LABOUR AND ITS FUNDS

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 54, 5 March 1927, Page 6

LABOUR AND ITS FUNDS

INVESTED IN BUSINESS INDUSTRIAL ARMISTICE BRINGS INDUSTEIAL OWNERSHIP. The Eight Hon. William Graham, LL.B., M.P., the well-known Labour M.P., who held the post of Financial Secretary to the Treasury in the Labour Government, writing in " Foreign Affairs," calls special attention to the investments in business enterprises of the American vrado unions, who have utilised their funds in this way, and have abandoned a strike policy. Mr. Graham says:— "Some years ago the leaders of the American Federation of Labour called attention to the enormous waste of reserve funds and energy in strikes designed to secure higher wages, and in. fresh stoppages "to resist reduction in wages; this policy, said one of them, has run its course. They concluded that much better results could be obtained by a policy which they regarded as more in keeping with changes whick had taken place in the structure of American industry.

"The five years' industrial armistice which was then suggested did not mean no.strike. It sought rather to restrict unavoidable conflict to larger issues Meanwhile funds were to be conservedattention directed to increased purchasing power, decent working conditions, more leisure and security of employment. But the programme embodied a new demand which overshadowed all the others—a definite place in industrial ownership and control." After detailing this development Mr Graham, referring to British trade unionism, adds:—

"In normal times, with a memborship of between five and six millions funds accumulate rapidly; wore tho membership restored to the 1920 peak of eight and a half millions (which after all, would leave seven or eight million people in normal daily employment still outside of the ranks of trade uniomsm), very large rosources would be available at the end of even five years, assuming substantial industrial' peace during that time. | "But that is not quite the experience. The unions accumulate; stoppage exhaustß the accumulation. It is often a perfectly legitimate effort to improve conditions or to defend existing standards. For the purposes of. this argument the essential point is that, jn any event, the funds disappear. "Fresh accumulation is again lost, and finally the general strike of 1926 costs the unions between £5,000 000 and £6,000,000; subsequent conditions aggravate their problems, until one of the largest is practically £1,000,000 overdrawn, collective bargaining power for a eonsidorable period ahead is greatly reduced, and at tlie end of the day, in spite of all their sacrifice and their expenditure, the railway men have probably only as much railway stock as is represented by their share of superannuation funds; the miners do not own even a part of one of tho thirteen hundred colliery undertakings, and the transport workers have nothing in capital ownership apart from such investments as have survived or exist, in general public form, in the docks and harbours which belong either to the locality or to the people as a whole. "Taking the period from the beginning of this century until the conclusion of the European War, that was very much the experience of American trade unionists; progress and improvement ia industrial conditions were certainly visible both in Britain and in tho United States; but British industrial organisation may well ask with its American counterpart whether the time is not ripe for reconsideration of.'union policy in. the use of their resources. . 'r "In other words, has individualist Amcnea (we must not forget that much of the trust operation is not strictly individualist at all) anything to teach (iroat Britain in its undeniable emphasis of the importance of control? Fewwould dare to answer that question in. tha negative. "To many the chief trageay of the summer and autumn, of 1926 has been the economic helplessness of the Miners' Moderation. A million men and thoir dependants, whoso courage and sacrifice no just mind disputes; years and years of coal production enriching private capital and building up the industrial progress of the State; and at tho end virtual bankruptcy, aud.au appeal to the wide world for charity. The facts are cruel; but let us face them. "No place in control; not the ownership of one colliery. y e t at the more cost of the general strike to the unions they could have had at all events £6,----000,000 worth of industrial stock, with' the corresponding part in control- and it is worth recalling that, if the coal stoppage has cost the country in loss about £300,000,000, the mines could have been purchased for approximately that sum. **■ ■■ j.

Conservative members of the House of Commons, in urging us to look to American practice, say they would encourage in Britain a property-owning democracy." By that they mean apparently great masses of small proprietors of capital. Vigorous thrift would give us that under any system, and not least under Socialist public ownershipbut the world tendency to combination' makes the larger holding inevitable, individual trade unionists cannot' appropriately face.it. The trade unions with accumulated resources can. • "Nor is this policy inconsistent with the u-.ulonymg public ownership of British labour. Increasingly the faith is in public corporation, which Mr Keynes would probably call something between, the individual- and the State If a consolidated trade unionism were also the holder of industrial stock, it would be ready for its place in control, in the public interest; and no appreciable difficulty would arise in adjusting vestment- rCIUI'U n°n **" a^reSate i»