i^Jjsi-' 5fcm fork i'tate (folUge of l^gticulturc M (Slatntll Unineraitg Jtliata. ^. f . Mbtmrj Cornell University Library HD 5650.G6 The frontier of control; a study in Briti 3 1924 002 708 216 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tlie Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924002708216 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL A Study in British Workshop Politics BY CARTER L. GOODRICH WITH A FOREWORD BY R. H. TAWNEY FELLOW OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD; LATE MEMBER OF THE COAL INDUSTHV COMMISSION is NEW YORK HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE 1920 COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY HARCOURT, BRACE AND HOWE, INC. THB QUINN AND BODEN COMPANY RAHWAY, N. J ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Fob the fun I have had in doing this job, my two heaviest obligations are to Amherst College— for sending me to England to study — and to Mr. Henry Clay — for directing my work here. The trip was made possible by the award of the Eoswell Dwight Hitchcock Fellowship to which the Trustees of Amherst College voted a special addition. My personal debts to the college and to the men working with President Meikle- john there are too many and'too great to mention here. It is Professor Walton H. Hamilton, how- ever, to whose teaching I owe my start in labor problems and to whose planning I owe this special opportunity. To Mr. Henry Clay, late of the Ministry of Labour and now Fellow of New College, Oxford, I am indebted both for suggesting a job that "wanted doing" and for giving me almost day- to-day counsel and guidance in the doing of it. Without the many kindnesses of Mr. Clay and his friends, I could hardly have begun to find my way about in an investigation of the current British situation. Mr. G. D. H. Cole and his associates of the Labour Eesearch Department were good enough iii iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS to give me access to their useful collection of trade union journals, constitutions, rules, etc. and to help me in other ways. Mr. R. H. Tawney, Mr. Arthur Grleason and Mr. Robert W. Bruere have very kindly read my manuscript and made valuable suggestions. Finally I feel warmly grateful to a large number of people in various parts of Great Britain — employers and workers, managers, foremen, trade union secretaries, tutorial movement students and tutors, government oflSicials and "rebel" shop stewards — for the readiness and courtesy with which they have taken time from their inunediate and practical concerns with industry to answer the questions of an outsider and an American. C. L. G. December 1, 1919. CONTENTS FAOB Acknowledgments iii Foreword by K. H. Tawnet . . . , . vii Introduction: The Demand for Control . . 3 The Extent of Control : , SBCTION I— Control 51 II— The Frontier of Control .... 56 III— Employment 63 IV — Unemployment 72 V— "The Right to a Trade" . ... 92 VI— "The Right to Sack" . . . .104 VII— Promotion Ill VIII— The Choice of Foremen . . . .117 IX — The Organization of Foremen . . 126 X — The Standard of Foremanship . . 135 XI — Special Managerial Functions . . 146 XII— Methods of Payment .... 161 XIII — Technique: Restriction and Restrictions 176 XIV — Technique : Consultation over Changes . 186 XV — Technique : Insistence on Improvements 202 XVI — Technique: Suggestions and Inventions 217 XVII— Trade Policy : Joint Action . . .223 XVIII— Trade Policy: Workers' Demands . . 241 XIX— The Extent of Control . . , .253 Note on Soueces 267 Index 278 FOREWORD By R. H. Tawney It is a commonplace that during tlie past six years the discussion of industrial and social prob- lems has shifted its center. Prior to the war students and reformers were principally occupied with questions of poverty. To-day their main in- terest appears to be the government of industry. An increasing number of trade unionists regard poverty as a symptom of a more deeply rooted malady which they would describe as industrial autocracy and demand "control." Anxious to establish some modus vivendi which may promise industrial peace, employers consider the conces- sion of a workshop committee or an industrial council. The Grovernment gives the movement its official blessing and has taken steps through the Ministry of Labor to propagate the proposals of Mr. Whitley's Committee. That "control" should stand to different sections of opinion for quite different types of industrial structure was only to be expected. But the necessity of meeting some demand for which that is now the accepted name is generally admitted. The formulation of a "Constitution for Industry" is conducted with something of the same energy as that which past viii FOREWORD generations have given to tlie discussion of a Con- stitution for the State. The^ change of angle is interesting. No doubt it is all to the good that the task of reorganizing industry should be recognized for what it is — a particular case of the general problem of consti- tutional government. But if it has been useful to show that recent industrial movements have "self-government" as their genus, it is no less im- portant now to be clear as to their species. The formulation of programs of "joint control," such as — to give only one example — that advanced by the Miners' Federation, the demand for "indus- trial democracy," the analogies drawn between representative institutions in industry and in poli- tics — these things have been invaluable in broadening horizons and in opening windows through which new ideas could pass. But the emphasis needed to compel attention to the sig- nificance of a point of view which till recently was unfamiliar has by now, it may be suggested, done its work. The new field for investigation and practice has been mapped out. What is needed to-day is to give precision to its content and to test general propositions in the light of particular facts. "Control" is the most ambiguous and least self-explanatory of formulae. The aspira- tions behind it may be genuine enough. But un- less it is to remain a mere aspiration, it must be FOREWORD ix related mucli more closely tlian has been done hitherto to the actual conditions of industrial or- ganization and to the realities of human psy- chology. We must know how much control is wanted, and control over what, and through whom it is to be exercised. iWe must decide whether the demand is the passing result of abnormal eco- nomic conditions, produced by the war and seized upon by theorists as a basis for premature gen- eralizations, or whether it represents a move- ment which, is so fundamental and permanent that any future scheme of industrial relationships, un- less it is to be built upon sand, must take account of it. The first condition of answering these questions is an impartial survey of the actual facts as they exist to-day. Mr. Carter Goodrich's book supplies it. He is concerned not with theory, but with practice. His object is not to propound any doc- trine, to suggest any reforms or to formulate a judgment as to the merits or demerits of any fea- tures in the industrial system. It is simply to offer the materials without the possession of which these exercises, however exhilarating, are apt to be sterile. He has set himself the question : — ' ' How much control over industry do the rank and file of those who work in it, and their organi- zations, in fact exercise?" He answers it by an analysis of industrial relationships, of the rules X FOREWORD enforced by trade unions and employers' associa- tions, of the varying conditions whicli together constitute "the custom of the trade" in each par- ticular industry, and of the changes in all of these which took place during the war. Such a study of "The Frontier of Control" is indispensable to the formation of any reasonable judgment upon the larger issues which the phrase suggests. Mr. Goodrich is well qualified to pro- vide it. He has made a careful investigation of such aspects of British industrial organization as are relevant to his subject. Eesidence in Great Britain has familiarized him with the atmosphere in which its industrial politics are carried on. He has mixed with members of Whitley Councils and Boards of Control, Trade Boards and Eoyal Com- missions, trade unions and employers' associa- tions. He knows what men of business like Mr. Foster and Mr. Malcolm Sparkes hope for the building industries and the views on mining of leading members of the Miners' Federation. To the economic perplexities and agitations of a foreign country he brings the wide background of a student of economics and a dash of charming skepticism which to one heated by the somewhat feverish temperature of British industry during the last two years, is as refreshing as the ice at the close of an American dinner. Mr. Goodrich has shown admirable self- FOREWORD xi restraint in allowing the facts to speak for them- selves, and in resisting the temptation to enlarge upon their moral. With regard to certain broad questions, however, -his book encourages the reader to attempt the generalizations which the author withholds. It suggests, in the first place, that the sharp division ordinarily drawn between the sphere of "management" and that of "labor" is an abstraction which does less than justice to the complexity of the facts. If it is broadly true that in modern industry the function of the former is direction and of the latter the execution of orders transmitted to it, the line between them, nevertheless, fluctuates widely from industry to in- dustry. It varies, for one thing, quite irrespective of any deliberate effort on the part of the workers to move it, with the nature of the work which is being carried on. There are certain occupations in which an absolute separation between the plan- ning and the performance of work is, for technical reasons, impracticable. A group of miners who are cutting and filling coal are "working" hard enough. But very little coal will be cut, and the risks of their trade wiU be enormously increased, unless they display some of the qualities of scien- tific knowledge, prevision and initiative which are usually associated with the word "management." What is true of miners is true, in different de- grees, of men on a building job or in the trans- xii FOREWORD port trades. They must exercise considerable discretion in their work because, unless they do, the work does not get done, and no amount of supervision can compensate for the absence of it. It is not, it may be suggested, a mere chance that workers in these industries should have taken the initiative in the movement for "control." They demand more of it, because the very nature of their work compels them to exercise something of it already. In industries such as these the character of the work pushes the frontier of the workmen's con- trol further into the employer's territory than is the case in — say — a cotton miU or a locomotive shop. But the degree to which workers exercise in some industries functions and powers reserved in others for the management does not depend merely upon economic conditions. It is also, of course, the result of conscious effort, which is not the less significant because till recently it took the form of specific claims to be consulted upon par- ticular matters incidental to the wage contract and was not related to any general social philosophy. The organization of sufiicient power to assert those claims effectively is the history of trade unionism. Of its result in establishing or failing to establish them, Mr. Goodrich's book is the best account known to me. The reader can judge from it how much "control" had in practice been se- FOREWORD xlii cured by workmen up to 1919. If lie compares the position with that which obtained fifty years ago he will see that long before the movement for "self-government in industry" had become ex- plicit, the line between "management" and ' * labor ' ' had been, in fact, redrawn. On one point, apprenticeship and the entry to a trade, the ef- fective power of the workers appears for obvious reasons to have diminished. On all the rest it has enormously increased. As Mr. Groodrich's survey shows, the intensive development of trade union- ism has been even more remarkable than its ex- tensive growth in membership. On the whole group of questions, in particular, suggested by the word "discipline," it is every year more and more succeeding in the establishment of the same claims as it made effective thirty years ago with regard to wages and hours. In the light of the facts presented by Mr. Good- rich it is a question whether the conventional description of industrial organization given in most economic text-books does not require a some- what radical revision. The picture of "the em- ployer" achieving economic progress by "substi- tuting" one "factor of production" for another may have been adequate to the early days of the factory system. What the present study brings out is the vital importance at every point of a condition which is apt to be lightly touched upon xiv FOREWORD or omitted altogether, the condition of corporate consent on the part of the workers. How vital that condition is is one of the discoveries of the past five years. It was emphasized first by the events of the war, which revealed how little reality there was ia the common as- sumption that the settlement of the larger ques- tions of industrial organization was a matter for the employer and the employer alone. It became necessary to reorganize industry for the purpose of increasing production or of economizing mate- rials. The condition of carrying out the reorgani- zation effectively was the consent of all engaged in the industry. Consent could be obtained only by a formal recognition of the fact that the rep- resentative of the workers had a right to be con- sulted with regard to questions of policy and management, because they possessed de facto the power to frustrate the required changes or to make them effective. Hence, as Mr. Goodrich poiats out, the creation of representative organs, such as the Textile Control Boards, through which the views of the workers on these matters could be expressed. When, as in the textile trades, that representative machihery worked effectively, the emergency was met with compara- tively little difficulty. When, as in the engineer- ing trades, the policy pursued was to force drastic innovations upon workers who were not consulted FOREWORD XV witli regard to them, the result was endless fric- tion. The moral suggested by the situation since the armistice in the building and coal-mining in- dustries — to mention no others — and emphasized by Mr. Foster's Committee, by Mr. Justice Sankey, and by the report on dock labor of Lord Shaw's Court of Inquiry, is the same. It is that, as matters now stand, the first condition of economic progress is such a change in the posi- tion of the workers as will throw on to the side of increased efficiency the public opinion which is at present skeptical both of the objects for which it is urged and of the methods by which it is sought to attain it. The truth is that, with the pushing forward of the "frontier" through the process described by Mr. Goodrich, the conditions of industrial effi- ciency have changed. In no very remote past disci- pline could be imposed upon workers from above, under pain of dismissal, which meant in the last resort, however hateful it may be to confess it, by an appeal to hunger and fear. "Members of this Court," states Lord Shaw's report, "can re- call a period when men, gathered at the dock gates, fought fiercely for a tally which, when obtained, might only enable them to obtain one hour's work, and so limit their earnings for the day to 4d." Workmen were conscious of individual grievances, but they had not formulated an interpretation of xvi FOREWORD their position in general terms, and the willing- ness of the personnel of industry to co-operate in production without raising fundamental questions as to its constitution and government could be taken for granted. To-day that assumption is possible only to the very short-sighted. As the present study shows, the effect of the piecemeal advances made by trade unionism has been to effect, in the aggregate, a radical redistribution of authority between the parties engaged in in- dustry, which results, in extreme cases, in some- thing like a balance of power. To discuss how that situation is to be resolved, whether by a frontal attack on trade unionism, such as appears to be favored by the more naive and irresponsi- ble section of opinion in the United States, or by giving it a vested interest in the con- tinuance of profit-making through schemes of profit-sharing and representation on directorates, or by a partnership between a trade unionism undertaking responsibility for the maintenance of professional standards and the consumer for whom industry is carried on, does not fall within the scope of Mr. Groodrich's book. But a reasonable consideration of these large and burning issues wiU be materially assisted by the clearness and impartiality with which he has set forth the pre- cise facts of the existing situation. E. H. Tawney. THE FRONTIEE OF CONTROL INTEODUCTION THE DEMAND FOR CONTROL "In the past workmen have thought that if they could secure higher wages and better conditions they would be content. Employers have thought that if they granted these things the workers ought to be contented. Wages and conditions have been improved; but the discontent and the unrest have not disappeared." So far the quota- tion might be from almost any American business man. But the place was the King's Robing Eoom of the British House of Lords, and the speaker was a veteran trade union leader, Mr. William Straker, presenting the case of the Miners' Federation before the Coal Commission which was sitting in judgment on Great Britain's key industry, Mr. Straker went on: — "Many good people have come to the conclusion that working people are so un- reasonable that it is useless trying to satisfy them. The fact is that the unrest is deeper than pounds, shillings and pence, necessary as they are. The root of the matter is the straining of the spirit of man to be free." In the name of this "deeper" unrest, the Miners ' Federation was demanding a bold scheme 8 4 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL of workers' control. And the "deeper" unrest itself — or at least the unrest which is concerned more with discipline and management than with wages — is often spoken of as the demand for con- trol. The main business of this book is to discuss the facts of the present extent of workers' control in British industry; the purpose of the introduce tion is to indicate the significant setting of these facts in the human terms of the demand for con- trol. Control is important only because people want it. But how many workers do wamt control, and how much control do they want? No answer can pretend to be definite. Control is a slogan in several vigorous propagandist programs. Con- trol has more than once been a definite issue both in the active conflicts and the formulated policies of the labor movement. But even for this con- scious and organized demand, no accurate count of heads can be made. And for the much more significant estimate of the underlying demand for control — the desires of individual workers for the simpler things that are grouped as control, and the restlessnesses for which the word control is an attempted rationalization — it is possible only to offer a few clues for further study. Control is the central idea of various propa- gandist isms. The Syndicalist cry of 1911 — "The Mines for the Miners" — ^has died out, but THE DEMAND FOR CONTROL 5 the idea of workers' control remains. "Complete control of industry by the working-class organiza- tions," is the slogan of the Marxian Industrial Unionists/ Control of industry by guUds of pro- ducers co-operating with a democratized state representing the people as consumers, is the subtler syndicalism ^ of the Guild Socialists. And the cries of "complete control" and "encroaching control" of these groups of theorists are echoed more and more faintly through various grades of opinion to the "share in control" and "voice in control' ' ^ offered in the Whitley Councils. The thoroughgoing disciples of either of the two com- plete gospels of control — Marxian Industrial Unionism and Guild Socialism — are a tiny minority. The Socialist Labor Party, the chief organization of the former, has about two thousand members, but this number included the ablest of the leaders of the shop stewards' move- ment, and the movement served as a channel for the doctrine. The Central Labor College, which "promises to be candid but not impartial" and preaches an uncompromising revolutionary orthodoxy, reaches through its correspondence and other courses perhaps ten thousand students a year — chiefly among the members of the National ' G D H Cole, An Introduction to Trade Unionism, pp. 97, 98. ' Of. the footnote on p. 37 of Cole's Self-Govertiment in Industry.^ • The corresponding Americanisms are " management-sharmg and "voice in management." 6 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL Union of Eailwaymen and the South. Wales Miners' Federation. The Guild Socialists, too, are insignificant in enrolled members, ^he Na- tional Guilds League, their propagandist body, has less than a thousand members. This figure is, however, little indication of the actual munber who accept more or less fully the guild idea and little indication of the actual influence of this small group — composed as it is largely of able and pro- lific writers and of the younger trade union officials. The working-class circulation of Mr. Cole's books, his personal influence as adviser to the labor movement, and the obvious guildsman's hand in documents such as the Miners' Bill for Nationalization* and the Foster Eeport to the Building Trades Parliament "—are suggestions of this. One shrewd observer declared that: — "The Guild Socialist propaganda has gone as far in the trade union movement in two years as the State Socialist propaganda had gone in twenty years." In addition to these elaborate and definite theories of control there is a large body of opin- ion that is agreed on some extension of workers' control as the next step in trade unionism. No trade union leader would admit that he wanted less control than the minimum offered in the Whitley Councils scheme — which is itself some in- dication of the spread of the control doctrine. ♦ See below, p. 12. ' See below, p. 86. THE DEMAND FOR CONTROL 7 There is no one break in the long, series from Syndicalism to Whitleyism, and the widespread acceptance of the latter in middle-class thinking is a hint of the driving force of the more drastic doctrines. Next possibly to ''nationalization," "control" is the most talked-of word among trade union theorists. The control issue, moreover, has passed from labor theory into labor activity and declared pol- icy. Its most spectacular expression was in that revolt against or within trade unionism known as the Shop Stewards' Movement.' This, it is true, was many things besides an expression of the de- mand for control. It hegcm largely as a protest against the special helplessness of the trade union leaders before the special war-time problems. The cost of living was rising sharply, dilution was threatening the wage standard of the skilled engi- neers,'' the number of war-time restrictions was multiplying. Meanwhile the trade union leaders were bound not to lead strikes— first by the "in- dustrial truce" agreed upon at the beginning of the war, later by the anti-strike provisions of the Munitions Act. The unrest broke out in spontane- ous and unauthorized strikes. The movement found leaders in the shop stewards or trade union representatives from within the various shops, ° G. D. H. Cole, Introduction to Trade UmonUm, pp. 63-68. ' See below, pp. 100 and 189. 8 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL men whose position before the war had meant little more than collecting dues for the union.* The issues were concrete and immediate. The first of these strikes was the "Tuppenny Strike" for a long-delayed wage increase on the Clyde in Jan- uary, 1915. The strike committee of stewards elected from the various works organized per- manently as the Clyde Workers' Committee and this simple type of structure was copied by other districts. The movement at Sheffield broke out when a certain skilled engineer was drafted into the army. And so through the other engineering centers. The movement was first and most simply the workers' attempt by whatever means came handy to get the immediate concessions which their official machinery was failing to win. It became in part, however, a revolt against official- ism in gem,eral. This in fact furnished the chief dogma of the movement — "the vesting of control of policy in the rank and file" — and its common name, the "Eank and File Movement." "Eefer grievances to the rank and file," and "Get a move on in the shop before reporting to official sources," are rules from the Sheffield Shop Stewards ' Man- ual. The movement was largely a breaking wwa/y from the cumbrous structure of engimeering trade unionism. "We organize for power," wrote the ■ Ministry of Labour, Works Committeet, pp. 2-10. See Note on Sources. THE DEMAND FOR CONTROL 9 chief spokesman of the movement,* "and yet we find the workers in the workshop divided not only amongst a score of branches but a score of unions." Shop vs. branch and mdustry vs. craft, were the two issues of organization. The trade union branch m engineering is based on the residence, not the working-place, of the mem- bers. Men who work side by side may be scattered among a number of branches. But grievances arise in particular shops. Therefore "Direct Representation from the Workshops to the Committees" is the first of the "Principles" on the member's card of the Sheffield "Workers' Committee. In the second place, the industry is organized in a score or more of separate and often competing trade unions." Jealousy frequently runs high between craft and craft and higher be- tween skilled and unskilled. The shop stewards ' movement took in all grades of labor and was in effect an amalgamation from below. "Work always for the solidarity of all the workers," is the last rule from the Shop Stewards' Manual. The movement was, then, a double attempt to fit the structure of the labor movement to the struc- ture of the industrial unit. So much for the motives other than the demand • J. T. Murphy, The Workers' Committee. See Note on Sources. '" Eight of these unions, including the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, have just voted to unite. 10 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL for control. The movement won its chief support by appeals to simple and very practical war-time issues ; its chief effect may possibly be in the field of trade union structure. But its connections with the demand for workers' control are close and highly significant. Whatever the rank and file wanted, the conspicuous leaders were out for control. This is evident in all the propaganda of the movement. The first of the "Objects" on the SheflSield member's card was "To obtain an ever- increasing Control of Workshop Conditions." It is evident in such by-products of the movement as the Clyde Dilution Scheme ^^ and the GaUecher- Paton memorandum on collective contract.^^ But it is clearest of all in the actual seizures of power by the shop stewards and in the way the leaders played on each particular grievance and played up each particular issue to swell the general de- mand for control. Several instances of shop steward tactics are given in Section X. The use of a particular blacksmith's objection to the boss's watching his fire to establish a general refusal to be watched at work is a minor but typical case." Moreover the very changes in structure themselves were often argued on control grounds : fit your organization to industry to make it fit to control industry. The shop stewards' movement was a " See below, pp. 197-201. " See below, p. 173. " See below, p. 138. THE DEMAND FOR CONTROL 11 genuine movement towards the control of industry. And as an object-lesson in control it has become a stimulus to further demands. The powers won by the shop stewards are being used up and down the country as a text for vigorous propaganda. The shop stewards' control was decidedly con- tagious control "; its actual extent may be easily underrated by an outsider. It wals recorded in no formal agreements. It rested on the war shortage of labor and was abruptly checked in the period of unemployment that followed the end of the war. The full story has nowhere been put to- gether, and the evidence must be pieced out from the accounts of the shop stewards themselves and from employers' tales of "what they had to put up with during the war," but it is clear that the movement was enormously powerful throughout the great engineering centers and that it has spread to other industries, and it is clear that in certain works the shop stewards exercised the greatest degree of control ever held by British workers in modern industry. The shop stewards' movement was both an expression of the demand for control and an incitement to further demmids. But the demand for control is by no means con- fined to " rebel ' ' trade unionism. The demand that among the engineers broke through the union machinery has in other unions found its outlet in " See below, Section XIX. 12 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL official programs. Its expressions in official trade union policy have been less picturesque than the unofficial outbreak, but they are no less signifi- cant. Two of the greatest trade unions, the Miners ' Federation with its 800,000 members and the National Union of Eailwaymen with its 450,- 000, have not only accepted the principle of con- trol but have put forward specific schemes of con- trol as serious parts of their programs. At the annual conference of the Miners on July 9, 1918, the following resolution was carried: — "That in the opinion of this conference the time has arrived in the history of the coal mining industry when it is clearly in the national interests to transfer the entire industry from private ownership and control to State ownership with joint control and administra- tion hy the workmen and tJie State" (italics mine). • ' ' The workmen should have some directive power in the industry in which they are engaged," said Mr. Frank Hodges in urging the resolution. "I do not believe that nationalization wiU do any good for anybody, unless it is accompanied by an effec- tive form of working-class control." Another leader declared: — "We have the brains amongst the miners to work the mines. ' ' The sense of this resolution was embodied in a Mines Nationaliza- tion Bill " which was drafted early in 1919 and '" See below, Note on Sources. THE DEMAND FOR CONTROL 13 presented to the Coal Commission. Under this scheme the industry would be administered, under a Minister of Mines, by a National Council made up of ten Government nominees and ten men chosen by the Miners' Federation and by a series of subordinate District and Pit Councils on each of which one half of the members should be di- rectly elected by the workers affected. The system of control outlined in the majority report of the Coal Commission, known as the Sankey Scheme,^^ differs from this in the important particular that on each of these boards the workers are given slightly less than half of the places. The repre- sentatives of the Miners nevertheless accepted the Sankey Eeport with minor reservations. After the Government rejected it, it was endorsed by an overwhelming majority at the Trades Union Con- gress at Glasgow and is now the subject of vigor- ous propaganda on the part of the entire trade union movement. The National Union of Eailwaymen was first committed to a control policy by the following resolution passed by a National Conference of District Councils early in 1917: — "That this Conference, seeing that the Railways are being controlled by the State for the benefit of the nation during the war, is of opinion that they should not revert to private ownership afterwards. Further, >' See below, Note on Sources. 14 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL we believe that national welfare demands that they should be acquired by the State to be jointly controlled and managed by the State and representatives of the N.U.R." Mr. Bellamy in his President's address that year declared : — "Whether nationalization or [state] control be de- cided upon, it ought to be made unmistakably clear that neither system will be acceptable to railwaymen unless we are given a share in the management." A special conference in Novemher, 1917, voted by a majority of 74 to 1 : — "That there should be equal representation, both na- tional and local, for this union upon the management of all railways in the United Kingdom." In March, 1918, the Executive at a special meet- ing adopted a control scheme similar to that of the Miners and providing for a National Board of Control, half of whose members should be elected by the House of Commons and half by the railway trade unions. The scheme is now under negotia- tion with the Prime Minister and the Minister of Transport. The Government's counter offer seems to be an iiaprovement in the Conciliation Board machinery — to allow for the hearing of grievances over discipline — and a small minority of places for the union on the Railway Executive Committee. THE DEMAND FOR CONTROL 15 The Miners and Railwaymen, then, have put con- trol schemes into their official programs end have pressed them in their actual bargaining. The other unions have no such detailed proposals as parts of their serious immediate policy, but it would be easy to fill a book with statements from trade union journals and from responsible trade union officials that the control of industry is their "ultimate aim." The Postal and Telegraph Clerks,^' whose leaders are all National Guilds- men, are definitely committed to a control policy. The following bit from a correspondent's letter is a fair sample of the tone of their official publi- cation : — "I am out for a Postal G-uild; so is Francis. He wouldn't be worth a dime . . . if he wasn't." But it is unnecessary to go down the list of individual unions to discover commitments of the trade union movement to the idea of control. The issue came before the Trades Union Congress at Glasgow in September, 1919, Mr. Bromley of the Locomotive Engineers moved a resolution favoring workers' control of industry to end ex- ploitation. The motion was carried unanimously and with some enthusiasm. Control has become an official and avowed aim of the whole labor movement. " Now a part of the new Union of Post Office Workers. 16 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL How much this commitment really means is another ipatter. A resolution carried unanimously and without debate at a Congress whose real interest was in the hot fight over "Direct Action" is hardly evidence of immediate responsible policy. But together with the other commitments to control, it is a significant sign of the times. It is at least a sign of the phenomenally rapid growth of the demand for control. In 1907, the leaders of the railwaymen declared in all honesty that they had no intention of having anything to do with discipline. In 1919, the railway unions are nego- tiating on the basis of a demand for half control of the entire management. This is partly a matter of the increased power of the union; a union's strength may be roughly gauged by the issues on which it fights. But it is largely a matter of a change in the ideas of the trade union movement. The demand for "control of industry" in so many words is a new thing or possibly the revival of a long-forgotten thing. Bits of what would now be called control have long been fought for and often won by the trade unions — of that this whole book is evidence. But the conscious demand is a new and significant phenomenon. The very vocabulary of control is new. It had hardly been heard before Mr. Tom Mann " stumped England " A leader in the great dock strike of 1889, mass orator to three continents, now General Secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. THE DEMAND FOR CONTROL 17 in 1911, All the movements discussed have started since that time. Eight years of propa- ganda at the most and a new and revolutionary- idea officially accepted by the trade union move- ment. The resolution indicates one more thing — that there is within trade unionism practically no active opposition to the idea of control. There is no doubt at all of the truth of Mr. Cole's claim in the Introduction of Trade Unionism that the theorists of control are in line with the immediate tendencies of the "younger active trade union- ists." But just here must be made the first serious discount of the force of the demand. Younger active trade unionists are by any count a mere handful. The percentage of members interested in general policy is small in any union. "I sometimes feel," said Mr. Hodges, "that there is a great mountaia of indifference even in the Mining Movement." Younger active trade unions are perhaps also a minority. Few unions have both the power and the desire to push forward programs of control. Many must be written off almost completely in any calculation of the demand. The great cotton unions have hardly been touched by the control propaganda. The aristocratic monopolists of the old crafts discussed in Section XIX make no part of the new demand. The women's unions have 18 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL showed little effective demand for control — so far at least dilution by woman labor bas been also a dilution of the demand for control. All this is not to minimize the demand. Control has been genuinely fought for in trade union activity. The idea of control has officially captured the trade union movement. But to say that the trade union movement is committed to control by a resolution passed unanimously at Glasgow is not to say that control is actively demanded by each of the five and a quarter million trade unionists represented at the Congress. Nor is it to say that every trade union represented will fight for control. Trade unionism is no such coherent and united force. Nor is control so simple and definite a thing. The word is a slogan and a convenient general term. But in actual reference to the facts of in- dustry it breaks up into a bewildering variety of rights and claims — as the rest of the book will show. Control is no "simple central objective," no one clear-cut thing which people either know they want or know they don't want. The demand cannot be put glibly into a single phrase or a single resolution — too many diverse motives are blended and crossed in the strivings of many workers for the complicated set of things called control. The demand for control is not the unified ex- THE DEMAND FOR CONTROL 19 pression of some single specific impulse. If it were, it might be easier to separate it from the other strands of motive in industrial life. But instead, the elements of the demand must be hunted for in the whole jungle of the reactions of workers to the industrial situation. It is a hujit for facts that can neither be classified sharply nor weighed accurately. " It is essential, ' ' says the re- port of the Garton Foundation,^* "to disentangle as far as possible the economic and non-economic factors. ' ' That would be hard enough, but would lead only to the edge of the problem of distinguish- ing among the non-economic factors. It is a study to which there is no end, but even the most tenta- tive beginning may fill in some of the human con- tent of the phrases of control. What are some of the wants and feelings on which the propaganda is based? A start might be made by setting down a few general heads under which to group the workers' feelings about industry. The worker's interests in industry are roughly these : — (1) How much he gets — ^Wages, etc. (2) What it's for— The Object of the Work. (3) How he's treated— Freedom and Author- ity. (4) What he actually does— Workmanship. To put these down in a row is not to pretend that " See Note on Sources. 20 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL they are equal or even sharply distinct, but the classification will serve as a tool in the examina- tion and comparison of some of the elements in the demand for control. The first two sets of interests are concerned with the consumption of the products of industry, the others with the con- ditions of production. The third and fourth in- terests fit closely the issues of discipline and management which are the frontier of control. The first and second apparently bear less directly on the personal and technical organization of pro- duction. But no serious study could ignore the cross-relationships between all four sets of mo- tives. How much the worker gets — in wages, hours of leisure, etc. — is of course the chief field of trade union activity.^" The immediate bargain for hours and wages is ruled out of the subsequent descrip- tions of the extent of control. But most of the complicated forms of control are themselves merely elaborate safeguards of the standard of living. Most of the control already won by the workers is control as a hvlwarh of wages. The checkweighman is there to see that wages are '° The annual) official Reports on Strikes and Lockouts give figures of the numbers of workpeople involved in disputes and a classiflcation of the disputes according to the issues involved. According to these, 64 per cent of the workpeople out in the years 1901-13 were out over question of wages and hours. See Note on Sources. THE DEMAND FOR CONTROL 21 not nibbled away by fraud.^^ ApprenticesMp and similar restrictions are frankly for purposes of wage monopoly.^^' The constitution of the Amal- gamated Society of Engineers talks of the "vested interest" in craft rights. Consultation over changes in technique is mainly an outgrowth of the piece-rate bargain.^' It is only a slight exag- geration to say that all present forms of workers' control, except those that secure the rudiments of decency in discipline, are by-products of the wages-and-hours struggle. The wage element is the dominant factor in present-day control. But what are its bearings on the demands for more control? There are at least three widely different interrelations to be noticed. The first and most talked-of is opposition. The average workman, it is often said, is interested in "mere wages."'* He cares nothing about con- trol; he doesn't want to run things. What he wants is to draw his pay regularly and get away as quickly as possible. Nor is this merely an " Section XI. " Section V. " Section XIV. " I do not intend the phrase "mere wages " to carry any moral stigma. It is not argued that it is sordid or immoral to want wages and short hours and a steady job, and gloriously moral to want control and personal dignity and an interesting task. Nor is it argued that it is natural and healthy for men to want money and decent ventilation, but unnatural and sentimental for them to desire freedom and joy in work. The question is not what people should want but the sufficiently difficult one of what people do want. 22 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL employer's view of working-class psychology. I heard it also from an impatient leader of shop stewards who said that most workmen were "not interested beyond wages and hours" and that therefore he "had no intention of waiting for the majority." It is true that the wage and control movements are sometimes in competition, and no doubt on a straight vote between wages and con- trol wages would still win. But it is a great mistake to suppose that the two interests are always or even usually in opposi- tion. The short-run economic interest — ^what E. F. Hoxie called the demand for "more now" — is indifferent to control movements. The longer-run economic demands — which take shape in the plan- ning of drastic changes in the distribution of wealth — may on the other hand be found greatly strengthening the demand for workers' control. In fact, the latter form a major part of the driv- ing force of current control movements. The shop stewards are emphatic on this point. "What we want," a Sheffield leader told me promptly, "is the product of the industry, and" — after hesitat- ing a moment — "conditions," by which he meant chiefly protection from trade diseases. Mr. Frank Hodges of the Miners has been perhaps the clearest of all labor leaders in his insistence on the need for control as an "avenue for great" — and non-economic — "longings." Yet he too de- THE DEMAND FOR CONTROL 23 clares that the control demand is mainly one for satisfactions outside working hours : — "Workers' control is a means, and not an end. Work in the modern industrial world is unpleasant for the majority of workers. They will find their ex- pression as human beings outside the working hours. . . . Control they wiU use to get efficient manage- ment and machinery. . . . Control they wish to save them from the waste and insecurity and long hours of the present system . . . whjieh leaves no secure and creative leisure. . . . But control wiU never of itself be an answer to the instincts thwarted by stan- dardized machine industry. The answer will be found outside working hours. ' ' ^^ The demand for high pay may strengthen the demand for control. The desire for sure pay — for security against unemployment — is even nearer the surface of control schemes. This is in fact the chief immediate appeal to the workers of such an elaborate plan of control as the Foster Eeport.^" Indeed, several working-class students have told me that the desire for security is the chief factor in the demand for control. Both security and high wages might conceivably be won without workers' control, but the demands for them furnish much of the impetus of current movements toward control. '" Quoted by Arthur Gleason, What the Workers Want. " See below, p. 86. And cf, all of Section IV, 24 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL There is still a third interrelation between the wage motive and the "non-economic factors" in the demand for control. What starts as a wage demand may easily — oft^n unconsciously — ^be colored by an admixture of other motives. The clearest case is the transition in motive from wages to workmcmship to be discussed in Section XV. Every demand on the part of the Miners for improved technique has had as its basis the effect of bad management on piece-work earnings. The first and obvious motive was wages. Yet a large part of the feeling with which I have heard indi- vidual miners talk about needed improvements was clearly — ^whether they knew it or not — a sheer workmanlike disgust at inefficiency. And at the Miners' Conference on output committees, held in November, 1916, the Yorkshire leader, Mr. Her- bert Smith, declared: — "I say it has nothing to do witli it . . . whether a man gets 15 shillings or 20 shillings . . . oppor- tunity must be given ... to get as many tubs as possible. ' ' The strictly economic motives, then, are found both opposing and greatly strengthening, and oc- casionally even passing bodily over into, the non- economic factors in the demand for control. Clearly they are not the whole demand, but any estimate of the future of the demand is worthless THE DEMAND FOR CONTROL 25 if it does not consider on which side their great weight is likely to fall. Certain of the motives centering around the object for which the work is done or the purpose for which the product is to be used — what it's for and for whose benefit— hawe a bearing on control. The good economic man, it is true, in an imper- sonal economic system cares for none of these things. But actual workers sometimes do. The patriotic motive made a difference in war-time pro- duction. Moreover workers sometimes refuse to do certain pieces of work because they disagree with the purposes of it: — the Sailors' Union dur- ing the war would not carry delegates to the Stockholm International Labor Conference; more recently certain trade unionists have refused to make munitions for the Russian Campaign. More to the present point is the extent to which the control demand is fortified by the objection to working for private profit. The organisation of industry is right enough as it is, one shop steward told me, what we want is to eliminate private ownership. The Foster Report names as one of four causes of restriction of output, "the disin- clination of the workmen to make unlimited profit for private employers. " " We don 't want to work any longer for private profit, ' ' was the burden of the Miners' case before the Coal Commission. 26 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL That this was more than a wage matter and clearly bound up with state socialist or community feel- ing, comes out clearly in a passage in the cross- examination of Mr, Straker of the Northumber- land Miners by Mr. Cooper- of the Northumber- land Coalowners : — "Mr. Straker. . . . He [the miner] objects to those profits being collected by any few individuals. Mr. Cooper. What possible difference can it make to him whether the profits are collected by few or many, or by a neutral body like the State, so long as he gets his fair share? Mr. Straker. Because he is realizing now that he is a citizen of the State." The feeling is evidently in part that the status of "public servant" is somehow honorable in it- self. It is no accident that the two strongest official trade union movements toward control — those of the Miners ' Federation and the National Union of Eailwaymen — are for "nationalization and joint control. ' ' There is no doubt that the older social- ist feeling is a powerful element in the control demand. One careful working class student, in defining the essence of the demand for control, said that it was: "To serve the community, not a man and a class." The blending is not logically necessary. Socialist Utopias have been planned with no thought of workers ' control. The interest in what happens to the product of industry does THE DEMAND FOR CONTROL 27 not necessarily involve an interest in the internal control of the production. But in the ideas of the British labor movement, at least, these two sets of motives are inextricably mingled. "When Mr. Straker says that the miner must "feel that the industry is being rim hy him in order to pro- duce coal for the itse of the comm'unity," it would be hard for him to say where the one motive ends and the other begins. Row the worTcer is treated — what sort of author- ity he is under, how much freedom he is allowed, how much authority he has — on these questions the demand for control becomes most nearly a de- mand for control for control's sake. "The con- flict of interests between employers and employed in private industry has two aspects," writes Mr. Henry Clay in the Observer, "the purely economic aspect of wages, and the moral aspect of subor- dination to discipline." There is no lack of testimony to the importance of the discipline as- pect in present-day labor feeling. Self-respect, status, independence, personal freedom, personal dignity, — a whole propaganda literature and a whole set of commentaries on labor have been written around these terms. And the roots of this sort of feeling run far back into the older trade unionism. Trade union membership, says the constitution of the Friendly Society of Iron- 28 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL founders, ' ' enables men to exhibit the principle of self-respect which, if duly exercised, will in its turn command the respect of others, thereby plac- ing a man in that position where he may demand that he should be treated as a factor in any arrangement involving his services, and not as though he was a mere human machine." A re- cent account of a dispute carried on by the shop stewards at a Cowes aircraft factory runs in al- most the same terms: — "A mass-meeting of all sections made it quite clear that they were going to insist that any attempt to treat any group of men without regard to their feelings or self-respect would be treated as a challenge to all the unions." Lord Robert Cecil put the case to the House of Commons in the phrases of political theory: — "What is really the position of the wage-earner in most industries? He is paid so much wages. He is a mere item. He has to carry out a certain industrial policy on which he has never been consulted, and with which he has no power of dealing at all. He is not really a free, self-governing man in industrial matters. ... It [this feeling] is really at the bottom of this claim for nationalization." Professor Edwin Cannan put the same claim into homelier language in his testimony before the Coal Commission : — THE DEMAND FOR CONTROL 29 " It is all right to work with anyone ; what is disagree- able is to feel too distinctly that you are working under someone. You suffer from this feeling when you are told to da what you know, or think you know, to be the wrong thing, and also when you are told to do the right thing in a disagreeable manner." Dr. Cannan's shrewd analysis makes a good beginning for an attempt to separate out tlie ele- ments of the freedom-authority demand. The most conspicuous is surely the objection to be- ing told in a disagreeable manner, to being told the wrong way. It is just this that the Welsh colliers and the railwaymen and the other workers described in Section X are "quick to resent." Being told the wrong wag is almost an exact trans- lation of "alleged harassing conduct of a fore- man," and the great number of disputes on this head is a sign of the strength of the feeling. The aircraft-workers already quoted were demanding "the right to work under a manager who will real- ize that men are men inside the shop, and not servile slaves." Similar evidence of the intensity of this resentment against harsh discipline may be taken from a writer whose sympathies are entirely on the employers' side. The author of The Mem-Power of the Nation " is warning fore- men of "The Pitfalls of the Promoted" : — "" See Note on Sources. 30 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL "Domination, even when veneered by a display of sympathy, tends to active guardianship of privileges cherished by the worker and the exercise of that will- fulness which finds expression too often in an enforce- ment of selfish rights. In fact, were one to probe deeply into the basal cause of many disputes in works, it would be found that in a large number of cases a little thoughtfulness and tact on the part of the fore- man would have nipped the trouble in the bud." There is no doubt at all that irritation at "petty- tyranny or constant bullying" is "at the bottom of some of the bitterest strikes." All these hot protests against particular abuses of authority are perhaps not yet a demand for con- trol. There is certainly a distinction between the resentment against being controlled m a certain way and the resentment against being controlled at all. But even more significant than the distinc- tion is the fact that the one passes so readily over , into the other. The objection to being "messed about" by an unusually fussy foreman becomes an objection to being "messed about" by any sort of supervision. The fierce resentment against ill- treatment by a particular "gaffer" or boss crystallizes into the general phrases "sack the gaffer" or "eliminate the bosses." Eesentment at being given orders in a disagreeable manner be- comes, as Cannan suggests, the general resent- ment at feeling too distinctly under orders at all. THE DEMAND FOR CONTROL 31 Mucli of the touchiness of the workers toward the display of authority comes very near to resent- ment against all control. ' ' The British attitude, ' ' said the secretary of a powerful employers' asso- ciation, "is this : — I know how to do my job and won't be told how." "Policing" is pretty generally resented. And sometimes the objection is put rigorously into practice, as in the case of the Scottish miners who refuse to work while the overman is in their stall ^^ or of the Clyde black- smiths who would not let their managing director watch their fires.^" All this is not the demand for control in the sense of an explicit theory of opposi- tion to authority and only a small minority of the workers hold any such complete theory. But this resentment may easily be the "makings" of such a demand. One of the shop stewards declared vehemently : — "People talk as if the demand for control was some- thing that had to be created among the workers by a islow process, hut it's there already!" He must surely have meant, however, that it was "there" in the shape of a latent resentment that might be focused on this or that particular issue, not "there" as a fully conscious program. There is some evidence, too, of the workings of this pro- cess by which irritation with certain orders be- " See below, p. 137. " See below, p. 138. 32 THE FRONTIER OP CONTROL comes a resentment against all control. A York- shire carpenter gave me a theory to account for the war-time increase in the control demand which illustrates this in detail: — Work before the war went along much the same way from year to year, and few new orders had to be given. There was nothing to make the workers especially con- scious that they were under control. The rapid war changes made necessary a sudden stream of novel and disturbing and often conflicting orders. All this made the workers feel themselves more distinctly bossed, and therefore ready to think in terms of opposition to control. The intellectual history of one of the prominent Clyde shop stewards has run a somewhat similar course. Be- fore he had any particular social theories he used to resent being watched at his work. When the manager brought guests through the shop he used to switch off the power and walk away from his machine — "bad enough to have to work in a fac- tory anyhow without being put on exhibition do- ing it!" It was this sensitiveness to all subordi- nation which became the basis for his later revolu- tionary theories ; and it is this, he claims, which is the real driving force in the minds of the leaders of the extremist movements. The sensitiveness of those who always "feel too distinctly" that they are under someone is very near the core of the conscious theories of control. The feeling of THE DEMAND FOR CONTROL 33 servility in subordination to tlie employer's authority is the leading note in shop steward prop- aganda. This is what makes the bitterness that runs through Mr. J. T. Murphy's pamphlets: — "Why are men and women servile to directors, man- agers, and foremen? Why do men dodge behind mar chines and in lavatories to smoke while the employers can and do stroll through the shops smoking cigars? . . . Why do men and women work long hours and show all the characteristics of subjection to the em- ployers if the latter do not possess a power over them? . . . The workers show all the characteristics of a sub- ject people when in contact with the employers." '" Mr. Straker is a labor leader of quite different temper, but the same feeling of resentment that the worker should be "merely at the will or direc- tion of another being" '^ appears again and again in his testimony before the Coal Commission. The following passage is typical: — "Q. I notice that you lay considerable stress in your precis upon this idea that under the pre-war system the workmen were in what they called a servile position : do you really seriously put that forward? Mr. Straker. I do. . . . It is always a servile posi- tion when men are almost entirely under the control of another." ^^ '" Compromise or Independence? See Note on Sources. "C!oal Commission Evidence, Question 23116. See Note on Sources. " Questions 23433, 234,34. 34 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL A resentment against the whole system of con- trol in industry, a resentment constantly fed by irritation at particular cases of clumsily-exercised control, is a genuine and distinct factor in the demands of labor. It may still be pointed out that all. this is merely a negative resentment against control and not specifically a positive demand for control. This distinction may seem like an attempt to cut be- tween things never separated in practice, but it is not merely a quibble. The desire to be let alone, to be free from the irksomeness of control by others, is not identical with the desire to co-oper- ate actively in the work of controlling. The "will to be responsible for oheself " does not automati- cally resolve itself into the will to take part in representative government. The question of how far and under what conditions the one passes over into the other is a highly important practical point. Men might be ungovernable by authority without being thereby ready to govern themselves. The demand for personal freedom within in- dustry is not identical with the demand for political power within industry ; the one begins as a desire for no government, the other is a desire for a share in self-government. How much of the latter is there in the present-day control demand? Clearly it is a less vocal part. The roots and beginnings of the control demand are in the felt THE DEMAND FOR CONTROL 35 irksomeness of the present system of control, not in a conscious desire for a new field of activity. I heard a group of Derbyshire miners thrashing out the problem, "Supervision is nauseous." On that they heartily agreed. "But supervision is necessary." Yes, if only for safety. Then one of the men suggested that there might be another sort of supervision — "amicable discipline" he called it — in which the supervisors should be elected by and responsible to the workers. It is apparently in some such way as this that the positive demand arises. Mr. Frank Hodges is almost alone in putting the demand for responsi- bility — for the ' ' daily exercise of directive ability ' ' — in the forefront of the claim for control. Little direct evidence of the reality of this demand can be taken from industry itself. What interest the ordinary workman may have had in running things or in managing men has had to be satisfied out- side of industry if at all. Evidence from the few firms that have experimented with the "devolu- tion of managerial functions ' ' is conflicting. Some report an almost pathetic pleasure over consulta- tion on very minor matters,'^ some a real interest in general policy, some a refusal to take responsi- bility. Perhaps a better judgment of the interest of workers in "running things" might be formed from a study of their organizing activities outside " Cf., p. 191. 36 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL the workshop, — the Trade Union Movement itself, with the remarkable series of experiments and failures and successes in devising forms of organization which make (or should make) the two great books of the Webbs books for the political scientist; the Co-operative Movement, with what D. F. Schloss called "its power to pro- mote the organization upon democratic lines of the working classes by the working classes"; the Dissenting Chapels, in regard to which Mrs. Webb wrote of "the debt which English democracy owes to the magnificent training given by Protes- tant Dissent in the art of self-government;" the national ^nd local work of the Labor Party; and so on. The question runs beyond the scope of the present study. The extent and range of working class organizations may be put on one side, the poor attendance at trade union meetings ^* and the low percentage of votes cast on important trade union ballots on the other. Some organizing in- terest is surely "there," in the shop steward's phrase; the important question is really whether or not it will be turned inwards upon industry it- self. These demands that bear directly upon the ques- tion of authority are of the highest importance in a study of the control problem. Control is a '* " To get an attendance of 70 to 100 out of a branch member- ship of 300 to 1000 is a sign of stirring times, or of unemploy- ment," says Mr. J. T. Murphy. THE DEMAND, FOR CONTROL 37 political ^^ word. The demands previously studied are not primarily political; they are concerned with the control of industry not as an end but as a possible means, and they might conceivably be satisfied without changes in workshop politics. But the "political" demands now under discus- sion are concerned more nearly with control for its own sake ; their chance of satisfaction depends directly ^^ upon the type of industrial government. These "political" demands may be phrased as the demand not to be controlled disagreeably, the demand not to be controlled at all, and the demand to tahe a hand in controlling. The first runs through all trade union activity. The second is less widespread. The conscious general resent- ment is vastly less than the sum of particular irri- tations, but it is the powerful driving passion of the control agitation. The third — the desire for a share in the job of running things — is real but less immediate. The force of these freedom demands is hard to measure. Apparently they run as an under- current in many of labor's campaigns on other issues. It is impossible to judge the extent to which a vague and uneasy sense of oppression '""Political," that is, in the wide sense of concerned with au- thority relationships ; not " political " in the narrow sense of relating to the authority of the State of territorial unit. "• Except in so far as the organizing interest is drawn off into non-industrial channels. 38 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL adds to the bitterness and determination with which apparently trivial disputes are fought. It is by now a commonplaoe " to say that the occa- sion or formulated issue of a strike, as of a war, is only a part of its cause or of the emotions that are called out; surely a part of the emotion that gathers around any industrial struggle is that of servant against master. It is in this sense that Mr. Straier calls "the straining of the will of man to be free" the root cause of labor unrest. And it is the linking of this feeling with the economic motive that makes "wage-slavery" a powerful phase for propagandists to conjure with. These political factors are rightly thought of as the essential part of the demand for control. Possibly they are not the strongest part of the demand, but they are the part least likely to be diverted from the issue of the government of in- dustry. They are the core of the demand; the other motives may in various circumstances be added unto it. The worker's interests in the work itself — ^in what he actually does, in the technical processes of industry — have also important bearings on the control problem. Cannan's analysis of the resent- ment against control includes both "political" and " Thanks in part to the work of the late Carleton Parker. THE DEMAND FOR CONTROL 39 technical factors. The "feeling when you are told to do what you know, or think you know, to be the wrong thing," is surely a workmanlike distaste for inefficiency. The technical interests are often grouped under the one term workmanship '^; it is safer to discuss them simply as interests in the job. The interest usually mentioned first under this head is craftsmanship, the feeling of the indi- vidual craftsiiian toward his own particular bit of skilled technique. And the first thing that is usually said about it is that it is dead or at least dying out.'" Certainly the long run effects of the transition from handicraft to modern ma- chine industry bear heavily in that direction. "In the technique of handicraft the central fact is always the individual workman." On the other hand, "the share of the operative workman in the machine industry is (typically) that of an atten- dant, an assistant, whose duty it is to keep pace with the machine process and to help out with workmanlike manipulation at points where the machine process is incomplete."*" Crafts and craftsmanship are clearly going down together " Of. especially Thornstein Veblen, The Instinct of Workman^ thip, ■""The worst indictment of capitalism," one ex-joiner told me with unexpected bitterness. *° The Instinct of Workmanship, pp. 234, 306. The last two chapters of the book are a discussion of the institutional bearings of this technological change. 40 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL before the advance of fool-proof macliinery and standardized industry. But it is much, too early to count off craftsman- ship as a genuine force in industry. Nor is it strictly true to say that it survives only in the tiny remaining handicrafts or only in the trades mentioned in Section XIX under the topic of "old craft control." Even in the great industry there are occasional indications of craftsmanship — though no propagandist movement is finding it worth while to bring together evidence on the point. The best signs of it are in fact those that come out incidentally in the course of discussions on other subjects — such as the use by a certain skilled joiner of his own dexterous hands as the basis for his social theories/^ the use by an en- gineering trades official of "cutting a micrometer scale" as the type of something that required real skill, or the following passage on rate-fixing from the Ministry of Labor's report on Works Com- mittees : — ■ "A discussion that starts about the price of a job often finishes by two men staking their reputations as craftsmen and their experience as workmen that they are absolutely right. ' ' I have even heard an engineering shop steward confess to a certain pride in the skill of the craft whose special privileges he was attacking. *' " Human hands too valuable " to be used for " donkey work." THE DEMAND FOR CONTROL 41 Craftsmanship is still a force, though, a dimin- ishing one. In relation to the control demand it cuts two ways. It is a conservative factor in the resistance of the old crafts against "encroach- ments" upon their ancient forms of control.*^ It moreover is an element in stiffening the demand not to be controlled. The true craftsmen will stand very little supervision in regard to his own technique. The glass bottle maker will not work under a manager who is not trained as a glass bottle hand. "I know how to do my job and won't be told how" — this was quoted as almost the cen- tral element in the demand not to be controlled. Pride in craft skill may often make a part of that independence which resists irksome control. But craftsmanship seems to cut just the other way in relation to the positive side of the control demand. The old craft unions are completely in- different to the newer "political" demands. The craftsman may be quick to resent interference with his own work, but he is not likely to bother about organizing activities very far outside that work. "The artist, the craftsman, the scholar and the scientist have one overpowering desire ; to be let alone," writes Mr. Arthur Gleason, "They haven't the slightest wish to run anything or any- body, to manage, to 'know the commercial side,' to market the product or to control the raw " See below, Section XIX. 42 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL material." It is true that some of the control propaganda — notably that of one school of Guild Socialists — runs in terms of a return to crafts- manship; but the immediate program of workers' control is a program of opportunities for political activity within large-scale industry. If Professor Wallas is at all right in making "concentration on what he can see and touch" the essential characteristic of the craftsman " it is no use for National Guildsmen to talk arts and crafts and at the same time to point to the Miners' Federation of Great Britain and the National Union of Eail- waymen as promising steps "Towards National Guilds." Craftsmanship has no direct connection with representative government. By its concen- tration on the immediate and highly individual skill it runs counter to the general organizing interest which makes up the positive side of the demand to exercise control, but by the very pride in that individual skill it stiffens the refusal to be controlled. So much for the relation of craftsmanship to control. But the chances of interest in the work for the work's sake do not end with individual manual craftsmanship. The enthusiastic manag- ing director of a great engineering firm may have as keen an interest in the process of production as any Swiss wood carver. Large-scale "social pro- *' Graham Wallas, The Oreat Society, p. 4. THE DEMAND FOR CONTROL 43 duction" has to a great extent taken the place of individual production. With it have come a set of interests in the technique of group-organi- zation as well as in the technique of individual work. Collective worJcmcmship might serve as a general term for them, but the interests covered would run from an interest in the routing of work in a particular shop to an interest in the governing and lay-out of great industrial enterprises. Some of these feelings — that of the individual in- ventor,** for example, or the pride in a great in- dustry,*° or the queer generalized pride in being "practical men"" and "industrialists" — ^bear only indirectly on the demand for control. At least one interest, the pride in a particular firm's workmanship — ^Wedgwood's in the Potteries is one of a few oases — ^may run counter to the con- trol demands. .But certain of these interests in collective work appear directly as part of the control demand. The most conspicuous of these is the demand for the right to make suggestions about the con- duct of the work. Of the reality of this interest there is abundant evidence.*' A foreman in one of " But cf., pp. 217-219. " But note the use of the pride in " the industry as a national service" in the Building Trades Parliament. *° It would be amusing to count the number of times this phrase is used, both by employers and worlcers, in a year's crop of arbitration proceedings and blue books on labor problems. "See Section XVI. 44 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL the National Factories ** was telling me how the management had encouraged suggestions both from the foremen's and the workers' committees. "It isn't only the big wages," he declared em- phatically. "The men like to have their ideas taken up." In discussing the demand for control with a group of Derbyshire miners, I found — to my surprise — that this was the issue on which they showed the greatest interest. One man got up and declared: — "There isn't a man in this room who hasn't time and again made suggestions and been told he was paid not to think but to work." The evening turned into a sort of testimony meeting in which the men related different specific suggestions that they had made, and the next noon the colliery blacksmith stopped me on the road to explain to me how he thought his company might use compressed air more efficiently, and so on. This interest in making suggestions — and the strong feeling that the chance to make them is blocked under the present type of industrial gov- ernment — are real factors in the demand for con- trol. The interest in making suggestions, moreover, can hardly be separated from the interest in see- ing those suggestions put into force. It is in fact " Munition plants run directly by the Government. THE DEMAND FOR CONTROL 45 only a special form of a general interest in the running of modern industry. Various traces of an interest in the technical efficiency of industry may be found in labor feeling. There is at least a certain negative interest, a disgust with various sorts of inefficiency. Evidence is hard to collect since, as a building trades union official remarked, most of the discussions of workmen on a job about the inefficiency of their employers can find no outlet in the form of suggestions.** One of the Derbyshire miners just quoted talked of being "told to do the silliest things imaginable." A Clyde shop steward told me that a disgust with the inefficiencies of management wa^ always there for the agitator to "play on" — evidence the more interesting because the object of the agita- tion was certainly not to stir up technical interest. How widespread this sense of irritation with in- efficiencies in organization may be, it is impossible to say. Its clearest expression is in the complaints of the Miners, enforced by trade union power, against inefficiencies in the arrangements for haulage, etc."" Nor does this interest always re- hiain merely negative. There are even cases of the urging of positive changes in organization. This is shown in the elaborate schemes of the " See Section XVI for the results in a few cases where an outlet has been provided. "See Section XV. 46 THE FRONTIER OP CONTROL Post Office Workers for extending the financial side of the postal service, of which one of their leaders speaks as follows: — ' ' The workers want to take part in the administration of the Department. For years past they have proffered suggestions whereby the public could be better served and the services more efficiently organized and man- aged, but they have been turned down. ' ' It is shown in the detailed suggestions on the technique of the industry presented to the Coal Commission by the Miners' Federation. What Justice Sankey called the Miners' "higher am- bition of taking their due share and interest in the direction of the industry," is, as he realized, of great significance. It marks the appearance of the managing and planning interest as a definite factor in the control demand. Workmanship in this most general sense is an idea that has run through part of the propaganda of workers' control ever since the agitation of 1911. One of Mr. Mann's followers declared that year : — "I for one believe we have yet to see good work, and that will be when work is made pleasant and attractive, well organized by capable men, who will have been elected by their mates. ... I understand Syndicalism is to use some of its efforts at making the worker take a vital interest in the industry he is connected with, THE DEMAND FOR CONTROL 47 thereby preparing him for the democratic control of the industrial community of the future." The most comprehensive statement of the work- manship part of the demand — and one that adds to it the demand for knowledge about large-scale industry — is given in Mr. Straker's testimony before the Coal Commission on March 13, 1919 : — "Any administration of the mines, under nationaliza- tion, must not leave the worker in the position of a mere wage-earner, whose whole energies are directed by the will of another. He must have a share in the manage- ment of the industry in which he is engaged, and un- derstand all about the purpose and destination of the product he is producing; he must know both the pro- ductive and the conunercial side of the industry. He must feel that the industry is being run by him in order to produce coal for the use of the community, instead of profit for a few people. He would thus feel the responsibility which would rest upon him as a citi- zen, and direct his energies for the common good. This ideal cannot be reached all at once, owing to the way in which private ownership has deliberately kept the worker in ignorance regarding the industry; but as that knowledge which has been denied him grows, as it will do under nationalization, he will take his right- ful place as a man. Only then will labor unrest, which is the present hope of the world, disappear." This explicit plea for the chance of workmanship is the demand of a few. When Mr. Ben Turner, 48 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL the veteran leader of the Textile Workers, put the question at the Trades Union Congress: — "Why shouldn't they sing at their work?" the cheers were more out of pleasure in his personality than from any very definite notion of work that might be worth singing about. The Right of Workman- ship is not carried as a motto on the street banners of the labor movement. These various interests in the job tie back to all the other factors of the control demand. A striking case of the substitution of the workman- ship for the wage motive has already been men- tioned. The last statement quoted from Mr. Straker's evidence is one of many that show the blending of the public service and workmanship interests. The relations between the freedom and workmanship demands are even more central to the control problem. Craftsmanship has already been spoken of as strengthening the objection to being controlled, and surely all forms of work- manship fortify what Mr. Cole calls "the natural impulse we all feel to push aside anyone whom we see doing badly what we can do better." The feeling of inferiority which deepens the bitterness iof the agitation for control is in part a feeling of functional inferiority. It is impossible to separate the "organizing interest" spoken of as the posi- tive side of the "political" demand from the interests in organizing industry just discussed. THE DEMAND FOR CONTROL 49 In fact it is just where the two are one that the control demand is the clearest. The general interest in organization becomes directly impor- tant for control only when it is turned to the organ- izing of industry ; the general interests in industry become directly important for control only as they become orgcmising interests. In a list of the nucleus elements of the demand for control — those elements, that is, that can hardly be diverted from the issue of the control of industry — it is necessary to put with the "political" factors of the determination of workers not to be rv/n and their desire to rim thimgs the "workmanship" addition that it is indwstry that workers wamt to rim. This is indeed implied in the quotation which began this introduction. Mr. Straker, it is true, states the demand in terms of "the straining of the will of men to be free ; ' ' but he has more than once explained that he means by that not merely a negative freedom but a positive freedom, a free- dom to do something. The content of his idea of freedom is in fact workmanship. It would, I think, be fair to his position to rephrase it as follows : — I Wages and conditions are not enough. They have been improved and the unrest is still strong. Mere negative freedom from harsh discipline is not enough. That fMe> Northumberland Miners have long been able to secure and the unrest is still strong. The root of the 50 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL matter is a demand for a positive freedom of responsi- Mlity and self-expression. But such a clear-cut claim for control is the claim of a tiny minority. Most of the driving force of the movement comes from other motives, and no single statement can pretend to express all the confused strivings that make up the total demand. The whole of this introduction makes only a be- ginning at describing its complexity. The actual demand for control is a tangle of half-expressed and shifting and richly varied desires. That is, it is a human phenomenon. It is a dogma in the somewhat Early Christian faith of the Clyde shop stewards that "the fer- ment creates its own organization." It is at least "ferment" that makes "organization" interest- ing. And it is the ferment of the demand for control that makes worth while a patient study of the present extent of control. A STUDY IN BRITISH WORKSHOP POLITICS CONTROL There is a theory current that the employer does and should exercise something that is known as "complete executive control" over industry. There are other theories current that the organ- ized workers should — sooner or later, and more or less completely — take over "the control of industry." Workshop politics are forcing them- selves iato first place in social politics, and the workshop conflict represented by these ideas is perhaps the most significant fact in the social politics of the day. This study is an attempt to make a record of the present stage of the conflict in Great Britain in terms of the questions : — What is the present extent, and what are the boundaries, of workers' control? How much control of in- dustry do the British workers now exercise? But "control" over what? The term is used by the contestants in the struggle in an undefined but somewhat specialized sense. When one of the coal-owners on the Coal Commission asked one 61 52 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL of the Miners' Executive what they meant when they said they wanted control, and the answer was: — "We mean just what you mean when you say we must not have control," they were using a term an outsider might well try to define for himself. "Complete executive control" might mean, among other things, that the employer/ "by his absolute knowledge and mere motion" provides capital, decides what to produce and how to pro- duce it, provides any sort of place to work, hires whom he likes, pays his hands any wages by any system, works them any number of hours he likes, drives them by any method and with any degree of supervision, promotes, fines, or dismisses them for any cause, trains any hand for any job, dic- tates every process in the minutest detail — and does all this and more "subject to change without notice." But the most cursory acquaintance with industry or a glance at a few typical collective agreements shows that the employer ^ has no such ' The use of the phrase " the employer " is not meant to imply that all employers are alike either in personality or in their position in industry. But the differences between employers, great as they are, are comparatively unimportant in the present connection since they are not usually expressed in differences of the extent of control they leave to their employees. The popular distinction between " good " and " bad " employer is of no use for the present purpose, — except in so far as the " bad " employer may arouse his employees to devise means of controlling him, or as the " good " employer may also happen to believe, in Mr. Seebohm Rowntree's phrase, in " giving as much control as he can instead of as little as he must." CONTROL 63 control as this. The real question is how much less does he mean by "complete executive control." There is after all such a thing as a trade union and, as Professor Commons says, "If it cannot prevent the employer from doing as he pleases at some point or other, it is something besides a trade union." But the question is, which points? What matters have been recognized as subjects for consultation, at least, rather than employer's fiat? First and most obviously, wages and hours. The "wage bargain" has always been in the eyes of the law a bargain between equals. The primary function of the trade union has been to restore to this contract some degree of real equality. These are of course the questions on which the workers now exercise their most important share of control. In the second place, some of the more obvious physical "conditions of employment"— ventila- tion, sanitary arrangements, and works conven- iences generally— have also long been subject both to collective bargaining and Factory Act legislation. Neither of these things, though, is control in the sense that either a fighting employer or a propagandist of "workers' control" would use the term. An employer's control over industry is not destroyed by the fact that he has to buy 54 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL labor with, much the same equality in bargaining that he buys other factors in production. And matters of toilets and air space and welfare work are after all not vital to absolute power over the actual organization of production. The question of "control" arises beyond the immediate contract of so many hours or so many pieces of work for so much pay, and beyond the obvious physical "conditions of employment," in the debatable ground where regulating the "con- ditions of employment" appears from another point of view to be actual sharing in the organiza- tion of industry. The object of the present study is to find out how much control the workers have over matters that are (1) Less immediate to the "wage bargain" it- self than Bates of Wages and Hours of Labor. (2) More immediate to the "actual business of production" than Ventilation, etc. What degree of control do the trade unions exercise over the relations of man to man in indus- try — the employment and discipline relationships ; and over the relations of man to the work itself — • to the plans, processes, and technique of industry? How much say have the workers over what the boot manufacturers once called "the internal economy of the workshop and the manipulation of the workman by the employer?" CONTROL 65 The first and obvious answer is — directly and explicitly, very little. A longer and more critical answer requires study and analysis of collective agreements and arbitration awards, of trade union regulations, of jealously guarded shop practices and customs of the trades, of the issues of strikes, and of the demands of the revolutionary minority. In theory trade union rules rarely extend beyond the "conditions of employment" in the sense of the famous definition of the Webbs of a trade union as "a continuous association of wage-earn- ers for the purpose of maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment. ' ' ^ But it is at least worth a study of such "conditions" as the non-unionist, apprenticeship and demarcation questions; the various expedients for meeting unemployment; discipline, dismissals and the handling of grievances ; promotion and the choice and authority of foremen; methods and payment and the measurement of results; restrictions on technique; consultation over change in technique and over trade policy, etc., to determine to what extent they involve, in fact if not in form, trade union (1) interference with (2) consultation over (3) direction of the actual organization of industry. ' History of Trade Vniomsm, p. 1. See Note on Sources. n THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL "WoEKERs' control" is, I suppose, often trans- lated as "interfering with the employer's busi- ness." A definite notion of the meaning attached to the' latter phrase would be of use in finding the fighting frontier of control. "Where does the issue come into the open? At what point does the employer say — ^beyond this there shall be no discussion, the rest is my business alone? The line is a hard one to draw; the issues are rarely thought out in the abstract and rarely presented dramatically. The real frontier, like most lines in industry, is more a matter of accepted custom than of precisely stated principle. In a few in- stances, however, there have been definite at- tempts to stake out the boundary, evidently as results of disputes in which the principle became explicit. There are for- example a number of collective agreements ^ that attempt to define the "Authority of Employers" in such terms as these: — "Bacli employer shall conduct his business in any way he may think advantageous in all details of man- * Report on Collective Agreements. See Note on Sources. 56 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL 67 agement, not infringing on the individual liberty of the workman or these rules." (Liverpool Carpenters and Joiners.) "Each employer shall have the power to conduct his business in any way he may think advantageous in the matter of letting work, taking apprentices, using ma- chinery and implements, and in all details of manage- meni not infringing these rules." (Birmingham Brick- layers.) "That Dressers shall not interfere in any way what- ever with the management of workshops." (Scottish Steel Dressers.) "The right of the Association to organize its equip- ment and to regulate its labor with a view to the lowest cost of production." (Bradford Dyers Association.) The most famous of these declarations of the employers' authority was the Engineering Trades Agreement signed in 1898 after a great and un- successful strike. This declared under the head of "General Principle of Freedom to Employers in the Management of their "Works, ' ' that : — "The Federated Employers, while disavowing any intention of interfering with the proper functions of Trade Unions, will admit no interference with the man- agement of their business. . . . Employers are re- sponsible for the work turned out by their machine tools, and shall have full discretion to appoint the men they consider suitable to work them, and determine the conditions under which such machine tools shall be worked." 58 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL In addition to these attempts to define positively the borderline of control there are a number of agreements which define it negatively by setting aside questions which are not matters for discus- sion. Certain questions, they say, are questions for bargaining or arbitration; certain questions are vital and reserved to the employer. It is worth while to mention a few of these non-justiciable questions of i/ndustry. The Pottery arbitration agreement which preceded the present Joint Industrial Council ruled out the two questions of "Good from Oven" (deduction from wages for broken pots) and "Limitation of Apprentices." A Liverpool Dockers agreement provides "that the Union shall not interfere with the methods of working cargo on ships or quay. ' ' Leicester Boot and Shoe arbitration arrangements provide that "no Board shall interfere with the right of an employer to make reasonable regulations for time- keeping and the preservation of order in his fac- tory or workshop." The last rule of a pioneer Works Committee in the woollen industry .reads : "It is understood and agreed that it is the business of the management, and is not the business of the Con- ference to deal with: — (a) The allocation of work to particulEir sets of drawing. (b) The allocation of winders to particular ma- chines." THE PRONTIER OF CONTROL 59 More typical, however, are provisions such as the following : — "Questions of discipline and management not to be interfered with." (London Motor Bus Employees.) Under questions to be discussed: — "Differences relat- ing to general conditions of labor (not being questions of discipline and management)." (London County Council Tramways.) Arbitration on "any question other than one which he [the arbitrator] shall decide to relate to manage^- ment and discipline." (Bobbin Turners, etc., at Garton and Coverholme.) The phrase "discipline and management" has been made most prominent by its appearance in the remarkable succession of railway crises. Dur- ing the "all-grades movement" of 1907, which turned on the issue of union recognition, Mr. Hobert Bell, the Secretary of the Railway Serv- ants, was "on all occasions most emphatic in denying that it was the desire of the men's execu- tive committee to interfere with the discipline of the railway staffs," while Lord Claud Hamilton (who wanted his men "to be free and independent as subjects of a Constitutional Monarch") and other railway directors were firm in their * ' abso- lute refusal to allow the society to interfere in our domestic relations with our staff." The Concilia- 60 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL tion Boards, set up in that year as Mr. Lloyd George's solution of the difficulty, were expressly limited to the consideration of "rates of wages and hours of labor." By the time of the railway strike of 1911, the attitude of the men was changed. When their leaders testified before the Eoyal Commission of that year, they were no longer willing to repeat the absolute denial of an interest in discipline. Mr. J. H. Thomas in fact argued that, "the common sense of two parties meeting in a representative capacity is more likely to arrive at a right decision than through one side's taking up the attitude that it is purely a question for them to determine. . . . The men are distinctly of opinion that all questions ought to be discussed and settled by the Board. ' ' The Commission, how- ever, reported that "with their great responsibili- ties the companies cannot and should not be ex- pected to permit any intervention between them and their men on the subjects of discipline and management;" and by the 1911 scheme, although the companies are to receive deputations on "any questions affecting the contractual relations be- tween the company and its employees," the Boards themselves are limited to consideration of "rates of wages, hours of labor, or conditions of service, other than matters of management and discipline." Since that time the last clause has been the storm center of the industry, and the dis- THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL 61 satisfaction with, it is now expressed in a demand for nationalization witli joint control' by the workers and the State. "Discipline and management," then, has often summed up the issue of control. The phrase would perhaps most often be used by an employer to describe the issues over which he would refuse to share control. And, from the other side, the president of the National Union of Eailwaymen declares that, "it is in the fierce questions of dis- cipline and management," tbat his union has found its soul. But when one has said that discipline and man- agement are the crux of the control problem, one is not very far along. The phrase almost disap- pears under analysis. The specific issues that have come under what the Railway Review calls "the symbols D and M" include such things as dismissals, promotions, classification of employees, a doubtful safety regulation, etc. The Steel Dres- sers agreement quoted above goes on to include under the reservations to management the alloca- tion of work between classes of workmen. The Engineering agreement put in the same category the selection, training, and employment of opera- tives and the right to pay according to ability. And in 1907 the Railway Gazette even argued that if wages and hours were "fixed by two dif- ferent bodies" {i.e. by negotiation with a union) 62 THE fHONTIER OP CONTROI. an impossible "duality of management would arise!" But all these questions have of course been subjects for collective bargaining in othet trades. On the other hand, there are many cases of what an outsider would surely call consultation over "management" into which the disturbing word or idea never enters. The employment manager for an employers' association told me, for example, that various works committees ia his trade found themselves discussiug such matters as the reason why on a given morning there was no work ready for the piece workers. If anyone had suggested that that was a question of "management," of the actual arranging of production, the employers would doubtless have closed the discussion. But to everybody concerned it seemed merely the ques- tion of how to make sure that the piece workers should find work at starting time. Discipline and management, then, are conve- nient terms for the frontier of control. But that frontier must be looked for as a shifting line in a great mass of regulations in regard to which the question of control may never have arisen. The material in this section, then, is interesting only as indicating a few of the cases in which the issue of control has been fought consciously, in which the frontier of management has seemed to its defenders a hard chalk line. in EMPLOYMENT .The employer is sometimes spoken of as the man who finds jobs for workers. But to what ex- tent do the trade unions determine which jobs are found for which workers? To what extent do the trade unions possess what D. F. Schloss called the "power of rejecting as fellow workers persons who appear to them to be undesirable compan- ions?" An obvious limitation on the employer's control under this head is the tendency of any strong union to reject non-unionists as fellow-workers. The employer's right and practice of keeping union members out and employing only non-union- ists has practically gone by the board in Great Britain, if not in America. The issue now, where there is an issue, is whether the employer shall be permitted to employ any but unionists. The na- tural intensity of feeling on this point is best ex- pressed by a comparison made by the shrewd secretary of an employers ' association of the non- unionist to the conscientious objector, or by the foUowiag extract from a form letter drafted by a 63 64 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL Railwaymen's district council to be sent to the wives of non-unionists : — ' ' Dear Madam, Do you know your husband is in receipt of a War Bonus, which the members of the N. U. R. have worked and paid for, and he has done nothing except to act like the young birds in a nest and take what others have struggled hard to get? " It is diflBcult to measure the exact extent to which union membership has become a necessary condi- tion of employment. Two or three great indus- tries, certain skilled trades within other indus- tries, and a few old crafts are practically ' ' black- leg-proof. ' ' ^ Coal-mining is the nearest approach to a completely-unionized great industry. The Miners' Federation of Great Britain claims just under 99% of the underground workers, exclud- ing officials, and 95% of the surface workers; and of the remainder many are organized in other unions.^ In certain collieries the management itself collects the union dues by deducting from the men's pay and receives a percentage for its pains ; and there are even instances of successful strikes against the employment of men in arrears to the union. In cotton there is practically no opening for the non-unionist on the spinning side ' " Blackleg " is the British trade unionist's equivalent for the American trade unionist's expression " scab." ' Coal Commission Evidence, Question 23635 et aeq. EMPLOYMENT 65 of the industry, at least in Lancashire, and very- little in weaving. The Boilermakers have long claimed 95% organization and the other skilled shipbuilding unions are in practically the same position. The remarkable growth of the National Union of Eailwaymen and the Railway Clerks' Association has made the railways stand very high m percentage of unionists. In the wool in- dustry the Dyers claim a 100% organization, and their agreement with the Bradford Dyers' Asso- ciation provides that "any employee ceasing to be a member of any of the Unions shall be required by the Association to resume membership of one or other of the Unions." The Huddersfield Dyers and the Bradford Woolcombers work under sim- ilar arrangements. Such old crafts as the Glass Bottle Makers, Flint Glass Makers and Hand Papermakers are almost completely unionized, as well as such small skilled sections of larger indus- tries as the Stuff Pressers (wool), Lithographic Priaters, Calico Printers and Tape Sizers (cot- ton). Other industries — ^probably most industries — ^vary widely in this regard from district to dis- trict or from shop to shop. In the Manchester dis- trict, for example, the painters have a closed-shop agreement (though only with the organized em- ployers) and the other building trades are push- ing for it; in many parts of the country these trades are very imperfectly organized. In engi- 66 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL neering, with a high total percentage of union membership, the enforcement of the closed shop condition varies entirely with the strength in the various works of a given town. In printing, although the union compositors refuse to work except in "fair houses" (i.e. all-union), rival "rat houses" continue to flourish; and the London So- ciety of Compositors wages a continual campaign to make sure that all public contracts go to the former class of firms. In many industries, of course, and particularly in the distributive trades, there are hardly the beginnings of compulsory unionism. From the point of view of our question about control, this enforcing of union membership is interesting chiefly as a basis for extensions of control to issues more closely bound up with the actual processes of production. The same is true of the custom of using the trade unions as employ- ment exchanges. This is usually merely a matter of obvious convenience to both parties, without any thought of control. The man out of work goes to his union office to sign the ' ' call book" and draw his out-of-work pay ; the employer naturally sends there to find him. The union secretary will prob- ably boast that his office is a better employment agency for his own trade than the public one^or possibly fear or despise the public exchanges as blackleg agencies — ^but that is about all it comes to. ^EMPLOYMENT 67 More interesting, however, are cases wliere the union, in the interest of fairness between its mem- bers or for other reasons, makes some regulation as to which men shall be hired first. The "Eules Governing Calls ' ' of the London Society of Com- positors provide : — "All calls for workmen received at the Society House shall be given to the members whose names appear first on the list. ..." "Employers, overseers, or their agents may choose workmen from the list irrespective of the position in which their names appear on the book ; but the members so chosen may, if they think fit, refuse such employment, unless of those present they are first in order on the book." The workman may look for work on his own account, but "any member intercepting, in the street or else- where, a messenger with a call that is intended for the Secretary, shall be dealt with by the Committee as they may determine." Many unions advise, and in some cases require, their members to consult the union secretary be- fore applying for a job in order to make sure that conditions are * ' fair. ' ' An adaptation of this prin- ciple is the claim of the Sailors' and Firemen's Union, denied in 1911 but granted for the duration of the war with the setting up in 1914 of the Na- tional Maritime Board, that representatives of the union "be present when men sign on." 68 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL The rules of this Maritime Board also estab- lished the principle of "a single source of supply jointly controlled by employers and employed." An important further extension of control is the requirement that the employer must hire exclu- sively through the union or at least give the union first chance to provide a man. The agreement in the China Furniture trade — where the employers and employed combine to keep up prices — ^pro- vides : — "The Operatives' Association shall undertake to pro- vide at all times for a due supply of efScient workpeople, so that the business of Members of the [Manufacturers'] Association may in no way be hindered. Should the sup- ply of workmen fall below the number required, the Wages Board shall at once take into consideration the best way of remedying the evil." The Bradford Dyers' Association agreement of July 1, 1914, reads : — "The Association' shall on the engagement of em- ployees first make application to the unions to supply the employees required. The unions shall supply em- ployees with the least possible delay, and if the unions do not supply employees satisfactory to the Association within 24 hours of receipt of a requisition in writing from the Association, the latter shall be free to engage persons who are not members of the unions, but such • A trust not an association of independent firms. EMPLOYMENT 69 persons shall be required by the Association forthwith to become members of one or other of the unions." This last system, together with the method of collective piece work provided for by the same agreement, has an iateresting by-product in trade union responsibility for technique. The members of the National Society of Dyers are supposed to be able to perform all the processes of the trade ; if, however, their secretary has to send to an em- ployer a man who has had no experience in the particular process for which he is wanted, he sends at the same time a note to the shop steward * so that the others will "pull him through." The Stuff Pressers, a small and highly skilled craft within the wool industry, are by far the most striking example of trade union regulation of em- ployment. With them the " staffing of shops" is entirely the function of the union. The method is described by a member in the Orgamzer of April, 1918 :— ' ' The success of the union is further demonstrated by its methods of dealing with trade depression and slack- ness of shops. The experience gained in this direction during the past ten years has been invaluable. . . . To- day the Pressers' Society has a travelling man power, a ' " Shop steward " as used here means merely a representative of organized workers within a particular shop or works. The term is most widely used in the engineering industry; " constable " and " father of the chapel " are parallel terms in printing. The " shop stewards' movement " has already been discussed. 70 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL small but efficient body of skilled men who are ready to respond to any call that the demand might make. This mobile reserve has contributed largely to the solu- tion of the unemployment problem [in an industry of marked fluctuations in trade] . . . The method of choos- ing men is usually by the request for volunteers from the shops. If the voluntary principle is ineffective, the shop resorts to the ancient method of 'picking out of the bag'. . . . The success of the scheme can be gauged from the fact that the Society has not had an unemployed member for nearly five years." It is worth noting, in reference to the relation of 100% unionism to other forms of control, that the writer goes on to say that, "the principle of the mobility of labor . . . owes its success to the fact that the Society is practically blackleg proof." This is, I am sure, the instance of most complete actual control over the finding of jobs. In this case it apparently grew up without any conscious theory, certainly without any public propaganda. The theorists of control, however, have not completely neglected the possibilities of the control of labor supply as a basis for the control of industry. The Engineering and Ship- building Draughtsmen, whose journal talks much of "status" and "control," voted in March, 1919, to secure for their Association, as soon as possible, a monopoly over employment quite consciously as a "new and formidable engine of control." And Messrs, Galleoher and Paton, of the Clyde en- EMPLOYMENT 71 gineering shop stewards, in their Memorandum on Workshop Control, suggest for their District Committee both the "skilful manipulation" of labor supply as a weapon for immediate fighting purposes and the ultimate function under full workers ' control of ' ' the effective and economical distribution of labor." IV UNEMPLOYMENT The last paragraph of the preceding section shows how the problem of employment becomes the problem of unemployment. Here we might well expect to find real trade union attempts at the organization of industry, for the question is of much more pressing importance to the union than to the employer. The difference in immediate economic interest is this : — ^the employer is inter- ested in finding men for jobs ; the union is inter- ested in finding jobs for men — interests "iden- tical ' ' only in busy seasons. In fact the employer 's bargaining power increases directly with the size of the "reserve army" of unemployed. In slack seasons the unions are faced with this danger to their standard as well as the necessity of support- ing their own members "on the funds." This is only another way of saying that the fear of unem- ployment is a ruling motive both for the individual workman and for his trade organizations. "Want or uncertainty of employment for the industrial classes," is still what William Thompson called it in 1830 — a "master-evil of society as now con- stituted." 72 UNEMPLOYMENT 73 The principle expressed in most trade union attempts to meet the problem is a simple one — that no one should have more work than he needs until all have as much as they need. "They want to ration employment so that all will have their proper share." {Strike Bulletin, Clyde, Febru- ary 8, 1919.) The simplest arrangements, usually found in the less important trades, are those for the shar- ing of work. The Webbs give us the most primi- tive instance the "Turnway Societies" of Thames watermen for regulating the "turns" of work. The London Corn Porters provide for equaliza- tion of work by "rotation of gangs." A reflec- tion of quarrels under this head is the following agreement reached by the tailors after the strike of 1892:— In reference to the trade union rule that provides that "during slack seasons a fair equitable division of trade should be compulsory in all shops, ' ' the employers, after stipulating that this did not necessarily mean ' ' distribution of the work in turns," stated that "we fully recognize that the work ought to be fairly shared during the slack season in harmony with the above, and we urge upon our members throughout the country to carry these principles into effect." And in 1903 the Scottish Master Tailors stated, "that in quiet seasons they used their own discretion as at all other times in giving the work to such work people 74 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL as they consider best capable of turning it out; but the principle of job about shall be recog- nized," Perhaps the most drastic regulation is that enforced by the highly monopolistic York- shire Glass Bottle Makers : — "In the event of any furnace being out for repair, slack trade or stopped from any other cause, the work- men shall be allowed, so far as practicable, to share work — provided, nevertheless, that after a furnace has been out for four months the master can discharge the surplus workmen." Many restrictions against overtime are based partly on this principle. The general question, of overtime, in its important bearings on the standard of leisure and the payment of extra wages, is beyond the present inquiry; but so far as it bears on the equalization of work, it is of iaterest here. The weakly-organized Garment Workers, who are subject to busy seasons of constant overtime and slack seasons of wholesale dismissals, are press- ing for the complete abolition of overtime as a means of forcing the employers to take steps to prevent or minimize seasonal fluctuations. A 1919 agreement in the Making-up Clothing trade in London provides for avoidance of overtime. The same principle is evident in a Boilermakers' agreement covering the South Wales ports : — UNEMPLOYMENT 75 "No member . . . shall work more than one whole night or two half turns as overtime, in addition to the usual working days ... in any one week, whilst conv- petent men are idle in the port, except on finishing jobs which can be completed in not exceeding three hours' labor. If more overtime be required on particular jobs, such overtime must he given to the unemployed members in the town" (italics mine). A rule proposed by tlie Manchester building trades unions puts the demand briefly : — "No overtime to be worked in any branch of the Building Industry whilst any men in that branch of the industry and district are unemployed." Organized short time is the most familiar pallia- tive for unemployment. There is, says Professor Bowley {An Elem&ivtary Manual of Statistics, p. 151), "a group of industries in which certainly more than two million persons are employed, in which it is the custom to regulate the working week in relation to the demand for the product, employing nearly the same number of persons in good trade and in bad, but working short ,time when the market becomes overstocked . . . Coal-mining is the most conspicuous industry of this group. The textile trades (cotton, wool, and others) organize employment with a similar re- sult; short time is worked, or the work is spread out among the operatives, when the demand is 76 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL slack; but the great number of those employed in moderately busy times draw some wages nearly every week." The "pound stint" was a similar pre-war expedient in pottery. In most cases these arrangements are based on the convenience of the employers as well as of the employed or on tacitly- aqcepted "custom of the trade," rather than on trade union insistence. They are interesting for the present purpose as the basis of experience from which have come two conscious movements toward control, — the one toward the use of short time against reductions of pay on account of over- production, best illustrated by the "Miners' Four Days" and the great cotton dispute of 1878 (see Section XVIII below) ; the other the extensive propaganda for shortening hours to absorb the unemployed. The last idea has been behind many of the demands for shorter hours made since Mr. Tom Mann's speaking tour in 1911. The Miners' claim for the six hour day was urged partly on this ground; and the "40-hour movement" in en- gineering, which boiled over in the Clyde and Bel- fast strikes early in 1919 and is simmering in the other districts, is based on this theory. "They have come into the strike to abolish unemploy- ment," said the Clyde Strike Bulletm. This is an item in the current propaganda of the shop stewards' movement, though one at least of its leaders thinks that, even after they had won their UNEMPLOYMENT 77 30 or 40-hour week and absorbed the present crop of unemployed, they would "never have to go back." The most workmanlike attempt to write into an actual agreement this notion of reducing hours to meet unemployment is in the proposed new rules for the Coventry district of the engi- neering industry: — ""When the unemployed list reaches 23^% [of the union membership], the above hours shall be reduced by one hour per week, and if 5% of unemployment is reached the hours shall be reduced by '^/^ hours per week. If more than 5% are at any time unemployed, the unions reserve the right to take any reduction of hours they consider necessary." It is no longer true that, as the Webbs stated in 1897, "wisely or unwisely, the Trade Unions have tacitly accepted the principle that the capitalist can only be expected to find them wages so long as he can find them work. " In a number of trades, there has been a movement toward forcing the employer to make it his business to regularize work or, failing that, to "make unemployment [that is, the maintenance of the unemployed] a charge on the industry. ' ' In its simplest form this is merely an objection on the part of a number of trade unions to the practice of keeping their mem- bers waiting without pay at the employer's con- venience on the chance that work may be found 78 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL for them. The demands put forward in October, 1919, by the National Union of Eailwaymen and the Transport Workers Federation on behalf of the coal-tippers include the provision: — "All men shall be paid waiting time at the rate of 2/6d. per man per hour or part of an hour in all cases. ' ' Various unions have been able to establish the principle of gvMrcmteed time, — that is, that if a worker is hired at all he must be assured a full day's or week's work or, failing that, full pay for the period. The Manchester Carters won in 1911 an agreement that "all carters employed at or before 9 a. m. shall be paid a day's pay." The Boot and Shoe agreement of February 13, 1919, contains an elaborate stipulation that with certain .exceptions, "where operatives attend at the fac- tories on the instruction of the employers . . . work shall be found for them for at least half a day ... or they shall be paid ... at not less than the minimum or agreed wage rate." A rule pro- posed by the Manchester building trades unions reads : — "Six hours per day shall be the minimum time paid to men who attend on the job up to 9 a.m. and remain on the job during the day, or until told by the manage^ ment they may leave." The Compositors on the London newspapers have daily guarantees of at least two galleys (approxi- UNEMPLOYMENT 79 mately 7 hours' work). The Glass Bottle Makers have a guaranteed weekly rate or, in some districts, the guarantee of enough metal to allow them to make the weekly rate. Of the other old crafts, the Hand Papermakers are guaranteed "six days' custom" and the Flint Glass Makers "eleven moves a week" (33 hours). Finally, the first item in the terms of settlement with the National Union of Eailwaymen in March, 1919, reads : — "The standard week's wages, exclusive of any over- time or Sunday duty, to be guaranteed to all employees who are available for duty throughout the week." Guaranteed time by the day or week has been a definite part of trade union policy. A further ex- tension of the idea is guaranteed time all the year round. This is what is meant by the phrase "un- employment a charge on the industry" which Mr. R. Williams {The First Year's WorTcmg of the Liverpool Docks Scheme) explains as foUows : — "If a reserve of labor is required by any industry, then that industry should maintain that reserve not only when working, but also when it is unavoidably un- employed." The idea does not necessarily involve any ele- ment of workers ' control. Mr. WiUiams was writ- ing from the viewpoint of a government official, and in at least one case responsibility toward its 80 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL unemployed has been assumed by a powerful trust. The Bradford Dyers' Association agreed in 1907, "that to the men displaced from any cause whatever during the year the Association shall pay an amount equal .to and in addition to that paid under their out-of-work benefit by the So- ciety." But the most important experiment in this direction — that of the Cotton Control Board during the war — was much more to the present point. It involved both partial trade union re- sponsibility for the policy of the scheme and com- plete trade union responsibility for administration of the unemployment benefit. The lack of ship- ping, due to the submarine campaign and the di- version of tonnage to war purposes, had caused an acute shortage of raw cotton and widespread unemployment in the industry. The Cotton Con- trol Board, with representatives of the Board of Trade, the cotton merchants and manufac- turers, and the cotton trade unions, was estab- lished in June, 1917, with broad powers to deal with the emergency. There were two main problems to be considered: — the allocation to the various manufacturers of their share of the limited supply of material, and the provision for the maintenance of the unavoidably unem- ployed. The first problem was dealt with by fixing the purchase price of raw cotton and by allowing manufacturers to run only certain percentages of UNEMPLOYMENT 81 their machinery. To meet the unemployment problem, a fund was created by a levy upon the manufacturers who exceeded their percentage of machines; this fund was used as unemployment pay under principles laid down by the Control Board; its actual administration, both to union members and to the few non-unionists, was left solely (with the trifling exception of a few out- lying villages) to the trade unions. For a part of the first year of the Control Board's work and during the sharpest crisis, the industry ran on what was called the "rota" system — work for four weeks and the fifth week a holiday with pay pro- vided by this levy upon the industry; this was finally given up in order that the surplus labor might be drained off to the making of munitions ; but the general policy of making necessary unem- ployment a charge on the industry was maintained throughout the war. The importance of the work of the Cotton Control Board as a case in which trade union representatives shared, at least nomin- ally, in the determining of trade policy will be discussed in Section XVIII. Its importance for the present subject lies not only in its actual steps for meeting unemployment but in the partial con- trol by the workers in planning those steps and in their complete control over a part of the adminis- tration. It will be noticed, however, that even the most 82 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL elaborate of tliese expedients, except perhaps the little flying squadron of Stuff Pressers, are di- rected toward the end, not of decreasing irregu- larity of employment but merely of distributing more equally the incidence of its hardships. If there is any effect on the reducing of the fluctua- tions themselves, it is only the indirect but impor- tant one of making it worth the employer's while to plan to that end. In general the problems of "business cycles" and the like have been left as obviously beyond the reach of what little control the trade unions have secured over industry. It is the more interesting, then, to examine the few instances in which the trade unions have taken a part or an taterest in attempts at the regular- izing of employment as distinct from the mere mitigation of the evils of unemployment. Attempts to regularize employment may be divided into those which begin from the end of regularizing the supply of labor and those which begin from the end of regularizing the demand for labor. The history of the attempts in the former direc- tion falls largely outside the scope of the present study. The ti'ade unions have played little part in it, and most organized schemes of this sort are attempts to secure for unskilled workers the sort of regularity of employment which trade union "limitation of numbers" (which will be discussed in the next section) in part secures for certain UNEMPLOYMENT 83 skilled workers. De-casualization, the policy whicli Mr. (now Sir) W. H. Beveridge defined^ as follows: — "that all the irregular men for each, group of similar employers should he taken on from a common center or Exchange, and that this Exchange should so far as possible concentrate employment upon the smallest number that will suffice for the work of the group as a whole," was an invention of reformers from outside in- dustry, as an attempt primarily to solve the problem of irregular dock labor. The most famous attempts at putting it into practice, . those which substituted some degree of regulari- zation for the hideous scramble for work at the London Docks,^ made no provision for trade union activity. More recent attempts, however, have used the trade unions at least in a sort of junior partnership. The Liverpool Docks Scheme, an attempt to reduce the necessary surplus of dock labor to the minimum by a system of registration of workers and central clearing houses and. call- stands,^ was started in 1913 as a government un- dertaking, but from the first provided for a joint committee of employers and trade union repre- sentatives to supervise its working, and one of the rules was to the effect that : — ' Unemployment: a Problem of Industry, p. 201. 'Ibid., pp. 81-95. ■ For details, see R. WilUams, The First Year's Working of the Liverpool Docks Schema. 84. THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL "Employers shall issue a Registration Card to any man who produces his Dockers Union Membership Card stamped by the Branch Office to which he belongs." It is clear, however, that this degree of control was given to the trade union in order to secure its co-operation with the scheme and does not represent real initiative on the part of the workers to prevent unemployment. In fact the government official who carried out the scheme speaks of the initial "diffidence" of both employers and em- ployed and teUs the story of a strike of dock laborers against the scheme. Similar schemes are now in force in a number of other ports and in some cases involve much more positive trade union activity. In many of the ports where all men employed are union members registration is left in the hands of the union as agents for the Port Labor Joint Committee — in some cases union badges are even used as the tallies. And, although there has been in certain ports trade union opposition, a number of trade union leaders, notably Mr. Ernest Bevin of the Bristol Dockers, have themselves been active in the devising of the schemes to lessen unemploy- ment. The trade unions, then, have played at least an acquiescent and in some cases an active part in certain attempts to regularize the supply of labor. UNEMPLOYMENT 85 On the other question, the attempt to regularize the demand for labor, the trade unions have again assumed only a slight degree of control. There are occasional instances of joint attempts to solve particular problems of shortage of work. It is not at all uncommon for a trade union official in the course of his ordinary work to discuss with an employer ways and means of avoiding a stoppage of work that will throw his members out of em- ployment. Similar matters are occasionally dis- cussed by works committees. The Ministry of Labor's report on Works Committees* speaks of committees of building trades shop stewards which "may make representations to, or be con- sulted by, the employer on questions such as the proper allocation of work in order that sufficient inside operations may be reserved for wet weather" (p. 40), and of a works committee in a shipbuilding yard which considered among other matters, " unemployment questions — e.g., the purchase by the firm of an old vessel so as to employ idle men, and subscription to an unem- ployed fund" (p. 95). These of course are minor and immediate ex- pedients and the great question of trade fluctua- tions is naturally almost untouched by trade union activity. Political Labor, with which this inquiry has little to do, has given some attention to the ' See Note on Sources. 86 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL carefully thought out suggestion of Professor Bowley, taken up by Mr. and Mrs. Webb and em- bodied in the Minority Eeport of the Poor Law Commission (1908) and in "Labor and the New Social Order," of spraying work from a public reservoir to counteract trade fluctuations. An ex- pression of this policy in trade union activity has been the strenuous protest by the trade unions affected against the wholesale discharge from Na- tional Factories and Dockyards since the armistice, on the ground that the Government should convert the establishments to some sort of useful work in a time of unemployment. An ambitious recent project attempts to combine the four principles just discussed: — ^unemploy- ment a charge on the industry, trade union admin- istration of unemployment pay so provided, regu- larization of the supply of labor, and regulariza- tion of the demand for labor — in a single scheme intended to be carried out jointly by employers and employed in a great industry. The Joint Indus- trial Council for the Building Industry had placed in its constitution the "Prevention of Unemploy- ment" as one of its objects. It had appointed a sub-committeee to consider the more efficient organization of the industry. At the annual meet- ing of the Council, held August 14 and 15, 1919, this Committee presented a report — ^known as the "Foster Eeport" from Mr. Thomas Foster, the UNEMPLOYMENT 87 chairman, a master-decorator of Burnley — on "Organized Public Service in the Building Indus- try,'"' a document which was signed by all the workers on the Committee and three of the em- ployers, five employers dissenting. The report was debated at length and, after a definitely hostile amendment had been voted down, was referred back to the same Committee for reconsideration and elaboration. The Report covers a wide range of subjects which will be referred to in later sec- tions — the problem of unemployment, however, takes first place in the arrangement of the report and apparently in the minds of its supporters from the operatives' side. "Fear of unemploy- ment" is stated as the first cause of restriction of output. The remedies may be quoted under the headings given above. In charging necessary un- employment to the expense of the industry and in entrusting the trade unions with administering the benefit, the report follows the practice of the Cotton Control Board. The significant passages are as follows : — "15. "When all other methods of providing steady and adequate employment for the operatives have been exhausted, then the Industry is faced with the question of its responsibility towards its employees during pos- sible periods of unemployment. We are convinced that the overhanging fear of unemployment must be finally ' See Note on Sources. 88 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL removed before the operative can be expected whole- heartedly to give of his best. . . . 17. — "We further recommend that in cases of unavoid- able unemployment, the maintenance of its unemployed members shall be undertaken by the Industry through its Employment Committees, and that the necessary revenue shall be raised by means of a fixed percentage on the wages bill, and paid weekly to the Emplojrment Com- mittee by each employer on the joint certificate of him- self and a shop steward or other accredited trade union representative. 19. — While the collection of this revenue should be carried out by the Employment Committees, the pay- ments should be made by periodical refund to the trade unions, who would thus become an important integral part of the official machinery and would distribute the unemployment pay in accordance with the regulations prescribed by the Industrial Council and its Com- mittees." The question of regularizing the supply of labor, which was at the same time being incident- ally considered by the Eesettlement Committee of the same Council, was touched on as follows : — "42. — It is obvious that the important improvements we have outlined will tend to make service in the In- dustry more attractive; and while the interests of the public service emphatically demand the enrollment of every member who can be trained and utilized in the Building Industry, we fully recognize that indiscriminate enrollment must be prevented by careful regulation. 43. — We therefore recommend that the development UNEMPLOYMENT 89 of the Industry should be kept under constant review by the Employment Committees, and that these Committees should periodically notify the trade unions as to the number of new members that may apply for registration under the Employment Scheme, after a suitable trade test or evidence of previous service in the Industry. 16. — . . . The machinery for filling vacancies already exists in the trade union organization and should be developed to the greatest possible extent, in order to supplement the State Employment Exchanges so far as the Building Industry is concerned." The most elaborate and far-reaching proposals have to do with the regularization of demand, by the planning of public work to counteract trade depressions and by dove-tailing with other indus- tries to counteract seasonal unemployment. The report reads as follows : — "9. — . . . We consider it essential that the whole productive capacity of th"e Industry should be continu- ously engaged and absorbed, and that a regular flow of contracts should replace the old haphazard alterna- tions of congestion and stagnation. It is well known that the proportion of public to private work is very considerable and that it is well within the powers of Public Authorities to speed up or to delay contracts. "We therefore recommend: — (a) That the Industrial Council shall set up a permanent committee entitled the Building Trades Central Employment Committee, with the necessary clerical staff. 90 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL (b) That each Regional Council shall similarly set up a Building Trades Regional Employment Committee. (c) That each Local or Area Council shall similarly set up a Building Trades Area Employment Committee. (d) That each Committee shall consist of an equal number of employers and operatives with one architect appointed by the local pro- fessional Association of Architects or by the Royal Institute of British Architects as may be most appropriate. 10. — • The first duty of these Committees would be to regularize the demand for building: — (a) at the approach of slack periods, by accelerat- ing new building enterprises, both public and private, with the co-operation of architects and local authorities; (b) conversely, at periods of congestion, by advis- ing building owners to postpone the construc- tion of such works as are not of an urgent character. . . . 13. — ... The difficulty of providing employment during wet and bad seasons has yet to be faced. We feel that a certain amount of investigation is still needed in this direction, and venture to suggest that the Build- ing Trades Industrial Council should approach the re- presentatives of other industries with a view to investi- gating the possibility of 'dove-tailing' or seasonal inter- change of labor. There would appear to be a large volume of national and private work which could be undertaken when the Industry itself could not usefully employ all its avail- able labor, for example: — UNEMPLOYMENT 91 (a) Afforestation. (b) Eoad-making. (e) The preparation of sites for housing schemes. (d) Demolition of unsanitary or condemned areas in preparation for improvements." ) The Foster Report is of course only in the dis- cussion stage; it is, however, of great interest as the most elaborate plan for joint action against unemployment being seriously debated by employ- ers and employed. In the field of already accom- plished fact, the instances of any degree of work- ers' control over unemployment problems are of two sorts. There are first the numerous rules by which the trade unions exert pressure upon em- ployers to distribute work equally and to plan against unemployment. Of these the principle of guaranteed time is the furthest development. In the second place there have been the exercise by trade unions of administrative functions in con- nection with jointly controlled attempts to meet the problem of unemployment. Of these the Cot- ton Control Board and the Dock Clearing House schemes are the only important examples. V « THE RIGHT TO A TRADE » The trade union control studied in the preceding sections dealt almost entirely with the quantitative regulation of employment or with the condition of union membership. There still remain the quali- tative restrictions on employmen-t — the attempts of the imions to say what class of workman shall be set to do a particular sort of job. Apprenticeship — the limiting of work in a par- ticular trade or on a particular process to men who have served a specified term of years as learn- ers of the trade — is the most talked-of restriction of this nature. But perhaps the most important thing to say about it is how little of it there really is. Even in 1897, the Webbs emphasized this by the following table {Industrial Democracy, p. 473, footnote) : — (1) Membership of Trade Unions actually en- forcing apprenticeship regulations .... 90,000 (2) Membership of Trade Unions nominally retaining apprenticeship regulations, but effectively open 500,000 92 « THE RIGHT TO A TRADE » 93 (3) Membership of Trade Unions having no apprenticeship regulations : — a. Transport workers and laborera 250,000 b. Textile, mining, and other occupations . . . 650,000 900,000 1,490,000 A few moments' figuring will show that their argument now holds a fortiori; that the proportion of the trade union movement in class (3) is at the present time much greater than when the Webbs wrote. Class (3) (a) in 1915 would have included under transport workers (738,000) and common labor (including builders' laborers — 789,000) more than a million and a quarter workers. Adding to this the 857,000 engaged in mining, the 258,000 shop assistants, clerks, and employees of public authorities and the 500,000 in the textile industry (from which, however, a few minor sections should be subtracted) the figures come to 2,850,000 with- out any attempt to study the smaller trades; and a detailed investigation would surely show that many more than three million out of the 4,126,793 members reported in 1915 were in unions not even claiming apprenticeship regulations. Even this fails to weight the figure sufficiently, since it is precisely in general labor and women's labor that trade unionism has grown most rapidly since 1915. 94 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL Fnlly as striking for the purpose is tlie break- down of what was left of apprenticeship in the trades classified by the Webbs under (2). The numbers of trade unionists in these trades is now greater, but the importance of apprenticeship in them has greatly dwindled. The "Webbs spoke then of the " complete collapse" of apprentice- ship regulations in engineering — a phrase which unfortunately leaves little room for describing the changes both before and during the war by which the industry was invaded by dilutees who were taught one process alone and were used on repeti- tion work. Apprenticeship, then, is no longer of first-class importance in the greater industries ; ^ but it is still worth while to notice what degree of control it involves. This is of two sorts — the/ limitation of numbers and a certain command over technique and training in technique. The first is no doubt the more important object of the regulations; limitation of entry means monopoly and there- fore high wages and some security of employment, and a much more considerable basis for control than even the compulsory trade unionism referred to in the third section. The power of the Stuff Pressers rests largely on the regulation which • An incidental indication of this is the fact that the word " apprenticeship " does not appear in the index of G. D. H. Cole's Introduction to Trade Uniomsm. " THE RIGHT TO A TRADE " 95 limits apprentices to a proportion of one to ten journeymen, though even in this extreme case the union finds it sometimes necessary to admit men who have not served their time. This is of inter- est for this inquiry merely in so far as it becomes a means for securing further control — for our purpose it is more interesting to study the few instances in which apprenticeship means some con- trol by the union over the education of the worker in his trade. Probably every trade that retains apprentice- ship retains some degree of control over the train- ing of apprentices, if only, as with the Glasgow Bakers, to the extent ' ' that the Operatives ' Com- mittee have power to make inquiry so as to ascer- tain that the apprentice is not an underpaid journeyman." Often, however, this means a cer- tain control over the actual training the appren- tice receives — if not positive control in the sense of directing the training, at least negative control in the sense of effective complaint when the em- ployer fails too signally to give the apprentices a fuU chance to learn the trade. The Power Loom Overlookers (wool), for example, will fight the issue of the proper training of an apprentice. The monthly form which the "father of the chapel" (the printers' shop steward) fills out for his union contains a space for reporting a failure to give apprentices a fair chance to learn the trade. In 96 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL one old-fashioned monopoly craft, in which the employing side admits that "the unions have earned supremacy over the question," the union exhorts its members to "intelligently study the handicraft" and claims in dignified language the right to protest against the choice of unfit appren- tices, which in practice means a veto power on their selection. The handful of "potters' paint- ers," the most skUled workers in the potting in- dustry, claimed and won the right to fill the latest vacancy in their craft. Much more striking is the rule of the Britannia Metal Smiths, one of the tiny archaic unions of the Sheffield light trades, which requires : — "That every boy on completing his apprenticeship shall be reported upon by the men working at the firm as to his abilities, before he is accepted by the Trade. If it be found that the said boy is incompetent as a work- man, the Committee shall institute an enquiry and, if possible ascertain the cause, and take the necessary steps to prevent a similar misfortune." There are several instances of joint control over apprenticeship. An extract from an arbi- trator's award, dated 1909, shows the situation among the Bookbinders : — "It being further agreed by the employers . . . that the apprentices be trained not merely in a sub-section " THE RIGHT TO A TRADE » 97 but in a branch. Evidence was given me as to the technical training of apprentices at technical classes and as to the desire of the employers to co-operate with the societies in encouraging and improving the apprentices' training. ' ' The 1916 report of the London Society of Com- positors welcomes the adoption of a joint scheme "for the better education of the printer's appren- tice" with the following remarks: — "The training of apprentices has long been regarded as a matter of supreme importance both to the Society and to the trade at large . . . The apprentice is not only the journeyman of the future; he is the trade unionist of the future. Our effort, then, should be to make him a better printer and a better man, and there- fore a better member." Since the Joint Industrial Council of the building industry announced that one of its objects was "to arrange for adequate technical training for the members of the industry," there has been some activity in planning toward that end. One scheme, originated by Mr. Frank Woods, a Bolton builder, and already approved by the Joint Council for the North Western Area, provides an elaborate plan of training under supervision of a committee rep- resenting (1) the employers' association, (2) the unions, (3) the Education Authority, and (4) the Juvenile Employment Committee of the Ministry of Labor, which shall deal both with the selection 98 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL of apprentices and with complaints either as to their misconduct or as to the employer's failure to teach the trade. "Those employers who shirk their duties and do not train apprentices \ Moreover the principle of the right to make tech- nical criticisms was not always enforced even where formally conceded. In some cases the work- ers ' side did not dare bring up the question or else simply let their opportunities pass. And a large number of committees definitely broke down in disputes over this issue. This experience is worth setting out in such de- tail, because it brings us again to a consciously felt "frontier of control." The quality of the innova- tion that this trade union insistence on technique implied may be indicated by the grounds on which it was opposed by a minority of miners and a num- ber of managers. Some of the former called it doing the employer's work. "When the miners' leaders began to draw the miners' attention to the loss of turns and pointed out to them that, if they only increased their attendance a little, it would increase the output by 13 million tons of coal, they soon told their leaders that it was the business of the employer to talk like that." Trade union offi- cials were not paid for ' ' advocating increased out- put which would only affect the coal-owner." On the other hand, as shown in Mr. Bramwell 's testi- mony, managers felt that it was interfering with management and taking the management out of INSISTENCE ON IMPROVEMENTS 215 their hands. When a trade union is found vigor- ously doing the employer's work and taking it out of the management's hands, the case comes very near the center of the problem of control. It is this background of quarrels and responsi- bilities regarding problems of actual production that makes somewhat less astonishing the part played by the Miners' Federation in the Coal Com- mission's inquiry. Their claim was not merely that the mine-workers should have higher wages and shorter hours ; but that these demands could be met by improving the organization of the in- dustry; and that the Miners were prepared both to suggest and to help carry out the necessary im- provements. Detailed evidence of the technical defects of the industry was a more important part of the Miners' case than even the reports of the conditions of their housing.' "I want the mines nationalized," said Mr. Smillie on the occasion of a recent deputation to the Prime Minister, "in order that, by the fullest possible development on intelligent lines, with the assistance of the en- gineering power which we know we possess and the inventions which we know we pos- sess, we might largely develop the mines and increase the output. That is one of our first claims." ' E.g., Coal Commission Evidence, vol. I, pp. 321-322. 216 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL These cases in which the organized pressure of the trade unions is on the side of improvements in technique are emphasized, not as of frequent oc- currence outside the industries named, but as the furthest extensions of constructive control. There are other instances of suggestions for improve- ment made by groups of workers still to be con- sidered ; the present section deals only with those in which improved technique has been definitely something for the trade union to fight for. XVI TECHNIQUE: SUGGESTIONS AND INVENTIONS The positive interferences in technique already- mentioned had their beginnings, at least, in the demand for facilities for piece-work earnings. I do not mean that this is the only factor ; the signi- ficant transition in motives from wages to 'work- manship has already been suggested. Still the be- ginnings were piece work, and the interferences were backed by the organized force of the unions. There are, however, other cases of an interest on the part of groups of workers in the betterment of technique which are not so immediately bound up with piece-work earnings and which are not to the same extent enforced by the unions. They are not, then, insistences on improvements; they are better classed as suggestions and inventions. Not as significant from the point of view of con- trol as those just mentioned, they are, neverthe- less, interesting as indicating some degree of joint action in the development of industrial technique. The work of the individual inventor is beside our point, except as he is encouraged and protected by collective action. I heard a group of Midland 217 218 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL working-class students debating witli great inter- est the encouragement and protection of inven- tors and the state of the patent laws ; they made no suggestion that it might be a subject for trade union and works committee action. Similarly the various schemes of individual firms for encourag- ing inventions and suggestions, — ^from the mere provision of "suggestion boxes" to the long-stand- ing and successful systems of awards for inven- tions in force at William Denny's shipbuilding yard at Dumbarton and at Barr and Stroud's en- gineering works at Griasgow and the similar scheme introduced in March, 1919, at Cadbury's cocoa works at Bourneville which produced 759 sug- gestions in the first seven months — are not cases of workers' control; though it is hardly a coincidence that the first firm mentioned was, as pointed out by D. F. Schloss, a pioneer in devolu- tion of responsibility to groups of workers and that all three have highly developed works cord- mi ttees. A works committee is of course hardly likely to make inventions ; that is not a political function. It may, as the Ministry of Labor's report on Works Committees suggests, do two things: — (1) create an atmosphere which will encourage the making of suggestions and (2) provide the machinery, by sub-committee or otherwise, for stimulating an interest in and for considering and testing inven- SUGGESTIONS AND INVENTIONS 219 tions. As an illustration of the need for the first, the former labor superintendent of an engineering firm told me of a man who had been victimized by his foreman for suggesting to the manager an im- provement in process. A sub-committee with a part of the latter function has just (October, 1919) been set up at Cadbury's at the suggestion of the workers ' side of the Works Council. It is called the "Brains Committee" and its object is to hunt for promising talent among the employees. The works manager describes it as the "most talked-of thing in the works." The encouragement of inventions was clearly intended as an important part of the Whitley scheme. The following is a typical clause from the list of functions of a Joint Industrial Council : — "The provision of facilities for the full consideration and utilization of inventions and improvements designed by work people and for the adequate safeguarding of the rights of the designers of such improvements." (Paint Color and varnish Industry.) So much for inventions proper; there is still the field of suggestions in regard to meeting the various practical problems of organization and the planning of work. This is obviously a more natural subject for group action than- the former ; of this sort were the suggestions made by the Out- put Committees referred to in the last section. 220 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL Many works committees have discussed the actual arrangement of work; the report by the Ministry of Labor says that "testimony to the value of suggestions [made by them] . . . has been received from employers." The suggestions reported were usually on minor matters of detail; in one inter- esting case, however, a committee of pattern-mak- ers suggested, as an alternative to dilution, the pur- chase of certain tools and brought about a 50% increase of output.' A recent instance is even more striking. The British Westinghouse Co. was considering closing down its foundry on account of the high cost of production. The works manager put the proposal before his shop stewards' committee. The committee ob- jected and asked for two weeks in which to collect statistics of wages in other foundries in order to show that the high cost of production was not due to high wages. These figures were pre- sented and indicated that the wages in the foundry were, if anything, lower than in competing ones. The committee argued that this showed that the trouble was one of organization and asked for an- other two weeks in which to prepare suggestions. At the end of that time the committee presented a memorandum on foundry organization — ^which the works manager described as the ablest he had ' p. 30, Works Committee), Industrial Report No. 2, Ministry of Labor. SUGGESTIONS AND INVENTIONS 221 ever seen, and the firm has decided to keep the foundry going and to spend hundreds of pounds in carrying out the committee's suggestions. The encouragement of suggestions is of course an integral part of the Whitley idea. The third re- port of the Whitley committee says of the works committees : — "They should always keep in the forefront the idea of constructive co-operation in the improvement of the industry to which they belong. Suggestions of all kinds tending to improvement should be frankly welcomed and freely discussed. Practical proposals should be exam- ined from all points of view. There is an undeveloped asset of constructive ability — ^valuable alike to the in- dustry and to the State — awaiting the means of reali- zation. ' ' These read like merely pious and peace-loving phrases; the argument from the waste of ability in a system which discourages suggestions, how- ever, I have heard from both sides, — from the head of the labor department of a manufacturers' association ; from a foreman in one of the National Factories where suggestions had been taken from both the foremen's and the workmen's com- mittees, and, most strikingly, in Mr. William Straker's evidently sincere reference before the Coal Coromission to the "coal-owners' huge blun- der" in neglecting to use the practical ability of the men. "For a generation," says the first 222 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL Sankey report (signed by tlie Chairman and three employer members of the Coal Commission), "the colliery worker has been educated socially and technically. The result is a great national asset. "Why not use it?" These are mainly arguments for what might be ; the actual instances of workers' activity under this head amount to comparatively little. The organization of the facilities for invention and suggestions may become an important function of joint committees. It implies a direct assumption of .a degree of interest in and responsibility for technique. At the moment, however, it is a much less significant form of workers ' control than that collective enforcing of industrial efficiency men- tioned under the "Insistence on Improvements." XVII TRADE POLICY: JOINT ACTION Theee are still other people who write about control who make a distinction similar to that used in the transition from discipline to technique Their argument runs like this : — The workers should have much to say about the immediate processes of production, which are the stuff of their daily life ; but general trade policy — ^buying and selling, exchange, the market, the adjustment of supply and demand, large-scale research and planning — is obviously not their business. Again the moral may be disregarded and the distinction used for classification. Again, however, it must be recognized that it is not a rigid one: — ^unem- ployment, for example, is clearly a matter of gen- eral trade policy; there is no sharply logical line that sets off the invention of a device invented for use in a particular shop, from the organization of research for a great industry. And it will again be seen, in this and the following section, that the unions have not kept neatly to one side of the demarcation laid down in the theory. The present section will consider cases in which the unions have acted jointly with the employers in these 223 224 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL matters; the next with, cases of independent ac- tion or demands on the part of the workers. A loose sort of joint action between employers' and workmen's organizations for the common pur- poses of their industries is of course no new thing. A rudimentary provision for it — ^now superseded by a Joint Industrial Council — is found in the rules of the conciliation boards in the building trades : — "Although the principal objects of the Conciliation Boards are the settlement of disputes . . ., it shall also be within their province to meet and discuss any question of trade interest at the request of any of the parties to the agreement." Apparently legislation was one of the trade ques- tions intended. The Plumbers' board made this object more specific: — "To consider any question affecting the Plumbing trade and to procure the improvement of any existing laws, usages and customs, which the Board may consider to be prejudicial to the trade, and to amend or oppose legislation or other measures or the establishment of any usages or customs which in the opinion of the Board might prejudicially affect our Craft." The cotton industry gives the best examples of this sort of joint action. The Oldham agreement reads : — TRADE POLICY: JOINT ACTION 225 "It is agreed that 'in respect to the opening of new markets abroad, the alteration of restrictive foreign tariffs and other similar matters which may benefit or injure the cotton trade, the same shall be dealt with by a Committee of three or more from each Federation, all the Associations agreeing to bring the whole weight of their influence to bear in furthering the general interests of the cotton industry in this country." This clause has not been at all a dead letter; as witness the recent project of a trip to India and the United States by a party of cotton manufac- turers and union leaders, and the well-known readiness with which both sides of the cotton in- dustry will rally against Government interference — or answer the cry of Lancashire against London. The logical, though infrequent, extension of the sort of co-operation suggested in the agreement mentioned is definite combination to fix prices "thereby securing better profits to manufacturers and better profits to work people ' ' at the consum- er 's expense or to secure tariff or other preferen- tial advantages. The former is evidently aimed at in the rules of the conciliation board for china manufacture : — "Mutual Trade Alliance. ... No Member of the Manufacturers' Association shall employ any workman who is not a Member of the Operatives' Association, and no workman shall take employment under any manu- facturer who is not a Member of the Manufacturers' 226 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL Association, or who is selling his goods at lower prices than those which from time to time are decided upon." (Italics mine.) The "Birmingliam Alliances," in six branches of the light metal trades, contain the same arrange- ment and the definite stipulation that prices are to be set by a "Wages Board, to be formed of an equal number of employers and employed." The latter object — combination for trade war purposes — is sometimes said to be a main part of the Whit- ley scheme. "His (the Minister of Labor's) idea," said a trade union journal, "appears to be that joint bodies of employers and employed will be excellent institutions to conduct a trade war after the war." Some color is given to this view by the activity of one or two of the Joint Coun- cils in asking for tariff advantages ^ and ' ' anti- dumping" laws. It is not fair, however, to suggest this as the only motive behind the Whitley scheme or even its chief outlet for joint action on trade policy. The first stated object of a Joint Industrial Council usually reads something like this: — • Cf., the sneer in one of the Daily Herald's " Hymns of Re- construction," — "Whitley Councils. Two opposite sides. Two opposite sides. See how they agree. See how they agree! They both are after Protection for trade That is the way that profits are made: No better example of mutual aid Than two opposite sides." TRADE POLICY: JOINT ACTION 227 "To secure the largest possible measure of joint action between the employers and work people for the safe- guarding and development of the industry as a part of national life." (Bobbin and Shuttle Making Industry.) The proposal by Mr. Malcolm Sparkes, a Lon- don master builder, whicb led to the formation of the Joint Industrial Council for the building trades began as follows:— "The interests of employers and employed are in many respects opposed; but they have a common inter- est in promoting the eiBcieney and status of the service in which they are engaged and in advancing the well- being of its personnel." And the phrase — "the industry as a national service" — has at least got from the building trades constitution into the conversation of local leaders. How much all this means in practice it is too early to say. It is worth while, however, to look at some of the specific functions suggested under the head of this broad generalization. "The consideration of measures for regularizing production and employ- ment" and the provisions for encouraging and protecting inventors have been mentioned in earl- ier sections. The Council for the Silk Industry (among others) provides for:— ' ' The regular consideration of, and the compilation of, available statistics as to wages, working costs^ fluctua- 228 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL tions in the cost of materials and Customs tariffs, and the study and promotion of scientific and practical sys- tems of account keeping." A number of constitutions have clauses such, as the following:— "The encouragement of study and research with a view to the improvement and perfection of the quality of the product, and of machinery and methods of eco- nomical manufacture in all branches of the industry." (Match Manufacturing Industry.) The program for the building trades council already quoted was even more specific in stating a similar object : — "Continumis amd Progressive Improvement — To pro- vide a Clearing House for ideas, and to investigate, in conjunction with experts, every suggested line of im- provement including, for example, such questions as: — Industrial Control and Status of Labor. Scientific Management and Increase of Output. "Welfare Methods. Closer association between commercial and aesthetic requirements. ' ' It is again too early to say how much these proj- ects mean. A sub-committee of the Building Trades Parliament is making an attempt to pro- vide the basis for a complete reorganization of the industry. Its interim report on Organized Public Service in the Building Industry,^ known as the ' See Note on Sources. TRADE POLICY: JOINT ACTION 229 "Foster Report," has already been referred to under "Unemployment." Its recommendations, however, go much further than was there in- dicated. In addition to the provisions for making unemployment a charge on the industry and for the regularization of employment, the report rec- ommends a regulation of the "Wages of Manage- ment (on lines admittedly not yet worked out), a limitation and guarantee by the industry as a whole of the rate of interest on capital, and the disposal of the surplus earnings of the industry at the discretion of the Council. The detailed pro- visions under the last two heads are as follows : — "The Hiring of Capital. 36. We recommend that approved capital, invested in the Building Industry, and registered annually after audit, shall receive a limited but guaranteed rate of in- terest, bearing a definite relation to the average yield of the most remunerative Government Stock. The fixing of the ratio will have to be worked out by further in- vestigation, but we recommend that once determined upon, the guarantee shall apply to all firms in the Industry, except where failure to earn the aforesaid rate is declared by the Committee on the advice of the auditors to be due to incompetent management. . . . The Surplus Earnings of the Industry. 40. . . . We, therefore, recommend: (a) That the amount of the surplus earnings of the Industry shall be publicly declared every year, and accompanied by a schedule of the services to which the money has been voted. 230 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL (b) That it shall be held in trust by a National Joint Committee of the Building Trades In- dustrial Council, and shall be applied to the following common services, which will be de- veloped under the control of the Industry as a whole: — 1. Guarantee of Interest on approved capital, as outlined in paragraph 36. 2. Loans to firms in the Industry for purposes of development. 3. Education and research in various directions for improvement of the Industry, both in- dependently and in co-operation with other industries. 4. Superannuation scheme for the whole regis- tered personnel of the Industry. 5. Replacement of approved capital lost through no fault of the management. 6. Such other purposes as may be thought ad- visable." This project was vigorously and seriously debated at one meeting of tlie Building Trades Parliament and has been referred back to the same Commit- tee for further consideration. All these things mean the possibility of joint action, though in most cases they mean little activity on the part of the rank and file of work- ers, on a wide field of questions. For a review of the present situation in regard to control, how- ever, they must be heavily discounted. In the older forms of joint action, those that are more TRADE POLICY: JOINT ACTION 231 purely for the sake of protection or prices, there is little evidence of labor acting as anything but a very junior partner; the newer forms are still almost entirely on paper. This does not at all exhaust the account of cases of joint action on matters of business policy. As has already been suggested in earlier sections — for example in the account of the Westinghouse works committee's advice on foundry organization — certain individual firms have given opportuni- ties for discussion at least on questions that would surely be classed under the heading of trade policy. A number of firms make the practice of telling their works committees about their pros- pective contracts, etc., and in some cases report considerable keenness on the part of their coromit- tees in discussing them. There was during the war a very striking experiment of real workers' control in this and in every field at a Newcastle aircraft factory — John Dawson and Co., Ltd. A joint body representing management and workers exercised almost the full powers of an ordinary board of directors. "The business of the "Works Council," says the pamphlet edited by its secretary and published in March, 1919 under the title of Democratic Control the Key to Industrial Pro- gress, "is to control matters of policy, consider and decide upon extension or contraction of busi- ness, and to provide for the maintenance of output. 232 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL The Workers' Eepresentatives are elected by bal- lot, and have an equal voice with the Management Representatives in all decisions. There being no casting vote it is essential that both sides agree by a majority upon any question that may arise. In the absence of an agreement the subject would remain in abeyance until a common ground of action could be arrived at ... . Broadly speak- ing, the functions of the Works Council may be defined as those of a Management Council which issues its decisions to the Executive Staff for that Staff to carry into effect. The decisions of the Works Council on matters of policy are of necessity subject in all cases to the control of the Directors in regard to finance . . . The Directors have the responsibility of con- trolling the finance and sales organization of the Company, and the general work of the Staff. Whilst they are unfettered in regard to the exer- cise of their powers, the Works Council may call for, and in fact receives, all information in regard to the policy of the management, expansion of business and results of operations undertaken." The exclusion of the Works Council from financial control was explained by Mr. Gr. H. Humphrey, the Proprietor and originator of the scheme, as a matter of banking accommodation: — "Dependent as we are on loans and the Banks, we have to maintain a Capitalist front to the world and a TRADE POLICY: JOINT ACTION 233 Democratic one to the workers. As we are financed by loans we have to give personal guarantees, and our per- sonal guarantees have no weight unless we own half the organization. I have, therefore, given away only one half of the' voting stock of the Company, retaining the other half which I use as my baUast for my personal guarantees." This must of course be understood as one man's experiment, and not as an illustration of a large body of experience, and it is an experiment that is no longer in operation, since John Dawson's, though highly successful in war-time production, was unable to finance the readjustment to peace conditions. It is, however, of great interest as marking the most definite devolution of an em- ployer's authority. Of almost equal interest, and perhaps of greater importance, was the joint action on trade policy that was a by-product of State control during the war. It is true that trade union and employers' association representation on bodies charged with public; functions was not quite unknown before the war; there was a minority of two labor members, for example, on the Port of London Authority. State action for war purposes made the practice of real importance. The State took over, in vari- ous degrees, the control over the most important industries in the country; in certain industries, this control was largely administered — after early 234. THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL attempts to do everything by State action — through bodies composed in part of representa- tives of employers and employed. This principle, it is true, did not extend to shipping; the National Maritime Board was a joint body, but its func- tions were merely conciliatory. The railways were and are administered under the Board of Trade by a Eailway Executive Committee of railway presidents. The National Union of Railwaymen asked repeatedly for representation on this com- mittee; the request was denied, but the following clause was inserted in the 1919 agreement : — "When the new Ministry of Ways and Communica- tions is set up it is the intention of the Government to provide in the organization for and to avail itself fully of the advantage of assistance, co-operation, and advice from the workers in the transportation industry." Negotiations on this point are now (November, 1919) proceeding between the Government and the Railwaymen. Mr. J. H. Thomas announced at Bristol on November 16 that the Government had made an offer to the unions of three seats on the Railway Executive Committee. In the other branches of the transport industry, road transport was administered without labor representation ; but local consultative committees, on which the Transport Workers' Federation was represented, exercised certain functions in refer- TRADE POLICY: JOINT ACTION 235 ence to both dock and canal traffic. The coal in- dustry was mucli under State supervision from the outbreak of the war; by February, 1917, the Government had assumed complete control. At that time the Coal Mining Organization Committee, which included representatives of the Miners (Smillie, Hartshorn, and Walsh) and the mine- owners, and which had played an important part not only in conducting output campaigns but in suggesting economies of distribution was made into an Advisory Board to the Coal Controller, with equal representation from the two sides* The Miners' Federation was not satisfied with the limited and purely advisory powers of this Board, and at its 1918 Conference passed the following resolution :— "In the opinion of this Conference the present form of Governmental control of the mines tends to develop into pure bureaucratic administration, which is in itself as equally inimical to the interests of the workmen and the industry as was the uncontrolled form of private ownership. We, therefore, propose that, pending the complete nationalization of the mines with joint control by the State and the workers, the present Joint Ad- visory Committee of the Coal Controller should be vested with directive power jointly with the Coal Controller." In South Wales a Joint Allocation Committee was set up to meet the problem of distributing or- ders for the various grades of coal to the different 236 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL collieries in order to bring about uniformity of em- ployment throughout the coalfield. Mr. Hodges described this as "a taste of effective control ia the allocation of trade," though Mr. Evan Wil- liams of the coal-owners insisted that while, "you gave us valuable information," the scheme itself "was not put into operation." ' In the engineering and allied industries and particularly the production of munitions, the con- trol exercised by the State was perhaps most direct and there was very little devolution of authority (except to the Munitions Tribunals already men- tioned) . In certain districts, however, notably the Northeast Coast and the Clyde, local Munitions of War Committees were set up with seven employ- ers, seven union representatives and a number of State nominees. These were directly charged with the function of accelerating production. Mr. Cole wrote * of this as a step of great importance : — "It will go down to history as the first definite and ofiicial recognition of the right of the workers to a say in the management of their own industries. Here for the first time the nominees of the workers meet those of the masters on equal terms, to discuss not merely wages, hours, or conditions of labor, but the actual business of production. ' ' The real control exercised by these committees, however, varied widely with the degree of interest " Coal Commission Evidence, Questions 23706-23714. ' Labor in War Time, p. 198. TRADE POLICY: JOINT ACTION 237 shown by the workers in the different locali- ties. The most striking examples of joint administra- tion by employers and employed were the Wool and Cotton Control Boards. The Government was the chief consumer of wool during the war. Early in 1916 it took considerable power under the Defence of the Eealm Act to direct production, and in the same year bought almost the entire supply of raw material in order to establish priorities for war work. In April, 1917, an Advisory Com- mittee, on which the unions had five members as against twenty-four representing the employers and merchants, was set up and immediately ex- tended the system of priorities and drastically re- stricted the hours to be worked by mills employed in the civilian trade. During August and Septem- ber, after considerable unrest in the industry, the "Wool Control Board — eleven representatives of the unions, eleven of the employers, and eleven of the War Office Contracts Department — was set up with extensive powers in organizing the civilian trade and full power to ration raw material to the various branches of the industry and to the particular firms engaged. "Clearly," says the Labor Year Book (1919), "the principle of equal representation of Trade Unions with the employers on a body possessing such powers creates a precedent of the greatest possible impor- 238 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL tance, and one wMch. is still strongly resented by some employers in the industry." The Cotton Control Board — ^which in its final form consisted of seven employers and merchants, seven union leaders, and two nominees of the Board of Trade — exercised even more important administrative powers. The problem in the case of cotton was the shortage of raw material ; many of the ships that had formerly brought cotton were either sunk or diverted to other purposes. The object of control was to regulate the price of the raw material and to conserve the supply. The Control Board was set up on June 28, 1917; its first acts were to regulate purchases by a system of licenses and to take a complete census of cotton stocks. It was soon given full powers to fix the price of the raw material and to allocate it among the different firms. The latter function was per- formed by restricting the percentage of spindles that could be run on other than Government work. An important extension of the Board's duties resulted from the effects of the shortage and the consequent restriction. Some provision had to be made for those unemployed. The arrangement made was this : firms were to be allowed to exceed the specified percentage of spindles on payment of alevy for all spindles in excess; this levy be- came an unemployment fund which was admin- istered, on agreed principles, wholly by the trade TRADE POLICY: JOINT ACTION 239 unions. This was discussed in Section IV as an ap- plication of tlie principle that unemployment should be a charge on the industry and as a definite delegation of responsibility to the trade unions for administering benefit. The case of the Cotton Control Board has been taken — by Mr. Penty, for example, in his Indtts- trial Crisis and the Way Out — as a striking in- stance of trade union direction of industry. It is easy to make out the case. Hero were a group of union leaders on a Board which was charged with the responsibility of meeting the problems of a great industry in a great emergency and which was given almost unlimited powers to say what work should or should not be done and what ma- chines should or should not be kept running. These were great and executive powers — certainly an opportunity for positive control. The best evi- dence, however, seems to be that, except as regards the unemployment benefit which they administered independently and with little friction, the control exercised by the union leaders was more negative than positive. They were there to see that no harm was done to the unions; the constructive planning was left almost entirely to a few of the employers and civil servants. This was not be- cause the union leaders, being in a minority, were voted down; it was because they attended only the formal weekly meetings — the real planning 240 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL was done between them. It is true tliat the employ- ers at the end of the war hastened to secure the abolition of the board for fear the union leaders would through it learn to run the industry; there is no evidence, however, that they even thought of taking their position as an opportunity for learn- ing control. Joint action for commercial purposes is then not unheard of. The Whitley proposals are of some importance in offering a possibility of widen- ing the range of subjects. Joint acceptance of public responsibility for the conduct of industry was a significant war development. The next sec- tion will discuss the few trade union attempts at independent action in these fields. XVIII TRADE POLICY: WORKERS' DEMANDS The previous section dealt with joint action on trade policy — action rarely initiated from the labor side and carried on for joint purposes. The pres- ent section deals with attempts by the workers to manipulate trade policy for their own purposes, with their independent suggestions for improve- ment in trade policy, and with their demands for trade and financial information. The actual in- stances are less frequent ; the fact that the initia- tive comes from the workers, however, makes them of interest for a study of control. The last section discussed the "Birmingham Alliances," a rare instance of trade unions join- ing with their employers to rig prices. There are also rare instances of trade unions trying to rig prices on their own account by limitation of output, or of trade unions disagreeing with their employers as to the best means of rigging prices. The classic illustration of the latter is the cotton dispute of 1878 described by the "Webbs. The own- ers announced a ten per cent reduction of wages to meet a depression due to a glut in the market. The unions argued that the way to meet a glut in 241 242 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL the market was to stop overproduction, and of- fered to accept the reduction in wages on condition that the factories should work only four days a week. ' ' One hundred thousand factory workers, ' ' said the Weavers' Manifesto, "are waging war with their employers as to the best possible way to remove the glut from an overstocked market, and at the same time reduce the difficulties arising from an insufficient supply of raw cotton. To remedy this state of things the employers propose a reduction of wages. . . . We contend that a re- duction in the rate of wages cannot either remove the glut in the cloth market or assist to tide us over the difficulty arising from the limited supply of raw material. ' ' The ten weeks ' stiike over eco- nomic policy finally ended in the complete defeat of the workers. The cotton imions have on this and other oc- casions claimed, unsuccessfully, a right to force upon the employers their notions of the way to adjust output to demand in order to maintain prices and wages. The Miners alone have once or twice attempted to do the adjusting on their own account. Two facts may partly explain this. For a long period of years the coal-owners in certain districts, notably Northumberland, had agreed to a limitation of output — "the limitation of the vend" — for the purpose of keeping up the price of coal; of this the workers were, of course, aware TRADE POLICY: WORKERS' DEMANDS 243 and in Lancashire liad even been at times parties to tlie agreement. In the second place, the miners' wages in many districts were governed, either under formal slidmg scale agreement or according to the general practice of arbitrators, by the sel- ling price of coal ; manipulation of the selling price by the owners or dealers was thus felt by the min- ers to be " gambling with men 's wages. " It is not then surprising that the Miners have in a few instances insisted that, "supply and demand should be adjusted rather by diminishing the out- put than by forcing coal upon unwilling buyers. ' ' In 1892 the Miners saved themselves from a reduc- tion in wages, threatened on account of the great . surplus stocks of coal ^ which the coal-owners could not sell, by arbitrarily taking a week's holi- day. A similar issue arose just before the out- break of war in 1914. The Scottish Miners were threatened with a reduction which would have brought their wages below the national miaimum agreed on by the Miners' Federation; yet they were under agreement to submit to arbitration, and the lowered price of coal, due to overproduc- tion, would be used as the chief argument against them. The Scottish union, apparently following an expedient sometimes practiced in Lanarkshire, decided to work only four days a week in order to ' It Is very difficult in 1919 to think back to a time when there could have been " great surplus stocks of coal " in England. 244 THE FRONTIER OE CONTROL reduce the surplus and to force up the price. The matter was vigorously debated at a conference of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain. "When they were last before the neutral chaiitoan, ' ' said a Scottish delegate, "one of the grounds put for- ward for the reduction of 25% was that some of the collieries were only working two or three days a week, and because of the glut of coal in the market prices were going down. The four-days policy would enable all their men to get an equal share of work, and would also take in hand the insane competition amongst the sellers of coal." The question was argued at length. For the policy it was urged that: — "If the employers will not so regulate the working of the mines as to prevent the overproduction and bring wages up to a decent living wage, then the workers themselves are entitled to take the matters into their own hands." On the other hand there was a strong feeling against "the acceptance of the principle of the policy of restriction." The Conference finally decided not to approve the four-days policy, but to support the Scottish Miners in case their wages fell below the agreed minimum. Within two weeks the Great War had broken out; and in the "in- dustrial truce" that followed immediately, and with the increased demand for coal which was a TRADE POLICY: WORKERS' DEMANDS 245 more lasting effect of the war, the issue was not pressed. These direct attempts to regulate the amount of production for the sake of wages are unusual even in the two industries named and practically unknown outside. There are, however, cases of suggestions for changes in trade policy less im- mediately connected with wages. The Miners' demand that "small coal" should be brought to the surface and used and paid for is perhaps a border case. The demand begins with wages; it is supported by arguments of the danger of "gob fires" when the coal is stowed in the workings and of the national waste involved. The 1916 Confer- ence resolved: — "That the Miners' Federation of Great Britain be urged to take immediate steps to bring before the Coal Control Board the enormous national loss caused by the practice of stowing small coal in the workings, with a view of making the necessary arrangements for secur- ing that all coal produced in the mines should be sent to the surface." A long-standing argument of the Miners for na- tionalization that on the ground of conservation, is clearly a demand for an improvement in the policy of the industry: — "Unless we press for the nationalization of mines at once there will be nothing but the worst yearns left for the nation to work." 246 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL A very large part of the Miners' case before the Coal Commissioii was taken up with the argument on technical grounds that unification by national- ization would make possible a number of improve- ments ^ — the pooling of privately-owned railway trucks, for esample — in trade policy. The most conspicuous instance of a trade union suggesting schemes for the improvement of its industry is that of the Postal and Telegraph Clerks' Association. Some years ago its parent society (United Kingdom Postal Clerks' Associa- tion) printed a pamphlet containing a scheme for extending the service by the institution of a postal banking scheme. Its foreword read : — "With a view to bringing before the public the pos- sibilities of the British Postal Service as a means of pro- viding the busiaess community and the general public with the facilities for the transaction of business, the United Kingdom Postal Clerks' Association has been tabulating evidence and information concerning the Postal Services of other countries. This pamphlet outlines the most remarkable feature of Post Office activity which has taken place during the last five years, viz., the development of the Post Office Bank- ing Business for the transmission of moneys, known as the Postal Cheque and Transfer Service. The importance of the subject from a business stand- • These suggestions are listed in two of the first set of reports issued by the Coal Commission— that of Justice Sanliey and three employers and that of the six labor representatives, Cmd. 87 and 85. TRADE POLICY: WORKERS' DEMANDS 247 point has impelled the Postal Clerks' Association to place this matter before the public with a view to direct- ing attention to Postal affairs, so that the Post Office Authorities may be induced to improve and develop the Service on the lines indicated." With either tlie details or tlie merits of the pro- ject, this inquiry is, of course, not concerned; the point is that it represents the expenditure of trade union money and energy in attempting to force what is believed to be an improvement of the ser- vice in which its members are engaged. Appar- ently this intention is still of importance to the Postal and Telegraph Clerks. A resolution passed at their 1916 Conference declared : — "This Conference is convinced that . . . the most effective work which the Executive Committee can ac- complish during the period immediately before us will be by applying itself to consideration of the problem of development of the Service, having in mind the needs of the community, the possibility of increased services to the community . . . " and the betterment of condi- tions for the staff. Another resolution passed at the same Confer- ence shows the direct bearing of this sort of inter- est in industry on the problem of control : — "Having in view the possibility of the Association as- suming in the future more direct and active participa- 248 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL tion in the administration of the Postal Service, this Conference recommends the organization within the branches of circles for 'craft' study and discussion. Members of the Association only to be admitted to such circles." The Branch moving the resolution had already started such a study group. Similarly the Execu- tive Committee urged the rank and file to educate themselves to apply the Whitley report and in turn to use the Whitley scheme as an education in control : * — "Members should begin to study minutely the con- ditions 6f their offices and the history of trade and in- dustry, so that when the time comes they are prepared to administer the principle with a statesmanship worthy of a great trade union." In more than one union the preaching of the study of the industry as a step toward control has been part of recent propaganda by the leaders.* The fear of just this was a reason for the employ- ers' objection to the Cotton Control Board already referred to — the fear that the union leaders would learn too much about finance,^ perhaps by hearing ' In a speech condemning the Whitley report as offering no real workers' control, I heard one of the ablest of the younger advocates of control taking this attitude toward the labor sym- pathizers on the Whitley committee:: — don't blame them; they were trying to provide a training ground. * One of them declared, however that, " you might as well talk to wooden dummies." ■ The cotton union secretaries had long had the reputation of knowing a great deal about the financial position of their industry. TRADE POLICY: WORKERS' DEMANDS 249 the merchants and manufacturers accuse each other of profiteering. The labor side of the Wool Control Board was more conscious of this pos- sibility, and several of the leaders regret bitterly the chance lost by not putting a representative on the full-time staff of the Board. This desire for a general knowledge of the work- ings of industry and finance with a direct eye to learning control is confined to a very few. The demand for publicity of profits is a widespread one. Oh yes, said a trade union leader to me, the employers will discuss anything with us "except perhaps costing cmd profits." Here is another keenly-felt frontier of control. It was touched on by a Scottish miner in the debate on the Miners' Four Days in 1914: — "If any such increase in the cost of production has taken place, they [the employers] will have to open their books and prove it, and further, we want to know what profits have been during these periods on the price ob- tained. They say they will never open their books to us and show their profits, as in their opinion we have nothing to do with profits; that is a question for them." By 1919 the coal-owners were in fact opening their books to show their profits to the Coal Com- mission. D. F. Schloss quoted one of them as follows: — "We know . . the general rate of profits, depreciation, costs, etc., . . . and we know that after we have got our wages out of it, and we leave the balance to the employer, he has nothing to make a great noise about." 250 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL It is hard to overestimate the importance of the Commission in this connection, first, because of the actual profits revealed, second, because of the Commission's practically unanimous recommenda- tion in favor of future publicity of profits, and third, because of its effect in encouraging a similar demand in other trades. The first result is of no concern for the present inquiry. The second is of importance and has been given comparatively little public attention for the very reason" that it was an agreed recommendation. The Chairman's report and Sir Arthur Duckham's are on this mat- ter identical in substance. The latter reads as follows : — "It is essential that there should be complete pub- licity as to the operations and financial results of the coal industry. The Ministry of Mines should be ex- pressly charged with the duty of publishing, not less than once a year, figures showing the cost of getting coal in each of the districts of the country, and the propor- tion chargeable to materials, wages, general expenses, interest, profits, and other general items. ' ' The other five employers do not touch definitely upon this point in their recommendations, but they quote with evident approval the even more em- phatic opinion expressed in the evidence and scheme submitted by the Mining Association of Great Britain: — TRADE POLICY: WORKERS' DEMANDS 251 "The autJiors [of the coal-owners' project] contend that want of knowledge with respect to prices, costs and profits, and the absence of machinery conferring upon the workers opportunities for obtaining information and influencing the conditions under which they work have been to a great extent the cause of the existing discon- tent. The authors propose that, in future, fluctuations of the wages of the workers in each mining district, over and above the minimum rates, should, instead of being regulated solely as in the past by selling prices, be regu- lated by reference also to costs and profits in that dis- trict. For this purpose, average prices, costs and profits in each district are to he jointly ascertained, so that the workers may be able in future to discuss questions of wages with u complete knowledge of the results of the industry in that district." (Italics mine.) On the third point — the influence which the great publicity of the Commission's work has had in encouraging similar demands in other industries it is too early to gather much evidence. One ex- pression of it, from a prominent building trades official, was something like this : — we'll never again accept the plea that they can't afford an advance until they show us the books ! These trade union demands on the subject of trade policy are neither many nor of frequent oc- currence, but the range they cover is significantly wide. In a few cases the unions have tried to alter 252 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL their employers' trade policy in adjusting output to demand. In others they have suggested specific improvements in trade policy. And finally they have made some claim to be shown the inner workings of the business direction of industry. XIX THE EXTENT OF CONTROL The attempt has been made in the preceding sec- tions to indicate the specific sorts of control of in- dustry now exercised by organized workers in Great Britain. I know no way of adding these and making a neat sum. How much control have the workers got ? There is no use in making gen- eral answers, like "very little" or "a good deal." But in weighing and judging the extent of control, certain distinctions which have been implicit in the previous discussion are worth making explicit. "Agreeable control is better than enforced con- trol," I heard a Birmingham toolmaker say. "In- vasion, not admission, should be the trade union- ist 's watchword, ' ' said one of the prominent Guild Socialists. The distinction is of some importance. Which is better depends on what you want, and on economy of effort in getting it ; but, from the point of view of definition, enforced control is control in a more real sense. There is a significant psycho- logical difference between "admission" and "in- vasion, ' ' between control presented to and control seized by a trade union. The distinction may be 253 254* THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL made clearer by illustration. When "Bedstead Smith" organized the first of the "Birmingham Alliances ' ' and let the trade unions come in on the deal, the sort of workers' "control" over price- fixing that resulted was a very different thing from the sort of control that would have resulted, say, if the "Miners' Four Days" policy in 1914 had been applied and had raised the price of coal. Control implies initiative; for that reason, forms of control entirely initiated from above must be ruled out unless or until they are shown to involve workers ' activity as well as acquiescence. On that ground co-partnership and similar bits of "con- trol" offered to workers in connection with profit- sharing schemes have been left out of consider- ation. This same distinction accoujits for the paradox of a refusal of control pointed out with such surprise in the chairman's statement of the Ebbw Vale Steel, Iron, and Coal Co. (July 2, 1919) :— "After very mature consideration your directors de- cided to extend an invitation to one of the great trade unions to nominate one of their number to occupy a seat on this board. We felt that the presence of a rep- resentative of labor on this board, with all the privileged, with all the responsibilities of an ordinary director, would perhaps give him the opportunity of realizing the many difficulties which from time to time confront those men whose duty it is to control the destinies of our great THE EXTENT OF CONTROL 255 industrial companies. "We felt that in realizing and ap- preciating our difficulties he might possibly be able to taJie a broader view of the many questions which have from time to time to be settled between capital and labor; we felt that the presence of a representative of labor on this board would have given an opportunity to myself and to my colleagues to have learned the views of labor at first hand. "I regret to say our invitation to labor has been re- fused. In that I am somewhat surprised and consid- erably disappointed. If labor seeks to control industry, then labor should be prepared to serve its apprenticeship side by side with men who have made it their lifelong study." Eeal control of industry cannot be presented like a Christmas-box. Certain of the advocates of "control" push this distinction even to the point of saying that joint control cannot be in any sense workers' control. Mr. J. T. Murphy, the spokesman of the Shop Stewards' Movement, publishes an attack on the Whitley proposals with the significant title, "Compromise or Independence," in which he says that: — "A 'joint' committee can only be a committee of em- ployers and employees formed to prevent any encroach- ment on the power of the dominant body, in this case the employers." But this is surely an overstatement. The Build- ing Trades Council's committee on "Organized 256 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL Public Service" hardly fits Mr, Murphy's defini- tion; and it is impossible to imagine Mr. Smillie, for esample, losing his independence by sitting on a joint body like the Coal Mining Organization^ Committee. It is impossible to rule out all forms of joint control; the test must be whether in the particular instance of joint control the workers' side is independently active. Joint control when the lead is entirely from the employing side — as in co-partnership and the "Birmingham Alli- ances" — ^may be disregarded. But the Whitley Councils must be studied and judged by their ac- tions; the classification of each couucU depends not on its constitution but on the purely empirical question whether the chief function of the workers ' side is to be that of junior partnership in petition- ing for Protection and similar favors from the Government or whether, as is already the case in the Building Trades Council, the workers' side is to play an active part in shaping policy. "One point, however, must be made clear," says Mr. Malcolm Sparkes, the chief founder of that council, in an article maintaining that the Industrial Coun- cil Movement is going in the same direction as the Shop Stewards' Movement. "In itself the Indus- trial Council is no solution for the problem of con- trol. It is, however, an instrument that can pro- duce the solution." The same test of actual in- dependence of function applies also to joint bodies THE EXTENT OF CONTROL 257 exercising state-given powers. This was the basis of the questions asked in Section XVII about the Cotton Control Board. So with the various schemes of voluntary "devolution of managerial functions. ' ' The initiative here is clearly from the top. Mr. Humphrey of John Dawson's makes the distinction in the pamphlet already cited : — "There is a likelihood of a great educative movement amongst the working classes as a result of which they will take a large measure of control, and their obstruc- tive employers will wish they had given joint control in their own works when they had the chance to do it gracefully. ' ' Until such schemes are actively taken up by the workers, they amount to nothing in the way of control, however much they cover on paper. But when or if they are so taken up, they should not be ruled out because of their origin; what begins as a gift may become a right. The line between "agreeable" and "enforced" control, or better be- tween dependent and mdependent control, must be drawn not on the ground of the origin of con- trol or even of the extent of control, but/ solely by the test of whether or not the workers' side does actually exert an independent force. A similar distinction, and one more frequently drawn, is that between negative and positive con- 258 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL trol. It is a commonplace that the control now exercised by the workers is mainly negative — that they may sometimes say "no," or say that work must not be done, or changes must not be intro- duced, except under certain conditions, but they can very rarely say that this or that must be done. They are in the position, as Mr. Tawney says, of "an Opposition that never becomes a Govern- ment." It is easy to confirm this from the in- stances given; most of the "trade union con- ditions" — of hiring, apprenticeship, demarcation, and the rest — are clearly negative. It is much shorter to enumerate the instances of positive con- trol. In the staffing of shops and in the selection of foremen, the Stuff Pressers exercise positive choice. There are other cases of independent ad- ministration by the workers within sharply limited fields, for example by the printers' "clicker" in allocating work and by the miners ' safety inspec- tors. The workmen directors at Dawson's were charged with positive functions; certain shop stewards actually — though not in name — exercised directive powers during the war. And finally there are the "Insistences on Changes in Technique" by the Miners' output committees and others, which were emphasized because of the great cur- rent significance of this distinction. Positive con- trol covers then only a very small proportion of the cases even of that independent control defined THE EXTENT OF CONTROL 259 in the preceding paragraph. On the other hand, a number of the newer demands are put forward with just this sort of control in mind. The Clyde committee, whose proposals were quoted in Section XV, wanted the right to say not under what con- ditions machinery might be introduced but actually where it should be introduced. The object of the scheme of collective contract put forward is to "take over a whole province" of industrial direc- tion from the employers. In fact the essence of the new demand of labor, as was stated by Mr. Henry Clay in the Observer, is for "participation in the direction and not merely in the regulation of industry." Insistence on this distinction does not imply that regulation and negative control are not real control or that they are not of great im- portance. The standard of foremanship, for ex- ample, is maintained almost entirely by the highly negative process of insurgence. And the right to say yes or no shades very easily into the right to say which or what. But the distinction is worth emphasizing, as indicating the new Frontier of Control — over which the conscious struggle is marked on the one hand by Mr. Frank Hodges' demand on behalf of the workers for "the daily exercise of directive ability" and on the other by Lord Gainford's testimony before the Coal Com- mission : — 260 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL "I am authorized to say on behalf of the Mining Association that if owners are not to be left complete executive control they will decline to accept the respon- sibility of carrying on the industry." A third distinction — and one that I have no- where seen definitely stated — is that between what might be called old craft or customary control on the one hand and conscioits or contagious control on the other. This is based not on the greater or less degree of "reality" of control exercised but on the nature and policy of the union exercising it. It is a distinction of no importance if the ob- ject of inquiry is merely the static one of present- ing the sum of instances of control. But for any study in terms of process, for any study that pre- tends to estimate moving tendencies, it seems to me of the highest importance. The more striking instances of control already mentioned fall quite clearly into two main classes: — on the one hand control long exercised as a customary right by con- servative, exclusive, and usually small unions in old skilled crafts, fighting if at all only to resist "encroachments" on their ancient privileges; and on the other hand control newly and consciously won by aggressive, propagandist, usually indus- trial, unions in the great organized industries, fighting not to resist encroachments but to make them. The Stuff Pressers, the Hand Papermakers, THE EXTENT OF CONTROL 261 the Glass Bottle Makers,^ tlie Calico Printers and, less typically, the Compositors are instances of the former class of unions. The Miners and the Eailwaymen are the most highly-developed ex- amples of the latter. Cases of these two sorts of control, or of the first sort and of the demand for the second, have been set down side by side ia almost every section: — full control over employ- ment exercised by the Stuff Pressers and full con- trol over employment demanded by certain indus- trial unionists among the Engineers; sharing of work long practised by the Yorkshire Grlass Bottle Makers and rationing of employment demanded by the Clyde Engineers ; the Hand Papermakers long guaranteed "six days' custom" and the Railway- men this year securing a guaranteed weekly wage ; the Stuff Pressers choosing their own foremen and the activists among Engineers, Miners, Eailway- men, and Postal Workers pushing for the right; Compositors and Miners alike enforcing a stand- ard of foremanship and preventing "policing"; the printers' clicker allocating work by long cus- tom and certain Tramwaymen securing it as a new right; co-operative work in the Cornish tin mines and collective contract a new demand of Glasgow engineers; and so on. The difference then is not primarily in the actual bits of control exercised, nor is it merely a matter of the date ' See above, p. 158. 262 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL of acquisition of power. If the latter difference did not carry with it a totally different attitude of mind and if, for example, an official of the Stuff Pressers toured the country with Mr. Frank Hodges of the Miners and seconded the latter 's speeches on behalf of "Workers' Control" by stating that his union had had some workers ' con- trol and had found it good, the distinction might very well be ignored. But in point of fact, nothing like this does or could happen. In the first place, the old crafts have no theories of the value of con- trol for control's sake. Just for this reason the Stuff Pressers are giving up their right to elect foremen almost without protest, since the change is going on with no immediate practical loss. Similarly the old crafts are thoroughly conserva- tive; they are engaged in defending "established expectations" ^ just as definitely as the advocates ' The old craft type of mind is best described on p. 571 of Industrial Democracy : — " The Doctrine of Vested Interests. . . . is naturally strongest in the remnants of the time-honored ancient handicrafts. Those who have troubled to explore the nooks and crannies of the industrial world, which have hitherto escaped the full intensity of the commercial struggle, will have found in them a peculiar type of Trade Union character. Wherever the Doc- trine of Vested Interests is still maintained by the workmen, and admitted by the employers — where, that is to say, the conditions of em.ployment are consciously based, not on the competitive battle but on the established expectations of the different classes — we find an unusual prevalence, among the rank and file, of what we may call the 'gentle' nature — ^that conjunction of quiet dig- nity, grave courtesy, and consideration of other people's rights and feelings, which is usually connected with old family and long- established position. But this type of character becomes every day rarer in the Trade Union world." No contract could be sharper than that between this " gentleness " and the aggressive- THE EXTENT OF CONTROL 263 of the newer control are in the broad sense revolu- tionary and out to attack "established expecta- tions. ' ' The father of a compositors ' chapel talks of the London "Scale" with much the same rever- ence that a thoroughgoing engineers' shop steward saves for the Social Revolution. And as a natural corollary, the old crafts are exclusive and aristo- cratic and play little part in the labor movement ; the advocates of the newer control are widely propagandist. The Stuff Pressers keep themselves to themselves and hug their monopoly ; the authors of the Mmers' Next Step are propagandists for control on the expressed ground that:— "We cannot get rid of employers and slave-driving in the mining industry, until all other industries have organized for and progressed towards the same objec- tive. Their rate of progress conditions ours; all we can do is to set an example and the pace." This difference in intention clearly makes a difference in results. Nobody supposes that the Eailwaymen demanded a guaranteed week because the Hand Papermakers had one ; on the other hand, ness of the modern advocate of the Doctrine of Workers' Control. The latter temper at its extreme may be indicated by a few sen- tences from one of J. T. Murphy's pamphlets: — "They [the em- ployers] struggled through the centuries to obtain their power. We also of the working-class have come through the long years of strife and have suffered their batterings and their spite. We do not squeal. Struggle is the law of life. As we see they rose on the backs of our class we see and feel now the gathering power of the labor hosts." 264 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL the publicity of profits which the Miners secured through the Coal Commission almost immediately becomes a demand in other trades. This distinc- tion is of great importance in estimating the po- tential significance of these forms of workers ' con- trol. Old craft control is traditional and clings on but does not spread. On the other hand, news of each "invasion" made by the theorists and propa- gandists of the newer control is carried to other trades and made the basis of agitation there. It is for this reason that the word "contagious" seems a significant one for describing this newer and more conscious control. The two things are not the same: — old craft control almost neces- sarily implies small groups of skilled workers ; the advocates of contagious control are for the most part either members of industrial unions or strong advocates of industrial unionism; the temper of the old crafts is monopolistic and conservative; that of the latter, propagandist and revolutionary. Undoubtedly there is some slight degree of cross- influence, just as the various attempts at inde- pendent associations of producers have no doubt had some influence on the present and very differ- ent demand for control. The printing unions are by no means isolated from the general tendencies of the labor movement,^ and of course there are " The printing unions were among the first to offer their help to the Railwaymen during the recent strike. THE EXTENT OF CONTROL 266 many unions of various sorts between the two extreme types indicated here. But the types are widely and fundamentally different, and it seems to me almost futile to argue from the experience of one to the other: — equally futile, for example, to argue that direct election of foremen would be a good thing for all industry because it worked for a long time with the Stuff Pressers, or to argue that the right to elect foremen is proved of no use to other workmen because the Stuff Pressers are giving it up without protest. And for the purpose of attempting to forecast future develop- ments, the distinction is of the highest importance. It raises the entire question of the historical rela- tion between the type of industrial technique and the type of industrial government. You cannot base a theory of modem industry on the tin mines of Cornwall. Old craft control is a survival from an earlier technology and is clearly dying out with the industrial conditions that made it possible. Contagious control is a demand made in view of the newer industrial technique ; the judgment as to whether or not it is to grow must be made in- dependently of the decay of the other. The answer to the question, How much control? depends, then, on whether or not the question it- self is qualified in any of the three senses indicated above. If it is not qualified, the nearest answer 266 THE FRONTIER OF CONTROL that can be given is : — all tlie control indicated ia the earlier sections and whatever more may be thought of under co-partnership or other devices of "industrial peace." If the question is how much independent control? — and this seems to me the broadest sense in which the term "control" can be used with any significance — ^the few cases mentioned in which the initiative lies entirely with the employers must be ruled out, and all instances of joint control must be narrowly examined to see whether they involve workers' activity or merely workers' acquiescence. If the question is how much positive control? — and this question is of importance as marking the newest Frontier of Control — the answer can be given in a very few instances, — of which the staffing of shops and choice of foremen by the Stuff Pressers, the work of the labor-directors at Dawson's, and the in- sistences by a few Miners' output committees on specific improvements in management, are the most conspicuous. If the question is how much contagious control? — and this question is import- ant for any guesses about the future — ^nearly half the cases mentioned, including some of the more striking forms of positive control and the greater part of the negative control covered by the phrase "the right to a trade," must be ruled out as hav- ing little bearing on the moving tendencies in the great industry. NOTE ON SOURCES The following is a brief list of the more valuable sources of material on workers' control — of those, that is, that can be obtained outside the Labour Research Department or Scotland Yard. I. BEITISH GOVERNMENT PUBLICATIONS. (H. M. Stationery Office, Imperial House, Kingsway, London W. C. 2.) Report on Collective Agreements. 1910, Cd. 6,366. The most comprehensive cross-section picture of the extent and variety of trade union agreements. Annual Reports on Strikes and Lookouts. 1910, Cd. 5,850. 1911, Cd. 6,472. 1912, Cd. 7,089. 1913, Cd. 7,658. A valuable indication of the magnitude and, less ac- curately, the causes of strikes. The sections on the specific issues of strikes are especially suggestive. The classifica- tion of causes is, however, inconvenient for the purposes of the student of control. Report of the Commissioners on Industrial Unrest. 1917. The section on South Wales discusses the demand for control. Works Committees. Ministry of Labour. Industrial Report No. 2. (Reprinted in America by the Bureau of Industrial Research, New York.) The most useful single official document on workers' control. Ably vrritten and packed with invaluable factual material. Further material is being collected for a second edition. The Whitley Report. Ministry of Labour. Industrial Re- port No. 1. Industrial Councils. Ministry of Labour. Industrial Report No. 4. Sample provisions from the constitutions of Whitley Councils. Recommendations of the Provisional Joint Committee of the Industrial Conference. 1919, Cmd. 139. A somewhat startling indication of the things on which British employers and workers agree. 267 268 NOTES Coal Industry Commission. Interim Reports. 1919, Cmd. 84, 85, 86. Coal Industry Commission. Reports of Second Stage. 1919, Cmd. 210. The famous " Sankey Report " recommending nation- alization of the mines with a considerable measure of workers' control. Coal Industry Commission. Minutes of Evidence. Cmd. 359, 360. The record of a great public clinic in the economics and psychology of modern industry. Control is a leading theme throughout. A great mine of valuable material on this and other subjects that has not yet been worked over by students. II. SOURCE MATERIALS ON WORKERS' CONTROL. A. The Peopaganda of " Complete Contkol. " The Miners' Next Step. Unofficial Reform Committee. Tonypandy, South Wales. 1912. Industrial Democracy for Miners. A Plan for the Demo- cratic Control of the Mining Industry. The Industrial Committee of the South Wales Socialist Society, Forth, Rhondda Valley, South Wales, 1919. The contrast between these two pamphlets, the work of the same group of rank-and-file extremists, is a striking indication of the increasing hopefulness with which the claim for control is urged. The Miners' Next Step is bitter ^d purely destructive, advocating the irritation strike, and is still publicly referred to with bated breath as the type of all that is criminal in syndicalism. Its sequel is hopeful and entirely con- cerned with constructive, though equally "impossi- bilist," plans of organizing control. J. T. Murphy. The Workers' Committee. Sheffield Workers' Committee, 56 Rushdale Road, Meersbrook, Sheffield. 1918. By the chief spokesman for the Shop Stewards Move- ment. Claimed a sale of 30,000 copies up to May, 1919. J. T. Murphy. Compromise or Independence? An Ex- animation of the Whitley Report. Sheffield Workers' "Committee. W. Gallecher and J. Paton. Towards Industrial De- mocracy: A Memorandum on Workshop Control. Trades and Labour Covmcil, Paisley, Scotland. 1917. A scheme of " collective contract " devised by two of the Clyde shop stewards. Taken up in the propaganda of the National Guild League. NOTES 269 B. The Miners' Case foe Control. R. Page Arnot. Facts from the Coal Commission and Further Facts from the Coal Commission. Miners' Federation, Russell Square, London. 1919. A skillful abridgement of the most telling evidence for the Miners' case. The second pamphlet contains the text of the Miners' Bill for Nationalization. Frank Hodges. The Nationalisation of the Mines. Par- sons. London. 1920. By the Secretary of the Miners' Federation, who of all prominent labor leaders has most consistently thought of himself as a student of the control problem. C. " Joint Contbol " in the Building Trades. Organized Public Service in the Building Industry. The Industrial Council for the Building Industry. 48 Bed- ford Square, London. 1919. The far-reaching " Poster Report " presented by a sub-committee of the Building Trades Parliament. Thos. Foster. Masters and Men. Headley. London. Mr. Foster is a prominent building trades employer, a Guild Socialist, and chairman of the committee that drafted the " Foster Report." History of the Building Trades Parliament. Carton Foundation. London. 1919. First-hand. Somewhat sentimental. D. Employers' Experiments with Control. C. 6. Renold. Workshop Committees. Suggested Lines of Development. Hans Renold, Ltd., Manchester. 1917. (Reprinted in America by the Survey.) Mr. Renold is a Cornell graduate and the managing director of a highly successful and somewhat " Ameri- canized " chain factory outside of Manchester. Democratic Control the Key to Industrial Progress. John Dawson, Ltd., Newcastle-on-Tyne. 1919. An account of the boldest attempt on the part of an employer (Mr. G. H. Humphreys) to give control to the workers. The firm flourished during the war but failed to survive the peace. E. An Engineer's Cottntebblast Against Control. Alex. Richardson. The Man-Power of the Nation. Reprinted from Engineering, 35 Bedford St., Strand, London. 1916. III. BOOKS ON BRITISH TRADE UNIONISM. Sidney and Beatrice Webb. History of Trade Unionism. Longmans, Green. London, New York. 1894. 270 NOTES Sidney and Beatrice Webb. Industrial Democracy. Long- mans, Green. London, New York. 1897. Tlie two great classics of trade unionism. I have drawn Heavily on their material throughout, perhaps most ob- viously in the earlier part of Section IV and in Section V. It is interesting to note, however, that their material is arranged without specific reference to the control problem. The Doctrine of Workers' Control had not yet been in- vented. Sidney Webb. The Restoration of Trade Union Conditions. Huebsch. 1917. Sidney and Beatrice Webb. The History of Trade Unionism. Longmans, Green. London, New York. 1920. A new edition, revised and brought up to date. G. D. H. Cole. An Introduction to Trade Unionism. Bell. London. 1918. The best brief statement of current trade union prob- lems. Valuable statistical appendices on trade union membership. G. D. H. Cole. Labour in War Time. Bell. London. 1915. G. D. H. Cole and R. Page Arnot. Trade Unionism on the Railways. Allen and Unwin. London. 1917. G. D. H. Cole. The World of Labour. Bell. London. 1915. American students should not judge this by its chapter on American Labor, which is not a fair sample. G. D. H. Cole. Self-Government in Industry. Bell. London. 1917. G. D. H. Cole. Labour in the Commonwealth. Headley. London. 1919. Mr. Cole's work is almost as indispensable to the study of current trade unionism as is that of the Webbs for the earlier period. The last two books are less concerned with trade imionism as it is than with trade unionism as a Guild Socialist would like to make it, but they also contain information not accessible elsewhere. All the books are written with the control problem in the very forefront. Labour Year Booh, 1916. Labour Party, 33 Eccleston Square, London. Labour Year Book, 1919. Labour Party, London. Useful catalogues of and by the labor movement. The Industrial Situation After the War. Garton Foundation. London. 1918, 1919. IV. BOOKS ON SPECIAL PEOBLBMS. A. Unemployment. W. H. Beveridge. Unemployment: A Problem of In- dustry. Longmans. London. 1910. NOTES 271 R. Williams. The First Year's Working of the Liverpool Docks Scheme. London. 1914. B. Methods of Payment. D. F. SchloBS. Methods of Industrial Remtmeration. Williams and Newgate. London. 1892, 1894, 1898. G. D. H. Cole. The Payment of Wages. Allen and Unwin. London. 1918. V. AMERICAN BOOKS ON BRITISH LABOR. Paul U. Kellogg and Arthur Gleason. British Labor a/nd the War. Boni and Liveright. New York. 1919. Arthur Gleason. What the Workers Want. Harcourt, Brace and Howe. New York. 1920. Mr. Gleason is by far the best informed American journalist on British Labor. The earlier book is mainly concerned with political questions, but Part VI and a number of the appendices are useful in the present con- nection. The latter book makes industry its main busi- ness and contains very valuable material. The first- hand description of the human side of the Coal Com- mission, and the statements secured from the leaders of the Miners and the Shop Stewards, are especially useful. INDEX "Abnormal places," 167 Absentee Committees, 149 Absenteeism, 209 Agreement, Bradford Dyers' Association, 68, 80, 118; Brooklands, 166; Engineer- ing Trades, 57; Leek Silk Weavers', 187; Linotype Op- erators', 188; Liverpool Dockers', 58; Oldham, 224- 225; Pottery, 58; Scottish Bookbinders', 188, Sliding Scale, 243; Steel Dressers'. 61; "Treasury," 171, 194-197 Agreements; collective, 56-58 Allocation of Work, 58, 61, 155- 156, 190 Amalgamated Society of En- gineers, 21, 98-99. " Amicable discipline," 35 Apprentices, limitation of, 58 Apprenticeship, 21, 92-98, 181; Britannia Metal Smiths, rules of, 95 Authority, of Employers, 56-57 ; opposition to, 30-31 Barnes, George, 99 Barr and Stroud's, 218 Bell, Robert, 59 Beveridge, W. H., 83 Bevin, Ernest, 84 Birmingham Alliances, 241-242 Birmingham brass trades' grad- ing system, 165 Bowley, Professor, 75-76, 86 Bradford Dyers' Association Agreement, 1914, 68, 80, 118; payment system of, 172-173 Bradshaw, Secretary, on build- ing-trades labor supply, 101 "Brains Committee," 219 Bramwell, Hugh, testimony of, 106, 212-214 British Westinghouse Co., 220 Brooklands Agreement, 166 Building Trades Parliament, see under Joint Industrial Council Ca'canny policy, 172, 178 Cadbury's, 218, 219 Cannan, Edwin, testimony of, 28-29 Cecil, Lord Robert, quoted, 28 Central Labor College, 5 Clay, Henry, 27, 259 Cleveland Rules, the, 148-149 Clyde Dilution Scheme, 10, 197- 201 Clyde Shop Steward's case, 32 Clyde Workers' Committee, 8, 259 Coal Commission, 1, 46, 51, and see under Miners Coal Miners, see under Miners Cole, G. D. H., 6, 161-162, 164, 168, 236 Collective Agreements', 56-58 Collective bargaining, 53, 62, 165, 166, 168 Collective Contract payment, 173 Compulsory Unionism, 128 Conciliation Boards, 14, 224- 226 Control, "agreeable," 253; a political word, 36-38 ; " con- tagious," 266 ; " complete ex- ecutive," 51-52; demand for, 3-50; degree of, 54-55; Derby- shire Miners and, 44; extent of, 253-266; favored by Trade Unionists, 17, 18; 273 274 INDEX Frontier of, 66-71 ; Guild So- cialists and, 5-6; independ- ent, 257, 266; irksomeness of present system of, 35; Marx- ian Industrial Unionists and, 5; Miners' Federation and, 12; National Union of Kail- waymen and, 13-14; negative, 202, 217, 257; Old Craft, 264-265; over choice of fore- men, 120 ; political factors of, 38; positive, 257, 264, 266; resentment against, 30-35 ; striking instances of, 260-261 ; State, 233; technical factors of, 39; wage element dom- inant factor in, 21; workers', 4 et seq., 56. Co-operative work, 173-175 Cotton Control Board, 237-239, 248; policy concerning un- employment, 80-81 ' Craftsmanship, 39-42 Dawson's, John, 231-233, 258 De-casualization Policy, 83 Defence of the Eealm Act, 237 Demand for control, 1-50; or- ganized demand, 4-18; by propagandist bodies, 5-7 ; shop stewards, 7-11; trade unions, 11-18; unorganized demand, 18-50 Demarcation issue, 99-100, 181 Denny's, Wm., 218 Dilution, 100-03, 181-182, 189; Clyde scheme of, 10, 197-201 Direct Representation from Workshops, 9 Discipline and management, 61- 62 Duckham, Sir Arthur, 250 Education in control, 248 Employers, authority of, 66, 60; limitation on, 63, 77; policy relative to foremen, 129-132 Employment, 63 et seq.; joint control of, 68 ; " rationing," 73; regularizing, 82-85; re- strictions on, 92 et seq.; union membership a condi- tion of, 64-66 Engineering and Shipbuilding Draughtsmen, 70 Engineering Trades Agreement, 1898, 57 Factory Act regulations, 154 Fines, 210 Foremanship, standard of, 135- 145 Foremen, choice of, 117-125; National Industrial Confer- ence report on, 132-133; organization of, 126-134; separate unions for, 130; workers' choice of, 120-121, 135 Foremen's Benefit Society, 131, 133 " Forty-hour Movement," 76 Foster Report, 6, 25, 86-91, 229-230 Foster, Thomas, 86 Gainford, Lord, 155, 259-260 Gallacher-Paton memorandum, 10, 70-71, 123, 174 Garton Foundation, report of, 19 Gaunt's, Reuben, 108 Glasgow Trades Union Con- gress, 15-18 Gleason, Arthur, 41 Guaranteed Time, 78-79, 91 Guild Socialists, 6, 122 Hamilton, Lord Claud, 69 Hodges, Frank, 12, 22, 23, 35, 164, 206-207, 212-213, 269 Humphrey, G. H., 232 Improvements, insistence on, 202-216; miners' demand for, 204-215 Industrial Crisis and the Way Out, 239 Industrial Democracy, 91 "Industrial Truce," 7 Industrial Unionists, and con- INDEX 275 tagious control, 264; Marx- ian, 5; shop stewards, 9 Industry, workers' control of, 15-18; joint control of, 224- 240 Interests in industry, worker's, 19-50; what he gets, 20-25; what it's for, 25-27 ; how he's treated, 27-38; what he does, 38-50 Inventions, 218-219 Irritation strike, 179 Joint action, see under Trade policy Joint control and price fixing, 169-171 Joint discipline, 147-150 Joint Industrial Council, for the Building Industry, 86, 113, 224, 227-228, 230; for the Silk Industry, 227-228 Juvenile Employment Commit- tee, 97 Labor Party, 157 Labor Unions, attitude toward innovations, 186-191; see also under Trade Unions and sep- arate titles Liverpool Docks Scheme, First Year's Working of, 79 Lloyd George, David, 60, 193 London Society of Compositors, 67; report of, 97 Machine industry, 39; produc- tion, 102 Managerial fimctions, 146-160; allocation of work, 155-156; measurement of results, 156- 159; safety of workers, 150, 154; wartime regulations, 147-149 Mann, Tom, 16, 76 Man Power of the Nation, the, 29-30 Marxian Industrial Unionists, 5 Measurement of results, quan- tity, 157; quality, 158-159 Mining Association of Great Britain, scheme of, 250-251 Miners' Federation, of Great Britain, 1, 12-13, 42, 151-152, 154, 163-164, 192, 208, 209, 235, 244-245; of South Wales, 6, 152-156, 212-214, 235-236 " Miners' Four Days " policy, 254 Miners' Minimum Wage Act, 137, 167 Miners' Neait Step, 105, 123, 144, 183, 263 Miners, complaints of, 205-206; improvements demanded by, 204-215 Miners' Nationalization Bill, 12-13 Ministry of Labor's Report on Works Committees, 40, 85, 108, 122, 140-141 Muir, John, 193 Munitions of War Act, 147-150 Murphy, J. T., 100, 102, 182, 255 National Guilds League, 6 National Industrial Conference, 132 Nationalization and Joint Con- trol, 26; miners' bill for, 6, 12, 13 National Union of Eailway- men, 2-6, 4-5; policy of, 13- 14, 42, 61, 78 Northimiberland miners, 49, 50 Officialism, revolt against, 8 Oldham agreement, 224-225 Oufput Committees, 149 Output, 210; restriction of, 177-185 Overtime, Union restrictions against, 74-75 Payment, and control, 164-165; collective, 163, 170-173; by results, 165; Bradford's Dyers' Association's system, 172-173; for work in abnor- mal places, 167; methods of, 161-175; South Wales Col- 276 INDEX liery Agreement for, 167; Woolen Trades' plan for, 167 Personal freedom, 34 Piece work. 162-163, 205; Bradford Dyers' Associa- tion's system of, 172-173; Phcenix Dynamo Company's objections to, 170; Wood- working Trades opposed to, 162 Phoenix Dynamo Co., 170-171 Pitfalls of the Promoted, the, 29 30 "Policing," 31, 137, 261 "Politics of industry," 176 Poor Law Commission Report, 86 Postal and Telegraph. Clerks, 15, 112 Post Office Workers, 46 Power Loom Overlookers, 95 Premium bonus, 162-163 Production, regulation of, 243- 245 Promotion, 111-116; Federation of Weavers' rules for, 114; Joint Industrial Council's rules for, 112-113; Seniority rule for, 112; the workers' prerogative, 115 Publicity of profits, 249-251 " Rank and File Movement," 8 Rate fixing, 168-171 Redmayne, Sir Richard, testi- mony of, 205-206 Renold's, Hans, 120-121 Restriction and restrictions, 176-185 Richardson, Alexander, 131 Rowntree's, 121 "Sack," the right to, 102 et seq. Safety, 150-154; strikes, 152- 154 Sankey, Justice, quoted, 46 Sankey Report, 13, 222 Schloss, D. F., 36, 110, 125, 161- 162, 218 Scottish Master Tailors' state- ment, 73-74 Sharing of work, 73-74 Sheffield Workers' Committee, 9 Shop Committees and their du- ties, 200-201 Shop Stewards' Manual, 8-9, 140; movement, 7, 9-11, 255 Short time, 73-77 Sliding Scale, 243 Smillie, Robert, 154, 206, 215 Smith, Herbert, 24, 206 Socialism, Sitate, 25-27 Socialist Labor Party, 5 Sparkes, Malcolm, 227, 256 Specialization, 182, 183 Stay-in strike, 178-179 Steel Dresaers' Agreement, 61 .Stockholm International Labor Conference, 25 Straker, William, quoted, 3, 22, 27, 38, 221 ; testimony before Coal Commission, 33, 47 Strikes, against objectionable promotions, 114; against ob- jectionable supervision, 135- 137; against use of machin- ery, 184; because of a woman shop steward, 184; for rein- statement of operatives, 106- 107, 109; for safety, 162; Glasgow Dockers', 128; Iron Foimders', 204 Stuff Pressers' Society, 69, 94, 117, 172, 263, 265 " Suggestion Boxes," 218 Suggestions, right to make, 43- 46 Syndicalism, 4 Tawney, R. H., 135, 258 Technique, consultation over changes, 186-201; insistence on improvements, 202-216; restriction and restrictions, 176-185; suggestions and in- ventions, 217-222 Thomas, J. H., 60 Thompson, William, 72 Trade Policy, joint action re- garding, 223-240; Joint In- INDEX 277 dustrial Councils, 226-227 ; Oldham Agreement, 224-225; publicity of profits, 249-251; scheme of Postal Telegraph Clerks' Association, 223-240; workers' demands, 241-252 Trade, the right to a, 92-103 Trades Union Congress, Glas- gow, 1919, 15-16, 18 Trade Union movement, 36 Trade Unions, and overtime, 14- 75 ; and short time, 75-77 ; as employment agencies, 66; at- titude toward promotions, 111; guaranteed time, 78-79; membership of, 92-93; policy regarding foremen, 126-129, 142 Treasury Agreement, the, 171, 194-197 "Tuppenny Strike," 8 Turner, Ben, 47-48 Unemployment, 72 et seq.; a charge on the industry, 86 a matter of trade policy, 223 fear of restricts output, 87 prevention of, 86-91 ; schemes for lessening, 80-86; security against, 23 Unionized industry, 64-66 Unions as employment agencies, 66-70 Victimization, 104, 107-108 Wages, 20; and hours, 20-23, 53; collective contract, 173- 174; collective payment, 171- 173; methods of payment, 161 et seq.; piece work, 162- 173 "Wage Slavery," 38 Weavers' Manifesto, 242 Webb, Sidney and Beatrice, 36, 86, 91, 93, 112, 157, 203 Wedgwood's, 43 Whitehead Torpedo Works, 147 Whitley Councils, 5-6, 154, 226, 240; report of, 113-114, 192, 221, 248 Williams, E., 79 Woods, Prank, 97-98 Wool Control Board, 237, 249 Women labor, 102 Work, equalization of, 73-74 Workers, grievances of, 140- 142; interests in industry, 19-20, 38; methods of pay- ment of, 161 et seq.; objec- tion to being watched, 137- 138; resentment of, 29-35; safety of, 150-154; sensitive- ness of, 32; servility of, 33; treatment of, 27-29 Workers' Control, see under Control Working Shedules, 156 Workmanship, 46-49 ; collective, 43 Works' Council, 231-233 Yorkshire Glass Bottle Work- ers, 74 -*J3*"S?*^~^