Two New Social Departures

Two very interesting new departures in matters social will mark the year 1895 for the British Isles, — the foundation of an Industrial Union of Employers and Employed, and the holding in London of the first International Cooperative Congress. Both have the very hopeful quality of being no “ bolts from the blue,” but orderly developments from or of existing institutions, the worth of which is established by experience. The former, though British in its inception, represents an idea which may be carried out in any country where industry is to any extent organized ; the latter was graced at the outset by foreign help.

The Industrial Union of Employers and Employed was established at a conference held at Essex Hall, Essex Street, Strand, June 22, 1895. It was the direct outcome of a smaller conference between twenty employers and twenty work people, held in London on March 16, 1894, as related in an article by Mr. T. W. Bushill, of Coventry, published in the Economic Review for April, 1894. That conference itself arose out of the wide - spreading distress and suffering caused by the then recent conflict between coal owners and miners in the Midlands, From a report of the proceedings of the conference of 1895 (Methuen, London), it appears that this was attended by some twenty-six employers or employers’ representatives, and some forty-seven employed, of whom twenty-one were representatives of trade unions, trade councils, or conciliation or wages boards, numbering together over two hundred thousand men, and including the premier British trade union, the Amalgamated Society of Engineers with its 77,306 members.¹ Eighteen other trade unions or trade councils, representing over thirty thousand workers, sent expressions of sympathy, and of regret at their inability to be represented at the conference. The one striking and most encouraging feature about the conference was the perfect footing of equality upon which employers and employed met together. The provisional committee consisted of an equal number of employers and employed, forming two sections, with two honorary secretaries, one of each class. Each section met separately, before the joint meeting. The whole country was fairly represented, though the strength of the movement lies evidently in the northern and midland counties ; and in the list of the president, vice-presidents, and council, as finally constituted, the only name of a London working man is that of Mr. F. Maddison, compositor (editor of the Railway Review). The basis of the Union is “ the recognition of association and combination both of employers and of workmen, and of the underlying common interests of both.” The statement of its objects, in fourteen articles, is too long to quote ill full, but the first three may be set forth : —

“ 1. Harmony. To promote harmony between employers and employed, by affording opportunities for each side to obtain abetter understanding of the other’s aims and difficulties, to realize in larger measure their common interests, and to encourage and foster feelings which will tend to remove the ground for labor disputes.

“ 2. Conciliation and Arbitration. To promote the formation of properly constituted local boards of conciliation and arbitration.

“ 3. Means. To discuss and suggest means by which, without detriment to business, the conditions of labor and the opportunities of workmen may be improved, and to make known the results of experiments in this direction.”

I have said that both the social developments of which I propose to treat in this paper grow out of existing facts. In proof of this, it would be almost sufficient to say that the president of the conference, Mr. W. Whitwell, of Stockton-on-Tees, addressed it as having been for twenty years chairman of the Board of Conciliation and Arbitration for the Manufactured Iron and Steel Trade of the North of England, which itself had been established six years before he took the chair on March 22,1869. It has settled eighty-one cases of “ general wages,” and for the last few years the number of cases dealt with by the standing committee has averaged sixteen to a year, besides many disputes which have been settled without coming before the Board, merely through the preliminary inquiries of a delegate, who is able either to settle the case himself or to get it settled by reference to the foreman, so that “ nineteen cases out of twenty ” are settled between foreman or manager and a representative working man without even coming before the employers. The Board does not indeed “ claim to have altogether prevented stoppages of work,” but “ such as have occurred have taken place under circumstances of special irritation or excitement, and have been but of short duration.” Its main object bc\eing to prevent any strike or suspension of work, if such take place it refuses to inquire into the matter in dispute till work is resumed. But there is, Mr. Whitwell declares, “ on both sides the desire to do justice, and difficulties are wonderfully minimized.” Later on. Mr. Trow, operative secretary to the Board presided over by Mr. Whitwell, as one who had sat at the same table with him for twenty-five years in effecting settlements of labor disputes, “ challenged any one to give a single instance where a man had been interfered with for speaking fully and freely in the iron and steel trade. They did not know what victimization meant.”

As a matter of fact, then, the amicable settlement of trade differences by an organization in which employers and employed meet together on equal terms has prevailed, in one particular trade and district, for over a quarter of a century. The report of the chief Labor correspondent of the Board of Trade, himself an old trade-union secretary, On the Strikes and Lockouts of 1893, shows (page 219 and following) that fifty conciliation or wages boards (their nomenclature varies) were in existence and at work during the year in the British Isles, besides eighteen that did no work in the year, whilst in sixteen cases attempts were made to form such boards, of which six succeeded and are included in the list. Of the total of sixty-eight, twenty-three were “ district or local boards ; ” not confined to particular industries, but connected with local chambers of commerce, and generally with trade councils. The remainder (making, it will be observed, over sixty-six per cent of the whole) were connected with particular trades or groups of trades, the boot and shoe trades taking the lead with thirteen boards, followed by the metal trades with nine and mining with five ; these three groups thus comprising sixty per cent of the class. Moreover, out of the twenty-three district boards, thirteen did nothing, and only eighteen disputes were dealt with by the other ten, with doubtful or unsatisfactory results in six cases, or one third of the total number. Of the fortyfive trade boards, only four did no work, and the number of strikes, disputes, cases, and questions dealt with exceeded 1440, of which, however, 246 were withdrawn, passed over, ruled out of jurisdiction, or referred back to local boards. But these figures are incomplete, as in at least nine instances “ only the more important disputes are recorded,” and in another one no return is made, on the ground of the confidential nature of the proceedings. Eight hundred and twentythree of the tabulated cases were settled by conciliation or mediation, and 242 by arbitration.²

The report for 1894 has not yet been published, but detailed information, the Labor Gazette for October, 1895, informs us, has been collected with regard to the settlement of disputes and other questions by arbitration and conciliation during the year. Forty-one trade boards had 1707 questions and cases submitted to them, ranging from a general wage question affecting many thousands of persons to the classification of a sample.” Of these, 365 were withdrawn, referred back, or ruled out of order, 1121 settled by conciliatory means, and 221 by arbitration. Twenty-two district boards reported the settlement of only five eases in all, three by arbitration. The London board had the lion’s share of the work, settling three cases out of the five. At the same time, the Labor Gazette warns its readers that its figures must be considered as preliminary only, inquiries being still pursued in many cases by the department.

It will be obvious from the above figures that the work of the district boards is a mere trifle beside that of the trade boards. Experience thus shows that the true way to the amicable settlement of trade disputes is for the employers and employed in the particular trade to come together in the first instance; and that if any good is to be done by outsiders it must be as final arbitrators, when the matter has been thoroughly thrashed out between the parties without their being able to come to an agreement. Without wishing, therefore, to disparage the efforts of the many well-meaning men who have sought to establish boards of conciliation or arbitration outside of particular trades, it seems to me that they are putting the cart before the horse.

Very wisely, thus, in my view, does the Industrial Union of Employers and Employed declare that it is not “ a primary object of the Union to mediate in or assist the settlement of specific labor disputes ; ” claiming, however, “ the power to do so whenever such mediation or assistance shall be desirable,” but so as not to “ interfere in any dispute which comes within the scope of any properly constituted local or trade conciliation or arbitration board, except with the consent of such board.”

The objects, then, of the Union are excellent, and as a recognition on a large scale of the equality of rights between employers and employed, and of the value of organization to both classes, it represents an important stage in the history of labor in Great Britain. It must, therefore, do good even if it should fail. Whether it will be a practical success, I own, appears to me more doubtful. It can be so only if it be the joint work of both classes ; if the worker as well as the employer feels it to be his own. I heard with regret, at the conference, the resolution for raising a fund of ten thousand pounds ; for any such large sum must come mainly from the pockets of the employers ; and if the Union once comes to be looked upon as an employers’ concern, it will be viewed with suspicion by the workers. I cannot help doubting whether, among the fourteen objects of the association set forth by the rules, there are any which are likely to call for extensive pecuniary support from the workers, except at the hands of a few specially wealthy and thoughtful trade unions, and of a limited number of working men in others. ,

One point, not enumerated among its objects, which I think the Union should keep in view, would be the federating of existing trade boards I should, indeed, have been better pleased if this had been its starting-point); for it must not be concealed that several such boards have been discontinued already, even after a flourishing existence of years. 1 find no mention, for instance, in the Board of Trade volume of any board in the hosiery trade, whereas, in 1868, there was one in Nottingham, founded in 1860, and prospering.³ There was also another in the same trade in Derby, and a third had been resolved upon in Leicester. The disappearance of these is all the more painful because Mr. Mundella, the founder of the Nottingham board, has been the most zealous and eminent promoter of the movement in Great Britain. Now, the failure of a trade board to have its recommendations carried out, and its consequent collapse, — what does it amount to ? To a fresh dispute between the board itself and either employers or employed. On such a dispute, so long as the board remains isolated, there is no authority to decide. But it appears to me that if the board were federated with others in a body like that of the Industrial Union of Employers and Employed, it ought not to be difficult to determine the new dispute in the ordinary way, by conciliation or arbitration, the Union supplying practically a friendly court of appeal.

At the same time, valuable as are all institutions which tend to bring together the employer and employed on a footing of friendly equality, I cannot myself hope that conciliation boards, arbitration boards, wages boards, and the like will ever do more than minimize the number of labor contests and alleviate their rigors. The old-established Conseils de Prud’hommes in France, the archetype, one may say, of all conciliation and arbitration boards, have not availed to prevent serious contests, of which the Carmaux strike was but one out of many. I do not, therefore, look with very great hope to the working of compulsory arbitration in trade disputes, which it has been sought to establish by law in Australia, and more recently in the United States, nor do I even expect very much from bills to promote courts of conciliation and arbitration, such as the one now before the British Parliament. In all human differences there must be a final “I will ” or "I won’t,” and "I won’t” nothing but force can overcome. Now, I do not deny the lawfulness of force, exerted on behalf of the community at large, to put down a labor dispute when its motives have been thoroughly thrashed out, and only the obstinacy of one or the other of the disputants hinders the dispute from being settled on the terms laid down by an honest and competent arbitrator, after all attempts at conciliation have failed. In principle, therefore, I am perfectly favorable to the attempts made, in one part of the world or another, towards providing for the enforcement of arbitration in trade contests, in default of a friendly settlement. But I am at a loss to see how such enforcement can be effectually carried out. If the responsibility be a pecuniary one only, the remedy will be nugatory as against unions of the poorer laborers, with small funds or none, and I am afraid it will act as a deterrent to the accumulation of funds by the better paid workers, and involve complications which trade unions would not submit to. For example, the compulsory separation of their funds, since the attempt to levy a fine upon their old age or other purely benevolent funds for the infringement of an award on a trade dispute, would, I suspect, arouse a far greater outcry than the application of those funds to the sustainment of an existing dispute does now. Again, the working population is to a large extent so little fixed that the workers in a particular trade would rapidly melt away from any locality affected by an obnoxious award, or, if it concerned the whole of a trade, from the particular union against which the award was made, in order to form a new one. The difficulty of maintaining a trade on the basis of an award obnoxious to the employer is scarcely less. If he is wellto-do, he may close his works and transfer his capital elsewhere; if he is the reverse, and chooses to go into bankruptcy, the award becomes equally abortive. And the enforcement of an award against the person of a disputant would, I fear, be still more difficult. Employed or employer would be exalted into a martyr by his class, and esprit de corps would very likely lead to a fresh dispute on a larger scale.

The longer I live, the more Ifeel convinced that the only solution to the labor question, or to speak perhaps more truly, the only termination to that labor war which, openly or covertly, is being waged throughout the civilized world, lies in cooperation, in the fusing into one of the essentially conflicting interests of employer and employed. That we are still very far away from that solution on any large scale I fully admit; I admit that it may take the education of both classes for centuries before it is attained. Nevertheless, if I value the Industrial Union of Employers and Employed, it is mainly as a step, however unconscious on the part of most of its promoters, in that direction, — as educating both classes for industrial cooperation. The more intelligent and friendly the employer finds his workmen to become, the more will he be tempted to take the last step for the avoidance of quarrels by making them his copartners. The more the workmen learn, through the practice of a conciliation or wages board, of the conditions of a trade, the better fitted will they become for the carrying on of that trade, either in partnership with an employer or on their own account. It is observable, moreover, that the two subjects of the amicable settlement of trade disputes and of cooperation are by no means unconnected. Not only do the rules of a very large number of cooperative societies provide for the settlement of disputes with their members by arbitration, but one of the trade boards of conciliation and arbitration is that of the Northern Counties Cooperative Societies. Moreover, whilst the strikes against cooperative societies have been very few and of short duration, the fact should be recalled to notice that during the great strike in the Leicester boot and shoe trade not a single workman employed by a cooperative body, at either of the two large workshops of the Cooperative Wholesale Society and of the Anchor Boot and Shoe Cooperative Society, stopped working. One of the ends of the International Cooperative Congress, to which I shall now pass on, is practically the establishment of an Industrial Alliance among the cooperators of all countries.

The International Cooperative Congress, held at the hall of the Society of Arts, August 19-23, 1895, was in fact, as I have had occasion to show elsewhere,⁴ only the carrying out in a definite form of the spirit of the first of the cooperative congresses which have succeeded each other annually in Great Britain since 1869. That was convened, not by cooperators in the British Isles only, but, in the proportion of nearly one sixth, by cooperators abroad ; it had foreign societies represented, foreign delegates present. But the stride forward that has been taken in internationalism is shown by the fact that the latest Congress had twenty foreign honorary presidents,— from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Roumania, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, the United States ; the Italian honorary presidents including the present minister of posts and telegraphs for the kingdom of Italy and an ex-minister, the French an exminister, and the secretary-general to the Dutch minister for the colonies representing the Dutch ; not less is there an indication of progress in the list of “ adhering societies,” comprising sixteen in Italy, ten in France, three in Holland, one each in Belgium, Denmark, and Servia. Among other eminent foreign cooperators present were M. Charles Robert (successor of Léclaire), Count de Rocquigny, and M. Buisson for France, Baron d’Andrimont and M. Micha for Belgium, Signori Cavalieri and Luzzatti for Italy. Cooperative Production was indeed but one of the subjects discussed, the others being Cooperative or People’s Banks, the Cooperative Store Movement, and Cooperative Farming, Dairies, Creameries, Cheese Factories, Agricultural Supply, and Combined Selling ; Cooperative Production, however, attracting the largest and apparently most interested attendance, Cooperative Banks the thinnest. In the person of Dr. Lorimer, America sent to the Congress by far its most eloquent speaker, and in that of Mr. Nelson, of St. Louis, a most worthy adoptive son of the United States, one of its most popular members.

The work of this first International Congress could obviously amount to little more than the formal adoption of the idea of international cooperation. A committee, consisting of five delegates from France, one each from Italy, Switzerland, and Denmark, and seven Englishmen, was appointed to consult with the general provisional committee as to the best means of opening up trade relations between the cooperators of various countries for the exchange of cooperative productions, and reported very judiciously that, “ before any practical work can be done, it will be necessary to obtain from existing cooperative productive and distributive societies in each country a list of the foreign goods they use or sell, so that it may be ascertained which of these goods can be obtained through or from cooperative societies,” and that "as soon as the information referred to has been obtained it should be circulated amongst cooperators in the various countries in their various languages, and their assistance requested.” The final resolutions declared the creation, “ to promote cooperation and profitsharing in all their forms,” of an International Cooperative Alliance, of which the objects were defined to be : “ (a) To make known the cooperators of each country and their work to the cooperators of all other countries, by congresses, the publication of literature, and all other suitable means. (b) To elucidate by international discussion and Correspondence the nature of true cooperative principles. (c) To establish commercial relations between the cobperators of different countries for tlieir mutual advantage,” —the Alliance being “careful to act as much as possible through the organizations existing in the different countries.”A provisional central committee was appointed, with Earl Grey, the president of the Congress, at its head, with power to add to its number, which is to prepare for and present to the next Congress a complete constitution of the Alliance, on the footing of triennial congresses, to be held as far as possible in each of the allied countries, — a central committee renewed by halves at each Congress, and a section or sections in each country, with sectional councils. It is understood that the next Congress will be held in Paris.

Without in the least blinding myself to the difficulties, especially those arising out of the fiscal laws of the various countries, which must hamper the carrying out of object (c) of the Alliance, — practically the most important of the three, — it seems to me that the adoption of that object constitutes a most important new departure in the history of trade. Certain classes of traders, growers, manufacturers, from a number of different countries, have come together to say, Can we not trade together in furtherance of a common work? A moral principle is thus introduced into international trade,⁵ and though its application may hang fire for years, or even fail in the first instance, a seed is sown that will not perish. Now, as all true cooperation necessarily leads to genuineness of goods and trustworthiness of dealing, a bond should thus be wrought of mutual helpfulness between the cooperators of all countries, which may become no inconsiderable factor in the maintenance of international peace. Suppose the attempt comes to nothing ?

Very likely it will. But there are some failures which are more fruitful than successes. I think this would be one of them.

John M. Ludlow.