old-fashioned, and local society, with its traditions of exclusiveness and "privilege," refused to merge itself, but offered to its big rival a mutual "next preference" working arrangement—that is to say, whilst each society maintained for its own members a preferential right to be taken on at the wharves or yards where they were accustomed to work, it should accord to the members of the other society the right to fill any further vacancies at those yards or wharves in preference to outsiders. The answer to this was a peremptory refusal on the part of the National Union to recognise the existence of its tiny predecessor, whose members accordingly found themselves absolutely excluded from work. The National Union no doubt calculated that it would, in this way, compel the smaller society to yield. But at the very moment it had a great struggle on hand, both in Liver- pool and Glasgow, with one of the principal shipping firms. Communications were quickly opened up between that firm and the Glasgow Harbour Laborers' Society, with the result that the latter undertook to do the firm's work, and thus at one blow not only defeated tlje aggressive pretensions of the National Union but also secured its own existence. This line of conduct was repeated whenever a dispute arose between the employers and any Union on the Clyde. When the Blast-fiimacemen on strike had successfully appealed to the National Amalgamated Sailors' and Firemen's Union, not to unload Spanish pig iron, the Glasgow Harbour Laborers' Union promptly came to the employers' rescue. During the strike of the Scottish Railway Servants' Union, the same society was to the fore in supplying "scab laborers." Its crowning degradation, in Trade Union eyes, came in an alliance with the Shipping Federation, the powerful combination by which the employers hav'e, since 1892, sought to crush the whole Trade Union movement !n the waterside industries. Its conduct was, in that year, brought before the Trade Union Congress, which happened to meet at Glasgow, and the Congress almost unanimously voted the exclusion of its delegates.
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must in any case find it difficult to maintain a common organisation, are constantly hampered in their progress by the existence of competing societies which, starting from different industries, quickly pass into general unions, in- cluding each other's members. Indeed, with the remarkable exceptions of the coal and cotton industries, and, to a lesser extent, that of house-building, there is hardly a great trade in the country in which the workmen's organisations are_not seriously crippled by this fatal dissension.
) Now, experience shows that the permanent cause o f this competitive rivalry and overlapping between unions is th eir o rganisatio n upon bases inconsistent with each other. When two societies mclude and exclude precisely the same sections of workmen, competition between them loses half its bitter- ness, and the solution of the difficulty is only a question of timej We see, for instance, since 1862, the Amalgamated SocifityLflLCa rpente rs and Joiners rapidly distancing its elder competitor, the General Union of Carpenters and Joiners (established 1827)! But—because—»he . mem bers of both societies belong to identically the same trade, are paid by the same methods, earn the same rates, work the same hours, have the same customs and needs, and are in no way to be distinguished from each other, the branches in a given town find no difficulty in concerting, by means of a joint committee, a common trade policy. riA.nd although the existence of two societies weakens the financial position of the one* as well as of the other, the identity of the members' income and requirements, and jtheir constant intercourse, tend steadily to an approximation of the respective scales of contribution and benefitsjCTlnder these circumstances the tendency to amalgamation is, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, almost irresistible, and is usually delayed only by the natural reluctance of some particular official to abdicate the position of leadership.
1 VThe problem which the ^gineers, the transit workers,
'and the laborers have so far failed to solve, is how to
define a trade.) |_Among the engineers, for instance, there is
Interumon Relations 123
no general agreement which groups of workmen have interests sufficiently distinct from the remainder as to make it necessary for them to combine in a sectional organisation ; and there is but little proper appreciation of the relation of these sectional mterests to those which all engineering mechanics have in commoii|^ The enthusiast for amalgama- tion is always harping on the necessity of union amongst all classes of engineering workmen in order to abolish systematic overtime, to reduce the normal hours of labor, and to obtain recognition of Trade Union conditions from \ the government. To the member of the United Pattern- makers' Association or of the Associated Blacksmiths, these objects, however desirable, are subordinate to some re - arrangement of the method or scale of remuneration > peculiar to his own occupation. \The solution of the problem is to be found in a form of organisation which secures Home Rule for any group possessing interests divergent from those of the industry as a whole, whilst at the same time maintaining effective combination through- out the entire industry for the promotion of the interests which are common to all the sections^j , „..^ ,1,^1
Foj^tunsrtely, we are not left to our imagination to devise a paper constitution which would fulfil these conditions. In another industry we find the problem solved with almost perfect success. We have already described the half- dozen distiriCt-classes into which the Cotton -Operatives are naturally divided. Each of these has its own independent union, which carries on its own negotiations with the employers, and would vigorously resist any proposal for amalgamation. But in addition to the sectional interests of each of the six classes, there are subjects upon which two or more of the sections feel in common, and others which concern them all. JTAccordingly, instead of amalgamation on the one hand, Vt isolation on the other, we find the sectional unions combining with each other in various federal organisations of great efficiencyN The Cotton- spinners and the Cardroom Operatives, flying always for
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the same employers in the same establishments, have [formed the Cotton - Workers' Association, to the funds of which both societies contribute. Each constituent union carried on its own collective bargaining and has its own funds. But it agrees to call out its members in support of the other's dispute, whenever requested to do so, the members so withdrawn being supported from the federal ,/und.^ The Cotton-spinners thus secure the stoppage of the material for their work, whenever they withdraw their labor, and thereby place an additional obstacle in the way of the employer obtaining blackleg spinners. The Card- room Operatives on the other hand, whose labor is almost pnskilled, and could easily be replaced, obtain in their disputes the advantage of the support of the indispensable I Cotton-spinners. No federation for these purposes would be of use to the Cotton -weavers, who often work for employers devoting themselves exclusively to weaving, and whose product goes to a different market, ^ut the Cotton-weavers join with the Cotton-spinners and the Cardroom Operatives in the United Textile Factory Workers' Association, a purely political organisation for the purpose of obtaining and en- forcing the factory and other legislation common to the whole trade^ And it is interesting to notice that the Cotton Operatives not only refrain from converting this strong and stable federation into an amalgamation, but even carry the federal form into the different sections of their industry. The ig.ooo Cotton -spinners, for instance, form a single fighting unit, which, for compactness and absolute discipline, bears comparison even with the United Society of Boilermakers. But though the Cotton-spinners call their union an amalgamation, the larger " provinces " retain the privilege of electing their own officers, and of fixing their own contributions for local purposes and special benefits, and even preserve a certain degree of legislative autonomy. The student who derives his impression of