In the same year a great agitation began, led by the most prominent advocate of industrial unionism in Great Britain, the Socialist, Tom Mann, who with John Burns had been one of the organizers of the great dockers' strike in 1886, and who had returned, in 1910, from many years of successful agitation in Australia to preach the new unionism in his home country. That this agitation was one of the causes of the great seamen's, dockers', and railway strikes that followed is indicated by the fact that Mr. Mann was at once given the chief position in this movement.
His first principle is that the unions should include all the workers, in their respective industries:—
"Skilled workers, in many instances doing but little work, receive from two to seven or eight pounds a week, whilst the laborer, having the same responsibilities as regards family and citizenship, is compelled to accept one third of it or less.
"This must not be. We must not preach social equality and utterly fail to practice it; and for those receiving the higher pay to try and satisfy the demands of the lower-paid man for better conditions by telling him it will be put right under Socialism, is on a par with the parson pretending to assuage the sufferings of the poverty-stricken by saying, 'It will be better in the next world.' It must be put right in this world, and we must see to it now."
Unions composed exclusively of skilled workers, as many of the present ones, operate against the interests of the less skilled—often without actually intending to do so. Mr. Mitchell, for instance, concedes that the trade unions bring about "the elimination of men who are below a certain fixed standard of efficiency." This argument will appeal strongly to employers and believers in the survival of the fittest doctrine. But it will scarcely appeal to the numerous unskilled workers eliminated, or the still more numerous workers whose employment is thus lessened at every slack season. Mr. Edmond Kelly shows how the principle acts—"Where there is a minimum wage of $4 a day the workman can no longer choose to do only $3 worth of work and be paid accordingly, but he must earn $4 or else cease from work, at least in that particular trade, locality, or establishment."[254] The result is that the highest skilled workmen obtain steady employment through the union, while the less skilled are penalized by underemployment. The unions have equalized daily wages, but the employer has replied by making employment and therefore annual wages all the more unequal, and many of the workers may have lost more than they gained. Whereas if each man could secure an equal share of work, he might be paid according to his efficiency and yet be far better off than now. But the only way to secure an equal amount of work for all is through a union where all have an equal voice and where the union is strong enough to have a say as to who is to be employed.
It is this tendency either automatically or intentionally actually to injure unskilled labor, that has led men like Mann and Debs and Haywood to their severe criticism of the present policies of the unions, and even affords some ground for Tolstoi's classification of well-paid artisans, electricians, and mechanics among the exploiters of unskilled labor. In the days of serfdom, the great writer said, "Only one class were slave owners; all classes, except the most numerous one—consisting of peasants who have too little land, laborers, and workingmen—are slave-owners now." The master class, Tolstoi says, to-day includes, not only "nobles, merchants, officials, manufacturers, professors, teachers, authors, musicians, painters, rich peasants, and the rich men's servants," but also "well-paid artisans, electricians, mechanics," etc.
Mr. Mann thus defines the attitude of this new unionism to the old:—
"It is well known that in Britain, as elsewhere, there is only a minority of the workers organized; of the ten millions of men eligible for industrial organization only one fourth are members of trade unions; naturally these are, in the main, the skilled workers, who have associated together with a view to maintaining for themselves the advantage accruing to skilled workers, when definite restrictions are placed upon the numbers able to enter and remain in the trades.
"We have had experience enough to know that the difficulties of maintaining a ring fence around an occupation, which secures to those inside the fence special advantages, are rapidly increasing, and in a growing number of instances, the fence has been entirely broken down by changes in the methods of production. We know, further, that ... the majority of trade unionists still remain sectionally isolated, powerless to act except in single' sectional bodies, and incapable of approaching each other and merging and amalgamating forces for common action. This it is that is responsible for the modern practice of entering into lengthy agreements between employers and workers. Sectional trade unions being incapable of offensive action, and gradually giving way before the persistent power of the better organized capitalist class, they fall back upon agreements for periods of from two to five years, during which time they undertake that no demands shall be made." (My italics.)
The industrialists, therefore, advocate the termination of all wage agreements simultaneously and at short intervals or even at will (like tenancies at will, or call loans). They claim that employers are practically free to terminate existing agreements whenever they please, as they can always find grounds for dismissing individuals or for temporarily shutting down their works or for otherwise discriminating against active unionists or varying the terms of a contract before its expiration. But it is in America that the policy of no agreements, or agreements at will is most advanced. In Great Britain it is thought that agreements for one year and all ending on the same day may lead to the same results. If there is a central organization with power to call strikes on the part of any combination of unions, and the large majority of the workers are organized, it is held that the new unionism will soon prove irresistible, even if agreements in this form are retained.
The recent strikes have not only been stimulated by this gospel and led by its chief representatives, Tom Mann, Ben Tillett, and others, but from the very first they have been an actual application of the new idea and have marked a long step towards the complete reorganization of the British unions. They were started with the seamen's strike in June, when the dockers in many places struck in sympathy, at the same time adding demands of their own. When the seamen won their strike, they refused to go back to work at several points, against the advice of their conservative officials, until the dockers received what they were striking for. With the dockers were involved teamsters, and these from the first had agreed to support one another, for they were both connected with Mr. Mann's "National Transport Workers' Federation." And the railway strike was largely due to the fact that the railway unions decided at least to coöperate with this federation. The dockers had remained on strike at Liverpool in sympathy with the railway porters who had struck in the first instance to aid the dockers, and at the first strike conference of the railway union officials, forty-one being present, it was voted unanimously "that the union was determined not to settle the dispute with the companies unless the lockout imposed upon their co-workers because of their support of the railroad men at Liverpool and elsewhere is removed and all the men reinstated."