Chapter IX: Thirty Years’ Growth (4)

But the most extensive federation of the Trade Union world is to-day, as it has always been, the Trades Union Congress, which could count in September 1919 an affiliated membership of more than five and a quarter millions, a number never paralleled in this or any other country. We have described in previous chapters the origin and development of this federal body, its uses in drawing together the scattered Trade Union forces, and its failure either to help in the solution of the problems of industrial organisation or to give an intellectual lead to the rank and file.[639]

We drew attention in the first edition of this book in 1894 to the weakness of the organisation of this imposing annual Congress; and, from 1895 onward, certain changes have been successively made in its constitution and procedure, not always, as we think, for the better. At the Norwich Congress in 1894 the Parliamentary Committee, which the Congress annually elects as its executive, was charged by a resolution proposed by W. J. Davis to consider the amendment of the Standing Orders, and to make the amended orders applicable to the next Congress. On the authority of this ambiguous resolution, which seems to have had in view only the establishment of Grand Committees to deal with the multiplicity of resolutions on the annual agenda, the Parliamentary Committee, of which the Chairman was then John Burns, M.P., decided forthwith to expel all the Trades Councils from the Congress, to make obligatory the “vote by card” according, not to the number of delegates, but to the aggregate membership of each Union, and to confine the delegates rigidly to the contemporary salaried officers and the members of Trade Unions actually working at their crafts--thereby excluding not only the veteran Henry Broadhurst, M.P., with John Burns himself, but also Keir Hardie, Tom Mann, and other leaders of the new movement that was seeking to make Trade Unionism a political force. Who, exactly, was responsible for this _coup d’état_ was not officially revealed. It was said, with some authority, that James Mawdsley, the rough and forceful secretary of the Cotton-spinners, was at the bottom of the move, and that he made use of the personal rivalry between Henry Broadhurst and John Burns to get them both, and also the rebellious element from the Trades Councils, which all three disliked, excluded from future Congresses.[640] The Congress at Cardiff in 1895 was very angry, and, in effect, rebuked the Parliamentary Committee, but allowed the new Standing Orders to be confirmed on the newly adopted “card vote.” In so far as the intention was to keep the new ideas out of Congress, the result was plainly a failure, as within four years (to be described in Chapter XI.) there was a majority in Congress for the creation of the independent organisation entitled the Labour Representation Committee, which became in due course the present Labour Party. The effect was merely to weaken the intellectual influence on the Trade Union world of the Congress and its Parliamentary Committee.

With this exception of the exclusion of the Trades Councils, and of the outstanding personalities whom they occasionally sent as delegates, the visitor to the Trades Union Congress in 1919 would have found very little difference between it and the Congresses of thirty years before, except for an increase in the size of the gathering and in the number of members represented; and, as must be added, an all-round improvement in the education and manners, especially of the younger delegates. As an institution it can hardly be said to have shown, between 1890 and 1917 at least, any development at all.

It must be admitted that, with all its shortcomings, the Congress, which has now for over fifty years continued to meet annually in some industrial centre, serves many useful purposes. It is, to begin with, an outward and visible sign of that persistent sentiment of solidarity which has throughout the whole of the past century distinguished the working class. Composed of delegates from all the great national and county Unions and an increasing number of local societies, and largely attended by the salaried officials, the Congress, unlike the Trades Councils, is really representative (except for the absence of most of the political side of its organisation) of all the elements of the Trade Union world. Hence its discussions reveal, both to the Trade Union Civil Service and to party politicians, the movement of opinion among all sections of Trade Unionists, and, through them, of the great body of the wage-earners. Moreover, the week’s meeting gives a unique opportunity for friendly intercourse between the representatives of the different trades, and thus leads frequently to joint action or wider federations. Nevertheless the Congress remains, as we have described it in its early years, rather a parade of the Trade Union forces than a genuine Parliament of Labour.[641]

All the incidental circumstances tend to accentuate the parade features of Congress at the expense of its legislative capacity. The Mayor and Corporation of the city in which it is held are frequently permitted to give a public welcome to the delegates, and to hold a sumptuous reception in their honour. The Strangers’ Gallery is full of interested observers, Distinguished foreigners, representatives of Government departments, “fraternal delegates” from America and the Continent, and from the Co-operative Union and the National Union of Teachers, inquisitive politicians, and popularity-hunting ministers sit through every day’s proceedings. The press-table is crowded with reporters from all the principal newspapers of the kingdom, whilst the local organs vie with each other in bringing out special editions containing verbatim reports of each day’s discussions. But what more than anything else makes the Congress a holiday demonstration instead of a responsible deliberative assembly is its total lack of legislative power. The delegates are well aware that Congress resolutions on “subjects” have no binding effect on their constituents, and therefore do not take the trouble to put them in practicable form, or even to make them consistent one with another. From the outset the proceedings are unbusiness-like. Much of the first day is consumed in pure routine and a lengthy inaugural address from the President, who has been since 1900 always the Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee of the preceding year. The rest of the agenda consists of resolutions sent in by the various Unions and brought higgledy-piggledy before the Congress in an order determined by the chances of the ballot. These resolutions are subjected to no selection or revision beyond an attempt by subcommittees to merge in one the several proposals on each subject. The delegates have at their disposal about twenty-five hours to discuss every imaginable subject, ranging from the nationalisation of the means of production down to the prohibition of one carter driving two vehicles at a time. To enable even a minority of those present to speak for or against the proposals, each speaker is limited to five, or perhaps to three minutes, a rule which is more or less rigidly enforced. But, in spite of this vigorous application of the closure, the President is seldom able to get the business through, and has frequently as much as he can do to maintain order. The Standing Orders Committee is entirely taken up with its mechanical business, and is not authorised, any more than is the Parliamentary Committee itself, to formulate a programme for the consideration of the delegates. Nor does the Congress receive much guidance from experienced officials of the old-established Unions. Whether from a good-natured desire to let the private members have their turn at figuring in the newspapers, or from a somewhat cynical appreciation of the fruitlessness of Congress discussions, many of them habitually lie low, and seldom speak except to defend themselves against attacks. Moreover, they are busily engaged, both in and out of Congress hours, in arranging for the election of themselves or their friends on the Parliamentary Committee, which has hitherto always been governed by mutual “bargaining” for votes.[642] When the four days’ talk draws near to an end, many of the resolutions on the agenda are still undisposed of. On the Saturday morning, when most of the delegates have started for home, a thin meeting hurries rapidly through the remainder of the proposals, speeches are reduced to sixty seconds each, and the Congress adopts a score of important resolutions in a couple of hours. From first to last there is no sign of a “Front Bench” of responsible leaders. As a business meeting the whole function of the Congress is discharged in the election of the Parliamentary Committee, to which the representation of the Trade Union world for the ensuing year is entrusted.

In the first edition of this book, in 1894, we gave a description of the work of the Parliamentary Committee which it is interesting to recall:

The duties of the Parliamentary Committee have never been expressly defined by Congress, and it will easily be understood that resolutions of the kind we have described afford but little guidance for practical work. But there is a general understanding that the Committee is to watch over the political interests of its constituents, in much the same way as the Parliamentary Committee of a town council or a railway company. It is obvious that, in the case of the Trade Union world, such a mandate covers a wide field. The right of Free Association, won by Allan, Applegarth, Odger, and their allies, is now a past issue, but the Trade Union interest in legislation has, with the advance of Democracy, extended to larger and more complicated problems. The complete democratisation of the political machinery, the duty of the Government to be a model employer, the further regulation of private enterprise through perfected factory legislation, the public administration of monopolies, are all questions in which the Trade Union world of to-day considers itself keenly interested. To these distinctly labour issues must be added such interests of the non-propertied class as the incidence of taxation, the public provision for education and recreation, and the maintenance of the sick and the aged. We have here an amount of Parliamentary business far in excess of that falling upon the Parliamentary Committee of any ordinary town council or railway company. To examine all bills, public or private, introduced into Parliament that may possibly affect any of the foregoing Trade Union interests; to keep a constant watch on the administration of the public departments; to scrutinise the Budget, the Education Code, and the Orders of the Local Government Board; to bring pressure to bear on the Ministry of the day, so as to mould the Queen’s Speech into a Labour Programme; to promote independent Bills on all the subjects upon which the Government refuses to legislate; and, lastly, to organise that persistent “lobbying” of Ministers and private members which finally clinches a popular demand--all this constitutes a task which would tax the energies of half a dozen highly trained Parliamentary agents devoting their whole time to their clients. This is the work which the Trade Union Congress delegates to a committee of busy officials, all absorbed in the multifarious details of their own societies, and served only by a Secretary who is paid for a small part of his time, and who accordingly combines the office with other duties.[643]

The whole organisation is so absurdly inadequate to the task, that the Committee can hardly be blamed for giving up any attempt to keep pace with the work. The members leave their provincial headquarters fifteen or twenty times a year to spend a few hours in the little offices at 19 Buckingham Street, Strand, in deliberating upon such business as their Secretary brings before them. Preoccupied with the affairs of their societies, and unversed in general politics, they either confine their attention to the interests of their own trades, or look upon the fortnightly trip to London as a pleasant recreation from hard official duties. In the intervals between the meetings the Secretary struggles with the business as best he can, with such clerical help as he can afford to pay for out of his meagre allowance. Absorbed in his own Parliamentary duties, for the performance of which his constituents pay him a salary, he can devote to the general interests of the Trade Union world only the leavings of his time and attention. It is therefore not surprising to learn that the agenda laid before the Parliamentary Committee, instead of covering the extensive field indicated by the resolutions of the Congress, is habitually reduced to the barest minimum. The work annually accomplished by the Committee during the last few years has, in fact, been limited to a few deputations to the Government, two or three circulars to the Unions, a little consultation with friendly politicians, and the drafting of an elaborate report to Congress, describing, not their doings, but the legislation and other Parliamentary proceedings of the session. The result is that the executive committee of the United Textile Factory Workers’ Association and the Miners’ Federation exercised a far more potent influence in the lobby than the Committee representing the whole Trade Union world; whilst such expert manipulators as Mr. John Burns, Mr. Havelock Wilson, or Mr. George Howell, can point to more reforms effected in a single session than the Parliamentary Committee has lately accomplished during a whole Parliament.

It is therefore not surprising that there exists in the Trade Union world a growing feeling of irritation against the Parliamentary Committee. In each successive Congress the Committee, instead of taking the lead, finds itself placed on its defence. But it is obvious that Congress itself is to blame. The members of the Committee, including the Secretary, are men of quite as sterling character and capacity as a board of railway directors or a committee of town councillors. But whereas a railway company or a town council places at the disposal of its Parliamentary Committee the whole energies of a specially trained town clerk or solicitor, and allows him, moreover, to call to his aid as many expert advisers as he thinks fit, the Trades Union Congress expects the Parliamentary affairs of a million and a half members to be transacted by a staff inferior to that of a third-rate Trade Union. At one period, it is true, the leaders of the Trade Union world as a whole successfully conducted a long and arduous Parliamentary campaign. We have described in a previous chapter the momentous legislative revolution in the status of Trade Unionism which was effected between 1867 and 1875. But the Conference of Amalgamated Trades, and its successors the Parliamentary Committee, had in these years at their command the freely given services of such a galaxy of legal and Parliamentary talent as Mr. Frederic Harrison, Professor E. S. Beesly, Mr. Henry Crompton, Mr. Thomas (now Judge) Hughes, Messrs. Godfrey and Vernon Lushington, and Mr. (now Justice) R. S. Wright. The objection felt by the present generation of Trade Unionists to be beholden to middle-class friends is not without a certain validity. But if the Trade Union Congress wants its Parliamentary business done it must, at any rate, provide such a salary as will secure the full services of the ablest man in the movement, equip his office with an adequate number of clerks, and authorise the Parliamentary Committee to retain such expert professional assistance as may from time to time be required.

Such was the position as we saw it in 1894. The Trades Union Congress did not in any important respect improve its organisation, nor equip its Parliamentary Committee with any adequate staff. Its failure to cope with the Parliamentary business in which the Trade Union world was interested became more and more manifest; and the discontent was increased by the disinclination felt by many of the leading members of the Committee for the larger aspirations and more independent attitude in politics that marked the active spirits of the rank and file of Trade Union membership. All this co-operated to produce the vote of the 1899 Congress in favour of some definite step to increase the number of Labour Members in the House of Commons, out of which sprang the independent organisation subsequently known as the Labour Party, which we shall describe in Chapter XI. But although the Trades Union Congress thus created, at the very end of the nineteenth century, a separate political organisation for the Trade Union world, into which the steadily increasing political activity of the Trade Unions has since flowed, the Congress and its Parliamentary Committee made no change in their own work. There has accordingly continued to be the same stream, year after year, of miscellaneous resolutions before Congress, 99 per cent of them dealing with political issues, involving either legislation or a change of Government policy, resolutions which have continued to be presented and discussed without any regard to their place in any consistent programme for the Trade Union world as a whole. The Parliamentary Committee has continued to regard itself almost entirely as a Parliamentary Committee, just as if the Trade Unions had not united in a distinct political organisation and had not created their own Parliamentary Labour Party. The futile annual deputations to Ministers have continued to present to them the crude resolutions of the Trades Union Congress, without regard to the contemporary situation in the House of Commons, or the action taken by the Parliamentary Labour Party, and without taking into account in what relation they stand to the political programme of the Trade Union world as formulated, year by year, in the Conferences of the Labour Party. Meanwhile the essentially industrial work of the national organisation of Trade Unions has continued to be neglected. Both the Trades Union Congress and the Parliamentary Committee have shown the greatest disinclination to tackle such essentially Trade Union problems as those presented by the existence in the same trade of competing Trade Unions;[644] by the formation of separate Unions on overlapping and mutually inconsistent bases; by the growing rivalry between the warring conceptions of organisation by craft and organisation by industry; by the increasing failure of the membership of each branch to correspond with the staffs of the separate gigantic establishments characteristic of the present day; by the “rank and file movement,” demanding a greater direct control of workshop conditions than can easily be made compatible with the centralisation of policy in the national executives; by the development of the “Shop Stewards’” organisation; by the spread in different industries of systems of “payment by results,” unsafeguarded by the necessary adaptations of the Standard Rate and Collective Bargaining; by the tendency of the employers to make deductions from the Standard Rate when it suits them to take on individuals or new classes of workers whom they declare to be inferior, whether women or boys, old men or partially incapacitated workers of any sort; and by the introduction of “Scientific Management.”[645]

During the whole of this century, in fact, the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress, and the Congress itself, have failed to grapple with the work that calls out to be done by some national organisation of the Trade Union world. After allowing to be created, on the one hand, the General Federation of Trade Unions, abandoning to it the whole function of insurance, together with the representation of British Trade Unionism in the International Federation of Trade Unions, and, on the other, the Labour Party, with its inevitable absorption of the political activity of the Trade Union world, the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress has failed to recognise, and to concentrate upon, the sphere that it had left to itself, namely, to become the national organ for the improvement and development of British Trade Unionism in its industrial aspect. Whilst the Trades Union Congress has continued anxiously and nervously to abstain from any attempt to demarcate the spheres of rival Unions or to improve their mutual relations, action which would have brought the Parliamentary Committee dangerously into conflict with one or other of its constituents, and has confined its attention as much as ever to the statutory and governmental reforms which its various sections desired, it has been progressively overshadowed, on the political side, by the rise of the Labour Party, to be described in a subsequent chapter.

Towards the end of 1919 the discontent of the Trade Union world with the position and attitude of the Parliamentary Committee came to a head. The sudden railway strike, described in this chapter, revealed the lack of any organ of co-ordination in industrial movements which inevitably affected the whole Trade Union Movement. The Parliamentary Committee itself laid before a special Trades Union Congress in December 1919 a report declaring that “the need has long been recognised for the development of more adequate machinery for the co-ordination of Labour activities, both for the movement as a whole, and especially for its industrial side. Again and again the lack of co-ordination has resulted, not only in the overlapping of administrative work, but also in unnecessary internal and other disputes, involving vast financial and moral damage to the whole Labour Movement. To do away with some of this overlapping and to provide means of co-ordinating the work of certain sections was the object with which the Triple Industrial Alliance was founded by the Miners, Railwaymen, and Transport Workers, and the same object is behind the numerous steps towards closer unity which have been taken in various industries and groups. The Negotiating Committee, hastily improvised to deal with the situation created by the railway strike this autumn, was generally felt to have fulfilled, however imperfectly, a vital need of Labour; but it is clear that it ought not to have been necessary to create a new and temporary body to do this work; the necessary machinery should have been already in existence in the form of a really effective central co-ordinating body for the movement as a whole.

“It appears to us that the body which is required should and must be developed out of the existing organisation of the Trades Union Congress and out of its closer co-operation with other sections of the working-class movement. At present, the Standing Orders do not permit the Parliamentary Committee to undertake the work which is required. Indeed, its functions, as they are now defined, are in great measure a survival from a previous period, when the chief duties of the Congress were political, and there existed no separate political organisation to express the policy and objects of Labour. We accordingly suggest that the whole functions and organisation of the Parliamentary Committee demand revision, with a view to developing out of it a real co-ordinating body for the industrial side of the whole Trade Union Movement. It is also necessary to take into account the relation of the reorganised Central Industrial Committee to the other sections of the movement, and especially to the Labour Party and to the Co-operative Movement.

“If a better central organisation could be developed both on the industrial side and by the closer joint working with the other wings of the working-class movement, a vast development of the very necessary work of publicity, information, and research would at once become possible. The research, publicity, and legal departments now working for the movement require co-ordination and extension equally with its industrial and political organisation. The research, publicity, and legal work now done by the Trades Union Congress, the Labour Party, and the Labour Research Department must be co-ordinated and greatly enlarged in close connection with the development of the executive machinery of the movement.”

The proposal did not secure the approval of the Miners’ Federation, but the special Congress, by a very large majority, passed the following resolution:

“That in view of the imperative need and demand for a central co-ordinating body representative of the whole Trade Union Movement and capable of efficiently dealing with industrial questions of national importance, the Parliamentary Committee be instructed to revise the Standing Orders of Congress in such manner as is necessary to secure the following changes in the functions and duties of the Executive body elected by Congress:

“(1) To substitute for the Parliamentary Committee a Trades Union Congress General Council, to be elected annually by Congress.

“(2) To prepare a scheme determining the composition and methods of election of the General Council.

“(3) To make arrangements for the development of administrative departments in the offices of the General Council, in the direction of securing the necessary officials, staff, and equipment to secure an efficient Trade Union centre.

“Further, in order to avoid overlapping in the activity of working-class organisations, the Parliamentary Committee be instructed to consult with the Labour Party and the Co-operative Movement, with a view to devising a scheme for the setting up of departments under joint control, responsible for effective national and international service in the following and any other necessary directions:

“(_a_) _Research_: To secure general and statistical information on all questions affecting the worker as producer and consumer by the co-ordination and development of existing agencies.

“(_b_) _Legal advice_ on all questions affecting the collective welfare of the members of working-class organisations.

“(_c_) _Publicity_, including preparation of suitable literature dealing with questions affecting the economic, social, and political welfare of the people; with machinery for inaugurating special publicity campaigns to meet emergencies of an industrial or political character.”

THE OFFICERS OF THE TRADE UNION MOVEMENT

If we survey the growth of the British Trade Union Movement during the past thirty years, what is conspicuous is that, whilst the Movement has marvellously increased in mass and momentum, it has been marked on the whole by inadequacy of leadership alike within each Union and in the Movement itself, and by a lack of that unity and persistency of purpose which wise leadership alone can give. Hence, in our opinion, the organised workers, whilst steadily advancing, have not secured anything like the results, either in the industrial or in the political field, that the individual sacrifices and efforts in their cause might have brought about. This deficiency in the brain-work of successful organisation is very marked in the various sections of the building trades, with their chaos of separate societies, and in the engineering industry, with its persistence of competing Unions formed on inconsistent bases, its lack of uniformity in Standard Rates, and its failure to devise any plan of safeguarding Collective Bargaining in the various systems of “Payment by Results.” But it has been equally apparent in the incapacity of the Trade Union Movement as a whole to establish any central authority to prevent overlapping organisations and demarcation disputes, and to co-ordinate the efforts of the various sections of workers towards a higher standard of life and greater control over the conditions of their working lives. The British workmen, it must be said, have not become aware of the absolute need for what we may call Labour Statesmanship. They have not yet learnt how, either in their separate Trade Unions or in the Labour Movement as a whole, to attract and train, to select and retain in office, to accord freedom of initiative to and yet to control, a sufficient staff of qualified officials capable not merely of individual leadership, but also of well devised “team play” in the long-drawn-out struggle of the wage-earning class for its “place in the sun.” To this constant falling short of the reasonably expected achievements is, we think, due the perpetual see-saw in Trade Union policy: the Trade Unionists of one decade relying principally on political action, to the neglect of the industrial weapon, whilst those of a succeeding decade, temporarily disillusioned with political action, rush wildly into strikes and neglect the ballot-box. This change of feeling is due each time to the failure of the results to come up to expectation. We shall understand some of the reasons for this shortcoming if we examine how the Trade Union Movement is, in fact, officered.

The affairs, industrial and political, of the six million Trade Unionists, enrolled in possibly as many as fifty thousand local branches or lodges (including a thousand independent small local societies), are administered by perhaps 100,000 annually elected branch officials and shop stewards. These may be regarded as the non-commissioned officers of the Movement; and it is fundamentally on their sobriety and personal integrity, combined with an intimate knowledge of their several crafts and a steadiness of judgement, that the successful conduct of the branch business depends. They continue to work at their trades, and receive only a few pounds a year for all their onerous and sometimes dangerous work. It is these non-commissioned officers of the Trade Union army who keep the Trade Union organisation alive. But they have neither the training, nor the leisure, nor even the opportunity, so long as they remain non-commissioned officers, working at their trades, to formulate a detailed policy, or to supply the day-by-day executive leadership to the particular Trade Union, or to the Trade Union Movement. For the work of translating into action, industrial or political, the desires or convictions of the whole body of the members, the Trade Union world necessarily depends, in the main, on its salaried officers, who devote the whole of their time to the service of the Movement, in one or other capacity. Such a whole-time salaried staff was slow to be formed. In 1850 it did not exist at all. It probably did not in 1860 number as many as a hundred throughout the whole kingdom. In 1892, in the first edition of this book, we put it approximately at 600. In 1920, with a fourfold growth in membership, and (under the National Insurance Act) a vast increase in the office and financial business of the Trade Unions, we estimate the total number of the salaried officers of all the Trade Unions and their federations (not including mere shorthand typists and office-boys) at three or four thousand, of whom perhaps one-tenth, in or out of Parliament, are engaged exclusively on election and other political work. But even on the industrial side, Trade Union officials differ considerably in the work they have to do, and the differences in function result in marked varieties of type.

We have first the salaried officials of the skilled trades. They are broadly distinguished from the officers of the Labourers’ Unions by the fact that they are invariably men who have worked at the crafts they represent, and who have usually served their society as branch secretaries. We may distinguish among them two leading types, the Administrator of Friendly Benefits, and the Trade Official.

To the type of Administrator of Friendly Benefits, the school of William Allan, belong most of the General and Assistant Secretaries at the head offices of the great Trade Friendly Societies organisations in which the mass of routine, financial, and other office business has become so great that only the ablest men succeed in rising above it. Owing to the continued increase in membership of the principal Unions, to their tendency to amalgamate into larger and larger aggregations, to the constant extension of friendly benefits, and since 1911 to the enormous addition to the work made by the National Insurance Act, the administrative staffs of the Unions have had to be doubled and quadrupled. But the Trade Union official of this type, however great may be his nominal position, has, during the past thirty years, come to exercise less and less influence on the Trade Union world. Rigidly confined to his office, he becomes in most cases a painstaking clerk, and rises at the best to the level of the shrewd manager of an insurance company. He passes his life in investigating the claims of his members to the various benefits, and in upholding, at all hazard of unpopularity, a sound financial system of adequate contributions and moderate benefits. Questions of trade policy interest him principally so far as they tend to swell or diminish the number of his members in receipt of “Out of Work Pay.” He is therefore apt to be more intent on getting unemployed members off the books than on raising the Standard Rate of wages or decreasing the length of the Normal Day. For the same reason he proves a tenacious champion of his members’ rights in all quarrels about overlap and demarcation of work; and it may happen that he finds himself more often engaged in disputes with rival Unions than with employers. He represents the most conservative element in Trade Union life. On all occasions he sits tight, and votes solid for what he conceives to be the official or moderate party.

More influential in Trade Union politics is the salaried officer of the other type. The Trade Official, as we have called him, is largely the result of the prevalence, in certain industries, of a complicated system of “Payment by Results.” We have already described how the cotton lists on the one hand and the checkweigher clause on the other called into existence a specially trained class, which has since been augmented by the adoption of piecework lists in boot and shoemaking and other industries. The officers of this type are professionals in the art of Collective Bargaining. They spend their lives in intricate calculations on technical details, and in conducting delicate negotiations with the employers or their professional agents. It matters little whether they are the general secretaries of essentially trade societies, such as the federal Unions of Cotton-spinners and Cotton-weavers, or the exclusively trade delegates of societies with friendly benefits, such as the Steel-smelters, the Boilermakers, and the Boot and Shoe Operatives. In either case their attention is almost entirely devoted to the earnings of their members. Alert and open-minded, they are keen observers of market prices, employers’ profits, the course of international trade, and everything which may affect the gross product of their industry. They are more acutely conscious of incompetency, whether in employer or employed, than they can always express. Supporters of improved processes, new machinery, and “speeding up,” they would rather see an antiquated mill closed or an incompetent member discharged than reduce the Standard Rate. Nor do they confine themselves exclusively to the money wages of their clients. Among them are to be found the best advocates of legislative regulation of the conditions of employment, and whilst they have during the present century fallen somewhat into the background when wider political issues have come to the fore, the elaboration of the Labour Code during the past fifty years has been due, in the main, to their detailed knowledge and untiring pertinacity.

The Trade Official, however, has the defects of his qualities. The energetic workman, who at about thirty years of age leaves the factory, the forge, or the mine, to spend his days pitting his brains against those of shrewd employers and sharp-witted solicitors, has necessarily to concentrate all his energies upon the limited range of his new work. As a Branch Secretary, he may have taken a keen interest in the grievances and demands of other trades besides his own. Soon he finds his duties incompatible with any such wide outlook. The feeling of class solidarity, so vivid in the manual working wage-earner, tends gradually to be replaced by a narrow trade interest. The District Delegate of the Boilermakers finds it as much as he can do to master the innumerable and constantly changing details of every variety of iron-ship, boiler, and bridge building in every port, and even at every yard. The Investigator of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives is often hard put to it to estimate accurately the labour in each of the thousand changing styles of boots, whilst at the same time keeping pace with ever-increasing complexity both of machinery and division of labour. The Cotton Official, with his bewildering lists, throws his whole mind into coping with the infinite variety of calculations involved in new patterns, increased speed, and every alteration of count and draw and warp and weft. The Miners’ Agents can seldom travel beyond the analogous problems of their own industry. Such a Trade Official, if he has any leisure and energy left at the end of his exhausting day’s work, broods over larger problems, still special to his own industry. The Secretary of a Cotton Union finds it necessary to puzzle his head over the employers’ contention that Bimetallism, or a new Indian Factory Act, deserves the operatives’ support; or to think out some way of defeating the evasions of the law against over-steaming or of the “particulars clause.” The whole staff of the Boilermakers will be absorbed in considering the effect of the different systems of apprenticeship in the shipyards, or the proper method of meeting the ruinously violent fluctuations in shipbuilding. The Miners will be thinking only of the technical improvement of the conditions of safety of the mine, or of the way to protect the interests of the hewer in an “abnormal place.” And the modern Knight of St. Crispin racks his brains about none of these things, but is wholly concerned with the evil of home work, and whether the inspection of small workshops would be more rigidly carried out under the Home Office or under the Town Council. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Trade Officials are characterised by an intense and somewhat narrow sectionalism. The very knowledge of, and absorption in, the technical details of one particular trade, which makes them such expert specialists, prevents them developing the higher qualities necessary for the political leadership of the Trade Union world.

In another class stand the organisers and secretaries of what used to be called the Labourers’ Unions, and are now styled Unions of General Workers--a less stable class, numbering in 1892 about two hundred, and in 1920 possibly ten times as many. In contrast with the practice of the old-established societies these officers have at no time been always selected from the ranks of the workers whose affairs they administer.[646] In “revivalist” times the cause of the unskilled workers attracts, from the ranks of the non-commissioned officers of other industries, men of striking capacity and missionary fervour, such as John Burns and Tom Mann, who organised and led the dock labourers to victory in 1889. But these men regarded themselves and were regarded more as apostles to the unconverted than as salaried officers, and they ceded their posts as soon as competent successors among their constituents could be found. In the main the unskilled workmen have had to rely for officers on men drawn from their own ranks. In not a few cases a sturdy general labourer has proved himself a first-rate administrator of a great national Union. But it was a special drawback to these Unions in the early days of their development that the “failures,” who drift from other occupations into the ranks of general labour, frequently got elected, on account of their superior education, to posts in which personal self-control and persistent industry are all-important. Nor were the duties of an organiser of unskilled labourers in old days such as developed either regular habits or business capacity. The absence of any extensive system of friendly benefits reduced to a minimum the administrative functions and clerical labour of the head office. The members, for the most part engaged simply in general labour, and paid by the day or hour, had no occasion for elaborate piecework lists, even supposing that their Unions had won that full recognition by the employers which such arrangements imply. On the other hand, the branches of a Labourers’ Union in those days were, for one reason or another, always crumbling away; and the total membership was only maintained by perpetually breaking fresh ground. Hence the greater part of the organiser’s time was taken up in maintaining the enthusiasm of his members, and in sweeping in new converts. This involved constant travelling, and the whirl of excitement implied in an everlasting round of missions in non-Union districts. The typical organiser of a Labourers’ Union in 1889-94 approximated, therefore, more closely than any other figure in the Trade Union world, to the middle-class conception of a Trade Union official. He was, in fact, a professional agitator. He might be a saint or he might be an adventurer; but he was seldom a man of affairs.[647]

During the past quarter of a century these Unions of Labourers, which are now better styled Unions of General Workers, have changed in character, and are now often huge national organisations of financial stability, administered by men as competent as any in the Trade Union world. Their officers, who have greatly increased in number, have elaborated a technique of their own, combining an efficiency in recruiting with an effective representation of their members’ case in negotiations with the employers, and before arbitration tribunals, which, particularly in such influential bodies as the National Union of General Workers, the Dock, Wharf and Riverside Labourers’ Union, the Workers’ Union and the National Federation of Women Workers, brings them much nearer what we have described as the Trade Official than the typical labourers’ organiser of 1889. The exclusively women’s Unions, among which the National Federation of Women Workers is the only one of magnitude, have been exceptionally fortunate in attracting and retaining women of outstanding capacity--good organisers and skilled negotiators--who have not only obtained for their members a remarkable improvement in the conditions of employment, but have, by their statesmanship, won a position of outstanding influence in the Trade Union Movement. It is, indeed, important to note that the accomplished officials of the larger Unions of General Workers, and not those of women only, have become aware of a diversity of view between the skilled craftsman with a “vested interest” in his trade, and the unskilled or, as they prefer to call them, the semi-skilled or general workers, bent on being considered qualified for any work which the employer has to give. Hence these officials sometimes take a larger view of Labour questions than the trade officials of the skilled crafts. They tend to be in favour of the amalgamation of separate societies into “One Big Union”; of much more equality of remuneration among all manual workers; of the “open door” to capacity; of equal rates for men and women on the same job; and of a levelling up of the Standard of Life of the lowest section of the workers. This leads them instinctively to a co-ordinated use of the industrial and the political weapons.

Some of these officials, however, are paid in a manner which may exercise an adverse influence on their activity. A new method of remuneration of the officers of a Trade Union has been devised. In one case the very able General Secretary of a Union of skilled craftsmen, whose services have been in the past most valuable to the trade, is reputed to be paid so much per member per annum, and with the great increase in membership to be making an income four times as large as the salaries of the General Secretaries of great Trade Unions. In another very extensive Union of unskilled and semi-skilled workers, practically the whole staff is paid “by results,” the Branch Secretaries, for instance, by rule retaining for themselves “six per cent on the contributions, levies and fines received from the members of the Branch on behalf of, and remitted to, the Chief Office”; and being paid also “a procuration fee of 1s.” for “introducing new members” into the Approved Society; and for the extra work involved in disputes, a further “6d. when under 25 members are affected, and 1s. for the first 25 or over; 2s. for the first 50; 6d. per 50 or part thereof afterwards.” This method of remunerating Trade Union officials--analogous to that successfully employed by the Industrial Insurance Companies for their agents--has certain attractions. A fairly adequate remuneration for the position and work can thus be allotted to the officer, without its amount being specifically voted by the members or appearing in the accounts in such a way as to offend the rank and file by a contrast between their weekly wage for manual labour and the Standard Rate of what is essentially a different occupation. It is, however, rightly regarded as a pernicious system. The practice of “paying by results” is alleged to lead sometimes to reckless recruiting, to “in and out” Trade Unionism, and even to wholesale poaching among the membership of other Unions; and it produces in the Trade Union world a type of “business man” more concerned for numbers than for raising the Standard of Life of the members he has enrolled, or for co-operation with other Trade Unions for their common ends.

Quite another type, of more recent introduction, is the Political Officer of the Trade Union world. He may be merely the Registration Officer or Election Agent serving the local Labour Party and the Labour Candidate in a particular constituency; he may be simply a Labour M.P.; he may be the secretary or staff officer of a great Trade Union or powerful federation, or, indeed, of the Labour Party itself, devoting himself to political functions; he may combine with one or other of these posts, or some other Trade Union office, that of a Member of Parliament; but he is distinguished from the typical General Secretary, Trade Official or Labour Organiser--from one or other of which he has usually developed--by his absorption in the political work of the Movement, either inside the House of Commons or outside it, within one constituency or in a wider field. He may not always hold a political office. A marked feature of the past decade has been the frequency and the amount of the calls upon the time of the Trade Union leaders who are not in Parliament, for public service in which their own Unions have no special concern. The Trade Union official has to serve on innumerable public bodies, nearly always without pay of any kind, from local Pension or Food or Profiteering Act Committees, or the magisterial bench, up to National Arbitration Tribunals, official Committees of Enquiry or Royal Commissions. Such a man is perpetually devoting hours every day to the consideration and discussion, and sometimes to the joint decision, of issues of public character, in which it is his special function to represent, not the opinions and interests of the particular Trade Unionists by whom he is paid, but the opinions and interests of the whole wage-earning class. All this important work, a twentieth century addition to the functions of the Trade Union staff, and not alone the increasing calls of Parliament, is tending more and more to the development of what we have called the Political Officer of the movement.

These three or four thousand salaried officials of the Trade Union world, whatever their several types, and whatever the duties to which they are assigned, are, with insignificant exceptions, all selected in one way, namely by popular election by the whole body of members, either of their respective Unions, or of particular districts of those Unions. They are, in the skilled trades, required to be members of the Union making the appointment; and in order to gain the suffrages of their fellow-members they must necessarily have made themselves known to them in some way. They are, accordingly, selected almost invariably from among what we have described as the non-commissioned officers of the Movement, those who are serving or who have served as Branch Secretaries, or other local officers. They have thus all essentially the same training--a training which has no more reference to the work of an administrator of Friendly Benefits than to that of a Political Officer. What happens is that the popular workman is, by the votes of his fellow-workers, taken suddenly from the bench, the forge or the mine, at any age from 30 to 50, with no larger experience than that of a Branch Official, and put to do the highly specialised work of one or other of the types that we have described.[648] It is a further difficulty that such training and experience that an individual Trade Unionist may have had, and such capacity as he may have shown, whilst they may secure his election to a salaried office, or his promotion from one such office to another, will be held to have no bearing on the question of which office he will be chosen to fill. The popular Branch Secretary, who has led a successful strike, may be elected as General Secretary in a head office where his work will be mainly that of the manager of an insurance company. The successful Trade Official, expert at negotiating complicated changes in piecework lists, may find himself elected as the Union’s candidate for Parliament; and will, in due course, be sent to the House of Commons to deal on behalf of the whole wage-earning class, with political issues to which he has never given so much as a thought. The Trade Union secretary, whose daily work has trained him to the meticulous supervision of the friendly benefits, may find himself perpetually called away from his office to represent the interests of Labour as a member of Royal Commissions and Committees of Enquiry on every imaginable subject.

With such imperfect methods of selection for office, and with so complete a lack of systematic training for their onerous and important functions, it is, we think, a matter for surprise that Trade Union officials should have won a well-deserved reputation for knowledge and skill in negotiations with employers. But their haphazard selection and inadequate training are not the only difficulties that they have to overcome. Trade Union officials are nearly always overworked and expected to become specialist experts in half-a-dozen techniques; they are exposed to harassing and demoralising conditions of life, and they are habitually underpaid. The conditions of employment and the terms of service which the Trade Unions, out of ignorance, impose on those who serve them, far from being conducive to efficient administration and wise leadership, are often disgracefully poor. In November 1919 the National Union of Railwaymen set a notable example in raising the salaries of their two principal officers to £1000 a year each. But this is wholly exceptional. Even now, after the great rise in the cost of living, the salary of the staff officer of an important and wealthy Trade Union rarely exceeds £400 or £500 a year, without any provision for any other retiring allowance than the Union’s own Superannuation Benefit of ten or twelve shillings per week, if such a benefit exists at all. The average member forgets that what he has to compare the Secretary’s salary with is not the weekly wage of the manual working members of the Union, but--on the very doctrine of the Standard Rate in which they all believe--the remuneration given by “good employers” for the kind of work that the Secretary has to perform. When we remember that the modern Trade Union official has to be constantly travelling and consorting with employers and officials of much higher standards of expenditure than his own, and when we realise the magnitude and financial importance of the work that he performs, the smallness of the salary and the lack of courtesy and amenity accorded to the office is almost ludicrous. The result is that the able and ambitious young workman in a skilled trade is not much tempted by the career, even if he regards it as one of Trade Union leadership, unless he is (as so many are) an altruistic enthusiast; or unless his ambitions are ultimately political in character. The able young workman will both rise more rapidly and enjoy a pleasanter life by eschewing any ostensible service of his fellow-workmen, and taking advantage of the eagerness of intelligent employers to discover competent foremen and managers, nowadays not altogether uninfluenced by the sub-conscious desire to divert from Trade Unionism to Capitalism the most active-minded of the proletariat. Nor does the danger to the Trade Union world end with the refusal of some of its ablest young members to become Trade Union officials. The inferiority of position, alike in salary, in dignity and in amenity, to which a Trade Union condemns its officers, compared with that enjoyed by men of corresponding ability and function in other spheres, puts a perpetual strain on the loyalty of Trade Union officials. They are constantly being tempted away from the service of their fellows by offers of appointments in the business world, or by Employers’ Associations, or in Government Departments. And there are other evils of underpayment. A Trade Union official whose income is insufficient for his daily needs is tempted to make unduly liberal charges for his travelling expenses, and may well find it more remunerative to be perpetually multiplying deputations and committee meetings away from home than to be attending to his duties at the office. He may be driven to duplicate functions and posts in order to make a living wage. The darkest side of such a picture, the temptation to accept from employers or from the Government those hidden bribes that are decorously veiled as allowances for expenses or temporary salaries for special posts, is happily one which Trade Union loyalty and a sturdy sense of working-class honour have hitherto made it seldom necessary to explore. But such things have not been unknown; and their underlying cause--the unwise and mean underpayment of Trade Union officials--deserves the attention of the Trade Union world.