TRADE UNIONISM, ITS FLOWER AND FRUITION.
When we are continually assured that there is a new and better way of
doing anything, it is only reasonable to ask if anyone has tried it
before. "The proof of the pudding is in the eating," and if some one
has eaten such a pudding before us, we may be saved from using up good
materials in a bad concoction. Until now the attention of historians
has been so fixed upon the great military autocracy of Rome, that the
growth of trade unionism and socialism under that government has been
overlooked. Here we will trace and put together such facts as seem
curiously parallel to the growth of modern unionism; and which, when
they outstep our present position, may serve to show what further
developments may be expected by us.
The first great step, which bore centuries of bitter results, was the
favouring of the townsman as against the countryman. The voter in Rome
could push laws to his own advantage in the hurly-burly of the public
assembly, while the countryman was working hard in his furrow miles
away. The conquered provinces were a great temptation; they had to
yield tribute, grain came pouring into Rome, and why should not this
abundance benefit the citizen by being sold at a low price? They forgot
the countryman. His toil was none the less because Carthage or Sicily
or Egypt were being plundered. But his pay was much the less if his
produce lost its market value. The cheap corn of Gracchus was the knell
of the honest agriculturist, as Professor Oman has pointed out. The
only remedy was to try to cheapen production in Italy. This was done by
giving up the small farmer altogether, and running only big estates by
slave-labour, the human machine which was to Rome what machinery is to
us. This staved off the evil somewhat. But soon the townsman demanded
more and more, and at last free doles of corn were given to him, and
agriculture became impossible in Italy. What tribute-corn did to Italy,
cheap transport has done to England. The townsman is always favoured
at the cost of the countryman, and the country is being depopulated.
Not only cheap bread, but doles of every kind—hospitals, wash-houses,
music, games, libraries—all are given to the townsman, while the
countryman cannot possibly share in such doles. A large policy of
equivalent benefits to the countryman would be the only corrective to
this one-sided and deleterious favouritism. But the votes carry it, as
they did in Rome.
In the earlier part of the second century, under Trajan, two little
statements show what was going on. A guild or trade union of firemen in
Asia Minor wished to be incorporated: but the emperor forbade, because
such trade guilds became political centres. There must have been
some experience of such movement for it to be anticipated. The other
statement is that the more able and wealthy men avoided entering the
guild of permanent aldermen, or _curia_, because of the burdens which
were thrown upon them. A century later, about 230 A.D., all trades
were organised into corporations or trades unions, recognised by the
government, instead of being only private societies as before. This
seems to have been a compulsory unionism; but there was some difference
in class between this trades unionism and our own. In Rome the trades
were in the hands of smaller men, and not of large firms and companies
as much as with us; and on the other hand the mere mechanic was
usually a slave, this slave labour being economically the equivalent
of machinery in our time. Hence the Roman trades unions were small
employers of the status of our plumbers or upholsterers, more than, as
with us, a large mass of crude labour organised against all capital.
They were trade unions, rather than unions of the mechanics as against
the managers. The compulsory entry of all the master employers into a
union would no doubt be a step very welcome to modern unionism; and the
compulsory extension of it, so as to leave no free labour, would be an
ideal condition, in which picketing would be quite superseded by legal
compulsion to join the union. The differences therefore were mainly
such as our trades unions would desire, and aim at in future; in short
unionism by 230 A.D. was more developed than it is at present with us.
But here came in a very difficult question, which is before us also
whenever unionism becomes dominant in any trade. It is all very well to
let unions pillage capital, or even pillage each other, but can they be
allowed to pillage the poor? This at once clashes with the favouring of
the proletariat. It has already raised an acute difficulty in England.
The Bricklayers' Union cannot be competed with from abroad, except
very slightly by means of imported wooden houses. Hence this union
has been able to close its grip firmly on the throat of the public;
it has raised wages, and it has cut down work from eight hundred or
nine hundred bricks laid daily to two hundred and seventy or three
hundred and thirty in different standards now. By raising the cost
of labour to about three times the amount, the cost of building as a
whole must be nearly doubled. The dearness of lodging of the poor is
really due to the remorseless extortion of the bricklayers, abetted
by the extravagant building regulations locally in force in their
interest, to increase the expenditure on a building. In the country
there is disgraceful overcrowding for lack of cottage accommodation,
and in towns miserable rooms fetch high rents. The ground-landlord,
who is so much abused, has little to do with this; for ground-rents
are seldom more than a tenth of the house rent and taxes. If all land
were confiscated to-morrow it would not lower most rentals more than a
fraction. If the Bricklayers' Union and all its results were abolished,
rentals would descend to nearly half the present amounts.
If we were to meet this difficulty in the way that Rome dealt with it,
the Government would give the Bricklayers' Union an absolute monopoly
of building, on condition that dwellings under a certain value were
charged at a third of the cost of labour, that is on the old terms of a
full day's work fifty years ago, leaving all later profits to be gained
from the wealthier classes. In the present straits about housing it is
by no means certain that this would not be a popular course.
In Rome the grain importers and the bakers were the two trades
which touched the proletariat most closely. And early in the third
century these, and probably other essential trades, were organised
as monopolist unions, on condition that the union was bound over to
do a certain amount of work for the poor at a nominal rate. Thus the
wastrel was favoured and protected, with his right to maintenance;
and all profits of the business were to be made from work done for
those who could afford to pay for it. This is unquestionably an ideal
toward which a great deal of social legislation is tending at present.
Railway companies and tramways are bound to carry workmen at nominal
rates, while all their profits are to be earned from wealth. So far has
this burden been imposed, that the construction of one railway line at
least has been prevented by the heavy toll of cheap transport which was
demanded before sanctioning it.
If the trade is not in the hands of a single firm for a whole district,
like a railway company, there arises the problem, how is the burden
of cheap work for the poor to be distributed over the constituent
firms? This was solved in Rome by the union, which was the sole body
recognised in law. Each member of the union was assessed by his union,
on the basis of both his capital and his trade returns, and he had to
do so much of the cheap work in proportion. Hence the wealth of each
firm determined the amount of their proletariat taxation. If they could
withdraw temporarily part of the capital from the business, their
assessment would be lighter. Hence to each person the aim was to work
with the smallest amount of capital, and to remove from the business
all spare capital, and invest it elsewhere. This naturally resulted in
business being badly worked. The difficulty was met by the law that
all capital once in the business could never be withdrawn; and all
profits—and, later, all acquired wealth—must be kept in the business,
so that the richer firms should do their full share of proletariat
service. The results of these logical developments of unionism and help
to the proletariat, were that many withdrew altogether from unions,
retiring on a small competence rather than live under such a burden,
and that there was a general decline of commerce and of industry.
Property having thus become the gauge of responsibility in the union,
the only way to prevent desertions was to declare that the property
was attached to the union permanently, and whosoever acquired it did
so under the implied covenant of supplying the share of union work out
of it. The result of this law was that no one with capital would join
a trade union, as their whole property became attached to the union;
and poor persons were not desired on unions, as they could not take
up a share of the proletariat service. This condition was met by the
law forcibly enrolling capitalists in the unions, and demanding their
personal service as well as the use of their capital.
By 270 A.D. Aurelian had made unionism compulsory for life so as to
prevent the able men from withdrawing, to better themselves by free
work individually. He also gave a wine dole, and gave bread in place
of corn, to save the wastrel the trouble of baking. In the fourth
century every member, and all his sons, and all his property, belonged
inalienably to the trades union. By 369 A.D. all property however
acquired belonged to the union.
Yet still men would leave all they had to get out of the hateful
bondage, and so the unpopular trades—such as the moneyers in 380
A.D. and the bakers in 408—were recruited by requiring that everyone
who married the daughter of a unionist must join his father-in-law's
business. And thus "the Empire was an immense gaol where all worked not
according to taste but by force," as Waltzing remarks in his great work
_Corporations Professionnelles_, where the foregoing facts are stated.
There was but one end possible to this accumulation of move upon move,
on the false basis of compulsory trade unionism, and work under cost
for the proletariat. The whole system was so destructive of character
and of wealth that it ruined the empire. Slavery was by no means the
destruction of Rome, it flourished in the centuries when the Government
was strongest, and diminished in advance of the social decay. Vice
was by no means the destruction of Rome, it was worst when Rome was
most powerful and was lessened in the decline. The one movement which
grew steadily as Rome declined, and which was intimately connected
with every stage of that decline, was the compulsion of labour and
the maintenance of the wastrel as a burden on society. It was that
which pulled down the greatest political organism, by the crushing of
initiative and character, and by the steady drain on all forms of
wealth. The free Goth was the welcome deliverer from social bondage.
This growth of trade unionism has been followed here as a whole,
without stopping to note other effects of the same type of mind, which
are also very instructive to us. We now turn back to look at some
earlier developments.
The Empire had a long age of internal peace, from the accession of
Vespasian to the rise of Severus, comprising four or five generations.
Men had forgotten in Italy and the provinces what war meant, as the
only troubles had been frontier fighting. They ceased to value the
strength of unity, and the importance of keeping the empire bound
together. The sayings attributed to Gallienus in the middle of the
third century cannot be looked on as merely wild vagaries, contrary
to all the public opinion around him. Had no one else advocated the
subdivision of the empire, he would never have continued to jest about
not needing the produce of Gaul or of Syria. Such phrases must have
been familiar among a little-Italy party, of whom Gallienus was the
agent and mouthpiece. And such a situation will help to explain his
conduct regarding the captivity of Valerian his father in Persia. A
glance at old Valerian shows him to have been a rigid gentleman of
the old school, like Galba or Nerva. And, when he was captured, the
little-Italy party who had hold of Gallienus were relieved rather than
otherwise. Had George III been captured by the French, probably George
IV and Charles James Fox would not have been very anxious for his
return.
The policy of the party seems to have been to encourage each province
to start a separate government under its local ruler, in touch with
the Roman Government, but with recognised independence. Britain was
separated, and was only reunited to the empire at later times for
short periods; Postumus, Victorinus, Tetricus, Carausius, Allectus,
Constantius, Magnentius, Magnus Maximus, Jovinus, all ruled without
any check from Italy. Syria was separated with such good will that the
coinage for Zenobia was struck at the Imperial mint in Alexandria. In
all, nineteen independent rulers are enumerated in this reign; and no
attempt was made to reunite the provinces. There were gains in such a
course; the heavy charge on Italy of keeping a great army was lessened;
the risks of civil war seemed to be reduced, when each province was
not tempted to set up its own ruler for the whole empire; and local
feelings and variations could have free scope. It might be thought that
three centuries of rule had fitted the provinces to hold their own in
the world, and to be ruled independently. The result of the experiment
in devolution, or home rule all round, was a time of such anarchy,
misery and loss, as had not been known since a unified civilisation had
existed in those lands.
After the immediate catastrophes had been somewhat rectified by
succeeding emperors, Aurelian took up the great task of reuniting the
whole empire. He carried this out victoriously; Tetricus from Gaul
and Zenobia from Syria adorned his triumph. But Rome was bitter at
such a policy. A furious rebellion broke out, nominally called the
revolt of the mint; that it was a great social movement was seen by
Gibbon, though he confesses that it is mysterious how three senators,
most of the senatorial families, and multitudes of minor people were
involved in it. The fighting was so severe that five thousand of
Aurelian's trained army were killed. That the mint workmen took part
in it is certain: but probably the mint was adopted as headquarters
of the movement owing to its strength. All this shows that, so far
from the great victories making Aurelian popular in Rome, they were
most bitterly opposed. The only ground for this must be that a very
strong party clung to the little-Italy policy, and hated Aurelian in
consequence. This movement gives good ground for interpreting the
policy of Gallienus in the way we have done above, as being a great
party policy and not merely an imperial freak.
Within less than a generation later came the vast socialist decree of
Diocletian, regulating all prices and wages throughout the empire. A
maximum value was fixed for every kind of food—grain, wine, oil, meat,
fish, vegetables and fruit. Hence such food would never be produced
where the natural conditions prevented a profit within this maximum
price; nor would it be transported beyond the distance within which the
maximum yielded a profit. Whole districts must have been cut off from
different kinds of supply by such legislation. Meanwhile the wages of
labourers, of artizans, and of professions were all equally regulated,
so that the best men could never have their superior ability rewarded.
The prices of skins and leather, of all clothing, and of jewellery were
likewise defined.
The consequence must have been that the losses in bad years of supply,
owing to weather and other circumstances, must have fallen wholly on
the producer, who might be ruined by the whole brunt of the loss,
instead of being partly compensated by a rise in prices which taxed the
whole body of users. No wonder that after such a law the whole empire
plunged ever deeper into poverty and confusion. The coinage depreciated
even more rapidly than before; and the economic distress of such a
fixed system with a falling currency must have been overwhelming. Such
were the results of one of the great socialistic attempts to remedy the
course of events by artificial legislation.
We thus see how by the establishment of unionism, the feeding of
paupers, the devolution of the empire, and the legislation on prices
and wages, the socialistic policy brought to naught the greatest social
organism that had yet appeared in the world.