There can be no doubt that the judgment to be formed upon a strike
among the operatives in a great factory district, if it is to be worth
anything, must be based upon a more difficult chain of reasoning than
usually goes to the consideration of irregularities in the appointed
course of trade. Perfectly free competition regulates all prices, it
is said; and, in most callings, regulates with certainty the price
of labour. A self-adjusting power is introduced by it into the usual
machinery of commerce. So far as regards labour, the working of it is
that, as a rule, every man goes where he can get most value for such
work as he can best perform; and every man who wants labour will, to
the extent his capital allows, vie with his neighbours in attempting
to secure to his service the best labour he can meet with of the
sort he wants. That is the ordinary course of trade. Only the true
price stands, and that price being the lowest by which men of average
capabilities find that they can live, a poor trade entails secret
hardships; middling trade a bare subsistence; and none but a very brisk
trade affords chance of wealth. So it is with the price of skilled
labour; but, with the price of unskilled labour, it is scarcely so. In
each class of men possessing special capabilities, there is a given
number only, and the aim of each of their employers is to do what he
can towards securing for himself, out of that number, the best. For
the absolutely unskilled, there can be no competition when a mass
of the population, ignorant and in sore need, is pressing forward
to receive a dole of such work as it can perform; or, if there be a
competition, it is of an inverse kind--a struggle among thousands for
the food of hundreds; each striving by the most desperate offer of
cheap labour--sometimes even an hour’s work for a farthing--to secure a
portion of the necessary subsistence.
Skilled labour is, with but few exceptions, subject to an inevitable
law, with which employer and employed alike must be content to bring
their operations into harmony. But, with unskilled labour, the
compulsion set on the employer is in no proportion to that set on
the employed. Wages in that case are not regulated by a just regard
to the fair relations between capital and labour; the question among
competitors being not who shall, by paying most, attract the most
efficient class of servants, and secure the heartiest assistance;
but who shall, by paying least, take most advantage of the necessity
of people who are struggling for the chance of only a few crumbs
of the bread of independence. It thus becomes notorious enough how
it is that cheap articles are produced out of the lifeblood of our
fellow-creatures. The evil can only be corrected now, by the direct
interference of our consciences. Unwholesomely cheap production is a
perversion of the common law of trade which will in course of time be
blotted out by the advance of education; and there can never be in this
country a glut of intelligence and skill, although we may soon have a
glut of ignorance. Parallel with the advance of mind, there will run
the advance of mind-work, and the diffusion of a right sense of its
value will be increased.
Thus it will be seen, that while we believe with all our hearts in
the wholesomeness of the great principle of free competition--regard
nothing as so really helpful to the labourer, so sure to beget healthy
trade and bring out all the powers of the men engaged in it--we do
see that there is in society one class, and that a large one, upon
which, when men look, they may believe that competition is an evil. The
truth is, that the existence of that class, so helpless and so much
neglected, is the evil to remove; but while it remains--as wholesome
meat may kill a man with a disease upon him--there is an unsound body
hurt by it, requiring, O political economist! spoon-meat and medicine,
not the substantial bread and beef which doubtless theory can prove
and experience affirm, to be the best of nourishment for human bodies.
There are fevers among bodies politic as among bodies corporal, and
we are disposed to think that half the difficulties opposed to a
distinct and general perception of the truths which our economists have
ascertained, depend upon the fact that they have not yet advanced--so
to speak--from a just theory of nutrition to the formation of a
true system of therapeutics. That which will maintain health is not,
necessarily, that which will restore it. Often it happens that a
blister or a purge, though it would certainly make sound men sick, will
make the sick man whole. May it not also be that what is ruinous to
all sound trade shall hereafter come to be known as a social medicine
possessed, in certain cases, of a healing power, and applicable
therefore to some states of disordered system? We believe that a great
many discrepancies of opinion may be reconciled by a view like this.
Its justice is hardly to be questioned; although, as to the particular
applications of it, there is room for any amount of discussion.
Thus, in the case of the Manchester strike, the workmen--though not
of the unskilled class--may state that they are unable to feel the
working of the principle of competition; that if they do not get what
pay they like at one factory, they are not practically at liberty to
get the value of their labour in another. Even the population of one
mill, thrown out of work, is too large and too special, as to the
nature of the various kinds of skill possessed among its people, to
be able to find anything like prompt absorption into other factories;
but as masters almost always act in groups for the determination of
wages, it is the population, not of one mill, but that of five or six,
that becomes discontented; and the best proof of the fact that it is
practically unable to better itself even though higher wages may be
given elsewhere is, that it does not better itself. There is a curious
and decided variation in the rates of wages paid in various factories
and manufacturing towns; variations artificially increased by strikes,
but the existence of which shows, at any rate, to the satisfaction
of the operatives, that rates may be arbitrary, and that the natural
law does not work easily in their case which brings the price of any
article to its just, uniform level. The Manchester masters point out
to their men other masters who pay less than they pay; the operatives
point on the other hand, to masters paying more. But it is not in
their power to carry their own labour to those masters, as it ought
to be, for a free working of the principle of competition. Mechanical
and accidental difficulties stand completely in the way, and they are
aggravated on both sides by habits of imperfect combination. It is
just to state these difficulties, and to show that the instinct of the
operative may not be altogether reprehensible when it suggests to him
that against the worst uneasiness which he feels in the system to which
he belongs, a blister or a bloodletting, in the shape of a strike, is
the best remedy. He may be very wrong, as a man is apt to be wrong when
doctoring himself. There is an excuse for his quackery in the fact that
he has, at present, no physician to call in.
The difficulties of the case, as it is felt by employers and employed
in our manufacturing districts, is aggravated, as we have said, by
imperfect combinations; for, between the trades’ unions and the
masters’ associations there is, in truth, a perfect unity of interest.
They who reduce the master’s capital, reduce his power of employing
labour; they who wrong the labourer by whom they live, reduce his will
and power to do work. At present, men and masters are in many cases
combatants, because they never have been properly allies; they have not
been content to feel that they are fellow-workers, that the man at the
helm and the man at the oars are both in the same boat, and that the
better they agree together, the more likely they will be to weather out
a storm.
In the case of the existing strike at Manchester, we have read
carefully the manifestoes, replies, and counter-replies that have been
passing between the opposed bodies for the purpose of being laid before
the public; and the fact made in them of all others most manifest
is--that the points raised in them are points that ought to have been
raised very many months ago; discussed and understood between the
masters and the men before the strike, and for the prevention of the
strike.
Upon the precise points in dispute we cannot undertake to give a
definite opinion. From each party to the quarrel we get half a case,
and the halves are not such as the public easily will know how to
unite into a distinct whole. Rates of wages, as we have already said,
do not appear to be uniform, and while the masters in Manchester
desire, as we think, most fairly and properly, to bring a certain
class of wages, raised unduly by strikes, to its just and natural
rate, pointing to some other place in which the rate is low, the men
point to a place where the rates are higher than at Manchester, and
say, Come let us strike an average between the two. The offer is
refused. It may be necessarily and wisely refused. There are evidently
many accessory considerations that affect the nominal day’s wages in
this place and that. To the public out of Lancashire it cannot be
explained fully by manifestoes. Between masters and men, if they were
in any habit of maintaining a right mutual understanding it ought
not to be possible that any controversy about them could be pushed
to the extremity of open breach. The spinners on strike head one of
their documents with the last words of Justice Talfourd: “If I were
asked what is the greatest want in English society to mingle class
with class, I would say in one word, the want of sympathy.” Most
true; but need we say that there is sympathy due from workmen towards
employer, as well as from employer towards workmen? It is essential to
a correction of the evil thus stated that the operative should either
generously be the first to give up hostile prejudices, or that at
the least he should be altogether prompt to second, heart and soul,
every attempt of the master to establish a relation of good-will and
confidence with him. Men rarely quarrel except through what is wisely
called--misunderstanding.
There is some reason that we will not undertake to give, which causes
Lancashire, although by no means the only British factory district, to
be the district most afflicted by misunderstandings. Nowhere else are
the masters so much obstructed by the dictatorial spirit of the men;
nowhere else is the law so much interfered with, by the dictatorial
spirit of the masters. In Scotland, Yorkshire, and the west of England,
masters and men work generally well together, and the law is more or
less obeyed; machinery, for instance, not being, as a rule, obstinately
left unfenced.
Many pages of this journal have been devoted already to the
discouragement of strikes. We have urged invariably that the one
perfect remedy against them is the opening up of more and better
opportunities of understanding one another, between man and master. In
case we may be supposed to be ignorant of the feelings about which we
reason, let it be known that every thought--almost every word--upon
this subject given in the paragraphs that follow will be the thought or
word, not of a speculative person at a distance, but of a Lancashire
millowner. At the time of the disastrous Preston strike, a Preston
manufacturer, whose men stood by him honestly and well, published at
Manchester, a little pamphlet;[D] which, if its counsel had been taken,
would assuredly have made the present strike of Manchester impossible.
Mr. Justice Talfourd’s last words, placed lately by the men above their
manifesto, was then chosen as a motto by the masters. Coming, this
gentleman wrote, into Lancashire from a district where good feeling
subsisted between the employer and the employed, it was with the
utmost surprise that he found labour and capital to be in a state of
antagonism throughout the country. From the time when he first began
to employ labour in Lancashire, more than a quarter of a century ago,
he has made it his strict business to study the system at work around
him, and discover the real causes of the evils that undoubtedly exist;
and he has no hesitation in saying, that the main cause is a want of
cordial feeling--the absence, in fact, of a good understanding between
the parties to the labour-contract. This feeling must be established,
he adds, or the case never will be mended. Such understanding does
not come by any explanations from third parties; it is produced only
by direct and habitual intercourse between the parties too often at
issue. The Preston manufacturer says that no doubt the masters in
Lancashire help their men to be intelligent by spending money liberally
upon schools connected directly or indirectly with their mills. Duty
is done amply; and, for duty’s sake, too, to children; but, he adds,
what is really wanted is the education of the adult intellect. The
minds of children, having been prepared by the rudiments of knowledge
to receive ideas (whether good or evil), they are then cast adrift to
gather and continue their education by absorbing all the notions, all
the prejudices, and all the fallacies with which chance may surround
them. A dispute arises; there is no sympathy shown to the operatives
by the employers; but much real or pretended sympathy is shown by
the delegates, who tell them fine-spun theories about the results of
trades’ unions; talk to them in an inflated manner about their rights
and wrongs; tell them that a strike is the only way of battling for the
right. Such men never interfere without widening the breach, on which
they get a footing.
[D] Strikes Prevented. By a Preston Manufacturer. Galt and Co. 1854.
So far, the Preston manufacturer says what we have felt and said on
numerous occasions. Now let us see how he not only speaks, but acts,
and how the doing looks which illustrates the saying.
In the first place, minor acts of friendship to the men may be
mentioned:--He has encouraged them to form a Provident Club in
connection with his mill, and given them all help in it that would not
compromise their independence; at the same time he has encouraged them
also to support the benefit clubs out of doors. He has liked them to be
led to accumulate savings, never believing that a store of money in the
operative’s power would facilitate a strike, but rather knowing that
the provident man who has saved property will be especially unwilling
to see it dissipated. He has provided his men with a reading-room and
a lending library, and secured a fund for its support, while he has
removed a cause of soreness that exists in even well-regulated mills,
by devoting to their library the fines levied upon operatives for
faults of discipline. Such fines are necessary, and the faults for
which they are imposed cost, of course, loss to the millowner for which
they are no real compensation; nevertheless, if the master puts such
shillings into his own pocket, or, as is sometimes the case, gives them
as pocket-money to a son, experience declares that they are grudged,
and sometimes counted as extortions. Let the fine go to the common
account of the men, and the payer of it, instead of being pitied as
the victim of a tyrant, will be laughed at--thanked for his donation
to the library, and so forth. Practically, also, the result of this
system, as the Preston manufacturer has found, is to reduce the number
of the fines. Men would so much rather be victims than butts, that
acts of neglect are more determinedly avoided, though we may suggest
the general good feeling in the mill as a much better reason for the
greater care over the work.
Left to select, by a committee chosen from among themselves, the books
to be placed in their library, the men have been found to prefer those
which contained useful knowledge--such as manuals of popular science,
voyages, and histories.
So much being done to promote among the adults increasing intelligence
and good feeling, there remains the most essential thing, the
cornerstone of the whole system. It has been the practice of this
master to promote weekly discussion--meetings among the operatives in
his employment. Topics of the day, opinions of the press, the state
of trade, questions concerning competition, discoveries on practical
science or mechanics, especially such as affect the cotton-trade;
and, lastly, the conduct and discipline of their own mill, provide
plenty of matter for the free play of opinion. The master takes
every possible opportunity of being present at these meetings; and,
from what he has heard in them concerning his own mill, the Preston
manufacturer declares that he has derived substantial advantage. It
will, very often, he says, happen that the men may fancy themselves to
be suffering under a grievance which does not really exist, and which
a very little explanation will at once remove. Sometimes, too, a real
grievance may be in existence, which the employer needs only to be
informed of to remedy. In some mills, this master adds,--such is the
fear of the consequence of being thought a grumbler,--that the men will
often draw lots to determine who shall be the bearer of a complaint
which may have been long seeking expression.
With one extract we will sum up the result of the adoption of this
system. “I confess,” says the Preston manufacturer, “that, at the
time, having control of a large establishment, I cultivated a habit
of meeting and discussing questions with my workmen, both questions
affecting the public concernment, and questions relating to our
business. I confess that I derived quite as much benefit from these
discussions as they did; and how much that was, may be inferred from
the fact that, after the institution of that habit, I never had
a dispute with my operatives. And I will here say that, at those
meetings, I have heard an amount of sound and various information,
expressed with a native strength and eloquence such as would have
surprised any one not conversant with the Lancashire population. It
was from those meetings that I derived the settled conviction which I
now entertain, that the operatives do not lack the power, but only the
means, of forming sound and independent opinions.”
We believe that we employ ourselves more usefully at this juncture in
setting forth general principles like these than in any attempt, by
arbitration as third parties in a special case, to introduce that
which the Preston manufacturer declares to be only a fresh element of
discord.