As between themselves and their employers, they are under no obligations but those of prudence. The employers are quite capable of taking care of themselves. Unionists are under no moral duty to their employers which the conditions they may seek to impose on them can possibly violate. But they owe moral duties to the remainder of the labouring classes, and moral duties to the community at large; and it behooves them to take care that the conditions they make for their own separate interest do not conflict with either of these obligations.
However satisfactorily the question may admit of being answered, it still requires to be asked, whether Unionists are justified in seeking a rise of wages for themselves, which will in all probability produce a fall of wages, or loss of employment, to other labourers, their fellow-countrymen.
Still more is this question raised by those restrictive rules, forbidding the employment of non-unionists, limiting the number of apprentices, etc., which many Unions maintain, and which are sometimes indispensable to the complete efficacy of Unionism. For (as Mr. Thornton recognises) there is no keeping up wages without limiting the number of competitors for employment.
And all such limitation inflicts distinct evil upon those whom it excludes--upon that great mass of labouring population which is outside the Unions; an evil not trifling, for if the system were rigorously enforced it would prevent unskilled labourers or their children from ever rising to the condition of skilled. In what manner is a system which thus operates, to be reconciled either with the obligations of general morality, or with the special regard professed by labouring men for the interest of the labouring class? To the justification of Unionism it is necessary not only that a mode of reconciliation should exist, but that Unionists should know it and consider it; for if there is ever so good a defence of their conduct, and they do not know or care about it, their case is morally the same as if there were none.
Unionists who do not concern themselves with these scruples are, in intention, sacrificing the interests of their fellow-labourers, the majority of the labouring classes, to their own separate advantage; they are making themselves into an oligarchy of manual labourers, indirectly supported by a tax levied on the democracy.
There are, however, two considerations, either of which, in the mind of an upright and public spirited working man, may fairly legitimate his adhesion to Unionism. The first is, by considering the Unions of particular trades as a mere step towards an universal Union, including all labour, and as a means of educating the elite of the working classes for such a future. This is well put by Mr. Thornton:-- Though, in the interests of universal labour, the formation of national and cosmopolitan unionism be clearly an end to be aimed at, the best, if not the only means to that end is the previous formation and bringing to maturity of separate trade unions. The thing is scarcely to be done, if done at all, in any other way. National unionism is only to be built up piecemeal. To begin by laying foundations coextensive with the area to be finally covered, would be a sure way of never getting beyond the foundations.
The only plan at all feasible, is for separate sections of labourers to organise themselves independently, and for each separate organisation to confine its attention to its own affairs, wherein it would long find abundant occupation without troubling itself about those of its neighbours, until it and they, having grown strong enough to stand alone, should perceive it to be for their mutual advantage to coalesce and stand together. This is the plan which, unconsciously perhaps for the most part, trades' unions are at present following, each in obedience to its own selfish instinct, seeking only to do the best for itself, yet each doing thereby the best for the others also. That this or any other plan will ever really eventuate in the formation of a confederacy embracing the entire working population, may to most people appear an utterly chimerical notion, and no doubt the chances are great against its realisation.
But the thing, however improbable, is not more improbable than some of the actual phenomena of unionism would not long since have appeared. Half a century back, while the marvellous organising aptitudes of working men lay dormant and unsuspected, it would have been quite as difficult for any one to look forward to the existing 'amalgamation' of little less than 50,000 engineers or 70,000 miners, as it is now to imagine that in another century or so -- no very long period in a nation's life--a combination of these and of other associations may weld together the whole community of British workmen as one brotherhood. At the present rate of progress less than a hundred years would suffice for the operation. (Pp. 289-90.)
This prospect may appear too remote, and even visionary, to be an actuating motive with any considerable number of Unionists; but it is certainly not beyond the aspiration of the leaders of Unionism, and what is more, some great steps have already been made in the direction of its realisation.
