§1.A brief summary of the actual tendencies towards harmony and discord at present visible in the economic world may be conveniently presented here.
We see among the fundamental industries the transformation of the structure of the single business; large numbers of little rivulets of savings from innumerable separate personal sources merging to form a single body of effective capital; large numbers of workers closely welded into a single body of effective labour-power; both operating in normal harmony under the direction of a common central management, and engaged in the continuous work of turning out a product, the price of which forms the common income alike for capitalists and workers.So far as that portion of the dividend is concerned which forms the economically necessary costs of these masses of capital and labour, there exists a harmony of interests between the two groups of claimants, which is more clearly recognised with every improvement of the general standard of intelligence and information.In most businesses that common area of interest covers by far the larger part of the business dividend.Where a surplus emerges in excess of these economic costs, an initial discord arises between the claims of the capital and labour.But this discord may be resolved in two ways, in each of which important experiments, attended by a growing measure of success, are being carried on.Large patches of the area of discord are being reclaimed to order by the modern State, whose policy is more and more directed to absorbing by taxation, and applying to the use of the community, great shares of these business surpluses, as they emerge in incomes and inherited properties.As regards the surplus which is not so absorbed, the grouped forces of capital and labour within the business are constantly engaged in seeking to discover pacific and equitable modes of division which shall reconcile, or at least mitigate, the remaining opposition.Though this remains at present the sharpest field of conflict, pacific forces are making more gain than perhaps appears upon the surface.Some of those industries, where such discords have been most rife and most wasteful, have been taken over by the State or the Municipality.
In these cases such quarrels as may still arise in connection with the claims of labour admit of settlement by other means than economic force.
In others, the State intervenes on behalf of public order by assisting to promote processes of arbitration or conciliation.In others, again, the organisation of the forces of capital on the one hand, labour on the other, over the whole range of businesses comprising a national trade, has tended to make actual conflicts rarer, and presents a machinery capable of application to pacific settlements.Grave as are the defects in the working of this machinery of Joint Boards, Sliding Scales, Conciliation and the like, and terrible as are the injuries these defects cause, they ought not to blind us to a recognition of the fact that the number of actual conflicts between capital and labour is constantly diminishing.
§2.This truth is better realised when we turn from the structure of the business to that of the trade or market.There, though keen and even cut-throat competition still survives, the tendency is more and more, especially in the great staple industries where large aggregates of capital and labour are employed, towards cooperation, combination and trade agreements.
If, for the moment, we ignore the dangers which such combinations often threaten to consumers, and regard them from the standpoint of trade structure, we cannot fail to recognise the enormous advance they represent in the cause of industrial harmony.For whatever the degree of unity attained by such a Trust, Cartel, Conference, Trade Agreement, Federation, it means pro tanto a saving of the energy of capital and labour formerly expended upon conflict, and a concentration of the thoughts and purposes of business men upon the best performance of the useful functions of production which constitute the social value of their trade.So long as a trade remains in a distinctively competitive condition, an enormous part of the actual energy is consumed not in production but in warfare.The thoughts and wills of the controllers of the several businesses are deflected from the economical fulfilment of their social function to conscious rivalry.Neither the capital nor the labour in each several business enjoys a reasonable measure of security; and not only the profits but the wages of each firm are jeopardised by the success of a stronger competing firm.The growing displacement of this condition of a trade by the principle and practice of combination is perhaps the most conspicuous movement towards industrial peace.I am aware that, in itself, this concentration and combination of businesses within a trade afford no sure settlement for the differences between capital and labour.They may even aggravate those differences in several ways.
