Hiram S. Maxim, the great gun maker, who has had experience in manufacturing in three countries, declares that a given amount of labor in the iron trade produces a smaller product in England than in France, Germany, or the United States; and that a given machine has a greater productive capacity in each of these countries, and particularly in the United States, where the system of payment by the piece generally exists. The Amalgamated Society has generally successfully resisted the piece-payment system, and has managed in many other ways to practically control the internal management of the shop.
In a word, the purpose of the manufacturers has been to so change the basis of their industry that they can increase production by reducing costs, not through reduced wages, but through the more complete utilization of modern mechanical inventions. They have insisted that the individual workman would, in consequence, earn much higher wages. The movement on the part of their employees was one to limit production by the shorter working day and by the increased cost of increased overtime work at overtime wages. The ends aimed at were diametrically opposite, and the intensity and the prolongation of the struggle are thus explained. It was an issue which admitted of no compromise. A truce might, indeed, have been patched up, and the battle declared a draw; but any conclusion short of the complete surrender of one side or the other would have left the vital issue as unsettled as at the start.
As that issue has been stated, the impartial student finds it difficult to understand why it should exist at all. If the iron masters are right in their contention that reduced costs of production, through greater machinery efficiency, are necessary for the preservation of English manufacturing against foreign encroachment, the welfare of their workmen is as vitally involved as their own. This is only another way of stating the time-worn truism that the interests of capital and labor are identical, in any true analysis of their relationship.
But the English trades-unionist does not see the matter in any such light; nor is his point of view at all obscured. Apart from the latent antipathy to labor-saving machinery, which is not avowed, is
