MR. W. A. APPLETON ON INDUSTRIAL TROIA:MRS.* EvEarrnaul written by

Mr. W. A. Appleton, Secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions, is well worth reading, and his new book is packed with good sense. We have no doubt that if he had been listened to years ago we should now hear little of unemployment. A short introduction has been provided by that stalwart Labour leader, Colonel John Ward, who writes with his usual plainness :—

" In times of stress (he says) we are apt to do strange things and adopt stranger remedies in the sometimes vain hope of overcoming our difficulties. The Trade Union movement has had its period of stress and strange remedies, but its recent afflictions have produced a finer crop of quacks 'than usual, and it is the more necessary that this great instrument for human betterment and industrial regeneration should begin to consult the less showy but more sober of its professors."

Mr: Appleton does well to lead off with some sober reflections on the tyranny of phrases. A large number of people are inclined to cling with passionate faith to a new phrase merely because it is new and because they are tired of the old phrases, even of those which have stood the test. The world of general politics rings with such phrases as " self-determination " and " open diplomacy "—very loose phrases which when they are used as though they had a scientific accuracy serve as mere marsh fires and lead people into empty places if not to their doom. The phrases which for some years have been tyrannizing over the manual workers are nearly all drawn from Marx. Mr.

Appleton earnestly warns his readers against being misled. It must not be supposed, however, that he does not stand up, and stand up stoutly, for his own clients. He says what he says because he devoutly believes that he is pointing out to Labour the only way to prosperity. He knows that he is spoken of by Socialists and Communists as an agent of Capitalism in disguise, but the most splendid fact about Mr. Appleton is that he is fearless. He tells the truth as he sees it, and no doubt he is fortified by the reflection that he will be justified in the end. The record of his innumerable services to Labour while he has been the Secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions will speak for him. After all, he has no reason to play anybody's game but that of the manual worker ; he has known what it is to be unemployed and to be oppressed :-

" In dealing with the modern relations of labour to the owners of capital, we have to remember, in explanation of some facts and in partial extenuation of others, that the owner of capital has mismanipulated the lives of the workers until their hearts have become ready receptacles for the dogma of the doctrinaire and the extremist. It is difficult for those who have never passed through the fires to realize the agony the fires inflict. The men or women whose lives have always fallen in pleasant places can hardly hope to understand the point of view of the men or women whose lives, from birth to death, epitomized tragedy. The lack of opportunity for the poor begins before birth, and continues in most cases until death. The expectant mother knows that her child will lack some physical or mental quality because she has worked too much and eaten too little prior to the child's arrival, while the elderly man knows that the only way out for him is through the Valley of the Shadow. Lancashire of to-day suffers from the in- humanities perpetrated upon the little children of yesterday ; not by the mothers and fathers, but by the owners of capital who insisted that very young child labour was essential to industrial success."

Mr. Appleton has come through the fires himself with his ideals not merely unimpaired but intensified. It is a real satisfaction in these times, when Labour is like the daughters of the horseleech, crying " Give, give l " to read Mr. Appleton's assertion that nothing counts for so much as " spiritual values." He deals faithfully with various fashionable nostrums. He tells those who advocate Trade Guilds that they are building on a discredited foundation. The Trade Guilds died, he says, of " super exclusiveness." Just as landless men attack land- owners, so it was the excluded craftsman who attacked and brought about the downfall of the Guilds. He expresses the confident opinion that unless revived Guilds were to include everyone engaged in or attached to the industry which they served they would be bound to fail again. Turning to what is called " workshop control," he points out very truly that the demand for it is of political rather than industrial origin. The

principle of workshop control, that is to say control by the workers themselves, assumes a knowledge not merely of indus- trial processes but of commercial management and international exchanges. Mr. Appleton says that he knows admirable work- men who believe in workshop control, but that there is not one

• What we Wang and Where we An. By W. A. Appleton. London: Hodder and Stoughton. lee. net.]

of them who is at once an accomplished craftsman and the possessor of an effective knowledge of the Complicated ramifica- tions of trade. As regards State Socialism during the war, Mr. Appleton is astonished to find how few people recognize that what the State was doing then was merely to purchase within its own borders articles which had no reproductive value whatever, and for which it paid a price altogether dis- proportionate to the value. " The State," he says, " was pur- chasing fireworks and paying for them with paper." Mr.

Appleton very neatly turns upon his traducers who say that he is not loyal to his own class when he sarcastically remarks of the revolutionaries : " It may be desirable to bring about catastrophe for the sake of propaganda ; it may be very altruistic and very noble to think only of the future generations ; but I cannot escape the conclusion that my own duty lies with the people who live to-day." Mr. Appleton is particularly cogent in the passages in which he argues that reduced production—one of the aims of the new trade unionism—means a lower standard of living, and that higher production means a higher standard. After turning out the whole box of trade union tricks and examining them, he comes to the conclusion that trade unionism is badly served by mixing up politics with industry. Most of the disappoint- ments for Labour have come from schemes which were political in their birth. Most of the great strikes have been much more political than industrial, and against that kind of strike Mr. Appleton declares with all his force. He of course recognizes

the right to strike, to withhold labour, as a necessary part of the liberty of the subject. But he condemns out and out the

strike which is really directed against the community. The chief sufferer, though the suffering is always intense all round,

is the worker himself. Mr. Appleton believes that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred much more can be obtained by con-

ciliation than by striking. He emphasizes his point by remind- ing us that the first rule of the General Federation of Trade Unions is :-

" To promote Industrial Peace and by all amicable means such as Conciliation, Mediation, References, or by the establish- ment of Permanent Boards, to prevent Strikes or Lock-outs between Employers and Workmen, or disputes between Trades or Organizations. Where differences do occur, to assist in their settlement by just and equitable methods."

What he says about the beneficial effects in particular trades where conciliation instead of striking has been pursued as a regular policy is remarkable :- " The National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives has never drawn a man out where negotiation and settlement by reason was possible. MI their disputes have been settled in conference, and their increase in wages, spread over a fair period, compare very favourably with those secured by the men who have adopted extreme courses. The shoemaker was always a thinking person, and during the war he acted with sensibility and forethought. He has neither starved production nor opposed the introduction of machinery, nor needlessly depleted the funds of his Trade Union."

Mr. Appleton blames the younger men, whose active experience does not date back much before the war, for fanning the flames of violence. But it is certainly not much to the credit of the older men that they should allow themselves to be led by the nose. The majority, we krow, have plenty of good sense, but surely there has been too much docility ; far too few attempts have been made to combine internally against the tyranny of a minority. Somebody once remarked that there were so many fleas in his room at an inn that if only they had combined they could have pulled him out of bed. But fleas never do combine, and the majority of workers are rather too much like them.

Now that unemployment is acute it is interesting to read what Mr. Appleton has to say about the attitude of Trade Unions towards unemployment in the past two years. He fore- saw that depression was coming, and he wrote warnings again and again. He states that nothing was done by Trade Unions in response. In September, 1920, while still endeavouring to amuse interest, he wrote :-

" To discover the real causes of unemployment and the real remedies would be worth all the money the Trade Union move- ment possesses. To go on repeating the old formulae in face of the world's facts will be folly of -the worst kind. It is no use talking about the right to work unless we can discover the laws that govern work and the proper way of applying them."

Now that the tempest is upon us, what do the Labour leaders

do to repair their indifference or their mistakes ? They produce a scheme which is in effect a demand for nationalization—a principle which the vast majority of the nation detest and will have nothing to do with ; and because this scheme is not accepted, they refuse practical co-operation with the Government. It is very discouraging and we can imagine what Mr. Appleton will have to say about it in some future book.

We will conclude with Mr. Appleton's vision of the efficient Trade Union of the future :-

" The Trade Union of the future ought to have at its service officials who possess a scientific rather than a dogmatic know- ledge of industrial economics, commercial geography, and inter- national exchange. They must have sources of information which the ordinary Trade Union member will regard as un- tainted and which will enable them to strike or wait—whichever is the wiser policy. The ordinary principles of insurance must be adopted by the Trade Union movement if it is to achieve the maximum of success. The present haphazard method of fixing contributions and benefits without regard to their actuarial relationship must be discarded. All these things the Trade Union can do and have without merging its identity in organiza- tions differently constituted and having different objectives, and without sacrificing its autonomy. Hero lies the great, the immediate, task of the Trade Unionist—the oonsohdation of the real Trade Union movement. Let it decline groupings which jeopardize its existence and places its members and its funds under the control and at the service of men who are not in it, and whose aims are foreign to it. To-day it is servant where it ought to be master. Its rehabilitation and its salvation lie in freedom from control by other organizations, in the use of its funds for industrial instead of political purposes, in the logical development of the craft ideal, in the amalgamation of all similar trades, and in the federation of all amalgamations. The fight to recover freedom will be bitter, for those who have invaded the movement will not easily be driven out. If, how- ever, the straight men who are Trade Unionists first# and politicians afterwards will put their hearts into the work, success is assured."