Socialism as it is

by William English Walling

There can be little doubt that the railway strike would neither have taken place at the critical time it did, nor have gone as far as it went, except for this new and concerted action which embraced even the least skilled and least organized classes of labor.

Accompanying this movement toward common action, "solidarity" of labor, and more and more general strikes, was the closely related reaction against existing agreements—on the ground that they cripple the unions' power of effective industrial warfare. For several years there had been a simultaneous movement on the part of the "State Socialist" government towards compulsory arbitration, and among the unions against any interference on the part of a government over which they have little or no control—the railway strike being directed, according to the unionists, as much against the government as against the railways. For many years the government, represented by Mr. Lloyd George or Mr. Winston Churchill, had acted as arbitrator in every great industrial conflict, and had secured many minor concessions for the unions. As long as no critical conflict occurred that might materially weaken either the government or the capitalist or employing classes as a whole, this policy worked well. It was only by a railway strike, or perhaps by a seamen's or miners' strike that it could be put to a real test. By the settlement of the threatened railway strike of 1907 the employees had gained very little, and had voluntarily left the final power to decide disputes in the hands of government arbitrators. A conservative Labourite, Mr. J. R. MacDonald, writing late in 1910, said:—

"We held at the time that the agreement which Mr. Bell accepted on behalf of the Railway Servants would not work. It was a surrender. The railway directors were consulted for days; they were allowed to alter the terms of agreement at their own sweet will, and when they agreed, the men's representatives were asked to go to the Board of Trade and were told that they could not alter a comma, could not sleep over the proposal, could not confer with any one about it, had to accept it there and then. In a moment of weakness they accepted. An agreement come to in such a way was not likely to be of any use to the men."[255]

Nevertheless, this extremely important settlement was accepted by the union. Mr. Churchill did not know how to restrain his enthusiasm for unions that were so good as to fall in so obediently with his political plans. "They are not mere visionaries or dreamers," says Churchill, "weaving airy Utopias out of tobacco smoke. They are not political adventurers who are eager to remodel the world by rule of thumb, who are proposing to make the infinite complexities of scientific civilization and the multitudinous phenomena of great cities conform to a few barbarous formulas which any moderately intelligent parrot could repeat in a fortnight. The fortunes of trade unions are interwoven with the industries they serve. The more highly organized trade unions are, the more clearly they recognize their responsibilities."[256]

By 1911 the whole situation was completely reversed. Over less important bodies of capitalists and employers than the railways, the government had power and a will to exercise its power. The railways, however, are practically a function of government—absolutely indispensable if it is to retain its other powers undiminished. It was for this reason that little if any governmental force was used against them, and the agreement of 1907 came to be of even less value to the men than agreements made in other industries. When the chorus of union complaints continued to swell, and the men asked the government to bring pressure on the railways, at least to meet their committee, it acknowledged itself either unable or unwilling to take any effective action unless to renew the offer to appoint another royal commission, essentially of the same character as that of 1907 except that it should be smaller and should act more speedily. This still meant that the third member of the board was to be appointed by a government, in which experience had taught the workers they could have no confidence—at least in its dealings with the powerful railways.

In view of this inherent weakness of the government, or its hostility to the new and aggressive unionism, or perhaps a combination of both, the unions had no recourse other than a direct agreement or a strike. But the refusal of the railways to meet the men left no alternative other than the strike, and at the same time showed that they did not much fear that the unions could strike with success. It was no longer a question of the justice or injustice, truth or untruth, of the unions' claims. The railways, in a perfectly practical and businesslike spirit, questioned the power of the unions, by means of a strike, to cause them sufficient damage to make it profitable even to meet their representatives—without the presence of a government representative, who, they had learned by experience, would in all probability take a position with which they would be satisfied. Mr. Asquith's offer, then, to submit the "correctness" of the unions' statements and the "soundness" of their contentions to a tribunal, was entirely beside the point. The representatives of the railways were sure to give such a tribunal to understand, however diplomatically and insidiously, that the unions were without that power, which alone, in the minds of "practical" men, can justify any considerable demand, such as the settlement of all questions through the representatives of the men (the recognition of the union).

Doubtless the railways had refused to meet the union representatives until they felt assured that the government's position would on the whole be satisfactory to them. The government's real attitude was made plain when, after the refusal of the unions practically to leave their whole livelihood and future in its hands, as in 1907, it used this as a pretext for taking sides against them—not by prohibiting the strike, but by limiting more and more narrowly the scope it was to be allowed to take.

The government loudly protested its impartiality, and gave very powerful and plausible arguments for interference. But the laborers feel that the right not to work is as essential as life itself, and all that distinguishes them essentially from slaves, and that no argument whatever is valid against it. Let us look at a few of the government statements:—

The government, said the Premier, was perfectly impartial in regard to the merits of the various points of dispute. The government had regard exclusively for the interests of the public, and having regard for those interests they could not allow the paralysis of the railway systems throughout the country, and would have to take the necessary steps to prevent such paralysis.