BOYCOTTS AND THE LIMITING OF PRODUCTS

When free from the taint of monopoly, trade unions, as has been shown, help rather than hinder the natural forces of distribution. Collective bargaining is normal, but barring men from a field of employment is not so. Connected with this undemocratic policy are certain practices which aim to benefit some laborers at the cost of others, and thus tend to pervert the distributive process.

Restrictions on the Number of Members in a Trade Union. - If a trade union were altogether a private organization, it might properly control the number of its own members. Before it is formed all members of the craft it represents are, of course, non-union workers, and the aim of the founders is to “unionize the trade” - that is, to enlist, in the membership of the body, as large a proportion as is possible of the men already working in the subgroup which the union represents. From that time on it can fix its own standard of admission, and allow its membership to increase slowly or rapidly as its interests may seem to dictate.

How a too Narrow Policy defeats its Own End. - Very narrow restrictions, while they keep men out of the union, attract them to the trade itself. An extreme scarcity of union labor and the high pay it signifies causes the establishment of new mills or shops run altogether by non-union men. If these mills and shops are successful, the union may later admit their employees to membership; and a series of successful efforts to produce goods by the aid of unorganized labor thus interferes with the exclusive policy of unions. The number of their members grows in spite of efforts to the contrary.

Free Admission to a Trade Equivalent to Free Admission to a Union. - We may recognize as one of the principles in the case that free admission to the craft itself involves free admission to the union. When once men are successfully practicing the trade, the union is eager to include them, though it enlarges its own membership by the process.

How a Government might prevent a Monopoly of Labor. - It is entirely possible that a government might require trade unions to incorporate themselves, and might include in the charter a clause requiring the free admission of qualified members, subject only to such dues as the reasonable needs of the union might require. That is not an immediate probability, but the end in view can be attained by making membership in the trade itself practically free - which means protecting from violence the men who practice it without joining the union. This is not difficult where a mill in an isolated place is run altogether by independent labor, and it is natural that the unions should endeavor, in other ways than the crudely illegal ones, to prevent the successful running of such mills. If they run with success, their employees will have to be attracted into the unions. A measure designed to impede the running of non-union mills is the boycott. It is a measure which does not involve force and which is yet of not a little value to workers.

The Nature and Varieties of the Boycott. - A boycott is a concurrent refusal to use or handle certain articles. In its original or negative form, the boycott enjoins upon workers that they shall let certain specified articles alone. If they are completed goods, they must not buy them for consumption; and if they are raw materials, or goods in the making, they must not do any work upon them or upon any product into which they enter. They may thus boycott the mantels of a dwelling house and refuse to put them in position, or, in case they have been put in position by other workmen, they may, as an extreme measure, refuse to do further work on the house until they are taken out. A producers’ boycott, such as this, falls in quite a different category from the direct consumers’ boycott, or the refusal to use a completed article. When a raw material is put under the ban, workers strike if an employer insists on using it. If the cause of the boycott is some disagreement between the maker of the raw material and his workmen, the measure amounts to the threat of a sympathetic strike in aid of the aggrieved workers. If the cause is the fact that the materials were made in a non-union shop, the men who thus made them have no grievance, but the union in the trade to which these men belong has one. It consists in the mere fact that the non-union men are working at the trade at all and that their employer is finding a market for their product. Workers in other trades are called on to aid this union by a sympathetic strike, either threatened or actually put into effect. Such a boycott as this may therefore be described as amounting to a potential or actual sympathetic strike somewhat strategically planned. If the strike actually comes, it may assist the men in whose cause it is undertaken; and the principles which govern such a boycott are those which govern strikes of the sympathetic kind.

Direct Consumers’ Boycotts economically Legitimate. - The other type of boycott is a concurrent refusal to buy and use certain consumers’ goods. Legally it has been treated as a conspiracy to injure a business, but the prohibition has lost its effectiveness, as legal requirements generally do when they are not in harmony with economic principles. Of late there has been little disposition to enforce the law against boycotting, and none whatever to enforce the law when the boycott carries its point by taking a positive instead of a negative form. The trade-label movement enjoins on men to bestow their patronage altogether on employers included within a certain list, and this involves withdrawing it from others; but the terms of the actual agreement between the workers involve the direct bestowing of a benefit and only inferentially the inflicting of an injury. The men do not, in terms, conspire to injure a particular person’s business, but do band themselves together to help certain other persons’ business. Economic theory has little use for this technical distinction. It is favorable rather than otherwise to every sort of direct consumers’ boycott, and is particularly favorable to the trade-label movement. This movement may powerfully assist workers in obtaining normal rates of pay, and it will not help them to get much more.

The Ground of the Legitimacy of the Boycott. - An individual has a right to bestow his patronage where he pleases, and it is essential to the action of economic law that he should freely use this right. The whole fabric of economic society, the action of demand and supply, the laws of price, wages, etc., rest on this basis. Modern conditions require that large bodies of individuals should be able concurrently to exercise a similar right, - that organized labor should bestow its collective patronage where it wishes. This can be done, of course, only by controlling individual members, for the trade union does not buy consumers’ goods collectively. If it can thus control its members, it can use in promoting its cause the extensive patronage at its disposal.

Unfavorable Features of the Indirect Boycott. - The boycott we have thus far had in view is a direct confining of union laborers’ patronage to union-made goods. Why this is a thing to be encouraged we shall presently see. What we have said in favor of it does not apply to boycotting merchants on all their traffic because they deal in certain goods. If a brand of soap is proscribed, the workers are justified in concurrently refusing to use that variety; but it is not equally legitimate to prevent a merchant, whose function it is to serve the public, from selling this soap to the customers who want it. To refuse to buy anything whatsoever from a merchant because he keeps in his stock a prohibited article, and sells it to a different set of customers, is interfering, in an unwarranted way, with the freedom of the merchant and of the other customers. Indirect consumers’ boycotts have little to commend them, but those of the direct kind have very much.

The Merits of the Trade-label Movement. - This appears most clearly in connection with the trade-label movement. As a result of this movement union laborers will, as is hoped, buy only union-made goods. The existence of such a movement in itself implies that there are goods of the same sort to be had which are not made by union labor. The shop that is run by the aid of independent labor is the cause of the existence of the union label. If all the labor in a group were organized, the label would have no significance. At present the trade unions offer to an employer a certain amount of patronage as a return for limiting himself to union men, and so long as the cost of making his goods is not much increased, the inducement may be sufficient to make him do it.

The Movement as affected by Extravagant Demands on Employers. - Unduly high wages mean, of course, unduly high prices. Without here taking account of the “ca’-canny” policy, which aims to make labor inefficient, extravagant wages for efficient labor increase the cost of goods. This opens the way, as we have seen, for the free shop and the labor which is willing to sell its product at a cheaper rate. If union labor then firmly resolves to buy only the goods with the label, it proposes a heroic measure of self-taxation.

Trade Labels and the Quality of Goods. - The experience of the trade-label movement thus far has been, that in some instances the label vouches for prices which are high, if quality be considered, or for a quality which is poor if the prices are the current ones. Instead of telling the purchaser that the shoes, hats, cigars, etc., which bear the label are surely the best that can be had for the money, the labels are more apt to tell him that the goods are poorer than others which can be had. In some instances this is not the case, and the union-made articles are as good and as cheap as others. When the label stands for a high price or a poor quality, the union fails to control its members and especially its members’ wives. Having the meager pay of a week to invest, the wife needs to use it where it will do the most for the family. There is so strong an inducement to buy goods which are really cheap and good that the trade-label movement fails whenever loyalty to it means very much of self-taxation.

The Object Lesson of the Consumers’ Boycott. - Organized labor gives itself a costly and impressive object lesson when it tries to force all men of its class to buy the dearer of two similar articles. What this shows is that the demands of unions must be limited, and that for the highest success they must be so limited that there shall be no decisive advantage given to an employer who has a non-union shop. A marked difference in costs of production will cause the free shop to grow and the union shop to shrink. A certain moderate difference in wages there may be, provided always that the union labor is highly efficient; but more than such a difference there cannot safely be. If the trade-label movement should be generally successful, that fact would prove that the demands of trade unions were kept within reasonable limits.

The Policy of Restricting the Product of Labor. - It is a part of the policy of trade unions to limit the intensity of labor. The term “ca’-canny” means working at an easy-going pace, which is one of the methods adopted in order to make work for an excessive number of men. For some of this the motive is to avoid an undue strain on the workers. If the employer selects “pacemakers,” who have exceptional ability and endurance, and tries to bring other laborers to their standard, then the rule of the trade union, which forbids doing more than a certain amount of work in a day, becomes a remedy for a real evil - the excessive nervous wear of too strenuous labor. This, however, by no means proves that the policy as carried out is a good one. Beyond the relief that comes when undue speeding of machinery and driving of workers is repressed, it will be impossible to prove that in the long run there is any good whatsoever in it, and the evil in it is obvious and deplorable.

"Making Work” as related to Technical Progress. - The policy reverses the effects of progress. That which has caused the return to labor to grow steadily larger is labor saving or product multiplying, and labor making and product reducing are the antithesis of this. Enlarging the product of labor has caused the standard of pay to go steadily upward and the actual rate to follow it; and the prospect of a future and perpetual rise in the laborers’ standard of living depends almost entirely on a continuance of this product-multiplying process. A single man maintaining himself in isolation would gain by everything that made his efforts fruitful, and society, as a whole, is like such an isolated man. It gains by means of every effective tool that is devised and by every bit of added efficiency in the hands that wield it.

Reversing the Effect of Progress. - It follows that undoing such an improvement and going back to earlier and less productive methods would reverse the effect of the improvement, which is higher pay for all; it is restoring the condition in which the product of labor and its pay were lower. The “ca’-canny” policy - the arbitrary limiting of what a man is allowed to do - has this effect. It aims to secure a reduction of output, not by enforcing the use of inferior tools, but by enforcing the inferior use of the customary tools. The effect, in the long run, is, and must be, to take something out of the laborers’ pockets.

The Effect of the Work-making Policy under a Regime of Strong Trade Unions. - It is, of course, only a strong trade union that can enforce such a policy as this. Making one’s own work worth but little offers a large inducement to an employer to hire some one else if he can. Within limits, the powerful union may prevent him from doing this, and if for the time being society is patient and tolerant of anarchy, - if it allows men who are willing to work well in a given field to be forcibly excluded from it by men who are determined to work ill, - the policy may be carried to disastrous lengths.

How Static Law thwarts the Work-making Policy. - Even strong unions, as we have seen, succeed in maintaining only a limited difference of pay between their trade and others. The effort to maintain an excessive premium on labor of any kind defeats itself by inducing free labor to break over the barrier that is erected against it. The same thing happens when we reduce the productive power of organized labor. If, at a time when the premium that union labor bears above the non-union kind is at a maximum, the policy of restricting products is introduced, it so increases the inducement to depend on an independent working force that there is no resisting it. The palisade which union labor has built about its field gives way, and other labor comes freely in. If the ca’-canny policy makes it necessary to pay ten men for doing five men’s work, the union itself will have to give place to the independent men. No single good word can be said for the ultimate effect of the policy as carried beyond the moderate limit required by hygiene. Up to the point at which it will avert undue pressure upon workers, stop disastrous driving and the early disabling of men, the effect is so good as amply to justify the reduction of product and pay which the policy occasions. Beyond that there is nothing whatever to be said for it, and if it shall become a general and settled policy of trade unions, it will be a clog upon progress and mean a permanent loss for every class of laborers.

Notwithstanding all this, it must be true that some motive which can appeal to reasonable beings impels workers to this policy. No plan of action, as general as this, can be sustained unless some one, at least transiently, gains by it. Workers have a tremendous stake in the success of any plan of action they adopt, and they have every motive for coming to a right conclusion concerning it. They are in the way of getting object lessons from every mistaken policy, as its pernicious effects become apparent, even though some local and transient good effects also become evident. It is not difficult to see what it has been that has appealed to so many laborers and induced them voluntarily to reduce the value of their labor.

A Common Argument against Product Restricting. - What is commonly said of the policy is that it is based on the idea that there is a definite amount of work of each kind to be done, and that if a man does half as much as he could do, twice as many men will be employed to do the whole amount. Nobody who thinks at all actually believes that the amount of work of a given kind is fixed, no matter how much is charged for it. If workers on buildings charged from five to ten dollars a day, there would be fewer houses erected than would be erected if they charged three dollars; and the same thing is true everywhere. The amount of labor to be done in any field of employment varies constantly with changes of cost, and making labor more costly in a particular department reduces the amount of its product that can be sold.

A trade union often finds that there are too many workers in its field to be constantly employed at the rate of pay it establishes. The result is partially idle labor; the men work intermittently, and though the high wages they get for a part of their time may compensate them for idle days or weeks, the idleness which is the effect of the oversupply is inevitable.

A given number of workers in the group which makes A’’’ when the wages are three dollars a day becomes an excessive number when the wages are five, and even if the high wages do not attract men from without and make the absolute number of workers greater than before, employment is not constant. The ca’-canny policy is a transient remedy for this. It is an effort to avoid the necessity for partial idleness and for the transferring of laborers to other occupations. All the labor may, for a time, remain in its present field if it will afflict itself with a partial paralysis. For a while the demand for the product of the labor will be sufficient to give more constant employment. Time is required for the full effect of the product-limiting policy to show itself in a falling off of the consumption of the goods whose cost is thus increased. When it comes the evil effect of the policy will appear. If a union were strong enough to keep a monopoly of its field, in spite of the greater efficiency of laborers that are free to work in a normal way, it would be strong enough to maintain much higher pay for its own members if it limited the number of them and encouraged them to work efficiently. The strongest conceivable union must lose by substituting the plan of paralyzing labor for that of restricting the number of laborers. The union may choose to take the benefit of its monopolistic power by keeping an unnecessarily large number of men in constant employment, rather than by getting high wages for efficient work; but in that case any union but one the strength of which is maintained in some unnatural way is likely to come to grief by the great preference it creates for non-union labor. The independent shop will get the better men at the lower rate of wages, and its products will occupy the market. The popularity of the plan of work making is the effect of looking for benefits which are transient rather than permanent. If it were carried in many trades as far as it already is in some, it would probably neutralize, even for those who resort to it, much of the benefit of organization, and work still greater injury to others.

The Eight-hour Movement as a Work-making Policy. - The effort to reduce the hours of labor to eight per day has in it so much that is altogether beneficent that it is not to be put in the same category with the ca’-canny plan of working. And yet one leading argument in favor of this reducing of the number of hours of work is identical with that by which a reduction of the amount accomplished in an hour is defended. The purpose is to make work and secure the employment of more workers. What has been said of the other mode of work making applies here. Reducing the length of the working day cuts down the product that workers create and the amount that they get. In the main the loss of product is probably offset by the gain in rest and enjoyment; but the loss of product, taken by itself alone, is an evil, and nothing can make it otherwise. If the hours were further reduced, the loss would be more apparent and the gain from rest and leisure would be less.

One Sound Argument in Favor of the Greater Productivity of the Eight-hour Day. - There is one reason why the eight-hour day may in a series of generations prove more permanently productive than a longer one. It may preserve the laborers’ physical vigor and enable them to keep their employment to a later period in life. The dead line of sixty might be obliterated.

If what we wanted were to get the utmost we could out of a man in a single day, we should do it by making him work for twenty-four hours; after that, for another twenty-four hours, he would be worth very little. If we expected to make him work for a week, we should probably shorten the day to eighteen hours. If we expected to employ him for a month and then to throw him aside, we might possibly get a maximum product by making him work fourteen hours. If we wanted him for a year only, possibly a day of twelve hours would insure the utmost he could do. In a decade he could do more in a ten-hour day, and in a working lifetime he could probably do more in eight. Forty or fifty years of continuous work would tell less on his powers and on the amount and quality of his product.

The Connection between the Restriction of Products and the Trade-label Movement. - Very important is the bearing of these facts concerning the restriction of laborers’ products and the trade-label movement. If that movement should become more general and effective, it would bring home to all who should take part in it the effects of the labor-paralyzing policy. The faithful trade unionist would find himself paying a full share of the bill which that policy entails on the public. Ordinary customers can avoid the product whose cost is enhanced by the trade-union rules; but the unionist must take it and must make himself and his class the chief subjects of the tax which enhanced prices impose. It may well be that the pernicious quality of the general work-making policy will become so evident in any case that it will be abandoned; and this would be made sure by a rule that should actually make union labor the chief purchaser of union goods. Ca’-canny would then mean self-taxation on a scale that no arguments could make popular.