CHAPTER XIII.
INTERNATIONAL LABOUR PROTECTION
Years and years elapsed before the first supporters of international protection received any recognition. Then immediately before the assembling of the Berlin Conference, the idea began to take an enormous hold on the public mind. Switzerland demanded a conference on the subject. Prince Bismark refused it. The Emperor William II. made an attempt towards it by summoning an international convention to discuss questions of Labour Protection.
The inner springs of the movement for international Labour Protection are not, and have not been, the same everywhere.
With some it is motived by the desire to secure for wage labour in all “Christian” States conditions compatible with human dignity and self-respect. This was the basis of the Pope’s negotiations with the labour parties and with certain of the more high-minded sovereigns and princes. Others demand it in the combined interests of international equilibrium of competition and of Labour Protection, believing that these two may be brought into harmony by the international process, since if industry were equally weighted everywhere, and the costs of production, therefore, approximately the same everywhere, protected nations would not suffer in the world’s markets. The first, the more “idealist” motive prevails most strongly among Catholics, and contains no doubt a deeper motive – namely, the preservation of the social influence of the Church. At the International Catholic Economic Congress at Suttich, in September, 1890, this view prevailed, with the support of the English and Germans, against the opposition of the Belgians and French.
The light in which international Labour Protection is viewed depends upon whether the one or the other motive prevails, or whether both are working together.
Two results are possible. Either limits will be set to the right of restricting protection of employment and protection in occupation by means of universal international legislation, or the interchange of moral influence between the various governments will be brought about by means of periodical Labour Protection Conferences and through the Press, which on the one hand would promote this interchange of influence, and on the other hand would, uniformly for all nations, demand and encourage the popular support of all protective efforts outside the limits of the State.
Before the Berlin Conference it was by no means clear what was expected of international Labour Protection. Since the Conference it has been perfectly clear, and this alone is an important result.
The international settlement which Prince Bismark had opposed ten years before did not meet with even timid support at the Berlin Conference. England and France were the strongest opponents of the idea of the control of international protective legislation. This can be proved from the reports of the Berlin Conference.
The representative of Switzerland, H. Blumer, in the session of March 26, 1890, made a proposal, which was drawn up as follows: —
“Measures should be taken in view of carrying out the provisions adopted by the Conference.
“It may be foreseen on this point that the States which have arrived at an agreement on certain measures, will conclude an obligatory arrangement; that the carrying out of such arrangement will take place by national legislation, and that if this legislation is not sufficient it will have to receive the necessary additions.
“It is also safe to predict the creation of a special organ for centralizing the information furnished, for the regular publication of statistical returns, and the execution of preparatory measures for the conferences anticipated in paragraph 2 of the programme.
“Periodical conferences of delegates of the different governments may be anticipated. The principal task of these conferences will be to develop the arrangements agreed on and to solve the questions giving rise to difficulty or opposition.”
Immediately upon the opening of the discussion on this motion, the delegates from Great Britain moved the rejection of the proposal of Switzerland, “since, in their opinion, an International Convention on this matter could not supply the place of special legislation in any one country. The United Kingdom had only consented to take part in the Conference on the understanding that no such idea should be entertained. Even if English statesmen had the wish to contract international obligations with respect to the regulation of factory labour, they would have no power to do so. It is not within their competence to make the industrial laws of their country in any way dependent on a foreign power.” The Austrian delegate suggested that it be made quite clear “that the superintendence of the carrying out of the measures taken to realise the proposals of the Conference is exclusively reserved to the Governments of the States, and that no interference of a foreign power is permitted.” The Belgian delegate “considers it advisable, in order that the deliberations of the Conference may keep their true character, not to employ the word ‘proposals,’ but to substitute for it ‘wishes,’ or ‘labours.’” M. Jules Simon, the French delegate, states that he and his colleagues have received instructions which “forbid them to endorse any resolution which either directly or indirectly would appear to give immediate executive force to the other resolutions formulated by the Conference.” And M. Tolain adds that “it is true that the French Government had always considered the meeting of the Conference exclusively as a means of enquiring into the condition of labour in the States concerned, and into the state of opinion in respect to it, but that they by no means intended to make it, at any rate for the present, the point of departure for international engagements.”
The idea of an international code of Labour Protection could not have been more flatly rejected. Hence the opposition to the idea manifested by Prince Bismark was fully borne out by the Conference. This opposition has everything in its favour, for it is clear that a uniform international code of Labour Protection would supply boundless opportunities for friction and for stirring up international commercial quarrels. If it were desired to establish Labour Protection guaranteed by international agreement, it would be found that there would be as many disturbances of international peace as there are different kinds of industry, nay, I will even say, as there are workmen. The countries whose administration was best and most complete would be the very ones that would be most handicapped: seeing that they could expect only a very minimum of real reciprocity from those other contracting powers whose administration was faulty, and where a strong national sentiment was lacking in the workers, owing to their miserable and penurious condition in the absence of effective protection for labour. Accurately to supervise the observance of such an international agreement we should require an amount of organisation which it is quite beyond our power to supply. But even on paper, international labour legislation has no significance beyond that of creating international discontent and agitation, and of supplying political animosity with inexhaustible materials for arousing international jealousy. The Berlin Conference has negatively produced a favourable effect by the protest of England and France, if one reflects how fiercely the scepticism of Bismark’s policy was attacked before the meeting of the Conference. Repeated readings of the reports of the Conference have confirmed me in the impression that Prince Bismark was fully upheld by the Conference in his opposition to the establishment of Labour Protection by international agreement. But I have felt it necessary to clearly establish the grounds on which the opposition to this form of protection is based.
The moral influence of the international Conference, however, has been on the other hand something more than “vain beating the air.” This is already shown in the increased impetus given to the improvement of national labour-protective legislation.
The conclusions arrived at by the Conference as to the international furtherance of Labour Protection are, it is true, of the nature of recommendations merely, and are in nowise binding on the governmental codes of each country. But even as recommendations they are practically of the greatest value. None of the nations represented will venture, I think, to disregard the force of their moral influence. All the means recommended by the Conference have promise of more or less success. Some of the proposals, for instance, are: the repetition of international Labour Protection Conferences, the appointment of a general, adequate, and fully qualified industrial inspectorate, the international interchange of inspectors reports, the uniform preparation of statistics on all matters of protection, the international interchange of such statistics, and of all protective enactments issued either legislatively or administratively.15
But what of the proposal for the appointment of an international commission for the collection and compilation of statistics and legislative materials, for the publication of these materials, and for summoning Labour Protection Conferences, and the like? And what would this proposal involve?
None of the objections which can be urged against the enforcement of an international code of Labour Protection would apply to this. The commission would be well fitted to help forward the international development, on uniform lines, of labour protective legislation, without in any way fettering national independence. Its moral influence would be of great international value.
What it would involve is also easy to determine. Such a commission would be an international administrative organ for the spread and development of Labour Protection on uniform lines in all countries; a provision by International Law for the enforcement of the international moral obligations arising out of protective right.
That is really what the Labour Protection Conferences would be if they met periodically as suggested At the Berlin Conference this at least was felt when it was said that the Conference was indeed less than a treaty-making Congress, but more than a scientific Congress. “International Conferences may be divided into two categories. In the first the Plenipotentiaries of different States have to conclude Treaties, either political or economic, the execution of which is guaranteed by the principles of international law; to the second category belong those Conferences whose members have no actual powers, and give their attention to the scientific study of the questions submitted to them, rather than to their practical and immediate solution. Our Conference, from the nature of its programme, and the attitude of some of the States good enough to take part in it, has a character of its own, for it cannot pass Resolutions binding on the Governments, nor may it restrict itself to studying the scientific sides of the problems submitted to its examination. It could not aspire to the first of these parts; it could not rest content with the second. The considerations which have been admitted in the Commissions relative to all the questions contained in the programme have been inspired by the desire of showing the working population that their lot occupies a high place in the attention of the different Governments; but these considerations have had necessarily to bend to others which we cannot put aside. In the first place, there was the wish to unite all the States represented at the Conference in the same sentiment of devotion to the most numerous and the most interesting portion of society. It would have been grievous not to arrive at the promulgation of general principles, by means of which the solution of the most important half of the social problem should be attempted. It was evidently not possible to arrive at once at an agreement on all its details. But it was necessary to show the world that all the States taking part in the Conference were met in the same motives of humanity.”
The proposal of a commission for summoning repeated conferences, international, uniform gatherings of representatives of all non-governmental agencies of Labour Protection, for the purpose of dealing uniformly with the requirements of a progressive policy in national labour-protective legislation, was a summing up of the demands urged by the Conference for a strong, international, administrative organisation for the furtherance of Labour Protection by the international exchange of moral persuasion, but without the enforcement of a code of international application.
From a scientific point of view it is of the highest interest to observe how international right, and even to some extent an international administrative right, is here breaking out in an entirely new direction. Treaties between two or more, or all, civilized States have hitherto mainly been treaties for combined action in certain eventualities (treaties of alliance), or territorial treaties for defining spheres of influence. Or else they have been treaties for the reciprocal treatment of persons or of goods passing between or remaining in the territories of the respective contracting States: migration treaties, commercial treaties, treaties concerning pauper aliens, tariff treaties and other treaties. Or they have been treaties for the prevention of the spread of infectious diseases. The exercise of international activity in the creation, development, and regulation of an international uniform Social Policy would be quite a new departure. Probably the idea of Switzerland has not been thrown out altogether in vain.
FOOTNOTE:
CHAPTER XIV.
THE AIM AND JUSTIFICATION OF LABOUR PROTECTION
The aim and justification of Labour Protection have I think become sufficiently clear in the course of our inquiry. It is now only necessary to recapitulate.
Labour Protection, especially protection by limitation of employment, and protection in occupation, is first and foremost the social care of the present and of all future generations, security against neglect of their spiritual, physical, and family life through the unscrupulous exploitation of wage-labour. Hence Labour Protection is indirectly protection also of the capitalist classes of the future, and therefore far from being unjust, it even acts in the highest interests of that part of the nation which by virtue of the fact of property or ownership is not in need of any special Labour Protection.
In fulfilling its purpose, Labour Protection even goes beyond the work of upholding and strengthening national labour, when it takes the form of internationally uniform Labour Protection such as was lately projected at the Berlin Conference, and such as is becoming more and more the goal of our efforts.
This international Labour Protection is a universal demand of humanity, morality and religion, especially from the standpoint of the Church, like that of international protection of all nations against slavery, but it is also no doubt demanded in the interests of international equilibrium of competition.
The aim of Labour Protection for the worker individually lies far beyond mere industrial protection. Protection of labour extends to the person of individual labourers and their freedom as regards religious education, instruction, learning, and teaching, social intercourse, morality and health, and especially does it afford to every man security of family life.
In this social and individual aim lies its justification, subject to certain conditions. These conditions we have already examined.
The first condition is, that special protection shall only be used to guard against distinct dangers arising out of employment in service. Next, Labour Protection is only justified in dealing with such dangers as cannot or can no longer be adequately guarded against by any or all of the old forms of protection, viz., self-help, family protection, private agencies and non-governmental corporate agencies, or the protection of the regular administrative and judicial authorities, and even with such dangers only so far as is absolutely necessary. And lastly, the extraordinary State protection contained in the several labour-protective enactments must be adapted to the suppression of such dangers altogether.
Bearing in mind these conditions, it will be found on examination of the several measures of Labour Protection, as they appear in the resolutions of the Berlin Conference and in the von Berlepsch Bill, that not one of them oversteps these limits. The labour protective code as already existing, and as projected by government, nowhere stretches its authority beyond the specified point, either in its scope, extension or organisation; at present it rather errs on the side of caution, and in many respects it does not go nearly so far as it might. This also I claim to have shown in the foregoing pages. This fact alone fully justifies the policy of Labour Protection as at present projected by the German government.
It is in nowise intended (as shown in Chaps. IV. to X.) by this protective policy to supplant and replace free self-protection and mutual protection, or the ordinary State protection of common law.
No addition to Labour Protection will be permitted except where special need exists.
In no case shall a larger measure of protection be afforded than necessary. There is no question of treating all and everywhere alike the various classes of industrial wage-labour needing protection. But rather that complete elasticity of treatment is accorded, which is required in view of the variety of needs for protection and of the different degrees of difficulty of applying it; it is this variety which necessitates extraordinary State intervention, extraordinary alike in scope, basis and organisation.
Labour Protection has not, it is true, by any means reached its full development either in aim and scope or in organisation. None of those further demands, however, from various quarters, which I have treated in this book as within the range of discussion overstep in any essential degree the limits imposed on Labour Protection, regarded as special and supplementary intervention of the State.
Even the Auer Motion when carefully examined – if we set aside the general eight hours day and certain special features of organisation, in particular its claim to include in its scope the whole of industry – is not really as extravagant as it appears at first sight; for although indeed it demands complete Labour Protection for all kinds of industrial work, it requires only the application of the same special measures as are also demanded in other quarters, and as I have shown to be justified, except in a few special cases where it calls for more drastic measures.
We have seen also that the policy of Labour Protection does not involve a kind of State intervention hitherto unknown. The State has long afforded regular administrative and judicial protection to the work of industrial wage-service, and has even interfered in a special manner in the case of children, young men, young women and adult women; and for still longer in the case of adult men, by affording protection in the way of limitation of employment, truck protection and protection in occupation, and by affording protection of contract through the Industrial Regulations, applied to non-factory as well as to factory labour. The application of protection by limitation of employment is thus far from being the first exercise of State interference with the hitherto unrestricted freedom of contract. Nothing will be found in the developments of protection here dealt with, that has not long ago been demanded and granted elsewhere, chiefly in England, Austria and Switzerland.
The economic burden imposed upon the nation by Labour Protection, when compared with that of Labour Insurance, which we have already, will be found to be comparatively small. Those measures which call for the greater sacrifices – protection of married women, and regulation of the factory ten hours working-day – are recommended on all sides by way of international uniform regulations.
Freedom of contract will not be impaired, since such adults as are included under Labour Protection stand in special need of protection, and are as incapable of self-defence as minors in common law; we have discussed and proved this contention point by point. This will certainly soon be recognised generally, even by England and Belgium, whose representatives at the Berlin Conference laid such stress on freedom of contract for adults.
An international and internationally administered code for the whole of Labour Protection is strictly to be avoided.
The wider measures of Labour Protection demanded by the Berlin Conference, and the von Berlepsch Bill,16 I conclude therefore to be nothing more than a fully justifiable and harmless corollary and supplement to the Social Policy of the Emperor William II. and of Prince Bismark.
By following in the paths already trodden without ill results by separate countries, long ago by some, only lately by others, in paths therefore which have to a certain degree been explored, this policy will need to be subjected to fewer alterations than that great and noble policy of Labour Insurance which has struck out in entirely new paths, and too often worked in consequence by somewhat unpractical methods.