What we want and where we are; facts not phrases

Front matter

WHAT WE WANT

AND

WHERE WE ARE

Foreword

By Samuel Gompers

PRESIDENT OF AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR

Great Britain has no man better fitted to write of the achievements and the accomplishments of British working people than Mr. William A. Appleton. Whether the reader finds it possible to agree at all times with Mr. Appleton's conclusions is of less moment than the fact that the reader will surely find Mr. Appleton's writings facts that are important and opinions that are the result of careful thought and long experience.

My own acquaintance with the author of this book goes back over a long period of years. As a leading trade union official in a position which has brought him in touch not only with the workers of his own country but with the workers of the world, Mr. Appleton has lived and served through a period which forms a large and illuminating background for his present effort.

He is not one of those who will, to quote his own language, "reiterate frequently exploded platitudes" or "rejoice anew over the passing of vain resolutions." Mr. Appleton is essentially and fundamentally a trade unionist. He is thoroughly in accord

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with the American trade union movement in his attitude toward the theories, formulas and dogmas of the politicians. In matters of trade unionism, Mr. Appleton is probably more nearly American than any other leading British trade union official. For that reason his viewpoint and his analysis will be particularly interesting to Americans. They will be able to understand him because of this kinship of mentality.

Entirely aside from the general soundness of his views and the practical value of his information, Mr. Appleton has a claim upon Americans for a sympathetic reading of his book which will be appreciated, at least, among American trade unionists.

During the war he was one of a group, then all too small, who in England and Continental Europe, stood against peace by negotiation, but who stood for the destruction of militarism and autocracy. I make bold here to record one of the declarations I made during the war — "I hate war and I would not want this war to last one hour longer than necessary to attain democratic objectives and yet I would not end it one day before those objectives had been permanently achieved." Even though Mr. Appleton may not have used the words I employed, yet I know that was his position.

He was uncompromising in his opposition to the Stockholm conference project, the danger of which at that time was fully appreciated by only a small group in our own country but the defeat of which was a mighty factor in the conflict then raging.

FOREWORD is

Every effort of this character to intrigue the allied nations found a strong and unfaltering opponent in Mr. Appleton and those who worked with him.

It is to be hoped that Mr. Appleton will write more books. His long experience and his deep understanding should be made available to those whose opportunities have been fewer but whose needs are ever present.

Samuel Gompers.

Author's Preface

To know the nature and extent of desire and the foundations upon which attempts to attain desire may be based, should be the aim of all men in all communities. Failure on the part of the great majority to analyse desire and circumstances and possibility, accentuates the outward expressions of unrest and facilitates the spread of dangerous propaganda. The tendency to generalize, apart from effective analysis, often involves the endorsement by the masses of proposals which, in spite of superficial attractiveness, too frequently tend to exhaust national strength and national resources.

The demand for maintenance, irrespective of remunerative return; the proposal for levies which involved the dissipation of capital and the consequent limitation of industrial enterprises; the demand for legislation which continually increases bureaucratic control and administrative costs, would have secured but few supporters had every proposal been stripped of political bias and subterfuge and accorded full consideration by a majority of the people.

Broadly speaking, we all think we know what it is we want. The term most frequently used to express the common desire is "better conditions."

xi xii AUTHOR'S PREFACE

Here we all agree. Everybody desires better conditions. Where we part company is in the matter of definition and method.

Obviously, it is not sufficient to know only what we want. To achieve real success we must also know where we are in respect of bases and possibility. Desire that is unattainable should be eliminated if mental and moral health is to be maintained. The acceptance of this conclusion has led me at all times to apply the interrogative method to the problems arising out of my work and my associations with men. It has been my practice to reduce to writing my questions, addressed to myself, and to answer them in the light of what knowledge I possessed of history and natural law.

The most convenient form of presenting these analyses of the problems which faced me and which affected the lives of all with whom I directly or indirectly came in contact, and which affected also the stability of the State, appeared to be that of a book containing a series of chapters, each dealing with one topic and each aiming at the exposure of fallacy and the elucidation of fact. The success of the effort will be determined by the extent to which readers of the chapters are assisted in deciding within their own minds what they really do desire and whether the attainment of these desires is possible through efforts, or at prices which the individual or the community is willing to make or pay.

The mechanical work connected with the preparation of any book involves both time and anxiety.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE xiii

Most of this mechanical work has been taken off my hands, and I desire to express sincerest thanks to Dorothy Golding for relieving me of tasks that would have taken more time than it would have been possible for me to give.

W. A. Appleton.

June, IQ2I,

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

There is no man in the great Trade Union movement better equipped for the role of adviser than Mr. W. A. Appleton. For many years he has been at the head of one of the largest combinations of labour in the world and has had unique opportunities to view Trade Union conditions in almost every part of the globe. It is therefore as much a performance of a public duty as a private inclination that he enters the field of literature to either admonish or instruct the people to whom he belongs.

In times of stress we are apt to do strange things, and adopt stranger remedies in the sometimes vain hope of overcoming our difficulties. The Trade Union movement has had its period of stress and strange remedies, but its recent afflictions have produced a finer crop of quacks than usual, and it is the more necessary that this great instrument for human betterment and industrial regeneration should begin to consult the less showy but more sober of its professors.

Most people will only read those things which please; there are, however, a fair number left who prefer truth and facts to any number of pleasant, attractive theories. This book is written primarily for the latter, but even the former will find it to their advantage to read it, not once, but twice.

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We may not agree with all the conclusions with entire accord, but a perusal will do a great deal to strengthen the faith of those who believe that if it can be kept on straight and sensible lines, the Trade Union movement cannot be diminished by any temporary reverses such as have been recently inflicted upon it.

Chapter I

THE effect of phrases upon British mentality undoubtedly adds point to the query of those foreigners who ask whether Britons ever think, and if so, whether they ever carry their thoughts to logical conclusions.

Some years ago a great political party came into power on the u three acres and a cow" cry. A little later, because we were told that our beer would cost us more, another political party was driven out of power. During the last few years, and especially during and immediately after the war, Britain has suffered, and continues to suffer, through the national tendency to accept the phrase and to follow the phrase-maker irrespective of logic or physical possibility. We might perhaps despair if our American friends did not demonstrate their kinship by imitating that fashion in faith which obsesses us. It is comforting to realise that others besides the British m WHAT WE WANT AND WHERE WE ARE

surrender to the glamour of the epigram or the neatly turned phrase.

President Wilson's fourteen points were seized upon with avidity. They crystallised the subconscious, and often disconnected, meanderings of men's minds, and at once removed, or at least greatly reduced, the necessity for independent and definite thinking.

"Secret diplomacy" and "self-determination" fastened, limpet-like, upon the public imagination. Some of the greatest adepts at secret diplomacy, men who practise it daily, men who rejoice in the power that it gives them, at once began to declaim against it; sometimes because they honestly desired to get rid of it, but mostly because they realised that declaiming against it distracted observation and left them freer to pursue it. Very few of the general public stopped to ask whether it was possible, or even desirable, to manipulate affairs of State, matters of international relationship, programmes of trade unions and other equally delicate operations, in the light of the publicity accorded by modern journalism. It was hastily assumed that secret diplomacy was the cause of the war! — abolish secret diplomacy, and, as a matter of course, war might be expected to be abolished also.

The wise man, who is not so easily swayed by every wind that blows across Areopagus or Richmond Hill, might shake his head and still cling to the idea of the quiet and tentative approach when complicated policies had to be discussed, but his wisdom was discredited. The masses were for Mr. Wilson's way. There was to be no more secret diplomacy, and even the transactions of the Supreme Council, sitting in inquest upon the world's affairs, were to be published, and an era of frank truth was to be inaugurated. To-day the wise men do not shake their heads. They only smile cynically.

"Self-determination" was seriously discussed, not merely as a new conception, but almost as a divinely inspired one. The phrase was grandiloquently discussed and supported from a thousand platforms, and the vision of each man and each group, each nation and each continent, deciding, without let or restraint, his or its future, grew until, to some men, it appeared like a shining reality.

Again, the wise men doubted and wondered whether it would be possible for every man's rights, or every nation's rights, to be governed by the man himself or by the nation. They saw the existence of conflicting rights, and realised that these could not be determined by the individual or the nation, but must be regulated by the consent that follows upon good will, and by the circumstances which affect peoples and nations and times.

It was said that the whole Peace Treaty would be based upon this principle of self-determination. It is doubtful whether any man who was closely concerned with the determining or drafting of the Peace Treaty believed in his heart then, or will even argue to-day, that the principle of self-determination was, or could be, undeviatingly adhered to.

Once up against the facts, the wit of the best and the cleverest failed to produce any formula that would give effect to the declarations. There has not been self-determination. It is doubtful even whether there has been a reasonably strict adherence to the principle of right. As in the past, so now and always, might has been used to interpret right, and, as a consequence, there are Germans, millions of them, handed over to Czecho-Slovakia, and there are Hungarians, over a million of them, handed over to Rumania; and there are Austrians and Slavs handed over to Italy. The attempts to determine ethnologically instead of economically, have already disturbed industrial conditions in many countries and have involved many peoples in needless suffering.

Perhaps all these things were inevitable, but, if they were so, it discredits the phrasemonger, and illuminates the folly of those who permit themselves to be governed by phrases.

Nothing, indeed, can have been more embarrassing to some political groups than the formulae adopted in the early days of the war. The anxiety to discover partisan battle-cries led them into difficulties which they cannot easily overcome.

There was the phrase, "freedom of the seas." The seas were free to every nation in the days that preceded the war. The ports of Britain were open to the ships from every country. The ports of every country were only open on terms to the merchandise of Britain. If those who raise the cry of "freedom of the seas" mean that they are prepared to fight all those nations that close their ports against Great Britain, they are likely to have a busy time.

Unfortunately, freedom of the seas was differently interpreted by German statesmen, for, speaking in New York in 19 15, Herr Dernberg declared that by freedom of the seas he meant that u there should be no hostile operations outside the threemile limit." This would have been magnificent for Germany, for she would have been able to dispose troops anywhere within the radii of the Central Empires, while Britain herself would not have been able to move troops for the assistance of Belgium or France, or even to take them to her own colonies, without offering the British friends of Germany opportunities for hostile criticism and condemnation.

Had Britain been pledged to this kind of freedom in 1 9 14 she would to-day be enduring the humiliation and horror of military defeat by Germany.

"No annexations, and no indemnities," has formed the basis of many speeches on political platforms, but what on earth does it really mean? Is it retrospective, present or prospective? Does it apply to Alsace-Lorraine, or to Bosnia or Herzegovina? Does it mean, in fact, what it states? If it does, Germany might be called upon to disgorge what she has filched in the way of indemnities from Belgium, from Serbia, from Russia, from Rumania, and from every territory she has invaded. It would mean also that she gave up all territory to which she has made claim since 1866, and over which she sought to exercise political and economic power.

Did the formulists mean that Germany was to disgorge and repay? If she failed to do this, did they intend to fight, or would they have been content with drafting an expostulatory resolution and sending this round to the communist branches for adoption?

By war, and by the threat of war, Germany defeated and plundered Austria in 1866 and France in 1870, and Denmark in 1884, when she took Schleswig-Holstein and gave herself the opportunity to construct the Kiel Canal. In 1897, by threat of war, she compelled Japan to give up the things Japan had secured for herself as the result of military enterprises against China.

Later on, similar threats compelled France to get rid of a popular and able Foreign Minister — Monsieur Delcasse. The history of Prussia has been an interesting record of war and plunder, and it is inconceivable that she should relinquish either cash or territory except under military compulsion. Germany believed in the survival of the fittest; she believed that the fittest were the fighters. She also believed that the end justified the means, and a peace which might have left her in possession of the territories or the money, or the property, or the advantages she temporarily secured as the result of this war, would have been a victory for her and an encouragement to further aggression.

Our phrasemongers have yet to learn that war is a gamble in which the loser pays. Germany has been a confirmed and ruthless military malefactor.

The world, for humanity's sake, had to impose deterrent penalties. Unless Germany was made to understand that war did not necessarily pay, trouble was certain to arise the moment her man-power and her resources were restored to the position in which she would consider she had again a fighting chance. "No annexations and no indemnities" meant the shortest road to this — for Germany — desirable position.

In Britain we were told that there was to be a "new heaven and a new earth. " With the Briton's capacity for generalisation we naturally came to the conclusion that Britain was to be the premier and outstanding example of what a new heaven and a new earth ought to be. Perhaps, of all the phrases, none sank so deeply into the hearts of the British as this one. To start with, there are many of us who believe that already Britain is the best and the most beautiful of all lands; that its men are the most honest and the most enterprising; that its women are the most beautiful and the most faithful. We are, consequently, predisposed to accept any theory or any contention which places upon our shoulders and within our capacity, the duty of introducing the millennium.

Unhappily, those who promised so much gave colour to the assumption that all could be achieved by legislative action, and they have kept Parliament wandering through a maze of measures, all aiming at the ideal, but all falling short because men and women failed to understand that the ideal must be based upon the practical.

It was too much to expect that every man and woman throughout the United Kingdom would sit down seriously and carry their exploration of these euphonious phrases to their logical conclusions. It is not too much to expect, however, that the men who sit in Parliament, together with the men who claim to lead communal thought, should themselves essay this task; and, after careful analysis and comparison with historic similarities, truthfully and honestly set forth their conclusions concerning rights and duties and possibilities.

Not until men get away from the folly of determining their conduct by phrases; not until they are willing to search for the truth as it concerns themselves and their surroundings, will there be any possibility of effectively administering the affairs of mankind or of securing even an approximation to that new heaven and that new earth which have been so eloquently pictured and which are so ardently desired.

Chapter II The Relations Of Labour And Capital

NO student of human affairs can regard with equanimity the existing trouble between Capital and Labour; nor can any student, bearing all the facts in mind, regard the present attitude of the worker without some measure of understanding and sympathy.

For centuries the owners of capital have, unconsciously and consciously, acted upon the tenets of what is known as the Manchester school of economics. They have applied these tenets to the human as well as to the material factors in industry, and they can hardly complain if the human, given only a limited measure of enlightenment, applies in unlimited fashion the tenets of an economic school which is diametrically opposed to the Manchester one.

By treating the human factor as they treated the material one — by buying labour in the cheapest market and selling the produce of that labour in the dearest market, and afterwards pocketing the whole of the profit — the owners of capital bred in the workers an atmosphere of serious hostility to present forms of industry. This hostility is accentuated by the belief that the owners of capital frequently depredate the market that supplies human effort, in the same way that they depreciate the market which supplies other commodities. However untrue it may be of modern conditions, and especially post-war conditions, this feeling is finding stronger expression to-day than in other periods of industrial existence of which men have ready cognisance.

In Britain, for a hundred years, every effort the workman made to improve his conditions, his working hours, his wages, or the social conditions under which he lived, was scouted, ridiculed, or savagely repressed. His present resentment is intensified by the fact that to-day even the capitalist admits that the desire of the workman for better wages and conditions was right. The labour politician has taught the workman to meet this admission by the historical fact that the capitalist has called to his aid political resources and national resources in the shape of the police and military, in order to prevent the workmen from obtaining better conditions.

In dealing with the modern relations of labour to the owners of capital, we have to remember, in explanation of some facts and in partial extenuation of others, that the owner of capital has mismanipulated the lives of the workers until their hearts have become ready receptacles for the dogma of the doctrinaire and the extremist. It is difficult for those who have never passed through the fires to realise the agony the fires inflict. The men or women whose lives have always fallen in pleasant places can hardly hope to understand the point of view of the men or women whose lives, from birth to death, epitomised tragedy. The lack of opportunity for the poor begins before birth, and continues in most cases until death. The expectant mother knows that her child will lack some physical or mental quality because she has worked too much and eaten too little prior to the child's arrival, while the elderly man knows that the only way out for him is through the Valley of the Shadow.

Lancashire of to-day suffers from the inhumanities perpetrated upon the little children of yesterday; not by the mothers and fathers, but by the owners of capital who insisted that very young child labour was essential to industrial success.

Just before the war, when the Ulster weavers applied for an increase in wages, one of them declared that he had had eight children, six of whom had died because he had been unable, though fully employed, to provide them with the food necessary to maintain life. To the workman the causes of these things are obscure, but the fact of them is more certain than that Christ died.

In Berlin, in June, 19 14, a German socialist, extremely clever, high up in the councils of his party, and with an international experience, told me that if I could live and see Germany after seven generations of industrialism, I should discover nothing like the physical and mental deterioration that to-day affects some of the industrial centres of Great Britain. "I am satisfied," he said, "that apart from what Social Democracy in Germany may do, the

German Government itself will set a higher value upon flesh and blood and mind than you appear to have set in Britain/' These words were bitter; the more bitter because I felt that in the main they were justified.

I have known workmen penalised by boycott for six months at a stretch, whose only crime was reckoning up the piecework prices of men who were themselves incapable of working out the figures. Even within the last fifteen years innumerable disputes have arisen in consequence of the attitude that the owner of capital, as represented by the employer, has taken towards the worker and the organisations which he has built up. Half the industrial disputes that took place before the war arose from the employers' stupid and short-sighted refusal to discuss questions affecting wages and conditions of employment with the duly accredited representatives of the Trade Unions. It was part of the employers' considered policy to undermine the influence of these men, to misrepresent their actions, and to encourage rebellion against them in the Unions which they represented.

Those who sow the wind must expect to reap the whirlwind.

These references to conditions, it will be said, are commonplaces, and are not true of the present day. Possibly they are less true, but the suspicion they engendered is profoundly influencing Labour thoughts and attitudes. That is why the commonplaces are stated so fully.

They show that the hostility of the workman has some justification, and emphasise the difficulties of removing the suspicion with which he regards the present attitude of even the best of employers. He realises that the war has broken down many barriers ; that a common intercourse with danger and death has stripped employers and workmen of many misconceptions, and has brought the manhood of each into closer communion. He fears, however, that as the cause of the change becomes obscured by the passing of time, so the effect will diminish, and that attempts will more and more be made to reimpose the old irresponsible relationships.

If one says that the cost of the change has been too tremendous for the effect to easily diminish, the workman asks questions which are barbed with the experiences of the past. Centuries have been occupied in breeding the distrust which exists, and only a gigantic effort on the part of the employer and on the part of that other class which neither employs nor is employed in the ordinary acceptance of the term, can convince the worker that the change of heart is real and permanent, and that, henceforth, there shall be at least genuine attempts to give to each man and to each woman his or her honest dues. The new spirit which such a conviction would beget would be favourable to a common-sense and gradual development of all the relations existing between capital and labour.

A new spirit is necessary, for, while the owner of capital is still attached to the spirit of the Manchester school, Labour has, rather blindly and without analysis, accepted many of the ideas of Karl Marx, as interpreted by his latter-day adherents. The employer has translated capital into terms of land, buildings, machinery and cash. The workman has accepted the employer's translation, with the qualification that, as all these things represented natural resources upon which Labour had operated, they belonged to Labour in the mass rather than to the few people who had successfully appropriated them.

To one who studies rather than dogmatises, both sides appear to have missed something; because neither side seems to have considered mental or spiritual values.

It is possible to have a superabundance of national resources and of labour, as in Russia, and to exploit them badly, or not to exploit them at all. Land and labour — to use familiar terms and to interpret them in the familiar sense — must be of indifferent value, apart from intelligent direction and co-ordination. If both sides could realise that success in industrial operations depended upon the combination of materials, mentalities and muscle, it would be possible to approach the future with greater degrees of confidence.

In what form will the new spirit, when it arrives, manifest itself, and what are the dangers which have to be met pending its coming?

At the moment there are many groups of reformers, and each advocates its own panacea. One would place industry and commerce under the control of Trade Guilds; another proposes to institute a system of direct management of industry and commerce by the workers engaged in the workshops; another would place all these matters in the hands of the State ; a fourth aims only at anarchy, because it believes that chaos must inevitably precede order, and that the greater the chaos the more perfect the resultant system will be. A fifth would leave matters in principle as at present, but would insist upon the common observance of what may be termed the social and industrial humanities.

Of those who advocate the claims of Trade Guilds, it may be said that they build upon a discredited foundation. The Trade Guild has already had its day. It died of super-exclusiveness, and its prototype can hardly escape a similar disease. As it is the landless man who attacks most virulently landowners and landownership, so it was the excluded craftsman who attacked and encompassed the downfall of the old Trade Guilds. Unless the advocates of resuscitation can show that the modern form of the Guild will include everyone engaged in, or attached to, the occupation, history will repeat itself.

What is known as workshop control has many advocates, but a departure on these lines can hardly be regarded as a course likely to secure the best results. This demand is of political rather than industrial origin. It involves the immediate and non-compensatory appropriation of wealth and capital. It assumes a knowledge, not merely of industrial processes, but of commercial enterprise and international exchanges.

I have met some workmen who hold these views. They are admirable workmen. They are intelligent, and some of them possess extensive knowledge ; but I cannot say that I know any advocate of this system who is at once an admirable workman, an intelligent person, and the possessor of an effective knowledge or understanding of the international character of trade and who possesses also that experience which is necessary to make international trade a success. Much of the trouble of those who advocate this form of control arises from the mistaken notion that trade is mainly an internal and national matter; when, as a matter of fact, much of the wealth that Britain enjoys, and much of the capital she has stored up, has been derived from commerce and overseas trade. Into some of this trade no British-made goods ever entered.

Some of the men I know are intelligent enough, given time, to deal with these problems in a satisfactory manner; but events move very rapidly in these days, and the country which scraps the methods evolved from a thousand years of thinking and striving, and elects to depend upon untried processes and inexperienced men, will incur very dangerous risks.