. J. R., ii. 480

Greg, R. H., 338

Greville, C. C. F., ii. 565

Griffiths v. Earl of Dudley, 370

Grindery, claim for free, ii. 540

Grinding money, 175* 3J3

Gross, Dr. Charles, ii. 855

Guile, Daniel, 157

Gun-barrels, welding of, ii. 724

G union, George, ii. 696

HADFIELD, R. A., 324

Halesowen Nailers, ii. 548

Half-time system, proposed extension
of, ii. 769

Hall, Rev. Robert, 171
— W. Clarke, 363

Halle, E. von, ii. 709

Halliday, Thomas, 382

Hammermen, ii. 509

Handloom Weavers, strike of Scottish,
10; travelling benefit of, 162; applica-
tions for legal fixing of wages, 250,
337 ; indifference of, to Normal Day.
337 J gradual degradation of, 414 ;
irregularity of employment among,

434

Handrailing, 284
Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Sir W. V., ii.

538

Hardy, R. P., 101 ; ii. 638

Harrison, Frederic, ii. 618

Hatters, early "congresses" of, n ;
insist on piecework, 286 ; Trade
Union membership among, 286 ;
London hat finishers work by time,
336 ; attitude of, towards Normal
Day, 336 ; night-work prohibited by
mediaeval, 335 ; arrangements for
finding employment, 438 ; prevent
employer choosing workman, 438 ;
apprenticeship regulations of, ii. 463 ;

3 N

914

Index

economic effect of regulations of, 7°7-
See Felt Hat Makers

Hattersley composing machine, 408

Health, slow growth of attention to,
355 ; economic importance .of, ii.
710, 717 ; unprotected, 771, 785

Hearts of Oak Benefit Society, 101 ; ii.
636

Helpers, Boilermakers', 291, 296 ; ii. 481

Herkner, Heinrich, ii. 789

Ilexham Carpenters, 53

Higgling of the Market, the, vol. ii.
Part III. ch. ii. pp. 654-702

Hill, Frank, ii. 458

Frederic, 281

Hingley, Sir B., 234

Hobson, C, 434

J. A., ii. 628

Hodgskin, T. , 403

Holders-up, admitted to United Society
of Boilermakers, 128; ii. 491

Holland, Dr. G. Calvert, ii. 614
Lord, ii. 567

Holmes, David*, 201, 259

Home Rule, vi, 88 ; ii. 833

work, abolition of, desired, 252,

263 ; causes indifference to Normal
Day, 325, 342 ; effect of, on personal
character, 326 ; imperfect legislation
with regard to, 365 ; struggle of,
against factory, 414 ; extreme irregu-
larity of, 433 ; Trade Union objec-
tion to, ii. 539 j Utopian picture of,
541 ; demoralising conditions of, 542 ;
causes degradation of wages, 543 ;
gradual decline of, 543 ; parasitic
nature of, 749-766 ; abolition of, 840

Horner, Francis, ii. 567

Horrocks' longcloth, ii. 690

Hosiery workers, Mutual Insurance
among, 171 ; applied for legal fixing of
wages, 250 ; desire to regulate Home
Work, 263 ; insist on piecework, 286 ;
Trade Union membership among,
286 ; indifference of, to Normal Day,
335 ; policy of, to women workers, ii.
502

Hours of labor, cases of increase of,
353, 441 ; ii. 794 ; in mediaeval
crafts, 335 ; among home workers,
ii. 544 ; of Bookbinders, 336, 352 ;
of Brushmakers, 343 ; of Building
Trades, 340, 352 ; of Carpenters,
255. 352 5 of Coalminers, 255, 339 ;
ii. 583 ; of Chain and Nail Opera-
tives, ii. 583 ; of Compositors, 342 ;
of Coopers, 336, 341 ; of Cotton

Operatives, 25$, 338, 346, 431 ; of
Dressmakers, 329, 350 ; of Engineers,
254, 255, 340, 346, 352 ; of Flint
Glass Makers, ii. 583 ; of Hatters,
33 5> 336 ; of Laundry - women, ii.
583 ; of Saddlers, 336, 352 ; of
Sheffield trades, 344 ; of Shoemakers,
342 ; of Shipwrights, 341, 352 ; of
Stonemasons, 352 ; of Tailors, 336,
352. See also Normal Day

House of Call, 9, 437

of Lords' Committee on the

Sweating System, 364 ; ii. 543, 548,
588, 589, 655, 765, 771, 772

Howell, George, 158; ii. 855

Hoyt, H. M., ii. 866

Hughes, Judge T., ii. 486

Hull Compositors, ii. 466

Humidity of weaving sheds, 252, 272,
358, 364, 386

Hunter, Joseph, ii. 458

Huskisson, Rt. Hon. W., 447

IMPERATIVE Mandate, use of, 14,
20 ; superseded by Referendum,
21 ; abandoned by Northumberland
miners, 33 ; not used among Cotton
Operatives, 39 ; absent from Miners'
Federation, 43 ; gradual abandon-
ment of, in revision of rules, 46, 63

Implications of Trade Unionism, the,
vol. ii. Part II. ch. xii. pp. 528-558

Imports increased by an increase in
exports, ii. 742, 763, 863. See also
Free Trade

Income, national, 445 ; ii. 643

Indentures, ii. 454, 460

Independent Labor Party, primitive
democracy of, 35

Index number, ii. 577

Individual Bargaining, origin of term,
173 ; description of, 173 ; frequent
result of piecework in some trades,
291-304 ; difficulty of, with regard to
hours of labor, 327 ; impossibility of,
with regard to sanitation and safety,
354 ; with respect to new processes
and machinery, 404, 408, 411 ; inci-
dental to annual hirings, 431 ; in-
evitable with Home Work, 435 ;
inadmissible with demarcation dis-
putes, ii. 519 ; inevitable with Home
Work, 544 ; injurious effect of, uni-
versally assumed, 560

Individualism, in Trade Unionism, ii.
598, 832

Industrial Insurance, regulation of,

Index

915

114 ; comparison of, with Trade
Union benefits, 154

Infectious disease, fear of, 362

Inglis, J.f ii. 457, 481

Ingram, J. K., ii. 546

Initiative, the, 21 ; results of, 24 ;
gradual abandonment of, 25 ; reten-
tion of, among Northumberland Coal-
miners, 32 ; produces instability of
policy, 24, 33 ; fails to secure popular
control, 33, 6 1

Inquest on accidents, 384

Inspection, Government, increase in,
377 ; failure of, with Home Work
and Small Masters ; ii. 547, 549

Insurance, experience as to sickness in,
101 ; advantage of branch as jury
in, 101 ; evil of competition in, 113 ;
legal regulation of, 114; Trade
Unionism a form of, 152 ; lack of
study of insurance side of Trade
Unionism, 155 ; against accidents by
employers, 375, 383, 389 ; compul-
sory, objected to, 385 ; ii. 529

Integration of processes, 353

Interest, effect of rate of, ii. 610-632 ;
low rate of, on watered capital, 667

Interpretation, questions of, 183 ; among
boot and shoe operatives, 189 ; ex-
amples of, among coalminers, 311 ;
among cotton operatives, 312

Interunion relations, vol. i. Part I. ch. iv.
pp. 104-141

Ipswich Engineers, 346

Ireland, survival of spirit of local
monopoly in, 75 ; irregularities of
Trade Union branches in, 83 ; num-
ber of branches in, 87 ; absence of
Irish national unions, 87 ; Home Rule
for, 22, 84, 88 ; child labor in, ii. 769

Iron bedsteads, ii. 578, 747

Ironclad contracts, ii. 684

Iron dressers, 17

Ironfounders, drinking allowed at meet-
ings of, 5 ; preference for rotation of
governing branch, 13; long stay in
London, 17 ; mode of electing execu-
tive, 17 ; delegate meetings of, 19 ;
adopt Referendum, 21 ; experience
of Direct Legislation among, 23 ;
expansion of union of, 72 > separate
organisation of Scotch and English,
83 ; proposal to include, in A. S. E.,
112, 130; quotation from first rules
of, 112; rivalry between unions of,
115; attempt to increase benefits
and reduce income, 1 16 ; federal

relations of, 130, 134 ; declared
objects of, 145 ; exhaustion of funds
of, 155 ; nature of friendly benefits
of, 145, 157, 170; out of work pay
among Scottish, 164 ; machinery for
Collective Bargaining among, 180 ;
political desires of, 264 ; object to
piecework, 287, 302 ; object to de-
ductions for spoiled work, 316 ; Trade
Union membership among, 287 ; urge
members not to resist machinery.
394 ; forbid long engagements, 431 ;
attempt to restrict boy-labor, ii. 487
Ironmoulders. See Ironfounders
Iron Trades Employers' Association,

I3'» 353, 362

Irregularity. See Continuity
Irwin, Margaret H., ii. 539, 545, 756
Ismay, Thomas, ii. 534
Ithuriel, ii. 729

"JACK Cade legislation," ii. 565

Jaeger clothing, ii. 683

E. L., 324

James, John, 162

Sir Henry (now Lord James of

Hereford), 186, 190, 231, 235, 241 ;
ii. 484, 485, 776

fan-old, J., ii. 568

"arrow, ii. 513
cans, J. S., 223
efferson, ii. 841

'enkin, Fleeming, 166, 357 ; ii. 618,
646, 647, 821

Jerry builders, objected to, ii. 549, 792

Jevons, W. S., 3o7>.355> 377; "• 657

Jews, in bootmaking form separate
branches, 127 ; standard of, ii. 687,
698 ; in clothing trade, 744

Jobez, ii. 566

Joiners, ancient demarcation with Car-
penters, ii. 510. See also Carpenters

Joining, system of, ii. 475

Joint boards or committees, long advo-
cated, 185 ; experience of, in boot
and shoe manufacture, 185-192, 209 ;
in coalmining, 192-194, 234 ; in
cotton manufacture, 194-204 ; in iron
manufacture, 205, 211, 231 ; under
South Wales Sliding Scale, 209 ;
proposal to give legal powers to, 218 ;
ii. 534 ; objection of Cotton Opera-
tives to, 244 ; in Victoria, 246 ; ii.
488 ; in New Zealand, 214 ; ii. 814

Jones, Lloyd, ii. 587

Richard, ii. 618

Jude, Martin, 339

916

Index

Judge, James, II

Jupp, E. B., ii. 480, 510

Jurancles, ii. 570

Jury, the branch acting as, 100

KATZENSTEIN, Louis, ii. 776

Keighley Engineers, 346

Kemble, Fanny, ii. 505

Kendal Stonemasons, 98 ; Woolcombers,

162

Kennedy, John, 326
Kentish Papermakers, 8, ii, 12, 420,

436 ; ii. 462, 533, 579, 707, 761
Kettle, Sir Rupert, 185 ; ii. 580, 708
Keufer, Auguste, ii. 776
Keymaster, 6
Kidderminster Carpet-weavers, 286 ; ii.

481, 486

Kingswood boot trade board, 187, 188
Knight, Robert, 30, 132, 204, 228 ; ii.

457
Knobsticks, 249

LABOR colonies, ii. 787

Department. See Board of Trade

Exchanges, 402

Laborers, weakness of organisations of,
121 ; liability of, to chasing, 305, 306 ;
objectionable by-laws of, 304 ; desire
payment for overtime, 340 ; progress
to be slaters and bricklayers, ii. 489 ;
relation of, to demarcation disputes,
525 ; employment of, on machines,
471, 524, 563. See Dockers, Gas-
workers, Builders' Laborers

Labour Leader, the, 36

Lacemakers, 286 ; ii. 463, 761

Laferriere, 26

Lakeman, 351

Lalor, 42

Lanarkshire Coalminers, 446 ; ii. 587

Lancashire Coalminers, 43, 45, 53, 194,
339, 372, 374; Trade Unionists, poli-
tical sympathies of, 271 ; ii. 538, 838

Landesgemeinde, the Swiss, 3, 7> 22

Land nationalisation at Trade Union
Congress, 271 ; not necessarily de-
sired by Trade Unionists, ii. 555, 832

Lassalle, Ferdinand, 403

Lasters. See Boot and Shoe Operatives

Laundries, 365 ; ii. 583, 727

Laurence, Edwin, 292

Lawson, Sir Wilfrid, ii. 564

Laziness of mankind, ii. 726

Leather -workers, travelling benefit
among, 162 : use of Strike in Detail
by, 167 ; custom of patrimony among,

ii. 460 ; ancient demarcation among,
5io

Lecky, W. E. H., 26, 177, 214, 221,
282, 329; ii. 559, 717

Leeds, Boot Trade Board of, 187 ;
clothing factories in, ii. 765 ; Brush -
makers, 13; Builders' Laborers, 304 ;
Compositors, ii. 466 ; Leather-work-
ers, 168 ; Stuff Pressers, ii. 463

Leek Trimming Weavers, ii. 463

Lefevre, Rt. Hon. G. Shaw, 169

Legal enactment, as a Trade Union
method, Part II. chap. iv. pp. 247-278 ;
early use of, 248 ; recent increase of,
250 ; variety of demands for, 252 ;
characteristics of, 253 ; machinery
for, 257-278 ; in support of Standard
Rate, 309 ; not possible in apprentice-
ship, ii. 479 ; nor against boy-labor,
488 ; economics of, 796-806

position of Trade Unions, 114;

"• 533 J as affecting their actuarial
position, 154; as affecting enforce-
ment of collective agreements, 218 ;
ii. 534 ; Appendix I. pp. 853-862

Legalisation of Trade Unions, limited
character of, 154 ; objection to com-
pletion of, ii. 530

Leicester Boot and Shoe Operatives,

10, 401, 418 ; ii. 483
Leslie, T. E. Cliffe, ii. 618
Levasseur, ii. 455

Levelling-up, policy of, 321 ; ii. 835
Liberty, definition of, ii. 847
Lightermen. See Watermen
Limitation of the vend, 448 ; of output,

11. 708. See also Restriction of
Numbers

Lincoln Engineers, 346 ; Fullers, ii. 498
Linotype, 407; ii. 464, 571, 733
List, Friedrich, ii. 865
Lister and Company, ii. 667
Lithographic Printers, 287 ; ii. 463
Liverpool Boilermakers, 300, 314 ;
building trades, 340 ; Coopers, 394 ;
Dockers, 307; Engineers, 117; ii. 515;
Ironfounders, 117; Packing-case
Makers, 395 ; Painters, 432 ; Sail-
makers, 75 ; Shipwrights, 5, 7 ; Stone-
masons, 20, 340, 352 ; Tailors, ii. 544 ;
Tinplate workers, 300
Livesey, George, ii. 534, 777
Living Wage, Doctrine of a, ii. 562,

582-597, 766, 816
Lloyd, H. D., ii. 709
— Sampson, ii. 866
Local option in drink traffic, ii. 564

Index

917

Locomotive Enginemen and Firemen,
constitution of Union of, 46, 50. See
also Railway Servants
Log, Tailors', 279, 283 ; Scottish, 322
London, absence of boy-labor in, ii.
489, 770 ; hours of labor in, 352 ; fail-
ure of Factory Acts in, 351 ; ii. 549 ;
high wages of, 321 ; Trades Council
of, 266 ; political sympathies of men
in, 271 ; Bookbinders, 131, 336, 352;
Boot and Shoe Operatives, 10, 322 ;
Bricklayers, ii. 489, 549; Brush makers,
4, 14, 343 ; ii. 502 ; Building Trades,
178, 340, 352; ii. 480, 489; ii.
800 ; Carmen, ii. 800 ; Carpenters,
321 ; Compositors, 10, 127, 299, 314,
342, 407, 436, 438; ii. 460, 465,
468, 499, 500, 502, 507, 873;
Coopers, 336, 341 ; Dockers, 47,

365, 433 5 "• 535, 588, 718, 757, 78.3,
791; Engineers, 313, 340, 352; ii.
469 ; Goldbeaters, ii. 501 ; Hatters,
ii, 321, 336 ; Plasterers, 360 ; Plum-
bers, ii. 475 ; Sailmakers, 7 ; Saddlers,
336» 352 ; Shipwrights, 341, 438 ;
Silver - workers, ii. 800 ; Stone
Carvers, 360 ; Stonemasons, 77, 279,
313 ; Tailors, 9, 264, 279, 336, 352 ;
Watermen, 437 ; Woolstaplers, 4,
ii

and North-Western Railway Com-
pany, 372, 374 ; ii. 691

Brighton, and South Coast Rail-
way Company, 374

County Council, attempts in, to

confine contracts to London firms,
76 , refusal of, to conform to Stone-
masons' rules, 78 ; minimum wage
of, ii. 774

School of Economics and Political

Science, 9, 19, 336, 356; ii. 642

Longe, F. D., ii. 618

Longfield, Montifort, ii. 618

Looking-glass Factories, ii. 708

Loom rent, 316, 434 ; ii. 840

Loria, Achilla, 56

Lot, choice by, 7, 442

Lothians Engineman, ii. 873

Lotteries, ii. 569

Lowell, 47

Lucifer-match Makers, ii. 588

Luddites, the, 220

Ludlow, J. M., 159; ii. 618

Lump Work, 302

Lushington, Sir Godfrey, ii. 544

Lying-in benefit, ii. 638, 642

Lynch, J., 291

Lynch law, 213
Lyttelton, Hon. A., ii. 861

MACCLESFIELD Silk-weavers, 434

Macleod, H. U., ii. 618

M'Corquodale, ii. 499

M'Culloch, John Ramsay, ii. 604, 606,
607, 608, 609, 610, 617, 623, 633,
634, 635, 653, 695, 696, 722, 723,
868

Macdonald, Alexander, 261, 339, 367,
368, 372 .

Machine-minders, 108 ; ii. 524, 525.
See also Engineers

Machinery, increases mental strain of
work, 289 ; and speed of work, 399,
409 ; policy of Trade Unions towards,
392-429 ; specially encouraged by
Cotton Operatives, 408-410 ; intro-
duction of, a matter for Collective
Bargaining, 41 1 ; effect of, on engin-
eering trade, ii. 471 ; employment of
laborers in connection with, 471,
524, 525, 563

Mackie, 350

Maine, Sir Henry, ii. 580

Malingering in sick benefit societies, 101

Mai thus, T. R., ii. 633, 641

Malthusianism, ii. 632-643

Manchester G^iardian, ii. 466

Boot Trade Board, 187 ; Trades

Council, 266 ; Building Trades,
442 ; Bricklayers, 304 ; Compositors,
5, 438 ; ii. 466 ; Engineers, 438 ;
Saddlers, 439 ; Slaters, ii. 489 ;
Stonemasons, 78 ; Tinplate Workers,
300 ; Upholsterers, ii. 467

Manley, Thomas, 437

Mann, Tom, in, 133, 346

Manningham Mills, ii. 667

Marcet, Mrs., ii. 608

Marginal cost of production affected by
Common Rule, ii. 730 ; not conclu-
sive as to distribution of industry, 73 J

utility determines value and wages,

ii. 645, 779 ; under Common Rules,
also the sphere of employment, 719

Marriage-rate, ii. 636

Marshall, Professor Alfred, 354, 393 ;
ii. 546, 604, 618, 621, 622, 627, 643,
644, 645, 648, 649, 651, 652, 657,
666, 722, 723

Martineau, Harriet, ii. 485, 608, 653,
752

Martin-Saint-Le'on, E., ii. 455

Marx, Karl, 285, 328, 337, 402, 403,
418; ii. 725

9i8

Index

Masham, Lord, ii. 667

Masons. See Stonemasons

Massachusetts, early use of Referendum
in, 19 ; boot factories of, 400, 413 ;
ii. 747 ; primary assemblies legally
regulated in, 42 ; report on arbitra-
tion in, 223 ; limitation of families
and supplementary wage-earners in,
ii. 641 ; manufactures of, 729

Mast and Blockmakers, ii. 509

Masterpiece, ii. 455]

Matchbox-makers, 365

Mather, W., ii. 727

Mavor, Professor, ii. 618

Mawdsley, James, 199, 201, 228, 230,
259, 409

Maximum, ii. 716

Mayhew, Henry, 437

Meeting, general government by, 3, 8,

10, 36, 40 ; drinking and smoking
at, 5

Melson, John, printer, gets idea of
Referendum from continental demo-
crats, 21

Menger, Dr. Anton, 403

Merchant Shipping Acts, 364

Method, the, of Mutual Insurance, vol.
i. Part II. ch. i. pp. 152-172; of
Collective Bargaining, vol. i. Part

11. ch. ii. pp. 173-221 ; of Legal
Enactment, vol. i. Part II. ch. iv.
pp. 247-278; economic characteristics
of each, ii. 796-806

Midland Iron Board, 205, 21 1, 231

Railway Company, ii. 551

Mill, John Stuart, ii. 568, 569, 604,
605, 610, 612, 618, 620, 624, 636,
638, 649, 653, 688, 695, 696, 711,
712, 714, 730, 752, 759, 809, 832,
869

Millwrights, 107 ; ii. 460, 468. See
also Engineers

Miners' Federation of Great Britain,
adoption of representative institutions
by, 38, 43 ; federal form of, 51, 57 ;
concentration of, 53 > declared ob-
jects of, 146 ; object to arbitration,
228, 244 ; political activity of, 260
263 ; leading position of, in Trade
Union Congress, 278 ; policy with
regard to output, 449 ; order a week's
holiday, 449 ; demand of, for a Living
Wage, ii. 589. See also Coalminers

Parliament, the, description of,

44 ; composition of, 57

Mines inspectors, increase in, 368,
377

Mines Regulation Acts, 250, 261, 263,
309, 368, 384, 39.0 ; ii. 728

Minimum, the National, ii. 766-784

Mir, the, ii. 808

Mobility of labor established, 74 ; ob-
jections to, 75 ; hostile to long en-
gagements, 431 ; inconsistent with
employers' benefit-societies, ii. 551 ;
obstacles to international, 630 ; Trade
Unions try to increase, 731

Moeser, Justus, 347, 356

Mogul S.S. Co. v. Macgregor, Gow,
and Co., ii. 689, 857

Monopoly, local trade, 73 ; among
Shipwrights, 73, 75 ; among Sail-
makers, 74, 75 ; among Stonemasons,
75, 77 ; among Coopers, 75 ; among
Carpenters, 76 ; among Shoemakers,
78 ; in Ireland, 75 ; manifestation of,
in demarcation disputes, ii. 514;
growth of, in modern times, 582 ; an
outcome of freedom, 689

Morals, influence of work on, ii. 497 ;
effect of Home Work on, 542

Morison, J. Cotter, ii. 632

Morisseaux, Charles, 223

Morley, Rt. Hon. John, 449 ; ii. 538

Morpeth Coalminers, 264 ; Tailors,
264

Morris, William, ii. 50x3

Morrison, C., 173; ii. 606, 614

Mosses, 119

Mule-spinners. See Cot ton- spinners

Mundella, Rt. Hon. A. J., 185, 223 ; ii.

723.
Municipal employment, relation of

Trade Unionism to, ii. 556
Musee Social, 160, 366
Music printers, incipient federation

among, 127
Mutual Insurance, the method of, Part

II. ch. i. p. 152

NAPOLEON, use of plebiscite by, 2b
Nash, Vaughan, 433 ; ii. 589
Nasmith, Joseph, ii. 732, 733, 754
Nasmyth, Joseph, ii. 573
National agreements, 176, 218, 256;

of Cotton Operatives, 97, 176, 256;

of Boilermakers, 97, 177 ; of Boot

and Shoe Operatives, 186; of Iron

and Steel Workers, 205
Association of Employers of

Labor, 226

• Dividend, the, ii. 643

— Minimum, the, ii. 766-784

— Union of Miners, 261

Index

919

National Union of Teachers, ii. 826
Nationalisation of minerals, 45 ; ii.

555

Negotiator, development of the skilled,
181 ; effect on extension of piece-
work, 303

Negro, absence of minimum in, ii. 698

Neo-Malthusianism, ii. 638

Neuchatel, ii. 770

New Processes and Machinery, vol. i.
Part II. ch. viii. pp. 392-428

unions, declared objects of, 147 ;

practice of, with regard to benefits,
153; effect of absence of friendly
benefits in, 159; supposed exceptional
exclusiveness of, 214

Zealand, Conciliation Act of, 246 ;

ii. 814

Newcastle, old gilds of, ii. 510; de-
marcation disputes at, ii. 510-518;
Carpenters, 53; ii. 510; Shipwrights,
74; ii. 511 ; Engineers, 95, 178; ii.
512; Plumbers, 95; ii. 512

Newcastle Chronicle, the, ii. 513

Leader, the, 204

Newmarch, William, 282

Newport Engineers, 358

Newspaper printers in federal union,
127 ; use linotype, 407 ; guaranteed
a minimum of earnings, 408, 436 ;
restriction of apprenticeship among,
ii. 466

Newspapers, competition among, ii. 720

Newton, William, no, in, 133, 134,
340

Newton - le - WTillows, women learn
printing at, ii. 499

Nicholson, Professor J. S , ii. 618, 626,
646, 727

Niger, ii. 680

Nightwork prohibited in mediaeval
crafts, 335 ; for women, 329

Nine Hours' Day, of Cotton Operatives,
250, 254, 257, 338; of Engineers,
254, 352 ; ii. 732 ; of Carpenters,
256; of Stonemasons, 340, 351, 352

Nitti, F., ii. 637

Non-unionists, compulsory inclusion of,
within Sliding Scale, 209 ; violence
to, 213 ; refusal to work with, 214 ;
ii. 533 ; virtual compulsion of, 534

Normal Day, Part II. ch. vi. pp. 324-
353 ; a modern demand, 325 ; in-
fluence of, upon wages, 329-335 ;
diversity of opinion as to, 335-344 ;
effect of overtime in connection with,
341, 344; necessary rigidity of, 347-

351 ; successive reductions of, 351 ;
tendency of, to uniformity, 353
North-Eastern Railway Company, ii.

777

North, the Lord Keeper, 355

of England Manufactured Iron

Board, 205, 21 1, 231 ; ii. 533

Northampton Boot and Shoe Operatives,
78j 393 J Boot Trade Board, 209, 231

Northumberland joint boards and com-
mittees, 192, 234, 238, 311 ; ii. 533,
limitation of the vend in, 448,
county average in, 183, 192, 193,
311 ; political sympathies of Trade
Unionists in, 271 ; Coalminers, 32,
125, 215, 255, 261, 311, 355, 374,
432, 448 ; ii. 533, 555, 583 ; Coke-
men, 125 ; Colliery Mechanics, 125 ;
Deputies, 125 ; Enginemen, 125

Norwich Brushmakers, 394 ; boot
trade board, 189

Nottingham, Hosiery Board, 223 ; ii.
723 ; Coalminers, 45, 58 ; Hosiers,
223 ; Lacemakers, 286; ii. 463, 761 ;
Bricklayers, 360

OASTLER, T., 250, 364
Oddfellows' Magazine, the, 83, IOI
Officers chosen by rotation, 7 : by lot,
7 ; nominated by other officers, 8 ;
by tacit approval, 9 ; after com-
petitive examination, 16 ; annually
elected, 16, 36, 50; obtain perma-
nence of tenure, 16, 40, 41, 50
Offices, sale of, in Switzerland, 7, 22 ;
proposed among the Stonemasons, 22
Old age, provision for, by Trade Unions,
152-161; objection to compulsory
insurance for, ii. 529 ; pensions, 827

men, employment of, ii. 717

Oldham, Cotton-spinners, 41, 92, 125,
264, 289 ; ii. 729 ; Ironfounders,
116; Plumbers, 264; Carpenters, 264
Open trades, ii. 473
Outdoor relief, effect of, 426 ; ii. 718
Out of Work pay given only by Trade
Unions, 100, 160; municipal attempts
to provide, 160 ; fundamental posi-
tion of, in Trade Union Mutual In-
surance, 161 ; economic effect of,
163 ; use of, to abolish underground
workshops, 359 ; effect of, in demarc-
ation disputes, ii. 515 ; future of, ii.
828

Overlap, ii. 519. See also Demarcation

Overlookers, wages of, 105 ; federal

relations of, 123, 258 ; type of Trade

920

Index

Unionism required by, 105 ; strategic
position of, ii. 479. See Cotton Oper-
atives

Over-production, 448

Oversteaming, 252, 272, 358, 364, 386

Overtime, 264, 341-351, 439

Owen, Robert, 101, 250, 402, 403 ; ii.
608, 868

Owenite Trade Unionism, constitutional
form of, 12; inherent impracticability
of, 1 39 ; economic basis of, 402 ;
was followed by Doctrine of Supply
and Demand, ii. 572

PACKING-CASE Makers, 395 ; ii. 486

Painters, imperfect organisation of, 81 ;
federal relations of, 132, 134 ; work-
ing rules of, 175 ; forbid long en-
gagements, 432 ; ancient gild of, ii.
480 ; demarcation disputes of, 509

Paley, ii. 454

Pallion Works, dispute at, ii. 563

Pamphleteer ; the, ii. 455

Papermakers, nomination of committee
by officers, 8 ; early rules of, 1 1 ;
hierarchy of non-elective authorities
among, 12 ; attitude of, towards
machine-made paper, 420; rates of
wages of, 421 ; frequent arbitrations
of, 420 ; increased efficiency of,
423; enforce the "six days' custom,"

436

apprenticeship regulations among,

ii. 462 ; compulsory Trade Unionism
among, 533 ; virtual alliance of, with
employers to check competition, 579,
707 ; in France, 708

Parasitic trades, ii. 749-766

Paris, the Parliament of, ii. 565;
poverty and birth-rate of, 637 ; pro-
vision for funerals in, 827

Parliamentary agent, boot operatives
support, 147

Committee of Trade Union Con-
gress, 265-278 ; action of, with re-
gard to Employers' Liability, 369, 373

Particulars clause, 252, 271, 310

Partnering, ii. 475

Patents, ii. 682

Patrimony, ii. 455, 458, 460, 462, 469,

474

Patten, Professor Simon, ii. 866
Pattern-makers, character of, 1 08 ;
object to amalgamation and form
separate union, 1 10 ; division among,
in, II 7> nS; touting for members,
117; rivalry with A. S. E., Il8;

sectional interests of, 123, 129 ;
federal relations of, 130, 132, 134;
insist on time work, 287 ; strategic
advantage of, ii. 479 ; demarcation
disputes of, 509, 514

Pea- picking, ii. 544

Pearl Button Makers, 395 ; ii. 463, 475,
498

Peasant proprietorship at Trade Union
Congress, 271

Pease, Sir J. W., 232

Pen and Pocket Blade Forgers, 395

Pennsylvania, election of executive by
districts, 47 ; coal trust in, 448

Penrhyn, Lord, 244

Pepys, Samuel, ii. 775

Perceval, H. G., 115

Perkins, F., 231

Permanent Relief Funds, 373 ; ii. 529 ;
literature as to, 366

Perry, A. L., ii. 604, 606

Peterborough, pea-picking at, ii. 544

Pickard, B., 262; ii. 590

Picketing, ii. 719, 855

Piecers, wages of, 105 ; relation of, to
spinners, ii. 475, 497 ; exclusion of
girls from, 497 ; excess of, ii. 735,
759, 811. See Cotton Operatives

Piecework forbidden by Stonemasons,
77, 286, 297 ; abolition of, desired
by Gasworkers, 147 ; list of Trade
Unions which object to, 286 ; list of
Trade Unions which accept, 287 ; as
protection against sweating, 288 ; as
leading to sweating, 292 ; explana-
tion of Trade Union posilion with
regard to, 288-304 ; effect of, on
desire for Normal Day, 328-334 ;
associated with overtime, 346 ; in-
sisted on, by Boot and Shoe Oper-
atives, 398 ; effect of, in American
boot factories, 400 ; objection of em-
ployers to, 401 ; mistaken economic
basis of, 402 ; effect of, on machinery
and improvements, 413 ; relation of,
to sex segregation, ii. 501

Lists, antiquity of, 283 ; among

Basketm akers, 283 ; among Boot
and Shoe Operatives, 188, 283, 314 ;
among Brushmakers, 283 ; among
Cabinetmakers, 301 ; among Com-
positors, 283, 299, 314 ; among
Coopers, 283 ; among Cotton Oper-
atives, 195, 288, 312, ii. 501 ; among
Hosiery Workers, ii. 502 ; among
Ironworkers, 283 ; among Tailors,
279, 283

Index

921

Place, Francis, 9, u, 299, 337, 402 ; ii.
542, 587, 638

Plasterers, working rules of, 175 ; object
to piecework, 287 ; Trade Union
membership among, 287 ; insist on
place for meals, 360 ; ancient gild of,
ii. 480

Platelayers, accidents to, 376

Platers. See Boilermakers

Plater's marker, ii. 456

Playfair, Dr. William, ii. 454

Lord, ii. 585

Plebiscite in France strengthens execu-
tive, 26. See Referendum^ Initi-
ative, Direct Legislation

Plimsoll, S., 364

Plug Riots, the, 220

Plumbers, preference for rotation of
governing branch, 17; mode of
electing executive, 17 ; separate
organisation of Scotch and English,
83 ; proposal to include, in A. S. E.,
112 ; working rules of, 175 ;
machinery for Collective Bargaining
among, 179 ; desire certificates of
proficiency, 252 ; ii. 495 ; object to
piecework, 287, 297 ; Trade Union
membership among, 287 ; recruited
from plumbers' mates in London, ii.
475> 4^9 ; ancient gild of, 480 ; de-
marcation disputes of, 509-518 ; rule
of, as to working for customers, ii. 579

Pole, W., ii. 469

Politics, exclusion of, 4 ; need of special
organisation for, 258-265 ; cleavages
in, among Trade Unionists, 271 ;
interest in, of Trade Unionists, ii. 537

Pollock, Sir Frederick, 366; ii. 534, 853

Poor Law Commissioners, Report of,
163, 426, 750, 755

Poor Man's Guardian, the, 402

Pope, J. Buckingham, 388

Population, influence of wages on, ii.
612,617,632-643 ; declining increase
of, 636 ; deliberate limitation of,
637-643 ; in Hearts of Oak Friendly
Society, 638 ; in Massachusetts, 641

Porter, G. R. , 448

Portsmouth Stonemasons, 77, 360

Positivists, the, ii. 603, 618, 845

Potter, Edmund, F.R.S., 217, 220,
308, 392 ; ii. 565

Potters* Examiner, the, 392, 393

Potters object to empty hot ovens, 358 ;
vehemently objected to machinery,
392 ; stint among, 447 ; revolted
against annual hiring, 431

Poverty, influence of, on birth-rate, ii.

637 ; great extent of, 722, 766
Preference men, 121, 434
President, authority of, 3, 4, 6, 7 ;

chooses committee, 8 ; acts in

Collective Bargaining, 179
Preston Carpenters, 5 ; Cotton-weavers,

315

Price, John (of Palmer and Co.), ii. 513

L. L. F. R., 205

Prices, relation of wages to, 444 ; ii.
577, 869, 873

Priestley v. Fowler, 366

Primary assembly, in America, 42 ; the
Trade Union branch as, 102

Prime Cost, ii. 665

Primitive Democracy, vol. i. Part I.
ch. i. pp. 3-37

Printer. See Compositors

Printing, change of custom as to
electioneering, 80 ; introduction of
stab in, 299 ; extras in, 314 ; intro-
duction of composing machines into,
407 ; wide dispersion of industry of,
ii. 465 ; introduction of women into,

499

Priority, position and purpose, ii. 522

Prison labor, ii. 787

Profit-sharing, reasons why Trade
Unions object to, ii. 551

Profits, theories of, ii. 604-653 ; low
rate of, on watered capital, 667 ;
pools of, 677, 806 ; increased by
Common Rules, 730 ; not interfered
with by good wages or short hours,
733 ; and Free Trade, 863

Progress, definition of, ii. 703

Progression, ii. 498-495

Progressive Review, the, 387

Proportional representation, unsuited
for federal bodies, 136; especially if
they act as umpires, ii. 523

Protection. See Free Trade

Protectionism, local, its relation to
Trade Unionism, 73-80 ; resemblance
of Trade Unionism to fiscal, ii. 559

Proxy voting, among Northumberland
Coalminers, 34 ; in Coalminers' Con-
ferences, 45 ; at Trade Union Con-
gress, 277

Prudential Assurance Company, 101

Public Health Acts, 356; ii. 771, 785,822

QUEENSTOWN Shipwrights, 75
Quetelet, ii. 637

RAAIJMAKERS, Charles, 160

922

Index

Rae, John, 324

Railway Servants, constitution of union
of, 46, 50 ; national character of, 73 ;
Irish branches of, 86, 87 ; promote
agitation for Employers' Liability,
369 ; secure special clause, 370 ; are
compelled to contract out, 372, 374 ;
extreme liability of, to accidents, 376,
378 ; have now special inspectors for
their protection, 378 ; irregularity of
work among, 435 ; desire guaranteed
minimum of weekly earnings, 435 ;
regulation of hours of, ii. 584, 594

Railways, irregular employment by,
434 ; overwhelming strength of, ii.
553? 691 ; regulation of hours on,
5^5> 773 J Parliamentary monopoly
of, 68 1 ; fixing of minimum wage by,
814; application of arbitration to, 814

Springmakers, ii. 564

Rambert, Eugene, 3, 7, 22

Rational Sick and Burial Association,
101

Rattening, 213, 397

Raymond, Daniel, ii. 618

Razor Hafters, ii. 458, 459

Redgrave, 349

Red Leaders, ii. 509

Reeves, Hon. W. P., 246; ii. 814

Referendum, use of, among Trade
Unionists, 19 ; idea of, derived from
Rittinghausen, 21 ; results of, 22 ;
failure of, to ensure popular control,
23, 26, 31 ; form of, among North-
umberland Coalminers, 33, 34 ;
abandonment of, 26 ; logical defect
of, 6 1 ; possible sphere for, 62

Remission of rent, effect of, ii. 762

Renfrewshire Coalminers, ii. 587

Rent, nature of, ii. 643-645, 831

Representative, the elected, unknown
in early Trade Unions, n, 19, 36;
evolved from the delegate, 37, 38, 44,
47, 54, 63 ; subject to the caucus, 41 ;
duties of, 54; must be specialised and
salaried, 65 ; future functions of, 68

Assembly, absent from early Trade

Union constitutions, ii ; need for,
36 ; form of, among the Cotton-
spinners, 38 ; among the Coal-
miners, 43 ; voting at, 42, 45 ;
superiority of, 49 ; difficulty of
obtaining, 53 ; character of, 66 ;
future of, 70

Executive, 47 ; working of, 51

Institutions, vol. i. ch. ii. ; as

affected by federation, 136, 140

Reserve army, economic effects of, ii. 706

Restriction of Numbers, Devi.;e of the,
ii. 560 ; economic effects of, 704-
714. See also Population

of Output, 449 ; ii. 708

Retail trade, ii. 669, 684

Rhodesia, ii. 680

Ricardo, David, ii. 604, 610, 622, 633,
730, 869

Richmond, 10

Right to a Trade, the, vol. ii. Part. II.
ch. xi. pp. 508-527, 809

Riley, H. T., 335; ii. 498, 480, 459,
5io, 511

Ring -spinning, introduction of, 424 ;
effect on mule-spinners, 427 ; effect
on engineers, ii. 733 ; parasitic, 753 ;
legal regulation of, 803

Rings, capitalist, 448 ; ii. 577, 675,
685, 689, 708

Ritchie, Professor D. G. , ii. 845

Rittinghausen, 21

Rivet-boy, ii. 456, 481

Rivetters. See Boot and Shoe Opera-
tives and Boilermakers

Roberts, W. H., 366

Rochdale Cotton-spinners, 58 ; Warpers,
442

Rodbertus, 324

Rogers, J. E. Thorold, ii. 618, 727

Romilly, E., ii. 608

Ropemakers, of Glasgow, election
customs, 6

Rosebery, the Earl of, 241, 242

Rotation of office, 7 ; in old friendly
societies, 13 ; of governing branch, 13,
17 ; in the Ancient Order of Foresters,
1 8 ; among Cotton Operatives, 41 -

Rotherhithe Watermen, 437

Rough-stuff cutters, 418

Rousiers, Paul de, 175, 434

Royal Commission on the Aged Poor
(1893-95), ; 385 ; "• 529 5 °n the
Supply of Coal (1873), 448 ; on
Children's Employment, 285 ; on
Factories (1837), 338, 355 ; on
Friendly Societies, 101 ; on the
Health of Towns, 355 ; on Labor
(1891-95), 159, 207, 218, 219, 221,
228, 230, 234, 291, 346, 358, 365, 393,
434 ; ii. 457, 531, 534, 5^3, 722, 770;
on the Poor Law (1832-34), 162, 355,
426; on Trade Unions (1867-69), 156,
159, 167, 304, 305; ii. 453, 461,
553. See also Select Committee

Prerogative, use of the, ii. 800

Ruskin, John, ii. 618

Index

923

SADDLERS, 336, 337, 352, 439

Sailmakers, rotation of office among, 7 ;
local monopoly among, 74, 75 ;
machinery of, for Collective Bar-
gaining, 179 ; work either piece or
time, 287 ; Trade Union membership
among, 287 ; apprenticeship regula-
tions of, ii. 462

Sailors, political desires of, 252, 263 ;
inability of, to take legal proceedings,
381 ; exclusion of, from Workmen's
Compensation Act, 388

St. Gall adopts Referendum, 19 ; muni-
cipal insurance against unemployment
at, 160

Salisbury, Marquis of, 390

Samuda, ii. 553

Samuelson, Sir Bernhard, 205

Sanger, C. P., ii. 454, 457, 473

Sanitation and Safety of the workplace,
vol. i. Part II. ch. vii. pp. 354-391 ;
modernness of demand for, 355 ; Trade
Union policy in, 361, 385 ; Home
Work involves lowering of, ii. 541 ;
not now abandoned to Supply and
Demand, 583, 584

Saturday half-holiday, 352

Sauerbeck, ii. 577

Saunders, W. , ii. 469

Saving, influences affecting, ii. 621-
627

Savvsmiths, 395

Sawyers, ii. 479, 509

Scab, description of, 207, 215

Schaeffle, Albert, 324

Schanz, G., ii. 455

Schloss, D. F., 285, 297

Schmoller, Professor Gustav, 414 ; ii.

455» 754

Schoenhof, J., 401 ; ii. 726

School teachers, ii. 791, 826

Schulze-Gaevernitz, Dr. G. von, 29,
223, 289

Schwabe, ii. 637

Schwiedland, Dr. Eugen, 414

Scotland, independence of Trade Unions
in, 82 ; character of Trade Unionism
in, 82, 83

Scottish Bakers, 287 ; Boilermakers,
82 ; Carpenters, 340 ; Compositors,
287 ; Cotton-weavers, 10 ; ii. 543 ;
Handloom Weavers, 9 ; Ironfounders,
430 ; Shoemakers, ii. 539 ; Stone-
masons, 287 ; Tailors, 286 ; ii. 540

Scythe Grinders, 440, 442 ; ii. 459

Seaports, monopoly spirit strong in, 73 ;
demarcation disputes in, ii. 509

Secrecy, caused by prosecutions, 9, 10

Secretary, original subordination of, 6 ;
elected by whole society, 14 ; special-
isation and permanence of tenure of,
X5> 4°j 5° 5 subjected to competitive
examination, 16 ; chooses committee,
8 ; acts in Collective Bargaining, 179

Sectional unions, 117

Seeley, Sir John, ii. 847

Seguier, ii. 566

Select Committee on Artisans and
Machinery (1824), 10, II, 319, 355 ;
ii. 453; on Climbing Boys (1817),
363 ; on the Coal Trade (1800, 1829,
and 1830), 448 ; on Combinations of
Workmen (1825), 8, 355, 420 ; ii.
453 ; on Conditions of Government
Contracts (1897), ii. 776 ; on the
Cotton Cloth Factories Act (1889),
359; on Employers' Liability (1887),
366 376, 380 ; on National Provi-
dent Insurance (1885), Ir4 > on Peti-
tions of Artisans (1811), 249; ii.
679 ; on Railway and Canal Bills
(1853), ii. 582 ; on the Sweating
System (1887-1891), 364 ; ii. 543,
548, 588, 589, 655, 765, 771, 772 ; on
Trade Unions (1838), ii. 453 ; on
the Woollen Manufacture (1806), ii.
4^5> 679. See also Royal Commis-
sion

Selection of the Fittest, definition of,
ii. 703

Senior, Nassau, 328; ii. 485, 617, 623,
635, 653, 868

Servitor, ii. 490

Sewage farms, ii. 788

Sewing machine, introduction of, to
bootmaking, 393, 418

Sexual relationships, economic influence
of, ii. 750

Shaftesbury, Earl of, 364, 440 ; ii. 763

Shand, Lord, ii. 590

Shearmen, ii. 459

Sheffield Iris, the, 336

Sheffield, apprenticeship in, ii. 458, 463,
478 ; cutlery trades in, 179, 263, 343,
395, 434 ; ii. 458, 463, 478, 800 ;
effect of Trade Unionism in, ii. 614 ;
outwork in, ii. 543 ; rattening and
violence in, 213 ; Britannia Metal
Smiths, ii. 458 ; Edge Tool Forgers,
ii. 459 ; File Cutters, 286, 395 ; File
Forgers, 395 ; Pen and Pocket Blade
Forgers, 395 ; Razor Grinders, ii. 459 ;
Razor Hafters, ii. 459 ; Saw Smiths,
395 > Scythe Grinders, 440, 442 ; ii.

924

Index

458 ; Table Blade Forgers, 395 ;
Tailors, 336 ; Wool Shear Benders,
439 ; Wool Shear Grinders, ii. 459

Shipwrights, of Liverpool, drinking
rules, 5 > compulsory office among,
7 ; local monopolies of, 73, 75 ;
congresses of, 74 > formation of
Associated Shipwrights' Society, 74 ;
absorption of local societies, 74, 76 ;
spreading from Glasgow Society of,
82 ; irregularities of Irish branches,
86 ; divergence of interest between
joiners and, 130; in federal union
with other trades, 132 ; introduction
of out of work pay among, 164 ;
Trade Union membership among,
287 ; work either piece or time, 287 ;
desire of, for Normal Day, 333, 341 ;
hours of labor of, 341 ; objection of,
to overtime, 341, 439; prohibit en-
grossing of work, 439 ; demarcation
disputes of, ii. 509-518

Shoe and Leather Record, the, 78, 188,
189, 191, 192, 322, 398, 400; ii. 550

Shoemakers (hand), of Edinburgh, rules
as to keymasters, 6 ; separate organ-
isation of Scotch and English, 83 ;
description of scab, 207 ; indifference
of, to Normal Day, 342 ; effect of
home work among, ii. 541 ; enlight-
ened policy towards machinery, 418 ;
strict maintenance of Standard of
Life by, 419 ; ancient demarcation
cases among, ii. 510, 511. See Boot
and Shoe Operatives

Shop assistants, ii. 804

Shop bargain, 173, 279, 302

Shops, psychology of expensive, ii. 670

Short time, policy of, 448

Shot-firing, proposed restriction of, 126

Sick benefit, administered by branch as
jury, TOO ; variation of, in different
societies, 101 ; an element in Trade
Union insurance, 152; causes objec-
tion to employers' benefit societies.
ii. 551 ; future of, 826

Sidgwick, Professor H., ii. 650, 651,
652, 800

Sigismund, the Emperor, ii. 565

Silk-dressers, ii. 490, 493

Hatters. See Hatters

Throwers, ii. 587

— — Weavers, 434 ; ii. 543, 760

Silver engraving, women attempt, ii.
498 ; hours in, 800

Sismondi, J. C. L. S. de, ii. 568

Six Days' Custom, 436

Skinners, ii. 460

Slaters, working rules of, 175 ; pro-
gression among, ii. 489 ; protest
against Bricklayers' encroachments,

515

Slaves, trade in, ii. 569 ; enfranchise-
ment of, 569 ; economic effect of,
751, 778, 868

Sliding Scale, in iron trade, 205, 211,
231-234, 237 ; in South Wales coal-
mining, 209, 237 ; in Northumber-
land and Durham, 234 ; compulsory
nature of, 209, 216 ; inconsistent
with Trade Union policy on over-
production, 446 ; disastrous character
of, ii. 576, 587

Small masters, Trade Union objection
to, ii. 546

Smart, Professor W., 445 ; ii. 618, 626,
648, 673

Smith, Adam, 337, 356, 357 ; ii. 454,
481, 569, 617, 623, 624, 626, 656,
695, 869

Assheton, 375

E. J., ii. 578, 665

Erasmus P., ii. 618

— H. Llewellyn, 433 ; ii. 589

Smiths, character of, 108, 123 ; retain
sectional unions, no; rivalry with
A. S. E., 118; federal relations of,
129, 132, 134; use of Strike in
Detail by, 168 ; work either piece or
time, 287 ; relations of, to strikers,
290, ii. 480 ; ancient gild of, 480 ;
demarcation disputes of, 509. See
Engineers

Smoking allowed at members' meet-
ings* 5 ; forbidden, 6

Smooting, 439

Socialism among Trade Unionists, 271 ;
at Trade Union Congress, 271 ; ob-
jection to piecework ascribed to,
282 ; economic basis of, 402 ; influ-
ence of, with regard to admission of
women, ii. 5°° > by Trade Option,
536 ; relation of Trade Unionists to,
539, 598, 832

Social Science, National Association
for the Promotion of, 76, 153, 169,
217, 220, 308, 337, 340, 359, 392,
393, 401, 403, 432; ii. 544, 564, 565

Sombart, Prof. Werner, 414

Somerset Coalminers, 126; cloth
manufacture, ii. 764

South African coal, ii. 741

Australia, Conciliation Act of,

246; ii. 815

Index

925

South Wales Coalminers, 126, 209,
237, 286, 374 ; ii. 577 5 Tinplate
Workers, 286

Metropolitan Gas Works, ii. 777

Sovereignty, ii. 845

Spanish and Morocco Leather Finishers'
Society, 167 ; ii. 460

Specialisation, in the art of govern-
ment, 59, 64; in cotton manufac-
ture, 105, 125 ; in engineering, 107 ;
ii. 471 ; in handicrafts, 419 ; be-
tween the sexes, ii. 501, 507 ; in
shipbuilding, 509, 516

Speeding up in cotton-mills in boot and
shoe factories, 399 ; in engineering
works, 428

Spencer, Herbert, ii. 781

Spens, W. C.,366

Spindle and Flyer Makers, 287

Spitalfields Silk-weavers, ii. 543

Spring Knife Grinders, 163

Stafford Boot Trade Board, 187

Staffordshire Ironworkers, 233, 234 ;
Potters, 286, 316, 358, 431 ; Oven-
men, 358

Staircasing, 284

Standard of Life, ii. 693-700

Oil Company, ii. 709

Rate, vol. i. Part I. ch. v.

pp. 279-323 ; relation of, to Normal
Day, 330; relation of Machinery to,
405 ; effect of, on sex competition,
ii. 498-507 ; application of, to de-
marcation disputes, 524 ; adverse in-
fluence of small masters on, 547 ;
relation of profit sharing to, 551 ;
effect of, as a bulwark, 701 ; in caus-
ing selection of the fittest, 718

State Insurance, 390 ; ii. 529, 827

Statesman's Manual, 42

Steam Engine Makers, drinking rules,
5 ; rotation of office among, 7 ;
rotation of governing branch among,
13 ; delegate meetings of, 19 ; foreign
branches of, 81 ; object to amalga-
mation, no; proposal to increase
superannuation funds, 116; rivalry
with other engineers' unions, 117;
federal relations of, 132; treaty of,
with Cardiff Boilermakers, ii. 520.
See Engineers

Steel Smelters, national society develop-
ing from Glasgow, 82 ; insist on
piecework, 286 ; membership of,
286 ; system of progression among,
ii. 490 ; term of service among, 493 ;
objection of, to restriction on em-

ployer's selection, 494; earnings of,
582

Stephan, H., 324

Stephen, Leslie, ii. 606

Stephens, W. Walker, ii. 566

Stephenson, Robert, ii. 581

Stimson, F. G., 253

F. J., ii. 86 1

Stint, 447

Stirling, James, 159, 224, ii. 611, 612,
613, 614, 621, 622, 653, 690, 841

Stocking-frame workers. See Hosiery
Workers

Stocks of coal, 447

Stone Carvers, 360

Stonemasons, long stay of head office
in London, 17 ; delegate meetings
of, 19 ; adopt Referendum, 21 ; ex-
perience of Direct Legislation among,
22, 24 ; declare rules unalterable,
25 ; local monopoly among, 75, 77 ;
prohibition of importation of worked
stone by, 77 ; working rules of, 77,
98 ; separate organisation of Scotch
and English, 83 ; irregularities of
Irish branches of, 84 ; centralisation
of funds among, 91 ; spasmodic local
strikes among, 98 ; local autonomy
of branches among, 98 ; federal re-
lations of, 134 ; rule as to provision of
dinner by employers, 98, 366 ; ex-
haustion of funds of, 155 ; working
rules of, 175, 360 ; machinery for
Collective Bargaining among, 180 ;
political desires of, 264 ; Standard
Rate of, 279, 323 ; differentiation of
work among, 284 ; forbid piecework,
287, 288, 298 ; Trade Union 'mem-
bership among, 287 ; object to chas-
ing, 304 ; desire of, for Normal Day,
340, 351 ; hours of labor of, 340,
352 ; start Nine Hours' Movement,
340, 352 ; insist on place for dinner,
360 ; apprenticeship regulations
among, ii. 460, 463, 473, 478 ;
ancient gild of, 480 ; wages of, 873

Strikes begun by single branches in
building trades, 97 ; approval of
council required among Carpenters,
99 ; spasmodic local, 98 ; largely
non-unionist in origin, 178; rendered
less frequent by Trade Unionism,
221 ; outbreak of, about demarca-
tion, ii. 509, 513 ; probable public
interference to prevent, 813

Strike in Detail, description of, 169 ;
among the Tapesizers, 107 ; among

926

Index

the Leather Finishers, 167 ; among
the Smiths, 168 ; among the Flint
Glass Makers, 169 ; drawbacks of,
171

Strikers unite with Smiths, 129 ; ob-
tain piecework rate, 290 ; relation of,
to Smiths, ii. 480 ; progression of, 490

Stuff- pressers, 215 ; ii. 463, 478

Stussi, 24

Subcontracting forbidden in building
contracts, 298

Sugar bounties, ii. 767, 779

Superannuation benefit, 152 ; insecure,
:55> J57 » causes objection to em-
ployers' benefit societies, ii. 551

Supply and Demand, Doctrine of, ii.
562, 572-584, 593-599, 810

Sweated trades, inadequacy of factory
legislation for, 364 ; irregularity of
employment in, 433 ; inevitability of
Individual Bargaining in, 435 ; Trade
Union objection to Home Work in,
"• 539 > result of Supply and De-
mand in, 589 ; parasitic nature of,
749-766; future of, 817

Switzerland, the Landesgemeinden of,
3, 7, 22 ; election of executive com-
mittee by districts, 47 ; sale of offices
in, 7, 22 ; small results of the Initi-
ative, 24 ; obedience to popular will
in, 68 ; education and child-labor in,
ii. 769

Symes, Rev. J. E., ii. 618

TABLE Blade Forgers, 395

Tailors, militant organisation of, 9 >
separate organisation of Scotch and
English, 83, 120; irregularities of
Irish branches of, 85 ; large number
of branches in Ireland, 87 ; accusa-
tions of blacklegging among, 120 ;
contagious disease benefit among,
152; political objects of, 252, 263;
extreme dispersion of, 264 ; insist on
piecework, 286 ; Trade Union mem-
bership of, 286 ; antiquity of piece-
work lists, 283 ; do not object to
extra payment, 279 ; plurality of
standard rates among Scottish, 322 ;
hours of labor of, 336, 352, 356 ; ii.
800 ; desire of, for Normal Day, 336 ;
action of, against underground work-
shops, 359 ; insanitary conditions of,
358 ; degeneration of unorganised
sections of, 416 ; strong feeling
against unemployment, 430 ; influ-
ence of outwork among, ii. 544

Tallyman, tally system, ii. 654, 674

Tangye.and Company, ii. 690

Tantum, 447

Tapesizers, wages of, 105 ; type of
Trade Unionism required by, 106 ;
federal relations of, 123 ; Strike in
Detail employed by, 107 ; use of out
of work pay by, 165 ; refuse to work
with non-unionists, 215; strategic
position of, ii. 478

Task work forbidden among Boiler-
makers, 300

Tattersall, W., 201

Taussig, Professor F. W., ii. 604, 618,
650

Taxation, ii. 871

Team system, 399-404 ; ii. 483

Technical education, apprenticeship as,
ii. 476 ; must be paid by community,
481 ; connection of, with Living Wage,
595 ; decay of, in London, 770 ; real
object of, 829

Temperton v. Russell, ii. 859

Tenement factory, ii. 539

Ten Hours' Day of Cotton Operatives,
250, 338 ; ii. 565 ; of Engineers, 336,
351, 352 ; of Building Trades, 336,
352; of Tailors, 336, 351

Tenant right, ii. 567

Tenters, children employed by Cotton-
weavers as, 105; ii. Si I ; assistants
to Calico Printers, 481

Textile Factory Workers' Association,
the United, 124, 251, 258 ; objects
to arbitration, 244 ; organisation of,
as political machine, 258-260 ; con-
sults experts, 268 ; influence of, in
Trade Union Congress, 278 ; tem-
porarily suspended, 260

Theatres, employment of children in,

364
Thomas, D. A., 448

E., 226

Thompson, Professor R. E., ii. 866

William, 403 ; ii. 618

Thorneycroft's Scale, 232

Thornton, W. T., 304; ii. 605, 618,

620, 628, 646

Three shifts objected to, 412
Tilers, ii. 515
Times, the, 64, 293, 448; ii. 534, 732,

804

Timework. See Piecework
Tinplate Workers, 286, 300, 432 ; ii

509, 517

Tomn, Lilian, 19
Toolmakers, ill. See Engineers

Index

927

Torrens, Robert, ii. 696
Toyn, Joseph, 229

Trade Unionism and Democracy, vol.
ii. Part III. ch. iv. pp. 807-847

difficulty of defining a, 104.

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