Twentieth Century Socialism: What It Is Not; What It Is: How It May Come

by Edmond Kelly

It is perfectly true that this tendency is frowned upon by the trade unionists at large; but the reason for this is that every union which tries to be exclusive cultivates a crop of non-unionists who constitute a menace to the union.

A better illustration of the quandary in which unionists find themselves between the importance of being comprehensive in the one hand and the importance of being exclusive on the other, is found in their attitude towards boy labor.

Modern conditions have made apprenticeship practically obsolete, and yet many national organizations endeavor to maintain the practice with a view to preventing too great a supply of skilled workers in the trade. The limit generally fixed by national organizations is 1 to 10, though some, such as pressmen, trunk and bag workers, flint glass workers, allow 1 to 4. Lithographers allow 1 to 5.[92] "It is obvious," says the Report of the Industrial Commission, "that the chief motive which influences the unions in the shaping of their apprenticeship rules is the desire to maintain their wages, by diminishing competition within the trades."[93]

It is true that many unions in controlling apprenticeship are animated by a much higher purpose; that is to say, to provide that when a boy undertakes to learn a trade he shall have a chance to learn it.

John Mitchell in his book[94] claims that the restriction of admission of apprentices in the United States is negligibly small, and yet deplores the fact that "the great mass of youths to-day receive little or no training in their particular trade as a result of the breakdown of the apprenticeship system." In his opinion the solution to the problem is not to be found in apprenticeship, but in industrial schools; yet he deplores the hostility of graduates of trade schools to trade unions, without apparently recognizing that this hostility is due to the hostility first evinced by unions to trade schools. But let us turn from conflicting opinions and look the facts in the face.

When a unionist approaches the age of forty years, he is confronted by the fact that he cannot rival in speed and efficiency the work of a young graduate of an industrial school. He looks forward to the time when his place will be taken by the graduate of the industrial school. He is very naturally therefore hostile to the industrial school and the graduate of the industrial school is for the same reason hostile to him. And here we come to the real difficulty: When a trade union fails to include all the members in the trade, it does not succeed in eliminating competition between workingmen. On the contrary, it begins by creating two hostile classes of workingmen: Those within the union and those without—classes which bitterly hate one another because they are both fighting for the same job. But they do more than this: They create competition within the trade union because by insisting upon high wages and short hours they are making it impossible for the employer to utilize the service of any but the most efficient. John Mitchell himself points this out. In resisting the charge that trade unions tend to level down, he says: "If there is a levelling at all in the trade union world, it is a levelling up and not a levelling down. The only levelling which the trade union does is the elimination of men who are below a certain fixed standard of efficiency."[95] He further expresses it in another passage:[96] "Trade unionism tends to improve workmen not only directly, through an increase in wages and a reduction in hours, but it attains the same end in an indirect manner. The general policy of trade unionism, as has been explained before, is the establishment of a minimum wage, safeguarding, as a rule, the right of the employer to discharge for proved inefficiency. The result of this is the gradual creation of a dead line of a standard of efficiency, to which all who work must attain. Where there is a minimum wage of four dollars a day, the workman can no longer choose to do only three dollars' worth of work and be paid accordingly, but he must earn four dollars, or else cease from work, at least in that particular trade, locality, or establishment. The consciousness that he may be employed for a varying wage permits many a man to give way to his natural idleness and carelessness, whereas the maintenance of a rigid standard causes a rapid and steady improvement. The minimum wage acts upon the workman, as the school examination upon the child. If a child falls, by however small a margin, below the standard set by the school, he fails of promotion, and the stimulus which is strong in the case of a school child is infinitely more intense in that of a worker with a family dependent upon him. The principle of the survival of the fittest through union regulations works out slowly and unevenly; nevertheless its general effect is towards a steady and continuous progress of workingmen to a permanently higher standard of efficiency."[97]

There is one point upon which the author is silent—yet it is the point which enormously interests the workingman at large: this is that while trade unionism guarantees high wages and short hours to the efficient, it throws out of the trade altogether those workingman who do not attain a high standard of efficiency or who, having attained it, fall back from it owing to overwork, sickness, or old age.

There is, therefore, a perpetual struggle going on in the trade unions, not only between members and non-members, but even amongst the members of the union itself, in view of the fact that diminished efficiency must eventually lead to the weeding out of the inefficient. In periods of industrial depression such as we have just passed through it is obvious that the most inefficient are the first to be dismissed, and being the most inefficient, they are the ones least able to find employment in other industries.

Under the title of Unemployment, the extent of this evil has been pointed out; it must not be lost sight of; it reaches a population of a million at the best of times and of five millions at such times as these.

But the problem raised by the importance of comprehensiveness to prevent "scabbing" on the one hand and of exclusiveness to maintain wages on the other, is not confined to such details as initiation fees and apprenticeship. It covers the whole question of the employment of boys, women, old men, and half-supported persons, and includes the "sweating" system.