SECTIONAL DEVELOPMENTS
[1863-1885]
From 1851 to 1863 all the effective forces in the Trade Union Movement
were centred in London. Between 1863 and 1867, as we described in the
course of the last chapter, provincial organisations, such as the
Glasgow and Sheffield Trades Councils, and provincial leaders such as
Alexander Macdonald and John Kane, began to play an important part in
the general movement. The dramatic crisis of 1867, and the subsequent
political struggle, compelled us to break off our description of the
growth of the movement in order to follow the Parliamentary action of
the London leaders. But whilst the Junta and their allies were winning
their great victories at Westminster, the centre of gravity of the
Trade Union world was being insensibly shifted from London to the
industrial districts north of the Humber. This was primarily due to the
rapid growth of two great provincial organisations, the federations of
Coal-miners and Cotton Operatives.
The Miners, now one of the most powerful contingents of the Trade Union
forces, were, until 1863, without any effective organisation. The
Miners’ Association of Great Britain, which, as we have seen, sprang
in 1841-43 into a vigorous existence, collapsed in 1848. An energetic
attempt made by Martin Jude to re-establish a National Association
in 1850, when a conference was held at Newcastle, was, in consequence
of the continued depression in the coal trade, entirely unsuccessful.
For the next few years “the fragments of union that existed got less
by degrees and more minute till, at the close of 1855, it might be
said that union among the miners in the whole country had almost died
out.”[442] The revival which took place between 1858 and 1863 was due,
in the main, to the persistent work of the able man who became for
fifteen years their trusted leader.
Alexander Macdonald, to whose lifelong devotion the miners owe their
present position in the Trade Union world, stands, like William Newton,
midway between the casual and amateur leaders of the old Trade Unionism
and the paid officials of the new type. Himself originally a miner and
the son of a miner, the education and independent means which he had
acquired enabled him, from 1857 onwards, to apply himself continuously
to the miners’ cause. A florid style, and somewhat flashy personality,
did him no harm with the rough and uneducated workmen whom he had to
marshal. The main source of his effectiveness lay, however, neither
in his oratory nor in his powers of organisation, but in his exact
appreciation of the particular changes that would remedy the miners’
grievances, and in the tactical skill with which he embodied these
changes in legislative form. Like his friends, Allan and Applegarth,
he relied almost exclusively on Parliamentary agitation as a means for
securing his ends. But whilst the Junta were contenting themselves
with securing political freedom for Trade Unionists, Macdonald from
the first persistently pressed for the legislative regulation of the
conditions of labour. And though, like his London allies, he consorted
largely with the middle-class friends of Trade Unionism, and freely
utilised their help in the House of Commons, he proved his superior
originality and tenacity of mind by never in the slightest degree
abandoning the fundamental principle of Trade Unionism--the compulsory
maintenance of the workman’s Standard of Life.
“It was in 1856,” said Macdonald on a later occasion, “that I crossed
the Border first to advocate a better Mines Act, true weighing, the
education of the young, the restriction of the age till twelve years,
the reduction of the working hours to eight in every twenty-four, the
training of managers, the payment of wages weekly in the current coin
of the realm, no truck, and many other useful things too numerous to
mention here. Shortly after that, bone began to come to bone, and by
1858 we were in full action for better laws.”[443] The pit clubs and
informal committees that pressed these demands upon the legislature
became centres of local organisation, with which Macdonald kept up an
incessant correspondence. An arbitrary lock-out of several thousand
men by the South Yorkshire coal-owners in 1858 welded the miners
of that coalfield into a compact district association, and enabled
Macdonald, in the same year, to get together a national conference at
Ashton-under-Lyne, at which, however, the delegates could claim to
represent only four thousand men in union. In 1860, when the Mines
Regulation Act was being passed into law, Macdonald was able to score
a success in the “checkweigher” clause, to which we shall again refer.
Not until the end of 1863, however, can the Miners’ National Union
be said to have been effectively established; and the proceedings of
the Leeds Conference of that year strike the note of the policy which
Macdonald, to the day of his death, never ceased to press upon the
miners, and to which the great majority of them have now, after a
temporary digression, once more returned.
The Miners’ Conference at Leeds was in many respects a notable
gathering. Instead of the formless interchange of talk which had marked
the previous conference, Macdonald induced the fifty-one delegates
who sat from the 9th to the 14th of November 1863 at the People’s
Co-operative Hall to organise their meeting on the model of the
National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, and divide
themselves into three sections, on Law, on Grievances, and on Social
Organisation, each of which reported to the whole conference.[444] The
proceedings of the day were opened with prayer by the “Chaplain to
the Conference,” the Rev. Joseph Rayner Stephens, celebrated as the
opponent of the New Poor Law and the advocate of factory legislation
and Chartism.[445] In the reports of the sections and the numerous
resolutions of the conference we find all the points of Macdonald’s
programme. The paramount importance of securing the Standard of Life by
means of legislative regulation of the conditions of work is embodied
in a lengthy series of proposals which have nearly all since been
inserted in the detailed code of mining law. In contradistinction to
the view which would make wages depend upon prices, the principle
of controlling industry in such a way as to prevent encroachments
on the workman’s standard maintenance is clearly foreshadowed.
“Overtoil,” says the report, “produces over-supply; low prices and low
wages follow; bad habits and bad health follow, of course; and then
diminished production and profits are inevitable. Reduction of toil,
and consequent improved bodily health, increases production in the
sense of profit; and limits it so as to avoid overstocking; better
wages induce better habits, and economy of working follows.... The
evil of overtoil and over-supply upon wages, and upon the labourer, is
therefore a fair subject of complaint; and, we submit, as far as these
are human by conventional arrangements, are a fair and proper subject
of regulation. Regulations must, of course, be twofold. Part can be
legislated for by compulsory laws; but the principle (_sic_) must be
the subject of voluntary agreement.”[446] The restriction of labour in
mines to a maximum of eight hours per day was strongly urged; but at
Macdonald’s instance it was astutely resolved not to ask for a legal
regulation of the hours of adult men, but to confine the Parliamentary
proposal to a Bill for boys. And it is interesting to observe already
at this time the beginning of the deep cleavage between the miners of
Northumberland and Durham and their fellow-workers elsewhere. The close
connection between the legal regulation of the hours of boys and the
fixing of the men’s day is brought out by William Crawford; the future
leader of the Durham men. The general feeling of the conference was
in favour of a drastic legal prohibition of boys being kept in the
mine for more than eight hours, but Crawford declared that “an eight
hours bill could not be carried out in his district. He wanted the boys
to work ten hours a day, and the men six hours.”[447] He therefore
proposed a legal Ten Hours Day for the boys. The conference, however,
declined to depart from the principle of Eight Hours; and the Bill
drafted in this sense was eventually adopted without dissent.
Another reform advocated by Macdonald has had far-reaching though
unforeseen effect upon the miners’ organisation. The arbitrary
confiscation of the miners’ pay for any tubs or hutches which were
declared to be improperly filled had long been a source of extreme
irritation. It had become a regular practice of unscrupulous
coal-owners to condemn a considerable percentage of the men’s
hutches, and thus escape payment for part of the coal hewn. The
grievance was aggravated by the absolute dependence of the miner,
working underground, upon the honesty and accuracy of the agent of
the employer on the surface, who recorded the amount of his work. A
demand was accordingly made by the men for permission to have their own
representative at the pit-bank, who should check the weight to be paid
for. During the year 1859 great contests took place in South Yorkshire,
in which, after embittered resistance, the employers in several
collieries conceded this boon. A determined attempt was then made by
the South Yorkshire Miners’ Union, aided by Macdonald, to insert a
clause in the Mines Regulation Bill, making it compulsory to weigh the
coal, and to allow a representative of the men to check the weight.
A great Parliamentary fight took place on the men’s amendment, with
the result that the Act of 1860 empowered the miners of each pit to
appoint a checkweigher, but confined their choice to persons actually
in employment at the particular mine.[448] This important victory was
long rendered nugatory by the evasions of the coal-owners. At Barnsley,
for instance, Normansell, appointed checkweigher, was promptly
dismissed from employment and refused access to the pit’s mouth. When
the employer was fined for this breach of the law he appealed to the
Queen’s Bench; and it cost the Union two years of costly litigation
to enforce the reinstatement of the men’s agent.[449] The next twenty
years are full of attempts by coal-owners to avoid compliance with
this law. Where the men could not be persuaded or terrified into
forgoing their right to appoint a checkweigher, every device was used
to hamper his work. Sometimes he was excluded from close access to the
weighing-machine. In other pits the weights were fenced up so that
he could not clearly see them. His calculations were hotly disputed,
and his interference bitterly resented. The Miners’ Unions, however,
steadily fought their way to perfect independence for the checkweigher.
The Mines Regulation Act of 1872 slightly strengthened his position.
Finally the Act of 1887, confirmed by that of 1911, made clear the
right of the men, by a decision of the majority of those employed in
any pit, to have, at the expense of the whole pit, a checkweigher with
full power to keep an accurate and independent record of each man’s
work.
It would be interesting to trace to what extent the special
characteristics of the miners’ organisations are due to the influence
of this one legislative reform. Its recognition and promotion
of collective action by the men has been a direct incitement to
combination. The compulsory levy, upon the whole pit, of the cost of
maintaining the agent whom a bare majority could decide to appoint
has practically found, for each colliery, a branch secretary free
of expense to the Union. But the result upon the character of the
officials has been even more important. The checkweigher has to be
a man of character insensible to the bullying or blandishments of
manager or employers. He must be of strictly regular habits, accurate
and business-like in mind, and quick at figures. The ranks of the
checkweighers serve thus as an admirable recruiting ground from which a
practically inexhaustible supply of efficient Trade Union secretaries
or labour representatives can be drawn.
The Leeds Conference of 1863 was the first of a series of yearly
or half-yearly gatherings of miners’ delegates which did much to
consolidate their organisation. The powerful aid brought by Macdonald
to the movement for the Master and Servant Act of 1867 has already
been described. But between 1864 and 1869 the almost uninterrupted
succession of strikes and lock-outs, in one county or another,
prevented the National Association from taking a firm hold on the men
in the less organised districts. In 1869 a rival federation, called
the Amalgamated Association of Miners, was formed by the men of some
Lancashire pits, to secure more systematic support of local strikes.
This split only increased the number of miners in union, which in a few
years reached the unprecedented total of two hundred thousand.
It is easy to understand how much this army of miners, marshalled by
an expert Parliamentary tactician, added to the political weight of
the Trade Union leaders. Though only partially enfranchised, their
influence at the General Election of 1868 was marked; and when, in
1871, the Trades Union Congress appointed a Parliamentary Committee
Macdonald became its chairman. Next year he succeeded in getting
embodied in the new Mines Regulation Act many of the minor amendments
of the law for which he had been pressing; and in 1874 he and his
colleague, Thomas Burt, became, as we have seen, the first working-men
members of the House of Commons.
Not less important than the somewhat scattered hosts of the Coal-miners
was the compact body of the Lancashire Cotton Operatives, who,
from 1869 onward, began to be reckoned as an integral part of the
Trade Union world. The Lancashire textile workers, who had, in the
early part of the century, played such a prominent part in the
Trade Union Movement, and whose energetic “Short Time Committees”
had, in 1847, obtained the Ten Hours Act, appear to have fallen,
during the subsequent years, into a state of disorganisation and
disunion. In 1853, it is true, the present Amalgamated Association
of Cotton-spinners was established; but this federal Union was
weakened, until 1869, by the abstention or lukewarmness of the local
organisations of such important districts as Oldham and Bolton. The
cotton-weavers were in a somewhat similar condition. The Blackburn
Association, established in 1853, was gradually overshadowed by the
North-East Lancashire Association, a federation of the local weavers’
societies in the smaller towns, established in 1858. This association,
growing out of a secession from the Blackburn organisation, had for its
special object the combined support of a skilled calculator of prices,
able to defend the operatives’ interests in the constant discussions
which arose upon the complicated lists of piecework rates which
characterise the English cotton industry.[450]
It is difficult to convey to the general reader any adequate idea of
the important effect which these elaborate “Lists” have had upon the
Trade Union Movement in Lancashire. The universal satisfaction with,
and even preference for, the piecework system among the Lancashire
cotton operatives is entirely due to the existence of these definitely
fixed and published statements. An even more important result has been
the creation of a peculiar type of Trade Union official. For although
the lists are elaborately worked out in detail--the Bolton Spinning
List, for instance, comprising eighty-five pages closely filled with
figures[451]--the intricacy of the calculations is such as to be beyond
the comprehension not only of the ordinary operative or manufacturer,
but even of the investigating mathematician without a very minute
knowledge of the technical detail. Yet the week’s earnings of every one
of the tens of thousands of operatives are computed by an exact and
often a separate calculation under these lists. And when an alteration
of the list is in question, the standard wage of a whole district may
depend upon the quickness and accuracy with which the operatives’
negotiator apprehends the precise effect of each projected change in
any of the numerous factors in the calculation. It will be obvious that
for work of this nature the successful organiser or “born orator”
was frequently quite unfit. There grew up, therefore, both among the
weavers and the spinners, a system of selection of new secretaries by
competitive examination, which has gradually been perfected as the
examiners--that is, the existing officials--have themselves become
more skilled. The first secretary to undergo this ordeal was Thomas
Birtwistle,[452] who in 1861 began his thirty years’ honourable and
successful service of the Lancashire Weavers. Within a few years he was
reinforced by other officials selected for the same characteristics.
From 1871 onwards the counsels of the Trade Union Movement were
strengthened by the introduction of “the cotton men,” a body of keen,
astute, and alert-minded officials--a combination, in the Trade Union
world, of the accountant and the lawyer.
Under such guidance the Lancashire cotton operatives achieved
extraordinary success. Their first task was in all districts to
obtain and perfect the lists. The rate and method of remuneration
being in this way secured, their energy was devoted to improving the
other conditions of their labour by means of appropriate legislation.
Ever since 1830 the Lancashire operatives, especially the spinners,
have strongly supported the legislative regulation of the hours and
other conditions of their industry. In 1867 a delegate meeting of the
Lancashire textile operatives, under the presidency of the Rev. J. R.
Stephens, had resolved “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.”[453] On the improvement of trade and the
revival of Trade Union strength in 1871-72 this policy was again
resorted to. The Oldham spinners tried, indeed, in 1871, to secure a
“Twelve-o’clock Saturday” by means of a strike. But on the failure of
this attempt the delegates of the various local societies, both of
spinners and weavers--usually the officials of the trade--met together
and established, on the 7th of January 1872, the Factory Acts Reform
Association, for the purpose of obtaining such an amendment of the law
as would reduce the hours of labour from sixty to fifty-four per week.
The Parliamentary policy of these shrewd tacticians is only another
instance of the practical opportunism of the English Trade Unionist.
The cotton officials demurred in 1872 to an overt alliance with the
Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress, just then engaged
in its heated agitation for a repeal of the Criminal Law Amendment
Act. “Some members of the Short Time Committee,” states, without
resentment, the Congress report, “thought that even co-operation
with the Congress Committee would be disastrous rather than useful,
... as Lord Shaftesbury and others declared they would not undertake
a measure proposed in the interest of the Trades Unions.”[454] So
far as the public and the House of Commons were concerned, the Bill
was accordingly, as we are told, “based upon quite other grounds.”
Its provisions were ostensibly restricted, like those of the Ten
Hours Act, to women and children; and to the support of Trade Union
champions such as Thomas Hughes and A. J. Mundella was added that
of such philanthropists as Lord Shaftesbury and Samuel Morley. But
it is scarcely necessary to say that it was not entirely, or even
exclusively, for the sake of the women and children that the skilled
leaders of the Lancashire cotton operatives had diverted their “Short
Time Movement” from aggressive strikes to Parliamentary agitation.
The private minutes of the Factory Acts Reform Association contain
no mention of the woes of the women and the children, but reflect
throughout the demand of the adult male spinners for a shorter day.
And in the circular “to the factory operatives,” calling the original
meeting of the association, we find the spinners’ secretary combating
the fallacy that “any legislative interference with male adult
labour is an economic error,” and demanding “a legislative enactment
largely curtailing the hours of factory labour,” in order that his
constituents, who were exclusively adult males, might enjoy “the nine
hours per day, or fifty-four hours per week, so liberally conceded to
other branches of workmen.”[455] It was, however, neither necessary nor
expedient to take this line in public. The experience of a generation
had taught the Lancashire operatives that any effective limitation of
the factory day for women and children could not fail to bring with it
an equivalent shortening of the hours of the men who worked with them.
And in the state of mind, in 1872, of the House of Commons, and even of
the workmen in other trades, it would have proved as impossible as it
did in 1847 to secure an avowed restriction of the hours of male adults.
The Short Time Bill was therefore so drafted as to apply in express
terms only to women and children, whose sufferings under a ten hours
day were made much of on the platform and in the press. The battle, in
fact, was, as one of the leading combatants has declared,[456] “fought
from behind the women’s petticoats.” But it was a part of the irony of
the situation that, as Broadhurst subsequently pointed out,[457] the
Bill “encountered great opposition from the female organisations”;
and it was, in fact, expressly in the interests of working women that
Professor Fawcett, in the session of 1873, moved the rejection of
the measure.[458] Even as limited to women and children the proposal
encountered a fierce resistance from the factory owners and the
capitalists of all industries. The opinion of the House of Commons
was averse from any further restriction upon the employers’ freedom.
The Ministry of the day lent it no assistance. The Bill, introduced
in 1872, and again in 1873, made no progress. At length, in 1873, the
Government shelved the question by appointing a Royal Commission to
inquire into the working of the Factory Acts. But a General Election
was now drawing near; and “a Factory Nine Hours Bill for Women and
Children” was incorporated in the Parliamentary programme pressed upon
candidates by the whole Trade Union world.[459]
We have already pointed out what an attentive ear the Conservative
party was at this time giving to the Trade Union demands. It is
therefore not surprising that when Mundella, in the new Parliament,
once more introduced his Bill, the Home Secretary, Mr. (afterwards
Viscount) Cross, announced that the Government would bring forward
a measure of their own. The fact that the Government draft was
euphemistically entitled the “Factories (Health of Women, etc.) Bill”
did not conciliate the opponents of the shorter factory day which
it ensured; but, to the great satisfaction of the spinners, this
opposition was unsuccessful; and, if not a nine hours day, at any rate
a 56½ hours week became law. This short and successful Parliamentary
campaign brought the cotton operatives into closer contact with
the London leaders; and from 1875 the Lancashire representatives
exercised an important influence in the Trades Union Congress and its
Parliamentary Committee. Henceforth detailed amendments of the Factory
Acts, and increased efficiency in their administration, become almost
standing items in the official Trade Union programme.
An interesting parallelism might be traced between the cotton
operatives on the one hand and the coal-miners on the other. To
outward seeming no two occupations could be more unlike. Yet without
community of interest, without official intercourse, and without any
traceable imitation, the organisations of the two trades show striking
resemblances to each other in history, in structural development,
and in characteristics of policy, method, and aims. Many of these
similarities may arise from the remarkable local aggregation in
particular districts, which is common to both industries. From this
local aggregation spring, perhaps, the possibilities of a strong
federation existing without centralised funds, and of a permanent trade
society enduring without friendly benefits. A further similarity may be
seen in the creation, in each case, of a special class of Trade Union
officials, far more numerous in proportion to membership than is usual
in the engineering or building trades. But the most noticeable, and
perhaps the most important, of these resemblances is the constancy with
which both the miners and the cotton operatives have adhered to the
legislative protection of the Standard of Life as a leading principle
of their Trade Unionism.
Whilst these important divisions of the Trade Union army were aiming
at legislative protection, victories in another field were bringing
whole sections of Trade Unionists to a different conclusion. The
successful Nine Hours Movement of 1871-72--the reduction, by collective
bargaining, of the hours of labour in the engineering and building
trades--rivalled the legislative triumphs of the miners and the cotton
operatives.
Since the great strikes in the London building trades in 1859-61, the
movement in favour of a reduction of the hours of labour had been
dragging on in various parts of the country. The masons, carpenters,
and other building operatives had in many towns, and after more or
less conflict, secured what was termed the Nine Hours Day. In 1866
an agitation arose among the engineers of Tyneside for a similar
concession; but the sudden depression of trade put an end to the
project. In 1870, when the subject was discussed at the Newcastle
“Central District Committee” of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers,
the spirit of caution prevailed, and no action was taken. Suddenly, at
the beginning of 1871, the Sunderland men took the matter up, and came
out on strike on the 1st of April. After four weeks’ struggle, almost
before the engineers elsewhere had realised that there was any chance
of success, the local employers gave way, and the Nine Hours Day was
won.
It was evident that the Sunderland movement was destined to spread to
the other engineering centres in the neighbourhood; and the master
engineers of the entire North-Eastern District promptly assembled
at Newcastle on April 8 to concert a united resistance to the men’s
demands. The operatives had first to form their organisation. Though
Newcastle has since become one of the best centres of Trade Unionism,
the Amalgamated Society of Engineers could, in 1871, count only five
or six hundred members in the town; the Boilermakers, Steam-Engine
Makers, and Ironfounders were also weak, and probably two out of three
of the men in the engineering trade belonged to no Union whatsoever. A
“Nine Hours League,” embracing Unionists and non-Unionists alike, was
accordingly formed for the special purpose of the agitation; and this
body was fortunate enough to elect as its President John Burnett,[460]
a leading member of the local branch of the Amalgamated Society,
afterwards to become widely known as the General Secretary of that
great organisation. The “Nine Hours League” became, in fact though
not in name, a temporary Trade Union, its committee conducting all
the negotiations on the men’s behalf, appealing to the Trade Union
world for funds for their support, and managing all the details of the
conflict that ensued.[461]
The five months’ strike which led up to a signal victory for the men
was, in more than one respect, a notable event in Trade Union annals.
The success with which several thousands of unorganised workmen,
unprovided with any accumulated funds, were marshalled and disciplined,
and the ability displayed in the whole management of the dispute, made
the name of their leader celebrated throughout the world of labour.
The tactical skill and literary force with which the men’s case was
presented achieved the unprecedented result of securing for their
demands the support of the _Times_[462] and the _Spectator_. Money was
subscribed slowly at first, but after three months poured in from all
sides. Joseph Cowen, of the _Newcastle Daily Chronicle_, was from the
first an ardent supporter of the men, and assisted them in many ways.
The employers in all parts of the kingdom took alarm; and a kind of
levy of a shilling for each man employed was made upon the engineering
firms in aid of the heavy expenses of the Newcastle masters. In spite
of the active exertions of the “International,” several hundred foreign
workmen were imported; but many of these were subsequently induced to
desert.[463] Finally the employers conceded the principal of the men’s
demands; and fifty-four hours became the locally recognised week’s time
in all the engineering trades.
This widely advertised success, coming at a time of expanding trade,
greatly promoted the movement for the Nine Hours Day. From one end of
the kingdom to the other, every little Trade Union branch discussed
the expediency of sending in notices to the employers. The engineering
trades in London, Manchester, and other great centres induced their
employers to grant their demands without a strike. The great army of
workmen engaged in the shipbuilding yards on the Clyde even bettered
this example, securing a fifty-one hours week. The building operatives
quickly followed suit. Demands for a diminution of the working day,
with an increased rate of pay per hour, were handed in by local
officials of the Carpenters, Masons, Bricklayers, Plumbers, and other
organisations. In many cases non-society men took the lead in the
movement; but it was soon found that the immediate success of the
applications depended on the estimate formed by the employers of the
men’s financial resources, and their capacity to withhold their labour
for a time sufficient to cause embarrassment to business. Wherever the
employers were assured of this fact, they usually gave way without
a conflict. The successes accordingly did much to create, in the
industries in question, a preference for combination and collective
bargaining as a means of improving the conditions of labour. The
prevalence of systematic overtime, which has since proved so formidable
a deduction from the advantages gained by the Nine Hours Movement,
was either overlooked by sanguine officials, or covertly welcomed by
individual workmen as affording opportunities for working at a higher
rate of remuneration.[464] On the other hand, it was a patent fact that
the mechanic employed in attending to the machinery of a textile mill
was the only member of his trade who was excluded from participation in
the shortening of hours enjoyed by his fellow-tradesmen; and that his
failure to secure a shorter day was an incidental consequence of the
existence of legislative restrictions. Thus, at the very time that the
textile operatives and coal-miners were, as we have seen, exhibiting
a marked tendency to look more and more to Parliamentary action for
the protection of the Standard of Life, the facts, as they presented
themselves to the Amalgamated Engineer or Carpenter, were leading the
members of these trades to a diametrically opposite conclusion.
But though faith in trade combinations and collective bargaining was
strengthened by the success of the Nine Hours Movement, the victories
of the men did not increase the prestige of the two great Amalgamated
Societies. The growing adhesion of the Junta to the economic views
of their middle-class friends was marked by the silent abandonment
by Allan, Applegarth, and Guile of all leadership in trade matters.
Already in 1865 we find the Executive Council of the Amalgamated
Engineers explaining that, although they sympathised with advance
movements, they felt unable to either support them by grants or to
advise their members to vote a special levy.[465] The “backwardness
of the Council of the Engineers” constantly provoked angry criticism.
The chief obstacles to advancement were declared to be Danter, the
President of the Council, and the General Secretary, whose minds had
been narrowed “by the routine of years of service within certain
limits.... Never, since it effected amalgamation, has the Society
solved one social problem; nor has it now an idea of future progress.
Its money is unprofitably and injudiciously invested--even with a
miser’s care--while its councils are marked with all the chilly apathy
of a worn-out mission.”[466] What proved to be the greatest trade
movement since 1852 was undertaken in spite of the official disapproval
of the governing body, and was carried to a successful issue without
the provision from headquarters of any leadership or control. Though
the Nine Hours Strike actually began in Sunderland on April 1, 1871,
the London Executive remained silent on the subject until July.
Towards the end of that month, when the Newcastle men had been out for
seven weeks, a circular was issued inviting the branches to collect
voluntary subscriptions for their struggling brethren. Ultimately, in
September, the “Contingent Fund,” out of which strike pay is given,
was re-established by vote of the branches; and the strike allowance
of 5s. per week, over and above the ordinary out-of-work pay, was
issued, after fourteen weeks’ struggle, to the small minority of the
men on strike who were members of the Society. An emissary was sent
to the Continent, at the Society’s expense, to defeat the employers’
attempt to bring over foreign engineers; but with this exception all
the expenses of the struggle were defrayed from the subscriptions
collected by the Nine Hours League.[467] And if we turn for a moment
from the Amalgamated Society of Engineers to the other great trade and
friendly societies of the time, it is easy, in the minutes of their
Executive Councils and the proceedings of their branches, to watch the
same tendency at work. Whether it is the Masons or the Tailors, the
Ironfounders or the Carpenters, we see the same abandonment by the
Central Executive of any dominant principle of trade policy, the same
absence of initiative in trade movements, and the same more or less
persistent struggle to check the trade activity of its branches. In the
Amalgamated Society of Carpenters, for example, we find, during these
years, no attempt by headquarters to “level up” the wages of low-paid
districts, or to grapple with the problems of overtime or piecework. We
watch, on the contrary, the branches defending themselves before the
Executive for their little spurts of local activity, and pleading, in
order to wring from a reluctant treasury the concession of strike pay,
that they have been dragged into the “Advance Movement” by the more
aggressive policy of the “General Union” (the rival trade society of
the old type), or by irresponsible “strike-committees” of non-society
men.
Time and growth were, in fact, revealing the drawbacks of the
constitution with which Newton and Allan had endowed their cherished
amalgamation, and which had been so extensively copied by other
trades. The difficulties arising from the attempt to unite, in one
organisation, men working in the numerous distinct branches of the
engineering trade, demanded constant thought and attention. The rapid
changes in the industry, especially in connection with the growing use
of new machinery, needed to be met by a well-considered flexibility,
dictated by full knowledge of the facts, and some largeness of view. To
maintain a harmonious yet progressive trade policy in all the hundreds
of branches would, of itself, have taxed the skill of a body of experts
free from other preoccupations. All these duties were, however, cast
upon a single salaried officer,[468] working under a committee of
artisans who met in the evening after an exhausting day of physical
toil.
The result might have been foreseen. The rapid growth of the society
brought with it a huge volume of detailed business. Every grant of
accident benefit or superannuation allowance was made by the Executive
Council. Every week this body had to decide on scores of separate
applications for gifts from the Benevolent Fund. Every time any of the
tens of thousands of members failed to get what he wanted from his
branch, he appealed to the Executive Council. Every month an extensive
trade report had to be issued. Every quarter the branch accounts had
to be examined, dissected, and embodied in an elaborate summary,
itself absorbing no small amount of labour and thought. The hundreds
of branch secretaries and treasurers had to be constantly supervised,
checked by special audits, and perpetually admonished for negligent or
accidental breaches of the complicated code by which the Society was
governed. The Executive Council became, in fact, absorbed in purely
“treasury” work, and spent a large part of its time in protecting the
funds of the Society from extravagance, laxity of administration, or
misappropriation. The quantity of routine soon became enormous; and the
whole attention of the General Secretary was given to coping with the
mass of details which poured in upon him by every post.
This huge friendly society business brought with it, too, its special
bias. Allan grew more and more devoted to the accumulating fund,
which was alike the guarantee and the symbol of the success of his
organisation. Nothing was important enough to warrant any inroad
on this sacred balance. The Engineers’ Central Executive, indeed,
practically laid aside the weapon of the strike. “We believe,” said
Allan before the Royal Commission in 1867, “that all strikes are a
complete waste of money, not only in relation to the workmen, but
also to the employers.”[469] The “Contingent Fund,” out of which
alone strike pay could be given, was between 1860 and 1872 repeatedly
abolished by vote of the members, re-established for a short time,
and again abolished. Trade Unionists who remembered the old conflicts
viewed with surprise and alarm the spirit which had come over the once
active organisation. Even the experienced Dunning, whose moderation
had, as we have suggested, dictated the first manifesto in which the
new spirit can be traced, was moved to denunciation of Allan’s apathy.
“As a Trade Union,” he writes in 1866, “the once powerful Amalgamated
Society of Engineers is now as incapable to engage in a strike as
the Hearts of Oak, the Foresters, or any other extensive benefit
society.... It formerly combined both functions, but now it possesses
only one, that of a benefit society, with relief for members when out
of work or travelling for employment superadded.... The Amalgamated
Engineers, as a trade society, has ceased to exist.”[470]
It would be a mistake to assume that the inertia and supineness of the
“Amalgamated” Societies was a necessary result of their accumulated
funds or their friendly benefits. The remarkable energy and success of
the United Society of Boilermakers and Iron-shipbuilders, established
in 1832, and between 1865 and 1875 rapidly increasing in membership and
funds, shows that elaborate friendly benefits are not inconsistent with
a strong and consistent trade policy. This quite exceptional success
is, we believe, due to the fact that the Boilermakers provided an
adequate salaried staff to attend to their trade affairs. The “district
delegates” who were, between 1873 and 1889, appointed for every
important district, are absolutely unconcerned with the administration
of friendly benefits, and devote themselves exclusively to the work of
Collective Bargaining. Unlike the General Secretaries of the Engineers,
Carpenters, Stonemasons, or Ironfounders, who had but one salaried
assistant, Robert Knight, the able secretary of the Boilermakers had
under his orders an expert professional staff, and was accordingly
able, not only to keep both employers and unruly members in check, but
also successfully to adapt the Union policy to the changing conditions
of the industry. In short, it was not the presence of friendly
benefits, but the absence of any such class of professional organisers
as exists in the organisations of the Coal-miners, Cotton Operatives,
and Boilermakers, that created the deadlock in the administration of
the great trade friendly societies.[471]
The direct result of this abnegation of trade leadership was a complete
arrest of the tendency to amalgamation, and, in some cases, even a
breaking away of sections already within the organisation. The various
independent societies, such as the Boilermakers, Steam-Engine Makers,
and the Co-operative Smiths, gave up all idea of joining their larger
rival. In 1872 the Patternmakers, who had long been discontented at
the neglect of their special trade interests, formed an organisation
of their own, which has since competed with the Amalgamated for the
allegiance of this exceptionally skilled class of engineers. Nor was
Allan at all eager to make his organisation co-extensive with the
whole engineering industry. The dominant idea of the early years
of the amalgamation--the protection of those who had, by regular
apprenticeship, acquired “a right to the trade”--excluded many men
actually working at one branch or another, whilst the friendly society
bias against unprofitable recruits co-operated to restrict the
membership to such sections of the engineering industry, and such
members of each section, as could earn a minimum time wage fixed for
each locality by the District Committee.
This exclusiveness necessarily led to the development of other
societies, which accepted those workmen who were not eligible for
the larger organisation. The little local clubs of Machine-workers
and Metal-planers expanded between 1867 and 1872 into national
organisations, and began to claim consideration at the hands of
the better paid engineers, on whose heels they were treading. New
societies, such as those of the National Society of Amalgamated
Brass-workers, the Independent Order of Engineers and Machinists, and
the Amalgamated Society of Kitchen Range, Stove Grate, Gas Stoves,
Hot Water, Art Metal, and other Smiths and Fitters, sprang into
existence during 1872, in avowed protest against the “aristocratic”
rule of excluding all workmen who were not receiving a high standard
rate. The Associated Blacksmiths of Scotland, which had been formed
in 1857 out of a class of smiths which was, at the time, unrecognised
in the rules of the Amalgamated, now began steadily to increase in
membership. Finally, during the decade various local societies were
refused the privilege of amalgamation on the ground that either they
included sections of the trade not recognised by the rules, or that the
average age of their constituents was such as to make them unprofitable
members of a society giving heavy superannuation benefit. To the
tendency to create an “aristocracy of labour” was added, therefore, the
fastidiousness of an insurance company.
Many causes were thus co-operating to shift the centre of Trade Union
influence from London to the provinces. The great trade friendly
societies of Engineers, Carpenters, and Ironfounders were losing
that lead in Trade Union matters which the political activity of
the Junta had acquired for them. The Junta itself was breaking up.
Applegarth, in many respects the leader of the group, resigned his
secretaryship in 1871, and left the Trade Union Movement. Odger, who
lived until 1877, was from 1870 onwards devoting himself more and
more to general politics. Allan, long suffering from an incurable
disease, died in 1874. Meanwhile provincial Trade Unionism was growing
apace. The Amalgamated Society of Engineers, so long pre-eminent in
numbers, began to be overshadowed by the federations of Coal-miners
and Cotton Operatives. Even in the iron trades it found rivals in the
rapidly growing organisations of Boilermakers (Iron-shipbuilders),
whose headquarters were at Newcastle, and the Ironworkers centred at
Darlington, whilst minor engineering societies were cropping up in all
directions in the northern counties. The tendency to abandon London was
further shown by the decision of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters
in 1871 to remove their head office to Manchester, a change which had
the incidental effect of depriving the London leaders of the counsels
of Applegarth’s successor, J. D. Prior, one of the ablest disciples of
the Junta.
But although London was losing its hold on the Trade Union Movement, no
other town inherited the leadership. Manchester, it is true, attracted
to itself the headquarters of many national societies, and contained in
these years perhaps the strongest group of Trade Union officials.[472]
But there was no such concentration of all the effective forces as had
formerly resulted in the Junta. Though Manchester might have furnished
the nucleus of a Trade Union Cabinet, Alexander Macdonald was to be
found either in Glasgow or London, Robert Knight at Liverpool and
afterwards in Newcastle, John Kane at Darlington, the miners’ agents
all over the country, whilst Henry Broadhurst (who in 1875 succeeded
George Howell as the Secretary of the Parliamentary Committee),
John Burnett, the General Secretary of the Amalgamated Society of
Engineers, and George Shipton, the Secretary of the London Trades
Council, naturally remained in the Metropolis. The result of the
shifting from London was, accordingly, not the establishment elsewhere
of any new executive centre of the Trade Union Movement, but the rise
of a sectional spirit, the promotion of sectional interests, and the
elaboration of sectional policies on the part of the different trades.
We have attempted in some detail to describe the internal growth of
the Trade Union Movement between 1867 and 1875, in order to enable
the reader to understand the disheartening collapse which ensued in
1878-79, and the subsequent splitting up of the Trade Union world into
the hostile camps once more designated the Old Unionists and the New.
But all the unsatisfactory features of 1871-75 were, during these
years, submerged by a wave of extraordinary commercial prosperity and
Trade Union expansion. The series of Parliamentary successes of 1871-75
produced, as we have seen, a feeling of triumphant elation among
the Trade Union leaders. To the little knot of working men who had
conducted the struggle for emancipation and recognition, the progress
of these years seemed almost beyond belief. In 1867 the officials of
the Unions were regarded as pothouse agitators, “unscrupulous men,
leading a half idle life, fattening on the contributions of their
dupes,” and maintaining, by violence and murder, a system of terrorism
which was destructive, not only of the industry of the nation, but also
of the prosperity and independence of character of the unfortunate
working men who were their victims. The Unionist workman, tramping with
his card in search of employment, was regarded by the constable and the
magistrate as something between a criminal vagrant and a revolutionist.
In 1875 the officials of the great societies found themselves elected
to the local School Boards, and even to the House of Commons,
pressed by the Government to accept seats on Royal Commissions, and
respectfully listened to in the lobby. And these political results were
but the signs of an extraordinary expansion of the Trade Union Movement
itself. “The year just closed,” says the report of the Parliamentary
Committee in January 1874, “has been unparalleled for the rapid growth
and development of Trade Unionism. In almost every trade this appears
to have been the same; but it is especially remarkable in those
branches of industry which have hitherto been but badly organised.”
Exact numerical details cannot now be ascertained; but the Trades Union
Congress of 1872 claimed to represent only 375,000 organised workmen,
whilst that of 1874 included delegates from nearly three times as many
societies, representing a nominal total of 1,191,922 members.[473] It
is possible that between 1871 and 1875 the number of Trade Unionists
was more than doubled.
We see this progress reflected in the minds of the employers. At
the end of 1873 we find the newly established National Federation
of Associated Employers of Labour declaring that “the voluntary and
intermittent efforts of individual employers,” or even employers’
associations confined to a single trade or locality, are helpless
against “the extraordinary development--far-reaching, but openly-avowed
designs--and elaborate organisation of the Trade Unions.” “Few are
aware,” continues this manifesto, “of the extent, compactness of
organisation, large resources, and great influence of the Trade
Unions.... They have the control of enormous funds, which they expend
freely in furtherance of their objects; and the proportion of their
earnings which the operatives devote to the service of their leaders
is startling.... They have a well-paid and ample staff of leaders,
most of them experienced in the conduct of strikes, many of them
skilful as organisers, all forming a class apart, a profession, with
interests distinct from, though not necessarily antagonistic to, those
of the workpeople they lead, but from their very _raison d’être_
hostile to those of the employers and the rest of the community....
They have, through their command of money, the imposing aspect of
their organisation, and partly, also, from the mistaken humanitarian
aspirations of a certain number of literary men of good standing, a
large army of literary talent which is _prompt_ in their service on
all occasions of controversy. They have their own press as a field for
these exertions. Their writers have free access to some of the leading
London journals. They organise frequent public meetings, at which paid
speakers inoculate the working classes with their ideas, and urge them
to dictate terms to candidates for Parliament. Thus they exercise a
pressure upon members of Parliament, and those aspirant to that honour,
out of all proportion to their real power, and beyond belief except to
those who have had the opportunity of witnessing its effects. They have
a standing Parliamentary Committee, and a programme; and active members
of Parliament are energetic in their service. They have the attentive
ear of the Ministry of the day; and their communications are received
with instant and respectful attention. They have a large representation
of their own body in London whenever Parliament is likely to be
engaged in the discussion of the proposals they have caused to be
brought before it. Thus, untrammelled by pecuniary considerations,
and specially set apart for this peculiar work, without other
clashing occupations, they resemble the staff of a well-organised,
well-provisioned army, for which everything that foresight and
preoccupation in a given purpose could provide, is at command.”[474] It
is not surprising that the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union
Congress, composed, as it was, of the “staff of leaders” referred to,
should have had this involuntary tribute to their efficiency reprinted
and widely circulated among their constituents.
The student will form a more qualified estimate of the position
in 1873-75 than either the elated Trade Unionists or the alarmed
employers. In the first place, great as was the numerical expansion of
these years, the reader of the preceding chapters will know that it was
not without parallel. The outburst of Trade Unionism between 1830 and
1834 was, so far as we can estimate, even greater than that between
1871 and 1875, whilst it was far more rapid in its development. There
were, during the nineteenth century, three high tides in the Trade
Union history of our country, 1833-34, 1872-74, and 1889-90. In the
absence of complete and trustworthy statistics it is difficult to say
at which of these dates the sweeping in of members was greatest. But it
is easy to discern that the expansion of 1873-74 was marked by features
which were both like and unlike those of its predecessor.
Like the outburst of 1833-34, the marked extension of Trade Unionism
in 1872 reached even the agricultural labourers. For more than thirty
years since the transportation of the Dorchester labourers good
times and bad had passed over their heads without resulting in any
combined effort to improve their condition. There seems to have been a
short-lived combination in Scotland in 1865. We hear of an impulsive
strike of some Buckinghamshire labourers in 1867, which spread into
Hertfordshire. A more effective Union was formed in Herefordshire in
1871, which pursued a quiet policy of emigration, and enrolled 30,000
subscribers in half a dozen counties. But a more energetic movement
now arose. On February 7, 1872, the labourers of certain parishes of
Warwickshire met at Wellesbourne to discuss their grievances. At a
second meeting, a little later, Joseph Arch, a labourer of Barford, who
owned a freehold cottage, and had become known as a Primitive Methodist
preacher, made a speech which bore fruit. On the 11th of March two
hundred men resolved to strike for higher wages, namely, 16s. per
week for a working day from 6 A.M. to 5 P.M. Unlike most strikes this
one attracted from the first the favourable notice of the press.[475]
Publicity brought immediate funds and sympathisers. On the 29th of
March the inaugural meeting of the Warwickshire Agricultural Labourers’
Union was held at Leamington, under the presidency of the Hon. Auberon
Herbert, M.P., a donation of one hundred pounds being handed in by a
rich friend. Through the eloquence, the revivalist fervour, and the
untiring energy of Joseph Arch, the movement spread like wildfire among
the rural labourers of the central and eastern counties. The mania
for combination which came over the country population during the next
few months recalls, indeed, the mushroom growth of the Grand National
Consolidated Trades Union of forty years before. Within two months
delegates from twenty-six counties met to transform the local society
into a National Agricultural Labourers’ Union, organised in district
Unions all over the country, with a central committee at Leamington,
which, by the end of the year, boasted of a membership of nearly a
hundred thousand.[476]
The organised Trade Unions rallied promptly to the support of the
labourers, and contributed largely to their funds. The farmers met the
men’s demand by a widespread lock-out of Unionist labourers, which
called forth the support of Trades Councils and individual societies
all over the country.[477] George Howell, then Secretary of the
Parliamentary Committee, George Shipton, the Secretary of the newly
revived London Trades Council, and many other leaders, gave up their
nights and days to perfecting the labourers’ organisations. The skilled
trades, indeed, furnished many of the officials of the new Union.
Joseph Arch found for his headquarters an able general secretary in
Henry Taylor, a carpenter, whilst the Kentish labourers, organised
in the separate Kent Union, enjoyed the services of a compositor.
This help, together with the funds and countenance of influential
philanthropists, made the outburst less transient than that of 1833-34.
In many villages the mere formation of a branch led to an instantaneous
rise of wages. But, as in 1833-34, the audacity of the field labourer
in imitating the combinations of the town artisan provoked an almost
indescribable bitterness of feeling on the part of the squirearchy
and their connections. The farmers, wherever they dared, ruthlessly
“victimised” any man who joined the Union. It is needless to say that
they received the cordial support of the rural magistracy. In aid of
a lock-out near Chipping Norton, two justices, who happened both to
be clergymen, sent sixteen labourers’ wives, some with infants at
the breast, to prison with hard labour, for “intimidating” certain
non-Union men. An attempt to punish the leaders of a meeting at
Farringdon, on the ground of “obstruction of the highway,” was only
defeated by bringing down an eminent Queen’s Counsel from London to
overawe the local bench. The “dukes”--notably those of Marlborough
and Rutland--denounced the “agitators and declaimers” who had “too
easily succeeded in disturbing the friendly feeling which used to unite
the labourer and his employer in mutual feelings of generosity and
confidence.” Innumerable acts of petty tyranny and oppression proved
how far the landed interest had lagged behind the capitalist employers
in the matter of Freedom of Combination. Nor was the Established Church
more sympathetic. At the great meeting held at Exeter Hall on behalf
of the labourers, when the chair was taken by Samuel Morley, M.P.,
the only ecclesiastic who appeared on the platform was Archbishop
(afterwards Cardinal) Manning. In fact, the spirit in which the
rural clergy viewed this social upheaval is not unfairly typified
by the public utterance of a learned bishop. On September 2, 1872,
Dr. Ellicott, the Bishop of Gloucester, speaking at a meeting of the
Gloucester Agricultural Society, significantly suggested the village
horsepond as a fit destination for the “agitators,” or delegates sent
by the Union to open new branches. And the farmers, the squires, and
the Church were supported by the army. When the labourers in August
1872 struck for an increase of wages, the officers, in Oxfordshire and
Berkshire, placed the soldiers at the disposal of the farmers for the
purpose of getting in the harvest and so defeating the Union.
This insurrection of the village and the autocratic spirit which it
aroused in the owners of land and tithe had, we believe, a far-reaching
political effect. With its results upon the agitation for Church
disestablishment and the growing Radicalism of the counties we are not
here concerned. We trace, however, from these months, the appearance
in the Trade Union programme of the proposals relating to the Land Law
Reform and the Summary Jurisdiction of the Magistrates, which seem,
at first sight, unconnected with the grievances of the town artisan.
But though the agricultural labourer had his effect upon the Trade
Union Movement, Trade Unionism was not, at this time, able to do much
for him. Funds and personal help were freely placed at his service
by his brother Unionists. The minute-books and balance-sheets of the
great Unions and the Trade Councils show how warm and generous was the
response made to his appeal by the engineers, carpenters, miners, and
other trades. The London Trades Council successfully exerted itself
to stop the lending of troops to the farmers, and procured a fresh
regulation explicitly prohibiting for the future such assistance “in
cases where strikes or disputes between farmers and their labourers
exist.”[478] The public disapproval of the sentence in the Chipping
Norton case was used by the Trade Union leaders as a powerful argument
for the repeal of the Criminal Law Amendment Act.
But all this availed the agricultural labourer little. The feverish
faith in combination as a panacea for all social ills gradually
subsided. The farmers, after their first surprise, during which the
labourers, in many counties, secured advances of from eighteenpence
to as much as four shillings per week, met the Union demands and
successes by a stolid resistance, and took every opportunity to regain
their ground. In 1874 the Agricultural Unions sustained their first
severe defeat. Some of those in Suffolk asked for an advance of wages
from 13s. to 14s. for a 54-hours week. The farmers’ answer was an
immediate lock-out, which was rapidly taken up throughout the Eastern
and Midland counties, no fewer than 10,000 members of the Union being
thus “victimised.” The struggle had to be closed in July 1874, after an
expenditure by the National Union of £21,365 in strike pay. After this
the membership rapidly declined. Every winter saw the lock-out used
as a means for smashing particular branches of the Union. And in this
work of destruction the farmers were aided by their personal intimacy
with the labourer. It was easy to drop into the suspicious mind of the
uneducated villager a fatal doubt as to the real destination of the
pennies which he was sending away to the far-off central treasury. Nor
was the Union organisation perfect. Difficulties and delays occurred in
rendering aid to threatened branches or victimised men. The clergyman,
the doctor, and the village publican were always at hand to encourage
distrust of the “paid agitator.” Within a very few years most of the
independent Unions had ceased to exist, whilst Arch’s great national
society had dwindled away to a steadily diminishing membership,
scattered up and down the midland counties, in what were virtually
village sick and funeral clubs. With the decline of prosperity of
British farming, which set in about 1876-77, men were everywhere
dismissed, grass replaced grain over hundreds of thousands of acres,
and the demand for agricultural labour fell off; and even Joseph Arch
had repeatedly to advise the local branches to acquiesce in lower
wages. By 1881 the National Union could claim only 15,000 members, and
in 1889 only 4254.[479]
We have, therefore, in the sudden growth and quick collapse of this
revolt “of the field” a marked likeness to the meteoric career of
the general Trades Unions of 1833-34. But the expansion of the
Trade Union Movement in 1871-75 had another point of resemblance to
previous periods of inflation. In 1871-75, as in 1833-34 and in 1852,
the project of recovering possession of the instruments of production
seizes hold of the imagination of great bodies of Trade Unionists.
Again we see attempts by trade organisations to establish workshops
of their own. The schemes of Co-operative Production of 1871-75 bore
more resemblance to those of 1852 than to Owen’s crude communism. In
the Trade Unionism of 1833-34 the fundamental Trade Union principle of
the maintenance of the Standard of Life was overshadowed and absorbed
by the Owenite idea of carrying on the whole industry of the country
by national associations of producers, in which all the workmen would
be included. But in the more practical times of 1852 and 1871-75 the
project of “self-employment” remained strictly subordinate to the main
functions of the organisation.[480] Whatever visions may have been
indulged in by individual philanthropists, the Trade Union committees
of both these periods treated the co-operative workshop either as
merely a convenient adjunct to the Union, or as a means of affording to
a certain number of its members a chance of escape from the conditions
of wage-labour.[481] The failure of all these attempts belongs,
therefore, rather to the history of Co-operation than to that of Trade
Unionism. For our present purpose it suffices to note that the loss
in these experiments of tens of thousands of pounds finally convinced
the officials of the old-established Unions of the impracticability of
using Trade Union organisations and Trade Union funds for Co-operative
Production. The management of industry by associations of producers
still remains the ideal of one school of co-operators, and still
periodically captures the imagination of individual Trade Unionists.
But other ideals of collective ownership of the means of production
have displaced the Owenism of 1833-34 and the “Christian Socialism”
of 1852. Of co-operative experiments by Trade Societies, in their
corporate capacity, we hear practically no more.[482]
On the whole the contrast between the Trade Union expansion of
1873-74 and that of 1833-34 is more significant than any likeness
that may be traced between the two periods. The Trade Unionists of
1833-34 aimed at nothing less than the supersession of the capitalist
employer; and they were met by his absolute refusal to tolerate,
or even to recognise, their organisation. The new feature of the
expansion of 1873-74 was the moderation with which the workmen claimed
merely to receive some share of the enormous profits of these good
times. The employers, on the other hand, for the most part abandoned
their objection to recognise the Unions, and even conceded, after
repeated refusals, the principle of the regulation of industry by
Joint Boards of Conciliation or impartial umpires chosen from outside
the trade. From 1867 to 1875 innumerable Boards of Conciliation and
Arbitration were established, at which representatives of the masters
met representatives of the Trade Unions on equal terms. In fact, it
must have been difficult for the workmen at this period to realise
with what stubborn obstinacy the employers, between 1850 and 1870, had
resisted any kind of intervention in what they had then regarded as
essentially a matter of private concern. When the Amalgamated Society
of Engineers offered, in 1851, to refer the then pending dispute to
arbitration, the master engineers simply ignored the proposal. The
Select Committees of the House of Commons in 1856 and 1860 found
the workmen’s witnesses strongly in favour of arbitration, but the
employers sceptical as to its possibility. Nor did the establishment
of A. J. Mundella’s Hosiery Board at Nottingham in 1860, and Sir
Rupert Kettle’s Joint Committees in the Wolverhampton building trades
in 1864, succeed in converting the employers elsewhere. But between
1869 and 1875 opinion among the captains of industry, to the great
satisfaction of the Trade Union leaders, gradually veered round.
“Twenty-five years ago,” said Alexander Macdonald in 1875, “when we
proposed the adoption of the principle of arbitration, we were then
laughed to scorn by the employing interests. But no movement has ever
spread so rapidly or taken a deeper root than that which we then set
on foot. Look at the glorious state of things in England and Wales. In
Northumberland the men now meet with their employers around the common
board.... In Durhamshire a Board of Arbitration and Conciliation has
also been formed; and 75,000 men repose with perfect confidence on the
decisions of the Board. There are 40,000 men in Yorkshire in the same
position.”[483]
But though the establishment, from 1869 onwards, of Joint Boards and
Joint Committees represented a notable advance for the Trade Unions,
and marked their complete recognition by the great employers, yet this
victory brought results which largely neutralised its advantages.[484]
As in the case of the political triumphs, the men gained their point
at the cost of adopting the intellectual position of their opponents.
When the representatives of the employers and the delegates of the
men began to meet to discuss the future scale of wages, we see the
sturdy leaders of many Trade Union battles gradually and insensibly
accepting the capitalists’ axiom that wages must necessarily fluctuate
according to the capitalists’ profits, and even with every variation
of market-prices.[485] At Darlington, for instance, we watch the
shrewd leader of the employers, David Dale, succeeding in completely
impressing John Kane and a whole subsequent generation of ironworkers
with a firm belief in the principle of regulating wages according to
the market price of the product. The high prices of 1870-73 removed
the last scruples of the workmen as to the new doctrine. In 1874 a
delegate meeting of the Northumberland Miners decided to use the
formal expression of the Executive Committee,[486] “that prices should
rule wages”--a decision expressly repeated by delegate meetings in
1877 and 1878. In 1879, when prices had come tumbling down, we find
the Executive still maintaining that “as an Association we have
always contended that wages should be based on the selling price of
coal.”[487] In an interesting letter dated February 1, 1878, Burt,
Nixon, and Young (then the salaried officers of the Northumberland
Miners), in describing the negotiations for a Sliding Scale, take
occasion to mention that they had agreed with the employers that there
should be no Minimum Wage.[488] And though the practical difficulties
involved in the establishment of automatic wage-adjustments hindered
the spread of Sliding Scales to other industries, the principle
became tacitly accepted among whole sections of Trade Unionists.
The compulsory maintenance, in good times and bad, of the workman’s
Standard of Life was thus gradually replaced by faith in a scale of
wages sliding up and down according to the commercial speculations of
the controllers of the market.