The fundamental principle of English trade unionism is the necessity, in modern industrial and social conditions, for the establishment and enforcement of a common rule, with regard to the conditions of employment. Without the enforcement of such a common rule trade unionists assert that the operation of competi tion is inevitably to degrade the conditions of employment irrespective of the profitableness of the industry or the wealth of the country as a whole; eventually forcing down the remunera tion of the lowest and weakest wage-earner to the very minimum on which he can manage to exist from day to day (far below the level for healthy subsistence); requiring him to labor for excessive hours, and exposing him to unsani tary, dangerous and brutalizing conditions of employment. Toward such a morass of °sweat ing,° demoralizing to the workers themselves, and economically as well as socially disastrous to the community as a whole, the unrestricted competition of the labor market is always forcing out not only the weaker members, but also through the competition of these, the entire wage-earning class. In confirmation of this analysis, the English Trade Unionists point to the state of millions of workers in every in dustrial country, the United States and Japan affording quite as striking demonstrations as England and the continent of Europe. Its essential accuracy is, indeed, now asserted by the economists of to-day, and mathematically demonstrated (consult 'Industrial Democracy' by S. and B. Webb, 1911) ; and accepted in such measures of modern statesmanship as the Trade Boards Act (1907), and the minimum wage legislation of Australasia and the United States.
Against this persistent tendency of indus trial competition in the labor market, the mod em economist or statesman establishes, in the interest of the community as a whole, the Common Rule of standard minimum conditions, designed to prevent the wage-earner being sub jected, even with his own consent, to conditions of employment likely to impair his health, un dermine his strength, or demoralize himself or his family. This is the philosophy of Factory Legislation, as yet only imperfectly applied in any country, but advancing in all; as yet re stricted in the main to women and children, and to their hours and sanitation, but now in creasingly extending to wages and other condi tions, and to adult men. The maintaining, ex tending and enforcing of Factory Legislation is one of the principal expedients used by English Trade Unionists (especially the textile operatives, the coal miners, the railway workers and the shop assistants) for obtaining the pro tection of the Common Rule. Such legislation has been carried to its fullest extent at present in New Zealand and Australia. (Consult 'State Experiments in Australia and New Zealand' by W. P. Reeves).
The second expedient used by English Trade Unionists is that of Collective Bargaining. In stead of each wage-earner making his own bargain with the individual employer, the Trade Union aims at making common terms for the operatives as a whole, with the whole of the employers. Examples of such Collective Bar gains are the ((Working which govern the building trades in nearly every English city; the elaborate hierarchy of agreements of the iron-shipbuilding trade; or the highly evolved lists of prices of the cotton industry. This
does not mean (as often ignorantly asserted) that Trade Unionism implies, or that Trade Unionists desire, that all workers should be paid alike. The mere fact that a large major ity of the English Trade Unionists (including the strongest and ablest of them all) absolutely insist on piecework as the very basis of their Collective Bargains, and would instantly strike against any attempt to introduce wages by the hour or by the day, roves that equality of earnings is not their object. What they do aim at is equality in the rate of pay for a given unit of work; though even here their aim is only to secure for every worker as a minimum the standard rate for the work done. No ob jection is made to more than the minimum rate being given, provided that this is not done in such a way as to bring other workers below the minimum. Collective Bargaining, more or less universal throughout the trade, is now the prevalent practice in all the principal manu facturing industries of Great Britain and it is, to the economist, a notable fact that it prevails most universally and is most strictly enforced, just in those industries, such as cotton spinning and shipbuilding, in which British industrial supremacy is most demonstrable.
The third expedient of English Trade Union ism is Mutual Insurance. By bringing to the support of the individual workman, in any time of economical weakness, the aid of ac cumulated funds, he is enabled to stand out against the terms offered by the employer, and wait until better terms are conceded. It is with this object, and not primarily from any compassionate or humanitarian feeling, that English Trade Unionists have so generally united the well-known ((friendly benefits)) with their trade combination. The large accumu lated funds of some of the English Trade Unions, amounting sometimes to 1.25 per head of membership, afford valuable assistance in their Collective Bargaining for better condi tions, by making possible the final arbitrament of the strike. But they do more than that. In small and closely unit trades, where the oper atives are sufficiently self-restrained and intel ligent, what we have called the strike in detail may be an effective weapon. There may even be no overt Trade Unionism. The employer may refuse to recognize the Union, or the law may make corporate action dangerous. There may be no attempt to prevent the employer filling his vacancies. But if the men in the trade are strongly combined, the employer may find that he cannot keep any man more than a week or two. Each man in succession leaves in silence before he has well settled down to his work, leaving the employer to find out for himself in what way the conditions which he is offering offend against the undivulged Common Rule. Such a strike in detail is out of the power of any but a small, skilled, strongly combined, highly intelligent, and rich Trade Union having an elaborate Mutual Insur ance. But with such a Union experience shows it to have often been more efficacious in main taining the Common Rule, than the most tur bulent of mass strikes.