BOOK IV.

LABOUR AND CAPITAL IN ALLIANCE..

CHAPTER I.

INDUSTRIAL PARTNERSHIP.

IN THE estimate attempted in the last chapter of the merits and demerits of Trades' Unionism, one of the former was intentionally omitted. No allusion was made to the powerful reason which unionism furnishes to employers for desiring to improve the relations between themselves and the employed. This was designedly kept back then, with a view to its being more effectively brought forward

now.

In the same chapter the paradox was started that unionism is, in the natural order of things, destined to mollify hereafter that antagonism between classes, which in its earlier stages it undoubtedly does its utmost to foment. It was treated as having, together with its more obvious and immediate functions, an educational office to perform, and was credited, in consequence, with a portion of that humanizing influence which education, of whatever kind, can scarcely fail to exercise. Whether justly so credited, time must be left to show. As yet, it must be admitted to have done little to deserve the praise bestowed upon it by anticipation. Hitherto, far from mollifying, its general effect has been that of very greatly aggravating that hostility between capital and labour, which is only too apt to grow up spontaneously and without any external fostering.

Wherever it prevails, it has extinguished whatever mutual kindliness a sense of patronage on the one side, and of dependence on the other, had engendered, and for such faithfulness and attachment as previously existed, has generally substituted an embittered discontent, that grudges payment of even its acknowledged dues. In the words of one of the last to be suspected of speaking with undue harshness on such a point, the rich are regarded as a mere prey and pasture for the poor-the subject of demands and expectations wholly indefinite, increasing in extent with every concession made to them. The total absence of regard for justice or fairness, in the relations between the two, is as marked on the side of the employed as on that of the employers. We look in vain, among the working classes in general, for the just pride which will choose to give good work for good wages. For the most part, their sole endeavour is to receive as much, and return as little in the shape of service as possible.'*

So speaks Mr. Mill, and so (or similarly) thought and felt M. Leclaire, house-painter in Paris, when, finding it 'insupportable to live in close and hourly contact with persons whose interests and feelings were in hostility' to him, he set himself seriously to consider how more amicable relations could be established with them.

He had begun business, he says, with the usual mistake of paying the lowest possible wages, and dismissing for the slightest offence; but he soon found that this would not do and that, without some permanent connection with his men, there was no hope of his getting on satisfactorily with them. He tried, therefore, to attach them to his service by raising their wages, and he succeeded so far as to render them loth to leave so liberal a paymaster, but not so far as to induce them to take more pains with their work than they thought necessary to prevent their being discharged. As long as he was personally superintending, there might be a fair show of diligence, but this * Mill's Political Economy, Sixth Edition, vol. ii. p. 342.

lasted only while he himself was looking on. As soon as his back was turned, the men slackened their pace, and at the end of the day they would be found to have done barely two-thirds of what might fairly have been expected of them. He was not, however, disheartened by the failure of his first expedient, but went on wrestling manfully with the necessity of the case, which in due course became mother of a more promising invention. He considered that his men, having no obvious interest in common with him, had no sufficient motive for desiring to promote his views. Being paid the same whether they did more or less, they did, he observed, no more than they could help. The surest way, he inferred, of getting them to do more, would be to proportion their remuneration to the value of their exertions, and he resolved, accordingly, to distribute among such of them as should in his judgment prove themselves worthy, a portion of any increased profits that might result from their increased or improved labour. The outlines of his plan were as follows:-He announced that when the accounts were made up at the end of the year, out of the net profits which might then appear, should be taken, first, interest at five per cent. on the capital invested, and a salary of 6,000 francs for himself as superintendent and manager, and that the surplus should be divided rateably, according to the sums-total of wages or salary they had severally earned, among those, himself included, who had been selected as entitled to participate. The promise thus made was hedged round with sundry precautions. Only certain of the workpeople were admitted as participants, and the determination of the number and the selection of the individuals was reserved by M. Leclaire entirely to himself. No one either had a right to see the books without his consent. Who should be sharers, and how much, or whether anything should be shared, depended entirely on him. It would not have been surprising if a proffer so qualified and hampered had not appeared particularly tempting, and had not acted as much of a

stimulant on those to whom it was made. M. Leclaire, however, knew his men, and his men knew him too well by experience to have any fear of his deceiving or defrauding them; and they entered cordially into his arrangement, which came into operation early in 1842. Very soon afterwards the waste of time that had previously so much vexed him almost entirely ceased. His best hands redoubled their exertions, and in presence of their activity, the old idlers became ashamed to be seen lolling about with their arms folded. At the end of the year there was so considerable a surplus to divide that, of the privileged participants, there was not one who had worked as many as three hundred days, whose quota was less than 450 francs, or 14; while the utmost amount of bare wages which—at M. Leclaire's highest rates, of four francs a day in summer and three francs in winter- anyone could have earned within the same number of days, was only about 1,050 francs, or 42/. That the surplus which thus permitted their incomes to be augmented by little less than two-fifths was the creation of their increased industry, may be inferred from the satisfaction with which M. Leclaire uniformly speaks of his experiment. In 1848, he assured M. Chevalier that the increased zeal of his workpeople afforded him full compensation for his pecuniary concession to them; and in 1857, M. Villaumé reported of him that, notwithstanding the abandonment of so large a proportion of his profits, he was in the habitual receipt of a liberal revenue, thanks to the unusual diligence of his men, and to the vigilant supervision they exercised over each other. Alluding to this last point, M. Leclaire, in one of his pamphlets, intimates that he feels himself in consequence to a great extent relieved from the burthen of mastership. Of late years he has materially modified the details of his plan, retaining, however, the original principle unimpaired. Besides himself, there are two other partners in the concern-a M. Defournaux, and a Provident Society composed of all the other persons (apparently about two hundred) employed,