' The utility of this jury system, if we may so describe the branch function, may be gathered from the experience of other benefit organisations. It is, to begin with, significant that the great industrial insurance companies and collecting societies, with their millions of working-class customers, and their ubiquitous network of paid officials, but without a jury system, find it financially impossible to undertake to give even sick pay, let alone out of work benefit. The Prudential Assurance Company, the largest and best managed of them all, begaJto'do so,' but had to abandon it because, as the secretary told the Royal Commission on Friendly Societies in 1873, "after five years' experience we found we were unable to cope with the fraud that was practised." Among friendly societies proper, in which sick benefit is the main feature, it is instructive to find that it is among the Poiesters and Oddfellows, where each court or lodge is financially autonomous, that the rate of sickness is lowest. One interesting society, the Rational Sick and Burial Association (established in 1837 by Robert Owen and his ' ' Rational Religionists "), is organised exactly like a national amalgamated Trade Union, with branches administering benefits payable from a common fund. In this society, as we gather, the rate of sickness is slightly greater than in the Affiliated Orders, where each lodge not only decides on whether benefit shall be given, but also has itself to find the money. Finally, when we come to the Hearts of Oak Benefit Society, the largest and most efficient of the centralised friendly societies having no branches at all, and dispensing all benefits from the head office, we find the rate of sickness habitually far in excess of the experience of the Foresters or the Oddfellows, or even of the Rationals, an excess due, according to the repeated declarations of the actuary, to nothing but inadequate provision against fraud and malingering. During the eight years 1884–91, for instance, the "expected sickness," according to the 1866–70 experience of the Manchester U^ity of Oddfellows (all districts), was 1,111,553 weeks; the actual weeks for which benefit was drawn numbered no fewer than 1,452,106, an excess of over 30 per cent (An Enquiry into the Methods, etc, of a Friendly Society, by R. P. Hardy, 1894, p. 36). " Centralised societies," says the Rev. Frome Wilkinson, " will never be able to avoid being imposed upon ; not so, however, a well-regulated branch of an affiliated society with its machinery in good working order" (The Friendly Societies Movement, p. 193). See also " Fifty Years of Friendly Society Progress," by the same author, in the Oddfellowi \fagatine for 1888.
I02 Trade Union Structure
the branch forms an integral part of the legislative machinery If the laws are made by the votes of the members, it is t Ee^ranch meeting which is the deliberative assembly, anH usually also th e polling plac ed When the society enjoys Tally developed representative institutions, the branch becomes
[ at once a natural and convenient electoral division, and supplies, what is so sorely needed in political democracy, a means by which the representative must regularly meet every section of his constituents. In other trades it is common to
' require that nq important alteration of the society's rules shall be put before the Representative Assembly until it has been first discussed, and sometimes voted on, by one or more of the branches. In attending branch meetings we have found most interesting that jiart of the evening which is taken up with the reports made by the branch representatives on the local Trades Council, on a district or joint committee of the trade, or in the Representative Assembly of the society itself It has often occurred to us how much it would enliven and invigorate political democracy if the member of Parliament or the Town Councillor had habitually to report to, and discuss with, every section of his constituents, supporters and opponents alike, all the public business in which they were interested. Quite apart, therefore, from any administrative functions, organisation by branches has manifold uses, even in the most centralised society. But these usps have little connection with the problem of centralisation and local autonomy. In all these respects the branches are not separate units of government, but constitute, iri effect, a single mass meeting of members, geographically sliced up into aggregates of convenient size.
' Thus, in the vexed problem of how to divide ad-
iministration between central and local authorities. Trade Union experience affords no g:uide, either to other volun- tary associations or to political democracy. /The extreme centralisation of finance and policy, which the Trade Union has found to be a condition pf^ efficiency, has been forced
^upon it by the unique character of its functions, i The lavish
The Unit of Government 103
generosity with which the early trade clubs granted their surplus funds right and left to the clubs in other towns that needed assistance, was not simply an outburst of brotherly unselfishness. Each club had a keen appreciation that a reduction of wages in one centre was likely soon to spread to other towns, as a result either of the competition among the employers, or of the migration among the workmen. And when the various local clubs drew together into a national combination and appointed one salaried officer after another, to execute the commands of a central executive, this was not due to any indifference to local self-government or liking for bureaucracy, nor even to any philanthropic impulse to be kind to their weaker brethren, but |to a dim recognition of their own dependence upon securing a trade policy uniform from one end of the kingdom to the other^ This aspiration has crystallised in the minds of all experienced Trade Unionists into a fixed conviction, which has long since spread to the rank and file. It is obvious t hat a uniform policy can only b^ a rrived at and maintained by a central body act ing for the whole trade. A nd thus it comes about that the constant tendency to a centralised and bureaucratic administration is, in the Trade Union world, accepted, and even welcomed, by men who, in all the other organisations to which they belong, are sturdy defenders of local autonomy.^
' This generalisation applies, in its entirety, only to the trade funds and trade policy of the unions. In so far as the friendly society side of Trade Unionism is used only as an adventitious attraction in obtaining members, there is no inherent difficulty in each local branch, in its capacity of " benefit club," fixing its own rates of contribution, retaining its own funds, and administering its own affairs, whilst at the same time forming part, for all trade protection purposes, of a strictly centralised national combination. More usually, however, the friendly society side of Trade Unionism is valued also for the adventitious aid which its accu- mulating funds bring to the war chest. Thus we find that the , national Trade i Unions, with very few exceptions, have now centralised not only their trade but also their friendly society resources, the whole of each member's contribution being paid into a common fund available for all the purposes of the society. The result is, accordingly, to conc entrate still m ore asthority in the hands of the central executive- "" '
CHAPTER IV INTERUNION RELATIONS
Throughout the foregoing chapters we have accepted the current assumption that there is such a thing as a " trade," as to the boundaries of wrhich no question can arise. In the preface to nearly every Trade Union book of rules we find some passage to the following effect : " Every artisan following a given occupation has an interest, in common with all those similarly engaged, in forming rules by which that particular trade shall be regulated." But what is a " trade," and how are its limits to be defined ? By the journalist or professional man, every mechanic employed at Armstrong's or Whitworth's would naturally be classed as an engineer ; would be expected to belong to the " Engineers' Trade Union " ; and would at any rate ,be clearly distin- guished from a plumber, a joiner, or a shipwright. Yet the grouping of these mechanics into their several organisations, and the relations of these organisations to each other, are responsible for some of the most serious difficulties of British Trade Unionism,
We had better first state the problem as it appears in some of the principal trades. A single industry will often include sections of workers differing widely from each other in their standard earnings, in the kind and amount of pro- tection called for by their circumstances, and in the strategic strength of their respective positions against the employer,