DEMOCRACY IN THE LABOUR MARKET.
MR. BURNS is as much too optimist in his congratu- lations to the laburers on the result of the great dock strike of last year, as our correspondent "in an Easy Chair" is, we think, too pessimist in reviewing the same great movement and its consequences. Mr. Burns counts up the various rises in wages which the various strikes have gained for the working men, which he reckons at something like £700,000 a year, and forgets entirely to reckon up on the debit side of the account, the vast cost of these various strikes, and what is even more important than their cost, the sense of insecurity, which they have diffused amongst the capitalists, and the reluctance to enter on great enterprises which cannot be safely promoted without an uninterrupted supply of the best kind of labour. Turn from Mr. Burns's con- gratulatory oration to another page of Monday's Times, and what do we find ? We find the Labour Correspondent of the Board of Trade reporting to the Board of Trade Journal that the labour market has been highly disturbed during July ; that where there were seventy-nine strikes in June, there have been ninety-nine strikes and a lock-out in July ; that where the number of men out of work in certain trades, employing 226,980 workers, in June numbered 4,215, the number out of work in July numbered 5,171; and that out of twenty-one trades, only five can be reported as very good, while seven are good, and the remaining nine are only "moderate." That is not a report got up by hostile critics, but a report by a correspondent favourable to the labourers, and chosen by the Board of Trade to report on the state of the Labour Market. It shows what Mr. Burns keeps out of view,—that these strikes and the fear of strikes tell on the capitalists ; that they shrink, even in a prosperous condition of trade, from doing what they would be most eager to do if they felt certain of the supply of labour ; and that the more strikes there are, the less likely are they to secure a favourable issue, because the less is the desire of the capitalist to run the risk which a sudden order by a Union to its members to desist from work, would certainly cause.
It cannot be denied that the democratic spirit which is springing up in all the departments of labour is at once very natural, to some extent even very justifiable, and yet full of peril. Nobody can deny that the dockers' strike, for instance, was caused by a state of things at the docks which pressed very hardly indeed on the unskilled labour there, nor that the result of that strike was almost un- adulterated good, except so far as it gave other labourers who were not in the same position too much confidence in the sympathy of the public with them, and too confident an expectation of triumph. Perhaps the same may be said of the recent strike in South Wales, which has been settled almost to the perfect satisfaction of both parties. But though several of these strikes have been prudently undertaken and admirably managed, there are others,— the gasworkers' strike, the postmen's strike, and the policemen's strike, for example,—which have not been at all wise, and which have greatly shaken the confidence of the employers in the sobriety and good feeling of the asso- ciations which organised them. It was not to be expected that the labouring classes would gain political power without applying the notions they had acquired in the political field to the field of their actual work and earnings ; and it certainly was not to be expected that they would begin to apply those notions to the field of their daily labour without making big mistakes, without throwing away a good portion of the resources which they ought post carefully to have hoarded, and without alarming the capitalists for the security of their invested capital, and rendering them reluctant to sink more of it in ventures so uncertain as all ventures in a capricious labour market must necessarily be. We have seen during the last year a great deal that has quite reasonably alarmed the capitalists, but we have also seen a great deal that ought to have soothed that alarm. Even Mr. Burns's $ pee c h , —in which he denies that there is to be any fresh dockers' strike, and suggests that the best way of benefiting the dockers is to organise their work on a co-operative basis, and quotes the success of the co-operative lighter- men, who have already forty-seven barges at work in the Port of London,—should relieve the minds of the alarmists at least as much as his foolish demand for legislation limiting the working hours of the day to eight, should excite them. Once let the co-operative movement get itself well organised in all the departments of labour, and we feel pretty sure that the demand for a legislative minimum of eight hours' work will die away. The Co- operative Societies will know perfectly well that it would be most dangerous to their own success to reduce the hours of labour too suddenly, too rigidly, and without proper regard to the varying exigencies of time, place, and need. We are very confident that no large associations of co-operative workers would be at all disposed to restrain by law the liberty of labour, and to renounce the chance of com- peting with Continental labour for the various prizes of industry. Mr. Burns said many unwise and boastful things in his speech on Sunday, but, to our minds, he said what compensated for them all when he pointed to the competition of co-operative labour associations as the best check on capitalists who work their labourers too hard and pay them too little. Successful co-operative associations will certainly work their labourers at least hard enough to succeed, and will not pay them higher wages than they can afford, and that will be a very complete check on the doctrinaire view that it is wicked to work more than eight hours a day, or to pay wages below a high minimum. When Mr. Burns recommends so very sober a policy as the starting of co-operative associations, he virtually gives up the transcendental abstractions of the Socialist creed.
On the whole, we believe that, in England at least, there is a better prospect for democracy in its bearing on the conditions of the labour market, than for democracy in its bearing on the principles of constitutional govern- ment, not because there is anything intrinsically insoluble in political problems, but because the problems of the labour market come more directly home to the people's minds and hearts, and press so directly on their most tangible interests, that with a sober people like the English, it is not possible for them to go far wrong without recognising the sudden check which their own dwindling resources and the increasing estrangement of capital, place upon their aberrations. In politics it is not so. Parliament may fail year after year to do what the Con- stituencies would on the whole prefer to see it doing, and yet their chagrin will be but languid, their restiveness under failure a very tepid and mild impatience. They will go on tolerating year after year, and perhaps even decade after decade, delay in obtaining the legislative measures which their leaders have on the whole persuaded them that they ought to adopt. But the misery caused by imprudent strikes, or a combination of imprudent strikes, is so intense and widespread, that it either causes revolutionary spasms of passion, or,—with a sober-minded and self- controlled people,—an explosion of practical wrath against the leaders who embarked them in a wrong policy and a dangerous enterprise. So far as we can judge by the con- duct of the labour movements of the last year, it is the latter state of mind, to which English labourers incline, when they are confronted with hunger on the one side, and the timidity of capitalists on the other. They are ready for any reasonable and practical compromise, and will either oblige their leaders to recommend, such a com- promise to them, or else dispense altogether with mischief- making and impracticable guides. In political matters they may acquiesce in chaos, because political chaos, so long as the laws are enforced, property protected, and order secured, hardly touches the happiness of the great mass of the people. But the affairs of the labour market come too much home to their hearts to admit of this practical indifference to the issue. Doubtless there will be a time of anxiety, perhaps even of serious fluctuations and alarms. But we think we see reason to expect practical good sense in the behaviour of the great Unions, and a disposition to acquiesce even in what seems to them appreciably less than their fair claims, rather than hazard the peace of their homes and the welfare of their wives and children. In politics, the local leaders may be intemperate men, and yet the masses will rarely exert themselves to interfere. But in the matters which concern wages and the hours of labour, the local leaders cannot well advise internecine war without disgusting their constituents and getting themselves sup- planted by more moderate and prudent men. For the present, at all events, we may honestly say that a year of considerable excitement and anxiety has produced better evidence of the comparatively moderate and just feelings of the various labourers, skilled and unskilled, in relation to wages and the hours of labour, than we ever see in the political world, and than any other European country except our own can show even in relation to the conditions of industry itself.
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