1.AND & WATER 
Shop Stewards 
By Claude D. Farmer 
January lo,. 19; S 
WHAT may he termed the " problem of the Shop 
Steward " is a feature of industrial unrest 
which has lately figured largely in the public 
eye. The comprehensive strike which for a 
briot peri(Kl during last summer paralysed the. munitions 
industry afforded evidence of the power which this class of 
worker can wield. 
The institution of the shoj) steward sysleni, though of 
recent date in the history of the Trade Union movement, is 
not an outcome of war conditions. The practit e of electing 
from among the people employed at a factpry a chosen few 
who shall personally watch over the conditions of work inci- 
dental and pecuHar to their own workshops has, in fact, 
bt^en in force for several years. The leading officials of the 
rnions are naturally unable to attend to all the minor 
grievances and evils arising in each factory from which their 
members are recruited. Local or distriet officials are generall\- 
at a similar disadvantage in this respect, especially when the 
members of the I'nion are scattered among a large number 
of works. In cases therefore of kxalities in which there 
were many firms employing the same denomination of work- 
jieople, it was natural that Labour representatives should 
be appointed from among the men working for these lirms. 
Officials so created complied with the principle which obtains 
as a general rule in Labour organisations, that the official 
must be, or nnist have been, a craftsman at the trade in 
which the I'nion interests itself. 
The election of welfare guardians from among 4he work- 
people has its chief merit in the fact that only those who 
serve as manual workers in the factory or millcan be fully 
alive to the needs of their class. This truth is self-evident. 
The managing staffs of workshops arc often unconsciouslv, 
sometimes even wilfully, blind to matters petty in therii- 
sehes, but irksome to those whose lot it is to be daily con- 
strained to work under such conditions. The shop steward 
lias^rown up, hitherto unconstitutionally, as a unit in the 
far-reaching organisation whereby the interests of the em- 
plovers of the indixidual factory are represented to the govern- 
ing body of the Trade Union in cases where satisfaction cannot 
. )>e obtained in discussion with the employer. Only the 
I'nion-man comes directly within the sphere of interest of the 
shop stewards,' but" it follows that benefits gained for the 
•Organised workers must generally accrue also to the non- 
Vnion employee. This qualification does not. in fact, les.sen 
the importance of this type of representation to working-class 
interests as a whole. Industrial Labour is now regarded in 
the broader aspect, at least, as an oi-ganised force, and with 
the unprecedented rate at which the membership of the 
frades Unions— notably of the Amalgamated Society of 
Engineers— is increasing, the non-Union man becomes of less 
and less moment (e.xcept to himself). 
So much, then, for the shop steward principle as an in- 
fluence to the good in safeguarding the interests of the majority. 
(Jperated honestly and honourably, it must fulfil a consider- 
able part in the steady trend ,of' industrial democracy. 
l-roni the capitalist standpoint it must be admitted that 
little as was the authority possessed by the employer in liis 
own works as late in history as 1914, the existence of the shop 
steward element, now officially recognised in industry, has 
practically wrested from him such shreds of despotism" as he 
could displa\-. Tor what is the effect upon the woiks 
manager's position of having in his employment men recognised 
by agreement as endowed \\ith power to enforce such demands 
as their sense of right, and. in extreme cases, their personal 
whim may inspire ? Simply this, that, short of a decision 
favourable to him by a court of arbitration, he is compelled 
to concede any claims made upon him. The alternativ(> 
consequence is a strike, or, what amounts to the same thing 
as regards production, a lock-out. This state of affairs was, 
before the war, already arising by reason of the despotic power' 
if such it may be called, of the'Trades Unions. It was only 
augmented and accelerated by the presence of shop stewards 
in sc\eral large works. I<'or^the shop steward antl the Trade 
I'nion are not, in principle at least, opposing parties in 
Socialism: in object, they are one and the same, and it is 
only as a n'sult of certain features of war legislation that 
they ha\-e appeared to be rival elements. 
It may ,be urgid that th(> employer was even more of an 
autocrat than was desirable in the eyes of the demagogue, and 
therefore, to say that his foothold in his own property has 
been cut from beneath his feet is all to the good. Be that 
as it may, it is now widely realised that after the war the old 
order in iadustr\- \nll not lie tolerated by tin; people. And 
since Democracy is. the battle-cry of the Allied cause, it 
would be perfidy were we to thwart at home and during 
the work of reconstruction the realisation of that ideal which 
figures s<i prominently in the statements of our war aims.. 
DiscipHne, or the obedience to an established order, thbre 
must be in industry as in every phase of public and private life. 
Just as the old limitations to industrial progress and pros- 
perity, the re.-^ult of so many of tho.se fallacies with \nTiich 
Labour has become imbued, must be swept away, so tlicrc 
must be concessions on the part of Capital. The employer 
must acquire a broader sympathy with the just needs ut 
working-men and women, thereby showing that order and 
efficiency in the business contribute to the prosperity of all 
concerned in it. 
It is difficult, however, to be very sanguine as to the in- 
dustrial future after the war. Capital and Labour arc still, 
for the most part, at daggers drawn e.\en though a super- 
ficial harmony has arisen out of the common call of patriotism. 
The restraints of the Munitions Act have s?rved to foment 
hostility between the two sides : the repeal of the more irksome 
of the clauses has come late in the day. The Trades Unions 
have beei'i depri\-ed of all power of militant agitation. Where 
there have seemed to be flagrant instances of the exploitation 
of labour, the resulting strikes ha\e been brought about by 
the workers themselves or through the medium of the shoi^ 
stewards acting j)erforce independently of their official 
organisations. On the other hand, the issue of almost ev-ery 
labour disputi' during the war has been a surrender on the 
})art of the Government, as controllers of the munitions 
t'stablishments, to the workers '{demands. Such a procedure, 
howe\Tr reprehensible in some respects, has at least kept 
the wheels of industry in steady motion, and has, moreover, 
been the only fair course jwssible. in view of the uncurbed 
fall in the buying-power of money. 
\\'hen the war is o\er and the much-\"aunted schemes for 
reconstruction come to the test, this method of oiling tjic 
labour machine will not be economically possible. Of the 
financial dangers of such .1 practice, even under the conditions 
of the moment, one has gra\-e fears : when the har\est of war 
has been reaped and the fruits of — let us hope — victory- 
garnered, we shall not be able to sow the seeds of the new life 
at the cost of an unlimited and ever-increasing wage-bill. 
How then are we to ensure a reasonable stability in industry 
such as shall create a contented public and. at the same time, . 
preserve the capital credit of the country without which 
economic progress is impossible ? 
The greater part of the schemes afoot deal with questions 
of securing to labour a more satisfying share m the fruits of 
commerce. It is now, in fact, acknowledged that the pro- 
ducer must receive, whetlicr by a system of profit-sharing or 
by a form of wage-bonus, appreciable recompense for his 
part in achancing the output of the factory. 
Such, briefl3% is the impUwl moti\e of the Whitley rejwrt. 
The recommendations of this committee have been" adopted 
by the War Cabinet as a basis for post-war reconstruction , 
and already, as described in the Contemporarv Review, they 
lia\-e been instituted in the form of the Painters' and Deco- 
lators' Joint Council. A similar system of joint management 
by employers and workers' representatives is in force in the 
textile trades. It is early days to venture an opinion upon 
so new a principle as co-operation where before were niistnist 
and antagonism, but surely this scheme, c(miplying as it docs ' 
w itJi one (jf labour's strongest aspirations — the desire to call 
its soul its own — can meet only with opposition in this quarter 
if at all. on points of detail. " ^^ 
For there is nothing more essential to any policy of recon- 
struction than the inclusion of the \yorkman's opiiiion in the , 
councils of the directors of industry'-. It must be admitted 
tliat questions of purely commercial policy such as tendering ■ 
for contracts or considerations of extension of plant, to 
name but two instances, are prima facie matters which, for 
the present must be left to the judgment of the commercial 
or technical expert. With the spread of education, however, 
and above all when a sane grasp of economic truths has 
supplanted the false though seducti\-e shibboleths of the 
worst type of trade agitator, the ^•iews of working-class ; 
representatives will carry weight in shaping the whole policy 
of commerce. 
For the present it is with questions of employment and ' 
wages and with the conditions of factory life that the opinion 
of the workpeople must be consulted. To this end it seems 
probable that the present position of shop stewards will 
only be modified from that of maintaining an attitude often 
liostilt: to the employer to one in which their views, while 
.-^till implying in the main a protection of their fellow-men, 
w ill come lu be \-alurd by a manager as those of an ally in 
promoting ultimately the welfare of the country at larg'- 
