THE DISCIPLINE OF SERVICE.
TH'S
' quarrel between the Engine-Drivers and the Railway
Companies, which in a week or two may supersede the Reform Bill in interest, adds a new question to the half-a-dozen which are always pending between masters and servants, and one, too, of no mean importance. Ought service, according to the servants' proverb, to be an inheritance, or not? The Train, a nicely printed, fairly written little paper, published apparently by "Engineers," in the interest of railway employe's generally, publishes the official correspondence between the Engine-Drivers on the South.Eastern, who are acting as spokesmen apparently for the entire body, and the Directors of that line,—an honest prac- tice, which we recommend strongly to the attention of other papers published by working men. The public can judge of cor- respondence better than ex parse stories. It is quite clear from these letters that the real question between employers and men in this department of labour is not one of wages only, or even, as we imagined, of wages plus hours of duty. The Directors, though they would not grant all that is asked, amounting, as they say it does, to an increase of 80 per cent., would compromise both these disputes, setting time, on which they are in the wrong, against wages, on which they appear on the face of things to be partly in the right. The suspension of traffic on English Railways during the French Exhibition, a result which the men audibly threaten, is too serious a calamity to be treated lightly or under any impulse of temper. But the men have put forward a demand which is, so far as we know, entirely new in the history of Trades' Unions, which is inadmissible, whatever the consequences of refusal, and which, if conceded, would instantly be put forward by every trade, business, and profession in the island as a precedent. They demand that they shall have equal power with the masters on all questions of dismissal, and that the power of promo- tion at will shall be finally surrendered. To put it technically, they refuse to allow their ultimatum to be considered except as a whole, and insert in it two clauses, numbered Clauses 8 and 11, the first of which insists that "engine-drivers and firemen shall be promoted according to seniority in the locomotive department of the Company's service," and the second, that "in any case impli- cating seriously any engine-driver or fireman," that is, in any case involving dismissal, "the case shall be settled by the arbitra- tion of a deputation of their fellow-workmen, in conjunction with the Board of Directors, or Mr. Fletcher," the Traffic Manager. The men, in fact, demand that their department be turned into what is called in public affairs a "seniority service," and that they be not dismissed without trial and sentence before a mixed court- martial.
Hitherto, Trades' Unions, while often interfering, sometimes wisely, as in the matter of overtime, sometimes unwisely, as in the matter of piecework, and sometimes unjustly, as in the matter of apprentices, between Capital and Labour, have left to the masters one unchecked authority. Any individual man can be dismissed on notice settled by contract or the custom of the trade, without a reason assigned. It being the masters' interest to keep a good man, dismissal is proof of reason for dismissing. If this power is to be abrogated, or even questioned, the whole relation between the two classes is changed ; the masters become the employed, and business as at present carried on in Great Britain becomes simply impossible, without legal restrictions as minute and as severe as those which secure the discipline of an army. The demand is, to begin with, utterly inexpedient, as we think we can prove, even to the men themselves. The power of dismissal, of which they complain, rests with the Directors acting as trustees either for the shareholders or the public, or, as we should unques- tionably hold, while railways are monopolies, for both. In their interest, not in the interest of their own power, the directors must have the right to decide whether work is properly done, whether John Smith, driver, is a fit man to retain, or whether John Brown, fireman, is qualified for promotion. The Firemen say they can dispense with any claim to the latter except experience, but they must know they are talking nonsense. Conceie the whole theory. which is in their minds, and still, to preserve any organization at, all, a man to deserve promotion must be bearably civil to his superiors, bearably even-tempered with his inferiors, tolerably courageous, and decently willing. He may be experienced, and yet be none of these things. Moreover, he must not stand absolutely- in the way of one with very much better qualifications than him- self, or the Company's prosperity, which is the source of engine- drivers' prosperity, is pro tante threatened. A seniority service does not secure any form of ability whatever, except the ability to live a little longer than other people. An army could not be worked so ; in the only army in which it was ever fairly tried the men, weary among other things of inefficient old men in command, at last sprang at their officers' throats. The Firemen will, we imagine, on reflection surrender this point, and remain content, as in the matter of dismissals, with a conjoint authority. If they sanction supersession or dismissal,- either may be allowed. But then arises this difficulty. Discipline, as they will acknowledge, must be preserved on a railway, or lives will be lost and the profits out of which wages come will be destroyed. The driver must start when his orders direct or there will be collisions, must be sober, must be ready if needful to do an extra tarn. Unless, therefore, the Manager be invested with the authority involved in the power of dismissal, which authority, like all others, 'should be justly and gently exercised, he must be invested with some other, equally stringent, permanent, and swift of application. This is just what has occurred in the Army. Because dismissal is no sufficient punishment to secure obedience, the master, called, as it happens, the Colonel, is invested by 1 tw with the power to inflict imprisonment, and the man, called soldier, is forbidden to disobey on pain of penal servitude, to resist on pain of death. Any officer in the British Army can in practice, though not absolutely by law, demand trial by his comrades in preference to dismissal ; but if he disobeys an order he is broken, i.e., dismissed and disgraced ; and if he resists one in the field—i.e., on the rails—shot. If the Engineers will accept a similar rule, their system will no doubt work, because independence will not then mean anarchy, but without it com- pliance with their demands would merely produce chaos. They may say they would dismiss for real offences as readily as the Manager, and we quite admit the men in every trade are wonderfully severe and unbending, but they would not be so prompt as the Manager, and promptitude is the fast con- dition of true discipline ; and they would not dismiss for the same things. Their interest is to keep their privileges and their wages and their independence. The Manager's in- terest, and only interest, is to get the work well done. The men say of course that he has another interest, that of securing sub- servient employe's ; but that is merely to say he is a bad manager, an evil corrected by an exchange. Civility is an absolute condition of organization, as any driver will see who travels a few hours with a fireman who "cheeks him" before and after every order. In- deed only the Manager, who sees as it were all parts of the line at once, can tell distinctly what is essential and what is merely expedient for the general well-being of the line. We could not have a better illustration of that last truth than the Drivers' own demands, the thirteenth clause of which runs thus : —" That the trip system on the Pontop Branch be abolished." We never heard of the Pontop Branch in our lives, and are not willing to concede that so absurd an undertaking can exist, but we undertake to say on a priori evidence that Mr. Fletcher could produce twenty reasons for that particular anomaly of which the engine-drivers never heard one, and which they would consider of no importance whatever. Even if they owned the line themselves they would be compelled by their own interests to elect a Manager, and depute to him precisely the powers now vested in Mr. Fletcher, just as officers if they governed the Army would be compelled to -elect and to support a Commander-in-Chief. In the "White Mutiny" in India there was a beautiful instance of that. The men thought their officers hard, so they elected officers of their own, and supported them in using the cat almost ad libitum. Without a chief the drivers might have and would have the firemen revolt- ing one day, and demanding, as matter of right, that no driver should ever report his attendant for insubordination, idleness, or other offence, except with the consent of a court-martial of his -comrades. Why should not the firemen be a " service " as well as the engineers, and as independent? The engineers will say their art demands less skill, is less paid, and involves harder toil, but they give up the question of skill when they demand promotion for firemen by seniority ; and in an Utopian system of society, the more disagreeable the toil, the higher the pay ought to be. If supply and demand have no influence, a " nightman " ought to be paid five times as much as an engineer.
We have purposely avoided the question of justice, because the men fancy it is on their side, but it must come in at last. Why should anybody give portions of his property to John Smith to do work he wishes him to leave undone ? Because he has done it before ? Well, he has been paid according to agreement. Be- cause -he he is ready to do it again? So is Brown outside, possibly at half the same cost. The Engine-Drivers would think it very hard if anybody took part of their weekly wages on pretence of cleaning their windows when their children could do it for nothing. To make an employer pay sixpence when he could get the work done for threepence is, subject always to the higher law involved in such questions as child labour or cruelty, simple theft from that -employer, and exemption from dismissal is that coercion organized. The Company thinks somebody else would earn his wages better than Smith, and dismisses Smith. Why not ? Of course Smith has the clearest right to fix his own terms, to insist on the engage- ment for life involved in this ultimatum, and to combine with all other Smiths to secure his end, but he has no conceivable right to grumble if he is outbid. Of course, also, if the employer offers excessively low wages, and does not want the best work,.like the .Btate, for instance, he may throw in permanence of office as an additional inducement; but suppose our contributors all demanded promotion by seniority, or claimed that they should always have work, however the proprietors might prefer new men ? Or, suppose the under-housemaid, slattern, or none, claimed to be become par- barmaid by seniority, and objected to dismissal, except after the verdict of a jury of passed housemaids. Indeed, we do not see why the system should not be carried further, why tradesmen should not compel their customers to deal exclusively at one shop, or at all events to transfer custom only to shops older than that which the customer dislikes. The result would either be anarchy or a new discipline, in which punishment would be substituted for dismissal, in which compulsory labour, in short slavery under decorous dis- guises, would be substituted for free contracts. The men demand their freedom very properly, but if they are free the employer must be free too, free to select for promotion as well as to make the origi- nal appointment. Otherwise he will very soon say that as the men have all rights they may as well take all burdens too, finding wages on Saturday included. Keeping servants is not such a luxury that masters should first find them wages, then take their orders, and then give up the power of dismissing them when in- tolerable. The evils to be produced by a strike of all the Railways in England would be almost unendurable, but we cannot imagine how the employers are to yield, or if they do, what iito become of the remainder of the world. The hunger for security of livelihood grows greater with the spread of education, and an ignorant impa- tience of the right of dismissal begins to pervade every class of wage-receivers. Some other business will have to commence the fight immediately after the Engineers have done theirs, and how- ever sharp the struggle, it can only be settled one way. The brain will rule the hands, let the fingers crack as they like, and a society in which servants settle how long the employer is to employ them is merely a society reduced to its elements, in which the strongest and least scrupulous will speedily get to the top.
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