town there has, however, grown up a local Building Trades' Federation, formed by the local branches to concert joint action against their common employers, as regards hours of labor and local advances or reductions of wages, bodi of which are in each town usually simultaneous and identical for all sections. We have elsewhere referred to the difficulties arising from this separate action of each town, and it is at least open to argument whether the building trades would not be better advised to form a national federation to concert a common national policy, having federal officials in the large towns, who would, like the district delegates of the United Society of Boilermakers, represent the whole organisation, though acting in consultation with local committees.
' The Holders-up were admitted into the society in 1881, at the instance oi the general secretary, who represented that Holders-up were indispensable fellow- workers and possible blacklegs, and must therefore be brought under the control of the organisation, more especially as they were beginning to form separate clubs of their own.
Tnterunion Relations 129
move at different times, or by different expedients. Finally, experience seems to show that in no trade will a I well-paid and well-organised but numerically weak section permanently consent to remain in the subordination to inferior operatives, which any amalgamation of all sections of a large and varied industry must usually involve.^
Let us apply these axioms to the tangle of competing societies in the engineering trade. The fitters, turners, and erectors who work in the same shop, on the same job, under identical methods of remuneration, for wages ap- proximately equal in amount, and who can without difficulty do each other's work, form, no doubt,) a natural unit' of governmen t.^ * We might perhaps add to these the smiths, though the persistence of a few separate smiths' societies, and the uprising of joint societies of smiths and strikers, may indicate a different cleavage. With regard to the pattern-makers, it is easy to understand why the United Pattern-makers' Association is now attracting a majority of the men entering this section of the trade. These highly skilled and superior artisans constitute a tiny minority amid the great engineering army ; they usually enjoy a higher Standard Rate than any other section ; and any advances or reductions in their wages must almost necessarily occur at different times from similar changes among the engineers proper. It is even open to argument whether, for Collective Bargaining, the pattern-makers are not actually stronger when acting alone than when in alliance with the whole engineering industry. CWe are, therefore, disposed to agree with the con- tention of the United Pattern-makers' Association that "when the interests of our own particular section are concerned, we hold it as the first principle of our Association that these interests can only be thoroughly understood, and effectively looked after, by ourselves." *^ The same conclusions apply,
' In 1896, though the Amalgamated Society of Engineers enrolled the un- precedented total of 13,321 new members, all but 1803 of these belonged to the classes of fitters, turners, or millwrights.
2 Preface to Rules of the United Pattern-makers' Association (Manchester, 1892).
VOL. I *'
130 Trade Union Structure
though in a lesser degree, to some other sections now included in the Amalgamated Society, and they would decisively negative the suggestion to absorb such distinct and highly organised trades as the Plumbers and Ironfounders.^
This conclusion does not mean that each section of the engineering trade should maintain a complete independence. " We quite acknowledge," state the Pattern-makers, " that it would be neither politic nor possible to completely sever our connection with the organisation representative of the engineering trade, and we are always ready to co-operate with contemporary societies in movements which affect the 1 interests of the general body." * jThere are, indeed, some Imatters as to which the whole engineering industry must act in concert if it is to act at all. A great establishment like Elswick, employing 10,000 operatives in every section of the industry, would find it intolerable to conduct separate negotiations, and fix different meal-times or different holidays for the different branches of the tradej We find, in fact, the associated employers on the North-east Coast expressly com-
1 Our analysis thus definitely refutes the suggestion that the quarrels be- tween the engineers and plumbers, and the shipwrights and joiners respectively, might be obviated by the amalgamation of the competing unions. The two trades overlap in a few shipbuilding jobs, but in nine-tenths of their work it would be impossible for an engineer to take the place of the plumber, or a ship- wright that of a joiner, or vice versd. In strategic position the plumber differs fundamentally from the engineer, and the joiner from the shipwright The engineering and shipbuilding trades are subject to violent fluctuations, which depend upon the alternate inflations and depressions of the national commerce. The building trades, on the other hand, with which nine-tenths of the joiners and plumbers must be counted, vary considerably according to the season of the year, but fluctuate comparatively little from year to year ; and the general fluctuations to which they are subject do not coincide with those of the shipbuilding and engineering industries. By the time that the wave of expansion has reached the building trades, the staple industries of the country are already in the trough of the succeeding depression. It would have been difficult to have persuaded a Newcastle engineer or a shipwright in the spring of 1893, when 20 per cent of his colleagues were out of work, that the plumbers and carpenters were well advised in choosing that particular moment to press for better terms. Finally, we have the almost insuperable difficulty of securing adequate representation for the 9000 plumbers, scattered in every town amid the 87,000 engineers ; and, on the other hand, the 14,000 shipwrights concentrated in a few ports amid the 49,000 joiners spread over the whole country.
' Preface to Rules of the United Pattern-makers' Association (Manchester, 1892).
Interunion Relations 131
plaining in 1890, "of the great inconvenience and difficulty experienced in the settlement of wages and other general questions between employers and employed"; and ascribing the constant friction that prevailed to the " want of uniformity of action and similarity of demand put forward by the various societies representing the skilled engineering labor." 'Collective Bargaining becomes impracticable when different' societies are proposing new regulations on overtime in- consistent with each other, and when rival organisations, each claiming to represent the same section of the trade, are putting forward divergent claims as to the methods and| rates of remuneration. The employers were driven to insist that the " deputations meeting them to negotiate … should represent all the societies interested in the question underv consideration." ^ _\ And when the method to be employed is not Collective Bargaining but Parliamentary action, federal union is even more necessary.\ If the mechanics in the great government arsenals and factories desire modifica- tions in their conditions of employment, union of purpose among the tens of thousands of engineering electors all over
the country is indispensable for success.
>§o long, however, as the Amalgamated Society of Engineers claims to include within its own ranks every kind of engineering mechanic, and to decide by itself the. policy to be pursued, a permanent and effective federal organisation is impossible. Any attempt to combine in the same industry the mutually inconsistent schemes of amal- gamation and federation may even intensify the friction. I Thus we find, in 1888, to quote again from a report of the
1 Circular of the Iron Trades Employers' Association on the Overtime Ques- tion, October 1891. We attribute the practical failure of the Engineering operatives to check systematic overtime, an evil against which they have been striving ever since 1836, to the chaotic state of the organisation of the trade. A similar lack of federal union stood in the way of the London bookbinders in 1893, when they succeeded without great diflEculty in obtaining an Eight Hours' Day from those employers who were bookbinders only. In the great printing estab- lishments, such as Waterlow's and Spottiswoode's, they found it practically impossible