[479]The rival Kent Union, which had become the Kent and Sussex Agricultural and General Labourers’ Union, enrolling all sorts of labourers, claimed in 1889 still to have 10,000 members, with an annual income of £10,000 a year, mostly disbursed in sick and funeral benefits.
[480]See Die Strikes, die Co-operation, die Industrial Partnerships, by Dr. Robert Jannasch (Berlin, 1868; 66 pp.).
[481]Amid the great outburst of feeling in favour of Co-operative Production it is difficult to distinguish in every case between the investments of the funds of the Trade Unions in their corporate capacity, and the subscriptions of individual members under the auspices, and sometimes through the agency, of their trade society. The South Yorkshire Miners’ Association used £30,000 of its funds in the purchase of the Shirland Colliery in 1875, and worked it on account of the Association. In a very short time, however, the constant loss on the working led to the colliery being disposed of, with the total loss of the investment. The Northumberland and Durham Miners in 1873 formed a “Co-operative Mining Company” to buy a colliery, a venture in which the Unions took shares, but which quickly ended in the loss of all the capital. Some of the Newcastle engineers on strike for Nine Hours in 1871 were assisted by sympathisers to start the Ouseburn Engine Works, which came to a disastrous end in 1876. In 1875 the Leicester Hosiery Operatives’ Union, having 2000 members, began manufacturing on its own account, and bought up a small business. In the following year a vote of the members decided against such an investment of the funds, and the Union sold out to a group of individuals under the style of the Leicester Hosiery Society. It became fairly successful, but scarcely a tenth of the shareholders were workers in the concern, and it was eventually merged in the Co-operative Wholesale Society. Innumerable smaller experiments were set on foot during these years by groups of Trade Unionists with more or less assistance from their societies, but the great majority were quickly abandoned as unsuccessful. In a few cases the business established still exists, but in every one of these any connection with Trade Unionism has long since ceased. In later years renewed attempts have been made by a few Unions. Several local branches of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives, for instance, have taken shares in the Leicester Co-operative Boot and Shoe Manufacturing Society. The London Bassdressers, the Staffordshire Potters, the Birmingham Tinplate Workers, and a few other societies have also taken shares in co-operative concerns started in their respective trades. Full particulars will be found in the exhaustive work of Benjamin Jones on Co-operative Production, 1894.
[482]In one other respect the Trade Union expansion of 1872-74 resembled that of 1833-34. Both periods were marked by an attempt to enrol the women wage-earners in the Trade Union ranks. Ephemeral Unions of women workers had been established from time to time, only to collapse after a brief existence. The year 1872 saw the establishment of the oldest durable Union for women only—the Edinburgh Upholsterers’ Sewers’ Society. Two years later Mrs. Paterson, the real pioneer of modern women’s Trade Unions, began her work in this field, and in 1875 several small Unions among London Women Bookbinders, Upholsteresses, Shirt and Collar Makers, and Dressmakers were established, to be followed, in subsequent years, by others among Tailoresses, Laundresses, etc. Mrs. Emma Ann Paterson (née Smith), who was born in 1848, the daughter of a London schoolmaster, served from 1867 to 1873 successively as an Assistant Secretary of the Working Men’s Club and Institute Union and the Women’s Suffrage Association, and married, in 1873, Thomas Paterson, a cabinetmaker. On a visit to the United States she became acquainted with the “Female Umbrella Makers’ Union of New York,” and strove, on her return in 1874, to promulgate the idea of Trade Unionism among women workers in the South of England. After some newspaper articles, she set on foot the Women’s Protective and Provident League (now the Women’s Trade Union League), for the express purpose of promoting Trade Unionism, and established in the same year the National Union of Working Women at Bristol. From 1875 to 1886 she was a constant attendant at the Trades Union Congress, and was several times nominated for a seat on the Parliamentary Committee, at the Hull Congress heading the list of unsuccessful candidates. An appreciative notice of her life and work appeared in the Women’s Union Journal on her death in December 1886; see also Dictionary of National Biography, and Women in the Printing Trades, edited by J. R. MacDonald (1904), pp. 36, 37.
[483]Speech quoted in Capital and Labour; June 16, 1875.
[484]It must be remembered that the words “arbitration” and “conciliation” were at this time very loosely used, often meaning no more than a meeting of employers and Trade Union representatives for argument and discussion. The classic work upon the whole subject is Henry Crompton’s Industrial Conciliation, 1876. It receives detailed examination in the various contributions of Mr. L. L. Price, notably his Industrial Peace(1887) and the supplementary papers entitled “The Relations between Industrial Conciliation and Social Reform,” and “The Position and Prospects of Industrial Conciliation,” published in the Statistical Society’s Journal for June and September 1890 (vol. liii. pp. 290 and 420). For an American summary may be consulted Joseph D. Weeks’ Report on the Practical Working of Arbitration and Conciliation in the Settlement of Differences between Employers and Employees in England (Harrisburg, 1879), and his paper on Labour Differences (New York, 1886). The working of arbitration is well set forth in Strikes and Arbitration, by Sir Rupert Kettle, 1866; in A. J. Mundella’s evidence before the Trade Union Commission, 1868; in his address, Arbitration as a Means of Preventing Strikes(Bradford, 1868; 24 pp.); and in the lecture by Dr. R. Spence Watson entitled “Boards of Arbitration and Conciliation and Sliding Scales,” reported in the Barnsley Chronicle, March 20, 1886. An early account of the Nottingham experience is contained in the paper by E. Renals, “On Arbitration in the Hosiery Trades of the Midland Counties” (Statistical Society’s Journal, December 1867, vol. xxx. p. 548). See also the volume edited by Dr. Brentano, Arbeitseinstellungen und Fortbildung des Arbeitvertrags(Leipzig, 1890), and Zum socialen Frieden, by Dr. von Schulze Gaevernitz (Leipzig, 2 vols., 1892). The whole subject of the relation between Trade Unions and employers is fully dealt with in our Industrial Democracy. For the latest British Official reports on the subject see Cd. 6603, 6952, and 9099.
[485]The course of prices after 1870 demonstrates how disastrously this principle would have operated for the wage-earners had it been universally adopted. Between 1870 and 1894 the Index Number compiled by the Economist, representing the average level of market prices, fell steadily from 2996 to 2082, irrespective of the goodness of trade or the amount of the employers’ profits. Any exact correspondence between wages and the price of the product would exclude the wage-earners, as such, from all share in the advantages of improvements in production, cheapening of carriage, and the fall in the rate of interest, which might otherwise be turned to account in an advance in the workman’s Standard of Life. On the other hand, in an era of rising prices, when these influences are being more than counteracted by currency inflation, increasing difficulty of production, or a world-shortage of supply, an automatic correspondence between money wages and the cost of living would be useful, if it did not lead to the implication that the only ground for an advance in wages was an increase in the cost of living. The workmen have still to contend for a progressive improvement of their Standard of Life whatever happens to profits.
[486]Executive Circular, October 12, 1874.
[487]Ibid., October 21, 1879; as to the Sliding Scales actually adopted, see Appendix II.
[488]Miners’ Watchman and Labour Sentinel, February 9, 1878—a quasi-official organ of the Northern Miners, which was published in London from January to May 1878.