[176-6] Thus in several places in 1848, and in Paris in 1789, where even the lackeys and apothecary clerks formed such unions. (Wachsmuth, Gesch. Frankreichs im Revolutionszeitalter, I, 178.) Similarly, frequently in isolated factories.
[176-7] Thornton mentions six instances in which strikes and strike-unions may permanently raise wages: a, when those engaged in an enterprise have a virtual monopoly in their own neighborhood; b, when the country has, for the industry in question, great advantage over other lands; c, when the demand for the product of the industry is necessary on account of an increasing number and increasing capacity to pay of customers; d, when the progress of the arts, especially of machinery, makes the industry more productive; e, when the rise in the rate of wages affects all branches of industry to the same extent, and at the same time; f, when the industry is carried on on so large a scale that it yields greater profit, even while paying a smaller percentage than other industries. (On Labour, III, ch. 4.) It is easy to see that many of these conditions meet in the building industries in large cities.
[176-8] Compare Brentano in the Preliminary Essay to T. Smith's English Guilds, ch. LXXII ff. The same author's Die Arbeitergilden der Gegenwart Bd., I, 1871.
[176-9] The greater number of strikes begin with a small minority, generally of the best paid workmen, whom the others follow unwillingly but blindly. (Edinb. Rev., 149, 422.) The despotic power of the Unions over their members depends principally on the fact that their treasury serves not only to maintain strikes but at the same time as an insurance fund for old age and sickness, and that every case of disobedience of a member is punished by expulsion, i. e., with the loss of everything he has contributed. Hence the Quart. Rev., Oct., 1867, advises that these two purposes which are so hard, technically speaking, to reconcile with each other, should be required to be kept separate, especially as most of the unions, considered as benevolent associations, are really insolvent. (Edinb. Review, Oct., 1867, 421 ff.) On the other hand, both the Count of Paris, ch. 3, and Thornton are favorable to the admixture of humane and offensive objects in the trades-unions, because the former contribute to make the latter milder. Brentano, I, 153, has no great objection to the insolvency shown by the books of the unions vis-a-vis of their duties as insurers, since, hitherto, the subscription of an extraordinary sum has never failed to make up the deficit. A strike is detrimental in proportion as the striking workmen represent more of the previous preliminary operations that go to finish a product; as when, for instance, the 50 or 60 spinners in a factory strike, and in consequence, from 700 to 800 other workmen are thrown out of employment and forced into idleness against their will. What might not have been the consequence of the great union of the coal miners of Durham and Northumberland, the members of which numbered 40,000 men, and stopped work from April to the beginning of September, 1864, so that at last it became necessary to carry Scotch coal to Newcastle! Compare Engels, Lage der arbeitenden Klassen in England, 314 ff.
[176-10] The English unions even forbid their members to exceed the established time of work, or the established task. Thus, for instance, a penalty of one shilling for carrying at any time more than eight bricks in the case of masons, and a similar penalty inflicted on the person's companions who witness the violation of the rule and do not report the guilty party. Equality of wages for all members; piece-wages allowed only when the surplus earned is divided among one's companions. Hence the complete discouragement of all skill or industry above the average. If an employer exceeds the prescribed number of apprentices; if he engages workmen not belonging to the union; if he introduces new machines, a strike is ordered. With all this the severest exclusion respectively of one class of tradesmen by the other. If a carpenter lays a few stones, a strike immediately! (Quart. Rev., October, 1867, 363, 373.) Rigid shutting out of the products of one district from another. (Edinburg Rev., October, 1867, 431.) The poor hand-weavers were thus prevented going from their over-crowded trade into another. (J. Stuart Mill, Principles, II, ch. 14, 6.) However, many trades-unions still seem to be free from these degenerations, and the most influential unions the most moderate in their proceedings. (Count de Paris, ch. 8, 9; Thornton, III, ch. 2.) Brentano expressly assured us that such degeneration of the unions in England is confined to the building trades-unions. (I, 68, 188.)
[176-11] "They have no notion of contenting themselves with an equal voice in the settlement of labor questions; they tell us plainly that what they aspire to is to control the destinies of labor, ... to dictate, to be able to arrange the conditions of employment at their own discretion." (Thornton, III, ch. 1.) The membership of the English trades-unions was estimated, at the Manchester Congress, June, 1868, at 500,000 by some, and at 800,000 by others. Brentano, II, 310, speaks of 960,000. Since 1830, there have been frequent endeavors to effect a great combination, with special organizations of the different trades. During recent years, there have been even beginnings of an international organization, although in Germany, for instance, at the end of 1874, there were 345 trades-unions, with a membership of over 21,000. (M. Hirsch.) A formal theory of workmen's unions to culminate in popular representation, in Dühring, Arbeit und Kapital, 1866, especially, p. 233; while the American Walker accuses all such combinations, which used compulsion on any one, of moral high treason against republican institutions. (Science of Wealth, 272.)
[176-12] The former view, for instance, of Harriet Martineau, "The tendence of strikes and sticks to produce low wages" (1834) is now unconditionally shared only by few. When Sterling says that the momentary success of a strike is followed by a two-fold reaction which restores the natural equilibrium, viz.: increase of the number of workmen and decrease of capital (Journal des Econ., 1870, 192), he overlooks not only the length of the transition time which would certainly be possible here, but also that an altered standard of life of the workmen prevents the former, and one of the capitalists the latter. The Count of Paris and Thornton do not doubt that the elevation of the condition of the English working classes, as proved by Ludlow and Jones, is to be ascribed, in part, to the effect of the trades-unions. Many of the unions work against the intemperance and quarrelsomeness of their members. The people's charter of 1835, came from the London "workingmen's association."
[176-13] On the great utility of the arbitration courts between masters and workingmen, by which the struggle for wages is terminated in a peaceable manner and without any interruption of work, see Schäffle, Kapitalismus and Socialismus, 659. More minutely in Thornton, III., ch. 5. Faucher, Vierteljahrsschr., 1869, III, 302, calls attention to the fact that such "boards" may be abused to oppress small manufacturers.
WAGES-POLICY.—STRIKES AND THE STATE.