INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY

Demy 8vo; Tenth Thousand; New Edition in 1 vol., with New Introductory Chapter; lxi and 929 pp. (1907), with Two Diagrams.

Price 12s. net.

In this work the authors of The History of Trade Unionism deal, not with the past, but with the present. They describe, with the systematic detail of the scientific observer, and in the same objective spirit, all the forms of Trade Unionism, Factory Legislation, and other regulation of industry to be found within the British Isles. The whole structure and function of Labour Organisations and Restrictive Legislation in every industry is analysed and criticised in a manner never before attempted. The employer in difficulties with his workmen, the Trade Unionist confronted with a new assault upon his Standard Rate, the politician troubled about a new project for Factory Legislation, the public-spirited citizen concerned as to the real issues of a labour dispute, will find elucidated in this work the very problems about which they are thinking. It is a storehouse of authenticated facts about every branch of "the Labour Question," gathered from six years' personal investigation into every industry in all parts of the Kingdom; systematically classified; and made accessible by an unusually elaborate Index. But the book is more than an Encyclopedia on the Labour Question. Scientific examination of Trade Union structure reveals, in these thousand self governing republics, a remarkable evolution in Democratic constitutions, which throws light on political problems in a larger sphere. The century-long experience of these working-class organisations affords unique evidence as to the actual working of such expedients as the Referendum, the Initiative, Government by Mass Meeting, Annual Elections, Proportional Representation, Payment of Members, and, generally, the relation between the citizen-elector, the chosen representative, and the executive officer. The intricate relations of trade with trade have an interesting bearing upon such problems as Local Government, Federation, and Home Rule. Those who regard the participation of a working-class electorate in the affairs of Government as the distinctive, if not the dangerous feature in modern politics, will here find the phenomenon isolated, and may learn how the British workman actually deals with similar issues in his own sphere. The intricate constitutions and interesting political experiments of the thousand self-governing Trade Union republics are dissected and criticised by the authors in such a way as to make the work a contribution to Political Science, as to the scope and method of which the authors, in describing their investigations, propound a new view.

The analysis of the working of Trade Unionism and Factory Legislation in the various industries of the United Kingdom has involved a reconsideration of the conclusions of Political Economy. The authors give a new and original description of the working of industrial competition in the business world of to-day; and they are led to important modifications of the views currently held upon Capital, Interest, Profits, Wages, Women's Labour, the Population Question, Foreign Competition, Free Trade, etc. The latter part of the work is, in fact, a treatise upon Economics.

A new Introductory Chapter deals at length with Compulsory Courts of Arbitration and Wages-Boards in New Zealand and Australia.

CONTENTS

		Preface
		Introduction To the New Edition.

PART I

TRADE UNION STRUCTURE

CHAP.
I.		Primitive Democracy.
II.		Representative Institutions.
III.		The Unit of Government.
IV.		Interunion Relations.

PART II

TRADE UNION FUNCTION

CHAP.
I.		The Method of Mutual Insurance..
II.		The Method of Collective Bargaining.
III.		Arbitration.
IV.		The Method of Legal Enactment.
V.		The Standard Rate.
V1.		The Normal Day.
V1I.		Sanitation and Safety.
VIII.		New Processes and Machinery.
IX.		Continuity of Employment.
X.		The Entrance to a Trade.
		(a) Apprenticeship.
		(b) The Limitation of Boy Labour.
		(c) Progression within the Trade.
		(d) The Exclusion of Women.
XI.		The Right to a Trade.
XII.		The Implications of Trade Unionism.
XIII.		The Assumptions of Trade Unionism.

PART III

TRADE UNION THEORY

CHAP.
I.		The Verdict of the Economists.
II.		The Higgling of the Market.
III.		The Economic Characteristics Of Trade Unionism.
		(a) The Device of Restriction of Numbers.
		(b) The Device of the Common Rule.
		(c) The Effect of the Sectional Application of the Common Rule
		on the Distribution of Industry.
		(d) Parasitic Trades.
		(e) The National Minimum.
		(f) The Unemployable.
		(g) Summary of the Economic Characteristics of the Device Of
		The Common Rule.
		(h) Trade Union Methods.
IV.		Trade Unionism and Democracy.

APPENDICES

The Legal Position of Collective Bargaining in England—The Bearing of Industrial Parasitism and the Policy of a National Minimum on the Free Trade Controversy—Some Statistics bearing on the Relative Movements of the Marriage and Birth-Rates, Pauperism, Wages, and the Price of Wheat—A Supplement to the Bibliography of Trade Unionism.

"A permanent and invaluable contribution to the sum of human knowledge.... We commend to the public a book which is a monument of research and full of candour.... Indispensable to every publicist and politician."—Times (on day of publication).

LONGMANS, GREEN & CO.

LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA

WORKS BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB