Fortunately the almost invariable practice of electing the salaried officials from the ranks of the non-commissioned officers tends to exclude the workman deficient in personal self-control. The evenings and holidays spent in clerical duties for the branch do not attract the free liver, whilst the long apprenticeship in inferior offices gives his fellow-workmen ample opportunity of knowing his habits. Thus we find that the salaried officials of the old-established Unions are usually decorous and even dignified in their personal habits. An increasing number of them are rigid teetotalers, whilst many others resolutely refuse, at the risk of personal unpopularity, all convivial drinking with their members.
But another danger—one which would not immediately have occurred to the middle-class investigator—besets the workman who becomes a salaried official of his Union. The following extract, taken from the graphic narrative we have already quoted, explains how it appears to a thoughtful artisan:
And now begins a change which may possibly wreck his whole Trade Union career. As Branch Secretary, working at his trade, our friend, though superior in energy and ability to the rank and file of his members, remained in close touch with their feelings and desires. His promotion to a salaried office brings him wider knowledge and larger ideas. To the ordinary Trade Unionist the claim of the workman is that of Justice. He believes, almost as a matter of principle, that in any dispute the capitalist is in the wrong and the workman in the right. But when, as a District Delegate, it becomes his business to be perpetually investigating the exact circumstances of the men’s quarrels, negotiating with employers, and arranging compromises, he begins more and more to recognise that there is something to be urged on the other side. There is also an unconscious bias at work. Whilst the points at issue no longer affect his own earnings or conditions of employment, any disputes between his members and their employers increase his work and add to his worry. The former vivid sense of the privations and subjection of the artisan’s life gradually fades from his mind; and he begins more and more to regard all complaints as perverse and unreasonable.
With this intellectual change may come a more invidious transformation. Nowadays the salaried officer of a great Union is courted and flattered by the middle class. He is asked to dine with them, and will admire their well-appointed houses, their fine carpets, the ease and luxury of their lives. Possibly, too, his wife begins to be dissatisfied. She will point out how So-and-so, who served his apprenticeship in the same shop, is now well-off, and steadily making a fortune; and she reminds her husband that, had he worked half as hard for himself as he has for others, he also might now be rich, and living in comfort without fear of the morrow. He himself sees the truth of this. He knows many men who, with less ability and energy than himself, have, by steady pursuit of their own ends, become foremen, managers, or even small employers, whilst he is receiving only £2 or £4 a week without any chance of increase. And so the remarks of his wife and her relations, the workings of his own mind, the increase of years, a growing desire to be settled in life and to see the future clear before him and his children, and perhaps also a little envy of his middle-class friends, all begin insidiously, silently, unknown even to himself, to work a change in his views of life. He goes to live in a little villa in a lower middle-class suburb. The move leads to his dropping his workmen friends; and his wife changes her acquaintances. With the habits of his new neighbours he insensibly adopts more and more of their ideas. Gradually he finds himself at issue with his members, who no longer agree to his proposals with the old alacrity. All this comes about by degrees, neither party understanding the cause. He attributes the breach to the influences of a clique of malcontents, or perhaps to the wild views held by the younger generation. They think him proud and “stuck-up”, over-cautious and even apathetic in trade affairs. His manner to his members, and particularly to the unemployed who call for donation, undergoes a change. He begins to look down upon them all as “common workmen”; but the unemployed he scorns as men who have made a failure of their lives; and his scorn is probably undisguised. This arouses hatred. As he walks to the office in his tall hat and good overcoat, with a smart umbrella, curses not loud but deep are muttered against him by members loitering in search of work, and as these get jobs in other towns they spread stories of his arrogance and haughtiness. So gradually he loses the sympathy and support of those upon whom his position depends. At last the climax comes. A great strike threatens to involve the Society in desperate war. Unconsciously biased by distaste for the hard and unthankful work which a strike entails, he finds himself in small sympathy with the men’s demands, and eventually arranges a compromise on terms distasteful to a large section of his members. The gathering storm-cloud now breaks. At his next appearance before a general meeting cries of “treachery” and “bribery” are raised. Alas! it is not bribery. Not his morality but his intellect is corrupted. Secure in the consciousness of freedom from outward taint, he faces the meeting boldly, throws the accusation back in their faces, and for the moment carries his point. But his position now becomes rapidly unbearable. On all sides he finds suspicion deepening into hatred. The members, it is true, re-elect him to his post; but they elect at the same time an Executive Committee pledged to oppose him in every way.[598] All this time he still fails to understand what has gone wrong, and probably attributes it to the intrigues of jealous opponents eager for his place. Harassed on all sides, distrusted and thwarted by his Executive Committee, at length he loses heart. He looks out for some opening of escape, and finally accepting a small appointment, lays down his Secretaryship with heartfelt relief and disappears for ever from the Trade Union world.
The Trade Union official who became too genteel for his post was, like the habitual drunkard, an exception. The average Secretary or District Delegate was too shrewd to get permanently out of touch with his constituents. Nevertheless the working man who became a salaried officer had to pick his way with considerable care between the dangers attendant on the rôle of boon companion and those inseparable from the more reputable but more hated character of the superior person. To personal self-control he had to add strength and independence of character, a real devotion to the class from which he had sprung, and a sturdy contempt for the luxury and “gentility” of those with whom he was brought in contact. All this remains as true to-day as it was in 1892, but the general advance in education and sobriety, and the steady tendency towards an assimilation of manners among all classes, render the contrasts of the social nineteenth century daily less marked. The Trade Union official of 1920 finds it much easier to maintain a position of self-respecting courtesy both among his own members and among the employers, officials, and middle-class politicians with whom he is brought in contact.
We break off now to describe, in the following chapters, the development of the Trade Union Movement from 1890 to 1920, and to discuss some of its outstanding features.
FOOTNOTES:
[577]During the whole course of the nineteenth century the Government failed to ascertain, with any approach to accuracy, how numerous the Trade Unionists were. Until the appointment of Mr. John Burnett as Labour Correspondent of the Board of Trade in 1886, no attempt was made to collect, officially, any information about Trade Unionism. The five annual volumes published by Mr. Burnett between 1886 and 1891 contained a fund of information on Trade Union statistics, and the returns became year by year more complete. The report for 1891 gave particulars of 431 Unions with 1,109,014 members, whilst that for 1892 covered a slightly larger total. But, restricted as he was to societies making returns in the precise form required, Mr. Burnett was unable to get at many existing Unions, whilst a considerable deduction had to be made from his total for members counted both in district organisations and in federations. The Chief Registrar of Friendly Societies gave particulars, in his Report for 1892 (House of Commons Paper, 146—II. of March 28, 1893), of 1,063,000 members in 442 registered Trade Unions alone, after deducting organisations which are not Trade Unions, and many duplicate entries. A large number of societies, such as the Northern Counties Amalgamated Weavers’ Association, many of the Miners’ Unions, the English and Scottish Typographical Associations, the United Kingdom Society of Coachmakers, the Flint Glass Makers, the Yorkshire Glass Bottle Makers, and others were then (as most of them still are) unregistered. Thus our own statistics revealed a 50 per cent greater Trade Union membership than the Government figures. It is difficult to state with exactness the number of separate organisations included, as this must depend upon the manner in which federal bodies are regarded. These exhibit almost infinite variations in character, from the mere “centre of communication” maintained by the thirty-two completely independent local societies of Coopers, to the rigid unity of the forty district organisations which make up the Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton-spinners. The number of independent societies may be reckoned at either 930 or at anything up to 1750, according to the view taken of federal Unions and federations. We put it approximately at 1100.
[578]See our Industrial Democracy and Problems of Modern Industry: also Men’s and Women’s Wages, should they be Equal? by Mrs. Sidney Webb, 1919.
[579]There were, at this date, altogether about 45,000 Unionists in Oldham, but of these some 20,000 were women.