Chapter XXXIII: Section CLXXVI: Wages-Policy.--Strikes

Where the wages-receiving class feel themselves to be a special class, _vis-a-vis_ of the purchasers of their labor, they have frequently endeavored, by the preconcerted suspension of labor upon a large scale, to force their masters to pay them higher wages, or grant them some other advantage.[176-1] It is hard to say whether such strikes have more frequently failed or succeeded.[176-2]

As a rule, a war over prices, carried on by such means, and without force on either side, must generally issue in the victory of the richer purchasers of labor.[176-3] The latter require the uninterrupted continuation of labor for their convenience and profit; but the workmen need it to live. It is but seldom that the workmen will be in a condition to stop work for more than a few months, without feeling the sting of hunger. The purchaser of labor can live longer on his capital; and the victory here belongs to the party who, in the struggle, holds out longest. Hence, a strike that lasts more than six weeks may, for that reason alone, be considered a failure. The employers of labor, on account of their smaller number and greater education, make their counter-coalition much more secret and effective. How many instances there are in which labor-saving machines have come into use more rapidly than they otherwise would have come but for the influence of these coalitions![176-4]

On the other hand, it cannot be ignored that a host of workmen, by means of an organization which provides them with a unity of will, such as the heads of great enterprises naturally possess, must become much better skilled in carrying on a struggle for higher wages. Where wages in general tend to rise, but by force of custom, which is specially powerful here (§ 170), are kept below their natural level, a strike may very soon attain its end. And workmen are all the more to be wished God-speed here in proportion as employers are slow to decide of their own motion upon raising wages, and where, under certain circumstances,[176-5] a single cold-hearted master might force all his competitors to keep wages down. If even the entire working class should follow the example of the strikers, so that all commodities, in so far as they are products of labor, should grow dearer to an extent corresponding to the rise in wages, there would still remain an improvement of the condition of the working class at the cost of the interest paid on capital and the profits of enterprise. It is, of course, otherwise with the struggle of workmen against the natural conditions which determine the rate of their wages (§§ 161-166) in which they might, in turbulent times, possibly succeed[176-6] temporarily, but would, in the long run, have to fail.[176-7]

The working class will be best fortified in such a struggle for higher wages when their organization is a permanent one, and when they have taken care, during good times, to collect a certain amount of capital to protect their members, during their cessation from work, against acute want. This is the object of the trades-unions as they have grown up in England, especially since the total decline of the guild system and of governmental provisions relating to apprentices, fixed rates of wages[176-8] etc. But it cannot be denied that these unions, although democratic in form, often exercise a very despotic sway over their members;[176-9] that they have, so far as the employers of labor are concerned, and the non-union laborers, gone back to a number of measures, outgrowths of the guild and embargo systems, which it was fondly hoped had been forever banished by the freedom of industry.[176-10] What many of the friends of this system hope it may accomplish in the future, viz.: regulate the whole relation between capital and labor, and thus, on the whole, control the entire public economy of a people,[176-11] is, fortunately, all the more certainly a chimera, as any national or universal approximation to this end would be the most efficacious way to compel employers of labor to the formation of corresponding and probably far superior opposing unions. Notwithstanding this, however, I do not doubt that the recent development of trades-unions in England is both a cause and an effect of the rise in wages in the branches of industry in question, as well as of the moral elevation of the condition of the working class which has simultaneously taken place.[176-12] The mere possibility of a strike is of itself calculated, in the determination of the rate of wages, to procure for the equitable purchaser of labor the desirable preponderance over the inequitable.[176-13]

[Footnote 176-1: Even _Boisguillebert_, Traité des Grains,
was acquainted with instances of this kind in which from 600
to 800 workmen simultaneously left their masters. There are
much earlier instances in Italy. Thus, in Sienna, in 1381
and 1384, in which the nobility sided with the workmen.
(Rerum Ital. Scriptores, XV, 224, 294.) Strikes of
journeymen began to be much more frequent in Germany in the
guilds, from the time of the prospect of their becoming
masters themselves, and of their living in the family of the
masters had decreased. On similar strikes at Spires, in
1351, at Hagenau in 1409, and Mainz in 1423, see _Mone's_,
Zeitschrift, XVII, 56; XIII, 155, and _Hegel,_ Strassb.
Chr., II, 1025. A remarkable strike of the Parisian book
printers under Francis I. (_Hildebrand's_ Jahrb., 1873, II,
375 ff.) In so-called "home manufactures," where the
"manufacturer" is both orderer, preparer and seller, but
strikes are scarcely possible without much fixed capital.
The strike of the factory spinners in Lancashire in 1810
caused 30,000 workmen to stop work for four months.

Among the next following coalitions of labor, those of the
Glasgow weavers in 1812 and 1822 were very important. In the
latter, two workmen who would not participate with the
strikers were blinded with sulphuric acid. In 1818, great
strike by the Scotch miners. The Preston strike of 1853
lasted 36 weeks. It is said that 6,200 male and 11,800
female working people took part in it. (_Athenæum_, 30
Sept., 1854.) Compare _Morrison_, Essay on the Relations
between Labor and Capital, 1854. For a history of Swiss
strikes, especially of the Zürich compositors' strike in
1873, see _Böhmert_, Arbeiterverhältnisse, II, 287 ff. Comic
type of a strike of married women in _Aristophanes_,
Lysistrata. A practical one in Rome at the departure of the
plebeians for the holy mountains, 492 before Christ.
(_Livy_, II, 32,) then, on a small scale, on the removal of
the pipers after Tiberius, 311 before Christ. (_Liv._, IX,
30.)]

[Footnote 176-2: Instances of successful strikes:
Fortnightly Review, Nov. 1865. Similarly in Germany, in
1865; but there, in truth, many strikes were only defensive
and intended to restore the former thing-value of the
declined money (Werke, XIII, 151). The English strikes, in
1866 and 1867, failed nearly all, so that wages again
declined to their level in 1859, and in many places, to what
they had been in the crisis-year 1857. (Ausland, 16 April,
1868.) As to how even in Victoria, strikes which opposed a
decline of wages from 16 to from 8 to 10 shillings a day
failed, after doing great injury, see Statist. Journ., 1861,
129 ff.]

[Footnote 176-3: The Preston strikers of 1853 got even from
their non-striking colleagues, £30,000. Had their masters
prevented this, the affair would have been terminated much
sooner. (Quart. Rev., Oct. 1859.) But employers are much
more frequently divided by rivalries than workmen,
especially in strikes against new machines or when a
manufacturer, who has too large a supply of goods on hand,
desires a strike himself. On account of their smaller
number, too, they are less in a condition to declare a
recusant colleague in disgrace. _Adam Smith's_ remark that
coalitions of capitalists are much more frequent than those
of workmen, only that much less is said of them, is hardly
applicable to our time. (Wealth of Nat., I, ch. 8, p. 100,
ed. Bas.) But, since the strike of the London builders in
1859, capitalists have begun to form more general opposing
unions. On a very energetic one among the ship builders on
the Clyde, see _Count de Paris_, Les Associations ouvrières
en Angleterre, 1869, ch. 7. Examples on a smaller scale,
Edinburg Review, LXXXIX, 327 ff. On the other hand, a
"lock-out" on the part of capitalists is very difficult,
from the fact that it is impossible to prevent idle workmen
from being supported from the poor fund. Moreover, there can
be no greater folly than for the workmen to add insult to
their masters to their demand for higher wages, because then
the limits within which the latter are willing to continue
the business at all, are made much narrower, than they would
be on a merely economic estimate.]

[Footnote 176-4: Thus the "iron man," by which a single
person can put from 1,500 to 3,000 spindles in motion; also
an improved plane-machine, by means of which several colors
can be printed at once. (_Ure_, Philosophy of Manufactures,
366 ff.) Machines for riveting cauldrons. (_Dingler_,
Polytechnisches Journal, LXXV, 413.)]

[Footnote 176-5: Compare the statements in the Statist.
Journal, 1867, 7.]

[Footnote 176-6: Thus in several places in 1848, and in
Paris in 1789, where even the lackeys and apothecary clerks
formed such unions. (_Wachsmuth_, Gesch. Frankreichs im
Revolutionszeitalter, I, 178.) Similarly, frequently in
isolated factories.]

[Footnote 176-7: _Thornton_ mentions six instances in which
strikes and strike-unions may permanently raise wages: a,
when those engaged in an enterprise have a virtual monopoly
in their own neighborhood; b, when the country has, for the
industry in question, great advantage over other lands; c,
when the demand for the product of the industry is necessary
on account of an increasing number and increasing capacity
to pay of customers; d, when the progress of the arts,
especially of machinery, makes the industry more productive;
e, when the rise in the rate of wages affects all branches
of industry to the same extent, and at the same time; f,
when the industry is carried on on so large a scale that it
yields greater profit, even while paying a smaller
percentage than other industries. (On Labour, III, ch. 4.)
It is easy to see that many of these conditions meet in the
building industries in large cities.]

[Footnote 176-8: Compare _Brentano_ in the Preliminary Essay
to _T. Smith's_ English Guilds, ch. LXXII ff. The same
author's Die Arbeitergilden der Gegenwart Bd., I, 1871.]

[Footnote 176-9: The greater number of strikes begin with a
small minority, generally of the best paid workmen, whom the
others follow unwillingly but blindly. (Edinb. Rev., 149,
422.) The despotic power of the Unions over their members
depends principally on the fact that their treasury serves
not only to maintain strikes but at the same time as an
insurance fund for old age and sickness, and that every case
of disobedience of a member is punished by expulsion, i. e.,
with the loss of everything he has contributed. Hence the
Quart. Rev., Oct., 1867, advises that these two purposes
which are so hard, technically speaking, to reconcile with
each other, should be required to be kept separate,
especially as most of the unions, considered as benevolent
associations, are really insolvent. (Edinb. Review, Oct.,
1867, 421 ff.) On the other hand, both the _Count of Paris_,
ch. 3, and _Thornton_ are favorable to the admixture of
humane and offensive objects in the trades-unions, because
the former contribute to make the latter milder. _Brentano_,
I, 153, has no great objection to the insolvency shown by
the books of the unions _vis-a-vis_ of their duties as
insurers, since, hitherto, the subscription of an
extraordinary sum has never failed to make up the deficit. A
strike is detrimental in proportion as the striking workmen
represent more of the previous preliminary operations that
go to finish a product; as when, for instance, the 50 or 60
spinners in a factory strike, and in consequence, from 700
to 800 other workmen are thrown out of employment and forced
into idleness against their will. What might not have been
the consequence of the great union of the coal miners of
Durham and Northumberland, the members of which numbered
40,000 men, and stopped work from April to the beginning of
September, 1864, so that at last it became necessary to
carry Scotch coal to Newcastle! Compare _Engels_, Lage der
arbeitenden Klassen in England, 314 ff.]

[Footnote 176-10: The English unions even forbid their
members to exceed the established time of work, or the
established task. Thus, for instance, a penalty of one
shilling for carrying at any time more than eight bricks in
the case of masons, and a similar penalty inflicted on the
person's companions who witness the violation of the rule
and do not report the guilty party. Equality of wages for
all members; piece-wages allowed only when the surplus
earned is divided among one's companions. Hence the complete
discouragement of all skill or industry above the average.
If an employer exceeds the prescribed number of apprentices;
if he engages workmen not belonging to the union; if he
introduces new machines, a strike is ordered. With all this
the severest exclusion respectively of one class of
tradesmen by the other. If a carpenter lays a few stones, a
strike immediately! (Quart. Rev., October, 1867, 363, 373.)
Rigid shutting out of the products of one district from
another. (Edinburg Rev., October, 1867, 431.) The poor
hand-weavers were thus prevented going from their
over-crowded trade into another. (_J. Stuart Mill_,
Principles, II, ch. 14, 6.) However, many trades-unions
still seem to be free from these degenerations, and the most
influential unions the most moderate in their proceedings.
(_Count de Paris_, ch. 8, 9; _Thornton_, III, ch. 2.)
_Brentano_ expressly assured us that such degeneration of
the unions in England is confined to the building
trades-unions. (I, 68, 188.)]

[Footnote 176-11: "They have no notion of contenting
themselves with an equal voice in the settlement of labor
questions; they tell us plainly that what they aspire to is
to control the destinies of labor, ... to dictate, to be
able to arrange the conditions of employment at their own
discretion." (_Thornton_, III, ch. 1.) The membership of the
English trades-unions was estimated, at the Manchester
Congress, June, 1868, at 500,000 by some, and at 800,000 by
others. _Brentano_, II, 310, speaks of 960,000. Since 1830,
there have been frequent endeavors to effect a great
combination, with special organizations of the different
trades. During recent years, there have been even beginnings
of an international organization, although in Germany, for
instance, at the end of 1874, there were 345 trades-unions,
with a membership of over 21,000. (_M. Hirsch._) A formal
theory of workmen's unions to culminate in popular
representation, in _Dühring_, Arbeit und Kapital, 1866,
especially, p. 233; while the American _Walker_ accuses all
such combinations, which used compulsion on any one, of
moral high treason against republican institutions. (Science
of Wealth, 272.)]

[Footnote 176-12: The former view, for instance, of _Harriet
Martineau_, "The tendence of strikes and sticks to produce
low wages" (1834) is now unconditionally shared only by few.
When _Sterling_ says that the momentary success of a strike
is followed by a two-fold reaction which restores the
natural equilibrium, viz.: increase of the number of workmen
and decrease of capital (Journal des Econ., 1870, 192), he
overlooks not only the length of the transition time which
would certainly be possible here, but also that an altered
standard of life of the workmen prevents the former, and one
of the capitalists the latter. The _Count of Paris_ and
_Thornton_ do not doubt that the elevation of the condition
of the English working classes, as proved by _Ludlow_ and
_Jones_, is to be ascribed, in part, to the effect of the
trades-unions. Many of the unions work against the
intemperance and quarrelsomeness of their members. The
people's charter of 1835, came from the London "workingmen's
association."]

[Footnote 176-13: On the great utility of the arbitration
courts between masters and workingmen, by which the struggle
for wages is terminated in a peaceable manner and without
any interruption of work, see _Schäffle_, Kapitalismus and
Socialismus, 659. More minutely in _Thornton_, III., ch. 5.
_Faucher_, Vierteljahrsschr., 1869, III, 302, calls
attention to the fact that such "boards" may be abused to
oppress small manufacturers.]