We have, therefore, in the sudden growth and quick collapse of this revolt “of the field” a marked likeness to the meteoric career of the general Trades Unions of 1833-34. But the expansion of the Trade Union Movement in 1871-75 had another point of resemblance to previous periods of inflation. In 1871-75, as in 1833-34 and in 1852, the project of recovering possession of the instruments of production seizes hold of the imagination of great bodies of Trade Unionists. Again we see attempts by trade organisations to establish workshops of their own. The schemes of Co-operative Production of 1871-75 bore more resemblance to those of 1852 than to Owen’s crude communism. In the Trade Unionism of 1833-34 the fundamental Trade Union principle of the maintenance of the Standard of Life was overshadowed and absorbed by the Owenite idea of carrying on the whole industry of the country by national associations of producers, in which all the workmen would be included. But in the more practical times of 1852 and 1871-75 the project of “self-employment” remained strictly subordinate to the main functions of the organisation.[480] Whatever visions may have been indulged in by individual philanthropists, the Trade Union committees of both these periods treated the co-operative workshop either as merely a convenient adjunct to the Union, or as a means of affording to a certain number of its members a chance of escape from the conditions of wage-labour.[481] The failure of all these attempts belongs, therefore, rather to the history of Co-operation than to that of Trade Unionism. For our present purpose it suffices to note that the loss in these experiments of tens of thousands of pounds finally convinced the officials of the old-established Unions of the impracticability of using Trade Union organisations and Trade Union funds for Co-operative Production. The management of industry by associations of producers still remains the ideal of one school of co-operators, and still periodically captures the imagination of individual Trade Unionists. But other ideals of collective ownership of the means of production have displaced the Owenism of 1833-34 and the “Christian Socialism” of 1852. Of co-operative experiments by Trade Societies, in their corporate capacity, we hear practically no more. [482]
On the whole the contrast between the Trade Union expansion of 1873-74 and that of 1833-34 is more significant than any likeness that may be traced between the two periods. The Trade Unionists of 1833-34 aimed at nothing less than the supersession of the capitalist employer; and they were met by his absolute refusal to tolerate, or even to recognise, their organisation. The new feature of the expansion of 1873-74 was the moderation with which the workmen claimed merely to receive some share of the enormous profits of these good times. The employers, on the other hand, for the most part abandoned their objection to recognise the Unions, and even conceded, after repeated refusals, the principle of the regulation of industry by Joint Boards of Conciliation or impartial umpires chosen from outside the trade. From 1867 to 1875 innumerable Boards of Conciliation and Arbitration were established, at which representatives of the masters met representatives of the Trade Unions on equal terms. In fact, it must have been difficult for the workmen at this period to realise with what stubborn obstinacy the employers, between 1850 and 1870, had resisted any kind of intervention in what they had then regarded as essentially a matter of private concern. When the Amalgamated Society of Engineers offered, in 1851, to refer the then pending dispute to arbitration, the master engineers simply ignored the proposal. The Select Committees of the House of Commons in 1856 and 1860 found the workmen’s witnesses strongly in favour of arbitration, but the employers sceptical as to its possibility. Nor did the establishment of A. J. Mundella’s Hosiery Board at Nottingham in 1860, and Sir Rupert Kettle’s Joint Committees in the Wolverhampton building trades in 1864, succeed in converting the employers elsewhere. But between 1869 and 1875 opinion among the captains of industry, to the great satisfaction of the Trade Union leaders, gradually veered round. “Twenty-five years ago,” said Alexander Macdonald in 1875, “when we proposed the adoption of the principle of arbitration, we were then laughed to scorn by the employing interests. But no movement has ever spread so rapidly or taken a deeper root than that which we then set on foot. Look at the glorious state of things in England and Wales. In Northumberland the men now meet with their employers around the common board.... In Durhamshire a Board of Arbitration and Conciliation has also been formed; and 75,000 men repose with perfect confidence on the decisions of the Board. There are 40,000 men in Yorkshire in the same position.” [483]
But though the establishment, from 1869 onwards, of Joint Boards and Joint Committees represented a notable advance for the Trade Unions, and marked their complete recognition by the great employers, yet this victory brought results which largely neutralised its advantages.[484] As in the case of the political triumphs, the men gained their point at the cost of adopting the intellectual position of their opponents. When the representatives of the employers and the delegates of the men began to meet to discuss the future scale of wages, we see the sturdy leaders of many Trade Union battles gradually and insensibly accepting the capitalists’ axiom that wages must necessarily fluctuate according to the capitalists’ profits, and even with every variation of market-prices.[485] At Darlington, for instance, we watch the shrewd leader of the employers, David Dale, succeeding in completely impressing John Kane and a whole subsequent generation of ironworkers with a firm belief in the principle of regulating wages according to the market price of the product. The high prices of 1870-73 removed the last scruples of the workmen as to the new doctrine. In 1874 a delegate meeting of the Northumberland Miners decided to use the formal expression of the Executive Committee,[486]“that prices should rule wages”—a decision expressly repeated by delegate meetings in 1877 and 1878. In 1879, when prices had come tumbling down, we find the Executive still maintaining that “as an Association we have always contended that wages should be based on the selling price of coal.”[487] In an interesting letter dated February 1, 1878, Burt, Nixon, and Young (then the salaried officers of the Northumberland Miners), in describing the negotiations for a Sliding Scale, take occasion to mention that they had agreed with the employers that there should be no Minimum Wage.[488] And though the practical difficulties involved in the establishment of automatic wage-adjustments hindered the spread of Sliding Scales to other industries, the principle became tacitly accepted among whole sections of Trade Unionists. The compulsory maintenance, in good times and bad, of the workman’s Standard of Life was thus gradually replaced by faith in a scale of wages sliding up and down according to the commercial speculations of the controllers of the market.
The new doctrine was not accepted without vigorous protests from the more thoughtful working-men leaders. Lloyd Jones, writing in 1874, warns “working men of the danger there is in a principle that wages should be regulated by market prices, accepted and acted on, and therefore presumably approved of by Trades Unions. These bodies, it is to be regretted, permit it in arbitration, accept it in negotiations with their employers, and thus give the highest sanction they can to a mode of action most detrimental to the cause of labour.... The first thing, therefore, those who manage trade societies should settle is a minimum, which they should regard as a point below which they should never go.... Such a one as will secure sufficiency of food and some degree of personal and home comfort to the worker; not a miserable allowance to starve on, but living wages.... The present agreements they are going into on fluctuating market prices is a practical placing of their fate in the hands of others. It is throwing the bread of their children into a scramble of competition where everything is decided by the blind and selfish struggles of their employers.”[489]“I entirely agree,” writes Professor Beesly, “with an admirable article by Mr. Lloyd Jones[490] in a recent number of the Beehive, in which he maintained that colliers should aim at establishing a minimum price for their labour, and compelling their employers to take that into account as the one constant and stable element in all their speculations. All workmen should keep their eyes fixed on this ultimate ideal.” [491]
Nor was this view confined to friendly allies of the Trade Union Movement. We shall have occasion to notice how forcibly both the Cotton Operatives and the Boilermakers protested against the dependence of wages on the fluctuations of the market. Alexander Macdonald himself, though he approved of Joint Committees, instinctively maintained an attitude of hostility to the innovating principle of a sliding scale.[492] And, as we shall hereafter see, the conflict between Macdonald’s teaching with regard to both wages and the hours of labour, and the economic views of the Northumberland and Durham leaders, presently divided the organised miners into two hostile camps.
The Trade Union world of 1871-75 was therefore more complicated, and presented many more difficult internal problems than was imagined, either by the alarmed employers or the triumphant Trade Unionists. It needed only the stress of hard times to reveal to the Trade Unionists themselves that they were not the compact and well-organised army described by the National Federation of Associated Employers, but a congeries of distinct sections, pursuing separate and sometimes antagonistic policies.
The expansion of trade, under the influence of which Trade Unionism, as we have seen, reached in 1873-74 one of its high-water marks, came suddenly to an end. The contraction became visible first in the coal and iron industries, those in which the inflation had perhaps been greatest.[493] The first break occurred in February 1874, when the coal-miners of the East of Scotland submitted to a reduction of a shilling a day. During the rest of the year prices and wages came tumbling down in both these staple trades. In January 1875 a furious conflict broke out in South Wales, where many thousand miners and ironworkers refused to submit to a third reduction of ten per cent. The struggle dragged on until the end of May, when work was resumed at a reduction, not of ten, but of twelve and a half per cent, with an understanding that “any change in the wage rates ... shall depend on a sliding scale of wages to be regulated by the selling price of coal.”[494] In the following year the depression spread to the textile industries, and gradually affected all trades throughout the country. The building trades were, however, still prosperous; and the Manchester Carpenters chose this moment for an aggressive advance movement. The disastrous strike that followed early in 1877, and lasted throughout the year, resulted in the virtual collapse of the General Union of Carpenters and Joiners, at that time the third in magnitude among the societies in the building trades, and left the Manchester building operatives in a state of disorganisation from which they never fully recovered. In April 1877 the Clyde shipwrights demanded an increase of wages, to which the employers replied by a general lock-out of all the operatives engaged in the shipbuilding yards, in the expectation that this would cause pressure on the shipwrights to withdraw their claim. For more than three months the main industry of the Clyde was at a standstill, the dispute being eventually ended, in September 1877, by submission to the arbitration of Lord Moncrieff, in which the men were completely worsted. In July 1877 a conflict broke out between the stonemasons and their employers, in which Bull & Co., the contractors for the new law courts in London, caused the bitterest resentment by importing German workmen as blacklegs. The demand had originally been for an increase of wages and reduction of hours for the London men; but as the obstinate struggle progressed it became, in effect, a battle between the Stonemasons’ Union and the federated master builders throughout the country. Large levies were raised, and over £2000 collected from other trade societies; but in March 1878, after eight months’ conflict, the remnant of the strikers returned to work on the employers’ terms. The cotton trade, too, was made the scene of one of the greatest industrial struggles on record. After several minor reductions of wages during 1877, which resulted in local strikes, in March 1878, as the Times reports, “all the way through a centre of 70 miles, where 250,000 cotton operatives are employed, notices have been posted giving a month’s notice of ten per cent reduction in wages.” A colossal strike ensued, which brought into prominence the rival theories of the cotton operatives and their employers. It was conceded by the men that the millowners were losing money, and that some change had to be made. But as the employers admitted that their losses arose from the glutted state of the market, the operatives contended that the proper remedy was the cessation of the over-production; and they therefore offered to accept the 10 per cent reduction on condition that the mills should only work four days a week. A heated controversy ensued, but the millowners persisted in their demand for the unconditional surrender of the men, and refused all proposals for arbitration. The cause of the men was unfortunately prejudiced by serious riots at Blackburn, at which the house of Colonel Raynsford Jackson, the leader of the associated employers, was looted and burnt. After ten weeks’ struggle the men went in on the employers’ terms. [495]
The great struggles of 1875-78 were only the precursors of a general rout of the Trade Union forces. The increasing depression of trade culminated during 1878-79 in a stagnation which must rank as one of the most serious which has ever overtaken British industry. The paralysis of business was intensified, especially in Scotland, by the widespread ruin caused by the failure of the City of Glasgow Bank. From one end of the kingdom to the other great firms became bankrupt, mines and ironworks were stopped, ships lay idle in the ports, and a universal feeling of despondency and distrust spread like a blight into every corner of the industrial world. Every industry had its crowds of unemployed workmen, the proportion of men on the books of the Trade Unions rising, in some cases, to as much as 25 per cent. The capitalists, as might have been expected, chose the moment of trial for attempting to take back the rest of the concessions extorted from them in the previous years. “It has appeared to employers of labour,” stated the private circular issued by the Iron Trade Employers’ Association in December 1878, “that the time has arrived when the superfluous wages which have been dissipated in unproductive consumption must be retrenched, and when the idle hours which have been unprofitably thrown away must be reclaimed to industry and profit by being redirected to reproductive work.” The result is reflected in the Trade Union reports. “All over the United Kingdom,” states the Monthly Report of the Amalgamated Carpenters for January 1879, “notices of reductions in wages and extended hours of labour come pouring in from employers with an eagerness and audacity which contrast strangely with the lessons of forbearance and moderation so incessantly dinned into the ears of the British workman in happier times.” “At no time in our history,” reports the Executive Council of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, “have we had such a number of industrial disturbances throughout the country. Bad trade has prevailed; and our employers, now better organised than ever before, seem to have made it their aim to raise as many points of contention with us as ever possible. In one place sweeping reductions of wages would be carried out or attempted; and in others the rates paid for overtime were sought to be reduced, while in many cases the hours of labour have been attacked, and in the Clyde district successfully, three hours being, as a result, added to the week’s work all over Scotland.... Another notable feature of the depression has been the continued oppression by the employers of the men in the most submissive districts, where conciliatory measures were adopted, and where little objection was made to any innovation. The Clyde district has been a notable example of this fact, passing in the first instance through two considerable reductions of wages almost passively, only to be almost immediately after the victims of desultory attacks upon the hours question. Irregular attack appears almost to have been the system adopted by the employers in preference to the development of any general movement by their Associations.”[496] The years 1878-1880 witnessed, accordingly, a great increase in the number of strikes in nearly all trades,[497] most of which terminated disastrously for the workmen. Sweeping reductions of wages occurred in all industries. The Northumberland miners, whose normal day’s earnings had been 9s. 1½d. in March 1873, found themselves reduced, in November 1878, to 4s. 9d. per day, and in January 1880 to 4s. 4d. Scotch mechanics suffered an even more sudden reduction. The Glasgow stonemasons, for instance, who had been earning 9d. and 10d. per hour during 1877, dropped by the end of 1878 to 6d. per hour, and found it difficult to find employment even at that figure. A still more dangerous encroachment was made in connection with the hours of labour. Employers on all sides sought to lengthen the working day. The mechanics on the Clyde lost the fifty-one hours week which they had won. The Iron Trades Employers’ Association, whose circular we have quoted, resolved upon a general attack on the Nine Hours Day. “It has been resolved,” writes the secretary, “by a large majority of the Iron Trades Employers’ Association, supported by a general agreement among other employers, to give notice in their workshops that the hours of labour shall be increased to the number prevailing before the adoption of the nine hours limit.”[498] The concerted action of the associated employers was, however, baulked by the energy of John Burnett, then General Secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. Placed in possession of the Circular for a couple of hours, he promptly reproduced it in an ably reasoned appeal to his own members, which was sent broadcast to the press. Publicity proved fatal to the employers’ plans, and no uniform or systematic action was taken. Isolated attempts were, however, made in all directions by the master engineers to revert to fifty-seven or fifty-nine hours per week; and only by the most strenuous action was the normal fifty-four-hours week retained in “society shops.”
Other trades were not equally successful in maintaining even their nominal day. In many towns the carpenters had two or three hours per week added to their working time.[499] More serious was the fact that in numerous minor trades the very conception of a definitely fixed normal day was practically lost. Even among such well-organised trades as the Engineers, Carpenters, and Stonemasons the practice of systematic overtime, coupled with the prevalence of piecework, reduced the normal day to a nullity.[500] In the abundant Trade Union records of these years we watch the progress and results of these economic disasters. The number of men drawing the out-of-work benefit steadily rises, until the societies of Ironfounders and Boilermakers, which in 1872-73 had scarcely 1 per cent unemployed, had in 1879 over 20 per cent on their funds. The Amalgamated Society of Engineers paid away, under this one head, during the three years 1878-80, a sum of no less than £287,596. The Operative Plumbers had to exclude, in the two years 1880-82, nearly a third of their members for non-payment of contributions. The Ironfounders, who in 1876 had accumulated a fund of over £5 per member, paid away every penny of it by the end of 1879, and were only saved from actual stoppage by the numerous loans made to the society by its more prosperous members. The Stonemasons’ Society drained itself equally dry, and resorted to the same expedient to avoid default. The Scottish societies had to meet the crisis in an even more aggravated form. The total collapse which followed the City of Glasgow Bank failure absolutely ruined all but half a dozen of the Scotch Trade Unions, a blow from which Trade Unionism in Scotland did not recover for the rest of the century.
The year 1879, indeed, was as distinctly a low-water mark of the Trade Union Movement as 1873-74 registered a full tide of prosperity. The economic trials through which Trade Unionism passed in 1879 are only to be paralleled by those through which it had gone in 1839-42. But the solid growth which we have described prevented any such total collapse as marked the previous periods. The depression of 1879 swept, it is true, many hundreds of trade societies into oblivion. The Unions of agricultural labourers, which had sprung up with such mushroom rapidity, either collapsed altogether or dwindled into insignificant benefit clubs. Up and down the country the hundreds of little societies in miscellaneous trades which had flourished during the good years, went down before the tide of adversity. Widespread national organisations shrank up practically into societies of local influence, concentrated upon the strongholds of their industries. The great National Union of Miners, established, as we have seen, in 1862-63, survived, after 1879, only in Northumberland, Durham, and Yorkshire. Its younger rival, the Amalgamated Association of Miners, which had, up to 1875, dominated South Wales and the Midlands, broke up and disappeared. The National Amalgamated Association of Ironworkers, also established in 1862, which in 1873 numbered 35,000 members in all parts of the country, was reduced in 1879 to 1400 members, confined to a few centres in the North of England.[501] In some districts, such as South Wales, Trade Unionism practically ceased to exist.[502] The total membership of the Trade Union Movement returned, it is probable, to the level of 1871. But despite all these contractions the backbone of the movement remained intact. In the engineering and building trades the great national societies, though they were denuded of their reserve funds, retained their membership. Nor was it only the trade friendly societies that weathered the storm. The essentially trade organisations of the cotton operatives, and of the Northumberland and Durham miners, maintained their position with only a temporary contraction of membership. The political organisation of the movement was, moreover, unaffected. The local Trades Councils went on undisturbed. The annual Trades Union Congress continued to meet, and to appoint its standing Parliamentary Committee. In short, though many individual Unions disappeared, and many others saw their balances absorbed and their membership reduced, the trials of 1879 proved that the Trade Union Movement was at last beyond all danger of destruction or collapse, and that the Trade Union organisation had become a permanent element in our social structure.