THE TIMES ON THE DISINGENUOUSNESS OF TRADES' UNIONS.
THE Times of Wednesday was very powerful on the disin- genuousness of the evidence given by Mr. Applegarth -and others before the Trades' Unions' Commission with respect to the Unionist treatment of workmen of special skill and ability. If the charge be true, the critic evidently believes in the prin- ciple of similia similibus curantur, for a more clear application of disingenuous criticism to rectify the mischief of what he declared to be disingenuous statement, we have never seen. The statement to which we specially refer was as follows :— " If a workman shows unusual skill, quickness, or ability, he receives warning at once, lest the spectacle of what might be done by such hands should induce the employer to expect more from other hands employed ; but if any corresponding steps are taken with a workman falling below the mark, they have still to be • described. We suspect, indeed, that the Unions feel the weak- ness of their case at this point, for it is the only point on which, as yet, any disingenuous testimony has been given. The witnesses endeavour to represent their policy, as conceived in the interest of the superior workman himself. Mr. George Howell, for instance, in stating that the Bricklayers' Union condemned overwork, pro- fessed to believe that it was very injurious for the men to act in that way :' that 'when a man had done a day's work he had done sufficient ;' and that it did not add to a man's genius to overtax his own strength.' This is all pure hypocrisy. The Unions do not care a pin for the man's own interest ; they think only of the damage likely to result to the rank and file of the trade."
Now, first, as an illustration of the care and attention the writer of this slashing paragraph has given to the subject, these quotations ascribed to the evidence of Mr. George Howell, bricklayer, are really from the evidence of Mr. Robert Applegarth, joiner, and one of the answers quoted, moreover, has not the slightest relation to the subject to which the Times' writer makes it apply. The quotations will be found in answer to questions 108, 109, and 115, put to Mr. Applegarth ;—no such answers were given by Mr. George Howell at all. But the carelessness goes beyond matters of form. The first of these three answers quoted by the Times, was given not to justify the practice of discouraging over-good and overskilful work by workmen, but to justify the practice of dis- couraging, in the interest of the employer, special contracts between journeymen carpenters and the public, which might him injurious to the interests of their employers. We extract the whole passage, to show how the Times has perverted and misrepresented its true drift :— " Are we to understand that that rule of not suffering a man to work for a private customer of his employer is maintained by the .society in the interest of the employers?—Solely in their interest ; it could not be to our interest. The fact is that we have found that the employers have met us in this way sometimes : they say, "There are lots of your men that take work from our customers to do of an evening,' and in all such cases we consider the ea- ployer has a just ground of complaint ; and we say, 'We will put our veto upon that proceeding.'—Then you consider, do you, that your society is exercising its proper function in protecting the employer as well as the workman ?—Yes.-----So that you do 'really interfere with a man's judgment of his own interests; you say, We, the trade, interfere, and tell you that you shall not be governed by your own judgment ?— In matters like that we believe it to be on the whole very injurious for the men to act in that way."
And yet the Times quotes this answer to prove that the witness justified the suppression of a good workman's talents -" in the interest of the superior workman himself." The question had no relation to the keeping down of a superior workman's talents, and the answer had no reference to the "interest of the superior workman himself." It was simply a justification of a rule of the Union, made in the in- terest of the masters, that their workmen should not take private jobs from the customers of their employers. We do not suppose for a moment that the Times' writer made this absurd and self-stultifying blunder on purpose, or with any sinister intention. But it only shows how Times' miters, with a brief in their hands, get up their evidence. They look to the answers without looking to the questions, construct for themselves out of "the pure reason" the point to which the answers relate, and use the words they have alighted upon without reference to the context, in the interests of the "case" they were set down to advocate. The second and third answers quoted by the Times from Mr. Applegarth's evidence have no doubt more reference to the subject in hand. The questions and answers were as follows :— "What do you mean by 'injurious ?'—We believe that when a man has done a day's work he has done sufficient.—Here is, we will say, an individual man who has a peculiar power, who is in fact a genius ; you interfere with him and say, your genius shall not help you, we will bring you down to the medio- crity of the society ?—That is a mistake. I would ask whether it adds to a man's genius to overtax his own strength."
The answers here had reference to the disputed ques- tion of overtime, namely, whether a society has any right to prohibit its abler and stronger men from working overtime, on the ground that it is a bad thing for ordinary men ; and Mr. Applegarth's answers were not very wise, as it is obvious that the individual man must be usually a better judge of his own strength than the society can be. But while quoting these replies, the Times might beneficially have quoted,—if the able leader-writer in question had read the evidence a line beyond the words which misled him, which no doubt he had not done,—the testimony expressly given that while Mr. Apple- garth personally approved of a prohibition of overtime, his society, as a matter of fact, did not object to overtime, and only supported rules against it where they had been agreed. to in special localities both by the employers and the employed. The random answer as to " genius " was really only a chance opinion of Mr. Applegarth's. General rules against over- time do, no doubt, exist in many societies, but not in the society of this witness, and are not justified by any regard to the individual, but by the good of the majority. More- over, should we not consider it a perfectly legitimate thing in an association, say of bankers' clerks, to make it a rule that no banker's clerk should be admitted to the benefits of the association who belonged to a bank closing later than four on ordinary days and three on Saturdays? We should hold this a legitimate self-protecting rule in favour of one of the most desirable and philanthropic objects in the world,—early closing. Yet when, on precisely similar grounds, working men restrict the benefits of their society by similar limits, we cry out upon them that they "proscribe and punish" any workman who can excel his brother workmen in industry and talent. If the law is really so mischievous and absurd as to refuse protection to the funds of any society whose rules are made "in restraint of trade," no early closing association could have a benefit fund the enjoyment of which should be made conditional on refusing to work with any firm adopting late hours. A more oppressive and tyrannical law we cannot imagine.
But the worst and most disingenuous part of the blunder- ing misrepresentation which we have quoted from the Times is, that it asserts that "if a workman shows unusual skill, quickness, or ability, he receives warning at once, lest the spectacle of what might be done by such hands should induce the employer to expect more from other hands employed." Now, we do not hesitate to say that there is not the least show of evidence of any jealousy either of good or superior work, or of superior pay for superior work, in the evidence as yet taken by the Commission. Hear Mr. Applegarth :— "Take the case of a man of inferior ability to the great name I have mentioned ; take a carver in wood, and take it in your own case. I will suppose he is of the bettermost sort of workmen, that he can do his work more rapidly than, we will say, Thomas Smith, by his side. You would interfere with him ; you would say, No, you are not so great a man as to take yourself out of the rest of mankind ; we will reduce you to the mediocrity of our standard ?'—No, nothing of the kind. It does not follow, because we set our faces against piecework, that one man is not to have more pay than another. When there is a man of first-class ability, whether he is working .by the day, or the hour, or the month, his employer can and frequently does single him out and give him a higher rate of wages, even where piecework is prohi- bited.—(Mr. Hughes.)—You do not object to the employer
doing that, do you in the least.
And not only is this the general drift of the evidence, but some of the witnesses complain that the difficulty of paying the most skilful and able workman at a higher rate for their special skill is created not by the Unions, but by the masters. Mr. George Howell, whose name was taken in vain by the Times for evidence which he did not give, testifies expressly that in the bricklaying trade the overseers would like to pay higher wages to specially good men, but that in the interest of the employers they cannot do it openly, and have to manage it by a sort of legal fiction. They pay him for an hour more than he has really worked, because if they paid him a higher rate the employer fears that the ordinary workman might be expecting or demanding that higher rate. The Unions, so far from discouraging a higher rate for special ability, are strongly in favour of it.
"The maximum is paid to the superior man, not by an addi- tional rate of wages, but by allowing him an hour's work, which he does not in fact do ?—That is frequently done, but I admit that in many instances more money is paid.—If you pay more to the abler workman, you are obliged to disguise that in fact ?— As a rule ; that is not the fault of the Union but of the masters. —Will you explain how it is the fault of the masters ?—Simply because in fixing this minimum rate of wages we fix such a rate that we think a man's skill as a bricklayer should not be valued below that point ; the master is endeavouring continually to drag us down below that, to make that the maximum in fact, while we are always endeavouring to fix that minimum, and to get the employers to give something more as a maximum for skilled labour. That they generally refuse to do.—You would be very glad if, that minimum being fixed, men were paid accord- ing to their talents ?—Certainly."
Mr. Charles Williams, plasterer, gives evidence exactly to the same effect :— "Could you give us an idea what is the difference in value be- tween a man of first-class talent and a man of the lowest, in your trade ?—If you were to bring some of our lowest men and some of our first-class men on a job similar to this ceiling, it would run 50 per cent.—Do you allow the first-class man to take advantage of that ability of his ?—The lowest class seldom do anything like this ; they nearly always classify the men, and they are set apart to do different kinds of work.—So that a man of high-class work gets a higher rate of wages ?—Yes, as a rule.—There is no rule in your society that keeps him down ?—No."
And in general, we may say it is the universal testimony, that though a good deal of jealousy is felt of ordinary men lowering the market rate of wages by working for less than that rate, and though this is only very exceptionally allowed to a member of any Union,—young countrymen coming up to London are sometimes allowed to take lower wages till they have mastered their business, — there is no objection felt anywhere to a specially high rate of wages for men of specially high capacity. The Times, in asserting this on the strength of evidence which had no connection with the point at all, asserts what goes absolutely counter to the whole tenor of the evidence given. That "the Unions discourage excellence, and proscribe, beyond a certain point, both industry and skill," as the Times gratuitously asserts, may be true ; but if it is, then, as the Times remarks of other evidence unfavourable to its own view, it has "yet to be described."
The last evidence printed contains a very remarkable instance of the intervention of a Union to check unreason- able demands on the part of the men, and a letter from a contractor in Aberystwith bearing testimony to the "impar- tial and prompt action" taken by the Union in repressing that strike. Indeed, the Executive Council went so far as to supply the contractor with other workmen in place of those who had struck against what the Executive Council thought all reason and moderation. The contractor in question con- cludes with saying :— " In conclusion, let me add that I think the services of the Executive Council are indispensable to the good government of the trade, and the cause of so much abuse in public papers chiefly arises from the ignorance of the writers of the impartial spirit which governs the action of the Executive Council, and of the valuable services of the General Secretary of the Association, Mr. C. Williams."
In answer to a question from Mr. Hughes, "Has the con- duct of the Executive in that matter been much canvassed by the society," Mr. Williams answers, "No, not as a rule ;" and when further asked, "Has it done you any harm I" he replies, "No, I think it has done us a great deal of good." And to the Earl of Lichfield he asserts that, as far as he remembers, none of the men who were thrown over by the Executive in this case have in consequence left the society. Will the Times quote the evidence of this remarkable case, or will it rather pick out some other bit of Mr. Williams's evidence to charac- terize as "disingenuous f" It seems to us that no people are so fond of throwing stones as those who live in glass houses.
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