CHAPTER XX: TRADE-UNIONISM.

§ 825. Among those carrying on their lives under like conditions, whether in respect of place of living or mode of living, there arise in one way diversities of interests and in another way unities of interests. In respect of place of living this is seen in the fact that members of a tribe or nation have unity of interests in defending themselves against external enemies, while internally they have diversities of interests prompting constant quarrels. Similarly in respect of mode of living. Those who pursue like occupations, being competitors, commonly have differences, as is implied by the proverb “Two of a trade can never agree;” but in relation to bodies of men otherwise occupied, their interests are the same, and sameness of interests prompts joint actions for defence. In preceding chapters history has shown how this general law was illustrated in old times among traders. Now we have to observe how in modern times it is illustrated among their employés.

Union of artisans for maintenance of common advantages is traceable in small rude societies, even before master and worker are differentiated. Turner tells us that in Samoa—

Apparently without formal combination there is thus a tacit agreement to maintain certain rates of payment. Something of kindred nature is found in parts of Africa. Reade says that a sort of trade-union exists on the Gaboon, and those who break its rules are illtreated. The natives on the coast endeavour to keep all the trade with the white man in their own hands; and if one from any of the bush tribes is detected selling to the white man, it is thought a breach of law and custom. But the trade-union as we now know it, obviously implies an advanced social evolution. There is required in the first place a definite separation between the wage-earner and the wage-payer; and in the second place it is requisite that considerable numbers of wage-earners shall be gathered together; either as inhabitants of the same locality or as clustered migratory bodies, such as masons once formed. Of course fulfilment of these conditions was gradual, but when it had become pronounced—

Not that there was a lineal descent of trade unions from craft-gilds. Evidence of this is lacking and evidence to the contrary abundant. Though very generally each later social institution may be affiliated upon some earlier one, yet it occasionally happens that social institutions of a kind like some which previously existed, arise de novo under similar conditions; and the trade-union furnishes one illustration. Akin in nature though not akin by descent, the trade-union is simply a gild of wage-earners.*

§ 826. That in common with multitudinous other kinds of combinations, trade-unions are prompted by community of interests among their members, is implied by facts showing that where, other things being equal, the interests are mixed, they do not arise. At the present time in Lancashire—

So was it with journeymen in early days. While the subordinate worker could look forward with some hope to the time when he would become a master, he was restrained from combining with others in opposition to masters; but when there had come into existence many such subordinate workers who, lacking capital, had no chance of becoming masters, there arose among them combinations to raise wages and shorten time.

If, with community of interests as a prerequisite, we join local aggregation as a further prerequisite, we may infer that the evolution of trade-unions has been very irregular: different trades and localities having fulfilled these conditions in different degrees. London, as the place which first fulfilled the prerequisite of aggregation, was the place in which we find the earliest traces of bodies which prefigure trade-unions—bodies at first temporary but tending to become permanent. At the end of the 14th century and beginning of the 15th, we have the well-known complaints about the behaviour of journeymen cordwainers, sadlers, and tailors, in combining to enforce their own interests; setting examples which a generation later were followed by the shoe-makers of Wisbeach. And here we are shown that just Edition: current; Page: [538] as hot politicians in our days are commonest among those artisans whose daily work permits continuous conversation, so in these old times the wage-earners who first formed tentative trade-unions were those tailors, shoemakers, and sadlers, who, gathered together in work-rooms, could talk while they sewed.

Germs usually differ in character and purpose from the things evolved out of them. Community of interests and local clustering being the prerequisites to trade-combinations, the implication is that they have sometimes grown out of social gatherings of festive kinds, and very frequently out of burial societies, friendly societies, sick-clubs. Artisans periodically assembling for the carrying on of their mutual-aid business, inevitably discussed work and wages and the conduct of masters; and especially so when they all followed the same occupation. There could not fail to result, on the occasion of some special grievance, a determination to make a joint defence. It also naturally happened that the funds accumulated for the primary purpose of the body, came to be used in execution of this secondary purpose: an illustration of the absurd delusion respecting the powers of a majority which pervades political thinking also—the delusion that the decision of a majority binds the minority in respect of all purposes, whereas it can equitably bind the minority only in respect of the purpose for which the body was formed. The prevalence of this delusion has greatly conduced to the development and power of trade-unions; since, in any case of proposed strike, the dissenting minority has been obliged either to yield or to sacrifice invested contributions.

We are not here concerned with the detailed history of wage-earners’ gilds. It will suffice to say that though there were early attempts at them, such as those just named, there were no permanent defensive associations of wage-earners before 1700; but that, by the close of the century, they had become numerous, and were met with repressive legislation which, at first partial in character, ended in a general Edition: current; Page: [539] penal law. By the 39 and 40 George III, chap. 106, it was enacted that any workman entering into combination to advance wages or to shorten hours, should be liable to three months’ imprisonment. That the causes of the rapid development which took place at this period were those above named, is shown by the fact that in 1721 a trade-union was formed by the fifteen thousand journeymen tailors in the Metropolis: aggregation being in this case a conspicuous antecedent. It is further shown by the contrast between the state of the cloth-trade in the West of England and in Yorkshire. Early in the 18th century there had arisen wealthy clothiers in Somersetshire, Gloucestershire, and Devon, who had water-mills in which part of the manufacture was carried on, and on which the hand-workers depended. Here the operatives combined and riotously enforced their demands.

But this contrast disappeared when there arose in Yorkshire, as in the West of England, the Factory system—

That is to say, they struggled against absorption into the body of mere wage-earners which was growing up; and trade-unions were among the results.

§ 827. Evils habitually produce counter evils, and those arising from the Combination Laws were, after repeal of those laws, followed by others consequent upon misuse of freedom. “Trade societies . . . sprang into existence on all sides;” and artisans became as tyrannical as their masters had been. Cotton-operatives in Glasgow, seamen on Edition: current; Page: [540] the Tyne, Sheffield grinders and London shipwrights, dictated terms and used violence to enforce them. Actions and reactions in various trades and numerous places made the course of these combinations irregular; so that there came many formations followed by many dissolutions: especially when commercial depression and extensive suspensions of work brought to unionists proofs that they could not settle wages as they pleased. But combinations of a transitory kind grew into permanent combinations, and by and by the integration of small local groups was followed by the integration of these into larger and wider groups. In 1827 the carpenters and joiners formed a national association. “Temporary alliances in particular emergencies” had, in earlier days, joined the Cotton Spinners’ Trade Clubs of Lancashire with those of Glasgow; but in 1829 there came a binding together of spinners’ societies in England, Scotland, and Ireland. Almost simultaneously the various classes of operatives in the building trades throughout the kingdom combined. Up to this time the unions had been trade-unions properly so called; but now there came the idea of a Trades’ union—a union not of operatives in one trade or in kindred trades, but a national union of operatives in all trades. The avowed plan was to consolidate “the productive classes”: the assumption, still dominant, being that the manual workers do everything and the mental workers nothing. The first of these schemes, commenced in 1830, quickly failed. In 1834 a second scheme of like nature was initiated by Robert Owen, entitled “The Grand National Consolidated Trades’ Union,” which in a few weeks enrolled “at least half-a-million members,” and which had for one object “a general strike of all wage-earners.” This great but feebly organized body was soon split up by internal disputes and collapsed; while during the same period various of the minor bodies affiliated to it, as the Potters’ Union and the unions of tailors and clothiers, dissolved. There ensued a breaking up of the federal organizations at large, and in Edition: current; Page: [541] 1838 there was going on a steady decline of trade-unionism in general. After some years, however, came a “gradual building up of the great ‘amalgamated’ societies of skilled artisans,” in the course of which trade-unionism “obtained a financial strength, a trained staff of salaried officers, and a permanence of membership hitherto unknown.”

Further particulars do not call for mention. It will suffice to note the sizes of these organizations. In 1892, among engineering and shipbuilding operatives, there existed 260 societies with 287,000 members, formed into various large groups, as the Amalgamated Societies of Engineers, the United Boilermakers, and the societies of ironfounders and shipwrights. Among miners and quarrymen and associated workers, locally or specially combined, there were 347,000 unionists, nearly two-thirds of whom were, in 1888, “gathered into the Miners Federation of Great Britain”—an integration of integrations. Referring to the million and a half unionists existing at that date, the authors from whom I have briefly quoted say:—

§ 828. Since community of interests is the bond of union in these gilds of wage-earners, as it was in the gilds of merchants and craftsmen centuries ago, the wage-earners have naturally adopted modes of action like those of their predecessors. As by the old combinations so by the new, there have been joint resistances to things which threatened material evils to their members and joint enforcements of things promising material benefits to them.

The number of artisans occupied in any one business in an old English town, was restricted by the regulation that no one could carry it on who had not passed through an apprenticeship Edition: current; Page: [542] of specified length. This being the law of every gild, it resulted that each town had a semi-servile population living as best it might outside the regular businesses. Similarly, gilds of wage-earners, prompted by the desire to restrain competition, commonly insist upon previous apprenticeship as a qualification for entrance into their unions, while making strenuous efforts, and often using violence, to prevent the employment of non-unionists: the tendency being to produce, as of old, a class of men ineligible for any regular work.

To the same end the old gilds kept down the numbers of apprentices taken by masters into their respective trades, and in this their example has been followed by these modern gilds. Indeed, we here find a definite link between the old and the new. For one of the earliest actions taken by modern combinations of workers was that of reviving and enforcing the still-extant laws limiting the numbers of apprentices; and this has become a general policy. Of the flint-glass makers it is said:—

So, too, in the printing trades there have been persistent efforts to find “the most effective way of checking boy-labour.”

In the days of craft-gilds the State-regulation of prices prevailed widely; but that the gilds, either as deputies of the government or of their own motion, also regulated prices, we have some evidence. “A statute of Edward VI seems to have limited the powers hitherto enjoyed by the gilds of fixing wages and prices,” says Cunningham. Even in the absence of proofs we might fairly infer that their rules were intended to check underselling; as also to prevent Edition: current; Page: [543] the lowering of prices by over-production. Among the merchant-adventurers there was a “stint,” or limit, put to the quantity of commodity a member might export within the year, according to his standing: a restraint on competition. Similarly, the regulations for the trade of Bristol in the 15th century, implied “a ‘ruled price’ for each of the chief commodities of trade,” and implied “that no merchant should sell below it,” save in special cases. Clearly, forbidding the sale of a commodity below a certain price, is paralleled by forbidding the sale of labour below a certain price; and the man who underbids his fellow is reprobated and punished in the last case as he was in the first.

Laws imply force used to maintain them; for otherwise they are practically non-existent. Here, as before, there is agreement between the old combinations and the new, though the forces used are differently derived. The most ancient trade-corporations were practically co-extensive with the municipal governments, and at later stages the corporations which differentiated from them, continued their municipal alliances: town-authorities being largely composed of gild-authorities. Hence it can scarcely be doubted that gild-regulations were enforced by municipal officials; for the political actions and the industrial actions were not then separated as they are now. But the wage-earners’ gilds, having had no alliances with municipal bodies, have tried to enforce their regulations themselves. This has been their habit from the beginning. The shoemakers of Wisbeach, in striking against low wages, threatened that “there shall none come into the town to serve for that wages within a twelve-month and a day, but we woll have an harme or a legge of hym, except they woll take an othe as we have doon.” When we recall the past deeds of the Sheffield grinders, trying to kill recalcitrant members of their body by explosions of gunpowder, or by making their fast-revolving wheels fly to pieces, or when we remember the violent assaults month after month now made on non-unionists, we Edition: current; Page: [544] see that the same policy is still pursued—a policy which would be much further pursued were police restraints still less efficient than they are.

Among minor parallelisms may be named the conflicts arising in old times between the craft-gilds, and in modern times between the wage-earners’ gilds, respecting the limits of their several occupations. The gild-members in one business denied to those in a kindred business the right to make certain things which they contended fell within their monopoly. And similarly at present among wage-earners, those of one class are interdicted from doing certain kinds of work which those of another class say belong to their occupation. Thus the fitters and plumbers, the joiners and shipwrights, quarrel over special employments which both claim. Within these few weeks public attention has been drawn to a conflict of this kind between boilermakers and fitters at Messrs. Thorneycroft’s works at Chiswick.

In one respect, however, the ancient traders’ gilds and the modern wage-earners’ gilds have differed in their policies, because their motives have operated differently. The bodies of craftsmen exercised some supervision over the products made and sold by their members; seeming to do this in the public interest, and being in some cases commissioned thus to do it. But in fact they did it in their own interests. A gild-brother who used some inferior material for making the thing he sold, was by so doing enabled to get a greater profit than the rest of the gild-brethren who used the better material; and their prohibition was prompted by their desire to prevent this, not by their desire to protect the public. But the wage-earners who have established fixed rates of payment for so many hours’ work, have no interest in maintaining the standard of work. Contrariwise, they have an interest in lowering the standard in respect of quantity if not of quality: so much so that the superior artisan is prevented from exercising his greater ability by the frowns of his fellows, whose work by comparison he discredits.

Beyond question, then, these various parallelisms (along with the absence of parallelism just named) prove identity of nature between ancient and modern trade-combinations.

§ 829. The restrictionist is essentially the same in nature whether he forbids free trade in commodities or whether he forbids free trade in labour. I make this remark as introductory to a parallel.

Not long since a member of parliament proposed that a duty of ten per cent. should be imposed on imports in general. This was urged as a relief not for the agricultural classes only but for all classes. What was the anticipated effect? That if foreign goods were prevented from competing with English goods to the implied extent, English producers would be severally enabled to obtain so much the more for what they had to sell. There the inference stopped. Every citizen was thought of as a producer, but what would happen to him as a consumer was not asked. The extra profit made by him was contemplated as so much to the good, and there was no recognition of the fact that if all other producers were similarly enabled to get higher prices, the result must be that he, as consumer, would have to pay these higher prices all round for the things he wanted: his income would be raised, but his expenditure would be raised in the same proportion.

We need not wonder, then, if the members of trade-unions are misled by a parallel fallacy. In each class of them—carpenters, bricklayers, engineers, calico-printers, weavers, compositors, pressmen, &c.—every worker thinks it an unquestionable advantage to get more in return for his work than he might get without combination. He sees only the extra amount of his wages, and does not see how that extra amount is dissipated. But it is dissipated. Even by trade-unionists it is now a recognized truth that in any occupation the rise of wages is limited by the price obtained for the article produced, and that if wages are forced up, the price Edition: current; Page: [546] 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 trade-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.

That this must be the general effect has recently been shown in an unmistakable way. At a recent Miners’ Congress it was openly contended that the out-put of coal should be restricted until the price rose to the extent required for giving higher wages. Nothing was said about the effect this raised price of coal would have on the community at large, including, as its chief component, the working classes. All labourers and artisans need fuel, and if coal is made dearer each of them must either spend more for fires or be pinched with cold: the colliers’ profit must be their loss. But what so obviously happens in this case happens in every case. The trade-union policy carried out to the full, has the effect that every kind of wage-earner is taxed for the benefit of every other kind of wage-earner.

§ 830. “What right has he to deprive me of work by offering to do it for less?” says the trade-unionist concerning the non-unionist. He feels himself injured, and thinks that whatever injures him must be wrong. Yet if, instead of himself and a competing artisan, he contemplates two competing tradesmen, he perceives nothing amiss in the underbidding of the one by the other. Says the grocer Jones, pointing to Brown the grocer over the way—“What right has he to take away my custom by selling his tea at twopence a pound less than I do?” Does the unionist here recognize a wrong done by Brown to Jones? Not in the least. He sees that the two have equal rights to offer their commodities at whatever prices they please; and if Brown Edition: current; Page: [547] is content with a small profit while Jones greedily demands a large one, he regards Brown as the better fellow of the two. See then how self-interest blinds him. Here are two transactions completely parallel in their essentials, of which the one is regarded as utterly illegitimate, and the other as quite legitimate.

Still more startling becomes the antithesis if we make the parallel closer. Suppose it true, as sometimes alleged, that the lowered price of wheat does not lower the price of bread, and that therefore bakers must have combined to keep it up. As a buyer of bread, the artisan has no words too strong for the bakers who, by their nefarious agreement, oblige him to spend more money for the same amount of food than he would otherwise do; and if he can find a baker who, not joining the rest, charges less for a loaf in proportion to the diminished cost of wheat, he applauds, and gladly benefits by going to him. Very different is it if the thing to be sold is not bread but labour. Uniting to maintain the price of it is worthy of applause, while refusal to unite, followed by consent to sell labour at a lower rate, is violently condemned. Those who do the one think themselves honest, and call those who do the other “blacklegs.” So that the estimates of conduct are in these two cases absolutely inverted. Artificially raising the price of bread is vicious, but artificially raising the price of labour is virtuous!

If we imagine that the real or supposed bakers’ union, imitating trade-unionists who break the tools of recalcitrant fellow-workmen, should smash the windows of the non-unionist baker who undersold them, the artisan, standing by, and thinking that the police ought to interfere, might also think that the sellers of bread are not the only persons concerned; but that the buyers of bread have something to say. He might argue that it is not wholly a question of profits made by unionist and non-unionist bakers, but is in part a question of how customers may be fed most cheaply: seeing which, he might conclude that this violence of the unionist Edition: current; Page: [548] bakers was a wrong done not only to the non-unionist but to the public at large. In his own case, however, as a trader in labour, he thinks the question is solely between himself, demanding a certain rate of pay, and the non-unionist who offers to take less pay. What may be the interest of the third party to the transaction, who buys labour, is indifferent. But clearly all three are concerned. If the unionist complains that the non-unionist hurts him by underbidding him and taking away his work, not only may the non-unionist reply that he is hurt if he is prevented from working at the rate he offers, but the employer may complain that he, too, is hurt by being obliged to pay more to the one than he would to the other. So that the trade-unionist’s proceeding inflicts two hurts that one may be prevented.

Should it be said that the employer can afford to pay the higher rate, the reply is that the profit on his business is often so cut down by competition that he must, by giving the higher rate, lose all profit and become bankrupt, or else must, along with other manufacturers similarly placed, raise his prices; in which case the community at large, including wage-earners at large, is the third party hurt.

§ 831. Returning from this incidental criticism let us ask what are the effects of the trade-union policy, pecuniarily considered. After averaging the results over many trades in many years, do we find the wage-earner really benefited in his “Standard of Life”?

There is one case—that of the agricultural labourers—which shows clearly that under some conditions little or nothing can be done by combination. Numerous farms are now advertised as vacant and can find no tenants: tens of thousands of acres are lying idle. If, then, the cost of cultivation is even now such that in many parts no adequate return on capital can be obtained by the farmer; and if, as we are told happens on the Bedford estates, all the rent paid goes in keeping the farms in order; the implication is that Edition: current; Page: [549] to increase the cost of cultivation by giving higher wages, would make farming unremunerative over a yet wider area. Still more land would lie idle, and the demand for men would be by so much decreased. Hence a combination to raise wages would in many localities result in having no wages.

Now though in most businesses the restraints on the rise of wages are less manifest, yet it needs but to remember how often manufacturers have to run their machinery short hours and occasionally to stop altogether for a time—it needs but to recall official reports which tell of empty mills in Lancashire going to ruin; to see that in other cases trade conditions put an impassable limit to wages. And this inference is manifest not only to the unconcerned spectator, but is manifest to some officials of trade-unions. Here is the opinion of one who was the leader of the most intelligent body of artisans—the Amalgamated Society of Engineers.

On the workmen a strike entails a double loss—the loss of the fund accumulated by small contributions through many years, and the further loss entailed by long-continued idleness. Even when the striker succeeds in obtaining a rise or preventing a fall, it may be doubted whether the gain obtained in course of time by the weekly increment of pay, is equal to the loss suddenly suffered. And to others than the workers the loss is unquestionable—not to the employers only, by absence of interest and damage to plant, but also to the public as being the poorer by so much product not made.

But the injury wrought by wage-earners’ combinations is sometimes far greater. There has occasionally been caused a wide-spread cessation of an industry, like that which, as shown above, would result were the wages of rural labourers forced up. And here, indeed, we come upon a further parallel Edition: current; Page: [550] between the ancient craft-gilds and the modern wage-earners’ gilds. In past times gild-restrictions had often the effect of driving away craftsmen from the towns into adjacent localities, and sometimes to distant places. And now in sundry cases wage-earners, having either through legislation or by strikes, imposed terms which made it impossible for employers to carry on their businesses profitably, have caused migration of them. The most notorious case is that of the Spitalfields weavers, who in 1773, by an Act enabling them to demand wages fixed by magistrates, so raised the cost of production that in some fifty years most of the trade had been driven to Macclesfield, Manchester, Norwich, and Paisley. A more recent case, directly relevant to the action of trade-unions, is that of the Thames-shipwrights. By insisting on certain rates of pay they made it impracticable to build ships in the Thames at a profit, and the industry went North; and now such shipwrights as remain in London are begging for work from the Admiralty. As pointed out to a recent deputation, the accepted tender for repairs of a Government vessel was less than half that which a Thames-builder, hampered by the trade-union, could afford to offer. So is it alleged to have been in other trades, and so it may presently be on a much larger scale. For the trade-union policy, in proportion as it spreads, tends to drive certain occupations not from one part of England to another but from England to the Continent: the lower pay and longer hours of continental artisans, making it possible to produce as good a commodity at a lower price. Nay, not only in foreign markets but in the home market, is the spreading sale of articles “made in Germany” complained of. An instance, to which attention has just been drawn by a strike, is furnished by the glass-trade. It is stated that nine-tenths of the glass now used in England is of foreign manufacture.

One striking lesson furnished by English history should show trade-unionists that permanent rates of wages are determined by other causes than the wills of either employers Edition: current; Page: [551] or employed. When the Black Death had swept away a large part of the population (more than half it is said) so that the number of workers became insufficient for the work to be done, wages rose immensely, and maintained their high rate notwithstanding all efforts to keep them down by laws and punishments. Conversely, there have been numerous cases in which strikes have failed to prevent lowering of wages when trade was depressed. Where the demand for labour is great, wages cannot be kept down; and where it is small, they cannot be kept up.

§ 832. What then are we to say of trade-unions? Under their original form as friendly societies—organizations for rendering mutual aid—they were of course extremely beneficial; and in so far as they subserve this purpose down to the present time, they can scarcely be too much lauded. Here, however, we are concerned not with the relations of their members to one another, but with their corporate relations to employers and the public. Must we say that though one set of artisans may succeed for a time in getting more pay for the same work, yet this advantage is eventually at the expense of the public (including the mass of wage-earners), and that when all other groups of artisans, following the example, have raised their wages, the result is a mutual cancelling of benefits? Must we say that while ultimately failing in their proposed ends, trade-unions do nothing else than inflict grave mischiefs in trying to achieve them?

This is too sweeping a conclusion. They seem natural to the passing phase of social evolution, and may have beneficial functions under existing conditions. Everywhere aggression begets resistance and counter-aggression; and in our present transitional state, semi-militant and semi-industrial, trespasses have to be kept in check by the fear of retaliatory trespasses.

Judging from their harsh and cruel conduct in the past, Edition: current; Page: [552] it is tolerably certain that employers are now prevented from doing unfair things which they would else do. Conscious that trade-unions are ever ready to act, they are more prompt to raise wages when trade is flourishing than they would otherwise be; and when there come times of depression, they lower wages only when they cannot otherwise carry on their businesses.

Knowing the power which unions can exert, masters are led to treat the individual members of them with more respect than they would otherwise do: the status of the workman is almost necessarily raised. Moreover, having a strong motive for keeping on good terms with the union, a master is more likely than he would else be to study the general convenience of his men, and to carry on his works in ways conducive to their health. There is an ultimate gain in moral and physical treatment if there is no ultimate gain in wages.

Then in the third place must be named the discipline given by trade-union organization and action. Considered under its chief aspect, the progress of social life at large is a progress in fitness for living and working together; and all minor societies of men formed within a major society—a nation—subject their members to sets of incentives and restraints which increase their fitness. The induced habits of feeling and thought tend to make men more available than they would else be, for such higher forms of social organization as will probably hereafter arise.