EMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS CYRIL JACKiJO, THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES i^^nm j I ; '^ ■ POLITICAL ECONOMY, ECONOMICS, ETC. Political Economy. By JOHN STUART MILL. With an Intro- duction by W. J. ASHLEY, M.A., M.Com., Professor of Commerce in the University of Birmingham, sometime Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. Crown 8vo, 5s. Political Economy : a Short Text-book of Political Economy. With Problems for Solution, Hints for Supplementary Reading, and a Supplementary Chapter on Socialism. By J. E. SYMES, M.A. Crown 8vo, 25. 6(/. Political Economy. By CHARLES S. DEVAS, M.A. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. {Slonyhuyst Philosophical Series.) The Commonweal : a Study of the Federal System of Political Economy. By ALFRED P. HILLIER, B.A., M.P., M.D. Crown 8vo,4s. 6d. net Essays on Political Economy. ByT. E. CLIFFE LESLIE. Hon. LL.D. Dubl. 8vo, 10s. 6NDON, NbW YOHK, RO.MDAV, AND CAL.CUTTA. UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS CYRIL JACKSON WITH A PREFACE BY RT. HON. VISCOUNT MILNER P.C., G.C.B., G.C.M.G., ETC, LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA 1910 .V- ?.:;«l»MU )^^ K C3 PREFACE. BY VISCOUNT MILNER. CO ^~ i^ For years past no word has been more constantly on the ^ lips of all men interested in social questions than the word 5 unemployment. And latterly it has also played a leading II part in our political controversies. There is a profound difference of opinion between Tariff Reformers and the supporters of " Free Trade " as to the fiscal arrangements best calculated to improve the amount and the character of employment in this country. But the more thought- ful members of both the contending parties are agreed that fiscal arrangements, however deeply they affect the amount and character of employment, are not the only factor in the case, and that, with our modern industrial system, seasons of unemployment will, in a greater or less degree, continue to threaten the workman, whatever fiscal policy we may adopt. As Mr. Jackson well puts it in his opening chapter, " it is clear that side by side with any fiscal reform and any general social policy certain measures specifically directed against unemployment are necessary". This book is the careful attempt of an ex- pert, and a life-long student of industrial conditions, to indicate the lines which such measures ought to follow V 407507 vi PREFACE. As such it is, as it seems to me, entitled to the thoughtful attention of all those, who have the welfare of the wage- earning classes really at heart, and in considering its arguments Tariff Reformers and Free Traders alike can afford for the nonce to lay their differences on the fiscal question on one side. And a thorough study of the subject is an urgent necessity at the present time. The State is now definitely committed to an active policy with regard to unemploy- ment. One important step has already been taken in the establishment of Labour Exchanges supported by public funds. Another step, even more important, and more difficult, is likely to follow soon, viz. a State-aided system of insurance seeking to provide for the workman during spells of unemployment and to prevent such periods from causing a permanent deterioration in his condition or in that of his family. A system of insurance would mitigate the evils of un- employment, but it would not prevent their recurrence. There are other remedies striking more directly at the root of the evil such as the better distribution and organ- ization of work, and an improvement in our methods of industrial training, and of our educational system generally. On all these Mr. Jackson has something to say, which will well repay careful perusal. But there is one question which meets us on the threshold of all these reforms — the question, how, and especially by what agencies, they are to be effected. Broadly speaking, there are two main alternative methods which the State may adopt. It may either avail itself of the voluntary agencies already in existence, or it may seek to establish a brand-new system PREFACE. vii of its own, disregarding and perhaps, incidentally, under- mining those existing agencies. There can be no doubt that the former method is the more consonant with our national temper and traditions. But in this instance there are some special objections, which may be raised to its adoption. For if the State is to avail itself of existing voluntary agencies in the battle against unemployment, it cannot possibly ignore the Trade Unions. Mr. Jackson, as will be seen, argues with great energy and conviction in favour of a policy, by which the State would avail itself of the existing organization of the Unions and would supplement and direct the efforts, which they have long been making, both to insure greater regularity of employment and to provide adequate sup- port for their members when out of work. His object is to strengthen the Unions, where they already exist, to extend them to trades which are still unorganized, and to make them, so to speak, the mainspring of a systematic national effort to deal with the problem of unemployment. Such a suggestion will inevitably excite considerable controversy and meet with much opposition. Trade Unions, though they have overcome some of the intense prejudice with which they were formerly regarded, are still the proverbial "red rag to a bull" in many quar- ters. Let it be frankly admitted that some of the latest developments of Trade Unionism, especially in the sphere of politics pure and simple, are little calculated to allay animosity, or to convince any man, who is not well dis- posed to them to begin with, that Trade Unions possess the steadiness and impartiality which would justify us in trusting them, in any measure, as agents of the State. viii PREFACE. To some extent I sympathize with these misgivings. No one could be more opposed than I am to the pohtical attitude of official Trade Unionism. Take the stereo- typed list of resolutions — on national, not on trade ques- tions — with which any Trade Union Congress is wont to diversify its proceedings. They are generally one long string of propositions, with which, in common I fancy with every Imperialist and almost every Unionist, I profoundly disagree. But for all that I would beg those who, like myself, are most strongly opposed to the misuse of the Trade Union organization for political purposes, not hastily to reject the idea of utilizing the Unions in their own proper sphere — that of the organization of industry and the protection of the workman — as the instruments of a national policy. It is true that even in their own proper sphere the Unions have made many mistakes. Mr. Jackson himself calls attention to not a few of them. But, when all is said and done, an immense amount remains to their credit from the point of view, not only of the wage-earning class, but of the whole community, and whether we like them or not, they have become an essential part of our industrial system. And after all, the original object of Unionism, the ideal, which, under all its mistakes and perversions, it has nevertheless steadily, and on the whole successfully, pursued, is a genuinely national object. Not higher wages so much as a stable existence, the protection of the individual workman against being submerged by the accidents of industrial life — this has been the dominating aim of the great com- binations of wage-earners. And it is just the recogni- tion of the importance of such stability from the national PREFACE. ix point of view which justifies State intervention in the matter of unemployment. If the State has at length taken up the cause for which the Unions have so long been struggling, is it not reasonable that it should build on the foundations they have already laid instead of erecting a similar and perhaps less efficient structure entirely de novo? The fact that the activity of the Unions is often diverted to the pursuit of sectarian and partisan ends is no reason for not assisting them in the discharge of functions which are of national value, pro- vided always that any assistance given to them by the State is clearly earmarked for those national purposes, and cannot be employed for any other. True it may be said that the recognition of the Unions by the State, though it might be only for a particular purpose, would strengthen them for all purposes, including some of which many of us would disapprove, and which certainly cannot be called in the broad sense national. And that argument, no doubt, is entitled to consideration, but those who read Mr. Jackson carefully will see that it is at least susceptible of a good answer. For that answer, however, as for the careful analysis of the whole problem, the reader must be referred to the book itself I have already far exceeded the limits ordinarily allowed to a preface, and will only in conclusion venture to express the hope that this book may not only be widely read, but read with the same desire to get at something prac- tical, the same absence of bias and the same single- minded regard for national interests, with which it has evidently been written. AUTHOR'S PREFACE. The subject of Unemployment has been much before me from the time that I organized a rehef committee in Limehouse for the distribution of the Mansion House Fund in February, 1886. I revived my close personal connexion with the problem when I became first Hon- orary Secretary of the Stepney Distress Committee in 1905, but my appointment by the Poor Law Com- mission to investigate and report on the subject has prevented my expressing my personal opinions until after the publication of their report. In the midst of the business in which I now find myself involved on the London County Council it has been exceedingly diflficult to find any time for other work, and this book could not have been written without the assistance of my friend, Mr. J. R. Brooke, of Toynbee Hall, who has given me invaluable help both in verifying facts and in giving them better expression by his literary skill. I must thank him warmly for his co-operation, and must also express my gratitude to many Trade Unionists who have discussed matters with me, especially Mr. Shackleton, Mr. Bowerman, Mr. George Dew, Mr. H. R. Taylor, and Mr. W. Steadman. They will none of them agree with all that is written in the following pages, but will, I am sure, accept my thanks for their readiness to give me their co-operation, so that I may not too greatly mis- understand the Trade Unionist position. CYRIL JACKSON. 5 Jw^y. 1910- CONTENTS. PAGE Preface. By Viscount Milner v Author's Preface xi CHAPTER I. The Problem of Unemployment i II, Relief Works ii III. Labour Exchanges 21 IV. Insurance 29 V. Regulation of the Hours of Labour and Better Organization of Work 40 VI. Boy Labour 55 VII, The Education of the Workman 68 Conclusion 85 Index 8q CHAPTER I. THE PROBLEM OF UNEMPLOYMENT. Of the social problems of the moment Unemployment is the most insistent in its claim upon public attention. For the first time since the industrial revolution changed the very nature of industry the problem of unemployment has become a political issue. At any election it may become the dominant issue. In the discussion in the House of Commons on 9 April, 1 9 10, on the Prevention of Destitution Bill which was moved by a Ministerialist and seconded by a member of the Opposi- tion, Mr. Balfour said, " It is a most intolerable thing that we should permit the permanent deterioration of those who are fit for really good work. Putting aside all considerations of morals, all those considerations which move us as men of feeling, as flesh and blood, and looking at it with the hardest heart and the most calculating eye, is it not very poor economy to scrap good machinery ? " The demand for State action grows in volume and in force, not only does the right to work supply the Labour party with its most effective battle-cry, but each of the orthodox parties claims that its policy will lessen the evil. This marks a great change in the attitude both of the populace and of the econo- mists. Whereas a generation ago unemployment was regarded as the result of economic forces beyond the control of the State, to-day the prevalence of unemployment is attributed to defects in the organization of industrial life which it is the business of statesmen to rectify. This change is due in part to the decrease in that fear of State intervention which was 2 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS the dominant political creed of last century, but far more to the increased knowledge of the nature and extent of unemploy- ment which a more careful study and a more accurate analysis has placed at the disposal of reformers. To the study of un- employment contained in Mr. W. H. Beveridge's book and to that further statement of the problem in the reports of the Poor Law Commission nothing need be added. The problem which now confronts practical politicians is the choice of im- mediate measures to carry into effect the theoretical reforms which all admit to be desirable. Such reforms will of necessity be additional to those changes in general policy, whether fiscal or social, which form the programmes of the great political parties. Tariff reformers do not profess that their fiscal policy will abolish unemployment. They limit themselves to the as- sertion that Tariff Reform will lead to more capital being in- vested in productive industry in England, and, therefore, will ensure the employment of a greatly increased number of men in precisely those trades where employment is most regular and dependable. The advanced Socialists, it is true, assert that under a Socialist regime work will be found for all, but it does not appear that any of the advances towards sociaUsm which arc immediately possible will lessen the existing evils of unem- ployment. Those who prefer to encourage growth rather than to wait on catastrophe are forced to seek methods compatible with an individualistic organization. It is, therefore, clear that side by side with any fiscal reform and with any general social policy certain measures specifically directed against unemploy- ment are necessary. This book is an attempt to suggest the type of reforms which can be most easily effected, and should most surely commend themselves to moderate opinion in both the great historic parties. The problem of unemployment is not merely the successful curative treatment of the few thousand men who parade their degradation in street processions and apply year after year with unfailing regularity to the Distress Committees or the Munici- palities for assistance thinly disguised as rehef work. Many of THE PROBLEM OF UNEMPLOYMENT 3 these men are unemployable, most are below the average ability, and their reclamation is relatively unimportant compared with the problem of providing for the vast number of efficient men who are deprived of work by the seasonal fluctuation of in- dividual industries or by the cyclical variations in the world's volume of trade. Recent analysis has shown that besides these well-known causes of unemployment, there must be added other tendencies in modern industry productive of great distress. (i) The intermittent nature of the demand for labour in many of the lower grades of employment which is the cause and again the result of the existence of a permanent excess in the number of men available for jobs which can never in the best times afford a livelihood to all. (2) The existence of labour unfitted for such employment as is offered either because it is devoid of any skill or because of a change in the methods of industry. These and other causes together produce human suffering of an intensity and an extent which can hardly be exaggerated. Only a knowledge of individual cases can give any insight into the real meaning of unemployment. Two or three cases personally known to the writer will serve both to illustrate the different aspects of the problem and to express in terms of in- dividual human experience the hardships to which the wage- earner to-day is exposed. To take an instance from the building trades, which have in recent years been permanently depressed owing to the general depression of business. A skilled carpenter about 37 years of age and in the prime of his skill has been employed by the same firm for seventeen years. He is a first-rate workman, can do excellent cabinet work as well as builders' carpentry, and is of thoroughly good character and sound in health. For the first time in his life he has had a spell of unemployment for several months. A thrifty fellow, he had a considerable sum of money saved, and having union funds to fall back upon he drew his unemployed pay until he obtained work. I * 4 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS He has felt most bitterly the hopelessness of wandering round searching for a job and the degradation of sneaking into the yards during the dinner hour to interview various foremen. Had he had a family there would have been serious suffering and not only the loss of his savings. Another type of unemployed is an excellent Linichouse ship- wright who has always been a leader in his union and has taken some part in public work. The shipwrights' trade in London is dying, and in spite of a blameless record he finds himself getting only partial employment with long spells of idleness. He at present gets along on his savings and unemployed pay, but at any time might find himself reduced to destitution. At the bottom of the scale is a young casual dock labourer, strong and active, but with no special skill. He gets two or three days' work one week, none the next, and then a whole week on end ; but he never is able to save, and he has no out- of-work pay to fall back upon. The wife works at bottle washing and the children get free dinners at the school : other- wise they could not possibly keep the home together. The enforced idleness of so many days at a time makes him slowly but surely lose all his capacity for steady work and his energy and his physique alike deteriorate. On a rather higher plane is the regular unskilled labourer. At an East End rope-works, for instance, a young man, now about 30, has been employed for a dozen years intermittently. His nominal wage is 24s. a week, but often for a month or two on end he gets three or four days a week only. He has five little children, and last year his wife fell ill and has been in and out of hospital ever since. Then the children got scarlet fever and his rent got into arrears. He was sued and ordered to pay it off by monthly instalments. In short weeks he took to borrowing from fellow workmen at the usual rate of interest of a penny on the shilling per week. His position is always pre- carious and at any moment illness topples the family into debt and semi-starvation. Only charitable assistance has saved him for the present. THE PROBLEM OF UNEMPLOYMENT 5 There are thousands of similar cases where the family muddles along somehow with the help of the wife's work and gifts from relations and friends. Such cases never go to the Poor Law or even to the Distress Committee, but they deserve the more consideration because they do their best to avoid cadging on the public, and are never to be found among the unemployed of the processions. It is the uncertainty hanging over the future which is most harassing to all classes of workmen. By no fault of their own the most efificient and steady workmen may find their work leaving them. Those of us who have regular incomes cannot well comprehend the position of the man with a family, who is taken on by the day or by the week and is dependent on the amount of work that may happen to be available, so that how- ever ready he may be to work he knows that at any time the day may come when he will be "put off" and have to take an enforced holiday — a holiday which means no earnings to take home to the wife. It is clear that no single reform can cope with difficulties so complex and deep rooted, but the statement of the causes and the description of the effects of unemployment point clearly to the lines along which reform must be directed. It is necessary to distinguish between efforts to reduce the amount and duration of unemployment and measures to mitigate the suffering which that unemployment inflicts. Among measures for directly lessening unemployment are those designed to decrease the amount of intermittent labour by concentrating the available work on a few men so that the number retained in any one trade or group of trades does not exceed the maximum which can be fully employed when work is most abundant. It is also desirable to mitigate as far as possible the periodic fluctuations in general trade by a more careful distribution of contracts and to lessen their effect by the organization of systematic short time rather than by the discharge of a proportion of the men ordinarily employed. Among measures for relieving distress the only useful pro- 6 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS posals are those for increasing and extending insurance against those inevitable periods of unemployment which no foresight can prevent. Upon reforms of this nature all experts are agreed. Their value is incontestable. The only point upon which opinion dilTers is that of method. In the following chapters an attempt is made to throw into a practical form suitable for immediate action the results of theory. In that attempt the guiding prin- ciple is that wherever existing institutions proved and tested by practice can be utilized it is better and more hopeful to adopt or adapt their organization than to attempt to build afresh. Since trade unions are the established form of work- ing-class organization, it will be better to work through and with them. Briefly four distinct problems have to be solved. They may be stated as follows : — 1. In some trades and occupations the total number of men engaged is permanently in excess of those for whom regular work can be found. The men are therefore casually employed; and though their daily or even weekly earnings are quite ade- quate, their yearly earnings are not sufficient for a decent live- lihood. This must be corrected by " decasualization " which concentrates work on the ablest men. 2. In many trades annual spells of unemployment are inevit- able. The wage earned during the other months may be ample, but unless a machinery of thrift is organized the slack season brings penury and deterioration. 3. In most trades the cyclical depression of the world's com- merce brings periods of unemployment too long to be met by unassisted thrift. These must be met by collective action. 4. Throughout industry the supply of unskilled labour ex- ceeds the demand, because the occupations of boys and girls are such as to produce neither the skill nor the character necessary for the higher grades. This must be corrected by better tech- nical training. For each of these difficulties many remedies can be suggested, THE PROBLEM OF UNEMPLOYMENT 7 but before plunging into untried methods it is well to observe that in one part of the labour world thei difficulties have been faced and in practice very largely dissipated. Among the 1,500,000 members of the greater trade unions, each of these problems is partially, and in many cases completely, solved. The real need is not so much to devise new remedies, as to facilitate the adoption of those which have already been tested in practice and approved by experience. The methods by which the unions have with greater or less success met the four problems of unemployment above enu- merated are as follows : — 1. Casual employment due to the excess of workers has been met by the insistence on a standard rate sufficiently high to make it Avorth the while of masters to employ only regular and dependable men (e.g. the effect of the dock strike on the London Dock Company was to make them establish a per- manent staff and beyond that have preference lists), and secondly by the establishment, accidental rather than intentional, of an exchange at the union office where men out of work can be found. The employers are therefore under less temptation to take on casual and probably unskilled hands so long as regular tradesmen are unemployed. 2. Short spells of unemployment, whether seasonal or ir- regular, are met by the payment of out of work benefit. This is the method in many of the most highly skilled trades. 3. Long periods of depression are met by an agreement with the masters to work short time all round rather than to throw the burden entirely on to a few individuals. This is the solu- tion in the textile and mining industries. 4. The misuse of boy labour has been checked to some ex- tent by insistence upon a due proportion between men and boys, while trade education has been encouraged by fixing the duration of the training which must be undergone before a learner can be admitted to the union (e.g. this is the rule among printers, engineers, etc.). In practice these methods have often been misused and 8 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS misunderstood. But despite faulty execution the general re- sults have been so satisfactory that the justice of the root ideas is proved beyond any doubt. Within the circle of the skilled trades the solution of the problem of unemployment lies in the complete application of the remedies already partially available. It is true that, at the present moment, the total number of trade unionists is only about a fourth of the working men in the country, and the rate of increase does not warrant the as- sumption that without definite assistance the unions can extend so as to include any high proportion of the unskilled workmen. That assistance can very easily be given ; and it appears certain that less risk of failure will be encountered and more chance of permanent success will be assured by schemes which are based on trade union experience, and have for their object the encouragement of independent and voluntary organization among masters and men, than in those which aim at the substitu- tion of State action and official control. There has been in the earlier stages of the movement a considerable feeling roused against trade unionism. Some of their methods seemed violent and tyrannical. There was a fear that they would use their power for purely selfish ends. They have been accused of forcing down the good workman, and re- ducing his output of work below a fair amount. They were of course considered to be mainly anxious to organize strikes in order to force up wages irrespective of the capacity of the trade to bear increased cost of production. Public opinion has, however, undergone a very great change. The unions have in many instances seen that they have been too narrow in their views. The minute subdivision of work under different organ- izations, so that two men had to be called in to do the work of one, has given way to more common-sense co-operation among the unions. A strike could hardly now occur, as it has done in the past, because bricklayers had done a small piece of work which the unions claimed as belonging to stone masons. A general movement is in progress towards the organization of trades as a whole. Employers have formed associations as a THE PROBLEM OF UNEMPLOYMENT 9 counterpoise to the workmen's unions, and the result has been that the officials of both sides can meet and adjust differences much more easily than the actual parties to a dispute. Strikes are thereby averted, for masters and men hear each other's point of view with greater ease. The officials of a great union with branches in every part of the country are better informed and more clear-sighted than the men actually concerned in a dispute, and their influence is almost invariably on the side of peace. That this change in the work of the trade unions is recog- nized was clearly shown in the debate in the House of Lords on the Trades Boards' Bill on 30 August, 1909, when Lord Lansdowne, speaking as leader of the Conservative party in the Upper House, said : " The sound principle in all these cases is surely that which was laid down by the noble Lord behind me — namely, that it is for the trades themselves to combine and fix, by their own efforts, what shall be the recog- nized rate of remuneration for any kind of employment. That is, I venture to say, the only really sound principle. We have, of course, recognized, and recognized to the full, the right of trades to organize and to combine, in any way they think proper, for the purpose of bringing about that result." In the same debate, Lord Salisbury said : " I confess that I see no way out of the main proposition which the Government have put before your Lordships' House. As far as I myself am concerned, I assent to the establishment of these Trade Boards, whose principal function is to fix a minimum rate of wages. I do so because the ordinary trade remedy for these evils appears to be impracticable — I mean the union of the workers. That is the proper remedy wherever it can be ap- plied, and that is the remedy one would like to see applied in these cases. They know much better — I am speaking of em- ployer and employed — what is good for them than any Trade Board which the ingenuity of the Government or of your Lord- ships' House can construct. But, unfortunately, the evidence is almost conclusive that these women have not made sufficient lo UNEMrLOVMRNT AND TRADE UNIONS progress in the arts of citizenship to l)e able to combine in a trade union, and until they do I presume we must be content with this procedure, not so good and not so effective as the other would have been." It is in this spirit that the sugges- tions in the following chapters are made. If it is desirable that the workers should unite it is desirable that any Government measures for the solution of the problem of unemployment should tend to strengthen, extend, and improve the trade union organization. Like other human machinery, tlie unions are not perfect, but they contain a very large part of the most highly skilled and thrifty men in the working classes. If some of their leaders seem at the moment to be one-sided, it must be re- membered that the more nearly the unions correspond to the full force of the working classes, the more national and com- prehensive they become, the more impossible it will be for them to take sectional or partisan action. It is desirable to consider how the various causes of unem- ployment can be removed and remedies applied through these great organizations which now form so important a part in the national life. They have done so much for their own members that the most hopeful lines of advance seem to be through them or in co-operation with them. In the following chapters the relation of the trade unions to the various methods pro- posed for dealing with unemployment is considered. It will be suggested that attempts to solve the problem apart from trade unions by relief works are doomed to failure ; that labour exchanges are dependent for their success on the frank co-operation of trade unions ; that the only adequate machinery for insurance is through the same organizations ; and that a better distribution of work can only be effected by their help. It will also be contended that the trade unions must actively assist in the regulation of boyjabourand in the improvement of the education of the workman. CHAPTER 11. RELIEF WORKS. For the last quarter of a century the various methods success- fully adopted by the workmen themselves for dealing with un- employment have been ignored and the favourite remedy has been the provision of relief in the form of some kind of unskilled work. In 1886 the Local Government Board by a circular to Local Authorities gave official sanction to the establishment of relief works. They have been started intermittently at periods of trade depression in various parts of England, and in the last seven years have become a regular institution in the winter months. Borough and Town Councils have registered the unemployed and started extra street-sweeping, park-levelling, or some other form of municipal work at the expense of the rates. Since the Act of 1905 there have been formed the Distress Committees with their Labour Colonies and other forms of employment relief. Large numbers of men have registered their names, e.g. in London, the Central (Unemployed) Body re- port that in 1908-9, their Distress Committees registered 49,485, investigated 30,898, and that of these 8,587 were given work by the Central Body, 6,180 by Borough Councils, and 254 by other agencies. The bulk of the work given was spade work, level- ling sites, forming grounds, etc. It is desirable to consider how far this form of relief is suitable for the men to whom it is given, and whether they have done it sufficiently well to justify the expenditure — whether in fact relief by provision of work is better for these distressed men than maintenance relief given directly. 12 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS We must first understand what kind of workmen these dis- tressed men are. A classification was attempted of 47,731 of the London applicants, and they were returned as 15,490 skilled and 32,241 unskilled. This classification, probably, was a very rough-and-ready affair. Committees take different views as to what constitutes a skilled trade and still more what persons in a trade are skilled.^ For example, sometimes carmen are considered skilled and sometimes unskilled, and again many men who call them- selves painters are merely what are known as " handy men " who occasionally do some rough painting. On the other hand there are degrees of skill in most forms of labouring work. If we scrutinize the classification of the applicants under various trades we find that as many as 16,322 men are assigned to the building trades and 2 1,239 ^^^ placed under the heading Transport and General Labour. In the former category there may be a number of more or less skilled painters, carpenters, etc., but the best skilled workmen in these branches are generally in their trade unions and do not apply to the Dis- tress Committees. If the bulk of the men classified under these headings are really labourers it is possible that spade-work may not be entirely unsuitable. But there were also applicants classed under trades for which spade work is clearly not suitable, e.g. printing and paper (448), dress (640), food and drink (1,285), clerks (703), perhaps also metal (3,530), and wood (1.425)- The folly of offering this unsuitable work is recognized in the Reports of the General Federation of Trade Unions. " Skilled mechanics," they said, " should not be put to spade work ". To meet this obvious criticism at any rate in one trade, the London Central Body endeavoured to provide some indoor work and to give some skilled employment to men in the build- ing trades by undertaking the renovation of the Alexandra Palace. Work at the trade union rates of wages was provided for 189 men, including bricklayers, masons, scaffolders, car- ^ See Vol. XIX, p. 186, App. F. Poor Law Commission. RELIEF WORKS 13 penters, blacksmiths, painters, plasterers, glaziers, together with their labourers. There was, however, difficulty in finding men suitable among those registered. " Some Distress Committees were scarcely ever able to supply men for this work, whilst others could invariably be relied upon to supply whatever men were required . . ." " as the summer season advanced it became increasingly difficult to obtain skilled men to fill such vacancies as arose" . . . " eventually a few skilled men were specially registered in order to fill vacancies." ^ It seems clear that among the 16,000 men registered as from the building trades there were very few who could be relied on as skilled and competent men. The attempt to provide skilled work was a very interesting one, but there is another side to the question. Why should not this work at trade union rates have been done in the ordinary way of business ? Why should not the local workmen, trade unionists or others, have done it ? Why were they deprived of it and perhaps driven on to their union funds in order that with very great difficulty certain unemployed persons who had registered might be selected to take their place ? From the general experience of relief works it seems probable that the work was not done as quickly (it was not finished till July), as efficiently, or as economically as it would have been by ordinary workmen under a contract. Even if this assumption is incorrect, and in this instance the men really carried out the work in the usual manner, why should these special men have been singled out to do it rather than the ordinary workmen, and was there really any adequate reason for paying these particular men out of public funds ? The same question arises over the ordinary relief works where spade labour is employed. For example, the sea-walling done by London unemployed in 1906 at Fambridge was extravagantly costly and the work very inefficiently done. There were Essex labourers in the vicinity, accustomed, as they say, to " handling the muck," unemployed themselves, and refused a share in 1 Report of the C. (U.) Body, 1909, p. 15. 14 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS making up their own sea-wall because it was to be done by London registered men. To take another instance, some of the labourers regularly employed by the Salford Corporation on their sewage works were actually discharged to make places for the men registered by the Distress Committee. It seems absurd that work should be done as relief work by distressed men which might and could be better done by the ordinary men accustomed to the job who are themselves de- prived of work to make way for those not accustomed to it. Such action is hard on the regular men and wasteful of the money of the community. It is hopelessly uneconomical that a London Borough Council should have taken its machine brooms off the streets in order to spend an extra ;^iooo of the ratepayers' money in having the unemployed to sweep with hand brooms. It is wasteful of the taxpayers' money that the London County Council should have had a park levelled by men from the Distress Committee, instead of by men taken on in the ordinary way, at so great an increase of cost that the Council's engineer certified that the value of the work was only about a quarter of the amount expended by the Relief Agency. We are coming perilously near to a condition of things when a certain class of less efficient men are to be selected to do certain work badly at the public expense which could be and should be done by those regularly engaged on the work under ordinary conditions. The better class of workmen have a distinct grievance against a system which at their expense takes their work away in order to give it to less competent men or those wholly unused to it. The trade unionists have commented severely on the relief works of the Distress Committees. " They fail to give suitable work for skilled workmen, and trade unionists do not apply to them," say the Parliamentary Committee of the Labour party (Liverpool Report, 1906). In their 2 9ih quarterly report the General Federation of RELIEF WORKS 15 Trade Unions state that relief works are " used by non-unionists who for inferior work get trade union wages," ^ and on 26 July, 1906, they report that the relief work offered was "frequently repellent, economically unsound, and must be executed under conditions not acceptable to trade unionists ". They thought the Act was " not going to be of any service to the unemployed workmen who are efficient, provident and organized ". This forecast has been amply justified. The evidence is overwhelming that relief works have been a failure in that they are both unduly costly to the community and fail to reach the better class of workmen. Nor does there seem any reason to believe that they could be made any more useful if they were extended in scope and undertaken by the Central Government. The Federation Report in 1905 had urged that Distress Committees should be given the power to acquire land and that the Government should start works of public utility, such as land reclamation in periods of depression, which should be closed down when conditions improve. In fact Distress Committees have had plenty of land on which to experiment. The Leeds Corporation embarked on a scheme of afforestation which was popularly supposed to be a suitable form of relief work. But the ordinary towns- man is not the right man for the job. In Leeds fifteen men only from the Distress Register were sent off to the Corporation Moor and of these four returned at once. An advertisement issued for men for the work brought 300 applicants, of whom eighteen were selected. There were costly experiments on Chat Moss by the Manchester unemployed ; Croydon unem- ployed made an attempt to grow potatoes, Poplar and West Ham started farms. There is no reason to believe that any better results would be achieved if the Central Government 1 Of course it is equally unsound to pay a lower rate, both because it interferes with the fair wage of the open market and because it discourages the men from doing their best. i6 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS tried to reclaim the Wash if they did it as relief work. The ordinary townsman does not desire to be drafted to such work, and he would not do it efficiently if he were. The difficulties and expense of the transport of men from all over the country to Government relief works, of housing them in barracks and supporting their families, would be so great that the Govern- ment are very unlikely to undertake any such scheme and they would probably mismanage it if they did. It is idle to suppose they could start works and close them down again at will. It would be impossible to decide when the ordinary market could be trusted to absorb all the men of the class who would be employed on them. The men themselves would be quite out of touch with their ordinary work. Further, this kind of work, as has been clearly seen by the Labour leaders, only touches the lower classes of labourers and is not suited for the indoor tradesmen or the skilled workmen. There is little real mean- ing in the cry of back to the land as far as the unemployed townsman is concerned, though the Labour party have clung to it for sentimental reasons. Something might be done to help to keep the countryman in the country. He now floods the towns. By improved methods of cultivation, by greater facilities for small holdings worked on a co-operative basis and by the help of agricultural banks he might be kept in the villages. The trade unionists have been too shrewd to urge that Government workshops in their respective trades should be started in times of depression. They have too much sense to suggest that when the cotton industry is depressed in Lancashire the Government should open fresh mills, or that when any branch of trade is slack the Government should step in to supply at the expense of the community the very article for which there is at the moment no demand. Unemployment cannot be diminished through relief works. Nowhere have they been condemned more unsparingly and with greater lucidity and force than in the Report of the Minority of the Poor Law Commission. Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb take too wide a view to see any hope in a mere palliative of the RELIEF WORKS 17 disease. They aim at removing the causes of unemployment. No doubt, however, they felt that they had to face the problem of the individuals who are now unemployed and who are, many of them, tending to become unemployable ; and hence we have in the report an interesting suggestion that " training estab- lishments " should be started for the incompetent class of unemployed who are the great difficulty of the moment. The scheme is very vaguely sketched, but with the persuasive at- tractiveness Mr. Sidney Webb can so well use. He sees that the applicants to Distress Committees are the less competent men with a feeble hold on the labour market. He desires to prevent further deterioration through unemployment. Many of the men are honest steady fellows enough and they have not lost work through any definite fault of their own. But they are the men who are of low economic value, and the employer gets rid of them as soon as trade begins to get slack. Relief works have a tendency to make these men into a regular class who come back winter after winter for doles of public work. This is evident from the report of the London Central Body. Out of the 49,485 registered in 1908-9, there were 2,653 ^^^o had registered in all the three preceding years, 4,463 who had registered in two out of the three years, and 1 1,1 11 who had registered in one of the three preceding years, i'oubtless many of these had also registered in the two years of the Man- sion House Committee which had been at work before the passing of the Act. It is quite certain that the only result of continuing relief works will be to maintain and perhaps increase this class. An alternative to the present form of relief works has been suggested in the so-called farm colony where men are kept away from the towns for considerable periods and set to healthy work on the land. The advantages of this system over ordinary relief works are obvious. The men can be given continuous work for com- paratively long periods ; the regular life, good food and absence of dissipation restore to health and strength any who are po- 2 1 8 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS tentially able-bodied, at the same time the produce of the farm goes towards paying for the keep of the men and, though as a method of agriculture the farm colony is quite uneconomic, the total cost of maintenance is far below that incurred in any urban workhouse. If, therefore, it is necessary to maintain a number of men who are physically or morally unfit to retain any permanent place in industry, this system of farm colonies is preferable on many grounds to either relief works or the ordinary workhouse and casual ward. The authors of the minority report of the Poor Law Com- mission, however, believe that the idea of working colonies can be extended far beyond the narrow purpose of a substitute for the workhouse, and that a complete system of training establish- ments where all sorts of trades are carried on can be devised. To these training colonies the man who had exhausted his trade union benefit or his insurance might be sent, and while there might not only keep his skill by practice but actually in- crease it under the tuition of the superintendents. Instead, therefore, of a long spell of unemployment ruining a man's chances of regaining a place in his old occupation, it might actually increase his industrial value. It is very difficult with- out more details and some experiment to understand how the scheme would work. The experience of English colonies is most discouraging, for however anxious the superintendents are to maintain the standard of work the men persist in the idea that they are merely performing a task which entitles them to relief, and reduce their efforts to the minimum which will pre- vent their dismissal. If a complete system of colonies pro- viding for every man out of work were in operation the fear of dismissal would no longer supply any stimulus, and the quality of work would drop to that which obtains in every relief scheme. The men would deteriorate and soon lose any desire for more strenuous regular work. The standard of work in a colony could only be maintained by the threat of sending recalcitrant workers to a penal estab- lishment, and for that Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb have made a RELIEF WORKS 19 place in their scheme. But English sentiment is averse to sentencing a man to imprisonment for mere slackness, even when prison is euphemistically termed a "penal training colony," and the whole system of colonies would not improb- ably break down, and return to a gigantic scheme of relief works, simply because the ordinary magistrate would not be ready to punish men for laziness apart from some tangible offence. The remedy is largely in the hands of the working classes themselves. If organized labour will insist upon the need for discipline and coercion in the case of the idle and the vagabond, a system of labour colonies might be built up which would strengthen the unemployed morally as well as physic- ally. The trade unionists have repeatedly asserted that they would have no mercy on the loafers. "The great problem about the unemployed has always been the severing of the sheep from the goats, the willing workless worker from the loafer." It is true that the Labour party have inconsistently objected to full inquiries into the character of the applicants to Distress Committees. Their action in this respect was very hard on the better men to whom the Distress Committees desired to give a preference. They were probably quite un- necessarily anxious as to the action of the Committee. In spite of a clear statement that they believed the Distress Com- mittees would not reach the deserving unemployed, " the man who is deserving is the trade unionist " (Report of the General Federation of Trade Unions, January, 1905), they in- sisted on the Local Government Board modifying the record papers of the Distress Committees in 1906, and among other omissions was the heading "Particulars of Membership of Trade or Provident Society". They thereby prevented pre- ference being given to those applicants who could produce evidence that they had endeavoured to insure themselves. Workmen, however, are generally among the most severe members of a Committee when the work-shy or the drunkard are concerned, and the Report of the General Federation 2 * 20 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS stated categorically : " To the Poor Law Guardians we can leave the . . . problem of the shiftless, the loafer and the un- fit ". They have expressed too their general agreement with the system of penal work colonies established on the Conti- nent. These penal colonies are not of the nature of relief works. They are intended to be a more humane method of Poor Law relief than the oakum picking or stone breaking of the workhouse, but they embody the same principle that the able-bodied man who is unwilling to work must be made to support himself if possible. To sum up the conclusions arrived at above ; to relieve the unemployed by the provision of work for which they are more or less unfit is economically unsound, and to give a body of men, because they are less efficient but have become distressed, work of public utility at the expense of the community is grossly unfair to the ordinary workman who would otherwise be called in to do it. A distinction must of course be made between relief works started for the unemployed and any in- telligent system which can be devised by the State or the municipalities for so arranging their regular work that it is spread as far as possible over the year or a term of years, or for putting in hand certain forms of necessary work in times of depression which would have to be done later, but might have been postponed for a period. Any such forestalling of work, however, requires a very great deal of careful consideration and an amount of intelligent foresight which it is difficult to ensure. This work, moreover, must be given in the ordinary way to the ordinary men. It is not relief work for the unemployed, though it may be work specially put in hand by a municipality at a time when there is danger of men becoming unemployed owing to depression of trade. The relief works tried now for a quarter of a century have been a costly failure. CHAPTER III. LABOUR EXCHANGES. The trade unions at first were very shy of labour ex- changes and they can hardly yet be considered sympathetic. On I September, 1906, the General Federation decided that three suggestions should be made — (i) That the exchanges must maintain labour conditions and insist on trade union rates of wages for all men on the register; (2) That the trade unions should provide their own vacant books and continue their present methods as they are now arranged. In fact the labour exchange was merely to be a centre for the trade unions to work from in their own way. (3) That a system of registration covering a trade was to be accepted as sufficient by the labour exchange. These terms were submitted to the Government, but the first was refused. In the Report of 16 April, 1907, the Federation made some scathing remarks on the exchanges. "No skilled workman," they said, "worth his salt was Ukely to register at these exchanges, and even if he did, employers . . . are not likely to go to them." " With unskilled men the position is different. Few unions have vacant books or registers of their own as skilled unions have." " The great fear is that they will degenerate into cheap labour supply bureaux." In their Annual Report (20 June, 1907) they stated that as the Central (Unemployed) Body was " opposed to the demand that workmen should only be supplied to employers on the un- derstanding that trade union wages should be paid," the Federa- tion advised unionists that the labour exchanges were Httle 21 2 2 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS better than "free labour organizations" and unionists should " leave them severely alone ". This suspicion can only be allayed if the exact function of the labour exchange is carefully defined and every efifort is made to avoid trespassing upon the ground already occupied by trade unions. The duties of the labour exchanges can be shortly stated. They are two. In the first place, the exchange should put the skilled workman into touch with the demand for his labour wherever that demand occurs. In the second place, by inducing employers of unskilled and casual labour to engage their hands only through the medium of the exchange they should endeavour to give to the better men a constant preference. Naturally the employer will take the best work- men available on any day, and thus the more competent the man the greater his chance of regular employment in an irregu- lar trade. Success in this second function depends, however, on a measure of success in the first. If the exchanges fail to attract the skilled man and to supply the employer with the best as well as the ordinary run of his workmen they must in- fallibly degenerate into registries of the unemployable, where a competent man will decline to be seen. This is quite likely, since the duty they propose to undertake is in the case of the skilled man already being performed by the trade union. In the cotton trade, for instance, the employer who wants a weaver or a spinner turns naturally to the official of the union, who can send him any skilled man unemployed at the moment. There is every reason why the union should continue this work, for there is no likelihood that the exchange will be as efficient in its discharge. The union official is a man who knows the trade from top to bottom, who appreciates exactly the minute differences between different mills and sheds, who can place his men so as to give satisfaction to both sides. The official at the exchange, on the other hand, is dealing not with one trade but with many. He cannot be expert in all, and his selection of men must be a rough-and-ready business. The union exchange will beat the Government establishment by superior efficiency. LABOUR EXCHANGES 23 It will be a positively reactionary step if the official exchange attempts to compete with the union in its own specialized work. But while the union possesses the advantages of superior knowledge and of an established connexion, the Gov- ernment building will have special facilities for communica- tion with other centres, and probably a clerical staff which is both more adequate and more efficient than that of the union. Clearly the sane policy is not to attempt a wasteful duplication of machinery but to amalgamate the old voluntary distributing agency with the new Government institution and to arrange that all vacant books of unions shall be kept at the exchange under the control of the union officials, who shall be given the same telephonic and clerical facilities which are at the disposal of the Government superintendent. This is the practice in the Berlin Labour Exchange, and the regulations issued by the Board of Trade make provision, sub- ject to the approval of the consultative committee, for the use of the exchanges both as a calling place for men to sign the vacant book and as a meeting place for unions. That policy alone can make the labour exchanges the centre for skilled workmen ; they must be regarded and administered as subservient to the trade unions in every trade which has reached a high level of organization. But in thus putting themselves at the disposal of the unions the officials of the labour exchange will be able to raise the level of the less efficient organizations by example and by advice. For in many trades the union exchange is still rudi- mentary and the advent of the trained Government servant will greatly expedite its development. In the second part of their proposed work, the labour ex- changes are entering a field where hitherto trade unionism has been a failure. The causes which prevent an effective organization of the un- skilled man are numerous. The excessive number of those who are competing for the same job makes any strike most difficult : the officials of the union are drawn from a lower grade 24 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS of labour, and have not had the same chances as in the more highly skilled and better educated grades of learning methods of business management ; the shifting nature of casual work hinders the growth of any feeling of solidarity ; all these causes are contributory to the failure, but the most important is the difificulty of securing subscriptions large enough to war- rant the payment of benefits. The wages of the labourer are so low that he is unable to make a weekly payment large enough to pro\nde either sick or unemployment benefit. The moment a spell of bad trade comes the numbers of the union fall away, for there is nothing to induce a man to retain his membership. In so far as the exchanges succeed in decasual- izing this labour they are preparing the way for the formation of effective unions. But for this it is necessary to obtain the assistance of the employers. Only by inducing or compelling the majority of the employers to take all their labour from a single source can the exchanges begin to lessen the excess of workers which is the great impediment to the organization of unskilled labour. That decasualization is important is certain, but that it is not the only goal of organization is obvious. A means must be found for carrying regular men over the periods of bad trade. That can only be done by the trade union with an arrangement of short time, and with unemployment benefit. It follows, therefore, that the work of the exchange among unskilled workmen must be regarded and organized as a pre- face to trade unionism. As far as possible the exchange should give preference to men who belong to a union, even though that union is not established in the sense that it governs the rates of wages over the larger part of the trade. If this policy is adopted the final position of the labour exchange will be that of a trade hall subsidized by Government in respect of rent and of clerical staff, but really governed by the committees of the men in each trade. There seems to be no doubt that the men's officials have a much better grip by being able to confine themselves to one trade, and that when LABOUR EXCHANGES 25 the men manage themselves they have a much better chance of doing the work with knowledge and with economy than is at all likely under State officials. It may, however, be questioned whether the exchanges as they are at present managed will succeed in advancing towards this ideal. The figures hitherto published as to their work are of course an insufficient basis for any generalization, but they serve to illustrate the difficulties. During March, the second month of operation, the exchanges filled 20,000 places, a satis- factory beginning. But of these 1041 were messenger boys, 1356 boys in other trades, generally, it may be assumed, engaged in errands or odd jobs, 1069 were girls, and no less than 127 1 were classed as female outdoor domestic service, a somewhat grandiloquent synonym for charwomen; 4737 places, or nearly one-fourth of the total number filled, must be neglected in discussing the ability of the exchanges to assist in the decasu- alization of labour. Turning to the men's trades, 3496 places were found in the building trade, 2165 for general labourers, 1443 in the "conveyance of men, goods and messages". That is a fair start, but when the number of men on the register is considered it will be perceived that the process of regularizing industry is not yet begun. In the building trades 3496 places were found, but 9909 men remained on the register ; for the 2165 general labourers' places 14,908 unsatisfied applicants re- mained on the register. There is no guarantee and indeed little probability that when the men who have obtained one job return for a second they will have any better chance than the great number who are still waiting their turn. There is no machinery of discrimination. It must be remembered that the German exchanges are part of a great system of labour organ- ization. In Germany a certain discrimination between the men who apply for work is easy, because every man has his identification papers and his whole record can be easily ascer- tained. In England at present a man can register at as many exchanges as he can reach and in each his record will be sepa- rate and distinct. The superintendent will not be in a position 26 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS to judge of the suitability of a man for any particular job save by a casual personal estimate. Those who have had anything to do with relief funds know how this absence of identification papers hinders any real knowledge being obtained of the applicants for relief, and the registers of the labour exchanges and of the distress commit- tees area very short step in the direction of obtaining knowledge of workmen's records. To pick out three instances among many which show how important is a complete record of antecedents, the following cases may be cited : — G. P. was a boy from Dr. Barnardo's Homes. He be- came a labourer at the Docks, and in 1894 appeared to be a respectable young married man with two children in great destitution. He was emigrated in May to Canada with his family, and a report was received of him in October that he was in work and doing well. However, in January, 1905, he was again destitute in East London and applied to the Mansion House Joint Committee. He was not given work, and in December, 1905, he applied to the Distress Committee, pro- ducing tolerably good references from employers, and was given seven weeks' work at levelling playing fields in Victoria Park. Nothing was known as to his Canadian experience till some time afterwards when his old record of 1894 was discovered. C. T. was a well-spoken man who applied to the Distress Committee in 1906. His own account of himself made no mention of previous applications for relief. He was, however, quite by chance recognized as a regular applicant for relief of many years' standing. He had been on the books of the Charity Organization Society and received some assistance at various times, applying during 1877, 1878 and 1879, again in 1884-6 and 1887 when the Charity Organization Society finally refused him further help. But besides this he had been a frequent applicant to the Guardians for twenty years before his ap- plication to the Distress Committee and was not by any LABOUR EXCHANGES 27 means considered one of the honest but unfortunate men who failed to get work through slackness of trade. S. L. also applied in 1906 to the Distress Committee. He too was recognized by chance as a man who thirteen years ago had been sent by the Mansion House Committee to a well-to- do uncle in Derbyshire who promised him work there. These were cases of chance recognition and they were all of them the chronic destitute. They can all register at a labour exchange in England without anything really being known about them. Neither decasualization nor any insurance against unemploy- ment is possible unless this radical defect is removed. A tradi- tion obtains that the English working man would never stand any such inquisition into his private life as the obligation to produce properly filled in identification papers must imply, but like many generalizations about national characteristics it prob- ably rests on an insecure basis of fact. The trade unionists are quite accustomed to produce their cards for all purposes connected with their society, and there is good reason to believe that the leaders of trade unionism would readily accept a system of identification papers, so long as they were confined to a bare statement of fact detailing the industrial record of a man, but not including the opinions of employers. It is not proposed that identification papers should have records of character or should give information as to a man's applications to charitable agencies. The cases quoted above showed how necessary it was that the previous history of men should be known when they are applying for relief, but the facts would have been to some extent evident if they had had merely a labour record, for the times of unemployment would have been shown, and in one case it would have been seen that the man had been in work in the colonies and in another that he had tried the country. The skilled and competent man has every- thing to gain by a system which will differentiate him from the loafer. Labour exchanges based on a complete system of identification papers could proceed to decasualize labour with 28 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS justice and success and thus pave the way for the inclusion of unorganized labourers in societies managed by themselves and supported by their own thrift. From the point of view of the employers, such a consum- mation will be satisfactory. As regards the real business of an exchange, the provision of the most competent men at short notice, the rule of the trade union will tend to the maximum efficiency, while in other aspects the growth of trade unionism will be an advantage. Since for many reasons the organization of casual labour is necessary, the interest of the employer is that the organization shall be as flexible as possible, and that its officials shall have a direct interest in the well-being of the trade. That sense of a community of interest is now prevalent among trade union officials and makes the working of concili- ation boards relatively smooth and easy. But before this ideal of completely organized industry can be reached, a long stretch of road must be traversed ; for very many years the official exchange must be the intermediary be- tween employers and unemployed. Care must, therefore, be exercised that the idea of dependence on a State machinery does not grow so rapidly as to exclude the better alternative of voluntary organization by independent men. CHAPTER IV. INSURANCE. However closely the supply of labour is approximated to the demand in any particular trade, periods must always occur in which some percentage are temporarily out of work, and to meet these emergencies the trade unions have organized their system of unemployment benefit. In those sections of the great trades which are well organized the trade union benefit provides all that is necessary to meet the difficulty arising from temporary unemployment. In many trades the periods for which provision is thus successfully made, extend to six months or a year, and the benefit paid being often as high as los. or I2S. a week, supplies sufficient to keep the home together. The practical problem is to devise a means by which these benefits may be extended to a larger circle of workmen. In many European countries the State or the municipality has been experimenting with insurance against unemployment, and the present Government is pledged to the introduction of a scheme which shall include all those engaged in certain speci- fied industries which are from their nature peculiarly liable to spells of unemployment. The attitude of the trade unions to this proposal is at present that of friendly neutrality. In the annual report of the General Federation (i June, 1909) they discuss the possibility in England of State insurance against unemployment and they enumerate various methods : — (a) Those which demand from all who are to participate equal contributions and give in return equal benefits. {i>) Those which demand a percentage on wages and confer benefits in proportion. 29 30 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS (t) Those which take the whole of the contributions from the workmen and the employers in equal shares. (7<^o> i" i905> -^910.928; and in 1906, ;^6o,38i. Some of these orders were, it is true, spread over a considerable period, e.g. orders amounting to ;^4oo,ooo placed in March, 1905, were not to be completed till March, 1907, but the orders to the amount of p£"i 80,000 placed in January, 1905, had to be completed by August of the same year, and in the month of September orders to the value of ;^2oo,ooo were given to be completed in May, 1906.^ It looks as if the War Office had never considered the question of labour at all. When their stock has run down they seem to have suddenly placed large orders and demanded so speedy a delivery that overtime has had to be worked by the men for a number of months to be followed by a long spell of unemploy- ment. This is most hard on the operatives. The National Exchequer must also suffer, because under these conditions the ^ Report on Unemployment to the Poor Law Commission, Appendix, Vol. XIX, p. 134. 42 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS contractor is bound to put up his prices. A steady output with his machinery in constant work and his employees ac- quiring skill day by day is obviously better and more economi- cal than a system of spasmodic outbursts of great activity with overtime for the men, followed by complete cessation of work for a period, with deteriorating machinery and men equally de- teriorating through unemployment. To take another example, the Birmingham contractors for harness and saddlery must have suffered greatly from the un- evenness of distribution of War Office orders. In 1902, work was placed to the value of ^^i 33,000 in separate orders extend- ing over the first seven months of the year, the period of de- livery being from two to four months, the last expiring in September. Except an order of ;^45o in November, 1902, no contract was again placed in Birmingham till October, 1903, when an order to the amount of ;^6ooo was placed to be de- livered in December of that year. Except a few tiny orders from ;^3o upwards, aggregating ;^i7oo, no further contracts were placed till June, 1904, when orders for about ;^2 5oo were placed to be delivered in September. For nearly six months no orders were placed, then after the winter was over orders were placed in March, 1905, to the value of a little over ^3500, the period of delivery being from April to December. In April and August two further contracts were placed, amounting in the aggregate to nearly ;^ 13,000, the periods of delivery being April to June and August to December. Another was placed in December for over ;^2 6oo for delivery in April, 1906. From that date no orders were given until July, 1906, when contracts for over ^15,000 were placed, the period of delivery being December, and a further order for a little over ;^3ooo was given in September, the period of delivery being January, 1907. The trade unionists' complaint that no consideration is shown to the workers seems amply justified, and it is not surprising to hear that "military work is the lowest kind"^ in ' See " Work and Wages," by E. Cadbury, C. Matheson and G. Shann Unwin, igo6. REGULATION OF THE HOURS OF LABOUR 43 the estimation of the workers, because it employs all the " vagrant labour ". There can only be a small permanently employed class of workers, while numbers are taken on and discharged month by month as there happen to be periods of pressure or slackness. Yet to the outside critic it would appear that the amount of harness and saddlery required for the army year by year ought not to be so greatly different that if due foresight is exercised it should be impossible for the War Office to arrange for a toler- ably regular annual expenditure. If the Government makes no attempt to organize work, so that steady employment may be the rule and violent fluctuations as far as possible got rid of, there is little likelihood of the ordin- ary individual employers succeeding in regulating their work. Yet it is essential for the well-being of the workers that there shall be as much foresight shown as possible. In very large businesses it should be possible to do much to ensure a fairly steady and constant supply of work, so that neither the machinery nor the " hands " may suffer from periods of disuse alternating with periods of strain. We need not discuss here the contraction and expansion of demand, or the glut in the market which may be the result of a feverish activity to increase the supply of an article for which a sudden demand has arisen. It is possible that in the future the formation of employers' combinations and the growth of the size of businesses may tend to check this great cause of un- employment. The action of the trade unions must be directed rather to the regulation of the hours of labour and to checking an excessive use of overtime. One of the most interesting features of the various reports of the General Federation of Trade Unions has been their steady adherence to the principle that the elasticity required by trade conditions should be met rather by regulation of the hours of labour than by increasing or diminishing the number of men employed. Thus in their report (20 June, 1907) they say "a more equitable distribution of labour is needed," " working hours and not the number of 44 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS employees should be the elastic part of the industrial machine ". Their aim is " to secure to workmen continuity of employment in those callings to which they are accustomed" (26 July, 1906). " It is no solution to offer a compositor the work of a navvy" (27 September, 1906). "The only solution is to regulate the supply of labour in each trade in accordance with the demand in each trade ... by regulating the working hours per day or per week " . . . " in accordance with the number of workers in the respective trades and the demand for labour in that trade ". The report on unemployment in the 29th quarterly report of the Federation is headed, " The Short Time System as an alternative to discharges." " At the present what happens in very many trades is to meet changes in demand for labour by increasing or decreasing the number of men employed and allowing the hours to remain stationary. Under such a method unemployment is inevitable ; the economic position of the workers is weakened ; changes in demand are intensified.'' In order to see that enough men are taken into the trade for ordin- ary purposes they desire to discourage the practice of working overtime, though they admit that it may be necessary that over- time should be possible to meet a sudden expansion of demand. In the textile trades the time of employment for women, young persons and children is limited by law to fifty-five and a half hours per week and in practice the men work no overtime. " The engineers are limited by agreement with their employers to forty hours overtime per month per member, and the London compositors are limited also by agreement with their employers to eight hours overtime per week." They go so far as to say : " We see no reason in fact why the practice in the textile trades where no overtime at all is allowed should not be generally established in other trades ". This seems almost too strong a measure from their own point of view, if the elasticity of hours is to be the guiding principle, but they are, of course, anxious to prevent the violent expansion of production which seems in- evitably to result in a corresponding depression at a subsequent period. It is on the question of the reduction of hours that REGULATION OF THE HOURS OF LABOUR 45 they are so boldly emphatic. In times of depression they say the hours of all the men should be curtailed below the normal time rather than that a number should be discharged. " Instead of discharging men " you should " keep on shortening hours as demand slackens, the object being to keep all employed." This system is already adopted in the textile trades, where short time is continually being worked. In the cotton mills the hours per week are shortened not more than fifteen and a half hours ; the week's work is fixed at fifty-five and a half hours, and this can be reduced to forty hours in times of depression. It is not confined to the textile industry, and for example in Leeds during the great depression in the boot and shoe trade in igo6 the- trade unions, with the co-operation of all the em- ployers in the town, arranged that all the operatives should work half-time instead of a large number being discharged. The principle so clearly expressed by the Federation of Trade Unions is an exceedingly important one, and it must be noted that it can only be adopted successfully through the trade organization. If a single employer endeavoured to en- force the principle in his shop there would be practically no prospect of acquiescence by the men. It is only through the trade unions looking at the condition of its members and of the trade as a whole that such an arrangement can be effected. The union and the masters' association can discuss the position in a broader spirit and can come to terms which both sides can then hope to make effective. It is true that if the fluctuation is not general to the trade, but varies from shop to shop, men must be able to move from place to place freely. Shortening hours could be effected only when the whole trade was slack. It is of great value to find the authoritative leaders of the unions expressing so clearly the need for dealing with un- avoidable fluctuations of employment by a method so drastic. They, of course, rightly insist at the same time that there must be far better regulation of industry, so that such fluctua- tions are minimized and rendered as infrequent as possible. For it is, of course, evident that there are great drawbacks to a 46 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS system of short time. It is impossible when wages are already low for the workers to continue for any length of time on short hours. The operatives who were under-employed for a long period and receiving only half or two-thirds of their normal wages would soon fall into a distressed condition. If this method of dealing with the problem is adopted we might find ourselves faced not with the unemployed it is true, but with the hopelessly under-employed. The difficulty would not, however, be as great. It is far better for the men to have four or five days a week at work than none at all. They at any rate " keep their hand in," and they are not exposed to the same risk of deterioration as when they are absolutely idle. A great deal depends on morale ; the man who has no work tends to get more and more helpless and hopeless. It is clear, of course, that it could only be efficacious in the case of a temporary depression where there was a certainty of the ultimate revival of the trade. The men in a dying in- dustry must get out of it as quickly as possible ; for them shortening hours is no remedy. Again, an industry may be radically changed by the introduction of new machinery which displaces permanently a number of men. Here, too, men must seek other work and leave full wages to the survivors who are required under the new system. It is no use whip- makers remaining in the trade if the growth of the motor industry is so great that horses will rapidly go out of ordinary use. If, as is stated in the brass-finishing trade in Birmingham, in file cutting one girl can now manage a machine which does the work of eleven men, it is necessary' that the men dis- placed should seek other work at once and not go to their union with a demand for a general shortening of hours. To say, however, that shortening the hours is not a cure for every form of unemployment is merely to state a truism. In the case of casual dock labourers, for example, they are suffer- ing already from short hours, and in the intermittent trades the remedy is to decasualize labour and to insure that all men, if possible, get a full week's work and the number of under- REGULATION OF THE HOURS OF LABOUR 47 employed men is reduced. As a way of dealing with certain great industries, however, the method seems most important. The textile trades have suffered from very violent fluctuations, and the system of shortening hours seems to have been successful. It could probably be extended to a great number of factories producing other material if the operatives were sufficiently well organized. It is worthy of consideration whether by the strengthening of the trade unions in other industries both employers and employed might not make similar arrangements very much for their mutual benefit. But strong trade unions and masters' associations are essential which can meet and discuss the state of the trade through their ablest representa- tives. Further, it is necessary to consider whether the trade unions could possibly supplement the wages of men on short time out of their unemployed benefit funds for a brief period if the weekly income is reduced to too low a figure ; other- wise the resources of the family might be too seriously crippled. It is clear, however, that no union could pay a small benefit to supplement the wages of all its members for a long period. Unless, therefore, there is some share taken by the community, a State subsidy supplementing the trade union benefit, the trade unions would not be in a position to help its members over a lengthened period of short time. It is possible that not even with a State subsidy could wages be supplemented in this way. The Government, as has been said above, ought to set an example in giving careful consideration to future needs, so that a steady production may be spread over a considerable period instead of allowing spasmodic outbursts of activity ; and, having exercised as much foresight as possible, they might also set an example by shortening hours rather than discharging hands. This example might be held before the employers in the large productive industries, and by strong trade unions and masters' associations the steadying of employment might be achieved. The above suggestions have been directed to the regulariza- tion of production by foresight and the reduction of unemploy- ment by means of a better distribution of work in the periods of 48 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS depression ; but the better organization of labour cannot be achieved in all trades by these methods alone. It is from outside the factories that many of the unemployed are drawn. The building trades and the distributing trades are responsible for a very large number of the unemployed. The largest number of applicants to Distress Committees describe themselves as labourers, and they are either general labourers or labourers in the building trades. It does not follow, of course, that the men on the registers of the distress committees fairly represent the unemployed. Speaking gener- ally, trade unionists do not register. We know that they suffer from unemployment. Further, the nature of the work given to their applicants by the Distress Committees is generally only suited for labourers, and therefore members of definite trades and those accustomed to indoor work do not register. Still the labourers are a very large class among the unemployed and their low wages make them peculiarly liable to distress. In the provincial towns the Distress Committees registered in 1905-6 nearly 57,000 unemployed, of whom 11,000 came from the building trades and nearly 25,000 were classed as general labourers. It is necessary to consider how far proposals for dealing with unemployment through better organization of work or by shortening hours could be applied to the building trades, and how far trade unionists can assist in solving the problem. There are, of course, a large number of sections of the building trades which are highly organized. The condi- tions are, however, different from those obtaining in the fac- tories of the great productive industries. It is not that the trade is absolutely dependent on the season of the year : " Small jobs extend throughout the year as they are needed ; large ones extend over the whole year. The speculative builder weighs against winter weather the fact that houses let better in spring." It is, of course, true that outside painting cannot be done in wet weather and that a long frost throws out the brick- layers, but these are not conditions recurring with any regul- arity. One of the great features of the building trades is the REGULATION OF THE HOURS OF LABOUR 49 almost total absence of a permanent staff. Men are engaged by the hour, and though men " follow " the same employer on many jobs there is no security of employment. The work shifts from place to place, and though men travel great distances in London to take work under their old firm there is naturally a disinclination on the employer's side to tie himself to a per- manent staff when he may get a job outside London altogether, and he knows that he can always pick up men on the spot. We are always hearing when the subject of employment is dis- cussed of the necessity of a " margin " of labour. This seems to mean in the building trades that there is a permanent surplus of men, so that the employer who takes up a building job is always certain to find any number of applicants for work on the job. There appears to be a quite unanimous opinion that there is always a plentiful supply of men. With a doubtful exception in 1899, when there was a "slight difficulty in getting bricklayers," a general foreman of a large firm said he had "never known a shortage of skilled or unskilled labourers ". If there is permanently a large surplus of men available it is easy to understand why engagements by the hour continue to be the rule of the building trades, and why the men have no security of tenure. Clearly a better distribution and organization of work cannot be effected by increasing the elasticity of hours of labour, they are too elastic already. The evils of unemployment can no doubt be palliated by an extension of trade union un- employed benefit. The amalgamation of the painters' unions has enabled unemployed pay to be extended, the carpenters and joiners have a well-organized society and pay a large sum, but though other branches of the trade are well organized, and we are told that the employers prefer trade unionists, a considerable number of the unions do not give unemployed benefit at present, though they probably could manage to do so. Nothing but the reduction of the surplus of labour and a greater security of tenure of work can really be effective. Ap- 4 50 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS parently wages are high during periods of employment, e.g. in London plasterers and plumbers get iid. an hour; bricklayers, masons, carpenters and joiners get lo^d. an hour and their labourers yd. an hour. Should not the trade unions and masters' associations very carefully consider whether it would not be possible to substitute a weekly wage system and secure greater permanence of employment? One of the causes of the overstocking of some sections of the trade is probably the employment of boys as " mates " to the men. Should not the unions consider very carefully the question of boy labour? Further, there seem to be too many highly specialized branches of the trade. Plumbers for long held electrical fit- ters at arm's length. There are separate unions for joiners, cabinet-makers, wood shipwrights, etc. Even among the labourers there is extreme specialization. Thus there are scaffolders and hoisters; masons', carpenters' and painters' labourers ; plumbers' mates and other men who have acquired some little skill in particular sections of the trade. We are told that " very seldom would a labourer think of asking for employment in any other section but that to which he was accustomed ". If all these labourers were apprentices to skilled trades and only a sufficient number to fill the ranks of the trade were admitted there would be no difficulty, but they are largely a permanently lower branch of adult members of the trade, and their skill is not so extraordinarily great that an intelligent and adaptable man in one branch of the trade could not be readily employed in another section. This extreme specialization is no doubt a very large cause of unemployment. It can be remedied by the trade unions feder- ating and amalgamating and probably in no other way. A movement in this direction has already been begun, and what is even more important the unions have begun to see the ne- cessity of allowing some latitude and of co-operating with each other. It is not necessary now that a joiner should be sent for to pull up a board in order that the plumber should look REGULATION OF THE HOURS OF LABOUR 51 to the gas pipe. Under certain conditions the plumber can do this little bit of work himself. In so far as labour in the building trades is casual, it is under similar disabilities with the general labourers in the great trans- port services, especially the docks. The docks are the last resort of the lowest class of labour. If it is true that there are some 19,000 men at the docks and wharves in London of whom nearly 14 per cent are unemployed in November (the best month) while 23 per cent are unem- ployed throughout February, March, April, May and June, it is evident that very serious efforts must be made to organize labour in the Port of London. Even these figures are a very great improvement on the state of things which obtained twenty- five years ago. After the great dock strike in 1887, the London, India and Milwall Company made great efforts to in- crease their permanent employees, and by transferring men from dock to dock were able to keep a certain number of men who formed their " A " list permanently employed. They were led to do this in order to get better value for the sixpence an hour which the strikers won from them. They found the system pay, for they got much steadier and more efficient men. There was practically no chance of employment for men not on the "A" and " B " lists, and as a result a number of the unsteady physically weak and inefficient have been eliminated altogether and have had to seek other occupations. The loafer or unem- ployed work-shy can hardly now pretend that by going to the dock gates he has made a real effort to get work. He knows it is practically hopeless. The old dock company had done something to decasualize, and whereas in 1891 34 per cent of the dockers earned under 14s. a week, in 1906 those earning under 14s. had been reduced to 22 per cent. This percentage, however, implies a vast amount of under-employment. The earnings of a man on the " B " list who fills in his time partly in the wharves when he is not wanted at the docks are still miserably low. That his daily earnings may vary from is. 6d. to 7s. I id., and in one month his total earnings may be 13s. and 4* 52 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS in another j£s. 13s., shows the complete uncertainty of employ- ment.^ The difficulty of dock work is that the shipper under modern conditions wants his vessel cleared at lightning speed so that he may avoid a lengthened stay and heavy dock dues. It is probably no exaggeration to say that with the improved machinery and organization available a ship that used to take a week to clear gets out now in thirty-six hours. To decasualize dock labour will be a big task for the Port of London Authority. In the Bristol Corporation Docks a similar problem is very much in evidence. It was found in 1906 that there was no attempt to organize labour, men were taken on as they came. On two days the numbers varied from 1132 to 204, on the first day 597 casual men were employed and 45 1 preferred men, on the second day 4 casual men and 115 preferred men. The number of per- manent men employed was 84 and 85 respectively.'-^ In Liverpool it was estimated that there were 25,000 men trying to get work in the docks and only work for 15,000 at the busiest time. It was suggested that only about 25 per cent of the men got a full week's work and 25 per cent got only a single day or even half a day in the week. All the evidence as to dock labour is clearly in favour of some strong measures for better distribution of the work. It is desirable to see whether the trade unions can do any- thing. So far the dockers' unions have been ineffective. It is clearly impossible to get casually employed men to find regular subscriptions, it is impossible to arrange unemployed benefit for dockers while the existing conditions continue. The dockers are a poor class of men and their unions have not been well manned or managed. The London union had 14,000 members in 1899 and had sunk to 1000 members in 1906. It is very noteworthy how large is the proportion of administrative expenses in these unions compared with the better managed and larger societies. But an improvement of the unions might lead to very large ' " Poor Law CJommission," Appendix, Vol. XIX, p. 398, *See " Report Poor Law Commission," Appendix, Vol. XIX, p. 316. REGULATION OF THE HOURS OF LABOUR 53 results in regulating work and improving the condition of the men. Both here and in the unions of general labourers the remedy seems to be the consolidation of a number of small societies. The General Federation of Trade Unions reported on this question in September, 1906, and insisted that there must be a better organization of general labourers. Three things they said should be done : — 1. The further multiplication of general labourers' unions should be prevented and by amalgamation larger and more powerful organizations formed. 2. Where existing unions do not amalgamate overlapping and competition must be carefully guarded against. 3. Uniformity in constitution and benefits should be se- cured among the different unions. A conference held in December, 1906, endorsed these sug- gestions and a General Labourers' National Council was formed, to which so far ten unions have federated themselves. If this new movement results in an amalgamation of small unions the labourers' organization should be greatly strengthened, they should have a larger influence on the distribution of work, and above all they should get men of a larger and wider out- look at the head of the unions, ensuring better and more econ- omical management of funds as well as sounder policy in dealing with such questions as decasualization. To sum up the questions dealt with in this chapter, unem- ployment can be reduced by a better organization and distri- bution of work. The Government must set an example of foresight and spread their contracts over longer periods in the interests of labour. Large businesses and federations of em- ployers may be expected to follow suit and to endeavour to check the great fluctuations of work which make busy and slack times. In factories and the large productive branches of industry, unemployment can be minimised by agreements between masters' associations and trade unions to make the time worked by the men and not the number of men employed the elastic part of the machine. In the building trades and 54 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS the casual employment trades generally a great attempt must be made to ensure more permanent employment. For the lower classes of labour the trade unions must be strengthened and cheapened by amalgamation, there must be less specializa- tion and more general adaptability, labour must be made more mobile and this must be effected by an improved system of labour exchanges in which the Board of Trade and the unions closely co-operate. CHAPTER VI. BOY LABOUR. It is now generally agreed that the employment of boys on unskilled work which gives them no real training and from which they are displaced as soon as they approach manhood to make room for other boys is one of the great blots on our industrial system. A mass of unskilled youth is thrown upon the market at a time of life when they are most liable to deteri- oration from unemployment. Further, boys, because they seem relatively cheap, often take jobs which should belong to men. There is, therefore, a double danger from boy labour. The boys displace their parents and they themselves are deteriorated in capacity by taking monotonous and uninteresting unskilled work at the period of their lives when they should be still learn- ing and developing to the utmost their skill, their intelligence, and their character. Unfortunately the trade unions have not, up to the present, seriously tackled this question. As parents, ithe men have been too much concerned that the boys should help to support the family as soon as possible. If there are a number of young children in the family, as soon as the eldest boy reaches 14 years of age the parents often feel unable to forego his earnings. In his book on "Town Life" in York, Mr. Rowntree showed very clearly the periods of comparative ease and difficulty in the workman's life. Even the man with the regular wage, who in the early years of married life can live in decent comfort, gets steadily poorer as the children grow, until the eldest child is old enough to take a job and at once add several shillings to the weekly income. Naturally, therefore, the tendency is to 55 56 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS take the job which gives the immediately highest possible wage for the eldest boy, regardless of his future if the pressure of the moment can be relieved. Seeing how low wages often are, it is hard to blame poor parents for grasping at the utmost shilling. But it is not only the parents with very low wages who drive their boys into premature work. The cotton operatives are well paid relatively to those employed in other industries, and yet in the textile towns boys are driven to work much earlier than in the metropolis. It is not the employers who are anxious to continue the half-time system in the mills. The piecers among the cotton spinners and the tenters among the weavers are engaged and paid by the operatives themselves. The trade union leaders to their great credit have done their best to educate public opinion in the direction of abolishing the half- time system, but in the ballot taken last year only 34,000 voted in favour of abolition while 150,000 cast their votes against it. The leaders will, it is to be hoped, persevere until these figures are reversed. Public opinion when once set in motion moves quickly. In the textile trades there is no chance of the absorption of these children in the mills when they are grown up. Mr. Sidney Webb says : " The cotton spinners in fact ... go so far as to insist on there always being ten times as many of them as would suffice to recruit the trade ". ^ The boys hang on and as big piecers continue to earn less than adult wages until they can stand it no longer. Then they find no openings for them outside. Mr. Wilkinson says: "The piecers who leave the mill . . . are forced to accept work as unskilled labourers. Numbers of these disappointed piecers have worked in the stuffy vitiated atmosphere of the mill from sixteen to twenty years and are physically unfitted to endure the strain entailed in the labourer's work and they thus swell the ranks of the unemployed." - To show the hardship on the boy of the action of a selfish parent, the following illustration from Halifax may be useful: — ^ " Industrial Democracy," p. 811. '*" Poor Law Commission, Report on Boy Labour," p. 137. BOY LABOUR 57 " A boy strong in health, of excellent character and exceed- ingly clever reached the VII standard in his school at nine years old. The teacher was most anxious that he should sit for a scholarship, but this the father refused to allow, though he himself a millhand ' could afford to keep him at school '. The boy was sent to work as an errand boy at twelve years old, even before he left school, and as soon as he left he was put into quite unskilled work because it was more highly paid. Several offers obtained for him by his old teacher were refused, because they meant immediate loss of a shilling a week, though the ultimate prospects were excellent. The teacher reports of this boy that ' with his character, health, ability and intelligence he ought to have gone forward to the University'." The evil of premature boy labour must be dealt with by the workmen themselves, and the Labour party must try to educate the great mass of workmen to look ahead. It is noteworthy how far London is in advance of the pro- vinces, for whereas in England and Wales at the time of the 1901 census 67.52 per cent of boy.s and 39.54 per cent of girls between 14 and 15 years of age were at work, in London the figures were 60.13 P^r cent of boys and 33.02 per cent of girls employed. The age of compulsory school attendance in London is 14 and it is lower in most parts of the country, so that if the figures of children below 14 are taken the num- bers are still more favourable to London. If we take boys between 10 and 15 years of age and compare London directly with some of the northern manufacturing towns we find that in 1 90 1 London showed 15 per cent employed, whereas the figures were in Blackburn 41.2 per cent, Bolton 39.4 per cent, Burn- ley 42.9 per cent, Oldham 38.2 per cent, Bradford 38.5 per cent, and Halifax 41.6 per cent. The above facts relating to the industrial north, with its highly organized trades and with better wages, show that it is not always due to the needs of the parents that boys are driven to work at an early age. There is, however, no doubt about the pressure of the growing family in the case of the labourer and especially the casual labourer. 58 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS Still it is important to bring home to the working classes that this child labour is bad for the adult workmen in many ways. Boys actually displace men from light machine work ; they tend to depress men's wages in so far as they compete with them ; by supplementing the family income they obscure the fact that wages of the adult workers are insufficient ; while by the deterioration of the boys themselves by uneducative work the capacity of the wage earners of the future is lowered and when the boys become adults they will themselves not be fit to earn the higher wage they will need properly to support their families. Boy labour may be a serious loss to the community if it de- stroys the value of the men. At the same time the employer of cheap boy labour takes an unfair profit, for when, as Mr. Sidney Webb says, " he gets his work done by boys and girls who live with their parents . . . he is clearly receiving a subsidy or bounty " ; and again, " if the employers can get the work done by parasitic labour they will have so much the less inducement to devise means of performing the same service with the aid of machinery and steam power ".^ Clearly we must check this exploiting of boy labour. It is in the true interest both of the employer who wants a better man and of the workman who wants better wages that this use of boys should be stopped if they are deteriorated. Generations of highly skilled craftsmen are being succeeded by generations incapable of anything but the commonest routine labour. As long ago as 1892, Lord James in giving his award in the boot trade dispute said : "an employer carrying on his factory entirely by boy labour and yet giving the boys no educational training, is therefore enjoying a positive subsidy in aid of just that form of industrial organization which is calculated in the long-run to be most injurious to the community ".^ The general public have not yet grasped the change of cir- cumstances which has resulted from the industrial development of the last century. Under the old conditions boys entered ' " Industrial Democracy," pp. 749, 754. ' Ibid., p. 485. BOY LABOUR 59 trades as apprentices and were continuing under discipline and were being further educated. Now the need for a long period of apprenticeship to acquire manual skill and to master the principles of a trade has passed away. Machines have largely taken the place of human hands. A number of separate machine processes have been introduced for the manufacture of the different parts of each article. The workman does not himself make the article, he feeds the machine and has become its attendant. Boy workers under modern conditions are learning little or nothing of educational value, and they are no longer under the discipline of the apprenticeship system. They are employed because with the growth of machinery there are a number of minor and unskilled subsidiary employments. Again machinery undoubtedly displaces labour. A machine worked by one man may produce more than ten men could do by manual labour. With the growth of machinery there has been a great shifting of the proportion of men employed in productive and distributive work. The output of a larger amount of material by machinery has led to a very large rela- tive increase in the men employed in transport and other forms of distribution. Hence an increasing army of van boys, messengers, and shop boys forms a new feature in our industrial system. These boys are learning no trade, and are under far different conditions from those enjoyed by apprentices. There has been a great loss of discipline and of interest in the work, and there are no future prospects. Hence the admitted instability of the boys who light-heartedly throw up jobi after job. Here, for example, is the case from the Liverpool Distress Committee's register of a man who has, between 13 and 27 years of age, been in nineteen different jobs and has now become one of the unemployed. When he left school at 13 he started minding the door at a pawnshop, but after only three weeks of this job he threw it up and went to the docks, where he got casual work. After a year he made an attempt to get a regular 6o UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS job, delivering bread for a baker at a wage of 5s. a week for about nine months. But the new overhead railway attracted him one day while on his rounds, and he took a trip on it instead of completing his delivery to time, and was consequently discharged by his employer. He next tried six months as an errand boy for an ironmonger, but he then fancied a change of scene and took a place at 8s. a week with a provision dealer at Chester which he kept for six months. He then had a spell of domestic service for six months, but his employer went to India, so he took casual work for a year cleaning boots, knives, etc., at two schools and a private house, for which he got 3s. 6d. a week from each. For some reason after a year he gave these jobs up and went to another baker, where he got a wage of 8s. a week. After nine months of this he heard of the death of a brother in Liverpool so he threw up his work and went home. He was now 18 years old and so thought he would try man's work, and went to an iron-foundry but found the work too heavy, and after nine months went back to Chester, where he became a porter in a large drapery establishment. He left this place after a year's work for reasons which he now forgets, and having now reached the age of 20, and being suitable for no job in particular, he took a turn at the militia and went through his period of training. After this was over he went back to Liver- pool and worked as a labourer at a sheet-metal worker's. He was now earning i8s. a week, and stayed two whole years at this place. Then the 3rd Cheshire went out to serve in South Africa and he went out for active service, but was invalided home after nine months and discharged six months later. He took to casual labour at the docks for six months, then became a fitter's labourer, working for the Mersey Dock and Harbour Board for nine months, took another spell of casual labour for seven months, re-entered the Board's service in his old capa- city for another year, was then discharged and has since done casual dock work, and at the age of 27 is one of the problems of the Distress Committee. In the case of another young man, now aged 20, it is said that there is nothing the matter with him except that he was a " spoiled BOY LABOUR 6i child ". His father, a saddler, placed him in a shop as errand boy when he left school at 13^ years of age. In six and a half years he has contrived to take work under twenty-two differ- ent employers, including various shopkeepers, a tobacco factory, and a mineral water company. He has now become a bath attendant and may settle down as a municipal employee. He could give no reason beyond desire for change for his great variety of experience. In yet another instance a lad had been in thirty-eight differ- ent jobs between 14 and 17 years of age. He had been an errand boy, a house boy in place after place, sometimes only stopping a week. His longest job between those years had been for six months, but at 1 7 he took a porter's place which he has kept for nearly a year. The above are of course extreme cases, but they illustrate with what ease a lad may drift complacently from place to place, learning nothing and only unfitting himself for steady work. In most cases, of course, a boy leaves a job to " better himself," which means that he hopes to earn an extra shilling a week by taking a new unskilled job. No statistics have been published as to the average time spent by boys in their several jobs. Some boys' biographies which were collected for the Poor Law Commission have been re-examined, and taking 350 boys who began their career in factory work it appears that between the time of leaving school and reaching 19 years of age the boys have been in three jobs on the average. The average duration of their jobs in a factory seems to be about twenty-one months in London, two years in the larger manu- facturing towns, e.g. Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Brad- ford, Sheffield, Halifax and Leicester, and in ports like Liverpool, Bristol and Glasgow, and in some of the smaller provincial towns the average seems to be under a year and a quarter. If boys leave the factories for other work they seem to do so after a couple of years' trial. In the provinces about 43 per cent were found to leave their first job between the ages of 13 and 15, and in London about 26 per cent do so. The London boys leave school as a rule later than provincial boys. 62 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS London boys seem hardly ever to enter skilled trades after beginning in factories. In the provinces they sometimes drift out early enough to be apprenticed to trades, but the number who do so is very small. Of those who stay in the factories for more than a year none seem to enter skilled trades. The reasons given for leaving are various, but the bulk of the boys either give " slackness of trade," which means they were discharged, or say that they wanted " to better themselves," i.e. get higher wages. In London 40 per cent gave the former reason and 32 per cent the latter, whereas in the large provincial manufacturing towns those who are discharged for " slackness " are 30 per cent and those who leave " to better themselves " 49 per cent. It does not follow that this means that slackness of trade is more in evidence in London. It may be the case, but it may only be that the employers displace boys more readily when they get older to take on younger ones. In the great manufacturing towns it is natural that the boys who leave work in one factory should seek it in another. Thus in these towns 70 per cent of the boys remain in factory work whereas in London only 34 per cent remain and 30 per cent become labourers, while in the towns grouped with and includ- ing Liverpool, Glasgow and Bristol only 16 per cent remain in factories and as many as 44 per cent become labourers. It is clear, therefore, a very large number who begin in factories as boys find no places in them when they grow up and so swell the army of general labourers who form the class from which the casual, the under-employed and unemployed are drawn. It is not necessary here to point out the trades or the par- ticular kind of factories in which the boys have no place as adults. Some trades are of course much worse in this respect, and in some factories boy labour is more obviously exploited than in others. The trade unions would be well qualified to discover the places in which there was no attempt made to absorb the boys who are used for light machine processes or other unskilled work. Unfortunately in some trades the men like to have boys to wait on them. Boy labour is exploited in some even of the skilled and BOY LABOUR 63 semi-skilled trades. Here is the case of a young man who is apparently "too old at 20," a youth on the Bethnal Green Distress Register who gives his trade as a polisher. He be- gan work as a milk boy at 11 and left school at 13. He was an errand boy for a year and then tried factory work for three months, but made an attempt to get some definite instruction and was taken on as a learner by a French-polishing firm. Unfortunately after he had been there a year the firm became bankrupt. He had some knowledge of the work and took jobs with other firms in his trade. He had three months with one at los. a week; four months with another at iis. ; then a few months with a third at his old wage of los. There were of course periods of unemployment between these jobs but when he was over 16 he managed to get a job at metal polishing at 17s. a week and stayed with this firm for two and a quarter years. Then he asked for higher wages and a younger man was engaged. He got similar work a little later with an- other firm at the same wage and stayed there for a year, but then, being about 20, he was again displaced for a younger man. He thus became one of the unemployed, and must ap- parently not hope with his small skill for a place with man's wage while boy labour is to be obtained. If we turn from the productive to the distributing firms we find that in the same way boy labour is used and the boys are displaced by their juniors when they begin to grow up. Thus there were a number of van boys whose biographies were ob- tained for the Poor Law Commission and the papers of some 200 of them have been re-examined. The van boys seem to keep their jobs on the vans for about eighteen months. In the provinces they seem to leave van work altogether after their first job and generally remain at the work a shorter time than their confreres in London. Some 67 per cent changed to other work between 13 and 15 years of age. In the large manufacturing towns about 41 per cent entered factories and 2 1 per cent became labourers, and of those who left the van work within the first year some 18 per cent found their way into skilled trades, but none did so who 64 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS remained as van boys for more than a year. In London 19 per cent entered factories and 40 per cent became labourers, and only 5 per cent entered skilled trades, but none did so who remained for more than a year as van boys. Comparatively few seem to become carmen, and they cannot be said to be learning much that is of value to them in their future life. Still it is probably a healthier though rougher life than that of the factory for a year or two, and though the hours are generally very long the work is not very fatiguing. In the case of messengers, a number of boys' biographies have been re-examined, and it appears that in London in the four or five years after leaving school these boys change their jobs on the average four times, and that their stay in each job is on the average less than fourteen months. In the provinces their average stay is longer (sixteen months), and they change their places less than four times on the average. There are two ways in which the amount of boy labour can be diminished, by the State, and by the pressure of the trade unions. The State can raise the age of compulsory school attendance and thereby cut off altogether the supply of very young children. If the age were raised to 15^ there would be an immediate relief of the labour market, for the census of 1901 showed that under that age as many as 365,205 boys were employed, of whom 138,130 were under 14. The trade unions can make arrangements with employers' associations to limit the number of boys and girls employed in the various trades. But the limitation of numbers in the various forms of industry is the more difficult because it is im- possible to forecast the number of adults that will be wanted in each branch in the future. As new machinery limits the hands required in the factories the needs of the various trades become more and more incalculable. Still the trade unions should give very great attention to the whole question. There are processes now carried on by juvenile labour which ought to be in the hands of men. Boy labour though cheap is careless ' Probably exceptional treatment is desirable in agricultural districts. BOY LABOUR 65 and wasteful, at any rate at first, and even when boys have be- come thoroughly accustomed to routine work they have not the same perseverance as men. Again though an increase of the employment of women is generally undesirable, girls mature more quickly than boys, and it might be less harmful to use girls on very light machine work where men cannot be economi- cally employed. Since a considerable proportion of girls look forward to marriage when they become adults, the proportion to be absorbed in industry is smaller and therefore some trades which offer only a few openings for adults are satisfactory for girls though they would be unsatisfactory for boys. The trade unions must look at the question from all sides. They have from time to time tried to restrict the number of apprentices in various trades, but the result has not always been happy. Boys have been refused apprenticeship but have too often been allowed to enter the trade to work some easy machine. Then the trade suffers much more severely, for not only is cheap labour competing with the men, but the adult workers of the future will not be recruited from properly instructed youths. Apprenticeship in London has almost become obsolete. A few years ago it was found that in forty-one typical firms in the building trades having 12,000 employes there were only eighty apprentices and 143 learners instead of the proper proportion which would be 1,600. The skilled man will cease to be if, while apprenticeship disappears, unskilled boy labour grows so that it becomes true, as Mr. Charles Booth said, that " in the docks alone does the Londoner hold his o^vn ". It is perhaps necessary to say here that it is not suggested that it is possible to make all boys skilled workmen, at any rate in the old sense of the word. Apprenticeship is dying in the great majority of trades because under modern conditions the old highly trained all round skilled man is no longer so much needed. Machinery with its process work has superseded him. When it is asserted that it is a bad thing that boys are put into unskilled occupations which lead them nowhere, we mean that certain occupations are wholly uneducative and ought not to be 5 66 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS entered into by boys at the age when they need to continue their education and develop their capacities. The skilled man of the present day is the intelligent and adaptable man. Boy labour must be diminished if it destroys the boy. If he is employed in unskilled work it should be for part time and in combination with continued education, for though he will no longer need, perhaps, the same kind of manual skill as of old, he will very much need intelligence and character. Even in the most unskilled occupation the good man does it better and, therefore, more economically. A new branch of labour exchange work is now being con- sidered for boys and girls leaving school. The exchange for adults can attempt to decasualize labour and to make it easier for the man to find work. If it fulfils its functions with regard to adults it will help the trade unions to a better organisation of the work in each trade. The problem for children is more difficult, and here also the co-operation of the unions is neces- sary. It is essential that the future of the child should be con- sidered. It is not enough to find a job for a child, it must be a job for which he is fitted by character and capacity and, further than that, one which contains prospects of permanence. It must be a training for the future and not a job which uses up the child and then throws him on the scrap-heap. It is essential that the exchange should make inquiries as to the nature of the job and the prospects of the trade. This is a func- tion outside the ordinary work of the exchange. The future pro- spects of the child can be best considered in connexion with the trade as a whole as known to the employers and the union of workmen. The character of particular shops must be inquired into and the chance of future absorption in industry must be very carefully weighed. Either there should be some prospect of work within the shop or the industry in which the boy is placed, or if this is impossible it must be arranged that a chance of self-improvement is given to the boy, that the hours are not too long and that facilities are given for further education. The establishment of juvenile exchanges may be productive BOY LABOUR 67 of great harm if they are worked merely on the principle of filling such places as are offered by employers with children who may happen to be leaving school at the moment. The general regulations of the Board of Trade on labour exchanges lay down (IV, I) that "the officer in charge of a labour exchange . . . shall undertake no responsibility with regard to wages or other conditions beyond supplying the employer or applicant, .as the case maybe, with any information in his possession as to the rate of wages desired or offered ". In the special rules for juvenile exchanges the board propose to establish special advisory committees who " may take steps, either by themselves or in co-operation with any other bodies or persons, to give information, advice and assistance to boys and girls and their parents with respect to the choice of em- ployment and other matters bearing thereon. Provided that the Board of Trade and the officer in charge of a labour exchange shall undertake no responsibility with regard to any advice or assistance so given." The Board of Education (circular 743) advise Local Educa- tion Authorities to consider the question, and say they " will doubtless realize the opportunities which the labour exchanges present to boys and girls leaving school of obtaining occupa- tions which are suited to their capacities, and which afford pros- pects not merely of immediate wages but also of useful industrial training and permanent employment ". On the advisor)' committees will depend the success of the juvenile bureaux. It is essential that they should be carefully selected in co-operation with or by the Local Education Au- thorities and they should be empowered to make the necessary inquiries, and given a sufficient and well-qualified staff to make such inquiries under their direction. They must be able to negotiate with employers as to the conditions under which trades can be taught and they must keep some supervision over the boys while at work, as is now done by the skilled employment committees. Only so can juvenile labour be properly regulated in connexion with the Government exchanges. 5* CHAPTER VII. THE EDUCATION OF THE WORKMAN. Dr. William Garnett found a short time ago in a certain scientific institution that the boiler-man had been unable to get the injector to deliver the feed water. He consulted an as- sistant, who advised him to apply to the head of the engineering department. His answer was : " If I goes to he, he will want to explain the blooming thing. Now I'se paid to work this 'ere boiler, I'se not paid to understand it." This story illustrates the attitude of the unintelligent rule-of- thumb workman. The trade unions have never succeeded to the work of the old trade guilds, which existed not only to protect their craft but to see that it was properly taught. The attitude of the workman towards technical education has been too often hostile. He fears the overcrowding of his trade and ignores the necessity of making it as sound and scientific as possible. If, however, the workman has seen no practical use in education, and has been apt to oppose any developments which tend to trade instruction, the attitude of the bulk of the employers has been equally unsatisfactory. Partly because elementary education has seemed unpractical in its results they often condemn education. They have ceased to expect intelligence in their men ; yet they should be aware that an intelligent workman can save for them enormously. Dr. Garnett tells another story to illustrate how theory is ignored for rule-of-thumb rnethods by the employers. In one of the best engineering shops in the Midlands he found the managing director, the shop foremen in the iron and brass 68 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORKMAN 69 shops and the workmen themselves all unable to give in figures even the slightest approximation to the number of strokes per minute made by some of their most important machines. In fact the foremen were of opinion that the machines cut wrought iron and gun metal at the same speed, and were surprised when he suggested that the machines in the brass shop were probably running two and a half times as fast as those in the iron shop. For the first time probably in the history of the works the machines were timed and his view vindicated. He asked the managing director how they arranged matters when a new machine was erected, if they had not the slightest idea of the speed at which it should be running. The reply was that they tried one pulley after another until they got the right speed — a course which involved an amount of time, trouble and expense which could have been avoided altogether if the pulleys had been made of the right size to begin with. Yet it is obvious to anyone that it is the countries in which education is at a high level which are going ahead in commerce. Years ago ^ it was pointed out that the backwardness of Russia was due to the ignorance and inefficiency of the workmen, and that " in the mills of Vladimir, though very simple material is m_anufactured, one workman was employed to "8 of a loom and the cost of supervision and management was very much higher than in England, while in Lancashire the average was said to be one man to 2 '8 looms, and in the case of the very simplest manufacture even one to three or four looms ". We are ready to agree that uneducated Russia is behind us, and we shall gradually, no doubt, become fully alive to the fact that in Germany, Austria and the United States their great pro- gress is due to their greater attention to education, and that we must set our own house in order if we are not to be outstripped in the race. In America, we are told, men are encouraged to study ^" Report of the U.S.A. Commissioner of Education," iSgg-igoo, vol. i. p. 754. This is an old report and four-loom weavers are now quite common in Lancashire. 70 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS machinery, and any invention they may make is quickly taken advantage of. In England the men are too often repressed. Here, for example, is an instance which could probably be frequently paralleled. A yard foreman who had charge of a punching machine called attention to a mistake which had been made in the drawing office and pointed out that the riveting would have less than half the strength required. By doing this, he prevented the waste of a considerable amount of material, but he was told not to concern himself with the accuracy or in- accuracy of the drawing office, but to mind his own business. As Mr. Ben Tillett said not long ago, at a Mansion House con- ference : " If you go to America you will find the average manager of a big works very glad to get a hint or suggestion of improvement from his workmen. But if a workman here goes to his foreman with an invention he is more likely to get the sack than anything else." It is too true that in England technical knowledge is not considered necessary for the masters or managers — the English employer is apt to scorn what is known in America as the " College Man " who is there used to the full in industry. The English employer feels educated workmen still more un- necessary. A wholly stupid idea is fixed in the heads of many employers that his workmen must be kept down lest they be- come too " independent ". The truth of course is that a good man is worth high wages and that the skilled and intelligent workman gives thoroughly good value. If he is not encouraged and if he gets no adequate reward he certainly will not work up to his best level. The highly paid workmen are the solid ele- ments of the population and the badly paid and ignorant are a danger to the State. It is not the intelligent but the stupid operative who is the tool of the revolutionary demagogue. If the masters try to keep down the men it is small wonder if the men " ca' canny " and refuse to put out their best efforts. Hence we have the frequent statement that the men dis- courage good work. As an instance of this in a certain large London shop on several occasions it appears that as soon as THE EDUCATION OF THE WORKMAN 71 certain very skilled men at the lathe began to turn particular objects, in this instance chessmen, with such rapidity that their wages (piece work) increased by a few shillings a week, the em- ployer reduced the price paid per dozen sets. The less quick workmen found their wages diminishing below the old level, and as a matter of fellow-feeling for their mates some of the quicker workmen reduced their output when a new reduction was mooted and then the union successfully opposed the further reduction. The employer simply seems to have thought that some of his men were earning too much ! Clearly he loses by repressing his best men as well as by the actual diminution in output. Those who study the question know that it is the best educated nations which are winning in the world's markets and that the cost of production depends more on the intelli- gence of the managers and operatives than on the amount of wages paid. In fact the nations which pay high wages win, and especially in those industries in which high wages are paid. It will be argued that we already spend enormous sums on elementary education. It is quite true that we do so and there is little doubt that the self-respect and standard of living of the working classes have considerably increased in the last quarter of a century. At the same time our elementary educa- tion has not been altogether successful in its results, and we have failed to make it practical or to crown it with suitable technical training afterwards. Our schools, hampered by the old system of payment by re- sults, have tended to become too unpractical. Teachers have aimed at making the children memorize certain facts of arith- metic, spelling or geography, and generally the facts memorized are comparatively unimportant and of no use in after-life. Children have not been taught in school to apply their know- ledge to the practical problems of life before them. To take an example, they have learned arithmetical rules, and problems have been invented to illustrate the rules instead of some actual problems before them being taken and the rules applied 7 2 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS to work them out. Attempts made at concrete illustrations in the kindergarten stage are not continued in the succeeding classes when abstract arithmetic is introduced as a new subject divorced from reality. It would be both more educational and more interesting to find the areas of sheets of paper or of the tops of the desks as examples of multiplication than to multiply abstract numbers. Even if illustrations are now being increasingly provided in the schools to which the theoretical principles the children learn can be applied, this is not the same thing as taking some practical problem which lies before them and evolving the principles by which the problem can be solved. To-day boys frequently leave school with the firm conviction that what they have learned has no relation to their actual life, and when they go to the workshop their new experiences go into another compartment of their minds and there is no com- munication between the two parts. Even now that manual training and some sort of elementary science have been intro- duced into the schools they are taken more or less as special subjects and not dovetailed into the curriculum. To make our elementary education more practical we need a revolution in methods of teaching. For this we want differ- ently trained teachers. The time is now ripe for the introduc- tion of real training in method into the training colleges. They have been in the past a special type of secondary schools giving instruction to students of a single type who as pupil teachers have had little time for study, and have been mainly acquiring some experience in managing classes. Now that the pupil teacher is vanishing and the new training college student will be a person with a wider and sounder secondary education be- fore coming to college, the business of the colleges will be not to impart knowledge of facts but of principles of instruction and of methods of applying them so that the children may learn in the best way. While we must begin the education of the workman in the elementary schools and endeavour to make the instruction more practical, we do not want children aged 12 to specialize THE EDUCATION OF THE WORKMAN 73 for their future trades, but we do want to develop intelligence which can be applied to the problems which will be before them in actual life. Now the workmen have undoubtedly been anxious to have their children educated, but they have not considered education as having any direct bearing on their life work. They have been more anxious to have a showy kind of education than a practical one. The schools that are popular are too often those e.g. where a little smattering of French is taught. The trade unions have not yet given sufficient atten- tion to the kind of education which will really be useful. They have even resented attempts at practical teaching, as if it was the intention to give some lower form of instruction to their children. They opposed at first the introduction of manual training, of cookery and of laundrywork. Gradually all classes of the community are seeing the advantage of practical education. The evidence before the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education " suggested the view that it is educa- tionally more important to secure that the future clerk shall be able to use his hands as well as a pen ". ^ A representative of the Scotch Education Department was decidedly of this opinion. " You produce a better clerk," he said, " if the boy takes an in- dustrial rather than a commercial course." All the engineering witnesses supported this view. "I think," said one, "it is very much more important to teach a man who goes into commercial life something mechanical." This has long been the view of those who advocated manual training not as the beginning of trade teaching but as the proper way of " teaching through doing ". The trade union opposition to these particular aspects of education has to a large extent died away, and as the men grow in self-respect and independence of character they will more and more see the dignity of any form of labour. The admira- tion of the black coat is not so much in evidence nowadays. But the trade union leaders have still prejudices to overcome. ^ Report, p. 20, 74 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS They luiisl support experiments in practical education whole- heartedly. It is most unfortunate for example that the Com- positors Union should have quite recently attacked a suggestion of the London County Council that the children in a Clerken- well school should be taught their spelling and composition by means of type-setting. As was said above, there can be no specialization in trade teaching in the elementary school ; this, like French and Latin, can well be left for later years ; what is needed is every kind of general training, manual and mental, which will fit the child for whatever later development is suit- able for his capacity — in fine, an education which will enable the child in the often misquoted words of the Church Catechism to do his " duty in that state of life into which it shall please God to call him" — whatever that calling may be. A great deal too much attention has been given to the so- called ladder to the universities. Every one now agrees that for the child of exceptional brain power that ladder should be set up. Local education authorities have established scholar- ship schemes throughout the country to enable children of the working classes to attain the highest education in their power. It is quite easy, however, to overdo scholarships to secondary schools. Evidence is not wanting that many children who might have been first-rate mechanics or engineers have been wasted and turned into very second-rate clerks. Universities are now taking in higher technical teaching and the ladder may well be sometimes through the technical schools as well as the old literary secondary schools. There is, however, a step which must shortly be taken which is distinct from a mere revision of the curriculum. The child who leaves school the day he reaches 14 too often leaves off his education just at the moment when his ripening intelligence makes its continuance most necessary. It has already been pointed out how much the labour market would be relieved by raising the age of compulsory edu- cation to 15. Educationally it is still more desirable. We largely waste the millions spent on the schools by allowing the THE EDUCATION OF THE WORKMAN 75 children to leave just at the moment that they are beginning to profit. The London Education Committee recently advocated the extension of the age to 15, and in support of their view said that the children " would receive an extra year's instruction at the time they are most apt to learn ; they would be kept for another year under discipline just at the period when it is easiest to influence permanently the development of character ; they would escape a year of aimless drifting from occupation to occupation ; and lastly when called on to choose a profession they will have a year's extra experience to help them in making a wise choice ". The attitude of the trade union representatives to this sugges- tion has been thoroughly favourable. Their Congress has passed resolutions in favour of extending the age to 15 or even 16. The Federation reports have several times advocated the pro- posal. The rank and file have not yet, however, shown any strong desire for the change. The vote of the cotton operatives against the abolition of half-time has already been alluded to. Since parents with very low wages often feel the pinch very severely when the eldest of the family reaches 14, it might be necessary at first to allow exemptions freely for such cases. Previous extensions of the age within the legal limit have, how- ever, been effected by local bye-laws without any difficulty by local authorities, and with the cordial support of the trade-union leaders the further extension should be possible in the very near future, and the Government should be willing to make the necessary enactments and provide the necessary funds. Such a reform would be far more effective, and incomparably less subversive of industry than the proposal for compulsory even- ing schools. It is impossible to compel attendance at even- ing classes while the hours of labour are so long. Unless part time exemption from work is insisted on, to compel children to attend evening schools is both cruel and useless. The boys are too tired for any sound mental work in the evening. This is the experience of all evening-class teachers and has even been 76 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS shown by carefully devised tests. Among others, Mr. Winch, a London County Council inspector, has been examining classes and testing students, and he found, for example, that in a class of telegraph boys at an evening school even in the second half- hour they were incapable of the same mental effort and their work was 28 per cent worse than in the previous half-hour. Exceptionally strong boys and those who are lucky enough to work shorter hours may and do get benefit from evening classes, but even they must suffer. Mr. Sidney Webb, speaking last year on the subject to the Association of Technical Institutions, strongly opposed com- pulsory evening schools, and said : " I might probably have been an inch taller and much better developed physically if I had not attended evening classes in my youth when I ought to have been playing cricket or something like it ". To the ordinary boy, after a long day's work any really sus- tained mental effort in the evening is impossible. After a school day of five and a half hours, with a Saturday holiday, the boy of 14 is suddenly plunged into a working day of nine or ten hours. It would dislocate industry if we suddenly imposed compul- sory part-time exemption, but it would be quite easy to raise the school age to 15, and the extra year of full-time instruction would be incomparably more effective. At a later stage part-time classes may be arranged, and for boys between 15 and 18 could be definitely connected with the trades in which they are engaged. This brings us to the consideration of definite trade in- struction. Trade unionists and employers are both aware that real train- ing in the workshops is becoming increasingly difficult — almost impossible in large shops in the great towns — under modern con- ditions of industry. Mr. Gossip, speaking at the Mansion House recently, as a trade-union representative of the furniture trades, said : "I fully agree as to the absolute necessity at the pre- sent time for the better training of our boys. If there is not some THE EDUCATION OF THE WORKMAN 77 better training given, the time will very soon come when there will be no very highly skilled workmen left in the country. . . . Every one who has been a workman knows perfectly well that there is little or no opportunity at the present time of lads learning their trade." As the head of a large printing firm, Mr. Hazell confirmed this view, saying that though apprentice- ship still exists in the printing trade it is very uncertain what kind of teaching a young apprentice would get. " In one de- partment the foreman may have great skill and intelligence and do his best to give the boys an opportunity of learning a great deal. . . . But separated only by a partition there may be an- other department . . . where the foreman is of that tempera- ment that the boys learn very little indeed." Clearly even if the age of school attendance is raised to 15 further trade and specialized education is necessary. Both employers and workmen recognize the need, and there is no reason why the trade unions and employers' associations should not arrange a part-time system of trade school education and workshop practice. A beginning has been made in many parts of England already. In London representatives of masters and men sit together on the advisory > committees of the various trade schools which have been opened. Employers have given time off so that their apprentices can attend. Thus, to quote some instances, sixty silversmithing apprentices attend the Central School of Arts and Crafts, leaving work at 5 p.m. instead of 7 p.m. on two afternoons a week. A number of young persons from the furnishing trades attend on two afternoons at the Shoreditch In- stitute and the authorities of the Woolwich Arsenal send boys on two half-days a week to the Woolwich Polytechnic. In the Great Western Railway \\'orks at Swindon classes are held in the evening, but if the apprentices attend regularly three evenings a week their absence from the factory before 9 o'clock on the three mornings immediately before or immedi- ately after the classes is allowed. The factory work begins at 6 a.m. and breakfast is from 8. 1 5 to 9 a.m. The actual working 78 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS time excused is, therefore, six and three-quarter hours per week which is slightly in excess of the average time put in at the evening school. In other cases the " sandwich " system has been adopted with excellent results. In the engineering trade in some work- shops the months from April to October are spent at the works and the winter months are spent in the Polytechnic or Day Trade School. This gives full time in the school in the months when schools are in session and allows a continuous period of workshop practice. These are only some instances of what is already being done in the direction of part-time trade teaching, but it must be ad- mitted that the principle is not as yet very widely extended. Before it can win general acceptance there must be a general agreement on the need of trade teaching and of the revision of apprenticeship conditions. Trade unionists feel that under present circumstances the apprentices are bound for a longer period than is necessary for the actual teaching they get and that the employers use them as cheap labour for the last years of their time. Employers and men must come to an agreement to shorten terms of apprenticeships for lads who become skilled in techni- cal schools and to give part time during working hours for further technical classes. The trade unions have by no means yet advanced to a full understanding of the needs of technical instruction. The work- men must give to the future of trade education the same common sense and shrewd thought that they give to other trade matters. Lads should be encouraged to go to the day trade-schools up to i6, and then afterwards to continue in part-time classes. But the workmen have not yet cordially ac- cepted the idea. There was considerable opposition on the part of the Plumbers' Union to the classes in the Brixton School of Build- ing, although a number of trade representatives who went over the school drew up a very laudatory report of its work. THE EDUCATION OF THE WORKMAN 79 Only a few months ago the Trade Journal of the Jewellers and Silversmiths had some paragraphs on the subject. The editor — himself a trade unionist — wrote that " in certain firms the workmen endeavour to prevent lads, however competent, entering the establishment as apprentices or learners" after a course of instruction at the Central School of Arts and Crafts. " No wonder we complain of foreign competition when by our narrowness we refuse to take the best we can find into our crafts." "The London County Council, acting in the best interests of the community, have endeavoured to do what the failure of the apprenticeship system has made essential "... "if the trade unions are going to be ridiculously narrow, and if employers are going to sit down calmly to this condition of affairs, I shall not be surprised if . . . the shrewder nations cut us out." It is to be hoped that the trade-schools which are now con fined to a few highly skilled occupations will be widely extended, for continued education is necessary even for those engaged in the semi-skilled and unskilled occupations. If employers and trade unions can by mutual agreement make the necessary arrangement, the best of all progress, that springing from the free will of the parties, will take place, but it is to be noted that our continental rivals have made a system of part-time continuation schools compulsory in many of the large industrial towns. In Austria-Hungary, for example, classes are held on week-days in the afternoon and evening not later than from 7 to 8 o'clock and on Sundays, and the employers are bound to allow the necessary time off and to compel their appren- tices to attend ^ This applies to lads up to 18 years of age, who must attend the general industrial schools or preparatory classes, or the special trade classes which are established if a sufficient number of pupils are available. In German towns much is being done in the way of contin- uation schools. Those for boys tend to be specialized in the various trades, but general classes exist, and besides reading, ^ For details see a paper by Mr. James Baker, published in " Education," II February, 1910. 8o UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS composition and arithmetic, lessons are given on social legisla- tion and on the rights and duties of the lads as members of the community. Drawing is very largely taught both as general hand and eye training and as bearing specifically on the several trades. The time set aside for these classes varies in different localities. It is not uncommon for factory hands to leave the mills to attend classes between 5 and 7 or 8 p.m. on certain afternoons in the week. In Bavaria the time devoted to the classes is about nine hours a week. More instruction is given in the dull season than in the busy time of the year. For ex- ample, builders and decorators in Munich receive twelve hours instruction, i.e. from 5 to 7 p.m., every week day from 15 Oc- tober to 15 March. Employers are compelled to give time off by law, but they are said to be favourable to the schools, and sometimes even build their own. The attendance of the lads is sometimes compulsory to the end of the eighteenth year, but in some of the textile towns in Germany it is only up to the end of the sixteenth and seventeenth years. In the main, compulsory attendance is a matter of local option, but the schools are becoming increasingly popular, both with employers and work-people. At our own Trade Union Congresses similar action is advo- cated, but the trade unionists must individually and collectively push the principles in their several trades as well as press for legislative action. It would surely be better to make the ar- rangements by voluntary agreement. The employers would fall into line if the workmen were keenly in favour.^ Com- pulsion is not a pleasant word to English ears, especially when applied to adults, or at any rate young men of 18 who are to be sent to school. ' The London Chamber of Commerce issued a circular to the members on June 15, 19 10, urging upon them the following resolution, " That em- ployers of labour be recommended, by reducing the present hours of work or otherwise, to give such facilities as may be possible consistently with the requirements of their business to enable boys and youths to obtain technical instruction ". THE EDUCATION OF THE WORKMAN 8i There is a further course of education which might well be considered for lads between i8 and 21. This is precisely the age when at present there is a terrible break in industrial life. The lad is nearly fully grown and feels that his value is ap- proaching that of an adult and he begins to want man's wages. At this period loss of one job means such difificulty in getting another that many youths experience the evils of unemploy- ment for many months.^ This gap might be bridged by two years' military training. Such training might include technical instruction in the trade chosen by the lad or general education. It might well result in a very great improvement both in the physical standard and the steadiness of character of the young men of the nation. Both Dr. Shadwell, the author of " In- dustrial Efficiency," and Mr. Harbutt Dawson, two of the best informed of recent writers on German life, regard the period of military service as one of the most valuable parts of the education of the German. Their view has been endorsed by so well known a social worker as Mr. T. C. Horsfall, who after careful inquiry convinced himself that military training tends to give young men steadiness in their work. " German opinion," he says, " was general that military service improves physical health, increases strength and activity, gives training in orderliness and cleanliness, gives the power both to obey and to command, and in those and other ways gives the physi- cal, mental and moral preparation which makes it most easy to work steadily and intelligently." ^ ^ No statistics of the length of time boys are unemployed between jobs have been published. Such evidence as has been obtained would seem to show that it varies enormously in different trades and in different towns. In the big manufacturing centres of the cotton and wool trade there is little time lost during boyhood, but in London and the great distributing centres there are considerable spells of unemployment between 14 and 20. An examination of 300 biographies gives an average "out of work" in this period between eighteen months and two years. Boys whose start was bad and who kept their first job for less than a year have more than two years' unemployment out of the six; boys who keep their first jobs more than a year have on the average less than eighteen months' unemployment. -"Manchester Guardian," 24 May, IQ09. 6 82 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS Exemptions might of course be given for the eldest son it wanted to help to support the family, and a year might be ex- cused for those whose work is to be mainly brain work and who pass a stiff examination, or again for those engaged in highly skilled trades involving delicate manipulation, which might be lost by disuse. If general and special education were given during the period of service the years of training might greatly improve the intelligence and capacity as well as the physique both of the workman and the clerk. When they had finished their training they would be adults fit to take their permanent place in the ranks of industry. The census returns in 1901 showed that there were in England and Wales 320,465 lads between 18 and 19 and 312,063 between 19 and 20. If 500,000 were under training the relief to the labour market would be enormous, and they would be taken out of competition just when it is most difficult to fit them into the industrial machine. It must not be sup- posed that our present army training is advocated. In the conscript armies of the Continent the men are much more trained and much harder worked. In England in order to make voluntary enlistment attractive all sorts of inducements are held out, e.g. a month's furlough, nights out and frequent half-holi- days. The result is that in the line regiments our soldiers are apt to get lazy and incapable of steady work. It is even said that the Regulars grumble at having as hard work on manoeuvres as is cheerfully endured by the Territorials. The proper training of a citizen army need not consist in merely mechanical drill, and the present military training might well give place to a more scientific system, which encouraged instead of destroying ini- tiative and intelligence. We do not hear on the Continent as we do in England that a soldier becomes a machine while a sailor does not. The trade unions have not at present shown any sympathy with the idea of compulsory service, though it was interesting to read lately the pronouncement of the Social Democratic Federation in favour of a citizen army. THE EDUCATION OF THE WORKMAN 83 The colonial working men, who are politically more demo- cratic than the mass of the English, are rapidly becoming favourable to the idea, and there seems no reason why the trade unions at home should not carefully consider the question from the two points of view of educating the workman and of removing from the labour market semi-adult cheap labour. It may be said that the proposals in this chapter for dealing with unemployment through education all imply the with- drawal of workers from industrial productivity, and that a re- lief of the labour market which withdraws 300,000 boys under 15 and 500,000 young men between 18 and 20, as well as part time of those between 15 and 18, must mean a serious loss of national output.^ Such an argument ignores the fact that the productivity of any nation depends not on mere numbers working or the number of hours worked, but on the quality of the workers. If the productive capacity of the workmen is greatly increased there will be no loss to the nation. In any case, our most dangerous continental trade competitors do not fear such a loss, for they have organized their industry on this basis. If these proposals for the better education of the workman effect their object benefit should accrue both to individuals and to the nation. Better workmen would have an enhanced value to employers and command higher wages. With better workmen, steadier and more efficient, earning higher wages, most of our social problems would vanish. We should no longer have unhealthy and underfed children growing into puny men and women. What would be spent in education might well be saved in the Poor Law and in the relief of the un- employed. To sum up the proposals of this chapter it is believed that a better education would greatly increase the value of the workman, and that to achieve this object three lines of advance could be followed. The compulsory school age might be 1 It must not be forgotten that the English emigrants leaving our shores in 1907 numbered 140,979. 6* 84 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS raised to 15, a system of part-time exemption from labour for attendance at day continuation classes, whether technical for skilled trades or general for the larger number of workers, might be established with or without compulsion for the years from 15 to 18, and from 18 to 20 young men might be given a term of military training with which could be combined some further general or technical education. CONCLUSION. In this brief survey of the accepted remedies for unemploy- ment which now receive the approval of all students and most practical men, it has been urged that only with the co-opera- tion of the trade unions can any of the theoretical benefits be secured in practice. The decasualization of labour by engage- ment only through some definite and central organization ; the lessening of excessive fluctuation in the demand for labour by the extended use of short time ; the mitigation of the distress due to unemployment by the provision of out-of-work insurance pay ; the better education of the boys who are entering trades ; the reduction of boys employed in blind-alley occupations, all require the assistance of the trade-union organization and the support of trade-union opinion. Is the trade union fit to co-operate with the State and with the employer ? Does the existing management and policy of the unions inspire sutificient confidence to warrant their recognition by the State as the chief means of combating the disease of unemployment? On the whole, both the record and the present policy of the unions do justify the State in entrusting to them this great responsibility. If, however, the community is ready to assist the unions by supplementing their benefits, building and equipping labour exchanges for their use, further- ing the principle of collective bargaining and inviting their co-operation in the organization of education, the unions on their side must not abandon their sphere of industrial organiza- tion in which they are so well qualified to succeed in order to support a particular section of political opinion in the House 85 86 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS of Commons. If the agitation which has driven men like John Burns and Richard Bell, Hke Thomas Burt and Charles Fenwick out of the ranks of official labour representatives continues and the organizations are captured by Socialists and exploited for purely political ends, the further development of their industrial functions will be checked and any alliance with the State and with the employers' organizations for a common purpose will be- come impossible. But there is no reason to suppose that trade unionists are anxious to transform their organizations into in- struments for class warfare or to consign their individual politi- cal consciences into the keeping of one group of politicians. A great number, probably the majority, of the members of trade unions desire that the societies shall retain their present form and confine their activities to industrial matters. Trade unionism has passed its early fighting stage and is as much a part of normal industrial life as the limited company or the employers' association. The amount spent on strikers during the last ten years was only lo per cent of the total expenditure of the IOC principal unions, and the chief business of the leaders is not fomenting disputes but settling differences and allaying friction. The Osborn judgment has for the moment put an end to the corporate political action of unions. If instead of asking for the removal of that judgment, the spokesmen of unionism would demand the assistance of the Government in their real work the future of the trade unions would be assured. In the industrial sphere itself the policy of the unions must also be modified to suit their assured position. Many vexatious regulations which were adopted when working-class organiza- tions were engaged in a struggle for existence can and ought to be modified. If employers and workpeople co-operate as they should do in organizing short time during periods of de- pression, the unions ought readily to accept any arrangement of double shifts by which expensive machinery can be utilized fully in times of busy trade. If the State is to assist in prevent- ing the downfall of a man through unemployment and his con- sequent loss of skill, the trade unions must on their side attempt CONCLUSION 87 to raise the level of efficiency by encouraging technical educa- tion and setting a standard of good and rapid work. The charge against unions that they discourage the best men from utilizing their abilities to the full is not wholly unfounded. The employers, it is true, are themselves often to blame since they take advantage of the exceptional earnings of a specially gifted man to establish a case for a general reduction of rates. But when all allowance has been made the effect of trade union opinion, rather than trade union regulation, is to bring men to a common level, and it would be in the interest of all parties if the pressure of workshop opinion could be directed in favour of good work. The best interests of the workmen are served equally with those of the employer by encouraging the maxi- mum possible output from every individual. This ideal of efficiency must animate the trade unionist in all his regulations. In the past the rules about the employment of boys have been prompted chiefly by the desire to prevent the substitution of juvenile for adult labour. In the future these rules should have for their first object the thorough and careful training of the boy that he may be able to maintain the trade-union rate by the intrinsic value of his work. If trade unions thus range themselves on the side of indus- trial efficiency they can safely be utilized by the State as the chief instrument for combating unavoidable unemployment. The present organization of the skilled trades has brought order and stability into the chaotic relationship of masters and men. Its extension to unskilled trades with the assistance of State recognition will enlarge the area of true industrial co- operation and set society on a firm basis of organized and efficient labour. The working classes have a preponderance of electoral power. It is very necessary that there should be genuine working men in the House of Commons ; their first-hand knowledge of trade and social conditions is of inestimable value in Parliament ; but there may well be representatives of working-class opinion attached on Imperial and National 88 UNEMPLOYMENT AND TRADE UNIONS matters to either of the two great political parties. Socialism, too, should have its adherents represented at Westminster ; it is a school of political thought which has a right to find full expression. But trade unions, if they are to be co-extensive with the working classes, must find room for men of all creeds and schools of thought. The men must recognize that indus- trial organizations cannot safely or properly arrogate to them- selves separate political power, the employers and the public must shed the prejudices against organized labour which is the inheritance of an age that is past and of an economic theory that is finally discredited. INDEX. 55 59, manhood 65 65 78 58 • 55 • 55 56, 57 . 58 • 59 60, 61 61, 62 64 65 81 Apprenticeship — Almost obsolete in London Being superseded by machine processes Terms must be shortened and Technical Education in Trade Schools added ..... Boys — Displace their parents .... Are deteriorated by premature work . Are forced to work through poverty of parents In textile trades employed by workmen Exploited at expense of community Largely used in distribution Unstable in character Keep jobs for short periods Should remain longer at school No longer apprenticed to same extent Are much unemployed, especially when approaching Building trades — Not merely seasonal Special!}' prone to unemployment Not organized on basis of permanent employment Large surplus of labour in .... Unions too highly specialized .... Ca' canny — Sometimes due to masters lowering wages of good workmen Must be repressed by Trade Unions Casual employment — Due to excess of unskilled men 6 Must be stopped by Trade Unions ...... 7 And Labour Exchanges 27, 28 Wages too low and intermittent to enable casual labourers to form strong unions ........ 24 Depression — Cycles of, to be met by collective thrift 6 May be reduced by increase of scope of large businesses . . 43 Evils minimized by elasticity of hours of labour ... 45 Distributing trades — Increasing in proportion ........ 59 Unemployment in 48 89 90 INDEX Dock labour — Very casual and badly regulated 51 Earnings very fluctuating ........ 51 Weakness of unions 52 Education — Not properly valued by workmen .... 68 Or employers 70 Importance of, in increasing productivity recognized abroad . 69 Not practical 71 New methods of, needed ........ 72 Must not specialize too early ....... 73 Age of compulsory education should be raised • • • 75 Evening classes must be associated with shorter hours of labour 76 Workshop education diminishing ...... 77 Must be supplemented by trade schools ..... 77 Compulsory continuation schools abroad with " time ofi " from work ........... 79 Physical and technical, in connexion with compulsory military service 81 Identification papers — Used in Germany 25 Needed in England 26 Only industrial record necessary as an extension of system of Trade Union cards 27 Insurance against unemployment— Now effected by best Trade Unions 29 Universal compulsory scheme tried in Switzerland unsuccess- fully Difficulties of, owing to uneven distribution of risks Voluntary schemes of, in Switzerland and Germany State subsidies to Trade Unions . . . , Details of Danish scheme of ... . Difficulties of a separate State scheme Inadequacy of benefits under separate State scheme Labour colonies — Farms better than workhouse .... Low standard of work at . Labour Exchanges — Not liked by Trade Unions, as may degenerate labour bureaux .... Their true functions .... Work already done by many Trade Unions Should be subsidiary to unions And help to strengthen them . Statistics of Dangers of, for juvenile labour . Machinery — Displaces men ..... Increases boy labour .... Has altered proportion of distributors and producers Destroys teaching of apprentices 30,31 • 31 • 31 32, 33 35.36 • 37 • 39 . i8 . i8 nto cheap 23 21 22 22 28 24 25 66 46,59 • 59 • 59 65.77 INDEX 91 Military training — Might bridge gap between boy and adult .... Valuable for physical and moral development . Should be coupled with education ..... Would relieve labour market ...... Penal colonies — Difficult to commit men to Principle of, approved by Trade Unions .... Regulation of labour — Not sufficiently considered by State or employers Elasticity of hours of labour considered .... Hours must not be reduced so that wages become insufficient Can be effected by Trades Unions and Employers' Associations 47 Cannot be effected by shortening hours in, e.g. distributing trades 48 Relief works — Tried for 25 years past 11 Only suitable for unskilled labourers ...... 12 Unjust to ordinary workmen ....... 13 Uneconomical ......... 14 Not acceptable to Trade Unionists 15 Extension of, not likely to be successful ..... 16 Tend to create a class of inferior labour ..... 17 Failure of, acknowledged ........ 20 Schloss, Mr. F. D.— Re insurance against unemployment . . . 30, 31, 34, 36 State- Action now demanded for dealing with unemployment Must assist Trade Unions ...... Action through Local Government Board Dependence on, must not interfere with Unions Subsidies to Trade Unions in European countries „ ,, best scheme in Denmark . ,, ,, could be given in England A bad employer Must show more foresight in regulating work . Must raise age of school attendance .... Surplus — Of labour Of unskilled men leads to casual employment . Of labour in building trades ..... Tariff" Reform — Does not claim to remove unemployment .... 2 Trade- Cyclical contraction and expansion may be regulated by growth of larger businesses ........ 43 Trade Schools — Necessary in connexion with workshop practice ... 77 Trade Unions — Benefit of organization admitted ...... 9 Must be strengthened to solve unemployment problem . . 10 Condemn lazy men ......... 16 28 32 33-36 37-39 40 41-43 75 5 6 49 92 INDEX Trade Unions — Attitude to Labour Exchanges of Government , Act as labour exchanges for their own trade Might use Government Exchanges as their offices Difficulty in forming, for casual labourers Many insure against unemployment . Attitude to State insurance .... Subsidized in European countries Proportion of workers in English Paid ;{^ 1, 000,000 m unemployment benefit in one year Guard against malingerers. ..... Could accept Government audit of unemployed benefit fund Might allow non-unionists to join for unemployed benefit only Condemn Government for not regulating labour Can regulate hours of labour ...... Alone can shorten hours by arrangement with employers . Have settled hours in textile trades ..... Too many separate organizations in building trades . Small, should amalgamate Have not seriously tackled boy labour problem . Cannot accurately forecast future of trades Have not restricted admission of unskilled boys to trades . Have not succeeded to work of Trade Guilds in educating th( workmen ......... Must encourage trade schools ..,.., Should arrange with employers for time off for technical instruc tion Are fit to co-operate with State Should organize the whole working classes Must encourage the maximum output of work . Unemployables — Their reclamation comparatively unimportant . Unemployed — Types of 3, 4, 26, 27, 59, 60, Number of, registered by Distress Committees Not benefited by relief works At Labour Exchanges .... Unskilled labourers — The precarious position of. Due to want of training as boys Difficult to define ..... Training establishments suggested for The relation of Labour Exchanges to Large unions of, in Denmark . Large number unemployed Surplus in building trades In docks Need of consolidating unions of Recruited from boys who learn no trade Further education for ... 21 22 23 24 29 30 32-34 34 35 37 38 38 40 43 44 45 50 53 55-56 64 65 68 78 79 «3 84 85 61, 63 X7.48 15, 20 • 25 4 6 12 17 22-24 • 34 . 48 • 49 51.52 • 53 55-59 • 79 ABERDEEN : THE UNIVERSITY PRESS UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. Korm L9-I2jm-9.'47(A5618)444 UNlVKkSJTY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGKLES LIBRARY HD Jackson - J13u trade unions. UCLA-Young Research Library HD5767 .J13u y L 009 543 673 9 5767 Jl3u