Hobsbawm - Artisan or Labour Aristocrat

Artisan or Labour Aristocrat? Author(s): E. J. Hobsbawm Source: The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol. 37, No.
3 (Aug., 1984), pp. 355-372 Published by: Wiley on behalf of the Economic History Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2597286 . Accessed: 22/01/2014 16:20
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Artisan
or
Labour
Aristocrat?*
by E. J. HOBSBAWM lecture which I have the honour of giving today is not intended as a continuation of the debate on the labour aristocracy, which has been gathering pace and impetus in recent years.1 In this sense the question-mark at the end of the title is deceptive: there will be no direct answer to the question whether the concept of a labour aristocracy is useful, what this stratum consisted of, or how it developed. Of course, such an answer is unnecessary for the group on which I want to concentrate today, namely the skilled workers usually known in the nineteenth century as "artisans", since as a group they, or certainly their organized sector, would certainly have considered themselves a privileged stratum or aristocracy of labour. Conversely, insofar as there was a model of the "labour aristocrat" in the minds of the many who used this term, or equivalent terms, in the nineteenth century, it was almost certainly that of the skilled artisan, separated by an abyss from the "labourer". Whatever may have been the case elsewhere, in the world of the tradesman "according to workshop etiquette-and nowhere is professional etiquette more sternly insisted upon than among the handicrafts-all who are not mechanics are labourers."2 However, while I believe that my observations have some bearing on the debate about a labour aristocracy, my argument does not depend on any particular position in that debate. It is essentially an argument about the fortunes and transformations of the skilled manual wage-worker in the first industrial nation. His characteristics, values, interests and, indeed, protective devices, had their roots deep in the pre-industrial past of the "crafts" which provided the model even for skilled trades which could not have existed before the industrial revolution, such as the Journeymen Steam-Engine Makers. Skilled labour continued to bear the marks of this past until well into the twentieth century; in some respects it survived strongly until World War II. It is now generally accepted that the British industrial economy in its prime relied extensively, and often fundamentally, on skilled hand-labour with or without the aid of powered machinery. It did so for reasons of technology, insofar as manual skill could not yet be dispensed with; for reasons of productive organization, because skilled labour supplemented and partly replaced design, technological expertise, and management; and, more fundamentally, for reasons of business rationality. So long as it did not stand in the way of making satisfactoryprofits, the heavy costs of replacing it, or incidental to its replacement, did not seem
* A revisedversionof the TawneyMemorial Lecture, ig83. 1 Muchof this lectureis basedon the research, stilllargely unpublished in print,of a number of younger labourhistorians.Amongthem readersfamiliar with the field will recognize my debt to Nina Fishman, GarethStedmanJones, WayneLewchuk,Keith McLelland,Joe Melling,AlastairReid, RichardPrice and Jonathan Zeitlin. 2 Anon., WorkingMen and Womenby a Working Man (i879), p. 62.
The
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to be justifiedby the prospectsof the profits to be made without it. This applied not only to special cases like Fleet Street. Sir Andrew Noble of Armstrong's argued, no doubt correctly,that there was more money to be made from buildingone river boat than from producing6,ooo cars.3Unlike the USA, skilled manual labour was not in short supply. And the major incentive to replaceit, namely the mass productionof standardized goods, wasunusually weakor patchyin the Britishhomemarketuntilthe lastdecades of the century,while the commanding positionof Britishgoods on the world market,or more preciselyin the marketsof what today would be called the "thirdworld"and the white empire,kept old methodsof productionviable. Moreover,it may be suggestedthat, in termsof moneywages, Britishskilled labourwas probablynot expensive. It may well have chargedless than the trafficcould have borne. The Britishskilled workerthus occupieda crucialpositionof considerable strength,and the longerhe occupiedand exploitedit, the more troublesome and expensive it would be to dislodge him. Skill could indeed have been decisivebattles toppled. Skilledmen were defeatedin pitchedand apparently
between the early i83os and the early i85os-even the powerful engineers. Yet what followed in the i85os and i86os was, in most industries, a tacit
and accommodations system of arrangements between mastersand skilled labour which satisfied both sides. The position of the skilled men was reinforcedto such an extent that the much more systematiclater attemptto displacethem by a new and moresophisticated mechanization and by "scientific management"also largely failed. The nineteenth-century artisanwas indeed doomed. Except on some small if crucial patches of the industrial of the blackeconomy,he-for even in our economy,and in the undergrowth days it is very rarelya she-no longer counts for much. But then, neither does British industry. The historyof the artisanis thus a dramain five acts: the first sets him in his pre-industrial heritage, the second deals with his strugglesin the early industrialperiod, the thirdwith his mid-Victorian glories,the fourthwith his successfulresistanceto renewedattack.The last sees his gradualbut far from smooth decline and fall since the end of the first post-warboom. I I shallbegin with a simpleobservation. In most European the word languages is automatically artisan or its equivalent,used withoutqualification, takento mean somethinglike an independentcraftsman or smallmaster,or someone Britain whohopesto becomeone. In nineteenth-century it is equallyautomaticor indeed sometimesinitially(as ally taken to referto a skilled wage-worker, in Gaskell'sArtisansand Machinery) to any wage-worker.In short, artisan as nowhereelse. traditionsand valuesin this countrybecameproletarianized, The term artisanitself is perhapsmisleading.It belongslargelyto the world
3 J. Zeitlin, 'The LabourStrategies of BritishEngineering Employers, i890-I922' in H. C. Gospeland C. Littler, eds. ManagementStrategyand IndustrialRelations:An Historicaland Comparative Survey (i983).
is to p. My reference 23 Marchi98i.
20
of the originalpaperat the SSRCConference on Businessand LabourHistory,
ARTISAN
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ARISTOCRAT?
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of nineteenth-century social and political discourse, probably entering the public vocabulary in the course of the ill-fated campaigns, almost the last collective endeavours of both craft masters and journeyman-the latter already vastly predominating-for putting life back into the Elizabethan labour code at the end of the Napoleonic wars. The term seems rarely to be used for social description or classification in the eighteenth century. The actual word almost universally used in working class circles is "tradesman". While in nineteenthcentury middle-class usage it came to mean almost without exception a, generally small, retailer (a man who was "in trade"), in working-class usage it retained, and perhaps among older men still retains, the ancient craft usage of the man who "has a trade": here language and the differentiation of the estate of artificers into those who make and those who sell, go together. We may note in passing that while "being in trade" develops connotations of contempt or deference, "having a trade", at least for those who have it or compare themselves to its possessors, maintains its connotations of selfsatisfaction and pride. As the word "master" shows an analogous development, becoming in nineteenth-century usage a synonym for "employer", so conversely "journeyman" becomes synonymous with a wage-working tradesman. Indeed, in the dawn of industrialization it was sometimes used for any wage-worker. Trade societies and trade unions, in which the name of the old artisanate survives, are now not only bodies of traditional crafts like hatters or brushmakers, but unprecedented ones like journeymen steam-engine makers and boilermakers. While unions gradually dropped the word "journeyman" from their titles, the word itself continued as a description of the skilled man, no longer in contrast to the "masters" in his trade, but rather in contrast to the apprentices whose numbers he sought to control, and especially the "labourers" or "handymen" against whom he defended his job monopoly. Nineteenthcentury class differentiation and stratification is thus deeply rooted in the vocabulary, and hence the congealed memories, of the pre-industrial craft world. What is more, the term "the trade" becomes essentially identified with the skilled workers who practise it. "The men of every trade speak of their trade among themselves as 'the trade'."4 "In connexion with labour affairs" says an early twentieth-century labour dictionary, "this term denotes either (I) a specific craft or occupation in the field of manual employment, or (2) the collective body of workers engaged at a single specific craft or occupation."5 Indeed, "the trade" may actually become a synonym for the union. Thus as late as World War II we find a cooper's apprentice, outraged by seeing a labourer doing skilled work, successfully threatening the boss to bring the matter to the attention of "the trade", if he is not told to stop.6 I do not wish to labour the linguistic point, though the question of language is significant and would repay systematic research. At all events, it is clear that not only the vocabulary and institutions of pre-industrial craft organization passed over to the working class almost en bloc, but the basic Victorian
WorkingMen and Women, p. I02. Waldo R. Browne, What's What in the Labor Movement: A Dictionary of Labor Affairs and Labor Terminology (New York, I92I), p. 497. 6 Bob Gilding,The JourneymenCoopersof East London (Oxford,I971), pp. 56-7.
4
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classificatory distinction within the working classes also derived from craft tradition. It is common ground that the Victorian division of workers into either "artisans" (or some similar term such as "mechanics") and "labourers" was unrealistic, and had always been descriptively inadequate. Yet it was very generally accepted, and not only by skilled workers, as representing a real dichotomy, which caused no major classificatoryproblems until the expansion of groups which could not be realistically fitted into either pigeon-hole, or neglected, and who, from the i89os, came to be known vaguely as "semiskilled".7 From the masters' point of view it represented the difference between all other labour and skilled labour, i.e. "all such as requires a long period of service, whether under a definite contract or agreement, and in a single firm, or with no such agreement, the learner moving about from firm to firm."8 This was also essentially the men's definition.9 From the men's point of view it represented the qualitativesuperiority of the skill so learned-the professionalism of craftsmanship-and simultaneously of its status and rewards. The apprenticed journeyman was the ideal type of labour aristocrat, not only because his work called for skill and judgement, but because a "trade" provided a formal, ideally an institutionalized, line of demarcation separating the privileged from the unprivileged. It did not much matter that formal apprenticeship was, almost certainly, not the most important gateway to many trades. George Howell estimated in i877 that less than io per cent of union members were properly apprenticed.10 They included as firm a pillar of the crafts as Robert Applegarth, secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners [ASCJ]. The basic fact was that good fitters-even good carpenters and bricklayers, who were much more vulnerable to interloping-were not made in a day or a month. So long as genuine skill was indispensable, artisans-the kind who would never be out of a job if jobs were going-were less insecure than has been sometimes suggested. What they had to protect themselves against was not so much labourers or even handymen who could immediately take over their jobs, but a long-term oversupply of trained tradesmen-and of course the insecurity of both trade cycle and life cycle. In many trades-e.g. in engineering-the risk of an uncontrolled generation of a reserve army of tradesmen was small, though in some of the building trades, with their large influx of countrytrained men, it was significant. Such, then, were the artisans we are dealing with. I may note in passing that they are not to be confused with the so-called "intelligent artisan" of the mid-Victorian debates on parliamentary reform, or of Thomas Wright, that "hero of a thousand footnotes", to quote Alastair Reid. Artisans were indeed apt to be more adequately schooled than most non-artisans and, as the history of most labour movements shows, far more apt than the rest to occupy responsible and leading positions. Even in the I950S skilled workers provided
Prevailing in London (I914), 7N. B. Dearle, Industrial Training:With Special Referenceto the Conditions Pp.
Ibid. p. 3I9 RoyalCommission of J. Cronin,Secretary onLabour (P.P.i892 XXXVI/i) GroupA, Q. i6064. Evidence of the Associated Millmenof Scotland. 10GeorgeHowell, 'TradeUnions, Apprentices and TechnicalEducation',Contemporary Reviewxxx
8
3I-2.
(i877),
p. 854.
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OR LABOUR
ARISTOCRAT?
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the same proportion of full-time union officials-about 95 per cent-in former craft unions with a heavy admixture of the semi-skilled, as in unions still described as skilled unions.11 Yet, as Thomas Wright correctly observed, the reading artisans with intellectual interests-at least in England-were a minority among their mates whose tastes did not differ notably from the rest of the proletariat.12 An analysis of a sample of what might be considered "intelligent artisans" by definition confirms the point. In the first three years' intake of the London Mechanics' Institution such groups as, say, hatters, coopers, and shipwrights were grossly under-represented, though they would scarcely have considered themselves less skilled, or lower in the artisanal pecking-order than, say, the somewhat over-represented wood-working trades.13 The truth, confirmed by later attendance statistics at evening schools14 is that some trades found it professionally more useful to make written calculations and use or produce designs than others, and therefore tended to be more studious. We may therefore safely leave the "intelligent artisan" to one side. What did they derive from their pre-industrial craft heritage? Academics should have no difficulty in grasping the assumptions behind the thinking and action of corporate crafts, since we largely continue to act upon those assumptions ourselves. A craft consisted of all those who had acquired the peculiar skills of a more or less difficult trade, by means of a specific process of education, completed by tests and assessments guaranteeing adequate knowledge and performance of the trade. In return such persons expected the right to conduct their trade and to make what they considered a decent living corresponding to its value to society and to their social status. It is quite easy to translate this last requirement into the terms of market economics, and indeed much of what the crafts did served to restrict entry to the trade, to exclude competition by outsiders (possessing their own trade or not) and to restrict output and labour supply in such a manner as to keep the average income at the required level. In our days market economics have indeed taken over, but the basic assumptions of crafts had only a peripheral relation to the discourse of business schools. They spoke the ancient language of a properly structured social order, or, in E. P. Thompson's terms, a "moral economy": The obvious intentionof our ancestorsin enactingthe Statute(of Artificers)... was to produce a competent number and perpetualsuccessionof masters and the of practical journeymen, experience,to promote,secureand renderpermanent by theirability honestly wrought prosperityof the nationalarts and manufactures, education. and talents[my emphasis],inculcatedby a mechanical
And this in turn meant that they had "an unquestionable right . . . [to] the
quiet and exclusive enjoyment of their several and respective arts and trades That labour which the law has already conferred upon them as a property."'15
12
H. A. Clegg, A. J. Killick, Rex Adams,TradeUnionOfficers (Oxford,i96i), p. 50. Artisans and Aristocrats The Essaysof ThomasWright'in Cf. Alastair of Labour: Reid, 'Intelligent
Jay Winter, ed. The WorkingClass in ModernBritishHistory:Essays in Honourof HenryPelling (Cambridge,

i983), pp. I75-6.
13 The Registers are preserved in BirkbeckCollege,University of the Institution of London,to which I am obligedfor access. 14 N. B. Dearle, Industrial Training, pp. 566-7. 15 'Reportof the Committee on the Petitionof the Watchmakers, i8I7', cited in A. E. Bland,P. A. Brown,R. H. Tawney,eds. English EconomicHistory: Select Documents(I914), pp. 588-go.
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was the working man's "property" and to be treated as such, was, of course, a commonplace of contemporary radical political debate. Conversely, the duty to work properly, was assumed and accepted: the London Operative Tinplate Workers who left their job, were obliged to return to complete any unfinished work, or to pay for it to be completed, on pain of fine by their Society.16 In short, the trade was not so much a way of making money, but rather the income it provided was the recognition by society and its constituted authorities of the value of decent work decently done by bodies of respectable men properly skilled in the tasks which society needed. The ideal, and indeed the expected, situation was one in which the authorities left or conferred these rights on the body of the trade, but in which the trade collectively ensured the best ways in which they were carried out and safeguarded. In the classical, or if you prefer the ideal-typical, corporate crafts of the pre-industrial period, this regulation and safeguarding was essentially in the hands of the craft masters, whose enterprises formed the basic units of the collectivity, as well as of its educational and reproductive system. It is clear that artisan interests represented essentially by hired workers would be formulated rather differently. It is less evident that a "trade" so identified would not be the same as a self-contained stratum of craft journeymen within a craft economy, even when organized in specific journeymen's gilds, brotherhoods or other associations. The difference between the latter type of organization and the British "trade society", which developed directly into the craft union, deserves more analysis than it has received, though some recent work has advanced it significantly. It has been suggested that such forms of collective journeyman action tended to stress "honour" and the social prestige of the journeymen outside,and often at the expense of, their economic interests, often by a sort of hypertrophy of symbolic practices such as the well-known journeymen rituals, fights and riots.17 All we need note here is that this road of journeyman development-which has no British parallel, so far as I know-could not easily lead directly into trade unionism. II The economic interests of wage-workers were clearly fundamental in British journeyman trades' organizations even before the industrial revolution. That is to say, they were designed to safeguard them against the primary life risks to manual workers, namely accident, sickness and old age, loss of time, underemployment, periodic unemployment, and competition from a labour surplus.18 Whereas the core of German or French journeyman collectivity was to be found outside the workshop-in the institutionalized period of travel, the journeymen's hostel or lodging-house where the rituals of initiation took place-the essential locus of the British apprentice's socialization into
16
A. Kidd, History of the Tin-Plate Workersand Sheet-Metal Workersand Braziers Societies (I949), p.
28.
17 Cf. Andreas Griessinger, Das symbolische und kollektivesBewusKapital der Ehre: Streikbewegungen stsein deutscher Handwerksgesellen im i8. Jahrhundert(Berlin, i98i), for an extensivediscussion. 18 Iorwerth Prothero, Artisans and Politics in Early Nineteenth-Century London:John Gast and His Times (Folkestone, I979), pp. 27-8.
ARTISAN
OR LABOUR
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waspatentlythe workplace. Therehe was "taught the waysof the journeyman both by the preceptand the exampleof his mates, that he must respectthe tradeand its writtenand unwrittenlaws, and that in any matteraffectingthe personalinterest,or privateopinion,to what tradegenerallyhe must sacrifice the trade has rightly or wrongly ruled for the generalgood."19There was thus no clear distinctionbetween the "customof the trade"as traditionor ritualizedpractice,and as the rationaleof collectiveactionof workerson the job or the sanctionof concessionswon by it. Thus some formalizedrituals could be allowedto atrophywithout weakeningthe force of the "customof the trade". The basic journeymaninstitutions, as Prothero'sArtisanPolitics shows, were the friendly benefit society, the house of call, the trampingsystemTo these which gave artisansa nation-widedimension-and apprenticeship. yet by no means researchhas rightlyinsisted we must add the unorganized, totallyinformal,work group in the shop or on the site.20 They protectedthe interestsof hired men-yet it must never be forgotten that this was seen to be "the trade",composedessentiallyof hiredmen, that is to say a specificbody of respectableand honourable men defendingtheir "craft", i.e. their right to independence,respect, and a decent livelihood which society owed them in return for the proper performance of socially essentialtasks which requiredtheir educationin skill and experience.The to the "rightto a trade"in the originalconstitutionof the ASE was compared for The qualification right belongingto the holder of a doctor'sdiploma.21 the job was identicalwith the right to exerciseit. The artisan'ssense of independencewas, of course, basedon more than a moral imperative. It was based on the justified belief that his skill was indeedon the beliefthatit wasthe onlyindispensindispensable to production; able factor of production. Hence the artisan'sobjectionto the capitalism deniedthe moraleconomy which,in the earlynineteenthcentury,increasingly which gave the tradestheir modest but respectedplace, was not so much to as such, which workingmasters,whomthey had long known,or to machinery could be seen as an extensionof hand tools, but to the capitalistseen as an and parasiticmiddleman.Masterswho belongedto the "useful unproductive as well as classes"both insofaras-to quote Hodgskin-"they are labourers andinsofaras they wereneeded"to directandsuperintend theirjourneymen" werefine: only, unfortunately, "they labour,and to distributeits produce"22 are also"-Hodgskin again-"capitalists or agents of capitalists,and in this respecttheirinterestis decidedlyopposedto the interestsof theirworkmen". Smallmastersraisedno problemat all, and indeedcouldoften be, or remain,
19ThomasWright,Some Habits of the WorkingClasses (i867), p. I02. See also the accountby F. W. of rituals Galtonin S. andB. Webb,History of Trade Unionism(i894), pp. 43I-2, and, for the importance Drinking Usages of the United Kingdom attached to the workplace, John Dunlop, Artificial and Compulsory
(7th edn. i844), passim.

20 See R. Price, Masters, Unions and Men: WorkControlin Building and the Rise of Labour (Cambridge, 1g80), ch. 2, for references. 21 "It is our duty then to exercise the samecontrolover thatin whichwe havea vestedinterest,as the by his copyright." Prefaceto the Rules physicianwho holds his diploma,or the authorwho is protected
of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, i85I, cited in J. B. Jefferys, ed. Labour'sFormative Years(I948), p. 30. 22 Cited in G. Stedman Jones, Languages of Class (Cambridge, i983), pp. I36-7.
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members of unions. The theoretical foundations of early socialism, misnamed "utopian", are to be found in this attitude. Essentially it envisaged the elimination of competition and the capitalist by means of co-operative production by artisans. Prothero has shown how artisans who began simply by trying to defend or re-establish the old "moral economy" could find themselves driven, under the pressure of the economic transformations of the early nineteenth century, to envisage a new and revolutionary way of re-establishing the moral social order as they saw it, and in so doing to become social innovators and revolutionaries. And Prothero has also, rightly, drawn attention to the fact that in this respect the evolution of the British journeyman artisans runs parallel with that of the continental, or rather French, ones.23 Both tended to become politically active as artisans and in doing so to transform themselves into the "working classes" or essential sectors of these. Yet there is a vital difference. Utopian socialism, or rather mutualism and producers' cooperation, became and long remained the core of French socialism. But in Britain, in spite of occasional surges of popularity and an attraction for journeymen cadres, cooperative socialism was always a peripheral phenomenon, on the way to oblivion even as Chartism swept the country, the first mass working-class movement, in which journeymen artisans, like all others under economic pressure, took their share. Socialism declined in the Britain of the i840s, as it rose on the continent. Whatever the reasons for this difference-and they remain to be fully explained-they will probably have to be sought partly in the political conditions of the country, but chiefly in the very advance of the British capitalist economy over the rest, which already made an economy of small commodity producers, individual or collective, somewhat implausible or economically marginal. Journeymen were workers. They lived in a world of employers. Characteristically, the only form of cooperation which proved to have genuine appeal from the start was that which sought to replace an economic sector of small independents, namely the co-op shop. III Thus the tradesman had no difficulty in coming to terms with an economy of industrial capitalism, once that economy decided to accept his modest claims to skill, respect and relative privilege, and plainly offered expanding opportunities and material improvement. And this clearly came to be the case in the i85os and i86os. Their position may be symbolized in the anniversary dinner of the Cardiff branch of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners in i867, in the Masons Arms, etc. and overthe headof the president's chairwas with evergreens nicelydecorated a design portrayingthe friendshipexisting betweenemployerand workman,by their cordiallyshakinghands. This iconographic theme appears frequently at the time.24 the commerceof all nationsand in the corner In the background was represented
23
andRevolution pp. 337-8. For a clearstatement, see WilliamH. SewellJr., Work Prothero, Artisans,
p. 283.
in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to i848 (Cambridge, i980),
24
See the description I974). Book(Gateshead, of bannersin W. A. Moyes, TheBanner
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etc. This designborethe followinginscription: werebusts of ancientphilosophers and "theprosperity "Successto honourable competition" andwealthof nationsare due to science, industryand a just balanceof all interests."25 It would be an error to suppose that such sentiments were incompatible with going on strike. It may be worth noting, as Richard Price reminds us, that if the artisan certainly required collective organization, his collective force is normally not yet to be measured by the membership of trade unions. The general assumption, by Mayhew and others, was that "society men" represented perhaps io per cent of all but exceptional trades. Powerful bodies like the masons had perhaps I5 per cent of the trade organized in i87I, the carpenters and joiners perhaps II-I2 per cent, the plasterers under io per cent.26 The Amalgamated Engineers with perhaps 40 per cent in i86i were quite exceptional.27 Whether or when society men in unorganized trades acted as pace-makers of economic advance is today a re-opened question. At all events, in wage and hours movements there was no sharp distinction between the organized and the unorganized, inasmuch as both had the same interest in restriction against non-tradesmen. Thus, among the bricklayers of poorly organized Portsmouth, where there were no indentured apprentices and 70 per cent of the men had just "picked up" the trade, there was nevertheless no piece-work, and the advancement of labourers, once frequent, had become rare.28 In Glasgow, where the Webbs found poor relations with employers, no working rules, no limit on apprentices and far-from-dominant unions, there was no piece-work, and labourers did not "encroach".29 The truth is that craftsmanship was not only the criterion of a man's identity and selfrespect, but the guarantee of his income. The best men, said a student of unemployment in the London building trade, always get work.30 In the Amalgamated Carpenters and Joiners it was taken for granted that "the success of the society depends on the members being invariably competent workmen",31 and they were recruited accordingly, and indeed kept up to the mark. "If a man's not worth 36 shillings a week" said the ASE Monthly Record proudly, though perhaps in i9ii no longer with total sincerity, "the union has rules to deal with incompetence."32 Just so James Hopkinson had observed in the i830s: "Our shop was a strong union shop and the leading workmen in the town worked there."33 The small-arms fire with which the artisans fought the big guns of the employers derived its effectiveness from the ramparts of skill which protected it as well as from the solidarity of the marksmen. The skill, and the artisan's independence, were symbolized by the possesand joiners (hereafter ASCJ) MonthlyReport, January i868, p. 25. AmalgamatedSociety of Carpenters Price, Masters, Unions and Men, p. 62. 27 M. and J. B. Jefferys, 'The Wages, Hours and Trade Customs of the Skilled Engineer in i86I', Econ. Hist. Rev. XVII(I947), pp. 29-30; but the inclusion of members of other skilled unions would raise this percentage. 28 LSE Library, Webb Collection, Coll. EA 3I, pp. 245-9. 29 Ibid. pp. 3II-22. 30 N. B. Dearle, Problems of Unemployment in the London Building Trade (i908), p. 93. 31 ASCJ, Monthly Report, Feb. i868, p. 63. 32 Amalgamated Society of Engineers(hereafter ASE), MonthlyRecord, June i9ii, cited in M. HolbrookJones, Supremacyand Subordinationof Labour (i982), p. 68. 33 J. B. Goodman, ed. VictorianCabinetMaker: The Memoirsofjames Hopkinson, i8i9-94 (i968), p. 24.
25 26
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sion of personaltools,34 those small but vital means of productionwhich enabledhim to workanywhereat his trade.Broadhurst, the unionleaderand Lib-Lab MP, kept his mason'stools packedand readythroughouthis time of politicaleminence:they were his insurance.35 Many yearslater, in I939, when the boilermaker HarryPollittwas deposedfromhis post in the Communist Party, his motherproudlywrote: "Yourmarking-off tools are here, and I have kept them in vaseline,readyfor use at any time."36At a moremodest lost his job level, when Jess Oakroyd,in J. B. Priestley'sGoodCompanions, and went on tramp, the most importantthing he took with him was his bag of tools. The highestskillsdid not necessarily the mostexpensiveor elaborate require tool-kit, though proud tradesmen-notably in wood-working-spent heavily on tools and luxury containersas statussymbols. The ASCJin i886 limited benefitfor the loss of a tool-chest,on the groundsthat "if a membertakes a more valuablechest to work [i.e. than is necessary]he should do so at his own risk."37Tool insuranceby the union was usual among woodworkers, becausetheirpersonaltools thoughless so amongmetal-workers, presumably were ancillaryto shop equipment.38The "tool benefit" of the ASCJ was clearly intended as a major selling-pointfor the union-it insured against is indicated theft, andnot only againstfireand shipwreck-and its importance by the frequencyof branchresolutionsand notices on the subject.39 Indeed, in their first thirty years the amount of tool benefit paid per memberwas roughlycomparable to accidentbenefit, and amountedto c. 55 per cent of funeral benefit.40 Yet the value of implementswas secondaryto their symbolicimportance. London shipwrights,than whom few were more skilled, owned perhaps50 and in the i88os the union shillings'worthin i849, accordingto Mayhew,41
paid 50 per cent of replacement costs up to a maximum of ?5.42 Mayhew
estimatedcabinetmakers'tools at ?30-40, joiners'tools at up to ?30, coopers' and joiners,areratherhigherthan at ?I2. These figures,exceptfor carpenters on Labouror derivablefrom the lists those quotedin the Royal Commission of stolen tools in the carpenters' reports;and accordingto both Mayhewand
34
strike. . . it is the carryout theirthreatof a Masters' Association of Employers "Thatif the Central
.
duty of working men to .
. begin manufacturing for the public .
. .
. That inasmuch as many of our
. . . it is to be hopedthattheywill . . . communicate members havelathesandothertoolsin theirpossession whomaybe thrownout of employment of lendingsuchtoolsforthe benefitof thosepersons theirintention 23 Dec. i85I. by the Councilof ASE in TheOperative, by the masters'strike."Announcement 35 HenryBroadhurst, Bench(i90i), p. 2. Benchto theTreasury TheStoryof hisLifefromStone-mason's 36 HarryPollitt, Serving my Time(I94i edn.), p. I4. 37 ASCJr, MonthlyReport,July i886, pp. I37-8. appearto have had none (D. C. Cummings,Historyof the UnitedSocietyof 38 The Boilermakers (Newcastle,I905), pp. 36-7, 52. The ASE AnnualReports andIron& SteelShip Builders Boilermakers grants, coveringmiscellaneous for "lossof tools by fire"in an item of the accounts includedexpenditure may be inferred. fromwhich its relativeinsignificance 39 Following in the MonthlyReport werepublished branch pressure,lists of toolsstolenfrommembers from Octoberi868 on. 40 Totalbenefit Li I5s. iold.; Funeral,?3 2S. 8d.; Accident, of ASCJi860-i889 inclusive: permember ConsidandEconomically Historically of CapitalandLabour Tool, Li W4s.61d. (G. Howell, TheConflicts Britainetc. (2nd edn. i890), p. 5I9. andReviewof the TradeUnions of Great ered,beinga History Districts Chronicle Surveyof Labourand the Poor: TheMetropolitan 41 Henry Mayhew, The Morning (Horsham,i982), v, p. 225. 42 David Dougan, TheShipwrights: i882andShipwrights Association, TheHistory of theShipconstructors on Labour (P.P. i893-4, xxxiv), GroupA Q. 20,4I3, I963 (i968), pp. I9, 30. See alsoRoyalCommission
2I,398.
ARTISAN
OR LABOUR
ARISTOCRAT?
365
probability,tools were bought piecemealin a man's last years of apprenticeship, and usually second-handto begin with.43 But they symbolized Hencethe disputesabout"grinding-time". independence. Sincethetradesmen broughtto the job his skill and his tools, both must be absolutelyreadyfor action. He and only he must sharpenthem-at a weekly expensewhich was not negligible.44 Logicallythe momentfor this was at the end of the last job, andin the employer'stime, which (or moneyin lieu) was expectedto be made available.45 Even today, as Beynon shows for Ford's, tools still imply some for tradesmenas againstproductionworkers.46 independence But if personaltools symbolizedindependencefor the artisans,controlof the tools symbolized,conversely,the superiorityof management. We know that management was about to transform its plant organization, when emery wheels were taken from the shop and workerswere no longer allowed to sharpentools in theirown way and to theirown specifications, but must have this done to angles determinedby others in a special tool-room.47 And, the tool-room was to remain the last strongholdof the characteristically, craftsmanin the semi-skilled mass production engineeringworks of the twentiethcentury. Even in the non-unionmotorindustrybetweenthe wars, wouldbe carefulof the susceptibilities of the tool-room management and turn a blind eye to the unionism of toolmakers.In the nineteenthcentury such controlwas most visible in the giant railwaycompanies,enterpriseswhich employedand trainednumerousartisansand, though recognizingthat their foremenwere essentiallydrawnfrom amongthem, and hence were likely to have the artisanview,48saw no need for a symbiosiswith partlyautonomous labour. Thus the GreatWestern and the GreatEasternturned craftsman's pride into an obligation, by obligingworkmen,in the unilaterally imposed workingrules, to buy and insure their personaltools. Foremenin Stratford wereto examinethe men'stool-chestsbeforetheyweretakenout of the works, and in Derby they neededa specialpass to do So.49 The labourpoliciesof the railwaycompanies,which deservemore study than they have so far received in Britain, sometimeslook as though they had been specifically designedto replacecraftautonomyand exclusivecontrolby managerial controlof hiring, training,promotionto higher gradesof skill, and workshopoperations. For tools symbolizednot merely the relativeindependenceof the artisan from management,but, even more clearly, his monopolyof skilled work. The standard trained expressionfor what the unskilledor the not specifically
i892, 44
Mayhew,v, p. I93. For data on tool costs from the Royal Comm. on Labour (GroupA), see P.P. XXXVI/ii, Q. i6,848, I9,466, i9,8I2-3, 20,367-9. Mayhew,ibid. pp. 94, 96, I55, i67, 2I4 estimatesthe weeklycost at between6d. and 2S. a week. 45 S. and B. Webb, Industrial Democracy (I9I3 edn.), p. 3I3. 46 Huw Beynon, Working for Ford(Harmondsworth, I973), p. I45: "On the assembly line one man is
43
as good as the next man ....
In a skilled work situation things are slightly different ...
by virtue of the
fact that [the men] controlthe tools, or the knowledge,vital to the completion of the job. The foreman has to ask them." 47 Zeitlin, 'LabourStrategies', pp. 2I, 26. 48 "The shop foremen will be men who are skilledin the workof theirrespective shops. Probably as workmenthey showedespecialabilityand skill, which led to their promotion from the ranks."James Clayton,'The Organization of the LocomotiveDepartment',in John Macaulay,ed. Modern Railway A PracticalTreatise Working: by Engineering Experts (I9I2-I4) II, p. 57. 49 KennethHudson, Working to Rule:RailwayWorkshop Rules:A Studyof Industrial Discipline (Bath,
I970).
366
E.
J.
HOBSBAWM
men must be preventedfromdoingat all costs, i.e. "encroaching" or "following the trade", was some variantof the phrase "taking up the tools", or "workingtradesmen'stools" or "getting hold of the tools for himself'.50 Bricklayers' labourers,in morethanone set of workingrules, wereprohibited specificallyfrom the "use of the trowel" .51 Coopers'labourerswere only allowedto use some specifiedcoopers'tools such as hammers.52 Conversely, artisansrecognizedeach others'statusby lendingeachothertools.53In short, animals. they may be definedessentiallyas tool-usingand tool-monopolizing The right to a tradewas not only a right of the duly qualifiedtradesman, but also a family heritage.54Tradesmen'ssons and relationsdid not only become tradesmenbecause, as among the professional middle classes, their chancesof doing so were notablysuperiorto the rest, but also becausethey wantednothingbetterfor their sons, and fathersinsistedon privilegedaccess for them. Free apprenticeship for at least one son was providedfor in many a set of Builders'WorkingRules.55 The formidable Boilermakers' Societywas largelyrecruitedfrom sons and kin,56and in Edwardian London hereditary successionwas consideredusual amongboilermakers and engineers,in some printing trades, though among the builders only for the favouredmasons, plasterers, and perhaps plumbers. Here it was also pointed out that the attractions of office jobs for tradesmen's sons were small.57 This is confirmed by the analysis of some 200 biographiesfrom the Dictionary of Labour Biography58 (mainlyof those bornbetweeni850 and i900) whichshowsthat, thoughthe numberof sons of non-tradesmen was only c. 75 per cent of that of tradesmen,the numberof tradesmen's sons who went into white-collar or similarjobs was not much morethan half of that of non-tradesmen's sons. In short,for the Victorian ratherthanschoolingwas artisan,workshop education still whatcounted,and a tradewasat leastas desirable or betterthananything else effectivelyon offer. Indeed, the largestsingle group in the Dictionary sample (from which I have excluded the overwhelminglyself-reproduced who took up trades,in abouthalf miners)consistedof c. 70 sons of tradesmen the cases, their father's. And we know from Crossick'sstudy of Kentish
50 WorkingMen and Women, p. 66; ASE QuarterlyReport, Dec. i893, pp. 48, 59; Dearle, Industrial Training, p. 25.
51 Cf. the collection rules"in the WebbCollection (LSE Library, Coll. EB xxxiof builders'"working
xxxvi and Coll. EC vi-xviii); for instance Bridgnorth i863, Loughborough i892, Worcester i89i (Coll. EB xxxiv). Shrewsbury (Coll. EC vii). 52 Gilding, Journeyman Coopers, p. 56. 53 Thomas Wright, The GreatUnwashed will lend a long-termtramping (i869), p. 282: shopmates artisan "their best tools". Charity Organisation Society, Special Committeeon Unskilled Labour: Report who havebeenout of workfor any and Minutes of Evidence, June i908, p. 98: "In the caseof mechanics
amongthem, andthey lend each time, how far arethey shortof tools . . . ? Thereis a lot of freemasonry in tools."Note othertools. If you lookedinto theirbasketsyou wouldfind ten per cent of them deficient that the witness, a buildingforeman,claimsto be merelyguessing.He does not look into the artisans' baskets.For the penaltyof losing tools, namelylapsinginto unskilledlabouring,see Mayhew,Morning
ChronicleSurvey, v, p. I30.
54 J. B. Jefferys,TheStory of theEngineers (i945), p. 58 on secondand thirdsons, and sons of fathers out of the trade,joiningthe trade. 55 WebbColl.EB xxxiv: Hull, Redditch, KidderminsWakefield; Coll.ECVII: Bristol,Dudley,Gornal, Stourbridge, Wigan. ter, Leicester,Rotherham, 56 Keith McLelland Workers,i840-I9I4' (unpub.paper),p. i8. and Alastair Reid, 'The Shipbuilding 57 Dearle, Industrial Training, p. 241. 58 Joyce M. Bellamyand John Saville,eds. Dictionary of Labour Biography, I-VI, (I972-i982).
ARTISAN
OR LABOUR
ARISTOCRAT?
367
London in i873-5 that 43 per cent of the sons of engineering craftsmen were sons of men in these crafts, and 64 per cent came from skilled fathers in general; 64 per cent and 76 per cent of shipbuilding craftsmen came from shipbuilding and skilled families respectively; as did 46 per cent and 69 per cent respectively of building tradesmen. I leave open the question whether, as Crossick suggests, the links binding artisans together and separating them from the unskilled, actually tightened during the mid-Victorian period.59 This does not mean that entry into the trades was closed. It could hardly be, considering the rate of growth in the labour force, not to mention powerful enterprises like the railways, which deliberately saw to the training and promotion of unskilled labour, and provided a significant road for its upgrading; in the Dictionary sample this is very noticeable. What it does suggest is the relative advantage the stratum of tradesmen had in reproducing itself, and the significance within the skilled labour force of this block of self-reproducing artisans; and not least their capacity to assimilate the non-artisans who succeeded in joining their ranks, so long as artisan status meant a special and lengthy education in skill, essentially conducted by artisans in the workshop. And in i906, according to one estimate, about i8 per cent of occupied males beween the ages of I5 and I9 were still classified as apprentices and learners.60 In industries and regions dominated by artisans-the north-eastcoast immediately comes to mind-their ability to assimilate new entrants was clearly enormous. One recalls that even in I9I4, in spite of considerable efforts, 6o per cent of the workforce of the Engineering Employers' Federation were still classified as skilled.61 Under these circumstances the artisans, or the bulk of them, were both privileged and relatively secure. IV The crux of their position lay in the economy's reliance on manual skills, i.e. skills exercised by blue-collar workers. The real crisis of the artisan set in as soon as tradesmen became replaceable by semi-skilled machine operators or by some other division of labour into specialized and rapidly learned tasks, i.e. broadly speaking in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. This phase of artisan history has been fairly intensively investigated, at least for some industries,62 and it is at this point that the main attack on the concept of an "aristocracy of labour" has concentrated. Apart from a diminishing minority, the craftsman's position was no longer protected by the length of training and practice, by skill and the willing toleration of employers. It was protected primarily by job monopoly secured by trade unions and by workshop control. Yet the jobs now monopolized and protected were no longer skilled jobs in the old sense, though those who were best at protecting them were usually formerly skilled trades, like compositors and boilermakers, which
59Geoffrey Crossick,An Artisan Elite in VictorianSociety: Kentish London, 1840-1880 (I978), p. ii6. 60 Charles More, Skill and the English WorkingClass (i980), p. I03, Table 5.I3. 61 M. L. Yates, Wages and Labour Conditionsin British Engineering(I937), p. 3I, Table 6. 62 E.g. A. Reid, 'The Divisionof Labour in the BritishShipbuilding Industry,i880-I920' (unpublished Regulation and the Divisionof Labour: i980); J. Zeitlin, 'Craft Ph.D. thesis, Universityof Cambridge, in Britain, i890-i9I4' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Universityof Warwick, Engineersand Compositors
i98i).
368
E.
J.
HOBSBAWM
insisted on their members' monopolizing the new de-skilled jobs. But even this undermined the special position of the artisan. For, as we all now know from the Fleet Street printing trade, when skill and privilege or high wages are no longer correlated, artisans are merely one set of workers among many others who might, given the right circumstances (generally the occupation of a strategic bottleneck), establish such strong bargaining positions. Speaking generally, at the end of the nineteenth century the trades found themselves, for the first time since the i83os and i840s, threatened by industrial capitalism as such but without the hope of by-passing it. Their existence as a privileged stratum was at stake. Moreover, the employers' main attack was now against their craft privileges. Hence, for the first time, their key sectors turned against capitalism. Thus, unlike some of the traditional trades, the new metal-working crafts of the industrial economy had not been given to breeding political activities. There are few if any engineers and metalshipbuilders among the nationally prominent Lib-Lab politicians before the i89os. Yet almost from the start, engineers were prominent among the socialists. At the ASE's Delegate Meeting in I9I2 more than half the delegates present appear to have been advocates of "collectivism" to be achieved by class war.63 The small argumentative Marxist sects like the Socialist Labour Party were full of them. Engineering shop stewards and revolutionary radicalism in World War I went together like cheese and pickles, and metalworkers-generally highly skilled men-later came proverbially to dominate the proletarian component of the Communist Party, to be followed a long way after by builders and miners.64 The left attracted them for two reasons. In the first place, a class-struggle analysis made sense to men engaged in battle with organized employers on what seemed to be the crucial sector of the front of class conflict; and by the same token the belief that capitalism wanted "a just balance of all interests", was plainly no longer tenable. In the second place, the radical left in the unions, ever since the i88os, specialized in devising strategies and tactics designed to meet precisely those situations which appeared to find traditional craft methods wanting. I do not wish to underestimate this shift to the left, which now gave to the British labour movement a political outlook fundamentally different from that of Chartist democracy, which still prevailed amid the sober suits of Liberal radicalism-a new political outlook which, some might argue, was de facto more radical than many continental socialist movements. At the same time this shift should not be identified with the various brands of socialist ideology which now sprang up, and, naturally, attracted young artisans conscious of their new predicament: in the i88os men in their mid- to late twenties, from Edwardian times perhaps men in their late 'teens. For most tradesmen the shift to anti-capitalism began simply as an extension of their trade experience. It meant doing what they had always done: defending their rights, their wages, and their now threatened conditions, stopping management
63 B. C. M. Weekes, 'The Amalgamated Societyof Engineers,i880-I9I4: A Study of Trade Union Politics and IndustrialPolicy' (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Universityof Warwick,I970), Government, pp. 3i8-20, 322. As earlyas i895 fourASEmembers stoodas parliamentary candidates underIndependent
Labour Party auspices: David Howell, British Workersand the IndependentLabour Party, 1888-1906 (Manchester, i983), p. 88. 64 KennethNewton, The Sociology of British Communism (i969), Apps. II, III.
ARTISAN
OR LABOUR
ARISTOCRAT?
369
from telling the lads how to do their job, and relying on the democracy of the workplace rank-and-file against the world, which, if need be, included their unions' leaders. Only now they had to fight management all the time, because management was permanently threatening to reduce them to "labourers", and now had the technical means of doing so. They were far from revolutionaries, but how did this constant confrontation differ from the class struggle which the revolutionaries preached? If the masters no longer recognized the interests of the skilled men, why should the men recognize those of the masters? I do not believe that many tradesmen were as yet affected by the drastic renunciation of old craft assumptions suggested by some of the ultra-left, who recommended fighting capitalism with its own market principles, by working as little or even as badly as possible for as much money as the traffic would bear. Such ideas were put forward in the syndicalist periods. However, at this stage there is no evidence that tradesmen-still often suspicious of payment by results, though increasingly pushed into it-thought in such terms which, as the Webbs pointed out, undermined their basic principle of pride in work, rewarded by a wage which recognized ther standing. Yet the period from i889 to I9I4 introduces us to an artisan predicament which is similar to that of the British economy as a whole, because it is one aspect of it. Just as there were men in business who recognized that fundamental modernization was needed in the British productive system, but failed to mobilize sufficient support to achieve it, so also in the field of labour. The left, including the artisan left, knew that craft unionism of the high Victorian kind was doomed. It was the target of all critics. The mass of proposals for trade-union reform between i889 and I927, ranging from federation and amalgamation to a complete restyling of the union movement along industrial lines,65 were all directed against a position which was barely defended in theory even among the leaders of old-style craft unions. Yet no systematic general union reform was achieved, though craft unions recognized some need to expand, federate, and amalgamate. They also accepted that elite organization must henceforth be part of the mass unionization of all workers, and that in such mass unionism the craft societies would inevitably be less dominant, either numerically or strategically. Yet attempts at general reform failed so clearly, that after I926 they were defacto abandoned. Railways and engineering are obvious examples of this failure. The new National Union of Railwaymen, designed as the model of a comprehensive industrial union, never succeeded in integrating most of the skilled footplate men, and the engineers did not even try, though their left-wing leadership time and again committed them to broaden their recruitment: in I892, in i90i and again in I926. But as late as I93I the Amalgamated Engineering Union told the Transport and General Workers: With regard to the organizingactivities of the AEU, whilst it was true that the constitutionof the union was amendedto permit of all grades of workers being organizedwithin the union, this had not been operated,the AEU confining activitiesstrictlyto those sectionsof the industrywhichit had always its organizing organized.It was not the intentionof the AEU to departfrom this policy.66
65 Cf. the Resolution (I929), ed. TradeUnionDocuments of the Hull TUC, I924, in W. Milne-Bailey, reform,ibid. p. I33-4. of systematic p. I29; for the abandonment 66 J. Zeitlin,'TheEmergence CarIndustry', in theBritish andJobControl Organization of ShopSteward
io History Workshop,
(i980),
p.
I29.
370
E.
J.
HOBSBAWM
For, just as the Britishindustrial economyappeared to enjoyits Edwardian Indiansummer,so did the artisans.Did they need to reformthemselvesout of existence? Sheer bloody-mindedshop-floorresistancereversedthe total victory won by the EngineeringEmployers'Federationin the i897-8 lockout, incidentallydrivingthe union'ssocialistgeneralsecretary GeorgeBarnes It had so far restoredthe positionthat buying off the into the wilderness.67 craftsmenbecame the majortask of the I914 war economy. Their position had actuallybeen strengthened,becausethe system of paymentby results, which employerspreferredto Tayloristand Fordist strategies,laid the base for endless shop-floorconflicts and, in consequence,shop-stewardpower. Moreover,during the war the industrywas flooded, not with promoteable semi-skilledmachinemen, but with 650,000 women, virtuallyall of whom from the labourmarketafter i919. The union had to be rapidlydisappeared defeatedonce againin frontalbattlein I922. Afterthat, unionswerevirtually drivenout of such new sectorsof the industryas motorsand electricalgoods, even though once again employersin generalfound the costs of systematic plantrationalization too high, and the foreseeable profitsinsufficiently attractive to justify such heavy outlays. therefore hadtheirchancein the I930s, as recovery, Onceagainthe artisans and war made times more propitiousfor labour organization. rearmament This was the last triumphof the Victoriantrades.The men who broughtthe waters of unionism back into the desert of non-unionshops were largely, and the men who built the perhapsmainly, craftsmen,like the tool-makers aircraftof the I930S and I940s, and whose role in the growthof mass metals unionismwascrucial.Theywerethe firstnucleusof the revivedshop-stewards' movement. These men were craftsmen,or at least, even when engagedon what was in effect semi-skilledwork, craftsmenby background and training. They were now also largelyCommunists,or becameCommunists.68
theirownliquidation Yet, whethertheywantedto or not, theywereinitiating as a special stratum of the working class. This was largely because the industriesthey organized no longerrestedon artisan mechanized engineering skill, though they still needed it. But it was also partlybecausethe left no longerhad a coherentunionpolicy. Giventhe failureof generalunionreform, "new model"of union organization. It benefitedfrom it lackeda practicable a government from I940 when ErnestBevintook over the policy, particularly Ministryof Labour,which favouredunionism;but it neithercontrolled,nor often understoodor usuallyeven approved it. Its majorweapon(leavingaside the production-oriented unionism of the Communistsin I94I-5) was much the same as in I889-I92I: sheer blinkered,dour, stubborn,defence of "the
Zeitlin, 'Labour Strategies', pp. 30-2. 68 For this part of the paper I am especially indebted to the as yet unpublished research of Ms Nina Fishman on the Communist Party and the Trade Unions in the I930s and I940s. See also R. Croucher, Engineersat War, i939-i945 (i982), esp. pp. i68-74, and James Hinton, 'Coventry Communism: A Study of Factory Politics in the Second World War', History Workshop,io (i980), pp. I00-2.
67
ARTISAN
OR LABOUR
ARISTOCRAT?
37I
custom of the trade"in the shops. It is irrelevantthat some of the left may have identifiedthis in some way way with the roadto revolutionor at least to De facto, the left had no specificunion strategy,but politicalradicalization. merelypursuedthe old tactics with intelligence,dynamismand efficiencyin a situationquite unlike that of i889-I92I. What they achieved was the generalizationof the old craft-monopoly movement,and in industrieswhere methodsto all sectorsof the trade-union tradesmenformed a diminishingminority among the mass of semi-skilled operatives.And in doing so the artisansbecamemerely one set of workers amongmany others who were in a position to apply such methods, and not the ones who could strikethe best bargains.In the Fleet Streetof necessarily the late twentieth century, not only has the qualitativedifferencebeween compositorsand "printers'labourers"disappeared,but the chapel of the NationalGraphical Associationis not necessarilya more powerfulbargainer than that of SOGAT 82. There is no longer anythingspecialabout being a tradesman. Someare clearlyon the way out, like the locomotivedriversof the old craft unionASLEF. Somesurvive,but in a worldthey no longerquite understand. This Someworkfor as much money as they can get, and for nothingmore.69 is a fundamental breakin craft tradition,which, as has been argued,aimed to the craftsman's statusas a group,as professors at an incomecorresponding distrustof piece-rates. A Communist still do.70 Hence the persistenthistorical recallshis amazement when he discovengineer,interviewedby a researcher, ered during the war that workersin Coventrynot merely could, but were expectedto push their earnings into what seemed the stratosphere.And, indeed, the famous Coventry Toolroom Agreementof I94i reflected this curious interminglingof old and new principles, until its breakdownin the I970s. Whereasin the past the toolmakers'earningshad providedthe over and above less favouredgroups, of their "differential" measuring-rod level was henceforthfixed againstthe entirelyundetermined this differential on could of whatnon-toolmakers piece-work earn.Craftsmanship, goodwork, was no longer the essentialfoundationof good earnings.If anything,it was now a liability, since it stood in the way of the sky-highwages which could andconsciously put speedandskimping be earnedby the menwho deliberately the origin, beforesoundwork. Financially "cowboy"-the termis of uncertain but seems to emergein the buildingtradeduringthe hey-dayof "the lump" in the i960s-could do better than the good tradesmen. Finally, the possibilityof trainingas a craftsmangrew less. In i966 the
69
for Fords, p. Beynon, Working
I45.
powersof workcontrolwas that they did pointaboutthe shipwrights' "Perhaps the most interesting werewillingto accept The shipwrights or to createdifferentials. not use them to maximizetheirearnings wages unrelatedto the effort or skill of individualsand which tended towardsa single rate." (David Revolution,particularly, in H.M. Dockyardduringthe Industrial Wilson, 'A SocialHistoryof Workers skilled (unpublishedPh.D. thesis, Universityof Warwick,I975, p. i88). For Edwardian I793-i8I5' Society,Reporton output, see CharityOrganization builders'insistenceon standardrates for standard Unskilled Labour, Q. 25I-72, pp. I04-5). The Webbs argued,Industrial Democracy, p. 7I9, noting the raisingof the approvingly,that "The progressive corporatism parallelwith middle-classprofessional the 'Selection of the Fittest',causesan increasing specialization promoting CommonRule, by constantly of Life andcorporate traditions of its own which of function,creatinga distinctgroup,havinga Standard each recruitis glad enoughto fall in with."
70
372
E.
J.
HOBSBAWM
numberof apprentices was only aboutthree-quarters of whatit had been sixty yearsearlier,or indeed in I925, and by I973 it had plummetedto 25 per cent of the i966 figure.71 And so did the incentive to follow one's fatherinto a propertrade.Book educationand not skill is now the roadto statusand, with diminishingexceptions, even skill has moved into the world of diplomas. And, of course, the road into that world has broadened.There was a time when minersmight want their sons out of the pit at all costs, but engineers were contentto offer their sons a presumably improvingversionof their own prospects.How many of the sons of toolmakers todayare contentto become toolmakers? The artisansno longerreproduce themselvesor theirkind. The generation of men who grew up with artisanexperienceand artisanvaluesin the I930s and I940s, still survives, but is growingold. When the last men who have drivenand caredfor steam locomotivesretire-it will not be long now-and when engine-drivers will be little differentfrom tram-drivers, and sometimes quite superfluous,what will happen?What will our society be like without that largebody of men who, in one way or another,had a sense of the dignity and the self-respect of difficult,good, and sociallyusefulmanualwork, which and money: a is also a sense of a society not governedby market-pricing society other than ours and potentiallybetter?What will a countrybe like which skill with hand, eye, and brainprovide withoutthe roadto self-respect for men-and, one might add women-who happennot to be good at passing examinations? Tawney would have asked such questions.I can do no better than to conclude by leaving them with you. BirkbeckCollege, London
343,200 (More,Skill, p. I03); i966, 27I,650 (Min. of Lab. Gazette, Jan. I974, 66,ooo (Min. of Lab. Gazette, May i974). The statutory schoolleavingage was raisedto i6 from Sept. I972. Only male figuresare given, in view of the insignificance of femaleapprenticeship.
71
In absolutenumbers:i906,
i967),

Hobsbawm - Artisan or Labour Aristocrat

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Artisan or Labour Aristocrat? Author(s): E. J. Hobsbawm Source: The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol. 37, No.

of the originalpaperat the SSRCConference on Businessand LabourHistory,

Jay Winter, ed. The WorkingClass in ModernBritishHistory:Essays in Honourof HenryPelling (Cambridge,

(7th edn. i844), passim.

See the description I974). Book(Gateshead, of bannersin W. A. Moyes, TheBanner

duty of working men to .

. begin manufacturing for the public .

. That inasmuch as many of our

as good as the next man ....

In a skilled work situation things are slightly different ...

for Fords, p. Beynon, Working

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