THE REDEMPTION OF WORK.
“And the men of labour spent their strength in daily struggling for
breath to maintain the vital strength they laboured with. So living
in a daily circulation of sorrow, living but to work, and working
but to live, as if daily bread were the only end of a wearisome
life, and a wearisome life the only occasion of daily bread.”—DANIEL
DEFOE.
“And perfect the day shall be, when it is of all men understood that
the beauty of holiness must be in labour as well as in rest. Nay!
more, if it may be, in labour; in our strength rather than in our
weakness; and in the choice of what we shall work for through the
six days and may know to be good at their evening time, than in the
choice of what we pray for on the seventh, of reward and repose.
With the multitude that keep holiday we may perhaps sometimes vainly
have gone up to the House of the Lord and vainly there have asked
for what we fancied would be mercy; but for the few who labour as
their Lord would have them, the mercy needs no seeking, and their
wide home no hallowing. Surely goodness and mercy shall _follow_
them all the days of their life, and they shall dwell in the House
of the Lord for ever.”—JOHN RUSKIN.
THE clue to the approaching change in the social order is to be found in
the mind of organised labour. What organised labour is resolved to
achieve, that it will achieve soon or late. Hitherto we have been
concerned in these pages with an enquiry, more or less speculative, into
the conditions and measures required for a wholesome social evolution.
How far does the present tendency of organised labour correspond with
the general lines of progress which our enquiry has so far constrained
us to define? It will not be necessary, in order to answer this
question, to survey the whole field of labour policy. For our present
purpose we may neglect on the one hand the conservative element in the
labour movement, and the extreme revolutionary element on the other.
This does not imply a judgment on either; it simply means that we shall
reach a safer judgment upon the direction in which labour is minded to
go by considering the central mass of the movement; and of this central
mass it may be affirmed with some assurance that its best mind has
received a more coherent and detailed interpretation in Great Britain
than elsewhere. We shall, therefore, consider the general tendency of
the progressive elements in the British Labour Movement. It will not be
necessary to raise the question of ways and means at this point. It is a
question upon which strong views are held on both sides—whether labour
is to attain its goal by political or industrial action, by gradual
approach or by some catastrophic method such as the general strike. But
the question of method does not arise at this point; our present object
is to examine so far as we may the goal which organised labour is
pursuing.
I
The Trade Union movement originated in the necessity to provide some
remedy for “the helplessness in which since the industrial revolution,
the individual workman stood in relation to the capitalist employer and
still more in relation to the joint-stock company and the national
combine or trust.” In this initial stage it was governed by what Mr.
Sidney Webb has called the “Doctrine of Vested Interests,” and it was
chiefly concerned with securing those concessions and safe-guards which
constitute the “Trade Union Conditions” to the suspension of which
British Labour consented for the period of the war. These conditions
affected the rate of wages, the length of working day, overtime, night
work, Sunday duty, mealtimes, holidays, and included a countless
multitude of details affecting processes, machines, the employment of
boys and girls, the limitation of output, and other related subjects—the
whole being an inconceivably intricate patchwork of concessions and
advantages gained as the result of innumerable local skirmishes and
negotiations. The policy at this stage may be properly described as one
of “nibbling” at the enemies’ lines, of raiding his trenches as
opportunity offered or need required; and it is a commonplace what large
and substantial advantages these operations have yielded to the workers
as a whole, whether unionists or not. But it was not possible that these
piece-meal tactics should continue to be the chief weapon of a growing,
highly organised movement which was gaining a kind of self-consciousness
and a common mind; and gradually out of the experience of the Unions
grew the “Doctrine of the Common Rule.” The main emphasis has now
shifted from the local and sectional problem to that of establishing and
maintaining a Standard Rate of Wages and a normal Working Day. This
change is naturally marked by the appearance of a large scale strategy
in place of the local and occasional tactics of the earlier stage; and
the earlier type of labour leader is rapidly disappearing in favour of
persons who are able to bring some gifts of statesmanship to the
problems of labour. This is not to say that the earlier doctrine has
been abandoned; rather it has been supplemented and overshadowed by the
new orientation.
But a situation has recently arisen which will probably bring about the
permanent and general supremacy of the Common Rule doctrine. The
urgencies of war-production made it desirable and necessary that the
achievements of the earlier unionism should be suspended; and all the
intricate machinery of safeguards and restrictions was willingly laid on
one side for the period of the war. But it is now evident that even with
the best will in the world, this restoration, as it was originally
guaranteed, has become impracticable. Events in industry have moved so
rapidly that it is impossible to retrace our steps to the _ante-bellum_
period and to pick up the lines of life where we dropped them in 1914.
At first sight it would appear that this result proved that the whole
achievement of the earlier union activity had been of a peculiarly
fragile and slender kind. Yet, despite this circumstance, the British
Trade Unions have grown considerably during the war, this growth being
doubtless due to the increasing sense that only a strong corporate
movement of the workers will be able to establish for them the necessary
conditions of a secure and independent life, and in particular such
improvements in their position, in respect of wages and other matters,
as they have been able to gain during the war. It now seems likely that
the outcome of the situation created by the impossibility of restoring
the _status quo ante_, and the increase of Trade Union strength, will be
the general acceptance of the Doctrine of the Common Rule and a
programme based upon it; and the demand for the Restoration of Trade
Union Conditions may take the form of a demand for certain general
standards of life and labour. Already, it is fairly evident that the
least that labour will demand will be what Mr. Sidney Webb calls “the
New Industrial Charter” in which there are five articles: (i.) the
prevention of unemployment; (ii.) the maintenance of standard rates of
wages; (iii.) a “constitution” for factory and industry, _i.e._ the
introduction of a measure of democratic control over the conditions of
work; (iv.) no limitation of output; (v.) freedom for every worker.[15]
The “charter” as it stands, represents a minimum demand; it certainly
does not run to revolutionary excess and contemplates no organic change
in the existing framework of the industrial order. With its probable
economic effects we are not now concerned, but it is important to notice
the emphasis which it lays upon the standing of the worker. The charter
aims to give him security against unemployment, a share in the control
of the conditions under which he works, and freedom from the autocratic
dictation of employer or foreman, and from the coercion of necessity.
Even this moderate measure would undoubtedly bring a great accession of
independence to the ordinary worker. Further, this charter applies to
all workers, not to unionists alone; for once the Standard Rate and the
Normal Day are conceded, the old invidious necessity of making war upon
non-unionists disappears; and with it, to the great good of all
concerned, the demoralising custom of imposing restrictions upon output.
Footnote 15:
The whole position is discussed in its relation both to the employer
and to the worker in Mr. Webb’s brochure: _The Restoration of Trade
Union Conditions_. Since these passages were written, the increased
demands here foreshadowed have been definitely made.
II
This “charter” will not be granted without a struggle. The greed and
_amour propre_ of some employers, and the stupidity of others, will
interpose great obstacles to its institution. The great growing strength
of organised labour, however, guarantees a comparatively early
capitulation of the intransigent employers.[16] But it would be a
mistake to suppose that this is all that is implied in the present
temper of labour. A good deal of what labour is looking to has not yet
reached the stage of articulation, but it is impossible to misapprehend
the general direction in which it is moving. The socialist propaganda,
even if it has not always been as prolific of conversions as its
promoters desired, has been a singularly potent instrument of education,
and if the workers as a whole have not accepted the conclusions of the
socialist, it is most certain that they have been profoundly moved by
his premises. Probably more than any other influence it has stimulated
the spirit of revolt against a permanent division of society by a line
of economic privilege; and it has encouraged a very real insurgency
against the idea, so comforting to the fortunate classes, that it is the
duty of all persons to be content in that station of life into which
Providence has been pleased to call them. While the rich believed that
their duty to their less fortunate neighbours was an affair of charity,
the Socialist had taught the poor to cry for justice. The chief
achievement of the Socialist movement up to this time lies less in the
acceptance of its doctrines than in the new sense of _right_ which it
has succeeded in awakening, even in many to whom the very term socialism
still represents a dangerous and forbidding spectre. And it is this
sense of _right_, the refusal to accept as permanent and just a state of
exploitation, with the demand for economic freedom and independence,
which is working as an irresistible leaven in the mind of the
worker-mass of our time; often indeed, inarticulately enough, but in the
minds of the better educated and most thoughtful workers, beginning to
express itself in specific requirements which far outstrip Mr. Sidney
Webb’s conservative interpretation of the present need.
Footnote 16:
Since these paragraphs were written, a National Industrial Conference
convened by the British Government, and composed of equal numbers of
employers’ and workers’ representatives, has reported unanimously in
favour of a universal minimum wage and a universal maximum week.
The Socialism popularly advocated during the last half-century, is,
however, not likely to capture the working-class of to-day. The
movement for the nationalisation of the means of production and
distribution—especially of the primary necessities of life—has
indeed gained strength during the war; and the public ownership
doctrine of orthodox socialism is in no danger of being discarded,
though it may be modified in the extent of its application. But the
orthodox socialist plan of vesting economic and industrial control
in the state will not survive the war. The modern doctrine of the
state reached its apogee during the war; it is already in process of
rapid discredit. This is chiefly due to the revelation of the logic
of state-absolutism, which the German performance in the war has
yielded; and we are likely to witness a strong reaction from the
doctrine of the sovereign omni-competent state in the coming
generation. Moreover, in England the working of the Munitions Act
has proved that the state may be as harsh and troublesome an
employer as a private individual or a corporation; and the workers
are not minded to emancipate themselves from the plutocracy to hand
themselves over to a bureaucracy.
But how is public ownership to be made practicable without slate
control? The experiences of war-time have revealed a possible solution
of the difficulty. The Garton Foundation and the Whitley Committee, the
former a private, the latter a parliamentary body, and neither committed
to “labour” views, have been led by the study of industrial conditions
in war-time to advocate introduction of democratic control into
industry, and experiments in democratic control which have been made,
have plainly demonstrated its practicability and its economic value. In
the woollen trades that centre upon Bradford, in Yorkshire, various
troubles interfered with the output of cloth. Early in 1916 the War
Office requisitioned the output of the factories for the production of
khaki, blankets, and other war-material; and a little later the
Government purchased all the available wool on the market. The
distribution of this wool to the factories was left by the Army
Contracts Department to a Board of Control which it established for the
whole industry. “The allocation,” says a recent account of the matter,
“is carried out by means of a series of rationing committees. There are
district rationing committees of spinners, of manufacturers, and a joint
rationing committee on which the Trade Unions are represented. These
committees ascertain all the facts about an individual firm’s
consumption of wool, and the kind and quality of machinery that has been
used. From these data the rations are arranged for the several mills of
the district, while the Government committee settles the rations for the
several districts. It is an extraordinarily interesting example of an
industry regulating its life on a principle of equity instead of leaving
the fortune of different mills and the fortunes of thousands of
workmen’s homes to the blind scramble of the market.” It is of interest
further to observe concerning this experiment that when the Government
requisitioned the mills, it established a method of payment which
eliminated profit-making, and the spinner and the manufacturer became
virtually government servants. This is worth remembering when it is
urged that the incentive of profit is essential to industrial
development, especially in view of the conspicuous success of the
experiment. More to our immediate point, however, is that this is a
definite experiment in democratic control, for the organisation in which
the ultimate control of the woollen industry was vested is composed of
thirty-three members, eleven each being appointed by the Government, the
Employers’ Associations, and by the Trade Unions.
The experiment in the woollen trades goes farther than the measure of
democratic control suggested by Mr. Sidney Webb in his charter. For he
contemplates no more than a democratic control of the actual conditions
of work, while the control of raw material is vested in the Board of
Control of the woollen industries. Mr. Webb’s suggestion is for
“workshop committees or shop stewards” in every establishment having
more than twenty operators, to whom the employer should be required to
communicate at least one week prior to their adoption any proposed new
rules, and also any proposed changes in wage-rates, piece-work prices,
allowances, deductions, hours of labour, meal-times, methods of working
and conditions affecting the comfort of the workshop.[17] Mr. Webb
himself would probably like a good deal more than this; but in his
brochure, he frankly writes as one who believes that “the most hopeful
evolution of society ... lies always in making the best rather than the
worst out of what we find at the moment to hand.” But in point of fact,
very considerable extensions of the principle are already being
canvassed; and it is unlikely that organised labour will be long content
with the timid bid for a share of industrial control which Mr. Webb’s
proposal represents. It is symptomatic of the present tendency that in
the Building Trades a movement initiated by Mr. Malcolm Sparkes, a
London Master Builder, looking toward the formation of an Industrial
Parliament for the building trades, has already been the subject of
serious discussion both by the employers’ associations, and the trade
unions concerned. Mr. Sparkes suggests that the Parliament should be
composed of twenty members appointed by the National Association
Building Trades Council, and twenty appointed by the Federation of
Building Trades Employers, and that it should meet regularly for
constructive, and not at all for arbitral or conciliatory purposes. To
this parliament would be remitted such matters as the regularisation of
wages, unemployment, technical training and apprenticeship, publicity,
and the investigation of possible lines of trade improvement. But
obviously such a parliament as Mr. Sparkes suggests could have vitality
and authority only as it stood at the top of a hierarchy of analogous
bodies all the way up, through provincial and district councils, from
the committee of the single shop.
Footnote 17:
_The Restoration of Trade Union Conditions, p. 95._
The principle of democratic control in industry has come to stay;
together with the doctrine of public ownership it will probably fix the
accepted social policy of progressive labour. Already, indeed, this
combination is to be found in the British Labour Party’s memorandum on
“Labour and the Social Order.” The Party “demands the progressive
elimination from the control of industry of the private capitalist,
individual or joint-stock.” It stands “unhesitatingly for the national
ownership and administration of the Railways and Canals, and their
union, along with Harbours and Roads, and the Posts and Telegraphs ...
in a united national service of Communication and Transport, to be
worked, unhampered by capitalist, private and purely local interests,
_and with a steadily increasing participation of the organised workers
in the management, both central and local_, exclusively for the common
good.” And again, the Party “demands the immediate nationalisation of
mines, the extraction of coal and iron being worked as a public service,
_with a steadily increasing participation in the management, both
central and local, of the various grades of persons employed_.” It is no
exaggeration to say that the principle of democratic control in
industry, especially under the conditions within which the British
Labour Party contemplates it, carries with it an entire change in the
status of the worker. For when we remember that with democratic control
in industry, the British Labour Party demands a universal application of
the policy “of the National Minimum, affording complete security against
destitution, in sickness and in health, in good times and bad alike, to
every member of the community of whatever age or sex,” it is evident
that we have the two requirements of that necessary revolution in the
worker’s standing which is the corner-stone of a worthy social order.
The worker is no longer dependent, a pawn in the game of production, an
employed wage-earner, a “hand;” he has become a partner, possessing both
the freedom and the responsibility of partnership. And it is no less
evident that a great stride has been taken in the direction of
separating work from the means of subsistence and abolishing “wagery.”
III
There can be little doubt that the principle of public ownership with
democratic control has received a great impulse from the able advocacy
of what has come to be known as Guild-Socialism. The work _guild_ in
this connection is something more than a reminiscence of the mediæval
institution; the present movement has quite definite affinities with its
historical precursor, notably in the principle of combining all the
members of a craft in co-operation. But the “national” guild goes beyond
its forbear in two respects—in the fact of being national where the
older institution was local, and in the account it necessarily takes of
the more complex and specialised character of modern industry. “A
national guild,” says Mr. S. G. Hobson, “is a combination of all the
labour of every kind, administrative, executive, productive, in any
particular industry. It includes those who work with their brains and
those who contribute labour power. Administration, skilled and unskilled
labour—every one who can work—are all entitled to membership.” This body
of people will lease from the community the right and the means to carry
on the industry with which it is concerned, always providing that it
shall be under conditions which safeguard the interests of all the
people in respect of the products of the industry.
In the eyes of the guildsman, the “original sin” of the existing
industrial system is production for profit. In his _Guild Principles in
Peace and War_, Mr. S. G. Hobson puts side by side (_inter alia_) the
following figures, (the particular year to which they belong is not
given):
Iron and Steel Railway
Industries. Construction.
Net output £30,948,100 £17,103,100
Persons employed 262,225 241,520
Net output per person £118 £71
Average wage per person £67 £67
Here are revealed two facts of great interest. The first is that in
railway construction, which is chiefly for _need and use_, the disparity
between the average output and the average wage per person is only four
pounds, whereas the iron and steel industries, where production is for
profit, the disparity is as high as fifty-one pounds. Railway
construction represents output in locomotives, rolling-stock and so
forth which the railway companies make for their own use; whereas the
products of the iron and steel industries are destined for the market.
Where product is for profit, the excess of average output over the
average wage is more than twelve times as great as where the production
is for use. This is connected with the fact that the iron and steel
industries are chiefly concerned with the provision of dividends,
whereas in railway construction there is no such _direct_ necessity.
The second fact of importance is that in both cases the average wage is
the same. This is the result of two circumstances—first, the
commodity-theory of labour, according to which labour-power is regarded
as a measureable marketable affair, subject to the law of supply and
demand and separate from the personality of the worker; and second, that
reserve of labour commonly called unemployment, the existence of which
tends to moderate the fluctuations of the labour market. It is in the
interests of capital that there should be a permanent margin of
unemployment in order that the price of labour should not become
excessive at any time by reason of its scarcity.
In the past, the maintenance of the unemployed was, so far as their own
members were affected, assumed altogether by the Trade Unions; but by
the provisions of the National Insurance Act this has partly been laid
upon the employer and upon the community as a whole. But, says the
guildsman, since the existence of a reserve of labour seems under
present conditions inseparable from the conduct of the industry; and
since further, it is impossible to secure that under no conditions there
will not be some margin of unemployment, the charge for the maintenance
of the reserve of labour should be made to fall on the industry itself.
This, however, immediately destroys the commodity-theory of labour.
Under such an arrangement, the worker will be regarded not as a
potential vendor of so much labour-power, subject to the law of supply
and demand, and liable to lose his subsistence and that of his family by
the chances of the market, but as a regular member of a society which
provides a financial reserve for the purpose of maintaining him when he
falls into the labour reserve. So once more, we see the status of the
worker transformed. He ceases to be a “hand,” and becomes a partner.
The “national guild” is really no more than the systematic development
of this idea of partnership; and because it insists that this
partnership shall be real and not fictitious, it rejects all schemes of
democratic control in industry which (like the Garton Foundation and the
Whitley schemes) still retain the commodity-theory of labour, and all
schemes of profit-sharing which is the voluntary bounty of the employer.
The guildsman holds that the worker has a direct interest in the thing
produced apart from his hire, and that his contribution in the way of
labour entitles him to a partnership in the industry as real as that of
his employer, and much more real than that of the investor who does no
more than rake in his dividends. To this principle of partnership, there
is, of course, no logical end but the elimination of the private
employer, whether an individual or a company, and the combination of the
administrative, executive and productive labour in a given industry in
some such way as is contemplated in the “national guild.”
Under these conditions, production for profit will be subordinated
increasingly to production for need and use. Industry will be organised
no longer in the interests of capital, but in those of the community;
and the profits that may accrue will go to the community. The conduct of
the industry will be vested in a hierarchy of representative bodies
which will consist of persons chosen to act on behalf of the various
departments of production and administration; and these bodies will
range all the way up from the small shop council to the national
council. The guildsmen extend their vision further to a combination of
national councils, which will become the economic parliament of the
nation, empowered to handle its commercial and industrial affairs and
leaving the legislature to occupy itself with those aspects of public
life such as education, health, art, local government and so forth which
are now so grievously neglected and subordinated to the exigencies of
the commercial life of the nation.[18]
Footnote 18:
The proposed National Industrial Council recommended by the recent
National Industrial Conference is plainly an instalment of the
National Guild Council.
That roughly is the guild theory. Its great advantage is that while it
eliminates competitive profit-making, it also avoids through its
emphasis upon democratic control, the danger of excessive centralisation
and bureaucratic control inherent in state socialism. On the other hand
it does not fall into the syndicalist error of antagonism to the state.
It is not without interest to point out here (in anticipation of later
discussion) that the national guild reflects on the economic side the
current tendency in political philosophy towards a doctrine of the state
which regards it as multi-cellular in nature, and would make it
federalistic in practice, in contrast with the emphasis of the last
generation upon its unitary and absolutist character. It would appear
that sovereignty is destined to be distributed among a series of
democratic functional controls.
The pressure of events has already validated many of the contentions of
the guildsman. We have seen how in the case of the woollen industries
the Government has initiated the practice of treating employers as its
own paid servants, has recognised the principle of democratic control,
has assumed the purchase and control of raw materials, and has
superseded production for profit by production for use; we have here all
the essentials of a national guild save one; and that one thing needful
is the short step from government control to public ownership. Naturally
the end of the war will bring some reaction from the position thus
achieved; yet it is impossible not to believe that the need to increase
the aggregate normal productivity of the nation, imposed by the
financial burdens of the war, will ultimately compel a further
development of these wartime tendencies. Certainly we have in the
British Labour Party some guarantee that this movement will continue.
Its memorandum on reconstruction virtually presupposes where it does not
explicitly affirm the underlying principles of the guild-movement.
“Standing as it does for the Democratic Control of Industry, the Labour
Party would think twice before it sanctioned any abandonment of the
present profitable centralisation of purchase of raw materials; of the
present carefully organised ‘rationing,’ by joint committees of the
trades concerned, of the several establishments with the materials they
require; of the present elaborate system of ‘costing’ and public audit
of manufacturers’ accounts, so as to stop the waste heretofore caused by
the mechanical inefficiency of the more backward firms, of the present
salutary publicity of manufacturing processes and expenses thus ensured;
and on the information thus obtained (in order never again to revert to
the old-time profiteering) of the present rigid fixing, for standardised
products, of maximum prices at the factory, at the warehouse of the
wholesale trader, and in the retail shop.”
IV
“The question,” the Memorandum continues, “of the retail prices of
household commodities is emphatically the most practical of all
political issues to the woman elector. The male politicians have too
long neglected the grievances of the small household, which is the prey
of every profiteering combination.” And this brings us to the answer to
our question how far the present orientation of labour satisfies the
conditions we have laid down as necessary to worthy social progress. The
rigid fixing of the retail prices of household commodities,—the primary
necessities of life—plainly substitutes the principle of production for
need and use for that of production for profit; and while this of itself
does not eliminate the profiteer altogether, it tends so to limit the
area of exploitation as to bring the small household, which is after all
the unit of society, within reasonable distance of a healthy security of
material circumstance. Moreover, the principle of the National Minimum
virtually dissolves the connection between work and the means of
subsistence, so that the worker gains security of maintenance and a
large accession of freedom and independence. Still further, the
principle of democratic control brings to every worker complete immunity
from exploitation by those upon whom an antecedent economic advantage
has conferred power and enables him to graduate to the dignity and
responsibility of partnership.
But what then? Having achieved this new status, it is certain that he
will not be satisfied. For the thing that is stirring in the mind and
heart of organised labour to-day is something much deeper than a desire
for a more satisfactory physical life or for economic independence.
Labour is indeed unable to make articulate more than the margin of the
new desire of which it is aware; but the phenomenon which we have called
“labour unrest” properly understood, is the result of a craving,
imperious and not to be denied, for a larger life. Of this larger life
the worker instinctively feels that economic security and independence
are the indispensable pre-requisites. According to the measure of his
intelligence and insight, he is aiming for these things. That is the
inwardness of the present stirrings of organised labour. The worker
knows that while he is compelled to hire himself out at a price in order
to provide himself and his children with bread, under conditions which
make a sufficiency of bread permanently uncertain, and which virtually
deny him the opportunity of being anything more—from his first working
day to his last—than the tool of interests from which he is powerless to
detach himself, he can never become the man he might be or experience
the joy of life which his intuitions declare to be his rightful
inheritance. The greater part of life, and especially of the worker’s
life, is an unredeemed and unexplored tract; and the possibilities
hidden in those regions beyond, eye hath not seen neither hath ear
heard. But dimly and indistinctly the worker has caught glimpses of this
promised land and he has set his face that way. But he has justly
perceived that between him and the promised land lies the “great divide”
of economic disinheritance with all that it entails of insecurity and
bondage. To-day he has come so far as to be in the very act of crossing
this divide. That he does not discern clearly what manner of life awaits
him in his promised land is no wonder; for none of us know, since as yet
none of us have tasted save only in brief and transitory moments the
rare quality of the fellowship and the creative urge which belong to the
life of spiritual freedom. The British Labour Party speaks of “the
promotion of music, literature, fine art, which have been under
capitalism so grossly neglected, and upon which, so the Labour Party
holds, any real development of civilisation fundamentally depends.” This
is a hint of the “milk and honey” of the promised land, and it is only
in hints we can speak until we have entered upon our inheritance of
spiritual life, and have begun to explore its untold riches. But the
road into that land is the road of economic freedom and independence;
and that is the road which organised labour is making to-day. It has
discovered that “society, like the individual, does not live by bread
alone,—does not exist only for perpetual wealth production.” If it makes
bread and produces wealth, it is only that men may live, and living may
together strive to achieve the glorious liberty of the sons of God.
It is a fair conjecture concerning the results of this general movement,
that it will ultimately assign to the economic interests of life their
own proper secondary place. With the gradual disappearance of private
profit and wages will pass the present ascendancy of the economic motive
over the whole of life. It is significant of the intrinsic impulse of
this movement that the promoters of the national guild movement should
contemplate the separation of the conduct and control of the commercial
and industrial elements of national life from the business of the
national legislature, so that that body may attend to things other and
greater than bread. This does not mean that the economic aspects of life
will lose their proper importance; it simply means that they will be
deprived of their present paramountcy; and how much that means for the
right kind of social progress, for the development of a completely human
order of life, it is impossible to do more than fancy. But it will be a
great day when men awaken to the fact that the centre of gravity of life
is not in the body but in the mind.
V
To have transformed the status of the worker is, however, only a part of
the problem of work. An industrial democracy may conceivably be no
better than a glorified capitalist, a national profit-making concern.
But this keeps us still within the vicious circle of economic
domination, with the dangers of degeneration greatly increased. For in
place of individuals exploiting individuals, we should have nations
endeavouring to exploit nations—with two certain consequences, war and a
reaction to competitive individualism; and our last state would be worse
than the first. Our complete emancipation from the economic motive
requires not only a new status for the worker but _a new doctrine of
work_. Industry must no more be conceived as a means of _national_
wealth than of individual wealth.
The true doctrine of work is present in germ in the British Labour
Party’s formula of “workers whether by hand or by brain.” The inclusion
in one category of the industrial and professional classes should exert
a very profound influence upon the popular attitude to manual labour.
Much of the traditional habit of looking upon manual labour as being
intrinsically inferior to brain work is due to a stupid lack of
discrimination. For skilled labour often requires as nice a
co-ordination of mind and hand, and as sensitive a nervous organisation
as the most recondite surgery. The competent engineer is in no sense the
mental inferior of the accountant; probably the engineer has on the
whole the more highly organised mind; yet the engineer is popularly
assigned to a relatively lower social rating. The conventional social
divisions of those who work are entirely absurd and seem chiefly to
depend upon the clothes one wears. That toil is regarded as inferior
which cannot be performed without soiling clothes of a more or less
ceremonial cut.
But when once it is realised that the work of the physician or the
clergyman is different only in kind and not in social worth from the
work of the machinist or the farm-labourer, we shall have a more
reasonable basis for classification; and though it is true that the
minister (being no more immune from the pressure of social atmosphere
than other men) has not been unmindful of his stipend or the doctor of
his fee, yet both callings have preserved enough of the ideal of
disinterested social service to pass on something of the same impulse
into occupations which the common mind regards solely as means of
livelihood. This indeed, must be the first element in our doctrine of
work. It must be regarded primarily as a social service. John Ruskin
long ago tried to teach us that in every nation there were four great
intellectual professions: the soldier’s, to defend it; the pastor’s, to
teach it; the lawyer’s, to establish justice in it; and the merchant’s,
to provide for it; and it was, he added, the duty of each of these on
due occasion to die for it. What was novel in Ruskin’s doctrine was that
there was a due occasion on which a merchant should die for his country.
But why should we stop at the merchant? There is no reason why this
principle should not be extended to every kind of labour essential to
the life of the nation. At least there should be nothing inconceivable
in the idea that every member of the community should develop the same
degree and quality of social devotion. And (let it be repeated once
more) the industrial records of this time of war do make this
expectation into something more than a chimæra. The splendid social
devotion which the emergency of war has discovered and released should
and could be made a permanent asset. It is entirely a question of the
right kind of education.
If the impending revolution in the worker’s status brings with it (as it
should) a sense of genuine partnership, its natural sequel should be a
growing consciousness of participation in a great social task. Every man
would come to look upon his job as an integral and indispensable part of
the common service. This would add a new interest and worth even to the
purely mechanical tasks which the growth of large-scale production has
so greatly multiplied. It would be no more than a partial solution of
the entire problem involved in routine mechanical toil; but it would go
a great way towards mitigating its inevitable dreariness, and it would
certainly bring with it a quality of personal satisfaction in work which
working for a living at a job in which one’s sole interest is one’s hire
cannot possibly afford.
VI
Yet neither the habit of regarding work as participation in a social
task nor the element of comradeship which we may reasonably expect to
grow out of such a way of conceiving work, nor yet the amelioration of
the purely external conditions of modern industrial production, can
possibly be accepted as furnishing a final solution of the problem of
work. It is probable that under existing conditions, some such changes
as these are all we can hope for over large areas of industrial life;
perhaps, indeed, without a general recognition of the real social
significance of large scale production, the best we can ever do will
consist of further modification of industrial conditions along these
lines. Yet all this does virtually nothing to make work a means of
worthy self-expression.
The high degree of specialisation which has followed the introduction
and improvement of industrial machinery, confines large multitudes of
people to occupations which consist of repeating the same small routine
operation all day and every day; and the mentally benumbing and
demoralising consequences of this type of work is one of the
commonplaces of social observation. Not the least of the social services
of Trade Unionism is that it has furnished to men occupied in purely
mechanical work an interest which has helped to keep their minds alive.
It is rarely recognised how inevitably certain of our graver social
evils are connected with the devitalising influences of modern
industrial conditions. Undoubtedly one of the most powerful causes of
the deadly grip of the drink traffic upon society is the opportunity it
provides of reaction from the depressing and deadening round of the
shop. The saloon strikes a kind of psychological balance with the
factory. The well-meaning persons who suppose that open spaces, museums,
art galleries, and the like will furnish effectual off-sets to the
public house, overlook the fact that the peculiar depression to which
the factory worker is subjected demands a relief more vivid and more
violent than these more refined avenues of diversion offer. Temperance
reformers have greatly neglected this aspect of their problem; and
prohibition without any accompanying provision for the healthy
equilibration of human energies is likely to have consequences that may
astonish and perhaps confound its advocates.
But the remedy for this and the other penalties which society has to pay
for its industrial system is not to be found in the abandonment of
large-scale processes and reversion to an earlier fashion of production.
Machinery certainly supplanted a more human, kindlier way of life; and
not even the extensive factory legislation which has tempered the worst
excesses of the new way, has compensated for the passing of the
amenities of the older system. We have, however, to count upon the
permanence and the still further extension of large-scale processes.
Obviously it is not intrinsically an evil thing, potentially it is an
asset of incalculable value to society. Even its monotonies have their
uses; for a certain amount of routine work is good for every man. It is
only evil when it is excessive. The disadvantages which belong to
large-scale production are on the whole incidental, and owe their origin
chiefly to _laissez faire_ and the economic motive. Once this vicious
connection is dissolved and production for need and use becomes the
general rule, the very proficiency of our large-scale processes will
liberate a great volume of human energy for the pursuit of the spiritual
ends of life.
For the elimination of the profit-interest, and the regulation of
production on the basis of calculated demand, will at once lead to a
very considerable diminution in the number of working hours. It is
questionable whether, with industrial processes properly organised, it
would be necessary for any man to spend more than four hours a day in
the actual production of necessities. This refers, of course, to the
strictly mechanical departments of production. In agriculture, which
depends upon seasons and weather conditions, it is obvious that a
standardised day is impracticable. Moreover, agriculture is an avocation
which has its own peculiar compensations. It is carried on in the
open-air and has elements of variety and change to which the industrial
worker is a stranger. Yet, even in agriculture the great extension of
mechanical and labour-saving instruments should go far to mitigate the
acknowledged disadvantages of the life. The evils attaching to the work
of the farmer and his labourer are, however, largely extrinsic. It is
the dullness and monotony of his spare hours that weigh most heavily
upon him.[19] With the industrial, it is different. He does not lack
opportunity of social life in so much as he lives normally in large
populous centres; but the atonic condition to which he is reduced by the
circumstances of his work, renders him incapable of creating and
enjoying the best kind of fellowship. He is either too weary for any
kind of fellowship and sits at home reading the newspaper, and then to
bed; or he turns in his need of compensating excitement to the
questionable atmosphere of the public-house. A small minority of tougher
mental and nervous fibre will cultivate an allotment or seek diversion
in books or sport; but the majority have neither inclination nor energy
for any active pursuits. The remedy for this trouble lies in the drastic
shortening of the working day for all men who are engaged in the
mechanical process of production. With the increasing application of
science to industry, under conditions of production for use, it is
impossible to say how short the necessary working day may become. And if
it became the rule, as it probably should, that no member of society
should be exempt from a share in the work of maintaining its natural
life and so take his part in mechanical production, there is no reason
why the indispensable mechanical toil expected of the individual should
not be reduced to a very low point indeed.
Footnote 19:
The present wholly inadequate remuneration of the agricultural
labourer does not come under discussion here, as the argument assumes
that the principle of the national minimum is accepted. This
assumption is the more reasonable in view of the fact that in England
a minimum wage for agricultural labourers has been fixed and is to
operate for five years.
If in addition men are trained from childhood to take the view that this
toil is a necessary social task, and therefore, intrinsically noble and
honourable, the whole atmosphere in which it is discharged would be
organically changed. To-day, the prevailing note of speed and
competition reduces the place and sense of comradeship to very narrow
limits. The general attitude of antagonism between capital and labour
infects the air, and not only makes co-operation between the
administrative and productive functions impossible, but introduces a
subtle poison of disintegration into the mutual relations of the
operatives. The only comradeship which appears to exist is that which is
created by the need under present conditions of safeguarding class
interests. When men of all classes have been brought up to regard a
certain amount of mechanical toil as an honourable obligation to the
society to which they belong, they will naturally accept their share in
the common task and bring themselves to it in a spirit of comradeship.
VII
But it is useless to suppose that we have done all that is needed when
we have thus relieved the irksomeness of the day’s work. Indeed, we have
(if we leave it at that) only created a great peril—the peril of
deterioration which always attends unused or ill-used leisure. “Satan
finds some mischief still for idle hands to do;” and the antidote to
idleness lies in providing things to do that unoccupied hands will turn
to do with readiness. Yet it were fatal to regard this as a problem of
utilising spare time. We have indeed a greater and worthier task on
hand; and the drastic shortening of the statutory working day provides
us with our opportunity.
Genuine social progress and content is, as we have seen, to be achieved
only under conditions where men have the opportunity, and are trained in
the exercise of the instinct of creativeness. For the great majority of
men, the means of this self-expression must be found in some sort of
manual activity. It must take the form of work. Perhaps the solution
lies in the principle of “one man, two trades”; of which one shall be
some part of the mechanical toil involved in social upkeep, and the
other a craft in which a man may exercise and express something of his
own independent mind. Possibly we may distinguish the two types of
occupation as utility-trades and vocations, the one necessary quality of
the latter being that men should be able to put their whole souls into
their tasks; and in so far as these tasks are of a direct productive
kind, since they are not tasks of mere utility, they may fitly be tasks
of beauty as well. We require something of the nature of a revival of
the older type of craftsmanship in which the æsthetic faculties found
room for expression; and in the matter of clothing and house-furniture
and decoration there is ample room for the development of a revived
craftsmanship where use will go hand in hand with beauty. It should
plainly be an organic part of educational policy to provide for the
early laying of the foundations of original and creative craftsmanship.
In any wise system of education, the period of adolescence should be
marked by a very definite differentiation of vocational training
(without neglecting the other elements of a generous education).
Aptitudes should be watched for; and the growth of the youth should be
stimulated along the lines of his natural inclinations. Especially
should any signs of independent and original creative power be
encouraged. Change of this sort can, of course be brought about only
gradually; but it should be faced seriously if society is ever to be
emancipated from its baleful subjection to the economic motive.
That we find it difficult to believe that any change along these lines
is possible is due chiefly to a lack of acquaintance with any other
conditions than those which exist to-day. But William Morris and John
Ruskin found no difficulty in believing that men would work “for the joy
of the working,” provided that they had work to do which had in it the
elements of joy. It was so that they worked themselves; and the
substance of their teaching was a plea that work should be made once
more a delight by being raised to the plane of art—that is to say, that
it might become the avenue of independent creative self-expression. It
would doubtless take several generations before this doctrine could be
established as a habit of mind and society organised conformably to it,
but it is no cheap speculation which foresees, arising out of a
progressive liberation and discipline of the creative instincts of a
community, a new birth of art. The creative urge would, like the sun,
shoot out coronas of flaming achievement; art itself might climb to a
plane it has never hitherto known and break out in directions which we
in our present state of spiritual purblindness cannot anticipate. At
least, it is something to be remembered that those days in England in
which industry was alive with a fine craftsmanship and a generous
comradeship, were also the days which produced the finest monuments of
English art.
VIII
The organisation of society upon lines of this kind would be a
protracted and difficult task; and here one is concerned more with the
definition of a tendency rather than the precise measures necessary to
make it effective. Obviously there must be large exceptions to any rule
of life in any vital and developing social order. But the reduction of
mechanical toil to the lowest practicable point, and a generous
development of the idea and practice of the vocational life seem to be
essential. And the general principle which we desire for mechanical
tasks of production should be applied in other regions, as for instance
in the distributive trades and in those occupations which are concerned
with the disposal of waste. The increasing emphasis on hygiene has led
to the multiplication of a number of “waste-occupations,” the
street-cleaner, the drain-man, the garbage-man and so forth. Within this
region we have every right to expect so large an extension of scientific
and mechanical methods of dealing with the waste products of life as to
make some at least of these occupations wholly superfluous. This type of
occupation has meantime, the very undesirable and injurious effect of
relegating those who are engaged in it to a condition of much social
inferiority; and this is the more unjust, insomuch as the health of the
community depends so greatly upon its being faithfully performed. It was
a happy inspiration to clothe the New York street-cleaners in white; and
it should have a sacramental suggestion for their fellow citizens. For
we are familiar with a word which describes a multitude “arrayed in
white garments.” The innovation established a point of contact between
urban cleanliness and holiness; and it is within this cycle of social
judgment that the waste occupations should be placed. We should then
take more kindly to the only equitable solution of the problem presented
by this class of work, namely that it should be shared out and that all
the members of the community should be liable to be called out in
companies, as they are now for jury service, to do their part of this
indispensable work. This brings the waste occupations into the same
category as the productive trades; in point of fact, it is there they
really belong. There can be no intrinsic difference of worth between the
work of providing for the needs of society and the work of disposing of
its waste. For without either of these, society cannot live.
The only class for which there should be no room in a healthy social
order is the social parasite. It is to this class that the “idle rich”
belong, the people who neither toil nor spin yet fare sumptuously every
day at the expense of the labour of others. To this class also belongs
the large “flunkey” class—butlers, footmen, door-openers, and other
uniformed persons who are arrayed in fine apparel doing little things
for us that we ought to do for ourselves. It is just neither to these
persons nor to society that they should be allowed to continue in
careers of such complete uselessness. So far as Europe is concerned this
class has already largely disappeared, for the Army or industry has
swallowed it up; and it is not likely ever to re-emerge on the pre-war
scale. We must add also to this parasitic class those who are engaged in
luxury trades—with the _caveat_ that it is exceedingly difficult to draw
a strict frontier line between necessity and luxury on the one hand, and
on the other, between luxury and the thing that may minister to the
legitimate comfort, the health, the beauty and the general enrichment of
life. But there are some things so palpably on the wrong side of the
line that there should be no difficulty in identifying them. It is a
subject worth some reflection here that the war is teaching us to do
without many things which we had come to regard as necessities. It is a
sad commentary upon the civilisation we had produced, that it left us
with a hunger which we endeavoured to appease by an elaboration of the
fringes of life. We had gradually accumulated a range of comforts and
conveniences, and not a few superfluities, which had come to be regarded
as indispensable. But the war has taught us how few things are after all
needful. We have all the materials of joyful life when we have food to
eat, a home to live in, freedom and congenial work, comradeship and
love. And unless these become more and more the sure possession of all,
our social progress is no more than a laborious sham.
------------------------------------------------------------------------