Cambridge Journal of Economics 1979, 3, 263-274

Craft control and the division of labour:

engineers and compositors in Britain
1890-1930
Jonathan Zeitlin*

Over the past 20 years, labour historians have drawn increasing attention to the tenacious
struggles of particular groups of workersnotably skilled craftsmento defend their
position in the division of labour in the face of pressures toward technical and organisa-
tional change (cf. Thompson, 1963; Hobsbawm, 1964; Turner, 1962; Hinton, 1973;
Montgomery, 1976, 1978). Eric Hobsbawm's essay on British gasworkers:
Labour-saving and labour-simplifying devices do not automatically dislodge key groups of workers
from their strongholds. They do so only when such groups are unable to maintain their relative
indispensibility (i.e. their bargaining strength) during the crucial transition period, and cannot
therefore 'capture' the new devices for recognised unionism, the standard rate, and standard
working conditions. Thus in the last decades of the 19th century printers almost everywhere, and
to a lesser extent skilled engineers in Britain 'captured' mechanised typesetting and automatic
machine-tools, assimilating the new semi-skilled work to the old artisan status . . . (Hobsbawm,
1964, pp. 170-171).
But as he went on to point out, this line of argument immediately raises a new question:
what are the social and economic conditions which make possible the successful defence
of craft control ?
This question lends itself readily to a comparative treatment, and in this paper we will
examine the experiences with technical change of two important groups of craftsmen,
skilled engineers and compositors in Britain between 1890 and the 1920s. All comparisons
necessarily involve an arbitrary element, and the position of engineers and compositors
at the onset of a major wave of mechanisation in the 1890s was by no means identical in
every respect; indeed the differences between them will play a crucial role in explaining
their divergent fates. But for our purposes the central structural similarity is sufficient to
justify the comparison: despite the more recent history of technical and organisational
change in engineering than in printing, by 1890 skilled workers exercising a substantial
degree of craft control through formal and informal workshop organisation occupied a
dominant place in the division of labour in both industries. In many respects the fitters
and turners of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE) were better organised and
* Centre for the Study of Social History, Warwick. Preliminary versions of this paper were delivered at
seminars at the Centre for the Study of Social History, University of Warwick, the Faculty of Economics and
Politics, Cambridge; the Institute of Historical Research; and the Ecole Normale Suprieure. I would like
to thank participants in those seminars for their helpful comments, especially Patrick Fridenson, Eric
Hobsbawm, and my supervisor, Royden Harrison. I am also grateful for comments from the editors of the
Cambridge Journal of Economics.

0309-166X/79/030263+ 12 802.00/0 1979 Academic Press Inc. (London} Limited

264 J. Zeitlin
more secure than the hand compositors in their three regional typographical unions.
Despite setbacks to their ability to enforce apprenticeship and to resist piecework during
the depressed 1880s, skilled engineers had been major beneficiaries of British dominance
of world markets, while the ASE, having spawned a range of imitators, remained among
the largest and most influential forces in the labour movement (Jefferys, 1946, chs 3-5;
Weekes, 1970, ch. 1; Burgess, 1975, pp. 25-49). The compositors, on the other hand, had
experienced a significant deterioration in their position since mid-century, as employers
sought to cheapen and intensify their labour to meet rapidly rising demand for printed
matter with traditional typesetting methods. The ensuing growth of casual, juvenile,
and female labour, together with intensified supervision, were eroding the printer's
claim to regulate the conditions of the trade, while his earnings fell behind those of other
skilled crafts, especially in London (Cannon, 1961, pp. 74-88; Musson, 1954, chs 9-10;
Child, 1967, chs 8-9; Zeitlin, 1978, ch. 2 ) . |
By the end of the 1920s, however, the reversal in the relative positions of these two
groups of craftsmen was quite striking. At the time of the General Strike, the ASE (now
the AEU) had been defeated in its second major confrontation with the Engineering
Employers' Federation (EEF) in 25 years, had suffered spectacular wage cuts, and had
seen a quarter of its inflated wartime membership melt away. In its heavy engineering
strongholdsClydeside, Lancashire, and the North-East Coastmass unemployment
prevailed, while in the prosperous new mass production centres of the West Midlands,
the union had been effectively driven off the shop floor after the 1922 lockout (Jefferys,
1946, chs 9-10; Carr, 1979; Yates, 1937; Balfour- Committee, 1928; Zeitlin, 1977,
ch. 5). Only 34% of the workforce in federated firms was classified as skilled in 1928
compared to 60% before the war, while a considerable majority of AEU members
worked on payment-by-results systems that had been bitterly resisted by pre-war crafts
men as subversive of the standard rate and the egalitarianism of the craft community
(Jefferys, 1946, pp. 207, 210; Rowe, 1928, Appendix I I I ; Jefferys, 1946, pp. 100-102;
Weekes, 1970, ch. 5).
The compositors by contrast emerged from the war in a position of unparalleled
strength. Despite post-war wage cuts in the provinces, printers had become clearly the
best-paid manual workers of the period. The typographical unions throughout the
country had secured complete control over the new composing machineslinotypes and
monotypesat substantial advances over hand rates. At the same time, they obtained
official recognition from employers for restrictions on the number of apprentices, paving
the way for the monopoly of labour supply that underlies their power on Fleet Street
today (Child, 1967, chs 14-15; Musson, 1954, chs 16, 19; Cannon, 1961, pp. 105-114;
Sisson, 1975, ch. 6).

Confrontations over technical change: 1897 and 1911

To a great extent, the divergent fates of the engineers and compositors flowed from their
relative abilities to control the impact on the division of labour of new technology
composing machines in printing and semi-automatic machine tools such as capstan and
turret lathes in engineering (Jefferys, 1946, pp. 55-58, 119-127; Floud, 1976, ch. 2;
Rosenberg, 1963; Musson, 1958; Lee, 1976, pp. 54-63). This question in turn was
largely determined by the radically different outcomes of the two major confrontations
t The major exception to this sombre picture was the Fleet Street compositor in regular employment,
who then, as now, was among the best-paid manual workers in the country, but who comprised a small
proportion of all compositors even in London.
 Craft control and division of labour 265
between unions and employers in this period: the national engineering lockout of
1897-8 and the London 50 hours printing strike of 1911. An analysis of these disputes
offers a useful focus for an explanation of the differential impact of technical change on
the division of labour in the two industries.
The 1911 London printing strike presents a number of structural parallels with the
better known engineering lockout. Both were drawn-out and expensive confrontations
lasting some seven months, and involved a considerable proportion of the unions
concerned15% of the London Society of Compositors (LSC) and nearly 25% of the
ASE. In each case, the spark was a demand by a federation of unions for a shorter
working week, while the underlying causes were conflicts over managerial prerogatives
and technical change (Jefferys, 1946, ch. 6; Weekes, 1970, pp. 81-135; Wigham, 1973,
pp. 46-62, 282-283; Clarke, 1958; Clegg, Fox and Thompson, 1964, pp. 161-168;
ASE, 1898; Howe and Waite, 1948, pp. 292-298; Child, 1967, pp. 216, 243, 280;
Musson, 1954, pp. 163-169, 215-218, 296-299; Zeitlin, 1978, ch. 4; cf. also LSC
Annual Report, 1911; Printers' Register, January 1912).
In the engineering lockout this theme was readily apparent, as disputes over labourers
operating machines occupied a prominent role in the lead-up to the lockout, and a
conference between the ASE and the EEF had collapsed a few months previously over
the employers' refusal to negotiate a list of new machines whose operators would receive
the skilled men's rate (Jefferys, 1946, pp. 139-145; Weekes, 1970, pp. 82-113; Burgess,
1975, pp. 58-63; Wigham, 1973, pp. 46-52; cf. also minutes of conference on the machine
question, April 1897, and employers' broadsides against ASE restrictive practices,
Webb Collection EB: LIV:3 and LIX:10-14, 17). In the printing strike, the role of
conflict over technical change was less obvious but central nonetheless. The strikers
openly proclaimed that their demands for a shorter working week flowed directly from
resentments over unemployment and the intensified work pace brought about by
composing machines. Similarly, the employers defended their intransigence on the hours
question by reference to the increased 'dictation' of the trade unions and the latter's
interference in the management of their business, especially in relation to restrictions on
overtime and the operation of composing machines. |
Though the basic issues at stake in each dispute were similar, their respective out-
comes were rather different. The victorious engineering employers imposed upon the
ASE their 'Terms of Settlement' designed to pave the way for a wholesale reorganisation
of production to meet foreign competition. Among other things, these terms formally
recognised the employers' freedom to man machines with whomever they liked (including
non-unionists) and to impose piecework systems on their workers, as well as instituting a
disputes procedure designed to prevent local unofficial strikes (text in Wigham, 1973,
pp. 282-283). In printing, on the other hand, most firms conceded the 50 hour week,
while the chief holdoutslarge book firms which had converted to the open shop at the
t For union arguments linking the demand for the shorter working week to composing machines, see the
minutes of a conference between the London Printing and Kindred Trades Federation and the London
Master Printers' Association, 10 January 1911, Webb Collection EB LXXVII:9, p. 26; 'From the wage
earners' point of view', Newspaper Owner, 22 October 1910; 'Speeding up', Daily Herald, 14 March 1911.
For the employers perspective, see Newspaper Owner, 11 March 1911; British and Colonial Printer, 13 April
1911. For more general complaints about union restrictiveness, see the testimony of J. Strayer and E.
Unwin to Fair Wages Committee, 1908, Q,s. 4430-4572. The connection between mechanisation and the
shorter working week was even clearer in the provinces, where a national printing strike was averted in
March 1911, by an agreement between the Typographical Association and various employers' organisa-
tions, which represented a compromise on the reduction of hours and the relaxation of restrictive rules on
the operation of composing machines enacted at the 1908 Delegate Meeting (Musson, 1954, pp. 163-169,
296-299).
266 J. Zeitlin
onset of the strikewere brought round the following year by the Treasury's decision to
recognise the 50 hour week as mandatory on government printing contracts (Fair Wages
Advisory Committee, Minutes, 24 October 1912; London Master Printers' Association
Monthly Circular, March, November, December 1912; Bercusson, 1978, ch. 8). The
unions had shown that they could hold their own in a protracted and expensive show-
down, and this strike marked the final attempt by employers to re-establish their control
over composing machines.

Conventional explanations: economic conjuncture, technology, union policy

Conjunctural factors may have played a role in the outcome of these industrial disputes.
The engineering lockout developed against the background of a sagging economy. It
followed a series of reverses for the labour movement, as an employers' offensive rolled
back the initial gains of the new unionism and the courts undermined basic trade union
rights (Saville, 1960; Clegg, Fox and Thompson, 1964, ch. 2). Conversely, the London
printing strike was part of a tremendous upsurge of industrial militancy. Labour
markets had reached their tightest point since 1871, and the government, impressed by
the growing political influence of labour, played a more sympathetic role than 20 years
earlier. It is also no doubt important that the engineering lockout came at the onset of a
period of industrial change, while the printing strike occurred after a framework for
regulating new technology favourable to craftsmen had begin to solidify. Nonetheless,
such radically different outcomes require a deeper explanation.
One conventional line of argument might be that linotypes required more skill to
operate than did, say, a turret lathe or a milling machine. While this view may have
some substance, it is extremely difficult to judge objectively the skill required for a
particular task. Certainly, there was no shortage of employers prepared to argue that the
linotype required no more skill to operate than a typewriter, while monotypes were
initially worked by untrained women in Edinburgh and London (testimony of Unwin
to Fair Wages Committee, 1908, Q,s. 4485, 4493-4502). At the same time, the semi-
automatic machine tools by no means eliminated the need for skilled craftsmen to make
and set tools, install and repair machines, and even to perform production work in the
smaller unspecialised workshops that comprised much of the engineering industry. In any
case, a given technology will be compatible with several forms of the division of labour
though it may exclude othersand the skill level required by new machines is intrinsi-
cally insufficient to explain why they should be worked by craftsmen under strict trade
union rules.
Another traditional line of argument, which has in fact dominated the trade union
aistoriography, attributes the compositors' successes to the moderate policies pursued by
the leaders of their unions (Musson, 1954, p. 249; Gillespie, 1953, pp. 115-116; Child,
1967, p. 182). This explanation contains two fundamental flaws. First, it cannot with-
stand a comparative test: the 'extreme' demands of the ASEthat whoever worked
certain machines should receive the skilled man's ratewere far more moderate than
those accepted by printing employers, whereby trade union compositors obtained
exclusive control of the linotype at higher wages than on hand work. Similarly, machine
compositors peacefully obtained a reduction of hours, while an analogous demand by
engineers precipitated a national lockout. Second, this argument begs the question of
how union policies are determined, ignoring both the role of the rank and file in policy
formation and the wider contextual and organisational factors that determine why some
union executives can impose a strategy from above while others cannot. During this
 Craft control and division of labour 267
period, executive policies considered insufficiently protective of craftsmen's interests in
the face of mechanisation gave rise to rank and file revolts in each of the typographical
unions, as well as in the ASE. Yet in the printing unions these revolts did not result in
any substantial shift in union policy, while in the ASE the conciliatory strategy of
working within the Terms of Settlement pursued by the executive after 1898 was over-
turned by opposition from the membership. Rank and file compositors eventually
accepted the policies of their executives because they did not prove to be subversive of
craft control and because they themselves lacked any real alternative strategy. Engineers
overturned their executive's policies because these had failed to prevent the deterioration
of skilled craftsmen's position in the industry (Musson, 1954, pp. 149-150,235-236;
Child, 1967, pp. 177-179; Zeitlin, 1978, chs 3-4; Weekes, 1970, chs 5-6; Croucher,
1971). Thus it was not the intrinsic features of union policies that appear to have
determined the consequences of technical change, but rather the impact of technical
change on craftsmen's position within the division of labour that determined the forma-
tion of union policies.

Competition among employers

A striking contrast between the two disputes was the far greater unity displayed by
engineering employers than by their counterparts in printing. Though a minority of
engineering firms were members of the EEF, the most important firms strongly sup-
ported the lockout, especially in the crucial sectors of marine engineering, armaments
and machine tools, while smaller firms were brought into line through a trade boycott
(Jefferys, 1946, pp. 143-144; Wigham, 1973, pp. 46-62; Weekes, 1970, chs 3-4). In
printing, on the other hand, the newspaper proprietors, having granted the 48 hour
week during the 1890s, withdrew from the London Master Printers' Association in the
face of a threatened citywide strike of compositors in 1906. Only the large book firms
mounted determined resistance to the union in 1911 (Howe and Waite, 1948, pp.
316-317; Child, 1967, p. 202).
These variations in the capacity of employers for collective action stemmed from
important differences in their market position and in the structure of the two industries.
By comparison with capital goods, news is a highly perishable commodity which cannot
be stockpiled, and newspapers are consequently extremely vulnerable to strikes and
short-term interruptions in production. At the same time, newspaper proprietors faced
intense competition among themselves for circulation and advertising revenues,
together with a volatile readership capable of rapid shifts of allegiance from one paper
to another. Given the certainty of losses in the case of a shutdown, together with the risk
of losing their share of the market, newspaper proprietors could not combine effectively
against the unions, though individual papers were able to lock out their union com-
positors for short periods of time. Hence news compositors were strategically well-
placed to secure control over new technology on favourable termsas remains the case
today even when photocomposition has made them technically unnecessary (Diblee,
1902; Watney and Little, 1912; Southward, 1892; Smail, 1917).
A related contrast lay in the relative vulnerability of the two industries to foreign
competition. Both newspaper and jobbing printing were sheltered from foreign competi-
tion by the nature of their product. Engineering employers on the other hand felt them-
selves threatened by competition from German and American manufacturers using a
more advanced division of labour, a perception sharpened by the rapid influx of
268 J. Zeitlin
American machine tools into the British market during the mid-1890s (Diblee, 1902;
Smail, 1917; Saul, I960, 1968A, B; Floud, 1974, 1976, ch. 4).
The importance of these variations in market position is underlined by the contrast
between newspaper and book publishing, the latter being the sector within printing
most similar to engineering. It was the large bookfirms,able to stockpile their relatively
standardised and durable product, but vulnerable to competition from provincial plants
unfettered by trade union wage rates and work rules, who played the most active role in
resisting the demands of the printing unions.
While their vulnerability to strikes prevented newspaper publishers from uniting
against their workers, the underlying buoyancy of their economic situation also enabled
them to concede the unions' demands more easily than could their counterparts in
engineering. Before the introduction of the linotype the slowness of composing room
production had become an absolute barrier to the expansion of newspaper production.
Each linotype, however, could do the work of three to four hand compositors, thereby
not only removing the bottleneck to more rapid print runs, but also markedly reducing
the importance of composition costs in the overall expenses of running a newspaper.
Given their rapidly expanding market, newspaper owners could afford to concede
control of the machines to union craftsmen, and even to pay the operators substantial
premiums, without thereby cutting into rising profits (Child, 1967, pp. 159-160; Boyce,
Curran and Wingate, 1978, chs 5-6). In engineering, by contrast, the new machines did
not in themselves offer such crucial gains in productivity without a wholesale reorganis-
ation of the division of labour, often involving a new workshop layout, as well as the
simultaneous introduction of new systems of incentive paymentsuch as the premium
bonusand new methods of supervisionsuch as time clocks and 'feed and speed'
menantithetical to craft control, f Moreover, the limited market in Britain for mass-
produced goods (Saul, 1967), and the engineering employers' anxieties about foreign
competition did not incline them to offer financial premiums to win craftsmen's consent
to the new techniques. On the contrary, they believed the use of less skilled and lower-
paid labour essential to the profitable operation of the machines, especially since fitters
and turners comprised a much larger proportion of the labour force in engineering than
did compositors in printing. Thus technical change presented a challenge to both the
social and the economic position of engineering craftsmen, and conflicts over mechanisa-
tion accordingly proved more bitter and less amenable to compromise than in printing.

Divisions among workers

Whereas engineering employers were more united than those in printing, the reverse
was true of the workers in the two industries. The ASE did not receive the support in
1897 of two of the most important craft unions in the industry, the Boilermakers and the
Patternmakers. At the same time, they had earned the active hostility of the less skilled,
who remained largely unorganised. The 50 hour movement in London, by contrast, was
strongly supported not only by the various printing craftsmen, but also by the new unions

t The premium bonus was a form of payment-by-results whereby a rate-fixer set a time for the completion
of a task. If the job was completed more quickly, the savings were divided between the worker and the
employer, as opposed to straight piecework where the proceeds of all extra production went to the worker.
Feed and speed men were supervisors charged with implementing managerial instructions about the angle
of cutting toob and the speed at which machines should run, thus usurping a traditional prerogative of the
craftsman.
 Craft control and division of labour 269
of the less skilled, whose co-operation was by all accounts crucial to the successful
prosecution of the strike.
This variation in the ability of craftsmen to secure the support of the less skilled
stemmed from the radically different social relations prevailing at the point of pro-
duction between grades of workers in the two industries. Paradoxically, the more
amicable relations between craftsmen and labourers in printing resulted from the
compositors' more successful policy of exclusiveness. Because there had been no signifi-
cant changes in typesetting methods since the days of Caxton and Gutenberg, there were
no non-craftsmen with a foothold in the organisation of production who could be up-
graded by the introduction of the linotype. The only labourers passing through the
composing room were unambiguously relegated to carrying type-filled formes and to
similar menial tasks. In engineering on the other hand, a previous wave of mechanisation
in the 1830s and 40s had called into being a host of 'handymen' working simpler
machines such as planers or drills who could now expect to move on to semi-automatic
lathes or grinding machines at higher wages unless restrained by the ASE (Burgess,
1969; Foster, 1974, ch. 4; Hyman, 1971, pp. 38-45).
These conflicts of interest made solidarity between craftsmen and labourers in engin-
eering difficult to achieve, even over a demand beneficial to all such as the eight hour
day.f Mid-Victorian observers such as Thomas Wright, the 'Journeyman Engineer',
and the anonymous author of Working Men and Women have testified to the antagonism
between craftsmen and labourers in engineering (Wright, 1867, 1873; A. Workingman,
1879). Most engineers would doubtless have agreed with the response of Robert Knight,
secretary of the Boilermakers, to queries from the Royal Commission on Labour in 1892
about conflicts between his members and those of the National Amalgamated Union of
Labour:
There ought not to be if only we could get the labourers to keep their places.... The helper
ought to be subservient and do as the mechanic tells him . . . . (RC Labour, vol. XXXII, Qs.
20, 801-802; cf. also Lynch, 1885).
Unsurprisingly, therefore, the latter union advised its members to remain at work during
strikes by craftsmen on Tyneside during the early 1890s, a position it maintained in 1897:
As neither our members nor the union have been consulted in any way on the question of the 8
hour day in the engineering trade, and seeing that the engineers refused to allow the labourers to
act with them in the last wage advance, and seeing that our members are chiefly employed in
districts outside London, and will therefore not receive any benefit whatever the ultimate settle-
ment is, the Executive Council advises our members to remain at work (Todd, 1975, pp. 38-39).
Similarly, a local study of the engineering lockout in Barrow-in-Furness shows that
already tense relations between locked-out craftsmen and labourers collapsed over a
dispute concerning the payment of common strike funds at markedly higher rates to
craftsmen (Todd, 1975).
As a result of this acrimonious history, labourers acted as blacklegs throughout
Britain, enabling the engineering employers to keep production going without the ASE.
It should be noted as well that the defection of the Boilermakers and the Patternmakers
from the federated movement resulted from a series of bitter demarcation disputes with
the ASE over the previous decade (Robertson, 1975).

t It should be remembered that the nine hour day for engineering was won in the 1870s by craftsmen and
labourers acting in concert, but this movement took place on the whole outside the framework of the unions
in a period when the division of labour was relatively stable (Allen et al., 1971).
270 J. Zeitlin
Though there had been conflicts between craftsmen and labourers in printing
notably between machine managers and feeders in the pressroomthese issues did not
involve the compositors. Consequently, cordial relations were possible between the
compositors and the new unions of the less skilled, founded in 1889 with assistance from
socialist compositors: the Printers' Labourers Union (now NATSOPA) and the Ware-
housemen and Cutters (now SOGAT). A dynamic Printing Trades Federation was
formed in 1901, and the new unions were the first to propose joint action within its
framework to secure the eight hour day (Child, 1967, pp. 194-197; Printing and
Kindred Trades Federation, Annual Reports, 1904, 1906). In this context, the demand for
the shorter working week appeared as an egalitarian goal advantageous to all grades,
even though this struggle aided the compositors to consolidate their privileged status.
In Edinburgh in 1910, an analogous federated movement was instrumental in elimin-
ating the historic source of local compositors' weakness, low paid female compositors
introduced after an unsuccessful strike in 1872. The women themselves came out for
higher pay and were organised in a special section of the Scottish Typographical
Association, while the male compositors obtained an agreement from the employers
that no new women be employed, especially on composing machines (Gillespie,
1953, pp. 203-207; Zeitlin, 1978, ch. 4).

Engineers' defence of craft control 1898-1914

So far we have drawn the contrast between the experience of engineers and compositors
very sharply, in order to highlight the role of the balance of forces between workers and
employers in determining the shape of the division of labour. But having sketched the
broad outlines of the argument, we can now qualify our description of the engineers,
particularly in regard to the pre-war period. As James Hinton has ably argued, the
extent of dilution required to meet wartime demands for mass-produced munitions
indicates the limits of pre-war reorganisation of engineering production, just as the
dynamism of the shop stewards' movement demonstrates the continued ability of
engineering craftsmen to defend their prerogatives (Hinton, 1973). The widespread
survival of craftsmen in engineering is particularly striking by contrast to the boot and
shoe industry, where following a successful lockout in 1895, employers converted to
mass-producing shoes in integrated factories with semi-skilled workers (Fox, 1957,
pp. 129-358; Church, 1968; Head, 1968).
Why then did the engineering employers fail to press home their advantage after their
victory in 1898? The answer lies in an interaction between their market situation and
the continuing capacity of craftsmen for local resistance. The British engineering industry
before 1914 was dominated by the older heavy sectors oriented toward export markets:
textile machinery, locomotives and railway rolling stock, marine engineering and heavy
machine tools. Though driven out of European markets by tariffs and the growth of
continental industries, these sectors continued to dominate third world markets,
especially in the empire and the white dominions. The real American and German
competition came in new lighter sectors amenable to mass production: light machine
tools, electrical engineering and consumer durables such as sewing machines, typewriters,
cycles and motor cars (Saul, 1968A; Floud, 1974, 1976, ch. 4). The demand for these
products in Britain was on the whole limited by comparison with its overseas competitors,
in part because of the weakness of working class purchasing power and in part because of
the disadvantages of an early start, which inhibited for example the diffusion of electric
 Graft control and division of labour 271
lighting (Saul, 1962, 1967;Byatt, 1968). To the extent that the new industries developed
in pre-war Britain, they were generally located outside the traditional areas of trade
union organisation, in the West Midlands and around London (Hinton, 1973, ch. 2;
Balfour Committee, 1928). Consequently, the important clashes between craftsmen and
employers over changes in the division of labour arose where the older sectors presented
opportunities for mass production, especially in armaments. It was therefore firms such
as Armstrong-Whitworth, Vickers and John Brown which gave the lead to employers'
militancy rather than the Lancashire textile engineers.
It should be remembered that the engineering lockout followed two decades of
depressed trade, as unprecedented numbers of American machine tools swept into
Britain to feed the demand for cycles kindled by a short-lived home boom. (Saul, 1967,
1968A). After 1900, as the terms of trade turned in favour of primary producers, the
increased demand from the markets of the underdeveloped world created an Indian
summer for the heavy engineering sectors, and accordingly diminished employers'
determination to press home their attack on the skilled craftsmen (Lewis, 1978).
Similarly, the limited market for mass-produced goods, coupled with the wholesale
reorganisation of the division of labour needed to convert the older sectors to standardised
production, encouraged the persistance of traditional techniques. It was only with the
massive wartime demand for munitions backed by government finance that a break-
through to mass production became possible (History of the Ministry of Munitions, 1920-4,
vol. IV, pt. 4, pp. 74-75, 79; Cole, 1923, p. 196; Hinton, 1973, ch. 1-2).
At the same time, the determined shop-floor resistance of craftsmen, coupled with the
democratic structure of the ASE, offered a powerful disincentive to such innovation as
the market permitted. After 1898, the ASE executive adopted a strategy of co-operating
with the EEF within the Terms of Settlement, accepting for example the introduction of
Taylorist-inspired premium bonus systems in 1902. District organisers reports show that
within a few years after the lockout, local union branches had resumed a guerrilla
campaign against labourers working machines and other managerial encroachments on
craft control (ASE Monthly Reports, 1900-1904,passim). Meanwhile, the ASE executive's
support for wage reductions during recessions along with resentments over the bonus
systems precipitated a full-scale rank and file revolt. District Committees on Clydeside
in 1903 and on Tyneside in 1908 struck against wage reductions in defiance of executive
orders; the union appeals court's ruling that strike pay could not be withheld led to the
demise of the executive's conciliatory strategy and the resignation of its architect,
General Secretary George Barnes (Weekes, 1970, chs. 5-6; Croucher, 1971). The
resulting devolution of power to the districts and the shop floor, which forms the back-
ground to the wartime shop stewards' movement, generated a renewed local offensive
over machine manning, and new systems of supervision and incentive payment, which
enjoyed considerable success during the pre-war boom (ASE Monthly Reports, 1910-14,
passim; Zeitlin, 1977, ch. 5).
But while many skilled engineers were able 'to follow the work to the machines' during
the pre-war years, the extent of their success should not be exaggerated. By 1914, 46%
of fitters and 37% of turners were on piece rates compared to a third of all engineers
eight years earlier, an index in this period of declining craft control (Jefferys, 1946, p.
129; Weekes, 1970, pp. 212-214). Similarly, skilled men's wages did not keep pace with
the cost of living, while the increase in the number of women and semi-skilled men ran
far ahead of the overall growth of engineering employment in the decade and a half
before the war (Yates, 1937, p. 99; Drake, 1917). By comparison with the compositors,
272 J. Zeitlin
the engineers' defence of the old order remained precarious, as the chill winds of the
1920s demonstrated. When craft militancy revived during the late 1930s and '40s, it was
on a substantially different basis (Carr, 1979, ch. 9; Croucher, 1978).

It will be apparent that in explaining the divergent abilities of craftsmen to maintain

their position in the division of labour in the face of technical change, we have largely
ignored cultural and political considerations. This is not because we wish to argue for a
determinism of social and economic structures, but rather because of the nature of the
problem we have chosen and its influence on the terms of our comparison. By choosing
the struggles of two groups of skilled craftsmen in the same country during the same
period, we have been able to compare groups with very similar world-views against the
background of a common political context. Were we comparing these groups with, say,
Italian peasant-workers, the role of culture and politics would be more central and the
implications for the division of labour different, f But by framing the comparison in this
way, we have been able to highlight the role of the balance of forces between capital and
labour in determining the structure of the division of labour and to identify the crucial
factors which condition that balance of forces itself: the market structures which at once
create the pressures for change and set the limits of confrontation, and the divisions
within the ranks of workers and employers themselves which so influence each party's
relative strength. In so doing we have provided an account of changes in the division of
labour as the outcome of a complex process of struggle and negotiation which could not
have been deduced from a unilinear view of capitalist development.

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