GUILDS AND TRADE UNIONS.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.")
SIR,—There is a very puzzling comparison in your article on "Manhood Suffrage " between modern trade unions and ancient trade guilds. You say : "Looked at, then, merely from a party point of view Unionists have nothing whatever to fear, but, we believe, may find that they have a good deal to gain, especially in the struggle between trade unionism and free labour—the old struggle of the trade guilds and the men outside the guilds in the past, which is to be also the struggle of the future."
I do not wish to discuss the Unionist prospects, but I do wish to know, if you will be good enough to tell me, in what respect the struggle of trade unionist and non-unionist re- sembles the struggle of the guilds and the craftsmen who were not members of the guilds. Is it a fact that trade unions seek to include all men working in their respective trades, and that the trouble arises with men who refuse to join ? Is it a fact that the guilds sought, in their later stages, to exclude craftsmen, and so became "close corporations," against the exclusiveness of which the rest of the craftsmen protested? If the facts are as I suggest, is not the " struggle " between trade unionism and non-unionism so dissimilar from the struggle of the guilds and the men outside them as to be outside the range of comparison P Is not the complaint against trade unions that they try to compel men to join ? Was not the grievance against the guilds that they refused to allow men to join?
Here is what the late Mr. Geo. Howell said in his " Conflicts of Capital and Labour" (pp. 41-2) :—
" The object of the Association of Craftsmen was the regulation of their trade ; they were especially recognized as the lawful authority for this purpose ; it was therefore necessary for the efficient carrying-out of their rules that every member in the trade should belong to it. There was at this time no question of monopoly, every person being permitted to engage in the trade if he submitted to the regulations and became a member of the guild, when he acquired a vote and exercised an influence on its decisions. Monopolies were the growth of later times : they arose out of the exclusive trading corporations, which first limited their numbers and then prohibited non-members from carrying o❑ their trade."
Mr. Howell's history points out that the decay of the guilds began in the fourteenth and continued in the fifteenth century, " until we find Lord Bacon in his time described them as `fraternities in evil,' so quickly had they fallen into a mean state and bad repute."
Now I do not desire to discuss the merits of trade unions ; but is it not an entirely false point, historically, to suggest that their attitude in any sense resembles the attitude of the guilds towards the non-guildsmen ? Is it not, indeed, the exact
[" E. T." scores a point against us, but not quite as good a point as appears at first sight. He has forgotten that certain trade unions keenly endeavour to restrict apprentices,
and seek in other ways means of limiting the supply of labour in particular trades. No doubt in the case of workers in
oeing, i.e. men who have learned a trade and are working at it, they endeavour to force them into the union, but that is because they want to control the existing supply of labour, not because they want to enlarge that supply. One of the rules of the Printers' Union, if we are rightly informed, is that
the employers should only have a proportion of one apprentice to every four men employed.—En. Spectator.]
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