The slow, intermittent, and fragmentary manner in which labour-unions have been hitherto conducted even in the stronger trades, is a fact which has perhaps done more to hide the true parallelism in the evolution of capital and labour. The path traced above has not yet been traversed by the bulk of English working men, while, as has been shown, working women have hardly begun to contemplate the first step. But the uneven rate of development, in the case of capital and labour, should not blind us to the law which is operating in both movements. The representative relation between capital and labour is no longer that between a single employer and a number of individual working men, each of the latter making his own terms with the former for the sale of his labour, but between a large company or union of employers on the one hand, and a union of workmen on the other. The last few years have consolidated and secured this relation in the case of such powerful staple industries in England as mining, ship-building, iron-work, and even in the weaker low-skilled industries the relation is gradually winning recognition.
§ 7. Probabilities of Industrial Peace.--This concentrative process at work in both capital and labour, consolidating the smaller industrial units into larger ones, and tending to a unification of the masses of capital and of labour engaged respectively in the several industries, is at the present time by far the most important factor of industrial history. How far these two movements in capital and in labour react on one another for peace or for strife is a delicate and difficult question. Consideration of the common interest of capital and labour dependent on their necessary co-operation in industry might lead us to suppose that along with the growing organization of the two forces there would come an increased recognition of this community of interest which would make constantly and rapidly for industrial peace. But we must not be misled by the stress which is rightly laid on the identity of interest between capital and labour. The identity which is based on the general consideration that capital and labour are both required in the conduct of a given business, is no effective guarantee against a genuine clash of interests between the actual forms of capital and the labourers engaged at a given time in that particular business. To a body of employés who are seeking to extract a rise of wages from their employers, or to resist a reduction of wages, it is no argument to point out that if they gain their point the fall of profit in their employers' business will have some effect in lowering the average interest on invested capital, and will thus prevent the accumulation of some capital which would have helped to find employment for some more working men. The immediate direct interests of a particular body of workmen and a particular company of employers may, and frequently will, impel them to a course directly opposed to the wider interests of their fellow-capitalists or fellow-workers. But it is evident that the smaller the industrial unit, the more frequent will these conflicts between the immediate special interest and the wider class interest be. Since this is so, it would follow that the establishment of larger industrial units, such as workmen's unions and employers' unions, based on a cancelling of minor conflicting interests, will diminish the aggregate quantity of friction between capital and labour. If there were a close union between all the river-side and carrying trades of the country, it is far less likely that a particular local body of dock-labourers would, in order to seize some temporary advantage for themselves, be allowed to take a course which might throw out of work, or otherwise injure, the other workers concerned in the industries allied to theirs. One of the important educative effects of labour organizations will be a growing recognition of the intricate rapport which subsists not only between the interests of different classes of workers, but between capital and labour in its more general aspect. This lesson again is driven home by the dramatic scale of the terrible though less frequent conflicts which still occur between capital and labour. Industrial war seems to follow the same law of change as military war. As the incessant bickering of private guerilla warfare has given way in modern times to occasional, large, organized, brief, and terribly destructive campaigns, so it is in trade. In both cases the aggregate of friction and waste is probably much less under the modern régime, but the dread of these dramatic lessons is growing ever greater, and the tendency to postponement and conciliation grows apace. But just as the fact of a growing identity in the interest of different nations, the growing recognition of that fact, and the growing horror of war, potent factors as they seem to reasonable men, make very slow progress towards the substitution of international arbitration for appeals to the sword, so in industry we cannot presume that the existence of reasonable grounds for conciliation will speedily rid us of the terror and waste of industrial conflicts. It is even possible that just as the speedy formation of a strong national unity, like that of Prussia under Frederick the Great, out of weak, disordered, smaller units, may engender for a time a bellicose spirit which works itself out in strife, so the rapid rise and union of weak and oppressed bodies of poorer labourers make for a shortsighted policy of blind aggression. Such considerations as this must, at any rate, temper the hopes of speedy industrial pacification we may form from dwelling on the more reasonable effects and teaching of organization. Although the very growth and existence of the larger industrial units implies, as we saw, a laying aside of smaller conflicts, we cannot assume that the forces at present working directly for the pacification of capital and labour, and for their ultimate fusion, are at all commensurate in importance with the concentrative forces operating in the two industrial elements respectively. It is indisputably true that the recent development of organization, especially of labour unions, acts as a direct restraint of industrial warfare, and a facilitation of peaceable settlements of trade disputes. Mr. Burnett, in his Report to the Board of Trade, on Strikes and Lock-outs in 1888, remarks à propos of the various modes of arbitration, that "these methods of arranging difficulties have only been made possible by organization of the forces on both sides, and have, as it were, been gradually evolved from the general progress of the combination movement."[[40]]
Speaking of Trade Unions, he sums up--"In fact the executive committees of all the chief Unions are to a very large extent hostile to strikes, and exercise a restraining influence"--a judgment the truth of which has been largely exemplified during the last two or three years. But our hopes and desires must not lead us to exaggerate the size of these peaceable factors. Conseils de prud'hommes on the continent, boards of arbitration and conciliation in this country, profit-sharing schemes in Europe and America, are laudable attempts to bridge over the antagonism which exists between separate concrete masses of capital and labour. The growth of piecework and of sliding scales has effected something. But the success of the Board of Conciliation and Arbitration in the manufactured iron trade of the north of England has not yet led to much successful imitation in other industries. Recent experience of formal methods of conciliation and of sliding scales, especially in the mining, engineering, and metal industries, as well as the failure of some of the most important profit-sharing experiments, shows that we must be satisfied with slow progress in these direct endeavours after arbitration. The difficulty of finding an enduring scale of values which will retain the adherence of both interests amidst industrial movements which continually tend to upset the previously accepted "fair rates," is the deeper economic cause which breaks down many of these attempts. The direct fusion of the interests of employers and employed, and in some measure of capital and labour, which is the object of the co-operative movement, is a steadily growing force, whose successes may serve perhaps better than any other landmark as a measure of the improving morale of the several grades of workers who show themselves able to adopt its methods. But while co-operative distribution has thriven, the success of co-operative workshops and mills has hitherto been extremely slow. A considerable expansion of the productive work of the co-operative wholesale societies within the last few years offers indeed more encouragement. But at present only about 21/4 per cent. of English industry and commerce, as tested by profits, is under the conduct of co-operative societies. Hence, while it seems possible that the slow growth in productive co-operation, and the more rapid progress of distributive co-operation, may serve to point the true line of successful advance in the future, the present condition of the co-operative movement does not entitle it to rank as one of the most powerful and prominent industrial forces. Though it may be hoped and even predicted that each movement in the agglomerative development of capital and labour which presents the two agents in larger and more organized shape, will render the work of conciliation more peremptory and more feasible, it must be admitted that all these conciliatory movements making for the direct fusion of capital and labour, are of an importance subordinate to the larger evolutionary force on which we have laid stress.
We see then the multitudinous units of capital and labour crystallizing ever into larger and larger masses, moving towards an ideal goal which would present a single body of organized capital and a single body of organized labour. The process in each case is stimulated by the similar process in the other. Each step in the organization of labour forces a corresponding move towards organization of capital, and vice versâ. Striking examples of this imitative strategic movement have been presented by the rapid temporary organization of Australian capital, and by the effect of Dock Labourers' Unions in England in promoting the closer co-operation of the capital of shipowners. By this interaction of the two forces, the development in the organization of capital and labour presents itself as a pari passu progress; or perhaps more strictly it goes by the analogy of a game of draughts; the normal state is a series of alternate moves; but when one side has gained a victory, that is, taken a piece, it can make another move.
§ 8. Relation of Low-skilled Labour to the wider Movement.--The relation in which this large industrial evolution stands to our problem of the poor low-skilled worker is not obscure. In comparing the movement of capital with that of labour we saw that in one respect the former was clearer and more perfect. The weaker capitalist, he who fails to keep pace with industrial progress, and will not avail himself of the advantage which union gives to contending pieces of capital, is simply snuffed out; that is, he ceases to have an independent existence as a capitalist when he can no longer make profit. The laggard, ill-managed piece of capital is swept off the board. This is possible, for the capital is a property separable from its owner. The case of labour is different. The labour-power is not separable from the person of the labourer. So the labourer left behind in the evolution of labour organization does not at once perish, but continues to struggle on in a position which is ever becoming weaker. "Organize or starve," is the law of modern labour movements. The mass of low-skilled workers find themselves fighting the industrial battle for existence, each for himself, in the old-fashioned way, without any of the advantages which organization gives their more prosperous brothers. They represent the survival of an earlier industrial stage. If the crudest form of the struggle were permitted to rage with unabated force, large numbers of them would be swept out of life, thereby rendering successful organization and industrial advance more possible to the survivors. But modern notions of humanity insist upon the retention of these superfluous, low-skilled workers, while at the same time failing to recognize, and making no real attempt to provide against, the inevitable result of that retention. By allowing the continuance of the crude struggle for existence which is the form industrial competition takes when applied to the low-skilled workers, and at the same time forbidding the proved "unfittest" to be cleared out of the world, we seem to perpetuate and intensify the struggle. The elimination of the "unfit" is the necessary means of progress enforced by the law of competition. An insistence on the survival, and a permission of continued struggle to the unfit, cuts off the natural avenue of progress for their more fit competitors. So long as the crude industrial struggle is permitted on these unnatural terms, the effective organization and progress of the main body of low-skilled workers seems a logical impossibility. If the upper strata of low-class workers are enabled to organize, and, what is more difficult, to protect themselves against incursions of outsiders, the position of the lower strata will become even more hopeless and helpless. If one by one all the avenues of regular low-skilled labour are closed by securing a practical monopoly of this and that work for the members of a Union, the superfluous body of labourers will be driven more and more to depend on irregular jobs, and forced more and more into concentrated masses of city dwellers, will present an ever-growing difficulty and danger to national order and national health. Consideration of the general progress of the working-classes has no force to set aside this problem. It seems not unlikely that we are entering on a new phase of the poverty question. The upper strata of low-skilled labour are learning to organize. If they succeed in forming and maintaining strong Unions, that is to say, in lifting themselves from the chaotic struggle of an earlier industrial epoch, so as to get fairly on the road of modern industrial progress, the condition of those left behind will press the illogicality of our present national economy upon us with a dramatic force which will be more convincing than logic, for it will appeal to a growing national sentiment of pity and humanity which will take no denial, and will find itself driven for the first time to a serious recognition of poverty as a national, industrial disease, requiring a national, industrial remedy.
The great problem of poverty thus resides in the conditions of the low-skilled workman. To live industrially under the new order he must organize. He cannot organize because he is so poor, so ignorant, so weak. Because he is not organized he continues to be poor, ignorant, weak. Here is a great dilemma, of which whoever shall have found the key will have done much to solve the problem of poverty.
List of Authorities.
By far the most valuable general work of reference upon Problems of Poverty is Charles Booth's Labour and Life of the People (Williams & Norgate). By the side of this work on London may be set Mr Rowntree's Poverty: A Story of Town Life (Macmillan). A large quantity of valuable material exists in The Report of the Industrial Remuneration Conference, and in the Reports of the Lords' Committee on the Sweating System and of the Labour Commission. Among shorter and more accessible works dealing with the industrial causes of poverty and the application of industrial remedies, Toynbee's Industrial Revolution (Rivington); Gibbins' Industrial History of England (University Extension Series, Methuen & Co.); and Jevons'The State in Relation to Labour (English Citizen Series), will be found most useful. For a clear understanding of the relation of economic theory to the facts of labour and poverty, J.E. Symes' Political Economy (Rivington), and Marshall's Economies of Industryare specially recommended.
Among the large mass of books and pamphlets bearing on special subjects connected with Problems of Poverty, the following are most useful. An asterisk is placed against the names of those which deserve special attention, and which are easily accessible.