CHAPTER XVIII: COMPOUND FREE LABOUR.

§ 816. Thus far we have been concerned, if not wholly yet chiefly, with industrial relations between individuals. Though, in sundry cases referred to, one master has directed several workers and sometimes many, yet he has separately regulated each: each man has done this or that particular thing according to order. In other words the work has been retail in its character, not wholesale.

Of wholesale labour the earlier forms were of course compulsory. By men under coercion were built the pyramids of Egypt and the vast buildings of Assyria. Besides bondsmen in their “factories,” the Phœnicians, like others of the ancients, had galley-slaves. Beyond doubt the public works of the Greeks, such as the attempted canal across the isthmus of Corinth, were carried on by slave-labour. And it was thus with the Romans. Mommsen writes:—

If not in such extensive and fully organized ways, yet in ways kindred in character, the large structures bequeathed by mediæval days must have been executed. Unskilled workmen who helped the masons to build the great cathedrals were probably serfs from the estates of the Church; and the laborious part of castle-building was doubtless chiefly done by the serfs of nobles. In our own country may be instanced the case of Windsor Castle. We read that Edition: current; Page: [514] the Round Tower was the product of skilled artisans impressed in various parts of the kingdom: Henry VIII doing in a small way what Koofoo did in a large way. And we have always seen that in those days bodies of burghers or gild-brethren of walled towns were forced to labour on the fortifications.

Indeed a few centuries ago nothing else could have happened. There did not exist in each locality the numbers of free labourers required for uniting in the execution of large works.

§ 817. One of the earliest forms of combination among free workers, or rather semi-free workers, occurred in the manning of ships. The crews of war-vessels during wartime cannot indeed be all of them thus classed; since impressed sailors are slaves in respect of their compulsory service—worse than slaves, because they are liable to be killed. But merchant seamen come in a qualified way within the class we are considering. I say in a qualified way, because they, too, during their engagements stand in the position of slaves; being under despotisms, and liable to severe punishments for disobedience. They are free labourers only in so far that they are free to accept or refuse these temporary contracts of bondage: usually having to choose between one of them and another of the same kind. Moreover their labour is otherwise scarcely of the kind we are contemplating; since, being variously occupied, they stand to their captain in individual relations, rather than as workers who in bodies do the same kind of thing.

Among united workers thus distinguished, the first to be here named are those employed on the semi-public works undertaken by joint-stock companies—roads, canals, railways. Of the masters and men who, generations ago, made turnpike roads we know little. It is tolerably clear, however, that the required money was subscribed locally, with the prospect of interest to be paid out of the proceeds of Edition: current; Page: [515] tolls; and that, probably, lengths of a mile or so were assigned to local contractors, who employed neighbouring farm-labourers. That the gangs of men were composed of such is implied by the fact that, as stated in the life of Mr. Brassey, they were thus composed in recent days on larger and later works: in the first place on canals. These being originally called inland navigations, the men employed were popularly known as “navigators,” abbreviated into “navvies;” and this eventually became the name for all men who in numbers dig and wheel earth.

In the early days of railway-making, portions of a line, each a few miles in length, were let to separate contractors, who undertook in some cases all the required works—cuttings, embankments, bridges, &c.—and in other cases work of one kind only. Some of these, making good profits, acquired wealth; and then, very commonly, one of them would undertake a whole line. But there continued in another form the division of the work into portions: the chief contractor engaging with sub-contractors either for sections of it, or for different kinds of work on one section—earthwork, brick-work, &c. As we learn from The Life and Labours of Mr. Brassey—

This organization was carried out in detail. Beyond division of the entire number of workers occupied in making the line into great groups, under separate sub-contractors or masters, and beyond the division of these again into groups employed by sub-sub-contractors, there was division into still smaller groups, which were the actual operative bodies—clusters of men severally headed by one who was in those days called a “butty,” and who would now be called a “ganger.” The “butty-gang” system implied—

By this union of a few men having joint interests, who laboured under one another’s eyes and under the eyes of their head, great efficiency was ensured: one cause of it being that only proved good workers were admitted into the gang.

Industrial organization thus parallels in its divisions military organization. Among the Romans, who so highly developed this, the larger military bodies contained sub-divisions decreasing in size down to those under centurions and finally decurions—an arrangement followed in principle, if not in detail, throughout modern armies; and, as we have seen, bodies of Roman slaves were in like manner divided into small groups. The like happened in that kingdom which so perfectly carried out the graduated subordination of a stationary army—Peru. The workers were grouped into thousands, hundreds, and tens, under their respective classes of officers. And now we see that large bodies of men among ourselves, whose relations are voluntary instead of compulsory, nevertheless fall into simple groups within compound groups, and these within doubly-compound groups. That such modes of organization are necessary for efficient joint action, whether in fighting or in working, will be all the more manifest on noting the parallelism which in this respect, as in so many other respects, exists between social structures and organic structures. For each large organ in an organism consists of small parts, massed together to make larger parts, which larger parts are similarly massed together to make still larger. To form a muscle a number of contractile fibres are enclosed in a sheath. A number of such sheathed bundles are enclosed in a larger sheath; again these composite bundles are many of them united within a Edition: current; Page: [517] sheath that is larger still; and so on. A kindred mode of composition obtains in the great glands. This analogy, like the other analogies between a social organism and an individual organism, is necessitated by the requirements of cooperation. Manifestly, if the tens of thousands of fibres composing a muscle were merely aggregated, a nervous stimulus could not be so distributed among them as to cause simultaneous contraction. But if a stimulus be sent through some trunk nerve which divides, sub-divides, and sub-sub-divides, until its ultimate branches severally end in small groups of fibres, it can make these all act together. Socially it is the same. The conflicts between hordes of savages and organized troops, show us that efficiency in war depends on analogous grouping and re-grouping. Imagine a great European army suddenly becoming only a swarm of soldiers, and its immediate defeat by an opposing army retaining its regimentation would be certain. And, as we here see, industrial armies employed to execute large works have assumed a kindred type of structure. I emphasize this truth because we must bear it in mind when, hereafter, we consider the plans of various social reformers.

Let us note one more general truth. We lately saw that, of necessity, free labour and contract take their rise together: they are correlatives. Naturally, therefore, they develop together, growing from small to large. The contractor in his first stage is a clever labouring man, who undertakes some small piece of work at a price agreed upon, and hires others like himself to help him: standing to them in a relation analogous to that in which a “butty” or “ganger” stands to his group in later days. Success brings a small capital which enables him to contract for larger works; and so on, step by step, if adequately sagacious, he becomes in time a large contractor: the proof being that a generation ago there were sundry such who could not write. At a later stage, the practice in pursuance of which a company formed to make a railway employed contractors, became Edition: current; Page: [518] inverted. The contractor, taking into his counsels an engineer and a lawyer, got together a board of directors and formed a company, which, through his nominees, gave him the desired work on profitable terms. This change, like many others, shows us that an agency originally formed to discharge a function, is apt to reach a stage at which its self-sustentation becomes the primary thing, and the function to be performed by it the secondary thing.

§ 818. These combinations of free men which dissolve after the completion of the out-door works they are engaged on, are second in order of time to the combinations of those who follow indoor occupations—combinations which do not end, because the products of their labour do not end. I refer, of course, to the compound free labour of factory hands.

Though we are without definite evidence, we may safely conclude that there was here an evolution from simple germs which in early days everywhere existed under the domestic form of master, journeyman, and apprentice. The fact that there were gild-regulations which narrowly limited the number of employés, implies that prosperous masters continually tended to increase their staffs: an illustration being yielded by the fining of Thomas Blanket of Bristol in 1340 for having in his houses various looms and hired weavers. These repressive regulations, though generally efficient, were doubtless sometimes evaded. One of the motives prompting migration to suburbs, or to more distant places beyond the reach of gild-regulations, may have been the ability there to employ more men than the gilds allowed: both masters and workers desiring to escape from arbitrary restraints. Reason for suspecting that some of the earliest combinations of many men under one master arose in such unregulated localities, is afforded by the account of an establishment which existed in Henry the Eighth’s time at Newbury—doubtless at first “New-borough”: implying by its name that it was of late Edition: current; Page: [519] date as compared with other towns. Among Fuller’s worthies “Jack of Newbury” is described as “the most considerable clothier (without fancy and fiction) England ever beheld;” employing, according to a metrical romance of the period, 200 hand-looms in a room, each worked by a man and a boy, 100 carders, 200 spinners, 150 children packing wool, 50 shearers, 80 rowers, 40 dyers and 20 fullers—in all over 1000: an account which, allowing for probable exaggeration, implies an extensive manufacture. And Fuller’s remark that “Jack of Newbury” was “the most considerable clothier” implies that there existed elsewhere establishments in which one man employed many hands.

Originally, lack of capital checked such developments. In the days of the Conqueror, and doubtless for long after, “there was no fund which could be used for planting new industries, or calling labour into new directions; stock-in-trade there undoubtedly was, but no capital as we now use the term.” In those times property consisted of land, houses, and live-stock, mostly in the hands of feudal lords and their dependants. The accumulation of property by burghers, at first in the form of stock-in-trade and hoards of coin, must have been a slow process. There were no investments save mortgages (not always to be found); and these did not permit immediate realization when needed. So that besides artificial impediments there was a natural impediment to the growth of this form of compound free labour.

Amid various facts obscurely visible and rendered unlike in different localities by local circumstances, one general fact may be discerned; namely, that at first little beyond simple aggregations of workers of like kinds were formed. Before units can be organized they must be gathered together; and in the evolution of the factory system, simple integration preceded differentiation and combination. Concerning this stage in France under Louis XV. Levasseur remarks—

Limiting further illustration to our own country, we find that in sundry cases there is traceable a preceding stage, in which these like workers were scattered about in the neighbourhood of some centre with which they maintained industrial relations. There were at first numerous solitary weavers who had their looms in their own houses, and worked independently; often, at intervals, devoting part of their energies to agriculture. Out of this stage grew another. Early in the last century in Lancashire—

Here we see the weaver passing from the condition in which he was at once master and worker, to the condition in which he worked for a master, though not under the master’s roof. In some industries this system still continues, coexisting with the more developed system. It is thus not only in the weaving of wool and cotton, but in the making of stockings, of nails, and in the stitching of clothes. A step in the transition was seen in the cloth-districts in the latter part of the last century, when master-clothiers, buying wool wholesale, “gave it to workmen to work up, partly in their own houses, partly in the masters’.” Evidently the conflict between the systems of detached cottage-industry and industry carried on by many like workers in one building, has been slowly resulting in the great predominance of the latter. For some occupations, as glass and china-making in France, and in England the making of lace, large numbers were, more than a century ago, collected together under single Edition: current; Page: [521] employers, working on their materials and with their implements; and what was then exceptional has since become general.

Of course compound free labour under this form has more and more replaced scattered free labour because of the economy achieved. Machines furnished by a capitalist employer are likely to be better, and more rapidly improved, than those owned by poor men living apart. The regularity and the method sure to be insisted on by a master, must both be conducive to efficiency of production. And further, the supplies of raw material can be obtained on lower terms by a relatively rich man who purchases wholesale, than by single workers who buy in small quantities. Hence the employer of aggregated free workmen is able to undersell the free workmen not aggregated.

It should, however, be remarked that the degree of this substitution in part depends on the extent to which the older forms of society have been replaced by newer forms, and in part on the natures of the industries, as furthered little or much by division of labour. In Germany, where sundry feudal relations survived down to the early part of the present century, where the gild-system of regulating industry continued here and there in force, and where separation between the rural and urban populations is even now in some places so incomplete that men work in the fields in summer and at their looms in winter, cottage-industry holds its own to a considerable extent against factory-industry.

What we are chiefly interested in noting, however, is the transformation of industrial relations entailed by this concentration. A triple differentiation may be observed. The man who was partly artisan partly agriculturist ceases entirely to be agriculturist. Simultaneously the increasing urban populations become marked off from the rural populations: town-life and country-life acquire sharp distinctions. Lastly the manufacturing class, throughout which in early days masters were themselves workers, domestically Edition: current; Page: [522] associated with their employés, separates itself into those who own the capital and the implements and those who are simple wage-earners living apart.

§ 819. We have seen that even in Tudor times the bringing together of many workers initiated a considerable division of labour. The description given of “Jack of Newbury’s” establishment, where for the making of cloth there were carders, spinners, weavers, shearers, rowers, dyers, fullers, packers, shows this. Close concentration was not needful; since spinning, weaving, dyeing, &c., could be as conveniently, or more conveniently, carried on in buildings merely adjacent to one another. But a minute division of labour can arise only along with the gathering of workers under the same roof. The familiar illustration given by Adam Smith, serves to enforce this truth. The passing of every pin through the hands of eighteen or more operatives, each doing his particular part towards its completion, would be greatly impeded if after each modification it had to be taken from one building to another, instead of from one bench to another. But this integration, differentiation, and combination, of factory hands, was brought to its extreme only by the aid of a new factor—a common motor for many machines. Water-power was used in France as far back as the sixth century for grinding corn; and at a later period (the close of the 16th century) the water-wheel was employed for driving mills having other purposes. To some ingenious man there occurred the thought that a process which, like that of weaving, consists of perpetually-repeated similar motions in the same order, might be effected automatically. Once reduced to practice in a single case, this theory presently extended itself to other cases; and, by driving-shafts and driving-bands, power was communicated from a water-wheel to many machines: the result being that each artisan, no longer called upon to move his machine, had only to superintend its action. In England the Edition: current; Page: [523] first building containing many machines thus simultaneously driven, was the well-known silk-throwing mill at Derby, erected early in the last century by Sir Thomas Lombe. The example he set was followed in cotton-spinning by Arkwright, Crompton, and Hargreaves. Their mills were of necessity erected on the banks of rivers yielding the requisite fall of water—a requirement which dispersed the manufacture to scattered places, often in remote valleys. And here we are introduced to another of those great changes in industrial organization which have been initiated by scientific discovery and resulting mechanical appliances.

For the revolution which gave to the Factory System its modern character, arose from the substitution of steam-power for water-power. One result was that, being no longer dependent on supply of water, the variations in which led to variations in activity of production, processes of manufacture were made continuous. Another result was that wide distribution of factories was no longer necessitated by wide distribution of water-power. Factories and the people working in them became clustered in large masses to which there was no limit; and there followed increased facilities both for bringing raw materials and taking away manufactured products. So that beyond the integration of many machines in one mill there came the integration of many mills in one town.

§ 820. But now, from considering this evolution as a mechanical progress and as a progress in industrial organization, let us go on to consider it in relation to the lives of workers. Here its effects, in some respects beneficial, are in many respects detrimental. Though in his capacity of consumer the factory-hand, in common with the community, profits by the cheapening of goods of all kinds, including his own kind, yet in his capacity of producer he loses heavily—perhaps more heavily than he gains.

More and more of his powers, bodily and mental, are Edition: current; Page: [524] rendered superfluous. The successive improvements of the motor-agency itself show this effect. Originally the steam-engine required a boy to open and shut the steam-valves at the proper moments. Presently the engine was made to open and shut its own valves, and human aid was to that extent superseded. For a time, however, it continued needful for regulating the general supply of steam. When the work the engine had to do was suddenly much increased or decreased, the opening through which the steam passed from the boiler had to be enlarged or diminished by an attendant. But for the attendant there was presently substituted an unintelligent apparatus—the governor. Then, after an interval, came a self-stoking apparatus, enabling the engine itself to supply fuel to its steam-generator. Now this replacing of muscular and mental processes by mechanical processes, has been going on not only in the motor but in the vast assemblages of machines which the motor works. From time to time each of them has been made to do for itself something which was previously done for it; so that now it stops itself, or part of itself, at the proper moment, or rings a bell when it has finished an appointed piece of work. To its attendant there remains only the task of taking away the work done and giving other work, or else of rectifying its shortcomings: tying a broken thread for instance.

Clearly these self-adjustments, continually decreasing the sphere for human agency, make the actions of the workman himself relatively automatic. At the same time the monotonous attention required, taxing special parts of the nervous system and leaving others inactive, entails positive as well as negative injury. And while the mental nature becomes to the implied extent deformed, the physical nature, too, undergoes degradations; caused by breathing vitiated air at a temperature now in excess now in defect, and by standing for many hours in a way which unduly taxes the vascular system. If we compare his life with the life of the cottage Edition: current; Page: [525] artizan he has replaced, who, a century ago, having a varied muscular action in working his loom, with breaks caused by the incidents of the work, was able to alternate his indoor activities with outdoor activities in garden or field, we cannot but admit that this industrial development has proved extremely detrimental to the operative.

In their social relations, too, there has been an entailed retrogression rather than a progression. The wage-earning factory-hand does, indeed, exemplify entirely free labour, in so far that, making contracts at will and able to break them after short notice, he is free to engage with whomsoever he pleases and where he pleases. But this liberty amounts in practice to little more than the ability to exchange one slavery for another; since, fit only for his particular occupation, he has rarely an opportunity of doing anything more than decide in what mill he will pass the greater part of his dreary days. The coercion of circumstances often bears more hardly on him than the coercion of a master does on one in bondage.

It seems that in the course of social progress, parts, more or less large, of each society, are sacrificed for the benefit of the society as a whole. In the earlier stages the sacrifice takes the form of mortality in the wars perpetually carried on during the struggle for existence between tribes and nations; and in later stages the sacrifice takes the form of mortality entailed by the commercial struggle, and the keen competition entailed by it. In either case men are used up for the benefit of posterity; and so long as they go on multiplying in excess of the means of subsistence, there appears no remedy.