Preface to the Issue of 1920
The authors of these studies had not contemplated reprinting them. But there continues to be a demand for them, even after a couple of decades; and it seems ungracious to let them go out of print, imperfect as they are. We therefore reissue them uniform, not only with our Industrial Democracy, in which the theory and practice of Trade Unions is analysed in detail, but also with our History of Trade Unionism, in the revised and greatly enlarged edition, in which the story is brought down to 1920.
It is interesting, at least to the authors, to trace in these essays of the nineteenth century the forecasts of the solutions which the twentieth century is accepting. With regard to Women's Wages, dealt with in Chapter III., the reader may be referred to the elaborate Report of the War Cabinet Committee on Women in Industry, 1919; and especially to the Minority Report by one of ourselves, which has been separately published under the title of Men's and Women's Wages: Should they be Equal?1
The once-disputed question of the propriety of legal regulation of the conditions of employment, dealt with in Chapters IV. and V., is no longer a matter of .controversy among educated people, though each particular application of the principle still meets with opposition among the uninstructed. The analysis of the economic and social effects of legal regulation, as contrasted with those of the absence of regulation on the one hand, and those of regulation by voluntary association on the other, is given in great detail in our Industrial Democracy. We should explain, for the benefit especially of readers in the United States and other countries in which the desirability of legal regulation is not yet fully accepted, either by some of the men's Trade Unions or by the employers and legislators, that the authors retain the view that Factory Laws applicable to women only are better, even in the women's interests, than no Factory Laws at all; and that 'the fear of women's exclusion from industrial employment,' as a result of such one-sided and imperfect legislation, 'is wholly unfounded.' A quarter of a century of further experience confirms the conclusion that the effect of such legislation is, 'by encouraging machinery, division of labour and production on a large scale, to increase the employment of women, and largely to raise their status in the labour market.' In countries where more comprehensive Factory Legislation cannot, for the moment, be obtained, it is in 1920 even more desirable than it was in 1895, that legislative regulation of the conditions of women's employment should be obtained. We have seen in Great Britain during the past decade, how true was the conclusion that 'with this regulation, experience teaches us that women can work their way in certain occupations to a man's skill, a man's wages, and a man's sense of personal dignity and independence.'Wherever, as in the United Kingdom, the men's Trade Unions and instructed public opinion accept Factory Legislation as desirable, there is, of course, no reason for any one-sided treatment; and Factory Laws should not be differentiated, any more than Standard Rates of Payment, by sex, race or the colour of the hair.
In Chapter VII. the reader may detect an imperfect foreshadowing of the elaborate Minority Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Law, 1909; republished without its bewildering but instructive footnotes and references, with introductions by ourselves, as The Break-Up of the Poor Lazv and The Public Organisation of the Labour Market.2 State Pensions for the Aged were granted, imperfectly, in 1908; and the British Government expressly pledged itself in 1919, as a Parliamentary bargain by which it secured the passage of the Ministry of Health Bill, to the immediate Abolition of the Poor Law, and the distribution of its services among the several committees of the local municipal authorities, to be conducted under the Education, Public Health, Mental Deficiency, Old Age Pensions and Unemployment Acts, as proposed, ten years before, in the Minority Report. Each year's postponement of this far- reaching reform is involving a waste of millions of pounds, and doing incalculable social harm.
If the reader is alive to the acute controversy that now exists, not in Great Britain only, but also, under other forms of words, among whole sections of the population of most European countries (though scarcely at all as yet among those who fill the places of statesmen), as to the form in which the Democratic governments of the future should be cast, he should weigh Chapter VIII. In that popular exposition of the relation between Co-operation and Trade Unionism, dating as far back as 1892, will be found the contrast between the nature and functions of Associations of Consumers and Associations of Producers respectively—terms which are gradually coming into the consciousness of those whose duty it is to scrutinize the evolution of Democracy. The authors do not believe to-day, any more than they did in 1892, that the government and control of industry can, or even will, be in the future vested wholly in the Democracy of Producers, whether self-governing workshop, Trade Union, Gild or factory soviet, any more than it can be allowed to be vested in a class of private employers or an employers' association. On the other hand, they recognize, as they explained in 1897 in their Industrial Democracy, that it is equally impossible to attain either the highest productivity or that fullest development of individual faculty which we mean by freedom, where the government and control of industry is trusted exclusively to the Democracy of Consumers, whether Co-operative Society, Municipality or completely democratised National Government. We believe now, as we said in 1892, that, for any genuinely efficient Democracy, both forms must coexist, and be fully recognised—the Association of Consumers and the Association of Producers each having its own lawful and necessary sphere of power and influence, and each working continuously in full activity. The 'proper relationship' between them, as was indicated in 1892, is 'that of an ideal marriage, in which each partner respects the individuality and assists the work of the other, whilst both cordially join forces to secure their common end—the Co-operative State.'
Sidney Webb.
Beatrice Webb.
41 Grosvenor Road, Westminster, February 1920.