of arranging difficulties have only been made possible by organization of the forces on both sides, and have, as it were, been gradually evolved from the general progress of the combination movement. The trades which have chiefly benefited by the adoption of such peaceful methods have been the coal and certain branches of the iron trade, although now and again casual experiments have been made in other industries. Taking the lead, if not in point of time at least in point of importance, have been the miners of Northumberland and Durham and the ironworkers of the north of England. In these trades in the days before organization had been effected strikes were frequent, prolonged, and bitter. After one or the other of the parties had reached the end of its powers such disputes were generally settled by a roughand-ready form of conciliation arranged by negotiation. As soon, however, as the men became combined, and their associations might be really said to represent the bulk of the workers, they were in a position to meet with associated employers and talk over all questions affecting their labor upon something like equal terms.

That the development of these methods had not yet become very extensive appears from the final report of the Royal Commission on Labor in 1894. This Commission was appointed in 1891 and sat for 3 years. It took testimony from nearly 600 witnesses, which was published in a series of volumes; and it submitted to Parliament four interim reports, and a fifth and final report from which the following extracts have been taken. The status of collective bargaining was summarized 10 thus:

(a) In some of the principal industries a steady extension has for many years past taken place in the scale and importance of trade-unions and employers' associations. In industries of the kind referred to the settlement of terms between employers and workmen is mainly, and the conduct of the industry is to a large extent, controlled by the action of these organizations on either side.

(b) In a large proportion of industries organizations exist for the protection of trade interests and friendly benefit purposes, but only comprise a part, and often only a small part, of the workmen and employers engaged in these industries. These organizations do not, for this reason, exercise so great a controlling power over trade relations as do those of the kind first mentioned.

(c) In other classes of industry organizations are insignificant or do not exist at all.

But the Commission noted that the collective agreements affected more persons than those who were in terms brought under them, pointing out 111 that:

It may, however, be added that although institutions of conciliation and arbitration have not been brought to a very high pitch of development in a large proportion of trades, the evidence shows that in matters of standards of wages and hours one organized body of employers and workmen taking counsel together affect a larger area than that of their own district or even their own trade. Instances were given of districts and works which, while not belonging to any organized institution for conciliation themselves, make it their rule to follow the decisions of such an institution in their trade with regard to general wage rates and similar matters.

In considering what might be done to improve industrial relations, the Commission reflected a philosophy similar to that set forth in the 1888 report. Its fundamental conclusion was that strong organizations of employers and workers, dealing together through collective agreements and setting up machinery for conciliation and arbitration, afforded the most practical approach to industrial peace.

Cmd., 7421.

10 Ibid., part I, p. 97. 11 Ibid., part I, p. 50.

In

the first place, after stating that collective agreements could not legally be enforced, the Commission said: 12

The general conclusion seems to be that the moral sanction or force, which at present is alone available to secure respect to the arrangements between bodies of employers and workmen throughout the industry and to the awards of arbitration, can only, as far as present experience goes, be relied on with anything like certainty in those trades which are very well organized, so, as to comprise practically all the workers in a trade, or important districts of it, and which have a strong and efficient form of internal government. In trades of this class, at any rate, in spite of occasional serious disturbances, there seems to be every prospect of fewer outbreaks of industrial conflicts between employers and employed, due to the growing practice of consultations upon equal terms of representatives of either party in conferences or standing joint committees. By influences of this kind there are gradually established steady and permanent trade customs with regard to price lists, the regulation of wages according to the fluctuations of trade, and other conditions of labor. Under these circumstances custom may become so strong, even without assistance from the law, as to afford in such trades an almost certain and practically sufficient guarantee for the carrying out of industrial agreements and awards. The Commission added that the "effectiveness of this moral sanction to agreements and awards diminishes as the organization on each side becomes less perfect"; and in another portion of the report 13 analyzed the difficulties in the weakly organized trades as follows:

If peaceable relations are, upon the whole, the result of strong and firmly established trade-unionism, it seems no less clear from the evidence that tradeunionism in a weak and struggling condition rather tends to increase the number and bitterness of industrial conflicts. The experience of those industries which have reached a high degree of organization usually seems to be that the most quarrelsome period of a trade's existence is when it is just emerging from the patriarchal condition in which each employer governs his establishment and deals with his own men with no outside interference, but has not yet fully entered into that other condition in which transactions take place between strong associations fully recognizing each other.

This seems to be in some measure due to the fact that when organization has partially established itself and brought men together, grievances, which during the unorganized period have long been latent, come suddenly to light, and also in some measure to the fact that in early stages of organization the workmen have not yet learned by experience what their union can and what it can not achieve. In weak organizations of no long standing the leaders or executives often have no great hold over the men, who are in such cases apt to abandon a union if its policy does not coincide with their own views. The result is that unwise trade conflicts are frequently precipitated by the hasty action of sections of workmen. But the effort to force recognition for tradeunions at the hands of employers seems to be the chief cause of the frequent and violent conflicts which usually attend the earlier stages of organization. Many recent conflicts in the ranks of less skilled labor which were brought to our notice seem to have been, in reality, wholly due to the determination of members of new trade societies to compel employers to recognize and deal with them. It is not unnatural that at first employers should usually be unwilling to negotiate with their leaders as not being really representative of the workmen, and that they should take up the position that, while they are ready and willing to negotiate with representatives or deputations of the workmen in their immediate employ, they will not treat with officials of organizations to which perhaps only a fraction of their workmen belong.

In its final conclusions 14 the Commission rejected all proposals for compulsory arbitration and for other limitations on the right to strike, and stated its opinion that "the chief matter of importance”

12 Ibid., p. 53.

13 Ibid., part I, p. 36.

14 Ibid., part I, pp. 98-101.

was the "rapid extension of voluntary boards" of conciliation on a trade or district basis which "we hope and believe will continue * * * until they cover a much larger part of the whole field of industry than they do at present." But the Commission opposed proposals to invest these agencies "with legal powers, or to establish rivals to them in the shape of other boards founded on a statutory basis, and having a more or less public and official character."

During the ensuing 15 years the collective bargaining relationships steadily developed, so much so that in a report 15 to Parliament in 1910 the Board of Trade stated 16 that "the method of collective bargaining may be said to prevail throughout the whole of our manufacturing industries and to obtain to a very considerable extent in regard to the employment of dock and waterside labor, and of labor employed in transport and sea fishing." The report summarized the provisions of all the collective agreements in the United Kingdom of which the Board of Trade was able to obtain copies.

The extent of these agreements was summarized 17 in the preface of the report by Sir George (later Lord) Askwith as follows [italics ours]:

*

The collective agreements of a general trade or district character known to the department, of which particulars are given in this volume, number no less than 1,696. * * The 3 most important affect in the aggregate nearly a million workpeople; 34 agreements affect numbers varying from 10,000 up to 200,000; while the remaining 1,659 each affect less than 10,000 and most of these * * * affect quite small numbers of workpeople.

The total number of workpeople whose conditions of labor are specifically regulated under the provisions of these agreements (after allowing for workpeople affected by more than one agreement) is estimated to be 2,400,000. The distribution according to trades is shown in the following table:

It should be understood, however, that in addition to those directly affected, there are a large number of other workpeople whose wages, hours of labor, and other industrial conditions follow, and are in effect governed by, the collective agreements in force for the time being in the trades concerned. For this reason the total number of workpeople either directly or indirectly affected by the 1,696 agreements referred to is very materially in excess of 2,400,000. While in many important industries the conditions of employment are regulated under collective agreements covering very wide areas, in some instances these agreements are of a more narrow character, embodying the terms agreed upon between a single firm and its employees, or one or more classes of employees. Agreements of this type, such as "pit lists" in the mining industry and "shop" agreements, are, as a rule, excluded from this report.

The collective agreements dealt with in the report are not only very numerous, but in many instances are of considerable length, and contain provisions

15 Report on Collective Agreements between Employers and Workpeople in the United Kingdom (1910) Cmd., 5366.

16 Ibid., pp. xi-xiii.

17 Ibid., pp. iii-v.

often of a very detailed character. These provisions relate, not only to the rates of remuneration to be received by the workpeople and their hours of labor, but also to a great variety of other subjects, including the number of workpeople to be employed in the execution of specified jobs, the distribution of work among workpeople or different classes of workpeople, and the conditions under which youthful labor shall be employed. In a large number of instances, particularly in the more important industries, the collective agreements also provide machinery for the purpose of effecting the pacific settlement of differences which may arise either as to the interpretation and application of existing agreements or as to the terms upon which fresh contracts of the kind shall be concluded.

The wide prevalence of these arrangements in our most important industries must have an important influence on industrial enterprise, for when the level of wages, the length of the working day, and other principal conditions of employment are regulated, for specified periods of greater or less duration, by clearly defined agreements, the employers concerned must be enabled to calculate with precision that part of the cost of production which will be represented by labor; further, when these agreements bind the whole or a very large proportion of the firms engaged in a given trade, the danger of undercutting by rivals who find it possible to obtain labor at a lower price is materially reduced.

APPENDIX E

[The following tables taken from the Twenty-Second Abstract of Labor Statistics of the United Kingdom, pp. 127-135.]

TABLE I.-STRIKES AND LOCK-OUTS IN GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND-SUMMARY FOR 1900-1936

[Compiled from information collected by the Ministry of Labor from employers and their associations, trade-unions, and other sources. Disputes involving less than 10 work people and those which lasted less than 1 day have been omitted except when the aggregate duration (see note 1) exceeded 100 working days]

3,088, 000

4, 130, 000

3, 438, 000

2, 320, 000

1, 464, 000

2, 368, 000

3, 019, 000

2, 148, 000

10, 785, 000

2, 687, 000

9, 867, 000

40, 890, 000

9, 804, 000

9, 878, 000 2, 953, 000 2,446, 000 5,647, 000 5, 875, 000 34, 969, 000 26, 568, 000 85,872, 000

19, 850, 000

8, 424, 000 7,952, 000

162, 233, 000

1, 174, 000 1,388, 000

8, 287, 000 4,399, 000 6,983, 000

1, 072, 000 959, 000 1,955, 000

1, 829, 000

1 I. e., the number of work people multiplied by the number of working days lost, allowing for work people replaced by others, etc.

2 Work people indirectly involved are those thrown out of work at the establishments where the disputes occurred, but not themselves parties to the disputes.

3 For the purpose of these totals, workpeople are counted in the total for each year as many times as they were involved in a dispute during that year. The resulting duplication is mainly confined to coal mining with the addition in 1926 of other industries involved in the "general strike." In the coal-mining group duplication was largest in the years 1919-21, amounting to 150,000 in 1919, 300,000 in 1920, and 100,000 in 1921. Since 1926 the more considerable duplications in the totals for all industries have been as follows: 1931, 57,000; 1932, 70,000; 1935, 59,000; 1936, 66,000.

6, 488, 000