We se e, therefore, that within the circle of what is usuallyf called a trade, there are often smaller circles of specialised! classes of workmen, each sufficiently distinctive in character to claim separate consideration. The first idea is always to cut the Gordian knot by ignoring these differences, and making the larger circle the unit of government. So fas-_ cinating is this idea of f amalgamation '| that it has been tried in almost every industry. The reader of the History} of Trade Unionism will remember the remarkable attempt - in 1 83 3–34 to form a national "Builders' Union," to com- prise the seven different branches of building operatives. 1 The s^me years saw a succession of general unions in the cloth-making industry. In 1844, and again in 1863, the coalminers sought to combine in qne amalgamated union every person employed in or about thie mines, from one end*' of the kingdom to the other. The " Iron Trades " again" were, between 1840 and 1850, the subject of innumerable!
no Trade Union Structure
local projects of amalgamaticin, in which not only the " Five Trades of Mechanism," but also the Boilermakers and the Ironfounders were all to be included. We need not describe the failure of all these attempts. More can, perhaps, be learnt from the experience of the great modern instance, the Amalgamated Society of Engineers.
It does not seem to have occurred to William Newton,, when he launched this famous amalgamation, that any diffi- culty could arise as to the classes of workers to be included. What he was primarily concerned about was to merge in one national organisation all the various local societies of engineering mechanics, whether pattern-makers,smiths, turners, fitters, or erectors, working either in iron or brass. But " sectionalism " stood, from the very first, in the way. The various local clubs of Smiths and Pattern-makers objected strongly to sink their individuality in a general engineers' union. In the same way, the more exclusive Steam-Engine Makers' Society, in which millwrights, fitters, and turners predominated, refused to merge itself in the wider organisa- tion. To Newton and Allan all these objections seemed to arise from the natural reluctance of local clubs to lose their individuality in a national union. This dislike, as they rightly felt, was destined to give way before the superior advantages of national combination. But subsequent ex- perience has shown that the resistance to the amalgamation was due to more permanent causes. The "merely local societies dropped in, one by one, to their greater rival. But this only revealed a more serious cleavage. The present rivals of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers are, not any local engineers' clubs, but national societies each claiming the exclusive allegiance of different sections of the trade^ The pattern-makers, for instance, came to the conclusion in 1872 that their interests were negfected in the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, and formed the United Pattern-makers' Association, which now includes a large and increasing majority of this highly skilled class. Tte -Associated Society of Blacksmiths, originally a Glasgow local club, now dominates
Interunion Relations \ 1 1
its particular section of the trade on the Clyde and in Belfast, and has branches in the North of England. The Brass-workers, the Coppersmiths, and the Machine-minders have now all their own societies of national extent. The result has been that the Amalgamated Society of Engineers does not realise Newton's idea as regards any section what- ever. The' Boilermakers, who refused to have anything to do with amalgamation, and who have persistently put their energy into organising their own special craft, have succeeded, as we have mefitioned, in forming one undivided, consolidated, and centralised society for the entire kingdom. Very different is the condition of the engineers. Neither the fitters nor the smiths, the pattern-makers nor the machine-minders, the brass-workers nor the coppersmiths, are united in any one society, or able to maintain a uniform trade policy, even for their own section of the industry. For all this confusion, the enthusiastic adherents of the Amalgamated Society have gone on preaching the one remedy of an ever-wider amalgama- tion. " The future basis of the Amalgamated Society," urged Mr. Tom Mann in 1891, " must be one that will admit every workman engaged in connection with the engineering trades, and who is called upon to exhibit mechanical skill in the performance of his labor. This would include men on milling and drilling machines, tool-makers, die-sinkers, and electrical engineers, and it would make it necessary to have the requisite staff at the general ofifice to cater for so large a constituency, as there are at least 250,000 men engaged in the engineering and machine trades of the United Kingdom, and the work of organising this body must be undertaken by the A. S. E."^ Somewhat against the advice of the more experienced ofiScials, successive delegate meetings have included within the society one section of workmen after another. At the delegate meeting of 1892, which opened, the society to practically every competent workman in thei most miscellaneous engineering establishment, it was even
' Address to the East End Institute of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, London, in Trade Unionist, loth October 1891.
1 1 2 Trade Union Structure
urged by some branches that the boundaries should be still further enlarged, so as to perniit the absprption of plumbers and ironfounders. This proposal was with some reluctance rejected, but only on the ground that it would have brought the Amalgamation into immediate collision with the 16,278 members of the Friendly Society of Iron- founders (established 1809); and with the compact and militant United Operative Plumbers' Society (established 1848, membership 8758), rivals too powerful to be lightly encountered. Each successi ve widenit^jy of_th e amals[a ina- tion bringsi t in fact, into con flict_witb^ a ^^^V,^'^ nnmhpr of ptlier unions, who _ becom e its_e mbittered en emies. The very competition between rival societies which Nfewton's amal- gamation was intended to supersede, has, through this all- inclusive policy itself, been rendered more intense and jntractable.
And here it is imperative that the reader should fully appreciate the disastrous effect of this competition and rivalry between separate Trade Unions. The evil will be equally apparent whether we regard the Trade Union merely as a friendly society for insuring the weekly wage-earner against loss of livelihood through sickness, old age, and depression of trade, or as a militant orgainisation for enabling the manual worker to obtain better conditions from the capitalist employer.
Let us consider first Jthe side of Trade Unionism which has, from the outset, been universally praised and admired, the " ancient and most laudable custom for divers artists within the United Kingdom to meet and form themselves into societies for the sole purpose of assisting each other in cases of sickness, old age, and other infirmities, and for the burial of their dead." ^ Now, whatever weight may be given, in matters of commerce, to the maxim caveat emptor—how- ever thoroughly we may rely, as regards articles of personal consumption, on the buyer's watchfulness over his own
1 Preamble to Rules of the Friendly Society of Ironmoulders (Manchestei, 1809), and to those of many other unions of this epoch.
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interests—it is indisputable that, in the whole realm of insurance, competition does practically nothing to promote efficiency. The assumption which underlies the faith in unrestricted competition is that the consumer is competent to judge of the quality of what he pays for, or that he will at any rate become so in the act of consumption. In matters of financial insurance no such assumption can reasonably be maintained. Apart from the dangers of irregularities and defalcations, the whole question of efficiency or inefficiency in friendly society administration is bound up with the selection of proper actuarial data, the collection and verifica-| tion of the society's own actuarial experience, and the conJ sequent fixing of the due rates of contribution and benefits. When rival societies bid against each other for members, competition inevitably takes the form, either of offering the common benefits at a