THE ENGINEERS AND THEIR EMPLOYERS.
A DETERMINATION not to understand the matter in hand seems to be fixed in the minds of those who have been dealing with the in- tended" strike" of the engineers and mechanics of the iron-trades; although it is only by arriving at a clear understanding that the dispute can ever be arranged on such a basis as to make the settle- ment satisfactory and enduring. The real understanding of the ease appears to us to be quite practicable; and therefore we hold it also within the bounds of possibility that masters and men should come to a settlement satisfactory and enduring. Let us say at starting, however, that a part of the understanding must be a distinct recognition of the rights which exist on both sides, and
i of the powers also which exist on both sides : thus far in the con- test, both sides are chargeable with ignoring essential facts.
Among the modes of promoting a misunderstanding on the.part of the public, has been the systematic confusion of things distinct; and also a constructive interpretation of claims. The proceedings of a local union at Oldham, in the case of Messrs. Hibbert, Platt, and Son, have been treated as identical with the proceedings of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. The Oldham union, indeed, seems to belong to the Amalgamated Society ; but it has exercised an independent local action beyond that which the Society has ex- ercised. Again, the Amalgamated Society is charged with " inti- midation," and a case of violence at Leeds has been alleged against it : the violence at Leeds was individual, and the offenders have been punished; and it is as absurd to accuse the general body with that violence as it would be to accuse the whole body of iron-manu- faoturers of the breach of compact not explicitly denied by Messrs. Hibbert and Platt,—with this difference in the two cases, that the Amalgamated Society disavows the violence,while the manufacturers support Messrs. Hibbert and Platt. The "intimidation" used by the Society is exactly the same as the intimidation used by the masters —the attempt to obtain certain concessions by the fear of pecuniary inconvenience as the consequence of refusal. The means of enforce- ment is exactly correlative—the men withdraw their labour, the masters withdraw employment. The combination alleged against the men has its exact counterpart in that of the masters ; the men have a fund, the masters a larger fund. If capital has its rights, so has labour ; and if society at large has any interest in the mat- ter, it is as much on one side as the other. Both sides have a right to claim the conditions on which they can give and take employment, and to enforce those conditions so far as they can do so by the control over their own actions ; and they the members of either party, have the right to combine with their fellows for the promotion of the general interest. It is the re- fusal to recognize the exactly correlative nature of these several rights and powers which constitutes the weak point on either side. The masters have a right to employ their capital as they please, to make what conditions they please, and to combine for the purpose of inducing others to make those conditions general. If the men think the conditions cruel, their only appeal is to the humanity of the masters, which must be spontaneously exercised ; to the Legis- lature for a general law, if they can get it ; or to their own power of refusal. If the masters employ other hands, that fall in with the conditions deprecated, the men have no right to interfere—ex- oept, we repeat, through the moralist or the Legislature. Nothing can be peremptorily demanded of any individual employer except obedience to the laws.
But these rights of the masters are no more than correlative to precisely similar rights of the men. They have a right to lay down the conditions of their own labour, even to the extent of vnisaling, as Messrs. Hibbert and Platt's men have done, that they will not work with certain men ; as much right as a physician has to decline to meet a quack doctor, or as a guest at a dinner has to withdraw
from the presence of another guest, if it be only because that other is offensive to him.
Messrs. Hibbert and Platt's men, however, were not merely capri- cious in a condition which their employers accepted and after- wards broke. It refers to a new practice in the iron-trades. Many of the " tools" used in those trades are very elaborate and valua- ble pieces of machinery, costing at times as much as 2000/. ; and the skilled" mechanic," who has served an apprenticeship of seven years, understands the construction and management of the tool at which he has worked. The masters have found, however, that they can employ a common unskilled labourer if a mechanic be first used to " set out" the labourer's work ; and thus a mechanic and a labourer fill the place once filled by two mechanics ; the labourer taking probably half the wages—say 18s. instead of 36s. The mechanics object: they argue that their apprenticeship entitles them to a pre6mption over the labourers; that their ingenuity and assiduity have helped to simplify the machines, whose easy management is now turned against them ; and that the more en- during interests even of the master are promoted by retaining valuable machines in the hands that do not hazard misuse, damage, and loss. The reader will perceive both the force and the weak points of this argument; but the fact on which we are now insist- ing is, that the men have some grounds in reason and equity for their claim, and a right to enforce the condition of their own labour if they please, even to declining, for the interest of their order, a joint employment with the unskilled labourer. The masters have the equal right to employ the unskilled labourers, if they choose, and if they can obtain skilled companions for them. The circumstance that the rights are conflicting, the interests conflicting, ought not to blind us to their existence : on the contrary, to recognize them distinctly is the first step towards a reconcilement. The demands made by the Amalgamated Society for the discon- tinuance of over-time and piece-work, are also far from being merely capricious claims—far from being without embarrassing difficulties of enforcement. Day-work is not always, as the reader would sup- pose, the opposite of piece-work, but often a fixed quantity : so much done in ten hours shall be a day's work ; only, says the man, do not force me to work longer by saying that you will give me none if I will not work fourteen or seventeen hours a day ; do not force me, under pain of paying me less, to work harder, in heat and over- strained exertion, than human limbs can bear. " Piece-work " is objected to by the men, not only as directly lowering wages, and compelling excessive exertion, but also as facilitating the employ- ment of middlemen, like the " sweaters" of the tailors' trade. The men have a right to object; the masters have a right to em- ploy none but men who will work hard and long. They have some reason also on their side in the undeniable propensity of numbers to idle and avoid work, and in the uncertainty with which orders come in. In equity and humanity, however, those reasons do not justify the coercion of the really steady workman, nor a systematic use of over-time as a means of beating down wages by making the men feel alternations of no pay and full pay. Recognizing the rights, the masters and men know, from bitter experience, that they also possess mutual powers of annoyance. " Strikes" are mostly retaliated by the closing of shops, the calling of new hands into a trade, and the improvement of laboursaving machinery. On the other hand, discontent among workmen is in- variably felt in loss, through damaged machinery and diminished production ; and the shifting of hands, in the ease of skilled labour, is in itself a source of injury. Masters and men can damage each other.
It is not less certain that they possess common as well as con- flicting interests; and an allusion to the principle of mutual insur- ance, at the meeting of employers last week, by a master noted for his intelligence and kindness, Mr. May of Ipswich, was received with a favour remarkable in that assemblage. It would be well if the spirit of that suggestion could be transferred to the proceed- ings on both sides. The talk among the masters about not sub- mitting to " dictation" is balderdash; just as the whining of the men about " oppression" is nonsense. The thing to be done is to recognize the Justice and the amount of power to enforce condi- tions residing in each side, and then to establish a machinery for facilitating the expression of the several desires, the free working of the several influences, in order that the two parties may have a consistent means of coming to terms on a fair and practical basis. By that means, the common interests would be adequately pro- moted : and society would thus be far better served than by any conflict of capital and labour ; since it is only the alliance of capital and labour that can really bring forth that full production in which society at large is most interested—to say nothing of the social concord.
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