Trade Unions: their origin and objects, influence and efficacy. ..

Front matter

Trade Unions:

THEIR ORIGIN AND OBJECTS, INFLUENCE AND

EFFICACY.

CHAPTER I. — Historical Sketch

Serfdom — Emancipation — The Domestic System — The “ Capitalistic Craftsman” — The Working Class The First Crisis — The Statutes of Laborers — The Black Death — High Wages, Cheap Food, and Short Hours — Combination — Guilds — The First Union — Rise of the Artisan — The Lollards — Antagonism of the Wealthy— The Peasants’ Revolt — Oppression of the Working Classes— Debasement of the Coin — Confiscation of the Guilds — Combination Laws— The Poor Laws— Continued Decline of the Workman — His Miserable Condition in the Nineteenth Century — Trade Unions Their Original Rules — Combinations of Employers.

Those who so often speak of the “ welfare of the State” would do well to remember that the phrase has never yet meant the “ welfare of the people.” The “good old times” were good only for a small portion of the community, and although year after year has shown constant .improvement, yet that amelioration has been very slow and lamentably imperfect. Aristotle says, in his “Politics,” that the best and most perfect commonwealth is one which provides for the happiness of all its members. The fact that the great philosopher conceived such a noble sentiment so long ago is in itself remarkable ; but admiration for his wisdom is somewhat diminished when it is found that, “although artisans and trades of every kind are necessary to a State, they are not parts of it, ’ ’ and their happiness, therefore, is of a kind with which the “best and most perfect commonwealth” has no concern whatever.

‘ * The same law must be for all classes of my subjects,” said Henry II., but laborers were not considered subjects. So late as Elizabeth’s time they were spoken of (by Shakespeare) as “fragments.” Even the Magna Charta, of which Englishmen are so justly proud, referred but to a moiety of the two millions of persons who inhabited England at the time of its promulgation. It affected freemen alone, and there is little doubt that nearly one-half of the entire population was then in a state of slavery so abject that, in the language of the old law-writers, ‘ ‘ the villein* knew not in the evening what he was to do in

* “Villein” was a term to denote the serf or

worker in those days.

V the morning, but was bound to do whatever he was commanded.” He was liable to beating, he was incapable of acquiring property for himself, and any he got became his master’s ; he could be separated from his wife and children, and sold to another lord, or he could be passed with the land upon which he lived, as if he had been a chattel attached to it.

Various causes noiselessly and gradually effaced this miserable condition, though at a very slow rate. “Faint traces of it,” says Lord Macaulay, ‘ ‘were detected by the curious, so late as the days of the Stuarts ; nor has that institution [villenage], even to this hour, been abolished by statute.” From the earliest times, however, serfdom in England bore within it the germs of its own destruction. The lord might enfranchise his villein, or the latter could purchase his freedom. If, too, the slave es caped to some town, and remained t’er^‘ unclaimed a year and a day, he be^ ^ a free man. There were also difficult the way of proving the villenage, the < ^ of which proof always lay with the li^ while in all disputes on the subject the p.,e sumption of law was in favor of liberty. .

“Thus,” writes Creasy, “while at the period when we first can assert the common law of the complete English nation to commence, we find this species of slavery so widely established in this country, we also find the law for its gradual and ultimately certain extinction. ’ ’ The Church, too, discountenanced slavery. Theodore denied Christian burial to the kidnappers, and prohibited the sale of children by their parents after the age of seven. Violation of the prohibition was punished with excommunication. The murder of a slave by his owner, though no crime in the eye of the State, became a sin for which penance was exacted by the Church. The slaves attached to Church property were freed, and manumission became frequent in wills, as the clergy taught that such a gift was a boon to the soul of the dead.

With half a nation in slavery there could be no “ working class, ’ ’ as the term is generally understood. The wealthy kept domestic artisans amongst their servants, and the wants of the nobles were almost entirely supplied by their retainers. The villeins tilled the soil, while the men in towns worked on what is now called the “domestic system.” The factory system and the capitalist employer were not yet known, and the employers of labor were those who provided materials which they hired men to work into the articles required. The glazier glazed, but did not find the glass ; the blacksmith forged, but did not find the iron. There was, therefore, very little hiring of laborers. “ The capitalist employer,” says Professor Thorold Rogers in “Six Centuries of Labor and Wages,” “the first middle man, is entirely unknown till the seventeenth century ; and the capitalist purchaser of raw materials, the second middle man, is later still in \iie economy of society.

At a very early date, however, craftsmen became the chief purchasers of the materials on which they worked, and the “capitalist artisan ’ ■ developed considerably in the sixteenth century. The London tailors, even in the reign of Edward III. , were the great importers of woolen cloths, and there can be no doubt that at this time many of the craftsmen traded in the raw material which they worked, As, however, the trades became more prosperous, and the poor, who flocked to the towns, more numerous, the traders gradually ceased working at their craft, and, confining themselves to trading, ’ fft the manual labor to their less fortunate ions. That is to say, a class of dealers in raw material sprang into ce. The distinction of classes bemarked. The shoemaker soon learnt k down upon the cobbler, and the er merchant to despise the shoemaker, he “full history of England as a nav.ii,” it is agreed, begins in the reign of enry II., and it is thenabouts that we find anything like a working class gathering itself together. In the three centuries which immediately succeeded the Norman Conquest, the commerce of England was greatly extended. Foreign commodities were “introduced in' abundance, and native manufactures established and improved.” This naturally attracted to the towns such serfs as wished for liberty, and thus we find springing up in the towns a class of men possessed of personal freedom, but destitute of property and land. These were the forerunners of the wageworking class.

The Statute of Laborers (23 Ed. III., c. 1) clearly shows the existence of a wage- receiving class, the remuneration being about one penny a day in addition to food ; and when it is remembered that the sum mentioned was sufficient to purchase a couple of fowls or the fifth part of a sheep, it is evident that the recipients were well off as things went. Indeed, the statute referred to was passed because, in the opinion of the landholders, the wages of agricultural laborers had become “excessive.” Here was, in fact, the first “crisis” on record between employers and employed in England. The depopulation (amounting, it is said, to one-third of the nation) which followed the great plague of 1348, the “Black Death,” caused a natural rise in the price of labor. Whole villages died out ; houses fell in ruins ; entire flocks perished for want of herdsmen ; and the corn crop perished for wants of reapers. The clergy even raised their fees for masses and prayers, because fewer persons were able to afford such luxuries ; merchants and tradesmen took advantage of the small supply of wares to raise their prices ; and in like manner the workmen endeavored to profit by the dearth of labor, by refusing to work except at enormous prices. The wealthy class objected to all this, and the purpose of the Act referred to was to fix the wages, by requiring all laborers, etc., to accept the same remuneration as had been customary before the plague. Any lord of the manor paying more was to be mulcted in treble damages; food was to be sold at reasonable prices; and alms were forbidden to ablebodied laborers. The statute, however, seems to have been disregarded ; and two years later we find the master shearmen of London complaining to the city authorities that they could not get men at the same wages as formerly, and that the workmen also refused to work unless they were paid by the piece.

There had, indeed, already been something of the nature of a ‘ ‘strike, ’ ’ and it was, therefore, ordered that any further disputes should be settled by the warden of the trade. If a workman did not submit, he was to be punished by the mayor and aldermen. All, however, was of no avail, and what is also surprising is the obtuseness that could for a moment imagine the Act could be enforced. The statute had to be enforced by the Manor Court, and that court depended for efficiency upon the good will existing between landlord and tenant; and where statute prices were paid the difference was made up in some other way. Professor Rogers has recently brought to light some curious instances of evasions of the Act, by the alterations in the record of the court from the price actually paid to the statute prices ; alterations evidently made to technically conform to the law, while actually evading it. At last the peasants combined to resist the law. They organize themselves, and they subscribe considerable sums of money for the defence and protection of serfs, which, it has been suggested, may have included the payment of lines. In point of fact, here is a rudimentary trade union to resist an unjust law and to secure higher wages. A similar statute to the one above quoted was passed in 1362, when, after a violent tempest, a royal order was issued that the materials for roofing and the wages of tilers should not be enhanced by reason of the damage done by the storm. An additional statute, with a similar object, was passed the following year.

From these sources, and from the industrious researches of Professor Thorold Rogers, we learn what were the wages earned at the period before the rise set in.

It will be sufficient to say here that they were not satisfactory, though not so meagre a3 has been generally supposed. The Acts, however, were disregarded, the men refusing to work for less than double or treble the sums prescribed by statute. For about a dozen years wages continued to rise, until in 1363 the prosperity of the peasantry was so great that an Act (37 Edward III., c. 14) was passed enjoining carters, ploughmen, and farm servants generally, not to eat or drink “excessively,” or to wear any cloth except “blanket and russet wool of twelvepence, ” while domestic servants were declared to be entitled to only one meal a day of flesh and fish, and were to content themselves at other meals with “milk, batter, cheese, and other such victuals.”* These restrictions were as futile as those which preceded them, and it would be foolish to weary the reader with an account of similar legislation effected during the succeeding century, in spite of which, however, wages constantly advanced ; and we find an Act passed in the reign of Richard II. stating that laborers would not work except at a rate “much more than hath been given to such servants and laborers in any time past.” Indeed, they were the halcyon days of the British laborer. He was much better off then than he is now. The rise in the wages of labor after the famine of Edward II. was as much as from twenty-three per cent, to thirty per cent. ; and after the Black Death in the following reign the average advance was upwards of fifty per cent. more. The masons succeeded in obtaining an advance of sixty per cent., the reason of which will be given immediately. Great, too, as was

*In Scotland, at a much later date, farm laborers complained that they had to eat salmon more than four days a week.

the rise in wages, there was no corresponding rise in the price of provisions. Everything the laborer needed was as cheap as it ever had been, his labor was rising in value week by week, and he worked only eight hours a day. Never before or since have the workingmen of England been so well off as far as material comforts were concerned, and this halcyon period lasted until 1390.

It will be necessary further on to trace the reasons of the downward tendency that began to show itself in that year; and to show how it was that laborers who had become masters of the situation were again degraded to the level of serfs. It would be interesting to inquire whether any ‘ ‘union’ ’ or ‘ ‘combination’ ’ had given the men strength to resist the injustice- which the Acts just mentioned inflicted upon them by curbing the “aspiring exertions of industry and independency.” Materials upon which to found a decided opinion are, unfor« tunately, very scarce. One thing, however, is certain. The people of England had lon| been familiar with the principle of association for trade and other purposes. Even sc early as the time of Canute, associations under the name of “guilds” were established for religious purposes. Similar brotherhoods afterwards developed into combinations of merchants for mutual assistance and protection, and were followed in the fourteenth century by ‘ ‘craft-guilds, ’ ’ which, as their name implies, were unions of handicraftsmen — the principal guild being that of the weavers. The very essence of the guilds was mutual support;, mutual protection, and mutual responsibility . They were, indeed, the first friendly societies. These guilds gradually extended their influence beyond the limits of particular trades, and ultimately became far more powerful than the municipal corporations of the present day. The notions of the members of the guilds were of a very exclusive nature in regard to the admission of members. No irilleins were permitted to join them, and all freemen who were proposed had to be duly elected.

The noblest of all the guilds of the Middle Ages was undoubtedly that of the masons. This brotherhood rose from the circumstances in which the travelling builders of the Middle Ages found themselves placed. “They were brought together from distant homes to be employed for a considerable time on such great works as our mediaeval churches and cathedrals. Near the rising structure on which they were engaged it was necessary that they should provide for themselves a common shed or tabernacle.” This was the original masons’ “lodge.” Before all things it was necessary that masons should be “ free and accepted.” The entrance into this guild, as indeed into all others, was, in ao cordance -with the spirit of the times, surrounded by mysterious rites and ceremonies, and all such societies had their peculiar lore and traditions. Their original intentions have long ago been disregarded. All that remains of the masons’ guild is the now fashionable order of ‘ ‘ Freemasons, ’ ’ and of the others the rich livery companies of London and the guilds of elsewhere, who now spend their dying moments, as they inaugurated their existence centuries ago, at dinner.*

The exclusiveness of the guilds naturally separated still more the incipient working class from their well-to-do superiors, and tended more and more to give the workmen separate views and interests, which were not infrequently antagonistic to those of the employer or ‘ ‘master. ’ ’ When two or three are gathered with identical interests (and those interests opposed to the wishes of their employers, who are already combined), it seems so natural tor them to form a combination of some sort or other that it is impossible to resist the belief that in the fourteenth century the working man — excluded from the guild — would unite with his fellows, if not for general, yet for specific objects in connection with his condition. It is gratifying to learn that this view is taken by so high an authority as Dr. Lujo Brentano, who also points out that, at about ‘4he time referred to, accounts of ‘ ‘ strikes In the building trade are particularly numerous ; ’ ’ and there is in existence a ‘ ‘ royal mandate as to the workmen who have withdrawn from the palace of Westminster. ” Indeed, it is beyond dispute that the masons of the fourteenth century maintained a higher rate of wages than was paid to other crafts, as has been above mentioned, solely on account of the combination these artisans were able to effect ; a fact that non-unionists of to day would do well to remember.

This view is strengthened by the fact that in 1383 the authorities of the city of London issued a proclamation forbidding all ‘ ‘ congregations, covins, and conspiracies of workmen ; ’ ’ and four years later three shoemakers were carried off to Newgate for violating it ; while in 1396 a similar coalition of saddlers was suppressed. Two laws also were enacted against combinations, congregations, and chapters of workmen (which had been established to limit the number of working hours), viz., the 34 Edward IV., c. 9, and 3 Henry VI., c. 1. The punishments inflicted upon working men for combining were very severe, and yet they combined in spite of such punishments. The endeavors of the laborers to raise wages showed themselves most promi-

* It is gratifying to find that now some of the livery companies are devoting a portion of their funds to useful puposes, such as the promotion of technical education, etc.

nently in the trades in which, as in the cloth manufacturers, development was most rapidly progressing, and in which there existed a large working class.

The prosperity of the laborers and artisans produced events that alarmed the privileged classes. The emancipation of the serfs had for some time past proceeded very rapidly, from causes which have been already indicated. Professor Thorold Rogers, after an enormous amount of research, writes of the fourteenth century, “In the many thousands of bailiffs and manor rolls which I have read, I have never met with a single instance of the sale of a serf, nor have I discovered any labor rent for which an equitable money payment could not be substituted.” Indeed, during the reign of Edward II., the practice became general of accepting money compensation in lieu of labor rents ; and at the end of a quarter of a century the rule had become almost universal. The improvement in the condition of the serfs created an amount of independence among them that had the happiest results.

Sir Robert Sale, Captain-General of Norwich in 1381, was the son of a villein, was born a serf, as was also Grost£te, the great Oxford scholar of the thirteenth century, thus showing that even in those days serfs could rise to very high positions. There is abundant evidence, too, that they became possessed of property, and indeed, as they became enfranchised, they also became copyholders. It is certain they paid rent, which indicates a real bargain between the lord and the serf which the former could not break if the other satisfied his dues ; and he could recover wages due to him from his lordly employer by distraint upon his goods, even upon his chattels, and therefore could not be a chattel himself. The impetus given to this process by the general rise after the Black Death was brief, and that plague, in short, emancipated almost the whole of the surviving serfs.

It was, therefore, amongst a prosperous and independent class that Wiklif ’s “Poor Priests,” or Lollards, followed by John Ball, also a priest, preached doctrines that in those days were revolutionary doctrines, and, in the eyes of some people, are so still. From village to village the old couplet was repeated :

“When Adam delved and Eve span,

Who was then the gentleman ?”

The people were taught that those who labored, did so not only for themselves, but to enable others to live without labor, or to live by mischievous labor. The “equality” expounded in the Bible was explained to them, and generally it was impressed upon them that they were oppressed by a privileged class whom accident, fraud, or force had placed in a superior social sphere.

The men were not starving, and had time to listen and to think, and, above all things, to combine. And they did combine. They subscribed money ; they shielded the escaped serf from the pursuit of his lord ; the serf and the free joined in a common cause, and waited but the signal to “strike” against their enemies. The sign was at length given, and the result was, on the 10th of June, 1381, the Peasants’ Revolt, or Wat Tyler’s Rebellion. This was a rising caused, not by the outrage on Tyler’s daughter, or even the poll tax, but by the general attempts by the upper classes to force down the wages of the laborers of England, and to take from them the rights they had won, though of course other grievances would not be forgotten. In all risings for a particular object, the opportunity is seized of making many demands. For the particulars of that revolt the reader is referred to the history of the period. The rebellion nearly succeeded, b;j-t the laborers were cajoled into quietude.

From this time forward for three centuries the history of the laboring class is a sad story. The governing powers never forgave the Lollards, nor those who listened to them. They seized every opportunity of crushing the people, and it is only recently that policy has been departed from. It is not too much to say that from this time to 1824, in the words of the author already quoted, “a conspiracy concocted by the law, and carried out by parties interested in its su cess, was entered into to cheat the Euglish workman of his wages, to tie him to the soil, to deprive him of age, and to degrade him into irreparable poverty.” The first of these repressive measures was the debasement of the coin by Henry VIII. and the guardians of Edward VI. The nefarious transactions by which this was brought about had for their object the replenishment of the royal coffers out of the earnings of the artisans and laborers, and they succeeded in that object. The peasantry were already impoverished by the action of the landowners in substituting sheep-farming for agriculture, and the new stale of affairs oppressed them with great severity.

The purchasing f)ower of the revenue fell to one-third of its original capacity, and the consequent rise in prices was one and a half. In other words, if wages rose from Gd. to 9 d. a day, the laborers had to pay 3s. for meat, 2s. 5d. for bread, and 2s. Gd. for butter and cheese, where he had paid Is. before. This, it is obvious, put back the laborer into a position of penury to which he had not been accustomed, and to which he did not readily submit. His condition was again almost that of the serf. From childhood to old age all was labor. Eight hours no longer constituted a day’s work. His miserable condition was rendered worse by the dissolution of the monasteries that accompanied the debasement of the coin. A great part of the vast funds of the monasteries was devoted to the relief of the poor, and to their assistance in many ways. When this was withdrawn, no substitute was provided in its place. These transactions were followed by the confiscation of the property of the guilds. I have described them as the first Friendly Societies. The guilds assisted the artisan in times of difficulty, allowed him loans without interest, and granted benefits to his widow. The effect of the confiscation of the guilds was the same as would result from the confiscation of the funds of the Friendly Societies; and it is worth noting, as an argument in favor of strong union, that only the provincial guilds were molested, those in London being so powerful that the Crown dared not molest them.

The working men resisted these oppressions, and vigorous measures were passed to force them into submission. An Act was passed in the reign of Edward VI., which shows pretty plainly what was thought in those days of the “working classes.” If a man refused to work at statute prices, he was branded with the letter V (vagabond), and reduced to slavery for two years. If he attempted to escape from that condition, he was branded with S, and became a slave for life ; and if he objected to that state, he was hanged. It is also evident that the spirit of combination was growing amongst the laborers and artisans, for the laws against workmen’s combinations were made still more stringent than hitherto. The preamble of 2d and 3d Edward VI., cap. 15 (a.d. 1548), set forth that “artificers, handicraftsmen, and laborers had made confederacies and promises, and have sworn mutual oaths, not only that they should not meddle with one another’s work, and perform and finish what another hath begun, but also to constitute and appoint how much they shall do in a day, and what hours and times they shall work, contrary to the laws and statutes of this realm, and to the great impoverishment of his Majesty’s subjects.” Anyone convicted for the third time of having joined such a combinatiorf had his ear cut off, and altogether the punishments were very severe.

It may be gathered, then, that the principle of combination amongst the workpeople was rapidly progressing, and wae met under the Tudors and Stuarts in a spirit which, it is to be regretted, is not wholly extinct at the present day, as recent events have shown.

It is not surprising that this state of affairs should have impressed the thinking minds of the period ; and that the causes and remedies should be considered. Statesmen and persons of influence began to acknowledge the j ustice of the demands of the workpeople. In Sir Thomas More’s Utopia the great statesman advocates almost all the reforms that have taken place since his day, and many that have not yet been accomplished. Indeed, as Mr. J. R. Green points out, “ In his treatment of the question of labor he still remains far in advance of current opinion. The whole system of society around him seemed to him ‘nothing but a conspiracy of the rich against the. poor. ’ Its economic legislation was simply the carrying out of 'such a conspiracy by process of law. The rich are ever striving to pare away something further from the daily wages of the poor by private fraud, and even by public law, so that the wrong already existing (for it is a wrong that those from whom the State derives most benefit should receive least reward) is made yet greater by means of the law of the State.

‘ ‘ The rich devise every means by which they may in the first place secure to themselves what they have amassed by wrong, and then take to their own use and profit at the lowest possible price the work and labor of the poor. ’ ’ The result was the wretched existence to which the labor class was doomed — ‘ ‘ a life so wretched that even a beast’s life seems enviable.” More then gives his remedies. The end of labor laws, he says, should be the welfare of the laborer. Labor should be compulsory with all. Unless a man work, neither shall he eat. Even in those days, 1516, More demanded that the period of toil should be shortened to nine hours, with a view to the intellectual improvement of the worker: there must be also, he pleaded, ‘ ‘ a public system of education,” comfortable homes for the people, complete toleration and equality of all religions, and much more in the same strain.

I do not suppose that any book that was ever written has done so much for the working classes as the Utopia , written by the proposer of the nine hours system more than three hundred years ago. The general progress of civilization, even, had its drawbacks as regards the humbler classes. The general diffusion of the art of printing, the great geographical discoveries effected in the sixteenth century, and the general activity which prevailed throughout Europe immediately after the Reformation, gave a great stimulus to trade and commerce, the effects of which were long felt. This, of course, had a beneficial influence. It had, however, some drawbacks. Amongst them may be mentioned that in the seventeenth century the practice of setting children prematurely to work prevailed to a very large extent. At Norwich, the chief seat of the clothing trade, children began to work at six years old, and earned not the “insignificant tiifle” which was paid to the little sufferers forty years ago, but very much more than was necessary for their own sustenance. In the opposition which was shown at the time to this inhumanity is to be discerned the dawn of the Factory Acts, and of the opposition which was subsequently offered by Trade Unions to the overworking of youths and children.