cent of their members work by contract, add that the system is not approved by the organization. The reason given is the impossibility of predicting the hardness or softness of a given piece of work, and the consequent impossibility of making earnings regular. The president of the Piano and Organ Workers, while saying that about 90 per cent of his members work on the piece system, adds that there is a desire for the abolition of it. The reason given here is the tendency to require all workmen to keep up to the pace of the fastest, and the tendency to cut wages till only the fastest can earn a decent wage.

It is generally held that the piecework system results in the giving of more work for the same pay; and it is even maintained that no intensity of exertion beyond a certain point will give any permanent increase of daily wages. Every employer has in his mind, it is said, a somewhat definite standard of fair wages for every class of workers. He is apt to assume that all of them could, if they would, do as much as the fastest actually do. If the fastest considerably and habitually exceed the amount of earnings which seems to him proper, he is certain, say the workmen, to reduce the piece price.1

The attitude of the trade unions of Great Britain toward piecework, as it appears to Mr. and Mrs. Webb, after their exhaustive study of trade-union history and methods, is summed up in the following passage: "What the capitalist seeks is to get more work for the old pay. Sometimes this can be achieved best by piecework, sometimes by time work. Workmen, on the other hand, strive to obtain more pay for the same number of working hours. For the moment, at any rate, the individual operative can most easily secure this by piecework. But not even for the sake of getting more pay for the same number of hours' work will the experienced workman revert to the individual bargain, with all its dangers. Accordingly, the trade unions accept piecework only when it is consistent with collective bargaining; that is, when a standard list of prices can be arrived at between the employers on the one hand and the representatives of the whole body of workmen on the other. As a matter of fact, this is practicable, so far as concerns anything above mere unskilled laboring, in a majority of the organized industries, in which, therefore, piecework prevails by consent of both masters and men. It is, indeed, impossible to decide whether trade unionism has, on the whole, favored or discouraged the substitution of piecework for time wages. On the one hand, every increase in tradeunion organization, and especially every extension of the class of salaried trade-union officials, has made more possible the arrangement of definite piecework lists. This process is now extending from trade to trade. The very establishment of these lists has, on the other hand, lessened the employers' desire to introduce piecework, whilst to any method of remuneration involving individual bargaining, such as 'estimate' or 'lump' work, the trade unions have shown implacable hostility.'

The long and careful study which Mr. and Mrs. Webb have given to trade unionism in Great Britain, and their wide acquaintance with the officers and members of the unions, make it necessary to give credence to their statements when they enumerate the unions in Great Britain which insist on piecework or prefer it. The expressions above cited indicate, however, that, while the parallelism between Great Britain and the United States in the actual use of the piecework system is remarkably close, the desires of the union leaders in many trades in the United States are by no means such as Mr. and Mrs. Webb allege them to be in the same trades in

During that

1The following is a quotation from an employer's argument for a reduction of wages: period 25 loaders in that mine averaged over $3.25 for every day the mine ran. * ** I took 25 men, because if 25 men can produce such wages others are capable of doing it if they try to work as hard as these 25 did." Official report of fourth annual joint conference of coal miners and operators of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, held January 31 to February 9, 1901; p. 71.

*Industrial Democracy, by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, vol. 1, pp. 303, 304. In addition to Mr. and Mrs. Webb's admirable discussion, see Methods of Industrial Remuneration (third edition, 1898), by David F. Schloss, pp. 50-86.

Great Britain. The principal officers of many of the most important American unions, whose members habitually work by the piece, would, if they had the power, instantly abolish the system.

Doubtless the inferences to be drawn from this fact ought to be modified with reference to possible divergences between the views of the union leaders and the views of the body of the workmen. The secretary of the Boiler Makers, for instance, while objecting to piecework in all branches of the trade, himself admits that the use of it is satisfactory to the shipbuilders, who are paid under it. The explanation of such differences of view is not obscure. The union officer looks exclusively at what he conceives to be the interest of the trade as a whole. Anything which seems to him to diminish the number of men employed, anything which seems to increase the amount of labor which is sold for a given amount of money, appears to him unquestionably bad. The man with the hammer in his hand thinks primarily of his individual gain. If piecework enables him to draw more wages at the end of the week, though by considerably greater exertion, and though he may believe, as the secretary believes, that his higher wages are gained at the expense of unemployment for his neighbor, he is tempted to follow his immediate pecuniary advantage.

LIMITATION OF OUTPUT.

If the objection to the piecework system is less widespread among British than among American unionists, it is probable that one reason is in the greater commonness and greater strength, among the working people of Great Britain, of the custom of limiting the intensity of their work. The refusal of the British workmen to accomplish all which, by the greatest exertion, they could accomplish, is one of the commonest complaints of British employers and British writers on industrial topics. The accusation of fostering this tendency is one of the standard accusations against the British unions. Speakers and writers, both British and American, constantly contrast the British workman, in this respect, to his disadvantage, with the AmeriThe alleged decline of British trade is attributed, in a great degree, to the refusal of the British workman to do his best. The limitation of output was one of the chief questions at issue in the great engineers' strike of 1897; and the superiority of the Americans in such industries as the manufacture of boots and shoes is laid at the door of British unionism and its discouragement of activity.

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There has always been a strong tendency among labor organizations to discourage exertion beyond a certain limit. The tendency does not always express itself in formal rules. On the contrary, it appears chiefly in the silent, or at least informal, pressure of working-class opinion. It is occasionally embodied in rules which distinctly forbid the accomplishment of more than a fixed amount of work in a given time; but such regulations are always felt by employers, and almost always by other persons who are not of the wage-working class, to be obviously unjust, shortsighted, and socially injurious. This adverse public opinion outside the unions themselves has doubtless had some influence in discouraging such applications of the principle. These rules have not by any means, however, absolutely disappeared. The Flint Glass Workers strictly limited the day's work of their members up to 4 or 5 years ago, and they still limit it in some kinds of work. Similar regulations appear locally from time to time in the building trades. Before the great building trades strike of 1900, in Chicago, the plumbers, the gas fitters, and the lathers had rules setting forth in detail the amount of work which a man might do in a day. In the case of the plumbers it was asserted, by employers and others, that some of the specifications did not amount to more than one-third of a good day's work, though others were more than an ordinary man could accomplish."

1 Reports of the Industrial Commission, vol. vii, Testimony, pp. 833, 835; vol. xv, pp. 425, 426. Ibid., vol. viii, pp. 170, 313, 407-410, 422, 466.

A substantially similar limitation may be applied, where piecework is used, by specifying the highest amount that a man may earn. Thus the stove mounters' union of Detroit does not permit its members to earn more than $4.50 a day; the scale for day work is $2.75. The Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers fixes the maximum charge for a boiling furnace and the minimum time for a heat. It also limits the output of tin-plate rolling mills, and orders that if any crew is found to have surpassed the limit the local union must collect the equivalent of the surplus earning, together with a fine for each offense of 25 cents from the roller and 25 cents from the doubler.

Another form of limitation, where highly automatic machines are used, is to forbid the running of more than one machine by a man. The Machinists provide that "any member introducing or accepting piecework or running two machines in any shop where they do not exist shall be subject to expulsion." In this case, as in many others, the union accepts perforce the existing fact, but undertakes to prevent any change of conditions contrary to its desires. The Pressmen forbid any member to run more than two single-cylinder presses or more than one flat-bed rotary press or one perfecting press. The Lithographers also forbid their members to run more than one press, under pain of expulsion, without possibility of reinstatement except on payment of a fine of $250.

One defense of the general principle of the limitation of performance rests upon the necessities of the system of collective bargaining. It is a necessary incident of the collective bargain that one man shall not underbid another; and one can as easily underbid by offering more work for the same hourly wage as by offering the normal amount of work for a lower hourly wage. Perhaps the ground on which the principle is oftenest defended, however, by representatives of the unions, is the tendency of employers to seek means of rushing or overcrowding the men. It is often alleged that employers hire particularly able workmen, by a small extra payment, or by some other advantage, to put extra speed into their work, and so to set a pace which all the men can be compelled to strive for. By this means the employers get extraordinary activity out of all the men and pay only one or two for it. Sometimes there are rules directed specifically against this practice. Thus, in 1900, the carpenters of Chicago had the following rule: "Any member guilty of excessive work or rushing on any job shall be reported and shall be subject to a fine of $5." This further rule of the same organization was directed to a similar end: "Any foreman using abusive language to or rushing the men under his supervision shall be fined not less than $10 and ruled off the job.”

In such work as carpentry the fast man only furnishes an example which the employer or the foreman is able to appeal to in hurrying the others. The case is worse in "team work," in which several men cooperate in a given task, and each is compelled to maintain the pace set by the fastest, or forfeit his place by impeding the operation of the whole. The two bricklayers at the ends of a wall put up the line as fast as they build their portions, and the men between must keep up with it. In making a coat, three men work together-a machine operator, a baster, and an edge baster or finisher. No one may slacken his pace, no matter how weary or sick; for if one slackens, the work of the whole team is balked.

Under a piecework system the men are automatically induced, by their eagerness to earn the highest possible wage, to work with all their energy through every moment of the working day. If the tendency is unrestrained, the ultimate result is, say the workmen, that the piece price is reduced as the output increases, till the most skillful, working their best, can just make good wages. The process results in

The agreement which was made in 1900 between the Machinists and the National Metal Trades Association, and which was abolished in 1901, provided that the union should “place no restrictions upon the management or production of the shop," but should "give a fair day's work for a fair day's wage."

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excessive work and overstrain for the ordinary workers, without any reward in increased pay.

The pace which a few set, whether at piecework or at day work, tends to become the normal pace in the trade. The few may be able to endure it, but the average worker, it is said, goes home at night with exhausted body and worn-out nerves, unable to give attention to any recreative pursuit or to enjoy such hours of leisure as he has. A space of a few years wears him out. The speed which he was able for a few years of his youth to maintain by an excessive consumption of nerve force he can maintain no longer. He is thrown over-superannuated.

While these specific reasons for the limitation of output have undoubtedly a considerable degree of validity, and while they have doubtless played a large part in determining the actual course of labor organizations upon this point, it seems clear that the general doctrine that the price of labor power may be increased by diminishing the amount that is brought to market has always had and still has its importance. It is not easy to convince the workingman that if A does only half a day's work he does not leave another half day's work for B; and the workingman finds it hard to see why the removal of B from the ranks of the unemployed will not diminish the competition of workingmen with each other, and tend to raise the price of each specific job, and consequently to increase the portion of the social product which goes to workingmen as a class.

In these days, however, the workingmen are coming to realize that there is a better way of diminishing the supply of labor power in the market. The deliberate limitation of a man's activity during his working hours alienates the sympathy of everybody outside the wage-earning class. The diminution of the number of hours which a man spends in daily toil is an object which appeals to men of all classes as not only justifiable but admirable and socially beneficial. It is to the limitation of hours that the most intelligent labor leaders are now turning their chief attention.

MACHINERY.

It is probably not far wrong to say that trade unionists universally regard the introduction of new machinery as a misfortune. With the possible exception of a very few industries, like the cotton manufacture, in which machine production has already been long and highly developed, a new machine always appears to the workingman as a displacer of men, a creator of unemployment, a depresser of wages. Trade-union leaders, even when they express their acceptance of the advance of machine production as a necessary feature of social progress, usually manifest the feeling that, if it is not inevitably at the expense of the workingman, it at least increases the difficulty of maintaining his economic position. It is doubtful whether any union which felt strong enough to keep machinery out of its trade ever submitted without a contest to the introduction of it. The experience of long years has taught the unions, however, that in general the introduction of machinery can not be prevented, and direct attempts to keep it out are now comparatively few.

The Stogie Makers still refuse to admit machine workers to their organization, and both the Coopers and the Iron Molders maintained the same attitude up to 1899. It is only half a dozen years since the Coopers appealed to the Federation of Labor to declare against ale and beer packages made by machinery. The Federation, however, did not approve the proposition. The Stone Cutters prevent the use of stone-planing machines wherever they can. When a new machine was invented two or three years ago for blowing lamp chimneys, the Flint Glass Workers proposed to the manufacturers that the machine be bought up and eliminated, and that the selling price of chimneys be advanced to pay the cost. The rules of the Plumbers contain a long list of plumbing goods which were formerly made by hand as they were used, but which are now appearing in the market as products of machinery. The Plumbers declare that this change is taking away the work of their trade, and that the use of

these goods should be stopped. The Plate Printers have always opposed the introduction of steam presses, and have succeeded in keeping them out of the largest plate printing office in America, that of the United States Bureau of Engraving and Printing. The reason given is that the work done on a hand roller press is far better. The unions that have fared best in their dealings with machinery are those that have frankly and promptly recognized the inevitableness of it, and have devoted their energies, not to the hopeless task of preventing the use of it, but to regulating the manner of use. Probably no union in this country furnishes a better example of a wise policy toward machinery than the International Typographical Union. When the typesetting machines began to be introduced, the union promptly accepted them as inevitable, and only insisted that they be operated exclusively by members of the organization, and on union terms. If the attempt had been made to keep the machines out of printing offices, the fate of the hand compositors might possibly have been comparable with that of the hand weavers, who tried a hundred years ago to compete with the power loom. The union would have been driven out of all important printing offices, the machines would have been run by nonunion hands, wages, both of machine operators and of hand compositors, would have been cut, and hours of labor would have been lengthened. By the policy which the union adopted the number of its members who were thrown out of employment by machines was greatly diminished, wages were maintained and gradually raised, hours were gradually shortened. The union has been able to secure for its members a share of the benefits of the machine, instead of seeing all its benefits, together with a portion of the advantages which they themselves had previously enjoyed, divided between the employing printers and the community at large. The wage scales for machine operators are uniformly maintained at least as high as those of hand compositors, and in many cases higher; and in most places the hours of machine operators are shorter.

The Glass Bottle Blowers have recently had to face the question of machinery. Their president recommended, in his address to the convention of 1900, that no effort be made to oppose the introduction of machines, but that the union try to arrange for the gradual introduction of them, without strikes or lockouts, and for the working of them by members of the union only.

PROVISION OF EMPLOYMENT.

In the broadest sense, all those policies of trade unions which are directed to diminishing the production of each member, whether by shortening working hours, by lessening the intensity of work, or by reducing the efficiency of it through the exclusion of machinery, have for at least one of their objects the provision of employment for a larger number of men. The whole development of the union is a means of obtaining employment for union men as distinguished from the nonunion. Most unions, however, provide some more specific means for bringing particular members who may be unemployed into contact with opportunities for work.

There are trades in which it would be held disgraceful for a man to ask for employment for himself. Thus, among the hatters a man looking for employment must approach a journeyman who is already employed, and be introduced by him to the foreman as a man of the trade "on turn" and desiring to be "shopped." This is an ancient custom, antedating any general organization of the hatters; but it is sanctioned by the existing union, and any foreman who hires a man in violation of it is liable to a fine of $25. There are other trades, however, in which it would be regarded as unmanly to seek employment through another instead of asking for it oneself.

Many local unions have regular employment bureaus, where unemployed members register their names. Sometimes employers apply to the union bureau whenever they need help. The Bakers, the Barbers, the Brewers, and the German-American