Overlookers' Role in Strikes
The role of overlookers in Germany helped to sustain German workers' understanding of the labor process as the submission of the labor activity to the employer's domination. When German workers labored under overlookers, they understood themselves as having immediate contact with executants of the employer. In Britain, by contrast, the overlookers' relative independence from the factory owners lent support to the workers' understanding that they transferred their labor as it was embodied in products. The German overlookers' status as agents, not just servants, of the owners prevented them from mediating between workers and owners. By contrast, British overlookers, who boasted that they did not "fawn" on the owners, saw themselves as intermediaries between workers and owners.[105] For example, the rules of the Huddersfield and Dewsbury Power Loom Tuners' Society, issued in 1882, set down as one of the association's goals the "regulating" of relations between workmen and owners.[106] Weavers in Yorkshire and Lancashire could even consult with their overlookers about the chances of obtaining wage concessions or ask for advice about the best timing for a strike.[107] Textile workers in Germany prevented even the lowest supervisors from getting word of a possible strike.[108] The German courts ruled that if an overlooker heard of a planned strike and did not report it to the owner, he had betrayed his duty to the owner and given grounds for immediate dismissal.[109]
The contrast between the roles of overlookers in Germany and in Britain left their marks upon the organization and course of strikes. Overlookers in Britain sometimes supported weavers' strike demands. At Manningham, for
[105] Yorkshire Factory Times , February 7, 1902, p. 8. A poem published in Werkmeister-Zeitung betrays a somewhat different attitude: "If the output is to be a credit to the foreman, then sweat must run from the burning brow. Yet only from above [the owner] can the yield indeed come." January 1, 1892.
[106] Kirklees Archives, Rules, Huddersfield and Dewsbury Power Loom Tuners' Society, 1882.
[107] For examples of tuners acting as intermediaries, see Yorkshire Factory Times , March 20, 1903, and December 6, 1889, p. 6, Huddersfield. For Lancashire, see Cotton Factory Times , September 10, 1886, Rochdale.
[108] Stadtarchiv Gera, Nr. 2799, pp. 40–41, April 27, 1890.
[109] Das deutsche Wollen-Gewerbe , December 31, 1905, Beilage zu Nr. 104–105, p. 1663. See the parallel decision for white-collar workers in Zeitschrift für Textil-Industrie , October 1, 1913, p. 264.
example, in one of Yorkshire's most famous labor disputes, in 1890 and 1891 the tuners refused to teach silk weaving to the new hires whom the higher management set on to break the weavers' strike. Instead, the tuners walked off the job in support of the striking weavers.[110] Weavers cheered their supervisors' decision with the cry, "Good owd overlooker!"[111] In the great weavers' strike of 1883 in the Colne Valley, too, tuners from the district voted against training learners and against filling in on the looms for the striking weavers.[112]
British overlookers also supported weavers' opposition to increases in the number of looms per weaver. For example, the overlookers at a firm outside Bradford in 1891 accused the owner of plotting to shift from two to three looms per weaver. They refused to carry out what they called the owner's "dirty work" of "spotting" for dismissal the least favorite weavers in their sections. This, they charged, would only fit into the owner's plan to begin assigning three looms to each weaver. They ceased work even though the owner did not propose an increase in their own allotments of looms.[113] In Lancashire, too, the overlookers struck in support of workers' demands. In a strike at Nelson in 1891, many of the weaving overlookers left work to force the dismissal of an overlooker who had made immoral propositions to a female subordinate.[114] Overlookers in Lancashire also supported an end to the so-called slate system, in which overlookers posted their workers' earnings to shame the slower ones.[115]
[110] Cyril Pearce, The Manningham Mills Strike, Bradford: December 1890–April 1891 (Hull: University of Hull, 1975), p. 20.
[111] Yorkshire Factory Times , January 9, 1891, p. 7.
[112] Northern Pioneer , April 14, 1883, p. 11. The employers' request during the strike that the tuners do weaving reflected a customary expectation: during slowdowns in production, tuners were wont to weave on a loom of their own. A few overlookers did carry out the weaving after the employer threatened them with dismissal. Yorkshire Factory Times , November 1, 1889, and December 6, 1889; Huddersfield Daily Examiner , April 12, 1883. In 1884 overlookers in Burnley, Lancashire, refused to fill places of weavers who went on strike. When these weaving overlookers went out on strike on their own in 1897 for a higher commission, they issued a leaflet which said, "The masters have set the tacklers and weavers one against the other quite long enough. . . . It is plain to everyone that our interests are identical." Trodd, op. cit., p. 302.
[113] Bradford Daily Telegraph , May 11, 1891, Horton Bank. This pattern was repeated elsewhere in Yorkshire. When employers at the turn of the century put increasing pressure on weavers in the Colne Valley to take on two looms instead of one, the Huddersfield and Dewsbury Power Loom Tuners' Society censured the employers. Yorkshire Factory Times , February 7, 1902, p. 1; March 28, 1902. Tuners in Dewsbury encouraged weavers to join the Textile Workers' Association: Yorkshire Factory Times , July 14, 1905, p. 4.
[114] Jan Lambertz, "Sexual Harassment in the Nineteenth Century English Cotton Industry," History Workshop Issue 19 (Spring 1985), p. 35. The Nelson Society of Powerloom Overlookers dismissed one of its members who allowed his children to work at this shed during the strike. Ibid.
Can we find analogous episodes in Germany where overlookers supported their underlings? In Germany, the professional journal Der deutsche Meister reported sympathetically in 1904 on weavers' efforts in Mönchengladbach to resist a move in some branches to the two-loom system.[116] But German overlookers did not make formal statements or take stronger action to support the weavers.[117] In Germany, business journals, textile workers' newspapers, police reports, and factory inspectors' reports appear not to mention such acts of solidarity.
The most telling indicator that overlookers stood closer to the workers in Britain than in Germany lies in the workers' collective actions. In Yorkshire and Lancashire, strikes by subordinates to protest the firing of their overlooker occurred in each of the textile districts and in all branches of the trade, especially among women, but among male workers as well.[118] When companies attempted to replace striking tuners, the Yorkshire Factory Times
[115] LRO, DDX 1151/19/3, Chorley Power-Loom Overlookers' Association, March 13, 1908. In Lancashire the overlookers' unions voted to strike with weavers against the use of inferior cotton. LRO, DDX 1151/1/3, January 7, 1907.
[116] Der deutsche Meister , September 7, 1904.
[117] Overlookers in Germany, as an arm of the employer, were forbidden to strike. As an appeals court in Dresden reasoned, "If the professional staff resorts to the threat of collectively giving notice, in order through the planned action to force the employer to be more forthcoming, then the staff has grossly violated their duty, inherent in the employment relation, to safeguard the interests of the owner and to refrain from anything that could run against those interests, and has thereby proven themselves guilty of disloyalty in service." The quotation comes from a case involving white-collar workers but applied to the category of professional technical workers as well. Zeitschrift für die gesamte Textil-Industrie , October 1, 1913, p. 264. For an analogous case outside of textiles in which an employer could immediately dismiss a technical professional for collaborating with workers, see Das Gewerbegericht , September 3, 1903, p. 294, Solingen. So long as they did not strike, however, German overlookers remained free to petition their employers for changes in working conditions. Jürgen Kocka, Die Angestellten in der deutschen Geschichte , 1850-1980 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1981), p. 123. But they exercised this option only when it concerned their own interests. Die Textilarbeiter-Zeitung , May 21, 1910, "Kommission der Webermeister," and September 25, 1909, Bocholt; Der Textil-Arbeiter , April 29, 1910, p. 134.
[118] "Strikes and Lockouts in 1893," PP 1894 LXXXI, strike 694, Halifax; "Strikes and Lockouts in 1894," PP 1895 XCII, strike 966, Leeds; United Kingdom, Royal Commission on Labour, 1891, re strike ca. 1870, op. cit., p. 92; Yorkshire Factory Times , Birstall, November 22, 1889; Elland, May 15, 1891; Ravensthorpe, April 29, 1892; Milnsbridge, February 12, 1892; Halifax, June 2, 1893; Luddenden, August 9, 1901; Dewsbury, May 2, 1902; Halifax, June 17, 1898; Bradford Daily Telegraph , May 8, 1891. For Lancashire, see J. White, The Limits , op. cit., p. 189, and J. White, "Lancashire Cotton Textiles," op. cit., p. 213; Cotton Factory Times , January 29, 1897, Colne; PP 1890 68, pp. 574, 580, Manchester; Royal Commission on Labour, PP 1890–1891 LXXVII, p. 483, Burnley; "Strikes and Lockouts in 1893," PP 1894 LXXXI, p. 77, Wigan, and p. 510, Bolton; "Strikes and Lockouts in 1894," PP 1895 XCII, p. 360, Whittlefield, and p. 481, Stockport; "Strikes and Lockouts in 1897," PP 1898 LXXXVIII, p. 589, Preston. For the early industrial era, see Ashworth, op. cit., p. 13.
reported, "the weight of the evidence is that women weavers will refuse to work with imported overlookers."[119] This newspaper even believed that the ability to retain favorite supervisors in the spinning branch comprised an incentive for workers to join unions. "It's a great pity, to my mind," a correspondent wrote, "that even the spinners do not combine, if for no other reason than to keep a good overlooker."[120] British weavers supported the demands of their tuners for higher commissions.[121] German overlookers received comparatively little support from workers. In Britain, workers' strike support for overlookers was discussed as common knowledge, but in Germany it was considered an extraordinary event. A German supervisor said in 1912 that if an overlooker appealed to underlings for support, "they would laugh at him and declare him insane."[122]
To complete this comparison of overlookers' positions, we must consider the form of union organization pursued by overlookers in the two countries. Although German overlookers could not legally strike, they could unite in collective associations and organize demonstrations.[123] Two major organiza-
[119] Yorkshire Factory Times , December 6, 1912. For Nelson in Lancashire, see Yorkshire Factory Times , October 28, 1892. The tuners' society in Bradford resolved at an assembly in 1899 "that the best thanks of this meeting be given to the weavers at Briggella Mills for the gallant stand they have made on behalf of the overlookers." Bradford District Archives, 1/1/6 3D86, July 8, 1899.
[120] Yorkshire Factory Times , November 17, 1893.
[121] Cotton Factory Times , April 23, 1897, Oldham.
[122] Zeitschrift für die gesamte Textil-Industrie , October 31, 1912, p. 967. One example of German weavers striking in support of a fired overlooker did come to light: Zentrales Staatsarchiv Merseburg, Rep. 120, BB VI, No. 164, Band 4, 1899, Mönchengladbach, p. 109.
[123] On the staging of demonstrations, see Der deutsche Meister , March 1, 1913, and March 15, 1913. Overlookers from the Wuppertal in Germany, during a collective protest in 1910, sought to establish thirty-six looms as their upper limit. Der Textil-Arbeiter , 1910, p. 142. German overlookers were not denied the right to bargain over the sale of their labor as a market commodity, only the ability to do so through the threat of collective action. In Yorkshire and Lancashire, strikes by an entire staff of overlookers at weaving mills did not represent a rare event. The tuners' typical grievance was the assignment of an excessive number of looms per tuner. In the twenty-five-year period before the First World War, overlooking disputes occurred in each of the major weaving towns of Yorkshire and in every branch of production, from the fancy woolen trade to cheap worsteds. The largest action by overlookers began during the spring of 1913 in the Bradford district. The overlookers' union in Bradford, which counted 90 percent of the areas' tuners as its members, carried out a general strike to demand a minimum wage of two pounds per week. For tacklers' strikes in Lancashire at Accrington, Church, and Oswaldtwistle, see Textile Mercury , July 8, 1899, p. 24, and for Nelson, see Yorkshire Factory Times , October 28, 1892. For Yorkshire, see the wagebooks for Taylor and Littlewood, Newsome Mills, August 1894, Kirklees Archives; Minutes of the Huddersfield Power Loom Tuners' Society, January 10, 1912, November 12, 1912, and October 24, 1913, Kirklees Archives; Textile Mercury , May 16, 1891, p. 344; Bradford Daily Telegraph , May 8, 1891; July 6, 1899. Yorkshire Factory Times , June 9, 1905, Dudley Hill.
tions represented the interests of German textile overlookers. The oldest, the German Foremen's Union, founded in 1884, included overlookers from all industries. Before the turn of the century, this group counted over twenty thousand members, including more than one hundred in each of several towns in northwest Germany where textiles predominated: Aachen, Mönchengladbach, Rheydt, Barmen, and Elberfeld.[124] Another association, the German Supervisors' Union, admitted overlookers only from the textile branch. This group, founded by weaving overlookers in 1899 in Mönchengladbach, had over five hundred members in northwest Germany by 1903.[125]
These German overlookers' unions varied in a crucial respect from those in Britain: the lowest loom fixers and the highest foremen united in a single organization.[126] The lowest loom fixers and the highest supervisors in Germany shared the position of salaried servants, in contrast to those below them who received piece rates. German foremen used their organization to support the rights of the lesser overlookers. For example, the German Foremen's Union petitioned to ensure that state officials classified its loom fixers as technical professionals, eligible for the government's pension plan.[127] In each of the major centers of weaving in Yorkshire—Bradford, Leeds, Halifax, Keighley, and Huddersfield—citywide overlookers' unions developed at the same pace as in Germany. But the British overlookers' unions severed the lower-level overlookers from higher-ups; foremen did not join.[128] The titles of the Yorkshire unions reflected this exclusion: the local associations named themselves Power-Loom Tuners or Power-Loom Overlookers. In contrast to their German counterparts, the British overlookers had an organization in which the
[124] Deutscher Werkmeister-Verband, Statistics from 1892. Zentrales Staatsarchiv Merseburg, Rep. 120, BB VII 1, Nr. 25, Bd. 1, p. 19. Membership cannot be broken down by trade on either the city or the national level.
[125] Gladbacher Merkur , September 26, 1899. Archiv des Freien Deutschen Gewerkschaftbundes, Der Deutsche Meister-Verband, Membership Report, Third Quarter, 1903.
[126] Stadtarchiv Bocholt, K2/149, August 1900, statutes of Deutscher Webermeister-Verband. For evidence that not all members had so-called fixed terms (feste Bezüge ), see paragraph 133, Der Textil-Arbeiter , June 16, 1905. This confirms that loom fixers belonged to this union. See also Der Christliche Textilarbeiter , June 8, 1901, "Sonderorganisationen."
[127] Archiv des Deutschen Gewerkschaftsbundes, "Stenographischer Bericht über die Verhandlungen des Delegiertentages des Deutschen Werkmeister-Verbandes," 1913, p. 32.
[128] In its mill-by-mill survey of members and loom assignments in 1913, the Bradford loom tuners' union counted as members virtually all tuners but in each mill excluded one supervisor, the highest-level foreman. Bradford District Archives, Loom Tuners' Union survey of 1913.
highest foremen, who were tied most closely to the owner, could not put a brake on action directed against the owners. In Germany, by contrast, the overlookers' unions classified the loom fixers, who actually stood near to the status of ordinary workers, as occupants of the same basic position as the employers' closest assistants.
The absence of foremen from overlookers' organizations in Britain also enabled the overlookers to move closer to the position of the textile workers' unions.[129] From their founding in the mid-nineteenth century, the overlookers' organizations endorsed the principle of providing strike support to weavers if weavers in turn supported the overlookers' cause.[130] In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, affiliation became more explicit. The tuners' societies in the cities of Yorkshire relinquished their status as mere friendly societies and registered as trade unions.[131] By the eve of the First World War, the overlookers' unions in Bradford, the Colne Valley, and the Heavy Woollen District had endorsed the Independent Labour Party. They donated funds and sent representatives to the Labour party's parliamentary council meetings.[132] Even in Halifax, where the overlookers' club was slow to act, some overlookers identified themselves more as laborers than as supervisors. One member of the Halifax society, in a debate during 1909 on a resolution to affiliate with the General Union of Overlookers, a national organization, expressed this view with special clarity. According to the minutes of the union's meeting,
He said it was the same ol' thing over again, Capital versus Labour.
He said if the masters of Halifax wished to reduce overlookers'
[129] For an example in which even the mill manager's niece and chief overlooker's daughter volunteered for the weavers' union, see Elizabeth K. Blackburn's autobiography, "In and Out the Windows," Burnley Library Archives, p. 36.
[130] LRO, DDX 1128/1/1, Blackburn Overlookers' Society, 1858, 1862.
[131] Managers' and Overlookers' Society, Bradford, Managers' and Overlookers' Society, Centenary Spinning Celebrations, 1827–1927 (Bradford: R. Sewell, 1927), p. 20; Yorkshire Factory Times , March 22, 1901, p. 5, and March 17, 1893, p. 4.
[132] Managers' and Overlookers' Society, Bradford, op. cit., p. 26. Joanna Bornat, "An Examination of the General Union of Textile Workers 1883–1922," Ph.D. diss., University of Essex, 1981, p. 76; Minutes of the Huddersfield Power Loom Tuners' Society, May, 1905, and December, 1907, Kirklees Archives. The Huddersfield Power Loom Tuners' Society sent delegates to the Labour party parliamentary council meeting in 1905 to decide how many wards ought to be contested "in the interest of Labour." These overlookers' unions also supported the Yorkshire Textile Workers' Federation, which lobbied in Parliament for factory legislation. Yorkshire Factory Times , March 22, 1901, p. 5. The Yorkshire Factory Times reported in the spring of 1914 that the Yorkshire Tuners' Association planned to put forward Labour candidates for Parliament at Morley, Wakefield, and Holmfirth. March 26, 1914.
wages, this Society could not resist it. Therefore he would support Joining the General Union or he was prepared to go further and amalgamate with the workers of the world.[133]
The collaboration between overlookers and workers extended to Lancashire as well. In 1907, when overlookers in Blackburn, Lancashire, joined the United Textile Workers' Association, a national confederation of textile unions, they justified their decision by citing the "spirit of mutual help and brotherhood that ought to exist among all unionists."[134]
Whereas overlookers' unions in Britain supported their members' interests by fighting for improvements in the factory, their counterpart German unions focused their efforts on the political arena outside the factory. They persuaded the German government to admit them in 1911 to a government pension program similar to one enjoyed by white-collar workers.[135] They advocated that technical professional workers be represented on the government's labor boards.[136] Yet the German overseers' unions did not directly
[133] Calderdale Archives, TU102/3, June 19, 1909. In Burnley, the overlookers in 1892 urged the formation of a "distinct Labour Party in order to carry forward the full and complete emancipation of labour." Trodd, op. cit., p. 325. The General Association of Powerloom Overlookers supported the Labour Representation Committee, because, it said, other parties are "mixed up and interwoven with capital." General Union of Associations of Powerloom Overlookers, The Almanack and Guide for 1899 (Manchester: Ashton and Redfern, 1899). Yorkshire overlookers stood close enough to the weavers that they also applied for jobs as dues collectors for the regular textile workers' union, the Textile Workers' Association. Yorkshire Factory Times , October 14, 1892, p. 4, Bradford. Overlookers were also elected treasurers of workers' independent mill clubs. Yorkshire Factory Times , December 5, 1912. In Yeadon, the tuners never developed their own union, but enlisted with weavers in the Factory Workers' Union. My interview with Edward Mercer, Rawdon, Yorkshire. In the heavy woolen district, some heads of departments, probably outside of weaving, were members of the regular textile workers union. The union chief asked for a raise for them as part of a package of wage demands in 1913. Yorkshire Factory Times , May 8, 1913, p. 8. In Lancashire, the manager of an Oldham mill said, "Plenty of overlookers in the weaving trade who have been working weavers are still in the Weavers' Union." Journal of the British Association of Managers of Textile Works , Session 1913–1914, Volume 5, p. 17.
[134] Blackburn Times , March 2, 1907. The textile overlookers played an important role in the founding of the Labour Representation Committee in Lancashire. Trodd, op. cit., p. 303. For Lancashire, see also LRO, DDA 1151/19/3, Chorley Power-Loom Overlookers' Association Minutes, July 11, 1903, support for Labour Representation; LRO, DDX 1151/1/3, Preston Powerloom Overlookers, June 19, 1906, support for Labour Representation. The General Union of Associations of Power-Loom Overlookers endorsed the Labour Representation Committee. Cotton Factory Times , April 29, 1904. For the division in political outlooks among overlookers from 1908 to 1920 in Preston, however, see Michael Savage, The Dynamics of Working-Class Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 155.
[135] Heinz Potthoff, Das Versicherungsgesetz für Angestellte: Vom 20. Dezember 1911. (Stuttgart: J. Hess, 1912).
[136] Franz Potthoff, Die soziale Frage der Werkmeister (Düsseldorf: Werkmeister-Buchhandlung, 1910).
confront the issue of raising overlookers' salaries. "In our social program the question of pay is almost completely forgotten," said a speaker at the overlookers' convention in 1911. The first requirement for raising the salaries of overlookers would have been to admit into the union only those who were already able to command a minimum salary, so that all in the union would have some bargaining leverage. Such an entrance requirement the union rejected.[137] The overlookers' societies in Yorkshire and Lancashire, by contrast, imposed a rule that applicants prove they already earned a high wage.[138] British overlookers took on the issue of pay directly, whereas their German counterparts moved to the political arena, a shift which, in the factory itself, upheld the role of German overlookers as servants of the owner.
The forms of association for overlookers in Germany and Britain reflected the basic difference between their perceptions of the overlooker's role in the factory. The German organizations detached the overlookers from the workers and linked them to the highest foremen; they defined their members' status by reference to the exercise of authority. From the German viewpoint, even the lowest loom fixer was unlike a worker, since the loom fixer had to exercise authority over others and made decisions for workers. The British associations for overlookers, by contrast, severed overlookers from the higher foremen close to the owner; they defined their members as workers who delivered a labor product.
The inability of workers in Germany to unite with their immediate supervisors against employers meant that workers' collective action was directed against the employers' domination of the labor process per se. In Britain, the affiliation of workers with their overlookers meant that workers were comparatively insulated on the shop floor itself from regular contact with the employers' authority. They oriented their collective action to a greater degree toward the price at which workers would deliver their materialized labor.
The theory of the capitalist labor process that Marx presented in Volume One of Kapital is critical for unraveling the differences between the German and British labor movements—but not for reasons that Marx would ever
[137] Archiv des Deutschen Gewerkschaftsbundes, "Stenographischer Bericht über die Verhandlungen des Delegiertentages des Deutschen Werkmeister-Verbandes," 1911, p. 94.
[138] LRO, DDX 1128/1/1, Blackburn Powerloom Overlookers' Society, February 5, 1862. Kirklees Archives, Minutes of the Huddersfield Power Loom Tuners' Society, September, 1912. For an example of someone rejected due to low salary, see ibid., May, 1907.
have dreamed of. The text reveals the cultural assumptions acquired by German workers in the labor process. Marx's emphasis upon the capitalist's exercise of authority in the factory as a means of extracting surplus forecasts the greater importance German textile workers would place, both in their complaints and in the enactment of strikes, upon aggressively contesting the capitalist's disposition over the labor activity itself.