[595]In the great Amalgamated Societies District Committees, composed of representatives of local branches, are formed in the great industrial Centres, and decide on the trade policy to be adopted by their constituent branches. These decisions must be confirmed by the Central Executive.
[596]The travelling card, formerly called a “blank,” is now, in most cases, a small book of receipt forms. On it is recorded the particulars of his membership, and the date to which he has paid his contributions. Along with it he receives a complete list of the public-houses which serve as the Society’s Lodge-houses, and also a list of the names and addresses of the Lodge secretaries.
[597]We did not include in this figure a large class of men who are indirectly paid officials of Trade Unions, such as the checkweighers among the coal-miners, and the “collectors” among the cotton-weavers, cardroom-workers, etc. The checkweigher, as we have stated (p. 305), is elected and paid weekly wages, not by the members of the Trade Union, but by all the miners in a particular coal-pit. But as Trade Unionism and the election of a checkweigher are practically coincident, he frequently serves as lodge secretary, etc. The collectors employed by certain Trade Unions to go from house to house and collect the members’ contributions are remunerated by a percentage on their collections. Though not strictly salaried officials, they serve as Trade Union recruiting agents, as well as intermediaries between members and the central office, for complaints, appeals, and the circulation of information.
[598]We have here another instance of the deeply rooted objection on the part of workmen to “sack” their officials. A Society will make the life of an unpopular official unbearable, and will thwart him in every direction; but so long as he hangs on he has a safe berth.
CHAPTER IX
THIRTY YEARS’ GROWTH
[1890-1920]
In 1892, after more than two centuries of development, Trade Unionism in the United Kingdom numbered, as we have seen, little more than a million and a half of members, in a community approaching forty millions; or about 4 per cent of the census population and including possibly 20 per cent of the adult male manual-working wage-earners. At the beginning of 1920, as we estimate, the number of Trade Unionists is well over six millions, in a community that does not quite reach forty-eight millions; being over 12 per cent of the census population and including probably as many as 60 per cent[599] of all the adult male manual-working wage-earners in the kingdom. With the exception of slight pauses in 1893-95, 1902-4, and 1908-9, this remarkable growth in aggregate membership has been continuous during the whole thirty years.
It is important to notice the continuous acceleration of this increase. For a few years after the high tide of 1889-92 the aggregate membership dropped slightly. When in 1897 it started to rise again it took a whole decade to add half a million to the total of 1892-96. Three years more brought a second half million: a total growth in the eighteen years from 1892 to 1910 of about a million, or only about 66 per cent. It then took only three or four years to add another million; whilst during the last few years the increase has not fallen far short of half a million a year, or of the order of 10 per cent per annum. Trade Union membership has, in fact, doubled in the last eight years. [600]
No less significant is the fact that the increase has not been confined to particular industries, particular localities, or a particular sex, but has taken place, more or less, over the whole field. It is common in varying degrees to the skilled, the semi-skilled, and the unskilled workers. Even the women, still much less organised than the men, have in 1920 five or six times as many Trade Unionists as they had thirty years previously; and have trebled or quadrupled the then proportion of Trade Union membership to the adult women manual-working wage-earners. Financially, too, the Trade Unions have, on the whole, greatly advanced; and their aggregate accumulated funds in 1920 (apart from the assets of their Approved Society sections under the National Insurance Act) exceed fifteen millions sterling; being about ten times as much as in 1890, and constituting a “fighting fund” unimaginably greater than ever entered the mind of Gast or Doherty, Martin Jude or William Newton, or any other Trade Union leader of the preceding century. It is the stages and incidents of this past thirty years’ growth that we have now to describe. We shall refer incidentally to half-a-dozen of the more important strikes of the generation; but nowadays it is not so much industrial disputes that constitute landmarks of Trade Union history as the steps, often statutory or political in character, by which the Movement advances in public influence and in a recognised participation in the government of industry. During the present century, at any rate, the action of Trade Unionism on legislation, and of legislation on Trade Unionism, has been incessant and reciprocal. The growing strength of the Movement has been marked by a series of legislative changes which have ratified and legalised the increasing influence of the wage-earners’ combinations in the government both of industry and political relations. And every one of these statutes—notably the Trade Disputes Act of 1906, the Trade Boards Act of 1908, the Coal Mines Regulation (Eight Hours) Act of 1908, the National Insurance Act of 1911, the Trade Union Act of 1913, the Corn Production Act of 1917, and the Trade Boards Extension Act of 1918—have been marked by immediate extensions of Trade Union membership and improvements in Trade Union organisation in the industries concerned.
During the thirty years which have elapsed since 1890 the progress of the Trade Union Movement, enormous as it has been, has been accompanied by relatively little change in the internal structure of the several Unions. What has occurred has been a marked change in the relative position and influence of the different sections of the Trade Union world, and even in its composition. Some sections have declined relatively to others. Even more significant is the vastly greater consolidation of the Trade Unionism of 1920 than that of 1890. Not only have many more of the societies grown into organisations of numerical and financial strength, but there has also been developed, especially during recent years, an interesting network of federations among Unions in the same industry, and often among cognate or associated industries, some of which, undertaking negotiations on a national scale for a whole industry, have become more influential and important than any but the largest Unions.