CHAPTER IX.
THE RELATIONS OF THE VARIOUS BRANCHES OF LABOUR PROTECTION TO EACH OTHER
If the various chief branches of Labour Protection are compared with each other after they have all been examined separately, they appear to be indispensable and inseparable members of one system, for no one branch can be spared. But they are very different in nature, and by no means equal in importance.
Protection of truck and contract have long ago reached their full development. Both are almost universal in their extension, and are exercised by the regular administrative courts and petty courts of justice. They are characterised on the whole by legal precision, which affords little room for interpretation and extension at the will of the administration. Protection of contract and protection of intercourse are required less in the immediate interest of the whole State than in that of individuals.
But when we come to protection in occupation, it is altogether another matter.
Protection by limitations of employment, which forms the central point of the latest protective movement, is in all its aims more or less in contrast to protection of contract and intercourse. It is not a matter of universal application. It requires special administrative organs, special methods of procedure with many technical differences of detail adapted to the peculiarities of different trades. Its full development requires general legal enactments, a central authority, and a uniform exercise of administration; it has to deal with the entire working class, nay more, with the whole body of citizens, and with the spiritual as well as the material life of the workers and of the nation, because it constantly affects and influences the lives of larger masses of labourers.
It must not be supposed that any one branch of protection by limitation of employment is more important in itself than all the rest. It is not protection of holidays alone, nor the maximum working-day alone that will restore the workman to himself, to his place in the human family, to civic life, to his family, to the performances of his spiritual duties; but all measures of protection by prohibiting and limiting employment must work together to effect this. Protection by limitation of employment, as a whole, seeks to ensure those moral benefits so finely emphasised in the preamble of the Confederate Factory Act: “The benefits which may accrue to the country from the factory system depend almost entirely upon its being ensured that the worker shall not be deprived of time or inclination to be the educator of his children, and the head and prop of his family.” The maximum working-day effects this by securing the evening free to all – to fathers, mothers, children, and young people. Protection of holidays works towards the same end by securing to everyone the seventh day free for his own life, the life of his family, and intercourse with his fellow citizens, and for the performance of his spiritual duties. Prohibition of night work also contributes its quota towards the same result. Without all this protection by limitation of employment, the father of the family would lose his family, the child would lose its training and care, the mother and wife would lose her children and husband; and all of them would lose their joint life as citizens, as members of society, and of a religious community.
It is from these considerations that we must justify the immense importance which it is the growing tendency of Labour Protection in the present day to attach to the whole question of protection by limitation of employment.
CHAPTER X.
TRANSACTIONS OF THE BERLIN LABOUR CONFERENCE, DEALING WITH MATTERS BEYOND THE RANGE OF LABOUR PROTECTION; DALE’S DEPOSITIONS ON COURTS OF ARBITRATION, AND THE SLIDING SCALE OF WAGES IN MINING
The demand for a legal minimum wage, for wage tariffs, and the sliding scale of wages, form no part of Labour Protection. The State cannot, as we have seen, regulate wages directly, but only indirectly, by favouring an adjustment of wages that shall be fair to each side. But even in measures of that kind it does not interfere for the purpose of protecting the persons of the wage earners in their relations of dependence on the employer. Politico-social proposals for indirectly influencing the movement of wages, do not for this very reason, belong to Labour Protection, in the sense which I have assigned to the term in this book. Therefore, I shall content myself, on the one hand, with clearing up a misunderstanding concerning the minimum wage and the wage tariff; and on the other hand, with supplementing my former contribution to the subject (Jahrg., 1889, Die Zeitschrift für die gesammte Staatswissenschaft) from the reports of the Berlin Conference, having special reference to the regulation of wage in the English mining industries.
These proposals, dealing with minimum wage and the wage tariff, which I shall now introduce into my treatise on Labour Protection, do not aim at enforcing a minimum rate of wage from above, regardless of the individual value of the labour, they merely aim at providing as far as possible a stable adjustment and classification of efforts and rewards between the whole body of employers and the whole body of workers in any branch of industry or industrial district, i. e. at substituting general for individual control, for the protection not of the worker alone, but also of the employer, i. e. against exploiting competitors. In Germany the printers have led the way; the number of their followers in other industries is increasing. But this is a matter that must be settled by the two classes, not by the State.
Questions of wage policy, however, even when unconnected with protective policy, are often drawn into discussions on protective policy; and even the Berlin Conference, which was officially designated14 “an international conference on the regulation of labour in industrial establishments, and in mining industries,” frequently overstepped the limits of questions of purely protective policy. I feel myself fully justified, therefore, in touching upon a few of the further questions dealt with by the Conference.
In an earlier treatise, written before the proclamation of the Imperial Decree of February 4th, 1890, I pointed out the need for the special cultivation of Labour Protection in mining industry, particularly in coal mining, and I expressed an opinion as to the advisability of establishing government mines as a kind of politico-social model to the rest; while, on the other hand, I declared against the necessity for the nationalisation of coal mines.
Pamphlets of an opposing tendency, which circulated freely in the wake of the great coal strike of 1889, have, it is true, brought to light more and more reliable evidence; but hitherto I have found in them nothing to shake my confidence in the correctness of my fundamental contention: as far as I am concerned, I await without anxiety the issue of the latest Coal Trust.
As I pointed out in the same treatise, the special danger of the strike agitation, attacking as it does the very centres of activity and channels of healthy movement in the social body, has unfortunately been only too fully exemplified. The coal strike, and the railway and dock strikes, have become samples, and are triumphantly quoted as typical instances of the success of the method.
In the same treatise I raised the question whether the branches of industry under consideration should be constituted a department of the public service, involving special obligations and special safeguards against breach of contract, but also ensuring special security of work and a good standard of pay. This question has also risen to a high level of importance since that time; it does not, however, belong to the sphere of Labour Protection, and in this treatise I must therefore leave it on one side.
But I consider myself bound to supplement the information given as to the means of avoiding strikes in the mining industry by bringing forward the communications made by the best informed English expert, who sat in the Berlin Conference (session of March 4). The reports read as follows: “Mr. Dale reminded the Conference that about twenty-five years ago numerous and protracted strikes took place in the north of England (in mining). In consequence of this, the employers met together to discuss means of regulating the wage question. At first they refused to treat with the workmen in corpore, but they finally decided on the advice of a few of their number more far-seeing than the rest, to recognise the union of miners belonging to one and the same mining district. This principle once admitted formed the groundwork of the prevailing system of the day for the settlement of all disputes. This method has obtained for twenty years. At first the representatives of the employers and workmen were only summoned to negotiate on special questions. The principle of settlement by arbitration was admitted in all questions, and was applied in the following manner: each party nominates an equal number of arbitrators, usually two, and these elect an umpire; this last office is willingly accepted by persons of the highest standing. Since the questions laid before the board of arbitration mostly concern the relation of wages to the market price of coal, this relation has to be first ascertained from examination of the employers’ books by a legally qualified auditor, before a decision can be given. The most important experimental method, which has so far been adopted for regulating the relations between the rate of wage and the market price, has been the sliding scale. The sliding scale aims at the establishment of a numerical ratio between the rate of wage and the price of coal. At first this was sometimes determined by the following method: five consecutive years are taken, in the course of which considerable fluctuations have taken place in the market prices and the price of coal (the latter brought about by strikes, agreements, and arbitration). These five years are divided into twenty quarters; the average price of coal and the average rate of wage for each quarter is ascertained, and by this means the numerical ratio of the two amounts to each other is determined. The average of these numerical ratios is taken to express the normal relation which must exist between the rate of wage and and the market price of coal. Upon the scale thus determined the average market price for all coal produced in the district for the last preceding quarter is reckoned. The required numerical normal proportion between prices and wages is now computed on this basis, and the rate of wage for the current quarter thus determined. This calculation takes place for every ensuing quarter. These calculations are made by two qualified auditors, who are appointed by the labourers’ union and the employers’ union. The books of all the works are submitted to these experts, who are bound to the strictest secrecy as to the information thus obtained. They confine themselves to the task of attesting: (1) that during the latest preceding quarter, the average price of coal in the district is such and such; (2) that such and such a rate of wage results therefrom. In this way the workmen obtain, without the necessity of negotiation, of strikes, or arbitration, the same wages which they could not otherwise have obtained except by repeated efforts. The numerical ratio between wages and market prices is generally fixed for two years. After that time each party may give a half year’s notice; but during six years, the first sliding scale introduced has only been subjected to very slight alterations. Notice will shortly be given by the employers in Northumberland and the miners in Durham. Mr. Dale believes that this double notice does not aim at the abolition of the system, but only at revision of the existing scale. In the districts where for the moment the sliding scale has been abolished, an attempt is being made to take the nearest conjectural price of the current quarter as the basis, instead of the price of the previous quarter. In this way the workmen would receive official information as to the market prices, which would be a great advantage, for strikes are most frequently caused by the ignorance of the workmen as to the real position of the coal trade. As to local questions which do not affect the whole district, they are settled by so-called ‘joint committees,’ or mixed commissions formed by an equal number of workmen and employers; either the President of the county court, or some other person of high position, is chosen as chairman. These commissions meet generally once a fortnight; their decisions operate from the date of the complaint. Mr. Dale asserts that the heads of the labour unions are, for the most part, intelligent men, and when this is the case, the relations between workmen and employers are easily arranged; in Durham, e. g., the miners union has four secretaries, who devote their whole time to the affairs of the association. In this district more than 500 disputes yearly are settled by the joint committee.”
At the request of the President, Mr. Dale gave some information as to the strike of the past year; it did not affect the northern district where good relations existed, although notice had previously been given on the sliding scale. He further pointed out that former strikes had often been caused by the fault of the foremen, who treated the workmen with undue harshness. “The introduction of joint committees, on which the workmen are equally represented, has had the effect of establishing better relations between the foremen and the miners. Mr. Dale considers this the best system for the avoidance of crises. The decisions pronounced by the board of arbitration, and by the joint committees, are generally accepted; thus the principle of decision by arbitration takes the place of that of decision by strikes.”
CHAPTER XI.
THE “LABOUR BOARDS” AND “LABOUR CHAMBERS” OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY
Of all the problems with which the science of government is confronted in the present and the near future, there are few in the domain of Social Policy of greater importance, or more fraught with serious possibilities in their results, than the establishment on a democratic basis, both in constitution and in administration, of the organs of Labour Protection.
This tendency appears already in the demand for equal representation of both classes in the organisation of Labour Protection. The establishment by local governing authorities of industrial courts of arbitration has been a step in this direction, a step which has not entirely been retraced by recent legislation in Germany, dealing with such courts.
The form which Social Democracy has given to this idea by the proposal of “Labour Boards” and “Labour Chambers,” brought forward in the Auer Motion, is a matter of the highest interest. So far as I know, this form has received very little, or at any rate insufficient, attention in the Reichstag or the Press. This is the more surprising for two reasons, viz., the justice of its attempt at a better protective organisation, and the serious import of its evident tendency to evolve out of the Capitalist System a Social Democratic order of society.
I think, therefore, that just because of this extreme step in organisation which the Auer Motion takes in proposing Labour Boards and Labour Chambers, as instruments of Labour Protection, it behoves me not to pass it by with indifference, but on the contrary to dwell upon it at some length.
In the first place let us construct in our own minds a picture of the new form of organisation proposed in the Auer Motion.
In the place of Art. IX. in the existing Imp. Ind. Code, a new Chap. IX. would have to be inserted, dealing with “an Imperial Labour Board, District Labour Boards, Labour Chambers, and Labour Courts of Administration” (§§ 131-143).
1. The Imperial Labour Board and the Imperial Labour Parliament
The Imperial Labour Board. Its organisation would be determined by special Imperial legislation. Probably equal representation of classes is intended in this Central Bureau, which would act together with the hitherto essentially bureaucratic Imperial Insurance Board. Its duties would consist: first, in supervising so far as possible, the whole system of Labour Protection as demanded in the Auer Bill (§§ 105-125); further, in affording protection against the competition of penal labour; finally, “in enforcing such measures and conducting such enquiries as may be necessary to the well-being of the whole body of wage-earners, including apprentices, in any kind of industry.” Its duties would therefore extend far beyond the limits of Labour Protection in the strict sense, and it would be a general Central Bureau of aids to Labour, in which the Imperial Insurance Board would soon become incorporated.
The Labour Parliament (Diet of Labour Chambers). I take leave thus to designate the representative central organ proposed (although of course it is not brought forward in these terms in the heading of the new Chap. IX. of the Auer Bill) since it is clear that the Imperial Labour Board is practically only intended to be the executive organ of this democratic industrial Council of the nation. Sections 140-142 of the Auer Motion require that: § 140 “It shall be the duty of the Imperial Labour Board to summon once a year representatives from the collective Labour Chambers to a general deliberation on industrial interests. To this General Council each Labour Chamber shall send one delegate to represent the employers, and one the body of wage-earners. The choice of the representatives shall be made by each class separately. The chair shall be taken at the Council by a member of the Imperial Labour Board, but he and his colleagues shall have no right to vote. The Council shall determine its own standing orders and the orders of the day; the sittings to be public. § 141. The members of the Labour Chambers shall receive daily pay and defrayment of travelling expenses. § 142. The Imperial Government shall pay the costs of the arrangements enumerated in §§ 131-140; they shall be entered yearly in the imperial accounts.”
Thus we should have a national Labour Parliament – formed from the district Labour Chambers – with equal representation of both classes, receiving grants from the Imperial exchequer, undertaking the general supervision of industrial interests and acting as a check on the Imperial Labour Board. By the simple process of throwing overboard the nominees of the employers, this Labour Parliament might at any time become a pure parliament of labourers, or “People’s Parliament,” and the Imperial Labour Board might resolve itself into the central ministry of a purely “People’s State.”
Such a state of things would obviously be the realisation of the extreme Social Democratic order of State.
It must be admitted that no secret is made of this fact, nor yet of the basis on which the whole edifice is raised.
(2) Labour Boards and Labour Courts of Arbitration, Labour Chambers
The basis of the edifice is formed by Labour Boards and Courts of Arbitration, on the one hand (i. e. for executive purposes), and Labour Chambers on the other (i. e., for purposes of regulation). We shall, as far as possible, give the explanation of the matter in the words of the motion.
Labour Boards. On this head the Auer Motion reads as follows: “§ 132a. Below the Imperial Labour Board come the Labour Boards which shall be appointed throughout the German Empire, in districts of not less than 200,000, nor more than 400,000 inhabitants, at the latest by Oct. 1, 1891. § 133. The Labour Board shall consist of a Labour Councillor and at least two paid officers; it must pass its rulings and decisions in full sitting. The Imperial Labour Board shall select the labour councillor from two candidates nominated by the Labour Chamber. The permanent paid officers, whose duty it is to assist the labour councillor in his task of supervision, shall be elected by the Labour Chamber, half from the employers, and half from the employed. In districts in which there are a considerable number of works employing chiefly female labour, some of the officials appointed shall be women. The same rules with regard to invalid and superannuation pensions shall apply to the officers of the Labour Boards, as apply to all other imperial officials. § 133a. The officers of the Imperial Labour Board, and the labour councillors or their paid assistants, shall have the right at any time to inspect all places of business (whether of State, municipal, or private enterprise) and to make such regulations as may appear necessary for the life and health of the workers employed. In the exercise of such supervision they shall be empowered with all the official authority of the local police magistrates. In so far as the rules laid down are within the official authority of the supervising officers, the employers and their staff shall be bound to render unhesitating obedience. The employer or his representatives shall have a right of appeal to the District Labour Board, to be lodged within a week, against the orders and rulings of individual officials, and a right of appeal against the District Labour Board’s decision, also within a week, to the Imperial Labour Board. The Labour Board shall be bound to inspect all the works within a district at least once a year. The employers shall permit the official inspection to take place at any time when the work is being carried on, especially also at night. The inspecting officers shall be bound, except in cases of infringement of the law, to observe secrecy as to all information on the concerns of a business obtained by them in pursuit of their official duties. § 133b. The local police magistrates shall uphold the Labour Board in the exercise of its authority, and shall enforce obedience to its directions. § 133c. The Labour Board shall organize all free labour intelligence within its district, and serve in fact as a central bureau for this purpose. It shall also be empowered to appoint branch bureaux with this object, in such places as may seem suitable, and if there is no industrial union to undertake the duties the local police magistrates shall undertake them. § 133d. Every Labour Board shall publish a yearly report of its proceedings, copies of which shall be distributed gratuitously to the members of the Labour Chambers by the Imperial Labour Board and the Central District Courts. The report shall be submitted to the approval of the Labour Chamber before publication. The Imperial Labour Board shall draw up yearly, from the annual reports of the Labour Boards, a general report to be submitted to the Bundesrath and the Reichstag. The reports of the District Labour Boards and the Imperial Labour Board shall be accessible to the public at cost price.”
The Labour Board of a district of from 200,000 to 400,000 inhabitants would be in the first place a modern kind of industrial inspectorate with offices filled from both classes – employers and employed – with a democratic system of election, and to which women would also be eligible. Even the presidency of this inspectorate would not be freely appointed by the government, which would have only the power of electing one out of two nominees of the Labour Chambers. The primary task of the board would take the form of Labour Protection, of centralization of labour intelligence, and of drawing up reports on matters concerning labour. The Labour Board is intended as the executive organ of the Labour Chambers, the parliamentary administration would therefore be general; even in reporting on industry the Labour Board would be subject to the approval of the Labour Chamber. It is evident that this Democratic organisation of courts, which would be powerless to act so long as both classes obstructed each other, might easily at one stroke, by turning out the nominees of the employers, be changed and developed into purely democratic district courts for the general protection of labour and the control of production.
Courts of Arbitration. The Court of Arbitration as proposed by the Auer Motion, is, so to speak, the judicial twin brother of the Labour Board. According to § 137-137e, the Court of Arbitration would be a court of the first instance, for the settlement of disputes between employers and workmen. It would be formed by each Labour Chamber out of its numbers, and would consist of equal numbers of employers and of workmen. The chair would be taken by the labour councillor or one of his paid assistants. Equal representation of both classes would be required when pronouncing decisions. None but relations, employés, and partners in the business, would be permitted to be present during the deliberations in support of the disagreeing parties. There would be right of appeal to the Labour Chamber. The members of this Court of Arbitration would (like those of the Labour Chamber) (§ 130a) receive daily pay and defrayment of travelling expenses. Such would evidently be the working out of this system of combined class representation, of which, indeed, we already have an instance in the industrial courts of arbitration.
Labour Chambers. These would form the foundation stone of the edifice, and they deserve the special attention of all who wish to know how Social Democracy means to attain her ends. I give verbatim the clauses dealing with this: “§ 134. For the representation of the interests of employers and their workmen, as well as for the support of the Labour Boards in the exercise of their authority, there shall be appointed from Oct. 1, 1891, in every Labour Board district, a Labour Chamber, to consist of not less than 24, and not more than 36 members, according to the number of different firms established in the district. The number of members for the separate districts shall be determined by the Imperial Labour Board. The members of the Labour Chambers shall be elected, the one half by employers of full age from amongst their numbers, the other half by workers of full age from amongst their numbers. The election shall be made on the principle of direct, individual, ballot voting by both sexes, a simple majority only to decide. Each class shall elect its own representatives. The mandate of the members of the Labour Chamber shall last for two years, opening and closing in each case with the calendar year. Simultaneously with the election of the members of the Labour Chamber proxies to the number of one-half shall be appointed. The proxies shall be those candidates who receive the greatest number of votes next after the elected members. In the case of equal votes lots shall be drawn. The selection of the polling day, which must be either a Sunday or festival, shall rest with the Imperial Labour Board, which shall also lay down the rules of procedure for the election. Employers and workmen shall be equally represented on the election committees. The time appointed for taking the votes shall be fixed in such a manner that both day and night shifts may be able to go to the poll. § 135. Besides fulfilling the functions assigned to them in §§ 106a, 110 and 121, the Labour Chambers shall support the Labour Boards by advice and active help in all questions touching the industrial life of their district. It shall be their special duty to make enquiry into the carrying out of commercial and shipping contracts; into customs, taxes, duties, and into the rate of wage, price of provisions, rent, competitive relations, educational and industrial establishments, collections of models and patterns, condition of dwellings, and into the health and mortality of the working population. They shall bring before the courts all complaints as to the conditions of industrial life, and they shall give opinion on all measures and legal proposals affecting industrial life in their district. Finally, they shall be courts of appeal against the decisions of the Courts of Arbitration. § 136. The president of the Labour Chamber shall be the labour councillor, or failing him, one of his paid officials. The president shall have no vote, except in cases in which the Labour Chamber is giving decision as a court of appeal against the decision of the Court of Arbitration. Equality of voting shall be counted as a negative. The president shall be bound to summon the Labour Chamber at least once a month, and also when required on the motion of at least one-third of the members of the Chamber. The Labour Chambers shall lay down their own working rules; their sittings shall be public.” According to § 139 of the motion, the members of the Labour Chambers shall also be entitled to claim daily pay and defrayment of travelling expenses.
Such are the Labour Chambers according to the proposals of the Social Democrats in 1885 and 1890.
It is not without some astonishment that I note the tactical ingenuity displayed by the party even here. Everything that has anywhere appeared in literature, in popular representation, in judicial and administrative organisation, in the way of proposals for the centralisation and extension of labour intelligence, or of proposals for the representation of labour in Labour Protection, and in all agencies for the care of labour, – every scheme that has ever been put forward under different forms, either purely theoretic or practical, as, e. g., “Popular Industrial Councils,” and “Industrial Courts of Arbitration” – is here used to make a part of a broad bridge, leading across to a “People’s State.” Nothing is lacking but the lowest planks, which could not, however, be dispensed with, a Local Labour Board and a Local Labour Chamber, as the sub-structure of the District Labour Boards and District Labour Chambers.
The leaders of Social Democracy in the German Reichstag maintain that they are willing to join hands with the representatives of the existing order in their schemes of organisation. We have, therefore, no right to treat their scheme as consciously revolutionary. But this hardly affects the question. The question is whether – setting aside altogether the originators of the plan – such an organisation as that described above might not in fact readily lend itself as a battering-ram to overthrow the existing order and realise the aim of Socialism, whether, in fact, it would not of necessity be so used. This question may well be answered in the affirmative without casting the slightest reproach at the present leaders of the party.