industrial emancipation of the workmen. It has perhaps had an effect
more general still. Aided by the general awakening of social sentiment
and of the feeling of social responsibility, it has practically opened
our eyes to the fact that a nation and humanity at large is a community
the good things of which all are entitled to share while all must share
the evil things. It has forcibly dispelled the notion in which the rich
indolently acquiesced that enjoyment leisure culture refined affection
high civilization are the destined lot of the few while the destined lot
of the many is to support the privileged existence of the few by
unremitting coarse and jobless toil. Society has been taught that it
must at least endeavour to be just. The old ecclesiastical props of
privilege are gone. There is no use any longer in quoting or misquoting
Scripture to prove that God wills the mass of mankind to be always poor
and always dependent on the rich. The very peasant has now broken that
spell and will no longer believe the rector if he tells him that this
world belongs to the squire and that justice is put off to the next. The
process of mental emancipation has been assisted by the bishop who was
so rash as to suggest that rural agitators should be ducked in a horse
pond. Hodge has determined to find out for himself by a practical
experiment what the will of God really is. No doubt this is an imperfect
world and is likely to remain so for our time at least; we must all work
on in the hope that if we do our duty it will be well for us in the sum
of things and that when the far off goal of human effort is at last
reached, every faithful servant of humanity will have his part in the
result; if it were not so, it would be better to be a brute, with no
unfulfilled aspirations, than a man. But I repeat, the religion of
privilege has lost its power to awe or to control, and if society wishes
to rest on a safe foundation, it must show that it is at least trying to
be just.
Wealth, real wealth, has hardly as yet much reason to complain of any
encroachment of the labour movement on its rights. When did it command
such means and appliances of pleasure, such satisfaction for every
appetite and every fancy, as it commands now? When did it rear such
enchanted palaces of luxury as it is rearing in England at the present
day? Well do I remember one of those palaces, the most conspicuous
object for miles round. Its lord was, I daresay, consuming the income of
some six hundred of the poor labouring families round him. The thought
that you are spending on yourself annually the income of six hundred
labouring families seems to me about as much as a man with a heart and a
brain can bear. Whatever the rich man desires, the finest house, the
biggest diamond, the reigning beauty for his wife, social homage, public
honours, political power, is ready at his command. Does he fancy a seat
in the British House of Commons, the best club in London, as it has been
truly called? All other claims, those of the public service included, at
once give way. I remember a question arising about a nomination for a
certain constituency (a working man's constituency, by the way), which
was cut short by the announcement that the seat was wanted by a local
millionaire. When the name of the millionaire was mentioned, surprise
was expressed. Has he, it was asked, any political knowledge or
capacity, any interest in public affairs, any ambition? The answer was
"None." "Then why does he want the seat?" "He does not want it." "Then
why does he take it?" "Because his wife does." Cleopatra, as the story
goes, displayed her mad prodigality by melting a pearl in a cup, out of
which she drank to Antony. But this modern money-queen could throw into
her cup of pleasure, to give it a keener zest, a share in the government
of the greatest empire in the world.
If the movement, by transferring something from the side of profits to
that of wages, checks in any measure the growth of these colossal
fortunes, it will benefit society and diminish no man's happiness. I say
it without the slightest feeling of asceticism, and in the conviction
that wealth well made and well spent is as pure as the rill that runs
from the mountain side.
Real chiefs of industry have generally a touch of greatness in them and
no nobleman of the peerage clings more to his tinsel than do nature's
noblemen to simplicity of life. Mr. Brassey with his millions never
could be induced to increase his establishment his pride and pleasure
were in the guidance of industry and the accomplishment of great works.
But in the hands of the heirs of these men colossal fortunes become
social nuisances waste labour breed luxury create unhappiness by
propagating factitious wants too often engender vice and are injurious
for the most part to real civilization. The most malignant feelings
which enter into the present struggle have been generated especially in
England by the ostentation of idle wealth in contrast with surrounding
poverty. No really high nature covets such a position as that of a
luxurious and useless millionaire. Communism as a movement is a mistake
but there is a communism which is deeply seated in the heart of every
good man and which makes him feel that the hardest of all labour is
idleness in a world of toil and that the bitterest of all bread is that
which is eaten by the sweat of another man's brow.
The pressure is hardest not on those who are really rich but on those
who have hitherto on account of their education and the intellectual
character of their callings been numbered with the rich and who are
still clinging to the skirts of wealthy society. The best thing which
those who are clinging to the skirts of wealthy society can do is to let
go. They will find that they have not far to fall and they will rest on
the firm ground of genuine respectability and solid comfort. By keeping
up then culture they will preserve their social grade far better than by
struggling for a precarious footing among those whose habits they cannot
emulate and whose hospitalities they cannot return. Then income will be
increased by the whole cost of the efforts which they now make it the
sacrifice of comforts and often of necessaries to maintain the
appearances of wealth. British grandees may be good models for our
millionaires but what most of us want are models of the art of enjoying
life thoroughly and nobly without ostentation and at a moderate cost. It
is by people of the class of which I am speaking that the servant
difficulty that doleful but ever recurring theme is most severely felt.
Nor would I venture to hold out much hope that the difficulty will
become less. It is not merely industrial out social. There is a growing
repugnance to anything like servitude which makes the female democracy
prefer the independence of the factory to the subordination of the
kitchen, however good the wages and however kind the mistress may be. We
must look to inventions for saving labour, which might be adopted in
houses to a greater extent than they are now. Perhaps when the work has
been thus lightened and made less coarse, families may find "help," in
the true sense, among their relatives, or others in need of a home, who
would be members of the family circle. Homes and suitable employment
might thus be afforded to women who are now pining in enforced idleness,
and sighing for Protestant nunneries, while the daily war with Bridget
would be at an end.
I would not make light of these inconveniences or of the present
disturbance of trade. The tendency of a moment may be good, and yet it
may give society a very bad quarter of an hour. Nor would I attempt to
conceal the errors and excesses of which the unions have been guilty,
and into which, as organs of corporate selfishness, they are always in
danger of running. Industrial history has a record against the
workingman as well as against the master. The guilds of the Middle Ages
became tyrannical monopolies and leagues against society, turned
callings open to all into mysteries confined to a privileged few, drove
trade and manufactures from the cities where they reigned to places free
from their domination. This probably was the cause of the decay of
cities which forms the burden of complaint in the preambles to Acts of
Parliament, in the Tudor period. Great guilds oppressed little guilds:
strong commercial cities ruled by artisans oppressed their weaker
neighbours of the same class. No one agency has done so much to raise
the condition of the workingman as machinery; yet the workingman
resisted the introduction of machinery, rose against it, destroyed it,
maltreated its inventors. There is a perpetual warning in the name of
Hargreaves, the workingman who, by his inventive genius, provided
employment for millions of his fellows, and was by them rewarded with
outrage and persecution.
Flushed with confidence at the sight of their serried phalanxes and
extending lines, the unionists do like most people invested with
unwonted power; they aim at more than is possible or just. They fancy
that they can put the screw on the community, almost without limit. But
they will soon find out their mistake. They will learn it from those
very things which are filling the world with alarm--the extension of
unionism, and the multiplication of strikes. The builder strikes against
the rest of the community, including the baker, then the baker strikes
against the builder and the collier strikes against them both. At first
the associated trades seem to have it all their own way. But the other
trades learn the secret of association. Everybody strikes against
everybody else, the price of all articles rises as much as anybody's
wages, and thus when the wheel has come full circle, nobody is much the
gainer. In fact long before the wheel has come full circle the futility
of a universal strike will be manifest to all. The world sees before it
a terrible future of unionism ever increasing in power and tyranny, but
it is more likely that in a few years unionism as an instrument for
forcing up wages will have ceased to exist. In the meantime the working
classes will have impressed upon themselves by a practical experiment
upon the grandest scale and of the most decisive kind the fact that they
are consumers as well as producers, payers of wages as well as receivers
of wages, members of a community as well as workingmen.
The unionists will learn also after a few trials that the community
cannot easily be cornered, at least that it cannot easily be cornered
more than once by unions any more than by gold rings at New York or pork
rings at Chicago. It may apparently succumb once being unable to do
without its bread or its newspapers or to stop buildings already
contracted for and commenced, but it instinctively prepares to defend
itself against a repetition of the operation. It limits consumption or
invents new modes of production, improves machinery, encourages non
union men, calls in foreigners, women, Chinese. In the end the corner
results in loss. Cornering on the part of workingmen is not a bit worse
than cornering on the part of great financiers; in both cases alike it
is as odious as anything can be, which is not actually criminal; but
depend upon it a bad time is coming for corners of all kinds.
I speak of the community as the power with which the strikers really
have to deal. The master hires or organizes the workmen, but the
community purchases their work; and though the master when hard pressed
may in his desperation give more for the work than it is worth rather
than at once take his capital out of the trade the community will let
the trade go to ruin without compunction rather than give more for the
article than it can afford. Some of the colliers in England, we are
informed, have called upon the masters to reduce the price of coal,
offering at the same time to consent to a reduction of their own wages.
A great fact has dawned upon their minds. Note too that democratic
communities have more power of resistance to unionist extortion than
others, because they are more united, have a keener sense of mutual
interest, and are free from political fear. The way in which Boston,
some years ago, turned to and beat a printers' strike, was a remarkable
proof of this fact.
Combination may enable, and, as I believe, has enabled the men in
particular cases to make a fairer bargain with the masters, and to get
the full market value of their labour, but neither combination nor any
other mode of negotiating can raise the value of labour or of any other
article to the consumer, and that which cannot raise the value cannot
permanently raise the price.
All now admit that strikes peaceably conducted are lawful. Nevertheless,
they may sometimes be anti-social and immoral. Does any one doubt it?
Suppose by an accident to machinery, or the falling in of a mine, a
number of workmen have their limbs broken. One of their mates runs for
the surgeon, and the surgeon puts his head out of the window and says--
"the surgeons are on strike." Does this case much differ from that of
the man who, in his greed, stops the wheel of industry which he is
turning, thereby paralysing the whole machine, and spreading not only
confusion, but suffering, and perhaps starvation among multitudes of his
fellows? Language was held by some unionist witnesses, before the Trades
Union Commission, about their exclusive regard for their own interests,
and their indifference to the interests of society, which was more frank
than philanthropic, and more gratifying to their enemies than to their
friends. A man who does not care for the interests of society will find,
to his cost, that they are his own, and that he is a member of a body
which cannot be dismembered. I spoke of the industrial objects of the
International as chimerical. They are worse than chimerical. In its
industrial aspect, the International was an attempt to separate the
interests of a particular class of workers throughout the world from
those of their fellow workers, and to divide humanity against itself.
Such attempts can end only in one way.
There are some who say, in connection with this question, that you are
at liberty to extort anything you can from your fellow men, provided you
do not use a pistol; that you are at liberty to fleece the sailor who
implores you to save him from a wreck, or the emigrant who is in danger
of missing his ship. I say that this is a moral robbery, and that the
man would say so himself if the same thing were done to him.
A strike is a war, so is a lock out, which is a strike on the other
side. They are warrantable, like other wars, when justice cannot be
obtained, or injustice prevented by peaceful means, and in such cases
only. Mediation ought always to be tried first and it will often be
effectual, for the wars of carpenters and builders, as well as the wars
of emperors, often arise from passion more than from interest, and
passion may be calmed by mediation. Hence the magnitude of the unions,
formidable as it seems, has really a pacific effect; passion is commonly
personal or local, and does not affect the central government of a union
extending over a whole nation. The governments of great unions have
seldom recommended strikes. A strike or lock-out, I repeat, is an
industrial war, and when the war is over there ought to be peace.
Constant bad relations between the masters and the men, a constant
attitude of mutual hostility and mistrust, constant threats of striking
upon one side, and of locking out upon the other, are ruinous to the
trade, especially if it depends at all upon foreign orders, as well as
destructive of social comfort. If the state of feeling and the bearing
of the men toward the masters, remain what they now are in some English
trades, kind-hearted employers who would do their best to improve the
condition of the workman, and to make him a partaker in their
prosperity, will be driven from the trade, and their places will be
taken by men with hearts of flint who will fight the workman by force
and fraud, and very likely win. We have seen the full power of
associated labour, the full power of associated capital has yet to be
seen. We shall see it when instead of combinations of the employers in a
single trade, which seldom hold together, employers in all trades learn
to combine.
We must not forget that industrial wars, like other wars, however just
and necessary, give birth to men whose trade is war, and who, for the
purpose of their trade are always inflaming the passions which lead to
war. Such men I have seen on both sides of the Atlantic, and most
hateful pests of industry and society they are. Nor must we forget that
Trade Unions, like other communities, whatever their legal constitutions
may be, are apt practically to fall into the hands of a small minority
of active spirits, or even into those of a single astute and ambitious
man.
Murder, maiming and vitriol throwing are offences punishable by law. So
are, or ought to be, rattening and intimidation. But there are ways less
openly criminal of interfering with the liberty of non-union men. The
liberty of non-union men, however, must be protected. Freedom of
contract is the only security which the community has against systematic
extortion; and extortion, practised on the community by a Trade Union,
is just as bad as extortion practised by a feudal baron in his robber
hold. If the unions are not voluntary they are tyrannies, and all
tyrannies in the end will be overthrown.
The same doom awaits all monopolies and attempts to interfere with the
free exercise of any lawful trade or calling, for the advantage of a
ring of any kind, whether it be a great East India Company, shutting the
gates of Eastern commerce on mankind, or a little Bricklayers' Union,
limiting the number of bricks to be carried in a hod. All attempts to
restrain or cripple production in the interest of a privileged set of
producers; all trade rules preventing work from being done in the best,
cheapest and most expeditious way; all interference with a man's free
use of his strength and skill on pretence that he is beating his mates,
or on any other pretence, all exclusions of people from lawful callings
for which they are qualified; all apprenticeships not honestly intended
for the instruction of the apprentice, are unjust and contrary to the
manifest interests of the community, including the misguided monopolists
themselves. All alike will, in the end, be resisted and put down. In
feudal times the lord of the manor used to compel all the people to use
his ferry, sell on his fair ground, and grind their corn at his mill. By
long and costly effort humanity has broken the yoke of old Privilege,
and it is not likely to bow its neck to the yoke of the new.
Those who in England demanded the suffrage for the working man, who
urged, in the name of public safety, as well as in that of justice, that
he should be brought within the pale of the constitution, have no reason
to be ashamed of the result. Instead of voting for anarchy and public
pillage, the working man has voted for economy, administrative reform,
army reform, justice to Ireland, public education. But no body of men
ever found political power in their hands without being tempted to make
a selfish use of it. Feudal legislatures, as we have seen, passed laws
compelling workmen to give more work, or work that was worth more, for
the same wages. Working men's legislatures are now disposed to pass laws
compelling employers, that is, the community, to give the same wages for
less work. Some day, perhaps, the bakers will get power into their hands
and make laws compelling us to give the same price for a smaller loaf.
What would the Rochdale pioneers, or the owners of any other co-
operative store, with a staff of servants say if a law were passed
compelling them to give the same wages for less service? This is not
right, and it cannot stand. Demagogues who want your votes will tell you
that it can stand, but those who are not in that line must pay you the
best homage in their power by speaking the truth. And if I may venture
to offer advice never let the cause of labour be mixed up with the game
of politicians. Before you allow a man to lead you in trade questions be
sure that he has no eye to your votes. We have a pleasing variety of
political rogues but perhaps, there is hardly a greater rogue among them
than the working man's friend.
Perhaps you will say as much or more work is done with the short hours.
There is reason to hope that it in some cases it may be so. But then the
employer will see his own interest, free contract will produce the
desired result, there will be no need of compulsory law.
I sympathize heartily with the general object of the nine hours
movement, of the early closing movement, and all movements of that kind.
Leisure well spent is a condition of civilization, and now we want all
to be civilized, not only a few. But I do not believe it possible to
regulate the hours of work by law with any approach to reason or
justice. One kind of work is more exhausting than another, one is
carried on in a hot room, another in a cool room, one amidst noise
wearing to the nerves, another in stillness. Time is not a common
measure of them all. The difficulty is increased if you attempt to make
one rule for all nations disregarding differences of race and climate.
Besides how in the name of justice, can we say that the man with a wife
and children to support, shall not work more if he pleases than the
unmarried man who chooses to be content with less pay and to have more
time for enjoyment? Medical science pronounces, we are told, that it is
not good for a man to work more than eight hours. But supposing this to
be true and true of all kinds of work, this as has been said before is
an imperfect world and it is to be feared that we cannot guarantee any
man against having more to do than his doctor would recommend. The small
tradesman, whose case receives no consideration because he forms no
union, often perhaps generally has more than is good for him of anxiety,
struggling and care as well as longer business hours, than medical
science would prescribe. Pressure on the weary brain is, at least, as
painful as pressure on the weary muscle; many a suicide proves it; yet
brains must be pressed or the wheels of industry and society would stand
still. Let us all, I repeat, get as much leisure as we fairly and
honestly can; but with all due respect for those who hold the opposite
opinion, I believe that the leisure must be obtained by free arrangement
in each ease, as it has already in the case of early closing, not by
general law.