INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY.*
No student of economics can afford to neglect this able and comprehensive work, which is the first attempt to relate the industrial to the general political movement of our time, to show how English workmen have actually dealt with the problems of democracy in their own trade combinations, to examine carefully the complex questions which modern industry is forcing on our attention in the light of a constant. attempt on the part of the working people to improve the human lot so far as the condition of manual labour is con- cerned. The central idea of the work is the treatment of the growth of Trade-Unionism as a kind of spontaneous demo-, °ratio structure created and remodelled from time to time by the working classes to enable them to meet the immense forces of modern Capital on something like equal terms. Here and there, we think, the work might have been con- densed with advantage, the details being too elaborate. Bat there is no single line of slipshod work; every sentence reads as though the authors had carefully thought about the exact form of expression which would best convey their meaning. The work has, therefore, a certain truly scientific aspect; it is in the genuine succession of the works of original investiga- tion. We do not propose to criticise its ideas, though with most of them we have little or no sympathy, but rather to tell exactly, within our limits, what is its substance and) what are its conclusions.
Trade-Unionism is seen at the outset as analogous to primi- tive democracy. It is a loose alliance of separate local self, governing clubs, whose course of evolution suggests Mr. Spencer's phrase of development from homogeneity to hetero- geneity. That is to say, instead of the primitive meeting where one man is as good as another (by the way, this was not. quite the case in Uri, e.g.), a separate governing class is evolved. The principle of representative government., developed in the State, is also developed in the Trade-Union. The authors make a little political capital against the Refer- endum out of this fact, but in doing so they are rather travel- ling beyond their proper sphere. Their main idea is that indirect popular control goes along with expert advice and rule, and they boldly face the consequence (against which the Referendum in Switzerland has been directed, and which is such a source of perplexity in the United States),—the growth of the pro- fessional politician. In their view Parliament will some day be filled with professional politicians drawn from the leaden' of Trade-Unions. Originally the unit of the Union was the • Indtudrial Mmiscraoy. By Sidney and Beatrice Webb. 2 yob. London, Longman", Green, and Co. [2510
town, but now it is the trade. A common war-chest or central fund was essential to the existence and success of the Union, and centralisation on the bisis of the whole trade was neces- sary. But is there such a thing as "a trade"? It is shown how trades tend, with the increasing complexity of industry, to dovetail into one another. But can separate though allied trades form one combination ? "The whole history of Trade- Unionism" is proof that they cannot ; but yet there must be some bond of union. "The most efficient form of Trade- Union organisation is therefore one in which the several sections can be united for the purposes that they have in common, to the extent to which identity of interest prevails, and no further, whilst at the same time each section preserves complete autonomy wherever its interests or purposes diverge from those of its allies." So much for the structure of the Trade-Union; we now turn to a consideration of its function.
The section dealing with function is the central part of the work, and is divided into thirteen chapters. The first function is that of mutual insurance, consisting mainly of friendly and out-of-work benefits. These are adventitious attractions, but they breed discipline. The disadvantages of mutual insurance are sammed up as consisting of lack of legal or financial security, and as enabling, in the case of an industrial contest, each side to hold out as against frank and full discussion of the points at issue. The second function of the union is that of collective bargaining, the principle for which the engineers have been mainly contending for so many months. This is dealt with very exhaustively. The making of new bargains is differentiated from the interpretation of existing ones, and the analysis of the actual methods employed is a revelation to the amateur of the complexity of present industrial conditions. Compulsory membership is considered essential to the success of this method. An auxiliary chapter dealing with arbitration shows that this is as much an inter- ference with individual liberty as collective bargaining, since it involves the arbitrary fixing of wages,—by law, if publicly done, as in New Zealand; by a Board or an individual, if done privately. The authors do not appear in this chapter to be friendly to arbitration, but in a later chapter they seem to look with some favour on the recent New Zealand legislation, whose tendency is in their own direction of State Socialism. The third function of unionism is that of securing legal enactment. This method involves prolonged and uncertain struggles, but, when accomplished, its results mean "perman- ence and universality." The authors are of opinion that it will be wise for Unions to abandon mutual insurance, to modify collective bargaining so as not to disturb the course of business by violent cataclysms, and to greatly develop the method of legal enactment. It may be said in this con- nection that they assume all through the permanence of the present industrial system, and that it means neces- early the surrender of much of the old liberty of action which the last century conceived as the one object to be desired.
A series of chapters deal with such aspects of Labour as the standard rate of wages, the normal day of working, sanitation and safety in the factory, new processes and machinery, con- tinuity of employment, conditions of working in a trade—i.e., apprenticeship (which is condemned)—the "right to a trade," &c., while two chapters close this part of the work, discussing respectively the implications and the assumptions of Trade- Unionism. It is shown that the real object of Unionism is to secure the adoption of a Common Rule, and that in that lies largely the solution of the great questions of adequate rewards to Labour, shorter hours, and healthy conditions. The old Unions had their rigid class distinctions, so different from the notion of people who lump the working classes into one great mass, and assume that the cotton-spinner and the dock labourer are undifferentiated specimens of the genus "working man." But class distinctions have had to give way before the manifestly beneficent theory of the Common Rule, on the securing of which, in the authors' judgment, so much depends. The Common Rule having been secured in different trades by collective bargaining, or other methods, the next great step is to secure it in the whole line of industry by State enactment. That is how the authors see the democratic principle working out in the future. They are, in short, bit-by-bit State Socialists, not hoping for that millennial change which buoys up the genuine Continental Socialist,
but merely desiring an extension and development of existing conditions,—a well-groomed and well-machined industrial civilisation in the hands of experts.
The theory held by the authors as to the increments of enforcement of the Common Rule of course assumes the universal tendency to capitalist aggregation. Bat on this point we should have been glad to hear more, for there is no proof that the tendency, especially with a new motor- power, is universal. Looking forward to the universal adoption of the factory system, with the economic advantages it seems to bring, the authors condemn all home labour. But is it so universally bad as is supposed P Examination of home work in France, Switzerland, and Bavaria would probably modify this sweeping judgment. Of course, with growing monopoly and aggregation, collective bargaining gives way increasingly to legal enactment. The assumptions of Trade-Unionism are (1) doctrine of vested interests, or certain assumed " rights " of workmen; (2) doctrine of supply and demand, by which the Trade-Unionist is assimi- lated in his methods and outlook to the capitalist type ; and (3) doctrine of a living wage. The authors think that the two former ideas will be largely shed, and that the Living Wage will stand out, along with the Common Rule, as the chief bulwark of Labour. It is argued further on that this living wage, to be obtained and enforced by legal enact- ment in the main, will prove to be the great means whereby the problem of the rewards of Labour will be solved. Trade seems to tend towards two forms,—the great industry as conducted in large mills, and the parasitic industry, in which the "sweating system" is an integral factor. The consumer is the ultimate source of the "persistent pressure on sellers," from the top to the bottom of the industrial scale. The two forms in question seem best to supply his demands for cheapness. But the acquiescence by the State in the existence of a "sweated" class must drag the community downwards, therefore the need for the minimum wage comes in as an adjunct to the common rule which is the first object of Trade-Unionism—to maintain the general standard of life at the highest possible point. This, we are told, must be effected by legislation. It will, of course, be objected that for the State to pare off increasing slices from the returns of Capital will be to check investment here, and to deflect it to lands where such operations are unknown. The authors try to meet this objection by showing that, in spite of trade dis- putes and growing Labour legislation, England remains the beat field for investment, but the case against their proposals is not fully met, and this is, indeed, the weakest part of the book. Surely, there is a line beyond which profitable invest- ment is impossible.
In the final part of the work it is shown how the verdict of the political economists has changed in respect to Trade- Unions. The older economists believed in the Wage Fund theory, and consequently supposed that there was a definite fund to be divided between the workmen and the capitalists, and that therefore the more the former got the less was reserved for the latter. But with the disappearance of the theory the economists took up a new attitude to Unionism, and it is easy to show that Marshall, Walker, and Schoenhof take a very different view of the Union from that taken by McCulloch, Ricardo, or Mill before his conversion. In the chapter on "The Higgling of the Market" the chief points made are that the workman is at a disadvantage as compared with the capitalist, and that the latter is also at a disadvan- tage compared with the wholesale trader. This chapter is very well thought out. The final chapter is a somewhat ambitious attempt to forecast the future of democracy. But is the future as seen by our authors democracy at all ? With the rule of the expert, with Parliament declining and the Royal Prerogative revived (as hinted at), with capitalist aggregation accepted as permanent though tempered by State interference, there is not very much democracy left as the term has been generally understood. "The Revolution, like Saturn, devours its own children." It must never be for- gotten, too, that the members of Trade - Unions are in a minority. People are apt to think and talk of them as if they were synonymous with the working classes. In reality they are by no means numerically impor- tant, and it is very possible that they have reached their zenith.
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