CHAPTER VIII.

TRADE UNIONS.

IN most industrial and commercial nations powerful associations have been organised for the protection of what they hold to be the rights of labourers in relation to those of capitalists. They are met by counter organisations of employers. The labourers have the command of large funds, contributed by multitudes of workmen. Elaborate machinery and rules for joint action are provided under leaders possessed of ability and energy. In the market for labour the buyers find that they have to deal with united combinations of labourers. Instead of settling with the men whom he wishes to engage the terms of hiring, the employer is often confronted with the whole body of workmen in his particular trade all over the kingdom. Thus, for the ordinary method of bargaining in the market is substituted a struggle founded upon force. Sometimes negotiation is had recourse to, with occasional success; but the more usual practice is open war. The labourers are withdrawn from the works of the masters industry, the workmen themselves, the employers, and the whole community, are all injured together.

The relations between employers and labourers touch to the quick the welfare of every State. The interests

of civilisation are deeply staked on this great issue. No country is more vitally concerned in the problem than England. She trades with all the world, because all the world buys her products; but by this very fact she is brought into competition with the industries of every country. Any change in the cost of production of any of her manufactures might strip her of a large trade, and thereby deprive her of the power, not only of maintaining her wealth, but of feeding her people. On no subject, therefore, is the duty of all more clear and more imperative than on the relation between employers and employed to analyse its elements, to discover the truths-the facts and principles-which underlie it, and to bring them home to the understanding of every man in the nation. The truths thus obtained will often need to be repeated. A truth is not established in universal reception by its first recognition. Every teacher addressing a body of students must repeat; the things taught must often be sounded in their ears before it can penetrate their minds. Many Political Economists of distinguished ability have treated this very question with eminent power; yet little of what they have shown to be true has sunk into the understandings of millions. The same teaching must be incessantly repeated for a long time to come. "Nothing is taught well," says Matthew Arnold, "except what is known familiarly and taught often."

That it is in the highest degree desirable that masters and men should work together in harmony no sane man will dispute. The only question that can arise is, Is it possible? The answer to it must be found by a careful examination of the points of difference. But

here, at the very outset, we encounter the unwelcome fact that the denial of this harmony is laid down by most Trade-Unionists as the very foundation of their position. Their doctrines and their actions are based on the assumption that capitalists and labourers are, by their very nature, necessary and irreconcileable antagonists. Let us then consider the theory they propound, and the inferences which they draw from it.

I. Capitalists and labourers are antagonists. They divide a common fund between them. What one man wins of it the other loses. Their respective interests, if not absolutely hostile, are in direct conflict.

2. Capitalists are able to combine for applying coercion on labourers in determining the price to be given for the hire of their services. They can enforce lower wages than the state of the labour market at the time warrants.

This being so, labourers must, on their side, also combine for mutual help in contending against the coercion of masters; in no other way can they obtain fair play and justice. Without union every man would be at the mercy of the buyer of labour, and would be compelled to submit to the wages imposed upon him.

3. Not only must the labourers oppose association to coercion, but further, they must lay down certain economical principles, which would strengthen their position, and would lead to their winning a larger share of the fund to be divided.

The chief of these principles are—

a. Limitation of the length of the day's work.

b. Abolition of working by the piece, and the substitution of wages by the hour or the day's work.

c., All workmen to receive the same wage, whatever

their quality.

d. Abolition of payment by the piece and of over

time.

e. Limitation of apprentices.

f. A minimum wage to be given to all labourers. g. Diminution of production to secure higher prices for the goods; and when demand for the things produced is weak, working on short time with no diminution of the existing rate of wages. h. Refusal to work with non-unionists; monopoly of work for members of the unions.

I. In considering the first proposition that masters and men are necessarily in direct antagonism, it is very essential to keep two situations thoroughly apart in thought. The mixing of them up together is the main cause which hides the true relation between capital and labour from the public eye. These two situations are, first, a steady trade worked by a sufficiency of labourers and no more; secondly, fluctuations either in trade, or in the numbers of the labourers, or in both. The two positions are wholly different in kind. The second generates uncertainties which give rise to all the quarrelling and to the doctrines which it calls forth. When the demand which was good last year is bad this, and the workmen who could then find well-paid employment are now too many and are put upon short time and reduced wages, that distrust should often spring up, to the obscuring of the real nature of the relation of the masters to the men, is inevitable.

The point to grasp and to bear steadily in mind is that these are storms on the surface; they are not the sub

stance of the position of capitalists and labourers in industry. Not to be sure that the altered wages are just and unavoidable only shows that the true market value of labour is hard to discover under the circumstances of the day. That in an obscure state of the condition of the market a man should doubt whether he has received the true value of his article is no proof that he and the buyer are natural enemies. Both of them may be honestly in search of the right price; and each of them may be doubtful whether it has been found. The true rate of wages at such times can be discovered only by trial-by bargaining-by testing the competition of the masters to secure the workmen-by trying to get work at one mill, if the wages are unduly low at the other.

Bargaining, however, on so serious a matter as what a man shall have to live upon easily generates irritation. It strikes deeper into human feeling than bargaining at a cattle fair or in a corn market. It cannot be exactly a matter for wonder if a number of men, in the same identical position, should try, by acting together, to fix wages, unaltered, at a particular point. But these uncertainties, and the feelings they excite, furnish no warrant whatever for inventing new ideas as to the essential positions occupied by masters and men towards one another in production. These positions can be learnt only from the facts of industry in ordinary and normal times. Transitory perplexities reveal nothing but a liability to occasional disturbance. High floods on the Thames are not the phenomena from which to learn the nature and the laws of the tide.

Taking, then, the even flow of industry, nothing is more certain than that the interests of capitalists and working