It will be obvious that if a workman, ostensibly enjoying a Nine Hours Day, is habitually required to work overtime, and is paid only at the normal piecework rate for his work, he obtains no advantage whatever from the nominal fixing of his hours of labour. To many thousands of men in the engineering and building trades the nominal maintenance of the Nine Hours Day meant, in 1878 and succeeding years, no more than this. See for the whole subject of “the Normal Day,” Industrial Democracy, by S. and B. Webb.
[501]The lowest point reached in the statistics of the annual Trades Union Congresses was in 1881, when the delegates claimed to represent little more than a third of the numbers of 1874. These statistics of membership are, however, in many respects misleading. The Congress of 1879 was attended by a much smaller number of delegates than any Congress since 1872, and the number of Unions represented was also the smallest since that date.
[502]“Four years ago,” writes the President of the Bristol Coopers’ Society in 1878, “upwards of 40,000 workmen were in combination in these valleys [South Wales], and to-day not a single Union is in existence throughout the entire district.” (Paper at Local Conference on the Depression of Trade, Bristol Mercury, February 13, 1878).
[503]See the injunctions of the General Secretary, Monthly Report, March 1862; Annual Reports, 1882 and 1888. Robert Knight consistently opposed “violent fluctuations of wages, at one time a starvation pittance, at another exorbitantly high.”
[504]Trade Unionism, New and Old, by George Howell, M.P. (1891), p. 235.
[505]House of Commons Journals, Motion of March 14, 1882: “That in the opinion of this House it is detrimental to the public service, fatal to the efficiency of our war ships, and unjust to the fitters in Her Majesty’s Dockyards, that superintending leading men should be placed in authority over workmen with whose trades they have no practical acquaintance, or that men should be put to execute work for which they are unsuited either by training or experience.” See Henry Broadhurst, the Story of his Life from a Stonemason’s Bench to the Treasury Bench, by himself, 1901.
[506]Evidence of Mr. Chandler, then general secretary of Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners (Labour Commission, 1892, vol. iii. Q. 22,014).
[507]Abstract Report of Amalgamated Engineers, June 30, 1876.
[508]In 1890, however, Robert Knight, who had been throughout the foremost worker for federation, succeeded in establishing a Federation of the Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades of the United Kingdom, described in our Industrial Democracy, from which the Amalgamated Society of Engineers has held aloof. A large part of the work of the Federal Executive consisted, for many years, of adjusting disputes between Union and Union with regard to overlap and apportionment of work. For the whole subject, see our Industrial Democracy, 1897.
[509]When, in 1890, the project of universal federation was revived, the draft rules of 1879 were simply reprinted.