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Throughout the foregoing chapters we have accepted the current assumption that there is such a thing as a " trade," as to the boundaries of wrhich no question can arise. In the preface to nearly every Trade Union book of rules we find some passage to the following effect : " Every artisan following a given occupation has an interest, in common with all those similarly engaged, in forming rules by which that particular trade shall be regulated." But what is a " trade," and how are its limits to be defined ? By the journalist or professional man, every mechanic employed at Armstrong's or Whitworth's would naturally be classed as an engineer ; would be expected to belong to the " Engineers' Trade Union " ; and would at any rate ,be clearly distin- guished from a plumber, a joiner, or a shipwright. Yet the grouping of these mechanics into their several organisations, and the relations of these organisations to each other, are responsible for some of the most serious difficulties of British Trade Unionism,

We had better first state the problem as it appears in some of the principal trades. A single industry will often include sections of workers differing widely from each other in their standard earnings, in the kind and amount of pro- tection called for by their circumstances, and in the strategic strength of their respective positions against the employer, upon which, in the end, their trade policy will depend. Thus

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a cotton-spinning mill, with 40 pairs of mules, will employ about 90 cardroom operatives, mostly women, the men earning from 1 8s. to 30s. per week and the women 12s. 6d. to 1 9s. 6d., ; 40 adult male mule-spinners, earning, by piecework, from 30s. to SOS. per week ; 80 boys and men as piecers, engaged and paid by the mule-spinners at 6s. 6d. to 20s. per week ; and 2 overlookers with weekly salaries of 42s. and upwards. The adjacent cotton -weaving shed, with 800 looms, will employ about 260 male and female weavers, paid by the piece and earning from 14s. to 20s. per week; 8 overlookers (men), paid by a percentage on the weavers' earnings, and getting 32s. to 42s. per week ; 10 twisters and drawers, earning at piecework 2Ss. to 32s. per week; 5 warpers and beamers working by the piece and making from 20s. to 30s. per week ; 3 or 4 tapesizers with a fixed weekly wage of 42s. per week ; a number of children varying from I to 50, employed by the weavers as tenters, and paid small sums ; and a manager over the whole with a salary of ;f 200 or ;^300 per annum.^

All these operatives may be engaged by a single em- ployer, work upon the same raw material, and produce for the same market. They have obviously many interests in common. But for all that they do not form a simple unit of government. It is impossible to devise any-«onstitution which" would enable these %ix or more classes of cotton operatives to form an amalgamated union, having a common policy, a common purse, a common executive, and a common staff of officials, without sacrificing the financial and trade interest, of one, or even all of the different sections. It suits the well- paid sections, such as the Spinners, Tapesizers, Beamers, Twisters, Drawers, and Overlookers, to pay a high weekly contribution, which would be beyond the means of the Cardroom Operatives and the Weavers. But the manner in which each section desires to apply its funds varies even

' Compare the still more detailed classification of workers incidentally given in the Board of Trade Report by Miss Collet on the Statistics of Employment of Women and Girls, C. 7564, 1894.

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more than their amount. The Tapesizers, , deriving their strategic strength from their highly specialised skill, the impossibility of replacing them, and the small proportion which their wages bear to the total cost of production, can afford to spend their funds on ample sick and funeral benefits. With a uniform time rate in each district, and few occasions for dispute with their employers, they need no offices or salaried officials whatsoever. It pays the Spinners and Weavers, on the other hand, to maintain a highly skilled professional staff for the purpose of computing and maintaining their earnings under the complicated lists of ^fecework prices. But the Weavers stand at the disadvantage of needing also a large staff of paid collectors to secure the regular payment of contributions from the girls and married women, who are indisposed to bring their weekly pence to the public- house in which the branch meeting is still frequently held. This applies also to the 'Cardroom Operatives, but these, working usually at time rates, do not need the weavers' skilled calculator. The Beamers, Twisters, and Drawers, on the one hand, and the Overlookers on the other, have again their own peculiarities. To unite, in any common scheme of contri- butions and benefits, classes so diverse in their means and requirements, appears absolutely impossible. Still more difficult would it be to provide for the effective representation upon a common executive of sections so different in numerical strength. Not to mention the Tapesizers and Overlookers, who must be completely submerged by the rest, it would be difficult to induce the 19,000 well-paid, well-officered, and well-disciplined Spinners to submit their trade policy to the decision of the 22,000 ill-paid Cardroom Operatives or the 85,000 Weavers, of whom two-thirds are women. On the other hand, the Weavers would not permanently forego the advantage of their overwhelming superiority in numbers, nor would the Spinners allow the Tapesizers an equal voice with themselves. But even if a representative executive could, by some device, be got together, it would not form a fit body to decide the technical questions peculiar to each class

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On each point as it arose, the experts would be in a minority, and the decisions, whatever their justice, would invariably cause dissatisfaction to one section or anofeer. Moreover, quite apart from technical details, the moments of strategic advantage differ from section to section. It may suit the Spinners to move for an advance, at a time when the weaving trade is depressed, and both will be more ready to move than the Overlookers. The Tapesizers, on the other hand, will prefer, to any overt strike, the silent withdrawal of one man after another from a recalcitrant employer, until he is ready to offer the Trade Union terms. It is obvious that a council representing such diverse elements would find it' extremely difflfcult to maintain an active and consistent course. On the other hand, all the sections of Cotton Operatives have njanifold interests in common. Every factory act regulating the sanitation, hours of labor,! machinery, age of children, anS inspection of factories, directly or indirectly concerns every worker in the mill. Such industrial dislocations as Liverpool "cotton corners," or the employers' mutual agreement to reduce stocks by working short time, affect all alike. The policy of the Indian Secretary, the Minister of Education, or the Chan- cellor of the Exchequer, may, any moment, touch them all on a vital point. If, therefore, the Cotton Operatives are to have any effective voice in regulating these essentially trade matters, their organisation must in some form be co-extensive with the whole cotton industry.

Another instance of these difificulties is presented by the great industry of engineering. A century ago the small skilled class of millwriglits executed every kind of engineering operation, from making the wooden patterns to erecting in the mill the machines"; which had been constructed by their own hands. The enormous expansion of the engineering industry has long since brought about a division of labor, and the mechanics in a great engineering establish- ment to-day are divided into numerous distinct classes oi' workers, who are rarely able to do each other's work. The

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pattern-makers, working in wood, have become sharply marked off from the boilermakers and the ironfounders. The smiths, again, are distinguished from the fitters, turners, and erectors. Another form of specialisation has arisen with the increased use of other metals than iron and steel, and we have brass -founders, brass-finishers, and coppersmiths. Each generation sees a great development in the use of machines to make machines, so that a modern engineering shop, in addition to the time-honored lathe, includes a be- wildering variety of drilling, shaping, boring, planing, slotting, milling, and other machines, attended by wholly new classes of machine-minders and tool-makers, displaying every grade of skill. Finally, we have such new kinds of work, with new classes of specialists, as are involved in the innumerable applications of iron and steel in modern civilisation, such as iron ships and bridges, ordnance and armour-plating, hydraulfc apparatus and electric-lighting, sewing-machines and bicycles. ■To discover the exact limits of a " trade " in these closely related but varied occupations is a task of supreme difficulty. All are working in the s^me industry, and in the large establishments of to-day, all may be engaged by a single employer. The same recurring waves of expansion and , contraction sooner or later affect all alike. On the other hand, there exist between the separate occupations great varieties of methods of remuneration, standard earnings, and strategic position. The strictly - apprenticed boilermakers (shipyard platers) working in compact groups, at co-operative piecework, earning sometimes as much as a pound a day, find it advantageous in good times to roll up, by large sub- scriptions, a huge reserve fund, to maintain a staff of special trade officers to arrange their piecework prices at every port, and to provide handsomely for their recurring periods of trade depression. At the other end of the scale we have the intelligent laborer become an automatic machine-minder, securing relative continuity of low-paid employment by working any simple machine in , any kind of engineering establishment, and interested mainly in the opening of every

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operation to the quickwitted outsider. The pattern-maker again, working in wood, at a high time rate, has little in common with the piece-working smith at the forge. When trade begins to improve, the pattern-makers, followed by the ironfounders, will be busy long before the smiths, fitters, and turners, and, if they wish to recover the wages lost in the previous depression, must move for an advance whilst all the rest of the engineering industry is still on short time. Finally, t here is the difficulty of the method and basis of repres entation. Shall the government be centred in an trnn shipbuilding port, where the boilermakers would be supreme, or in an inland engineering centre, when the fitters and turners would have an equally great preponderance ? How can the tiny groups of pattern-makers, dispersed over the whole kingdom, get their separate interests attended to amid the overwhelming majorities of the other classes ? Any attempt to represent, upon an executive council, each dis- tinct occupation, let alone each great centre, must either' ignore all proportional considerations, or involve the forma- tion of a body of impossible dimensions and costliness.

We se e, therefore, that within the circle of what is usuallyf called a trade, there are often smaller circles of specialised! classes of workmen, each sufficiently distinctive in character to claim separate consideration. The first idea is always to cut the Gordian knot by ignoring these differences, and making the larger circle the unit of government. So fas-_ cinating is this idea of f amalgamation '| that it has been tried in almost every industry. The reader of the History} of Trade Unionism will remember the remarkable attempt - in 1 83 3–34 to form a national "Builders' Union," to com- prise the seven different branches of building operatives. 1 The s^me years saw a succession of general unions in the cloth-making industry. In 1844, and again in 1863, the coalminers sought to combine in qne amalgamated union every person employed in or about thie mines, from one end*' of the kingdom to the other. The " Iron Trades " again" were, between 1840 and 1850, the subject of innumerable!

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local projects of amalgamaticin, in which not only the " Five Trades of Mechanism," but also the Boilermakers and the Ironfounders were all to be included. We need not describe the failure of all these attempts. More can, perhaps, be learnt from the experience of the great modern instance, the Amalgamated Society of Engineers.

It does not seem to have occurred to William Newton,, when he launched this famous amalgamation, that any diffi- culty could arise as to the classes of workers to be included. What he was primarily concerned about was to merge in one national organisation all the various local societies of engineering mechanics, whether pattern-makers,smiths, turners, fitters, or erectors, working either in iron or brass. But " sectionalism " stood, from the very first, in the way. The various local clubs of Smiths and Pattern-makers objected strongly to sink their individuality in a general engineers' union. In the same way, the more exclusive Steam-Engine Makers' Society, in which millwrights, fitters, and turners predominated, refused to merge itself in the wider organisa- tion. To Newton and Allan all these objections seemed to arise from the natural reluctance of local clubs to lose their individuality in a national union. This dislike, as they rightly felt, was destined to give way before the superior advantages of national combination. But subsequent ex- perience has shown that the resistance to the amalgamation was due to more permanent causes. The "merely local societies dropped in, one by one, to their greater rival. But this only revealed a more serious cleavage. The present rivals of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers are, not any local engineers' clubs, but national societies each claiming the exclusive allegiance of different sections of the trade^ The pattern-makers, for instance, came to the conclusion in 1872 that their interests were negfected in the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, and formed the United Pattern-makers' Association, which now includes a large and increasing majority of this highly skilled class. Tte -Associated Society of Blacksmiths, originally a Glasgow local club, now dominates

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its particular section of the trade on the Clyde and in Belfast, and has branches in the North of England. The Brass-workers, the Coppersmiths, and the Machine-minders have now all their own societies of national extent. The result has been that the Amalgamated Society of Engineers does not realise Newton's idea as regards any section what- ever. The' Boilermakers, who refused to have anything to do with amalgamation, and who have persistently put their energy into organising their own special craft, have succeeded, as we have mefitioned, in forming one undivided, consolidated, and centralised society for the entire kingdom. Very different is the condition of the engineers. Neither the fitters nor the smiths, the pattern-makers nor the machine-minders, the brass-workers nor the coppersmiths, are united in any one society, or able to maintain a uniform trade policy, even for their own section of the industry. For all this confusion, the enthusiastic adherents of the Amalgamated Society have gone on preaching the one remedy of an ever-wider amalgama- tion. " The future basis of the Amalgamated Society," urged Mr. Tom Mann in 1891, " must be one that will admit every workman engaged in connection with the engineering trades, and who is called upon to exhibit mechanical skill in the performance of his labor. This would include men on milling and drilling machines, tool-makers, die-sinkers, and electrical engineers, and it would make it necessary to have the requisite staff at the general ofifice to cater for so large a constituency, as there are at least 250,000 men engaged in the engineering and machine trades of the United Kingdom, and the work of organising this body must be undertaken by the A. S. E."^ Somewhat against the advice of the more experienced ofiScials, successive delegate meetings have included within the society one section of workmen after another. At the delegate meeting of 1892, which opened, the society to practically every competent workman in thei most miscellaneous engineering establishment, it was even

' Address to the East End Institute of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, London, in Trade Unionist, loth October 1891.

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urged by some branches that the boundaries should be still further enlarged, so as to perniit the absprption of plumbers and ironfounders. This proposal was with some reluctance rejected, but only on the ground that it would have brought the Amalgamation into immediate collision with the 16,278 members of the Friendly Society of Iron- founders (established 1809); and with the compact and militant United Operative Plumbers' Society (established 1848, membership 8758), rivals too powerful to be lightly encountered. Each successi ve widenit^jy of_th e amals[a ina- tion bringsi t in fact, into con flict_witb^ a ^^^V,^'^ nnmhpr of ptlier unions, who _ becom e its_e mbittered en emies. The very competition between rival societies which Nfewton's amal- gamation was intended to supersede, has, through this all- inclusive policy itself, been rendered more intense and jntractable.

And here it is imperative that the reader should fully appreciate the disastrous effect of this competition and rivalry between separate Trade Unions. The evil will be equally apparent whether we regard the Trade Union merely as a friendly society for insuring the weekly wage-earner against loss of livelihood through sickness, old age, and depression of trade, or as a militant orgainisation for enabling the manual worker to obtain better conditions from the capitalist employer.

Let us consider first Jthe side of Trade Unionism which has, from the outset, been universally praised and admired, the " ancient and most laudable custom for divers artists within the United Kingdom to meet and form themselves into societies for the sole purpose of assisting each other in cases of sickness, old age, and other infirmities, and for the burial of their dead." ^ Now, whatever weight may be given, in matters of commerce, to the maxim caveat emptor—how- ever thoroughly we may rely, as regards articles of personal consumption, on the buyer's watchfulness over his own

1 Preamble to Rules of the Friendly Society of Ironmoulders (Manchestei, 1809), and to those of many other unions of this epoch.

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interests—it is indisputable that, in the whole realm of insurance, competition does practically nothing to promote efficiency. The assumption which underlies the faith in unrestricted competition is that the consumer is competent to judge of the quality of what he pays for, or that he will at any rate become so in the act of consumption. In matters of financial insurance no such assumption can reasonably be maintained. Apart from the dangers of irregularities and defalcations, the whole question of efficiency or inefficiency in friendly society administration is bound up with the selection of proper actuarial data, the collection and verifica-| tion of the society's own actuarial experience, and the conJ sequent fixing of the due rates of contribution and benefits. When rival societies bid against each other for members, competition inevitably takes the form, either of offering the common benefits at a lower rate, or of promising extravagant benefits at the common rate of subscription. The ordinary man, innocent of actuarial science, is totally unable to appreciate the merits of the rival scales put before him. To the raw recruit the smallness of the weekly levy offers an almost irresistible attraction. Nor does such illegitimate competition between societies work, as might be supposed, its own cure. The club charging rates insufficient to meet its liabilities will, it is true, in the end bring about its own destruction. But the actuarial nemesis is slow to arrive, as many years must elapse before the full measure of the liability for death claims and superannuation allowances can be tested. And when the inevitable collapse comes, the prudent society gains little by the dissolution of its unsound rival. A club which has failed to meet its engage- ments, and has been broken' up, leaves those who have been its members suspicious of all forms of organisation and indisposed to renew their contributions. The payment for some time of high benefits in return for low subscriptions will have falsified the standard of expectation. Those who have lost their money ascribe the failure to the dishonesty or incapacity of the officers, to the workmen's lack of loyalty,

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to any cause, indeed, rather than to their own unreasonable- ness in expecting a shilling's worth of benefits for a sixpenny contribution.

In the case of Friendly Societies proper, and in that of Insurance Companies, the untrustworthiness of competition as a guarantee of financial eflficiency has been fully recog-' nised by the community, and dealt with by the legislature.' Trade Unions, however, have, for good and sufficient reasons, been left outside the scope of these provisions.^ But, as a matter of fact, competition between Trade Unions on their benefit club side is even more injurious to their soundness than it is to Friendly Societies proper, Dealing as they do, not with a specially selected class -of thrifty citizens, but with the whole body of men in their trade ; unable, owing to their other functions, to concentrate their members' attention upon the actuarial side of their affairs ; and destitute of any authoritative data or scientific calculation for such benefits as Out of Work pay. Trade ^nions must always find it , specially difficult to resist a demand for increase of benefits, or lowering of contribution. If two unions are competing for the I same class of members, the pressure becomes irresistible.

The history of Trade Unionism is one long illustration of this argument. In one trade after another we watch the cropping up of " mushroom unions," their heated rivalry

' It is unnecessary for us to do more than refer to the long series" of statutes, beginning in 1786, which provide for the registration, publication of accounts, public audit, and even compulsory valuation of Friendly Societies and Industrial Insurance Companies. By every means, short of direct prohibition, the State now seeks to put obstacles in the way of " under-cutting," and, to use the words of Mr. .Reuben Watson before the Select Committee on National Provident Insurance in 1885 (Question 893), discourages "the formation of new societies on the unsound principles of former times." Within the two great "affiliated orders" of Oddfellows and Foresters, which together comprise at least half the friendly society world, the legal requirements are backed by an absolute prohibi- tion to open any new lodge or court without adopting, as a minimum, the definitely approved scale of contributions and benefits. Even with regard to middle-class life assurance companies. Parliament has not only insisted on a specific account- keeping and publication of financial position, but has, since 1872, practically stopped the uprising of additional competitors, by requiring a deposit of ;^20,ooo from any new company before business can be begun.

 ' See the chapter on "The Method of Mutual Insurance."

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with the older organisations, and consequent mad race for members ; and finally, after a few years of unstable existence, their ignoble bankruptcy and ' dissolution. Meanwhile the responsible officials of the older societies will have been struggling with their own " Delegate Meetings " and " Revising Committees," to maintain a relatively sound scale of con- tributions and benefits. ' Any attempt at financial improve- ment will have been checked by the representations of the branch officers that the only result would be to divert all the recruits to their rasher and more open-handed competitors. The records of every important union contain bitter complaints of this injurious competition. The Friendly Society of Ironfounders, for instance, which dates from 1 809, is one of the oldest and most firmly established Trade Unions. Its 16,000 members include an overwhelming majority of the competent ironmoulders in England, Ireland, and Wales. For over sixty years it has collected and preserved admirable statistical data of the cost of its various benefits, to provide for which it maintains a relatively high rate of contribution and levies. In August 1891, a leading member called attention to the touting for membership that was going on among his trade in certain districts. " I have now noticed," he concludes, " three distinct societies that enter moulders (ironfounders) who are eligible to join us. They offer, more or less, a high rate of benefit at a low rate of contribution. Whether they are likely to fulfil their promises I leave to the judgment of any thoughtful man who will sit down and compare their rates of contribution and benefits with the statistical figures of our society, as shown continually in the annual reports. Those figures have been arrived at by experience, which is the truest basis of calculation for the future, and I would commend them to the notice of all who set themselves the task of computing the maximum rate of benefit to be obtained at the minimum rate of subscription." ^ Nor was

« I^ttei from H. G. Percival in the Monthly Report of the Friendly Society of Ironfounders (August 1891), pp. 18–21.

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this warning unneeded. When, in the very next month, the Ironfounders met in delegate meeting to revise their rules, branch after branch suggested, in order to outstrip the attractions of their extravagant rivals, an increase of benefits, without any addition to the contribution. Thus Gateshead, Keighley, and Greenwich urged that the Out of Work benefit should be increased by more than ten per cent ; Huddersfield and Oldham sought to raise the maxi- mum sum receivable in any one year ; Barrow, Halifax, and Liverpool asked that travellers should be allowed sixpence per night instead of fourpence ; Oldham tried largely to increase the scale of superannuation allowances, and to raise the Accident Grant from ;^50 to ;^ioo ; St. Helens and many other branches demanded a ten per cent increase of the sick benefit ; whilst Brighton, Keighley, and Wakefield proposed to raise the funeral money from

^io to £\2. On the other hand, Chelsea proposed a

reduction of the entrance fee by 33 per cent, whilst Gloucester sought to lower it by one-half ; Liverpool would take in men up to the age of 45, instead of stopping at 40; and Wakefield suggested the abandonment of any medical examination at entrance.^ Fortunately for the Ironfounders, their officers, with the statistical tables at their back, were able to stave off most of these pro- posals. But even responsible officials are forced to pay heed to this reckless competition. Thus in 1885, when certain branches of the Steam - Engine Makers' Society, getting anxious about their old age, suggested that the provision for the superannuation benefit should be increased, the central executive demurred to raising the contribution, pointing out " the keen competition " for membership which they had to meet, "just as though we were engaged in commerce. In every workshop," they continue, "we have numerous societies to contend with, some of whose members

' Su^estioKS from Branches of the Friendly Society of Ironfounders … for consideration at the Delegate Meeting to be held in September 189 1 (London, 1891X

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think that taking a man from another society and squeezing him into theirs is a valiant act. Many cases will occur to all, but we give one instance. We learned of the Pattern- makers' Association taking members of ours for an entrance fee of 5 s., placing them in benefit at once, and even giving them credit for ten years' membership, should they apply for superannuation in the future." ^ These examples enable us to understand why it is that the Trade Unions accumulating the largest reserve funds to meet their prospective liabilities are to be found in the trades in which a single union is co-extensive with the industry. Thus, among the larger organisations, the United Society of Boilermakers with a balance in 1896 of ;£^ 175,000, or ;^4 : 7 : 6 per head of its 41,000 members, towers above all other societies in the engineering and shipbuilding trades.

ifWe have dwelt in some detail upon the evils of com- petition between Trade Unions considered merely as benefit clubs, because this part of their function has secured universal approval. But assuming that the workmen are right in believing trade combination to be economically useful to them—assuming, that is to say, that the institutioh of Trade Unionism has any justification at all—the case against com- petition among unions becomes overwhelming in strength. If a trade is split up among two or more rival societies,^ especially if these are unequal in numbers, scope, or the; character of their members, there is practically no possibility] of arriving at any common policy to be pursued by all the branches, or of consistently maintaining any course of action, whatsoever. "The general position of our society in Liverpool," reports the District Delegate of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers in 1893, "is far from satisfactory, the work of organising the trade being rendered exceptionally difficult, not only by the existence of a large non-union element, but by the existence of a number of sectional societies. Here, as elsewhere, these small and unnecessary organisations

' Steam-Engine Makers' Society ; Executive Council Report on Revision oj Rules, 2SthJuly 1885.

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are the causes of endless complications and inconvenience, How many of these absurd and irritating institutions actually exist here I am ijot yet in a position to say, but the following are those with which I am at present acquainted : Smiths and Strikers (Amalgamated), Mersey Shipsmiths, Steam-Engine Makers, United Pattern-makers, Liverpool Coppersmiths, Brass -finishers (Liverpool), Brass -finishers (Birmingham), United Machine Workers, Metal Planers, National Engineers. All these societies are naturally inimical to our own, yet how long shall we be able to tolerate their existence is another question. … The Boilermakers would never permit any section of their trade to organise apart from them ; why we should do so is a question which will assuredly have to be settled definitely sooner or later." ^ The " small and unnecessary organisations" naturally take a different view. The general secretary of the United Pattern-makers' Association, in a circular full of bitter complaints against the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, thus describes the situation : " For the information of those who may not be intimately acquainted with the engineering trade, we may explain that the Pattern- makers form almost the smallest section of that trade—^the organised portion being split up into no less than four different sections [societies]—the largest section outside the ranks of the United Pattern-makers' Association belonging to the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. It will be easily understood that this division makes it very difficult for our society to act on the offensive with that promptitude which is often essential to the successful carrying out of a particular movement, as we have to consult with and obtain the co- operation of three societies other than our own ; and as our trade in these societies are in an insignificant minority, it is perhaps only natural that so far as the Amalgamated Society of Engineers is concerned, legislation for the trades that comprise the vast majority of its members should have a priority over a consideration of those questions which concern

' " Report of Oi^anising District Delegate (No. 2 division) of Amalgamated Society of Engineers" in Quarterly Report for quarter ended March 1893.

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so small a handful as the Pattern-makers belonging to their society." ^ An actual example of the everyday working life of a Trade Union branch will show how real is the difficulty thus caused. "Our Darlington members," reports the Pattern- makers' Executive, " have been engaged in a wages movement which has had in one respect a most unsatisfactory termination. The ' Mais ' ^ and non-society men pledged themselves to assist our members to get the money up, until the critical moment arrived when notices were to be given in. The non-society element and the ' Mais ' then formed an ignominious com- bination, and declined to go any further in the matter, the Darlington branch of the ' Mais ' writing our Secretary to the effect that they would not permit their P.M.'s [Pattern- makers] to strike. They only number three, and the non- society men twice as many, so fortunately they could not do , the cause very much injury. The advance was conceded by every firm excepting the Darlington Iron and Steel Works, where oijr men were drawn out, leaving two ' Mais ' and their present allies, the non-society men, at work. Your general secretary wrote the executive committee of the ' Mais ' on the subject over three weeks ago, but so insignificant a matter as this is apparently beneath the notice of this august body, as no reply has yet been vouchsafed." ^

Trade Union rivalry has, however, a darker side. /When

the officers of the two organisations have been touting for members, and feeling keenly each other's competition, oppor- tunities for friction and ill-temper can scarcely fail to arise^ Accusations will be made on both sides of disloyalty and unfairness, which will be echoed and warmly resented by the

 Circular of United Pattern-makers' Association (on Belfast dispute), 22nd

June 1892. The same note recurs in the Report of Proceedings of^ the Sixth Anntial Meeting of the Federation of Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades (Manchester, 1896). " As a consequence of their present divided state," said Mr. Mosses, the general secretary of the United Pattern-makers' Association, at this meeting, " they had one district going in for advances, foUovfed in a haphazard fashion by other districts ; and one body of men coming out on strike for the benefit of others v/ho remained at their work."

2 Members of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers.

3 Monthly Report of the United Pattem-makerf Association, September 1889,

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rank and file. Presently some dispute occurs between an employer and the members of one of the unions. These workmen may be dismissed by the employer, or withdrawn by order of their own district committee. The officers of the rival union soon hear of the vacancies from the firm in question. Members of their own society are walking the streets in search of work, and drawing Out of Work pay from the funds, f^o let i these take the places left vacant—to " blackleg " the rival society—is to commit the gravest crime against the Trade Unionist faith._J Unfortunately, in many cases, the temptation is irresistible. The friction between the rival organisations, the personal ill-feeling of their officers, the traditions of past grievances, the temptation of pecuniary gain both to the workmen and to the union, all co-operate to make the occasion " art exception." At this stage any pretext suffices. The unreasonableness of the other society's demand, the fact that it did not consult its rival before taking action, even the non-arrival of the letter officially announcing the strike, serves as a phiusible excuse in the subsequent recrimi- nations. Scarcely a year passes without the Trade Union Congress being made the scene of a heated accusation by one society or another, that some other union has " blacklegged " a dispute in which it was engaged, and thereby deprived its members of all the results of their combination.^

• Whenever rivalry and competition for members have existed between unions in the same industry we iind numberless cases of " blacklegging." The relations, for instance, between the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, and all the sectional societies, abound in unfortunate instances on the one side or the other. The twc societies of Bricklayers have, in the past, frequently accused each other's members of the same crime. The "excursions across the Border" of the English and Scottish societies of Tailors and Plumbers have been enlivened by similar recrimi- nations, which are also bandied about among the several unions of general laborers. The Coalmining and Cotton manufacturing industries are honorably free from this feature. An exceptionally bad case of an established union becoming, through blacklegging, a mere tool of the employers, came to light at the Trade Union Congress of 1892, and was personally investigated by us.

The Glasgow Harbour Laborers' Union, established among the Clyde steve- dores in 1853, had, up to 1889, maintained an honorable record for stability and success. In the latter year it found itself, with only 230 members, menaced with extinction by the sudden uprising of the National Union of Dock Laborers in Great Britain and Ireland, a society organised on the antagonistic idea of including every kind of dock and wharf laborers in a national amalgamation. The small.

Interunion Relations 1 2 1

The foregoing detailed description has placed the reader in a position to appreciate the disastrous effect oL com- petition between Trade Unions for members. [Whilst seriously impairing their financial stability as benefit clubs, this rivalry cuts at the root of all effective trade combination. It is no exaggeration to say that to competition between overlapping unions is to be attributed nine- tenths of the ineffectiveness of the Trade Union worldj The great army of engineering operatives, for instance, though exceptional in training and intelligence, and enrolled in stable and well- administered societies, have as yet not succeeded either in negotiating with the employers on anything like equal terms, or in maintaining among themselves any common policy whatsoever. An even larger section of the wage -earning world—that engaged in the great industry of transport—has so far failed, from a similar cause, to build up any really effective Trade Unionism. The millions of laborers, who

old-fashioned, and local society, with its traditions of exclusiveness and "privilege," refused to merge itself, but offered to its big rival a mutual "next preference" working arrangement—that is to say, whilst each society maintained for its own members a preferential right to be taken on at the wharves or yards where they were accustomed to work, it should accord to the members of the other society the right to fill any further vacancies at those yards or wharves in preference to outsiders. The answer to this was a peremptory refusal on the part of the National Union to recognise the existence of its tiny predecessor, whose members accordingly found themselves absolutely excluded from work. The National Union no doubt calculated that it would, in this way, compel the smaller society to yield. But at the very moment it had a great struggle on hand, both in Liver- pool and Glasgow, with one of the principal shipping firms. Communications were quickly opened up between that firm and the Glasgow Harbour Laborers' Society, with the result that the latter undertook to do the firm's work, and thus at one blow not only defeated tlje aggressive pretensions of the National Union but also secured its own existence. This line of conduct was repeated whenever a dispute arose between the employers and any Union on the Clyde. When the Blast-fiimacemen on strike had successfully appealed to the National Amalgamated Sailors' and Firemen's Union, not to unload Spanish pig iron, the Glasgow Harbour Laborers' Union promptly came to the employers' rescue. During the strike of the Scottish Railway Servants' Union, the same society was to the fore in supplying "scab laborers." Its crowning degradation, in Trade Union eyes, came in an alliance with the Shipping Federation, the powerful combination by which the employers hav'e, since 1892, sought to crush the whole Trade Union movement !n the waterside industries. Its conduct was, in that year, brought before the Trade Union Congress, which happened to meet at Glasgow, and the Congress almost unanimously voted the exclusion of its delegates.

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must in any case find it difficult to maintain a common organisation, are constantly hampered in their progress by the existence of competing societies which, starting from different industries, quickly pass into general unions, in- cluding each other's members. Indeed, with the remarkable exceptions of the coal and cotton industries, and, to a lesser extent, that of house-building, there is hardly a great trade in the country in which the workmen's organisations are_not seriously crippled by this fatal dissension.

) Now, experience shows that the permanent cause o f this competitive rivalry and overlapping between unions is th eir o rganisatio n upon bases inconsistent with each other. When two societies mclude and exclude precisely the same sections of workmen, competition between them loses half its bitter- ness, and the solution of the difficulty is only a question of timej We see, for instance, since 1862, the Amalgamated SocifityLflLCa rpente rs and Joiners rapidly distancing its elder competitor, the General Union of Carpenters and Joiners (established 1827)! But—because—»he . mem bers of both societies belong to identically the same trade, are paid by the same methods, earn the same rates, work the same hours, have the same customs and needs, and are in no way to be distinguished from each other, the branches in a given town find no difficulty in concerting, by means of a joint committee, a common trade policy. riA.nd although the existence of two societies weakens the financial position of the one* as well as of the other, the identity of the members' income and requirements, and jtheir constant intercourse, tend steadily to an approximation of the respective scales of contribution and benefitsjCTlnder these circumstances the tendency to amalgamation is, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, almost irresistible, and is usually delayed only by the natural reluctance of some particular official to abdicate the position of leadership.

1 VThe problem which the ^gineers, the transit workers,

'and the laborers have so far failed to solve, is how to

define a trade.) |_Among the engineers, for instance, there is

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no general agreement which groups of workmen have interests sufficiently distinct from the remainder as to make it necessary for them to combine in a sectional organisation ; and there is but little proper appreciation of the relation of these sectional mterests to those which all engineering mechanics have in commoii|^ The enthusiast for amalgama- tion is always harping on the necessity of union amongst all classes of engineering workmen in order to abolish systematic overtime, to reduce the normal hours of labor, and to obtain recognition of Trade Union conditions from \ the government. To the member of the United Pattern- makers' Association or of the Associated Blacksmiths, these objects, however desirable, are subordinate to some re - arrangement of the method or scale of remuneration > peculiar to his own occupation. \The solution of the problem is to be found in a form of organisation which secures Home Rule for any group possessing interests divergent from those of the industry as a whole, whilst at the same time maintaining effective combination through- out the entire industry for the promotion of the interests which are common to all the sections^j , „..^ ,1,^1

Foj^tunsrtely, we are not left to our imagination to devise a paper constitution which would fulfil these conditions. In another industry we find the problem solved with almost perfect success. We have already described the half- dozen distiriCt-classes into which the Cotton -Operatives are naturally divided. Each of these has its own independent union, which carries on its own negotiations with the employers, and would vigorously resist any proposal for amalgamation. But in addition to the sectional interests of each of the six classes, there are subjects upon which two or more of the sections feel in common, and others which concern them all. JTAccordingly, instead of amalgamation on the one hand, Vt isolation on the other, we find the sectional unions combining with each other in various federal organisations of great efficiencyN The Cotton- spinners and the Cardroom Operatives, flying always for

124 Trade Union Structure

the same employers in the same establishments, have [formed the Cotton - Workers' Association, to the funds of which both societies contribute. Each constituent union carried on its own collective bargaining and has its own funds. But it agrees to call out its members in support of the other's dispute, whenever requested to do so, the members so withdrawn being supported from the federal ,/und.^ The Cotton-spinners thus secure the stoppage of the material for their work, whenever they withdraw their labor, and thereby place an additional obstacle in the way of the employer obtaining blackleg spinners. The Card- room Operatives on the other hand, whose labor is almost pnskilled, and could easily be replaced, obtain in their disputes the advantage of the support of the indispensable I Cotton-spinners. No federation for these purposes would be of use to the Cotton -weavers, who often work for employers devoting themselves exclusively to weaving, and whose product goes to a different market, ^ut the Cotton-weavers join with the Cotton-spinners and the Cardroom Operatives in the United Textile Factory Workers' Association, a purely political organisation for the purpose of obtaining and en- forcing the factory and other legislation common to the whole trade^ And it is interesting to notice that the Cotton Operatives not only refrain from converting this strong and stable federation into an amalgamation, but even carry the federal form into the different sections of their industry. The ig.ooo Cotton -spinners, for instance, form a single fighting unit, which, for compactness and absolute discipline, bears comparison even with the United Society of Boilermakers. But though the Cotton-spinners call their union an amalgamation, the larger " provinces " retain the privilege of electing their own officers, and of fixing their own contributions for local purposes and special benefits, and even preserve a certain degree of legislative autonomy. The student who derives his impression of these organisa- tions merely from their elaborate separate rules and reports, 1 This organisation was temporarily suspended in 1896.

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might easily conclude that, in the relation between the Oldham or Bolton " province," and the " Representative Meeting " of the Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton-spinners, we have a genuine case of local and central government. This, however, is not the case. The partial) autonomy of the " provinces " of Oldham and Bolton is noti a case of geographical, but of industrial specialisation^ Each " province has its own peculiar trade, spinning different " counts " for widely different markets. Each is governed by its own peculiar list of piecework prices, based on different considerations. And though the prevailing tendency is towards a greater uniformity of terms and methods, there is still a sufficient distinction between the Oldham and Bolton trades themselves, and between those of the smaller districts, to make any amalgamation a hazardous experiment. Similar considerations have hitherto applied to the Cotton - weavers, who have, indeed, only recently united into a single body. Differences of trade interests, not easy of explanation to the outsider, have hitherto separated town and town, each working under its own piecework list. These sectional differences resulted, until lately, in organisation by loosely federated autonomous groups. It is at least an interesting coincidence that the increasing uniformity of conditions which, in 1884, per- mitted the concentration of these groups into the Northern Counties Amalgamated Association of Cotton-weavers, re- sulted, in 1892, in the adoption, from one end of Lancashire to the other, of a uniform piecework list.

U^e history of Trade Unionism among the Coalminers also supplies instructive instances of federal action- In Northumberland and Durham the present unions included, for the first ten years of their existence, not only the actual hewers of the coal, but also the Deputies (Overlookers), the Enginemen, the Cokemen, and the Mechanics employed in connection with the collieries. This is still the type of union in some of the more recently organised districts. Both in Northumberland and in

126 Trade Union Structure

Durham, however, experience of the difficulties of com- bining such diverse workers has led to the formation of distinct unions for Deputies, Cokemen, and Colliery (Mechanics. IlEach of these acts with complete independ- lence in dealing with the special circumstances of its own loccupation, but unites with the others in the same county in a strong federation for general wage movements.' p And if we pass from the " county federations which are so characteristic of this industry, to the attempts to weld all coal-hewers into aisingle national organisation, we shall see that these attempts have hitherto succeeded only when they have taken the federal form. In 1868 and again in 1874 attempts at complete amalgamation quickly came to grief. Effective federation^pf all the organised districts has, on the other hand, endured\ since 1863.^ B'V^e attribute this pre- ference for the federal form, not to the difficulty of uniting the geographically separated coalfields, but to the divergence of interests between the^i^ Nor^thumberland, Durham, and South Wales, producing chiefly for foreign export, feel that their trade has little in common with that of the Midland Coalfields, which supply, the home market. The thin seams of Somersetshire demand different methods of working, different rates of remuneration, and different allowances, from those in vogue in the rich mines of York- shire. The " fiery " mines of Monmouthshire demand quite a different set of working rules from the harmless seams (A Cannock Chase.* It was, therefore, quite natural that, in 1887, when a demand arose for a strong and active national organisation, this did not take the form of an amalgamated union. [The Miners' Federation, which now includes 200,000 members from Fife to Somerset, is composed of separate

' The Durham County Mining Federation, established 1878, includes the Durham Coalminers, Enginemen's, Cokemen's, and Mechanics' Associations. The Northumberland associations have not established any formal federation but act constantly together.

' See History of Trade Unionism, pp. 274, 287, 335, 350, 380.

' See, for instance, the animated discussion on proposed clause to restrict shot-firing, National Conference of Miners, Birmingham, 9th- 12th January 1893.

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unions, each retaining complete autonomy in its own affairs, and obly asking for the help of the federal body in matters common to the whole kingdom, or in case of a local dispute extending to over 15 per cent of the members^j Any attempt to draw tighter these bonds of union would, in all probahility, at once cause the secession of the Scottish Miners' unions, and would absolutely preclude the adhesion of Northumbei-land, Durham, and South Wales.*

' Other industries afford instances of federal union. The compositors employed in the offices of the great London daily newspapers, at specially high wages, and under quite exceptional conditions, have, since 1853, formed an integral part ol the London Society of Compositors. But they have, from the beginning, had their own quarterly meetings, and elected their own separate executive committee and salaried secretary, who conduct all their distinctive trade business, moving for new privileges and advances independently of the general body. One or more delegates are appointed by the News Department to represent it at general or delegate meetings of the whole society, whilst two representatives of the Book Department (which comprises nine-tenths of the society) sit on the newsmen's executive committee. There is even a tendency to establish similar relations with the special " music printers." The National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives presents an example of incipient federation. The union is made up of large branches in the several towns, each possessing local iimds and appointing its own salaried ofScials. In so far as the members belong to an identical occupation, the tendency is towards increased centralisation. But it has become the rule for the members in each town to divide into branches, not according to geographical propinquity, but according to the class of work which they do. Thus, in any town, " No. i Branch " is composed exclusively of Rivetters and Finishers, " No. 2 Branch " are the Clickers, and where a separate class of Jewish workers exists, these form a "No. 3 Branch." The central executive is elected by electoral divisions according to membership, and has hitherto usually been composed exclusively of the predominating classes of Rivetters and Finishers. But the Clickers, whose interests diverge from those of their colleagues, have, for some time, been demanding separate representation, which they have now been informally granted by the election of their chief salaried official as treasurer of the whole union. A similar movement may be discerned among the Finishers, as against the Rivetters (now become "Lasters"), and it seems probable that this desire for sectional representation, following on partial sectional autonomy, will presently find formal recognition in the constitution.

The building trades afford an interesting case of the abandonment of the experiment of a general union in favor of separate national societies, which are not at present united in any national federation. The Builders' Union of 1830–34 aimed at the ideal afterwards pursued in the engineering industry. All the operatives engaged in the seven sections of the building trade were to be united in a single national amalgamation. This attempt has never been repeated. In its place we have the great national unions of Stonemasons, Carpenters, Brick- layers, Plumbers, and Plasterers', whilst the Painters and the Builders' Laborers have not yet emerged from the stage of the local trade club. Between the central executives of these societies there is no federal union. In almost every

128 Trade Union Structure

frhese examples of success and failure in uniting sieveral sections of workmen in a single unit of government , point to the existence of an upper and a lower limit to the process of amalgamation. It is one of the conditions of effective trade action that a union should include all the workmen whose occupation or training is such as to jenable them, at short notice, to fill the places held by its m^mbets^ It would, for instance, be most undesirable for such inter- changeable mechanics as fitters, turners, and erectors, to maintain separate Trade Unions, with distinct trade policies. And if the Cardroom Operatives could easily " mind " the self-acting mule of the Cotton-spinners, it might possibly suit the latter to arrange an amalgamation between the two societies, just as the Rivetters found it convenient to absorb the Holders-up into the United Society of Boilermakers and Iron Shipbuilders.^ VThere appears to be no advantage in carrying amalgamation (as distinct from federation) beyond this point. But there are often serious difficulties in going even thus farj The efficient working of an amalgamated> society requires that all sections of the members should be fairly uniform in the methods of their remuneration, the conditions of their employment, and the amount of their standard earnings. (Moreover, it may confidently be pre- dicted that no amalgamation will be stable in which the several sections differ appreciably in strategic position, in such a manner as to make it advantageous for them to

town there has, however, grown up a local Building Trades' Federation, formed by the local branches to concert joint action against their common employers, as regards hours of labor and local advances or reductions of wages, bodi of which are in each town usually simultaneous and identical for all sections. We have elsewhere referred to the difficulties arising from this separate action of each town, and it is at least open to argument whether the building trades would not be better advised to form a national federation to concert a common national policy, having federal officials in the large towns, who would, like the district delegates of the United Society of Boilermakers, represent the whole organisation, though acting in consultation with local committees.

' The Holders-up were admitted into the society in 1881, at the instance oi the general secretary, who represented that Holders-up were indispensable fellow- workers and possible blacklegs, and must therefore be brought under the control of the organisation, more especially as they were beginning to form separate clubs of their own.

Tnterunion Relations 129

move at different times, or by different expedients. Finally, experience seems to show that in no trade will a I well-paid and well-organised but numerically weak section permanently consent to remain in the subordination to inferior operatives, which any amalgamation of all sections of a large and varied industry must usually involve.^

Let us apply these axioms to the tangle of competing societies in the engineering trade. The fitters, turners, and erectors who work in the same shop, on the same job, under identical methods of remuneration, for wages ap- proximately equal in amount, and who can without difficulty do each other's work, form, no doubt,) a natural unit' of governmen t.^ * We might perhaps add to these the smiths, though the persistence of a few separate smiths' societies, and the uprising of joint societies of smiths and strikers, may indicate a different cleavage. With regard to the pattern-makers, it is easy to understand why the United Pattern-makers' Association is now attracting a majority of the men entering this section of the trade. These highly skilled and superior artisans constitute a tiny minority amid the great engineering army ; they usually enjoy a higher Standard Rate than any other section ; and any advances or reductions in their wages must almost necessarily occur at different times from similar changes among the engineers proper. It is even open to argument whether, for Collective Bargaining, the pattern-makers are not actually stronger when acting alone than when in alliance with the whole engineering industry. CWe are, therefore, disposed to agree with the con- tention of the United Pattern-makers' Association that "when the interests of our own particular section are concerned, we hold it as the first principle of our Association that these interests can only be thoroughly understood, and effectively looked after, by ourselves." *^ The same conclusions apply,

' In 1896, though the Amalgamated Society of Engineers enrolled the un- precedented total of 13,321 new members, all but 1803 of these belonged to the classes of fitters, turners, or millwrights.

2 Preface to Rules of the United Pattern-makers' Association (Manchester, 1892).

VOL. I *'

130 Trade Union Structure

though in a lesser degree, to some other sections now included in the Amalgamated Society, and they would decisively negative the suggestion to absorb such distinct and highly organised trades as the Plumbers and Ironfounders.^

This conclusion does not mean that each section of the engineering trade should maintain a complete independence. " We quite acknowledge," state the Pattern-makers, " that it would be neither politic nor possible to completely sever our connection with the organisation representative of the engineering trade, and we are always ready to co-operate with contemporary societies in movements which affect the 1 interests of the general body." * jThere are, indeed, some Imatters as to which the whole engineering industry must act in concert if it is to act at all. A great establishment like Elswick, employing 10,000 operatives in every section of the industry, would find it intolerable to conduct separate negotiations, and fix different meal-times or different holidays for the different branches of the tradej We find, in fact, the associated employers on the North-east Coast expressly com-

1 Our analysis thus definitely refutes the suggestion that the quarrels be- tween the engineers and plumbers, and the shipwrights and joiners respectively, might be obviated by the amalgamation of the competing unions. The two trades overlap in a few shipbuilding jobs, but in nine-tenths of their work it would be impossible for an engineer to take the place of the plumber, or a ship- wright that of a joiner, or vice versd. In strategic position the plumber differs fundamentally from the engineer, and the joiner from the shipwright The engineering and shipbuilding trades are subject to violent fluctuations, which depend upon the alternate inflations and depressions of the national commerce. The building trades, on the other hand, with which nine-tenths of the joiners and plumbers must be counted, vary considerably according to the season of the year, but fluctuate comparatively little from year to year ; and the general fluctuations to which they are subject do not coincide with those of the shipbuilding and engineering industries. By the time that the wave of expansion has reached the building trades, the staple industries of the country are already in the trough of the succeeding depression. It would have been difficult to have persuaded a Newcastle engineer or a shipwright in the spring of 1893, when 20 per cent of his colleagues were out of work, that the plumbers and carpenters were well advised in choosing that particular moment to press for better terms. Finally, we have the almost insuperable difficulty of securing adequate representation for the 9000 plumbers, scattered in every town amid the 87,000 engineers ; and, on the other hand, the 14,000 shipwrights concentrated in a few ports amid the 49,000 joiners spread over the whole country.

' Preface to Rules of the United Pattern-makers' Association (Manchester, 1892).

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plaining in 1890, "of the great inconvenience and difficulty experienced in the settlement of wages and other general questions between employers and employed"; and ascribing the constant friction that prevailed to the " want of uniformity of action and similarity of demand put forward by the various societies representing the skilled engineering labor." 'Collective Bargaining becomes impracticable when different' societies are proposing new regulations on overtime in- consistent with each other, and when rival organisations, each claiming to represent the same section of the trade, are putting forward divergent claims as to the methods and| rates of remuneration. The employers were driven to insist that the " deputations meeting them to negotiate … should represent all the societies interested in the question underv consideration." ^ _\ And when the method to be employed is not Collective Bargaining but Parliamentary action, federal union is even more necessary.\ If the mechanics in the great government arsenals and factories desire modifica- tions in their conditions of employment, union of purpose among the tens of thousands of engineering electors all over

the country is indispensable for success.

>§o long, however, as the Amalgamated Society of Engineers claims to include within its own ranks every kind of engineering mechanic, and to decide by itself the. policy to be pursued, a permanent and effective federal organisation is impossible. Any attempt to combine in the same industry the mutually inconsistent schemes of amal- gamation and federation may even intensify the friction. I Thus we find, in 1888, to quote again from a report of the

1 Circular of the Iron Trades Employers' Association on the Overtime Ques- tion, October 1891. We attribute the practical failure of the Engineering operatives to check systematic overtime, an evil against which they have been striving ever since 1836, to the chaotic state of the organisation of the trade. A similar lack of federal union stood in the way of the London bookbinders in 1893, when they succeeded without great diflEculty in obtaining an Eight Hours' Day from those employers who were bookbinders only. In the great printing estab- lishments, such as Waterlow's and Spottiswoode's, they found it practically impossible to arrange an Eight Hours' Day in the binding departments, whilst the printers continued to work for longer hours.

132 Trade Union Structure

United Pattern-makers' Association, "the sectional societies (on North-east Coast), indignant at the arbitrary manner in which the Amalgamated Society of Engineers had acted, federated together with the avowed object of resisting a repetition of any such behaviour in case of further wages movements, and asserting their right to be consulted before definite action was taken. … It is impossible," continues the report, "to dissociate the action of our contemporaries (the Amalgamated Society of Engineers) from their recent unsuccessful attempt at amalgamating the various sectional societies ; and it would seem that they, finding it impossible to absorb their weaker brethren by fair means, had resolved to shatter the confidence they have in their unions by showing them their impotence to influence, of themselves, their relations between their employers and members." ^ The "Federal Board," thus formed by the smaller engineering societies on Tyneside in antagonism to their more powerful rival, lasted for three years, but failed, it is needless to say, in securing industrial peace. A more important and more promising attempt has been marred by the persistent absten- tion of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. Hn 1890, Mr. Robert Knight, the able general secretary of the United Society of Boilermakersjsucceeded, after repeated failures, in drawing together in a powerful national federation the great majority of the unions connected with the engineering and shipbuilding industries. This Federation of Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades of the United Kingdom "J includes such powerful organisations as the United Society of Boilermakers, 40,776 members; the Associated Shipwrights' Society, 14,235 members ; and the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners, 48,631 members, who are content to meet on equal terms such smaller unions as the Steam-Engine Makers' Society, 7000 members ; the United Operative Plumbers' Society, 8758 members; the United Pattern-makers' Associa- tion, 3636 members; the National Amalgamated Society of Painters and Decorators, and half a dozen more minute 1 Monthly Report of the United Pattern-maker^ Society, January 1889.

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sectional societies. fThis federation has now lasted over seven years, and has fulfilled a useful function in settling disputes between the different unions. \ But as an instrument for<j Collective Bargaining with me employers, or for taking^ concerted action on behalf of the whole industry, it is useless ^ so long as 'the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, with itsj 87,455 members, holds resolutely aloof. And the Amal- ; gamated Society of Engineers, still wedded to the ideal of one undivided union, cannot bring itself to accept as per- manent colleagues, the sectional societies which it regards as illegitimate combinations undermining its own position.^

' The first numbers of the Amalgamated Engineer^ Monthly Journal—an official organ started on the accession of Mr. George Barnes to the general secretaryship—shows that thinking members of the Amalgariation are coming roimd to the idea of federal union with the sectional societies, and others con- nected with the engineering and shipbuilding industry. Thus Mr. Tom Mann, in the opening number (January 1897, pp. lo-ii), declares "that the bulk of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers' men are ashamed … of their present power- lesscess. … Whence comes the weakness ? Beyond any doubt it is primarily due to the feet that no concerted action is taken by the various unions. … That is, the Amalgamated Society of Engineers has not yet learnt the necessity for forming part of a real federation of all trades connected with this particular profession. … What member can look back over the last few years and not blush with shame at what has taken place between the Amalgamated Society of Engineers and the Plumbers, and the Boilermakers and Shipbuilders ; and who can derive satisfac- tion in reflecting upon the want of friendly relations between the Amalgamated Society of Engineers … and the Pattern-makers and Shipwrights, and Steam- Engine Makers, etc. ? A fighting force is wanted … and this can only be obtained by a genuine federation of societies connected with the trades referred to. … The textile workers (cotton) have federated the various societies, and are able to secure united action on a scale distinctly in advance of that of the engineering trades." And in the succeeding issue Mr. John Bums vigorously strikes the same note. " To really prevent this internecine and disintegrating strife, the first step for the Amalgamated Engineers this year is to join at once with all the other unions in [a] federation of engineering trades." Two months later (April 1897, pp. 12–14) comes a furious denunciation of the proposal, signed "Primitive," who invokes the "shades of Allan and eloquence of Newton " against this attempted undoing of their work. "Just because a few interested labor busybodies have got it into their heads that they can run a cheap-jack show for every department of our trade with the same effect as our great combina- tion, we are to drop our arms, pull down our socks, hide our tail under our nether parts, and shout 'peccavi.' … Sectional societies for militant purposes are useless, and therefore they only exist—where such is practised—as friendly societies. … Amalgamation is our title, our war-cry and our principle ; and once we admit that it is necessary to ' federate ' with sectional societies we give away the whole case to the enemy. … Federatibn with trades whose work- shop practice is keenly distinct from our own is a good means to a better end.

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hi now, looking back on the whole history of organisation in the engineering trade, we may be " wise after the event," we suggest that it would have been better if the local trade clubs had confined themselves each to a single section of engineering workmen, and if they had then developed into national societies of like scope.J^ Had this been the case, and could Newton and Allan have foreseen the enormous growth and increasing differentiation of their industry, they would have advocated, not a single comprehensive amalgamation, but a federation of sectional societies of national extentjfor such purposes as were common to the whole engineering trade. This federation would have, in the first instance, included a great national society of fitters, turners, and erectors on the one hand, and smaller national societies of smiths and pattern-makers respectively. And as organisa- tion proceeded among the brass-workers, coppersmiths, and machine-workers, and as new classes arose, like the electrical engineers, these could each have been endowed with a sufficient measure of Home Rule, and admitted as separate sections to the federal union. This federal union might then have combined in a wider and looser federation, for specified purposes, with the United Society of Boilermakers, the Friendly Society of Ironfounders, the Associated Shipwrights' Society, and the other organisations interested in the great industry of iron steamship building and equipping.M

One practical precept emerges from our consideration of all these forms of association. It is a fundamental condi- tion of stable and successful federal action that the degree of unionbe tween the constituent bodies should corresp ond ^trictly w ith the degree of their unity of interest. This will

-Federation with trades whose shop practice is similar, whose interests are identical, and who ought to be with us in every fight, is a maudlin means to a general fizzle." The question is now (August 1897) a subject of keen debate in the society.

1 The several national societies of Carpenters, Plumbers, Painters, Cabinet- makers, etc., would, in respect of their members working in shipbuilding yards, also join this Federation ; whilst they would, at the same time, continue to be in closer federal union with the Bricklayers, Stonemasons, and other societies o< building operatives.

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be most easily recognised on the financial side. We have already more than once adverted to the fact that a scale of contributions and benefits, which would suit the require- ments of one class, might be entirely out of the reach of other sections, whose co-operation was nevertheless indis- pensable for effective common action. But this is not all. We have to deal, not only with .{"classes differing in the> amount of their respective incomes, but also with wide > divergences between the ways in which the several classes need to lay out their incomes,^ vThe amount levied by the federal body for the common purse must therefore not on^y be strictly limited to the cost of the services in which all the constituent bodies have an identical interest, but must also not exceed, in any case, the amount which the poorest section finds it advantageous to expend on these serviceg,^

But our precept has a more subtle application to the aims and policy of the federal bodig^and to the manner ih which its decisions are arrived at. rThe permanence of the> federation will be seriously menaced if it pursues any course of action which, though beneficial to the majority of its constituent bodies, is injurious to any one among thejal The constituent bodies came together, at the outset, for the promotion of purposes desired, not merely by a majority, but by all of them ; and it is a violation of the implied contract between them to use the federal force, towards the creation of which all have jcontributed, in a manner inimical to any one of them. \This means that, where the interests diverge, any federal decision must be essentially the result of consultation between the representa- tives of the several sections, with a view of discovering the " greatest common measurej These issues must, therefore, never be decided merely by counting votes. So long as the questions dealt wi|h affect all the constituents in approxi- mately the same manner, mere differences of opinion as to projects or methods may safely be decided by a majority vote. If the results are, in fact, advantageous, the dis- approval of the minority will quickly evaporate ; if, on the

136 Trade Union Struchire

other hand, the results prove to be disadvantageous, the dissentients will themselves become the dominant force. In either case no permanent cleavage is caused. fBut if the difference of opinion between the majority and the minority arises from a real divergence of sectional interests, and is therefore fortified by the event, any attempt on the part of the majority to force its will on the minority will, in a voluntary federation, lead to secession. J

^^.JfTKus, we are led insensibly to a whole theory of " pro- ' ^ggstional representation" in federal constitutions. In a homo- geneous association, where no important divergence of actual interest can exist,' the supreme governing authority can safely be elected, and fundamental issues can safely be decided, by mere counting of heads. Such an association will naturally adopt a representative systeni based on universal suffrage and equat electoral districts. /But when in any federal body" we have a combination of sections of unequal numerical strength, having different interests, decisions cannot safely be left to representatives elected or voting according to the' numerical membership of the constituent bodies. For this, in effect, would often mean giving a decisive voice to the members of the largest section, or to those of the two or three larger sections, without the smaller sections having any effective voting influence on the resultLj Any such arrange- ment seldom fails to produce cleavage and eventual secession, as the members of the dominant sections naturally vote for their own interest. \^ It is therefore pref erable, as a means of se curing the permanence of the federatio r i, tH^*' tV rTr ° ™n- ta tion of the constituent bodies should noJi J'p pvartly pmp nr- tion ate to their respective membersh ip s. Jm ^^ ^ representative system of a federation should, in fact, nice its finances, vary with the degree to which the interests of the constituent bodies are really identical. Wherever interests are divergent, the scale must at any rate be so arranged that no one con- stituent, however large, can outvote the remainder ; and, indeed, so that no two or three of the larger constituents could, by mutual agreerhent, swamp all t^eir colleagues/ If

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for instance, it is proposed to federate all the national unions in the engineering trade, it would be unwise for the Amalga- mated Society of Engineers to claim proportional represen- tation for its 87,000 members, mainly fitters and turners, as compared with the 10,000 pattern-makers, smiths, and machine -workers divided among three sectional societies. And when a federation includes a large number of very" different constituents, and exists for common purposes so limited as to bear only a small proportion to the particular interests of the several sections, it may be desirable frankly to give up all idea of representation according to member- ship, and to accord to each constituent an equal voice . Hence the founders of the Federation of the Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades exercised, in our opinion, a wise discretion when they accorded to the 9000 members of the Operative Plumbers' Society exactly the same representation and voting power as is enjoyed by the 41,000 members of the United Society of Boilermakers, or by the 40^00 members of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters. \K federal body« of this kind, formed only for certain definite purposes, and composed of unions with distinct and sometimes divergent interests, stands at the opposite end of the scale from Jhe homogeneous " amalgamated " societyJ^-'irEe representatives of the constituent bodies meet for the composing of mutual differences and the discovery of common interests. They resemble, in fact, ambassadors who convey the desires of their respective sovereign states, contribute their special knowledge to the common council, but are unable to promise obedience to the federal decision, unless it commends itself as a suit- able compromise, or carries with it the weight of an almost unanimous consensus of opinion.^

The problem of finding a stable unit of government and of determining the relation between superior and subordinate authorities seems, therefore, to be in a fair way of solution

1 We revert to these considerations when, in describing the Trade Union machinery for political action, we come to deal with such federations as th« Trade Union Congress and the local Trades Councils.

VOL. I F 2

13S Trade Union Structure

in the Trade Union world. With the ever - increasing mobility of labor and extension of industry, the local trade club has had to give place to a combination of national extent. So long as the craft or occupation is fairly uniform from one end of the kingdom to the other, the geographical boundaries of the autonomous state must, in the Trade Union world, ultimately coincide with those of the nation itself. We have seen, too, how inevitably the growth of national Trade Unions involves, for strategic, and what may be called military reasons, the reduction of local autonomy to a minimum, and the complete centralisation of all financial, and therefore of all executive government at the national headquarters. This tendency is strengthened by economic considerati^s which we shall develop in a subsequent chapter. Of the Trade Union is to have any success in I its main function of improving the circumstances of its i members' employment, it must build up a dyke of a uniform minimum of conditions for identical work throughout the kingdomj This uniformity of conditions, or, indeed, any industrial influence whatsoever, implies a cer tain uniformity and consistency of trade policy, which is Jonly rendered possible by centralisation of administraticuy So far, our conclusions lead, it would seem, to the absolute simplicity of one all-embracing centralised autocracy. But, in the Trade Union world, the problem of harmonising local ad- ministration and central control, which for a moment we seemed happily to have e;ot rid of, comes back in an even more intractable form. VThs very aim of uniformity of con- ditions, the very fact that uniformity of trade policy is indispensable to efficiency, makes it almost impossible to combine in a single organisation, with a common piirse, a common executive, and a common staff of salaried officials, men of widely different occupations and grades of skill, widely different Standards of Life and industrial needs, or widely different numerical strengths and strategic oppor- tunifiesj^ A Trade Union is essentially an organisation for securing certain concrete and definite advantages for all its

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members—advantages which differ from trade to trade according to its technical processes, its economic position, and, it may be, the geographical situation in which it is carried on. Hence all the attempts at "General Unions\ have, in our view, been inevitably foredoomed to failu^J The hundreds of thousands of the working class who joined the "Grand National Consolidated Trades Union" in 1833–34 came together, it is true, on a common basis of human brother- hood, and with a common faith in the need for a radical reconstruction of society. But instead of inaugurating a " New Moral World," either by precept or by political revolu- tion, they found themselves as a Trade Union, fighting the employers in the Lancashire cotton mills to get shorter hours of labor, in the Leeds cloth trade to obtain definite piecework rates, in the London building trade to do away with piecework altogether, in Liverpool to abolish the sub- contractor, in the hosiery trade to escape from truck and deductions. Each trade, in short, translated " human brother- hood" into the remedying of its own particular technical grievance, and the central executive wg£_jquite unable to check the accuracy of the translation. ^The whole history of Trade Unionism confirms the inference that a Trade Union, formed as it is, for the distinct purpose of obtaining concrete and definite material improvements in the conditions of its members' employment, cannot, in its simplest form, safely extend beyond the area within which thos e ident ical improvements are shared by all its members—cannot spread, that is to say, beyond the bo undaries of a single occupa- tionv_jBut the discovery ol thiT simple unit of government does not exhaust the problem. Whilst the differences between the sections render complete amalgamation im- practicable, their identityjn other interests makes some bond of union imperative. I The most efficient form of Trade Union organisation is therefore one in which the several secfiortS can be united ibr the purposes that they have m common, to the exte nt to which identity of interest prevails, and no further, whilst at the same time each section preserves

140 Trade. Union Structure

complete auto nomy wherever its interests or purposes diverg e j rom those of its allies^ \ But this is only another form'of the difficult political problem of the relation of supreme to subordinate authorities. Whilst the student of political democracy has been grappling with the question of how to distribute administration between central and local author- ities, the unlettered statesmen of the Trade Union world nave had to decide the still more difficult issue of ^w to distribute power between general and sectio nal industrial combinations, both of national extent./ |Tne solution has been found in a series of widening an3cross-cutting federa- tions, each of which combines, to the extent only of its own particular objects, those organisations which are conscious ^ their identity of purpose. Instead of a simple form of democratic organisation we get, therefore, one of extreme complexity. Where the difficulties of the problem have feen rightly apprehended, and the whole industry has been organised on what may be called a single plane, the result may be, as in the case of the Cotton Operatives, a complex but harmoniously working democratic machine of remarkable efficiency and stability. Where, on the other hand, the industry has been organised on incompatible bases, as among the Engineers, we find a complicated tangle of relationships producing rivalry and antagonism, in which effective common action, even for such purposes as are common to all sections, becomes almost impossibjgj

") Tfade Union organisation, if it is to reach its highest possible efficiency, must therefore assume a federal form.^ Instead of a supreme central government, delegating parts of its power to subordinate local authorities, we may expect to see the Trade Union world developing into an elaborate series of federations, among which it will be difficult to decide where 1 the sovereignty really resides. Where the several sections closely resemble each other in their cirO cumstances and needs, where their common purposes are! relatively numerous and important, and where, as a result/ individual secession and subsequent isolation would be)

Interunion Relations 14^

dangerous, the federal tie will be strong, and the federal" government will, in_ effect, become the supreme authority. At the other end of the scale will stand those federations, little more than opportunities for consultation, in which the contracting parties retain each a real autonomy, and use the federal executive as a convenient, but strictly subordinate machinery for securing those limited purposes that they have in common. And we have ventured to suggest, as an interesting corollary, that the basis of re- presentation s hould, in all these c o nstitutions, vary according to the charact er of the bond of union, r epresent ation propo rtionate to membership being;' perfe ^tV spplirnhln nrrl^' to a homogeneous organisati on, and decreasing in sui tability with every degree 01 dissimilarity hetvfreen the- cnnatk-aefKfe- bodies;^ Where the sectional interests are not only distinct, but may, in certain cases, be even antagonistic, as, for instance, in industries subject to demarcation disputes, rule by majority vote must be frankly abandoned, and the repre- sentatives of societies widely differing in numerical strength must, under penalty of common failure, consent to meet on equal terms, to discover, by consultation, how best to conciliate the interests of all.