THE RESTORATION OF TRADE 
 UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 * 
 
THE RESTORATION 
 
 OF TRADE UNION 
 
 CONDITIONS 
 
 BY 
 
 SIDNEY WEBB 
 
 Hew 
 B. W. HUEBSCH 
 
 MCMXVII 
 

 PRINTED IN ENGLAND 
 
C- 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. THE SUSPENSION OF THE CONDITIONS 7 
 II. THE NATION'S PLEDGE . . .21 
 
 III. THE DANGER OF A SHAM RESTORATION 46 
 
 IV. WANTED A NEW SETTLEMENT . . 66 
 
 V. THE FIVE POINTS OF THE NEW 
 
 CHARTER 79 
 
 APPENDIX: BIBLIOGRAPHY . . 107 
 
 380J90 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE SUSPENSION OF THE 
 CONDITIONS 
 
 IN the increasing stress of inter- 
 national competition, much will 
 depend for this country on the 
 rapidity and the smoothness with 
 which our industries can resume their 
 normal work. If this resumption is 
 hampered by ill-feeling and suspicion 
 between employers and workmen 
 still more, if it is delayed by indus- 
 trial war the loss to the commu- 
 nity will be incalculable. A grave 
 peril hangs over the nation on the 
 coming of peace. Second only in 
 urgency to the problem of demobili- 
 zation is the problem of the restora- 
 tion of what are called Trade Union 
 conditions. Unless this most difficult 
 position is candidly faced in all its 
 7 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 aspects, by the Trade Unions as well as 
 by the employers, and above all by 
 the Government, before the war has 
 come to an end, and unless a solu- 
 tion is timely found which all parties 
 will accept, and which will not be 
 prejudicial to the nation's industrial 
 development, there is serious danger, 
 throughout the whole of the engi- 
 neering and some other trades, of 
 calamitous industrial strife. 
 
 THE TRADE UNION NETWORK. 
 
 The outbreak of war found the Brit- 
 ish engineering, and, indeed, most other 
 manufacturing industries, carried on 
 under a complicated network of usages 
 and regulations, differing from district 
 to district, and often from establishment 
 to establishment. These customs and 
 rules had been built up during several 
 generations, with the more or less ex- 
 plicit acquiescence of the employers. 
 They were sometimes embodied in 
 8 
 
THE SUSPENSION OF THE CONDITIONS 
 
 written codes or agreements, drawn 
 up and signed by Trade Unions and 
 Employers' Associations, or by par- 
 ticular employers for the conduct of 
 their own establishments. Sometimes 
 they were recited in Trade Union 
 books of rules, known to the em- 
 ployers, or in local working rules to 
 which the employers of the district 
 had agreed. Very often, however, 
 many of the usages and customs 
 were not embodied in any written 
 document, and existed independently 
 of any Trade Union ; arising, in fact, 
 among workmen who were non-union- 
 ist quite as much as among Trade 
 Unionists, and representing, in an 
 effective way, the spontaneous public 
 opinion of the workshop. 
 
 This network of rules and agree- 
 ments, usages, and customs was more 
 extensive than is usually realized. 1 
 
 1 The most extensive collections of Trade 
 Union rules and other documents are those 
 at (1) the Fabian Research Department, 25 
 9 
 
&ESTO&ATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 It covered different points in different 
 trades, and often in different districts 
 of the same trade. Taking the net- 
 work as a whole, and at its widest, 
 it embraced not only the standard 
 rates of wages, and the length of the 
 normal working day, together with 
 the arrangements for overtime, night- 
 work, Sunday duty, mealtimes, and 
 holidays, but also the exact classes 
 of operatives (apprenticed or skilled, 
 semi-skilled or unskilled, labourers or 
 women) to be engaged or not to be 
 engaged for various kinds of work, 
 upon particular processes, or with 
 different types of machine ; whether 
 non-unionists should be employed 
 at all ; what processes should be 
 employed for particular tasks ; 
 what machines should be used for 
 
 Tothill Street, Westminster, which will supply 
 information to any inquirer ; and (2) the 
 British Library of Political Science at the 
 London School of Economics, Clare Market, 
 Kingsway, W.C. 
 
 10 
 
THE SUSPENSION OP THE CONDITIONS 
 
 particular jobs; how the machines should 
 be placed in relation to each other, 
 and the speed at which they should 
 be worked ; whether one operative 
 should complete a whole job, or 
 attend only to one machine, or form 
 part of a team of specialized opera- 
 tives each doing a different process; 
 what wages, if any, sho-ild be paid 
 in the intervals between jobs, or whilst 
 waiting for material, and what notice 
 of termination of engagement should 
 be given; whether boys or girls or 
 young persons should be employed 
 at all, or in what processes or with 
 what machines, or in what proportion 
 to the adult workmen ; whether the 
 remuneration should be by time or 
 by the piece, and under what condi- 
 tions, at what rates and with what 
 allowances ; and perhaps where it 
 prevailed most severely criticized of 
 all, but by no means universally 
 existing what amount of output by 
 each operative should be considered 
 11 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 a fair day's work, not to be con- 
 siderably exceeded under penalty of 
 the serious displeasure of the work- 
 shop. 
 
 ADVANTAGES OF THE NETWORK. 
 
 To their own particular network of 
 rules and customs each set of work- 
 men attached enormous importance 
 an importance so great that employers 
 had often found it desirable to ac- 
 quiesce in or even explicitly to agree 
 to its continuance in order to arrive 
 at any agreement as to rates of wages. 
 Nor was the workmen's attachment 
 to their customary usages and rules 
 entirely unreasonable ; or, as the 
 political economists would now say, 
 without some economic justification. 
 These conditions, as the workmen 
 held, formed an essential part of their 
 individual contracts for service. What 
 the employer paid for was their 
 labour exercised under these conditions. 
 12 
 
THE SUSPENSION OF THE CONDITIONS 
 
 Invidious as some of them might appear 
 to persons without the wage-earner's 
 knowledge, they had been found by 
 experience, so it seemed to the men, 
 to be indispensable safeguards of the 
 customary rate of wages necessary 
 defences against a progressive degra- 
 dation of their standard of life. 
 
 Nor was the existence of such a 
 network of usages altogether detri- 
 mental or distasteful to the employer 
 doing a steady-going business in quiet 
 times. It may be that it prevented 
 the greatest possible output. Some 
 managers might resent this or that 
 rule or custom, or chafe against this 
 or that restriction on their autocracy. 
 The capitalist eager to " Americanize " 
 his workshop might deplore the re- 
 strictions thus placed on production 
 as uneconomic. But the typical Eng- 
 lish employer found that he was not 
 doing so badly. He knew what to 
 expect from his factory. Observance of 
 the usages made for smooth running. 
 13 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 Just as the weight of the atmo- 
 sphere is not felt as pressure, the 
 long-continued customs of establish- 
 ment that sought no change some- 
 times failed even to reach the 
 employer's consciousness. He was 
 often unaware of their existence. 
 
 Suddenly came the war, and the 
 need for an enormous increase of pro- 
 duction not only of shells but of all 
 that war consumes ; the insistence by 
 the War Office and the Admiralty 
 on the immediate supply of things 
 which had not hitherto been made ; 
 the plain need of using every kind of 
 factory, whatever may have been its 
 previous product, in the new and 
 gigantic task ; and, at the same time, 
 the absorption into the Army of many 
 thousands of the men who had hither- 
 to done the work of the kind now 
 required. 
 
 14 
 
THE SUSPENSION OF THE CONDITIONS 
 
 WAR CHANGES. 
 
 To meet the need all sorts of 
 changes had to be made factories 
 had to be extended or adapted, new 
 and additional machinery had to be 
 introduced, processes had to be 
 changed, the relation of the operative 
 to the machine had often to be 
 revolutionized, a great development 
 of standardized or repetition work 
 replaced the series of slightly differing 
 tasks to which the skilled mechanic 
 had hitherto been set ; and, as the 
 demand grew, fresh classes of opera- 
 tives had to be brought in, non- 
 unionists, unapprenticed men, semi- 
 skilled men, labourers, boys, even 
 women and girls. The network of 
 agreements and usages, rules and 
 customs stood everywhere in the way 
 of these industrial transformations. 
 What might be unobjectionable or 
 even mutually serviceable in peace 
 was obviously not suitable for the 
 16 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 exigencies of war. It was not a time 
 for mere revision, or for any nicely 
 calculated less or more. The Trade 
 Unions which were the only bodies 
 with whom negotiations could be 
 carried on, although the tens of 
 thousands of non-unionists were 
 equally concerned were accordingly 
 asked by the Government, in con- 
 junction with the Engineering Em- 
 ployers' Federation, to consent, for 
 the duration of the war, at one blow 
 to give up not this or that Trade 
 Union rule or custom, but any part 
 of the network which any employer 
 thought was in any way interfering 
 with the utmost possible production. 
 It must be remembered that by no 
 means the whole of the network has 
 been given up. What the Engineer- 
 ing Employers' Federation were 
 specially concerned about, as frankly 
 explained in their proposals of Novem- 
 ber 1914, was to get complete free- 
 dom for each employer to " dilute " 
 16 
 
THE SUSPENSION OF THE CONDITIONS 
 
 labour by setting one or two skilled 
 mechanics to help and direct a score 
 of less skilled workers ; to break up 
 fthe jobs so as to bring them within 
 the capacity of semi-skilled workers ; 
 to introduce automatic machinery and 
 engage non-unionists and unappren- 
 ticed men, labourers, and women ; to 
 work, if need be, an unlimited number 
 of hours seven days a week, without 
 regard for Factory Acts or holidays ; 
 to substitute for the standard time 
 rates whatever piecework or bonus 
 systems they found convenient; and, 
 above all, so to speed up the machin- 
 ery and abrogate all customary limi- 
 tations on individual output as to get 
 lie very maximum of production. 
 
 LABOUR'S SACRIFICE. 
 
 Upon the strong appeal made by 
 the Government the Trade Unions, 
 vdthout a single exception, agreed to 
 :lo what the national interest required. 
 17 B 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 It was not a matter of bargain with 
 this or that union only with which 
 special terms as to waiving the exact 
 restoration of the conditions might 
 conceivably now be arranged. Prac- 
 tically the whole world of Labour was 
 concerned. The terms offered by the 
 Government were accepted, on behalf 
 of Labour as a whole, by the Par- 
 liamentary Committee of the Trades 
 Union Congress and the Management 
 Committee of the General Federation 
 of Trade Unions, by the Federation 
 of Engineering and Shipbuilding 
 Trades, the Amalgamated Society of 
 Engineers, and half a dozen other 
 engineering unions, by the Shipyard 
 Trades' Agreement Committee and 
 the main shipbuilding unions, by the 
 National Union of Railwayman and 
 the Transport Workers' Federation, 
 by the General Union of Textile 
 Workers and the National Union of 
 Boot and Shoe Operatives, by the 
 Furnishing Trades Association and 
 18 
 
THE SUSPENSION OP THE CONDITIONS 
 
 the half a dozen principal wood- 
 working unions, by the British Steel 
 Smelters and other metal unions, and 
 by the three principal unions repre- 
 senting over a quarter of a million 
 labourers and nondescript workers. 
 All these organizations "placed on 
 one side," said a grateful Minister of 
 Munitions eighteen months later, 
 
 the whole armour of Trade Union regu- 
 lations upon which they had hitherto 
 relied. For the weapons slowly forged 
 during long years of struggle . . . directly 
 or indirectly, might have tended to reduce 
 the output during the war. The Gov- 
 ernment asked Labour to put all these 
 on one side. It was a great deal to ask. 
 I doubt if any community has ever been 
 asked for greater sacrifices, but with a 
 loyalty and statesmanship which cannot 
 be overestimated the request was readily 
 granted. The Trade Unions required, and 
 they were right to require, a scrupulous 
 record and recognition of what they were 
 conceding. It was promised to them as 
 a right, but they will receive more, not 
 19 
 
[RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 only the restoration of the system they 
 temporarily abandoned, but the grati- 
 tude of the Army and the nation. (Mr. 
 Montagu in the House of Commons, 
 August 15, 1916.) 
 
 It is only just that the magnitude 
 of the sacrifice made by organized 
 labour should be remembered. But 
 its very magnitude now increases the 
 national difficulty. 
 
 20 
 
CHAPTER II 
 THE NATION'S PLEDGE 
 
 THE abrogation of the Trade 
 Union rules and workshop cus- 
 toms was required only for the 
 duration of the war. The most ex- 
 plicit pledges were given, not once, but 
 repeatedly ; not to any particular Trade 
 Union but to the Labour movement 
 us a whole ; not only by one Minister 
 only but by many, representing all 
 sections of the Coalition Government ; 
 and not by the Government alone but 
 also by the Engineering Employers' 
 Federation, and by innumerable em- 
 ployers individually that whatever 
 rules and practices were thus laid 
 aside should be restored at the con- 
 clusion of the war. 
 
 So completely was this understood 
 that provision was made that the 
 21 
 
EESTOKATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 employer should place officially on 
 record all the changes in working con- 
 ditions that he might make during 
 the war. But the restoration was not 
 made dependent on the record, the 
 completeness of which the Trade Unions 
 were given no opportunity of verify- 
 ing ; nor was the pledge in any way 
 limited to a restoration of the changes 
 that the employer might choose to 
 record. The pledge was complete and 
 unconditional that the employer should 
 in every case (to use the words of the 
 important Shells and Fuses Agree- 
 ment of March 5, 1915) " reinstate 
 the working conditions of his factory 
 on the pre-war basis." Nor was the 
 pledge limited to a restoration of con- 
 ditions embodied in documents ; what- 
 ever had been actually practised, 
 whether with the consent of the 
 employer or not, was to be reinstated. 
 "Any departure during the war," 
 said the Treasury Agreement of March 
 19, 1915, "from the practice ruling in 
 22 
 
THE NATION'S PLEDGE 
 
 our workshops, shipyards, and other 
 industries prior to the war shall only 
 be for the period of the war." This 
 was specifically agreed to by every 
 employer doing any Government work, 
 for (as Mr. Henderson told the House 
 of Commons on July 1, 1915) it was 
 "made a condition of Government 
 contracts " from March 1915 onwards. 
 
 ABSOLUTE RESTORATION. 
 
 The pledge of the restoration was 
 not conditional, as has since been 
 suggested in some quarters, on restora- 
 tion being eventually asked for, or 
 insisted on, by the Labour movement, 
 or by any particular Trade Union or 
 workman after the war. The promise 
 of restoration was embodied as com- 
 plete and without reservation, un- 
 conditional and absolute, irrespective 
 of the desires of any Trade Union, in 
 the Munitions of War Act, 1915, 
 where any failure on the part of any 
 23 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 employer to carry it into effect was 
 made, not a matter of contractual 
 obligation which might be waived by 
 the other party, but a criminal offence, 
 punishable in the Munitions Tribunals 
 by a fine to the Crown for each day 
 or part of a day that the failure con- 
 tinued, no condition or excuse or 
 extenuation or waiver being provided 
 for. The Munitions of War Amend- 
 ment Act, 1916, specifically repeated 
 the same pledge with regard to the 
 introduction, during the war, of non- 
 union labour "into any class of work 
 in a controlled establishment in which 
 it was the practice prior to the war 
 to employ union labour exclusively.'* 
 A similar pledge was given with regard 
 to the Royal arsenals and dockyards. 
 The Government as an employer is 
 technically not bound by the Munitions 
 Acts, but the Prime Minister expressly 
 promised, without condition or reserve, 
 that, " subject to exceptional cases, 
 the spirit of the Act should be observed 
 24 
 
THE NATION'S PLEDGE 
 
 by Government Departments " (House 
 of Commons, August 21, 1916). In 
 short, as Mr. Lloyd George said on 
 June 28, 1915, the abrogation "during 
 the war " was agreed 
 
 on the honour and pledge of the nation 
 that things would be restored exactly 
 to the position they were in before the 
 suspension 'of all these restrictions and 
 practices that interfere with the increase 
 of the output of war materials. 
 
 (House of Commons, June 23, 1915.) 
 We promised, said the present Prime 
 Minister to the Trade Union Congress 
 on September 9, 1915, 
 
 that we would give a guarantee that 
 at the end of the war the pre-war con- 
 ditions would be restored. How have 
 we done that? We have done it, not 
 merely by solemn declarations on the 
 part of the Government, but we have 
 embodied them in an Act of Parliament. 
 We have a statutory guarantee carried 
 unanimously by Parliament, by men 
 25 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 of all parties ... all sorts and con- 
 ditions of men. They are all in it, and 
 they are all committed to that guar- 
 antee. 
 
 It is this solemn national pledge, 
 given absolutely and unconditionally 
 and not dependent on any application 
 or request by any Trade Union or any 
 workman, or upon any record or 
 agreement by this or that employer, 
 that the pre-war conditions and prac- 
 tices, whatever they were, should be 
 restored at the end of the war, of 
 which the Trade Union Congress and 
 the Labour Party Conference reiterate 
 that they expect the fulfilment. 
 
 THE TRANSFORMATION OF INDUSTRY. 
 
 Under the continued incitement and 
 pressure of the Ministry of Munitions, 
 the employers in all the industries 
 supplying the thousand and one dif- 
 ferent things that the Government 
 required gradually transformed their 
 26 
 
THE NATION'S PLEDGE 
 
 factories and workshops, not only as 
 regards buildings and machinery, but 
 also as regards the hours of labour, 
 mealtimes, overtime, and holidays ; 
 the methods and rates of remunera- 
 tion ; the conditions of engagement, 
 suspension, and dismissal; the dis- 
 ciplinary code, with its fines and 
 other penalties; the relation of the 
 operatives to the machines and of 
 the various grades and classes of 
 operatives to each other; and, above 
 all, as regards the grades, classes, ages, 
 trades, and sex of the operatives 
 employed. It is suggested that no 
 such sweeping transformation in the 
 organization of British industry a 
 transformation occurring not in any 
 one trade only but simultaneously in 
 nearly all branches of manufacture 
 has taken place since what is known 
 as the Industrial Revolution of 1780- 
 1825. The present revolution, com- 
 pressed within little ever a couple of 
 years, has been rendered possible only 
 27 
 
BBSTOBATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 by the abrogation of the network of 
 usages and regulations, customs and 
 rules which the Trade Unions so patrioti- 
 cally allowed "for the duration of 
 the war." 
 
 So smoothly has the revolution been 
 made in the great majority of cases 
 so completely have employers been 
 set free to alter the working condi- 
 tions that they are often unaware of 
 the extent to which their alterations 
 infringed the old network of rules and 
 customs. The actual changes made 
 have naturally varied from trade to 
 trade, from district to district, within 
 any one trade, and even from establish- 
 ment to establishment. They have not 
 been restricted to the " Controlled 
 Establishments," now nearing 5,000 in 
 number; nor to those other thousands 
 to whom some of the provisions of 
 the Munitions Acts limiting the free- 
 dom of labour have been applied by 
 official order ; nor yet to the innumer- 
 able other firms employed on "war 
 28 
 
THE NATION S PLEDGE 
 
 work." Nor has their operation been 
 confined to the orders of the British 
 Government or its Allies. There is 
 scarcely a branch of manufacturing 
 industry that has not been affected, 
 from steel-smelting to the making of 
 scientific instruments, from saw-milling 
 and shipbuilding to every corner of 
 the furnishing trade; from processes 
 in all the metals arid chemicals to 
 work in leather, glass, pottery, india- 
 rubber, textiles, paper, and food pre- 
 parations, not even wholly excluding 
 the transport, distributive, and muni- 
 cipal services. It is, of course, not 
 the case that every factory has been 
 transformed in all respects. The 
 extent of the transformation in each 
 case has depended on the nature of 
 the industry, the efficiency and energy 
 of particular employers, the amount of 
 pressure applied by the Ministry of 
 Munitions, and ev r en the degrees to 
 which those concerned in particular 
 establishments have known how to 
 29 
 
RESTORATION OP TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 capture the heart and enlist the 
 co-operation of those whom they em- 
 ployed. 
 
 THE TRADE UNIONISM THAT 
 CONTINUES. 
 
 Nor does the abrogation of those 
 Trade Union rules and agreements, 
 customs, and usages which have been 
 found to restrict output or diminish 
 production mean, as some people 
 seem to imagine, the total suspension 
 of Trade Unionism. As a matter of 
 fact, the Trade Unions have in nearly 
 all cases greatly increased their mem- 
 bership during the war (allowance 
 being made for members with the 
 colours) ; and a large part in many 
 Trade Unions the major part of 
 their activities has remained unaffected. 
 Twenty years ago, in analysing in 
 detail the whole field of Trade Union 
 action, 1 we described these activities 
 
 1 Industrial Democracy > by S. and B. Webb. 
 30 
 
THE NATION'S PLEDGE 
 
 (apart from the Friendly Society side) 
 as falling into two classes, namely, 
 those inspired by the Doctrine of 
 Vested Interests and those inspired 
 by the Doctrine of the Common Rule. 
 \Ve pointed out that the activities of 
 the former class, inherited from the 
 past (whilst entirely justified as weapons 
 of defence), had invidious results, were 
 becoming less effective even as weapons 
 of defence, and characterized only a 
 portion, and, as we thought, the least 
 successful portion, of the Trade Union 
 world. The activities of the other 
 class, leading to a reliance on the 
 maintenance of the Standard Rate 
 and the Normal Day, without restric- 
 tion of numbers or limitation of output, 
 and without any invidious exclusive- 
 ness, were coming more and more to 
 be the characteristic features of British 
 Trade Unionism, and were, in our 
 judgment, not merely harmless to 
 British industry but actually produc- 
 tive of great economic and social 
 81 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 advantages to the nation as a whole 
 as well as to the workmen. Now, it 
 is significant that it is only the Trade 
 Union activities of the former class, 
 based on the Doctrine of Vested 
 Interests, which have been found 
 obstructive or in the way of increased 
 production, and which have therefore 
 been suspended. The very extensive 
 range and volume of Trade Union 
 activities of the latter class, based on 
 the Doctrine of the Common Rule, 
 which some of the strongest Trade 
 Unions (for example, the Cotton 
 Spinners) have found so efficacious, 
 have not been interfered with ; and 
 these remain in full force. This may 
 explain the fact that, notwithstanding 
 the suspension of all the Trade Union 
 rules and agreements, customs, and 
 usages that the employers have cared 
 to suspend, the strength and activity 
 of Trade Unionism have steadily in- 
 creased, so that, whether in member- 
 ship or in funds, the forces of Trade 
 32 
 
THE NATION'S PLEDGE 
 
 Unionism are actually more extensive 
 than they have been at any previous 
 time. The strength of the Trade 
 Union position does not lessen the 
 difficulty of the situation. 
 
 THE INDUSTRIAL CHANGES. 
 
 We shall realize better what is the 
 character of the " Trade Union con- 
 ditions " that have been suspended if 
 we state the changes in the organiza- 
 tion and management of the factory 
 that their abrogation has permitted. 
 During these fateful two years the 
 employers in practically all industries 
 have, to a greater or less degree 
 
 (i.) Changed the processes of manu- 
 facture, notably so as to enable work 
 formerly done by skilled craftsmen to be 
 done by women or labourers ; 
 
 (ii.) Introduced new and additional 
 machinery with the same object; 
 
 (iii.) Engaged in work or on processes 
 33 o 
 
RESTOKATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 formerly done by skilled craftsmen, boys, 
 women, and unapprenticed men ; 
 
 (iv.) Increased the proportion of boys 
 to men ; 
 
 (v.) Substituted piecework and bonus 
 systems for time wages ; and that with* 
 out any printed and collectively-agreed-to 
 piecework list of prices, or other pro- 
 tection against a future cutting of rates ; 
 
 (vi.) Increased the hours of labour, 
 sometimes refusing also any satisfactory 
 addition for overtime, night duty, and 
 Sunday work ; 
 
 (vii.) Speeded up production, getting rid 
 of all customary understandings among 
 the workers of what constituted a fair 
 day's work, or what times should be 
 taken for particular jobs ; 
 
 (viii.) Suppressed demarcation dis- 
 putes and ignored all claims, whether to 
 kinds of work or particular jobs, of par- 
 ticular unions, particular grades, particu- 
 lar sets of craftsmen, or a particular sex. 
 
 It is these changes, avowedly made 
 
 only for the duration of the war, which 
 
 the nation has been most solemnly and 
 
 unconditionally pledged by a whole 
 
 34 
 
THE NATION'S PLEDGE 
 
 series of Cabinet Ministers, by two 
 successive Premiers, by a unanimous 
 House of Commons, and by the entire 
 newspaper Press to undo and reverse 
 on the conclusion of the war. Nor 
 has the pledge been given only by 
 the statesmen and politicians. Every 
 manufacturing employer who has, 
 since March 1915, received a Govern- 
 ment contract has individually pledged 
 himself in writing in similar terms ; 
 whilst every firm, whether or not a 
 controlled establishment or engaged in 
 Government work, which has had any 
 section of the Munitions Acts applied 
 to it has come under a like obligation. 
 There can be no doubt or quibble 
 about it. We have pledged our faith, 
 individually and collectively, to "rein- 
 state the working conditions ... on 
 the pre-war basis" to see that all the 
 departures 
 
 "from the practice ruling in our work- 
 shops, shipyards, and other industries 
 35 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 prior to the war shall only be for the 
 period of the war " to ensure " that 
 things would be restored exactly to the 
 position they were in before the sus- 
 pension of all these restrictions and 
 practices that interfere with the increase 
 of the output." 
 
 WHAT THE NATION HAS GAINED. 
 
 It is idle at this stage to consider 
 whether the Government and the 
 House of Commons, together with the 
 various employers' associations, were 
 wise in pledging themselves in such 
 unequivocal terms to an exact and 
 specific restoration of the "pre-war 
 conditions " and " the practice ruling 
 in our workshops," or in requiring 
 employers individually to bind them- 
 selves by a similar obligation. The 
 employers, like the Government and 
 the nation as a whole, have signed and 
 sealed this " scrap of paper." And we 
 cannot deny the advantages that 
 we have drawn from the temporary 
 36 
 
THE NATION'S PLEDGE 
 
 abrogation of the network of rules and 
 agreements, usages and customs that 
 it procured. It is not merely that the 
 Ministry of Munitions has got delivered 
 during these two years, as it tells us, 
 an incredible quantity, far in excess of 
 any previous record, of shells and guns 
 and every kind of supplies needed for 
 the Armies and Navies of ourselves 
 and our Allies the workpeople toiling 
 so incessantly during "all the hours 
 God made " that the Government itself 
 has been driven, on the remonstrances 
 of Sir George Newman's Committee, 
 to impose new limitations in order to 
 prevent too large a proportion of them 
 from breaking down in health. 
 
 What is perhaps of more permanent 
 importance from the employers' stand- 
 point is that they have discovered how 
 to increase the output of their establish- 
 ments without increasing the number 
 of skilled operatives ; and, at the same 
 time, how to diminish the " labour- 
 cost " of their products, irrespective of 
 37 
 
BESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 any reduction of the rates of wages. 
 A large section of British industry has 
 at last learned by experience, as it had 
 long admitted in theory, the lesson of 
 the economic advantage of a large 
 output, of production for a continuous 
 demand, of standardization and long 
 runs, of the use of automatic machinery 
 for the separate production of each 
 component part, of team-work and 
 specialization among the operatives, of 
 universalizing piece-work speed and of 
 not grudging to the workers the larger 
 earnings brought by piece-work effort. 
 We do not think it is any exaggera- 
 tion to say that the 15,000 or 20,000 
 establishments, large or small, in every 
 conceivable industry, with which the 
 Ministry of Munitions, the Board of 
 Trade, the War Trade Department, 
 and the Admiralty have been in touch, 
 are now turning out, on an average, 
 more than twice the product per 
 operative employed than they did 
 before the war ; whilst, assuming the 
 38 
 
THE NATION'S PLEDGE 
 
 same standard rates of wages, grade by 
 grade, the labour-cost works out con- 
 siderably lower than under the old 
 system. 
 
 Employers, at any rate, are abun- 
 dantly convinced of the economic 
 advantages of the new industrial 
 revolution that has been effected. Not 
 from engineering alone, but from 
 industry after industry comes the 
 report that productivity and profits 
 have alike so much increased that any 
 reversion to the old state of things 
 would be disastrous ; and that the 
 continuance of the new organization 
 and practice of their factories is in- 
 dispensable if this country is to be 
 able to face the impending fierce 
 competition for the world's trade. 
 Moreover, the practical difficulties of 
 reinstating in each factory the working 
 conditions on the pre-war basis are 
 very great. There is no complete 
 statement of what were the usages and 
 customs, or of what was the ruling 
 39 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 practice, of each establishment. The 
 records of changes which the employers 
 were ordered to keep have, in many 
 cases, not been kept at all ; and prob- 
 ably in no case have they been kept 
 with completeness. 
 
 A BARGAIN NOT KEPT. 
 
 For this failure to carry out the 
 bargain which it made with the Trade 
 Unions, and to obtain the evidence 
 which would at any rate have facilitated 
 the eventual fulfilment of the Govern- 
 ment pledge, the Ministry of Munitions 
 (which was, of course, busy about other 
 things) is itself responsible. For many 
 months no steps were taken to require 
 employers to forward the records 
 provided for by the statute; it is 
 believed that no employer out of the 
 whole 5,000 or 10,000 has been 
 prosecuted for failure to comply with 
 this provision; and to this day no 
 systematic arrangements have been 
 40 
 
THE NATION'S PLEDGE 
 
 made with the Trade Unions concerned 
 to get the records agreed to, contem- 
 poraneously with the changes, by both 
 parties. The Government is therefore 
 estopped from now taking refuge in 
 the imperfection of the records. And 
 the changes (which could, of course, 
 be proved by other evidence, including, 
 in many cases, the signed agreements 
 of the employers and the Employers' 
 Association as to the pre-war practice) 
 have often been enormous and far- 
 reaching. 
 
 During the past two years the 
 factories have, in many cases, been 
 enlarged or completely rearranged ; the 
 application of power has been revolu- 
 tionized ; the provision for lighting, 
 heating, and ventilation has been trans- 
 formed. The course of manufacture 
 and the appliances have been changed. 
 Many tens of thousands of automatic 
 lathes and other machines have been 
 installed, frequently of kinds never 
 before employed in the establishments 
 41 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 in which they are now working, and in 
 some cases not previously in use in 
 this country. The addition made to 
 the machinery almost all of it in the 
 establishments doing " war work " 
 is estimated to run, in the aggregate, 
 into hundreds of millions sterling. A 
 large proportion of this machinery has 
 been put up for the new processes 
 which have been introduced in con- 
 nection with the standardization of parts 
 and the long runs of repetition work ; 
 and for all this the old time-work rates 
 of wages have been superseded by new 
 piecework and bonus systems. With 
 the rapidly progressing "dilution of 
 labour " and the substitution of team- 
 work for individual production, the old 
 rates of speed and the old standards of 
 output have become wholly obsolete. 
 
 Finally, in order to work the new 
 machinery and to execute the newly 
 devised processes, as well as to replace 
 the skilled mechanics called to the 
 colours, new classes of operatives, 
 42 
 
THE NATION'S PLEDGE 
 
 who would never have been allowed 
 inside the establishments prior to the 
 war, have been taken on and trained 
 to the new jobs to the extent of 
 several hundred thousand, a very large 
 proportion of whom are quite cer- 
 tainly determined to continue in the 
 new vocations that they have gained 
 craftsmen belonging to other trades, 
 unapprenticed handimen, semi-skilled 
 men, nondescript persons from all 
 sorts of occupations, hobbledehoy 
 youths, and, last of all, women, some 
 of whom have now made themselves 
 capable of the work of the all-round 
 skilled craftsman. 
 
 AN ANXIOUS QUESTION. 
 
 How are the employers going to 
 fulfil the terms of the Government 
 contracts that they have been sign- 
 ing since March 1915, which all 
 include, as we have seen, an ex- 
 plicit undertaking that the changes 
 43 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 in their establishments are to be only 
 for the duration of the war ? How 
 is Mr. Lloyd George going to carry 
 out the promise that he made in 
 so doing only repeating the under- 
 taking of the Treasury Agreement, 
 and the pledges in which Mr. Bonar 
 Law, Mr. Asquith, and other Minis- 
 ters joined that things should be 
 restored " exactly to the position they 
 were in before the suspension of all 
 the restrictions and practices that 
 interfere with the increase of out- 
 put " ? The position is not made 
 easier by the fact that many firms, 
 and a large proportion of the newly 
 introduced operatives, have no desire 
 for any such restoration. Some 
 employers, doubtless forgetting the 
 obligations by which they have indi- 
 vidually bound themselves in their 
 Government contracts, make no secret 
 of their intention to allow in their 
 establishment no such reversion to 
 methods of working, processes of 
 
THE NATION'S PLEDGE 
 
 manufacture, and systems of remuner- 
 ation which they denounce as obsolete 
 and uneconomic. Nothing will in- 
 duce them, so some have declared, to 
 restore the network of rules and 
 agreements, usages and customs under 
 which their factories were working 
 prior to the war. 
 
 It is scarcely to be wondered that 
 an uneasy feeling is spreading among 
 the Trade Unions as to whether the 
 pledge, so solemnly and so repeatedly 
 made to them, is, after all, going to 
 be fulfilled. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE DANGER OF A SHAM 
 RESTORATION 
 
 AS we have shown, we are face 
 to face with the unpleasant fact 
 that the nation has given a 
 solemn pledge to labour which it 
 cannot possibly fulfil. Without Mr. 
 Wells's " Time Machine " we cannot 
 return to an era that is past. The 
 pre-war conditions cannot be restored. 
 Things cannot be put back in the 
 position they were in prior to the new 
 industrial revolution. The network of 
 agreements and rules, customs and 
 usages, which made up the practice 
 of the workshop, had reference to 
 factors which have, to a large extent, 
 been changed or replaced. The old 
 network, in so far as it has been sus- 
 pended, would, if it could be restored, 
 46 
 
THE DANGER OF A SHAM RESTORATION 
 
 fit neither the new machines nor the 
 new organization of the establishment, 
 neither the new processes nor the new 
 classes of operatives, neither the new 
 intensity of production nor the 
 new methods of remuneration. 
 
 To take only one instance, the resto- 
 ration of "the practice ruling in our 
 workshops, shipyards, and other in- 
 dustries " would involve, in the case 
 of the Amalgamated Society of En- 
 gineers alone, and confining ourselves 
 for the moment to the evidence of 
 the printed rules, agreements, awards, 
 and declarations of employers and 
 employers' associations which are in 
 the possession of the Trade Union, 
 (1) the exclusion of all the women, 
 unapprenticed men, men from other 
 crafts, labourers, and in many factories 
 also the non-unionists, from all strictly 
 engineering work ; (2) the total abo- 
 lition of " dilution " and team-work 
 in all its forms; (3) either the scrap- 
 ping of the many millions of pounds' 
 47 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 worth of new automatic machines, 
 or their manning, even when they 
 were used for simple operations, ex- 
 clusively by skilled engineers at the 
 old standard rates ; (4) the aban- 
 donment of any form of "scientific 
 management" wherever it has been' 
 introduced ; (5) in nearly all estab- 
 lishments the abolition of piecework 
 or bonus systems of remuneration, 
 where they have been newly adopted, 
 and a resumption of the old weekly 
 standard rates ; and, in short, (6) a 
 return to the arrangement under 
 which a skilled mechanic, attending 
 to a single machine, occupied exclu- 
 sively with a single job, did it from 
 start to finish at a fixed weekly wage. 
 Moreover, it must be remembered 
 that it was, in addition, particularly 
 the unwritten usage of a customary 
 limitation of individual output that 
 the employers and the Government 
 were anxious to get abrogated ; and 
 this, too, would have to be reinstated 
 48 
 
THE DANGER OF A SHAM RESTORATION 
 
 and permitted, as part of the prac- 
 tice of the workshop, practically wher- 
 ever the workmen chose. Other Trade 
 Unions are in a position to prove 
 their "pre-war conditions" on similar 
 lines. 
 
 FACE TO FACE WITH FAILURE. 
 
 To put it plainly, we could not 
 restore that part which has been 
 abrogated of the network of agree- 
 ments and rules, usages and cus- 
 toms, that existed before the war, 
 even if this could anyhow be done, 
 without undoing the new industrial 
 revolution ; and without making, in 
 a reverse direction, as sweeping a 
 change throughout British manufac- 
 turing industry as has been effected 
 by that revolution. We may as well 
 admit to ourselves, straight away, 
 that, in face of so great a national 
 loss, and of the opposition both of 
 the employers and of the new classes 
 49 D 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 of operatives who would have to be 
 turned out, together with that of 
 their sympathizers in other social 
 circles, no Government could insist 
 on carrying out the pledge; and that, 
 in spite of its plighted troth, no 
 Government will try. 
 
 The position is therefore grave. The 
 eagerness of the Minister of Munitions 
 has committed us to a national promise, 
 which procured for us, collectively as 
 a nation and individually as employers, 
 very great advantages ; and now we 
 find that we cannot keep our word. 
 
 Up and down the country the work- 
 men will be very angry ; and, as we 
 must own, with some cause. In every 
 branch meeting, at every workshop 
 bench, at every Labour Conference, 
 the tale will be discussed of how, 
 when the Government was in a hole, 
 and the employers were eager for war 
 profits, the opportunity was taken to 
 play upon the workmen's patriotic 
 feelings to induce them to make what 
 50 
 
THE DANGER OF A SHAM RESTORATION 
 
 the responsible Minister described as 
 perhaps as great a sacrifice as has ever 
 been asked of any community ; of how 
 the Trade Union leaders, in the name 
 of the workmen, and often against 
 local opposition, made this sacrifice of 
 " the whole armour " of Trade Union- 
 ism, in reliance on the pledge of the 
 Government and the employers that 
 the " pre-war conditions " of the work- 
 shop would be in their integrity re- 
 stored ; and of how, when the time 
 came, the nation and the employers, 
 having secured all the advantages, 
 broke their word, and the workmen 
 found themselves done ! For a whole 
 generation the Great Betrayal will be 
 talked about and bitterly resented. It 
 will not be a good basis on which to 
 build the national co-operation and 
 industrial efficiency that we desire. 
 
 DANGER OF SHAM RESTORATION. 
 
 What, then, can be done? There 
 is one line of policy which may be 
 
 51 ' 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 confidently predicted to lead to muddle 
 and disaster, discredit, and class-bitter- 
 ness, and which nevertheless is dan- 
 gerously likely because it seems to 
 get over the difficulty for the moment 
 to be the one to which the Govern- 
 ment will be tempted. That is the 
 policy of a sham restoration. The 
 workman, who is still too often re- 
 garded as " half-devil and half-child," 
 may be deceived. The Trade Union- 
 ists, as the Board of Trade and the 
 Ministry of Munitions have come to 
 believe, can be cajoled into anything ! 
 We must, it will be said, have a con- 
 ference or, if need be, a series of con- 
 ferences, and get adopted some sort of 
 compromise. Find out privately from 
 the big engineering employers the 
 utmost that they can without detri- 
 ment concede ; discover discreetly from 
 the members of the executives of the 
 principal Trade Unions concerned on 
 which turns of phrase their members 
 lay most stress ; and it will not pass 
 52 
 
THE DANGER OF A SHAM RESTORATION 
 
 the wit of the Civil Service to compose 
 a form of words which will seem to 
 satisfy the workmen, and yet will, in 
 effect, not upset the new organization 
 of the factory ; which will assert the 
 monopoly of the skilled craftsmen to 
 certain kinds of work, yet will, in fact, 
 so define them as to allow the auto- 
 matic lathes to be worked with diluted 
 labour, or by the labourers who have 
 become so proficient; which will 
 avowedly maintain engineering as a 
 man's trade, and yet not dismiss more 
 than a small proportion of the women 
 from the engineering workshops ; which 
 will in bold words uphold the principle 
 of the standard rate, and yet not upset, 
 or even bring under collective bargain- 
 ing, the newly introduced piecework 
 scales and premium bonus systems, in 
 which it is always open to the em- 
 ployers arbitrarily and insidiously to 
 cut the rates and reduce the times. 
 
 53 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 FACILE NEGOTIATIONS. 
 
 Moreover, it will be only a paper 
 agreement, without authoritative in- 
 terpretation or effective sanction. The 
 employers will know, without even an 
 official hint, that the terms drafted will 
 not be enforced or even be enforceable 
 by the Government at all ; and will 
 therefore not need to be as strictly 
 obeyed as the Factory Acts ; whilst 
 the necessarily general terms of such 
 a universal treaty will be interpreted 
 by the myriads of employers them- 
 selves each in his own way. When 
 the secret negotiators and the expert 
 draughtsmen have formulated their 
 scheme there will be a private con- 
 ference, of the kind of which there 
 have been so many within the last 
 two years, made up of representatives 
 of " the Trade Unions concerned," 
 selected for the Government by the 
 hand of one of its many "Labour" 
 Advisory Committees. This select 
 54 
 
THE DANGER OF A SHAM RESTORATION 
 
 conference, without reporters, will be 
 very persuasively addressed by Minis- 
 ters perhaps by the Prime Minister 
 and the difficulties will be discussed 
 with a great show of frankness. The 
 matter will be treated, it may be 
 predicted, not so much as the fulfil- 
 ment of an unconditional national 
 pledge to the Trade Union movement 
 as a whole, as an intervention of the 
 Government to compose the differences 
 as to the restoration found to exist 
 among the Trade Unions themselves ; 
 and much will be made of the in- 
 compatibility between the desires in 
 the matter of the skilled craftsmen 
 and the labourers, and between those 
 of rival crafts. 
 
 At the right moment the carefully 
 drafted compromise will be produced, 
 and persuasively explained. Of course, 
 no opportunity will be given for its 
 scrutiny at home, for it to be sub- 
 mitted to a legal adviser, or even for 
 private discussion. The workmen will 
 55 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 not even be allowed to bring their 
 solicitor or other skilled advisers with 
 them. The conference will be asked 
 to come to a vote. Some verbal 
 amendments may be made. When 
 the vote is taken it may very probably 
 be found that more than half of these 
 specially invited representatives partly 
 out of inability to think, then and 
 there, of any practicable alternative, 
 partly under the influence of the 
 speeches, and partly because of honest 
 desire to serve the Government will 
 have voted for the very specious 
 compromise. 
 
 DOWN THE SLOPE. 
 
 The rest will be fatally easy. Any 
 dissentient Trade Union executive need 
 only be told that the movement as a 
 whole has accepted the terms, and that 
 no exceptions can be made and then, 
 as a special favour, a separate agree- 
 ment will be privately made with that 
 56 
 
THE DANGER OP A SHAM RESTORATION 
 
 union, conceding some slight altera- 
 tions to meet the particular circum- 
 stances of its industry. The various 
 compromises will then be submitted 
 to the memberships of the several 
 organizations as the best terms that 
 their National Executive could obtain ; 
 and there will be much angry dis- 
 cussion. Some districts will oppose 
 acceptance, but others will acquiesce, 
 with more or less protest, in the 
 terms, to which, in the absence of any 
 stated alternative, their minds will by 
 that time have become accustomed. 
 There may be strikes here and there, 
 but they will probably sputter out. 
 The workmen, as they will presently 
 discover, will have been done. Not 
 the old network of rules and regula- 
 tions, customs and usages, will have 
 been restored ; but a new general 
 agreement will have been substituted 
 for it under which the new organiza- 
 tion of industry will, with a certain 
 amount of local friction, continue to 
 57 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 work. The nation will be satisfied that 
 it has, more or less, kept its word. 
 The corner will have been turned. 
 Each trade will then be left to make, 
 by its own subsequent negotiations, 
 and at the cost of its own fighting, 
 the modifications in particular points 
 which employers and workmen will 
 promptly desire and fight over. 
 
 THREE BAD RESULTS. 
 
 Now, this policy of a sham resto- 
 ration, however discreditable to our 
 national honour, is so plausible to the 
 bureaucratic mind that it is desirable 
 to explain very definitely why it will 
 be as disastrous for the nation as for 
 the workmen ; and, in the long run, 
 even for the employers. 
 
 It will, in the first place, not bring 
 industrial peace. The terms arranged 
 will not provide, and will not have 
 been intended to provide, any real 
 protection or genuine safeguard, in 
 58 
 
THE DANGER OF A SHAM RESTORATION 
 
 substitution for " the whole armour of 
 Trade Union regulations" that will have 
 been got rid of, for the standard of 
 life of the skilled craftsmen. This 
 standard of life will, the whole armour 
 of Trade Unionism having been thrown 
 away, inevitably be undermined by 
 the admission of labourers and women 
 at lower rates, by the competition 
 between processes, and by the per- 
 petual " cutting " of piecework prices or 
 premium bonus times, unsafeguarded 
 either by standard lists or collective 
 bargaining, that the sham restoration 
 will have been deliberately designed 
 to leave open. The result will be, not 
 peace, but a perpetual succession of 
 strikes, great and small, in all the 
 industries affected; strikes that will 
 be for a whole generation embittered 
 by their relation to the great betrayal 
 which will be perpetually recalled. 
 
 In the second place, no such sham 
 restoration will secure to the relatively 
 badly organized labourers, and still less 
 59 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 to the women these two classes now 
 comprising literally more than half the 
 staff in our manufacturing industries 
 taken as a whole any definite mini- 
 mum standard, not even the " pound 
 a week " which Mr. Lloyd George, 
 Mr. Montagu, and Dr. Addison, as 
 Ministers of Munitions, have tried and 
 failed to make anything like universal. 
 This failure to secure a living wage 
 to the weaker half of all our manu- 
 facturing operatives will make neither 
 for continued efficiency nor for in- 
 dustrial contentment. Although the 
 labourers and the women are still 
 badly organized, they are not incapable 
 of resistance. Already in 1913-14 
 there were more stoppages of work 
 due to strikes of women or labourers 
 than to strikes of the skilled craftsmen. 
 And the number will grow. 
 
 Finally, and to the employer eager 
 
 for industrial progress most important 
 
 of all, sham restoration will do nothing 
 
 to prevent on the contrary, it is 
 
 60 
 
THE DANGER OF A SHAM RESTORATION 
 
 bound greatly to stimulate those 
 spontaneous reprisals of the workshop 
 against the cutting of rates, or any 
 abuse of piecework, which are summed 
 up in the phrase " Ca' canny." It was 
 more than anything else this secret 
 and nevertheless widespread refusal, 
 not in the engineering workshops only, 
 but also in innumerable other trades, 
 to do more than was considered "a 
 fair day's work," that the employers 
 sought once for all to get rid of by 
 what they called the abrogation of 
 Trade Union conditions. The sham 
 restoration of these conditions, and 
 the sullen resentment that it will 
 inevitably cause throughout the whole 
 world of labour, is the very way to 
 bring back and increase the silent 
 limitation of output that British em- 
 ployers fear more than anything else. 
 That demon cannot be exorcized by 
 tricking the workmen's representatives 
 into any sham restoration of Trade 
 Union conditions on the old lines to 
 61 
 
EBSTOBATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 which the employers could be per- 
 suaded to agree, or which would be 
 compatible with the new industrial 
 revolution. If the Government is 
 short-sighted enough to try this dis- 
 honourable course of a sham restoration, 
 to which it may be departmentally 
 advised, it may achieve a momentary 
 appearance of success, but it will not 
 have averted the very grave peril that 
 hangs over British industry. 
 
 It has been said, indeed, that if 
 things are to be put back as they were 
 before the war, the same argument 
 applies to wages ; and that the Trade 
 Unions will therefore not wish to press 
 their claims at such a cost. This is 
 a profound mistake. To begin with, 
 it cannot honestly be contended that 
 the pledges given, and specifically 
 enacted in the Munitions Acts, either 
 included or contemplated any revision 
 of the rates of wages. The pledges 
 have to be fulfilled whatever the rates 
 of wages. Moreover, "real wages" 
 62 
 
THE DANGER OF A SHAM RESTORATION 
 
 have fallen, not risen. Money wages 
 have nowhere risen in proportion to 
 the rise in the cost of living. Thus, 
 if it is argued that putting things 
 back as they were before the war 
 includes a reversion to pre-war money 
 wages, it must also, it is clear, include 
 a reversion to pre-war prices, which it 
 is impossible to secure. 
 
 No SEPARATE NEGOTIATIONS. 
 
 It follows that matters would not 
 be bettered if the Government threw 
 the whole responsibility on the em- 
 ployers in the engineering and other 
 industries principally affected, and 
 told them to negotiate with the Trade 
 Unions concerned, in order, severally, 
 to make the best bargain that they 
 could. The transformation of each 
 industry affects not one but several 
 dozen Trade Unions. The nation's 
 pledge was given not particularly to 
 the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, 
 63 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 but to the entire Trade Union world. 
 Moreover, it was not given merely 
 generally, but also to each Trade 
 Union and even to each workman, 1 
 separately and specifically ; and there 
 would be no settlement until every 
 one of the Trade Unions had been 
 settled with. In view of the rivalries 
 and conflicting interests of the sixty 
 or seventy Trade Unions represented 
 in the engineering industry alone ; in 
 view of the very different claims and 
 demands of the skilled craftsmen, the 
 semi-skilled men, the labourers, and 
 the women, all of whom would have 
 to be separately represented ; in view, 
 moreover, of the conflicting claims of 
 a " Right to the Trade " and of the 
 outstanding demarcation disputes, it 
 may be safely said that (whilst the 
 device of separate negotiations might 
 be used to divide the Trade Union 
 
 1 Every workman may proceed in the 
 Munitions Tribunal to secure restoration of 
 the Trade Union conditions. 
 64 
 
THE DANGER OF A SHAM RESTORATION 
 
 forces, and to settle with some Unions, 
 while refusing to others any fulfilment 
 of the pledge given to all alike) no 
 amicable general settlement can 
 possibly be reached along the line 
 of separate negotiations. And the 
 Government is responsible before the 
 nation for arriving at an amicable 
 general settlement, without the cordial 
 acceptance of which by the rank and 
 file of the workmen throughout the 
 whole of each industry the elimination 
 of "Ca' canny" cannot be secured. 
 
 65 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 WANTED A NEW SETTLEMENT 
 
 THE warning conveyed in the 
 previous chapter shows that 
 what is wanted is not any 
 restoration of those " Trade Union con- 
 ditions" which have been suspended 
 to the position in which they existed 
 before the war. In any real sense such 
 a restoration has been rendered im- 
 practicable by the new industrial 
 revolution ; and any disingenuous 
 pretence will lead only to trouble. 
 
 What is wanted is a new settlement 
 of industry on a basis that will secure 
 to the wage-earners, honestly and effec- 
 tively, what they have really at heart ; 
 and at the same time allow to the 
 managers of industry that freedom 
 of initiative and power of direction 
 66 
 
WANTED A NEW SETTLEMENT 
 
 which is, whether under individualism 
 or collectivism, indispensable to indus- 
 trial progress. Have we, in the nation, 
 the statesmanship for such a new 
 settlement ? 
 
 The Minister who will have to 
 grapple with the task will be beset 
 with difficulties. He will have to deal, 
 on the one hand, with employers who 
 are heartily sick of the trammels and 
 annoyances to which they have been 
 subjected in the past by the ill-con- 
 ceived restrictions forged out of the 
 suspicions and by the innate industrial 
 conservatism of the workmen ; and 
 who frankly declare their intention to 
 manage their factories henceforth in 
 whatever way they think best. He 
 will have to meet, among the work- 
 men, not only the reluctance of Trade 
 Union leaders to abandon old weapons, 
 but also the influence, increased by 
 every betrayal and by every act of au- 
 tocracy of the employers, of those who 
 do not want to make the " capitalist 
 67 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 system " work smoothly, because they 
 fondly imagine that its imminent 
 " breakdown " will usher in a Utopian 
 State. 
 
 Nor will such a new settlement be 
 possible if it is true that between the 
 real objects of the employers and those 
 of the wage-earners there necessarily 
 yawns an impassable gulf; if national 
 efficiency is not a necessary condition 
 of genuinely securing the interests of 
 either party, and compatible with 
 obtaining the utmost results for both ; 
 and if the most hopeful evolution of 
 society, whether this is to be towards 
 an equalitarian Socialism or towards 
 any other goal, does not lie in always 
 making the best, rather than the worst, 
 out of what we find at the moment 
 to hand. It is in the belief that these 
 propositions have at least a strong 
 presumption of validity that the fol- 
 lowing analysis of the conditions of a 
 new settlement is offered for con- 
 sideration. 
 
 68 
 
WANTED A NEW SETTLEMENT 
 
 EVILS TO BE WARDED OFF. 
 
 We shall do well to consider, not 
 so much the precise stipulations that 
 employers and workmen have sought 
 to enforce in the past, as the objects 
 which they have had in view. Thus, 
 the customs and conditions which the 
 workmen have given up, at the request 
 of the Government, for the duration 
 of the war, represent a large part of 
 the protection which the workmen 
 have gradually built up for themselves 
 against manifest evils. What are 
 these evils ? 
 
 / There is, first, the danger of un- 
 employment of each particular set of 
 workmen, either immediately or at 
 some future time. This fear gives 
 most of the bitterness to the trouble- 
 some demarcation disputes among the 
 different crafts ; maintains the spirit 
 of exclusiveness which seeks to keep 
 out unapprenticed men, labourers, or 
 women ; lies at the root of the objection 
 69 
 
RESTORATION OP TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 to boy labour ; and strengthens the 
 objection to long hours of labour, 
 habitual overtime, increased use of 
 machinery, and generally the " speed- 
 ing up" of production, as all tending 
 to " deprive other men of work." If 
 the workman were somehow relieved 
 from his fear of there presently being 
 "not enough jobs to go round," and 
 guaranteed against involuntary un- 
 employment, he could afford to forgo 
 many of the above restrictions. J 
 
 Secondly, there is the danger of a 
 reduction of the standard rate. This 
 coupled with the fear of unemploy- 
 ment is at the root of the objection 
 to the introduction of new machines 
 which enable unskilled or semi-skilled 
 labour to be substituted for the fully 
 qualified craftsmen ; it intensifies the 
 objection to the introduction of women 
 and labourers; it inspires the resistance 
 to an undue multiplication of appren- 
 tices or the improper use of boy 
 labour ; it leads men to object to 
 70 
 
WANTED A NEW SETTLEMENT 
 
 systems of remuneration by piecework 
 or bonus systems in which the em- 
 ployer can at any time " cut rates " ; 
 it increases the bitterness of demar- 
 cation disputes, which are nearly 
 always complicated by the craft at 
 the lower rate being preferred by the 
 employer ; and, finally, it adds new 
 weight to the danger of a period of 
 unemployment, when employers can 
 seldom refrain from attempting re- 
 ductions of wages, either individual or 
 general. 
 
 Thirdly, there is the helplessness in 
 which, since the industrial revolution, 
 the individual workman stands in 
 relation to the capitalist employer, 
 and still more in relation to the great 
 joint stock company and the national 
 combine or trust. It was to remedy 
 this helplessness that Trade Unionism 
 arose. The workman seeks (a) pro- 
 tection against caprice or tyranny, 
 notably at the hands of foremen ; 
 (b) some opportunity of deciding, in 
 71 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 concert with his fellows in the work- 
 shop, as to the conditions in which 
 they have to spend their working 
 lives ; and (c) jointly with the other 
 workmen an equal share with the 
 employers in the making of the con- 
 tract under which he gives his services. 
 This desire to remedy the individual 
 helplessness of the workman inspires 
 his insistence on Trade Unionism ; 
 and his resentment of the employer's 
 constant wish to limit the power and 
 strength of the union, by encouraging 
 the presence of non-unionists or even 
 by refusing to employ unionists, and by 
 fostering the divisions between unions. 
 
 WAGE ASPIRATIONS AND FREEDOM. 
 
 Fourthly, the workmen are natur- 
 ally not contented with the mere 
 maintenance of existing conditions 
 and the prevention of unemployment. 
 They claim, in addition, the right to 
 progressive improvements in wages, 
 72 
 
WANTED A NEW SETTLEMENT 
 
 in correspondence with the increasing 
 productivity of the nation's industry. 
 They claim, in particular, that the 
 wages and other conditions of the 
 " sweated trades," and of all those 
 workers still below anything that can 
 be called a living wage, should as soon 
 as possible be levelled up to a decent 
 standard. But these entirely justified 
 aspirations for improved conditions 
 of life do not, so the economists tell 
 us, and every big employer confirms 
 the statement, necessarily involve a 
 diminution in the profitableness of 
 industry, either to the State or the 
 private employer. An increase in 
 remuneration is as welcome to the 
 workmen, whether it comes from 
 improvements in production or by 
 way of diminution of the capitalist's 
 dividend. 
 
 Fifthly, we have to face the fact 
 
 that the workmen expect and desire 
 
 more than material advantages, more 
 
 even than security and leisure. They 
 
 * 
 
EBSTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 are to-day full of yearnings none the 
 less potent because they are vague, 
 and none the less influential because 
 they characterize chiefly the more 
 thoughtful and the better educated 
 rather than the half-brutalized mass 
 whom employers sometimes think of 
 as the whole for a higher status for 
 labour, in the industrial as in the 
 political world. This does not mean 
 profit-sharing (an exploded futility 
 which is simply anathema, and must 
 on no account be thought of its mere 
 mention will wreck any settlement), 
 nor yet the elevation of one or two 
 tame representatives of the workmen 
 to the board of directors, where they 
 are as much out of place as a financier 
 would be at a forge. What it does 
 mean is that the whilom autocratic 
 employer, like the nineteenth-century 
 king, will have to "grant a constitu- 
 tion." 
 
 Finally, and most fundamentally of 
 all, the workmen cling to their freedom 
 74 
 
WANTED A NEW SETTLEMENT 
 
 to engage or not to engage in service 
 with whom they choose ; and, on the 
 expiration of their wage contracts, to 
 quit their employment, if they like, 
 whether individually or in concert with 
 each other. The right to strike must, 
 it is clear, remain absolute. 
 
 THE EMPLOYER'S STANDPOINT. 
 
 On the other hand, employers seek 
 to protect themselves against any 
 action by the wage-earners, whatever 
 its motive, which interferes with a 
 progressive increase in the efficiency 
 of industry. They object to any 
 limitation of the workman's output, 
 however effected ; to any restrictions 
 which hamper the installation of the 
 best machinery, or the speed at which 
 it is worked; to anything which pre- 
 vents the introduction of new pro- 
 cesses ; and to any limitation on their 
 freedom to engage, or to promote, or to 
 put to any kind of work any operative, 
 75 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 whatever his training, age, or sex. 
 All this is with a constant desire to 
 reduce the cost of production ; and 
 employers rightly assert that every 
 such reduction is a national gain. 
 
 But we must distinguish. Em- 
 ployers are apt to confuse a reduction 
 in the cost of production that is to 
 say, in the human effort and sacrifices 
 involved with a reduction in the rates 
 of wages that they have to pay. Such 
 a reduction of wage is, of course, not 
 a reduction of the cost of production 
 at all, but merely an alteration in the 
 way in which the product is shared. 
 It is not necessarily, or even usually, 
 of any national advantage ; and it may 
 be, and, in view of the inadequacy of 
 current wages for the fullest efficiency, 
 in most cases is, a national disadvan- 
 tage. To the workman a reduction 
 of wage rightly seems to be, in no real 
 sense, a reduction in the cost of pro- 
 duction, or otherwise than a dead loss ; 
 it seems to him, at best, the taking 
 76 
 
WANTED A NEW SETTLEMENT 
 
 of an unfair advantage of strength ; 
 and it may amount to fraud or what 
 is very near theft. There must clearly 
 be no room, in the new settlement, for 
 such pretended reductions in the cost 
 of production. 
 
 Finally, employers lay great stress 
 not, as some of them wrongly ex- 
 press themselves, on autocracy in the 
 factory but on full freedom to dis- 
 pense as they think fit with the 
 services of any or all their employees, 
 at the expiration of their wage con- 
 tracts. This is the converse of the 
 workman's right to strike. The em- 
 ployer will naturally not give up his 
 right to lock out. 
 
 Are these fundamental requirements 
 of the workmen and the employers 
 incompatible with each other, or with 
 the national interest? Does it tran- 
 scend the powers of industrial states- 
 manship to work out a new settlement 
 for industry in such a way as honestly 
 to secure to each party what it really 
 77 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 desires? It will involve the abandon- 
 ment of some cherished traditions of 
 all parties, including the Government. 
 It must necessarily include very great 
 concessions to Labour, as the nation 
 has its broken word to redeem, and 
 not merely acquiescence but cordial 
 acceptance to obtain. But it need not, 
 it is submitted, involve either detri- 
 ment to British industry or the em- 
 ployers' ruin. 
 
 78 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE FIVE POINTS OF THE NEW 
 CHARTER 
 
 WE have sketched the fund- 
 amental requirements of 
 the workmen and of the 
 employers, and we have pronounced 
 them, under certain conditions, capable 
 of reconciliation without detriment to 
 the former or the ruin of the latter. 
 Let us consider the terms of a new 
 industrial charter. We may arrange 
 them under five heads : 
 
 I. The Prevention of Unemploy- 
 ment. 
 
 Many of the Trade Union condi- 
 tions that we have pledged ourselves 
 to restore have for their object, as 
 we have seen, to protect the skilled 
 79 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 craftsmen from unemployment. We 
 cannot, as a nation, have the shame- 
 ful audacity to refuse to restore 
 these conditions without offering an 
 equivalent guarantee against unem- 
 ployment. It is impossible to hope 
 to get the skilled engineers, for in- 
 stance, to endure without revolt the 
 sight of labourers and women doing 
 engineers' jobs if trained engineers 
 are simultaneously walking the streets 
 in search of work. The same is true 
 of other trades. The first and the 
 most indispensable condition of in- 
 dustrial peace under the new settle- 
 ment is that the Government shall 
 undertake, by the means that are 
 thoroughly understood in the Board 
 of Trade, to prevent the occurrence 
 of unemployment, in the same sense 
 that it prevents the occurrence of 
 cholera. There will always be spo- 
 radic cases, but any continued or 
 widespread unemployment must be 
 henceforth, not merely relieved by 
 80 
 
THE FIVE POINTS OP THE NEW CHARTER 
 
 doles or futile relief works, or even 
 by insurance, but actually prevented 
 from occurring. This can be done, 
 as soon as the Government chooses, 
 by nothing more recondite than such 
 a systematic rearrangement of the 
 necessary works and orders of the 
 Government Departments and local 
 authorities over each decade as will 
 maintain approximately level from 
 year to year (including the fluctuat- 
 ing wage bill of capitalist employers) 
 the aggregate wage total of the king- 
 dom. 1 
 
 A PROGRAMME or PUBLIC WORK. 
 
 During the first decade after peace, 
 for instance, there will inevitably be 
 enormous public works and orders of 
 the most diverse kind, probably en- 
 tailing an aggregate expenditure of 
 
 x See the whole scheme worked out in 
 The Prevention of Destitution, by S. and B. 
 Webb (Longmans, 6s.). 
 
 81 v 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 many hundreds of millions sterling. 
 It is not suggested that even one 
 piece of work should be undertaken 
 merely for the sake of giving em- 
 ployment. But if these inevitable 
 public works and orders are left to 
 be executed, as they have hitherto 
 been, regardless of the state of the 
 labour market, we shall have a worse 
 chaos (and more financial waste) than 
 ever. If the Government guarantees 
 the Trade Unions against unemploy- 
 ment, it would actually save money 
 by framing a ten years' programme 
 and giving out its orders for all the 
 work that was not urgent deliber- 
 ately in such a way as to keep the 
 national wage total approximately 
 level throughout the decade. This 
 need cost literally nothing (except 
 the " intolerable toil " of taking 
 thought) to the Government or the 
 nation. 
 
 Such a policy of actually prevent- 
 ing the occurrence of unemployment 
 82 
 
THE FIVE POINTS OF THE NEW CHARTER 
 
 will be as advantageous to the em- 
 ployer as to the workman. The 
 employers will gain greatly in con- 
 tinuity of production ; capital would 
 be fully employed as well as labour. 
 What they must forgo is the inten- 
 tion or desire, secretly cherished by 
 the less reputable among them, of 
 taking advantage of periods of un- 
 employment to worsen the condi- 
 tions of labour. Any such worsen- 
 ing, it need hardly be said, is against 
 the national interest, and must any- 
 how be prevented. It must, how- 
 ever, be ruefully admitted that the 
 Trade Unions will be slow to believe 
 even the most solemn Government 
 declaration and pledge that this policy 
 of preventing the occurrence of un- 
 employment is to be forthwith adopted. 
 It is part of the penalty for our 
 breach of faith that something more 
 specific will be required, in addition, 
 by the principal unions. In view of 
 our special obligations to these unions 
 83 
 
EESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 in the skilled crafts, whose regulations 
 we are not able to restore, and whose 
 cordial acquiescence in the new settle- 
 ment we have to procure, the Gov- 
 ernment might well undertake (in 
 the event of its measures to prevent 
 the occurrence of unemployment being 
 so far unsuccessful in particular trades) 
 to pay to the Trade Union, as liqui- 
 dated damages, and quite apart from 
 unemployment insurance, l per week 
 for every member for whom the 
 employment exchanges were unable 
 to find a situation under the condi- 
 tions specified in Part II of the 
 National Insurance Act. If the Gov- 
 ernment honestly and energetically 
 carries out the proposed pledge to 
 prevent the occurrence of unemploy- 
 ment which, be it remembered, is 
 quite practicable such a supplemental 
 guarantee would cost the Treasury 
 nothing. 
 
THE FIVE POINTS OF THE NEW CHARTER 
 
 II. The Maintenance of the 
 Standard Rates. 
 
 Second only to protection from un- 
 employment, as the motive for the 
 Trade Union conditions that we are 
 pledged to restore, is that of maintain- 
 ing the standard rates of wages. It 
 is clear that if we have to go back on 
 our word, and refuse to restore these 
 conditions, we must in common 
 decency undertake that there shall be 
 nowhere any lowering of, or nibbling 
 at, the standard rates. Moreover, it 
 is certain that any attempt, after the 
 war, to reduce rates, at any rate so 
 long as the cost of living remains high, 
 will lead to serious industrial trouble. 
 The "good employer," the employer 
 on a large scale, the well-equipped and 
 competent employer, does not seek any 
 such reduction ; on the contrary, he 
 is often found conceding conditions 
 superior to what is the standard in his 
 industry. But in every large industry 
 85 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 there are low-paid districts, in which, 
 mainly through local weakness of 
 organization, rates of wages are below 
 the prevailing standard. Sometimes 
 a whole class of work, like agricultural 
 implement making or sewing machine 
 making in the engineering industry, 
 will be paid at rates scandalously be- 
 low that of other branches of the 
 industry. More important still, there 
 is usually a fringe of employers who, 
 because of their inferior equipment, or 
 their own incompetence, or merely 
 because of their short-sighted desire 
 to squeeze the last drop of blood out 
 of those who are subject to them, 
 habitually refuse to pay the standard 
 rates ; and thereby often harass the 
 better employer by their cut-throat 
 competition. 
 
 MINIMUM NOT MAXIMUM. 
 
 Now, in order effectively to main- 
 tain the standard rate in any industry, 
 
 86 
 
THE FIVE POINTS OF THE NEW CHARTER 
 
 the facts must first be ascertained and 
 authoritatively recorded ; and a precise 
 standard rate, for an equally precise 
 normal week, either uniform through- 
 out the kingdom for each class of work, 
 or varying according to exactly de- 
 limited and completely coterminous 
 geographical districts, must be defin- 
 itely prescribed. The standard rate, 
 it must be remembered, is never any- 
 thing but a minimum. No employer 
 is prevented from paying more, and, 
 in fact, there are always some who do 
 pay more, whilst no workman is pre- 
 vented from asking more. There is 
 no prevention of competition, least of 
 all any attempt to give the inferior 
 man the same chance as the superior. 
 On the contrary, all experience shows, 
 as the economists theoretically demon- 
 strate, that the fixing of a uniform 
 minimum rate actually improves the 
 position of the efficient man or the 
 man of good character relatively 
 to the inefficient or the " boozer. " 
 87 
 
RESTORATION OP TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 Competition is limited only on the 
 downward way. 
 
 So far as the low-paid trades are 
 concerned, what would suit best would 
 be an extension of the Trade Boards 
 Act (suitably amended) to practically 
 the whole range of industries in which 
 the great bulk of the operatives get 
 less than 30s. per week. The coal- 
 miners have now their own arrange- 
 ment on a similar basis. Much the 
 same arrangement would be acceptable 
 to the railway employees, the employees 
 of the National Government and the 
 local authorities. Probably all occu- 
 pations without effective Trade Union 
 organization would find advantage in 
 such a plan. 
 
 ASCERTAINMENT OF RATE. 
 
 This would apparently not be ac- 
 ceptable to the skilled and well- 
 organized men in such industries as 
 engineering and shipbuilding, the 
 
 88 
 
THE FIVE POINTS OF THE NEW CHARTER 
 
 cotton trade, building, furniture, and 
 many small but strongly combined 
 crafts which are just those to which 
 we are under a special obligation to 
 make good our broken pledges. We 
 are in the difficulty that we cannot 
 very well safeguard their rates until 
 it has been definitely ascertained what 
 they are. In their case what seems 
 best appears to be the formation of 
 a joint board of employers and em- 
 ployed, to which all employers in 
 the industry and all Trade Unions 
 claiming to include any considerable 
 number of workers in it should be 
 invited to take part for this special 
 inquiry. 
 
 This joint board should be required, 
 within a certain time, to formulate 
 for the whole industry a precisely 
 defined standard rate (with possible 
 variations for particular districts) ap- 
 plicable to each grade and section of 
 the industry, and based upon the 
 existing practice of the best employer* 
 89 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 in the industry ; in the event of the 
 failure of the board to agree upon 
 this issue of fact (what standard rate 
 does, in fact, represent the existing 
 practice of the best employers) the 
 bare issue of fact to be decided, after 
 hearing and inquiry, by Sir George 
 Askwith. This is not compulsory 
 arbitration. There is no suggestion 
 of any decision as to what the rate 
 of wages ought to be. All that would 
 be in question would be what was, 
 in fact, the actually prevailing rate, 
 disregarding alike the 15 per cent, of 
 employers who paid more and the 
 15 per cent, who paid less. The 
 standard rate so ascertained for the 
 normal week (with any deductions 
 and allowances provided for) should 
 be enforceable as a minimum on all 
 employers, and not subject to reduc- 
 tion on any excuse whatever. Any 
 increases in the wage rates or improve- 
 ments in conditions to be settled 
 by agreements between Trade Unions 
 90 
 
FIVE POINTS OF THE NEW CHARTER 
 
 and employers' associations as hereto- 
 fore. 
 
 PIECEWORK. 
 
 With regard to piecework, it is 
 plain that, in order to protect the 
 standard rate, the employer cannot 
 be allowed to fix the rates (or times 
 of bonus systems) as he chooses, or 
 merely by individual bargaining. The 
 joint board settling the standard rate 
 must settle also its equivalent in 
 piecework, as is habitually done by 
 the trade boards. This should be on 
 a uniform basis of time and a quarter 
 or time ard a third. Where the 
 nature of tiie work forbids a standard 
 list to be made, there should be in 
 all cases a guarantee that no work- 
 man whom the employer chooses to 
 put on piece rates should receive less 
 than time and a quarter or time and 
 a third for each week, deficiencies not 
 being carried forward. Moreover, the 
 power to see that the piecework price 
 91 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 is really equivalent to the standard 
 time wage (at time and a quarter), 
 so far as the ordinary workman is 
 concerned, working at the normal 
 speed, under normal conditions, shall 
 be entrusted to a couple of salaried 
 rate-fixers, one appointed by the 
 employers' association and the other 
 by the Trade Union, who shall be 
 called in to adjudicate by any em- 
 ployer or any workman, and whose 
 decision as to the equivalent piece- 
 work rate shall, if they agree, be final. 
 If they do not agree, they shall 
 jointly nominate an umpire, with 
 whom they shall consult, and whose 
 decision shall be final. The necessary 
 staff of rate-fixers shall be appointed 
 to enable all disputes to be settled 
 without delay, work proceeding mean- 
 time uninterruptedly. This is the 
 device which has proved successful, 
 under one or other name, among the 
 brassworkers and some of the coal- 
 miners. 
 
 92 
 
THE FIVE POINTS OF THE NEW CHARTER 
 
 There would need to be many 
 minor safeguards of the standard rate, 
 including : 
 
 (a) Each workman to be paid for a 
 full week until definitely discharged 
 with the necessary notice, irrespective 
 of interruptions due to weather, short- 
 age of materials or orders, stoppages 
 of machinery, etc. ; 
 
 (6) Work in excess of the normal 
 week to be paid for at overtime rates 
 of time and a half or double time ; 
 
 (c) No deductions to be made for fines, 
 breakages, bad work, etc. 
 
 HI. A Constitution for Factory and 
 Industry. 
 
 It is clear that the British workmen 
 will, after the war, less than ever con- 
 sent to sit down quietly under indus- 
 trial autocracy. There are employers 
 who are claiming to-day that they are 
 henceforth going to be " masters in 
 their own works," and that they 
 93 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 intend to run their own factories as 
 they think best. That way lie " Ca' 
 canny" and spasmodic rebellions. If 
 the Factory Acts and Mines Acts 
 and Shop Hours Acts and Trade 
 Boards Acts do not serve to warn 
 such employers that the day for 
 industrial autocracy has gone by, they 
 must be reminded, not only of their 
 penal liability under the Munitions 
 Acts, but also of the specific obliga- 
 tions to which they have individually set 
 their hands in their contracts with the 
 Government entirely to restore the 
 pre-war working conditions of their 
 factories. They cannot be allowed, 
 even if they would, to stand in the 
 way of a national settlement. They 
 will do well to agree quickly, lest 
 worse things befall them. 
 
 /It is, in fact, imperative that the 
 new settlement, if it is to have any 
 chance of cordial acceptance, should 
 include a definite constitution, both for 
 
 the little kingdom represented by each 
 94 
 
THE FIVE POINTS OF THE NEW CHARTER 
 
 establishment, and for the industry of 
 which it forms part. Such a consti- 
 tution must, we suggest, include 
 
 (a) Universal acceptance of Trade 
 Unionism by employers making it a 
 penal offence for an employer to have 
 a rule against engaging trade unionists, 
 or for him to refuse unreasonably to 
 receive the Trade Union officials or to 
 negotiate with them. 
 
 (6) Workshop committees or shop 
 stewards to be provided for in every 
 establishment having more than twenty 
 operatives, to whom the employer should 
 be required to communicate at least 
 one week prior to their adoption any 
 proposed new rules, and also any pro- 
 posed changes in wage rates, piecework 
 prices, allowances, deductions, hours of 
 labour, meal times, methods of working, 
 and conditions affecting the comfort of 
 the workshop. 
 
 These workshop committees should, it 
 
 is suggested, be frankly representative, 
 
 partly of the several Trade Unions to 
 
 95 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 which the employees may ^belong, 
 and partly of the employees as such, 
 whether members of Trade Unions 
 or not. Possibly a good arrangement 
 would be for half the members to 
 be nominated in due proportion on 
 behalf of those employees who were 
 members of the several unions, and 
 the other half to be elected by the 
 whole body of employees. It should 
 be the duty of workshop committees 
 to see that no cutting of piecework 
 prices and no reduction or other 
 " nibbling " of the standard rate takes 
 place, or any worsening of conditions, 
 and in any such case both to make 
 representations to the employer and 
 to communicate with the Trade Union 
 concerned. In such matters its func- 
 tion should be purely defensive. The 
 employer would not be required to 
 receive and consider any representa- 
 tion asking for an advance in wage 
 rates or other improvement of con- 
 ditions unless it has received the 
 96 
 
THE FIVE POINTS OF THE NEW CHAKTER 
 
 endorsement of the Trade Union. 
 The works committee should not be 
 permitted to take any action contrary 
 to the conditions agreed to between 
 the employers and workmen of the 
 district ; and its constitution must, of 
 course, not include any clause or 
 agreement restricting the freedom 
 of employers or employed as to strikes 
 or lock-outs. 
 
 (c) Can we add to this Constitution a 
 clause providing for a deliberative, 
 national council for each industry ? An 
 interesting proposal has been made by 
 Mr. Sparkes, a London master builder, 
 for a permanent " Industrial Parliament 
 for the Building Industry," to be com- 
 posed of twenty members appointed by 
 the National Associated Building Trades 
 Council and a like number representing 
 the Federation of Building Trades Em- 
 ployers. Such a body, meeting regularly 
 for stated sessions, might work out 
 greatly improved conditions for the 
 industry. He suggests that: 
 
 "The Parliament would not concern 
 97 G 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 itself with the adjustment of differences 
 or the settlement of disputes. Means 
 already exist for conducting such nego- 
 tiations and settling such issues. The 
 function of the Parliament would not 
 be judicial or conciliatory, but construc- 
 tive. 
 
 " The agenda of the Parliament would 
 be determined from time to time accord- 
 ing to circumstances as they arose. The 
 following matters call urgently for atten- 
 tion from such a joint council of 
 employers and employed in the building 
 industry at the present moment: 
 
 1. Regularization of Wages. The pro- 
 
 vision of a graduated scale of 
 minimum rates designed to main- 
 tain real wages as nearly as 
 possible identical throughout the 
 country. Subsequent advances to 
 be on a national basis. 
 
 2. Unemployment. To acquire a fuller 
 
 participation in the control of the 
 Board of Trade Labour Exchanges, 
 and to supplement their work by 
 improved organization special to 
 the building trade for (a) the 
 decasualization of labour, and (6) 
 98 
 
THE FIVE POINTS OF THE NEW CHARTER 
 
 by minimizing the fluctuation of 
 trade by intelligent anticipation 
 and the augmentation of demand 
 in slack periods, in co-operation 
 with the National Housing and 
 Town Planning Council and the 
 Local Government Board. 
 
 3. Employment of Partially Disabled 
 
 Soldiers. To consider the employ- 
 ment of partially disabled soldiers, 
 and to ensure that the pensions 
 granted by the nation shall not 
 become the means of reducing the 
 standard of wages. 
 
 4. Technical Training and Apprentice- 
 
 ship. To make provision for 
 adequate technical training for 
 the members of the industry. 
 Apprenticeship, and the regulation 
 of the conditions of entry into the 
 industry. 
 
 5. Publicity. To issue authoritative 
 
 information upon all matters 
 whereon it is deemed desirable 
 that leaders of public opinion, the 
 Press, and the general public should 
 have exact information. 
 99 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 6. Investigation into Possible Lines of 
 Improvement. To investigate, in 
 conjunction with experts, fore- 
 seeable developments, probable 
 changes, and suggested improve- 
 ments, such as : 
 
 Scientific management. 
 Industrial control and status of 
 
 labour. 
 Improvements in design and 
 
 standards of workmanship. 
 Closer association between com- 
 mercial and aesthetic require- 
 ments. 
 
 Additions to this list would be as 
 occasion arose." 
 
 There would be many advantages, to 
 employers as well as to the community 
 as a whole, if such a deliberative body 
 in each industry could sit regularly to 
 consider its requirements, quite irrespec- 
 tive of any differences between masters 
 and men. 
 
 100 
 
THE FIVE POINTS OF THE N'EW CHARTER 
 
 IV. No Limitation of Output. 
 
 The foregoing heads of the Charter 
 the Prevention of Unemployment, 
 the Maintenance of the Standard Rates, 
 and the Grant of a Constitution will 
 seem to some employers to represent 
 an enormous concession to labour. 
 Yet they are the very lowest terms 
 on which, if we fail to restore the pre- 
 war network of Trade Union conditions 
 in accordance with our plighted word, 
 there is any chance of securing the 
 new settlement which is so indispens- 
 able to efficient production. And it 
 must be remembered that, as every 
 competent employer knows, none of 
 these three concessions reduce by a 
 single penny the margin between cost 
 and price, which is the employer's profit. 
 On the contrary, by securing continuity 
 of employment, which involves con- 
 tinuity of profit-making as well as con- 
 tinuity of wage-paying, the aggregate 
 101 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 profits of each decade will actually be 
 increased. 
 
 What is most vital to national 
 efficiency, as it is to the employers' 
 hope of profit, is to get rid, fully and 
 permanently, of the workman's ten- 
 dency silently to restrict his output. 
 This has been in the past the sullen 
 reprisal of the workshop to the em- 
 ployer's constant attempts to cut rates 
 and to his peremptory turning off of 
 hands whenever work was slack. We 
 can get rid of it only by really main- 
 taining the standard rates and pre- 
 venting unemployment. Making these 
 two concessions, the Government can 
 legitimately ask for a frank abandon- 
 ment of a practice which does more 
 harm to British industry than all the 
 strikes and lock-outs. 
 
 V. Freedom for Every Worker. 
 
 ( Once unemployment is prevented 
 and an effective guarantee for the 
 
 102 
 
THE FIVE POINTS OF THE NEW CHARTER 
 
 maintenance of the standard rate is 
 conceded, together with a constitu- 
 tion for the factory and the industry, 
 the claims of the labourers and the 
 women to remain in their new jobs, 
 and of the employers to organize their 
 factories on new principles, become 
 tractable. 
 
 { In return for these concessions the 
 Government may fairly ask from the 
 Trade Unions complete freedom for 
 the employer for engaging any person 
 whatever, for any sort of work ; com- 
 plete freedom for any person to do 
 any task or carry out any process ; 
 and complete freedom for the intro- 
 duction of any machinery or process.^ 
 What is and will remain indispens- 
 able is that whoever is engaged should 
 receive, not what wage the employer 
 may dictate, but the full standard 
 rate for the work, as authoritatively 
 prescribed and enforced. This main- 
 tenance of the standard rate for the 
 work done, of course, is the very 
 103 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 cornerstone of the edifice. If em- 
 ployers are not prepared to forgo their 
 previous practices of " cutting rates " 
 and striving to get " cheap labour " 
 which did not really pay them they 
 will not get freedom to improve the 
 organization of their factories. 
 
 If the Government asks the skilled 
 crafts to forgo the restoration of their 
 monopoly, the skilled craftsmen have 
 an irresistible claim to have (i.) an 
 absolute guarantee against unemploy- 
 ment ; (ii.) an absolute guarantee that 
 their standard rates shall suffer no 
 reduction, now or in the future. 
 
 On the other hand, if these two 
 guarantees are effectively secured to 
 them, it is suggested that there is no 
 reason why, in the interests of a 
 national settlement, the skilled crafts 
 should not abandon their monopoly, 
 and allow the employer to put any 
 person, male or female, to any work, 
 conditional on (i.) the fixed stan- 
 dard rate for the work as actually 
 104 
 
THE FIVE POINTS OF THE NEW CHARTER 
 
 performed being paid ; and (ii.) on the 
 person immediately joining the Trade 
 Union concerned (which must, of 
 course, be open to that person). \ 
 | It is worth remembering that free- 
 dom of choice of men has long been 
 conceded by the cotton spinners 
 one of the strongest and most suc- 
 cessful of unions upon exactly these 
 two conditions. The London Society 
 of Compositors takes up practically 
 the same line. 
 
 Indeed (if effective guarantees are 
 given against unemployment, and 
 against any reduction of the standard 
 rate), the concession to the employers 
 of complete liberty of choice of opera- 
 tives is really advantageous, in leading 
 to a constant preference for the more 
 skilled and more efficient operative, 
 and so to an actual advancement of 
 skill. 
 
 Here then are the "Five Points" 
 of the suggested New Charter which 
 employers and workmen might alike 
 105 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 be asked to accept as the basis for 
 that new settlement of industry which 
 the new industrial revolution and the 
 nation's inevitable failure to fulfil its 
 pledge of the restoration of Trade 
 Union conditions render indispensable. 
 It is only by frankly putting before the 
 Trade Unions a large and sweeping 
 scheme, which will genuinely safe- 
 guard their interests, that their cordial 
 acceptance of the new state of things 
 can be secured. Without some such 
 new settlement, cordially accepted by 
 all parties, the future is dark. 
 
 106 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 PARTICULARS as to the successive action 
 taken with regard to Trade Union con- 
 ditions will be most conveniently found 
 in the Labour Year-Book for 1916 (Fabian 
 Bookshop, 25 Tothill Street, Westminster, 
 price 2s. 6d., postage 5d.), especially Part I, 
 "Labour and the War." The LabourYear- 
 Book for 1917, to be published in a few 
 months, will contain the later documents. 
 See also Labour in War Time, by G. D. H. 
 Cole (Bell, 2s. 6d.); the various Reports 
 of the Government Committee on Pro- 
 duction (February 16 and 20, and March 4, 
 1915); the Munitions of War Acts, 1915 
 and 1916 ; the A.S.E. Journal (monthly) 
 during 1915 and 1916 ; the Labour Gazette 
 (monthly). The following Fabian Tracts 
 may be consulted ; No. 176, The War and 
 the Workers (Id.); No. 178, The War, 
 Women, and Unemployment (2d.) ; No, 181, 
 When Peace Comes : the Way of Industrial 
 107 
 
RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS 
 
 Reconstruction, by Sidney Webb (2d.). 
 The War Emergency Workers' National 
 Committee (1 Victoria Street, London, 
 S.W.) has published The Restoration of 
 Trade Union Customs after the War: a 
 Statement and Analysis of the Govern- 
 ment Guarantees (Id.), and The Munitions 
 Act and the Restoration of Trade Union 
 Customs (Id.). 
 
 For an employer's view see Some 
 Aspects of Labour and its Claims in the 
 Engineering Industry, being the Presi- 
 dential Address to the Glasgow University 
 Engineering Society by J. R. Richmond. 
 
 After- the- war conditions are dealt with 
 in the Garton Foundation Memorandum 
 on the Industrial Situation after the War 
 (Harrison & Sons, Is.) ; Great Britain 
 after the War, by Sidney Webb and 
 Arnold Freeman (George Allen and 
 Unwin, Is.); The Elements of Reconstruc- 
 tion, reprinted from The Times, with 
 introduction by Viscount Milner (Nisbet 
 & Co., Is.). See also the War Emergency 
 Workers' National Committee pamphlets 
 on The Problem of Demobilization (Id.), 
 The Prevention of Unemployment (Id.), 
 and Report of the Joint Committee of 
 108 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 Women's Industrial Organizations (2d.). 
 The Fabian Research Department will 
 publish shortly a detailed report on 
 Women in the Engineering Industry. 
 
 The best analysis of systems of piece- 
 work remuneration, and of the very 
 grave economic objections to it where 
 the rates are not safeguarded by law or 
 collective bargaining, will be found in 
 Industrial Democracy, by S. and B. Webb 
 (Longmans, 12s.), and Methods of Indus- 
 trial Remuneration, by D. L. Schloss 
 (Williams and Norgate). 
 
 All the above can be obtained at the 
 Fabian Bookshop, 25 Tothill Street, 
 Westminster, S.W. 
 
 109 
 
fcsjmm Jr*ss 
 
 BROTHERS, LOOTED 
 WOKING AND LONDON 
 ENGLAND 
 
THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW 
 
 AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS 
 
 WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN 
 THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY 
 WILL INCREASE TO SO CENTS ON THE FOURTH 
 DAY AND TO $1.OO ON THE SEVENTH DAY 
 OVERDUE. 
 
 MAR 27 i&34 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 OCT 23 1938 
 
 
 MJ*V 1 1 101(1 
 
 
 MA? li-Jt-K' 
 
 1 1 h u 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 FEB 11 1542 
 
 J 
 
 
 
 
 
 wMli JL vj loUU 
 
 
 t^fWjfMtfl^V f fV C 
 
 co iR'Rft -9Pfl 
 
 REC D LJD 
 
 CD J[O DO ^ir w 
 
 
 
 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY