Beatrice Webb

“ When, as in 1833-34, 1872, and 1889, a wave of enthusiasm sweeps the unskilled labourers into the Trade Union ranks, it is obviously necessary to form, at any rate in the first instance, organisations which make no greater tax upon their miserable earnings than a penny or twopence per week. The apparent rhythm of alternations between the two types of organisation is due, therefore, not to any general abandonment of one for the other, but to the accidental prominence, in certain crises of Trade Union history, of the Unions belonging to particular trades or classes of wage-earners. ”

“ Lord Shaftesbury, the lifelong advocate of factory legislation, was praying that “the working people may be emancipated from the tightest thraldom they have ever yet endured. All the single despots, and all the aristocracies that ever were or ever will be, are as puffs of wind compared with these tornadoes, the Trade Unions.” ”

“ It is remarkable how slow the Trade Union world is to recognise the importance, to administrative or political efficiency, of the constitution of a hierarchy, a group or a team. Where a great society has a salaried staff of half-a-dozen to a score of officials—under such designations as General Secretary, Assistant Secretaries, President, Members of Executive Council or District Delegates, Organisers or Investigators—it is almost invariable to find them all separately elected by the whole body of members, or what is even more destructive of unity, by different district memberships. ”

“ But the working classes were suffering, in addition, from a calamity which no mere politician of that time grasped, in the effects of the new machine and factory industry, which was blindly crushing out the old methods by the mere brute force of competition instead of replacing it with due order and adjustment to the human interests involved. This phenomenon was beyond the comprehension of its victims. Each of them knew what was happening to himself as an individual; but only one man—a manufacturer—seems to have understood what was happening to the entire industry of the country. ”

“ Democracy is an expedient—perhaps the only practicable expedient—for preventing the concentration in any single individual or in any single class of what inevitably becomes, when so concentrated, a terrible engine of oppression. The autocratic emperor, served by a trained bureaucracy, seems to the Anglo-Saxon a perilously near approach to such a concentration. If democracy meant, as early observers imagined, a similar concentration of Knowledge and Power in the hands of the numerical majority for the time being, it might easily become as injurious a tyranny as any autocracy. ”

“ The “leisure class”—the men and women who live by owning and not by working, a class increasing in actual numbers, if not relatively to the workers—seem to the great mass of working people to be showing themselves, if possible, more frivolous and more insolent in their irresponsible consumption, by themselves and their families, of the relatively enormous share that they are able to take from the national income. It is coming to be more and more felt that the continued existence of this class involves a quite unwarranted burden upon their fellow-citizens working by hand or by brain. ”

“ In the modern Trade Union, on the contrary, we find, not an association of entrepreneurs, themselves controlling the processes of their industry, and selling its products, but a combination of hired wage-workers, serving under the direction of industrial captains who are outside the organisation. The separation into distinct social classes of the capitalist and the brainworker on the one hand, and the manual workers on the other—the substitution, in fact, of a horizontal for a vertical cleavage of society—vitiates any treatment of the Trade Union as the analogue of the Craft Gild. ”

“ But, peaceful or violent, the great social revolution of the nineteenth century is at hand, and if fighting should be necessary the workers may at least remember the profound historical truth that ‘Force is the midwife of progress delivering the old society pregnant with the new,’ and reflect that they are striving for the final overthrow of a tyranny more degrading than the worst chattel slavery of ancient times. ”

“ But this is a point which each Trade Union must decide for itself. It is not a matter in which outsiders can offer more than counsel. It is clearly not a matter in which the discretion of the Trade Union, any more than that of an individual employer, can properly be limited by law. For no Trade Union can nowadays abstain altogether from political action. Without co-operating with other Trade Unions in taking Parliamentary action of a very energetic and very watchful kind, it cannot (as long experience has demonstrated to practically all Trade Unionists) protect the interests of its members. ”

“ As an Elector—still more as a chosen Representative—in his parish, in his professional association, in his co-operative society, or in the wider political institutions of his state, the ‘average sensual man’ is perpetually impelled to appreciate and to decide issues of public policy. The working of democratic institutions means, therefore, one long training in enlightened altruism, one continual weighing, not of the advantage of the particular act to the particular individual, at the particular moment, but of those ‘larger expediencies’ on which all successful conduct of social life depends. ”

“ Throughout all the various struggles of these years the Trade Union leaders kept steadily in view the definite aim of getting rid of a law which they regarded, not only as hampering their efforts for better conditions of employment, but also as an indignity and an insult to the hundreds of thousands of intelligent artisans whom they represented. The whole history of this agitation proves how completely the governing classes were out of touch with the recently enfranchised artisans. ”

“ To Owen himself we may allow the privilege of his genius, which did not prevent him from being an extravagantly bad captain for a working-class movement. But in his leading disciples ignorance of industrial conditions, contemptuous indifference to facts and figures, and incapacity to measure, even in the smallest actions, the relation between the means and the end, stand in as marked contrast to the sober judgment of men like John Burns as they did to the cautious shrewdness of Allan and Applegarth. ”

“ It is impossible to deny that the perpetual liability to end in a strike or a lock-out is a grave drawback to the Method of Collective Bargaining. So long as the parties to a bargain are free to agree or not to agree, it is inevitable that, human nature being as it is, there should now and again come a deadlock, leading to that trial of strength and endurance which lies behind all bargaining. ”

“ Supposing that all the capitalist press were deliberately to boycott all Labour news, whilst deliberately giving currency to false statements about Labour Leaders and the Labour Movement, would the compositors, as representing the Trade Union world in this industry, be justified in a strike? The only conclusion we can suggest is that, human nature being instinctively militant, any anarchic use of the power given by one form of monopoly will lead to a similar anarchic use of the power given by another form of monopoly. ”

“ The loss of employment by individual members became in bad times a serious financial drain on Unions giving out-of-work pay. In place of the bickerings of individual workmen we have the conflicts of powerful societies, each supporting the claim of its own members to do the work in dispute. “When men are not organised in a Trade Union,” says the general secretary of a large society, “these little things are not taken much notice of, but the moment the two trades become well organised, each trade is looking after its own particular members’ interests....” ”

“ They exhibit more tendency to “stand in” with their masters against the community, or to back them against rivals or interlopers, than to join their fellow-workers of other trades in an attack upon the capitalist class. In short, we have industrial society still divided vertically trade by trade, instead of horizontally between employers and wage-earners. This latter cleavage it is which has transformed the Trade Unionism of petty groups of skilled workmen into the modern Trade Union Movement. ”

“ On the contrary, the most advanced Trade Union leaders were never tired of asserting that their members must enjoy the full standard conditions of employment, whatever arrangements the employers might make with regard to the other factors of production; or however unskilful employers or groups of employers might prove to be in the buying of the raw material, or in the selling of the commodities in the markets of the world.
With the opening years of the twentieth century we become aware of a new intellectual ferment, not confined to any one country, nor even to the manual working class. ”

“ We can all give a little, and each one may encourage his neighbour to follow his example. The conflict may be a severe one. It is for freedom and liberty to unite as we have done. We have reaped some of the advantages of our Unions; we must assist them to establish theirs, and not allow the ray of hope that now shines across the path of our patient but determined fellow-toilers to be darkened by the blind folly of their employers, who, being in a measure slaves to the powers above them, would, if they could, even at their own loss, consign all below them to perpetual bondage. ”

“ The traditional history of the Trade Union Movement represents the period prior to 1824 as one of unmitigated persecution and continuous repression. Every Union that can nowadays claim an existence of over a century possesses a romantic legend of its early years. The midnight meeting of patriots in the corner of a field, the buried box of records, the secret oath, the terms of imprisonment of the leading officials—all these are in the sagas of the older Unions, and form material out of which, in an age untroubled by historical criticism, a semi-mythical origin might easily have been created. ”

“ The very discovery of improved industrial methods, by leading to specialisation, makes manual labourer and brainworker alike dependent on the rest of the community for the means of subsistence, and subordinates them, even in their own crafts, to the action of others. In the world of civilisation and progress, no man can be his own master. But the very fact that, in modern society, the individual thus necessarily loses control over his own life, makes him desire to regain collectively what has become individually impossible. ”

“ The sense of solidarity has, as we have seen, never been lacking among those active soldiers and non-commissioned officers who constitute the most vital element in the Trade Union army. The generous aid from trade to trade, the pathetic attempts to form General Unions, the constant aspirations after universal federation, all testify to the reality and force of this instinctive solidarity. The Collectivist faith of the ‘New Unionism’ is only another manifestation of the same deep-rooted belief in the essential Brotherhood of Labour. ”

“ The Trade Union plea for the right to strike has always been a simple one. It is a mere derivative of the right of Freedom of Contract. Whenever an individual workman had the right to refuse to enter or continue in a contract of service, any group of individuals might, if they chose, exercise a like freedom. After the collapse of Owenism and Chartism all thought of using the weapon of the strike, otherwise than as an incident in Collective Bargaining with the employers, seems to have left the Trade Union Movement in Great Britain. ”

“ Hence these officials sometimes take a larger view of Labour questions than the trade officials of the skilled crafts. They tend to be in favour of the amalgamation of separate societies into “One Big Union”; of much more equality of remuneration among all manual workers; of the “open door” to capacity; of equal rates for men and women on the same job; and of a levelling up of the Standard of Life of the lowest section of the workers. This leads them instinctively to a co-ordinated use of the industrial and the political weapons. ”

“ The paralysis of business was intensified, especially in Scotland, by the widespread ruin caused by the failure of the City of Glasgow Bank. From one end of the kingdom to the other great firms became bankrupt, mines and ironworks were stopped, ships lay idle in the ports, and a universal feeling of despondency and distrust spread like a blight into every corner of the industrial world. Every industry had its crowds of unemployed workmen, the proportion of men on the books of the Trade Unions rising, in some cases, to as much as 25 per cent. ”

“ There appears to us to be a subtle distinction between the economic position of workers who hire themselves out to the individual consumer direct, and those who, like the typical Trade Unionist of to-day, serve an employer who stands between them and the actual consumers, and who hires their labour in order to make out of it such a profit as will provide him with his interest on capital and “wages of management.” ”

“ In this light the divorce of the manual workers from the ownership of the means of production was seen to be no passing phase, but an economic development which must, under any system of private control of industry, become steadily more complete. And it was argued that the terrible alterations of over-production and commercial stagnation, the anomaly that a glut of commodities should be a cause of destitution, were the direct result of the management of industry with a view to personal profit, instead of to the satisfaction of public wants. ”

“ It appears to us from these facts that Trade Unionism would have been a feature of English industry, even without the steam-engine and the factory system. Whether the association of superior workmen which arose in the early part of the century would, in such an event, ever have developed into a Trade Union Movement is another matter. The typical “trade club” of the town artisan of this time was an isolated “ring” of highly skilled journeymen, who were even more decisively marked off from the mass of the manual workers than from the small class of capitalist employers. ”

“ No Trade Unionist can deny that, without some method of enforcing the decision of the majority, effective trade combination is impossible.
It must not be inferred from the above criticism of the theoretic position taken by the men who steered the Trade Union Movement through its great crisis that they were conscious of their inconsistency with regard to State intervention, or that they deliberately set to work to win their case upon false premises. No one can study the history of their leadership without being impressed by their devotion, sagacity, and high personal worth. ”

“ But the Democracy based on Associations of Consumers, whether in the National Government, the Municipality, or the Co-operative Society, reveals certain shortcomings and defects, some transient and resulting only from the existing Capitalism, and others needing the remedy of a complementary Democracy of Producers. So long as we have a society characterised by gross inequalities of income, it is inevitable that the conduct of industries and services by Associations of Consumers should be even more advantageous to the rich than to the poor, and of little or no use to those who are destitute. ”

“ In more than one direction, therefore, the depression of trade was bringing into prominence wide divergences of opinion upon Trade Union policy. But the adverse industrial circumstances of the time were revealing, in certain industries, a more invidious cleavage. As manufacturing processes develop and change with the progress of invention and the substitution of one material for another—iron for wood in shipbuilding, for instance—the skilled members of one trade find themselves superseded for certain work by the members of another. ”

“ But the problem of protecting the workers’ Standard of Life under the new conditions was neither easy nor obvious, and it remained unsolved until the nineteenth century discovered the expedients of Collective Bargaining and Factory Legislation, developing, in the twentieth century, into the fixing by law of a Minimum Wage. In the meantime the workers were left to shift for themselves, the attitude of Parliament towards them being for the first years one of pure perplexity, quite untouched by the doctrine of freedom of contract. ”

“ The capitalists were, in short, committed to the principle of laissez-faire in every phase of industrial life, from “Free Trade in Corn” to the unlimited use of labour of either sex at any age and under any conditions; and what the workmen demanded was only the application of this principle to the wage contract. “The Trade Union question,” writes, in 1869, their chosen representative and most powerful advocate, “is another and the latest example of the truth, that the sphere of legislation is strictly and curiously limited. ”

“ Great peers and Conservative statesmen were always blessing “Co-operative Production,” and always trying to stimulate the workers to undertake business on their own account. When the invariable failure of self-governing workshops became too obvious, the advocates of Co-operative Production fell back on “Labour Co-partnership”—partnership in business with the capitalist class! This was so obviously, and almost avowedly, an attack on, or at least a proposal for the supersession of Trade Unionism, that it aroused the fiercest opposition; and the very idea became anathema in the Trade Union world. ”

“ It was, however, hopeless to dream of converting the middle class to the essential principle of Trade Unionism, the compulsory maintenance of the Standard of Life. In the then state of Political Economy the Trade Unionists saw against them, on this point, the whole mass of educated opinion in the country. John Bright, for instance, did but express the common view of the progressive party of that time when he solemnly assured the working man that “combinations, in the long run, must be as injurious to himself as to the employer against whom he is contending.” ”

“ The right of Free Association, won by Allan, Applegarth, Odger, and their allies, is now a past issue, but the Trade Union interest in legislation has, with the advance of Democracy, extended to larger and more complicated problems. The complete democratisation of the political machinery, the duty of the Government to be a model employer, the further regulation of private enterprise through perfected factory legislation, the public administration of monopolies, are all questions in which the Trade Union world of to-day considers itself keenly interested. ”

“ But during the past decade the movement has been reinforced by the desire for an organisation based on the whole of an industry, such as engineering, housebuilding, mining, or the railway service, in which all the co-operating crafts and grades of workers would be associated in a single Industrial Union; in contrast with the earlier conception of the separate organisation of each craft throughout the whole kingdom; such as that of the carpenters, the enginemen, the engineering mechanics, the clerks, and by analogy the general labourers, in whatsoever industry they may be working. ”

“ Are the good men in his trade—those whom he likes; who have treated him well, helped him out of his difficulties and given him coppers when a lad; the powerful men, the foremen, and those whose words carry most weight with their fellows—are these men members of the Union? If they are, and if, as is most probable in a Society shop, he has formed friendships with other young fellows who are already members, it is not long before he consents, and allows himself to be duly proposed as a candidate for membership. ”